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Hello and welcome in to the 6 Again Podcast! Feel free to rate and review us on your chosen podcast platform! In Beers and Banter, Adam celebrates the announcement that Brisbane will be hosting the 2032 summer Olympics with a Hop Nation favourite and Jarrod doesn't care ... like at all. In 'Off the Ruck' the TPJ signing, release and signing sage opens up a number of avenues for the NRL to explore moving forward. So Adam puts forward three trade scenarios. More season ending injuries, this time the Warriors and Cowboys are hardest hit. Who can continue their run to the finals this weekend? We can't wait to find out. All that and more as 6 Again is back to two episodes a week. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube! https://twitter.com/6againpod https://www.facebook.com/6againpodcast/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/6again-ahoy-jmewton/message

01:25 - Teaching, Learning, and Education 06:16 - Becoming a Data Scientist * Opportunities to Create New Knowledge * Data Science Science 19:36 - Solving Bias in Data Science * Weapons of Math Destruction (https://weaponsofmathdestructionbook.com/) 23:36 - Recommendations for Aspiring Data Scientists * Hire a Career Coach * Creating and Maintaining a Portfolio * Make a Rosetta Stone * Make a Cheat Sheet * Write an Article on a Piece of Software You Dislike * A Few Times, I've Broken Pandas (https://towardsdatascience.com/a-few-times-i-managed-to-broke-pandas-d3604d43708c?gi=7c2404551ab3) * Kyle Kingsbury Posts (https://aphyr.com/) * Contribute to Another Project * Post On Project Contribution (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-6800974518308478976-4YqK) * Spend $$$/Invest on Transition * Bet On Yourself 45:36 - Impostor Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome) * Immunity Boosts * Community * Know Your Baseline * Clance Impostor Phenomenon Test (http://impostortest.nickol.as/) * Dr. Pauline Rose Clance (https://paulineroseclance.com/) * The Imposter Phenomenon: An Internal Barrier To Empowerment and Achievement by Pauline Rose Clance and Maureen Ann O'Toole (https://paulineroseclance.com/pdf/ip_internal_barrier_to_empwrmnt_and_achv.pdf) * Disseminate Knowledge * Confidence Leads to Confidence * Dunning-Kruger Effect (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/dunning-kruger-effect) * Johari Window (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johari_window) Reflections: Mae: Checking out the metrics resources on Impostor Syndrome listed above. Casey: Writing about software in a positive, constructive tone. Mando: Investing in yourself. from:sheaserrano bet on yourself (https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Asheaserrano%20bet%20on%20yourself&src=typed_query&f=live) Adam: Talking about career, data science, and programming in a non-technical way. Also, Twitter searches for book names! This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: MANDO: Good afternoon, everyone! Welcome to Greater Than Code. This is Episode number 241. I'm Mando Escamilla and I'm here with my friend, Mae Beale. MANDO: Hi, there! And I am also here with Casey Watts. CASEY: Hi, I am Casey! And we're all here with Adam Ross Nelson, our guest today. Welcome, Adam. ADAM: Hi, everyone! Thank you so much for having me. I'm so glad to be here. CASEY: Since 2020, Adam is a consultant who provides research, data science, machine learning, and data governance services. Previously, he was the inaugural data scientist at The Common Application which provides undergraduate college application platforms for institutions around the world. He holds a PhD from The University of Wisconsin: Madison in Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis. Adam is also formerly an attorney with a history of working in higher education, teaching all ages, and educational administration. He is passionate about connecting with other data professionals in-person and online. For more information and background look for his insights by connecting with Adam on LinkedIn, Medium, and other online platforms. We are lucky we have him here today. So Adam, what is your superpower and how did you acquire it? ADAM: I spent so much time thinking about this question, I really wasn't sure what to say. I hadn't thought about my superpower in a serious way in a very long time and I was tempted to go whimsy with this, but I got input from my crowd and my tribe and where I landed was teaching, learning, and education. You might look at my background with a PhD in education, leadership, and policy analysis, all of my work in education administration, higher education administration, and teaching and just conclude that was how I acquired the superpower. But I think that superpower goes back much further and much deeper. So when I was a kid, I was badly dyslexic. Imagine going through life and you can't even tell the difference between a lowercase B and a lowercase D. Indistinguishable to me. Also, I had trouble with left and right. I didn't know if someone told me turn left here, I'd be lucky to go – I had a 50/50 chance of going in the right direction, basically. Lowercase P and Q were difficult. For this podcast, the greater than sign, I died in the math unit, or I could have died in the math unit when we were learning greater than, or less than. Well, and then another one was capital E and the number 3, couldn't tell a difference. Capital E and number 3. I slowly developed mnemonics in order to learn these things. So for me, the greater than, less than pneumonic is, I don't know if you ever think about it, but think of the greater than, or less than sign as an alligator and it's hungry. So it's always going to eat the bigger number. [laughs] It's always going to eat the bigger quantity. So once I figured that mnemonic out and a bunch of other mnemonics, I started doing a little bit better. My high school principal told my parents that I would be lucky to graduate high school and there's all kinds. We can unpack that for days, but. MANDO: Yeah. ADAM: Right? Like what kind of high school principal says that to anybody, which resonates with me now in hindsight, because everything we know about student learning, the two most influential factors on a student's ability to learn are two things. One, teacher effectiveness and number two, principal leadership. Scholarship always bears out. MAE: Whoa. ADAM: Yeah. So the principal told my family that and also, my household growing up, I was an only child. We were a very poor household; low income was an understatement. So my disadvantages aside, learning and teaching myself was basically all I had. I was the kid who grew up in this neighborhood, I had some friends in the neighborhood, and I was always exploring adjacent areas of the neighborhoods. I was in a semi-rural area. So there were wooded areas, there were some streams, some rivers, some lakes and I was always the kid that found something new. I found a new trail, a new street, a new whatever and I would run back to my neighborhood and I'd be like, “Hey everybody, I just found something. Look what I found, follow me and I will show you also. I will show you the way and I'll show you how cool that is.” MAE: Aw. ADAM: I love this thinking. [laughs] MAE: I love that! CASEY: Sharing. ADAM: I'm glad because when I'm in the classroom, when I'm teaching – I do a lot of corporate training now, too. When I'm either teaching in a traditional university classroom, or in corporate setting, that is me reliving my childhood playtime. It's like, “Hey everybody, look at this cool thing that I have to show you and now I'm going to show it to you, also.” So teaching, learning, and education is my superpower and in one way, that's manifested. When I finished school, I finished my PhD at 37. I wasn't 40 years old yet, if you count kindergarten had been in school for 23 years. Over half of my life, not half of my adult life, half of my entire life I was in school [chuckles] and now that I'm rounding 41—that was last week, I turned 41. Now that I'm rounding 41 – MAE: Happy birthday! ADAM: Thank you so much. Now that I'm rounding 41, I'm finally a little more than half of my life not in school. MANDO: Congrats, man. That's an accomplishment. [laughs] So I'm curious to know how you transitioned from that academic world into being a data scientist proper, like what got you to that point? What sets you down that path? Just that whole story. I think that'd be super interesting to talk about and dig into. ADAM: Sure. I think context really matters; what was going on in the data science field at the time I finished the PhD. I finished that PhD in 2017. So in 2017, that was that the apex of – well, I don't know if it was, or maybe we're now at the apex. I don't know exactly where the apex was, or is, or will be, but there was a lot of excitement around data science as a field and as a career in about 3, or 4 years ago. MANDO: For sure. ADAM: So when I was finishing the PhD, I had the opportunity to tech up in my PhD program and gain a lot of the skills that others might have gained via other paths through more traditional computer science degrees, economics degrees, or bootcamps, or both. And then I was also in a position where I was probably—and this is common for folks with a PhD—probably one of the handful of people in the world who were a subject matter expert in a particular topic, but also, I had the technical skills to be a data scientist. So there was an organization, The Common Application from the introduction, that was looking for a data scientist who needed domain knowledge in the area that I had my PhD and that's what a PhD does for you is it gives you this really intense level of knowledge in a really small area [chuckles] and then the technical skills. That's how I transitioned into being a data scientist. I think in general, that is the template for many folks who have become a data scientist. Especially if you go back 3, or 4, or 5, or 6 years ago, before formal data science training programs started popping up and even before, and then I think some of the earliest bootcamps for data science were about 10 years ago. At least the most widely popular ones were about 10 years ago to be clear. And then there's another view that that's just when we started calling it data science because the skills for – all of the technologies and analytical techniques we're using, not all of them, many of them have been around for decades. So that's important to keep in mind. So I think to answer your question, I was in the right place at the right time, there was a little bit of luck involved, and I always try and hold myself from fully giving all the credit away to luck because that's something. Well, maybe we'll talk about it later when it comes to imposter syndrome, that's one of the symptoms, so to speak, of imposter syndrome is giving credit for your success away to luck while you credit the success of others to skill, or ability. But let me talk about that template. So the template is many data scientists become a data scientists with this three-step process. One, you establish yourself as an expert in your current role and by establishing yourself as an expert, you're the top expert, or one of very, very few people who are very, very skilled in that area. Then you start tackling business problems with statistics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. You might not be called a data scientist yet, but by this point, you're already operating as a data scientist and then eventually, you be the data scientist, you become the data scientist. If it is a career path for you, you'll potentially change roles into a role that's formerly called, specifically called data science. But one of the articles I wrote recently on Medium talks about the seven paths to data scientist and one of the paths talks about a fellow who really doesn't consider himself a data scientist, but he is a data scientist, been a data scientist for years, but he's really happy with this organization and his role as it's titled as an engineer and he's great. He's good to go. So maybe we'll talk about it a little bit later, too. I think as we were chatting and planning, someone asked about pedigree a little bit and one of the points I like to make is there's no right, or wrong way to do it. There's no right, or wrong way to get there just once you get there, have fun with it. MAE: I love what you said, Adam, about the steps and they're very similar to what I would advise to any traditional coder and have advised is take all of your prior work experience before you become a programmer. It is absolutely relevant and some of the best ways to have a meaningful impact and mitigate one's own imposter syndrome is to get a job where you are programming and you already have some of that domain knowledge and expertise to be able to lend. So you don't have to have been one of the rarefied few, but just having any familiarity with the discipline, or domain of the business you end up getting hired at, or applying to certainly is a way to get in the door a little easier and feel more comfortable once you're there, that you can contribute in lots of ways. ADAM: And it gives you the ability to provide value that other folks who are on a different path, who are going into data science earlier—this is a great path, too don't let me discount that path—but those folks don't have the deep domain knowledge that someone who transitions into data science later in their career provides. MAE: Exactly. Yeah, and the amazing teams have people with all the different versions, right? ADAM: Right. MAE: Like we don't want a team with only one. Yeah. ADAM: That's another thing I like to say about data science is it's a team sport. It has to be a teams – it has to be done in tandem with others. CASEY: I just had a realization that everyone I know in data science, they tend to come from science backgrounds, or maybe a data science bootcamp. But I don't know anyone who moved from web development into data science and that's just so surprising to me. I wonder why. MAE: I crossed the border a little bit, I would say, I worked in the Center for Data Science at RTI in North Carolina and I did do some of the data science there as well as just web programming, but my undergrad is biochem. So I don't break your role. [laughs] MANDO: [chuckles] Yeah. I'm trying to think. I don't think I know any either. At the very least, they all come from a hard science, or mathematics background, which is interesting to me because that's definitely not my experience with web application developers, or just developers in general. There's plenty that come from comp side background, or an MIS background, or something like that, but there's also plenty who come from non-traditional backgrounds as well. Not just bootcamps, but just like, they were a history major and then picked up programming, or whatever and it doesn't seem to be as common, I think in data science. Not to say that you couldn't, but just for my own, or maybe our own experience, it's not quite as common. ADAM: If there's anybody listening with the background that we're talking about, the other backgrounds, I would say, reach out probably to any of us and we'd love to workshop that with you. MAE: Yes! Thank you for saying that. Absolutely. MANDO: Yeah, the more stories we can amplify the better. We know y'all are out there; [chuckles] we just don't know you and we should. MAE: Adam, can you tell us some descriptor that is a hobnobbing thing that we would be able to say to a data scientist? Maybe you can tell us what P values are, or just some little talking point. Do you have any favorite go-tos? ADAM: Well, I suppose if you're looking for dinner party casual conversation and you're looking for some back pocket question, you could ask a data scientist and you're not a data scientist. I would maybe ask a question like this, or a question that I could respond to easily as a data scientist might be something like, “Well, what types of predictions are you looking to make?” and then the data scientists could respond with, “Oh, it's such an interesting question. I don't know if anybody's ever asked me that before!” But the response might be something like, “Well, I'm trying to predict a classification. I'm trying to predict categories,” or “I'm trying to predict income,” or “I'm trying to predict whatever it is that –” I think that would be an interesting way to go. What's another one? CASEY: Oh, I've got one for anyone you know in neuroscience. ADAM: Oh, yeah. MAE: Yay! CASEY: I was just reading a paper and there's this statistics approach I'm sure I did in undergrad stats, but I forgot it. Two-way ANOVA, analysis of variance, and actually, I don't think I know anyone in my lab that could explain it offhand real quickly really well because we just learn it enough to understand what it is and why we use it and then we have the computer do it. But it's an interesting word saying it and having someone say, “Yes, I know what that means enough. It's a science, or neuroscience.” ADAM: I would be interested in how neuroscience is used two-way ANOVA because I'm not a neuroscientist and two-way ANOVA is so useful in so many other contexts. CASEY: I'm afraid I can't help today. Maybe 10 years ago, I could have done that. [laughter] CASEY: It's just something that you don't work with and talk about a lot. It's definitely fallen out of my headspace. I looked up the other day, I couldn't remember another word from my neuroscience background. Cannula is when you have a permanent needle into a part of the brain, or maybe someone's vein, same thing. I used to do surgeries on rats and put cannulas and I was like, “What's that thing? What was that thing I did?” I have no idea! It's just like time passes and it fades away. I don't do that anymore. [chuckles] ADAM: So sometimes folks will ask me why I'm a data scientist and I love that question by the way, because I'm a major proponent of knowing what your why is in general, or just having a why and knowing a why, knowing what your why is. Why do you do what you do? What makes you excited about your career, about your work, about your clients, about your coworkers? One of the main reasons I am a data scientist is because it's an opportunity to create new knowledge and that's the scientific process, really. That's the main output of science is new knowledge and if you think about that, that's really powerful. This is now at the end of this scientific process, if you implement it correctly, we now know something about how the world works, about how people in the world work, or something about the world in general that we didn't know before. I get goosebumps. We're on podcast so you can't see the goosebumps that I'm getting. But when I talk about this, I actually get goosebumps. So for me, being a data scientist and then there's also the debate is data science, science and I say, absolutely yes, especially when you are implementing your work with this spirit' the spirit of creating new knowledge. One of the reasons I am very adamant about keeping this why in the forefront of my mind and proposing it as a why for others who maybe haven't found their why yet is because it's also a really powerful guardrail that prevents us from working on problems that we already have answers to, that have been analyzed and solved, or questions asked and asked and answered. I'm a major proponent of avoiding that type of work, unless you have a really good reason to replicate, or test replication, or you're looking for replication. That would be an exception, but in general, questions—analytical questions, research questions, and data science problems—that lead to new knowledge are the ones that excite me the most. And then this goes back to what I was talking about a moment ago, my superpower teaching and learning. One of the reasons I really enjoy teaching data science in the classroom, or statistics in the classroom, or at corporate training is because then I can empower others to create new knowledge. That feels really good to me when I can help others create new knowledge, or give others the skills and abilities to do that as well. MAE: I love that. Yeah. I do have one angle on that, but I hope this doesn't feel like putting you on the spot, but especially in the not revisiting a established—I'm going to do air quotes—facts and from undergrad, the scientific definition of fact has not yet been proven false. But anyways, there is a growing awareness of bias inherent in data and we so often think of data as the epitome of objectivity. Because it's a bunch of numbers then therefore, we are not replicating, or imposing our thoughts, but there is the Schrodinger's cat, or whatever in place all the time about how those “facts” were established in the first place, where that data was called from? Like, the Portlandia episode where they ask where the chicken is from and they end up back at the farm. [laughter] The data itself, there's just a lot in there. So I'm curious if you have any thoughts about that accordion. ADAM: There's a lot. That's a big question. I will say one of the things that keeps me up at night is this problem, especially when it comes to the potential for our work in data science, to perpetuate, exacerbate social inequity, social inequality, racial inequality, gender inequality, economic inequality. This keeps me up at night and I am, like most, or like everyone – well, no, I don't know if everybody is interested in solving that problem. I think a lot of data scientists are, I think a lot of researchers are; I think many are interested in solving that particular problem and I count myself among those. But I would be ahead of myself if I purported to say that I had a solution. I think in this format and in this context, one of the best things to do is to point folks towards others who have spent even more time really focusing on this and I think the go-to is Weapons of Math Destruction. Weapons of Math Destruction is a book. If you're on a bad connection, that's M-A-T-H. Weapons of Math Destruction and especially if you're just getting started on this concern, that's a good place to get started. MAE: Thank you. Thanks for speaking to that, Adam. CASEY: There's a piece of the question you asked me that I always think about is the data true and I like to believe most data is true in what it measured, but it's not measuring truth with a T-H. ADAM: That's true. MAE: Whoa. ADAM: I think you could spend a lot of time thinking this through and noodling through this, but I would caution you on something you said it's true as to what you measured. Well, you have measurement error. We have entire – actually, I happen to have social statistics handbook handy. In any statistics handbook, or statistics textbook is going to have either an entire chapter, or a major portion of one of the introductory chapters on error, the types of error, and measurement error is one of them, perception error, all of the – and I'm on the spot to name all the errors. I wish I could rattle those off a little bit better. [chuckles] ADAM: But if you're interested, this is an interesting topic, just Google data errors, or error types, or statistical errors and you will get a rabbit hole that will keep you occupied for a while. MAE: Love it. I will be in that rabbit hole later. [laughs] ADAM: Yeah. I'm going to go back down that one, too myself. MANDO: So Adam, we have people who are listening right now who are interested in following one of your paths, or one of the paths to becoming a data scientist and maybe they have domain expertise in a particular area, maybe they don't. Maybe they're just starting out. Maybe they're coming from a bootcamp, or maybe they're from a non-traditional background and they're trying to switch careers. If you were sitting there talking to them one-on-one, what are some things that you would tell them, or what are some starting points for them? Like, where do you begin? ADAM: Well, one, admittedly self-serving item I would mention is consider the option of hiring a career coach and that's one of the things that I do in my line of consulting work is I help folks who are towards the middle, or latter part of their career, and they're looking to enter into, or level up in data science. So a career coach can – and I've hired career coaches over the years. Back to, Mando, one of the questions you asked me earlier is how did you end up in data science? Well, part of that story, which I didn't talk to then is, well, I went into data science route when the faculty route didn't open up for me and I'm a huge fan. I had two career coaches helping me out with both, faculty and non-faculty work for a while. So having been the recipient and the beneficiary of some great career coaching, I have also recently become a career coach as well. Probably something more practical, though. Let me give some practical advice. A portfolio, a professional portfolio for a data scientist is probably one of the most essential and beneficial things you can do for yourself in terms of making that transition successfully and then also, maintaining a career. If you're interested in advancing your career in this way, maintaining a career trajectory that keeps you going so having and maintaining a portfolio. I'll go through four tips on portfolio that I give folks and these tips are specifically tips that can help you generate content for your portfolio, because I know one of the hardest things to do with the portfolio is, well, let me just do some fictional hypothetical project for my portfolio, so hard to do and also, can end up being sort of dry, stale, and it might not really connect with folks. These are four ways you can add to, or enhance your portfolio. I wouldn't call them entire projects; maybe they're mini projects and they're great additions to your portfolio. The first one is: make a Rosetta Stone. This one is for folks who have learned one computer programming language, and now it's time for them to learn another computer programming language, or maybe they already know two computer programming languages. In fact, the Rosetta Stone idea for your portfolio doubles as a way to build on and expand your skills. So here's what a Rosetta Stone is. You have a project; you've done it from start to finish. Let's say, you've done a project from start to finish in Python. Now port that entire project over to R and then in a portfolio platform—I usually recommend GitHub—commit that work as git commits as a Rosetta Stone side-by-side examples of Python and R code that produce the same results and the same output. I love this piece of advice because in doing this, you will learn so much about the language that you originally wrote the program in and you will learn a lot about the target language. You're going to learn about both languages and you're going to have a tangible artifact for your portfolio and you might even learn more about that project. You might encounter some new output in the new language, which is more accessible for that language, that you didn't encounter in the old language and now you're going to have a new insight about whatever your research project was. The next piece of advice I have is make a cheat sheet and there's tongue in cheek opinion about cheat sheets. I think sometimes folks don't like to call them cheat sheets because the word cheat has negative connotations, but whatever you're going to call it, if it's a quick reference, or if it's a cheat sheet, a well-designed cheat sheet on any tool, platform, tool platform, language that you can think of is going to be a really nice addition to your portfolio. I recommend folks, what you do is you just find the things that you do the most frequently and you're constantly referencing at whatever website, make a cheat sheet for yourself, use it for a while, and then polish it up into a really nice presentable format. So for example, I have a cheat sheet on interpreting regression. I also have a cheat sheet that is a crosswalk from Stata, which is a statistical programming language, to Python. So actually there, I've put the two of them together. I've made this cheat sheet, which is also a Rosetta Stone. If you're looking for those, you can find those on my GitHub, or my LinkedIn, I have cheat sheets on my LinkedIn profile as well and you can see examples. I do have on YouTube, a step-by-step instructional video on how to make a cheat sheet and they're actually really easy to do. So if you even if you consider yourself not graphically inclined, if you pick the right tools—and the tools that you would pick might not be your first choice just because they're not marketed that way—you can put together a really nice cheat sheet relatively easily. The third tip is to write an article… about a piece of software that you dislike. So write an article about a piece of software that you dislike and this has to be done with, especially in the open source community, do this one carefully, possibly even contact the creators, and also, be sure not to blame anybody, or pass judgment. Just talk about how and why this particular project doesn't quite live up to your full aspiration, or your full expectation. I've done this a couple of times in a variety of ways. I didn't in the title specifically say, “I don't like this,” or “I don't like that,” but in at least one case, one of the articles I wrote, I was able to later submit as a cross-reference, or an additional reference on an issue in GitHub and this was specifically for Pandas. So there was a feature in Pandas that wasn't working the way I wanted it to work. [chuckles] MAE: Pandas. ADAM: Yeah, Pandas is great, right? So there's a feature in Pandas that wasn't working in quite the way that I wanted it to. I wrote an article about it. Actually, I framed the article, the article title is, “How I broke Pandas.” Actually, several versions of Pandas back, the issue was it was relatively easy to generate a Pandas data frame with duplicate column names. Having duplicate column names in a Pandas data frame obviously can cause problems in your code later because you basically have multiple keys for different columns. Now, there's a setting in Pandas that will guard against this and it's an optional setting—you have to toggle it on and off. This article, I like to say, helped improve Pandas. So write an article about software you dislike and also, like I said, be diplomatic and in this case, I was diplomatic by framing the article title by saying, “A few times, I managed to break Pandas,” and then – MANDO: This reminds me a lot of Kyle Kingsbury and his Jepsen tests that he used to do. He was aphyr on Twitter. He's not there anymore, but he would run all these tests against distributed databases and distributed locking systems and stuff like that and then write up these large-scale technical explanations of what broke and what didn't. They're super fascinating to read and the way that he approached them, Adam, it's a lot like you're saying, he pushed it with a lot of grace and what I think is super important, especially when you're talking about open source stuff, because this is what people, they're pouring their heart and soul and lives into. You don't have to be ugly about it. ADAM: Oh, absolutely. MANDO: [chuckles] And then he ended up like, this is what he does now. He wrote this framework to do analysis of distributed systems and now companies hire him and that's his job now. I'm a big fan of the guy and I miss him being on Twitter and interacting with him and his technical expertise and also, just his own personality. Sorry, your topic, or your little cheat there reminded me of that. We'll put some links—thanks, Casey—and in the show notes about his posts so if people haven't come across this stuff yet, it's a fascinating read. It's super helpful even to this day. ADAM: I'm thankful for the connection because now I have another example, when I talk to people about this, and it's incredible that you say built an entire career out of this. I had no idea that particular tip was so powerful. MAE: So cool. MANDO: [chuckles] So I think you said you have one more, Adam? ADAM: The fourth one is: contribute to another project. One of the best examples of this is I wrote an article on how to enhance your portfolio and someone really took this fourth one to a whole new level. I'm sure others have as well, but one person—we'll get links in, I can get some links in the show notes—what he did was he found a package in R that brings data for basically sample datasets for our programmers and citizens working and data scientists working with R. But he was a Python person. So he suggested, “Hey, what about making this?” I remember he contacted me and he said, “I read your article about adding to my portfolio. I really think it might make sense to port this project over to Python,” and so, he was combining two of them. He was making a Rosetta Stone and he was contributing someone else's project. Now this data is available both in R and in Python and the author of this project has posted about it. He posted about it in May, early May, and it's constantly still a month and a half later getting comments, likes, and links. So he's really gotten some mileage out of this particular piece, this addition to his portfolio and the original author of the original software also has acknowledged it and it's really a success. It's really a success. So contribute to another project is my fourth tip. Oh, one more idea on contributing to another project. Oh, I have an article on that lists several projects that are accepting contributions from intermediate and beginners. The point there is identify specific projects that are accepting beginner and immediate submissions on contributions, mostly via GitHub. But if you go to GitHub and if you're newer to GitHub, you can actually go to a project that you like, go to its Issues tab, and then most projects have tags associated with their issues that are identified as beginner friendly. That is an excellent place to go in order to get started on contributing to another project, which makes the world a better place because you're contributing to open source and you have an addition to your portfolio. MANDO: Oh, these are fantastic tips. Thank you, Adam. ADAM: I'm glad you like them. Can I give another one? Another big tip? This one's less portfolio, more – MANDO: Yeah, lay it on us. MAE: Do! By all means. ADAM: And I'd be interested, Mae, since you also made a similar career transition to me. I made an investment. I think I know what you might say on this one, but I spent money. I spent money on the transition. I hired consultants on Fiverr and Upwork to help me upgrade my social media presence. I hired the career coaches that I mentioned. Oh, actually the PhD program, that was not free. So I spent money on my transition and I would point that out to folks who are interested in making this transition, it's not a transition that is effortless and it's also not a transition that you can do, I think it's not one that you can do without also investing money. MAE: Yeah. [chuckles] Okay, I'm going to tell you my real answer on this. ADAM: Okay. MAE: Or corollary. I had a pretty good gig at a state institution with a retirement, all of these things, and I up and left and went to code school. I had recently paid off a lot of debt, so I didn't have a lot of savings. I had no savings, let's just say that and the code school had offered this like loan program that fell through. So I'm in code school and they no longer are offering the ability to have this special code school loan. I put code school on my credit card and then while in code school, my 10-year-old car died and I had to get a new car. ADAM: Ah. MAE: In that moment, I was struggling to get some fundamental object-oriented programming concepts that I'm like, “Holy cow, I've got a mortgage. I no longer have a car.” Now I'm in a real bind here, but I be leaving myself. I know I made these choices after a lot of considered thought and consultation. I, too had hired a career coach and I was like, “I've already made this call. I'm going to make the best of it. I'm just going to do what I can and see what happens.” I really have a test of faith on that original call to make those investments. I would not recommend doing it the way I did to anyone! [laughter] MAE: And I went from a pretty well-established career and salary into – a lot of people when they go into tech, it's a huge jump and I had the opposite experience. That investment continued to be required of me for several years. Even still, I choose to do things related to nonprofits and all kinds of things, but it takes a lot of faith and commitment and money often, in some form, can be helpful. There are a lot of, on the programming side, code schools that offer for you to pay a percentage once you get a salary, or other offsetting arrangements. So if somebody is listening, who is considering programming, I have not seen those analogs in data science, but on the programming side, especially if you're from a group underrepresented in tech, there's a number of different things that are possible to pursue still. ADAM: Here we are talking about some of the lesser acknowledged aspects of this transition. MAE: Yeah. ADAM: Some of the harder to acknowledge. MAE: Yeah. MANDO: Yeah, I really liked what you said, Mae about the need to believe in yourself and Adam, I think what you're saying is you have to be willing to bet on yourself. ADAM: Yes. MAE: Yeah. MANDO: You have to be willing to bet on yourself and sometimes, in some forms, that's going to mean writing a check, or [chuckles] in Mae's example, putting it on your credit card, but. [laughter] Sometimes that's what it means and that's super scary. I'm not a 100% convinced that I have enough faith in my ability to run the dishwasher some days, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do that today, or not. This is going to be really silly and stupid, but one of my favorite cartoons is called Avatar: The Last Airbender. MAE: Yes! MANDO: It's a series on Cartoon Network, I think. No, Nickelodeon, I watched it with my kids when they were super little and it's still a thing that we rewatch right now, now that they're older. There's this one episode where this grandfatherly wizened uncle is confronted [chuckles] by someone who's trying to mug him [chuckles] and the uncle is this super hardcore general guy. He critics his mugging abilities and he corrects him and says, “If you stand up straight and you change this about the way that you approach it, you'll be much more intimidating and probably a more successful mugger,” and he's like, “But it doesn't seem that your heart is into the mugging.” [chuckles] So he makes this guy a cup of tea and they talk about it and the guy's like, “I don't know what I'm doing. I'm lost. I'm all over the place. All I want to do is become a masseuse, but I just can't get my stuff together.” Something that the uncle said that really, really struck with me was he said, “While it's important and best for us to believe in ourselves, sometimes it can be a big blessing when someone else believes in you.” MAE: So beautiful. MANDO: “And sometimes, you need that and so, I get it. You can't always bet on yourself, or maybe you can bet on yourself, but sometimes you don't have that backup to actually follow through with it.” That's why community is so important. That's why having a group of people. Even if it's one person. Someone who can be like that backstop to be, “You don't believe in yourself today. Don't worry about it. I believe in you. It's okay. You can do it. You're going to do it.” ADAM: Community is just massive. Absolutely massive. MANDO: Yeah. ADAM: Having a good, strong community is so important. Also, I think I could add to what you're saying is about betting on yourself. I don't know if I love the analogy because it's not a casino bet. MANDO: Right. ADAM: The odds are not in favor of the house here. If you have done the right consultation, spoken with friends and family, leveraged your community, and done an honest, objective, accurate assessment of your skills, abilities, and your ambition and your abilities, et cetera. It's a bet. It's a wager, but it's a calculated risk. MAE: Yes! That is how I have described it also. Yes, totally. I loved that story from Airbender and it ties in a few of our topics. One is one of the things Adam said originally, which is being deeply in touch with your why really helps. It also ties in the whole teaching thing and often, that is one of the primary roles is to offer faith and commitment to your pursuits. If I had had different code school teachers, the stress of my entire livelihood being dependent on my understanding these concepts in week two of bootcamp that I was struggling with, and I had made a calculated bet and I thought I was going to be awesome, but I was not. It was like the classic Peanuts teacher is talking, “Wah wah woh wah wah.” I had to lean into my teachers, my school, my peers, believe in me. I believed in me before, even if I don't in this moment and I just have to let that stress move to the side so that I can reengage. That was really the only way I was able to do it was having a similar – well, I didn't try to mug anybody, [laughs] but I had some backup that really helped me make that through. MANDO: Yeah, and those credit card folks call like, it's tricky. MAE: Yeah, and then I had to buy a car and those people were calling me and they just did an employment verification. They said, “You don't have a job!” I was like, “Oh my god. Well, you [inaudible] get my car back, but I have really good credit. How about you talk to your boss and call me back?” So anyway, these things all tie into, if we have time to talk about something, I was hoping we would cover is this thing about imposter syndrome and believing in oneself, but also not believing in oneself simultaneously and how to navigate that. I don't know, Adam, if you have particular advice, or thoughts on that. ADAM: I do have some advice and thoughts on that. Actually, just yesterday, I hosted a live webinar on this particular topic with another career coach named Sammy and she and I are very passionate about helping folks. When we work with clients, we work with folks intentionally to evaluate whether imposter syndrome might be part of the equation. Actually, in this webinar, we talked about three immunity boosts, or three ways to boost your immunity against imposter syndrome and in one way, or another, I think we've touched on all three with the exception of maybe one of them. So if you're interested in that topic reached out to me as well. I have a replay available of that particular webinar and I could make the replay available on a one-on-one basis to folks as well, who really want to see that material, and the section – MANDO: [inaudible] that. ADAM: Yeah, please reach out and LinkedIn. Easiest way to reach me is LinkedIn, or Twitter. Twitter actually works really well, too these days. MANDO: We'll put both of those in the show notes for folks. ADAM: Okay. Yeah, thank you so much. I look forward to potentially sharing that with folks who reach out. The community was the second immunity boost that we shared and actually, Mando and Mae, both just got done talking extensively about community. And then the first immunity boost we shared was know your baseline. We called it “know your baseline” and I know from our planning that we would put in this program notes, a link to an online assessment that's named after the original scientist, or one of the two original scientists who really began documenting imposter syndrome back in the 70s and then they called it imposter phenomenon. Oh, the history of this topic is just fascinating. Women scientists, North Carolina, first documented this and one of the two scientists is named Pauline Clance. So the Clance Imposter Phenomenon Scale, that'll be in the show notes. You can take the Imposter Phenomenon Scale and then objectively evaluate based on this is imposter syndrome a part of your experience, if it is what is the extent of that, and just knowing your baseline can be a really good way, I think to protect you from the effects of the experience. It's also, I think important to point out that imposter syndrome isn't regarded as a medical, or a clinical diagnosis. This is usually defined as a collection of thoughts and actions associated with career, or other academic pursuits. And then the third immunity boost is disseminate knowledge and I love the disseminate knowledge as an immune booster because what it does is it flips the script. A lot of times folks with imposter syndrome, we say to ourselves, “Gee, if I could get one more degree, I could probably then do this,” or “If I got one more certification,” or “I can apply for this job next year, I could apply for that permission next year because I will have completed whatever certification program,” or “If I read one more –” MANDO: One more year of experience, right? ADAM: Yeah. One more year of experience, or one more book, or one more class on Udemy. Especially for mid and late career professionals and we talked about this earlier, Mae the bank of experience and domain knowledge that mid and late career professionals bring, I promise nobody else has had your experience. Everybody has a unique experience and everybody has something to offer that is new and unique, and that is valuable to others. So I say, instead of signing up for the seminar, host the seminar, teach the seminar. [laughter] ADAM: Right? Again, there's nothing wrong with certifications. There's nothing wrong with Udemy classes, I have Udemy classes that you could should go take. There's nothing wrong with those, but in measure, in measure and then also, never, never, never, never forget that you already have skills and abilities that is probably worth sharing with the rest of the world. So I recommend doing that as a boost, as an immunity boost, against imposter syndrome. MANDO: Yes, yes, and yes! [chuckles] CASEY: Now, I took the Clance Imposter Phenomenon Scale test myself and I scored really well. It was super, super low for me. I'm an overconfident person at this point, but when I was a kid, I wasn't. [laughter] I was super shy. I would not talk to people. I'd read a book in a corner. I was so introverted and it changed over time, I think by thinking about how confidence leads to confidence. MANDO: Yes. CASEY: The more confident you are, the more confident you act, you can be at the world and the more reason you have to be competent over time and that snowballed for me, thank goodness. It could happen for other people, too gradually, slowly over time the more you do confidence, the more you'll feel it and be it naturally. MAE: Yes! MANDO: I think it works the other direction, too and you have to be real careful about that. Like Adam, you were talking about flipping the script. If you have a negative talk script of just one more, just this one thing, I'm not good enough yet and I'm not you know. That can reinforce itself as well and you just never end up getting where you should be, or deserve to be, you know what I mean? It's something that I struggle with. I've been doing this for a really, really long time and I still struggle with this stuff, it's not easy. It's not easy to get past sometimes and some days are better than others and Casey, like you said, it has gotten better over time, but sometimes, you need those daily affirmations in the morning in the mirror [laughs] to get going, whatever works for you. But that idea, I love that idea, Casey of confidence bringing more confidence and reinforcing itself. MAE: And being mindful of Dunning-Kruger and careful of the inaccuracy of self-assessment. I like a lot of these ways in which making sure you're doing both, I think all the time as much as possible. Seeing the ways in which you are discounting yourself and seeing the ways in which you might be over crediting. ADAM: Right. Like with a lot of good science, you want to take as many measurements as possible. MAE: Yeah. ADAM: And then the majority vote of those measurements points to some sort of consensus. So the IP scale is one tool you can use and I think to your point, Mae it'd be a mistake to rely on it exclusively. You mentioned Dunning-Kruger, but there's also the Johari window. MAE: Oh, I don't know. What's that? ADAM: Oh, the Johari window is great. So there's four quadrants and the upper left quadrant of the Johari window are things that you know about yourself and things that other people know about yourself. And then you also have a quadrant where things that you know about yourself, but nobody else knows. And then there's a quadrant where other people know things about you that you don't know. And then there's the complete blind spot where there are things about you that you don't know that other people don't know. And then of course, you have this interesting conversation with yourself. So that quadrant that I don't know about it and nobody else knows about it, does it really exist? Does the tree falling in the woods make a sound when nobody's there to hear it? You can have a lot of fun with Johari window as well and I think it also definitely connects with what you were just saying a moment ago about accuracy of self-assessments, then it gets back to the measurement that we were talking about earlier, the measurement errors. So there's perceptual error, measurement error—shucks, I had it, here it is—sampling error, randomization, error, all kinds of error. I managed to pull that book out and then get some of those in front of me. [laughter] CASEY: There are some nice nicknames for a couple of the windows, Johari windows. The blind spot is one of those four quadrants and façade, I like to think about is another one. It's when you put on the front; people don't know something about you because you are façading it. MAE: Hmm. MANDO: So now we'll go ahead and transition into our reflection section. This is the part where our esteemed panelists and dear friends reflect on the episode and what they learned, what stuck with them, and we also get reflection from our guest, Adam as well, but Adam, you get to go last. ADAM: Sounds good. MANDO: You can gauge from the rest of us. Who would like to go first? MAE: I can! I did not know that there was an evaluative measure about imposter phenomenon, or any of that history shared and I'm definitely going to check that out. I talk with and have talked and will talk with a lot of people about that topic, but just having some sort of metric available for some self-assessment, I think is amazing. So that is a really fun, new thing that I am taking away among many, many other fun things. How about you, Casey? CASEY: I like writing about software you dislike in a positive, constructive tone. That's something I look for when I'm interviewing people, too. I want to know when they get, get feedback, when they give feedback, will it be thoughtful, unkind, and deep and respectful of past decisions and all that. If you've already done that in an article in your portfolio somewhere, that's awesome. That's pretty powerful. MANDO: Oh, how fantastic is that? Yeah, I love that! CASEY: I don't think I've ever written an article like that. Maybe on a GitHub issue, or a pull request that's longer than it feels like it should be. [laughter] Maybe an article would be nice, next time I hit that. MANDO: Oh, I love that. That's great. I guess I'll go next. The thing that really resonated with me, Adam was when you were talking about investing in yourself and being willing to write that check, if that's what it means, or swipe that credit card, Mae, or whatever. I'm sorry, I keep picking on you about that. MAE: It's fine. [laughs] It's pretty wild! MANDO: I love it. I love it, and it reminded me, I think I've talked about it before, but one of my favorite writers, definitely my favorite sports writer, is this guy named Shea Serrano. He used to write for Grantland and he writes for The Ringer and he's a novelist, too and his catchphrase—this is why I said it earlier in the episode—is “bet on yourself.” Sometimes when I'm feeling maybe a little imposter syndrome-y, or a little like, “I don't know what I'm going to do,” I click on the Twitter search and I type “from:sheaserrano bet on yourself” and hit enter and I just see hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of tweets of this guy that's just like, “Bet on yourself today.” “Bet on yourself” “Bet on yourself today, no one else is going to do it.” “No one's coming to save you, bet on yourself,” stuff like that and thank you, Adam for that reminder today. I needed that. ADAM: You're welcome. I'm so happy that you've got that takeaway. Thank you so much for sharing the takeaway. I have, I think two reflections. One, what a breath of fresh air, the opportunity to talk about life, career, but career in data science, and programming in a non-technical way. I think the majority of our conversation was non-technical. [laughter] We briefly went into some technicalities when we talked about how you can sometimes have duplicate heading names in a Pandas data frame. That was a little bit technical. Otherwise, we really just spoke about the humanistic aspects of this world. So thank you so much for that and I got a research tip! Mando, what a brilliant idea. If you're ever looking for more background on a book, do a Twitter search for the book name and then anybody who's been speaking about that book – MANDO: Oh, yes! ADAM: Yeah, right? You could extend that to a research tip. [overtalk] MANDO: That's fantastic! Absolutely. Yeah. ADAM: So today, I learned a new way to get additional background on any book. I'm just going to go to Twitter, Google, or not Google that, search the book title name, and I'm going to see what other people are saying about that book. And then I can check out their bios. I can see what else they're sharing. They might have insights that I might not have had and now I can benefit from that. Thank you. Thank you so much for the research tip. MANDO: Yeah, and I think it dovetails really well into what you were talking about earlier, Adam, about publishing data. Like building out this portfolio, writing your articles, getting it out there because someone's going to go to Google, or Twitter and type into the search bar a Pandas data frame, column, same name, you know what I mean and now they're going to hit “A few times, I managed to break Pandas,” your article. But it could be about anything. It could be about that stupid Docker thing that you fought with yesterday, or about the 8 hours I spent on Monday trying to make an HTTP post with no body and it just hung forever and I couldn't. 8 hours, it took me to figure out why it wasn't working and it's because I didn't have one line in and I didn't call request that set body. I just didn't do it. I've done this probably more than a million times in my career and I didn't do it and it cost me 8 hours of my life that I'm never getting back, but it happens. That's part of the job is that – [overtalk] MAE: Yeah, sure. MANDO: And you cry about it and you eat some gummy worms and then you pick yourself back up and you're good to go. ADAM: Yeah, another common one that people are constantly writing about is reordering the columns in a Pandas data frame. There's like a hundred ways to do it and none of them are efficient. MANDO: [laughs] Mm hm. ADAM: So I love [inaudible], of course. MANDO: Yeah, you hit the one that works for you, write a little something about it. It's all right. ADAM: Exactly, yeah. MANDO: All right. Well, thanks so much for coming on, loved having you on. Special Guest: Adam Ross Nelson.

