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In this episode we really cover a lot...again. We start off warning people of the seizure danger associated with Cyberpunk 2077 and move onto: the passing of David Prowse, the new Obi-Wan series, some thoughts on movie franchises and making every movie into an expanded universe, some fun and interesting casting for the new Spiderman movie, and some photos from the new Hawkeye series. We do talk about our thoughts on the latest episodes from The Mandalorian, but we wait till AFTER nerd grabs. All of this plus Nerd Grabs and a lot of bad jokes, although some are funny. So grab a large stiff drink and come walk with us on our nerd journey. Please feel leave comments on our Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter pages!! We'd love to hear your thoughts, comments, or questions!! ~Nick, Robb, and Kevin~   BEST 3SOME ON FACEBOOK Best 3some Ever on INSTAGRAM Best 3some Ever SWAG SHOP    Intro music: Strings and Blips by Adam Selzer, vocied over by Amanda Day Exit music: Little Clubthing by Pure Black Stabbers, voiced over by Amanda Day Best 3some Ever is produced, and copyrighted, by KALE WHINN PRODUCTIONS LLC

It’s time to start dismantling the system! Gotta start at the top where the money is! Like with the treasurer! But that means we need to get fancy. A fancy party sounds like just the thing. Can our gang fit in and rub elbows with the fancy people in town? I guess we’re about to see!Pledge/donate on Patreon: www.patreon.com/thatdndpodcastSend feedback to: ThatDnDPodcast@Gmail.comVisit our website: http://www.thatdndpodcast.comAmazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/?rw_useCurrentProtocol=1&tag=thdnpo07-20

On this edition of Solo Weekends with Jimmy:MJ sits us down to teach us all a lesson,The Ravens and Buccaneers prove they are all in,This week's Phrozen 5 best NFL bets to pay the mortgage,The most interesting NBA team is not who you think.

A city so nice for tournament golf they're playing it twice. Hell yeah we're running back Columbus. Some mea culpas for Tron and Randy to issue, new ground to explore, and then a wide-ranging interview with the one, the only, RC3. Enjoy!

Welcome!   For being locked down do to this Pandemic there is certainly a lot of technology in the news this week.  So let's get into it.  We are finding that managers are surveilling their employees, probably a little more than necessary and an uptick in VPN usage. Big Tech is strangling us and WordPress has a vulnerability plus much more   So sit back and listen in.  For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson: Hey everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. Spring is in the air. I am so excited about this, you know, I love pretty much every season. I was just thinking the other day how I missed not having, you know, like crunchy snow that you can walk on. I know you might think I'm crazy, right? I know other family members of mine who absolutely think I'm crazy, but it's, maybe it's just a thing from my childhood, you know, being 40 degrees below zero and being outside and just walking in the snow and just having a crunch, crunch, crunch. [00:00:40] But you know, so wintertime makes me enjoy spring makes me enjoy summer to a bit of a lesser degree, but I love going motorcycling so that works right? In the summertime. And then I really like fall probably my favorite season and then winter is pretty good. I'm not a winter sports kind of guy. I should probably do a little bit more of that. [00:01:01] Well, if you saw me on the TV news this week, you know that I was talking a lot about this new surveillance society that we have. Yeah. I'm not just talking about general regular surveillance that we've talked about before. I'm talking about surveillance in the workplace. And now there are two sides of this. [00:01:23] Of course, there are like two sides to everything and there's the side of the employee and then there's the side of the employer. And so we're going to spend a little time right now going through some of the things on both sides. If you're an employer, why you might want to be doing surveillance. In fact, in some ways, why you should be doing surveillance, if you're an employee, what are your rights? [00:01:46] What can you do about it? We'll be talking about that. And then some of the software the businesses are using and what you can expect. So let's sort of been talking about a lot this week over on various radio stations and on television as well this week. So getting right into this, and you'll see some articles about this up on my website as well, at Craig peterson.com [00:02:10] Oh and man did I get a kick in the pants this week, you know I've been doing a little bit of work on the website because we're putting some new stuff together for people. For y'all and I, I went to CraigPeterson.com/subscribe and just tried to check it out. So guess what. It doesn't work. Slash Subscribe to me. I just hate it when that happens. [00:02:35] So if you have tried to subscribe on my website before to get my weekly newsletter or get some of my special reports because you get, I think it's four of them when you subscribe, I send those off to you and you went to CraigPeterson.com/subscribe to subscribe. It may not have worked. So I'm going to be working some more on that this week. [00:02:58] I got that problem and then I've got a problem as well with the text number, the (855) 385-5553 number. And I guess it's kind of like the cobbler's kids that have no shoes, right? Where man. There are so many things that I need to do and I've been doing for customers and lately, I've been doing even more for non-customers, is trying to help everybody out because there are so many people that are in such dire straits right now. [00:03:26] You know, all businesses have changed. Talking about the pivot and pivoting to work at home has been a very big deal. In fact, I'm going to. Probably have a little course on that coming up here in a couple of weeks. What to do if you a business and you're kind of pivoting to homeworkers maybe permanently, but certainly for the next little while. [00:03:45] What should you be doing from the security standpoint? I think it's really important for everyone to understand and to do. Many managers are turning to surveillance software and. I got this idea about a norm reminder really from the Washington Post this week now, Washington post, you know, I don't trust him at all for any of their political coverage because they haven't been honest with any of us for quite a while, but some of their technology coverage isn't bad. [00:04:14] It's kind of like the New York Times. It's such a shame because the New York times has such great. In-depth articles on so many things, and then they completely misrepresent politics all the time, like a hundred percent consistent, and it's, so, I'm just always torn. Do I pay any attention to these guys or not? [00:04:35] You know, I certainly look at their coverage too when it comes to the political stuff, cause I have to make a judgment call myself. But man, I don't mind supporting the regular things, but their editorial things are in their decisions as to which stories to run. Sometimes they're just so antithetical to everything, I believe. [00:04:55] But anyway, enough of that. So the Washington post article. Kind of got me thinking about it. So I did a bunch of research and I have one, two, three pages of a bullet point that I want to go through with you. Because I did research. I looked at a lot of things online. I looked at some of the websites of these companies making this, I don't know if you want to call it spyware, but that's kind of what it boils down to and figured out what's going on there. I had looked at some of the legal issues from the federal government side and from the state government, and here's the bottom line. When in doubt, assume you're being watched now. [00:05:36] I think that's a reasonable assumption in this day and age, right? We've all got our smart devices. We're online. We know that companies like Google and Facebook are compiling information to sell it about us, and I'm not sure that that's an absolutely horrific thing. I get more concerned when we're talking about employers surveilling us because if you have a bad boss or not so great boss, what's going to happen when that boss comes down on you for taking a break. [00:06:09] Right? Even a short break, you know? Yeah. You took a 15-minute break or whatever it was that was not, you know, necessary for them to come down on you. That's where I started getting concerned. People losing their jobs over this. Now, in some cases, if you're a transcriptionist and you're paid by the word, well, you know, why would they bother? [00:06:29] Monitoring me. I'm paid by the word, right? Who cares? You know? Obviously I have to deliver in a certain timeframe, but if it takes me all day and I have a 24-hour guarantee and I'm only typing one word a minute,  it's no skin off my employer's nose. And on the other end of the scale, if you are kind of intellectual work and you're working. [00:06:52] At a higher level, if you will, right? You're not just selling your, your keystroke, your fingers. You're actually thinking about problems. You're trying to logically analyze what's going on, what should be done, what shouldn't be done. If you're that type of person while then it's a completely different thing, right? [00:07:12] Again, how do you measure that? Because you might be reading a book, you might, you might have read a book last night and now you're in the office and you're looking at that book from last night cause you want to make some notes on it because you're one implemented into the office and now your employer's looking at you saying, well why hasn't your screen changed. [00:07:31] So that's the other side. So I get really concerned with the employers somehow thinking that this type of monitoring is a panacea for them. It's not going to motivate their employees to work. It just totally reminds me of when I was a professor on faculty out at Pepperdine University, and I taught, back then it was called MIS management information systems 422 out at Pepperdine. [00:07:57] And one of the things we had to look at was something called the Hawthorne principle. And they had done a study in Hawthorne, California of workers on a manufacturing line. And the big question was do they perform better when they're being monitored or when they're not being monitored? There were some interesting studies to this looking at music in the background. [00:08:21] Do you perform better when you have music playing in the background just at a low volume or better when it's quiet? Well, in all of these cases, it depends on what you're doing. Workers tend to perform better. With music in the background when they're doing kind of a rote task when they're working on an assembly line, and it's the same thing over and over and over again, that tends to help those people. [00:08:50] But when we're talking about an intellectual worker who is planning, who's thinking things through, who's writing marketing materials, who's doing software development, in most cases. They perform worse with music in the background and they're better off just having some basic white noise going on, which could be as simple as a fan. [00:09:13] It could be office chatter, et cetera, and I actually use some things in order to put that into the background myself, and I find them to be very, very helpful. You can find all kinds of them online. If you wanted to know exactly which ones I use, send me an email and I'll let you know, just me@craigpeterson.com but I have a plugin that goes into my browser. [00:09:37] That has a coffee shop, the ring of fire, burning, you know, outside a bird chirping, wind blowing, water lapping just, it has a few of those things. And, and I can select what I want and if I need to kind of focus on something, I find that to be very, very helpful. so when it comes to monitoring in the Hawthorne effect. [00:10:04] What they found is that yes, in some cases monitoring people. Worked out better, they produce better than not monitoring people. And that kind of reminds me of a good war movie that I absolutely loved. I don't think it was a great escape. Oh, no. I remember what it was. it was Schindler's list and there were supposed to be making hinges. [00:10:28] These are, of course, prisoners, that are being used as slave labor. And. They are supposed to be making these hinges. And so the guard comes over, lets me see, we make a hinge and he makes one in a matter of just seconds or minute or whatever it is. And then under the Hawthorne. That'd be principal here. [00:10:48] If he makes one hinge in one minute, he should be able to make 60 hinges in an hour. And yet they were only making, I don't remember what any of these numbers were. It's been a long time since I saw that movie. But, he didn't make his many, so obviously he got in trouble, as did other people who were on the assembly line. You know, if there's a gun to your head, maybe you will work better, maybe you will work faster. But in most cases, that's not true. And that was certainly true of these people who were confined to slave labor. They're in the Schindler's list movie. So we're going to talk a lot more about this when we get back because nearly half of the US labor force is now. working from home. [00:11:30] That's according to a study by MIT researchers in April, so just a couple of weeks ago, stick around. We're going to talk a lot more about this when we get back. You are listening to Craig Peterson right here on WGAN, and you'll hear me every Wednesday morning, give or take at 7:30 on with Matt. [00:11:52] Stick around. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson: Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig Peterson here, on WGAN. I hope you're enjoying your Saturday, or if you're listening to me online, whatever day it is, you're listening, and of course, you can get that online experience through any podcast app. I'm on tune in. I'm on pretty much everywhere. You'll just be able to find me by looking for Craig Peterson. [00:00:28] The easiest way is just go to CraigPeterson.com/your favorite app when it comes to podcasts, whatever it is, and it'll just do a redirect for you, send you right to the right spot, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever it is. So we were talking before the break about what's happening here with surveillance scene, surveilling our employees out there. [00:00:55] And we're seeing some major changes. Now, some of these started actually a few years ago because businesses are rightly concerned about their intellectual property being stolen, and they need to know if an employee is. About to leave and leave with their customer list. And I have certainly seen that happen before. [00:01:17] Unfortunately, we often get these phone calls after the fact, after the data's already been stolen, the employee's gone, or whatever it is. But you know, that's kind of the way it is, right? Most businesses and people aren't willing to do anything about it until it goes over the cliff and this case. So what do we do as employers if we want to protect our information? [00:01:41] Because it's proprietary, right? That's called intellectual property for a reason, and the reason that it's proprietary is you just don't want it stolen and it gives you the advantage that you need to have. MIT researchers, as I mentioned before, are saying the nearly half of the US workforce is now working from home, which is absolutely massive. [00:02:06] We're seeing. VPN usage way up, and you know, I have a whole course on VPNs, the free one that I've been doing, and VPNs are not a panacea at all. In fact, they can make things much worse for you if you're trying to be secure. We've got these tattle wearables. Programs out there now that are doing everything from watching what you're typing and alerting the manager if you're typing in certain words that they think might mean that you are leaving their employee. [00:02:40] Right? So going to a website and employment website could cause, could cause a phone call from your manager. But we do have to check this. We do have to be careful. If you are going to be monitoring your employees, you need to make sure it's in the employee handbook. You want to be upfront with your employees and from the employee's side, remember that some of the software will do everything, like keep track of your keystrokes, watch the websites you're visiting, which is always the case. [00:03:13] A reasonable business is going to be tracking website visits. So keep that in mind. But, They're also going to potentially be screen capturing and maybe even capturing a picture from your camera. Some of them also will listen on the microphone and I get it. You know, it can be very demoralizing. [00:03:36] You've been working for a company for years, maybe decades, and now all of a sudden you've been, you're being spied on. Right? You think you've been a good worker, so talk with them. There are no federal laws against employee monitoring. In the private sector. There are a number of state laws, but many of these employers are crossing these ethical lines by continuing to track the employees after they've clocked out for the day. [00:04:05] So if you're an employee. Your best bet may be to just turn off the computer, turn off the laptop. If you have a smartphone that's been issued by the company, turned that off as well. If you have an app that is from the company, you might want to kill it. So it's no longer tracking and make sure your settings on your iPhone are set to only allow tracking while the app is active. [00:04:32] So those are a few things. You can talk to your HR department if you think something's happening that shouldn't be. And if you filed an internal complaint and nothing is really happening, you can file the same complaint with the securities and exchange commission, the equal opportunity employment commission, or the state organizations. [00:04:53] All right? By the way, you don't have to be informed that you are being spied upon. So keep that in mind. [00:05:01] So next step here, I want to talk about something from American thinker.com there's a great article there about big tech and how it is frankly strangling us right now. We have that 1984 ad. [00:05:17] Do you remember that? where. All of these people were sitting in a kind of Orwellian room, a socialist room. Everybody's dressed the same because you only have one type of clothes you can buy. Yeah. [00:05:29] By the way, Hey, thanks, guys. For this, what has it been two months exhibition of what socialism's really like? There's nothing on the shelves right now. [00:05:38] What do you remember that they're all sitting there and they're fighting this technocratic elite. When that woman runs down and throws the hammer at the screen. And obviously it was a pretty gloomy spot that ran, and I think it didn't have first run during the super bowl if I remember. Bottom line, but the tech giants now, like Apple and Google, all of these guys have really morphed into what is now, I think, near totalitarian giants. [00:06:13] No, they are controlling our speech. You got Candace Owens, brilliant woman. She's suspended from Twitter for challenging the Michigan governor. Facebook has flagged the declaration of independence as hate speech. It's incredible what's going on. We see Aaron Renn reporting that conservative and left-wing groups are being pulled down at Twitter, and that was back in 2016 2019 YouTube has been blocking some British history teachers from. [00:06:49] YouTube entirely for uploading archival material related to Adolf Hitler. Yeah. Heaven forbid that we remember what happened with him and YouTube said that these British history teachers were breaching. Guidelines banning the promotion of hate speech, even though they weren't promoting it, they were trying to let people know, Hey, this has happened before. [00:07:15] It can happen again. It's absolutely incredible. And, and where is that line drawn with the national socialists in Germany? Right? You remember? That's what they were. That's what Nazi stood for. National socialists. So the socialists there in Germany, they put out all kinds of a propaganda film about how great they were. [00:07:35] We were only telling half-truths. Sound familiar, right? and they're these British history teachers. Apparently we're putting some of these apps so people understood what it looked like to have manipulation coming from the government. So they deleted the videos, abrupt loaded to help educate future generations about the risks of socialism. [00:08:00] It's absolutely incredible. Now, Michael Cutler wrote just a couple of years ago that Twitter has, I love this language now morphed into a means of thought control. Through the control of language. Now we have, through the government, through the legislature and the federal level, we have given these companies immunity from prosecution in most cases because we say, Hey, it's like a public bulletin board. [00:08:30] People are up there saying stuff and YouTube and Twitter, et cetera. You're not liable if someone posts, posts, hate speech, et cetera, on your site. And now they're acting as though they might be liable. And so now because they're acting this way, should we remove their, their special treatment of being basically common carrier? [00:08:57] They're, they're saying, Hey, listen, we're, we're more like the telephone company than anything else than a newspaper. We don't have editorial control over the content and we don't control the content. Well, guess what? Those days are long past us. We need to make some changes here, okay? These big internet companies know more about you than you know about yourself, frankly. [00:09:20] And there's a study that came out, this was a years ago, where average consumers are checking their smartphones 150 times a day, and that number. Has grown, so we've got to make some changes. All right, everybody, stick around. We'll be right back. We're going to talk about some attacks that are going on. If you like to go online, visit websites, or particularly if you have your own business or personal website. [00:09:46] I got some news for you about attacks that are underway right now. Stick around. You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN. Craig Peterson: Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN yeah. Big tech is strangling us. We talked about that and how laws really need to change. I know that Chairman Pai over the FCC has been trying to tighten the things up a little bit, but there's been a lot of pushback from the left end from some people in their bureaucracy. [00:00:26]We also all already talked about the managers turning to surveillance software. And I understand why many of them are doing it to protect their intellectual property more than to make sure you're working at least. That's been the case historically. Now they're doing a little bit differently. They're actually trying to make sure you're working. [00:00:46] So if you are someone that has a website and it could be just a basic website, like something that you have for your local boy scout troop, or many, many of the other ones out there, your very likely to be using some open-source software called Wordpress. [00:01:07] WordPress is a great piece of software and I've been using it for many, many years. I used to hand-roll websites, which means I was sitting there writing the HTML code and putting everything in and it just wasn't very pretty. And then I moved over to an Adobe product. To do it. And then, then I went to something called WebGui, which was another piece of software to help run websites and build them. [00:01:35] And then I ended up on WordPress and I've been there for many, many years. Basically, since WordPress started. It has been quite a great little. Tool. So if you're thinking as well, by the way of putting up a website, let's say you want to start a business. Let's say you are a brick and mortar business, and frankly, you're looking to transition from brick and mortar to online first, which is what I think every business needs to be doing. [00:02:03] I want you to have a serious look at this. You can find it online. There are two WordPress sites. There's wordpress.com that you can go to online. And WordPress dot com just takes care of everything for you. They, they're a hosting company. They have themes. You can use a, they make it really quite simple. [00:02:25] It is not the most flexible but let me just give you a little bit of warning, but. All right? In this day and age, it's like 35% of the web is built on WordPress, so I'm looking at the numbers here on their website or their pricing plan. And for personal use, it is $4 a month. That is if you are paying for a year at a time so that that's hard to beat, isn't it? [00:02:59] And for premium, which I say is best for freelancers, it is $8 a month. Again, if you pay a yearly small business, they've got $25 per month and e-commerce. $45 a month. Now, the main difference between all of these different price points for WordPress. It has to do with domain name registration. Like if you're free, you probably don't have your own domain. [00:03:28] If you're a business, you're going to need your own domain name. Some of them have live support, 24/7 some of these, the basic packages only have email support. Premium themes are only available in the higher packages. You know, the business ones, which are premium business and commerce, they've gotten marketing and monetization tools that you can use at the business level. [00:03:54] Some search engine optimization, some advertising analytics, they have just a whole bunch of things that you can do. And then, then the highest end in e-commerce, they're adding on accepting payments and 60. Plus countries. Integrations with top shipping carriers, unlimited products or services, eCommerce marketing tools, premium customizable starter themes for 45 bucks a month. [00:04:22]So then this is kind of a duh, if you are looking to start a little business and have it online, if you have a business and you're looking to move it online, we're talking about WordPress right now. So wordpress.com is where you go for all of that. Now I get more complicated, than any of these provide for. [00:04:45] So I can't just use wordpress.com and I actually use WP engine as well as I self hosts some sites. In other words, I have my own servers because of my company Mainstream, we have our own data center. So why not? Right. But in some cases, like my bigger websites, I have up at WP engine and they maintain everything for me. [00:05:10] It's actually running on a Google platform, but they will automatically size it, resize it, and I can do absolutely anything I want. So if you want to be able to do anything you want, you're not going to use a wordpress.com. You're going to go to wordpress.org. Now, wordpress.org is the software that is behind wordpress.com and it's the software that I, again, 35% or so of the web uses. [00:05:43] I actually think it's probably higher than that, and most places use WordPress nowadays, and it's just so flexible. It's no longer just a blogging platform. And they have some built-in beautiful themes. I use something called Divi, which is a page builder. There's a few of them out there, Beaver, Ellementor. [00:06:03] Those are the three big ones. And if you're interested in, in thinking, Hey Craig, maybe you should do a class on this for us. Well, let me know. I'd be glad to put something together, but you got to tell me. Right? I just don't know. Otherwise, me, Me@craigpeterson.com if you'd like a class on this, and I know some people like Nancy Fields out there who she'll help people with their sites and put them together, but wordpress.org is where you go to get the software you need to put on too. [00:06:36] Some of these hosting services that you can use, and there's a million of them out there. Really. There's a lot, and then the kind of the ultimate, if you will, as the WP engine guys, but I brought this up to let you know the basics, right? This is what you want to look at. If you're thinking about going online. [00:06:54] But on the other side, I want to warn people right now because security teams and businesses have their hands full dealing with these COVID-19 related threats that are out there, and there are a lot of them, and right now the biggest problem isn't the hackers. The biggest problem is people clicking on emails and then getting ransomware. [00:07:16] We have a client that just. Yes. No, it was earlier in the week, I think it was Tuesday, one of their employees downloaded some software and he needed some software for windows to do some screen grabs cause he wanted to just grab a few things for off of the screen and save them the, save that graphic and use it in some documents. [00:07:38] So he went online, he did some searching and he found some screen. grabbing software, and lo and behold, there's this wonderful screen grab software for free that he downloads, and guess what? It's ransomware. So because we were doing all of the stuff for them and we had the really, the top anti-malware software that's out there very advanced stuff. [00:08:03] It detected it, it stopped it, it stopped it from spreading almost. Instantly, and that was just a phenomenal thing to have happened. It stopped it and it stopped the spread right away. So right now in WordPress, we're seeing a 30 fold increase in attacks on WordPress websites out there. , this is just dramatic. [00:08:27] So if you are running a word press word site or website, you're going to want to really, really have a look at it, make sure it's completely patched up because just like windows and Mac, iOS and iOS and Android, you have to apply patches. Man. It's like a grand central station here today. People in an out. [00:08:48] Anyhow, let's see. A million websites were reported, attacked, in the week from April 28th for one week. On May 3rd alone, they counted in excess of 20 million attacks against some half a million WordPress sites. It's just absolutely crazy. And by the way, they're coming in from more than 24,000. [00:09:10] Distinct IP addresses. What that means people are your machine to have been compromised and the bad guys are using them to launch attacks against websites and other people, which is not news, but it is news to most of those 24,000 people whose computers. Are being used to launch attacks. [00:09:32] You are Listening to Craig Peterson. Stick around because we're going to be right back. Talk a little bit about Zoom and how they are going to fix their chats. Stick around. We'll be right back and of course, visit me online at CraigPeterson.com. Craig Peterson: Hello everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. You can hear me here every Saturday from one till 3:00 PM and on with  Matt  Gagnon Wednesday mornings at 734 this week because the mayor was on, let's see, it was Friday at like eight Oh eight or something like that. So. Was very, a little bit, off. But I'm here from one til three. [00:00:31] Anyways. And for those listening online, of course, I am on pretty much every podcasting app out there. And in some ways, I'm one of the pioneers of this thing. I've been doing this podcasting stuff for over 20 years, so for a very, very long time. I don't know, it kind of makes you feel old. So, so far today we just talked about WordPress and how you can use that. [00:00:53] For your business where you can go online and order to find the right hosting environment for your WordPress site. We talked a little bit about how WordPress also has security vulnerabilities like anything else and what is going on right now. I also spoke about half an hour ago here about how big. [00:01:16] Technology is a drag, just strangling, just totally strangulating all of us with their censorship free speech just doesn't exist when you're talking about the big guys. And then, of course, we started out the show talking about surveillance software in what managers have been doing with the surveillance software over the years. [00:01:42] It's really bad, frankly. What's been going on. And right now we're going to talk a little bit about something. Pretty much I think everybody in the country's been on, and that is zoom. Now, if you have not been on zoom, let me just explain it really briefly, and that is zoom is a video conferencing. App, it's been around for a while now, was written by a couple of kids and they did a terrible job with the security side of things. [00:02:14] It works well, it's easy to use, and so they did a very good job on that. And frankly, if they hadn't, they wouldn't be kind of the premier video conferencing app right now. We just used it for mother's day. I set up a zoom conference for my mother and of course my stepfather, and we did another one for my, my father, and my stepmother, and we had the kids on there like 16 people called into it, and I chose zoom. [00:02:48] Knowing that it was easy to use, that a lot of people use zoom and really like it, but also knowing about the major security problems. Right? We're talking about mother's day, so I'm not worried about losing intellectual property. I'm not really worried about having people's zoom bombed me, and that is where zoom bombing has been going on like crazy. [00:03:12] But zoom bombing is where somebody. Gets onto your zoom conference and does something nasty. anything from sexual stuff through, I, I've heard of, swastikas coming up, you know, the good old socialist national socialist party of Germany and world war two I've heard about all just all kinds of terrible things that have been coming up. [00:03:37] So I wasn't worried about Zoom by me, so because I wasn't worried about privacy. Intellectual properties, zoom bombing. Okay. It's fine because I have a small business account on zoom. Now when I am doing something for my business, this business-related or I'm concerned about intellectual property or security, then I use WebEx because it is a, not just a regular WebEx, but a secured WebEx because it is a. [00:04:05] Very well known commodity out there, something that many people, have been looking at and the federal government uses, military uses, et cetera, et cetera. So that's kind of what I do. So zoom has had a very, very bad rap as of late and for, I think, frankly, it's for many, many good reasons. And I'm, I'm on Google right now, and you know, I recommend you use duck, duck, go. [00:04:32] But I'm going to use Google because of the fact that that's what most people are using. And I wanted to have the same results you'd see. So I just went into Google news and I said, zoom security. And it's got a, the latest updates, the highs, the lows. Here's what you need to know. Avoid the app and do this instead. [00:04:53] Here's why. It's from Forbes. Zoom five offers new security and privacy features. That's the new version of zoom, the new major version that they've released. In case you didn't get that notification, make sure you upgrade zoom. zoom settles with New York attorney general over privacy and security concerns. [00:05:13] This is just two days ago. Zooms tips for safety as recommended by video conference, express zoom issues, play security issues, plays a spotlight on other video platforms, privacy troubles. but here's the one that I think is kinda interesting. This one's from. Forbes and that is Zoom buys key base in bold, new security move. [00:05:37] How this could change everything. If you've been listening for a while, you know, I've been talking about how there are still security jobs open. You know, right now, security is kind of at the bottom of the list for most of the businesses out there because businesses are saying, Hey, we just don't know what's going to happen with our business going forward. [00:05:59] So, let's just drop security who need security, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's a bit of a problem if you ask me. And so because of that. I, you know, there, there's probably been a drop, I think, in the number of security jobs that are currently open, but we were talking about two and a half million, you know, up to 3 million open cybersecurity jobs before this whole pandemic. [00:06:26] It is, frankly, we need security now more than ever as business people and at home because we're under attack more than ever. But this is Zoom's first acquisition. Now I would actually call it more of an acquire than an acquisition. And if you're not familiar with that term, it's big probably because it's a pretty new term. [00:06:52] And an Aqua hire is where you find a company that has talent in it that you need or you want. And so how do you hire those people away? You probably can't, and it is a team of people working there, so you got to figure, they probably work together. They know how to work together. They know what some of the things are they need to do to work together. [00:07:19] So you just go ahead and you buy the whole company. So they're calling it an acquisition. In reality, this seems more like an acquire and Zoom got this 90-day plan to improve their security in this whole video conferencing system. We'll see what ends up happening. The terms of this deal weren't disclosed. [00:07:41] I'm sure a part of it is usually, Hey, all of the employees have to stay, or these key people have to stay. And then as part of the acquisition, they'll pay everybody some sort of an amount. So it isn't just the stakeholders. They're stockholders that make money off of this. Everybody stays around, but this is their first acquisition zooms nine years old in case you didn't know that if you thought they just came out of nowhere. [00:08:09] It's one of these overnight successes that took nine years to get there, but they're saying that as of a couple of weeks ago, there were 300 million people. On zoom, that's dramatic. In December, it was estimated that there were 10 million people. Now for the FBI InfraGard webinars that we were running, the FBI wanted us to use Zoom. [00:08:34] I don't know why, but that's what InfraGard wanted us to use. That's what I used. So we were part of that 10 million. To up to 300 million. Can you imagine that kind of growth so you can see how they had to do something, do something fast? They could not just staff up for it, but they're planning on creating a secure private and a scalable video communication system. [00:08:58] Part of the problem they've had recently when it comes to scalability is they have been routing people's teleconferences through China and other parts of the world. And of course, those really upset people when they found out about it because of course China sits there and spies on everything that's going on now. [00:09:19] The company that they acquired is called Keybase. They spent the last six years building a secure messaging and file sharing service. And with this, users can chat and share with team members and communities knowing that the messages are end to end encrypted. So the other thing with this acquire that zoom may be getting is the ability now to have chat and file sharing, which is something that. [00:09:49]Microsoft teams have that WebEx teams have, right? That's what the team's apps have. And even Slack has built-in now some communications ability. You can have small meetings and make calls to other users. And zoom is planning on putting this encrypted end to end meeting mode in for the paid accounts. [00:10:12] So if you have a free account, you're probably not going to get it, at least not initially. And then they're going to use public-key encryption, which is something that is, say, Pattonville a little bit of a go. But it's absolutely the way to do it. So I'm glad to hear that there are some adults in the room now over at zoom and they realized, not invented here syndrome is not going to help them grow. [00:10:37] It's not going to solve their security problems. And so they, I acquired a company that has been doing this type of security for quite a while. So, okay, here we go. This is a, an article from, this is dark reading, I think. Yeah. and they're saying as part of the deal, key basis, team members will become zoom employees. [00:11:00] So there you go. Okay. they, so they are planning on publishing a draft for their cryptographic design, next Friday. So it's coming up pretty soon. So we'll keep you up to date on this. I promised I would in the past let you know what zoom is doing and how they're doing and where they're going, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. [00:11:21] So I'm really glad to hear that zoom is pulling up their socks. So we are going to go away for a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about one of these companies that has smart hubs and what they have done. And this is kind of a story about what happens at end of life. And it's something that every business needs to think about. [00:11:48] If you're using salesforce.com Microsoft, you name it. Those companies are eventually going to go out of business. What happens when they go out of business? What's going to happen to your data? Whose data is it anyway? And in many cases, these companies are saying. It's my data. We own it, and if we lose it, we don't know you. [00:12:17] Anything. Real problem. If you asked me, so stick around. We'll be back here right after the break with news, et cetera, and we'll be talking more about all of this. You're listening to Craig Peter's son, right here on WGAN, and make sure you visit me online. Go to Craig peterson.com make sure you sign up for my newsletter so you can find out about the various cool stuff we've been working on and then we'll have out for you very, very soon. [00:12:45] Take care of everybody and stick around cause we'll be right back. Craig Peterson: Hey everybody. Welcome back. Craig Peterson here on WGAN and of course online as well at craigPeterson.com. We have been talking about a bunch of stuff today and you know, if you missed any of it, you can go to my website, Craig peterson.com this includes why businesses are using surveillance software. [00:00:25] To where what you can do as an employee if you think they are spying on you and what are your rights when it comes to some of this stuff, I talked also about what is happening with big tech and censorship and it really is a big problem, WordPress and how you can use that as a business. You know, if you are brick and mortar, you probably want to try and transition to more of an online model. [00:00:53] But even if you have a little bit of both, maybe WordPress is the way to go. So we talked a little bit about that when you can get WordPress as a service and also what you can do about it yourself. And by the way, attacks on WordPress are have gone up 30 fold in just the past few days. And then just before the top of the hour, we talked about zoom. [00:01:17] And how they have acquired a company in order to have end-to-end encryption on zoom. And I bet you also because of this acquisition, who they purchased the zooms going to be seen a new feature here where they're going to be doing a little bit of conferencing and. Collaboration. So I think that's going to be a good thing. [00:01:40] It's going to give a little competition to WebEx teams and also to our friends at Microsoft teams. Now, how many of you guys out there have been using some of these services. For your internet of things devices now, internet of things, devices that I'm talking about here. My kind of definition is anything that would normally be considered just a piece of hardware, you know, something that you turn on and use. [00:02:10] A good example would be some of these thermostats many of us have right. We've got these, now it's Google nest thermostats or some of the lights that we have. Well, many of these devices require what are called bridges because they using different technologies. So for instance, in my home, I've got some. [00:02:35] Now Apple home equipment, and of course we use Apple equipment almost exclusively in my business, and we have iPhones with iOS and Apple's home. The Apple home is the most secure way of controlling near your internet of things devices. The problem is that not many people make devices for Apple home, and that is because they are a little bit more expensive to make. [00:03:05] You have to have better encryption software. You have to pay the Apple tax because Apple developed it and Apple is going to charge you as a manufacturer to use their technology. So many of these companies have kind of gone off and done their own thing. We have some hue lights as well. H U E from Phillips. [00:03:25] Great lights, by the way. And those are all, again, controlled remotely, and we've got it tied in so that our iOS devices, our I-phones can turn on and off. The hue lights can turn on and off like our family room lights, et cetera, and can change the colors of lights. But because my internet of things devices are not directly compatible with Apple home, we had to get some special hubs. [00:03:58] So we have a small hub, and that hub speaks both the hue protocol. It speaks to a protocol that is used by the light dimmers in our main rooms, and it speaks Apple's protocol. Now. Were totally geeked out. So guess what? We have Linux running on a box. It does all of that stuff for us, right? So we can maintain it, we can update it, we can upgrade it. [00:04:23] We know what's going on. Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're really not after me. Right. Well, there is a company out there called Wink that many people have been using for quite a while. Wink, I should say, looks pretty darn good. It was launched first about six years ago, and the idea was to be able to connect and control all of their devices through just one master wink interface. So wink exists to really kind of simplify life for somebody, right? [00:05:00] That's really into the internet of things. You've got your lights, you got your locks, your thermostat, your cameras, your appliances. And they're all coming from different brands and they need different apps to operate. [00:05:13] Nowadays. You even see refrigerators and ovens. Man, I think I saw the first internet-connected one about six years ago as well. Our washing machines, dryers, all of these things, and they're different brands, and even though they might be using the same protocol, it doesn't mean as implemented the same way. [00:05:35] So these devices just can't speak to each other. Enter wink. Now there are a number of different devices out there that can be used as a smart hub, but speak to different, you know, different protocols, different vendors, everything else. But a lot of people went to wink because you bought it once. And that's it. [00:06:00] It was free for the rest of your life. Now, wink cost more yes than some of these others, but you did not have a monthly subscription fee that you had to pay. Well, as of this week, Wink is starting to charge on a monthly basis for their devices. The quote from Wink and obviously then they're looking for cash. [00:06:24] Now, who isn't? Wink has taken many steps in an effort to keep your hubs blue light on. That's the light on the Wink Hub. However, long-term costs and recent economic events have caused additional strain on our business. Unlike companies that sell our data to offset costs associated with offering free services, we do not. [00:06:48] Little jab there at Google. Data privacy is one of Winks core values. And we believe that user data should never be sold for marketing or any purpose. So basically what they were doing is, no grandfathering. The mandate here is to pay up or we're gonna shut you off. Here's what they said. Should you choose not to sign up for a subscription, you will no longer be able to access your wink devices from the app with voice control or through the API, and your automation will be disabled on May 13th your device connection settings and automation can be reactivated if you decide to pay up,  excuse me, to subscribe at a later date. [00:07:35] So there's no warning. It's now $5 a month per device. Think about how many devices are out there and how many devices people might have. Right? I'm a little unclear as to whether it's only $5 per house because you might only have the one Wink Hub or if it's $5 per month per device. That's kind of how I read it, so it could be really, really expensive and people are very upset about it. [00:08:05] You know, on Reddit there are thousands of responses to this company's tweet that was posted there. Most people are just absolutely angry. You know, they paid a lot more to get something that had lifetime support, and here it is, no life-time support. Right? So this feels like a variation on a familiar theme because it's happened many times. [00:08:29] You know, these internet-connected light bulbs. Many of them no longer work as a company went out of business and the servers got shut down. Smart scales. Some cases they just got dumb and they show you your weight to no longer show you your history or weight loss or anything, and in some cases, they just don't work at all because the companies pulled the plug on the apps. [00:08:51] These pet feeders. We've talked about a couple of cool ones here. They've gone. Out of business, they completely stopped feeding pets. How about these vacuums that we have in our homes that are all automated? They're running around cleaning the houses. So this is nothing new. We have seen companies go out of business before, right? [00:09:12] You've seen companies go out of business, right? Tell me. You have told me I'm not crazy. And when the companies go out of business and they're providing a monthly service for you. Then what happens? This gets to be a very, very big deal, and I also want to caution businesses because it reveals a major hole in this whole cloud business. [00:09:40] You know, we look at the cloud and say, it's going to make my life simpler. It's going to keep my costs down. I don't have to worry about the side of it anymore. I'll just use this cloud service like Salesforce for instance, or, or Dropbox or whatever it might be in reality. [00:09:59] Now, remember that your core business information, your intellectual property regarding your customers, regarding your orders, regarding your sales, your inventories, all of the stuff that is now in the hands of a third party. So what's going to happen when that third party. Goes out of business, it could be really, really bad for you. And for me. [00:10:27] So one of the things that we always advise our customers is to make sure you have a third party in a place that's securing these cloud-based apps and is doing backups for you. [00:10:43] So for instance, most of them, Microsoft. Office through the, what do they call it now? Windows three 65 plans or whatever it is. Those email accounts don't have backups and there's no guarantee from Microsoft that they will not lose your data. So are you backing that up as well? That I think there's a lot of lessons for all of us in this, and be careful when you're buying something. [00:11:11] We just got a new dryer. I made sure you were not internet-connected. I don't want a dryer from a company sitting in my house on my network, even though I've got it separated out into the internet of things network. I don't want that device sitting there potentially providing a breach for the rest of my network. [00:11:34] So think about that, be careful with that. You're listening to Craig Peterson right here on WGAN. Stick around because we're going to talk about how Microsoft is getting rid of passwords. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson: Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. Thanks for joining me today. I always appreciate it and I love getting your emails. I've got a couple of great ones this week. Again, Gary was out there letting me know what he was having some problems with. In fact, I even ended up getting on the phone with him to help him out a little bit with this whole tracking thing. [00:00:26] He was thinking that his GPS was being used to track him, and some people were really trying to mess with him while he's trying to make some money driving around. So I explained how the app he's using as a paid driver works, how tracks him, and how he can stop it from tracking him when he's not working. [00:00:47] So if you're driving for Uber eats or grub hub. Et cetera. That's, that's the sort of thing he's doing. And he was really kind of wondering about, because some people were changing the delivery point on deliveries and he'd show up at the new address and there's nobody there, and there's nobody at the old address. [00:01:07] And so he was really having some issues. Yeah. Obviously that can be a problem. So if you have any questions, whether it's about grub hub or anything else, by all means, just email me, ME@Craig peterson.com. Let me know how I can help. I'm always glad to give a little bit of help for absolutely nothing. [00:01:28] And obviously this is what I do for a living as well. So you know, if, if it's a lot of work, then I'm going to have to charge you. But anyhow, Microsoft. Now. passwords have been kind of the bane of my existence forever. I remember the very first time I had a password, I don't remember what it was. It would have been pretty simple back then but that was the early 1970s, and it was a non-online timeshare. [00:02:00] The Computer, an HP, I think it was like a 2000 access or 2000 after that got upgraded to an a and it was so totally cool. It was my first real computer access and we had a teletype, a TTY33 yay. Seven level. Yeah. So it was an a, it was really, really cool. [00:02:24] And that was my first major introduction to computers way back then and we had passwords now, the head of the, of the math department, and that's where was at the time I was in school then it was inside the math department. He always used some variation of his name for his password. And I still remember to this day, his name was Robert Allen Lang. [00:02:53]So, hi, Mr. Lang. If you're, if you're still around, actually, if you're listening, but He would always use a password that like R A lane or R Allen lane or, you know, you could always guess what his password was, so we would guess his password. And we'd use that to get more access. So for instance, our accounts could only have so much storage and the accounts could only have so much time per week to be used. [00:03:26] We just loved using as much time as we could. Oh, man. One of these days, I'll tell you some stories. And so we would hack into his account. And once we're in doing his account, we then gave ourselves upgraded privileges and online time and kind of everything else. So yeah, you know, that's what you do when you're a kid, but anyhow, you know, teenagers right? [00:03:54] Fast forward to today and passwords are still a problem. I've been using pretty darn good passwords for a very, very long time now, and as you probably are aware, if you sign up for my email list, I'll send you a special report on passwords, but you might be well aware that I really like one password. [00:04:16] It's by far the winner. There was some other half-decent password managers out there last pass being one of them, but 1password, absolutely the winner. And we also use DUO, which is a two-factor authentication system. So between the two of them, we're pretty secure and I have it generate passwords for me, which is really nice, and it'll generate passwords. [00:04:39] It's funny, many times I'll have a like a 20 plus character password and the website I'm on just doesn't support that. Sometimes it'll ask all, you didn't put enough special characters in, which, as you know, just doesn't count anymore. So make sure you get my password special report so you can see what the current advice is. [00:05:01] And it's really changed recently, current advice for passwords and what you should do. So we've got world password day and every year we talk about passwords and what you should do. And this is the first year I think we're seeing more people starting to really use new forms of authentication. We're working from home even at work, and people are starting to understand just how insecure and ultimately how costly passwords really are. [00:05:38] Our cybercriminals don't need advanced techniques when they can just bet on human behavior. Ponemon Institute did a survey in 2019 and this is all on security behaviors. Okay. And they found that 51% of 1700 information technology and information technology security professionals reused an average of five total passwords again and again and again across both their business and their personal accounts. [00:06:17] Now that is a very bad thing to do. There's something called password stuffing where they steal your password. And remember a couple of weeks ago I mentioned a, "have I been pawned" or powned website? And there's a feature that I put out as well. I don't think they're airing on WGAN, but they are on some other stations all about powned passwords. [00:06:41] Well, Once a password has been stolen and they know what it is and they know what your username is, they just start automatically going and checking banks, trying to log in with that email address and that password. So having the same password that you're using on more than one system is a very, very dangerous habit because if they get ahold of just one password, they know they can use it on other sites and they're probably going to be able to get in. [00:07:16] So this single compromised password can create just this chain reaction of theft and liability, frankly, on your part. And on average, one in every 250 corporate accounts is compromised each month. Think of that one in one in 22 really accounts is compromised every year. Wow. That is huge. I don't think I've ever seen that stat before. [00:07:48] So this expense of using passwords is really continuing to grow because we're using more business applications online, aren't we? I just talked about the cloud and some things she needed to be careful of with the cloud. Well, the cloud requires passwords and we're using those same passwords. Man. That is bad. [00:08:12]By the way, password reset is one of the highest support costs, especially in larger businesses. And that means that companies are dedicating 30 to 60% of the support desk calls to just resetting passwords. So. We all have to understand it better. We all need a multifactor authentication. The very least two-factor authentication and Microsoft now has this passwordless login. [00:08:43] You might've used it, you might've seen it where it's using the camera on your computer, and sometimes it's using other biometrics, like your fingerprints, et cetera. And there are new technologies out there that are being deployed, including in web browsers that we'll be talking about in the future as they get a little bit more well adopted. [00:09:03] But some of these keys, these USB authentication keys have a built-in, it's called Fido - FIDO so if you're interested, you can always dig that up and we'll be covering that. To a, you know, a future show, as I said, and I do do some training on that with my mentorship site. All right, everybody, stick around. [00:09:25] You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN and I'm going to talk a little bit about remote work and now. The security fight that's happening in the cloud. Make sure you join me as well. Wednesday mornings at 7:34 with Mr. Matt Gagnon morning drive time as we talk about the latest in technology. [00:09:50] Stick around. I'll be right back. Craig Peterson: Hey, good morning everybody. Craig Peterson here. We started out this whole show talking about surveillance here that managers are doing as they're surveilling their employees. I want to talk now a little bit about surveillance where we should be keeping an eye on our cloud devices. And our endpoint. [00:00:28] So let's start out with the cloud. You know, I call them devices. In some places, you might be using a server that's living up in maybe Microsoft Azure or Google's cloud, Amazon cloud, Amazon web services, et cetera. Those systems can all be compromised. And yeah, they're sitting in the data center. Yeah. You don't have to pay for the hardware or the electricity or the cooling, which is really nice. [00:00:58] Yeah. You don't have to hear all of the noise they make in the background, but many businesses have found that, wow, the cloud really isn't the panacea. I thought it was. And they're actually moving it back out of the cloud. And that's particularly true of businesses that have security concerns due to regulations because moving to the cloud does not absolve you, from these regulations. [00:01:27] Now we've got this additional problem of people working from home, so they're using either their own computers or maybe a company computer at home. They might be connecting to the office, but it's just as likely, maybe even more likely that they're connecting to a cloud service somewhere. Not, not just for collaboration or for meetings, but to do their basic work. [00:01:51] As more and more businesses are saying, Hey, why should I be paying for the software or hardware, et cetera. Let's just move it all to the cloud. And we're seeing now States and cities that are starting to lift some of these stay-at-home orders, but frankly, this increased level of employees working from home. [00:02:12] Is not going to disappear. Sure. It'll get a little smaller. Many businesses are going to be calling people back and they are going to be working from that office, but many people are in businesses that are going to continue that move over to the cloud. So what are the security challenges that come from a hybrid infrastructure? [00:02:35] Almost three-quarters of companies expect at least 5% or more of the former onsite employees to work from home on a permanent basis. That's not a lot, but 5% when you add it up over all of the small businesses, that is a lot because half of all employees in the country work for small businesses. And a quarter of businesses are planning on keeping at least 20% of their workers out of the office post-pandemic. [00:03:06] And this is according to a survey of chief financial officers by the, it's maybe you guys know Gartner right? Gartner group. They're research firm, so their numbers are usually considered gospel in the business world. With this remote work comes even more cloud usage, and that could be a problem for a lot of companies that have issues with the visibility into the security of the cloud. [00:03:33] Now. You might be as a business relying on maybe some permitter defenses or maybe some on-premise security software and appliances to help keep your systems and data safe. Now, most of the time, small businesses aren't using the right stuff. They're just using some equipment that they got from, you know, a random break-fix shop or heaven forbid at staples or where they ordered it from Amazon. [00:03:59] You can't, you just can't get the good stuff from any of those places. But that's not going to work anymore at all. When we're talking about remote workers cause people are in their homes and they're using cloud services that you just don't know the security level of, you might not know what the patch level is of windows of the software that's running on windows. [00:04:26] You might not know any of that stuff. Right. But we are going to see a major shift so. Let's talk about it a little bit here. We're just seeing, you know, massive, massive growth. I'm looking at these numbers in telecommuting. It was growing slowly before, but now many technology firms, particularly marketing companies, are relying almost exclusively on people working from home. [00:04:53] IBM had moved people to work from home and then found that experiment to be a failure and moved everybody back into the office. Now, that was back in 2017 they pulled them back in and made them work from an office in one of six cities. While IBM now has moved almost entirely to remote work and they've got 95% of its current workforce working outside of the company offices. [00:05:21] IBM, by the way, is a major player in the cloud in case you weren't aware, they were way more prepared for this problem than many companies. It com and infrastructure information security groups. Absolutely true. So coming out of this, we need to embrace the fact that we have to continually be ready for full. [00:05:43] Remote workforce. What is going to happen? And, and I'm, I'm on governors, the governor's task force here on education, on re-opening education. What are we going to do? And of course, I'm the security guy, the technology guy, actually one of the technology people on that task force. And we had a meeting this week and we were talking about it. [00:06:07] Okay, fine. So we've got the COVID-19 thing and it's eventually going to be a thing of the past. But thinking about the teachers that are 60, 65, 70 years old, what happens when there's another virus? What happens when the annual flu or curves. Are we going to be shutting down our offices again? Are we going to be shutting down our schools again? [00:06:32] Are we going to maybe try and do quarantines as we've always done in the past where we say, Hey, if you are sick. Or if you are vulnerable, you just stay home because this is happening more and more. We, we had SARS very, you know, that wasn't long ago. Right? That was another covert virus that we had. We had to MERS. [00:06:56] That was another COVID virus that we had. We've had a number of these things. I'm thinking about Ebola, which I don't think was a COVID virus. They're happening more and more. And as we have more and more people in the world, the likelihood of them occurring is going to be even greater. So if you are a business person, and then the case of where I'm on the governor's task force, looking at education, if, if we are a school, what are we going to do in the future? [00:07:30] And I really think we have to realize that we have to be able to have our businesses basically work remotely. So I want to encourage everybody to really keep that in mind as we're looking at this going forward. What can you do in order to make your business covert proof? Now, it isn't just the COVID-19 what happens if there's a fire in your building burns down. [00:08:00] What happens if there is a major lightning strike and it burns up all of your computers just zaps them. What's that all going to mean and what's going to happen with the next 12 months? Are we going to have another massive spike in the COVID virus or are you ready for that? We got to think about it. [00:08:21] The other side is the endpoint devices and we're seeing right now. Six and 10 remote workers using personal devices to do work, and almost all of these workers believe that the devices are secure. CrowdStrike had a look at this and said that people are naive. Six in 10 remote workers are using personal devices to do work and all. [00:08:48] Almost none of them. Are properly secured, and we've got attackers now focused on targeting the remote workers. They're going after VPN technology technologies, which is part of the reason I say don't use VPNs, right? It's where the people are and it's where we're getting it back. So be ca

Summary: In today's podcast, our Head of Advisory Services and Consulting, Simon Powley, will touch on what FIs are doing to protect their employees, while continuing to serve their customers during COVID-19 Crisis. Replay On-Demand - April 29th Webinar:  https://www.dieboldnixdorf.com/en-us/banking/insights/ondemand-webinar/whats-next-for-financial-institutions-during-the-covid-19-crisis Related Content:Diebold Nixdorf COVID-19 Web Page: Page:https://www.dieboldnixdorf.com/en-us/about-us/news-and-events/covid19 Transcription: Amy Lombardo:                00:15                     Hello again, this is Amy Lombardo, your host for this episode of COMMERCE NOW. During a recent Diebold Nixdorf webinar with guest Forrester Research, we shared ongoing research tracking how financial institutions are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and what and how they are communicating to customers in this time of crisis. As the pandemic continues to grow and our economies continue to be impacted, how can financial institutions respond? Amy Lombardo:                00:43                     Well today I'm joined by our head of advisory services and consulting, Simon Powley, and we're going to touch on what FIs are doing to protect their employees while continuing to serve their customers during this unprecedented time. So welcome Simon to COMMERCE NOW. Simon Powley:                  00:59                     Oh, thanks Amy. It's great to be with you again. Amy Lombardo:                01:01                     Awesome. So let's get started here. My first question for you is this webinar that we had recently here, we saw new consumer behaviors and also shifts in channel usage. Based on these changes, how are we seeing banks initially adapt and really cope with COVID-19? Are we seeing an importance for more digital initiatives and the usage of those digital channels? Simon Powley:                  01:27                     Yeah. It's a great question, Amy. There's a lot of exciting things happening in the turmoil caused by COVID-19, especially for banks and financial institutions that are impacted by this. Simon Powley:                  01:39                     I thought it was a great webinar. I listened to it a few weeks ago. I thought it was fantastic. Simon Powley:                  01:44                     We're seeing a lot of changes. Early adaption is really driving a lot of changes in the way that they are operating and really touching customers. We're seeing branches being closed or certainly reduced hours. We're seeing call center volumes increasing dramatically as customers who are used to trying to reach out and communicate with their banks and be advised and guided through this. Obviously with the closures of banks they're looking to other channels to be able to service them. So it's been very interesting to see those changes. Simon Powley:                  02:17                     I think not only are our customers beginning to see the value associated with these digital channels in times like this. What I mean by that is people that we were talking to executives out there and a lot of our customers with banks, they're getting a lot of questions from people who either did not see value in digital channels in the past or were reluctant to use them for whatever reason, really beginning to gravitate and begin to not only have interest in these particular channels and how they can self service their deposits or get questions asked or check balances or what have you. They're really looking for solutions from their banks on how to do this in a new vibrant way. Simon Powley:                  02:58                     So we're certainly seeing those digital strategies and initiatives begin to change a lot for banks. It'll be very interesting, and we'll talk more about this in future, be very interesting to see how banks are defining their channels as a result of this and how they're leveraging that with their customer base. Amy Lombardo:                03:16                     Right. That makes complete sense, and we see the news cycles and note that responses and reactions that they're changing quite constantly. Right? We're in this different place today than what we were weeks ago, a month ago, even at the turn of the calendar year. Amy Lombardo:                03:31                     So with that said, what themes are you seeing emerge as the weeks change? Are bankers holding to their continuity plans? Are you seeing more gut reactions? What's that type of feedback you're hearing? Simon Powley:                  03:45                     Yeah, it's a mixed bag. Absolutely. Things are changing extremely quickly. I think if asked, most senior executives or even CEOs within the organizations, over the last couple of days we've seen JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America kind of come out and everybody is repositioning and changing their 2020 strategy. Certainly you're seeing that from an earnings and how they're really dealing with this downturn in different ways. Simon Powley:                  04:10                     So yes, certainly things have changed from the beginning of the year in the guidance that they're giving and their strategies are changing. From a week to week and a fluid environment I would call it is I think financial institutions are learning from this. So we're seeing a lot of trends emerge such as how do we leverage our digital channels again to be able to change with our customer base? Simon Powley:                  04:34                     I saw an article come out even this morning from Lloyd's Bank that they will be providing educational seminars for people on their digital strategies and giving away iPads to customers that are impacted by COVID-19 and I think specifically for customers that are over 70 for instance. Amy Lombardo:                04:53                     Oh wow. Simon Powley:                  04:53                     Yeah. So those kinds of strategies are obviously new, and I think I'm hearing from a lot of banks really from an internal standpoint is as they're doing this they're saying, "Okay, here's ways that we've always done things. Everything's on the table right now. How do we open up and change the way? What are we learning for this and what ideas of solutions do we have from our teams in the organization on how we use this to begin to change the way we interact with our customers and clients? How do how we support them during this time?" So you're seeing a lot of interesting things and things come out, which is just exciting even in the midst of terrifying weeks in some cases for people. Simon Powley:                  05:30                     So I think these continuity plans will continue to change. I think that we'll see a lot of people looking at new ways to reinvent the business and leverage a new way to talk to consumers. Simon Powley:                  05:42                     When we look at how customers really want to be interacted with, you have to look at the experience driven by Amazon or a Microsoft or an Apple in terms of how you leverage the customer journey. Right now those journeys have been completely disrupted in the traditional sense. So those are completely being reinvented. Simon Powley:                  06:06                     This I think in the long term will be very good for banks, and allowing them to be focused on PPP, the small business loans. The banks did not have long to stand those up and get those moving and being able to process those. So that took a tremendous amount of capacity. Simon Powley:                  06:25                     When you have digital channels, and some of these strategies already outlined on how to help your customers without being touched by a human being for all of their needs, you're able to adapt and adjust a little bit more quickly. So they're fairing a little bit better I think right now. But even in the smaller maybe community banking space, they're coming up with good creative ways, and I think that they will re-look at how they want to interact with their customers and the value proposition of technology. Amy Lombardo:                06:55                     Right. You mentioned something interesting about the tablets available for the elderly. It's interesting how the topic and the importance of financial inclusion is now coupled with how banks and credit unions are communicating how they can help here during this crisis. Simon Powley:                  07:13                     Yeah. We touched on it a little bit and certainly we can talk more about this down the line. But around that I talked to several folks in the industry and you're absolutely right, Amy. What we're seeing is a proactive stance not only on driving the awareness of digital channels, but outreach to help customers in some very unique and interesting ways. Amy Lombardo:                07:34                     Sure. That's an interesting point. Okay, so Simon, last question here. Is there a recommendation or best practice that FIs can use or approach with their business plan? Maybe even here, is the approach simply the current and near term plans to deal with this situation and take it more day by day, week by week? Simon Powley:                  07:55                     I think it's a combination, amy. I think first of all, it's triaged, but we're beginning to get out of that triaged perspective. People are getting used to working at home from a corporate bank perspective and the branches, they're beginning to define their journeys and how they can operate in this environment. Simon Powley:                  08:12                     The biggest thing you want to do right now is learn from this and gather as much data and information as you can, because what the next phase obviously is what are those business continuity plans going to look like and as you evolve, how do you create those and learn from that to change the way you're going to handle that the next time this comes up? Simon Powley:                  08:30                     Then it's the longterm trajectory. Looking at the roadmap of are your products and services still the same need that they were going into that and how do you begin to look at what your plans are over the next, let's call it 12 to 36 months. How do those plannings change as a result of that? Amy Lombardo:                08:46                     Yep, makes total sense. To hear more on this topic, listeners can listen to our on-demand webinar. Simon covers how to balance the needs of consumers, small and medium business clients and staff, the unique solutions FIs can put into action with digital automation at the forefront and the changing expectations for personalized experiences and operational efficiencies. Amy Lombardo:                09:17                     Listen now at DieboldNixdorf.com/COVID-19, and as always, thank you to our listeners for tuning in to another episode of COMMERCE NOW. Until next time, please keep checking back on iTunes or however you listen to your podcasts for new topics on COMMERCE NOW.    

