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Brian Beaulieu has served as CEO and Chief Economist of ITR EconomicsTM since 1987, where he Researches the Use of Business Cycle Analysis and Economic Forecasting as Tools for Improving profitability. Brian has shared his Highly Valued Research Results via Presentations, Workshops, and Seminars in Numerous Countries to Hundreds of thousands of Business Owners and Executives for the last 38 years. In this episode we talked about: Brian`s Background Economic Outlook for 2021- 2022 Interest Rates Inflation The Federal Reserve Modern Monetary Theory Austrian Economy Overview The Real Estate Prospective Bulding Manufactured Housing Safety of the US dollar The Overview of Real Estate Opportunities Mentorship, Resources and Lessons Learned Useful links: https://www.itreconomics.com/brian-beaulieu brian@itreconomics.com Transcription: Jesse (0s): Welcome to the working capital real estate podcast. My name is Jesse Fragale. And on this show, we discuss all things real estate with investors and experts in a variety of industries that impact real estate. Whether you're looking at your first investment or raising your first fund, join me and let's build that portfolio one square foot at a time. Welcome to working capital the real estate podcast. My name is Jesse for galley and my guest today is Brian Ballou. Brian has served as CEO and chief economists of ITR economics since 1987, where you research is the use of business cycle analysis and economic forecasting as tools for improving profitability.    Brian has shared his highly valued research results with via presentations, workshops, and seminars in numerous countries to hundreds of thousands of business owners and executives for the last 38 years. And Brian and I will be speaking in October in new Orleans for the bigger pockets conference, BP con Brian, how's it going?    Brian (1m 1s): It's going pretty well. Just me. How about you?    Jesse (1m 4s): I'm doing great. Doing great. You know, we're kind of, we're in a good spot right now in Toronto. Weather-wise Italy's moving to the final and in the Euro. So,    Brian (1m 15s): You know, everything's everything's okay.    Jesse (1m 21s): So we've talked a little bit before the show. You're joining us from New Hampshire today. Brian, is that, is that home for you?    Brian (1m 29s): No, home is Marco island. We summer up here in New Hampshire and here we are right on. Yeah.    Jesse (1m 36s): Well, I'm very excited to have you on the show as listeners know, I'm a bit, a bit, I'm a bit of a economics geek and I love looking at real estate through the lens of, of macro and micro trends, you know, when it comes to investing and, and ultimately forecasting where we think real estate is going to go. And another thing we talked about before the show as a little bit of a template for how we go through our conversation, you know, with real estate, as the backdrop, but economics as, as kind of the tool we use.    But before we do that for listeners and for myself, Brian, if you could give a little bit of a background of yourself, you know, how you got in the industry and, and how your career has has gone. Over the years,    Brian (2m 22s): I started off in the private sector, working in Boston, in the financial department of gray bar. Then I went to work for the government for three years, and then 1982 came to ITR economics. And I bought the place in 1987. So it's not a very long resumes, just one big long gap or stretch here. It it's been a great rundown. It's been, it's been amazing.    Jesse (2m 51s): And was your, your background originally was in economics or did that, did that evolve over, over the career?    Brian (3m 1s): I started college as an accounting major and realized that looking for that perfect balance or drive me crazy, I need something where it close enough is good enough. And that was economics. So I have a, I have a dual major of econ and finance with a minor in accounting    Jesse (3m 16s): Right on. And so for the, the conversation, you know, you're going to be giving this talk in, in new Orleans in October. I'd love to basically take a step back of where we're at today in terms of the lockdowns, the impact of the last 18 months on the general economy and real estate. And just wanted to get your thoughts, you know, from an economic sort of an economists point of view, what's your take on the last 18 months? And you know, how are we sitting today as a, as an economy, whether that's, you know, in north America or, you know, or the European markets    Brian (3m 54s): We are sitting on on this rock that is heading ever higher coming out of something that not none of us have ever experienced before. And hopefully it will never experience again. And the governments of the world decided that what they needed to do in order to get the economy going again, once they allowed people to move about was dumped an unimaginable amount of money into the various and century economies when all they really needed to do was simply maybe that first round is stimulus to let people out of their homes and the economy would be coming back.    But it's coming back with nitrous oxide added to the fuel tank now, which is stretching our supply chains. We have trucking shortages, we have cargo ships stacked on the east coast and the west coast. China's dealing with the Delta variant now, and that's shut down part of going down province and therefore some shipping activity guys shut down for a couple of weeks. So we're, we're clearly going to be contending with the supply chain issues and pricing issues to the rest of this year.    But we see in 2022, the rate of growth in north America and in Europe dissipates to a more normal pace. And that would allow this, the supply chains much needed time to get caught up to the demand. So over the course of 22, a lot of those stresses what we ameliorated really, and the world will seem much more sane at that particular time. We'll understand normal economic relationships much better as we get through 22 and on into 23 and 23 looks to be a good solid year of rise also.    So from a real estate lens perspective, we're bullish on all aspects. So multi-family most aspects of commercial real estate in general, coming back nicely as we go through 22, 23 office is going to obviously experienced some difficulties because of COVID backer and the, the moving away from these urban areas.    It's, it's, it's amazing to us actually that the millennials, and if you stop me if I'm digressing, but we all assume that millennials who are going to be so different than the gen X-ers and the baby boomers, but come to find out that behaving an awful lot, like gen X-ers and a somewhat like baby boomers in terms of then moving out into suburbia now, and they're buying homes and they're getting powers. We never thought they would have cars. Right. But yeah, they have cars. There's an 80% penetration of automobile ownership amongst millennials, which is the highest we've seen since the seventies.    It was a matter of fact. So there, again, all the, all the things that we used to pine for also. So I recently I mentioned that is because I find that incredibly encouraging in terms of seeing that normalcy, that rubble, that we're all striving for, at least we don't have to worry about that curve ball coming at us. Right. So yes, that the platform is going to change the commercial real estate landscape, but the fundamentals of the demand pull from the population, at least that looks to be rock solid.    And that that's really fantastic.    Jesse (7m 28s): Yeah. I'd love to Del delve into the different verticals in, in commercial real estate and residential. And just before we do, I'd like to get your take on, you know, whether it's the, you know, I can't remember the emergency plan that we had in, in Canada for, you know, whether it was 79 billion, whatever it was. And then you, you know, conversely or in addition a us had the cares act. And I think now, I don't know if you guys are up to four or $5 trillion in terms of actual stimulus six, ah, well, a nice round number at six.    Yeah. What's your, what's your take on, on this, this level of stimulus because you know, the oh 8 0 9, it was supposed to be, you know, QE was net, it was supposed to be an emergency lever. We would never see it again until, you know, we're in a global pan denim mix. So what's your view on that? How are we going to deal with, with these, this level of, of stimulus injected into the economy?    Brian (8m 26s): That's the trillion dollar question, right? Next trillion, 6 trillion. And then there's like Canadian billions on top of that. Yeah. You said you saw it in Canada, just like we did in the us, all that liquidity stimulated, retail sales activity, it stimulated housing, single family housing activity primarily to a very high degree. So the question now becomes is the resulting price inflation, be it in homes or commodities to make all this stuff, is that trenchant or is it here to stay?    That's one question and then the follow on question has to be, will the central bankers of the world decide they need to sterilize some of this activity, pull it back in, in other words, and will they do that quickly because they fear inflation, will they do it very slowly, mid that's? That's part of why we see some dangers on the horizon, in the financial markets, and by the way, we'll get there not compensation I'm sure.    But I think the after, well, I'd already mentioned that we see real estate doing well in the near term. We see it as an outperforming asset class through the rest of this decade. So investors in this real estate space, be it multifamily or other types of commercial real estate, I think they're in for a very good ride and likely to significantly outpaced stock market returns, seriously outpaced any bond market returns that could possibly get it's going to be the go-to investment place for this decade.    Jesse (10m 14s): Yeah. It's w I was talking with somebody last week on the podcast, and we were talking about the difference between where we're living right now in this, you know, technical recession and where we were in oh 8 0 9, where now we're in a position where there's a lot of credit. There's a lot of capital out in the market back then there wasn't. So it seems that the real estate, like you're saying is being buoyed by the fact that there is a lot of capital out there. And I mean, we just see it on, you know, anecdotally on the brokerage side that our capital markets teams have, have been having record record months over the last a year, year and a half.    And it just looks like there's a lot of capital with the caveat that, you know, on the leasing side, on the retail side, definitely, you know, where they've had the most challenge by far.    Brian (11m 1s): Well, and it's in real estate, it's always just location, right? I mean, here in the states, if you broker a deal or you're involved in a deal in Nashville or Dallas or Austin, you're going to have a much different experience than if you're trying to do that deal in Chicago or West Virginia someplace, or even New York, the geographic location driven by demographics and tax environment are extremely important.    Jesse (11m 31s): Yeah. In terms of this conversation, it's, it's funny, you have very smart people on both sides that, that seem to take a very different views from the interest rate inflation debate and, and you know what, it's, it's hard to figure out where you, where you really stand on it, where, you know, one school of thought is that there is no place, you know, aside from a future with more inflation, as a result of the amount of stimulus. And then, you know, you hear people push back on that and basically say that it's not stimulus in the Milton Friedman sense that, you know, you, you have, you have money going into the economy and no matter what that's going to cause inflation as a result of it being dumped into the economy, it's, it's like in oh eight, seem to sit on balance sheets.    Wasn't, didn't have a tremendous amount of velocity, but based on the last few months, the numbers seem to indicate that we are starting to increase from an inflationary standpoint. W how do you read that    Brian (12m 35s): It's a complex issue, but how we read it is similar to how the federal reserve and the bond market is reading the situation. If you look at the bond market, which is amazingly prescient about the future in terms of inflation, at least 18 months out, they're not at the least bit concerned about systemic inflation. They think that this supply chain driven price increase and the asset price bubbles that were experiments in are not real inflation sustained compounding inflation.    That's likely to come beginning in the mid to second half of this decade, based on all the patient buyers that have been let logs that have been laid in place by all of this Fiat currency and excess liquidity out there in the marketplace, which is not the state that we're not going to. You know, housing is a, is an asset price bubble. It's going to be some correction in housing, but it's not going to be like the 2006 through 2009 correction because the credit markets dried up at that particular time.    And as you just said, that isn't going to be going on right now. There's no indication that it's going to be going on right now. The credit markets are very well lubricated. And if you look at the extent of leverage that the consumers have engaged in Dubai, these homes, it's much more moderate than what we saw back in 2005, 2006. So it's not going to be that sort of replay, even though these prices are going up, we're just going to see a normal business cycle correction and some of these prices.    And then they're going to just rise again through the end of this decade. This is, this is a really tour's decade dream come true. As far as we're concerned, largely driven in the final analysis by the us dollar being pushed into an extended declining trend because of all the deficit spending that the U S Congress is engaged in so that, you know, a lot of people are going to lose, but the real estate markets are going to win.    Jesse (14m 41s): So from the, from the real estate vantage point is, is the lesson here to re you know, reallocate or, or readjust the portfolio to have more alternative assets in the way of real estate as a, you know, as number one, like you said, just the fundamentals are good, but number two, as a potential inflation hedge,    Brian (15m 1s): Absolutely. I mean, you, you interpreted my meanderings perfectly well. Yes. And we've been encouraging people to take some of the risk out of the stock market and redeployed into different asset classes in particular different assets buckets within the real real estate sector.    Jesse (15m 22s): So your, your economics are for, for the U S what, what, if anything, are your recommendations for the next, you know, let's say the short-term for the U S yeah. For the U S    Brian (15m 37s): My recommendations to kind of investor. Yeah, no. I    Jesse (15m 41s): Mean, from a, from a federal reserve standpoint, is it, is it stay the course kind of targeting 2%?    Brian (15m 49s): Oh, our federal reserve doesn't care about 2% anymore. Under chairman Powell, they've adopted a new system where they look at average rolling inflation. So they're going to accept inflation out of the CPI core inflation running three, three, and a half percent for a couple of years before they worry about it, because they see it as balancing out those years where it was running below 2% so that they no longer get excited about three, three and a half percent core inflation.    And that's one of the reasons why we think they're telling the truth when they say interest rates that they influence are going to stay down on the deck through the rest of this year and on into 2022, because if inflation does subside as the indication suggests, and that would be CPI inflation, then they're going to sit on these low interest rates until they see more concerted indications of that, a rising trend in inflation. You know, they're already making some adjustments and we behind the scenes, when you, it's one thing to keep interest rates on the deck, right?    But when you look at the repo activity that the federal reserve has been embarked on the last several weeks, it was running a trillion dollar repo activity, trying to reign in some of this extra money, if you will, but that they have so many different levers at their disposal. The thing that worries me most about this federal reserve is chairman Powell first.    And he stated it. He says this, the federal reserve can't possibly do too much to stimulate the economy. Hm. He's not the least bit worried about inflation. And I think if you had, if you could pin them down, he'd tell you that is in the modern monetary theory camp when it comes to how to, to control the political and economic environment going forward. And that, that scares me, I'm waiting for the next year.    Jesse (17m 56s): No, I was going to say, so we, we D we've talked about a modern monetary theory MMT on the show before we had a bond trade local bond trader here who now kind of manages a portfolio and fund. And it seems to be that there's this stark difference between this Austrian school of economics and an MMT. And I think both of them kind of make a caricature of the other where M you know, the Austrian city MMTs will just they'll spend it.    There is no limit to possible spending because they're in a different paradigm. You can't look at the U S government or the, or the Canadian as a household, because they can borrow the reserve currency. What's your view on, on kind of the differences between those two camps and maybe as a backdrop, you could, you could talk a little bit about the business cycle and you know how that relates.    Brian (18m 50s): Oh, okay. You know, your stuff first I'm in that Ostrin camp. Okay. MMT folks though, like Larry Summers say, you know, they can engage in depth at spending to the fullest extent until real interest rates rise about 2%, and then they need to cut back on that deficit spending problem is you think the politicians have the political will to cut back on the deficit spending.    We have seen zero inclination of their ability to do that, except for a brief period where there was sequenced ration going on for three years. But ever since the early 1980s, we've been on this spending binge, and I'll send out, we're gonna, we're gonna find discipline because it's real interest rates go up to 2%. So I cry foul on that assumption. And the other major assumption that they make is we can get away with it here in the U S because U S is the dominant world reserve currency, right?    Problem with that is the Chinese beat us to it, having a digitized currency. And they're selling that very effectively as it means of making trade easier with China. And you start in 2019 end of 2019, a $54 billion deal done between China and Pakistan and Pakistan, as part of that deal, drop the dollar as their second formal currency. And they adopted the yawn.    Okay. And then they're doing this with other Turkey has adopted the Chinese currency in place of the U S dollar. All of those are chipping away at the solvency or that immutability of the U S dollar, right? Because I have no life. I watch world reserves and the Russians have dumped the dollar. I mean, they made no bones about it. They sit and the dollar is no longer any part of their rainy day funds.    They replaced it with a 50 50 mix of the Euro and the Chinese currency. It had nothing to do with the, with the dollar. All of those are indications that you cannot afford to assume that we will always be the dominant currency and therefore a few engage in deficit spending. And assuming we can rack up as much debt as we want, because we are that dollar, that's a huge risk that you're playing with the economy, given these little pebbles that are already rolling down the hill.    Jesse (21m 35s): So from the vantage point, like I th I'm partial to Austrian economics as well. And at least in so far as you know, I I've, when I was younger Hayak and Friedman, I mean, he's more of a monetarist, but the idea that there is no free lunch, this idea that, you know, you could run an economy in oh 8 0 9 and, you know, just completely bail everybody out. I think most Austrians would have said that at that point, the states and other countries affected really needed the, the medicine there, whereas other, you know, other people said, no, they, they definitely needed the bailout.    So it, it kind of, it's interesting to see that paradigm now where MMT has become this thing where for either political party, it seems like a, an ability to just here's the scientific rationale for me to spend.    Brian (22m 26s): Exactly. And you're absolutely right. It is not confined to one party or the other. They both engage in the same rhetoric and premium is all about when you're on the growth side of the business cycle, you're supposed to run your government at a surplus so that you have the ability to run it at a devastating when it's needed. Right. They don't get that. I mean, it's always deficit spending with them. So, you know, they say that following Friedman's prescription, but if they are not, and when, you know, Friedman's famous saying and long run, we're all dead.    You know, where that came from is that Keynes or Friedman in the long run. Okay. Yeah, you're right. He asked where's this all going to end all this spending that you're advocating the government do. And you said even it didn't matter in the long run the world that is sort of just like a massive cop-out at that time. Right. Pretty nihilistic view there. Well, it's    Jesse (23m 27s): Actually a w one thing that's a pretty funny too, is I think it was, it had to be in the eighties, early nineties, a Friedman was with a bunch of lawmakers and they were S the Republicans were saying, you know, aren't you worried about all the deficit spending and, you know, the interest payments alone for the debt. And his answer was actually pretty funny. He, well, you know, the interest payments that we make means that there's a portion of cash that the government can't utilize for its own for its own ideas and own. As soon as like, at least we're paying the interest payments and it's out of your hands.    So I think it really comes down to just a view of, of whether you think the economy is more, at least in my point of view, in my opinion, more like a, a biological organism that, you know, goes too far, comes back and kind of ebbs and flows. We can't just be on this constant upward trend, just, you know, forever.    Brian (24m 24s): Well, yeah, business cycles are here and they don't always lead to recession, but they lead to, if they're not, you know, you celebrate, then you decelerate. And sometimes the deceleration gets you into a period of recession. Sometimes it doesn't depends on the circumstances, but I'll be it's because there are these structural imbalances that develop in the economy and you need to adjust those imbalances. And sometimes the adjustments lead to a recession because they're allowed to go on too far, being an Austrian inclination.    The heavy heavy-handed government is not always welcome, you know, but go back to 2008, 2009, I was advocating, let the banks fail, you know, let the stock shareholders take it on the chin. Instead of the taxpayer, they were being too big to fail. Right? So now the banks are back to their messy ways in so many different categories. Okay. So if you're too big to fail, cough up more money going into the federal reserves who can bail your butts out next step, you know, I'll banks have the small banks pay a greater portion of their cash to the federal reserve.    Then the large banks shouldn't be the other way around. If you're too big to fail patient more insurance here, buddy, if you expect me to bail you out, next thing we created a fantastic moral hazard. Every time we'd be on them. When we bailed out Chrysler, we created the same moral hazard. Yeah. That's where you get more and more weaknesses inherent to the system view. You know what I mean? Yeah.    Jesse (26m 0s): I mean, moral hazard is exactly what it's going to say. I've always loved the, the Hyatt quote. The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to man how little he knows about what he, what he imagines. He can design. And I think it's just, it's this MMT in can be something that if, if used as a, as a club or a justification can be a little dangerous, like you said, once, once you get an allotment or you get an ability to tax, you usually don't give it away. So emergencies, economic emergencies, any pandemics, I, I feel like a lot of things are gonna come out of this that are going to stick around for a long time.    I want to talk a little bit about the real estate perspective. So, you know, you, you mentioned business cycles. How do you view real estate? The real well, first of all, do you believe that the business cycle and real estate cycle are those pretty much in sync typically? And how do you break down real estate? When, when looking through the lens of a business cycles?    Brian (27m 3s): Well, we have our residential real estate as a leading indicator, generally followed, not a couple of quarters later, if I multifamily all else being equal. And then the caboose on that whole train would be most aspects of commercial real estate. And that typically is a lagging indicator. In fact, it's generally about 25 months after housing reaches a low that overall non-risk construction will reach a cyclical level.    So that's quite a gap. So you can play that to your advantage at the high though, I mean, an ITR were concerned about a business cycle decline occurring in 2026. Okay. But it won't be 26 for non res because they'll lag that their problems will come more on 27. So there's always ample warning in the non-residential market when things are about to go awry. Now, whether people pay attention to that or not, it's a different store.    Jesse (28m 2s): And in that, in that residential side, are you including a multifamily housing multi-residential as one bucket?    Brian (28m 10s): No. A single family being the leader followed a couple of quarters later by multifamily housing starts.    Jesse (28m 18s): Yeah, it's fascinating. And then down the line, whether it's industrial office retail as lagging indicators for those, and w what's what's the, you know, what, what determines or w what's the cause of, of those commercial verticals lagging even, even from office to say office to industrial, for example,    Brian (28m 41s): The lag occurs at high because contracts have been signed and a construction has begun, and most of it will get completed. All those, some of it, you just button up and wait for the cycle to turn around again. But that's why it lags at the high it lags at the low, because oftentimes the commercial, I mean, the, the credit markets simply aren't there to facilitate the recovery. That's not a problem this time round, but then there's the trepidation of sinking that much money mean we're not talking small projects with Dr.    Mote, really large projects thinking that much money. And one thing, I think that you've talked about verticals. I'm, I'm excited about what it's going to be going on in manufacturing, building construction in the states because of onshoring and near sourcing phenomena. Canada's not getting nearly as much of that action as we thought they were going to, we looked at how north America breaks down and the us is getting the vast majority of that onshoring activity followed by Canada.    And then Mexico, I thought that Mexico would be getting more activity, but there's something going on. And this scares people about fender Mexico. You know what,    Jesse (29m 57s): It's a, it's funny on the manufactured housing piece, we actually had a, a local gentlemen on the show. It was a private equity, real estate, private equity. And he was from Toronto. And we were talking about manufactured housing as we've done on the show multiple times. And I said, well, let me guess, you're not buying in Canada. He's like no Atlanta. So it just like, I don't think, I can't think of, of a, a, an area of that. There's a significant investment in manufactured housing up here. I don't know if it's a cultural thing or if it's, you know, something else, but yeah, we don't, we just don't see that type of type of building.    Brian (30m 34s): Oh yeah. I mean, I can understand that. I talked it up to culture. Yeah. Yeah.    Jesse (30m 40s): We'll put it up to culture. And when you, when you look at manufactured housing, the what, what is the relationship with onshoring that you see between between the two?    Brian (30m 52s): Oh, we're going to be shortening supply chain. So we're going to actually be building new manufacturing centers. Yeah. Building right. That's cyclical. And that's going to get boosted by, but we're going to need affordable housing for the people working in those facilities. Right. And those manufactured homes, very good homes. And they're affordable compared to the old fashion, you know, stick and nail approach.    Jesse (31m 24s): Yeah. And it's, it's, I think that's, we're going to see that, you know, regardless of which country you live, I think the reality with real estate is that we've talked about this quite a bit in the industry of, you know, just the repurposing of assets, you know, hotels potentially into multi-family, you know, older shopping malls into, you know, distribution centers. I'm sure that creative destruct destruction is poised to happen over the next few years.    Brian (31m 52s): I I'm a huge fan of that lens that you just referred to in a creative destruction. My man, Joe. Yeah. Yeah. So many people get distressed distressed that the, the destruction side that they failed to see it creation side that occurs at the same time. And it is inevitable that more jobs are created by the creation side of that than by the destruction side lost jobs.    But that was future jobs. They don't, they don't vote. And that's why sometimes the, that process gets retarded or inhibited by the politicians because they hear the loud noises of the people that are on the losing side of the equation. Yeah.    Jesse (32m 39s): I couldn't agree more, I think, and you know, I'm going to lose listeners here, but that's a reference to Joseph Schumpeter coined the phrase creative destruction, but it really is the, the horse to the buggy, to the car, you know, it's something had to be destroyed in a paradigm to create something that from his lens was, was much, had much more utility and value. And I think the other thing too, is he was one of the few economists that are one of the first economists that, you know, there's a reason that in microeconomics, there's a blurb on entrepreneurship.    Whereas, you know, now there's chapters in whole courses on entrepreneurship from an economics lens. So I think it's, it's really important to look at it that way.    Brian (33m 18s): She was my hero and still is in college. I would say, Debo tell you, but he wrote so. Yeah.    Jesse (33m 26s): And, and he was, he was, I think he was also a, what was it? The, whatever the chief economist was for, like he was a in government as well. And then I think moved into a professorship role, but continued to do a lot of work and publish. So now that we've lost half the half the    Brian (33m 46s): Lesson, what, what I'd    Jesse (33m 50s): Like to actually talk to you about just had it in my notes, as well as I wanted to get your, your take, you kind of mentioned a little bit about the, the U S dollar for, just for listeners, regardless of where you're at. W what is the importance of where the dollar is at and what the impact has been over the last a year, year and a half?    Brian (34m 12s): Well, the impact of the let's start with that last part. The last, the impact of it last year, year and a half has been a flight to safety, which has bolstered the dollar longer than it normally would have been the pandemic clearly distorted that trend. And even now with the concerns about the Delta variant, we see that the dollar is gaining some buoyancy that it really doesn't warrant. There's a very clear relationship between deficit spending and the trend B not the day to day or the week to week, but the extended trend in the direction of the dollar.    And by the same token, there's a very strong relationship between the U S dollar and oil prices, because oil is the nominated in dollars, right? So the weakening dollar means higher oil prices going forward this decade, which is good for Canada. When I, when I saw that relationship, I said, yeah, okay, here we go. It's going to make some folks happy. I don't know about you. Tell me if this has happened to Canada, but this is what's happening here in the U S banks lending to the oil and gas industry, because they're not reading enough, they're balancing their portfolios to be politically green.    Jesse (35m 27s): Well, listen, I think at the end of the day, all, all businesses are ESG is environmental, social and governance is becoming a bigger and bigger component of, of how they invest. And I think it was, it was JP Morgan that was saying that they, I think they took the stride of not investing in certain type of industry, fossil fuel industry. I'm a cynical guy by nature. So I know, you know, there's been some pundits that have said, you know, that's the reality of them getting loans from, from Europe at extremely preferential rates, if you're a green quote unquote green company.    I honestly, I wouldn't, I wouldn't know if it's yes. If, if that is happening here at once, surprise me, especially given, you know, our political posture typically. But yeah, I I'm sure if it's happening. It's definitely to the chagrin of Western Canada, because I mean, that's, they, they were hit pretty hard even before the pandemic, at least, you know, in Calgary, the office, you know, office spaces, my and buildings is kind of the world I live in and you know, that they had been hurt years prior to this.    So, yeah, I think it's, it's a trend that is, is just something that is happening, which I, I compare it to organic food and, you know, hopefully it don't catch flack for this. I I'm sure there's even my company ESG is important. I think organic labeling was originally a positive thing. They wanted to, you know, have things that were grown properly ethically, but then it kind of moved into a, you know, just an ability to basically put a number on or check a box.    And I, unfortunately, I, I feel like that's where we're going with with ESG and from an investor standpoint, but I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong.    Brian (37m 17s): History would suggest that you're probably right about that. Yeah. But    Jesse (37m 21s): Like you said, it, you know, it's, it's not just a, you know, economics, there's there, there's the shift. The pendulum will swing the other way. If it goes too far in one direction, and people are saying, you know, listen, is, is there actual science behind this? Because, you know, I know Tesla, I haven't checked recently, but I know they had a very low ESG score. And that was, you know, the, you would think that they are, you know, some of the, the trailblazers in terms of businesses in the world, but yeah, so it wouldn't surprise me if it's happening. I take it.    You're saying it's happening in the states that they're just not investing unless you are meeting probably a certain threshold of a green.    Brian (37m 60s): Yeah. And when we look at oil production right now, it's only in the Permian basin, Permian basin that we're seeing some increase, the middle small guys are starved for cash because of the down term that just trying to repair their balance sheets, they don't have the liquidity and they don't have the access to the credit to really start opening up a lot of their, their activity again. Then that's going to be a higher oil prices also, which is going to make the move toward the electric vehicles seem all that smarter.    Right. So,    Jesse (38m 32s): Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I didn't, Puerto Rico is probably good, a good test case for that. I mean, I think there was a congressional hearing on putting basically converting them from coal and fossil fuels. And I, and I always come from the opinion, it's very easy for us, us, you know, privileged rich countries to say, you know, to other countries that, you know, you gotta, you gotta go green where, you know, part of the reason we built wealth was cheap, renewable, reliable energy. So I, I'm always a little torn on, on that, but I digress.    So Brian listened, we're, we're coming close to the end and I want to be mindful of your time. So just, why don't you take us on a positive note? I think I have an idea of the answer to this, but what do you think are, is one of maybe one or two of the biggest opportunities you see going forward, whether it's short term or long term, I'll leave that leave that    Brian (39m 27s): I think multifamily is a huge opportunity. I think storage given us another huge upside market and a distribution, warehousing logistics, all the real estate involvement that is, that's got so much upside to it. That that that's where I would be moving some of my assets reallocating into that space over really overweighting that space within the portfolio.    Jesse (39m 55s): Perfect. Well, I'm sure listeners would love to hear that. Cause we got a lot of multifamily investors. There's four questions. We ask every guests kind of a rapid four. If you are ready, I can lob those at you, Brian. I'm ready. All right. What's something, you know, now in your career that you wish you knew when you first started out.    Brian (40m 19s): I wish I knew when it first started out that the smartest thing I could do was hire people that were smarter than me. And once I learned to do that, things got a whole lot better.    Jesse (40m 30s): I agree more on that. That's perfect. In terms of mentorship for younger people, getting the industry, whether it's real estate or even in your space, what's your view on mentorship and, and what would you say to them?    Brian (40m 46s): Oh my gosh, mentorship is probably the best training exercise you can have. We have a mentorship program in our company because you can't, it accelerates the learning curve. It makes those people that much more productive. They feel much more comfortable, happy. And when they're happy and productive, your retention rates go sky high. So it's a win-win the company is more efficient. People are more happy and mentorship is it's serious. And I'm amazed.    Sorry, question number two. Yeah.    Jesse (41m 23s): Cut out there for a sec. We'll we'll edit that out there, but I think we got everything. Yep. So question number three. Is there a resource or book that you could recommend to listeners that, you know, maybe you're you're reading now or, or you've read in the past?    Brian (41m 43s): Yeah, I'm going to recommend to it. Matter of fact, that both sitting here, my desk one is a book that my brother and I wrote called prosperity in the age of decline. I think it does a great job of putting the economics of the 2020s and 2030s into a correct perspective for people to prosper. And I just finished this Jessie called full faith and credit by Alan Axel rod. And it is extremely well done in terms of deficit spending, how we got here and what it potentially means going forward.    It's not a very thick book, but it was very, well-written both faith and credit by Alan Axelrod.    Jesse (42m 29s): Perfect. We'll definitely, we'll definitely put some links in the show notes for that prosperity. I feel like I have seen that book before, or maybe just seeing, seeing your name on it. Last question, our, our lobbed, the ball first car make and model    Brian (42m 49s): Really. Oh my gosh. That wouldn't say a word Maverick. Oh, I'm going way back. Right. And I repainted it to midnight blue metallic, and I just rode that thing until the engine sees the one day.    Jesse (43m 7s): That's amazing. You know what we like when we get a, you know, 40, 30, 5, 40 and older, you get the cooler cars, but you can pop that down. That Ford Maverick beside my dad's. I think his first car was a Ford Fairlane. Unfortunately I saw it on paper, but that's great, Brian, for, for those that want to reach out to you, what would you know aside from, I always say Google search. What would be the best way to, to connect,    Brian (43m 35s): Go to a ITR economics.com or brian@itreconomics.com. So like Gary economics is the website. You can email me brian@itreconomics.com.    Jesse (43m 51s): My bet. My guest today has been Brian Ballou. Brian, thanks for being part of working capital. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for listening to working capital the real estate podcast. I'm your host, Jesse for galley. If you liked the episode, head on to iTunes and leave us a five star review and share on social media, it really helps us out. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram, Jesse for galley, F R a G a L E, have a good one.    Take care. 

Jon and Sara have vanished into the moving void, and nobody is quite sure what Garrett is up to. So Brian has come to the rescue! Today, he's talking to Jesse Zink about Christianity in South Sudan, religious culture, and making connections.   For more from Jesse: https://jessezink.com/ https://riskingchurch.substack.com/p/beating-the-bounds On Twitter: @jazink Check us out at logosish.com Support local book stores and this podcast

It's not every day that you can hear a great conversation with the Head of Product of Excel. Brian Jones sits down with us and talks about the past, present, and very promising future of Excel. Rob and Brian go way back, and the stories and laughs abound!   Check out this cool World Orca Day Excel template for kids!   Episode Timeline: 4:00 - Brian's lofty title is Head of Product at Excel, The importance and magic of Excel, and people's a-ha moments with Excel 20:25 - The difficulty of not seeing your projects' impact on the world and how the heck does Bluetooth fit into the story?!, Rob and Brian reminisce with some funny conference stories 32:00 - The XML file format and some very neat XML tricks that everyone should know about 51:25 - The birth of the Excel Web App and Rob can't believe some of the things that Brian's team has done with Excel 1:05:00 - How to onboard the Excel, VLOOKUP, and Pivot crowd into data modeling and Power BI, and the future of Excel most certainly includes the Lambda function (maybe!) Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello, friends. Today's guest, Brian Jones, head of product for this thing you might've heard of called Microsoft Excel. Brian and I go back a long way. We were both youngsters at Microsoft at the same time, and we both worked on some early features of Office apps, and we're friends. Really, really have sincerely warm feelings about this guy, as you often do with people that you essentially grew up with. And that's what we did. When Brian and I first worked together, he was working on Word and I was working on Excel. But even though Brian was on Word at the time, he was already working on what we would today call citizen developer type of functionality in the Word application. So even though we were essentially on different sides of the aisle within the Office organization, we were already finding ourselves able to connect over this affinity for the citizen developer. Rob Collie (00:00:55): Now we have some laughs during this conversation about how in hindsight, the things he and I were working on at the time didn't turn out to be as significant as we thought they were in the moment. But those experiences were very valuable in shaping both of us for the initiatives that came later. Rob Collie (00:01:11): Like almost everyone at Microsoft, Brian has moved around a bit. He's worked on file formats for the entire Office suite, which ended up enabling Power Pivot version one to actually function the way that it should. He's worked on Office-wide extensibility and programmability, back to that citizen developer thing again. And in that light, it's only natural that Excel's gravity reeled him in. And in that light, it's only natural that someone like that, someone like Brian, found his way to Excel, and it really is a match made in heaven. And if you permit me the Excel joke, that turned out to be a great match. Rob Collie (00:01:50): We took the obligatory and entertaining, I hope, walk down memory lane. We spent a lot more time than I expected talking about file format. And the reason why is that file formats are actually a fascinating topic when you really get into it. Lot of history there, a lot of very interesting history and challenges we walked through. And of course, we do get around to talking about Excel, its current state, where it's headed, and also the amazing revelation for me that monthly releases actually mean a longer attention span for a product and how we ended up getting functionality now as a result of the monthly release cycle that would have never fit into the old multi-year release cycle. We were super grateful to have him on the show. And as usual, we learned things. I learned things. I have a different view of the world after having this conversation than I did before it, which is a huge gift. And I hope that you get the same sort of thing out of it. So let's get into it. Announcer (00:02:56): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? Announcer (00:03:03): This is the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast, with your host Rob Collie and your cohost Thomas Larock. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 Adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:03:26): Welcome to the show. Brian Jones, how are you, sir? Brian Jones (00:03:30): I am fantastic. Thank you for having me, Rob. I'm excited. Rob Collie (00:03:33): So let's start here today. Well, you and I go way back, but today, what's your job title and what are your responsibilities? Brian Jones (00:03:42): So today, my job is I'm the head of product for the Excel team. So I lead the team of product managers that are tasked with or given the honor of deciding the future of Excel, where we go with Excel, what are the set of things that we go and build Rob Collie (00:03:59): Head of product. That's a title that we didn't have back when I was still at Microsoft. We did at one point have something called a product unit manager. Is it similar to that? How does that relate? Brian Jones (00:04:11): That's a good question. So we're continuing to evolve the way that we use titles internally. So internally, we have titles that still for most folks externally don't make any sense, like program manager, group program manager, program manager manager, director of program manager. And so for externally, whenever I'm on LinkedIn or if I do PR interviews, things like that, I use the term head of product. Internally, we don't have the term head of product. Rob Collie (00:04:37): Okay. All right. So that's a translation for us. Brian Jones (00:04:40): Yes, exactly. Trying to translate the Microsoft internal org chart to something that makes more sense to folks. Rob Collie (00:04:49): Yeah. So things like, if we use the word orthogonal, what we're really saying is that's not relevant. Brian Jones (00:04:53): Exactly. Rob Collie (00:04:54): That kind of decoder ring. Brian Jones (00:04:57): I didn't realize orthogonal [inaudible 00:04:59] until you said it and I'm like, " Oh yeah, no. Of course, that is completely a ridiculous term to use." Rob Collie (00:05:03): Or I don't know if they still do this, but an old joke that Dave [Gayner 00:05:07] and I used to have, it was all his joke at the time. It was big bet. Do we still talk about big bet? We're going to place a big bet. Brian Jones (00:05:14): Yep. Big bet or big rocks. Big rocks. You know the- Rob Collie (00:05:17): Big rocks. Whoa. Brian Jones (00:05:18): Yeah. It's kind of an analogy. You've got a jar and you want to fill it with the big rocks first, and then you let the sand fill in the rest of the space. So what are the big rocks? Rob Collie (00:05:26): Okay. Yeah. But big bet was one that we used to always make fun of. Brian Jones (00:05:31): Especially when there'd be, "Here are the big bets," and there's 20 of them. Rob Collie (00:05:34): Yeah. The joke I think we used to make was we would call something a big bet when we really didn't have any good reason for doing what we were doing. Anyway, all right. So you're head of product for Excel. That is a pretty heady job. That's pretty awesome. Brian Jones (00:05:52): It's a pretty fun job. Absolutely. Rob Collie (00:05:54): I mean, you're not lacking for eyeballs in that business, are you? We're all friends here. We're all on the same side of this story. I mean, it is the lingua franca of business, Excel. It is the business programming tool. People don't necessarily think of it as programming, but formulas are a programming language. To be head of product for the platform, you could call it an application, but really it's probably more accurate to call it a platform that is, I think, is the single most critical platform to business in the world. That's pretty amazing. Brian Jones (00:06:30): Absolutely. And that's usually the way that we talk about it internally. It depends on who your audience is externally when you're talking about it. But yeah, Excel is a programming language. I remember even before, back when I was on the Word team, but I would go and meet with PJ, who ran program manager for Office all up. And he'd always referred to Excel more as an IDE. And that didn't totally resonate with me at the time because to me, Excel was just a list app, an app for just tracking things. I didn't totally understand what he meant by that, but I'd nod cause he was super important and smart. And it wasn't really until I started working on the team that I was like, "Oh, I totally understand all these things that PJ used to reference." Rob Collie (00:07:06): This one of the things I had been dying to ask you is when you and I first met, I was working on the Excel team, but still had... Gosh, this was year 2000 maybe, maybe 2001. And even though I was nominally part of the Excel team at that point, I still didn't really know Excel, and you were working on Word. So the thing we both had in common at that point is that we didn't know Excel. So I wanted to get your perspective. I know that you've done some things other than Word, but we were already sort of teasing this. So let's just get into it. What's it like to come from "outside" Excel and how's that transition? How do you view Excel differently today versus what you did before? We already started talking about that. The list keeper. That's very common way for people to view it. Brian Jones (00:07:53): When I first started, yeah, I was on Word, although I was working on more kind of end user developer type of pieces of Word. That's how you and I first interacted because we were talking about XML. The first feature I owned was a feature called easy data binding to Excel. And the whole idea was when you could easily bring content from Excel into Word, but then create a link back so that the content in Word would stay live. And a lot of this stuff that I did while I was on Word was all about trying to make Word a little bit more of a structured tool so that people could actually program against it because Word is completely unstructured. It's just free-flowing text. So trying to write a solution against that is almost impossible because you can't predict anything. So we did a lot of work to add structure, whereas Excel out of the gate has all that structure. So it's just much easier to go and program. Brian Jones (00:08:39): If I had gone straight from Word to Excel, it would have been a little bit more of a shock, but I actually had about eight years in between where I was running our extensibility team. So a lot of the work we would do was revving the add-in model and extensibility for Excel. So I got some exposure there. When we did all of the file format stuff and the whole file format campaign, That was a couple of years where I was working really closely with a bunch of folks in Excel, like Dan [Badigan 00:09:06] and folks like that. So I had a bit of exposure, but I'll tell you when I first joined, I had a similar job, but it was for the Access team and we were building up some new tech. Brian Jones (00:09:17): Some of it still is there today. Office Forms came out of some of the investments that we were doing in Access. But when I showed up into Excel, I was very much in that mode of, "Why don't the Excel folks, get it? Everything should be a table with column headings." And like, "That's the model. And why do they stick with this grid? Clearly word of it is eventually going to go away from the printed page as the key medium. Excel's got to go away from the grid. And they've got to understand that this should just be all tables that can be related." And thankfully, I was responsible when I joined and didn't try and act like I knew everything. So I took some time to go and learn. Brian Jones (00:09:52): And it didn't take me long. We have some crazy financial modeling experts on the team and stuff like that, where I'd say it was maybe six months in that it clicked for me where I understood those two key pieces. The grid and formulas are really the soul and the IP of Excel. The fact that you can lay out information really easily on a grid, you have formulas that are your logic, and you can do this step-by-step set of processes where each cell is almost like another little debug point for you. [Cal captain sub 00:10:20] second, and it's the easiest way to go and learn logic and how to build logic. Brian Jones (00:10:25): I didn't get any of that at that time, but you pick it up pretty quickly when you start to look at all the solutions that people are building. And now, obviously, I've been on the team now for five years, so I'm super sold around it. But I'd say it took me a little while and I'm still learning. It takes a while to learn the whole thing. Rob Collie (00:10:41): Yeah. It's funny. Like you said, Word's completely unstructured. You're looking in from the outside and you're like, "Well, Excel is completely structured." Then you get close to it. You're like, "Oh no. And it's not, really." Brian Jones (00:10:52): No. Not at all. Rob Collie (00:10:53): I mean, it's got the cells. Rows and columns. You can't avoid those. But within that landscape, is it kind of deliberately wild west? You can do whatever you need to. You're right. Okay. So tables, yes. Tables are still very important. But you've got these parameters and assumptions and inputs. And what do you do with those? I mean, they're not make a table for those. Brian Jones (00:11:19): Yep. Absolutely. I think that the thing that I started to get really quickly was the beauty of that. Like you said, it's unstructured. You have nice reference points. So if you're trying to build logic, formulas, you can reference things. But there's no rule about whether or not things go horizontally, vertically, diagonally, whatever. You can take whatever's in your mind that you're trying to make a decision around and use that flexible grid to lay it out. It's like a mind map. If you think about the beauty, the flexibility of a mind map, that's what the grid is. You can go and lay out all the information however it makes the most sense to you. Brian Jones (00:11:53): Really, that's what makes Excel still so relevant today. If you think about the way business is evolving, people are getting more and more data, change is just more constant, business processes are changing all the time. So there are certain processes where people can say, "This thing is always going to work the same way." And so you can go and get a vertical railed solution. That's why we use the term rail. That's kind of like if I always know I'm going to take this cargo from LA to San Francisco, I can go and build some rails, and I got a train, it'll always go there and do the same thing. But if business is constantly changing, those rails are quickly going to break and you're going to have to go off the rails. Excel is more like a car than a train. You can go anywhere with it. And so as the business processes change, the people who are using Excel are the same people who are the ones changing those business processes. Those are the business folks. And so they can go and evolve and adapt it and they don't have to go and find another ISV to go and build them another solution based on that new process that's probably going to change again in six months. Thomas Larock (00:12:52): So Brian's been in charge for five years of Excel, and he's sitting there telling us how there's still more to learn. And two weeks ago, we all got renewed as MVPs. And so I was on the MVP website, and I'm going through all the DLs I can join because that's all a manual process these days. I'm like, "Oh, there's the Excel MVP DL. I don't know why I haven't joined this yet." So I click. I'm immediately flooded with 100 emails a day. 100 emails a day. Now, I don't believe I am a novice when it comes to Excel. I don't. I know I'm not on you all's level at all when it comes to it. You build and work and live the product. But I know my way around enough that I can explain things to others when they say, "I'm trying to do this thing." "Oh, I think it's possible." Thomas Larock (00:13:40): But I read these passionate MVPs that you have and the stuff that they highlight, and it's not complex stuff. It's like, "Hey, this title bar seems to be wider in this." And I'm like, I might not even notice this stuff. And I see these features that aren't a complex feature, but I'm like, "I didn't even know that was there. I didn't even know you could do that. Oh, you can do that too." There's so much. And like you said, it's a programming language. It's an IDE. It's all these things. As [Sinopski 00:14:10] said, "It's the killer app for Windows." To have the head of product say that, there's just so much. He really means it. There is a lot to it. And it is something that is malleable and usable by hundreds of millions of people a day. Brian Jones (00:14:25): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:14:26): My old joke is, if you want to know how good someone is at Excel, just ask them, "How good are you at Excel?" And then take their answer and invert it. Brian Jones (00:14:37): That's absolutely true. Rob Collie (00:14:38): If someone says, "Yeah, I'm really good at it," You know they don't have any clue because they haven't glimpsed the depth of that particular mine shaft. And once someone has been to the show, they know better than to oversell their knowledge because they know they can't know everything. Rob Collie (00:14:54): You say you're good at Excel. And then the very next question is one that you're not going to be able to answer. So you got to be careful. [inaudible 00:15:00] person views Excel as Word with a grid. And that's not obviously what it is, but that's the oversimplification for... I don't know... maybe 80% of humanity. Brian Jones (00:15:10): Yeah. And the thing is, there's a lot more that we're doing in the app now to try and make it, one, more approachable, because there's a set of folks that just find it really intimidating, for sure. You open it up and it's this huge, dense grid. Like, "Hey, where do I start? What should I go and do? I've never even heard of this thing before." In the past, a lot of stuff that we would do, we never really thought about those first steps of using the app because we were always like, "Well, everybody knows our app. We're going to go and do the things for everybody that knows our app." And I think we're doing a better job now trying to think, "Well, there's a bunch of people who don't know about our app. Let's go and figure out what the experience should be like for them." Brian Jones (00:15:43): But we've done a lot with AI where we're trying to get a little bit better about... We look at your data. Recommend things to you. So we'll say, "If you've got a table of data, hey, here's a pivot table." You may not have even heard of the pivot table before. So really more like, "Hey, here's a summary of your data." You want to go and insert that. Brian Jones (00:16:00): In fact, those tests are always fun because then we get to work with people who've really haven't ever used a pivot table. So it's always fun to hear the words that they use to describe what a pivot table is. It's like, "Oh wow, you grouped my data for me." Or stuff like that like, "Wow. That's a nice name for it too." So we're trying to do more of that to expose people to really those higher-end things. But those things where for those of us that use it, once you discover that stuff, you're even more hooked on the product. You're like, man, that first experience of somebody built a pivot table for you and you realize, "Oh my God, I didn't know I could do this with my data. Look how much easier it is for me to see what's going on," and trying to get more people to experience that kind of magical moment. Thomas Larock (00:16:39): Now imagine being me and only knowing pivot through T-SQL and that magical day when you meet Rob and he's like, "You just pivot table [inaudible 00:16:49]." And you're like, "How many hours have I wasted? Why didn't someone tell me?" Brian Jones (00:16:56): Yeah. We get that a lot when we'll go and show stuff. Oftentimes, the reaction is more frustration. "I can't believe I didn't know about this for the past five years." Rob Collie (00:17:05): We get that all the time now with Power Pivot and Power Query and Power BI in general. The target audience for that stuff hasn't been really effectively addressed by Microsoft marketing. But even back, just regular pivot tables, such a powerful tool, and so poorly named. You weren't around on the Excel team, Brian, when I waged a six-month campaign to try to rename pivot table to summary table. Brian Jones (00:17:31): Oh really? Rob Collie (00:17:31): Yeah. Brian Jones (00:17:31): How long ago was that? Rob Collie (00:17:33): Oh, well, it was a long time ago. I mean [crosstalk 00:17:35]- Brian Jones (00:17:36): Pivot tables had already been out for quite a while. Rob Collie (00:17:37): Oh God. Yeah. I mean, they were long established. They were in the product. I didn't even know what they did. Believe it or not, I worked on the Excel team for probably about a year before I actually figured what pivot tables could do. People would just throw it around all the time on the team like, "Well, once you have the data, then you can chart it. You can pivot it," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I would fit in- Brian Jones (00:17:58): You would nod? Rob Collie (00:17:59): I would fit in... I would also author sentences like that, that had the word pivot in it. It was a pretty safe thing to do. There was no downside to it. But believe it or not, the time that I discovered what pivot tables are for... you'll love this... I was trying to figure out how to skill balance the four different fantasy football leagues that I had organized within the Excel and Access team. I wanted to spread it out. Levels of experience. I've got this table of data with the person's name and their level of experience and my tentative league assignment. And just this light bulb went on. I'm like, "Oh my God, I bet this is what pivot tables are for." Total expertise by league. Like, "Oh, look at that. It's totally it." That was a big change for me. That was during the release, Brian, where you and I were working together. Brian Jones (00:18:54): I think I played on one of those fantasy football leagues. Rob Collie (00:18:56): You might have. Brian Jones (00:18:57): I was one of the people with zero experience. I remember going into the draft not knowing... I knew football, but I didn't know anything about fantasy football. Rob Collie (00:19:03): That's right. We did loop you in. So let's do that way back machine for a moment. That release when you and I met was the first release on Excel. I was the lead at that point. It was my first time being a lead. It was the first time I was in charge of a feature set, and it was really my baby, this XML thing we were doing. And the reason for that was because no one was paying any attention. That was this weird release. For a whole release, Office went and tried to do cloud services without having any idea what that really was going to mean. And so we stripped all of the applications down to skeleton crews. And this is really the only reason why on the Excel side, some youngster like me was allowed to be a lead and come up with a feature, because no one cared. No one was paying any attention. There was no one minding the store. Rob Collie (00:19:48): I remember being so wild-eyed enthusiastic about how much this was going to change the world, this XML import export future. And I mean, you might as well just take it out. I can't imagine it's being used hardly at all today. I bet Power View is used more often than the XML import export feature. You all have done a pretty good job of hiding it. So kudos. But it was a good thing to cut my teeth on. I learned a lot of valuable lessons on that release. Rob Collie (00:20:24): How do you feel about the XML structure document work that you were doing in Word at the time? Do you kind of have the same feeling looking back at it that I do? Brian Jones (00:20:33): It was a similar thing. In fact, we did rip it out a couple of years later. I think that when you and I would talk about it, we would talk about these scenarios that were super righteous and great. And then we just start geeking out on tech. And then we would get way too excited about the tech and we kind of forget about those initial scenarios. We wouldn't stop and think, "Wait a minute. These users we're talking about, are they actually going to go and create XML files?" Because you need one of those to start with before any of this stuff makes sense. And no, of course, they're not. But for me, a lot of it started from that. Like I said, one of my first features was that easy data binding to Excel feature. And we thought, "Hey, maybe XML would be a good tech for us to use as a way of having Word and Excel talk to each other," because clearly they have different views on what formatting is and how to present information, but the underlying semantic information, that could be shared. Brian Jones (00:21:20): And so I could have a set of products show up in Excel as a table. And when they come into Word, they look more like a catalog of products. That totally makes sense. And we just did a lot of assumptions that people would make, do all the glue that was really necessary. And of course, they didn't. So I had the exact same experience. The other big thing that was different back then for us was we would plan something, meet with customers for six months, but then it'd take three years to go and build it. We had no way of validating that stuff with customers because we couldn't get them any of the builds. And then even after we shipped it, they weren't actually going to deploy it for another three-plus years. And so the reality is from when you had the idea to where you actually can see that it's actually not working and people aren't using it is probably about six years. So you've probably moved on to something else by then. Brian Jones (00:22:04): The only way you really as a PM got validation that your feature was great was whether or not leadership and maybe press got excited about your thing, but you didn't get a whole lot of signal from actual customers whether or not the thing was working, which is obviously completely different now, thank goodness. Rob Collie (00:22:18): Yeah. That Is true. It took some of the fun out of being done too, now looking back at it, like the day of the ship party, when we were done with the three-year release. "Okay, fine." We'd dunk each other in fountains and there'd be hijinks and stuff. But the world did not experience us being done. That was purely just us feeling done. And then it was like you take a week off maybe, and then the next week, you're right back to the grind at the very beginning. You never got the payoff. Even if you built something really good, by the time the world discovered it and it was actually really helping people at any significant scale, you're no longer even working on that product. Brian Jones (00:22:57): Yeah. You're doing something completely different. Rob Collie (00:22:59): You might be in a different division, both finding out the things in real time that Rob Collie (00:23:03): [inaudible 00:23:00] Both finding out the things, sort of in real time, that aren't working. That's the obvious advantage, right? But there's also this other emotional thing. Like you never got the satisfaction when you actually did succeed. Brian Jones (00:23:11): Right. You didn't see it actually get picked up, adopted. Millions and millions of people using it, which is what the team gets now. We no longer pick a project and say, "Okay, how many people and how long is this going to take?" You really just try and figure out what's critical mass for that project. And then you just let them run. And you'd be really clear around what are the goals and outcomes they're trying to drive. And they just keep going until they actually achieve that. Or we realized that we were wrong, right? And we say, "Hey, we thought people are going to be excited about this. It's not even an implementation thing. We were just wrong. We misread what people really were trying to do. Let's stop. Let's kind of figure out a way of moving off of that and go and figure out what the next thing is we should go and do." Rob Collie (00:23:50): That era that we're talking about right now. The 2003 release of Office. I was still very much a computer science graduate and amateur human. That's exactly backwards, it turns out, if you're trying to design a tool that's going to be used by humanity. Brian Jones (00:24:08): Well, it's what leads you to get really Excited about XML? Rob Collie (00:24:12): That's right. Yeah. That's right. Tech used to have such a power in my life. I'm exactly the opposite now. Every time I hear about some new tech, I'm like, "Yeah, prove it." I am not going to believe in this new radical thing until it actually changes the world around me. I'm not going to be trying to catch that wave. But XML did that to me. It was almost a threat. If we don't take this seriously, we're going to get outflanked. It got really egregious. Rob Collie (00:24:42): I had a coworker one time in that same release in the middle of one of my presentations asked me. This guy wasn't particularly, in the final analysis, looking back, not one of the stronger members of the team, but he had a lot of sibling rivalry essentially in his DNA. And he'd asked me in front of his crowded room, "Well, what are you going to do about Bluetooth?" And, we didn't know what Bluetooth was yet, right? It was like, unless I had an answer for what we were going to do about Bluetooth and Excel, right? Then I was not up on things. You know, the thing that we use to connect our headphones. At the time, Bluetooth was one of those things that might just disrupt everything. Brian Jones (00:25:29): It was funny. It was at that same time, I was asked to give a presentation to the Word team about Bluetooth. We were all assigned things to go and research as part of planning and that was one of the ones I was asked. And I gave a presentation that was just very factual. Here's what it is. And I was given really bad feedback that like, "Hey, I wasn't actually talking about it strategically and how it was going to affect Word. I was just being very factual." And I was like, "I don't understand. I don't understand what success looks like in this task." Right. Rob Collie (00:25:59): I remember going, a couple of years later, going into an offsite, those offsite big, I don't know if you all still do those things, big offsite, blue sky brainstorming sessions. There was this really senior development lead that was there with me. And he and I were kind of buddies. At one point, halfway through the day, he just leans over to me and says, "Hey, I'm going to the restroom and I'm not coming back." And I looked at him in horror, almost like "Thou dost dishonor the offsite!?" And he's like, "Yeah, you know, I've never really believed that much in this particular phase of the product cycle. It's never really meant anything to me. It's all just BS." It was just devastating. I just knew it was right. He was... Brian Jones (00:26:46): But you didn't want to, you didn't want to believe that. Rob Collie (00:26:52): I mean, I felt so special. I was invited to the offsite, the big wigs and everything. Brian Jones (00:26:57): They have nice catering too, Rob Collie (00:26:59): Yeah and he was totally right to leave. Brian Jones (00:27:04): I always remember getting super nervous to present stuff for those. Once it was actually, it was one of our XML ones where I was trying to convince, it was my attempt to get us to create an XML file format, which actually ended up, obviously, happening. But I got an engineer to go to work with and we had Word through an add-in, start to write to XML. And it was just a basic XML format. And then I built all of these... it was like asp.net tools that would go and then create an HTML version of the Word doc that was editable. And it also even created, I think it was called WHAP, I don't remember, like a tech for phones. It was back when you didn't have the rich feature phones, but these basic ones. Brian Jones (00:27:41): And so I created this thing that was almost like a SharePoint site. So you could take all your Word docs, go through this add-in, and then you could actually get an HTML view of them to edit it and a phone view of them to go and edit it. Brian Jones (00:27:51): I think it was probably 2002 or 2001, but I was so excited to go and show that at the offsite because I was like, "Okay, this is where I make it, man. Everybody's going to be so excited about me." But I don't know. I think everybody was excited about Bluetooth at that point or something. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:28:05): Oh yeah Bluetooth, WHAP was so 15 minutes ago. So there's a few, irresistibly funny or interesting things I want to zero in on from that era before we come back to present, and we're definitely going to come back to present, for sure. Rob Collie (00:28:21): First of all, we went to a conference like some W3C sponsor. I don't think it was necessarily W3C affiliated, but it was the XML conference. Brian Jones (00:28:31): The one in Baltimore? Rob Collie (00:28:32): Yes. Rob Collie (00:28:33): Okay. Now two very, very, very memorable things happened at that conference. I bet you already know one of them. But the other one was, and we're just going to make this all this anonymous person's fault. Okay. We're not going to abdicate any responsibility. And we're just going to talk about our one coworker from Eastern Europe who brought his wife and they had vodka in their hotel fridge, or freezer, or something like that. And every day I would wake up and say, "I am not going to get suckered into that again." Rob Collie (00:29:12): And then the next day I would wake up and say the same thing. That was a tough trip. Brian Jones (00:29:16): I definitely remember that. Rob Collie (00:29:18): Even on my young, relatively young, body at the time that... Trying to keep up with that, that was difficult. But the single most outstanding memory from that conference, and we will also leave this person anonymous. But there was an executive at Microsoft who was hotter on XML than either you or I, which is hard to believe, right. And we ended up with the sponsored after hours session at this conference. You remember this? You see... Brian Jones (00:29:45): I do. Rob Collie (00:29:46): You know where we're going. Okay. So this was a 30 minute sponsored by Dell or something. Right. It was a 30 minute session, at 5:00 PM, at the end of a conference day where everyone's trying to go back and get to the bars or whatever, right.? But, it's a Microsoft executive, it's Dell sponsored, we'll show up. And the plan was at the end of this 30 minute talk given by this executive, he was going to bring all of us up on the stage to show everyone the team that had done all of this, right? Great plan. Except it was the worst presentation in history. I remember it running for two hours. It was so bad that we started off with 200 people in the room and at the end of it, and I'm just like an agony the whole time cause like I'm associated with this, right? Rob Collie (00:30:31): At the end of these two hours, or what felt like two hours anyway, it was easily 90 minutes. There's five people left in this room of 200 and it's not like the presentation is adapted to the fact that it's a smaller audience. It's just continued to drone on exactly as if everyone was there, right? And I'm sitting here thinking, "Okay, he's not going to call us all up on this stage. There's been more people on the stage than in the audience. If he does this, he's clearly not going to do that." And then he did and we all had to parade up there and stand there like the biggest dodos. I've never been more professionally embarrassed I don't think, than that moment. Rob Collie (00:31:14): And we're all looking at each other as we get up out of our seats like, "Oh my god." Brian Jones (00:31:19): I definitely remember this. Rob Collie (00:31:22): I don't see how you could have forgotten. Brian Jones (00:31:23): Well, yeah. And the person that we're talking about is actually one of my favorite people on the planet. I totally... I love this guy. I view him as like a mentor and everything, but... Which makes me remember it even more. Brian Jones (00:31:34): I think it was just, there was so much excitement. There'd been so much build up to this and this was like a kind of crescendo right? Of bringing this stuff. We probably should have had it a little bit shorter. Rob Collie (00:31:46): I mean when it reaches the point where clueless, mid twenties, Rob Collie is going, "Oh no, this is not the emotional, this not the move." You don't do it. Brian Jones (00:31:58): I'm no longer excited about being called up. Rob Collie (00:32:04): So from my perspective, you kind of parlayed that experience of the XML and all that kind of stuff. I think you did a really fantastic job of everything you guys did on that product. Again, it was the relevance that ultimately fell flat for both of us right. I guess in the end, the excitement with XML wasn't really all that appreciably different from the excitement about Bluetooth. I mean, it's everywhere, right? XML is everywhere. Bluetooth is everywhere and neither one of them really changed things in terms of what Excel or Word should be doing. It seemed like you played that into this file format second act. And I think very, very, very effectively, actually there was a little bit of controversy. Rob Collie (00:32:43): Let's set the stage for people. This was the 2007 release of Office where all the file formats got radically overhauled. This is when the extra X appeared on the end of all the file names, right? Brian Jones (00:32:58): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:32:58): There was a controversy internally. Kind of starting with Bill actually. That we shouldn't make well-documented transparent file format specs, right. There was this belief that the opaque file formats of the previous decades was in some sense, some big moat against competition. And of course, a lot of our competitors agreed. Tailor out in the public saying, "Yes, this is a barrier to competition. It's a monopolistic, blah, blah, blah." We, Microsoft had just gotten its ass kicked in the Anna Truss case. So it was really interesting. I credit Brian, your crew, with really advocating this very effectively. That's a difficult ship to turn. First of all, you got all these teams to buy into all this extra work, which no one wants to do. But when it's not even clear whether you have top level executive support, in fact, you might actually have C-suite antagonism towards an idea. To get it done. That's a career making achievement. I'm sure you remember all of that. Right. But what are your reactions to that controversy? Do you remember being in the midst of that? Brian Jones (00:34:12): I do. It was definitely a long running project. It evolved over quite a number of years. The beginning of it was, in that previous release, the XML stuff you and I were talking about was more about what we called "Custom XML". Right? So people would go and create for themselves. But in that same release, we had Word, we outputted an XML format that was our definition, which we called "Word ML" and Excel did a similar thing. Words' we try to make full fidelity. So you could save any word document in the XML format. Excel's was kind of a tailored down, it was less about formatting, it was more, "Hey, here's like..." It's almost like, "Here's a better version of CSV, right. But we're going to do it as XML." And so we already had a little bit of that. Brian Jones (00:34:53): And the whole reason we were looking at that was, on the Word side, for instance, a lot of the customer issues that we'd get where people would have corrupt files, they were corrupt because they there'd be some add-in that they had running or some third party app that was reading and writing word files. The files were fairly brittle and complex. The binary format... The binary format was written back in the days of floppy disks, right? So the top priority was how quickly can you write to a floppy disk and read from a floppy disc, right? It wasn't about, how easy is this for other people to go and read and write? Not because it was on purpose, make it hard. It was just the primary bid is let's get this thing so it's really easy to read and write from floppy, right? Brian Jones (00:35:31): And so in Word, we were like, "Wow, I think that there's a bigger opportunity here for an ecosystem around Word if we make it easy for people to read and write Word docs and build solutions around them." And so then the next release, the Excel team was looking at doing some big changes around a lot of the limitations, like how many rows you could have in columns, right. Lengths of like formulas and things like that. Right. And so there was this thing where the Excel team was like, "We are going to need to create a new file format." And on the word side, we thought this XML thing was great. We want to move to that as our new format. Brian Jones (00:36:01): And so everything kind of came together and it was clear. Hey, this is going to be the release that we are going to go and rev our file format, which we hadn't done in a while. This is also the release of the ribbon. So there were two really big major changes in that product, right? It was the new file format and the ribbon. It's funny. I still refer to it as the new file format, even though it's 15 years old. Rob Collie (00:36:23): Yeah. It's the new file format it's still new, yeah. Brian Jones (00:36:25): I still call it that, which is kind of nuts. But I think that the controversies you were talking about was really more of a... Boy, this is a really big deal for the product. We had changed file formats before in the past and not necessarily gotten it right. And there were a lot of challenges around compatibility and stuff. And so there was just a lot of worry of let's make sure you all have your stuff together here, right? Like let's make sure that this doesn't in any way break, stop people from wanting to upgrade to the new version. But it went really well. The whole goal of it was let's get something that we think third parties can go and read and write, and this is going to help build an ecosystem. And a new ecosystem run Office. Office already had big ecosystem with VBA and COMM add-ons and stuff like that, right.? But we won't have this new ecosystem around our file formats as a thing. That's why we chose... There's a packaging layer, which is all zip based. So if people haven't played around with it that XLSX, you can just put a .zip at the end and double click it. And it's just a zip file. And you can see a whole bunch of stuff inside of it. Right? Rob Collie (00:37:23): Yeah. If you're listening, you haven't done that go right now, run don't walk, grab an Excel file or a Word file, whatever. Go and rename the XLSX or BPTX, go ahead and rename it so that it ends in .zip and then open it up and you'll be blown away. Thomas Larock (00:37:38): PowerPoint is my favorite when I have to find some unknown setting that I need and I can just search through the whole thing. Yep. Rob Collie (00:37:45): Or all the images. You want to get all the images out of the PowerPoint file. It's just a zip file that has a bunch of images in it. Right. Brian Jones (00:37:50): So I also did this for backpack. It's the same thing. You can crack open the backpack by renaming a zip file... Thomas Larock (00:37:58): An actual physical backpack? What are we... what are we talking about here? Brian Jones (00:38:03): Ah yeah. Rob Collie (00:38:03): This is the digital acetate that is over the top of the entire physical world that you aren't aware of. Thomas Larock (00:38:08): Digital acetate, that's it? That's it. That's where the podcast peaks. Right? Those two words. We're all going home now. Brian Jones (00:38:19): Yeah. No. A SQL server, there's DAC pack, which is just the, say database schema. Then there's a backpack which has the data and the schema combined. But you can, if you rename them . zip, you can crack them open to see the XML that makes up those forms. So it's not just office products. Rob Collie (00:38:37): We ended up standardizing the entire thing, but that packaging format, it was called OPC, Open Packaging Convention, or something like that. It was something that we did in partnership with a Windows team. It's part of the final ISO standard for our file format. And then there were a lot of other folks that went and used that exact same standard. Because it's a really easy way of you have a zip package. You can have a whole bunch of pieces inside of it, which are XML. And then there's this convention for how you can do relationships between the different pieces. So I can have a slide. That's an XML and it can declare relationships to all the images that it uses. And that way it's really quick, easy to know, okay, here's all the content I need to grab if I want to move pieces of it outside of the file. Rob Collie (00:39:16): So the single coolest thing I've ever done with, we'll just call it your file format Brian. We'll just pretend that it was only you working on that. Brian Jones (00:39:23): Just me yeah, I was pretty busy, but yeah. Rob Collie (00:39:27): So the very, very first version of Power Pivot, first of all, your file format, the new file format made Power Pivot possible. We needed to go and add this gigantic binary stream of compressed data and everything, everything about Power Pivot needed to be saved in the file. At the beginning of the project, everyone was saying, "Oh, no, we're going to save it as two separate files." And I'm like, "Are you guys kidding?" The Pivot cache, for instance, is saved in the same file. You can't throw a multi file solution at people and expect it to... This was actually like Manhattan project, just to get that stream saved into the same file. It was pretty crazy. However, when it was done, there was something really awesome I wasn't aware of until the very end, which was, first of all, you could open up a zip file and just tunnel down and you would find a file in there called item one.data. Rob Collie (00:40:21): Okay. That was the Power Pivot blob. That was everything about the Power Pivot thing. And it was by far the biggest thing in the file, like it was like 99% of the file size was what was there. However, as this backup, someone had decided, I had nothing to do with this, to save all of the instructions. I think it's called XML for analysis XMLA. All of the instructions that would be required to rebuild exactly that file, but without any of the actual binary data in it. So it was a very, very small amount of XML. Okay. So here's what we would do because there were no good automation, no interfaces, no APIs. If we needed to add like 500 formulas to a Power Pivot file, you could go through the UI and write those 500 formulas, type, click, type, click, type, click. Rob Collie (00:41:08): Okay. So what we would do, and my first job outside of Microsoft, is we would go in there and we would edit that XML backup and add all the formulas we wanted in it. And by the way, I would use Excel to write these formulas. I would use string concatenation and all of that kind of stuff to write these things. It was very, very, very sensitive, one character out of place in the whole thing fails. So you make those changes. You save the file, reopen it, nothing happens because it's just the backup. Okay. So then you've got to go and you've got to create a zero byte item one.data file on your desktop and you copy it into the zip file and overwrite the real item one.data, therefore deliberately corrupting the primary copy. So when you reopen the file it triggers the backup process and it rehydrates with all of your stuff, it was awesome. Rob Collie (00:41:57): And then a couple of releases of Power Pivot later, suddenly that didn't work anymore and I was really pissed. But it just really shows you, it opens up so many opportunities that you never would have expected. And even a hack like that, that's not the kind that you'd be really looking for, but the fact that something like that even happens as a result of this is really indicative of what a success it was. Brian Jones (00:42:19): Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of those things where, I love building platforms, like that's my favorite part of the job. It's all those things that you see people do that you never would have predicted. Right? That's just so exciting. PowerPoint had this huge group of folks that would go and build things like doc assembly stuff, right. Where they go and automatically build PowerPoint decks on demand, right? Based on who you're going to go and present to cause they've just shredded the thing. In fact, when we did the ISO standardization, it was a 6,000 page doc that we had to go. And we built and reviewed with a standards body and we did it over about a year. Which sounds nuts, a 6,000 page doc in about a year. And the way that we were able to do that is there was never really a 6,000 page doc. There's a database where there's a row for every single element and attribute in this, in the whole schema, that would then have the column which is the description, which would just be the word XML. Brian Jones (00:43:09): And so we could, on demand, at any point, generate whatever view or part of the doc we wanted. So we'd say, "Hey, we're going to go in now, review everything that has to do with formatting across Word, Excel and PowerPoint." And so we just click a couple buttons and the database would spit out a Word doc that was just that part. Everybody could go and edit it cause we were using the structured elements we'd added to Word, which is called content controls, which was the next version of that XML stuff that we had to deprecate. And then the process, as soon as you'd finish editing that Word doc, we just submit it back. The process would go back and shred that Word doc again and put it all back in the database. And so we really used the file format to bootstrap documenting the file format. Rob Collie (00:43:48): And then when you dump a 6,000 page document on someone, they have no choice. But to just say, yep, it looks good to us. Brian Jones (00:43:55): Well, there was a pretty, incredibly thorough review still. It was just pretty impressive. The final vote that we had in Geneva, the process leading up to that, the amount of feedback that we got. Cause basically the ISO, you can kind of think of it like the UN, you go and show up and every country has a seat, right? I mean, not everybody participates, but anybody that wants to can. And so yeah, we had to respond to thousands of comments around different pieces, things that people wanted to see changed. Rob Collie (00:44:22): Yeah. I can imagine, right. Think about it. You just said at the final vote in Geneva. That's a heavy moment man. Thomas Larock (00:44:29): Yeah. That threw me off for a second. I thought, for sure, you were talking Switzerland, but now thinking that was just a code name. Rob Collie (00:44:38): No, I think, I think he was actually in Switzerland. Brian Jones (00:44:40): In Switzerland. Rob Collie (00:44:41): Have you seen the chamber where they do these votes? It looks just like the Senate from episode one of Star Wars. It's just like that. It's pretty heavy. Brian Jones (00:44:51): The little levitating... Rob Collie (00:44:53): The floating lift. Yeah. I think they call that digital acetate. I think that's what they call that. By the way on the Excel team, the way I came to look at the new file format and the open architecture of it, again, this this will show you how quickly I had turned into the more cynic side of things. Well, okay. We're going to be changing file formats. And we're doing that for our benefit because we didn't have enough bits allocated in the 1980s version of the file format that was saved to floppy disc, as you pointed out, right. Who could ever imagine having more than 64,000 rows, it's just inconceivable or 250 columns or whatever, right.? Because we hadn't allocated that. We'd made an engineering mistake, essentially, we hadn't future-proofed. So we need to make a file format change for our benefit, right. To undo one of our mistakes. And the way I looked at it was, "Ooh, all this open file format stuff, that'll be like the 'Look, squirrel!'" To distract people and to sort of justify, while we went and did this other thing, which, ultimately it actually went pretty well. The transition for the customers actually wasn't nearly as bad, because we actually Took it seriously. Rob Collie (00:46:03): The transition for the customers actually wasn't nearly as bad because we actually took it seriously. We didn't cut any corners. We did all the right things. Brian Jones (00:46:07): Well, there were several benefits too. We were talking about all the kind of ecosystem development benefits, but the fact that the file was zipped and compressed right, it meant that the thing was smaller. And that was all of a sudden, it was no longer about floppy discs. People are sharing files on networks. And so actually being able to go and have a file that's easier to share, send over network because it's smaller was a thing. Brian Jones (00:46:26): There were a couple of things that we were able to go and highlight. There's also a pretty nice thing where it was actually more robust because it was XML, and we split it into multiple pieces of XML. It meant that even if you had bit rot, you would only lose one little piece of the file, whereas with old the binary format, you had some bit rot and the whole thing is impossible to open up.There are a couple of things that were in user benefits too, which helped. Rob Collie (00:46:50): And ultimately, on the Excel side, the user got a million row spreadsheet format and the ability to use a hell of a lot more than like 14 colors that could be used in a single spreadsheet or something. It was .like a power of two minus two, so many bizarre things. Like Excel had more colors than that, but you couldn't use more than a certain subset in a- Brian Jones (00:47:10): At a time, yeah. Rob Collie (00:47:10): -In a single file. So yeah, there were a lot of benefits. They just weren't- Brian Jones (00:47:15): It's not like it's an explicit choice. It's just that at the time somebody is implementing something, you're right in a way, assuming, "Oh, this is fine. This is enough. I'll never have to worry with this issue." Rob Collie (00:47:25): Why waste the whole byte on that? When you can cram four different settings into a single byte. If you read the old stories about Gates and Allen programming up at Harvard, they had these vicious head-to-head competitions to see who could write the compiler or the section of basic in the fewest bytes possible. This was still very much hanging over Microsoft, even the vestiges of it were still kind of hanging over us even when I arrived. But certainly in the '80s when the Excel file format was being designed for that rev, it was still very much like, "Why waste all those bits in a byte?" "Let's cap it at four bits". Thomas Larock (00:48:05): In that blog series from Sinofsky, he talks a lot about that at the early start. And I'm at a point now where he's talking a lot about the code reuse because the Excel team, the Word team, I guess PowerPoint, but all these other teams, were all dealing with, say, text. And they were all doing their own code for how that text would be displayed and shown. And Bill would be the one being like, " This is ridiculous". "We should be able to reuse the code between these products". And to me, that would just be common sense. But these groups, Microsoft just grew so rapidly so quickly, they were off on their own, and they have to ship. I ain't got time to wait around for this, for somebody to build an API, things like that. I'll just write it myself. Brian Jones (00:48:50): It's a general thing that you get as you get larger where the person in charge that can oversee everything is like, "Well, these are all my resources", and, "Wow, I don't want three groups all building the same thing". But then when you get down, there's also a reality of we're just going to have a very different view on text and text layout than Excel. And Excel is not going to say, "I want all of that code that Word uses to lay out all of their content to be running for every single cell". Right? That's just suboptimal. And so it's always this fun conversation back and forth around where do you have shared code and reuse and where do you say it's okay for this specific app to have this more optimized thing that might look the same, but in reality, it's not really the same. Rob Collie (00:49:33): Brian, do you remember the ... I'm sure you do, but I don't remember what company they were from. But at one point in this file format effort, these really high priced consultants showed up and went around and interviewed us a couple of times. Do you remember that phase? It was like- Brian Jones (00:49:51): Was that towards the end? There was a couple summary stories that were pulled together just to talk about the overall processes. It was actually after the standardization. Rob Collie (00:49:58): I remember this being at the point in time where it was still kind of a question. whether we should do it. Brian Jones (00:50:02): I don't remember that. Rob Collie (00:50:04): The thing I remember really vividly is a statement that Chris Pratley would make over and over again, this encapsulated it for me. I came around to seeing it his way, which was the file format isn't the thing. That's not the moat. The thing that makes Office unique is the behaviors of the application. It's not the noun of the file format. It's the verb of what happens in the app. It's instructed to think that even if you took exactly the Excel team today, every single person that's already worked on it, and said, "Hey, you have to go rebuild Excel exactly". There's no way that version of Excel would be compatible with the one we have now. It would drift so much. Rob Collie (00:50:43): You could even have access to all the same specs. We would even cheat and say, "Look, you can have access to every single spec ever written". So? It was clearly someone had thought it was time to bring in like a McKinsey. They were all well dressed. They were all attractive. They were all a little too young to be the ones sort of making these decisions. It was just really weird to have them show up, three people in your office. Like, "Okay, I'll tell you what's going on". Brian Jones (00:51:11): I can totally imagine. It's funny I don't remember that. There were several rounds of analysis on how we were doing it, what we're doing and making sure we were doing it the right way. But yeah, Chris is spot on. I mean, your point about rebuilding it, that's essentially what we've been going through for the past five plus years around our web app. It's a lot of work. Unfortunately, we can't let it drift. The expectation from everybody is, "Hey, I learned the Wind 32 version. When I go to the web, I want it to feel the same. I don't want to feel like I'm now using some different app." Rob Collie (00:51:44): What an amazing, again, like a Manhattan project type of thing, this notion of rewriting Excel to run on the web and be compatible. Brian Jones (00:51:55): Yeah, with 30 years of innovation. Rob Collie (00:51:56): Yeah. That started in the 2007 release. Excel services, the first release of Excel services was 2007. And this whole thing about shared code, like what features, what functions of Excel, what pieces of it were going to be rewritten to be quote unquote "shared code"? And shared code meant it was actually server safe, which none of regular desktop Excel written in the early '80s, still carrying around assembly in certain places, assembly code of all things, right? Excel was not server safe. It was about as far from server safe as you could get. And so to rewrite this so ambitious without breaking anything. Oh my God. What a massive ... This dates back, gosh, more than 15 years. Brian Jones (00:52:45): Yeah. I'd say like the first goals around it were a bit different, right? It wasn't a web version of Excel. It was like BI scenarios and how can we have dashboards and Excel playing a role in dashboards. But yeah, I'd say since I joined, it was probably maybe a half a year or a year into when I joined, we just made the decision to shift a huge chunk of our funding to the web app. It was just clear that we need to make even more rapid progress. If you go, we have a site where you can go and see all the features that are rolling out there. It's incredible. And it's just because of the depth of the product. "Wow that's so many features you've done. You must be almost done". But then you look at everything else that's still isn't done yet. Brian Jones (00:53:23): Now thankfully, we're getting to the point where we can look at telemetry and say, "Hey, we've got most people covered." Most users, when we look at what they do in Windows, they could use the web app and shouldn't notice a difference. But there still is a set of things that we're going to keep churning through. So that'll continue to be a huge, huge investment for us. But yeah, the shared code strategy, we have an iPhone version, an iPad version an Android version. We've got Excel across all platforms. And because of the shared code, when we add new features, the feature crew that's working on that, they need to have a plan for how they're going to roll out across all those platforms, clearly levered shared code. But they also need to think through user experience and stuff like that too. Clearly a feature on a phone is going to behave differently than it's going to behave on a desktop. Rob Collie (00:54:05): Part of me, just like, kind of wants to just say, "I don't even believe that you've pulled that off, there's no way". It's kind of like, I've never looked at the Android version, and until I look at the Android version, I'm just going to assume it's not real. This is why it's one of the hardest things imaginable to have a single code base with all these different user experience, just fundamental paradigms of difference between these platforms. Like really? Come on. Brian Jones (00:54:34): It was a massively ambitious project. Mac shifted over maybe three years ago. And that's when, all of a sudden, in addition to a bunch of just features that people have been asking for that we'd never been able to get to, the massive one there was we were able to roll out the co-authoring multiplayer mode for Excel. Rob Collie (00:54:50): Multiplayer. Brian Jones (00:54:52): That's the term I like for co-authoring. It's more fun. Rob Collie (00:54:55): Yeah. It's like MMO for spreadsheets. Brian Jones (00:54:57): Yes. We were able to get that for the Mac. I mean, all of our platforms. One of us can be on an iPad, an iPhone, the web app, and we'll all see what we're doing in real time, making edits and all of that stuff. That alone, if you want to talk about massive projects, 30 years of features and innovation, basically that means we had to go and teach Excel how to communicate to another version of Excel and be very specific about, "This is what I did." "Here's the action I took." And that is massive. There are thousands and thousands of things you can do in the product. So getting it so that all of those versions are in sync the entire time, and so we're all seeing the exact same results of calc and all of that. That itself was a huge, massive project. Rob Collie (00:55:37): Take this as the highest form of praise when I say I don't buy it. I can't believe it. Brian Jones (00:55:44): I hope everybody's okay that we just talked for like an hour on just like listening to somebody at a high school reunion, I think, or something. Is this like me talking about how great I played in that one game? And you're like, "Yeah, that was a great basket". Rob Collie (00:55:54): Yeah. "Man, my jumper was on". the thing that's hard to appreciate, I think, is that you got to come back to the fact that we're talking about the tools that everyone in the world uses every day, that we rely on. And I think being gone from Microsoft for the last 12 years, I'm able to better appreciate that sense of wonder. This isn't just you and I catching up, I don't think. People enjoy, for good reason I think, hearing the stories of how these things came to be. People don't know by default how hard it was to get to a million rows in the file format. If you're like a robot, you're like, "I don't care how I got here. I just care what it is", then you're not listening to this show. We call it data with a human element. Robots can exit stage left. I think you should feel zero guilt. This isn't just self-indulgence. Brian Jones (00:56:55): Well, on the off chance everybody else ... I've listened to a lot of Rob's other podcasts, and they're awesome. So if you're bored with this one, it's okay. Go check out some of the other ones. They'r