Parshat Pinchas - A live recording of Geoffrey Stern and Rabbi Adam Mintz on Clubhouse as we use the intriguing case of the Daughters of Zelophechad to explore Patrilinear and Matrolinear decent in Judaism. Sefaria Source Sheet: www.sefaria.org/sheets/332756 Transcript:  Geoffrey Stern  Welcome, everybody. This week's portion has a story that is typically referred to as Zelophehad's daughters. And you'd figure because they always called daughters that they don't have names. They don't have identities. But the Bible in Numbers 27 says the daughters of Zelophehad, and it says their names: Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. So they did have a name and what they came to Moses for was that they did not have a father. Their father had passed away in the wilderness. And they were worried about the allotment of land in the holy land that was divided up amongst the 12 tribes. And they were worried that since the portion that you received was passed on from father to son, that since their father did not have a son only had five daughters, that their allotment, their inheritance, their legacy would be lost. And they said: "let not our father's name be lost to his clan, just because he has no son." So I'm going to stop right there and ask you, Rabbi, what does this story mean to you? Is it a woman's lib story?  Is it a purely transactional story? What does it mean to you?   Peter Robins  So I mean, on a basic level, it's transactional, of course, just how they divide the land. It's women's lib, but it's also the ability of people standing up to Moses, and saying to Moses, this is not fair. To me, that's even more interesting. Now, the fact that it's women doing it makes it more dramatic in the 21st century. But actually, from our perspective, just the ability to stand up to Moses and to say, Moses, this isn't fair, we deserve to have our share in the land is really an amazing thing.   Geoffrey Stern  I love the fact that that's the point that you You touched upon, because I started to think to myself, how unique is this situation? And I came up with two other cases, I'd be curious to know whether I missed any but the first case is when Jethro, the father in law of Moses shows up in camp, so to speak, when the Jews get out of Egypt, and there he sees his son in law, Moses adjudicating from early in the morning, to late at night. And he says to him, in Exodus 18, "the thing you are doing is not right, you will surely wear yourself out. And these people as well for the task is too heavy, and you cannot do it alone." So here's a situation where maybe he doesn't confront Moses, maybe Moses doesn't go and say, Well, let me ask the boss. But ultimately, it is also an outsider, if you consider women kind of on the fringe, here this father in law, who's not Jewish, uses his powers of observation, and says this is not sustainable. And the other instance, and this is an instance that we went into in detail is right before the first Passover, when the unclean Israelites came to Moses, and said, How could it be that we will not be able to experience the holiday? And that's when Moses minimally gave them Peach Sheni, a makeup Passover, and maximally adjusted the whole calendar? So my first takeaway from your comment and from this list is, is this the complete list? And two since in each case, God or Moses was so accommodating? I say, isn't it a shame that they didn't come and ask Moses more questions and push him further?   Peter Robins  Yeah, that's kind of an interesting take on it, is why they stopped there?   Geoffrey Stern  I mean, it just shows you the power of being engaged. You've got to ask and maybe that's the first lesson that we should learn from the daughters of Zelophehad, that if something doesn't seem fair, something bothers you, go ahead. And if it has to do with Judaism, we have a very receptive religion. God loves to hear from us write Him a note ask him a "Sheaylah"  , send in a question.   Peter Robins  We joke about that, but that actually is what makes this story so sore story so special, the idea that you can actually ask God a question or that Moses has to ask God a question, you know, is something that's so surprising. That's just not the way the rabbinic system works. The rabbinic system is based on the fact that God doesn't really play a role. It's the rabbi's who play the role. But here we have God being an integral part of making this decision.   Geoffrey Stern  Absolutely. The other thing that occurred to me is that all of these three instances have something in common. Unlike Korach, who was splitting hairs and making an argument, these three instances seem to have in common that they are arguments from sustainability. The argument is, this is not going to last, this is not a practice that can continue over time. So whether it's the daughters of Zelophehad, who said, you know, we've just kind of revealed a crack in the system. If this will continue. It's it's not even about us. It's about keeping the integrity of the tribal allotment. In the case of the Passover. It was a question, in my mind, a big question about the Hebrew calendar, and how does one fix it and in the case of setting up a court system, clearly, that was something that was again, I think Jethro says it the clearest when he says, This can't go on. And so I'm wondering what what you anyone in the audience thinks about this question of sustainability. In other words, if we have a practice, I've brought this subject up before, for instance, the the, the issue of taking interest on a loan, it might work in some societies, but an agrarian society where you have to buy your crops and your seeds and stuff like that. It just wasn't sustainable. And and even though the Bible rants against it, the rabbi's went ahead, and they created a loophole. And so I'm wondering what can we learn from this about changing the law, modifying and modulating our practice, based on the argument that if we continue at this rate, we won't continue to exist, that we'll be throwing out maybe the baby with the bathwater.   Peter Robins  I mean, sustainability is an interesting idea generally, how the Torah deals with with sustainability? I mean, are you talking about sustainability in terms of fairness of law, or you're talking about it in terms of dividing the property?   Geoffrey Stern  Well, I mean, again, Jethro says it the best, you know, he says, that, if you continue doing this, you wear yourself out and the people as well, the task is too heavy for you, you cannot do it. So I'm not talking about sustainability and a fairness mode. And I'm certainly not talking about it in an ecological way. What I'm talking about is an institution, a custom, a practice a law, that if one continues doing it, life will cease as we know it. Other issues, the case of interest where either the farmers will not be able to run their businesses, or they'll be forced to break the law. In the case of Zelophehad's daughter, as you point out, the whole integrity of the tribal system, and the allocation will not last. So you have a choice, either you say, Well, this is the way it's written. And we'll have to give up on this sense of having the allocation for each tribe. The point is, you can't have it both....  it's a catch 22 it's, it's a social institution that cannot persevere, it cannot continue. going in the direction that it's going. It's not practical. Maybe it's an argument from practicality that I'm trying to say,   Peter Robins  yeah, maybe the word is practicality rather than sustainability.   Geoffrey Stern  So is there is there something there there? I brought the example of taking interest but are there other instances?  I've brought up this concept of "Tircha D'Tzibur" (incoveiencing the community) or "gezera she lo hakehilah yachol l'amod bo"  , there are there are rules that are given that if the determination is made. It's too difficult. It's too stark. We can't go on this way. Is that more widespread in the development of Jewish law in your mind?   Peter Robins  I think that that's a very important idea in Jewish law, the idea that people can't handle it, you can't Institute such a law is a very important principle in Judaism. That's what you call practicality and sustainability, if the system is not sustainable, because the people just can't rise to the occasion, you know, Geoffrey, take the simplest example, you know, in, in the diaspora,  for whatever reason, we have two days of every holiday, except for Yom Kippur. Why don't we have two days of Yom Kippur? It's because it's not sustainable. People can't fast for two days of Yom Kippur. Right? That's a perfect example. We should have two days of Yom Kippur, but it's not practical. The system couldn't,  can't survive that way.   Geoffrey Stern  Yeah, I think that's a wonderful example. It's kind of where the, the rubber hits the road, so to speak. And it makes you wonder, and again, you know, this is it. This is a question that people will have to use nuance for, when when does it become something that is too difficult? You know, clearly, if you have a rule that maybe was fine in the past, but people are finding too difficult. That's another question, can something become unsustainable? I see that Peter Robins is here. So Peter, you are on the stage. And I'd love to hear your opinion.   Peter Robins  I think you're going down a slippery slope. Where it is mutability, sustainability, and slippery slope are intermingled. And I give kudos to your definition of rigid laws being changed, because they're not sustainable. But I start out by asking the question, if you ask God a question, how do you know what the response is and where I end up is? That your conscience becomes the response? The question of sustainable and immutability, though, is a slippery slope. And I just wonder how diluted the tenants become when they become changed?   Geoffrey Stern  I think you're asking two questions. And they're two great questions. You know, the easier question is, how do you know that it's God speaking? Is this just a ruse? Is this just a face saving technique that can be used? And when can it be used? Does it disappear with the end of prophecy? Or is there a statute of limitations? I think that's a great question. And and of course, the slippery slope, part of it, is the question of used and abused, you know, who decides, and at what point do Jews come and say, you know, walking to Shul is not sustainable. We used to live in urban areas, or we used to live before the car and the highway, and now we're spread out. And, you know, can we ride to shul? And of course, I think there are movements within Judaism that have argued that that's precisely where one has to use a an argument like this, but clearly, it is a slippery slope, especially if you're an orthodox rabbi. So Adam, what what do what is your response?   Peter Robins  I mean, slippery slope is a tricky business. You know, I understand what Peter is saying, you know, you have to be able to draw lines, but you also need to have flexibility. If you don't have flexibility in the system, then the system is going to fall apart. So you talk about walking to shul. You know, the Conservative movement in 1960 decided that the movement was not going to survive, unless they allowed for driving to shul on Shabbat. 60 years later, they now write and they say that the Conservative movement made a mistake, that they lost community and orthodoxy maintained community because people had to live close by.  The Conservative lost community there. So they made a mistake in the sense of figuring out the slippery slope, or whether it was practical. And I think that's so interesting that that's the consideration. That's what we think about now. Did they go too far? Did they fall down that slippery slope? What do you think Geoffrey, did you think the Conservative movement fell down that slippery slope?   Geoffrey Stern  Well, I do think that, in addition to being a slippery slope, there is the issue of unintended consequences. And I think that there is no question that if one was to make a determination, that riding to synagogue is a necessary evil, one would have to do it with their eyes wide open. And when I say that, I mean, that clearly the optimal situation is that maybe we have smaller synagogues that people even in a suburban or rural area, can live closer to, and if you are too far away to walk, you start another synagogue. And I do think that that is a solution that is, is very positive. So there are alternative solutions to every problem. And definitely, one needs to think but I think my answer to you is, sometimes you need an experiment like that. In other words, you cannot always know what the unintended consequences are. And so you need to be flexible enough to try something and then have the self confidence to admit when a mistake was made.   Peter Robins  That's a big deal, Geoffrey, that's not so easy for people, you know, to admit mistakes, is hard.   Geoffrey Stern  Especially if you're in the God business, I guess.   Peter Robins  I guess that's right. Peter, what do you want to say?  Yeah, Geoffrey and rabbi, I think that slippery slope is I think, harsh. My takeaway from the conversation between and among the two of you, is that survival of the religion and its people, trumps any type of rigidity, that morphing into adaptability becomes the imperative.   Geoffrey Stern  I think maybe it's more of an art than a science. And I do think that the takeaway for me is that you have to ask, you have to speak up, no matter how, what position in the society you hold. You don't have to be a leader, you can be a woman, you can be on the periphery, you can be well meaning non Jew, you can be someone who's quote, unquote "unclean". That's the takeaway to me, and that you need to be flexible and try. And if there's a mistake that gets made, I think that you just have to have the self confidence to admit it. I do think, though, that if we're going to talk about something that is very meaningful, and relates very much to the ability of the Jewish people to survive, we have a another direction that we can go in our discussion today, in terms of the daughters of Zelophehad. And the direction that I want to take us in, is this is the first instance of women arguing for a matrilineal society, meaning to say the assumption of these daughters was that they lived in a patrilineal society, and their father died, and there was not going to be any inheritance to them. And his name would no longer go on, and that you certainly couldn't pass on his tribal affiliation through them. And I know the traditional answer will be, well, whether you are Cohen, Levi or Yisrael goes through your father, but whether you're Jewish, goes through your mother. And what I would love to spend the rest of our afternoon discussing is the fact that that's not altogether clear, number one, and number two, that you could make a case that this is the only instance that we see in biblical Judaism and Torah Judaism, that women were given some ability under certain circumstance to be able to exercise a matrilineal descent. And I'd like to quote a Mishnah. And, of course, the Mishnah is First / Second century, so many, many years after this instance (of the daughters of Zelophehad). And again, you'll hear in the in the Mishnah, that matrilineal descent is only for certain circumstances. So the Mishnah says as follows "Every place that there is a Kidushin (marriage) , and there is no sin, the child goes after the male. And it goes ahead, and it gives many examples..... the ones that I just gave where the father is a Cohen, where the father is a Levite, so forth and so on. And then it goes on to say, however, in a case where there is a sin, whether it's a question of a Cohen, who's not allowed to marry a divorced woman, or a widow, or someone who marries somebody who's a Gibonite. it makes a whole long list. And at the end of the list, it says, that "this one who engages with forbidden intercourse, according to the Torah and cannot join in marriage with that person. In that situation, the child goes after the mother." So if you if you hold in your mind, the situation of Zelophehad's daughters where they were in a situation where it could not continue through that the males. So it had to be tweaked to go through the females, (and of course, this is not the place to have a very deep textual understanding of the text). But what the text actually is saying that any case where the Kiddushin the marriage cannot be fulfilled, such as marriage with a non Jew, in that case, the child goes after the mother. And so this is absolutely radical for us, because we seem to believe that in every instance Judaism goes through the mother, where the Mishnah is saying that similar to the case of Zelophehad's daughter that was an exception with extenuating  circumstances. So too Matrolinear descent, is based on  extenuating circumstance. And now I'll paint it in much more social context. A girl gets raped. And she's not accepted by the the Canaanites or whatever. And rather than have her not affiliated with anybody, the Rabbis say your child is yours, and it's Jewish. And that, to me is the clear reading of this text. So rabbi, what is your sense of the history of this unquestionable belief that we seem to have that Judaism in all cases goes after the mother?   Adam Mintz  Yeah, so that is of course, fascinating. Now, you have to believe that the reason for matrilineal descent goes back Geoffrey is something you said at the beginning. And that is about being practical. And that is you always know who the mother is, you don't always know who the father is. Right? That's a very important consideration. So if you had to determine  what the lineage is, I know what the lineage to the mother is. I don't necessarily know what the lineage who the father is. So therefore, the default seems to be that you go through the mother matrilineal rather than patrilineal. descent.   Geoffrey Stern  So I think that that's an explanation that I've heard before, and clearly, correct me if I'm wrong, but when somebody is, God forbid, sick, and we make a prayer for them for the reason that you just raised we say it after the mother because we know who the mother is.   So there's no question that there was a strong basis for your argument. Alternatively, you cannot say that passing on one's tribal affiliation is meaningless. So, if in fact, we are willing to overlook this surety that we get from the mother when it comes to all sorts of things inheritance law, tribal affiliation, one could ask, why was there this disconnect for being Jewish? And of course, you could argue, well your religion is much more important. But I would argue that while it's a good argument that you're making, it's clear from this text, that When the rabbi's instituted this situation or instance of matrilineal descent, it was for this specific instance. And I just want to say that when I grew up and the Reform movement came out, and said that they were willing to accept patrilineal descent meaning to say that in Reformed Judaism, I think I'm correct in saying that whether your father is Jewish or your mother is Jewish, if one of the parents is Jewish, the kid is Jewish. We all went up in arms, we said that they were going to rip Judaism apart, and so forth and so on. It was a higher bar then when they said, you know, maybe you can light a fire on Shabbat or something. When I did some research, I found and it blew me away that the Reform movement actually wrote a traditional responsa. And in their responsa, they quoted the piece of Mishnah that I just said, and one other, and they said, "the report offers a sociological interpretation of the reason for matrilineal descent. In illicit unions, the woman with a child had no recourse but to return to her own people." So it's amazing to me, number one, I have to give credit to the Reform movement for actually going to the trouble of writing a traditional responsa. But I also believe that they were saying something that, just as the case of Zelophehad's daughters, a social situation prompted us prompted God prompted Moses his spokesman to make a change. In the case of matrilineal descent, it was a beautiful thing, and it stayed. But it somehow totally eclipsed, the more natural, the more widespread patrilineal descent and I was a member of Rabbi Riskin's, synagogue, Lincoln Square at that time, and I remember and I've googled articles that he wrote against these Reform rabbis. Fast forward 30 years, Rabbi Riskin is now living in Israel. And an Israeli soldier whose parents came from the Soviet Union, was tragically killed in battle. And his name was Lev Pascale. And he died in the Lebanon War. And he was about to be buried in the military cemetery, which is a Jewish cemetery. And all of a sudden, the military rabbi said no, his mother was not Jewish, he cannot be buried. And unlike a situation that might have occurred like this, in any other town or instance, in Israel, when it came out to the public, the public universally around Israel said here is a man, a young boy who gave his life for the State of Israel. And you are trying to deny him the the ability to be buried in the military cemetery. And at that point, rabbis, such as Rabbi Riskin, started to delve into the texts, and lo and behold, they started to come up with arguments that there is something to patrilineal descent, I'm going to stop before I actually start bringing some of the arguments. But rabbi, where were you in this in this argument? Is this something that is dynamic at this point, is this is there some movement here?   Adam Mintz  So I mean, that story that Rabbi Riskin story is a very powerful story. I mean, I think the answer is, is it dynamics? The answer is, yes, it's dynamic. But I wanted to go back, Geoffrey, to how you started. And you said that when you were a member of Lincoln Square Synagogue, and the Reform movement said that they accept either patrilineal or matrilineal descent that everybody was up in arms. The reason they were up in arms is because they were afraid that all of a sudden, we were defining Judaism differently for different groups of people means you could be Reformly Jewish, but not Conservative or Orthodox Jewish, and they became very much afraid of that. That at the very least the definition of what it means to be Jewish needs to be standard for everybody. So I think that even though of course, what Rabbi Riskin found out and the fact that there is room for patrilineal descent, but I think the idea that when you go out on a date, you have to wonder, are you Jewish, according to the Reform movement, Jewish according to the Conservative movement, or Jewish according to the Orthodox movement, I think makes it complicated. Doesn't mean it's impossible, and maybe long term. American diaspora Judaism is gonna have to address these issues, because these are the issues that have to be talked about by everybody. Because we can't have a situation where you're Jewish for one and not Jewish for another.   Peter Robins  Can I ask a question here?   Geoffrey Stern  Of course,   Peter Robins  what is the definition of a Jew under the Law of Return?   Geoffrey Stern  I believe it's one grandparent. And I'll go further than that, and say that the State of Israel took the same law as l'havdil eleph havadlot, Hitler took. Hitler would kill you if you had one Jewish grandparent. And I don't know if there's a connection or not, but the State of Israel would accept you if you have one Jewish grandparent.   Peter Robins  Why wouldn't the religion take the same point of view?   Geoffrey Stern  Well, because the religion Church and State in Israel are divided and close at the same time. And of course, the religion follows the halakhic, the legal thinking, and one has to formulate a legal argument. So we only have a few more minutes. Let me just tell you what Rabbi Riskin came up with, he found that the first Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, made the following ruling. He said, if your father is Jewish, and your mother is not, you can't look at that person the way you would look at someone who had no connection to Judaism at all. And when that person decides to come back, "Hozer haYeled l'ikar zaro"  that child is coming back .... he's coming home. And so unlike when someone converts, they have to go through all these classes. And they have to agree to accept all the laws and all of that. This rabbi said, it's different. And of course, Rabbi Riskin said, and that is the way it should be in Israel for a soldier, but it doesn't work in the diaspora. The point that I'm trying to make is, this is an area like any area in Judaism, that you can ask questions, and you can get surprising answers. And I think that, ultimately, is the lesson that we have to learn from the daughters of Zelophehad. And more to the point we don't ask just intellectual questions, but questions that affect people's lives. And I think in with regard to intermarriage, clearly, in terms of American Jews, the new Pew study came out. And if you take away the Orthodox community, 75% of the Jewish community is now inter-marrying. But more than a point, more than 50% of them are raising their children in some level of Judaism. So I think in terms of sustainability of our people, but also the human issue, the social issue we are entitled to ask these questions, to have these discussions, and to know that there is never a black and white answer, and that is my takeaway from the Zelophehad.   Adam Mintz  Thank you. That was really a very good takeaway. I thought this was a great conversation. Thank you, Geoffrey, something to think about for all of us. Shabbat Shalom, everybody. Happy July 4th. I look forward to seeing everybody next week.   Geoffrey Stern  You got it ... Shabbat Shalom. Thanks for joining.