Tonight on the Kickoff: join host Harry Broadhurst, Brandon Biskobing, Jason Teasley and Erik Watkins as they present...well, the most difficult episode of the show to date. The sports world is at a basic standstill and the real world isn't much better. We at the show like to think that we bring some levity to you all but this show is much more then that. Get to know the more human side of The Kickoff, as the guys give you a look into their world as they deal with the effect the coronavirus has had on them and those they care about. The very real struggles some people are facing are brought up and discussed in addition to conversation about where do we go from here going forward.The Kickoff is a presentation of the W2M Network, online at w2mnet.com

Tonight on the Kickoff: join host Harry Broadhurst, Brandon Biskobing, Jason Teasley and Erik Watkins as they present...well, the most difficult episode of the show to date. The sports world is at a basic standstill and the real world isn't much better. We at the show like to think that we bring some levity to you all but this show is much more then that. Get to know the more human side of The Kickoff, as the guys give you a look into their world as they deal with the effect the coronavirus has had on them and those they care about. The very real struggles some people are facing are brought up and discussed in addition to conversation about where do we go from here going forward. The Kickoff is a presentation of the W2M Network, online at w2mnet.com

The tables are turned this week as Stacey gets on the other side of the microphone. Kerri Sparling, writer of the long-running and popular blog SixUntilMe and now Children with Diabetes board member, interviews Stacey about her experience raising a child with type 1, what led her to claim "The World's Worst" title and much more. This is part of Children With Diabetes Celebrating Storyteller series. "There are some amazing storytellers in the diabetes community, and many of those folks have spent years honing their craft through blogs, books, and videos. Their stories of life with diabetes bring our community closer. Sharing stories helps make the journey with diabetes less isolated and instead paved with hope and camaraderie. (text from the CWD website) Stacey was excited to be selected to be part of this storyteller series, and even happier to be interviewed by Kerri. You can watch the video here, read the transcript below or, of course, listen to the audio on this episode. Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! you can win a copy from CWD - must enter by March 20th. ----- Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! ----- Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android   Episode Transcript: This episode of diabetes Connections is brought to you by the world's worst diabetes mom real life stories of parenting a child with Type One Diabetes available as a paperback ebook and audiobook at Amazon and at diabetes connections.com. This is diabetes connections with Stacey Simms. Welcome to another week of the show. I am so glad to have you along. As always, I'm your host Stacey Sims. This is a little bit of a different week around here because we released our regular Tuesday interview episode early. If you haven't listened to that yet, it was all about the corona virus and basic information that people with diabetes need to know. Thanks very much to Gary Scheiner CDE and the director, founder of integrated diabetes services. He is always a very calm and informative presidents. He also has a great sense of humor, but I wanted to get that show out. pretty quickly, because you know, of course, as the situation is changing, podcasting is tough to get breaking news out. But we wanted to make sure to get basic information from a good source out to the diabetes community, because I've been seeing and I'm sure it's only gotten worse, a lot of rumors and the beginnings of some panic. So I hope you listened to Gary or read the interview as well, because I put it out as a blog post with just that interview, as well as a transcript with the entire episode. And I hope you've been able to share that a lot of people picked up on it and I really hope it's helped give you some good information. We'll do more as the situation changes if we need to get more information out there. And then this week is a little different because I usually do a mini episode here, where I'm just talking about one topic kind of an editorial, but I'm going to be bringing you an interview that Carrie Sperling did with me now carry most of you know, wrote the long running blog six until me she retired that last year. She's doing a lot of great work with children with diabetes. This is the group that among many other things, puts on those great friends for life conferences, the big one in July every year, smaller regional conferences throughout the year. And they do a lot of really good work in terms of information, and community outreach. So Carrie is doing some of these interviews and I was so excited to be able to talk to her. You may have seen it, they put it out as a YouTube video and I will link that right up. You want to stop right here and go to the video instead of listening. It's the exact same interview except to get to see us and it made me realize I need to work on the lighting in my office. But the information I hope is good. We talked about what led me to write the world's worst diabetes mom a lot about you know, parenting Benny, my son diagnosed right before he turned to 13 plus years ago now, privacy issues Carrie has shared this in her own life. You know, how much do you share online? How much do you not? How do you decide that? And it was really a fun conversation. It's always a A little weird to be on the other side of the microphone.   Unknown Speaker  3:02 It's not   Stacey Simms  3:02 my comfort zone. But here we go. Anyway, here is the interview that Carrie Sparling did with me.   Kerri Sparling  3:09 I am here today to talk to Stacey Simms   Stacey Simms  3:12 about this, oh my goodness,   Kerri Sparling  3:14 I had to climb on my bookshelf to get it down because I accidentally put it on the shelf that I couldn't reach without a stool. So thank you for giving me morning exercise for that. I appreciate it. But um, I Okay, let me make this more formal. I am very appreciative that you've taken the time to talk to me, and then we're going to broadcast this to the children with diabetes community and then share it through our different channels. So thank you for making yourself available. I know this has been chaotic, getting them on the line.   Stacey Simms  3:38 This is what I get out of TV, when really we just need to stick to radio, but I really appreciate it Carrie. Thank you.   Kerri Sparling  3:43 My pleasure. And so I want to jump right in because I've already kept so much of your morning already. So just if you could for a minute just introduce yourself to the community that may not know you already so they can get a sense of who you are, and then we'll get into the book.   Stacey Simms  3:54 Oh, sure. So my name is Stacy. My son Ben. He was diagnosed more than 13 years ago, which is bananas, time just flies, but he was not yet two years old. He was diagnosed with type one when he was 23 months. I have an older daughter Her name is Leah. She is three years older than him over there four years apart in school and I say that cuz she's a freshman in college now and he's a freshman in high school. I started a blog about a month after Ben he was diagnosed at the time I was working as a morning radio show host I had been a TV anchor and reporter that's the I hate pictures. Because it's all the makeup and the hair and the you know, I'm looking at myself like my headphones are so big on this is not good. I distract myself. Um, but then I started the blog and then four years ago, I started a podcast and then last year I wrote the   Kerri Sparling  4:39 book. That's that is awesome. And so so you've been sharing a lot of your family's experience and your personal experience with centered around diabetes, but going right into Stacey Simms, the world's worst diabetes mom. So this title obviously feels a little tongue in cheek because you are clearly very involved, clearly clever and also on top of things that are going on in your kids. In your family's health, so why did you call it this?   Stacey Simms  5:03 The book title came about because I had actually been working on a parenting advice book about raising a child with type one for a couple of years. And it was really boring. And it was really like had been done before. There are so many great books, especially, you know, from a layperson perspective, there are so many great books by medical professionals that can really tell you how to better manage, and I didn't want to just say, here's our story, and here's what I think. And I was writing that book, but I wasn't, I wasn't jazzed by it. It was kind of just writing, you know, old blogs and my publisher and said, Oh, put your old blogs together. We'll just put those out. You know, that just didn't sound right. To me. No friends really resonates like old blogs like it. So I was in a Facebook group, having a discussion like I still do, I foolishly still go into Facebook groups because I want to help people and I get help to still and we had a disagreement and it got heated. I really I felt strongly that this was an okay way to manage and the person was so mean and said, you're gonna you're gonna kill your child you're you're terrible parent, you know really went there. And I just said, Well, I must be the world's worst diabetes Mom, you and I slammed the computer shut and I walked away and I was like, Oh my gosh, this is it not not even think about the book but this is who I am I want to talk about making mistakes. I want to talk about living with less fear. I want to talk about not always being a slave to your beats. Are you okay? Do you need a juice box?   Unknown Speaker  6:33 Sorry, and beeping, then one of those days, but everything is fine. Thank you for asking.   Stacey Simms  6:36 But I just wanted to, I realized in that moment that I did have something to say. And it wasn't just about the old blogs. And I went back I screenshot of the conversation because I thought well, maybe this guy is bananas. It's gonna come after me. But I also deleted it. Because we didn't need my anger out there either. It wasn't just Hey, I was ugly too. So I got past that and I thought let's talk about all the mistakes I've made because we Made a ton of mistakes. And it's not a question about being a bad parent or a good parent, sure, you're gonna make mistakes with your kids, whether they have diabetes or not. And let's use those examples of mistakes to talk about resiliency and confidence and, and I think my son is better off for all the mistakes I made.   Kerri Sparling  7:16 I hope that applies to parenting outside of the realm of diabetes, because I'm not a perfect mom myself. And so it's reassuring to hear that stumbling leads to success, even if it's a modified version of the success you thought you were going towards. So I really appreciate that. And I also like the fact that it's not like here's how to be perfect by Stacey Simms, because that really puts people on their heels like you can't take advice from someone that you have on a pedestal it's always a lot easier to have a peer to peer conversation and that's why I feel like your book reads through it very a resonated for me and I'm an adult the diabetes not raising a child with diabetes but reading your perspectives gave me a lot of insight on maybe conversations that my mom and I never had or my email just think the cross Can you see that when it comes across You know, you're supporting the note cuz he's just some weird emails. But I just have a couple notes. I just wanted to look through this. But when I was reading through the book, there's the story of the first night that you guys are home with, with Benny. And, and it hit me really hard because I was thinking about my own two kids. And like I said, they don't have diabetes, but I was putting myself in your position. And it's so easy to be the person with diabetes from my perspective, but it is very, very different to be the person who carries just as much, but it's like 10,000 feet away for so much of the experience. And so do you think that it's important to have those stories shared like stories like yours and stories from adults with type one, so that we can kind of create a, an amalgam story sort of thing, like, why is that important?   Stacey Simms  8:37 I think it's a great question, because it's it's so important to recognize that the two experiences run in tandem, but they are so separate, as well. Right? We're never really going to separate them. We can't pretend they're the same. So a person with diabetes is having one experience a parent of a child with diabetes is having a totally different experience, obviously tied to By diabetes, and I, you've already said, Oh, I think it's you know, it's worse to be the parent, you've implied that by something you said, which is fine. I mean, I almost every adult with type one I know, says all my mom, it was so much harder on her.   Kerri Sparling  9:10 We're not saying it to make you feel better. We're saying, we believe that fun. Yeah,   Stacey Simms  9:14 I understand. But I disagree, because I'm not beeping, and I can walk away from it. But at the same time, it's not a question of comparing, right. And I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I'm not saying that you're doing that. But I think it's really important that we see these experiences as equally important, but very different, but then tied together. So telling all of these stories. I'm hopeful that Benny, when he gets a little older, we'll look back and read it. And he knows what he knows the stories we actually shared that ahead of time. We talked about what I could put in the book, but I'm hoping that he'll see it and kind of think, Oh, well, that was not my experience, but I'm glad to know it.   Kerri Sparling  9:50 Well, of course and you were saying it's not it's it's not about comparing them. I think it's about making a cohesive story around them like my low felt like this, but it looked and felt to my mother like this and meshing those two stories together together gives us a broader experience touch point. And I think that's so important, especially for like a teenage kid who might pick up your book and read it. And when they're in that angsty, angry part of diabetes, and they might be so furious with their parents to get your perspective on that might help segue a good conversation with their own parents. That's why I don't think this book is just for parents of kids with diabetes at cross collateralize is the whole community you know? I don't know. I think that's accurate. I'm gonna toot your horn for you that way.   Stacey Simms  10:28 One thing I think it's really interesting to talk about is you mentioned like the not perfect parenting thing. And I think it's we're under pressure, regardless of diabetes is parents right? You can't win you really can't. But I also think it's funny when you look at a lot of parenting blogs and parenting writings. It's either I'm a perfect parent and you should aspire to look like this. It's perfect Instagram photos or whatever, you know, look like us do like us eat like us. Or you have the oh I don't know what I'm doing.   Unknown Speaker  10:54 I'm so crazy on motherhood is that you know, I'm a man I look at my and I really that doesn't speak to Neither,   Kerri Sparling  11:00 right we are middle lane.   Stacey Simms  11:02 We are smart, we are strong. We are sometimes a mess. We are sometimes perfect. And I really I'm not. I know that sound like I was making fun. You know what I mean? If these archetypes, especially women we get put into, right. I'm a hard driving success story or I'm so clumsy. I fell into my man, you know, I mean, I hate that. So I tried to really in this book, kind of encapsulate, you know who I am, but who I think a lot of other moms are too, right. competent, confident,   Kerri Sparling  11:29 but not having it all together. Now might be an important part to bring up the fact that I'm wearing normal clothes from the waist up, but sweat tears from the waist down. So like I think that sort of is the it's the template for that. They need you there we go. Wait, you you would actually skipped ahead to something I wanted to ask you about. Sorry. Should No no, that's fine. This is good, though. When you're using the questions, I know and I don't normally write my stuff down. But I'm organized today. Um, but yeah, we talked about when you first started sharing your stories, and Benny was home that first night That sort of stuff. And you used to write about Benny's personal experiences and yours. And as he's gotten older, and his experiences become more his, you've said that you've stepped away a little bit from telling his stories and have embraced. I can't describe it for you. But like, what, what's it like to decide to share x in the beginning, and what makes you transition to the y?   Stacey Simms  12:19 I think it's such an important conversation. It was interesting in the beginning, and I do wish that I'd given my kids just a little bit more privacy by changing their names, or giving them nicknames. The problem for me was I was already on the radio. And we had a show where it was mostly political news. But we did talk about our personal lives a little bit. So my listeners knew when I started at that station, I had a one year old daughter. And then when I was working at that station, I was pregnant and then I had a baby and here's Benny in the hospital, you know, it was a different experience than just blogging. So it didn't really occur to me at the time and social media. Certainly what it is now isn't wasn't then what it is now. It was a different experience. But when you have a toddler, you have a baby, I mean, even going back, I was Careful at the time not to overshare I but as he got older you realize, you know people are reading this people are looking at this. There were there were only some experiences that I felt comfortable sharing and it wasn't just the good stuff, right? We shared things that things went wrong. I thought that was important. But I'm I'm on the record. I sound like a broken record. You know, I don't share my Sunday one. See, I don't have that. I don't like you know, do not share photos of your child in distress. You know, no hospital pictures. I wish I had pictures of him in the hospital and he was diagnosed for me. Sure. But you know, we didn't have our phones with us. 24 seven at that point, especially didn't have cameras on them, which sounds so ancient.   Kerri Sparling  13:43 I mean, this is what it is right? Like when I was diagnosed with diabetes, I had to pee in a bucket to test it. So like things had to not a bucket. I mean, let's be realistic about this. But you know, things have progressed and with it the the conversation about what to share and not to share and so, I mean, you talked already about not sharing his anyone see? And I think personally, I am on the same page with you about that no one needs my personal data points because their mind in their personal, but that there's a broad spectrum of decision making processes around that sort of stuff. So what made you decide not to do that?   Stacey Simms  14:14 Well, I think I'll just put a caveat in there, I think, to not mindlessly share, right? Sometimes it makes sense if you're trying to talk through something or get advice or share a situation or, or say, hey, look at this difficult situation we worked through and now we're celebrating I mean, just mindlessly is the word I tried to use about it. But what changed was when he was about seven, I think I read something by Moore McCarthy, who is a mentor of mine, and she's longtime blogger, author, I mean, yeah, faculty, you know, I probably saw her speak there and got this information, but she really encouraged me and others to think about it. And once I stopped to think about it, I realized there's no reason for my seven year olds health information to be on the internet. I'm not posting my weight and my cholesterol. And you know, my blood pressure. It's the same thing. We don't see it that way, right? But it really is. And that once I thought about it, it changed everything for me and I started sharing more, you know, great endo visit no changes, everything's on track or great endo visit. We had a whole conversation about changes we have to make sure sometimes like bad, you know, bad can be good when you get the information. Yeah, I love the finger quotes.   Kerri Sparling  15:27 But I feel like that's an important part of it too, because it's not truly bad or truly good. There's a right   Stacey Simms  15:32 dial up stations get better when you get away from the numbers. I agree. You know, you can you can have more in depth about how you're feeling and what advice you're looking for. And that sort of thing. So I've shared with friends when I've said old I'm upset about this, or can you help me with that? That's different.   Kerri Sparling  15:46 Yeah, no, of course because that's your actual personal life but broadcasting it to the broader internet as a different person retired. As a kid who grew up with Type One Diabetes, that's my perspective. And yours is parenting a kid who's growing up with Type One Diabetes. How How do you feel about I mean, you see a lot of memes from parents about parenting in general where they have like the curlers, half in their hair, and the bathrobe and the coffee cup dangling off of one arm, and they're like, parenting is so exhausting. And that feels universally haha. But when I see that same sort of meme applied to diabetes, like, this is what a parent of a kid with diabetes looks like. And they just look bedraggled and rotten and exhausted and as an adult with type one that applies a guilt to my experience that I didn't see coming. And so I'm just curious what you think about things that paint diabetes in a light that maybe they don't realize is shining directly on their kid. When parents tell those sorts of stories? Yeah, it is a great question because the reality is, maybe you didn't sleep that great last night, right? Maybe you were up three times treating a low. But are you talking about me because that was my nightlight?   Stacey Simms  16:49 Well, I do have Do you have a baby can still because there was a signal in my house. No, I   Unknown Speaker  16:52 do.   Stacey Simms  16:55 It No, I'm talking about the parent, right. So if a parent has to do that, and then wants to go on from But the next day and start talking about how hard it was. I can understand that. But I do think and my favorite meme about this and I don't think it started as a diabetes parenting meme. I think it's just a parenting meme. But it's like, you know, an 87 year old woman, and that it says like, well, parenting is hard. You know, my I'm celebrating my 23rd birthday tomorrow. Money. But I do think that you've hit it on the head, that's going to be my would share about diabetes. I think it's difficult to know where to draw that line. And we don't, we don't think because what we're doing not to get all psychological. But in doing some research for a recent podcast I was doing I found a great article about this and I can send you the link but when we're sharing things like that we're looking for likes, right because our brain As humans, we need support. We're looking for community. We actually like to get the good Brain Stuff going the dopamine or whatever, when you get the right weights real and physical and social hosting, something like that, you know, is going to bring in more of that. And it's not made up. It's not fake. Oh, yeah.   Kerri Sparling  18:09 Feeling it all   Stacey Simms  18:10 really happens. But there are better ways of doing it. I think and as you were alluding to, if we, as parents of kids with type one, don't listen to adults with type one, we miss out on this kind of conversation, because no seven or eight year old is going to say, you know, it kind of hurt my feelings or I, I really processed some guilt when you posted that, right? They're not gonna say that they may not even realize it, but we need to be mindful of that kind of stuff. And I think it's fine to have fun and you know, maybe share that privately. But um, you know, I I'm really try hard not to make diabetes, the focus of everything and not show that guilt because that's just parenting anyway.   Unknown Speaker  18:48 Right? It's just an added thing.   Stacey Simms  18:50 It is just an added thing. It's like not to get too far off topic, but when people are freaking out about sending their kids to sleep overs, sure, right, because something might happen when I was in second grade Jennifer Look, it's like At my house, we had a babysitter. We didn't eat that my parents and she put her leg on my bed. It was the 70s. It was like some metal crazy trundle bed. She cut her leg bad enough that we had to go to the ER and get stitches.   Unknown Speaker  19:10 Oh, wow. How do you prepare for that? I don't think you do.   Stacey Simms  19:15 Things happen on sleep overs. emergencies happen. Parents who say I'm gonna have sleep over have to be prepared for weirdness. And to me diabetes falls under that category. But that's a decision you have to make. And I think it's the same thing with that kind of a mean, you kind of have to make the decision of, there's a difference between, everything's fine, everything's fine. Everything's fine, which I've been guilty of for a long time. It's fine. It's fine. I'm not gonna worry about it. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. I don't need any help. I'm fine. And there's a difference between that and what was me everything's terrible. Like, like sucks and you know, oh, my God, diabetes is the worst. You gotta you gotta find that medium and you've got to, at least to your children, I think it's important to fake it, but be careful about stuff like I might.   Kerri Sparling  19:57 I like what you said earlier because I read a lot about my fulness and being mindful and making sure that you're mindful, but the fact that you've cited mindlessness as a potential alternative to that, like, don't be mindless, don't share mindlessly consider the you know, the course of your actions that you're taking and how it might influence your kid. That is a huge takeaway already. For me from this conversation. It doesn't apply just to parenting diabetes, I think it applies to the whole mess being Don't be mindless about the things that you're sharing. I think that's a really, really good tip.   Stacey Simms  20:26 It's funny because I stink at being mind. Right? You're like, Oh, no, take your time when you eat and drink your tea and fever and, you know, take them home. I really don't think I can do that. But I can take an extra 10 seconds and think do I want to post this photo?   Kerri Sparling  20:39 Of course, not. In a mindfulness exercise once I was asked to spend one minute eating one m&m, and it was really strange experience and I'm sure it was really effective, but for me, it made me feel very stressed out. We can get into that later, but because we've talked a lot about parenting, and I'm sorry to be going back to my notes here. You You talked about it experience where you and your family are you at least and Benny and Leah met Nick Jonas, and how this was truly more of a thing for Leah, your daughter than it was for your son who is the one who has diabetes. And there's something that you wrote that really stuck with me because I feel like parenting a kid with diabetes, that parent is acknowledged a lot, which is fantastic. The child with diabetes is acknowledged quite a bit because they become the focal point of that narrative. But the siblings of kids with diabetes end up on this weird purgatory peripheral area, and they're not often acknowledged. And you wrote that at the end of meeting with Nick Jonas, that you had said the diabetes was in our lives. But she Leah knew we wouldn't let it take over she knew she wasn't going to be left behind and reading that now gives me goosebumps for reading it then also did too because it acknowledges a group of people that need just as much support as I do as a kid, as you do as a parent. And when I think about children with diabetes in the organization, the programming really speaks to that as well. It's not just for parents, it's not just for adults with type one is for the siblings. It really embraces the whole family. So because your wrote that awesome line. Could you say a little bit more about supporting a sibling   Stacey Simms  22:04 and, and the children's diabetes? I mean that friends for life Leah has come. And Mr. Summer schedules are always crazy. So it's rare that either one of my kids can come and like I still go, but I had a I had a blast, and she didn't really think she would. She kind of came as a favor to me.   Kerri Sparling  22:21 But she was when she was I   Stacey Simms  22:23 think she was 14 or 13. She was a teen. So she was in the teen programming. And you know, Benny was still too young to be in that programming. So they were separate. Yep. And she knew she was gonna get to go to a Disney park, which was amazing, you know, when state of fancy hotel with me and it was great. And she I don't think I saw her much. You know, she thought, Well, I'm not gonna do this. You know, we'll see how it goes. And it was wonderful, but it's really hard. You know, that's one of the few programs that there is for siblings. When when he was diagnosed, we got this reminder really off the bat and it did help us set the tone he was in high But on the Saturday, and on Sunday, I had an event that I had planned. And I do talk about this in the book. But it was an ice skating event uptown. So uptown from my house is about 45 minutes. Okay. And I was the only link between these two groups. It was a group from near my house and a group from your my work. Well, the skating rink was my work. They sponsored the rink. I didn't. I was working at a radio station that sponsored the rig. And I knew that somebody could take care of it, but it was going to be difficult. And Leah reminded me like we're still gonna go ice skating, right. We're still gonna go ice skating because I live in the south. Ice skating is exotic. No, it really is. I grew up in New York. I'm like, oh, there's never been she likes frozen ice that you walk on. Amazing, right? Magic. So I said to my husband, I'm like, We're going he's like heck yeah, go take her and he stayed the hospital and that was the day after my not your two year old was diagnosed and I'm thinking is this the right decision? Is this this is a terrible This is the world's worst diabetes mom because here I am leaving the hospital. But as soon as I I got outside I knew was the right thing. And that was the day that we said we can't let this take over our lives. So you have to be careful. Like, I don't I don't I say this not to judge but just again with that mindlessness and that mindfulness or you know, if you signs in your house that are like in this house, we're blood sugar fighting, you know, ketone, chicken, whatever it is, look, the science we will have in their kitchen. Nobody, I mean, if they're all diabetes related, of course, yeah. You know, have to be kind of careful unless you also have ice skating, hockey playing, you know, unless you want to have a litany of everything your family does. You know, I'm mindful of like, how many t shirts do I actually wear that say diabetes stuff on them all the time. And making sure like, I have stuff from my daughter's programming, and frankly, from Benny's programming that's not diabetes related. It's that kind of little thing I think that siblings really pick up on, like, if you name your dog or your cat or your goldfish after diabetes stuff, you know, it's a family pad. I mean, if it's a diabetes alert doc that might be different. I just think these are things that as simple We kind of forget, you know, they're always they're always watching and they're tallying. And you have to be honest with them that diabetes gets more attention. But with Leah, just having the conversation over and over again really helped. I mean, when she was 15, she and I had a great conversation about it. She said, I was really upset about it. And now I get it. Oh, it was amazing. I mean, he probably is back to being upset about it now.   Kerri Sparling  25:22 But it was great. You guys can talk about it is really nice, because a lot of times that animosity isn't voiced, and nobody has areas to sort of air their concerns. And so it's good that you give her space and like we mentioned in friends for life, people have that space to get that stuff out there. Oh, yeah.   Stacey Simms  25:35 I'm the over communicating Mom, you're like enough.   Unknown Speaker  25:39 Talking to me.   Kerri Sparling  25:42 We've talked about community, we've talked about sharing, we've talked about Facebook and the pluses and minuses of that sort of stuff. And it and it led me to the story that you had written about Benny losing his insulin pump. And then after that, you would, which I think is an amazing discussion about the cost of supplies, and how even small Children are mindful of the cost of things. And we'll get back to that in a second. But after that story you had mentioned, places to find support for when you have gaps like that, or you have issues like that. And I would love some perspective from you on as a parent whittling down this massive diabetes online community that we have access to, to a manageable size that kind of caters to what people might be looking for, like, advice for someone who's just jumping in and saying, there's so much how do I find what's best suited for me?   Stacey Simms  26:26 Yeah, absolutely. I think the best thing to do is if you're already online where where do you like to be? Right? Do you like Twitter? Do you like Facebook? You like Instagram, Pinterest? You got to find your house, like where do you like to live? And then once you're there, find your people. And let's have a Facebook cuz that's probably the biggest for parents. I know Instagram is a lot bigger than the last couple of years. But Facebook groups are still really really active for parents. And my advice there is be careful again, not to turn your Facebook into diabetes book which is what happened to me. I am in I am in 50 Five Facebook groups about diabetes. Now granted, I joined Facebook in 2008. So I had around for a while.   Kerri Sparling  27:07 Well, I'm just it was the look on your face. It wasn't like I'm so proud to be in 55 horrified to be in 55 it was a real mashup of the both   Stacey Simms  27:15 emotions. And that's exactly how I feel. So, because I'm like, I want to be here. And I like the vibe of this group. I like the information in this group. And I like to put my podcast in this group. But what I did was I muted the majority of this groups and that has been phenomenal. If you're not familiar as you're watching or listening. It's very easy to do, you can just mute the group. I think you unfollow the group might be the technical term, but you don't leave the group. So that way, when you want to dip into those waters, it's up your time. And my Facebook feed went back to being my real life, which is my friends, the stuff does the dumb things. I follow in a little bit of diabetes, and then I can jump back in whenever I want to. And Facebook Of course will find you you know if there's something interesting, put it right in your face, on Twitter if you're there, which is Just a crazy place to be the best, just all the politics and mess but DSM a is still your diabetes, social media advocacy is still the best hashtag on Twitter. They still do the Wednesday night chats. Those are wonderful. Instagram I'm struggling with just a little bit only because I like the realness of the stories and things that people I know that out. But I've been trying to follow more people and I'm not knocking anybody, you're all wonderful and beautiful. But I have talked to two influencer type people and I complimented one of them. That was such a beautiful shot in your hair looks so good. And you know, she said, Stacy, I have a hair person and a photographer.   Unknown Speaker  28:40 Diabetes person. What   Stacey Simms  28:43 if I had if I had a hair person and photographer I could change the world. I do wear pants. I'd be wearing pants. I would have better headphones because wearing Benny's beats I thought these would be smaller. You have cute little earbuds I don't know I haven't no here but I studio cans that are like this big I thought would be even more Your cancer headphones in the biz. But I just, you know, I can't do the influencer thing. So you but you as you listen, you might love that that might be your thing, go for it. But I think you have to find where you live where you where you feel comfortable, where's your vibe, and then you'll find your people but don't let it get overwhelming. And if you find somebody that wants to call you the world's worth diabetes. You walk away walk away unless you have a book. But I mean, really, it's not worth the argument. If someone tells me I'm wrong, I'm not going to change their life probably. Maybe I can help. I've got a good discussion going in my local group right now about finding babysitters. There are people locally I run a face for parents in the Charlotte area. Okay, started a few years back and it's been amazing. And there's a discussion right now people like I will never be able to leave my children alone. Yes, you will. And here's how. And so we're trying to help each other kind of get past that right. So   Kerri Sparling  29:59 that's See, I feel like the internet is fantastic. And it's done such a great job of connecting people who don't live anywhere near one another. But when it comes right down to human connection that people really crave in those moments of need, that hyper local stuff is huge. You can recommend a babysitter to me, but they're of no use to me in Rhode Island. But for the people who live down the street from you, they can go and call that person and they can actually hire them out. And that's, that says a lot to about the diabetes community how willing people are to give those really harder and resources and to share it with their,   Stacey Simms  30:28 with their people. That's beautiful. It is absolutely amazing. And you think I mean, I know this is a CWT interview, but the first thing that comes to my mind is going to that conference or any of the conferences that they put on. I don't even worry about what I'm packing my pack everything Ben he needs but you know if he's anything, somebody's got it, and they'll have you a 2am you know, it's just an amazing community. And I don't know, I think especially locally, knowing that we might see each other at the grocery store. Like that Facebook group is probably one of the nicest groups. I'm in   Unknown Speaker  30:59 You'll have to own what they say, right? Because they may see you over avocados.   Stacey Simms  31:02 I know who you are, right?   Kerri Sparling  31:06 We've run through the questions that I had structured for the book and my preparation. But is there anything else that you feel like it would be really pertinent to share with the specifically the CW, the audience,   Stacey Simms  31:14 one of the things I've learned just doing the podcast and now on this book tour that I've been on this year, it's just fascinating as the technology gets better and better, and you know, Benny's on the newest software from tandem, and, you know, there's all sorts of great stuff coming out. It's interesting how the change from 13 years ago seems to be almost more fearful. And it's not that it's not so much that people are afraid to let their kids do things. It's that they're afraid to let their kids get out of range. I think I'm seeing that a little bit among adults as well. Now my adult view is skewed to a lot of the influencers and people that you know, sometimes I see in person, but there's this that's another thing with the the world's worst is, you know, talking about staying in range was never part of my repertoire was like go play football, and we'll figure out how to put diabetes in the picture. I'm learning that a lot of people have. We have amazing technology. It's changed so much just in the last few years. And we need to encourage each other to use that technology to live fuller lives, rather than use the technology to post graphs. And it's just remarkable to even say that to a parent who was diagnosed, compared who was diagnosed, I mean, I've gotta watch language. No, I   Kerri Sparling  32:23 will go back to that in a second. You're right. You are right. My mommy got me it was a wee thing. Just, it was a different version of wheat. So that's a very fair statement.   Stacey Simms  32:31 I think with a 15 year old to I'm really trying to change my language over it's hard   Kerri Sparling  32:35 so of him. So I mean, his health is is your mental well being right. I mean, there's, there's no separation there. It's sorry to go on a tangent.   Stacey Simms  32:43 Well, this is a great discussion. This could be for another time too. And we'll talk more in person, but I think it's his diabetes. And I'm it's the family is affected, but it's his. So that's what I mean. And I completely lost Richard.   Kerri Sparling  32:56 Oh, wait. I was waiting to with that. I started ranges range, using technology to your benefit. I sorry,   Stacey Simms  33:06 I got all I get crazy bad language right now it's it's really hard for me to change over. But I just feel like we're finding that this the state of the art. I mean, I know what I'm saying in my community, we have a pilot program where your child is diagnosed, and they give you a dexcom in hospital when you go home. So it sounds great. But the problem is that there unfortunately, I don't know there's enough education and I'm not slamming the CDs and dexcom here has nothing to do with that. It's just the diabetes is hard. And so see everything from the beginning. Maybe you get used to that, but then the dexcom comes off and they don't wanna go to school, or they don't want to go to the waterpark, or they don't want to go on that that field trip or that overnight because they've never been without the depth causeway. And we're more and more and more of that, where I would be like, Oh, I hope your inset still on, you know, an hour but you learn resiliency, you learn stuff like that. Yes, the worst. And that's the story. When he was three, we were at a waterpark. That's in here. Instead came off and his blood sugar went really high because he was terrified of shots in sets at the time. And I thought, you know what this is going to be an hour to he's going to be fine. The long term, my indices stuff like this is okay, as long as we don't do it a lot. And maybe the running around will bring him down. It didn't, you know, so he got with Ari was 400 we change this instead, we got him home, he was fine. No ketones, blah, blah. But in my local group, someone had posted my kids dexcom came off, I'm not sending her the waterpark. I'm like, come on. Yeah, I got it. Right, we got to use this stuff to live better not let it restrict us long way of getting to that point. And that's really where I think I am right now. Because, you know, the technology is fantastic, but your stuffs gonna fall off. Things are going to fail. You know,   Kerri Sparling  34:44 you know, you have to continue on several life after diagnosis thing.   Stacey Simms  34:50 So it's been a long time. Permit this year, I can't believe it. Oh, and then you get to write about driving with diabetes, which is a Book unto itself, start, the book pretty much stops in sixth or seventh grade. So I'm not going to say that I'm an expert at high school yet, because I've only had one kid go through and she didn't have diabetes. So   Kerri Sparling  35:12 Nick Jonas at one time, so there is that there is that kind of coasting through. But um, but and so you have just been so generous with your time and your perspectives, I really, really appreciate it. And if you could just do me one solid real quick and let people know where they can find you online and where they'd be able to pick up a copy of your book. And obviously, we'll be including links to that, you know, and all the notes that are around this video, but hearing it from you is great.   Stacey Simms  35:34 Oh, thank you so much. I think the best place to go is the podcast website, which is diabetes dash connections.com. And then from there, it'll link to every place else the book, the podcast, the blog, blah, blah, blah. And   Kerri Sparling  35:45 so what's the actual URL for that   Stacey Simms  35:48 diabetes dash connections. com. Perfect. And I would love to do a book giveaway.   Kerri Sparling  35:55 Oh, we would love to have a book giveaway so   Stacey Simms  35:57 I can give away. Let's do this. Let's do a paperback And let's do an audio book. Because the audio book was really fun and interesting to do. If you ever do an audio book, it's quite the experience, like reading a dramatic play. It was very strange, very strange, totally different experience than writing it. But we can do a paperback giveaway. And then the audio book, that would be my pleasure, thank you.   Kerri Sparling  36:18 That would be amazing. And I will put a link to the giveaway page in this video and on the web page. But Stacey, thank you so much for your time for your perspectives for what you've given to the diabetes community and just being my friend, I appreciate that.   Stacey Simms  36:30 Thank you for giving me an excuse to put lipstick on today. The giveaway is open until March 20. I will link up all of the information you need. It is at children with diabetes at their giveaway page. You have to go there you can't do it on social media. We're giving away a copy of the book in paperback and an audio book as well. I'm really looking forward to seeing everybody from friends for life and children with diabetes at their conference coming up at the end of this month in Indianapolis. I'm hoping the travel plans you know stay the way we hope we are watching The virus situation I'm really not sure what's going to happen with travel. But Fingers crossed right now that we are able to do this. And I really appreciate partnering with them on this giveaway and being selected for one of their storyteller interviews. So it's really fun. Okay, our next episode next week, we should be back to normal around here minimum normal being a relative term with me. But our next episode is going to be focusing on Lilly, Eli Lilly announced almost two years ago now that they the makers of human log are getting into the pump and pen business. So we will talk to them about how they're progressing on this connected system. It's a smart system and they are partnering recently announced with dex calm, so we will be talking to them about the progress they've made and what it means for the industry. That will be next Tuesday. Okay, I'm Stacey Simms. Until then, be kind to yourself.   Diabetes connections is a production of Stacey Sims media. Benny  38:02 All Rights Reserved all wrongs avenged   Transcribed by https://otter.aid by https://otter.ai  

Dr. Pennell and Dr. Lisa Lowenstein discuss decision coaching in the LDCT setting and how it provides an opportunity for patients to confirm their screening decision by ensuring they are truly informed.   Hello and welcome to the latest JCO Oncology Practice podcast, brought to you by the ASCO Podcast Network, a collection of nine programs, covering a range of educational and scientific content, and offering enriching insight into the world of cancer care. You can find all recordings, including this one, at podcast.asco.org. My name is Dr. Nate Pennell, medical oncologist at the Cleveland Clinic and consultant editor for the JCO OP.   Lung cancer is a huge public health issue. It's our number one cause of cancer-related mortality, and a big reason for that is the lack of a widespread screening tool which results in most of our patients ending up with advanced disease at diagnosis. Although, low-dose CT screening has been proven to reduce deaths from lung cancer for a number of years now, uptake among eligible patients in the United States is very low, well under 10%. Part of the problem may be a poor understanding of the risks and benefits of screening CT, despite broad recommendations for shared decision-making between providers and patients.   Why is uptake such a big problem, and can shared decision-making be improved to help increase screening rates? With me today to discuss this issue is Dr. Lisa Lowenstein, assistant professor in the Department of Health Services Research at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. We'll be discussing her paper, Implementing Decision Coaching for Lung Cancer Screening in the Low-Dose CT Setting, to be published in the February 2020 JCO OP. Welcome, Dr. Lowenstein, and thank you for joining me today.   Thank you. It's wonderful to be on.   So can we start out by telling our listeners a little bit about the landscape of screening for lung cancer today and the role that shared decision-making plays in this process?   Yes. I think we're in a very exciting time in terms of lung cancer screening, because this is the first time that we have a screening test for lung cancer which is the number one cause of cancer deaths among men and women in the United States. It's really notable that CMS included shared decision-making in their policies for lung cancer screening, because they recognize that, unlike breast cancer and colon cancer screening, we're changing the game a lot of bit here. So we're saying that only high-risk individuals should be screened. So it's not all-comers, and I think telling people about the potential benefits and harms is beneficial. So they go in being a little bit more informed about what the next steps will be, and it is a complex process, and overall, it's still in its infancy.   Yeah. I think a lot of people found it interesting that, in order to reimburse for lung cancer screening, that CMS required this documented shared decision-making visit which on the surface seems like a very reasonable thing. But do you think that's really helping, or is it hurting?   Lung cancer screening is really in its infancy, and it's a complicated process. So we're not just talking about you just show up, and you show up for a scan. Right? We're not where breast cancer screening is. We don't have mobile scans out there. It's taken decades for those programs to get where they are, and I think shared decision-making is just adding one more step and just emphasizing that it's really a program that you're committing to.   And the other aspect is that we really want to highlight that it's not lung cancer screening is enough to prevent lung cancer. Right? It's just detecting it, if you have it. But the best way you can reduce your lung cancer risk is by not smoking, and I think by inserting the counseling and shared decision-making visit, we're reiterating that message to our high-risk smokers and former smokers. Primary care providers, or any providers, aren't even talking about lung cancer screening.   Two, not a lot of facilities may be listed in the American College of Radiology Lung Cancer Screening registry, but their volumes are very low, and they may not actually have the proper equipment or machines to conduct the lung cancer screening. Third is that, if there is to be something to be found on the scan, we don't have processes in place to deal with all the abnormal findings. So I think those are all the things that providers and networks are trying to figure out, and they're trying to figure out like the cost benefit from the reimbursement issue. Because CMS reimburses this scan for a very low cost, and it's lower than what's reimbursed for breast cancer screening.   That's interesting, and in your paper, you mention that, as of right now, something around 6% of eligible patients are getting screened for lung cancer. Which is disappointing, because the studies have been out for a while now. You mention about some of the institutional issues and awareness and providers. Are there any other reasons out there that are limiting this? Because this is something that should be saving lots of lives, and so far, it just seems like it's not making much impact.   I think so, and I think it's misguided in some sense. The reimbursement is not-- you don't have to submit a reimbursement for the counseling and the lung cancer screening. A screening facility can still be reimbursed for the scan without the 1 to 1 ratio of a counseling in shared decision-making billing code, if that make sense.   That's interesting. I didn't know that.   Yeah. So the reimbursement is definitely not going on 1 to 1. I just think, it's a complicated process, and if you were doing a study in Texas and we're serving as many screening facilities as they can in Texas, and I can tell you, a number of them are not doing a high volume of scans. And a lot of primary care providers are trying to find screening facilities that are doing low-dose CT, and it's really hard to navigate the American College of Radiology Lung Cancer screening facility to find a facility. It's about 15 to 20 clinics or something like that.   Wow.   So we tried to look for it on a number of occasions, and it takes us multiple tries every single time.   Well, it's obviously a complex issue, and there's more than one reason for the low uptake. What was the specific issue that led you to do this particular study, and do you think that improving shared decision-making can improve uptake on lung cancer screening?   I think the main issue that we were trying to address here is that, one, we recognize that primary care providers may not be the best-suited individuals to provide the counseling shared decision-making visit. Instead, they may just want to do more of a referral process, like what they're doing in the Cleveland Clinic. Right? Where they say, somebody's potentially eligible, so I'm going to send you to a one-stop shop type of setting. And our radiologists who are leading our lung cancer screening program really wanted to start building this and test it out as an alternative delivery model for the counseling shared decision-making visit which wasn't proposed by CMS or the task force recommendations.   So can you take us through your study design?   Sure. So it was really a pre/post kind of study, really with a quality improvement mindset, as well as using some elements of implementation science, so we can make it relevant more generalizable in our findings. But we first had our period of where they just did what they normally do, where the patients show up. They go and have their scan. They have their normal intake process, and that's it for the lung cancer screening. Then, in our post, we embedded a tablet interactive decision aid, decision coaching module.   So what happens is the patient has the iPad in hand, and they have some patient-facing education talking about the benefits and harms. It's very fast and quick. Patient can get through it and two to three minutes, five minutes if they're not tech savvy. And then we have an advanced practice provider sort of talk about what do they know about the benefits of lung cancer screening? What did they know about the harms, and what are their primary reasons for wanting to be screened, just to kind of confirm their issue, confirm their decision to be screened.   And so what did you end up finding with the intervention?   What they found is that, one, with the decision coaching aspect of it, the advanced practice providers can deliver all the key elements that are required for the counseling and shared decision-making to defer CMS reimbursement. So I think that's really important, in the sense that so much of what we already see in the literature, providers talk a lot about the benefits of screening, but they don't note any potential harms. And it's really important to notice that screening is not without its downsides, and that with an abnormal finding, there is inherent risk. It's not like you're just getting a picture taken. There are steps that need to be followed afterwards.   And the other thing is that what we really like and what our clinical operations people appreciated is the fact that this embedding entire new process did not increase the throughput time for the time that the patient checks in to the time that that patient checks out. Because every institution is paying a lot of attention in money, as to what is throughput time and making sure that it's not too long. And from a patient's anecdotal evidence, the patients appreciated that additional process, because it broke up the time between the waiting periods in between each step.   Yeah. I think that's an incredibly important point that you point out, that they didn't really increase the visit time, but how did that work? The intervention took place during a time that they'd normally be waiting or doing something else?   That's basically what it is, because we did time-motion studies in the pre and in the post. So we followed patients from the time they checked into the time they checked out, and we cataloged what they were doing. And what we saw when we looked at that data in more granular level is that the time was shifted from waiting periods to active time.   That's great. That's really important that you were able to show that. I thought it was interesting that you commented in your paper about the different elements of the shared decision-making visit. That in fact, what we might think of as the primary reason for doing it, which was the element of reducing mortality or their chance of dying of lung cancer, was actually the least important part of the shared decision-making visit. Why do you think that was?   I don't know if it was the least important part. It's just that we had some slides dedicated to it for the decision coaching, but there are so many more harms to talk about, and it's also an artifact of the context to where this intervention took place. So we took it, we were dealing with patients who had already been scheduled to be screened. So we were just confirming their decision, and I think the advanced practice providers knew that. So they might have glossed over the benefit, because otherwise, the patients wouldn't be there, if they didn't value the screen.   Mm-hmm. I guess that makes sense. They knew why they were there. Is there a next planned follow-up study for this?   Good, I'm glad you asked that. So using this data, we're testing this more centralized model and using it in a different setting. So now, we're taking this into a quit line setting. So we have a Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas, or CPRIT, grant that's looking at the decision coaching being delivered by tobacco treatment specialists via phone.   So a primary care provider identifies patients with upcoming appointments that might be eligible based upon age and being a current smoker. And then they get contacted with our quit line folks, here at Anderson, and we deliver the counseling and share decision-making visit, in addition to the cessation, and we give a report back to the BCP. And well, we're hoping that increases individuals to get screened and also have proper follow up, if there is something abnormal on the scan.   So I'm curious if you have any other suggestions outside of your program of ways we might improve the uptake of lung cancer screening in the US.   Oh, I think we could do a number of things. So I think we have to think about each step of the pathway. Right? So one, we have to increase awareness of it. So that's through social media, social marketing, that kind of stuff for both patients and providers and caregivers.   Then, two, we need multiple avenues, where we talk about lung cancer screening, like how we do with breast cancer and colon cancer. Like at church, at your beauty parlor, at your grocery store, and have those kind of public health interventions to get out the information. And three, we really need to train up our health care workforce and help programs. Where it's possible to either have the PCP do it in a robust manner or have a more linked program, where they can refer to a centralized program. Where the counseling and shared decision-making visit can be delivered by their pulmonology or in the radiology scan, and the patient can get scanned that day.   So I think there's a lot of different questions and different delivery models that can be asked, and this is a great area to be working in right now. Because with the release of the Nelson study, it's even more exciting to show that lung cancer screening can be very beneficial, and with using the lung rads, the false positives are much lower. So I'm pretty excited, and I think there's so much opportunity, and we can learn so much from what we're doing in breast cancer and colorectal cancer screening.   No, I completely agree with you. I think it's very exciting that the Nelson study was finally just published, and so hopefully, this will overcome any residual skepticism about the benefits of lung cancer screening. And obviously, continuing to improve on the screening tools themselves, maybe using some kind of companion diagnostic, maybe blood or breath-related, that might improve the-- or using artificial intelligence to better tell benign from malignant nodules. Ways that you can reduce the false positive rates would be very helpful. Well, Dr. Lowenstein, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.   Thank you. It's a pleasure.   Until next time, thank you all for listening to this JCO Oncology Practice podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, don't forget to give us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen. While you're there, be sure to subscribe, so you never miss an episode.   JCO OP's podcasts are just one of ASCO's many podcast programs. You can find all recordings at podcast.asco.org. The full text of the paper will be available online at ascopubs.org/journal/op, in February, 2020. This is Dr. Nate Pennell for JCO Oncology Practice signing off.

