Podcasts about so corey

Jack Thursday - State of the Union - Do We Care About Lumber Prices? (LA 1507) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hey, hey, hey. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show. What the heck? Jill DeWit: I don't know. Steven Butala: Entertaining Land Investment Talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, and I apparently had too much caffeine. Steven Butala: Yes, you have. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: Today is Jack Thursday. I'm going to do what our customer service people have requested. A State of the Union, real estate in 2021. For example, do we care about lumber prices? Jill DeWit: I have a lot of questions, don't worry. Steven Butala: Okay. Before we get into it, then, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. And if you're already a Land Academy member, please join us on Discord. Jill DeWit: Corey wrote, "Good evening." Steven Butala: Sorry. Jill DeWit: When posting a deal on Land Tank or sending a deal to someone for funding, what info about the property is good to include, so that no time is wasted, to get a quick "yes" or "no" answer for funding? Of course, I know that the [inaudible 00:01:06] are important, but what else should I include? I love this question, by the way. I am new and I haven't bought any land yet, but I'm sending offers to ten to a hundred acre properties, because I know that there are plenty of people here that will fund a deal if it's right. P.S. Jill, I had to leave this in here. I absolutely love listening on Clubhouse. Steven Butala: You snuck this in here. Jill DeWit: I totally. Steven Butala: Jill has a love affair with Clubhouse. Jill DeWit: This is not me making it up. Corey really put this in here and I'm like, oh I am putting the whole thing. Jill DeWit: He said Jill, I absolutely love listening on Clubhouse for someone that isn't a member yet. I feel like I'm breaking the law getting all the info for free that you guys talk about on there. Of course, the podcasts on this site are great too. Thanks, Corey. [inaudible 00:01:54] this is awesome. Okay. I need to know how the property is going, how the property will be sold, how fast it will be sold and what the game plan is. So let me give you an example. So Corey, you come up with a beautiful twenty-acre property and whatever county and whatever price let's just say. Say it's twenty-acre property for $20,000. So not only do you give me the property details. If there's anything pertinent, I want that I found that there is a well, they used to have a mobile on there. Jill DeWit: I've found out that it just got rezoned to this. Something unique or cooler, something that's making you want, why we're doing this deal about the actual property. Then the other thing I want you to do is tell me about you. You're selling me not only on the property, but you're selling me on you because you're coming to me to money and you should be saying, here's how great the property is and here's how great I am. And here's what I'm going to do with this. So I need information that says, I've been studying this for six months. I've got three brokers lined up champing at the bit. They think it's going to sell within 30 days at three times our money and how fast can I do it? And I can, and I've got the title agent ready to go. I can do this in two weeks. That's the information I need. Steven Butala: Let me state the obvious. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: And put this sentence in there. I don't need anything from you guys except the money. Jill DeWit: Yep. Perfect. Steven Butala: [inaudible 00:03:36] We have not so much now anymore. We've had a lot big problems with that when we start started Land Tank and deal funding. Basically new people were just throwing a property in there. It's a great deal. I know it's a great deal and just handing it to us and expecting us to do work. Steven Butala:

What is at the heart of energy efficiency and what are the benefits? Is less really more? And why is it so important that nations and governments implement policy to take action not only for their economies, but for the planet? To help us demystify this topic, Corey Diamond, Executive Director of Efficiency Canada, and the national voice for an energy efficient economy, joins us to share his insights. The short answer: energy efficiency really means so much more! Tune in to get the scoop. Related Content & Links:  - Efficiency CanadaTwitter: @EfficiencyCANLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/efficiency-canada/ Website: https://www.efficiencycanada.org/ - Resources 16 ways Canada’s enhanced climate plan advances energy efficiency Our Human Energy --- Transcript: Dan Seguin  00:02 Hey, everyone, welcome to this very special episode of the ThinkEnergy podcast. Energy efficiency is a large sweeping topic that has different implications and meanings depending on if you are a nation, a federal, provincial or municipal government, an industry, a business owner, or simply a homeowner. On today's show, part one, in our discussion about energy efficiency, we're going to talk about what energy efficiency means on a global scale and on a nationwide scale here in Canada, because that's where the topic of energy efficiency has been elevated to. Back in 2015, the United Nations set out an ambitious 15 year plan to address some of the most pressing issues facing the world by developing 17 Sustainable Development Goals. One of these goals, 'affordable and clean energy' offers solid technical guidelines and solutions so that governments can achieve energy efficiency nationally, and work together to achieve it internationally. So what does that mean for Canada? Where does energy efficiency fit into eliminating energy waste, reducing greenhouse gases and the fight against climate change? We're going to find out. So here's today's big question: What are the benefits of energy efficiency? And why is it so important that nations and governments implement policy to take action not only for their economies, but for the planet? To help demystify this for us, Corey Diamond, Executive Director of Efficiency Canada, the National voice for the energy efficient economy, is here with me today. So Corey, you work with Efficiency Canada, whose advocacy work is focused on making our country a global leader in energy efficiency? Let's start by defining energy efficiency in general, and what are the important things your organization advocates for?   Corey Diamond  03:01 Well, thanks for that, Dan, appreciate the 'back to basics' question. Because, you know, oftentimes, in our world, we just dive right into the erudite world and use as many acronyms and things like that. So why don't we start, you know, at the foundation, and if you think about energy efficiency, I mean, the main thing you're thinking about or talking about is, is using less energy to achieve the same or even better outcomes. And, you know, we want we like to think of it as you know, we want things like, we want to be warm, and we want light, and we want mobility, and we want to be productive, and we want to watch Netflix, without, you know, a breeze coming across our ankles, we want all these things. And it doesn't really make any sense to kind of pay, you know, extra for it or to harness us with, you know, the economic or environmental costs of wasting energy. So if you think about energy efficiency, think of it in the terms of how do we make our lives more comfortable? How do we make them more healthier? How do we make buildings more durable? How do we make our economy more productive? Just by using less? And then you asked about what are the things that we advocate for really, you know, we kind of boil it down to three things. And we think of it as kind of like an end state. So if we woke up at a certain date, and out of hibernation, and we said, oh, wow, look at the world, it did all this amazing stuff. What we'd want to see is we'd want to see zero carbon buildings and facilities, we'd want to see a netzero productive economy in Canada. And we want to see meaningful careers, you know, purposeful, meaningful careers for people. So those are the three major kind of impact areas we're working towards. And we see energy efficiency in the policies and investments related to energy efficiencies as the way of us getting there.   Dan Seguin  04:51 In the intro for the show, I talk about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. What are some of the evidence base Best practices that the UN recommends the government should follow in. Do you feel that these standards have started a long overdue global conversation?   Corey Diamond  05:11 I would say that as far as an overdue conversation, yes, certainly things have been amped up. But people have been talking about this for decades. And it has been fairly central to, you know, you know, humanity on earth in trying to tackle with emissions reductions since the Rio summit in 92. You know, we look at the International Energy Agency, or the IEA is kind of the most definitive kind of global organization that is, you know, working in this space. And they spend a lot of time particularly since COVID started, on really trying to kind of think about clean energy, energy efficiency, and how will help with with the world's economic recovery, the thing that they look at is they say, Okay, if we're going to reach this, like Paris commitment that the world's governments have come together on, how do we do that, and they looked at and said, Look, 40% of the global climate commitments are going to come from energy efficiency. So it's a significant amount. And I would suspect that many agencies in the UN are also trying to figure that out in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals. So that means looking at buildings, it means looking at transportation, it means looking at industry. And it really means taking that long overdue conversation and going a lot deeper than the way we've done it before. And I think we're starting to see a bit of a sea change. We're at a very pivotal moment in the world right now, where I wish somebody I mean, I'm sure someone has an online, but it'd be so interesting just to get a tracking list of the governments and the corporations who have committed to a netzero future, and then kind of work backwards from that and see, okay, how do we unleash this massive potential energy efficiency to help us get there?   Dan Seguin  06:55 Corey? Can you help me better understand how Canada can grow its economy while reducing emissions, and building resilience to adapt to a changing climate? Do you have examples of other countries, like Australia, that are proving why energy efficiency plays a big part in their economy?   Corey Diamond  07:18 So certainly, there's an economic benefit when you just eliminate waste, right? It's common sense. My daughter's in grade six and I'm sure she's been learning that since kindergarten, right? You know, why? Why are we wasting, you know, there's no benefits from that. And so when we think about energy efficiency, the first thing sort of economic benefit we can think of are the direct jobs. So when the retrofit economy, people coming in retrofitting buildings, or making industrial facilities more efficient, it's a lot of people to do that work, you get a lot of labor involved in order to make that happen, there's no other way to do it. So what ends up happening is that that work is almost overwhelmingly local, you've got local contractors, local suppliers, and these are people in every community across the country who can do that work. So with the right policies and investment and direction, then you start to unleash that kind of job creation, you know, type of thing. So then you look at, okay, not only the direct jobs, but let's look at what happens indirectly, you know, when we save, so naturally, when we save the money, then re circulates back into the economy to do other things, and more productive things, not just spending it on waste. I like to think of it as you know, there's a restaurant at the top of my street. And let's say they, they undertook a, you know, an energy audit, and then did a whole bunch of energy retrofits. So the first thing they did is they hired a whole bunch of people, those people, you know, got jobs and got work and got to do the work. And then this restaurant thought, huh, look at that, we've cut our energy bill by 50%. Why don't we reinvest that into building a brand new patio, and all of a sudden, they built a new patio where they can put more tables, they had to hire two more servers, and they're recycling all that savings back into the economy for productive things. So you get the job creation of the headset, you get the job creation throughout, and you start seeing people do that. You asked about, you know, kind of where else in the world is this happening? There was a study that came out by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, the AC Triple E. They do it every two years. The last one was done in 2018. And they actually rank they do a global ranking of all the countries in the world and who's doing the best. and Canada came in 10th and actually tied with the US. And you know, there's some really good insight in there as to which countries are doing great on certain types of things. Certainly in Europe, you're seeing a lot of activity, and you're not not just historically in Europe. Have you seen it? I think Italy was ranked number one with Germany, they've done a lot of work for many, many decades on this. But what you're starting to see now is the European Union really kind of baking in energy efficiency as part of their economic recovery. And they called the Green New Deal. And they're really trying to kind of relaunch the European economy in this way. And one of the things they did is, I love the marketing and the names they use and things like that. They called it the renovation wave. And there's, you know, there's 32 member states in the EU. And they basically, you know, have a plan to double energy efficiency and building retrofits over the next 10 years. And they're going to create hundreds of 1000s of jobs, and they're going to lower people's energy bills, and they're going to put people back to work. And, you know, they're just doing it and, you know, it comes with a strategy, and it comes with the mandates for the states, and most importantly, comes with money. So they're really kind of, you know, locking it down and saying this going to be a core part of our recovery. So we get a lot of inspiration from our friends and colleagues in Europe, who are, you know, pushing ahead in this way, and starting to see that kind of unlocked here as well,   Dan Seguin  11:07 Is energy efficiency making significant contributions to economic growth in job creation in Canada, into the productivity and competitiveness of Canadian industries?   Corey Diamond  11:19 You know, one of the things we lack, I think this goes for everything in the clean energy space is it's tough to get data, but we do have some data, and it's very encouraging. Our friends at Eco-Canada in Alberta, they came up with a study a couple years ago, and they counted it, they counted up the numbers of people who work in the Energy Efficiency sector, and it's over 436,000 people in Canada. And that's over 51,000, organizations, companies, businesses, things like that, you know, that's more than the telecommunications and the oil and gas sector combined. So there's a lot of people doing this work already. It's overwhelmingly small businesses, independence type, folks. And you're starting to see more of that, you know, some analysis we did we kind of looked at, okay, well, that's the current status, what if we actually enacted and implemented all of the policies that are on the federal government's books, and we saw that we would, we would generate 118,000 annual jobs a year just from doing the things that are in those policies. So again, it backs up that kind of theory we've been having around that local job creation and things. On the industrial side, it's harder to get a number, not a lot of this is tracked. But we do know that, anecdotally that we're starting to see, you know, industries using more energy management systems incorporating this, one of the challenges on the industrial side is, is you're competing for capital projects, or you're competing internally for like, you know, hey, we could like change this system out, that system out, we can do energy efficiency, we can do all these types of things. So you see a bit of a challenge there. But one last economic data point that we just found that actually, which is really encouraging is that not only are we, you know, employing a lot of people, and there's a lot of activity in Canada, but we're also exporting a lot. In fact, the second biggest clean tech export, Canada's clean tech export is energy efficient equipment services. So that's really cool to see too, because there's a huge opportunity of a world market going in this direction. I you know, I just mentioned Europe, is there an opportunity for Canadian companies to take their knowledge, their technologies, their know how, and export that and grow economies around the world as well?   Dan Seguin  13:48 I'm very interested in your thoughts as it relates to the updated federal climate plan, and how you think it will advance energy efficiency?   Corey Diamond  13:58 Well, I am really glad you asked that question. Because my colleague, Brendan Haley, our policy director, he actually wrote a blog called 16 ways the new climate plan advances energy efficiency. So I'm not gonna go through all 16 because then, you know, this will be a very long podcast, but I want to highlight a few things and really three things. So number one, the first thing we see is a major priority placed or an emphasis placed on energy efficiency in the climate plan. The first section, if you go to the plan, the first section is called cutting energy waste. So this is in line with, you know, what I was saying earlier around the value and the benefits that flow when we just get rid of waste first. So that was really cool from a theoretical standpoint, and from a priority standpoint that the federal government is seeing this as a big opportunity. The second thing we see is that there's money. Last year, the federal government announced $6.1 billion for Energy efficiency programs. These are things for home retrofits for financing for commercial energy efficiency upgrades, and for a brand new program around municipal buildings and in the community, so we're starting to see some, some major dollars. And if you put that into context, we look at how each province does every year and energy efficiency, and we kind of, you know, added it up last year, the provinces combined spend $1.2 billion on energy efficiency. So, you know, adding $6 billion into the system is a big step. So, we saw that in the climate plan. And the third thing is, we saw mentioned and sort of a doubling down on some supporting or enabling policies, specifically around building codes. And this is something that we're tracking very closely advocating for, and making sure that any new building that's being built today is built at the highest standard, using the least amount of energy. And so it was really good to see that, you know, obviously, money is good, and priorities are good and investments, great, but just, you know, sometimes it's a, it's a policy, you know, turn of the pen, that actually gets us to where we want to be. But, you know, as an advocate for energy efficiency, I would be remiss not to also outline what's missing. So give me a chance. One thing we're, you know, really, you know, pushing for is a program for low income Canadians. And, you know, this is all the more important because of the situation today, as many people find that they're spending an overwhelming amount of their income on energy. And there's a huge opportunity to support low to moderate income Canadians with a program. So we're really pushing hard for the federal government to do that. And this is especially important because the carbon price is, you know, intended to rise considerably between now and 2030. So, again, that will create more of a burden for those that are finding it already hard to pay for energy bills, we look at it as kind of an energy justice view. And, and we're really, you know, looking for that to be included as part of a beefed up plan by the federal government.   Dan Seguin  17:17 Canada faces the threat of a recession due to multiple shocks spurred by the pandemic, since it's a given that the government will need to lead the economic recovery with sustainable investments, many world leaders are calling for economic recovery plans that pave the way to a zero carbon economy. How can energy efficiency help Canada recover from COVID-19? And how can it lead this economic recovery?   Corey Diamond  17:49 Yeah, it's a really good question. In fact, you know, starting last March, when, you know, when the world turned upside down, we kind of, you know, we're a small shop, we're 8 people and we, you know, we got together, you know, online, and we're starting to figure out, Okay, what what can we do? And how do we essentially pivot or work towards ensuring that the economic recovery has energy efficiency baked into it? So we did some work on that and we also supported a group of economists and policymakers, you know, a nonpartisan group from across the country called the Task Force for Resilient Recovery. And we helped them shape the energy efficiency recommendations for Canada's economic recovery. But we looked, we basically looked at it first. Okay, so why would you invest in energy efficiency to help Canada recover, and we came up with five things. So I'll quickly just kind of outline those. So if you're listening at home, and you want to take notes, here we go. First is obviously I've already stated this creates jobs. So you know, there's a lot of people whose lives have been disrupted, there's a huge opportunity, there is so much energy waste in Canada, that we can put a lot of people back to work doing it. The second thing is it increases consumer spending in the local economy. So as I mentioned earlier, that example of, you know, the restaurant at the top of my street, what ends up happening is you start to boost local economies, when you do this, people spend, they hire local contractors, but then they have savings. And then they spend that again, and so it ends up circulating back into the local economy, which helps with economic recovery. The third thing is, you know, it's through government, investment or government policies, government procurement, what you end up creating is a, essentially a pipeline of projects. And, and that builds, you know, investor confidence, you know, with financial institutions and different stakeholders in the sector, that there's a place where we can put our money that's going to generate a return on investment. That's really exciting. Now when everything is, you know, up in the air and other upside down, you know, one of the things you can pretty much bank on is that if you make certain changes, let's say to a building, you're going to get your savings back over time. And, you know, there's very sophisticated models that help you plan that out. And, it always works. So that kind of investor confidence where people can kind of start to take their money and kind of place it somewhere is a really important thing, as you know, economies try to get out of recessions. The fourth thing is, is the link between energy efficiency and kind of managing ongoing concerns related to COVID-19. You know, you know, things related to ventilation, things related to how we are interacting with our indoor environments now is a huge part of, you know, the Future Part of Canada. And so baking in energy efficiency, and combining energy efficiency, design or renovation as part of a way to manage pandemic concerns is another reason why it's a core part of recovery. And then the last thing is, and, you know, there's some work being done by the insurance bureau of Canada and a lot of great people across the country around resilience. And I think this is something that energy efficiency and making buildings and, and, you know, our infrastructure more resilient, is, is going to be key, because no matter what we do now, as far as emissions, a lot of the emissions are historically locked in. And so how do you combine energy efficiency, to help our buildings manage and adapt to a changing environment? Another reason why it's such a core part of our recovery.   Dan Seguin  21:42 Okay, so let's move to the next question. What kind of funding for energy efficiency and retrofit projects are you hoping for with respect to Canada's economic recovery being a green recovery?   Corey Diamond  21:55 Yeah, so we kind of work backwards and thought, okay, so if we need to get to a certain point within five years, and what that looks like, is essentially a tripling of our activity now of energy efficiency activity. It's about a $27 billion investment, that's a lot of money. And, and that's over five years. But the interesting thing about it, you know, when we talk about this, we don't, we don't necessarily talk about energy efficiency is, you know, one time payment, and it's out the door. As I was saying earlier, from an economic standpoint, it really is an investment. This is about how you structure your economy and your society to eliminate the bad parts of it. And so to do that, you invest and you invest in the types of things that are going to generate jobs, you invest in the types of things that are going to circulate money in the local economy. So that's, that's 27 billion over five years, as I mentioned earlier, this is that that's a recommendation to the federal government only. We have seen $6 billion dollars announced in programs thus far. So we're on our way. But certainly there's a long way to go, especially if we're going to keep up with some of the plans that we're seeing around the world, including President Biden's plan, climate plan. And then as I mentioned earlier, the European new green New Deal, which is really kind of paving the way for significant investment in this.   Dan Seguin  23:22 Aside from the need for more financial support from our governments, what sort of policy changes must happen to bring our energy efficiency game to the next level?   Corey Diamond  23:34 Yeah, it's a good question. I kind of touched on the building code piece earlier, you know, that's definitely one of them. 60% of our new buildings, you know, that you build today are going to be around by 2050. And I was actually thinking about that number, I was doing a walk this morning, and I was looking around, I'm like, pretty much every building in my neighborhood is over 100 years old. So if you're, if you have an ambition, like, you know, governments, corporations around the world are pushing towards net zero by 2050. Why would you lock in carbon right now, with every new building, you know, especially when we have the technology, the know how, the services, the workforce to do that? Why are we doing that? And so we're pushing as hard as we can to make sure that all levels of government are looking at new building codes, and also, you know, what they call alterations to existing building codes. So thinking about what we do with all of the existing building stock to bring that up to a level that is Net Zero Energy Ready. So we need that immediately. We're, you know, spending a lot of time advocating to governments across Canada on that. The second thing we need is, is policies related to workforce development, you know, certainly COVID has kind of put Canada and all nations around the world into a bit of a pickle, right? We are we're kind of stuck here where we're trying to figure out where do we go from here and how does that The world change because of the situation we're in right now, that requires some real thinking and requires to match the kind of policy ambition you want to see in the climate side with significant investment or matching investment in developing the workforce, for that policy and vision, certainly the market will dictate certain things. And, you know, I think we're already seeing that in the energy efficiency sector, but policies have a huge impact on where this market goes. And particularly, we need to match that policy with ensuring that people understand that there are various different career pathways they could take in the sector, that it could be a safe landing space. And, you know, the energy efficiency sector, just like many sectors in the country needs to up its game and its inclusion of women and inclusion of a more diverse workforce. What a great opportunity we're in right now to do that. And, and it's, it's an exciting time. And I think that, you know, especially with young people who are looking at the way the world is going, they want purposeful work, they want meaningful work, they want to do stuff that helps you know themselves, but also helps the country and the climate. And I think we're gonna need some leadership in this country around that so that people are nudged in this direction, and given an opportunity to enter a workforce that is meaningful, that is purposeful, and that helps us, you know, ultimately get to the net zero emissions future we want to see.   Dan Seguin  26:36 Efficiency Canada has recently published its second annual provincial energy efficiency scorecard, which ranks Ontario fourth in the country overall, in 2020. What are the key focus areas or topics that contribute to those rankings? And can you maybe highlight one or two things that Ontario is doing very well with? And what the key areas of improvements are?   Corey Diamond  27:03 Yeah, So what we do is we look at a number of things, we look at how each province is doing on their programs, so energy efficiency programs that they're providing to, to people, we look at the enabling policies - so like I mentioned things like building codes - we look at how they're doing on buildings, we look at how they're doing on transportation, and then we also track industry. Ee do that across the country. And we look at every single province, we're starting to bring into territories, you're right, Ontario is now ranked fourth, it's a slip, they were third in the previous year. So you're starting to see some backwards movement in Ontario, largely due to some of the cancellations of programs when premier Ford came in, but they're doing some good things, we are doing some good things here, you know, we'd like to see, for example, do some innovative stuff, you know, non wire or non non pipe alternatives. Certainly the ISEO is moving ahead with an auction around energy efficiency, that's new Enbridge doing some geo targeting stuff. So there's some cool stuff going on as far as kind of taking efficiency out of the more traditional realm and kind of pushing the barriers a bit. So so we like to see that. But it can definitely improve, we can definitely improve things here. There's two areas that we called out in our scorecard around improvement. One is around natural gas savings. You know, Enbridge does a great job in delivering and implementing energy efficiency. But we noticed that in 2018, the Ontario government actually in their environment plan called for a significant increase in natural gas savings as part of its environment plan. And then when it came down to, you know, directing the Ontario energy board around that they basically said you don't need to, to listen to our environment plan. So that was that was a bit of a step backwards, I think, you know, at least from our perspective, because there's a massive opportunity to do more on natural gas savings by a bunch of experts who know what they're doing. And then the second thing around improvement is really around electric vehicles, because we track that too. And, you know, 1% of vehicle registrations in Ontario are EVs. And if you compare that across the country, BC is at seven 7%. Quebec almost at 6%. It's been in the news a lot lately, because Will Ferrell was in the commercial, but Norway's at 50%. So, you know, we can do this and it's largely driven by policy, right? That's how you do that. And so, you know, especially,now in Ontario, where there's been some great announcements around, you know, essentially making these cars here. I think it's time that we started to see a much more aggressive push to enable Ontarians to access these types of vehicles as well.   Dan Seguin  29:52 Okay, Cory, as we close out part one of our discussion on energy efficiency. What do you think is the most important thing utilities, governments, regulators, businesses and consumers can do to accelerate clean power and electrification? And what will be the biggest barrier to getting there?   Corey Diamond  30:14 That's the money question these days, right? I would probably have the same answers I would have for anything going on in 2021. That, you know, we need to treat this situation we're in as the emergency that it is. And I think, you know, all of us who have lived through the past, you know, 11 months have seen us, you know, respond to an emergency. And, you know, it's no secret that the chaos that the climate crisis is going to create, or is creating right now, for many, many people around the world is going to be something that we can't even imagine. And, you know, if you are a decision maker in a utility or business or regulator in a government, we need to start thinking of this as a significant emergency, which means we need to act much faster. And, and, and, and much deeper than we've ever worked before. And I think we can do that. Because the stuff we're talking about is not controversial. I mean, compared to a lot of other policies out there. Maximizing energy efficiency is not controversial. It's got broad, nonpartisan support, we've got states down and south of us, or countries in the US that are way beyond where we are today. So getting there is not not the hard part, and you know, it's safe. So I think we need to maximize this as fast as possible, because the cost of inaction is just far too high. You know, not just, you know, morally, but, but but financially and socially as well. So what's the barrier to that, you know, I, you know, I guess it's just inertia and, and, you know, a general lack of treating it as, as the emergency that is, and, you know, the savings levels that we're aspiring to, and, you know, the types of things we're calling for, you know, shouldn't have that much political inertia in it, and we're starting to see a big change, we're starting to see a shift to that, but nowhere near the level that we need to in order to move at the speed and the depth that that we need to so I think the way to do that overcome that barrier is really kind of what we're trying to do it efficiency Canada, which is really trying to organize this sector and, and come together as a, you know, a really intelligent and kind of future forward thinking sector to unlock that inertia, and organize ourselves to make it make it known that this is a real solution. I know we can do it. We just have to, we just have to do it. Yeah.   Dan Seguin  32:48 We've reached the end of another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Thank you so much, Cory, for joining me today. I would usually close off with some rapid fire questions, but I'll save those for when you join me next time on part two of our chat about energy efficiency. And we take a deeper dive into what energy efficiency means at the local level of municipalities, businesses, and homeowners. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you had a lot of fun.