Meet Shannon Shannon is the Executive Director of The Community, a nonprofit he founded while incarcerated to foster the successes, humanity, and agency of people with criminal records. He is also Co-Owner of Paradigm Shyft, a new Second Chance employment consulting agency that trains incarcerated people prior to release and helps employers benefit from this untapped pool both while incarcerated and post-release.  Meet Adam Three days after turning 15 years old, Adam was involved in a gang-related homicide and received a life sentence. He would become the youngest inmate within the walls of Wisconsin's most violent adult prison. But over the following 23 years of incarceration, he would renounce his gang membership and work tirelessly to keep teenagers from joining gangs. Today, Adam is dedicated to providing those released with the resources needed to succeed and making our community a safer place. What exactly does Second Chance employment mean and why should people care about it? Shannon: So second chance employment basically just refers to helping people who have gone through the justice system get employed after that experience. So it can be anyone who was sentenced to probation, sentenced to some years in prison, or as in Adam's case life in prison. One statistic that, to me, is the only conversation that needs to really be had when it comes to, what do we do when it comes to people coming out of prison and people that have criminal records, is that 95% of people who go to prison, come back. So who do we want them to be when they return to our communities, because they're going to be coming, regardless of what a person thinks, or what anyone believes in terms of their political ideology, they're going to return. So we should at least have a process set up to incorporate the value they have as human beings and as employers and as citizens as much as possible. So second chance employment is all about how do we best do that? Adam: Just to expound a little bit on what Shannon said, If 95% of the people that are going to prison come home, we should care about it. Because eventually, at some point, 95% of the people that have been incarcerated might be your neighbor. So do we want that neighbor to be somebody who can contribute successfully to society or do we want that somebody to be someone that feels ostracized has to go back to what they used to do because nobody will hire them? A lot of people who have gotten out of prison have children, and in no way is it an excuse to commit crimes if you can't provide food for your family, but we have to look at it realistically and understand that okay, if John Doe has served his time or her time, and they want to contribute to society, but nobody will hire them, what are they going to do? Again, no justification, but we have to really start looking at things logically. What has been the experience of companies and people in general who have hired from the justice impacted community? Shannon: So one thing I want to point out with that is that term is really interesting because there's a lot of debate within the advocacy groups and justice reform groups and abolition groups and all the other terms that go around this kind of word and really just comes down to people that have gone through the carceral side of the system, you've got justice impacted, system impacted justice-involved, there's a number of terms. That's one thing, I would definitely want to encourage anyone who's looking at it to not get too scared by what terms do I use or what language is appropriate? I think people would generally be very open to somebody just asking, "How do I refer to this population?" The heart is usually the most important thing. So that's one thing I want to touch on is the language can sometimes be a barrier for people when it comes to getting involved in a lot of things and the way the world is operating now with a lot of areas opening up for groups that have traditionally been disadvantaged to some degree. The numbers kind of speak for themselves, and you have the second chance business coalition has been put together and they have a number of companies, big-time companies, Kroger, Walmart, MasterCard, McDonald's, Amazon, they've all signed on as supporting this, and showing that they are really behind the value this population brings, and really trying to incorporate them. 82% of managers report that the value of Second Chance employees brings to the organization is as high as or higher than that of workers without records bring. It's something that we hear a lot too from organizations that get people jobs, and they get out. Even on work release, which we both experienced inside before we were currently in prison working at free jobs, is that there's a hunger, there's a humility, there's a desire to really show and get our life back that you get from workers that are formerly incarcerated that you don't always get from people who have been out in the world and kind of take a lot of things for granted. So both the numbers and our experience that we've seen personally and from groups that we work with, who get people jobs, shows that there's a significant value behind this population being hired not just as charity, but to help everyone grown and help out their bottom lines. What happens if there's still discrimination based on criminal history if that's the way companies are looking at things? Adam: I think it kind of goes back to what I was referencing earlier. What happens if that's the case? Let's say somebody with a criminal background applied for a job, they turn them down, and or continue to get turned down, what does that look like for them? So what does going dark look like? What does somebody do? So I think when you ask what happens, I feel and this is truly unfortunate, in my opinion, but I feel another victim is going to be creative because what other options are there? If they cannot work to provide that food or shelter for their family what does that look like? And so many times people just disregard that. They just kind of say, well, they shouldn't have made that mistake. But I'm a firm believer in whatever sentence you have shouldn't necessarily be deemed as a life sentence. If you're sentenced to five years in prison for whatever crime and you get out, if you can't get a job because of that record it becomes a de facto life sentence and that's unacceptable. How can companies approach finding second chance employees? Adam: They approach one of the many re-entry organizations that are in Milwaukee currently. Us, for instance, Partners and Hope, we are constantly bombarded by employers saying, "Look, we need workers, we just need somebody that's going to show up, day in and day out and work hard, we're willing to pay them well." One of the biggest myths I think people who have been incarcerated are told is that nobody's gonna hire them when they get out. Right now, at least in Milwaukee, in this jobs boom, it's the exact opposite. We can pretty much store our rock and find an employer willing to hire somebody. For a lot of people, whether they're in work release status, or Huber status, those are people that they know, for a fact are going to show up, unlike a lot of the other employees. So right now it's the best time in recent memory, in my opinion, for those who are with criminal records can get employed. I would imagine on a national level, that there are resources available for that? Shannon: There's a variety of resources. The things that I've seen, that I've encountered, that I find reliable, are kind of reaching out to some of those that can connect you to others. So Adam's organization, Partners in Hope, and mine in The Community, we very much are hubs where you can come to us we have a variety of partners. We're very deep into this space, in the city, and statewide and even nationally. The https://secondchancebusinesscoalition.org/ have a lot of little resources, a lot of advice, things for you to go to and organizations can then kind of have more of a boutique approach. So if you are trying to just get information on maybe an organization to contact or some stuff to read and get a better understanding of things. That's what stuff like Second Chance business coalition will help with or some of the other state entities, there's a lot of resource directories and so forth. But then if you really want to understand how to deal with individuals, the micro-level, that's where we would come in and be able to help incorporate and even attract, retain and train and retain talent. We have a whole pipeline of people coming out that we're connecting with to get them trained so that they will be really prepared to enter job fields and have connections with organizations and industries before they get out. So there's that loyalty concept as well. Honestly, you can reach out to us, and we probably can connect anybody in the state with where they're trying to go and what they need help with in this regard for hiring for this population. Can you share with our listeners one of your favorite networking experiences that you've had?  Shannon: I have a number of them because when I was inside, I was immensely blessed to just have people who would allow me to make three-way phone calls. So the organization itself began because of a small donation we had from an executive director of an organization called Hudson Link in New York, and they were one of the preeminent higher education prison programs in the country at that time. So just doing that reaching out to him and staying in touch with him and then he donated to help the organization get going and donated along the way. He's just been a really powerful advocate and resource since 2013 back when I first connected with him. So that was one when I was in and when I got out, clubhouse. A friend of mine who I knew in high school, I just was talking to him about a trucking company that I had set up with a friend. At the time I didn't know what I was gonna do and he was like, "Let me connect you on clubhouse, there's this trucking guru." I didn't know what I was doing, I just got on there and right away from that, I made so many connections nationally, in the work that we do that is really just borne fruit. It's just been really cool how the craziest things are just you go down an alley and find yourself in a palace sometimes. Adam: For me, if I had to describe my life, and success so far be at the results of networking. For me, one of the sessions that we run here is called Building Bridges with Law Enforcement, where we invite officers all the way up from rookie to inspector within the MPD to come to humanize the badge. We give our guys that have gotten out of prison, a chance to humanize the tattoo, so to speak. We create a safe space for conversation to be held so we can look at each other as human beings. One of these sessions there was at the time, a Captain that attended and she has since been promoted to inspector. She now is the supervisor of the police academy and last year with all the George Floyd and Blake situations, there's definitely a need for better relationships between the community and the police department. So that connection led me to meet the captain at the police academy and we came to a decision on how to best combine those who have gotten out of prison with those just entering the police department. So we came up with this idea where I was introduced and went undercover at the police academy. My name was Lieutenant Smith from Detroit and I kind of just gave myself a chance to humanize myself without the preconceived biases of incarceration. It was one of the most powerful experiences of my life and it all came from a session that we did here that led to one step further and one step further beyond that. How do you stay in front of and best nurture your network? Shannon: For me, it's just been a matter of always trying to make sure that I'm connecting people to other people or resources that I see they need. Because then that fuels them to in turn, remember me when something comes about that they would find to be valuable to the work I'm doing or any projects I have or even like in my career in general. So it's always about putting myself out there for them first, and then trusting the process that it will come back around. Even if it doesn't you're still helping people that you've, for whatever reason found a connection to, and by then helping their work, it's just helping you still, because that's the whole goal is to have a macro view of the way we're operating instead of the transactional way which is a terrible way to operate the world. It'll come back to me, even if it doesn't because you directly offer something to me, you're just doing your work and doing good by the connection I made, the resource I provided or the help I gave you is going to help us in general, because I believe in what you're doing. Adam: For me, I would say, given the job title that I have now, community outreach specialist, networking and keeping those relationships active is paramount to the success of my role within this organization. I think it boils down to little things, just being a human being and accepting others as human beings as well. So as crazy and as simple as it sounds like I go back to those lessons I learned in the sandbox of just play nice with others, seem interested, be interested, and it might be off the topic of whatever current meeting you might be in, but I feel relationship building is a pivotal part of network building. Nobody's going to remember someone that just looks at you as a means to an end, I think you really have to look at the person as a person, which seems like an odd thing to say. I feel it's extremely important to humanize one another because I think that sticks in people's minds in the end. We've all heard of the six degrees of separation. Who would be the one person that you'd love to connect with and do you think you can do it within the sixth degree? Shannon: It's an interesting question because, for me, I feel that anyone that I look at it and they give me a sense of, "I wish I could talk to that person," just in my experience. Also, I'm kind of a baby, I've only been out now for eight months. But my degree is in business and I've read countless pieces of literature about how the world operates in this sense. So I feel like I'm versed enough to say this, that on the way to meeting that person through the six degrees, one of those degrees is going to be more interesting and more valuable in the person I felt like I was trying to get to. So it would be more so that I'd be wanting to reach that person with the intent of finding out who really is going to be more intriguing and more connected to or aligned with what I'm trying to do in life along the way. Again, just trusting that process. I like to explore, I think I'm just gonna find the thread and pull on it and I don't think that going for the ultimate specific person that I think is going to be who I want to talk to, is the best way to go. Adam: To answer that, I kind of have to help you understand what it feels like to have served 23 years in prison. Prison is a very dehumanizing place so I find that even today, I sometimes struggle with anything is possible. Even though I know that consciously, sometimes I feel not, actually, I'll take a step back before I answer my own thought. Inside everything kind of looks like it's a movie so when you watch the news, or you watch a movie or TV show, it all seems foreign, you don't necessarily feel as though you're a part of society. So now that I'm out, sometimes I have to tell myself you can contact whomever you want to. There is that avenue for that and I've realized in the two and a half years that I've been released, that the six degrees of separation concept are very accurate. I can only speak to really Milwaukee at this point, but I feel that there are very few people in Milwaukee that I couldn't contact within someone in my social circle. Then taking that nationally, I feel depending on the circumstance, the same would probably apply. I feel you have to have a give or a reason to reach out to some of these individuals. But I think at the end of the day, it's possible. I don't know if I put a name on the person I want to meet, but it would definitely be a large investor because I feel if we had the funds to do what we needed to do, we could truly save some lives. So rather than approaching a person for a reason, there will probably be a foundation that has the means to help us financially and make our community a safer place. Do either of you have any final word or advice to offer our listeners with regards to growing and supporting your network? Shannon: I think really just if you have any interest in the field that we're in, and in hiring from this population, and connecting to the pipeline of people we are working on right now, just contact us. We have a lot of experience and connections in this space to be of value to a person if this sparked their interest. Adam: I guess the last thing I would suggest is we get that people who have been incarcerated at the end of the day, they've heard somebody and you can't uncry those tears of that pain caused. So we get it, but at the end of the day, knowing that 95% of the people that come out, are going to in some way need to make the society a better place and so we just want to ask people, for those of you who are thinking about are contemplating hiring somebody with a criminal background, would you want to be held responsible for the worst mistake you ever made in your life, and have that held against you forever? Again, not taking away from the pain and harm that people have caused, we get it. But at some point, if we're truly invested in making our community a safer place, we have to start looking at things a little bit differently. Hopefully, at some point, everyone can give those who have made a mistake, a second chance.   Connect with Shannon & Adam   Emails: adam@paradigmshyft.org and shannon@paradigmshyft.org  The Community: https://thecommunitynow.us/  Community Warehouse: https://www.thecommunitywarehouse.org/

So Adam takes the week off as he prepares to travel for a "leadership" conference which means that Bob and Mike are your distraction for the week. We start out fairly lighthearted as we talk about baseball (go figure) and Mixology with Michael (or Mike) makes a return. This one will catch you off guard but is somewhat wholesome. There is some discussion of economics, hence the intelligence of the show. We also spend some time talking about setting, missing, recalculating and reaching goals. It started with baseball but morphed from there. This may be the one episode you flag and then come back and listen to again when you find yourself stuck somewhere. There is a post production question about possibly violating the premise of the podcast and we actually make a point. We have toyed with a name change and we may have to do it now that this happened. Many thanks to Anchor.fm for putting this show out across platforms such as Spotify, Google Podcasts, PocketCasts and Breaker. They do this for free and we appreciate them doing the work for us. We also appreciate the fact that when you listen to the show on one of these outlets, we get a little bit of money kicked back to us. When you do listen on a platform, please make sure you give us a rating (only if it is a good one!) and subscribe to the show so you can receive notifications when we post new shows. If you want to leave a review, comment, question or some snarky comment...DO IT! We would really like to hear from you and what you like or don't like. You can also catch us on Facebook with video so you can see the expressions and visual jokes that we sometimes pull out. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/getttpoint/support

Episode 35: Rural ResponseA discussion about how small and rural communities can respond and structure their response to active shooter events.Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your host of the podcast and today's topic we are going to talk about active shooter response and active shooter incident management in smaller communities or rural communities where there's not a lot of resources. I've got with me today three of the C3 Pathways instructors. We've got with is Joe Ferrara, who has not been in for a while. Joe, it's good to see you back here. Thanks for being here.Joe Ferarra:Good to be back.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely, and we've got Adam Pendley from law enforcement. So Joe's with fire, I guess I should say that, fire EMS. We got Adam Pendley, one of our law enforcement instructors. Adam, good to see you.Adam Pendley:Yes, sir. Nice to be here.Bill Godfrey:All right. So guys, the question of the day is, and the discussion point that we want to have is for those communities out there that are smaller communities, or rural communities, that don't have a lot of depth and resources, how can they still respond to these events and structure their response in a way? And what I'd like to do just so the audience can kind of follow along is kind of follow the checklist process in terms of the flow of the thing, which is going to lead us starting off with contact teams. So Adam, talk to us about some of the challenges when you have a limited number of officers, how do you stretch those resources for your contact teams and to do the security work needs to be done?Adam Pendley:Sure. I think for initial response to an active shooter event, that initial contact to address the threat, one of the things we find when there's less officers working in a geographical area is this idea that there's an increased chance that you're going to have a solo officer entry. So we'll start there. Across the country, many departments are training to the idea and adjusting policy to the idea that we may have to have a solo officer entry to at least put something down range to stop the killing, to get the suspect's attention off of the innocents and maybe toward the officer so they can address that threat. So solo officer entry is a conversation that all departments, but especially those that might not have as many resources on duty at a particular time of day or in a particular geographical area, they have to consider solo officer response.Then as that additional officer arrives, that linkup procedure and understanding how do you turn it from a solo officer response into that first contact team. And of course, when we use the term contact team, in a perfect world, we want that to be three, four, or five officers. But a contact team might just be those two officers. Both of them who are doing the security work with their weapons platform, facing the threat, eliminating the threat, somebody available to talk on the radio, and somebody... The two of them being able to kind of get that 540 degree security with each other, an extra set of eyes is always important. But that might be the entire size of your contact team. And as additional officers arrive, maybe from another jurisdiction, they know to form up as a second contact team that may also only be two officers.So I think it's important to be creative and tactically sound and realize that as we attend training and exercises, just be cognizant of the fact that how do we change our training to address making entry into a building with just one or two officers, and how does that change the tactics a little bit. With time, more officers will arrive. And so, how do you transition to building some additional teams on top of that?And then that gets us into our discussion, which I know we've discussed quite a bit, about the fifth man, that tactical group supervisor. And it's not always a hard number. In some instances the third officer arrives, might have to stay outside in and coordinate the resources that are eventually going to arrive instead of having all resources inside. Or some communities that we've worked with their plan is to have all on-duty resources go inside and then as additional resources arrive, hopefully one of them can extricate themselves from inside the scene and then come back out to kind of take that fifth man function. So it's very jurisdiction specific on how you get creative.Bill Godfrey:So Robert, I'm curious, Adam's talking about reducing the contact team size, which obviously I think makes sense when your resource is constrained. What are the implications for that in training? When you're trying to train your law enforcement guys how to work in contact teams is there a difference in the way you need to train them and in the tactics that they need to use, if it's just a couple of them?Robert McMahan:Well, I think the biggest difference is we're actually doing it in training and working through what it looks like to have smaller numbers of officers on a contact team. And often our rural small jurisdictions don't get the same amount of training because they don't have the trained dollars. But when you're looking ahead towards this kind of incident, you've got to make that sacrifice somehow to get that training done so they know what they're doing. Officers that are responding in these hot situations that don't have that trainer are more at risk to getting injured or killed and not solving the situation without that training. So trainings got to be the first thing that to be addressed in these.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So we've got a couple there on how to reduce some of the team size, looking at solo officer entry and reducing the team sizes. I think everybody can kind of nod your head and see that. Do we still need a tactical, do we still need a fifth man when we're resource constrained? What do you think?Adam Pendley:So, yes, absolutely. The thing that is very important to realize is that the call for help has gone out so more resources are coming and if you only have three or four deputies or police officers that are on duty and they're all inside, and we know from experience that many of our buildings, especially in rural areas, once you get inside a building, the radio doesn't work anymore. So now you have follow on resources that are entering blindly if they don't have someone outside as a guide or a gatekeeper to what's going on. And a lot of our radio systems, you'll have a car to car type function that would work well so you can have two or three officers inside and that third or fourth officer that's outside that can use that car to car frequency to establish what's going on inside to establish a strategy of some sort.So when those mutual aid officers finally arrive, or even from a callback situation, we know in some communities, they have a plan to call officers at home and they quickly throw on a gun belt and there and out the door they go to the scene. And when that officer arrives, they really do need that tactical direction. So I'm not comfortable sacrificing the tactical group supervisor in these situations because I've said this many times, one more gun inside the crisis site might not be nearly as valuable as managing the 10 more guns that are on their way.Bill Godfrey:That's a really interesting point. And Adam, it kind of reminds me of the one group we work with. It was a very rural county out in the Midwest, and on a good day, they had three law enforcement officers on duty, four if you counted the sheriff, if the sheriff himself happened to be there. And they actually, after they went through training with their volunteer fire department, came to an arrangement with their volunteer fire department that all of the armed officers would go down range as quickly as possible to try to deal with the threat, and it would be the fire department's responsibility to take care of all the outside stuff, to get all the incident management positions stood up and kind of coordinate all of those other items on the checklist that needed to get done.And then as soon as the officers that were down range felt like they had just a little bit of stability on controlling the threat and it was warm enough, they would then have one officer back out and go grab the medics to kind of bring them in. I thought that was a pretty... I thought it was pretty creative, and quite honestly, a fascinating look into the mindset of a rural community who's used to having to rely on each other and make things work. I mean, I can think of any number of city or metro agencies where the idea that law enforcement would delegate those tasks to the fire department would just be crazy. But I don't know. I thought it was pretty interesting way. Robert, how does that strike you?Robert McMahan:There's a lot of things that can be done to spread the workload to maybe some unconventional areas. Everybody's got some form of road and bridge that can be brought into help control perimeter as far as access at least, maybe not the security element, but they can provide that access control to the scene and around the command post and other areas. You've got civilians within your community that may be formed into groups, that may be able to be accessed to help out with some things like a reunification program.You could get reunification on the school side, but you can also get some pieces of that from various civilian groups that come in and help staff some of those positions. So, they've got to be creative in how they can fill those things with maybe some non-commission personnel in some of those areas. And planning ahead is a big part of it because in a lot of rural areas, there's wildlife officers, there's forest service officers that we don't normally think about in these responses, and they may not even be on the channel to hear the call for help. So in the planning part of it, if they're thinking about, "Hey, there's these types of officers out in the area that we can maybe call in on." Think about calling them early on in the response.Bill Godfrey:Interesting. So before we get too far afield, down range on the other stuff, because you mentioned a couple of things I want to come back to, but before we get there, I obviously want to jump over to the medical side. So we talked a little bit about that initial law enforcement [inaudible 00:11:06] and the contact teams, but Joe, I'd like to tangent over to the medical side, and to me it seems there's a couple of challenges or potentially a couple of challenges here from not having enough staffing because you're a small or rural community, you've got limited access to the number of medics that are on duty. But also I've seen an awful lot of rural communities where the fire department is volunteer, doesn't have medical capability, they've got an EMS system that works very well for them, but then there's some challenges there because how do you operate when the medics are downrange, but then you also have to do transport. So Joe, can you talk a little bit about some ideas and thoughts on how to make those resources work and how to kind of plan ahead?Joe Ferarra:Sure. So the interesting thing about rural America is, as compared to the metropolitan areas, where you already mentioned that in metropolitan areas we tend to operate in silos, where we do our police, we do our fire, we do our EMS. But when we get out to rural America, the great thing about it is it's a whole community approach, everybody works together, whether that be volunteer fire, or a small fire department working with either a partnered private EMS agency, or a countywide EMS, and then working with law enforcement.And take that one step further, or one other layer on top of this, in many small communities, we have public safety officers that are triple certified as police, fire, and medic, and we'll kind of circle back to that. But in the basic concept where we might have two paramedics on an ambulance and we have however many volunteer firefighters that would show up for that incident, let's just say four them show up on an [inaudible 00:13:00] initially, we're going to have to be really creative because we don't want to put those non-medically trained personnel down range with a security component and ask them to do advanced triage. But we also don't want to lose our personnel and our ambulance because the key to an ambulance on an active shooter event is that is our mechanism to get to the hospital. And without that, we're going to lose time... Great, we have an ambulance, but we have nobody in it.So smaller communities, I think working together, maybe using your fire department as your drivers for the ambulance so you can free up one EMS personnel from a two person unit, and having one paramedic stay with the ambulance, and the other paramedic now get with law enforcement as a rescue task force, and there's your security component and your medical component going downrange and taking care of the patient, ultimately getting them into the ambulance and transport them out of there.So there needs to be all those partnerships looking to mutual aid agreements, looking to other parts of the community. And like I said, I applaud rural America because I think they do the best job at the whole community approach because they have to, they have to have all those pieces. They don't have resources to throw at it like a metropolitan area does.Bill Godfrey:It's interesting, Adam mentioned earlier the idea of doing callback, and I'm kind of reminded that most volunteer departments work that way. How realistic is, do you think, [inaudible 00:14:32] on the EMS side, on the medical side, I shouldn't necessarily just say EMS, but on the medical side for a rural community or a smaller community that's got limited resources, to be able to set up some sort of callback program. Is that going to work fast enough, you think, Joe, to get some medical help?Joe Ferarra:I think so. I mean, for the most part, depending on the model, let's say it's a public utility model or it's a third service EMS. Certainly there's depth there because they're working in shift work similar to how fire departments work so it should not be too much of an issue to have a depth and a callback list. And then if it's a contracted third service or contracted private ambulance, depending on the size of the company, I mean, they could have regional and statewide resources that can be there from a callback perspective.Certainly counties also should work with their emergency management because let's not forget the certificate and need process that occurs in EMS across this country. If I want to be a ambulance provider in that community, and maybe my business is normally transporting a patient from the hospital to the nursing home, the law usually requires, and it's going to be different by jurisdiction, that that ambulance be available in time of emergency. So there are other resources and that's where it's key to tap into your emergency management because they have the reach out to all those other agencies that can assist with that patient transfer.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So let's just kind of recap where we're at. At the basic response level we've got to have on the law enforcement side some certified, armed law enforcement officers to deal with the situation. And on the medical side, we need some trained medical people that are trained and equipped and certified to whatever level the community wants, to also be available to go deal with the situation. We've talked about a couple of ways to stretch those. So let's shift gears and talk a little bit about how to manage this and some of the ideas, robert, you started going down that road a little bit, on some of the ideas for some of the additional ancillary rules that we know need to be filled. Where do we go with that, Adam?Adam Pendley:Sure. I mean, once you get outside of those... That are downrange in the crisis side, there's still a lot of jobs to be filled. So let's take the command post for example. So you have your contact teams and medical and RTF doing their job. You have some sort of tactical in place, tactical triage and transport. It's ideal to have someone handling the triage group function and the transport group function separately, but that might have to be combined into one function so that you have that one fire EMS person downrange making those decisions.But at the command post level, and that's really where you can leverage a lot of help. In many areas there's three or four law enforcement officers that are helping with scribing and helping with talking on the radio and helping doing some other things, same thing on the fire EMS side, they have a trained firefighter that's in there helping scribe and manage resources and keeping the incident commander informed. When reality, you may only have the ability to have an incident commander from law enforcement, a medical branch director from fire EMS, and then you have to train in advance to the point that Robert made earlier is these are training opportunities that you have to develop during a policy development and training and exercises, find those people that can be trained to do those jobs.If I were running a command post in an area that has a fewer resources available, I would reach out to my civilian staff and train them on how to help as scribes in the command post, how to use the radio, how to make resource requests, how to go to the dispatch center and help answer extra calls for service that are coming in. And not necessarily calls for service, but all those calls for information that are going to be coming in. So every part of your civilian staff that works, in not only your agencies, but in the city and public works, like was mentioned, they can all be trained up to do those ancillary jobs when they're called to duty.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. And Robert, I think you were kind of going down this road when you were talking about the perimeter responsibilities, certainly for the outer perimeter. And I know we've got one of our instructors that worked in a smaller community and she had a fairly creative way... I've worked out a deal with our public works department to respond with the garbage trucks and the dump trucks to be able to quickly close down the roads and be able to isolate an area. And while that didn't get used on an active shooter event, it did get used on a bank robbery quite effectively. I mean, are there some other ideas that stick out in your mind about where to get some other resources and be able to kind of backfill some of those ancillary roles?Robert McMahan:So one area that communities can consider is, sometimes they're called CERT teams, civilian emergency response teams. Other agencies have community safety volunteer programs. And if you don't have them in your rural areas, it's something that you could think about starting up getting your community involved and trained to do certain roles like traffic control and other various needs within that emergency response.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. I think that's a great idea. Joe, you got any that jump out in your mind?Joe Ferarra:Yeah. One that jumps out at me and you mentioned CERT, there's another area and this is through the health department. So if the emergency management or the agency directors work with their health department ahead of time, many health departments across the country have what's called MRCs or medical reserve corps. And these are made up of, they may be retired nurses and doctors in the community, or even current and practicing ones. And they're actually in a response mode. So there's a potential there, and I'm not talking a response mode of eight minutes, advanced life support on scene, but they're going be able to support the operation. So imagine being able to get some doctors and nurses to the scene, and that's where your health department and that where it is key to work with emergency management because they have those connections.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. And I guess in some ways... You mentioned the medical reserve corps. I mean, if you're in a smaller or a rural community, it's not just at the scene you're going to have the problem, your local hospital's going to have the problem too.Adam Pendley:Absolutely. And so that all ties into that personnel recall as well, that we mentioned earlier, and also your emergency management. So on both of those, remember, even if you have resources between on-duty and mutual aid that you're able to handle the incident, all of those resources are now pretty much out of service. It's a very stressful event, you may have officer involved shooting protocols that you have to follow.And that happened in an incident that I was involved in, it involves civil unrest. We had a lot of units tied up responding to the civil unrest, and as a responding agency assistant chief, the calls I started making was for emergency recall right away because all of those units were now going to be out of service for a long period of time. And so getting that process started early is very important, I think, when you have a limited number of resources.And then secondly to that is, again, another early call, if somebody can remember to make it very early on in the incident, is reaching out to that county emergency manager because they're going to also be able to bring some of their staff in to help with a lot of the administrative type stuff. But they have plans for trying to call in additional resources. So it's a way to get all of those things started very early on. So somebody has to make that decision and make that call very early to get that going.Robert McMahan:So another area that I just thought of is a lot of rural communities have some kind of incident management team, which could be another call-up resource to come in and help out with this kind of thing. And as I was sitting here, we were talking about hospitals and their resources in these communities. Remember, in some of these communities, and I lived in one before I got into law enforcement where the hospital was 60 miles away. And so it's going to take time to transport patients to that hospital, a lot of time, and so we might think about having that agreement with that hospital to fly resources to the site to get some more advanced care on the site until we can get patients transported that far away.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. That's interesting. I mean, there's a few... I'm not aware of any here in the US, but certainly overseas, there's a few models where they have physicians and physician staff that are either assigned to the medical helicopter, or are available immediately to be deployed to the medical helicopter. It's really interesting. What strikes me about this conversation is we're talking about a lot of ideas here, and I think there's a lot of really good ideas about how to do this on the response side. But the thing that really catches my attention is, I'm not sure that you're going to do a whole lot of this at the time of the incident. This has got to be done before the bang. We're talking about a lot of planning. Where's the best place for that to occur within the community. If we've got some firefighters or some police officers, or medics that are working and serving rural America, who do they turn to to say, "Hey, listen, we need to work on this a little bit?"Adam Pendley:Well, I think mainly that work has to happen together. That's the first thing is you got to get everyone at the same table at the same time, but I can tell you from a law enforcement perspective, I've been called many times by local entities in the community that want to host an active shooter exercise. But that almost always involves some tactical officers demonstrating what it would look like, what gunshots would sound like as they're running down the hallway. And then we begin to treat a couple of patients, but then that's the end of the exercise.The reality is is we need to think about everything else that's going to need to be done. And that's where the conversation really begins because honestly, most law enforcement officers in this country are ready to do the tactical part. And yes, we need training, but that's not where we need the exercise and the policy development. We need the policy development in making sure that all of these creative ideas can happen without somebody standing there and saying, "Oh, I can't do that. The policy doesn't allow it." Or, "I can't help drive that ambulance because state law doesn't allow it." That's where you have to dig deep now to answer those questions. So when you ask a public works person to use his truck to block traffic at an incident, does his union contract allow him to do that? Those are the kinds of questions that you have to dig deep and get the answers to now so you're prepared to be that creative on scene.Bill Godfrey:Joe, what's your thoughts? You're working as a medic in a rural community, where do you start?Joe Ferarra:So Adam already mentioned that it starts with the agencies, but I'll take it one step further in that. In every community and in our great country, there's a comprehensive emergency management plan. And the purpose of that is to plan for emergency response. So we start with emergency management, emergency management has the relationships, hopefully already, that they put together to design a response plan. And then you work through all the iterations of that, that may involve, "Okay, well, if the governor declares this a disaster area, can we override XYZ regulation and deal with these things?" But in my book, that's clearly a comprehensive emergency management plan function.Bill Godfrey:Robert, what about on the political side or the management side? Is there an opportunity with a city manager, or a county manager, or the mayor, or the elected officials to ask them for their help in opening doors and kind of greasing the wheels? What are your thoughts?Robert McMahan:Yes, absolutely. And these are key people that have got to get involved in this on the front end, before the bang, as you said. And figure out how they're going to enable the resources that they have to respond to this. And where the agreements are, are they in place with the hospital 60 miles away? Are the agreements in place with other resources that they've got to have to answer this kind of call?So those political leaders, sheriffs, and I'm not even thinking chiefs of police because we're talking so small here, but maybe there is a chief of police, town marshall, county managers-Bill Godfrey:County judge.Robert McMahan:... county judge, all those things need to be brought together to figure out what these legal issues may be and what these logistical issues may be to get these agreements in place. And so everybody knows what needs to occur and that it can occur when this happens.Bill Godfrey:So guys, let me ask this bottom line question. So no question, this is a difficult challenge for a resource constraint community, no question about it. But bottom line, fixable and doable?Adam Pendley:Absolutely.Bill Godfrey:Joe?Joe Ferarra:Yes, absolutely.Robert McMahan:Absolutely.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. And I think so too. In some cases you've got to be creative and it may not be easy to get buy-in from everybody, but I think there's a common need here. And it seems, if you're willing to commit to a little bit of work and plan ahead of time that it can come together.Robert McMahan:Absolutely. Those pieces that we teach in active shooter incident management that need to occur, these communities need to come together, these community leaders need to come together and look at that, realize what their shortcomings are, and figure out, "How are we going to get this done?" And it may not happen when that bang goes off, it may not happen as quickly as we want, but it can happen and we need to plan ahead on how we're going to do that.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. Well guys, thank you so much for taking the time. I will say this, I'm kind of reminded a little bit here on the 10 part series we did on the 10 questions that the mayor or the city manager should ask their police chief or fire chief together to talk about that. If you're out there in a rural community or a resource constraint community, and you're trying to kind of figure out where to start that political conversation, you might want to revisit some of the series of those 10 questions the mayor can ask the police chief and fire chief because there was some good stuff. They can arm you with the kind of things that you can approach your elected officials with. And if you get their buy-in, they can really begin to open doors. If they didn't have relationships and couldn't open doors, they probably wouldn't have got elected in the first place. But just a thought out there for our listeners.Robert, Adam, Joe, thank you so much for taking the time to come in guys and talk about this very important issue. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us for the podcast. If you haven't subscribed, please do so on whatever device that you consume your podcasts on. If you have any suggestions, ideas, or questions, please email them to us at info@c3pathways.com. Until next time. Stay safe.

