Podcasts about so eric

Turns out Jeremy's a dad. But there's one problem. He's on business in a foreign country. So Eric, posing as Jeremy, takes the young fellow under his wing and becomes a wacky father figure. Hijinks ensue, followed by a discussion of the 1999 Adam Sandler movie "Big Daddy." Go to patreon.com/ericandjeremy for a bunch of bonus episodes.

Speaker 1: So one of the greatest predictors of success is goal orientation. In fact, only 3% of Americans write down their goals.  Speaker 2: Amazing the water level of leadership in the Tri-Cities of Eastern Washington in the Tri-Cities influencer podcast. Welcome to the TCI podcast where local leadership and self-leadership expert Paul Casey interviews, local CEOs, entrepreneurs, and non-profit executives to hear how they lead themselves and their teams. So we can all benefit from their wisdom and experience. Here's your host, Paul Casey of growing forward services, and it could be individuals and teams to spark breakthrough success.  Speaker 3: It's a great day to grow forward. Thanks for joining me for today's episode with Eric Pearson. Eric is the CEO of community first bank and HFG trust, and they are my financial partners for life. See, I got it in there and I got to know Eric, I got to meet you for the first-time boy, way back. I did a team building for your team, man. It must've been 10 years ago. And so it was great to reconnect with you recently and do an offsite with your leadership team and you guys are killing it, flipping winning, right? Well, we'll dive in after checking in with our Tri-City influencer sponsor, it's easy to delay answering uncomfortable questions. Like what happens to my assets and my loved ones when I die. So it's no surprise that nearly 50% of Americans don't have a will and even fewer have an estate plan, many disabled clients worry that they don't have enough assets to set up an estate plan, but there are important options available to ensure that you have a voice in your medical and financial decision-making. Even if your health takes a turn for the worst estate planning gives you a voice when your health deteriorates or after you're gone. Marin Miller bam attorney at law is currently providing free consultations to find out more about estate planning or to book an appointment. Call Marin at (206) 485-4066 or visit Salem that's S a L U s-law.com today. Thank you for your support of leadership development in the Tri-Cities. I asked for something funny about Eric today and say it again, Eric. So when a song comes on the radio,  Speaker 4: I have an uncontrollable urge to like, as quickly as possible name, the song or the artist as though it's a trivia contest. It drives my family crazy.  Speaker 3: We all have our quirky thing, but you'd be great to have an, a trivia contest as long as with classic rock. Yeah. Well, welcome. Welcome. Well, so that our Tracey influencers can get to know you, Eric, tell us about what your does, maybe a little bit about how it's joined together and what do you spend 80% of your day doing?  Speaker 4: Sure. Yeah, well, you know, community first bank and ACFE trust joined forces about five years ago. So a little bit of history from, you know, both organizations before they became one can, we, first bank was founded in late 1997. Really first day of business was the last day of 97. So we're what 22 years old. Now, something like that 23 years old and just a hometown community bank focused primarily on small businesses, you know, commercial banking and then supporting the, you know, the consumer banking needs of the, usually the business owners and employees that the bank with them. And then, you know, as we've grown, we've expanded out and, you know, really provide the full breadth of banking services that, you know, most financial institutions do. I was still at that, you know, exclusively local community bank feel. But one thing we, we didn't do was providing any sort of investment management to, or advice service.  Speaker 4: And so one of our board members timetabling, we've been along a long time, financial advisor, Haberman financial group. And so as we talked about trying to add that business line, you know, we looked at various ways to do it. It just always felt like a, we wouldn't be doing it the right way because you know, it's not our business. We'd be learning it from scratch B would be competing with one of our, one of our primary shareholders and directors. And so I always thought it would be a great idea if the two companies could come together, you know, Ty was fiercely independent. And as much as that he built his business and one of them wanted to stay, keep it that way. But one day he recognized because he had something happened with one of his clients that, you know, they would pass away and becoming incapacitated.  Speaker 4: And he would have to part ways with that relationship at that point and, and hand them off to a trust company because he didn't provide those services. He wasn't licensed to do so. And he felt Jesus at the most important time, sometimes in someone's life. And that you've been taking care of their financial needs, giving them advice. And all of a sudden, you you're, you need to hand them off and you, you could re retain them and have someone do the trust work. And he maintained the investment advisory work, but it really wouldn't be in the client's best interest to have that split and pay kind of double fees. And so he felt, well, gosh, I'm going to have to continue to hear these off. And that's just not the service I want to provide. I'd like to look into becoming a trust company. And so he enlisted my help just because the trust companies are regulated and overseen by the same state department as banks, our department of financial institutions.  Speaker 4: And so I went with them, we visited with the department of financial institutions and we quickly realized that it would probably be in his best interest to partner with the bank to form the trust company because of our experience in dealing with regulatory matters, the, the, the depth of capital that the bank had and just the size that, that the bank had become added. Some, some stability to what would become trust company would make it much more viable. So they decided to do a, we merged HFG or humbling venture group into the bank, or as a subsidiary of the bank. And we named HFG trust, added trust services to, to the product mix for them, and then began to go about implementing the, you know, the, the combination of the businesses and they're really two different industries. And so we recognized a lot of financial institutions had embarked on providing investment services, typically in a limited way, and not in a full fiduciary manner that that hyperlink financial group had.  Speaker 4: And so we were careful not to impose go bank tradition on an investment firm. And conversely, you know, we weren't looking to have investment industry influence the way banking was done. And so we ran them fairly separately and just tried to find ways to synergize backroom operations and those kinds of things. And we went about it very slowly. And I think that was wise, you know, we learned a lot through that process about, about the new industry that we were now in as a collective organization, how to manage it, how to work them together. We've been together now five years, and we're really beginning to see the fruits of how we can take care of a client's financial needs across the board. And so, you know, we, we, we call that being their financial partner for life is when we're there for anything and everything that they need.  Speaker 4: You know, we take it, it's when it's in their best interest, we're there to provide it. You know, we're not, we're not salespeople and as much as we're trying to push product or, or, or our business on folks, but when they need our service and our advice for our products, you know, we're there for them and we don't have to send them somewhere else. That's really what we aimed to do, and we've pretty much accomplished it. And so now it's a matter of getting the word out and growing the business and doing a great job taking care of clients. And so that's what we've been up to. Fantastic.  Speaker 3: So does your role change throughout that and, and what do you spend a lot of your time doing right now?  Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, my role didn't really change.  Speaker 4: I was the CEO of community first bank at the time of the merger. And, you know, because it was technically an acquisition and as much as the bank acquired HFG and there were some particular arrangements, you know, I was the CEO for the combined entity. I didn't have a, and, and still don't have a lot to do daily inside the wealth management and trust business, other than, you know, I have responsibility for the financial performance of the organization. And so, but I rely on the talent and management, that's there to produce that. And so, you know, I have oversight and know audit kind of responsibilities to make sure things are being done the right way. Obviously, the results are coming in. And if, if, if, if they vary from expectations to inquire as to why, but really most of my time on that side of things is spent trying to make sure that we're providing that business with the resources they need to be successful.  Speaker 4: And as the organization grew, that really became what I started doing for the bank to, you know, in fact, one of our directors and the strategic planning said, you know, I'm that, I'm the resource allocator. I, I needed to determine there's limited resources in an organization, all of our business units, and even, you know, departments within business units are clamoring for support and resource. And so there's a need to go through and prioritize who gets what, when, and you know, that that's not always easy. Every, every need is a real need. And, and from the perspective of the person who needs it, it's the most important need. And so, you know, that's probably in, in a broad sense, what I spend most of my time doing is working to bring the business lines together, make sure they have what they want, make sure they're working well together and making sure that they're pushing forward on the financial partner for life, you know, mantra that we're living by and, and that, and, and that, and that we're advancing towards our strategic objectives.  Speaker 4: And then making sure we have good people to, to lead that effort. And that's probably been the biggest transition is letting go of management duties and really becoming a CEO, you know, while I had that title for a long time, we were a small enough organization. As most small businesses would know, you're really holding about eight different jobs and you're the ultimate manager and I'm not anymore. We've got a great leadership team at multilevel of our organization at this point that take most of that work off of my plate. And so it's really more directing, you know, the orchestra than it is playing the instruments.  Speaker 3: Yes. So why do you love to do it?  Speaker 4: Well, you know, I, I love taking care of clients. It's probably, you know, the greatest satisfaction is when we have a win. When we see we did something that made their life better, and whether I did it, you know, whether it was part of the interaction or not just hearing those stories, I think is really what drives us. I like building things, you know, just more selfishly I think, you know, it's been fun to be part of an organization that, you know, had 30 employees when I started, and it has 130 now. Wow. And, you know, has grown, you know, five, 600%. And, you know, the wealth management firm was 350 million in assets, under management when we combined, and there are a billion or a little over a billion dollars in assets under management now. And so that's five years, you know, that kind of growth is just remarkable.  Speaker 4: We've added mortgage. We, we always did mortgages, but we've, we've developed and recruited a great manager, Jamie Clark, who has taken us to new Heights on the mortgage side too. So we really feel like we have three distinct business lines, all of which are winning and growing, and it's just fun to be a part of it. And probably what I've learned, you know, in the last five years, especially, is that it almost works better when I'm not doing it. You know, and I did a lot in the early years and not that I wasn't capable of doing some of those things, but I'm only one person. And, and not that other people weren't contributing obviously then too, but I was so much more involved in the weeds, you know, seven, eight years ago I have now and the less involved I am, the better it goes. Yeah.  Speaker 3: And you talked about having these great leaders in these key areas on your team. How did you decide to surround yourself with those folks and who else do you surround yourself with? Maybe even outside of HFG and community first?  Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, you know, two good questions there. I mean, I've been really fortunate throughout my career to have a lot of great mentors. And in fact, we've talked a lot about building mentors for our young talent. It's a challenge, you know, we're finding, we have to be very deliberate about being mentors. I don't recall that as a young person coming up in the industry, I found the mentors and I don't even know sometimes if they knew they were being a mentor, I was just sucking information from them. And I was lucky to know them, you know, was really how it turned out. And, and so I had a lot of that, you know, my immediate predecessor, rich Emory, you know, was a fantastic long time bank CEO who, you know, left the bank. When he, when he retired and handed the keys to me in just pristine shape, you know, it was, it was set up to be successful.  Speaker 4: He laid the groundwork and made my first few years really easy and and taught me so much about really what was important in the banking business. And so, and again, we were small enough that I probably took all those lessons to heart and try to do it all myself, or, you know, again, not all myself, but be involved in all of it myself. And, and then I had to, it took me a while to learn that I, I really needed to let go of a lot of those functions and, and let people experiment and try things without necessarily trying to make oversee their decision-making. And, and, and that's when we really began to, to blossom and grow. But as far as, you know, how we pick the people, you know, some of them have been with us since before I got there and, or very early on when I got there.  Speaker 4: And they, we were just fortunate to have him on board and they're super talented and they've evolved with us and changed in their, in their roles dramatically in some cases. And, you know, and, and it's been fantastic to see people who are willing to do that, to give up on what they thought was their job, and really start doing another job altogether, applying, you know, their knowledge and experience in a new way to the organization. And we've got a large number of those folks that have been with us for a while. We've lost a few along the way, you know, because of change and really good people too, but for one reason or another, you know, the, the growth stressed, you know, what they thought they were a part of to begin with. And so we've really added some new talent, you know, and we've, we've been lucky, and we've been more successful than not in bringing in new leaders to the organization, but we've, we have had some cases where, you know, it just wasn't the right fit.  Speaker 4: But for the most part, the, the folks that we brought in, at least after some working and maybe making sure that they're focused on the right thing, you know, we've been able to develop a team that, you know, as you were with us at our leadership event in Spokane here last week or two weeks ago, and, you know, I, I feel more confident today than I've ever felt with the cohesiveness and the chemistry of the team that we have working together. So, and then beyond that for me, you know, as I said, mentors, but I've really been fortunate the entire time that I've been with the organization to have the board of directors that I have. It was a local group of business leaders who all run significant businesses in this community have tons of experience dealing with all the problems that all businesses deal with, not necessarily banking, although they got a, a crash course in banking early on running our business.  Speaker 4: And of course, Tai is the foremost expert in our company on wealth management. And so, you know, the, the knowledge base and the, and the business management leadership experience that, that our board of directors brings, it has been probably the single biggest resource that I've had through this time, because, you know, they've helped me make all the big decisions and keep me pointed in the right directions to me when I'm maybe going the wrong way and, and, you know, share their own experiences if I'm struggling with something, you know, as well as this kind of happened to me. And, and this is what we did. And, and, you know, I think they would all agree that they like being part of the board because it's a little bit of a, a lonely job sometimes being the owner or the CEO. And so you're going to get a group of us together, and we can kind of finally admit what what's hard and what you struggle with, and what's emotionally taxing and, and you see someone else struggling with it, or someone being successful, something you struggled with, and we all learn from each other. So it really kind of turns into a bit of a support group. Sometimes we've instructed our board meetings that way we spend a fair amount of time, or it's just the board and it's pretty freeform. And we, and we talk openly. And so that's been successful, also involved in lots of other organizations in the community and trade organizations and w deal with other bank CEOs around the state and around the country. And, and so, you know, having a big network of people that can, that can provide input is definitely  Speaker 3: How are you constantly evolving as a leader? You've been in the business a while you're around these great, this great capacity of leaders around you, what's in your own professional development plan. How do you keep, you know, and just not checking in, you know, every day, but like I got to keep growing as, as the top leader. Well, that's  Speaker 4: A great question. You know, I think as I said before, you know, I don't know that I set out in life to be a CEO or to be a bank CEO for that matter when you're a little Navy, never did you, my dad was a banker, so you might think that, but, but it really all happened sort of by accident, you know, that I ended up on this path and then the path just led me where it led me. And, and so, you know, I pursued the things in the short-term that led me to the next thing. And as I got closer, I started to have the vision of what I wanted to do. And when I came to community first in particular, I, I knew that's what I was trying to accomplish. That was the game plan. And, but I didn't know what I didn't know, you know, and, and I probably still don't, you know, 10 years from now, I look back and go, gosh, I didn't know anything.  Speaker 4: I think that that's the reality of it is just knowing that that's a fact that there's, so you don't know what you don't know, and it seems like a cliche thing, but you really don't. And until you learn it, you didn't even know you didn't know it. And so many times, you know, and I think that's probably what keeps me going is our business is one where it's just a different day. Every day. It's not a routine thing. We don't execute the same task two days in a row ever. And all of our customers and our employees throw us new challenges. And so, you know, I think it, it forces you to be continually learning. It's what keeps it fresh and interesting and not monotonous. And, and so I think it forces you to continually go seek skills that you haven't previously acquired to deal with this new challenge that's in front of you. And so at least that's that's, I guess that's how I would summarize it. And Suzanne learning, I wish I could say I was way out in front of a lot of these issues, you know, maybe business strategy. Sometimes I can do that, but in terms of the skills that I need to develop, no, I think you recognize I've got a short book coming and I need to go work on this. It pops up in real time, and then you identify it and, you know, sometimes I'm better at addressing it than others. Sure,  Speaker 3: Sure. So how do you go about getting things done? You said your day is pretty varied, you know, but you've got to do lists. The CEO has a to-do list, just like everybody else. So how do you organize yourself? Just curious,  Speaker 4: Another skill set that I think I could be a lot better at in fact, I was just joking with someone about my paper to do lists. I've tried to put them into electronic format. And so really what I do is I take lots of notes that only I could probably translate. And they're very brief. They just, there for me, it's a matter, it's kind of like the music thing. It's like, I just need a little snippet of the song. I need a little snippet of the information. Then it comes rushing back to me. Oh yeah, yeah. There's this whole topic of information that I need, need to do. And so I make these notes and then about once a week, I transcribed them on a paper with a pen, into a list that has a little more detail as to what I was thinking. And then the next week I'll go back, and I'll see how many of these did I cross off?  Speaker 4: And how many did I not? And, and then look at my new notes and add those new ones to the list. And that's really the process. I mean, it's, it's, it's pretty informal, I guess, in that regard, I get pulled directionally off of a game plan for a day, most days, you know, I think, I think this is how it's going to go, that how it goes. And so, you know, I just have to react with that. And, and so probably the biggest challenge I have sometimes is if I find myself with time, I wasn't expecting, and now I also have a list of things to do, and I have to sit down and say, okay, I wasn't expecting to be working on anything right now, what should I knock off that list? You know, that tends to be the challenge in COVID has made that even more difficult because, you know, it used to be a much more, you know, get out and just, you know, manage by walking around kind of leader, I guess. And I've gotten away from that. And, and I'm trying to get back to it because we're, you know, we're, we're free to do it a little bit more now and, and, but the bad habits set him so fast. And so it's something I'm still struggling with managing wandering  Speaker 3: Around. I love that it has been harder in COVID well, before we head into our next question on how Eric looks at the bigger picture, a shout out to our sponsor, located in the Parkway, you'll find motivation, new friends and your new co-working space at fuse. Whether you're a student just starting out or a seasoned professional, come discover all the reasons to love coworking at fuse come co-work at fuse for free on Fridays in February, enjoy free coffee or tea, Wi-Fi printing conference rooms, and more, and bring a friend. If you use this, where individuals and small teams come together in a thoughtfully designed resource, rich environment to get work done and grow their ideas. Comprised of professionals from varying disciplines and backgrounds. Fuse is built for hardworking, fun, loving humans. Learn more about us@fusespc.com or stop by seven to three, the Parkway in Richland Washington. So Eric, it's easy to get trapped in reacting to crises and leadership. So how do you specifically step back and take a look at the bigger picture? I know that offsite retreat that we were able to do together, that's probably one of those elements, but you know, how do you stay in front of stuff?  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting. It's a good question. It depends. I suppose, you know, when it's, when you get stuck in the morass or the, the, the whirlwind, the whirlwind of day-to-day business, I think I, I, self-talk a lot on reminding myself that whatever it is that I'm obsessed with is pretty small potatoes generally. And really, even to some pretty big things, that's kind of always been a technique for stress dealing with stress that I've, I've always used this for whatever reason. It's very reassuring to me to, to, to tell myself, or to give myself the perspective that what am I complaining about? There are people who have a whole lot bigger problems than I'm wrestling with right now. And you don't have to look very far to find them. And, and they're literally millions or billions of people on the planet who are dealing with far, far more difficult things.  Speaker 4: And that always just sort of reassures me. It doesn't take away the problem, but it, it takes away the, the level of anxiety that maybe starts to creep in sometimes. And so I do that, self-talk myself that way a lot, but strategically maybe if that's the point of the question is how you really step back and look the bigger picture and what we're trying to accomplish and keep other people focused on that. Yeah, that's a, that's you have to be deliberate. You know that that's one where, you know, we do things like we did in Spokane with you where, you know, we remind ourselves, okay, what are the three or four most important things? And how do we make sure we're reminding everybody that that's the case. So we don't get so hung up on details that are important but get so hung up on missing a detail that we forget what we're really trying to accomplish.  Speaker 4: And what we're trying to accomplish is easy. We're really just trying to take great care of clients and, and, you know, again, cliche things, but if we take really good care of clients, they'll continue to do business with us. They'll refer people to us, it's worked it, it continues to work. The more we do it, the more clients come. It, it just is beautiful cycle. It's super easy. You know, from that perspective, you know, actually taking care of them takes work and technical skills and things like that. And managers and leadership and training, and, you know, all the things that we struggle with from time to time. But at the end of the day, the big picture, it's pretty straightforward. And we, we sometimes get hung up, but what should we do? Should we go, laughter, should we go extra far left? Well, as long as we're going left, I think we're doing fine.  Speaker 4: You know, we can of course, correct a little bit, but we went right. That'd be a problem. I think that's the, I think that's the, you know, the, the, the method and all of our leaders are a little different. So I think it's interesting. I have conversations with my leadership team and they're, they're each different in terms, I think of how they approach things. And the real secret is learning how to deal with each of them, you know, making sure that they're getting what they want. We just had a conversation last night about you actually with you too. We said, how come, how come we look around? And we're winning, but it's, sometimes it doesn't feel like we're winning. I came up with the, your recognition was something that's lacking. And we've heard that feedback from, from employees before. And, you know, we try things that are kind of formulated recognition and it just sort of dawned on me sometimes that is really this just conversational recognition, you know, really appreciate you helped me out with that.  Speaker 4: You know, you know, those kinds of things, you know, that for whatever reason you just don't do, if you can be a little bit deliberate about it and being sincere that, you know, I recognize that you're particularly good at this. It's honest, you know, it's not brown nosing. It's, it's just saying things you knew, and you assume the other person already knew, but it's good for the other person to hear you say it. And I think that at the end of the day, that's, that's the, the, you know, one of the biggest things we, we could do a better job of, but it sure helps keep us focused. Yes,  Speaker 3: We all need more air affirmation, inspiration recognition gotta have that. It's gotta be deliberate because you just onto the next thing. So that was, that was a cool recognition there at the retreat of, we got to celebrate our wins because we're winning. What key moves did you make for the organization in the year of COVID up till now to be responsive and strategic in a very uncertain time?  Speaker 4: Well, you know, it was interesting because, you know, when COVID first hit, I was B I was one of those who thought all this won't last week and it's all being over-hyped and, you know, it'll be, you know, by Memorial Day we'll be back to normal. You know, it was my instant, you know, early March 2020 mindset. So I had that wrong. And, but once it became apparent that the, that I was wrong and that it was going to be, you know, a significant event that was going to impact us. You know, I think we, we, we tried not to be on the bleeding edge of adjustments because nobody knew what to do. And so to the extent that we can sit back and watch what other people did and what worked and what didn't, you know, made a lot of sense, but we didn't come up with anything novel in terms of, you know, dealing with it from a space or safety perspective.  Speaker 4: You know, we were fortunate slash unfortunate, very look at it to be an essential business. And so we were never shut down and we had to have people in there, their offices too, not all of our people, but many of the jobs must be onsite. And so that took some of the decision-making out of it, you know, should they stay home or not, but we quickly spun up. And our, our, our it team and facilities group, and whole leadership team did a great job of quickly adapting technology and getting it out the door so that people could work from home. And that we could free up space in places where people were in crowded quarters and or people who could work from home, or if they had symptoms or, you know, they had that they were preexisting health conditions. You know, all the things that were obviously everyone was dealing with, we were able to quickly, you know, take care of those, those, those employees, you know, get people spaced out and get people home who needed to be home and, and deal with it.  Speaker 4: You know, we were slow to reluctant to close our lobbies and, you know, we were, we, but we kind of waited until, I don't know, sometime in early April, maybe that it was, became apparent that you would be conspicuously dangerous if you were open that way. And we went drive through only, and then we opened it back up in August. And then we had to, we've had to shut them down a couple of times, both over the holidays with that spike. And then also in a couple of cases where individual offices, you know, had people out. And so we went back to, drive-through only when that occurred, but by and large, I think, you know, our employee's kind of direct that, how they feel about their safety and comfort with working with one another. And, you know, to our knowledge, we've not had one transmission in our buildings, you know, very confident we haven't, we've had a number of employees that had COVID, but they all contracted it elsewhere.  Speaker 4: Fortunately didn't give it to anyone else. And so, you know, I think we had a pretty good experience with it, but the thing that hit us was PPP loans. You know that it's almost, when I think of COVID, I think of PPP for us, it was especially in the early days in April of last year, it was a bigger deal. It was for us, it was what's COVID, it's, it's all PPP all the time. And I'll admit now we, we through safety precautions by the wayside, you know, it was pre mass mandate when the, when the, when the PVP thing hit. So no one was wearing masks and we had big group meetings and we were, we were bringing food in to keep our employees who were working ridiculous amounts of overtime fed, you know, in engaged, because we had, you know, almost our entire staff work, you know, probably 40, 50 hours overtime, those first couple of weekends off of PPP.  Speaker 4: And it was crazy. I mean, the, the, the hours that we put in and the number of people, we had HR people, it, people marketing people making or helping with the PPP loan origination process, because it was so manual and so new, it was changing every day, but we figured it out. And, you know, I think for us, it was a real, a real win, you know, really helped us stand out in the community because we were able to get loans out, actually funded within a few days of the program, opening up when most banks were like, all right, I'm sure if we want to do this program. And so just a lot of Goodwill in the coin the community. I know we helped out a lot of businesses, you know, helped a lot of employees retain jobs. You know, in that first phase, we put a hundred million dollars on the street.  Speaker 4: It's a big deal in a community like this. And it was scary. I remember thinking, is the SBA really going to stand behind us on this? What if we make a mistake, are we going to lose money on these loans? And, you know, in the baking business, we can't lose money on loans very often, or we're not in the banking business. And so, you know, it's, it's one of those things we it's maybe the most solemn oath we take with deposit or money is we can't make those kinds of mistakes. And, you know, in those early days we felt like we were really sticking our neck out, as it turned out, the program worked like it's supposed to, and there really wasn't any risks that we took, but at the time we weren't sure about that. And so it was nerve wracking to think we're gonna, we're kind of betting the company that this program will work out.  Speaker 4: And, but we decided to do it to trudge forward with it aggressively under the hospital. So, well, if this is what ends it, we went down and doing what we do and, you know, helping, helping our clients in this community. And so I, it comes back to that's the bigger perspective, you know, I literally had that conversation with my wife. I said, well, you know, I'll be the George Bailey or the tray cities, you know, for life, if this happens, I w it was well-intended, there was no, no bad wheel in this at all. If this ends up blowing up in my face and, you know, we'll survive one way or another, it was nowhere near that dire. But in the moment, it didn't feel that way. And so that, that, that was sort of our experience. Well,  Speaker 3: You were the front runners in that. And I just kept hearing in the community in the community go to community first bank for PPP loan. And so it was a good reputation, you know, it's spread like wildfire, and I was fortunate to get one of those as well from you guys. Well, Eric, finally, what advice would you give to new leaders or anyone who wants to keep growing and gaining more influence?  Speaker 4: Well, it should have prepared for that question. There's so many good pieces of advice to kind of boil it down into one singular thing. You know, I think it's, you know, treat people, right. You know, if, if you do, if you treat people well, I mean, recognize, I guess first and foremost, that you don't get anywhere without the people. And, you know, if you're a small business, you might just be, you know, one of your laborers or what have you that worked for you, but, but they're carrying all the weight and they have to know how much you appreciate that and care. And, and w because you do, you're, you're riding on their shoulders. And I think if you're honest with yourself about that, then you can genuinely show that to the people around you. And that probably extends out to, you know, your broader support group, whether it's a consultant that helps you with management or your CPA, your attorney, your banker, or your insurance person, you name it, you know, those people, if you're treating them right, they're going to go the extra mile for you.  Speaker 4: And you need people to go the extra mile for you at certain times, like PVP, you know, as I was saying, you know, I was probably the thing I was the most proud of was I don't have, I think I had anybody who, or what do you mean I have to work this weekend? People were excited. They want, they knew it was there, that they, it was their time to rise up and do the right thing. And I believe a is because we just had great people that their parents had a good job or whatever it was that was most of it. But I think the other part was is that they knew the company cared and we were sincere. And that what we were trying to do with PPP loans was to help the community and they wanted to do their part. They wanted to be a part of it.  Speaker 4: And so, you know, that's what drove people to not just be burned out by the process, you know, and struggle on a year and a half now. And I think we're all tired of BBB, but the, but we're when we see the light at the end of the tunnel, but, but it's that, you know, truly letting people know that they care and what they're, that they're contributing. And that's a big part of it, you know, just get extra, extra benefit out of them. And then that person could be anybody in your support. It could be your spouse or your kids that support you by, you know, being there for you when you had a hard day. All of those things are, are, are, is really, I think what fuels us, at least from my perspective.  Speaker 3: So Tri-City influencers go the extra mile with people in your internal network, your external network, and will boomerang back on you. So Eric, how can our listeners best connect with you?  Speaker 4: Oh, well, I mean, with me directly, I pretty accessible. So you can reach me via email is probably the best way I, I get a lot of emails that I can get back to them if I'm busy during the day later. So my email is E Pearson, P E a R S O n@communityfirst.com. And first is one St. So community one S t.com.  Speaker 3: Thank you so much for all you do to make the Tri-Cities a great place and keep leading. Well, thank you. Let me wrap up our podcast today with a leadership resource to recommend, I run a program called leader launcher leader. Launcher is a leadership development program for emerging leaders and young professionals. We meet once a month and right now it's a virtual and we look forward to getting back together alive and do a two hour on leadership, could be on leading change or casting vision, or having that difficult conversation with a team member. And so the community gathers and do a seminar and they formulate an action plan to take back to their work and customize that. And then there's some peer networking that goes on as well. So they can meet leaders in other industries and talk about goals together. So just a little loose accountability. So if you'd like to sign up for the year, or if you've got employees that you'd like to sign up, it's a leader-launcher.com.  Speaker 3: Again, this is Paul Casey. I want to thank my guest, Eric Pearson from community first bank and HFG trust for being here today on the Tri-City influencer podcast. We also want to thank our TCI sponsor and invite you to support them. We appreciate you making this possible so we can collaborate to help leaders and inspire them in our community. Finally, one more leadership tidbit for the road to help you make a difference in your circle of influence. Scott Adams says there's no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end until next time, keep growing forward.  Speaker 2: Thank you to our listeners for tuning in to today's show hall. Casey is on a mission to add value to leaders by providing practical and strategies that reduce stress in their lives and on their teams so that they can enjoy life and leadership and experience their key desired results. If you'd like more help from Paul and your leadership development, connect with him@growingforwardatpaulcasey.org for a consultation that can help you move past your current challenges and create a strategy for growing your life or your team forward. Paul would also like to help you restore your sanity to your crazy schedule and getting your priorities done every day by offering you is free. Control my calendar checklist, go to WW dot, take back my calendar.com for that productivity tool or open a text message 2 7 2 0 0 0, and type the word groan  Speaker 3: Tri-Cities influencer podcast was recorded at fuse SPC by bill Wagner of safe strategies.

