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Jimi Wollumbin joins Mason on the show today to wax lyrical on all things microbe and virus related, very fitting considering the current climate and international lock down. Jimi is true renaissance man, who, over the last 20 years has had the opportunity to research and practice some of the most respected traditional medical systems on the planet, including the Chinese, Tibetan, Indian, Mongolian and Persian traditions. Jimi has also worked extensively in community health and international aid initiatives. These days Jimi's passion lays in the death and birth cycle of transformation. Jimi believes this is what the world needs on both an individual and global level. Jimi supports his clients through this transformational process at his Artemisia, his clinic based out of Northern NSW. "viruses are the medium of evolution, and they're distributed intelligent networks inside a massive big biosphere, which is Gaia, which is a huge supercomputer, single living organism that thinks, and responds, and computes really significantly. So we have to think of viruses in that context if we've got any hope of starting to approach what's happening at the moment, right?" - Jimi Wollumbin.   Mason and Jimi discuss: Crises as a part of the universal order. Disease as a factor driven by your individual belief system and lifestyle. Corona Virus. The role microbes play in the web of life. Drug resistant bacteria. Viruses as a distributed intelligence. Viral replication and eco harmony. The use of reductionist linear thinking in a nonlinear universe. The value of exploring ancient mythology when transforming your personal health culture. Traditional medicine and integrative thinking vs evidence based medicine. Using herbs as allies in healing vs using herbal medicine within the "pills for ills" ideology. Healing and the death/birth cycle of transformation. Who is Jimi Wollumbin ? Jimi Wollumbin is Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Jimi is one of those rare individuals that is an expert in his field that also knows how to teach others. He has spoken at the United Nations, opened for Deepak Chopra and has even been personally insulted by the Dalai Lama. He teaches integrative doctors across America, sits on the faculty of the America Integrative Health and Medicine Association and is a lifetime member of the Tibetan Medical Institute's 'Friends of Tibetan Medicine'. After completing his internship in Chinese Medicine in TCM in Beijing hospital he has since completed 3 research exchanges at Ayurvedic hospitals in India, 2 with the Lama-physicians at the Tibetan Medical Institute, 1 with the Persian Hakims of the Unani Tibb Hippocratic tradition, 2 at the Trad-Med Department of the Mongolian National University in Ulaan Bataar and a 2019 trip through Siberia to research Shamanic medicine. Jimi’s original degree at the ANU was in philosophy and eastern religion which is why Dr Seroya Crouch describes him as ‘a philosopher of medicine’. He has written several books, none of which have been published, acclaimed or even read... yet. Jimi is the CEO and founder of One Health Organisation, a wellness-based charity that has distributed over 10 metric tonnes of herbs and supplements to 100 locations across 13 countries since 2005. Jimi brings passion and enthusiastic hand gestures to every conversation he is a part of.   Resources: Jimi's Website Jimi's Blog Jimi's Instagram   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason:   (00:00) Jimi, thanks so much man.   Jimi Wollumbin:  (00:01) It's a pleasure.   Mason:  (00:02) Round two for us, first round for Superfeast podcast.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (00:05) Yeah, great. I'm looking forward to it. The last round was really exciting, and we went to all sorts of magnificent places.   Mason:  (00:11) Oh, and your inspiring clinic as well, which you're full time in now.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (00:15) That's right.   Mason:  (00:15)                    Okay.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (00:15) Yeah. At the base of Mount Warning in UK.   Mason:  (00:18) I've been following along. I mean, just before we kick on, I mean, there's not too many people anymore that I follow on Facebook, but I love every one of your posts.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (00:29) I'm very touched.   Mason:  (00:31) Got a lot of them saved. [crosstalk 00:00:32] a lot of them saved. So just go and find Jimi Wollumbin and follow him. We were talking about, you've gone and you've got a clinic, can you just tell everyone the nature of what you're offering there?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (00:48) What am I offering? I previously used to offer alternative and traditional medical services around acupuncture, and herbal medicine, and body work, and helping people get well, and now I help people die and be reborn. And so, if people are just looking to mitigate their symptoms, then I'm not necessarily the best practitioner anymore because I found that those symptoms, whatever it is that they're struggling with, are always an invitation into a larger process of transformation.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (01:25) And at an individual level and a global level what we require, in my book, is transformation. And so, yeah, the dying and reborn process of transformation is what I'm really passionate about out at Artemisia.   Mason:  (01:36) Well, I mean, because coming in off the bat, especially if you're coming in from a Western model, you're like, all right, well that's some pretty heavy language that's going on there. But when you get into a clinical process and when you get into the fact that, how many little deaths are going on within the body at every moment and just the transformation cycles that need to occur with your energy at all times, I mean, these are the things that, the bed of basically all energetic medicine and Taoist medicine that is just... Qi is just.. Energy is just transforming and changing as you go along.   Mason:  (02:11) And in order to really be reborn through those processes, you need to deal with it a very multidimensional level, and I think that's why the only appropriate thing to talk about is to die and be reborn. Right?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (02:24) Yeah. And just to make that understandable to the average person that might not have been engaging in this, is that 90% of our deaths and illnesses, 92-95 are chronic degenerative illnesses, right? And so that means they're lifestyle mediated. So you lived your way into your illness, but the lifestyle that you had is determined upon your beliefs. Right? And so you've got all these particular beliefs, I'm not lovable unless I work my ass off, I'm not safe unless I earn lots of money, something like this. So your belief structures determine your lifestyle and your lifestyle determines your diseases.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (03:01) And so those belief structures are really the viral memes, just to segue us towards the next conversation, that are giving rise to your symptoms. And it doesn't matter whether the symptom is a rash, or a joint problem, or indigestion, underneath that are these core ideas that you have that have driven you to behave and live in an unsustainable manner. And that then crystallizes into your lifestyle, which crystallizes into your diseases. And so it makes no difference what your disease is, if it's, you've lived your way into it, and overwhelmingly we do, it's going to require personal transformation.   Mason:  (03:39) So the personal transformation, especially to go back, because you used the word, you've been living in an unsustainable manner. And that's, I mean, that's where I personally feel that little deaths and reborn processes need to occur for myself, because to have to realize that what you're doing isn't sustainable and generally opens you up to the possibility of degenerating in one way or another.   Mason:  (04:04) As much as you might be doing all this other healthy shit and rocking it, but if you've really got something that's coming from, whether it's a belief pattern, whatever it is that's tweaking year towards unsustainability, then you're going to keep on being caught in that cycle and the only way is to really consistently let a part of you go, just like pass away. Right?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (04:30) Yes, absolutely. And it's not a failure if you find yourself in there, because crisis is woven into the very heart of life, into the fabric of the universe itself, that crisis is what facilitates evolution and change, phase shifts. And so biology, any complex system generates crises, because it's complex. And then as that crisis emerges, then it facilitates the emergence to another level of hierarchy, another level of complexity. So evolution and change has crisis and chaos as a core part of it.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (05:05) And so if you find yourself sinking and swimming and being engulfed in crisis and chaos in your life, then it's not because you're a failure as a human being, it's your living out to the process of the evolution of matter itself. All life passes through that, and all species pass through that, and the earth itself is passing through that. And so I think it's really important not to have some ideal that if you don't have vibrant wellness you're spiritually failing yourself in some way, which is a terrible thing to be putting forth to people because-   Mason:  (05:37) But it's something that hangs on in the background. [crosstalk 00:05:39].   Jimi Wollumbin:   (05:39) It hangs on a lot. It's very, very common in the new age, and it's toxic. It's a toxic meme. But we're going to talk about viruses today, and just to link those two ideas together is, what I was saying there is if somebody comes to me with a viral infection, then I don't... It's somewhat relevant what virus they have. I have to pay attention to that. Is it herpes, is it genital, is it this, where is it, what are the symptoms?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (06:08) But because they're opportunistic overwhelmingly, then I'm just going to go through that process of saying, well, what else is going on, how have you driven yourself to this particular point, and what are the beliefs underneath that? So what are the ideas or memes, if we use that language, right, these, what are the ideas that you've been infected with, the memes, that have driven the behavior that have now made you susceptible to this particular virus?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (06:35) And so that's what the work looks like at an individual level as well as the pragmatic stuff of these are the medicines and treatments that are useful in viral infections that sort of, the day to day bits of medicine. But the personal level goes like that. And I actually think that whilst everyone's got coronavirus on the brain at the moment, it's a perfect time to have the same conversation for us as a culture that needs to happen at an individual level about, wow, you've got a viral infection, so what does this mean? What does this mean to America? What does this mean to the global culture right now?   Mason:  (07:10) What does it mean in Australia when every single pharmacy and supermarket is literally sold out of face masks over this outbreak of the coronavirus. There's obviously a lot of worry and fear, and when you have, let's just say novel virus, if emerging and it's coming into public knowledge, at least, for the first time. It's been the first advertised outbreak. But I don't exactly know. I'm just talking between the lines, because I don't know exactly what's going on with coronavirus. I haven't been looking too much into it.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (07:44) Okay. Well that makes both of us really, I just have to flag my general ignorance as well about, I have an oral only policy on news, so I don't have any Facebook feeds or any social media feeds that I look, and I don't look at any websites.   Mason:  (07:56) Or conspiracy feeds.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (07:57) No feeds at all. The only way I get news about the world is filtered through other human beings that I trust, and so it that makes me the most ignorant and ill-informed person that I know.   Mason:  (08:07) And what it brings up, it's this interesting pattern. We can see with swine flu, bird flu, SARS, corona, it's this new ambiguity of us being susceptible and infected, not understanding quite what viruses are, which, that's where I feel like I'd like to jump into.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (08:26) Let's go there.   Mason:  (08:26) Let's go there, so-   Jimi Wollumbin:   (08:27) It'd be really, really interesting.   Mason:  (08:27) Yeah. Or, you want to just take the bat there and run with what we mean by that.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (08:31) So, just before we go into viruses, there needs to... I think, just a context of microbes. Right? And so just to see the larger context is that the web of life and the idea of a tree of life has been cut down by biologists. It's a bad metaphor, and it didn't work out. It's really officially a web of life.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (08:52) The web of life is microbial. And so that means that of the 23 kingdoms, we've got animals, plants, and fungi being macro, and the other 20 are all micro, right? And those macro ones, they're like the fungi, the fruiting body on top of this vast web of life. So life is overwhelmingly on this planet, microscopic and invisible to us. And the only reason that those microbes account for 90% of the species on this planet rather than 99.8985 or something, is because insects are in the animal category with us.   Mason:  (09:33) Right.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (09:34) Because of insects-   Mason:  (09:37) We bumped up.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (09:37) We bump it up to 10%.   Mason:  (09:38) They bump the mean up.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (09:39) Yeah. They bump it up, but you take them out and it's this microbes, so the web of life is microbial. And it's a web, right?   Mason:  (09:46) That's like cells are most bacteria in the human body kind of ratio.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (09:49) Just that sort of thing. So if you dehydrate me, I'm 19% microbial protein, it's like, wow, okay. And it's like that across the whole planet, the macro and micro thing. And the other important thing to see is that the bacteria are, we think of them as all these different species and that's helpful in a way, but they're all changing DNA, all changing DNA, like microbial lions changing DNA with microbial zebras, with microbial praying mantises, just swapping DNA. And so-   Mason:  (10:27) And many ways to swap as well.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (10:28) So many ways.   Mason:  (10:29) Directly to a different species, I'm randomly just going to leave this information here so that some other life form can come and get this-   Jimi Wollumbin:   (10:38) Here's the app.   Mason:  (10:38) ... and learn how to evolve.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (10:39) That right. Here's the piece.   Mason:  (10:40) It's insane.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (10:40) Grow wings like that.   Mason:  (10:42) [inaudible 00:10:42].   Jimi Wollumbin:   (10:42) You know?   Mason:  (10:43) Yeah.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (10:44) And it's, they're downloading large pieces like that. And so there's this huge subterranean, I mean that figuratively, but actually literally, microbes go kilometers under the earth, and if we would pile them up it's like four stories of microbial protein covering us right now across all of the oceans and all of the land, right? So this vast subterranean network, that's a single organism, that's a single network, because it's all swapping DNA and information around, right?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (11:16) And so it's this vast system of information processing that makes our technology and our internet look like a 1980s space invader machine compared to a quantum computer. The numbers, I mean, if I've got 35 trillion bacteria, and there's 7 billion of us humans, and we're a fraction of this... It's just...   Mason:  (11:36) Yeah, it boggles the mind.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (11:38) Vast, right? And so we have to see this huge web of life that is microbial, that fruits up in towards us and the other cute macro species where we're at, and profoundly intelligent. They invented sex. I mean, hallelujah, thank goodness, they have their own language, quorum sensing, all of these things, they have strategies, they hunt, they flee, they're intelligent, they solve mazes and all sorts of things, and they evolve at a staggering pace. And so, first off, that they evolve at a staggering pace is, we know that...   Jimi Wollumbin:   (12:17) Penicillin came out in '45 and 10 years later 80% of bacteria were already immune to it. Right?   Mason:  (12:25) Mm-hmm (affirmative)-.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (12:26) 10 years later. And Fleming had warned in the late 20s of the way in which they were getting immunity really quickly, before it was even available broadly, right? And so they just...   Mason:  (12:35) How was he onto that? Just working in the field?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (12:38) Yeah, in his own experiments. It's like things get immune really fast.   Mason:  (12:41) Right.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (12:41) He figured out in 1929 and he made a public announcement in 1945, the same year it all came out, right? 1954, nine years later, we got 65% to 80% immunity, right? And so because they're this huge smart network of everything trading genes, you put anything in and it passes all around. And so we throw our finest next generation bacteria antibiotic inside that, and then resistance forms, antibiotic resistance that is spread potentially through everything. Right? But not just resistance to that, but resistance to the next six drugs we haven't yet developed.   Mason:  (13:20) I love this world and it's floored me over the years, and at this point, a lot of it, I'm just like, yep, that's the reality. There's this huge web of life that's communicating and it's a whole kingdom upon itself, but when I think about the fact that they've become resistant to the antibiotic that hasn't been released yet, when I saw that data, I think it's like a Stephen Buhner first had data, is that fact they're living in the antibacterial soaps in the hospitals, you'd learn-   Jimi Wollumbin:   (14:02) Absolute zero, in nuclear reactors-   Mason:  (14:05) [inaudible 00:14:05].   Jimi Wollumbin:   (14:05) ... Out in space affecting them also.   Mason:  (14:06) You learn the reality of just, well, yeah, what we're... And then you watch the traditional mindset go, look what we're up against.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (14:17) Yeah. Wow. Okay. So that's the viral meme that we'll come back to, that pace then. Let's put that one to the side.. At the moment.   Mason:  (14:24) All right.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (14:26) So we've got that vast network of really intelligent super processing that is the web of life, right, that we are a part of. It's not us and them, we're a part of it. And then inside of that then we've got viruses. And not very long ago we were like, viruses, do they even get categorized as being alive, because they're just dumb self replicating chunks of DNA. It's like we don't even give them status as living beings. Right?   Mason:  (14:58) Yeah.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (14:58) That's where it was at. Right?   Mason:  (15:00) Yeah.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (15:00) And since then, thanks, I believe, to computer programming and together with systems biology, we found that viruses have to be understood as a swarm. And so looking at the individual, of course this is one of the things we were looking at in a reductionist way and you can't see the forest for the trees, so we look at an individual virus, it's like an alien coming down and looking at one of our brain cells and saying, these guys are morons.   Mason:  (15:25) Good point.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (15:25) Right? It's like that. So you're looking at one bee rather than a swarm of bees. Right? And then I found that when I look at that they behave in ecosystems like top predators, and they move through large whole areas, right, and inhabit that inside macro species like monkeys. And then they will do that, and they want to maintain, like farmers, say, of animals, equilibrium so that they can have their own going home that's stable.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (15:55) But then if something happens, like a rival troop comes in, then those viruses will become virulent. And when they infect the rival troop, then the rival triple die or get sick and unpleasant and have to run away so that ecostasis is maintained. Right?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (16:12) So we've got viruses as these large a-cellular, not having their own body, distributed intelligences, ecological demon, spirits of place that exist across multiple different beings and yet behave as a system in coordinated ways with all these different mutant mutations, right, all these different cells that have slightly different tweaks that will up-regulate one of those expressions and down-regulate another in order to maintain eco harmony so that they can continue. Right?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (16:49) So it's like viruses are doing this. Wow. So viruses are clever distributed intelligences. And on top of it, the other thing is that the reason why we don't have a tree of life anymore and we've got a web of life, is that the idea of a species doesn't make any sense anymore because we see that species are all changing DNA as well. And that's thanks to viruses. So viruses through horizontal gene transfer are taking DNA out of a zebra and putting it into a rattlesnake.   Mason:  (17:17) That's the best [inaudible 00:17:18]. It's always the best. It's like you're part virus, you're part so many things.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (17:24) We're like 40% viral in origin that we can identify, or something like this, right?   Mason:  (17:28) 40%.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (17:28) Something really, really high.   Mason:  (17:30) I didn't think it was that high.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (17:31) So viruses are the medium of evolution, or at least one of the mediums of evolution on this planet, right? And it creates, that's the tension of micro evolutionary changes in a Darwinian model of random mutation, it's like the fossil record doesn't support it, and it's just like, how do we get these leaps that the fossil record shows? It can be through viruses taking chunks, can be one of the mediums, right? Either way, horizontal gene transfer is taking place.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (17:58) So viruses are the medium of evolution, and they're distributed intelligent networks inside a massive big biosphere, which is Gaia, which is a huge supercomputer, single living organism that thinks, and responds, and computes really significantly. So we have to think of viruses in that context if we've got any hope of starting to approach what's happening at the moment, right?   Mason:  (18:25) Yeah. Well, it brings on a bit of a dichotomy when you have a viral infection and you go... I think because it's like we needed to have started the conversation back a little bit further. It's like, right now you're like, what am I supposed to do? Am I grateful for this? Am I letting it... It's maybe not the time to be have any huge conversations, just go and get yourself dealt with, but what is the conversation that we have then?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (18:53) Well, the conversation is... Let me give a couple more missing pieces of the puzzle before we get to the conversation I think.   Mason:  (19:00) Great. And go into that virus, just clipping parts of DNA of the puzzle and putting them all into one perfect string.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (19:07) So we've got the viruses moving around like this, we've got the vast, huge network of microbes that is the web of life that we are a part of, and we're just little fruiting bodies. And we have, on the planet at the moment, technological evolution like we've never seen before. Right? We've never seen, you're just staggering at the change that has happened in my life.   Mason:  (19:31) Yeah. Staggering.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (19:33) No one can keep up with it, right? But that technological evolution from the industrial revolution or wherever you want to take it, has produced significant changes in the biosphere, and parallel to the technological revolution that we can see in the big clunky things at our big clunky multicellular level, which is not the majority of life, where we are, we see all this technological change because our phones are smarter. Parallel to that is massive microbial evolution, massive change, maybe not like we've never seen before, but like has not been witnessed in a long time I assume.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (20:10) And so this is because we've significantly changed the environment, and we've been pumping out tons and tons and tons and tons of antimicrobial agents like antibiotics through our beef and all of these different things that are all putting pressure on the web of life. And let me say the web of life is fine, the microbial kingdom, fine. Microbes, like we just said, they can exist in nuclear reactors. The first evidence of microbes on this planet is during the Hadean era named after Haitis when the earth is essentially just a slightly cool ball of lava with meteorites exploding on it, the microbes are all right. Right?   Mason:  (20:51) And it's same with the Gaia, same with Gaia.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (20:54) That whole piece, right? Gaia microbes, microbes Gaia, they're sort of cells of Gaia in a way.   Mason:  (20:59) It's fine.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (20:59) Yeah, so that's fine, but it is changing because we have changed the environment so radically. It's having to adapt, so it's adapting. But those adaptions of the microbial kingdom to create ecostasis or harmony like the... You know the viral monkey story? Or you know when microbes first learn how to take in carbon and shit out oxygen they almost killed themselves by producing this noxious gas of oxygen that drowned the whole planet in corrosive, oxidizing, nasty acidic oxygen. And the mass extinction happened because of that.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (21:40) And then they figured out, oh, we can just use that intense, intense gas called oxygen, which is like sulfuric acid, and we can breathe it. And so they adapted to that. And then we got the respiration processes that plants and that we now take a breath, take for granted. And so they evolve underneath those things ecological crisis and adapt. And at the moment we've got this massive bio shift. And so this is massive change in what's happening with the microbes, right?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (22:10) And so we see the extinction of some of the macro species, which is heart rendering, right, for us, but what we don't see is this tsunami of roiling rippling change that's happening at the microbial level that reflects what's happening at the macro level of just like, whoa, okay, there's so much more carbon, whoa, there's tons and tons and tons of antibiotics, whoa, there's less of these species, whoa, there's pesticides, and heavy metals, and whatever else, and-   Mason:  (22:39) And radiation and all the [crosstalk 00:22:39].   Jimi Wollumbin:   (22:39) ... changing temperatures and radiation, gray spaces. And so it's like the web of life, that vast thing that would bury us four stories deep if we put this, the protein, the bacteria on top of us, is going through bacteria and viruses. And so over the last 25 years we've had like 30 brand new diseases emerge predominantly through ecological change and environmental change, and then through damning, through deforestation, through gray space, all that sort of stuff.   Mason:  (23:07) What's the gray space?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (23:09) Gray spaces where you've got huge environments that are manmade. And so-   Mason:  (23:14) Oh, and all that.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (23:15) Yeah, like concrete and all these sorts of things. Bacteria are thriving here, but they have to change to thrive inside plastic, concrete, EMF environments, right?   Mason:  (23:27) No real soil or ground-   Jimi Wollumbin:   (23:30) No, that's right.   Mason:  (23:30) ... just a little bit of [crosstalk 00:23:31].   Jimi Wollumbin:   (23:31) So it's a different culture, right?   Mason:  (23:32) Yeah.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (23:33) So it's a different microbial culture that-   Mason:  (23:34) Literally a different culture.