Embrace the change within yourself and be willing to change your friendship circles, job, mindset to get the change you're desiring. A lot of people struggle with letting go of identity and who they feel they are, or even who other's say they are..like "Oh but that is just SO BRIAN!" You know?! We are always investing time into being our best versions of ourselves and maybe you feel you want that too - reach out and say hey and let us know where you're at and where you want to go! If you're happy with life and not wanting change, THIS VIDEO IS NOT FOR YOU. With oceans of love and light, Tom & Lo

In today's episode, I welcome Bryan Colley! Bryan is a playwright and director, and is premiering his latest work about the 19th amendment, "On Account of Sex," at this year's Kansas City Fringe Festival, running July 18th through August 1st. Learn about his unique approach to naming his theater companies, his writing process, and how he keeps his productions lean and impactful. (Fun fact: the cover image of this episode is a cut-out version of his Fringe show's promotional image.)   Watch Bryan Colley's KC Fringe Festival Show, "On Account of Sex": https://kcfringe.org/2021-shows/on-account-of-sex/  Enroll in Lindsey's dance and wellness courses: www.elevateart.thinkific.com  Support Artfully Told: www.paypal.me/elevateart Artfully Told links: www.facebook.com/artfullytold | www.artfullytold.podbean.com | elevateartskc@gmail.com Get a free audiobook through Audible!  http://www.audibletrial.com/ArtfullyTold Schedule your own interview as a featured guest with Artfully Told! https://calendly.com/artfullytold/podcast-interview   Episode 61 - Bryan Colley Lindsey Dinneen: Hello, and welcome to Artfully Told, where we share true stories about meaningful encounters with art. [00:00:06] Krista: I think artists help people have different perspectives on every aspect of life. [00:00:12]Roman:  All I can do is put my part in to the world. [00:00:15] Elizabeth: It doesn't have to be perfect the first time. It doesn't have to be perfect ever really. I mean, as long as you, and you're enjoying doing it and you're trying your best, that can be good enough. [00:00:23] Elna: Art is something that you can experience with your senses and that you just experiences as so beautiful.  [00:00:31] Lindsey Dinneen: Hi friends, whether you are just getting started or you're a seasoned professional looking to up your game, I have an exciting opportunity for you. Did you know that I am actually the creator of 10 different courses online that range from ballet, jazz, tap. They also include a mindset detox course and two Stretch and Tone courses. So if you're looking to start a new hobby or get a little bit fitter, or you're looking to do a deep dive into your mindset, really perform a true detox, I have the course for you, and I would love to help you out with that. So if you go to elevateart.thinkific.com, you will see all of the different courses I've created. [00:01:26] You don't have to step in a classroom to take your first dance class. I teach a signature 20 Moves in 20 Days course that allows you to learn 20 steps in just 20 days. It's a lot of fun. We have a great time together. And I think you're going to absolutely love the different courses. And artfully told listeners get a little something from me. So if you go, you'll sign up and use the promo code "artfullytold," all one word, and when you do so you'll get 15% off the purchase of any and all your favorite courses. All right, listeners, enjoy that. Again, it's elevateart.thinkific.com. See you there. [00:02:11] Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Artfully Told. I'm your host, Lindsey and I am absolutely delighted to have as my guest today, Bryan Colley. He is a playwright and producer, and I actually had the opportunity to get to know him just, just a little bit, but through Kansas City Fringe Festival. That's  sort of where we initially got connected. And I am just so delighted. Bryan has such a rich background, and has been involved in the Fringe Festival and as a playwright for years and years, and just brings so much just interesting experience to the table today. So thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it, Bryan. [00:02:54] Bryan Colley: Hello. Thank you for having me. [00:02:56] Lindsey Dinneen: Of course. Well, I would love if you wouldn't mind sharing just a little bit about your background, maybe what got you started in art in general, writing specifically and, and take it from there, if you don't mind. [00:03:09]Bryan Colley: Okay. I'm not sure how far you want to go back. But I think I've wanted to be a writer since I was a teenager or at least to do something creative. I do art as well. I went to The Art Institute for a year. My college years were kind of scattered, trying to figure out where I wanted to be, because I didn't know if I wanted to do art or if I wanted to make movies. And somehow I ended up doing theater and didn't think I wanted to write plays until I wrote my first play. And it was such a good experience that I said, "Hey, this is something I can do." So after college, I started writing plays and also spent a long time writing screenplays. I'm one of the founding members of the Kansas City Screenwriters that's still meeting. I think we started in 1992 and we're still meeting today, just a very small group of people who wanna write screenplays. And I haven't really written a screenplay in a long time, but I did spend a long time writing them before Fringe came along, and then I kind of committed myself to writing plays after that, just at, at the very minimum, at least doing one show a year. Every year for Fringe was a goal, which I have done every year since 2008. [00:04:32] Lindsey Dinneen: Wow. Yeah. And so I know that Fringe probably helped narrow down your trajectory, but I-- it seems like you, how should we say ,you got "volunteered" into a broader role with Fringe. And so, your role kind of has expanded from not only being on the producing side, but then also being on the whole administrative/ marketing genius side. Is that correct? [00:04:57] Bryan Colley: That is correct. My wife, Tara, and I went to Fringe its first year and went and saw the shows there and came away from it thinking, "Hey, we can do this." And so the next year we wrote our first show for the Fringe, which was called "Jesus Christ, King of Comedy." And it was supposed to be a sketch show basically around a theme of, of basically Jesus is an entertainer and it's actually more about showbiz life than it is about the Bible or anything. But it was supposed to be like a group show. We had invited a whole bunch of people we knew to write a sketch and a one guy wrote a sketch about Jesus's birthday, where Joseph is there trying to have a happy birthday with, with a young Jesus, and then God shows up and kind of steals all the thunder, as gods will do. And, and then, so that gave us the idea to make the show about Joseph, as this put-upon father, who's raising this kid that isn't his and kind of life the life of Joseph, which we never get to see. [00:06:06] So we took all these different sketches and kind of built a story out of it. And that was our very first Fringe show. But I'm also a graphic designer and had been doing graphic graphic design work. And I was friends with Cheryl Kimmi who runs the Fringe and, I guess I was complaining a lot about their printed program, which was basically just an Excel Sheet dumped onto a piece of paper for people to try to figure out what show they wanted to go see. And so I offered to help the next year after that, to do their program for them and have been doing it ever since. I've been at it every year, honing it down and trying to get better and better programs so that people can find the shows they want to go. And so, and that led to other administrative roles with Fringe. I basically volunteer and help out what they need to do and work behind the scenes that way. [00:06:59] Lindsey Dinneen: Yes. And every fringe producer who comes through Kansas City is super grateful  to have Bryan because Bryan, you are very good at articulating exactly what helps to capture someone's attention. If you're not familiar with the Fringe Festival, anyone who's listening, there are hundreds of shows to choose from every year traditionally. And so Bryan is always really good at helping producers who might not have the graphic design or writing background to sort of say, "Hey, here are some best practices to get people's attention and, you know, do this, don't do this." So anyway, we're all super thankful to have Bryan on board, to say that as a blanket statement, because it is true. So thank you for taking a spreadsheet and making it beautiful. That's such a great story. Go ahead. [00:07:49]Bryan Colley: What happens is Tara and I-- usually most of the shows we've done at Fringe Tara and I write together, and so after the playwriting is done, she will, she directs all the plays. So she would go off with the actors and she will direct a play. So I'm, as a playwright, I've got nothing left to do. So I put a lot of my attention to marketing. So I apply my graphic design skills and I do the marketing. And I guess I had a few successful shows, so Fringe thought I was some kind of a marketing guru. So they kind of have me work with marketing for Fringe as well and help all the other producers market their show. And I help as much as I can, so. [00:08:33] Lindsey Dinneen: Yes and we appreciate it. So definitely. And yeah, I love the story especially of your first show and how that came together. And that sounds so fascinating to come from a perspective that, like you said, we don't get to hear. So I like the imagination behind that. And so that was 2008? Or is that when you first saw the Fringe. [00:08:54] Bryan Colley: No, that was 2008 was our first show. [00:08:57] Lindsey Dinneen: Perfect. And then after that, you've literally produced at least one per year. Do you ever run out of ideas? I mean, obviously you don't, but how does that writing process work for you? [00:09:06]Bryan Colley: It varies, of course, with each show. Sometimes we plan way ahead and have ideas going in to the show. We usually don't start talking about the next year's Fringe until after, you know, until that that show is done. And then we start talking about, what are we going to do next year? And so it usually takes about a year to write a show. Sometimes we'll have an idea in advance, but usually not. So it's just kind of looking for that thing that we have not done before, is basically looking for an idea or a concept or a style or something that we haven't done yet, because it's really easy to just... Well, well, you might notice is most theater companies are a company and they have a name and they produce shows and there's some at Fringe, theater companies that come back every year and produce shows [00:09:54]But you'll notice with our shows practically every year, it's a different theater company name that we use on the idea that once you established a theater company as a name, you're pretty much locking yourself into doing a certain kind of show. So this theater company will do this kind of show and you know what to expect from them. And we didn't want that. We didn't want to be a theater company and we didn't want to be locked down into saying, this is what we do. We wanted to... actually people not know what's going to come next and not know what to expect. And so we changed. We make up a theater company every year and this theater company we make up would produce that kind of show. [00:10:35]But it's been interesting because sometimes we will go back and reuse the theater company name, like for our show this year. Our second show we did at Fringe was called The Lingerie Shop, which was sort of like this kind of feminist fantasy kind of thing, comedy, and the theater company we, we used was called the Fourth Wave Theater, which is like a feminist reference and, and that was all well and good, but now we're doing a new show that also has this kind of feminist theme. So we're using the Fourth Wave Theater Company has come back and is producing their second show. So that's kind of how it was. And then on years where we don't know or where, what we're planning to do falls through, and we have to do something else, then we call it Plan B Production. [00:11:25] Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, I love that. Perfect. [00:11:28] Bryan Colley: And it's happened twice, I think. Yeah. It's twice that we've had to fall back on the Plan B Productions. [00:11:33]Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, that's brilliant. [00:11:36] Bryan Colley: Sometimes things don't work out. [00:11:38] Lindsey Dinneen: Indeed, especially in the art world, especially with live theater. Yup. Well, that's awesome. I, I don't think I realized that, but that makes more sense, 'cause I'll, you know-- once you start participating in Fringe shows or the festivals long enough, then you know, you sort of start to get to know each other. And it's really fun. There's like a lot of comradery with Fringe and, and it makes so much more sense that you're under a different title every time. 'Cause there would be times where I'd be like, "Yeah, which one is his this year?" And that makes sense. It's because you use different theater companies. That's funny. I love it. And that's smart! 'Cause like you said, it doesn't tie you down to anyone genre or topic or style. Like I just, yeah. Interesting. I like that approach. [00:12:26] Bryan Colley: I mean the most common thing we have in our shows is that we wrote, wrote them, but there've been two shows that we didn't write that we've done. So even that doesn't hold true, and I guess you could say Tara directs them all, except the one we did last year where she was the star. So we had other directors. [00:12:46] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. She has a background obviously in directing and acting as well. Did you guys meet through theater or through different means? [00:12:54]Bryan Colley: Yeah. After college I started working with the Gorilla Theater, and basically I got out of college. I was looking for stuff to do. One of my other college friends was doing Gorilla Theater and invited me in and I just started doing it, whatever they needed to be done. A lot of it was sound design or running the sound, soundboard. They didn't have anyone to do that. And eventually it was like, well, we need to market our shows better. So I started doing marketing. I eventually ended up on the Board of Directors and doing like the financial stuff and writing a grant. And basically it was just, this is what they need. So I'll step in and help out. But anyway, one of the last Gorilla Theater shows I did was directed by Tara. And, and we'd met on a Gorilla Theater show right before, or maybe it wasn't Gorilla. [00:13:42] We met. She'd done some Gorilla shows. She did some other shows. We met back in the nineties doing theater. And then we, but she was just an actress then, and I kind of pushed her into her directing in going into Fringe as a director. And partly because she wasn't happy with how theater was done where she wants more of a process kind of thing, where she wants to work with the actors more. And she never got that as an actor. It was always just kind of like, "here's your blocking, you know, your lines, let's do a show" kind of thing, and there's not really a process to it. So she brings that process when she does the Fringe shows. I suppose we probably have more rehearsals than normal, but, but we always give actors a lot of input into the final process. [00:14:30]Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, well, that's nice. I think it's nice 'cause it sounds like it's much more up her alley, much more her style of interacting and producing these plays. So that's, that's great. I mean, that's such the, the nice benefit about being able to have your own productions that you produce and, you know, she's working with you as the writer. So, you know, if there are any differences in interpretation, y'all can work that out. And I mean, that sounds like a pretty good, good partnership right there. [00:15:00]Bryan Colley: Yeah. That's what I mean. I'm, I'm more open probably than anyone to changing the script and improving it and doing whatever. And because she's a co-writer, she feels complete freedom to just change whatever she wants to change. She doesn't have to even ask me if it's a good idea. So, yeah, it helps that way if you want to do a process, if you want to have more of a process in developing a show. Like that it helps to have the playwright there and to be able to just change whatever you want. [00:15:34] Lindsey Dinneen: Sure. Absolutely. Well, and then, so I know that you guys have a show that you're obviously producing for this year's Fringe Festival, how are you at the filming stage of it yet? Or are you guys still kind of rehearsing and getting, getting it up to where it's ready to film? Where are you in that whole process? And maybe just a little bit about your show-- a little teaser. [00:15:56] Bryan Colley: A little teaser... it's already recorded. It's actually the show we wrote for last year's Fringe before COVID happened. And we were all ready to produce it. It's called "On Account of Sex" and it's about the, the long process to get, to pass the 19th amendment, where the women won the right to vote, and in 1920. And of course, 2020 was the hundred year anniversary of the amendment. And so that's kind of why we plan to do the show for 2020. And it's the only time we've ever written a show that was timely in any way. And so of course, all of our plans went awry with COVID and we weren't able to produce the show. We were just getting to the point of starting rehearsals when, when COVID happened and we decided we didn't want to do the show in any kind of virtual way, any kind of like a Zoom kind of thing. So we just said, "Well, we'll do it next year." [00:16:56] And now here we are a year later, and we're still not having a live Fringe, so we still aren't able to do the show. But back in August on the anniversary of the 19th amendment, we did a, like a reading of the play using Zoom. And so we just had a one night only, this is the anniversary, so we're going to do and we put together a reading of the show. And so we still have that recording and we're going to use that for our show for Fringe next year, or this year. And then hopefully next year we can actually produce the show. [00:17:29] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Oh yeah. I definitely miss in-person theater. I'm so grateful that there are ways to adapt to the times, but yes, I, I miss I miss in-person theater. Well, that shows sounds fantastic. I can't wait to watch it. I'm obviously super interested in that subject. And I just think that it's such a great thing that you're addressing and talking about. So that's, that's awesome. Thank you for doing that. And typically find out ticket links and things like that what, early July? I'm trying to remember. [00:18:04] Bryan Colley: I think tickets go on sale July 1st. [00:18:07] Lindsey Dinneen: Okay. Okay, perfect. So yes. So Brian, if there's people who want to watch the show and, and/ or connect with you, is there a good way for them to be on the lookout for that? [00:18:17]Bryan Colley: They should just go to kcfringe.org and they can sign up for the mailing list and be informed of everything that's going on. [00:18:26] Lindsey Dinneen: Cool. And then your theater company this year, plus the title just one more time. So we're, we're squared away, ready to watch it. [00:18:34] Bryan Colley: Right. Our show is called "On Account of Sex" and the theater company is Fourth Wave Theater. [00:18:41] Lindsey Dinneen: Perfect. Thank you. Yes, we'll definitely be on the lookout for that. Thankfully with the virtual format, now it's so accessible, so you don't even have to be local to Kansas City anymore. You can literally watch this from the comfort of your home anywhere. So yeah, definitely be able to look out for that. Bryan, I'm curious, you know, you've kind of led a very artistic life with your different ventures. And I'm, I'm curious if you have any advice for someone who might be interested in doing something maybe a little bit on the side. I mean, you have your graphic design as well, but maybe for somebody who is thinking about producing a show at some point, but just hesitant. What advice would you have for somebody like you? [00:19:21]Bryan Colley: I would say you just have to go there. Don't don't hesitate to go and make a fool of yourself. When we did the Jesus Christ, our motto was "forgive us for, we know not what we do." So and that model still applies to everything we do, because we always try to do, we try to do stuff that we don't know what we're doing. We, we try to do something we haven't done before. So almost every show is like, "Well, I don't, I don't know what we're doing this time, but we're doing it." And whether, you know, 'cause we have done musicals, we have done an opera, we have done a variety of different shows. We did a show in a planetarium. So every time it's, it's a new experience for us. So we're learning every time and it's, and it's basically like doing it all over for the first time. [00:20:07]Fringe is great for that. I mean, that's the best thing about Fringe is anybody can just go in and do something and, and not only is it a welcome environment for that, the, the audience is welcoming to that too. They're not, they're not paying $50, $60 tickets and expecting a big professional show. They know what they're getting into. They're very forgiving of mistakes. They know the format, they know what Fringe is and, and they know it's experimental and a lot of people doing it for the first time. So it's just kind of, that's it just a place to go and do something, do whatever, whatever, whatever you fancy and, and, and the, that it's, it's wide open to whatever you want to do. It's like any, any crazy idea will, will fly there. So. [00:21:00] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, definitely. Yes. Love it. Yep. Just go do it. I like it. And I, I do agree. I think Fringe is one of the the best outlets that I've found. And it's, it's not very cost-prohibitive to produce a show through Fringe too. And I know a lot of times that's a concern when you're first starting out. So yeah. Fringe is a great connection. There are Fringes literally all across the world, so definitely try to find whatever's local to you and see what the process is like, because I think you'll find it a lot-- I mean, it's a lot of work-- but it's a lot more accessible than you think it is. So. [00:21:36] Bryan Colley: And the hardest part, I think, for people doing new-- for people just getting out there for the first time, especially if you're producing something for the first time, the hardest part is finding an audience and finding people to come see your show, because nobody knows who you are and you don't have this loyal following. So that's another thing Fringe is great for because there's already an audience there. There's people going to shows and looking for something to go see. So it's a lot easier just to find an audience and get people to see your show. [00:22:04] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I'm just curious, I'm sure that there are moments that stand out to you, either witnessing someone watch your art, or you participating in someone else's art, but that just sort of stand out as this moment that mattered. And I'm just curious what that might look like for you if you have any examples that come to mind. [00:22:27]Bryan Colley: Oh, well, there's probably a lot of those moments. I mean, I've, I've seen a lot of shows that have blown me away and just really impressed me. And they're not always the biggest, the best. In fact, they're very rarely the big, biggest, and best show. It's usually the little scrappy productions and kind of stuff you have to seek out that have really impressed me. It was just creativity and, and theatricality and kind of stuff because they don't have, you know, a full staff and a full shop and can build sets and do all the traditional stagecraft. They have to be creative and come up with different ways to do things. So there's been a lot of stuff over the years that's really blown me away and I try to incorporate. You know, as a playwright, you, you typically think of the playwright is like, well, they have these words and they write the dialogue. And, but as a playwright, you have a lot more tools available to you to do that because you can say, "I want this character to dance. I want this, I want there to be music here. I want, you know, this should be poetry." [00:23:36] You have all the theatrical tools at your disposal that you can pull in and use in your play. So, so I try to be aware of that. If I want to use mime, if I want to use masks, if I want to do this or that you, you want to be aware of what's out there and be able to use, utilize all of that and make something that's theatrical. You don't need a huge budget to produce theater. You just need to be creative about how you approach it so that you can, you can tack tackle big subjects. You know, I keep telling myself someday, I'm going to write a play that requires a set. And it hasn't happened yet. So, you know, you just, you find other ways to do things when you're, when you're-- and, and audiences, I think audiences like that. I think, I think there have been people that reacted to our shows and it just like, they, they liked the creative approach and, and I know some of the shows, a few of the shows I think have reached a higher level, what you typically expect from a Fringe. So I wouldn't say all of them do, but I think a couple of them have. [00:24:44]Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Well, and I like what you're saying about the sets. And I think that that is such a, an interesting dynamic of, you know, like, you'll go and see a Broadway production or like a Cirque du Soleil show or something like that. And the sets are integral to the choreography and, and all of it, and it's amazing. Like, it, it blows you away just because you think, "Oh my gosh, the creativity in that." But then, like you said, you'll go this local theater company or a dance company or whatever, and it's kind of art speaking for itself and doesn't have all the glitz behind it. And sometimes that's really impactful just that way. 'Cause you're, you're not necessarily distracted by the sets or the props or things like that. You're really kind of more focused on the art itself and that's where some of that brilliance can shine through. So I actually like your, you know, your challenge for yourself of "how do I create this and not use sets? How can I be creative and think about this in a different way? And what would that look like if I do that?" So kudos to you. That's awesome. [00:25:46]Bryan Colley: Well, yeah. I mean, it's partly because, I mean, my plays are not getting produced by big theaters, so I don't have that experience, you know, to draw from. But, you know, I always, when I'm writing, I'm always thinking, how could this, how can this be produced as cheaply as possible? I'm not writing something that requires a huge budget, you know? [00:26:09]Lindsey Dinneen:  Yeah. Yep, absolutely. [00:26:13]Bryan Colley: My probably worst sin is, is-- it's hard. I find it hard to write anything with fewer than five actors. So it always seems to end up at about five actors or so, five or more. So, you know, if you really want to write cheap theater, you can't have that many actors, you know, and especially if you're doing Fringe shows and there's artists out there who are professional, and this is all they do is Fringe and they travel around the country or around the world and do, do their Fringe shows. And usually these shows are one or two people, you know, because they have to be able to travel and travel cheaply, you know, and be able to produce it as cheaply as possible. So, so people have always told us we should take our shows to other Fringe festivals, but logistically it's just really hard when you have five actors who all have their own schedules and trying to pack a show up and, yeah, it's just makes it really tough. [00:27:12]Lindsey Dinneen:  Yeah, I can, I can relate to that. It's, it is challenging when you have a little bit of a bigger group of people and you're like, "Yes, we're going to travel." And then you think about all the logistics and you're like, "Well, maybe not, maybe not right now." But yeah, no, that is that's really cool. I really like learning more about your process. It was so interesting to hear about, you know, the fact that you use different theater companies and why, and you know, your stance on all of the different things. So thank you for sharing all of that. And I do have three questions that I always like to ask my guests, if you're okay with that. [00:27:48] Bryan Colley: Okay. Three questions. [00:27:50] Lindsey Dinneen: Three questions. Okay. So the first is, how do you personally define art or what is art to you? [00:27:58]Bryan Colley: Okay, well, I think art, in the grand scheme, art is, is how we communicate. It's, it's the most advanced form of communication. I mean, there's the obvious, you know, language-- you write a book and, and use words, and that's the obvious communication. But, and, and that works great if someone can speak that language, but not everyone does. And art is a way you can communicate that goes beyond language. And, and even as a playwright, of course I'm using words, but, but theater as a, as a way of communicating, it's, it's, it's, it's not just using words to tell a story. It's, it's putting, putting a scene on stage and communicating that experience. So you can communicate the experience, you can communicate emotions. I mean visual art is the way to communicate, you know, how do I describe the color blue? Well, I can, I can do a lot of words during it to tell you what blue is and never really explain it, but I can show you the color of blue and I can do, you know, a painting that shows you something you haven't seen before and communicates new ideas and thoughts and experiences. And I think that's kind of what art is all about and what, you know, it's what brings us together, humanity together, more than anything else. [00:29:31] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. I love that. Okay. And what do you think is the most important role of an artist? [00:29:37]Bryan Colley: Well, that's a, that's a tricky question. I mean, I think the role of the artist is to, to offer ideas to the world and hopefully they can offer an idea. No one's thought of before. And of course, you know, everyone is born ignorant, so everyone experiences new ideas all the time in the, in the course of their life. It's not like there's this one set of ideas everybody knows. Everyone has a different experience. So, so everyone has a way to experience art and some people gain something from it and other people don't because maybe they've already experienced that or, or they don't understand it, you know? So, so you need a wide field of art out there because there's just different art for each person. [00:30:23]So but you know, it's, you go through life learning things, you get an education, you read books, you, you know, I'm a media junkie. I watch films and I listen to music, you know, it's consume, consume, consume. And I think at some point you want to contribute to that or you want to give back and it's like, well, I've learned all this for what reason? It's like, so that I can take my experience and my knowledge and offer my ideas or my observations on that. So that's where art comes into play, I think. And I think it's something everyone can participate in. It's not just for professionals. Everyone can be an artist and offer something to the world. [00:31:09] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely agree. Yeah. And then my final question, and I'll explain my terms a little bit, but do you think that art should be inclusive or exclusive? And what I mean by that is inclusive referring to an artist who puts their work out there and provides some context behind it, whether it's title, show notes, the inspiration, just something to give the viewer a little bit of context as to what was going on in the artist's mind. Versus exclusive referring to an artist who puts their work out there, but it doesn't provide the context. And so it's left solely to the viewer to decide what they will. [00:31:47]Bryan Colley: Well, I think it depends on the art, I think, but I generally think exclusive. I think art should stand on its own and speak for itself and not require context. But as I just said, everyone has a different experience. So if you don't provide context, somebody may not understand it or may not be interested, but that's fine because you're, you know, art's, art's not for everyone. It's for those who need it and what you're offering somebody out there might need and might react to. And that's what you're going for. But so, but I think the art should stand on its own, but I see no problem with providing context, if you want. And some things are better with context and some, some the context doesn't matter, but if you provide the context, it's only for those people who are really wanting that context, or really want to know more. I don't think it should be a prerequisite. I think people should experience the art and say, "Wow, that's really interesting. I want to know more." And then go after the context. I mean, that's how I approach it anyway. It's just like, I find something that interests me and then I want to know more about it and do the research. But, but if I do the research first, it just kind of... [00:33:03]Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, it impacts the way you view it, for sure, no matter what. I mean, it couldn't not, there's your double negative for the day. Yeah. And I, yeah, that makes complete sense to me, the way that you were talking about it. I'm curious, when you produce your plays, do you guys provide any sort of program or is it, or, or if it's a program, is that just sort of like, Lisa was played by so-and-so and Daniel was played-- you know what I mean? Is it, do you provide context when you do stuff or not? [00:33:32] Bryan Colley: We always do a program, of course, ' cause actors love to have their bios and like to think and sometimes the program is more fun than others. I wouldn't say they really provide context. And I know when we did the opera, we provided the libretto so people could read what was being sung because, you know, it can be hard to follow. Not that they could read during the show, cause it was dark in the theater anyway, but at least they can go out afterwards and read what they were singing if they want to. So yeah, it depends on the show, what, what we think the show needs. Sometimes it needs more. I know Tara has a real disdain for director's notes. So we don't really do that. We might provide just some background, but mostly we just put the actors' bios in and maybe add some fun stuff if we can think of it. So. [00:34:20] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, no, that's totally great. And, and like you said, it's, it's completely up to each individual artist. So again, no wrong answer. It's just really interesting to me to hear different people's approaches and their reasoning behind it 'cause I think, you know, it's, it is subjective to the artist. It's subjective to the art itself. And so I just, I'm always just fascinated by, by what people say about that. So great answer. I loved it. Yeah. Well, thank you again, so very much for being here today, Bryan. I really, really appreciate it. And I do highly encourage anyone who is interested in Bryan's work to definitely check out this year's Fringe Festival. Again, tickets are supposed to go live in-- we'll just say early July, just in case anything, but just keep your eyes open for that kcfringe.org. And then yeah, definitely take a look at that.  Well, thanks again, Brian, that was so much fun to chat with you today. I'm looking forward to seeing this production, of course. And I appreciate you. Thanks. [00:35:23] Bryan Colley: I guess we should mention that the Fringe Festival itself will be July 18th through August 1st. Those are the actual dates you can actually watch the show. [00:35:31] Lindsey Dinneen: Perfect. Thank you for that. Yes. Yes, exactly. So that will give you your timeline for how long you can watch it. So you'll, you'll have plenty of opportunities to grab those tickets and watch the production. And if you are feeling as inspired as I am right now, I'd love if you would share this with a friend or two and we will catch you next time. [00:35:53]If you have a story to share with us, we would love that so much. And I hope your day has been Artfully Told. [00:36:03]Hi friends. I wanted to share with you another podcast that I think you're going to fall in love with just as I have. It's called Harlem with a View, and it is hosted by Harlem Lennox, who was a previous guest of mine on Artfully Told and a dear friend. Just because it looks easy doesn't mean it is. There is so much that goes into the work of your creative. She wants to know how the artists got into their line of work, what inspires them, but most importantly, what keeps them going? She'd asked them about how they make it through the blood, sweat, and tears. She wants to know what it's like to live this creative life: the good, the bad, the ugly, and even the magical. So she goes behind the scenes with creatives, from different genres and she explores their history, their take on life and talks about the business of art and the dedication of making art. She has a brilliant, brilliant platform. I think you will fall in love. I highly recommend that you search for Harlem with a View. Thanks!

So Brian’s having an off night, you do content marketing daily and see how it goes.

So Brian's having an off night, you do content marketing daily and see how it goes.

Season 2 Episode 61 Released 2/5/21Grandpa ! My grandson Maverik was born at 11:17pm on 1/8/21 . He was 7lbs 5.5oz And 20.5"What a joy. When you're fixing your RV and something overwhelms you try to break it down into attainable tasks. like I did with my solar.But if it seems like it is way too much, let someone else do it like I did with the water heater in our rigSo quick recap on RV finish- Blue Beacon washed the Rig and our finish was ruined. Geico (https://www.geico.com) agreed to cover the damages. We brought it to Connecticut Motorcar and Coaches (http://ctmotorcars.com/) on 1/4/21. They tried different compounds to no avail. Geico said go ahead with the repair. So Brian at Ct. Motor car stripped off the stickers on both sides and has begun the repainting. It's a good feeling that the damage that was done to the rig will be fixed. And it's perfect timing with the lack of winter travel.Our rig is not yet winter ready. Heated tanks yes, not plumbing yet.We are still waiting for the cabinet door from Camping World. I have 3 free Stress Management recordings at RelaxRV Audio Recordings.I made some videos about the improvements I mentioned and I posted them on YouTube. Or you can go to relaxrv.org-Videos.I took some pictures and posted them on the RelaxRV Facebook page for your enjoyment and edification.one of the things I added to our list of things to add and do with the rig is to put fans blowing on the windows and maybe like Little heaters too blow on the windows. Then going through Facebook I saw her gentleman complaining that Thor put fans in a bad location for these windows. Somebody suggested picking up Rain-X anti fog spray. So I so I pick some up and when we get the rig back from Connecticut will give it a shot.So being we won't be traveling for at least another month or two with the weather and the rig still at the shop we've been out hiking and now that the Hudson valley just recently got 20 in of snow we're going to do some snowshoeing. We've noticed drawer travels. Some hiking trails more great. Some terrible. And for someone who is new to that area and can be very frustrating trying to find the correct hiking trail.

Season 2 Episode 61 Released 2/5/21Grandpa ! My grandson Maverik was born at 11:17pm on 1/8/21 . He was 7lbs 5.5oz And 20.5"What a joy. When you're fixing your RV and something overwhelms you try to break it down into attainable tasks. like I did with my solar.But if it seems like it is way too much, let someone else do it like I did with the water heater in our rigSo quick recap on RV finish- Blue Beacon washed the Rig and our finish was ruined. Geico (https://www.geico.com) agreed to cover the damages. We brought it to Connecticut Motorcar and Coaches (http://ctmotorcars.com/) on 1/4/21. They tried different compounds to no avail. Geico said go ahead with the repair. So Brian at Ct. Motor car stripped off the stickers on both sides and has begun the repainting. It's a good feeling that the damage that was done to the rig will be fixed. And it's perfect timing with the lack of winter travel.Our rig is not yet winter ready. Heated tanks yes, not plumbing yet.We are still waiting for the cabinet door from Camping World. I have 3 free Stress Management recordings at RelaxRV Audio Recordings.I made some videos about the improvements I mentioned and I posted them on YouTube. Or you can go to relaxrv.org-Videos.I took some pictures and posted them on the RelaxRV Facebook page for your enjoyment and edification.one of the things I added to our list of things to add and do with the rig is to put fans blowing on the windows and maybe like Little heaters too blow on the windows. Then going through Facebook I saw her gentleman complaining that Thor put fans in a bad location for these windows. Somebody suggested picking up Rain-X anti fog spray. So I so I pick some up and when we get the rig back from Connecticut will give it a shot.So being we won't be traveling for at least another month or two with the weather and the rig still at the shop we've been out hiking and now that the Hudson valley just recently got 20 in of snow we're going to do some snowshoeing. We've noticed drawer travels. Some hiking trails more great. Some terrible. And for someone who is new to that area and can be very frustrating trying to find the correct hiking trail.