It's the final Power of Veto of the season, and it's an ESCAPE ROOM, baby! And that's not all! There's an Instant Eviction where the Final 4 becomes the Final 3 and things are all lined-up for Finale Night! So Eric and Nicole are here to reflect on the season and predict how the Finale could go. Who do they think may have the best chance of sitting in the Final 2 spots? Of getting the jury's votes? What about Canada's Favorite Player? Who do they think may walk away with that coveted title? All this and more, including a lot of reflections on how things could be post-season and beyond, so listen now for all the "BB Times," friends! (---Get it?! It's a "POV Newsroom" reference! haha) "Hello, Friends!" can be watched in all of your favorite broadcasting locations and listened to on all of your favorite podcast providers. You can find "Hello, Friends!," Nicole, and Eric on all of your favorite social media sites to get exclusive content. Plus, join the shows live to participate in the chats with your real-time questions, comments, and reactions! FOLLOW US ON: Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/hellofriendstwi Instagram: https://instagram.com/hellofriendsinsta?igshid=crycra6hx9c7 YouTube: https://youtu.be/3rUuoAUpnhY Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/947039436 Facebook: https://fb.watch/4cYrwiQM1M/ To see more of our socials, get our live show schedule, contact us, and more, be sure to visit our website at: http://www.hellofriendspod.com  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello Gut Check project fans and KBMD Health family. I hope you're having a great day. It's your host Eric Rieger soon to be joined by my awesome co host, Dr. Kenneth Brown. It's time for Episode Number 53 and this is a really informative episode about what causes Hemorrhoids and believe it or not, would you maybe listening to this podcast on could be making your hemorrhoids worse? That's right The phone anyhow, how is this possible? We'll just check out Episode 53 it's it's very light but really informative and without wasting any more time let's get to our sponsors. And as always, I'll try until formulated by my partner Dr. Ken otter ideal chock full of polyphenols go to love my tummy calm doesn't matter if you're an athlete trying to protect your gut health. If you just want to protect your body from systemic inflammation, trying to daily go to love my tummy calm that's love my tummy, calm slash, KB MD get your polyphenols today, and of course unrefined bakery, great food, regardless of your specialty diet. If you need to be paleo or keto or certainly gluten free, head to unrefined bakery.com use code, gut check and save 20% off your first order. This is just great food, great groceries delivered to your door unrefined bakery.com use code gut check and save 20% off your first order. And last but not least, go to KB Md health.com. And you can peruse the three signature products that Dr. Brown endorses his own CBD as well as Brocelite chock full of severe things and of course auto deal. So go to KB Md health.com. Use code GCP and save 20% off of any order anytime. Alright, let's get to it. Episode Number 53 what is causing my hemorrhoids every day?Hello Gut Check project fans and KBMD health family How are you doing? I'm Eric Rieger flanked here by my awesome co host, Dr. Kenneth Brown. It's Episode 53 What's up, man? That'sawesome. It's Episode 53. And you rarely refer to me as awesome. That's why I'm gonna use it three times in the same sentence. That's an awesome sentence. Usually it's I'm I'm here with my adequate co host, Dr. Ken Brown.Yeah, I've never said that. And y'all will never use awesome again. That's probably not even true. So what's what's shakin here for Episode 53.And this is exciting because Episode 53 it's gonna be all about hemorrhoids, hemorrhoids, hemorrhoids and Roy Roy. Yeah, this all came about because I was treating a patient in their mid 20s. And that person asked if it was unusual for me to be treating a person that was they felt that this was an older person's disease. And I said no, actually, I treat a lot of people in their 20s. And I started thinking about it. And I went, you know, I do treat a lot. And that person said, Why is that? And what I have not paused to think about and he goes you should do a show on it. Yeah, and I went absolutely. And as suggested we're doing a show on hemorrhoids. So I am declaring today officially national hemorrhoid Awareness Day. That's veryambitious. I actually you're not you're not gonna believe me, but I actually believe that there is a hemorrhoid day. And there's actually a hemorrhoid month the hemorrhoid days October 19. And hemorrhoid month is November and I don't want to take it away from you. Maybe this could be hemorrhoid30 minutes. Yes, yes. We all know this. Everyone knows that October 19. Everyone knows and it's also national clean your virtual desktop days national Kentucky day. National seafood bisque day 10 National LGBT Center Awareness Day. hemorrhoids gets buried under all that so I'm pulling hemorrhoids out and declaring today national hemorrhoid day.So we're shining the light on him right. I'm changing. Everyone likes to have their hemorrhoids eliminated. Oh,I emailed the national hemorrhoid committee and found out there is not one I made myself president. And by doing so. I voted. I was I filled a quorum and I was able to change it this morning. Today's national hemorrhoid day quit arguing with me. So I'm done. And I'll just go ahead and move on to I like the fact that you use the word quorum and they were using the words hemorrhoid because both of those are kind of hard to spell. Once you give me you were telling me you were second runner up in the deck. cater local spelling bee in 1978 was ityeah much like your impromptu declared hemorrhoid national day I was the only one who showed up and I still came in second.Alright, so before we jump into hemorrhoids man what's going on with your life? What's going on with the Rieger household?We are preparing to actually follow your footsteps we are about to renovate the house and sweeping changes about to move everything out today to the house the one that we just moved into so we're going to really justis upgraded did you do the renovations? Like we did? Did you flood the house first? No choose to renovate it. Wetried to order a freeze and it didn't quite work out. But now in about a week and a half we get started should take about a month. I don't think it's nearly as extensive as what you're doing. But yeah, we'll update some stuff. Mack is back in the throes of offseason basketball. Murray's got her new company up and going gage is back out finishing up his first full year in college. So you know, they're doing well. Howabout you? That's awesome. Oh, the brown households doing well. Lots of tennis going on. I think Lucas is playing on that ITF circuit and both Carl and Lucas have tournaments this weekend. So that's, that's cool. love to see everybody healthy out there able to do that kind of thing. You know, suffering through a little bit of a small neck injury that I now i i appreciate when you can get out there and play the sports that you want to play and have fun the way you want to have fun. Sodefinitely check that what episode was was Wade McKenna,who early on very early. Yeah, that was back in the original students how we even did this that was back in the spoony studio.So his episode was specifically on stem cells from his perspective. He's one of the world's leading experts.You throw a little y'all bro. Yeah, I'll throw a little information out there. Right. So I injured my neck. And which is a really, really common injury and there's typical traditional medicine that people do. And one of our read one of our guests maybe guest number five or sixWade McKenna,he's Dr. Wade McKenna happens to be a world expert on stem cell. So I texted him and said, Get an act thing going on. I want to I don't want to play around with this. I went and made an appointment with him. Super cool guy. Super cool staff absolutely phenomenal out at trophy club. He spent a long time with me. And we went through everything and I'm going to do stem cells. We're gonna see what happens. I hear Joe Rogan talk about stem cells all the time. Yeah. And honestly, there's varying differences with how people respond to it. But if you're gonna do it, you go with the person who's been doing it the longest that does the most the person that that Rogan had on to talk about it was who Wade used to open up his Panama clinic with Neil Riordan. Yeah. Neil Riordan.I'm pretty excited. And we won't spend too much time because this is about hemorrhoids. However, I think it's really cool on that episode, if you go back and check it, you'll learn that lots of stem cell failure is due to people not knowing how to even even the physicians themselves may not be using the best technique for sure there's there'shandling of stem cells doing things but he did on our podcast, he explained how he did research as a residence. He has been doing this autologous bone marrow use with stem cells, which nobody, which people are now just scratching the surface. He's been doing it for a long time and even had the Panama clinic where because the laws were a little bit more relaxed, and he could do some things that he had been doing research on. So I'm excited. So I'll keep everybody updated to what happens because if it if it goes well, and I imagine it really well, I'll be really excited that I can if I look 20 years younger, not that I took 10 bottles of Toronto at one time for the anti aging polyphenols. It's because those stem cells are kicking in but you know, we'll see. All right. This is kind of cool. I didn't even realize this. This threw me off. I'm really excited. Also, on episode 35, we interviewed ron paul Bundy. Oh yeah. Yep. generosity, generosity fee. So Eric and I, my family's out of town. Eric brought his family we went and we participated in one of generosity feeds, making campaigns or what is it? Yeah, wedid the food baking campaign where we packed all of the lunches for over I think that one was 11,000 meals that we did for kids who essentially just don't have a means to eat during the weekends. Yeah,it's it's absolutely shocking. So what Ron on that on that episode explained, is that how many children rely on the school system to get the only meals that they get right? Even in like what you would consider affluent areas, there's going to be people that still need the assistance. And so what they do is they have teamed up with a nutritionist and stuff that devised a very, I guess you would call it healthy, nutrient rich meal. Definitely that is sustainable. And so what we did is we packed rice and beans and seasoning and everything's all they got to do is you just give it to the child when they walk out the door, right and then they get there. We're able to eat over the weekend until the school is able to do it. I think it's a phenomenal thing and the fact that they're in so demand so anyways, it's been a year dude. And party on purpose is up again and we're gonna be sponsors again. So last year we helped sponsor What what? what Tim power setup with Austin down and yeah, it was a year ago. We were justwondering that pandemic stuff. That'swhat we were doing the pandemic, everybody was like this weird thing that's happening what's going on? Yeah, it was one year ago. So we're going to be sponsors, again, a party on purpose. And I would like everybody to take a look at Episode 35. And just see the special work that generosity feeds is doing and robbing Ron club Andy and his passion for it is really amazing. helps a lot of kids who just don't just don't have a voice, and it's pretty awesome. Yeah, so we've had some really sciency shows recently, a couple maybe a little too sciency. And, you know, I'm feeling like we're not doing good justice to the other arts. I went to a liberal arts college. Did you know that?I did know that. Yeah.My mom taught there and I went there. Good. Old Danna college that no longer exists.So you're not going to the reunion. So what what is it about that and it reminded you of your college?Well, I was gonna jump into the science of hemorrhoids. Oh, it's really cool stuff. And I thought, Wait a minute. No, let's, let's bring in some other arts into this. Let's be a full spectrum podcast.Okay. I'm excited.I'd like to kick some history. Okay.Let's find out.Yeah, let's kick some history. So I was sitting there preparing for this. And I'm, specifically I want to talk about the history of the toilet.Ooh, yeah. Okay.I mean, we take it for granted. It's something that in other people's worlds, my favorite thing is when patients come to me and they're like, I don't want to talk about this. But no matter what they're gonna say, I'm like, I talk about this all the time. Yeah. No, you can't say anything, but I'm not gonna go. Oh, yeah. So specifically the toilet and quick trivia quiz. Okay, first documentation of a toilet. Do you have any idea of when it actually took place? When when we when historians believe that there may have been the beginnings of writing about a particular thing that could have been a toilet? I'm just going to guess because of irrigation? Maybe in Rome? I don't know. That was interesting. 3000 bc and Scotland?No kidding.Yeah, that's what they that's what archaeologists believe was the first plausible thing that is a toilet, but it wasn't written about and you're exactly right. You're exactly right on this, but they think that the true record didn't start taking place until 315. Ad by the Romans. Okay.Make sense?Yeah. And this is kind of fun. Okay, because it's gonna play into what we're going to talk about later. All right. But the toilets at that time, were actually public toilets. And they were situated like in a square next to each other. And it was considered a social event to go poop. Oh, with the community.So could that be considered the first buches?They sell beaver nuggets?Oh, my gosh, that explains so much. Because I was looking at these archeological digs. And there was these little carvings of like this little beaver with a hat. And I'm like, Yeah, yeah, the Romans actually started the first buches. But anyways, so they build these, these toilets in public locations where people would gather, and they would socially poop next to each other, right? Men and women, just just kind of part of it. And then there would be a stick attached to your toilet with a sponge on the end with which you would clean yourself.Hopefully, you'rethe first No, yeah, well, hopefully you are. But you're never the first because once it's there, it stays. And then you dip it in water and shake it off. And some historians believe that that is the origin of I'm not making this up of getting the wrong end of the stick. Wow. Well, trivia for you.Yeah, I never knew what was the right end of the stick was thrown out. That's a really good point.So if you're a private pooper, and Tim poop in public, remember that Romans would rather be like, Hey, I'm having a dinner party and a pooping party. So let's all eat and then we will go gather in the pooping room together and use the sponge that we've others have used 1000s of times,the Romans had a lot of ideas, wrestlingthings so thank goodness, during the medieval times, people became way more dignified, I mean, way more dignified. Sure. So they started pooping in private in a pot. Okay, which and then they would poop in their pot and then they would go to the window and they would throw it out on the street.How pleasantthat's what they were doing. Yeah. So, yeah, the medieval times they would throw the contents out there. And then in 1560s, sir john Harrington developed the first flush toilet a pipe that went straight down john Harrington, where john Well, this is funny because sadly his invention would go ignored for 200 years. Wow. That's like one of those things where you're like, you invent something that is really novel and exciting. Yeah, they didn't have social media back then try and promote it. You can take out Facebook ads and know that so john was out there, here, you here, you can poop over here. And, you know, it was documented that he did it. But then in 1775, so 200 years later, Alexander Cummings took his idea put an S shape at the bottom it was a pipe Yeah, and then that controlled the fumes that were coming back out Sure. Which made a world of difference and POW it took off and I mean, it literally took off the poop took off unfortunately, Alexander Cummings didn't think it through too far because then it just went through an S shape and then into a pit. Okay in and so in 1848 everybody was using these toilets and Britain had to Britain actually required that homes be built with an ash room a s h Okay, not bathroom ashra Ashram Okay, where the waste would be collected in a pile of ash. And who knows? If you think you have a bad job where night soil men that was the night soil night soil man would come by and empty your ash roomsay that fast.can't apply for that job. So tell me Eric, what makes you qualified to be in Knight soil man,I'm good at nothing else.Who takes that job? So if you're if you're upset about your job, remember, you could have been paid Knight's oil man. And then of course the one that everybody remembers here. And so you this lead up to it was funny because I always thought this guy invented in 1861, a guy named Thomas crapper patented a series of toilets and then the whole expansion on plumbing took off and this is what you now have in your home you sit in your home. I bring this up because I don't really think that we can talk about hemorrhoids without on national hemorrhoids. I'm going to keep referring to this as national hemorrhoids. I don't think we can talk about hemorrhoids on national hemorrhoid day without discussing toilets because it all plays into it. Okay, so that's my history lesson for you. I don't think we've ever done history before.Not well not about toilets. No, not quite like that. That's interesting. I actually always thought that with crappers first name was john. I didn't know as Thomas crapper. That's funny.Yeah,but it makes sense. No, no, you did say that. But the earlier the first guy was john Harrington. I guess they just overtime they kind of morph those two together. I think it's prettyThomas crapper. Funny. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? I'm gonna head to the john. Yeah. Take a crap. You're right. Right there.Yeah, there.There it is. That's how you want second place indicator spelling. Alright, so now back to the original question. Can younger people get him?Absolutely.So this is really intriguing. I went down some rabbit holes on this one. So as it turns out, recent data is showing that there is a significant increase in hemorrhoids with late Generation Z and millennials. Okay. And the real question is why? Me? There'sonly because we've, we've talked about that long term sitting, can do that there must be something that's drawing people to either sit more frequently or more importantly, sit longer.What do you think you are? 100%? Correct. On a prior episode, we did discuss a funny study. We thought it was kind of funny. We're in 2012. They did a survey in 2012. Right? 75% of the people admitted to taking their smartphone into the bathroom, the other 25 are lying about it. And then Verizon saw that as an opportunity. And they did their own study. And granted, it's from Verizon, June 2015 90% of the people admitted to it.Well, they know where yours they probably definitely know.Yeah, and there's an actual study ongoing right now. It started in 2018. I looked it up on clinical trials.gov where they are looking into the actual correlation to make it more scientific, interesting. And what they're saying is that as we continue to move forward, Generation Z, taking the phone into the restroom is basically built into the DNA. So I did I did a survey this morning, and I took a poll of Generation Z people around me now. Yeah, 100% of them said yes. 100% Use a phone. I believe that other estimates, maybe other regions, not in my area where 95%. But 100% of the Gen Z people that I interviewed, right said that they use their phone that way. Sothis is important, because I think what we need to ask you is how many people did you ask my son? There's wine.But that is 100%. It's a 100%. Yeah. So that's just shows to make sure that you look at the actual study design and data whenever something like this all the time, it's all the more time. So necessarily, the podcast is sponsored by these apps. But my medical practice is sponsored by these apps. Yeah, so I would like to give a shout out for our sponsors, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, tick tock. Yeah, somehow Reddit got left off, but I believe read, it should be on there. So there's all these articles now talking about this. And there's certainly lots of opinion pieces. And there's lots of blogs and stuff where they're interviewing colorectal surgeons and gastroenterologist and asking their opinions. And they what they actually talk about is that it's probably not about the app. It's more about the time sitting on the toilet. And I believe that's part of it. And that's what I want to get into with this guy. Because I believe that there's more going on than that. And I have a theory as to why those apps in particular, cause more damage. You'll notice it like candy crush isn't on there and things like that. When people really spend time they tend to go to those apps and I'm going to explain that later. Okay, so let's start with some basics. Alright. Alright, you fire questions. And well, let's talk you know, just as much about this topic, as I do. So let's just say what are hemorrhoids?It's when vessels of belief can becoming gorged people will probably notice them when they are external. But there are external internal hemorrhoids, you'll probably want to delineate between the two of those typically, oh, it's the number one reason that people notice bleeding, rectal bleeding, correct. They can become painful at different things like that. I don't remember how many vessels it is, can become a gorge two or three, typically, and, but if caught early enough, can be treated by a gastroenterologist and pretty much eliminated.Yeah. 100%. So it is a natural collection of veins. And I remember talking to a colorectal surgeon, I use all the time, Dr. Macaluso, and he goes, Hey, keep in mind that this is an arterial venous connection also. And I only say this because this reminds me of a story what early on in my career, like really early on I was in the hospital, I get called to go see an ICU patient that was crashing, absolutely crashing cirrhotic patient that was crashing, and blood was shooting out of this person's butt. And they were just running bags, and his pressure just kept dropping. He's like, Hey, we can't we have no time to wait, you got to come in here. It's probably variceal his massive bleeding. I scope him up top. totally clean. No viruses. Yeah. And I'm like, well, and he's still bleeding. And I'm like, either he decompressed them. So I'm like, we had an emergency call and flip them around. And this is all bedside and I'm early on. So if what I mean by that is I guess over time, you start seeing more and you kind of, you know, shrug stuff off and go another one of these this was like, out of left field. Like on a like a Monday afternoon. They're like you need to cancel clinic and go to the ICU right now. And so I, I end up scoping this person in blood is throughout the entire colon. And I'm like, I can't find the source. I can't find the source. I'm coming back. And there, I come back. And I retroflex this is before I started treating hemorrhoids. And I'm like, the rectum is just feeling full of blood. Uh huh. And I I said call. Like, I apologize, forgot his name down so many years ago, but I said, Call this guy get them on the phone. He's a colorectal surgeon that had just left the university and had come over and was joined the group that Dr. Macaluso was at. And so I said, Man, I got this guy, whatever he goes, this could be a massive hemorrhoidal bleed. People forget that. It's an arteriovenous connection connection. Yeah. And he's like, Are you comfortable banding it I'm like, I've never done it. And he goes, just treat it like it's a virus. Like it's a variceal bleed. I'm like, okay, anyone describe what a virus sees is their sees when people have liver failure. pressure builds up and actually when the blood tries to go to the liver, it backs up, fills up and then it the spleen gets big, the spleen fills up and then you end up shunting blood. It's all applying up to the gastro esophageal veins. These come up this way. And those veins can dilate and they can actually pop. Oh, yeah. And unfortunately, people will bleed a ton when they actually have that. And so what we do is we go down with the camera and then we do a rubber band ligation on the various hillbillies. So at this point, he's like, I'm gonna come over and see what's going on. And I loaded up a banner. I put one band, and it's like a scene from a movie with the clouds this. Birds start chirping blood pressure comes up one band and I was like, Wow. So that's so although they can be a nuisance in very, very, very rare circumstances, they can be like a really big deal. And that particular time it was a really big deal. Yeah, it's a big deal. So, yes, collection of veins and they weren't like shock absorbers. So all of us have hemorrhoids. If you don't have hemorrhoids. You're an alien. Yeah. Or Ilan musk.He lives Ilan.I don't know. Yeah, I'm thinking he doesn't have them. He's, he's not of this world. He's not of this world. So and they look like shock absorbers. But when you build up too much pressure, then they will fill up. And they're it's a it's a vein that can actually stretch. Yeah. And if too much pressure builds up, then it goes into the extra hemorrhoids, then the extra hemorrhoids get big. And that's when people really notice them because they hurt because there's a line called the dentate line, where you have pain fibers below it. No pain fibers above it. So frequently, I'll get people that will come in when they have an external thing. Yeah. And then we realize well, it's the internal ones feeding the external so if you've ever had an external hemorrhoid it's probably because your internal your internal hemorrhoids have grown and it's created a diversion for the pressure over there. And it hurts bad over there. And you're right, they can bleed edge pain thrombose. incidence, how many people do you think have issues with hemorrhoids?I don't know. How many people I've got no idea. It seems like it seems like it's it's really often for those that we see in our line of work, but that you know, that's that's a kind of a skewed sample size.is a little bit skewed. Yeah.I don't know. I'm just gonna throw a number out there cuz I really have no idea. One in more than 20. I don't know.120. Okay.I have no idea. It's probably bigger than that.Well, this is interesting, because on up to date, which is supposed to be the most up to date thing that I subscribe to I pay service to the incident is a study show that up to 14% of us people had hemorrhoid issues. And that seemed really small. And I realized that I'm skewed on this. And then I started researching more. I went and found that study, it was done in 1989. Wow. The only study that was published on the incidence of true hemorrhoids was done in 1989. Now looking back and other studies where people are mentioning them on colonoscopies and such Yeah, it's way more than that more recent data is that one in three people have issues and that incidence is going up. That's one in three people seeking the care of a doctor interesting. And then I started looking at the number of people that are or the amount of money that's being spent in over the counter medications. It's in the hundreds of millions. So it's gotta be way it's gonna be even more than one in three. I would even say that most people at some point in today's society may have a hemorrhoid issue even if they don't realize that it's a hemorrhoid issue.Yeah, wow. Yeah, I was I was off by at least three to five fold. They'renot close. So like but but you're exactly right. In my world. Everyone has a hemorrhoid. Yeah,I feel like I've rescued because we see, dude.It's like that. That time in Nebraska when I was running the the free STD clinic. And I got interviewed. They're like, how many people have committee? I'm like, all of them. All of them. Everybody does.I was skewed. I didn't realize that there's I'm wearing my silver x suit.So I am a hemorrhoid doctor or I treat hemorrhoids. So everybody seems to have it right. Or at least they funnel to me. I probably should remember that time and I did that free STD clinic. But anyways, alright, so why did I even bring up him? Why did I even bring up toilets? In the beginning, when we're talking about hemorrhoids?Oh, because we're sitting. And on top of that, not only are we sitting, I know this, we're straining, we're gonna applying pressure. So applying pressure sitting for longer. I think when you're reading through your statistics, it sounds to me like the incidence is rising. So now we're going to start looking at what could potentially make us be sitting longer. In a spot where we are increasing our pressure,we think 100%. So what people don't realize is, and it's funny, because this particular patient asked, Do you think that we're seeing more hemorrhoids because of COVID? Because people are sitting instead of? And yes, and then I started thinking about it. I was like, but why is the toilet different? Like how does this support, there's no support hole. So what you've done is they've put a hole there so that the your rectum is now lower, you form a king, the blood pools there And sure, which is why sitting on a toilet scrolling through your abs is one of the reasons why more blood can pool in that area.Okay, so there was some context around that. So essentially sitting on the toilet seat is actually more conducive to forming hemorrhoids more rapidly than just sittingsomewhere flat. Correct. Okay. And then this is one of the things when we talk about the evolution of the, of the toilet. I was really funny because I was googling this. And then what came up was a blog that I wrote in 2011. About the angle of dedication. Yeah, angle that we poop at our Western toilets, actually are not conducive to proving right. And one of my biggest pet peeves is in the older population. They make the toilets very high, so that they can get off of it easy the wrong way to go. Exact wrong way to go. Because as you change from a sitting to a squatting position, yeah, squatting is how we're actually supposed to be moving. Yeah. Which is why if you go to Middle East, certain Asian countries, the toilets are on the ground. Yeah, that's really the way that you should be. Yeah. And they did a study, the blog that I wrote was a Japanese study where they took med students which is I just thought it was a funny study. And they did they put barium paste in these med students. And then they made them poop. multiple different angles. Yeah. So it was like, you're like, there's there's labs that do this where there's like an audience watching and you just kind of like I mean, that's just yeah, we'rethe modern day ash. shovelers arethe descendants of the ash, soil man. What am I call night soil?Well, people really sure it's not a job I'm going for No,it's not but certainly the descendents night soil man.They do now.Dr. Satish Rao who runs the anal rectal lab, and I got in Georgia, he's probably gonna look this up and go, great, great, great. Night soil man. You can read some of the work that he's done on this Dr. Rouse done some most of the work on the anal rectal movement. I remember watching him in a lecture and he showed his lab which is a barium toilet. And then our panel of people that watch on a large screen as a cameras there. And he said john, unfortunately designed it a little bit wrong shift and walk up a couple steps and sometimes people they can't hold the Wow. Because the whole time I mean, I'm just like watching this as a gastroenterologist. I'm like, that is a profoundly invasive thing. When you go I'm gonna go to the doctor, what are you gonna do? I'm gonna I'm gonna go poop in front of an audience. Yes,Ma'am, I'm missing my appointment.Sir, you're 15 minutes late, we're gonna have to reschedule. Oh, shoot. So anyways, squatting is the best. So toilets contribute to it in its own right. Sure. And it's called the angle of dedication. Basically, you have a muscle that wraps around when you stand. It's there so that it kinks it. So that when you're walking around, you have several safeguards. So you don't put yourself right. Internal sphincter, external sphincter and even this thing. And that thing is always tight. The people retells muscles, so as you sit, the angle becomes so as it's, when you're standing, the muscles will tighten. And as you sit, the muscle relaxes, and then it allows for a straighter, straighter shot. Yeah. So that's one of the reasons the toilets are an important part. And then if you spend more time in it, so if you're wondering, the best way to poop, lift your knees up. squatty potty style. Oh, it's fine. Yeah, it's a product, but you can do it with anything, get your knees up above your hips lean slightly forward. And that's the best way to poop. So let's talk about prevention of hemorrhoids.Well, since we were talking about toilet seat whole while ago, I was going to make sure you weren't going to say you should just poop on a flat board. So I'm glad that wasn't one of the solutions. Just sounds incredibly messy. So prevention, find things when number one probably find a way to to consume the foods that allow you to make good stool to come out. Be certain that you're not doing activities that make you want to stay on a toilet longer, walk around smoking, the new sitting.Oh, explain that real quick. smoking's the new settings you through that our settings in settings, the new smoking, sorry, setting, sitting sitting, the new smokingsettings, the new smoking, there was a there's been a handful of different studies, but most recently, I think it was almost two years ago, there was a study where they showed that the comorbidities that people can develop over time was commensurate with how many hours of a day they were sitting and as people begin to sit longer and longer. throughout the day. They had more incidents of obesity, hypertension, just on and on die, diabetes. I can't remember what else lifespan, lifespan latwon lifespan and lifespan if ik quality of life,the quality of life so the your likelihood of dying is equivalent. If used a certain amount of hours a day is equivalent to smoking like a pack a day. Yeah. For like 30 years.Yep. Something like that. Yeah.That's wild. Yeah. Soany and actually, they say that if you did that routinely, you actually couldn't overcome it through rigorous exercise. That's right. Yes. It was almost like there wasn't a way to combat the long sedentary periods of the day or something like that.I remember exactly. You're making me Can you hold on the podcast? Well, Imean, podcasts aren't two hours anymore.We read that study. Back in the early days, Eric and I were doing marathon podcasts were like Joe Rogan gets that many views with three hours. Let's do six hours. Yeah,I decided I didn't want to be a smoker.So you're exactly right. Don't sit too long on a toilet. If you're sitting there for a very long time, then that's just gonna lead to hemorrhoids. And what you're talking about proper diet. So eating fiber, actually 20 to 30 grams of fiber. just published a blog yesterday, on getting enough fiber does have this Yeah. So go to Kenneth Brown, or go to Kenneth Brown, MD. com. You can see these you can see this blog. But basically, it's how to get 20 to 30 grams of fiber and soluble insoluble. The distinction. The distinction is, it's To me, it's a lot of overlap a lot of gray, I think you need both. Basically, if you're eating your veggies, in having some fruit, you're probably you're probably pretty good and getting your fiber. Yeah. So 20 to 30 grams. And then the question that everyone's gonna ask is, well, are there any supplements that I can take for this?supplements for hemorrhoids, for hemorrhoids? I think there is one key ingredient within artron to that has research behind it and the horse just notYeah, so wild. So I just assumed that there would be like five or six that have. So I signed up to examine calm, shout out to them, because they actually go through the effort of doing everything research backed, and they have what's called a human matrix panel, where you can see what the human studies are. Alright, so it's the human matrix. So there's, there may be animal studies. And shockingly, the only one that showed any evidence of decreasing hemorrhoids was horse chestnut, or the extract and horse chestnut called asen. And I'll read exactly what the the one study that actually that they referenced on this is that supplementation of three times a day of horse chestnut, 40 milligrams asen, for over the course of a day in a short period of time with somebody with hemorrhoids was associated with this significant reduction in symptoms, bleeding and improvement in endoscopic evaluation. I didn't even know this. And what they showed is that there's a 32 response in the placebo arm, but an 82 response 82% response in the arm that actually got the horse chestnut, and most benefits were apparent within six days. So it's not like you have to take it forever. Wow. Now, what's really interesting is when we're talking about something like I'll try and steal that may help you go to the bathroom easier, and it's got a horse chestnut in it. I haven't even been having my hemorrhoids. Patients take it because I just really kind of use it for the polyphenol effect on those that do not have bloating. And if you have bloating, I'm gonna recommend it. Right. But now we're looking at a whole new aspect here of horse Jessa being for him, butyeah, I remember when you first found that study, it was just kind of a eureka moment. I, I didn't know that.Yeah. So now speaking of eureka moment, here's mine about this topic. So every other colorectal surgeon and gastroenterologist on all these different blogs or interviews or TV spots and stuff like that. They were there said, well, it's not really the phone that's doing it. It's just the time on the toilet. I want to disagree with that a little bit. And I'm gonna I'm gonna see if you agree cuz this is purely theoretical here. But there's something called pelvic floor dyskinesia, okay? pelvic floor dyskinesia is when the muscles down below. They are not responding the way that you want them to respond. Okay? It's very common in women who have had babies. And so I'll bring people in. And it's typical of the person that says, I get the urge, but I feel like I've not fully evacuated or it takes way too long to get the stool out. Yeah. And that's when I have my discussion about squatty potty and, and lifting your knees up above and leaning forward, making sure there's enough fiber the fiber will bind the stool together so that hopefully, it brings moisture in along with binding it so that it all comes on at once. The typical person that has something like this as they struggle to go and when they go to the restroom, it's small, uneventful stores, you know, they talk about it being just like small rattle millet, rabbit pellets, things like that. So now knowing that pelvic floor dyskinesia is associated with some emotional response, because it's muscles they tense up. And they believe that they are relaxing the muscles when in reality, they're tensing them. So when I examine somebody, I'll go, can you relax your anus for me? And they'll frequently, many times can't do it. I'll be like, contract your anus for me. And they'll squeeze their butt cheeks, but the anus doesn't contract, right? And then when I say try and expel my finger, like you're having a bowel movement, everything clamps down. And I'm like, does this and then I can get them to relax. And that's what Satish Rouse Dr. Satish Rao's whole lab works on is this and there's Laureen forgot her last name. lorien is a physical therapist that specializes in only this, and I spend a lot of patients so we're gonna have her on the podcast at one time to really deep dive into this one top pelvic floor experience, pelvic floor expert. And yeah, because it's not just deputation, it can, it can lead to dyspareunia, which is pain during intercourse, it can lead to spasms in the bladder calledstatus, it can lead to a lot of other things and that without with the poor, and that could be way off here poor pelvic floor tone can lead to the need for like bladder slings and stuff like that, forsure. All of that over time leads to that. So the more you keep doing this, that's what a rectal seal is. Yeah, that's what prolapse happens from and other things. So it's not something that if you're having these issues, so if you're like the twin, mid 20 year old that's doing this, we got to correct these things now, because if you continue to let this happen over time, the muscles start relaxing the nerves start thinking it's normal. And then that happens. So my theory is this. Number one, you're on these particular apps, okay, these apps can be associated with an emotional trigger shares all imagine going into the bathroom sitting down, you hit Facebook, you're trying to go poop, and you realize that you weren't invited to a dinner party, a party. Yeah. And then you start going on, you start scrolling through the pictures. And it's emotionally upsetting. you hop on Instagram and see a very, or Twitter and see a very angry political posts that get you riled up. As you do this, your sympathetic tone goes up, which is the fight or flight, and you will tend to contract muscles. So I would love to do a study on that, in particular, like you get to use your phone in the bathroom, but you can only I'm just I'm have a great idea. We're gonna hold on and I need your help on that. Okay. Okay. So basically, these particular apps in general, put you on the toilet longer, but then you can actually become emotionally invested in what you're looking at. I think you and I should design an app. Okay. How would you do it?probably find something that would make me completely relax. And well, actually, we we know people who have technology to have scientifically backed data to to help one relax, and possibly utilize a mobile device.Yeah, we need a bit. So you're about brain.fm? Yeah, yeah. Dan Clark CEO. Interesting, very interesting. Imagine having we need to set the brain.fm has a patented technology, which is called neural phase locking, where and I'm going to, we've talked to their PhD. Oh, yeah, super smart. And I'm not going to pretend to explain it. But basically, you can increase the activity in a certain part of your brain so that you can focus when you want to focus Mack and sleep when you want to sleep. You can relax, chill,anti anxiety, yeah, antianxiety. We got to sit with him and be like, let's team up.awesome idea.Let's do a pooping app where we're going to stimulate an area and then we'll just we'll combine that with the headspace guy. Have you ever listened to headspace?Is that the guy from New Zealand or Australia?Yeah, it's huge. headspace is huge. Yeah, you know. Hi. Welcome back.Yeah, yeah,we're gonna talk today about emotional stress it just hot Welcome back. I see that you're on the loo.Don't stay here too long.I'm going to talk you through this. Now make sure your knees are up. And you are leaning slightly forward. Please know while this app is running, no other apps can be opened.You are stuck here until you're finished.And at at a certain amount, you will be required to stand up walk around. And then we'll make it so that the only way to turn it off is the sound of a flushing toilet.Yeah. Then that actually is not a terrible idea. Nota terrible idea at all.I'll tell you what was funny though. I got to confess some because I was laughing a little bit earlier before you got to that. In case y'all don't know, this guy, and I hardly ever been This guy does not use social media apps and watching you struggle for what people are looking for in Twitter. And what else did you mentioned Facebook and Instagram. That was awesome. He has no idea what makes you mad when you get on those apps. You're trying to find out.But all I know is every day I get on my MySpace page, and it's just blank. I don't know whypeople don't like me, man, you treat your your laptop like a Solitaire machine.I actually believe that. Well, fortunately, I'm a total nerd. So I would rather actually read some journal articles. Yeah, no, totally.Yeah. 100%.Yeah. And I mean, shout out to everybody that's crushing it out there. Like, you know, Tony yuans. A friend and his Instagram is just chilling. Well, he's,he's actually on it.Yeah. He's doing a good job with that. Yeah. And I admire that. Yes. That's awesome. But yeah, but anyways, I think we should do it. We should get into the app business and figure out how to and obviously we can't afford the headspace guy at this point. But I think what how is your accent? Let's hearno, now it's not very good. I would have to think about thealways starts with Welcome back. Yeah. And it's really cool. very soothing. Welcome back.Very rarely get described with a calling voice. Eric is not really what happened.You were starting to sound like the NPR SNL episode of Alec Baldwin.That's the only thing I do.Alright, so anyways, that's that's my theory, pelvic floor dyskinesia. So if you've ever been on the toilet and realize that you're looking at something that may be emotionally may be an emotional trigger, that may be causing some of the issues. Yes, that's my theory. And that's why I think that the advent of the smartphone is doing that. So now treatment, other than some prevention, so treatment, there's lots of treatment out there. That is a whole separate episode unto itself. Yeah, sure. And to do it justice, we will bring some serious experts in here that do like like a colorectal surgeon that does surgery and understands the anatomy inside and out. But the treatment that I do, that's a whole separate episode, of course, but basically, if you have them, speak with your doctor, I want to say one thing for sure. If you see rectal bleeding, it is never, never, never, ever, ever normal. Even if you're saying, Oh, it's probably just hemorrhoids. Now you need to have it checked out no matter what. Yeah, and as always, our little disclaimer is that this is a medical show, but I'm not your doctor, if you have anything, anything at all that you're concerned about, please discuss it with your doctor. And if this gets one person to go in and talk to their doctor about it, and we can remove a polyp or or you can prevent colon cancer. Yeah, that is a huge deal. And if it is hemorrhoids, you want to get them treated early before they become too big. Because the reality is that hemorrhoids come in different stages. Yeah, so in internal hemorrhoids, they're one through four. So internal hemorrhoids grade one, they pop up, they can bleed some times. But you don't really notice hole at grade two, when you go to the bathroom, they pop out. So frequently, patients will come to me and they're like, I felt something that I was going to the bathroom. And now I don't grade two hemorrhoids, they pop out spontaneously because you're in that position. And once the pressure is relieved, it goes back in grade three, you have to manually reduce it. And grade four, they stay out all the time. So if you're having any of this, if you're having any symptoms like that, the sooner you get it treated, the more likely you do not need surgery surgery, trying to avoid surgery at essentially all costs. The type of treatment I do is called is a modified banding procedure. So if you talk to your parents, and they say oh, I had hemorrhoid banding done, it hurt really bad. It's come a long way and the old way of doing it was to grab the hemorrhoid itself plays a rubber band and Remember when I said earlier that there's that dentate line below it is pain above it is no pain. The way that this works is the type of banding that I do is the reagan ligation right go up above where the dentate line is place a rubber band above the hemorrhoid. And the reason why is so that the vein that is supplying it, you actually create a little scar and it decreases the blood flow. So it isn't so much cutting out the hemorrhoid. It's just over time getting it to calm down. And I treat a lot of these. It's one of my favorite things to do because I get such good response from patients in a very quick amount of time where you do it, they come back and they're like, wow, I'm already better. That's fantastic. It is the safest, least invasive and most effective way to treat these symptomatic hemorrhoids. I got some videos on this. You can go to Kenneth Brown, MD calm and take a look. I'm a big big proponent, but mostly if you're having any symptoms, go talk to your doctor, get your colonoscopy done. We did a whole episode on colon cancer. Definitely. And so that's the really important thing.random question and maybe this will help someone if you're sitting on the fence. What is the possibility or probability that a hemorrhoid will just suddenly resolve itself?So that is a great question. Because remember, in the very beginning was said that they are shock absorbers. Yep. So they can actually increase in decrease. And there's a bunch of risk factors for hemorrhoids sitting a long time. pregnancy is one of them. So I have a lot of women that will say, Well, I got them with my first child, I got them with my second child, and then they and then they go away, because the pressure is relieved, and they can do this. People that modify their diet, they're like, it was really bad. But then I changed my diet, I increased a lot of fiber, and there is a chance that they can go away. So we always recommend first line is to try to do the preventative stuff. Let's change your diet. Let's change your lifestyle with the toilet. And if it doesn't get better and continues, and then we can actually treat them so yes, they can go away. And I think by the time this is why I think that the incidence is really underreported. Yeah. Because by the time somebody actually comes to me, it's never like, Oh, this this happened once a week ago. It's always like, all right, I've been dealing with these for a long time. They seem to keep getting worse. Because of my hobbies. I like to work out jujitsu I get a lot of people that strain a whole lot. It's just the nature of it because when you're straining a whole lot you're gonna have that I get a lot of you know, people that are in vigorous jobs that do that so it's it can happen any age, any lifestyle it can happen some of this is genetic also. So we do know that there is a genetic component where whether it's the elasticity of the veins or not that's all kind of been figured out but so yes, they can go away so by lifestyle modification, maybe even you know, supplementation according to the one study unexamined calm did help.Yeah. Interesting. That's a lot of information about hemorrhoids well, and we never got to it. Wehave spell hemorrhoid. Oh, let's see if we can do this is National hemorrhoid day and we are at the National hemorrhoid day spelling bee with reigning runner up Eric Rieger.were no first place participant in that particular spelling the reigning runner up. He mm r h Lidy All right.Let's do it in true spelling bee format.So hemorrhoid hemorrhoid can you use them to sentencemy hemorrhoids are killing me today. hemorrhoidsgo originof the Spanish origin the emulator IDs which by the way, this is really important we're gonna have to translate everything ever since our Silvia podcasts were huge in Spain right now. Huge Yeah, no toy these Mr. Ortiz? Okay. him Roy which I think would be Latin in origin.It's gotta be hemorrhoid h MMR. h od?Yeah, no, he m o r. Every time I do every time that's what made you lose back in 1978. No,that's not what made me lose.So anyways, I'm trying to make light of something that a lot of people are embarrassed to talk about. That was kind of the goal of today's podcast, but it's super important and easy to fix. so common that now we have 20 year olds coming in worried that they're abnormal and we've got very fit people thinking that's abnormal and it's it's really just something that's part of our society now and treating it and getting it treated early is probably the key to this.Definitely. Well get yourself checked if you see any anal or bleeding when you wipe etc.See the toilet go view so there's a few other diseases that cause bleeding and one of my favorites is ulcerative proctitis ulcerative colitis, I'm a big inflammatory bowel disease fan. We're working on some stuff for our inflammatory bowel disease patients. In the meantime, if you suffer from any bloating or change in bowel habits, remember artron to go to artron to calm and take a look at that now that you realize that there's horse chest in there right there on the label and you have some hemorrhoids I'd be curious to see if it affects them according to this one study and of course KB MD health calm for CBD and broccoli, the biohack combo of artron to CBD and broccoli.For our for on camera like that.Oh yeah, probably not.Yeah. So this is broccoli. There we go.We did a whole episode with the founder of broccoli and their PhD. I just love it when there's like minded people that are sciency and everything and so we'll say I don't know. Let me know if you take all three and your hemorrhoids you better be curious to see.Absolutely. Well, that's gonna do it for episode number 53. Thank you all so much for joining us please like and share. And of course if you know anybody who suffers from hemorrhoids or you do Reach out to your gastroenterologist or your health care provider and they can point you in the right direction.Now if you're in the neighborhood, I'd be happy to talk to you.Alright, take care