Last year we started to dig into the idea of what it’s like to be an IT professional with a strong religious, ethical, or moral point of view, who is also a parent. In that episode we discussed some of the concerns we have with technology, and how we get around those concerns. But like most topics in tech, there is a lot more to say. So today we’re revisiting this topic to extend and deepen the information we shared. In this podcast, Leon Adato, Keith Townsend, Al Rasheed, and Destiny Bertucci about parenting with a bible in one hand and a packet sniffer in the other. Listen or read the transcript below.   Leon: 00:06 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh, or at least not conflict, with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon: 00:53 Last year we started to dig into the idea of what it's like to be an it professional with a strong religious, ethical or moral point of view, who's also a parent. And that episode we discussed some of the concerns that we have with technology and how we get around them. But like most topics in tech, there's a lot more to say. So today we're revisiting this topic to extend and deepen the information that we shared. I'm Leon Adato and the other voices you're going to hear on this episode are some of my best friends and cherished colleagues, including Destiny Bertucci. Destiny: 01:22 Hello. Leon: 01:24 Keith Townsend. Keith: 01:26 Hey! Leon: 01:26 And Al Rasheed. Al: 01:27 Hello. Leon: 01:29 Before we dive into this, very important and also a big topic. I want to give everyone a chance for some shameless self promotion. So Destiny, why don't you kick off and tell us a little bit about yourself and where people can find you and how you identify religiously. Destiny: 01:44 I'm Destiny Bertucci. I'm one of the product managers for SolarWinds and you can find me on Twitter @Dez_Sayz with a Z, and I'm an evangelistic Christian. Leon: 01:54 Keith, how about you? Keith: 01:55 Hey, I'm Keith Townsend. I'm the cofounder of the CTO Advisor. You can find me on the Twitters @CTOAdvisor, and I am a nondenominational Christian. Leon: 02:09 Al. Al: 02:09 Hello. I am Al Rasheed. I am a federal contractor in the DC area. You could find me on Twitter @Al_rasheed. Also my blog is https://alarasheedblog.wordpress.com/. And I am a practicing Muslim. Leon: 02:22 Great. And just rounding things out. I'm Leon Adato, I'm one of the head geeks at SolarWinds. Yes. That's actually my job title. Head Geek and SolarWinds is neither solar nor wind. It's actually a monitoring software vendor because naming things apparently is hard. You can find me on the Twitters, which we all say because it annoys Keith's daughter to no end. @LeonAdato. I pontificate about things technical and religious at http://www.adatosystems.com, and I identify as Orthodox Jewish. So we have a range of both religious and technical opinions on the episode today. And before we dive into the "how", because I know a lot of people listening are really hoping for the, you know, "how do I build my home network and how do I secure it? What software should I buy?" And we're going to get there. But first I think it's important, like any good IT project to define the scope, what is in and out of scope. So what are some things that we're not going to be talking about on the episode here? Keith: 03:21 So if you are, uh, you've gone to the airport, you've seen these, uh, amazing billboard ads for firewalls, we're not going to tell you how to configure a set of golden firewall rules for protecting your, your, the egress VPNs. And all of that... Leon: 03:40 Right? We're not going to tell you how to do your Palo Alto firewall, you know, uh, profiles and things like that. Keith: 03:47 I know a couple of the hardcore fans out there have a enterprise class firewall but that's not gonna... Leon: 03:52 At home? Destiny: 03:53 I may have a couple. Just a few. Leon: 03:56 Okay. But it's beyond scope again, beyond scope. If you have a Nexus in your basement, we're not going to talk about that. Uh, anything else that is that we're not discussing here? Keith: 04:07 So I think the other thing is if you have an active teenager who was, you know, going out and uh, you know, kind of, uh, defeating your, your, your, your protections, we'll talk about kind of repercussions to that, but not necessarily how to outpace your, uh, your, your geeky teen. Leon: 04:26 Yeah. If you are in a arms race, uh, and they're constantly finding ways to get around your firewall or get around the protections you've put in place, then that's sort of out of scope. And as I am fond of saying, there is no force on earth that is going to stop a horny teenage boy from searching for boobies on the internet. It's just, it's a losing proposition. What we're really gonna deal with are more the oopsies and also some other protective measures that you may not even be considering, but, but yeah, horny teens, we're not gonna stop them. That's out of scope. Keith: 05:00 Where was the internet when I was a teenager? Destiny: 05:01 Right? Yeah. I feel, I feel like the honeypots are still fun though for those. I always always like to tell them there's a great collection of old Playboy in the back. So as long as they can... as long as they can break in. Leon: 05:16 Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Um, but what we are going to talk about are things like, let's see, um, we're going to talk about filters, right? How to set up a filter on your house, uh, on your home internet. Right? What are some other things that we're going to talk about? Al: 05:27 Passwords, um, securing your passwords you discussed, um, you know, resetting them every so often. Um, not having an open network. I believe you all seen that discussed as well. Destiny: 05:40 Basically like cyber hygiene, right? Like, you know, let's, let's get rid of them guest networks. Let's go ahead and like kind of do our due diligence on protecting ourselves and realizing that the brick and the mortar house does not protect our internet, right? We gotta, we gotta get to take it to the ones and zeros and be able to put up those little blocks and we know that that can sometimes be a little intimidating, but we're going to try to make that a little bit easier. Plus we'll discuss some of the software, right? That is available as applications for your phones as well as your kids' laptops and things like that so that you can actually filter that out and see what they're doing, Leon: 06:13 Right. Um, aluminum siding is not, in fact a faraday cage. It's not going to keep the signal from leaving. Destiny: 06:18 I'm going to remove my foil hat right now. Keith: 06:22 I did just spend $1,000 on a fancy security door, so that, that HAS to help. Leon: 06:27 I don't know that that security door is doing. Uh, the security that you're implying here, but, okay, fair enough. All right. So, uh, so again, now that we've talked about what's in and out of scope, what, what are the problems that we're trying to solve? Um, so I'm going to start off and say that we're not talking about internet jail. Um, we're really talking about creating a, a healthy family environment and a healthy technical environment, uh, in your house as it relates to technology, the internet, cell phones and things like that. But that's what we're doing is, and we are going to talk about gear. I don't want to give you the impression, we're not going to talk about geek toys. We are gonna talk about hardware. Absolutely. But we're doing it with the intention of creating a positive environment where the internet can be seen as a useful and safe, uh, tool within the family structure. Whatever your, your moral, ethical or religious outlook is. Um, what are some other problems that we're going to address here? Destiny: 07:34 Think were going to be talking about like, you know, the effects of technology in today's world. A lot of the times the parents are trying to play catch up to what the kids are understanding and knowing and their social aspects and a lot of times parents don't understand why social media is such an integral part right of their life. And so we're going to try to see if we can bridge that gap while making them safe as you are talking about. So that's like self body image, right? That's like just basic things that we should do as cyber hygiene of our social media accounts. Let's not give out things that are so private that people could use against us. Let's not use things like that that are out there. So we just need to kind of like get those out there and put those into the mindset of parents and other people who may not have the knowledge so that they can actually relate that and understand with their kids a little bit better. Keith: 08:22 Yeah, and, uh, to piggyback on that. A lot of times we're focused on, especially as as religious people, we're focused on kind of the, the, the sexual parts of internet and making sure that we're protecting our kids from porn. You know, my 11 year old granddaughter came in, uh, this morning around this recording the, there's an awful lot going on in the middle East and my 11 year old granddaughter's teachers told her something very inaccurate around politically what can happen here in the U S if we're at war. And I'm like, "That's not true at all!" So while, you know, 11 year olds are at that point where they're very impressionable. They find people that they admire, such as teachers or people on YouTube that they, that looks fancy and well put together. And the next thing you know, they're coming in and arguing. "I know I've been to Australia, but the earth is flat for sure. Grandpa." Al: 09:24 I was just going to add, we're going to remind them that common sense most times I'm not prevails. And I think, and I know Keith has mentioned this as, as everybody else, what they see online is not always good. It's not positive, it's not the path that they should follow. And um, you know, when we reflect back on our times when we didn't have all these, all this technology, we didn't have the internet at our hands at all times. We, we just used, again, I can't say it enough common sense because we always knew what decision we made was going to have an action right behind it. Leon: 09:54 Great. And I also think that Destiny to your point, um, when we talk about the, the safety of the internet, you know, cyber hygiene, um, recently there were some really high profile moments that uh, parents who are geeks may be more familiar with, but if you're not in, you know, it feel, don't feel like you're part of the geeky spectrum. The Ring doorbells recently was a big deal where there was a $6 app that you could download from uh, the internet, a couple of different places and install and it would just tell you all of the open, unprotected. "Nobody changed their password" Ring doorbells and in the home devices and you could just hack right into them. And a wife came home, she heard a man's voice inside the house and thought that the house had been broken into. And after doing some, some investigation realized there was nobody in the house, but somebody was on there, uh, in indoor Ring speaker and it was making fun of the dog, which they could see. So there was a camera and a speaker that was talking to their own dog and the husband who happened to be two states away was having, was justifiably worried because he had no idea where that person was. They might be in the next driveway over on the actual home wifi, but they might not have been. And I think that there's, there's a lot of cases like that. Um, Destiny, you had a couple of stories recently in your neck of the woods. Destiny: 11:22 Yeah. So especially around the holiday times, birthdays, things of that nature. A lot of people get, you know, new technology that they're just not used to. And they assume that when they apply it into their application because their phone has a password - and I've heard this from several people - that they assume that that transfers over, right? Like, "okay, well I opened it up with my face ID. So obviously somebody has to have my face to be able to get into my Ring" or "they have to have my face to get into my Wise." And that's not true because they did not change the password when they were logging this in and getting things done. It's still an open password, right? Like it's one that you can Google today. It's just like if you have a Netgear or LinkSys anything of which that you want to do, you can Google what the standards are. You know, your, your standard capital P password one, you know, things like that. And that's fine and dandy and I get it that people don't quite translate that technology. But here's where it gets you in a bind. They start putting their cameras up in their playrooms. They start putting their cameras up, kind of like a monitoring system. Right? And we all know that monitoring systems for babies and things like that used to be hackable by a telephone, right? There's things like, just think about it. I always tell everybody if it has an operating system, it's hackable. I don't care what it is. All you need is time and motivation. So what people do with these is they can actually use your Ring door camera and they can see when you left, they can see if you're home and then you start adding them inside of your house and you don't change the password. Well now they can see where you're at located in the house, what your routine is in the house. They can see and gather, what's your daughter's name, what's her pet name, what's your pet's name, right? Like what are all these little things of which that you're doing that you generally use to protect your data online. So it's one of those things where when they start to actually talk to you through the device, right, they're done. And I'm just throwing that out there. If they are talking to you through the device, they're done with you. They've already gathered what they need, they've already done what they needed to do, right? So how long have they had it open? How long have they monitored you? How long have they, if they were a pedophile, watched your kids in their bedrooms undress and dress, and I know that sounds mean, but we deal with it every day. There's people who are still putting cameras and doing things in their children's bedrooms that are on a live feed, that it can be accessible all over the world that is being hacked. You have to start thinking that you have to protect yourselves. I know you're trying to protect yourself as a parent to say, "Hey, I'm monitoring the situation. Right?" Well you're not. If you're not doing your due diligence to protect your network indoors, and that's something that I think that people have to focus on. You should never ever leave the out of the box password. You should create a reminder in your phone. We all have, I'm the one that they do the face ID to connect to it to change your passwords. You should be able to actually look into your network and have just basic concepts of: is there external transactions that are coming through? How do you read the log file? It's all in your user manual. Like there's things that are in there that you can do due diligence. And it's almost a disservice by saying, "well I just didn't know", right? Because the law tells you all the time. The ignorance to the law is no reason that you wouldn't be punishable. Right? So if you're putting things of technology within your home, in your safe dwelling, you should protect it like it's your family. So you should look into that device. You should Google the reviews, you should make sure that there's security measures in place that's going to help protect you cause you want to be able to protect yourself and your family. That's why you probably have it. And that's probably why you were putting it in those rooms, is for a protection base. And you just didn't understand that there's a whole global world out there that can use that against you. So you have to stand up to it. Leon: 15:09 And for those people who are thinking, "Oh, but it's gotta be really, really hard to get into." I just want to offer one website, http://shodan.io. And by the way, all the websites and all... everything that we talk about in this episode is going to be in our show notes. So don't feel like you have to scribble things down or worry about spelling. It's all gonna be there. You can pull it from http://www.technicallyreligious.com but Shodan.io is a clearing house for IOT, internet of things, devices. You can search by manufacturer, by brand, by country, by company name, by any, anything that's associated with the devices. And there are prebuilt searches. So you can look for webcams that still have the password admin admin. So there's just a list built in there on shodan.io to find those things. Now on the one hand you can look for yourself and you can make sure that you are not on it. But on the other hand, that's how easy it is to find these things. If, uh, you know, somebody wants to, you know, go looking for trouble. So there's that. All right, so having talked about what we think is a problem... Some of the things we think are problems. I do want to take a minute and talk about why we see it as a problem to be solved and, and we've started to really get to this, but there's a lot of people who look at some of this stuff "Well, I don't, I don't want to put a filter on my kid's phone or their internet or whatever because this stuff is in the world and if I shelter them, they'll never know how to deal with it." And things like that. That's the sort of the argument about it. And I'm going to kick off this section by saying that my community, my Orthodox Jewish community has incredibly (compared to many other communities), strict standards about outside influences. For example, in my city for a very long time, if there was a TV in the house, the kids couldn't attend certain schools. They, the schools felt that the television was such a negative influence that they didn't want those kids coming to the Jewish day school in question. So that's, that's the level. And the internet is really an extension of that set of values. The Orthodox community here in Cleveland understands that parents need to work. The internet is part of that. It needs to be there. But to leave it unfiltered and unmonitored is like leaving a fire burning in the middle of your living room. Yeah, it is going to keep your warm and yeah, you can cook your food, but it is also going to burn your house down. So, you know, not, not the way that we want that to happen. That's uh, you know, that's the attitude. That's one of the reasons why some people see this as a problem to be solved: it just doesn't fit into their, uh, ethical, moral or religious values. The other piece I'll bring in is actually a piece of Talmud, which, uh, discusses that there are three things that a parent is responsible, obligated, commanded to teach their children. And the first one is Torah. Meaning they have to teach their children how to pray and how to understand what their religion means, how to think critically about their religion and understand it in their application of life. That's an interesting perspective. The second thing is they have to teach them a skill, a trade, something that they can, uh, be worthwhile. And the third one is how to swim. And that's the one that stands out for a lot of people. It's like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. The first two makes sense. That's like life skills. What about swimming?" Well, back in the old times, back in the old days, medieval times or before that, water was really dangerous. People didn't know how to swim, there was no such thing as a public pool. And if there was a flood or a river overflowed its banks or whatever you're talking about, dying simply from not being able to tread water. So a parent was responsible for teaching a child basic survival in the, in the wilderness. It is understood in many, uh, synagogues, many Jewish communities that the internet is equivalent to the way water was treated. "Yet we have to have water, we have irrigation, we have to live near waterways because it's travel, all that stuff. But it'll kill you. You know, if you're not careful, one false move, you slip in and you're going to drown in it." And I think that the internet has those, some of those same properties. So those are some reasons why building a safe, secure, um, and mindful internet space in your home is important and necessary. So that's, that's my side of it. Well, what are your folks thing Keith: 19:37 in the Townsend household? We have this philosophy. We let our children go over other people's homes. Uh, we commune with, you know, we're, we're part of the community. However, this is a fortress, not when it comes necessarily somebody breaking my door down. But this is a place of refuge. This is not quote unquote the world. You can come here and let your hair down. That's what happened to mine. Leon: 20:09 You let it all the way down! Keith: 20:11 I let it down a little bit too much. You can come here and let your hair down and you can as a place of safety. So, you know, uh, when, when for the longest time, my sons, when they were kids, we'd be that home that the neighborhood kids come and play basketball. Some kid would curse and I say, "You know what, that's it. Everyone has to go." And they'd be very disappointed. But it taught them that this, the, when you come to the Townsend's home, there was an expectation. So extending that no matter what your faith is, whether you're, you're to, you're to the point that you made, that you're of a faith that this is a river or to someone's extreme point that, you know what, this is the world. I just don't let the world in my home. Period and, and there and the internet is part of that. It's part and parcel. So, uh, it may not be to the same level of your, your strictness, Leon, but there it is stricter than most and it, it's, I'm going to protect my family, uh, regardless of what medium that is. Destiny: 21:15 I have to second that because that's kind of the same thing with us is a lot of the kids come to our house and like, just like they'll show up at on Friday and they leave on Sunday. Right? And it's one of those just normal things. But one thing that they all know is that they bring Sunday clothes because they know they're going to church on Sunday. They know that they're eating dinner every night together. It's not just on a Sunday thing and to where now they like start to do things to where like Leon, you know, like we do like little contests and stuff on like 'who makes the best cookie arrangement for the holiday' or whatever. You know, we put it out there and the reason why we cook and we bake and we do stuff like that is because my Christian values and the things that I come from is, you know, we are supposed to be able to feed into nurture, into, you know, to bring people up within the world, right? Like it's all about love and I feel like if I can have these kids here and where they're learning how to make, even if it's a chocolate chip cookie, right? Like they're learning a skill and they're surrounded by love and they love it. Like they have so much fun. But it's one of those things where it's like they're protected. Like kind of like what Keith was talking about, you know, like there's a zone, like our house has like a dome or something on it where we've had kids show up at two o'clock in the morning because bad things were happening. Right. And they didn't know where else to go. A: it should've been the cops, not gonna lie, but we took them to the cops. But it was one of those things of we were still a safe haven. They got in a bad situation and they didn't know what to do. And they knew that we would probably guide them in the right location. And we did. And it's one of those things where it's like, no matter where we've lived, we've tried to make sure it's an open door. It's "Please come in." We don't force anything upon anybody by any means. But they know and they have a sense when they leave that there's love that's in that household. And I think that that's, that's all I ever wanted, to be honest. Like, you know, I just want the kids to feel safe and I want people to feel they're loved, but they also know like kind of what Keith was saying, it is a protected zone and you know my husband very well, like he's "the protector." So it's one of those things where we take it very wholeheartedly. Leon: 23:35 Yeah. I mean the idea of a safe space, you know, making our home a safe space from an emotional standpoint, making it a safe space from a physical standpoint and extending that, making it a safe space, from an internet or Keith, I like it, you know "the world", you know the world, the internet trolls are not going to intrude in this space. They exist. They're out there but they're not coming here. Al: 23:56 Yeah. If I could add to it also when we have kids come over, we try to, you know, or when we're together as a family more so recently, try to have some bonding without the electronics. Board games or you know, "how, what, what was your day like?" "Is there something you want to talk about?" Or "what do you have on the horizon? What are your plans?" So on and so forth. And um, you know, there's a, we want to get off of this reliance of technology to function. We all got, we all got by fine without it years ago. It should be the same moving forward. Uh, but there's no way really around it. But we've tried to limit it as much as possible. Destiny: 24:35 We have "the basket policy." I love the basket policy. We have a friend basket for the friends come over and each, cause we have four daughters. Sorry guys. I know it's crazy. But we have, we have four baskets for the girls and the parents have their baskets too. And trust me, they will call you out on that if your phone is not in the basket when it's supposed to be because they're like, "Excuse me, where's your phone?" And it's like "I'm working." And they're like, "Nope, it's dinner." And that's like you said Al, that's 100%. Like you have to have those boundaries of a technology gap. And if you look at Steve Jobs and even Bill Gates, they monitored and completely limited their children and their family because they knew and understood what they were creating and doing. And I think that's something that people may not realize. That a lot of the, the applications that we have on our phones, a lot of the software, a lot of the gaming things that we do is created by neurologists as well as gaming commissions with the machines, right? So they know what's going to make you want to come back for more. They also know if you're young and you're playing a young game, that they can show you an intermediate ad while you're playing it to prepare you for your next level. So as me and Leon has talked about this, the parent is behind the ball because you literally have a force of scientists that are backing your kids to keep them in technology. And you're one person, right? They have teams and teams and billions of dollars invested on hooking your child from a young age. Al: 26:12 Right? And it's very hard to manage all the security or try to enforce everything at all times because they can literally just go right across the street to their friend's house, piggyback on their wifi and you've lost all control. Leon: 26:25 Well, and we're going to talk about ways to avoid that because that is, um, that is definitely a concern. Is that you can lock down your fortress and as soon as somebody leaves through the, you know, through the, um, portcullis across the moat, you know, they're going to get attacked by the ravaging hoard. Just to, just to beat the metaphor, the ground here. But there's some ways to, to still protect our families, not just kids. I mean, I think in some cases for some families, the people you're trying to protect the most are your parents. You know, or you know, or your spouse. You know, again, we're talking to the whole episode is talking about being a, you know, somebody who's religious and a parent and a geek. But we may not be married to geeks. We may be the one who has to, uh, help our, our non-geek spouses to avoid those same risks. So we'll talk about that also. Uh, good stuff. Okay. So having, having talked about why these are problems and those are some compelling reasons - but I don't think that that's, you know, surprising - what are some, we're going to talk about some technical approaches and then we'll talk about some non technical approaches for how to, uh, how, how to really build a secure, safe, comfortable environment without, again, Keith, to your point, without having to buy Palo Alto firewalls and you know, stuff like that. Like how, what, what's a, uh, reasonable home environment or home setup. Keith: 27:50 So I'll start with my, my configuration. So I'm in a pretty interesting situation versus I think everyone else on the line, I have a 11 year old granddaughter. We're empty nesters, so my granddaughter's coming over. So we have to co-parent. And my daughter and, and, and my wife's perspective on some of these topics are wildly different. However, the Townsend family, uh, traditions are in place when family and friends come to our house. That's just the way it is. So we use, uh, for my own protection because I'm an adult and I still have eyes and I still want to protect my own purity. That's just my approach to making sure that, uh, when I run into women on and the community that I have the proper perspective of those women. I'm not, my eyes are not seeing things that, that uh, that will harm my reputation of being "Keith" in the community. So I use Eero plus and the natural filters on that. And then I think everyone uses, what's the DNS service that you can just set your DNS to? Uh, Leon: 29:07 OpenDNS? Keith: 29:07 Yes! OpenDNS... Leon: 29:09 Which is now Cisco... Part of Cisco umbrella. Destiny: 29:13 of course it is. Leon: 29:18 Well, okay, I'm going to talk a little bit more about, about Cisco umbrella in a minute cause I'm really impressed with, uh, what they're, what they're doing with that. But okay. So you've got Eero and you've got OpenDNS or Cisco Umbrella Keith: 29:28 And then I can use, you're there. I can set, um, uh, I can turn the knob as to what I want to be able to search myself and what family and friends when they over because I've had the challenge, believe it or not, where I've had friends come over and abuse. Uh, the internet here when it was open. This was some years ago and I had to have, have a difficult conversation with a, uh, with a good friend. The other thing that we do is... Mobile is put a big challenge, especially in the days of unlimited data that, uh, you know, simple controls that Apple allows on, I think for me, the iOS is probably the better platform for parental controls. You can just go in and, uh, as you can even set if you want Safari, uh, turned on or not. So, you know, the scariest thing about iOS and mobile devices is a mobile web browser because you're, now you're outside of the boundaries of open DNS, et cetera, et cetera. You'd have to go in and manually set, uh, DNS if you want it to do that. That's, that's a easy fix for some people. If you're not battling, you know, a teen that wants to, you know, bypass open DNS, you can set your DNS server, uh, even on your mobile device to the open DNS servers. And then we control the knob as far as applications. Obviously my 11 year old doesn't have a job to be able to, uh, buy applications on her, on her own. So we, uh, approve every application that's installed, uh, monitor her overall usage, et cetera. Leon: 31:14 We know you can't listen to our podcast all day. So out of respect for your time, we've broken this particular conversation up. Come back next week and we'll continue our conversation. Destiny: 31:23 Thanks for making time for us this week to hear more of technically religious visit our website, http://technicallyreligious.com where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect to us on social media.  

This week’s Bourbon Community Roundtable touches on lots of good hot topics. We look at MGP's stock as it continues it's downward trend with our thoughts on how this will play out for them. Then we talk about sourcing in general and if consumers are getting oversaturated with the same bulk market products. Stickers are always a fun subject, but this week there was one released that got national media attention. Will distilleries crack down on stickers? Lastly, we congratulate Old Forester on it’s revamp of the barrel program and cap it off with our most annoying bourbon terms. Show Partners: Barrell Craft Spirits is always trying to push the envelope of blending whiskey in America. Learn more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks more about smoked grains. Breaking Bourbon announces Stagg Jr. as their whiskey of the year. Let's discuss. What do you think about the MPG losses for the 3rd quarter in a row? Is the bourbon market oversaturated with brands? What happens when the aged whiskey runs out? Let's discuss the effect of stickers on bottles. What do you think about the New Riff Pitino sticker? Sticker predictions? Brown-Forman comes out with a barrel proof single barrel program for Old Forester. What is taking everyone else so long? What's the most annoying term in bourbon? 0:00 Kenny didn't did my over talking on the sticker thing. get in the way of getting the opportunity to talk about vodka. 0:11 I guess so, 0:13 son of a bitch. Yeah. Hey, I got it. I got it. I got to dial it back a little bit. Man, I really need to talk about vodka on this show. But how much I hate it. I've never done that before. 0:35 Maybe one it's Episode 237 of bourbon pursuit. I'm kidding. And here's some of the news. You know, we've been keeping up with the talks of the trade war going on. And however President Donald Trump and his French counterpart president Emmanuel Macron, have agreed to hold off on the escalating trade war. And this is now avoiding what would have been a massive tariff increase on French goods such as wine, cheese and handbags, Trump and threaten the new duties and retaliate. 1:00 For a tax slapped on revenue earned in France by American tech firms such as Facebook and Google, the two sides will hold off on potential tariffs until the end of the year, as French officials have said and negotiations over the digital tax will continue at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. A 25% tariff still remains intact and in place due to separate trade disputes related to Airbus numbers are starting to come in for visits to distilleries across Kentucky, and Sazerac, who is not a part of the Kentucky distillers Association has released their numbers earlier this week. The distillery ended 2019 having a record breaking 293,996 visitors during the calendar year. This is a 35% increase in visitation over 2018. And as you know, there is currently a $1.2 billion investment going into everything around Buffalo Trace, including producing more whiskey but also expanding the visitor center. The expanded Visitor Center will be utilized together 2:00 A bit more distillery archives. And as the expanded space will back up to the recently completed fermenter expansion, the visitor center will have a backdoor access to the whiskey making process allowing for new and updated to a routes. The expanded space will also supply another place for event locations for hosting evening parties. Now for this week's podcast, this roundtable touches on a lot of good subjects, we look at the stock of MGP as it continues its downward trend, and with our thoughts on how this is going to play out for them. Then we talk about sourcing in general and of the consumers. You and I are getting oversaturated with some of the same products that we see on the bulk market, and stickers. It's always a fun subject. However, this week, there was one that got released that got national media attention. And does that mean that distilleries are going to start cracking down on them? Who knows? We'll find out and then we congratulate old forester on the revamp of their barrel program. While we cap it off with our most annoying bourbon terms. Are you interested in this 3:00 See what sort of barrel pics we have going on. Right now we are still set to select an old forester whistlepig to Buffalo Trace barrels to four roses barrels and a new roof barrel this year, or aiming to do somewhere around 20 barrels this year and you can get in part of the action as well. Not only just getting a chance to have a bottle from the barrel pick, but you could also be on this selection team. Go to patreon.com slash bourbon pursuit and you can learn more there. Alright, it's that time once again to see what Joe over barrel bourbon has to say. And then you've got Fred minich with above the char 3:35 it's Joe from barrell bourbon. We're always trying to push the envelope of blending whiskey in America. Find out more at barrel bourbon com 3:43 I'm Fred minikin. This is above the charm. Last week in my above the char I talked about smoking the grains before distilling them and how that is changing the character and the flavor profiles of bourbon really all American whiskeys 4:00 And I asked a question in the barrel finishes, we bring up a stink as to whether or not those are really bourbon. I asked, should we start asking ourselves are the smoked grayned Bourbons, also bourbon. Now they technically meet all the qualifications but there was a time in American whiskey history in which they tried to dictate what types of grains were used and where they were coming from. So the question is, because smoking the grains changes the character so much it takes a big right or left hand turn on Kentucky bourbon, Should we open that up? And we got a really good email from Jason Lambert. He's the lead distiller at came and spirits company in the Grand Cayman says he's a big fan of the show. Thank you very much for that Jason. And he, he says, When you think of bourbon, you often think of this as tradition in history. But when it comes to smoking grains, I think 5:00 Industrial kilns were mainstream and most all malls were smoked to stop germination. In this respect, a smoke bourbon would be welcomed with open arms. So as long it is properly labeled, however, this would open a Pandora's box to include grains like the smoke corn, you discussed about MB rolling. But again, I should 5:24 I think they should be accepted as long as it is very clearly labeled. Now, Jason brings up a great point. And I think that is always my main concern is that consumers are not deceived. And that's what has happened in a lot of whiskey labeling is like somebody will follow it to a tee, and then someone else will take advantage of the equity that that one person has built and do something like dump a gallon of sherry in there and then call it it's Sherry finished barrel. The Sherry finished blend or 6:00 Whatever. And you know, when it comes to the smoking of the grains, I just want to be, I just want to make sure that consumers are protected. And the fact is, is that people will do things that they can get away with. So as long as people are, you know, making note on their labels that they're using smoke grains, I don't think we have a problem. But the minute that someone comes out and is pumping mosquito smoke or peated Bourbons into the market without notifying the consumer, that's what it is. 6:35 That's when we have a problem. Because what will happen inevitably, someone will taste that product, and then not like it or like it, and they'll expect that's what bourbon is supposed to taste like. You have to remember that when we talk about consumers, we're really talking about, you know, one or 2% of the consumers, people who are not necessarily engaged in whiskey at all. We're definitely not talk about people in this podcast. 7:00 But when people are arguing for class action lawsuits that somebody was deceived or something, they find like a small amount of people to prove their case. And that's what I'm talking about here. I imagine someone going to some some place like Walmart that's where attracts everybody and they grab a bottle of what they think is bourbon, they go home and taste it and it tastes like smoke or tastes like pee or something that the tourism away from buying another product of bourbon because what they think of in their head is bourbon is that smoke flavor that they didn't like, and so they go back to Crown Royal or vodka or gin or whatever it is never giving something like Evan Williams a shot even though Evan Williams doesn't taste anything like that smoke product that they dislike. And they're in is what why Jason has hit the nail on the head when he talks about it's all about labeling, and trying not to deceive the customer. And as long as we have upfront labeling, I'm always going to be okay. 8:00 With just about anything as whether or not barrel finishes, or actually bourbon, now, that's a debate for another time. But I can tell you 1955 things like four roses of today and Buffalo Trace, they were not even considered the way they are made today would not be considered bourbon in 1955. And that's when the barrel entry proof was the legal maximum was 110. So, even though we have some rigid standards in American whiskey, it's always evolving. What American whiskey looks like in 10 years. Who knows? Maybe mosquito smoke corn finished and Sherry barrels is the standard. I don't know. But I do know that I'll be here to taste it. And that's this week's above the chart. Hey, if you'd like to write me and tell me what you think about above the char, maybe I'll read it on the next episode. shoot me an email or hit me up on Instagram. 9:00 Graham at Fred minich Until next week, cheers 9:06 Welcome back to another episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon and tonight we are having bourbon Community Roundtable number 40 and it's also the first verb Community Roundtable of 2020. So welcome back everybody. Glad to have everybody here right 9:22 here. So pretty much we got the whole crew here tonight. So Fred, Ryan, Brian, Nick and Blake as well. So how's everybody doing? Doing well doing well Kenny start to the New Year. 9:35 Just fantastic. 9:39 So excited. And for anybody that's not able to if you're just if you're in the car you're just listening or something like that. Ryan has finally got a new background. He's He's finally stepped up and he's got a whole new house renovations got bottles behind them now. I know. I'm like halfway through. You can maybe see if I get all the way. running our shells. I have another 10:00 One next to me. That's empty. But uh, yeah, I'm only halfway there and I'm running out I should have went bigger like Kenny said, but I don't have any more walls so 10:10 I think that's one thing is as we start going down and when people ask they're like, Hey, can you send pictures of like your your shelves or? Anybody have ideas and as soon as you have an idea for how big your shelves need to be, just triple it. Yeah, because always triple it because that's exactly i mean even doubles not going to get there but so when you think you need shelves for your bourbon, just triple it, because that's what's gonna happen. I yeah, just liquidate. I've been like giving like somebody comes to my house and I'm like, Here, take this bottle bottle for you, bottle for you. 10:44 So I'll go on over. I'll give you a funny story. So this past Sunday, my wife kind of went on a cleaning spree and went down to the basement and y'all know my basement. I know many people have seen it on social media. I mean, it's just littered with bottles and just crap everywhere. And she's 11:00 Like, this has gotta go. I probably ended up dumping out probably like three bottles worth of whiskey of just like samples of like 100 ml ml samples of just stuff that like it's, it's stuff that's all like from distilleries that wasn't very good or under age and I'm just like, I'm never gonna drink this. I don't know why I'm hanging on to it. But there's a little piece of you that just dies every time you sit there just empty down the drain. 11:26 Yes, I did. Actually, I had a bunch of media sample bottles and I just dumped them into the canter. We'll see what happens here. Infinity bottles. Yeah, exactly. already had one infinity ball that never touch. And then I like wow, be a great idea to create another one. So I don't drink it and let it sit there but uh, yeah, it's, it's good problem to have. Yeah, yeah, it is. Alright, so let's go ahead and go around the horn real quick. So Blake, we'll start with you. Just go ahead and do the usual. Yeah, I'm Blake from bourbon er calm. Bo you are Bo you are Bo, nr? It's been a 12:00 wow you know I almost forgot how to spell the name so glad to be back these are a lot of fun to do so that you can check me out at all social medias Instagram Twitter, Facebook as well as CEO box comm that's s ELBACH s I'm Nick from breaking bourbon, breaking bourbon com check us out 12:20 on social media all at breaking bourbon. And so I'm not going to spell it for you like Blake Blake i don't know i don't i don't want to screw it up and embarrass myself on live here. But yeah, you guys should know it by now. Breaking bourbon again. Glad to be here guys. Good Brian. Yeah, thanks for having me back. Happy to be for the first one of the of the New Year Brian with sip and corn. You can find me on Twitter Facebook and Instagram at sip and corn si p p n co CEO or MC there I go next can't even spell your own name anymore. And and also see me at bourbon justice.com. Let's start getting into some of the 13:00 The topics for tonight and so one of the one I kind of look at is how breaking kind of made stag Junior famous because it was one of these things that's like stag Jr. has been around, it's been around forever and all of a sudden, they come out and say it was their whiskey of the year and 2019 batch 12 and never at least correct me if I'm wrong Never before has Sazerac ever put out a press release about a new release of stag Jr. and now all of a sudden people are just going crazy for it it's just I don't even know if the initial release of stag Jr. Got a official press release 13:35 batch number 13 yeah even know they had badges 13:40 not getting 13:42 Okay, can I jump in so I was going to share this story earlier but so I was in South Carolina this weekend when we hit a few stores just see what they had three different no it was one bar and two different stores. They're like well, you know, we did just get the George t stag Jr. I don't know if you know this, but it was just named whiskey of the year. 14:00 I'm like, No, no, don't trust those guys. 14:05 It was gone off the shelves and the guy was like, yeah, you know, one of the employees grabbed it here because it was just named whiskey of the year. So, like, dang it breaking strikes again. 14:17 Y'all have a meeting with Jim Murray, you know? 14:22 I wish somehow it's like, it's like a catch 22 because, like, in a way, it kind of it kind of hurts us to to do something like that, because it's generally not insanely difficult to get here. I mean, it's not on the shelves all the time. But it shows up. I mean, if you're in liquor stores as much as we are, you're going to see it, you know, it's going to be out, you're going to have a chance to get it, you know, and so when when you do stuff like that, you know, you always think about the impact of, you know, are people going to lose their minds about it, but the flip side of that is, is, you know, it's kind of nice to have something that's just kind of a regular release, you know, they're not all going to be great. I don't think you know, there's going to be a 15:00 Elijah Craig barrel proof that's fantastic there's going to be a larceny you know barrel proof that's that's fantastic you know that kind of thing you know so it's that idea that kind of these regular releases that we get some really good once in a while we don't have to necessarily hunt you know the crazy stuff that everyone's already going to go nuts for no matter how good it is or not you know that you might just stumble upon you know really good batch or you know really good run a single barrels or something like that. So that's what's kind of exciting about that. But yeah, the catch 22 is it probably is going to be a little difficult to find for a little while at least although you know, probably taper off and be able to find it like you did before. If you know the know the liquor store, guys and you're getting your area. I think it'll still show up, you know, couple months from now. So one of the benefits of never deleting an email is that I have been able to trace every single Buffalo Trace, press release, and I found the original one with the original George t stag Jr. Or the stag Junior bourbon press release July 25 2000. 16:00 13 and I did not find any other follow up releases. So this 16:08 this is the first based on my inbox, which is a very well kept never deleted inventory of all Buffalo Trace press releases. And I remember the first either the first one or the first couple of those were just hotter than all hell. I mean, they were just unveiled. 16:28 Yeah, yeah, terrible. Yeah, terrible one of the one of my lowest rated Bourbons and everyone was super excited for it when it came out. And everyone thought I was going to be the, you know, the George t stag just a little younger, really, it's pretty much should be the same thing. Otherwise just maybe not quite as developed. But that one was pretty bad. And that one kind of turned us off from it for a little while. Of course, I have three bottles of that batch one. But you know, so it's been a little while we've had it here and there. You know, this one kind of popped up and Eric was the one who got it first and he was just going on and on about how great it was. 17:00 We had it and we're like well it's yeah we're going to start buying this again now you know so just yeah I think there's going to be hits and misses they're not all going to be they're not all gonna be home runs but this one was pretty good and from what I hear batch 13 is pretty good too and from a lot of comments people I don't think people didn't realize there were batches you know, if you're not a die hard bourbon enthusiasts, I don't think you're necessarily noticing that the proof is different. And it doesn't say batch anywhere so you know, I think Buffalo Trace maybe realize they could educate people a little bit better. You know, kind of talking about that there are actually different batches of this. You know, like for example, having held us with their you know, how they're identifying their batches now. We're knows maybe we'll switch to doing something like that. Maybe they're just going to try to get people on their website and do press releases from now on you know, be interesting to see what happens you know, everybody actually not opposed to like the the the announcement of a new release like this, if anything, it helps. It helps in a lot of ways kind of like Chronicle when these things are coming out. It gives you you little nuggets of information. 18:00 Because let's face it 18:02 We are at the liberty of what information they want to divulge to us we're very fortunate that someone like new riff or heaven Hill will tell you answer any question that you want. But Buffalo Trace, doesn't they, they don't tell you everything and so like to get any kind of like real like actionable information from some of those distilleries that don't give you information is always a plus. You know, it's the funny thing is this one question that came in and said how many people in the roundtable do the news earlier and guilty of insider trading? You know, for me, I don't even know how this was on your radar because stuff like you know stag Jr. Huge t single barrels are I mean, even even a lot of I mean, thankfully, heaven Hill sends us a lot of the samples for every release of the Elijah Craig barrel proof so we have an opportunity to taste it but a lot of times like a new stag, Jr. thing, just it's just not on the radar for me to go and search out among the liquor stores so well, they're gone anyway, they're not on the shelves here. It's like 19:00 Global's a different scenario Yeah, they get kind of compiled in with the you know Weller releases well or 12 where people have to camp out for it so I'm like stag jr No thanks not camping 19:11 or people camping out for stag Jr. He had they just do like they just they budget in 19:18 the raffles in the lotteries in the release. Yeah yeah it's part of the long line scenario maybe not the camping out but at least a two hour wait sort of scenario that's bourbon for you. Mm hmm. All right, let's go ahead. Let's move on to something fun. Well, maybe not fun, fun to talk about. You know, this is something that was an article that came out of Barron's calm on Friday and talked about MGP is now posting its third loss in a row, sorry, third quarter loss in a row. On Friday, the news came out that the stock had actually lost 20% of its value. It's currently I just checked it before we started here around $38 a share. It's high was back in around June of 2018, where it peaked around 19 20:00 $5 and it said at least within the article that it made a bet on aging whiskey, and that was related to blame, and really was a failed bet at the end the day. So I want to kind of look at the finance guys over here, because you all know what this means about, you know, trying to hit numbers, not posting or not meeting your, your expectations, your results. So what is this to you kind of say about the current market of maybe craft distillers that maybe don't need to source as much whiskey anymore? 20:31 Yeah, I mean, I think it's actually pretty telling, you know, if you dig in a little bit, they dig into like the, you know, the price to earnings ratio, all this other stuff in really what it comes down to is, I don't think MGP is getting the prices for their age whiskies that they wanted to, they thought that they could just kind of they were controlling the market, they could demand whatever price they wanted. And, you know, but you also have a lot of these other distilleries you've got Bardstown. 21:00 bourbon popping up you've got some other you know castle and key who's doing a lot of contract distilling, as well as just some other places around the country we've got a lot of decal bourbon that popping on to the market. So 21:11 I think they were just thinking they were in the driver's seat in our kind of getting proved that they weren't. 21:18 You know what that means for a stock forecast? I don't know that may be a little tough, but 21:24 ultimately, I think they're going to have to bring the prices down some they're still extremely high demand for MGP whiskey. But as I think that MGP probably thought that they would be able to release their own black brains with a little little bit of a better result and they haven't really done that, you know, what the remis and then well, they had the 21:46 the one that Oh, shoot with the old master distillers name that they released under his name, met Greg. 21:52 Greg Mets select but then you know that after he left, I assume they didn't care that on so I think between the fact that they haven't been able to really 22:00 thrown brands with much success. And then there's other stuff popping on the market where you know brands and smaller craft distillers they're looking to source. They have more options now. So I think that's the big thing. So let's analyze what MGP is MGP for years has been a supplier to people who were seeking craft spirits or distilled food, basically distill, distill the alcohol use for food. And in 2016, they hired Gus Griffin as their CEO Gus. Gus comes from Brown Forman. He's not from that kind of brought home and certainly had its like it played in the source market. Don't get me wrong, but not to this extent. And that facility in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, had been used as a blending agent for years and Canadian whiskey and American blends. It was never a place to do it's to have its own whiskey until Pernod Ricard sold it to ldi or Angostura 23:00 We're up, and they started selling stuff out into the wholesale market. They saw so much success with this. Unfortunately ldi could not, could not survive, so they had to sell you MGP MGP saw so much success with the source market that they said, Hey, why don't we have all this great whiskey and hey, you taste the honeybell from NGP. And you tell me it's not great. It is fantastic whiskey. And they're like, why don't we do our own brands. So they bring in this guy from Brown Forman Absolutely. Perfect position ready to go. Here's the problem. The company's infrastructure had always been built around 23:41 the wholesale market or the trade industry or other distillers and helping other other brands. They had not successfully done their own brand. They didn't have the sales infrastructure. They didn't have the marketing teams in place. They had some here and there but they did not build brands. And so in 2016, they shifted 24:00 gears and they started let letting go contracts and they started saying, hey, you're gonna have to find another source for your whiskey because we're cutting back. And here we are, we're basically seeing the results of a fantastic distillery not being supported by, you know, something that we always talk about that we hate in marketing and sales or apps. So that without that infrastructure there, you can see the results. And I know the stock market is not like real life, but it's an indication of what what happens. 24:38 Yeah, I mean, I also think when you look at this as a as a distillery going into this, you want to be able to buy whiskey and and have something that you can kind of buy and then sell almost overnight like that. That's kind of the goal a lot of these people went with. And now when even I mean, Ryan and I, we've been down this path we've talked to MGP like the most that they really sell 25:00 to people like us is like four year old product of that they have the 36%. Right? If you're buying a lot of 30, or buying a lot of four year old product, that means you're banking on betting your whole business on aging NGP stock. And so that doesn't necessarily play into the long term category of a lot of distillers where they say like, okay, we're going to get this to get us over this hump, until we can actually start selling our own whiskey. And so, most people unless you're, unless you're trying to build a business where it's NGP all day, every day for the rest of eternity, then it's gonna be hard for I think, to keep to keep selling some of these younger stocks. I think that's right. I also think frankly, Indiana has something to do with it. I mean, they they caught some bad press with Templeton and everyone referring to it as Oh, it's just 25:48 a whiskey made in a factory in Indiana, and they can't call it Kentucky bourbon. And everyone knows when Indiana's on the on the back. That's where they got it from and it's just a brand trying to 26:00 Make make it go until they can sell their own. And in the meantime, you've got brands stocking up on that can call themselves Kentucky bourbon and you've got a JW locally in particular, with all kinds of warehouses that are full of bourbon. And they'll have that cachet that MGP just won't and a half wonder if it's the market figuring that out. Also, you got to think about to Ozi Tyler has a lot of stuff on the market. Bardstown, bourbon, which 26:30 Blake mentioned earlier barsa Berbick and he's got a lot of stuff out there. I mean, the market is almost in about a one or two years if you're starting a brand. It's a buyers market, you know, because a lot of these people are going to be you know, desk selling have also heard rumors as that anything I can confirm it. So there's been some really strong Major blueblood distillers that are starting to say, Well, you know what, maybe we sell some of those two year old age doc that we have in tanks. So you're starting to see some Kentucky probably 27:00 open back up on the market. Well, you know, the old Barton stuff that's 12 and, you know, 17 years old remains there for half the price as you will know, Kenny. Yeah. Well, it is Kenny was alluding to or talking about, you know, us being in the source market. It's hard to I think MGP is actually built a name for themselves especially for the rye whiskey and the older bourbon I think. I think if you carry the rye whiskey, a lot of people will give you a benefit of the doubt because it's damn good rye whiskey, probably the best out there but the problem is is their pricing it's you can pay $1,000 more for aged, you know, product from Tennessee or or Barton's, and 27:43 then a four, you know, a four year old NGP and it's like, what you know, and when you taste it, it's just it's hard to, you know, invest that kind of money for that young of a product. And like Kenny said, You're banking on you know, aging, that stock and whatnot. So 28:00 I don't know, I think they're, they're getting squeezed barsen by recovery, like other said, and castle and key and 28:07 yeah, I think that's just all part of it. And, you know, they, it's adapted. So they'll they'll figure it out, I'm sure, when they shifted their business plan, they left the market open and people took advantage of it, the only way that they can correct this, you know, to get themselves back in place, is to flex their muscle. And I would really, I would really say that they should spin off their brands, and they should go back to servicing, you know, the craft market because they were so good at that and their infrastructure is set for it. And the market accepted it, you know, we can all say what we want about those class action lawsuits and everything, but no one was ever really bitching about the whiskey. And, and and that's that's telling you something 28:50 that's true. When you're going into you're really putting the marketing in a lot of other people's hands in you don't have to bank everything on your own strategy. You know, you're going to get some great 29:00 ideas from from some really inspired people by doing it that way. And I think that's what's built up their name to this point, because there's certainly an enthusiast group that's, you know, follow these brands that are, you know, probably built from enthusiasts themselves that have sourced MGP To get started, you know, done really well with it. And I think that's built such a strong name for them, you know, in that group, and then just by and large, as a lot of people out there that I don't think they care if it's MGP or not, they just care if they feel somewhat connected to the brand and they liked the whiskey enough in That's it, and it's just about getting distribution to the right places. So I think that makes a lot of sense, Fred. 29:39 You know, I mean, maybe this is, you know, certainly could be a bit of a glut here. Everyone's producing like crazy, you know, we're seeing whiskey come to market a lot younger, you know, then it was he came and dropped off a lot of regular everyday products we see on the limited release stuff, of course, you know, but is it to the point now, where it's just gotten that much harder to compete, and people may be overproduced 30:00 A little bit, you know, compared to what the what the projections were, Nick, you bring up a very interesting point. You know, we always talk about the glut but The what? The thing that's different now is that there's this whole lifestyle and tourism impact that American whiskey has jack daniels is enjoying it and so like if you're a fan of it, you can go to Jim Beam, you go to Maker's Mark what a Buffalo Trace and have the experience of your life. No one's going no one's going to Indiana. So you know that's, that's a that's a component there and I'll say this about MGP I hope that they stick with it because I think that's a good company. They just, you know, we all make business mistakes. I think this was a business mistake but I do not want to see them sell I think they have the passion for it. I do not want to see this get in the hands of printer card or Dr. Joe or someone like that, who's just going to turn this into a churn and burn place without any attention, you know, to the whiskey in American American whiskey hands and I don't want to see it be sent off to for blending purposes again, the world got 31:00 taste that whiskey and the world said we like that whiskey from Lawrenceburg, Indiana. 31:07 And the people have spoken here here. 31:11 So while we're also on the source whiskey path right here, you know, as we start looking at the scene of more and more Bourbons coming to the market, there's only a limited supply of sources that things are coming from. And this is one that, you know, we all kind of talked about before on the show, are we starting to see that the bourbon market is now being oversaturated with brands? Because, and don't get me wrong, we're probably problem too. Right? We're part of the problem too. Now, however, like it's it is becoming to the point where there is a lot of private label stuff out there. 31:45 I just saw somebody released one called Blue Ribbon bourbon, which is a revitalization of a label that was a 12 year old Kentucky bourbon about a week or so ago. And I think we're going to end up seeing more and more of these in the next probably few 32:00 months, few years, something like that. So do we see the over saturation of the market starting to happen? Well, I was I was wrong about this about four or five years ago. And so I guess I'm not, I'm not going to be reporting on the demise or the bubble being pop just yet. I mean, I thought four years ago that I'd be buying someone's still out of bankruptcy and I'd be the able to have my own little distillery on the first side hospital. Sure, didn't happen, obviously. And if we can get past tariff issues, and if we can get past trade issues, there's so much capacity overseas, it'll it'll soak all this up, and we won't notice a blip here, despite all of this production coming out. So we just have to think it's going to keep pushing. And I guess I would say, you know, from a, from a production standpoint, there's there's a lot of it, you know, where it's going to get consumed, it's going to grow almost just from 33:00 A pure, like, different brand standpoint, pure number of producers out there. You know, I think there's probably plenty of them out there that do not necessarily have a passionate person behind them. You know, there's a lot of money in it right now. You know, there's plenty that do have passionate, excited people behind them, I think we're going to see, you know, a percentage of those succeed, you know, but they're fighting for shelf space on a limited number of, you know, a limited number of retailers. You know, they've got to go through the distribution system. You know, there's, there's ways around it, of course, to some extent, but I think the reality is, is I think if you flood with flood with just too many different brands, there's just too much noise. And I think we're going to see a challenge for, you know, just an overflow of these to succeed if they don't have the driving force, the passionate people behind them, you know, kind of that gumption to, you know, to stick with it. I don't know, I don't think it's necessarily a quick money play, you know, per se, the same way. It may have been, you know, five, seven years. 34:00 years ago, at this point, I think the competition's a lot tougher. And so you got to pull a little bit more into it. You gotta have something special, you got to bring a destination into the mix, you've got to you just have to do more. You're not just, you know, the bottle something, put it out there and have nothing behind it and succeed. Yeah, one thing, I think with the source, you know, I mean, obviously, like Kenny said, there's a few sources that people get it with the refreshing thing about the source, age market, it's comes with an age statement, like nothing else out there is really coming with age statements. And you know, that's one niche they can hang their hat on. It's like, okay, we can give you a 11 1214 year old, you know, whiskey and you can't hide age. You can't there's just, you know, five, six, it's fine. But when you get 11 1214 there's something special unique you get with those types of Bourbons and still, and we're whiskey geeks. So we noticed these brands, we know where they come from, but the general public, they have no idea. You know, they're like, oh, any idea about this brand? No, it's 12 years old, you know? 35:00 They've been producing forever. Right? They opened up yesterday. Yeah. And so it's, 35:06 you know, as us we probably think, yes. Like, oh, how ridiculous. Can there be another 12 year old baartman brand out there. But the general public, I think, doesn't see that it is see that age number 12 years, and they get excited about it. I guess the other question that kind of comes with this is, we all kind of know what happens when you buy a bunch of stuff. It ends up running out right, it'll go dry. So what do you all kind of see is like some of these brands that are hanging their hat on putting that big number 12 of Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey as their brand. When we know here in maybe a year, maybe six months, maybe it's two years? I'm not too sure. But this will run out? 35:49 Yeah, I mean, I think it's tough to say because I'm, I'm kind of with Brian, where, you know, probably four or five years ago, I thought and by 2020. We'll see a glut nobody's gonna care about 36:00 This stuff anymore and I'm going to pick up, you know, 36:03 maybe not Pappy, but at least like well, or 12 or something again, but the demand is increased even faster than anyone expected. So 36:12 I think people will stick with brands, even if age statements are dropped. I mean, look at Elijah Craig. Granted, that's a massive company behind it, but they've gone through it Look at you know, Jim Beam eight year, the Black Label that they've gone through it and seems to be no issues. So, you know, I think a lot of these things are just blips on the radar radar, and it's a marketing thing that they have to figure out. Even when, you know, you hang your hat on age statement, you have to drop that age statement later. That ultimately what I think it comes down to is, is the is the whiskey good and, you know, it's easy to get stuck on a age statement. If it's good people drink it, people will talk about it and you know, it'll continue to grow so I don't I don't see any signs of slowing down even with it. 37:00 There's going to be a huge flooding of the markets in the next five to six years of Bourbons from New distilleries have been, you know, aging for a while, as well as other major distilleries that have just increased production over the last six to seven years. 37:15 As long as bourbon is cool, people keep buying it. 37:20 You keep it cool, Fred. 37:23 I've got that. 37:25 Pretty sure. So, you know, as we start looking at you know, Bourbons come on the scene. There's one thing that we always also see that that happens in this world of bourbon and that's, that's stickers. 37:39 With the careers of master distiller spanning almost 50 years, as well as Kentucky bourbon Hall of Famer and having over 100 million people taste his products. Steve nalli is a legend of bourbon, who for years made Maker's Mark with expertise and precision. His latest project is with Bardstown bourbon company, a state of the art distillery in the heart of the bourbon capital the world. They're known for the process 38:00 fusion series however, they're adding something new in 2020 with a release named the prisoner. It starts as a nine year old Tennessee bourbon that is in finished in the prisoner wine companies French oak barrels for 18 months. The good news is, you don't have to wait till next year to try it. Steve and the team at Bardstown bourbon company have teamed up with rackhouse whiskey club rackhouse whiskey club is a whiskey the Month Club on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories that craft distilleries across the US have to offer. Their December box features a full size bottle of Bardstown suffusion series, and a 200 milliliter bottle of the prisoner. There's also some cool merchant side. And as always, with this membership, shipping is free. Get your hands on some early release Bardstown bourbon, by signing up at rackhouse whiskey club.com. Use code pursuit for $25 off your first box. 38:50 So, you know, as we start looking at you know, Bourbons come on the scene. There's one thing that we always also see that that happens in this world of bourbon and that's that sticker 39:00 And there's one that the recording of today is Monday and there's one that just kind of get real big real fast and this was a play you know, one thing that I always loved about new riff is somebody that's something about riffs something and so riff pitino of play on Rick Pitino is one sticker that kind of got big on bourbon today. And what this does is it depicts a a kind of like a to face of Rick Pitino you got UK on one side you have Elad another, they have UK holding up a trophy and they've got a bunch of UFL players throwing dollars at strippers on the other side. And this got so big that it got picked up by Kentucky Sports Radio which is a very large syndicate here in the state that then got picked up by barstool sports. And in the barstool sports article, it actually talked about how it was coming from the distillery, right it didn't say it was a pretty 40:00 private group I didn't say it was a pic it like it said new riff. I'm sure they love that. Yeah, I mean, I guess I guess you know any publicity is good publicity but like At what point or I don't know maybe how about practicing a little journalism I Tommy call me old school but hey how about we actually call the company that there's no money in it with it you could call somebody for that. Yeah, yeah I mean all of this I feel like new riff is is an enormous victim right now and it just it drives me crazy because this has this has been happening I've been covering this business for you know 1415 years in all it's never happened this egregiously but like a brand really got damaged today it there's no question about it that someone saw that article in is going to have a bad opinion or saw the tweet is going to have a bad opinion about new riff for the rest of their life and they will not have taken the time to follow up to see you know what the real story was, but new riff got 41:00 Damage today because somebody made a sticker and put it on the bottle and made national national trending news, whatever you want to call it, but you know they're hurt from this or are they hurt? I mean they sure they're they're hurt I mean that's 41:20 but they're getting press on this folks who had never heard of this small distillery in Northern Kentucky now know about new riff and they're going to hear a lot of response to me about Oh, new riff is actually you know, get get the get the new riff. I mean, this is a fantastic single barrel. Well, I don't think anyone actually most people, you know, the way the world goes with this stuff, it's it's going to be the one thing that someone clicks on and then they're going to see a cat and they're going to go to something else. So I that I don't think there's any kind of real value in any kind of trending topic. I mean, there are multiple studies of somebody who comes up with something you know, clever on Twitter. 42:00 They don't their Twitter followers don't grow, you know, they get 30,000 retweets and what have you and their Twitter followers grow by 20 or something silly like that. And, and, and the fact is, is that within the Kentucky Community, you know, they're already kind of an outlier because they're in Northern Kentucky. They're not in Lexington, or they're not unlovable, and they're not in Bardstown. So they're an outlier as it is. And, you know, this sort of thing, puts them in kind of like a weird position in the state. And it has made state news. It's been tweeted by Matt Jones. And so everyone sees it, and all anyone had to do was pick up the phone and call the distillery. And then there's the whole thing could have been like, hey, this barrel group is doing this using this. They just pick up a sticker. Now it's free speech, right. And the distilleries can't dictate to anybody what they can do to the bottle after it's been purchased the same way that Nike can't dictate to you what you do with a pair of shoes that you pick up, you know from shoe locker or 43:00 Whatever. I mean, when I was a kid, I used to spray paint shoes. And that was probably stupid at the time, but I did it. No Shoe Company was coming after us to, you know that we couldn't spray paint our shoes. And that's really what it is here is that you have to practice you know, practice some, some, you know, some common sense of say like, Hey, is this a good idea? Does this pass the smell test? And I think this, this whole thing has 43:28 it could be the one sticker that, you know, puts the whole 43:33 you know, takes the fun out of all of this. I mean, honestly, a lot of people don't like the stickers. I love them. I love looking at everybody's stickers. I like getting on social media. And seeing people's post about it. I thought it was great. And this one even if 43:49 I mean I it was too far, it was too far. 43:55 actually makes it cool with younger people and that's growing. 44:00 It looks like because most bourbon brands are like, old man kind of like real old school kind of thinking. I don't know, the barstool sports, you know, they have a lot of millennial. Most of you know followers and that's where Bourbons growing and that's the future of bourbon. And I think they'll probably think it's cool. I know it probably drives me crazy Fred that that's what they love, they love like, I like tweeting and all this stuff and I and I, and I watch barstool sports. I listened to the pizza, the guys pizza reviews are great. And I just, you know, this is just one where I don't know it's just I would have to agree with Fred where I thought this one kind of went over the line a little bit on on a sticker but but the press was fantastic. You know, it's you can't pay for that kind of that kind of viral effect. But was it wasn't Ken Lewis, the one who on the on bourbon pursuit said he didn't like the stickers and is like, you know, I understand people are free to do whatever they want, but we put a lot of time and effort into those 45:00 bottles and 45:02 we prefer that then they stay the way they are you're right it was killing us on this podcast and said that I think he's the only the only you know owner I can really think of who's talked about that now granted new riff gets way more just because of the the funniness of the the name way more stickers and craziness than other ones but overall you know it definitely hit an audience but i mean i don't know i can't condone putting strippers on your bourbon bottle that's just a little far for me. So here's here's another side okay, so I like again that that audience that's getting touched is not going to get converted for new roof. It's just not they're not going to take the time to go seek out a bottle if they do they're going to do it in Jersey where the bottles not available and find a bottle go to seal box calm 45:57 should a quick link in the show notes. 46:00 Nice I like it. This is the whole setup, you know, not what this stuff but this is this is a this is a trend that that social media has brought that a lot of people do not appreciate and that's the social responsibility aspect of, of, of alcohol, their actual laws about what can be put on the bottle and their actual laws about what the distillers can promote. Yeah, putting a stripper on the bottle is is is within many violations now obviously new rifton do that. But I have seen multiple bourbon groups have a have their child hold the bottle and you know quickly those things often get taken down. But people don't practice they don't they don't look at. They don't look at the bottle as like some kind of 46:55 regulated you know, piece of real estate and 47:00 You know in these kinds of things are going to end up hurting the the distilleries, the community, the hobby, all of it. Because we're all the the bourbon world's already under, you know, every Attorney General in the country is already looking at, you know, the secondary markets as like some kind of like easy press release for them to take down and arrest arrest Joe Schmo in a parking lot in Pennsylvania. They're like, pound their chests and say like, hey, look at us, we're taking down illegal illegal drinking and legal selling. And so, you know, we don't need this kind of activity happening. Because all it does is it puts it puts a bigger Bullseye on the entire industry. And it just frustrates the shit out of me that people don't get that when it comes to like having their kids next alcohol when it comes to the stickers when it comes to anything and the fact is, at any given moment, like Facebook or whoever could just snap 48:00 It's all gone, it'll pop up in something else, but it'll be gone in that particular medium. And that is where you know that the stick that particular sticker is in that same kind of categories, right there. 48:13 Yeah, I mean, we've talked about stickers plenty of times on the show before and, you know, whether it's you know, you want to commemorate something or whether it's a an opportunity for you to pay homage to somebody I know we've seen people that have like had Freddie on the bottle before I know there's people are afraid to on the sticker. You know, there's a lot of fun things that get played with it. This just happened to be one that blew up rather quickly. And only because I think it 48:39 It had a little sensitive subject around to it, but you know, it's a it's it's Kentucky and it's basketball in the day. So maybe that's just why it started really supporting it. You know, you shouldn't ever went to frickin level. 48:55 There's just there's no restrictions on the rival 49:00 Read between Kentucky and u of L so that that that's part of it. And that's, that's why it's on. That's why Matt Jones is is tweeting it. And that's why it gets on barstool sports. But I think overall there's there's obviously the risks, Fred, that you point out. I think overall, it'll end up being fine for new riff. I think what it's going to do though is it's going to call the attention to all the distilleries about what goes on these, these stickers for the private groups, because a lot of them use trademark images. I mean, there's plenty with with Marvel Comics, images that are trademark images. There's, there's there's just free use of anything out there that are protected marks, and the distilleries are going to have to have some responsibility for that. I absolutely disagree. I disagree with you on that because once that once it is bottled, it is going to the distributor and it's being sold to a retailer. So the the 50:00 The responsibility on this is going to be on the retailer. If they are putting that sticker on there at the distillery, there's some liability there, I would assume. Yes. Yeah, it's wherever they go place. Yeah, that's where a lot of them come on. I mean, I've know some that go on on post sale, but a lot of them go on at the at the distillery, they'll give them the sticker and it goes on there, that that's going to be restricted. Now once it gets into into the group's hands and gets whatever stickers on it, that can still be trademark infringement, but you're gonna have to go after the group for it, which will be next to impossible. So if it's if it's Disney trying to protect a Marvel mark, they're going to go to the distillery and say you need an agreement with whoever does private selections that they will not be using any infringing marks. I wonder what Rick Pitino thought when he saw 50:55 the he says 50:58 he's like, I just can't get away from this trip again. 51:00 thing, you know, you know, he's he's probably, you know, he hasn't did he Sue anyone with all the coverage that he got? I don't think you know, probably now i don't think i don't think he will I think he's just trying to get another job and to be honest with you, if the Oklahoma State job pops up, I pray to God that he goes there because we could we could use a winning season anyway, that this whole thing is 51:26 it it just kind of like plays into a whole nother 51:31 you know, conversation to be had about, you know, what is, 51:37 you know, what, what is the standard of, I guess, being cordial, you know, we've lost in, in an overall society, we just, we just put pictures up with people and, and, and have a good laugh at it. And yet we have 12 year olds trying to kill themselves on a daily basis, because they're getting made fun of online. It's like 52:00 At some point in our society, we're going to have to take some, 52:04 some responsibility for what we're posting online. And this is this is a part of all that it's a greater conversation. But 52:13 you know, 52:15 it's sad, it's sad that it's accepted. And people just go on with it and have a good laugh. But the fact is, you know what, my grandpa wasn't doing this you know, when when they were trying to you know, create a cut, you know, basically rebuild this country after World two. And you know, and here we are, and it's just kind of like, this is what we're This is what we do on a daily basis. That's it 52:42 your mood and change the mood? Yeah, go look a little like a good device. The subject I feel like the you know, the the router game will fall every problem. 52:52 All right, let's move on. I think we're ready. 52:57 I'm ready. That went deep. So you know, as we are 53:00 Talk about private barrels and you know, private pics and stuff like that. You know, I think there's one and I think, actually, Blake before we can go on to that I think you had a had a sticker prediction for 2020 as well. Did you want to kind of really? Yeah, yeah, it kind of, to piggyback on that a little bit, I think there's going to be a brand or distillery that comes out and says, you know, they can't control it. But they will be very boisterous, kind of how the Van Winkle have been about the secondary about, you know, no stickers on their bottles. Like we said, you know, if the bottle comes untouched, gets in the hands of a customer. You know, my six year old can color on it, I can throw a sticker on it, it doesn't matter. But a lot of times when these things are getting advertised, I think they could stop it and you know, somebody put it in the chat. That's why steel box puts the sticker just in the box and doesn't put it on there. But I think there's going to be somebody else who comes out and says, You know what, we don't like that. And we'd prefer that you know? 54:00 People not do this to our bottles and in there a little more outspoken about it. So I think that's coming especially after today. You think that's what it's new riff Blake or do you think somebody Yeah, I mean they already kind of said it. I think it's new riff I mean you think about the the major ones are getting stickers. New riff will it a lot of Buffalo Trace pics you know Buffalo Trace Weller's, all that kind of thing. Will it seems to be okay with it? I don't know. I've never seen them have an issue. I've seen them do some distillery releases where they have stickers. But yeah, I think it'll be new riff, you know, especially after this backlash, that that does say something. 54:42 You know, some people kind of get the fun of it and others, you know, to his point that he made on the podcast it was we put a lot of work and design effort into this bottle. We prefer that it stays the way it is. So, you know, I think it'll be interesting to see what they're able to get away with it. 55:00 Cuz, you know, they can't, they can't dictate free speech? Well, I'm very much in opposition of, of poor taste, I also support free speech. And, you know, if when someone gets that bottle, and they can put whatever they want on it, and I think the only thing could probably dictate his say, you can't, we will not be putting this label on the bottle. And if we catch you doing it, we're not going to resell to your group. I think that's about the extent of it. And honestly, I think that would be the biggest return of all they said, Look, you know, we're just not going to let you do another pic. If this is how the bottles are going to be treated. I don't think there's anything wrong with that legally, you know, they're allowed to choose which groups they allow to buy barrels. 55:49 So I don't know it take a little bit of the fun out of it. I mean, I know we had some fun with our rollers trail pick, so it does add some fun, but overall, I think it's gonna 56:00 If it continues, you know, they'll have to at least acknowledge the fact that they're not associating with with a lot of these stickers. I mean, it we can all, you know, prevent all this by just, you know, practicing common sense, right. 56:18 That's way too much to ask these. 56:22 Remember we started what what is bourbon? bourbon is drama. Yeah. So that's what it's all about. Yes, it is, always has been, by the way. So as we as we continue this theme of talking about single barrel selections and stuff like that, there's there's one that's sort of leading the pack and kind of made a big splash this year already. I know it's rolling in January. But the biggest news was that brown Forman is now coming out with a barrel proof and 100 proof option for their single barrel program of old forester and will be retiring their 90 proof version. This all is going to come into effect around the May timeframe that kind of begs 57:00 Question. What's taking everything else so long to get on board with this? Gosh, I applaud them for listening. I mean, yeah, absolutely. I'm Foreman's like just they are like nailing it on all aspects the past like two, three years, they just been doing great releases at great prices like putting out ever since Jackie's joined. I mean, it's just they've been nailing it out of the park and they're listening to fans. They're doing everything like I commend them so much like it's it's incredible. I've done an old forester pick at barrel strength it's absolutely incredible. You know, and it's I'm so excited for this unfortunately our pic will be at 90 proof because it's not before 57:39 before May So, but Gosh, way to go brown Forman like talk about company and listens to people and then listen to their fans like I applaud that. Absolutely applaud them. I mean that's on those barrel pics there have been some of the best straight out of the barrel bourbon, I've have had hands down and we've been 58:00 crying for it for five years, and maybe it takes that long but we finally have so I'm happy. Yeah, I put this in a post today about I've never been that huge of a brown form and fan for over the years. But there Honestly, I think they did better than any other distiller I can think of in 2019 really last couple years with their whiskey row or releases, you know, the the hundred proof raw or the straight rye that they released. That's like 23 bucks a bottle. And now this with the barrel picks, what does every single person say? Whenever they go to do the barrel pics, what will they let's do it a barrel proof. And the answer's no, you got to water it down to 90 you gotta water You know, one of seven. There's something hard to do. We got to do a TTB filing. Yeah, yeah. And I don't think they just continue. I thought the old forester birthday bourbon was fantastic this year. So yeah, I mean, kind of hats off to them. I think they're 59:00 They're crushing it with the whiskey crowd right now or the, you know, the enthusiast crowd at least. So, I want to get in on their barrel program now. Like, who do I need to call on that one, but now I'm excited to see what else comes out of there because we know they have a lot of good barrels sitting so it should be a lot of good barrels to kind of, so a little breaking golf. Sorry. 59:23 Breaking News. Yeah. Okay. Let the man talk. Okay, kind of sorry, Fred, kind of to that point. 59:31 Blake, you know, I think you know, talking about the enthusiast crowd, you know, you gotta wonder if if the Steelers are looking at it as a real small portion of the community that does really want that is going to be impacted by that and you know, look at it as from a cost benefit that maybe it's not there, you know, but that kind of listening to the enthusiasts and even if it you know, the single barrels and barrel proof only do get into a small number a hands, you gotta wonder if they're looking at kind of that spiral effect of, you know, if that kind of interesting 1:00:00 goes down from there to just people's association with the brand. So kind of talking to everybody, you know, the enthusiasts, I think we're relatively speaking a pretty small group, you know, when you look at what really sells and where the numbers really get posted, but we're a pretty vocal group too, I think and it's great that they're listening and making their products better. And yeah, I mean, across the board when you have those pics and you're there and you're tasting all the barrel, and it's so good then they water it down and it's it's not the same It's a shame to know that it's going to be watered down and they're basically going to ruin what's otherwise a fantastic bourbon. 1:00:36 Well, and so I wouldn't go to room. Sorry. 1:00:40 I want to hear what you say. But I've some of your and watered down some of those old forester private selections have been fantastic. Sorry. I just mean, I just mean in general, you know, yeah, I'm with zero proof. It's fantastic water down. It's just not anything near where it was. Yeah, you know, it's really those it actually some tastes better with 1:01:00 Water than they do it barrel proof, you know and so it's kind of funny how that goes to. All right, go Fred. All I was going to say is because of everything that she has done and is continuing to do, and her 1:01:14 her effort to find herself we're putting Jackie's I can on the cover. bourbon plus. All right, fantastic. She if you guys can beat me out, 1:01:32 pulled away. We should probably 1:01:34 more community vote next time. 1:01:38 Jackie's gonna win every day of the week. Yeah. The photography on her is amazing, but this story is about her. We know about the whiskey side and that's there but on the personal side, she's she fought like hell. And I got to tell you all when I tell you that every single great thing that is happening on the old forester line. 1:02:00 is in large part because of Jackie's I can. But also you know who she would say is her partner in crime Campbell Brown, the president Campbell deserves a lot of credit for taking a brand that was kind of like forgotten in the world and giving it the love and attention that it's deserved. And that's a good brown Forman on it sharp dude, he's done. They've done amazing things since he joined. So that's a great point. Yep. And I guess kind of like last question that we do, as we kind of wrap this up is, you know, as we see, brown Forman come out with this barrel proof single offering, and I know that the eyes are on one company, now that everybody kind of looks at and says like, okay, we love We love to taste your stuff, a barrel proof, we want to see a barrel proof offering. I mean, is it do we actually see this as a change of the bourbon consumer market, where more people are actually opting to actually want to have barrel proof expressions, rather than saying like, Okay, well, I'll just 1:03:00 Take this 94 proof counterpart because that's all you're going to give me. Haven't we always been there? We have. But I mean, now you see the them actually starting to adjust to maybe some market reactions. Yeah, well, the single girls are like, really for whiskey geeks. It's not for the general populace. So, I mean, but the general population, they even think 94 proof is fucking hot as hell. They're like, you know, they even like 86 they're like, Oh my gosh, it's so hot. You know, but uh, 1:03:31 I think so. Yeah. 1:03:35 Yeah, I'm Ryan, I come across this people. I wonder their way. Yeah. Yeah. 1:03:40 What has happened is they finally have listened to the data and listen to the people who are out in the market saying that new consumers and women and people who are wanting to, you know, to drink in a sophisticated fashion, want higher proof and I believe it you 1:04:00 No, Peggy no Stevens has played a big, big role when she handed over the bourbon women's research that women preferred basically Booker's as the as their drink of choice and the like every day that you can find in the in the market. And so when they started seeing that data, they're like, Oh, well, we all need to kind of, you know, create, you know, somet