Visit us at https://soapfreeprocyon.com/ Transcript [00:00:00.095] Hey, thanks for joining me today, it's JP from Procyon with another soap free podcast. Well, we all survived Thanksgiving. I hope you had a healthy and enjoyable one during this very strange pandemic year. And now we're heading toward Christmas and it's it's giving season. So my mind is very much on the joys of giving. I'd like to share with you today some great quotes about exactly that and then tell you a quick story. But I know I get the most out of this season each year. [00:00:38.315] Instead of just focusing on things I might like, it's become much more important to me to think about what I can give. So here's just a few great quotes I just love. No one has ever become poorer from by giving from Anne Frank. And we all know what she gave. Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more. That's Jackson Browne, Jr.. Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a great deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give Eleanor Roosevelt. [00:01:16.485] We must give more in order to get more. It's the generous giving of ourselves that produces the generous harvest for us and Martin. We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give. Winston Churchill, No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another. Charles Dickens, a seasonal Ford, is in giving that we receive St Francis of Assisi. It is every man's obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it. [00:01:58.925] The meaning of life is to find your gift, the purpose of life is to give it away. So the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. And those who are happiest are those who do the most for others. Booker T. Washington. So in that vein, a wonderful opportunity came my way this week through the misfortune of a friend, Brian, who is my dear friend and father of a one of my son's classmates in high school. [00:02:41.855] And I started a carpet cleaning company well over a decade ago. Brian still runs the company full time and does an amazing and reputable job in our region. So Brian's also an avid mountain trail runner. I've been holding my breath for most of that decade, hoping he didn't get injured in this past weekend. Lo and behold, he took a fall and ended up breaking his left wrist. So when we had coffee on Monday morning to discuss the season and just catch up, I offered that if you found he needed help, I could change my schedule around and help them with jobs this week. [00:03:19.775] And he, in fact, called upon me yesterday. So I have the privilege and the opportunity to do the noble work of some commercial carpet cleaning on Friday, hoping to have a little video from that to share with you online, because we will be using encapsulation cleaning methods, using Rotary for machine. But more importantly, it's just such a great thing for me to have the opportunity to help a dear friend. And that is just right in my wheelhouse and exactly how I want my holiday season to unfold. [00:03:55.685] So I just wanted to share that with you. Put the thought of giving in your mind. It's often said that, you know, a shared misery is half a misery. So let's be out there. All of us. I encourage you finding opportunities to help those we know and those we don't know during these very difficult times and to make the most of this holiday season. I'm going to leave you with one more quote from William Penn. He said, I expect to pass through life, but once if there be any kindness I can show or any good thing I can do to any fellow human being, let me do it now and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again. [00:04:42.095] With that, I wish all of you a wonderful, bright and giving holiday season. Stay safe and visit us at SoapFreeProcyon.com. We're here for you, your health and the environment. Subscribe to Soap Free Podcast on Soundwise

Episode Summary Are you willing to experience anything? In this episode, the Founder and CEO of MEG Business Management, Brian Gallagher, talks about the power of the intrapreneur and entrepreneur in private practice. Brian graduated with a BSc in Physical Therapy from Daemen College in 1992. Soon after, he founded Gateway Health Services, which quickly became one of the largest staffing companies in Maryland. In 1999, he founded Cypress Creek Therapy, which was awarded the Anne Arundel County’s “Most Family Friendly Business” for several consecutive years, and in 2011, Advance Magazine awarded CCT as the “National Practice of the Year”. In 2006, Brian founded MEG Business Management and has grown to become among the top 10% of private practices across the US. Today, we learn about the difference between an intrapreneur and an entrepreneur, the four types of PT owners, and Brian gives practice owners some advice on the interview process. He tells us why he sold his practice with a contingency, and how the current environment is ideal for entrepreneurs. We get to hear about the 4 C’s, how we can become a successful Go-Getter Owner, and Brian gives his younger self some advice, all on today’s episode of The Healthy, Wealthy & Smart Podcast. Key Takeaways   •       “Typically, an intrapreneur is a manager within a company who assumes no financial risk, but they’re willing to promote and execute on the development and implementation of innovative products or services.” “An entrepreneur is similar, but it’s one who will find the needs out there within the business community, and simply fill them by developing their own ideas into actualities, by assuming the full financial risk and development of that idea through a business model of their choice.” •       “Your practice is a reflection of you as an owner. Figure out which type of owner you are first.” •       “The secret to successful hiring so that you can be correct 85% of the time is that you have to get the entire team involved in the hiring process.” •       There are 4 types of PT owners: The Innocent Owner, The Caregiver Owner, The Know-It-All Owner, and The Go-Getter Owner. The innocent owner – the person that falls into ownership, and is managing based on census. They never really thought about being an owner; they just had an opportunity.   The caregiver owner – they assume the perspective of a clinician first and owner second. They tend to run their clinics like it’s a democracy. The know-it-all owner – through their life’s experiences, they’re not open to new ideas. The go-getter owner – they have an entrepreneurial spirit, they like to manage based on performance, and they’re in a continuous pursuit of knowledge. •       “This is an entrepreneur heaven right now.” •       “If we’re going to sit here and go through our profession, and continue to colour inside the lines and make our picture like everybody else’s, you’re only going to get that.” •       “When you ask what the common denominator is to all success, the highest thing would be confidence.” •       “Transparency breeds trust.” •       “The secret to success is giving.” “I hate a win-win relationship. A win-win relationship implies that I’m going to allow you to win as long as you help me win.” •       “Don’t react; respond.” Book Mention The Go-Giver, by Bob Burg and John David Mann Suggested Keywords Intrapreneur, Entrepreneur, Owner, Courage, Capability, Commitment, Confidence, Success, Listen, Introspection, To learn more, follow Brian at: Email: info@megbusiness.com Website Facebook Instagram                         Twitter     LinkedIn YouTube More about Brian:  In 1997, Brian founded what became one of Maryland’s largest therapy staffing companies, while at the same time launching a multi-site private practice that resulted in a sale in 2006. Brian re-acquired the practice in 2008, thus doubling it, before winning “Practice of the Year” in 2011. MEG Business Management began in 2006 as an educational coaching company training owners and their key employees on innovative practice management strategies. Today MEG has taken another major leap forward by developing a Virtual Training platform that practice owners can now have the tools and training resources to professionally enhance, track and manage employee performance, and hold in compliance with every employee in the company. This platform is available 24/7, 365 days per year. When Brian is not coaching, or working on the VT training platform, he can be found giving lectures at the APTA, PPS and CSM Annual Conferences, as well as APTA State Chapters and DPT Schools across the country. Brian believes strongly in giving back to the profession of physical therapy and does so by supporting the APTA through lecturing, writing articles, and performing webinars. Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website:                      https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts:          https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy- smart/id532717264 Spotify:                        https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud:                                    https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher:                       https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio:               https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927   Read the transcript:  Speaker 1 (00:01): Hey, Brian, welcome to the podcast. I'm happy to have you on, Speaker 2 (00:05): Oh, thank you so much, Karen. Thanks for taking the time and hooking up with me and doing the show. Speaker 1 (00:10): Yeah, well, I'm actually really looking forward to the topic today because it's something that I've spoken about a lot and that I have friends of mine who are business owners and, and love to empower their employees. So today we're talking about the power of the intrepreneur and the entrepreneur in private practice. So before we get into it, can you define the difference between those two terms? Speaker 2 (00:39): Yeah. And there's lots of definitions out there. I think if we Google it or YouTube, it you're all gonna, you know, find various forms of definitions for this. But for me, and I've always operated under this basic definition that typically an intrepreneur is a manager within the company who assumes no financial risk, but they're willing to promote and execute on the development and implementation of innovative products or services. In our case, it would be services and they do that via marketing branding, or other various forms of public relations, but they're innovating within somebody else's company. And that's my definition, that's my operating definition of an entrepreneur. Speaker 1 (01:19): And so when you're, when you're thinking about an injury, an intrepreneur and it can be a person who takes the initiative to maybe start a new program and within a physical therapy practice or right, something like that, Speaker 2 (01:41): Something like that, it could be as basic. And as simple as that, where they've taken an idea, they've worked it through to a concept and then they've developed that concept into an actuality. So that's what I really see with an entrepreneur. I have certain characteristics that we look for, and I think we'll talk about a little bit later that will really give you the identifying markers of an entrepreneur and what you should seek in an entrepreneur within your clinic, because an entrepreneur is similar, but it's one who will find the needs out there within the business community, whatever the market is that they're in and simply fill them by developing their own ideas into actualities by assuming the full financial risk and development of that idea through a business model of their choice, through the development of their business operations. So innovating within your own company is more of that, of an entrepreneur, assuming that financial risk. And that's really the defining factors between the entrepreneur and entrepreneur. Speaker 1 (02:37): And so what does, what does it take for one to stand out as an entrepreneur? So if I'm the entrepreneur, I own the business. What am I looking for for this? For a standout entrepreneur? Okay. Speaker 2 (02:52): All right. Well, I have a good story for that. And just to give you an example of a, of an entrepreneur, you know, it was several years ago. I, my clinics are in Maryland and I live in Florida and so I had six offices in Maryland and I was running them from Florida and I had a team that I had built. And so I had a chief operating officer working for me. Her name is Denise, she's now the CEO of Meg. And she runs our whole billing division. But at the time she was running the clinics and our largest clinic, it's a, you know, a 8,000 square foot office. And I got to talking to her on one Monday morning and I was asking her about, you know actually I didn't do my normal, that, that's how it actually came up. I was talking to her Monday morning, I got right into business, which is unusual for me. Speaker 2 (03:33): I'm usually like, how was your weekend? And how's the kids what's going on, you know, fill me in and all right, let's get start. But I was in a rush and I just got right into it. And she just started spouting off the things I wanted to know and just hitting it. And then I caught myself and I said, you know what, Denise, I'm so sorry. I apologize. I didn't even mean to ask you about your weekend. You know, how's your weekend go. And to my surprise, she says, well, you know, the air conditioning unit kind of backed up and it flooded the whole place I had to bring in a fan system. And my husband, I lifted the carpets and we dried them all out and got them down. We didn't miss a beat. We were ready Monday morning when the, when the patients got in here. Speaker 2 (04:05): So we're all, you know, find a good, I'm like, Oh my gosh, I had no idea. Like she never called me. She never made that problem. My problem. And I remember getting off the phone and saying to myself, what a level of responsibility, you know, what a level of responsibility. And that's one of the key factors that I look for in an entrepreneur. Now, in this case, I'm not giving you that shining, you know, example of somebody who started a women's health program or a pediatric program. I mean, she's obviously had done that through her time with me, but just this personality characteristic of I'm going to own the responsibility of this situation or this individual or this environmental breakdown, because it is my level of responsibility. And that's somebody who is thinking beyond themselves. And that always stuck with me that she just took that being this on, if you will, of an entrepreneur, when in fact this isn't even her clinic and that's really the sign of a true entrepreneur. Speaker 1 (05:00): Yeah. So someone who's really willing to take the initiative and to kind of really think of the, it sounds like someone who's really going to think of that clinic as, as their own, and really have a stake in it. You know, a true sort of emotional stake in the clinic and a sense of pride in, in where they work and what they're doing Speaker 2 (05:21): Exactly. And they typically come to the table, you know, if you're hiring well, and you're building that management team around you, you're looking for the foundation, right? I mean, every bridge is only as good as the foundation. And the foundation that I'm always looking for is does this individual have the personality, characteristics of confront, right? Are they willing to say what needs to be said to whomever? They need to say it to now, of course you communicate in manners. You never go out manners, but you can't shy away. And we live in a culture. Now we're in an environment where nobody really wants to offend anybody. Nobody literally wants to tell anybody anything they don't want to hear. But in fact, if you're raising children and many of your listeners probably have children, you can't raise your kids and say yes to everything for a month. Speaker 2 (06:02): Yes. Chocolate cake for dinner. Yes. You can go to bed when you want. Yes. You can have candy in the grocery store line, I'll visit your house a month later. It'll be chaos. It'll be a nightmare. Right? So when we run our clinic, we have to have that level of discipline. And that means you have to have that quality of confront. I need to be willing to confront my staff, say what needs to be said, always within good manners. And that's when it comes down to the, the, the equation of communication, you know, how can I communicate in a manner that I can bring about understanding, right? Because after understanding comes agreement, and we're always striving for agreement, but you know, that's the final as the final marker. And then the, the last two building blocks of foundation, I think that really make an intrepreneur entrepreneur is accountability and responsibility. Speaker 2 (06:43): And the difference between those two in my mind is accountability is one who's who owns the obligation and willingness to be accountable for their own actions. But responsibility is like the example I gave of Denise, where she took full responsibility for the whole wellbeing of the clinic and everybody inside it. So just to summarize, I'm always looking for who has a high level of confront who can communicate and bring about duplication and understanding and the art of their communication and who can be accountable to their own actions as well as responsible to that of others as well as situations. So I'm always looking for that and if I don't have them, how can I grow me? Speaker 1 (07:19): And, you know, I love the fact that you're always looking for that. So what advice do you have for a practice owner who is interviewing people, you know, to come and work in their clinic? Cause it's, I think it's hard, let's say in one or two interviews to kind of get those for confrontation communication, you'll get countability responsibility. So what advice do you have for business owners in those first couple of interviews to hire someone to kind of get this, this type of intrepreneur, if that's what you're looking for in your clinic. Speaker 2 (08:00): Yeah. And if you're looking to get distance from your practice, if you're looking to get freedom and flexibility, that's typically what we're trying to hire. Right. So that's a great question. You're asking a fantastic question. I think my answer is going to surprise you. I don't think it's going to be the path that you may be expecting. I think what my advice would be based on my experience now, I've been in and out of 400 offices. I've been in every state in the United States, helping practice owners throughout the whole United States, except for four States. And in doing that, I've come to the conclusion that it has to start with you. It really has to start with us looking at ourselves in the mirror and asking ourselves, what kind of owner are we right. I mean, to some extent you're, you're you're and I like to use family analogies a lot. Speaker 2 (08:38): I don't know, maybe because I had a pediatric clinic and adult clinic. And so I always saw the dynamics there, but I think your family you know, performance, your children are somewhat of a reflection of you as parents, right? I think your practice is a reflection of you as an owner. So I think you really need to look at yourself. So my first bit of advice is look at yourself and kind of know what your own strengths and weaknesses are. You know, there are four kinds of owners out there, and I think we'll talk about that. So figure out which type of owner you are first, second, when it comes to the interviewing, which is kind of what you were leading to. It's a, it's a five stage hiring process, and I've been, I've been pushing this and teaching on this for, well over a decade. Speaker 2 (09:17): Now it's a five phase hiring process and the secret to successful hiring so that you can be correct. 85% of the time with every single candidate you're trying to hire is that you have to get the entire team involved in the hiring process. Your entire team know selectively, right? There's some key individuals, some individuals where you're like, Nope, that's not going to be a fit, right? But for the most part, you need to include everyone in your clinic, in that process. And let me just quickly summarize. So first and foremost, it starts off with phase one, the ad for the ad, you know, you're advertising for somebody you're trying to recruit somebody. Let's say you're looking for a therapist. Let's just pick what everyone's thinking about. Well, here's, here's, here's a tip. Always open your ad with a question, always open your, a question. When you start the ad with a question, it prompts the person to think and reflect on themselves and raises their curiosity. Speaker 2 (10:06): You know, here's an example. Let's say you were to say, you know, are you GM's next? You know, senior financial analyst. And then before you even get the next sentence, the person who read that for sense of like, I don't know, maybe I am, maybe I am qualified. Are you the next senior manual therapist who can work in an autonomous work environment? The therapist's coming? I don't know. Maybe I am. So it gets their interest in. So the ad really has to stimulate their interest and then step two, they have to reach in for a phone call, phone screen. Now the phone screen, here's the, here's the death to any interview process. Don't talk about you. Don't talk about the clinic. Don't get into that. Don't sell your clinic. Don't sell yourself. Look, you have to, this is dating one Oh one. You have to be more interested than interesting. Speaker 2 (10:47): Now what happens here is once you're demonstrating your higher level of interest, their comfort level goes way up when their comfort level goes way up, their natural persona, their natural personality is going to be there. And that's what you're really striving for in the interview process. You know, phase three, they come into the clinic, they meet the front desk. They, they introduce themselves, give them the application, they fill it out, then let some other member of your team, give them a tour of the clinic. It shows that you're so confident in your staff. You're so confident what you built, that you can leave that potential applicant alone with another staff therapist who can just give up five minutes who are, and now that candidates going to ask, you know, the popular questions you know, how, how do you like the way they run the schedule here, right? Speaker 2 (11:28): That's always a difficult question in, in, in hiring or what do you think of the EMR system, right? Encourage that, encourage that outflow and encourage that dialogue with another individual. And then of course you bring them into the interview process. And then finally, you're going to wrap it up and potentially offer them a position, but you have to ask the questions that are getting them to reflect on themselves. And I'll, I'll end with this in the interview and this one of my favorite questions, you know tell me about a time when you last help someone. You know, it's really interesting when people go blank and they pause, you know, I don't want to hear about work. I want to hear about like, when you genuinely tried to help someone, it tells me a lot about the person and how they live their life, because I think striving to serve others and adding more value to other people around us is what's fulfilling. And so I'm really looking for that when I'm hiring. I know I can make somebody a better therapist. I can't always make them a better person. Speaker 1 (12:19): Very true. Very true. And thank you so much for outlining that interview process. And hopefully that gives a lot of the entrepreneurs listening, a better idea of maybe how they can do that on their own and kind of make it their own. Now, before we went into that, you said there are four types of PT owners. So let's go back to that. And I want you to let, let, let, let us know what are those four types of PT owners. Speaker 2 (12:43): Okay, good. Now this is just based on experience, you know, for the thousands of engagements I've had going all the way back to, you know, I started the business in 2006, but I've been a physical therapist since 92. And so what I see out there and what I've been able to categorize is four types of owners. The first one is the innocent owner. All right. And I think we've all met that person. This is the person who falls into ownership and, you know, they're, they're, they're managing based on census, right? They're like a poll taker, you know? But they're always open to help. They're always willing to get help. They're always willing to seek some advice and some help, but they're the type of person like, yeah, I was in this clinic and the owner just decided to retire and they didn't really want to move on with it. Speaker 2 (13:25): They didn't want to get out on the market. You know, they told me a hundred thousand, I could just buy it out. And so, you know, it's less than a Tesla. So I bought the clinic. Right. So, you know, that kind of owner who never really thought about being an owner or whatnot, but they just had an opportunity and they just jumped out and they did it. They didn't give it much thought and then they quickly find out, wow, there's a lot more to this than just treating patients and being great therapist. Right. similar to that owner, you, you run into the caregiver owner and I, I run into this a lot, especially out in the Pacific, on the, on the West coast. You know, Karen you're on the East coast, I'm on the East coast. The average collections per visit in the U S is like 83 to $85 a visit. Speaker 2 (13:58): But if you get up in that New Jersey, New York area, you know, it's not happened. And I have clients and stereotypes. Yeah, exactly. It's such a, Oh my gosh, $68 a visit $73 a visit. But if I'm over in Portland, Oregon, 125, $127 a visit. So you get some of these owners that are in these very high reimbursed environments predominantly. And they're what I call the caregiver owner right there, that caregiver. And they go into practice. And they're the one who assumes the perspective of a clinician first, an owner second. And they can be a bit of a martyr. Right. And they tend to run their clinics like, like a democracy, like it's a vote like everybody has equal say, right? And so these are the people that, that call me and, you know, come to find out, they're paying themselves, you know, 45, 55,000. And they've got, you know, therapists two, three years out of school making 85,000, you know? Speaker 2 (14:52): And so, but they're always, they're always justifying well, will we put our patients first? And it's all about the patients. And I'm like, so is that to assume that the other 30,000 private practices in the us are not doing that? I mean, really let's, let's just keep this in balance, right? So you really have to, you know, my success with them is I really have to coach them that the minute you open up your clinic, your senior responsibilities to your, your flock, you know, to all the people coming into your clinic, you own that responsibility. You have to be an owner first and clinician second. And then one of the most frustrating owners, number three is the, know it all owner, right? This is the owner has been around a while. They've had some wins, they've had some losses and through their life's experience, they're not really open to a lot of ideas. Speaker 2 (15:34): They're not really very open-minded. They got off fixed ideas. They're a little resistant to change. And here they are like, you know, reaching out to us, Hey, Brian, how do you do your social media marketing? Or how do you do your hiring process or what's your, you know pay for performance model and you start going into it and they start, boy, I know that, or I do that, or I don't do that. Or that, you know, this, this know it all kind of thing. Well, you're only going to be as good as you're willing to open up and willing to look at new thoughts and ideas. If you're not willing to look, you're not gonna learn anything. So that's a real shutdown right there. And that's really hard to, to get past that the suite owner, the one that I go for every day, I'm striving for. Speaker 2 (16:10): I love it's usually my startups that I've run into that are the go getter owners. These are the ones that, you know, they have an entrepreneurial spirit. They like to manage based on performance. And they're in a continuous pursuit of knowledge. You know, they're just continuing to pursue their knowledge. You know, I always tell people I'm 52. I want to be a better 53 year old. And I was a 52 year old. The only way I know how to do that is listen to podcasts like yours, read books, do audible. I mean, there are so many great people that are adding value to people's lives. You just have to go and get it. You have to take it in. So that go getter that go get her owner. That's the one, that's what we're trying to move everybody into that bucket. Speaker 1 (16:47): Okay. So how do we do that? So we're ending 2020. It's been a hell of a year. A lot of unpredictability moving into 2021. I think it's safe to say we're still there still a lot of predictability. So how do we, how do we become that go getter? How do we become successful as that go getter? Speaker 2 (17:11): All right. So I was listening to Gary V earlier today, I was watching one of his interviews and he was talking about this exact moment in time. And he said something that I just could not agree with. More, just could not be more in agreement. And I know it's probably going to shock everybody when I say it, but this is an entrepreneur heaven right now. This moment in time, this period in our life and our society in our profession is an entrepreneur. Have it? I mean, this is a 89 degree swimming pool. This is perfect time for you to jump in. And I see it in my business. I mean, we're having our record year. This is our most, most expansive year, yet on record going all the way back to 2006. And I think it's because if you really think about the true essence of an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur like you, Karen like myself, and so many others that we meet, I mean, look, you and I were talking earlier about your practice. Speaker 2 (18:06): You have a mobile PT practice. You're doing tele-health, you're willing to color outside the lines. You've always been willing to color outside the lines. If we're going to sit here and go through our profession and continue to call her inside the lines and make every picture like everybody, else's, you're only going to get that. That's all you have available to you, but if you're an entrepreneur and you're a willing to experience anything, and that you got to think about those words, I have to be willing to experience anything. When I sold my practice the first time. So my practice, the first time, two years later, it's tanked the people. I sold it to tanked it. They stopped making their note payment to me. I had a clause in my agreement that if you stop making the no payment, I come back and I buy the clinic back for a dollar. Speaker 2 (18:48): I bought the clinic back for a dollar. I bought this product for a dollar. Yup. I was 30 years old, two years later, they tanked it, bought the clinic back for a dollar. I got rid of all of the offices. I kept two. I lost half of the staff. And my wife says, you know what, honey, you can go up there and rescue that clinic. But I am not going to live here in this house in Florida with these two little girls all by myself. That is not what I bargained for. So you can go away for two weeks at a time, but you have to come home for at least three to four days. And then you can go back. And I said, I promise that's what I'll do. I ended up doing that back and forth, back and forth. I turned that clinic around two years after I took that back. Speaker 2 (19:24): It became practice of the year practice a year. Why? Because I was willing to experience anything. It had vendors that I owed $150,000 to, it had taxes that hadn't been paid for a year. It was in a middle of a Medicare audit where the patient was seen 141 times a Medicare patient, 141 times. And when Medicare audited them, they failed the audit a hundred percent. I'm like, you didn't even sign your name. Right? And so then I come in and I take it over. And I, I said, I sat on the phone for four hours to finally get to the person whose desk that was running. The Medicare audit, who advanced the R we are an advanced documentation, right? Who are notes were being mailed to mailed to this person in Alabama who was reviewing the notes. Right? And so we found who person was. Speaker 2 (20:18): And I said, I'm going to talk to you every single week. I'm getting off this ADR as quick as possible. She says to me, and this really funny Southern accent, and she's like, I've never seen anybody get off an ADR in six months or less. It's going to be at least that, you know, they only pay you one third of your Medicare dollars. I got off that advanced documentation review that Medicare I got off in three months, I was a hundred percent success in three months. And she, she caught us off, but that was me being willing to experience anything in pursuing the knowledge that leads to greater. And that's all that was Karen was, I didn't know anything about that. I didn't know how, what it took to get off an advanced documentation review. I didn't know how I was going to pay those vendors back or rebuild a whole operation with half the staff, but I did what needed to be done. Speaker 2 (21:00): And that is what I think really makes an effective leader. Who's really going to be that go getter owner. And the last two P the last three things about that is I'll say I was listening to a audible book by Dean Graziosi. You know, he was mentored by Tony Robbins and he talks about the four CS courage commitment capabilities that naturally grow confidence. I think every successful person who's in this space, who's, who's in this entrepreneurial space business space. When you ask, what is the, what is the one ingredient that is the common denominator to all success? I think they'll all say if you took a tally, the highest thing off the chart would be confidence. It takes confidence, but you're not going to competence. If you don't have courage, like I had to go back and rescue that clinic. If you're not going to be committed to it, like I was going to go the distance, no matter what, if you're not going to have the ability to go to podcasts, read books, go to courses, go to seminars, invest in yourself and get the capabilities to actually do it. I ended up you know, took that clinic back, made it practice the year, two years after I took it back, I took it back in 2009 and it was practiced a year in 2011. So I like to pull from those natural experience. I like to pull from those and share them with everybody. I mean, that's, that's wild. It was a rollercoaster. Speaker 1 (22:19): And now, so when you, I have to, I have so many questions. So now when you sold this practice, so you sold it with the contingencies. So you didn't just sell it and be like, okay, I'm selling this and I'm outta here. So why did you not do it that way? Because I think that's an interesting question to ask for people who may be, might be in similar situations. Speaker 2 (22:40): Absolutely. I do a lot of mergers and acquisitions and sales. I have three owners right now that I'm working with helping get them, getting them connected to selling their practice and connecting the right people. So at that time, I had spent $115,000 between three different consulting firms and training firms to really train up my management team, train up myself. And that's what I did. And so I invested that money 115,000 to hook a home equity line out of my house. Now you're going to find like, I'm not your typical speaker. You know, when I do my podcast and I'm on other people's podcasts, I believe this Karen, I, and I hope you don't mind. I believe a hundred percent of my DNA that transparency, breeds trust transplants. So I'm willing to just like wear it on my sleeve no matter where it goes. So what happened? Speaker 2 (23:26): I manned up this management team. I invested 115,000 into this group. I got back to 2005, 2006, I'm working 15 hours a week. I'm making like $45,000 a month. I'm a thousand miles away living in Florida. I'm living the dream. I'm living the dream. I'm like, okay, I'm going to devote the rest of my life to showing other pet owners how you could be a remote owner and make this happen. A year of that goes by. I get a phone call my management team, the leader up there says, Hey, we want to buy your practice. So I said, all right, let me talk to my wife, Lisa, and I'll get back to you. So I tell my wife, I was like, absolutely not. Why in the world, I am not, we we've worked our whole lives to get to this point. This is, I am not. I said, Lisa, let's think this through. If I call them back and say, we're not interested. What's their next action. Speaker 1 (24:15): Find someone else to buy it. They're going to leave. Oh, Speaker 2 (24:19): Because they're thinking, well, wait a minute, I'm running this, this $4 million operation, $6 million operation at, why would I stay here? If I don't get a piece that I'm, I'm going to go. So I literally flew up. I wrote on a napkin at dinner, I wrote $6 million. They said, we can buy that. We're going to give you a third up front and we're going to give you no payments on the rest. And I'm like, well, I love these guys. Right? I built them. I groomed them. I put them in a position. I want to see them win. Right. Done deal. Now the nice thing about doing it that way is I already have the skills and knowledge to know how to run the business. So what's my risk. My risk is exactly what happened. They tanked and they crashed it, but I have the skills and knowledge and ability to go back and rescue it. Speaker 2 (25:00): Right? So that was the, that was the risk that I had to be willing to accept. What's the upside. Well, two thirds and a note I'm making, you know, fi was a 6% interest on that money. So I'm getting well over my asking price over the course of the time that I'm making, making the payments. It also gives me this guaranteed income, which I made for the two years. And I could go do other things with it. Right. So it was a really good win-win, but the nightmare happened. They defaulted. I had to step in, I had to do. And that goes back to my, you know, my four CS courage commitment capabilities. I had the ability to, I knew myself well enough to go do that. So of course that's what ended up happening. But in 2017 I sold it all again. So it's kind of like in the big scheme of things, it really worked out. But in 2017 I won and done, you know, here's the keys. Thank you. Here's the check. I love it. One and done. So it was a different, it was a different, so I've, I've lived through both experiences. I've lived through both of those opportunities. And that's how it went. Speaker 1 (25:57): Yeah. Wow. So I think it's great for people to hear that there are different ways to even sell a practice and, and that it really behooves someone who is in that position to find someone, to help them guide, guide them through that. Speaker 2 (26:13): Right. Absolutely. You know, even tiger woods has a coach, right. And he's the best golfer at the time. You know, Tom Brady has a quarterback coach. I think every practice owner needs a coach when you're running the practice. And especially when it comes time to sell your practice. You know, I paid somebody $5,000 just to be a sounding board for me when I sold my practice. Like, because it's an emotional rollercoaster. I said, I don't really need you to do anything. I just need you to pick up the phone when I call, I just need to bounce ideas off of you. And just tell me I'm crazy or tell me I'm being too emotional or tell me. And I just needed somebody to consult with. You know, I just needed a little counselor to help keep me on track. And, and that, that was well worth the $5,000 for me to, to move it on through, you know, I kind of despise the idea of people brokering these deals and taking 6% of somebody's livelihood that they built their whole business for 15 years for like a four month transition. Speaker 2 (27:01): I like to just coach people through the sale. I like to help coach them through it, just pay for the time don't pay a percentage of business, but that's me, that's just my opinion on it. You know? I mean, how many of us have sold a house in real estate? And the realtor, you know, blows in and sells a house in 60 days, blows out and walks away with 50 grand. I'm like, I don't care how many website things you did. There's no way I can justify that 50,000, but that's the market. Right. That's how that industry works. Speaker 1 (27:24): Right, right. Wow. That's a great story. Thanks for sharing that. And now, before we start to wrap things up what would you like the listeners to take away from what we just spoke about? What are your key discussion points? Well, Speaker 2 (27:44): I'll start with what is one of my most favorite books, and if you're going to start there, I think you, if you, if you get this book and you'll listen to it on audible, or you read it, it's, it's the Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann, that book completely changed my life. And what I got from that book was I got this, that the secret to success is actually giving the secret to success is giving all successful. People will keep their focus on what they're giving and that's what actually gives them their success. You know, I grew up on welfare, you know, my mom raised three boys on her own, you know, government, cheese, bread, butter, food stamps, the whole nine yards, no car. And, you know, I was always of this mentality. Like once I get successful, I'm going to give back. Once I get all my, you know, shelter and security and this and that, I'm going to give back. Speaker 2 (28:37): And along this journey, I realized that was completely false. That was completely false, like right here on my computer. I'm talking to you right now on zoom. And I'll just rip off this post-it note and just put it right in front of your camera. I mean, that is what I look at every single day. And it says strive to serve, strive, to serve. And I realized the more I embrace that philosophy of it's about giving more in value than you ever expect in return. I hate a win-win relationship, a win-win relationship implies. I'm going to allow you to win as long as you help me win. I want to see you win in spite of whether I'm winning or not. And I think once I really grasp that, and for those of you with are listening, the more you can focus on surrounding yourself in improving the lives, both personally and professionally of the people you work with. I think that gift of giving is going to pay off tenfold to your community, to your patients, to your employees, to your family and to yourself. That's what I, that's my message on that. That, that's what I've learned. It's been a long haul. It's been a lot of ups and downs, but I'm, I'm convinced that that is what has led to my success and the success of so many other people I've worked with. I've been blessed to work with over my lifetime. Speaker 1 (29:49): That's awesome. And now I feel like I'm going to ask you the question I ask everyone, and, but maybe you just answered it. I don't know, but looking at where you are in your life and in your career, what advice would you give to your younger self? Let's say right out of, you know, right out of college. Speaker 2 (30:07): Oh my gosh. Right out of college. Well, I think the advice I would give my younger self is to be more introspective, you know, be, be a better listener, you know? Don't, don't be so full of your own fixed ideas, you know, be willing to be willing to step down off of that and, and embrace the ideas of others, no matter how foreign they may be to you. So I've looked at it like that. I think that's really changed my perspective over the, over this, especially this last decade, but I've learned to not think of my thoughts. First. I've learned to focus on what's being said to me first and literally take it in, duplicate it to its fullest. Meaning before I communicate back and I'll leave this one phrase and this rattles through my head all the time, whenever I'm in a situation, I'm always reminding myself, don't react, respond, don't react, respond. And so many wild things are happening in our society today. And I think a lot of people respond, respond, respond, and I tend to sit back and take it in a little bit more. And I like to give an approach. I mean, react, react, react. I like to give an appropriate response rather than just be so reactive. So I think that's really changed a lot about me. And that's, that's about all I can say about that. Speaker 1 (31:38): Yeah. That's great advice. I mean, great advice. I love the respond, not react and guilty, guilty here of, of reacting maybe too much when I need to just sit back and respond. So it's something I'm going to remember now, where can people find you? If they have questions they want to get in touch with you, they want to learn more about you, the business, all that stuff. Speaker 2 (32:00): Oh, great. Well, they can reach out to us. You know, we're on Facebook at Meg business management, you know, that's our handle there and you can follow us on Twitter at Meg business or Instagram at Meg business management as well. Our website is www.megbusiness.com. One of the things we really like to do is we like to, like I said, give and without, so we give free practice assessments. We give free practice stress tests. So if they want to reach in, you know, they can email us@infoatmegbusiness.com, for sure. And for your listeners, you know, special for your listeners for this year, you know, until we hit 20, 21, any service they want to do with us any training they want to do with us, they get a 10% discount. We'll just take 10% off anything they want to do. And that's just for your listeners. Karen, all they have to do is reach into us and say, they heard us on this podcast and my team will just go ahead and honor that anything we can do to add value, I'm happy to do it. Speaker 1 (32:51): Awesome. And just so everyone out there listening, of course, we will have all of the links to this one, click away at the podcast website at podcast at healthy, wealthy, smart.com. So if you didn't take everything down, don't worry about it. It's will all be in the resources section under this episode. So Brian, thank you so much for coming on. This was this was wonderful. A lot of great advice, especially as we're winding up the year and kind of moving into 2021. I think this is the perfect info for all of those physical therapy, business owners and entrepreneurs, and intrepreneurs out there. So thank you so much. You're welcome. Speaker 2 (33:30): You're welcome. You know, I think we should look into next year and everybody should have a handle on the bottom of their email. I know when my email signature goes out, it always says, expect to do well. And that's one of the things I like to get people just wake out of bed, wake up out of bed, start every day, expecting to do well. Speaker 1 (33:46): Awesome. I love it. I may, I may add that as a little sticky note on my refrigerator in the morning. I'll frame it. I love it. Thank you so much for coming on and everyone. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy and smart.    

How can you make sure you hire the right person for every job? On this episode of the ROI Online Podcast, author and senior-level recruitment expert Brian Mohr shares the key to hiring with purpose.In 2011, Brian Mohr was the Senior Director of Talent Strategy at P.F. Changs and Pei Wei Asian Diner. His job was to make sure any senior-level positions were filled with the best person for the job. As part of his responsibilities, he worked with executive search services, locating individuals who fit the job description best based on what they looked like on paper. He found the experience to be very transactional. It didn't consider whether the applicant's values or personality aligned with the company's, which is often even more important in the long run. So Brian left the company and started his own executive search firm with co-founder Max Hansen, Y Scouts, to fill that missing piece of the recruitment process. He and Max Hansen wrote a book, Hiring with Purpose, to share their human approach to hiring.Culture is something that many, many business owners struggle with. Brian notes that your culture is extremely dependent on the people you hire. if you manage to craft the culture you've always wanted, a single bad employee can corrupt the culture. This puts a lot of stress on entrepreneurs when a job becomes vacant. They feel overwhelmed and worry that they'll hire the wrong person and lose what makes their business so unique in the first place.To avoid this, Brian suggests hiring with a proactive mindset, creating a planning process so you're prepared when a job opens up, speak to stakeholders to see the kinds of people you should be hiring, and research candidates well before their first interview.Although he is skilled in the world of senior-level recruitment, Brian's original dream was to be a musician. When that didn't happen, he started to reflect on his life. He joined an EO forum and made good friends by being vulnerable and showing the good, bad, and the ugly to a group of strangers. Brian began to see the importance of vulnerability in and out of the office. Psychological safety is the biggest part of an individual's success at work. You have to have a place where you can share raw, real emotion with people you trust.Today, Brian's focused on finding ways to bring entrepreneurs together using music, story, and human connection. You can get ahold of Brian here:brian@lifetracks.meLinkedInRead Brian's book:Hiring on Purpose: How the Y Scouts Method Is Revolutionizing the Search for LeadersRead the books referenced in this podcast:How Google Works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan RosenburgGet your copy Steve Brown's book, The Golden Toilet. Also available on Audible for free when you sign up for a 30-Day Trial Membership!Thinking of starting your own podcast? Buzzsprout's secure and reliable posting allows you to publish podcasts online. Buzzsprout also includes full iTunes support, HTML5 players, show statistics, and WordPress plugins. Get started using this link to receive a $20 Amazon gift card and to help support our show!Support the show (https://cash.app/$stevemfbrown)

 “Build a strong foundation for success.” You may be tired of hearing that quote time and again but if you ask any successful person around you and they’ll tell you exactly that. It always starts at the beginning where your core values play a very important role in building who you are and who you’ll be.  For today’s podcast, we’ll let you in on the early life of Brian Bullock, our guest for today’s episode as he tells  a story fulfilling your destiny by building a strong foundation that will stand the test of time. By the end of today’s episode, we’ll assure you that you’ll never be afraid to start again, work your way up and have the biggest comeback of your life.  Here’s what you missed Story about young Brian and his love of going to church.What is Simba Syndrome Dichotomy of living 2 livesBrian’s Jaw breaking moment and what he learned going through itWhy we can say that where you are is where you’re destined to beLiving a legacy and how to start it  Knowledge nuggets [01:58] “ I recognize I wouldn't be where I am, if it wasn't for my grandfather.” The people around us have a great impact in our lives. Whenever we can, we should choose a circle that influences us to be better. With regards to Brian’s early life, his father was never a good role model for him, however, he was influenced by his mother and grandfather. He especially remembers how his grandfather says he should always wear his best (suit and tie) because that’s who the Bullocks are.  [05:40] If we let other people’s negative opinion influence us, we might set aside our destiny  thinking we are not worth it. That’s what we learn from Simba of Lion King. We all see the Lion King and Simba knows that he’s the heir to the throne, but what happens along the way, he makes mistakes and does this in front of everyone. He even had his uncle (Scar) telling him that he’s not good enough for the position. He doesn’t belong there and he’s not worthy. As a result, Simba embraces this “Hakuna Matata” type of living where he doesn’t worry or even care where he is now and where he’ll be in the future. There are times when Brian would set aside his destiny as he thinks he’s not worthy of it. Just like Simba. [06:50] The dichotomy of living two lives.  Brian got to a place where he was struggling privately, but looking great publicly. Living a double life where he’s caught between a private Brian that struggled with low self-esteem and had some character flaws and a public Brian where he needs to look great. This same thing could happen to us, might be due to our upbringing or environment. [08:00] Brian’s ‘jaw-breaking’ moment. After church service, Brian got into a fight where he broke his jaw and it was wired shut for six weeks. He was always singing and preaching and now, and that’s how he identified himself with. He couldn’t do any of that for weeks. It should be disheartening, right? Guess what? He identified this incident as the best thing that happened to him. Why? He finally understood that he is bigger than what he does, bigger than his singing, bigger than his talking. This incident made him realize that God made him who he is and it is only what you need. [12:40] The older you get, the more you forget who you are supposed to be. Brian shared a bible text that made him realize that God already knows what you’re destined to be. He mentioned God saying to Jeremiah: “Before you were formed in your mother's womb, I knew you.” So Brian believes that when we are born, there is something there's something in us that knows who we are. However, the older we gets, because of our environment, what society teaches us, and because of our upbringing, we forget who we are supposed to be in the beginning. Someone can talk you out of your purpose/dream because it doesn’t make sense to them. Some will take advantage of it and make you less than who you should be. If you find yourself in the right environment, you’ll realize that you should be here and everything will fall into place. [22:00] Brian’s turning point- where he literally saw the vision he had as a child. In a time where he was invited to talk to an called WinterFest in Rochester, New York, he thought he’ll be talking to group of 15 youths in this church. He gave his all. To his surprise, it was an event attended by 3,000 youths. Then he realized this isn’t the first time he saw this event, he saw this room full of people when he was 10-12 years old when he was preaching in his room with a hairbrush as his microphone. He concluded that the Lord showed him a vision and that he got to see the vision with his own eyes.  [28:36]  Write a vision. Determine your life. You have to have a vision and write it. Get as detailed as you possibly can and the reason why you got to do that, is because from what Stephen Covey says, start with the end in mind. Don’t see where the day leads you, lead the day. Determine how this day is going to go. Determine you month, determine your year, determine the next five years from now. Think about it. [30:45] When you have a plan, you are more prepared for change and for shifts to happen quickly. For example, no one knew COVID-19 would come, but every successful people is still doing their plan and they are flexible and ready to shift despite this unforeseeable thing. This is because they already have a plan and are determine to follow it. [30:59] If you don't take time to build your own legacy, you will spend the rest of your life building someone else’s. Start by asking yourself,  “What do I want my legacy to look like in the next five years?’ [36:41] The 80% that is good and shared to the world is better than the 100% good that's only on the head. A lot of people have their dreams stuck in their head. If you got something that's 80% good, share it to the world. Important Reads and Links Lion King (Movie) (1994/2019) Reach Brian Bullock at Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianmbullockYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVNpTvg9_5ZYq8tkof6PctATwitter: https://twitter.com/brianmbullock Get Brian’s books: Winning with Worship and The #Dear Worship Leaderhttps://www.brianmbullock.com/books The Total Money Makeover- Dave Ramsey  Love #DreamNation? Check Us Out on Apple Podcasts! At Dream Nation, we’re all about building dreams. We do that through podcasts that motivate, educate, and entertain our listeners with some of the best entrepreneurs from around the world to get you to the best tips to level up your game in business in life. If you enjoyed this episode and want to keep building your dream,subscribe to the DreamNation podcast using the links below. Dream Nation on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dream-nation/id1457381714 Dream Nation podcast website - https://dreamnationpodcast.com/ Dream Nation Facebook group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/dreamnationcommunity/ Catch your host on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/casanova_brooks/ If you are in DreamNation, thank you! Feel free to leave a review or share with a friend.

Brian Burk signed up and trained for Umstead, but it was canceled due to the Covid-19 Pandemic.  So Brian ran 10 loops in his community and shares his story of determination, persistence, and rejuvenation.  You'll want to also check out his books on Amazon too - https://www.amazon.com/Brian-Burk/e/B01N3L87M0?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_4&qid=1590774634&sr=8-4