In this episode, Founder of Science PT, Dr. Erik Meira, PT, DPT, talks about his campaign platform as the President-Elect of the American Academy of Sports Physical Therapy, and the many components of this platform. Today, Erik talks about his roles within the academy over the past 15 years, his formal 5-year strategic plan, creating an executive board separate from the executive committee, and creating a research agenda. What is the overarching vision for the academy? Who is on the executive committee, and how is the executive board chosen? Erik elaborates on organisational structures and boundaries, and embracing the tenets of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, all on today’s episode of The Healthy, Wealthy & Smart Podcast.   Key Takeaways “If you look at any 1 or 2 year period, it’ll look like things are getting done, but when you look over a longer period of time, you’ll see a lot of what gets published kind of has a circular nature to it.” “You have to build the boundaries of your sandbox, and then let the person play in the sandbox.” “Not every great presenter is a great leader, and not every great leader is a great presenter.” “Not everybody wants to keep progressing and keep pursuing, and somebody stepping back should not be slighted and that should not be seen as a negative.” “Somebody turning something down today does not mean that you shouldn’t offer it to them tomorrow.” “Nobody can be you better than you. Remember that. And that goes two ways - remember that the person that you’re talking to is also not you. They don’t have a brain that works like you, thinks like you, and sees things like you, and they’re trying to be the best person that they are as well.” “We all have different perspectives, and that’s okay.”   More about Erik Meira Erik Meira is a consultant physical therapist in Portland, Oregon. He is a Board Certified Sports Clinical Specialist and an NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist with extensive experience in the management of sports injuries at many different levels. He also created and oversees the PT Podcast Network. The son of an engineer and a school teacher, he developed a love of science at a young age often running home experiments comparing/contrasting the effectiveness of products such as detergents and preservatives. Before beginning physical therapy school he studied philosophy and psychology while geeking out on chemistry and physics courses. Although he follows medical science professionally, he is a fan of all fields of science, particularly particle physics and astrophysics. He began his rehab training at the University of Florida where he had the opportunity to be a student athletic trainer with Gator Football. After finishing his physical therapy degree, he moved on to The George Washington University Hospital in Washington, DC where he overhauled the patient education program and became a physical therapy adviser to the GWU Medical School. After moving to Portland, OR he started his own private practice Elite Physical Therapy & Sports Medicine now called Black Diamond Physical Therapy. He also founded and directed the Northwest Society for Sports Medicine, a group of regional sports medicine providers who provided continuing education, professional support, and community outreach in the Pacific Northwest. Erik is extremely active in the American Academy of Sports Physical Therapy (AASPT), currently serving as the Representative at Large on the Executive Committee. In 2008 he helped initiate, organize, and then chair the Hip Special Interest Group. From 2012-2019, he was the Sports Section Program Chair for Combined Sections Meeting (CSM) for AASPT. He has authored several articles and textbook chapters, and has lectured at conferences around the world sponsored through the National Strength and Conditioning Association, American Physical Therapy Association, and the National Athletic Trainers’ Association, covering topics such as the hip, knee, shoulder, exercise prescription, returning athletes to sport, science application, and ethics in practice. He is a frequent consultant to professional and collegiate sports teams and individual professional athletes.   Suggested Keywords AACPT, Campaign, Opportunities, Strategy, Learning, Sports, Physiotherapy, Research, PT, Health, Therapy, Architecture, DEI, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Problem-Solving,   To learn more, follow Erik at: Website:          https://thesciencept.com Podcast:          https://ptinquest.com                         https://ptpodcast.com Instagram:       @erikmeirapt Twitter:            @erikmeira   Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website:                      https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts:          https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy-smart/id532717264 Spotify:                        https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud:               https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher:                       https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio:               https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927   Read the Full Transcript Here:  Speaker 1 (00:01): Hey, Eric, welcome to the podcast. I am happy to have you on. Speaker 2 (00:06): Thank you so much, Karen. It's a, an honor to be here. Speaker 1 (00:10): I know it's so nice to see you, even though we're not in person, hopefully one of these one of these years, maybe next year fingers crossed. We'll be able to see each other in person. Speaker 2 (00:20): Yep. Fingers crossed for sure. Yeah. I'm looking forward to it. It's I can only do so much zoom. I so much prefer being in person with people to do to do conversations and to do a teaching as well. Speaker 1 (00:32): Oh yeah. Teaching is, I mean, what a, it's just a whole different ball game when you're on zoom or whatever platform you're using. So Eric, today, you're on the podcast to talk about your campaign platform. So for people who don't know, Eric is a present elect candidate for the American Academy of sports physical therapy, which is part of the American physical therapy association. Did I get all that right? Speaker 2 (01:05): Yes, that's right. We're one of the academies, one of the components of the AP TA. Speaker 1 (01:09): Right? So you are here to talk about your campaign platform. So I'm going to hand the mic over to you and I want you to let the listeners know what are the components of your campaign platform? Speaker 2 (01:24): Sure. I, I, I really appreciate that. Yeah. So first to clarify, some people have the question, what's the difference between a president and a president elect and for the for the American Academy of sports, physical therapy, the AAS PT our president is elected to serve one term as the president elect. So kind of the president and waiting under the current president for one year, so that the transition is smoother when that happens and then they serve a three-year term after that. And so a little bit of my background is I've, I've been involved in I've been involved with the Academy for, for, you know, well, over a decade, I've been in leadership positions within the Academy continuously for the last 15 years. And so that's everything from just being a member of a, of a committee moving up to, I founded a special interest group. Speaker 2 (02:17): I then was the chair of a special interest group moved on to be the, the section programming chair. So I was involved with all of the the academies program at combined sections meeting did that for about six years. And then the last two years I'd been serving on the executive committee as a representative at large. So I have a, I have a huge history with this Academy and a lot of the things that a lot of the changes that have been made over those last 15 years, I've been very involved with and really trying to move things forward. And so one of the reasons I'm running for, for president elect at this point point is to try to kind of complete the mission, so to speak and, and really help set the Academy up for, for the future. We're, we're coming up on 50 years of, of existing as an Academy. Speaker 2 (03:08): Or as a component, we used to be a section like most of the other components. And now what I'm looking for is, you know, what's the next 50 years look like, are we set up for, for that future? So the first thing that I'd like to, I actually have five points that I'm highlighting for my campaign. The first one is I would like to create a formal five-year strategic plan that systematically, it gives us something to systematically work towards for our goals over time. And, and so, you know, the Academy has traditionally had strategic planning as a component of what it does, but it has never actually put forward a formal announcement to the members to say in five years, this is where we would like to be as, as a target. And that's something that I think can be really useful for, for a component to have to give a little bit of guidance to. Speaker 1 (04:05): And if, if you are elected, how will you go about implementing that? Speaker 2 (04:10): Yeah, so a five-year strategic plan. So currently the executive committee does a strategic planning meeting once a year to set basically the agenda for the next year. And so what this would be is actually sitting down and going over where would we want to be in the next five years? And that would be a process of, of actually first, you know, surveying the members, talking to members, trying to get that information of where are we going to go, want to go pitching ideas to the members, to get some feedback from that and then putting it together and setting it forward. And, and again, you'll notice it's a five-year plan. Our terms are only three years. And so that's kind of the point is something that outlives any one executive committee and is something that really is looking to kind of go past that one. Speaker 2 (04:57): One of the other points that I'm kind of looking at exploring is creating a separate executive board separate from the executive committee, which is an organizational strategy that a couple of other components have used as well, but it's also very common in associations in general. And so the idea there would be you know, I, I see this in the future as being something that the executive committee would work to create a five-year strategic plan. And then that would be reviewed by an executive board who would then have potentially have voting power to to approve such a plan and, and look at going through implementing the strategy. Speaker 1 (05:36): And so can you tell the listeners what, what is made up of the executive committee, who is on that executive committee within the organization, and then how would that executive board be chosen? Speaker 2 (05:52): So right now the Academy just has an executive committee and a lot of times within the Academy, they use the term executive board and executive committee interchangeably. And that's not always the case necessarily. So our current executive committee is made up of five elected positions. They are the main elected positions of the Academy. The other elected positions are our nominating committee. And so these are the elected officials. There's five of them and they, they make all, they do all the decision-making for the Academy. And that's, I mean, that's great. You want people who are voted in to be making the decisions you don't want, just, you know, all appointments across the board like that. And so the problem that that sometimes can create is, you know, they get into, they can get into the weeds of dealing with the nuance and the details and all of these things. Speaker 2 (06:44): And a lot of times decisions, especially in a large component like ours sometimes they're very nuanced, complex, challenging. They're not easy to kind of educate out on a sound so to speak. And so what an executive board would do first off that would be made up of all of the members of the executive committee would also serve on the board. But then you add additional members that are representative of the rest of the Academy to allow additional conversations that would happen like once a year, for example, of all right, we've been working on a bunch of stuff for the last year. Here's what we're going to bring forward. And again, this would be, this is how it's working towards our five-year plan. This is the, these are the issues. Here's a really tough decision that we're up against that we've had lots of conversations we brought in outside consultants. Speaker 2 (07:35): We've, we've had again, conversations after conversations, and now we need to convince the board that this decision is the right decision. And the example here would be well, if that board disagrees, this is where again, these are things that would have to be figured out in designing a board. Would they have the authority to block an executive committee or would it just be, Hey, we're just going to go on down on record that we don't think this is a good idea. And the board, you know, is, is doing this alone. And again, just, just being a little more transparent with that. So those other members, you would want it to, you know, you think of all the different components of a, of an Academy. And, you know, we have, like, we have practice, we have research, we have education within our Academy, we also have early career professionals. Speaker 2 (08:26): We also have diversity equity and inclusion as its own part of it. And then we have our SIGs as well. So I could see a representative from, from, you know, all those different committees. So, you know, practice research these could be, the chairs would sit on that and, and there could be a conversation about whether or not those would become elected right now, they're appointed positions and then and DEI and early career professional. So we get all of those voices having a strong voice and then maybe a, an at-large position, which could be a SIG chair, or a couple of SIG chairs could serve in that role there. And, and then, you know, they kind of get that opportunity to be heard, but again, it's still kind of behind closed doors, but it expands that ability to have those conversations out and, and get more advising for an executive committee. Speaker 1 (09:18): Got it. And, and because the you've got the, these people on an executive board that are part of these different sections within the Academy, I would then imagine that you can get some more input and feedback from the members. So it sounds like, and you can correct me if I'm wrong. You're trying to allow the members of the Academy have a bigger voice in the decisions made by the, by the executive board. Speaker 2 (09:43): Exactly. Cause one of the issues we have is, you know, we have an Academy that's, you know, seven between seven and 8,000 members in any given time during the year, there are definitely fluctuations and all being represented by five people and five people that, you know, yes, they were elected their position and they do know a lot of people within the Academy. They can go talk to those people, but then you have a tendency of just talking to the friends of the executive committee, for example. And so the more, the more kind of diverse voices you can get into the conversation the better. And, and again, if you have an executive board that has a very unified voice, well, that's a very strong position that you would be taking as opposed to a more divisive type position than these would be things that would probably have to have more of a conversation. Speaker 1 (10:28): Okay. All right. I like it. Let's move on to, you've got, you said you had a, a couple of things within your plan. So we talked about a five year strategic plan and executive board. What else? Speaker 2 (10:40): So the other thing I'd love to see is creating a research agenda and that would be to kind of lay a roadmap for the research needs of our members and explore our ability to drive this research potentially through some Academy funding as well. And so, you know, research and science, that's something that I hold very dear. I it's, it's you know, pretty much everything that I kind of geek out about, you know, in particular. And I hear a lot from, especially our early career researchers, but then other researchers as well, especially the ones that are running smaller labs of of how a lot of times, it's hard to know what is kind of useful information from clinicians or what the true path is to get to what we want to know. And then I hear from the clinicians on the other side, you know, I've been practicing over 20 years and there's a lot of things that I don't feel like we've made much progress much real progress over my career and, and it can get kind of frustrating. Speaker 2 (11:35): And, and what I mean by that is if you look at any one, like, like one or two year period, it'll look like things are getting done, but then when you look over a longer period of time, you'll see that a lot of what gets published kind of has a circular nature to it. So they, they're kind of revisiting some of the same questions, not really doing a very thorough job of answering that. And what I mean by that is a lot of times, you know, a group will have, it's like, look, we only have one study that we can do. We're going to try to answer as many questions with this one study as we can. And what ends up happening is it's so diluted that they don't really answer any question really thoroughly for the future. And again, this is looking for where are we going to be 20 years from now with this information? Speaker 2 (12:20): I understand that small steps are frustratingly slow, but that's where we actually make a difference long-term. And so creating a research agenda would basically take clinicians X are some of our researchers. And then ideally also methodologist that they're, they're what we call meta scientists. So people who study this study the science of studying information. And so making sure studies are designed appropriately making sure that replication is being set up, making sure that a study isn't biting off more than it can chew. And so in a research agenda can lay out here are the next five steps that we need to see to go towards what we're trying to get done. And then researchers can look at that. It can be published publicly, and they can look at that and say, Oh, I can actually step in right here. And the thinking here is if you have a large Academy kind of endorsing that these are studies we'd like to see done, that should increase the value again from the publishing side where journals would look at it and say, Oh, well, you know, this is a study that was very well executed. Speaker 2 (13:24): That answers the question specifically that was asked by an Academy. This is going to be cited in future studies. This is something we'd want to publish. So kind of putting those incentives kind of on both ends of it. Speaker 1 (13:36): Got it. So kind of using the Academy as maybe a jumping off point for ideas for future studies, given the input from the members and what they're seeing clinically and what they would like to see, continue on in the research. Speaker 2 (13:49): Yeah, exactly. And so part of that too, is, you know as a clinician, you might say, you know what, I would just love to have an answer to this right here. And it may seem really simple to the clinician of, I don't see why that's a hard thing to answer. And that's where the research community can go, come in and say, all right, well, if you want to answer that, you actually have to start with this very simple question way over here that you're not even thinking about. And so we're going to start there and lay the path so that clinicians can also see where are we on this path to see what do we know and how does this actually develop over time? And I think that that's a huge value both for, for the practitioner and for the researcher, Speaker 1 (14:27): Right? And, and on the research side. So obviously the clinician side. Great. Cause we're getting some of what we're seeing every day put into the research from the researchers side. It's Hey this is what we're seeing. You get an endorsement from the from the Academy and maybe it will maybe it will allow you to have a greater chance of being published. I don't know. That's not that I'm not phrasing that in the best way. You could probably phrase it better. Speaker 2 (15:01): Put it is, I would say that it makes their research more translational. So it's showing that. And, and so, and I think this is something that researchers sometimes struggle with where they're, they're trying to kind of dress up the clinical application side of things to make it more clinically applicable. So it gets that, that, that, that translation, but by doing that, it actually kind of dilutes their, the quality of the study, so to speak because there's certain looking at too many things. And so by getting that opportunity for the research community to say, Hey, it may not look clinically relevant yet, but it's going to be. And so then they're part of that clinical relevance as a package. So instead of one study trying to answer everything, you would have a suite of studies that actually lays your foundation for, for gives you a good foundation for knowledge. Speaker 2 (15:57): And, and I'd like to stress. I mean, there are plenty of, of research labs in our profession that are doing this themselves and doing a phenomenal job of that. And this wouldn't necessarily be for them. It's just, we have a lot of questions to answer. And there's a lot of, of again, some of these smaller labs and early career researchers that are looking to jump in and, and, and even some, you know, research clinicians who are like, Oh, I can, I can do a 10 person study that answers this one little, very finely asked question. If it's laid out for me, I can then take that and run with it, or simply just do a replication of it. Speaker 1 (16:36): And how does this look practically running through the Academy? How does this happen Speaker 2 (16:44): Here would be, you know, somebody would bring it forward an idea, for example, and there would be, you know, we do have a research committee they would start organizing around a couple of research questions and right off the bat. And, you know, I posted this on my blog this idea around a research agenda and I did get some people actually contacted me through my contact form saying, Hey, this sounds really awesome. Are you thinking about, you know, a return to play after ACL? It's like, well, sure. Are you thinking about Achilles repairs? Sure. Again, it's we lay out the agenda and the idea here would be that they would also be living, breathing documents, so to speak that would be revisited every year or every two years. And Hey, where are we? The idea, you know, you lay it all out and then as things get done, you know, you things get checked off the list, so to speak it just gives us a way to have kind of a repository for, for thoroughness that I think is often beyond the scope of a, of a large lab. Speaker 2 (17:42): And this is where, you know, even large labs can step in and say, wow, there's a ton of basic science work that got done by lots of little entities. Now we're going to swoop in and we're going to collect 500 subjects and we're going to now do an effectiveness study based off of all of the solid foundation that was laid out for us. So we didn't have to do year after year of sequential studies. We have a base of studies that we can now just move forward. Speaker 1 (18:11): Got it, got it. So you're looking at this from the Academy standpoint as being a repository of ideas that early career researchers, clinician researchers, smaller labs can go in and say, Hmm, I think I can, I think I can handle this. I'm going to pull this out and I'm going to see what I can do. I'm going to try and create a study. Speaker 2 (18:30): Exactly. And this is also one of, some of our really, you know, big, big names. So to speak. Researchers can look down and go, no, no, no, no, no. That's, that's not how you design that study for something I can use. I would need you to also do this here. And then our research committee and our methodologists might even kick back to them and say, Oh, I understand that what you're actually doing is adding another study in between not necessarily trying to do too much with one study. And so again, this is where it's creating a sounding board that all these people can have these conversations. Speaker 1 (19:01): Got it. Okay. All right. I think I understand it now. Thank you. Sorry for asking so many questions. Speaker 2 (19:07): No, no, of course. And then ultimately, you know, the name of the game is almost always funding. So if, if we can then set up some, some grants, for example, to say, you know, we want to, we have money set aside to pay for this next step. And then, you know, people can pitch the ideas to us. We can do like a register report process where we would review the study before it was even starting to collect data to say, Oh, this looks beautiful. We're going to, we're going to give you money to complete this. Speaker 1 (19:35): Got it. All right. Sounds like a plan. Okay. So what else is on your platform? Speaker 2 (19:42): So another thing I'd like to see is creating more structure to our organization. So something that, you know, as I mentioned, we just had the four, you know, executive committee members, and then we've had other we've had committees over the years, as I've said, I've served on a lot of those. But a lot of times what ends up happening is that everything ends up having to go through the executive committee for final approval for every single step. And, and I understand the need for that. I mean, these are the elected officials, these are the ones making the decisions, but when you get to a Academy, as large as ours, it kind of can start to smack a little bit of micromanagement and making it that if you've ever been in a, in an environment where you're feeling micromanaged, it really feels like your hands are tied, your creativity is stifled and you can't really give to the, to the institution if you're in that situation like that. Speaker 2 (20:33): And so the way that that gets solved is actually to have better defined roles that people are stepping into. So our, we have a new membership engagement director, Jamie little, who's just absolutely phenomenal. And he's been with us for the last year. And one of the things that he likes to point out is you have to create, you have to build the boundaries of your sandbox and then let the person play in the sandbox. But you, you give them a lane to be in so that they feel confident in what they're doing and feel supported in what they're doing, not just giving them like a very vague instruction and then say, then come back to me and show me what you got. And then I'm going to change everything anyway, but really empower them to say, Hey, here's, here's the goal. Speaker 2 (21:23): Here's generally what, you know, what your role is to say, like the chair of the practice committee or the chair of the education committee. And, you know, let's see what you can do. And you know, as long as it's not too far out in left field, we're going to support, support that all the way through. And so since I've been on the executive committee, we've expanded the leadership opportunities for our SIG members. So SIGs used to just have a chair in a, in a vice chair, and now they also have a practice lead and education league, a membership league, and a communication lead, all opportunities for people to step in and take leadership roles and allows us to to let people demonstrate what they can do in the Academy. And I mean, the beauty of it is I, these people, when they step into these roles, I don't know who half of them are. I've never heard of them. And I think that is awesome. That's not me trying to think of somebody to fill this role. That's somebody who stepped up and said, I want to do this role. And of course, some of them are not going to do very well, but a lot of them are really going to demonstrate who they are and what they can do. And it's an opportunity to to let our members really kind of, kind of contribute to the Academy. Speaker 1 (22:35): Yeah. And it also sounds like you're developing a bit of like a leadership development pipeline. Speaker 2 (22:40): That's exactly right. Yeah. And that's where, you know, and that, that gets to the final. One of my points is and embracing the tenants of diversity, equity and inclusion, and make sure that that applies to all of our members and our future members. And that's going to ultimately make our Academy a better overall. And again, this is the thing that, you know, people get, they get hung up on. And again, diversity equity inclusion typically noted as DEI is kind of the popular initialism that's used now. People get hung up on, Oh, well, that's referring to minorities. Oh, that's referring to gender. It's like that also refers to early young professionals, older professionals people who otherwise don't, you know, quote unquote fit into the to the, the, the club, the cliques, so to speak. And we just want to make sure that we're embracing of all the different voices that are within our Academy and make sure that they, they feel they feel represented and they feel seen. Speaker 2 (23:45): And so, you know, you mentioned leadership development. That's definitely one part of it. And a lot of components, a lot of times leadership and, and presentation. So like getting up at a conference and speaking a lot of times they're kind of shoved together as the same thing and not every great presenter is a great leader and not every great leader is a great presenter. So we don't want to fault people for being really strong on one, but not so great on the other. And so we want to create two opportunities for the, the face of our Academy, which is our leadership and our presenters to develop as, as again, as leaders. And then as people who are getting into more of the education side. Speaker 1 (24:29): Right. And like you said, they don't have to be the same person that's right. So you can speak on behalf of the Academy, let's say it's at CSM, or maybe even an international conference, something like that as, as a representative. But it doesn't mean that you're the president of the Academy, nor does it mean because you're on the executive board, you get to speak at these different places. It has to be something that is earned, not just given for the position that you're in. Speaker 2 (24:59): Yeah. And so that's, that's another definition of diversity is playing to your strengths. So not trying to make one person do everything, but try to find the best person for that job regardless of who they are. And it may be that they're really good at one thing, and they're not so great at other things, instead of trying to shoe horn them into things that, that they're not gonna Excel at, let them really shine where they, where they can shine. And, and again, you know, we're an Academy between seven and 8,000 members. We don't need to have one person doing everything. It's really an opportunity that lots of people can step up and fill different roles. And, and I think that's just, it's just great for all of us. Speaker 1 (25:37): Absolutely. And it also makes people feel like they're wanted. Yes. Yeah. And that's important because there's nothing worse than not feeling wanted. Speaker 2 (25:47): The other thing too is, you know, I'm a, I'm a big data guy, big analytics guy. And so one of the things that we used DEI in particular for, and this was a little over a year ago when we put together a task force to look at it. And that, that was the mission of the task force was to see what do our demographics, how do our demographics break down along gender and along race race identity. And the simple thing is you can just look at those numbers of the membership and then how do our leaders break down by gender and by racial identity. And then how do our presenters break down in the same way? And so in some respects, we had very, very good matches you know, specifically CSM presenters were pretty well representative specifically in gender, not quite so much when it came to race. Speaker 2 (26:50): So we're able to say gender is pretty well addressed from the CSM side. Now that doesn't mean there's, there's not future issues or not some issues still to be solved, but it looked much better for example. But then when we looked at leadership and we looked at some of our other, other events, we had some bigger issues around that specifically. And so, you know, a lot of people will say, Oh, so, you know, are you saying that you know, some of your leaders are racist or massage? Monistic, it's like, no, that's not how this works. What it means is that there's something at play here that is restricting equity and inclusion because of all things being equal, it should balance itself out in that way. And, and, and again, looking at the way CSM programming was selected it was intentionally set up to try to increase the number of submissions in and then trying to go strictly based off of the merit of the submissions and the quality of the speakers and not trying to read into it anymore. Speaker 2 (27:52): And it kind of organically started to sort itself out. And so this is where, you know, when we look from leadership, well, if you have an Academy of 7,000 plus people, and you only have five elected positions, a couple of nominating committee, a couple SIG chairs, there's just not a lot of opportunity for people to step up and have a path to leadership. And so that's why we expanded the leadership opportunities within our SIGs. Again, a little more low risks low stakes opportunities for people to step in demonstrate their, their abilities. And then if they want to pursue further, they have an opportunity. And that's the other thing to remember is not everybody wants to keep progressing and keep pursuing. And somebody stepping back and saying, I don't want to do that, is that should not be slighted. And that should not be seen as a negative either. Speaker 1 (28:40): You, I was just going to say that, darn it. I was just going to say, then that person can make the decision if they want to continue further, is this for them? Is it not? But it at least gives people the opportunity to make that decision for themselves. Speaker 2 (28:57): Yeah. And not only that, when, when talking from a leadership perspective, what leaders have to understand is that somebody turning something down today does not mean that you shouldn't offer it to them tomorrow. And so you may offer somebody an opportunity. They'll say, you know what? I just don't have time for that right now, I'm going to have to pass. And, you know, a lot of times people are advised, you know, never say no, because you never know what it's going to lead to. It's like, okay, well then it's, you're just encouraging people to take on way more than they should be doing. And then you end up with a handful of people doing everything. And so a good, a good developing leader is someone who recognizes, you know, I'm not in a good spot right now to take that on, to do it justice. Speaker 2 (29:37): So I'm going to pass for now. But then when another opportunity comes around, you know, bring it back to them and, and keep, keep asking. That's cause a lot of times, you know, especially when we talk you know, women in the workforce in particular, a lot of times they may be, you know, stepping back a little bit with you know, child-rearing and things like that. Which, which honestly, I don't understand why men wouldn't be doing the same thing, but this is where they may not want to be engaged in that way for a year or two, but then they need the opportunity to step back into it. It's not a matter of, Oh, well they just say no to stuff. So we don't ask them anymore. That's not really fair to people. Speaker 1 (30:17): No. And that's, I think it's so important is to remember that you have to ask because a lot of people feel like maybe they're not smart enough. They don't know enough people, but boy, they really want to try and get involved, but no one really asked them. Yep. So if you don't ask someone, you may be missing out on some great opportunities that that person can bring to the table. Great ideas. So I'm a huge fan of just asking and then if they say no, then you circle back and you ask again, and if they say, no, you keep circling back and circling back. That's what I did as part of the nominating committee for the private practice section. It was just a lot of circling back, a lot of conversations and sometimes long conversations, you know, because it's not like if someone says, Oh, no, I don't want to. I'm always like, okay, tell me why. Tell me, you know, tell me more, tell me what the barriers are now and what might that look like in a year or two, just so that we have, you know, a good also repository of people who we know want to serve this Academy or the section or component or whatever you want to call them. Speaker 2 (31:34): Yeah. And that's where and I like how you, how you put that at the asking the question of, okay, well, you know, can you explain why not now, again, assuming it's not a personal issue. And they may say, you know, I'm, I'm just not really good with this one part of that job. And it might be, Oh, we can get somebody else to do that. You know, that that's not a problem. As a matter of fact, there's another opportunity for another person to step up into a role. And so, you know, hearing them out from that perspective. I remember when I took over as programming chair for CSM, we greatly expanded, you know, we went from, I think it was eight or nine sessions that we offered at CSM. And then I took over and it was like 36. So it was like full, you know, big explosion. Speaker 2 (32:19): And it was more, a matter of APA had always offered us that, those number of slots and we just turned them down. We just wanted to do one every, every block and not program against ourselves. And I was like, Hey, if they're going to get us a spot, I'm going to throw people up there. And it was difficult the first year because we didn't have enough submissions to support that, but I wanted to set the precedent. No, no, no, we are going to do this. And so I then had to get on the phone and walk around at conferences and say, Hey, can you submit something on this, this or that? Or why aren't you submitting something on this, this and that. And the most common answer I got back was, Oh, I didn't, I didn't know that, that anybody wanted me to submit something like that. I didn't know that you guys were interested in that. It's like, no, yes, we are definitely interested in that and pleased and trying to lay things out. And then of course stressing that. There's a difference between me asking and me accepting, you know, a lot of times it's just, Hey, give me some missions so that we have something to work with here. And we don't have to accept, you know, necessarily the same speakers over and over, but because of that opportunity to do that. Speaker 1 (33:24): Yeah. Amazing. And now, Eric, what would you say when looking at this platform? So we have five-year strategic plan, creating research agendas, expanding organizational structure, creating an executive board and embracing the, and progressing the tenants of DEI. What is sort of the over arching vision in your mind for the Academy? Speaker 2 (33:49): So what I'm trying to do is really set things up for and the term that I've been using since I came on as, as representative at large, as well as my big thing is, is architecture. So I'm trying to set up kind of a scaffolding for our members to inhabit and to, and that is set up in such a way that the Academy can move forward into the future with the ability to be adaptable as things are changing, but also to be strong at the same time. And, and that's something that I think having things laid out, you know, I mentioned five-year strategic plan. That's where I would start. And then I would love to see, you know, a 10 what's the 10 year strategic plan. What's the 20 year strategic plan. I mean, that was something that, you know, we just passed a 2020 which, which turned out to be a different year than I think we were anticipating. Speaker 2 (34:38): But back in 2000, that was vision 2020. That was the APA made a strategic plan of where we want to be in 20 years. And I think people forget how important strategic planning is. You know, there's a lot of decisions that happen in the course of a year within any organization. And a lot of times there could be three or four perfectly acceptable, you know, courses that could be taken you know, decision courses that can be taken on one of those, you know, big decisions that need to be made, but one of them may support the strategic plan down the road better so that when you're making that next decision, it's going to build off of the previous one, as opposed to just solving the problem that's in front of you. And so making sure again, kind of like that research agenda, making sure that what you're doing today is something that can be built upon tomorrow. Speaker 2 (35:33): We're never finished. It's never the end. It's never, we've just solved it. It's how does this set us up for the next thing that we're going to be doing, you know, down the line and, and intentionally laying that out. And, and so some people will ask, well, w w so, so how locked in is this five-year plan? It's like, no, it's, it can be amended as we go. I mean, that's, that's kind of the whole point of it. It's just that we have some sort of a vision going forward with that. And so again, it's more trying to set things up, not for me, not even for the, our, our younger members, but for the members that haven't even joined yet that they have a path through their career, through our Academy, that our Academy supports them every step of that way. And they feel like they're involved as they go through. Speaker 1 (36:22): Yeah. And if 2020 taught us anything, it's that amendments are probably needed on any five-year plan. So if it's locked in, it's locked in and it can't be changed, then we're all in a lot of trouble. Speaker 2 (36:33): Exactly. Right. Yeah. Everything has to be flexible. Speaker 1 (36:36): Yeah. Everything needs some fluidity to it these days. That's for sure. Well, Eric what, what are the things that you want the listeners to take away from this and to think about the possibilities of you being president of the Academy? Speaker 2 (36:53): Well, what I would say is you know, I was elected as a representative at large a couple of years ago because I'm, I'm a regular old member. I don't have a PhD. I'm not a, you know, I have not taught in a S you know, as a school or anything like that. Not academic, not a researcher. I owned a private practice for almost 20 years. Just sold it. I work with patients day in and day out. I'm not, again, I'm not conducting research, I'm not doing these things. I do continuing education. I talk to a lot of physical therapists. I do a lot of mentoring across across the country and across the world with other sports physical therapists. I know this world inside and out, and what I'm trying to do is bring forward an entity that supports that. Speaker 2 (37:50): Ultimately, it's not that it supports the researchers. It does support the researchers, but that's not the mission. It's not supporting the clinicians either. It does support the clinicians, but that's not the mission it's to support our patients, to make sure that they get the best service possible by supporting our researchers and our clinicians and doing it in such a way that it's integrated in such a way that makes our members feel like they are getting a back and forth conversation with the Academy, which is made up of all the other members. So it's everybody talking across each other. Everybody communicate communicating everybody working together towards some common goals, trying to make their careers, what they want it to be setting it up so they can hand it off to the next generation to make it what they want to be as well. Speaker 1 (38:40): Excellent. Sounds wonderful. And now it does, it sounds great. Now, Eric, where can people find you if they have questions or comments or they just want to say hello? Speaker 2 (38:52): So probably the easiest way is well, the, the, the most comprehensive one is just going to the website that I run, which is called the science, pt.com, all one word, the science PT, make sure you put the at the beginning. And that's got links to my Twitter account. My, I have an Instagram account although I'm terrible at it. If you want to see an old man hitting something with a rock, that's pretty much what I do on Instagram. But definitely available for the most part on, on Twitter. But there is also a contact form on my website that if you have any questions, you can click on that, right on the homepage. There's a, a button that's, that's a link to my campaign page. And so you can go there and, and everything that we've talked about, I have a blog post and individual blog posts for each point that I highlighted going into more detail. Speaker 2 (39:41): And also as I, you know pointed out in this conversation, there are things I don't have answers for. I'm just talking about where I'm thinking of pointing things and then getting information and seeing is this something we can work towards, and maybe it's something we need to revise or change and do differently. But these are just my thinking from what I've seen from all my years of service, things that I think are very doable, very possible within our current means within our current support, within our current structure to really set us up, to grow into the future. And so just that website probably is, is the the most comprehensive spot. Speaker 1 (40:18): Perfect. And then before we go, last question, which I didn't tell you about, I probably should have done that. I think you'll be fine. I think you can handle it. So knowing where you are now in your life and your career, what advice would you give yourself as the new grad as that, you know, young, young, professional, Speaker 2 (40:37): You know being flexible, being adaptable is, is always the biggest thing be patient for probably the best lesson that I've learned is that nobody can be you better than you. And remember that. And that's, that goes two ways. Remember that the person you're talking to is also not you, they don't have a brain that works like you and thinks like you and sees things like you, and they're trying to be the best person that they are as well. And so the more that we can support each other to both be better at all times, I think is huge. And I think that's something that you can carry in with your patients when you're working with them of being compassionate, to understand that, you know, it might be easy for you to get up every morning and do a 30 minute run, but that might be like torture to the person you're talking to. And it's not their fault. They're not lazy, they're not wired wrong or whatever. It's just the way they, and we have to be supportive of, of that. But then that's also with our colleagues when we're trying to have conversations around things as well, to, to understand that you know, we all have different perspectives and, and that's okay. Speaker 1 (41:47): Absolutely. And what wonderful advice. So Eric, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your platform. I'm sure myself and the listeners really appreciate it. So thank you Speaker 2 (41:58): So much for having me. I really appreciate it. You're doing a great job with all of this. Speaker 1 (42:02): Aw, well, thank you. That's very kind and everyone, thank you so much for listening for tuning in, have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy and smart.  