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (23:35) ... thrives inside this culture that's here, right? And so all of those things are producing changes, right, so microbial changes, microbial cultural that reflect our cultural changes and our technological evolution, biological evolution that affects our technological evolution. And so then when we see coronavirus, then we have to have this conversation that we started off with like the person that comes to me with some other virus and say, well, you know what else is going on? I'm really exhausted, and I've been drinking too much, and I just had a divorce. And why was that?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (24:10) So I go, I guess I got a divorce because I was just never available, because I got the idea when I was a kid that I was unlovable. So I just had to work my ass off and all blah blah blah, and I drive people away like that, and now I'm exhausted, and my immune system is crashing, and I've got a virus. It's like, oh wow, good, it's time to take a good long hard look in the mirror.   Mason:  (24:25) Take this.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (24:26) Take a mirror home. That's the main thing, right?   Mason:  (24:31) Yeah.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (24:31) It's like, wow, you lived your way into this.   Mason:  (24:33) Well, then you're asking them to take home a lifelong practice as well.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (24:37) Absolutely.   Mason:  (24:37) Which is interesting.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (24:38) But that's what's being asked of us as a species.   Mason:  (24:41) For sure.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (24:42) That process, right, of, what's coronavirus about, and all these other new diseases about, and what can we learn from it, and in what way do we need to change and adapt? Because at the moment we are on this thing of just like, let's just keep changing the environment to us rather than us changing to our environment, adapted to an environment. So there's a larger conversation of like, wow, okay, things are shifting really fast and we can see some of these diseases coming up.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (25:11) And not to fear monger, because people have pointed out that there's a large amount of fear out in the world at the moment about these viruses, but as somebody that's studied the history of epidemics, then we know that when we've mismanaged our environment really significantly, like in the middle ages or through the industrial revolution, that those diseases that come up, those microbial changes that have to adapt to that really significantly different environment, there's nothing medicine does and can do then or today, and just like, yeah, a third of the population just disappears.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (25:46) And this just comes for a period of time and then disappears like this English sweating sicknesses and you just, you'd be alive and then 24 hours later you'd be dead. And then when it's all done, the sweating, sickness, bacteria and virus have just disappeared. They come for a period and then they go after that. Right? And so there's due course for us as a species to have a degree of alarm about how we're mismanaging our environment and what the biosphere is going to do, not in a punitive sense because we are the biosphere, but just in terms of maintaining equilibrium and balance. Right?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (26:19) And so coronavirus by itself doesn't frighten me, but the rippling and roiling of the microbial underworld is, that's what homeostasis can look like in the process of these mass macro ecological changes. We see the forests, we see the glaciers, we don't see what's happening in the web of life below that because it's too small for us. But it's moving like plate tectonics. Right? And coronavirus is one of those ones that's like this, but coronavirus looks all right. But the epidemiologists and my microbiologists that are alarmist, they have a good reason, because they've seen-   Mason:  (27:06) They've seen what can happen.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (27:08) They know what can happen. They do know what happens. So as a species, not as an individual, as an individual you shouldn't worry. And I just want to repeat that. Anyone that's really worried, I don't think as an individual you should worry at all right now, but as a species I really think we should worry because we terribly mismanaged our environment. And the changes that can come as a result of that can be frightening for us, not for life, not for the web of life, but for us as an individual species.   Mason:  (27:34) Yeah. And it's confronting, I mean, none more than when you go into the healing space of a hospital, and it's, you continue... Last decade I've been around lots of more nurses and doctors and become much more sympathetic of the human element, but I'm not sympathetic towards my own ignorance and nor for general ignorance as well, and also not an asshole when I try and point it out and think I'm a know it al.   Mason:  (28:08) But that environment is literally a storehouse of bacterial and viral infection because we keep on kicking the can down the road with antimicrobials, and antivirals, and antibiotics when it's a virus, just to be safe, so on and so forth, just chopping the organ out, sterile, no plants, no sunlight, none of that. It gets very significant when you take a-   Jimi Wollumbin:   (28:33) Oh, yeah.   Mason:  (28:33) ... back look or look back at, this is where we're doing our healing?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (28:37) It radicalizes and virializes the web of life. And so there's no good metaphors for this, but you could think of it as terrorist training camps, except it's not terrorist, it's just life. You could think of it as-   Mason:  (28:53) The way that we relate to it it is.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (28:54) Yeah. From our perspective, we're radicalizing, it's like that because they're still not terrorists, they're still interested just in harmony, but from our perspective they invoke terror so we think we think of them as terrorists.   Mason:  (29:05) For sure.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (29:06) We radicalize them in the hospital through those particular processes, but we don't just radicalize them, we evolve them.   Mason:  (29:13) We evolve them massively, right?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (29:14) Really quickly. And there's been more microbial generate... How does this go? Because they go through a generation in every two minutes or something like that, so there's more... What we see over the last 300 years of human existence in terms of technological evolution, we say, wow, look at that, that's happening every five minutes in the bacterial world. It's just, it happens so quickly. It's happened so quickly. Like one bacteria listed left to divide uninhibited would produce more cells than there are protons in the known universe in like two years or something like that.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (29:54) And they are evolving through that process constantly. So the process is really, really fast. And compared to our macro evolution, which is quite slow, the micro evolution is really, really fast.   Mason:  (30:06) So then if we start looking at, all right, if we are susceptible to illness and viral infections, say, in a treatment perspective, you've talked to our need to get to the root as well as then personalized treatment. Ongoingly, do you see the fact that we need to be working on that level to come into harmony within ourselves, in lifestyle and state of mind? In that essence, then what? Is it so that our immune system can be strong so we can be a part of nature?   Mason:  (30:38) Do we need to almost practice the little deaths because we've got this inevitable moving back to when we're going to die and be absorbed by this huge microbial kingdom? What's the point? Where do we fit with our health and our relatedness?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (30:54) Okay. So, I hear the invitation to speak in a clinical and individual level, and I promise I will, but first I want to say, if I just have a conversation like that and then said, and for yourself, make sure you do this and this and this so you're strong, I will be perpetuating the problem. And so the problem is this as I see it, right, is that we've been talking about genes and the way in which they move around, but we spoke previously about memes, like the viral infection of an idea that drove that particular man to destroy his marriage and his health. Right?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (31:34) And so memes in evolutionary biology are ideas that spread through culture. So Christianity is a meme, catholicism is a meme, feminism is a meme, capitalism is a meme. All our isms are memes. They're ideologies that affect us, right? And so there's this continuity between microbial culture and human culture, between genes and memes, that goes around and around and around.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (32:02) And so on the one hand we can see, just imagine that there's a gene for selfishness and violence, which there isn't, and genes don't work that way, but imagine there is because it's easier to think about. And then we've got someone that's got that gene and then they create a tribe around them that's all got that gene, and then they create a country and an empire like the Roman empire that's based upon this particular gene spreading, every stage of that. Then they create culture around that, they creates stories around that, they create images, they create are practices that all have a meme involved of violence and selfishness.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (32:37) Now as that meme spreads to other cultures, their stories, their religions, and their religion is, it's survival of the fittest, that's their religion, say, as that idea gets out, then that idea changes those other people in the same way that that gene could change other people. Right? So genes can give rise to meme and then memes come down and change our biology culture. The meta emergent culture changes our biology as a species in the same way that your ideas change your biology and your biology changes your ideas.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (33:12) So we've got this movement of there's unhealthy ideas, cultural memes that are spreading across the planet behind the globalization of the world, and that fundamental... It's hard to put a word to what is that meme, because it's really complex, right? So there's no satisfying single quip. Right? But for the purposes of your question, I'm going to say the meme that is spreading is the meme of the fallacy of separation, that our economy is separate from our fine arts, that human culture is separate from the environment, that the icebergs is separate from your gut health.   Mason:  (33:54) I mean, even in the body strength is separate from flexibility.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (33:58) All of those.   Mason:  (33:58) Yeah. All of those. Yeah.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (33:59) All of those using reductionist linear thinking in a nonlinear universe overwhelming.   Mason:  (34:07) A universe-   Jimi Wollumbin:   (34:07) Right?   Mason:  (34:07) ... that literally doesn't have such thing as a straight line.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (34:09) Right. That's right. So that's the meme that I would say, the fallacy of separation, right? And that that is spreading across lots of different cultures. And as it spreads, they create technology and practices that then alter the environment that then virializes bacteria in particular ways, right? And then those bacteria will then spread genes and do things like that. So we've got this movement up and down in a complex system from its parts and the emergent holes that come out of them like this.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (34:39) And so when you say, well, what should I do? If I say, well, you know what you should do, Mason, is you should make sure that you get all the proper nutrition and you do this and this and this and this and this, I would be potentially spreading the fallacy of separation.   Mason:  (34:55) Well, what I'm thinking, well, yeah, what I was thinking there, what we do in terms of a mindset going forth, is it... Because I've thought about this and meditated on this for so long, and in the end it's just something to do to keep on coming back to yourself I imagine, but is there a surrenderedness, is there you're not in control? Is it, while you are a part of that web of life and so then the context of you becoming healthy isn't in, don't let that opportunistic organism come and kill me you bastard, I'm going to beat you. Is it something bad? I just want hear your insights of that core.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (35:38) Yeah. Good. So I definitely think that our own personal healing and our own personal journey is one of the most profound ways that we can affect the macro level as well.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (35:48) And there's this ancient connection between the micro and macro, right? That by getting healthy, by getting well, by engaging deeply in your process, your addictions, and the viral memes that you have in your family line and your own story, by starting to become conscious of those and healing those, by seeing the cultural ones that you've inherited of separation and fragmentation of who you are and how you see the world, then you're in a better place to be that little meme sharing bacteria in the web of life that says in moments like this, hey, have this little download. That's what I'm doing now. You and I are doing this now.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (36:33) We are virally spreading an idea. Well, we caught it from other people as well, it's not that we came up with it, but we're spreading this idea. And as it spreads that idea, then it changes the culture, and as we change the culture, then we change the way we do things, which is changing the environment, which is giving rise to those bacteria as well. Right?   Mason:  (36:52) Yeah.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (36:52) So I definitely think that people engaging with their own health is really, really important, but it's how you do that and why you do that that makes all the difference. Because a lot of people have still the viruses Osama Bin Laden must be killed and protected against and I'm taking all these super herbs to kill the bug, must kill bug.   Mason:  (37:13) And now the water fast, like more skin scrubbing, more oregano oil all over me. Like it's-   Jimi Wollumbin:   (37:20) It's herbal antibiotics against life, antibiotic, against the web of life. And it's the fallacy of separation that underpins that. And so there can be no health in an unhealthy culture. There can't be. And so our deepest yearnings for self-preservation have to get married to the transformation of our unhealthy culture and the preservation of the environment that we live in. It has to be that. And also along the way, yes, we need to take care of ourselves and we can... Once I've said this piece, I can move on, and then we can talk about antiviral herbs and things like that as well.   Mason:  (37:59) Yeah. I guess it's got a context.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (38:00) It does. Then it has the context. Right? But the larger piece is that we can not isolate ourselves with adaptogenic, immunological, super extracted herbs from the vast biological upheavals of the microbial kingdom. We cannot, our best... We can't do that. Right? Human beings will survive, but there's no guarantees about any individual.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (38:29) And so the idea is, I think, folly to just try and lock ourselves away, and the idea is, I believe, to get whole and healthy, and to become a wellbeing so that we can participate in the process of healing our fractured culture and vanquishing those unhealthy memes that have changed our environment, that are giving rise to those virulent genes, viruses, and microbes. Yeah.   Mason:  (38:59) Then we become, funilly, the micro in the macro of the microbials at that point. Right. Which is a trip. They are our ancestors. Right?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (39:09) Absolutely.   Mason:  (39:10) It's the bacteria that created, and viruses, that created a cell structure that then enabled us to come about that. I like that because it doesn't change us. We're not expecting all of a sudden to put on completely new glasses and see the world in a completely different way, but you can feel the world in a different way. You can trust the course that you're on already. You're trying to become more loving, more healthy, less of an asshole, try and get as much information as possible.   Mason:  (39:36) The internet is connected, but humans aren't connected, so you can't get, as you say, because you have all these memes, and this bias, and these institutional official stories of what reality is. It's hard sometimes to know what's truth and what's not, therefore, it's hard to take action like a microbe would that is going to lead us towards a personalized evolution. And you can see this quagmire happening. I think it's going to pass. I think there's a lot of extremism. I also see a splitting of the chains.   Mason:  (40:13) When you said those gray areas, I always think sometimes you just see... And you can feel the pull, you can feel the pull of modernity and domestication at times, and then as well you can feel that pull of nature. And if you're going to be getting involved in one direction or the other, to an extent, this is all speculation, but this is something I think about a lot, there's various splits in the genes where, not that you have different speices necessarily, but along that line of a conversation. So, because that leads to there had not been a right or a wrong because we have many different paths as well.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (40:52) Yeah, there are. One of the things I was thinking when you were saying that is about the modernity piece, is I think that one of the most radical things that we can do is to not just consume ancient grains, but to consume ancient memes, and to preserve ancient meme. And so ancient memes are contained in the world's mythologies in these ancient, ancient stories because they hold wisdom, they hold huge chunks of information, like the bacterial chunks that say, this is how you fly, or this is how you get camouflaged, right?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (41:34) They contain this in this myth or poetic language. And when we take them in they're like a ferment or something that you introduce into your kombucha. It changes everything. You change the culture within through consuming these leavens of these ancient memes. And so I think when you it's hard to know, it's confusing. There's all these things going on, all that sort of stuff, in the world. It's like, personally, that's one of the reasons why I'm ignorant of a lot of things in the modern world, is because I'm cautious about the information that I consume. I'm cautious about the imagery that I consume.   Mason:  (42:16) Well, that's huge as a health piece.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (42:19) Yeah. Because it changes... They're memes. They're all memes. Right. And you're not immune to it. They're going to become a part of you.   Mason:  (42:25) Discernment is massive.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (42:27) Yeah. Far out, so anyway, so. So that's that piece. I think that it's in terms of saying, well, how do I navigate through this environment? Is the how do I live, is not what science has ever excelled at. Right. Because mythology is not bad science, it is a completely different piece. It's a guide on the nature of being and how to navigate through crisis and change. That's what's in those stories. So that's one of my prescriptions, right.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (43:04) To our culture and to anyone living, read and immerse yourself in ancient mythology, because there's this life saving memes inside there that go in like viruses and change your state of consciousness. And they change it profoundly by giving you different metaphors, different images, and different lenses so that you can see the world in a different way, you can see opportunities and crises in a different way. And if I've arrived at a different perspective in my journey as a practitioner, it's through that. It's through the regular consumption of ancient memes.   Mason:  (43:39) Is that what draw you back to Mongolia?   Jimi Wollumbin:   (43:42) Yes, that's what drew me back to Mongolia. Yes. Speaking of ancient meme, it's a place rich in, and Siberia as well, the shamanism there, a place very rich in ancient memes indeed.   Mason:  (43:55) You've got some of those stories on your Facebook page. I think I'll-   Jimi Wollumbin:   (43:57) I do indeed.   Mason:  (43:58) ... just tell people to stay there rather than going, give us your top 10 mentions.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (44:03) That's right. And so then, I feel like I've dodged your previous question of what are people to do in response at an individual level to viral illness.   Mason:  (44:18) No. You answered it. I mean, clinically it's always interesting. I'm quite over getting a checklist of things to do and the Western approach of having reliance. I think a 20% of your energy in towards knowing the practicality, if you go down there are certain actions that you can take upon infection feeling, whether it's... What is it? Is it hot, is it cold, or is it... And you can take appropriate action to get yourself back into harmony.   Mason:  (44:44) You really answered the beginning of it. Being a part of that web of life, first of all, it means you get infected and, I mean, part of it's a big thing. It's like something's going to get yet you, something's going to get you.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (44:55) But do you not want to be gotten is the question.   Mason:  (44:57) Exactly.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (44:58) Do you not want to be gotten?   Mason:  (44:59) Well, that's what drove me in health, I think, in the very beginning, was a subtle fear of death. And that's why I got a little bit orthorexic and parasites. And now I'm at the point where I feel like I can go back into that conversation of cleansing, knowing that cleansing isn't a separate conversation from my general, it is my general lifestyle and everything that I'm doing anyway. I've got a little bit more of that. What you're saying, it takes a long time to feel that unity and that connectiveness.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (45:30) Purify me of the idea that I need to be purified.   Mason:  (45:34) It's massive. And it's interesting as well, because part of you needs to go forth at times. All you've got is your mind to hang on to protocols to get healthier. But then the transition of when you're rejuvenated to an extent that you can stand in your own sovereignty and start, you start feeling these mythical stories inside of yourself. You don't even have to... all that wisdom inside of yourself, and that capacity to realize, whether you like it or not, on a very practical level, you're not separated. There are microbials in you that have connected...   Jimi Wollumbin:   (46:07) You can't live without.   Mason:  (46:08) You can't live without.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (46:09) You die if they go. We know this.   Mason:  (46:11) But then from there you go, okay, I'm not having a knee jerk response to an official story or a meme anymore. From there, I mean, we don't even have to talk about anti-microbials and antivirals.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (46:28) Well, the best thing you can do is very simple, is to maximize your own wellbeing. And so the goal of health is health, it's not fighting disease, and health is not the absence of disease.   Mason:  (46:38) Well, that's an interesting piece-   Jimi Wollumbin:   (46:40) Right?   Mason:  (46:40) ... because it's a good-   Jimi Wollumbin:   (46:40) We notice. The world health organization agrees, right? And yet again and again, it's same with herbalists, they get suckered into fighting disease and treating disease. And so then you'll see a famous herbalist circulating their coronavirus formula, which just shows disappointingly their absence of education in the foundations of traditional medicine and integrative thinking.   Mason:  (47:04) Do you mean that even, just to bring some context, do you mean that in regards to what we've talked about or even more basically the fact that there are going to be absolutely individualized reasons as [inaudible 00:47:17] the coronavirus in the first place.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (47:19) No. If five people have influenza virus, and let's say they had the same strain, when they come to a good therapist, then they get five different treatments. One of those people is a 85 year old woman, and how she's feeling is really exhausted. The next person is a 45 year old robust man who's got fevers. The next person is a seven year old child who's sweating a lot and vomiting, right? What we treat is we enhance the resistance and the wellbeing of those individuals.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (48:00) Yes, we have an awareness of herbs that are anti-microbial, but that's only one of a whole range of things that go in to improve the way the system is responding. We're trying to harmonize that ecology of that particular person, and so some of the medicines could be diaphoretics that open up the pores and help release, some of the medicines could be heating, some of them could be cooling, some of them could be focused upon reducing nervous tension because that's what's keeping them in a fight or flight response and has switched off their immune system at the mains.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (48:34) And they all require, so evidence based medicine and integrative medicine, and I teach integrative doctors in the States about how to get integrative and to think in an integrative manner, evidence based medicine is giving way to individualized medicine.   Mason:  (48:47) It has to.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (48:48) It has to, right?   Mason:  (48:49) Otherwise it's not medicine.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (48:50) There's no evidence. It's like when you average it out, it's like across 50,000 people, well then it becomes nonsensical because then there's one who is average, right? It's like the matchbox factory that puts 49 matches in every box and the other one that puts 51 they say the average matchbox has 50 matches, but there's no match box that has 50 matches. It doesn't exist. There's no average.   Mason:  (49:12) It's an interesting thing that happened. TCM is the classic example that went extremely Western, and went, even just the categorization of disease based on the symptoms. Which you kind of, you have some sympathy for the Western mind needing to go to an institution and get a piece of paper, and we need a regulatory body because we're not patient enough to have it be like a real teacher student download, and then most people just don't have the patients or...   Mason:  (49:38) I hardly think I've got the skill and patience to sit there in a clinic and do that individual assessment again and again, not at this point in my life anyway. That's tough. It's a special skill.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (49:50) The opposite is really tough actually, I would say, having been a practitioner for 20 years.   Mason:  (49:54) Being ineffective.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (49:56) And also, no one wants to be making burgers. People come, I give you my this protocol, the next person comes, I give you my that protocol. That's why you said, what do you do? And I said, well, I'm interested in helping people transform. I mean, interested in people, helping them die and be reborn, because that's what your ill health is an invitation for always. And that's what globally we require.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (50:23) We require each one of those individuals to be transformed, to die to themselves and to emerge as well-beings having vanquished some of the unhealthy cultural memes that they've had inside them so that then they can be the leaven for a healthy culture, because there can be no health and an unhealthy culture. And so we desperately require well-beings, but that happens individual by individual, and as it happens is a very personal process, and it's gutsy, and it's raw, and it's got sweat, and tears, and snort, and it's hard, and it's terrifying a whole bunch of the time.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (50:59) As you go through it, that's what transformation looks like. Just ask the caterpillar, I used to think the caterpillar crawled into its chrysalis and it was really cozy in there, and mood lighting and all that sort of stuff, and then it elongated and sprouted wings, but it doesn't, it turns to mush, and every single cell in that bacteria just dissolves into a Caterpillar smoothie, right? It's just like, except for these-   Mason:  (51:25) Sexy.