Many of us have heard of A. Smith Bowman, which is owned by Sazerac, but we really don’t know much about them. We sit down with their Master Distiller, Brian Prewitt, to learn about the inner-workings of their operation and how the relationship with Sazerac works, as it pertains to the bourbon. With more than 20 years of brewing and distilling expertise, he tells us how he dialed in their stills to create a unique product and what the future entails for growth. We may or may not talk about gin for a few minutes as well. If you're a fan of A. Smith Bowman, let us know your favorite bottling in the comments. Show Partners: The University of Louisville has an online Distilled Spirits Business Certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry. Learn more at uofl.me/bourbonpursuit. At Barrell Craft Spirits, they explore whiskey in an entirely new way. The team selects and blends barrels of whiskey into something greater than the sum of its parts. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about Texas. How did you get into bourbon? What has been your favorite spirit to work with? Did your parents influence you to get into the alcohol industry? Tell us the history of A. Smith Bowman. Does it ever make you mad that Kentucky gets all the glory for bourbon? What year did the operation start? Tell us the history of Master Distillers there. Is it hard to dial in flavor profiles? Are you able to make your own imprint on the product? What did you tweak during the process? When did it become part of the Sazerac portfolio? What resources did you gain from Sazerac? Do you distill or does Buffalo Trace contract distill? Is it aged in VA? Are higher age releases sourced or made in house? What is your capacity? How many states are you available in? Is there a flavor profile difference from Kentucky bourbon? Tell us about your products. What makes your gin unique? Tell us about your single barrel program. Where do you see the market in the future? How has Virginia embraced you? Do you have a lot of competition visit? Has bourbon tourism grown in VA? What are your plans for growth? 0:00 I love bourbon. But I'm not ready to restart my career and be distiller. I have a bachelor's degree, and I want to continue to use those skills in the whiskey industry. So check this out. The University of Louisville has an online distilled spirits business certificate. And this focuses on the business side of the spirits industry like finance, marketing and operations. This is perfect for anyone looking for a more professional development. And if you ever want to get your MBA, there certificate credits transfer into u of s online MBA program as elective hours. Learn more about this online six course certificate at U of l.me. Slash bourbon pursuit. 0:37 You know you have a whole line of beers and a whole line of wines and then of course I'll bring a lot of different whiskies and we have a good time on on the on the holidays. Yeah, those families have like a chili cook off, you'll have like a days off, like it's mine's way better than what you're making. 1:05 Hey everyone, it is Episode 244 of bourbon pursuit. I'm getting one of the hosts. And last week somebody asked me, Why didn't I talk about the announcement of Blanton's gold coming to the US on the podcast opening there, right? I totally Shut up. It was a huge missed because it was massive news. So yes, that is happening. And this will also be one of the major talking points for next week's bourbon Community Roundtable. So make sure you tune in for that, because it's likely going to be 100%. All About blends. All right onto the news. The audio is raising a glass to the women behind some of the most famous labels with the introduction of their crafts women project. The two new whiskies are going to be one as bullet Blender select crafted by bullet Blender Ebony major and Jane Walker created by johnnie Walker's master blender, Emma Walker. Both will be hitting the shelves this spring bullet blenders select number 001 will be a blend of 2:00 Three of the distilleries 10 high rye bourbon recipes bottled at 100 proof. Dr. Joe also announced a release of Jane Walker scotch, a 10 year blend featuring whiskey from Speyside. Jane Walker is crafted by Emma Walker who has the lion's share in most run of inventory. With over 10 million casks of aging and maturing whiskey and distilleries across Scotland. Bullet Blender select and Jane Walker will be hitting shelves in the coming months for a suggested retail price around $50 and $38 respectively. Pin hook bourbon has announced the arrival of their 2020 bohemian bourbon, the first bourbon release in almost 40 years. That was the stilt at historic castle and key pin contract is still the new bourbon at Castle and key, which is also what's known as old Taylor to craft their own custom mash bill of 75% corn, 10% rye and 15% malted barley, they blended just 100 barrels of this 34 month bourbon to create their high proof release, which clocks in at 114.5. It will share some of the 3:00 Same magenta wax color as last year's cash drink bourbon expression. The high proof bohemian bourbon will be arriving on shelves at April of 2020 per suggested retail price of around $50. In bourbon pursuit news since the beginning of 2020. We have already selected seven barrels from places like Buffalo Trace 79, and four roses. While they have eight more barrel selections to go in just the first half of this calendar year alone. We've got places like New riff, jack daniels bullet heaven Hill, and more. So if you want to be a part of this, head on over to patreon.com slash bourbon pursuit, and not only can you help support the show, but you get some damn good bourbon in the process. And in more bourbon pursuit news, you know that you can find us on every podcast platform out there such as Apple podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Google, and even places like YouTube, but now we're hitting the airwaves. Yes, airing on Wednesdays from nine to 10am. We will be in Bardstown, Kentucky, his radio station w 4:00 Artie with frequencies of 1320 am 97.1 Fm 94.9 fm and online at wb rt country.com. The first show is set to launch next week on March 18, of 2020. Now today on the podcast, we dig into a brand that we know about but don't really know about, and that's a Smith Bowman, which is owned by SAS rock and based out of Fredericksburg, Virginia, we sit down with their master distiller Brian Pruitt to learn more about the inner workings of their operations, and how the relationship with SAS rock and Buffalo Trace works as it pertains to the bourbon with more than 20 years of brewing and distilling expertise. He tells us how they dialed in their stills and is pushing out a unique product. We also talk about their capacity and what the future entails for growth as well. Plus, we may or may not talk about gin for a few minutes. All right. Also as a small apology, this podcast audio for this week was recorded over zoom and is the 5:00 Final podcasts at AIR using this platform all shows going forward or using new platforms that will enhance your listener experience. So thanks for sticking with us. It's time for the show. Here's Joe from barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred minich with above the char. 5:17 I'm Joe Beatrice, founder of barrel craft spirits, we explore whiskey in an entirely new way. My team at barrel craft spirits, selects and blends barrels of whiskey into something greater than the sum of their parts. Use the store locator a barrel bourbon calm. 5:33 I'm Fred MiniK, and this is above the char. As I put the whiskey to my lips, I felt a tingle just throughout my palate. It started on the front and moved its way toward the back just dripping down the jaw line tickling the top and it's gonna surprise you where this whiskey came from. It was not from Kentucky, Tennessee or Indiana. This barrel proof bourbon was distilled 6:00 aged and bottled in Texas. That's right, Texas. Texas is on the move and they have been for some time. And I do believe that Texas bourbon will soon begin to rival Kentucky and competitions and with consumers from California to New York and from Alaska to Hawaii. Now this bourbon that I tasted that kind of wowed me was t x, Texas straight bourbon whiskey. It was 127.4 proof four years old barrel proof is on the label, obviously. And it's from Firestone and Robertson. I tasted this on my YouTube channel if you haven't go check that out. It's for my what's in the box segment where I open a box and taste whatever is in the box. But this this bourbon really was one that kind of made me think rethink my position on where Texas is. Now I've always thought Texas is a growing state and very powerful. 7:00 When it comes to whiskey, and I think the rise of Texas has been has been happening for some time, but in the last couple of years we have seen Texas distillers like iron root win major awards, we've seen balconies kind of like, you know, get on shelves all over all over the country and when pallets, especially those in the American single malt category, while garrison brothers has kind of dominated like this, like this landscape and built a cult following for itself. I think right now, Texas is primed to do things in American whiskey that we've not seen any other state be able to do. And there's a good chance as I go off to San Francisco to judge the world spirits awards, that we could see a Texas whiskey win a lot of gold. I'll say this. Texas has the formula. They have the formula to be able to compete with all the great distillers around the world. They have a consumer base that really is passionate 8:00 about anything from Texas I mean how you could you could slap Made in Texas on anything and I would sell out in Texas those people love their state and they have a lot of talent and they have the education there like people from that state who are in the distilling business have taken the time to go get the education that it requires to be good distillers they're also humble you don't see them slapping master distiller on there, or for the most part, you don't see them calling themselves master distillers without in their opinion earning it and I also don't think that you see a lot of like terribly bad products coming out of Texas. The one thing that's going to hold Texas back is its water, water. It has a it's it's it's not a resource in abundance in Texas. And this is something that I think that every whiskey state needs to be able to rely on. You need to rely on a lot of water, obviously, but keep your eye on Texas. Something's going on there. And if you if you haven't tasted this 9:00 yet make sure you go pick up a bottle that TX barrel proof bourbon. And if you followed me for a while you know how hard it is for me to give a compliment from Tech to Texas. After all, I was born and raised in Oklahoma, where we kind of rival Texas and a lot of ways. And that's this week's above the char Hey, if you have an idea for above the char hit me up on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, just search for a name Fred medic. Again, that's Fred MiniK Am I in an IC k? We're going to my website Fred medic calm until next week. Cheers 9:36 Welcome back to a another episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon Kinney and Ryan here today talking to one another master distiller we have never had on the show today but it is coming from a distillery. I've got one or two bottles downstairs. Love what they're doing really good things over there. But it is it's not Kentucky's backyard which is a little bit different for us from time to time. 10:00 Yeah typically well I'm surprised this is like one of the master stories we haven't had one so I'm excited like we haven't had him on yet I don't know what's taking so long it's probably my fault we just got it but you have to knock on the right door sometime but they do have a great product I don't know a ton about it so I'm really excited to kind of get their story and info by had some great single barrel picks from them from liquor barn around here so I know they're doing some good stuff and excited to see what the future and past present all the above for this distiller Yeah, absolutely, it's kind of gonna be a culmination of all those things because what we've seen at least around here in Kentucky is being able to finally get your hands on some of these bottles and now that it's got a unique bottle shape to it's kind of like this, this oval looking heart shaped kind of thing and it's it's really cool. It really stands out on the shelf and I think it's going to be good for our listeners to kind of learn more about the brand more about the people that are behind the brand as well because I think that's a good 11:00 What our audience really cares about, they want to know more about the stories of the people behind it. So yep, so let's stop talking and let's start asking. 11:07 So today on the show, we have Brian Pruitt. Brian is the master distiller at a Smith Bowman out of Virginia. So Brian, welcome to the show. Kenny Ryan, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. Guys, so before we kind of dive into the history of Bowman and more about you know, you we always like to kick off the show and kind of think of like, what is it that got you into bourbon whiskey was there? Was there an early like, I mean, it's okay, because we talked to a lot of people and they're like, well, it started back when I was 12. And Grandpa said, you know, taking it but this so kind of talk about your first run and experience. Absolutely. So for me, it was a little bit different. I I started actually in school, I had no intentions of going into the alcohol beverage industry. I was in actually pre pre med and I had no 12:00 You know, I was in a class, literally looking for nerves or whatever it was on a cadaver. And I thought, this sucks. I hate this. I don't want to do this anymore. On a cadaver. Yeah, it was not fun. And I decided, Hey, you know what I really liked. I really like beer. Why don't I try and make beer. So I actually called up the local brewery which happened to be a large Anheuser Busch. And I was able to talk to the the master Brewer. You know, here I am this college kid. And he said, Yeah, come on down. I'll talk to you. I'll tell you how I got to where I was. And I went in and talked to him and, and he said, yeah, this is what I did. And this is the path I took. And so I next day went in and changed my major to food science, and did the whole food science thing Colorado State and then eventually went on to do the master brewers at UC Davis. 12:56 Started in the brewing industry. So I was working a lot of small craft breweries. 13:00 across Colorado and California. And you know after several years in the brewing industry, I decided I wanted to learn what beer became when it grew up. Now when it comes to see that's that's the fun part though you always get to start with beer before you make to the get to the spirits anyway Absolutely. A lot of people don't realize you know, basically what we do here is you know, for whiskies as you as you as you make a beer and then you're going to distill it after ferment, so I kind of really wanted to learn about that. So I I found that at the time I found a weaseled my way into the the wine industry, which had a very large distillery with it and was able to learn about, you know, under a master distiller and a master blender. They had probably a combined about 80 years worth of knowledge and I worked for them for well over a decade. And, you know, got to make all sorts of things got to make brandies and vodkas and gins and spend time in Mexico making tequila and Caribbean rooms. 14:00 And then of course whiskies and, but eventually I really wanted to get back to kind of my roots, which was small craft, you know, high quality spirits and that's what brought me to a Smith bone. So it's kind of a maybe a different route than some have taken versus, you know, just like am I, my father worked in the industry and I got in the industry and, you know, it's, I will say that all of my family is involved with the alcoholic beverage industry. I brother worked for breweries, my dad owns a winery, and I'm in booze. My sister is the only one that hasn't made it. She's a doctor. So you got it. She liked the nerves on the cadaver. It's a trail. Yeah, exactly. So it sounds like you've worked with a lot of spirits. 14:44 I know you're gonna say you want to work or whiskey is your favorite thing to work with the what's been one of your favorite spirits to work with. I absolutely love whiskey and I mean it came from, you know, the the brewing side and just seeing what you can do with 15:00 The grain the grain bill different yeasts and then taking that on and the maturation side 15:07 I think that's I think that's great now I don't discriminate against the spirits though I love them all. I love all sorts of spirits you know in the summer, sometimes it's nice to have a nice gin and tonic. Sometimes, you know, you need a nice brandy or rum drink when you know you're out. You have to have a boat drink, you know, out on the boat. You gotta have that rum drink. But of course, you know, nothing, nothing beats a nice nice single barrel bourbon. So absolutely see when I go in the boat, it's like it's the only time I let it slide is like you get the Bud Light limes. Or you have one of those kind of like the very fruity kind of forward kind of beers it's the only time it works is when you're on a boat. Well, it takes plenty of beer to make to make good bourbon so 15:49 absolutely well let slot 15:51 well cool. So that's good to see like it was there it kinda want to talk about your family life here a little bit. So you talked about your family all kind of being in the Alcohol Beverage 16:00 industry. Was there a, 16:03 you know, at least from your your parents side of it? Was there an influence that said like, hey, like this is this is a good route for you to go was that a an opportunity that you said you already kind of have experience in this? Yeah. Because my family was a part of it. Like was that an influential factor into it? No, I think it was more, you know, actually my father he kind of started the winery that he runs. He started in that in retirement. So that's kind of like he was retirement type thing. So it was all of us were kind of getting into the industry at all at the same time and we all just kind of I think we love the science aspect of it. We love the art aspect of it. You know, we just kind of all went different ways. And it was just one of those things that Yeah, we get we get together and we have some pretty crazy Christmases and things like that where you can, you know, you really get to bring out the full spread different I'll call it Tipples, you know you have a whole line of beers and a whole line of wines and then of course I'll bring a lot of different whiskeys in 17:00 We have a good time on on the on holidays. Yeah, those families have like a chili cook off, you'll have like a days off. Like, it's man's way there and what you're making. 17:11 So, it was kind of interesting. But yeah, we I mean, we definitely help each other out. And, you know, I'll get calls from guys all the time they'll say, Hey, I talked to your brother the other day and don't don't believe a word he said. Or hey, I was at your dad's place. I don't believe a word. He said. He doesn't know what he's talking about. So you give each other a hard time. And that's okay. I mean, it's family you have to give each other a hard time. Especially in the holidays. It's kind of kinda like the booze off we should probably we should make a bourbon pursuit booze off for our Christmas holiday party. It wouldn't last long my family that like every time I bring straight bourbon or Nate they're like, I can't believe you drink this. This is awful. 17:50 So let's you know before we start talking more about your job and everything like that, that you've gone with let's let's give a our listeners kind of a an understanding and background of really 18:00 What's the history at a Smith Bowman? Because I just realized before we were coming on here that is it is not Abraham It is actually a from Smith. 18:09 Yep, we're the experts. 18:11 School is so so a Smith Bowman is actually one of the oldest distilleries on the east coast. It was the oldest distiller in Virginia, started by Abraham Smith Bowman, and a lot of his family actually kind of has roots to the, you know, the pioneers of basically, during the Revolutionary War, discovering what is now current day Kentucky. So if you're in Louisville, and you go out to Bowman field, 18:38 that is actually part of the bone was discovered and named after one of the Bowman family, really, tours of Cedar Creek is as they were known and all of our current day products are all named after the bone like historical Bowman figures. But kind of getting to modern history of how Abraham started it. He was actually the great grandson. 19:00 of 19:02 Abraham Bowman or sorry, George Bowman. And he was actually in the distilling industry prior to prohibition. He ran a distillery in in New Orleans prior to prohibition and one of the largest ramen bourbon distilleries, Algiers point. And and then after, you know, prohibition, he happened to buy about 7400 acres. And he opened up a granary and, and, and cattle. And then he no of course, prohibition ends and 3334 is when an ended here in Virginia, and he decided, hey, you know, I already know this business quite well. I have all my own corn. I have all my own rye. Let's start making bourbon. And, you know, that's what he started doing. So, right in 3435, he started making bourbon. And His goal was basically straight, you know, granted glass we did everything from, like I said, growing the grain. we harvested our own trees and made our own barrels. 20:00 I mean, we did it all. And the whole point was to make, you know, high quality spirits. And, you know, we kind of continue on with that. That kind of mantra today. We're known for making Bourbons, of course, but we do other spirits as well. So that's this kind of a little bit of the history of it. We give it we give the complete history. If you ever make it down to Virginia, we'll give you the complete history. There we go. We'll do the 30 minute tutorial one of these days. That sounds good. Does it ever make you all mad that like Kentucky gets all the glory for bourbon when Virginia was like, the state before Kentucky? You're like, yeah, we have a lot. There's I will say a lot of people come in and they're very proud of their their Kentucky bourbon heritage and and, and we're proud of it as well, but we always like to remind them that Kentucky used to be part of Virginia, we say Well, we've been making bourbon here for a long time too. So it's kind of just curious about like the current operation like kind of like the year that really it started or is it still like been all running since 18, whatever. Well, so we started 21:00 Like I said, and 33 in Fairfax County, which is about just outside of Washington, DC area, and we moved it to their current location here in 1988. So we've been running here in this location since 88. And the reason we moved is because basically we sold off the family sold off the farm. And the the city of Reston, or that Fairfax County, which is well over a million people now just kind of grew around the distillery and they're, you know, having this distillery where literally, they were walking the cows in from the farm to feed off the slop down the middle of the road. They just didn't, they kind of didn't like that so much. So move to the distillery where we're at now, which is about 45 miles south of Washington DC. We're in this small town in Fredericksburg. 21:49 And it's you know, it's been it's been a great location for us. So we're right along the Rappahannock river and, and, you know, it's a great area for aging Bourbons, and when 22:00 Enjoy it here so far. Talk a little bit about like the the history of the master distiller title there as well. Are you the fourth the first of the new one? And do they don't have master distillers back now and to talk about that? Yeah, actually so there's been six master distillers here in the history of the company since the 30s. The first one was for about five years and then we had kind of one or two that only lasted about, you know, five to 10 years. And the previous master distiller was actually earth to master distillers ago was actually here for about 30 years he kind of took it from basically took over as master distiller in the 80s until almost 2011. And then the previous master distiller to me was Truman Cox, who came from Buffalo Trace actually, and he was here. I think he worked here for probably about three years, but he's only master distiller for a little over a year and a half. He sat down 23:00 Passed away very you know, very unexpectedly and I took over from him he had been hidden and gone for probably about six months when I took over so I came into you know into a building with you know, there hadn't been a master distiller for six months. So it was one of those things where you you hope that the previous master distillers and taking notes and you go in and you learn the skill and you find out what's going on and taste through the stock I know that's that's rough to do. Got a taste you're all the stock to find everything out somebody in Thank you for taking that sacrifice for us. We proud. I'll stop. That's okay. I'll do it again. I get it. I have to so but it was you know, it was just trying to come in and find out what the house flavors were, how the stills ran and and just taking it from there. So I've been in this role for six years now. So how long do how long do you think it takes to become comfortable with the existing setup and accounting? 24:00 Get those, you know, like basic flavor profiles you're looking for dialed in, it takes a little while it takes a you know, I think you have a good couple of months that you know, just tasting through all the stock, you know, just going through and seeing where everything is. So, you know, you're literally going out into the warehouse and you're saying, okay, you know, what's this one? We're okay, this is a year old, what's it tastes like? Okay, this is two years old, what's it tastes like? And then all the way up, you know, 1516 years, and you're trying to find out, hey, what are the flavor profiles that are out there in the different parts of the warehouse because you know, you, you don't have anybody to tell you that, you know, that historic. This is where I did this. And this is where I did this. And if I want this flavor I pulled out of this area of the warehouse, you just don't have that. So you know that that took a little while but you know, once once you get there, I think then it's tweaking it to make a little little changes right off the bat just to just to kind of make it your own style and and then kind of improve the product and 25:00 That's one of the things that we always want to do is, you know, that's, that's our logo or our motto here is pioneering spirit. So we're embracing our history, and just pushing the future. We're just wanting to improve our products every day. So we don't want to just sit back and go, yeah, that's okay. It could be better. 25:17 So, that's amazing, free rein to make your own imprint on it. So it's not just like, plug and play, like, this is the way we do it. Don't screw it up. No, absolutely. I mean, there there is, obviously you have an established brand and you don't want to if you have historic, you know, customers of that brand, you don't want to just change it willy nilly. You know, yeah, if you're gonna make changes, you want to make sure that for the better and, you know, you want to keep improving them, but, you know, if it's a change that does make it better, makes it taste better. You know, improves its, its overall appeal, then yeah, absolutely free rein. No one's good because, you know, one thing that we always talk about is how the 26:00 Entry just loves to hear about change, right? Yeah. Not really like it's always like, you know, let's, let's keep Let's stay the course Let's not really not shake things up too much or anything like that. So I guess the question that I kind of want to pose about, you know, when you started coming in, you're figuring out like, how do we dial or how do we tweak things? Can you recall like one of those things that you kind of had to tweak to kind of figure out what it is to kind of make Pruitt's own signature bourbon? Right. Well, I mean, one of the things that I, you know, I'm looking for, as the heads were coming off the still and I walked in, and I'm like, Alright, well, wait, what are you doing? Oh, we're making the cut. Like, not yet. Not yet. You got it. Wait, wait, wait, wait just a minute. And then you know, we do our heads cuts a little bit different and then eventually, you know, we're saying, okay, where's our ideal proof? Because, you know, we had some periods of time that I will say that, you know, the proof really kind of varied 26:56 quite a bit off the still and we tried to dial that in 27:00 And tried to really get consistency off the off the distillation process versus, you know, you know, just, hey, this is the way that we run it every single time. 27:09 We wanted to go in and say, Hey, each, each tank each fermenter each batch is different. So we're going to adjust our still to make sure that our flavor profile is consistent from distillation to distillation, so that you don't have this huge variation from batch to batch. You know, we wanted it, you know, there was there was just processes that you have to go in and say, Okay, this is how we want to run it. And just a little tweak here, a little tweak there. And, you know, a lot of these guys have been working in the industry for 30 years. And they kind of go Oh, yeah, okay, that makes sense. You know, these are these are good things to do. So 27:46 I think we've been successful in that. So absolutely. And so I guess one of the things that maybe most people will know about is that it is all part of the the SAS rack portfolio. So, Buffalo Trace, all that sort 28:00 stuff as part you know, Smith Bowman as part of that kind of when did when that started happening when it became part of that portfolio. So it actually it's kind of interesting story because in the move for a Smith Bowman from Fairfax to the current location, 28:19 they had to take down all of the basically the entire distilleries shut it down for it, it took about two years to move the entire distillery. So they started partnering with what was at that time before it was called Buffalo Trace was ancient age. So they started partnering with them and doing the initial mash, even the the yeast and the mash bill and things like that, so that we can continue on producing and, and then basically, when you know, we kind of kept going in that direction, and in 2003 was actually one of the first distilleries that Sam's rack purchased from the Bowman family they purchased the distillery 29:00 2003 and it's now it's even, it's an even better situation. Because Yeah, we're able to, you know, we're all part of one, one company, and we can do all sorts of things work together. It's a great network. And we're all about, you know, making the absolute best products that we can, which is wonderful. What are some of the resources that I guess he gained from being with SAS direct versus just trying to do stuff on your own? Or is it like a big collaboration? I guess he's got Harland cellphone on the dial. He's got that. Well, yeah, we do have that, obviously. But, you know, things. Some of the benefits are, as you know, for example, barrels were really hard to come by a couple years ago, right? Well, luckily, we buy enough barrels, that we're able to say, Hey, you know, we're part of this bigger network, you know, can we can we get barrels whereas if you're a small guy, and you're only buying, you know, a couple thousand barrels a year, you may not necessarily make the list for some of the biggest 30:00 barrel producers, they say, Well, you know, our big barrel producer or big customers already have it, we don't have barrels for you. So Tough luck, which has been a benefit, you know, getting getting the distribution and sales and marketing side of a larger company. I mean, those just really work well. And it's a benefit, or for us, obviously, you know, because we, we do run ourselves as a kind of a separate entity, a small a small distillery. But we do have that, that lifeline. So to say, you know, that to help us out, we have a problem. You know, hey, we don't have analysis for this kind of stuff. And can we send it to your lab? And can you run it for us and, and they'll say, Yeah, absolutely, we can do that. You know, or, hey, I have trouble getting this kind of grain or this kind of wood. You know, Can Can somebody find it or and, you know, and the good the guys will help you out. So which is which is a great, great thing to have. It so I think you 31:00 You kind of sparked an idea in my head too, because one thing that I think the bourbon community really thought of for the longest time is like, Oh, well, Smith home and like all it is is just sourcing from Buffalo Trace. And it's not that at all. You just said like, Oh, we gave them the mash bill so they can start contract basically contract distilling for us at the time. So kind of talk about really is, is that still part of the current operation? Are they still distilling for you? Or is everything shifted back over to your place? We do, we do a combination of a couple of things. So we do use a 31:36 Nashville that is made for us. And actually, it's not it's not one two or a week, right. 31:44 Come on, you guys. You guys know that. We were a little bit we wouldn't be prodding for information. We're a little tight lipped about some of our recipes sometimes. No, it's all good. So it is a what we do is we actually have them 32:00 Do the fermentation for us do a primary distillation for us and we'll get the high wines here. And then we'll finish up the distillation on a lot of our bourbon products. So distillation, aging processing bottling but we also I mean we have full mash and cook capabilities here. So we'll do you know, just yesterday we were using a local bloody butcher corn, 32:25 you know, local rye and doing stuff on our our pilot still or our 500 gallon experimental still. So we have full capabilities here. We do a combination of both 32:39 is everything Ah, they're in Virginia or some aged in Frankfort. Okay, we have all this stuff that we're putting out has been aged in our facilities. 32:50 And so I mean, it's a I think there was it had to been a few years ago now there had been there have been some pretty high h2 releases that had come there limited edition sort of stuff that came 33:00 From the distillery I think like, in the rounds like 14 or 17 years old and stuff like that, was that still your all's product as well or kind of kind of get a little bit? Well, sometimes sometimes we'll go out there and depends on the product. Most of the really old stuff has been aging in our, in our, our sellers for quite some time or our warehouses for quite some time. Sometimes we'll find, I'll call them unique barrels that we use for certain products, and we'll bring them in an agent and blend them we're big on on blending a lot of product here. So we like a little small batch. And sometimes when we do Abraham's, we'll do some, we'll find some very neat stuff that doesn't work. But the majority of them have been almost primarily 100%. aged and produced here. Great. I mean, I'm already learning something right? Because like I said, from from a real whiskey geek background, most people kind of assume that oh, you know, part of the 34:00 Right portfolio, it's some of the stuff that's just could be the Buffalo Trace, basically mash bill coming in. But no, it's good to understand that there is there is this unique factor that is driving into it. And we had kind of touched about, you know, talked a little about the operation kind of talk about more along the lines of the size of what you're all able to do there on your own. And maybe even with combination of what's happening inside of Frankfort with in regards of how many barrels you filling per day, and so on and so forth. 34:33 There are more craft distilleries popping up around the country now more than ever before. So how do you find the best stories and the best flavors? Well, rack house whiskey club is a whiskey of the Month Club, and they're on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories that craft distilleries across the US have to offer rack houses box shipped out every two months to 39 states across the US and rack houses April box. They're featuring a distillery that mixes Seattle craft, Texas heritage and Scottish 35:00 Know how rack house whiskey club is shipping out to whiskies from two bar spirits located near downtown Seattle, including their straight bourbon, go to rack house whiskey club.com to check it out and try some for yourself, use code pursuit for $25 off your first box 35:20 how many barrels you filling per day and so on and so forth? Well, and that's, that's unfortunately one of the few things that the they they asked me not to speak about too much. Okay. Production or production size, but I will say what we do in a day is or even a year is what some of our sister distilleries can do in a day. Right? You know, we, we were find ourselves very, very efficient, you know, are still able to distill it almost 10 barrels an hour on our 2000 gallon pot still. So we're moving pretty quick on that. But 36:00 We can we can barrel really quickly, you know, we can we can empty a cistern tank in a matter of you know, two to three hours. So we feel we're up there and in terms of all of our infrastructure is made for a large large distillery. But in terms of our production, we're what we would consider a micro distillery were very small. No promise no more, no more poking and prodding. 36:24 You talked about sastra helping you all get distribution in the States. How many states are you currently available in? Well, currently, we're I think we're around 40 states. 36:34 And we have distributed in the past to the UK, we do send some products to Japan as well. So it's I mean, we're out and about most of what we concentrate on though is of course, Virginia, the East Coast. Kentucky is a big market for us. Indiana is also a good market for us. So I mean, it's kind of if you think if you look at the map and you look at the you know, kind of the south or southeast states and 37:00 Mid Central States, it's really where we focus. But we do. I mean, of course, we have distribution in California, and we have some in Oregon and things like that. But for the most part, it's, it's mostly in the east. So I kind of want to like shift a little bit and kind of talk about back to kind of like the distillation really like the flavor profile that you all are really trying to dial in on, you know, most people. I think Ryan brought it up at the very beginning. You know, Kentucky's very proud, very, very proud of their bourbon. Absolutely. And they should. And so kind of talk about really, what is is I mean, is there a an overall flavor profile difference that is, you know, coming from you all because, you know, there's, there's, we always try to talk about limestone, filtered water. It's so great here in Kentucky, but most people if you listen to the show enough, we're like, okay, it's reverse osmosis everywhere. We can kind of sit there and like put a checkbox like that's really nothing important nowadays. So kind of talk about a different kind of flavor aspect that really, you're trying to get 38:00 With inside of your your bourbon versus what you can get off the shelf of any other Joe Schmo Kentucky bourbon out there. Well what we look for is we look for a lot of like baked apple and cherry notes in the distillate are easterly kind of produces that that kind of note. So we and we want that to be emphasized in the raw spirit. The white dog coming off is still 38:22 and we want it really clean. We want that nice corn, you know, we want that sweet corn a little bit of a hint of that rye coming through. But we don't want it to be spicy, we want it to be really super smooth. And then when we aged out, of course for the Bowman brothers, I want a little more of the spirits come through a little less of the barrel. So a little bit of the vanilla, a little bit of the kind of the, the oak tannins to come through with the emphasis on on the fruitiness and then we would go the like, say the john J. Because it's the single barrel we wanted to we want the barrel to stand out a little bit more. So we want a little more of that coconut and 39:00 Heavy Carnival notes we want you know that really toasty Oh, and then in the background, we want that nice smooth, you know, kind of baked Apple note. 39:12 I think I sound like a john j person because you said you said coconut he said like oh, like that's oh man you just pulled on my heartstrings right there whereas I like the fruity and softer notes though and you know people ask me which one is the best and I say well I you know I don't decide between the two and then we kind of do one in the middle which is you know, our our port finish so if you like a little bit sweeter notes we got a little bit more open to that one in terms of it gets kind of a 39:43 basically we're doing a finish on on port barrels, Ruby port barrels that we import from Portugal and we also use Virginia port barrels. And then we agent we finish it in a solera process. So we always blend all the barrels together at the end. French oak American oak 40:00 And it's all in one big huge oak tank at the end that we bought a lot of to get that kind of extra character. It gets some really nice fruit notes and some really nice oak notes. So kind of a combination of the two. So if I'm taking my notes correctly, we got we got a Smith Bowman we got john J. Bowman, we've got the port finish. Is there any other products that that I'm not that we haven't talked about yet? Yeah. So so we have we have as far as our Bourbons. We have our Bowman brothers bourbon, which is a small batch bourbon, we have the Isaac Bowman, which is a port finish. We have our john j, which is a single barrel. And then we have our Abraham, which is our experiments. So those can vary in Nashville or finish or anything like that. Then we of course do rum, gin, and vodka, and you have to do a cream record, of course a bourbon bourbon caramel Perea Hmm. Now, do those have the Bowman named to him as well with the gin and the vodkas? Yeah, the gin is actually called sunset Hey, 41:00 So it's named after our original farm. And the vodka is called Deep run, which is the name of the lake, which is right in front of the distillery. And George Bowman is our rum. And it's a Caribbean rum. And then Mary Hite who is the matriarch of the Bowman family. That's our that's our bourbon caramel cream. You didn't pull Harlan Wheatley and name it. Brian Pruitt. We I don't have that kind of pull, I guess. You know, I don't think they would look at it and they'd probably pronounce it wrong or they go I don't I don't want that stuff. 41:35 You're just humble. 41:37 I try to be that we have we have a you know, we really appreciate that people enjoy our brands and and we hope that they enjoy what we're putting out that's I mean, that's the whole goal is that I go in day in and day out and but you know, I I put my passion into what I'm doing and and i hope they enjoy it. So I want to talk about Kenny omega man. I want to talk about Jim 42:00 For a second just cuz a budget gym gym pursuit just because we've been going to a couple distilleries and they happen to be producing gin that day and so kind of you know putting in their different blends and their own botanical botanicals in it and stuff so talk about your gin and what kind of makes it unique and what do you like about it? Well we in and I kind of I didn't even mention the fact that we actually have five gyms out there right now so we do a lot of gyms Yeah, we didn't curious now. Yeah, we have our Sunset Hills which is kind of a call it a straight London dry style fairly, fairly simple in flavor profile, only about four different botanicals. But then we we actually do a line called the Tinker men's line 42:46 on the Tinker band, I guess. And we're tinkering with different styles, different display methods. We have a citrus Supreme, we have a spice which we're doing more of the brown spice characters and we have a balanced was called brighten 43:00 And then we actually made with local rye. 43:04 You know, we just not more than a half an hour from the distillery we did 100% rye base, rye gin. We called it rye expectations, we used rise of botanical too. So, you know, we we like to use that and you know, that's one of the ways when, when we we don't have we have some extra time on the still, it's really fun to get in there and you know, you can unlike bourbon where it takes you 710 1215 years to really see your product, turn around and and come up with a recipe and the next day and taste it you're like oh, yeah, okay, that was fun. So how do you incorporate these botanicals? Do you like throw them in like a tea bag and throw them in there? Or like how to how to or do you just throw them straight in there? How do you extract these different flavors? It kind of depends on the recipe, but we'll do a lot of times we'll do kind of the maturation in the pot. So we'll throw all the botanicals in the pot, but certain botanicals like for example if we're putting elderflower in there or you know 44:00 You know, some of the more floral aspects that we put into, into some of our gins, we'll actually put it in a gin basket, which is actually in the scheme, the vapor line of our still, and so it's vapor extracted. So we'll put certain things in like vanilla bean, or elderflower, or things like that, you know that we don't want to just sit there and boil and cook them. We want just the really nice top notes to come out. And so, and depending on the on the method we'll use, we'll use you know, sometimes a combination of the two. And we can even sometimes do extractions and then distill it. So it's just kind of depends on the gin. Could you do that with bourbon or whiskey and any type like, I guess not well 51% corn and then say you want to get certain fruity flavors or certain vanilla mandolins could you technically extract them from? 44:54 Well, technically, yes. Whether or not it could be legally called whiskey is a different different 45:00 story but 45:02 yeah, you could probably do that. I wouldn't put it past that. Maybe something like that has happened. So there's the prett 45:10 that's the Brit product. Then he's then he's fighting a battle with the TTB of like, what do we even classify this thing? Yes, everything gets killed then now becomes a DSS. Mm hmm. All right off the Jin tan. Let's say you got any more Jin Jin things going on? I just find it interesting because like you said, you can just go there and get the flavors right then and there versus having to wait. So I was always curious about it. Got it. You gotta have your vitamin D and vitamin t in the summer. So that's 45:36 exactly. So, uh, you know, one thing that we kind of talked about at the very top of the show, you know, Ryan said that, you know, the products that he tried were all single barrels. So kind of talk a little bit about the single barrel program that you do have there. You know, I've, I've made been made aware of it. At some point. We probably need to do our own single barrel there, too. And we'll get invited. Yeah, well, if we get invited, let's come out there. We'll we'll choose. Well, and we have we we 46:00 We kind of for a while because the john j is really what we do is single barrels and it's and it's a it's a well aged product. 46:08 It's anywhere from nine to 14 years typically is what will age that product in a single barrel. What we like to do there is you know, I've anything that really kind of goes out in our normal production runs, I want a specific flavor profile, I want that like I mentioned earlier, you know, that vanilla coconut and, and the high toasty notes. But sometimes you get some barrels that are really, really good. But don't meet the flavor profile of what you would expect on the shelf. So if you were to buy a j&j today, and then a couple weeks later go out and buy another one, and they didn't taste the same or similar. You might be a little bit upset and you may have loved it before and you didn't love the next one. So what we do is, you know, barrels that are slightly different barrels that maybe have a little more spice or maybe a little more fruit 47:00 Or maybe a little more vanilla. They're wonderful in their own right. We put those into, into a lot of our private URL selections is when we do those. So that's why, you know, some people have specific tastes that they're looking for, they're looking for more of an earthy, spicy, some have more of a, you know, like I said, a sweeter profile. And those are the ones that we we've done in the past and we've we've been pretty, pretty tight on barrels just because of the mean, just purely on the amount of we I don't think any of us expected the growth of single barrel Bourbons to take off like it has. And so we've been playing catch up, but hopefully we'll we'll have more and more of those barrels available in the future but there's there has been some absolutely spectacular ones that have come out recently. You know, some ones that you know, I put in my I call my spice rack, you know, if I if I have something that is really amazing doesn't fit the profile, john Jay, but maybe potentially, you know, 48:00 If I can use it for blending, like I mentioned blending into a neighbor Abraham down the road, you know, hey, I need a little more spice or I need a little more fruit and then I'll take these out of the spice rack. And occasionally they just sit up in the spice rack and I can't find a home for them. I'll let people taste them and if they like them they can take them home. See there's the sticker idea for the Bowman take despise Dr. Spice, right. So are you familiar with single barrel stickers out people are putting these gaudy you know, stickers on the back? Oh, yeah, absolutely. We do those for people. Absolutely. Well, what would you do for single barrel pick it up your choice? Oh, well, I have a couple of barrels up there that are really amazing. been sitting for a while. And 48:47 yeah, they're getting up there and proof I should probably pull them pretty soon. But you know, that kind of depends on the day, some days I like a little more, a little more spice in my my bourbon and other times. I like a really soft, open 49:00 Almost a weeded profile, so it just kind of depends on the day. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna go ahead and put in a request now. Because if you go through and you find one that is like super coconut, it tastes like an Almond Joy. Just go ahead and earmark that one and be like, hold on, let me mark this down right now. Yes. As you're going through your sampling, yeah, sampling, put it on a post it note and be like, Alright, this is for the bourbon pursuit, guys. We'll send you some stickers you can throw on there. Absolutely. 49:28 Sure, they're really big and round and cover the whole back. What jerk edge cover we have. We'll do it. That sounds great. Well, we'll even we'll send you our handwriting too. So you can just like trace it on the on the barrelhead. So we just claim it. So the, you know, one of the things that we always like to kind of talk about is you know, you kind of talked about extra still time and kind of like what can we do create some experimentations do some crazy gins and stuff like that but we look at really what's happening into the the bourbon market and the bourbon world and one thing that you as a master distiller have to do get to 50:00 kind of look at the spreadsheet and start calculating like, what is what is this bourbon market? What is this boom going to look like in the next few years? What's is there going to be a bust? What's it going to look like? Where do you kind of see the market trending here? In the next three years, five years, decade, decade, two years, five years, I think it's gonna start slowing down a little bit. You know, it's just been growing. It's such fast pace. I think it will slow down just a little bit. But by that, I mean, instead of double digit growth, we're gonna have high single digit growth and type things and, and I don't see it stopping. You know, I don't I don't see a fall of whiskey and bourbon in particular, in the near future. I think it'll just kind of flatten out for a while, you know, it's we've had this huge spike. I think you're going to see you know, people, you know, ride for a long time. No one wanted to drink a rye and now all of a sudden rise popular again. So I think I'll see we'll see a little bit of that come up. I think 51:00 Gonna be healthy for the next few years? And probably the next 510 years, I think it'll be pretty healthy. At least we're counting on it. We're putting down the stock for that. So I hope I hope it continues that way. And I hope I'm right. So otherwise, you got a lot of stock. I'm gonna have to figure out what? 51:17 Well, we're in the market. Yeah. Well, as we'd like to drink whiskey, too, we'll be more than happy to help you just, you know, go through and sample every barrel that's out there. Yeah, talk about a Virginia and how they've kind of embraced you guys, you know, and hung their hat on you as like this is our distillery to kind of have that with the state or? Well, we do there's, you know, it's interesting in the last, you know, up until the 50s, were they really the only distillery in Virginia. And now, you know, over the past five years, just the distilling industry in Virginia has really taken off. We've gone from, you know, being 20 small distilleries in the state. Now, I think there's 70 in the state 52:00 But I think a lot of people still embrace the fact that you know, bourbon is one of the products and whiskey is one of the products that is made and has been made in Virginia for a long time. And there's a lot of people that really, really are putting out some great products and you know, and I think it's it's great that a lot of people look to a Smith Bowman and they go oh, yeah, okay, that's, you know, that's that's the model that we should follow for making a great bourbon or great whiskey in the state of Virginia. And I think a lot of people you know, a lot of people who have lived in this area for a long time they know us, and they know our products and you know of course they go to their football games and they they have their bottle a Smith Bowman and and you know that's that's our tradition. You know, we have guys a little semi, you know, I am 80 something years old and I've been drinking a Smith Bowman bourbon since you know, I was 20. So which is great to hear, you know, that 53:00 It's one of those legacy products that, 53:03 you know, you just don't find the history and a lot of the smaller distilleries, and I think that's a wonderful thing to be a part of that history. Absolutely. And I think, you know, you kind of you kind of struck something in my head when you started talking about olders. It went from, you know, 20 now to 70. Do you see a lot of like competition coming through your doors and saying, oh, let's go see what let's go see what Brian's up to over here. Let's see if we can take down a few few notes in our, in our Yeah, absolutely. I we had a lot of people that do that will have, you know, the local distiller will say, Hey, can I come up and walk through the distillery and spend some time with you? And I say, absolutely. Come walk through the distillery. We do tours every hour on the hour. 53:46 And we don't hide anything. And you can you can see exactly what we're doing. Now. We may not tell you exactly what we're doing. We may not tell you, you know, hey, this is the mash bill. This is that we're doing this. You can see what we're doing. And, you know, we're we're very 54:00 You know, we're supportive, we want to we really think that the industry has room to grow, and we want to support them. But we also, you know, I don't want the industry to go in such a way that people look out and they see the smaller distillers and go, Oh, they don't make anything good. You know, so that's why we really want to support and say, yeah, you know, you got to put out a good product. And if you can see, you want to come in and see how we're doing things. That's fine. I may not tell you a whole lot, but you're welcome to come in and walk around. So how's a bourbon tourism been in Virginia? Because like here, it's exploded. Have you guys seen that as well in Virginia? Well, for us, tourism is a little bit harder than it is, you know, a lot of people go to Kentucky and they go to Kentucky to go visit distilleries. For us. It's a little bit different. And we have you know, we're right in the middle of I'll call it historic, you know, where people are coming to see you know, civil war you know, we're the distillery site is actually is a site of a civil war about 55:00 battle. You know, there's a lot of historic sites as far as the Civil War love Revolutionary War. You know, George Washington was actually lived, you know, his boyhood home is literally across the river from the distillery. So a lot of people come for the history. And it's our our challenge is to get them to come in and visit the distillery. Now, I think the Virginia wine industry has done a great job of getting people to realize that there's wine in the state. And then of course, breweries have been doing pretty well as well. 55:32 So it's been a struggle for us as far as getting the visitors here. But we still you know, this last year was almost 30,000 people come through the distillery you know, obviously not hundreds of thousands of people that people will go to larger distilleries, but we're hoping that we can grow that and let people know that Yeah, we're a distillery that's been here for a long time. And we plan to be here for another 8590 years at least. So you got to figure out a way to get yourself on the hip. 56:00 trail over there. Yeah. Taking a break from the capitals and all the Yeah, Norton come down and yeah you go to the Capitol you go across the river you go see George Washington's house he grew up in then oh, there's this old distiller over here. Oh, and we get to drink. Absolutely and count me. Absolutely, absolutely that's that's our whole goal is how to get them getting you know, you're like, hey, yeah, that's that's a really nice monument there but come see a distillery Have a drink. Yeah, it's, I mean, that's an easy sell point for me to come in. Just say yeah, let's let's go, let's go do that. You can you can go see a mime and every single day if you wanted to, but so I guess, you know, we're coming to come down here to the end of this and I kind of want to get a little bit more information about really, where do you kind of see is is there expansion? is there is there ideas of like how, how much more bigger can is going to get in regards of like what you all are trying to do in regards to growth or anything like that? Yeah, well, right now we're actually in the in the midst of an expansion. You know, we're 57:00 We're adding tanks. We've added just in the past probably going to say about a month, we've added about 11 tanks to our production. We're hoping to add to our bottling line here pretty soon to be able to pick up production. Because we really want to you know, we're we're coming up some of the moves that we made a couple of years ago when I came in five, six years ago was to increase some of our small batch production and increase some of our j&j and things like that. And those those are kind of coming into fruition now and we're hoping to expand and make more that bourbon available. And but I don't think we ever really have any ideas. We don't want to become this huge, multi million case distillery. We want to be focused on making the absolute best products that we can you know, the best bourbon that we can find our best bourbon that we can produce. And, you know, the best, the best Jan's best vodkas, best rums, we want to absolutely make great products. And if we grow to be, you know, a large 58:00 Larger regional size. Great. But that's not really our focus. Our focus is to make a great product. And Sazerac supports that vision. They're not like, they're not like, yeah, that sounds great. We want to crank out as much juice as possible, I'm sure. Yeah, no, absolutely. They absolutely under present sport, making the best product that we can make. Very cool. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, and shout out to Matthew, who is here on the chat. He just said thanks for joining in Brian. It was so so great to actually learn about a brand that's flying under the radar for a lot of the bourbon geeks out there because like I said, For myself, you know, learning more about the mash bill and really how the operation kind of functions and you know, knowing that you're single girls are nine to 14 years old, like that's, that's got some age on it for evil. I mean, for even most of the NASDAQ portfolio when you're looking at the the Weller antiques, you're looking at six years old, maybe seven, something like that. So seeing of of what's coming out. 59:00 Virginia I can't wait to get my hands on some more of those bottles that's for sure. Yeah, yeah we'll be sending them your way 59:08 you got it you're marking those barrels yeah go your mouth go your mark that barrel I got my credit card we're ready to start swiping. Okay. But Brian thank you again for coming on the show today you know giving us some more information about a Smith Bowman the history sort of your history and how you kind of cut your teeth in the industry and kind of your family life to think it'd be fun to get your get your whole family on here one day and kind of see you all kind of like go back and forth if there's any of that 59:35 would definitely be interesting. 59:39 So, last way to kind of give a shout out so if people want to know more about you or they want to visit the distillery, where do they go and do that 59:48 know more about us or visit the distillery go ahead and go to a Smith Bowman calm that's the best way to find us and any information about us. We're on Twitter and Instagram as well but you can get all that from the 1:00:00 From the website there you go and ride the coattails on their Virginia history trail and stop over there and yeah and then go and get yourself a nice bottle of basement Bowman to take over john j Bowman i think i think the john Jay Lee's fit my flavor profile Absolutely. You never know you can come in and try them all next time you're in the area. Okay, so so yeah 1:00:24 so make sure everybody that you are you know you check out their website make sure you go to bourbon pursuit calm. We've got links on there for all the episodes that we've had. If you want to know more about any of the the the sass rack portfolio, you can kind of check out some of our past episodes we've done there too. If you want to follow us, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, we're all over the place there. 1:00:45 Yeah, and then also thank you to everybody that is a Patreon supporter that was joining us watching this show live as it happened on YouTube. Just again, one of those Perks of Being able to watch this live before it actually goes out on air. So frankly, close it out. Yep. 1:01:00 Sure, Brian, thanks, man, that was a very interesting, great, you know, like you said the bourbon has been crazy growth. And we're kind of have blinders on, you know, we have these Kentucky brands, you know, things that we're used to and like, we focus on those, but then you forget that there's these guys like you all doing such great things. And like it's flying under the radar and 1:01:22 with the flavors you were talking about, like, I think, Kenny and I might run out and go get some bottles after this. I just want to find some more coconut. Yeah, the coconut and oak and all that. Yeah, but uh, no. Appreciate your time, man is a cool story. And I want to come to your holiday party. 1:01:37 booze wars. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'll put the invitation out next time. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. So yeah, if anyone has any show suggestions, comments, feedback, let us know. We're always here to serve you guys. You know, bring the audio to you. So we'll see y'all next time. Cheers. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Using Software to Price Your Mailer (LA 1163) Transcript: Steven Jack Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Jack Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWitt broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Jack Butala: Today Jill and I talk about using software to price your mailer. You want to kick this thing old school, or you want to use some easy button type software and there's more and more and more easy stuff that supposedly makes your pricing effort or your mailing effort easier and faster? Jill DeWit: Well, I've got to say though Steven, why wouldn't you? Because of self-driving cars are a hit. Steven Jack Butala: Jill and I have a list of real life analogies and comparisons of taking shortcuts and the result of that. Jill DeWit: Yes, like child raising. Steven Jack Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit: That would be so funny. We did an experiment. We raised one child on our own. We left the other child's self-raise itself. Here's the results. I think we all know how that went in. So funny. Okay. Brian wrote and the note says. This is really not a question, more of a story so you know where we're going here. Jill DeWit: Hi all. I had made an offer on a property for around $2,500. The owner was trying to get more than that, and from my research, the $2,500 that I had offered wasn't leaving enough margin for my comfort, so I certainly could not go above that. Not to mention there was trash on the property. So I respectfully and kindly told the gentleman that I really wish I could pay him. I'm guessing more than $2,500 for it, but there was just no way I could swing that. I also told him about the trash on it. It must've been a month or two and he reached back out, ask me if I had changed my mind. I told him, "Unfortunately, no, I still couldn't do it." He went silent for another month or so and then reached back out again. I told him that honestly the best I could do was $500. Jill DeWit: Okay, so I'm confused. He made it for $2,500, but then he said that was too high and he was ... Brian was backpedaling or do you know? Steven Jack Butala: A few months past, a bunch of time passed. He said- Jill DeWit: Now, the best I could do is- Steven Jack Butala: The seller wanted more than 25. The offer was for 2,500. Brian was happy to pay him 2,500. The seller said, "Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope." And then ... Jill DeWit: Okay, so then he wrote back. Then he came back and now he's changed it. So Brian said, "All right," I told him, "Honestly, now the best I could do is $500." He accepted. I hired someone to clean up the trash for $100. I sold it for $4,500 a month later. Didn't expect to get that much, but I did. Not all deals happen like this, but they're definitely out there. I think my not needing it ... I love. This is me. I'm so good at this. Steven Jack Butala: I've included this for you because I knew you were just going to get a charge out of it. Jill DeWit: I do. My not needing it helped with getting such a low price for it. And my patience, like Daniel explained with his example- Steven Jack Butala: This is a string of [inaudible 00:03:06] Jill DeWit: Okay, happy investing. So yeah. I think because I've been in this business now for years, it's easy to ... I know there's going to be another one around the corner. When you're new, you don't always see that or feel it or know it. So you have a hard time letting go and saying that. But I promise you, once you get going, you get the mail out there, there's going to be one. You're going to open the mail tomorrow and go, "This one's even better. Oh my gosh." Jill DeWit: So that's how I easily can say, "You know what? I've kind of forgot about this. This is kind of funny." So how many months go by and the guy calls Brian back, and Brian's like, "Oh,

Michelle Oates: "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." by Maya Angelou. I am Michelle Oates and I am a Tri-Cities Influencer. Paul Casey: When we live a little bit off, we actually reduce our chance of longevity in our job, we're closer to burnout when we do that and we just live an unfulfilled life. Michelle Oates: Raising the water level of leadership in the Tri-Cities of Eastern Washington. It's Tri-Cities Influencer podcast. Welcome to the TCI podcast, where local leadership and self leadership expert Paul Casey interviews, local CEOs, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit executives to hear how they lead themselves and their teams so we can all benefit from their wisdom and experience. Here's your host, Paul Casey of Growing Forward Services. Coaching and equipping individuals and teams to spark breakthrough success. Paul Casey: Thanks for joining me for today's episode with Brian Ace, the executive director of the Boys and Girls Club. "So Brian," I asked him, "what's something quirky about you, Brian?" And he said, "I better have to explain it myself." So Brian, tell us. Brian Ace: It's food. It's definitely food. So I view food as entertainment and so obviously we love to eat as a family and sit down with the kids and that's great. That works perfect for me. But if we're not doing a family meal and we're just watching a movie or playing a game, or I'm reading a book by myself, I actually don't like to eat until I start the activity. I would actually rather let my food get cold than start eating it before the movie starts. Or at movie theaters, it's the worst with popcorn. Trailers don't count. I can't eat that first bite until the movie begins. So my wife gives me lots of grief for this. Paul Casey: I'm going to be watching next time in the theater. What we're going to dive in after checking with our Tri-Cities influencers sponsors. Neal Taylor: Hello, my name is Neal Taylor. I am the managing attorney for Gravis Law's commercial transactions team. The CT team helps business owners, investors and entrepreneurs accelerate and protect their business value. Today we're talking about employment law and alcohol and cannabis licensing. Josh Bam and Derek Johnson are both here with me now to describe those practice areas. Take it Derek. Derek Johnson: Thanks Neal. I'm Derek Johnson, partner at Gravis Law. We find that many employers in Washington state simply don't have handbooks, employee policies, or any other written materials to protect themselves and their employees. Without having these types of policies in place, an employer can run into trouble by firing employees even if the employee isn't properly performing or are causing issues at work. Even if an employer fires someone for performance issues, for example, but fails to take the proper steps, they may run into trouble by inadvertently exposing themselves to a wrongful termination suit. We build strong, predictable and protective employee policies to protect our client's business. Josh Bam: That's true, thanks Derek. And having employment policies in place when you're dealing with cannabis or alcohol licensing is especially important. We know that clean employment policies, clean corporate structure, and having an attorney that can work with the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board is critically important to protecting your business through licensing. The attorneys at Gravis Law have this experience. Visit us today, www.gravislaw.com Paul Casey: Thank you for your supportive leadership development in the Tri-Cities. Paul Casey: Well, welcome Brian. I was privileged to meet you. Boy, I want to say 12 to 15 years ago probably been now. I was working at a church, I think you were working at the chaplaincy, which was then called Tri-City Chaplaincy. Brian Ace: A little change there, since then. Paul Casey: Yes, yes. We were trying to figure out how churches can work with nonprofits together so that it would be volunteer labor helping good causes. That was a great first contact. Then through Leadership Tri-Cities, I'm class 11 you were class? Brian Ace: I was class 13. Paul Casey: I think I even came to your retreats maybe that year. So, and over the years, just really respect you and seeing what you've been able to accomplish and the teams you've created here in the Tri-Cities. Brian Ace: Well, it's been fun to watch your journey too. You've had some changes since when we first met. Paul Casey: Absolutely. Absolutely. We just run with those open doors. So tell us a little bit about your past positions that led you up to what you're doing now. Brian Ace: Yeah, it's not an overly complicated journey. So I actually went off to, I was born and raised here in Tri-Cities, but then headed off to school in Seattle at Seattle Pacific University. And I was going to be a pastor of all things. So my degree is actually in theology. I kind of felt this call and still do. My wife and I did care for widows and orphans, and widows and orphans look a little different today than they looked 2000 years ago. You know, orphans sometimes have two parents at home, but for a variety of reasons, they've lost a parent to addiction or to busy-ness or to divorce. Widows look different. Sometimes it's just that single mom that's struggling to make ends meet. But that's kind of the root passion for my wife and I and we were pursuing that through the church. Brian Ace: Then I got a job as a part time janitor and program person at the Boys and Girls Club in [Boward 00:05:19] And just fell in love with it and realized that I could serve widows and orphans, today's widows and orphans, through the Boys and Girls Club. And that's kind of been that journey since is doing nonprofit work, kind of focused on serving young people in the community that need that positive adult relationship, that additional connection point to really enhance what their families are doing. Paul Casey: Fantastic mission. What do you think was that a-ha moment that it's like this is what I want to be doing? Brian Ace: So I think it was, it's connecting with kids. I mean that's what it ultimately comes down to is some of those early experiences at the club in Seattle of getting to know families, getting to know their stories, getting to know kids, their challenges, what they've overcome, what trips them up, how to be a support is part of that. You build relationships that have value and longterm value and that hooks you on that. It's relationships are the hook. Paul Casey: And how many children does Boys and Girls Club here in Benton- Franklin counties do you serve? Brian Ace: So we have a annual membership of about 3,500 youth. However, lots of people have gym memberships. It doesn't mean they use them, so I think the real number to really track is average daily attendance on any given day. Today, how many kids are in a Boys and Girls Club throughout Benton-Franklin counties and that's close to 1700 youth any given day are at Boys and Girls Clubs in our community. Paul Casey: And how many locations? Brian Ace: So we're at 25 locations. Yes. So it keeps us a little busy. We've grown a lot the last couple of years with Kennewick Club and then some licensed childcare programs and early learning programs here in Richland. It's been a few years of a journey to be sure. Paul Casey: In your work, what are you very good at? Your talents, strengths, to get to brag on yourself here for a minute. How are you using those strengths to help those around you be successful? Brian Ace: It's always hard to identify your strengths. I think others usually identify those for you, but I think some of the feedback that I kind of hear on that and see is, is critical thinking and data. That's a piece that I was just wired to process data relatively quickly and that works great when you're looking at financials. It works great when you're looking at metrics, on kids and data and survey pieces and all those fun things. So that's a true strength I think. And I think also helping others to understand the underlying pieces of an issue. Sometimes when we're processing an issue, we get caught up in what we see in front of us. What's the immediate, what's the pressing? And it's a matter of kind of looking for what those foundational challenges are that's now bubbling to the surface in the current issue we're dealing with. And I can have a tendency to dig with people deep enough that we can really try to get to those core issues. Paul Casey: Micro and the macro. Brian Ace: It's both at the same time. Paul Casey: So the flip side, what's one of your biggest liabilities and how do you mitigate that weakness so it doesn't limit your influence? Brian Ace: Yeah, so I think you actually presented this topic to me, I believe, on A side B side, maybe it was somebody else, but you know, this is kind of stuck with me from years ago during Leadership Tri-Cities that oftentimes your strengths can have this counterside of this large weakness. And that's similar to me. Brian Ace: So from a data side, I get caught up in data and that's great. That's a great A side. But the B side of that is I have a tendency to go down those rabbit holes in a way that leave others behind. And I have to be really cautious as a leader in Boys and Girls Club in our community to make sure that I slow down on some of that data processing so that everybody becomes part of that process. And it's not just me disappearing by myself. So I think that's definitely a weakness that I have. Brian Ace: You know, another piece that actually came out of leadership Tri-Cities when we first met was in, you're going to have to remind me of this, the book at the time that we were doing in Leadership Tri-Cities was I think the- Paul Casey: The leadership challenge. Brian Ace: The leadership challenge. That's written by- Paul Casey: Kouzes and Posner. Brian Ace: Okay. So that really identified those five traits of an effective leader. One of those traits is encourage the heart. I'm terrible at this. This is where the assessments, the 360 feedback, everything is clear for the last 20 years in my life. Encouraging the heart is not good. My wife will be the first to tell you I am terrible at encouraging the heart. So that is by far one of my biggest weaknesses and the frustrating part for that is I've known it's my weakness for a lot of years. I've put different levels of energy towards that on a regular basis. And I have yet to find success. I'm still struggling to this day after 20 years of awareness that encouraging the heart is a challenge for me. Paul Casey: A weakness is a weakness for a reason, right? Because I mean it's just not a strength. So how do you ... do staff around that? Do you surround yourself with people who are good at that? Brian Ace: And I think that's the critical piece is when you're looking at building a team, your team ultimately needs to have people that compliment your weaknesses. I have some great team members that I work with that are encouragers and they can really kind of carry that flag, but that only goes so far. Ultimately what they have to do is they have to pull me along, they have to spoon feed me at times on what- Paul Casey: There's a thank you note Brian. Brian Ace: Exactly. Paul Casey: Sign it. Brian Ace: Put it on my desk and I'll need to set it off and I'm okay doing that. I can execute, but it's the initiate that is hard for me. So having those team members that do that is critical. Paul Casey: Sure. Yeah. For listeners, the A side B side activity very quickly is the, there used to be a thing called records, sorry, millennials- Brian Ace: They existed at one point. Paul Casey: You may not remember that. It's like a big CD, right? And so on one side was the A side, which was the hit and the B side was the filler. And so we use this as an illustration to say that we often look at others through our B side lens and say, because of their behavior there, they must not care and they're all about themselves, they're narcissistic, all that stuff. We look at ourselves through the A side lens and go, wow, all my intentions are pure. I was late today. But it's because of these other things which are noble causes and how we need to probably flip that a little bit and look at others through an A side, assume positive intent of others. Then sometimes you need to be a little bit more, not self critical but self evaluative of the B side and say, I'm really not good at this. I need help. Paul Casey: So in your opinion in leadership, what is one of the most difficult parts of leading a business? Leading a nonprofit, leading a team? Brian Ace: Employee performance. It's the piece that keeps me up at night. We all have those experiences. We have team members that are just not being successful for a variety of reasons. It might be the skill set that they have. It might be the clarity of expectations, but people not being successful. I find it very difficult in times when we have to separate from that team member, terminate that team member, go different direction every single time it hurts. I've had multiple examples where I've hired somebody and it's my fault. It was a bad hire. I looked past things that I should've paid attention to and it wasn't a good fit. And at the end of that I put somebody in a terrible position where they now don't have their job and they left something else that they were great at to come work for us and it didn't happen. And I get caught up and stay up at night. I'm thinking about those examples. Paul Casey: So what hiring advice would you give, because you've taken some punches on that one, like you said- Brian Ace: Sure, I failed multiple times. Paul Casey: You've ignored some red flags or whatever it is. What counsel would you give to leaders who are in the hiring process? Brian Ace: So it's this hard tension. Part of it is getting the perspective of others. That is critical. Don't make hiring decisions in a vacuum. And so you want to have a team of people that are part of that evaluation, that dialogue process. So that is incredibly important. However, at the end of the day you are making that decision. And so how do you set up that team dynamic in a way where people are giving input that you can listen to and it's they're given permission to tell you things that you don't want to hear, but you still have to make that ultimate decision at the tail end of that. Even if you have great feedback and a great team of people, I still make the wrong decision at times. Paul Casey: So then you also mentioned like when an employee fails or doesn't make it and you have to let them go, you feel some personal responsibility there along the way. What would you say are some slip ups that leaders make that they really are a partially responsible for that employee not succeeding? Brian Ace: So, I think it's making the assumption that the onboarding process, the team culture that's already in place, the great work that's been done before is going to provide enough of a foundation that a struggling person can take it to the next level. That's just usually not reality. Someone that's struggled in certain areas is going to continue to struggle in those areas. You can try to bolster them and build a support system around them and sometimes that will work. But to start a team relationship that way is a challenging way to start. But you're right, each one does hurt and there is a level of responsibility. Brian Ace: You know, I'll tell you a quick story that I think is funny on this. I go home and we have family dinners and when we do dinner as a family, which is important to the Ace family, it doesn't happen as much as we'd like it to, but it happens. We do a little round table sharing where we talk about our highs and our lows. And so each of the family members, the kids and the adults, get to share their low for the day and then they're high for the day. We always end on the high. Brian Ace: So one day I'm sharing the low and I was talking about having to fire a staff member that day, which hurts when you do it. We're talking about this a little bit around the dinner table and my daughter Juliana, who I think was probably like three or four at the time, starts to cry, hysterical crying. It was the hardest thing to see as a dad. We finally said, "Juliana, what's wrong? I don't understand. Why are you crying?" And she proceeded in her whup, whup voice to kind of say, "Dad, it's not okay to light people on fire." It gave me a great image of how painful that experience is for me and how kids can perceive that as well. It feels like that sometimes that you're just burning with guilt on making these hard decisions. Paul Casey: Let me keep following that rabbit trail. So how do you let somebody go in an honorable way? Brian Ace: So intentions matter, but ultimately people hear through the hurt that they experience. So I think it's a matter of affirming and apologizing as a piece of that while still being confident that the decision you're making is the right one for your organization. I think a lot of it is being willing to admit that you had a role in that. That might be a generous severance package. It might be a continuation of employment for a time so that they can find a way to land on their feet. But I think we oftentimes have to be willing to have it hurt us too, because we're part of that tough decision. I think employees feel that when it's done right, that it wasn't just them. It's also us as a team and we're willing to be hurt a bit through that process too. Paul Casey: Good stuff. So we want our people to be engaged. We don't want them to leave. We don't want to let them go. So how do you think leaders can value their people, even though you might not give yourself an A+, you've kept self-confessed that, but you would say you probably know employees that feel valued and others that don't. They feel devalued. So what can organizations and leaders do to make their people feel valued and stay engaged? Brian Ace: Yeah. I think ultimately it comes down to what are you willing to do to make their lives easier. I think some organizational leaders can fall in the trap of delegating to the point where all of this stuff that's not fun goes down and all this stuff that's enjoyable stays high. Paul Casey: I want to pass out the paychecks, but not the- Brian Ace: Not show up on a Saturday and work [crosstalk 00:17:29]. So I think some of it is we have to be willing to encourage people by doing for them what frees them up to do other things. That's not the glamorous stuff. It's the taking the van in for an oil change. It's the working a Saturday event. It's doing these evening meetings that no one wants to miss their family time for. Or in the case of the people I work with, the early morning meetings, they are glad to surrender those to the early riser that I am. But I think a lot of it for staff is being willing to do whatever it takes to support them even if it's inconvenient for you. I think people see that. Paul Casey: That's servant leadership isn't it? And it's enabling others to act, which is one of those five principles in the leadership challenge. Brian Ace: Just the appreciation, recognition, Encourage the heart that I'm not. Yes it is one of the five. Paul Casey: You get a four out of five. Well, before we asked Brian about his life hacks for success, let's check in with our sponsors. Paul Casey: The C12 group is a national organization focused on spiritual and professional development of Christian CEOs and business owners. Members participate in professionally facilitated monthly meetings during which 12 experienced Christian CEOs exchange ideas to solve business issues Biblically. Additionally, members receive a 90 minute personal coaching session each month. Information is available from Tom Walther at (715) 459-9611 or online at c12easternwa.com. Paul Casey: So Brian, what are a few of your life hacks that help you be successful on a daily basis? Brian Ace: So I have some that worked for me, but I don't want to pretend they work for everybody. The one that works best for me is I email myself regularly. So my email is my task list and that is good and bad. Sometimes I get so behind on email, I'm also behind on tasks. But nonetheless I will forget if I don't email myself. So I'll be driving and I'll think of something, email myself, I'll be in a conversation with somebody, I'll say, sorry, one second, I need to email myself. But emailing myself is absolutely a life hack that's worked for me and I see great value in that. Brian Ace: You know, another one is just getting up early and showing up before others arrive. When I'm at the Boys and Girls Club office or out at our club locations, I need to be accessible to people. They need to feel that if there's a question they have, a conversation they want to have that I'm approachable for that, but I also have stuff I have to get done. So if I can arrive early, beat everybody in, then I can get caught up on emails, phone calls, and kind of the day's plan before anybody else ever sets foot in the office. Paul Casey: So many leaders have that as a success strategy. Before the cumulative stress of the day overtakes you, you get ahead of it. And that's the only quiet time that most leaders have because they want to be available. Paul Casey: Well, how about decision making? That's huge for a leader because I think leaders are known by the decisions they make. So what process do you think through before making decisions generally? Brian Ace: Yeah, I think there's just some questions that I ask myself. You know, the first one is who will be impacted by this decision? And we have to look at it through the lens of each of those stakeholders. Kids, parents, community members, community partners, donors from a stewardship perspective, our staff are a critical part of who's impacted. So I think a lot of it is asking the question who is impacted by this decision and being willing to flush that out. Brian Ace: Then I think there's one that is that nonprofits have an advantage on that. I think a lot of for profit businesses maybe don't, and it comes down to whether you have clearly defined what your mission is. So we have the advantage at most nonprofits that our mission becomes a very key piece of who we are. And if we're wise enough to keep it at the forefront, to have it at top of agendas and starting each meeting, that becomes a real critical part of making decisions. Is it consistent with our mission and that mission consistency, that avoidance of mission drift is a great way for us to ensure that decisions are made for the right reasons. Paul Casey: I love both of those. The first one you described, I've heard it's called the View of Six, where you look at a decision through six different lenses and like you said, the student, the staff member, the community member of the donor, the board member, you're probably going to make a pretty good call if you have empathy and looking through each one of those lenses and not just one. So that is really good. Paul Casey: So who influences you, Brian? Who do you surround yourself with so you keep growing yourself? They can be live people or afar people. Brian Ace: Sure. Yeah. You know, I think there's some local ones and then there's kind of the thought leader part of that. I'm blessed with a great board and some of my most challenging people that challenged me from a leadership perspective that I work with are my board members. Not every nonprofit person can say that. Paul Casey: True. Brian Ace: But I have a great board and a board that I can be vulnerable with that can challenge me and can push me, but can also listen, advise and offer support. And so that's quite a blessing. I would encourage everybody to surround yourself with those people that you can be vulnerable with. And I can't do that with all my board members, but there's enough that I can, and that gives me an outlet that is incredibly helpful. So I think that's a key piece for that. Brian Ace: The other one are those thought leaders. Who are those people that you feel push the envelope for you? This is seasonal for me. You know, I'll go through a season where education is kind of a topic that I'm interested in. You know, I'll have Sal Khan is one of my favorites. That is the individual that developed Khan Academy. Wrote a great book that is just phenomenal to challenge educational assumptions. Or it might be leadership and you'll read a leadership person or fundraising and an individual that speaks to you there. But I think finding those authors, those industry thought leaders that for a season become almost your impersonal challenger, someone that you're engaging with, but just not necessarily through dialogue. Paul Casey: Yeah, you're mixing it up for a season on a theme. I really like that, I haven't heard anybody else to do that. That's pretty cool. And I think with your board, not everybody has a board, obviously if you're an entrepreneur out there, a leader, but you could set up your own personal board of directors. That's what one leader calls it. These are the folks that speak into your life. They love you for who you are. They are for your success. Some call them accountability partners, success partners. I think we all have to have those in our life. Brian Ace: Well, and I think one of the experiences I've had, because I work with a lot of donors in the community that have successful businesses, that they're in the process of transitioning to their children. One thing they do is they set up advisory boards for that business transition. A group of committed, dedicated people that their son or daughter can call and bounce ideas off of in a safe way. And I think that's a way of replicating that process in a business setting. Paul Casey: Yeah, so smart. So when you've lived your life, Brian, you look back and think back on your influence, how do you want to be remembered? Brian Ace: So I think I would love to be remembered through the lens my wife and I have established of kind of our personal mission that care for today's widows and today's orphans. I think that would be a key piece. Brian Ace: You know, I think the caution that I always have is what I don't want to be remembered for. You know, sometimes for folks that are super involved in the community, either as someone involved in a nonprofit, a business leader in the community, a political leader in the community, we forget that our number one service group should be our family and that is a piece I'm guilty of. I don't want to be remembered as that person that helped others, but sure didn't do a lot for his own wife and kids. And so that's a constant concern I have that I have to be cautious to, because my natural tendency is to say yes, yes, yes. And those that I love the most get a lot of nos. Paul Casey: Yeah. One author says if you have to cheat your work or cheat your family, don't cheat your family. Brian Ace: That's fair. And it might be easier to cheat them in the short run, but from a longterm perspective, it's better to give them your best. Paul Casey: Absolutely. And it's a good for Tri-City Influence listeners, it's good for you to do the eulogy activity, which sounds a little morbid, but it's really, who do you want to be there at your memorial service someday? What do you want them to say about you? What do you want your family to say about you especially? And then you live into that. Once you've established what you want your legacy to be. Paul Casey: So Brian, finally, what advice would you give to new leaders or anyone who wants to keep growing and gaining more influence? Brian Ace: So I think make time to learn. Schedule time to learn. I have seasons where I don't do this as well and I have seasons where this is a critical part of what my day looks like. But it might be books you're reading, podcasts you're listening to, people you're connecting with. Just sitting down with somebody over coffee, not with an agenda but just to bounce ideas and learn. But make time to learn. You have to schedule it and it's worth it when you can pull that off. Brian Ace: You know. I think another one is just work ethic. You're going to have to work harder than anybody else. Sometimes that can be compensated for by working smarter. And we all have those. We see that they make it look effortless. But for a lot of folks it's a matter of just putting in the hours, the focus, the dedication to push yourself to do better on behalf of those you serve and that's a great principle as well. Paul Casey: Wise words. So how can our listeners best connect with you? Brian Ace: Well, you know Boys and Girls Club is an organization that serves our community and website is probably the best way and that's greatclubs.org. With great information on programs but just reach out via email, phone. We're always glad to answer questions about our work but also I'm always glad to just share with people personally as well. I like to meet people, I like to be in relationship with people. I like to be challenged by people. Paul Casey: And you'll probably take a volunteer or a donor as well. Brian Ace: Volunteers and donors never hurt. Volunteers who are donors are the best. Paul Casey: Ding ding! Well thanks again Brian for all you do to make the Tri-Cities a great place and keep leading well. Brian Ace: Right. Thank you Paul. Paul Casey: Let me wrap up our podcast today with a leadership resource to recommend. More of an organizational one, it's called Followupthen.com, so it's for email. You set it up for free and if you want to not use your inbox as a waiting for list for all the people that you've sent the emails to, what it will do, Follow Up Then, well you can set a time for it, sort of boomerang back into your email box so you can go, Oh yeah, I never heard back from so-and-so. It can be days later or just later in the day. There's another tool called Boomerang, so followupthen.com or Boomerang might help you in your email management. Paul Casey: Again, this is Paul Casey. I want to thank my guest, Brian Ace from the Boys and Girls Club of Benton and Franklin counties for being here today on the Tri-Cities Influencer podcast and we want to thank our TCI sponsors and invite you to support them. We appreciate you making this possible so we can collaborate to help inspire leaders in our community. Paul Casey: Finally, one more leadership tidbit for the road to help you make a difference in your circle of influence. It's Mario Andretti. He says, "Desire is the key to motivation, but it's the determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal, a commitment to excellence that will enable you to attain the success you seek." Until next time, KGF, keep growing forward. Michelle Oates: Thank you to our listeners for tuning in to today's show. Paul Casey is on a mission to add value to leaders by providing practical tools and strategies that reduce stress in your lives and on their teams so that they can enjoy life and leadership and experience their key desired results. Michelle Oates: If you'd like more help from Paul in your leadership development connect with him at growingforward@paulcasey.org for consultation that can help you move past your current challenges and create a strategy for growing your life or your team forward. Paul would also like to help you restore sanity to your crazy schedule and get your priorities done every day by offering this free Control my Calendar Checklist. Go to Www.takebackmycalendar.com for that productivity tool or open text message to 72000 and type the word 'growing'. Tri-Cities Influencer podcast was recorded at Fuse SPC by Bill Wagner of Safe Strategies.