Audio source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOo6XSYW66cSpencer took on the competitive threat of OpenDoor at Zillow when he didn't need to, taking a tiny competitor startup seriously and pivoting a $5 billion company into a $30 billion one without a crisis.News at the time:- https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/14/zillow-surprises-investors-by-buying-up-homes/- https://www.geekwire.com/2018/zillow-group-will-start-buying-selling-homes-taking-open-door-expanding-real-estate-footprint/Transcriptswyx: [00:00:00] Normally, I try to make these clips under five minutes, but for today I absolutely could not because this is one of the most fascinating business stories and business moments that you can encounter. And this is the best explanation of a recent pivot that was very, very high profile and very successful. So I want to give you the story of Spencer Rascoff pivoting, Zillow as a successful company, not against the wall, and succeeding. Despite having an incumbent startup where the classic disruption theory would tell you that he had an innovator's dilemma. He got past that, and it was just nearly a train wreck, as he will tell you towards the end. But he had enough friends to give them good advice and he took it and he paused at the right time and he went for it at the right time. And it was just an amazing, amazing, real life story.  Spencer Rascoff: [00:00:51] And then I guess the second takeaway from Zillow would be the importance of disrupting yourself. And this is all about Zillow's move into ibuying and the business of buying and selling homes directly, which was a very controversial, difficult decision that I made. And it was very much the right one.It's what moved Zillow's market cap from 5 billion. A couple of years, post IPO to 30 billion today was deciding to put at risk the core business. Of selling ads to real estate agents by launching a new business of buying homes from people, renovating them and selling them to other people. And pulling off that business transition or business extension was a lot of sleepless nights, but it was very much the right move.Do you mind James Besheara: [00:01:37] walking me through almost the specifics of one of those sleepless nights and what that internal dialogue was like and where that internal for use uncertainty lied? Spencer Rascoff: [00:01:47] Sure. Let me paint a picture. So as Zillow goes public in 2006, We do 16 acquisitions. We buy Trulia, we buy StreetEasy in New York.We buy hot pads at the top rental site. And now here we are in 2000, like 12 ish, and it's about a $5 billion market cap. We've got like a thousand employees top of the world. We won, online, real estate and we consolidated the category. Victory is ours. Okay, we're done. But then we see this startup Opendoor.And open doors, buying homes for people sight unseen. And we're like that's crazy. That's not going to work. And we have to decide, do we enter that business? And the first, the first thought that I had and the team had was. What about the core, w we have about a billion of revenue selling ads to real estate agents.And if we start buying houses ourselves, real estate agents, aren't gonna like that very much. Because there might not be agents in those transactions. Now, it just so happens that when we eventually entered a year or two later, we did put real estate agents in those transactions as a way to, to keep the peace.But after I left Zillow started. Hiring those agents themselves at Zillow and cutting agents, other agents out of the transaction. And so now Zillow's in, in unchartered territory with respect to the, how the industry perceives it and that might or might not, we'll see put a strain on the core business of selling ads.So it's very similar just to give an analogy that can listeners have experienced as a consumer. Think about the Netflix business with DVD by mail. So Netflix has a great business DVD by mail. It's probably a I dunno, $10 billion market cap company. This was whatever, five, five, 10 years ago.What about streaming? The idea that you could press a button and start to see the movie right away on your computer was crazy. Like instead you just press a button and the DVD arrives in the mail to, two days later, but Netflix decided to disrupt their core business and shift to streaming and put at risk the whole core business and.It worked and then they did it again when they decided to create originals. Cause like they had a great business. Now they're a $50 billion market cap, but you know what, all their content comes from the studios. And now they say we're going to create our own shows. How are the studios going to feel about that?That's crazy. Don't do that. Like why risk it? You're doing great. They have a 300 billion market cap today. Why? Because. They pulled off the pivot to originals. So Netflix is like the rare company I can think of has done this twice. Zillow has basically done it once so far. But anyway, so back to the decision-making first risk is what happens to the industry, the perception of Zillow and the impact on the core business.Second risk is the investor community reaction, which is to say, we had public market shareholders that are like. Don't do that. That's crazy. You've got a 95% gross margin business selling digital advertising. Why would you move into it? The business of buying and selling houses, which is cyclical, risky, complex, operationally intensive.It's a real estate flipping business. Rather than a digital media business, you're going to trade at a lower multiple, I didn't sign up for that. I'm an internet hedge fund. I'm an internet mutual fund. Like I buy tech stocks, not real estate stocks. And so there were a lot of naysayers from that community.And then there were naysayers from the employee community, also back to the importance of people in culture that were like, I don't get it. Like they just don't do that. Why would we risk everything for that? What is that even that. I'm compressing about six months, James Besheara: [00:05:11] six minutes.How did it, how did you navigate it? How did you mentally nap? Did you S did you know there, did you almost have like faces in your mind that you were going to piss off by making this decision and you were like, yes. Spencer Rascoff: [00:05:24] It, it's very stressful as a executive, especially when you feel like you'd won, like at an earlier stage, a pivot, right?Especially a pivot driven by your backs and feeling of necessity, right? Yeah. It's okay, COVID happened. I talked to a company today that, that ran an events business and they suck, and then COVID happened and they successfully pivoted to virtual events and it's wow Bravo but you had no other choice, in this case it's Zillow, we HAD another choice just like Netflix had a choice to not move into streaming and not to move into originals. And so the status, when the status quo, it looks attractive. It's even harder to pivot. And so what we did, I'll tell you the two steps that we took to arrive at the decision. The three steps, the first was we tracked competition closely and we started looking carefully at Opendoor data and Opendoor metrics.How many listings do they have? How quickly are they selling? What do we think their unit- level profitability is? How much are they raising? We kept seeing them raise more and more money and we're like, okay, there must be something here. Cause smart VCs, keep throwing more money into this business. So maybe we're maybe this is a thing that was data.Point one. Data 0.2 is we went out and did a massive amount of consumer research to sellers to understand what their pain points were on the sale process. And it came back. Crystal clear that sellers hate selling their home the conventional way, and that they prefer selling their home to an institutional buyer for a ton of reasons, the certainty, the speed, the convenience, the lots of reasons.And so then when I was like, okay, now what and I really didn't want to move into this business of I buying. And so we launched a marketplace model and a test you James Besheara: [00:07:03] really want to. Spencer Rascoff: [00:07:05] I did not want to, I didn't want to. And so my sort of half measure was to launch a marketplace model where in four cities and it was four, maybe three, you could come to Zillow and you'd say, Hey, Zillow, I want to sell my house.Go get me an offer. And we would send that home info two to five to 10 buyers in that city, other local flippers or other companies. And then a day later we would go back to the consumer to the homeowner and say, okay this guy is willing to pay 200,000 for your house. This guy's only paid two 10.This guy is willing to pay one night. This guy says he doesn't want to buy it because it doesn't match his needs, whatever. What do you want to do? And then the seller would pick and we did all this for free just for market research. And then the seller would pick somebody and then we'd connect them and we'd get out of the middle of it.And so my hope was that this marketplace model would work because it scales so much better than actually buying your house yourself. Us having to take possession and buy the house for 200,000 bucks and renovate it and resell it six weeks later. Anyway. What happened was homeowners loved it.They loved selling their home in this way. Just like the research predicted it would, they would. But it was a very inconsistent user experience. We'd pass the consumer, the homeowner onto one of these local companies and the local company would retrade. Oh, did I say 200? Now that I come and I see that your roof is old, it's really 190,000, oh. I said, I would close in two weeks. Guess what? It's three weeks because my credit line's not ready or whatever. And the seller just had a really inconsistent experience. And so reluctantly. I decided we had to do it ourselves. And the next step was to go get the relevant expertise. Actually I'll tell this in more detail since you're pushing me for something.All right. So what we did next James Besheara: [00:08:42] and did, and by the way, did you have a coveted voice that you were listening to within or outside the company that gave you a little bit more of. Locking and locking arms were jumping together or was this kind of just one of those isolating CEO Spencer Rascoff: [00:08:54] shit. No, I have to.It's a good question. No, my co-founder, yeah. Are right there with me on this journey. And the three of us all staking out, slightly different positions over this, now we're probably, I think we ran the instant offers, test that marketplace test for at least six months. So we're at least a year, maybe a year and a half into this.Yeah this decision period that I'm describing and, there'll be times when one of us will be like, yeah, we need to do this ourselves. And the other two would say no, and we're back and forth for more than a year. So what I decided to do next, once I, and the co-founders were like, okay, we need to do this.And the board was like, okay, we need to do this. I decided to headquarter the initiative outside of headquarters. So there's those based in Seattle. And I decided it would be smart. To take two co-founders of two startups that we had acquired, who one based in San Francisco, one based in Irvine, both of whom were scrappy and had done startups that Zillow bought and had built businesses on their own and were not at headquarters.Think back to that Expedia offsite with 70 executives talking about six Sigma, everything that, that represented this would be the opposite. My idea was to make these ninjas, Navy seals outside of the core. And so I told them in their teams from the two startups that we had acquired, like figured this out, like we're in launch in three months and we're gonna start buying houses in a couple of cities.And I will get you a giant checkbook. Now you figure out what to do and. We were, and they worked at it and we were getting ready. We were only probably a week or two away from launching that first in that first market. And now this, Amazon talks about one way doors and two way doors, where a two way doors, a door that you can go through and then go back out.And so that's a decision you can undo. And a one way door is one that you can't undo for Zillow. Launching Zillow offers that's a one-way door pretty much. Because once they, once we launched this, the real estate industry might freak out and, the investor community might freak out and you can't say, Oh, just kidding.It's you can't really undo it. So a week or two before launch I. I started having some panic attacks and real ones. Not literally no. So I, no, not literally. We're getting more and more concerned. It does come up James Besheara: [00:10:55] on the podcast. Spencer Rascoff: [00:10:56] And I called an old friend from TPG who I'd worked with when we started Hotwire, 20 years earlier.And he had left TPG to start a company called colony America homes, which bought tens of thousands of houses through the recession and turn them into single family rentals. And so he was the guy that I knew best who had bought the most houses. And I called him and I was like, his name is Justin Chang.And I was like, Justin, we're about to go buy a lot of houses and flip them. What do I need to know? What have I not thought of? And I described our whole business plan and open door and the marketplace test, et cetera. And he's Dude, this is going to be a disaster. This is going to be a total shit show.Don't what do you, what are you crazy? Because that's the week before two weeks before I described the guy in San Francisco and his team from the startup we bought and the guy in Irvine in LA from his and how I, and he's so you don't have any real estate expertise, like real estate, really?Like nobody. And I was like it's w we've all kind of thought how he's no, no. Like institutional realtor, licensed producers, and now he's you gotta hit the brakes. You gotta talk to this guy. His name is Eric power. And I was like, Oh, okay who's Eric power.So Eric was the, was the number two at Colony America homes. So he had also bought tens of thousands of houses. So I call Eric and I had lunch with him the next day and in LA and. I was, I told Eric this whole thing and he's wow, this is going to be a shit show. This is a disaster.Let me give you some examples, Spencer, cause we bought tens of thousands of houses. Uh, you need to figure out what to pay for these houses and renovate them, within days and turn them so quickly. Are you ready for that? And I'll give you the example in a sec and anyway, 10 minutes in my conversation with Eric, I realized that we needed to hit the brakes.And I made the very unpopular decision at the time. Cause we had already motivated the whole company to run hard at this opportunity to hit the brakes. And I said, we need to recruit a team and we need to get the right people on board before we can go make this one-way door decision. And so we press pause and we recruited Eric and lost about six months and in, in, in speed because.Eric's team at Connie America homes was in the process of being bought by invitation homes. And so this whole team in Scottsdale, Arizona outside Phoenix of about 200 people were in the process of getting riffed, getting laid off by invitation homes, including Eric and his whole team. And but it took us a couple months to get through all the non-competes and all the, non poaches and whatever.And anyway, six months later, we have this whole team that knew how to buy lots and lots of houses. During those six months, open-door continued to separate from us though. So I'm walking the halls in the Scottsdale office, the new Scottsdale office of Zillow a week or two after we launched Zillow offers.And I'm talking to employees, I'm saying, what do you do? What do you do? And I meet this older woman and I say, what do you do? And she's Spencer, it's so great to meet you. It's an honor, you're the CEO, so cool. I'm 65 years old. I'm the world's leading expert on changing names on utility bills.And I'm like, w what do you mean? She's I've been doing this my whole career. I know that if you buy a house in this County, in Florida, the way to change the name on that utility bill is to go to this website. I know if you buy a house in this County, in North Carolina, it's you call this lady, and she only answers the phone between 12 and 2:00 PM, two days a week.And I know that if you buy a house with solar panels on the roof, It takes an extra three weeks because you need the lease to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the person sitting next to her, had an equal amount of completely esoteric knowledge about how to deal with solar panels and whatever, and how to change the pool maintenance contracts and so on and so forth.And I was like, Holy cow, we dodged a bullet. Those two startup founders in San Francisco nervine they were tech people and then they were scrappy and startup-y, but boy, they didn't know anything about real estate right in that business. Where you're buying and selling homes. You're putting $200,000 per house out there.Everyday counts. If you hold the house for just three or four more days, all the profit in the flip goes away. So speed matters. Anyway. So it was It worked is how the story ends. This is why Zillow then went from 5 billion to 30 billion and managed to disrupt itself while still actually maintaining its core business.To the team's enormous credit, we, they managed to not have the core agent advertising business evaporate on the contrary. It's still doing quite well. And the company is prospering.