Signs and Wonders  Neville Goddard5/15/64   Tonight's subject is “Signs and Wonders.” As we are told in the 6th and 20th chapters of the Book of Deuteronomy, “The Lord brought his people out of Egypt with signs and wonders.” Now, the Bible from beginning to the end is divine history. But this history is not history as you and I understand it. In other words, you could never by historical research either prove or disprove it; and any religion in this world that depends upon historical and scientific confirmation really is not a fixed act.   Let us now take the book, this divine history. It's your history, a history that you and every child born of woman will experience. Every child is Adam, and Adam is compelled to be disobedient. As we are told in the 11th chapter of the Book of Romans, that “God has consigned every man to disobedience that he may have mercy upon all” (verse 32). So Adam is the garment that God wears. And that disobedience is for one outstanding purpose: He eats of the tree of knowledge of good and evil that conscience may be born. And so conscience is born by the seeming disobedience. Then he passes through the furnaces of affliction. But at least he does have conscience and he does know right and he knows wrong. He violates it time after time. And so from Adam to Noah it is sheer hell in scripture, because everything is for self-gain; and so, he simply buries his conscience which tells him it is wrong, and simply, well, for the purpose of self-gain. Then we're told this is all wiped out, and then we start with Noah.   Remember these are all states…every character in the Bible is a state of consciousness. They're simply personifications of the eternal states of the soul through which the individual passes like a pilgrim. So he moves first through Adam to Noah. Alternate Universe Reality Activation  get full access to new meditations, new lectures, recordings from the reality con and the 90 day AURA meditation schedulehttps://realityrevolutionlive.com/aura45338118 BUY A COPY OF MY BOOKhttps://www.amazon.com/Reality-Revolution-Mind-Blowing-Movement-Hack/dp/154450618X/ Listen my book on audible https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Reality-Revolution-Audiobook/B087LV1R5V Music By Mettaversesolacesolitudegolden lotusinto the omniversejourney into the multiversenocturne ➤ Listen on Soundcloud: http://bit.ly/2KjGlLI➤ Follow them on Instagram: http://bit.ly/2JW8BU2➤ Join them on Facebook: http://bit.ly/2G1j7G6➤ Subscribe to their channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyvjffON2NoUvX5q_TgvVkw  All My Neville Goddard Videos In One Playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKv1KCSKwOo8kBZsJpp3xvkRwhbXuhg0M For all episodes of the Reality Revolution – https://www.therealityrevolution.com Like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/The-Reality-Revolution-Podcast-Hosted-By-Brian-Scott-102555575116999 Join our facebook group The Reality Revolution https://www.facebook.com/groups/523814491927119  Subscribe to my Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOgXHr5S3oF0qetPfqxJfSw #nevillegoddard #audiobooks #imagination #newthought #lawofattraction #totalhumanoptimization

In her sermon, the Rev. Barbara Ballenger describes how Eden is the first house divided. Our history as a people of faith is rife with division, violence, and separation from God. But in Jesus we are offered a chance to reunite, to rebuild the house divided. Are you ready to accept the invitation into a house united? Sermon by the Rev. Barbara Ballenger for the Second Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 5, Sunday, June 6, 2021. Today's readings are: Genesis 3:8-15 Psalm 130 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1 Mark 3:20-35 Readings (track 2) may be found on LectionaryPage.net Sermon Text: Where are you? Comes the cry from Genesis today. And it's not humanity calling out to a hidden God who seems to have abandoned us. No in the third chapter of Genesis it is God crying out to God's people, who aren't where they should be I wonder if that question followed Adam and Eve wherever they went from that point forward? I wonder if every prayer we send out to God is actually prompted by this silent prelude: God crying out to us, Where are you? The human couple's answer is– We're hiding. We're ashamed. We're naked. Because we know things now that we never knew before. And it's his fault, it's her fault, the devil made us do it. Do you notice that they never once apologize? They're honest, but they don't seem to be sorry. We should take a moment to consider that forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That tree is not there when God fashions Adam. And then God plants a garden for Adam to tend, and in the center of that garden God plants a choice, a rule that can be broken, a way out of the garden called delight. You shall not eat of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or you'll die. Then God fashions a partner for Adam and the first couple get on with their lives for a while. Who knows for how long they got up each morning, and chose not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. How long did they consciously choose to stay in that garden, where work was a pleasure, labor was easy and everyone was a vegetarian, as long as you didn't take from that one tree? It's just that one day they choose the tree. They had some help for sure. But really it was their own decision to make and they made it. The fruit was good to eat; it was a source of wisdom that they didn't have before. And once they tasted it, once they knew it, they couldn't un-know it. The consequence was that they'd be making their own decisions from now on. And the first thing they decided to do was hide from God. Eden became the first house divided. There wasn't room for more than one God. So Adam and Eve had to move out. The labor that once was a delight, now became toil. The earth they once stewarded became their enemy. The animals they once named became their prey. The first murder of an innocent man happens a chapter later, an act born of an envious brother. And their new house is divided. That's Israel's origin story, and it's ours as well. In the rest of the saga God follows humanity out of the garden and keeps calling “Where are you?” And houses rise and fall, form and divide. Until in Jesus, God provides a new way of return. And that involves seeing the household of God in an entirely new way, by looking beyond the way people usually set things up, to the alternative world that God is forming through Christ. Not even Jesus' own family can see it at first, we discover in Mark's gospel today. The crowds have gone wild with desire for the Good News and healing that Jesus has been providing; Jesus has just named 12 apostles to share the load with, and things are so busy that there's not even time to eat. But Jesus' family, his mother and his brothers and his sisters, are embarrassed. They come in person to fetch him away; they just want him to come home so things can go back to how they should be. They fear that he is out of his mind. And Jesus disobeys. He challenges one of the key components of Israel's identity -- loyalty to family, stick with your own, obey your parents. “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Jesus asks. And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Theologian NT Wright puts it this way: “God is doing the unthinkable: he is starting a new family, a new holy people, and is doing so without regard for ordinary human family bonds. Unless you read verses 34 and 35 as deeply shocking, you haven't got the message.” (Mark for Everyone, p 38). It is shocking to Jesus' family. It should shock us still today, in a society where protecting one's own family is often a good enough reason to deny other families the resources they need. In Jesus' day such a defiance meant you were either insane or evil. And if evil, Jesus points out, he would make for a pretty ineffective demon, since he's undermining the powers of sin at every turn. Through the Good News that God is at hand, through the strength of his healing and his inclusion, through his table fellowship, through the life he will lay down and the forgiveness that he will offer, Jesus binds the strong man. Jesus subverts the divisive forces of evil, of empire, of kinship bonds, of exceptionalism, and throws open the doors to a new house. The Apostle Paul understood that recognizing what God had done in Christ required a new way of seeing. It shows up in his second letter to the Corinthians, whom he urged to look to the invisible work of God, rather than what they were used to focusing on. The Christians in Corinth had this tendency to confuse their wealth and their prosperity and their egos with God's favor, as though these were the visible signs of their salvation. They were becoming a house divided by their own arrogance and their class divisions. All the things they treasured about themselves just made up the outside of the tent, Paul insisted. They needed to keep their eyes on what God was doing within. “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day,” Paul reminds them. “For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.” To look at what is not seen, to look to eternal things, requires belief, the eyes of faith, the inner yes to the divine offer, not just for the Corinthians, but for us as well. Fast forward to today. Flip through the newspaper, or read twitter. Scan your email. Can you show me a house that is not divided? Can you show me a church that's not divided? It's perhaps the easiest thing to spot about our relationships these days. And yet, in these scriptures and in this act of worship, we are invited to believe that God has been remaking the tent from the inside out. This is how God heals the breach. In Christ, God makes the divine self something that can be chosen, taken, received, over and over again, visible to eyes that want to see him. It's as though, in Christ, God has reverse engineered the garden from the old story. Eden featured a tree whose fruit had to be continuously denied in order for humanity to remain with God. One taste and the deal was over, the tale goes. In this new way home there is also a tree, in the form of a cross. The repair before us also involves a tasting and a seeing with new eyes, it involves a death that results in eternal life. It is Jesus himself who is on offer, who is the food on the plate, who is the choice we can make, our invitation into a house united in God. Keep this choice before you as you reach for the Bread of Life today, whether you come to the table here or respond to Jesus' invitation to receive him in spiritual communion. In both cases we look beyond what we can see before us. And at that moment when we pause in prayer to receive him, make your choice. What is on offer is a house united, a breach that is healed, new life with the one who has been calling and calling: “where are you?” Amen. Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. All rights reserved. Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

So Adam cole and Karion Cross' confrontation and my theory on it…I'll explain

God created weed because he felt bad that we had to die. He snuck it in there before he could catch it. He made weed so we could be like him. He double crossed Adam and Eve with satan and we haven't been the same since. No serious: God created us to live forever. I guess we were in heaven already and somehow he snuck some bomb ass stanky herb into heaven where everything was perfect and nobody died and shot. and god told them not to smoke it. They could look at it and walking and steal its sweet aroma. But not smoke it. Hey you could probably touch it and watch as the herb sprouts buds, but don't smoke it. See that herb over there Adam and Eve? What herb god? That herb, here let me walk you over to it. Of yeah we see it. It looks cool and smells great. Well don't even think about smoking it. Wait you can smoke this? Wow that sounds awesome. Yeah I know it does and it is super awesome but don't smoke it ok? Sure ok god but why is that rainbow snake looking at us smiling and smoking the herb? Oh don't pay him no mind he has no power but he looks great don't he? I shot him down from the sky like lightning because he was trying to challenge me. he can sing better yeah and has amazing hair and shiny skin but who makes the world go round? This guy here exactly! But god the snake is flying Now and singing beautiful songs! Sure but ignore him if you smoke you'll end up just like him. But then the devil started talking and of course women are to blame so Eve smoked some of that stank ass weed with satan. Imagine that smoke sesh! So Eve and Stan toked it up nasty style without Adam right. Then Eve felt bad because she left Adam out of the crazy ass smoke sesh so she offered him some and he was like Craig on Friday at first like no but then why not? So Adam smoked that stank weed and they both realized they were naked! So being naked they ran to get clothes and God got mad at them for doing what he knew they were going to do anyway. God got mad at himself for sneaking in some bomb weed into the garden so he went nuclear and gave them death. Now we die. Because Adam and Eve smoked weed. We suffer and watch others do the same because god knew we were going to smoke weed. I smoke in the morning and at night and I always wonder what a smoke sesh with Jesus would've been like. Or a smoke sesh with the big G in the sky. But i hope to find out one day. I hope heaven is one big smoke sesh where god begs for forgiveness and I laugh hard and uncontrollably at his long beard and fire eyes. God knows weed. God smokes weed that's why he's god. We created alcohol and now drive under its influence. We drink alcohol to satisfy our urge to be Gods. We believe in ghosts but not in each other. Especially the Holy Ghost man that motherfucker sneaks into your soul through your Asshole and makes you speak in different languages. Like the Babylonians or the ancients who smoked dust and threw their kids into the fire beneath the golden calf. Religion is a man made artifact. Women were consulted but their advice was ignored, ursurped. Women are so busted! They caused death because they smoked that bomb weed with satan. Women are always the bad ones in the Bible go figure. God raped the Virgin for her sweet juice but it's her fault we die. If women had invented religion there would be none. Women couldn't even write a book in the Bible! They can't even preach or be pastors! Women can't wear jeans or be alone with white men because of their sweet juice and lustful thoughts. It's ok women are God's with a womb. We bow down to their power. To their superiority. Man made religion just brings more conflict and penis size arguments. Religion sucks like rancid meat tacos. Like spoiled milkshakes. Religion is maggots swimming in your vomit as you die a slow painful death knowing god created weed and made us die. C'mon god why would you do that to me? Your best buddy! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

The doctors put mosquitoes on trial, as listener Cathy in the UK asks, ‘What is the point of mosquitoes?’ in response to our show about wasps. Mosquitoes have undeniably played a role in killing millions of people. Malaria is the single biggest cause of death in human history. But Erica McAlister, senior curator of flies and fleas at the UK’s Natural History Museum, reveals that not all mosquitoes are interested in biting us for a blood meal, or are involved in transmitting disease. Only the females of about 10 species are the most problematic for humanity, from around 3600 true species of mosquito. Limited research indicates that many play important roles in ecosystems, for example as pollinators on land and as food sources during their larval stage in aquatic environments. Nonetheless, those roughly 10 species cause devastating disease. Kate Jones’ research at University College London examines the interface of ecology and human health. Malaria and dengue fever alone cause over 300 million infections annually. And there are many more diseases transmitted by mosquitoes: Zika, West Nile fever, Yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis – the list goes on, and with urbanisation and climate change, the picture is constantly changing. So what can be done? Should we try to annihilate the disease-carrying species? Insecticide use has historic and ongoing controversy, as the difficulties of needing to stop deaths in the short term risks longer term environmental damage, with unforeseen and possibly greater consequences for humanity. So Adam turns to new, genetic technology with zoologist Matthew Cobb. Can and should we modify mosquitoes to wipe themselves out, by wrecking local populations with sterile males, or use a technique called a gene drive to perpetuate debilitation through generations? Or could life find a way to evolve past our attempts at control, and cause greater problems? The doctors deliberate and try to decide a verdict on mosquitoes’ fate. Presenters: Hannah Fry & Adam Rutherford Producer: Jen Whyntie A BBC Audio Science Unit production for BBC Radio 4

This episode is a re-release from a past episode with Adam Lean. Adam is my bookkeeper and people are constantly asking me about bookkeeping and accounting, so I thought it best that I release this episode! Keep in mind, I sound like a baby podcaster and gave out the wrong email address (it redirects) but the content is still golden!  Adam Lean knows what he was meant to do. After graduating from college, he became an accountant, but quickly realized it was not his calling. He started an eCommerce store, and things started out great. But before long, something felt off. Sales were up, his business seemed to be growing, but his profits just weren’t telling the same story. Even as an accountant, he couldn’t figure out why. Like many business owners, Adam was wearing ALL the hats in his business and struggled to devote the necessary time/energy to take a closer look at what was working, what wasn’t working, and what he should be doing to boost the financial health of his company. So Adam set out to find out exactly what he should be focusing on. And from this quest, Adam started the CFO Project. Today, Adam and his team of “Chief Financial Officers” work with business owners who are struggling to make the right decisions to yield profit. Together, they plot out a roadmap to guide each client (and each client’s business) to become more profitable and have more cash flow, allowing those business owners to finally take control of their business and finances. They’re not like most business coaches, consultants, or gurus. They’re more like financial business coaches that focus on RESULTS. To Adam, results mean more profit & more cash flow for a business. https://thecfoproject.com/sbm/ https://serviceemperor.com @tershblissett on social media. 

This episode is a re-release from a past episode with Adam Lean. Adam is my bookkeeper and people are constantly asking me about bookkeeping and accounting, so I thought it best that I release this episode! Keep in mind, I sound like a baby podcaster and gave out the wrong email address (it redirects) but the content is still golden!  Adam Lean knows what he was meant to do. After graduating from college, he became an accountant, but quickly realized it was not his calling. He started an eCommerce store, and things started out great. But before long, something felt off. Sales were up, his business seemed to be growing, but his profits just weren’t telling the same story. Even as an accountant, he couldn’t figure out why. Like many business owners, Adam was wearing ALL the hats in his business and struggled to devote the necessary time/energy to take a closer look at what was working, what wasn’t working, and what he should be doing to boost the financial health of his company. So Adam set out to find out exactly what he should be focusing on. And from this quest, Adam started the CFO Project. Today, Adam and his team of “Chief Financial Officers” work with business owners who are struggling to make the right decisions to yield profit. Together, they plot out a roadmap to guide each client (and each client’s business) to become more profitable and have more cash flow, allowing those business owners to finally take control of their business and finances. They’re not like most business coaches, consultants, or gurus. They’re more like financial business coaches that focus on RESULTS. To Adam, results mean more profit & more cash flow for a business. https://thecfoproject.com/sbm/ https://serviceemperor.com @tershblissett on social media. 