This going to be my favorite episode because it is one of my dear friends, my brothers, my soul brother, business partner friend for life that I just don't think I could ever live without. And we call him the vegan Superman. He's known as lean green dad. He's known as C for social. He's known as the guy. Who can break the ice. Talk to everybody brings smile and joy to the world while helping hundreds and hundreds of companies absolutely crush their digital marketing strategy, growing and scaling with a heart centered approach. So the first question, and you probably know this one, if you've listed, what is the biggest mistake that you have ever made in business? And what did you learn from it? Corey:  I go right to the first thing that I think of. And I'll have you people know, like George didn't send me these questions. I just don't operate that way. I don't want to practice or rehearse or think through them deeply. The biggest mistake I've ever made in business is taking things personally.And so I care a lot about my clients and the people that I work with. And sometimes in the past, when I would get, you know, feedback I would take it as a personal attack on me and it had nothing to do with me and so I think that when we are focusing a lot on ourselves and forgetting the bigger picture it details us.And so I had to get back to just how can I help? How can I serve, right. And how can I help whatever this question is, problem that my client, my friend, my partner is having, how can I help solve that and make it more about them and less about me. And that's been, I'd say the biggest mistake, but also the biggest growth for me as a business owner.And I loved every second that every day I feel like I learned something new and every day I get an opportunity to. Test myself, I mean, just the other day I was on with George and my friend Craig from high speed down and, you know, he, they called me out. On the fact that  I violated my promise to myself in a sense of, I was going to bed early and waking up early.And I didn't do that. I slept in the other day, I stayed up too late and I didn't work out. And so the boys made me do and they didn't make me do I chose to do how about that? I chose to do 75 burpees with a pushup. I added that pushup in Jordan.But getting, getting back to the original question, that is the biggest mistake I've made is, is taking right things personally and getting, you know, I don't want to say emotionally involved cause emotions are great and it's great to have passion and emotions.I'm not saying being an emotionless robot, I'm saying stop thinking that it's all about you all the time. Cause it's not. And that's, that's been the biggest thing that I've learned and the biggest thing that I've made a mistake of.George:  you know, Donald Miller captures this perfectly with Story Brand cause he says the mistake that a lot of people make is they try to make themselves the hero. But our job is to make our customer the hero. And  you know, this is something you and I have talked about in depth. I mean, we've been talking about this for three, four years with both of us back and forth and back and forth. And you know, for me personally I took things personal because I either had expectations or like you said, I was doing it for the wrong reasons.And sometimes I had to remind myself like, Oh, these guys are paying me the money. And I was like, Oh, that's about me. That's about me. Then there was also a part of me that gets attached to the outcome as well. Right. Like I was like, I give it my, all, I give it my all, and then they don't give me any feedback or a compliment or even, you know, an insult or whatever the case may be.It's not insulted screaming for help and sharing and growth. So I had to learn really, really quicklykind of like how to navigate it and fill my own tank. And I'm interesting to hear your perspective on this because for me, what it was is it was I was into deals and relationships and client work, and even these podcasts with an empty tank. And so therefore everything that came out on the other side was done for the wrong reasons. I did this podcast and it's only good if everybody listens to it and reviews it. Or I made this for this client and it's only good if they utilize it in a hundred X their company.And so, you know, I had a mentor who said your value will never be predicated on somebody else's execution. And it took me a long time to like really embody that. But what are some of the things that you've done understanding that like learning that lesson like if you could go back to the beginning of C4, right.When we were having that Instagram conversation of a hallway of a conference that will not be named on this podcast, and we were having that conversation and you were getting ready to forecast where you are now. How would you go into client work, service work, or even your own brand or business cause you have an amazing agency who runs all of our companies our digital marketing, our strategy executes.And he also is the Lead green dad. And so he has his hands in both sides of the game. But what would you do differently now? Or how would you set yourself up to win when it comes to doing client work or creating your own content? Like where do you navigate that now? I think the biggest thing for me was I was having conversations with absolutely anyone that wanted to talk to me and I'm all for helping.CoreY : I want to help anyone I can, but there's a difference between someone calling and having no idea, you know, what they want to do and how they want to do it. And just kind of wanting tojust chat and literally just chat versus reaching out to an expert who has, you know, years and years of experience and a team, a full team of, you know, 10 plus people with an average of like 10 years of experience each.And so I had to prequalify who I was going to have conversations with, and I think that was the biggest thing for me. And I don't want to sound like an A hole here. I'm not saying like anyone let's listening to this, please don't be afraid to reach out. But I have a couple questions that I need to ask business owners before we talk.And it's more for them than it is for me.  These are questions, very simple questions like what is your profit margin on your product? What is your product? Who is your potential customer and what are their pain points? What do they want to learn? You know, George talks about this all the time, whether it's the captain's assessment or, you know, an avatar evaluation, whatever you want to call it, guys.You have to know who you're talking to, why you're talking to them and how you want to help them. And if you don't know those things you're not, I'm not ready to take money from you. It just doesn't work that way. I want to be able to send you to some other resources like this podcast like a show that I'm going to be starting soon.That's just helping business owners that are just starting out. And you know, the biggest thing for me is I don't want to be one of those agencies that takes advantage of people that don't know what they want and sells them on a bunch of fluff stuff that they don't need.  I don't use  big words on purpose.It's funny. I say, don't drop the names of the people you've worked with and I'm going to drop names right now. Listen, when you talk about Disney and Fox and Amazon and Netflix and Ford, like I've worked with all of these brands.But it's not the thing that I'm going to drop in someone's face. When they start talking to me if they ask for a case study, if they want to go deeper into that stuff, I got you. But the biggest question is, how can I help? And I would say qualifying and helping them understand the answer to some of these tough questions. Before I talk to them would be the most important thing, because the last thing I want is 20 minutes conversation, that is, Hey, what's your name? Where do you work? What's your website? Let me check it out, right? No, I want all that garbage to be out of the way so that when we do talk for the first 20 minutes, you can walk away with a crap ton of value that will help your business, whether you work with me or not. And that's what it's all about.George: And so before I get even any deeper for everybody listening, I'm just going to recommend this right now. Find Corey at C4socialcom.We go live on every client platform in the world, but like go find Corey Warren. Either lean green down, if you want some delicious plant based recipes that you can eat.  I have three things that I want to dive into based on what you said. Before I do that goes at the end of the episode. I asked Corey to kind of come on and I said, Hey, at the end of the episode, can we give everybody the three most important things to help them succeed?He's going to be sharing like three to four things that are absolutely required for you to maintain your business, build and scale, and even have a chance to succeed based on hundreds and hundreds of experience dances and companies that he's worked with.Corey, the moment you said, you were like what's your name? What's your website. It reminded me of the old chat bot days of AOL messenger, ASL. Like what's your age? Sex and location. 22. I'm a dude. And I live in Massachusetts.Like, it's the new way of doing that now? And it, and it doesn't work like whatsoever. What I loved, I loved about what you said, and I thought of a tweetable quote. You know, one of the things that I think you embody better than most people that I know and work with is that you allow the results of your beingness to be your testimony. It's not about the results of your clients. It's not about your case studies. That's not about anything. Like you will allow your beingness in the experiences and touchpoints to be your testimony. And I think that's one of the biggest differentiator for people that are listening to this can do in their business.And I fall prey to this. There's days that I'm insecure. Cause I message everybody that adds me on Facebook.  And I get 25 to 40 requests a day now and we approve everybody and we send them a message in the first masters.Like, thank you so much. I am super stoked to connect. How can I support you? And normally 10 to 15 of them come back with, well, what do you do? And my response is like, Whoa, why did you add me? But I don't say that. But there's times that I want to be like, well, I did blank and I, cause I get.Emotionally involved because I care so much. And so I think it's an amazing test, similarly to how you do this. And everybody listening, like we get to allow the way in which we interact to be the testimony, right. And people don't buy the best product or best service they buy the best relationship.And that first touch point sets the entire paradigm for what the context of that relationship is going to be. So I love that you said that. And I think one of the other things that I really want to dive into because you and I have worked on this a ton and this applies to everybody.One of the mistakes that we see all the time is that people get customers too early. Too early. They convinced them to buy when they're not ready, they convinced them to come in when they are not fully indoctrinated and you nailed it. And it's not a, it's not an, I don't want to talk to you. But if you get on the phone with somebody before you have all the information or they've discovered it, you've set your both up to fail and you're not being what you teach.If you sell a supplement to somebody who doesn't have the habits or lifestyle to support it, you've set them end you up to fail because now they're going to have a negative experience and not achieve the results. So can you talk a little bit about, so obviously from an agency perspective for you.How important it's been and how you kind of go about navigating that to make sure that you're serving people at the right level. And then even if they don't end up as a customer, that you're leaving it better than when they came in.Corey:   There's two things I want to touch on that you hit earlier, right? So like, let's talk about Scarface for a second. Alpachino and Scarface. Do you think he has to prove to anybody like who he is and he's going to like, I'm a bad ass.And so like, when you talk about embody and like proving and stuff like that, like. Any agency or any quote, unquote competitor or whatever that I go, you know, and might, you know, talk to, or I'm sorry, not talk to you, but compete against for business.. I compete against people all the time. There's RFPs and stuff. I actually don't submit proposals it's kinda, it's kind of weird. It's kind of weird, like, but because I believe in providing that value and letting the work speak for itself.  I have case studies.I have examples of work on our website and stuff like that, but. That's that's the first thing.I had someone that I was talking to the other day and they said that basically the price that I had for them was too expensive. And I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna, I'm fully transparent here. I'm going to just drop the number. I'm not going to say the name of the person, but it was 6,000 a month that I was proposing for something.And it was a lot of services and it was going to really help them out a lot. Well they said that's too expensive. And I went awesome. And I knew right then this was the wrong fit. Because you want to know how much one lead would have gotten them as far as revenue goes, $12,000. Okay. So I knew hands down, I would have brought them 30 leads that would convert at around $12,000 per month. Now I'm not math wizard, wizard George. But if you're spending $6,000 to make 30 times six, what's that 160,000. Okay. So that's a lot of money. All right is it expensive then the problem is that person didn't value appreciate or respect, or even on a very basic human level, like have the. The decency to have a conversation with me.  So let's talk about ad spend, for example, right. $3,000 or a hundred dollars a day. That's super expensive. It might be for some people. And it might be for not, not be for other people, big brands who cares, they're spending millions a month, whatever don't even talk about, what political representatives and government officials and people in elections are spending forget about that.But $3,000 doesn't mean that expensive when you make three times the return on ad spend. So if you're making 9,000 off a 3000, no they're spent, and those are new customers that are going to potentially come back, especially if you have a consumable. That 3000 bucks. Isn't really looking like that much.Is it then you want to scale from there? So that's little bit that I wanted to chat about real quick. I know I'm kind of jumping all over the place, but okay.George:  I think what's really important too is, and thank you for acknowledging, like you take it personally, because I want everybody to understand there's no finish line in this game, right? Like we have awareness, we get grounded. We're having those great days, but there's always going to be times that like it sneaks in.. It gets in it. Smacks us the key is to recognize it and move forward. But what I think is important to understand, because we talked about this a couple minutes ago that like, they have to be ready to comment. And they have to be, and there's times that I struggle. Like I invest in things in my business and I'm like, Aw, I don't know if I can spend that. And my brain, like my logical brain knows that 60 days from now, it's going to pay off a thousand times. Right. My physical body's having a reaction. My fears are coming up.And I'm the only one that loses in that situation, but it's not really, it's still a learning lesson. And so the reason I think this is so important because you do this right, and you said this earlier, and I don't want it to get passed over because it's something you and I both do. The moment the distinction comes that this is going to be a no, or that they're not going to commit.You will immediately shift the lens from. This isn't about closing a deal. How can I add value and leave it better than when I found, which is the way that you become a magnet and they will come back or tell their friends about it. So I just wanted to make sure that we, we hit that because it's such an important topic where I watch people walk away at the L.It's only Lost if you quit. If you understand that it's not permanently. It's just, no, right now that could shift in six minutes when you're like, okay, I've seen this happen by the way, because you know, I I'm just like Corey and I do a lot of the same stuff. I don't send proposals. I hate making them. It's a waste of time. I'm like, tell me what you want, how I'm going to help you. This is exactly what it'll look like. We'll record the call and like, let's go. And I've had people I've given my price to. And like everybody, he knows when I work with some big companies, it's $50,000 a day.And so companies have paid me a hundred grand, 150 grand. And they've come in and made 10 million, 20 million, 50 million. Some of them only made 300 grand and they were like, yeah, this was worth it. But one of my favorite ones and Cory, you said this I've closed more deals because of how we show up when they're like, Oh, we can't do it. I'm like, okay. Okay, fine. Well, I have 30 minutes left. Let's just get started now. And they're like, what? I'm like, well, screw the deal. I was like, I got through 30 minutes in my calendar. What can I fix right now? Remember on the call, you told me you needed help with email, hit record, get out your notebook and let's go.And I'm like, let's go through a buyer fulfillment sequence. And sometimes they're like,  no, I can't, I'm not, I don't, I don't want you to pay me. I don't write. And they'll come back an hour later or six hours later, a month later. I had one that came back nine months later, like I had literally forgotten about that.And I was like, Hey, it's fine. Not a good fit let me help. And we spent that our designing their business, their path, they call me nine months later. Like we did everything you said now we'll pay you.  and so it's, it's really important, right? Like it's never a game over. It's never an end. It's a not right now and you're really good at that. So I just wanted to make sure. I guess I'm sharing an example, but Corey embodies this at a level that is impeccable. And so you can go back on your tangent now.  Corey: After I figured out that they were not the right fit, I immediately switched to how can I help them if they're not the right fit right now, but how can I help them? And there were two people on the call, one person who I'd worked with in the past that went through some hard times, had to step away and then they're coming back now that they're in a good place.And he had a business partner and the business partner had never met me. So this is a 20 minute discovery call. And so, you know, we real, I realized she's the one that was like osteo too expensive, whatever. And I'm sure he was embarrassed because he didn't know that that was going to happen. And so I said, I know we haven't had the opportunity to meet and talk, but over the two years that I've worked with your business partner, I think he knows who I am and what I stand for. And this offer extends to you as well. If you need anything ever as you're going to try to find your partner that is going to work with you and you need maybe some fact checks, fact checking, or maybe some.You know just thoughts or knowledge because they were being sold on like YouTube advertising at like a hundred dollars a month or something like that. They're like, Oh, you should spend a hundred dollars a month on YouTube advertising. I'm like, Oh, awesome. That's really going to get you a ton of results. You know, it's like, and then how are you going to measure it? Like they had no, no answer to any of these questions, but they're going to go try to find a cheaper option. Right. And that's good. I want them to do that. And thenat some point they're going to come back and they will remember that I. I said, you know, Hey, reach out if you need anything. And it's funny, after that conversation ended, I got a private text from my, my contact and he thanked me for my time. And it couldn't, I couldn't have had any better results than him saying thank you for hopping on the phone with me and extending that, you know that to me. So that was really cool.  So if you are a brand, like I'm talking about this from agency stuff, right. But I'll just give lean green data as an example, because it is my brand. Lean green dad was a hobby. Don't get me. It's still very fun for me. And it just brings me so much joy to feed people, vegan food.But I never really monetized it. I never really thought about that. I was like, man, I'll think of it. I work with some brand through some sponsored posts here and there. So I started this thing called the lean green meal plan and it works. It works really great. And I said, you know, I know this is going to be cool because I'm speaking to people that just don't have enough time.No freaking rules, no specifics, no, anything like that. And so we talk about investing and being scared, you know, how can I advise companies to invest in ad spend and things? Now, look, we're able to very quickly, we make the ad spend pay for itself and then be profitable. Like that's, that's my game. As an agent, I see like very quickly, but it wasn't the case so much withwith the lean green meal plan.It took a month and a half or two for it to be profitable. And I was investing a lot in my own ad spent. I mean, I want to like close to $5,000 a month. And that's a lot of money out of my own pocket, but I'm like, if I don't believe in my own self, who the hell do I believe in? So I went ahead and did that and yeah, it's already profitable.I mean, it's a recurring revenue is, is pretty crazy. It's far exceeded, you know, what I've spent on ad spend. So it's doing well and it's working. But if you think about. You know, lean green down and its purpose. And I want you to apply this to your brand guys. Like my job is to help people eat healthier and on a planet based diet and to make a plant based diet easy. If I can make them believe that eating a plant based diet is actually easy and I can show them how to do it. And it can actually taste good, not like cardboard then. I win and if they get the meal plan, that's cool. If they don't get the meal plan. That's cool too. And so every recipe I do, and I want you to think about this with your social media posts.And I learned this from George. I want you to put all the value in the post. Don't make them click through to get the damn recipe. Just put the whole recipe right there, the ingredients, the method, because I promise you there's a thousand other recipes out there that are just as good as yours. And you are not the first person to think of an original recipe for a plant based cheese steak.Whether the person buys or not, they got the value in the social post and they will come back to me and they will see it. And you know, what, if they don't, they'll be retargeted by my darn good Facebook ad strategy. So it's all, it's all connect acted, folks. And then you think about the whole process of helping people, you know, whether it's a lead magnet before they even come into my world and see that recipe and I'm offering them the top 10.You know, vegan or plant based protein sources. And then, you know, they end up watching the video and then they get a couple emails and they get retargeted with a Facebook ad and they buy after that, you know, like George talks about what the buyer nurture sequences again, you're giving them value. You're just here to shine your light, as George says, and be there, guide them and help them get to where they want to go on their end result, whether they buy your product or not. That's, that's his whole game people. That's his whole game. Just be a good person, work with integrity, work with value, and, you know, just focus on helping people and everything else will take care of itself.George: So I wanna have you dispel a myth that I see on the internet all the time, because there's nobody better to talk about this. Cause I see this all the time. I'm ready to scale. I just need traffic. I'm ready to scale. I just need traffic. And I was like, if you were ready to scale and you just traffic, it would be coming because if your offer was that good and people were converting that well, everybody would be knocking on your door to send more traffic. It's never a traffic problem. In my opinion, what are your thoughts on that?I keep getting these messages and these things like, Hey, I am selling like five a day. I'm ready to scale. Like I just need more traffic. I just need more traffic. And without even looking at it, right. Understanding the way that digital marketing works, affiliate marketing works.When offers convert the marketing handles itself, right? Like companies don't accidentally scale. You watch these and be like they're a unicorn. They must have spent a ton of ads. I was like, no, most of it was done themselves because of word of mouth marketing, the results they speak for themselves. And so, you know, for me, I believe I like it just came to me so much and I, it didn't have a response to it. And then I started thinking about it. I read Justin golf, talked about this cause he's releasing a new course and it's a really prevalent thing that's been happening for years where, you know, there's this context that like the only thing stopping me from scaling is traffic. If you're making fun five sales a day, that means yeah. In 30 days there's 150 customers that went through. And if no one of them are telling any of their friends, there's a deeper problem. If none of them are standing off, if none of them are, are standing on the rooftop, shouting your name, there's a deeper problem, right?Like we talked about this earlier, right? Like you can pick one path in your business. You can be the business that talks about how great you are, or you can be the business where everybody else talks about how great you are. Right. So what are your thoughts on that?  Corey: Some people might think this is foolish and we'll hang up right now. But like guys, I don't advertise my, my marketing agency. I don't advertise at all. I don't have any ad spend. It's all word of mouth. Word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing out there. And so my clients actually recommend me to other clients.And then the people that, you know bring clients to me are people that I know and trust and love and you know, know what I'm all about. And so it's a, it's a little different, you're not going to see a Facebook ad with my Lamborghini in the background, like showing you how muchmoney I made on the latest transaction, like taking a fake screenshot and manipulating it in Adobe to show you like some upward trend that doesn't really exist. So I think that, you know, before you can "scale", like before the horse kind of thing, like get, get focused, get I've got a client that has a product that cleans walls. But it sells itself and I'll tell you why. The traffic brought itself, right.So I think they're making like $90,000 a month now on this one product that cleans walls and you know what everybody told me, they were like, nobody's going to buy that. I've never cleaned my walls in my entire life. What in the world of cleaning solutions? It'spretty saturated. There's a lot of cleaning out there and there's, you know, maybe even cheaper options who knows, but how many times have you seen someone cleaning their wall? Like never. And why would they clean their wall? Well, it's an opportunity to add, well, I have a three year old, so I cleaned my wallet lot.Well, did you also know that a sneeze travels at a hundred miles an hour and has a 25 foot blast radius? I actually didn't have that. How many times have you sneezed in your house? There's sneeze product. There's sneeze, you know, snot on the wall and there's dog dander, and maybe there's a smoker in your house. Maybe somebody has bad video who knows, but anyways, the product alone is incredible. It stands on its own. And you know, we probably spent, you know, a dollar for every dollar. We, we made like $4. And that was absolutely ridiculous, but what's happening is customers are coming back and they're leaving reviews so authentic that I could never think.To leave the things that they're leaving and it's on the product page. So you talk about marketing, taking care of itself and traffic taking care of itself. Even in some of my Facebook ads, people are talking to each other in the Facebook ads, tagging each other in the ads. Hey Stephanie, this is the one I bought. No way. This is wicked. Does it really work on your walls? Well, totally. I use this Mitt and it's a perfect color. Oh, but it didn't get this out. Oh, well it does. And then the brand chimes in, well to get it out, you could do this. Oh, thank you. What excellent customer support. I mean, People are having conversations in the ad. It's unbelievable. So you do need traffic. Traffic is necessary, but it's not the main thing. And just like we talked about, it's not a guarantee that you're going to sell anything. You've got to know that the three things that we're going to talk about at the end here coming up are going to be the most important thing for you, because you've, you've got to have these three things before you can even talk about scaling and, and your ad spend and all this other kind of stuff.George:   So that's  I I'd like to say that that company is where it's at because they had heart. They cared. They created a better solution for a problem. And then Corey and I both touched this company and now it's skyrocketing because they were open and willing to take what they had and put their ingredients in the right order.And it's been mind blowing to watch what happens. And I didn't expect it as well. I was like well that tripled my projections. So I'll take it that all day.  