Ok. Let's be real. If you've been listening very long, this is not a topic you thought the girls would tackle. But hey! New Year! New You! Right? We're sharing some funny things that have happened to us and YOU as we venture into the land of "The Gym People" and we brought in one of our very favorite members of the gym -- "CrossFit Kelli." Kelli Magee is a dear friend and will likely beat you AND your husband in an arm wrestling match, but if you're struggling with feeling a part of the gym culture, she's also your girl! She shares some of the dos and don'ts of the gym and Johnna and Laura jump in with a few of their own, too! Sidebar: If you really want a blessing, check out Kelli's church's new worship album: Psalms, Vol. 1 on Spotify or iTunes.  Check out our girl featured on "Again and Again" (You'll have it on repeat! We do!). The ladies are sharing some GOOD things this week that you'll want to check out, too! Kelli shared a great hydration tool - Liquid IV Hydration Multiplier - and her love for the NY Times cooking app. Johnna is loving the Brad and Jennifer rumors and speaking their reconciliation into being. She's also sharing a great cosmetics brand with the most amazing color-matching system - Maskara (Check it out and our friend, Colleen, will be happy to help you if you have questions about their products!). Laura's good things this week is a book Johnna recommended a few months ago, The Nightengale, that she could not put down over Christmas and her Aveda Damage Remedy. Thanks for being a part of our fun each week! We are grateful for each of you that laughs along with us! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I talk with Jenessa Berg. She shares her thoughts about motherhood as a creative process, birth-related terms that can be taken multiple ways, and the circle of support during birth.   TRANSCRIPT: Sara: On today's podcast, I will be talking with my friend Jenessa Berg. Jenessa is the mother to three children, a dancer and dance teacher, and an aspiring birth worker. Welcome, Jenessa to the Birth Words podcast.   Jenessa: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.   Sara: I'm really looking forward to hearing your perspective and sharing it with our listeners today. So, I was really interested when we were messaging before that you mentioned that you see motherhood as an artistic and creative process. So tell me more about that.   Jenessa: Yeah, okay. So I think it might help to tell a little bit about my, my story. I started going to BYU a few years ago as a freshman and I was in the nursing program. And I, I was thinking, you know, I really want to be a nurse and probably a midwife later, I was really interested in you know, science and, and I like math and I was like, this seems like you know, like a good thing for me and, but then as I started getting more into it, I just felt like that wasn't going to be the best use of my talents. And like I could maybe be a good nurse, but that wasn't what I was supposed to do. And I'm a praying person and I prayed a lot about it, and I ended up switching to dance, which is a very different thing and part of me was like embarrassed because I thought that people were going to think that like, I wasn't smart or something. But as I got more involved in the arts, I experienced a lot of healing and, and my health got a lot better than it had been. And it was an interesting shift going from, you know, being you know, in this medical world to this artistic world, and my health was so much better. So now I've had I've had three children and as I've had my kids, I've recognized that yes, it is. It is. There is a lot of it that is medical. There's there's a lot of math and science involved in how it all works. But it's also so much more than that. And so, I've realized that you can move beyond the statistics and the evidence and everything and it's, and it's your story, and you get to create it. It’s not just you know, you just have to live something out. Like it's, it's something that you get to be a very active part of, if you choose to be. And you can make it into something really beautiful. So I've started kind of thinking of, I guess over the past three births. I've come to think of the whole process is more of a, you know, this is my story that we're creating. And, and these are moments that I get to choose. You know, I don't get to choose everything but I get to choose. I get to choose quite a lot actually. And it is a creative process and trying to make your life and the life that you're bringing into the world, making it all a beautiful process. Sara: Love that. So how do you think that that perspective comes out when you're interacting with other parents in your community?   Jenessa: Yeah, so that's an interesting question. Um, I think that it's very common to kind of just stop at the, “you know, this is what happened to me. And these are the, these are the are, these are the facts or this is how it worked, or this is how it happened” instead of really taking it a step further and saying, but this is my story, and I choose how it plays out. And so, a lot of times when I have conversations with people, you know, you hear a story and sometimes a birth story is like, well, I went to the hospital and then I and then I had this intervention in this intervention and then my baby was born. And I guess I, I just want people to have stories that they're proud of. And so that's part of why I've become more passionate about birth is because, you know, my first birth I kind of did that, you know. I just kind of, well, you know, I'll just go in and, you know, do what all the experts are telling me here and we'll see how it goes. And it didn't go very well. And when I kind of took things into my own hands and said, “You know, this is my story, and I'm the hero of the story. I'm going to make this a good story.” Yeah, it's just so much better when I've when I've changed that. And so when I when I interact with other people now I, I guess I try to help other people to recognize that it's their story and that they get to choose how it is. And that it's not just, you know, you just have to live it out whatever happens to you.   Sara: Yeah, I love that. So we're kind of jumping all over the place. We have it just a short amount of time, but you had so many good ideas that I was like, Yes, we have to talk about all of them. But only for a few minutes each.   Jenessa: We’ll have to have another session where you just talk… can be a sleepover.   Sara: Sounds good. Okay, so when you reached out to me, you mentioned that a topic that interests you, is that different words or phrases have very different connotations for different people. So can you give some examples of that?   Jenessa: Yeah. So, um, since I originally kind of had this idea that I shared with you, I've been making a list, so I'm just going to kind of read through and just give a little blurb about them. So one thing is, when people say, “we're pregnant,” instead of “I'm pregnant.” Some people think that that's like, a really great way of looking at it like “yes, I am the husband. We're pregnant, and we're doing this together and working together,” and some people take a lot of offense. “Yeah, excuse me. You don't have heartburn. You don't have to, you know, you don't have hemorrhoids. You you're not dealing with this. You're not carrying this baby around all the time. Like, how dare you say that?” You know, “we're pregnant.”   Sara: But yeah, some people are totally like, this is a dual process. And that's how I'm going to express it. So that's very…   Jenessa: Right. And for some people, I think that's a good thing for them.   Sara: Yeah. It's good to know where you fit in.   Jenessa: Yeah.   Sara: And where your partner fits in, so that you’re not…   Jenessa: Definitely. So the next one here, and this is one that you've talked about before, especially with Rebecca Decker, from Evidence Based Birth: delivery or deliver in birth. Um, some people just don't even think of that as a word that could be offensive. And some people are really upset by it because they think my baby is delivered from me like, right? No, my baby is like, it's not taken from me to free me of it or you know, so there's that one. Sometimes there's just words that are just…it's like they started out meaning one thing and then just got confused. So the word postpartum? It means the time period after birth, but a lot of people use it to refer to postpartum depression, right? Which can make it confusing. Yeah, like after I had my baby a few months ago, um, I had a friend and she was like, “Hey, how are you doing?” And I was like, “Oh, you know, just the, you know, postpartum is crazy.” And she was like, “Oh my gosh, like, let me come and like, help you out. Like I had postpartum depression too.” And like she… And I was like, you know, like, I'm, I'm.. I appreciate your concern and help but that's not what I was saying.   Sara: Yeah, it's interesting, because I think that it means that we have an increased awareness of it. But then we have this conflation of this term that just means like, yeah, time after baby's born and I’m adjusting to real life as a mother.   Jenessa: Yeah, yeah. Interesting. So, Oh, here's a here's a phrase that yo some can be very comforting and to some just makes you very angry. And it's, “there's no trophy.”   Sara: Oh!   Jenessa: And I think most people have feelings about that   Sara: Right! Some people probably feel like, “Oh, you're right, that means I can do it my way. This is my story it doesn't matter, there's no prize!”   Jenessa: Exactly, right, like, I don’t have to worry about other people. And other people are like, “you think that I did that for a trophy? Like how shallow do you think I am? You know, like that's usually that's a—you know—phrase it's usually used in like, whether someone got an epidural or not. And, like of course it's not about a trophy, but some people can get… some people take great comfort from that phrase and other people, it just kind of lights a fire underneath them.. Another one very similar to that is, “you don't have to be a hero.”   Sara: MmmHmm.   Jenessa: Um, this one I thought was interesting. I heard a woman recently who had had a stillborn baby and she was really upset when people used the term “angel baby” and talking about her “angel baby” because she doesn't believe in God. And she doesn't have that belief. And she felt like people were always like giving her false hope. Like, no, like,   Sara: Not validating her grief.   Jenessa: Yeah, right. Exactly. Not validating her grief. Another phrase is, “leave it to the experts.” usually referring to medical professionals.   Just the phrase, or the word “natural.”   Sara: Yeah. That one can be so controversial.   Jenessa: Yeah. And it's funny because like, you know, they're just words, but we attach these meanings to them. And when we come at them from different directions, they can be hurtful or they can be… anyway, they can just have such different meanings.   Sara: You have such a good list. Can I like…?   Jenessa: Yeah, I'll send it to.   Sara: And maybe piggyback off of it for future episodes?   Jenessa: Yeah, totally. Totally.   Sara: You’ve got such a good list.   Jenessa: Yeah, I got another one. And this one, I also got from listening to this podcast—such a good podcast—when The VBAC Link was on here, and they talked about belly births, and how, you know, some women like that phrase and like, “Oh, yeah, like my cesarean birth was also a birth” and some people feel like “no, my cesearean birth was not a birth. That was something that I was robbed of.”   Sara: Right.   Jenessa: So yeah, it's interesting, like you wanna you just want to validate people, but sometimes the words that we use, they actually get some harm.   Sara: Yeah, because they come… and the words that I use or that you use They’re symbols that represent all of our lived experience relating to that concept, right? And like for you, and for me, we have totally different lived experiences. A lot of similarities, a lot of differences… and one little word, just a few letters packaged together can mean so much. Something so different to me than it does to you, than somebody in another state, another country, especially as we get into a wider circle.   Jenessa: Definitely. A couple more. There's when people say “easy way out.” And this is another one that’s sometimes with the cesarean section where people will say like, “No, that wasn't the easy way out, you know, like, how dare you say that?” And the interesting thing that I have noticed without phrases that I usually hear it in people who haven't given birth before, and they usually say it.. and it's just because they just don't know they just think “oh, like, I've heard that labor is terrible. So a cesarean section seems like the easy way out, so she must have chosen the easy way out.” You've had a C-section.   Sara: No, it’s not the easy way out! I had labor and a c-section, so…   Jenessa: Yeah, but just don't ever, I think pretty much don't ever tell a woman that she took the easy way ever.   Sara: Yeah. Or any person ever.   Jenessa: The easy way… I had I have an aunt who adopted three children. And someone told her once, “Oh, you went…you took it the easy way.” Because, you know, she didn't have pregnancy or labor, but she was like, okay, like all the years of therapy, like the years of waiting the years of infertility, all of the you know, like, what about the time where I thought that I was going to have a baby and I went and I met him and then his birth mother decided to keep him and you know, like that all this heartbreak years and years of heartbreak? Like, no, that was not the easy way. Ah, anyway, so that was really hurtful to her. And yeah, so I don't know. I don't know that that phrase is really helpful to anyone   Sara: It’s not a two-way think, it’s just a “Don't say that!”   Jenessa: But I think that that it is good to recognize though that a lot of people don't realize that got that that phrase can be so upsetting.     Sara: Wow. Okay. You've given me lots of things to think about over the coming weeks and months. I'm excited. Um, another topic… was that positions of authority in the birth experience. That's important to you. So what's your perspective about who is or who are the authority figures in birth and what responsibilities does an authority figure have?   Jenessa: Perfect. Okay, so um, I think that our society's general view of looking at birth and authority figures is kind of a hierarchy. And you have doctors up at the top, and then midwives because like, they're still pretty smart, but they're not doctors. And then underneath that, you have nurses. And then underneath that you have doulas and then at the bottom is mothers. And I heard someone say something recently about like if we're going to make any change in our maternity care, then it's got to start from the bottom—like you mothers—and I was like you've got to you've…you're at the bottom? …. Like I understood the point, but I was kind of bothered by that because, like—wait, mothers are at the bottom of the maternity care system?   Sara: Right, I have life inside of my body!   Jenessa: There would be no maternity care system without the mothers! Anyway. So like, I think that we need to stop with the whole hierarchy thing. And I'm not saying that we should switch it either. I'm not saying like mothers at the top and everybody else just bow to them. Because it's not quite that either. So I think like if… I'm a really visual person, so like… the way I like to think about it is more like the mother is the center. Everybody else… we're all on the same standing. Right? We're all people, we're all humans, we're all important. And birth professionals certainly have, you know, they're doing great work and they are important. It's not like you know, like they don't matter all. But the mother is in the center because she's the one that is bringing the life into the world and everyone else is surrounding her. It's a circle. A circle of support…   Sara   Do you want to like draw…? I think we can all probably imagine a circle. I love that visual. That's really powerful.   Jenessa: Yeah, I thought of that visual. Mostly… Well, as I was thinking about this, like, I just had this visual from when I was watching, when I was recently watching the video of my most recent birth, yeah. And Sara was my doula. You were my doula for that. And I also had, like, my mom was there and, and I had my midwife, my husband, and right at the part where it was just the very most difficult and I was like, Yeah, “oh, man, like, why am I doing this? Can I really do this? I don't think I can do this!” when I was in that moment. I was surrounded.   Sara: That’s beautiful   Jenessa: There were literally people you know, like there was someone holding each hand, there was someone behind me doing counter pressure. My midwife was there getting ready to catch the baby… like it was it was literally…and someone else was… I had like the nurse was, you know, checking for the fetal heart rate, and it was just really, like that felt right, you know, to be in the center of a circle.   Sara: It was beautiful to be on the outside of the circle too supporting you. Your birth was so beautiful. I love that too. Because so your videographer from that birth, Sarah Asay, also has a website and social media platform called Birth Circle. And that is the metaphor that she uses so much. And I've been doing some business training with her. She talks so much about we don't…this hierarchy is all wrong in…   Jenessa: It's just silly.   Sara: Yeah. Not just in the birth space. But if we think about businesses working that way, that's just not how we support one another. And I love the circle that she's creating of support for women and that she so beautifully took a video of so that you could see that visual. That's… Yes. Thank you for sharing. Yeah, I love all of this. Thanks so much for being on the podcast today. If you had to summarize your feelings about birth, pregnancy, postpartum in one… and I don't mean depression, just the postpartum experience… In one word, what word would you choose?   Jenessa: Birth is sacred.   Sara: I love that. I really think that's beautiful. I agree. Thank you.   Jenessa: Thank you.   Outro: Did words play an important role in your birth experience? If you're interested in sharing your story on the podcast, go to www.birthwords.com. If you're liking what you hear on the podcast, please leave a review on your podcast app. For more resources about harnessing the power of words to benefit the birth experience, visit birthwords.com   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Don West and Shawn Vincent continue their discussion of the Michale Drejka trial. Topics include Drejka’s statements to police, his decision not to testify, and what was learned from jurors who spoke to the Tampa Bay Times after the guilty verdict.   TRANSCRIPT:   Shawn Vincent: Hey, everybody, this is Shawn Vincent. Thanks for listening in. I'm excited about the podcast today. Today is the second part of my conversation with Don West, he's CCW Safe National Trial Council, on the Michael Drejka case. So if you remember Michael Drejka is the parking lot shooter out of Clearwater, Florida. He was getting into an argument with Brittany Jacobs over her parking in a handicapped parking spot, a disabled parking spot. Shawn Vincent: Markis McGlockton, that's Jacobs’ life partner, the father of her children, came out of this convenience store, saw this dude arguing with his girl. He walked up to Drejka quickly, without notice or warning, he pushed him to the ground violently. Drejka pulled his licensed concealed carry pistol, and he aimed at McGlockton, who was at this point standing over him in kind of an aggressive posture. He paused for a minute. Shawn Vincent: The video shows McGlockton take half-step back, a real slow retreat. And then he fired. That shot struck McGlockton in his heart. He stumbled back in the convenience store, fell to the ground, died at the feet of his five year old child. At first there wasn't an arrest. After some more details came out, the prosecutor charged him with manslaughter. A year and a half later, little over a year later, he goes to trial, convicted for manslaughter. Shawn Vincent: Don West and I watched that trial. We had a lot of things to say about it. And in today's podcast, we're going to talk more specifically about the statements that Drejka made to police, and why if you're ever approached after a self-defense shooting, you shouldn't say much without the advice of a lawyer. How those statements can be used against you, whether that means you have to testify or not at trial. And we're going to look at the jurors in this case. In full disclosure I helped, I contributed in a minor way in the jury selection of the Drejka case. I helped research the jurors, and vet them to make sure that they were qualified for trial. They spoke to the Tampa Bay Times, and they give us some pretty interesting insight into what happened behind closed doors in the jury room, and how they rendered that decision. There’s a lot of great lessons for concealed carriers from that. So, thanks again for listening in. Here's my conversation with Don west on the Michael Drejka trial. Shawn Vincent: Here's one thing that we tell CCW safe members all the time, and that's after a self-defense shooting. Don't make detailed statements to cops, without the presence and advice of a lawyer. Don West: Right, just as a quick refresher, generally speaking, if you're involved in a serious self-defense incident, there will be a responding officer, maybe in response to your own 911 call, which you should keep in mind is being recorded and available as evidence down the road. Shawn Vincent: Right. Don West: You'll be interacting with a responding officer, who will want you to tell him or her what just happened. You will likely be detained. Certainly, you'll be detained at the scene for officer safety. You may be detained and taken to the police station for further questioning. You may or may not actually be arrested at that point. We don't need to go into the nuances of that. But it's likely at some point, either that evening or shortly thereafter, a detective with the police agency, who has now been fairly recently assigned to the case and getting up to speed- Shawn Vincent: A homicide detective. Don West: A homicide detective, yes, will want to talk with you in detail about what happened. So the general advice is that you provide enough basic information to orient the responding officers, you clearly state that you acted in self-defense because you were attacked, telling them where any evidence that may not be obvious might be, if describing the attacker or attackers if they fled. Providing the basic information that helps the police officers know you're not a threat, that you are defending yourself. Don West: Then if being requested to provide further information, say you're happy to cooperate, but you want a counsel present. Same thing with the detective, where you ask for a counsel to be present during any sort of detailed debriefing, and there's lots of reasons for that. Part of it is legal: Why would you subject yourself to the questioning of a trained investigator, without having a trained professional helping you? You certainly are clearly at a disadvantage. Don West: Secondly, you may very well say things in a way that you don't intend to say, because you haven't thought it through, or you felt the need to come up with an answer instead of reflecting on it. Then the trauma of the event itself. You will have undergone a life threatening circumstance, which will affect your judgment and your decision making, it will affect your perception. And it's commonly said, police officers will get a couple of three days in between the use of force incident they're involved in, until they're asked to be fully debriefed. Don West: And that's the recognition of how difficult and how traumatic that experience is, and how it can make you unreliable when you're otherwise doing everything possible you can to tell the truth. Shawn Vincent: So you and I had a chance to talk to Steven Maddox, that was the CCW safe member who was charged and prosecuted. You were instrumental, I think in his defense, and I got a chance to help pick the jury on that. And Stephen told us that he was trying to answer questions honestly to the investigators there, but he got things wrong, like the number of children that he had, or his address, because he was so affected by the attacks that he had endured and the stress of the shooting itself. And he wasn't intentionally trying to deceive, but he got things wrong because he was in an unfamiliar emotional state. Don West: Keep in mind too, that the investigator has a very clear role in this. They may have already decided that you're guilty. So they may be just looking to confirm things they believe they already know, and getting you to try to incriminate yourself. Others may be more genuinely looking for information, without having sort of prejudged the situation, but the rules are different. Don West: The police can try to trick you and deceive you and lie to you about things during this interrogation process. So if you respond to that, if you become defensive, if you say things that can make you look guilty, that's going to be permanently recorded and available to use against you. I really believe that sometimes the hardest job of the defense lawyer representing an innocent person is to- Shawn Vincent: Undo what they did. Don West: Undo. Yes, yes. And I can think of several cases that I've been involved in, or worked on in some capacity, where it was an hour or two hours or longer into this extended interview, before the suspect even knew that the person they had shot had died. That's not a fact that's offered very often, certainly not very early, because they know how that changes the entire picture. And Maddox was one of those. Maddox didn't know for two or three hours that his attacker was dead. Shawn Vincent: We talked about the Michael Dunn case; the Michael Dunn interrogation tape is fascinating, because Michael Dunn felt like he was justified at first, although he knew he messed up by leaving the scene. But there's this point in the tape where he realizes how much trouble he is in, and he is being nice to these guys, these investigators. He's like, "All of a sudden I don't feel very good." And the homicide officer is like, "Yeah, I bet. Because you messed up dude.” Shawn Vincent: But it's that moment where... and I feel like a lot of self-defenders feel they're justified. They have no doubt to themselves, that they were justified, and see the law enforcement as their friends in this. That the criminal is the other guy that I had to shoot, and now I'm talking to you like we're bros here. Right? We're on the same side, because we're both against that bad guy. And then it sinks in potentially later that, "Wait. I'm the bad guy. Or they might be thinking of me as the bad guy." Because you in fact, committed a homicide. But let's look at it in terms of the Drejka case. Drejka gave pretty extensive video tape statements to law enforcement. Don West: That's right. And they became featured in the trial, of course. So during that interview, he recreated, reconstructed the events, even with a demonstration. He answered all of the questions. And if you look at that recording, it appears to me that he was genuinely trying to answer the questions, honestly, from his perspective, that he used some language that the prosecution made a lot to do with... that he said was kind of cop talk. Shawn Vincent: Cop talk like? Don West: I don't know if that was or not, whether he was trying to act like he was a police officer, but that certainly is a good example of how... or act like a police officer, or just being sure that he was clear in what he was saying. But nonetheless, the prosecution made a heyday out of that, looking for any tiny little thing that could be exploited and turned against him. And there were lots and lots of those examples. Shawn Vincent: When you say cop talk, you mean like this, he quotes this 21 foot rule? Don West: The 21 foot rule probably falls into that category. What I was referring to specifically, was he might answer a question that would call for a yes or no answer. And he would say, "Negative." As opposed to, "No." Shawn Vincent: I got you. Don West: That kind of talk. But since you mentioned the 21 foot rule, that of course, was also featured in the trial. His comment referenced the 21 foot rule, and the prosecution had a heyday with that, and featured an expert witness, whose primary purpose it seems to me, was to make Drejka look bad by talking about how Drejka was wrong, the way he talked about the so called 21 foot rule. Shawn Vincent: And the 21 foot rule is essentially, is mostly for law enforcement, right? It's how far away someone is, that they can still get to you, and the time it would take you to unholster your weapon, drop the safety, and aim and fire. Right? Don West: It's interesting, I imagine anybody who has taken any kind of self-defense class, or probably even a concealed carry class is going to hear about the 21 foot rule. And it's unlikely that they will understand clearly what the research actually was when it was done, how it was done, what you can draw from it and over time. And of course, through the mouths of different instructors in different circumstances, it becomes all sorts of things. Don West: One of the purposes of calling the expert at the trial against Drejka, was I think, to show that Drejka misunderstood what the significance of that is. And I think it's arguable, I think it's pretty clear, that the expert got it wrong, or at least the expert focused on some aspect of that, that wasn't completely accurate. It wasn't completely forthcoming. Don West: Let me just take a second, and I'm certainly no expert on this. I've gathered some information on, and I know generally, what you've said, Shawn, is correct. And that is, the notion is that if someone is attacking you, that by the time it would take someone to draw a weapon -- so this is someone that has some skills, and some training to draw a weapon, prepare it to fire, put it on target and fire it. The actual drill was two times. That person can easily cover about 21 feet. Don West: So that means basically, if somebody has an edged weapon, or a blunt instrument, a baseball bat of some sort, and they're 21 feet or closer in front of you, and they intend to seriously injure or kill you, they can cover that distance in about a second and a half. Shawn Vincent: So faster than you can get your gun out, the idea of, they're inside that circle. Don West: Yeah. Shawn Vincent: Your decision making is over at that point. Don West: So the value of knowing that is, generally speaking, someone can be a lot further away than you would think, and still get on top of you and kill you, before you have an opportunity to defend yourself. Shawn Vincent: Sure. Don West: So in general, that's the notion behind it. Shawn Vincent: And Drejka brings this up, because he's on the ground on his back and this guy is just a feet away from him. Don West: Yes, he's clearly less than 21 feet. And I think what Drejka was trying to illustrate is that, he was well within that zone of danger, that meant that, if McGlockton intended to come over and kick him in the ribs, kick him in the head, stamp him to death, continue the violence that he had initiated by shoving him to the ground, he was close enough that he could have done that before Drejka could defend himself. That's the sense of it. Shawn Vincent: Yeah. To get back to your cop talk conversation, you and I have both been involved in cases where the prosecutors have tried to use the defendant's knowledge of self-defense against them. Almost as in, you know these rules and you're trying to work around them to justify a homicide. Do you agree with that? Am I explaining that properly? Don West: Yeah. Let me back up just a little bit and say that, when someone is involved in a self-defense shooting, the jury is asked to look at that incident through the eyes of the shooter, of the defender. And that includes, knowing what the defender knew. And that necessarily incorporates what their training may have been as well, good or bad. It incorporates what they might have known about the attacker. Did they have information beforehand? Was this guy was violent and aggressive? Did they have a beef? Don West: All that kind of stuff is allowed to be looked at by the jury, in deciding, was there a fear of great bodily harm or death? And then ultimately, was that fear reasonable under all things known to the defender? So that's where this notion of there's the subjective view of the evidence, and that's through the defenders eyes, as the jury looks at what the defender saw, and knew, and then there's this objective view, and that's kind of this reasonable person test. The jury looks at, was it reasonable for him, knowing all that he knew and seeing it as he saw it to act the way that he did? Don West: And I think in large part, that's the jury saying, what would I have done if I had been in that situation? So the training is legitimate. The problem is, sometimes it gets exploited. And I think, by the prosecutor and I think that's what happened here. Drejka was basically accused by the expert of the state, the prosecutor, of not knowing what he was talking about, when he mentioned the 21 foot rule. Don West: The prosecutor's expert made a big deal, that this research that was done was based upon an edged weapon only, and that McGlockton didn't have an edged weapon. So nothing that Drejka said made sense. I think that's an overly restrictive view, because an edged weapon is a deadly weapon, but so would a baseball bat be at that point. And that doesn't change anything. Shawn Vincent: Yeah. Don West: Do you care, particularly if you're stabbed? Or hit in the head with a baseball bat? I think not. Both of them are going to do you harm. So I think that was frankly disingenuous. The background is, it's called the Tueller drill. The research was done by Dennis Tueller. I think it goes back to the '80s, trying to understand better what this dynamic was. And the research was duplicated over the years, that it became pretty much the standard. That's why it's called the 21 foot rule. Don West: That is, that it takes... that a person can cover the 21 feet in about a second and a half, which is about the time that it takes to draw and fire a weapon by a trained person. So the mindset is that, if the person is 21 feet or closer, that you're in big trouble at that point, because once they get their hands on you, if they have a knife then you're done. Shawn Vincent: I guess the lesson here is, if you rely on that rule and the police investigators are talking to you after a self-defense shooting that, that's something you want to save to talk about with your lawyer, as your lawyer can decide that, that's now one of your defenses, justifying the shooting. And I think anything that- Don West: I think that's right. I think Drejka was inarticulately trying to explain his thinking, trying to reconstruct the events in his mind. And he had heard that from a class or read about it and thought it might help him to throw it in. Just like he thought it might help him to talk to a police officer in cop talk, because that's who he was talking to. It wasn't like he was at a cocktail place. Shawn Vincent: Right. Don West: And those two things backfired in the sense that the prosecutor made hay, and unfortunately, I don't think that the defense lawyers were particularly effective at blunting that or explaining it further. So in a sense, the prosecutors went there and got away with it. And the jury had sort of a bad taste, I think about Drejka, and this whole, this picture of who he was. Don West: Now, we know that the only picture that the jury got of Drejka came from the witnesses that talked about the prior incident, when he had threatened a guy over a handicapped parking spot, the prior bad act stuff, the witnesses at the scene who described his manner after the fact as almost being matter of fact, which didn't help very much, and what he said on the statement. He didn't testify. Shawn Vincent: Yeah, they didn't put Drejka on the stand to explain to the jurors, what his mindset was. They ended up relying on this recorded testimony. Don West: And we could talk for an hour about what's involved in making that decision, as a criminal defense lawyer, if somebody testifies, why they don't. Let me say, first of all, that a defendant has the absolute right to testify if they choose. It is their choice and their choice alone. Of course, they would like the guidance of counsel to help them make that choice. But that's not a decision the lawyer can make for them, unlike other legal decisions. Shawn Vincent: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Don West: So the fact that Mr. Drejka did not testify was his decision with the counsel, and advice, obviously. Shawn Vincent: Was an informed decision. Yeah. Don West: Yes. In fact, I think in most cases, the judge will actually address the defendant outside the presence of the jury and ask him if he intends to testify, or if he had chosen not to at that point. Whether he understood he had the right to, whether it was his decision, whether he needed more time to talk about it for trying to protect the record, so that, if there's an appeal down the road that, the defendant doesn't come say, "Well, I didn't know I had the right to testify." Or, "My lawyer told me I wasn't allowed to." Those kinds of things, as a fundamental right. Don West: And Drejka elected not to testify. Now, keep in mind that, by the time he would have made that choice, the prosecutor had already decided to offer the recorded interview into evidence. They did that during their case, during the prosecution case, and that was their choice. They didn't have to do that. Shawn Vincent: Sure. In fact, in the Dunn case, they waited until the rebuttal argument to play the recording, after they Dunn testified. Don West: Because Mr. Drejka voluntarily gave that statement, and it was otherwise admissible, it gave the prosecution the choice to play it in their case or not. It was not a choice that the defense had. Shawn Vincent: Yeah, that's an interesting point. You need to emphasize, because you can't just offer pre recorded stuff about the defendant to testify, or I'd say evidence if you're the defendant. Don West: That's right. Mr. Drejka, in order to get his story in front of the jury, if the prosecution hadn't offered that recorded statement he gave to the police, Mr. Drejka would have had to take the stand. Now, that statement could have been used by the prosecution as cross examination, or as impeachment. All or parts of it may possibly have been introduced, but not by Mr. Drejka. He doesn't get the opportunity to offer a prior exculpatory statement, and evidence in lieu of his testimony. Don West: So a lot of the legal commentators wrestled, when they were looking at this case. Should the prosecution offer it? Or effectively, should they force Mr. Drejka to take the stand? And that was a strategy decision, based upon a number of things. Shawn Vincent: Sure. Don West: They would have had to evaluate their case, and decide whether they thought it helped them or hurt them. Shawn Vincent: And then when you look at the contents of that, there's one segment of it where he's recalling to the officer what happened. His perception was that, Markis McGlockton, after Drejka pulled out the gun, either stayed still or stepped towards him, in direct contrast with what the recording showed. So all of a sudden, you have the defendant making statements that, whether maliciously intended, are untrue, based on the evidence. Don West: They are inaccurate. Yeah. So it's clear that, his perception of that was wrong. It's a question I suppose, and the prosecutor gets to play with that too. Was he just wrong? And that makes it unreasonable. Or, was he lying about it? Which makes it evidence of guilt. So I assume they figured they could box him in that, since it was evident from the tape that McGlockton was backing up. I think that's a reasonable construction, when Dr. Drejka said he was actually coming forward to him, that puts the prosecutor having his cake, and eating it too. Because they get to make the reasonableness argument at the end, which they did over and over and over again. Don West: I thought it was interesting, too, the way that Drejka explained the situation, because when he was challenged a little bit by the interrogator, by the investigating detective about McGlockton coming toward him. He actually said to Drejka, "What if there was information that he wasn't coming towards you, that he might actually even be backing up?" And Drejka said, "Then I couldn't shoot him. I wouldn't shoot him. In fact, I wouldn't shoot him or I couldn't shoot him, even if he was just standing still, much less coming toward me." Don West: So in some respects, Drejka knew where the boundary was, that had he recognized that McGlockton had stopped or was retreating, he knew that he would not legally be allowed to use lethal force, because the attack was not imminent at that point. Shawn Vincent: So interesting, and he seemed to me credible, when he said that. I believed him. Don West: Yes, I didn't get the usual markers that you look for somebody that's lying about it, and trying to get away with something. No, I believe that's at least the way he was explaining it, what he thought and that was sincere. And of course, another interesting dynamic of self-defense is that the threat has to be perceived as real and actual. But it doesn't, in fact, have to be real. That you can be mistaken about certain things, as long as your perception of the threat is reasonable and that your response is reasonable. Don West: I think where the prosecutor kind of wove the way through this was that, they kept pounding on the idea that McGlockton had stopped, and he had actually taken a step back. So that not only was there not an actual threat at that moment, but Drejka's perception, even if you gave him the benefit of the doubt, was so wrong, that it was unreasonable for him to think there was a threat. Shawn Vincent: That's right. So if you're going to be wrong about a detail, if you're going to misperceive, the jury has to believe that you misperceived it. Don West: And that it was reasonable. Shawn Vincent: Yeah. Don West: I really think that's where they put themselves in the case, where they look at it through your eyes as the defender, but then they also step back and say, "What would I have done in that situation?" This is an interesting case because there were some jurors... well, it was interesting because you had the video, and rarely do you have the video that shows the crucial moments leading up to and after shooting, but then there was media coverage. So you could see it gavel to gavel, and see how the lawyers presented this case, their strengths and their weaknesses. Don West: I like to armchair quarterback and second guess. So I'm sitting there saying, "Wow, that was pretty good. I'm not sure I could have done it that way." Or, "Wow, that was terrible. I wish that I was there to ask those questions." Or where I thought evidence was available that wasn't sufficiently developed, especially knowing that he wasn't going to testify. Shawn Vincent: We'll be right back with more of my conversation with Don west, to include a look inside the jurors’ minds. And the conversation about whether concealed carriers are compatible with vigilante justice. Don West: We write a lot about... we talk a lot about self-defense. I write for CCW Safe, a lot about self-defense, and sometimes I get people who are angry at me, or challenge my point of view on some aspect of self-defense and what's justifiable, what's not justifiable. My answer always is, "I'm not telling you what I think. I'm telling you what my experience has been with what juries think." And in the end, if you're a self-defender, if you're a self-defense shooter, it doesn't necessarily matter what you think about whether or not you're justified. It's going to be in the hands of the six to 12 people, who come from all walks of life, and what they think. Shawn Vincent: And in the Drejka case, a number of the jurors spoke to reporters afterwards. And that's going to give us a little bit of insight into what they were thinking. And obviously, we haven't mentioned this yet, but Drejka was convicted of manslaughter after a six and a half hour jury deliberation. And in my experience, six and a half hours is not bad. That means that they gave it some real thought. Don West: I think that's a good comment. I think that, while there were a handful of witnesses that testified, and certainly a handful of physical exhibits that were on their way in it, this was not a particularly complicated case to unravel. It wasn't a document case, where there are thousands of documents to sort through or tons and tons of expert testimony that really mattered much in the scheme of things. So for this jury to deliberate, to just sort through the information and then the no doubt, sometimes agonizing process of trying to figure out what's right, what's lawful, what's fair. Six hours is certainly a tribute to the system working, I think. Shawn Vincent: Yeah. And so an article from the Tampa Bay Times that covered the trial extensively, when they spoke to some jurors, said that, it was about 45 minutes to an hour in, that they took their first poll. And they said that the jurors were split between guilty and not guilty at that point. Don West: I don't think that's uncommon and a difficult or a close case, and certainly there's nothing wrong with it. It's encouraged that one of the things the foreperson, once chosen, would do, and once they get settled down and have everything with them, and they're ready to start, there's no reason not to take a sort of a preliminary look at how people feel. And then they can start the hard work of people explaining it, and people having enough of an open mind that they're willing to re-look at things or reconsider, and -- only to comment that, sometimes the hardest thing to figure out is how to apply the law to the facts. Don West: Once you've got the facts sorted out, the jury is supposed to do that, figure out which witness is believable, what evidence is reliable, and sort of get a handle on what happened. After they do that, they still have to then apply that to the law and figure out whether a crime was committed. And if so, what crime? In a self-defense case, it's not an issue of who committed the crime, but rather was a crime at all committed? And then they've got to dive into the deep end of the law, and as hard as the Supreme Court who drafted the instructions and the trial judge who conformed them to the trial itself, that's no easy task. Those instructions are often very difficult to truly understand, and to apply to a challenging situation. Shawn Vincent: Sure, for the case in point, there is one jury question that came out to the judge and to the lawyers. And that was the jury asking for clarification on what reasonable doubt meant. And reasonable doubt, that's the fundamental thing a juror needs to know when they're deciding guilty or innocent, or guilty or not guilty, right? Don West: Yeah, that's kind of the bottom line, isn't it? Shawn Vincent: Yeah. Shawn Vincent: It's always funny. You and I talked about, how we felt about this case and we put ourselves in the jurors shoes. And we know an awful lot about the law of self-defense. And you mentioned something that's in the instruction for reasonable doubt. And that's this idea of a vacillating conviction. You know what I'm talking about? Don West: Yeah, let's back up a little bit. Now, this was a criminal trial in Florida, which means that, whatever the rules are in Florida are the rules that apply to this case, as opposed to a federal case that could take place in any federal court around the country, where the rules are basically the same. So what I'm saying is, every state in their state criminal courts would have their own set of jury instructions, that have been crafted over the years by their courts. Shawn Vincent: Yeah. Don West: So they are different from state to state. The concept is the same, the reasonable doubt standard is the same, but the language that's used to try to explain it changes. Some is better than others, frankly. The courts, the trial judges, are really, really hesitant to change the language of those core instructions. They basically just read it the way it is, and don't deviate from it. And if the jury doesn't quite get it, it's really hard for the judges to do much about that, other than just read it again. Shawn Vincent: Yeah, that's what happened here. They said, "Listen, it's written down." He has got to go figure it out. Don West: So from the reasonable doubt standpoint, I don't have it in front of me just sort of by memory. Having heard it a few times, is that a reasonable doubt is explained in the jury instructions more what it isn't than what it actually is, because how do you actually define it? And there's no easy, clear way of doing it. So one of the instructions that's given is that, it's not a forced doubt or a speculative doubt. It's not a possible doubt. The prosecutors love to latch on to “it's not a possible doubt,” meaning it's possible that you could wake up tomorrow and there could be six feet of snow in Florida. Don West: Well, yeah, we understand that. But the instructions go on to say, even if you have no reason -- let's say, if you have an abiding conviction of guilt, and that's kind of old language, I think. Who uses abiding these days? Shawn Vincent: The Dude. Don West: But nonetheless- Shawn Vincent: The Dude abides. The Big Lebowski. But yeah, I get your point. Don West: That's Jeff Bridge's moment in the sun, isn't it? Of course, he has a few. Shawn Vincent: Sure, but that's our favorite by far. Yeah. An abiding conviction. Don West: An abiding conviction of guilt is as close to the instructions as you get them saying, "If you believe there is no reasonable doubt." So meaning, if you have an abiding conviction of guilt, but one that waivers or vacillates. Shawn Vincent: Yeah. Don West: Again, pretty old language, the waiver not so much but vacillates. So if you have an abiding conviction of guilt, but it wavers or vacillates, then you don't have an abiding conviction. Shawn Vincent: Sure. And it takes- Don West: That's another way of saying that, if that's a reasonable doubt, then we know the standard is, if there is a reasonable doubt... some places say, "A doubt to which you can assign a reason," which is kind of the tail wagging the dog. Shawn Vincent: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Don West: Then the jury has this sort of mash, kind of a mash up of stuff they take in there and try to figure out what that means, and how to apply it to the case. Shawn Vincent: Well, here's how the jury approached that problem. They had that first poll at 45 minutes to an hour in. That meant, for the next five and a half hours, they were hashing it out. One juror said that -- this 11 seconds of surveillance video, in this case, they said they re-watched that 11 seconds hundreds and hundreds of times. It was the key piece of evidence obviously. Don West: Sure, it was. Whatever that was, for better or for worse, that's what drove the decision, don't you guess? Shawn Vincent: I do. We talked earlier about the motions in limine, and how the prosecution won the right to show that video in slow motion. But one of the jurors actually says that, one of the witnesses talked about how that's not a accurate representation of what happened. So the video they watched over and over again was the full speed video. So I'd give the jurors a lot of credit for that. Don West: You should. That they just didn't sign on to one side or the other from the beginning and run it through. Certainly, the prosecution showed it to them, because they were allowed to, in slow motion, but that the jury was so conscientious that they realized, maybe that wasn't the fair thing to do. Maybe that was not the due process that Michael Drejka deserved. They didn't succumb to that in the jury deliberation room. That's powerful stuff to me that the system works. Shawn Vincent: But here's a quote here: “It really came down to the fact that once the gun was drawn, he the victim retreated. The defendant had enough time to make the decision, that once he saw the victim retreating, that he did not have to pull the trigger.” Is there any statement that you can think of, that defines this case much better than that? Don West: No, that's right on the money. That's the moment of truth, so to speak. Shawn Vincent: Gosh, that kind of takes your breath away, I think, if you're a concealed carrier. And you come to terms with life or death and freedom and prison. Right? That it comes down to this pause. Right? The sheriff of Pinellas County said, "That pause gives me pause." That's what kept him from charging, or making the arrest originally. But then, you get this juror that watches that hundreds of times. I don't know how many times you watched it. I've watched it at least 40 times in my analysis of this. There is that moment. There's that moment of reflection. Maybe, if he hadn't paused, he has a different case. Don West: How incredible is that? If he had actually fired sooner, nothing else changing, if he had fired sooner, the jury may have felt that he didn't appreciate that McGlockton was retreating at that point. Now, of course, they may very well have said, that he didn't have to fire so fast. He had the situation under control by virtue of displaying the firearm. And then you start getting into the nuances of this so called 21 foot rule, right? Or, how quickly could McGlockton react to that? Shawn Vincent: Yeah. Here's another juror -- a quote from them that I think is interesting, "I think he had the opportunity not to kill him." And that's an interesting thing to think about. Right. And that speaks kind of like it's a duty to retreat, or an ability to retreat. The juror says there's an option not to use deadly force here. What they were saying is that they didn't think that the threat to Drejka was imminent, or reached the level of force that would justify lethal force, right? Don West: That's a beautiful, beautiful assessment of the case by the juror. It touches on all of these elements of self-defense in a way that is particularly human, if you think about it. It's in our genes to preserve human life. You preserve your own, but you preserve everyone else's too, as long as you can. That he didn't have to do it. And if you heard the prosecutor say, unreasonable, or it wasn't reasonable, one time, it was said 50 times. And that's this notion that he didn't have to do it. Because he did, it was unreasonable. Shawn Vincent: Sure. And another part of that is, we're looking at it from the law, but we're also putting ourselves in the shoes of the defender, right? Don West: I feel bad for McGlockton. I mean, what a tragedy. A guy, not quite 30 years old, I think, who was shot and killed and no longer on this earth. He has young children. He was in a long term relationship with Brittany Jacobs. He did some stupid things. He exercised really bad judgment. He was high. But in his mind, he was coming to her rescue. He did it illegally and wrong. Shawn Vincent: But of course battery is never punished with executions, right? We don't execute people for battery charges. Don West: Exactly. I also feel bad for Drejka, of course. Because he made equally bad decisions. He stuck his nose in something that wasn't really his business, at least not in a confrontational way. He could have handled it very differently and still made his point. Shawn, I was struck by the testimony that Brittany Jacobs told Drejka, when he said, "You don't have a parking permit. What are you doing in this parking spot for handicapped?" There were no other people using that spot. There was another one available, I think. And her response was, "My guy or my husband is in the store. As soon as he comes out, we will move. There are a couple of young kids." Don West: So she wasn't agreeing, but she wasn't being particularly defiant either. She just was saying, "Look, it's just not a big deal, because I'm going to move as soon as he comes out." It wasn't like she parked there and left. And there wasn't any immediate use for it. And Drejka, that wasn't good enough for him. He didn't say, "Whatever," and walk away. He continued to escalate it. And of course, that's the problem. Don West: You get two confrontational, aggressive guys in something, one that's not hesitant at all to be physical and the other who's armed. And by the Williams rule, I guess the prior bad acts stuff we were talking about, arguably, is looking for a reason, itching for something. Man, you've got the makings of a bad outcome, and that's what we had here. Shawn Vincent: Yeah. We have a quote I want to talk about from another juror. That the law says... we have this one who said that, she didn't think that it was necessary. He had the opportunity not to shoot, right? And that's not necessarily the legal stuff standard. But, we ask a jury to put themselves in the shoes of the defender, right? Don West: Yes. Shawn Vincent: Even if we know that he misperceived it. You've talked about before, legally, you're allowed to misperceive it, as long as you are honest about that, and you are still reasonable under that perception to act, right? Don West: Well, I guess, rather than perception, you should use the threat. The perception of the threat. The threat itself does not have to be real. So in other words, you're allowed to make certain mistakes. Part of that, if you fast forward to the Amber Guyger trial in Dallas, where she's went- Shawn Vincent: She is the one who went to the wrong house and shot the occupant, thinking he was a burglar? Don West: That's right. She made a huge mistake. Her perception of the threat was wrong. But that does not prevent her from melting an effective self-defense claim. There were other problems in that case, but- Shawn Vincent: Which I can't wait to talk to you about, by the way, on another day. Don West: Yeah, that's going to be interesting stuff. The threat doesn't have to be real. The perception of the threat has to be reasonable. So in other words, other people are going to have to say, "Yeah, I would have seen it like that too." Shawn Vincent: And here's what this juror said. He said, "I had a hard time seeing what he saw." So here's a juror who watched this 11 second video hundreds of times. And even though Drejka gave statements to the police that were recorded and shown to the jury, saying that from his point of view, he was moving forward, that this juror said, "I just didn't see it. I had a hard time seeing what he saw." It's tough to overcome. Don West: It is. Yes. And I think that juror was being honest with- Shawn Vincent: When he said something like, "I had a hard time seeing what he saw," meant that he tried. Right? Don West: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Shawn Vincent: He tried to see it the way he did, and just couldn't, when it came down to it, when he had to make the decision. Don West: In some ways that gives Drejka the benefit of the doubt. That's kind of what this whole notion is, with the prosecution burden having to disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt. When the juror says, "I tried to see it the way Drejka did, but I couldn't," that tells me that he was genuine and sincere in his role as a juror. Shawn Vincent: Yeah. So going back… the lessons for the concealed carrier, there's a ton of them in this case, but the ultimate lesson that we always come down to is, I think this one juror said it best, "If you have the opportunity not to use lethal force, you got to take it." Legally, you should take it. Because that's going to... if the jury thinks you had an opportunity to avoid it, whether the law says it or not, they may hold that against you. Don West: Yes, that's a fundamental and a valuable lesson to learn. That's a direct window into how jurors look at these hard cases. And that's a valuable lesson. There are of course, lots of other lessons too. And the obvious lesson is, if you're the guy with the gun, you may just want to mind your own business. Shawn Vincent: Well, isn't that a huge lesson in this? Because, they made hay in the... like, although that spot was painted handicapped, it wasn't an official city designated handicapped spot, that she wouldn't have gotten a ticket for parking in that spot. We talked over and over again that, if you are armed, if you choose to carry a concealed, then you sort of have an obligation to avoid unnecessary confrontations. Don West: One of the arguments that the prosecutor made and I thought he made it effectively is that, Drejka was the guy with the final solution. So he didn't have to care about putting his nose in other people's business, or how far he took this thing, because he knew he was equipped with the final solution. That scares the hell out of most jurors, don't you think? Shawn Vincent: I think so. We talked a little bit about doing his recorded statements with cops. He had this quote unquote “cop talk.” And we encountered this in Zimmerman. I've seen it before. It gets brought up in some self-defense cases, where they project a law enforcement mentality on the defendant. Right? If you're defending your home, that's one thing, but if you're out, seeming to be enforcing parking permit law, or somehow patrolling the neighborhood, if that was the suggestion. Shawn Vincent: Cops are trained to be armed, and to approach people who are breaking the law, and citizens are not. So I think, if you're armed and a private citizen and you put yourself in a position where you're encountering a would be criminal or some code violator, then you're not trained like a cop necessarily. And you don't have the legal standing. You're just putting yourself in a potentially no-win scenario. Don West: There's certain hot button descriptions that, words that are just thrown out there because people know the kind of reaction that they cause. And in a firearm incident of some sort, if you throw the word “vigilante” out there, you've just pushed all those hot buttons that makes everybody- Shawn Vincent: Bristle. Don West: Yes, yes. And that was the word that was used for Zimmerman of course, and that's the word that comes to mind with Drejka. It's easy to paint him as the parking lot vigilante. Shawn Vincent: Yeah. Don West: That's a lot of ground you have to make up, if you're trying to defend that guy, if that name gets associated with him and sticks. And just like any other scenario where you're having to overcome a negative perception right from the beginning, associated with somebody who arms themselves, goes out and sticks their nose into other people's business. Don West: By the way, let me say, Drejka did nothing illegal, except when the jury determined that he committed the crime of manslaughter. Up to that point, he didn't commit any crimes. He just exercised questionable judgment. And it's not against the law to go up to somebody and express your displeasure at the fact that they are parking where they're not supposed to be. You can raise your voice and call them names as long as you're not threatening in some way. Don West: But that's all protected by the First Amendment. The first crime in this scenario was committed by Markis McGlockton, when he shoved Drejka to the ground. But that would not have happened, and no way justifying what Markis McGlockton did. But that would not have happened had Drejka just let it go and backed away, anyway. Shawn Vincent: But that's what we talked about, when you are armed and you enter a conflict, you can't control what the other person is going to do. We see these dominoes fall to so many scenarios, where the shooting becomes almost inevitable. Don West: This is an expression that one of the guys at CCW Safe used just offhand. I don't know where it came from. We were just talking about some self-defense scenario. I don't remember if it was even one of the ones in the news, but something that he knew about, and we talked about. He just kind of shook his head and said, "When assholes collide." Shawn Vincent: Right. Don West: It's a little descriptive or overly descriptive, but at the same time, man, does it say it all. Shawn Vincent: Yeah. And you and I have talked about before that, when you carry a concealed, then you give up your right to be an asshole. If you want to be an asshole, don’t bring your gun, right? Don West: Good enough. Shawn Vincent: I think that's the final word, Don. Don West: One of my favorites, one of my favorites. Shawn Vincent: All right. Thanks again for taking the time to talk. Don West: Enjoyed it, Shawn. This has been a fascinating discussion. It's a fascinating case. It's as you point out, one that you can come at from many different perspectives and learn so much about it. I greatly enjoy talking with you about these cases. It makes me think about stuff I haven't thought about in a long time, or thought about in a particular way. And I think whether you're visualizing yourself in a restaurant and wondering who could be coming through the door, and how you might react if somebody approaches you in a parking lot, trying to figure out what their intentions are. Don West: Anytime you see something in your mind and discuss it from beginning to end, you're going to come out at the other side, better prepared to deal with it if it actually happens. Shawn Vincent: I agree, Don. So thanks again for going through that exercise with me. Don West: Thank you Shawn. Look forward to the next time. Bye, bye! Shawn Vincent: Bye.