Today's retelling comes from Genesis 2:21-3:24. Intro:  Ugh. How heartbreaking it must have been for God, though He knew that this moment would come from the very beginning. Every good gift comes down from the Father of heavenly lights (James 1:17), and He had bestowed the best He had upon Adam and Eve, the crowning glory of His creation. But what He wanted was a real relationship with them, in which they chose to obey Him—not because they had no alternative, but out of love and respect. They had to have a choice in order to do this. So God placed the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the “midst” of the garden—presumably, right in the middle. They would have passed by this tree more often than any other in the garden. The choice was always right there, in plain view. But when they were innocent, they did not even notice it. Why would they? Every need had already been met. They trusted God implicitly. Enter Satan, who would not be so called anywhere in the book of Genesis. Perhaps it was he who took the form of the serpent, or perhaps he would just inspire the serpent to deceive Eve. In his cunning, he overlooked every blessing, every ‘yes’ God had given Eve, and focused entirely on the one ‘no.’ It’s also interesting that he approached Eve instead of Adam. God had never told Eve anything about the tree directly—He had told Adam that it was forbidden, and Adam had relayed this to Eve. Her knowledge of what God had said about the tree was secondhand. Because of this, just like playing “telephone,” she got it just slightly wrong. She thought they had been forbidden even to touch the fruit of the tree. God never said this, which may have been significant. Perhaps when Eve touched the fruit and nothing happened, it convinced her that the rest was false also. Satan also convinced Eve to question God’s character. Temptation to sin always includes some element of this. If she had never wondered whether there was a blessing that God had withheld from her, she never would have eaten the fruit (2 Cor 11:3). Why was their nakedness what they noticed first after the fall? Andrew Wommack’s theory is that they were previously so dominated by their spiritual “sight” that they simply did not notice the physical. I don’t think this is entirely true, since everything else in the garden was physical—but it is true that they died spiritually as soon as they disobeyed God. It was not until after Jesus’ resurrection that spiritual rebirth became possible. The challenge now is to renew our minds so that we can see into the spirit, where we have every spiritual blessing available (Eph 1:3), rather than walking by sight (2 Cor 5:7). Immediately after the fall, Adam and Eve experienced fear for the first time (Gen 3:10). Fear does not come from God (2 Tim 1:7); it only comes when we do not understand and trust in God’s perfect love, which casts out fear (1 John 4:18). But if they had understood God’s perfect love, they never would have obeyed the serpent in the first place. Punishment did come, but it was not for punishment’s sake. The world was now corrupted, and it was God’s mercy that expelled them from the Garden so that they could not eat from the Tree of Life and live forever in that fallen state! God did not want that for them: to be always decaying but never dying, always separated from Him, always in their sin. He wanted us to have eternal life, but spiritually, not just physically. Once they became aware of their nakedness, they needed to cover it—which required death. They died spiritually the moment they fell, but physical death would come, for them, centuries later. To “cover” them until then, God had to kill an animal—a symbol of Christ’s ultimate atonement for all sin (Hebrews 9:22). (I chose a lion in this retelling because Christ is referred to as both the Lion of Judah and also the Lamb of God, but I figured a single lamb probably wouldn’t produce enough skin to cover both Adam and Eve unless God wove its wool into clothing, and the scripture doesn’t say He did that.) When God pronounced that the Seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head, this of course referred to Jesus. It’s interesting that part of Adam’s curse was that the ground would produce thorns, and Jesus wore a crown of thorns on the cross—a symbol of bearing the curse for us so that we could be redeemed from it (Gal 3:13). But Eve did not understand that the Savior would be many generations hence. When she gave birth to Cain, she said, “Behold, I have gotten a man, the Lord” (Gen 4:1, though some translations say, “I have gotten a man from the Lord.” The original Hebrew does not include the word “from”). She presumably thought this was the Messiah, come to redeem them already. Perhaps she hoped that through him, she and Adam would be able to return to Eden. Sadly, rather than becoming their redemption, Cain became the first murderer instead. When Christ comes the second time, in the New Jerusalem, the Tree of Life will again be freely available to the redeemed (Rev 2:7), and its leaves will be for the healing of the nations (Rev 22:2). Then, restored to our original perfection, eternal life—body, soul, and spirit—will be ours once more. Fictionalized Retelling:   I breathed in, and I was. The air filled every part of me with life. This was the first thing I knew. Then I opened my eyes. The Face I beheld was like light itself, though there was also light behind Him. I had no concept of anything until that moment, but that Face was the very definition of beauty. I gazed up at Him, rapturous. His eyes were like liquid love, bursting with color, their expression infinitely gentle. “Hello, my dear,” said my Creator. “Hello,” I murmured back in wonder, marveling at the sound of my own voice, at the feel of it vibrating in my throat. On instinct I reached for Him, but had not fully completed the action when I stopped, distracted by the wonder of my own limbs. I held them up before my face, wiggling my fingers and watching them obey me. My Creator chuckled, and the sound thrilled me with warmth. I shivered, every nerve humming with the sensation. “We are Elohim,” the Creator told me. “You may call me God.” “God,” I whispered, reaching again for His face. He did not repulse me, but let me caress Him, leaning in to my palm and covering it with His own. He grinned down at me, and I reflexively grinned back. “Come. There is someone I want you to meet,” God said. He set me on my feet, and I marveled at the feeling of the spongy, dewy ground beneath my feet. As soon as I noticed the sensations, the words for them came to me. I marveled at that too: that I knew so many things I had never learned. I looked up at God, and though before I had thought of Him as infinitely larger than I was, I found that he was only about a head taller. He held my hand in his. He shone like the orb overhead that bathed us all in its light. I turned my attention to it next, and then to all it illuminated. There was a canopy of green above us, the foliage of thick trees. I identified the sounds around us as flowing water and chirping birds. I turned to see the cheerful river behind us. Flowers of every color, shape, and size bloomed all around us, and living creatures hummed all around them: hummingbirds, butterflies, bees. Other creatures covered in fur or feathers roamed throughout the land too, each of them unique and lovely in its own way. “What is this place?” I asked in wonder. “Do you like it?” He asked, but the delight in his question made it clear He knew my answer already. “Oh, yes!” “I have called it Eden. I made it for you, Adam.” I turned back, excited to hear my own name. “Am I called Adam, then?” “You were taken from Adam, your husband. I have given him the task of naming all My other creatures, so I will give him that privilege with you as well. Until then, you too are Adam.” God gestured before us, under a palm tree. “This is your Adam. He is called a man.” A new sensation stirred in me as I beheld the creature God indicated. The man had flesh instead of fur or feathers, like I did. My eyes traced the curve of his face. His strong jaw beneath his dark beard. My mouth fell open in awe. Like all the animals, he too was beautiful, but in a completely new way. His kind of beauty allured me in a way that none of the other animals had done. As I took all of this in, he sat up, as if waking from a deep sleep. Then he saw me. His expression went slack, and I watched, gratified, as he drank me in as I had him. Slowly, he rose to his feet and took tentative steps toward me. Beside us, God beamed, delighting in our admiration of each other as much as we were. He said, “Adam, meet your helper. I have fashioned her from one of your ribs. I trust you prefer to have it back in this form.” Adam’s eyes filled with tears, as he turned to God, unable to speak, the gratitude obvious in his face. Then he looked back at me, and spoke. I could tell, even though I had never heard him speak before, that his voice was hoarse with emotion. “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.” When he got close enough, he reached for my face, in the same way that I had originally reached for God’s. I copied the motion, laying my hand on top of his when he touched my cheek. “I will call her Eve, because she will be the mother of all the living.” “Eve,” I repeated, trying the sound of my own name on my tongue. I liked it. I smiled at Adam and he smiled back at me. There was nothing more to say.  “I will leave you two to get acquainted,” God murmured, and took His leave. For a second the thought that He was gone alarmed me, but then Adam slid his hand from my cheek to my hand, entwining his fingers with mine. When I turned back to him, the expression on his face was so full of tenderness that I felt answering tears prick in my eyes. “You… are… exquisite,” Adam whispered to me. The words filled me up almost the way that first breath had done. I had not known I wanted to be exquisite until my husband said it—but suddenly, it was all I wanted. “Aren’t you going to show me around?” I teased, though I was very pleased that he could not seem to look away from me. “I will try, but I cannot promise I will be able to walk without tripping over my own feet,” he replied in the same tone. “I’ll be too busy looking at you.” I giggled, marveling at that instinct too and delighting at the feel of it. Somehow, I knew what laughter was. Adam led me through the garden by the hand, calling the animals to him by name and then showing them to me. I reached out to caress them all, from the elephant to the lion to the mouse, and they nuzzled me affectionately in return. I gestured to the lion to open his mouth for me, marveling at how sharp his teeth were. He let me poke them with the tip of my finger, patiently waiting for me to extract my hand before he went about his business. I watched as he used those sharp claws to dig up root vegetables hidden in the earth, so hard that I would not have considered them food. But the lion’s incisors tore into the vegetables with no trouble at all. My own stomach growled as I watched the lion eat. Adam explained, “You are hungry. Here.” He plucked a bunch of berries from a tree, handing them to me. Then from another, he plucked something very hard and brown. I frowned at it, unsure how it might turn out to be food like the berries, until Adam showed me how to remove the outer shell to reveal the soft meat inside. Nuts, he called them. When I tasted them both, my face lit up wth delight as the flavors exploded on my tongue: tart and sweet and savory, all at once. “What about that one?” I pointed at a tree that bore round fruit that looked like burnished gold. “You want one of those?” Adam grinned, trotting over to the tree and plucking two of the golden fruit. He returned and handed me one, taking a bite out of the other himself. “I think this one is my favorite too. God called it the Tree of Life.” “So many different kinds of food!” I exclaimed, looking around the garden to see if I could distinguish all the fruits around me from the flowers. “God gave us all of the green herbs and fruits with seeds for food,” Adam explained, “except for the one in the middle, the one that makes those sort of oddly shaped reddish brown fruits, see it?” He pointed at the tree next to the Tree of Life, and I nodded. “Why not that one?” I asked. “He said it is called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and He said that we shall not eat it, for the day that we eat of it, we shall surely die.” For the briefest second, I felt an ominous shadow pass over my heart at these words. Die? What did die mean? But then it was gone. I shrugged. We had plenty of other trees to choose from. I saw no reason to bother about the one forbidden tree. The day began to wane and the light changed from white to golden before we had finished our tour of Eden. I pointed up at the sky with a slight questioning frown, though I wasn’t concerned so much as confused. “It is called sunset,” Adam explained. “Day and night lasts a total of twenty-four hours. It’s not precisely twelve and twelve hours of day and night, but close. God says the ratio between the two will change with the seasons.” “What are seasons?” I asked, wide-eyed. Adam shook his head. “I don’t exactly know, I haven’t seen them yet. But God says it’s when weather changes, and the sun and celestial bodies change their positions throughout the year.” I thought about how I knew that twelve and twelve made twenty-four. This too delighted me. But I forgot all about addition when I watched as the colors changed across the sky, from golden light to pinks and golds and purples. I gasped, clapping with delight. “God!” I called out to Him, suspecting He was not far away. “Good show!” He emerged from the trees in the cool of the day, strolling unhurried, and beamed at us. “Thank you, my dear,” He said, sitting down on the marshy grass beside us. We sat too, and I leaned into his gleaming white robe, nestling my head on one of His shoulders. God stroked my long dark hair away from my face. I sighed with contentment. Adam sat down on God’s other side, interlocking elbows and also leaning into Him. The three of us watched as the sun descended below the horizon, and then suddenly the darkness was not just darkness. “What are those?” I exclaimed in wonder, pointing up at the tiny pinpricks of light in the dark sky. “And that?” I pointed at the large glowing orb spangled with shadows. “The moon and the stars,” God explained. “The moon is to govern the night just as the sun governs the day. Stars are just like the sun, but much, much further away in outer space.” “What is outer space?” I asked, wide-eyed. “It is where the earth is hung, and there are other planets also, though not exactly like earth. Earth is very special,” He told me with a tender smile, touching the tip of my nose affectionately. Satisfied, I nestled back against Him, yawning. “Why do I feel so tired?” “Because it is time for you to sleep,” God whispered, lowering me down to the spongy ground beside my husband, who automatically wrapped an arm around me. “It restores your energy so that you will be fresh again tomorrow morning…” I did not hear the last of God’s words before I drifted off. The first rays of the sun filtered through my eyelids the following morning. They fluttered open and I sat up, mouth agape in wonder yet again as the same colors from sunset danced across the sky at sunrise as well. I glanced at Adam, who somehow managed to continue his slumber despite the light. A little family of squirrels slept on the ground near us, and beside me, a bear stretched its sharp claws, yawned, and took a swipe at the fruit on a nearby tree. I skipped over to him and stroked his fur in good morning. But then I jumped back—not from the bear, but from something living in the branches of the tree beside us that I had not seen before. It looked like one of the branches itself, but it seemed to slither. My eyes scanned until I found first its tiny legs, and then its face. The eyes sharpened upon me, and it opened its mouth. “Good morning, Eve,” it hissed. I had not heard any of the other animals in the garden speak besides Adam, myself, and God. But everything was new to me, so I thought nothing of it. “Good morning, serpent,” I greeted it, remembering the name Adam had given the creature. I was just reaching for the same fruit the bear had breakfasted on, when the serpent said, “You don’t want to eat from this tree. The fruit is very bitter.” “Oh,” I hesitated. But then I shrugged, and turned to a vine nearby, bearing clusters of juicy-looking red grapes. But the serpent’s words stopped me again. “You know which fruit tastes more delicious than all the others?” I looked at him, curious, and he gestured with his head toward the center of the garden. “That one.” “The tree of life?” I asked, delighted. “Yes, Adam and I sampled it yesterday, and it was my favorite so far!” “No, not that one, the one beside it,” the serpent hissed. “The one with the reddish brown fruit.” I frowned. “The one from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?” The serpent nodded, and I said, “But… Adam said God forbade that one.” “Is that right?” the serpent hissed, slithering its head closer to me. “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?’” I frowned, trying to puzzle out the meaning of this phrase. The negatives in it confused me. When I finally worked out its meaning, I said uncertainly, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’” I thought that was what Adam had told me. It had been something like that, anyway. “Ah,” hissed the serpent, his fork-like tongue flicking out toward me as he spoke. “You shall not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” I blinked at the serpent, then turned to look at the tree. I tried to process the serpent’s words. He was saying… God… lied to us? That He was withholding a blessing from us out of… jealousy? The thoughts felt clunky and unfamiliar. They made no sense. God was perfection. Our only experience of Him was that He was good and kind and wonderful. He loved us. I had paid almost no attention to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil before. Yet now that the serpent pointed it out to me, I noticed that the fruit, strange looking though it was, did look enticing. And the serpent said—even God had said—that the tree would make us wise, as God Himself was wise. And after all, if God had not wanted us to eat of it, why did he put that particular tree in the midst of the garden, I reasoned? I took a hesitant step toward the tree, and then another and another until I stood right in front of it. I reached out and touched one of the reddish brown fruits, cringing for half a second—but nothing happened. It was just like touching any of the other fruits in the garden. I laughed, exultant, and plucked the fruit from the branch, all hesitation now forgotten. “What are you doing, Eve?” I turned to see Adam standing beside me, a note of alarm in his voice. A new emotion of defiance rose up on the inside of me. I had just proven that what Adam told me God said about the tree had been false, hadn’t I? I had touched it and had not died! I plucked a second fruit from the tree and tossed it to Adam. Then, before he could stop me, I opened my mouth and took a bite. “Eve, no—!” Adam shouted, reaching out as if to dash the fruit from my hand—but it was too late. I chewed, savoring the delicious burst of sweetness across my tongue. For a brief second, I relished the thought that the serpent was right—the fruit was indeed the best I had yet tasted. But just as quickly, a bitter flavor overtook the sweetness. I made a face, dropping the remainder of the fruit to the ground and staring at it. I had a sudden urge to wash away the taste. “You shall die,” Adam croaked. His expression cut me to the heart. Suddenly I felt another new emotion come over me: horror. What had I done? “It was only one bite,” I whispered back. Suddenly the wind whipped around my body, and I looked down. A hot wave of shame passed over me as I realized—I was naked! I dropped to a crouch to cover myself, a sudden impulse from an instinct that I had not had before. How had I not noticed? How had Adam not noticed? He was naked too, yet he still stood unashamed, displaying himself before me and all of the creatures in view. We had been naked even before God Himself! Adam’s focus was not on his body, though; it was on the fruit I had given him. “If you must die, then I must die with you,” he murmured, raising sorrowful eyes to me. “I do not want to live without you.” Then he opened his mouth, and despite the look of disgust, also took a bite. He chewed and swallowed, then dropped the remains of the fruit on the ground as I had done. He stared at it with sudden revulsion. Then he looked down at his body, and I saw his cheeks color as he realized what I had realized a second before. He moved both hands to cover his nudity. “How did we not know?” he moaned. “Oh! How shameful!” “All the animals have fur or feathers, but we—” I agreed, wincing. “What are we to do? We must at least cover ourselves somehow before God returns…” Adam shrugged, biting his lip. He gestured with his chin to the leaves of the tree from which we had just eaten, unwilling to move his hands away from his genitals. “I’ll try to sew together some of the leaves,” he said, “but I’ll need to use my hands to do it, so you have to promise not to look.” “You have to promise not to look at me, either!” I declared. Adam gave me a sad smile. “But you are so beautiful.” I narrowed my eyes at him, not in the mood. He sighed. “All right, I promise. Turn around.” I obeyed, but since we had promised not to look at each other anyway, I decided I might as well make myself useful, and approached the tree where I had seen the serpent. Both serpent and bear were gone now, so I began to pluck leaves from that tree, wondering how Adam intended to weave them into clothing. I collected a pile of leaves, and then stripped some of them to just the stalk that ran down the center of the leaves, thinking that would somehow serve as thread. I started to knot some of them together, and then poked holes in the remaining leafy part of the other leaves, so as to thread the knotted leaf stem through them. It was slow work, and many of the leaves tore before I could connect enough of them to do any good. I finally managed to make myself a little apron to at least cover my genitals, but it was a poor covering indeed, and hid very little. I realized I'd have to connect many more leaves to cover my breasts, and the sun was already past peak in the sky. I decided instead to try to find something sticky, so that they could adhere directly to my body. I tried clay, but that lasted all of two seconds. Then instead I used a bit of sap from a tree. This worked better, but it meant everything else I touched adhered to my hands— “Eve!” Adam hissed, and I perked up my ears, at once understanding what he meant. We both heard the sound of footsteps, and knew they belonged to God. My poor leaf apron fluttered to the ground as I fled, hiding with Adam among the underbrush. The branches poked at us, but I hardly noticed, my heart pounding so hard with fear that we would be seen. Once in the bushes, I tried to wipe the remaining sap off of my hands on its leaves, but found that it would not go. “Stop it, He’ll hear you!” Adam hissed, stilling my fidgeting hands. Just then, we saw God enter the clearing from between the branches of our hiding place. I suddenly envied Him His gleaming white robe. When His face turned so that we could see it from our hiding place, I saw His puzzled, slightly concerned expression. “Adam! Where are you?” God called out. I looked at Adam, shaking my head sharply, but I saw that he intended to reply. He opened his mouth and called back, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and hid myself.” Now God turned and looked straight at the bush where we hid. Adam stood up only so high as to expose his chest, still kneeling to conceal the rest of him. God’s expression grew stern. “Who told you that you were naked?” He demanded. “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?” Adam trembled, and then pointed at me, still fully crouched beside him. “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.” My mouth fell open, indignant. But then I realized that I could not truly protest. His statement was quite true. God turned to me. “What is this you have done?” He demanded. It took me a moment to find my tongue. When I did, I blurted, “The serpent deceived me! And I ate.” God waved His hand, and the serpent appeared from nowhere on the ground between Him and us. The sky grew dark, and God said in a terrible voice to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you shall go—” and as He pronounced this, the serpent’s legs dissolved into nothingness, until he was all tail, “and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” Even as God spoke it, I saw its fulfillment in my mind’s eye. My Seed would be my son. He would conquer the serpent. He would redeem Adam and me from what we had done. He would be the Lord Himself… No sooner had God finished speaking, though, He turned to me. I was compelled to look at His face, and I saw at once mingled anger and heartbreak. It made me want to weep. “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” I bowed my head, accepting God’s punishment. Since I got us into this mess, it was only fair that I should labor and travail to bring forth the Savior who would get us out of it. And Adam was right—it was my choice to disobey God, not his—at least not originally. If I had listened to my husband, none of this would have happened. Then God turned to Adam, who trembled under God’s gaze. “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” Adam buried his face in his hands and wept. God’s expression sank into sorrow as well, all His anger now spent. “Lion,” he called out, and summoned the creature I had met the morning before. The great cat bounded toward the Lord, frolicking around Him playfully and swishing its tail this way and that. The Lord caressed its mane tenderly. Then, with one swift jerk, a horrible crack sounded. I screamed, and the lion slumped, lifeless. I could not stop screaming, even though Adam hushed me as best he could. Even God wept openly now. “The wages of sin is death,” He said to us, a terrible grief in His voice as He removed the lion’s skin and knit it together into tunics to clothe us. When He had finished, he approached the bush where we both shied away from Him, and deposited both tunics upon the top of the bush, turning away from us. Adam shimmied into his first, standing up fully for the first time once he was covered. Then I did the same, standing beside him. We heard Elohim say to Himself, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever—” He turned back to face us, tears still flowing freely. “You must leave the garden now,” He said, “and go out into the wilderness to make your way as best you can. To live forever in your current state would be a fate far worse than death.” Fresh tears gushed on to my cheeks at this word. “But—you said my Seed would crush the head of the serpent!” I blubbered, hardly able to make myself understood. “He will redeem us, surely?” “Yes, daughter, He will,” God assured me, “but not for what to you will seem a very long time.” So Adam took my hand, and led me through our lush home for the last time. Beyond it lay nothing but desert. We would survive, of course—I must bring forth a man, so we must survive somehow. Death, it turned out, was not immediate. And yet, leaving the garden and leaving the Lord God behind us was a kind of death. For the lion, death had certainly been immediate, I thought with a pang of sorrow. And the poor lion had done nothing wrong. It died for our sin, to cover our nakedness. I turned around to look back at the garden one last time. A ring of creatures that looked like the Lord in luminescence stood before the tree with the golden fruit, bearing swords that shone like the sun. Then I turned away again, looking out into the wilderness that was to be our new home. “But we will still return one day,” I whispered to Adam as we walked out into the desert. “Right?” “One day,” he whispered back, and squeezed my hand.

In this super quick micro 9 minute episode, Mark asks what movies will be screening in obscene household. So Adam reaches in to the VHS vault for some inspiration.

Adam Ferguson and Ben Cooper-Woolley join Rik Brown for a chat about all things 2020. Both Adam and Ben reside in Sydney shaping a slightly different check in. Covid 19 has impacted the whole of Australia - but Victoria has been most severely impacted. So Adam and Ben have been more active with work during 2020. For those of you experiencing the various stages of Start Up or if you are interested in this world - this is the perfect mini conversation for you. Adam is a regular on Leadership of Fools. With Ben they are the founders of sitehive.co and you will soon discover how Shark Tank and Love Island have shaped their journey. Enjoy. Make sure you check us out at thepeoplespot.com

                                             THE STORY OF ADAM AND EVE The first man's name was Adam and his wife he called Eve. They lived in a beautiful Garden away in the East Country which was called Eden, filled with beautiful trees and flowers of all kinds. But they did not live in Eden long for they did not obey God's command, but ate the fruit of a tree which had been forbidden them. They were driven forth by an angel and had to give up their beautiful home. So Adam and his wife went out into the world to live and to work. For a time they were all alone, but after a while God gave them a little child of their own, the first baby that ever came into the world. Eve named him Cain; and after a time another baby came, whom she named Abel. When the two boys grew up, they worked, as their father worked before them. Cain, the older brother, chose to work in the fields, and to raise grain and fruits. Abel, the younger brother, had a flock of sheep and became a shepherd. While Adam and Eve were living in the Garden of Eden, they could talk with God and hear God's voice speaking to them. But now that they were out in the world, they could no longer talk with God freely, as before. So when they came to God, they built an altar of stones heaped up, and upon it, they laid something as a gift to God, and burned it, to show that it was not their own, but was given to God, whom they could not see. Then before the altar they made their prayer to God, and asked God to forgive their sins, all that they had done was wrong; and prayed God to bless them and do good to them. Each of these brothers, Cain and Abel, offered upon the altar to God his own gift. Cain brought the fruits and the grain which he had grown; and Abel brought a sheep from his flock, and killed it and burned it upon the altar. For some reason God was pleased with Abel and his offering, but was not pleased with Cain and his offering. Perhaps God wished Cain to offer something that had life, as Abel offered; perhaps Cain's heart was not right when he came before God. And God showed that He was not pleased with Cain; and Cain, instead of being sorry for his sin, and asking God to forgive him, was very angry with God, and angry also toward his brother Abel. When they were out in the field together Cain struck his brother Abel and killed him. So the first baby in the world grew up to be the murderer of his own brother. And the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel, your brother?” And Cain answered, “I do not know; why should I take care of my brother?” Then the Lord said to Cain, “What is this that you have done? Your brother's blood is like a voice crying to me from the ground. Do you see how the ground has opened, like a mouth, to drink your brother's blood? As long as you live, you shall be under God's curse for the murder of your brother. You shall wander over the earth, and shall never find a home, because you have done this wicked deed.” And Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. Thou hast driven me out from among men; and thou hast hid thy face from me. If any man finds me he will kill me, because I shall be alone, and no one will be my friend.” And God said to Cain, “If any one harms Cain, he shall be punished for it.” And the Lord God placed a mark on Cain, so that whoever met him should know him and should know also that God had forbidden any man to harm him. Then Cain and his wife went away from Adam's home to live in a place by themselves, and there they had children. And Cain's family built a city in that land; and Cain named the city after his first child, whom he had called Enoch.

The Adam Sank Show books our first ever overseas guest! And then fails spectacularly at actually connecting with him via telephone. (Sorry, Finn.) So Adam, JayBee and guest co-host Tarik Daniels fill time with sordid sex tales. Plus, the Falwell Pool Boy scandal explodes! Splish splash, bish. Visit www.adamsank.com 

Adam Zeitsiff is the CEO of Gold’s Gym. Zeitsiff has faced many challenges during the COVID, which shaped his belief that he may not solve the virus, but he can help to solve the problems within the fitness industry and ensure that it remains alive and thriving.  What kind of challenges have you faced? Give me an example of a challenge you faced over the last 60-90 days that came up where you had to overcome in a creative way? Zeitsiff says that during the shutdown, they faced the problem of supporting their team members, supporting their members and giving through unique content that members could consume from home.  Focusing on restructuring that they were going through, in order to ensure their business would be here 55 years from now.  They had to get really creative in focusing on their future and not getting distracted and keep the focus on bettering the business.  A schedule was built of things that Gold’s Gym had to accomplish, and pulling that through the entire shutdown in order to create a brand that will be here for a long time. Gold Gym tried their best focusing on the positives and hyped up their creativity with how they delivered their services.  What is the difference between just closing down and restructuring? What are the guidelines you have to work with? What does that mean for the company? The differences are that people fall for it due to the fact that they believe they have to protect themselves because they feel as if they can no longer be a concern within the company.  You may have a business that can - and will - survive, it is just important to restructure, remove liabilities and clean up your balance sheet.  The pandemic was difficult on the Fitness industry - and the food industry - we had no way to do any sort of deliveries or get any revenue in.  Gold Gym had to solve these liabilities and had to clean up their balance sheets with some of the clubs they operated.  Gold Gym restructured, removed their liabilities, and cleaned up their balance sheets in order to pull through the pandemic and be in a good position to expand internationally.   Beyond the hybrid model, what are you seeing now? Maybe from a technological perspective, or an entirely new model, what do you think is going to come out of it?  Zeitsiff says since the last time they spoke, they are even stronger than they were. Gold Gym has taken tremendous strides and has quite a few things to announce.  Hybridization is key to creating amazing experiences in the gym. If you are incapable of getting digital solutions that allow individuals to work out when not in a gym, it coincides with the brand's persona.  Zeitsiff believes digitizing gyms will be taken to the next level.  There will be people who will personalize the experience more than others, and engage members.  How do you increase experience? I guess that is Gold’s Amp. Is that the project or the answer you guys are working on to this digital fitness solution?  Gold’s Amp has been Gold Gyms foundation to digital fitness since their launch in 2017.  There are a lot of plans in order to develop features, functionality, content, programming and experience.  Who are the people that may never come back to a gym? How is Gold’s Gym trying to get in touch with these people and communicate with them?  Those who do not return may not have been so committed, to begin with, or who are not comfortable being in public spaced.  Gold’s Gym is reaching out to people, and informing them that they are taking necessary precautions to keep things clean.  One can only control what they can control. You can only give them proof that their health is taken into consideration, and that gyms are a safe space to be in.  If you were going to talk to an independent health club owner or someone who owns a couple of facilities, are there any blind spots or anything that you think a lot of those leaders within the health club industry are missing?  It is important to note that gyms are on the hot seat right now, the industry is under the microscope. It is important to show members you are constantly cleaning.  The fitness industry should not be afraid to sell and think about what to sell, and how to sell. It is important to realize people are cautious.  What other leaders in the industry as far as technology are you keeping an eye on? Any companies or names that you would like to highlight? Taking a look at the big guys, and how they innovate and react quickly is the forefront of our businesses.  First and foremost, the big guys need help to innovate and lead. They need their creations integrated within businesses.  Any type of technology that helps with engagement within the fitness industry is vital and is more important now than ever.  What are some of the bigger news outlets that you are on? Zeitsiff was on CNN, NBC Nightly News, and he enjoys the chances to represent Gold’s Gym.  With that level of exposure, how has your life changed over the last 90 days? Zeitsiffs wife keeps him humble, and it has helped him realize that they have a platform and allows him to help the industry.  Zeitsiff has been blessed to be running these brands, and this industry is very much needed in these difficult times. Exercise is medicine.    So Adam, anything else you’d like the fitness industry to hear?  Zeitsiff says that it is important for the fitness industry to continue with what they are doing, and keep helping people with their daily lives.  Resources Connect with Adam on LnikedIn Visit Gold’s Gym Website

The ASS is once again left guest-less, and this time the culprit is neither a lesbian nor a straight man. THE SHAME! So Adam and Ryan fill time with discussion of Sam Smith's love of poppers and questionable anal hygiene, a porn star's breaking quarantine and a new trend involving shampoo bottles and erect penises. This episode may be a little short, but nothing else is, honey.

In our recent two-part series focussing on The New Hollywood movement, regular contributor Film Historian Darrell Buxton boldly claimed that Roger Corman was the most important American film maker in post-war cinema. So Adam decided to challenge Darrell to back up his argument in a wide-ranging conversation which focuses on Corman's long career as a producer and director. Also covered is his role as a talent spotter and an influential cheerleader for some of the biggest names in modern cinema. With thanks to Steve Woodward at The Podcasting Editor for behind-the-scenes assistance. Check out the Cine-Lit website for additional content and further reading - https://cinelitpodcast.wordpress.com/ Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We’ve hit that part of quarantine times when the tap of new television has begun to sputter and spit out oily brown stuff. So Adam and Aidan, weary and thirsty, turn their attention to older shows. Adam is rewatching Person of Interest (instead of Fringe, which turned out to be too focused on face melting for Adam’s enjoyment). Aidan has already turned back to The Magicians. Adam even went back to the Bad Boys trilogy, and has more to say about it than you imagine. Enjoy below, or listen to us on your favourite podcaster.

Genesis 2 New King James Version (NKJV) The Garden of Eden 2 Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. 2 And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. 4 This is the [a]history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, 5 before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; 6 but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. 7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. Life in God’s Garden 8 The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. 9 And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 10 Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four riverheads. 11 The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one which skirts the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 And the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and the onyx stone are there. 13 The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one which goes around the whole land of Cush. 14 The name of the third river is Hiddekel;[b] it is the one which goes toward the east of [c]Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates. 15 Then the Lord God took [d]the man and put him in the garden of Eden to [e]tend and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you[f] shall surely die.” 18 And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” 19 Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to [g]Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him. 21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. 22 Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He [h]made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. 23 And Adam said: “This is now bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called [i]Woman, Because she was taken out of [j]Man.” 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be[k] joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Our work was done. We'd said all we needed to say. We apparated from this world, much like monks who retreat to a mountaintop hovel. Only for us, we apparated via Greyhound and hoveled in an abandoned Bauxite mine outside Eufaula, Alabama. Everything was going great. We each had our own little cavernlet in which to do our alonetime ablutions and adult irrigations, and every evening we gathered by the pile of old cigarettes to tell stories and scratch each others' bug bites. We chopped wood, and we carried water. We made forts. And, yes, somtimes, we cried. Then, one night, we heard a cricket. Coming from... somewhere? Its chirp drove us crazy through those long 'Bama nights. Merlin suggested we get a lizard to kill the cricket. The plan worked perfectly. But that night we noticed the lizard looking down at us from its perch, really giving us the stink eye. Like it thought it was better than us. So Adam bought us a snake to take care of the lizard. And, then, somehow, there was a filthy Persian cat to take care of the snake. And so forth. So, long story short: our cave is now occupied by a family of endangered Alabama Beach Mice (Peromyscus polionotus ammobates). And, we have returned to California. Also, we are out of money.

Our work was done. We'd said all we needed to say. We apparated from this world, much like monks who retreat to a mountaintop hovel. Only for us, we apparated via Greyhound and hoveled in an abandoned Bauxite mine outside Eufaula, Alabama. Everything was going great. We each had our own little cavernlet in which to do our alonetime ablutions and adult irrigations, and every evening we gathered by the pile of old cigarettes to tell stories and scratch each others' bug bites. We chopped wood, and we carried water. We made forts. And, yes, somtimes, we cried. Then, one night, we heard a cricket. Coming from... somewhere? Its chirp drove us crazy through those long 'Bama nights. Merlin suggested we get a lizard to kill the cricket. The plan worked perfectly. But that night we noticed the lizard looking down at us from its perch, really giving us the stink eye. Like it thought it was better than us. So Adam bought us a snake to take care of the lizard. And, then, somehow, there was a filthy Persian cat to take care of the snake. And so forth. So, long story short: our cave is now occupied by a family of endangered Alabama Beach Mice (Peromyscus polionotus ammobates). And, we have returned to California. Also, we are out of money.