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (51:25) ... small cells, the imaginal cells that hold the vision of flying, right? And that's like the soul, right, the imaginal realm, the imaginal cells in us. And so the process of healing is a process of alchemical transformation, and it's tough, and it's hard, and it is scary, but more scary than that is staying where you are. When it feels more scary to lose your soul and to stay in the little cage that you're at rather than to take this risk, and to go through, and to change, that's when I want to see you. I want them to book in with me then.   Mason:  (52:02) Yeah, I mean, and that process, it's, it can be harrowing and can take time.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (52:08) It is always harrowing. I've just been through one myself. It was incredible, but harrowing definitely. I had my own midlife crisis last year, and health things, and all this sort of stuff. It was definitely harrowing, but it's also profoundly liberating. And I'm not in a hurry to go back to it, but I'm so grateful. I would rather go back to that then go back to where I was and just continue indefinitely in the way that I was being, because I was possessed by particular ideas, particular selves, particular memes.   Mason:  (52:42) Identities, and yeah.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (52:43) Yes. All of those things, right, that were way too limiting, way too small for the vast pantheon of gods that inhabits every human being. And so I'm grateful for it, but yes, it was harrowing.   Mason:  (52:55) Yeah. It can be especially harrowing when you are enmeshed in the community where you've got yourselves and your identity tied up, yet it doesn't let you-   Jimi Wollumbin:   (53:04) Families, relationships, all of those.   Mason:  (53:07) Yeah. Cliques, social cliques, all that kind of stuff. It can't not be a part of medicine. You're right. And then these manifestations come up, that's when it becomes less of a mindset of just like this sickness is an opportunity just as an idea and you can actually start dropping into the reality of it. It becomes far more annoying being told that. What a great opportunity. It's like, shut up.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (53:27) Yeah. That's right.   Mason:  (53:30) I'm super sick right now. But it's like-   Jimi Wollumbin:   (53:35) Because there's no sense of what that is. It's just then it's a platitude, right? It's just thrown around, but there's no real understanding of what that is. But again, to come back to the macro, I think that this is required for us as a species, that individuals are willing to go on that journey, that they're willing to go right down that rabbit hole, that they're willing to go on a harrowing journey of initiation of descent into the underworld, like Persephone, of transformation and transmutation, is that, that's the hero's quest.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (54:11) Every one of us has that invitation. And the only way that our culture can be whole is if we have a certain number of imaginal cells, a certain number of initiated individuals that have been down to the underworld, that have died, that have drunk from those sacred waters and have re-emerged with gifts for those around them. And then they share those, those memes, those stories, those songs, right? They share them like that.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (54:36) That's the only way our culture is refreshed. Otherwise, a culture inevitably become stagnant, and ossified, and unhealthy, whatever it was at the start, it ends up, it used to be a signpost that pointed towards heaven, that pointed towards the moon, that pointed towards something worthwhile, and people used to use that signpost where their gaze was directed towards something, something truly worthwhile.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (54:58) And then after a while, people just start worshiping the signpost, and climb up on top of the sign post that pointed to Rome, or to heaven, or the moon and say, I'm at my destination and they get dogmatic and then they fight to defend the signpost, right? And that happens to every culture unless they're those people that go down, and when they go down, they go down crying and screaming, and hurting, and bleeding, and shaking, and terrified, into the underworld. But they emerge renewed.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (55:24) And so there's a lot of people that are hurting that will be listening to this. And there's a lot of people that will be scared and feel like they're not coping and that there are finally because of it, and again, I just want to say that that does not make you a failure. That makes you a hero on a quest, and to have the courage that it takes to keep going through that process, right, that's actually what healing looks like. It's a breakdown, a breakdown of those memes, it's a breakdown of those other identities, right? And that's what creates a well-being. That's what creates a resilient being.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (55:58) And if you want to be resilient, it's not really the goal, how can I be resilient so the bacteria can't get me? Wrong goal, wrong goal entirely.   Mason:  (56:07) Well, it's just a little bit misdirected, and with that reality that you've just been talking about, inclusive in the letting go, is as you move along.. The hardest thing is sometimes you find a community, or a person, or a practice, or diet, or whatever it is that was been super healing, and now a part of your process is to let that go as you go along. It's why it can be so harrowing and confusing.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (56:32) Absolutely.   Mason:  (56:33) However, then when you start talking about hydration, and herbalism, and sun exposure, if you're embedded in the process of the simplicity and enormity of what you're doing in this life and what you're going through, and in that context of I'm connected to all of this, and I don't know where I'm going, but I'm going, I'm doing it for me, and I'm doing it for others, and you're like, there's a focus on that sharing, all of a sudden it takes the charge away from the adaptogenic herbs. It takes the charge away from having to have the right water and diet, because it pulls it into context. Right? And that's what I like.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (57:13) Into a different context.   Mason:  (57:15) A hugely different context.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (57:17) A deeper, and a wider, and a broader context.   Mason:  (57:19) One that has reality. It's why, Superfeast, it's a weird thing, is why I don't go out and say like adaptogens, adaptogens, adaptogens, I talk about, in this instance I have the opportunity to talk about tonic herbalism in a Taoist philosophy. And so it's got this bed of, it's not really about the herbs, they fit in, and then they just fit into the flow, and they support something.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (57:40) They're a means towards an end, not an end unto themselves. Right?   Mason:  (57:44) And that's, it's not effective for longterm cruisy flowing, finding what for you, finding your own sovereign lifestyle and culture as you move along anyway if you create a health trend to everyone's got to be doing these things, it's not effective long term. I think it's a bad business model. Well, I think it is.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (58:09) Probably is, but it reflects a deeper understanding of what health really is as well. Because otherwise, we have this profoundly unhealthy culture with these profoundly unhealthy individuals infected by these cultural memes that rob them of happiness in a deep and fundamental way, that separate us from one another increasingly fragmenting us from parts of ourselves, our left brain from our right brain, our inner child from... All of these different parts of fragmenting and fragmenting and fragmenting. And there can be no health in that. It doesn't matter how many super foods you consume and how...   Mason:  (58:45) Except cacao and [crosstalk 00:58:45].   Jimi Wollumbin:   (58:46) Except cacao. Right. Except chocolate. Okay, chocolate's an exception.   Mason:  (58:48) And then the thing is, it's not. It definitely isn't. So, yeah... That fragmentation.   Jimi Wollumbin:   (58:58)

Brenden Schaeffer reacts to Saturday's news that the Cardinals have released Yairo Munoz after the player ghosted the team's spring training camp without telling anyone. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/bschaeffer12/message

In the second part of Nivi's interview, we look at BRCK, what she does now, the opportunity education is missing in Kenya and Africa in general and why nothing is built better for Africa to help leapfrog the world of yesterday like the internet. Are we doing what we should with it or are we just being bums?Music: Sun El Musician: Ntaba Ezikunde (feat. Simmy)

Welcome!   Today there is a ton of stuff going on in the world of Technology and we are going to hit a number of topics from Keyloggers, to Privacy and Encryption, and Tracking -- so stay tuned. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: Who is tracking your web movements? Use Firefox if you want to know. Little Inexpensive Devices Can Remove Sensitive Data Security 101 - Passwords and Password Management  Common Password Vulnerabilities and How to Avoid Them Cyber Cold War Right on Our Door Step International News Hits the Dark Web When Businesses Are Required to Capitulate to Chinese Society Cloud Players Vie for Pentagon Contract Privacy and China -- Not So Much --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: Hello everybody, Craig Peterson here. Welcome to my Saturday show her right here on WGAN. And online at Craig Peterson calm. You'll also find me up on YouTube, where I am posting videos of this show. And I try and do that every Saturday. I've been doing this now, last few weeks. This Saturday's no exception. Next Saturday maybe because I am going to be out in the West in the conference. So we'll see how that all goes. I may end up doing next week's show from my laptop, which would be a little bit different. I haven't done that before. So we'll see how that all goes. Today we are going to be talking about Firefox. A lot of you guys asked questions about browsers. So I've got an article from naked security up on my website at Craig Peterson. Calm talking about this. But Firefox browsers and this came up in one of my masterclasses here over the last couple of weeks, you know, those free classes that I've been holding, these are not pitchfests, in the least, we spent two hours in the last one. And this particular one, we're talking about privacy, and I had mentioned the offer browser and have some questions on that. So we will be talking about that today. Keylogging is an ongoing issue. It seems that every business that we go into, to help them clean up or do a security assessment and action plan for them. They all seem to have key loggers, at least one machine, man This week, we just found one of our clients had a data x filtration going on. Thank goodness, we had the right kind of equipment in place because it automatically noticed it and shut it down. But keylogging is a great way to start. That whole BX filtration, we're going to be talking about passwords today as well, which is always a big topic. And we'll talk about one password and some common password problems. We've got a warning out from checkpoint, and those are some guys that make some security software. That is saying that there is going to be a new cyber Cold War next year like that's a surprise. So we'll be talking about what that means to you as a home user as a business. The BBC did something I don't know that anybody would think about, but when I thought about it a little more. It made sense. But the BBC is now on the dark web and will tell you a little bit about that. And that also goes into my whole commentary about some of the browsers out there. And by the way, if you want to sign up for these masterclasses, I don't think I'm going to be having one this coming week. But if you sign up for the master class, you can attend Live asked questions. I always answer all of the questions, which is why sometimes it goes much just three hours because I try and make sure everybody understands what we discussed. I've been doing them live as well on zoom so that you can kind of jump in and type in your question in the chatbox, and I'll make sure I get to it right away. And I will be having more so see the two I've done, I think, Okay, the last couple of weeks. I know I did one on VPN and one on mobile security just yesterday. So make sure you sign up Craig Peterson comm slash master class. And these are, as I said, they're free, and these are not pitchfests. But it's me looking at material trying out material answering questions that I can use in upcoming courses that I do so. Tick tock, by the way, if you haven't heard about it, I've mentioned it on one of the morning appearance appearances that I do on the radio, but Tick Tock is here. Getting back now about this is from China about claims that China is doing the nasty with it. Microsoft man who thought that they would win this Amazon was the shoe and winner for this contract with the feds. We'll talk about that. And a little bit about what does it mean for you if you are using cloud services and what's the government trying to do here, and China, they passed a cryptography law. You know, of course, about Facebook, as I mentioned this before, and Facebook's cryptocurrency while China's getting in the game as well. And hopefully, they don't beat us to the punch here when it comes to the cryptocurrencies. You can watch all of this, as I mentioned, and I just noticed myself right because I got a little monitor sitting here so I can see what we're streaming. And I noticed that this big green logo God is behind me. It is for my ball. I sit on one of these kinds of big bouncy ball things so I can keep my back moving. In fact, this whole table that I'm sending that that you can see in the video on YouTube, this whole table, and my website. Of course, this whole table goes up and down. So I've got my production equipment here. I've gotten more production equipment there. I've got a huge 4k TV up there that shows me all of the different feeds and things it's just a nice little setup, but that's what this is in case you're wondering watching on TV certainly caught my eyes I might have caught yours as well. So let's get into Firefox right now. Mozilla, these are the guys that make Firefox has been trying to focus on security and privacy. And there is a difference between security and privacy. Security is where we have information that is kept private, but it is also kept secure, so it doesn't get out. It doesn't leak out. There's no way for anybody to get it. So that's how we're defining. Well, no way, right? There's always some way. But that's how we're defining security when it comes to browsers. Privacy is different privacy is where you don't necessarily want websites to know where you are, where you've been, what you're doing when you're online. And we should have privacy. I'm more concerned about privacy, my privacy, right. When it comes to government monitoring, then I am worried about privacy rights when it comes to business monitoring. Because businesses all they're going to do is try and sell me another pair of shoes. Or a car, maybe when I don't need a car. Government, much, much different government is going to be very intrusive government is the sole authorized entity and that it states to use force against you for what they want. In other words, the government can pull out a gun, put you in jail, take away your rights, your freedom, and kill you in some cases. So I get concerned when it comes to government. If you don't have the government, then you are really at risk. Now, how good is the government? I don't know. We were seeing these impeachment hearings going on with President Trump. The accusations are that under Obama's direction, the CIA started an investigation into Trump for political purposes. Then the CIA fooled the FBI into launching an investigation, and then there were some people high up in both these organizations, right. It's not the normal, lower level of people that were running this sort of stuff. And there's we can tell, right? But I get concerned, because even if this was true, and also if it was only the top-level people within the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, that were involved in, could move downhill. And we keep hearing talk about the deep state and what they're doing. Well, do you want the federal government to have all this information about you about where you're going online, what you're doing, and it goes back to the socialists. The quote that I've had in the front of my mind for the last couple of months is, show me the man I will show you the crime. Because every last one of us has committed a crime, some of them felonies. You before you leave your house in the morning, you've probably broken some rules. Regulation or law? Because there's so many of them just on firearms, there are more than 20,000 laws, how can you be expected to comply with them all? So, if you've got a committee in Congress, for instance, that wants to impeach the president, or someone else and they're allowed to go after the guy everything look at everything they've ever done everything! YES, Everything Everything. They will find a crime because everything is a crime. Oh, finally, we found an offense. Do you think that you with what you do online might have committed a crime at some point in time? That's the real question. If you're online and you are doing something that they want to paint as a crime, right, all they have to have is rumors to destroy your life. Look What happened with Mike Flynn? Did he remember every word that was said when he was vacationing in the Caribbean? Man? I know a lot of people that are a vacation in the Caribbean and are tipping back. Few too many drinks. Do you remember everything you said last time you inebriated? Right? And then now you're led into a perjury trap. All of this can happen when it comes to your online browsing history, what you're saying online when you don't have privacy. Again, we're talking about the government here. What the government's monitoring with the recording -- Who are you calling? What are you doing? And me, I'm a member of the media. And as a member of the media, I talked to all kinds of people I'm sure people that I have interviewed over the years have ended up being arrested and Probably some of them convicted of who knows what crime. So now they go back, and they selectively look at things that I might have said I might have talked to that person, and now I am a criminal. So when we're talking about privacy, there are two levels. I'm not worried so much about businesses tracking me. I am apprehensive about government monitoring me. And when we get back, we're going to talk more about this because the government monitoring side of things, and the business side, end up merging. It's kind of like a Moebius spurt strip here, frankly. You're listening to Craig Peterson. I'm on WGAN and online at Craig Peterson, calm, stick around because we'll be right back. Hey, everybody, welcome back, Craig Peterson, here on WGAN. And online at Craig peterson.com. Of course, as Peterson SO and we were talking about privacy protection before the break, I want to add one more thing about privacy protection when it comes right down to it. And that is, you are the person responsible for it. So let's do a little bit of education here. Let me help you understand what we're specifically encryption. Your web browsers can use encryption when talking to websites out there so that any data from your browser to the site is encrypted. Not that they always do it, but they can do it, and there are some plugins to make sure that it is using eat in corruption when possible. So one of those plugins is called. What is SSL everywhere, I think, is what the name of it is. But there's a number out there. But there are many browsers that do aim at trying to keep your data safe online. And I talked about those in the masterclasses here that we recently had we got more coming up, and we'll be answering even more questions. Of course, correct. Peterson comm slash master class for those three classes. But you can use a different browser. So, for instance, you know that if you have windows, you probably had Microsoft Internet Explorer on it. And then, they switch to this Edge browser. And now they have switched to using Google Chrome as the base. So basically, it's there. It's called chromium, which is the base that Google Chrome is based on and is in the OpenStack Source space. And Microsoft, of course, put their stuff on top of it so that they make sure they break a lot of websites. Well, that's, that's not why they did it. They did it because they're Microsoft and they know better anyhow. Your current Edge browser is not a Microsoft product. It's a Google product for the most part. So some of us will also use Google Chrome, which is the most popular browser out there by far right now. If you are using a Mac, you probably have Safari. So I've run through the leading browsers that people are using out there. Currently, some browsers are privacy aimed. One of them is the Firefox browser. And the other one is Opera. Those are the two most common, and Opera is probably the better of the two. But as was brought up in one of my master class, by one of the attendees, there are rumors that China has started to take control of opera, which could be a problem. And then there is the most privacy oriented browser in the world called tour. But we're not going to go into that today. You can find all kinds of information on the tour. I have done some Facebook Lives on it. And you'll find those online at Craig Peterson comm slash Facebook. And you can find out how to use the most private and secure browser that there is out there and it's free, by the way. So Firefox is trying to be the browser when it comes to privacy. And they have a few different browsers that are available on iOS and your Android devices, each offering different levels of privacy protection. Still, they have offered another privacy treat tweak to Firefox version 70. And this is the ability to see how often websites are tracking you. So if you are running Firefox, you can go and access it by clicking on the address bar shield icon. That's where you would normally see the information about any SSL certificates in use right now. It has a drop-down at itemizes different types of trackers detected on the various websites that you might be using. Now, there are some other things that you could potentially use and what I use as well. And probably one of these days we'll have to get more into this and what am I using and how are we blocking things, but there there are a few other plugins that you could use one from our friends over at EFS Electronic Frontier foundation that I use and that I like. I recommend, but we're right now we're talking about Facebook and Facebook, Firefox. Okay. So naked security, as I mentioned, has an article you'll see up on my website as well. And it's talking about the enhanced Tracking Protection that they did test. They said users might not notice the detection of many trackers if you already have this set to a strict setting, but it works pretty well. I like what the EFF has done a little bit better. But to back up its claim that privacy protections with having of Mozilla released figures showing that Firefox had blocked 450 billion cross-site tracking requests since the second of July. And now that's risen to 10 billion blocks per day. So a cross-site tracking is a site that might put a cookie on your browser. So that it knows what you're looking at what you're interested in where you came from, right. And that's one level of being monitored by the marketers. The next level of being monitored by the marketers is this cross-site stuff, including scripting. And that is where they're pulling data from another website. I have a client that this just happened yesterday. And this client has been using Internet Explorer. Now, we have been after them for a long time to get rid of Internet Explorer. It's not even supported by Microsoft anymore. So there are all kinds of security vulnerabilities. And they use this one particular small bank to do all of their banking. And they went online to the bank, and they couldn't log in, they couldn't get it to work. And it hasn't been working for months. Well, as it turned out, the advanced security that we had installed in their Network found that the bank had used an embedded a cross-site script, going to a tracked customer relationship management system. That was a fairly new site. It's only been online for about three weeks period. So we consider that high risk because that's a typical mo modus operandi for a hacker group. So we blocked that access. And that access, then made it so that she couldn't get a login. Now, this is all good, because it's a high-risk site. And we don't want them going there. We don't like the cross-site scripting, because many times that's how hackers get your data. And we're not going to get into a whole bunch of detail on how that works. But the Mozilla will block that now, which is nice, frankly. And you have to turn that on. If Wanted again, it's called enhanced privacy protection. And by the way, there is also a built-in password tool on Firefox called block-wise. And they now can generate a secure password when signing up for a new account. Now coming up here a little bit later, I'm going to be talking about passwords, some specific stuff about password managers, and not what the best practices are. But you can use it to replace the weak ones, and Firefox has been doing a pretty darn good job. By the way, Mozilla says that lock wise can be protected using Apple's FaceID Android Touch ID face recognition systems. And they're using AS 256, which is pretty good. encryption, it's tamper-resistant, it's GCM, it's their block cipher technology. They're using one PW protocol to obtain keys a, and they're doing a pretty good all shocked to 56 for the encryption key. So have a look at that if you are concerned about privacy leading into security, have a look again. And a side note here from our friends and naked security reason test by the German Federal Office for information security Firefox as importantly only one of five browsers to be given a passing grade. And I will leave you to guess who some of the ones that had failed. Were and I talked about them all the time. All right, stick around. You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN. Online at Craig Peterson dot com. We're going to talk about vampires on your computer when we get back, so stick around. Hello, everybody, Craig Peterson here. Welcome back. Of course, we're alive. Every Saturday from one till three. You can see me on Facebook Lives I've been conducting master classes. We got a great class coming up on hardening windows. It is a course we'll let you know about that as well. Hopefully, you got this morning's email. I send it out every Saturday morning with my notes for the week, including all of the articles we're talking about today. So make sure you follow along. If you haven't already, go to Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe, you'll get my special notes when they come out. You'll find out about some of the nastiness that might be happening out there, and you can be on top of and in Friend have any of these big problems that are out there? That's Craig Peterson comm slash subscribe. Well, let's get into the vampire side of things right the spooky time of year Halloween. Everybody's thinking about these vampires, and things about there's a kind of a cool new Walking Dead-ish show that it's a comedy on Netflix that we started watching. It is very, very cool. I think it's a fun one. But did you know that there may be vampires lurking in your computers? I mentioned a little bit earlier. But I have seen these vampires in pretty much every business that we've done an NSAAP in. So here's what an NSAAP is. An NSAAP is a network security assessment and action plan. We call them in NSAAP, right, so we'll go with In we charge 500 bucks. We analyze all of the machines that are on their network and what their security problems are. And then they have something they can run with, to try and fix the issues themselves or because it's so complicated, we'll fix them for them, right? That's what we do, we not only fix those problems, but we keep going. We keep the patches going, which is one of the most important things for you to do. We make sure that we have multiple layers of security on the machines and then on the network, and then at the network edge, etc., etc. So when we're looking at, these will look at two things that will look at vulnerabilities. And if they want us to, and there's an additional charge for this, we'll go ahead and look at indications of compromise, which means, Hey guys, not only do you have these vulnerabilities, but it seems like there's been a compromise. Now, you don't want to be compromised. I think that goes without saying the bottom line. But when we do this indication of compromise test, I think 100% of the times, and we have found