Today’s guest is Eric Jorgenson, author of the book The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: a Guide to Wealth and Happiness. Now, if you’re not in the tech world, you might be forgiven for not knowing the name Naval Ravikant. But to millions of people around the world, his teachings on business, investing, and life philosophy are the gold standard. Naval’s story is an inspiration to many, from being a first-generation immigrant to the US, founding a successful business, to becoming an early-stage investor in companies like Uber, Twitter, and Postmates. The problem was that Naval’s musings were scattered across many platforms. So Eric set out to solve that and consolidate them into one collective body of work. After jokingly floating the idea out to his Twitter followers, the response he received was overwhelming. He even got the blessing of Naval himself. And thus, without truly knowing what he was in for, Eric set about writing the book that Tim Ferris describes (in the foreword, no less) “will give you a good taste of what that cocktail of bullets looks like in Naval’s head.” Listen in as we cover everything from how the process took Eric way longer to finish than he ever could’ve predicted, how he’s found that other people are more willing to help you if you’ve first shown that you’ve put in the work, and how his book got published with a little help from Tucker Max. Yes, that Tucker Max.

https://tribus.captivate.fm/ (Enjoying Brokerage Insider? Please Subscribe Using Your Favorite Podcast Player.) Jorge Guerra built one of the most successful brokerages in Miami and the South Florida real estate market. RESF, https://resf.com (Real Estate Sales Force), has over 450 agents and has grown to one of the largest independent brokerages in the Miami market by focusing on what agents need. TRANSCRIPTION  (https://www.temi.com/editor/t/2eEKHf0sWI7d9otbShwkIh5q2FcsXUdvE1JpiWTnTubBttakkegRUofi7hQHJrFAD32HQcvVFfQGuSp2_-hurIGY3vQ?loadFrom=SharedLink&ts=0.93 (00:00)): Thanks for listening to Brokerage Insider. This week's episode was recorded live during the explore virtual conference on Thursday, September 24th. We look forward to returning to our regular scheduled program soon, but until then enjoy this session in this episode, our VP of product, Katie Ragusa interviews, Jorge Guerra, the founder of RESF, the Real Estate Sales Force with 450 agents in the South Florida area. He's also the 2020 chairman of the Miami association of Realtors. Katie Ragusa (https://www.temi.com/editor/t/2eEKHf0sWI7d9otbShwkIh5q2FcsXUdvE1JpiWTnTubBttakkegRUofi7hQHJrFAD32HQcvVFfQGuSp2_-hurIGY3vQ?loadFrom=SharedLink&ts=34.101 (00:34)): So I just wanted to tell everybody a little bit about who they're going to be hearing from. So Eric mentioned some of your credentials just leading into your session, but in addition to that, George launches, brokerage firm, real estate Sales force, or our ESF 15 years ago. And he's since grown it into four offices and nearly 500 agents. So they cover the South Florida market. And most recently he was named 2020 chairman of the Miami association of Realtors, the largest real estate association in the nation and the 2021 global liaison for the national association of Realtors. So lots of credentials there, you run a brokerage, you hold, you wear many hats. So I think today we want to focus on operating on and keeping your brokerage running in a post COVID environment and just lessons that hopefully we won't be here forever in these circumstances. So lessons really that we can apply to any major shift in the industry. So I remember I got my license back in 2008 during the downturn. So there, there just seems like, no matter what, if you're in the business long enough, you're going to hit some crisis or, or something is gonna rock your world or our industry. So I really want to talk about lessons that we can apply longer term. So George, I think you're muted there. So hopefully we can hear from you, Jorge Guerra (https://www.temi.com/editor/t/2eEKHf0sWI7d9otbShwkIh5q2FcsXUdvE1JpiWTnTubBttakkegRUofi7hQHJrFAD32HQcvVFfQGuSp2_-hurIGY3vQ?loadFrom=SharedLink&ts=119.18 (01:59)): You know what? I was talking to my executive assistant in between class and asking him for a water. So Katie Ragusa (https://www.temi.com/editor/t/2eEKHf0sWI7d9otbShwkIh5q2FcsXUdvE1JpiWTnTubBttakkegRUofi7hQHJrFAD32HQcvVFfQGuSp2_-hurIGY3vQ?loadFrom=SharedLink&ts=126.92 (02:06)): Man of water so George, what makes your brokerage res special and unique as a company? Jorge Guerra (https://www.temi.com/editor/t/2eEKHf0sWI7d9otbShwkIh5q2FcsXUdvE1JpiWTnTubBttakkegRUofi7hQHJrFAD32HQcvVFfQGuSp2_-hurIGY3vQ?loadFrom=SharedLink&ts=135.95 (02:15)): Ooh, I don't think we have enough time for that Katie to be, but you know what, I'm going to be honest with you. I think what makes us special honesty is number one, we're, we're an independent company. So, so we have a great pulse on what's going on in the market and, and being an independent company means I only have one boss and it's my wife. Besides that I'm able to move and shift at the speed of now and get as creative as I want to. And for me, that flexibility and that ability to pivot and market at, at the speed of now works best for me personally, you know, luckily real estate, there's so many ways to do business, so many different models that you can operate. It's...

Something a little different from us, we wanted to give our reactions to the second debate and decided to do this! Paige was busy so we had a friend of the podcast join us. So Eric, Ezra, and Anna give their opinions on the Presidential Debate, who won, how they did on talking points, and anything else relevant to the debates and election. I hope you enjoy and if you want to come on to give your opinion hit our DMs and we'll see what we can do!  All the links you could ever need! else: https://linktr.ee/porchtlk  Merch Link: https://teespring.com/stores/porchtalk  

Cinematographer Eric Branco discovered early on that he enjoyed translating people's stories into visuals. Eric started out as an actor in high school, but quickly realized no one had any interest in holding the camera except himself. While in film school, he developed an eye and shot several student projects, then found work on film sets in New York as a grip and gaffer while shooting short films on the side. Eric's latest film, The 40-Year-Old Version was shot almost entirely on black and white film stock. Director Radha Blank was very firm that the movie be black and white- in fact, when Eric received the script, it read “A New York tale in black and white.” So Eric came with a suitcase full of black and white photo books of New York when he and Radha met, which helped them arrive at The 40-Year-Old Version's look: a matte texture with a prominent grain. Eric ran several tests to find the perfect film stock for the movie, and shot it handheld with vintage lenses. The movie is a funny, semi-autobiographical story starring Blank as a struggling, almost-40 playwright who is determined not to sell out or compromise her artistic principles and reinvigorates her creativity by becoming a hip-hop artist. The 40-Year-Old Version won the U.S Dramatic Competition Directing Award for Blank at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020. For Eric, it was the third film he'd shot to go to Sundance in as many years. He felt honored to be the cinematographer of Clemency, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2019. Written and directed by Chinonye Chukwu, Clemency took a long time to get off the ground before Alfre Woodard was cast in the lead role. You can watch The 40-Year-Old Version streaming on Netflix. Find Eric Branco: https://ericbrancodp.com/ Instagram: @ericbranco Sponsored by Hot Rod Cameras: www.hotrodcameras.com IT'S A BOOK GIVEAWAY! Enter to win the Video Palace book- Video Palace: In Search of the Eyeless Man Collected Stories- signed by our host, Ben Rock, who also authored one of the stories! The book expands the world of the Video Palace podcast that Ben directed for Shudder. http://videopalace.shudder.com/ TO WIN: SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel, LIKE and COMMENT on the "How To Vote" breakdown we just posted! We will randomly select a winner from the comments. We're expanding and adding to our YouTube channel, so look for new content there, too! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNQIhe3yjQJG72EjZJBRI1w Find out even more about this episode, with extensive show notes and links: http://camnoir.com/ep95/ Sponsored by Hot Rod Cameras: www.hotrodcameras.com Website: www.camnoir.com Facebook: @cinepod Instagram: @thecinepod Twitter: @ShortEndz

Something a little different from us, we wanted to give a live reaction post debate and decided to do this! Paige was busy so we had some friends of the podcast join us and luckily Diana and Ethan we're available. So Eric, Ezra, Diana, and Ethan give their opinions on the Vice Presidential Debate, who won, how they did on talking points, and anything else relevant to the debates and election. I hope you enjoy and if you want to come on to give your opinion hit our DMs and we'll see what we can do! All the links you could ever need! else: https://linktr.ee/porchtlk Merch Link: https://teespring.com/stores/porchtalk

On this episode of the Healthy, Wealthy and Smart Podcast, I welcome Eric Miller on the show to discuss how to maximize the value of your physical therapy practice.  Eric Miller has been in the financial planning industry for over 20 years. He is the Co-Owner of Econologics Financial Advisors and the Chief Financial Advisor. He has a degree from Capital University and is a Registered Financial Consultant® and licensed insurance agent. He takes pride in helping practice owners become the financial heroes of their own stories and has taken this passion to over 600 families in the past decade. In this episode, we discuss: -How to maximize the value of your practice -The business systems that add the most value and are most attractive to potential buyers -Financial considerations when planning your exit strategy -Simple strategies to minimize your tax bill every year -And so much more! Resources: Econologics Financial Advisors Website Econologics Financial Advisors Youtube Eric Miller LinkedIn Econologics Financial Advisors Facebook   A big thank you to Net Health for sponsoring this episode!  Learn more about the Redoc Patient Portal here.                                                                        For more information Eric: Eric Miller has been in the financial planning industry for over 20 years. He is the Co-Owner of Econologics Financial Advisors and the Chief Financial Advisor. He has a degree from Capital University and is a Registered Financial Consultant® and licensed insurance agent. He takes pride in helping practice owners become the financial heroes of their own stories and has taken this passion to over 600 families in the past decade. During this time, he’s had over 15,000 conversations with practice owners regarding money, investing, practice expansion, practice transitions, taxes, asset protection, estate planning, and helping them shape their financial attitude toward abundance. Econologics Financial Advisors is an Inc. 5000 honoree for 2019 as one of the fastest growing companies in the US.   Read the full transcript below: Karen Litzy (00:01): Hey, Eric, welcome to the podcast. I am happy to have you on. Eric Miller (00:05): Well, thanks, Karen. I'm really excited to be here. Yeah. Karen Litzy (00:08): Before we get into our talk on, you know, how to maximize the value of our practice, in your bio, I read that you're a registered financial consultant. So can you explain to the listeners what that is and maybe how that differs from a financial advisor, an accountant? What is the differentiation there? Eric Miller (00:31): No problem there. So I think when people hear that I'm a financial advisor, I mean, people kind of have the same impression that all financial advisors are alike, so to speak. And that's not always the case. You know, there's some financial advisors that specialize in working with you know, ministers and teachers and all different kinds of professions. I just happened to work with private practice owners. Now, as far as am I licensed to do what I do in the financial world, there's something called being a fiduciary. And when you're a fiduciary, that basically means that you have to do what's in the best interest of your client, not all financial advisors adhere to that standard. What's called a registered investment advisor and we're held to that standard under the SEC guidelines. And then as a registered financial consultants, it's a designation that I picked up along the way. And it just basically, you know, there's certain criteria that you have to use to be able to get to that designation that's system. Karen Litzy (01:41): Got it. Yeah. So, you know, we were talking before we went on and it's kind of like if you're in the physical therapy world, which I am, and you go on to become, you know, like a clinical specialist in orthopedics or a clinical specialist and in pediatrics, it's like going on for a little bit extra education and certification and what you do is that right? Okay. That's exactly correct. Perfect. Perfect. All right. So now let's get into the meat of this interview. So today we're going to be talking about how to maximize the value of your practice, perhaps plan for an exit of that eventually. And we're going to weave in some critical tax strategies that you might be able to use to save you money. So no one likes to leave money on the table. No one likes to feel like a dope because they didn't know what they were doing. So, let's start with maximizing the value of your practice. So first, what does that even mean? Eric Miller (02:42): That's a great place to start because I think people automatically assume that when I say maximizing your practice value, it's just about money, right? It's just about, Oh, the, you know, what's the enterprise value of my business. And then that leads into, Oh my gosh, he's going to talk about like profit and loss and EBITDA and all these really technical terms. But in my viewpoint maximizing practice value. Isn't just about money. It's about the other parts of owning a business that you get value for like time, right? Like you would want to build a business that gives you a lot of time. You'd want to build a business that gives you great relationships with either your employees or recognition from your community. So when I say, if you're trying to maximize the value of your practice, it's not just about the money. Eric Miller (03:31): It's about all of those other things, because you know, you look at it, most people that own a private practice that is your largest investment. You know, it's like the thing that provides the most cash flow to your household, and it is an investment and anybody that's owned a business for any period of time knows that it's something that you have to care for. And that you have to make sure that you're treating like an investment and putting in the time and the money to make sure that you get the most value out of it. That's our definition for that. Karen Litzy (04:04): Yeah, absolutely. So how can we as practice owners then maximize the value of our practice. If let's say in the event, we want to sell it, we want to exit our practice in whatever way we want that exit to happen. Eric Miller (04:21): There's definitely some key areas like, yeah, you have to kind of assume the viewpoint of a buyer. Like if I'm going to buy your practice, Karen, like what are some of the things that I would like to see in place that would allow me to give you, you know, top dollar for it. And I think number one is your personnel organized? Okay, do you have organized personnel? Do people have job descriptions? Do they know what they're doing? Do they know who to report to? So, you know, I think that that is that's key because obviously if you have people in your organization that are aligned and are all kind of working together, you know, you're going to have a really powerful organization. If you can do that, if you don't, then you're going to have, you know, this scattered business that everyone's kind of doing their own thing and that's not good. Eric Miller (05:13): So that's certainly one thing. And then of course, just having good stable systems that are built in your business so that there's procedures that people have, that they can follow. You know, there should be an organization chart somewhere where people know like who's in charge of what I think that's going to all add value to your business. Certainly if you look at like the facility, what's the facility look like, is it in good shape? You know, do you have, if you lease the building, do you have a good lease on it? You know, is there new carpeting is, I mean, is it a nice place where people feel safe to come to, you know, certainly a buyer's going to think about that. And then I think from an income standpoint, obviously you have to be solvent. Eric Miller (05:57): You certainly don't want to have a lot of, you know, outstanding accounts receivable out there. You want to make sure your books are up to date and current, you don't owe any back taxes on the practice. You have multiple income streams in the business that you like multiple services that you provide because no one wants to be reliant upon one of anything. So I think those are all, some really key areas that if you can get those things in shape and you can get them systematized, you're really going to have something that someone else would want and they would value. And they're going to pay you a much higher amount for that. Karen Litzy (06:33): Yeah, that makes sense. So what I'm hearing is you really want to have an organization that's sort of a well oiled machine where people know why they're coming to work. They know what they're doing once they get there and reasonably happy at their jobs, if not very happy at their job. Eric Miller (06:52): Yeah. And I think that you're exactly right. And I think the key as the person that's in charge of it is that you have to know what your role is in that business. So I think a lot of people that are in private practice, and maybe you can attest to this when you first started out, you're just trying to make things happen and go, right. And, you know, as you go on, you kind of realize, look, I'm not just a practitioner, I'm also an owner and I'm an executive and those are completely different roles. And I think over time, if you can really make sure that you understand that those three roles are separate and that you have to make sure you master them to that degree, or at least hire someone that can do those things, that that's really going to create you a valuable practice, you know? Karen Litzy (07:41): And I mean, when you first start out, like I work with a lot of like first time entrepreneurs, you are the owner, the therapist, the executive, the marketer, the pay, you know, you're everything, right? So, so let's say you have a practice like that, where maybe you are a single owner practice, right. Or maybe you have one person part time person. So you don't have this sort of robust, huge practice. Can you sell that? Eric Miller (08:12): Well, you can, you can sell anything. It's just as a matter of how much you're going to get for it. So, again, looking from the buyer's perspective, he wants to buy something. That's not dependent upon one person. He wants something that's going to be basically, he can assume that there's free cashflow there. That is going to be worthwhile to him as an investment. So if you have like a single doctor practice or you're a single practitioner, I mean, you can certainly sell it. It's just not going to go for a very high, multiple, see, most of the practices that we're talking about, you know, are going to sell for maybe like a one to two times earnings. Whereas if you get a bigger organization that has, you know, seven, eight, nine, 12, 20 PTs on staff, there's executives in the office, it's going to go for a much higher, multiple could go as high as eight to 10 of your earnings. So it is, it is that kind of a game, but that's, you know, that's the journey. Karen Litzy (09:08): Right? And, you know, you had said you want to have a lot of systems in place, in your opinion, what are the most valuable or most important systems to have in place within your business? Looking at it from a value standpoint? Eric Miller (09:23): I think definitely having a good financial system is really key because look at what, you know, a lot of businesses, business owners, don't like to confront the finance part of their business, and that's why they don't have much in reserves. And, you know, they're always kind of struggling for, gosh, I can't make payroll this week. And it's just a constant battle when you don't have good financial systems in place, because they're just, they're not paying attention to their money lines. And unfortunately, when it comes to your practice, that that is the most important thing is keeping that practice solvent, which means that there's more money coming in than what's going out. So that personally, I think that's the most important. Some people would say a marketing system is really key because let's face it. If you don't have more patients coming in and buyers definitely going to want to see that he's going to want to see that you are, you have a system in place where you're constantly getting new patients in the door. Right. And then, you know, I think a good quality control system is, is really, really key. Because if people aren't, you know, getting better and you don't diagnose that quickly of, you know, why aren't people getting better because that's what you do as a physical therapist, your job is to get people pain-free, you know, or reduce their pain. So I think that's a pretty key area too. Karen Litzy (10:42): Nice. Yeah. I just had this conversation about the importance of a financial system. Cause I sort of switched my financial system within my practice around, over the last couple of years and it's made such a huge difference. You know, I started looking at the financial system in percentages sort of going off of Mike McCollough, the book profit first. And so, yeah. So how much stays in the business? How much goes to me as an owner, how much goes to taxes? How much goes to profit, how much goes, and then making sure that when that money comes in, it is automatically divided up into those percentages and it's made a huge difference. Eric Miller (11:22): That's so awesome to hear it, does it because you've instilled control over your money right now. Right. And when you look at like what's a barrier for a lot of practice owners is that they don't feel like they have control over their money. Right. And, when you start putting in good control, it's kind of like when you're adjusting somebody or you're getting someone to feel better, right. You have to kind of put control in on that person. Like, I need you to do this and move here and do that. It's the same thing with your money. You have to kind of allocate it so that you know, your expenses are you channel your money to places where it needs to go to handle whatever expense that would be. Certainly, you know, you're yourself. I think, you know, is the most important person that you need to pay first. Karen Litzy (12:07): Well, that's what profit first says. No, it's true. Like, and once I started doing that, it made everything just lighter. So now like quarterly taxes are coming up September 15th or depending on when this airs that might've just been that September 15th date. And I remember like years ago, I'd be like, Oh my gosh, I don't know how, how do I not have them now? I'm like, Oh, totally fine, my money's where it's supposed to be. I am good. Like, this is exactly where it needs to be. Eric Miller (12:43): That actually is kind of like an underlying goal and purpose that I have is I, you know, people always ask like, what's the product of a financial advisor and people think it's, you know, Hey, you know, you made me 20 or 30% or you know, helped me save in taxes. Not really, you know, I like people to feel relaxed about their financial condition and just what you explained to me right there. You're definitely much more relaxed about your condition now because you have control over it and it doesn't control you. That's really awesome. Karen Litzy (13:13): Yeah. And it's a little stressful at first because it's different and it's a change. So I always tell people if you're starting out now start off this way. And Holy cow you'll be so much easier. Everything is just, I feel so much easier. Yeah, just a sense of ease that I now know, like, yes, I have money set aside for this. It's already paid, like it's basically already paid for. Eric Miller (13:39): That's it that's right. But it also does another thing too. It does make you look at and say, you know what, maybe I'm not making enough money in my business because I can't cover some of these other things. And I think that's the most important thing that people have to realize. And I'll go off on a little tangent here, but there's really two basic rules of, for me, income and expenses. The first one is that just get used to the fact that your business will try to spend every dollar that it makes. And then some, and, and that's not just for a business, that's like a government or any household or organization just, it's just going to try to spend every dollar that it makes. And then some, but at the same time, it will also make the exact amount of money. Eric Miller (14:25): It thinks it needs to make to survive. So when I say that, people are like, what does that mean? I'm like, well, look, you know, if you know that you have expenses coming up, somehow miraculously, the business does make enough to cover it. Doesn't it? It's just like, it's just, that's the way it is. So the trick to it is simply to make sure that your reserves and your profit and your taxes are just part of what the business thinks it needs to make to survive. And if you can get that in as what you said as part of that profit first book, I think that's what he's talking about is that it sets the right income target for what the business really needs to make, because that's the biggest outpoint that I usually see with, with practice owners is that I'll ask them, Hey, what's your income target? They'll say, well, you know, I need to make $30,000 a month to pay my bills. And I'm like, well, no, that's not what you need. You actually need 45. If you want to include your profits and building up reserves and paying your taxes that they're operating on a wrong income target. So I think that's really key is to make sure you're operating on the right number. Karen Litzy (15:30): Right. So don't underestimate it completely because I think oftentimes people will just look at, well, this is my rent. These are my utilities. This is my payroll. If you're paying people and these are, you know, overhead costs that maybe we have to pay, you know, phone bills, things like that. And that's it. And they're like, okay, so that's all I have to make. Eric Miller (15:55): That's right. And that's where their demand for income is. But, and if, but if they put in, Hey, I need another $10,000 a month for myself. I need another 5,000 for taxes. I need another because I want to make sure I have reserves. So if I have to shut down for another month, I can handle that. Right. You start putting all those things in. Now the number changes from Oh, 35, I need to make 50. Oh, right. Okay. Well, that's fine. How many more patients do I need to see a week? Right. To be able to make that number, it just gets them, you know, being a problem solver now, as opposed to like, I can't do anything about it kind of mode. Karen Litzy (16:32): Yeah. And I do that. Like people always ask me, well, how many patients, you know, do you usually see a week? And I said, well, it's not, how many do I usually see it's this is what I need to see to make X amount of money per week. So that I know per month, this is what I'm making. And my costs are a little bit lower because I have a mobile practice. So I'm not paying a lease on a brick and mortar facility, but I still have to pay my own rent for my apartment. And I still got to eat. You know, these are all the things that you have to put in. So it's not just, what does the business need, especially if you're a solo preneur, what do you need to survive? Eric Miller (17:12): Yeah. And I think this is where a lot of people, yeah. A lot, a lot of practice owners and entrepreneurs gets, think that their business is more important than their household. And you know, I'm under the, you know, our philosophy, our viewpoint is that your household is like a parent company. Okay. You think about this, you look at all the big corporations out there and you know, people have opinions of them, but they do understand money pretty well. And they certainly understand that let's take Facebook. For example, Facebook owns, I don't know if you do this, like 83 other companies and they're the parent company to all of those other companies, but everything flows to the parent company. Okay. We're your households, no different, you know, you own, you have a, let's say you own a house, a business, maybe a piece of real estate 401k plan, the bank account. Right. Those are all assets of the household. So you really, you know, once you start treating your household, like the parent company, then you set up the system so that, you know, your household you're meeting the goals and purposes of the household people. I think they don't do that. They don't take care of themselves like they should. Karen Litzy (18:19): Yeah, no, I think that's great advice. Thank you for that. Alright. So we've got those financial marketing quality control systems, obviously three very important systems and we can go on and on and systems. That's a whole other conversation. So we will take those and people can run with them as, as sort of prioritizing their systems. So now we've got, we've got all of our systems in place. We've especially our financial system. So how do we plan? Let's say we're getting towards the end of our treating career, whatever your clinical career, whenever that may come. And it may come at different times for different people. How do we efficiently plan for an exit? What do we do? Eric Miller (19:05): As far as like getting the business ready to exit out. Karen Litzy (19:09): Yeah. Like let's say, let's say you're getting ready to kind of exit out of your business. Now we know that maybe you can try and sell it. Or what if you're just like, this is the business is done. You're just done. What do you do? Eric Miller (19:24): Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the first thing you gotta realize, you gotta look at your own financial readiness. Like, can you afford it? You know? I mean, I think a lot of people, they get into a position where they're tired, they get exhausted, right. Because they've been doing things for themselves or I'm sorry, just for the business. And then they just get burnt out, you know? Well, you know, burnout, you know, what burnout is, it has nothing to do with that. It's just that you don't have a bright enough future in front of you. That's what burnout comes from. Right. And I can see why a lot of practice owners getting that conditions. Like I just keep doing the same thing every day and I can't see a bright future for me, so I might as well just sell the thing. Okay. Eric Miller (20:06): So the first thing that I do is just, I try to rehabilitate, like, do you remember why you decided that you wanted to be a business owner? Do you remember like what the purpose was? And if you can revitalize that, I think you can get that person back on track, but look at the end of the day, if you don't want to do it anymore and you want to sell your business, then you know, certainly, you know, hiring a broker can help. Certainly finding someone or just finding another PT that, you know, in the area that would be willing to take, you know you know, sell, you can sell the business to, for Goodwill or it's not going to be very high price, but certainly you can find someone that would be willing to buy practice for some costs. Right. That may just not be very much. Right. Karen Litzy (20:52): And then what, if you were ready to just wrap it up, you don't want to sell it. Are there things that one needs to think about as they wind it down? Eric Miller (21:02): You mean just like, just close it down? Karen Litzy (21:04): You're closing it down. You're moving on to greener pastures, if you will. So you decided to close it down. Are there any financial considerations that one has to think about in that scenario? Eric Miller (21:16): Well, you know, certainly look at how much money that you make from your business. Even, you know, money that through the cashflow that you make, it's sometimes a lot more significant than what people think. And certainly you can own the business. You can just, I mean, if you're a physical therapist, you can just go work for somebody else if you want to. But you know, I think people just have to realize that, that their business does provide them a pretty good living and they just have to analyze that and say, do I have enough to replace that? Or can I go to work for somebody else and replace that income? You know, it's certainly not a good thing to do. You know, there's seven different ways to exit out of business. And that's one of them just shutting it down. It's probably the most, it's the worst way to do it, but I know that it does happen. Karen Litzy (22:05): Yeah. Yeah. What are the other ways you could just name them? We don't have to go into detail. Eric Miller (22:13): So you can die with your boots on, you can close it down. You can sell to an associate. Okay. You can sell to a competitor. Okay. You can sell to private equity. Okay. You can gift the practice to somebody else. Okay. Or you can have your employees buy it through, what's called a Aesop plan. Those are the seven ways that you can exit out of your practice. Okay. Great. What happens with most practice owners is they either sell to an associate to a private equity group, the size of the practice. Karen Litzy (22:54): Yeah. Yeah. And so now let's talk about taxes. Eric Miller (23:03): Yes. So, Oh, taxes. Hey guys, when you could see your eyes got big. Karen Litzy (23:07): Who likes to pay taxes, right. Nobody likes to do it, but we all do it because we need, we need the services that they provide. Right. So let's talk about some tax strategies that might be able to save us some time. Eric Miller (23:21): Yeah. Yeah. I think the first thing on taxes is that you have to realize that your accountant may or may not understand the tax code completely. And it sounds really weird because everyone assumes that they have an accountant, Hey, he's going to try to minimize my taxes. That's not really what their goal is. Their goal is to make sure that you are compliant, that you file your taxes on time. They're not necessarily doing tax planning for you. They're not trying to minimize your taxes. Okay. So I think that's the first thing is that you really have to make sure you're working with an accountant that has the viewpoint that I want to try to minimize this tax bill as much as I can, because it won't happen by itself. You have to be proactive. You cannot take a passive role in minimizing your taxes, or you're just going to end up paying the most. Eric Miller (24:09): Okay. The tax codes, 3 million words, and, you know, no one's going to know every single passage of it. That being said, there are definitely some strategies out there that you can utilize. One that is that I've been talked about a lot is that you can actually rent your house out for 14 days out of the year and you can collect that money completely tax free. And you're probably thinking like, well, how, how would that benefit me? So where this came about was that in a, I don't know what year it was, but if you've ever heard of the masters golf tournament, there's a lot of, there's a lot of guys that have big houses there and on the golf course and they rent their houses out for thousands and thousands of dollars. Okay, well, legally they can collect all of that money, completely tax free. Eric Miller (25:08): Okay. Because the IRS code says, you can rent your house out 14 days out of the year and get that money complete tax free. And you probably thinking, how do I take advantage of that? Well, if you own a business, your business can rent your house out for 14 days out of the year. And as long as you have a legitimate meeting at your house, maybe you have with a key executive or even with yourself, right. You have an executive meeting at your house and you document that, then you can rent, you can have the business pay for that. Okay. It's a business expense. And then you get that personally. And as long as you do it correctly, you can get that money completely tax free. All right. That would be certainly one strategy you can use. It's called the, it's called the Augusta rule. You can look it up online and, and certainly there's. Yeah, yeah. That's where it came from. That's one and, you know, right there, 14 days, let's say that it's a thousand dollars, that'd be $14,000 that you could expense out in your business. And then you can get that personally. Oh, you have to do it right. You have to have a legitimate meeting. You have to like Karen Litzy (26:14): Say it's $10,000 a night. Eric Miller (26:17): I don't know. In New York, you may be able to write. Karen Litzy (26:20): I don't know. That might be a stretch too. Eric Miller (26:22): If you needed to rent out like a hotel or a restaurant, that's what you would need to do. You need to go get like an estimate like of where you would normally hold that meeting just for documentation purposes, but like anything else it can be done. You just have to follow through and have documentation, you know? And I just have the accountant guide you on how to do that. That's certainly that's one that would be, you know, 14, 15,000. So if people have kids, they can put their kids on payroll and they can, you know, show them that would be another deduction that you can use. You know, there's certainly a lot more, I could probably go on all night. But you know, I think another thing that people can do is just look at how they take their income. Eric Miller (27:06): Like you own a business, right? And most physical therapists are escorts. And you know, a lot of accounts will tell them to take bigger salaries than what they actually need to be taking. Right? So you can actually adjust your salary downs as long as it's a reasonable compensation and then take more an owner draws. That's going to help minimize the Medicare tax as well. So it really just boils down to, you know, finding the right information, finding a right advisor that can help you and, you know, provide tax deductions that your accountant can work with to minimize it. It can happen like you should, it's your responsibility. And I say this a lot. It's like, I've never read anywhere where it's my responsibility to maximum fund the IRS. Right? Like I know I have to pay taxes. I get that. But there's no one that said that I have to like pay, you know an ungodly amount of tax. But that's the way the IRS works. They just assume that your money is their money and you have to be proactive to show them otherwise. Karen Litzy (28:11): Yeah. I know this year when I paid my taxes, when I did my taxes for 2019, I was so excited. Cause I only owed like $309 after doing my estimated quarterly taxes, which I thought, well, this is great because I'm not giving them more throughout the year. And in fact I was almost like, spot on. That's pretty good. Yeah. That was pretty good. Because like, you don't want to, like, I understand when people get refunds, but if you got a refund, that means that you gave them more than was necessary throughout the year. Correct. Right. Yeah. Eric Miller (28:53): So it is something that you have to stay on top of because as your business grows, you know, your tax liability personally is going to be higher. So you really have to make sure you stay in good communication with your accounts. Like you should be talking to them every quarter, especially now recently where I think a lot of people have gotten the PPP loan. And if you, you know, if that gets forgiven well, you know, physical therapists didn't really shut down. I mean, some of them did, but you were still collecting money. So you know, you may have, you really have to make sure that you're not going to have a tax problem for 2020, it could happen. So just, you know, just getting in communication with your accountant. I think that that will help. Karen Litzy (29:32): Yeah. During the PPP loan phase and covert, I was thinking, I was talking to my accountant like literally every other day. Yeah. I'm like, does this make sense? Should I do this? Should we do this? Should I do this? Can I do this? Does this, is this the right form? Do I feel, and I did get a PPP loan because in New York, you know, we were done, like when I say shut down, like shut down, nothing, you know? And eventually I started doing more telehealth visits, but in the beginning it was quite scary. And so I said, you know, I better apply for a loan and, and I did get it. And now they haven't even asked, we haven't even filled out the forgiveness paperwork yet, but now I'm in contact with him like weekly, like, is this the right form? Did I fill this out? Right? Is this the right documentation I need? And he's like, yes, yes, yes. You're all good. So now when the time comes, I'll be able to get that in really quick. Eric Miller (30:27): Yeah. And it won't be a problem and you know, you'll have your attention on other things that'll help expand and that's good. And then that's just, that's not my experience. Most practice owners, they kind of don't confront it, they ignore it. And then it becomes a bigger problem down the line. And that's really needless. Right. Karen Litzy (30:44): I think that's how I used to be, but I have now been rehabilitated financially. So yeah, this was great. Now, what are in your opinion, what are the key messages that you would like the listeners to kind of take away from this conversation? Eric Miller (31:02): Well, I mean, you know, for me look, I mean, you can, regardless of what your financial condition is, like, you can do something about it. Right. And I think that's always been a pretty key, you know, philosophical viewpoint that I have. Like, I don't think that there's such thing as an unwinnable game and I know that even things get a little murky and they get a little dark and you know, sometimes you don't really see, you know, the future as bright as it could be, but if you just kind of like, just do one thing right. And complete that cycle of action and then go onto the next, then I think that starts to create more freedom for yourself. Like people get overwhelmed so fast. Right. And there's like, there's so many different things to do, especially financially. Right. That they just, they don't just do what's in front of them while they're doing it. Like just complete one thing at a time. And then you can go on to the next one. Right. Like do the next thing and then go on to the next one. And then to me, that's the key to success, right? There is, is getting interested in something that you don't want to do. Right. And completing it. And I think once you do that, you'll start to see a much brighter future, better things happening to you. Karen Litzy (32:14): Yeah. Great, great advice. Thank you so much. And before we get going, I'm going to ask you the same question that I ask everyone. And that's knowing where you are now in your life and in your career. What advice would you give to your younger self? Eric Miller (32:29): I would simply tell myself that there are destructive and constructive actions that you can do in life, right. And that those destructive actions, while they may appear fun at the time will certainly prevent you from getting to your potential and leading the life that you want to lead. Right. I know we're all young. We all kind of make stupid mistakes and that's just part of the learning curve. But I would certainly tell myself, you know, your personal ethics is really part of your survival, right? And to the degree that you kind of keep yourself in good shape morally, and you do the right thing better things are gonna happen to you in your life. It's going to create more abundance for you. And I would tell myself that is just make sure you pay attention and do the right thing more often than you do the wrong thing. Karen Litzy (33:22): Excellent. And now, where can people find you on social media website? Eric Miller (33:27): Yeah. So if you want to go for a wealthforpts.com wealthforpts.com, you can download a free ebook that we have. You can certainly go to our website www.econologicsfinancialadvisors.com And then we have a YouTube channel, www.econologicsfinancialadvisors.com. And those would be three places that you can go to connect with us. Karen Litzy (33:48): Perfect. And all of that will be at the show notes at podcast.healthywealthysmart.com under this episode. So one click will take you to everything. So Eric, thank you so much. This was great. I was taking copious notes and you know, every time I have these conversations, I'm always thinking to myself, Hey, what do I need to do? What do I need to act on? And you know, a lot of the conversations that I've had with folks like yourself, accountants, even on this program and in my own personal life have just really been so valuable. So I thank you so much for taking the time out today. Thank you and everyone, thanks so much for listening. Have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy and smart.     Thanks for listening and subscribing to the podcast! Make sure to connect with me on twitter, instagram  and facebook to stay updated on all of the latest!  Show your support for the show by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts!