Welcome to the first episode of the Miracle Ford Podcast of the new decade! For our first episode, we go straight to the ART of it. Host John Haggard talks to Bryan Deese, Gallatin-based muralist and street artist who has worked for various companies and events, both local and national. Together, they discuss the following topics: Where Bryan Grew UpHow Bryan Got Into Mural and Street ArtHis Transition From Graphic Design to Full Time Mural and Street ArtistBryan Deese’s Art HeroesExciting Projects He Has Done RecentlyCreative FreedomIs the Gallatin Local Government Supportive of His Works?Most Memorable Artwork He’s Done so FarUpcoming Art ProjectsDoes Bryan Accept Commission Projects?Bryan’s Interesting ObsessionHow to Contact Bryan Transcript John Haggard 0:02 Welcome to the Miracle Ford podcast where, throughout the month, you’ll be able to learn the best ways to purchase, lease, service, maintain, accessorize, and sell your vehicle for the highest resale value possible when you’re ready. We also discuss vehicle model details and the latest technology that makes driving a new vehicle really cool compared to just a few years ago. I’m your host, John Haggard, and you know, as always, you can find show notes and a transcript along with links to content that we talked about right here on our website miraclefordtn.com and also on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Podcasts and on Spotify. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review on any of those platforms, and share. Another cool thing that we get to do and that’s to interview community leaders and shakers in the Gallatin-Sumner County area, who are part of great projects. Got a lot of things that are going on and, on today’s podcast, we have the privilege of speaking with Bryan Deese, muralist and street artist. Bryan, welcome to the podcast! Bryan Deese 1:03 Hello! Thanks for having me. John Haggard 1:04 Glad to have you! Before we learn about what a muralist and street artist is and does, tell us a little about you. Are you from Gallatin? Bryan Deese 1:14 I’m from Nashville. I grew up in Nashville, kind of all over that area, and then have been up in Gallatin now for about 10 years. John Haggard 1:22 So from Nashville. Where did you go to school in high school here? Bryan Deese 1:27 Well, I went to two schools. I went to Franklin Road Academy in South Nashville, with my area. And then I graduated from Hillsboro High School in the Green Hills area of Nashville, John Haggard 1:39 The Burros, I think they call that, or something like that. Bryan Deese 1:41 Absolutely, full of pride. John Haggard 1:42 Yeah. Was that a good football team when you were there? Bryan Deese 1:48 Not great when I was there. They have gotten a lot better with the coach they have. Fitzgerald has had a lot of success and they won a state championship after I left. But the Gallatin handed it to them pretty well the last season. John Haggard 2:01 So a muralist and street artist, I guess maybe, before we really dive into that, how would you define that term? If somebody says, “Well, what is a muralist and a street artist?” Bryan Deese 2:13 Yeah, mural artist mural list is anyone who’s painting murals and that could include indoors or outdoors. Street art is more specifically refers to the outdoors and painting, you know, on the streets where people walking, driving can see the work. John Haggard 2:33 From Nashville, how did you wind up in Gallatin? Bryan Deese 2:37 Well, I was living in Madison in 2007. And the recession hit and Madison got really shady there. I kind of starting to have a family and looking for greener pastures and found them at little Northeastern Gallatin and moved out here and have loved it and really embrace this community and just enjoy a lot of things about it. And so that’s kind of what brought us out here. John Haggard 3:05 And when you moved to Gallatin, what was the very first thing you did in terms of employment? Bryan Deese 3:09 At that point, I went to school for graphic design. So I had worked professionally as a graphic designer for years out of college, and I went to the University of Tennessee, in Knoxville. John Haggard 3:24 Go, Orange! Bryan Deese 3:24 Yeah, definitely go Vols for life. Did the graphic design thing for a long time, always kept painting on the side. My kind of painting was graffiti. I came up kind of doing that for fun and adventure. And through that had just learned to paint big and self-taught and through friends picked up a lot of other mural techniques, and just kept painting and painting. And that’s what I was doing though, when I was first arriving in Gallatin. I was still doing graphic design full time and murals on the side. John Haggard 4:02 So how did you actually get into painting murals? Is it something when you were a little boy and you said, Wow, that’s a cool thing. Look at that over there. How did, you know, where did this the artistry, I guess, come out? Bryan Deese 4:15 Well, it was an evolution for sure. But one of the first things in art that really struck me was a mural and it was by a famous Nashville artist Red Grooms. So he’s a big-time pop artist, and this was the Tennessee State Museum was doing a retrospective, maybe its 30th or 40th anniversary of, you know, kind of his career launch. And I went there on a field trip and he created a whole environment that you entered in and I was just blown away. You went down some escalators and there were murals on the sidewalls and then sculpture that you walked into and entered and just took over the environment but in a fun, playful way. It wasn’t a way that would go over a kid’s head, even though if you look at his work, there’s nothing childish about it. It is professional and incredible through and through, every aspect. But it struck me – that stayed with me. And I followed other contemporaries of his, like Myles Maillie and Norris Hall. These are other Nashville painters that were a bit illustrative, worked big. I saw them doing murals around. They work very colorful, and with a black outline. And then, through skateboarding and music, at some point, in high school, I was introduced to graffiti art. Bryan Deese 5:41 And it kind of had all of those same things. It was big, colorful, illustrative, blackout lines, and it had some adventure mixed in. So, I was drawn to that right away. And it was also based on typography and that was the graphic design side of me. As a kid who, you know, designed my own baseball cards and designed my own sneakers. Yeah, so those worlds kind of combined with some fun and adventure. It’s what you’re looking for as a teenager. And I followed that route for a while, and there was never a thought that this is something you’d make money on. But I didn’t just quit. I just took it up a notch or two, and started doing portraits, started doing bigger, more objective things and less of the letter-based graffiti stuff. More what you would consider street art, and just elevating it a little bit as I went along. And eventually, at some point, I just decided this is what I’m going to do this is paying as much or more than the graphic design and I’m going to jump out there and actually call myself an artist. And… John Haggard 6:57 Wow! Yeah, because there’s that phrase that we all hear -starving artist. Great work but a starving artist. And that, you may have starved a little bit maybe but you know you didn’t have that job you said. So you were doing this on the side and then it like as you said you just finally the dollars were there. Bryan Deese 7:14 Yeah and I absolutely had that instilled in me from my parents, too. Maybe not so much my parents but just society as a whole is like it’s a very hard thing to earn a living at – and it is! And so, yeah, I’d always heard starving associated with the word artists. So I look to do something that would fulfill my creative chops but would pay the rent. And then on the side, like I said, I was always doing this stuff that I never thought there’d be an income that it was just fun. Like a lot of people they don’t get into bass fishing, because they think there’s a future in bass fishing, they just enjoy the hobby. So that’s kind of how I approached it, but at some point what I was doing caught on. And a lot of that’s probably based on social sharing online. But people were coming to me to “can you paint big?”. And so yeah, it was a slow transition from full-time graphic design to full-time mural artist with a lot of crossover years, where, you know, in between. John Haggard 8:18 You know, I heard this motivational speaker Tony Robbins, you’re familiar with him? He says, follow your passion, and the money will follow you. And it sounds like you had a lot of passion and you thought, Well, you know, I’m going to try to make this thing work. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. I’ve got a backup plan. But nonetheless, the passion really seemed to drive you would you say speaking of passion and inspiration, you mentioned Red Grooms? Would he be someone you would consider a major inspiration was to you that got you to the next level or who would you consider that to be? Bryan Deese 8:50 He was a big one because what I didn’t know when I was eight or nine years old on that field trip – well, I wasn’t even there. It was in high school who I figured out who I’d been looking at on that field trip. And it was kind of, “Oh, Red Grooms graduated from Hillsboro High School.” So then that all of a sudden kind of did click with me that you could do it. People from your high school walk in the same halls or you’re reading about them in art history books, you know, it’s not that far-fetched. So and then, as far as the street art stuff goes, there were some conversations I had and people that, artists that I really respected, who came along and did the same job that I had done two years previously. For example, Bonnaroo, I painted some fences at Bonnaroo. And two years later, one of my favorite artists, Steve Powers, he came and painted the fences at Bonnaroo. And so that made me think “Okay, you’re on the right trajectory.” At that point. I was still doing graphic design also. And when a door would open like Bonnaroo would call and say “We’ve got these miles of linear fence. Got any ideas on how to paint something cool?” I’d walk through those doors, I would execute and somewhere in the middle of it, I panic, you know? How am I gonna get this done? You know, I’ve bitten off more than I could chew, but you just stay the course and, and work hard and get through that door and shut it behind you. Hopefully, you know, it worked out well. Bonnaroo did. And then you hope the next door you’re ready for the next door in front of you. And you just keep going. And that’s what I’ve done. John Haggard 10:35 What are some of the more exciting projects that you’ve worked on recently? Bryan Deese 10:39 2019 I had some really cool projects. First and foremost, the NFL Draft came to Nashville. And the NFL Network contacted me to do some murals on the side of Tootsies, the famous Honky Tonk on Broadway and on the back of Honky Tonk Central. And then NFL films recorded it. And it was the very first thing they aired a little two-minute package, right as their draft coverage kicked off. John Haggard 11:11 Wow, that was you? Bryan Deese 11:13 Yeah, and then they shared it with their social. So that was a really cool one. Bonnaroo Music Festival. I painted their iconic fountain the past year. And so those were two really cool ones. I did two really great murals in Gallatin that I’m proud of. So, and some really good work for the Country Music Hall of Fame. They’re one of my steady clients that I do, you know, anywhere from eight to 10 murals a year for. John Haggard 11:44 So in Gallatin, where are those murals? Bryan Deese 11:47 Well, I’ve got three murals in Gallatin. One is in Thompson Park, which is right next to the skate park. And it is a mural of Ray Underhill Jr. and Ray was Tennessee’s first professional skateboarder, and he grew up in Hendersonville in Gallatin. When he packed his car up and drove out to California to chase the dream, he was living in Gallatin. And sadly, Ray passed away from cancer. And so that’s a memorial a thank you to Ray Underhill. And then on the side of Chubbs Sports Bar, and Old Soul Tattoo, I’ve got two murals, they actually face each other. One is a history of the trains and trolleys in Gallatin. And then the other is about the 1970 basketball game between the segregated high schools at the time, Gallatin High School and Union High School. And that’s an incredibly interesting story. q2A`There’s a book about it, maybe plans to do a movie. But those are the three murals that I’ve got in Gallatin right now, and hopefully, we’ll do some more soon. John Haggard 13:07 So Brian, where do you get your ideas on what to paint? Bryan Deese 13:11 Well, a lot of that comes down to how much creative control I’ve got on each project. Some of the projects that I do, I don’t have any creative control, or here’s an album cover, we want to paint it on this wall, and it’ll stay there for three months. And I execute those and I keep it going. When I’ve got complete creative control, and that’s when I’m the most excited on a project as any creative would be. And when I’ve got complete creative control, I like to paint about history that’s very specific to the location I’m painting at. So you know, Ray Underhill next to the skatepark in Gallatin, that makes sense because of the history of who Ray Underhill is to skateboarding in Gallatin. The trains and the trolleys, the location of that Old Soul Tattoo, the wall right next to the Palace Theater, the back entrance, it’s in between the railroad tracks and then where the trolley tracks were on just down the alley. So I like to paint about history because I’m a history buff. And so if you let me paint about anything, it’s going to be generally a giant portrait about history that’s very specific to the location I’m painting. Bryan Deese 13:14 How would you say the support has been in Gallatin for what you’re doing? Bryan Deese 14:35 It’s really been incredible, especially the mayor’s office. When I approached them initially about the Ray Underhill project and the train with the train and trolley mural, the codes would not allow for murals in Gallatin. So we started with the Ray Underhill project because it was actually in the parks. It’s a park property that lays a little bit outside of the jurisdiction of code so they didn’t need to change the codes to actually execute that one. So then we’re able to show some community support and how murals can impact a community positively. And then with that, they took that effort and energy and passed and changed the Gallatin City codes as far as murals go. So now, and then they applied for and got a grant for me to paint the train mural and the basketball mural. So, and then the public at large has been incredibly supportive. Anytime I was painting, I had great conversations with you know, citizens and passers-by and met a lot of great people. In all three of those cases, anytime I was painting, I met a lot of great people. I met Ray Underhill’s family, too. They still live Portland, his parents and brothers, and siblings, and that’s really the most impactful to me is the people I meet when I’m painting. John Haggard 16:11 Yeah. And you know, you mentioned, of course, Gallatin where you live now, Bonnaroo, Downtown Nashville. Do you travel the country or is your work primarily in this area? Bryan Deese 16:22 Well, I do travel. So I head to Florida and Atlanta. There were probably the spots I hit the most. When I was younger, I traveled a lot more. You know, I’ve been to Europe and all over the West Coast and the Northeast Chicago, you know, St. Louis, Kansas City, a lot of cities, painting, and that’s really when it was just a hobby. My professional work though, my home base is Nashville and that’s where the bulk of my work is for sure. John Haggard 16:52 If somebody said, “I want you to paint a portrait of me.” Do you do work for individuals or is it more like what we’ve been talking about? Bryan Deese 17:02 Well, I absolutely could be commissioned. Most of my work now is of a commercial nature. And I’m not exactly cheap, but I absolutely take commissions and I’m worth every penny. John Haggard 17:17 All right, well, there you go. There you go. Bryan, Deese, everybody, we’re talking to. Muralist and street artists. What would you say, Brian, is your favorite painting that you’ve ever done out of all of them? Bryan Deese 17:29 Well, one that was dear to me was a Johnny Cash mural that was in downtown Nashville, that my friends and I would actually paint the wall very first in May in 1998, with like a surrealist desert kind of scene. But then, when Johnny Cash passed away, immediately we painted a memorial mural for him. And that was in 2003. We redid the mural in 2012 whether it just has taken its toll. A lot of people so new to the area, they don’t realize that the area of downtown Nashville flooded in 2010. And that really took a right toll on that mural. Um, yeah. So we redid that and in 2012 and it was perfectly located downtown. It was a joke. It was the last of a little one-story block buildings in you know, south of Broadway. And it was on American Idol and National Geographic Channel and Macy’s campaign, it just got a lot of traction. It was on all the Titans home games when it was a local CBS broadcast it was kind of just became part of their Stock B roll footage. So, unfortunately, like I said it was the last of but it’s unfortunately got knocked down last year. And some of my friends from the Country Music Hall of Fame, pulled aside some of the, the blocks of some of it, and I’ve saved them. But it was only a matter of time that property was worth too much to just be a block little block building. So now it’s like a two or three-story bar. John Haggard 19:17 So for 2020 as we enter the New Year, what big plans do you have? What’s going on anything local, more regional work. What’s happening? Bryan Deese 19:25 Well, one thing I’m really excited, I’m almost hesitant to talk much about it because I’m very much in the initial phases and it’s year one, but I’m going to do a little mural festival in Gallatin at the end of May. And what a mural festival is, is pretty simple. It’ll be anywhere from three to six, this year I’m just kind of starting small to get going on, but three to six murals being worked on by different artists at the same time over the course of a weekend. So you can come in, it’ll be roughly in the same location, so you could come and park your car and walk around and watch these different artists execute the murals. And, so the mayor’s office again, they’re being extremely supportive. And that’s something I’m planning. And then I’m filling up my calendar for 2020 and got some really great jobs and really excited to keep working with the Country Music Hall of Fame. They allow me to paint the icons of Nashville, and that excites me for sure. And hopefully, some other great ones. Some of them, they’re not exactly under contract yet, so I don’t want to jinx them by talking about them. But I’ve got a lot of really great projects coming for 2020. But the most – the thing I’m the most excited about is the mural festival. I’m going to start in Gallatin. John Haggard 20:51 And that’s in May, you said? Bryan Deese 20:52 End of May. So and I’m still on the date. I’m still waiting to hear back from the mayor that we’re not competing with any other long-standing Gallatin events that might conflict with it. But right now they said, it looks like the calendar is pretty open. So I think that’s going to be our date. John Haggard 21:13 So Brian, what would you say your favorite thing about living in Gallatin is? Bryan Deese 21:19 Oh man, there’s so many great things. I love where my kids go to school Sumner Academy. They really care about educating kids. And also just having socially the skills my kids are learning there are second to none. I love Gallatin Square. I like to go down to the square especially in the spring in the summer. When the flowers are the flower pots are out and you’ve got the splashes of pinks and purples violets around and I love to go to Jim Bose records on the square and pick out some old vinyl, maybe go to Phillies on the square and get a funnel Cake they’re delicious and play some games with the kids on my studio in Gallatin. It’s right by the bowling alley and bought my kids and bowling shoes and we go bowling a lot. That’s a lot of fun. And right there, too, I love Old Glory restaurant that’s kind of our greasy spoon diner and definitely love being a regular at all these spots around Gallatin. It’s pretty much everywhere I go now I’m a regular they don’t know what I do. They just know my face. John Haggard 22:28 What would you say of all the things that you have going on in 2020, If you can talk about it, is the most, I guess you would say, the most exciting thing that’s going to happen or that that you’re going to do or that really excites you the most for 2020? Bryan Deese 22:43 Well, I’m hoping to do the Bonnaroo fountain again, I’m trying to turn that into an annual contract. It used to be that they would hire an artist that would come in and they would design and paint the fountain and it would be totally separate from how the festival looks. Now they’re having the designer who designs the overall look for the festival that year as far as ticketing and marketing and all of that. They also design the fountain, but they don’t necessarily have the skills to execute the painting and Bonnaroo doesn’t even want them to have to worry about that. So I always call that my summer art camp anytime I go and spend a week out at Bonnaroo. I come back dark, suntanned, and about 10 pounds lighter. John Haggard 23:34 So let me ask you this one question. What would you say, Brian, the one thing that people don’t know about you, but they would be really surprised to find out about you. Bryan Deese 23:47 I’m big on the number two and things the power of two. So two times two is four times two is eight times two is 16 times two, 32. And doing all kinds of weird little number things in my head, that all break down to number in twos and the power of twos. So that’s some Rain Man autistic kind of side of me a little bit. But it fascinates me even myself is why do I need to stop the pump at 1616 or whatever I’m pumping, you know? So that’s something that is weird. And not a lot of people would know. John Haggard 24:31 If somebody wants to get in contact with you, Brian, what’s the best way to connect? Bryan Deese 24:37 My website is bryandeese.art. And it’s a really simple little site just with some images that slide through. And then there’s two buttons. One is a email that goes directly to my inbox, and the other takes you to my Instagram account which is more of a rolling portfolio of my work. So emailing me through my website is really the best way. bryandeese.art John Haggard 25:05 All right, and we know Bryan is, in your case B-R-Y-A-N. John Haggard 25:10 That’s right. John Haggard 25:11 Got it . Well, that’s Bryan Deese everybody, muralist and street artist on today’s Miracle Ford podcast. Remember, you can find show notes, just everything we talked about and a transcript along with links to content that we talked about right here on our website miraclefordtn.com and also on Apple podcast, Google Play podcast, and on Spotify. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review on any of those platforms and share. I’m your host John Haggard, and we will see you next time.

8 years ago a 22 year old Chloe Hogan was on her way to work at 5.30am one morning. She was gearing up for her second marathon a few weeks out and heading to the gym where she was a PT but disaster struck. An accident, a major one and Chloe was left with a massive brain injury. She lay in a coma for weeks, the Doctors after 19 days telling the family to turn off life support, that there was no hope. 4 days later she awoke and proved them all wrong. But the damage was massive and there wasn't much left of their beautiful daughter. But Brian is a fighter and a feisty Dad who wasn't willing to give up on his beautiful girl so he started researching and working. He ignored all the negative naysayers and powered through years of hard grind, always believing, always looking for the next level and slowly inch by hard won inch they bought Chloe back.  After 4 years they discovered Hyperbaric oxygen therapy, Chloe was still completely wheelchair bound, could only speak very slowly, and was incontinent. After 20 treatments the incontinence was gone, Brian did more sessions with her, another 165 to be exact and slowly combined with thousands of hours of physio, a change in diet and a never say die attitude Chloe got better and better. Now 8 years into their journey Chloe surprised her parents for Xmas with the greatest gift on earth, she took her first steps completely unaided.   Chloes story is outlined in my new book "Relentless" due out on the 11th of March. This book is about bringing my Mother Isobel back after a major aneurysm and stroke left her like a baby and she, like Chloe has clawed her way back. Against all odds and against all the medical professionals prognoses.   You can pre order "Relentless" right now at   https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless and if you grab it right now (before the 1st of February 2020) you will get free access to my MINDSETu online mental toughness ecourse.  Valued at $275.  So hurry over and pre order your copy right now.   To Watch Chloes feature story on TVNZ's 7 Sharp program go here: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10162529755070114&id=552205113&sfnsn=mo   and reach out to Chloe on Facebook at Chloe M S Hogan.   We would like to thank the sponsors for this show  www.vielight.com Makers of Photobiomodulation devices that stimulate the brains mitocondria, the power houses of your brains energy, through infrared light to optimise your brain function.  To get 10% off your order use the code: TAMATI at www.vielight.com     We would like to thank our sponsors:     For more information on Lisa Tamati's programs, books and documentaries please visit www.lisatamati.com    For Lisa's online run training coaching go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/runningpage/ Join hundreds of athletes from all over the world and all levels smashing their running goals while staying healthy in mind and body.   Lisa's Epigenetics Testing Program https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics/ Get The User Manual For Your Specific Genes Which foods should you eat, and which ones should you avoid? When, and how often should you be eating? What type of exercise does your body respond best to, and when is it best to exercise? Discover the social interactions that will energize you and uncover your natural gifts and talents. These are just some of the questions you'll uncover the answers to in the Lisa Tamati Epigenetics Testing Program along with many others. There's a good reason why epigenetics is being hailed as the "future of personalized health", as it unlocks the user manual you'll wish you'd been born with!  No more guesswork. The program, developed by an international team of independent doctors, researchers, and technology programmers for over 15 years, uses a powerful epigenetics analysis platform informed by 100% evidenced-based medical research. The platform uses over 500 algorithms and 10,000 data points per user, to analyze body measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home   For Lisa's Mental Toughness online course visit:  https://www.lisatamati.com/page/mindsetuniversity/ Develop mental strength, emotional resilience, leadership skills and a never quit mentality - Helping you to reach your full potential and break free of those limiting beliefs.    For Lisa's free weekly Podcast "Pushing the Limits" subscribe on iTunes or your favorite podcast app or visit the website  https://www.lisatamati.com/page/podcast/   Transcript of the Podcast:    Speaker 1: (00:01) Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa [inaudible], brought to you by Lisatamati.com Speaker 2: (00:13) If your brain is not function at its best, then check out the team at vielight.com. Vielight producers photo biomodulation devices. Your brain function depends largely on the health of the energy sources of the brain cells, the mitochondria. Now research has shown that stimulating your brain with near infrared light revitalizes mitochondria. I use these devices daily for both my own optimal brain function and to slow age-related decline and also for my mom's brain rehabilitation after her aneurysm in stroke. So check out what the team at Vielight like, do it and use the code Tamati. That's T A M A T I at checkout to get a 10% discount on any of the devices. Speaker 3: (00:59) Hi everybody, Lisa Thomas to hear it pushing the limits. And today I have a very special couple of guests with me, Brian Hogan and Chloe Hogan all way from Oakland. Hi guys. How you doing? Good. Thanks. Good morning Lisa. We've had a little bit of technical troubles trying to get you on here, but we've worked it out. So now I have, this is a very special story guys that I wanted to share with you, the audience because Conway's had an incredible difficult journey and who did in a family. And I wanted to shoot a little bit of the story because it sort of parallels a little bit. And so I'm going to start with you. Brian, we what actually happened to Chloe? Can you take us back eight years ago. Speaker 4: (01:49) Okay. Well in the morning of the 22nd her birthday, like she left to go to work at around five 30 in the morning and when about full bath rate case down the road, she for some unknown reason the stage well, what we want you to get or not chase way up to miss something on the road. There was a funny morning. Speaker 3: (02:10) Yup. Speaker 4: (02:11) Yeah, she lost control of the car and slammed passenger side on a heavy concrete pap on. She sustained a traumatic brain injury. Fortunately, there was a, a chromo theater nurse. Well, living within steady. Yeah. 30 meters of the crash. Yeah. It has been, came out sort of situation called the called his wife came out and she stabilized Slatery way stabilized, got a breathing soon after that. Somebody had run a very one of my mum and the ACE arrived and then the ambulance arrived and she was taken to Middlemore hospital. Yeah, no, we were there and it's seven o'clock in the morning, we're gonna knock on our door and our street placements, standing here and of course you get to wonder what this is all about. You think the worst and it was the worst or most and they say cloud and being involved in an accident and that she was very serious. Speaker 4: (03:08) Accident was Neha terminology. A great 9. And right team is a fatality, so like currently offers to drive us through the middle more, which they did at great speed. And we arrived to fund how he had been stabilized in the hospital and that she was totally unconscious. Of course it was hooked up to all sorts of houses and gadgets. And then they then we were told that they didn't have the, the equipment to continue the treatment there she needed through the engine and eventually medical intervention. So put it in an ambulance. And again, we following her, rushed through to walk hospital where she went into intensive care and wow. Yeah. So it was quite a day I had a morning. Speaker 3: (03:56) Yes. Yeah. So it was, and so Chloe was only 22 years old. Major brain injury. So she's hanging on for dear life. She's in the hospital. Of course. Clara, you won't remember any of this. Nothing. Thank goodness. That's a really good thing. So Brian, I know that then it was touch and go for a fairly long time. Chloe was in a coma and the ICU unit what was that time in your life like? Speaker 4: (04:27) Well, I guess that first two or three days you are just a sideline, I observed that really, you couldn't do anything. We were totally numb, totally numb, or it was like an out of body experience. You know, the way we can tell the truth is going to poke through and tell that she was going to die really new. So it was a time of great concern and she was blissfully sleeping. Thank goodness. Yes, I was sick. Mmm. But anyway, I think on the third day Dr. Stevens straight cold us coordinating with the family and set the stage, there was a a high likelihood that she wouldn't die. It's a big paper, a long journey and go with it right at the store. Speaker 3: (05:18) So I know that she was in coma for I think 23 days, but a day like 19 or something, they said to you, you might have to turn off the life support. Speaker 4: (05:27) That's correct. That's correct. She was transferred to high to begin and see after, okay. A week out of 'em [inaudible] and after, I think it was the 19th day or the 20th day, real cold to a meeting with them seeking you register on a high dependency ward, Hey saved to S there is no chance Chi [inaudible] out of her coma. Injuries are too severe and you probably the family to consider the alternatives, which was withdrawal of life support. And I pushed a document or pamphlet across the [inaudible] devastated. Speaker 3: (06:08) You were devastated and you actually refused and you're Brian, we've thought about it. Of course you're has five runs. So yeah, you, you basically you, you know, it came to be that you lifted the life support on and thank God you did. Is that what happened? Speaker 4: (06:35) Well, in it to the little no document on the wall that says they can't, that's where they are intervention. You know, I'm on the ward. You lost it all as your rights. Yes. Brilliant. And so that was it. And everyone went away pretty safe. But anyway, just normal for Kali on the . Speaker 3: (06:58) 22 days she woke up, she woke up just four days later and I were expecting her to, you know, not, not wake up even at all. This is pretty frightening though, Brian. If you think about it, like how many times has life support been tuned off when it didn't need to be tuned off? Yeah, yeah. Certainly not three weeks on and to the drama. I remember with my mom, I was, you know, given non resuscitation orders to sign and I wasn't as polite as you just saying. No, I use some stronger language. It wasn't that way. Always still going there. And you know, so after Callie woke up, of course she had massive brain damage. And Chloe, what is the very first memories that you have? How many months passed or you know, your dad will be able to help you here, but how many months before you can actually remember anything? The first thing I remember was the patient. Okay. So you have actual little bits of memory of actually in the, in the hospital, so okay. No, and their rehab. The rehab. Okay. So after hospital. Speaker 4: (08:25) Yeah. Especially as an open book or hospital for two months to Kevin IBI, which was out in route around Nelly and yeah, so that was probably four months after accident before she has that numeric. Speaker 3: (08:41) Wow. And that was the very first one. Now the cloud we have any any movement, any, any speech, any memory of you at all when she, you know, after a couple of months or was she pretty much you know, non functioning Speaker 4: (08:59) Well at open hospital once well she had an issue with biting her tone. Yeah. We all them. So they had to end up vein was gadgets to stop it tongue movement, which was very divisive and terrible. So she had shaved an amount, the must gadgets stuck in the mouth and she had a trunk. Yeah. And she has had a pig on to tell me to be fade. Sorry. She goes, Oh, what up. So even though she had woken up, she had no real response. We couldn't, she couldn't talk. She could say us. And she made, she'd made eye contact. Yeah. The the left side of her body wasn't functioning, so she couldn't see out the left side. And so that will took probably six months to come back slowly. Speaker 3: (09:57) Then we came back. Okay, Speaker 4: (10:00) Well forget, say what, say you on a high rot side, but hang on. Oh God, that ran the wrong way. My left and right. She could say, say on her right side and left side wasn't functioning. So she couldn't say, Hey, we'll stop. Stop. But then anyway, they, it's but now we're getting after the two months when it was obviously she was stabilized and she was reactive. And little by little like pulled some of these troops and things out. But you're so stuck with us math thing. But once the truck and that came out and I was there on the, not a senior nurse sick, well I think she can cope what ourselves and we're going to remove. So she moved there and they pulled them out, I think to me, his daddy. Speaker 3: (10:59) Oh, then it might give so she remember Jude, she had obviously some functions and some memory still there. No really good sign because I'm early on in the pace, you know, it's pretty hard not, you know, you don't know. I know with mum I didn't know whether she knew who I was and what I was or anything. And Tony, you've got a very, very special mum and dad, haven't you? Yep. So you've been now in this journey for eight years and from that time that you woke up from the injury and then that whole time you've been working really, really hard and your heart and your appearance and your family been working really, really hard to bring you back. How hard is this journey been for you and what, what does it mean? Like terrible. Yeah. So hard. Tell me some of the worst things that you've been through. Like at the very beginning you obviously couldn't control anything in your body at all. Speaker 4: (12:04) No. I don't think so. Well she had 'em up a little reasonable. Not reasonable, but okay. Up. I've I've actually, but she had, you know, we had to help feed her every meal, months, probably six months. Like to go back to one thing and it might, your audience might be interested that and for others going through this, you know, I did as much research as possible. Everything. Dr Google is probably really wonderful. Yeah. And one of the other things on that that I found out was stimulation was important no matter what. So while she goes and well while she was in and and not and high dependency, she I used to sing to her. Speaker 3: (13:08) Okay. Speaker 4: (13:09) And I also used the read to this, I agree to a book laugh out loud so she could hear it, but every time I did that end, even my staying here hat right wig down. So she was selling it for around 90 to a hundred beats per minute hot. Right. Well it had dropped her 70 almost every time. So she was getting it. She was, she was [inaudible] and stimulating and that suddenly, you know, for folks that are in the same situation, they might like to try that. There was a young guy at IBO who was a boxer and he sustained a traumatic brain injury in the prefab and his training and he was almost totally climatized. So his mother was, they regulate but wouldn't, she wasn't nice gun sit with him. And I talked to him about boxing and gosh, you just, yeah. You could say he'd smile and he'd give me . Mmm. Your responsible. Sorry. Can I just, as I said, never give up and try it. I was like this possible, but know simulation on happiness. Is it great? Mmm. Speaker 3: (14:23) And I think it's really important that people treat them as if they are the or O'Brian. Don't talk to them as a fan, not reasons or over them. That's what I found very, very frustrating. In the early days, did you find that like they would talk with a car? We didn't exist. Speaker 4: (14:41) Yeah. Do you let the medical staff talk to, talk over her as like when you're in hospital? But I might've pissed no, and I made them talk to her and address that. Ava, she was our sponsor. We just, we just stuck with it. We're not gonna give out. Speaker 3: (15:04) Yeah. And, and giving people that respect, even though they can't respond, is very, very important for anybody who has disabilities or anybody who can't communicate or has had a stroke or brain injury, you know, always give them the full respect that you'd give anybody else and talk to them about this situation. You know, I find that really, really offensive when people don't do that, even though they can't respond. Yeah, you, you went to dr Google. That's exactly what I did. I went like hardcore researching every thing in the universe on brain injury. And I know like for the listeners, Brian and I connected a few years down the track with Curry and actually I was probably half a year in or a year and with mom's rehab when we connected, I think, and you rang me one day about hyperbaric oxygen therapy and see what I, what I thought about that. I think you'd, yeah. Tell us a little bit about that journey cause that happened already. That was already four years in or so to two colleagues rehab, is that right? Speaker 4: (16:07) Yeah, it was it. Well, almost daily diary, as I said to medical staff, you know, how bout hyperbaric oxygen treatment. And so every single person, every single metal comparison I spoke to gave him no joy at all. Don't know anything about that. That's not proven. It's a hurry. But I, you know, I played, I played in the open rugby up hydrocod color dry for seniors and we played Navy and I took the bait fuck shelf it before it was no blood. Speaker 3: (16:40) Was almost an old black. I'm sure he was glowing Speaker 4: (16:47) That vaccines may or the boys go and you know, we're talking after the guy and mother boys go into the, into the decompression chamber, which I had on the night device, but the next day after the game, and I said, you could watch bruises disappear now that was when I was about 19 or 20. So it was a hell of a year long, long time ago. But that sort of stuck with me. So one of the early things I thought about or have have hyperbaric Novia with it and I, I sort of gave up on it because we got so much negativity from it. Speaker 4: (17:24) But anyway we, she hadn't had an operation, a middle matter hospital to correct her foot. So while we're sitting on the there for bed awakened and I was reading books like really got stuck into this hyperbaric and I found this chamber that's private chamber in, the seven mountain Nelson. And so that was approximately four years. Oh, on this journey. Did we rent them out to her? And Jose, actually, if there's someone who's down the call, I was going through hopper. Greg did, I rang you or she had 2020 treatments of MACRA the first time. And within a week of coming away she'd be, she'd be, she got control of about, so she was before years there was incontinent, a nappy for four years. And and so that, that was just a huge step. Now there was nothing else different than we did the fixed date. Speaker 3: (18:27) So this is 4 years. I want people to listen. Keep it. This is four years into the rehabilitation cause a lot of people have said to me, it's too late. I had a stroke five years ago or 10 years ago. It's now used to be doing that for years after the event. 20 sessions. And you've already got a major, major breakthrough. This might not sound major, but as it is, as both of us and all of us have gone through, being in consonants is major and it's not fun. It's not fun as it Chloe and after 20 treatments to get control, that means that part of the brain is coming back online. That's what that is. And then you, you had to go all the way to map or, so there's a, there's a a medical hyperbaric facility down in map or a Nelson, which I think is unfortunately closing if it hasn't already close his it, Brian. Speaker 4: (19:20) Ah, yeah, it's on the, in the process of closing down, but the much, Oh, absolute tragedy, you know, saying there's so much pressure from people who know about it. So it starts trickling along, but it'll eventually closed. I imagine by the end of this year, Speaker 3: (19:40) If we had, if we had lots of money, we'd go and buy it and get it up and running again. And no. So dr Tim are, is the, is the, is the doctor down there? He was in charge of the costume, a hyperbaric facility before he went in private. Now hyperbaric is a hugely beneficial, and then if you're listening to this guys, he was a, one of the world's leading experts on this podcast over two years ago now, Dr. Scott Scheer, who she has insights and go back and look up and I'll put it in the show notes, the link to that episode because this is really powerful. You did that 20 sessions and then you went back again and this, each time you're taking Kali right down to Nelson, you're staying, living down DHEA, which is a hell of a sacrifice day, isn't it? Speaker 4: (20:24) Oh yeah, I see it. You want to have a holiday? I got him out. Poets. Speaker 3: (20:29) It's a lovely place. But in karma you had to go in this chamber every day pretty much every day. Apart from weekends, weekends I got to go shopping. She's an expensive daughter, isn't she? So how many sessions did you end up having a map or Brian? Speaker 4: (20:52) 195, I think. Speaker 3: (20:54) 95 of the medical grade hyperbaric treatments in as she progressed. What were the things that you saw come back online? Cause when I met she was fully in a wheelchair, unable to stand or anything like that. What happened over there? 185 sessions. There's a lot of sessions, but that's, it's nothing when you compared to a lifetime. Speaker 4: (21:18) Oh yeah. Like it was well it just changed everything. She, she gained weight gain control of her alum. So her feet, you know, the walking out of it, she doesn't and I, I'm a high Walker. Speaker 3: (21:39) Yep. Yep, yep. Speaker 4: (21:40) And she has to have somebody in front of it pulling in somebody behind my conception 40th and the tray. That's as good as she had got. After half the Brack, she was able to walk to the gutter frame and assisted, you know, over a period of talking to them while we were down there. So her fake placement there was a first thing I noticed was probably after 40 stations she could manage her feet and place them in the right place instead of getting them 10 without. So then she was stable on like other friends. So it didn't make a person in front of the person to be healthy. And from that she's going on, she entering the Walker and now she's four, she's walking through and we'll link to basketball court. Speaker 3: (22:27) Wow. Probably tell you you were on television recently. We'd show because it was a Christmas miracle that you gave to your dad. What did, what did you do? May and Jane organized, did they own seven shop? Oh, I wanted to be on TV. Hey, curious, why not? And you showed them and this buddy you showed your dad and your mom, you for the first time taking some steps, is that right? Yeah. And I caught it on camera. I'll put the link to that guy, that video. Guys, these are copies for your steps. Now this is after 195 hyperbaric sessions, thousands of hours of physio therapy. Goodness knows what else you've done as well, Brian, for everything you've done, everything under the sun, pretty much. If someone sees this weird musical therapy, have you stuck? I've got lasers that I stick up mom's nose. I've done everything possible. Speaker 3: (23:33) Yeah, I've still got that. I actually think it's great. You know, in other words, we didn't just, both of us approach this with try everything. If it's risky, try it. And if it's risky, we'll weigh up the risks and we'll have a go at it and research like how, and take responsibility. Don't wait for the medical professionals to give you the go ahead. Don't wait for the green light for hyperbaric therapy. You know, this isn't an advert for five very clear free, but it is a very powerful therapy if you have enough sessions. And it's just an absolute travesty that Maffra is perhaps closing because the regulations around the just terrific. That made it very, very difficult from what I hear for dr terms to function and you leave are these stories. My mum has had 250, half of Barrick sessions. I ended up buying a, what they called a mild hyperbaric chamber, which is not as good as the one in Maffra, but it was the best that we could do. I had the first 53 sessions with you in a, in a proper, if you want to call it then a proper chamber. But it was through a dive company and it was, you know, taken off and we couldn't use it anymore. And I created that would giving me enough brain back of mom's brain that I could then teach you to walk and to do the things. And the same would have been with you I Brian with the, with the, with the policies coming back. Speaker 4: (25:05) Oh yeah, absolutely. And I like fake placements, quite important now with ums and she's got control of them. And I put that down to hyperbaric because nothing else is, well, she's had lots and lots and lots, lots and stuff. But I suppose that's been one of the pickiest parts of the puzzle and putting it back together. Speaker 3: (25:32) It's the key of it because it ha so what hyper hyperbaric does people is it hyper oxygenates your your body. So you're getting about seven times the amount of oxygen into the body and it's compressing the oxygen molecules so that it can actually pass through the blood brain barrier to the parts of the brain that are damaged but not deed. So the deed pats were unable to bring back. But typically around the deep parts of tissue there is what they call way ischemic penumbra and these are cells that are alive but they're not functioning. And these are the ones that we can hopefully target with hyperbaric and bring back. It also hits the inflammation pathways in the brain and in the body. And it also helps produce more STEM cells and all of these things help the body to repair it. So it's not a quick fix. Speaker 3: (26:18) It's something that you need to have a lot of sessions in. But as you can see with probably after four years of not getting very far at all and then having these 185 sessions over the period of, I don't know, a year and a half, two years, she's now walking that is massive. She now has control over her bowels and 40 in control over a hell of a lot more. Whose features also improved greatly, hasn't it? Karma. You're talking pretty now? Cause when I, when I meet slow, yeah. I think when I met you it was quite slow. It was. It was, and that's a huge difference. So it's a hugely powerful and you've got your whole life ahead. You're a super young lady and I know that you've got your 30th birthday coming up. Is that right? You're invited. Oh, I'm invited. It's fantastic. Speaker 3: (27:09) I'll try and get to that point. And so Chloe's dad and I have had sort of exchanged notes along the road, however we, Brian and given each other tips, some trucks of what we've learned along the way. And this has been really a multipronged approach. It's not just the one thing, a huge part of it has been hyperbaric, but it's also thousands of hours and the therapists and training and retraining the mind. It's having the guts and the determination like if Brian wasn't such a feisty, don't take any shirts person who is going to push through every barrier and if I wasn't the same then I don't think mum or Chloe would we be with AR. And by the same token, Chloe and mum are also identical and that they are fighters. They are people that persist that resilient. The positivity that Callie brings to this really difficult journey is nothing short of mind blowing. I've been absolutely astounded to watch you over the last few years on how you've just fought your, your differently. A chip off the old block, aren't you daughter? Speaker 3: (28:23) I have lots of grit. Exactly. So call me. You are just a couple of weeks away from running your first marathon when the accident happened. Day one. So I forgot. I forgot. You'd already need the one. Sorry. I was going to do it and then you want to smash that toe. I'll tell you what though, that dream is still alive in you, isn't it? To athlete again, get out there and race and be in a, in a, in a racing, you've actually done a fiveK , is that right? Yeah. Fun run. And you did it on your, your frame at that time. Zimmer frame funding. Yeah. Speaker 4: (29:14) She doesn't, well, yeah, I guess because it, but yeah, she doesn't walk. Oh by Southwest. We have lots of people around helping her. Oh, and encourage her, right. Very steep that she needed. Speaker 3: (29:30) Yeah. That's insane. That is so amazing. Chloe, you've got mum, I'm up to two Ks with mum. The five K's yet. And story in Brian's story is in my new book, which is coming out in match called relentless. And it's, it's another example of an incredible comeback story. And that's why I was really keen to share this. And Brian is hopefully gonna write the book one day and Brian and chloe, you're gonna get the bums into here and share this insight as well. Even though writing a book is a mission. I hope so because this is an incredible story, Callie and it's not finished yet and she's still got a week wise to go on on. Definitely to get full independence. Ron, do you think Chloe will ever reach full, full independence again and be able to no flat on her own or, or live in a house with, with flatmates and they talked to them. Speaker 4: (30:28) Oh, without a doubt. But they have a death. Speaker 3: (30:30) Really? That's amazing. So at the moment you with mum and dad? Yeah. Yeah. And yet are you sick and mum and dad, do you want your own independence? He goes away sometimes. So it's okay. It's just you and ma and then you girls go shopping, but more on spend. Spend some more money there. Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't really like shopping. They keep a grip on it. They'll say, Oh, hype site. So I call it. What are the next steps in your journey? What are you working on at the moment? Because you're always working on something. Hey. Yeah. To be able to walk without the Walker. Oh, like a long period of time. Yep. Yep. And what are the things that she's struggling with Brian in that respects as a balance or spatial awareness or con coordinating your face and things. Don't Speaker 4: (31:28) A balance really chase get, you know, like every day she gets better at it. You're like, we, we have been away to Tyro since Christmas or so before Christmas. And even I notice even though we're here all the time with it, even I know she can climb the stairs and stairs now with minimal assistance, whereas at Christmas it was, you know, you have to keep a class on I, but she can do it all by herself. Now just with my mind, Speaker 3: (32:00) Are you using functional neurology? That's something that I'd highly recommend you go out and start looking into if you haven't to Willy, which is using a, so doing things like with your eyes balancing, you know, different eye exercises that really helped me with non, with your facial awareness and who balance stuff. So if you, if you, are you doing that at all with, with PI? Speaker 4: (32:20) Yeah. maybe they're not that I'm aware of. Exactly. If you could save me that. Speaker 3: (32:26) Yeah, I'll send you a couple of videos. I'm in links to doctors who, who teach this online. I'd also recommend you go to a good car, Frank, cause it knows about functional neurology or I'm not sure if there's up in Oakland or not, but and just get things looked at it from that perspective because adjusting the bet can also help with I've got mum at the chiropractor at the moment, we're trying to straighten out. It's fine. Of course things are going a little bit skew with after four years of being, you know, leaned over on one side and that can help with neurological function as well. So it's just say people like it's really important to share these insights and information with each other cause we're still learning, we're still growing, we're moving forward. And each time you come, you take a step forward, you actually come up against a new obstacle. I've found a Braun, there's something that, some new place that you haven't thought about. A new, a new level, a new deal sort of thing. Speaker 4: (33:19) Yeah. You know, like the other thing that I think is important is as I'm assessing the notes that you know, the right to make a significant difference as well. I think Speaker 3: (33:33) The right food for our brain is really, really important. And having good high fats, good Omega threes, really important. I have a whole regime of different supplements that I also have mum on. And we also do something called epigenetic testing. And I got into this Brian, it looks because it looks at your gene genetic makeup and how they're expressing now and gives the exact right diet for that person's genes. So it'd be something that we Speaker 4: (34:02) Yeah, for sure. I like look at them. Speaker 3: (34:07) Yeah. Cause I think what, what, what the key takeaway from this guys is obviously hyperbarics really important. Second is resilience in fight in persistence and not giving up in certainly having the support of a wonderful family or friends or people that can help anyone going through a drama like this and being resilient and then also the right diet and taking a really multipronged approach. Not just relying on drugs, not relying on just physio. It's not enough. It's not enough. It's a part of the puzzle, but it's, it's not, it's not enough for brain injury, but there is a way back and there is quality of life. You know, Chloe, you're pretty happy lighting it nowadays that you, you always seem to be jetting around the place and having all travel. You love travel, you've got a wonderful family. You're moving again, you're walking in, you're going somewhere, you've got your job, sort of sit for the next couple of years. What do you get yourself back to? More independence and, but near as quality of life and nearest happiness. Fear and it sounds, yeah, it's an amazing story guys. Brian, are there any last words or closing any last words that you want to encourage people who might be going through hardships? It doesn't even need to be brain injury, but just hard times. Speaker 4: (35:23) Well, I, you know, I, my bag disappointment through or laser as a, a number of the professionals just don't get it. And you know, like a lot, probably more than 50% of the you know, they use psychologists if you like. Have said in front of Chloe, you'll never walk again. You've got unrealistic expectations to hit face. And some of them say, you know, you'll never have you know, never have a pattern in your life and you got any issue and you're going to get [inaudible] don't get used to it. That's, that's how it's going to be. The phone a lot. And I've got so angry and in front of people, I never quite lose it, but I felt like Speaker 3: (36:21) A few times and my big brother have lost it toe a few times. Speaker 4: (36:27) Yeah. And it's just stupid. They put themselves up as so called experts and they, yeah, I know nothing for those facts. We just kept them. You don't want to know anything about them. I've tried them in the door. That's it. We're not coming back. We keep looking and, and we've had some absolutely wonderful caregivers or professionals that are help Chi and, and an event like I, we keep changing providers cause he goes to speech therapists almost every two or three years until we find the right one. But they run out of ideas. They run out of experience and colleagues continue to improve. So therefore some of them you get to a stage where they've topped out, I don't know any more and can't take it to the next stage. Or the challenge is to find the next person who can take it to the next day. And we've been relentless at that nonsense and we look constantly for people that can help. And we just kept the negative ones there immediately. Non-Native might, I don't know. And I just really totally surprises me how how these people lie and I still operate and I just wonder how many people get discouraged by that and just accept it. We're, you know, we document, Speaker 3: (37:52) No, we don't. And, and, and we've, you know, like the thing is like, we're feisty fighters. We, we not people that give up and how many people go under the bus who don't have feisty daughters or fathers or people that will help them. I had times at the hospital where, like in front of my mum, I remember vividly, we had a, we were finally got into a physio program and of course she wasn't ICC like you guys. So we didn't get a lot of support. And I finally got her into a physio program after a year and we did this training with him, which was excellent. And he preceded, I could have done more in my, you know, when lunch break than they did. And at the end of the six weeks, they'd done all these tests with here and they'd talk to her like she was an idiot. Speaker 3: (38:35) And we were in this panel that we had to present the senior, that we were allowed to stay in the program. And we were taken into this room and I said to her, look, Isabel is below the level of the worst dementia patient we've seen. There is excellently no hope. She will never do anything again. We not going to continue in the program and this is in front of my mum. Right. And, and I just turned around to my mum and I said how does it make you feel mum? And she said, well, I was feeling quite empowered until I heard that, that I'm below the level of dementia patient now I'm absolutely depressed and I don't know what to think. And the mouths dropped open. They have never heard her speak a full sentence because that talked down to her, realized she had an intelligence via that they, they had ignored. And these are the professionals, the doctors, they send the fuzzier therapists and you know, I'm not saying that all like that from pig. God, they're not complete idiots. We told them to stop the program. Speaker 3: (39:42) I bet you've seen hates cause I've seen hates and in people who had told me, even, you know, good physios who would come to the end of their abilities, who told me you won't get any more rubbish. Yeah. And you can imagine when you've got a 78 year old how they're even more so, because they're like, she's 78. What do you want? You know, made it go, no, she's my mum and I'm going to fight and I wanted to live to 120, you know, then my attitude and I'm not, I'm not, I'm not happy with where we're at it, I'm very, I'm glad we're here but I want more and Callie wants more. We keep looking for the next layer of people that can help us and that's why we keep exchanging ideas and I've got a couple for Chloe to look into. So Speaker 4: (40:36) Yeah, I guess that that was really my point. I think just don't give up and when you get a divorce that you don't think is right, seek a second opinion or just go elsewhere and I just tell them out. They're not talking to our my niece has just qualified as a medical doctor and I said to her, she was here just over Christmas period. Said to her, what you know, what did they teach your bed? Hyperbaric oxygen treatment. And she said nothing. Nothing, absolutely nothing. Absolutely stupid as that I've been back works for almost, even though I dislocated my shoulder playing rugby years and years ago. And when they told me what I need a shoulder reconstruction thought and I was functioning okay. But I couldn't wash my hair with my left. Well wash it with my right. But so I put up with that for years and years and after that first 20 treatments, Speaker 3: (41:35) Yeah. Wow. What's flowing? No question. That there's no growth like crazy me. It does. We don't ask Dr. Scott share who was on this you know, earlier this, this podcast he said to me, if we can get three treatments, if anybody who's had a heart attack or stroke within a few days we can have the mortality. Right. And I see, why the hell is this not an every single ICU in the world. And you see, because there's no money to be made in it. He said that I'm a doctor, this is not from [inaudible] the company behind it, the clinical trials, they won't do anything cause you can't patient oxygen and they can't make money out of it. And unfortunately that is the general state of our health system. It's very pharmacological based and it's very surgery based. And while that brilliant surgery and the brilliant at those parts of the puzzle, they're not good when it comes to chronic health management and they're no good when it comes to a situation like this. And that's why, you know, I know this is controversial, unnoticeable piss some people off, but this is our experience and it needs to be shared because there's a hundred other people that will back up what we're saying a thousand other people. Yeah. Interesting enough. Was the next a customer in the door, was that an American lady? And we're talking about, she said, well, funnily enough, almost every new mall would you go on until you are in the States nowadays as a wellness clinic. Speaker 3: (43:33) There you go. Yeah, it's growing and, and, and the popping up. We'll have New Zealand. I opened the clinic here with a, what they call a mild hyperbaric facility with, so we can't afford the big ones with the big medical grade, but they are justice just about as good, not quite as good, but it just about as good, they don't have a hundred percent oxygen and these are popping up all over the country. So you guys, if you want to find out about it, this is not just for people with brain injuries. This is for people who want an anti aging. Good for you, for athletes. This is good for healing wounds. This is absolutely proven stuff. And there is clinical trials. I have a season. It is a powerful and by the same token, there's a hundred other Sierra pays or biohacking or whatever you want to call it, stuff out there that is worth looking into. Speaker 3: (44:21) We can't give recommendations for everything there is, but there's a hell of a lot that I've tried. And all combined together. Nope. Do the restaurant, do the risk assessment yourself. And if you think it's for you, go for it. And don't be told what you can and you can't do. And you know, just keep powering on clothing. Brian, you've been fantastic today. Thank you so much for sharing your story. It's really awesome. It's so important Chloe, that you get out there and you tell people this journey that you've been on, there's a reason why you've been through this. We've got to tune it into a positive, even though it's been health, you and your family. This is why the book for me is important to get it out there, to share these insights so that other people don't have to have it as hard as we did. Speaker 3: (45:11) And if we can help people then it's great. So if anybody wants to reach out to calling weaker, they find you guys your famous snare Chloe. Yeah, my Danny that drew runnings, my Facebook page, my journey back to running Facebook. So clubby Hogan on Facebook and I can find you the year under Chloe Hogan. That be right. Chloe is Hogan. Okay. Chloe, Ms. Hogan, what a complicated name you've got. Wow. That is very fancy. So fire was my granddad. Oh wow. That's a pretty cool name. So Chloe, Amy's Hogan, if anyone wants to reach out to Corey, I'm sure she'd love to hear from you. If anyone wants to reach out to me or to Brian, please let us know. You can email me and I can pass any messages on. If you've got any questions. Thank you very much guys for sharing your story. We've got to get it out there more. It's an absolutely amazing story and you and mum, Chloe are both rock stars, so thanks though. Thanks Lisa! Speaker 2: (46:20) We're pushing the limits this week. I hope that that was really interesting for you and you took some really strong takeaways from that interview with Brian and Chloe. It's been a, an amazing to watch her journey over the last few years parallel to my mums and some of the insights that we've both gained a really along the same path. So I hope you'll take heat of some of the notes that we talk. I just wanted to remind you to hop on over to our website. If you want to check out our programs. We've got three flagship programs. We've got our online run training Academy running hot. We you can learn everything you need to know about running with you are doing your first five K or 10 K or maybe you're gone for an a half marathon. Or if you're doing a hundredth hundredth miler, we would love to help you. Speaker 2: (47:04) We have a holistic run training system that is based around our five pillars. So these are your run training sessions, you mobility work, your strength work, your nutrition and your mindset and all those pieces of the puzzle. Really, really important. It's not just about putting one foot in front of the other and winging it and seeing how you go. Certainly not when once you start getting into the longer distances or once you start running sort of any injury issues. So please check that out. We also have mindset U, which is our mental toughness Academy. And this is all about developing a stronger mindset. You know, all the stuff you just heard about. And the interview with colleague, that sort of stuff. It's about resilience, it's about persistence. It's about overcoming that negative voice in your heads, those limiting beliefs that were programmed into you perhaps as a young person. Speaker 2: (47:53) All of that sort of good stuff. So cheek out mindset you're in. The third program that we have is our epigenetics testing program. Now this is just really next level. Now this is a program that's been put together by hundreds of scientists working from 15 different science disciplines to look specifically at your genes and how they are expressing right now. And so this is the next step in personalized health. Never before in the history of mankind. Have we ever had an insight into our bodies like we do now. And then information can help us really nail down our health problems, our optimizing our house, tuning the clock back on time and reaching high-performance. It give you information right from like having Google for your, for your own body basically. You know, it'll tell you exactly the right foods to eat, the right times of the day, your chronobiology all about the different times of the day, your hormones, when they're replacing what your dominant hormones are. Speaker 2: (48:54) It'll give you information on your mindset, how your mind works, which parts of your brain you use the most are just absolutely next level of information. So if you want to check out our epigenetics program, hop on over to my website, Lisa Thomas E. Dot com and hit the programs button and you'll see all three of our programs. I've also got our new book relentless coming out on the 11th of March, 2020 then this is a story of bringing my bump mum back from a mess of aneurysm. And you can preorder that book. Now, if you do preorder it, you'll get free access for the next three weeks only to mindset you. So you'll get your free X's to mindset you, you also get a discount on the book if you preorder it. The book does not ship until the 11th of March. But if you support me in getting this underway, I'm actually going to give you access to mindset. You now, that's a value of $275 and that program has been running for a few years and has helped countless people. So if you want to get this as a onetime only offer only to promote the book, please head on over to the shop at lisatamati.com Under the books button and you'll find relentless the preorders available there. So thanks very much for your time everyone, and we'll see you again next week. Speaker 1: (50:12) That's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to write, review, and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at Lisatamati.com.

Riding high off that Fast Five wave, we're once again headed across the pond for Fast & Furious 6. Joining us once again is Cara Gael O'Regan (of the Wistful Thinking podcast) to talk about her favorite moments, her favorite outfits, and the moments that made her cry. We also fire up another version of "That's So Brian!", guess the most visually unique car yet on "Dude, What's My Car?", and find some truly incredible tweets in "Boy, Do We Have a Podcast for You!" If you only listen to 2 Fast 2 Forever for the games, boy, do we have an episode about Fast & Furious 6 for you! (Note: Next week, we'll be covering Into the Blue. Stream it for free on Amazon Prime or Hulu!) Email us: family@cageclub.me Visit our Patreon page at patreon.com/2fast2forever. Extra special shout-out to Ben Milliman, Jake Freer, Alex Elonen, and Nick Burris for joining at the “Interpol’s Most Wanted” level or above! Intro music by Nico Vasilo. Interlude and outro music by Wes Hampton.

