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On this Wednesday Buckeye Talk, Doug Lesmerises and Nathan Baird dip into Ohio State's schedule strength and the opposing players that may bother the Buckeyes the most in 2021. Nathan, Doug, Stephen and Kayla Harvey have been rolling out a new capsule each day on the 50 best opposing players on Ohio State's 12-game regular-season schedule. So Doug and Nathan discussed the four teams with the most players in the top 50 -- Oregon, Penn State, Indiana and Michigan -- and then started rolling through some of the most interesting names among the first 25 players on the list. They'll cover the top-25 on a pod later in July. Among the opponents that the guys broke down, while theorizing if they could hurt the Buckeyes and how they'd do it:• Minnesota QB Tanner Morgan• Oregon QB Anthony Brown• Penn State receiver Parker Washington• Michigan quarterbacks Cade McNamara and J.J. McCarthyIt's almost July, which means it's almost time to really start breaking down Ohio State's schedule and expectations, and this was Doug and Nathan starting to wade into that water.Thanks for listening to Buckeye Talk from cleveland.com. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Allen: All right, Passive Traders. Welcome to another edition of the Option Genius Podcast, we got a real treat for you today. I have one of my long, long time friends with me today and we're actually doing something special, we're going to do a video as well as audio on the Podcast, we will be having some slides, but when we show the slides will describe to you what's going on in the slide so those of you who are listening will not be missing out. And the video will also be on our media channels and YouTube channel. So you can catch it there if you need. I want to introduce my guest today He is Mr. Doug Smith of Hawthorne Funds. Doug and I go back, man, we go back, like over what over a decade or so. But yeah. Doug: 15 years. Allen: So Doug is Mr. Moneybags himself, Mr. Real Estate, you know, he's been doing real estate for years and years, he launched a very successful company called MyHouseDeals.com where if you are a real estate investor, you can go and find all the deals that are not on the MLS. So it's pretty cool. And that site has made a lot of people a lot of money. But today, we're gonna be talking about Doug's newest venture, this is something that he's been doing for a few years now. And you know, whenever you get together with friends, you talk and "Hey, what's up?" "What are you doing?" And we would share stories of what we were doing and, and Doug A few years ago, came up to me, and he's like, yeah, you know, I'm doing all this stuff with land and doing this and doing that. And I was like, Wow, man, you're making a killing. And he made such a big killing that he just like, he just has to get out. And he's like, Alright, we need to do this on a bigger scale. And so Doug went and figured out how to do a investment fund. And so that's what we're going to be talking about today. I know back in Episode 94, it's called "How I Invest". I shared that one of my investments is in a real estate fund. And that is Doug's fund. And so I asked Doug, to come on and answer some questions and give us some highlights about what investment funds are, how they work, what to look for, when you're choosing one, making sure that your investment is safe, and all that stuff. So Doug, hopefully, I covered everything. If you anything you want to add, please go ahead. Doug: More or less, you covered all the stuff that makes me look good. So we'll just skip all the other stuff. Allen: Yeah, I didn't want to tell all your dirty secrets. Doug: It's good to see you again, Allen. And thank you so much for having me here on the call. I'm really looking forward to sharing everything I can to educate people help you out. Allen: Yeah, I appreciate it. Appreciate it. Thank you for having us. So tell us what are you doing at Hawthorne? Doug: Oh, my gosh, well, I work all the time, which was so funny, because when you and I met, I was like a lifestyle guy. But yeah, for those considering starting up a private equity firm, just know that it will consume you. We buy and sell land outside of Houston, Texas. And so we're buying about a million dollars a month worth of land, sometimes more. And we're selling maybe $2 million a month worth of land, it really just depends on the month. But that requires a lot of people and a lot of emails, a lot of phone calls, a lot of Excel spreadsheets, there's just a lot going on, there's 20 or 30 of us that make all of this happen. So there's always something kind of vying for my attention as it pertains to mining selling land and raising people's money and investing that money properly. Allen: Yep. And so one of the things I do want to point out that Doug, you are doing this for yourself before you started the fund? Doug: Yes, that's right. So not only that, I have my house deals calm going on, I was buying and selling houses, I was selling those on owner financing. And then my business partner and I switched over to land in 2016 started buying that and selling on owner financing. And it was just, it was very profitable, requiring a lot of my capital. And sometimes that capital would take a year and a half or two years to come back. And I was wanting to do more deals as opposed to just sit on sidelines, right and wait for money to come back. So that's when I started the fund around 2018 or so started taking other people's money on as well. Allen: Okay, so you had one iteration, and then now you're in the second iteration, right? Or the second fund?  Doug: Yes, there's the first time that was an equity fund. And then we formed a debt fund, I guess a few weeks ago at this point, maybe a month or two ago and took on 5 or $6 million into that second fund. We've taken out about the same amount into the first one, but there's, they're structured differently, but they The end result is pretty similar for the investors and for us. Allen: So can you give us a difference between debt versus private equity?  Doug: Yeah, sure so that's one thing you said we're gonna talk about on the call is like, what would you want to look for if you're looking at investing in a private equity fund, and the majority of those funds out there are equity funds, and so that means that they're probably buying one or more assets like multi multifamily apartment complex. For example, and they are going to leverage up with maybe 75 or 80% bank money. So that's debt. And then you as an investor, you're a limited partner in these deals. So you're now you're the equity portion, the 25% equity, and whatever it appreciates, you know, force appreciation or just natural appreciation over time, you benefit from that. But that can be a little bit risky. If there's a downturn in the market, or the property's not managed properly, because equity holders can get wiped out, or at least have a lot of their money, kind of like, you know, wiped away. So a debt fund is when you invest in a fund, and that fund becomes the lender against something. So they are now in the bank's position in that first example. So let's say you, Allen, or your friend is wanting to buy a house for $100,000. And you lend him $50,000. Well, he totally mismanaged the project, and you have to foreclose on him, he's not paying you, well, you're gonna become the owner, you're foreclosing become the owner of that house and be able to resell it on the open market, and, and almost certainly recuperate your $50,000, because the house would sell is worth more than that. So that's kind of like a simple way to explain the difference between an equity and a debt fund. Allen: Okay, so now on the first one, the equity fund, you said that they go out and they borrow 75% of it. And they in the investment funds are 25%? Doug: I think there's a fairly typical kind of split, right, equity funds. There are some equity funds that don't take on debt, but the majority do, and that's why they're able to pay out at, well, sometimes the ends up being maybe 15%, internal rate of return over time. But there's, you know, there's some risks, there's some negatives, those are projections, you never quite know how it's going to shake out. Yeah. And your money would be locked up for usually about three, five or seven years, depending on the fund. Okay. And what if you wanted to get out sooner than that? What would you Is there any recourse?   For most funds, you can't. Allen: No, just you can't give it to somebody else, or they won't help you facilitate it change or.. Doug: It might help you, but they're not obligated to do so. The latest fund that we set up, there was finalized one or two months ago, you can get it out. It's an evergreen fund, it is a lot more liquid. So that's one of the advantages of it. Allen: Okay, so now you said yours is a debt fund, right, then and so you are using the funds money to go out and buy the land? Doug: Yeah, so let's say like, let's say we're about to buy some land, and it's gonna cost a million dollars, we're able to borrow from the fund and the fund be a lender on that deal. So my entity that I own - Hawthorne land LLC will borrow. And it's all at the courthouse. It's documented from Hawthorne Income Fund, LLC, which is where all the investors are as members. Allen: Okay, so, okay, so basically, you created your own bank? Doug: Yeah. Here's the deal. Most banks, they do not like to lend on anything that is slightly outside of this cookie cutter box. And what we're doing buying raw land outside of the city, subdividing it and proving it and selling on honor on owner financing there, they've never heard of that most of them. And they're like, we don't know which box to check here on this form. So maybe you can go talk to this or that banker, but we did find bankers, and we saw bankers that will mind on it, but they're a huge pain to deal with. They take weeks to process alone. And there's all these requirements. It's just very, very bureaucratic, so much red tape. So yes, we created our own bank.  Allen: Okay so basically, you borrow the money from the fund, and then the fund gets a set percentage. Doug: Yes, it doesn't get any of the profits or anything. No, it's just the lender. It's very clean. So it's kind of like, it's kind of like a lot of people all they know is about investing in some sort of index fund. And then maybe they'll put some of their money in bonds. And so this is like a lot of people that invest with us there. They're familiar with other strategies, like they might invest in other private equity funds that are a little riskier and maybe they're an equity fund, and they will treat us as if we're like, the bonds. So we're the lower stable like steady investment that they feel like if all the crap hits the fan that we're standing Allen: And so say you're paying 10% and that's paid out every month Doug: It's every month or people can check a box and have it automatically reinvested in compound. Allen: Awesome, sweet. Okay, yeah, cuz I know the first time we had it, we had a, that wasn't a possibility. So actually into our investors who wanted that. Yeah. So you're actually growing and learning at the same time. So that's awesome. Doug: Yes. Allen: Awesome. So who is able to invest in your fund anybody or accredited or how's that work? Doug: Accredited investors, and the minimum is 100,000. So who knows? Maybe 95% or more of American population can invest unfortunately. But those who can enjoy it. Allen: So now accredited, that means what 200, I think it's 200. Doug: If you're an individual, you need to be making 200,000 a year or more if it's a married couple 300 or you need to have a net worth of a million dollars, not counting the equity in your house that you're living in, Allen: Okay. And the minimum to put in is 100. And there's like you said, there's no tie up phase. So somebody come in, and then if they need it six months down the road, they'd be like, hey, I need to get out.  Doug: That's correct. So we have provisions that if anybody's trying to get their money back at the same time, there's a slow process of giving it to everybody. But in general, people get their money back fairly quickly, if they need it. We've not even had our first requests yet, everybody, they're putting their money with us, because they want it to be with us not because they want to pull it, pull it out. But it would take a few days to, who knows a week or two to get someone's money back to them on a typical scenario. Allen: Right. And I mean, this is real estate. So people understand that this is not liquid, you know, most times you go buy a house, it's going to take you two months to sell it anyway. This is putting it in a fund that's invested in real estate. So that when if they need to, it takes time. So.. Doug: Yes, but with a structure, it is pretty liquid. Allen: Okay. Okay. Doug: Like it could be the next day, we get their money back to them, but I cannot go. Allen: So, I mean, I wanted to go over some of the reasons for our listeners, why, you know, why I invested in Doug in the first place. And, you know, this was one of the first investments that I actually made in a fund. And, you know, he came to me and said, hey, look, I've been doing this, and I'm starting a fund. And if you'd like to invest, you know, go ahead, these are the parameters, and this is how much we're gonna pay out. And there's risk involved. Of course, there's risk involved all assets, and all investing and trading and whatnot. Doug: My attorney made me say that. Allen: Oh, yeah, there is. So you know, you don't want to have somebody come in and be like, Oh, man, I'm gonna get rich. And then, you know, it doesn't happen. Doug: We do sell for about double what we buy for. So it's just like, with the margins like that, it's kind of hard to mess up. Allen: So I came up with some criteria, I was like, Alright, so number one, you know, who is actually doing or leading this fund, righ? And in this case, it was Doug. And I've known Doug for 10 years, and those of you guys know him, you don't know this, and you can't tell because he, you know, he looks like a really nice guy and everything on the in the video. That guy is I mean, he's a stickler, he, I mean, I only know this because I've known him for so long. But he tracks his net worth on a regular basis, he accounts for every single penny, in his business man, every single point 001% he knows what's happening and where it's going. And this guy is meticulous on his numbers. And he was not somebody that plays loose and fast, you know, he's got every dotted eye, every T is crossed. And so that was really something that gave me a lot of confidence. Like, you know, this guy, he knows what he's talking about. And he's been doing it on his own for a while. And the numbers just make sense. And so, you know, a lot of times people get attracted to these investments, the only thing they know about is Oh, I can make 10%, I can make 50%, I can make 25% in maybe some cases where, you know, it's, it's, it's more of a scam than anything else. There was like a lot of people investing in this crypto stuff. You know, there are crypto funds that I've seen that are like, oh, we'll pay you 30% a month, a month. Wow. And so you get money for a month or two, and then it folds and it goes out of business because it was a big Ponzi scheme. But in this case, you know, I knew Doug, and I trusted him. And that's what one of the things that led me to it. The other thing was, you know, his experience was there. And then the second part was, does the investment makes sense, is like, What is he doing? Or what is the investment. And in this case, it was something I had never heard about, it was pretty unique, where he's buying hundreds of acres of land, and then he's subdividing them into smaller pieces. And then when you subdivide it, and you smell a smaller piece, you get to sell it for a lot more money. So I think some of the numbers were you were buying it for four or $5 a square foot, selling it for $10-$12 a square foot originally. And like you said, it's pretty hard to go wrong with those kind of numbers. This was not like a apartment complex in some other country that we're going to Airbnb it and hopefully people want to go there and stay there. And maybe maybe it's run properly. This is something that he was already doing. The third thing was, what is my risk? You know, I'm going to put my money into this thing. I want to own that land. As an investor, what's my risk? And I was looking at, I think, well, this is raw land. It's been there for hundreds of years, it's not going to go anywhere. If it's not going to burn down, it's not going to go out of business. You know, he can't take it and run away with it. The only thing that might happen is it doesn't sell, you know, he'll buy it, it doesn't sell it'll sit there and maybe 5-10 years from now we'll sell it. To me that was like the only risk is like if the lead doesn't fill. It's just gonna sit there. No, I don't get my return but leaves my money is still safe. And so all those aspects, I was like alright, let's go. Let's do it, you know, and so that's why I feel comfortable. And those are the three aspects, I would look for investing in any other fund. Is there anything, Doug that you want to add? Like, you know, what are the things people should look for when there's questions I should ask? Doug: I can go into that a little bit. So one of the main problems with a lot of private equity funds that they have this projected internal rate of return. And the majority of funds do not meet their projection, really don't say like 15 to 20%, or whatever, but you can, but here's, here's what you do. So that'll be based on a certain amount of appreciation of whatever asset they're holding, you like reduce that appreciation by just .5% per year or something, and that projection all goes to crap. And the reason that it's so effective is that there is some debt ahead of you. And so you're just dealing with that little thin equity margin. So you play with that a little bit and that's a high percentage of your potential return that can be taken away from you. So that's kind of like the main problem. But yes, I do invest in other funds. And you know, private equity funds can be a good way to invest your money, right? Probably just a mix of right, different things like that. You could be doing Options Trading, like maybe you've got some like long term, like buying hopes, maybe you've got one or 2% of your money in crypto, whatever. But it can certainly be part of your strategy. So that's like the main problem I see with certain private equity funds, the less common one is that they're a scam. You'll see that maybe more like if there's like a crypto fund, okay, maybe like that could kind of like maybe be a scam. Oil and gas is kind of notorious for some guys that come and go with a little scam. They're gonna go drill some wells here and there on the wells and of dry or maybe they run off with your money, but pretty notorious. But for the most part, people running private equity funds do not want to go to prison. Like they're not super incentivized to run a scam. But I'm more than happy to tell you about a story where I was scammed recently in a private equity fund. Allen: No way. Doug: Yeah, I mean, if you want me to go into it. Allen: Yeah, yeah let's go. I'm sure people will be excited to hear about that. How the Mr. Smart Guy got scammed.  Doug: Yeah, that's crazy. Well, looking back, I can see like, now I can see how the scam and where I went wrong. So like I said, I like to kind of diversify a little bit of my money away from these land deals, not because I'm worried about the land deals, but it is nice to dabble in other stuff. I think we're a bunch of like business people, entrepreneurs on this call, right? So like, when somebody comes to us with something, it seems like "Oh, just plop 100 grand, or whatever it is, and your fund, and you're gonna pay me. Sounds great". So there was this guy, I was at this competition where veterans were pitching their business ideas, and we're all investing in some of their businesses. And there was a guy in the audience, and he actually ran a private equity firm himself, which he was on his maybe 6th fund, and each fund was like only a year. So that's kind of a shorter duration than his normal. So that was a little bit atypical from the beginning. And then his first fund got a return of 63% in a year. And so it's like, of course, like, my eyes lit up. “Oh, my God. Wow, that's awesome”. Like, well, what about your second one? Oh, that was 45%. What about these other ones? And and it was I talked to one of the person who had invested with him, and they were, like, fairly happy at the time. And so I went out and I.. Allen: What was he doing? Doug: Yeah, that's a good question. Well, I'll tell you what he said he was doing. He said that he and his team are going out there and buying mineral rights from individuals and then aggregating those, and selling them to companies that were looking to buy larger chunks of minerals into like, they like direct mail and stuff. So that like, you know, old Sue, she's like eight years old, and heritage minerals, she didn't even know about it. And she gets a little direct mail piece from his company saying that they'll buy her minerals, I'm sure at a discount. doing that for a lot of people aggregating them and then selling them in a package. So it kind of made sense, you know, aggregate and sell for a higher price. And so but here's the deal, I'm not an oil and gas guy. And so I was not able to properly vet the investment. I was just sort of going off these other investors seeing kind of happy to seems legit. I went out to his office, and I met with him and his staff out there. He's got like, all these people with firm handshakes and strong like backslaps, you know, like, and I'm just like, maybe a team of 15 or 20 people there are a lot of them were rice, MBA, Rice University MBA graduates, and it just seemed, it seemed kind of legit, you know, the, and here's the deal. They're all almost all veterans. It was a veteran owned and operated business. So like, wow, you go in there. And there's like all these like, swords on the walls and stuff like, you know, and flags. And just like, this guy seemed like Miss Captain America. Like, I was like, you know, 15 years ago, I was running an internet business and this guy was out there like killing terrorists or something. It's like, okay, I was like really looking up to this guy and a lot of other people were too and so over time, he took on maybe 60 million from people over the course of five years or something like that. And ultimately, we found out through an email from him like two months ago that he had squandered almost all of our money and that he was basically using fun money to pay a staff which you cannot you cannot do that the fund money has this very designated purpose, which is to invest in whatever asset you're investing in and had just basically raped and pillaged the the bank account for the fund. And it's very hard for like 30 or $60 million, because I think ultimately the losses were 30 million. But for me, it was like, almost all of my money. The early like first two funds, they mostly got their money back. But beyond that it was it was scam time. Allen: Oh, wow Doug: And so yeah, so like he was holding this managing the funds. And we still don't know if he ran off with some of them on his own. Or if he was just trying to pay his employees and save his company and make desperate business moves to sort of save things or salvage things. And the oil and gas has been going downhill. It's been in a, I guess, a trough over the last year or two. Maybe it's doing better lately? I think it is. But that really hit him. Just, I guess maybe when the pandemic was starting and maybe..  Allen: Yeah it was, you know, oil went in the toilet pretty much. Doug: Yeah. So I kind of like, we're like, he'll go to prison, which I don't know why in the heck, you'd want to do something that would lead him to prison. That's crazy. Like any sane private equity fund manager, their main goal is not to go to prison. So then what do you? How do you not go to prison? You don't do anything illegal? Yeah. Tell that to made off? Yeah, it's crazy. So anyway, so but looking back, I've got some insights as to why I kind of got scammed there. I understand it more now. Allen: Okay, tell us tell us. Doug: Basically, if anybody's really like his disguise themselves, it's like a Veteran Business or Christian business or something like that. That's usually a little bit of a red flag, because they're trying to make themselves seem like a very reputable, or moral and principled, and all that, it's like an overreach. Allen: And they're taking credibility from another organization kind of thing. You know, they're tying themselves to something else. Doug: Yeah. So that's one. I mean, there's many things that came together, when you go on his website, which are websites probably even not even there anymore. A lot of his team members, they had various positions, but their background on LinkedIn, and all ends up being sales. Like they were all in sales before, like the Geologists was in sales. So that was kind of a red flag. He had a huge overhead, like, he's, obviously all these MBAs, I was like, maybe this is a red flag, but I wasn't so sure. And here's what I messed up doing too, is like, I know, his professor at Rice, or that was his professor. He is one of our fellow members. And I could have asked that guy because I asked him later and he said, “You didn't know that was a scam? It was pretty obvious”. He came in here. And every time they were raising money for something, he was dropping $20-$30,000 at a time, everybody else was dropping, maybe 1000s. So I thought, well, he's probably just dropping all the investors money. You see what I'm saying? I was like "Oh I got it". And he was, uh, yeah, he seems like he's maybe trying to compensate for something, make himself look a little bit better than he is. And then I got to know another investor in the oil and gas business later. He's like, "Oh, we've known that was a scam for the last 12 months", just the types of returns he's been paying out are not feasible in this industry. It doesn't make any sense. Allen: Oh wow. Doug: And so basically, I mess up by not asking those two guys before I invested, I just asked that the the satisfied investor that I knew. And actually when I asked him right before I invested, he said he was less satisfied with the fund, and that he would not recommend it. But I went against his advice, because he could not give me a firm reason as to why I should not invest. It was more like a gut feel that he had. My own brother who ended up investing had a negative gut feel about it, too. So basically, in the future, if I get some of these red or yellow flags, I'm just gonna sit on the sidelines, and I'm gonna sit out of that deal. Another problem is like he was, I'm 40 now and he was my same age. And so like, I'm thinking, Okay, this is a guy, like, I've had, like, 20 years of business experience at and so but I'm not sitting across from another guy with that amount of experience, even though it's just it kind of felt like it because he was in the military 13 or 15 years. And so that's life experience, for sure. But like, as far as like business, this guy was green. I'm throwing a bunch of money at this guy that's green and so as everybody else so that's a red flag especially in oil and gas. I think they need to be in the industry for like decades because that's that can it's very tricky, complicated industry and, and very volatile. And a lot of fortunes have been made and loss. I don't want the guy that's like new to the industry. Right? Yeah. So yeah. And also I messed up. I should not necessarily be investing in stuff that I don't understand very well like oil and gas. Unless I'm willing to put the time into that. So the outrageous returns were red flag. Anybody saying we're gonna get you 60 something or he didn't guarantee that but right. I don't know. It's just like, that's not super realistic. I mean, it can be done, I guess. But red flag.  Allen: Yeah, I mean, our traders they can get it but We don't run a fun doing that, you know, they can do it on their own. They hear the trades, he learned how to do it and go for it and do it. And some markets, you do it in some markets, you don't in some markets you lose. But when you have a fund, you obviously have all these expenses, like you said, you know, the staff and the work involved and all that information, all the lawyers that you paid, I remember you telling me, you know how much you paid to the lawyers to make all the documents and the accounting and the photos and all the auditing. And that's done on a regular basis and all that stuff. Yeah. So it takes a lot of money to put this stuff together and actually run it. Doug: Yeah, totally. Oh, here's the company. Here's a couple more things about him. Like, he didn't let his investors mix and mingle. So I never really met any other investors besides that one guy like, there's other guys that run funds, they'll like even sometimes do lunches and dinners or like a group events for the investors because they have nothing to hide, let the investors check. Allen: This, I mean, if you're legit, if you're legit, you want that, you know, you want the happy people to mix with the new people. So the new people are like, Oh, yeah, are you doing it? They're like, Yeah, I do. It is great. You want that to happen if you're legit. Doug: Yes, totally. And we never got any documentation like showing which minerals we owned and what was sold. Like, I want to see like legitimate notarized documents, stuff that was filed somewhere like, so that's the problem with some funds, too, is like they're not obligated to show you all that stuff. Like, who regulates all this stuff? sec. sec. That's not I was thinking that may see that maybe needs to be something that maybe at some point becomes regulated. I hate to like, I don't I'm not like a fan of more regulation. That might be actually kind of handy. You know, like, it's crazy like the if you want to be a scammer with a private equity fund, you can. It does not end well, though. So you're not incentivized in that. That's when I shocking to some people would want to do it. You go to freakin jail. Allen: Yeah, Oh, I mean, you take the money and run to another country and live in it. Doug: There's like international police now. They'll get you anywhere. Allen: You can't go to like some island that doesn't have extradition or something? Doug: You'll be like the only white guy or whatever. Yeah.  Allen: Head on down to Cuba and you'll be the king. Doug: It baffles me that anybody would want to do what he did. But I again, I don't think that's the norm. I asked a couple of attorneys. I said, How often do you see this? And they said not very often? Allen: No, because I mean, I know with your stuff ever since we'd invested with you. It's like, we get regular emails, we get regular update, since like hey this, look, we bought this land and hey, we bought this property. And here's the address. And here's the photo. And and before we before we even invested, I mean, you took us on a tour, like, you know,  Doug: Yeah, we were actually on the land. Allen: Yeah, we saw the land we saw where it was subdivided. We saw, you know, people that were there, you know, that purchased other plots already. And they were building stuff. So I mean, it was everything was on the up and up, and it's still on the open up still, you know, if you want access, you call Doug up, and he'll explain everything. And if you want to go see it, he'll give you all the details and you go take a look and check the deeds are whatever you want to do. Doug: Yeah we'll send our statements or deeds, whatever. Also, some people if they are hesitant about investing in a fund, like for us, we're willing to sell people the notes that we generate. So like, they can get about a 10% return if they just own the notes, but it's a little bit more volatile. Because every now and then you might have a borrower that defaults, and you have to foreclose and then resell, so like investing the fun is just simpler. But if you're one of those people that just like I don't trust like somebody else having control over my money, there's other ways to get the same return with what we've got going on. That's why we changed our name from Hawthorne funds, the Hawthorne capital, because we sell notes, and you can lend against notes or you can invest in the fund, the fund is just the easiest. Awesome, cool, cool. How do people find out about you or talk to you about this? shoot me an email at Doug@HawthorneCapital.com That's D-O-U-G Doug@HawthorneCapital.com Allen: Alright, I'll put that in the show notes as well. And you know, one of the questions that I got after I did that episode 94 was like, you know, if you're making so much money in the stock market in an options, why are you investing in real estate or something else. And right now, at least in this market in this economy that we've had, you know, the stock market is doing amazing, it's doing great. I mean, this year, not so much. It's kind of, you know, going up a little bit last year was really good. But still as Options Traders, were making a killing. And I see my investments in my accounts in there, you know, just increasing and getting bigger and bigger and bigger. We're at the point now where I mean, it's got to end sometime, you know, and it's time for if you have a bunch of gains in your accounts, it's time to be diversified, especially with you know what they're saying with inflation coming down the road that's gonna be coming pretty hard. Land is a good thing to invest in when you have inflation because you can automatically just raise the price. Things lost more when you have inflation so. Doug: Well for us you know what the way that's affected is land has gone up in value. Big time over the last year, which a lot of us didn't see coming. We thought just you know, in a recession with our heading into a big recession, that would just decrease the value of a lot of stuff. We used to, we used to buy land for about four, or $5,000 per acre. And now we're buying it for eight to $10,000 per acre. Wow, no, we sell it for a lot more to so we're kind of in the flipping game we buy. And then a few months later, or sometimes it's maybe a year, we sell the little pieces because we buy a bunch and we chop it up a little pieces. So we'll sell those, but then we sell them on owner financing. So we collect on my income income stream over about 15 years. But we've seen that the market moving inland for sure. Allen: So who's buying these little pieces from you? Doug: Blue collar individuals who live in the city and want to be able to go out to the country on the weekends and enjoy time with their family and their dogs. And maybe they want some get some animals out there and maybe have a little swimming pool or something like that. They want to be on the country and there was already such a demand for that pre-pandemic, but it just exploded here with the pandemic. But our model works like pre pandemic during pandemic post. It doesn't really matter for us. It just, it changes some of the numbers a little bit like if we have to buy for more than we sell for more. Right, the demand is there. And we just we do a lot of advertising on Facebook to sell our ranchettes. And we also are on MLS and all these other places. But with Facebook ads, we're able to we spend about $2 per lead, and we're able to ramp that budget up or down and get as many ranchette buyers as we want. So it's just a matter of the sales team handling all those leads. Allen: Really? Doug: That was that was true before the pandemic, we didn't need the pandemic to make our business work. Allen: And what about the land, finding the land? Doug: We look on the MLS, there's a website called lands of Texas, there's one of those for just about every state. So we look at a bunch of land, and we try to get a deal on when we can but usually maybe the best we can do is about a 10% discount. No, we're looking for land that has access to roads on a couple of sides that we can chop it up into where each little ranchette it will have access to a road. So normally we'll buy one or 200 acres at a time, for example. And these are all over different parts. It's not like one all together, it's the subdivision. And yeah, so then we'll chop it up. And we need to give each of those little pieces access to road because it costs a lot of money to build roads. And that would make our deals a lot less profitable. If we had to do that. Allen: Ah, I see. So you buy the properties that already have roads, and you add the utilities or? Doug: Yes, we bring in we'll put in a water well, that costs about $6,000, maybe seven, and they will put in fencing usually cost about 5000 put in a gate for maybe another 1000 culvert driveway. Every now and then a pond that we bring we bring in power can cost one or 2000 per ranchette. So like the typical like 10 acre ranchette, we will have bought for about $80,000. And we will put about 20,000 and improvements into it. So now we're in it for 100. And they will sell it for maybe 180. Allen: Hmm, okay. Doug: And the fund lens as we do these things, it lands on the land, and then it lands on the note that we generate. So that's kind of the margins we're dealing with lately actually are probably selling for more than 180. Actually on that scenario. Allen: And how long do you think this will last? This will run? Doug: I don't see how it would end. Allen:There's plenty of land out there? Doug: Yeah, there's plenty land, plenty of buyers. I've got a lot of investors investing with us. And once a.. Allen: So you're not closed or you're not you're not full, you're still taking investors.. Doug: Okay yeah, that's good question. Fund to opens and closes as needed as so we took on about five or 6 million last month. And we close it because we have to deploy capital for new purchases, because as soon as we take it on, we have to start paying our investors. So we're not going to take on like 10 million when we can only deploy five. So as we're about to buy more land, so we'll open it up, temporarily take all that money and then close it. And we'll just accept a certain amount of money, whatever we need at that time, whether that's 2 million, 5 million, whatever it is, then we'll close it. Allen: So you have basically like a waiting list. Doug: Yes. Allen: Awesome. Cool. Cool. Cool. All right. Okay, I think we've covered everything I had all my questions. Is there anything else that you wanted to share anything else our listeners and our watchers need to know before they go out and invest funds? Because there's a lot of funds on now that you know, with the crowdfunding and all that stuff? What do you think about that? Doug: I think some of the inferior funds are going that route because if you've got a solid fund, you really pull a lot from your own network. And so you don't have to go like I don't have to go like list my fund on some sort of like fundrise or realty mogul or whatever. Because I get all my money just from my like word of mouth. Everyone just talks right. And that's how most like well operated funds are because they will take a cut of whatever you raise and so you get sometimes like slightly newer operators or they don't have. They don't have a network, or maybe there's not as good of word of mouth or something. So I'm not like a fan necessarily of investing in that kind of stuff. There is a cool website that came out called Vera Vest. It's fairly new, and they research, they do this sort of a background check on certain private equity funds. And so you can kind of go and make sure that they're, you can ever be fully sure, right, but make sure they're probably not a scam. But those operators are paying very best a fee. I don't know if it's like a monthly fee or what, for them to be like gold verified, or whatever it is on that website. And then so if they are, they're showing up high on that website, and they get a lot of new business from investors, or even a new investor capital. I say it's kind of like the BBB, you know, the Better Business Bureau where you have to pay them for drinking. To get the young people, people still believe in it. They're like, Oh, well, I mean, not too much anymore. I don't hear about it anymore. But people before were like, Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna go check the BBB. I'm like, okay, but, you know, if we pay them, they'll say good stuff about us. That's kind of on my other business My House Deals with, we had had 42,000 something paying subscribers at the time, and we had five complaints in the BBB, that's five out of like, 42,000 something. And these are people that had never even raised the issue with us. First, they just went straight to BBB, because they wanted to refund or whatever. And the BBB gave us a D or F rating. And yeah, we went in there. And they basically said that we were like, poorly operating our company, I said, five, I'd like for you to say here's our list, I printed out like this huge stack, here's all of our customers, by people complained. And they said that basically, we need to pay them some more money. And then we would be like A-Rated. That's like, this is a racket. It is a racket! Allen: It is, it is. Doug: So luckily, nowadays, people can just look at Google Reviews. And those can be manipulated a little bit too. Like if the company is like sending all their customers to leave reviews or.. Allen: For something free. Like they're giving away a free service or something. Doug: Yes, they do that on Amazon too. Like.. Allen: Oh, Amazon full of fake reviews. I mean, they buy the reviews, they don't even give you know, it's like they'll there are companies out there you can hire and they'll just go out and give you like, Yo you want 20 fake reviews, okay, pay us. And we'll go and our people will go and, you know, they have all these fake accounts and everything. And they just yeah, Amazon. I don't I don't trust anything on Amazon like I have. It's super hard to know if the reviews are good. Doug: Yeah, they need to do some coding to kind of look for that. But there are certain plugins you can install. Like if you use Chrome as your browser, like a fake spotter review, and they'll analyze, see whether that they think that Amazon review is legit or fake, and I'll give it they'll give it a rating. That's pretty cool. Allen: Interesting. Doug: Yeah, at least we have that we don't have to depend on the BBB anymore. Allen: Yeah.Yep. Cool. All right, Doug, I appreciate everything you've shared with us. Again, Doug's email is Doug@HawthorneCapital.com Doug: ..or email my assistant Ellen@HawthorneCapital.com. Allen: Okay. Doug: We'll put you on the email list. So like maybe every, every four, six weeks or so you'll get an update that shows what we're doing. So if you even if you're not looking to invest now, it's fine. Like maybe three years from now, you've been getting our updates, and you've been getting educated and seeing what we do. Then if you felt like investing you could. Allen: Yup and full disclosure, I am an investor. I was in the first fund and we were over the money into the second fund. But yeah, so you know if you're, if you're interested in getting into a fund, do your due diligence, please, you know, this is you turning over your money to someone else, hopefully, they have experienced hopefully, they have a track record and they know what they're doing. And they'd like, you know, most of them most of these funds are not scams, because they do take a bunch of money to put together and investment to start up and they have something to show for it. I think the bigger fear is, you know, if the investment goes south, you know, how much of your investment Can you lose? Can you lose all of it, etc? Doug: Yeah, that's gonna be case by case each fund is going to have a different risk reward profile. So you really got to look at that. Allen: Yeah, yeah. How would you know? Doug: Well, ideally, either you're in that industry kind of like sort of like or you have a friend who is okay, you people that you want to run it by people and really get to know the operator, maybe talk to a couple different people who run you know, similar types of funds if it's more it's pretty common as multifamily apartments. Of course there's some commercials there's some office buildings and stuff that has been beat the heck yeah, I was talking to somebody at the gym that he put a put a bunch of money in a fund that invested in hotels. He put in his money and right before the recession. He got hammered. Allen: Oh, boy. Yeah. So do they like do those funds, then they go out of business and then they everything gets foreclosed? Hmm. Doug: The lender forecloses on the fund because the fund has borrowed money. Allen: Okay, so what can the individual investors do and when that happens? Doug: They get whatever's left over after the bank gets paid. Allen: So they can't sue,they can't do anything? Doug: Well, if there was like fraud committed, yes, but a lot. Some of that there was no fraud. It was just gonna be a poor investment. Allen: Oh okay, yeah if you guys do your due diligence. Make sure you know. Alright, Doug I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. We're gonna put this up to everybody and you know, at least my recommendation is that Doug is a stand-up on his guy, most of the time and again, I've known him for years so yeah. Thanks Doug again and talk to you soon! Doug: Thanks Allen! Allen: Alrighty, bye bye Doug: Alright, bye