But I mean, it's really, really a Testament. We talk a lot about word of mouth marketing, right? Like, you know, I've quoted the same number it's way more now, but I know it's more, but I stick with my 85, 80 to 85%. Cause it's pretty accurate and I think it's one of the most neglected. Conversations in brands. Like when, when we work, one of the things I like to ask myself is if this is what I put into the world and somebody buys it, what are they going to say about me? What are they going to say about my product? What are they going to say about my experience? And I watch all too often, people being like, as soon as they get the credit card they're done, right. They do everything to get the sale. But if you don't give somebody something to say about you, either with direct words or a direct experience, then you're leaving that up for them to choose to say whatever they want or nothing at all.All of it comes down to customer experience, fulfilling on what you promised value agnostic of their credit card. Understanding just like all of us, like the other part, Corey. And I think you solve this well, cause obviously we talk customer journey a lot, but. We literally expect our potential customers immerse to take a different buying journey than we take in our personal lives. Like when was the last time we're likeI need a new product. I know what I want right now. Buy it right now. But yet we'll go flip it and we'll be like I have this new product. I'm going to sell it. They see it once they got a buy, they see it once they got to buy. Yeah. And so what are your thoughts on.How do you go about looking at a customer journey? Cause you don't go out and you're like, okay, we have the product that's running out to sell it. So like, what are the things like, what are some of like the tangibles that you think about. When you're thinking about that customer journey, right? Like I produce content on the front to add awareness themselves, select, you know, if they don't buy, this is what we do. Not necessarily the tactics, but like, what are some of the questions that you ask? I love that in your company, you do good words and bad words, you pay attention to your customers. So like, what are some of those non-negotiables that you need to basically at worst, somebody has a positive experience with the brand.  Corey: So the first thing you want to do guys is, is if you do have customers, you want to ask your freaking customer what they think of your brand. And the words that they use to describe your brand and their experience with your brand are going to become your marketing ad copy of your potential. Add pieces of content and everything. So that's the first thing to start with. And I think it's important. I don't know if you follow like the whole 80, 20 thing, George, right?80, 20 rule in general with products like 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your skews or whatever.  mean, there's a lot of brands that we've talked about in the past. It's like they have hundreds of skews, but two of them are responsible for 90% of their revenue. and we know who we're talking about.But it's like  that story is over and over and over and over again, any brand, it is had a major amount of success. It started with one or two products. So, you know, survey, survey your people. That's the first thing. The second thing is like, Maybe go find out and, and become a member of Facebook groups where these people are living and talking and look at how they're, they're chatting.Now, you're going to have to earn your space in that group. You don't want to spam the group and not talking about going in there and be in a Ninja and spamming the group or something. I'm talking about just getting some value. I'm providing some value and just like. Engaging in the conversation, you know, earn your little coffee cup badge that you get as a conversation starter, or like you're high with the new hand, a little symbol to say I'm a newbie and ask questions and do it for several weeks. You're just going to learn a ton but then the process with me, it's alarming to me, how many brands that I start working with that have been around and are doing millions and millions, tens of millions of dollars in revenue a year. And they don't have one cohesive brand guide and way that they speak about their brand.Maybe it's you know, a short story, a medium story, and a long length story. Like all of these things are so massively important because as you're creating content, And, you know, I talk about this good words document I have. It's an internal document that, after I meet with a brand, I onboard them. It's the longest meeting I'll ever have with the brand ever, but it's two hours. And during this two hours, I asked some really weird questions with every single team member on the call. Like if you imagine it's kind of like a George intensive, that happens over three days in a two hour period. And so they leave this meeting and I'm just like, I never thought about some of these things, you know, And those things, the way they answer, like it's being recorded by two different people, with two different brains on how they think like a marketer, one's more of a word Smith.And that turns into the brand guide with yeah. In 24 hours after we talk, you know, and then from there you can create all the content and everything like that. But asking tough questions, surveying your, your existing customers. If you have them. And then getting involved in groups in places where they hang out is going to be massively important to help you understand that customer journey. And then George has a couple of resources that you all have heard of before, but. You know, evaluating the pain points, what it looks like before they meet your brand and what it looks like after they meet your brand. Now keep in mind. I didn't say after they buy your product, I said after they meet your brand.So before they meet your brand, what's their pain point after they meet your brand? How are they feeling? Because feelings are super important because if you're developing content ads and writing copy without emotion involved, then you're failing. So those are the things that you need to think about and everything has to be customer centric. We don't talk about how great the brand is without talking about the pain point that that person is going through and the benefit. And I'll just say not the benefit, the level up that your product is going to provide because you, as the brand, your job is to help these people. You're going to help them get to their desired result.Your product is just a level up or makes getting to that end result a little bit easier.George: You mean that a feeling isn't my products on your shelf or by, you know, thing is on your counter and what what's not is like, we can think about that and all of us can go open our phone right now, scroll through our Instagram, scroll through Facebook and see ads or content that we would click on that all invoke story and all invoke emotion. And by the way, guys, I did an amazing podcast with Alya on storytelling that you should all go listen to.But you know, what's interesting is that we get that when we consume it, right. We get that in theory, but content without this and content, without this, his plan does the exact opposite of what actually converts because it's focused on the product.Corey: The three biggest mistakes and these are not, are these my three things? No. Okay. These are not my three things. The three biggest mistakes that I see are one, they make decisions subjectively.So they say things like, I, I, you know, I personally really don't like. You know, cleaning my walls. I feel like that's a waste of time.So why would I do that? And because of my feeling, I'm going to not advertise that product at all. That's a huge mistake because you don't know what's going to work. And if you go out there and you look at know, there's a couple companies that pride themselves on selling, like add, you know, software and stuff like that, to make it easier for you all good, like cool.But they spend. Tens of thousands of dollars testing things. And one article I read was like, what's the best. Copy length for a Facebook ad and we've, we've surveyed 30 marketers and here's what they thought. And then here's what it actually was based on the tens of thousands of dollars of spend complete opposite. Like all these marketers would like it's short, just short one line. And then the content sells it. That's one and then the other was like six paragraphs of description and then the content, the truth is all of it's BS because it depends on the product. All right. If the product's easy to explain.Let the content speak for itself. Like, I'm pretty sure you know, what a shoe does.. A shoe goes on your foot and you wear it, but you don't need to explain a shoe, but you know, like if you have some kind of supplement that is weird, that nobody's ever heard of before, maybe you need to explain a little bit deeper through six paragraphs why and have great content because content is always going to matter.So there's no right answer to that, but you can't make decisions based on what you think, because that's always going to be skewed. So look at things objectively. The second thing is, again, big broad statements. Like we don't do sales, right? What do you mean you don't do sales? Everyone does sales.A sale is something that's on sale, not discounted, right? So like you can do a discount, but you need to understand. How much it's costing you to do that discount. And if it's still probably affordable and maybe it's not profitable, maybe you're trying to acquire customers that cost new customers, that it, it pays for itself. A self liquidating offer. Maybe that's good enough for you. That's awesome. We see other people do it all the time. Like free plus shipping free plus shipping. That's fine. If that's your goal, that's good. But you can't just say like, we're never going to do a sale or we don't believe in this or that even if you're a premium brand.There's still a way like don't we don't even use the word sale. Call it value. All right. Give a tremendous amount of value. Don't take anything off of it and just put like a ton of really great products together, knowing your profit margin on those products and just give it away as a great value price.Maybe you don't even need to show you don't want to be in it. Discount culture. Don't get me wrong. So like I'm not saying take your a hundred dollar product and exit out and put like only 5.99. right? Like, what is that doing? Nothing for you, but. There's ways to still provide value without being on sale.So think about that. And don't just say that you're not going to do that and then I would say the third thing, I guess I'm just coming up with these right. Would be like going on autopilot and not measuring things on a consistent basis. And so I have monthly ROI meetings with my clients and we have to walk through things that matter, like numbers. There's things that are really pretty and cool and like things that get posted on the social feed, like look at this pretty picture isn't there, like so amazing. My team graphic design that's cool. So like, how did it perform engagement wise compared to the other things that you've been posting on my account?And why do you feel like we should continue doing that? Or maybe stop doing that? Or, you know, Hey, check out these, we wrote 15 emails this month. Oh man. They were so great. What was the open rate? Oh, well it was 7%. Oh, so congrats on wasting a ton of time that didn't do anything and no one saw it. So why did you do that?So evaluate things frequently. Don't be afraid to look at numbers. Don't be afraid to ask tough questions and don't be afraid to hold people accountable. Because you have to keep pushing people, agencies going autopilot all the damn time. I love it when they do that, because it makes me look so much better.  George:   Well, you have to, you have to push people and hold them accountable. We have to push ourselves and hold ourselves accountable. If you can't measure it, nothing moves. Everything is a blind. Really really bad decision because there's, it's not right based on anything that's there. Like we have to have feedback.So Mike  talks about this and fix this next, right? With his business hierarchy of needs. Like every 30 days, like looking at it, like, what are the goals? What are the targets? How do we hit it? How we not hit it? Like I'm back on Instagram now, for those of you who don't know, I decided to get back on Instagram and I am on it Instagram, like a fucking machine right now.And I've probably changed things 40 times in the last three weeks, because Instagram, if I'm going to be on Instagram, it's not about me. It's about you.  So I have to figure out how to capture attention in a feed. Get your attention, identify where you are, take you on a journey to better serve you in your business or life. So I'm using pinks and yellow backgrounds now where, before it was pictures and be in black and white, I'm like making carousels. When I used to just make images, I'm making stories that I didn't used to do. Did it not work? But here's the secret. When it doesn't work, you don't keep doing it. You're like, Oh, let's try something new. Let's try something new, which is actually, we're going to cover a at the end when Corey shares his three things for you. But Corey, there's a lot. I know about you a lot. I know about you and I love it. Of every single thing that I know about you. What is one thing that nobody knows about you that you've never shared on an interview or publicly.Corey: The amount of silence I get as a heavenly silence is good. It just means you're okay with silence. Is it something that, you know, cause you really know a lot, is it okay if I share something you already know or, you know, whatever you want, man, it's yours. All right, listen I'm super proud of something that only less than 0.1% of the population has done. And that was an iron man triathlon. So I did that and I never really talk about it anymore because the truth is a double thing I haven't shared publicly. I used to be ironed dad, guys but I received a cease and desist from the Ironman triathlon, which is so funny because I was so proud of it and I was talking about it and they were like, so I knew I made it right then.And that's how lean green dad was born because iron dad was lean green dad before that.And so I completed the Ironman triathlon triathlon is the first kind of one that bridges into, I received a cease and desist from iron man, which is like victory, but then I  I got this iron dad tattoo.And if you are listening on the podcast, you can't see it, but it's basically the Ironman M dot with a dad underneath and a neck tie. My sister made it for me and I had it put on my arm. And so. That's something that I don't really talk about or share publicly but it was pretty awesome to get, I don't want to say sued. I wasn't sued. I just received a season.  George: I think you did an amazing job at marketing because you did what our job is to do, which is to get their attention. So just so everybody knows an Ironman is a three mile swim a hundred and what's it. What's it come out to like 112. It's 140.6. Okay, great. 140 mile bike and a 26.2 mile run. No, you got the first two wrong. So it's 2.1 mile swim. 112 mile bike. It was 112. That's what I thought. And Corey was one of the most humble dudes. I know. So he never talks about himself. So I'm proud of you for sharing that.So thank you for being a super dad and iron man getting a cease and desist letter, being a master marketer. I have a question that I ask everybody because it's really important to me understanding the value of relationships. But when you think back about like your life for your business, like where has the power of relationships had? Like the biggest dramatic, positive impact for you could be an instance, could be a moment, could be anything.Corey: I was sitting  across from one of the other say biggest leadersfrom one of the biggest grocery chains ever. I was come out like, I'm not going to say who it was, but it was whole, so whole foods market has like some big juggernaut leaders. And I was at dinner in Austin with one of these leaders and there were so many opportunities for me to further my personal career by pitching a couple things, things to him and byjust having his undivided attention. And I didn't talk about anything except the food that was right there. His family, and I did a hell of a lot of listening again. And old-school Corey probably would have forecasted how I was going to go in and what angle and how I was going to pitch this and say this certain thing, but guys, I gotta tell you, like, just being present and listening, and calm and being who I was and showing up as Corey with that sunlight like inside of me, that energy ball that radiates out to other people served me way better than any strategic relationship manipulation that could have furthered my career. And that dinner was a turning point for me. And every single relationship that I have with anyone going forward is. A genuine relationship.And you want to talk about the difference between C4social and anything else out there. We pride ourselves on relationships. You know, relationships, speed algorithms. As George says, relationships are everything to my agency and they are now everything to me as a human being and the people that I associate myself with feel the exact same. And that's why we're friends. And that's why my clients are my clients. And if you're not the right fit, you're not the right fit.George:  And I will say, it's not a relationship if it's agendized manipulative or deceptive, that would be any of those definitions. And so proud of you, man. So I think it's time.I think it's time we give everybody the gift. So what are these things that people can take right now? And if you're listening to this. Remember the time pack. If you don't have a pen, if you're driving, do not take notes, take mental notes. If you were sitting there and you can write, write these things down, because these are going to be extremely important for you to be able to help you move the needle in your business and set you up to win in the future. So Corey let's have your zone of genius, my friend.  Corey: There's three things that you can do right now that will help your business move forward. The first. Is knowing your why? Why are you doing what you do? Because if you say that it's to make money and be rich is probably not a good goal. I want to challenge you to change that a little bit.Your why is something that's tied to your family? Your why is something that's tied to your inner motivation? Your why is about more than you? Who are you trying to help and why? If you don't know your, why. And I'm talking deep down. If you, if you don't know how to find your wife, just try talking to George, he'll pull it out of you. Might be with a couple of tears, but it's worth it.  So that's number one, number two. And that's intangible, or that that's intangible, you know, like you can't really like. Touch that know your why. So I'm going to give you the second one, which is a more tangible. And that is know your cogs, your costs of goods and services.If you have a digital platform like lean green dad that sells a digital meal plan and your cogs are very low because they are things like my time. How much time does it take for me to buildthe meal plan each week? And it is custom built each week. Trust me You know, but how much is your time worth? You should know that is a cog, right? That is a cog. And then, you know, the biggest thing, like I'm serious guys, like a spreadsheet, an actual sheet with formulas in it that maps out every single thing that you have because I've put together offers for companies before that they were super excited about and we blew it away, but they had a 10% profit margin. The profit margin was so low because it costs them so much to ship their product. It was a unique product, but still like no back to the drawing board, don't start your advertising until you have a call sheet in place. I think I know what that company is, right?  I think everybody knows. You can go to the Facebook page and look at page transparency and find the ads that competitors are running. Just because they're running ads doesn't mean they're successful and doesn't mean that you should just.Like try to do the same thing. You need to have your own twist on it and you need to not doubt your own brilliance. ou have ideas, you have great thoughts. Test them out. Be original, like do something yourself. I'm not saying you can't copy the model don't or the format. Cause maybe something has worked and you can see how long an ad's been running. If it's been running for eight months, clearly it's profitable. And maybe you should do that. You don't need to recreate the wheel. But you do need to infuse your own excellence and not do something the way that someone else has done it just because that's the way it's always been done or that's the way it happensLike this game will only work if you flip it on its head, this game, you will stand out by carrying more everything. George does like you stand out because you care more out care, your competition. Don't worry about outspending your competition, or, you know, getting to this first or. You know, whatever, just, just out carrier competition.George: And it actually, when you, when you talk about that card at the end, you talked about this earlier, right? Like you can copy and paste all day, but it never works. I watched people rip funnels and rip ideas and rip products, and then they get pissed that it doesn't convert. And I'm like, of course it's not going to convert because it's not, you it's incongruent. It doesn't match. Your morals, your values, your customers, and your journeys, and you get punished for it.And so, you know, the whole thing forever has been modeled genius, not copy genius.You know, like the thing is, is like, if we know that like this is like the three steps to start a car, well, great.You need to follow those three steps, but can do it at your speed, your way, whatever. So what you're looking for, and this is what I challenge people all the time. What you want to look for is you want to look for the foundation, right? You want to look for the things that aren't. I'm changing every single day, right? Like best principles, right? It's like,they have an ad that, not that it says this, or it does this in the video that like, Oh, it's a piece of content that adds value without a call to action. And then, Oh, it leads to a, a blog post that and try to do anything.Don't copy the blog post, but be like, wow.I wonder if my audience would respond well to this video for five minutes. That's all value-based and then goes to a blog where I help them put it into practice. And you're looking for the principals. Don't, don't try to match everybody's wrapping paper or try to forge their signature. It doesn't work. But you know, that like certain things and certain processes work because that's how customers respond and that's human psychology. And that's what you need to look for. So core. Those are absolutely. Absolutely amazing tips. And so just for everybody wondering again, I want to make sure that you understand Corey,find him @ wwwc4orsocial.com and listen, I'm pretty direct with everybody that listens to this.I wonder if my audience would respond well to this video for five minutes. That's all value-based and then goes to a blog where I help them put it into practice. And you're looking for the principals. Don't, don't try to match everybody's wrapping paper or try to forge their signature. It doesn't work. But you know, that like certain things and certain processes work because that's how customers respond and that's human psychology. And that's what you need to look for. So core. Those are absolutely. Absolutely amazing tips. And so just for everybody wondering again, I want to make sure that you understand Corey,find him @ wwwc4orsocial.com and listen, I'm pretty direct with everybody that listens to this.Some of these things that Corey shared are things that not a lot of people understand, and they miss them all the time and corn, I've worked with thousands of companies combined, and these are the things that get in the way of companies succeeding. And sometimes it's hard to even see them because it doesn't hurt bad enough until it's already too late. And so utilize these things, put them into practice, take one thing from this episode and put it into practice. So, Corey,I would just want to give you the floor. Anything you want to say, closing thoughts, anything that you want, you can go full.Corey: My time here in the spotlight has to be about someone else.So like my, my spotlight, I'd like to use to just say, thank you to you. Okay. Because  you're changing people's lives, man. You've changed my life. You changed a lot of people's lives if you're listening to this podcast andyou just keep showing up on a daily basis, man. You know, I sit here and I talk about all this stuff that I know, but. A damn lot of it comes from the man on the other side of this microphone. So man, you're, you're, you're an inspiration to me. You are an absolute fucking genius and my opinion and everything you do, the way you show up, the way you care, it's it doesn't go unnoticed. And I've told you this before, but there's not enough people out there that take the time just to say thank you.You're the man, dude, I wear your shirt all the time and I will totally be honored and proud to be associated with you any day of the week.George: For those who you're listening, you don't see the tears running down my face right now, but those two on video, I'm trying to sign them. They cry over here. Thank you for putting my measuring stick into place. My friend, thank you  for doing it. And thank you for being here and everybody listening to this, Cory's a walking Testament to what happens when you play the game the right way and you play it the long way. And there is no short game success.And you know, there are definitely days that like you can win a play. And you can win plays all day and still lose the game. And so play the long game, play this the right way, add value, make sure you're improving upon the silence. Do everything in your power to ensure that people succeed in your world and everything you touch is improved upon. And that might mean sometimes saying no. Honoring yourself, honoring your team, honoring your commitments and honoring your customers by being the one willing to hold them accountable. When everybody else is trying to take their money, there is no way to lose this. And I think it's something that all of us should focus on.So Corey absolutely honored and just. I'll just use the word flabbergasted. I feel like tubular supercalifragilisticexpialidocious right now. So thank you for being here. My friend, everybody go check out Corey and this has been another episode of the mind to George show. And so until next episode, which will be Monday and Monday minutes. So you better listen to it for a couple minutes and put it into practice. Remember that relationships will always beat algorithms.