A message from Annie Grace about the deeper meaning behind a funnel. On today’s episode Russell shares a video from his Inner Circle member Annie Grace about when she discovered the significance of a funnel versus an hourglass. Here are some of the awesome tidbits you will find in this episode: Find out why Annie Grace was discouraged when she realized she couldn’t have an impact on everyone she wanted to. And see how realizing the significance of an hourglass versus a funnel helped her feel good about her level of impact. So listen here to find out what Annie Grace means when she says she’s an hourglass. ---Transcript--- Hey Everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I am really excited because I’m going to actually be sharing with you guys a video from behind the scenes of the Inner Circle meeting. So some of you guys know Annie Grace in our community who is one of my favorite people. She shared something at the last inner circle meeting talking about a funnel versus an hourglass, and it had such a profound impact on me I wanted to republish it here. So with that said, I’m going to queue up the theme song and when we come back I will share with you guys that video, or that message and I hope you guys love it. Hey everyone, so we are back, and right now we’re going to move to the next segment of the show, which I’m really excited for, this is called Tales of a Funnel Hacker. This is where I’m pulling out really cool stories from the community. Sometimes they’re people who speak at Funnel Hacking Live, or maybe they’re in my inner circle, or maybe I hung out with them at the restaurant, there’s just a cool story that I wanted to share. And this is one is someone who doesn’t know I’m sharing this yet, so I’m kind of excited. But a lot of you guys know I have my own inner circle coaching program, it’s $50,000 a year, we had 100 people in it, and this year I actually shut it down, which if you listen to the Marketing Secrets podcast you’ve heard that story before, which was really hard and painful thing for me to shut down. But it was something we needed to do to focus on where we’re going. But basically every single entrepreneur in that group gets to come and they have 30 minutes on stage here in our office to present what they’re doing in their business and stuff like that. And I wanted to share with you guys a little clip from my friend Annie Grace. She is one of my favorite people in our inner circle. And she shared something that had such a huge profound impact on me, I remember after she said it, I just sat there and I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I kept thinking about it, the next day I thought about it, the next day I had her, there was another group that came in and I had her re-tell it again. And I wanted to share it with you guys because it’s such a big important thing. For those who don’t know Annie, Annie has written a bunch of different books, I can’t tell you, I have another cool announcement about her that I can’t announce yet, but…Yeah I can’t yet, I almost got in trouble. Anyway, she’s awesome, but she wrote a book called the Alcoholic Experiment, she has another one called The Naked Mind and she helps people to break the chains of alcohol addiction. And her books are amazing, even if you’re not addicted to alcohol, they can help you break the chains of any addiction because it helps you understand the psychology behind it, and NLP and all the stuff that affects your brain that gets you, that causes an addiction, and she is just an amazing person who is changing so many people’s lives. And at inner circle she was talking about her business and how she’s trying to help all these people and she’s talking about, she’s got a certification program coming and all these things she’s doing, and you know, she’s selling thousands of copies of her books and she’s on TV, and all these things that are happening, and I think sometimes we’re all excited, but then you see, “Man, I’m selling all these things, and not everyone’s having success.” And you get frustrated, and there’s always that piece of it. And this insight she shared had such a profound impact on me I wanted to share it with you guys. So I’m going to show this clip, it’s about 2 minutes long, if you guys want to see it right now. This is from Annie Grace during her inner circle presentation this year. Annie: Really, I have been struggling a lot with this idea of a funnel, since the very beginning, on a personal perspective. So you know, I’ve sold multiple hundreds of thousands of books and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, of all those you know 250,000 books, how many people actually read it? And then how many people finish it? And then how many people does it touch? And how many people…..” and it gets so small to the point where the people who need you and the people you’re impacting feels so, so, so small. So Brian was like, “Well, it’s kind of like the parable of the sower. You sprinkle the seed and some of it falls on…it’s just how the universe works. Some of it’s going to get choked out, some of it’s going to spring up, some of it’s going to do these things.” So I was like, “Okay, it’s just how the universe works. I just have to make peace with this idea.” And we just opened this Naked Mind Institute where we certified 60 coaches to go and kind of do this work in the world. And I was driving back from that training, I’d just dropped my team off at the airport, and I was really thinking about that. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, even in that room, 60 people came but how many of them are actually going to create these businesses that do something and go somewhere in the world? It’s just going to get smaller and smaller and there’s probably only going to be like 5 of them that are like the breakout people that impact other people.” And then all the sudden I just remembered the second part of that verse, it was like, “But the seeds that actually spring up will reproduce 30, 60, 100 times.” So all the sudden I saw that it’s not a funnel, it’s an hourglass, and I wanted to share that because that’s what Russell’s doing too, right. There’s, you know, of all the people Russell touches, there’s only a few, but then you look at the people in this room, and we’re the hourglass, we’re the people who are like impact. And then the next thing I wanted to share that I think is so good for me, and it’s something that I remind myself of all the time. As entrepreneurs, we are as Alex Charfen says, “Momentum based beings.” We are forward focused, we want the next thing, we are going to the next place. And a practice that I do, and something that just really speaks true to me is this quote, and I think if we can just say this to ourselves and have the tension of wanting the next thing, but also knowing that in this moment we have arrived, in this moment we are here, in this moment our destination is in each step and each moving forward. It’s so powerful and sometimes when you just get stressed and thinking about the next thing, just remember we’re already arrived you guys, we’re already here. This is the stuff. So I wanted to share those things. Russell: Isn’t that an awesome message. I think that I’ve felt that sometimes before, where it’s just like, man we’re doing all these things, we’re spending so much money to put our voice out there, our message out there, and sometimes it is discouraging when you look at it. You know we sold, and I see people a lot of times in the Clickfunnels Facebook group like, “There’s 250,000 people in here, why is there only 100,000 members? What’s wrong with everybody else?” or “We sold, I don’t even know, 3 or 4 thousand copies of the Dotcom Secrets and Expert Secrets books, but how is only 100,000 members, and from those members how many are having success?” and you look at that and it can be frustrating sometimes. And then when she pointed that out and said, no it’s not a funnel it’s an hourglass, the people that do take hold, those are the ones that grow, that’s what gives you the inspiration. That’s really what I think all of us, our calling is to go out there and be as loud as we can, put our voice out there, put our products, our services, put it out there, and try to change as many people’s lives as possible, but the ones you do touch, the ripple effect from that, that’s why we do this. So anyway, I hope that that helps any of you guys who have been going through this process, who may be struggling or maybe haven’t figured out…I think especially if you guys have taken the DISC profile, I’m a very high ROI, my highest value, I need to see a return on investment or else I don’t want to do it. For any of you guys who sometimes get frustrated like, ‘I created this video I posted it and I had like 13 people watch it.” Or whatever, and you’re frustrated because you’re not getting the traction you want yet. It’s like, that’s okay, you have to keep putting the message out there, and putting it out there, and keep putting it out there because you’re sowing all these seeds, you’re sowing all these seeds. And the right people are going to find it, they’re going to hear your message, they’re going to take that thing and that’s what’s going to blossom, that’s what’s going to change the world. So that’s my message to you guys from Annie, and I’m going to continue through Marketing Secrets live and try to find some of these cool experiences like that, where there was 30 people in the room there with Annie that heard that, but it’s something that I want to share with the entire world. I’m going to try to find some of those segments to share with you guys to really give you the impact. So I hope you guys enjoyed that. If you did, post it down in the comments down below, say, ”Annie, thank you so much for the hourglass analogy. I think it’s amazing.” And that’s it for the second segment of the Marketing Secrets live show.  We need a drum, we need a band. We definitely need a live band right now. Hey this is Russell again, and really quick I want to thank you so much to listening to the Marketing Secrets podcast, I hope you enjoyed this episode, and if you did can you imagine what it would be like to experience this for four days with 5000 other insane funnel hackers? People who are just like you, who think like you, who believe like you, who have vision like you. If you would like to do that then you need to be at this year’s Funnel Hacking Live, it’s coming up very, very soon. If you don’t have your tickets yet, you can go to funnelhackinglive.com. And it gives you the ability to leave your home, leave where you’re trying to create and dream and come to a place with a whole bunch of people who think like you, who believe like you, who see visions like you of what they can create, and what they can become. Funnel Hacking Live is not just a marketing event, it’s not just a personal development event, it’s both of those things wrapped into one, and it is an experience that will change your life forever. So I want to make sure you get your tickets. If you don’t have them yet, go to funnelhackinglive.com, get your tickets. We have sold out 5 years in a row, we will sell out this year as well, and after you get your tickets you will be there with 5000 other insane, crazy, fun funnel hackers talking about how to grow their business, sharing all the best marketing secrets, things that are working today. But you gotta go get your tickets now at funnelhackinglive.com. Thanks so much and I’ll see you in Nashville.

Brian and Blake back with another episode of the Chasing Tone podcast.So Brian has been in “fuzz state of mind” lately toying with some fuzz circuits. This has Blake excited and sparks a conversation about where this could be going. Is a new fuzz coming from Wampler?Is Blake putting down his guitar to play the synth? He talks about his desire to acquire a Fender Rhodes piano and how that led him to purchase a Yamaha synth with some Rhodes modules. Can effects be used here? The guys talk about it.LoFi beats, winter prepping the body, and Eric Johnson responds on the Tone Mob page. It’s all in this week’s episode of the Chasing Tone podcast.Find us at: http://www.WamplerPedals.comhttp://www.Facebook.com/WamplerPedalshttp://www.Twitter.com/WamplerPedalshttp://www.Instagram.com/WamplerPedalshttp://www.Facebook.com/ChasingTonePodcasthttp://www.facebook.com/groups/wamplerfanpage/

These days, it seems many are easily offended by the everyday issues that make up the contentious political landscape. So Brian and Jake unpack in this episode what they believe triggers people on the right and left. And, as always, the PB&J boys offer their common-sense views to help diminish the drama.

We were unprepared again. So Brian hit record and him and Khalil just talked about whatever came to mind. It was a train wreck. They brought back segregation in the form of parody film lists, and that's not the worst part of the episode. Find out more at https://cool-de-la.pinecast.coThis podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Welcome to Bourbon Heritage Month where it’s full of awesome festivals like Bourbon and Beyond. We dive into the show talking about Pernod's intent to acquire Castle Brands which Jefferson’s is a major portfolio player and if $223 million was a good deal. We comment on PBR's newest whiskey which is aged for a grand total of 5 seconds. Next is looking at the artificial tongue and what this could mean to the future of the industry. We wrap it up examining EU tariffs and it’s impact 1 year later on the whiskey market. Show Partners: The University of Louisville now has an online Distilled Spirits Business Certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry. Learn more at uofl.me/pursuespirits. Barrell Craft Spirits has a national single barrel program. Ask your local retailer or bourbon club about selecting your own private barrel. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. The 2019 Kentucky’s Edge Bourbon Conference & Festival pairs all things Kentucky with bourbon. It takes place October 4th & 5th at venues throughout Covington and Newport, Kentucky. Find out more at KentuckysEdge.com. Central Kentucky Tours offers public and private bourbon tours for groups from 2 to 55. Learn more at CentralKentuckyTours.com. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick takes a look back at the Legend Series. Let's discuss Bourbon and Beyond. Pernod buys Castle Brands for $223 million. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190828005771/en/Pernod-Ricard-Acquire-Castle-Brands-223-Million Do you think more smaller brands are going to get bought out? Is Pernod trying to get back to bourbon? Was this a good buy for Pernod? What do you think about PBR making whiskey? https://www.jsonline.com/story/entertainment/beer/2019/08/22/pabst-blue-ribbon-now-making-whiskey-collaboration-new-holland/2086883001/ Have you all seen Screwball Peanut Butter Whiskey? What are your thoughts on the artificial tongue? https://www.geek.com/tech/artificial-tongue-can-taste-subtle-differences-in-whiskey-1798999/ More secondary markets are gone. What are your thoughts? Who do you think is behind the shut downs? Tariffs continue to hammer down on bourbon. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-whiskey/us-whiskey-exporters-struggle-after-year-of-eu-tariffs-idUSKCN1V80DN What do you think is next for tariffs? What impact do tariffs have on the bourbon industry? Thanks to Nick from breakingbourbon.com, Brian from sippncorn.com, and Blake from bourbonr.com for joining. 0:00 I love bourbon, but I'm not ready to restart my career in be a distiller. I have a bachelor's degree and I want to continue to use those skills in the whiskey industry. So check this out. The University of Louisville now has an online distilled spirits business certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry like finance, marketing and operations. This is perfect for anyone looking for more professional development. And if you ever want to get your MBA, their certificate credits transfer into Ul's new online MBA program. Learn more about this online program at business.louisville.ecu slash online spirits 0:38 so I'm just waiting for the movie where artificial tongues go rogue and one of them decides is going to go and replace everybody's whiskey with like rapid each whiskey because it's got the perfect profile and there's just insanity and chaos. You know 1:08 This is Episode 217 of bourbon pursuit. I'm one of your host Kenny. And as usual, a little bit of news to go through. So larceny from heaven Hill has launched a new app. It's an augmented reality app called unlock the Rick house. The app was inspired by the history of john II Fitzgerald. He was a treasury agent back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and was one of the only people that was legally allowed to carry the keys to the barrel storage Rick houses with a discerning palate for fine bourbon john Fitzgerald often uses Rick house keys to gain access to some of the finest bourbon barrels for himself. And those barrels from which he chose to help himself were often referred to as the Fitzgerald barrels around the distillery. The infamous active larceny led to the larceny brand and has now inspired the newest augmented reality app. So Once downloaded, you can explore the Rick houses by tapping on each one to search for the prize winning 2:00 Fitzgerald barrel, and from September 1 through December 31. Each tap of the Rick house gains one entry into the grand prize of $10,000. Daily prizes will also be awarded and include everything from a mini barrel shot glass and larceny magnets all the way up until a larceny guitar or an LED sign. So you can get unlock the Rick house available now on the Apple Store and Google Play. On Tuesday this week, I had the pleasure of joining four roses master distiller Brett Elliot, to a special media preview of the 2019 limited edition small batch, were able to ask him anything in taste through all the individual lots that comprised of this batch. And here's some of the details. The 2019 limited edition small batch will have a breakdown of four different bourbon runs. There is an 11 year old ESV that accounts for 26 27% of the blend. A 15 year old GSB at 40% of them blend a 15 year old ESK with 25% and a 2:59 21 year old BSB at 8% on the blind, and we got to go through each one of these and kind of rate them all and kind of figure out how they all lead into creating their own blend and the 21 year OBSV had the best knows it was super okie but the finish lacks some depth. And there was I know there's a lot of OESK lovers out there, but this one had a pretty strong bite to it honestly wasn't my favorite. However, the 15 year OESV was the real star of the show. This had depth and complexity and just kept going at all the right components into it. But come to find out. This is the same version of OESV that was sold at the gift shop this past year for Father's Day. So there's a few lucky people out there sitting on some really good bourbon right now. And the final proof of this will be 112.6 with around 13,440 bottles to be released in the US in around 3002 the rest of the world with an MSRP of $139 and 99 cents. 4:00 During this time with Brent, we also discussed the barrels and if we would ever see a single barrel limited edition ever again. Well, the unfortunate news is that he said it's likely to never happen again. With the explosive growth of bourbon, it's almost impossible to find a run of barrels that were all distilled at one time that would be able to satisfy this type of demand. Instead, these runs will be saved for future small batches for years to come. He said they have plenty of high AH stock. So this is great to hear for enthusiasts like us. And hope you're out there enjoying these whiskey quickies that we're releasing. As we get into the fall we're going to be bringing new reviews of all the newest releases including next week's as we review the new four roses small batch Limited Edition. All right now on to the podcast. On this Roundtable. We talk about bourbon festival season as we just wrapped up one, but we're heading into bourbon and beyond right around the corner. And if you haven't yet, go get your tickets. We'd love to see you there. Drink some good bourbon and listen to some good tunes. But after that, we dive into 5:00 To the acquisition business was the 230 $3 million deal for Pernod Ricard to acquire castle brands which Jeffers is a part of. Was that a good deal? Well, we had a lot of folks that were commenting in our chat section and talking about the EPA or the earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. It's a measure of a company's operating performance. One comment we received was from Craig Kessler, he's a Chief Investment Officer as well as an executive bourbon Stewart. So he talked about per node selling wild turkey at 12 times its EPA, while brown Forman was selling at 10 x. So per node got an above market value during the time of the value of other competitors out there in the market. As for promotes re entry to the market, castle was trading at a price sales ratio of one x and per node paid about to exit the company. So brown Forman is currently trading at eight x. So per node is paying 75% less than brown Forman on a price per sales basis. So from this production 6:00 It looks like four nodes sold above market for wild turkey and bought castle below. So we'll see about more of that into the podcast that after that we also dive into PBR is new whiskey, the artificial tongue and if you tariff data that's now been published is still going to continue to wreak havoc on new exports. All right, now let's get on to it. Let's hear a word from Joe over a barrel bourbon, and then you've got Fred Minnick with above the char. I'm Joe Beatrice, founder of barrell craft spirits. I know I talk a lot about blending here. But we also have a national single barrel program asked you a local retailer or bourbon club about selecting your own private barrel. 6:41 I'm Fred Minnick, and this is above the char. In 2013. I started a series at the Kentucky Derby Museum called the legend series. It was a great opportunity for me to sit down with the legends of the industry and ask them questions about their careers and taste their whiskeys. I've talked to great people. 7:00 Julian Van Winkle, Edwin Foote, Harlan Wheatley, Chris Morris, Bill Samuels, Jimmy Russell, Jimmy Rutledge, and many, many, many more. It's been one of the most important events of my career. And now as I go into building the eighth season of The Legend series for the Kentucky Derby Museum, I just look back on it, and all. It's also where I made my first connection with the fellas here at bourbon pursuit. You may have heard this story where Ryan showed up and forgot to turn on the microphone. We still razz him about that. But it really was a great, great moment. I think, not just for me or the Kentucky Derby Museum. But for all of bourbon. The Legends Series was really one of the first high level high education events that allowed people to get really connected to a master distiller or a CEO and learn about what makes them 8:00 Tick. And I'm very glad to see that today we know everybody's mash bill. We know people's business procedures. And you have companies like heaven Hill who are creating diagrams for social media about airflow in a warehouse. So much has changed in eight years and the people who are most to be credited with this, are you, you the consumer have more power today than ever before. And let me tell you, the whiskey distillers pay attention a lot more to what you think, than they do. The USA Today or the New York Times, you are the most powerful person in the all the equation of American whiskey. They follow what you say on social media. They follow what you listen to what you read, and they want to know your opinion, constantly. So join me in the further pursuit of knowledge and let's 9:00 asked people to open up and tell us more about their distilleries. Some people may think it's unfathomable to know what's going behind the scenes when they're making a price increase, or what they're thinking when they're changing their barrel entry proof. But eight years ago, heaven Hill didn't disclose their mash bills. Now, they freely tell you every single grain that goes into their whiskies, so things can change. And that's this week's above the char. Hey, make sure you're following me on Twitter and Instagram. So you can come to next year's Kentucky Derby Legends Series. You can find me at Fred Minnick again at Fred Minnick. Cheers. 9:45 Welcome, everybody. This is the 36 recording of the bourbon Community Roundtable. This is where we talk about what's happening in bourbon bourbon culture bourbon news. We've got a lot of topics to cover, but you know, this is also the beginning and how we're kicking off 10:00 bourbon heritage month so everybody welcome to bourbon heritage month it's kind of like our Super Bowl if we will right we're finally here doing that. But you know not only this bourbon Heritage Month starting to kick off but one of the biggest things is this is also turning into festival season. You know we just wrapped up bourbon on the banks. There's one called Kentucky's edge that'll be coming up and first week October however, Fred Super Bowl here is here and in two weeks so Fred you getting getting mighty pumped for bourbon and beyond? Yeah, bourbon and beyond is right around the corner. I've got two other festivals right before that one but bourbon and beyond is my baby. I work on a year round. We've been working so hard on it, obviously we got the Foo Fighters ZZ Top. 10:41 Alison Krauss, Robert Plant, Zac Brown band we got all these incredible bands but we also have 10:47 you know, grand Melia from top chef and we have a lot of lot of cool panels here. So you all are on the panels. Nick Jordan's there on behalf of breaking bourbon. But I'm very proud of 11:00 The curation of the panels this year, and it's just an incredible, incredible lineup of of education and cocktail. Yeah, I mean, do you want to kind of give people a little bit of a teaser on what some of these panels are so they can go out and yeah, so well one year of moderating Kenny is like what is a master distiller and that's something that we in our community we talked about all the time like what is a master distiller? I mean right now technically Brian who's just a lawyer could be a master distiller without even going any kind of like training for it. We're I'm moderating a panel about the history of slavery and American whiskey. This is the very first time that anybody in our industry has approached this and I want people to realize that you know, this is something that 11:50 you know, it we, we kind of like avoided a lot but you have people like fun Weaver 11:58 and you know, who's bringing 12:00 to the forefront and making sure people want to talk you know, make sure people talk about it because it is something important that is a part of the American whiskey heritage. And I don't think we should just like gloss over it with and so that that's, that's a big seminar we've also got one called bourbon disruptors. I'm excited about Brian's panel that he's doing. It's called whiskey dark past, you know, there's been a lot of murders, there's been a lot of bootlegging. All kinds of shenanigans have been associated with with American whiskey. And, and so you have some some deep ones. And then we have some like real basic like high about how to make a high ball and how to make a man hat and an old fashion. We have a lot of stuff like that as well. So licenses, as well as the hardcore ones. Yeah, and I think at least all of us, we're super excited to actually be there be a part of it beyond the panels. And, you know, while we're doing that, let's go ahead and introduce all of our guests that are here or sorry, our typical roundtable member 13:00 Is that are here today. So let's start off with somebody who might not be able to be here for that much longer because he's getting ready to start batten down the hatches as as the hurricane starts making his way so Blake from Florida checking in How are you, buddy? Doing well, How are y'all? 13:18 We're trying to sneak sneak in a little bit. Yeah, it's been quite the week we you know, I'm kind of a little bit of a procrastinator on the on the storm side, but this one looks like we could get a little bit so yeah, no school for the next two days at least. 13:36 Well, good deal. Well, make sure you you stay safe out there. You know, we're all we're all making sure that you know, everything is everything's good for you, as well as all the other flirty and bourbon residents that are down there. So hopefully everybody is staying safe and heat and all the warnings of evacuating if you actually need to evacuate. That is true. Yeah, you know, but the streak continues. I just kind of throw that out there. The streak continues. 14:00 Introduction. 14:01 Absolutely this qualifies. It sure does. Yep. Yep. So Blake, if you could go back 10 to family please do please go for it, man. Thanks for thanks for chiming in here. 14:12 Yeah, I'm good for a few minutes. arena question Where were we? Not yet we're just still we just started going through the the table just going around the horn so well. 14:23 Yeah. Well, let's take a break. So Brian, you go ahead and take next. Yeah, thanks, Fred. And again, this is Brian with sip and corn. You can find me on Twitter and Facebook sipping corn Instagram to sip and corn and online at bourbon justice calm and sip and corn calm and just to echo Fred's comments. 14:44 Probably no one is is is as excited as he is. But I'm I might be second place got rained out last year for my bourbon workshop. So I'm really excited about doing it this this year. And Fred Thanks for including me. Yeah. 14:58 And Nick, let's go ahead break 15:00 bourbon. Let's hear it. All right, thanks, Kenny. I've Nick from breaking bourbon breaking bourbon com. Check us out on social media at breaking bourbon. And yeah, unfortunately, I will not be able to make bourbon and beyond this year, but Jordan will be there. I will say I am pretty disappointed. It was a pretty fantastic festival last year even with the day the rain out the second day. And you know, I think anybody who's gonna be making it out there probably won't be disappointed. So I'm sure Fred you're probably going nuts now still getting ready for this thing but yeah, it's a pretty fantastic bourbon festival seems to seems like it's only getting better year after year. Wow. Thanks, guys. I gotta tell you, you know, it means a lot to me hearing you all say that because, you know, getting rained out. It was like it was like a gut punch. And it was just so it was really devastating because we had to cancel the other festival which is the Hard Rock Festival louder than life the next weekend. So all three days were canceled. 16:00 So we're really hoping and praying that we don't we have great weather and we're at a weird a better location that can handle the rain so like it's at the fairgrounds it's like right across from the actual Expo Center building and it's like that flat plane and it's a much more it's not as beautiful as champions park with all the trees but it's something that you know is if if this thing floods the whole city's underwater 16:32 there's gonna be a new meters thick that's going to be on the side of the bridges the show the the great flooded 20 2019 if that's what it is. Knock on wood. Yeah, let's we're not gonna have that it's gonna be remember the first year it was hotter than hell out. The second year was just torrential downpour. Third year it's got to be just clear skies. It's what it has to get it perfect. Yep. Alright, so let's jump into it. So the first topic of conversation is kind of a big one. You know, we've had days all our 17:00 on the show before good friend of the show from Jeffersons, and it was announced last week that Pernod Ricard is going to acquire castle brands which Jefferson's a part of that portfolio for 223 million. So it's good to see that porno is still still on the hot streak of buying a lot of stuff. You know, I was just looking at Castle brands. His website, of course, like Jefferson's is the one that kind of screams out to a lot of us. But they've got they've got an Irish cream and an Irish vodka. They've got Gosling's rum, they've got Aaron whiskey, which I had never really come around before. But again, it's a it's a bigger portfolio but it's it's pretty good to see this sort of thing you know, we've been not really not accustomed to seeing a lot of these. These brands start getting acquired. Now porno is actually kind of on a buying streak. It seems a lot recently. 17:51 You all kind of see. This is a trend that's going to continue to happen like do you think these more smaller brands are going to continue to keep getting 18:00 swallowed up by a lot of these big ones. 18:03 One thing that I noticed about this and I know, I know what they're paying for, obviously 223 million sounds like a lot of money. But for these larger companies, it's really, to me that's a that's a low amount for a brand like Jefferson's, which really is a workhorse. I mean, that that's a good selling brand that, you know, that alone could have probably sold, you know, you know, five years ago when you had high West sell for 170 $5 million. You know, Jefferson's was 10 times the brand of high YS at that point. So I think and I know what I know what rabbit holes sold, but I can't really say and I felt like that was a low amount as well. And so I feel like they're getting these these these brands that might be in debt and they may not have as much like 18:56 you know, may not they I don't know what 19:00 How porno is doing this, but that's not a lot of money for for castle brands. I just don't I just don't think there was anyone else looking to buy them. And so, right now you have the big companies and I don't know if they're out there looking to buy up, you know, brands unless it's like white cloth at the moment. You know, the like laws the hot one. So I guess that you know I come from the I always say that where I come from the tech side and so seeing things in the, you know, a couple hundred million dollars of acquisitions aren't, you know, it doesn't really I don't really bat an eye at it anymore. So you said that 223 millions just really not a lot. 19:37 And you think that it also could be 19:41 are there really only like a just a tiny handful of big players in this game that actually have the capital to acquire and if they already have something that's in their portfolio, do they need to continue to keep acquiring? Yeah, let's look at the brands that the big. The big portfolio is proud for 20:00 pronounce Ricard Diaz. Do you throw Proxima in there? BM Suntory obviously 20:07 Karen which has four roses would you know throw them in there and you know there might be a couple others that could really move the needle but you have to look at like what are the who has what it says rack Africa says RX a big player obviously. 20:27 And in 2009 porno basically got out of the American whiskey game when they when they spun off 20:35 you know Barton and you know, wild turkey and so you had like this incredible you know, they got rid of these these great brands and 20:47 and, and now they're trying to get back into the game after it was too late and pornos got a great Irish Whiskey portfolio. So Irish Whiskey is the only you know, whiskey that's really hotter than bourbon and 21:01 It makes sense for them to to try and get some jargon juggernauts but you know they've got smooth Ambler rabbit hole now and Jefferson I think they got rabbit hole really because of the facilities and rabbit holes facilities have incredible potential for expansion they fit right into the like the tourism model and Jefferson's is a hot hot brand smooth Ambler two is got you know they're they've penetrated a lot of really good markets so they made some interesting moves and I think they did them at you know whoever negotiated their deals I think probably did a very good job for them. Yeah, you know Nick or Brian Do you kind of see this as is Fred said it is this PR know kind of like crawling back into the market a little bit. You know if you know if you got rid of wild turkey at the wrong time because you thought it was a you know, basically a bad stock and you sold when the you sold out when is low and you know you bought it when is high like it they tried to like flip the script for themselves here. Well 22:00 I think they they definitely trying to do that. But they're they're filling their roster with D league players instead of what they lost. And I think their problem is going to be capacity. I mean, how can they increase production of any of those without huge distilleries to be able to turn this out? I see that is their issue. I mean, they they can get some from rabbit hole and they can get some from smooth Ambler. But that's a ways off. 22:28 Jefferson's is still just bottling in Crestwood. Right? I mean, they don't have a whole lot of capacity of their own. They're still sourcing. So where's it going to come from? So I see it is problematic there, they're buying the league players, and they can't, they're not going to be able to increase production. And I think that to kind of piggyback on the sourcing, and that's, you know, probably the comments that were, at least that I saw, you know, here in there, with, of course, the focus then Jefferson's in the in the bourbon world. 23:00 With respect to this acquisition, you know that's the question thing about high West with Ambler there, they've got distilleries, they've got the that kind of capability, you know with Jefferson's for example, it really is the brand that's bought the distribution you know, the labels that that kind of thing. So kind of to Brian's point it's that you know, it's that want to get back in the game want to get in in the game. I think there's still a lot of growth potential in general, but it's what is that you know, what are you going to do with that so now they've got two brands now they've got a pull out from you know, pull out from behind them probably invest quite a bit more Jefferson's to like they go from a company that didn't necessarily didn't necessarily have the ability to walk into a company like brown Forman and and strike a deal for 5000 barrels of stock. I'm not saying that's going to happen now if you're in our carbon now printer card. I mean, trees owners got muscle like NASA castle brand was is like 24:00 You know, that was like, 24:02 you know, a triple A baseball team, you know, in comparison to our car, who would be the Boston Red Sox or the Yankees, you know? So the buying power that they have to be on the source market. I mean, it just went up. And because they can, they can strike deals that he could never dream of before when they start sourcing from wild turkey that or MGP, which, you know, they they own the facilities after, after Seager. I'm sad to shutter all their stuff. 24:35 They got the facility in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, and DIZO. got, you know, Crown Royal and they're like, you know, who got the better end of the deal on that because they can never make Pernod Ricard can never make that Lawrenceburg, Indiana distillery work, and they sold it to LDI. And that, you know, I became kind of like the source capital but so that would be ironic if they end up sourcing from wild turkey. 25:00 GP. 25:02 And I guess another question that kind of throw at you all about this is do we see, this is going to be a lot tougher game going into this, you know, we had Trey on the on the podcast before I last year and we talked to him he said like, Is it getting harder now with sourcing, like our people kind of trend in your territory or you are in had all these relationships for and now you've got people that are on your turf barrel prices are going up. How can you maintain, you know, with not actually having a distillery that can pump significant volume? You know, is this was this a good buy for per node like it? It's That's a tough question. I think. I think Brian kind of alluded to that and I wouldn't say that they're, you know, deep play or anything like that. I I still am a fan of Jeffersons. I still like the whiskey they put out. However, in regards of an operation, it might have been a kind of a weird acquisition in my opinion. Anybody have any thoughts of like, is 26:00 Is ditches they don't actually do a lot of distilling or heavy distilling, like Was it a good acquisition? Or is it just something that you know as Nick said to it, just maybe a brand recognition thing that you have to understand like this business is driven by brands like we look at things from where the liquid liquid comes from, but this business is really driven by like a name and they're like it or not, whether you if you if you follow it or not, the Jeffersons ocean is one of the one of the best like marketing ploys of of the last 1015 years and American whiskey. Now I remember asking, I remember asking Trey for to see a man manifest that was barrels at that it was going to punch me but you know, you've got you have some people who disbelieve in that it's the ocean barrel concept, but he does put them out there and it's been one of the best like my 27:00 And the conversations that are marketing boys, I've turned into conversations. 27:05 At least in my world, everyone's like is a real? Is it real? Is it you know, so it's it's one of those things that it's probably just just on that alone. And the fact that Jeffersons is, is everywhere. 27:19 I think it was a great, great acquisition for PR now. So there's another comment here from Dan wall ski, you know, he sees Jefferson's brand is probably worth the investment. However, he wouldn't be surprised to see it now eventually start getting separated from Kentucky artisan and then becoming like a visitor destination of its own now, it's a pretty good theory, I think for for what this could potentially be and where could go to think about the Kentucky owl situation, for example, you know, immediately it's the plans for a gigantic, gigantic park in distillery, you know, so are we going to see something like that? Is that going to be the growth plan for her, not in this 28:00 Or are they just going to keep you know, continuing with the brand as it is and sourcing and kind of doing business as usual? Be curious to see how that changes over time. 28:10 For sure, and I think you know, there's there's also something that kind of it kind of jogged my memory when I think about this when we look at you know, we had Corky was last week's podcast, we've had coffee from rabbit hole on and there's always like this. A lot of these CEOs they say a lot of the same things of like, we're never going to sell this is going to remain in the family forever. And then it's like, is it though like is it like is it puts a fat check in front of your face? Like it's got to be pretty hard to turn down. There's always a number. I agree. I think you have to look at you know, let's take a look at at those two particular brands. Kobe had a lot of investors. 28:56 Corky did all this with his own money and he's got 29:00 Trust lined up and everything, it always comes down to the money. And look man, I'm in business. I don't come from money. I've had to work for everything I've gotten. And when you sit down in a room with with money people, you know, they always want something. So, you know, you give up something to give up shares of your company or something to get what you want out of them. But this, you know, there comes a point where they're like, okay, we've had a good time on this fried where's our payout? We went out and that we want to cash out and so everything depends upon how your business structure is when you have these small distillers 29:41 you know one other one other in games is that like, this is Yeah, no, I agree. And I think for anybody that is ever getting into business like you always want to think like yes I do for the passion. I do it for the for the joy of what it is, but at the end of the day, if somebody puts a big fat check in front, your face 30:00 That's, that's part of the American dream too. So you can't you can't discount that. So, you know, as we kind of almost kind of switch gears a little bit. And this is one that I actually kind of like this one because Fred sent this a little bit before we started here. And this was the fact that 30:18 PBR is getting ready to start making their very own whiskey. So I will drop the link here into the chat. I'm also going to drop it into 30:28 the YouTube chat as well so you can kind of see it, but really what it is, is PBR is now making a whiskey that's been aged for a complete total of five seconds. So that should probably already kind of get your blood flowing a little bit. So they have recently talked about their have a new, hard sell to it's coming out with a percent. But now they're actually going to be doing a 40% whiskey. It's already 40% ABV that has been aged for five seconds. So Fred kind of talked about this one Fred does this. Make your blood boil a little bit 31:00 Yeah, I have two words for PBR. Fuck you. 31:07 Yeah, I think it's I think it's a, you know, PBR is trying to be trendy and they got some headlines with this. But you know, 31:20 given that we're, we have a brand that's raised, basically repackaged Zi Ma, taking over the space of 31:30 millennial consumption. And actually really, Why call penetrates the entire world right now. 31:37 Anything is possible with what will be the next big thing and PBR has got a big brand behind it and I just, I just wish they would, you know, 31:47 this is this is a mockery of whiskey so i just i hate everything about it. 31:55 Nick, do you share any the same the same feelings, you know, I 32:00 Always look, I do think it's interesting, it really created a buzz I think people who may not normally think about whiskey or bourbon or what they really are, you know, I think that just that buzz about that it's going to go into a container into an oak container, it's going to be aged for five seconds or, you know, whatever they end up doing with it, if anything, that's an awareness, you know, piece of will have number one, how good is it going to be, you know, so for somebody that is just doing shots at a bar, they never think about anything, you know, as far as you know, whether they like things that are you know, higher quality, you know, longer aged, etc. What am I really drinking? Where does it get its color from things of that nature? It may cause some people to kind of get curious about what's really there. And I think once people start getting educated reach the point of, you know, anybody who's listening to this or watching this right now, you know, you're obviously this is much farther behind, you know, where your journey started, or, you know, much farther behind where you are now where your journey started, but I think that's the interesting 33:00 part about it is kind of just that awareness. And what's probably a younger crowd that's going to be more, you know, 33:07 in tune with this or tasting this or whatever the case might be, you know, where it might make some people curious about exploring a little further and eventually getting to the point where they respect what's going on with the actual, you know, creation and aging and things of that nature. So I think it's interesting I don't hate it in the same way that I guess that Fred does. You know, Willie succeed. I don't know. You know, it's it's different than the beer in that sense of, you know, the beer. I see the market for this. I'm not so sure. I guess we'll see. Yeah, I think you look at it, like everybody wants to try to create something. And you know, what's PBR? PBR is not supposed to be some glorious luxury brand, right? Like this is supposed to be like bottom shelf like how like, How fast can we get this out the door and you know, really just churn product. And this might be following that same exact suit. I'm not too sure if this is supposed to be a a premium product by name. 34:00 Yeah, they're not trying to be premium and I guess from my standpoint it PBR five second whiskey has no impact on me whatsoever and I don't care about it. But I see where it's it's going like like Nick said it's going to be at the is going to be at the bar for a shot and hopefully it overtakes 34:22 you know, some of these other flavored whiskeys which I don't care about either as the you know, the new hot shot for college age through mid 20s. And then there's going to be a market for that and there always will be in my day it was Yeager Meister and you know, that's awful. 34:42 So, you know, knock knock your socks off, go ahead and do a five second whiskey. Try to sell it by by the shot to 24 year olds and I'll keep drinking what I've been drinking. 34:55 So you know, you talked about flavored whiskey there. Have you all seen the the new phenomenon of 35:00 screwball the peanut butter flavored whiskey. Okay, I think I had it first at your house to tell you the truth. But it started it's starting to catch on now like it's out here. Now I see it here. It's I mean, it's in all the forums, people are talking about it. It's like It's like the white glove whiskey right now. That was the first time I had it was bourbon and beyond last year. So I don't want to call myself a trendsetter. But you know, we did a 35:28 shout out to Tony from keg and bottle who actually gave me that probably about a year and a half ago. And he said, Kenny, I kid you not, this is going to be the next fireball. And so I mean, I guess a year and a half ago, he gave it to me and now all of a sudden, like people are buying and it's taken off a little bit, but you gotta like peanut butter, that's for sure. Because Yeah, definitely definitely has that. That flavor to it. Okay, then liked it or hate it. 35:55 All right, right position. Yeah. So So back to back to work. 36:00 whiskey. You know, there was something else that came out a few weeks ago on on geek calm, talking about the artificial tongue. Do y'all remember this? So I'll talk about it. So the artificial tongue can taste the light. Subtle, subtle, subtle differences. Wait, hold on. Wait, hold on. Okay, I got it. You don't have the art. I wonder what the artificial Tom thinks about the five second whiskey? I don't know. That's a good question. 36:26 I don't know if that's what it's really made for, though. Who knows? Right? I guess we'll find out one of these days. But this was built by Scottish engineers and it's ultimately made to sit there and try to find counterfeit frauds or anything like that. That's on the on the open market. And of course, you know, we talked about it with bourbon, you know, having counterfeit Pappy all the time and stuff like that. However, you're going to see this even larger scale in the scotch world as well. So Fred, what are your kind of thoughts on this artificial tongue? Well, I've actually talked to 37:00 Quite a few people about this who are like in a tasers role and I think most everyone knows I do a lot of tasting. And I think it's, I think it's great if it's not like, you know, stealing 37:16 that I'm curious to see like the data that like goes into it like how they how they create it, because I know of one like, you know algorithm that's out there that's been taking people's tasting notes and applying them to basically putting a collective 37:37 algorithm together of like white to say, from people various like if you're, if you're writing tasting notes on Reddit, or if you have tasting notes on a blog or anything that's scalable, there is now a there's some spiders out there that's out there taking him and they're applying them elsewhere. So, robot tasting, so if it's something like that, I'm not a fan of it, but if it's something that really 38:00 actually adds to the, you know, our world. I'm all for it. But, you know, the thing is, is like Canada, it's the right now their marketing is like spotting fakes. And that's great. But I wonder what their next iteration will be. Because, you know, 38:23 eventually it's going to be about like, you know, this is how you taste. So this is what you're going to like. And, you know, I think that's cool. Yeah, I think this could definitely lead to a lot of different things. I think. I think finding the counterfeits is a, it's kind of like a it's I don't it's like a gateway. Like, it's, I don't think it's going to have a large purpose at first. Like, I think you need to cover a little bit more blanket area here when you're trying to figure out exactly what can you do with this technology? It's got to be a little bit more uniform, a little more universal of actually how to catch on into the point where, you know, you know, Fred, you taste a lot, however, like, is this something where it's like, okay, 39:00 We've got six panelists that are humans and then our seventh is this AI machine, right? To make sure like, everything works like this out of this distillery, like, you know, we've been going for utilizing people for the longest time to you know, knows and tastes and actually understand what this what this is supposed to taste like and what typical batch it goes in, but we're human like what is human it's, it's you have error error is built in versus a computer. Whereas if you're feeding a data, like it's just computations, so you know, knicker or Brian, like, do you kind of see this like, much more spreading its way out into? Maybe distilleries should start looking into this time of technology as well. So I'm just waiting for the movie where artificial tongues go rogue, and one of them decides is going to go and replace everybody's whiskey with like rapid each whiskey because it's got the perfect profile and there's just insanity and chaos. You know. 39:59 I'm visually just look 40:00 is like little tongues across the street like just around like overtaken a rogue tongues. Yeah, rogue tongue, I think there could be great applications for it. You know, they just the question is, is it going to replace, not necessarily master distillers but you know, people that you know blend in in, you know, testing that takes place, you know, within distilleries, and producers, you think about kind of that non scientific nature of so much of this and even just tasting notes, like you're talking about, I mean, the very non scientific process in the sense and that's one of the kind of magical things about whiskey, you know, would we, you know, if there was inside each label or on each bottle, kind of like a very specific profile of a particular whiskey or almost a map that was scientifically put together, you know, would that be something that, you know, would enhance the experience to people want that, you know, is that the end result of what we're even, you know, kind of dealing with here? I think it's interesting from that aspect at the same time, I do think one of the 41:00 great things about whiskey is kind of the human and the art of whiskey. So it's almost a kind of a weird dichotomy of technology and, and kind of that, you know, our full human interaction that, you know, you don't want to see that necessarily overtaken but you do want to, you know, you do want to add you value when you can, you know, there's so many whiskies are so expensive, that I could definitely see a, you know, a value proposition for somebody to say, Hey, is this something I might like, you know, for example, or how do we design a better, you know, a better whiskey. I'm just really I'm really excited that there's been tech applied in 41:38 a valuable way usually, tech people apply it in the most into rapid aging or something that everyone's trying to fix that when there's really not a problem other than waiting. 41:51 But I'm just I'm just glad that somebody in the tech world is applying, applying their know how and skills to a very 42:00 particular area that we do probably could use some consistency. And I agree with Nick and I'll take it a step further though i mean i think while it's it's beneficial in some respects, to have this AI tasting because the AI is not can be thrown off with what you had for lunch or what you had for dinner. It's but it's on the other hand, it's going to be much more sterile of, 42:28 of an experience of a description of what you're supposed to be tasting. And so much as Nick said, is so much of drinking whiskey is the experience and it can change if you've got a steak versus something else. And it can change in the mood and I've been doing it presentation Fred did. Music can affect what you're what you're experiencing, and AI is never going to get to well Famous last words as never going to 42:58 have the experience 43:00 That you can have with whiskey and if I've got a piece of Gouda that I'm eating with it, AI is not going to be able to tell me again Famous last words how that's going to affect what what I'm experiencing at that moment. So it's it's nice but it's to me it's sort of like a party trick and we all know that Jim Beam or somebody would hack it to give like something like a legion like a 95 43:28 so now Brian, I'm picturing like, VR goggles, some scent thing going on here. 43:34 headphones with your favorite music, you know, you can certainly get right there. tastes and smells right at your at your disposal. Yeah, you see, a few Metallica, Metallica does that they have one of their tasters played various have everybody put on, you know, special headphones. And they have to taste like five different whiskeys. It's all their whiskey but they 44:00 People say like the whiskeys taste different based on the music they're listening to, and that there's news, new evidence that suggests that what you listen to has a much deeper effect on on how you taste. So I am definitely on board with what Brian just said there that the AI will never be able to pick out a more of a human element at least and probably in our lifetime. I think. I mean, I don't know, I think I think you're right, I don't think it's gonna have that human element to it. However, I think there's there's a lot of potential of what this could do in regards of thinking that you want to create more, say a brand that has a very, very specific kind of character. And so you take, you take one outside of a particular barrel, then you get a chemical breakdown of like the 30 different things that are in it. And it's like, you know, x percentage of something versus white percentage or another, and then you kind of figure out exactly Okay, I need this kind of percentages, and they all start equal now. 45:00 Alright, dump these barrels together. And now we eat. Now we kind of see this, this sort of specific profile that could be coming. So could be completely different in a way of building new brands versus just sitting there and saying like, okay, we'll just go and make sure this is this is this is not Pappy. This is just regular WO Weller. And you know, the thing about checking if something's fake or not, most the time when it matters, it's sealed, and you want to keep it that way. So that application is a bit of a struggle, you know, because you're probably rarely going to find a purchase contingent on you know, opening, pouring, tasting or testing or whatever the case might be. Yeah, how would you like to be the guy who just dropped $1.5 million on a bottle of McKenna gets a test and like, Oh, yeah, now. This is actually Glenfiddich, 12 year old, you almost don't want to know. 45:55 Like, no, just keep those things away. 45:59 Yeah, there's this 46:00 Definitely a bad side to that to it you know it as we start coming going down this path you know there's something news that happened last week. You know, there has been a tear on the secondary market lately like there's just groups are disappearing left and right. 46:17 The 2019 Kentucky's edge bourbon conference and festival pairs all things Kentucky with bourbon. It takes place October 4 and fifth at venues throughout Covington in Newport Kentucky. Kentucky's edge features of bourbon conference music tastings pairings tourists and and artists and market Kentucky's edge. 2019 is where bourbon begins. Tickets and information can be found online at Kentucky's edge.com. 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Their Dragon's milk beer is America's number one selling bourbon barrel aged out in 2005. They apply their expertise from brewing and began distilling beer barrel finished whiskey began production 2012 and rock house was the club is featuring it in their next box. The barrels come from Tennessee get filled with Dragon's milk we are twice the mature bourbon is finished and those very same barrels. Rocco's whiskey club is a whiskey the Month Club on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories from craft distillers across the US. 48:00 Along with two bottles of hard to find whiskey rackhouses boxes are full of cool merchandise that they ship out every two months to members in over 40 states. Go to rackhouse whiskey club com to check it out and try a bottle of beer barrel bourbon and beer barrel rye. Use code pursuit for $25 off your first box. 48:20 There has been a tear on the secondary market lately like there's just groups are disappearing left and right. And even the secondary backup BSM group that was over on me we may way whatever it is, is that's now gone as well. So it's not like it's just Facebook, it looks like this is like a virus that's continually trying to spread and it's just getting knocked out sort of wherever it goes. Now don't get me wrong, there's still a few groups that are remaining You know, they're probably around like the two to 3000 member Mark but there's nowhere near even on the bsm on me was like almost 10,000 or above. So it seems that we're everybody flocks to 49:00 These are just getting can left and right. 49:03 Now I've tried to reach out haven't really heard anything of in regards of why it happened or anything like that. However, it just seems there's there's no safe haven right now. Do you all kind of see this as is this can be the new norm? Or is it just like, it's just hot for the moment? We'll have to wait ride this wave, and then maybe here in another three months, will we back up to where it was, is going to happen. It's just a matter of what in when. And it might change over time. You know, as we're seeing right now, it's certainly changing how the communication is done. Probably the bigger question is if we have these call it a period of a drought, for example, which is interesting, because this is happening, you know, before we start seeing some of the big fall releases and things of that nature, you've got to ask yourself is is that going to change the the primary market, you know, because how much of the primary market is driven by what ends up happening on the secondary market? You know, so a lot of people buying you know, basically 50:00 The idea that they're going to be able to turn around and sell for a profit, if that is no longer in place or that you know, you knock out 50% or some in reasonable percentage of the, you know, people that are able to do that or see their ability to do that. Does that start driving prices down on the primary? I think it'll be interesting to see how that you know, kind of goes over the the upcoming months here. Yeah, I think we're going to see this in Natalie. That is, I think Brad Atlas had a post that was on Blake's group, this past week of, you know, the the new each Taylor amaranth has been album release. However, nobody can figure out what a price should be on it because there's no room there is no place to auction off and figure out what's going to be even today. There were I think, like 72 birthday Bourbons that were sold at old forester distillery downtown to kind of commemorate the old forester birthday bourbon and George bourbon Browns birthday. However, I haven't seen a whole heck of a lot of them show up on anywhere. So you know, this 51:00 Is this could be a sign of the times that, you know, hopefully you're buying it to hold on to it because finding the outlets to sell it is getting a lot harder now. It's definitely interesting. 51:12 I, you know, I, I'm beta testing an app right now and I've been asked if, like, people can do that and I'm like, Well, you know, I have that I have to, like, seriously look at that now. And I'm thinking of like the potential liability associated with it. I'm like, 51:29 you know, maybe you don't know maybe in your chat your own little private chat group, which I can't see but 51:37 it's, it's fascinating to me. How this this domino effect and I would love I would love to sit down with Mark Zuckerberg interview request I put out many times by the way, never that I have a probably, but I would love to find out if like he's had a hand in or some on Facebook, haven't you know, I would love to hear the rationale behind it. But I know they 52:00 said some things but there's more to it, there's gotta be more to it. It just doesn't. just doesn't make sense to me, especially with this new, this, this new social media site dumping it so quickly. It just, it's odd. Just, it's gonna be coming down from somewhere else. I mean, fame makes you wonder if brands are involved. Sorry, brands, you know, if we've got brands or somebody specific, you know, with intent, you know, and is watching this more closely, and specifically, I think that's a great question. And they have been watching these markets for for some time because they would even like, you know, price their whiskey to, to combat it, but I would, I would argue that it may not be a brand behind it, but a very powerful retailer. You know, who wants that money 52:58 and knows that that money 53:00 He's out there they want they want your dollar. They don't want you to buy it, you know, SRP and then flip it. I mean, there's any number of areas this could go, there's any number of people who would like to see it stop. 53:13 But I do know this. I, I know that most of the like the state authorities don't really care. You know, I mean, I've talked to him about it, and they're really care, you know, but like Texas does, Texas cares, Pennsylvania. All the control states actually. But 53:33 you know, this is doesn't seem to be like, any kind of state leading it. 53:39 Yeah, I mean, I don't know. The control states, they don't want competition. And Sylvania doesn't want to know, what cracks me up about Pennsylvanians. Every year they send out a press release, and oh, we lost like three or four of them this year, or one was broken in and transport. And I'm like, wow, I bet it suddenly got lost on the 54:00 The state majority leaders front still front step and you know the bottle accidentally broke after it was consumed by the directors house in our at the directors house and me is just it's all kinds of silly with with Pennsylvania 54:15 well let's control states in general but you know I think when we when we look at just the secondary market you know we've talked about it in regards of like how this built a culture This is probably how bourbon has a mass to how big it is because most people wouldn't even know about a lot of brands if they didn't see them on the secondary markets begin with I mean it's we all have our stories so I think it'd be it'd be interesting to kind of see where this is going to go you know me when I look at it I think this was this is a critical and crucial part of really what made bourbon what it is today. And you know, there's going to have to be somewhere where people can basically value this as sort of currency maybe it's trading You know, I'm, I don't like to sit there and say like, yeah, go get a birthday bar, birthday bourbon, 450 bucks and go try to sell for 300 like 55:00 I'm not all about that However, it's like, if you get a birthday bourbon 450 yet, you can't get a George t stag this year. And that's just part of the trade. And that's great, right? That's, that's something that you are able to get your hands on, you can kind of trade your way there, you know, and start with a paperclip unit with a plane. But that's that's essentially like where I like to be able to see this because it's all about getting the, you know, the bourbon that you want in your hands and kind of how to get it. But yeah, I mean, I think you're right, but for to the point of like this, this help kind of like spread the enthusiasm. 55:33 I know like the people in the groups, if you if you put it on scale, you're looking at maybe at most like 2 million or something, at least the various groups that I knew of, and that's not a lot in the grand scheme of things. Those people who are like everybody's influencer in their families in their workplace, and they would be the people out there talking about bourbon so and it was the these groups kind of became community 56:00 Bs and I was, you know, I, I love them. You know, I love them because we're actually I love them five years ago, you know, they they changed quite a bit in the last couple years, but they were very, very engaging. You can talk history, you can talk about who distilled water like, I mean, I remember having a conversation with someone educating them about Woodrow Wilson, which if you don't know, he was a master distiller, it's it's a well or for a very short period. But you know, he made some good whiskey. And so I guess a, you know, as we start thinking of other ways of how is the bourbon market being hindered, you know, there's been finally some data that's now coming out about the US whiskey exports and the tariffs that are now happening over in the EU. So when we start looking at this, you know, I look at some of the data here and I'll again, I'll drop the link in the chat for folks that want to be able to see this. You can see all these links in our show notes as well. 57:00 But the distilled spirits council came and said that there was a 21% decrease from June 2018 to June to 2019. That was all lost sales after shipments to Europe plummeted. So we've got the data coming in. 57:19 You know, I know Fred, you're you're kind of close to this. Is there a way that things could eventually bounce back to help bourbon brains grow? And I will always say it again that if somebody says, Oh, yeah, this is great, because it means more bourbon on the shelves for me. You're in the wrong here. Okay. Think bigger. Well, there have been some really nice trade related things that have happened like in a couple weeks, I was invited to to meet the European Union ambassador to the United States. And they're celebrating scotch Irish and bourbon whiskey, the you know, the unique designations of them and like all the all the country 58:00 kind of coming together in Washington DC to celebrate this. And so, from an industry perspective, you know, they have the ears of their legislators, their ambassadors, their Parliament or whatever. 58:14 You know, Brexit also, you know, through a wrinkle into it. So in an odd way Brexit could be 58:23 you know, it could be good for for the tariffs, 58:27 you know, for that particular portion. But, yeah, so those are a couple of the good things but in in all seriousness, you know, they're not letting up you know, Europe is still very hell bent on applying pressure. And you know, there's been reports that they want to apply more pressure you know, in in in mitch mcconnell areas so I just, I just don't see this you know, being good and it's in it's shut out small brands like the topping Creek completely. And Kenny, I know you're a brand owner. 59:01 You know, you want to, let's say you want to open them. You have a small shop in Poland, who absolutely loves to show loves you wants to make you his number one whiskey in his store, you won't find a distributor in that entire country that'll take your call. You know, it's just because of tariffs, they don't want to pass that on it. They're just not taking calls from small American lyst companies. So 59:25 yeah, and I think this is this is, as I mentioned before, I mean, this is so much bigger than just what you can get here in the shelves like this is this is trying to grow the category as a whole to start taking on scotch as as, you know, the whiskey in the market. And we can't get to that level scotch unless you have a fair playing field, you know, across the board to be able to say like, okay, like, let's get this in the hands of people in Australia and Zimbabwe and China and, you know, in the EU as well, like, how can we grow this as a whole. And this is really where the tariffs are going to start really being that that first sort of 1:00:00 Hand slap, I guess you could say is, if you're trying to reach a new market, you know, all of a sudden, if you have a, if you got a 30 or $40 bottle here in the States, I mean, you're, you're looking at doubling that, if not coming close to triple as you start getting, you know, already just distribution overseas, but now the tariffs are adding a lot more to it. And if you can't compete with a, you know, 50 $60 bottle of scotch, then you're, you know, you're already setting yourself up for failure. And so, you know, as we start kind of rounding this out, you know, Nick and, Brian, I kind of want to get your sort of thoughts on this, if you have any sort of inkling of what do you kind of see next? Maybe, if it's an election year, is there anything that could change? You know, after that as well, Nick, you go ahead and go first. I was gonna I was gonna say the same. 1:00:53 You know, I, it's, I think it's tough to say what's going to happen going forward. I'd be really curious. 1:01:00 To see, you know, what small brands are seeing the impact of this right now? 1:01:06 Immediately, 1:01:09 you know, like anything, I think there's the initial shock of it, but then, you know, demand is demand. So if that means to 20% increase in price or whatever the case might be, if the demand is there 1:01:21 over time might cause that to, you know, to become a non issue. But, but it's a barrier of entry as a starting point. So when you think about bourbon growing on a global scale, and the potential it has on a global scale, you know, certainly that's a pretty 1:01:40 pretty immediate, you know, block of have taken that first step for a lot of you know, a lot of these brands on that larger scale. You know, what if you see this go on for a period of time, then suddenly it goes away, you know, do you have the opposite impact you have suddenly a flood of, you know, a flood of opportunity, a flood 1:02:00 brands that are saying, Okay, now this opportunity just opened up, we're going to put pressure on actually doing this. Because if you think about all the brands that are out there, especially the small ones, how many of them are actually taking those steps right now to get overseas? I'd be curious out of this 1000 or 1200 distilleries. You know, in the US, for example, how many you're saying, Let's get on the shelves in Europe, or let's get on the shelves in Australia or Japan or whatever the case might be? China, what's the market like over there? But it will be interesting to see how it plays out, you know, like anything, it's it's a global economy, we're going to see the push and pull. And I think ultimately, the long term play for bourbon for us whiskey is to be probably bigger than scotch, quite frankly, I personally think is better, you know, so there's no really no reason why it can't be bigger or at least just as big it's just a matter of time and what you know, things are going to have to move and shift around and what dominoes are going to have to fall in when 1:03:00 can't allow that to, you know, to really gain some momentum and happen. Bourbons got a long way before it catches scotch. And I'll tell you like, this is why this is why the tariffs are so frustrating to me is that, you know, bourbon became a unique product to the United States largely in part because they were trying to get special designation so they would not get tariffs after world to the country, the rest of the world basically tariff bourbon and open the open the markets for scotch to help the United Kingdom recover from World War Two because, you know, they were bombed and everything, they took a much greater hit on the physical real estate of their country. And, and so they were places like Argentina, you know, was terrifying us like 200% United Kingdom actually had like limits of bourbon that they would allow in the country for a given year. And when they would actually when the bourbon distillers would push to like, you know, have exports. You know, the French basically came back and said, 1:04:00 Why would we give you any kind of anything carefree when bourbon doesn't mean anything to us? Like you have no special designation, of course the French, you know being the home of cognac and Champagne has a very unique understanding of like designation for alcohol. And and so in 1958, they started the bourbon industry started banding together and working to make bourbon, a unique product in the United States. And after that in 1964, they then had the ability to negotiate and free trade agreements to peel away tar

Our guest today, Brian Basilico, is the very reason this episode is called “Content Marketing That Brings Home The Bacon.” That’s not only because he’s an expert on content marketing and he has helped a lot of people make a lot of money.. It’s also because he’s the host of “The Bacon Podcast.” In fact, bacon seems to pretty much have taken over his life. His business life, anyway. Brian has a best-selling book called “It’s Not About You, It’s About Bacon.” His Bacon Podcast was voted by Inc. Magazine as one of the top 35 business podcasts.. He’s been around a long time, and he’s a pioneer. For example, when LinkedIn started up 15 years ago, he was one of the first 1000 people to join.. Brian, thanks for coming on, and welcome! 1. So Brian, give us the Express Tour of how you got to where you are today, and especially how you discovered what you are going to tell us about content marketing.. 2. Let’s start with some basic definitions. What is content marketing… how do most people use it… and what are some misconceptions about how to use it to make money? 3. What are some of your favorite techniques to use content marketing to make money. Please give us some examples either from your own business, or from clients you’ve helped. (Or both!). 4. Do you think the ability to create profitable content marketing will become more important over time? Why?. 5. Please give us some additional tips on what to do, what not to do, and where to find great examples of profitable content marketing.. 6. So I’m going to guess that if people want to contact you, they should not go to the bacon section of Whole Foods. If that’s right, what can people get from you and what’s your contact info?.Download.

Our guest today, Brian Basilico, is the very reason this episode is called “Content Marketing That Brings Home The Bacon.” That’s not only because he’s an expert on content marketing and he has helped a lot of people make a lot of money.. It’s also because he’s the host of “The Bacon Podcast.” In fact, bacon seems to pretty much have taken over his life. His business life, anyway. Brian has a best-selling book called “It’s Not About You, It’s About Bacon.” His Bacon Podcast was voted by Inc. Magazine as one of the top 35 business podcasts.. He’s been around a long time, and he’s a pioneer. For example, when LinkedIn started up 15 years ago, he was one of the first 1000 people to join.. Brian, thanks for coming on, and welcome! 1. So Brian, give us the Express Tour of how you got to where you are today, and especially how you discovered what you are going to tell us about content marketing.. 2. Let’s start with some basic definitions. What is content marketing… how do most people use it… and what are some misconceptions about how to use it to make money? 3. What are some of your favorite techniques to use content marketing to make money. Please give us some examples either from your own business, or from clients you’ve helped. (Or both!). 4. Do you think the ability to create profitable content marketing will become more important over time? Why?. 5. Please give us some additional tips on what to do, what not to do, and where to find great examples of profitable content marketing.. 6. So I’m going to guess that if people want to contact you, they should not go to the bacon section of Whole Foods. If that’s right, what can people get from you and what’s your contact info?.Download.