I've often described a career in IT as "long stretches of soul-crushing depression, punctuated by brief moments of manic euphoria, which are inevitably followed by yet another long stretch of soul-crushing depression". How do we, as IT professionals, remember to (as the old song goes) "accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, don't mess with Mister In-Between.” In this next episode, Doug and Leon explore how our religious/moral/ethical POV offers ways to help keep us positive in our work lives; and how our tech experiences tell us when we hit a rocky stretch of road in our faith journey. Listen or read the transcript below. Intro (00:01): [Music] Leon Adato (00:32): 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 Adato (00:53): I've often described a career in IT as long stretches of soul crushing depression, punctuated by brief moments of manic euphoria, which are inevitably followed by yet another long stretch of soul crushing depression. How do we, as IT professionals remember to, as the old song goes, accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative latch on to the affirmative and don't mess with Mister in-between I'm Leon Adato. And the other voice that you're going to hear on this episode is my longtime friend and partner in podcasting crime, Doug Johnson. Doug Johnson (01:24): Hey, how you doing? Leon Adato (01:26): I'm doing okay. Um, and before we kick off this topic, which I am really excited, I'm celebrating the chance that we have the fact that we have a chance to get to this. Um, I want to do some shameless self promotion. So Doug, bup bupa! Yes, exactly. Again, celebrate. So Doug, why don't you kick it off? Who are you? Where can people find you? If they want to know more about Doug Johnson (01:48): I'm Doug Johnson. I am the chief technical officer for a company called wave RFID, which is my side gig, actually becoming a real company. We hired our first employee. Oh my gosh. Leon Adato (02:00): Celebrate! Doug Johnson (02:00): I'm going to have to be an. Whee! Okay. Uh, I'm also a web developer for Southwestern health resources. My day job. Uh, you can reach me on Twitter's at Doug Johnson. That's D U G J O H N S O N because there are so many Doug Johnson's in the world. I had to drop the O, that's just the way it is. Uh, you can a website way by rfid.net. If you want to hear what we're doing and I'm an evangelical Christian, but not one of the crazy ones. Leon Adato (02:28): Got it. Okay. And, uh, just to close the circle, I am Leon Adato. I'm a head geek. Yes. That's actually my job title at SolarWinds, a company that has nothing to do with solar or wind. It's a monitoring software vendor, uh, based out of Austin, Texas, you can find me on the Twitters at Leon Adato. I haven't dropped any letters. It's all the way it sounds. My website is a Datto systems.com where I wax philosophical about things, both technical and religious. I identify as an Orthodox Jew and occasionally my rabbi even admits to knowing me too. Um, now if you're scribbling that stuff down, stop it, put your hands back on the wheel, pay attention to the road. Uh, we will have show notes out and all the things that we talk about, the links, even to the lyrics for accentuate, the positive are going to be in the show notes. You can find them there so you don't need to write them. All right. So I want to frame this topic before we get started, there was a tweet that came out as tweets do a little while ago from Anna the distracted gardener. She's actually taken it down. I think it created so much, uh, uh, traffic that she needed, muting wasn't enough. She deleted it, but, uh, it reads like this. My eight year old in the car today said, do you want me to throw the confetti in my pocket? Me; No, not in the car. What? Wait, why do you have confetti in your pocket? My eight year old. It's my emergency confetti. I carry it everywhere in case there's good news. So reading that just made me think, yeah, there, there are unexpected moments where we have to celebrate things. And what if we're not prepared? Now, perhaps carrying a bag of emergency confetti around in your pocket is a little extreme, but yes, I actually do now have a bag of emergency confetti in my pocket. Doug Johnson (04:17): I may have to do this. Leon Adato (04:20): I have it, I can't wait till we start traveling because going through TSA is going to be a really interesting conversation. Doug Johnson (04:26): That will be interesting. Leon Adato (04:28): sir. What is this? What is it? It's my emergency. Confetti. Your, your what? Doug Johnson (04:34): Oh, man. Leon Adato (04:36): Do you want to keep it? Yeah, I kind of do like I get, I'm just, I'm waiting, right? It's either going to go wonderfully gloriously fun, or it's going to be the reason why someone has to post bail for me. Doug Johnson (04:46): Exactly. They're going to smile or I'm going to have to come down to the airport. Leon Adato (04:49): It's going to be a cavity search. It's going to be something like that. Right? So, uh, Doug Johnson (04:54): Ooh! You need to eat confetti before you go that way. Leon Adato (04:56): Oh man. No, no, no, no, no. Okay. This took a weird left turn. Um, so there was, that was part of it. The other part, I was listening to an episode on NPR. And once again, we're going to have links to the episode in our show notes, um, where they interviewed Lee Horton, how he and his brother, uh, were released from prison after 25 years, uh, having been wrongly accused. And he had said some really amazing things about just the experience that he had being out of prison and having just typical experiences day to day. And so we're going to play those clips. Now, Lee Horton (05:36): When we got out, just to tell you this story, we went to the DMV a couple days later to get our license back. And me, my brother and some and another man, man, who was committed, we stood in line for two and a half hours. And we heard all the stories that everybody tells us the bad things about the DMV we had the most beautiful and all the people were looking at us cause we were smiling and we were laughing and they couldn't understand why we were so happy. And it just was that, just being in that line was a beautiful thing. It was a wonderful thing. I mean, I was in awe of everything around me. It's like my, my mind was just heightened to every small nuance and having an onion just to cook your food with becomes priceless, just having a stove and to be able to just look out of a window, just to walk down the street and just inhale the fresh air, just to see people interacting. We, I didn't see children for years, no children. And then I see a little boy running down the street and, and it, and it woke something up in me, something that I don't know if it died or if it went to sleep. One of my morning ritual is every morning is I sent a message of good morning to every one of my contacts. And that's like 42 people, family members. I sent them good morning, good morning, good morning, have a nice day. And they're like, how long can I keep doing this? Leon Adato (07:16): And all of those things really got me thinking about the nature of joy and celebration. And, maybe that we overlook opportunities to celebrate that, that we might be, you know, we might be missing and, and we might be not, we might be worse off for it. So I wanted to talk about all of that. Um, that was really where the whole idea of this episode called emergency confetti came from. Um, so Doug, I wanna, I want to hear your thoughts about what needs to be celebrated when you celebrate, you know, all of those things. Doug Johnson (07:51): One of the big problems that I had when I saw this, I was like, I thought, Oh, what a cute little girl, that's so great. And of course I immediately thought about confetti out, glitter all over the inside of the car and all that kind of stuff. And the problem, and the problem is for me is that my, uh, general take on the universe tends to be that it's all gonna go bad. Um. Leon Adato (08:14): Right. Doug Johnson (08:15): Well, I mean, I do have history, but remember that, you know, I'm, I'm a tech, chief technology officer. I'm also a web developer with, uh, for the marketing department, which means I'm the only person in my department that has any tech chops. And so I, most of my job, my life is spent anticipating disaster. Um, you know, I mean, I get to create good things all the time, but, but the reality is I'm the one who has to figure out what's going to go wrong. That's what they hired me for. And so I'm always looking for something to go wrong. Years ago, I was a camp director at a, at a boys camp up in Canada, 25 years of this stuff. And I eventually had to stop doing it because I used to love it. And then I liked it less and less because I was spending my whole time trying to figure out what could go wrong. And when you've got a couple of hundred boys, a lot can go wrong, Leon Adato (09:08): Basically. Yeah. They're basically mistake generators. I mean, when the concept of chaos monkey came from somebody who was a director at a boys camp, somewhere in upstate Allegheny forest or something like it has to be. Doug Johnson (09:20): It doesn't. But the problem is over a period of time, when you really, after you've spent years doing this and you really are looking for people to really get in trouble, it really sucks the joy out of it for you. Leon Adato (09:33): Yes. Doug Johnson (09:33): And that's why I ultimately stopped doing it. But, you know, it's like things and things do go wrong. It's not like you're just being a nervous Nellie. It's like, things really do go wrong. I've got stories. Believe man. You know what, um. Leon Adato (09:47): When the story ends, when the story in the middle of this story says, and then we got the epi pen. Doug Johnson (09:52): Yes. Leon Adato (09:53): Like, you know. Doug Johnson (09:55): Bad things are gonna happen. You know, that the kid that the ADD kid that was sent to camp without his Ritalin, because his parents were hoping that it would help him straighten out. Leon Adato (10:04): Yes. Doug Johnson (10:04): What could go wrong? Leon Adato (10:05): Because Summer camp is also therapy. Exactly. Doug Johnson (10:08): Yeah. But, and they didn't tell us either. Leon Adato (10:11): No, no, why would they do that? Doug Johnson (10:13): They didn't want so, so here's the, Oh, nevermind. In any case. So. Leon Adato (10:17): That's how double blind studies are done. Doug Johnson (10:20): Exactly. Well, we were doubly blind and boy, we eventually got the information and it straightened out, but geez, some low wheezing. I mean, usually using us as an experiment was not all that great. And it wasn't good for him either, but you know, and there's, there's the whole thing, like, uh, in, in the world of programming, would you, would you rather have an optimistic programmer or a pessimist program? Leon Adato (10:41): I just, I'd never thought of it that way, but yeah. I really want, I want Abe Vigoda as a programmer. Like I really don't. Okay. I just dated myself. I know. Look it up. If you don't know who Abe Vigoda is. Doug Johnson (10:53): He's still alive too. Isn't he? Or did he finally, I think he's still alive. I didn't get, well, we'll let you look it up. All the talk. Okay. But basically what it comes down to is everybody sells the optimistic program because you make all these wonderful things happen. And I go, no, you want a pessimistic programmer? Cause he'll find the error. But he doesn't think that's the only one he'll keep on looking till he finds all the errors that he could. He'll still know that there's more. So if you want something to work, you don't want an optimistic person. You might want an optimistic architect, but you don't want an optimistic programmer. You know, it's like one of the reasons why I love QA engineers, uh, regular programmers, they're all like I can make that work, QA engineers. I can break that. Right. They're great. You know, and, being a dev, I love my, my QA guy is my safety net because he's gonna, he's gonna break my stuff. And I thank him every time he does. So, and everybody knows about demo gods, everything works perfectly. You do a demo and it blows up. Right Leon Adato (11:52): Right, right. Okay. So I got, I got to ask just as a side note. I mean, because again, there's, there's concept of, of, of celebration or at least giving thanks and things like that. For people who've never seen it at certain types of conferences, I'm thinking like Dev Ops Days specifically, there is an actual shrine off to the side of the stage where people give their talks and demos and people will routinely bring offerings and place them on the shrine. They're placing an offering to the demo. God, whether it's USB sticks or CD rom drive, I've seen people leave AOL CDs as like, you know, very, very retro kind of things. And I'm always as a, as a religious person, I'm a little conflicted because this is really on the, I mean, I get it. It's a joke. Right? I don't think that anybody really thinks that there are demo gods, but I just like the image of an Orthodox Jew on a stage with a shrine to the demo gods off to the side is always just a little like. Doug Johnson (12:51): It's on the edge. It's right there on the edge. It's like, I want one of those happy cats that raises their hand up and down all the time. But those are, those are like a shrine also. So you just, it's just, you know, you want to be careful. I, I am a, uh, I am a minister in the church of the flying spaghetti monster. I am, I am somewhat conflicted only because now the church and the flying spaghetti monster does not make you give up your main religion, but every now and then I'm like, I just wonder if I should pull out this card at church and see what the pastor has to say about it. Because I just found out that I actually, I could do weddings if I actually went and registered with my County, I could do weddings. Wouldn't that be weird with a pirate hat? Leon Adato (13:36): Okay. In any case. Okay. So, Doug Johnson (13:39): So in scrum retrospectives, right? I mean the whole point of scrimming retrospectives is you're supposed to get together and, you know, look back at the last two weeks and talk about everything that went well. And they all 99% of the time, they're always here what went wrong. It's always, it's rarely celebration. It's almost always let's fix what went wrong, no matter how good it was. So again, so my default is things are, I assume things are going to go badly. Leon Adato (14:10): Right? So I was thinking about this as you were talking about it. And, and the, the thing that came to mind was the character of Leonard snort, who in the Flash, uh, mythology on comic books is, uh, captain cold. And he was famous, at least on the TV show, the CW TV show of the flash. He would say, make the plan, execute the plan, expect the plan to go off the rails, throw away the plan. And I feel like this is what you're talking about is it's not that, you know, everything's going to go to hell and a handbasket, so why bother even trying like, no, you make a plan, but you also have a healthy dose of, you want to say cynicism, you want to say pessimism, but you have a healthy dose of whatever that is to know that things are not going to go as expected. Okay. But we're talking about a celebration. We're not talking about regret, which is a whole other episode that were going to get to. Doug Johnson (15:02): Oh yeah. But so the, the same, the same attitude though, can carry over into the spirit world. I mean, you know, it's like, so here I am, I'm a Christian. I know I should pray every day. I know I should be doing, I have really good intentions and yet I don't execute all that. Well, in fact, most Christians don't, um, you know, and Christianity is based on the fact that we're all have a sin nature so that we're, you know, even with Christ as our savior, we are constantly battling against this sin nature. Even though, you know, we, we have victory through Jesus and I can sing the song. The fact is we are still have the sin nature. And all you have to do is just look around and you can go and see the, all the leaders that are going. Uh, I mean, there's just a lot of stuff happening in the Christian world right now. Uh, that's just really down. It just shows that even the, the main guys who you thought had it all together, they don't either. And it just, you know, it just, it, it, it can be depressing. Leon Adato (16:03): Yeah, yeah, no, no. I can see that. And so, so obviously this is a, a big, um, deviation from, uh, Jewish thought where, uh, there isn't that original sin or sin nature that, um, the, the challenges that we face the, the idea of free will and the idea of, um, the challenges to ourselves are more like hurdles. They are more like, um, the, the, what we are on earth to do is to improve ourselves perfect ourselves. That does not mean that we reach perfection. It just means that we are continually trying to make ourselves better. And the only way that you do that is by facing challenges. And sometimes you're going to trip. Sometimes you're not going to make it. Um, and I think that feeds into the overarching concept that we're talking about today, about celebration, but it is one of those theological deviations between Judaism and Christianity is that, um, it isn't, it isn't written into the software that sin is the default setting. So, um, I can see that, but okay. I still want to get to like, where's the happy stuff? Where's, I got this, the confetti. I'm ready to go. Doug Johnson (17:12): Okay. Okay, good. Glitter, glitter, glitter. Okay, here we go. Work. Guess what things actually get accomplished? We actually make stuff. Are you ready for this one? This Friday? After several months of working through this whole thing, I took code live. And when I got up on Saturday morning, because it processes overnight, it didn't work. And when people went and checked it, they said it, it worked. So I didn't have to fix it because it worked. And I Leon Adato (17:47): Want to just emphasize for people might not have heard that you pushed to production on a Friday. Doug Johnson (17:52): Oh yeah. But I do that. I do that anyway, because I'm the, see, I'm the only one. So the, so the reality is I would I push on a Friday after hours because that gives me all of Saturday and Sunday to fix it. It's just me. I'm the only geek. Leon Adato (18:10): Okay. Doug Johnson (18:11): No, I, I know you never push on Friday. Leon Adato (18:13): No, I was going to say that Charity Majors, who's the CTO of honeycomb, honeycomb IO. And again, we'll have a link is a big proponent, you know, push, push any day. It doesn't get, why is Friday different than. Doug Johnson (18:25): Right. Leon Adato (18:26): Another day. If you're not comfortable pushing on a Friday, you shouldn't be comfortable pushing on a Tuesday either. Doug Johnson (18:30): True. Yeah. I never pushed code except for after hours because I've just, I've had enough things go wrong in my life that I want at least a few hours to fix it. When nobody's watching. Leon Adato (18:40): There we go, ok. Doug Johnson (18:40): So there you are. So, um, you know, but so it worked and, uh, wave RFID. We have happy clients. They love us. They think that the stuff that we've done for them is great, you know, and we're getting, Leon Adato (18:52): They pay you. Doug Johnson (18:52): And they pay us, right. They, they not only give us money, but they tell us they like us. I'll take as long as I get the first one. I'm okay. But boy, getting both of them is nice, you know, and sure. Uh, when I push code and things go, well, guess what? My coworkers are happy. They're like, thank you for making this happen. I'm going don't thank me. It's just my job. And they go, but I want to thank you. It's like, Oh, I'll fine. And then, Leon Adato (19:17): Because you are still a curmudgeon. Doug Johnson (19:20): I mean, I was just, yeah, they know that. And, and, and, and finally, you know, we get to, we have a chance to do good things. We just hired our first employee. This is the guy that we wanted him a few years ago. He screwed up, he went to prison for awhile. We just got him. We've gone through a lot of work to go ahead and be able to take care. But we're, you know, his wife keeps sending me emails, like, thank you for doing this for him. I'm like, he's going to make our job better. Believe me. It's like, you know, but you know, and so, yeah, it's more work because of the, you know, I had to put some guard rails in place on his computer use and some stuff like that. But the reality is he's happy. He's not, he was working as a janitor since he got out of jail. He's perfect. He's really happy to go back to working with, uh, computer code and stuff. So that works out and, and, you know, in the church realm, guess what people really are trying to be better. I mean, just as you said, you know, most people aren't sitting there going, Oh, I'm sinning I might as well just keep on sinning. Some do. I mean, you know, but, Leon Adato (20:18): Right. Doug Johnson (20:18): But, but most Christians really do want to improve and if they can stop beating themselves up, then they can go ahead and, and do that. Leon Adato (20:27): And do it even faster. Right. Doug Johnson (20:28): Right. And the nice thing is that in the bounds of all that stuff, there's work, that people do that to help other people, the youth group was raising money, so they could all go to camp. Right. So they came to buy every year. Well, it's supposed to be twice a year, but they come, you can hire them for 4 hours. They've never done two. So this year I hired two teams for 4 hours, 8 hours of kids coming here so that my yard, my garden could be set. And as I'm sitting there telling them how much this, cause my, my strength and that is not what it used to be. I, I, I can't do. And I just telling them how, how great it is that they're coming to do this for me so that I can do this gardening, which I, I love gardening. I mean, I got a fan test and, but I couldn't do it if they didn't come. So they get a blessing and I get a blessing and they get money and I get to garden. And it just, every time I told these crews what they were doing for me, I would end up, you know, tears coming down my face. I'm going, they must think I'm a crazy, really crazy old guy, but it's just, it's right. Leon Adato (21:29): And they'd be right. Doug Johnson (21:30): And they'd be right. But yes, but they don't know how. Right. Leon Adato (21:34): Right, right. But the other thing I want to underscore there is that, you know, I think thinking back to, you know, teenage years, there's a lot of work that you do that, you know, is just, you know, forgive me, but it's, it's shit work that somebody made up just to keep you busy. Doug Johnson (21:49): Yup. Leon Adato (21:49): Like really, you know, it's, it's useless and it's, it's really, they would be better off just to hand the money to the organization as a donation. Then you coming out and doing this completely meaningless, pointless stuff, but to come out to somebody who says, no, no, no. The thing that I want to do, the gardening is you are enabling that this is the part I couldn't do. And very clearly letting them see that means that there is not just work and not just payment, but purpose. Doug Johnson (22:19): Yup. Leon Adato (22:19): And that, that is huge for a lot of people, let alone kids, but it is a really big deal for, for folks to know that the work that they're doing is meaningful work, that it has an impact on somebody. So, yeah. I mean, when you say blessing, it it's really, you know, the full meaning of that word. Yup. Doug Johnson (22:41): Yeah. I mean, and that's true back in the worker. I mean, how, I'm sure you must've had at least one job in the past where you wondered why the hell you were doing it Leon Adato (22:51): Occasionally Doug Johnson (22:52): Once in a while, but you know, but it's nice having work where you're sitting there going, I know why I'm doing this. I'm the person to be doing, you know, I'm, I am overpaid where I work, uh, for my day job. But the reality is for the kinds of things that I've had to fix over this last year, I may not have had to work really hard, but they couldn't have found one person that knew all of the different things that I knew to fix all of the stupid things that they came up with this last year, I'm going, you know, so they might have Leon Adato (23:22): Been paying for the hours, but they were paying for the experience. Doug Johnson (23:25): They sure as heck got that. It was just funny. Like every time I'd feel bad about, I really should be working harder. They'd come up with something, Oh, we need this website up in, Oh, let's see a week and a half. Uh, and it has to be match all. And I'm like, okay, well, guess what, I can do that for you. But so, uh, it's, it's been pretty amazing, but so big, big blessing in the spiritual world with Christianity, we get to start all over again anytime. Well, we did, we did the whole, the whole thing. We confess our sins and we get, we, we get to go back to ground zero. Got it. Not quite like not, not, not the Catholic, you know, every week kind of thing, but again, still it's, it's all built in there. Right, Leon Adato (24:07): Right, right. I think there's, I think many faith traditions have, I know Judaism does has a, the ability to, let go of the past too. Um, it's not quite wash yourself of your sin of your sins, you know, so to speak, but to, to be able to make a fresh start unencumbered by the mistakes. There's, you know, a lot of people think of heaven as a zero sum points game where it's like, well, if I've sin twice and I've done one good deed that I'm still negative one or whatever it is. And that, that really isn't how the calculus works. It's, you know, there's, there's this concept of taking the things that you have, where you've missed the mark, which is a better translation for the Hebrew word of a Chet or a sin, and really transforming them into a blessing like double because it, the, the, the time that you missed the mark actually drove you to do the good thing. Had you not miss the mark, you would never have been driven to do this, this, um, positive thing. And so it, it actually retroactively makes the quote unquote sin a blessing also. So you get to rewrite the past in a way and Recode it, to something positive, even though it wasn't at the time. Doug Johnson (25:36): Yep. And yeah, and it just comes down to things that look bad today. You may look back and say, that's the greatest thing that ever happened to me. All right. You just, you, you don't know. Leon Adato (25:47): Right. Right. And I find that faith does a really good job of framing that, um, there's a lot of stories of, you know, the quintessential, like I was stuck in traffic and I was swearing at the person ahead of me and whatever. And I was half an hour late. And what I found out was that had I gotten there on time, you know, fill in the blank, there was an accident, there was a robbery, there was a, this or that, or the other thing. And although I'm telling the story in broad brush stroke, that makes it sort of apocryphal. Um, the reality is that people have experienced that all the time where, you know, I missed my flight and then whatever I'm, you know, not necessary to say. Um, so we have lots of those stories where a, a seeming inconvenience at the moment that we are cursing about turns out to be a blessing, in fact, because it saved us from something much worse or, or horrible or whatever it is. And so again, I think faith helps to reframe that. The other thing that I think faith offers, and this is one of my questions for people who, um, you know, I don't, I don't believe in anything. I don't need any of that, whatever it is that faith offers, if nothing else, it offers a structure, it offers a protocol to handle things. Now, of course, grief is one of the first things that comes to mind. Cause when we're wracked by grief, when we're in the middle of a real crisis, the last thing that our brains can can do is say, well, just do whatever feels right. Do whatever comes to you. You know, no, that is not the moment that we need that. And, and so that's there, but again, because we're talking about emergency confetti, I also think that faith offers us a really interesting structure to process joy in the sense that it tells us, you know, when to celebrate what to celebrate, how to celebrate it. Um, and the secret, I think for faith is that it's in the small moments, not the large ones, um, big moments often just take care of themselves. It's your birthday, your anniversary, whatever you again, you know, I just, you know, you just go with what you feel it with. Feel like, you know, it's, it's a big moment. Okay. But you know, Judaism looks at moments like waking up in the morning is a cause for celebration. You actually say, before you move, as you're waking up, there's a blessing that you say, you know, thank you God for letting me wake up and getting out of bed and going to the bathroom. Okay, Doug, we are men of a certain age and man, you just need it not to work once to realize that all of that working the way it's supposed to is absolutely a cause for celebration, crack out the confetti because whew, everything moved, you know, it's great. In fact. Doug Johnson (28:39): He's going to hate me if I start doing that. Leon Adato (28:40): Right. Doug Johnson (28:43): Excuse me, Doug, what's all this glitter all over the bathroom floor. Well, I had this conversation. Leon Adato (28:51): Right. Celebrate the small moments. Celebrate the small victories. Right. Um, so Judaism actually looks and says, you know, you should say at least a hundred blessings a day, a hundred, thank you a hundred moments to, to celebrate. And when you think about saying, you know, a blessing for every, you know, every piece of, bit of food that you eat, and again, you know, the different things that you go through the day hitting a hundred, actually, isn't that hard. Um, but the underlying message is that these are moments worth celebrating that I going back to Lee Horton, you know, he, he said, just having an onion to cook with was a miracle. And I don't know that a lot of people think about that. They like, Oh, well, thanks. I'm so glad I had that onion ready, but they don't think of it as a miracle. But when you hear him talking, you know, he means it. He means it sitting, standing in line at the DMV was a joy, a real joy being with friends, having time like it. I think that faith gives us the recognition that these are moments that are definitely worth celebrating, not for weeks and weeks. Again, they're small moments, but there's still good ones. And I also think that faith puts boundaries around the big moments. Yes, there are big moments and they're worth celebrating, but, uh, it, it reminds us that there has to be a beginning and an end to even those celebrations that you have to move on if for no other reason than to make room for the next celebration. The next thing. Doug Johnson (30:23): It it's a lot of people get, they'll get caught up in their one success. And then, you know, when the next thing comes is not a success, then they're disappointed. And then it starts to spiral down and they can never move on because again, they just, they went, Oh, that was my big shot on it. I had my big deal. And that was it. And nothing else, you know, it's, it's a lot of what Christiana does talks about being, you know, again, the same thing that you're saying gratitude for everything being grateful, uh, it, there's a, in everything give thanks, uh, is in the new Testament and just, it's hard to do, uh, you know, rejoice always pray constantly in everything. Give, thanks for this is the will of God for you through Christ. Jesus. All right. That's what you're talking about. Yours is a little, a little more systematic and that's, I kind of, I like the idea of actually building some of those reminders into place. Like when you get up and doing that. And I, I may add this to my, uh, my, my list of things that I'm taking away from this, but yeah, Leon Adato (31:23): I will make sure that there are in the show notes, there's a link to the English, uh, English version of those. Because they really are. I mean, some of them are, are interesting. Like, you know, thank you God for giving the rooster, the, the understanding that it needs to crow in the morning, which is really saying thank you for, for putting boundaries on the day. Thank you for creating natural rhythms to the day that helped me fit into those rhythms. And I think especially after the last year that we've had where the running gag is, time has no meaning. I don't know what day it is. I don't know what you know. Well, yeah, but the rooster still knows to crow in the morning to wake everyone up. Like there's thank you for putting those structures in place. Doug Johnson (32:05): Of course, when I had chickens, we would pick which roosters to put in the pot based on how early they got up. So. Leon Adato (32:13): That's just natural selection. Doug Johnson (32:17): The one rooster we had at the end, he'd get up around noon, light a cigarette and go, [coughing], but Oh well. In any case. Leon Adato (32:30): Um, just, uh, you know, in terms of, yeah, those sell it, making room for celebrations and otherwise you get caught up in the last thing and it wasn't as big as the, the other thing Elizabeth Gilbert gave a Ted talk a few years ago now, after she'd written eat, pray, love, and the pressure was on for her to write something else. And they said, well, you know, what, if it's not as successful as eat, pray love. And she has this whole wonderful Ted talk again, it'll be in the show notes that talks about inspiration and that pressure and the idea that, you know, somehow if, if you don't continue to build on, it has to be bigger and better than before. No, I'm sorry, but it can be the same as before it can be smaller than before and still be worth celebrating, still be worth the joy that it brings. Doug Johnson (33:14): Oh, I mean, think about it for being an author. I mean, just any author, most authors that you love have maybe one or two books that were like really great. And then they've got, and then you find out they've got a whole back catalog that you didn't even know about. Um, that's just, and, and some of them are good. Some of them are not so good, but it's, you know, but the fact is they put their rear in the chair and they went ahead and pounded out the words. And as you say, it's worth celebrating the fact that they've got that they were able to go out and accomplish that it's an accomplishment, even if it wasn't death of a salesman, Leon Adato (33:51): Right. Or yeah, a New York time bestseller. And the other part about that, and Doug, you know, you're a writer, I'm a writer. Like we know that, you know, that even the things that were best-sellers may not have been the writing that they personally loved the most, or they personally derive the most satisfaction from it. And one of the best questions I hear people ask authors is no, no, no, I know which of your books I love, but which of which of your works do you love? That's, you know, when they talk about the writing, that was the hardest to do. And when it finally came out, it was, it was good, but it was such, it was such an effort that when it came out, it was that much greater for it. You know, those are the things, again, the, the moments that are worth celebrating most may not be the biggest along the way. And so I transitioning to the tech side, right? That's that's the faith side, but the tech side, I like to think that I try to bring some of that into my technical it sensibilities that when something goes, well, I know that I need to stop and celebrate that that no matter how big or small, you know, I was thinking about the line from, uh, the TV show, Bosom Buddies, and now we do the dance of joy because, and it's goofy. And, and my family will tell you, cause I work from home and of course it's been 2020. So it's been this nightmare hellscape pandemic, but okay. You know, that, there's a lot of moments when I come running downstairs and I am literally unintelligible. I'm just like, [unintelligible noise example], and my wife is like, good for you, honey. And I go running back upstairs to try to do the next thing, whatever it is. And you know, you've got to take a minute to, to just recognize that, um, the other piece that I think I, I get from all of this, that big successes, you know, those, those, again, the book, the, the major program, the launch of the new piece of software, the whatever it is, those are big moments that were comprised of small achievable moments of joy that simply added up, not necessarily sequentially either. You know, it's not about getting, you know, winning the trifecta or whatever it is. It was just, you know, enough things went right in a row or, you know, at a time to allow this thing to happen. Um, and I'll, I'll finish this thought just to mention that right now, I am actually programming something, which is not my natural state of being. And I will continue to remind people that I am not a coder or a dev or a programmer. I am be like a script kitty is probably the most complimentary thing you can say, no one will ever weep with joy at the beauty of my code. In fact, the nicest thing anyone's ever said about something that I programmed was, well, it ran right, which for litter, because that's how I feel right now. Like the default state of everything I code is not working. So when something works, when a variable actually is the thing that I wanted it to be, when the page loads, when, you know, I get a number at the end of it, that I was actually expecting, it really is a cause for celebration for me. And it is deeply humbling, but it's also a reminder that, you know, these, these celebratory moments, these, these moments are really tied up into small things. Not necessarily, you know, again, as I framed it at the beginning long stretches of, you know, soul crushing depression, punctuated by a brief moment of joy. I think the moments of joy are in there. And I think that it's up to us to, to recognize them and find them rather than just expect them to sort of beat us over the head or, Oh, that wasn't big enough that couldn't possibly be settled celebratory again, going to the bathroom worth celebrating. Trust me, anybody who's ever had gallbladder surgery knows worth celebrating. Doug Johnson (37:46): Oh yeah. But yeah, I mean all kinds of how to and, and life hacks in that really say, you need to go ahead and give yourself positive reinforcement. So it's not, as I said at the beginning, it's not my default state. Uh, one of the things I'm getting, just having this conversation is it's going to remind me to go ahead and try and give myself kudos for the small things along the way when I'm working on stuff, because you know, it can get depressing when you're working on something and big pieces of it don't work. But when you get that little thing that does, it's like, it's hard to remember. You're going, okay, good. Now I can move on to the next, as opposed to taking that moment to go ahead and say, woo, maybe I'll get, maybe I'll do a little glitter. Leon Adato (38:31): The other piece I'll add, there's a, another writer who said that, you know, basically I think of as a monkey, you know, I'm just a little monkey who needs a lot of rewards. And, the best work I do is in a café where every time I write a good piece of script, I, I will buy myself a cookie every single time. It's not good for my waist, very good for my output because I I'm so excited for the next thing, the other piece. And I just, I, you know, we're in the lightning round. So you know, that my last thought is that the same writer said, um, I like to write the fun parts first. I have an idea. This is a, a script writer. And they said, um, I have an image of the high points, the big moments in this script. And I'm so excited about it, that I write it first. A lot of people will tell you, you have to write the story from start to finish. No, I write the most exciting, the most compelling, the most interesting moments first, because then I have this beautiful scene and I've got to get there. I have to get the audience from the start of the story, to these moments. And these moments are so exciting that I have to make the whole rest of their journey worth it to get there. So again, by looking forward to the celebration, by looking forward to the thing that I'm already excited about, I make the rest of the journey, which could be again, long stretch of soul crushing depression. No, it is. I'm building up to this great moment and I have to make every moment before worth the journey. So that's another piece of it. Anything that you want to leave everyone with for this episode. Doug Johnson (40:03): Don't be like me. I'm depressed most of the time. Be happy. Do glitter. Leon Adato (40:08): Do glitter. Don't do drugs. Do glitter that I love it. Yeah. Don't don't eat the glitter. Doug Johnson (40:15): No, don't eat the glitter. Definitely do not. No, it's not. It will not take care of your COVID Leon Adato (40:21): No, or anything else. Really? It's not roughage. It won't, your didactic. Your digestive tract will not. Thank you or me. Doug Johnson (40:28): Although, well, you never know. It might sparkle when it hits the water. Nevermind. Leon Adato (40:33): Okay. Outtro (40:35): Thanks for making time for us this week, to hear more of technically religious visit our website, technically religious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect with us on social media.