one of these vampires on at least one computer. And what I'm talking about right now are key loggers. There is a guy that just went to prison sentenced just a couple of weeks ago for this type of thing. But there are two types of key loggers. But the bottom line is they're trying to find what you're typing because they know that you're going to have to type in password usernames, right? And they don't even need to know what's on your screen at the time because they can, you know, they can pretty reasonably recognize what you're typing. you're typing a letter versus you're logging into a system. And that, by the way, is why you need to factor authentication. That's why we use UB keys YUBI You can find them online Yubikey so that you have your account, you have your password, and then you have to physically insert this special encryption key to keep your data safe, right, that's the bottom line here. So the two types of these key loggers are there are hardware loggers, and the hardware key loggers are something that plugs into the back of the computer and then plugs into your keyboard. You don't see as much as you used to because many of us use Bluetooth keyboards. Now Apple is the best there is when it comes to it. And if you're watching me now, you see I've got an iMac over on my left, which is an Apple iMac. I've got Keyboard an apple keyboard, which is Bluetooth and an apple trackpad, which is Bluetooth hooked up to these, but it's using a special version of the Bluetooth protocol. To get the keyboard to sync up and the trackpad to sync up, I have to plug it into my iMac so that they can exchange security keys. So it's not just the basic Bluetooth security, it's much more advanced than that, which is great. So what they're trying to do now is get it so that with this apple keyboard and trackpad, there can be a key logger that pretends to be my Mac and then the keyboards talking to I'm Mac's talking to it, they get you can't do it right. Now, with the older stuff with a regular Bluetooth keyboard. What they'll do is they'll put a little Bluetooth receiver in the area, and it'll pretend it's the computer and the keyboard. Now regular Bluetooth keyboards do have security. And it does negotiate with the machine. So there's some security there. But most of them, the older ones, particularly all of them, are entirely hackable. So, what they were trying to do, again, is a key log. They sit in the middle between your keyboard and your computer and is easier to do with a hardwired or with a USB keyboard. You might want to switch to the latest version of Bluetooth available for your computer. Now the second way that keyloggers work and how we often find them when we're scanning the software. We're looking through the system registry, and looking in detail at everything. Those key loggers are pieces of software, and they've been inserting themselves into your operating system. So, that whether you're using a Bluetooth keyboard or hard wired keyboard, they see everything that you type. That's a problem because, again, they can figure out what your username is what your password is. Well, a New Jersey man has confessed to getting into businesses during hours and after hours and planting key loggers. And we've seen this happen in some congressional Democrats offices as well where they found installed key loggers. The Department of Justice has named the companies that were victimized one to New York, the others in Texas, and they both have offices in New Jersey. And what they said was that this guy, anchor wall 45 a month Ville news jersey pleaded guilty New York Federal Court on Tuesday this week to two counts of obtaining information from computers and one count of aggravated identity theft. So these can be bad, and they can be used to break into your bank accounts and all kinds of things. That's where identity theft comes in. And according to the court documents, it started in June 2016. When he trespassed into these companies, New Jersey, Brandt's branches, he got his hands on an access badge. And it let him keep, keep coming in when he wanted to write. And he installed the hardware key logger, those are the ones that sit on the USB port, or that you can program a Bluetooth keyboard into right so if you have physical access, all you have to do is just configure the Bluetooth keyboard to talk to your keylogger and then the keylogger talk to the computer. Then and then of This is hard, right? And apparently, he got employee usernames and passwords. He also snuck his computer and hard drive under the company's computer network. So we could install malware that does the same thing, which is the software key logger just talking about, then this gives the crooks a way to track everything, breach everything and get internet works completely. Okay. It's, it's a real problem. It's a real real problem. So, key loggers can be notoriously hard to find. But there is software that can find them in your normal antivirus. Sometimes it can. Hey, stick around. When we get back, we're going to get into passwords. You're listening to Craig Peterson here on WGAN. And I got a surprise for you when we get back. Of course, online Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe. Hello, everybody, Greg Peterson here. WGAN online, Craig peterson.com. What we're going to talk about passwords right now, and there are some surprising numbers that have just come out. I'm going to be talking more about these next week. Zogby, these are the pollsters just came out with some statistics on businesses and getting hacked, which is amazing. Amazing. Because it turns out that a quarter of businesses hacked in 2019 went out of business, 10% immediately went out of business. It's just crazy, but we'll be getting into this in more detail coming up next week. But let's talk about passwords because this is one of the most important things you need for your security. Now there are movements underfoot, and Microsoft is involved in Google and others in getting rid of passwords entirely. That's good. And it's bad. Now, they're not saying they're getting rid of the password. So anybody can just say, Hey, I'm Greg Peterson, let me into the Twitter account, what they're going to be doing and what they're already doing actually, is those accounts that they are that they're trying to protect, or it's using an exchange between your browser, the website, As well as something that you have like the Yubikey. You know, TLTP it's a one-time password type thing. That's where it's going. It's not there right now. And right now, the best thing you can do is protect your past. passwords by using one of these pieces of software that automatically generates a unique password for you for every website, and also store them securely will fill out the form for you with your password in there, so you don't have to remember it. And we go the next step and my company because we are a master managed services provider, that in fact for a master managed security services provider, but that's a mouthful. Be meaning that we provide the security services that other companies sell. So we're the people behind the scenes for a lot of local break-fix shops, bars, etc. So the change is now that one password we can tie in and we do tie into something called do ODUO-and it's something else that Cisco Bought, it's interesting. I don't know if they're following us around, but three or four of these products that we've been using for years, Cisco recently bought that we've been using them because we found them to be the best that was out there. So one password has a Business Edition, as well as a condition that you can be using, and you should be using for your family and using it to share passwords. So with the business version here, you can create different groups of users with varying vaults of passwords. And it makes it very, very easy, therefore effective. And frankly, according to CIO magazine, and I agree with this, you can get a measurable, beneficial impact on security just a few days after you've rolled it out. Now they have one password advanced protection, which also has extensive monitoring tools that we use to So that you can take control of your security in your business. So look at one password. It's not expensive, and it's not cheap. Okay? It's right in the middle. But one of the things it does is it lets you know hey, we have reports at this website that you have an account on has been compromised, so you've got to go ahead and fix it. So you've got to keep control of your sensitive information I've talked to before I had quite a stir when I said .hey don't tell the truth your bank you should be lying to your bank when it comes to your password recovery questions. And some people push back one of my daughters is pretty high up in a bank, and she was taken back by the headline, which is Lie to your bank, right? And then she read the article, and she's going to share it with other people within the bank because it just makes a lot of sense. So one password business lets you securely share passwords across your teams, or do your parliament, and only the people that need access to an account can get the access to the account, which is very, very important. It's the whole concept of limited access and, and who should be able to have access, right? very minimal access. Now there are other password managers out there. As I've said many, many times, I like one password, I think it's absolutely the best out there. That's what we use. We use it in conjunction with do Oh, and use that in conjunction with Yubikey. So that we have multiple layers, multiple layers of security when it comes to logging in. So let's say that you can't use one password, maybe your home user, your Soho, small office, Home Office. Let's talk about the other options available. One of them's called LastPass, which is pretty good. I've mentioned when we've talked about Firefox that it has a password manager built-in. That's pretty good as well. But let's get into the common password vulnerability. Ladies and how to avoid them. The old thinking was that you should change your password every 30 days, maybe more frequently. And that you need to have a mixture of numbers, letters, special characters, upper and lower case. That is no longer true. Not at all. The best password is a long password, that phrase, and you throw a couple of uppercase letters and some special characters in there. That's the best password. And not having your people change passwords every 30 days is also beneficial because it encourages them to come up with better passwords. Okay, because weak passwords are just the worst. So length versus complexity. You know, a complex password. Some of them they're saying like eight characters or lowercase characters, numbers, special characters, and in reality, that's a weak way to come up with passwords. Because if you're talking about eight characters, that's easy to break, relatively speaking, you can download my table from the internet, it's about two terabytes and size is pretty long. But it allows you to break pretty much every password that was ever created by Microsoft, or that you've ever used on a Microsoft System older than Windows 10. And even Windows 10 systems where there's been a migration So in other words, pretty much every password used in Microsoft, and. And that's called a brute force attack. When you're going up to the character one's a long one, you can use these fancy crackers, okay, that are out there. Well, if you enter a 16 character password even let's get simple, a 16 character password that only has lowercase letters. Computers right now using brute force, it would take 224 million years to crack that password 224 million years, versus it could break your password in nine hours, an eight-character random password randomly generated. Okay, so the length is the key here. So whether you're using one password or you're using just one account by yourself length is what matters. Now, some applications older programs you're using, they used to be restricted eight characters, many of them. Hopefully, they're not anymore, but give it the longest password that they allow that you can reasonably remember because you don't want to grab one of these. I'm holding up a sticky notes post-it notes here in the camera. You don't want to use one of these to write down your password and stick it on the screen. or stick it in the drawer, okay? Because now that guy or gal that is breaking into your office at night can find your password good, you wrote it down. So you don't have to be so complex it has to be written down. And you don't want it to be a character because that only takes nine hours to be cracked. Okay? So keep those things in mind length. Is it enough? Well, yeah, pretty much okay. But if you're using a password that is like your catchphrase, put down that cocktail that people might know that maybe you have on your Facebook page or something on your website at the office, your LinkedIn page. The bad guys are going to do a little doc scene and find it, and they're going to use it, and they're going to get in okay. So don't use these. You know, the quick Silver Fox jumped over the lazy brown dog or other things are going to be easier us Long password, if you ever have taken one of those memory courses to help you with your memory, and then it's a random list of words and it's like, airplane armed, low brown dog, etc. And then you associate them right. So the airplane flew over into the envelope, and the brown dog ate the envelope. Well, do that. Memorize that. And you can also use foreign languages. For many of these, you can come up with crazy words, anything that you know, well, that's a long-phrase going to be the best password that you can generate. And never, ever, reuse the password. Don't use them on multiple websites because if you use it on your kid's site for their x box, and you use it on the banking side, and the Xbox gets hacked, they now have your banking site password, okay? So be careful of all of this stuff. There's this out there called Have I been Pawned - spelled P-W-N-E-D? Go there, check your password, they'll tell you how good it is, based on whether or not that same password is located online. In one of these hacked websites, it's out there and use password managers use multi-factor authentication. These are things like DUO and YUBIKeys. Just do it the right way hardware tokens. They're getting more involved. Now I mentioned OTP. One time password, which is a new protocol, is going to get rid of passwords online. Google has their own called Titan. And there was just recalled on a bunch of those Google Titan keys. certain models of them. You know, stick with Yubikey. They are quite good. smart cards open PGP Fido is the new standard that I've been alluding to, and use them all the time. All of your passwords matter. All right. So that's it for passwords. And when we come back, we're going to talk about the new Cold War. That's coming up in 2020. will be talking about the BBC now on the dark web tech talk and their response over China's influence. And Amazon was expected to win this big contract of the federal government. We didn't talk about that and what my concerns are with us, and what your concerns should be when it comes to cloud computing. So those are coming up. So stick around. You're listening to Craig Peterson right here on WGAN and online. Craig peterson.com. Subscribe to my email list. Get my weekly emails to find out about the free masterclasses etc. Craig Peterson dot com Hello everybody, Craig Peterson here. Welcome, welcome. Welcome back. Of course, you're listening to me either on WGAN-AM online at Craig Peterson dot com, you might be watching over on YouTube Craig Peterson dot com slash YouTube or maybe Facebook, maybe LinkedIn, I'm starting to do a few things with LinkedIn. So we'll see where that all leads us. We're going to talk right now about some predictions, and this is from information security. buzz.com. An article by Checkpoint is a company that makes various types of security software. They were one of the very first firewalls many many years ago. I used them 20 years or maybe more ago, but Checkpoint has been around for quite a while, is not a product I use anymore. But they do have some useful information. And that's what we're going to talk about right now. And they're talking about 2020. And this is all about their predictions. And they're saying that we really could be looking at a significant cyberwar coming next year. What does a cyberwar look like? What are we talking about here? Because cyber Cold War's mean what what what is it cold war. You're not using kinetic weapons writing. In other words, you're not firing missiles. You're not shooting guns. You are playing games with each other, Right? We had as part of the cold war against the socialists and in the USSR in Russia, Soviet Empire. We had a trade war going on where we wouldn't trade directly with them. We wouldn't trade certain things with countries that did do trade with them at the time, and the CCC p ended up going out of existence entirely. That's an example of a Cold War. So today, what is a Cold War look like? We know the United States has started doing some cold war-ish things with trade. Right? We've got our president out there right now, President Trump, who is saying, Hey, listen, China, you need to smarten up. You are doing things that are hurting us. None of the Presidents before me, have had the guts to come out and say this, or do anything about it, but I am going to put tariffs on these various goods because we want you to stop stealing our intellectual property. We want you to be fair and open in your trade with us. China has been pushing back, and put some of their tariffs in place, and they go up, they go down. Is that a Cold War? Well, I don't think sustainable. But at some point, that's a Cold War. Right at some point to say, yeah, that China in the US is just going to butt heads together. I think it becomes a Cold War when we start trying to enforce sanctions against countries that do business with China, which will be bad for us. Now, the European leaders also sat on their hands for about 20 years. It's been since the late 90s. They sat on their hands and didn't do anything about China. So is this a Cold War right now? No, not really. Is it a trade war? Well, kind of. Yeah. We do have a cold war going on with North Korea. They're, they're not shooting missiles at the US, per se. We're certainly not shooting missiles at them neither South Korea. So yeah, there's a cold war there. Where else might we have Cold War's Well, you know, kind of a little bit of a one with the socialists in Cuba? You know, killing 20 million people in Cuba turns out to be a bit of a problem. We have a Cold War right now with Venezuela. And in Venezuela, of course, again, people starving to death in the streets with their socialist government. There seems to be a trend here right with socialist governments and people dying. So yeah, we have cold wars going on right now. So what checkpoint is saying that these nation-states that are out there that don't like us, but have very little power over us are going to get into a cyber Cold War with us? Because, again, if things were to escalate, you know, China versus the United States, if we wanted to hot, or where we were shooting at each other, the United States would probably win, you know, we we'd have to see, of course, it'd be a lot of lives lost, which would be horrific. Obviously, these smaller countries, we just go in, and we could topple them pretty easily look at what happened in Iraq, look at what happened in Libya, in Syria, where the Obama administration decided they would destabilize the Syrian government. They sure as heck did that didn't they looked at where Syria is right now. So we could do this with most small countries. So what can they do to retaliate back against the United States they're certainly not going to get into a hot war with us. Well, what I what checkpoint is saying is there is going to be a new Cold War, conducted in the online world. the world as western and eastern powers increasingly separate their technologies and intelligence. We've already seen Russia have a kill switch for the internet. China has a kill switch for the internet. And in both cases, particularly in China's case, they are controlling everything that people see on the internet. And that's where the whole Tor browser on your network comes in, right to help get that information out. Behind these curtains. We've got the bamboo curtain. We've got the Great Firewall of China, all of these things. So they're saying the ongoing trade war between the US and China and the decoupling of the two huge economy economies is a clear indicator of a potential Cold War, cyberwar. And it actually might be if we don't come to terms with China, we can see things getting worse. Talking about something that happened this week with one of my clients. It is a client that took some of my advice, but not all of my advice, right? Unfortunately, that happens. And so we had some equipment in place. We found with this client that they had given remote access to employees, for the employees to get into the systems at the office. And they didn't do it right. And we gave them a proposal to go ahead and make this, you know, make this happen clean things up. And they didn't. So they still had this, how do I even put this, it's like a big box retailer, firewall VPN controller, and you've heard of the company's name before, I'm sure and just a total joke. And they wanted to continue to use it, and they continue to use it. So then Week, what we found was that someone hopped in via that one of those computers that were used remotely that remote connection, right so so they hopped in, they got on that remote connection, probably because the employee's computer on the remote side was compromised. So they connected to this VPN server on this platform that I, I'm not going to mention their name because I don't want to confuse anybody. And think that it's a good platform because it's not it's cheap, though. It's cheap. And they were able to get in now on to the computer with remote desktop. And then from that computer that was on their internal network that we had no visibility into, they were able to go to another computer for the Operations Manager. And from there, they started uploading x Phil trading data, again, customer information potential They're intellectual property, etc., etc. So they were trying to accelerate it through a device that we control that is designed to look at all of the data, make sure that none of that data that's going out is data that contains confidential information, etc. Right? And it noticed something weird, which was waiting a minute is 6 am. Why all of a sudden is are there gigabytes worth of data on the way out of the network. And so our systems alerted our tax and immediately shut it down. I think about eight gigabytes made it out before we shut it down. So this is an example of what happens in a cold or cyber Cold War in this day and age we saw this week. It's a very, very big deal and this is a small company and trying to save a few bucks. I mean, a few bucks. They may have lost everything. We stopped it partway through. But because we don't have visibility throughout the whole network, who knows what's been going on in there, we can only see stuff that's going out x filter via our network connection on the outside. Okay. So it's they're expecting our friends over at checkpoint are expecting this to escalate next year. Where did this come from? Well, we did some tracebacks. However, what happens is someone can be sitting in China, using computers that have been compromised in Russia, to connect to computers that are compromised in Brazil to connect to computers are compromised in Mexico to connect to computers right here in the northeast United States. So you see what I mean. It's unpredictable but it is exactly what happened. But we did see a little bit about the source in the routing, what happened here. Now, cyberattacks are being used as proxy conflicts between smaller companies that are countries. I should say smaller countries aligned with these bigger countries that want to go after each other. It's going to be fascinating. So we got a couple more points here. We'll get to, and I will get to them as soon as we get back. So stick around. You're listening to Craig Peterson right here on WGAN. And online at Craig Peterson dot com. Peterson, with an O, stick around. We'll be right back. Hey, welcome back. Craig Peterson here on WGN online. Craig Peterson dot com. Thanks for joining us today. I know you got a lot of stuff going on. I appreciate you guys sticking around. Last time I saw the stats for my show. I had the stickiest show on Saturday of all shows, which means more people sit and listen to my entire show on the radio than any other weekend show. I thought that was cool and appreciate you guys for doing that. Also, our numbers keep going up. We've had some incredible days. When it comes to our podcast, we're changing it up a little bit on the podcast side, which you can get on iTunes. You can get it on tune in, SoundCloud, you name it, go to Craig Peterson dot com slash iTunes, if you wouldn't mind and give me a five-star rating. Hopefully, I've earned that from you. Craig Peterson dot com slash iTunes. Let's get into these last points here when we're talking about a new cyber Cold War in 2020. The 2016 elections were the first major fake news elections. Now, of course, Hillary Clinton coined the term fake news during her candidacy for President. Donald Trump kind of grabbed on to it. But we're talking about fake news 2.0 you think the Russians messed around with our last election Wowsers our next election 2020 is going to be a doozy and it's just going to get worse from there. Because now we can create deep fakes that are going to make a significant impact on the elections. President Obama was the first social media president, and he claims his election was due to social media, that social media was what led him to get his message out. And it was his message getting out. That got him elected. Right? Well, now we've got the ability for politicians to really master social media and then almost automated fashion, political adversaries going back and forth Republicans and Democrats. And now you can have the greenies the libertarians, the who was it pop their head up again. Another kind of crazy guy anyways, who's out there to spread false stories to build their narrative based on fake news 2.0 Okay, very, very big deal. And they are already in the process of implementing their plans to influence these 2020 elections. It's a huge deal. Part of what we're going to see with the cyber Cold War is more cyber attacks on utilities are critical infrastructure. They're all going to continue to grow. We've seen attacks on the US and South African utility companies this year, as well. In many cases, critical power and water distribution infrastructure and sewage plants have been using older technology and haven't been updated. Now I can tell you a little bit of inside baseball here that's not confidential that I talked with some experts about when I was running, the FBI Infragard program webinars. So the InfraGard is something the FBI put together to help critical infrastructure And other companies out there to help keep them up to date on what's going on. Okay. So I know there's been a lot of progress made, but they're not all to the point where they are highly resistant to these hackers that are out there and particularly nation-state. So we have to continue to increase our cyber defenses substantially. And another thing while we're on this topic, because of the solar flare activity, one of the most crucial things you need to be doing right now is hardening our electrical grid or electrical infrastructure. So that if we do get one of these massive solar flares, we don't end up with another Carrington event that could knock us back to the 1850s all technology gone. Something for another show, I suppose. So the checkpoints technical cybersecurity predictions for 2020 are targeted ransomware attacks are going to increase 20 1970 Somewhere being increasingly targeted against specific businesses, local government and healthcare organizations that we had a lot of that this year, you guys probably are aware of that I certainly have talked about it, okay. Attackers are spending time and intelligence gathering on the victims to make sure they can inflict maximum disruption. Remember, the disorder is what they're going to do. They want to disrupt our economy. They want to empty your bank account, they want to confuse, conduct phishing attacks going beyond the email, email is still the number one attack vector. And that's what we guard carefully for our clients. So most of our clients now are using some version of Microsoft Office 365. And remember, there's 10,000 plus skews that Microsoft has these different products and they've got a one through I can't remember where it goes now he five or seven for their email product. And then they've got data offerings, and I got all these different things. Don't go with the cheapest. Okay? But what we do with the email because Microsoft isn't very good at providing anti-phishing and anti-malware services for the email, we brought all the mail through us, we run it through some highly active filters, and then we send it on over to our customers, okay. So be very careful about that. Now, and frankly, next year and on there is now vision which is voicemail phishing, there are SMS texting attacks against mobile devices, gaming platforms, social media