In this episode, the folks of Melanated Social Work interview Soco Rey of Soco Rey Therapy in Inglewood, CA. Hear about her journey of becoming a therapist, starting and running her own practice, and why Soco Rey Therapy is chill AF.

James:  Hey audience and listeners. This is James Kandasamy from Achieve Wealth True Value Add Real Estate Investing podcast. You guys should definitely check last week's podcast where we featured Dr. Glenn Mueller who has 45 years of commercial real estate market cycle analysis experience.   And he is the one guy that most of the institutional big players sought after to find out where are we in market cycle for the different asset class or property types, as he calls it, right. Apartments, industrial, hotels, warehouse and, you know, a lot of other property types in commercial real estate. So it's an awesome show. It's called commercial real estate market cycles state of the union.   You guys want to check it out. There's also a webinar that came with it. So you want to send me an email to get into that webinar if you want to see all the slides that he presented. And today, I'm happy to have Corey Peterson from Kahuna Investment. Hey Corey, welcome to the show.   Corey:  Thank you, bro.   James:  All right, Corey. So Corey has been having like almost $95 million in assets that he has acquired and manages and he by across seven different states and he does some of the student housing and some of the conventional housing. We're going to go very deep into his operation, his structures and how is he killing it in this age of, you know, commercial real estate and how hard is the market cycle right now. Hey Corey, did I miss out on any of the introduction you want to fill up?   Corey:  No man, no, that's it. We have the best selling, I'm a best-selling author too.   James:  Got it, yeah. Awesome. That's the copy your Secrets to Success, right?   Corey:  Yeah, copy your way to success, standing on the shoulders of giants.   James:  Awesome.   Corey:  What I've done all my life, I've just copied other successful people.   James:  Yeah, absolutely. Why you innovate, right. So you just copy the guys who are being very successful, work hard and --   Corey:  Good chance you'll be successful too.   James:  Absolutely. So Corey I mean, when did you get started because I heard this Kahuna Investment and I thought some company out of Hawaii doing this and I was very intrigued. I mean, it's a nice name. I think it's a good brand and --   Corey:  Oh, thanks.   James:  Saw your pictures walking on the beach with your wife and making it like everything is, you know, very nice.   Corey:  And sunsets and palm trees, baby.   James:  Sunset and palm trees, yeah. And then this other thing that you always say in the last part of your podcast, what is that?   Corey:  Your paradise is possible.   James:  Your paradise is possible, yes, absolutely.   Corey:  You know, I started my company in 2005. But really how I got into real estate is back up about a year before that 2014, something magical happened to me and my mom was married to this man named Bruce. I call him Bruce Wayne, okay. He wasn't Batman but he was loaded. He had lots of money. And he had a house, guess where? In Hawaii.   And so I got invited me and my girlfriend, now my wife, 17 years, got invited to go to Hawaii. And we get there and the guy has a house right on the beach. And I mean, it's nice, he's got nice cars, he's got fine art. And I mean, if you ever been to Hawaii, it's a magical place, magical. The mountains and the ocean and just, it was really cool.   And I remember walking the beach, walking the cove and I was looking at his house and I'm like, man, what does this guy do? Because he had something different that I've never seen in most people because he had time and money you know. He really had a different aura about him. And so I asked him like, what do you do? And guess what he said, he said he was in real estate and he owned apartments.   And so I left the island thinking that he was the 'big kahuna', he had time and money. And then about six months later I read the book called; Rich Dad, Poor Dad and I realized what Bruce did. Bruce was a real estate investor that bought multifamily apartments. And so in 2005 you know I read every book I could on real estate and I was ready to jump in and I had to sit down and name my company.   And I was like, man, I'm going to name it with the end in mind of where I want to end up. I want to be the 'big kahuna'. So I called it Kahuna investments. And I've been on the journey ever since man. And what's crazy is I might be buying his house next year.   James:  Oh, that's like the vision board, right?   Corey:  Yeah.   James:  And then you might be buying it, that's awesome.   Corey:  Yeah, so it's gonna be pretty cool.   James:  So what did you start, I mean, you realize that this guy, you know you saw one guy who you know who has a house and he revealed that he buys apartments, invest in real estate. So what was your first step to getting started? I mean --   Corey:  Well, you know, I actually did a self-assessment said gosh, well, I'm not anywhere close, I didn't have any money or credit. I started off as a wholesaler.  I went to the local RIAs; Real estate Investors Associations and sat around. And you know, I asked the people that were hosting the event, hey, who are the players? And they'd say, you know, this guy, this guy, and that guy. And so I would just make sure I sit right next to him.   And then I'll be asking him, hey, where do you guys like to buy? How much rehab do you like? And you know, really kind of figure out what their model look like. And then I'd be like, well, I find deals like that all the time. Would you pay me a fee that if I could find your deal like that? And they said yes. And so I started wholesaling. Then I actually did something that changed my life forever. And that's probably what we'll talk about; is I raised my first piece of private money.   And I did it by accident and I did it with a guy, I was asking him for his help. I wasn't even asked him for money, I was just sharing my business plan with him and then he eventually said well, hey I'm interested, can I invest in that deal? And that really is my secret sauce of how I've raised a crap ton of money. Last year we raised 10 million dollars of private capital. That's not too bad. And, but more importantly, is we get it really cheap. We raised cheap capital which I believe most people are overpaying for their money right now.   James:  So let's go into, deep into the cheap capital, right because that's very important in this market cycle. So I don't believe they are deals which are expensive, I just believe that you can pay for it or your money's not cheap enough to buy that deal.   Corey:  Right.   James:  You can find people who want zero percent interest in the world, right because they may be getting some other tax incentive and that is okay for that. Right, so I think one of the golden nuggets in buying deals in this hot market where everything is expensive and you're competing with all the syndicators and all this, you know, institutional buyers, a lot of people from the coastal cities is to find investors who are willing, who believe in you and who believe in the, the risk-adjusted return, right.   So where you have really good investment, you know, even though it's lower return but really good investment, good operators you know. So people who are willing to, you know, take lower returns compared to what we used to have in the past three to five years.   Corey:  Well, now it's lower returns based on what, right. So let me, so we'll start by doing that. Now, my background was a financial advisor. I was actually a financial advisor as well, right. So I sold stocks, bonds, mutual funds, CDs, bonds, all that stuff. I worked for Edward Jones. And that was my MO, is to go raise capital and you know, and put these people's money and investments, typically just mutual funds.   And I'm going to tell you that there's trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars out there that are investing in the stock market and IRAs and things like that. And so, and what's the average return that they're making in their accounts? And I would say if you ask most financial brokers, they would say six to eight. If someone had a blended return for all their stuff, they're like, hey, if you can make a six to eight percent return, annualized return, that's really good.   Now, then you have what we call what you're talking about, I call it smart money. And what I've learned to do is not fish in smart money pots. So I'll give an example of what I mean by smart money. That's, you know, you go to a real estate, multifamily convention and everybody there is the smart money, right. They're not going to give you their money for you know six to eight percent or 12%, they want 20% and they want a piece of the GP and they want a piece of the back end. And they want all the upside.   That's how smart money works or, you know, family office money, that's the really smart money, they want to use the power of their money. Like we got all kinds of money and if you want it, we want a big piece of the deal. And they let you have a small carve out as the syndicator as the, you know the one that's bringing the thing but they put a high price on the money. And so what I've learned to do is to flip the script.   And I'm telling you, I don't know why people don't do this more because when you really look at the opportunity, the one thing that we can do. So he who has the cheapest cost of capital, in my opinion, wins, right. If my cost of capital, that's why REITs and all these things are so powerful because they can raise really cheap capital and they're raising, you know, millions of dollars. So how do we play the same game that the REITs are playing but planning on a smaller scale?   It goes to them trying to find the right avatar for money. And so I've simply defined the right avatar, what my target person looks like is a doctor, dentist, lawyer, heavy or high professional, high-income earner that invests in the stock market, that's it. That's all I'm looking for that they don't do anything with real estate, they don't even know real estate out there. They wouldn't have a clue on how to do it, they don't go to conventions. They don't meet where real estate guys hang out, they just go to work.   And there are lots of people out there like that. And so if you can go reach people like that, they're getting six to eight percent already in their retirement money. So if you can show them 12% and by the way, so we structure well, we'll go through the structure too maybe. But you want me to talk about structure a little bit too?   James:  Yes. Let's talk about your syndication structure because it's very interesting. And we can come back to the, you know, the how do you source, you know, that type of investors.   Corey:  Yeah. So what, I started to try to titrate this down. It's kind of like a science experiment. When I first was raising money, it was like, let's give 20% and all the backend that's how I started like everybody else because I needed to find a deal,e I needed a track record, I needed to prove myself. So sometimes you got to have to give up a lot just to be in the game. And then as you start getting experience, you learn to titrate it down.   And so my structure is this. We provide a six percent pref to investors with and the way it reads in our ppm is it's a six percent pref that upon disposition or redefine they get an additional, get a total return, including the pref of 12% annualized. Okay? And so all that means is that and it's actually on the back end, it's a 50/50 split until they get a total return of 12%.   And so, and what that means is that so they're getting six percent pref, we understand what that means. They get first dibs out of the profits and then on my sell, all you got to do is hit another six percent annualized for as long as they've been in the deal and then they get no more money. So my investors will only get a 12% total return. Now, why would someone do that if there are other syndications out there?   And here's how I've learned how to pitch it and talk about what we do and why we think we're different is because we're trying, what we've learned is if we can create consistency in the marketplace, that's what investors want. They want solid dependable deals that can pay, you know, quarterly checks, we pay our investors quarterly. And when they do that they're willing to take a smaller, lesser return.   But in their minds, it's not less because most of my investors are in the stock market which is currently six to eight. So 12 is winner, like, so if you ever go to a financial advisor and ask them, is 12% of great return? Most financial advisors are going to say what, yeah. Like that's my opinion. I mean, that's kind of what I think.   James:  Yeah, it's also a risk-adjusted return, right? I mean, 12% on something that you can't control versus real estate, right, which is, you know, much more low risk compared to a lot of other investment, is a much better return compared to --   Corey:  Yeah,  because they look at, you know, it's the roller coaster, right. Like, they really look at the stock market, they know it's a roller coaster. And one of the ways I try to educate my avatar, those people that are in that, like, a lot of times, I work with a lot of retired people or close to retirement. And so they've had their 401k or, you know, their solo one case for their practice and stuff like that.   And they've got a million or two million dollars of money sat there, that they've grown over a period of years. But now they need to produce a paycheck. And so that, and their minds are already thinking about I'm going to go to my broker and, you know, at this point in time, they're thinking about how long do they have to retire, right, how many years are they going to retire you know.   And now that number keeps getting longer 25, 30 years and so then they start worrying about am I going to run out of money and how much do I need? And so then they asked their advisor, hey, what can I invest my money in and not have any risk? Well, stocks that's risky, mutual funds risky. So what's left are bonds and CDs. Well, CDs, don't pay anything so then it's a bond, maybe a bond. And a bond typically yield is maybe three to four percent and it only pays annually.   Well, that's not really good for someone that needs to budget and create, you know, and pay bills. So if the average is three percent that's what a financial advisor would tell you, if we give the six percent pref, now, they're like, hey, I can make, I can budget and create and have a paycheck and I'm doubling my paycheck based on what my financial advisor was going to give me.   But then, you know, there's like, hey, but wait, there's more. There's the backside of, you know, guess what, our tenants because we do apartments, our tenants expect rents to go up. And we never disappoint them ever. And so, you know, as we raise the rents, we're going to raise the value of the property and so you'll get to share some additional profits at the end. And so in investors' minds, the avatar that we talked about to six percent is already great.   A 6% payer that pays quarterly, there's just not, there's not something out there in the stock market that does that good and consistent. And so we solve that problem first and then it's like, but the bonus round is you get more money in the end. And they're like, oh my god, I get more money. So now I have a chance for growth or at least keep up with inflation because they're going to be retired for 20 years. You've got your buying power has to keep up and ramp-up too.   And so that's the story that we tell them and we've been really successful in raising six percent and I call it six and six, a total return of 12. And then what it does for me, it lowers the hurdle. It lowers like between the deals that when investors when I'm looking at a deal and if I didn't have cheap money and I was at 20% or 20 plus a lot fewer deals qualify to be deals.   James:  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you should be able to find higher-quality deals, you know, because the money is cheaper, right? So let's go to step by step on how did you build this niche investor base. Because maybe it's not niche, maybe it's just a model perspective, right? So it's just maybe we are just not looking at it or just, you know, used to giving --   Corey:  Yeah, this is great. Now, this is gonna be really cool. So I should have my wife here because she'll tell you how she does it. Now, I'm pretty good at it but my wife's master. Now, my wife comes from the pharmaceutical industry, okay. And this is kind of how we stumbled on this and why we're doing so well with it, is her background was pharmaceuticals.   And every day she'd go in and talk to doctors, dentists, well, hers was just doctors but it's, we've realized it's the same talk, no matter if it's doctors, dentists, chiropractors, by the way, we don't like talking with doctors as much as we like dentist and chiropractors. Those are our two really places that we hit. And Shelly goes in just like she's a drug rep, right and we're actually training, we've actually just hired our staff. We're actually hiring just people to go out and represent my company and go out and tell the Kahuna story.   And what they do, I mean, we go door to door. We go every day, door to door, she goes and knocks and talks with doctors, dentists, chiropractors. And we tell, you know she does lunches, and all we talk about is the power of apartments. And we tell our story and then we set lunches. And then every month we have an event where we bring all those people that are interested and I tell them, you know, give them the big picture. And then I show them how they can use their IRA to invest in real estate. And that's, it's no harder than that's all we do.   James:  So do you focus a lot on getting IRA money or do they also give cash?   Corey:  IRA money.   James:  IRA money. Okay, got it.   Corey:  That is the secret, kids; IRA money. Now, like okay, so what it's not great for and this is now, you have to build this up. It takes a little time. But listen, ask me how many people bug me when I'm in my syndication? Like you know what I'm talking about like that one investor, sometimes it's the big dog that's got all the money, right? And it's like, what's this? What's this? Oh my god, what's this? Said no one ever in my deals. Why?   James:  All IRA money, right, something that they can't touch anyway.   Corey:  They're quiet as a mouse, they're just happy man. They're happy with 12%, they're like static. They're cool, man.   James:  If someone wants to put cash, would take it as well or --?   Corey:  Yeah, I mean we take a lot of that money too but the difference in our avatar is that type of person. They're busy working anyways and all you got to do is do what you say you're going to do. So if you're gonna say hey, we give a complete monthly financial package, we call it our dashboard. It's about 100 pages, right. Gets a really complete overview of our properties, it goes up every month.   But it's so detailed and then we kind of, I usually write, you know, a couple of paragraphs of what's going on in the deal and we meet their expectations. I tell them, this is what they're going to get, they do get it, they get it on the time that I said. And then everybody, I mean, no one really complains or has lots of other questions, there are no squeaky wheels, really in our deals which is great.   James:  Yeah. So let me recap the secret, right. So basically, you have, I mean, you and your wife have this connection where, you know, you have these high net worth individuals and you look for chiropractors and dentists, right and why not doctors?   Corey:  You want to know the real answer.   James:  Is it because --?   Corey:  It's because they're broke.   James:  Okay.   Corey:  Doctors are broke, don't let it, general practice. Now specialists not so much, right, so we like specialists but we've just found like the chiropractors and dentists are working with cash, right. If your teeth hurt, you're going to go get a pulled. And I just like those guys better. Doctors seem to have God complexes and I know I'm absolutely stereotyping in here so I apologize. But like, I'm trying to be blunt too that, like, I know my avatar.   When you're looking for money and you have a certain type of money that seems to do well, why try to go find something that doesn't? Stick with what works and just do more of it. And so we found those dentists and chiropractors are very warm to us and are easier to access than doctors and love the story. And a lot of them are just having a financial advisor. So what we like to say is that we're just an alternative to the stock market.   