During his years in New York City, Eric Jordan Young bounced around from Broadway productions and national tours to regional shows and concerts. According to most performers, he was living the dream. But he wanted something else, we wanted something more. So Eric branched out into his own endeavors, from a solo recording album to a one-man tribute to Sammy Davis, Jr. Along the way he met some challenges and found out he knew more about the show than he did the business. And Vegas became the testing ground and base of operations for his own production company, and he found the stories he was truly meant to tell.  Listen to Eric and other previous guests on the new WINMI Singers & Songwriters Playlist - spotify.whyillnevermakeit.com.  Follow Eric: Instagram / Twitter  Follow WINMI: Instagram / Twitter / Blog  Donate to the podcast: https://ko-fi.com/winmipodcast  —————  WINMI is a Top 20 Theater Podcast thanks to you!  https://blog.feedspot.com/theatre_podcasts/    Music used in this episode:  "Smooth Actor" by Podington Bear is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License. Based on a work at http://soundofpicture.com.  "Nocturnal" by Kai Engel is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.  "Holiday Gift" by Chad Crouch is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License. "Retreat" by Gold Coast is licensed by soundstripe.com.  

https://tribus.captivate.fm/ (Enjoying Brokerage Insider? Please Subscribe Using Your Favorite Podcast Player.) In this episode, Eric Stegemann sits down with EVP of Operations for Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, Jessica Edgerton. They discuss the importance of making sure your brokerage website is ADA compliant. Get an https://tribus.com/ada-accessibility-audit-for-real-estate-brokerages/ (ADA audit of your brokerage website). TRANSCRIPTION Jessica Edgerton (https://www.temi.com/editor/t/X9sgh0bEqJNjvYczJiSlKu61rPrnmOTW1WzsBfad8v2RTULeZ50u7ce8owbSdM0R_RKZE4gL6v_dPInNeZl_B8uP0ww?loadFrom=SharedLink&ts=4.64 (00:04)): Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us. This is Jessica Edgerton, executive vice president of operations and corporate counsel for https://tribus.com/integrations/franchise-reporting/leadingre/ (LeadingRE). I am excited to have Eric Stegemann here. He is the CEO of TRIBUS and has a, was a realtor before reaching the age of 20. So he has been in the business a long time and knows it well while loving his days in real estate, he knew there was a larger opportunity to build a technology oriented brokerage. In 2004, he created river city real estate, which quickly became the largest independent brokerage in the St Louis area. There he oversaw the development of numerous real estate technology breakthroughs that were well ahead of their time. Eric is regarded as one of the brightest minds in the real estate technology realm has spoken at a number of real estate technology events. You may very well have seen him at one of ours in the past and has also spoken at Inman connect to New York, San Francisco and NAR annual conference. Jessica Edgerton (https://www.temi.com/editor/t/X9sgh0bEqJNjvYczJiSlKu61rPrnmOTW1WzsBfad8v2RTULeZ50u7ce8owbSdM0R_RKZE4gL6v_dPInNeZl_B8uP0ww?loadFrom=SharedLink&ts=63.5 (01:03)): We see him everywhere and are very glad to have TRIBUS as part of our solutions group as well. So Eric welcome. Thank you so much today. We are talking about website accessibility. https://tribus.com/ada-accessibility-audit-for-real-estate-brokerages/ (ADA real estate brokerage website accessibility issues) have been around for a long time for our industry. In my NAR days, we heard about them quite regularly. Historically website accessibility has come under the umbrella of the Americans with disabilities act, which is protects people with disabilities, from dealing with public facing businesses that are inaccessible to them. So under the ADA, if you have a public facing business, you are required to take reasonable measures to make it accessible to people with disabilities. Now, once the internet came online, that was originally seen as a bricks and mortar have a ramp, make sure that people with, with in wheelchairs are able to navigate your, your aisles, things like that. Jessica Edgerton (https://www.temi.com/editor/t/X9sgh0bEqJNjvYczJiSlKu61rPrnmOTW1WzsBfad8v2RTULeZ50u7ce8owbSdM0R_RKZE4gL6v_dPInNeZl_B8uP0ww?loadFrom=SharedLink&ts=125.3 (02:05)): Then along comes the internet and there was for a number of years some, a lack of clarity as to whether the ADA applied to public facing websites, our websites, a place of, of public access does is public. Do public accessibility laws apply to websites? The answer really now is pretty much yes, across the board. There's a little bit of haziness in some circuits, but the recommendation a hundred percent, I've never talked to an attorney that would say no, no, don't worry about your public facing website, right? So this is an important issue. Why are we talking about it right now, given that we've been hearing about it for years? First of all, we're all kind of still sheltering in place and opening back up to the public. There's a lot of transition right now in our, in our industry. Jessica Edgerton...

Welcome, everyone. It is now time for COVID Episode 6.0. We have an incredible special guest this time, of course, I'm Eric Rieger with your host, Dr. Kenneth Brown. But today, we have Aubrey Levitt. She is the CEO of Postbiotics Plus. She's very much into research and an incredible entrepreneur certainly knows a lot of the people in the scientific community that have inspired Ken and I to dig deeper to look further. Without further ado, Ken would you like to say hello to Aubrey, and we'll get started.So you can imagine my excitement when I found somebody that was discussing postbiotics also. So Aubrey, thank you so much for coming in. Eric, do we have any...we need to shout out to our sponsors real quick? No, we don't have to do that. We just did that. You're all you're all here.So Aubrey Levitt. Oh my goodness. This is so cool. I felt like I was alone on an island discussing post biotics and then I have this little routine. I'm a very routine type person. I like to work out and go to the sauna. And I do a little mindfulness meditation. And then I just kind of scroll for the last little 10 minutes on podcasts and I just typed in postbiotics and I couldn't believe it. The CEO of postbiotics plus I'm like, not only does she know about it, she's an entrepreneur. She's smart. And she's got like, and then I went to your website, I'm like, she's got like six PhDs working for her like, holy cow, we have got to track this woman down. So I apologize that I stalked you. But thank you so much for coming on the show.No I was so happy about that. It's so nice to have somebody else on this island with me. Yeah, we put our stake in the ground like postbiotics and then echoes for a couple years, just looking back but no, it's very...So we're calling this COVID episode 6.0 because although we're gonna talk about the microbiome I want to let you in on something that you're doing. So congratulations to you and your desire to go through science first, hire these PhDs make something effective because you're going to change the world like I believe that we're helping to change the world. A article just came out this month, discussing the gut, the actual title is this gut microbiota and COVID-19 possible link and implications. And then another one just came out that said a comprehensive review on the effect of plant metabolites on Coronavirus. Plant metabolites means postbiotics and then somebody that we will get you in contact with is a PhD that we're working with her name is Silvia Molino, she did it to get her PhD. Her postdoctoral study is so cool. She actually looked at invitro digestion and fermentation of stable polyphenols. So she was able to do an in and of course, invitro means in a lab. So she was able to show the postbiotic effect once through digestion and then once the microbiome comes in contact with it. Absolutely brilliant and so cool. So COVID you're making a difference!Yeah. All across the board. No, yeah, I just want to say that one of the things that started this fascination for me was you just look at fermented foods, right, which are full of postbiotics and how much of a role they have played in every culture. And we may not have known why in the past, but when we're looking through the lens of the microbiome, we can see maybe a deeper into what's happening here. You know, I know people know probiotics and they know prebiotics of fiber. But when the probiotics eat the prebiotics, then this magic happens. And that's what's also happening in your gut, right if you have all those elements working.Yeah, totally.And I think why and what I've seen also why it directly relates to COVID is, you know, people are getting are at risk for secondary infections. And also people are getting antibiotics and whatnot. And that directly destroys the microbiome as we know, which leaves them vulnerable to being populated by whatever's there. And, and weakens them.If I'm knowing that kind of research and listening to the PhDs while y'all are constructing the studies, and or the clinical trials to find out what is actually going to work. What are some of the endpoint measures that you that some of your PhDs are examining? Is it because they're looking for what the bacteria will do with the things that you present like postbiotics, as you mentioned before, and how do you measure that, is it like short chain fatty acid stuff or what...We were looking specifically at one thing and just diversity overall, so we were looking at a point of injury. So the one because we wanted to kind of pare it down to. Okay, we know, we're researching the microbiome, and we're looking all these various things, but it's a complex ecosystem, right. And the one thing we do know is that when there is a lot of diversity that always correlates with health. And so we really pared it back to that of okay, but in our modern lifestyle, we have many, many things that affect that diversity and really, you know, strip it. So we looked at antibiotics first in our first study to say antibiotics is one of the harshest things that wipe out gut diversity and leave us susceptible in this window afterwards to either an opportunistic, you know, pathogen taking over or maybe just not recovering to the diversity that we had before. And so we did a study our initial study was to look at these antibiotics because think about it, also, people are coming in for maybe a sinusitis. So having their gut wiped out is a, you know, side effect that is not intended. It's a consequence that's not intended. So we gave them a fermented herbal product, which is full of postbiotics, because essentially, we put probiotic bacteria with the herbal components and it's breaking them down with we gave them that with some live probiotics as well. And we had a control group and we we took their stool samples to see if we are protecting their diversity. So right when they got the treatment, and then you know, all throughout the treatment and 10 days after, and we saw Yeah, so the endpoint was gut diversity is looking to see if the ecosystem was intact.I couldn't agree more and Brown we've talked about this in the past. And of course, we've seen this in the hospital. Oftentimes when people are given really powerful antibiotics and they come to the hospital. Unfortunately, the end result is often c diff, and it's exactly what it does. It goes through it wipes out all of the bacteria we and it tears down all c diff is all that's left in incredible diarrhea which persists forever so that you're certainly speaking I think that bringing up c diff is probably the most extreme version of lack of diversity because you wipe out everything but one particular bacteria that then populates so it's almost like having a neighborhood where only one family dominates and they decide what happens well c-diff kills people. It's very serious. I'm a huge as a, as a gastroenterologist, I reluctantly ever try to put anybody on antibiotics and I see So my research was in bacterial overgrowth SIBO, which is, which is a consequence of antibiotics all the time. My classic patient would be somebody that said, I got a sinusitis just like you said, five years ago, took this big round of antibiotics and I've never been right since. And that's that's the patient comes to me as a gastroenterologist.Yeah. And I was that patient because when I was a kid, I had antibiotics probably every week for years and then I had to go in and have two weeks straight of antibiotics, because I punctured a lung. And so they put you on IV antibiotics. And you know, ever since then it was just sort of this imbalance that couldn't get. I couldn't figure out how to right. And I didn't even know because that was sort of so early on. It was just this uphill battle that I wasn't aware of. So that was one of the things behind of like, you know, I could do everything perfect, but the moment too much stress would come on or whatever else would happen, I would fall back on my resiliency wasn't there, the normal resiliency that you would think you would have.So I could talk postbiotics all day, but now you just got me super intrigued about Aubrey Levitt. And how I built this, how does a woman this powerhouse CEO doing this? You just said you essentially had a very traumatic childhood, what was going on?Well, you know, it's a bit of a layered story, but it was I think it started also with this more, you know, trauma when I was a baby of someone had broken in and I actually had a memory of it, which is even weirder, you know, with a gun, but it put me on this hyper vigilant, very stressful response for years after where I was watching the window and the door couldn't sleep. And you know, this leads to an increase in illness where I was having strep throat probably every week. And I'm only putting these pieces together now actually looking backwards retrospectively, but you have these series of illnesses that which lead to pneumonia and then lead to puncturing a lung. And this is all pre second grade, you know, that happened in second grade. So you're on, you know, just a massive amounts of medication, and not compared to maybe some to what some other kids are having, but it was a lot for me at the time.I mean, I would argue that getting antibiotics that often could be one of the most traumatic things that somebody could do because you will never be able to rebuild this microbiome.Yeah, it becomes and then you only realize later how much it's really affecting you. It throws off your hormones, it throws off your immune system throws off, you know, all sorts of things that were just out of whack with without a real explanation. You know, you'd go to see these various doctors and they couldn't pinpoint what was the root cause.Wow, how are your parents through this whole process?You know, I don't think anybody thought anything of it at the time, right? They were actually very healthy and very conscious of all these things and did their best. But, you know, what are you going to do when your kid has 104 fever every other week? Right? I mean, you just don't really have a choice.Yeah. Wow. And that is wild. So I would, I would even couple that did on top of that. On top of the biodiversity that's being eliminated through long term antibiotics, you've also got, I mean, the stress of anxiety, which is obviously something that you're referencing, if you're staring at a door or window as a young kiddo, and it persists for days. I mean, the time to repair is constantly being thwarted by your body's vigilant state of trying to always be in fight or flight, there is no repair time. That's pretty wild.Yeah, and I don't think people realize how much stress wears on their, their immune system and their body and just like you're saying, it doesn't give you that rest and digest time to recover, which is very essential, you know, to bounce back. So. And I think also that got me very interested in like the gut brain response and how that vagus nerve talks between the two because you're just always reacting. Right?Okay, so we're both smiling because this is just right up Ken's ally. This is exactly whatI just think it's hilarious. This is the first time that we've actually talked. And you're literally mimicking everything that we say. We are a kindred spirit here. We've been on the same island...studying the same stuff.Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, even when we when I created this first product, I think one of the issues that I was finding is that okay, I would take these herbal remedies, I would, you know, eat these great foods, but I still wasn't able to digest them properly or really utilize them properly. And because I wasn't seeing the results I wanted and when I fermented these herbs, what what was very interesting is I actually even felt a focus and a mood difference right away, which is how I got into this post biotic work because I thought, wow, they're like, I think there's GABA or something in here that is different than what was in here when you started with the original product.So you felt it almost immediately.Yeah, I did, I did. And I felt the difference. And so then I went and tested and that there was GABA in it. And also too, if I was actually feeling that and because it was a small amount, I mean and I can't be sure that's just a assumption on my part, but that got me really interested. I started talking to these guys out of corp, you know, Ted Dinin, and they were studying this essentially how the gut communicates to the brain through the signaling molecules and these neurotransmitters that are released through this fermentation process, even if it's in your gut. And so I just went down this rabbit hole and ended up partnering with the scientists out of Memorial Sloan Kettering. Now he's at NYU, who, who was also interested in the same thing of these metabolites. And not only they also signal to the other bacteria in your gut, so there's just this constant communication going on between everything. Not not to get too in the weeds,No, totally because this perfect, this is the conversation I have with my patients all the time, is when pharmaceutical companies and I'm not putting them on blast, but when pharmaceutical companies try and do something they tend to focus on on a molecule that they can patent. And what we're learning is that the microbiome is way too complex, where we're at right now with our, with our research, so you can do these giant stool studies. And so I get all these people that come from functional medicine doctors with these, these gi DNA analysis, and they're like, Yeah, do something like that we can do the test, you don't really know how to manipulate 100 trillion bacteria. Exactly. And so what I tell everybody is, we do know that if you can diversify, they will figure it out. Meaning they when you have a proper diversification, a proper signaling mechanism where they will keep control of each other, and they send signals to your brain, we now know Eric and I did a whole episode just on the negative effects of short chain fatty acids, when they're out of proportion, meaning butyrate being real good. But yeah, if you have too much acetate, if you have too much propionic acid out of proportion, that crosses the blood brain barrier and creates that that gut brain situation. So it's all about just let your body let those microbiome, figure it out. We're not going to out think them.Yeah. And that's, that's also something that really excites me about this whole field is the ecosystem approach, I think is really an opportunity to look at medicine differently than how we've been looking in the at in the past, like this lock and key approach is doesn't work as you're saying. It's sort of the it's very complex, it requires more systems medicine approach of looking at how, if you touch this point, it affects this whole area around it. And I think it's also to me, the one area that's speaking to all different fields, you know, it's speaking to Western medicine, allopathic medicine, speaking to functional medicine, and it's kind of everybody because we don't know exactly what's happening here. But we all agree, it's important, and we all agree it matters. And that that hasn't really happened before. I mean, you guys are the you're the doctor, so maybe you could speak to that more but that's, that's what I see happening. And it's also saying we can't outsmart it. We have to work with it.Yeah. And that's where the whole, that's where I got really interested in the whole postbiotic thing because that's when I started doing. We started realizing that when, when you start decreasing the inflammatory response in the body by eating a different type of diet, I start asking why. And then that's when I started meeting scientists that said, Oh, it's because you're producing, urolithin or you're producing, you know, now a GABA. I didn't realize the GABA. So that's what's so fascinating. So I'm a doctor. And I imagine you've got what six or seven PhDs that you're in this postbiotic thing. What is how did you end up you were sick and then then you sort of jump forward and said, then I started this company. How did we get from there to here?Yeah, God, it's been a windy road. So I you know, I was a, how do I say this? So i i got obsessed with the science part because I always do have to measure and kind of look at...okay, starting with an idea of something that I may feel in myself or that matters to me, but I wanted to look at, okay, how can we measure this in a larger population? Like, it's not enough for me to I didn't want to go out there and just create a product and see what happens? And I guess Okay, so one step back, I do have a background in pharmaceutical advertising and marketing or whatnot. And so it started there. And I was working those jobs and I thought, okay, I, this is not what I'm going to look back 40 years from now and be happy with what I created. I wanted to go out there and solve a problem. And then once you create that solution, then I have to go back and measure and make sure it works. So that's what led me down the science path. And it just it wasn't necessarily the intention of starting a company. It was always coming from solving a problem and wanting to find the answer that didn't already exist. And if you're looking for an answer that doesn't already exist, then you have to test that answer multiple times before you go out there and offer it to somebody else. So, that's sort of the windy road there, I guess.Well, I'll tell you what that is, is that's you've when we you've said several times, allopathic and naturopathic boy, if there's ever anybody who I would not believe would somebody with a marketing background in pharmaceuticals that came up with a novel idea, usually its market first we'll worry about the science later. We're going to make cash on this thing. I've gotten a lot of flack for that. No, not flack at all. I'm giving you so much props you lead with science first. I mean, that is amazing. Especially because you come from a marketing background, holy cow.But to me the best marketing is truth and honesty. Right? And that speaks for itself. And so I was not interested in this...okay, you have this end product and you put a shiny package on it, and you hand it over somebody it's like how many of the layers can peel away so that you really have a clear understanding of where something starts and what the thought process is behind it and you and you just communicate that clearly at the end of it. And that's that's where I think things are going even on a marketing standpoint, but he you're just telling a clear story of why you did it and then what it is and why it works.I could not agree more I think the most stable marketing is knowing that your story is true, can be proven, can be reproducible. Generally, those who just flash in the pan the the charlatans are always revealed over time and then it's just it's just a trend or a fad that fades away but what you're doing is very much in line with what what drew me to work with Ken it's this is what I believe we'll figure out how to tell people about it later, but this is what's working and that made a lot of sense to me.And and even if it does, if it works the other way, do you is that something you really want to be a part of or like is that like I would lose interest over time. So doing it for me more than anything. And then I had to turn around and be like, okay, now how do I find a business story around that that other people get behind? Because I want to do the science for me, because that's what I need to move forward. So it really came from that place, read more than anything else. And to say, Okay, how do I get scientists that are smarter than me that are gonna think they're gonna challenge me? And then we're going to do the research around it and find some answers.There's so much similarity here. You being a CEO now, I had no business background, and now I'm in the throes of essentially, you know, I mean, it's a five year startup and I realized that Apple was a 20 year startup and Right, exactly 20 year startup and all this other stuff. So you you get that that side of it. I was super impressed with your team. I mean, you are just filled with PhDs and a couple MDs.Yeah, yeah, we got really lucky of and at this point, everybody's kind of donating their time. Like they've got on board out of passion. And that's what I think is even more exciting is that they believed in the process and we just kind of found scientists that were really obsessed with what they call this ecosystem science and looking at how these interactions happen in the microbiome. And I love the idea of ecosystem science that encompasses so much and it actually flies in the face of what Ken and I both kind of find challenging with, unfortunately, the pharmaceutical world which is just trying to find that one little bitty active molecule to try to solve all of the issues with that because it doesn't generally work that way. That being said, what are the goals with the company and utilizing ecosystem science? Where do y'all want to go? What what is what are some some pinnacle finish lines for y'all?Yeah, I mean, what's so there's two things that we have really exciting on the horizon and one we we are working now. We just talked to a doctor at Memorial Sloan Kettering and what the research they've done at Memorial Sloan Kettering is a cancer hospital. And they really looked at how diversity affects cancer patients. And that's been something that was, you know, a long term almost impossible thing for me and and the fact that we're actually pursuing being able to do that is exciting. And what they found is that so they did some FMT studies there. And they really found that if a patient comes in and they have higher diversity, then you know, when they go through their chemotherapy, and then their antibiotics and the most severe treatments, for the third, specifically working with bone marrow transplant patients, the patients who have the higher gut diversity do better. They surv...they're more likely to survive, it actually affects survival rate, and it reduces complications. And so this has sent them down the path of really looking into what can they do to protect the gut diversity and help these patients and so one of the questions they asked which I found fascinating is okay when you receive high doses of chemotherapy and antibiotics is there really anything you can do, or is your gut so destroyed at that point that it doesn't matter? And what they found was actually even a little bit helps these patients and helps their survival rate. And what that means is even if there's no intervention, so they may just happen to be someone who bounces back better than somebody else. And so, and they bounce back to a just slightly higher level than the other patients whose guts destroyed that slight increase in diversity, they do better. So that means even if they eat a better diet, they're potentially going to do better, which is to me huge because you can come in with something that is a more dietary or intervention and improve their outcomes. And so again...Very, very interesting and very congruent, Brown, with what, what you've been talking about even back to the inception of Atrantil. We, we have what we think are these incredible polyphenols this polyphenolic blend to feed bacteria. But, you know, the opposite needs to be true. Also, if if the correct bacteria aren't there to be fed in the right ratios, then we're just not going to have the byproducts, the postbiotics that we need for the body.Yeah. So Aubrey, so I'm sitting here listening to you, and I'm thinking, okay, so we talk about bio diversity and all this stuff. But the reality is, is that the bio diversity leads to this complex cascade of things that happen. Yes. And if I've got in my world, gastroenterology, I've got patients that have their colons taken out due to ulcerative colitis, due to cancer, due to different things. And we've actually talked, we've got one of my graduate students, actually, Angie will be very excited to know that you came on. I've got a graduate student that Eric and I work with carefully, and we started discussing this that well, what happens nobody's talking about If you don't have your microbiome, how can you make sure they have sufficient amounts of butyric acid? How can you make sure that there's urolithic come out there? How can you make sure that now Gaba and now we know that are they getting the appropriate amount of vitamin K, are they getting the glutathione things that we know that the bacteria break down, nobody's talking about that. And the ability to say, okay, during this acute process of getting chemotherapy, I would almost think that your particular product should be the protocol to ensure that there is something.Well, and that's what I think we got passionate about if there's nothing done to support the body to recover better when certain treatments or therapies are given and why not. So it's, you know, I mean, I think it brings me back a little bit to this COVID situation, what what's your best defense, your immune system, your own body, you know, and I think that no matter what you have, no matter what treatment you're given, your own body's going to be doing some of the legwork to get you back to where you want to be, or at least even to be able to handle the treatment better because a lot of these treatments are so harsh that they're also taking a toll on your own immune system or your own body in various ways. So, and we're not doing anything to help mitigate that or support the body as it's recovering. And that seems like an easy place to intervene and have because it's, it's gonna fall back on that on your body anyway.You know, I'm sitting there thinking about you as a young girl looking out the window, being hyper vigilant with the sympathetic nervous system, and then I'm thinking about a cancer patient that wakes up and goes, oh, shit, I have cancer. That thought sympathetic nervous system goes up. Exactly. Then a nurse comes in says, Remember you have chemo. Oh my God, I'm gonna have diarrhea, and nausea and vomiting. And I mean, you cannot think of a worse scenario, then and my, I mean, we've treated a ton of cancer, and the thought of the sympathetic nervous system going overboard the worries that are going on the financial stress, all this other stuff, it's very similar to the COVID situation. So similar,And that's our lifestyle these days, is this a high, heightened, stressful situation is we're constantly under stress. And so, and I think why, until you get something more severe, a lot of times, we're not thinking of what the effects of this are. But really the goal would be anytime you're sort of hitting a heightened stress, how do you balance that with also protecting yourself? And we're not really ingrained to think that way yet. You know, because it's having one round of antibiotics, we should be doing something to build ourselves back up to protect our gut microbiome. So that's why we looked into that in the study of like, how do you protect the diversity and make yourself and help yourself bounce back, right? Because that directly affects your immune system, which is suppressed during that medication and it's going to need to bounce back, you know, the microbiome helps with that. So that should be when you're in a stressful period when you get you know, because then we may not have it cascade into these larger problems, we start looking at it early. But then again, when you have the most extreme problem even then it helps you bounce back. And I, I just keep seeing this also vision in my head of the COVID situation of what happens when the whole world takes a break for a little bit. You saw how even like nature bounced back so quickly, right? Like the amount that we can all bounce back is actually incredible. If you just give a little bit of help...for a second.And I love how you're saying that because there's I have so many patients that when they they do something that let's say that they are...well, we've seen this. So Eric and I, we've we launched a program, Aubrey that we call the frontline program, because we believe so strongly that gut health, you cannot have a healthy immune system without a healthy gut. Because health begins there. And so we have launched a program where we're just giving away Atrantil because I know that it increases diversity. I know that it actually has anti pathogenic activity. I know this and we discussed it as a company, that we have a moral obligation to at least help the people that I'm with like I could, the thought that I could go to my hospital and find a nurse that maybe, you know, if somebody died, that maybe we could have just given them something to help, then that, that really that that drive starts getting me thinking about all the stuff that you're talking about, which is like, why can't we start doing protocols at a hospital that are essentially harmless, which is what you're talking about. There, the risk to benefit ratio, and it's insane the hurdles you have to go through. Like you had to find somebody at Memorial Sloan Kettering, you had to sit down, you had to go through meeting after meeting after meeting he had to then get passionate enough to go to the IRB to go to that. I mean, I've been there. And you're like, for God's sakes! Right. I mean, we're on the cardiac floor. The cardiac diet is pancakes and syrup and...Right, right. Yeah. I in and it's, it's kind of like Why not? You know, it's as you're saying it's why not do something that is going to do now it may help it may not in some situations, but why not?Yeah, we're going so far as we're giving away. I mean, we're losing a ton of money doing this just trying to make sure that if it does, if it can help, and we learned that it helps later, then I would look back at myself at this time and go you're a jerk for not at least trying to tell people. That's really great. That's really great.But it brings a question to my mind, Aubrey with your PhDs and we kind of set the stage here a little bit. So medicine in its early day was all it's all predicated. All the information we have is predicated on people doing experiments it's how we, we came to find everything and then ultimately which seemed like that we're at this intersection where innovation which might occur outside of, you know, the small little nucleus of companies or a handful of doctors is just summarily rejected until finally, over time, it's finally accepted because it happens to work for for someone else, or it's disproven and it doesn't work at all. But what inspires your PhDs to work with a company that's essentially helping challenge the status quo by using natural solutions? Because I know what works for Ken and I, it's because we see people smile and get real relief after trying for so long. So that's an easy one. But what is it about the PhD at that level who's like, you know what, I'm going to go to work today and keep challenging this because why?You know, that's great question. So I think a couple things I do think the microbiome has really opened the door to it's almost looking at it through the lens of the microbiome being complex, and not necessarily as much what the input is, because when you're looking at postbiotics, it kind of takes it one step away from like whether it starts as a natural product or not. I also think this next generation of scientists is they're very, the ones I'm meeting now are very interested in how can I make a difference? How can I not just stay in the lab? And how can I put something into the world and see that research be realized? And I think I happen to meet scientists that were passionate about, okay, this approach of taking the one missing bacteria, or this group of missing bacteria is not going to work. And they were willing to kind of stand on the edge and say that and my co founder who I work directly with, he did some research in Japan and you know, overseas, so I think it really opened up his eyes to hey, there are these things that have been studied for a long period of time that have been used with patients, but it just wasn't under a scientific rigor. So what happens if we look at that information and we start putting it under the lens that we look at other scientific remedies, what will we find? And it's more of just an openness to asking that question, and not really saying, okay, let's pick something more natural. It's more just like, okay, let's open our door to this wider range of things, whether it's natural or not. Let's look at what works.You know, I love how you say that. Let's open the door. Because what I've run into, which I'm sure you have run into, is what I I call cognitive dissonance. If somebody believes something, and they don't want to think about anything else, you described it as opening the door, just look outside and see and keep an open mind about that. That's really cool that you found people like that because when you get up a team, one thing that has been really neat about this whole COVID-19 issue is the collaboration of the scientists around the world. People are running with...people are just sharing data. And they're just saying, hey here, just what can you do with this? And this is, I think that the collaboration that's going on right now with you and your team is so cool, because this whole idea of opening the door and saying natural solutions and what is natural the most, you almost it has this implication that, oh, I'm going to try something unusual. And what you're saying is no, we're going to use our body and we're just going to feed it what it wants and allow the bacteria to do what they do, which is the most basic fundamental thing you can do for your health. I love that.And it's also not looking at the two extremes, right? I think, you know, just because something's natural doesn't mean it's healthy either. I think that's that's pretty clear as well, I you know, that there's, we can't jump to an extreme on either side of this. It's like okay, we can have a wider array of what we're looking at to support the body and then we test it and that's it. So what got the scientists I'm working with fully on board was our first study, we had a control group and we had results that were surprising to all of us because we went in saying, we don't know, maybe this could work. And then we got the results from the first study. So that's really what sealed the deal. Not not any kind of hope around it. Right?Yeah. Let me pin you down a little more. I know that Eric poked you a little bit here. But I'm going to take you one step further. So well, I want to know the because I'm, I'm much like you I'm into the science, but also own a company. And so I'm curious where Aubrey sees the business side of this. Where do you see that going? And you already said that science. You're correct. You're helping people. So morally, you're on the right place, but you also have to pay these six PhDs you also have and, and the beauty of having a successful company is that you can hire more people, more people can can can get insurance more people can, you know, there's nothing wrong with taking a beautiful scientific idea and turning it into a successful company.Yeah, yeah. And I and I tend to think of I prefer building a company where maybe there's a bigger hurdle upfront. And then hopefully, once you get over that, you're gonna have an easier time rather than sort of getting out the gate and meaning if you do the science, you get the credibility and you'll get people behind me and that could be your marketing that you go out the gate with. So what we're hoping is to get this next study done, which we hope we can get this study done with these cancer patients, which is more extreme scenario, right, and then we could put it as a medical food and that would be the hope and then you can also use it as an adjunct when these other medications are given because it's essentially 24% of medications affect your gut microbiome negatively, right. So really want to pay attention to when you're taking these medications, how do you protect it and I think also in these stressful situations, so the idea would be to get it as a medical food and then also take it when you take antibiotics and other things. And so it's not kind of it's when you need it right now like an ongoing every day sort of thing.Well, I see it as a not to have death by 1000 cuts, because I'm seeing going to my company, digestive health associates of Texas, I think that you have a relationship to Dr. Rogoff, one of my partners.Yep. Don't you?Yes, I do. He's a great guy. Yes.So we've got a Research Division that does pharmaceutical research. My background was in pharmaceutical research. That's how I went from that's how I discovered a a hole that they were missing and that a natural solution could fail. And that's very similar to what you did pharmaceutical marketing. Well, it would be really interesting that you got me thinking that I'm like, wow, we could easily do an inflammatory bowel disease study. And people that have had colectomies and see how they feel just a quality of life scale something super easy. Now you really got me thinking like, are they? Are they living their life with one hand tied behind their back? Because we took out their colons?Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, that would be that would be very interesting to do. I would love to do that. And I think, you know, here's the other side of it if we find something really interesting in one of these studies too to be able to take a collection of metabolites to say to really look at what are what are the predominant ones that are sort of the this lever for the inflammatory or the immune response is is a way to go, you know, because I think we can dig even deeper into so my interest is not looking at okay, these bacteria are the ones that are responsible but which metabolites are responsible in which collection metabolites that can potentially trigger the system?Yeah, fascinating that you say that because I've met with scientists that are actually working for pharmaceutical companies trying to get the one metabolite. And they're trying to get the patent on that. And I just laugh because I'm like, so you get this so does it survive in the gastrointestinal tract? Does it is it the actual one that the bacteria can you have, like we talked about on our show, Eric, you can have too much of a good thing. Your everything has to be in balance. Eric frequently will hyperventilate when I work with him because he thinks that air is good for him, and he'll just do too much. He doesn't do that.One time I realized that shoes made my feet more comfortable. So I just I just covered myself in shoes. Really, really bizarre. Well, hey, I think that, undoubtedly and away from even just this, this, this COVID interview that it's obvious that we could find some synergy between efforts, but for everybody who's listening, anybody else who's interested in postbiotics plus, how can someone else become involved, get in touch with and possibly even help you find what your goals are as well?Yeah, I think the easiest way is the websites postbioticsplus.com and send an email through there and anybody that's interested in helping us move this research forward, that's that's sort of our biggest goal right now or yeah, that's that's the easiest way to do it. I think we're trying to do it in an organized way with a formal study and then we'll go from there, soWe will try our best to do that I have an ask of you though.What...oh noThere's gives and asks, I don't remember his name, but you've got some badass person at Baylor that's head of virology and micrology, microbiology on I saw that on your team on his page. I would love to get in touch...Oh Joseph. Yeah, okay. Okay. Yeah.You've got, I mean, from an academic standpoint, you've got a pretty heavy hitter page. That was a...We've got a good group.Yeah, I mean, like, I'm a I'm a nerd through and through. And so I was like, oh my gosh, look at this. Oh, yeah. And I start looking at the research. I'm like, oh my gosh.Yes, yes, we can. We can make that happen. We can make it, have you talk to him, so...Cool. Cool. That is awesome. Aubrey. For those of y'all who may not know she's the hardest working woman in postbiotics because we're talking on Memorial Day morning. So. Oh, yeah. Thank you so much for doing this. Yeah. Thank you so much for carving out time to visit with us. This was an incredible discovery of synergy between efforts and it's I mean, to me, it's just it's not only a relief, it's exciting to find somebody else who also realizes that there isn't just one solution and to find solutions, it takes a team effort and it's different thanNow we have a club. This is awesome. So so let's start a Facebook group and other things that clubs do I'm not much into social media, but okay, we'll try it. It'll just be awkward staring at each other. Secret handshake.How did this work again? Yeah. Awesome. Thank you guys for having me.I love the work you're doing. Thank you so much for everything Aubrey Levitt postbiotics plus. We're gonna try we're gonna stay in touch. We're going to collaborate like crazy. I've got some scientists you need to meet around the world, some crazy smart people doing very similar things. I'd like to meet some of your scientists, so on and so on. And I don't think that I think that maybe a collaboration between us could probably help out this crisis that we're going through right now eventually. Not in a not in an arrogant way. But yeah, I believe that you see it also that immunity starts in the gut. Yeah, can it can I say one last thing? I know we're, but there's a study. I mean, when you think of collaborating, there's a study. I think it's at Columbia right now that's looking at fiber and inulin, of how it can prevent secondary infections in this COVID thing, and I think there needs to be one in postbiotics of how we can look at.Well, the article that, that that that Sylvia did was really wild because she showed the increase in butyric acid, and it was tenfold. It was 100,000 fold, it was nuts, that I had no idea when you start looking at this where you can actually show this and then we start to I've got this, do you have a Mandalay account, the repository of literature? No.I'll hook you up with this. In fact, we probably team up I've got a I've got an enterprise level Mendeley account where you can just put literature, download literature and put it into files so that you you can search your what you want. So I could like go right now and type in postbiotic you know Sloan Kettering and your your stuff would pop up. It's really it's just it's just a way to collaborate with other scientists that I've really enjoyed so that we can do stuff like this.Great, great. Sounds good.Ladies and gentlemen, that's, that's COVID Episode 6.0 Aubrey Levitt postbioticsplus.com thank you so much for joining us and thanks to our sponsors atrantil.com of course ilovemytummy.com KBMD health and unrefinedbakery.com Aubrey, thank you so much. Ken-any last words?No, thank you so much for taking the time and and on Memorial Day you know not being out on a boat using proper social isolation taking the time to do a podcast. Thank you guys.Have a good one. Bye. Bye.Talk to you soon, bye.Oh, she she jumped out.