On this Gotta Watch The Tape from cleveland.com, there's something a little different. Doug Lesmerises is joined by special guest Brandon Thorn, who tracks sack stats that nobody else does at his newsletter, trenchwarfare.substack.com. Thorn watches every sack in the league, and then grades the sacks of all edge rushers, assigning ratings based on what type of lineman the rusher beat, on what down it occurred and how special it was compared to the average sack, among other things.That means he spends a lot of time analyzing Myles Garrett.So Doug and Brandon talked a lot of Garrett, but they also got into former Brown Emmanual Ogbah and current Browns Adrian Clayborn and Olivier Vernon. In the end, Brandon talked about exactly where Garrett fits among the best pass rushers in the league.Scott Patkso and Ellis Williams will be back for a typical Gotta Watch The Tape on Thursday, but for now, enjoy the special sack insight from Brandon, who can be found on Twitter @BrandonThornNFL. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On this Gotta Watch The Tape from cleveland.com, there's something a little different. Doug Lesmerises is joined by special guest Brandon Thorn, who tracks sack stats that nobody else does at his newsletter, trenchwarfare.substack.com. Thorn watches every sack in the league, and then grades the sacks of all edge rushers, assigning ratings based on what type of lineman the rusher beat, on what down it occurred and how special it was compared to the average sack, among other things. That means he spends a lot of time analyzing Myles Garrett. So Doug and Brandon talked a lot of Garrett, but they also got into former Brown Emmanual Ogbah and current Browns Adrian Clayborn and Olivier Vernon. In the end, Brandon talked about exactly where Garrett fits among the best pass rushers in the league. Scott Patkso and Ellis Williams will be back for a typical Gotta Watch The Tape on Thursday, but for now, enjoy the special sack insight from Brandon, who can be found on Twitter @BrandonThornNFL.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