That’s right it happened. So no episode this week or next week. Cosplay wedding/honeymoon stories to come.

Kids are back in school and fall is just around the corner. You know what that means? Cold and flu season are upon us. Learn the top lifestyle tips/tricks for boosting your immune system BEFORE becoming a victim this year. 011 - Pump Up Your Immune System Links: Link to Immune/Gut Health Section: https://pure-shock.com/immune-gut Link to Vitamin D: https://pure-shock.com/product/5000d3-k2 Link to Daily Probiotic: https://pure-shock.com/product/probiotic-boost Hey gang, it's Dr. Kelly Shockley in today's episode. We are going to focus on just how you pump up your immune system. Hi, it's Dr. Kelly Shockley with https://areyoureallyhealthy.com.  Where we exposed the real truths and the realm of health and Empower you with insight and knowledge so you can take back control of your house, and when the highest quality of life for the rest of your life now, if you're new here, make sure you click that subscribe button and all of the links referenced in this will be found in the description box. Alright, let's get started. We are getting ready to go into that time of year. The kids are back in school. It falls going to be here in a few weeks and before you know it we're going to be in cold and flu season. So what are some of the easiest ways that you can prevent colds and illnesses and flu from actually impacting you and your family. The number one thing, as hard as it may be is to get rid of sugar. Now. I know that that can be a daunting task because sugar seems to have this weird. Hold on everybody. Right? Like you're almost addicted to it. Have you ever felt that way? Well, there's a good reason for that sugar is eight times more addictive than cocaine your body treats it like it's a drug which when you try to avoid it is why it's so hard to come back on it because you have to have it you just absolutely need it and those of. Who have successfully come off of sugar even if it was for a point in time know that? Because of how your body treats it like a drug, you can experience sometimes withdrawal symptoms. Those withdrawal symptoms can include headache and just general body aches and pains, you know, kind of those flu-like symptoms. It can also be imbalances with mood regulation. So people get a little irritable, little edgy because they can't have their sugar but if you stick with that for a couple of days you're going to be passed. The worst of it you will be out of the woods and you will be on your way within a couple of weeks all of those symptoms should have fully subsided you're craving should no longer be there, and as long as you avoid putting sweet stuff in your mouth, you will be doing a much better job. Now sugar, part of why this affects our immune system is it causes inflammation? And it actually is the food source for the bad guys bacteria viruses yeast fungus mold cancer, they all thrive on sugar. So a really easy way in theory right of how do we actually avoid getting sick is cut off the bad guys food supply. Excess sugar and processed foods, also disrupt the natural Flora in the gut and what I mean by that? They kill the good guys the good guys don't like sugar. So not only are feeding the badger killing the good which is allowing the bad to actually spread making you more susceptible to infection. Your gut is where 80% of your immune system lives. It is all of those bacteria and other Critters that make up Believe It or Not 90% of our genetic makeup. It's them that is our main layer of protection. Or not depending on what we're doing to it. If we have a really healthy what's known as microbiome or that gut Flora the critters in your gut as I like to call it if they're healthy then that's going to help make us more resistant to any kind of infection because they're there to fight the fight. So avoiding sugar is huge for helping the good guys stay strong and exist and cutting off that fuel supply to the bad guys and with sugar I am also talking fruits and fruit juices, there are loaded with sugar and it is challenging on the gut. And for those those guys that live that so some of your healthier like go to on-the-go snacks protein good fat type sources would maybe be like celery with almond butter cashew butter, maybe trail mix with nuts and seeds not the M&M's if you have to have something in there make it be dark chocolate. Okay, or none really doesn't need to be there vegetables with hummus is another great protein and good fat packed good for you diet kind of snack idea that's not going to harm the gut and it's not going to kill your defense. Also in a pinch using a high-quality vegan and that being because I'm not a fan of dairy okay for a number of reasons. A lot of people can't tolerate Dairy but I say go dairy free option of a protein shake would be another great option for a snack. Moves into tip number 2 we need enough protein. Okay protein is necessary for growth repair and proper immune function. My guideline is I want people for a number of reasons consuming a diet that's higher in good fats moderate amounts of Quality Clean proteins and low in carbohydrates. They're really not our friend. We do not need the amount that we've been consuming and what we've been taught research going back to when our food pyramid was first changed back in the mid-70s supports that the best overall results In body composition your blood pressure hemoglobin A1c, which is a better way to measure diabetes risk, your cholesterol levels, your triglyceride levels your inflammatory markers are the diets that are high in good fat moderate in protein and low in carbohydrates. This research has been around for nearly 50 years or more showing this time and time again, so as such if you eat that way everything about. Her health is going to be better and one of the critical pieces of that as we get ready to go into cold flu season is an immune system that is able to fight the fight and keep you healthy and out of the doctor's office and you know, no sick days unless you choose to take a personal day, but then you can actually enjoy instead of being sick, right? So it's suggested that one in every four bytes that you're consuming should be a good protein source like your seeds your knots your sprouts good clean protein means like your chicken grass-fed butter clean wild caught fish eggs are an excellent source of protein as well. Tip number three eat at least five to six servings of vegetables per day. That means like your broccoli or cauliflower lettuce kale brussel sprouts cucumber zucchini yellow squash peppers green beans. Eggplant asparagus onion you name it corn ethos in abundant. See they have so many vitamins and nutrients necessary for just Optimal Health to begin with that's really what we should be consuming a lot of. We want to eat these every like. Well here at think of it this way, there's priority and how we want to do our produce the produce vegetables that grow above the ground eat all day long every single day the ones that grow beneath the ground stick to maybe only a few times per week. And the reason being is because they are great at storing carbohydrates. So they have a higher carbohydrate content to them. So for trying to stay lower in the carbohydrate Department, we don't want to consume things like carrots, sweet potatoes, parsnips rutabagas and that more. A couple of times a week but eat liberal amounts of vegetables so many phytonutrients necessary for not just ideal immune function, but overall health and well-being tip number four eliminate Dairy. Okay, eating dairy products including cheese, butter and yogurt. Whey protein can actually create a lot of congestion. It's a promoter of mucus within our body. So there's a lot of research that actually correlates Dairy with otitis media or middle ear infection. So if you have a kid who has chronic ear infections and you're doing dairy in their diet cut it out now and you should most definitely see an improvement in that something else about Dairy. It's not. Well, there's a few different theories. Right? We're the only species that consumes another species milk beyond the part point of when we should be consuming milk. So there's that but also we. Adulterate the crud out of our cows we injected with hormones and antibiotics. We feed them grains, which that's not what they were meant to eat. They're meant to eat grass. These grains are a lot of the time genetically modified which also means they probably have a higher amount of pesticides being dumped all over them as well in the cows are consuming. And all of those things that they're being exposed to in addition to what's in the dirt within the water within the air gets absorbed into their tissues and the products that they produce and when we consume those products whether it's meat or dairy based product. We are ingesting all of those toxicities as well and that wreaks havoc on our system and the first system that goes down the tubes is generally the gut and when the gun goes down the tubes there goes our immune system since eighty percent of our immune system is located within the gut. We are also seeing in research and and focus and medicine now that yes, we know inflammation is the root cause of disease and Illness, but where does that begin and every area every discipline of Medicine? Sin is looking at the gut as being part of the primary area of where the problem began. So whether it's osteoarthritis or it's you know, Dimension Alzheimer's or it's cardiovascular or it's a general gut health itself issue, you know where kidney base liver base all focus is looking back at the gut as being part of the problem. So we want to keep offending substances out of the system. There isn't a finding substance. So stay away from it. Number five. We want to drink more water 1 quart of water per 50 pounds of body weight is one way to look at it. I also like to say one out. No, half your body weight in ounces per day. And that's minimum. If you're working out and you're sweating or you live in a hot humid Community, then you need to do that and then some because how we're predominantly water. It's necessary for every chemical process in our body and if we're dehydrated then that's not going to function very well also. You can drink decaffeinated herbal teas. That's fine little bit of caffeine is not going to kill you. But no more than two cups like to normal size cups mind you of. Coffee per day is what I've kind of seen being acceptable you want to avoid sweetened drinks and juices there they act like food and they produce waste and that also requires more water would remove it not to mention. They're loaded with sugar which we've already talked about. Another key tip for improving and boosting your immune system comes to sleep sleep might be one of the other most important variables outside of food. As far as we are going to be healthy or not? If you're not sleeping and research says seven to eight hours per night. I fudged a little bit on that and. My emphasis is on quality sleep. I don't care if you're in bed for 9 hours. If you're tossing and turning all night long, you're probably not getting the same quality of sleep that somebody who's maybe only in bed for five hours. But is out like a light and reaching those deeper levels of sleep is getting so it's more let's focus on quality sleep first and then we can work on kind of lengthening that to more the six to eight hour range. As a minimum so with sleep our body goes in to repair and. That's when our immune system kicks in, so if we're not getting adequate levels of sleep, we're not going into repair bodies not fighting the fight or I mean systems not doing what it's supposed to do so sleeps incredibly important few ways that you can help to improve your sleep as create a sleep routine. We are creatures of habit routine and we do that with our kiddos. But for whatever reason is we become adults. We don't think that's necessary anymore. So it's necessary and part of the whole point of that routine. If you remember when we were little kids or maybe you have kids and you know what this is, is it it triggers the mind and the body go. Oh, hey sleeps common. So it starts shutting the body down it perhaps it. So add a sleep routine back and try to go to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time every morning. A huge issue that we have nowadays is technology research says you need to be unplugged for two hours. I don't know anybody who could ever be unplugged for 2 hours. So I'm saying start with something that is actually doable. So go for a half hour. So that means no cell phone. No TV, you know, don't be reading on your iPad's and playing games or anything. That's electronic in nature get away from a half an hour before you go to bed. That's going to calm the brain and all of these electrical devices that were on on a regular basis anymore now are like overly stimulating to the brain. And if you're having a hard time falling asleep, that might be why you stimulate your brain way too much. If you're watching a show before you go to bed stay away from action thriller type types of shows because they stimulate the brain the most if you're going to do that then. Try to spend that finish that at least 2 hours before you go to bed. Okay. Also Deming the lights helps our natural production of melatonin, which is a hormone that tells us hey nighttimes coming and you need to go to sleep with all the false light around were not getting the adequate production of melatonin. So start Deming your lights to start signaling to the body that hey night times actually here. Rita relaxing book take a nice bath. So practice your relaxing types of meditation or breathing techniques, whatever helps calm you do that every night and do it nightly as best as you can to help trigger the body to start shutting down since sleep is actually coming soon tip number 7. Don't laugh at me when I say this. Manage stress I didn't say eliminate stress it said manage stress because obviously we're not going to eliminate it. So we need to figure out how to manage the stresses in our life as best as we possibly can and I am talking emotional stress right now scientists can't yet explain why your state of mind and your heart actually create or destroy parts of your immune system, but there is a relationship there. Obviously stress is never going to go away. So we have to find a lifestyle that helps us feel good. So no brainer exercising regularly helps with that and there's actually a biochemical shift that happens your stress hormone that you produce an abundance when your stress cannot be absorbed into or taken into cells for use if you have endorphins in your system, which are your natural pain killing your feel-good hormones, which you release when you're active you also release them when you're laughing so laughs more we need a laugh. A lot more like our kids laugh all the time and adults don't do near enough of it. So go watch comedians that are watching more comedies hang out with your friends or who are hysterical. I have borrowed wit. So I feed off of other people do the best that I can with the little bit of wit that I've borrowed another really beneficial thing for reducing stress is spending time outdoors in nature. There's research now about how the trees affect us in there are places over in Asia that they have. Forests that are designated as therapy areas for people to go and just walk and be in the area of trees because it creates a shift within our biochemistry and helps calm us and relaxes. It's very therapeutic and healing homeopathics and herbs, you know different nutrition using those instead of drugs for sleep aid if you need it and Stress Management if you need it. Meditation if you are good at doing that or yoga practicing being Mindful and. Getting a grip on what's going on in your brain is actually incredibly important. It's tied to improvements and overall brain function and cognition. So try to do that if you can or anything else that you know that distresses you whether it's working in the garden read and nice book doing some cross stitch, you know going for a hike whatever it maybe try to keep that in your daily routine because you really do need it. Number 8 last tip is nutrition. Okay, there are things that we can do from a nutrition standpoint. Now diet-wise already told you good fats good proteins small amounts of carbs staying away from all the process, you know fast food convenient stuff that stuff is going to really destroy the immune system. So load up on Good Foods the way that they occur in nature make sure you're getting enough good fat now nutrition to add above and beyond this I have to. Actually, I have a gamut of them. But two of the main ones that we always taken a recommend with my patients or probiotics and vitamin D vitamin D. Most Americans are deficient in vitamin D3 which is so important for keeping diseases like colds and influenza out of an otherwise healthy body. How much should you take? Well really should have it tested. You know, that that's if you've listened to me, this is kind of my Mantra without testing you're guessing so figure out what you need to do, but as a general rule of thumb, Low, low low ends here. Mm. I use per day for an adult 800 I use for a keto but really that's on the very low end and that assumes that your vitamin D levels are optimal to begin with okay, it acts as a natural antibiotic as well. So we can megadose on it when we are feeling sick for a few days without risk of becoming toxic with vitamin D and actually help to Nuke whatever's in our system out of the equation another really key one. Like I said was probiotic eighty to ninety percent of your immune system, depending on which source you look at research wise is located in your gut and probiotics help to keep the good guys in your gut that help protect us. You'd have to eat because I know everybody's like why. Well based off of what I've seen have to eat an average of about 42 tons of yogurt depending on which brand you were going for per day in order to get enough of a good guys in your system. But by then you've consumed so much sugar because all of these things are fruit-filled and they've got like look at the ingredients though. Sugar is one of the top first ingredients that you're actually going to come across. So by the time you've consumed 42 tubs of yogurt to get the probiotics. You've actually consume so much sugar that you've killed all the good and you fed the bad and you completely just made the problem worse. So not really a big fan of that. I'd rather you just take a probiotic supplement with a good one. Our Baseline probiotic has 30 billion Critters and it in their individually blister. When you expose these guys to oxygen they start to die which probiotics you can find them in the refrigerated section, which does help. But every time you open the bottle of you're exposing and of oxygen in there dying, so the potency of the probiotic when you first get it is definitely not the same as the probiotic when you're finishing the bottle. So look for individually packed blister packs, or we have those, you know at our office as well that we can distribute anywhere. So I think that's what I want to say about probiotic. So you can also consume things that we know help to improve and like feed are good gut bacteria which is where all fermented foods and the kombucha and that come into play. Just be mindful about what you're putting in be looking at ingredients. If it's actually in a container make sure that people are not adding sugar to anything because that is going to make the problem worse and it's going to defeat the whole purpose of even consuming that so know what you're putting in your body. I guess is one of the baselines. So just to recap these eight helpful tips for boosting your immune system. Number one, you can do it. I know you can get rid of sugar. Number to consume an adequate amount of protein number three eat five to six servings of vegetables per day or more eliminate Dairy number four number five drink more water number six quality sleep. Make sure you're getting quality Sleep Number Seven manage your stress is best as you can any effort towards doing that is going to be better than none at all. Okay, and number eight add in the good nutrition the vitamin D in the probiotics is a very minimal. Start of trying to help ensure the body has what it needs in order for your immune system to be strong. If you'd like more information, you need to get in touch with us for whatever reason can always reach out to us. The office number is 303-790-7650. I appreciate you also greatly for being here. If you've enjoyed this you think it's helpful, please share it with your friends and family. Anybody you think could benefit from this and if you wouldn't mind doing so head on over to iTunes give us a review that helps be us helps us be able to get our message out to the world, you know, I am on a mission. I want to help as many people as I can possibly get well and stay well through natural Healthcare and you know improving lifestyle factors things that you're doing every single day, but need to be tweaked because you don't realize what you're doing is actually harmful and not helpful. So, please help me on this Mission. I greatly appreciate it and stay tuned for more. I will be back. This is just getting going guys. Thanks so much again, and here's to being healthy. Awesome guys. Thanks so much for tuning into again today, and I just wanted to let you know if you are curious about any of the products that I mentioned today the probiotics the vitamin D. If you want to see what it is that I actually am recommending to my patients. All you need to do is head on over to Pure-shock.com and look. The section that talks about the immune system and gut again, that's pure-shock.com. This will also be down in the show notes. So feel free to reference there and I'll actually put in links directly to the products that I mentioned today. If you have questions again, feel free to reach out. We're always here. Thanks so much and here's to being Links: Link to Immune/Gut Health Section: https://pure-shock.com/immune-gut Link to Vitamin D: https://pure-shock.com/product/5000d3-k2 Link to Daily Probiotic: https://pure-shock.com/product/probiotic-boost

Transcript of Episode: Welcome back to the podcast. Um, today I have, you know, you have something in your spirit to say, but you're not exactly sure what that is. So I am not an external processor, I'm an internal processor. However, every now and then there are times where I just need to talk things out because I have a lot swarming in my mind and today is one of those days, I don't know where this is going. I just got something I want spirit to share. And so I just decided to put in my headphones into my phone and just start talking. Um, which is a sign, you know, for many of you, um, who are always looking to have the right things in order to start. I do this podcast with a set of headphones and my phone that I already own and I just turn on the voice memo app. I have an iPhone and I put on some headphones and I record and is it perfect? No. Does it get the job done? Yes. It gives me a starting point. And I'm really focused on showing up here consistently. Week after week, helping people, sharing my knowledge, giving whatever, I got to help you finish your dissertation, help you get to that next step. Or if you're just having a moment and you just need a little motivation or help getting to the next minute, I'm showing up and I'm not letting, not having um, $600 mic or mixing equipment or a studio or a producer or the right music or whatever, stop me from showing up, doing my best and helping you as much as possible because, excuse me, that is what I want to do. I'm here to help people. I think about my journey through the phd process and how much frustration I experienced, how much loneliness I experienced, how much unnecessary, I don't know, strife, conflict. That didn't have to have happen. Yeah. And if I could have just even had someone's podcast to listen to, videos to watch blogs to read, just to like, Oh, if they can do it than I can do it. If I could have just had that, I think I would have just felt a little bit better. It would have helped me to get through it a little bit more easily. And so really that is the why behind like why I had this business and why continue to show up every week and continue to put myself out there. Um, you know, I know a lot of people start their own business because they're all about the money and maybe they're looking for a get rich quick scheme or maybe they are, I don't know, like they just want the fame and notoriety that comes with having a large following and people looking up to them. If you know me, that is not, that is not my thing whatsoever. Like I am about helping people. And so that's why as much as possible, I'll continue to give out free content because I know that not a lot of people, um, have the access to pay for services. Um, and I want another side to the side of like not having access and truly not having funds is completely different than saying I'm just not going to do it. I don't think it's worth it. But that's a whole nother rant for a whole nother day. But I do, I did want to say that of like question are you, whether it's a coach, whether it's a conference, whether it's some other thing that you know would be good for you, that will be an important part of your, um, development. But you are looking at the dollar sign and you're just like, no, I'm not going to do it. How can you like, say like, something will be really helpful for me and not show up for yourself? Um, and that's really in line with what I want to talk about today of people. The number one objection, objection I get to working with me or hiring me as a coach is that, oh, I'm just a Grad student. I don't have the money for it. And what I think about is either you're gonna pay, we all are paying for things either with our time or with money. Right? So cool. This system, this world, the society we live in, it's controlled by many systems, particularly capitalism. Right? And that means some people are going to have it, some people are not even going to be in between. Right? We're all in the spectrum and you may need like additional resources or whatever to help you and you may not have the financial resources right to contribute. So if you don't have the finance resources to contribute, then that means you're going to have to pay to get to that same place that other people are getting to with your time. And that's what I want people to really like. The main takeaway from this episode is like, do you have money or do you have time? If you have neither, then you probably are not going to achieve this goal. I'm, I'm almost willing to go as far as you're not going to achieve this goal. And in this case, the goal is finishing your, um, doctoral journey, your phd or whatever program you're in this terminal degree, you either need money or time, you need both. But like what's going to get you to the end is how much more of money or time you're willing to invest, right? Because by the time you get to the point of enrolling into a phd program, right, everyone has shown that they whatever meet the requirements to get in. Right. So everyone, like for most people they were the smart person in their family and their school, whatever. For most people they had the test scores, they need it. They had, they were willing to devote the time they were willing to devote the energy right to get into the program itself. Right. And then a difference comes in is, okay, you may have two, three years of coursework depending on your program. Right? We've all been in school. You've heard if you're going to follow me, you've heard me say this like we've all been in school. Many of us have several degrees. So we're, we have proven with our many degrees and pieces of paper. We have proven that we're really good at showing up into a classroom, getting a syllabus, showing up week after week, taking the notes, um, doing the readings, completing the assignments, writing the papers, taking the final exam and moving on to the next class. Like we've done that. We've been doing it for 20 plus years, we're good. Right? And the real division comes in like everybody can do that. The division comes in when it's time to take your preliminary or comprehensive exams and maybe you can even do that because I mean at the end of the day, right? People look at that, oh is a big test. Right? And that could even be, I'm like, that's like the really big first a marker that separates and starts to weed people out. Because we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to do this test to, to do these exams. And, but like for most people that can like wrap their mind, like they can think of it as another class, I can, they can do whatever is necessary to, you know, get all their literature together, pull all the pieces together. It's still pretty much a very supportive process. Even if you don't feel like you're being supported, like there are people telling you at least like, this is what you need to do. Your chair, your committee, your program has structured in a way that if you just follow the steps right, you're good, right? And usually you're not the only person who's going through the process. Or if you are the exam is tailored to you by your committee or your chair, then they again, are setting it up in a way to make sure that you can pass. Like for the most part, you show up and do what you need to do. You can pass. However, when we get to dissertation, right now, you're at the top of the top. Now you at, you are aware 50, 60% of the people who started with you didn't make it there, right? We're saying at best are you 40% of the people who started with you in the program making it to or making it to that point of the dissertation, and we're not going to even talk about the people who actually make it to the end, but that's what you have to ask yourself. Are you going to be one of those people who make it to the end? And if you are, what are you willing to pay? How are you willing to pay to get to the end because it's going to take some additional resources to get to the end. You can't continue to do what you done to get to that point to get to the end. Getting to the end of the dissertation process, getting to your defense, passing your defense takes an extra set of skills, maybe not extra, but a different set of skills, strategies, etc. To like support to get you there because it's no more, it's no longer you showing up to a class with a syllabus, with a script that's telling you you do steps a, B, and c and you're good. Most programs don't have dissertation classes and if they do have dissertation classes, and we're going to be honest, they're geared towards quantitative projects, right? Because people think that like, oh, you're doing qualitative well that's easy. You're just going to do some interviews and you're good. Right? No, because I'm sure if you're in this process in any step of the dissertation process and you now know it's not, it's not that simple. It's not that simple, right? So this dissertation journey no longer has a class where you're showing up every day and someone gives you a script or a syllabus and they say if you just show up every week and you read these articles and you take this like test and you write these papers and you have a dissertation, it's not a like a paint by numbers type thing because now you, your final step in the doctoral journey is to contribute back to your field. To contribute something unique, different, something that's missing some perspective that hasn't quite been explored. It is your job now to find that and contribute it back to the field to help the field grow, to help the field become better you as a contributor of knowledge to your field. So no, there's not a a step by step. You just show up and you do this and you're done. Especially for those of you who are talking about winning dissertation of the year awards, you don't get to just show up and say, see, I've put in all these years of work. See all my degrees, see how many classes I've done, and now you want to be called doctor. That's not how it works. All of that was just the warmup. That was the warmup to get here. Now we're playing the game. Are you ready to play the game or you ready to give up? And do you feel like you don't have to devote extra time and financial resources to get to the end to win the game? Or do you feel like you should just get it off of GP because you showed up to some a few classes? You think you should just get it, man, I feel like I got all off, but I want you to feel me on this episode. Who is your team of people who are helping you because truth be told, your chair is not there to be, to be your personal assistant, your personal editor. Your chair is not there to hold your hand every step of the way. Sure they are there to help, help guide you. Right? And maybe they listen to you at your standing meeting, but they got other people, they got other things to do. This is their job and it's no shade towards you as not saying they don't care about you. However, this is your journey and if you're not willing to devote your time and your energy and show up, why should they show up for you? So what are you doing to show up for yourself? Who else is on your team besides your chair? Who else are you spending your time with? Who's going to help you finish your goal? Like I love, love hearing people's stories. I love watching like athletes, and, you know, I love Beyonce and I love their story. I love going back and watching old videos because they reminds me of what they had to do to get to where they are now. Sure. It looks cute now to headline Coachella. Sure. It looks cute now to have special after special and to show up at Grand Slam. Grand Slam have over 30 plus Grand Slam titles. But there was a journey that got there, right? Both of these women, Serena and Beyonce, their fathers were very important to building the foundation of who they are, helping them to build a foundation of their craft. Those men were there teaching them how to have a work ethic, right? A lot of that's innate and, they had their fathers there as like coaches, as, as leaders to help them practice and practice and practice. When no one knew who they were, when no one ever believed they would be where they are now, when everybody saw two little girls from the hood, right? Their fathers were there and they kept showing up practicing since they were little kids and the single digits like six, seven, eight and nine practicing singing, playing wherever, tournaments at the tournaments, concerts, pageants, all of these things, right? And then they get their break. So Serena comes to the pros at 14 and Beyonce gets a record deal at 15 but still people just saw two black girls from the hood who like, oh, that's cute that you got a few people following you. But they still just showed up and they practice and they practice and they practice. Right? And start winning titles and start having number one albums, right? It started to grow in popularity. Well truth be told, like even 10 years in the game, it was cute. Like people now knew them, right? People knew Serena and Venus, right? As the sisters, people knew Destiny's Child right they're on number one movies soundtracks, right? But still people wasn't looking at them as these huge stars. And they also realize that a moment between, you know, 10 to 15 years into the game, their fathers were not going to do it anymore. Their fathers had taken them as far as they could with the knowledge that they knew and in order to get to the next level, right? In order to become who we know them to be now today, they needed to work, they needed to expand their team. They needed a different level of coaching and support. So if you ever go and look, right, Serena has a coach, he, this French guy, I can't remember his name right now, but his whole thing is about his, his whole life is about turning out like number one tennis players. He has a whole like compounding business and organization and coaches under him helping to produce some of the biggest names, right? And then you have a Beyonce who left her father so that she could manage herself, but she has a whole team that's her. So it's not necessarily one person just like it's not one person in this arena. But you get what I mean? Like they had to leave their first like person who helped them get this far and they had to get a whole new team of people because you don't get to be at the top of your game of your fields of whatever without strong coaching and support and people who help get you there. You cannot do this by yourself. And so many of you took a pair this and to bring it home like Serena, Beyonce had their father's sure you had your family and you had your chair, right? Many of you, your chair with your advisor throughout your whole process and they got you to this far to get you to the point where you now need to start working on your dissertation. But now it's time to expand your team, right? Because their fathers are still there in the background, right? You still see them show up to the games. You still see them talk about their fathers like Serena, Beyonce, credit them for their foundation. They're still there and disappear and you see all these other people who know how to play at this different level. Who could help, who helps them build up the infrastructure to that strong foundation that was laid by their fathers to get them to being the number one tennis player in the world did number one entertainer of the world, right? They had his whole team of people and they had to put in the time and the money to do so because these things are not cheap and these people in their knowledge and that cheap. And so I'm asking you, you did, you have, you put in a time and you put it in the money cause you are enrolled in these programs, right? You gotta pay for it somehow. But are you comfortable staying where you are? Are you ready to go to the next level? And, how can you use your financial and your time resources more wisely by supplementing with people who can be on your team to help you use those things more wisely? Or do you want to continue to try to do this by yourself and continuing you to use up all your time, resources, your money resources in your health resources? Because we're not meant to be by ourselves. And if you say, well, I'll just continue and like talk to this person and talk to this person and get everybody in for the advice and I'm a work smarter, not harder, you're spending your time, right? Because the time it takes to continue to reach out to these people, find these people, get on their schedule, listen to everybody say a different version of something else. Right? And I'm sure it's real help or information, right? Cause they did it so you can learn from them. But if you're not with someone, someone who's dedicated to you, who knows exactly what it is that you're going through, who's in it with you day to day, who gets your style of playing or style of performing, your style of writing, who gets your, the particulars of your dissertation and helping you along the way and move you forward and who can dedicate the time and the love in the toughness and the criticalness when you need it to help you with your game. And they're not just speaking in general and it's not just a five minute, 30 minute, 60 minute conversation here, there, the coffee shop, whatever they are telling you, they're like reliving the glory days of their dissertation. But if that person isn't sitting with you day in and day out, how are you going to get to the next level? That information is useless. That's not going to help you. It may get you like a little bump up, but you're trying to finish this thing and so you're gonna look up and it's going to be one year, two years, three years and you still haven't finished my dissertation proposal because you keep thinking, oh I'll need to spend money on this. I'm already spending the money on a degree. I'm a just, you know, gonna go talk to these people and keep trying to do this on my own and every year, every month, every week, every day that you keep trying to spin your wheels and figure this out on your own. Yeah, you're wasting your time. That's valuable time and energy that could be going somewhere else to something you actually enjoy doing and you love doing. Because to be honest, I'm sure you don't love your dissertation anymore cause you're not making any progress. So who can you put on your team? How can you expand your team to get you moving so that you can actually make progress so that you can get to your prospectus defense and collect research and then write up the dissertation, finish it, get to the actual defense and become doctor to get to the awards. To win dissertation of the year, who are you putting on your team to help you get there? Your chair isn't enough. This is not shade to your chair. There's just one person with limited time and energy to like give you, you're not their only advisee. You're not their only thing they have going on. Right. And we, we're being real honest, a lot of the advisors and chairs, this is just a necessary evil of the job. They don't even like advising students, they probably won't tell you that today to your face, but they don't like it. So they just meet with you. Cause they have to because it's a requirement of the job. But I mean they probably really indifferent to if you pass or if you make any progress on your dissertation and they don't get paid regardless. So who else are you putting on your team to make sure you get there because you're responsible for you. You're responsible for making sure you finish. Nobody cares that you've been in school for 20 plus years. Nobody cares that you shut out to all the classes. Nobody cares that you're getting to probably get all A's in your classes. That doesn't matter in this process. This is a whole different game. All of that was just practice for this part. And Are you going to finish this part? Cause what got you here won't get you to Phd, like won't get you to being called Doctor. And this isn't saying like you got to come work with me. I'm just saying and you know and the opportunities have one across your email or somebody told you about this dissertation bootcamp or this writing retreat or this editor. Somebody told you something and you turned your nose up at it saying you're not paying for that. Well, I hope you got a whole lot of time and I hope you got a whole lot of patients and energy to keep spinning your wheels because it's going to take so much longer and it's going to be so much more difficult then if you would just take the step and get people on your team. You don't got to pay for everyone. You'll have to do some things that's gonna make you uncomfortable. You gonna have to do some things and maybe some of your family and never had to do before. You gonna have to pay for some resources or a goal to some conferences and some things that may seem like why I gotta spend the money. You don't have to do it to get what you want, cause you're trying to go to the next level. If you're not trying to go to the next level, then none of this matters. But if you try to go to the next level, you will have to do something. I'm hot, I'm about to go. But I just wanted to say that for today. What do you have time or money. How even, you know, argue like, the third thing is really it comes down to your health. How important are you and your health and your goals to you? So I would love to know what you thought about this episode. Please come on over to Instagram at @marvettelacy and let me know, I'd love to have a conversation with you there. Until next week, do something to show yourself some love and I'll talk to you then! Bye for now.

Ever wondered what you'd do if the world was suddenly overrun by zombies? What is your weapon of choice? Do you throw other members in your group to the undead if they're not pulling their weight? And does anything change if you have your kids with you? Let's talk about surviving the zombie apocalypse.

Oliver is a master at creating systems for business owners.  In this interview, you'll hear how he uses "blank slates" to help businesses automate and systemize just about everything under the sun.  His strategies have been proven to massively grow small and medium-sized businesses. ----- Automated Transcript Below: Unknown Speaker 0:01 It's time for the freedom in five minutes podcast. Powerful and liberating business strategies, you can start in five minutes or less. Now, here's your host, Dean Soto. Dean Soto 0:18 Hey, what is up? It is Dean Soto with freedom in five minutes.com. And we're here again with another freedom in five minutes episode. Today's topic is this you can systemized virtually anything. If you have the right person doing it, that and more coming up. Okay, so I am a here yet again. And I get to have the distinct pleasure, the honor, the privilege of talking with one of my close friends, Mr. Oliver Kelso who has been on this podcast once before he was actually here. But I want this podcast to be specifically about some of the cool stuff that he's been doing. Because last time we were talking about my beautiful nature at my house. So all of our Kelso with grow smart. And I'd love to have you introduce yourself my friend. Oliver Kelso 1:27 Hey, everybody. Hey, man, nice to Nice to be here again. Dean Soto 1:32 Oh, man, that was that it is nice to have you yet again. Over here, you're going to hear some of my kids screaming in the background, you know, every single one of them. Since you were there, you're used to it. But But yeah, so. So last time we were here we were talking about you know, we were we were just chatting about the nature and chart and talking about a couple other things while you were here. But I really wanted to get you on this podcast again, predominantly, because you have a really, really cool business. And one where we've worked together quite a bit. We still do in some ways we have connections and so on. But you've been doing some really cool stuff in the financial services industry and other industries, like real estate and so on. So I wanted people just get to know what is grow smart, grow smart? And what are the results that you get for the people that you work with? Oliver Kelso 2:30 Absolutely. So growth spark is a it's designed to be a outsourced operations company, really, operations consulting company. So we we come in, and we help people solve operational problems. And the cornerstone of that, of course, is the the the driving force behind freedom in five minutes. It's the you know, the VA service that you built from the ground up, that really is the cornerstone of the whole idea. And the reason that's the cornerstone is because that is the probably the single most effective scaling tool I've ever seen at a company. Like hands down, you can have solid software is great. There's a lot you can do with software. That's true, that's fine. But integrating, like a thinking human, that's affordable. That's often better and more detail oriented than the actual employees of the company is unbelievable. So that's, that's why I do what I do, because I love helping companies build and grow. And the only way I know how to do that now really effectively, is with a combination of good software integration, or good software combined and integrated with virtual assistants. Love it. Dean Soto 3:51 Love it. Yeah. Yeah, you're though you're one of the the first people who really adopted the whole virtual systems aren't tact type people, these these special VA is that that will help you to create the systems. And I still remember being in your house while you were creating those videos, and just seeing massive result right away. You're like, Okay, I got this. I'm doing this. And then just seeing all the systems documentation and stuff being made. It was awesome. So like, how did so how did you? Because even when we met you had a varied systems, and technology driven, and systems in the sense of business systems like processes and so on driven mindset. How did you even how did you connect what you were doing at the time to what you're doing now with grow smart? Like, how did you even Oliver Kelso 4:43 grow at the time? Actually, world systems weren't new. I like you said, I love systems. I like efficiency. I like things to work, right? You can ask my wife. The I didn't even know about bird I know about virtual assistants, I tried to actually hire one. And it was a disaster. It's actually exactly what you told me I could expect when I tried to do it on my own. And so I the shift in mindset really was the idea that I don't have to be the sole firefighter, the sole, you know, producer, the one that holds it all together, right? Because anybody that's done operations knows that you integrate the software, you build these things, you have ADD, you're the administrator and everything. And then anything goes wrong, it's up to you to fix it. Yeah, anything needs to be developed, it's up to you to build it. And everything in the process is up to you. Yep. And then what ends up happening for one of that happening for me is I was wanting to run the process the whole time. And that's where it failed. And so the shift for me was integrating that very first VA, when we sat in my living room, which you mentioned, opened my eyes to the freedom, literally freedom, and it actually felt like freedom. So that's why your name is great. me freedom, I felt one of the first time I told my VA like, hey, go, here's a list of tasks you're going to do every day prior to, you know, client meetings, you're going to do these 15 things, you're going to set this up that up, you're handling appointment bookings, all this other stuff, the free of myself, the moment that was implemented was unbelievable. So in the grow smart model, what we're what I'm doing is, for example, the financial services company, right now we're we're actually scaling up a new financial services company, it's a disruptor in the marketplace, super cool what they're doing, I won't get into it in detail now. But the foundation of how the company operates is the virtual assistant architect, virtual assistant model, I love your term virtual assistant architect, because that's really what you become, as the, you know, operations manager, or CEO, or whatever you want to call it. And, you know, in that model, the VCs are now running increasingly complex tasks. So it started with simple things in take forums come in, they can process them, they can move people to the right place, setting up server folders, you know, adding them to software, etc. I mean, to the point that now they're actually reading through client statements, figuring out where where money should be allocated, and why based off of, you know, rule sets that we've developed. So they live, it is like hiring a blank slate, you can teach them to do literally anything, because they are all super smart. They have their own strengths. Like you know, some are really good at data processing, some are really good at talking to people just like any other person, but they are way more of a blank slate than any current employee that I work with at any company. That's cool. Dean Soto 7:42 That's see and that's one thing. That's one thing about you, is that you got that right away with with, with systems in general, is you having that blank slate, which is a lot of people want, well, I need someone with this skill set, I need someone with that skill set, I need that, you know, and you just right away to jumped into, I'm just good at show them how to do something, get it documented and go? And do you still have that kind of mentality? You just you figure out the system? Because you have to actually architect the system? Do you? Do you do you right now just think of the thing of architect in the system? Show them how it's done. They documented and then you go in don't even care about Yeah, capabilities? Like as far as Oliver Kelso 8:26 Oh, yeah, absolutely. And actually, the the overriding decision in the process, when when building out a system now is okay. How do you have someone else do this whole thing. I mean, literally, because when I look at the employees and what they're doing in the office, the most important thing for them to actually do is the hands on stuff, it's the run down the hall and deal with a, you know, an issue or it's the oversee things from a very, very high level perspective, because they can sit in the office with, you know, a strategist who's who's very, very experienced, right in the financial industry, and ask them questions in a way that, you know, somebody sitting thousands of miles away, can't do. Yeah. And so that's why that's the role shift actually, is something that happens a lot in the businesses is they, the employees all have to shift their roles, they stopped being the processors, they stopped being the firefighter, they stopped being the one that that runs, you know, runs everything on a granular level, and they actually have to move into a managerial position, in a sense, because they have to, they have to work with other people. Now, they have to tell people like you go do this. Right, that's, that's not your job. Very interesting. Dean Soto 9:44 Very interesting. I love that. That's, that's great. So you essentially, your your, what you do, is you go in, you make it to where these people who, who are, who are doing just kind of the day to day stuff, you're actually making it to where they can actually be become higher value. employees or have a higher event value, an actual higher value person in the company, kind of making them into a an executive or managerial position. Because right, no longer having to do that day to day type stuff. Like you figure that out. Oliver Kelso 10:19 Yeah. Perfectly stated, people start doing the job role that fits their salary, which is what you always want, you know, you want them you want the employees that are paid the most producing the most. And if they can't produce, because they're filling out paperwork, and all these other roadblocks that are important in a company, but, you know, until now, there was no real way to get them done efficiently. So you know, you hire kids, interns out of college, right? That was the that was the previous model. So I'm going to go back to an earlier point and say, this is a good one, we probably the one of the largest mindset shifts, or mindset, issues I run into, when even talking about this subject with people is like you identified, it's the idea that, number one, no one else can do what I'm doing. And the lack of blank, blank slate thinking. Nobody is trained on like, what do you do when employee comes in that is just pretty good at everything, and you don't, but they don't know anything. Right? They can do anything, but they don't know anything. And I'm an example, as I was working with a with a mortgage broker, and this guy, I'm an associate, yeah, mortgage broker, but he really runs a mortgage processing company. He said, his number one hand hold up, was processing the loan, you know, mortgage process, and right hiring a good processor. And the problem he was running into is he had a couple, he wants to scale up. But in scaling up mortgage processes are very expensive. Yeah, put on payroll, especially out here in Hawaii. Right? We're very, you know, it's very a pro, whatever we call crew, employee friendly. employee. Yeah. So his problem is he didn't have enough business to hire another full time person, you can't hire a part time person because there aren't any. So as I'm talking with him, I mentioned what the VA is can do. And he goes, Well, I'm not I don't want to have to train a VA to do mortgage crossing it's way to details. And I thought, okay, so after I asked him a few more questions, I said, Well, why can't your mortgage processors have the VA and teach them to do whatever they needed to do? So that frees up your time? And he went? Oh, that's a great idea. And it would show in that moment, I realized, Wow, it is a shift in thinking that that not everybody has or we don't want to talk that right? Correct? Correct. It's, it's, that's my other example. Dean Soto 12:47 Like in school, you're taught, you do your homework, you do everything you're you, it's always you, like, I whereas, whereas as an entrepreneur, it's if if, if you you in the business world, you want other people to do your work. So imagine, imagine paying people to write your essays. That's a big No, no. And in in college, I'm not saying that. I've never done that. But but in the business world, that's exactly what you do. Right? And so it definitely is a change, like a big change in thinking, and it's cool how you're like, well, if you don't want to do it, have your mortgage processors just show how to do it, and then they can they can actually create the system for it. You know, like, that's, that's great. Exactly. So So one thing I want to so I want to, I want to ask you this is that give me an example of something that you're super proud of that you that you went into a company, you saw what they were doing, you architected a system, and you saw some pretty amazing results. What what were the results with what you actually brought to the company? Oliver Kelso 14:06 I'm so sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. Give me one second. Dean Soto 14:19 No worries. No worries. This is Denise, you gotta tell him or was that a door to door salesman? Oliver Kelso 14:31 No, that was actually my mom. She needed something. Awesome. Yeah, Mama comes first. That's right. Um, Dean Soto 14:40 alright. So the questions just just in case. So basically, you were you went into a company, and you saw what they were doing? And you're like, dude, there's a way better way of doing this. And you even if it was just one, one thing that that you did for them that completely changed the game for them? What were the results? Oliver Kelso 15:05 Boy, I mean, there's a couple that's why I'm pausing here. Dean Soto 15:13 Whatever is coming to mind, we have more than enough time. Oliver Kelso 15:23 Sorry about that. My phone out. I think. Do you hear me? Yep. No, I apologize. So I would say the the number one that I'm extremely proud of, is probably the current company I'm working with. And the reason is, this is a company that previously I said it was a new financial industries company. It's not actually they've been around for 20 years. Yeah. This is the first time they're actually learning how to scale. Oh, yeah. So last year, they saw a total I believe, was 62 customers, new customers, that boutique firm, right? Every client talk to a person for many hours, you what they need very small business model. Yeah. They wanted to scale up. We actually, like I said before, but we actually take someone through 75% of the intake process. This is complicated. This is like collecting account statements verifying, you know, verifying self reported data against actual statement data, and then figuring out based on tax law and all these other things, tax rules, how to manipulate their situation to give them you know, immediate success. Yeah, right now. We actually have a system where a virtual assistant can literally take them through 75% of that process. I love that. So year to date, we're, we're we're six months in, call it right June. And we now have taken in 200. And I believe it's 215 clients this year, but you can't Dean Soto 16:54 do that. Oliver, how how do they you know, you can't have someone who is you know, overseas. Think of all those complexities, right? They're not going to be able to do what you do or do what the financial strategist do. How are they doing? 75% I always get this man with financial services companies. Oliver Kelso 17:15 Exactly how and it's a great question, because it seems too complex on the surface. But if you I approached it this way, when I was working with the strategist on this exact problem is look, you learn how to do it. You can theoretically teach someone else how to do it. So there's some thinking process that happens when you evaluate a situation. What is that? So we started my only announcement aboard like, what's the first thing you look at? Oh, I look at the tax return. Okay, great. What do you look at? Why look at line 13? Okay, rule number one, look at the pattern, look at line 13. And what's cool is you start small, that was the other thing that you start small. So don't start thinking I'm going to turn the VA to do 100% of my friends process overnight. Yeah, yeah, depending on the complexity of the process. In this case, it's very complex. Instead, it was have the assistant pull out all the important information from the statements, verify it against the statement, and then give it to the strategist so that they don't have to go looking for information. Yeah, that immediately frees up half an hour an hour of their time per client. Yep, yep. Right. You can build on that, right? That though that was your favorite thing done is better than perfect. Yeah, you can build on if you do something you can build on it. So just having a VA that does, you know, step one, step two have a process. Well, then as things smooth out and start running smoothly, then you can have a two step three, then you add step four. Dean Soto 18:41 See, this is that is friggin amazing, you know, in in less than six months, you've pushed 200 clients through this. And, and this is, this is something that you have the the low cost option VC of the virtual assistant architect, there, you have you had you had the change in mindset of the organization there. It was, um, did once once you started doing this, did they kind of did the organization there start to see Oh, holy crap, this is actually like, we trust all of her to just like, what was kind of the deciding factor for them? To see that, like, Oliver knows how to make these systems. We're just gonna, we're just going to let them go wild with with that, because that's a pretty pretty dang amazing in the financial services industry to set something like Oliver Kelso 19:36 oh, yeah, it's huge. I mean, number one, it took someone was some vision at the top right, you have to have someone up there going, look, I understand we can't scale the way we are. Right? If you don't have that, if there's not a commitment, then this is important. That's why I say there's not a commitment at the top to say, look, we know what we're doing doesn't work right now. We need change. Yeah. Right. It's always an update, you're gonna have an uphill battle the whole time. There's no yeah. However, if, when there is that commitment, the next thing is achievable, measurable results. Yeah. Right. So to be able to turn around and say, Hey, we just the aha moment for them was when we on boarded six clients that never had to talk to a strategist, meaning the company actually collected fees on six people, which previously, they would have had to spend one to two hours on the phone with each one. Wow, wow. So we actually turned around and closed feet, the clients still get the same level of service, because they're still going to talk to the strategist. However, they the fees were closed, right, which means the strategies now is actually being paid for their time, they're no longer having to do sales and strategy. At the same time. See? Dean Soto 20:45 That's cool. Because now they can just focus strictly on strategy when it's necessary. And, and these are four to four to five figure fees, right? Generally. Oliver Kelso 20:59 Oh, yeah, exactly. Yeah, we're talking thousands up to upwards of, you know, 30 k, see. And then, depending on, you know, anywhere from one to $30,000, depending on the situation, so it's Dean Soto 21:11 so Gosh, is I sorry, I, I talked to financial services, guys all the time. And, and one on one, like, Dad, I need to get you in contact with some folks that I that I have, because you're so good at the numbers side of things to that's where we're, you're just so good at at not just the systems, but having everything makes sense for them, especially in the financial services realm. And I know you I know, you touch outside of financial services, but it just, it's just such an older, traditional, or whatever it is, if that's a word, model. And so, right mindset shifts is so different. So all that's been said, like, what, like, kind of walk me through? Can you just walk me through that process? Like, no, normally, I'd be like, starting to kind of walk in the podcast down. But this is super, super interesting. And I think it's gonna be super valuable for a lot of people. What is can you walk me through that process of what you do? It doesn't have to be super detailed, but but where a strategist went from one to two hours of having to sell and I'm I know for sure that it probably is even more than that having to go back and forth on the phone and stuff to zero and just being able to do strategy after they've been paid. What is the process? What was the process? And was the process now? Oliver Kelso 22:32 It's a great question. So the original process was, you know, you give it let's say, it's a speaking engagement, you go to a speaking engagement, you talk. People are interested, right, you haven't fill out a form while they're sitting there, you get back to the office, and then you got to call them all are you scheduled meetings, while you're there, even better, that's great. Problem is, you have no information on the client. At that point, there's no intake process, there's no nothing to sell it unless you're just selling a flat fee. Right, like $500, to get started $2,000 To get started, whatever. And then you have to go collect your documents, right, which is means someone has to send out a document collection link, or they got to fax them in if this is you know, before 1990 or whatever. Nowadays, away the financial services industry. So you bring them in. And that's how the process goes right? Until then you have to talk to them a couple of times to express you can disperse, you got to collect the documents, then you have to understand them, then you have to explain to them what you're considering doing. And then you have to sometimes in a fourth or fifth meeting finally close the feet. Yeah, did actually implement it. The shift, the shift wasn't complicated. This shift was was conceptually simple. It was automate every and by automate. I don't mean literally, I mean, automate with virtual assistants. Yeah. Okay. Um, I don't mean, build some, you know, complex automated pipeline, but automate the entire process up to the point that the strategist talks to a client and figures out what the real strategy is, which is the whole job, their whole job roles. So you want to eliminate everything up until that point? Yep. So that was question number one, how do we eliminate all that stuff? And the process is simple. They've got an intake form. So they self report their data? Yep. Right. Then from that point, the virtual assistant, and the automated system processes the information and determines what the client needs to upload to confirm their data. Yeah. Sometimes there's we you know, they may be a welcome call, and they're from like, an actual sales person, but still not a strategist. Yep. You're not taking your highest paid person and putting them on the phone yet, before the company is collected any money? Yeah. I'm from that, then you move to the document verification center, they verify the documents, and they create what's called an allocation. So they actually detail out where all the money is for the strategists. Again, it's all the stuff that would have had to happen in house or the strategies would have to do themselves. Once everything's documented, once the client files ready, everything set up, then we use a self booking link. That was another big addition. Yeah, so you don't have 6 million back and forth emails, the client books, their own appointment based on the strategist calendar. And then the strategy has their first meeting. So on any given client, it shouldn't, it shouldn't be more than two meetings, well give your first meeting to go over the strategy or your second meeting to confirm it with the client, make adjustments and close the fee. Love it. And then from that point on, there's more involvement, because you know, then you move to implementation. That's a whole nother ball game, which is also would only work in any scale will be a Yeah. Yo, man. And just as a note here, this is all this isn't, you know, revolutionary in the sense that this is always how the process works, right? Do you have an in house employees, they do certain tasks so that your high level person doesn't have to do them? That's not new. What's new, is having someone you're paying, whatever? 950 1050 an hour? Yep. Who's way more capable than a minimum wage, you know, high school employees that you get here? That's the difference. So I can hunger for vas for the same price as one decent employee. Yeah. Decent. And that's, that's the that's the key. That's why, you know, that's the I have to train them not to take a two hour lunch. Break, right. Let's need to like, Dean Soto 26:40 like, because you also you also automate the actual strategist as well, because they have to follow the process. True, right. Like they, they they have to know when it's their job, what they what what parts to work, kind of what their lane is to so you mapped out architect that as well. Right. Oliver Kelso 27:03 Right, exactly. So a lot of role readjustment. You have to be very cognizant that it's a shift, people are going to be switching roles. And like we already talked about, there's training required, even for your employees to say, look, stop being the Savior. Yeah, you're not the firefighter anymore. You don't have to do all of these little things, you get the same freedom that, you know, I'm getting at the top of the company, you're going to get to Yeah, cuz you're at what has ends up happening. Is the employees actually on the front line? Yeah, it's not you. Unless Unless we're talking about like a one or two man shop, which is then everything's you anyway. But if you already have employees, integrating VA is actually it's the employees integrating the VA is unless you're talking about like an admin assistant. Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of it's actually working with your staff to improve them. They said, you know, it's like, corporate, it's a continuing education for your staff. Dean Soto 27:55 So cool. I love that. Oliver Kelso 27:57 It's very cool. It's really me, I can't, I could go on forever. I know, we have limited time here. But yeah, it is like literally life changing. Dean Soto 28:05 Yeah, it's cool. Because you you have a great mix, especially in that niche of the systems of the outsourcing as well as the numbers that you understand, you understand the financial services realm, especially from the customer side of side of things, but also from the the the the advisor or securities, security advisor, whatever it might be, you know, the the strategist and so on, you understand their pains, their, their, their desires, and then also you understand how they can best help their customers. And so you have a really good mix of all of that. And I've just seen, just seeing tremendous results from companies that you've worked with. So that being said, How do people find out more about you? And how do people actually start working with you? Oliver Kelso 29:01 Yeah, so thank you for the plug. So what a convenient go to you can just go to grow smart. Got Co. Co, that's my website, I will tell you, I exclusively work with freedom in five minutes, I will not use another VA. That is on purpose. That's not some you know, it's because they work. So I don't care if you can hire a VA for $2 an hour from Croatia. And it doesn't speak English, that that's not going to get you where you want to go. So I'm very clear about that. I'm a boutique firm in the sense that I'm very careful about who I choose to work with. They have to be have to have the right mindset. Right? You know that I mean, you know that better than anybody, I'm not going to sit in and work with a company who doesn't understand the intense need for systems and for and that and that. And I'll just be direct, who doesn't have their ego wrapped up in them doing everything. That's, that's a real a real business owner, a real person that wants their business to thrive and is preferably doing good in the world. Unknown Speaker 30:14 I love it. Dean Soto 30:17 I love it. I love it. It's great. Because, like I said, I've seen I've just seen so much such tremendous results from what you bring to these companies, the ones that are that are hungry for scaling, the ones that actually aren't fighting you, which, where it's where they have that the ones that have the Superman mentality where they're, like you said, they're trying to say that for me, yeah, you, you go in the ones that really truly want to scale, they know that there's going to be some shifting some pain, and so on and so forth. You make it so easy for them to do by by doing those small little things that provide that positive feedback loop that, that I just I just recommend anybody who, especially in the financial services business, but it doesn't have to be in that edge. You work with real estate, for property management, real estate investments, property management, property management, and so on. Oliver Kelso 31:12 Yeah, doctors, lawyers, it really doesn't matter. The industry. That's the best thing about this is the VA architect, the VA mentality and architect in your business, that's not a word I know. To do to perform the way you want to and like you, you know, when when she once said to me getting back to why you started your business in the first place. Right? That's universal. Dean Soto 31:36 Yeah. I love it. And you you you are able to bring that back to them. And I've just seen it over and over and over and over again. It's so cool. So well, Oliver Kelso 31:44 thank you. I appreciate that. Dean Soto 31:47 No problem. So yeah, if you want to go and check it out, work with Oliver. I'm sure do you would you give like like discovery calls like Oliver Kelso 31:56 Oh, of course. Yeah. Yeah, well, we always talk first see what you're interested in See? See where you're you know where you're struggling in your business etc. Do a free assessment wherever you want to call that love it and then go from there. Dean Soto 32:11 Love it. So yeah, go check out grow smart.co grow smart co hit up all over us a genius and he will help you if your business if you've been dying to scale he'll help you scale very quickly. Very, very quickly. He's super super smart. And yeah, he's one of the he really is the only other systems and operations guy that I ever recommend to people so so and that's that's so I'm very boutique when it comes to that as well. So Oliver Kelso 32:46 I love it. Dean is amazing. If you're already listening to this, you know, he's amazing, but Dean is amazing. And it turned upon you right back because my life would be considerably less, less amazing. Without Dean, though. Kudos to you, man. Love freedom in five minutes works. It is one of the best shifts you'll ever make. I love it. Dean Soto 33:09 I love it. I love it. Alright, cool. So go check out all of our growth smarts.co go talk to him he will change your life. And if you are looking for a virtual systems architect, if you want to scale your business, the easy way you can go to freedom in five minutes calm if you need help go to grow smart co Oliver will help you and you'll end up working with me anyway. Because he's amazing. And he's he knows where to get the goods. He knows where to get the good so but other than that, thank you so much for listening to the freedom in five minutes podcast. My name is Dean Soto and we will catch you on the next freedom in five minutes. episode. Unknown Speaker 33:51 Thanks for listening to the freedom in five minutes podcast. Now head over to www dot freedom and finally minutes.com and register for our free masterclass and discover how to start systemized and automating your entire business five minutes at a time. We'll see you next time on the freedom in five minutes podcast.  