So our whole marketing is just geared up to tell them a story, right, get them interested, they raised their hand, said I want to know more. They'll usually come to one of our monthly events or they might do a one on one, they can do a one on one with Corey. And then we start working to create a substantive relationship, right. And so we have, you know, what, basically we tell them our story and then say if you'd like to learn more about us, you know, you got to fill out our credit investor.   And so then they fill that out, now we have documented. We've got usually a couple more types of correspondence and we have a whole email process that goes out. And we found that it's very effective in cultivating new leads, we’ll call them new leads. And you know, they all are ready at different points in their lives. But there's, what I like about it truly is that it's a local, we have a big local presence here in Phoenix.   James:  So a lot of your investors are Phoenix base?   Corey:  Yeah. And more and more I like, we're actually, it's becoming more and more. And we're kind of really excited about that because we want to start doing galas, right, some galas and stuff at the end of the year, let's do a fundraiser or do a charity event where we can invite all our investors, they can mingle. And you know, we can set the stage for that kind of stuff, super excited about it. And to me, that's how we're going to get more capital too, it's just by loving on our ones that have money now.   James:  Yeah, absolutely. If you work, if you take care of your current investors, you know they're going to be recommending others to and they're going to be just comfortable with you, right. And I mean, a few days back, I had an investor with me, they said there was one-liner question to me. James, can I have an investment opportunity, just like an annuity?   He just wants like, just give me cash-flow in consistent which is, I realized there are so many investors out there who want that, right and you are very right in terms of finding that people who want it and you should be able to cater for them. And that's okay, right. There could be some guy out there who's promising 20%, 25% IRR but he may be some random guy who they can't trust right.   Corey:  Yeah. And I see that going on in the marketplace. I know you do, too. There are so many people out there that are especially new syndicators that are coming out and they don't even know what a deal looks like, and they're offering these stupid returns. And I see it all the time where people promise something but what they deliver is absolutely different.   James:  Correct.   Corey:  And so I just say just, you know, we want to give a real return, not a, you know, smoking crack return but just a real one.   James:  Yeah. A lot of people that have made a lot of return just because the market is compressed. Right? The cap rate is compressed, not because they did a damn good job.   Corey:  They didn't do anything great, it's just because the market, yeah it covered up a lot of mistakes. And it's coming, change is coming, we both know it. And those people are going to be found out quickly.   James:  Yeah, at some point, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's becoming a market where you have to be a strong operator to really do well in this market, right. So let's go to a bit more detail into you know, nurturing this niche group of investors, right. So you have them and you have this monthly meeting. And is it at night, is it on the weekend and what do you --?   Corey:  It's usually at night, well, it's in the night and it's usually on the weekends. We have started trying to do a 'lunch and learn'. We call it lunch and learn, it's not as successful as anything. But on the evening ones, we don't do a big dinner. We do an event, we have some cocktails and it's only you know, an hour and a half, two hours long max and we're just really efficient, we just tell the story.   Usually, I'll do it with an IRA partner, right like specialized IRAs or you know like you know, quest somebody that's because I'm going to show them the why apartments and I call it, I have a canned speech I called the power of apartments. I just talked about what I'm talking about in that speech is demographics and what we do like our special size, which is, you know, you talk about the baby boomers, they're all downsizing, they're renting apartments. You got millennials, they don't want to own; one more people are choosing to rent more than ever.   We talked about the climate, then we talked about the product, which is we buy old apartment buildings, affordable housing, not section eight and then we also do student housing. So we talked about those two groups of things. And then we talk about why apartments make sense, you know they take, you know, cash into, they are like factories, they take in cash in the form of rent checks, they grind it through the factory process and it spits out profit out the back door. That's what we manufacture.   And, you know, then they're like little cities and we don't need every you know, if everybody doesn't show up to work, we're okay because it's a community. People understand that sometimes you got to talk in metaphors with people so they can understand the concept. And so we do that at an event and it works out really well. Most people actually fill out our accredited investor form there. So they can start. And then we set up a one on one calls with them to talk and kind of go more in detail about their investment goals and strategies.   And really, we're trying to see if they're the right fit, we don't want just anybody to be a part of our investment group, right. And we call it the deal room. So once we feel like they're the right fit, then we accept them into the deal room. Then we start another kind of drip campaign which is an email marketing campaign that talks about who we are, our team, our process.   And you know, there are about four or five canned emails that go out over, you know, one a day for five days, just to really tell and let you know don't take our word, hear one of our investors so we have testimonials built-in. So the whole time and then not only that but we also, let me see if I can grab this real quick. For anybody that's you know watching this, you know, we have a whole can series of direct mail carts, you know. And so we believe that these things, so we hit them with direct mail, we hit them with emails, we really take the time. And this is my favorites, right, the cash flow life.   James:  So it's a paper copy that you sent to them as a mailer?   Corey:  Yeah, these are just a just regular, you know, cards right and that has a nice picture and then a little story at the end. It just says who we are. Again, all we're trying to do is we were setting up the long game and you've got to set it up by doing something different and we like direct mail a lot. Everybody does email but direct mail is a lost art. And so that's our nurture campaign.   And then from there, we just have, you know, when they first come on board, we're going to have monthly calls for the first four months. And then because they're actively waiting to invest, so we got to wait till we have an active deal. So we're just nurturing them until we actually have a deal. And then we start working, would you like to invest in our deal? And so that's kind of, from there, which then after they maybe they've invested, maybe they've not. Then we started having we have a quarterly loop.   So every quarter, we're going to give them a call and we're trying to find like things like these are really important things. But what do they love to do? Like what do they like to do for fun? One of my favorite questions to ask investors, what do you like to do for fun? And the reason I like that is that it's an answer that has nothing to do with real estate or making money, right. That's important because they're going to tell you, hey, I'd like to golf and man, don't think that we're not writing detailed notes here, right, likes to golf.   You know what's your favorite place that you've golf at, you know, because maybe we might send them some golfing tickets somewhere. Like, we're always looking for ways to love on our capital. You know someone's sick, oh my god, we're really, you know, we're sending flower baskets. You know, like, you've got to key up to these types of because people are going to tell you these things. And the best part is once you really know what they do like to do for fun, that really becomes the open.   In other words, if I'm calling an investor before we even talked about anything else, James, if you said to me, hey, Cory, I like golf. So my first talk is James, now how's golf and man, what are you up to golf and what's the coolest place you just golf at? And you know, and you're going to tell me all about it. If you're passionate about it, it's something we're going to have a great conversation about it. Then we finally get to business. And that's to me what this business is about.   That's why I love this business. It's relationship-based. And people don't understand the power of relationships. And if they did and how to nurture that they would be way more successful than they. And that's why I'm hoping I'm getting some value here because that is the one thing that's made me super successful is understanding that relationships are important.   James:  Yeah. I think the personal touch is so important with the investors. I think it's just super critical right now. They are basically trusting you with money and you want, I think you are genuinely trying to understand them, trying to really have them with the investment as well. I mean.   Corey:  Yeah, they become your friends, right. I think the investors become your friends. Not always, you know, but like there's a good deal. So we don't always talk, we don't always go out. But when we do have our conversations, they're always fun and enjoyable and I don't have all the conversations. So I'm actually trying to build a business where I'm the CEO, right, I have one or two touches but my team has these interactions with them.   And that's where we're actually headed is where Corey is not on the phone every day with my investors, my team is. And that's what we're developing now is that team approach that kind of like, I'll call it the Edward Jones model you know. I worked for Edward Jones but I never met him, right. But all the clients that I had that I worked hard to get were truly the company's, were Edward Jones clients but they listened to me. And so that's what we're building now is our staff and people that go out there and help raise capital for our company and telling the Kahuna story.   James:  Got it. Now, that's very interesting, thanks for sharing the detail of how you nurture these passive investors who are, you know, willing to invest with you, you know, with the returns that you're talking about. And it just makes sense. I mean, they are people who want to invest, the IRA money for a solid, you know, investment with a good operator where they trust, right.   And that's more important than, you know, expecting a huge return and giving to someone random or people you do not know whether they can execute or not. And, you know, promising, you know, high returns and doesn't give it. So before, I mean, I don't think you came with this returns recently, right, so I'm sure when you started you said you had a 20% return --   Corey:  20%, then we went to like nine and nine then it went to eight and eight. Then I went to seven at seven. And I've been at six and six for a while now.  That's probably where I'll stay, I might go five and five.   James:  So did your investors who invest with you drop in terms of the number of counts and how did you deal with that?   Corey:  Yeah, so every time I titrated down, I lost a couple. I lost a couple, I didn't lose a lot but I lost a couple of people. But a lot of them come back around even though they said no in the beginning, once they truly left, knew that I left the station and then I call them back up. So I still call them back up, come on John, like, man, that's where we were but this is where we're at now. And I like you like, let me just work some of that money. Yeah, all right, I know. Take my money, Corey.   James:  And did you know like from the beginning itself that you focus on the IRA money thing from the beginning itself or did you --?   Corey:  Yes and no. I started with just friends and family, right, which I guess was IRA money or a lot of it was IRA money. But I just really, as I've gotten more in tune with that, I learned that's a nice honey hole. Now, I always lead with IRA money, but a lot of people it's kind of eclectic group. Some people have cash money, some people have IRA money. I work with both groups, both them are, you know, usually these investors are fairly high earners and so they do have some cash.   But I would find that most of their real wealth is in their IRAs, right. And now my typical investor invest, you know, initially 100,000, that's our minimum; is 100,000. And then from there, that's usually their first deal is usually the minimum. But we very commonly have $200,000 to $400,000 segments. I don't normally have $800,000 or $700,000 or a million dollars clients. I have a lot of $200,000 to $300,000 to $400,000 investors all the time.   James:  And is it per deal or is it total investment?   Corey:  Per deal. So like you know if I got a three million dollar raise, I'm going to have a lot of, you know, probably half of them are going to be 100,000 new investors. And then the other half is going to be those $200,000 to $300,000 that they're coming in for their second deal. Now, they're pushing more it because they saw the concept and they liked it. And then they give us their bigger chunks.   James:  Got it.   Corey:  But I'm really cool with having those 100,000 because that's my new database. I'm always wanting to get new people in deals so they can experience the Kahuna way.   James:  Yeah. I don't know whether you have this data. Do you know how many unique investors do you have?   Corey:  I don't. I don't have it offhand. But I --   James:  It's not easy to do.   Corey:  Yeah, but we do have I will say this, we do have a lot of repeat investors. Just like you, I mean once they give you money. And I want to say quickly the last thing, I really want to make sure that I say, this right here you can't see it if you're listening to the audio but this is one of the things that I have done religiously, is a self handwritten letters and so this is like a letterhead.   So this is business letterhead, everybody needs to have a high-quality stock letterhead and I'll call it envelope letterhead like a five by eight type of letterhead, thick cardstock. Mine has gold, Kahuna investments and then my name but it looks like it's coming from the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. And what I do with this is that I am big and I mean, I am emphatic about handwriting personal notes.   When I meet somebody for the first time if we had a really good conversation, I keep it in my backpack. I'll pen a handwritten note and if I don't have their address and like hey, man, how do I send you some correspondence? Or I like them, I want him on my Christmas list. I need to put you on my Christmas list with your address. People will give it to you and then you can handwrite a thank you note and say, hey, you know James was really good meeting you the other day and I really enjoyed our conversation. Let me know how I can be of service, right, give me a call like, let's do coffee. And that my friend has been one of, it's a  forgotten art of a handwritten thank you card. But man, I'm telling you, that is money.   James:  Yeah, yeah, I remember the first time when I meet you at a conference in Denver, right. You had a big bag behind you and you gave me a book copy of success, with your signature. I must be a high-quality client too.   Corey:  There it is, brother.   James:  Absolutely. I mean, we have a good relationship, right. So that's, I mean, I still have the book. I can see that you have written in the front and I appreciate that. And you are right, I mean, that personal classic touch is so important and people just feel that connection, right. So I also heard you call your investors on your distribution day.   Corey:  Yes, I really tried to call. Well, not always but someone on my team calls. I don't, I try to call and I'm pretty good at doing it most of the time. But on that week, whatever I love calling and saying it's payday, right. I mean, that's fun if you could call your investors once a quarter and say, hey, John, guess what day today is? Today is payday, right or guess what a week it is, it's payday week, right.   You know, I just want to let you know how much I appreciate you and you know, hey, John, we got some deals coming up. Who do you know that I should know? One of my favorite lines; who do you know that I should know? That needs to get a return like you're getting right now. And then you shut up and let them give them a moment to give you an answer. Silence is golden.   James:  Yes. And you said if you don't call, you have team members calling, right? How big is your team members?   Corey:  We've got a team of four.   James:  A team of four. Okay.   Corey:  Yeah. So I got an ad man, VA and I call him; Mr. Everything, which is like, his name's Isaac. He's my intern that turned into a full time but he really is, right now he's doing underwriting for us and acquisitions.   James:  And do you have an office or do you work from remotely --?   Corey:  I work right here at my house, man, this is it. Yeah, I've got my desk right here, I've got Isaac's is right behind me. We've got another desk to the right, that person we kicked out because it was getting too crowded in here. And then I got another room, I got another part by house that is the other part of the command central were two other people come to work every day.   James:  Oh, cool. So you have a house office with people looking in different parts --?   Corey:  Yeah, they come in. It's kind of eclectic but listen, we're supposed to like we all want maybe to get an office but I just like working from home so much that I just make everybody comes here. But I'm okay with that, like, you know, so it works for now, But we've really talked about maybe going to the next level and going to a real office. But I'm living my best life and so I always say why, why do we need to do that? Yeah.   James:  Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's so much information that you've given to me and to the audience. So it's really appreciated, it's just so I think the way I can summarize the approach is basically, you know, look for these investors that have the cash, right and, you know, nurture them by educating them through the monthly meeting. And of course, you do all kinds of personal touches. There's so much a personal touch and your cards are so professional, your pictures are very professional. And, you know, just people feel like you're dealing with somebody really, really high quality, right, and they trust you, right and that's so important.    Corey:  Yeah and they'll take less for and by doing that correctly, their confidence goes up and then their expectations of what they really want because people want 20% but they'll take a solid return all the time. So we've just been said listen, we give the solid return; a real return. And that means something to our group of people.   James:  Yeah. Sometimes consistency is more important than, you know, getting this high return, right. So yeah, I've seen syndicators who given, you know, huge return the first two quarters of operation after that for the next four years, there's zero return.   Corey:  Yeah, there you go.   James:  It's better than giving an average return or even a slightly lower than average return consistently, right. Because people can expect that I guess, for passives, I think they just giving you the money, they just want to, you know, get something consistently rather than getting huge, you know, lottery money coming in, right so   Corey:  That's it.   James:  That's awesome. All right, Corey, I think you've added tons of value. Can you tell our audience and listeners how to get hold of you?   Corey:  Yeah, man. If you'd like to get a hold of me, you can go to a; listen to my podcast; The Multifamily Legacy podcast or go to kahunawealthbuilders.com, we got a free gift if you want to opt into and get my free book.   James:  Awesome. Thanks for coming on to the show, Corey. I've learned a lot and you have added, what is the last word that you say the --?   Corey:  Your Paradise is possible, brother   James:  Your paradise is possible. I need to get one for my show too. Awesome. Okay, bye.   Corey:  Thanks, bro.