So Doug is friends with Ron Klain who is going to be Joe Biden's Chief of Staff, check that shit out! More importantly, I've gotta give you a warning- Around 31 minutes in the guys listen to Jared's VM and things get a little heated after that. If you've heard enough about Democrats, Republicans, riots, BLM, guns, looting and all the other shit that's pulling us apart instead of bringing us together, stop at 31:00. Trust me on this one, it's a bit of a trigger warning and there are things you can't un-hear after that. Consider yourself warned (if you actually read the notes, which I know you don't, so maybe this will teach you a lesson about that.)   Nice Sponsors: You really need to check out Doug and Strickland's mastermind class on How to make money, grow your tribe, and build influence through podcasting. Check it out at www.turnkeypodcast.com/podcast   Get your free E-Book 5 Ways to Make Money Podcasting at www.Turnkeypodcast.com/gift     Simplecast is the easiest way to set up your podcast hosting- Simplecast.com   Zoom is the easiest way to schedule meetings and record your podcast interviews- Zoom.us   Acuity is the easiest way to schedule your podcast interviews, meetings, and life. Acuityscheduling.com   See how The Nice Guys want to make your life easier? You can thank us later.   Reach The Nice Guys Here:  Doug- @DJDoug  Strickland- @NiceGuyonBiz    Nice Important Links:   Subscribe to the Podcast  website: Niceguysonbusiness.com  Book Doug and/or Strick as a speaker at your upcoming event.  Doug's Amazon #1 Best selling book Nice Guys Finish First.     Partner Links:  Amazon.com: Click before buying anything. Help support the podcast.  Acuity Scheduling: Stop wasting time going back and forth scheduling appointments Simply the best VO guy in the business- https://steveobrienvo.com/   TurnKey Podcast Productions Important Links: The Ultimate Podcast Launch Formula  www.turnkeypodcast.com/ultimatelaunchformula  FREE workshop on how to "Be A Great Guest." Free E-Book 5 Ways to Make Money Podcasting at www.Turnkeypodcast.com/gift     No time to get to this, but you can read the blog here: 12 worries that every entrepreneur has   Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. 