Bruce Russell and JoAnn Street both know their Wild Turkey distillation and family history like the back of their hand. Both have been brand ambassadors but are now transitioning to new roles. While JoAnn is developing the hospitality side, Bruce is learning the ins and outs of the distillery. This show dives into the personalities of these two as we discuss the effect of bringing fresh faces to the distillery and how they plan on keeping traditions alive. Show Partners: Barrell Craft Spirits blends cask strength, high quality spirits to explore the effects of different distillation methods, barrels and aging environments. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order with code "Pursuit" at RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: Episode 186 we feature Pam Heilman of Michter’s Distillery 150 bottles remaining from 4 barrels of Pursuit Series This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about fake whiskey. JoAnn, do you want to get into working in the distillery? Bruce, are they going to make you join the union? How are you related to Jimmy? How did you decide to get into the family business? Talk about being a female in whiskey. What does it mean to be new blood in the company? Tell us about your background and how it will help with working in the distillery. Did they have a daycare for you at the distillery when you were young? What is your favorite Wild Turkey product? Do you see yourself living in Lawrenceburg? Give us your typical brand ambassador spiel for 80 proof and 101. Tell us about Rare Breed and Kentucky Spirit. Why is 101 Rye important? 0:00 There's those 0:00 weird beetles that we got out here. 0:02 Yeah. Does that what does that mean that they're like stink bugs and know what they are? Yeah, yeah, at least that's what I know 0:16 that say that one for the blooper reel. 0:29 Welcome back. This is Episode 199 of bourbon pursuit. I'm one of your host Kenny. And to go through a little bit of news back on episode 186. We featured Pam Hyman of Victor's distillery. Pam talked about her extensive history working in bourbon that began at the Booker no plant. She's had a long tenured career and was named the master distiller Victor's back in October of 2016. However, last week, Pam announced she is retiring from actors, and Dan McKee will be taking over as the new master distiller. We wish him all the best in her retirement, and you can look forward to hearing her one last time when we release her interview with Fred Minnick at the Kentucky Derby museums legend series. It might be the worst kept secret in history, and I think it even gets a mention in today's episode, but the fourth wild turkey masters keep released titled Cornerstone will likely be a nine year old rye according to the filings with the TTP. The label describes it as the cornerstone as a Kentucky straight rye whiskey batch 0001 bottle at 109 proof aged a minimum of nine years and approved by Eddie Russell. However, we all sort of knew this was coming for a while. also kind of fun to note, if you go in a barrel, pick a wild turkey there is going to be a few ride barrels just for sampling fun. Just another reason to love those Russell's. We've had both our guests back on the Russell's family episode, which was 175. But this time, Joanne and Bruce get to have a moment in the spotlight. Both know their wives, Turkey distillation and family history like the back of their hand. We know this firsthand. Because on our last Russell's reserve barrel pic, we have Joe in actually giving us the tour for the podcast. And this show dives into their personalities. Because these two are very vibrant. They know what they're doing. And we discussed the effect of bringing fresh faces into the distillery and how they plan to keep some of these traditions that me as you understand here in a little bit how it try to keep those alive. We've got about 150 bottles remaining from our four barrels of pursuit series. These are ranging anywhere from 10 to 14 years old. And we're excited, we're going to be bringing two new more barrels in May. One last one of these is actually going to be a five year week from Finger Lakes distilling. And you can get information about these barrels such as their proof and the story behind them as well as you can get them shipped to your door at pursuit spirits.com. Now sit back and relax and here our friend Joe over a barrel bourbon. And if you want here more Joe, make sure you follow us on all our social media channels because our next live recording at downwind bourbon bar is going to be featuring Joe Beatrice of barrel so make sure you stay tuned for that. And as always, you've got Fred Minnick with above the char. 3:16 Hi, this is Joe Beatrice from barrel bourbon. We blend cast right high quality spirits to explore the effects of different distillation methods, barrels and ag environments. Use our store locator to find a retail or a bar near you at barrel bourbon calm. 3:30 I'm Fred Minnick, and this is above the char 3:34 and a recent Twitter survey. I asked the question, do you think fake Pappy Van Winkle is in circulation and American retailers and restaurants? 86% of the 861 voters said yes. Now my followers tend to be a little bit more cynical and on the whiskey geek side. But think about this for a moment. Some of the most enthusiastic people and all of spirits American whiskey fan 4:01 tend to think that there's fake Pappy Van Winkle in circulation. 4:06 That means someone is going to be buying a fake bottle or poor of Pappy Van Winkle. Now, how is this possible? And the times we live in? How is it possible that we can continue to face these types of issues, fraudulent activity on something as as benign as an American whiskey? It's ridiculous. But we've seen it in scotch, there are people serving time in prison for wine. We even had the Pappy Van Winkle heist a few years ago where Buffalo Trace employees stole from their own employer and tried to resell it. 4:45 The fact is, as long as people can make money, it will always happen people will always try to circulate fraudulent bottles into the marketplace. And there's not a whole lot we can do about it. But there is one thing, one thing that everyone out there can do. And that's putting an end to the selling of empty bottles on eBay. Get on eBay right now and just search Pappy Van Winkle empty bottle. Now I came across one that was selling for $700 and the guy had empty in quotation marks. And you know, frankly, I just saw read and kind of went off on it and Instagram. But he was really probably trying to sell a full bottle now that I think about it. But nonetheless, you will still find a number of Pappy Van Winkle bottles for sale. You'll also find empty orphan barrels and Buffalo Trace antique collection and four roses limited editions and you'll see older mixers bottles being for sale. And there's they serve no purpose to be sold as empty bottles, other than to for someone to refill them at another time. because no one's sharing the shit making candles, armor lamps. So if you're someone who's putting an empty bottle in eBay, I just want you to know that you're part of the problem. Oh, you may need money. I understand that. And if you've done a once, you know, I hope you got the funds you needed. But if it's consistently happening, and this is part of a business plan that you have or this is something that you hope to break in and become like a special follow on eBay. Well then sir, ma'am, you are causing us a whole lot of headaches and American whiskey right now. Because there's a good chunk of us who do not trust that good Pappy Van Winkle, or Buffalo Trace antique collection is legitimate. And if you are selling MTS on eBay, you are one of the biggest pariahs in American whiskey right now. There I said it. 6:55 Think about that, if we can put an end to selling empties on eBay, we may be able to put a dent in some of the fraudulent activity we've seen on the secondary market. And worst case scenario in retail or in restaurants. So I don't know what to do about it. It's not illegal. 7:16 People can do what they want with an empty bottle. But if you have an empty bottle, display proudly on your mantel, or take it outside and break them on the fucker with a sledgehammer. I don't care. But don't put it on eBay. 7:31 And that's this week's above the char this this subjects get me pretty pissed off. So if you have something that might piss me off, hit me up on Twitter, or Instagram at Fred Minnick. That's at Fred Minnick. Until next week. Cheers. 7:48 Welcome back to the episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon. Kenny here recording once again in Lawrenceburg at wild turkey Hill, home of wild turkey bourbon. And this has been a serious recordings that we have been doing. However, we have two new guests to the show that had not been on previously because we have had Jimmy and Eddie on. And we've got a few of the wild turkey super fans that have been on before as well. But this one we kind of looked at and we said there's got to be some more faces, right. And there's a lot of new faces that are starting up and become better the younger generation of bourbon, or what Fred and some other cells are starting to call this even the media people like the new regime of it, right because we've got a lot of people that are older authors and they're trying to do something different and we're doing podcast now. And now we've got some new blood that are starting to enter the the whiskey world in itself. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and introduce our guests. So we have got Bruce Russell, who is the global was the global brand ambassador gonna go ahead and introduce yourself. 8:48 Yeah, how's it going, guys? I was just the brand ambassador, there's just only ever one of us I was like all of them whatever there would be I would do. 8:57 But now they've got me transitioning to be more than a story hopefully take over and 9:02 do a lot of the same stuff that dad Jimmy did. So we'll talk about that one then we also have Joanne and Joanne is it st them I saying that correctly? Okay. 9:09 Yeah, so I do a little bit of brand ambassador work but I also help out and the visitor center with you know, all the events and whatnot that go on kind of all over the place. 9:19 So let's go ahead and that's a that's a good way to kind of kick started so you you're going in and doing a lot of like the events and stuff like that Do you do you want to follow in any other footsteps to like get into the the distillation, the warehouse, the actual jobs of what's actually happening inside of the distillery now. 9:34 So for me, I have a little bit of a different story, like Bruce grew up coming to the distillery whereas I grew up in Tennessee, and then decided to move up to Kentucky. But right now I'm committed. Great. 9:47 Thank 9:47 you. I think I'm liked a little bit more now and the Russell family because 9:51 you don't wear like a bunch of orange around the house. Okay, so you're not a volunteer went 9:54 to the University of Kentucky. So okay, well, pretty hard cats fan. But for me, I think I'm just still trying to find my way in this industry. And right now I'm really enjoying the marketing aspect of the job, and just really getting to interact with different bartenders and people who truly love what you do here. And it makes me more passionate and want to be better at my job, as well. So for right now, I think, let Bruce, Eddie and Jimmy make all the good juice. And then I'll just be out there talking about it sharing the wild turkey love. 10:22 So you don't have any dreams or aspirations to want to do that. 10:25 Maybe in the future. But right now I'm enjoying what I'm doing. 10:28 Maybe like a summer internship, something like that to learn the distilling operation. 10:33 Yeah, we'll see. I think once Bruce gets here, I've learned a lot from him. We're kind of really good buddies, and definitely who I look up to the most. So I'm sure once he gets back here and kind of doing his thing, I'll probably be very intrigued in that as well. But I'm really enjoying what I'm doing right now. So 10:47 awesome. And so Bruce will will kick that over to you. So you have been now you live in Austin, Texas right now. Correct. 10:55 Kind of kind of all right. So I haven't lived there much this year. So he's got a home back. 11:02 They've got me moving back for sure. Permanently here in Kentucky, January one. It was actually supposed to be sometime this year. So my jobs kind of in a transition phase where I've really probably spent the most time here in Lawrenceburg at the distillery this year, as opposed to 300 days on the road last year, but I'm still doing a little bit of the ambassador work. We've hired somebody to take over as a national level ambassador, but I guess they don't. They don't they treat everybody a little bit nicer than us. So they didn't make your family. Yeah, they didn't make him travel 315 days. So he only has the West Coast. So I'm filling in a little bit on the East Coast, Joanne's feeling a little bit on the east coast and some of the smaller markets. 11:38 So you guys are starting to understand what it's like to live in the Delta sky lounge. 11:43 Exactly. Yeah. And we are Delta 13 through me, dad, Jimmy, I think all of us. 11:48 Yeah, we've we've talked about it, to an extent, at least with Eddie and I, because I was a Delta person at one point when I was traveling. So we talked about sky lounges and sort of how you get used to 11:58 lean and do while they weren't Southwest. With his wild turkeys. So yeah, and Jimmy was buddies with herb. And like, I think that's kind of how that wild turkey thing got started. 12:08 But now I've 12:09 worn by bugs out here, by the way. So if you see us on camera, and we're dodging we even it's, it's because we're just bug just flying everywhere. And we are recording outside. So if you hear trucks going on the background, it's because of the limestone quarry that they are just trucking stuff in and out of, you know, it was funny, we were actually recording another episode and trying to figure out, you know, where Bruce was going to start coming into here, because Eddie actually was part of the Union when he started coming in here. And Jimmy was sort of laughing a little bit because he made him do that. Now they're going to make us start joining the union to and sort of work your ranks up you think, you 12:44 know, the know, and it's a cute story now, but 12:50 he wasn't as cute back in the day, there's, you know, there's some real animosity between him about how that got started. I don't even think that many originally wanted to work here. You know, now they are, they work well together, we make amazing whiskey. 13:04 But I won't have to do the exact same thing dad did. His dad was kind of forced to go the union without a college degree. And I'm coming in with a little bit of background in the job and with a degree in some chemistry under my belt and stuff and been having doing the apprenticeship. So I would assume that I'm going to have to do the same type of things. But I probably won't be a union employee. I'll probably be a company employee, but their plan is to get me as soon as possible into the warehouse. And one thing we did forget to mention is so you are Eddie son. 13:35 Oh, yeah. So we got forgot to get all about the family lineage. Point. So 13:40 yeah. Jimmy Russell Mini is what we call it means it is our grandfather, Eddie occur master distillers, my father, and then he is joins uncle. But as far as Walter, he's concerned, you know, Jimmy me was not the first one to work here. My grandmother worked here before he did, and was basically the reason he got a job here. And then his father had worked here even before my grandmother did. And as far as I know, his grandfather was maybe the first person to work in a distillery here in Lawrenceburg, and Anderson County. And he worked at the Old Joe plant, which I believe was the precursor to what eventually became for roses. 14:19 So talk about your side, like, did you did you look at coming into this and saying, like, I just, I just need a job guys. Like, can we can we have some fun here? Or did you have this aspiration of wanting to be a part in the family business? 14:34 Yeah. So growing up, I always went to different events that they threw, like outside of the distillery, whether it be bourbon festival, or like the national Wild Turkey Federation down in Nashville. And I've always kind of had interest in it. But when I turned 21, I started out giving tours at the visitor center and just kind of working there as a summer job. And the longer I was there, the more passionate I got about it. And when you really get here, and you see what Jim Eddie do here, and then what Bruce has done the past few years, you just kind of you love it, you can't get out of it. It's addicting. And when you see that passion, you don't want to do anything else. 15:10 You use that word passion a lot right about what you what you see inside the family. Yeah. So are you looking at making this a lifelong career Wild Turkey? Are you looking this is like this is this has been fun? 15:21 No, I'd love to, I'd love to work here. And it's not just the family, it's the people. A lot of our employees have been here for very long time. And I think that says a lot to our company and who we are as a brand, that it's not just Jimmy and Eddie that have been here forever. We've got people that have worked here, 2030, 4050 years. So you saying there's other 15:38 people we should have on the podcast to be saying to me, 15:42 if you want to 15:43 tell you the real truth, maybe you don't like that. 15:47 So yeah. 15:49 So another question for you. While you're still we're talking on Joanne here, kind of talk about what it is being you know, we will talk about being sort of a younger generation here in a second. But you've been very female, because right now you have a lot of females that are starting to make their presence, you've got fond Weaver of uncle nearest you've got Marian eaves of castle and key. You've got the bourbon women's society that's starting to grow on hundreds of members now. So do you do you see this as like a great push for for, you know, involvement of women into whiskey to 16:22 absolutely and I've got to be a part of women and whiskeys a lot. So their Instagram page, they've got a ton of followers, but also just the support. Because I'm sure like Jimmy said back in the day, it really wasn't gentleman's drink and not so much anymore. And he likes saying that i think i think he does. Yeah, 16:38 he's got he got this little like, twinkle in his eyes, like, 16:41 just a demand. 16:42 Maybe maybe the good old days. I don't know. 16:44 It's awesome. It's a great time to be in the industry. It's booming right now. And it's not just whether it be brand ambassador work, but bartenders and just industry in general is, is growing insanely right now. And I'm just thankful to be a part of it. 16:59 So let's talk about sort of new blood, right? Like what it means to be new blood in here. Do you do you think that this is because Jimmy it said it before right? It's it's an old man's drink it was something that just just kind of just pretty stagnant for a while DC is a new regime or new blood coming in? That's kind of reinvigorating this market. 17:18 Absolutely. I would definitely say so. And it's it's everywhere. And I don't think it's just in bourbon or whiskey. I think it's in all of the industry whether it be the beer or the vodka or the gin. Think it's everywhere everybody's kind of coming together and realizing women have a pretty powerful role in this industry and it's just exciting to be a part of it. 17:38 And Bruce What about you because you know you're going to be I guess going head to head with say Freddie no here in a few years right? 17:47 Oh, not head to head he's bigger than me. I'm not mad. 17:51 Oh, hello, Freddie. I love that family. There's very little competition I don't even consider me and Freddie the new regime that is not new regime he's just trying to do is granted did he's just trying to make Booker proud really. And that's kind of what I'm doing just trying to make Jimmy Pro. So I think you'll probably see some more old school stuff from us then you will maybe our peers as far as age is concerned. This new wave of distiller this new wave of industry person is really exciting. For the most part. Now here I can tell you one thing we have as big of a problem as you see in other places. 18:24 But here in Kentucky we've got a ton of 18:28 young and just younger people than dead and Jimmy that are making amazing product when you look at stuff 18:35 and people that are just involved maybe not even at the master quote unquote master distiller level but there's the people in there making it there's a young guy out there, that 18:44 new contract is still right there in Bardstown bourbon company, and they're making crazy good juice, we went out there and checked it out with blaze news, Mr. Hargrove out there making some good stuff, Drew over there will it's doing some crazy cool stuff, Mariana, they're canceling key. He's doing some crazy cool stuff. There's this group of people, especially here in Kentucky, the folks over at angel's envy, are doing some really cool stuff that and that younger generation, I'm really excited to see because all these people are either from here and had family involved, or they're doing it in a way that I think you can be proud of. But I will say that there is some bad that's come from, 19:24 Oh, here we go go with the dirt and not dirt. But I 19:27 do think that there's something about every 25 to 35 year old person with a chemistry degree. distilling. aspirations now, like we talked about before, calls himself a master distiller and finds seven angel investors to build them a distillery in their band choose that they don't want to really talk about and be honest about like, there's a good side and a bad side. 19:48 Not only to the young, younger, influence and kind of influx into our industry, but also there's money to be made now. And for most of Jamie and dad's career, there was no money to be made. So the people doing it more people that loved it. Now, you know, you see a little bit of both. But with people like Freddie and the family over there at angel's envy, and drew and Marianne, and I mean, even dad and his generation, when you look at Fred and dad and somebody a car owner, Danny, we're good hands here in Kentucky. Absolutely. Yeah. 20:21 So I want to kind of touch on something else that you were talking about there, too. We talked about, you know, the chemistry degrees and all that sort of stuff, kind of talking about your background of sort of what's going to lead you into the distilling path, right. I mean, you're going to take an apprenticeship underneath your dad sort of learned from the ranks. 20:40 So I think the my kind of education will be twofold. 20:46 It'll be mostly hands on work, the academic aspect of distilling that the chemistry component. 20:55 I've spent a lot of time studying, researching and learning from the people that we have here on our technical team and our old distillery supervisor and dad. And that's what I've always been most interested in. Before I wanted to work here. I was going to school trying to be an engineer. So you know, I've always been a tinkerer taking things apart, figuring stuff out, it's always been very interesting to me, where most of my production will be now is learning how to actually do it by hand. Even though all this is automated is very important for dad and Jimmy to pass along. how it's done, kind of the way that Jimmy used to do it. That way I know, oh, when this when this shit breaks, when this shit breaks, isn't going right, in a distillery does not run correctly, almost ever. Anybody anytime you go to the store, and like oh, everything's running great. It's usually not 21:46 everything, something's always wrong. And I need to know why. Because that's where a master distiller really comes in to play now. You know, and some people I guess, are just figureheads. But a lot of these guys whether the consumer base another they're not are in their work. But a master is doers and stern pots anymore. He's not hand crushing grain or, you know, he's not sitting on top of a 200 degrees still having to take proofs and temperatures like Jimmy would. It's all automated now. Right? We're master distiller really comes in handy is, how to remedy something that's going wrong. 22:18 Or how to make something maybe even better in that automated process. And that's the stuff you've got to learn. You only learn that by being here, Jim, you can go in and smell the fermentation say, I left that sitting there too long starting to smell spicy. Until I was here for a decade, and trying to actually listen and learn. I had no clue what that meant. But now when you go in, you smell it. And you can tell, oh, we've had secondary fermentation come in. It's kind of smells like vinegar and spices, pepper. And it's stuff like that. You just have to kind of be here and pick up 22:49 there for some reason Jimmy and dad don't. They don't teach you. They just figured you know, you listen, you learn, you know? Yeah, it's got to do time. It's experience. 22:57 Yeah. And you're gonna figure out the hard way. I 23:00 don't know if I'll ever make whiskey is as good as Jimmy did in his prime. I think. 23:05 I know, I'm boss, because he's my grandfather. But when you try that Turkey that he was making when cost was not a factor, he was probably losing money hemorrhaging money, probably by making whiskey the way he did. And that stuff in the 70s and 80s and early 90s. That stuff is incredible, right. And so my goal at the end of my apprenticeship is just to make some things happen, you know, if I can make something that's got a little bit of that old school, wild turkey phone, because we got away from it for a while. There's this weird time in the 2000s, where our stuff is a little bit inconsistent. It doesn't have that same kind of wild turkey. Overall flavor. It's not as complex as flavorful. It doesn't have that deep funk that some of that other stuff has. 23:47 Now we're getting I think back to that, yeah. When you taste somebody limited editions, like the Russell's limited editions are like that decades are 23:56 you man, you take some of these single barrels that that people come and buy some of the best of we've ever made in the history of artist story. And so I'm excited about getting to learn how to do it, but also trying to do that same stuff that Jimmy always did. 24:07 Yeah, I mean, that was actually one thing that I had asked your dad, when we started looking at the growth of the brand, how everything is pretty much that's not running at full bore, right? It's about three quarters capacity, something like that at the at the current time. So there's going to be a day when agent stock is going to be there, right? And you can be able to say, well, we're looking, I'll go fill a few barrels with 107, right? Because you can do a run and I'll just go fill 600 barrels, and then yeah, then maybe you'll be able to look at having those releases where they are reminiscent of those old days. And it could be eight year wild turkey one on one, you know, going into the barrel 107. And it might be able to pick up some of that that old. 24:48 So here's something I'll tell you. And really, I'm trying to tell your listeners 24:53 is that if you all want to see stuff like that, even if we have so here's how it kind of works with us is even if we do have backstage to be able to do that thing, we have to not necessarily get permission. But you know, you gotta convince your overlords 25:05 exactly, 25:06 there needs to be a kind of a program and a plan involved. And they really want to see that it's going to be worth their time, even if it's not sold that you know, needs to generate something. And so one thing that I like to tell bartenders, but it goes the same for people that would be listening to this somebody that's an enthusiast or considers himself a bourbon geek or bourbon nerd or collector. 25:24 If you want to see stuff like old incher proof, if you want to see everything going on to filter this stuff that I see people yelling about on bourbon Reddit or on people's blogs or on comments on Patreon and stuff. 25:36 Not only your online, purchase, use your purchasing power, purchase the stuff like that tell people when you're at tastings or at these events, you know, hey, I would really like to see some wild turkey from one on seven. Because that's what matters it. You never know, you could be talking to the right marketing person at the right time. And all of a sudden, because this has happened with us. I heard from this guy that we would really like this kind of thing. It's like yeah, we been trying to tell you that for 15 years, but the one right consumer the one right time of one right place can get something like that through. So we want to do all this kind of stuff like one on seven injury proof, we want to 26:10 go back to making you know, maybe some even smaller batches, then we're doing that are how proof maybe non to filter barrel proof, maybe something like the Kentucky donut legend series. 26:21 There you go. But 26:22 to be able to do that, you know, we need you guys to 26:24 There you go. So there's a there's a call to action for all the listeners out there 26:29 who will help us a lot when you all fight for the old school style whiskey that we want to make for sure. 26:33 There you go. So one of the things that we didn't ask when we started this, because typically when we have somebody we don't really need to watch Jimmy Nettie, because it's Jimmy and Eddie but with you all. And it's typically what we ask all our guests is kind of like, how did you get into bourbon? Like what was? Do you remember that first? Like time that you either consumed it? Or was it something that you know? I'm sure. Probably you come in here and actually just having to go to get delivered daycare here. Did you have to come to date here at the distillery 27:00 the day here for me, I think it was called like Keith James. It was a guy that worked under dad that I always used to hang out with and I was a kid. And I think he knew I got you a bug again. I think they keep knew if he had the basically the boss's grandkid with him that he could do whatever he wanted. It worked. So we just hang out. No, no daycare. 27:19 But if you want to go ahead first on the whiskey thing. 27:22 I mean, for me, I guess definitely in the past few years my my interest in it, my left words grown a lot and just getting very fortunate to taste a lot of different things. Especially a lot of our old school stuff like Bruce was talking about earlier, the stuff that Jimmy was making the 70 in the 70s in the 80s as some of my favorite stuff. And personally for me like Russell's 98 is one of my if probably my favorite product that we've ever made here before. I just tend to like that sweeter that vanilla Carnival in those Bourbons that we make here. So for me, I'm a big Russell's advocate. And the whole entire line I really enjoy 28:01 when I was 12 I know that's not what they want to hear. So 21 this is 28:06 all about being authentic. But when I was 12 28:10 around then I might have been 13 my brothers nine or 10 28:15 dad took us in gave us some whiskey and who you all probably know as bad and Jimmy is not really who they are at home. They're very stereotypical Southern patriarchs a family's stern don't speak. 28:30 disciplinarians. tough on you. And dad at home does not speak he hadn't spoken me probably four times my whole life except for maybe good game or bad game when I mean a 28:40 lot of it, there's There seems to be a consistent generational thing between the fathers in these families is 28:46 I'm the kind of the gregarious one so I'll just force everybody to talk to me, even if they don't want to 28:52 talk to a brick 28:52 wall. Yeah. But when, whenever I was about that age, dad took me and Jake, besides my younger brother's name, and 29:00 took probably 30 or 45 minutes to explain to us the importance of the product and kind of like his involvement in it. And he could tell he's very proud about a thing that I'd never seen him. He'd never been proud of anything like that before in his life, except maybe my mom like that's the kind of look he had on his face. And that's when I knew me, my brother both, you know, he never got into this. And at that time, I didn't want to do this. But I knew this is special. Because dad doesn't really care about anything besides us. His dogs, you know, maybe hunting and fishing. 29:32 He really cared about that whiskey. And I knew like, Oh, this is cool. Because before then All I knew is Jimmy's. Everybody's boss me because he had a big office in dad is not anybody's boss because he did not know he was just the norm. He smelled like everybody else smell it smelled like sweat, and motor oil. And like aging whiskey is the best smell of the world when I was a kid kind of smells like when you drove up to the stereo, what it's smelled like, but I he was a normal worker. So I didn't even know him probably 15 or 16 that like 30:06 Jimmy was different. He wasn't just like an employee. You know what I mean? Yeah. But even at 12 I knew whatever this was, it matters because it matters today. 30:16 So what was that? That turning point for you? Whether it was a few years ago that you said? Yeah, sure I can I can get into the family business. Because it sounded like you were lying 30:26 thing happened to me that happened to dad that happened to Joanne 30:30 Jamie was forced into his job. But my grandmother but we all took summer jobs. 30:37 Dad did not start off wanting to work here. He was playing football at Western hitchhiked up here. didn't have a car back then granny made him get a job at this story summer job he just never will have same thing happened to me. Basically, same thing happened to join. Whenever I was 21. I got a job here given tours. I had worked a million jobs and stuff farm stuff, working Kroger, the meat department organ and FedEx moving boxes. Dad was like withdrawal would be a lot easier. know everything at the distillery already, you can just give a tour and talk about yourself. It's like cool, and this little place right next to where we're at. So the one room home that they've kind of converted into an event space. 31:14 And I gave tours and thought I'm gonna make my 10 bucks an hour and give these tours and it'd be easy six hour day job. And I'll go back to Lexington and party up with UK kids. And about a month in. 31:27 I started getting questions from people, I started to get groups like probably the people that listen to this podcast. What's amylase enzyme? I've heard that before? Like, you know, why is your yeast proprietary? Why does that matter? Or you would get questions that I would have no clue what it was, which would be like, why do you all run your steals hotter? And why is low proof even a good thing? Because I just knew low proof. I went through proof or distillation proof. That's because that's what maybe says because tastes good. And then once I realized I don't have the answers that started to pick the brains. And again, it was a situation where you had two guys in your family. 32:01 They really don't open up about much. And then as soon as you start talking bourbon, all of a sudden you start to push Yes. 32:09 And that's when I knew like oh, I need to stick around here and at least figure out what's going on. Because this is cool. And this in that time I was still thinking maybe I'd go be an engineer or do something like that. 32:21 And it was probably the end of that summer when I knew I'm probably never gonna leave. 32:27 And now you know I'll never leave the bourbon industry. I love it the people 32:34 and the opportunities afforded my family's changed my fam the opportunity to travel around the world and meet people that don't look like us and sound like ghosts and it girl by ghosts it's changed me for the better a lot. So this industry's done a lot for us. And we're very appreciative. 32:49 So the other thing is, you know, being a little bit younger, you know, you're you're talking about going party back with the Lexington boys and something like that. So do you see yourself actually living here in Lawrenceburg? Or do you see yourself maybe coming from Lexington or Louisville everybody can eat from the city now love where I'm from. I love Lawrenceburg. 33:05 And it's a great place to grow up. It's great place to raise a family but you gotta you gotta have a Yeah, there's a little a little more I've got I've got to make the family before I move somewhere where I 33:16 tell me Tinder isn't like a big thing and Laura's knowledge. 33:18 It's pretty tough going out on dates when every single single woman within probably five years of me I'm either related to dated before I dated their sister, you know, it's a small community. Everybody knows me and everybody knows my best times and my worst time Yeah, and that's rough here. In South probably have to go to over Lexington. I'm not gonna say I'm never going to live here because Lawrenceburg town, it's home. Like I went to school at Anderson County. I went to the same high school that Jimmy went to same buildings and everything. I went to church right down here growing up in this little community called Tyrone that is the most little country church in the world. 33:56 And that it made me who I am. And I love it. Maybe when living in Austin, so it's gonna be awesome. Yeah, six 7000 people or whatever it is. Yeah, 34:06 the live music scene and Lawrenceburg just isn't the same. 34:09 Well, now there's a guy right down there Jared Stratton, who disagrees pretty good. Yeah. 34:15 take your word for it. 34:17 So who knows you could be here long enough and you'll get your own scooter down there. 34:21 That's good. It's pretty cool in about 50 That's what he said he's 34:24 got a license plate on and do some turn signals 34:26 I really want to because you know we know we're back in town I really want to get the the chief of police to come down here like fake arresting from drinking and driving on us. 34:37 That'd be a good one. What about you Joanne do you actually live around here? Do you commute like what's your what's your 34:42 went to school and Lexington I still live there right now. But think I'm going to be making the move to local by the beginning of the year just for work. bigger market. As you know, Lexington it's not super big, definitely a college town. But there's only so much you can do there. So I'm excited to make the move to global get to a little bit better, bigger city. Because I did grow up in Nashville. I grew up in a small town about 20 minutes south of Nashville so much bigger than Lawrenceburg. It 35:08 was like if they gave you an ultimatum gotta move to Lawrenceburg. We would 35:11 do it absolutely i mean granted Joe and made me live here. I get free breakfast every Saturday 35:17 enforcer to be complaining to me. 35:20 Like I'm spending the night at your house. I gotta get I gotta get out of here. 35:28 You've probably heard of finishing beer using whiskey barrels. But Michigan distillery is doing the opposite. They're using beer barrels to finish their whiskey. New Holland spirits claims to be the first distillery to stout a whiskey. The folks at Rock house whiskey club heard that claim and had to visit the banks of Lake Michigan to check 35:45 it out. 35:46 It all began when New Holland brewing launched in 97. Their Dragon's milk beer is America's number one selling bourbon barrel aged out in 2005. They apply their expertise from brewing and began distilling beer barrel finish whiskey began production today thousand 12 and rock house boozy club is featuring it in their next box. The barrels come from Tennessee get filled with Dragon's milk beer twice, the mature bourbon is finished and those very same barrels. Rocco's whiskey club is a whiskey the Month Club on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories from craft distillers across the US. Along with two bottles of hard to find whiskey rack houses boxes are full of cool merchandise that they ship out every two months to members in over 40 states. Go to rock house whiskey club com to check it out. And try a bottle of beer barrel bourbon and beer barrel rye. Use code pursuit for $25 off your first box. 36:37 So I want to kind of just kind of take it back, talk a little bit more about the whiskey right because both of your ambassadors you both know it inside and out. So kind of because this is this is, you know, every show is going to feature a little bit different kind of angle on the wild turkey story. And since you guys know the product sets really well. Let's just go through them just kind of real quickly to give our listeners kind of a different understanding that they wouldn't necessarily get from me Eddie or Jimmy when we're talking stories, right? So So let's start at the like the at one in one on one and kind of like give us the give us a typical spiel that you would usually do when you're out in Ambassador is the word we're 37:13 all good at when you do one on one. And that one's a little bit more difficult. 37:17 A bit different. Yeah. 37:18 So at one is a was not the original one on one is. So it was kind of a take on that that came out under the promo, I believe, regime when they were a parent company, and they had decided that they wanted to have a competitor for the 80 proof set. And like most 80 proofs, you know, surprise surprise to no one on this, listen to this, or 45 years old. And they had chosen to go down that same route. And so for a very long time, we had an 80 proof wild turkey that was in when people say 45 years old. Hopefully everybody knows that means it's probably all four years old. And every now and then a fat might squeeze in you know. And so when the best whiskey in for a long time in you've I've heard on this podcast, I'm sure you're aware that it's very hard to get Jimmy to say anything bad about anything that's ever happened the distiller he's a very, very proud company, man, very proud, very positive. And he just don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. And if you get him on Sometimes he'll say what he thinks. But he did not like that at PR never did. And now he admits it. And I think by the end of the ad, he used to tell people kind of like wink, wink, why would you drink the ad if you could get the one on one, because not only was it a four year old product, but it's proof down. It's just not what he liked. But then, after he bought us and I thought I think it's one of the smartest things they've done, they realized that we didn't care for the product. And that's probably a big reason why I didn't sail because when your two main phases of the company, they're on the road debt and Jimmy, when people ask him to drink the 80 proof, and they refuse outright, and go to something else that tells you all. And so they decided to let's change it. And that is one of the few things that they gave that almost full rein on it. He said, Well, I don't think that it's a problem that we have a proof down thing, I just think the whiskey is not good. And so we changed the product. And what you see now is at one is no longer any four or five, it's now going to be six, seven and eight year old bland average age right around six and a half years. And what he wanted is he wanted an 80 proof product that going to stand up in a cocktail. That's one of the reasons why I think one on one is so industry friendly is 101 proof. And we're known for having a big kind of in your face flavor. And it stands up if you add sweetener, you add modifier is you're going to still taste the whiskey or the raw. It wasn't the case for 80 proof. And I think it was just a 39:37 it's night and day better. And I've seen all the reviews come out that have compared the old ad to the 8181 just kicks its tail. That's one of the few things that was kind of in that Jimmy era that just I didn't think was a very good product. But I know it wasn't up to him to make it. So what you have now is that blend of 678 right at 81 proof is a large batch. So both it one on one American honey, these products, they're right around 1500 barrels mingled together for that one batch as opposed to like 150 or less on those small batches. And what we're looking for is kind of the classic wild turkey flavor profile, but a little bit lighter, a little bit, I guess brighter and a little bit more crisp, maybe fruity almost is the way I would describe it. I think it's a lot less of that kind of combo vanilla and a lot more like honey fruit, it's kind of a lighter thing. They it is a different blend than the one on one. I think that's something that consumers don't know. It's not the same bland, it's not the same age, they're completely different batches. One on One is older journal talking about that. And we do want at one to have a different kind of flavor profile 40:41 at doing that for a particular market. Because you know, talking about the bourbon aficionado of somebody that's semi educated. Did you really think that they're going to go for the 81 or they should probably not 40:56 bourbon aficionado, the only thing we would make was masters keeps. 41:00 That's not what everybody needs. Everybody likes different stuff. I'm not an expert in wine at all. I can't even really say one that will. 41:09 But 41:12 yeah, when I whenever I drink my bottle of two buck Chuck or whatever it is, I'm as happy as a lark. Yeah, just like I'm sure whoever enjoys like the 81. That's their go to drink their enjoyment. It's, it's for maybe a more of a beginning consumers for somebody that wants something low proof or something a little bit more sensible. 41:31 or four bar because there's a lot of bars that want wild turkey is their base product. But we don't want a one on one raw are not inexpensive, especially for well, or rail products. So if you go to a bar, and they have one on one or one on one, right as their, their bourbon and coke order or whatever, that's a good bar, it's been in a lot of money on their product. Most people don't want that they want something a little bit less expensive at ones for that kind of bar too. But we have seen a pretty big growth on the offspring to which is exciting because it like you were talking about a lot of the consumers that are going to be on this are going to be listening to this are going to want more probably Rare Breed spirit, private barrels, the limited stuff. 42:11 Nailed it. 42:13 We've got those consumers like they're already on our side and we make stuff specifically for them. So it's really fun to see when you walk into a liquor store. And there's somebody that's like, looking through what bourbon should I get? Oh, well, Turkey. Well, now at one's not at all anymore. It's wild turkey bourbon. So that's what they're going for. 42:29 And I think if you try that it does give you a kind of a good representation of what wild turkey can be. Yeah, one on one. And when you go to Rare Breed or like a Russell 2002, it just continues to be I think even more and more, quote unquote, wild turkey. I think at once like a really good entry point, maybe long branches to now. There we go. 42:49 So go ahead is a little bit of one on one. Yeah, 42:51 absolutely. So um, started back in like the late 30s. Early 40s is when we first started making one on one it was eight year one on one. One thing, one story that really stood out to me that Bruce told in the warehouse one day when we were doing a barrel pick was it really stood out because back then four year old bourbon was really what everybody was getting. And I guess when you put a big on a bottle and one on one, people kind of get drawn to it. So that's kind of what built our company. It's cool to see one on one still do so well. It's still our number one best selling product. Like Bruce said it does tend to be a little bit older. So Seven, eight, sometimes maybe a little nine is thrown in there as well. But for those long 43:28 old book 10 year old and this year, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Short on it, I guess because long range or something. There's a little bit older in this year. 43:34 Yeah. But for the longest time, all we were making was one on one and one on one. Right. And one of the coolest stories that I've come to know is that without the bartending industry without 43:46 off Prem on prem, we would just still be one on one and one on one right. We would not have Russell's we wouldn't have Kentucky spirit, we wouldn't have rare breed, because that's not what the market wanted back in the day. So it's really what Bill our company, it's still who we are today. One thing that I really respect about Eddie and Bruce is that they will never step on what Jimmy's done here. Like Eddie talks about a little bit earlier. One on one wall is we want to one Rare Breed will always be rare breed Kentucky spirit will always be Kentucky spirit. Those are kind of Jimmy's babies. But the one on one, like I said is a little bit older than the 81 tends to be a little bit spicier, a little bit bolder kind of that in your face bourbon. A lot of people tend to say it reminds them of their college days. Which is 44:25 funny. It's funny because we all we all talk about one way more 44:29 money than I did in college. I used to drink whenever I was broken couldn't steal anything. Yeah, Kentucky gentlemen a mountain dew. 44:34 I was a Kentucky Tavern guy. So I was Kentucky. But we wouldn't every once while I had a pet a buddy cuz I'm a nerd. Right? I work in tech. And so every time I had to go fix something form or reboot his girlfriend's router, whatever the fuck it was at the time. It and he would always be like, he was like, Hey, we're gonna go get a bottle one on one and drink it tonight. Yeah, yeah, we'd shoot it back then we're kind of like I was like, now I'd probably like savor and sip it. But back then we were shooting it right. I don't know. Understand. 44:59 I still you never know. 45:02 But it's I mean, that's probably one of the biggest the biggest things I get, especially working in the visitor center when people come in, oh, I drank this back when I was in college. Like, that's how I know it is what it is and why it's around but tend to be older, a little bit spicier. 101 proof, definitely stand up in a cocktail. Definitely our oldest product in my opinion, it's we're going to get that spice it kind of takes over your palate a little bit compared to a few other things in our portfolio that tend to be a little bit sweeter. 45:28 What's quite the statement to say it's the oldest one because you got a rare breed as well. So 116 is pretty easy to drink. No, yes, that's that's just that's just back porch. Country Day sipping whiskey right there. 45:38 One thing I'll say about the one one that I think is kind of cool that people probably don't realize when they look at the history. And I think this is like kind of in your face to some of the crowd that maybe listens to this podcast, one on one started off as a contract brand. So when people that aren't super educated about how contract works, yeah, don't Pooh Pooh contract brands, some of a really great artists pretty good. But what it is what how it kind of it all started, artist story was already making that recipe and something similar. A guy that went on a turkey hunt got some of our whiskey from our distillery that he was already purchasing, and fell in love with it and was one of the few people that probably ever existed that was wealthy enough to turn an inside joke into a brand. And it had become kind of an inside joke with him. And these guys on this hunting trip. Oh, this is Tom's wild turkey whiskey. And they fell in love with it. And then he started to promote it locally. And it was a contract brand. He owned it the label owned the name. And we made the whiskey for him here out of our distillery back when we were still Anderson distilling company when it was owned, I think even by the repeat. 46:42 And then by the time we were quote unquote, owned by the Austin Nichols company, Austin Nichols was then kind of merged or owned by completely different company. And so anytime when we were the label was owned by Austin Nichols. It was kind of a contract situation. And we were making good stuff out of here. So it was a good contract situation. And Walter, you just kind of took over we were the JT s brown distillery more so than anything else that was our big product. And really the only thing that we made back then that's still around, I think, although I think we made Dowling whiskey back then, too. And I think it might still be around, but I'm not sure. Jimmy thing seems to think it is. But all of his like facts and figures or stuff from from back when he was drinking 20 years ago. 47:23 I'm not sure he's not he's not hitting it as hard as he used to 47:26 know he's not not unless I make him. 47:28 Yeah. Because now it's YouTube that are taken over hitting it hard 47:32 on the right. But you know, once every four or five months, whenever we're all out somewhere, especially like he has certain places he really likes Chicago is probably his favorite market. Definitely. Because he has a lot of friends there. And an old school people are still around there. But when you get him with some old school buddies, he'll still stay out of 456 in the morning. He the mind is willing. And I think that the The palate is willing. He's just getting up here and age. Yeah. But if you if you hung out with him all day today and drink whiskey, he'd stay here with you till Friday, if you want to do. Absolutely. 48:06 So let's go hit hit a few other ones real quick. So talk about rare breed a little bit. Who wants to take that one? 48:12 Yeah, I mean, I'll talk a little bit about it. So it started back in 91. When we did the first batch, I think Eddie said we've made about 13 batches. Now. 48:20 There's like 12 or 13 different proofs that we've done, 48:23 that we've done. So making a new one every few years, but right now, it's going to be six, eight and 12 years old. So Jimmy really, really loves whiskey that is six to 12 years old. So he basically took those three years that he loves the most put together out of barrel proof. And that's what made Rare Breed so been around since the 90s. The previous batch was at a 112 point eight. So it's a small batch bourbon for us, that's about 150 to 200 barrels coming together. And then right at barrel proof, so chill filter it right a barrel proof not on any water to that product whatsoever. So it's a cast cask strength, or barrel proof bourbon, and right now it's sitting on 116 eight and it tends to be there a lot of my opinion there are a lot of flavors that go on in the rare breed just because it does have so many different years in it. When you get down to kind of the nerdy science part about whiskey and especially agent in a barrel different years produce different flavors so for me six is really really where you get that spice and the rare breed The A is kind of where you get a little bit more of that vanilla Carmel okie flavor and then that 12 is really getting kind of rounded out bringing more a little bit more of that sweetness kind of that that chocolate Enos I guess Eddie would say nuttiness on the back end of the product. Gotcha. 49:38 real cool. And then what we Kentucky spirit Russell's right, those are kind of still fall in the same right single barrel will actually Russell's doesn't technically have to be single barrel does it? Or is it? There's four Russell's products. So two single barrels and two small batches. configs spirits probably the next one, that we would go with every like doing the ambassador thing because we usually do like all the turkey stuff and then the Russell stuff. So rare breed and spirit kind of have a similar story where those aren't original ideas from me. And I think he just saw his friends do something and thought it was cool and did his version. So Rare Breed came about just two years after Booker's You know, that's not a coincidence. And but for the longest time, maybe mini nor, as far as I know, talking to Freddie Fred and, and remembering what I do from when I was a kid Booker never wanted to do a single barrel neither to Jimmy. They thought that it would be a disgrace to the brands because you would lose consistency and the right you can never be perfectly consistent barrel the barrel. And that's why most of the people listen to this podcast and myself included think the single barrel stuffs probably the coolest stuff that comes out all these distilleries because you can taste 50:47 every day, it's something different. You 50:48 could taste the barrel there Fred Minnick picked out or you could taste a barrel that the like I was just up in New York with the beast masters guys or whatever, or you taste one that an ABC store picks up, they're all going to be so wildly different, some super weird and funky some, just like retail some supply. And he hated that. And still doesn't completely get behind. Because the consistency bothers him so bad. And so it took him forever. So Booker's 89 Rare Breed 91 will bite and come out in 84. But took him 10 years to finally admit, he's playing stuffs pretty cool. Maybe we should do our version. And so he kind of wanted to do the same thing over did Elmer wanted to basically make the best version of that ancient age juice he could. And Jimmy wanted to go about making the best version of one on one he could and I still tell people that's the only way you're getting kind of the Oh gee, the original one on one just can tell you spirit in that retails all we can be at least eight years old, one on one in the bottles not anymore unless you're getting it from Japan. So if you want that old school, at least eight year old one on one proof, kind of flavor profile experience the way to go. It's probably 51:58 the least talked about least and over. 52:02 Most forgotten about product that we have on our line now that the Russell's single barrels have come out and a lot of people have gone to those with a private barrel program. And with rare breed been so good lately. 52:14 I really think people should should give spirit a chance if they haven't had in a while. It's a delicious product. And when you find that right barrel might be the best thing we make. Yeah, that stuff is so good. And I know some people get caught up in the will Russell's is 110. And it's one on one. Sometimes water helps. Sometimes you find that right? That right barrel that you prove it down, you know, 1015 proof points and that water opens it up. And it's just super tasty. 52:38 We're getting small bugs over here. 52:39 But I agree with Bruce definitely because I think Kentucky spirit is my favorite product and just kind of like our standard portfolio, but definitely doesn't get the love that it deserves for being eight year one on one kind of like that. Oh, gee stuff. 52:51 Where's me they change that bottle? 52:53 Yeah. 52:55 It could be the fact it could be the only reason people bought now is because of that goal bought onto it scares me because not very much of it is bought. And so I don't want anything to happen to that product. 53:03 Right? Well, you should probably just save like a few pallets of it in the back. So you can just go have your own little special releases of your own spirit. 53:10 Don't think that's not already done. Yeah. Here's a few, quote unquote, empty barrels out here, you know, there you go. 53:18 That's smart. So we're gonna, we're gonna get towards the end of this. So if there's any other products that you want to quickly touch on real quick, that kind of educate the consumers. Yeah, I 53:25 would love to touch on one on one raw, a little bit more. It's my favorite product that we make you're in, you're out because you're the right guy. But it's not because it's my favorite to drink that probably the single barrel raw or maybe a revival right now really like, but I think one on one rise very important to us, because it's very important to the bartending industry. 53:49 It's what they've traditionally kind of held as their own. And the thing that they've always kind of supported. Wild Turkey with is putting one on one rise, the bass cocktail and spirits are in Wales. And it only exists today in its current form because of our dinner. And I think this is a good story to tell your listeners, whether they work in the industry, or they're enthusiasts, or they run their own blogs or podcasts or whatever, that you all matter people that really the people that enjoy our product, and people that are passionate about our product they matter to us. So one on one raw went away for a while, we made very little raw for very long time, one day, kinda in the first season, spring, one day in the second season, fall winter, and 54:32 didn't have enough. Part of that is because we didn't forecast enough part of that is forgiven happen. So we lost six months worth of our on to accidental thing that our buddy Connie did. And we didn't have enough. So in the late 2000s, I think might have been around 2010, 2011, 2012, 54:51 right in there. 54:53 One on one route went away. And compared to Tom came out with 81. And nothing faith we can get by by just lowering the proof a little bit. And we couldn't get by a lot of people got very angry, especially people that were had to use that for decades is there? 55:11 Well, yeah, they're raw. If you ask for a Ronnie, that's what they're going to give you. And so 55:18 a guy by the name of Eric Asher, who's a good buddy of mine, now that he's almost like one of the family owns bars in San Diego, New York. At that time, I think maybe working in San Francisco started an online petition, first time I ever seen this happen to petition a supplier and also kind of speak out and say, if you are going to get one on one on one route, we're not going to carry any more competitive products. In he was the guy that kind of mattered, you know, he made himself mad, or he was loud and proud about what he did and took bartending seriously. And, and because of his passion, and because he got a lot of other people to kind of side with him and sign up on this kind of like online petition or group or whatever it was completely Listen, and they came out with a product after just two or three years of her being off the shelf. And it's we don't where it's not even an allocation anymore, we have plenty of it, and have had plenty of it for a year to the one on one or at least 56:11 in that's why it's kind of my favorite product, because it's a product that is very near and dear to me because I enjoy it so much. Because one on one rise, the only reason why we make any rat to begin with, because it's the thing that kind of makes money on the wrong side. But also because it's a good example of what a person that can be passionate can take what they can do what they can get done. You know, you had a question from from Dave Jennings earlier, Robert. It's another good example like this dude just made a hobby, his hobby into almost like a full time job. Even though he has another job in like, we talked about him in the company when we're doing meetings and stuff like did you see that thing he said? Or did you see that timeline that he did like bars? Like Is this right? Can we use this? Like, should we pay him 57:00 he's doing a better job than a lot of people we paid to do that kind of stuff. And if you're even if it's not wild turkey if you're listening into this, you're passionate about whiskey about bourbon. If you're a Buffalo Trace fan or a Jim Beam Stan, are you only like 400 year old family state will it? That's cool. Be passionate about that, almost to the noxious level and kind of good things happen. Because we like that we like when somebody shows up and gets that know that look I was talking about earlier the den Jimmy have on their face on their passion about something like when dad was talking about that whiskey. That's the kind of look that makes me excited when somebody comes in. And dad's like, I got something that we haven't even put out yet for Detroit. And you see that guys, I was like, you know, you think that at home the moon at that point. That's the best part of this job to see people get excited about what we do. 57:51 Absolutely. Well, that's good. That's I'm gonna go ahead and end on that note, because there's gonna be one that we're never gonna forget because we're all going to walk away with mosquito bites after this. 58:01 So I want to kind of quickly wrap it up. If there's anybody that people want to get in contact with you social media, go ahead and let them know so they can find you. Twitter, Instagram, 58:10 I'm Joanne Street. It's pretty basic on all social media aspects. 58:14 You said of yourself called yourself. 58:19 That was karma right there. 58:22 My Instagram is Russell's rock. I don't use social media very much. And I think my Twitter is Bruce Russell one on one. 58:31 I'm on Reddit too. You'll see me like pop around on bourbon Reddit

Part 3 of the Monster Series is out now, and Douglas picked the Beavcoon. I'm serious, I'm not even going to make jokes or say "As always this episode is brought to you by...".