Neil Pasricha on Coaching For Leaders, Corey Quinn on On Call Nightmares, Craig Daniel on Build by Drift, and Bryan Liles on Hanselminutes. I’d love for you to email me with any comments about the show or any suggestions for podcasts I might want to feature. Email podcast@thekguy.com. And, if you haven’t done it already, don’t forget to hit the subscribe button, and if you like the show, please tell a friend or co-worker who might be interested. This episode covers the four podcast episodes I found most interesting and wanted to share links to during the two week period starting January 6, 2020. These podcast episodes may have been released much earlier, but this was the fortnight when I started sharing links to them to my social network followers. NEIL PASRICHA ON COACHING FOR LEADERS The Coaching For Leaders podcast featured Neil Pasricha with host Dave Stachowiak. Neil described his first professional role, working at Proctor & Gamble. He had graduated from Queen’s University in 2002, one of the top business schools in Canada and, at the time, a job at Proctor & Gamble was one of the top marketing jobs you could get. Neil felt like Charlie Bucket winning the golden ticket.  But he was horrible at the job. He had been expecting to spend his days creating PowerPoint presentations and instead was asked to create spreadsheets to analyze trucking, gasoline, and a million other variables to determine how much to increase the price of mascara. As a high achieving adolescent, he took his failure to be his own fault rather than a factor beyond his control. He worked late, came in on weekends, and started grinding his teeth. A few months in, the company wanted to put him on a performance improvement plan. He couldn’t handle the notion of being fired, so he quit nine months in. He catastrophized this event. He thought, “If I can’t work here, at the best company, with the most supportive culture, kind people, and a lot of structure, I can’t work anywhere.” He thought, “If I can’t do marketing, my highest mark in business school, I certainly can’t do finance,” and, “If I look for another job, they’re just going to call P&G who will say ‘This guy is horrible.’” He pictured the worst-case scenario: he thought he would go bankrupt and thought his life was over as a working person. He calls this, “pointing the spotlight at yourself”. High achievers have a tendency to think, “It’s all about me and I’m terrible.” He was a low-resilience person. He wrote his new book, You Are Awesome, about resilience because he identified himself as lacking it. Like most of us these days, he grew up without famines, wars, and other sources of societal stress. He got the gold stars and participation ribbons and didn’t have the tools to handle failure. He didn’t see for years that the P&G blow actually was his first lesson in resilience. He says we look at successful people and think their lives were a string of successes, but the most successful people are those that have also seen the most failure. He cited Cy Young, who has won the most games in baseball ever. He also has the most losses. Nolan Ryan, who has the most strikeouts, also has the most walks. Dave talked about his first full-time role as director of a center that helped students learn math and reading skills. He was average at the job and the culture wanted people to show a lot of initiative. He struggled, got passed over for promotions, and the feedback he was given was that he wasn’t moving fast enough, wasn’t taking initiative, and wasn’t meeting deadlines. Like Neil, Dave dropped out and started his coaching business. Neil says that Dave’s and his own feelings of incompetence are a result of the spotlight effect. The spotlight effect is the feeling that we’re being noticed, observed, and judged more than we really are. Nobody at P&G probably even remembers Neil, but the spotlight effect had caused Neil to feel that everybody had watched him fail. To help reduce this effect, Neil asks himself three questions: 1. “Will this matter on my deathbed?” 2. “Can I do something about this?” And 3. “Is this a story I’m telling myself?” For example, if you fail a biology test, the story you might tell yourself, “I failed my parents.” Dave asked whether Neil is now comfortable with being uncomfortable. Neil had thought that he had reached a point where he was finally comfortable with being uncomfortable, but when he left Walmart to take his side hustle full-time, he suddenly felt uncomfortable again. He says you have to treat it like yoga. You have to keep learning it until you learn it. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/448-the-value-of-being-uncomfortable-with-neil-pasricha/id458827716?i=1000461086169 Website link: https://coachingforleaders.com/podcast/value-being-uncomfortable-neil-pasricha/ COREY QUINN ON ON CALL NIGHTMARES The On Call Nightmares podcast featured Corey Quinn with host Jay Gordon. Corey started his on call career in what he called an “abusive” environment. One year in, a new manager was dropped in and the first thing this manager decided was that he wasn’t going to be on call himself. The number of people on call dropped from four to three and then another person left. So Corey was on call 50% of the time and he could never schedule his life around it. At the end of that time, Corey swore he would never put himself in this situation again. When he started the Duckbill Group, he decided that anything he did would be “business hours only”. Jay asked Corey what in 2019 most excited him in the world of cloud. Corey said that it was the awareness by the providers that building the fastest, most exciting, far fetched, far flung technologies was not going to be what won them the hearts and minds of their customers. Instead, he saw the large providers speaking to enterprises about migrating from data centers to cloud environments. They talked about Microsoft’s advantage in selling the cloud to enterprises. Corey says one of Microsoft’s big advantages in cloud is that they have forty years experience apologizing for software failures. Explaining these failures to non-technical audiences is something Microsoft excels at and Google and Amazon have had to learn. Jay brought up that the embrace of managed Kubernetes was a big trend in 2019. Corey says that his objection to it is that if you run everything on top of Kubernetes, you’ve abstracted away what you’re doing from the cloud providers’ built-in primitives so much that it becomes challenging to do workload attribution of cost. Programmatically figuring out which workload is the expensive one is surprising difficult. Jay talked about Hashicorp’s rise in 2019, providing tooling around cloud agnosticism. Corey said that one of the best conversations he had on his own podcast, Screaming In The Cloud, this past year was with Hashimoto. Hashimoto argued that Terraform provides workflow portability rather than workload portability and that one is worth pursuing and the other one is not. Jay said that this was the first year that Amazon talked about multicloud. Corey says they talked about hybrid but still avoided multicloud. Corey believes that every cloud provider hates multicloud until they realize a large customer is going to go with a different provider, then multicloud is wonderful. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/episode-46-year-in-review-corey-quinn-duckbill-group/id1447430839?i=1000460596737 Website link: https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/oncallnightmares/episodes/2019-12-23T11_00_16-08_00 CRAIG DANIEL ON BUILD BY DRIFT The Build podcast by Drift featured Craig Daniel with host Maggie Crowley. Their topic was “What does Drift look for when hiring product managers?” Craig says that the product manager role is unique in that you don’t have direct reports but you need to be able to influence the engineering team, the designers, and a slew of stakeholders that includes customers. Regarding technical skills, Craig says they look for systems thinkers with the ability to break down a problem, articulate their breakdown, look at data and combine that data with qualitative research. Maggie asked about hiring for associate PM roles and Craig says it goes back to a core principle that a person’s aptitude and attitude outweighs their experience. Craig defines aptitude as a combination of ability to learn and curiosity. These people are those who can grow faster than normal. Maggie added that these people are paying attention to the world around them, are asking questions of the tools that they’re using, and are not just assuming things are the way they are. For more experienced hires, Craig is looking for results. Sometimes there are good people who were in bad companies or joined a startup prior to product-market fit that never got off the ground. If they don’t have results, you want to see outputs: shipping things, building partnerships, and media coverage. People who are successful in product are those that can build coalitions, roll up their sleeves, do the hard work, and get stuff done. Maggie says that PMs can be afraid to be accountable for the end result. It is easy to say, “I wrote my one pager,” “I wrote the spec,” or “We stuck to the timeline.” There are so many excuses that you lose sight of the fact that you need to be accountable for results. Regarding the interview process, Craig says Drift’s process consists of a design leader interview, a product team interview, an executive interview, and something called, “The Who method.” Craig himself is looking for fit. This is not culture fit. It means, “What is this person great at, what do they want to do, and what do we have available or can make available?” To get at fit, Craig asks about their superpowers. If they’re at a company with, say, five product managers, what would everyone say they are the best of the five at? What are they worst of the five at? He also wants examples of truly exceptional work. This tells him what they think exceptional is, what their emotional intelligence is (are they a braggart?), and what their value system is. Craig says he has made a lot of mistakes over the years hiring PMs and, as a result, has learned to be more systematic about it. You have to have a practical part of the interview where you have the candidate go to the whiteboard, break down a problem, or tell the interviewer about work they’ve done in the past. A particularly good practical problem is to have them talk about a product they use everyday and describe both what’s great about it and what needs to be improved about it. They talked about the Who method (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345504194). For example, if the candidate tells you they were responsible for a half-a-million user product, the Who method lets you find out how much of that was their responsibility versus something they are just taking credit for. He talked about an aspect of the Who method called the threat of reference check. You ask the candidate, say, who their previous manager was, and then say, “When I call your previous manager, what are they going to say about you?”  Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/what-really-matters-when-hiring-a-pm/id1445050691?i=1000461459804 Website link: https://www.spreaker.com/user/casted/what-really-matters-when-hiring-a-pm BRYAN LILES ON HANSELMINUTES The Hanselminutes podcast featured Bryan Liles with host Scott Hanselman. Scott started out by asking Bryan what he means by “a complete engineer”. Bryan says he has rules for everything and rule #1 is that there is a competition out there but you are only competing with yourself. You can watch what other people do and you can emulate them, but don’t compare yourself to others. Regarding being a complete developer, he says you have two aspects of being a developer: 1) writing software for money and 2) providing an impact to the world. That impact may be helping other developers level up, providing a role model, or simply doing no harm. Growing up, Bryan’s dream was simply to have a better life for himself than his parents had. Now, he wants to show people that his life was not a fluke but is a result of preparing himself for opportunities. The world Bryan wants to live in is one in which we’re trying our best and we’re also looking out for the people that come after us. Bryan talked about his recent project Octant that is a console for showing what’s going on in your Kubernetes cluster. He says that often we start to make a product and we start listing a bunch of features we want it to have. He says this is like that friend that talks too much and tells boring stories that go on for too long. We all prefer the friend who tells simple stories and it is the same with software products: you need to start off simply and solve one problem at a time. The interview ended with Bryan’s three pieces of advice that he gives to all black males that he meets. First, he says to ignore the advice that says you have to be the dumbest person in the room. That works when you have privilege and you have a safety net. Instead, be the smartest person in the room, but don’t tell anyone. Second, opportunity is rare, so when it comes, be ready. His third piece of advice is to get used to, but not comfortable, with failure. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/being-a-complete-engineer-and-bryan-liles-rules-to-life/id117488860?i=1000460922091 Website link: https://hanselminutes.simplecast.com/episodes/being-a-complete-engineer-and-bryan-liles-rules-to-life-BiK2k99r LINKS Ask questions, make comments, and let your voice be heard by emailing podcast@thekguy.com. Twitter: https://twitter.com/thekguy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithmmcdonald/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekguypage Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_k_guy/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheKGuy Website:

In Yeshiva - a system of advanced learning in the orthodox Jewish world, there’s a saying: “Shiv'im Panim laTorah” - which means “there are 70 faces of Torah”, but implies that there are many equally valid ways of getting to a certain point. That idea resonates with IT practitioners, because there are many paths that led us into our career in tech. In this episode, Leon continues the conversation with guests Corey Adler, Rabbi Ben Greenberg, and returning guest Yechiel Kalmenson about how that made that literal pivot, from yeshiva into the world of IT, and what their experiences - both religious and technical taught them along the way. Listen or read the transcript below. Leon: 00:00 Hey everyone, it's Leon. Before we start this episode, I wanted to let you know about a book I wrote. It's called "The Four Questions Every Monitoring Engineer is Asked", and if you like this podcast, you're going to love this book. It combines 30 years of insight into the world of it with wisdom gleaned from Torah, Talmud, and Passover. You can read more about it including where you can get a digital or print copy over on https://adatosystems.com. Thanks! Doug: 00:22 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating, and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon: 00:48 This is a continuation of the discussion I started last week with Yechiel Kalmenson, Ben Greenberg and Corey Adler on how they pivoted from a life of Orthodox Jewish studies into a career in it. Thank you for coming back to join our conversation. Leon: 01:03 Okay. So, I think a lot of people are asking themselves at this point, now that they have a better sense of what yeshiva was like and how very different it is from a secular education, how very different that kind of world is from sort of a normal working situation: How did you do it? How did you go from this really intensive... Yechiel, I think you said from 7:30 in the morning until 9 or 10 o'clock at night learning constantly, with a couple of bathroom breaks and a little bit of food and maybe a nap... go from that to learning to code or learning IT or whatever it was? How did you get through it? And in fact, Yechiel, since I mentioned it, why don't you go first? Yechiel: 01:42 So, I guess as I transitioned to programming through tech support, so I was doing that before. Though I knew I would have to move on at some point because tech support... There was, there was a limit to how much I could grow there and how far it can get. And actually, it's funny, before you asked, you asked like, you know, "what would your mother think?" She was actually the one who, it was her idea. She had someone in her office who went to a bootcamp, (actually a friend of mine) who went to bootcamp and later got a job as a programmer. And she was telling me, "No, why didn't you do that? You know, you're smart, you can do that." And I was like, "No, that's not for me." You know, in my head at least "no programmers were these genius hackers who had been born with a silver keyboard in their laps. And like, that wasn't me. And like, you know, I might be smart, I'm not that kind of smart. And I like, I just kept telling her, "No, that's not for me. I, you know, he could do it. I can't." And then I promptly went home and took my first coding class and been hooked ever since. Corey: 02:42 For the record, my keyboard was platinum, not silver. Yechiel: 02:46 Well, Ya know, we're talking about the layman... Lay folks. Leon: 02:50 right, well, he's Brooklyn, you're Chicago, you know, there's a whole economic strata. Yechiel: 02:55 Right. Anyway, so I took a few free coding classes online and got hooked and saw that this actually was something I could do and this was something I enjoyed. And once I realized that I was ready to commit to it for the long run, I enrolled in a bootcamp - FlatIron School. I don't know if you heard of it. I took it part time while I was still doing tech support. So back to our yeshiva days, I would work all day and then code all night, up too late. You know, until 2 to 3:00 AM like three or four nights a week. But it was a transformative experience. I met Ben at the same bootcamp. He went to the same boot camp as me. He's been bugging me ever since. And then half year later I got my first developer job. Leon: 03:38 So Ben? Ben: 03:39 So I decided to go to the Flat Iron school, as Yechiel did for the sole purpose and aim to continually bug him about my challenges in programming for the rest of my professional life. And I and to have someone to bother on Slack forever and ever and ever. But I also chose Flat Iron school in addition to Yechiel because I knew that I needed to retool and retrain and I knew I also didn't have a lot of time to do that. When you have already a family and responsibilities, you need to make a career transition quick. There's no time to go back for another four year program or two year program or even a one year program. And so the Flat Iron school at that point had a self paced program. I think it still does. I'm pretty sure it does. But it has a self paced program where you basically can do the program as fast as you can do it. And I tried to do it really fast. I left my job and I did it full time over the course of a summer - a summer plus a little more. Hours and hours and hours. And I actually think that spending four years in a yeshiva/college combined was a really great prep for that, because as Yechiel mentioned earlier, that days are very long. And balancing a dual curriculum of yeshiva studies in college meant that when I was in college, I was starting my day at around seven in the morning and ending at around 11 o'clock at night in studies all day between yeshiva curriculum and a yeshiva, (Beit midrash) study hall time. And combining that with traditional college classes. So the bootcamp - which is meant to be a very intense experience because it's full time and it's a lot of material - actually didn't feel that intense. It actually felt less. So it was actually a pretty relaxing experience, although intellectually stimulating and it definitely pushed me in my knowledge and learning. I didn't feel it didn't feel overwhelming because I had that experience from combining yeshiva and college at the same time, which is a very intense thing to do. And so, uh, within a few months of graduating from the boot camp I also found my first job, and it happened to be seated right next to Yechiel in the same company. Yechiel: 06:07 So I thought I'd gotten rid of him Ben: 06:08 ... on Long Island. Yeah. Cause everything eventually ends up back on Long Island. So we worked together for about a year, one cubicle apart from each other in a lovely place where it felt like you walked into the set of "The Office" every day. Leon: 06:29 So I've been in it for 30 years and, and it's amazing how many environments that show evokes for folks. It wasn't just there. Ben: 06:39 No, definitely not. Not this just in Scranton Pennsylvania. Leon: 06:42 Okay. Corey, it's your turn. Corey: 06:45 So I went to NYU as previously mentioned I got degrees in computer science and Jewish history. Afterwards I went to Case Western for only one year of Grad school, which is a story in and of itself, but it is something that my brother, who has a Ph.d and just recently got tenure at Northeastern Illinois University loves to beat me over the head with on occasion... Leon: 07:14 I was gonna say he doesn't rub that in your face at all? Every five minutes. Corey: 07:17 Oh he totally does . But I get to make fun of him because I make more money than he does. Leon: 07:22 Well, a Ph.d in history or in political science only takes one so far. Corey: 07:27 It does. That's really true. That's really true. So afterwards, then after Case Western, I went into the workforce and started worshiping at the altar of Stack Overflow. Leon: 07:39 And who doesn't do that? I want to point out that , recently I had the privilege of taking a few folks who were sort of in the adult version of yeshiva called kollel, which is for married guys. And they had been doing this for just a very little bit of money, but were learning scripture, Torah, all day long and realized - very much like you three did - that they needed to get a job. That their time of being able to do this was sort of coming to an end. And we also realized in the community that IT might be a wonderful transition point. And so I took them, in a period of about four months, from basically being at a point where the most technically advanced thing that they used was a flip phone. You know, not even a chocolate bar phone, but just one of the old dumb flip phones into programming, network engineering, sysadmin. And a lot of people said, "How could they do that? How could you take them so far, so fast?" And one of the things I want to emphasize for the folks who are listening is that the yeshiva program is not one that's structured to tell you the answers, (which we alluded to before). It's not about, "do you know the answer to this test?" "Okay, I pass the test . Moving on." It's, do you know how to think about the material? Do you know how to ask yourself - not just "what is the question and the answer", [but] "why is THAT the question? Why did they ask that question here? They could have asked any one of a dozen or two dozen or a million possible questions about this material. Why did they start there?" And when you start to look at information that way, why was that the question they asked? Why was that the answer they gave? Why didn't they give this other answer? When you start to think about that, your brain begins to process information in a very different way. And what that means is that you can categorize and digest information - especially IT information - much more efficiently than folks who might've come up through a more traditional learning program. And we'll talk about that in a little bit, but I just wanted to highlight that because it came out in each of your stories. So I'm curious on the flip side, what about this transition to IT do you think was harder for you three coming from yeshiva than it might have been for folks coming from a different route, from a more traditional American educational route. Yechiel, how about you go first? Yechiel: 10:11 I guess the main point is like Ben mentioned, it applies to any career change. I don't know if it applies specifically to someone coming from the yeshiva or from the rabbinate. The lack of formal education in the field, with me I didn't get a computer science degree. I didn't go to college for four years learning this stuff. And I know there are people in the field who believe that that is a hindrance. In my professional life, I didn't find that to be the case. I mean I appreciate the value of a computer science degree. I mean it teaches you the theory behind computing, the theory behind... and it is something that helps me in my life now. But to get started, it's like, when you're a carpenter, you don't have to know the theory of how the tools work, how, wood works. All you have to know is how to actually take a saw and a hammer and a nail and make things work. And that's something you can pick up. My first job as a web developer, that was literally just banging tools and nails together. And sometimes actually did feel that way. Like Ben can attest. And even though now I'm doing more backend-y, computer science heavy stuff, that's all stuff I was able to pick up later on. I was able to pick it up on the job as they say. Ben: 11:29 I often imagine, or conceive of our projects together in our first job together as we were building a sukkah out of code and a sukkah is... during one of the Jewish holidays in the calendar year, we're meant to go outside and build these temporary structures to dwell in for a week, and they're very fragile structures, that can easily yield themselves to the wind, to rain, to cold. And that's the intention behind them - is to reflect on the fragility of life. And so, often times, the code we're building in that first job felt very much like this sukkah of code. Um, the fragility of code. Yechiel: 12:14 And if I can extend that analogy, Leon: 12:17 Of course you can! We KNOW you can. Yechiel: 12:18 There's a popular meme that goes around every year around Sukkot time (which is the holiday when we build the Sukkah), of a photoshop-ed sign at a Home Depot saying "Dear Jewish customers: Unfortunately, we don't know what the thing that connects a thing to the thing is. You'll have to be more specific." And sometimes googling programming questions can feel like trying to figure out "what is the thing that connects the thing to the thing and does the thing, it makes the thing work? Ben: 12:46 It's an interesting question you asked. And I think for me the biggest differentiator there was: ultimately that the work I'm doing nowadays is not imbued with the same level of... sanctity? Uh, the same level of holiness, the same level of devotion and dedication that the work I did before was imbued with. And and I think in some ways it was both simultaneously challenging to come to terms with that, and come and reckon with that; but it also has made my life a lot easier. It both a challenging thing... I'm used to working in what I do 24 hours a day and having no differentiation between work and life, and yet getting used to having the differentiation between work in life. And having a time when I'm not working has actually been really pleasant. And discovering these things called "weekends" has been really nice. I didn't know what they were before and now I know what they are and they're... It almost feels like the episode of "Downton Abbey" when the matriarch of the family asks very naively and very innocently - but also from a great place of great privilege - "A 'week end'? What is a week end?" I asked that out of, not great privilege, but out of great stress. "What is a weekend?" And now I know what a weekend is and I never want to lose it ever again. Leon: 14:28 I just have to emphasize, again, for the it folks who listen to the show, that if you feel like you've been overwhelmed, just think of the hardworking rabbis who have... you know, we talk about 60 hour weeks in IT and "Oh my gosh, we have a Sev one call that went all night" and things like that... That if you wondered if there was something that was a notch higher, apparently the rabbinate is it. So just to let you know. Okay. So Corey, how about for you? Corey: 14:56 For me the most difficult thing was just trying to find the right balance between my work life and my religious life. So in keeping those two worlds kind of separate, but kind of mingled. But then also having to try to explain to people what that meant. So try to explain to my boss, "No, I'm sorry. I understand that there's a sprint launch coming up on Monday, but I can't make it because there's the holiday" Or in winter time, "Yeah. I'm sorry. I can't be at a four o'clock meeting on a Friday..." Leon: 15:33 ...because sundown is a half hour from now. Corey: 15:35 Yeah. The Sabbath is starting and I just can't make it or "Yes, I'm very appreciative that you bought lunch for everybody, but I can't actually eat this." And "Yes, I understand. And no, this didn't have to be blessed by a rabbi" Or "No, I can't make a 7:30am meeting in Pennsylvania because I've got to attend morning services." And also the idea that so many times - especially earlier on in my career - I would run into people who are doing 50 - 60 hour work weeks, and they're telling me all about working on the weekend and doing some Saturday work. And for me it's, "Well, okay, well how am I going to make myself look like I'm working as hard as they are, but I have one less day to put in the same hours that they are?" So it was really trying to maintain that balance between my work life, my professional life, and having my religious life. And where I was allowing the two to kind of coexist. Leon: 16:41 Interesting. Interesting. All right, so we started to hit on it, but I want to take the flip side of 'what was easier, coming from a yeshiva background'? What did you find about the transition to IT that was easier for you? Again, we talked about a few things, but is there anything else you wanted to add? Yechiel: 16:55 So I guess like you mentioned earlier, yeshiva thinking, for those who had a chance to look a little bit at the Talmud, yeshiva thinking, or yeshiva learning really trains you for thinking in abstract concepts. When you're programming, you're always trying to abstract things. You have a problem, a real physical world problem and you needed to abstract it into the idea what is the problem... what's the question behind the problem? What's the ultimate problem? And there are layers upon layers upon layers of abstractions. And I found that my time in FlatIron... I always, like I told you I'm a teacher at heart. I was always going back and helping students. And I found that this is something that a lot of people coming in from other fields struggled with that I struggled a lot less. Just idea that like when your screen says "x", it doesn't mean "x". It means the idea behind "x". It was something that came more naturally to me and that's yeshivas in general. Specifically. I learned in a Hasidic yeshiva, which puts a stronger emphasis on philosophical and Jewish philosophy. So they were constantly abstracting stuff. Going layers and layers deeper into the ideas. So that's one idea which you touched upon. Another idea actually, which I found interesting, which is not universal to tech, but and my company, Pivotal, we're very strong on the idea of pair programming. Like literally that's all... Like all day, every day. Every bit of code is written by a pair. We don't, we don't work on our own. We rarely ever solo on our own. And that that's a challenge to a lot of pivots moving into Pivotal. But actually at yeshiva, that is how we do all of our learning. Most of our learning is not done through lectures or listening to rabbis teach. There is some of that, but most of the learning is actually done in a system called a chavrusa, which is two people sitting together and learning together, trying to figure out the passage of Talmud, trying to figure out the commentary together, and delving deeper and deeper. So the idea of back and forth, exchanging ideas, thinking out loud, breaking a problem down together with someone else is something that came naturally to me and which I actually enjoyed when I came to Pivotal. Corey: 19:10 Does that make yeshivas agile? Yechiel: 19:11 Yes we are. We have a sprints. We have... Leon: 19:14 Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, you're right! Yeshivas are the original agile organization. Ben: 19:22 So who are the product managers in the yeshiva? Corey: 19:26 The Mashgiach? Yechiel: 19:27 The Mashgiach is sort of the supervisor who lays out the road map, tells you which material you're responsible to cover over the next week or so. And then you break off. And then at the end there's a retro where the Rosh Yeshiva, the head of the yeshiva gives a lecture on the material. Leon: 19:44 I see a blog post - a very serious blog post on this Ben: 19:49 In the Torah && Tech newsletter. Leon: 19:50 This is awesome. Okay. So Ben, how about you? Speaker 4: 19:54 Everything Yechiel said resonated and I would say just to add a little bit to that, the ability to switch back and forth between the concept and the implementation of the concepts. Between finding in the details, in the practical details, finding the conceptualization and then in the conceptualization, being able to go into the practical details, back and forth I think is very much a part of the world of programming. And I did also see it as an area that was very hard for a lot of people to come to terms with. That "I'm looking at this line of code and I know this line of code is executing this following thing, but in the execution of this following thing, it's also demonstrating to me this programming concept. And I see the concept through its execution" - is actually just a natural part of learning in the yeshiva world. And it just makes a lot of sense, it made a lot of sense to me from the beginning. I think that's a wonderful thing to port over from yeshiva life into IT life. Leon: 21:13 That's beautiful. Corey. Corey: 21:16 For me, and I touched upon this earlier, which was the idea of having to go step by step through the thing. You can't just jump to the end. And I'm sure we're aware of some of the, the traditional introductions to the idea of logical coding, like the, the old "Peanut butter and Jelly Sandwich" example. Tell me how to make a peanut butter and Jelly Sandwich. Leon: 21:43 And if you're our friend Aaron Wolf, you actually have several loaves of bread and a few jars of peanut butter and a few other things. And you end up destroying a bunch of those as the students in the class attempt to try to tell you how to do that and do it wrong and realize the flaw in their execution instructions. Corey: 22:00 Yeah. And it ended up destroying some students along the way. Leon: 22:02 Well, right. But that's just all part of the fun. Corey: 22:05 That's true. You gotta take your fun where you can Leon: 22:08 Shout out to Aaron Wolf. Corey: 22:12 So going step by step. And thinking about things logically, having to think things through - if something doesn't work, trying to question what's going on. Those things really ended up helping a lot when I started out. Leon: 22:32 Nice Leon: 22:34 We know you can't listen to our podcasts all day. So out of respect for your time, we've broken this particular discussion up. Come back next week where we continue our conversations about "Pivoting Our Career On the Tip of a Torah Scroll." Josh: 22:46 Thanks for making time for us this week. To hear more of Technically Religious, visit our website, https://technicallyreligious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions, and connect to us on social media. Leon: 23:00 So there's these three rabbis that walk into a bar. Ben: 23:00 Uh, that's not how it goes. Yechiel: 23:00 I think you totally ruined that joke. Corey: 23:00 This is how that joke goes.  