On this Buckeye Talk from cleveland.com, the big Wednesday pod isn't quite as big as usual. But it's instructive. As everyone waits for what's next from the Big Ten, Doug Lesmerises, Nathan Baird and Stephen Means took a crack at ranking every major college football team in tiers, but with a purpose. The exercise was intended to shed some light on how the 14 Big Ten programs might be thinking about playing football this fall, based in part on their standing in the college football landscape.So Doug assigned a tier to all 65 power conference teams, and Nathan and Stephen offered up where they believe Big Ten teams fall. From regular national title contenders to programs that are just bad, the guys ranked them all.Listen, disagree and enjoy. And thanks for making Buckeye Talk part of your day. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

How nonprofits can make better videos with Doug Scott Video is such an important tool for nonprofits period. And for-profit companies as well because it's such a powerful communications medium. Facebook's research division says the experiments they've run on Facebook and Instagram show that videos are looked at 5 times longer than static content and they generate more engagement.  If you are looking to do a mix of creating your own organic content and then doing paid content, only ever pay for content that organically works well. Release it first, organically through your channel, and see if it starts to actually have organic engagement from it. Going back to what works on social.  The most engaging videos are under a minute on every platform.  With a virtual event now, pretty much anybody can attend your fundraiser from virtually anywhere in the world whenever they want to.  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ SHARE THIS POST: HOW NONPROFITS CAN MAKE BETTER VIDEOS [just click to tweet] HOW NONPROFITS CAN MAKE BETTER VIDEOS Facebook's research division says the experiments they've run on Facebook and Instagram show that videos are looked at 5 times longer than static content and they generate more engagement. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Doug Morneau Well, welcome back listeners another episode of Real marketing real fast. Today in the studio I've got joining me, Doug Scott. Now he is the founder and CEO of a company called tectonic video. They are a leading video agency for not for profits, and we had an amazing conversation around video, video strategy, what works, what doesn't work, what you should hire an agency for, what you should be doing in house user-generated content. And then we finished off our conversation today, talking about remote and online fundraisers for not for profits and how this is working for businesses as well. So taking these big goals and events and what happens now that we're not gathering in large groups. So Doug and his team have worked with not for profits all across the US and around the world to create award-winning videos that drive massive results for the nonprofits and charities that he works with. He's been featured in The New York Times, NPR CNN, and ad week and he is a frequent guest lecturer at Stanford University on the power of storytelling for not for profit organizations. So join me in welcoming Doug Scott to the real marketing real fast podcast today. Doug Morneau Well, hey, Scott, super excited to have you on the podcast today. So welcome to the real marketing real fast podcast. Doug Scott Hey, Doug, great to be here. Doug Morneau Well, you're working in an area that's got a number of things that really piqued my interest. One is video so people have finally woken up to the importance of video for marketing. And the third or second one strategy in the third is not for profits. And I like all those spaces on those topics. So do you want to share with our audience system overview of the kind of what you do and how you help people? Doug Scott Of course, my pleasure. tectonic video exists to help nonprofits realize the power of video to accomplish their mission. And that could be through marketing or for fundraising, but also for other things. internal communications, training, hiring, even their programmatic work. So we are a video agency for nonprofits. So we start with strategy. It could be an organization-wide or a campaign-specific video strategy. Then we implement that strategy from concept all the way through filming through post-production, then we can advise on distribution and measurements. And we're humbled to work with some of the world's most amazing nonprofits. I'm a little biased because I love our clients so much. But we make PSA's for the American Lung Association. We do fundraising videos for World Relief, branded content for Mutual Rescue,

The Ohio State Buckeyes had 10 players picked in the 2020 NFL Draft, and on this Buckeye Talk episode from cleveland.com, Doug Lesmerises, Nathan Baird and Stephen Means break down the picks in the second through seventh rounds. The guys went over the three first-round picks on Friday's podcast.Of particular interest -- running back J.K. Dobbins in the second round to Baltimore and slot receiver K.J. Hill in the seventh round to the L.A. Chargers. Ryan Day didn't like the idea of Hill falling that far, but what did Doug, Nathan and Stephen think of it?Also, the next NFL Draft in 2021 will be held in Cleveland if the world is back to normal by then. So Doug, Nathan and Stephen went through the OSU roster and gave their picks on exactly which Buckeyes, and how many, should be hearing their names called in a year. Ohio State has seen at least seven players picked in the last five drafts.Thanks for listening to Buckeye Talk. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Terry had to be essential and work at the pizza shop. So Doug and Stacey, of Off The Beatin' Path, do a crossover episode in true OTBP fashion. They weird you out and have fun doing it. Due to COVID-19 this episode was recorded from two separate locations. We apologize for the sound. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/kindofabigdeal/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/kindofabigdeal/support

Terry had to be essential and work at the pizza shop. So Doug and Stacey do a crossover episode in true OTBP they weird you out and have fun doing it. Due to COVID-19 this episode was recorded from two separate locations. We apologize for the sound. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/off-the-beatin-path/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/off-the-beatin-path/support

So Doug sort of got off track on this show. He said it was going to be about one thing but then spent the entire show talking about why we should appreciate pastors. A heartfelt detour.

Doug Lesmerises is joined by Ellis Williams, the newest member of the Browns coverage team at cleveland.com, to dive into what happened to the Cleveland Browns near the goal line on Sunday night in their 20-13 loss to the Los Angeles Rams. The Browns scored a touchdown just once in four red zone trips, and more success there would have changed the outcome.So Doug and Ellis take you through the most important plays near the end zone and discuss what was there and wasn't there, and who might have been most responsible for the failures there. There are a lot of different opinions about the Browns offense right now, and we're not saying we're exactly right, but throw this look into everything else you're hearing and reading.Thanks for listening to Takes By The Lake from cleveland.com. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