Summary: In this episode we'll discuss how organizations can keep up, and what is expected in order to stay ahead of their competition.     Resources:   Blog: Services for a Connected World  Silicon Foundry LinkedIn: Steve Gotz Twitter: @stevegotz   COMMERCE NOW (Diebold Nixdorf Podcast)   Diebold Nixdorf Website   Transcription:   Amy Lombardo:                00:00                     Hello again. This is Amy Lombardo, your host for this episode of COMMERCE NOW. This year we've seen some significant technology trends, and we know the knowing your audience and increasing the level of personalization is key to the success to this ever changing digital world. But this can be easier said than done, right? So, in this episode we'll discuss how organizations can keep up, and what is expected in order to stay ahead of their competition. So, listeners I've got a real treat for you today. I'm joined by Steve Gotz who is an expert in working with executives to create impactful corporate innovation strategies. He has over a 20 year background working with a range of global organizations such as AT&T, General Electric, and Symantec, and one thing that you'll be most interested in is his recent work with Umpqua Bank, which we'll touch on a little bit in this discussion. So Steve, thanks for joining me today. Steve Gotz:                        00:49                     Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Amy Lombardo:                00:50                     Wonderful. So let's start a little bit with your background, and just really what keeps you up at night. Steve Gotz:                        00:57                     I think what keeps me up at night is relevance. So, my background. Quick intro. So, 20 years working with big companies like you said in industries that are undergoing change, and a really interesting thing is it doesn't matter what the industry is. Corporations are really in a race for relevance, and whether you're an entertainment company, whether you're a movie studio, whether you're a bank you have to think about ways to be relevant to your customers today and into the future. Amy Lombardo:                01:23                     So, that's an interesting comment. Okay. Race for relevance. Could you dive into that just a little bit more for me, or maybe give me an example of some recent work you've seen on how someone has caught up or stayed ahead maybe of the race for relevance? Steve Gotz:                        01:35                     Yeah. So, I think a really interesting one that I can point to is AAA. The automobile club, right? So AAA is an American institution, and their business model up until now has been predicated on your car breaking down on the side of the road, you're picking up the phone, you're calling them, and them sending somebody there to help you. Now, a couple of years ago they recognized that they're sitting on a dinosaur. That business model isn't going to exist 10, 20, 30 years from now. We have autonomous vehicles, when we have cars that don't break down with us behind the wheel, their business model needs to change. Steve Gotz:                        02:11                     So, what I think they've done is really interesting, right? So they're investing in infrastructure and thinking about how can AAA be relevant inside of the home, and I think that's a great example of an incumbent corporation that's saying, "You know what? We're going to face this head on, and we're going to drive this change. We're going to drive this disruption rather than waiting for us to be disrupted by the market." Amy Lombardo:                02:32                     That's such a great example because AAA is something that I just rely on so heavily in my own life, but I haven't thought about yeah what would be next for a business like that, or thinking back to the stories of like Kodak or Blockbuster or something. Why it did or did not work for them because their business models needed to change with the rate of pace of change here. Steve Gotz:                        02:53                     Yeah. So, the last couple of months for me I've spoken to maybe 200 executives. So these are CEOs, Chief Digital Officers, Chief Technology Officers, entrepreneurs about what's changing in their business, and what's really interesting is we've kind of gotten through this first era of innovation. So, every corporation talks about innovation being one of the most five, one of the most 10 important things that they're focused on. But if you look at the number of ideas that have come from an innovation lab that have found their way to production inside of big corporate, that number is pretty small. But I see happening now and with people are talking about is this second wave of innovation. This more impactful, this more intentional strategy to say, "We are going to build things that are going to change our business." Steve Gotz:                        03:41                     And change our business in a way that is going to make us relevant into and beyond the 21st century, and this is different, right? So I think you said at the beginning. When I started my career, I started at AT&T labs in the music industry, and this was at the beginning of the rise of digital distribution before we had iTunes. When we took this, basically AT&T invented something underlying technology to iTunes, right? Secure digital distribution. And when we took it to the labels, the music labels at that point, their response was really telling. The response was, "We're not interested in this. We sell things. We sell things that spin. We're never going to sell our music over the internet." Steve Gotz:                        04:20                     So, this was in the late 90s, and that was your classic Kodak response from an incumbent. Fast forward 20 years, and when I talked to bank CEO's, they don't talk like that anymore. What they talk about is, "Yes, absolutely. We need to change. We need to create new experiences, and here's how we're going to do that, and here's where we are doing it." Right? So, this idea that the banking industry is facing a Kodak moment, I'm not an advocate of that line of thinking, right? I think the banking industry is responding very differently than some of those other traditional industries that have been disrupted. Amy Lombardo:                04:54                     Right, okay. No, that makes sense. So, in some of my research on you, the work you've done, you've talked about this idea of the innovation theater, and is that what you were speaking to earlier, which is kind of this innovation 2.0? Steve Gotz:                        05:08                     Yeah, that's exactly it. So, if you look at kind of the last 10 to 15 years of innovation, it's very clear that companies are recognized they need to be more innovative. However, the tools, methodologies, and frameworks they've deployed, they resulted in what some people call innovation theater, right? It's really pretty, you go into the innovation lab, you see an interesting application. But then when you pull back the curtain to say, "Well, what's the path to production?" Right? How many customers are using this? That's where you tend to realize there's not much substance there. I think a lot of people have recognized that, and now they're thinking about, "All right. How do we do that?" Steve Gotz:                        05:45                     Right? So, we're seeing this kind of growing kind of drive. An increasing number of corporations that are sending out new company builders, new organizations designed to create things, and scale things up, right? Don't just show me something in the lab, show me how you take what's in the lab, and get it in front of all of our customers, and make us more relevant. Amy Lombardo:                06:08                     Right, right. So, the example Steve you're giving about this innovation theater, almost like the innovation smoke and mirrors, I'm also kind of thinking in banking terms now of what Chase has done with the everyday express branch, and Capital One with the café branch, I mean these are realistic examples of innovation- Steve Gotz:                        06:30                     Yeah. Amy Lombardo:                06:30                     That has now been brought to life, and the results and at least the studies show that consumers are gravitating quite well to these concepts. Steve Gotz:                        06:38                     Absolutely, and especially around banking. The Capital One café, it's a really interesting idea, and I think it kind of gets to this point that physical is still important, right? Being able to bridge digital experiences with physical experiences, that's kind of the next competitive battleground. And I think Capital One, Umpqua Bank, I think we ... And even Amazon with Whole Foods. I think we see an increasing number of organizations getting much more sophisticated at spanning the omni channel experience. Amy Lombardo:                07:10                     Right, right. So you mentioned Umpqua, and that is such an interesting case study here. So, tell us a little bit about the work that you did with that bank. Steve Gotz:                        07:18                     Right. So, Umpqua is really interesting. I got connected up with Ray Davis in 2015, and Ray is kind of an iconic figure in the banking world. He grew Umpqua from $100 million in assets to about $24 billion in assets, and he was really driving the industry, and created a unique customer experience, right? So, for Ray they're not called branches, they're called stores. In those stores, there's a very unique experience when you go in. A store are part of the community, a store holds coffee hours. People could use the store as a co-working space. So, Ray and Umpqua is really kind of the leading edge of the ideas that we're talking about today, and so much so the now Capital One is kind of borrowing some of the ideas that Umpqua pioneered a historic concept. Steve Gotz:                        08:04                     So, I got connected up with Ray in 2015, and in the first conversation he was like, "Look, the bank I built for the last 20 years isn't the bank that I need for the next 20 years, and I need some help to figure out what that new bank is." So, the mandate was figure out how to pivot the bank, right? Ray is a gentleman who likes to name things what they do, so it wasn't a digital adventures lab, it was Pivot us. Easier to pivot the bank. So, we started down this path, and what we got to fairly quickly was the banking relationship is a unique relationship. Money is such a loaded topic for people, for consumers, and 20 years ago the banker was your neighbor. Steve Gotz:                        08:41                     The banker knew your first name, they knew your kids, they gave them a lollipop when they walked into the store, right? There was an experience attached to that, and when we fast forwarded today, and we the state of digital he said, "It's impossible to create that really personalized digital experience right now with the technologies that were available." So, the question was how do we engineer the human in? How do we create that personalized experience through a digital channel? And that's what we set out to build from. Amy Lombardo:                09:11                     I think that's so interesting that you say that because a few years back we had this interesting study, that was how consumers could differentiate their toilet paper brand over their bank brand, and I say that. And of course, the source is escaping me, but- Steve Gotz:                        09:29                     Right. Amy Lombardo:                09:30                     But it was all around the fact that banking had become this emotionless interaction. No, really it was more the transaction. You need to move into an interaction here, and your examples here of putting the human element bank in is a perfect way for banks to be thinking about this. Can you give our listeners some specific technology examples if those are relevant and okay to [inaudible 00:10:00] out here? Steve Gotz:                        09:59                     Yeah. So, before I do that going back to your idea of kind of toilet paper brand and banks. Amy Lombardo:                10:07                     I know you didn't think that what was going to come out of my mouth. Steve Gotz:                        10:12                     If you kind of step back a little bit, and you kind of look at how the industry go to where it is today, what you see is in the pursuit of cost efficiencies, the customer experience has been lowered significantly. In the last 20 years, the industry has done what it should have done, right? Which is use technology to be more efficient. But in the active being more efficient, they've created a customer experience that's not that great, and by lowering that bar so far it's now become really easy for two kids in a garage in Palo Alto to create a new mobile banking experience that can run circles around most of the existing incumbents, right? Steve Gotz:                        10:55                     Now, the opportunity is to change that. There's no reason that two kinds in a garage in Palo Alto should be able to create a better experience. Incumbents can do that, which is where we get to this idea of, "All right. How do we create new teams? How do we create new environments to build these things?" And that's kind of really what we did at Umpqua. Ray's mandate to us was don't go give us some prototypes. It was figure out how to keep us relevant. So, that started with the customer relationship. We said, "How do we take that in-store experience that we have today that really personalized experience when you walk into the store, and create that, and then catalyze the experience in an additional channel." Steve Gotz:                        11:35                     So, when we looked at the technical landscape, what we said is, "The future of the industry is chat based. It's dialog based systems." So, let's think about how we engineer the human in, and do that at scale. Let's think about how we can deliver a chat interaction, a highly personalized chat interaction with a human. So, what we started building is eventually we started using WhatsApp, and some of the existing chat platforms. But very quickly we ended up building our own application primarily for security and privacy reasons, right? So, if you're using Facebook Messenger as a bank to service your customers, if you're using WhatsApp there are potential privacy implications that come along with that, that we were uncomfortable making. So, we ended up building our own technology stack. Steve Gotz:                        12:24                     And essentially what we did was we put a device in the hands of our employees, of our associates in the store, and said, "You now have the opportunity to chat with customers." So rather than make this a call center initiative, we pushed it out to the edge, and the response was phenomenal both from customers, and from our employees. Amy Lombardo:                12:44                     Now, was that a cross-channel application to where that chat feature was available both on mobile, and online? Steve Gotz:                        12:52                     Yeah exactly, and the idea of it. So everybody talks about getting customers to come into branches, and the question is we can't get customers to come into branches now. I don't think we're going to get them to come into the branch in the future. One interesting kind of dynamic that we observed is if the customer knows who they're going to see in the branch, who they're going to interact with, there's a higher tendency to come in. So, the idea was we can use the chat, right? We can use the online interaction with the customer to pull them into a physical experience. So, if the customer needs to have a more in-depth conversation. Maybe the retirement planning, 401k, 529 plan. Steve Gotz:                        13:30                     We can say, "All right. Maybe it makes sense just to sit down and have this conversation in the store, and we can get something scheduled." So, the human interaction becomes a really interesting way to pull people into the store for more engaged conversation. Amy Lombardo:                13:43                     I love the example you just gave me because it speaks so much to what we believe and strive to deliver to bankers, and retailers here at Diebold Nixodrf by delivering connected commerce. This idea that you have this seamless journey throughout various touchpoints that it doesn't have to seem like, "Oh, I'm only engaging in the branch. Oh I'm only engaging on my mobile phone." It's the same experience, and you're giving a perfect example of it right there. Steve Gotz:                        14:09                     Yeah, and I think the idea behind connected commerce is really powerful, right? It's the bank ... The bank almost becomes an orchestrator on the behalf of the consumer, right? The bank captures the intention, the bank understands what the consumer needs to do regardless of the channel, then it helps them do that, right? This is the core of what we saw a couple of years ago. This is what banking used to be. Now we have technology to deliver that experience in new and different ways at scale with efficiency. Amy Lombardo:                14:39                     Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay, so you just touched efficiency, and that was this one question I was writing down here. So, I've been looking in all these reports as to what are going to be these top pain points for bankers in 2019 and beyond, and what seems to be the top three of all those lists is around creating better operation efficiencies, back end transformation, etc., etc. Can any of your line of work? Do you see that holding true? Is that something that bankers are talking to you about as well? Are there some strategies in place that you can comment on to accomplish that, but still now lose that personalization aspect? Steve Gotz:                        15:13                     Yeah, yeah. So, I think there's ... A lot of people focus on kind of consumer facing, kind of innovations and efficiencies because that tends to be where a lot of the top line growth is. So, sometimes I think back offices operations doesn't get as much attention as it should, but I think there's an equally large if not more number of opportunities in the back office to do things better, faster, and cheaper while you maintain that front office customer experience. And I think ... Again, the idea of what we're talking about here, which is companies can create structures. Companies can create new types of environments to solve our problems. We can look for places where this happened, and I think one of those places would be with Liquid Labs, and the auto group in Germany. Steve Gotz:                        15:59                     So, the auto group is one of the world's largest retail conglomerates, they own a lot of properties. Six years ago they set up an organization called Liquid Labs, which is really designed to solve hard problems for the organization, and the model there was Liquid Labs would have a budget, they would go to a business unit and say, "Oh we see you're losing $150 million." And these numbers are hypothetical. "We see you're losing $100 million dollars a year on return shipments because we've had issues with the address. We can fix that problem for you, we can fix it in a discoverative way, and if we succeed you now have a new capability that improves your efficiencies." And in fact that's exactly what Liquid Labs did for the auto group, and they drove significant efficiency improvements just with the very strategic application of technology. Steve Gotz:                        16:47                     So, banks have those kinds of opportunities in spade. When we arrived at Umpqua, the number of operational efficiencies the word technology brought to bear was substantial. So, the question is what's the right portfolio, right? What's the right portfolio mix between kind of front facing, consumer applications, and back office? Let's make this engine as efficient as we can make it. Amy Lombardo:                17:12                     So, do you have a thought on that of what is that perfect balance? Is that the next project for people to turn to you on? Steve Gotz:                        17:19                     Well yeah. This is I think why kind of proclamations are dangerous. I think this is one of those places where I think it really depends on the organization, and the state of the organization. When we got to Umpqua, they have just been through a core transition, starting to think about other projects that need to get done. So, there were some strategy decisions and said, "You know what? We're going to really focus on that customer experience while we give the organization time to figure out what's going to be the internal digital transformation strategy." So, that was the right mix for Umpqua. I think you have other organizations that are fairly sophisticated on the front end where they could use focus on the back end efficiency. So, that's a long way of saying it depends. Amy Lombardo:                18:05                     Okay. Fair enough. All right. I'm going to throw this one out to you Steve. Steve Gotz:                        18:08                     Okay. Amy Lombardo:                18:08                     So, we talk a lot about this idea of retailing banking. It's not just banking, it's retail banking, and really these two industries converge together. Would you agree with that statement? Have any thought around is banking really retail banking? Steve Gotz:                        18:23                     Absolutely, absolutely. It's retail, and in my view the bank has a role in that, right? Today and into the future. The bank is an orchestrator of commerce, the bank is at the center of that experience. That's a powerful idea that I think is just coming to. Amy Lombardo:                18:38                     Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right. In any of the work that you do, do you find executives challenged with branch closings, and just trying to find that optimal footprint here, and just some of those challenges that are keeping them up at night around branch locations, and branch size? Steve Gotz:                        18:54                     Yeah, so this is a perennial problem, right? And the problem of a branch is a catch 22. Everybody knows this. The branch density is very high in America. That's for a reason. You ask Americans kind of how they choose their bank. At least up until a year or two ago, branch location, branch convenience- Amy Lombardo:                19:12                     Okay. Yeah, exactly. Steve Gotz:                        19:14                     Was one of the top choices, right? Now what's interesting is it's often the top choice, but when you look at the stats about how often do people go to the branch, they tend not to go in. So, they say it's important, but they don't go into the branch. So, this is the catch 22. You start shutting down your branches, you start kind of reducing your branch density, you start losing those deposits because customers have a fixation with the branch. The way we thought about tackling this was, "Okay. They say they want it, but they don't really go in all the time. So, what do they really want?" And what they wanted was a lifeline. What they wanted was a safety net, a connection. Steve Gotz:                        19:54                     So, we're like, "Okay. If we can give them that same kind of feeling with a dedicated digital banker, maybe the physical doesn't matter as much. Maybe we can reduce the density of the branch network, move to a destination branch strategy, take all of that OPEX off the books while keeping the people, right? And the people are important because they're really key to creating this personalized experience of that digital channel. And if we can do that, we can start right sizing the branch network while deepening the relationship with the customer at the same time. Amy Lombardo:                20:24                     Right. Oh my gosh. I have the perfect example just in my home life. Several years ago, my husband and I, we were going through some sort of refinancing, and we had to have a check physically signed by this particular ... The institution that was through our loan. I'm looking online and I was like, "Okay, I live in Ohio, and the closest is in New Jersey." And there was no options other than take this check physically to New Jersey. Nowadays I'm like, "Well, now we have check box features, and video tellers that I could have made that work." But several years ago luckily we just ironically we have a family member that lived there, and we happen to be visiting, and we went out of our way to go to this bank branch. Amy Lombardo:                21:09                     But it was such a hassle, and just to think how technology has come and crossing those channels, that had been no problem today. But that seems like eons ago, yet it was maybe only like two, three years ago. Steve Gotz:                        21:25                     I mean we've trained consumers to kind of have this unnatural connection to the branch. Amy Lombardo:                21:31                     Right. Steve Gotz:                        21:32                     Actually, that's not entirely accurate because at a certain point it was natural. Before a lot of the digital technologies we have today, that branch network was really valuable. We're getting to this point now where it's not so valuable we can right-size it, but the burden is on the industry to weening customers off that expectation, to show customers that we can deliver you the exact same experience through our digital channel, and it doesn't matter if the branch that you normally go to around the corner isn't there anymore because you're not going into it that often anymore. Amy Lombardo:                22:02                     Right. But of course it's just finding that balance of how often do you still need that physical interaction to potential create that emotional connection versus, "I just need the quick, easy transaction here." Steve Gotz:                        22:14                     Yeah. So the idea behind Pivotus Engage, which was the platform that we've built as over time if a customer can chat with the same person over, and over again they're going to develop a relationship, right? A professional relationship, and they're going to start trusting this person. And this is important because bankers used to be trusted. Over the last decade though, that trust has waned. So we're like, "How do we get back to that?" It's the same person, same conversation, interacting with the customer over time, and at a certain point the customer is like, "Yes, I need help here. I need help there." Right? Steve Gotz:                        22:47                     You can almost see the switch flip in the relationship where the customer starts to trust the banker on the other side, and that's when magic can happen because when you're in that trust space relationship with the customer, you can then advise, you can then recommend, you can then orchestrate commerce, right? Which is what we're talking about. Amy Lombardo:                23:07                     Yeah. Steve Gotz:                        23:07                     Then you can be able to play with that relationship, and if you can get there, that's where I think exciting things happen in the industry. Amy Lombardo:                23:14                     Okay. So, Umpqua came up with this or you helped with this engagement platform, and really the idea in general around experience platforms. Of course, there's obviously the personalization aspect, but what also is necessary to enable them? Steve Gotz:                        23:32                     I think you'd be from the top down of the organization. So technology is easy, right? I mean building the underlying tools to create new experiences. That's easy. Our experience is most people that are working in the bank, they want to do more. They want to help their customers. The want to support them. I think the critical element is the will, the drive, and the impetus from the top of the organization. From the board and the CEO to say, "We're going to do this." Right? "We're going to make an investment in creating new experiences for our customers. We're going to make an investment in retrofitting our technology organization so that we can create these new experiences." Steve Gotz:                        24:11                     I think without that kind of top down commitment, you end up with what we were talking about at the beginning, which is innovation theater. Amy Lombardo:                24:19                     Yeah. Steve Gotz:                        24:19                     Because the kind of change we're talking about, it takes time, it takes commitment, it hurts sometimes, right? Because people have to change. That only happens if that commitment is there within the C-Suite. Amy Lombardo:                24:31                     Got it. So, and maybe that's a good closing point here, and just getting that buy-in from the highest level. Is there anything else maybe you'd want to share with our listeners here on ways to think about how they're transforming their business? Steve Gotz:                        24:48                      Yeah. So, I think what I would leave people with is there's this emerging zeitgeist in Silicon Valley, which is we're entering the age of the big company, right? We're entering the age where having a good idea isn't enough. To actualize that good idea you need data, you need distribution, you need customers, you have capital. All of those things live within the four walls of every company out there, every bank in America who has these things, and I think the opportunity is to find creative ways to leverage those assets in new and different ways, right? I think it's somewhat presumptuous to suggest that the banking industry is facing its Kodak moment because I don't think it is. Steve Gotz:                        25:28                     I think the banking industry has never been better positioned to control its own future, and that's what I'm excited about, and that's what your listeners should be excited about. Amy Lombardo:                25:36                     Very good. Well Steve, this was an awesome conversation. I got a lot out of it, I hope our listeners do as well, and thank you of course for taking the time to be with us, and to our listeners for tuning into this episode of COMMERCE NOW. To learn more about this topic, log onto www.dieboldnixdorf.com. Until next time, keep checking back on iTunes or your podcast listening channel for new topics on COMMERCE NOW.  

We got the gang back together for the 100th Episode of the JustGoBike Podcast! Alumni members, fan favorites, and more! Thank you for 100 episodes of bikes, fun, beverages, and pie - we never thought we would make it this far and now you're stuck with us for another 100+ episodes! So come for the bikes, stay for the fun, and leave with a smile!

There's been lots of talk lately about why brands should think like, and even become, media companies. But how do you actually build a media company? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Frank Gruber shares the story of how he created Tech Cocktail and eventually transformed it into TechCo, a startup-focused media company that was recently acquired. From how to develop and grow and events business to the best way to build a robust content engine and strategies for building an audience, Frank covers in detail the strategies and tactics he used to transform TechCo from a scrappy grass roots network of startup founders into a thriving media business. Listen to the podcast to learn more about Frank's journey with TechCo and what he advised the big brands that he consults with today on when it comes to thinking like a media company. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to The Inbound Success podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth, and today my guest is Frank Gruber, the founder of Established as well as the founder of TechCo. Welcome Frank.  Frank Gruber (guest): Thank you, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.  Frank and Kathleen recording this episode Kathleen: Yeah. For those people who are listening, I have been chasing Frank down for weeks if not months to get him on this podcast- Frank: Sorry. Kathleen: -because, selfishly ... No, no, no. It's worth the wait. Selfishly, I have been wanting to pick your brain because you are somebody I met several years back in a networking group and in the time since, you grew TechCo quite a bit as a media platform, exited, and now you have a new company. But the reason I was excited to interview you is that I'm at IMPACT, and really, my main focus is transitioning us from an agency-first brand and business model, to a publisher or media company-first model. There's so much I want to learn from you and I'm super excited to dig in, but before I do that, tell our audience a little bit about yourself and your background and how you came to be where you are right now. Frank: Sure. Yeah, sure. I have kind of a product background to begin with. Years ago, I was doing product development for bigger brands like AOL and Tribune - a lot of it very content driven. I got into content and was one of the really early bloggers out there and had a site called Somewhat Frank and was a first contributor for Tech Crunch and then started a company called Tech Cocktail. The whole idea behind Tech Cocktail was to better connect and amplify the local communities that were out there. As you saw a rise of these different communities where there were startups happening and not a lot happening to kind of tell the story. So more or less, I started doing events, which turned into an online component, where we started TechCo and we grew that audience over the last decade from zero to millions of readers all around the world. Then, just recently, this last January, it was acquired by an international publisher. So, it's been quite a journey. A decade "instant success" or whatever you want to call it. Kathleen: Right. Frank: Along the way there was a lot of ups and downs and, obviously, we learned a ton because we were really pulled into the direction that we went, because it really started as very much a grassroots thing, and side hustle for me, because I was doing website development for AOL and Tribune, at the time. So yeah, here we are now, and I've kind of transitioned out of TechCo, and that's kind of running, and continuing to grow, and I've got a new company called Established, which is more or less helping brands with innovation slash startup programs. Helping them to better connect and create that innovation which is tough to do internally at big companies, and so we're helping kind of take some of the tools that we learned ... tools, and kind of lessons learned from building a media company, and taking those things, and now putting them onto a bigger stage with some of these larger brands, and helping them along the way, too. So, that's what we've been up to. Kathleen: That's great, and what I was particularly struck by, when you and I spoke about doing this interview, was that we're kind of navigating two different sides of the same coin. So in my case IMPACT has a long history as an agency, and we're trying to build this media company, and now you're really transitioning into an agency model. I think if we met in the middle, we would have the Wonder Twin powers. Frank: That's so true. And it's funny, I mean it's such a convergence right now, and that's what we started to see when we were at TechCo, we were actually behind the scenes, doing more or less agency type work, for brands. And some of those clients we were able to continue to work with, with Established, you know, the folks that acquired TechCo wanted to continue to grow that media component, not so much muddy the water with the different components of creating a, more or less a consultancy, plus running and growing a media company. It's interesting. We're seeing that across the board. You're seeing agencies acquire, or grow, media arms and vice versa. So I think it's really interesting to see, and now we're trying to help some of those bigger guys, now, with the different tactics we learned along the way. Kathleen: Yeah, in our case, we were very much inspired by the two Joe Pulizzi books, Content Inc. and Killing Marketing. Joe was the founder of the Content Marketing Institute, and he's written these books and Killing Marketing is about why you should actually start as a media brand, kind of like you did, and build an audience, and then you're audience will essentially tell you what your product should be through the feedback you're getting. Frank: Yeah. Kathleen: Yeah, and if you create products that come out of that feedback, you're almost guaranteed to succeed. As opposed to the other way around, which is the way most of us do it, where we build the products, and then we're like, "Well geez, now I need to build an audience," so I thought that was pretty interesting. Frank: No, it's so true, it's more or less ... that's how we believe, too. So we started by hosting events to showcase startups all around the country. And we, at one point, were doing 100 events. It's very much a grassroots movement, where we gathered hundreds of thousands of people together, over the course of a year, and more or less we were building this groundswell. And that was our Petri dish of people that we could just send and say, "Okay what is our next thing?" That's how it kind of turned into a media company, is we started producing content, and going that direction, and so I can totally see that. It's all about building that audience, and once you have an audience, you're able to do a lot. You can build a media company, or you could build a product, or you could offer other services, or whatever it is you're trying to do. That's the thing. Bottom line, we all had the opportunity to do that. Whether it be through this, or through a podcast, or through an online blog, or whatever. Kathleen: That's so true, and that's what we're telling all of our clients, is that you need to think like a media company to really be successful at marketing. It's kind of table stakes now. Frank: Right. From Tech Cocktail to TechCo Kathleen: What I would love to do is rewind the clock back to the very, very early days of Tech Cocktail, and I want to start just by asking how did you get people to these events? If you're starting with events, the holy grail is butts in seats, whether those are real seats, or virtual seats, or what have you. But, especially because you did events in different cities, how did you get that word out, and what was your grassroots engine? Frank: Right, yeah. So I think to begin with, it started very simply as a local thing. It was Chicago, and D.C., and then a couple other cities, and that was it, and it was really focused on getting that local word out. For that, we were leveraging our own networks. This is 2006, 2007 timeframe, so if you think about it, there wasn't the social movement. That was just the beginning, right? Of Web 2.0, and the social movement, so ... haven't heard Web 2.0 in a while. So more or less, we were leveraging that wave to be able to get the audience to come out, and so, yes it was a lot of little things, like blocking and tackling, or whatever, but also it was the opportunity now, that there were only a few people on Twitter, and there were only a few people using LinkedIn, and there were only a few people using YouTube, and some of those other technologies, and we leveraged those to grow an audience organically. And so I think that's how we started. Once we started getting into the situation where we were actually doing events all over the country, there weren't those advantages ... 'cause at that time, I think that was an advantage, to use those tools, and obviously time's moved, and things change, and so we had to continue to be flexible, and change as well, and so we started leveraging email as well. We started a big push towards notifying people via email newsletters and things like that in their local area. So, very hyper local about the next event that's coming to Detroit, or Denver, or whatever. I think that was a big part of our success as well, was we were able to get to people's inboxes, and I still feel like that's one of the number one places that you connect with people. Even with all the Snapchats and the Instagrams, or whatever, out there, I think that email's still pretty powerful. And so I think that's what we were able to leverage. And then also, just connecting with our networks, and being able to do the, "Hey, we're coming to town," every time we did it, and kind of connect with the right people.  I think where it got really difficult was when we started to do back to back to back. We were literally at one point doing events every single week, maybe sometimes in different cities. Kathleen: Wow. Frank: And that got to be tougher, because it's harder to duplicate the efforts, even if you create systems or whatever, you miss things, right? You can't do the same kind of VIP treatment that you would on every single event, and that's where it got really difficult. And we learned from that, so obviously scaled it back, and continued on our efforts on the online side. But, we also learned that as that was happening, everyone was creating spaces. Like there was now hubs in every market, like the 1871s in the world popping up, and accelerators in every single market, which didn't exist 10 years ago. And so all these different places were already converging people, and so the point of bringing the events together, and bringing people together was to create that convergence, and create the collisionable moments that happen and there's still a need for certain kind of events that connect people, but it was becoming table stakes, in that there was stuff happening everywhere, so we started to scale back the events, and really push towards the online component, when we saw that happening. And I think it was the right move for us, and ultimately, we were able to move all our offline events into an online program called Startup of the Year, which we're actually still running, to better showcase startups from all around the country. Kathleen: Now is that, that's an awards program? Frank: Yeah, it's a program that tries to find the most interesting companies all over. It's very inclusive. We look for really diverse startup founders, as well as teams, and geographically diverse as well. So yeah, it was basically our kind of community slash events program, that we were doing forever as Tech Cocktail, and we rebranded as Startup of the Year, and we're continuing to push ahead with that. It's about a ten month program. Kathleen: And how do you identify those startups? Do you have a network, or are they applying? Frank: Yeah, so they're applying. It's a little bit of everything again. So similar tactics, in that we were leveraging emails before, we're still now leveraging emails. We were able to continue the email focus from Startup of the Years past, as well as our personal networks, as well as reaching out to different local community leaders. We're part of something called the Startup Champions Network, which is basically ecosystem builders in every market, and we partnered with them, as well, and more or less, trying to find those local community leaders that can help spread the word is a big part of it, but also, we're still leveraging social. There's certain components of social that work really well. Some that we used in the past that worked great don't work as well anymore. It's interesting to see that trend. We even saw a trend in things like Facebook, which for a long time was driving a significant amount of interest, and whatnot, and engagement, and now it's gone to pay. You can't really get anything found unless you pay, and so that's totally different. Think about when we first started using Facebook. It wasn't that way. Things bubbled up and you were able to find things. Now the first thing they offer you is, "Oh, would you like to boost this?" You know? And you're like, "Well, no! I posted it, I thought that was all I needed to do!" So now you're seeing more people throw more money towards that effort, in a really strategic way, too, there's even companies that do it. I don't know if this is a thing you want to talk about or not, but there are literally companies that are paying for the demographics that they want, by leveraging companies that will get it for them via paid advertising on Facebook. So, you're a media company, and you wanna connect with the millennials of the world, you can literally pay your XYZ company, I'm not gonna name names, to get that exact traffic, and pay them thirty grand a month to do that. So, very eye opening. To me, I started to realize, there is just nothing pure in this world anymore. Literally. Kathleen: So true. Frank: Everything's pay, so it's funny to see that, and it was kind of a big lesson for us to learn, 'cause we were very organic in our growth and promotions and everything, and started to realize that, "Wow, there's a lot of people paying for this." Kathleen: No, we always say marketers ruin everything, and I think it's really true. So, going back one more time, you mentioned you had all these events in different cities, and you were leveraging your personal network. So did you actually have either team members, or brand ambassadors in these different locations? How did you handle covering all that territory? Frank: We didn't. We didn't have people in each market At first, we would literally go around the country, almost like touring, to each city, and as before we did, we'd reach out to anybody we knew in that local market, and connect with them ahead of it. And that worked for a while. Then once we started get the point where we were doing events in a ton of cities, that didn't scale anymore, so we basically created an ambassador network, right? We created a group of people, locally, that were our eyes and ears on the ground, carrying the, at the time, the Tech Cocktail, then TechCo flag, and continued to basically help create the events, get the excitement around them, and get people, obviously, to attend. And so we had some great brand champions in Albuquerque, and Boise, and all these different, Detroit, all these different cities along the way, and that really helped us a ton. At this point, to be able to scale to every market, and have people locally, I mean you need ... first off, you need a Groupon or LivingSocial sized sales force, when they were at their peak, right? When they were literally selling locally to be able to host these events to get them to be covered. And then you also need the other side of it, which is the marketing side, to get people to know about it. So, I think that wasn't, for us, scalable. We hadn't raised any funding to do that, and we didn't raise funding for quite some time, actually. We boot strapped for six years, and eventually took funding, and that's when we were able to scale it a little bit more, but we felt like that approach of having local people on the ground that were full time people, was just not a scalable thing for us. It's just too capital intensive. So we started with, okay, we've got a head of marketing slash events that then would manage of an army, more or less, of our ambassador network. And then that's kind of the approach we took. Some markets worked great, others didn't. I mentioned some of the high, like shining stars, and already some of the cities that did great work, and some, they did great for a while, then they got kind of pulled in, because of life, and work, and everything else, and so we had to continue to try to find their backups, right? And continue to refresh that network, which ultimately was a full time job, because you were constantly trying to find and refresh, people are changing roles, and having babies, and moving, and doing all these things all the time, and so it was difficult to keep a hold of, unless you had one person, or two people, working on that continuously. More or less community development, right? And continue to manage it. Kathleen: Right. And how did you structure that brand ambassador program? Because I would imagine that there has to be something in it for them, otherwise you can't really rely on them. Frank: Well. Kathleen: Any advice there? Frank: No, we tried everything. Every kind of setup you could. Because we didn't know. We were going into it blind, like, "How do we scale this? How do we get people on board, and continue to maintain the heart, right? And in it for the right reasons, right? So we struggled a little bit, to try to figure that out, and we tried a number of different attempts, and ultimately ones that worked the best were ones that just wanted to do it because of the good of the community or whatever. It's hard to find those people all the time. Especially in every market. And the ones that were doing that were now ... things started to be created, new things. So all of a sudden there was startup weeks, and there were startup weekends, and there were XYZ, whatever, meetups. So people that were those doers started to get consumed with all these things, and so we were, in some markets, we were really early, and others we weren't, so more or less we had to figure out, "Okay, what's the carrot that gets these people motivated and want to be a part of it?" And in many cases, the ones that were our best were just in it for the love of their local community and wanted to do the best thing they could. We actually started a pay model, where we literally were paying. "Okay, you go raise the money for it, and keep it. We don't care." We just wanted to do the event. So there was all these different challenges with that program, because we iterated and iterated and iterated, and interestingly, we ultimately, at the end of the day, said, "Okay, do you want to continue to do this kind of thing? We're not doing events anywhere all around the country, like we were, anymore, so if you want to continue to do it, do it, if you don't, that's okay." And it's funny, the ones that were in it for the love of the game, continued, and the rest were like, "We're done," kind of thing. And that was okay. We turned everything to an online competition, with a big culmination event at the end of the year, called Innovate Celebrate, which is coming up here in Boston in October. So things change, we had to continue being flexible. We did this for over a decade. So, if you think about what has happened- Kathleen: Yeah. Frank: There's no iPhone when we started. Like, think about that. Like ... it's nuts. And so, it wasn't that long ago- Kathleen: It's amazing. It's amazing how much it's changed. Frank: Right. Exactly. So- Kathleen: Yeah. Frank: This was like, at the beginning, a place of convening people, and then ultimately, that got created by a lot of different things, you know, with the different social networks, and different mobile apps, and everything else. So, we kind of continue to evolve, and we had to as we continue to grow. Kathleen: Now, let's just talk a little bit about the online media platform because you really built out a publisher site, or at least that's what it looked like from the outside, 'cause I spent some time on the site. There's a lot of great content on there. Can you talk me through ... You mentioned how you started. You started recognizing that people were creating spaces online all the way through to what it became. Frank: We had our own team to begin with, right? To begin with, we were writing all the content. At one point early on, 2010, up to ... we started in '06. So up to 2010, I was even writing up to five articles a day, which ... That was right when we first started doing it full-time. It took a while to be a full-time thing, and then we started ... remember hiring our first editor because I was like, "I need help managing all this." And then that turned into, "Okay, we need more writers." And at a certain point we had 10 or so writers and editors doing their thing and covering a lot of content and producing a ton. But then we realized like, in the media space, it's never enough. Even if you're a very niche publication, you still ... We got kind of pulled into from the offline events piece where it was very sponsorship driven, we got pulled into, "Okay. Now how do we generate revenue online?" Right? Because we're now doing most of our stuff online. And so, yes there's Google advertising, and there's all these different components out there that you can do to kind of generate revenue, affiliate is one of them. All that stuff is very driven by numbers. You need to have an audience - a huge audience to be able to make it work right. Or a very niche audience that is looking for exactly what you're offering. And so our content was so spread across startups, and innovation, and across cities, right? So it was very broad as far as that goes, but very much focused on innovation and tech. And there's a lot of that kind of content. And so, we were trying to really differentiate in the local space, and so, in the local space we were trying to continue to cover these things as the heartbeat in a lot of the local communities. Anyway, long story short, we got pulled into content and content marketing. And so we started to work with different larger brands that we were working on, on the offline stuff in the events, and they were like, "What else do you have? What else can you offer? And how could we reach a bigger audience?" And so we started working with them on some of our first content-marketing pieces, and didn't even know what it was at first ourselves. We were just like, "Well, we're going to just start writing the content, and it'll be brought to you by you, and it's gonna be similar content, but it'll be about this topic or whatever topic we decide, and we can do a whole series." And I still remember some of the first meetings with our team like, "What are we gonna do? How much are we charging?" But we figured it out, right? So we figured out what we should do, what's kind of the going rate, and ultimately, we were able to work with a number of bigger advertisers that we already worked with on events, and continue to extend that relationship online. And it turned into yearly contracts. In some cases it started as like, "Okay, here's a 10-article series for X amount." And now it's like, "Okay, now we're going to do a full year of content about this." We'll kind of space it out. And at one point, I think we had one that was like 54 articles. I'm like, "Wow. That's amazing. That's a really long deal." So, it was exciting and that's kind of the direction we ended up and ended up going, and we learned a lot about that along the way. But what we learned also is that, even with that, you're continually under this gun of how do we show metrics? So we had to find a metrics tools that showed not just like page views, engagement, and a lot more ... the answer if you're not CNN.com or something like that, right? Like we were trying to compete in so much space with them, as well as even some of the social networks are doing similar things than ... Basically, we were competing with everyone for attention, right? And so, but this was very niche kind of content. So more or less, it was a game where we always had to get bigger and grow and grow and grow, and we leveraged a lot of tools. Facebook was one of them. Twitter was one of them to begin with. I think one of the hidden gems out there is Flipboard. I don't know if you're familiar with it. If you're doing content, you should be on Flipboard because it can really engage a lot more users that don't even ... you may not even realize they're out there. Everyone's on their phone all the time and they offer really great interface to flip almost like an RSS reader, but a beautiful interface. Kathleen: Yeah. Frank: There's a lot of tools like that, that are out there that we kind of continue had to evolve and find because as you continue to grow, you always are trying to find more eyeballs, more or less, and as you try to compete with the larger folks out there. Kathleen: So you talked about how you were going to be able to demonstrate value to your sponsors and your advertisers. Frank: Yes. Kathleen: And kind of the different metrics that are out there to measure that, and I'm curious, when you would enter into conversations with prospective sponsor advertisers, what did those conversations revolve around in terms of, hey, this will be a successful partnership if what, for them? Is it if we get X number of leads, or was it engagement, or was it page views? What were those companies looking for from you? Frank: It was a mix, and that's we, we worked kind of backwards. So based on goals. So a brand may want to just have a great series of content out there about personal branding, right? And they wanted that because it was in line with the campaign that the were doing. Right? And so we worked backwards, like how do we create great content that fits our audience, that resonates well, is going to get great engagement? And we created a whole content calendar around how that would work. And then that's what we would present. Like, "Okay. This is what we're gonna do. This is what we think's gonna work. And it's gonna tie back to your campaign which is all about personal branding because that's your latest campaign or whatever." And that's just an example, but you get the idea. So then in the bottom of it, we would say, "Okay. This is brought to you by XYZ personal branding, blah, blah, blah, and link back if you want more information." So obviously those links were important to the brands, but at the end of the day in many ways, the minute that they're reading the content, and if there's some way that ... Sometimes we would incorporate the brand that were actually the sponsor of that content, and a lot of times you wouldn't, though. It just felt like we didn't need to, right, because they were already included in this brought-to-you-by kind of capacity. So, it just depended on what they were trying to do. We didn't love doing the content marketing that was to drive leads to a lead-gen form kind of thing like that as much. It was harder to do. Harder to measure. The audience that we were getting weren't sure if they were going to do that or not. It depended, you know. And we didn't want to be held to like, "Okay. We need to get XYZ brand to get this many signups," right? Or whatever. That made my heart race just even talking about it, like, I don't want to. Because ultimately, the minute we put that out there, we wrote that content for them about that specific thing or about that whatever it was, we already wrote the kind of the advertisement content for them in some ways. It wasn't. I mean, it was great content regardless, but we wrote almost like the advertisement piece if you were looking at it in line with like, "We're going to create a commercial," right? Well, the commercial is the content at this point. And we already created that for them which has value. So that's where, as a smaller, you know when I say smaller, we still had millions of readers, but smaller compared to the TechCrunches of the world or maybe CNN Money, or I don't know what their traffic is, but ... or Box. That's a good example, right? Verge. But they've also raised millions of dollars, like hundreds of millions of dollars. We did not. We raised two and a half. And so more or less, we were trying to compete in that same space, and the way to work in that space was more or less to add as much value. So we were trying to create the content, and then offer them the content to use. Like, if they wanted to use the content on their own site, they could feel free. We don't care. It's great. So we were almost like, in some ways, a content agency for them, and doing that allowed them to then use it in other ways. It tied in with the campaign that they had. They were getting online traffic and awareness from just being out there on Tech.co at the time, and then more or less, it was a better offering than a lot of the other folks were offering. Kathleen: Now that's really interesting. So, you had these partnerships, and it sounds like what you were selling is you creating the content for them and then publishing it, but also giving it to them to do what they wanted. Were there cases where you had sponsors or advertisers who came and said, "We want to do a five article series, but we want to create the content and give it to you for publication?" Frank: We have, and we worked with them on that. And we would actually have obviously final editorial approval on everything on what it would look like, but in that situation, that was even difficult to us, if they were good writers, and had great content. A lot of them did. Frank: So, the tough part of that was when they didn't have great content. And that- Kathleen: That's why I'm asking. Frank: Now we had an awkward conversation to have, because you're like, "Well, this isn't gonna necessarily fit for our audience because the ... you know." So you kind of have to be up front and say, "Okay. We're going to have to rework this." And we did, and that was the only way we could get it published on our site 'cause it wouldn't make sense ... Not to mention, we were really focused on making sure everything that was on Tech.co was very authentic in voice, and didn't rub our audience the wrong way, because our audience was our gold, right? That was what we had, and had to offer. And so, yes they were paying for the content, but they also were paying for this very engaged audience globally. So it was a mix, right? So they were getting a little bit of, almost like a value-add for being able to leverage the content in other ways as well. Kathleen: Now did you have, for the non-sponsored content portion of your site, did you have outside contributors who wrote for you, or was it all staff writers? Frank: Yeah. When we started with a paid staff, we realized that that was really hard to scale faster and grow. We got to the point where like, okay, now we've got to like ... How do we grow from here to here? How do we do that quickly? And so what we did, we started our contributor network which is similar to our ambassador network, but it was online, and it was writers. And so, we ... I don't know if you want to call it a mistake or whatever, we opened it up very quickly, and said, okay. We're going to put it out there, and got thousands of people to apply. We had so many writers, we didn't know what to do with them. And so then we had to reign it back in, and I think at the end of it, they don't have a contributor network anymore at TechCo because this is a lot to manage. Like now you've got a whole group of people that you're managing, and they're constantly asking about, "When is this going to get published," and "How is that going to go?" And you're going back and forth. So we had a whole team that managed that component of it. We had about a hundred and something writers at the end which were really solid and we could kind of depend on. And it would also go in spurts, kind of similar to what I was saying with the ambassador program. Some would write for a long time, and then all of a sudden, life happens. You know? And now they're like, "Well. I gotta take a break for a second." But these were all unpaid writers. They were doing it for the love of the game, to have bylines out there, and to be able to contribute. Some were local focused, some were national focused, some were focused on just the thing that they're really good at, and some were even about brand marketing and things like that. It just depended on what they were interested or excited about. And so, we accept a lot of contributors, but one of the things we had to watch out for is fake people, actually. We had a fake people problem, and I think the Internet does. It's still, in this day and age there are ... I don't know how many times you get these, but I get some random Facebook friends lately, and they're not real. You can go back and trace it. They're using someone else's picture. We've had people use other peoples' pictures. We've had people ... You know there was a lot of that kind of stuff happening, and we basically had to really hone that network into, "Okay. We're going to get on a Skype call with you, and find out if you're real." And we're going to have to pass that test, and then work with them to make sure that these are all real. And that was a lesson learned, and obviously we quickly removed any of the content that we found was not real. Kathleen: Yeah. It's interesting. We're in the early days of creating a contributor program, and definitely learning as we go. We have some contributors who are just rock stars. They're great writers. They're super reliable. And then we have others who are really smart but maybe take more handholding to get their articles to the point where they're ready for publication. And so, I've been working with my head of editorial content on how do we ... Let's look at the value we're getting vs. the time we're putting in, because in some cases it's just not worth it. Frank: Right. So the company that acquired TechCo, they did that analysis. The company's called MBF Global. Great company out in the UK. If you haven't heard of them, they're growing like crazy. And more or less, they were trying to build this media arm, and that's why they acquired TechCo. But they did that analysis, and they're like, well, it doesn't make sense. Right? We're going to be going in this direction, and we know what direction we're going to go in. It was a staff of people managing that from our side. We looked at it, as a funded company, and our goal is growth, right? Continued growth. And the best way to do that in the most capital-sensitive way, was to do it this way, right, and have these unpaid contributors that we're managing vs. having ... If we had to pay 100 contributors to write for us, that was just not the move to do. And so, it just made sense. And so I think, it just depends on your situation. If you have the time and effort, and you want to be able to do that, manage that group, then it makes sense. And if your goals are growth. But if it's a specific voice ... 'cause you're going to have now a lot of different voices, and a lot of different opinions about what should be going out and what shouldn't. And we even had some that we had to kind of pull back because they were too critical about certain companies we liked, or brands that we ... These are not all op eds. Now in this day and age, with political stuff, we're like, "Whoa. We can't, we're gonna have to keep an eye on that stuff as well." So it does open up just a Pandora's box of things you need to watch, watch out for, man. Kathleen: Yeah. Now you mentioned that your kind of North Star was growth, and as a media company, I know I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Obviously growth is synonymous with audience size, subscriber base, like especially owned audience. Can you talk a little bit about what some of the most effective levers were for subscriber growth for you guys? Frank: Yeah. To begin with events, right? We were able to get folks coming to something and they were super engaged in their local community. They were super engaged with our brand. They were an army of people locally that loved, at the time, Tech Cocktail, and then TechCo, and they would come out anytime we shined the Tech Cocktail symbol up there like the bat symbol, right, whatever, right? We started offering a number of different things that would grow us that subscriber base. Everything from reports ... We had some of the first ever reports about accelerators, we ranked the startup accelerators out there, and that was kind of first-to-market thing. Now you'll see like Forbes, and some of these others, already doing that. It's been almost six, seven years now, or maybe even longer since we first put our first one out there. And so you're seeing a lot more folks do that, so that doesn't necessarily make for a great report anymore. But as we started seeing folks do that, we started saying, "Okay, what other resources can we offer?" And so we started really trying to focus on online resources that offered value outside of just the regular articles that we were putting out. And then obviously, we traded the resource for their email address, and grew our audience. So we did a lot. That was kind of our growth strategy after the events, because the events became really capital intensive and time intensive, and not able to scale. There's only 365 days a year. We can only do 365 events and keep our sanity. Yes, you could do multiple events on multiple days. We did it. It was insane. But I wouldn't recommend that, especially if you only have a core team of ... a smaller core team. So I just think that, in this day and age, if you do the online kind of resource play and offer something of value, you can actually grow an audience that way. I would even, today, say with the platforms that are out there, things like Instagram are a great place to start. In some cases, you don't even need a website. It's crazy these days. You could literally start with an Instagram account with a "subscribe" link in your bio, or something like that, and grow that way. You may not get as much traction. It depends on how good you are at Instagram. But ultimately ... 'Cause it's not like you're off every photo. You're like, "Oh! That's resource." No, it's not. It's just a picture. So, it may be hard to get people to go back. So, that's where it's like at the end of the day, if we could create something that was valuable to someone, so the exchange is a one-to-one? You know, information for your email? That's the best way to do it, in my opinion. Some other things? Events. Obviously, if you can do them in a larger scale. We did some large things in DC with ... I don't know if you remember Digital Capital Week. We did that festival for three years with iStrategy Labs. And that grew ... You know, we had 10,000 attendees. So, that grew an audience locally of support, that knew about us, and what we were up to, and follow ... Some of them, you know, joined in the file, the content that we were putting out after that? So, that was another kind of strategy. And then, I think, just in general it was a ... We were focused on doing things that would create a sharable moment, or a way that we could engage somebody later with some kind of a resource. I mean, really, that's what we were focused on at the end. And that the strategy, obviously, I'm not with TechCo anymore. I should mention that early. I've transitioned out. So, their strategy now, I don't know what it is, but it's different. And that's totally fine. So, more or less, I'm speaking from when I was with TechCo up until we sold the company in December of 2017. So. From TechCo to Established Kathleen: Now, you mentioned earlier that these days you might not even need a website to be successful. So, you've sold TechCo. You've now started Established, where you're advising bigger brands on how to leverage this media, or publishing approach, in order to grow. If you were to try to start this all over again today, in the world we live in right now, which is really different- Frank: Critical. Kathleen: ... how would you do it? And like, what do you tell your clients? I'm curious. 'Cause it is, it's a completely different game these days. Frank: It is! I mean, it's a lot harder, in my opinion. It's harder and easier, if that makes sense. It's harder because there's ... Back when we started, there wasn't as much noise. Now, there's so much. Like, there is so much content. I mean, not just talking about our kind of content, I'm talking about like you have to choose between Netflix and Amazon, and all these different producers. HBO has ... I mean, there's so much content. And we only have the ... We have the same amount of time. So, it's just really ... That's, I think, the struggle that we have now is, from 10 to 12 years ago, there wasn't as much. You couldn't get things streamed to your phone. And so, you're competing with everything now. And so, I think, that's the challenge. The benefit is, from now, is that there are tools that can help. There's a lot more tools that can help you connect with people. Everything from ... Like I mentioned, Instagram's a big one. I mean, I just started a Podcast as well. It's called, Somewhat Frank. I brought back my old blog, which was called, Somewhat Frank, and repurposed it as now the Podcast, Somewhere Frank, because my name's Frank. And I thought it was clever. Kathleen: I like it. Frank: And I can be somewhat Frank on that, right? So, anyway, long story short, you know, without it, I didn't start a site right away. I just started Instagram, starting growing an Instagram account, leveraged that Instagram for a while. And then now, I've got a site. It's kind of that one-two punch after you've got a little bit of an audience. And then, the other thing is we're working with different groups. Like we're working with a group down in Tampa that has an innovation hub, and we helped them with a launch recently. And it's called, Embark Collective. And we're helping them with content strategy and growth, and whatnot. And kind of what we started talking about at the beginning is you need an audience. So, you need to build your own audience, because you can't rely on the local media, or the national media, or whatever, to tell your story for you. You have to tell it yourself. I mean, that's the whole thing. If you create an audience, you can talk, you don't worry about what The New York Time is covering, right? 'Cause you've got this really engaged audience that is already following along for the journey. And so, that's what ... You know, that's the approach we kind of take. That's the approach we're taking with Embark Collective, and we're doing it in a way that's the voice that they wanted to get out there, which is very founder led, versus talking about ourselves, right? So, it's a little bit- Kathleen: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Frank: ... a trickier thing with that kind of a lead. Especially with a new thing, right? When you have a new thing, you kind of need to tell people what it is. I mean, we're doing it in a way that's like through others can be more challenging. So, I think that is the challenge now. It's doing it in the right way, and kind of sharing that message. Frank: So, to tell ... You know, I guess the bottom line is there's still these great platforms that allow you to grow, and we're continuing to watch that. There are ... I mean, if you really wanted to jumpstart it ... And I've even heard some of the great marketers out there tell people to do this ... You can buy an audience. It's nothing that we did at TechCo, but you can. You can get a jumpstart with buying ... whether it be Twitter handles, or Instagrams, or Facebook, or even websites, right? 'Cause now you've got an audience that's already going to a website. So, those are other options. Like I said, TechCo was very organic. We just grew it from the ground up with events, and then online. So, that's where I'm more comfortable with, and understand better. Frank: Another example would be ... Here, I'm in Las Vegas. It looks like I'm in a locker room. I'm not. I have little lockers here with our secret things. No, we don't have anything over here. Kathleen: I know I'm dying to know what's in those lockers now. Frank: Yeah. So, basically, it's just where we put like things we used to do at events and stuff. But that's not really locker. Anyway, yeah. In Las Vegas, there ... we moved out here because of the Downtown Project. And so, one of the things that we start working on with them, Downtown Project, was this project by the CEO of Zappos Tony Hsieh. He started this 40-million-dollar project, Invest in Downtown. And, more or less, we started bringing people out every month. And it was more or less like a little summit. And we'd bring people out, and show them around, as the backdrop being downtown, but the ultimate payoff was that you were actually meeting great people. And so, as an opportunity to kind of connect, but that turned into, well, you also learned about the downtown. So, that is one kind of ... If you're doing things locally, and you're trying to get people excited about what's happening in your local area, that's one example of the way to do it. It's expensive and very timely, or time intensive. Kathleen: Consuming? Frank: Yeah, consuming. Consuming because you're now doing, you know, you're doing VIP kind of treatment for a lot of different folks that are coming in from all over, and you're the tie touch. So, I wouldn't recommend that to everyone, unless you ... Or they wanna do a lot of that. So, I think it just depends on what your goals are, and what you're trying to do. But I do think ... I guess you asked me would I start a media company today? I don't think so. There's just so much right now. I think there's so many other things you could do that would ultimately have to do similar things to a media company, and you'd still get that ... But you actually have a little bit different product, right? So, I love media. I've been doing it for a long time. I used to build the media sites at Tribune, so I've got a huge background in media, and as well at AOL, personalized news, and whatnot. So, I love media and news. I just think it's ... There's so much of it right now, I think that it's hard ... It's a lot harder to break in. Kathleen: Yeah. Well, so many interesting insights, and I feel like you've been in the media industry during a fascinating time, because it really has changed so much over these years. You know, here on this podcast, we talk a lot about inbound marketing, which at its heart is really just about using content to organically draw your audience in, which is kind of what you talked about in the beginning between events and some of the original content you were creating. Kathleen's Two Questions Kathleen: As somebody who's been in the space for a while, I'm curious ... Company or individual, I always like to ask this question: Who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now? Frank: Yeah. And I ... While you were saying that, I was thinking about other media brands that have done it really well recently. So, I'm gonna answer that question, and then I'm gonna answer your question. So, one of the brands that has done an amazing job, and has gotten a lot of traction through influencers, and is doing content marketing well, is Cheddar? So, if you're familiar with Cheddar. They went kind of a online component, but now they're on like Sling and other places. So they worked on distribution. And I think that's still really ... Any company, whether it be a start-up in the media space or any space, distribution is still like the most under-appreciated/thought of thing. Really. I mean, distribution is such a big deal. And so, the founder came from kind of a background of HuffPost and some others ... media sites, and had relationships. So, built great relationships, and leveraged them to build, what is now Cheddar. I think a lot of folks look at that and like, "Wow! That's just magic." It's not. It's relationships. At the end of the day, everything we do is relationship-based, and so I think a lot of that, he's done a really great job with platform, and then ultimately turned to relations. So, they're doing a great job, and they're on your television set, they're on your phone, they're on all the different social channels, and they're able to leverage media. So, if I was to start a media company, I'd wanna start something more like what he did, which is video-based, and then like growing it versus typing content and all that kind of thing. So, that's that whole answer to that question. But to your question about who's doing a good job? I may get a lot of newsletters. Obviously, Gary Vee is a leader in the space. I'm a big fan of his, for a long time. Brian Solis. I like his stuff as well. But, ultimately, I think I only ... I mean, everybody gets so many newsletters. One of the newsletters that I say and believe continuously is this Fortune Term Sheet? I just couldn't think of the name of it recently. I was like, "What's the name of that? The Fortune one." It's basically startup news and updates about investments, things that are ... I'm kind of looking towards, "Okay, how do I continue to invest in startups? How do I continue to grow our investor community to grow into our startup of the year stuff that we're doing to continue to invest in those great companies all over? 'Cause there are great companies all over the country and world, that aren't finding the funding that they need. So, because of that, I'm more focused on that kind of content lately. And so, I've been really focused on this Fortune Term Sheet email that goes around every day, actually. So it's a daily email which, I mean, we all get a lot of emails. That's the one that I continue to read continuously? Kathleen: And what makes it so great? What is it about that that you like? Frank: It takes time. It's got a great roundup. It used to be ... It's kind of a space that, like a TechCrunch, Crunchbase should be in, or I don't know if they do have a newsletter. I should probably look. But it's that, more or less, updates about things that have happened in the space. So like, "This company just got funded by this," or, "This just happened here," or that, you know, so it's kind of that quick rundown, and it's bulleted, so it's not like I have to read like a ton. And it saves me time about everything that's happened in the kind of venture space. And, in some ways, not just venture space, 'cause it is Fortune. They're looking at bigger companies as well. So, see. So, that's one that I read a lot. I'm trying to think if there's any others that do a really good job. Mine are so focused more on startup piece stuff. Oh, one of- Kathleen: Yeah, but that's great. I love hearing about examples outside of marketing. Frank: Well, here's one that's not. And it's kind of just my own ... Like I guess it would be called like just ... I don't consider myself an auto enthusiast. I just like looking at cool things. I used to love Jetsetter. So, I used to love the newsletter they sent out? 'Cause it was like a vacation. You'd like see this amazing resort, and the pictures. And it was in this beautiful place, and you could take a second, look at that. And I would save those. It's just changed to a different model, slightly. They don't have the same beautiful emails anymore. And they were, I think, acquired as well, right? So, they kind of changed a little bit. But they, for a long time, were like, "Wow! This is my daily vacation from whatever I'm doing. I'm gonna look at this Jetsetter email, and think about, "Wow! Wouldn't it be great if I went to this, you know, Bora Bora- Kathleen: Right. Frank: ... this beautiful place?"" Kathleen: If I was sitting on the beach with a piña colada right there, right now. Frank: Right, right. And they were offering affordable ways to do that, right? They were selling the dream. Frank: One that's similar to that, and I'm not a car enthusiast, but I get this new one called, Bring a Trailer. And it's basically an auction site for automobiles. Like I love looking at old like FJ Cruisers, which are like the Toyota big trucks and whatever. And like they have Porches. You know, like they have tons of stuff on there. It's my daily escape from everything that's like the chaos that's happening in my world. And I just take a look at those pretty daily to see what's going on. Frank: So, those are the ... I don't- Kathleen: Oh, I'm gonna have to tell my husband about that, because he loves looking for old Willys Jeep, and- Frank: There you go! Kathleen: ... old, like classic pick-up trucks. Frank: Right. Kathleen: So. Frank: Right, yeah. So, you could find that on that site. You can set a little alert, and they'll send you an email when that happens. So, it's a little bit more on the product side but, at the same time, it's kind of a guilty pleasure, if I have one. Kathleen: Yeah, yeah. Frank: So, you know, you're living in Las Vegas- Kathleen: No, that's great. Frank: You really can't have any vices if you live here, so that's mine. I look at, I guess they'd be auto porn. I don't know what that is, but I get right into it. Yeah. Yeah. Kathleen: That's awesome. Well, I'm definitely gonna check that out. Kathleen: Now, the second question is, you know, you're somebody who's in the world of marketing. With digital changing so much all the time, how do you stay up-to-date? How do you educate yourself? Frank: Yeah. Well, I read a ton. So, I mentioned Flipboard. I have that on my phone, and I'm on there a lot. And to the point of like ... I mean you're just ... Like I just flip, flip, flip, and try to keep up with everything. And I have different channels set up about different components of marketing or technology, or business, or whatever. And sports even, 'cause I'm the biggest sports fan. Go, Cubs. But the other thing I do is I've a friend that worked in ... to try to keep up to speed there as well. I used to attend a lot of events. Once I started hosting a ton of events, you started finding yourself not going to as many events. But then you become like, "Well, I'm disconnected from all the events. Why is that?" So, I started more recently going to more things. Like we were in our group together. Mindshare, right? So, that was me getting out and trying to do more event-related things to meet other folks in the industry, or we would never connect like this, if I hadn't been in that. So, I think that's my new approach for that. There's other events that are kind of more intimate that I've been trying to kind of get to. But again, I'm not doing as much of that, and so it's more or less, you know ... Daily, it's just like keeping up with the updates that are happening. And, obviously, the more high-test stuff is actually getting out and connecting with people. Kathleen: Yeah. It's definitely like drinking from a fire hose, right? Frank: It is, but like you know HubSpot does their big conference INBOUND every year. It just happened a little bit ago. That's a great opportunity for trying to connect with folks that are doing it, doing inbound marketing, and things like that. There's others, right? And there's niches too. So like, I just came back from Denver Startup Week. I gave a fireside chat with somebody out there, but also there was a summit for this group we're part of called, The Startup Champion Network, so SCN. And so, they kind of piggy-backed on each other, and that was an opportunity to connect with more people that were there, and vice versa. So, I try to make those kind of more strategic opportunities, right, that make sense. And you can continue to really refresh and re-up what your learnings are from those different opportunities. Kathleen: Great. Frank: Okay. Kathleen: Well, I have like a million more questions I could ask, but I know you have a life, and so I'll let you get back to it. But if somebody wants to learn more about what you're doing, or has a question about what you talked about here today, what's the best place for them to find you online? Frank: Yeah, sure. I'm just at Frank Gruber. So, Frank rhymes ... Or Gruber rhymes with Uber, dot me. And you can actually just ... I think it has my email on there, but frank@ ... Can I say that on this? Or is this gonna get- Kathleen: Sure, yeah. Go for it. Frank: All right. So, yeah, just ... My email address is pretty easy. It's frank@est.us so- Kathleen: E-S-T dot us? Frank: Yeah. US. Kathleen: Okay, great. I'll put- Frank: You're gonna get E-S-T dot us. Kathleen: ... all those things in the show notes. Frank: Yeah, that's great. So, yeah. I'm just gonna get a flood of emails now, right? Kathleen: Awesome. Well, you'll probably get a few from me, asking all the other questions- Frank: Okay. Kathleen: ... I didn't get a chanced to ask today. Frank: Good. Kathleen: But no, this was great, and really informative, and- Frank: Great. Kathleen: ... I think for any brand that's thinking of becoming a media company, there were so many good tidbits in there about, you know, good ways to grow, and maybe not such good ways to grow? Frank: Right. Kathleen: So, I really appreciate the time you spent. Frank: Well, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Kathleen: Yeah. And if you're listening, and you found value in this interview, please, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice. Kathleen: And if you know somebody who's doing kick-ass inbound marketing, tweet me at WorkMommyWork because I would love to interview them. Frank: Great. Thanks so much, Kathleen. Kathleen: That's it for this week. Thanks, Frank.