Jack just got a job at the same call center as his brother, Adam. So Adam wants us to have a little fun with him!

Adam Pally watched his dad put his own show business ambitions aside while he personally washed out of a high school band and quit the basketball team. So Adam was used to the idea of things not going the way they were planned. But it was when he joined the school AV club that he found his comedy voice and got in on the early wave of the UCB in New York. Adam tells Marc how taking acting classes prepared him to be comfortable with embarrassment, which helped on shows like Happy Endings. He also explains what he learned from working with Mindy Kaling on The Mindy Project, what he loves about his new show Indebted, and how the sudden loss of his mom still hangs over everything he does. This episode is sponsored by Zoro.com.

Adam Burke ("Wait Wait Don't Tell Me") was in town from Chicago. He loves old Hollywood. So Adam and Brido discuss old movies, classic actors, Adam also explains Brexit, and a whole lot more. He's Australian, kind of. He's Northern Irish, kind of. He's British, kind of. He's American. But mainly... he's a hunk. Listen. 

Create Facebook video ads that actually work with Adam Sand  The ability of Facebook video ads to find people while they're thinking about roofing before they're actually Googling roofers is incredibly powerful. I learned how the Facebook ad platform works, how to measure and test your different ideas, and I learned that everything at all times is always a test. To sell your service or product with Facebook video ads there is a product script, a process script, a people script, there's the thought reversal script, the caught doing it right script and the giving pledge script. Now they're calling it "through play", but essentially, can you get someone to stop and listen to you for 15 seconds? _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ CREATE FACEBOOK VIDEO ADS THAT ACTUALLY WORK [just click to tweet] CREATE FACEBOOK VIDEO ADS THAT ACTUALLY WORK The ability of Facebook to find people while they're thinking about your product or service before they're actually Googling it is incredibly powerful. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Doug Morneau: Well, welcome back listeners to another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. Today's podcast is like every other podcast, it's about marketing, but it's about an industry that we haven't talked about before. So, if you're interested in having your sales reps have a closing rate of 60%, or if you could see yourself investing $20,000 in Facebook ads and generating $750 or $800,000 in sales, I think you're really going to like what my guest has to say today. One of the things I want you to listen for later in the episode is what he calls "stop the thumb" with regards to your Facebook ads. Doug Morneau: So, my guest is Adam Sand. He has the odd combination of being a tech nerd as well as a high-performance salesperson. He believes that organizational discipline combined with the entrepreneurial spirit is the great alchemy for performance. He and his company use video marketing and infographics to pre-sell roofing, and once the industry figured out what they were doing, he became a hot topic and an influencer in that space. So Adam's going to share with you some of the strategies they use in Facebook, as Facebook videos and ads, and how they build their sales funnel out in an industry where Facebook has restricted their ability to target homeowners. So, I'd like to welcome Adam Sand to the Real Marketing Real Fast Podcast today. Hey Adam, welcome to the Real Marketing Real Fast Podcast today. Adam Sand: Hey, thanks so much. I appreciate the invite. You have a really good show, so I'm excited to be here. Doug Morneau: Hey, thanks so much. I had a chance to do a deep dive into your media, your social media, what you're doing and what you're producing for content. I know that's one of the things we're going to discuss and to say that I'm really impressed with the amount of detail and the information that you share that's educational in your content that can really help people to make decisions and move forward. Adam Sand: Thanks. I always say teach first, sell second. That's my big message for anybody that's trying to achieve anything, especially when they're marketing their construction companies. Doug Morneau: Well, I heard Frank Kern say once, he said, "What if we actually help somebody achieve the goal that we're promising in our advertising? So what if we can actually help them in the ad to do something opposed to just telling them to click here?" Adam Sand: Yeah, that's actually really smart. I wish I'd heard that before, but thank you for sharing that. Doug Morneau: Well, you've figured it out. So yeah, I guess we shouldn't talk hockey, because we're both Canadians of neighboring provinces and- Adam Sand: I'll go on all day. Doug Morneau: That's right. So onto the important stuff. So do you want to share a little bit of the background, how you got into this area where you're creating really compelling content and then hel...

Can you ask for what you want? The crew poses that question to each other. Andrea Martin needed a ride home. So Adam picked her up and the two discussed SCTV, my Big Fat Greek Wedding and the title Steve Martin suggested for her book. Can you take a compliment? This question is discussed after the interview. Please consider supporting the good people who support us. Thanks for all the love! https://cruzintowellness.com/contact-us http://www.betinispirits.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Has your pastor preached a sermon on Facebook settings or surveillance cameras? Mine hasn’t. Does the Bible really have anything to say about digital privacy? And—is Alexa actually listening to us in my kitchen? Chris wrote the cover story for Christianity Today on a Christian view of digital privacy. He started out by going to parties and asking “When was a time your privacy was violated?” So Adam interviews Chris about what he found out including: What is the “intimacy paradox”? Are you a “city, suburbs, or country” person when it comes to your reaction? Links Cover Story Christianity Today Magazine September 2019 ”Fixing our Privacy Settings: Why Christians should worry less about protecting their information and think more about giving it away” by Chris Ridgeway Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life by Helen Nissenbaum “Comfortable with friends sharing your picture on Facebook? - Effects of closeness and ownership on picture sharing preference” by Auk Kim and Gahgene Gweon, in Computers in Human Behavior, 2016.

In 2016, Red Wing Downtown Main Street hosted a Retail Challenge to bring one retail store to downtown. The competition was so successful that it filled four storefronts! Learn about how we did it, and how you can replicate it in your town. To download the pdf of all the materials Red Wing used to host the challenge, CLICK HERE. To View this Podcast with the presentation slides, go to our YouTube page HERE: https://youtu.be/d47sEl8cWN8 To learn more about Red Wing Downtown Main Street: http://downtownredwing.org/ Intro and Outro Music by Sam Tsui and Casey Breves GUEST INFORMATION Name: Megan Tsui Organization: Red Wing Downtown Main Street, Red Wing, MN Title: Executive Director Email: director@downtownredwing.org Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DowntownRedWing/ Instagram: https://instagram.com/downtownredwing Megan Tsui has been the Executive Director of Red Wing Downtown Main Street since 2016. She loves working with the local businesses and being their advocate. She recently completed the “Historic Real Estate Financing’ Course offered through National Main Street and the National Development Center. She hopes to use that training to help bring new development to Red Wing’s second and third stories. She lives in Red Wing in an 1875 Italianate Victorian with her husband Kent and their cats and dogs. TRANSCRIPT Megan: Hey, everybody! It's Megan Tsui. I'm super excited to be here today and I'm going to be the guest. You lucky ducks. I'm going to talk about a contest that Red Wing did in 2016 to fill vacant storefronts. We called it a retail challenge and it was really successful and really fun. And I'm going to go over some of the details. I'm doing this podcast a little differently today. If you're listening right now on a podcast, all you hear is audio, but I also have slides and I'll put that up on YouTube so you can actually go to YouTube and watch the whole presentation. If you'd like to, it's meetmedowntownpodcast.com and then search on YouTube and it should pop right up. I'll also link to it off my website, meetmedowntownpodcast.com website. And you'll be able to find it there as well. So, like I said, I have slides and I'm doing the audio and so sometimes I might forget that you can't see what I'm talking about so I apologize in advance. Otherwise, I also want to encourage you to go to the website because I'm going to have a downloadable packet for you of how you can do this in your town. And it has all of the information that we used to make this happen in Red Wing. And you can download it there. It's a PDF that has everything from our criteria, the plan, what we gave away, the marketing, everything. So, it's pretty much a plug and play kind of a download. So I'd encourage you to go to the meetmedowntownpodcast.com and then click on the latest podcast, which right now would be the, How to Fill Vacant Stores Using a Retail Challenge Contest. And you can click and download that kit there and get started on your own, and you don't have to reinvent the wheel, which is something I do not like to do. So let's get started. And again let me remind you, if I refer to something on the slide, I'm sorry, I forgot that not everybody can see. All right, let me tell you a little bit about my town. We're situated along the Mississippi River and it's this beautiful river town, very historic. We have everything you could think of for outdoor fun. You can go fishing, boating, biking, hiking. We have skiing, both Nordic skiing and downhill skiing. You can climb a bluff if you want. And it's just this very idyllic setting right around the curve of the Mississippi. And like I said, there's bluffs and all sorts of beautiful scenery around our town. We have a legacy manufacturing community in this town, I guess. We have the Red Wing Shoe, which some of you may have heard of. They make boots and shoes and, especially for the working, working folks. The Red Wing Pottery is also located here. And then we have Riedell Skates. They make skates for a lot of the Olympians. And these are manufacturers that have been here a long time and are very rooted in our community. And we're really lucky that, especially the Red Wing Shoe is still owned by the same family, as it was when it was started. And so they are very dedicated to our community and to our downtown. Actually, the Red Wing Shoe Corporation is headquartered right in our downtown. So we have a beautiful place to live. We're very lucky. It's idyllic. It's, it's wonderful. But we had a problem in 2016. I mean the recession hit us in 20--, you know 2008, 2009, 2010, and we weathered that a lot. But for some reason in 2016, we had this rash of vacancies that really left some gaping holes in our town. The reason we had some of those vacancies was that some owners retired without a succession plan. They retired and they closed their business and that was it. Some businesses just became obsolete. You know, when in this challenging retail environment, some businesses just can't make it or they just got tired. That absolutely happens. And then we had, we identified a couple voids, one especially in the outfitter idea. We did not have someone who you could, you know, if you were a tourist and you stepped into Red Wing, stayed overnight, you couldn't ride a, rent a bike or anything like that. So we knew that we wanted some sort of a business to be in that, to help fill that void. The other area we knew that we wanted to do to make sure to have some, somebody fill in some way, was Red Wing-themed products. Nobody was doing, you know, the T-shirts and coasters and bags and buttons. And nobody was doing that in our town, and we felt like there was a really missed opportunity to market our town. So, what did we do? We started the Red Wing Minnesota Retail Challenge. This was the primary marketing slide. Again, sorry for anybody who's listening on the podcast. It's basically a very simple drawing of a building in our downtown. And then it just says, “Red Wing, Minnesota, Retail Challenge” on it. And it says, “Do Downtown.” And it was very simple for a reason, because we wanted to make sure to have, to keep the idea of what we were going to do for the retail challenge and the kinds of businesses that we wanted to attract, to have it be pretty, we wanted to be ready for anyone. We knew there were those voids, but we also wanted to make sure that people felt like they could come to our downtown and open a store. So we didn't want to be super specific, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. There were six goals of the Retail Challenge. One was to recruit businesses that would enhance the business mix in downtown Red Wing. Number two is to provide businesses a head start during the toughest year of operation, which is, of course, the first year. Number three is to strengthen the local economy by attracting unique and specialty businesses. Number four, transform empty business spaces into more attractive and beneficial locations. Number five is to build a buzz and promote Red Wing as a great place to start a business. And number six is to display the community's commitment to downtown Red Wing. That's one thing that we're so proud of, is our community loves our downtown. And it’s apparent in everything we do and how much support we get. So it's wonderful. So those were those six goals of the retail challenge. We had very clearly identified eligible concepts. This was an important piece and I'd highly encourage you to think about these very carefully. And again, if you download, if you go to the meetmedowntownpodcast.com website and download that kit, you'll see all this in there and how we communicated these eligible concepts to potential contest entries. One, they had to be a new retail business. It must add to the downtown business map mix. It has to drive traffic to our downtown. Second or third retail satellite businesses from an existing location in another town were eligible. A significant expansion of a current downtown retail business that includes an added business concept. So, we weren't just looking to fund a retail business to get bigger, they had to add something. And then the last one was, this is a retail-specific competition. Service businesses are not eligible. The main difference between a retail business and a service business is that a retail business stocks and sells tangible goods, things you can touch and feel, whereas the service business sells non-tangible products, things you cannot touch and feel. We really wanted to stress and help to define that for folks because we didn't want to waste anybody's time and we didn't want to set anybody up for failure. So we really identified those clearly, and I think that was very important. The next thing we did is, we built an incentive package for folks, the business that was going to win. And there were different parts to that incentive package. So the assets and rent portion of the package was $20,000 in cash to be used to buy hard assets. That was sponsored by the Red Wing HRA, the Housing and Redevelopment Authority. They had a special grant program where they could grant funds to a Downtown Main Street and then we could distribute those funds in hard assets. So that's a pretty big deal to a business starting out. There was a low-interest loan from the Red Wing Port Authority that they offered up. And rent and utilities were subsidized by landlords. We asked all the different various vacant spaces, the landlords of those spaces, if they would help to offset some rent and utilities for a certain amount of time. And that value ended up to be about $4,000. And as you know, when you're starting a business, that's a big deal. There was also part, an incentive package of marketing. And that included merchandising and retail consulting, which was a $500 value; social media consulting which was a $1,000 value; cash for social media advertising, 500 bucks. We had someone who donated $500 so that we could do that. Graphic design services, $2,500. Local newspaper advertisements, up to $1,300 value. Gift certificates towards signage, $150. A one-page basic web site, $750 value. And the local radio station donated $1000 in ads. So, what a great way to kickstart a business, was really what this ended up being. All right. We also had legal, financial, and technical aspects of the incentive package. Those included $500 in legal counsel, $500 in accounting and tax services, business consulting, 500 bucks, value of that. We partnered with a bank that waived all the fees for this first set of business checks and endorsing stamp, etc., for $125 dollar value. And then we had some technology support for $150. A few other things that were offered up, and this is where you can really see, we have a great community, the first thing is we, the Downtown Main Street, offered up a one-year membership to our organization. We had one sponsor package for Downtown Main Streets Events for 2017. So, we put on a bunch of events especially the holiday stroll at winter time. And so that was a thousand dollars that we gave so that they could advertise or sponsor something that we were doing. There's a one-year membership to the local YMCA, $572 value. We have a local State Technical College and they offered one free online course for $100 in value. And then we had $2,000 cash to go towards facade improvements. And so what an amazing package we had in a total of almost forty thousand dollars by the time we were done. And we really had to partner with all these local organizations, and they were all really excited to do so and to offer, you know, the why, probably normally wouldn't think of being in the retail, you know, recruiting business. But all of a sudden, look at how that could really help make a family think twice about moving a business to Red Wing or opening up a business in Red Wing. So the timeline for the contest, on March 18th in 2016, we had the initial press release and announcement of the competition happened. By April 15th, we have Phase 1, where there was a business concept and officially the entry form was due. We wanted to prevent people from spending a lot of time on a concept that wasn't going to meet our needs. So we wanted, we had that part of the entry really helped us not waste anyone's time, again. By June 3rd we had, business plans were due. June 24th, that's when the final proposal presentations or the pitch happened and personal interviews happened. And then June 29th we announced the winner of the grand prize. And the business had to be opened by October 1st. We really wanted people to take advantage of the amazing tourism that happens in Red Wing during the fall and then also take advantage of those holiday sales that can really get you through some pretty lean months in the bleak winter around here. So we promoted the contest, like I said before, with a press release. There was a package of information that spelled out everything that was available on our web site. We visited shops in nearby towns that we thought would be a really good fit and fit some of the voids that we had and talked to those store owners about moving here and about the contest and what we could offer. And then we had signs in the window of participating locations and participating vacant spaces that alerted you that this contest was going on. So as you know, one of the biggest things a person needs before they start a business is a business plan. So, Phase 1 is really the business concept. Phase 2 is the business plan. And like I said before, in Phase 1 we really wanted to make sure we weren't wasting anyone's time. So we asked them to define what types of merchandise they were going to sell. What the definition description of, is the market for their retail business. How they will enhance downtown Red Wing and the Red Wing community as a whole. What resources, assets the applicant has and what resources would be needed to develop their concept fully. That included personal finances, etc. What their qualifications were to develop or expand their business, and what similar businesses and how they propose their businesses were different than those businesses that were already in town. And any other information that they might really sell the committee on the concept. So that was Phase 1. We asked for that in writing and got, I believe, 10 different concepts. Phase 2, if you were a business that we felt, or had the idea for a business that we felt, would be a good fit, you moved on to Phase 2 and I believe we had eight move on to Phase 2. Phase 2 was a business plan. And that includes things like the company summary, the products, the market analysis, the challenges, opportunities and strengths, a financial plan, a resumé, any management history, references, how many full or part-time employees this project would or business would employ. And then the finances, of course. We also asked for a community impact summary that asked them how this business would impact our community, because ultimately that's what we were after as much as anything. One of the ways that we help support businesses during this contest is we offered a Business Plan-in-a-day Workshop before that Phase 2 was due. The business plan was due in between Phase 1 when people knew that they could move on in the contest. We offered this Business Plan in a day. It was a six-hour-long workshop about what goes into a business plan, and it allowed people to get started writing their business plans, and then ask questions about writing a business plan. I taught that class and it was really a great way to help people get this part done because it's oftentimes the thing that they put off the longest and yet is the most necessary to actually getting started, to getting up and running. We also had some business writing assistance from the local small business development center in our area and some consulting with their consultant. So it really helped people to feel like they were more ready. At this point, it started to feel pretty real to a lot of these business owners who had said, you know, and for 10 years I want to start X business. And all of a sudden, it's looking like it could actually happen for them. And so we wanted to make sure that they were realistic and had the tools and the resources they needed. We also did a pitch clinic, something that I've done, worked with my alma mater college that, I was entrepreneur-in-residence there, and helped get those students ready for a pitch competition, a business plan competition there. And so I brought those skills and did a pitch clinic for anybody who made it into that Phase 2 and was going to pitch their business to the judges. And so that was a great way for those folks to get used to talking about their business, hone their presentation, get to the meat of the presentation and really be ready for that, that Phase 3, which was the final presentation and the pitch and then interview with the judges on the committee. The judges were made up of some retail business owners, community residents, city officials and then the Red Wing Downtown Main Street Board of Directors. So we had six businesses finally submit and go through the pitch. So of those six, let me tell you who the business was that won. The business that won was Red Wing Bicycle and Outfitter. Again, you'll remember I talked about the void that we had in the outfitter area of a business here in town. And so this is Andrew Peterson and he was the lucky winner. He had had a business, a bike shop, repair shop before in Red Wing and closed it to spend more time with his family and, he said, kind of get a normal day job. And he hated every minute of it. And he really missed his bike shop and we missed his bike shop in town. So he was the winner. And in the slide if you're watching on YouTube, that's one of the members of our Red Wing Main Street Board of Directors and Andrew. And so he has kayaks and bikes and equipment and he repairs bikes and sells bikes and all sorts of outdoor stuff. So that was great. But that's not the end of the story. Well, we wanted to have one retail business started and we had the funds for that one business all identified in the kind of winning package. There were three additional stores that opened as a result of our retail challenge. So three additional stores opened as a result of the retail challenge. Isn't that just crazy! That just blew our minds and we were really, really excited to have one store much less three. So let me tell you a little bit about the stores that opened up during this time. Red Wing did not have a comic book store and it didn't have a game store. So that was definitely one of the businesses we were super excited about that was interested in coming to town. Adam Hansen and his wife Sarah had a little baby, they were living in Minneapolis, and they wanted, Adam had always wanted to have a comic book store. And so they actually sold their house in the Twin Cities and moved to Red Wing to open up River Town Comic and Games. And they bought a house in town, and they really became members of our community because of this contest. They happened to be in Red Wing one day during the, when we were marketing the retail challenge and saw a sign in the window of one of the vacant spaces announcing the challenge. And that's how they got involved. So that absolutely works to put things in windows, etc. You know, sometimes we wonder what, what works and what doesn't. But we knew from their story that it did. So Adam opened his comic book store and the local port authority offered some low-interest loans to the other folks who decided to open because of the retail challenge. Backwoods Framing & Engraving is a big story. Luann Brainerd is the owner of the store and she actually purchased the building. She was a part of the competition. She didn't win, but she purchased the building and received some funds from the Port Authority to help her fix up the building and then open up her framing and engravings shop. She had had it out of her house for many, many years and needed to get it into town. She lived out in the country a little bit. And so it was a great opportunity for her to make the move into Red Wing. And, like I said, she bought a building and then converted the second floor into apartments. And she has one and then I believe she rents out another one. And she did a whole bunch of improvements to that building. It had been a long time neglected building that the landlords just hadn't invested in for quite some time. And so it really helped bring up the value of the properties in downtown because of what she did. So, again, I know the Port Authority helped her with some of the costs of the things that she had and some low-interest loans and some other things that helped her. We had a pop-up store, The Red Wing Mercantile, that opened up for that Christmas, as a 2016 Christmas season, and it was wonderful. It had those, that Red Wing merchandise in it. It had all locally made, you know, regionally made products, and it was just a beautiful store. Unfortunately the woman who ran the store had a family and had, you know, a regular job and so it was just too hard to do both the store and her job and have a family, so she did end up closing the store after the holidays, but it still was, we think it was a great success. There are some additional dollars that were brought in to the contest from the City of Red Wing. Those stores that didn't win the contest received five thousand dollars in seed money. And then again, many of them received an additional low-interest loan from the Red Wing Port Authority. So it was a really amazing thing to see everyone step up and collaborate and get excited about this program and this contest. I've been asked before about how much time did this take, and it took a great deal of time. But what took a lot of the time was getting the contest set up. And so again, if you want to go to the meetmedowntownpodcast.com website, we can help you get through a lot of that part of, what are the goals and all the things you need to convince people to help support the effort by putting in things that you can give away. I'll tell you, though that in Red Wing, this contest happened, the executive director was let go. It's a long story. But this program was 100 percent administered by volunteers and board members. So, if you think about the amount of time, you know, you could have to make this happen. It was really, I think a good way for volunteers and board members to understand how to plug themselves into a very specific contest. And I think that was one of the, a big advantage to this and how we got more than just staff to put this together. I was not the executive director at the time. I had helped in a consulting role with the organization before I came on board as the director, so I was pulled into this contest a little bit too. So it was just such a great way to make this happen without a bunch of staff time. I mean, and because the director had been let go and there was some drama around that, this contest really helped the organization be seen as still very viable and important for our community. There were a couple ripple effects that happened that we attribute to this contest. One, a shoe store from a neighboring town opened up a pop-up store that Christmas and decided to stay. So she stayed for about two years in her store, with a shoe store, and it was really great. It was right along Main Street and it was a beautiful store. And then she had some things happen in her business and so ended up closing it. But we know that, you know, she came because we invited her because we stopped by and handed her something and said, "You should come and move to our town, you know, move your business or open another business in our town." And so she did. And we were really glad to have her in our community, and she didn't take part in the contest but she did open a store. We also had Duluth Trading Company, is a really fun company that does work apparel and footwear and accessories. And we had, during the retail challenge when we were out, when the board members were out trying to recruit businesses to come to town, we'd reached out to Duluth Trading Company a couple of times. And we don't have any idea if our reaching out for sure brought them to town but we know that we did. And then pretty soon after they actually opened a retail store right in our downtown. So, who knows? But we're just going to say that all of it adds up in some way. We can't be sure there's a correlation there, but we're going to say there may be. So here we are about three years later. Here's where we stand. So Red Wing Bicycle and Backwoods Framing & Engraving are still open and they're still in the same locations and I think that they're doing very well. The comic book store is closing this spring and Luya opened up a store in a neighboring town and closed ours. So the shoe store did close. The Red Wing Mercantile pop up was open for one holiday season. But what we've seen is a continued pretty low vacancy rate in our downtown for retail because we think that we learned a lot during the retail challenge and it really helped us to support our retailers and we're continually trying to do that the best we can. So, could you make this happen in your town? I hope so. The biggest takeaways that I want to give you are, the keys to the success in Red Wing were the partnerships. When I've given this talk before, that's kind of when people go, "You know it's hard. Our local EDA or local port authority doesn't understand that, you know, fill in the blank, or we don't have, you know, a group that's willing to give that kind of money, or we just don't have..." And that could be a problem. But I think you just go where you can find the partners that are willing, and a lot of times what happens is the, you know, one partnership leads to another which leads to another. So, give yourself time to build up those partnerships and figure out what are the ways that those different businesses and different organizations in your community can help contribute to this effort. I mean, at the end of the day there were probably 20 different businesses or organizations that supported this new retail business. If he were to come in, you know, let's say he'd moved to town and had, you know, started this business, didn't know anybody. Think how much harder it is to start a business than with when you have 20 different partners behind you either in marketing or the newspaper or radio station. All that stuff adds up to really help support and create an environment in which the business can be successful. I think the other keys to our success was creativity. We were trying to think outside the box, and then we had very clear expectations and guidelines. Because we had clear expectations and guidelines in the very beginning, we didn't have a lot of hurt feelings towards the end. I mean, we, yes the people who didn't win were disappointed and, but a lot of them opened their business anyway. So, we had clear expectations and guidelines. But then I also think, I want to add, that we also created that level of support with the business plan and the pitch clinic and having the consultant from the Small Business Development Center, because those resources then became somebody, you know, people that that business could count on into the future. So, they were not just on their own. So that is how Red Wing did their retail challenge in 2016. And I really, really hope that you will consider doing one in your downtown. I think that they're really fun. It's actually, it's time-consuming, but I wouldn't say it's difficult. And I think it's something that can help change a conversation and a lot of downtowns. And it really puts you on the, the frontlines of filling those vacant spaces. So, it really, the landlords and the building owners, you start to become pretty important to them, which, sometimes it's hard. You know, we can sometimes reach those, those business owners but they may be just leasing this space or something else. But when you do a retail challenge like this and you start to connect to those landlords, all of sudden you become a pretty important resource. So, I think that was another thing that we learned from the challenge. So, I welcome your questions You can ask me questions either in the comment section on the web site, again meetmedowntownpodcast.com, go online and download the packet. It's a PDF that has everything that we used to make this happen and you can steal away, duplicate away anything you want out of there or you can go on social media. I'm on Instagram and on Facebook and you can ask questions there as well at the www.Meetmedowntownpodcast. All right. That's what I have for you today. Have a great day and I'll see you downtown.