There's an old joke (and a famous website) comparing programming languages to religions, but the analogy is truer than it might seem at first blush. Logic structures are everywhere in scripture. Pair programming strongly resembles the intensive 2-person style learning found in all orthodox Jewish Yeshivot. And you can say that your religion - the one you grow up with or grow into - is very much like a module you've inherited as a code owner. As Patrick Hubbard, our guest on this episode, says, "It's a balance of acceptance, idealism, reverence and challenging architectural decisions made long ago." Listen or read the transcript below. Doug: 00:00 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: 00:24 There's an old joke and a famous website comparing programming languages to religions, but the analogy is truer than it might seem at first blush. Logic structures are everywhere in scripture. Pair programming strongly resembles the intensive two person style learning found in all orthodox Jewish yeshivot. And you can say that your religion, either the one you grow up with, or the one you grow into is very much like a module you've inherited as a code owner. As Patrick Hubbard, one of our guests today says, "It's a balance of acceptance, idealism, reverence, and challenging architectural decisions made long ago." I'm Leon Adato and the other voices you're going to hear on this episode are my cohost and partner in internet crime, Josh Biggley. Josh: 01:02 Hello, Leon: 01:03 Doug Johnson. Doug: 01:04 Hello Leon: 01:05 Cory Adler. Corey: 01:06 Klaatu barada nikto, Leon Leon: 01:09 And my fellow Head Geek at SolarWinds, Patrick Hubbard. Patrick: 01:12 Hey, Leon. It's good to hear ya. Leon: 01:14 And it's good to have everyone here. Leon: 01:16 Um, so the first thing we want to do before we dive into the topic at hand is give everyone a moment for shameless self promotion. Um, so Patrick, why don't you lead us off? Patrick: 01:25 Yeah, so I'm also a head Geek at SolarWinds, which looks like dev advocacy pretty much anywhere else. Uh, you can find me on Twitter at @FerventGeek. Uh, that's probably the best way to find me. I am in too many places on YouTube and a bunch of other stuff because I didn't run away when they broke the cameras out. I'm not sure that I'd make that choice again if I could. And I am a Episcopalian, which means I'm a Christian, but not necessarily the kind that most people know because we're super progressive and we're kind of on a timeout from England right now. Leon: 01:55 [Laughing] Okay, great. Doug, how about you? Doug: 01:58 I'm CTO at Wave RFID, a startup that I started up with my business partner at the age of 60 something. How stupid is that? Uh, it can be found on Twitter at, at @DugJohnson or you can email me at doug@asknice.com. I'm an Evangelical Christian, but not one of those in your face hitting you with the Bible kind of people. But I will talk with you all day long if you, uh, want to have that conversation. Leon: 02:20 Uh, Corey, why don't you go next. Corey: 02:22 Hi, I'm Corey Adler, the constant pain in Leon's side, but during the day I am a team lead engineer at Autosoft. You can find me on the Twitter at @CoryAdler and much like Yechiel and Leon, I am an Orthodox Jew. However, I prefer to call myself the Jew, extraordinary Leon: 02:38 Dah, Dah, Dah. Okay. And as I, as I introduced earlier, Josh Biggley is one of the cofounders of the Technically Religious podcast. Josh, tell us who you are and where you're from. Josh: 02:48 Uh, so I'm a senior engineer responsible for enterprise monitoring. Um, I'm a wanna be a Head Geek. Is that a thing? [Multiple voices: It's a thing!] You can find me on Twitter at @jbiggley. I'm also with my wife, uh, the cofounder of a new website called http://faithtransitions.ca. It's for folks who uh, who are having a, uh, a faith crisis changing their faith. Uh, just a place for there to be a safe place for there to be community. Uh, I am currently a post-Mormon, ex-Mormon, um, former Mormon, whatever. Not Mormon anymore. Leon: 03:27 Got It. Okay. Um, and just a reminder to everyone who's listening that there will be links to everybody's information and any of the things that we mentioned during this episode in the show notes. So no, no need to scribble madly. Um, also these episodes are transcribed for people who may not speak English as a first language or are deaf or hearing impaired or just like to read more than they like to listen. Corey: 03:49 And study for the pop quiz later. Leon: 03:52 And Yeah, you can study for the pop quiz and my name again is Leon Adato. I am also a Head Geek at SolarWinds. You can find me on the Twitters @leonadato or on my blog, adatosystems.com. And I'm also an Orthodox Jew. Um, so I want to dive right into this. So the idea of, when we were talking about this episode, we talked about it as, you know, God as a Service or looking at our religion as code. Let's, let's unwind that a little bit. What are we, what are we saying really when we say looking at our religion, like we look at it as code. Josh: 04:27 I mean I, I want to start off by, by reading the, um, reference on blog dot a-e-g-sub.org. I don't even know how to say that. Leon: 04:39 Aegisub Josh: 04:39 It'll be, don't worry. The link will be there. Right? So, so this is, this is a post that I have laughed over since you brought it to my attention last year. I feel like I saw before but didn't remember it. And I was, as I was reading it today, I was howling with laughter inside because, so here's the entry for Mormonism and it is if you're Mormon or Post-Mormon or Ex-Mormon, you know that this applies to you. So C sharp (C#) would be Mormonism. All right? Okay. I don't code in C#, but that's okay. So at first glance it's the same as Java, but at a clo- at a closer look, you realize that it's controlled by a single corporation, which many Java followers believe to be evil. And that may, uh, that it may contain a theological concepts that are quite different. You suspect that it's probably the, it's probably, uh, sorry. You suspect that it probably be nice if only all the followers of Java wouldn't discriminate so much against you for following it. For context, Java is Fundamentalist Christianity. So Doug, [Leon laughing] you know? Yeah. Why? That's just the way that it works. Leon: 05:50 Okay. Corey: 05:50 That's scarily accurate. Doug: 05:52 I mean, and the reality is the guy behind C# is the guy who is behind Delphi, which is the other language that I, so there ya are. It just all comes together. Leon: 06:01 It all just comes together. So, right. So again, I think it makes it makes a cute joke, right? Um, and I think looking at our programming languages that we love as religions is one thing. But looking at our religions through the context of what we know as programmers I think is another. So again, I just want to, I want to try to unwind that for people who are listening. What do we mean when we say that? Patrick: 06:24 Okay. But hold on a second. I think the Delphi analogy is good and I once upon a time wrote an awful lot of Delphi and you could almost say it in a sort of descendant, um, way that Delphi was great because it was fun, right? It sat on top of the full Win32 API. It linked down to the compiler language that uh, a Borland C++ used. So it was super efficient. So when you transition to C#, and I was also all Java for a long time and when I changed jobs I was like, yeah, I'll hold my nose and do this C# thing for awhile. But it was fun in the same way. And so I think a lot of times with religions, a big part of it is like, are there, are there tenants here or there are there echoes and reminders of something from when I was younger or that was easy at the time. So I'm not sure that that analogy of something that you encounter once and then there's the better version and iterative period and then all of a sudden you find yourself in it later. Definitely with technology it works out that way. Patrick: 07:22 Okay, awesome. So that, that gives a piece of it. Um, anyone else want to take a swipe at why we're doing this today? What, how, how is it that we look at our religions through the lens of code? Doug: 07:32 Oh, they are in the world of code, there are ways that you do things. There are it, there, there are certain things that any language has to do to be a language. And there are also certain things that any religion has to do to be a religion. I mean, any religion that doesn't deal with how you run your life and uh, ethics and how we relate to each other as a person wouldn't be much of a religion. Uh, any piece of code that can't handle a four loop or a, uh, be able to go ahead and handle stuff or go to a procedure or have a goto [pause] kidding! Leon: 08:08 [Laughter] Corey: 08:11 Oh, you scared me there for a second. Doug: 08:13 Oh, come on. You guys are being too good. Leon: 08:16 Okay. Any religion that has a construct that you never, ever, ever want to use because it's horrible Patrick: 08:22 and that it's always going to be the one you're going to use over and over. Doug: 08:25 Oh, you know what I would say most regions religions would have, I can certainly give you some constructs in Christianity I never, ever, ever want to hear about Leon: 08:34 Anyone else want to take a swipe at it. Josh: 08:35 I'm struck by the, um, by the nature of code and religion, um, in that code doesn't play well together. So it's not like you can, um, start using Java and then go, Oh, I'm just going to throw some, you know, some commands in here from, you know, Golang or something. Uh, I mean, I know that you, there are, are, are certain languages that you can do that with, but if you're going to develop an entire, uh, project using Java, you're going to want to minimize things that are not part of, you know, mainstream Java. Religion to me feels kind of like that the same way. There are things that they, on the surface they look like, "Oh yes, these things all make sense!". Yes, there is a god. Yes, these are constructs that help us to, you know, act a certain way and behave a certain way and do certain things. But when you start to pull things apart, you realize that the way that religion is assembled, the way that it's put together is very different. Much like, you know, hey, you can, you can develop our front end app and it looks like it's doing all the same things, but you start to pull it apart and you realize that the pieces that go in to making that application don't look at all the same. Um, so I don't know, I'm not a developer at all, but I, I feel like things just don't fit together well when it comes to religion. You know, we see that we see an awful lot of conflict in the world. Um, you know, in a, in a prior life, uh, you know, Doug and I sitting down in the same room would have resulted in one of us being hit with a Bible. Um, I'm feeling it's probably me, um, being hit, but you know, you understand what I'm saying, right? It's, this isn't religion and, and code. I mean, it's a, it's a Battle Royale sometimes and it just doesn't need to be. Leon: 10:27 Okay. Patrick: 10:28 Well, but how much of that is, how much of that is the religion and how much of it is spirituality? Because if, if, to me, spirituality is sort of the platform as a service here, right? Like it's the set of cloud native service primitives that, that everything else is built on. So that would be a.. Leon: 10:44 I like that its a cloud native. Like it just works so well. Oh, keep going, keep going. Patrick: 10:48 No, the point of the Cloud is we're going to deconstruct everything into a set of service parameters and it's up to you to put it together, right? So then the question is, do you come at it dogmatically and say, "Okay, I'm gonna use only cloud native technologies!" Or "I'm gonna lift and shift from, um, a set of monolithic applications that have made me feel good for the last 30 years." And if there's anything that's opinionated in religious, it must surely be monolithic applications. Um, but underneath it, it's things like mindfulness and it's forgiveness and it's awareness and it's how does this fit in with cosmology and the, the basic tenants of that? Like what is spirituality? I think maybe that's the thing that maybe aligns more with technology and then almost the religion itself ends up being kind of the dogmatic argument if thing that you see in a Linux forum, right? Talking about talking, you know, where people will literally wish they could get in a car and go fight each other over a pattern implementation. But the reality is that the, the commonality is more about those, those base services and then we layer on all of this opinionated, uh, uh, dogmatism that distracts us from the, the core of it. Doug: 11:56 right? I don't disagree with you, but by the same token, in the wonderful world of religion, you can have all of these wonderful, uh, in touch with the world and all that kind of stuff. But you know, the, the, the real acey-spacey kind of stuff that you tend to get with people who don't have a specific religion, they just, they're in touch with their spiritual feels, they actually accomplish very little and in the world of programming, while we can all get down to the core constructs of going ahead and working directly against the metal if we want. The reality is until you pick a language, you hardly ever get anything done and it's until you've got a team of all of a bunch of people all working with the same code base, working with the same language, working together, that's when you actually accomplish stuff. So while there are similar, while there is that base that's behind it all, you don't get much done if you sort of stay off in the sort of loose commonality area. It's only when you get into specifics that things start to happen. Leon: 12:50 Okay, and I just want to jump in here for, for the listeners and for us and say that is at the heart of this episode, which is as programmers we can take our sensibilities as/programmers and then look at it and look at our religion and say, this is, this is the similarity. This is where I can actually deepen my experience of my religious point of view by bringing my technical, my programming sensibilities to it. So that's what this episode is about and we've already started to dive into it. So I want to keep going with this. Um, and really get into some of the specifics. So with all of that said, with that framework laid down, how are, in what ways do you find that our religions are similar to programming languages and/or code? Again, how do we bring our programming sensibility to the table and say, ah, now I can appreciate my religion so much more because of this or that or the other thing. What are some things that strike you? Corey: 13:50 I mean, just the general structure of it all. I mean, religions, organized religions in particular are always very structured, you know? Yeah. I have especially, I mean, you could speak to Orthodox Judaism. We have to go to the services three times a day and you know, and we have to on the sabbath. We have few certain things that we can do, things we can do. The, the, the structure in general of this is how you run your life is always there. We're there and it's something that in code, I mean you understand that there are certain commands that you're going to do. There's that and you understand what programmatically, what that is going to do. Leon: 14:24 So thou shall declare your variables before using them? Corey: 14:27 I've tried to teach you that too many times. Leon: 14:30 [Laughing] Okay! Patrick: 14:30 Wouldn't it be nice if there was a religious linter that took care of the analysis beforehand? Doug: 14:36 But that it is the same thing happens in my loosey Goosey Christianity there it's, it's, while there are rules that we don't have the very strict rules of course, because we're forgiven of everything, right? Okay. But if you actually, "Hey, you know, doesn't matter what you do, you get forgiven and just go ahead and take care of these sins and you're done!" Okay? But the reality is when we go to the service, there's the opening, then there's this many songs. Then, I mean, there's a way that we do it every single time and there's that structure that we expect. And boy, Heaven help you. If you should go ahead and you know, put the sermon first cause people are arriving late, who don't want to miss miss that, the big band in the beginning. And if they missed the sermon, boy they would be on your head. So there's just, again, there's that standard structure even in the loosey-goosey that uh, it makes it work interesting. Josh: 15:29 So I want to build off this idea that's a, that's come, um, that there's, there are differences and similarities between religion. Being the non programmer of the group here. Um, because my God is Google and that's, that's how I survive. Um, I'm, I think that the missing element we have here is a scrum master or a project manager. We've talked about this idea that religion has rules, that we are a, that we have to follow. We've also talked about how programming languages have constructs that we have to follow. But if you don't have someone who is enforcing those rules or who is, um, setting out the paradigm in which you need to participate, then how do you know that you're doing what the other people need to do? So Doug, to your point, if you don't get people all on the same platform, if they're not all using the same, uh, you know, the same version, right? You know, if you're using a Python and you're using 2.7, so is last two dot release?, uh, versus python three, I mean, they kind of look a lot alike, but they're not going to.., there's going to be some, uh, some discord there. So I, I, I feel like, at least for me, if I, if, if I were to come in and be a programmer, I would want that. Um, I would want that scrum master. I would want that project manager. Interestingly enough, within Mormonism there is a scrum master. Um, and some people are going to say, well, yeah, "Sure, Josh, the scrum master is Jesus!" Uh, wrong answer. The scrum master is actually the president and, and a prophet of the Church who today is Russell M. Nelson. He is, uh, the, the sole, um, well he is the corporate soul. So he owns everything within the organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day saints. He is also The Voice. So what he says is Gospel. Um, I mean, I don't know if you guys look at your scrum masters or your project managers and maybe the same way that Mormons look at Russell M. Nelson, but that's the construct, right? There has to be somebody who says, here's how things are going to operate. Here are the rules. Patrick: 17:51 Okay? But what if Git is a guide here? And not to invoke the obvious, but the whole point of being decentralized, right? Being, um, a set of practices that allows people to collaborate. And I think GoLang there is a, uh, something to be said for if you make the right thing to do, uh, the easy thing to do, people will do the right thing. Like what if it's not about adhering to a judgment that's external, but instead the thing that's great about a great technology or a great language is, is, is one where interacting with it daily, when you look back in hindsight, you feel like you did the right thing, but it never felt like it was prescriptive. Or you were worried that you weren't adhering to a set of programming standards or was that completely annoying architect? It was always about code standards and you're like, "I just hacked the most amazing thing ever and you're going to go on a 15 minute diatribe about the way that I did my comments?". Right? Well what if the best faiths are the ones where you find that you intrinsically live them without necessarily having to go back to requirements documents every time, that they, the the right thing to do is the easy thing to do. And instead it's something that you collectively do as a part of community as opposed to being something where you're worried that the scrum masters kind of assign you a code branch that you really don't want to deal with. Leon: 19:10 Okay. So I'm going to, I'm going to jump in on that whole scrum master idea and project manager idea. Cause I think in Judaism there's a slightly different structure. And the good part is I've got Corey here with me because there's a role in shul, um, in synagogue called the Gabbai. Uh, and the Gabbai is the person who really makes sure that every service is running as demanded as, as it needs to. So, Corey I'll let you... Patrick: 19:36 So basically it's Cron New Speaker: 19:38 uh, well more than that, I'll let Cory, I'll let Corey dive into it. Corey: 19:42 So, the analogy I use, let's use all the time for being, the Gabbai, he is a, he's like a bartender and a great party. You don't notice the bartender unless he screws up the drink. Leon: 19:53 Okay. Corey: 19:54 Very similar fashion. The Gaba gets cause people to leave the service, makes sure everything is running on time, make sure nobody uses, you know, growing up at the podium, you know, and, Leon: 20:09 But also you, the Gabbai knows what day it is and what special elements of the service have to be observed, whether that's a normative weekday or a normative Shabbat or a special holiday. But also that, um, this person has a special event in their life. For example, if there's a groom in the, uh, in the room or somebody whose a child is having a circumcision, then certain parts of the service are not said. But the Gabbai's job is to notice that, and say, "Oh!, we skipped this part!" and everyone says "What?!?" So the Gabbai really is that project manager role. I think, you know, in a large way I could be wrong, but... Patrick: 20:49 So a project manager, not a lead developer? Corey: 20:53 Uhh, I mean especially from an agile perspective, I was, I would disagree with that. Leon: 20:57 Fine. Corey: 20:59 Umm, from an Agile perspective, the project, the product manager is, you know... Patrick: 21:03 Well, cause where I was going with that was a more like a, you know Julie the cruise director, right? Not actually a part of your experience, just making sure that you have a fantastic experience. Basically like a Doula. Leon: 21:13 Right. Corey: 21:14 [Laughing] I like that! Patrick: 21:15 It's the, it's the leader behind the scenes in a situation where you're not supposed to have a leader. Corey: 21:20 So I would disagree about that from an agile perspective where the product manager is really is one informing the team of what needs to be worked on and what needs to be done now versus the Gabbai who is just almost letting everything just flow naturally. Everybody already knows what they're supposed to be doing in the service is just making sure that you know, the i's are dotted, the t's are crossed, you know, not to use the pun or anything because this is a religious podcast. Leon: 21:55 Oh my gosh! [Laughing] "The 'T's are crossed". Oh no! Okay, keep going, moving on. Nothing to see here. Corey: 22:04 But and so the Gabbai is more, is more of an over, is it more of an overseer rather than actually dictating what the product is. Leon: 22:15 Okay, Patrick: 22:16 So they're providing governance. Corey: 22:17 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Leon: 22:18 All right. Okay. That works. Doug: 22:20 And to a certain extent, I mean, again, while it would be great, you know that you're sitting there doing code and the code is perfect and the language allows you to do it and you're having a wonderful time and all that kind of stuff. You do still need that outside governance. In the evangelical community, it's going to be your elders and your deacons. But basically what it comes down to is, you can have a really crappy programmer coming in and just having a wonderful, wonderful time and they think they're doing great and they're just messing up everything. That's why everybody hates PHP so much is because the, you know, anybody can program in PHP and unfortunately anybody does. So you then need somebody, the scrum master, in this case, a code reviews, any kind of where to go ahead and help them get back on the track and hopefully, uh, to go ahead and write better code or to essentially be a little closer to the rules of the religion, which are there, one expects, for a reason. Josh: 23:19 Just so everyone understands, Doug and I have never worked together. So when he talks about crappy programmers, he's not talking about me. Leon: 23:28 [Laughing] And, and just to be clear, Doug and I have worked together, so if he's talking about crappy programmers, he's probably talking about me. Doug: 23:35 Actually, Doug's worked on enough teams that he has had enough crappy programmers in his life. He's talked to a lot of them. But you know, one of, as in the case being a senior Dev, one of, one of my jobs as a senior Dev or in my current role as CTO, is to go ahead and help my, uh, new developers to go ahead and become better developers to effectively become a senior developer. In fact, one of the best things that you know has happened to me is one of the guys that I coached at, the last place that I was at is now a senior Dev at his current job. He didn't have it when he didn't have it when I met him. And he did have it when he left. So I'm not taking, obviously he had the capability, but he needed guidance. And that's what, in evangelical Christianity, the elders and deacons are supposed to do. They don't, they don't beat you up around the head and the shoulder, but when they find that you're drifting, when you're going in a direction that's not good for you or the community, they guide you back into the path. Leon: 24:39 Okay. And, and we've also started to hit on another point that I think there's a commonality between, uh, programming and our religious life, which is the idea of consequences. So what are your thoughts? Like what, how are the consequences in, in our coding lives? How does that inform our experience of consequences in religion or vice versa? Josh: 25:00 So when we jump into this idea of cost consequences, I want to touch on something that really falls in line with what Doug was just talking about. And maybe it's something that we all have as a blind spot here because, um, to some extent or another, we have a religious observance. But when, when we don't work well on a team, whether we're talking about, um, uh, an agile team or, um, a religion, there are times in our lives where being part of a religion is really problematic for us. There are people who cannot function within, um, the constructs that we want them to function in. And I don't know exactly how to draw this completely back to, um, to programming because I'm not a programmer, but there are people... Doug: 25:48 It's called cowboy coding! Josh: 25:50 [Laughing] Cowboy coding! Doug: 25:51 It is that they exist and it's a problem. These are people who do not work well on a team and they do what they want. They're called Cowboy coders Corey: 25:59 Or Bro-grammers Leon: 25:59 Or Bro-grammers. Josh: 26:02 Well, and I think it's, it's even more than that though, right? This sometimes there is a system that um, you just don't work well and um, and it may take a long time for you to recognize the value of that. Um, for example, for an awful long time I was a Windows only guy. Man, Linux scared their crap out of me because like there are weird words in it. It's like... Patrick: 26:27 There's no pictures. Josh: 26:29 Like people make up funny names. Right? Exactly. And I'm, I'm complete. I was completely flabbergasted by it. It just seemed weird and I was compelled to have to learn a Linux and I mean, somebody on this call used to work for the same company I worked for, wrote some code that I still have to look at on occasion. I mean, I'm just pointing and saying Leon, I mean, not, not saying Leon, not saying Leon. Leon: 26:59 [Laughing] Right? Yeah. There we go. Josh: 27:02 These, these times, right? These times where we realize we have to step away from the thing that we were comfortable with and do something else. Um, that is for me is very much a very close to my heart. Right? Um, there are times when religion just does not work to construct those, those elders out, those deacons to use Doug's terminology, they have failed in their role and you step away from that. Um, and that's okay. Like you, you don't, to go back to what Patrick was talking about, you don't have to keep programing in Delphi just because it's the thing that brought you joy in 1996. Um, it's 2019 pick a new language. Patrick: 27:39 Cool. And I think that's something you're hitting on. Um, the thing that we all forget, right, is that I think everyone, when they are using the language of choice or if they're using the particular faith of choice or let's say religion of choice, is that you, I think a lot of people feel like, oh, this was just destined. I of course have just found myself in the best, most amazing thing ever. But the reality is, yeah, everyone went shopping once upon a time. People selected that and we forget that. And so like when you're looking at, um, especially with Go, um, your, your browsing GoLang libs or you're out looking at GitHub and what are you looking for, right? You're looking for fellowship, right? Like how many contributors are there? How long has this project been, uh, in, in, in a process? How many people are providing updates? How many comments on it? When was the last time the code was updated? So you know, basically how full is the parking lot, right? Right. So you, you, you, you did once upon a time make a choice. And I think part of the, the key is to remember that you should revisit that on a regular basis. Don't ever like just decide, well, this is who I am, this is what I am. I'm never gonna look at it again because then you don't own it. Right? So maybe, maybe that's that going back to the platform as a service thing, but like just with like with code, go back to how many people really actually enjoy this. Ah, do I trust the people who are contributing to the, uh, sub, uh, projects that are a part of this code? Am I willing to dive in and really dig through it? Like what was it? Never decide, "Okay, I'm settled." Like, whatever got you to that thing, that process should be good just as it was with picking a library or hey, there's four to choose from, so the other three have about the same number of, uh, same number of contributors. So what's wrong with the other three? Nothing. Leon: 29:24 I like that. And again, using that sensibility from our programming lives and reapplying it to our religion and saying, well, I do this with my programming. You know, I'm not afraid to do this, to reevaluate my programming. It must really joke about programming languages or like religions, you know, "There's the one true language!" You know. The fact is, is that we are very comfortable when it's time to move on or when we do declared that a language is not suitable for this particular project. It doesn't necessarily shake our world and using that comfort to say, you know what, I'm just going to take a minute. I'm going to think about this religious tradition I, I was born into or grew up into and say, "Am I still there? Is that still me?" I like that idea. Leon: 30:05 We know you can't listen to our podcast all day. So out of respect for your time, we've broken this particular conversation up. Come back next week and we'll continue our conversation. Josh: 30:15 Thanks for making time for us this week to hear more of technically religious visit our website, technicallyreligious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions, and connect with us on social media. Doug: 30:29 .Net! Patrick: 30:30 Go but optimized for Google, so GoLang Doug: 30:34 Delphi Leon: 30:35 Perl! Josh: 30:35 Guys, guys, please, can we just unite against our common enemy? All: 30:41 PHP!