Licensed psychotherapist Soco Rey joins us to talk overcoming the struggle of situational depression, being the “cycle breaker” in your family and the pressure to have it all together. www.morejuiceplz.com www.socorey.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/morejuiceplz/support

Licensed psychotherapist Soco Rey joins us to talk overcoming the struggle of situational depression, being the “cycle breaker” in your family and the pressure to have it all together. www.morejuiceplz.com www.socorey.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/morejuiceplz/support

This week we are continuing our conversation surrounding mental health, self-care and authentic living with the amazing Soco Rey, an Inglewood based therapist who is out here killing the game and changing lives on a daily basis!  

Soco Rey is a dope, Inglewood based therapist. She is an impeccable human being, a lover of people and a woman committed to authentically showing up in the world as her full self. This episode is part one our conversation about therapy and overall mental wellness. Listen in and come back next week for part 2!

GUEST BIO: Corey Quinn has been an engineering manager, a public speaker and an advocate for cloud strategies.  He now specializes in helping companies control and cost optimize their AWS cloud footprint without disrupting the engineers using it. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil’s guest on today’s show is Corey Quinn, who is a cloud economist, consultant, business owner, blogger and podcaster. His early career was spent as a system administrator. He later moved into DevOps. Today, he is a consultant who specializes in creating cost-optimized AWS cloud solutions that work efficiently, despite the fact that the cost of running them has been cut drastically. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (00.28) – So Corey, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself. Corey explains that he is a cloud economist. He started as an assistant systems administrator, which is the equivalent of an SRE, doing both individual contributor work and managing teams. But, for the last couple of years he has run his own AWS consultancy company. His main service is fixing the huge AWS bills that many companies end up with. More recently, he has become for his Last Week in AWS newsletter, which pulls together what is happening in the Amazon cloud ecosystem. At this point gives an important tip. Making fun of giant companies will make you less employable than you think. He also runs the Screaming in the Cloud podcast. (2.09) – Phil asks Corey for a unique IT career tip, one the audience probably does not already know. Corey says it is important not to lose sight of how valuable you are to the business. Being able to understand and prove your true value will really help the next time there are layoffs. So, it is wise to get into the habit of tracking that type of data. (3.16) – Phil asks how someone who cannot easily visualize their monetary value to the people they work for and how they would go about evaluating their true worth. Corey says that the best way he has found to do that is to speak to people within the company and outside about his role. Doing this has enabled him to get some perspective. He has been able to see how they think his type of role benefits a business and how it adds value. Finding a mentor helps too, they will also provide insight into this. You can also ask your boss how the company realizes the benefit of having you there. Don’t be afraid of asking this question. Doing so enables you to better understand your role and be able to fill it more effectively. It stops you from focusing on things the company does not ascribe much value to. Things they are not really interested in your taking care of for them. (4.48) – Corey is asked to share his worst career moment by Phil. Corey has a reoccurring moment. He has been “let go” several times and being fired never feels good, especially when you don’t see it coming. Over the years, Corey has been let go five or six times. Usually, because he was misaligned with what the business found valuable. He was just not focusing on what they wanted to have done. However, in some cases, it was a cultural mismatch that led to him being fired. Being let go hurts and can make you feel like you are a loser, even though you are not. But, on the flip side you usually end up feeling relieved, liberated even. (6.52) – Phil asks Corey if being fired has become any easier, over the years. Corey explains that it has gotten easier in that he knows what to do next. But, emotionally it is still hard. This is despite the fact that he knows every job comes to an end, at some point. In reality, you are either going to leave, because you are no longer a good fit, or your company is going to let you go, for the same reason. It is a fact of life. Besides which if you are no longer a good fit, continuing to work for that company is not good for you or your employer. Despite that, being told you have been fired is still painful. (7.53) - Have you ever experienced a situation where perhaps the company has moved on and the role that you're performing is no longer as valuable as it was previously? In Corey’s case, this has usually happened because the role has shifted radically. This has definitely been the case when he has joined a company during its early days. What a firm needs doing during start-up is very different from what they require once they are fully up and running. Corey enjoys fixing problems and turning things around. But, once everything is settled and he has to switch to take care of mundane day-to-day tasks he quickly gets bored. When that happens, it is best for him to move on quickly. (9.12) – Phil asks Corey what his best career moment was. For Corey that has definitely been helping a friend of his to grow her career. Over the years, she has regularly sought advice from him. Today, she credits him with some of her success. Corey gets more of a sense of achievement from having helped her than he does from saving companies large sums of money or help them to recover from problems. (10.28) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? The fact that the barrier of entry is lowering is exciting. Now, anyone with a credit card and ten bucks can implement their business idea in the cloud. They can easily set up a test lab at home. You no longer have to spend a fortune like Corey did, years ago, when setting up a simple mail server meant buying lots of expensive equipment. (11.39) – Phil agrees he is seeing more companies use the cloud as their long-term IT solution. Business owners seem to be far less concern about potential security issues. He asks Corey if he has seen the same thing happening. Corey he agrees, but explains that he occasionally comes across firms who are worried about data security. But, when he reminds them that the tax authorities, banks and other big organizations use the technology, most understand that the risk is low. Typically, they decide to make the change and move to the cloud. (13.17) – What first attracted you to a career in IT, Corey? At one time, Corey worked as an IT recruiter. Eventually, he got tired of placing people in roles he knew he could do a better job of. So, 14 years ago, he figured he would give IT a try and significantly increase the amount he was earning. He certainly earned more, with the added bonus that he really enjoyed the work. (13.41) – What is the best career advice you have received? “Talk less, listen more”. It is something Corey still struggles with doing. But, he is working at developing this skill and is getting better at listening. After all, “nobody ever listens themselves into having to apologize.” (14.33) – What career objectives are you currently focusing on? Corey says that would be continuing to grow his business. Currently, he is focusing on marketing and sales. Unfortunately, he no longer has the time to code much. (15.18) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? For Corey it is storytelling. Telling a story about something in a way that resonates with your audience is a great skill to have. That is the case whether you are trying to convince a client, one of your peers or a colleague, of something. You have to engage with them in a way that resonates. When you learn to do that, it automatically becomes easier to speak publically, put together podcasts and participate at meetups. (16.30) – Phil asks Corey to share a final piece of career advice. Every three months, pull up your resume and update it. Add what you have done for the past three months and think about what you want to add the next time you review your resume. If you find that you have nothing to add for the last three months, work out why that is. Make sure that you don’t stall your career. The last thing you need is to end up working for a company for 15years, yet only gain one year of experience. It is all easy to slip into the tap of doing the same thing year in, year out and end up stagnating. Reviewing your resume every three months will ensure that you are always intentional with your career choices. BEST MOMENTS: (1.38) COREY – “First career tip don’t make fun of giant companies. It makes you less employable than you'd think.” (2.19) COREY – “Make sure you don't lose sight of the business value that you provide to your employer” (10.12) COREY – “Saving clients, large piles of money, sort of pales in comparison to having helped someone develop in their career.” (15.20) COREY – “Regardless of what it is you're doing, you need to be able to tell a story about it in a way that resonates with the business.” (16.13) PHIL “Stories are a fantastic way to communicate ideas and really communicate the solutions as well.” CONTACT COREY: Twitter: https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig @QuinnyPig LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coquinn/ Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coquinn/

Marc thanks his listeners, and invites you to take an audience survey about the podcast, so he can provide more of what you want in the coming year. He discusses his interest in podcasts and books, and how he decided to launch the Repurpose Your Career podcast in support of his book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life, by Marc Miller and Susan Lahey. Marc goes on to describe how the show has evolved once the book launched, and finally, what he plans for 2018 and beyond. Listen in for a look at Marc’s processes of launching and running a podcast and making it appeal to you. Key Takeaways: [1:22] Marc thanks you, the listeners. Please fill out an audience survey to help guide how Marc can continue to serve his audience with helpful content. Marc also invites you to give your honest review of this podcast on iTunes. [3:00] In August of 2016, Marc had the idea of the Repurpose Your Career podcast, to support the launch of the next edition of his book, Repurpose Your Career. The idea largely came from listening to podcasts. Thom Singer’s, Ryan Rhoten’s, and Roger Whitney’s podcasts were his motivation. He wanted to blend their features in one show. [3:40] Marc found Podfly Productions through Thom Singer. Podfly sponsor’s Thom’s show and does his production work. Marc had the ability to produce and edit his own show, but all the production details were more than he wanted to handle. [4:00] Marc contacted Corey Coates, the owner of Podfly, and bought one of their launch packages. Corey and the Podfly team walked Marc through selecting music, creating artwork, creating an intro with a professional voice artist, and everything else to get his show launched. Marc knew he had no artistic talents, so he needed help. [4:30] Marc talks about the recording process. First, he had trouble with cable hum. So Corey suggested recording on his Mac with Piezo for Mac software. Marc decided next on a series approach where he would, over four weeks, interview an expert, interview a late-career pivoter, read a chapter from his book, and then do a Q&A session. [5:03] Marc discovered he was much better as an interviewee than an interviewer. Marc was used to speaking on topics he enjoyed as a public speaker. When he has to interact with someone on an interview that is off script, it is not a smooth process. Marc is his harshest critic when he listens to a recording of himself, but he edits out mistakes. [5:51] Marc has made a lot of refinements in this year. Marc can tell the difference between the early episodes to what he is producing today. The most important improvement in his technique is recording standing up in a closet with the microphone and pop filter attached to a shelf. [6:47] Marc tells how the production week goes with Podfly, from Marc’s raw file to audio edit, show notes, proofing, tagging, and uploading to LibSyn. From LibSyn, they show up on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play. On Monday afternoon, Marc’s VA creates the blog post, which contains the show notes, for Tuesday morning publication. [7:28] Marc lists some expert guests: Kerry Hannon, who writes on Boomer issues, Chris Farrell, author of Unretirement, Retirement Answer Man podcaster Roger Whitney, Taylor Pearson, author of End of Jobs, and John Tarnoff, author of Boomer Reinvention. [7:49] For the career pivoter episodes, Marc had a group of career changers in his network. At episode 20, Marc had to invite someone from his post clients to be interviewed. Marc’s first pivoter interview was with Dr. Joel Dobbs, who had volunteered to tell his great story in episode three. [8:14] Marc started recording episodes from his book and knew he had episodes for about a year. The book launched in April of 2017 and the original reason for the podcast had kind of come to an end. Marc introduced solo episodes, like this one, and found out it was really hard. Marc starts with a script, but ad-libs as he goes along. [8:55] Marc admires podcasters who do solo episodes and make it sound great. Roger Whitney does most of his Retirement Answer Man podcasts solo, and they are well-produced. [9:15] The last episode in the series is the Q&A episode, which Marc first named the Mailbag episode. The idea was to answer three listener questions. If Marc did not receive enough questions, he reflected back on his past clients’ questions. Marc recorded these with Elizabeth Rabaey, Marc’s long-time client and intern. [9:57] One thing Marc learned from recording is that shuffling pages is noisy. He reads from an iPad. Elizabeth rewrites in her own words a script Marc provides. Marc writes his points and then adlibs answers to the questions. Marc and Elizabeth can knock out an episode in just over 30 minutes. These have become the easiest episodes, by far. [10:44] By watching download stats on LibSyn, Marc saw that downloads dropped when the name Mailbag was in the title, so Mar dropped the name. By the middle of the year, Marc was editing more of his own audio. He likes to make it sound good. A 20-minute podcast takes a couple of hours to edit. By forgetting breath sounds, his edits got faster. [11:19] The book was launched about six months in, but there were a lot of other things going on. In October 2016 he noticed his health insurance premiums were about to explode, and they did. In November after the presidential election, Marc’s phones quieted for a few months. Business was off 60% for the first half of 2017. [12:07] This downtime gave Marc time to finish his book, and he was interviewed on different podcasts almost weekly promoting the book. He was using a podcast booking service to get the interviews booked. The book launched, has sold well, and continues to sell. Marc’s email list continues to grow. [12:33] Marc and his wife started exploring the possibility of becoming expats and living in another country. Next month, Marc will have an episode on their experience. In May they visited Ecuador, and returned early. Marc’s wife ended up in the hospital. The high altitude uncovered a condition that is now being resolved, at some expense. [13:05] Marc recorded episode 29 from his wife’s hospital bedside in Austin after they returned. 2017 has been an interesting year. Business started picking up again in June, perhaps when people became unfrozen from the uncertainty. Marc is glad that the AHCA failed, as it could have raised his insurance premiums. [13:43] At the same time, Marc began the CareerPivot Community website concept. Being so busy has made getting this podcast produced on time more difficult. Marc is now on a week-to-week basis. The second half of the year Marc turned over the blog post to his virtual assistant. The interview audio quality has improved, as has the flow. [14:30] Marc heard Roger Whitney’s podcast series, “Can Carl Retire?” It helped Marc create a series, just concluded, called, “Can Tim Repurpose His Career?” This series finished off the first year of podcasting. Please listen to episodes 48-51 for this series. This has delayed Marc’s audio recording of Repurpose Your Career. [15:22] It costs about $4,000 annually to produce this podcast. Starting in 2018, Marc will have a Patreon page for people to donate money on a recurring basis to support a cause. Patreon has become popular with podcasters. Podcasts are rarely profitable on their own. Marc would like to do a Repurpose Your Career series per year. [16:14] In 2018, Marc will be shifting his business away from individual coaching to group coaching and the community website. Marc has the initial cohort of about 10 individuals that he is onboarding onto a trial platform. Once he has feedback, he will create a more final product and open the community up to small groups of 10 to 15. [16:40] This will be a pod membership community, but Marc wants to keep the fees affordable to help more people. To learn more, you can sign up for the waiting list at CareerPivot.com/Community. [17:01] Now that the podcast is a year old, Marc wants to survey the audience on what you like, and what you would like in the future. Please take the survey at CareerPivot.com/Podcast-Survey. Marc will be sending an email to the entire subscriber list about the time this episode goes up. This will help Marc shape what comes next. [17:47] This podcast is a success because of you, the listener. Marc wants to thank everyone who’s been listening and supporting the cause. Onto a second year of the Repurpose Your Career podcast! Next week, Marc will interview author Thea Kelly.   Mentioned in This Episode: Careerpivot.com CareerPivot.com/Podcast-Survey or CareerPivot.com/PodcastSurvey Survey Monkey Please take a moment — go to iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play. Give this podcast an honest review and subscribe! If you’re not sure how to leave a review, please go to CareerPivot.com/review, and read the detailed instructions there. Thom Singer’s Cool Things Entrepreneurs Do podcast Ryan Rhoten’s The BRAND New You Show Roger Whitney’s Retirement Answer Man Show Podfly Productions, LLC Piezo for Mac LibSyn Kerry Hannon Unretirement: How Baby Boomers are Changing the Way We Think About Work, Community, and the Good Life, by Chris Farrell The End of Jobs: Money, Meaning and Freedom Without the 9-to-5, by Taylor Pearson  Boomer Reinvention: How to Create Your Dream Career Over 50, by John Tarnoff CareerPivot.com/Episode-20 with Elizabeth Rabaey CareerPivot.com/Episode-48 “Can Tim Repurpose His Career? Part 1” CareerPivot.com/Episode-49 “Can Tim Repurpose His Career? Part 2” CareerPivot.com/Episode-50 “Can Tim Repurpose His Career? Part 3” CareerPivot.com/Episode-51 “Can Tim Repurpose His Career? Part 4” Patreon CareerPivot.com/Community Get That Job: The Quick and Complete Guide to a Winning Interview, by Thea Kelley Please pick up a copy of Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life, by Marc Miller and Susan Lahey The paperback and ebook formats are available now. When you have completed reading the book, Marc would very much appreciate your leaving an honest review on Amazon.com. Marc is recording the audio version of the book, and he plans to have it available in late November 2017. Marc is taking on new clients. Contact Marc, and ask questions at Careerpivot.com/contact-me or call at 512-693-9132, and leave a message with your email address. Marc will respond with a link to his calendar, to find a time to talk. CareerPivot.com/Episode-52 Show Notes for this episode. You can find Show Notes at Careerpivot.com/repurpose-career-podcast.

This podcast was recorded partly at Podcast Movement a few years ago (2014?). A few years ago Major League Baseball shut down a bunch of podcasts who were using logos illegally, using the name of the teams illegally, but one of them was NOT Corey Fineran. He had named his show Ivy Envy. It was a show about the Chicago cubs. Then one day he got a direct tweet from the official Chicago Cubs team. He thought the team was coming down to shut down his podcast. So Corey called the front office, and they mentioned that hey had heard his podcast, and read his blog where he had criticized a certain contest the Cubs were running. The Cubs representative explained how it wasn't' a Cubs rule, but one from the Major League baseball. But because of Corey of the Ivy Envy podcast, the Cubs lawyers had taken Corey's points and gone to Major League Baseball, and in turn they changed the rules.  Your podcast can put you into a position of influence. You never know who is listening to your show. It just might be the head of a baseball team.  Check out Ivy Envy at www.ivyenvy.com Ready to start a podcast check out www.schoolofpodcasting.com

Hey everyone! Sorry this post is late but things have been a little hectic over here at the BMB Headquarters. But fear not faithful listeners we are still here and ready to bring you a whole new batch of wild and whacky episodes of the podcast you know and love. We didn’t plan on taking this week off, but life happens and we had to postpone the recording of Episode 75: The Peanut Butter Situation due to some unforeseen circumstances. So Corey, Gina, & Ryan will all be back on Wednesday, April 23, 2014 with a brand spanking new episode of B Movie Breakdown. If you want to watch the movie before you listen to Episode 75, you can find the movie in full on YouTube, just search ‘The Peanut Butter Solution.’ This movie, like a lot of them, was requested by a fan of the show; so if you have a movie you would like us to breakdown, let us know!! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/bmoviebreakdown/support