So Brian had a lightbulb or an Ah-ha moment and hit on the anxiety I have been feeling. Once that happened, It all came rushing out and the weight of the world was off my shoulders.Having someone you can talk to is so important and we demonstrate that in this episode.Vote for Sjogren's Strong for "The Peoples Choice Podcast Award"You can nominate us for Peoples Choice and Health. You will need to sign up and verify your email for fairness.https://www.podcastawards.com/app/signupWe Appreciate your Vote!Donate to the Sjogren's Syndrome Foundation by supporting "Living Sjogren's StrongSupport to the "Living Sjogrens Strong" Team for the 2019 LA Area Walk for Sjogren's. You can join our Team and/or donate to the Sjogren's Syndrome Foundationhttp://events.sjogrens.org/site/TR/Events/General?team_id=2166&pg=team&fr_id=1320Let’s SocializeFacebook https://www.facebook.com/SjogrensStrong/Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sjogrens_strong/Twitter https://twitter.com/SjogrensStrong

My guest today is Brian Wagner, Founder and CEO of A Radical Vision, an organization with a powerful mission statement: "It took a crippling disease for us to understand that we have no vision. Losing our sight allowed us to gain vision. That was the greatest gift that's ever been given. We can't hide from our adversity. Our goal is to help others recognize their adversity, go blind, and gain vision. This happened to us. And now, we want to help others have that same focus.” A Radical Vision When Brian was 10, he started to develop some health problems due to a cavernous malformation, which is a malformed blood vessel that can form anywhere in your body. Brian’s just happened to have formed in his brain stem. So, as a result, Brian dealt with a variety of different issues throughout his life. Then, at the age of 43, it started to bleed, and bleed, and bleed. And when it bled, it put pressure on the nerves that control his vision, and he started to go blind. So Brian had to undergo a brain surgery in order to remove the cavernous malformation from his brain stem. Brian still can’t see out of both eyes, but in other ways, he has more perspective and vision than ever before in his life. Resources:Learn more at https://www.aradicalvision.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/aradicalvision/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aradicalvision/Twitter: https://twitter.com/aradicalvisionRead: INSIGHT by Dr. Tasha Eurich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are Mint Juleps the problem child of bourbon cocktails? We examine the Mint Julep and it’s impact on history and give our novice commentary on horse racing. We then look at the crazy hoarding of higher aged MGP stocks because there are now groups scouring the country to find distilleries with this coveted whiskey. Is there a scary future of higher priced bourbons (over $100) that don’t carry an age statement? Lastly, we give our initial thoughts on the new Wild Turkey “Cornerstone” release. Show Partners: Batch 016 was project that took over a year. Barrell Craft Spirits selected 9 to 15 year old barrels with similar profiles from different distilleries. It’s deeply concentrated, but not too oaky and finishes with a toasted orange notes. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order with code "Pursuit" at RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: Oldest Whiskey: http://www.lawhiskeysociety.com/pages/Worlds-Oldest-Whiskey Yelp Recommendations: https://www.yelp.com/collection/Si779eiZUmjGomZP2pZLTg This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about the word smooth. 200th Episode of Bourbon Pursuit Kentucky Derby Post Mortem. Thoughts on the race? Bourbon was out in full force with Brown Forman having a spotlight. Are mint juleps a timeless classic or is it ruining good bourbon? How many brands can you name that have a horse on the label? MGP prices sky rocketing. When did this phenomenon begin? KY Owl Confiscated. Thoughts on the future with high price no age statement bourbon? Wild Turkey "Cornerstone" releasing their limited edition rye. http://whiskyadvocate.com/wild-turkey-masters-keep-cornerstone-rye-last-drop-glenrothes-whisky-whiskey/ 0:00 We should see I'm a accountants and lawyers. We can go on the show. Oh, wait. 0:07 No more no more lung capacity. Yeah. 0:21 Hey, everyone, and welcome to Episode 200. of bourbon pursuit. I'm one of your host Kinney. And did you just hear what I said? It was Episode 200. This is monumental. It's huge. Now I'm not going to talk about it because we talked a lot about it in the show, or maybe just a little bit. I don't know. We're kind of proud of ourselves here. But thank you so much for joining us and being a part of this monumental occasion. And it's because of you our listeners why this has been so successful. So keep tuning in, and we're going to keep bringing you good original bourbon content. Now on with a little bit of news, Adam hearse of the LA whiskey society has uncovered the world's oldest whiskey 1:00 It's a 12 year old Pennsylvania by distilled in 1847. It's been passed down through generations of family as well as estate sales until it ended up in the hands of someone asking more about its origin. The link to the website in our show notes goes through intensive detail of the label glass seal court condition, and even guesses what the whiskey is comprised of, because back then, there was no notion of Oh, hey, what's your mash bill? And really, also what is the importance of discovering this ancient artifact, and I guess I say agent and relatively new terms here, but having a bottle from pre Civil War era is a window into the age of whiskey history that at this point, only documentation is meant around. So other than that, you know, there hasn't been much else. And now historians have reviewed the advertisements below sales and other records, and we now have a legitimate bottle of whiskey from over 160 years ago. 2:00 Read the in depth analysis from the link in our show notes. Are you coming to the bourbon trail and happen to be staying in Louisville, Kentucky? Well, Ryan and I, we get asked all sorts of questions all the time of Where should we go? Where should we get a drink? Well, we went ahead and started creating a collection and we put it on Yelp. And you can go and get that in our show notes. It's loaded with casual and fine dining choices, dessert spots, as well as our favorite places to grab a cocktail or a glass of bourbon at one of our local watering holes around town. Now with that, let's hear from our good friend Joe over a barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred Minnick with above the char. 2:40 Hi, this is Joe Beatrice from Bell craft spirits. batch 16 was a project that took over a year, we selected nine to 15 year old barrels with similar profiles from different distilleries. It's deeply concentrated, but not too okie and finishes with a toasted orange note. Find out more at barrel bourbon calm. 2:58 I'm Fred Minnick. And this is a 3:00 The char, I stood in the middle of a liquor store aisle. Consumer asked the retailer, what was the most smooth bourbon on the shelf? Doubt. The retail attendant is just someone who's doing his job. He meant well, and he picked out five or six Bourbons that he thought were smooth. And he did it based on proof. They were all 80 or 90 proof when reality the Bourbons that he picked, were actually a little hot for their proofs. So he completely eliminated things like four roses single barrel, which is 100 proof, or knob Creek, which is 100 proof or Booker's, which you know, gets up there in the hundred and 20 proof range, completely ignored the mall, despite them being very smooth. And we see smooth being used and all sorts of marketing. We're talking about going back to the earliest forms of whiskey marketing and 4:00 You'll find the words smooth. Well, what does that mean? What does smooth actually mean? In a sense, it's meant to be a word that kind of covers the word good. 4:17 But in reality smooth really does have a true definition within the industry, as I recall many people saying, but most notably, Jim Rutledge, talked about smoothness being about how does it feel on the palate, and how does it burn if it burns at any point in a major way, and it is not smooth for you. So from the moment that it hits your palate, to the all the way down to the belly, if it's burning at any point in that process, then it is not smooth for you. But just like taste is very subjective. What tastes good to me may not taste good to you. And so what a smooth for me a grizzled and veteran whiskey drinker may not 5:00 be smooth for someone who's just getting in the game. So there's really no right answer for what is smooth. I'll tell you what isn't smooth. Vodka. Vodka sucks. And that's this week's above the char. Hey, if you have an idea for about the char hit me up on Twitter or Instagram, just like drew Scott did on May 4. He's the one who came up with the idea for what the term smooth means. Well, actually, he said, to stop using the term smooth when describing whiskey, I decided to get a little bit of a definition instead. But hey, if you've got an idea send it to me that's at Fred manic again that's add Fred manic and thank you drew for that wonderful idea. Until next week. Cheers. 5:47 This is the 200th episode of bourbon pursuit. Welcome back, everybody. We're worth the 32nd recording of the bourbon Community Roundtable. I'm glad I haven't gotten my my numbers mixed up in my head yet because we are really anticipating 6:00 This day it's kind of a huge milestone for us. So Ryan congratulations. Like an Adrian Adrian like we did at home it should be like running up the stairs rocky style. I know we need like, you know the Evan Williams bottle Red Label with the 200 like, wrapped around it we need that, you know, wrapped around this episode. Yeah, it's amazing. I can't believe gosh, how, how is that possible that we've done 200 episodes. That's amazing, and a lot of cool stuff we've done over the past few years. So congrats to you. Oh, it's it's to all of us into the whole Community Roundtable here as well. You know, these guys have been a very big part of making this show successful as well. You know, these these community roundtables are one of the most downloaded episodes that we have. I think it's just people love it when you pitch about bourbon and they love to hear the banter of what goes on. So with that I'm actually celebrating since I don't have like an Evan Williams to at the end. 7:00 Diversity I figured I'd grab like 100 McKenna bottle and bond and hundred proof and I got a pursuit series of 1400 per hundred proof. Mix them together and it guess it's 200 7:15 How long do you think about doing that before? I bought a few hours early, I was like, What can I do to celebrate? Because I saw Blake's post. He said, What are you drinking that to celebrate? And I said, I have no idea. I guess I'll just grab 200 proof Bourbons and mix them together. That's about as close as I can think it was something ridiculous. Yeah. Well, could you get to a 200 year old bourbon like what's in your stash? You could grab get three final reserves or something? Yeah. 7:39 How close could you get in a glass with a Nick? I thought tonight's round table we're actually going to turn it around in we're all going to interview you and Ryan about the highlights of your last 200 episodes. I like him your favorite moments. 7:55 I think people get bored pretty quickly. Yeah. not that exciting. All in all, we 8:00 Don't care all that. 8:02 gotta remember the premise of this show was never about us. It's where the dumb ass is that are the ones that asked all the questions. So that's episode number 204. Yes. And I'm like, oh no. 8:16 So with that, let's go ahead and let's go around the table as usual and introduce everybody Blake's already chimed in. So Blake I'll let you go first. Yes, I am Blake from bourbon or calm and so box calm can find me at bourbon or calm Bo you are be in our or all the social medias that correspond with that, as well as CEO box calm that's s e l EA ch s and I'm drinking one of my current favorite bottles of steel box. It's a Jay Henry and sons. It's their five year five year bourbon that's finished in cognac barrel. So really good stuff. Check it out. 8:54 Awesome, good deal, and a face that we haven't seen in a while Nick from breaking bread. 9:00 Hey man How you been catching up on sleep finally guys but glad to be back I tried to make the last two and kind of last man is like Jordan I'm sorry I'm I am not going to be home in time for this so can you jump on and he was always excited to jump on so he's been doing a bunch of them here lately but anyways, I'm Nick from breaking bourbon com check us out online breaking bourbon calm obviously and all the social media is all at breaking bourbon. I will kind of kind of reminiscing a little bit. I remember us being guests on bourbon pursuit years ago, I can't remember the episode number. But it was in the first you know, series run of them as before we were doing video so it was all audio. Eric and I were over at his house. You know, Jordan was at his house. Kenny and Ryan we couldn't see you guys. I'm not sure where you were exactly. But remember, we were talking about the bourbon storage experiment and kind of excited because we have been I've been listened to you guys from the beginning, you know from your first episode forward, and it was the first you know 10:00 podcast and the first time we do anything like that so just kind of thinking back about that now I was two years ago three years ago I can't remember at this point but yeah kind of you know fun exciting run here and excited to see where it goes from here. That was definitely one of my highlight episode you know with you guys 10:20 feel bad thanks a lot jerk 10:23 to say that 10:26 three bottles in the mail for 10:28 Yeah, I mean that's that's one of the big things and the great things about what we've what we've really done here in the roundtable is you know, it all actually all started off at each one of you had your own sort of singular episode before we even decided like hey, let's get on and do you know kind of coming on this together. So it was it was good with that. So if anybody really wants to see how bad our interview skills were in the first like 50 episodes then you can go Yeah, if you think they're bad now just 10:56 actually listened on a little bit of a roundtable number one 11:00 Last night or yesterday, whenever you sent it out Yeah, I was like, right on the first one. Yeah, it was five kids How the hell do 11:10 I do that? 11:14 But it's one of those ones where it's like had good personality. Yeah. 11:19 Exactly. Everybody's on their iPhone had that actual mix or filters or where we're at now so yeah, they were all vintage and it turns out they were auditions for this. Exactly. 11:32 It's been a good journey, that's for sure. So Brian, I'll let you go ahead. Yeah, sure everyone I'm I'm Brian with sippin corn. You can find me on the social medias si p p n co Rn, and citizen corner calm and bourbon justice calm. So check that out. book available on Amazon and through Potomac and on the website bourbon, justice, calm. I was also thinking back to the early time that I was 12:00 On the show to begin with, but that was replaced last night when I met a bunch of guys for a wild turkey tasting and practically everyone there had something to say about the urban Community Roundtable and it that's when it really struck me how we're able to to connect with so many different people from so many different walks of life and in Kenny and Ryan you guys have done great on this. I mean it's just the the reach that you guys have had. And the popularity of it is just fantastic. So congratulations on 232 round tables. Thank you sorry it's all good are good legal advice. 12:42 navigate the legal waters. That's right. For sure. I feel like I'm doing my own little barrel bourbon blend over here like mixing this the Kentucky and Tennessee stuff. It's actually pretty good mix of these these two together. Are you really raising them together? I really did. I mixed them together. I wasn't just joking. Like what you're gonna get 13:00 Yeah, follow through with my promise. 13:04 But personally series There you go. And the other thing is, you know, Fred couldn't be here tonight he said that he had a pretty wild Derby, you know going to parties and he's just finally get to the point where he was at home and his five year old son said, Dad when we gonna hang out again? And I said, Yeah, you need to spend time with your family. That's totally fine. So we're going to be saying spread on this one, but that's okay. And you know, 13:27 speaking of that with the derby, let's have a little bit of a post mortem because let's talk a little bit of thoughts on the race I know we got we got three guys here from Kentucky to that think they're from Kentucky. So let's try to try to get an idea of you know, what's your all's thoughts were just in the race in general because it was kind of a wild finish. 13:48 Yeah, first, I'd like to clarify, I don't think I'm from Kentucky. 13:53 Or from Florida, or no, um, I mean, my thoughts on the race for it's kind of kind of messed up. When you 14:00 When you look at the I go back to the NCAA Tournament because that's sports actually care about in who was it Virginia against? A virgin gets Auburn. It's like was it? Was it a foul at the gate? You know, the last shot of game by the book? Yeah, probably was a foul. Do you make that call at that time? I don't know. You know, I would probably say no. So I was not for the call. I thought, you know, there's probably a lot of other places that could have been called or it just kind of gets overlooked. But I'm not a huge horse racing fan. So it's kind of hard for me to weigh in with any kind of credibility. All I know is I watch the race. I walked outside and started cooking more and my wife came outside said, Oh, yeah, they're actually recalling it around Africa what she used but yeah, so Oh, no, I'd say I would rather just see the horses run and you know, if there's a little bit of bumping, 14:54 so be it but yeah, that sounds like a lot like your Barbara radians. That's a Floridians opinion. 15:01 Not a good party unless there's a little bit of bumping 15:05 no no bumping and grind I don't see nothing wrong with a little 15:11 Joe to see albums getting ready to come on or something. Yeah, yeah. 15:15 I gotta kinda agree with that you know, I honestly we watched the race and we had people over and before they even made that call we were doing something else and kind of lost track of it was until the next day that that became apparent and kind of went back and looked at it and you know, it is tough call you know, at the end of the day, I mean there are animals out there running in a circle you know what a little bit in front of another animal the room I guess you know, but it seemed it seemed really surprising it kind of shocking that that they did make that call. Well, it's definitely shocking its first time it's ever happened in the in the derby that the winner lost. And I'm no Stewart all all of those disclaimers, but I'll disagree with you guys just to have a different opinion. 16:00 The the people who I do know who are in the horse business were just looking at on how dangerous that really that move really was. And it's not just the animal moving over into the lane it's it's the jockey being reckless and going for that spot. Hell you know whatever whatever happens be damned he's gonna go for that spot and if they would have clipped apparently if they would have clipped hooves which was really close to happening you would have had two horses that were shot on the track and if if that's if that happened in the in the derby they had to pull out the blue tarp and kill some horses that's that just be devastating. So I think they have to be careful like this and if that's the if that's the risk, and you got to call them like that. Yeah, is that a real thing? Like they pull up the blue tarp and oh, yeah, they put a horse down. Well, they go on the track. Yeah. 16:57 haul out an ambulance kind of cover over then yeah. 17:00 euthanize them if it's so bad that they can't don't think it's going to they can save them. So yeah, you gotta think these these horses are I think I said this last night Kenny, I mean these horses are you know thousand plus on these really frail skinny legs and you know it's kind of like targeting within you know in college football if you get targeted with the helmet to helmet you get ejected you know it's it sucks because yes it is like you know part of the game you're hitting but at the same time you're trying to protect these animals and they say it's animals but they're very highly trained animals that this is all they do and so the jockey nude is done and and they have to do it to protect these animals and so it while it does suck, it is the right call and yeah, that's what needs to be because they were they fell on it. They fall in the Jackie was definitely behind it more or less or was that the horse that just moved out a position that the jockey tried to 18:00 say that the horse got scared by the other one. I'm like, well, that happens. every race you know, this is not another new and so you know it he can control that animal in that situation so but I'm not a jockey and I don't ride but I do think they would have made that call No, no, no question in any regular rates and so I'm glad that they did it on such a big stage but it did piss a lot of people off because that was the favorite and a lot of money was on on that horse. Yeah, let's just make sure we reaffirm that none of us are like bloodstock like we have skin in the game. We actually have no idea. We're just we're just commenting to comment. So yeah, I haven't given less credibility in horse racing than I do environment. So 18:47 take for what that's worth. So with that, we'll we'll switch it up and talk about some bourbon a little bit because, you know, bourbon was out in full force at the derby for anybody that wasn't paying attention. Brown Forman really has their time in 19:00 The spotlight when it comes to a Woodford Reserve and old forester there during oaks and Derby, and there are a lot of mint juleps that are sold there during that day. Now, one thing is that I enjoy a mint julep during the season. I think it's just like a classic thing. I don't know why I just kind of got hooked on him a little bit. I even had a mint julep recipe I put out there. However, there's a lot of people that are kind of the hardcore bourbon people that are saying that you bastardized good bourbon. You know, you're gonna make a mint julep. Take all the other crap out there and just give me the bourbon. So what do you guys think? Do you look at it as a kind of like a timeless classic? Or is it something that you know, maybe a bourbon nerd should probably just quit drinking a mint julep? You gotta have a look at the track. It's like just it's it's just they go hand in hand. I mean, it's it's a tradition it's in the old forester actually. It's pretty good. Pre mix Mint Julep I had their in their dangerously like sneaky strong, I had several and I ran into Kenny and I was like, I 20:00 Two or three not and then the next day I like woke up in my track outfit on the couch and so I was like 20:07 like what's in these things you know? Or did 20:10 it like the outfit you went to the tracking or like, like 20:15 like short shorts on 20:20 I was at first actually I appreciate the clarification on my running track outside things got real crazy if you got into a whole new Oh yeah, my my my spikes and 20:33 bad suit and whenever but now there you gotta do what you love. I love ninja loves candy makes one of the best ninja lips. I mean, they're hard to drink all the time but at the track Kentucky Derby it's like it's quintessential Derby stuff. So it just a quick little history because I was sitting there googling it at the the Mitchell was actually an associated with the Kentucky Derby since 1938. And even before then, it's been 21:00 documented that it was actually literature's earliest 1784 that it was for curing sickness of the stomach. So, amen. There we go. I guess. 21:12 It's, we don't have any medical people here on the show so nobody can really comment about that one, but there is there is 21:21 the Holiday Inn Express. How's that different from anything else can 21:26 you're right? We're pretending we're stewards, you know? 21:33 Yeah. 21:35 So, anybody else have any kind of comments on that? Like, is it is it is it a bastardization of bourbon or is it still have its rightful place in in history? Mostly I'm I'm a big fan of mint julep side, I tend to drink old fashions and mint juleps when it comes to mixed bourbon drinks. Not too too often, but I will say over time, probably more juleps than old fashions now. It's great in the summer. I kind of got some 22:00 I could go into the store to get meant so started growing some in the yard, it grows like a weed, it grows really well. 22:08 It stays really well in the fridge once I once I pull it, you know, 22:12 so it's I just think it's a fantastic easy drink that you know, people always tend to really like, not usually as strong as I make them. So I have to remember that, you know, 22:22 with other people kind of let them know to let it simmer for a little while and then pick up some of the ice to kind of water it down. But yeah, I think it's a fun, great summer drink. Nothing wrong with mixing bourbon if that's what you want to do. So I feel like somebody needs to take the opposite position. 22:40 is a terrible idea. 22:44 I'm not that far, but what does get me a little bit every year is the amount of I don't know if everybody else gets them, but like the text of like, hey, they're making 20 $500 Mint Julep TV. Man. I wish you could do something like that. I'm like, okay, like it's for charity. 23:00 Get it I'm completely okay with that side but they're just taking Woodford Reserve is just regular Mint Julep in a fancy cup but now it's like glacier water and that was one year one year they did glacier water this year I believe they did like a honey simple syrup mint. And basically it was a barrel aged simple syrup that was done like for a year or something like that. But now I don't pin pick juice or pig men from the infield or something. I don't know. But that was It never ceases to amaze me. I mean, it's great publicity for Woodford but why they're the ones where they really get credit for the Kentucky Derby because they pay for it. Yeah, I guess that's true. They got them brown Forman pockets but 23:48 no so I'm a once a year mental kind of guy. 23:52 364 days a year if you asked me what I would like mint julep is never in the top 10 23:59 but 24:00 You know, it's hot It's April or May what tables 24:07 you should really weigh in on the last week so I'm kind of running together at this point but no, you know, it's warm outside. It's like okay, it's it's there's a lot of ice in there and you know, nobody wants to just sit around drinking bourbon neat when it's 85 degrees out so for that I let it slide any other day of the week or any other day of the year. I'm not for Mitchell. Well, and I think to it has a place as if you're going to be day drinking because you're going to the track all damn day. That's that's your starter drink. That's your morning drink you just like you don't necessarily want bourbon need if it's 90 degrees out. Always want to start off with a barrel proof bourbon neat. So warm up to it start with a couple of juleps that helps set a base and you're good for the day. And then you can wake up in your track outfit. 24:56 Next thing you know you're in valore 25:00 You're on the floor. Yep. So the other thing that we kind of see with with bourbon and horses and Brian saw a little bit before we started so hopefully he's been he's been trying to think of this beforehand but I kind of want to put a question and it actually kind of test your knowledge. How many brands can you name that have a horse on the label? 25:20 Go ahead and start naming them off. So we got blank on the label or just on like, bourbon and 25:27 Don ID bullet at one point had thoroughbred which had a horse on it for roses and Secretariat on it. 25:38 Good. See, who else do we have? Don't forget a gifted horse. gifted horse that bad. Got Rock Hill farms Rock Hill Farm. 25:49 We met cow email you can hook pain hooks a new one that's kind of all their different brains have it? Think a smooth Ambler 26:00 But the 10 or 26:03 most any of the old scouts I think 26:06 yeah yeah 26:10 and that's it sure there's a horse on some get BK 26:15 has it even worse playing chestnut farms from total wind farms Yeah. Old Carter I don't remember old oh yeah old Carter the new one that came out Yeah, yeah. It has it on it's 11 Yeah, somebody said Maker's Mark I don't recall unless you're just talking about like the the 26:32 leases that they have and stuff like that. Yeah, rumor is that a pursuit series number 10 may have forced on it it's Ryan in his tracks it on. 26:43 It's not actually he's not 26:46 like he's kind of like just wavered to the side as he is a spine just gave out after getting thrown off the horse. 26:54 Penny horse at Kroger in a track suit. That's what needs to go on the label. 27:02 Yeah, I'm Woodford Derby models as mentioned now sure enough Yeah, every year 27:09 there's there's a lot of ties just with horses and bourbon as we can just see that from the sheer array of stuff that's out there. So I guess if you want a bottle of self put a horse on it. Yeah, that's like all old historical names and horses is what sells and bourbon right? It's Uh huh. That's right. Think about the two imagery it's that's typically what it is. And Tony just mentioned Bell meat as well. Another one forgot about Oh, yeah. 27:37 So So associating an animal with the label to have a spirit tends to help it tends to do better wine will do that to make 27:47 apps Of course it does. 27:50 The animal on it too. 27:53 Alright, so while we're talking about animals and spirit animals, Nick, if you were to start a brand to put 27:58 your spirit 28:02 Dragon 28:08 attack Season Two I mean I have no idea I was just thinking of the movie Coco for some reason I don't know why 28:15 you're gonna say How to Train Your Dragon because that's been on repeat in the bourbon or household as of recently. I don't know why my kids don't like that for whatever reason I love the movie and they watched it once No, we don't refuse to watch this is actually good. Yeah. 28:31 Alright, so let's go ahead and move on because you know, Bellamy just mentioned and Bell meat is part of one of the things that kind of leads us into this next conversation in this is just seeing what's happened with MTV lately. MTV prices are skyrocketing. Mike drop is trading for around the issues. Mike Trump, I think number one, or maybe number two, I can't forget which one is trading at the same values of Pappy 23. There's now a dedicated Facebook trading group. 29:00 Only MTP and I'm seeing more brands in that group than I've ever even heard of before. And you see people that are trying to sort of figure out where's the where's the next distillery with h doc of MTP that's selling it. And then they're ordering it and then it's just kind of like moving on to the next one. So can you guys think of like when this phenomenon began of people that just started going crazy over MTP? It's funny, like, I don't know what to look back at. It wasn't too long ago where we were like, talking about Isn't it just MTP that they're just putting it out there and like, you know, nobody was buying it because they're like, isn't it just another MTP? And it's funny how the tides have turned to the other and I'm not sure what started I'm sure with anything in bourbon, it's, there's less and less age stock of it. So now people think it's better, which it is great. I mean, I love 12 year MTP 1314 is some of the best stuff out there. But yeah, I don't get it. Because I mean 30:00 Sorry, go ahead. I mean, yeah, just go ahead. I was gonna say, I think when, at one point when it was kind of behind a brand and, you know, you knew they're making it easy, but you knew you had a pretty big accessible brand. That was one thing, but now that you're seeing these smaller niche brands, with MVP, you know, with, in some cases, age statements and other cases, just a limited number of bottle bottlings you know, limit number of bottles, it's got some hype, some momentum behind it. I think people have come around to the fact that empty p really knows what they're doing. I mean, they're good at making whiskey. You know, there's no question about that. And in combination with people that are good at marketing whiskey, and in some cases, it is really good whiskey. I think that's kind of that snowball is kind of happened here. And you know, it's, it's if there's enough different about the label, enough different about you know, people are talking about it that's going to generate that snowball effect for it. You know, I think that's what we're kind of seeing happen, you know, you're no longer having the, you know, I'm a big sorcerer of bourbon and it's 31:00 I'm going to make everything tastes the same. And you know that's going to be our goal and said, You're seeing no I'm going to make a niche product with a small you know, number of bottles and I'm going to make that look and feel special and MTP is behind. In a lot of cases then it's getting more limited to find the older stuff. That's what's happening. And people want it because the momentum is finally built up. Well, I see it it's a little odd because I think if you get you can just Google it. I think there's a there's a article out there that says your craft distiller is actually coming from a, like a warehouse in Indiana. 31:35 Indiana, I think that's exactly what it was. And that's I remember that I remember when that came out years ago. And that's kind of what helped kind of kickstart my education because that was something that I wasn't necessarily always up to snuff about. And that's really when you start learning how to read labels you understand when it says distilled in Indiana, like all of a sudden, like the cogs start clicking together and the gear start moving but 32:00 It's funny because at that time, there was this stigma or this kind of like, thought process that people said, Well, why would you just want to buy somebody source whiskey? Like, why don't you just go buy somebody that is distilling it and making themselves like its transparency on the label. But now it's kind of done a complete one at where people are like, Oh, yeah, I just, I just want that. Like, I don't care if it says Traverse City or blonde brothers or whatever it is like, I just want the juice that's inside. 32:32 Yeah, I mean, I agree with Nick. Sorry, Blake. I agree with Nick. Its marketing. I mean, my word. It's the same stuff that's been out and like Kenny, like you say, it's originally people were Pooh poohed it because it all came from Indiana. So the only thing different is, how it's marketed and the price that they charge for it. 32:52 So I don't know. So go ahead, like, yeah, so I would kind of go with that. It's proven itself as a really good thing. So 33:00 But but there is some differences you know, for me it goes back to like the smooth Ambler days when they were sourcing and putting out a lot where that was what first really turned me on to MTP was like oh wow, this stuff is really good. And then you know, you taste some from other distilleries or brands and labels, that kind of stuff. It's like, this is MVP, but it tastes different. So it becomes a little bit of a collector thing to it's like, with Buffalo Trace. Yeah, I love Buffalo Trace. But why would I just buy the Buffalo Trace brand? Why do I still try to buy the stags and all that of the world because there's difference in the barrels. 33:37 So I would agree it is marketing but who's the one really doing the marketing because in GP, I mean what they spend, you know, a couple hundred bucks a year on marketing or something. And it's really these labels and brands that are kind of put given the push behind it, but with these kind of groups, everything, they aren't really looking at the marketing nearly as much in my opinion, you 34:00 They're they're focused on the actual bourbon and then it just becomes a little bit of a cultish thing and 34:08 it's like, you know, sits a Willer all that much better. Is it $2,000 better, better than a comparable bottle? Probably not. But it's got a little bit of a, you know, 34:19 cache behind it that, that gives it that extra boost that it needs. So. And I also say that because I have an MVP pic coming out pretty soon, so it's going to be worth at least $700. 34:33 It's getting harder to find these distilleries. And that, 34:37 that have h product, you know, a lot of four and six years old. Yeah, I just happened to find, you know, Bull Run has some that's close to 13. Well, a little over 13 years old and it's you don't see that popping up nearly as much anymore. Yeah, I think that's a good point from Blake because there's a huge gap between, you know, like you said the four to five year MVP. 35:00 To the 1312 to 1314, you know, there's not really anything in between and so like, you have like a very rare supply of the older age stuff, and then a huge gap until it's younger. And so that age stuff is just getting kind of hype because of the supply side of that. And that's probably what most Bourbons out there today, you know, because there is a huge gap and all Bourbons from five years to you know, 10 to 12. Frank has a pretty good theory in the chat. He said in my perspective, the allocation game has drove MTP promotion, which might be somewhat true, you know, you can't get your hands on a regular bottle Blanton's anymore. But you have some really good age stock of MTP that's floating around from multiple distilleries that you can get your hands on pretty well. So that's a that's a pretty good theory behind it as well. The other thing you know, we talked about the the marketing aspect, I don't know if I agree with the the way these brands we're doing marketing, I think it's it's been the community of of the underground groups that have 36:00 really been able to pick and find these things. If I recall like one of the first ever Blom brothers pics that I saw came out of cork and bottle up in Northern Kentucky and then after that, it's like, it's like a everybody just swarms to something and they just gobble it all up, they eat it up and then now like blood brothers is crushed like they have no more like age stock that they're putting to do their single barrel program. Same thing happened to Boone County like Boone County does 175 doddle Sorry, sorry, hundred $75 per bottle now through their gift shop of the same 1314 year in GP juice. And so it just it's this community, I think this is very bullish in regards of how they are going about acquiring this through multiple means of finding these distilleries. But part of that too, is is how small that an outlet is though, that's actually putting their label on it and selling it that people can identify that okay, it is something that's different from something else out there. 37:00 You know, it's, you know, 37:01 ultimately put together and bottled by this company over here, whether that company is deliberately somehow reaching those people or it's just by chance that they're being reached. And they're, they're small enough that that relatively small number of people can make a run on it. You know, it's almost as if you, you know, you separated into two what's behind it. So you've got the distillation, and then you've got ultimately the blending in most cases, some cases single barrel, just identifying what those are, and then you've put the label on it. I think what's behind it as well as people have recognized that MTP from a distillation perspective can do it has done a very good job and they've done a good job. They've made really good Bourbons, you know, and some companies are good at finding what those are and bottling them whether they're blending it or doing single barrels or whatever, you know, I think the communities kind of recognize that and and, you know, given them that credit, and when that happens, you know, they just like you said, Kenny there people are jumping on it because they believe that 38:00 It's going to beach they believe it's true and they believe that can be a really good bourbon. But it doesn't even have to be a good bourbon though. I mean, that's the thing if you're starting a new brand now the recipe is to source it to release under 2000. And bottles have a really cool label. And you just generate that hype and it sell Oh, and the other point is to have a really high price for so limited supply really high price, cool label, limited number for sale, and that just drives it and and like you guys are saying people eat it up and it just it feeds itself. 38:37 There's like an expansion to you know, for a while there's and maybe I was part of the problem too is you know, you're Kentucky snob at first and all you want to drink is Kentucky bourbon whiskey. And then all of a sudden you hear about this distilled in GPI Indiana sort of stuff, and you kind of you write it off for the longest time, and then all of a sudden you kind of somebody introduces you to it. You know, you get a few 39:00 From gamblers you do all that and you kind of start enjoying it and so it kind of starts breaking this mold now where everybody at some point just said like oh like Kentucky and now it's like okay well Kentucky and Indiana like how far is this going to go until it's keep spreading to say like okay well now we can say at least 16 states in the US are producing good whiskey so I think it's also going to be a kind of a breaking the mold of just how people envision and think of where can they get their bourbon now to Yeah, no doubt because most people they want the Kentucky name they want the Kentucky brand behind it and that gives them a lot of validity and credit that it's going to be something good but when reality you know, and we're Kentucky ends and we do make the best bar and there is a lot of good people out there making some really good use that can compete with us for sure. 39:52 But it is it's there's that stigma though, that if it's not Kentucky, then it's kind of 39:58 Homo 40:00 Yeah, just take a few years for that stigma ago and and I think at this point like, what would end up in distilled in Indiana does when you see that in the back label now people's ears perked up. They're like, All right, cool. It's going to be good Indiana stuff. And so I think it's just going to take its time, one last thought to I think maybe like some, something like Templeton Rob probably heard MVP for a little bit. Yeah. You know, because, like you said, that article, you know, came out and then they're like, well, if everybody's done in those brands, they just heard that, you know, that's not i'm not going to buy that and then, but once they actually tried, then their opinions change, but it's hard to break that opinion when it's so strong against it. Absolutely. And so when somebody in the bourbon guy just said, Kentucky, I'll change the game as far as pricing goes, that kind of leads us into our next little segment here. 40:51 There are more craft distilleries popping up around the country now more than ever before. So how do you find out the best stories and the best flavors? Rock house whiskey club is it was 41:00 The Month Club and they're on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories that craft distilleries across the US have to offer. Along with two bottles of hard to find whiskey rack houses boxes are full of cool merchandise that they ship out every two months to members in 40 states and rack houses June box they're featuring a distillery that claims to be the first distillery to stout a whiskey rack house whiskey club is shipping out two bottles from there, including its beer barrel bourbon and beer barrel rye, both of which were finished in barrels that were once used to mature America's number one selling bourbon barrel aged out. And if you're a beer guy like me, you would know that's new Hollins dragon milk, go to rock house whiskey club. com to check it out. And try a bottle of beer barrel bourbon and beer barrel rye. Use code pursuit for $25 off your first box. 41:51 I haven't actually tried it yet. Ryan and I both have samples and Kentucky out confiscated However, there's there's a certain name he's been on the podcast Blake Woodard it seems like he's on him. 42:00 To make Dixon feel really, really bad about himself, but you know, he He kind of looks at what Kentucky confiscated his as the when he say the speaker van, or sorry, the was it was the analogy he used the guys selling secrets away Why man? Yeah, that that analogy essentially saying that what they're doing is they're sourcing a bourbon, which everybody knows that Kentucky is sourcing. However they're putting no age statement on it. And they're selling it for around $100 hundred and $30 in some markets. So what do you guys see on the thoughts of the future? Do you think this is going to be leading the pack in regards of other people doing this or do you think this is going to be a one off and who knows if it's going to sell through or not? 42:49 Well, I've got I got a story. It's on the topic. But before we jump into it, so when when my wife and I first got married, bought our house, we went furniture shopping, we're looking for 43:00 room set. And the first day we went to small store, one salesman, walked us through the whole store told us everything we didn't want to know about furniture and everything about it. And we were enlightened, but also really kind of dazed and confused. Went to the next store, and very different experience, the person walking around was, you know, just kind of touching on things. And we came up to one set that was like $6,000. And, and she said, Now this, this is like, this is the best set, and I'm looking at I didn't like the style of it. I didn't recognize at all, what would make it better. And I said, why is this one the best one, and she looks and she was really stumped. And she looks at me with a straight face and says, well, it's just more expensive 43:45 to be the natural transition. So I wanted to say that before we jumped into this conversation, just as because it's this kind of reminded me of that, in a sense as I started to dig into what's actually inside this bottle, trying to figure out what I've got here. You know, I have a sample here to behind me. 44:00 Yeah, it's, it's, it's what the old adage, perception is reality and you know, the way the price things are people are automatically going to think it's premium or superior to all the, you know, everyday Bourbons the probably the everyday consumers that it does work with us, we can kind of sniff it out and you know, but maybe that's not who they're trying to go after. So maybe they don't give a shit what we think and they're going to price it that way anyways, and they should, you know, and see what the market bears because that's what those people you know, so they pay it, why not? But you know, 44:35 you've priced it right if they pay it. Yeah, and I have and I have not tried it so I can't say it's worth it or not worth it. But it's it's hard to say it's probably going to be worth it but maybe it will be we'll see like how we kept count of how many posts that been on your Facebook group about people holding bottles of and saying is this a good buy? 44:56 Those all get deleted. don't post any unopened Bob pictures. 45:00 America 45:01 I mean, I think I see at least one a week between either that or Houston bourbon society one of the other, it definitely is in and that's the thing is like these these Bourbons and brands that are coming out now. They're not really made for the kind of store they're not made for the majority of the people watching this podcast like I love what Dixon is doing and he's an incredible Blender but at the end of the day, you know, there's a sales machine behind it, that's that's pricing this stuff and coming up with new brands and all that kind of stuff. So that's where I think 45:36 we're just seeing the beginning of the actual pricing and, you know, having a more expensive bottle, and we I still don't think we've seen the real big money get into bourbon that we will in five or six years, you know, I still think we're on the forefront of that when you look like what's going on with wine and scotch and all that and kind of to Nick's point of stores, people are going to walk in and 46:00 say oh I want the best bourbon you have they're just going to grab what's most expensive on the shelf so I can't blame these brands for doing that. Now am I going to be going out in spending my bottle or or spending my money on those bottles or even suggesting people that this is the best buy? No but I mean if if we just wanted to buy the best value we buy nothing but I don't know wild turkey want to want or something so to me it's about trying something new trying something different. If $130 doesn't like set you back and you're it's between that and paying the mortgage that month like enjoy a drink the bourbon have fun. 46:44 But you know don't get too caught up in the hype of just having an expensive bottle to buy. So 46:50 it to me it's it's gotten a little out of control and it seems like Kentucky I was kind of getting the brunt of the force at times when that's just where the 47:00 The markets going all together. Well, I think they get a little bit of the brunt because it is an NDP and it is Nast. And I think that's really where a lot of a lot of that out Well, maybe, yeah, maybe that the combination of both 47:14 got me wrong we we like Dixon too and he's a he's a good friend of the show and stuff like that. You know, one thing I thought I just had, it was it was literally last week somebody was here in Louisville, and they said, I need to get a bottle of a birthday or sorry, a bottle of bourbon for my friend's birthday, as somewhere around like the $80 value. I'm kind of like, geez, I don't even know like 47:37 yeah, and then they're like, but you host a bourbon podcast. You can't tell me one bourbon at $80. 47:43 But anyway, you know, in this, this is kind of what could be there that fits that mold sort of that higher premium tier category that you know, some but some people like us we may not be in for it. But you know the regular Joe that it's on the shelves, it has a high price tag. It's the perception that that's 48:00 They're now one Blake, I think I want to kind of like tail on to what you said there is you said that you don't think the real high dollar high price tag of bourbon has come yet. 48:12 I look at it and saying, I hope you're wrong. But kind of kind of expand on what you're thinking there. Yeah. So I mean, just think about the, the bottles, the expensive bottles that you have 48:26 sitting around now and had this conversation with somebody I think was last week or so I was like, Pappy 23, you know, secondaries probably 2020 500 48:36 at the most. There's guys spending, you know, upwards of 30 $40,000 48:42 on a bottle of scotch, there's guys spending, you know, $1,000 on a bottle of wine like it's nothing. The wines literally one sitting. So to a lot of the lot of this money like bourbon seems like a steal right now even where we are. You know if I can go spend 49:00 $3,000 on what's quote unquote, the best bourbon available and the most sought after bourbon in the world. Like That's nothing for a lot of these guys. And I think we'll start seeing more and more of that money start to pour in as we go through the years and you know, bourbon doesn't seem to be slowing down. So as much as we probably hate it as consumers and enthusiasts, the prices are just going to continue to go up and up and up. And 49:25 you know, I don't see that slowing down anytime soon. When the the Kevin O'Leary's of Shark Tank start making their way 49:33 whenever he starts buying Pappy and putting on a show, we're all in trouble. Yeah. Yeah, when Blake said that, that caught my attention to because I I'm past the time now where it must have been five, six years ago, I figured by now, I would have bought a still out of bankruptcy for some from some craft distiller who had failed and the prices would be back down to where they were, they were 10 years ago and I was totally wrong. 50:00 I mean, it's it's still going up and you get new releases coming out at 150 and $200. And 50:08 if the market bears it's with more fans coming on, it's, it's going to keep going up. And I was sorry, go ahead brand. And know that Yeah, just wrapping up on there. It's just it's continuing to climb and it surprises the hell out of me. And I think what's interesting is if you kind of think about scotch and if you go to a store with a fairly deep selection, you know, the scotch that you see on the shelf in the price of the scotch on the shelf, and if you go in the back room where, you know, that same bottle for $3,000 has been there, the one for $5,000 has been there, you know, and eventually somebody's going to buy it, you know, this stuff is on the shelf all the time, and you kind of don't have this run on it. Whereas with bourbon, when you have these kind of higher cost releases, you're still getting the the liquor store holding in the back parsing it out is something special for somebody. They touch the shelves. 51:00 In a lot of times, they're gone. I mean, there are the exceptions, of course. And I think we've tested that a little bit with, you know, some of these releases. I mean, I know some of the knob Creek releases that were special releases are still kind of hanging around, you know, above the hundred dollar mark, some of the wild turkey releases are still kind of hanging around. So I think the markets kind of touched that a little bit with bourbon and seeing that, in some cases, it will, you know, in some areas, at least sit for, you know, for quite a while and maybe doesn't have that same kind of momentum that scotch has built up over time. But I do think we're still potentially on that on that precipice on the beginning of, you know, seeing the higher price stuff but also seeing it as regular everyday stuff. kind of think of it like Bazell Haven, which, you know, around here is 40 to $50. You know, sometimes a little bit more. There's nothing inherently really special about that besides what the label is, you know, but in somebody's price range that feels like a special bottle. It looks like a special bottle. You know, for a lot of people 80 proof is fine. They don't really want any more than that. They're going to put down the rocks anyway. 52:00 You know, so that same person, whether go hunt, and when they go hunting for a gift for somebody, and they don't see anything in bourbon for over $80 on the shelf, because it's gone, or it's not there, it's in the background and they're not going to sell it to them. They see something like this, they don't know about age statements, they don't know about the story. They're not going to Google it. any of that, you know, they're going to somebody's going to say, this is really good stuff. And they're going to say, well, it must be it's $125. I'll take it, you know, and I think we're going to see that happen. And that got me thinking too, because I was I was thinking about I said, you know, I've written all the press releases trying to dig into this, I've got a bunch of questions out to the company. I'm waiting to hear back on and, you know, it's kind of, I think the non age stated is kind of thing that jumps out. But to me, it's more than that, because you definitely see, you know, Bourbons that don't have an age statement that are good, but it's more of the kind of like, just give me something about it, you know, give me more than just the tasting notes. You know, bourbon, I think kind of needs for me at least somewhat of a story with it. If it's not apparently obvious, you know, where it's just too 53:00 Tell me more about it. Tell me how it came to be. Give me some background about this. I mean, the story could be kind of cool, but it's all right. There's nothing there. It's a name. I want to know more about what's in this bottle to make it feel a little bit more special if it's going to be up at 125. And I'm going to think about buying it. Right. Yeah. I think we totally discount like, because we are enthusiasts and we have run a bourbon comedian roundtable how 53:27 o'clock at night? Yeah. 53:29 How naive and kind of gullible shoppers are, you know, everyday shoppers, and I'm reminded about this every time my wife sends me to go buy wine at the liquor store, I go and I have no idea and I'm like, Look, can somebody help me out here? Like, you know, 53:45 what's a good value? What's a good bottle you know, here and you know, so it's, you know, that there there is that at play. You know, there's a lot of people getting into this game and like you said, You somebody shows me a 40 or $50 bottle of wine which is expensive for wine because you have to drink and when 54:00 Sitting I'm like, well, it's gotta be pretty good and you know, it's higher dollar or, you know, where if it's like the seven or $8 one, which it's probably good but and probably just as good as the 40 or 50 I'm like, we'll just you know pass on that one so 54:15 so needless to say we need to start upping our prices on everything to start fitness new market is what you're trying to say. That's pretty much Well, I mean it when you think about what what Blake just said in having these these crazy asinine releases or these scotches that are $30,000 there is a little bit of the market that is kind of getting hit with that right now. I mean, Buffalo Trace and Sazerac they're doing their best to try to do it you know, the UFC releases the devil Eagle, very rare. These $6,000 bottles, $9,000 bottles that, you know, 54:49 we typically don't see at the retail store shelves in. That's actually the actually probably, another good point is that if you all saw one of those 55:00 Would you buy it? Because at this point you're kind of like 55:06 but I don't want to know if I want to be a part of that or not someone offered me double Eagle or whatever. albatross What are we calling that? What? 55:17 They said, Hey, the distributor can probably get two bottles. Do you want them like oh yeah, I'll take them both. Absolutely. Then they met somebody else but then I'm in the back of my head thinking like, am I about to spend 30 hundred dollars on a slightly older Eagle rare 17 you know, like, Is that where we are in the game? But yeah, you get caught in the hype. You go and you see it selling for $5,000 or whatever it is. And you kind of think, oh, man, this is smart. And 55:50 I mean, there's people out there that flip sport cars and you know, crazy stuff like that. So it's it's, there's always a market for that. So don't steal this. 56:00 blog post idea because it's still in the works, but I read your blog, you know, right. 56:06 I started like collecting stories from all these other enthusiast, which talks about, you know, what's the most expensive, expensive thing in their field? And there's like, I was talking to my uncle about it and he was talking to me about these wood duck decoys where guys are spending six $7,000 for wood duck decoys. I'm like, Okay, if somebody can spend that much for a wood duck decoys or cutter because it's, you know, Scotty Cameron used it to put left handed once you know, if there's all these other things, maybe Bourbons not as dumb and as crazy as anything. But, you know, every hobbyist and enthusiast kind of has their thing in their, you know, in their little circle. And to them, it seems crazy. To outside people. It seems real crazy. But at the end of the day, if the money's there, the money's there. Yep, absolutely. I explained it to your wife, Blake. When you buy it. 57:02 It's not crazy when you like 57:07 when you have those secret credit card stashed 57:10 on a CD with ducks 57:15 What in the world is that is like well, you know, Ernest Hemingway or I don't know what he is I kind of lost track after he's it 57:24 sounds like a bourbon story so yeah, really cool. So the last row bourbon 57:31 wouldn't duck and horses it'll, it'll all come together and it'll it'll stop. So the last thing we want to hit on kind of leave this on a high note is it's kind of basically I think it's out there now there was a TTP article I saw somebody that had a distillery sample already. So I think it's going to pretty much be solid at this point that Wild Turkey has announced that they are releasing their next limited edition masters keep it is he called Cornerstone it is a rye 17 year rye price. 58:00 Around $175 hitting the shelves in August and it's going to be about 15,000 bottles available nationwide which is a pretty pretty good release. So anybody excited for this one to kind of see a ride come out of this considering I think the past couple years we haven't seen a Russell's reserve right on the shelf 58:19 take notes heaven Hill and Parker's heritage collection. 58:24 Yeah. More I mean I'm really excited about this 58:29 you know, I think the need for a little bit of older I What's it is barrel proof. 109 proof. Okay. Which you know, the wild turkey in and 58:43 go there. Yeah, that might have gone in at 107. 58:47 I mean, that's, I'm more excited about that and any other release I've seen in 2019. So not even though Miss Rose recent orphan barrel with the big old buck that was up there. Well 59:00 Was that called bad decisions? Or 59:03 it's a scotch isn't it? It is. It's like a like a 20 something year old scotch or something like that hard to believe with how light the color looks in the pictures. 59:13 Yeah, well anyway, let's get back to Turkey. I'm excited. 59:18 I'm excited for wild turkey. You know, I, I feel like some of their first few kind of limited releases at least that I kind of get into. I just, they didn't hit the mark for me. 59:27 I feel like they've been getting better and better. I there's certainly, you know, very capable. So you know, I feel like we're just waiting for some more of those limited releases from them to just be some of the magic bottles you know, and really have the people in the story and everything behind it, you know, to you know, to back all that up. So, I'm excited for everything, everything they're doing and excited to see something different. excited to see Orion. I love rice. I'm a big fan of rice. So whenever there's a limited release, right, I'm typically 59:59 into 1:00:00 It camped out to me. Yeah. On that point, they say that Jimmy is not a fan of rise. So when this guy announced that it's going to be a ride that surprised me, but I'm still really excited about it to have that age that does mean that it probably went in at 107 1:00:17 it's it's definitely gonna be worth trying. So I'm excited about it. The question is, will you buy as many as you bought at the diamond? 1:00:29 Well, that's funny. I 1:00:33 wasn't a fan of it was the diamond Was it because of the ages the age? I mean, they talked about the age being more than what he obviously liked. And I'll get back from from testing lens I had had more rage in it and that I you know, in whatever my opinions worth, I thought was better. But yeah, so he's, he's got, he got to defer to him, to some extent, no doubt about that. Not going to try 1:01:00 Trump him but hearing that it doesn't like Ryan's hearing that this one is awry. kind of confused me but I'm I'm all over it for that age and that proof and and what that probably went into the barrel at that's that's bound to be good. Yeah I think they're making a way for the new blood because we were down doing our barrel pick of Russell's and Bruce, Eddie son. He's a huge rock fan and he let us taste some of some fantastic Rob barrels. And I'm really excited about this one. I think Walter he's kind of whiffed on a bunch of special releases and I'm hoping that this one is kind of a home run because the rise that me and candy tasted there were fantastic and I'm excited for this. Yeah, I'm pulling for him on that is kind of interesting. You know, you think about the missus. It seems like the Russell Brand assumed done pretty well with the 1998 that was 2002 two 1:02:00 Awesome too, but then the Masters keeps, I mean, some of them have been pretty good, but for the majority, they just kind of sit on the shelf. So it will be interesting to see if this kind of changes the tide a little bit for them. I know and it's surprising because rafal pics are so good, like, you know, 1:02:16 one of my favorites to do and it's like, how can they not get their limited releases down you know, it's like it's like something's not connecting there but hopefully this one hopefully they hit the park with this one was like they're trying to make the real limited releases somewhere out of the out of the bounds, you know, almost out of the bounds of that sweet spot of you know, 1012 years old and you know, the sweet spot with the proof and everything and so you say well, we we can just do that and battle the same thing. You know, we put in Russell's reserve single barrel or whatever it might be. So it's got to be different. It's got to be older, different proof or you know, something like that. I think that's what the struggle span is because they have kind of been so good at that sweet spot that now it's well we got it. We got to get outside the 1:03:00 sweet spot to make this thing special. So what do we do? You know, and I think that's been their challenge. Yep. Yeah. I mean, you're right. It's hard to make a limited release, if you just put a limited release out that's like, again, like camp Nelson effort. 10 years old, like, everybody be like, Wait a second. 1:03:17 We go and select these all day for $55. You can me. So yeah, they do have a little bit of an issue when it comes to that. But yeah, I mean, I think everybody's pulling form, everybody's kind of really been, you know, this is actually probably been the worst kept secret and bourbon for the longest time. Everybody sort of knew that there was going to be some aged rye release happening at some point. So we're glad that it's finally out there in the open and, you know, I'm excited for it, hopefully get my hands on a bottle or two. And, you know, 1:03:45 hopefully it's better than diamonds. Right. That's all we can. 1:03:51 The bar has been set. 1:03:55 So with that, let's go ahead and we will wrap it up. So again, gentlemen, thank you so much for coming. 1:04:00 going on tonight and joining us on this 200th episode couldn't have picked a better way for this to happen just I mean just sheer luck that it just happened to be on the dropped on the third week of when we do these so it just you think I started planning this out 32 rounds ago but it didn't actually happen that way so let you go ahead and kind of close out each one of yourself so Blake go ahead and go first. Yeah, once again thanks for having me. You know we always like to come on here and jerk around have a good time but it's always fun. So Brian Kenny, thanks for doing this. It's a you know, hopefully we'll have another 200 Here comes in so and the way you crank things out it'll be what 1:04:44 but now so I'm Blake from bourbon or calm and CEO box calm. I said you can find me on all social m

It's one thing to get out on the road with your dog (or cat or bird!) It's another to do it safely for both you & them - And what we have learnt over the years being involved in the pet & vet sector with our old radio show Pet Talk Radio, is that it's really important that just like kids - all pets should be safely contained while on the road. So Brian got an expert's advice. He caught up with the Animal Referral Hospitals 24/7 Vet Nurse & Surgery Manager Kylie Kavanagh who also happens to be a multi award winning dog breeder and shower under the name of Strongstorm Staffords to find out some of the tips she recommends when travelling with her dogs between shows.