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Religion and IT share a common ground when it comes to humor. In both cases, if someone doesn’t “get it”, it could take HOURS to explain enough for them to understand. in this episode, Leon, Josh, and special guest Doug Johnson talk about whether that is unique to IT/religious people, our own experiences with tech- and religious-based humor, and whether (as Josh asserts), Mormons just aren't that funny. Listen or read the transcript below. Leon: 00:00 Hey everyone, it's Leon. Before we start this episode, I wanted to let you know about a book I wrote. It's called "The Four Questions Every Monitoring Engineer is Asked," and if you like this podcast, you're going to love this book. It combines 30 years of insight into the world of IT with wisdom gleaned from Torah, Talmud, and Passover. You can read more about it, including where you can get a digital or print copy over on adatosystems.com. Thanks! Doug: 00:24 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 the ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh, or at least not conflict, with our religious life. This is Technically Religious, Josh: 00:49 So we just missed a very special holiday. Leon and Doug: 00:52 Wait, what? I... Leon: 00:54 International women's Day? Doug: 00:56 Ash Wednesday? Leon: 00:57 Mardi gras? Doug: 00:58 Pi Day! Leon: 00:59 The opening of Captain Marvel!! Josh: 01:00 Uh, no, no. It's that special day when we as it pros, we do important work, like changing everyone's password to "butthead" or setting everyone's email quota does zero, or setting off 500 alerts, you know, for no reason. Leon: 01:15 Oh April Fool's day. Josh: 01:18 Exactly. And in honor of that blessed day we're going to talk about jokes Doug: 01:24 Religious jokes? Leon: 01:25 Well, kind of. I think that religion and IT share a common ground when it comes to humor. In both cases if someone doesn't get it, it could take hours to explain enough for them to understand it. And by that point it's not funny anymore. So today I think we should focus on "jokes I wish I could tell." Josh: 01:39 So like religious jokes, you can't tell at work, not because they're bad but because it requires too much background knowledge? Doug: 01:48 Sure. But maybe also tech jokes that you can only tell the other it people. Josh: 01:53 Or even tech jokes you can only tell other folks who understand YOUR sub specialty? Like enterprise monitoring? Leon: 02:01 That would be like the story of my life as a monitoring engineer. Exactly. So before we dive into the topic, I do want to do some introductions. With us today is Doug Johnson. Say, Hi Doug. Doug: 02:11 Hey, hi.. uhey, Leon: 02:14 You missed it. Doug: 02:15 I know! All of a sudden I realized.. and oh no. I hate those jokes. Leon: 02:22 "Good night Gracie" Okay. Well, and today especially, we can talk about the jokes that we don't appreciate. So that's, that's fine. That's fair. I didn't mean to set you up for a joke you didn't want to hear. Um, so like I said, I think the tech and religion have like similarities to them that they're in the, you know, if you're not in the "in" crowd, you don't get it. But the other part of is that I think as IT people and also as people with a religious background, whatever, we keep TRYING to tell these jokes to people like, "No, really, you're going to love it once you understand it." Like, we keep doing that. Um, and, and that expands, I think to nerd or geek culture overall. The number of times I've tried to explain, you know, Harry Potter or Star Wars or whatever to people who just did not want to, did not want to hear it. Right? Doug: 03:08 Oh, I know. One of the problems that you run into is, you know, here we are, we, we've got all of these jokes that we really think are great and maybe they're jokes in our religious area or they're jokes in our technical area and there's a whole bunch of people we can't tell them to, but there are jokes. Right? Leon: 03:23 Right. And they're our people. You know, just because I can't tell, you know, something that really funny that happened at synagogue or a, a funny Jewish joke to people at work... But they're still my friends. Right? So I want to share those aspects of my life and vice versa. I want to, you know, share a RAID array, joke with, you know, people you know, at shul and they're just, they're not going to care. Josh: 03:46 It's funny, as you were talking Leon, I was thinking first you've just described my entire teenage life, sitting in the corner, you know, laughing about jokes that nobody else gets. And the harder you laugh because you know, you're making fun of that football player who looks like the ogre from your campaign last night and then suddenly you know you're running because you're, and you're trying to run and laugh and you know, you're dropping your "Magic, the Gathering" cards and like it's just, it's a, it's a nightmare. Um, yeah, sometimes you're, you laugh and sometimes you're laughed at. Doug: 04:21 But then the other thing that comes out of that though is if you think, I mean, we want to share the jokes, but sometimes as you note, you're just laughing so hard. Everybody says, "No, no, no. Tell me what the joke is." I mean, they actually, they try and get it out of you and you're going, it would just take too long. Leon: 04:35 Right. Okay. So that, that leads me to, I think the first big question that we should address, which is: is it really that specialized, you know, is religious based. You know, humor and/or geek tech humor so much different from say, sports humor or city location humor or humor that you would only understand if you were of a certain age or whatever. Josh: 05:00 Uh, yeah, Canada jokes, ya hoser! Leon: 05:04 Okay. But again, you know, we're not talking about jokes that make fun OF somebody. We're talking about humor that you'd only understand if you were Canadian. Right? Josh: 05:13 I have a perfect example for you. Okay. So, uh, and this is a great extent. This is a great example of how I have to give you the backstory. So, uh, one of the former prime ministers of Canada, his name was Brian Mulroney, and he was recently in the, in the news for making a very derogatory comment horde, a young politician. He called her" little lady" a way to go. Brian. Brian is famous for bringing in something called the "goods and services tax". It's, it's one of those taxes that was supposed to be temporary and it never was. And so, um, to the tune of the Tiny Tunes theme song, we used to sing a, "...we're tiny, we're twoney, we're all a little loony, since Brian Mulrooney invented GST." Leon: 05:58 Okay... Josh: 05:58 And we think it's Hilarious, right? Where it, and it takes not only an understanding of Canadian politics, but you have to be someone who appreciates children's... uh.. not-children's cartoons... NOT children's cartoons. Yes. Leon: 06:12 Right. Okay. So to my point is, is the premise of this episode not to, you know, pop poke holes in the premise the episode, but is is the stuff that we're talking about tech jokes and and religious jokes. I they is it really so specialized? Doug: 06:27 The thing that makes things funny is the element of surprise that comes, I mean, so that's why the one, two, three for jokes worksheet thing number one, thing number two, and then thing number three comes out of left field, New Speaker: 06:39 ba-dum-bum Doug: 06:40 Ba-da-boom. Right? That's, that's sort of the nature of all at least verbal humor. The problem is in the case of religion or IT or Canada or sports or whatever, you have to have enough knowledge to know what is normal so the setup works, if you don't understand the normal, then there's no surprise cause it doesn't seem any different from the first two parts that were there in the first place. I mean it's, I don't know that it's necessarily that different from other very specialized areas, but the fact is it's a specialized area that requires a knowledge for there to be a normal for there to be a surprise. Leon: 07:22 Right. And, and I would also argue that the populations that we're talking about are significantly smaller. It, it's a lot easier to find a group of people who would probably understand a, let's say a Cleveland joke or again, not to joke about Cleveland, but a joke that only Clevelanders would understand. Josh: 07:42 Did you just insinuate that Cleveland has more people in it than Canada. Leon: 07:45 Uh, no, I was not that at all. I was actually supporting it or it can, you know, Canadians, Doug: 07:51 They do have more people who are willing to go ahead and laugh at themselves though. Leon: 07:56 Canada does. Canada is very, yeah. Um, yeah. Clevelanders are just tired of it all. So, uh, anyway, um, Josh: 08:05 So Doug, when you were counting, I feel like I was, I was, uh, almost having to hold myself back, um, about making a number two joke, you know, you're like number one and number two, I feel like there's a, there's a universal joke that every everyone gets and I feel like, you know, boys get it around the age of three or so, like as soon as those sentences start being stitched together. Leon: 08:30 And they never lose it, Josh: 08:32 They never lose it. Leon: 08:33 Or as somebody said that, you know, all babies when they're first born have to be burped. Um, boys just do it on their own from that point forward. Um, and you're right, there was a study that was done and they found it two specific... Specifically two types of humor work regardless of culture, regardless of where you're from or how old you are or anything like that. And that is scatological or a fart and poop jokes and mother-in-law jokes. Uh, those are appreciated everywhere. Right? Doug: 09:02 Makes Sense. But, and the one that the, I've also heard that it's like universal and frankly it doesn't appeal to me at all, Is physical humor, slapstick stuff. I mean, if you look at even the comedy that we got in the beginning of the, uh, the film era, that was all slapstick stuff, right? And everybody loves it. I just don't, I don't know. It's not me. Leon: 09:25 Exactly. And I think that's another important point, right, is that whether you understand the joke is different than whether you like the joker. Appreciate the joke. Um, you know, to give an a, an a tech example, a lot of people who know even the littlest bit about networking say, you know, there's no place like one 127.0.0.1 right? Okay. There's no place like home, there's nobody, you know, or I could tell you a UDP joke but you probably wouldn't get it right. Ha Ha. Okay. That's all right. I, you know, but there's, even though that is, uh, that is a joke and, and some people will laugh at it. There's a lot of networking people who are like, really? I just, that is the 1024th time I've heard it. Right. Doug: 10:09 Oh Man. Leon: 10:18 So, uh, yeah. And, and it, there's a group of people right now her listening to this podcast who are like, "I don't, I don't get it" so, so Doug: 10:26 You just need to wait a bit Leon: 10:27 So "getting it" and "liking it". Right. Uh, oooooh. So, um, so you're liking it and getting it to, okay, this is where things get interesting. Um, I, I was playing around with the idea of like worlds colliding. Like are there jokes that you have to be both? Do you have to be like you have to be a Mormon and also a network engineer, you know, FULL INNER JOIN to get, you know, certain humor, stuff like that. I didn't know if you've run across any of those. Speaker 3: 11:01 Well, having been Mormon for 41 years, I, and as we talked about an episode two now post Mormon, I can tell you that the majority of Mormons, so that I know have, uh, no sense of humor. And it's not that they're not funny, it's just the things that they laugh at our really contextualized for Mormonism, um, like, um, pickup lines at a BYU, right? Um, you know, hey, well things like, um, uh, "Baby, I came here to feel the spirit, but I didn't know that I would see an angel." I, you know, Doug: 11:38 Oh yeah...f Josh: 11:40 So as I was looking for, for Mormon humor, I realized that most of it is around getting married. Uh, which I think is, that ties with the youthfulness. And you know, LDS people tend to get married younger than others. And generally, if it's not about Green Jello with carrot in it, if it's not about a, the relief society, which is the women's organization, uh, making ice sculptures, there's a whole, there's a whole trope of Mormon movies like "The R.M." Um, well "The R.M." is the one that we laugh at the most and it's, it's takes all of the sticks about Mormonism and cram them into, you know, 90 minutes of, of stories about people's lives. Um, all of those things, although we laugh at them, they're not really that funny. It's just, it's more self deprecating humor. So maybe we're really good at picking on ourselves. I don't know. Leon: 12:35 Huh. And then again, trying to get the technology in there is probably a little tricky. Doug: 12:39 It just doesn't happen. That's what I mean. We're just not that funny. Leon: 12:42 Huh. So I did here. So a friend of mine, Phil Setnik, posted on Twitter a little bit ago. So just for context for those listening, even though this is the April podcast, we did record it. Uh, not yesterday. We recorded it a couple of weeks ago and Purim the Jewish holiday of Purim is coming up in, one of the things about Purim is that you are commanded to drink. This is where everyone starts like, "Wait, wait, I want to convert!" Um, you know, you're commanded to drink until you don't know the difference between the sentence that the phrase, uh, "wicked is Haman" and "blessed is Mordecai". And so Phil posted that on May 4th, we're commanded to drink until we can not tell. The difference between "blessed is Obi-Wan" and "Cursed be Vader". This is the, this is none of the Mitzvah. The commandment known as "Ahd Lo Yoda". Doug: 13:31 Yeah. Leon: 13:33 Right, right. Okay. So requires deep knowledge of both Geek, you know, culture and also whatever. So I just wanted to get props out that, that this is a difficult brand of humor to, um, to perhaps a trade in and yet Phil managed to do it. So hat's off. Josh: 13:52 Does this mean that we had to have watched Star Trek? Leon: 13:54 Uh, no, no, it doesn't. Doug: 13:59 If you come down to it though, it just comes down to audience size really. I mean, we would go back to mother-in-laws and fart and poop is relatively universal, whereas people who both have seen Star Wars and know the stuff+ behind Purim are relatively few. Leon: 14:18 Right, right. Doug: 14:19 So you're, I mean you'll, I'm sure you, you'll kill it, your audience, but it's not the two people. Leon: 14:28 Exactly. It's Phil and me and maybe one other person. Yeah, exactly. Um, there's a few of us, but you know, it's, it's definitely a small group. So, so talking about that, like what are some occasions when, because it's so hard to find these populations. I want to hear about some times that you've tried to tell a joke to the group and they just, they didn't get it. Like what are those? Doug: 14:55 I live those every day. I work out at my home, so, uh, you know, I do all of my social network stuff while I'm sitting down in the living room next to my wife and I tend to laugh out loud when I read things that I find funny and my wife will be sitting there, she'll go, "what?" And you just do a take where you sit there going, how long would it, how much do I have to explain for her to get it to make it worthwhile? And then it always comes down to, and all the, all the answer is, is "Geek joke" and we're done. It's just she, she now has, cause we tried in the, you know, years ago, she would say, "No, no, really, I'll get it." And we'd go through it and she'd just eventually realized that it's not worth it to her for me to explain it to her. Leon: 15:50 So I had that the other day. And, and uh, again, for background context, uh, I, I work from home, so I had the same situation, you know, my wife and her sitting at the table for breakfast and we're doing, you know, reading stuff. But on top of it, my, my daughter and her children, my grandkids are living in the house with us also. So I have a three year old and a two year old and all of the things that they, they do and they listen to and their very sophisticated music that they listen to. So all of a sudden I'm laughing hysterically and my wife says, "what?" And I said "wireshark, do, do, do, do, do wireshark, do do do do", because you have to understand that that "Baby shark" is sung probably 52,000 times a day in my house. So it was just one of those things and she's like, "I don't get it." You were so close, you had everything except that one little piece. So, yeah. So Josh, how about you Josh: 16:52 Not to feel left out, I also work from home and I'm super grateful for it. One of, uh, one of the engineers on my team who lives in Boston. So if he's listening to the podcast, you know who you are. Um, he always drops these great, uh, pop culture references. Um, he is a veritable catalog of pop culture, uh, both current and historical. And the problem is that, I mean, I have no idea the other engineers, you know, they're like doing the ROFL and the LOL and you know, emojis are flying and I'm googling like a madman trying to figure out like what is so funny about that. And then I'm like, oh yeah, right. Ha Ha, lol, lowercase. That is my life. I get it. It's hard. But you know, fortunately worked from home and Google have made me seem kind of hip, you know, like, Leon: 17:44 right, exactly. And that's not just like IT people to non-IT people. I think it works for people who work in one area of IT and you know, versus another one. I think there are jokes that, you know, you have to be a storage engineer. You have to be like to "get it" right? Josh: 18:02 Yeah. We actually have a, we have a saying that it's kind of an inside joke. And I think that a lot of these jokes that we tell are really inside a humor as opposed to the traditional, you know, uh, a "Jew, a Mormon, and an atheist walk into the bar." They don't start like that. But we have, um, so our, our cloud team, uh, whenever they do something that were, uh, upset about, we'll say "what the cloud?" because that's our thing, right? It's, it's almost like, you know "what the fork?" or "holy shirt!", uh, from "The Good Place." If you haven't watched that on Netflix, you should. It's hilarious. Teaches you how to swear without swearing. It's great. Uh, but I think we all have those little sh...ticks that we throw out and uh, that is the ultimate insider jokes are the ultimate exclusivity of humor, right? You have to literally have been there and done that in order to get in on it. Um, and we've got them for technology. We've got them for a situational humor. We've got them for, uh, our religious things. Like I said, you know, the, the Green Jello joke, it just goes over roaringly, uh, and, and Mormon theology, uh, discussions and everyone else is like, "What Elliot? I like Green Jello. You guys put carrot in it? That's weird man. I don't understand you Mormons" Doug: 19:20 Thing that it does is the exact opposite? We talked about, you know, how you trying to go ahead and reach out to other groups and it's really hard. But what Josh is basically saying is we can actually use our humor to go ahead and cement the solidity of our very tight group. Oh Wow. That's so many of the jokes that are coming out of this pop culture type stuff. And you know, you are willing to go ahead and Google pop culture. And I appreciate that, uh, Josh I just, I admire your willingness to do that. I've just, uh, I've reached the point where I just don't care anymore. I was a disc jockey for like, you know, 12, 14 years. I was in pop culture. I would say celebrity, blah, blah, blah. I don't care. I haven't listened to I, it's not, we were just talking about that today. My wife and I said, I, I don't know if I've ever heard a Taylor Swift song I may have. The fact that I know that she exists is pretty much it. And so I not only am not current on pop culture, but I've also now reached the point where I don't care. I just don't care anymore. Leon: 20:23 And I think that that's sort of like you've reached your final form, you know, not only, you know, not only do you not get the joke, you don't care to get the joke. It's not, you're not curious about the joke. You just like, you know what, you know what you think is funny and everything else is like you do you, but I'm going to stay over here Doug: 20:43 Pretty much it, and they're perfectly willing to not explain it to me. That's one of the nice things about reaching a certain age is youngsters no longer care to even bother explaining it to you anymore. Leon: 20:55 Right. They just assume that you don't know. Doug: 20:57 Yeah, yeah. Josh: 21:00 You can always get back at them Doug. I found that as my teenagers drop jokes and they will sit with their friends and banter back and forth and they're just dying laughing. So the way that I get them back is that I, I drop their vernacular. I'm like at the dinner table, you know? Um, so I'll be talking to my wife and I, and I'll be telling her a story about work and I'll say, "Yeah, today I was a real baller at work. I was, you know, totally..." And my kids, let's just look at me and say, "What are you doing?" Um, so when you get, when you get to our age, I think, isn't it? You can really, the, the joke is on them. We don't actually care and we're just going to pick at you for thinking that you're, you know, so funny and welcome to old age or middle age or I don't know what we are the, we won't talk about that. Leon: 21:55 My kids have banned me from being jiggy with anything anymore. New Speaker: 21:58 (conversation fades) Josh: 22:01 Thanks for making time for us this week to hear more of technically religious visit our website, technicallyreligious.com where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect with us on social media. Doug: 22:15 Hey, thanks for having me on. Until next time, I've got a funny story... Leon: 22:19 You know what? Nevermind, you probably had to be there.  