The Kentucky Distillers’ Association does more for bourbon in the US than just Kentucky alone. Eric Gregory, the President of the KDA, has been on both sides of the government trying to put the interests of the distillers and consumers first. We talk about his experience with government lobbying and how he revived the organization. What is the future of bourbon? Are distribution laws changing, what will happen with tariffs, and how will the Bourbon Trail maintain growth? Show Partners: You can now buy Barrell Craft Spirits products online and have them shipped right to your door. Visit BarrellBourbon.com and click Buy Now. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about up and coming writers. Tell us about your background. What was it like at the KDA when you first got this job? What was your first lobbying experience at the KDA? Any good horse racing tips? How do you see bourbon growing? What do you think of the tariffs? Tell us about the lobbying process. How do you keep it bipartisan? When you hear rumblings of new taxes what do you all do? Tell us about the steps you have taken from the promotional side of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and the Kentucky Bourbon Affair? How many trail visitors did you have the first year? Talk about partnerships. What are some of the weirdest requests you've gotten from people? Are there other states that look to your organization for guidance? What is your position on the secondary market? Why do so many people oppose shipping alcohol? What do you think about bourbon tourism growth in Bardstown vs. Louisville? 0:00 How many visitors Did you have at that time? 0:01 The first year we did the passport in 2007. We had 189 people complete the Kentucky bourbon trail 0:10 and send them a pin. 0:23 Hey, it's Episode 250. Another big number mark and we're glad you're still here with us. And well, it's not much has really been going on because of COVID-19. It's putting a stop on pretty much everything except delivery services. And that's where we start this week's news alcohol delivery app drizzly says it has seen sales explode in the last week of March climbing 537% above the company's expectations. What's more is that 42% of those orders came in from new accounts. The company says that new buyers on the platform have jumped 900% year over year. Same goes for minibar, sales are up 143% new buyer is up 547% and quarters are up 100% with an average order size up 22%. If you haven't had the chance yet, go listen to our podcast back on episode 248 when we had drizzly CEO and founder Corey rellis on the show to talk about his business. A recent study by economics at john Dunham and Associates estimates that America's wine and spirit wholesalers can expect to lose up to $921.4 million in uncollectible or difficult to collect receivables, due to on premise accounts such as restaurants, bars and clubs that have been impacted by the shelter in place environment, and Massachusetts craft distillers are urging their governor to allow permission to deliver spirits. The Massachusetts distillers Alliance asked Massachusetts officials to take steps similar to those made in a handful of other states, such as California, New York. Washington, Kentucky and Virginia to eight independent distillers that are struggling during the current crisis. In a quote by the Alliance's board, they wrote we pay over two and a half times the rate of excise tax per proof gallon paid by brewers. Yet during these challenging times greater latitude is being extended to restaurants, breweries and wineries. While our businesses remain bound by the rules and laws that put us at great financial risk. We have a significant struggle ahead for some good news, and you all are the first to hear it because we are putting on a free online bourbon conference called whiskey from home happening on May 2 2020. Starting at 12 o'clock pm eastern This event will be streamed live through multiple properties with speakers from the entire castle the roundtable but also Peggy knows Stevens. It's bourbon night, the bourbon review, dad's drinking bourbon and more will have live seminars, panels, virtual tastings. The list goes on or incorrect credibly excited to bring more of this great content to you all. And if you can, please share it. Spread the word. Let your bourbon friends know, let your bourbon societies know let your friends that aren't into bourbon and want to get into bourbon know about it and family as well. This is a full five and a half hour jam packed event that will be streamed live, and you will get the chance to network with other people in real time and ask questions through chat. Go to whiskey from home comm and register today for your free ticket. Now for today's podcast, I was super excited to interview our guests. The Kentucky distillers Association does more for bourbon in the US than just Kentucky alone. Eric Gregory, the president of the KDA has been on both sides of the government trying to put the interest of the distillers and the consumers First, we talked about his experience with government lobbying and how it led him to reviving an organization that was struggling. He's maneuvered the KDA into a model that other states can follow. So we discuss what the future of bourbon looks like. Where the laws changing with the regulation of distribution? What's gonna happen with the tariffs and how will the bourbon trail maintain its current pace of growth? All right now Don't forget it. Whiskey from home.com go register now to get your free ticket. I also talked to Joe from barrel bourbon this week and he has a special message he wants me to share that will lift your spirits. You can now buy barrel craft spirits products and have them shipped right to your door. Just visit barrel bourbon.com from the comfort of your home and click Buy now. Alright, here's Fred MiniK with above the char 4:37 I'm Fred MiniK. And this is above the char. This week's idea comes from Kyle man or at bourbon numbers on Twitter. He writes nothing better than expanding my whiskey perspective. Are there any up and coming writers in bourbon that deserve the above the char spotlight? Or are there any underrated sites we should add to our family favorites. Thanks. Listen, there's nothing I like more than promoting good writing and a perspective that is different than mine. Listen, I am a big, big fan of the cocktail walk. Now I as you know, I am a big rum head. So I would I would get you to start with the cocktail wonk. That's Matt Patrick. He actually writes for me at bourbon plus, he writes the vintage column and that is a writer, you need to check out he wrote the book, The Tiki minimalist. So that is a great book. He's a great guy. And if you're wanting to learn more about another spirit, rum is the one I would recommend going to of course, I wrote a book called rum curious and Matt edited that for me. So I'm a big fan of Matt and everything that he does for the rum community. After that, I would say if you're not already following him, whiskey jug is a young up and coming writer. He's been at the game for Little bit of Joshua Peters is a. He reminds me a lot of myself about 10 years ago when I was out there kind of investigating and trying to break news in the whiskey circuit. he's a he's a very good, he's a he's a very good no bullshit kind of writer. So I'm a big fan of what Joshua Peters is doing. I think he's got he's got a bright future ahead of him. And I also wanted to ask you to go and check out the classics, the writers who are no longer with us. Gary Reagan wrote the book of bourbon, probably one of the one of my heroes in the, in the bourbon world. He because he kind of came at bourbon in a very similar fashion, as I did, but he was a bit before his time, and he broke into like, he broke away from bourbon a little bit and made his own bitters and kind of got a little bit more into the cocktail movement. And then you have the greatest whiskey writer of all time, in my opinion. Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson, the guy with the glove and the jacket and the weird stuff, I'm talking about Michael Jackson, the beer, the beer critic and whiskey writer. His words just flew off the page. And we're just so beautiful. So check those writers out. I'm a big fan of all of them. And I think they can all add to your perspective. But at the end of the day, it's about whiskey is about an experience for you. While the writers, the bloggers, THE podcasts, were all about bringing the information. We're all about trying to explore this community with you. At the end of the day, it's about you, and what's in your glass what you like, and what conversation Do you like to have around whiskey? So thank you for the question, Kyle man or at bourbon numbers on Twitter. Now that came in on April 4, when I asked people to send me their ideas for above the char. I love getting a good idea. So hit me up on Twitter. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or go to Fred medic comm and send me your idea. But that's this week's above the char until next week. Cheers. 8:15 Welcome back to an episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon. Kinney and Fred on the road today down in Frankfort. The you know, it's always funny. There's always a good joke that says How do you pronounce the capital of Kentucky? Is it Louisville or Lewisville? And they're like, Nope, it's Frankfort. 8:30 Yeah. You know, hopefully our guest today is part of a campaign to move it to Louisville, you know, 8:35 oh, well, I mean, they just got this new place that we're sitting and that is true. 8:38 That is true. Well, so this is where at the headquarters of the Kentucky distillers Association. And you know, 15 years ago, these guys could not get a meeting with a lot of the legislators. Now one of the first calls a new governor makes is to the KDA because bourbon is political capital and I believe that the Kentucky distillers association is the most powerful lobby in Kentucky. And that was confirmed to me by the Senate Majority Leader, David Thayer. I asked him, I was like, hey, how powerful is the KDA? They're like, and there's really not anyone more powerful right now. I mean, 9:15 is it basically coming from all the taxes from? Well, like it's fun and back in the mistake, let's take a look at what bourbon has 9:21 done for the state. It's really one of the only good conversations that people can have when they're talking about Kentucky you got the derby but the horse industry has been falling for for a while. I mean, it's that's a signature industry and it's it's been hurting. Yeah, getting the gambling, you know, they're trying to bring it in, but Ryan keeps getting denied. And the coal industry is turned to us. Sadly, I mean, it's not. If you look at Eastern Kentucky, it's hurting. And bourbon is the one thing that's kind of carrying the state forward. And one of the reasons why is because of the man we have sitting here and what the KDA has done for the last 10 years. In 2009 you know, when there was a new sales tax Taxes coming in. They protested. And they poured whiskey on the state capitol steps in the way of their protests. And they've been every single year, they have been peeling away ridiculous laws county by county and in the state and in town by town. And that's why we're able to like have a sip of bourbon while you visit a distillery a mean people don't realize that it wasn't that long ago that we didn't have tours, these guys created the Kentucky bourbon trail. So that is why everybody who's listening to this should be thankful that we have someone like this who has their interests at heart fighting for them in the bourbon industry. 10:44 In Frankfort. Yeah, there's a there's a lot to go over today. And with all that, I mean, taxes, tariffs, you name it. So we'll we'll get to a little bit of that. But you know, we'll first introduce our guests. So today on the show, we have Eric Gregory Eric is the president of the Kentucky distillers Association better known as the KDA. So Eric, welcome to the show. 11:00 Well, thank you, you, you guys are making me blush here. So thank you for the kind words. And I've got to say, we obviously couldn't do this without strong support from our membership. So let me lead off with that we appreciate and value all of our members. And they say guess before 11:15 we before we kind of dive into the KDA in the membership and really what the key days mission is like, let's kind of talk about you real quick. Like, where's where's your background? Where'd you come from? Did you I mean, were you part of, you know, moonshine and you said you know what, I'm gonna go ahead and make this legal and get off 11:31 get into business. I this I liked where you were moonshiners? 11:33 No, no, no, no, I grew up in the cornfields of Western Kentucky. My parents ran a grocery store. My dad was a huge Maker's Mark fan and my mom like ofits and in the 1970s I mean, I could still you know, see in my mind's eye my dad coming home every day from work, boring him little makers and in a glass with one cue, my mom Love ofits and some sprite or some ginger ale and then go on the back porch and sit and that was their time and they talk about their day and have a drink. And so it was just always surveillant in and in our household. So no, really just, I'm the luckiest sob in the world. I started my career many people know as a reporter, with the Lexington Herald Leader newspaper, spent eight or nine years there, immigrated to Hawaii for a couple of years and worked at the Honolulu advertiser. Oh my God, why would you come back here that everybody asked me, you know, how crazy are you? So have you ever lived in Hawaii? It's a great place to visit but it's really really expensive. And it's pretty far away from family. And, you know, once you get over there and you realize that everything that you love deer in the world, to me was in Kentucky and not only my family, my wife's family, but I'm a huge Cincinnati Reds fan. I love Keeneland I love the horses. I love Berman. I love UK basketball and they just want a championship without me and Kentucky and things and the tug of home really starts kind of, you know, getting pretty strong. So since those 13:14 those you'd be late night tip offs, right, I mean, if you're sitting now I 13:18 will do a six hour time difference. I'm sitting there having lunch, you know, at the local bar. And in watching the games that was kind of kind of crazy. But move back to Kentucky work for the paper again for a couple of years, went into political consulting. After that one of my jobs in the newspaper was covering the state legislature and back then the limit every two years. For 60 days. A happy channel used to say that he wished the legislature met every 60 years for two days instead of every two to two years for 60 days. So I covered them and I kind of had the political bug a little bit so when political consulting and public relations running campaigns in Kentucky, Indiana and Tennessee That led to one of my clients was the electric power cooperatives and doing lobbying and things for them and they ended up hiring me as their GM lovers manager. So I spent almost eight years working here in Frankfurt is their contract lobbyist, and, and September of 2007, I got a call from one of my best friends. He said, your dream job just opened up. And I said, What's that? He said, the president of the Kentucky distillers Association, he said they want somebody with a media background check. They want somebody with public affairs, government affairs background check. And they want somebody with lobbying experience to check and I love their product. So check that check. But in a resume, three and a half month interview process, Oh, wow. And they they offered me the job on December 7. And it's funny because they asked me in my last interview, how long do you think you'd stay at KDA Acid Are you kidding me This is like the best job in the Commonwealth outside of UK basketball coach you know where President a church on downs or something like that you I said I'm here as long as you'll have me You can drag my cold dead people body out of that chair someday but but we haven't slowed down since it since taking over it is been an amazing run so far 15:18 I kind of want to kind of want to give a little bit of a historical perspective here about the KDA. At this juncture Go for it. It was not really an organization that was known for doing anything or getting anything done. And no offense to interior history, but they didn't do anything. You know, other than like some some efforts in the 1800s and the 1950s. They were mostly just kind of a drinking club of the distillers getting together and they just, they just let things be dictated to them. And I'm curious because everything changed when Eric took office. And you know, Bill Samuels, Jr, who's the longtime Maker's Mark Chairman, has told me many, many, many times is that A lot of the growth of bourbon is because of this man and his leadership for the KDA. So I'm curious, you get the job, what are those first 40 days? Like, what are you assessing? And how are you? What are you looking at? 16:13 Well, it's funny, because the job description in those conversations, they were saying things like, you know, we'd like you to, you know, can you promote this bourbon trail thing we've got going on and, and I went into one of the the meetings and the interviews, and the New York Times had just done a front page travel section feature on the Kentucky bourbon trail, and actually held it up at the at the interview and said, What did y'all do to get this? And they literally said, Well, I don't know a reporter just showed up one day and like, you're getting front page travel sections in the New York Times without drying. You know, you don't know what you've got here. This is amazing. So, yeah, that first 40 days was really transitioning. My predecessor, a great man senator, former state senator Daniel out of Springfield have I don't think is enough credit back in the 70s and 80s when he was a state senator, he really worked hard to keep the ad valorem barrel tax issue from just exploding and driving a lot of distillers and those aging warehouses that Sandy out of Kentucky. And really, you know, he was running the KDA out of his law office in Springfield. And most people don't know that Katie went part time in the 1980s Oh wow. Because bourbon you know, had taken it on the chin and most people had written it off as Matt Shapiro said to the great liquor store in this guy and there was not much you're right for the KDA to do so. He You know, he but Ed for saw the the bourbon revolution coming and the Kentucky bourbon trail picking up speed and said you need a full time staff again. And so that's that's where I came in. So yeah, that first 31st 3040 days was really quite frankly kind of relaunching the association from scratch. We had to find an office in in Frankfort. We moved our operations here from here was running it out to get him his law office in Springfield, Washington County, find an office. After three or four months, I was allowed to hire an executive assistant and just got thrown into a legislative session, you know, with no idea. We need to come up with priorities. And you know, just really, like you said, start to get the KDA build an image bank among the legislators that we're here and we're lobbying and we're not asleep at the wheel anymore, 18:28 quite frankly. Can you remember that that first lobbying experience you did for the KDA? 18:33 Oh, yeah. They started talking about tax raising taxes in 2008. And myself and the wholesalers Association, and the retailers all went in and started talking to, to the legislators because they had just raised our taxes in 2005, wholesale taxes went from 9% to 11%. So we went in and say, Look, as you just, you know, raise our taxes a couple years ago. You're Gonna do it again and we fought it back that year and 2008 but then it came, you know crashing down upon us is very mentioned in 2009. But, again, I was doing all this I'm a bourbon geek. First of all, I'm a longtime bourbon geek. I'm one of the people that stood in line and you know, outside of liquor barn waiting for the different wax colored bottles and whenever bill Samuels I was one I am one of the first before I took this job, I was one of the first bourbon ambassadors at Maker's Mark. I worked my way through college at a liquor store right before Keeneland All right, what bottles were you stashing away back? at you know, we hidden makers gold that was really about the height of bourbon back then, but I remember vividly when we got the first bottles of Blanton's in the liquor store, and they were $35 and we were like Who the hell in their right minds gonna pay $35 for about a bourbon you get makers for 10 over here, right you know and Because we were the last liquor store before Keeneland in the airport, Toyota had just opened up and all the Japanese executives would stop at our liquor store and stock up on bourbon that before they got on the plane to take back home, and they fell in love with blends, and they love the bottle and the horse on top of the bottle. And so every Friday night, when they were making their rounds back to the airport to go home, there was a line of camrys waiting at the draft through and I knew I had to have cases in cases of Blanton's there and I would just go out and load them in the back of the car and they hand me over the cash and go so is more and more of the small batch really the bean products, the small batch selections, the you know the the knobs and things like that as those started rolling out. I had to really become more knowledgeable about what was coming out for our customers at the time. And so my friends all kind of, you know, kidding me about them being the bourbon geek and in teaching about that. So that's awesome. It really 20:58 does run through your veins. 21:00 You know and again and I got a lot of great tips track tips you know from the trackers coming in I think between that and you know that kind of kept me in school paid for for 21:12 me people can say that they made their way through college just like having a good few bets here and there right? 21:18 Especially my bets I guess what's your percentage on on betting? 21:23 I do. I don't do it anymore. You know when you've got young children Fred so once you your children start growing up and I've got you know, I'm putting my first into college later this year and then my son who is getting ready to turn 16 I got to get a car for him and everything else. My sister works at Keeneland and so you know there every now and then I'll get her to place a bet for me, but, boy, my bidding has gone down exponentially is a head start. 21:55 And he said a more attention and he's like winning by that by that. 21:58 Yeah, what's the best bet is Keep your money in your pocket, right? Yeah, 22:00 exactly as I'd say, if you do have a good horse racing tip, what would it be? Oh, wow, you are gonna go bet. 22:08 You know, I'd probably have to have a form with me, you know, to answer that question. Again, I really used to study that form. And there was a group of us former reporters who are now lobbyists and in everything up here who would hit kealan all the time. So I'm big on Kentucky born and bred, you know, I do get a lot of great tips from from my sister who sees them come through as yearlings, you know, in the Keeneland sales and stuff like that. But mainly, I look at bloodlines, you know, a when a family coming down the form the first thing I'll do is start circling but bloodline so that know that that'll be a good, you know, and then you get to look at, you know, how long it is. And if they're closer. I mean, there's just, I don't know, 22:54 that's a that's a good one. It's nice. 22:56 The Kentucky way, right. Yeah. 22:58 My dad's tip, he said Always circle, the ones that were the owner and the trainer are the same person because he was like they put a little bit more effort into that that horse. Right. That's a good point. That's, that's that's his little tip. But yeah, I like to go ahead and try to run with it again, you're still gambling at the end of the day. So let's go ahead and kind of want to shift gears a little bit and kind of talk about the growth of bourbon and kind of really, where have you seen it? And kind of, you know, you've been a pretty instrumental part of this. And so a few months ago, there was a press release that came out about now that there are more barrels of spirits aging Kentucky than there are people, twice as many, twice as many barrels twice as many. You're right, twice as many. Yeah. So kind of talk about like, Where, where do you kind of see the evolution of this going? And like, do we expect three x four x now coming here in the next two, three years? 23:44 A short answer? Yes. I'm typically pretty optimistic about that. I guess the biggest challenge that we faced are the tariffs, the retaliatory tariffs that are put on us. Because you know, everybody asks y'all, you know, what's feeling The bourbon revolutionary thing and we all know, you know, the rise, the cocktail culture, the madman effect. I think bourbon tourism has been has played a big part of that maybe a bigger part and most people understand the fact that we're just putting out some of the best juice that the Commonwealth has ever delivered, again is good. But really the opening of the global markets to me has been one of the if not the driving factor in the growth of Kentucky bourbon, because the I don't think it's any coincidence that back in the mid 1990s, when we had NAFTA and the EU treaties, that's when you start to see the spike in production, and the you know, the growing global thirst, but because we're fine, we were finally on a level playing field with our friends in the scotch industry who've had a 600 year head start on us. So, yes, you know, we have seen bourbon growth exponentially in the past five years. We're currently in the middle of a $2.3 billion capital investment spree. And most of that is Pre production for that, for that global market. We've you know, especially to the EU, you know, in the past three to four years, you're looking at 20 to 30%, even I think two years ago was 43% growth every single year to the EU market. And so that's when we got the call 18 months ago that the tariffs were starting to be used as pawns in a trade war that none of us saw coming. My first reaction was damn we made it we're being used as pawns in a trade war, then that was that was oh my god. Now we're really, you know, what are we going to do now? I really do believe that. You're going to continue to see growth and a lot of people ask us after that press release came out, you know, because not only do we have more than 9 million barrels aging right now in Kentucky. We filled 2 million barrels for the first time in the modern era of Kentucky bourbon in 52 years. And you know, we'll we thought the tariffs are hurting wires. Are you feeling that many barrels and begin the blessing and the curse of Kentucky bourbon is you can't make it overnight. So administration's change, you know, you're looking six, eight years out, hopefully this issue would be settled. But, you know, if the EU market which is almost half of all of Kentucky's whiskey exports, if that continues to escalate, as it has with the new tariffs on scotch whiskey, then you know, to me, that's a game changer. You know, it's, it's something that could really have long term effects if we don't get this resolved pretty soon. 26:35 And you're you're pretty knowledgeable person on this particular subject. And there is people that talk about this all the time. But when it talks about tariffs, they talk about exports, and they have this very narrow minded view and they're like, that's fine. More bourbon here in America. kind of tell people maybe they I don't believe that's right, but kind of give your kind of explanation rationale on that. 26:57 Yeah, well 27:00 Well tariffs or taxes First of all, and in we'd like to say there are no winners in a trade war. You know, there's no really good way out of this because what most people don't understand is when bourbon took a nosedive most of the bigger distilleries diversify their portfolio so they own a scotch whiskey distillery or an Irish Whiskey distillery, a Canadian whiskey distillery. Tequila distillery. And so that's when you saw the tariffs, you know, enacted back, you know, it wasn't just you. It was Canada and Mexico, and other places as well. A company like brown Forman or Jim Beam that owns multiple distilleries across the world. They're not only taking a hit on the retaliatory tariffs on Kentucky bourbon. They're also taking a hit now on scotch whiskey and Canadian whiskey and Irish whiskey and things like that. 27:50 So they're getting both ends of it. Yeah, 27:52 you know, and so they're taking five punches through the gut right away. So you know, that's not good from an industry standpoint because You're, you know, that that for destroy a purely business standpoint, it's hurting business, then we have, as an industry have done so much over the last generation to convert scotch drinkers, you know, mainly from a global community over to bourbon drinkers. And that's a lot of investment in that that most people don't understand. And that market helps us, you know, grow here in Kentucky and produce more alcohol. So if you're a scotch drinker, if you're a newly converted scotch drinker, to bourbon and you go into your favorite watering hole now and you see that bourbon is 25%, higher in price, do you go back to what you were drinking, and now we've lost you, potentially for a generation, that that's not good. Then you've got the situation where, if you're a company, you try to absorb that 25% or as much of it as possible as you can Which means less jobs and investment here in Kentucky, which again, hurts the Commonwealth. or going to your point out, you know, hey, I've just invested $50 million and doubled my production and I've got these stills do I keep them running? Well, okay, you do that. And suddenly, in six years, there's a glut of spirits on the market, that's gonna cause a price war, which probably the first casualty is gonna be the craft spirits market, it's going to put people out of business. And that's not good from a global spirit spirits industry, as well. So we don't like door number one, door number two or door number three on all those and that's why we've been lobbying awful hard to get this resolved as quick as possible. 29:47 So talk to me a little bit through about what your processes when you're lobbying against efforts like this, 29:53 bang the drum as loudly as possible. We've met with pretty much anybody who would listen to us And I've got to give a hand to our partners at the Scotch whisky association that still spirits counts the United States the American craft spirits Association, the American just just distilled spirits Association I mean this affects all of us. So one of the things that we did in Fred was actually there a couple years ago we brought the world whisky community to Lowell and had a W nine some of their Nanos so we called the W nine and talked about this you know, what are we all going to do about this because it affects everybody and we met for two days and eventually put out a resolution calling upon the world's leaders to get together and resolve this quickly before the long term consequences you know, send them became real and even planted an oak tree right in front of the Frazier there and got a lot of press and we got a lot of phone calls about it and and we all kind of went back to our corners and, and did what we we've continued to do is is just talk to us. Every Congress person, you name it. Congressman Andy Barr in Kentucky was having a fundraiser with Vice President Pence flying in. He managed to get our major companies in a meeting with Vice President Pence who from Indiana knows exactly what bourbon means to Kentucky. And he took that message back to President Trump. The governor here in Kentucky had Vice President Pence in last year during the derby did the same thing for us to help us. We've got you know, we're on speed dial with Senator McConnell's office checking in consistently with them on what more they can do. We've had meetings recently with commerce, cabinet, finance, cabinet trade, you know, Senator Grassley, his office, all these people just really explained to them how devastating these consequences could be if this goes on much longer. And the answer to them is all you know, we understand, but these decisions are being made itself high levels. That's where the frustration comes in. And, you know, we know that the US does have trade issues with countries and we get that. And we know that the steel and aluminum thing is a real issue because here in Kentucky, we have great steel and aluminum plants because of our historical low energy rates. So, you know, we're not pointing fingers at anybody, we're just, you know, going up and just trying to tell our story on you know, what this could mean to the industry. You know, because it's like, again, it's like just putting the brakes on a freight train, which is trying to sell bourbon at the end of the day, or at least 32:38 get and I want to remind, I want to remind people to who are listening, and we're never we're never really going to get a lot of backlash on this. People are gonna think all this is political. You know, you're you're you're bashing Trump and what he's trying to do. I want to remind people that this is not political. This is this is an industry who speaks to both sides. Absolutely. And talk bipartisan Talk Talk to us about about that about how you how you have to kind of keep your personal politics out of it and how you have to work with both sides. What's that like? 33:11 Well, you know, let me start from a state point here. You alcohol bills in Kentucky are incredibly hard to pass no matter what the subject is. I mean, we've even had people up here that will vote against our social responsibility efforts. Just because the word alcohol it's in the title of the bill. So we have to have Democrats and Republicans supporting alcohol measures or they just won't pass. So yes, we are constantly we say we support our friends and we have friends on both sides of the aisle. And the great thing about our Kentucky General Assembly is they understand that because they know that some of their members because of their constituencies and coming from drag counties just cannot support alcohol yet but without like how he said yeah, 33:54 yeah, 33:56 yeah, TBD drywall wedge, the you know, the The great thing about one of the smartest things that the KDA did, you know, years ago back in 2010, was invite the craft distilleries are coming into Kentucky into the Association. We change our bylaws, because not only is it good for them and our our legacy distilleries have been tremendous mentors to them, but it also spread our political footprint across the state now in 32 counties. And so we've had legislators now who never voted wet, who vote wet because they understand the the economic impact and the tourism impact, especially of that craft distillery in their district. So that's really helped. But we know you look at you know, we have a political action committee, we raise money for that. You look at our donations, they're almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, because we have to have support on both sides of the aisle. So we're very fortunate in Kentucky. Yes, we have Senator McConnell, who can be a lightning rod, obviously, if you're, you know, in politics, but we're lucky that we have his leadership up there because he has the President's ear and he is always, you know, carrying our agenda. That's why we have given him awards in the past. We're very fortunate to have john Yarmuth out of level now chairing Ways and Means and so met with him recently and, and he gets it because congressman Yarmuth is a huge rabid fan, and especially in local bourbon city right now, you know, and all the tremendous growth there he sees the tourism impact in the economic impact on a daily basis. Having him in the house carrying that message for us is equally as important. And, you know, he and Congressman Brett Guthrie started the bourbon caucus in DC which which is growing and as more and more states you know, produce America's only native spirit. So we have to be bipartisan and it's funny because as presently Katie, you know, you have to be kind of like a chameleon on my Republican friends think I'm a democrat and I'm a democratic friends think I'm a Republican. And I say well, I must be doing something right. Y'all don't know what I 35:55 guess. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you also have to be careful to with your membership of when you go to bar what you pick? 36:01 I do. And it's funny, obviously, you know, when people ask me, what's your favorite bourbon Kentucky bourbon is always my answer. But in it, what I usually try to do one of two things I'll usually try to drink from the county I'm in. right then. I also tend to favor our chairman or Chairwoman right now, at the time if you know this year is the heaven Hill, year to chair the KDA. And our great friend Jessica pentagrams. For heaven Hill, general counsel is is the new Chairwoman, so you'll probably tend to see me drink more heaven Hill products this year. But then there are some bars I go to and you know this Eric, what do you want and just surprised me, you know, just just mix me a good old fashioned then and I'll go from there. 36:48 Yeah, the his memberships got spies on him. 36:51 Yeah. 36:54 They have to though. Yeah, that's right. 36:55 And so I guess one of the other things I want to talk about a part of the lobbying effort here is, you know, There has to be it's got to be frustrating because we're This is a syntax basically at the end of the day right like it's alcohol and I would imagine that government just look at it like it's an easy target right an easy target attacks. When you won't like your rumblings of anything like is it like Alright, here we go like put the bat signal in the everybody get together. We're going to fly there. We're going to squash this before it ever blows up. 37:22 Well, first of all, yes. That's when you look at the government affairs strategies for your strategy number one is always hold the line on taxes. Everything else is one a one B. And Fred, highlighted our 2009 bourbon Tea Party in which we poured bourbon on the Capitol steps. And if you go to my office on top of the cabinet, I have the empty bottles in there that serve as a daily reminder for me and never forget that you know, yes, right now they're your friend but in thirst or for revenue. The first place they usually look is cigarettes or alcohol or one of the what they We think of as sin industries. But I think we've done a good job, you know, challenge changing the conversation in the culture in Frankfurt, especially from sin to signature. And that 2009 bill was probably the best wake up call for the industry and the association. That is one of the best things that ever happened to us. I mean, I can tell you the dates It was announced, if it's ingrained in my memory is announced on February 6, they pass it on Friday, February 13. That took effect on April Fool's Day. I mean, you couldn't have written a better script for how all this went down. But you had the bourbon industry and not just bourbon the alcohol industry in general because you had the beer truck circling the Capitol. You know, we galvanized they in you, we fought the governor, the Senate president and the Speaker of the House on an issue and came within one vote of killing that in one week. And it brought us together more, more and quicker than anything could have. So it's actually a blessing in disguise. For us, because we held an emergency meeting after that, February 26. See, these are how important these dates were to me and the history. And one of our board members looked at the rest of the board and said, Are we really a signature industry? Or is that a self portrait? And you could see everybody just kind of living, they physically took a step back from the table and went, you're right. Are we really a sanction? We'd like to think we're a signature in se, but are we? And so they said, what do we need to do? And so we said, All right, we need to have an economic impact study that shows what our impact is to the Commonwealth, we need to start talking about bourbon not just as a drink, but as part of the culture and the economy and tourism and things like that. And so once we started doing that, and we did, we came up with the first ever economic impact study and it is such a tool for the industry, you know, to showcase what we mean to Kentucky that we do it every two years now. And it's a no brainer. We just know we do it every two years. To update and so that gives us also the ability to forecast right what jobs are going to do what we think is going to be coming in there and down the line. But once we started talking about bourbon as economic development and tourism in and investment in jobs, it really changed the focus here in Frankfort, that we weren't a sin industry more as as Fred said earlier, because I remember sitting in a meeting in 2010 with Bill Samuels and and senate president or Senator Robert Stivers, who's now senate president and him looking as the saying you are not a signature industry. You're an image industry, but you are not a signature industry. Coal is a signature industry because he's from the coal fields of Eastern Kentucky. And now to hear him stand up and say you may be the only signature industry left in the state because coal is is dying tobacco is dead. You know, horse racing definitely has its challenges. That's, that's been, you know, a 180 turnaround from where we were 10 years ago. But it's a lot of it's been a lot of hard work, educating legislators. And, you know, in all, like all the other tools that a trade association uses, like political action committees and things like that, to make sure that they know that we appreciate their support and changing these laws. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Everyone knows what a “Fix and Flip Deal” is (you can even check out Episode 26 with Steven Pesavento or Episode 47 with Ian Reeves to learn more). A lesser known strategy you probably have not heard of is a “Fix and List Deal.” What is a Fix and List Deal, exactly?   Eric Young joins us in this episode to explain that this strategy works as follows: you as the investor finds a homeowner who has a distressed property looking to sell. Then, you take your capital and renovate the property (like you would with a regular flip). Finally, the seller lists and sells the property (keeping the difference in ARV) and you get reimbursed for all your hard work!   Before Eric discovered the Fix and List strategy, he worked as a superintendent for a commercial contractor for eight years, fixing and flipping properties on the side. The problem was he couldn’t scale how he wanted and, like many people getting started in real estate, felt that the barrier to entry was too costly. So Eric set out to find a way!   Eric wanted to be able to scale his business, and not lose money on his portfolio. Fix and List Deals help him do just that! Of the 90 Fix and List Deals he’s done in the past three years, he’s only had two go sour! We’d say that’s pretty good!   As of today, Eric is currently improving his track record, as well as finding more ways to differentiate himself from his competitors. It’s not long until this strategy catches on so he’s doing what he can in order to get ahead.   If Eric could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “You’re never going to achieve your goal of making money until you help other people.” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Eric said, was the power to turn a side hustle into a sustainable, long term business. One piece of advice Eric would tell his friends looking to get started in real estate would be, “To start with a Fix and List Deal!” Eric uses Xero to help with his bookkeeping, and recommends reading Built To Sell to help you get started investing in real estate.   If you’d like to get in touch with Eric Young or learn more about Fix and List Deals, you can find him at: www.fixandlistsecrets.com 