Since 2013 Quiet Light's average transaction size has grown up to ten times. Back in those days, there were no private equity firms poking around the e-commerce space for these listings. Today it is a completely different story and more often than not we're seeing private equity firms come into the buyer spectrum. In fact, once a business reaches a certain size, it is more likely than not that a seller's potential buyer is going to be in the private equity space of the buyer pool. Today we are going to dissect the PE process a bit further. We'll delve into the process, the advantages and disadvantages, and give a general education on the subject for those who are curious about it how it works. Today's guest, Brian Rassel, is Vice President of Private Equity with Huron Capital. He's responsible for sourcing, evaluating, and analyzing investments made by his firm. Brian delves into ways he finds that e-commerce has entered into almost sector of investment that his group is involved in these days. Prior to joining Huron Capital, Brian was an Associate at Prophet, a global growth strategy consulting firm. Prior to Prophet, Brian was a consultant with New England Consulting Group where he led project management in their private equity practice for buy-side clients. Brian is sharing his wealth of private equity experience and how PE is entering more and more into the e-commerce space. Episode Highlights: How Brian defines private equity. How PE funds traditionally start up and get solidified. The difference between small, medium and large equity funds. The holding periods that private equity funds usually need to secure capital. Is PE all about acquiring to grow and sell or is there a category for buy and hold? Do evergreen funds exist? The difference between platform and bolt-on investments. Three things funds do to generate deal flow and types of business spaces they favor. The behind-the-scenes processes of putting a deal together. How many people are involved in the deal on the PE side. The backend investors committee and if that hinders the deal for the seller. Why time commitment is actually a good thing. How many deals Brian's PE firm evaluates per year. The defined process that gets them through the numbers. The growth potential for e-commerce – multiple appreciations and the role of private equity. Brian frames an ideal acquisition structure based on the general private equity model. Why the buyer/seller fit really matters. How private equity can work for sellers who want to get their business to the next stage. Transcription: Joe: Back in 2013 Mark I closed 23 transactions. It was a busy year for me. Do you have any idea what the average transaction size was? Mark: I … what do I guess? Well, it's you so I'm going to say like seven million dollars. Joe: I love putting you on the spot because you do it to me all the time. The average transaction size— Mark: You got to be like 250. Joe: It was 125. Mark: Holy cow. Joe: 125; very small. Mark: Okay. Joe: And at that time there were no Private Equity Firms poking around the e-commerce space for these smaller listings. Today it's a completely different story and my average transaction size was 10 times that last year. And a lot of buyers or a lot of sellers, the question I get asked all the time are who are your buyers? And it's a mix of everyone but more often than not now we're seeing Private Equity Firms come into this space. And I understand you had an expert in that area on the podcast. Mark: Yeah private equity is a topic that's coming up more and more frequently with sellers especially on the higher end of that revenue spectrum that we really work with. And it makes sense because once you get to a certain size of business your buyer is more likely than not going to be at least somewhat in the private equity place … area of the buyer pool. In addition, we've talked before … I had Ryan Tansom on and we talked about selling to a strategic buyer versus a marketplace buyer. And obviously, people always look at this especially at the higher ends and say I kind of want to have a strategic buyer. Well, one thing to keep in mind here is that this is kind of a spectrum right? It's not binary; you're either strategic or marketplace. But when you get into that private equity world, private equity is almost always going to be something of a strategic play. So I thought … look this private equity world is something that people keep asking about let's actually start to dissect it a little bit. So Brian and I talked and we spent probably about half of this interview just kind of going over what is private equity. How does that work? What is the definition of this? What are the sizes of it? And really just trying to ask some of those silly questions that maybe you kind of wonder about but don't want to ask because you don't want to sound like you don't know what you're talking about. And so we went over a bunch of those questions but then we also went over what does the process looked like. What does it look like to sell to a private equity firm? What are the drawbacks to it and what are the benefits of it as well? And really it's kind of a general education podcast but I think also … and maybe more importantly for those of you out there who are thinking about selling down the road and you're looking and trying to peg the different values that you want to get from an exit and maybe you think well I want a 10 million dollar exit or a 15 million dollar exit, if you get to that point what's it going to look like to sell to a private equity and what do you need to do to really make yourself appealing for a Private Equity Firm? And how does the deal change when you're signed to private equity as well. So we really covered a lot of ground in about 30 minutes. Brian is super knowledgeable obviously. He works in this space. And I really appreciated him coming on the podcast because … again I just downloaded a ton of information. Joe: Well let's get right to it. Mark: All right Brian thanks for joining me on the podcast. I really appreciate you coming on. Brian: Yeah I know. It's great to be here. Thanks for hosting. Mark: All right so I don't expect people to listen … my guests to have listened to the podcast in advance and I know … I don't know if Joe's been doing this, he records like 9 out of 10 episodes and I don't know if he's continued on the tradition but we like to have our guests introduce themselves mainly because you know your story better than I know your story and I figure it's a little bit easier. So why don't you give just kind of a quick 30 second to one minute rundown on who you are? Brian: Yeah I'm Brian Rassel. I'm a vice president with Huron Capital Partners which is a middle market private equity firm based at Detroit Michigan. The firm is 20 years old and has invested in … we're typically enthralled buyout investors where we'll buy a majority of a business and have done that through five successive fawns starting back in 1999. And the industries that we play in are business services, consumer, and specialty manufacturing. You know it'd kind of be interesting how I got to know you Mark for those listening is that believe it or not all of those basins are being affected by e-commerce or different kind of SaaS business models that are internet based. And I'm taking it upon myself to maybe be the person of the firm who is trying to understand those influences on all of our companies and make sure that we're in a position to incorporate those changes that are going on out and new coming at large number and being done by a lot of people who probably listen to your podcast and make sure that we're bringing more of the [inaudible 00:05:51.4] in the businesses we own so that they can be successful today and be well into the 21st century. Mark: All right, well I got a lot of questions for you because this world of private equity is encroaching or coming into the internet business acquisition world more and more. And whether it's because at Quiet Light our deal value is moving up or private equity is starting to look at different price ranges and maybe this convergence of these worlds and also private equity looking more in the online space is just becoming an increasing topic that we're seeing more and more of. We're also seeing individuals that have started up on their own raising funds to do large acquisitions or to string acquisitions together. Brian: Yeah. Mark: So what I'd like to do and I already kind of told you this in our conversation before I hit record, I'd like to go over some of the basics here of the private equity world and how it looks in the Internet space as well. And then know a little bit more about your fund and some of the things that you guys are doing over there and all that. So a quick shout out to Chris from Centurica and Rhodium I know that we've talked about him so much that it's almost as if he's a sponsor. He's not. But this is again how we got introduced. You spoke at the Rhodium and then you and I had a chance to speak after that and a good conversation. So thanks Chris for the introduction again. So let's start out really really basic here. How do you define private equity? Brian: Private equity is capital … private capital being put to work in private businesses. And so I like to name [inaudible 00:07:22.6] for folks who really don't know much about it a little quick stat just kind of on the US economy. There are half as many publicly listed companies as there were in 1996 or 1994 something like that. So even if the value of the public markets is larger the amount of places you can park that capital in the public markets is small in the total number of listed names. Private equity is a big part of either big institutionally managed money. Whether that's from insurance companies, [inaudible 00:07:52.4], pension funds, universities, those kinds of things. This is their way to go participate in the forces of economy that are still private companies that they can't get access to otherwise unless folks like me help them get access to it. It also includes folks that can kind of go into different flavors of private equity but depending on the size from the bing capitals of the world down to very very small funds that are more entrepreneurial. There's sort of every flavor under design in certain family offices and other things like that. That would be private equity, pooled private capital going into private businesses. Mark: Well how did these funds start-up traditionally? And I imagine that there's a lot of ways that they can start up. You've listed a number of sources of money and I think sometimes we forget just how much money there is in some of these places. So yeah [crosstalk 00:08:46.6]. Brian: For sure I mean there's just [crosstalk 00:08:49.4] I'm going to get this off, I'll be wrong by a hundred billion dollars. But I think something like 600 billion dollars flowed into private equity firms last year. So these … and the source of a fund or the way a fund works is that a fund manager like the folks I work for here where I'm a part of, they go out and they make their pitch about how talented their professionals are and what their track record is and the fact that they can get access to great deal flow and great opportunities, places to put private capital where it will go earn a reasonable return. And they raise this money from these other institutional or independent investors. It could be high in net worth individuals or anybody like that but … so they get started that way. They'll hold this farm estate back to the 1960s and there are new ones being created all the time. And frankly, as hedge funds have declined I believe in a large way in popularity just because of the efficiency of public markets there's been more and more money directed towards these private pools of capital and the private equity market. And when I say private equity I mean both kind of traditional buy-out funds for more mature businesses that have healthy positive cash flows on the one hand and on the other hand I mean venture capital is the son segment of private equity. And that might be for really really high growth businesses like the next dewberry of the world or whatever it might be. Mark: Right, absolutely. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And as far as the breakdown as to sizes what would you consider to be a small private equity firm and what are we talking about in terms of their capitalization rates when they start up? What would be the difference between the small, medium, large type of firms? We can get an idea for how much money we're actually dealing with? Brian: So I would say just kind of from my understanding again all this caviada being dead this is sort of Brian Rassell's take on private equity and my interpretation and may not really be the opinions of United Capital, I can only speak for myself as an individual but they have a dedicated fund. And when I say dedicated fund these are groups of people that other folks, other investors have made a promise and a pledge that is legally binding and written their name at the bottom that that dedicated fund, the small one might be 50 million dollars. That'd be very small. Folks who are trying to invest less than that, generally speaking, have something more akin to a pledge fund. They have a number of people that they can pass the hat with to raise money in a deal by deal basis versus having committed capital to go invest in five, six, 10, 12 companies in that particular fawn. So just kind of … back at the envelope type map that you can think of is every firm should have plus or minus roughly 10 investments that have enough diversification in it. So a 50 million dollar fund is looking to put five million dollars to work in the 10 different companies. And that would be the equity capital going to those companies. There's oftentimes a mix of equity and debt coming into those companies and we could talk about that later. And then a midsize fund might be three or four hundred million up and pawn up to the 2KR's of the world or Apollo or the very big managers who are doing 15 billion dollar funds and so all different world. Mark: Very. Brian: They're taking hotels private or something like that. Mark: I was going to say they're buying something completely different than your Amazon business. Brian: Yeah that's right. It's a whole different world. Mark: All right you talked about you have successive funds. In my understanding again is that we go through these rounds of investment that coming up. We had Andy Jones from PrivateEquityInfo.com on and he talked a lot about the holding periods that private equity looks for. Can you just again quickly touch on that? We're kind of doing private equity 101 here. Brian: Yeah. I didn't hear Andy's remarks but just as it relates to a whole period I would think of it just to be linear about it that a private equity firm once our capital is raised [inaudible 00:13:01.9] the time that it takes to raise that money they committed capital or even the past they had capital they're going to take that money and let's just use this fictional 50 million dollar fund. And they'll take something like four years to deploy the first 80% of it. And the goal would be you take 20% of that money and get it into a new platform company. Companies they had no money in before. In the first year or the next year next 20%, next year next 20%, next year next 20% thus 80%. The point at that point you can't do necessarily new investments you're reserving that last 20% for either a company that's struggling that you need to give more money to to keep it going or to do an add on investment to buy something else and add it on to something that's in the portfolio. That might take four or five years to really deploy the majority of it and then another four to five … you know an investment from year one that you only … you're exiting that investment three to seven years later and let's just use five as kind of a round middle of the road number there. So an investment from year one is maybe gone in year six so it's being harvested. It could be sooner, it could be later. And the investment that was your last platform investment from year four might be heading out the door in year eight or nine. So fund life is something like eight to ten years. It can be longer. And a traditional as you kind of draw it up on the whiteboard like I have behind me here is sort of a five year hold. Now there's … I've seen many that are much much shorter and many that are much much longer but those are the fat parts of the [inaudible 00:14:36.2] if you want. Mark: Sure. So is private equity … is the goal of all private equity companies to grow and sell? So acquire, grow, sell, or are there other strategies? Buy it and hold for long periods of time? Brian: There are certainly evergreen funds out there. They're much more … when I say evergreen they have the ability to hold and recycle the capital. They may be designed to have heard of a number that has committed capital from particularly family offices that never want to do the tax consequences of becoming liquid in an investment and actually realizing the gains so they're structured to reinvest the money that they make. Or if they sell something to quickly find someone else new for it to go into. Now that would be a more unique situation. And then certainly family offices there's a number out there that looks for longer hold periods and there are certain funds that are designed for a longer hold period. Mark: All right so this is going to be again another basic question but I want to make sure our terms are all well-defined here. We hear these terms of platform versus bolt on or add on investments. Just real quick the difference between a platform investment versus a bolt on. Brian: Yeah I'll just keep it simple. I'll say anything that is a brand new business, new industry for that firm to go into. They don't currently own something in that space. Whether that's a tiny initial acquisition or a big one that would be the platform investment. So let's just say with a … I don't know Internet broker pencils, I'm just making this up, all right? And they don't have any other investments in the internet broker pencils space and they invest in a company in that space that would be the platform [inaudible 00:16:17.1] that. And maybe there are 10 companies that make … that do internet broker pencils and they buy two other ones of their competitors and they make it bigger or somebody [inaudible 00:16:25.3] and now they're putting it all together those might be add-ons to that original entity that they purchased or recapitalized. That's what we mean. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with size which can be confusing. Sometimes you start with something small and you get the opportunity and do an add-on that's much bigger than the original investment. So it's more just where is the starting point in you can do a space or an industry. Mark: And if we think about the terms it makes sense right? Brian: Yeah. Mark: You build on top of the platform and you add-on top of the platform. So it makes … that makes complete sense. Brian: Or bolt-on, yup that's where the nomenclature comes from. Mark: Or bolt-on, absolutely. It's amazing when you dig in to definitions it's like the terms actually have a meaning and it makes sense. Brian: They do. Generally, they come from somewhere. Mark: They come from somewhere. There's logic to this stuff. I love it. All right so now I'll get into questions that I'm starting to be genuinely interested in and that is how does a fund develop a thesis or an entire direction to go after a particular platform investment? I mean if you're selling blue widgets and also if somebody comes and says no you don't need widgets what you really need are sprockets, if you don't do anything with sprockets at all how does that enter into a fund's psyche at all? Brian: There's really three things that we're doing here to generate the sort of deal flow and the ideas and spaces we want to go into. So here I'll speak more from Huron Capital. There are other firms who follow a similar philosophy potentially. So the first is businesses we didn't know about but are being represented by a broker or an investment banker like yourself Mark who … those are opportunities that are coming to us. They are being listed. They're being actively shopped around. We may have never thought of the sprocket industry before or we didn't know too much about it or we read materials on it and we say it has a lot of characteristics and things we like; great cash flow, seems very resilient, seems countercyclical, if the economy goes down it'll still do well, it's a leader on its space, any of those kinds of things. Those are opportunities that come to us and that is more of a passive thing. And then we get active once we realize that it fits a lot of criteria and we believe we could be successful with it. And that sets into motion a whole chain of things where we kind of prove out of the pieces that we might like this business and we try to get educated. The second that we spend a lot of time on is networking with executives from a broad, broad variety of industries. Those people know where there are spaces that are changing. And generally speaking, change creates opportunities. Change creates winners on one side and losers on the other side. And less be to the losers but you need that kind of disruption to create any sort of sort interesting investment outcome. The study ID is probably the market's sufficient enough that the study ID is not going to return the greatest returns. So we've spent a lot of time with executives unless I knew them about spaces that could be interesting and trying to listen to areas they know about and start to build some [inaudible 00:19:37.4]. And then even more proactively than that there's a lot of opportunities where we meet the executive who has a view of one particular thing they want to do here at Huron it's got a registered trademark or the like of the firm. We call that an exact factor investment where we will actually flip the process and say we really believe in the sprocket industry. We met Phil who is going to be our perspective CEO in the space and he has this vision that is going to totally turn the industry [inaudible 00:20:11.5]. To do that we need to go find the platform, we call that like getting fuel behind the wheel. We need to find a car to fulfill the drive. We believe he's the best driver in that industry. And we will do all the work, we'll go write a hundred page white paper on it to prove to our investment committee why it's such a fabulous opportunity and Phil is the greatest operator in this space. And then we will commit dollars into going and finding businesses in that space and find Phil the car he can drive and we'll get off to the races that way. So it starts with a commitment from our farms for a certain amount of money behind Phil to go do an acquisition more and more in this space. So it … I guess ranges from that passive we find things and then we get educated too. We educate ourselves as much as possible and align ourselves with an executive who can execute and work the process the other way. Mark: Cool. All right that [inaudible 00:21:04.07]. So let's talk a little bit about the process that goes on behind the scenes when you are evaluating an opportunity. And I think for a lot of potential sellers this sort of conversation is going to be really insightful. So let's say we have somebody that they have an e-com business, 30 million in revenue, eight, nine million in earnings on an annual basis and they've got a couple of private equity firms looking at their business. Where does that start and what is the process going through? And you can talk about maybe Huron's process and then if there are variations that you know as well. The number of people that are going to look and touch that deal as it goes through the steps. Brian: Yeah. Mark: What are some of those behind the scenes looks? Brian: Yeah so once you've got that moment where there's a couple of firms interested there's going to be an incredible amount of information about the business across insurance, benefits, compliance with laws and regulatory statutes, information about the market; anything the business can possibly produce about itself, fairly every file that's off the shelf that they have, every non-disclosure agreement they have with somebody that they on boarded or employment agreement, every contract they have with a customer, or maybe it's an industry where you don't have a lot of contracts with customers but you have a lot of contracts with suppliers. All that information needs to be made available for these perspective buyers to digest. And the more they can be made available, the more that that's organized into different pockets of legal, employee, insurance, benefits, all of that, the better. It's going to save the company a lot of time from serving requests versus being proactive by getting that stuff out there. And you know well everything here all the buyers be under a non-disclosure agreement and that's just a very kind of well-oiled machine around making that information available to give your last few buyers down to the one you would like to choose and have them under a Letter of Intent. And that starts to be an exclusive relationship where the buyer is going to spend a lot of money in due diligence and in exchange for spending that money, they would like the exclusive right to [inaudible 00:23:19.3] business for a period of time. 60 days … 90 days where they engage and here is where it starts to get to be a lot more kind of in your trousers and really analyzing your business but they're going to engage in quality of earnings earned to go and understand did you actually produce the amount of revenue, if you put it in the right time periods, if you really counted for every cost etcetera. They're going to engage legal professionals who are going first to sort of just again a full work up of registration, compliance, [inaudible 00:23:51.9] and then those folks are going to work on the actual transaction documents as well as a host of other advisors. And that would be like again a 60 to 90 day process. It could be 30 days on the short end. There are firms who can do it in that time particularly if you're a smaller business and an add-on to a much larger or a very simple business. Mark: So how many people are we talking about there that are going to be involved in the process? Outside of the consultants like a Q of E … a quality of earnings report that's going to be an outside accounting firm right? Brian: Yeah. Mark: So we're not going to— Brian: Okay so from the acquiring firm? Mark: Mm-hmm. And we can start at the beginning. We can start at your interns that are digesting deals. That's going to be part one. Brian: Sure call it four and they're going to be answering to the remainder of their firm particularly their investment committee. Ideally, it's a tighter team and there's four and if it's an add-on expect more. So you'll have the management team of that kind of platform investment as well. So four to eight and then when you get to the advisor well now you're talking 20 something more. Mark: Right, getting all those outside advisers. Now one of the things I know people get worried about during this process is you start out again with that guy who's that in deals up front and he sees some he passes it on to the team and they end up liking it so now you're dealing with a handful of people that are asking the questions digging deep in that due diligence right? Pages and pages of collecting information possibly even submitting an offer because on the surface things look okay. Brian: Yup. Mark: There seems to be these back end investors committee as well which can also kind of wash the deal far in the process. What would you say to people that get kind of frustrated when they hear that and they think do I really want to work with private equity because there are so many people that could potentially disrupt this deal? Brian: So I would think about the time investment to it. So the private equity firm is in no way interested in wasting any of their time. Huron looks at something like little over a thousand deals a year. That takes a lot of time and we're very thoughtful about moving things to the funnel and connecting our firm's resources to evaluating an opportunity. So if somebody is spending the time I would tell the listeners that they are encouraged. If everything checks out the way I told to them so far or they've written so far about that business then there are absolutely no issues. The firm, an organized and real firm is going to be thoughtful and time is kind of their most valuable resource and they're set up to be able to make a number of staged gates kind of we're interested and we're not interested. We're interested subject to confirm affirmation I want two and three. And you can have a very quick conversation like you and I are having now to say is this the case is this not the case? Here's a big concern we have, should we be worried? And they will both take your answer and that gives them that kind of gumption to proceed. And they'll probably have to go validate that as well later. And that validation just has to support what's been told to them. But they are also making a big commitment with their time in the same way that the seller is and I would take it as genuine on their part that they're not looking for it to fall apart. It's just things do. Certain deals fall apart because new information becomes available. I've seen that happen a number of times where the seller learns things about their business or thinks about their business in a way they hadn't before and can agree that that's a genuine risk and may be something they want to work out within a course of another year and then they might be back to market. Mark: Yeah, that happens often. We see that all the time even in the amount of work that we put a seller through upfront it pales in comparison to what you guys are going to be doing in your actual dig deep due diligence. And the number of times that we have people come back and tell us that was a lot of work but that was really useful. Brian: Yeah. Mark: I have learned a lot about my own business, right? Brian: Yeah a great advisor like somebody like you and using a broker who's been through and understands the questions that are going to be asked is going to save a tremendous amount of time. And we call folks like you Mark a river guide we're using on our side and we love them. Sellers use them too because they're that much more prepared for the process. Mark: Yeah. And I can tell you like the one thing that … I'm going to play both sides here, I would say the one thing that can be difficult with working with private equity is because there are so many people that can come in with a dissenting viewpoint. You're not trying to … convince is a bad word but show the opportunity to one person and have them agree to it; you're having to show a number of people. But the great thing and I love working with private equity on is that it's completely unemotional throughout the process. Brian: Yeah. Mark: I mean it really is does this check the boxes we needed to check and if it doesn't we're going to find out as quick as we can. You said something, I was going to ask this question, you guys evaluate you said about a thousand deals per year? Brian: Yeah the pipeline you think about now it's working its way down at the top of the funnel and so we're a thousand and then that's working its way down to 250 that real solid time is being spent on and then 75 that we're spending real tons of resources and traveling around to visit them … maybe 80. Now I'll get these numbers wrong this is kind of directional and then down to the 30 or so that are getting a Letter Of Intention and we'll close 22 transactions a year. Mark: Yeah so that's an amazing amount of data to be pulling in. And you guys have criteria at every stage I assume that you're looking for up front? Brian: That's right. Mark: Okay. All right that makes sense. Do you publish those criteria? I know we get a lot of just the very broad stuff sent to us. Brian: We don't only because it's just so bespoke for every company. There are so many things that really are as you just said that are check the box and we're highly confident that we will go confirm later. We're highly confident that's not an issue and we are trying to get to it very, very quickly. The three or four things we want to make sure are the reasons we're most excited and confirm that that is factual and that was going to continue. Whatever that might be; on the customer relationship or the recurring purchasing or … whatever it might be. And then at the same time the three or four things that are kind of we're concerned that could be deal killers. We believe we're spending the time because we think that's going to turn out to be true or we need to get to a yes no about is this a real problem very, very quickly. And so you know it's just they're different for every business. Mark: Yeah I know a lot of people listening right now you guys are buyers that are out there looking to acquire. So technically Brian you guys are somewhat of competitors although I think that you operate at a range that a lot of our buyers wouldn't. But I think one thing interesting that they should hear is this idea of having this defined process number one and then number two the amount of deal flow that you have to look at. I've talked to buyers that been out there looking for a year, year and a half but then you find out the number of deals that they're actually looking at doesn't really … this is a numbers game. I mean it's purely a numbers game. Brian: It is and one thing I want to say on that numbers game for us and it may be different for some of your buyers or not is that we're looking for situations that are great for us and we're also looking for situations where the seller in some ways choosing us. Now I don't want to overstate that but I do want to say that there has to be a great fit in every piece and why we're a better owner than someone else for that business. Some angle that we have, some affinity we have for what they do, or some prior experience or something. Otherwise and it could be a little different for particularly small businesses. Maybe it's a little bit less like that and it doesn't need as much of the chemistry but that's a big part of what we're looking for, for sure. Mark: And we talk about that a lot on these pockets. I know you guys are probably tired of hearing Joe and I talk about the need for a buyer being a good fit. And we talked a lot about this general concept of being likable because sellers do eventually choose and for most of these sellers they do have a choice. I mean right now it's a seller's market. They do have a choice of who they're going to work with. I want to talk about the exciting stuff. Let's talk about the actual deals; the money. Brian: Sure. Mark: Why is selling to a private equity something that people should be excited about? Brian: I think I spoke a little bit about this at Rhodium but I just … I see then the difference in multiples that are paid for businesses that are exclusively e-commerce or SaaS based businesses. Those multiples are so much lower than what private equity firms are paying for more traditional businesses out in the economy. And I believe that those worlds will come together. And I believe that businesses that are a hybrid of both or have excellence in both and are flipping both worlds are going to be extremely, extremely valuable. Because on the one hand, they have the relevance for the future, it's coming from kind of the types of businesses that you represent. And also they have that anchor of the traditional business that makes them more under writable and it makes them more predictable because it's a less dynamic place that they're out in. And so that's where I think private equity firms in the coming two, three, four, five years are number one going to become much more comfortable with standalone e-commerce business models that are exclusive that and there are going to be people participating from the much more kind of like formal private equity world participating in your markets. And then I think there's going to be a convergence where a lot of more traditional business models are going to look for the influence and the DNA as well as the revenue and the profits but the influence and the DNA and the growth that comes from the types of businesses you work with Joe. And I think that means that the market that you're playing in, the multiples will rise there. For every dollar of earnings they'll be more valuable in the future and I believe that's for now in a very significant way in 2018. Mark: Yeah and we talked about this this idea of multiple appreciation that we see. And a lot of it reaches over to the fact that this is where private equity starts to play right? So we often talk if your EBIDTA is less than a million dollars per year the … just again for the sake of a multiple, it's going to vary for each business but maybe 3 … maybe 3.5 would be the multiple on that EBIDTA depending on the type of business that you have. But once you start getting up into two, three, four million dollars of EBIDTA now we start seeing the multiples jump up in the different ranges. And the reason for this again is that we're no longer playing as much with an individual investor who really has a much higher risk profile because they don't necessarily have the entire team behind them or a portfolio behind them to be able to take some of that risk but also get the staff in the background and all the resources in private equity. Brian: Yeah. Mark: So let's talk … I am not going to pin you down because it would be a really bad idea for you to say hey we generally paid 25x on earnings which I know you don't. What does a deal structure often look like? Because I know these deals structures do change as well when we're talking about a private equity acquiring a small company. What does an ideal acquisition look like for you in terms of its structure of cash that the owner is going to be getting, maybe equity or debt that you would hope that they stay around and I'd also like to address the idea that a lot of private equity likes to have or prefers to have an owner stay on board with the new company and why that's a good thing also for that owner to think about that. So that's a lot; the general structure, the ideals for a structure. Brian: Okay so let's keep this out of your space and let's just talk about the general PE model. When deals were cheaper a couple of years ago you might get a higher ratio of debt than equity in a deal but for this sake, I'm just going to make it 50-50. I think that more reflects the market today in terms of underwriting. But let's take a deal where a private equity firm is paying at least eight times. That's still a relatively rich multiple. I could have said six but let's use eight times. So we're paying four times the earnings in their own cash that they're talking and they are going and putting the company on the hook or raising four times and they do it. Private equity firm does it but on behalf of the company of debt for the business to take on. So let's say it's a business with 10 million dollars of EBIDTA. So it's an 80 million dollar transaction and a firm like Huron is putting 40 million of equity and raising 40 million of debt in that transaction. And that 40 million of equity can come either from Huron or some portion of it could be rolled over from the seller. If that seller has no debt on the business today, no capital leases or anything else that could be thought of as indebtedness over the normal trade payables. And in your day to day you've got cash coming in and cash going out; that thing that keeps the shop running. And they have no debt on the business theoretically on the day of closing they're getting a check for 80 million dollars. If they choose to roll over some of that … let's just say 10% of the purchase price, eight million of it I would argue that a private equity firm or somebody like me would take that as them stating a high degree of confidence in the future of the business that they want to continue participating and have a relatively [inaudible 00:37:34.7] portion of their net worth tied up in that outcome. Or that they see the opportunity to turn that eight million into 16 or whatever it might be that there is a great opportunity to continue driving growth and equity value in that business. They'll … I start there that the rollover investments are very useful because if you're saying you want to do no roll over whatsoever and you just want to walk away from the business it's not conveying a lot of confidence in the future of the business. There are certainly reasons to do that but it's not conveying a lot of confidence in the future of the business. And where somebody might have been agreeing to pay you eight if you were rolling over and giving that kind of tacit support for the business going over, they might kind of say this is we're not so sure. It makes them a little more nervous and it might be a seven times deal. So you may actually be shooting yourself in the foot in terms of the total proceeds you perceive. Again so it's an 80 million dollar deal, 40 million of debt, the seller is choosing to roll over. They got their 80 million dollar check, it doesn't work like this you're actually [inaudible 00:28:28.9] but they got their 80 million dollar check and maybe we wrote one back for eight and so Huron holds 32 million of the equity and that seller holds eight million of it. So Huron owns 80% of the business and they own 20% and we've got some obligations to pay. That would be kind of the middle of the road structure. There's certainly a lot more that happens as it relates to creating incentives for management teams and that's a very, very big part of what we do to make sure that if we do well they do well and vice versa so that we're all talking in terms of growing the underlying equity value of the business. And that can often be very different for a business that didn't have that before. And it was just solely kind of the founder driving it or minding the growth of equity value. We believe in creating a broad base of ownership so that we're all on the same page. Mark: Yeah. Brian: Our management team is on incentives exclusively through their salary or bonus or both. Mark: Right so one of the things that I've talked a lot in the past especially on like the main street sort of deals is this almost dichotomy and it really shouldn't be set up as a dichotomy of a marketplace based sale where you only have an investor looking to acquire business in a strategic sale where you have a company that it would effectively be like an add-on acquisition in your world right? They already have the sort of strategic advantage to acquiring that company. Within your world, it seems like so much of what you do is going to be the strategy based type of acquisition anyways. Brian: Right. Mark: So it's like you're not going to do an acquisition unless you think that you have a strategic advantage. And when we … you and I talked out in Las Vegas back last October one thing that you talked about quite a bit was we want to pour gasoline on the fire that's already existing. So whatever that might be and so as a seller who's out there thinking about this and saying man I've been growing my business like crazy but I'm investing all this cash back into acquiring more inventory and expanding the product line and I'd like to take money off the table and then keep growing it. This is that perfect sort of handoff to a private equity because you can say you know what you [inaudible 00:40:54.0] your income statement rich in cash flow pour. Brian: Yup. Mark: We got cash. We'll help you out there. You're going to get some cash on the table and then let's grow this from a 30 million dollar business to a hundred million dollar business. Brian: Right. Mark: And so there's an incentive there for that owner to double dip that [inaudible 00:41:11.7]. Brian: Absolutely. Particularly in situations … we see this all the time where additional capital is going to be an accelerant to growth. So capital is what we have and we're trying to find a smart place to put it work and if that means we can buy a business and continue and support that business with more dollars and we believe in the strategy and what's going on in the way it's being operated there's nothing … that's the easiest dollar for us to put out versus the whole re-under writing process of a new investment. And then for that seller to have all their eggs in one basket … I don't care what their life situation is they could be in their 30's and just want to diversify or they could be somebody who's looking at kids who are about to go to college and it just doesn't make sense to have 100% of their net worth or close to it tied up in their business. And if they could diversify a little bit or generate a little bit of cash but their vision hasn't changed at all that's a great situation to bring on a strategic partner like a private equity firm. And that's where that [inaudible 00:42:11.9] fit it really matters and the chemistry between the seller. For the most part, you're not going to sell it to a private equity firm, they don't want to be in the business or definitely not in the business of operating these companies. So round the business and investing in them helping to bring the right resources to it and bring the right capital solutions or capital availability all that. Helping them set strategy and all the other things but the actual day to day operations. So it's not going to be for your sellers or for buyers [inaudible 00:42:45.1] sellers who are looking to exit the business and hand it off somebody else private equity is not going to be the right solution. But for those companies that they either want to go to be a division of something larger and they think they can be a great cross selling opportunity or the way they've built their mousetrap if just they had more to sell in the same way, and I'll say like let's say you're the number one muffler seller online and you also want to do transmissions and drive cams and stuff but you don't have the capital and you don't have the ability to go source and expand that way, going and selling to a larger entity and being that e-commerce division is a very powerful idea. Or just continue and do your own business and double down … accelerate the organic growth, private equity firm could be a great partner. Mark: Yeah, we're just about out of time in fact we've gone a bit long but one thing I wanted to emphasize here, you said that capital obviously is the resource you guys have and are able to invest and I know a lot of people that I talk to say look I don't really need money from this, the business is making money and I feel good about this. But what I find when I actually start to dig in with these guys is I say well what would it take to move to that next level. Oh well, I would have to hire out this other division or create this other division and you know okay but what's the obstacle to that? I don't want to invest in it. It often comes up. Okay, that's the area where a firm like yours can also come in and say well look we have the capital to be able to invest in this. You know what you need; do you want to invest in it to get to that next stage? And even if that means bringing in someone and you can help with that let's do it. Exactly we can do that and we could— Brian: Not to mention that I think we find that often business owners are willing to do one out of their five ideas that are like that and were willing to do all five knowing that three won't work but two should work out beautifully and we're willing to go [inaudible 00:44:39.4] the bodies of the business and the capital and have the appetite to take two steps backward to take four forward and understand that they're not going to all work. And where maybe an independent owner would do those sequentially, try idea one it wasn't really working, didn't feel pleased with making that investment and losing that cash flow, fired that new sales person who was supposed to do something else. We're willing to go do things faster and make sure that that doesn't hover around in the business and the core of what we're interested in the first place. And so we'll work through that with the business owner by giving them that support and the dollars needed to make that happen. Mark: Brian, I really appreciate you taking the time here [inaudible 00:45:19.8] some of the small questions I had but really good to get those things— Brian: No it's my pleasure. It's fine. Mark: So thanks again and maybe we'll have you back again in the future at some point. Brian: That sounds great. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Thanks, Mark.   Links and Resources: https://www.huroncapital.com/member/brian-rassel/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianrassel  

GUEST BIO: Brian Okken is a lead software engineer for Rohde & Schwarz.  He is also the author of “Python Testing with pytest” from Pragmatic, host of the “Test & Code” Podcast and Co-host of the “Python Bytes” Podcast and has spoken at PNSQC and PyCon US. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: My guest on today’s show is Brian Okken. He is currently the lead software engineer for Rohde & Schwarz. His background is in R&D, testing and measurement. When it comes to programming languages, he is something of a Python expert. Brian is the author of “Python Testing with pytest” and the host of the very popular “Test & Code” podcast, he also co-hosts “Python Bytes”. Brian is passionate about sharing his knowledge. So, he teaches and regularly speaks publicly at conferences like PyCon and PNSQC. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.00) – So Brian, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Brian explains that he still describes himself as a software engineer. But, in reality, for the past 10 to 15 years, he has been mostly involved with automated testing. (1.21) – How did you get into automated testing? Brian explains that it was not a planned transition. It was a requirement within the test equipment industry. Those that work in that field spend a lot of time carrying out automated and regression testing on the code and instruments.  (2.10) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Brian’s key piece of advice is to align yourself with the goals of whoever you are working for. He also advises developers to know their value and understand what it is that they contribute to the companies they work for. Once you know that, you are in a position to make sure that you more than cover the cost of your salary. Periodically asking yourself – If this was my money, would I be happy to continue to pay my salary? is a good habit to get into. (3.21) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Brian explains that one of the things he enjoys doing is honing processes, so that he can streamline the work, as much as possible. On one project he realized that if he could automate the byte and the register settings from an FPGA to the software he would save the team a lot of time and hassle. So, he set about working out how to do this. However, he did not tell anyone, including his manager, that he had taken on this extra task. Unfortunately, he got sucked in and ended up spending too much time on this side project. Naturally, his output fell, which made it look like he was not contributing to the team, as he should. Naturally, his manager was not happy. He felt that Brian was not doing the work he had been asked to do. On the other hand, Brian was disappointed and frustrated because nobody seemed to appreciate the importance of what he was trying to achieve. All in all it ended up being quite a negative situation. Brian’s advice is not to forget about process improvement completely, because t is important. But, he said that once it starts to take up more than 10% of your time, you need to let your manager knows what you are trying to achieve and how much time it is taking up.  (5.11) – Phil asks Brian what his best career moment was. The highlight of Brian’s career, so far, has been his involvement in pytest and publishing his book. It was really cool getting it published. But, Brian also found that writing the book honed and deepened his skills. (5.24) – So, has that been beneficial for your career? Brian agrees that it has. While writing the book he found himself consulting and working with the core contributors. The writing process made him network more. (6.58) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and career? Brian says there are so many things that excite him that it is hard to pick one thing. But, it is probably the way in which the industry is changing how it is teaching the next generation of engineers. (7.43) – Is there a particular area that interests you, technologies you feel have a real future? Brian thinks the way in which schools are finding ways to teach programming at an earlier age is exciting. However, Brian would like to see the question - How do you know it will work and continue to work? being asked and answered more in educational settings. Developers need to have a better understanding of how things work to be able to design and build more robust applications and systems.  (8.44) Phil comments that, in the UK, that is certainly still an issue. Many of the degree courses leave the subject of testing right to the end of the course and the subject is rarely covered in much depth. (9.33) – What first attracted you to a career in IT, Brian? As a child, Brian had a combination games system. It had built-in games but you could also type in some simple programs to create new games like Lunar Lander. Of course, it did not work right away, so you had to figure out where you had gone wrong. When he got it working, he went back and tweaked it, for example by trying to increase acceleration. That is when he got the programming bug. It was an experience that stayed with him. He entered college as a fine art major, but switched to computer science at university. (10.50) Phil asks Brian to clarify why he made the decision to switch. Brian explains that there was a financial element to doing so. He realized that he would have less difficulty in paying back his student loan if he were able to find work in the IT field. (11.10 ) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? Brian uncovered a great piece of career advice while reading a book called Team Geek: A Software Developer's Guide to Working Well with Others. After reading that book, Brian understood that he needed to be spending at least 80% of his time creating value for the company he was working for. (12.02) – If you were to begin your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Brian says that he would not dismiss the idea of a career in web design and building, which is what he did when he first started out. He learned HTML and how to work with Perl, but veered away from building sites. At the time, he just assumed that most websites would end up being auto-built. Today, he understands that he may have missed out a bit as a result of that decision. So, now, he is learning PHP and getting into building the Python version of websites. (13.14 ) – What are you currently focusing on in your career? Right now, Brian is focusing on broadening his reach. He likes to teach and has got a lot to share with the community. (13.46) – OK, but do you have any thoughts on writing and conference speaking? Brian, says yes. He loves speaking, despite the fact he still finds doing it at conferences terrifying. But, he is a bit of a homebody and very much a family person, so he is not that keen on travelling. Despite this, he thinks he will end up travelling and speaking more in the near future. (14.25) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Brian says that is listening to people and being able to empathize with them. Phil agrees with this. He has noticed that many of us are too busy thinking about what we are going to say to be able to really listen to the other person. Brian says it is all too easy not to listen properly. He knows it is something he still needs to work on, something he discovered while listening to his own podcasts. He picked up on the fact that sometimes he was asking questions that his interviewee had already answered, which was a sure sign that he was not listening properly. (15.19) – Phil asks Brian to share a final piece of career advice with the audience. Brian says he wants to encourage people to teach. The act of writing things down or trying to explain them to someone else makes everything clearer in your own mind. Plus, it ensures that you get feedback from others, which enables you to recognize when you are wrong and learn from it. He is particularly keen to see more IT professionals writing personal blogs. BEST MOMENTS: (2.34 ) BRIAN – "Align yourself with the goals of whoever you're working for." (2.46 ) BRIAN – “Always try to be more valuable than the sticker price of your salary. " (5.49 ) BRIAN – "The process of writing the book made me an expert. " (14.30) BRIAN – "Learn how to listen to people. Really listen to their answers and empathize." ( 15.51) PHIL – "I think getting your message out there and telling people what you do and what you've learned is valuable " CONTACT BRIAN: Twitter: https://twitter.com/brianokken @brianokken LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/okken Blog: https://pythontesting.net/ Book: https://amzn.to/2QnzvUv Podcast: https://pythonbytes.fm/ Podcast: https://testandcode.com/

The #1 thing that keeps entrepreneurs back from success, that you won’t read about in any business or marketing book. On this episode Russell talks about the power of forgiveness and shares a small portion of a presentation by Chris Wark that encourages you to forgive everyone who has done you wrong. Here are some of the cool things you will hear in this episode: Find out why someone on the initial Rippln startup team has struggled to progress because he needed to forgive. Hear why Chris Wark thinks forgiveness is the key to healing your heart and in turn healing your health. And find out how to get a hold of Chris’ book, so you too can forgive and heal your heart. So listen here to find out why forgiveness of your enemies is so important. ---Transcript--- What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. It’s late night and I’m walking something out to the garbage, it’s raining a little bit out here. And I just want to share something with you guys that probably doesn’t seem like it has a lot to do with marketing, but it has everything to do with you being successful with your marketing and your business. So with that said, let’s queue up the theme song, and we’ll come back and have some fun. Alright everybody, it’s a beautiful night right now, I’m out walking. I had a great day with the kids today, church was amazing, just so many good things. About to get back to the next phase of world domination, we’re like a week and a half away from the 10x event, where my goal is to sell 10 million dollars in a weekend. That just sounds goofy saying that. And then a month later we’ve got Funnel Hacking Live. So a lot of work to do, but I’m super grateful for the opportunities and all the fun stuff that’s happening. It’s interesting, what I wanted to talk to you guys about is a concept, and again you’re not going to think it’s marketing or business related, but I’m going to show you about how vital it is to your success. And that is the concept of forgiveness. And it’s interesting, probably six or seven years ago now, I was involved in a startup that we were trying to launch, and we all had big dreams and aspirations for this thing, some of you probably remember it, it was called Rippln. In fact, if you go back to the beginning of this podcast, there was a time when I was talking about Rippln all the time because it was one of the things. And I thought it was going to be huge, I thought it was going to be our big payday, like all the things I’d been doing for a decade prior had led to that moment. And we built a dream team, and we thought it was going to be the thing, we launched it. And I felt I executed on my parts really well, we ended up getting 1.5-1.6 million people to sign up during the pre-launch, before it went live and then you know, there was supposed to be the big roll out, and money would start flowing. And the roll out, it missed its launch date, and it missed another date, and missed five or six dates, and by the time it did launch, 8 or 9 months later we lost all the energy and momentum and it fizzled away. And I think my check was like $30-40 when all was said and done. It was like six months of my life that I spent on it for like $30. In the process I had used all my favors up, you know, getting people to promote things, and just all sorts of stuff. So when it’s done it’s like kicked in the, what’s the g-rated, kicked in the gut. I don’t, how do we survive from this? And one of the partners in it, the guy who kind of started it was a guy named Brian Underwood, and after that Brian kind of went his way, I went my way and there were other people involved as well. I think there was a core manag…not core management team, but a core marketing team of dudes who got together to launch this thing together. So after that kind of crush, everyone went their own ways and we just kind of went on our own things. And then fast forward now, what is it, 5 maybe 6 years later, and if any of you guys have watched Funnel Hacker TV you probably saw the episode with me and Brian Underwood on his private plane, him and his new company owned four. They launched a company called Prove It, which became the category king of ketones. You know, last year they did, I don’t know the exact numbers but it was close to half a billion dollars in sales. It might have been a little over that. And this is four years into the company. Clickfunnels, last year we passed a hundred million dollars in sales, so I always feel like I did really good until I talk to Brian. I’m like, “Oh, we did one fifth of yours. But my profit margins are higher.” Anyway, that’s always the battle. You know both of us are doing well and successful, and just kind of it is what it is. And I didn’t think too much about it, you know, I never…It was obviously frustrating with the situation, but I didn’t blame him or anybody, it was just kind of like, whatever, and went on and built Clickfunnels, luckily. The next thing happened. And I watched as some of these other people who were involved in that project, went out and started doing different things with different varying levels of success. And what’s interesting is, I can’t tell the details right now, we’re in talks of an acquisition of a really big company, I’m really excited about. And Brian may potentially be part of that. And I wasn’t there for this conversation, but Dave Woodward from our team, he was talking to Brian and all sorts of stuff, and we’re trying to bring Brian in on the deal. And Brian told Dave, “One of the coolest things about Russell, when the whole Rippln thing went under, he never blamed me, he was never angry.” And he’s like, “By the way, I got a phone call from one of the guys the other day.” And I won’t mention his name, but one of the people, one of the main guys that were part of the whole launch with us. He said that guy texted him like, “I need to talk to you.” And he’s like, “I’m about to jump on a plane.” He’s like, “I gotta talk right now. We have to talk.” And this is like 5 years, 6 years later after Rippln went down. So Brian jumps on the phone really quick and the guy starts talking. He says, “Hey, I just need to forgive you.” He’s like, “What?” He’s like, “I have to forgive you. I’ve been angry at you for the last 5 or 6 years, and the more success you have the more angry I get and I’m just frustrated and angry and upset and I have to forgive you because I can’t move on in my life. I’ve been trying and I can’t. All the business ventures I do, I can’t get past it because I have so much, I’m so angry at you and I need to forgive you. I just need to forgive. So I’m sorry.” Or whatever and kind of forgave. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know the exact conversation, but that was kind of the gist of it. So Brian told Dave like, “Man I’m so, Russell didn’t hold a grudge, moved on and built this huge thing called Clickfunnels.” And you know, he was grateful I had never kind of blamed him or held that against him. And this other person who had, had been literally held back and stuck for the last 5 or 6 years of their career. And now he’s finally asking for forgiveness and hoping that by doing that would give him the ability to continue to start moving forward again. It’s crazy how forgiveness, when you forgive somebody it puts you back into momentum, gets you moving forward, and when you don’t it gets you moving back. Anyway, there’s one amazing thing I want to share. So after I started thinking about this tonight, before I started recording this podcast, I remembered at my last set of inner circle meetings, one of the people that was there, one of the most fascinating people I’ve met, bar none, on this earth, someone I’m just so impressed with, so grateful to have a chance to get to know him and to meet him. His name is Chris Wark, some of you guys know Chris. He runs a blog called ChrisBeatCancer.com, he has a new book that came out recently that everyone should read called Chris Beat Cancer. Go to Amazon and you’ll get it. And even if you don’t have cancer…If you don’t have cancer now, either someone you love or yourself someday is going to have it, probably. I went through his entire course and book just to understand when I meet, when I have people around me with cancer, what do I do? If my kids ever get, my wife gets it, my parents get it, if I get it. A lot of times we worry about cancer when it’s too late, or too far down the road. I was like, I would rather understand it now and figure it out how to prevent things as opposed to trying to figure out the cure after. Anyway, if you read his book, he’s amazing. Go and give him money because it will be so good for you for now, and for the future. Anyway, I digress, so Chris is a 15 year cancer survivor and in his journey of sharing what he’s learned, he’s helped save thousands of other people. Anyway, he was at our meeting and the very first thing he talked about, “you guys want to know how to not get cancer?” And we’re like, “Of course, please tell us what you’ve learned the last 15 years.” And I’m not going to go deep into it, but he talked about how to change your diet, how to exercise and things like that, that are really, really powerful. Things you will read about in the book. The one thing he talked about that was kind of towards the end, he just threw it in, and it was amazing what an emotional impact it had on me, on the people in the room. In fact, at the end of the mastermind, which is a marketing meeting, how do you grow your company, how you impact more people, we always do this thing at the end where everyone gives their biggest takeaway. And like half the room the biggest takeaway was this piece from Chris about forgiveness. And it was so powerful and so amazing. So I wanted to share it with you guys, because I think that it could be potentially what’s holding some of you back. And I think that, while it doesn’t seem like a marketing thing, it is probably one of the most important things. I look at my friend now whose spent 5 ½ - 6 years holding a grudge and it kept him from moving forward and impacting the people that he’s been called to serve because of that. And it hurts me to know that man, there’s people that you could be touching and changing and effecting, but you might not be, because of this. So I’m hoping this podcast will get you in the right state. And I hope that Chris’ message here will have a huge impact on you. So with that said, I’m just going to cut to that clip from the meeting, where Chris is talking about forgiveness. “The big, big thing you can do, one of the best gifts you can give yourself in terms of stress reduction… When I turn this way I get really loud. …is forgiveness. Okay, forgiveness. Forgiveness will heal your heart, your emotions, it will reduce your stress and there’s two things that you need to understand about forgiveness. One is it’s not a feeling. It’s not a feeling, it’s a choice. People will lie to you, they’ll cheat you, they’ll take your passport and credit card information and run off into Asia to never be found again. “People will hurt your feelings, they will lie to you, they will abuse you. It’s going to happen and it has happened to many people in this room. And if you don’t forgive them, you’re basically carrying that poison around. And it’s slowly poisoning you and it will produce a sick body. A sick heart will produce a sick body. And the only way to heal your heart is forgiveness. “And a lot of us are self medicating because we’re carrying pain and we haven’t forgiven someone who’s hurt us in life. So when I say stress leads to most disease it’s because that bitterness, that resentment, that unforgiveness makes us unhappy. What do we do to compensate for that? We drink, we do drugs, we become workaholics, we become sex addicts, we become either pharmaceutical or illegal drug addicts. All of those habits destroy your health. “So I just want to encourage everyone here today, some of you are probably thinking about somebody in your life right now that you’re still kind of pissed at, right? That’s hurt you? So I just want to kind of encourage you to give them to God. Just be like, “you know what, I’m choosing to forgive them. I don’t feel like it, I’m still mad but I’m making this decision. They’re all yours.” Right, “I’m letting it go. They’re all yours. You can deal with them. I’m not going to hold it against them anymore.” That’s what forgiveness is, it’s a choice. It’s not a feeling. But what happens when you make a choice, your feelings change. That’s when God heals your heart. “So forgiveness is so huge. It’s so huge. It won’t make you any money, but it will heal your heart and help you stay in a state of wellness, which is super important. So just whoever it is, so what I did in the cancer process is full circle. As I was learning this and I realized, whoa, stress and bitterness and unforgiveness is a root cause of cancer, I was like, “I gotta forgive everybody who’s ever hurt me.” So I just made a decision to just go through my life and think through my life and every time I would get in a quiet place, or in prayer or meditation, I would just dig up all the people in my life who had hurt me, and just one by one, I just forgive them by name and give them to God. And just pray the way I just said, “They’re all yours. I’m not going to hold it against them anymore. I’m making this decision for life. I forgive them.” “And then I would say, “I ask you to bless them too.” When you ask God to bless people who have hurt you, something really happens in your heart and that changes everything. And he knows you don’t want him to, right. He knows you want like the lightning bolt. He knows it, but he’ll honor the request. When you’re like, “God, I don’t want them to be blessed, but I’m asking you to bless them anyway.” That’s a very powerful thing you can do. So forgive and pray for your enemies, that’s what Jesus said, so you know, I think he had some pretty good life advice. “So this stuff works, I promise you it’s so powerful. I mean it changed my life. I see it changing people’s lives left and right. It’s like the weight’s lifted off of you when you forgive people. And be quick to forgive. That’s the other one, because we’re all going to get screwed over in the future. People are going to let us down, insult us, embarrass us, whatever. Just be quick to forgive, just be like, “I’m letting it go. I’m not going to hold onto it. God bless them. Moving on.” Be quick to forgive.” Okay, I don’t know about you, but isn’t that amazing? I just, once again, Chris is one of the most amazing people and I highly recommend all you guys go buy the book and just read it for yourself, read it for a loved one, read it because it’s worth it, it’s worth understanding. Anyway, with that said, I just wanted to come out tonight and record that before I went to bed. Hopefully it will help some of you guys in your journey. It re-reminded me, I’m going to do what Chris said, I’m going to get a list of people, I’m going to start trying to consciously do this more in my own life because I’m sure there’s things that are holding me back as well. With that said, you guys, appreciate you all. Have an amazing night. If you got any value from this episode, do a couple of things. Number one, go buy Chris’ book, buy one for yourself, buy one for someone you love, buy it for your family, your parents, your kids, go do that. I don’t get anything for it, but it’s worth it. And then number two, if you do like this as well, screen shot the podcast app you’re using right now and go and post it on Facebook or Instagram, tag me, and then do hash tag Marketing Secrets, I’d love to see it. With that said, I will talk to you guys soon. Bye everybody.

It’s a new year and Brian and Blake are back for a new Chasing Tone Podcast.So imagine going into the studio and laying down tracks only to find the producer bypassed your rig and applied different effects in post. This happened to a member of the tone group. Brian and Blake share their thoughts on the situation.Do you buy gear on Amazon? Are you sure you’re getting the real deal? Counterfeit gear is becoming a real problem on the popular site. The guys have some thoughts on the matter.NAMMs a comin’, peaches, Blake is getting old and Google searches. It’s all in this edition of the Chasing Tone Podcast.**NOTE - There was a hiccup in the recording of this episode. i.e;Brian did not hit record. So Brian's audio is from the Skype recording. We apologize in advance for the diminished audio quality.Find us at: http://www.WamplerPedals.comhttp://www.Facebook.com/WamplerPedalshttp://www.Twitter.com/WamplerPedalshttp://www.Instagram.com/WamplerPedalshttp://www.Facebook.com/ChasingTonePodcasthttp://www.facebook.com/groups/wamplerfanpage/

Click Above To Listen In iTunes... So the big question is this, what would you do if money didn't matter? So you had millions in your bank account, what would you focus on? Would you spend more time with your family, with your wife, with your kids? Take family vacations. Would you pursue your gifts and talents and dreams? Serve your local community, teach others, serve your church. You see if what you would do if money didn't matter, it was pursuing your gifts and talents and dreams to serve others, and that is probably what you should be doing. The problem is most people are in the rat race, living five inches in front of their face with no time to pursue what they were born to do. That is the problem, and the solution is to develop enough passive income to replace your working income so you can quit your job and be free to live your life the way you were created to. That is a solution and this podcast will show you how... Ryan Enk:                          What's up everybody? Welcome to another awesome episode of Cash Flow Dad Life. I'm your host Ryan Enk and I've got a special guest on with us today. Mr Brian Grignon, welcome to the show. Brian Grignon:                 Hey, thanks Ryan. Thanks for having me. Ryan Enk:                          I invited Brian on because his story is pretty inspiring. He like many of you, is starting out in real estate and you know, one of the biggest things in real estate is actually taking action.  I talk about it in my book, the seven day blueprint. I'm trying to remember the name of my own book, the seven day real estate survival blueprint... I've talked about just taking action is being like one of the biggest catalysts to actually making sure you have a check in your hand. The reason that I have Brian on the show is because Brian, you know, came from a similar background with his first deal and a struggle with a lot of what people struggle with, like analysis paralysis, you know, certain fear and also making the thought of real estate and the idea of "Yeah, I could probably do this," become a reality and making it a reality by taking action. When he did it, I don't want to, I don't want to give away the total number. I'll let Brian do that... But when he finally did that, he was rewarded a pretty handedly with his first check with real estate.  So from going, going from zero experience to cashing in on a pretty big check. So Brian, if you would, can you share a little bit about your backstory before you got started? Real estate, what was going on in your life and what made you decide to try it out? Brian Grignon:                 Sure. Thanks right. So many people I nine five job. I still have one actually. So, um, and you know, you get kind of stuck and you feel like I needed something else. I just like you, have lots of kids. I had five at the time, but I had four, I now have five and I wanted it to be able to do something. I want it to be able to feel like I had sort of control over my own destiny a little bit. I'm a little bit of freedom and so I think actually speaking to you one day and I said, you know, I'm really not sure what to do. We tried real estate. I don't know about that. But you know, that kind of ruminated I remember one day... Ryan Enk:                          What was making you so hesitant about real estate? Brian Grignon:                 I always liked real estate. I always liked seeing the houses tha --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/cashflow-dadlife/support

Welcome back to The Real Brian Show! Before getting started, I'll just take a quick moment to apologize for not communicating about no episode last week. It was on both our radars to blast something somewhere, but it got away from us! Brian made a trip to Vegas for HxGN Live (Hexagon International Conference) and will have some stories to share, and for good measure we're also throwing in the usual frivolity from Captain Influence. In This Episode Yeah... about last week... VEGAS! A lesson in preparing trout Stress = Dizziness & heart palps?? An emphasis on stress Lost in Space, Salvation, Altered Carbon What Happens in Vegas... Finding relief from stress in Vegas might not be exactly how you're expecting! Generally, the whole "let's go to Vegas for the weekend" bit is more specific to the casinos or endless nighttime entertainment. But in the case of our own Real Brian, the relief likely came on the heels of anticipation. Between extended alone time, dealing with crabby and rude drivers, and preparing for HxGN Live, stress bubbled up to the surface in the form of heart palpitations and a general uncertainty of health (and thus feeding back into the stress). I don't usually qualify my posts, but I do recognize that talking about stress is very personal and provokes in us a feeling that no one really understand what we're going through. I just want to share some of what I've learned about stress over the last 20 years as my own symptoms have changed since childhood. Stress manifests in different ways for everyone, and because of that... sometimes it's really hard to tell what's wrong or that you're even stressed out in the first place. When I was younger, my stress took the form of incredibly painful sores on my tongue. Any time I would get over-emotional (excitement, nerves, embarrassed, anxious) I could feel the sores start to come back. And then it would take forever for them to go away. It's interesting because even as I'm writing this I'm only realizing that it was one of the contributing factors toward a strive for balance, melancholy and stoicism. I still come up against strong emotions, but there's an aspect to stoicism that changes my perspective about receiving these emotions. Sometimes it's unhealthy (suppression) and sometimes it's limiting (not getting excited about things), but until I experienced grief (which was totally new) I found that I wasn't surprised by my emotions. The lack of surprise was a considerable help in managing stress. At the beginning of my grief, these tools were helpful. But at a certain point, my reactions stopped maturing and it became mostly suppression - which then began to manifest in TMD. Three years later... I'm definitely suffering the long-term effects of not adjusting my dose of stress relief accordingly. So Brian is totally correct when he says that this is a cyclical process and we keep learning and keep adjusting. And he's right that I was going to say as much! This is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating aspects to human nature, because we expect consistency in how we anticipate things, but it is so easy to neglect the third parties that feed into our circumstances. Society changes, people change, we ourselves change... and thus circumstances are constantly in flux. We recognize pain and stress, find a way to deal with it - we focus in and make sure it won't happen again - only to be shocked by another aspect of that experience which causes us stress. Stress relief is multilayered and transitory. It is a theory that can be applied, but also must be applied appropriately, with varying degrees of emphasis, and then adjusted and tested for every future use. Otherwise we'll just end up being frustrated that the old methods to relieve stress don't work and find ourselves in a vicious cycle of being dominated by our circumstance. The most difficult aspect of stress relief, for me, has been trying to find the motivation to dig down deep for the root of my stress AND make the necessary adjustments to relieve it. Sometimes it's easier (or it SEEMS easier) to just push through. But the long-term effects can be incredibly damaging. So I'll leave you, at the end of this long-winded diatribe, with a little encouragement to take the time to deal with it when it comes up... don't let it get out of hand, no matter how uncomfortable it might be. Links The Wunder Boner The Super Bass o Matic Hayley Williams - Still Into you (Acoustic)

Today on Dr. Homebrew we have two beers - one homebrewed and one homebrew-adjacent! Dave sent us a Saison, which is a pretty under-represented style on this show, and we were excited to find this in our inboxes. Then Brian brought in a beer that was brewed by the folks at PicoBrew for their PicoPak project, where you can buy pre-made kits of different beers, and he submitted his "Kick Your Own Ass" Strong Ale. So Brian got his sample bottle and asked us to judge it on the show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WizardCast Dreamforce 2017 Day 3 – MVP Party Episode 55.2   Click logo to subscribe RSS Feed https://thewizardnews.com/feed/wizardcast Dreamforce 2017 Day 3 – MVP Party Mark Ross has disappeared… AGAIN. So Brian seeks out a new co-host while he’s at the Salesforce MVP Party. Brian covers the Admin Keynote, the results of Dungeons and Dreamforce […] The post Dreamforce 2017 Day 3 – MVP Party appeared first on The Wizard News.

Many listeners will know we have a couple of chooks that we like to let free range in the backyard from time to time... but recently we heard a lot of commotion and raced outside to see of all things ... a BLACK cat! ... We don't know anyone in our street who has one but we do live by a small suburban forest and we immediately suspected a feral cat.And while this was just one recent incident we have had similar things happen before... So Brian popped over to the Chatswood Cat Palace to see what Dr Kim Kendall had to say about feral cats.....

Many listeners will know we have a couple of chooks that we like to let free range in the backyard from time to time... but recently we heard a lot of commotion and raced outside to see of all things ... a BLACK cat! ... We don't know anyone in our street who has one but we do live by a small suburban forest and we immediately suspected a feral cat. And while this was just one recent incident we have had similar things happen before... So Brian popped over to the Chatswood Cat Palace to see what Dr Kim Kendall had to say about feral cats.....

Imagine earning six figures…but being broke. Earning over $100,000…but facing the same amount in credit card debt. This is where the story of Brian Brandow begins. When trying to book a family vacation back in 2010, Brian says he hit a wall. All of his five credit cards were maxed out and he had no available cash. At the time he was making a great salary of $120,000 as an IT manager – more than enough to afford a vacation – and he quickly realized he and his wife needed to make a change. They were living far beyond their means, and had accumulated a whopping $109,000 in debt. So Brian and his wife set out to take control of their finances and their journey t tp financial freedom began. Brian educated himself on personal finance, his wife went back to work to bring in extra income, and they were able to clear the debt in just over 50 months or 4 years. Without having to worry about paying off debt, they now are able to contribute to an emergency fund, retirement savings and college funds for their three kids. Today, Brian’s goal is to help others in similar situations through his blog Debt Discipline, and personal coaching sessions, where he teaches budgeting and getting on the right financial track.

Josh and Justin are out this week! So Brian and Brad team up together for the first time to bring you updated news about Constantly Calibrating, the slow death of retail, and DC's inevitable rank behind Marvel's cinematic universe. Brad is on Twitch, Brian is on Mac (to the other host's chagrin), and Joshua is in Disneyland on this episode of: Constantly Calibrating!

This week Cody is still not here and Linsey fills in for him. So Brian and his companion talk about the Doctor Who Christmas special and theorize about the second half of Doctor Who.

Original Air Date: October 27, 2008 Original Post: “So Brian’s a dick.  You’ll understand shortly.” This one takes a small amount of explanation.  Orc Horns Day is October 23rd, and we’re talking about the first of two Orc Horns Day …Read more »