Prayer life, virtue, and holiness: That’s what we went with for this week. We originally planned to have John Sablan back on to re-record our episode. However, due to scheduling conflicts, he couldn’t be with us. So Adam and Dave had, probably a much needed, casual conversation on topics they have been considering throughout the week. https://www.patreon.com/thecatholicmanshow (OUR PATREON IS NOW LIVE) Tasting Notes for http://www.koval-distillery.com/newsite/whiskey/four-grain (Koval Single Barrel Four Grain Whiskey:) Color: Cherry Wood Nose: Heavy Banana Flavor: Banana, cream, spice, with a little vanilla We are giving away special gifts to patreon supporters this month only. Be sure to sign up. Any tier is entered to win the gifts. https://www.patreon.com/thecatholicmanshow (THE CATHOLIC MAN SHOW PATREON PAGE) If you want The Catholic Man Prayer Journal we discussed in this episode – http://www.lulu.com/shop/kenneth-henderson/the-catholic-man-prayer-journal/paperback/product-23890203.html?ppn=1 (click here) If this is your first time listening to The Catholic Man Show, we do 3 things almost every episode: 1.) Open, review, and enjoy a man beverage – Minutes 1-12. 2.) Highlight a man gear – Minutes 12-24. 3.) Have a manly conversation – Minutes 24-48. DRINK: http://www.koval-distillery.com/newsite/whiskey/four-grain (Koval 4-grain whiskey) GEAR: N/A TOPIC: Prayer Life, Virtue, and Holiness If you haven't listened to The Catholic Man Show before, check out our previous episodes https://thecatholicmanshow.com/episodes/ (here). Subscribe to our https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5MhmMZZhEnrapVYUIkFHLg?view_as=subscriber ( YouTube channel) to watch past episodes. Want to help The Catholic Man Show? By giving us a rating on https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-catholic-man-show/id1128843873?mt=2 (iTunes, it helps others find the show.)   Support this podcast

It's the first episode of 2019! So Adam and Dave talk about this year's excellent season, starting with Camarillo Skyway Playhouse, High Street Arts Center, and the Conejo Players Theatre! Intro Music: Somethin' For Ya by Ménage Quad Outro Music: Warmin' Up by Ryan Andersen email: thankyou30pod@gmail.com facebook.com/thankyou30pod Instagram: thankyou30pod Twitter: thankyou30pod

GUEST BIO: Adam Bien is a freelance architect and developer with a focus on Java.  He has written several books including “Real World Java EE Patterns – Rethinking Best Practices”.  Adam is also a Java Champion and was Java Developer of the Year in 2010.  He is also a regular conference speaker and three times a year he organizes Java related workshops at Munich Airport. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil’s guest on today’s show is Adam Bien. Having worked with JDK 1.0, EJB, JavaFX, J2EE, and Java EE from launch onwards he has a phenomenal understanding of the language. He knows Java inside out and is a leader in the field. Adam regularly shares his knowledge by organizing workshops, speaking at conferences as well as writing books, articles and updating his blog. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.06) – So Adam, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Adam said that originally he wanted to learn multiple programming languages, work a bit and enjoy life. However, things did not work out that way. The demand was so high that he ended up sticking with Java. Even after 22 years, he still enjoys working with this language. (1.55) – Phil asks if he has plans to switch to a different technology or will he stick to Java.  Adam says with Java, it is impossible to learn everything. He just keeps diving deeper. But, he is also doing a lot with JavaScript. He jokes that to learn both Java and JavaScript you would need at least two lives. (2.29) – Phil asks Adam for a unique IT career tip. Adam advises everyone to develop their own strategy. Not anything huge like - “I would like to take over the world, in 10 years time.” It has to be something logical. For example Adam has been working to make development simple for the clients he works with. He uses standards, which makes it possible for his clients to use other consultants. Adam has found that his clients really like this approach. It is one of the reasons they like working with him. (3.30) – Phil asks when you talk about standards are you thinking of different ways of working and models as well as industry standards? Yes, says Adam. The availability of Java’s quasi-standards like JCB Java community process, Java EE and Java SE are partly behind the language’s longevity. While lots of other technologies and frameworks have come and gone, Java has remained in use and popular. Sticking with the standard means users can stay up to date using just incremental learning. Building on what they already know to learn to use the new Java innovations. There is no paradigm change needed. Understandably, clients like that because having to migrate to new technologies is always hard and bad for business. (4.33) – Adam is asked to share his worst career moment and what he learned from it. Adam says that surprisingly he has not had any really bad career experiences. He did have one funny experience though. During the rollout of Java 6 or 7 he was due to speak about it at two Sun Microsystems locations, on two different dates. Somehow the dates got muddled up. So, Adam ended up in the wrong city on the first date, which was a funny rather than bad career moment. Although, Adam did say that when his server goes down things can get a bit crazy. Everything is on there, including his website, so he gets hundreds of emails asking him if he realizes he is no longer on the internet. (5.58) – Phil asks Adam what his best career moment was. Adam runs something called Taskforces. For example, if a system dies in production and the issue cannot be resolved, Adam pulls together the relevant people to get things up and going again. During that process there is the often the chance to spring clean the system and make it stronger than it was before. It is a rare opportunity. If a system is running you would never dare to refactor it and rebuild it from the ground up. When a system is broken, you can do so. After all, you cannot make it much worse. (7.02) – Phil asks Adam what excites him about the future of the IT industry and IT careers. Adam says that the fact that there is always something new to learn excites him. He also finds it interesting how technologies cycle. Adam has spotted the fact that “everything repeats every 10 years.” This pattern means that provided you do not forget things you are always ahead of the game. For example, JavaScript is becoming more and more like Java. So, now because Adam knows Java really well switching between it and JavaScript is actually very easy for him. He also enjoys the fact that in IT when you teach someone you inevitably end up learning more yourself. (8.54) – What drew you to a career in IT? Adam is not 100% sure why he followed this career path. But, he has always been a fan of Sci-Fi and he saw computers as being related to that. For him computers have always been magical things. When he got his Spectrum computer you could not do much with it, but Adam became obsessed with making it do more. He became fascinated by it. (10.44) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? Adam starts by sharing something he has learned in his career, rather than a piece of advice he has been given. He says that if something interests him, he just learns it and does not worry about how he is going to use and apply that knowledge. Usually, he finds that a few months, sometimes years, down the line he needs what he has learned to move a project forward. So, his advice is to “learn to enjoy learning.” Adam has found that this Meta strategy leads to success. Adam also advises developers to learn presentation and political skills. You need to explain clearly why your technological solution is good for business. After all, your clients are really only interested in the outcome not the technology. (12.25) – If you were to start your IT career again, now, what would you do? Adam says personally he would not change much. (13.03) – What career objectives do you currently have? Adam says he wants to make sure that he will still be programming in his 90s. Something that he feels will be good for his brain. He is working to ensure that he does not get swallowed up by business matters so that he can continue to program regularly. (13.52) – What’s your number 1 non-technical skill? The one that has helped you the most in your IT career. Adam says he feels that it is important to stay healthy. (14.29) – Adam can you share a parting piece of career advice with the I.T. Energizer Audience?  Yes – “Stay interested and enjoy life by being productive.” Also, carry on learning and challenging yourself. This stops you from getting bored and it helps you to stay successful. Adam also says that you should try to keep things simple. Always minimize the amount of technology and code you use to solve a business problem. That way everyone can understand and maintain it. BEST MOMENTS: (2.06) ADAM – “If you try to learn JavaScript and Java I think you will need at least two lives.” (4.26) ADAM – “I stick with a standard. So I didn't have to learn a lot, do just incremental learning all the time.” (7.30) ADAM – “If I try to teach someone about what I learned, you learn even more.” (9.25) ADAM – “Everything else was boring. But a computer was something from another world.” (11.57) ADAM – “You should be able to explain in simple words, why what they are doing is good for the business. And not just from a technological perspective, because no client is interested in technology.” (14.59) ADAM – “The learning is the most exciting thing which will keep your successful.”   CONTACT ADAM BIEN: Twitter: https://twitter.com/AdamBien @AdamBien Website: http://adambien.blog/roller/abien/

If you sold sales software to sales people, and the software promised a specific outcome, how would you help customers achieve that outcome? You might publish that outcome on a dashboard in your product and place it in a highly visible location so your customers can see it every day. You might also overlay a target on the dashboard so customers know the number they need to achieve and the gap between current state and goal state. You might also color code the dashboard to make it even easier to understand current state. This is just what Adam Honig, founder and CEO of Spiro.ai does in his CRM product. The outcome Spiro is designed to help customers achieve is having more meaningful conversations with customers. Sales people spend 40% of their time doing administrative work in CRMs when they should be spending more of that time on high value tasks, like talking to prospects. While conversations with prospects does not necessarily lead directly to new sales, it does put sales people in a position to succeed. So Adam's goal is to help customers have more of those conversations and help them track towards that outcome.  Learn more about Adam Honig: Spiro: https://spiro.ai/helpingsells/ Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

There's probably no more important single number than how much energy we produce as a globe, nor a more important prediction of what direction that trend is heading. It's almost impossible to think of anything we care about that won't somehow be shaped by those numbers. So Adam and Jed speak with James Ward from University of South Australia, to discuss his co-authored study into projections of global fossil fuel production, and a complementary paper on whether we can decouple GDP growth from energy use and environmental impact.

In this episode Allison and Adam watched the 2003 film The Rundown. Allison shares her advanced sports knowledge; So Adam must pretend he knows sports and does some second grade math. We learn Adam checks in with Beck and Travis too often and believes this film be a fine piece of entertainment. We hope you enjoy this weeks episode and appreciate you’re understanding for last weeks hiatus.

Whoah, Nellie! Did you ever think this ridiculous show could possibly make it to 100 episodes?! We didn't either. But here we are. So Adam flew in from Florida, John drove over from his house, and Greg...walked upstairs for our very first This Week Today-GravityBeard Mashup, a GravityBeard-a-thon, if you will. We ignore the clock and do all of the segments in one show. So come celebrate with us! Oh, and happy Olympics. #UnderDogPods #PodFix Lord Saunders  https://twitter.com/TheLordSaunders  http://www.lordsaunders.com/ This Week Today  https://twitter.com/ThisWeekPod https://www.facebook.com/ThisWeekToday/ thisweekpod@gmail.com https://twitter.com/thegravitybeard  www.gravitybeard.com  PodFix Network: www.podfixnetwork.com/  PodFix Presents http://apple.co/2zbFann  UnderDog Podcast Community https://www.facebook.com/groups/UnderDogPods/ https://twitter.com/UnderDogPods Hypotheticast http://hypotheticast.club/  https://twitter.com/Hypotheticast  Music: Theme Song - "Sophomore Makeout" by Silent Partner (YouTube Audio Library) All other songs and sounds can be found on YouTube

Today Anne chats with Adam Verner. Adam reads for a living -- literally. When he was a kid and people asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up he’d say read books. So Adam grew up and turned his theatrical background into a job as a professional audiobook narrator.Adam is also one of the few readers who's been decisive/brave/committed enough to choose his three all-time favorite books for the show. Click over to the podcast website for the full list of titles discussed in this episode, and leave us a comment to let us know what YOU think Adam should read next!Connect with Adam: Blog | AudiographyConnect with Anne: Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | WSIRN Instagram

Hey, everyone.  Hoje eu falo sobre vocabulário relacionado a um acidente de carro que aconteceu nos Estados Unidos um tempo atrás. Vamos ouvir maneiras de se dizer "o carro foi capotando montanha abaixo" e "a porta ficou balançando." Transcrição Hey, everyone. This is the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast. Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app. Thanks for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven't yet left a comment for this podcast please do so: the more comments for the Inglês Online podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes. Thank you for telling your friends, your neighbours, your family and keep listening. So all of you listening to this podcast have probably got an intermediate or advanced level of English - have you ever had the experience of trying to describe an everyday situation in English and struggling to find the right words to do it? Well, I was listening to a podcast the other day from the Adam Carolla show, and as I heard a bit where he described a car accident, I thought it contained some pretty interesting vocabulary for our episode. Adam speculates, about how a car accident went down. And this is an accident that happened to someone else, not Adam - a man was driving a car and lost control of the vehicle. So let's go ahead and listen to Adam as he makes his comments: a barrel I will speculate that he was not wearing a seat belt; I will speculate that the car started to barrel roll and as it rolled, perfectly, the door, from centrifugal force, flew open. And as it was going, as the door was flinging, as it was spinning, he was launched. And if he'd had a seat belt on he wouldn't have been launched from the car that barrel rolled as the door flung open as it went... So Adam starts off by saying he thinks the man wasn't wearing a seat belt. So far, so good. His next guess is that the car started to barrel roll - so what does that mean? Well, picture a barrel and imagine the barrel rolling down a mountain. That's what Carolla thinks happened with the car: it barrel rolled, or rolled like a barrel down a hill or a mountain. So I hope you remember this from school - when there's something rolling like that, or spinning on it axis, centrifugal force is generated. You know that machine that dries clothes that have just been washed - a clothes or tumble drier? It's able to dry clothes because of centrifugal force. So Adam says that, because of centrifugal force generated as the car barrel rolled, the door flew open - a bit later on he uses the expression flung open, which basically means the same thing. Flung is the past tense of fling. So centrifugal force pushed the door open, or flung that door open; the door flew open or flung open because there was something forcing it to open. So with the car barrel rolling down a hill, I guess, and the door flinging - or moving from one side to the other - the driver was launched from the car. The driver was launched, or ejected from the car. Then Adam finishes by saying that if the driver had had a seat belt on, he wouldn't have been launched from the car that barrel rolled as the door flung open. Listen to his commentary once again: I will speculate that he was not wearing a seat belt; I will speculate that the car started to barrel roll and as it rolled, perfectly, the door, from centrifugal force, flew open. And as it was going, as the door was flinging, as it was spinning, he was launched. And if he'd had a seat belt on he wouldn't have been launched from the car that barrel rolled as the door flung open as it went... So there you go - good vocabulary to describe a very specific situation. Awful accident, by the way! Have you ever been on a car that came barrel rolling down a hill? Let us know in the comments, and talk to you next time.   Key terms car accident vocabulary Vocabulário

Hey, everyone.  Hoje eu falo sobre vocabulário relacionado a um acidente de carro que aconteceu nos Estados Unidos um tempo atrás. Vamos ouvir maneiras de se dizer "o carro foi capotando montanha abaixo" e "a porta ficou balançando." Transcrição Hey, everyone. This is the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast. Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app. Thanks for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven't yet left a comment for this podcast please do so: the more comments for the Inglês Online podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes. Thank you for telling your friends, your neighbours, your family and keep listening. So all of you listening to this podcast have probably got an intermediate or advanced level of English - have you ever had the experience of trying to describe an everyday situation in English and struggling to find the right words to do it? Well, I was listening to a podcast the other day from the Adam Carolla show, and as I heard a bit where he described a car accident, I thought it contained some pretty interesting vocabulary for our episode. Adam speculates, about how a car accident went down. And this is an accident that happened to someone else, not Adam - a man was driving a car and lost control of the vehicle. So let's go ahead and listen to Adam as he makes his comments: a barrel I will speculate that he was not wearing a seat belt; I will speculate that the car started to barrel roll and as it rolled, perfectly, the door, from centrifugal force, flew open. And as it was going, as the door was flinging, as it was spinning, he was launched. And if he'd had a seat belt on he wouldn't have been launched from the car that barrel rolled as the door flung open as it went... So Adam starts off by saying he thinks the man wasn't wearing a seat belt. So far, so good. His next guess is that the car started to barrel roll - so what does that mean? Well, picture a barrel and imagine the barrel rolling down a mountain. That's what Carolla thinks happened with the car: it barrel rolled, or rolled like a barrel down a hill or a mountain. So I hope you remember this from school - when there's something rolling like that, or spinning on it axis, centrifugal force is generated. You know that machine that dries clothes that have just been washed - a clothes or tumble drier? It's able to dry clothes because of centrifugal force. So Adam says that, because of centrifugal force generated as the car barrel rolled, the door flew open - a bit later on he uses the expression flung open, which basically means the same thing. Flung is the past tense of fling. So centrifugal force pushed the door open, or flung that door open; the door flew open or flung open because there was something forcing it to open. So with the car barrel rolling down a hill, I guess, and the door flinging - or moving from one side to the other - the driver was launched from the car. The driver was launched, or ejected from the car. Then Adam finishes by saying that if the driver had had a seat belt on, he wouldn't have been launched from the car that barrel rolled as the door flung open. Listen to his commentary once again: I will speculate that he was not wearing a seat belt; I will speculate that the car started to barrel roll and as it rolled, perfectly, the door, from centrifugal force, flew open. And as it was going, as the door was flinging, as it was spinning, he was launched. And if he'd had a seat belt on he wouldn't have been launched from the car that barrel rolled as the door flung open as it went... So there you go - good vocabulary to describe a very specific situation. Awful accident, by the way! Have you ever been on a car that came barrel rolling down a hill? Let us know in the comments, and talk to you next time.   Key terms

Stephen is the CEO of Predictive ROI and host of the Onward Nation podcast. He is the author of two bestselling books, speaker, trainer, and his digital marketing insights have been featured in SUCCESS, Entrepreneur, The Washington Post, Forbes, Inc. Magazine, and other media.     Good Morning Onward Nation...I’m Stephen Woessner. Thank you for taking the time to be here with me for today’s solocast. It is an honor to have you here -- thank you for tuning in -- your time is sacred and I am delighted you have chosen Onward Nation and this episode to be what you listen to, study, and take with you on your morning run, or maybe Onward Nation has become part of your daily commute, or in some other way has become part of your morning routine. However our daily podcast fits into your daily routine -- I want you to know how much I appreciate you sharing some of your 86,400 seconds you have in your day with me and the strategies we learn and share each day from today’s top business owners. During today’s solocast, you and I are going to dive into a topic area that I just mentioned...and that’s morning routines -- sometimes we call these habits, maybe even rituals. But whatever name, title, acronym, or description we put on them...they represent the things we do every morning consciously or sometimes unconsciously that guide our success for the day. What I have discovered after interviewing over 100 of today’s top business owners is that they do not leave their mornings to chance. In fact, if you were to ask them, most would say that their mornings -- or the night prior -- are the most important parts of their day for a couple of key reasons. The night before is when they take time to reflect on the day that just was...perhaps add to their gratitude journal...and prepare their list of priorities for the next day. And by doing this, they consciously take the time to acknowledge all the good that happened that day and to get their mind into a peak state before bed, so that while they are sleeping, their brains are processing, thinking, solving, and getting ready to be at their best when they wake up. I first learned this principle way back in my senior year of high school. My Senior Math teacher said to us one day in class...if you’re struggling with a problem and you cannot find a solution...then do your absolute best to solve it right before bed. Thinks of all the possibilities, think of all the solutions, give it your very best effort. And if you solve it before bed...great. But if you don’t, you will have loaded your brain with all it needs to be able to solve it while you are sleeping. I thought to myself -- “Okay, this could be awesome because this class is really kicking my butt and I need all the help I can get.” So I tried it that night. I saved my math homework for last...I followed the specific recipe he had outlined in class earlier that day when I got stuck on one particular problem. I did exactly as he had taught us to do. And then I went to bed while hoping the recipe would work. The next morning...I got up...went over to my desk where I had kept all of my work, my notes, my scratch sheets...all of my frustration from the night before. And no joke, Onward Nation...honest...I reviewed the problem again and the correct solution was as clear as day. I was stunned. Here’s what I learned. Your brain is a very powerful tool -- a supercomputer -- the best ever invented. Unfortunately, it doesn’t come with an owner’s manual so we need to learn along the way from others who have faced similar struggles or who are knocking it out of the park. People who are operating or living life at a completely different level than we are...but where we know we can be if we apply the right recipe. So here we go...let’s go deep into dissecting the morning routines, the morning rituals, the morning habits of today’s top business owners so you can apply a similar recipe to your morning. The owners I have interviewed are strategic about what they do each morning, about how they prepare for each morning, and how they understand that what they do each morning sets them up for success the rest of the day. I am going to share five morning habits shared by some of our most recent guests. But what has been fascinating to listen to -- and to discover along this journey of learning -- is the commonality shared across all of our guests. For example...you could go all the way back to Episode 1 with Scott McKain and listen to his powerful morning routine and daily habits. In fact, if we were to take a survey of our Onward Nation guests...I suspect over 90 percent of them share some aspect of a morning ritual designed to kick-start their day -- and in some instances -- the days of their employees, customers, and other stakeholders. With that...let’s dive into the morning habits of today’s top business owners. These habits are simple and can be easy for you to apply into your business. Habit #1: Focus on One Most Vital Priority Episode 98 with Larry Winget (despite the fiasco I had with my microphone that day -- so sorry about that Onward Nation!) was an exceptional discussion with one of the most motivating and inspirational business owners I have had the joy of interviewing. Which is a bit counterintuitive because Larry does not consider himself a motivational speaker -- nor does he subscribe to any of today’s popular personal development mumbo jumbo. But that does not mean he is not focused on personal development or getting better every day...his approach is just radically different and a refreshing change from the sea of others out there. Larry’s success -- the root of all that makes him so powerful at what he does every day and the value he delivers to his customers -- is that he does the one thing each day he knows he MUST get done. He only allows himself to focus on his number one most vital priority each day. That’s it. Just the one. Where did that singular focus come from? If you listened to Larry’s, you heard him talk about how he went from rich to poor in a single day through no fault of his own. He had bills to pay and had to make money. How did he work through the devastation of losing his business? He distilled everything down to selling a training course that we quickly developed -- and he started with the As in the phone book and started selling. He knew that his most vital priority -- his one thing that had to get done that day was selling. Nothing else mattered...it was his singular focus for the day...and every day. So maybe yours is not selling...maybe it is leadership...maybe it is hiring the best talent...whatever your most vital priority is...how you move the needle...it deserves all of your attention...today and every day. Joining Larry in his focused pursuit of one most vital priority each day is John Gumas...my guest on episode 92. John is the founder of Gumas in San Francisco, an incredible advertising agency that helps challenger brands take on larger, more well-funded competitors. And they are excellent at it. John Gumas sets one goal a day – accomplishing the daily keeps him positive and moving forward. Habit #2: Create a Priority List Adam Carroll, our amazing guest on episode 113, starts every day by creating his Power Priority List. And he only focuses his time around completing the task or priorities on the list. Adam even separates the priorities into multiple categories, such as income producing, or business development, etc. But the key about his time management or Power Priority List system is how he assigns the time for each task. We have all felt this before -- that if we have an hour to do something -- oddly, it takes us about an hour to get it done. But if we are leaving that afternoon for a two week vacation -- it is amazing how productive we are that morning, right? So Adam brilliantly uses the same principle by assigning the amount of time he thinks each task on his list will take to get done -- and then he races the clock to beat the estimate. Then checks the items off the list as he goes, and in the process due to his efficiency, he is creating more time in his day because he is now running ahead of schedule. Wow, Onward Nation! Habit #4: Get Up Early I recently had a thought provoking conversation with Joe Calloway during episode 112 of Onward Nation. Joe shared and taught us several valuable lessons that revolved around the fact that value never goes out of style. And how part of being at his best for customers, and getting ahead of competitors, is to get up early -- no later than 5:00 in the morning. This of course requires discipline, Onward Nation but the rewards are substantial. And then Aaron Walker during episode 108 shared how he blends getting up early with the power of prayer during his first 60- to 90-minutes of his day to get centered and ready to tackle his most vital priorities. Aaron’s morning habit of prayer and centering is shared by over 80 percent of the most elite athletes, high performing business owners, leaders, etc. The best in the world all have some form of daily meditation, reflection, centering, or prayer. And I share the same practice of daily prayer, as Aaron described, and it is the most powerful part of my day and an invaluable part of my morning routine. I smiled a big smile when Aaron shared it during our interview. Habit #5: Get Focused and Eliminate Distractions Gene King, my guest during episode 107, shared some specific, practical, and tactical recipes with Onward Nation -- including patience and persistence -- but what was so compelling about our conversation was how he approached each day with the attitude of “you have to get up and go, no matter what.” And sure there will be days, Onward Nation that you don’t want to...there will be days when you would prefer to hit the snooze button. But, if you get up early like Joe Calloway and Aaron Walker and you apply Gene King’s outlook on life with the Get Up and Go mentality...your productivity and success will soar to new heights...you will push through the fears...you will push through self imposed obstacles (because most obstacles are self-imposed) and you will move your business onward with gusto! And combine Gene’s Get Up and Go attitude with Jim Cathcart’s (episode 106) strategy of starting your day by eliminating external distractions -- you will be part of the uncommon few. You will be among the top business owners in the country. You will be able to, like Jim, start your day with a fresh mind so you can focus on doing the things he needs to do in order to become the person he wants to be. And that is what it is all about, Onward Nation...so you can be the person you want to be -- so you can live the life you want to live -- and you don’t waste your precious time living someone else’s dream, life, or building someone else’s business. You, Onward Nation...you...have 86,400 seconds today -- how will you apply your time toward making your dreams come true and leaving a lasting legacy in this world -- making someone else’s life better as a result of you being you. Onward Nation, I just want to say thank you...thank you for being here and for giving me the privilege to be with you this morning -- to share some strategies and recipes for success. I wish you the best of success as you move your business onward to that next level. I will be back tomorrow with my interview with Dr. Pamela Dennis -- another one of today’s top business owners. Until then, onward with gusto! You can also find us here: ------ OnwardNation.com ------