platforms, it's crazy. Mobile malware attacks are moving up in the first half of 2019 saw a 50% increase in attacks by mobile banking malware, over 2018. So we're talking about stealing payment data credentials and funds from the victim's bank accounts. And there are new versions that are already available for the bad guys. And this stuff isn't expensive, and you know that a nation-state might pay a million dollars to get their hands on some of the newest zero-day attacks. But there are some beautiful attacks that you can get for 20 bucks online on the dark web that you can use to destroy a company. Twenty dollars is all it takes. Okay? And unfortunately, that company is going to have to spend a couple hundred thousand in order to protect themselves from that $20 attack, right? Is it worth it or isn't it? They're getting more sophisticated phishing attacks here and more effective as well. They're getting mobile users to click on malicious web links, etc., etc. Okay. Nice little quote here from Checkpoint that we won't read right now, but we've got to protect ourselves. These are called generation-five attack vectors, and they are getting very shrewd. They are able to really inflict maximum damage, it is just crazy. So that's why we have multiple layers, right? It goes back to Shrek, that Ogres are like onions. That's how you have to think of your security. You have to have a stack of security, and you have to have all these different layers. If they get through one layer, there's another layer underneath to protect it further. And then another layer and then another layer. That is how we stopped them this week at one of our clients from stealing all of their company's information. And, you know, again, it isn't cheap, but how much is the company worth? How much is your job worth, right? And I feel sorry for everybody that is this De facto security person and organization who does not have the budget that you need. And man, I empathize. That's why we're doing these mini-courses and the master courses as well. And that's why we got these free masterclasses and the Facebook Live so you can ask questions and get them answered because I really, really, want to help you guys. Okay, of course, I want to keep my lights turned on. So that's why I have paid for courses that you can purchase. But all of these classes are simple and free. So make sure you know about them. Sign up today. Go to Craig Peterson dot com slash master class, sign up, and you'll find out about these free classes that I'm holding more or less two times a month to three times a month, depending on what my schedule allows. All right, everybody, stick around because we'll be right back. You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN Hello, everybody, welcome back. Craig Peterson here, man, the show is winding. Winding down, I guess, is what you'd say. We get about the last half hour here together, and we're going to be talking about some of the technology in our lives, some of the things we need to do to protect ourselves. Of course, that's what I do for a living. So that's what I know best. Right? So we've talked about a lot of technology, but we kind of stick most closely with some of the security stuff. We're going to talk about the BBC now and why they're using the dark web. If you've watched any of the war movies, you know, that we used the BBC the Allies did in world war two to get messages to the underground and other people who were in occupied territories. They did it through code words and things, you know, they'd have a little phrase that they would put up on the radio as they were broadcasting it. And sometimes, the phrase would mean something, and sometimes the phrase wouldn't mean anything. The whole idea was to confuse the enemy during the war. That way, the socialists in Germany didn't know what we were talking about. The Socialist Party, the Nazis, and that that's true to the Japanese and what was happening there with their socialist Empire. We wanted to get messages through, but how do you do that in a time of war when people are listening? Well, that's one of the proper ways to do it. Today, in this day and age, things a little bit different. It turns out that China, Iran, and Vietnam are three of the country's This is according to the BBC, that has tried to block access to the BBC. Now the BBC is biased, but you know, they overall have some pretty darn good news. And I get my news from several different places because I want to hear all sides. So I listened to the BBC. I listened to the CBC, I listen to PBS. I listen to Fox, I listen to NBC, I listen to all of these different ones in podcast format. Well, that's easy enough to do right now in the United States but in many places around the world, there is serious censorship. I've mentioned the Great Firewall of China before. And that is total censorship where they can pretty much ban anything at least that's their idea behind this. So what the BBC has done is they have launched our new website that looks identical to their existing normal website out on the dark web. You know, if you attend a masterclass where we were talking about VPN, and we're talking about mobile security. I talked about what the onion network is. And it is essentially a hidden network that sits on top of the normal internet. And it was established by the United States. It's still maintained by the United States. And it's for dissidents, to be able to communicate with our State Department. That's kind of what it was set up, for now, would use for almost everything. It's the dark web. We just talked about it in my show, where we're saying the dark web was also being used by the bad guys to sell these hacking tools. They use it to sell our identities to do trades with each other. Right? The dark web, though, isn't all bad. It was, as I said, designed to be good and to be very helpful. In fact, it still is. So the BBC set up a new version of their website on the dark web. And you can look it up on the BBC website to find out more if you'd like. And you can also find it on my website at Craig Peterson calm. What's the only way to get at it is for most people is to use the Tor browser to our browser. And the lot of detail I went into for like half an hour about the Tor Browser in the master class. But users of the Tor browser can visit a special URL. It's BBC News v to VJTPSUI dot onion. Now you're not going to remember that I'm sure which is why I told you to go to the BBC calm or go to Craig Peterson and you'll find it there. But it is a different type of URL than you're used to his net. And if you click on that address, it won't work. If you're using a regular browser, but if you're using a browser that's on the onion network that knows how to use it, like the Tor Browser, which is the ultimate and privacy, it can get to the BBC website. So the countries that are blocking it that I named a little bit earlier, including China, Iran, Vietnam, we know North Korea is and some others to people in those countries that have internet access, can use this browser even if they have some blocks, firewalls, etc, in place to stop people from getting out. So I think that's pretty darn cool and smarter. The BBC, they're saying is going to include foreign language services such as BBC Arabic, BBC, Persian, and BBC Russian. But UK only content like usual only be available within the UK due to broadcast right. So check out the TOR if you haven't already. T-O-R There is TOR clients for all major operating systems, including your desktop computers and mobile devices. And it attempts to hide a person's location and where they're going. It's not 100% effective, but it's pretty darn close. And that uses these exit nodes that are really all over the world. So it looks like you're coming from the United States or India, etc, etc. So check it out online and kudos to the BBC, for doing just that. I'm going to talk right now about Tick Tock with you guys. Because social media is really important to our kids, our grandkids, it's become important to society. It's one of the most effective ways to do advertising nowadays. Social media, it's where it's at. And there are these people on social media that have huge followings. haven't done anything, right? Like the Kardashians, right? They're famous for being famous. And they use the money from the OJ Simpson trial to really get that thing going because the or the old man had was a popular attorney and he charged a lot and she, his wife was able to manipulate it and do some amazing things with it just absolutely amazing. Well, one of the apps that our kids are using this become very, very popular is called Tick tock, ti KT, okay. If you have kids or grandkids or maybe you're using it, you need to need to have a talk with them and help them understand. Because Tick Tock is owned by a company called ByteDance. That is based in Beijing. And what many people forget is that China is a socialist country and it is socialist it is gone down the communist road. And any company that's based in China, you know, the Chinese government doesn't necessarily run the company, but they heavily regulate the country, which is why you compare the United States to, for instance, the Nordic countries, United States is very socialist. The Nordic countries are actually much more capitalist. But they have the money to put in these safety nets that we don't because of the socialist control anyways, blah, blah, right. So Tick Tock is owned by a company based in Beijing, China, which means there are surveillance systems in place. And the concern that's been expressed in the reason why people need not states are calling for Tick Tock to be banned in the US and they're calling immediately for people to delete it from their phone. is we just don't know how much of our data is being shared with the communist government over there. So let's look at the response and that one to think back. Right. President Nixon, I want to make one thing perfectly clear. Right. Let me make this perfectly clear. I did not have with Miss Lewinsky. When we get back, we're going to finish this. I'm going to read what the statement is that came out of China. You're listening to Craig Peterson are right here on WGAN. Online, Craig Peterson. com, of course, online kind of everywhere on all of the podcast platforms on YouTube on Facebook. And you can just go to my homepage, Craig Peterson, calm or keep listening to me here. We'll be right back. Hey, welcome back, everybody, Craig Peterson here. WGAN online, Craig Peterson calm. And I am videotaping everything today. So you can watch me online that Craig peterson.com slash for YouTube. And we're changing the podcast formats up a little bit as well, trying to put the concepts together and just single podcasts as opposed to how I do things here on the radio show where I might go from one segment to the next segment, and make this just a little more friendly for the general online consumption. Now, before the break, I mentioned that I want you to keep something in mind. Remember President Nixon Nixon, and this is quoted all of the time I want to make one thing perfectly clear. And remember President Trump, let me make this clear. I did not Have with that woman misc Alinsky. Let's read the statement that came out from the company that makes this. Let me be very very clear. Sound familiar? Tik Tok does not remove content based on sensitivities related to China. We have never been asked by the Chinese government to remove any content, and we would not do so if asked. We are not influenced by any foreign government, including the Chinese government Tick Tock does not operate in China, nor do we have any intention of doing so in the future. So it makes me wonder when I hear let me make one thing clear. Are they lying? Right? It's like I always tell my kids because I know they're not trying to be deceitful, right, but if someone starts to sent insane Well, to be honest, You have to wonder where they been dishonest with you before, and now they're honest. Have you had that happen? I know I caught myself saying that I got into the habit of saying Well, to be honest, even though I had been correct the whole time, and I realized, wait a minute now, I'm painting a picture of me having been dishonest before this. So when were you telling the truth after you said let me make this clear or before? So the pushback from Tick Tock comes after US senators Tom Cotton and Chuck Schumer requested intelligence officials assess the national security risks posed by Tick Tock as well as other Chinese content platforms. Hundred 10 million downloads in the US alone. It's a potential counterintelligence tool that we can't ignore. That was in the statement that came out. Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, Whose firm competes with Tik Tok, particularly in the youth market, has also recently attacked the platform. Oversensitive. Concerned, remember that Coburg makes a competing product. Another US Senator Marco Rubio previously asked us national security panel to review their acquisitions of musically as well that happened this year. Concerns about censoring concerns also, about whether or not these guys are honest with everybody. So there you go. There's Tik Tok. I've got two more articles. Let's see if we can get through them here in the last segment. One is about the Pentagon. Many people have been looking at stuff saying Oh, man, I'm just moving to the cloud because then I don't have to worry about security anymore or configuration or updating computers. Remember, the cloud is just another word for someone else's computer. Your legal responsibility These to protect your data do not disappear when you move that data to the cloud. And you are frequently much more exposed once you're in the cloud than if you kept it on your machines. So what's happened here now is the Department of Defense is looking at their budgets saying, Hey, listen, if we move everything to the cloud, it's going to be cheaper for us. Now the Pentagon realizes it's not necessarily going to be more secure. And, in this day and age, most cloud services are far less reliable because of Miss configurations that humans have made on them, so I don't think the Pentagon is looking at as this as a way to make things more secure. Like so many small businesses do unknowingly and end up out of business because of it. But the Pentagon is looking to save money, and The winner that everyone was expecting from this was Amazon. And then President Trump came into power and said, Hey, wait a minute now. My administration has been looking at this bidding process for this project and says it doesn't look like this was fair. It's called the Jedi contract. By the way, JEDI. It doesn't look like this was appropriate. So let's have another examination at it. And Amazon came out with a statement awarding it to Microsoft. Amazon said that a detailed assessment purely on the competitive offerings wo

One of the most popular topics that comes up with intermediate and advanced freelancers pertains to hiring a Virtual Assistant. These freelancers are curious and want to know when should they hire a VA? They are also curious about how do they know it's time to bring a VA into their business?  Another piece of the puzzle is knowing how any freelancer can properly leverage this person. I have lots of different things to say about hiring a VA.  There's no way I can cover it all in one brief podcast episode. So this episode is going to be focused mostly on when it is time to hire a virtual assistant in your freelance business.  We are not going to dive too much into the process of doing it. So this is really designed for you if you don't have a virtual assistant yet in your freelance business.  It’s also for you if you may have hired one in the past and didn't have a good experience.  This episode is also for you if you've never worked with a virtual assistant before to get those creative juices flowing about the different types of things that you might be able to use a virtual assistant for. The first sign that now is the time to bring in that VA to help leverage some of your time is when you are fully booked. Now being fully booked is also a sign that your rates are too low and that they need to be increased.  But when you're fully booked and your plate cannot handle any more projects on it, you have officially capped out your revenue. At this point in your business, you cannot take on any other projects and you cannot realistically expect your business to grow. When you have filled every single hour of every day and you're racing against the clock it is time to hire a VA.  You may even be finding at the end of the day that you're barely getting your deadlines done. You might even be even falling a little bit behind.  So when you are fully booked, you can’t afford to be spending time on tasks like: Doing administrative work Social media Invoicing These tasks are taking up valuable space in your calendar.  It's also draining your energy and pulling you away from those processes in your business where it could be handled by somebody else. It’s also unlikely that these kinds of tasks you’d outsource to a virtual assistant are in your own zone of genius. A virtual assistant is a lot like an administrative assistant that you might see working in an office.  But this person handles tasks digitally and does them for you either by when they're being paid by the hour, being paid by retainer, or per project. You don't have to start in a big way to bring in a virtual assistant. You can start with just a couple of hours per week with inexperienced VA, even a new VA if you're willing to train them on the process. But being fully booked is that first key sign that you have too much going on and you're actually at risk of dropping one of the balls in your business and starting to make mistakes or miss deadlines. Deciding what to outsource to your VA is important- learn about the risks of overloading your VA in this blog post. The second thing to consider is that you have to think about how much time you're dedicating to administrative work in a week. A lot of us don't really know and tend to underestimate how much time we are dedicating to administrative tasks.  So what I encourage you to do is to track your time for a full week. You can do it loosely in a notebook or you can use a tool like toggle that's toggle.com which will help you set up different categories and labels for your tasks. And then you can figure out what you're spending your time on. There's also another great tool called rescue time, which will essentially analyze what you're doing on a weekly basis and send you reports as well as red flags of key issues. So one of the things that really opened my eyes to needing to delegate and outsource more was when rescue time sent me a report about spending 12 hours a week in my email inbox.  That's not something that I want to do. I don't think that's something that anyone wants to do. But it was my first real wake up call that I was going to have to do things differently.  To find a way to get on top of my inbox management,I had to hire somebody to help me with it and implement some different systems and tools. So if you've tracked your time using toggle or some other way and you're finding that you're spending more than five hours a week in administrative tasks, you are doing too much of those tasks.  You are limiting your revenue and your business growth potential. So if more than five hours as being dedicated to that, it's time to take a step back and say, “What of these things can I outsource to someone else?” If you're hesitant about handing over financial information to someone on your team, I completely understand that.  A lot of people and freelancers are nervous about passing that on to someone else in their business.  That's probably the last thing you'll outsource to somebody that you really trust and have been working with for a while.  You can still leverage a lot more of your time by choosing to outsource something else. For me, social media is a huge drain on my time. I don't enjoy doing it. It's far too easy to go down the rabbit hole with social media and end up looking at things that weren't the reason I hopped on there. Right? We've all done that. You might get on social media to schedule something and then you find yourself distracted. I'm always looking for ways to more efficiently use my time. I have had an extension installed on my internet browser for probably four or five years now called kill the news feed. When I sign in from any of my computers, I cannot see any of the news feed that makes it so tempting to scroll.  You still see all of the rest of Facebook. You can navigate to your groups, you can view your notifications, and you can even click on your own page to get there and update things. But that has been instrumental in saving my time. When I did that, I also realized that I didn't love doing social media. So I searched for a virtual assistant who could help by planning and scheduling posts to keep  those types of things off my plate.  So I saw that I was spending more than five hours a week on social media. I was spending more than five hours a week in admin. Those are perfect things to outsource to a virtual assistant.  It’s a great place to get started. So another thing to consider when you're trying to figure out what you can outsource to a virtual assistant, is thinking about when you're making consistent revenue. Now you don't owe it to any virtual assistant to pay them forever. You can work out your own payment terms and maybe bring them on for a couple of hours per week or for a limited engagement to start. But you want to be making relatively consistent revenue to where you don't feel like your not able to pay them. You don't want to set up a situation where you bring this person into your business and then you're not able to pay them several weeks or months in. I've seen this happen before and it can be really frustrating for the virtual assistant who essentially pulls time out of their schedule to help you figure out how to get everything organized. They do all of the onboarding work. They get to know you and your clients and the different industries that you work in. And then if you're not making consistent enough revenue for whatever reason, it gets very frustrating for the VA because they essentially have to step right back out of being able to work with you.  That's not a situation that anyone wants. So do you need to be making 5,000 or $10,000 a month to justify a VA? Not necessarily, but I would recommend consistently making at least $3,000 so that you can dedicate a portion,possibly $200 or $300 a month to start. And you can scale that as your business grows, but you want to make sure you have that money to pay your VA.. Consistent revenue is also a sign that your business is poised for growth. So that is your signal to start thinking more clearly about how you dedicate your time with what you do on a daily basis within your business. So the more you can be critical of how you're currently spending your time, how you divide that up, and how you decide if this is something you could potentially outsource is an excellent way to feel more confident about how you go through with this different with this process. So the final way to know whether or not now is the right time to outsource is a funny one because I don't think that any freelancer ever gets to this point completely. And that's when you're ready to hand over control. Hiring a VA does not mean that you have to hand over complete control of your business, but it does mean that you have to take a step back.  You have to decide how you can remove yourself from some of the processes of your business. Ultimately, this is going to help you learn to be more effective. It's going to help your business scale. You're going to get more of your time back that you can spend.as you want.  But at the end of the day, you are still going to have to give up some level of control. You're going to have to share password information with somebody who is new to your business.  That's always going to be nerve wracking. It's going to be nerve wracking to hire someone who's going to do something that is facing the front of your business. So talking with potential clients etc, but that will always be there, right? Because you've put so much energy and time into establishing your business and it's just scary to kind of hand that over to another person. But it's also something that is really important to think about. There's a lot of different benefits that you can get from outsourcing to a virtual assistant and knowing how you're going to leverage that   Think about what the benefits are for you and your business and even your clients. It will give you a lot of peace of mind. So in general, I've grouped virtual assistants and into a couple of different categories. Now there's many out there, some of the most common that a freelancer might be hiring are: graphic design VA content manager VA general VA web development VA So a graphic designer VA is going to be making icons, logos, banners, headers and eBooks, possibly even delving into designing of websites a little bit. They might design your sales pages, opt in pages, landing pages, and edit your graphics for social media. A content manager is someone who is helping you to write press releases, newsletters, directory submissions, or creating, editing or posting your blogs on your behalf. I have a VA on my team who helps to make sure that all of the content that I create is ready to be published live. Now, the category of general virtual assistant can also include social media VAs. You might sometimes find social media VA's working outside of the general VA term because they won't take on generalized projects. They'll specifically do social media.  But general VAs are where most freelancers are going to start when hiring their very first project working with their very first virtual assistant. General VAs can do things like data entry, preparing PowerPoint presentations, light transcribing of audio and video files, creating templates for documents, creating forms, online research, sending client invoices, basic bookkeeping, putting together training materials, personal errands, doing research, or finding hotel/travel reservations for you. They may also be able to add images and tags to blog posts.  They are acting somewhat like a receptionist, managing your calendar, creating your social media accounts, or uploading your videos on YouTube so you can see how there's a lot of different tasks that fall under that umbrella of general virtual assistant. For a freelancer, you have to hone in on what it is you do best that only you can do in you business that is writing for clients and that is specifically speaking to clients. Outside of that, there's a lot of tasks that you could do, but I don't really need to do.  That's why it's a good idea to be able to outsource it to someone else on you team. I frequently get asked the question, “How many VA's do you work with? How many do you have?”. It changes all the time. It changes based on the projects that I have going. Some of my VA's are with me for the long run and have been with me for years. I have VA's that work on my YouTube channel, on my podcast and it's corresponding show notes, VA's that work on social media and a VA that runs one of my other businesses for me completely and prepares all of my PowerPoints. And I have someone who posts my blogs for me and post a lot of my LinkedIn articles as well. So there's all kinds of different ways that you can leverage virtual assistants.  Freelance writers, in particular, might even consider using a virtual assistant to do some research.  That's a great way to still keep integrity with your writing process, but still ensuring that you're making the most of all the time that you have. You are in the right position to hire a virtual assistant when you are ready to get some of your time back. What you do with that time is up to you. You might take more of a break and reduce your working hours. You might scale and spend some of that time trying to bring in new clients. That's really up to you. Deciding why you're going to hire your VA is going to be important. That way you can measure your success. How will you know when a relationship with the VA is successful? When you have two or three more hours a week to plan and do certain things. So if you've been thinking about hiring a virtual assistant and you're sort of stuck and don't know what to do next, a future episode, we'll go into some more detail about the process of hiring a VA and what you can specifically expect. This is your teaser to start considering how you might be able to leverage a VA in your own freelance business. I'll tell you that I do not know any six-figure freelancer who does not use at least one virtual assistant. So if that's where you are aspiring to go, if you're looking to make more money and get more of your time back, hiring a VA should be the next thing on your radar. Thanks as always, for tuning in, if you want to check out the podcast in iTunes and listen to some of the past episodes, please consider leaving a review for the show. It helps other people find the Advanced Freelancing podcast.  You can also always join my Facebook group, Mastering Your Freelance Life with Laura, which is where you will get the most free trainings and access to the best tools and strategies for scaling your business. For more freelance advice, get a copy of my book Start Your Own Freelance Writing Business—available now! Buy it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, and more.

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.