The title speaks for itself. We could not let the summer go by without podcasting about the legit surprise hit of the summer...THE MEG. Yes, a movie with Jason Statham and big ass shark just straight killed it at the box. Pop Break's film editor Marisa Carpico and her team of intrepid podcasters break down this glorious film. Don't forget to rate, review & subscribe to the podcast! Twitter: @PopBreakDotCom Facebook.com/PopBreakDotCom Instagram: @ThePopBreak

Host Ali Nazar interviews Shaun Tai, Executive Director for Oakland Digital, on the organization's innovative approach to bringing tech and design jobs to underserved populations in the East Bay.Transcript:Ali Nazar:You're listening to KALX Berkeley, 90.7 FM, University of California and listener-supported radio, and this is Method to the Madness, coming at you from the Public Affairs department here at KALX, celebrating the innovative spirit of the Bay Area. I'm your host, Ali Nazar, and today with me I have Shaun Tai on the phone. He's the Executive Director of Oakland Digital. Hey, Shaun, how's it going?Shaun Tai:Hey, what's up, man? How are you doing?Ali Nazar:Pretty good. Really appreciate you joining us today.Shaun Tai:Oh, man. I'm happy to be here, man, and spread the knowledge. Spread that inspiration. I'm ready.Ali Nazar:Okay. Great. I always start this program with the same question, because you are a founder of an organization, and founders usually come to the decision to put so much energy into something like starting an organization, and dedicating their blood, sweat, and tears to it because they see a problem in the world. Tell us, what is the problem statement that Oakland Digital is trying to solve?Shaun Tai:Communities of color, specifically community college students, lack the same opportunities afforded to privileged communities. We focus specifically on artists of color, predominantly women of color, that are looking to break into a design career. Our problem really stems from, honestly, my own story of not quite the community college level, but the state level, of Cal State-East Bay, which I love. The teachers are doing a great job. They're teaching software. But they don't have the resources, and to be honest, the time, to be like, "Yo, check this out. Here's what they do at Twitter. Here's what they do at Facebook. Here's what they do at the local agency level." That's what Oakland Digital does, is we take those students and get their foot in the door, of not just tech, but business, non-profits, and some really cool creative agencies.Ali Nazar:Cool. Okay. You alluded to a little bit about your background and how you got to this. Can you tell us a little bit about you and where you come from?Shaun Tai:Man, well I come from the Bay Area, man. As anyone listening knows, the Bay is super real, authentic, dope, to be honest. It's just real. I've always wanted to do something real with my life. My dad passed away when I was two months old. I was raised by a single mother. Very small family. Born and raised by an entrepreneur. A woman entrepreneur of color. That was just the ultimate inspiration, from a work-ethic standpoint, of seeing my mom work seven days a week in Oakland, running a furniture design studio. Just seeing that work-ethic of not just her going to work, and showing up early, but coming back home and cooking for me and my brother.Then, after she cooked dinner, sketching, so 10:00 p.m., 11:00 p.m., and faxing those designs to a factor in Hong Kong to just create some dope furniture. Create things. That mix of creativity, that mix of hard work, really passed on to me, and that's what gave me that spirit of not just creating, but doing something with meaning and purpose.In my mom's case, it was making her customers happy with some great furniture. For me, it was how do I give back to the community with things that I love? Creativity, technology, community, social good, social impact. Really, my mom gets full kudos and credit for being my inspiration.Ali Nazar:Nice. She sounds like an amazing woman.Shaun Tai:She is.Ali Nazar:She put that idea into your brain, and that spirit into you, but what about your training. Did you go have another job or a career before starting Oakland Digital?Shaun Tai:Yeah, man, I'm, dude, I'm glad you asked. I know we were talking offline about music, and how powerful music is. In 2006, my partner Ray Luv, who's actually a Bay Area rap legend ... I grew up on Mac Mall, [inaudible] Tupac's music. We got together and created a YouTube channel when it wasn't hot. YouTube was cool in 2006, but it wasn't what it is now, with people getting billions of hits.We created a show called Pushin' the Bay TV, where we chronicled the Bay Area hip-hop and rap history. Interviewing people from Shock G, Dru Down, Spice 1, Too Short, E-40, The Jacka, rest in peace, and all of these Bay Area rap legends who did not have an online presence, right? But we were the first to say, "Hey, why don't we do this and celebrate the beautiful rap history in the Bay?"Ray Luv and I, we would just go around and interview people. We went down to L.A., East Coast. What I found was how powerful technology was. Specifically the YouTube platform. In one year, we received around 14 million views, and for that time, that was groundbreaking, and ground-shattering. What I found from talking to the young people was how influenced they were by these videos.But what I learned about the game were some of the things that were, I don't want to say negative, but definitely not the things I wanted to promote. After a year of success, and things were going up, I actually decided to give it up, and to cancel, because I wanted to do something for social good. Not that it wasn't powerful. Not that it wasn't getting impressions, but I thought, "How do we use tech for good?"That very simple core of "tech for good" is what birthed the Oakland Digital spirit of tech for good, and then, of course, myself being a designer and a creative, "creative tech for good," right? Those concepts birthed the idea of how do we help artists become professionals? Just like that young 13 year-old watching that YouTube video, how do I not just consume this technology, but create something cool, too, and then take those skills to get a career?That's the birth of OD. Oakland Digital.Ali Nazar:Wow, man. That's such a powerful story. Thank you for sharing it. We're speaking to Shaun Tai, who is the Executive Director of Oakland Digital, here on Method to the Madness on KALX Berkeley.Not a lot of people would have the guts to leave a burgeoning career like that, and take a left turn and follow their passion, so that's definitely commendable. I'd love to hear about, after you got to that point of understanding that, "Okay, I want to do something for social good? Creative tech for good." How did you then formulate the idea of how Oakland Digital would actually be an organization pursuing that goal?Shaun Tai:Yeah, I mean, I did gloss over a few details, like one of the biggest things that I learned while doing Pushin' the Bay TV was, there was an event at Stanford. I know you guys are rivals, but Stanford. Shout out to them, too. I met MC Hammer, Chamillionaire, and Mistah Fab, and Quincy Jones III, with Ray Luv and Mac Mall. They're friends. Everyone in the rap industry is friends.When I met MC Hammer, that day, he was introducing this crazy idea called Twitter. This is 2006, 2007. It was this thing that, in 140 characters, you could write about what you're doing. The whole crowd was confused, because here are effectively three rappers that are using this thing called Twitter, and in the crowd, I think very few people were.That's when I learned like, yo, tech doesn't have to be disseminated by the top-down. It can be actually by the community-up. After that day, actually, that same day, I went up to MC Hammer, and I'm like, "Yo, I'm here with Ray Luv and Mac Mall, who you know. Much respect. I love everything from your music career, but also your entrepreneurship. How do I get in touch?" Because he's like, "I love Oakland. I love the A's. I love technology."I tweeted him that night, ironically, I tweeted him, and from that year exchange, back and forth, we became friends. He's still an advisor to Oakland Digital, to this day. Between finding mentors, advisors, early on, to finding people that believed in the vision. Board of directors, co-founders, people that just believe in what you're doing.Then, of course, here's the big thing. Legal. After MC Hammer's like, "Yo, I'm with that idea of tech for good." I was walking down, and this is a true story, I was walking down Broadway, and I see City Hall, in Oakland. I literally said, "I'm just going to walk into City Hall and find out how to start a non-profit."I remember going up inside, checking in with the security guard, going up to the ninth floor, I believe. I met with this lady named Kathy Littles. I don't know if she's still around, but shout-out to Kathy Littles. I said, "I want to start a non-profit that's tech for good." She was like, "What is tech?" She literally said, "What is tech?" Because you have to remember, at this time, '08, right? "Tech" didn't exist in Oakland the way it does now. That was 10 years ago. Nobody even understood the word "tech."I said, "Well, it's these companies like Google, and Facebook, and how do we use that for good?" She was like, "Oh, okay. Well, here's a stack of contacts." Literally probably 10 pieces of paper, front-to-back, of non-profit people. "Contact all of them, then get back to me." Literally, I looked at it like, "Yo, this is crazy." I asked, "Well, how do I get paid?"She laughed. She said, "Non-profits, you've got to fundraise." I was like, "How often?" She laughed again. She said, "You've got to fundraise every day. Every week." I just didn't get the concept, coming from a for-profit background. I literally took that stack of papers, but I found one piece of paper where I started. I just called everyone. I just called everyone. Some had phone numbers, some had e-mails.Then I finally e-mailed one person. She's an artist. She's the only person that got back to me from probably a week of phone calls and e-mails. She said, "I have an art non-profit. Now it's defunct, but a guy named Don Tamaki, who is the," I think she used the term "godfather of Asian law. He helped us get started, but he's too big for you, Shaun. He won't get back to you."I remember cold-calling this law firm, Minami Tamaki LLP, shout-out to them. They're still in the SF. The receptionist picked up, and I said, "Hey, I'm Shaun. I'm just doing a cold call. Could I talk to Don Tamaki?" Just like wide-eyed, didn't know what the hell I was doing. He didn't pick up, but an assistant picked up and said, "Okay, I just shared that you want to start this non-profit. He said come in." On this date and that time, and I go in, and I think I'm wearing jeans and a shirt. I pitched this. There was two gentlemen next to him, who I found out later is his son and his son's friend, who go to Cal, by the way. They were interning with him for the summer.I threw this pitch about "tech for good." Completely vague. It was so bad, I don't even know what it was, but it was really bad. But he saw that passion of helping people with tech for good, and with design. Just taking everything that I cared about and presenting that, right? At the end, he was like, "Shaun, I'm going to help you get incorporated. Get your bylaws. Build your board. I'm going to put my son on this project."Really, that combination of passion, that combination of timing. There's a huge one for your listeners. Things have a time period and time relevance. You know what I'm saying? You can't come up now and start the next Snapchat. That's already over, right? Timing-wise, Oakland was not hit with tech yet. Timing-wise, Don Tamaki had his son interning, right? All of this things had, timing-wise, MC Hammer's talking about Twitter. You know what I'm saying? All of these things just were like a storm of positivity, and just relentlessness, to do something very positive for the community. Right?After that, he helped get us incorporated. We got incorporated July of 2009. And yo, now we're in Downtown Oakland, and we have benches, billboards, bus ads, helped almost 5,000 people to-date. We're just doing big things.Ali Nazar:That's awesome. Well, it's a great story, and I think a really great example of there is a serendipity to the formation of an organization like this. There's the timing, but there's also the passion. The passion that bubbling up from things that have happened in your life, is another thing that depends upon timing, and so-Shaun Tai:Right.Ali Nazar:We're speaking with Shaun Tai today. He's the Executive Director of Oakland Digital, on Method to the Madness here on KALX Berkeley. July 2009, and we're sitting here in 2018. It's been almost 10 years, so just tell me about that journey. You got some momentum there. You got your organization set up. But it's not a clear product or service yet, so how did you get to where you are today, with all of those numbers you just quoted. 5,000 people helped.Shaun Tai:Oh, yeah. I'm so glad that you said that there's no clear purpose yet. I think what's wrong with now is that there's almost an abundance of resources. Speaking about UX and UI. You can download a mobile-UI kit and build a start-up right now, right? But I think what's so dope about that time is there was so much exploration to be done. Right? There weren't solutions, there were questions.Think about that. There were questions, not solutions, at that time. The fact that people believed in the vision, at that time, says something. We had no product, and I talked to one of my advisors at the time. He was only 19 or 20, but he had worked at HP and AOL at 14 years-old. He's just a genius dude. His name is Jordan.I was like, "Jordan, yeah, we're a non-profit now. What should we start doing?" He was like, "Shaun, what are you doing today?" I'm like, "Nothing." "Let's go downtown. Let's pick one block in Oakland." I think it was 14th Street in Oakland. "Let's just go up to every single small business there and ask them what do they need with design and marketing." Right?I remember going to our first business, a small business owned by a Black woman, and she was like, "Oh, my God. I was praying to God, like literally, that someone would come and help me." She was like, "I can't find my phone line." Out of everything in the world, right? "I can't find my phone line." And we [crosstalk]-Ali Nazar:You guys were a gift from God, huh? [crosstalk]-Shaun Tai:No, no. I mean, it was like, she just was like, you know how it is, you're sitting there every day, no one comes through the doors. It's desperation, right?Ali Nazar:Yeah. Yeah.Shaun Tai:We did that, and we were like, "How do people find you?" She was like, "Yelp." That's it, it was like, "Yelp." We literally claimed her business on Yelp. We hooked that up, took photos of her studio, helped clean up the room. That was our first client. Then word of mouth, just going to businesses, talking to students.Really, between helping these small businesses, predominantly women-owned businesses, just like my mom, and then helping local students, Laney College, we were like, "Great. We're helping these two different groups of people. How do we connect them?" Right? Get those young people skills, build up their resume, their portfolios.It's not just pairing them with non-profits and businesses, but solving problems, right? What we ended up doing was start building out programs. One's called Inspire Oakland, where we go to community colleges, and state-level colleges, and we say, "Do you want your artwork on a billboard?" The whole room says, "Yes." Right? We're getting them inspired to have a professional career.Right? Because at school, you're like, "Okay, I know PhotoShop. I know Illustrator. But how do you apply that to anything real?" We, effectively, with Inspire Oakland, are the clients for these students. They're designing billboards for us to spec. Literally, commercial-spec billboards, bleeds, color, visual hierarchy, following the creative brief, going through multiple revisions, iterations of designs. That's what gets the students really, really excited about their careers.We only pick six winners, and those are the winners you see up all over Oakland right now, buses, benches, and billboards. But the question that we ask all of the students is, "Do you want to be an apprentice at Oakland Digital?" Once the billboard competition ends, while the billboards go up, we select, from around 70-80 students, a cohort of 10-12 apprentices. Those are the students that, yo, once they get through Oakland Digital, they're ready for hire. That's what we're doing right now. We have 10 apprentices learning UX. These are raw artists that are super talented with pencil and pen, but not so much the digital space, right? The reason we pick the tech space as the formats and the learning environment is that those are the highest-paying jobs. Now, here's the thing, brother: we're not telling them to get tech jobs. In fact, I'm very proud that a lot of them don't want to get tech jobs. However, the mindset of design-thinking, the mindset of design sprints, the mindset of creating products, of launching [tings], notice I said "tings," not "things." Those are the same tings you need to be successful in the non-profit world, opening a small business. I was so proud when we were at eBay with the UX designers, and we have super-exclusive events. We're at Twitter, Salesforce, Google, Google.org every Wednesday. They're in the tech world, and these professionals ask, "What do you want to do after this apprenticeship?"I'm so happy to say 80% are like, "Do my own ting. Help our community." That's the answer I want, right? We're using tech as an educational platform, as a learning platform, to get those skills to game up, to level up, but the goal for us is how do we give back to our communities? Tech for good. Oakland Digital. Holla.Ali Nazar:Wow. Wow. So much going on there, what you just said, and really impressive how it's come from that. You founded it with passion, with not necessarily the concrete of what the programs are going to be, and now you have so many different programs. I have a couple questions about that. One is, in a cohort of, what is it? 70 or so students-Shaun Tai:Yeah.Ali Nazar:... and they're getting to be up on billboards, and whatnot, where's the funding sources coming for the non-profit right now? Is it all through, is it earned income from you guys selling services?Shaun Tai:Yeah, and I actually, I want to touch upon that, for anyone listening. What I hear from students a lot is, "I want a work-life balance." That's one. The second thing is, "I want to start my own business." My honest answer is, "If you want a work-life balance, do not start your own company." I want to make that very clear.Ali Nazar:[crosstalk].Shaun Tai:If you want a work-life balance, do not start your own company. Work for someone, go there at 10:00, go home at 5:00. You know what? Props to anyone that wants to do that. But just don't get it twisted that you can do both. I think you need to make that decision early on in your career, not later.Ali Nazar:[crosstalk].Shaun Tai:If you are ... How do you feel about that, brother?Ali Nazar:Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. You can't have everything. They're all good things, but some of them are mutually exclusive. That's what you're saying, and I agree.Shaun Tai:Absolutely. I'll start there, and I will say that for the first three, four years at Oakland Digital, I received zero dollars. I had a six-month gig at Facebook. I had a five-year gig doing marketing for the former Chief of Science at Amazon. Shout-out to Andreas Weigend, who teaches at Berkeley. I had all of these part-time jobs to pay the bills, but I realized that if I don't give up everything for one, I'll be good at few things, terrible at most of them, and not really great at one. Right?I found that what's the one that I would call my baby? I was like, "That's OD. Oakland Digital." What happened was, I dumped everything, kept OD, and that next year, which was 2015, Google funded us. To your point, Google.org funded Oakland Digital, because they saw us as one of the only groups in the Bay Area really using tech in creativity to empower overlooked talent, specifically communities of color. I was really proud that Google saw that vision.When we got that three-year grant from Google.org, shout-out to Justin, Adrian, [inaudible], and Chelsea. They saw that we were talented. We were raw. We were grassroots. We were making an impact, but we just needed some funding to make big tings happen. The question that we were addressing that they wanted to fund, the solution, was Bridgegood.com. It's a platform called BridgeGood, that connects talent to amazing opportunities.Right now, if you're an artist, you don't have an online portfolio, you can go to Bridgegood.com, you sign up. By the way, we don't sell your data. We're not making profit. It's a completely not-for-profit platform. You can sign up, get a free portfolio. You can attend VIP events, including working out of Google every Wednesday, going to cool places like LinkedIn, design studios, even small businesses. That's the way that we wanted to scale Oakland Digital, in a very organic way, because everything that you sign up for, we'll be there. We'll also introduce you to some key connects. That's our biggest funding partner, is Google.org, but I would say the majority of our funding, in terms of year-round, is just ordinary people. Like, "Yo, I just saw your bus ad. I think it's dope. How do I make a contribution?" Things like $50. $100.Another thing I'll say is, if you're trying to start a non-profit to make a living, or get money, I would also say don't do that. It's not necessarily rewarding financially, and I would say do it because you actually care about that, the mission, the impact. The non-profit world is equally as cutthroat as the business world. Everyone's fighting over the same funding. I just happened to be very lucky to have an amazing team around me that really cares deeply about the art community, but also about successful designers, and really getting involved in the tech world in a meaningful way. When I say "successful designers," I mean "making money from doing something you love," right? We all say that. We all hear it. But it is possible, but you do need to feel uncomfortable in the sense that you might hate tech. In the Bay, a lot of people do, but you still need to understand it, explore it, and break it down. Right? You don't want to just be ignorant towards it. You want to actually understand it, and see what makes it tick. Because we can take those same concepts and make non-profits blow up. I think that Oakland Digital is one of those examples of how do we use tech for good, and utilize those resources? Not just money, but talent, too. We have a lot of volunteers from the tech world. And give back to the community in real, deep, meaningful ways?Ali Nazar:Wow, so that's awesome that you guys had Google as a benefactor, and I'm sure not just the money that they gave you, but the other doors that are opened are plentiful. We're speaking with Shaun Tai, he's Founder and Executive Director of Oakland Digital, right here on Method to the Madness on KALX Berkeley.Give us a little bit of a taste of what is the scope of it now? You went on this journey, it sounds like, almost 10 years ago.Shaun Tai:Yeah.Ali Nazar:How many employees? How many students have you had? Give me some of the breadth of this thing.Shaun Tai:Yeah, no. One of the things that I learned about the non-profit world, I sit on the grants panel for the Cultural Arts Program, and we just distribute money to artists, and we distribute money to non-profits. Last year, so I've been doing it two years in a row, for the City of Oakland. I've been noticing how much non-profits are struggling. A lot of the non-profits were in debt. What I noticed was non-profits are paying staff full salaries, because they should get paid full salaries. However, it's hurting their impact, right? Let me give you an example. Those four years that we were figuring out what we were doing, and making an impact, I don't think I deserved pay at that time, because I was still learning, right? I think that it's keeping that lean, agile methodology of how do you run as lean as possible, with as much impact as possible? I feel that the non-profit world needs a shake-up to think that way. Because if non-profits are just, quite honestly, fundraising to pay staff, that doesn't equate to community impact. You know what I'm saying?Ali Nazar:Yep.Shaun Tai:I don't have the answer, other than what I said earlier about "How do we take some of the things that start-ups do?" Right? Contractors, and paying people per-project. Compensating them what they're worth, but maybe on a contract or project basis, to get goals accomplished, right? And build some cool products, launch some cool things, the same way a start-up would do in the tech world.That, to me, I think that mindset, the growth mindset, is what the non-profit world may be lacking right now. But I do see things improving. I do see non-profits using design-thinking methodologies, and design sprints, and things that we in the tech world normally do to launch cool stuff.One example is, on BridgeGood, we actually give our students the experience of working with engineers and becoming UX designers by working on the platform itself. They gain, because they don't have to spend $15,000 for a boot camp, and they have a portfolio piece that's actually tangible. That's a way where both sides can win, right? The student can gain experience, build a cool platform, but at the same time, they can build their own career, and impact the community.Long story short, I think the non-profit world just needs to rethink how they spend money. Rethink, this is a good example, when we as non-profits apply for a government grant, which we don't even do that, you're tied in. Let's say you get a $1 million grant. Sometimes, you'll be doing more work than that $1 million, in terms of you'll run out of money. I've seen non-profits go under that way.How do we just rethink non-profits? How do we rethink and re-imagine the way non-profits run? Grants? Grant cycles, you're applying for a grant a year in advance. I don't know about you, brother, but every month for us changes. Do you know what I'm saying?Ali Nazar:Yeah, I mean-Shaun Tai:How can you apply a year in advance? These are the things that, about the non-profit world have, these confuse me. I don't understand why they do things the way they've been doing them for 100 years, when society's changed.Ali Nazar:Yeah, I think you're right on to something there. I have participated in the non-profit world, as well. That's why I asked the question around earned income, because that's ultimately what gets you sustainability as an organization, is that you don't have to rely on anybody else.Shaun Tai:Right.Ali Nazar:But you guys are in an interesting position, because you do have a product or a service you can provide, but monetizing that's a different question. It's a very challenging, I think, question, and one that I think many people are trying to answer right now.Shaun Tai:Right, and so, the impact that we've generated from BridgeGood is, we have a calculation of how do students get a job in design and/or tech? We've boiled it down to these three things: education, whether it's a BA or an AA. Two, some sort of apprenticeship or internship, and then help with their resume or portfolio. The portfolio is like 90% of getting a job in design. We figure if we can help a student build all four of those, it's a 90% likelihood that they'll get employed in some entry-level design position. What is the impact of that, right? Times, right now, we have 5,000 users on BridgeGood. We calculated roughly 300 have obtained some type of entry-level work. That times between 20,000 and 30,000, that's a lot of impact. But now to your point about-Ali Nazar:[crosstalk].Shaun Tai:Yeah, I know. It's super dope. It's super dope. When we just did a study of going back seven years on LinkedIn, of all of the students that have been through our program. We've had people get jobs at Yahoo!, Apple, YouTube, local non-profits, which I was super happy to see. That's really the impact. There's no quick solve.I mean, think about your career, right? You're like, "I've been in this for eight years." You and I, we're kind of a rare breed, where I think people growing up now, they just expect jobs right away. If there's one thing that I have learned, there's no free handouts. You've got to pay your dues. I feel-Ali Nazar:Wow. Shaun, I ... Sorry. Go ahead.Shaun Tai:Yeah. Nah, nah. I just feel like that's what we've got to get organizations to understand. Be committed. Stay committed, and keep doing things for good.Ali Nazar:Yeah, and I think following your passion, which you've certainly done. Oakland Digital is a great asset to the community. We have about a minute left, and I always like to close organizational founders, like you, with the same question. If everything went perfectly for Oakland Digital over the next five years, where will it be?Shaun Tai:Yeah, where would we be? We'd have a 15,000 square-foot building, with the ground space leased out, for some revenue. Then we would have a designer residence program, where we could facilitate, and make sure that the artists going through our program would actually be employed. 100%. 100% success rate, and really seeing the whole Bay Area respect artistry and creativity. Also, also be the Mecca of non-profits for the rest of the world. To be like, "Yo, the Bay Area has the best non-profits. BridgeGood Oakland Digital. Holla."Ali Nazar:Nice. Nice. All right. I'm so behind that. It's very interesting, also, that you added real estate to that vision, because it's like with-Shaun Tai:You've got to.Ali Nazar:... the housing costs the way they are, non-profits have to own a piece of the land, or else they're not going to be able to survive. [crosstalk]-Shaun Tai:I'm telling you, brother. I'm telling you brother, hey, and I appreciate what you're doing, because a lot of people behind-the-scenes do not get that credit. Thank you for what you're doing for the community. Let's keep pushing this, inspire the Bay Area together, man. Let's do it.Ali Nazar:Thanks, Shaun. Well, you've been listening to Shaun Tai. He's the Executive Director of Oakland Digital. To learn more about them, you can go to oaklanddigital.org. Any other ways to contact you, Shaun?Shaun Tai:Bridgegood.com. If you want to get a free portfolio and kick it, we can hang out. Let's do it.Ali Nazar:Cool, okay. That's how you get ahold of Shaun. This has been Method to the Madness on KALX Berkeley, 90.7 FM. I'm your host, Ali Nazar. Thanks for listening, everybody, and have a great Friday.Shaun Tai:Peace. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Quanisha Green, the founder of the Black Women Rise Movement. I am so excited that we are launching our Black Woman CEO podcast. As the Black Woman CEO Coach, I am starting this podcast because I want to bring to a new stage the successes and insights of Black women CEOs. Yes, we're going to have those who have run Inc. 500 companies, but we're also going to have the everyday sisters who are generating five to six figures, getting paid, doing what they love, sharing their genius with the world, and showcasing their expertise. So, I'm excited. I hope you're excited, and I can't wait to hear all your feedback as you hear these various stories. My Background If you don't know me, like I just said I'm the founder of the Black Women Rise Movement. It's a movement that has touched so far over 4,000 women who really wanted to take charge of their lives through starting a business. My background is in social justice, community organizing, leadership development, all of these awesome things. I have a master's in social work. I have a master's in social work. Let's see, what else? I have certifications in Master and Corporate life Coaching. I support women who are highly educated, ambitious, and driven and want to make a smooth transition from being a full-time employee to being a full-time entrepreneur. What I know... I know that you want to eventually work from home because you have babies now or want them later.  I know that you want to build a legacy, specifically, a financial legacy. Most of all, I know you want to own your time and have success on your terms. As a founder of the Black Women Rise Movement, the Black Woman CEO Collective, as a Black Woman CEO coach, I help you to get unstuck so that you can really stop holding yourself back and get in action, right, and actually starting to manifest and actualize this vision that you have for starting a business or helping you grow a business to the point where you're generating consistent income. My Results I've been able to have that success for myself when I was working part-time, and now I'm a full-time entrepreneur. I've been a full-time entrepreneur as of this post for two years, where over these last two years I've generated close to $90,000 in business revenue. It's been really exciting. Through contracts, private coaching, consulting ... I've done a little bit of everything. In addition to me sharing the success stories of Black women CEOs, I'm also going to give you some of my own tips and tricks to doing well in this game. We're going to talk about self-care. We're going to talk about business strategy. We're going to talk about mindset. We're going to talk about systems. Most importantly, we're going to really talk about the key pieces you need to have in place so that you can consistently execute. Because you're not going to manifest your vision, you're not going to actualize your dreams, unless you're in action. [Tweet "You're not going to manifest your vision or actualize your dreams unless you're in action."] Why Black Woman? As someone who has a background in social justice and a master's, where I have really spent hundreds of hours studying the particular challenges of black women when it comes to leadership and entrepreneurship, I'm going to talk from even the research space to tell you how  some of our challenges show up because of our unique cultural, historical -and even familial structure- and how it impacts us. Of course, black women, we're not a monolith. Right? We're very diverse in our group. I want to say with that, though, there are some trends, you can say, right, or commonalities. That's why I talk about us as a group from the research standpoint. I have worked for women from the United States, from the East Coast to the West Coast, from Australia, from the UK, so black women globally. Many of us have been socialized the same, right, especially when we think about that image of the strong black woman. [Tweet "Globally, many Black Women have been socialized the same: to be a Strong Black Woman."] These Black Woman CEO Expert Series, as well as their power strategies, the "Profit and Power" strategies I'm going to share with you, are not the everyday knowledge. We're going to go deeper into, really, how do you become the CEO of your life as well as your business? We're talking about transforming you, helping you to rise into a new leadership structure so that you can generate profits but also just have a better life. Really owning your purpose and organize your life so that you're fulfilling your purpose. [Tweet "I'm ready to own my purpose & organize my life to fulfill it. #BlackWomanCEO"] Go ahead, click Subscribe now so you get all the updates. Rate us and leave a review. Help another sister rise, because we really are a collective. [Tweet "Help another sister rise. We are a collective. http://bit.ly/BWCEOPodcast" ] We're a community and we're helping each other along the way. Make sure you go on Facebook and go to our Black Woman CEO Circle. Make sure you go to http://www.blackwomanceo.com  and check us out. Of course, over the series of the podcast, I will let let you know what's happening as things occur during our time together. This is Quanisha Green, signing off. Go ahead. Right now, go click and listen to the next episode so that you can get some of this good knowledge and education. Until next time, remember, Power is the ability to create your reality. [Tweet "Power is the ability to create your reality."]

Sarah: Hi, everybody this is Sarah Potter from the SCT podcast. We are at episode #28 and I have TJ here with me.   TJ: Hi, everyone.   Sarah: So in today’s podcast, we are going to talk specifically about adjusting, and rolling trades. Doing something with trades, if they haven’t really worked out the way you wanted them to. We’re going to talk about how and why you want to that. So first off TJ, I hope you can explain a little bit about what is the difference between using the term adjusting or rolling when it comes to trading?   TJ: Well, I think they’re pretty generic terms and different traders will use them differently. Usually for me, rolling is taking the same trade and moving it out to a different expiry date or a different strike price. Whereas, adjusting is changing the trade a little bit. So adding a leg, adding some stock to the trade, for example, to turn a short call into a covered call. Something like that where you’re changing what you’re doing, changing the intent of the trade.   Sarah: Yeah, you’re so right. I find that in trading, it’s kind of hilarious how everybody takes a different spin and take on different terms, I do find that a little interesting. I agree, so when you’re doing an adjusting and rolling, they are a different way to look at a trade but ultimately, what you’re doing is looking at an existing position that you have open, and trying to make a decision about whether or not you need to add some more risk to it to have a more favorable outcome than you have now. So TJ do you roll trades and when do you decide to do that?   TJ: Typically, I won’t generally roll a trade because most of the trades I’m doing are in weekly options and I’m only in a trade for maybe three days, four days. So we can adjust the trade or roll the trade but there’s not a lot of time to do it. So generally those weekly trades, we’ll just exit for the loss and regroup either back into an option in a few weeks once the chart pattern gets back to where we like it, for a new entry or we just get out for a loss and move on. And I think what we have to remember too and a really good point for any trader, is that no matter what you call it, adjusting or rolling. It’s placing a new trade, it’s adding risk to the trade, you’re adding an additional, potential of loss in hopes of making back what you lost on the first leg of the trade. But it is a new trade and it is adding risk so you really have to ask yourself, is that something you want to do? Is it better to take a small loss and walk away or is it better to potentially take a medium or large size loss with the hopes of winning back that initial loss. So for the short trades, no I don’t. I usually get out and move on. For some of the longer term long puts and calls, covered call position, protect puts, yes. And even if it expires three or four weeks out or longer is much easier and a much better candidate for adjusting or rolling and yes, on a case by case basis I will. I don’t think there’s any point of extending a trade for months or weeks or even a year or so just to break even at the end. I think it’s stressful mentally and stressful on your wallet a lot of times. What do you think about adjusting versus rolling do you do it? What’s your opinion Sarah?   Sarah: Well my opinion at the very beginning is I don’t ever really want to be doing that. That is never my goal in the trades and I think that is something that’s important to point out. There are strategies out there in the market that basically somebody is setting up the trade and their plan is to adjust as they move through that strategy and that’s really not something that we do in our room and I’d say that we’re both the same way that way. When we’re originally setting up our trade and deciding where we think something is going to go, choosing a strategy, the strike and the timeline accordingly, we’re looking to hit the home run. We’re looking to actually hit those targets from the beginning without having to adjust versus there are some strategies out there where when you place the trade your plan within the timeframe that you’re still in the trade is adjust the legs on either side. So we should mention that that is one strategy altogether. I don’t do that. For me if I’m going to adjust or roll a trade, I will do it occasionally. The only real times that I’m really even going to consider it is when I can still look at the underlying. I’m still going to look at a stock for example, and say yes, I still think things are moving in the same direction than I originally thought when I placed the trade. But along the way something has happened but now when I’m towards the end of the trade my assumption of where I think something is moving is still the same from the beginning I’ve just let’s say, ran out of time. So sometimes, if I still think the stock is going to be moving higher but my option is about to expire or time is influencing too much the price of the strike that I’ve purchased, I might have to roll that trade out or adjust it a little bit so that I have more time. So I will do that. I also will keep in mind how the market’s moving. So in fact if I look at my trades over the last couple of weeks, I actually have adjusted and rolled a couple. I think there’s specific links to why I’ve done each of those trades. I mean in the trading room we’ve talked specifically, because I always do that whenever we’re in trades, I always go through each one of the trades in the room and we talk about why we’re managing some, why am I exiting some, why am I taking profits here, and all that kind of things. But if I look at some of those the reason is one through earnings, so sometimes if I want to take advantage of an earnings announcement and let’s say I’m in a long position and the stock hasn’t popped out yet but I think that earnings is going to make that go a bit higher so I roll because I want to be involved a little bit longer. I will shift the trade. Again, making sure though that my assumption continues to be that I think things are going higher and so I’ll take the time and buy a little bit further out in terms of expiry to now take advantage of something like earnings. I will throw those on sometimes. And then also, if you’re in a trade, and let’s say it’s a couple of weeks out and we’re sitting in that trade and we’re waiting, and waiting and it hasn’t popped up yet but think it’s going to and all of a sudden one day there’s something that has happened that moved the market that wasn’t anticipated. So sometimes like some news events or something that has really changed the tone of the market, then I look at that stock I think okay that day alone really changed the move so let’s say it sold off quite a bit but I think it’s coming back quite strong very quickly. And so as long as the underlying assumption is still true, I still think it’s long, I will roll the trade out again. That’s an example of when I would also roll because I think again, it’s just time that I need on the trade as opposed to strategy. Now, if we talk specifically about adjusting TJ would you say you do more adjusting or rolling more often?   TJ: I do more rolling. And I agree with the premises. Usually, when I’m rolling it’s for extra time. So the stock is behaving the way that we wanted it to however the option, the expiry date that we chose is coming up really quickly. Trend is still there we just need to buy ourselves, literally, buy ourselves a little bit more time in the trade and just extend that allowing us to be in a winning trade. We’re not going to extend for time as if the chart pattern looks completely different than when we entered the trade and then a lot of people use rolling just to extend, extend, extend and kind of deny the fact that the trade’s not working but I think a lot of times it’s just like a bandaid you just have to rip it off the faster, the better and move on. Time that's a really good candidate that we've used with success. A number of times in the ETF, USO, it's a really inexpensive ETF trading anywhere right now kind of between a $9.50 and $11. You can pick up options pretty inexpensively on USO and you can look to, if USO makes a move, percentage wise you're looking to probably make 50-100% on that option's trade. So you're looking to turn that 15 cent option into a 30-40 cent option. And so in that case because you're looking for that to double or a little bit more price of the option you can afford to take that a couple of times. You can afford to adjust that trade a couple of times and still know that okay USO is in a really good trend. We just need some more time. So for example in a USO's bottoming out and I'm buying the call it slows down for a little bit and you know they say the $9 or $10 call that we have in the markets move sideway since we got into it. You know if I paid 20 cents for it, and I'm looking to get 40 or 50 cents out of it when I sell it then I can take that 20 cent trade I can take it twice and break even or more or do better on that trade. So I think there's some stocks in ETF's that really lend themselves to it and for me it is inexpensive ETF's or stocks that can move a large percentage in that USO is that one that we've adjusted with quite a bit of success.   Sarah: Yeah, you have done well with that one. So how many times would you roll something. Like at what point is it just too many times?   TJ:  I think for USO I'd probably take two tries at it. Especially now, how the charts are pretty well kind of locked between that 9.50 and 11 dollar range is if you're buying a call at the bottom at 9.50 or you're buying a put up at 11, you're usually still in the same trend. So I'd be buying my call and usually what happens is it's not moving fast as we thought was going to so I'll extend it. If it reverses for example, if I've bought the call at 9.50 and then all of a sudden USO's trading at 8.75 or 8.50 I might take one more shot at it because it's just broken through support and we might get a bounce but that's about it. If the trend is changed, I'm not going to keep reversing my position on it just to kind of hold on the trade.   Sarah: Okay, I agree I usually find two rolls is really the most for me where, okay I just have got it wrong at that point. So after two times it's just I need to move on from the trade or take a sign with the stock maybe. But I have got something wrong here and it's like you said, time to pull off the bandaid. So that kind of brings me to a good question that I think people want to hear about is, when you start rolling or adjusting, whatever you're doing, are you at that point changing the goal of your trade to just break even or are you rolling and adjusting and you're still looking for a reward or profit on the trade?   TJ: Yeah, I think that's a really good point too and that I hadn't really thought of that too. And it's a lot of how I trade and what I talk about is well is that when you are the premise for me when I adjust or roll is to make back the loss. So I'm looking at if I've lost, say 30 cents on a trade, I'm looking to exit the next trade the adjusting trade at around that 30 or just a little bit more. I'm really just trying to break even, cover commissions,  get out of the trade for 0. I'm not really looking on the second trade to go in and double up or triple up on that second trade and I think that's where a lot of people end up losing in adjustments because they see the profit, they've broken even and then they're trying to make money on that second trade and I think a lot of times, they're trying to make too much and it ends up retracing and they end up losing twice. So I don't know, why Sarah do you think that? why in trader's minds and I've asked myself this and I've asked room too, it never really got a great answer is, why don't people think adjusting or rolling is taking a new trade? Why do they talk about it like it's just extending in it has zero risk proposition with only gains to be had?   Sarah: You're so right actually. Sometimes I think probably because it's another term and I think we hear from brokers a lot like, let's just put out on the table that when you're all trading, were trading through brokers and what do brokers want from all of us? They want us to trade. And so sure they want to trade too, they want to make money, we want to protect our profits, we want to limit our risk, and of course everybody's looking for that one cash cow of a trade out there but we also do hear from brokers a lot that say, that explain rolling and adjusting as not necessarily a new trade but giving that first trade a second chance. And I think it actually relates to who we are as people and I just want to throw trading here on one side. Also look at everybody as a trader and the psychology of it all. I think every time any of us place a trade, we want to give things the benefit of the doubt. That it is going to work out. We all want something to be okay. We never want to set up something for failure. And I think sometimes when you're trading, it's important to be very conscious of that because when we start making those assumptions and thinking oh gosh I really hope it works out, this has to work, this has to work. We've really moved away from rational decision making that you need to make in the trade. And I think people just jump to this idea of it's okay, I can adjust. I can roll and it will just hide that and I don't have to deal with that right now. I can just move it out a little bit further. And I have to say that might be good in the short term but in the long term that can really bite you. I don't know if I'm allowed to say bite in the ass but it can really hurt you. And sometimes like you said, taking the band aid off quick or slow either way it's going to hurt. So what's the best way to actually get back on track? And sometimes because we hear from brokers about how it's okay we can hide this. It's okay, we can move on. I think people stop remembering that it actually isn't a new trade. But I like what you said, I think that's actually a good way to counterbalance that. So a solution into thinking that way is when you do start adjusting or rolling, rather than now looking for profit, is you're just really looking to break even to make back some of the loss and to cover commission. And that's another thing too here. We haven't really talked about that and ‘commissions’ can be another good podcast down the road. It's just talking about how conditions influence trading and that's another topic that we really don't hear about very often but it affects us every month and it affects our bottom line because we are all retail traders and we're paying commission. Let's mark that down as an actual theme to do cause I think that would be a good discussion. And I think that leads me into another idea that I wanted to make sure we're talking about, is that when we're adjusting and rolling, there is no undo button and I think that a lot of traders wish that once they start getting into adjusting and rolling that they're, secretly in their minds, they're thinking there's an undo button. And I would totally admit, I have trade right now that I wish there's an undo button on. So here's an example of a trade that's not working now, with you guys we're completely open and honest about trades, so here is one with DG I am in. I bought a call. It was long in position and then DG sold off. So I decided while I'm going to make an adjustment to that trade, I'm going to sell 72's and hold on to my 74 long position. So essentially creating a credit spread. And then lo and behold, what happened today DG shot up through 72. Like oh my god, man, where's my undo button?  I didn't have it. So speaking of adjusting and rolling,  I'm actually working on an example right now in DG and making the decision about what do I want to do moving forward. So let's take the same tips that we just discussed in the podcast and add that into this specific example. So right now when I'm in DG and the price of it is higher than the strike of which I sold. I have to make a decision about where do I think that underline is going. Where do I think that stock DG is going to move as it expires tomorrow. And so right now I'm actually holding the 72. I've been paying a lot of attention to how it's been pricing especially into this afternoon and that's really important when you're trying to decide whether to adjust or roll make sure you take good look at that options chain. Really look at and get a good feel for where is volume coming in, where are people lining up on that options chain, where do they put the stakes in the ground about where they think things are going. Use that information to help you with your trade to decide whether you want to adjust or roll. That's very helpful. And make the decision about okay I don't have an undo button here. I already adjusted the trades so I was long to 74 I added short the 72, what do I need to do now moving into tomorrow? For this specific example, in my mind tomorrow I'm going to evaluate; do I want to look to take an assignment on anything? If something has value, do I want to look for that assignment piece so I might be short in the stock if I keep this short position on or do I just want to get rid of the whole thing and say yeah, this is just a small loss and we'll just get out of it.. Do I want to get rid of just the 72's that I sold? So we're going to go through all that scenarios in the live trade room because I think that's really important. But for all of you in the podcast as well I hope you go through a same process of looking at a position you're in. Something I adjusted. I don't have an undo button. I was wrong about the direction that I thought something was moving and so as I move into tomorrow that is the end for me. I tried doing an adjustment on it. I am not going to go out any further. I confess up to it and say yup I got out of four or five winning positions this week and this one isn't working and that's okay. And I'm not going to continue the risk on this by rolling this out any further. I was wrong, I tried it once, I didn't get it so I have to make a good rational decision to say tomorrow's the end of this trade. Even though I have the ability and the broker's little light will flash and say hey you can do this. I'm not going to do that I have already made that choice one time and it's time to move on to look for other trades that can make me money. Cause I can make more money in the market being focused on the right trade rather than spending too much time on trades that are wrong. I don't know when you look at trades do you ever have a point where you're like I just have to stop here.   TJ: All the time and it's usually you try once, you try twice and then it's time to move on to something with better opportunity and not dwell or focus on the one trade or two trades of eight or two trades of ten that didn't work. Right? We're always focused on that one or two that didn't work when there's seven or eight or nine that have worked really well. But we're still well, like you said, as humans focused on that and I think, I don't know, I'd like to leave this with kind of a thought too and goes along to the last point in it. I think thought it was a really great point was if I'm taking a second. So for example, I have Apple. I take one trade, it doesn't work, I adjust it or roll it, and I'm looking at that second trade. Why does that second trade have to be an Apple? Maybe there's a better opportunity in a different stock in Google. So why do I have to stay in Apple just because I started trading in Apple? Maybe there's a better opportunity and I can make my loss back in a different stock and I think that's what we have to remember that like you said just because there is that rolling button on your brokerage that makes you that one click roll, doesn't mean you need to use it. And you need to really evaluate at the end of the day, is it better to stay in the original stock, and I think there's opportunity there. Or is there more opportunity somewhere else where I can make more money and I think that's kept me on the right side of things for many years.   Sarah: Those are wise words my friend and I'm sure all of you guys listening to this podcast can absolutely relate to this feeling because this is something that we all deal with. And I hope this has been really helpful for you to hear a little bit about how we evaluate trades and what we basically do with them when they're not working. I think it's sometimes really easy cause we are shorter term traders and we have so many profitable trades that sometimes a lot of the learning can come from trades that don’t work and so happy to talk through all of that. So great podcast today I think this was really helpful for everybody. We would love to hear from you though. So one is, send us an email podcast@shecantrade.com if there's a specific theme that you'd like us to talk about moving forward we're happy to take all of those pieces of feedback and then also please post a review. The reviews are what really helped build this podcast up and helped other people benefit from the learning that's here. So please review the podcast. Look forward to seeing you guys all guys next week and happy trading everybody.    

In today's ridiculously titled episode, Marc starts off talking about something you should know about dollar movie theaters, that is, at least according to reddit. After that, Marc jumps back into the pool of spring anime with previews of SukaSuka (WorldEnd: What do you do at the end of the world? Are you busy? Will you save us?) and Seikaisuru Kado (KADO: The Right Answer), before ending with a preview of the Early Access brawler aptly titled, Brawlout. Anyway, cheers and enjoy the anime-zing(ly bad) show.

Happy Monday Motivation! Welcome back to ALMOST ONE YEAR of podcasts!! (insert slight squeal of excitement!)  No More Excuses! Right? We're all full of them and one I have heard and it breaks my heart is, "I don't want to work that hard" or "I didn't realize it would be this hard". Well, life IS hard isn't it? I'm sure we've all read about or looked at some celebrity or big business owner and thought it was merely luck and he/she was born with "IT"! If you ask any successful person, they all say they've failed, they've heard no, they've changed course, been on the course of bankruptcy, yet they kept going! I just listened to an interview Dan Rather did with Carlos Santana! It was SO COOL! He said he worked his ass of, lives life with gratitude and never stops working at it. WHAT? He's Carlos-friggn'-Santana, why would he need to "WORK" at it?! Because he wants to keep on keeping on!  So last week's podcast was about determining what you NEED. More clients, more money, more joy, happiness, love, understanding. And, this week is about HOW HARD ARE YOU WILLING TO WORK FOR IT?! And... how will you get there? Big questions you have to face. You "say" you want IT. You "say" you'll work hard. But will you. Take a good look at your life, your dreams and goals, and tell me how you will get where you want to go AND if you are willing to put in the effort to get there?! Have a great week! Cheers! Sandi

Did you know this is the first time we've actually said the word f#ck on #MerryBiz? Woha :P hehe but with good reason! This was one our all time best/fave interviews we've done to date on #MerryBiz (actually, Carla said it was her actual favourite). Mark Manson does things a little differently when it comes to self-help. He makes you think harder. Question things. And in all honestly, he helps you just live a much simpler, better life, through the art of subtly not giving f#cks about certain things. Don't take it the wrong way. It's not about giving no f#cks. It's about choosing what f#cks to give. We go into all sorts of things during this interview, one of the best moments was when Mark said... "Wanting more positive experience is itself a negative experience, embracing negative experience is itself a positive experience." See! Made you think! And we bet it made you go AHA! Maybe you had to read it 5 times like us which is totally a-ok. It's so true it hurts. If there is one interview you listen to on #MerryBiz (oh come on... you know you wanna listen to them all!) make it this one. It will change your thoughts... and you know what they say when you change your thoughts... right? Right? We're so super pumped to welcome Mark Manson to the #MerryBiz podcast! YEW! Take a listen! Some questions we asked... Tell us about The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F#ck? How did you develop this way of thinking? What was the initial reaction to your style/thoughts when you started sharing it with the world? Tell us about the feedback loop from hell? What do you say to people who ask you "How do I find my passion?" How do you deal with failure? "This too shall pass" Some AHA! Moments in this episode... Why we need to become comfortable with the suckage that happens in life. Why feeling bad isn't a bad thing and how to remove the label and get on with life. Your ability to achieve success is directly proportional to how much failure you're willing to deal with (epic, right?). Wanting more positive experience is itself a negative experience, embracing negative experience is itself a positive experience.  There's always something to gain from any experience.  "What we end up giving a f#ck about determines our motivation and goals." See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Philadelphia and Raleigh face off! Cousins Lara and Christine each claim her city is best. Who is RIGHT? We're joined by expert witness JON WURSTER of Superchunk, The Mountain Goats and the late, great, BEST SHOW ON WFMU.