Phone selling and particularly cold calling is a lost art in today's world of automation, but it absolutely should not be. In episode #35 I bring on Adam Bluemner who has broken down over 63,000 cold calls to discuss what works and what doesn't, but more specifically, how to apply his findings into your entire sales funnel whether you ever sell on the phone or not! We'll show you how to take his findings and apply them to your emails, direct mail, calls to existing customers/clients, and even to cold leads. Check it out, share it, leave a review, and let me know what you think! Resources Mentioned Adam's website - http://findaccountingsoftware.com/ The study mentioned - http://findaccountingsoftware.com/expert-advice/2015-b2b-web-to-phone-qualification-study/ Want To Work With Me? Visit http://www.JeremyReeves.com or email me at Jeremy@JeremyReeves.com Enjoy! Transcript Jeremy Reeves: Hey everyone this is Jeremy Reeves with another episode of the sales funnel mastery podcast and today I have another expert guest on the line his name is Adam Bluemner, and he works at findaccountingsoftware.com and we have a pretty interesting discussion for you today because it is not technically about your sales funnel, it is kind of like what to do to get people into your sales funnel and it is something that a lot of people really do not do very much anymore and that is cold calling and so he is going to -- we are kind of going to talk about a case study that he did. They actually did 63,256 calls and they took all of that information and they kind of boiled it down to what works and what does not and that kind of thing, and then we are also going to because I know, depending on if you do cold calls or not this is going to be really valuable because we are going to then tie that into how you can put the information we are going to talk about into your sales funnel and use for example one of my strategies that I always talked about, and that is calling customers after they buy from you. See you can use the information it does not have to necessary be a cold-call, it can be kind of at any point in the sales process. So, we will tie that on together. So Adam, how are you? Adam Bluemner: I am great. How are you doing today? Jeremy Reeves: I am good, thanks for joining us today. I think is going to be a pretty interesting conversation. Adam Bluemner: Yeah, I mean, there is a lot of really interesting data to go through, so I am certainly looking forward to that. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, sounds good, sounds good. So, first of all, tell us a little bit about yourself, the context behind why you guys did, you know, you compile all this information and the story behind all that. Adam Bluemner: Sure, absolutely. So, my name is Adam Bluemner, I am the managing editor at Find Accounting Software, it is kind of an interesting company, I have been here for over a decade myself. What we do is we are a software matching service, so it is kind of two different angles that the company is providing value out into the market. One is buyers of software, so if somebody is looking for a new and a business management system, very likely 236 the internet or doing some research, so we have provision ourselves there with a lot of different resources and especially a matching process, so if somebody wants to find some good solution to consider they could share their requirements with us and we will get them some recommendation and different options that they might wanted to appear that is completely pretty thing on the software buyer’s side. On the other side we are also working with the companies who are selling software. Obviously, there is a lot of company out there who are offering technology solution, they partner up with us because we have the ability to get them matched up with people who are looking for software that is 319 of what they are offering, so that is kind of a little bit about how the company works. Jeremy Reeves: Okay. Yeah, it is kind of an interesting business model, it is actually a good one too because I even know, and I am going to start doing more of this, a lot of people kind of come to me as the resource for sales funnels like even the various different software and resources like people they need things like that. So, there is -- I mean pretty much every entrepreneur is looking for different things that they need in their business and you essentially matched them up to various accounting softwares that they can use. Adam Bluemner: Yeah, that is exactly right, I mean there is a lot 357 we are able to kind of realize that a lot of the software sellers themselves are not able to do, so we are able to kind of address really wide range of different kind of functional types of software, put out a lot of different marketing material on those different things and then use that kind of slice and dice it and bring it back on to the level of the individual solution that an individual seller might be looking to sell, so that is kind of where we come in and 428 we are able to do it, mark it and connect them with really 433 leads in a way that is less expensive than if they were doing internally. Jeremy Reeves: Nice, nice, sounds good, sounds good. So, let us get into the study that you guys did and you know before we get into because there is a whole bunch of statistics and all that kind of good stuff to go over, but before we get into that tell us the story of why you guys did this study and why you compile all the data, where are you using it for -- for your own kind of internal marketing or for may be clients, tell us the story behind that. Adam Bluemner: Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean 506 right away that we looked at 63,000 different calls 510 essentially people who had so 514 a lead form on our website or request for information that 518 so there is a huge amount of different opportunity to connect with this people and you are dealing with that 526 every efficiency that you can gain is really tremendously important then it is going to be multiplied many times or so. We have always kind of work at making our process as wean as possible if you want to use that term to make sure that we are eliminating 546 I mean just kind of break it down connecting with as many of this folks who are interested in finding software as possible. So what we want to do with this particular study is we are going to take a disciplined consistent approach that gathering the information and 606 really kind of quantitative benchmarks that we can 610 in and see without our suspicion about what is working 615 understand anecdotally and through our own experience what works well with when we actually break this down to the number 623 what we are doing here. Jeremy Reeves: Okay, nice, nice, sounds good. So, I guess, there is a whole bunch of statistics to get over like I guess let us just pick one. How does speed, because one thing that I have always noted is that when leads come in, it is something called recency and that is the use in direct mail it is kind of widespread marketing term, and is very relevant in what you guys are in to. So, how does the speed -- so when somebody comes in let us just say it is 1 o’clock in the afternoon, they filled out your lead form, does it make a difference if you call them within in a minute or within in a day or within in a week, does that make a difference? Adam Bluemner: Yeah, good question, I mean like I was saying, we are really looking for the things that we did, kind of quantify right? And 714 is one of those great things that 717 and really drove out exactly what you are doing and keep whatever the results of that. So, basically we did exactly that and it and we always knew that the speed of getting on the phone with somebody after they have indicated their interest was really important but is really pretty startling to see how profound that affect 743. So, for instance they kind of give you a number on it we actually work that -- what happens when you call somebody who has submitted a form indicated an interest within 5 minutes, how often are we able to get that person on the phone. We find out that it is about 50% of the time. We actually looked at that compared or what if you wait until the next day and it actually drops down to 28%. Jeremy Reeves: Wow. Adam Bluemner: Yeah, I mean from an efficiency standpoint, you are talking about doubling your efficiency in terms of being able to talk to folks just like getting on the phone with them right away within the 5 minutes. Jeremy Reeves: Wow. That is a pretty big drop I mean that is essentially doubling. You know, if you are waiting until the next day to call people back and you do it within 5 minutes you are essentially doubling the amount of people you get to talk to. Adam Bluemner: Yeah, that is exactly right and I thought one of the interesting things that I thought would be you know need to kind of find out is to take what are the industry approaches how quickly do people tend to follow up 851 there was some information out there it was not something that we had put together as reference in the study or so, but apparently, the industry average is about 46 hours. Jeremy Reeves: Wow. Adam Bluemner: Yeah, so I think, you know, and I think for some people if you are a salesperson and you are busy, you are out making calls you know, calling within a day can make me actually feel kind of feel fast, I mean it does not feel like if that 919 is a delay, but when you are actually kind of look at the result is that, 924 really interesting that you are talking about radically different result of that if you do wait that day or two. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, that is interesting, okay. That does not matter -- do you have any stats that are based on industry or is that kind of a total aggregative of everything you have done? Adam Bluemner: Yeah, so I believe the stats that I referenced on a study would be average of when people call to follow up with 951 in the different industries. In terms of the data that we gathered it is definitely across a huge variety of different industry type. We do not really make any effort whatsoever to focus on one particular etch, though. The people that we are talking to could be a nonprofit organization with a handful of people or could be you know a really large multinational manufacturing company, so those are the individual specializations are kind of 1026 because we do talk to such a wide variety of different folks out there. Jeremy Reeves: Okay, okay, nice. That is really good thing to know and to bring it back to -- to even with sales 1037 even if one skill that they always tell people to learn is the ability to take information and take a concept from one area and applied it to their own business. So, just one idea that just pop into my head is, if you look at that and it is basically the faster you get in touch with people when they first get in touch with you, the better results you are going to have. So, if you put that into even something like emails, so if you are doing callbacks and obviously call them back and -- but if you do not have that in your business right now you can take the same concept into something like email or retargeting or something like that, and that is kind of one of the things I say is when people get in touch with you whether to email or calling or whatever it is, that is when they are the most open and receptive and kind of you know, hot to do business with you because they just got in touch with you that moment and every minute that goes by, they become less and less excited to do business with you and that is why it so important to do things like call people back right away and to send emails right away, because a lot of times, they kind of get like that first initially you know like, “Oh, thanks for downloading our thing” and then you do not send the next email for like a week and by that time they forget who you even are, it is kind of the same thing with calling, it is definitely a good concept that you can use in several different areas in your business. Adam Bluemner: Yeah, absolutely. I think you are definitely right on to 1207 it is one of those principle that expands beyond 1212 one of the things that I am interested in doing this is actually doing a similar type of thing of work, quantifying it with our email 1222 to see exactly how to play out there. Now, I would expect we are going to find a very, very similar kind of phenomenon that is going out there, but the other part of what you are just kind of talking about is that when you see the soft of the fact, really the important thing is to actually grab it and latch onto it and integrate it and have a process -- it is great to see okay, there is this data that 1250 it is better if we get on the phone faster I think that -- from my perspective really groundbreaking I think most people are kind of intuitive 1258. The important thing is do you have a 1301 that you can actually rely on and to move forward with that, do you have the motivation to put into the practice. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah and do you have -- is there anything, and I totally agree by the way, the fact I was actually just working on one of my standard operating procedures right before we got into this call and that is -- it kind of shows the importance of having you know an actual system in place rather than just like “oh okay, you know one call you get back and you are not doing anything, so you call right away. The next time somebody calls may be you are in the middle of writing something or you know on another interview or whatever it is so they do not get called for two days, you know, it is -- do you have any kind of further insights into -- how to build those systems, is there anything that you guys do or any of your clients or anything like that do, that kind of helps make it so that is a very consistent process? Adam Bluemner: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I can tell you exactly what we did with that to make sure that it was consistent I can definitely share some ideas on. I think some very easy ways that you can kind of lean on technology to make it easier, so what we did and I talked about this in the study is we actually had developed kind of a piece of internal software super super simple it might be -- we have a couple of really smart internal developers here it might be online 1426 simple application type put together for our own use here. Basically what it was is they just look at the database and when a new lead, a new request free information came through what it would do is we have a team of software experts that speak with this different people about what their needs are. It literally will bring up a screen on their workstation with a little alert segment. I mean it is literally exactly that, I mean it is a visual 1455 Yeah, it is great it is funny I mean it sounds almost illegal when you have that kind of visual reminder in front of you, I mean it is very -- it demands action, so and that is all it is. It basically just says, “hey, there is something waiting for you here” and it allows you link to open it up and then make a call to you for those folks so that is our own internal system for it, I think there is actually a lot of really good ways that are very technologically simple that people can do that. For somebody who is hosting their own site, they are definitely waiting for you to get an email 1539, immediately letting you know that you got this new opportunity waiting for you. There is great services out there. There is something called IFTT, and you heard of this particular application? Jeremy Reeves: Ift? Adam Bluemner: Yeah, IFTT. Jeremy Reeves: No, I have not. Adam Bluemner: Okay, so it is a very simple thing. It is completely free. The IFFT stands for “If This, Then That.” Basically, it is kind of like a bridge between different software application and different web applications that allows you to make the action from one place, maybe it is a new tweeter post or something like that, cannot 1626 the action from somewhere else like if it is like an open web service, so people use this to, you know, if they get an email on a particular thing that includes a particular keyword, what kind of 1638 text message email or if they post a Facebook thing or, you know, a particular Facebook post come across with a particular topic 1648 down to some other means. I think those are the things which, again, is actually completely free to use. This particular web application, really, really simple 1700 being kind of democratize with the development of all this cool services out there, so the technology is 1708 out there, it is something that people can access at no cost. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah. I actually just - I was kind of browsing on the website. It is actually really cool. That is very similar if, for some reason, most of the people I know have either have or use called Zapier, and that is basically, it is a very similar kind of concept, you kind of link all the various apps together and they tell each other, you know, if this thing happens on that, you know, do this. So, yeah, I mean either of those works and I am actually going to keep it up on my screen because it looks pretty interesting. Yeah, that is really good kind of tip on doing that. How about-- while you are talking about the little notification that they get with the red siren and that kind of thing, do you guys have anything in place let us say for example that I get a lead and I am on the phone at that moment and it is going to be like an hour or something like that. Is there a way to -- and you might not even noticed, is there a way to like kind of click, you know, I am too busy and then it kind of does like a round robin thing and it goes to the next person? Adam Bluemner: Yeah. We do it absolutely, have that built in to it. It will even 1823 on that siren that we have. It will identify other people who may be potential people to call back are actually engaged in some other activity. So, 1834 phone system to see if that is the case which I guess is, you know, that level of sophistication beyond what I was going to present before 1844, so yeah, I mean there are all sorts of cool stuff you can do it but I mean really obviously being in the company that matches organizations up with different software solutions to business 1858 it is something that is angled that we are looking at every single day, so there are tremendous systems out there and you can take this as far as you need to take it, so something like -- yeah, 1913 an independent contractor right which definitely needs to set up, down and very simple little notification system. Now, that is going to be very different than if it is a large organization that has thousands of different sales reps that needs to manage all sorts of territory role and all sorts of different processes like that, but there is technically solutions out there that to do. There is a lot of 1942 systems they give you kind of leverage to do the sort of internal notification to keep a track of the results of these certain 1951 it really needs to take kind of analytical approach to this. Jeremy Reeves: Ok, nice. I like this. So how about, you know, we talked about speed and various ways to what kind of like the technical details in getting it done, what about you know, one of the things that I have learned over marketing is that you cannot like if you expect to be successful in whatever you are doing at any kind of marketing campaign you cannot just put yourself in front of the person one time, you know, obviously that is where you are going to get the most result is the first attempt like if you do a direct mail letter you will get whatever conversion rate for the first mailing but then what a lot of people do not do is then follow up and to a second one or third one and so one of the principles I teach is keep doing it until it is no longer profitable for you, because it is something like people give up too easily. Talk to us about that, does it make a difference in terms of cold calls, does it make a difference if you call them just one time versus two or five or ten times, how does that work? Adam Bluemner: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, like I was talking before about the average of the time between when people receive a lead and when they would make in terms of the industry average in about 46 hours I also went to find out how many times do people really make when they get a 2118. The number that I came back for that was also shockingly 2124 about 1.2 according to the study that I consulted. I believe it was from a company called IBM 2131 study again, but I really, really 2135 number of followup at times. So, the interesting thing is I know there is and probably a lot of your listeners do 2144 so these are expensive and there is a lot of cost tied into the marketing efforts to actually acquired that 2151 and you certainly want to make sure that you are doing everything that you can from a return on investment standpoint to get the value out of that leads. So, we wanted to look at it exactly from that window to make sense to what to give up on this particular lead. So what we did on that one is we actually checked out what are contact rates were by the number of calls that we made and found out some really interesting things with relation to that. We are able to go from about 42% of our first call that we made, we are able to speak with somebody right on that first call right. So, now the individual contact rate drops down significantly from there but if you go out to the 7th, 8th, or 9th call where the upper 70th percentile 2245 contacting that particular lead contact. So, again, we are almost approaching doubling the number of people that we spoke with by, you know, simply making 6 or 7 more calls. So, 2300 for an individual sales rep I understand that you are making, you know, making that 3rd and 4th and 5th and 6th call and you are not getting the experience, the feedback of talking to somebody, that is frustrating, but if you can take a look at the whole thing, if you have the perspective of “hey, I’m actually doubling my qualification rate or my contact rate here” I think that puts the difference on that when you actually look at the 2329 return that you are getting on the investment of your time. Jeremy Reeves: Definitely, definitely and I am looking at the image where you guy show this and it goes from the exact numbers are 42.9% for the 1st call and then it goes all the way up to 79.6%. So, it is basically doubling by 10 calls and then -- another way of looking at that is you can then just kind of like 80/20 that and say, okay but we are getting 80% of the results within the first, whatever, five calls you know, so for example it goes from 43% to 71% in the first 5 calls, so maybe you just stop there and maybe after that point, that is when you like, okay, you know, it is not worth the extra time to do those other five calls just for another 10% bump, maybe it depends on how profitable you are, it depends on how much you are paying your sales people, it depends on the margins I mean it depends on all kinds of different factors, but beyond, it is interesting, and once again, you know, moving that into other areas if you are doing direct mail. Keep testing it, keep sending out new letters until it is not profitable anymore. If you do an emails, you know, do not just have one or two emails, have it up until the point and you are able to track things like emails and any of retargeting things like that, so you know exactly how much you are making after each email, so just look at that and say, okay, it is not profitable anymore after email, whatever 20 and then stop. So, it is applicable in so many different areas, but you know, the thing is, do not just give up because like what I am talking about, I mean you can -- after 10 contact attempts you double just about -- you double your results and then if you mix that with calling people and it is funny because nobody thinks that doing cold calling works, but if there are not doing these things, like, imagine somebody, you know, they are getting 2528 cold-calls and there calling them the next day and then only following up once, imagine how much better if you -- because both of them basically double, so even if you just say, you know, 2-1/2 times overall just to be really conservative and did calls right off the bat like in the first 5 minutes and follow up with them 5 to 10 times, I mean just look at the difference in the results and that is probably why people are so frustrated when they do stuff like this is because they are not doing the right way basically, they are not doing everything that can make it worth their time. Adam Bluemner: Well, for me the interesting thing about it is they are actually is in mathematical answer, 2613 for how long it make them to follow up, right? Now, it is a little bit difficult to ride back you have got to consider all these different variables what 2621 making these calls what is the time required to make all of these different calls, but one of the reason why I wanted to present this information is because this is where it starts in order to that. For us, we are able to look at it and say, well, you know 2639 a minute and they ask may be to make an individual call. We are able to kind of calculate our own internal cost that are associated with that and then we actually able to see the return on what that cost is and compare it and come to actually in mathematical conclusion of this is where it make sense to stop and this is where it make sense to keep going and that is something that I would encourage every sales professional to do individually if they are not in an organization that are helping to do it themselves and I think it is really 2715 you got to just start to gather the information seeing what it is, in your case understanding, you know, the value of your time versus the time it takes to make these attempts and write it out, you will see what the difference and may be in your case for an individual it is the 4th or the 5th call and beyond that ---- on the time that takes 2739 and it is just really is not worth the rewards on it or maybe 2742 down the line but takes the time to actually figure that out because the differential between what you are doing and what is optimum is essentially 2750 and you can eliminate that you are making your company yourself more efficient. Jeremy Reeves: Okay, yeah, yeah, it make sense, make sense. So, the next question is, as you go down the line and you know, I am just going to play devil’s advocate a little bit. Do the prospects become less qualified as it gets harder to contact them, so let us just say that you have 100 people that you contact on 1st call, does that mean they are more open to buying from you or do you have any statistics on kind of how qualified the prospects are as you go down the line? Adam Bluemner: Yeah. We do. Actually, you are right, I mean, so far I have been talking about contact rates. What it would matter is that ultimately the qualification rate, right? You want to find out if there is somebody who is moving along on the process and kind of getting to the next stage. Now, I mentioned the context 2851 were qualifying these opportunities for external organizations the fact it does not matter so much, it could be whether it is for your sales or whether it is for, you know, outside company, it does not matter if you just need to move them along in that sales cycle. When you take a look at these numbers on that 1st contact attempt our qualification rate is about 24%. So 24% of the time that 2918 pick up the phone and make the call. We are going to have a qualifying prospect somebody that yes we are looking for software yes. We are looking to find out more information about this, yes were in the buying process. That is what qualifying 2933 that is going to be the number on that 1st call. Now, when you look at this and you continue on, the further you go and the number of contacted comes the lower that qualification rate is going to come. So, for instance, the 5th conversation you are at about 2.5% of those times that you take up the call, you are going to 2957 individually qualified prospect as the result of that particular call, but it is the same as it is with the contact rate if you look at the cumulative numbers, you are almost doubling your qualification rate by giving up the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th contact attempts. Jeremy Reeves: That is interesting. Yeah, it is kind of funny that like almost everything is doubling over 10 contact attempts. It is kind of -- it is a weird little phenomenon. Even when you are doing that I imagined -- and again, it kind of comes down to your specific business what make sense for you, but people listening to this, could you get to the 5th contact attempt and only a couple percent are qualified, what you can do in that case is just outsource the very beginning of the call and then maybe you have a question for them and then if they show that they are qualified, then they get transferred to the normal sales person. I mean there are always ways around this to make it work for your business. You have to get creative with it and figure out how to make it work for your business. Adam Bluemner: Yeah, all those 3105 numbers in terms of the value that you get out of it 3108 associated with following up that is where the rubber meets the road and of course that will be different kind of business by business key, but the general kind of overall phenomenon I think is going to be pretty consistent. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. Now, how about -- so far, we talked about -- and I am going to see if I remember everything, we talked about the speed of how fast you contact them, what was the second thing, it was speed and then how many, so the number of calls that you should do and then we talked about how qualify they are as you go down the line. How about things like, the time of day because I know a lot of people asked me specifically to like emails and things like that, is there certain time of day you should send them as a certain day of the week that kind of thing. Should you do them on weekend, should you not, should you do in the morning, afternoon, or night. Do you have any kind of insights on days of the week and times of the day and kind of breaking it down into that specific detail? Adam Bluemner: Yeah, so that was something we wanted as well, we wanted to put the actual numbers to that. I definitely seen a lot of different articles out there that were living at this very topic and trying to figure out is there a sweet spot. So, we were able to take a look at that and examine that I think one of the important things to mention is our specific contacts, I think the results will depend on whether or not each individual sales team or sales person contacts matches this one. We are talking about B to Be sales here. So, we are not calling up with anybody who is a direct consumer, buying the consumer product, this is all business to business type of sales, right? So we did look at what were the results from calling Monday through Friday and standard business days that is when we make our calls and then at 8 in the morning to 5 p.m. local time, that is also when we make our calls. So that is really where we have the data and where we were able to assess. So, we have been seeing some differences and at the middle of the week, Tuesday through Thursday was a bit elevated in terms of the contact rates that we saw there. Similarly we are seeing that there was a little bit of an elevated contact rate for the morning hours versus the afternoon hours, but I think for me when I look at this data, what we 3339 we are talking about differential of half a percent, 1.5% and 2%. So, before 3347 we are talking about doubling to get back. Here we are working at half percent or a couple percent, so I would actually urge people not to get too hung up on finding that exact particular time, recency that you are talking about before as well as the number of followup attempts I think is going to be a much -- further going to be much more important 3411. Jeremy Reeves: Okay, yeah, yeah. Like you were just saying, I think the recency and also the frequency are both way, way bigger determining factors than looking at it and just so everybody knows, it does kind of make sense because I am looking at it now, the days of the week, it is Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I know for me personally, both checking my own emails and also reaching out to potential clients or clients whatever, most people respond, in those middle days, Mondays usually terrible because everybody comes off of the weekend and their inbox is just overloaded, they are getting ready for the week and then Friday there is kind of like that mad rush to get everything done before the weekend and then throughout the day, there is a big jump at 11 or 12 so that is basically lunch time, so a lot of people and I know, you know, myself I know most of my friends, my clients they check their email a lot during lunch hours because it is kind of like a little bit of -- they get a little bit of down time, they kind of chilling for an hour or so, and they use that to kind of catch up on their email. A lot of people only check their email during lunchtime. So, that all make sense, but and that is -- I am kind of glad that you found -- that you came to these conclusions with days of the week and times of the day because I have talked about that several times in marketing and everybody wants to know when they should send it, but the reality is, it does not matter that much. Yeah, I mean if you are already a 50-million dollar business and you have tested the bejesus out of everything that you are doing, okay you can get really, really granular like that and test, you know, tiny little tweaks, but the bigger changes are going to happen when you are testing how fast you call them back, the script for when you call them back. How qualified they are in the first place, all that kind of stuff. So, I definitely agree with you that these, the last statistics there are -- they are interesting but they really, should not be focused on all that much. Adam Bluemner: Yeah, I mean as 3624 talking through why, some of the 3627 like variations made and 3628 I understand people 3631 about that and one of the interesting things I thought when I did the research for this is when I went out to see have other people found similar things and 3642 time of articles out there that are talking about reporting to tell you that this is the golden hour, the golden day for following up and I think I have 3655 theory that probably a pretty good portion of those studies are the results of sloppy analytics so here is my theory on that. When I originally ran these numbers, I saw that Monday and the first thing in the morning had really, really elevated contact rate, like abnormally high and I thought why that is really strange, that does not seem to make 3722 especially not on followup calls or a call after the 1st attempt was made and I think actually what happened is, because you have such a higher contact rate on that 1st call that you make, right? You are eliminating that 3742 people who, the reason they are not answering because they change their mind about 3749 that first 3750 where you got your best chance, well Monday morning you have got all of the needs and inquiries without being submitted over the weekend, 3800 abnormally high number of fresh opportunities and that is actually we wanted kind of avoiding those numbers. So when I 3809 and took that out of the equation, right, and I just listed the followup once and kind of normalize the 3815. That phenomenon completely disappeared for me. So I think a lot of the articles out there that are saying, hey 3825 first thing on Monday morning. I suspect there may be this kind of bias that is still can 3836 who knows, I mean maybe there are some niche industry where that really is a good time, I certainly do not want just to come to all of them, but it seems likely that there is some 3845 going on. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah. There could be a couple different things going on there I think and the number one it is kind of like -- like you were talking about -- basically correlation versus causation, is it correlators, is one thing actually causing the other thing, so there is that argument to it and then, another kind of potential thing would be something as simple as some marketer, 50 years ago wanted to bring out a new tactic to tell everybody to sell a course and he said, “Oh, its -- you have to follow up at Thursday at 2 o’clock” because that worked the best for me, 10 calls and therefore that is exactly what you have to do and then it just stuck. That happens a lot in the world of conversion rate optimization. Today, you know, people would get invalid results, they do like a sample size of like 10 or 20 people and they get a result, and they are like, “Oh, I tripled my conversion rate” but little do they know if they did, you know, 100 or 200 or 1000 conversions it would go down to insignificant numbers, 3948 I think your number is definitely after almost over 63,000 calls I am pretty sure you have a good enough sample size. Adam Bluemner: Yeah and those are one of the things that -- because of the unique position that we hold, we are actually able to deal with that sort of volume which is great, I mean it is an awesome sample size to be able to get into but, you know, interestingly 4014 and play it with, you know, at any given time, so we are really looking closely at where the rubber meets the road in terms of what is working and trying to be as nimble as possible and putting this things into a fact but I think also what you are saying before about somebody 4036 to sell a particular course. I agree I think those 4039. The truth is often a little bit more mundane than that, I mean for instance, I think you can see that 4052 study what we did we find here. We found that the biggest factors are 4056 again, something that most people 4058 as we 4100 continue to follow up, but there are things that I think, the value of this is -- okay here is the approach of how to work at the actual numbers on it and kind of work it out and let us think about what kind of mechanisms that we need to bring this in to an actual process. That is the value of thinking about that sort of thing. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah, absolutely and for everybody listening before we jump off here. I just want to bring everything back to a few key points. So number 1, if you are doing cold calls, make sure that you are doing all the things that we are talking about, but if you are not doing cold calls, maybe you are doing calls to customers, right? So if that is the case, then make sure -- again, that you are still -- all of this stuff still applies to that. And even if you are not doing now but you really should be, but even if you are not doing that if you are sending out emails, the same thing, it is recency, frequency and there is some other things in there but kind of -- do not worry too much about like time of the day and all that kind of stuff. Really 4204 with my 4206 just to show that it does not make that much of a difference with my side business it is a Kinowear I show guys how to dress better and a lot of the audience are younger guys a lot of them are in college, probably 50+ are in college. So when we send out emails, a lot of times we get better open rates but it is not a huge difference later in the day because most college students kind of check it like weekend nights, stuff like that or like after midnight. So a lot of times if we end a promotion it is really, really late in the night because we will get sales at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning when they are coming home from the bar and they have a couple beers in them, they see the promotion, then its “oh yeah that is a great idea” 4251 it helps them a lot in dressing better and getting confidence all that, but it really -- it depends it is something to test, but is very far down on your list of test. And then the fourth thing is if you are doing direct mail, again, the same thing applies. Do not just send out one piece, send out many pieces and then when they call you, if one of your ways to get in touch with you is to call you, make sure that you are getting touch in with them if you missed their call, you are getting in touch with them as fast as you possibly can and then calling them back a few times reminding of why they called you that kind of thing. So just the kind of bring it into a way that everybody can apply everything that we talked about today because it really is pretty fascinating information that we discussed and it is something I was even kind of shock of how much you can increase by just doing really simple thing. It is not rocket science. So, anyway, I really appreciate you coming on the line today. Why don’t you tell everybody where they could find you, how you can help them and then we will jump off. Adam Bluemner: Sure, absolutely. findaccountingsoftware.com is the website. If you are actually looking for the study, what you want to do is there is going to be an area where there is a number of blog post or doing discussions of our variety, different business management topics, this is one of them. If you click through to that, you will see it is probably I would say maybe 6th or 7th most recent post 4426 so you can find this study their 4429. Jeremy Reeves: Oh sorry, I was just going to say, I will put in a show notes for everybody, so you could just go to the post -- I will put the direct link just so you do not have to scroll around and try to find it. Adam Bluemner: Yeah, that is great and my email is actually on that as well. So if anybody has any questions I am definitely happy to provide any insights I can. So, yeah, check it out if you get a chance. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, sounds good. Thanks for joining us again. It was very, very fascinating for me. I know if I found it fascinating, everybody else did and again everybody knows that I am all about taking action. So make sure to listen to this again if you have to. Go and read the actual case study. Again, I will put a link to it in the show notes that you should -- just go to my blog and go to the podcast section, you will see the show notes for this interview. Go there and make a list and look through everything and see exactly how you can apply it to your business because that is kind of the whole point of all of this. Thanks again Adam for coming on, it was absolutely awesome and I hope to talk to you soon. Adam Bluemner: Sounds great. It was a pleasant for being here. Thanks so much for providing the opportunity. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, sure. Thanks.

Last week we looked in Matthew 19 at a discussion Jesus had with the Pharisees about divorce … they are going in the wrong direction with their question: “Can a man divorce his wife for any reason?” Jesus said because of the hardness of your hearts ..., but it was not so from the beginning. Have we been so culturally conditioned to believe that all our interpersonal conflict, all the pain and heartache in male – female relationships is normal? Jesus thinks not! Through conditioning, we’re more familiar with ORIGINAL SIN than ORIGINAL RIGHTEOUSNESS … Jesus is saying that in order to untwist the mess we’ve made, we must go back to the beginning … before Genesis 3. We must explore ORIGINAL INNOCENCE. We have a better theology of sin than we have of creation. The Gospel doesn’t begin with “all have sinned” … it begins with the glory of God. If we don’t understand God’s original intentions, we won’t understand how far we’ve fallen from the glory of God. Genesis 1 -2 describes “Original Experiences” of the first human beings. The first three Chapters of Genesis, arguably the first 11, provides interpretive keys for understanding the rest of the Bible. Once those categories are in place, you’ll find that they keep reoccurring. Historically, in America especially, we’ve been sidetracked by trying to read Genesis as a scientific account of creation. Other’s read it in a stiff, literal manner or as mere history, or pre-history. I believe the authors of Genesis are attempting to give us a theology. It is written in symbolic language to communicate universal truths about God and creation. It’s more about God’s intention for creation than HOW he created it. The NT authors read Genesis from symbolism to spiritual reality … from the snake in the Garden symbolizing Satan. Satan is no more a literal snake than Jesus is a literal Lamb! You see if I want to understand what a Toyota looks like, I don’t go the junkyard; I go to the showroom. Let’s now go to the showroom. Original Experiences 1. Original Divine Partnership (stewards of creation) 2. Original Freedom (the two trees) 3. Original Faith (avoiding death by God's awareness, not ours) 4. Original Solitude (alone without a complementary gift) 5. Original Unity (such solitude guides one to such unity) 6. Original Nakedness (without shame) In all of the above, human beings were growing in an emerging identity. Until the creation of woman, man, Adam (generic humanity) was unique from all of God’s creation. He is coming to understand that he is alone. The obvious meaning of Adam’s aloneness, his solitude, is that it’s not good to be without Eve. So Adam experiences solitude, and at this point, with no GENDER IDENTITY … Adam is a word meaning of the earth, generic humanity. Adam is required to live by Faith (faith working through love) He had no reference for what death was … he would have to trust God without any experience of it. Satan fell in heaven … before this possibility … love requires freedom within a plurality, a communion of persons. Before Sin entered the world, there was one thing that was not good. So … God did a humorous thing … Animals! After naming them, Adam came to more aloneness, alienation that he is similar but not identical to the animals. Adam has the breath of life but still a sense of aloneness. Adam walks with an unseen deity, but still 'alone'; he has to truth God's awareness of death without ever experiencing it. His aloneness is a gift, summoning him towards God and ultimate the other, Eve. Adam comes to understand his maleness (ish - Hebrew for male) only after he's introduced to Eve (is-sah - Hebrew for female. This one from the earth, Adam, comes to a new identity in light of a complementary gift. Original solitude remains in both Adam and Eve, summoning them towards God, a relationship of trust.

Brad is about to head off to Brazil to watch The World Cup. He may not return. He may get kidnapped, or lost in a riot, or eaten by prostitutes. So Adam called him on the phone to have one potential last conversation with his best friend.

Understating the True Image of God - a look at the feminineGen 1:27So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.Gen 2:18-23And the LORD God said, "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him."  Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name.  So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said: "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man."James and Denise Jordon - http://www.fatherheart.net/God's Image - Encompasses the Masculine and Feminine, not in regards to gender, but attributes, attributes of God given to man, unique to each personTogether there is strength, division brings weaknessExperiencing the fullness of both, allows us to be.  Allows us to receive, allows us to respond to God, allows us to respond to others, to nurture, to rest.Effects of the sin, Gen 3:1-7.- Eyes were not open until they both ate- Before, every desire and need was met, suddenly there were needs which were not met (nakedness), and there was a relationship with separation (they hid) Relationship between Woman and the serpent, Gen 3:13-15.  There is now war against woman; she represents the feminine attributes, an expression of this curse.

NEW FOR AUGUST 1, 2009 Could it be both sides need to quit being lippy and just stop and listen to the music . . . ? Black and Blue - The Best Radio You Have Never Heard Vol. 115 1. Fight The Power - Public Enemy Buy From iTunes 2. Cop Killer - Body Count Buy From iTunes* 3. Police On My Back - The Clash Buy From iTunes! 4. Black and White (live) - Todd Rundgren Buy From iTunes* 5. Physical (You're So) - Adam and the Ants But From iTunes 6. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - Gil Scott-Heron Buy From iTunes 7. I've Seen All Good People (Your Move - All Good People) - Matthew Sweet / Susanna Hoffs Buy From iTunes 8. Accidents Will Happen (rehearsal) - Elvis Costello and the Rude 5 Buy From iTunes* 9. Honky Tonk Woman (live) - Elton John Buy From iTunes 10. House We Used To Live In - The Smithereens Buy From iTunes 11. Transporter / Resident - Eddie Jobson 12. Carrying No Cross (live) - U.K. Buy From iTunes* 13. Batteries Not Included - Jethro Tull Buy From iTunes 14. Script For A Jester's Tear (live) - Marillion Buy From iTunes The Best Radio You Have Never Heard. Resisting arrest for playing disorderly music . . . Accept No Substitute.

What up bitches?!?! So today we go over March Madness. So Adam is here and there is no better at college basketball, at least that we know. So first we talk about how to set up you own bracket, whether it be at work or school or whatever. We also talk about our first impressions now that the brackets are out. All the large conferences vs. all the mid-majors, teams like Duke, Memphis, U-Conn and Villanova. We also talk about how the teams are matched up, and also how OUR picks look. Weâ??ve got a couple of upsets and we even took Robinâ??s picks, and Tristanâ??s little sisterâ??s picks. So we will see how it pans out over the next few weeks. Anyways, if your into College Hoops, this is the show for you! Listen up and enjoy! Next week will be back with the shenanigans from my birthday celebration!