ow how to deploy it and learn about real estate. Started with the single-family space. And so, the first thing I bought was a fourplex than a bunch of houses. And then I realized it was too much brain damage in terms of just scaling. Right. I mean it's, having 12 insurance policies, 12 tenants and 12 loans and 12 of everything is kind of a pain. And so, learn about multifamily and then kind of the rest of the history. So, I've been running with that since.   James: Yes. I really disliked, the insurance part of the single family because--   Feras Moussa: Yes.   James: --lot of it expires at different times of the year.   Feras Moussa: That's my biggest pain point honestly and I literally will, I'm willing to pay a premium for a broker that'll just take care of it and I just don't have to think about it because it's just not worth the hassle of thinking through and spending the time and effort there.   James: Yes. Yes. I think you can pay like a monthly is the same amount and it's all automated, but insurance is one thing you have to print out and you have to scan, and you have to do all kinds of things.   Feras Moussa: Yes.   James: So, let's go a bit more into the thought process here before we go into the details of your deals and all that. So, three IT guys, right? I'm also with an electrical engineering background with some software. Why do you think a lot of these IT guys like commercial real estate investing, especially in multifamily?   Feras Moussa: Yeah, I mean.   Ben Suttles: From my perspective, I think it's the numbers right. I think it's-- you come from a kind of an analytical side of the brain, right? And I think in real estate, a lot of it is numbers driven. Now there's a relationship side of the business, right? Which we all have to have. We have to have that side of it to raise equity and obviously work with the brokers and stuff like that, but at the end of the day, it's a numbers game, right? You've got to be able to underwrite the deals. You've got to be able to make, projections, financial projections and all that as numbers and spreadsheet driven. And I think that's a lot of why the IT and engineering guys, get into this space. Also, I think the other thing is too is that allows us to be creative. When we're not able to be creative in some, some respects, whenever you're able to kind of put your stamp on the rehab of a property and improve that and, and kind of get out and roll your sleeves up. That's another thing that we were lacking probably in a lot of our jobs. And so, I think, at least personally for me, that that might be part of the reason why, I don't know, Feras might have another take on it as well.   Feras Moussa: Well, no, I think the numbers things. Definitely one of the biggest factors, but it's also, it's a space that you can learn it yourself, right? Meaning, you know, a lot of engineers are willing to go above and beyond, spend the effort, research, read books and learn it. You can do that in this space and, there's not like an engineering exam at the end of it where you have to do, you can pass. Right?   James: Yes.   Feras Moussa: And so, it's the kind of thing where you can learn it and it makes sense, right? The numbers don't lie. And so, two engineers, right? It's like, you can see a clear path of the progression, right? There's not like a leap of faith any point in time. And then the other part of it too is problem-solving, right? I think all engineers like problem-solving as part of the challenge. And to me, that's what I like about multifamily. It's bigger and harder, right? Sure. I could've probably scaled out a rental portfolio part, really wanted to, but I mean, it's just not fun to buy, hundred thousand-dollar assets, $150,000. It's a lot more fun to do bigger projects, a bigger team, and really, work through each issue as it comes up.   James: Yes. Yes. I mean in my mind is a lot about-- I mean real estates, there's a lot of creative thinking that you need to put on and that's really fun, right? Because you want to, I mean, I'm sure when you guys handle deals, we want to solve that problem. Right?   Feras Moussa: Yes, absolutely.   James: You want to break; I'm going to break that deal. Right? Hey, why? Like for me, I always say, how can I break this deal? Why you should, why you should work for me. Right? That's why I think, I'm sure you guys do that too.   Ben Suttles: I was doing that earlier yesterday, man. Yes, man, [inaudible 13:36], how do you blow up the deal, right? And--   James: How do you blow up the deal? There must be something wrong with this deal. Let's find that out.   Ben Suttles: [crosstalk 13:42].   Feras Moussa: Oh yes that's fun. Let's have a deal that makes sense. It's like, this not right, I'm just going to offer a lower, I might've otherwise because something doesn't make me, go 100%.   James: Yes. If that [inaudible] make sense, you are like, let's say to break it. Something must be wrong and when you can't break it then, then it makes sense. That okay, that's [inaudible 13:58].   Feras Moussa: Yes.   Ben Suttles: That's the one.   Feras Moussa: And then the other part too is that it's a people game, right? I mean, so something, some engineers might not like it, but at least me, I mean nothing. Ben, same. We like it because it's a team effort. It's not one person. It's how do you combine people really get the thing done both on, on the GP side as well as the operations side, right? How do you build rapport with your manager, with your regional, whoever it is? Right. And kind of help accomplish the goals and give them motivated. To me, that's part of the fun.   James: Yes.   Feras Moussa: I guess what we do is like project management on steroids.   Ben Suttles: Feras, if you touch us up on that, that was really interesting to earlier which was the project management piece, which I had forgotten about. I mean a lot of us to come from big, we've done big projects, we've worked with teams and let's be honest, and this is a team sport, right?   James: Absolutely.   Ben Suttles: This is, yes you could maybe be solo and respectful, you've got a team in the background that's helping you accomplish your goal and you've got project management or manage that whole entire process in order to get it to close. And then even after you're closing it, right? In order to asset management or to do the asset management, to do the construction management and for you James too, you do the property management.   James: Okay.   Ben Suttles: All of that stuff is, you're juggling a lot of different pieces and making sure that the ball is continuously moving forward towards that goal. And I think a lot of IT and engineering folks come from that background, understand that. So, once you can kind of segue that into the commercial real estate state space, it's just essentially just project management at the end of the day.   James: Yes. Yes. You one might, throughout my 22 years in the corporate world, I think 16 years I was a manager and I was also a project manager and I was a very good project manager. I need all that translates to this multimillion-dollar business that you're managing, right?   Ben Suttles: Yes.   James: Because to make sure your transactions happen correctly; you need to make sure you communicate to people. And that's what we all learned in project management. But how do you over communicate? How do you make sure people don't mess up? How do you take proactive action to de-risk a project? Right? So that's, that's how the game is played. Even in the commercial real estate with this [crosstalk 16:00].   Ben Suttles: And it's never going to be straight forward. Right? There are always challenges.   James: Yes.   Ben Suttles: So, I mean, that's where, we're those project management skills really kind of come into play because, anybody can run a smooth project, right? And we're nothing ever bad happened, but let's just be honest. There's always something that happens.   James: Yes, yes.   Ben Suttles: And so, you have to, you have to have that, that acumen to be able to, to keep that ball moving forward towards that common goal.   James: Yes. So apart from the, IT education itself, do you guys think that your work experience, the classes that you have been at your workplace and the environment that you have gone through? I mean as given certain edge to you guys as well.   Feras Moussa: I will say absolutely. Like I said, I mean what we do is project management on steroids. Right? And so, having done that for years had-- knowing how to keep track of multiple projects simultaneously. That's another thing too, right? A lot of people will get into the business and they realize like, hey, syndicating start to finish is not a walk in the park. There's a lot that happens, both lending and legal and issues come up and they, it's a lot to keep track of. But then she tried to do two deals at a time. Right. And how would, it's not really two weeks, it's kind of a square, issues. So, I would say absolutely. Right. And then the other thing that we've seen, being on the tech side is how do we differentiate ourselves from other people too, right? How do we, create a better impression for investors? How do you position, everything professionally, right? All of our stuff is mobile friendly. All of our stuff, certain ways. And those are the things that I've brought at least from the tech world, to make sure that we kind of do and do well.   Ben Suttles: Yes, I think, I think efficiencies, right? That you come from that IT engineering background, it's all about productivity, efficiency, how can we automate things and James you probably saw the same thing when he got into space and to completely fracture. A lot of it is backward or outdated and there's a, there's a lot of low hanging fruit stuff, ways that can be improved and I'm sure your team is looking to do that constantly and so are we. And that's all come that comes from our background, right?   James: Background, yes.   Feras Moussa: I told Ben I have to stop myself from wanting to start a software company every few months. Being an entrepreneur and being a software guy, it's like man, this place some of the stuff we do is pretty archaic.   James: Yes.   Ben Suttles: Yes.   Ben Suttles: I think real estate is the last, most, what it called?   Feras Moussa: [crosstalk 18:28].   James: Fragmented industry, you know, that is, they're like something like AI or something is going to take over soon, right. Because there's so much inefficiency.   Ben Suttles: Yes. But it's, you can take it to an extent, but then there's that personal side, that relationship side. Right. And I think that's kind of, that's, that's one of the parts that I took from my former job, which was, a lot of sales and business development work as well. Right. Taking that, that networking, that relationship building side, that building rapport side into this space. But, I mean, I agree. I think there's their software and AI and these types of things are going to automate a lot of that back-office part of the process and maybe even the analysis piece. But there's always going to have to be those two people coming together to make a deal happen, right?   James: Yes.   Ben Suttles: Because ultimately, it's going to be one person or one group and trying to sell on one group trying to buy, and you have to come with some kind of an agreement. Right. And then even after you buy it, right, there's always those relationships with vendors and employees and all those different things that you have to kind of manage to. But anything that we can bring and that we've seen in our past gig where we could make that more efficient here, we're, we're obviously trying to introduce that.   James: Got It. Got It, got it. So, let's go back to the business side of it. So, what are your guys' focus, in terms of market? Right now, currently Atlanta and some cities in Texas, right? Why don't you guys talk about, why did you choose these two markets?   Feras Moussa: Yes. So, in terms of why we chose them, I mean, the same reason you're probably in San Antonio to some degree, right? We're looking for strong, attractive markets that are not a single industry that is growing right. Population and the business side. And then, really the important thing for us to is the yield, right. So that's why we got into San Antonio too, was that we can't find returns in Houston. We look at a lot of bills and use of our base and we don't own anything in Houston, right? We're looking for returns that we can, that that will actually, you are looking for deals that'll give actual turns, foreign investors. That's also why we don't look in Dallas, right? Price points are too high that you having to pay so much that you basically have no yield on the deal. And so that's kind of what really got us into Atlanta. We got us into San Antonio as well and yes, Beaumont's kind of a slight story, but those are the things that we look for. And then in terms of future deals, right? If future markets, so, we've really kind of manage to, I would say streamline a lot more of our acquisition pipeline, right? In terms of underwriting deals, identifying deals and really keeping a pipeline going. And so, what that's allowed us to do, especially with a fulltime asset manager now, is we can look at a lot more deals. So, we've kind of identified two markets that we want to get into, hopefully, this year. Orlando in North Carolina. And that just, just to give us, just to keep our pipeline going. Right. We can keep looking at more and more and more deals. Yes, we'll hopefully be finding something that makes sense.   Ben Suttles: Absolutely.   James: So how do you guys choose your market? So, like now you say Orlando and not Carolina, right? So, I have a lot of stats on Orlando because I know it's growing very quickly. So, let's take, not Carolina. Why did you guys identify? Not Carolina?   Ben Suttles: I mean, I think, I think all of it boils down to population growth, job growth. We also like to find areas and that's not every single market, but I like to see a good concentration of different universities and colleges as well because I feel like a lot of the bigger corporations are going to follow where they're going to have a good funnel of potential students to take from it as well. So, we'll look in college towns as well too, because, but let's be honest, North Carolina, it's got, the research triangle, it's got a ton of universities. And, it's calling to be called the Wall Street of the south. The problem with North Carolina is that we're not the only ones looking there. So, it's, it's pretty competitive there too. But it's got a lot of those good data points that we like to see in terms of population economic growth--   James: Okay.   Ben Suttles: --that you see in Texas and in Georgia. And really, we are, we look at in Texas for quite some time and we found Georgia was very, very similar in a lot of ways to Texas. And so that's the reason we started kind of focusing on Atlanta as well. But it ultimately boils down to, is there enough population job growth to continue to drive demand for the workforce housing that we're, that we're looking for. So, people are always like, well, you're not renting out to fortune 500 folks. So why do you care about that? I'm saying, well, the ancillary service companies and service jobs, they're going to feed into this white-collar job is what we're looking for. So, if you don't have any of the fortune 500 stuff rights, then there's not any real need for a lot of the infrastructure where a lot of these people are going to be working. So, when you, when you look at it in Texas, when you look at it and Georgia, right? One of those people is there. So there has to be serviced workforce type jobs that are going to have to be feeding into that. And that's why we like those markets. And, we see a lot of that same type of thing happening in Orlando and some other markets and Florida and as well as North Carolina. And we've looked in Tennessee, we've looked in some other spots as well. From us we've got so much deal flow coming in that in order for us to be a little bit more strategic work as a team, we've decided to focus on about three or four major markets and then just go deep on those and then we can go horizontal and find out that markets in the future.   James: Got It. So, let's say now today you're getting a deal, right? Let's say from North Carolina, what other steps that you guys take? So today let's say, I mean how do you guys get deals nowadays. Is it through broker relationship, off-market, on the market? How are you guys sorting out the deal flow?   Ben Suttles: Yes, everything in between. A lot of it is brokers. A lot of is people that know what's his buyers, people that you know, we will get the deal closed, right? Whether it's the broker that knows it and they might know. Seller. One thing I tell every broker is like, hey, if you have a deal that you don't have the exclusive on and you need someone to make a pre-emptive offer to try to get that locked down. Like, where are your guys? Right? So, you find ways to motivate the broker is motivated. Other people that know someone that knows someone. So, we, I mean really deals come in all shapes and forms. And so, for us, the biggest volume is definitely the brokers, but it's really, it's not about the ones that they just email outlasted, right? It's really about the follow-up deals that maybe are near, getting to the finish line and getting the finish line in terms of the-- in terms of the marketing, but they haven't had any such interest or for whatever reason. Right. So, I think that's important. So, once the deal comes through in terms of the analysis side of LLC, dig into the P12, dig into the OEM, but more importantly, talk to them. Sorry, go ahead.   James: I'm just saying, what do you look for first in the deal? Do you get a-- so you get a deal, what do you look for? What are the, what do you, what's your sniff test because I --   Ben Suttles: Yes.   James: underwrite everything, right? What's the sniff test?   Feras Moussa: I'll tell you what my first sniff test. I look at what the average rents are and what their price point is, and then I can deduce from that, right.   James: Okay.   Feras Moussa: Is this going to be anywhere. And really what I'm doing kind of mentally ballparking what the cap might be. Right? But really, I'm looking at what are the average rents and what does the purchase price. Right. And then yield. Is there, are they close enough that I think that there's some meat on the bone, right? It's really what it boils down to. I'll give you a real example. There was a deal in Atlanta that I-- so North Atlanta, Atlanta has a really unique market. North Atlanta is really expensive. South Atlanta is the complete opposite. There's a deal that came through on the northern side and I think the average rents on that deal were like, 850 $900. So, I'm okay, this one might be at a reasonable price point. Right? And so, I'm like in my head, mentally I'm like, okay, let me call the broker. If this is 80 maybe 90 you know, there's a deal to be had here. Hey, call the broker. And it's 130 a door, right? So, I mean, that already instantly ruled it out. And so, you're really looking for some of those kinds of low hanging fruit just to figure out, okay, is this still even in the ballpark for us to look into it anymore.   Ben Suttles: Yes, absolutely. And I think the first sniff test James is really, I mean then the location of it too, right? Do you know what I mean? We're getting the deal flow and these places that we want to be, and we've identified different pockets within those submarkets that we want to be in. So, if it's not within one of those pockets and we're automatically, putting that to the side. Now that doesn't mean that there's not a deal there. Right.   James: Yes.   Ben Suttles: So those are usually kind of the maybe deals and we're, we want to kind of circle back maybe we're bored or something. Let's do that one-- -   Feras Moussa: Exactly, whether we are bored, we go back and look at those deals.   Ben Suttles: Yes, we'll go back and take a look at those. Right. But we're looking for that are going to be the net, that those are some market pockets, right? That we like. And then from there, right, just like what Feras was saying, you can almost, you can almost immediately tell if it's going to work. Right. And you pencil out so many deals. I mean, we, at this point we've analysed hundreds and hundreds of deals. So, you can on them almost look and say, oh, that's not going to work for us. Right. Just based on what they're asking for. And you can also kind of tell that to, by the price per pound versus, sometimes the median income of the area. Right. I mean, are you going to be able to achieve the rent that it's going to, it's going to take to make that deal work. And if you're going to be maxing out your median income, then it's not going to work either.   Ben Suttles: So, a lot of the things that we look at, population growth, we look at job growth, all those things too. But one of the things that we also look at as the median income, right? And a lot of these is workforce housing, right? So, I mean, you look at, what's the, what's the average rent? We're usually doing the three-x income test. Whenever we're taking perspective tenants in, right? Like everybody should, and then you determine, what the median income level is and if you're going to be maxing that out, you're above that, then the first sign that something is going wrong, let's get ready to skip. They're going to stop paying rent, right? So, you want to make sure that you're under that, right? You don't want to; you don't want to be at the top of the market. Yes. Maybe they can keep up with it for a month or two where they're going to get behind. And so very, very cognizant of that.   Feras Moussa: And to add those, it's not that, if it's a lower income area, we won't buy a deal very well. It's really these are just kind of rules of thumb. And then from that, you start to work back, okay, well if it's a lower income area, can assume they are economic occupancy is going to be much slower. So, you should underwrite it that way. Right? Cause there's a deal to be had anywhere, right? I mean I'll buy any deal at the right price point, right? Assuming as long as it's, to me at least this has been new instead of a growing market. Right. And that's not a deal at f four worry about the city, essentially no one even wanted to live in that general area. But in terms of price points, in terms of, average incomes, all of that, it's really, again, depending on what price point are we buying it at.   James: So, let's say the rent and the price seems reasonable right? At the first sniff test, what's your next level sniff test? What do you guys do?   Feras Moussa: Then and actually started this. The thing I do before that is actually called the broker and just get there [inaudible 29:18].   James: Okay.   Feras Moussa: Right? And that's the first, usually, right? Because a lot of times there's more to this story, right? Is it, is it a partnership where you know, one of the sellers passed away and they're looking, you know, they're a little bit more motivated or is it a deal that just, the Bro, I've had brokers a little bit tell me these sellers are terrible operators, right? And you can kind of, and if you have a relationship with a broker, there'll be honest with you about that aspect. Right? Brokers are all, a lot of times brokers, I don't want to say always, but there'll always be, a lot of times we'll say, yeah, you know, you could do this and this and get, a $200 rent pop. Right?   James: Yes.   Feras Moussa: Take that with a grain of salt. But I'm looking for something that's kind of that ancillary information to help the deuce. Like, Hey, is there an actual opportunity to do, what's the value add that we can do is we can kind of take that into what we just talked about. Then kind of once, like you said, once you know the numbers make sense or the deals make sense, then you start to dig in and near. That's where we really do just to, go down to the numbers, right. Look at the t 12, look at where they are today on expenses. Look at where we think we will be on expenses. Where, what does the rent currently, right? What's the spread on just the rent, the market rents versus what their marketing right. Today. I mean kind of, we really starting to put the bigger picture together. Right. And then understanding is, hey, does this make sense at a high level? Right? Yes. That's us. Sorry, go ahead.   Ben Suttles: Oh, I was just going to say, what I mean, we don't even look at the OEM. Right. Do you know what I mean? We're going straight from our perspective, right. That just use your, you'll get, you'll get the skinny from the broker, right? Because they'll usually-- but the marketing packages is the marketing package. Right. And I feel like that sometimes skews people's numbers when they look in. Concentrate on that a little bit too closely. So, it's always best than if it passes your initial test and you talked to the broker and there might be something there and you just go straight to the spreadsheet analysis. Right. Because, I mean if you start trying to dissect what they're going-- what they have in terms of pro forma income and expenses, then you start getting that none of those numbers in your mind. And guess what, there, they're making those numbers work. So, we always, we always go straight to that and then only then do I then look at the OEM and I see how far apart we are. And usually, it's pretty significant. But, it's those classic sales tips, like, below replacement costs and all of these things that they love to say, that makes it sound so sexy.   James: Yes, its--   Ben Suttles: At the end of the day and it has to pencil out. It's all about the numbers.   James: Yes. I remember in one of the deals I never look at the OM until I close because I need a logo for that property. And I say where is the logo and then I called the broker, you understand the OM, I say yes.   Feras Moussa: Oh, you had the floor plan. Yes, we had that for the floor plan. You go back to the OM and grab the floor plan that [inaudible 31:56]--   James: Exactly.   Feras Moussa: --time and effort on.   James: Yes, yes, we did a floor plan and the logo from the OM, that's it.   Ben Suttles: There you go.   James: So, it's interesting. And so, the type of deals that you guys do, I mean, where do you categorize it? Value add deep value add or [inaudible 32:14] yield play or core type of tails.   Feras Moussa: I mean right now we're focused on value add. I mean we would like to do a more, really to me, the ideal deal for us now or given where we are given, our network, et cetera. It's really kind of that B minus space. Right? We've done the heavy value add, it's a lot of work. Right? And those skills have worked out. They performed, but for us, I mean it's just she consumes you, right to some degree. And so, we're trying to less of those and we try to vary it up. Right. Always have a value add going on, having a stabilized going on. Just cause from a bandwidth perspective, right, we can kind of handle one at a time, but we don't want to take on three big value add the one time because then he would get lost in that. And so, I think for us we're typically in that C plus B minus space is really the focus for us.   Ben Suttles: Yes, yes.   Feras Moussa: One day we'll do an ADL but not in, but not-- but it's about matching it to the right equity pool. Right. If we have equity that's okay with the lesser returns. Right. We can go do a B plus or a minus. But so far, we've been kind of in the C plus B minus space.   Ben Suttles: Yes. Yes.   James: Got It. Got It. So, what about that, that strategy? Do you guys do only agency Loan, Bridge, Bridge through an agency?   Ben Suttles: I think we're doing all this. It's really deals dependent. Right. Do you know what I mean? I think the bridge has gotten a little bit of a bad rap. I mean there's, there obviously you have to be careful with it, right? You have to understand that your exit strategy, you have to be able to hit those targets in terms of, especially if it's a value add, tell him the hair on it, which is, it's going to with a bridge, right? You got to be able to hit those timetables in terms of your construction, your rehab in order to refi out of it quickly. And then at the best price point that you can write, because obviously, you don't want to have to bring money to the table. So, we'll do a little bit of the bridge, but for the most part, where everyone, just like every other smart operator, you're looking for agency debt when you can. But at the end of the day, we're looking to maximize returns for our investors. And so sometimes, going bridge versus agency has been a better way in order to do that. And people understand that there's a little bit higher of risk tolerance with those. But we always get a three-year term with two years' extension. So, at the end of the day, it's still five years on a bridge that, it's not something like an 18-month deal. So, I think that that gives people a little bit of, they feel a little bit better about it as well. But we've done agency all the way up to 12 years too. So, it's a little bit about, just depends on the deal.   Feras Moussa: Yes. For anyone listening, I mean I think we have a Ph.D. in the agency space. Unfortunately, we've had issues that people that do 50 deals never hit. So, we've seen it all. And so, if anyone has any questions, feel free to reach out. But we've seen the good, the bad and the ugly on the dead space. So, it's, you kind of, you work through those problems, right? If you get the closing, which is the good news, but then you kind of learn from it and you know, start to figure out what are the things that could be learned from this to basically avoid the situation in the future. Right. We've had, we've really seen a variety of things. Unfortunately--   James: Oh, let's talk about--   Feras Moussa: --that's where Ben lost all this hair.   Ben Suttles: Just one. Just one lender, which I'll tell if you want to email me, I'll tell you which linear it was.   James: Okay, tell me the worst story with an agency, just let's just go--   Feras Moussa: The worst agency story. I'll tell you one, and this is one near and to you James. So, it's in San Antonio.   James: Okay.   Feras Moussa: San Antonio deal its a, a deal that pencils in really well. And for those of you that know on the agency side, right? With a standing loan, you can do what's called fully delegated, which means that fanny lets the dust lender, which in our case could be Arbor, could be haunted, it can be any variety of them. For us, it was an Arbor deal and lets them operate in the wrong capacity, right. To some degree. And so, there's kind of a box. As long as they're within the box, Arbor could approve the deal, no questions asked. Well yes, we're like three weeks from closing pretty much at the finish line. Money's in the bank. Well, we're already looking at the next field that we had to go on and then kind of going back, what happened was that because it's the San Antonio deal and the deal pencils in really, really well, right from a financial perspective, the lender said, well hey, we can go get your five years IO. And we didn't think much of it. Right. It was like, okay, that's fine. Well, at least we'll back out to where we are today because we run the road at one-year IO. Well, long story short, this deal essentially used to be on a watch list three years ago. The sellers are only deal in San Antonio. They struggled with it. Plus, it was kind of whenever they're in the midst of a lot of rehabs. So, he got on the watch list, it wasn't on the watch list the past few years. And that whole you, that market better than we do James. And that whole area has really turned around from where it was three years ago. But guess what, it was already flagged by Fannie and they just wanted to essentially get it off their books. Right. And so, this is something very, I actually did this just the other day where I, I was talking to a broker about a deal and asked him was the saber on a watch list.   