We have a Special Report from the field today. In fact we might want to call it a fast-track masterclass in music and copywriting. Our special guest today is copywriter Doug Pew. He also happens to have a doctorate in classical music composition from the University of Cincinnati. He’s won awards for his music and he wrote an operate which was performed at the Kennedy Center. Plus, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the prestigious Ferydyrik Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, Poland. Now, since this is the Copywriters Podcast, Dr. Pew has agreed to give us an in-depth look at some prized secrets only composers know, that we can use ourselves to make our own copy much more compelling and profitable. And it will be easy for you to understand, even if you don’t know anything about music other than what you like to listen to. Doug, welcome, and thanks in advance for all the hard work you’ve done putting your part of this show together. Before we get into this exciting material, I have a message that could well be called the Music of the Copywriters Podcast: Copy is powerful. You’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims... and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity... you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. So Doug. You’ve told me you have three musical strategies that evoke and extend emotions in copywriting. I got very excited about this idea, because that’s what every good copywriter wants to do — engage the prospect’s emotions and keep an emotional momentum through the close. 1. Could you briefly explain the concept a composer uses to evoke emotions in a piece of music? 2. Your first strategy, let’s call it “Variations on a Theme.” It's about a famous musical phrase that takes less than a second and keeps audiences on the edges of their seats for 45 minutes! Could you explain this strategy to us and then show us how it works in copy? 3. Now, let’s talk about your second strategy. We can call it “Striking a Chord.” You composed three chords that you told me caused your church audience to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit. Please tell us about that, and how we can use this, even in a non-religious context, with copy. 4. And let’s call your third example, “Off the Beaten Path,” because it involves a rhythm that is off-beat! I think you’ve got a Beatles tune in mind. Let’s hear about that. 5. Finally, I haven’t run into too many other award-winning classical composers who are also copywriters, Doug! Would you tell us about how you got into copywriting, and about your new book? 6. How can people get in touch with you? Doug's WebsiteDownload.

We have a Special Report from the field today. In fact we might want to call it a fast-track masterclass in music and copywriting. Our special guest today is copywriter Doug Pew. He also happens to have a doctorate in classical music composition from the University of Cincinnati. He’s won awards for his music and he wrote an operate which was performed at the Kennedy Center. Plus, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the prestigious Ferydyrik Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, Poland. Now, since this is the Copywriters Podcast, Dr. Pew has agreed to give us an in-depth look at some prized secrets only composers know, that we can use ourselves to make our own copy much more compelling and profitable. And it will be easy for you to understand, even if you don’t know anything about music other than what you like to listen to. Doug, welcome, and thanks in advance for all the hard work you’ve done putting your part of this show together. Before we get into this exciting material, I have a message that could well be called the Music of the Copywriters Podcast: Copy is powerful. You’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims... and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity... you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time. So Doug. You’ve told me you have three musical strategies that evoke and extend emotions in copywriting. I got very excited about this idea, because that’s what every good copywriter wants to do — engage the prospect’s emotions and keep an emotional momentum through the close. 1. Could you briefly explain the concept a composer uses to evoke emotions in a piece of music? 2. Your first strategy, let’s call it “Variations on a Theme.” It's about a famous musical phrase that takes less than a second and keeps audiences on the edges of their seats for 45 minutes! Could you explain this strategy to us and then show us how it works in copy? 3. Now, let’s talk about your second strategy. We can call it “Striking a Chord.” You composed three chords that you told me caused your church audience to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit. Please tell us about that, and how we can use this, even in a non-religious context, with copy. 4. And let’s call your third example, “Off the Beaten Path,” because it involves a rhythm that is off-beat! I think you’ve got a Beatles tune in mind. Let’s hear about that. 5. Finally, I haven’t run into too many other award-winning classical composers who are also copywriters, Doug! Would you tell us about how you got into copywriting, and about your new book? 6. How can people get in touch with you? Doug's WebsiteDownload.

It has been a very cold winter in my parts of the USA recently. So Doug and Steve decide to bundle up and get cozy by the fire as they talk about tips on home to keep your dream home warm! Lots of information on fireplaces, the kinds of windows you have, sealing gaps in your home, recessed lighting and more! Subscribe for more tips to design your dream home! www.thedougandsteveshow.com

Today I'm back from Speaking at DC Podfest (what a great event) and I went to a session that had some interesting points that I wanted to share.  The session was titled, "Size Doesn’t Matter: Build a Monetization Program with Any Size Audience with Doug Sandler and Strickland Bonner. Doung and Strickland host the Nice Guys on Business show. Their website states they have over 1 million downloads, and they showed proof in their session, and I can verify they are not lying. They explained a new strategy to grow your customers using your podcast. Because Of My Podcast: Stephanie Logan 8:35 Stephanie does the DC Diary show (sharing stories of DC Professionals) and she explains how Because of her podcast she was able to transition from a job that was more policy to now working in Media and communications Interviewing Your Potential Customers - The Power Of Podcasting 11:05 I have said one of the benefits of starting a podcast is people who would normally not give you the time of day, now will sit down to talk with you on a podcast. We've seen people use the power of being part of the media to partner with events and get access to vendors.  Interviewing people that you want to start a partnership with is a solid way of breaking the ice.  Doug repeated his main point, You have to reverse your thinking and focus on the guest, and identify people who would be a good client for your business. This was an interesting idea.  One example in the session was someone who did a show about visiting the national parks. This is a hard show to monetize outside of a guidebook, or maybe mosquito spray. Doug said you should find the person who is in charge of the national parks budget, and have them on as a guest. They would know alot about the National Parks. When the interview is done you could mention that the show takes a lot of effort, and to keep going needs to find a sponsor and see if they would be interested in sponsoring the show (I would twist that and ask them if they knew anybody who would be interested in sponsoring the show). Again, interesting. I know consultants Natalie Echtal and Katie Krimitsos who have offered discounted coaching calls with the knowledge that the call may be used on the podcast. This provides content for the audience (as you help to solve the problems of your target audience) and shows off your expertise.  So Doug pointed out that if you were a coach, you might interview people who need a coach. This does get a little confusing. If someone needs a coach, then one might think they aren't that successful (cause they need a coach), and with that in mind,  if it's not a live coaching call, what kind of content does that create? This is where this idea goes a little south for me. It's the part where you have to put your brain on backward.  What if you target customer is a prime prospect, but a horrible guest? If you've listened to my show (or Moondog Marketing) I am all about content, content, content. This is not focused on the audience, or the downloads, it is focused on getting in front of your target customer. They said their conversion rate was around 20%. For every 10 guests, they would get two new clients. This really goes against my main ideas, and I asked, "What if you guest/future client is boring?" They answered that they did their best to create good content.  They then also stated there was a vetting process. They don't let "just anyone" get on the microphone.  I left the session scratching my head a bit and realized I would need to listen to an episode to maybe complete my opinion. Their show is well produced and has a fair amount of comedy built in. Maybe a bit too much for my taste as I was five minutes in and they were still having a "how the sausage is made" discussion about the show's publishing schedule (which for me was boring as watching paint dry) and I never made it to their interview. Maybe I'll go back later. There is more to their strategy, and in my opinion, it's slightly sketchy. I've invited Doug Sandler to come on so we could have a dialogue about. We'll save that for a future episode. Questions of the Month 22:09 I need your answers to: What will you be doing differently in 2018? If you could only listen to one show, what would it be, where and what is it, and WHY is it your favorite (be sure to tell us about you too) Deadline is 11/20/17 How to NOT Make Money with Podcasting 24:34 Jessica Kupferman from JKM Agency (which recently merged with a new agency) comes with a story of how to NOT MAKE MONEY with a podcast. In this example, a podcaster knew they were going to start a campaign for a product. The campaign was going to start in the next episode. The podcaster covered ALL the competition of the sponsor in the current episode.  The sponsor saw the post and asked, "Are they sponsoring the show?" As you might imagine they might wonder why they have to PAY for exposure while their competition did not. While you're always in control of your content, when sponsors get involved you may want to tread lightly around certain topics.  Start Podcasting With Any of the Three Resources 28:00 One on one Podcast Consulting (Quick and specific to your podcast questions) Join the School of Podcasting (Step by step tutorials, private Facebook group, priority email support, and live group coaching) Podcasting in Six Weeks - Live Group Coaching for Six Weeks starting in January 2018, plus a year membership at the School of Podcasting Mentioned In This Show Moondog Marketing episode discussing the importance of content Good Grief Podcast The Story Behind podcast Epodcast Productions  

Two years ago, Doug Diamond and I put together our first attempt at a posthumous interview. This was the only way we could do it, as this was a guest I really wanted to get on the show, but when I discovered his great work on the vaccine issue, he was no longer physically alive. This should not have been any surprise, as Dr. Moulden was speaking openly the truth about vaccines and what they really do to the body, information we are never supposed to hear, especially from someone of Dr. Moulden's stature and credentials. Dr. Andrew Moulden was speaking to large public audiences and explaining that the issue with vaccines was not more testing of making them safe. The truth was (and still is) that the entire theory of vaccination is a malicious fraud, responsible for maiming and killing huge numbers of people, especially kids, since Jenner first promoted them about 1799. Yes the current "adjuvants" and other horrendous poisons intentionally put into vaccines now make them much worse, but even before any of these additives were being used, vaccines were still deadly. Dr. Moulden also made it very clear that EVERY vaccine causes harm to the person receiving it, in the form of damage to the brain and all other organs. Dr. Moulden showed his public audiences how to recognize the signs of damage. He intended to force vaccine companies to pay for the massive damage to humanity that they had caused up to the present. As a result, he is no longer with us in physical form. But I still wanted him on the show. So Doug and I took some of his recorded talks and cut them up (electronically), recording questions in between the segments, producing the closest thing possible to an "interview" that you can hear today as if he was in the recording studio with us in person. What Dr. Moulden has to say is so valuable in my opinion, that I hope even if you heard it the first time, you will listen and hear more detail now.

Reach Us Here: Doug- @DJDoug Strickland- @NiceGuyonBiz   Show Notes by Show Producer: Anna Nygren   Intro Patreon  Guest show notes from Strickland today because Anna is stuck on the side of the road waiting for AAA so you know this is going to be a total shit show, right? That's a great segue into Patreon because the more you donate to Patreon, the more we can give to Anna to get a nicer car. I hate thinking of Anna driving a banger that's leaving her stranded on the side of the road so please donate what you can. Thanks in advance. So Doug is recording this from San Diego and I'm on my way to Austin, TX this morning, so we are just a bunch of jet setters, aren't we? If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm not going to write anything about the episode today because I edited it 2 days ago and I've completely forgotten what we talked about. It's not like anyone reads the show notes anyway, I mean the only reason Doug had to give stuff away last time was because he posted something on Facebook to read the notes. Prove me wrong FunkNfans (No FB posts or Tweeting DOUG!!!) and reach out to us with anything. Something like "hey, great show notes today!" or "WTF Strickland, have a little pride in your show notes, you're making Anna look bad!" or something. Do that and we'll send you something. I don't know what, we've got lots of fidget spinners left and we may get another month of sponsorship from Unfolding.biz so you tell us what you want.  OK, I think I've written enough and I still need to pack for Austin so I'll wrap it up here. Thanks y'all we love you guys, please tell all your friends about the fuckery and join the Facebook group if you haven't yet.    Sponsor Link www.Unfolding.biz  Spinners and other promotional products, get 15% off with the promo code 2NICEGUYS through Sept. 30.   Nice Guys Links Support the podcast at www.Patreon.com/NiceGuys   Subscribe to the Podcast   Niceguysonbusiness.com   TurnkeyPodcast.com - You're the expert. Let us help prove it. Podcast Production, Concept to Launch   Book Doug and/or Strick as a speaker at your upcoming event.   Amazon #1 Best selling book Nice Guys Finish First. Doug's Business Building Bootcamp (10 Module Course)   Survey: Take our short survey so The Nice Guys know what you like.     Partner Links: Amazon.com: Click before buying anything. Help support the podcast.   Interview Valet:  Get interviewed on top podcasts and share your message.   Acuity Scheduling: Stop wasting time going back and forth scheduling appointments Dalyn Miller PR -- Guest Placement and Promotion www.ThePodcastTeam.com Social Quant - Boost your Twitter following the right way. Targeted reach Promise Statement: To provide an experience that is entertaining and adds value to your life. Don't underestimate the Power of Nice.