Feras Moussa: That's something I've learned to ask now because and what sucks about it is that once a lender, a dus lender, this gets Arbor went to fanny, right? Once Fannie times in, Fannie is the authority, right?   James: Correct.   Ben Suttles: Versus if we would have just not ever done that, we could have closed the deal agency with Arbor, no questions asked. And so, it's a very unique situation. I don't know anyone that's actually ever encountered that. Right. But these kinds of things do happen. And so just knowing that they can happen, figure on how much risk you want to take because we would have been happy with what we had-- what we could have closed. Right. We were happy with the one-year IO. That was great. That was fine. But it's your kind of get a little bit more than that and then now completely bag of worms. So.   James: Yes, I learn, even I learned about this watch list, last week when was looking at another dealer then someone says, Oh, I backed out because of watch list, I say what is that? Right? Then we realize there are so many other issues with the deal. Right? So that's crazy. Yes. I mean for listeners, just FYI most dus lenders, they have one-year authority on a delegated underwriting. So within, if they give one-year IO, they don't have to go back to Fannie Mae and get approval. But once they go above that they have to go to Fannie Mae. And a lot of things can change when you go to Fannie Mae.   Feras Moussa: Yes. So, I have learned that there are different tiers. Right? So, there's the tier two, tier three. So, if you're at higher leverage that can only give you one. But if you're willing to go down to 65% they can actually approve 5 years IO, no questions.   James: Okay.   Feras Moussa: So, you start to learn. And again, why did I learn that from a different deal? So, start to understand really the mechanics of what's going on behind the scene. And this is where having the right mortgage broker makes all the difference, right? They can help steer you in the right direction and help catch some of these. So, I mean for the-- for the watch list, the sellers were actually more pissed that we were about the whole, they didn't think that was going to be an issue in terms of us getting the next one. Right.   James: Okay.   Feras Moussa: And they never thought to just close it. You don't think it's going to be an issue.   Ben Suttles: No, they thought it was off too.   Feras Moussa: Yes.   Ben Suttles: But, do you know what I mean? I think there's that just like, like our earlier part of the conversation. Right. You know, we're project managing these things, things are going to pop up. So, we were able to make it through that process--   James: Right.   Ben Suttles: --and still come out on top in terms of the debt. But yes, I mean we're always looking to maximize returns and risk and minimize risk for our investors. And I think that having this different background and different debt products and having a good experience with some of these different lenders really gives us a good broad overview of the debt market and which deals are going to make sense where, and I think that that's huge when you're looking at who to invest your money with, because know some people, let's be honest. So, they'll just go straight to Fannie, if it's not Fannie or if it's not Fannie then I'm not doing it. Right.   James: Correct.   Ben Suttles: But I think sometimes you're missing out on opportunities there as well.   James: So, wasn't, like three weeks before closing, didn't you guys had a rate lock at that time?   Feras Moussa: No, we're supposed to [inaudible 40:01] lock a few days later.   James: Oh okay.   Feras Moussa: Like little, they're just waiting on the final. Oh, because they went to Fannie, Fannie kind of asked-- this is where really, I think we could have-- it's about positioning the story. Right. Again, I think the lender just went in thinking that it's going to be easy down the middle because really that's what they told us. Right?   James: Okay.   Feras Moussa: They didn't even bother. We had a great story for the deal, for the sponsorship team. They tried to do it retroactively and kind of wants Fannie comes in it's really hard to change. But we were literally at the point of rate locking and getting, being done with the steel. Like we will do, so.   James: Yes. [crosstalk 40:36].   Feras Moussa: You do full 360 and charge full 180 and change things and kind of Redo. So, in my mind, it was really, we did, it took us to close if get that deal done.   James: Yes, it's, yes, it's, it's a day just to do it at the end because you're almost at the closing table. Right. So,   Ben Suttles: Yes.   Feras Moussa: Yes. So, so in that situation, just maybe to complete the story, right. The seller realized kind of what happened. They gave us more time, right? They gave us another 30 days they knew that wasn't really for lack of use or lack of anything that we did. And so, we're able to buy more time and then redo the process and kind of, get to where we needed to be.   James: So, did you do a different loan?   Feras Moussa: Yes. So that one we call back every investor because I mean we basically what we did Arbor realized the mistake that they made, which was they should not have gone to the lender, tell Fannie, they should have just closed. And so, they basically gave us a balance sheet loan, right? Which is like a bridge loan on their books that essentially, the short term just to get it off of Fannie's book, --   James: Okay.   Ben Suttles: --then in nine months. Right. So, for us, we kind of turned it into a value add reprice scenario. Right.   James: Okay.   Feras Moussa: And so, when that case, we will, nine months, 12 months, somewhere around there. Right. We're also pushing our NOI as hard as you can. We'll refi, pull equity out and get back into a panty permanent loan.   James: Got it.   Feras Moussa: And so, but the deal changed, right? And so, we had to call every investor, tell every investor here's what changed, here's what happened. Then thankfully pretty much everyone stayed in the deal. Right? So that kind of-- for us that it's a sigh of relief. But also, it's like, everyone just doubled down on us. Right? So, we're--   James: Right.   Ben Suttles: --going to get babysat through the finish line.   James: Yes, the amount of pressure for you to go, on the contact to rate lock it so much. Right. So, I mean, I don't know, I mean-- there's a lot of pressure on, responsibility. You have so much money tied, and you are under the gun and you have all your reputation out there. You are doing the deal, investors are looking at you, you are to be a leader. You have very strong leaders. So.   Ben Suttles: Yes.   James: Yes, it's a lot of work.   Feras Moussa: Absolutely.   James: So, kind of back to value add, right? So, you guys do value add strategy. So, what's your, what do you think is the most valuable value add?   Ben Suttles: I think, ultimately, what tenants care most about, right? I mean, whenever you're doing value add, unfortunately, you have to cure a lot of [inaudible 42:52]. You have to do a lot of things that you not going to get the best return on your investment on. But the two things that tenants care about, first being their interiors. So, what was actually in my unit, the second thing that they care about is amenities, right. Probably a distance second. Most of the time with the workforce housing, they're caring about what their units look like. And I think that's where you're going to get the best return on your investment when you're doing value add. And then you can obviously update and add on amenities as a secondary thing to that. But unfortunately, with those value adds, you got to do things like roofs and HVAC replacement and other things that just people just say, hey if I'm renting from you, I expect that to be working. So, you know, but you might be spending a hundred or two hundred grand on some of this stuff, right? So, your return on investment is almost nothing, but you have to do it. So, you've got to balance those two things, right? You've got to work in curing that deferred maintenance along with how do I push the NOI and the revenue side by, really updating the property for the way that the tenants are looking at it. So, I mean that's kind of how we look at every value-add play that we do. A combination of those two things.   Feras Moussa: So, James, is your question really specific about ROI? Like what are the things that we putting kind of deferred maintenance aside, what other things would we do to really try to maximize our return?   James: Yes, other than deferred maintenance, like the roof and all the big stuff [crosstalk 44:21].   Feras Moussa: Yes, so I mean it's, its properties specific, right? It's really depending on the asset, what it looks like currently and what is the market doing right now? That said from our experience, right? The most common thing, flooring, two-tone paint, right? And pimping out the kitchen some degree. Right? And you can go as crazy as replacing all the cabinets or you really replacing the front or even just putting fixtures, right? Like for us, fixtures are definitely cheap. Easy to do. It gives a different, pop to the thing, right? Flooring almost always, painted and really two-tone paint. It's important. And the other thing too that we like to do is really putting a backsplash. You can do backsplashes with this kind of stick on backsplash, really, really cheap to do per unit. And it gives the kitchen, which is usually known the seventies, eighties build kitchen, a bit of Pop, right? It gives it something to modernize it. Right? We didn't go as far as putting granted in. Right. But you are putting that in kind of coupled with a resurfacing. It actually looks pretty good. And then, the obvious is white and black appliances. Right?   James: So, let's say--   Feras Moussa: And that's all, white, black or aluminium.   James: Let's say how the interiors, right. So, let's say you guys lost for some reason you thought you had 100% of your interior budget, but now you need like 50% of the budget. What would you focus on, on the interior?   Ben Suttles: Yes, if the property needed any flooring or paint. Right? [crosstalk 45:38] Those are important things to think.   James: Okay.   Feras Moussa: Yes, I mean, you got appliances too right, but I mean appliances, you're going to be two x in your interior budgeted, just adding those in. But a lot of people they take, there's a price difference between white and black appliances are really not, but there's a perception that they're a little bit higher quality. So, you can even do that too. Right? You got to replace the appliances, but you don't have a whole big budget for that. You can just go from white to black to and I think that adds a nice pop too.   James: Yes, that's a really good point. I mean I realize a lot of times if you give them even white, really nice appliances, people are happy. Right?   Ben Suttles: No. Yes, you can do, right. It's-- I mean, but like, you'll see people like, they're just ecstatic that they've got black appliances. Right now, the market is about the same in terms of pricing.   James: Correct.   Ben Suttles: So, but it's just a perception thing or just, like I said, backslash 150 bucks.   James: Yes.   Ben Suttles: [crosstalk 46:38].   Feras Moussa: Let me turn the question around to you, James. Would you, the same question to you, right, would you do the same thing, or would you do something else?   James: So, we, so for me, I think my most valuable value add would be just giving them good management, right? So, there are so many bad operators out there, which is mismanaging not respecting the tenants, not taking care of it. So, we just want to make sure, really good management that's on the management side. But if you go back to the interiors, I would say, of course, we do the appliances and we do the painting and flooring. That's what we would, I would say the most, so, but I think, a lot of people just love having good management people who take care of them. Everything--   Ben Suttles: Oh, absolutely. I mean, they want to feel comfortable and who miss their right. People that understand what's going on. I mean, that's to me, and that's why for all of our properties, we're big people, putting, doing parties, doing tenant events, pretending retention vents. Because from the operations side, right. This is, you have the backdoor and you have the front door, right? You don't have people renewing, right. You're going to have delinquency problems, not a delinquency problem, you're going to have an oxygen problem, right? And so really keeping people happy, renewing, right. Well, then it makes it easier on the front end to start the push friends, right? Because you have people that are enjoy working there, living there. Right. You know, for another 10, $20. Sure enough, it's more than the cost of moving. Right. And so that's absolutely.   James: Yes. I think at the end of the day the tenants just want to be felt appreciated. That you just-- so many properties out there. You don't have to be being mismanaged.   Ben Suttles: Yes, clean, quality, safe housing, man. I mean, it seems so easy and the way that I describe it, but so many operators, I've just run some of these properties in the ground and they don't take care of it. Right? And so, the tenants, therefore, don't consider home and they don't take care of it. So when you get a good operator, I know you get a good management company in there and they showed that they're taking care of the property, then by default you're going to get more loyal 10 tenants, you're going to have people that are going to be more apt to take a renewal increase, cause they like, they like coming home again. Right? It's home.   James: Yes.   Ben Suttles: Versus just a place just to sleep.   James: Yes. Yes. I think one of the episodes, maybe episode five or six, I interviewed, Addie Lauren from California strategic alliance and he had been doing this for 30 years, more than 1 billion in a transaction. And he told me very simple, clean, basic and functional quality is what his motto is that's it. Right?   Ben Suttles: You don't have to get; you don't have to be creative about it. Right. I mean, you know, the space that we plan is essentially workforce housing. I mean, across our whole entire portfolio, our average rents are less than a thousand bucks, right. So, folks aren't looking for crazy amenities and crazy things even in their interiors. They just want a good quality place to come home to and then, and the management side is a big piece of that too.   James: Correct, correct, correct.   Ben Suttles: Yes, she bought up a good point.   Feras Moussa: And then another thing too with good management, right. You get lower delinquency. So, for us, I mean that's night and day. We had a deal that we, one of our heavy value add deals where essentially where we were, I went back and looked at numbers July versus where we are today. We have three times more revenue collected than we will, we did before total, like literally straight revenue you and that's a combination of, cutting back the delinquency, bringing units, align, updating. But I mean, it’s, once people know that it's, someone taking care of the property and enjoying it, people want to stay there. All right. People are eating $200 rep push because guess what, this place has been completely turned around. It's more family oriented and even just bringing more families on board helps to come back for delinquency. So, for us really looking at how do you build that community and some people really cheap about it, but like, hosting these parties is you, I mean, do the math, right? How much does it cost to go get a hundred hot dog and a hundred burgers? Right?   James: Yes.   Feras Moussa: I mean it's very, very cheap, right? To be there and grill it out, have like a little patio, you know, a party, whatever it is. These things are almost, you know, half of the units rented a month, right. It's kind of thing. And so, they're almost rounding errors, errors where we are, but guess what? It changes the dynamics in the property. And so, I mean, some people don't really-- people are very short-sighted. I see. And really it has a much bigger kind of longer-term impact.   James: Yes.   Ben Suttles: And I think going along with the value add, right? I mean, you know, a lot of what we're doing is repositioning the property too, which is kind of where you're going with this James. Is bringing in better management. You're getting a better tenant profile at the same time too. So that's part of the value-add strategy as well, so once you, and once you show them that you care, you've got tenants in there that care than the properties just starts performing. There's a whole-- the energy shifts are palpable. Do you know what I mean? You go from a bad energy deal to a very good energy deal and you have less delinquency. Yes. Better occupancy people more apt to take a renewal increase and you can, you can rent that out more easily because people that prospective tenants that are walking around fuel that same thing too. So that's a huge part of what we do. We don't like to focus the value add just on the what the aesthetic of the property to, it's how you manage it and tenants that you have in there as well. A huge part of it.   James: So, you guys operators, which is the definition. What I mean is very active asset management because you know the details of what's happening on the side by side. Right. So, is that a correct assumption? Right? So.   Ben Suttles: Absolutely.   Feras Moussa: Yes, absolutely.   James: How do you guys manage this third-party property management companies?   Feras Moussa: Man, that's, that's part of the secret sauce. But I mean, it's really is nothing to it. There's nothing secret about it. So, we have an asset manager now that we've brought in who very experienced, 20 plus years if families a property, he manages family really. And so that's starting to help, but we plan to keep a pulse in general on what's going on in every deal. And so, for us, it's really about putting systems in place with each of your property managers, right? And having accountability. Right? And so, we have not brought in property management in house, but we've been successful with managing our property managers. Right? Yes. And it's a partnership, right? It's not like they're your employee. You really need to get on the level of like where they understand like, hey, we're partnering, we're growing together. Right? And so, they've seen that, and you know, yes. Identify the good property managers from the batch. So, there's a whole betting cycle. I don't want to get too far into, but really, we have the weekly calls, we have the weekly reports come in at a certain time. We have certain expectations that within a few days we expect them to follow up with hearing all the action items and did these all get done? Yes or no? Why not? Right? And how do we, I can keep them accountable, so.   Ben Suttles: Yes, it's all about obviously keep it to an agenda, keep into the processes that we put in place to templates and checklists. And we're very upfront when we get into a partnership with these property management companies that this is what we expect, that this is when we expect it. Right. And then we, like we said, we keep them accountable through--   Feras Moussa: And this is the format that we expect, that these are the numbers that we need and sent out.   James: Okay.   Feras Moussa: Just to help us track everything the way we want. And then you learn from it. Right. We're not perfect. It's not, it's an iterative process, right. Anytime we identify something that we can improve from one property manager, we applied to the portfolio. The nice thing is really is that having different property managers, we see the strengths and weaknesses of each property manager and you figure out how do we make them all better and so what things can we do across the board to make everything better?   Ben Suttles: Yes.   James: So, can you name like three things that you guys always look out for in the property management performance? When you realize that someone of these three things is not going well, things are not going right.   Feras Moussa: Oh Man. I would say renewals is the lowest hanging fruit. Look and understand what's going on in renewals and how important it is because early renewals are indicative of a lot of other things. Are they following up with tenants for the renewal? Right. Did they really? That's just a-- that's the number that you can kind of look at and realize that there must be other problems going on. I would say that's my answer. I don't know about you, Ben.   Ben Suttles: No, I think, yes, I think you're right, man. Totally. Yes. I think my biggest, my biggest hanging out in delinquency because it's like that's the properties money. Like you know, go out there, how are you going to collect the rent that is owed? And so, when you start seeing that slipping and we're increasing, that's my big red flag that hey, there's something going on here, right? As our management on site, not, not doing their job, or are we getting bad tenants in there that aren't capable of paying the rent that we're asking of them may be what's the, there's a, there's usually a bigger problem going on, but yes, I mean all of these, these metrics we expect on our Monday morning report. And so, we're looking at each of these things weekly and we're also having follow-up calls throughout the week to either our asset management or asset manager or us or having calls with the property manager to track these things. So, it's not like a weekly thing. And that we don't have any kind of insight into what's happening for the rest of the week. If there's a challenge, we're having a follow-up call that week about it as well.   James: Okay. So, do you convert like renewal to percentage and look at, give that as a goal, that what you guys delinquency at two percentage and give that as a goal?   Feras Moussa: It's a balancing act depending on how hard you're pushing. Right? So, it's not like you can just say, hey, we expect 50% renewals across the board. I think it's really, it's deal specific and I mean we're looking at renewals, we're looking at least as we're looking at delinquency, right? We're looking at how much traffic came in versus how much leases got closed and then going in and really both on leases, we didn't close. What's the story? What's the story? What's the story? Sometimes there are cases where you, maybe you, no, you can go save that, that person. Similarly, on the delinquency, we go through what's this person's story? Are they going to pay? Cause really in Atlanta, our delinquency is higher than it isn't and Texas, right? It's just by nature of the market. And so, you, you kind of need to be more flexible in one market versus the other. And so really go through and understand what's the story behind me. Just like whenever we, you asked me earlier about the properties, how we analyse it, you're looking for that story. And so, we talked through each one of these and figure out what makes sense to kind of do moving forward. Because to us, it is very different between different properties.   Ben Suttles: Yes, and I, I would say targeted for delinquency, right? It's always zero. And do you know what I mean? So, the property management companies will say, oh yes, we got zero across our whole portfolio, I'm like, yes right. Do you know what I mean? Not, not the workforce housing stuff. So, you got to be realistic. But I would say your target, there's probably one to 2%, you know, on a stabilized property if you're dealing in the workforce housing space that we are and so that's usually the metric that we're pushing towards. But on the renewal side too. One thing I want to point out, right? When you're doing a heavy value add and you've got a lot of interior budget to kind of burn through and you have units that you need to update too, right? You're not going to be chasing after those folks as aggressively as you would on a stabilized property because maybe you don't have a lot of down units are a lot of vacancies and you need to free up, you know, units actually update them, right? So, you're not going to be as aggressive in renewing those folks. So, we've been able to connect like Feras says, right? I mean, you don't want to, you're not going to burn that bridge completely. So, you're constantly looking at occupancy, versus how much, how many units are we supposed to be turning a month in order to hit that target of, 60, 70, 80 units a year. Right. Because people have, people aren't moving out. What are we going to do? We can't sit on the money and there's usually a finite amount of time that we can, we can actually use that cash. So.   Feras Moussa: To expand on Ben's point too. It's almost like, we have a deal where we almost went the opposite. We don't want renewal. And what I mean by that is that one of our deals in Atlanta, we've pushed rents an insane amount on this deal. Like we're probably up 30% honestly, you know, 30 40% and we still have 98% occupants are choke when they're property managers at one day on the call, it felt to 97 and a half. And then, we called her out on it like, Oh, you're at 97 and a half, you're not a 98% anymore. And she's like, no, no, I just had someone who fucking renewed. She's back at 98, but in that deal, we have interior budgets that we need to go spend. We were literally just sitting on the side-lines. Right. Trying to, so you were kind of that balancing act is because we knew what was below market. Right. And figure out, where can we land on to where we have some people not renewing and we can go in and actually spend the money to even get, you know, that better push.   James: Yes. I think you need to look for where is the base rank, where's the base rank before you really go and spend all that rehab money. Otherwise, you can't be spending, spending, spending.   Ben Suttles: Exactly.   James: You don't know where's your base. Where is your starting point? Right. So, yes, I've had properties where we didn't even spend, we have the money yet, but we already bumped up just because people like it just because we are just a better operator than the previous guy. Right. So, --   Ben Suttles: And you'll get that. Right. Do you know what I mean? You'll just, you're amazed that how much they'll take it on renewal too. And that's great. You know, I mean, I just think it's a balancing act sometimes, but yeah, you have that, you have to kind of see where the market is and, and obviously be strategic with those dollars as well.   James: Yes, correct. Correct. That's right. So, can you give us some advice on how do you choose third-party property management? Because you guys are going in multiple markets, right? How would you give them expectations? Because a lot of, I'm sure a lot of property management company don't like, active asset managers. I couldn't control, [inaudible 59:57] I guess.   Ben Suttles: Well, hey now. [crosstalk 01:00:01].   Feras Moussa: Ben. I think, yes, I think.   James: [inaudible 01:00:04].   Feras Moussa: Well I will say though all of our property managers literally, you ask them, they say we're one of their favourites.   James: Oh okay.   Feras Moussa: So, let's not because we're active or inactive. [crosstalk 01:00:15]. Well, it's, we're doing maybe some of it, but it's more so that we're realistic. Right. I think what I was surprised to hear from them as a lot of people will just sell their property may, here's your budget, here's what you have to go, you know, accomplish. And sometimes it's not realistic. Right. I said before any of your deals because we've already worked on a budget with a property manager, we have an agreement on what that looks like, what the plan is, and we're not just picking numbers out of a hat just to make our deal work. Right. And really kind of do it the other way around. And then, yes, whenever issues come up, we're both, I mean, I hope people on the audience, I get this impression. Ben and I are pretty level headed, pretty easy to work with. And so, they understand things happen. And so, the property management companies, at least they enjoy because we're easy to get a hold of. We understand what's going on the deal. And we're realistic. And so, because I've asked them and pretty much all of them have said that we're one of, we're one of their favourites. Right. And so, --   James: Okay.   Feras Moussa: Now, that said, maybe to answer your question, Ben, do you want to answer? Do you want me to answer?   Ben Suttles: I mean, I, I think, I mean, you've got to be stern, but at the same time, you can have a friendly relationship with them at the same time. Right. But I think it's all about setting the right expectations and just betting them in general. I think it's, it's all you usually start off with referrals. Right?   James: Okay.   Ben Suttles: But I think some of the big things are as, go take a look at some of their properties too. Go secret shop those deals, so you're going to say, okay, hey you, you're a good referral on whatever market. Right. Give me three of the assets that you, and then you fly out there and you go shopping. What does the property look like? Is it clean? Is the management, is the leasing agent and the manager, are they friendly, are they knowledgeable of the property? Are they good or are they leasing it properly? All of these things go back to the property management side and, and as long as that's, that's kind of coalesces with what you've heard about them and everything. That is good. Obviously, the fee has to be online and those roles have, the references have to be there. But I think the biggest, the biggest asset test for us is, vetting the deals that they currently have, and do we like what we see, and they call them out, right? I mean, if they don't, if there's a deficiency saying, hey we went to Xyz property and there's trash on the ground, what's the deal with that and then how do they respond to that? Because that's going to be, -- there are always challenges, but it’s how you respond to those challenges is what I'm looking for on the property management side.   James: Yeah.   Feras Moussa: And then a couple of things too, just to add, I mean it's about what's kind of, what's the impression and feeling you're getting from them? Right. And, and working on a budget with a property management company is actually a great exercise to understand how they look at things and how are they going to meet what you're looking for. And I mean that in multiple, always, right? A, are they, -- is their budget realistic? Right. And B, is there pushback? I mean we actually like when they push back, right? If we say, well we think we can run payroll at x amount and they're like, well no, payroll is going to be this amount. Here are the 10 properties we have nearby to prove it. Right? That's good. Versus we've had property managers that are essential yes people, right? That'll say yes to everything and that's not at all what you want because we need something realistic. We're not trying to, we have millions of dollars at stake, we have other people's money. We're not here to just take a gamble. So, looking at that and kind of what we've found success in is really the people that are in that five to 15,000-unit range, right? The 40,000 guys in too much, they don't care about you. The guys that are smaller, there's just a lot of them. You know this first-hand. There's a lot of back offices that need to happen for a successful property management company. Right. And so, we found that sweet spot seems to be that five to 15 and then to where there our portfolio is enough volume for them, right? That we kind of get that professional preferential treatment where needed and at the same time, right, they're developed enough to be able to, kind of take on and succeed with it.   James: Got It. Got It. Very interesting, very interesting. So, let me ask some question about more the personal side, right? So maybe each one of you can add in on your own site. So, what's, what do you think is the top three things that are the secret sauce, for the success that you guys have been having in terms of closing deals?   Ben Suttles: All right. Go for it man.   Feras Moussa: Partnerships and relationships, right? Most important, first and foremost, right? Being willing to partner with brokers, property managers, other partners, partners, right? On the GP. People that can help us, would the deal, right? Whether it's helping with construction, hel

Weeks ago, the world watched helplessly as he Notre Dame Cathedral, burned. While this event was notable for many reasons, one of the things that struck us here at Technically Religious was the protocol used by emergency responders: Save the people, save the art, save the altar, save what furniture you can, then focus on the structure, in that order. We know what can be rebuilt and what can't.” In this episode, Josh and Leon compare and contrast that disaster recovery process to the ones typically used in IT. Listen or read the transcript below. Leon: 00:00 Hey everyone. It's Leon. Before we start this episode, I wanted to let you know about a book I wrote. It's called "The Four Questions Every Monitoring Engineer is Asked", and if you like this podcast, you're going to love this book. It combines 30 years of insight into the world of IT with wisdom gleaned from Torah, Talmud, and Passover. You can read more about it, including where you can get a digital or print copy over on adatosystems.com. Thanks! Leon: 00:25 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. Josh: 00:45 A few weeks ago, the world watched helplessly as one of the iconic buildings in Paris, the Notre Dame cathedral burned. While this event was notable for many reasons. One of the things that struck us here at Technically Religious was a response by one of the bystanders, who understood what was happening on the ground. He said, Leon: 01:04 "The fire department in Paris followed a protocol. Save the people, save the art, save the altar, save what furniture you can, then focus on the structure. In that order. They know what can be rebuilt and what can't." Josh: 01:17 Now that smacks of a disaster recovery policy to us. But I think we in IT might look at it differently. Which is what we're going to do in this episode. Joining in the discussion with me today is Leon Adato. Leon: 01:31 Hi everyone. And of course, the other voice that you're hearing is Josh Biggley. Josh: 01:35 Hello. Hello. Leon: 01:36 Okay, so I think the first thing, because we're talking about disaster recovery, is let's get our terms. Let's define our data library and differentiate between redundancy, high availability, disaster recovery, risk mitigation, all those things. So do you wanna take a crack at it? Do you want to just collaboratively? Do this? Josh: 01:58 I love redundancy. And in this world of cloud, I think redundancy is the thing that we do really well now because you know, you can set up a system that is in two regions and so if one of your regions fails here, the region will pickup, you can do a multisite region. Redundancy to me feels like a descriptor that actually bridges across HA and DR and risk mitigation. Um, yeah, redundancy feels like a catchall term, right? It's not something you can achieve. I don't know. What do you think, Leon? Leon: 02:36 All right. All right. So I think redundancy at its simplest is "there's another one of them." There's another Josh: 02:42 Oh, like RAID Leon: 02:43 Yeah. Okay. Right. There's like RAID, you know, having multiple disks - RAID 0 - which is just having two discs, one backing up the other constantly. Or RAID 5... any of the other flavors of raid. So I think redundancy means "having more than one" and yes, redundancy can fit into a high availability plan. But high availability is more nuanced. High availability means that no matter what happens, the "thing" - the service, or the the network, or whatever, is going to be available. That can also be done by doing load balancing. It can also be done by, you know, in networking terms, channel bonding, so you can have those. So redundancy by itself is just "more than one of those at a time." So if one fails, the other one is still going or can take over. But high availability I think has more flavors to it. And then you have disaster recovery. That means that all your beautiful efforts at high availability have failed and it still went down. And so now you're left trying to recover from the failure. But at that point the failure is done. It has occurred, the system has crashed, you know, the meteor has hit the data center. Whatever it is and now you're trying to rebuild or pick up the pieces or whatever it is. Then you have risk mitigation, which sounds a little bit like, "We believe that this disaster could potentially occur, and we want to see what we can put in place to completely avoid the disaster, but we're going to do that ahead of time." So in the case of the Notre Dame fire, it might've been, you know, a sprinkler system. Just something like that. Like that would have been a nice little risk mitigation idea. Josh: 04:37 You know, I wonder how many of those risk mitigation things that we do on our lives are really, uh, to make us feel better. Leon: 04:46 Okay. So like the, you know, security theater kind of stuff, Josh: 04:50 Right, right. Yeah. Like, um, you know, locking your front door. I mean, if someone really wants in your house, they're just going to kick your front door down. I mean, if the police want in, they're going to get in, you know? No deadbolt you pick up at home depot is going to keep them out. Right? Leon: 05:08 No. Um, and, and I know this is a topic that Destiny Bertucci would love to be part of because this is one of her big things. But, so the thing about the dead bolts in the house, it's first of all, they don't need to kick down the door because you have windows. And I don't mean the computer system... Josh: 05:24 Ha ha, ba dum bum! Leon: 05:26 Yeah, we'll be here all week folks. So the thing about deadbolts is that it is way of avoiding, I guess, avoiding risk. It's a deterrent. It's not a protection. I saw some statistics recently that said, unless there was something specifically in your house that that individual wants - you have a Renoir, or a priceless Monet painting, or something like that - then they're just looking for what can get quickly and easily and a deadbolt is absolutely an effective deterrent because breaking a window is too risky and too loud and too noticeable. And if the door can't be easily opened, they'll move on to the next house or structure, where the pickings are easier. Or they'll walk around the house. And I've seen the statistics in neighborhoods where I've lived, that's occurred. Where they tried the front door, they tried the side door, they went around to the back door and "oops!". That one didn't have [a deadbolt. because], "who would go to the back door?!?" Everybody who wants to get in your house would go around to the back door. YOU go around to the back door right when the front... So everyone goes around. So having a dead-bolted system on all of your doors is the most effective deterrent to that. But I think we've gotten a little off topic, you know, in terms of Notre Dame. So I think we've defined redundancy, high availability, disaster recovery, risk mitigation... but what they're talking about, what they talked about in this whole, "first save lives and then save the art, and then save the...", you know, that's different. Josh: 07:05 Yeah, it is, isn't it? Because they almost - well not almost, they gave a priority to specific items. Right? And I appreciate the fact that they said "save lives," lives are irreplaceable. So..., and there are things, there are some beautiful things in that cathedral that were also irreplaceable. Right. But you know, to their credit, human lives come first. Leon: 07:31 Right. And, and I think that that's a pretty obvious one. After that though, taking the priority of lives, then art, and then, um, sorry I'm going back and looking at it... right. "Save the people, save the art, save the altar, save the furniture, then focus on the structure." So, you know, why did the roof, you know, get so hot it melted? Because it was just not part of the protocol... They hadn't gotten to that part of the protocol yet. And also what was said later was that not only is that protocol in place for overall, but it's in place room by room. Josh: 08:06 Oh, interesting. Leon: 08:09 I think there's an order of which rooms they tried to get to first. Again, looking for people. Once they knew all the people were safe throughout the structure, then they were going to specific rooms and looking for specific things to make sure that they could get those out before they moved on to the next category or even the next room. So I find it all fascinating. But the other thing is, do we do that in IT? Do we set up a protocol for which things we save first? Josh: 08:42 You know, I'm thinking back and I don't recall ever having a, "Howell moment" and by Howell I'm referencing Gilligan's island and the Howells and the, "Oh deah save the furniture first!" you know, Leon: 08:58 Save money, save the money! Josh: 09:01 Yeah. I don't know that we've ever had one of those situations. Now, I will say though, we've taken risk mitigation efforts. Back in the days of doing tape backups, you would keep.. now if someone here isn't, you should, but you keep your backups offsite, you would move them to iron mountain and other similar facilities. Leon: 09:26 Well, and, and bringing it forward a little bit, the 3-2-1 policy for backups, which is you have to have three separate backups, physically discrete backups, on at least two different kinds of media, with one of them being offsite. And offsite can be cloud, that's okay. But you know, 3-2-1" three backups to different media, at least two different media. One that is not where you are. So I would say that there is an order, but I think it's almost so self evident that we don't bother elaborating on it, which is: Save the data first. Josh: 09:59 Oh absolutely. Leon: 10:00 Yeah. So data in... Okay, and we're not talking about a fire in the data center, which changes the nature of everything. But you know, the first thing is save the data. The data equals lives in the Notre Dame protocol. If we, if we want to say it that way. And maybe the application is, you know, art, if we want to think of it that way, like the next thing. Once we know the data is secure, then save the applications, make sure, and by save I mean make sure the application can keep running, post disaster, post outage, whatever that is. So, we're both network folks and, we'll say "the network has gone down," All right? The main circuit out to the Internet, to our customers, whatever that circuits gone down. So what's the first thing? Let's make sure the data wasn't corrupted. Now, we might make sure that that happened before the outage by making sure that the system of rights is, you know, won't get caught in the middle of something that we're doing. Whether it's the particular kind of logging on the database or what have you, that those things are taken care of. But make sure the data's fine. Then make sure the application can get out to... "the signal must flow." The signal has to keep going. So can make sure the application is okay. Maybe the next thing in an IT version of that protocol... Uh, I don't know what would it be? Josh: 11:32 So, you know, we've talked about keeping the data, we've talked about getting the application out there. Then it's, "can I get the people who need to be connected to it, connected to it." So one of the things when you have a major disaster, is you're often worried about addressing your largest customers and getting them back. But maybe you've got a remote workers and you don't have the VPN, so they're not going to be terminating in your, your new data center. Or swinging those circuits, those VPN tunnels from your original data center to your new data center. Maybe that wasn't part of your disaster recovery plan. So all of those things I think that's the, "Okay, now, now go get all the bits that make the, make your application experience comfortable. And again, I'm a remote worker, you're remote worker. So being able to connect and provide the support to the business is very important. Leon: 12:32 And I can get behind that in terms of, like, we're the furniture. Josh: 12:34 Yeah. I mean we've been sat on before. It's all right. Leon: 12:39 Right. Sat on, stepped on, brushed aside, Josh: 12:43 and knocked over. Leon: 12:43 Yeah. Right. Yeah, sure. And I think the structure is, it literally that, it's the organizational structure. Make sure... but that's last because it's the thing that can be rebuilt easiest. The other thing about the Paris, the Notre Dame issue was the other comment: They knew it could happen and by that they knew it would happen again because Notre Dame was trashed back in the French Revolution or "The Terror" as someone referred to it. But the thing that was interesting was they weren't making any meaningful changes to Notre Dame even though it had happened before, and they knew it could happen again. And again, I find this fascinating. I've talked and written before about black swans in IT. You know, that really big event where "the application crashed and we couldn't sell widgets to our customers and we lost blah, blah, thousands of dollars." And you know, all that stuff. "And now we need to make sure that never happens again!" Okay. Yeah. But it was a meteor falling on the earth. I can't... why are we spending time even talking about it? And yet businesses spend lots and lots of time trying to protect themselves from the next Black Swan, which is going to look just like the last Black Swan, even though that one is a black swan because it was unpredictable. So why would they not make meaningful changes? Josh: 14:09 So, I wonder about that, right? Like why would we not make meaningful changes when we know that something has happened? And I think you've nailed it there. These are black swan events. The chances that, the realistic chances of "The Terror" happening again, were reasonably small in the grand scheme of things. They also knew that the cathedral itself, although it is iconic, it can be rebuilt. So get the things that will go into the new building and in the new building will have new designs. So here, a tale from Mormonism. The Salt Lake Temple was one of the first buildings that was built in the Salt Lake Valley - major building that was built in the Salt Lake Valley after the Mormons moved there from Nauvoo. And when they got there, they built this temple out of stone that was quarried from the nearby quarries. That temple has stood the test of time. It's, it's been there for, uh, geez, I don't even know how many years. Well over a hundred years at this point. They are shutting the temple down in the center of Salt Lake because they are going to make some changes. They're going to redo the foundation, which at one point had cracked, and then they had to tear it out well before the temple was finished and then put it back in and then finish the temple. But they're going to protect the temple from seismic events. And not that, not that there's ever been a major earthquake in Utah, but you know, there could be, and it's hard to take such a landmark off the grid. People literally from around the world to see that that temple and downtown Salt Lake. So I imagine those changes to the Notre Dame cathedral would have been equally... uh, no, let me rephrase that. They would have been more impactful to a tourism around that facility and the worship services that go on in there. Leon: 16:21 So, yeah, not that Notre Dame doesn't undergo renovations. In fact, this all occurred during a renovation. They certainly were renovating. I just, I wonder about, why not a sprinkler system or whatever. Although, as I sit there and I say it to myself, again, working in IT, well, why don't we put sprinkler systems in our data center? Oh, that's right. That's why we don't do that. And you know, the art, the paintings, the whatever, you know, maybe Josh: 16:51 The servers Leon: 16:52 The servers. Yeah. The wiring, the electricity. A water suppression system would probably be be more damaging than not, than the fire, which I guess people feel that they can outrun. And they did, in large part. You know, they really did. And also that the next step up, a halon system is simply not possible in a structure the size of Notre Dame. Josh: 17:27 I think the key here, though, is don't make any changes because once you make changes, you introduce variables that you can't control. Like really, "no deploy Fridays"? They're a thing. I mean, they should be a thing. Leon: 17:39 So I hear that, although I think that Charity Majors, from Honeycomb.io, is on a campaign for getting rid of that. But... Josh: 17:48 I'm just going say she was the one I was thinking about when I said that, I was thinking "Charity is totally going to kill me." Leon: 17:53 But I will say also that she is presupposing that there is a vastly different architecture in place than A) the kind of structure that Notre Dame is; and B) the kind of day to day small, medium, even large size businesses, but sort of the, the monolithic businesses that we, you and I, are used to working in, I think that she's presupposing that's not the case. Josh: 18:21 Most definitely not. Right. I think if the equivalent of a of honeycomb in architecture would be something akin to.... Boy, I can't even, I I have no idea. I'm like what, what would change as often as an environment monitored by honeycomb? Leon: 18:43 Yeah. So neither one of us is architect enough to come up with a good analogy, but... Josh: 18:50 I have one!! Leon: 18:51 Oh, go ahead. Josh: 18:51 What about a 3-d printed house, one of those ones you can build in a day that like puts the concrete down? I think if you had something like that, Leon: 19:01 ...if that was the case then you wouldn't worry about you. Yeah. You'd deploy changes all the time because you just reprint your plans, right? Josh: 19:09 "Oh honey, I think we're going to put an addition on this afternoon." "Okay. Hit print." All right. There we go. So Honeycomb is like a 3-D printed house. Leon: 19:20 There we go. I'm going to tweet that and see how quickly Charity jumps on there to tell us "erm, no!" Okay. Um, Josh: 19:30 I have a question. You mentioned to me, when we were talking about this episode, about this comment about the "long now in action" and how that resonated with you. Tell me only, what was it about that phrase "the long now?" Leon: 19:45 I loved the idea - and just to put it in context from the tweet (and we'll have it in the notes from the show.) But the original comment, "They know what can be rebuilt and what can't." (I'd said that before) "...the protocol has been in place since the last time the cathedral was destroyed. Sacked during the French Revolution. The steeple and beams supporting it are 160 years old. And oaks for new beans await at Versailles, the grown replacement for oaks to rebuild after the revolution. This is the long now in action. It's what happens when you maintain civilization." So a few more pieces here about why the protocol is in place and how they do it. They actually do have a sense of disaster recovery. They're growing it! There are trees. And in the thread of the tweet that we quoted, the gentleman who tweeted it posted pictures of Versailles with the oaks that have been grown to replace pieces. Now, of course that's also meant to replace pieces that just wear out after a while, or become decayed or something like that. But the entire idea is that they have their disaster recovery. They have their replacement process in place. But the idea of calling it "the long now" - I think in American we call it the long game, right? But the long game has a whole different flavor than "the long now." The long now means that life is happening - now. We are in it - now. But I'm not just looking at this moment. I'm not living for just this moment. I'm living for this moment, and also to ensure that every other moment is able to be sustained or maintained like it. That my children will experience THIS now. They will walk into iconic structures like Notre Dame and have the same experience I'm having in in large part, if not completely. So I just like that. And from an IT perspective, I think that we would do well if we could build in awareness of the long now - and by the way, which things don't need it. Which aspects of our architecture really are momentary and shouldn't be given the "long now" treatment, like Y2K is a great example of not doing that. You're not thinking about the long now, and you're not building in obsolescence into your code to say, "No! At the end of five years, this has to go away. It has to, we have to do something else with it." So that's the opposite of it. I just, I was just enchanted with both the terminology and everything poetically that seemed to be wrapped in with it. Josh: 22:31 Yeah. And, and as I, as I've listened to you wax eloquent about that idea, I do think that that is it. That is really an enchanting idea. Maybe to make it a little more base and brutish. It's that whole argument of pets versus cattle. And I think Netflix was one of the first companies to really push that idea. Don't get so attached to your tech that you can't kill it off. Right? We've got this dog, her name is Mabel. She's a Boston terrier. She's the purebred. And she is literally the most expensive gift I have ever purchased for my wife. Not because she was expensive to buy. But in the first year of her life, she is undergone close to $4,500 in surgery because apparently Boston's have bad knees. Who would have known?? And so for my pets, for this pet in particular, we're willing to literally move heaven and earth to make sure that she's comfortable. Right. But I also enjoy eating cows and I would not move heaven and earth to save a cow. Leon: 23:47 You might spend extra for a really tasty cow, but that's a very different thing. So I have long said both in IT context and also in my home that it's not the cost of the puppy that's gonna get ya. It's the cost of feeding the puppy. Josh: 24:02 Children too, actually. Leon: 24:04 Yeah. Well that's, it's all of them. Right. Iit's like "but you know the puppy's free!" No, it's not. It's not buying the puppy, it's feeding the puppy. And I think that again in IT, we would be well served to remember which of our projects, which of our architectural choices, which of our things that we do during the day, which of our activities, are cattle and can be really sort of thoughtlessly left to the side. And which of them are pets. Cause I'm not gonna say that all of it is cattle. Not, not everything in it can be treated like cattle. We want to do a certain level of commoditization, but it's always gotta be the things that are intrinsically not valuable that, that we can change it. Another corollary in the Dev ops mindset that, since you've brought up Netflix. Netflix is named, but also, uh, other companies are referenced in a book called "The Phoenix Project." And the Phoenix project also mentions this thing called Disaster Kata. Now a kata in karate terms is simply a set of actions that you take, and you do them over and over and over again until they just become muscle memory. And so they do disaster recovery or emergency or chaos kata. So they practice being in trouble and getting themselves out of it when it's not really an actual problem. So that when there's a real problem, you have that muscle memory, you jump into the situation. And that's true of military training. That's true of true disaster responders. They do the same thing. They practice certain behaviors, so that they don't have to think really hard about them when they come. And I think that we see this in the Notre Dame cathedral experience also. Is that they had done their kata. They had figured out the protocol and practiced it or talked through it so they knew what they were doing. And this was an example of it. And again, we in IT would be well served to think about which types of failures, which types of disasters and recovery actions we would be well served to practice beforehand. You talked about backups a little bit ago, you know, practice your restores. Otherwise you have what has become affectionately known as "Schrodinger's backup." The backup is both there and possibly not there, and you won't know whether it's there until you try to restore it. And if it's at the worst possible time and the answer is "the cat in the box is dead," then you're going to have a problem. Josh: 26:42 What you have is you have a branding problem. If you don't know if your backups are there or not there, what you really have are "quantum backups!" You won't know what state they're in until you observe them. So just as long as you don't observe it, then you can assume that they're there. Right? Leon: 26:58 Um, that's, I, I'm, Josh: 27:00 I'm trademarking that too late. Leon: 27:02 That's fine. Quantum backup. It just makes it sound far more exciting and sophisticated, and also then management may want to buy more of it. "Don't check it. Don't check it! You'll let the quantum state out! That's we're paying for. Josh: 27:18 I love it. See, were gonna be millionaires. Millionaires! Leon: 27:21 We are, but we're also not going to be able to show her face in IT conferences ever. "THERE THEY ARE!! GO GET THEM!" All right. So I want to turn this around to the religious perspective and talk about you know, this idea of disaster recovery, this idea of, what we protect and what we don't protect. Now you talked about how the Mormon temple is being restructured because clearly they don't want to lose it. They can't 3-D print the temple in Salt Lake City. So yeah. So they're not gonna even try to do that. And also they know the hit to the community that it would represent if something bad happened to it. Josh: 28:03 And historically, the LDS church has been ransacked right? When they were in Kirtland, the Kirtland temple was destroyed. It was literally burned with, well, I won't say burned to the ground, but it was, it was burned and desecrated. So there's, there is a history in Mormonism, even though it's a relatively new religion from a religion perspective, you know, founded in 1830 of having, it's it's sacred objects desecrated by people who were against them. Leon: 28:35 Right? Okay. So, so in terms of disaster recovery - and again, we'll presume that every church and every synagogue and every temple of whichever stripe or flavor we're talking about, has their own structural, organizational protocol for what to do if the building is on fire - if that happens. But there's other things that had been disaster and disaster recovery. So there's two I'm thinking of, one big and one small. And the big one was the destruction of The Temple (capital letters), The Temple in Jerusalem. And not only was it the building that got destroyed, not only was it the entire organization of the priesthood that was effectively demolished with the loss of the temple and the single focal point of sacrifice, but the religion - Judaism itself - took a hit because at the time Judaism was a sacrifice based religion that, you know, when you wanted to say, "I'm sorry" or "I messed up" or "thank you", the method that you did that through was to go to The Temple, and bring a sacrifice, and the priest would sacrifice on the altar either all or in part, and you would either eat some of it in celebration or not. And there's all sorts of wonderful flavors of that. But you couldn't go do that in your backyard. That was absolutely not an okay thing to do for a variety of reasons that would take too long to go over. There's some wonderful videos that I might link to in the show notes for this episode. But what's Judaism going to do now? The Temple's gone. There's no longer away to say I'm sorry or I messed up or thank you or I'm happy. There's no longer a way to do that. So does the, does the religion just disappear? No. There was a pivot. First of all, the location moved from a Jerusalem to a town of Yavne. And also what happened was a philosophical change that instead of sacrifices on an altar, it became sacrifices of the heart. That prayer took the place of the sacrifice. First and very, very literally by reading the laws of sacrifice. It was analogous to doing the sacrifice. And so every morning in morning prayers, still to this day, Orthodox Jews will read through those laws of sacrifice and the process and the protocol to do it as a way of metaphorically or philosophically saying this is still alive. But also prayer itself. Also, everybody's home has become an altar that on Shabbat, that Sabbath offering that we bring the two loaves of bread and the wine and everything has taken the place of it. So the religion was able to pivot from a very visceral, physical experience of divinity and connecting to the divine to a very, I'm going to say, intellectual and mental connection. And that was a big change. And for the religion to be able to do that was really remarkable. Not to have people just say, "Oh, well yeah, the building's gone. Yeah, that's it. I guess I'm going to be a, you know, I dunno, a pastafarian or, you know, whatever. I'm not trying to offend any pastafarians. The giant invisible spaghetti monster is a fantastic being if or if it does not exist. So that's the big one. The little one though, the little story is actually in the middle of disaster and having this protocol and how it saves more than you expect. So a friend of mine here in Cleveland was telling me a story about his grandfather. His grandfather was a young man in Morocco and, very hilly, you know, a lot of mountains and stuff like that. And they were sort of look in the low lands I guess. And in the spring, you know, the spring melt and the water was coming in. And I guess one of the rivers overran its bed, and the grandfather could hear the water coming at the town, like a flood was coming and he could hear it. And so what do you do? He ran to the synagogue and he grabbed the Torah because you know, that's the thing like, just make sure you have the Torah. Like again, we're not going to worry about the structure. Nobody was in the building, so he grabbed the Torah. Now the thing that you need to understand is: many people have seen a Torah and they see this parchment that is rolled between two scrolls and then covered with a cloth. That is not what a Sephardic - or people from the Middle East, the Spanish country. There, it's in a box. If the scrolls are strung between two poles, but then that's all wrapped in a box itself. A wooden case. So he picks up this case and he realizes he wasn't fast enough. The water is now there. It's coming into the synagogue and it's rising really fast. And he's waiting through this water with this Torah, this huge boxy Torah in his arms trying to get out, and the water just completely sweeps him off his feet and now he's going down the street, you know, still holding onto the Torah. Which is a big wooden box. That holds air inside. And so he's holding it and now the Torah is holding him up. He's floating down the water, this, this deluge holding on for dear life, both metaphorically and physically to this Torah that is keeping him afloat. And it saved him. And on top of it there's a saying that many people say in Hebrew "etz chayim hi lamancha zikim ba" - "It's a tree of life to those who hold fast to it." And that story was passed down generation by generation that in making sure he followed this protocol, making sure he saved that thing, that one artifact, made sure that he was able to survive also. Josh: 35:11 Thanks for making time for us this week. To hear more of Technically Religious, visit our website, https://technicallyreligious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions, and connect with us on social media. Leon: 35:24 We didn't start the fire, Josh: 35:26 ...but you can be damn sure we're going to be asked to pull an all nighter to fight it.