Does he have the best job in Sports? Most people will say yes! What does Eric Oberman Do? Find out! - Without our integrity, without our character, what else do we have? You could have 40 years of amazing work experience. If you're not a good person, you don't treat people well, you don't work hard, it's gonna come back to bite you. So those are some of the intangibles that I tell when I'm talking to, to folks who are looking for experience. - So Eric, hey, thanks for having me out. This is a pretty impressive office here. I mean, you've got all the, all the basketballs and, and, so, I wanted to learn a little bit more about you, get into your background, you know, and we're gonna talk about a lot of different things, like leadership, and team development, and what, how to identify talent and stuff like. But tell me a little bit about you. Where are you from, and how'd you get into all this? - Absolutely. I'm from Ohio, born and raised. Went to the Ohio State University, very proud of that. And graduated, got into sports communications at a pretty early age. I love sports, and my major was in the school of journalism, so. - Specific, specific sport you were interested in, or just sports in general? - You know growing up in Columbus, the only, I joke, the only pro team we had was college football. - [Chris] Right, right. - So, cut my teeth on college football and major league baseball. Ohio State Buckeyes and Cincinnati Reds were my, my two passions. And started at a small agency in Columbus, and from there I moved to Chicago. A lot of my friends wanted the bigger city, so we all moved up there. And my career took off at that point. I realized that communications was, was my passion and anything I could do to bring sports into the mix, I did. So for example, my first client was, was with Procter and Gamble and it was Crest toothpaste. - Uh oh. I'm hearing product placement. That's Procter and Gamble. - Well, but Crest sponsored a program tied to the Cincinnati Reds and the Cleveland Indians where, every time one of their players got a base hit, they would donate money to charity. Then they'd get a local sponsor to match it. So even though 95% of the work I did had nothing to do with sports, that 5% that did was really what made it worthwhile to get up and go to work each day. And that, that took me to Chicago, where I worked at Ketchum. I worked on Motorola was a client, and they sponsored the PGA Tour Western Open. So again, 90 something percent was, cellular technology, and cellular phones, new products. But just enough with sports to, to really light the fire and keep the passion going.

Are you wondering how to find the best franchise for the investment you’re willing to make? Are you looking for an awesome tool to help narrow down your choices? Franchise Business Review is a market research firm that rates and reviews today’s top franchise opportunities. Here to talk with me about finding the right opportunity for you is Franchise Business Review’s CEO, Eric Stites. As a previous franchisee and fellow entrepreneur, Eric brings a wealth of knowledge to the table. He’s been involved with Franchise Business Review since its inception and knows the ins and outs of the franchise process. He strives to help brands improve franchisee satisfaction while also offering a useful tool for those looking to buy a franchise. Listen to this episode of Franchise Secrets as we talk about franchise validation, emerging brands, and so much more!  Outline of This Episode [0:35] I introduce Eric Stites: CEO of Franchise Business Review [5:45] Franchising is a proven concept—but not easy [8:05] The importance of peer validation [11:00] Using reviews to understand brand culture [20:48] How to find success when investing in an emerging brand [27:46] Things to consider when preparing to buy a franchise [30:37] How franchises feel about information being published [35:15] Final words of wisdom and resources from Eric Franchise Business Review’s Origin Story The business was started 15 years ago when Eric was working with Dunkin’ Donuts to help connect prospective franchisees with current business owners. Franchisees were often hard to connect with and hesitant to commit time to candidates who may or may not be serious about the validation process. So Eric’s team created a satisfaction survey for franchisees to complete as a means to connect the two sides. What started as a simple tool for franchise development became an operational tool that they could scale and utilize in every franchise. Since 2005, Franchise Business Review has worked with over 1,100 established brands to bridge the gap between franchisees and candidates. The Review also doubles as a tool to help franchises assess and develop satisfaction among their current franchisees. We also cover misconceptions about franchising in this segment, so check it out! Choosing the best franchise for you—using peer validation Franchise Business Review is the perfect resource if you’re researching top brands and trying to decide the route to take. They supply detailed reports of many franchises—covering training and support, core values, financial opportunities, and so much more. Check out the methodology they utilize to determine their Franchisee Satisfaction Index (FSI) score to better understand their process. All of their data is sourced directly from current owners and operators. You’re able to gain insight from entrepreneurs who have been in the business for years without having to play phone tag with busy business owners. With lists of the top franchises, detailed free reports, what makes the brand unique—and more—they’ve positioned themselves as a top resource for those looking to buy a franchise.  What to look for in an emerging brand According to Eric, Franchise Business Review will work with and survey a franchise when it has 10 established locations—which by most standards is still an emerging brand. This allows you to take advantage of their reports if you’re interested in a brand that’s new to the market. So what should you look for when considering a brand that you are unfamiliar with or has a short history? Make sure you do in-depth research and analysis. Take a deep dive into the Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) and be familiar with the business expenses. It’s a good sign when the franchise is reinvesting its profit back into the company. Also, look at the team involved—do they have an extensive background in franchising? In business? An emerging brand is a different type of investment, but if you know the risk profile you’re ahead of the game. Keep listening as we go into detail about this important process. Why your spouse needs to be involved in every step I started this podcast to be a resource for people interested in buying a franchise who want to invest in learning about the process first. Let’s be honest, most people think they want to own a franchise, but don’t realize everything entailed in owning and running a business. Something that is often overlooked is the impact of business ownership on spouses and family. Your family needs to be aware of and involved in the process from day one.  Your level of involvement in a franchise can often be overwhelming when you’re starting. It’s important that you and your family are aware of what owning the business is going to be like. Even in the beginning stages of research and narrowing down franchises available to you, your spouse should be part of the decision-making process—so things aren’t halted weeks down the road. For more than just a snapshot of our conversation, listen to this whole episode of Franchise Secrets now! Resources & People Mentioned Dunkin’ Franchise Kona Ice FirstLight Home Care Orangetheory Fitness Planet Fitness Connect with Eric Stites FranchiseBusinessReview.com LinkedIn Facebook Twitter Connect With Erik TalkWithErik.com ILoveFranchising.com Facebook LinkedIn

Tyler is back home in Washington so Eric recruits good friend of the show Jacob Gonzalez to co-host because there was so much to go over on this episode of the TSKShow. So Eric and Jacob recap the NBA Conference Semi-Finals as there were two Game 7s and then preview the NBA Conference Finals. The Lakers have hired a new head coach and it isn't who Eric and Tyler discussed who it would be last week so Jacob and Eric discuss the Lakers decision. They also talk about the Cleveland Cavaliers hiring former University of Michigan head coach John Beilein. The NBA Draft Lottery results were announced before Eric and Jacob started recording so they cover everything that happened as the No. 1 overall pick belongs to a team that surprised most people when it was announced. Follow the show on all social media platforms: @TSKShow @TheDukeOfSports @TylerPacholke Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review to the TSKShow wherever you listen to the show so you can stay up to date with the newest episodes! You can find us on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Anchor; just type "TSKShow" in the search bar!

CTN 308: ControlTalk NOW -- Smart Buildings VideoCast and PodCast for week ending Mar 24, 2019 features Young Gun Brent Burrows, a Systems Integrator with ENTEK, who explains Alarm Fatigue, and much more,  ENTEK provides HVAC, Building Automation and Energy Services  in the Atlanta, GA, area and throughout the continental United States, Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii and Guam. Are You ready? Is Your AI Device Smarter than a six year old? Our transcription service, as you will see is not! I tried to correct as many errors as possible in the transcript of Episode 308, but could not get them all, so be kind as you read this: Episode 308 ControlTalk Now The HVAC and Smart Buildings Podcast Eric Stromquist: Do you suffer from alarm fatigue? Well four out of five facilities managers iand HVAC controls professionals do. So what exactly is this insidious disease and how can you cure it? Hi, I'm Eric Stromquist from controltrends.com and stromquist.com. And on this week's episode we're going to dive deep and into alarm fatigue and how you can solve it. Our guest this week is a young integrator out of Atlanta, Brent Burrows, he's a young gun. So Brent is going to be with us. The whole show is going to be fantastic. We get Brent's perspectives which are just absolutely stellar. So the other thing you need to know is that controlledtrends on our youtube channel, controlltrends smart buildings, youtube channel. We've started a new video series called HVAC tech school and it's designed specifically for the HVAC technician and we get into everything from how to size a valve to how to troubleshoot a gasregulator and topics specifically for the HVAC technician. So take a minute, subscribe to the Youtube Channel. All right, relax. Enjoy the show. Eric Stromquist: Alright here we go. One, two, three. Welcome to ControlTalk Now, the Smart Buildings podcast for the week ending March 24 2019 this is episode this is the show where we talk about all things smart controls, HVAC controls and pretty much anything else we want to. And I tell you what, I've got two legends today. One is the one, you know, Ken Smyers, the man, the myth, the legend, the control man from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And joining us today is a legend in his own right is ControlTrends Young Gun Brent Burrows, from Atlanta, Georgia. Brent is with Entek.. He's one of the rising stars in the controls industry. And if you were at the 2018 CONTROLTRENDS AWARDSawards, you know that Brent was inducted into The Young Guns class of 2019. So fellas, welcome to the show. Eric Stromquist: Well thank you Eric. Yeah, you took away all my firepower I suppose to get some of that introduction on Brent Burrows. But uh, yeah, we got a real live young Gun here and uh, it, it, it's so good to see the right, it looks like the type of guy who's going to be taking our place one day. So he's, he's learning, he's got some great background. He's a true integrator, does everything from the programming side of it. And it was all about analytics, but he could do, you could do the terminations to make stuff work. So that's a welcome to the show Brent. Brent Burrows: It's good to have it. And that's what they're talking about on the show every once in a while. I really appreciate it guys. And uh, yeah, actually the only real thing I have in my office, the Home Office here, uh, you know, I may have to make up some more awards for myself or some certifications. Eric Stromquist: No, no young guns. Pretty much all you need man. And now you're 60 and a young gun or 65. I can send Claire and a young gun then you're doing really, really good. Okay. Brent man would move. You know, we're talking about young guns and may one of the wraps that the young guns, the millennials get his man, they just can't be on time. I know this year here, but tell us about our other guest where is he? Brent Burrows: who else was supposed to be on the show with us. Uh, I, that's going to be my new cohost, Aaron Gorka. Ah, I'm not exactly sure where Aaron is now. Maybe they don't do daylight savings time in Canada or different things. He didn't, he didn't change his clock around. Eric Stromquist: Right. Well, in fairness they are, and man, he has been traveled a lot here and Gorka from ANT technologies, one of the hardest young working guys in the industry. Uh, he is, uh, does the podcast, next generation innovation and brand. I guess the big news is you're going to be joined and Aaron as his cohost. Brent Burrows: Yeah. Um, so, um, I had been reading some stuff lately and you know, I listened to you guys on a control talk now on iTunes and I'd always wanted to get into pocket casting and uh, and it just so happened I was featured on a, on an episode, um, a few months back and just really enjoyed it. I've worked with Aaron, we actually use aunt technologies, um, to do a track or project side. And uh, so me and him get along and you know, we vibe well. So I reached out to reach out to you and was like, Hey, what do you think this idea? And uh, and you were all for it gave Aaron a call. He was excited to have a cohost. So that's what we're going to be doing. Eric Stromquist: Well, I can't wait for you guys to take to work together. Aarons just doing a fantastic job so far and it's kind of fun with the cohost, you know, so the, but if you're going to get good at this, you have to practice saying this right off the bat. The man, the myth, the legend, let me hear you say it because if something ever happens to me, you know, it's going to be between you and Aaron to step in. But Kenny is very picky about who gets to be his is to introduce them. So one time, Brent, you're on, here's your audition, Brent Burrows: here's the audition, alright, we're on control. Taught now, you know, and in memory of the late, great. Eric, strong quick. No, he's in a better place now. But I am your new cohost and I am going to introduce the man, the myth, the legend Ken Smyers: Ken Smyres take it over again. Right. That was awesome man. He passed it. He might, he might not even wait for me to die, man. He might just nice. Did you guys read the second brand? You just put no, he might. He might give me the boot right after the show did. That was a little too good bread, but well listen dude, before we get into more of the show, talks about what you do and, and in tech, I've known your dad for years and a, you guys have a fabulous company, but, but talk about about Entek and what you guys do. Brent Burrows: Uh, so in tech where our ar can about a local, regional, regional and a national company, uh, have handled, you know, many national accounts over the years. Uh, so we have that side of the business and then we have more of our, uh, what I'd call our local and core business here in Atlanta. Um, we specialize in commercial office space. Um, but you know, also do, you know, hospitals, industrial work, really anything you need, um, we can provide the service and the expertise to work in those areas. So we do anything ranging from, you know, mechanical service, installation retrofits and then, you know, hopping into the controls, the building automation, you know, H Vac, lighting, integration, all of that stuff. And we even do system access controls everywhere. So in tech really is a great one stop shop to fill all your building needs. Ken Smyers: Yeah. One of the things that I saw on the site and we'd talked offline, there is analytics and the impact we have one of our posts we'll be talking about here as we review the posts. So you're actually a delving into analytics now. Tell us about some of your experiences so far. What do you think? Is that, is that the next great a goldmine to dig into? Brent Burrows: Well analytics, no, it's, it's been around, um, in, in the HVAC industry for, for a little while now. And it's kind of, you know, it's interesting, you'll go to these conferences or you know, you'll read stuff and you've got, you know, you got kinda these bud buzzwords or one of the big ones that are, and you know, when I kind of look at buzzwords, there are a lot of terms that people throw around, but then they'll just kind of throw it around and they don't know the meaning of it and they're just like, oh yeah, Iot and analytics and, uh, and you'll just see them, they pop up a lot of conferences, but, uh, but you know, really, uh, been seeing analytics get hammered for the last couple of years now. And basically, you know, one of the great things that you can kind of, they're doing in the industry now, you know, what, you know, everything being more standardized, like, you know, backnet lawn, um, you know, different protocols come then normalizing the data. And then a, you know, a huge one that I know you guys have talked a lot about and they got the big accounts coming up is haystack. Um, you know, basically being able to take all the data in your building, you know, sensor information, uh, whether it's, you know, discharge temps, she knows zone temps, uh, you know, all those things and you're building lighting levels, all this stuff and take it in and get that data. So you kind of get to that point with an integration and it's like, okay, well let's just say, you know, I got a 10 story building, uh, so, you know, got 10 air handlers, chiller plant, and then, you know, depending on the level of integration, let's say I've got 20,000 data points in my building, you know, what are you really doing with that? They're there are, they're acting out there and they're just doing their thing. But you know, unless you can hire somebody 24, seven to watch those sites and be like, oh, this is doing this, this is doing this. Um, it's, it's, it's hard to keep track of it. You kind of get into this, uh, you know, very responsive state. Um, you know, trying to manage the building. It's not forward thinking. It's not really effective. So analytics comes in and does, is it basically, it's like, you know, it is, it's, it's a 24, it's 24, seven program that looks at your building, looks at your data and can alert you to the issues going on. And then also in some cases make responsive writes back to correct issues. Eric Stromquist: Well, that's well said. Well said. And then I think one of the things that Kenny has sort of picked up early on in, and you were talking about sky spark a little bit because that's what you're working with. But, uh, you know, for years back, even when your dad and I were doing this stuff, you know, those old guys, I mean you could always alarm, right? But it got to the point that he had so many alarms, just like my emails, you just become null and void to me just don't pay attention to anymore. So it seems like one of the things analytics allows you to do is to write rules, for example. So if something goes out of temperature for a while, you could give an expert at a time before it sends out an email or an alarm. You could also maybe we'd send a command to say, hey, try to reset it or whatever before you do that. And so are you finding that that's driving some of your customers interest into it or her? What sorts of things when, when they say analytics, like I said, it's a buzz word, but when they come to you or do they actually know what they want her, it's just, hey, I want an analytics package and you shouldn't have to talk him through it. Brent Burrows: Uh, so it, it's interesting you were talking about, uh, my dad, uh, uh, actually met with him this week and he brought up some of the alarming going on from the 90s, and he was, uh, so, uh, I won't name them, but you know, big retail client, um, and they, you know, obviously they have sites all around the country and, uh, they had like a fax machine that sat on the side of this room and this thing continually like it reports and the, I think they actually set up a system where it just like fed into like a dumpster or shredded all it did for 24 hours a day. And they were like, he was like, what is that? There was like, oh, that's the, uh, that's the alarm matrix. Yeah, I remember those things. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but you don't know the, to Eric's point, uh, I think, um, we've seen several, uh, programs now coming out like controls, condoms, coming up with Detroit with the Cochrane supply, Scott Cochran and his team put together this thing. Raven, where you could really, you could eliminate anything. You didn't want to hear all the chief, you know, and just, just get to the nuggets that you needed to know. And then they teamed that down so much that it would be in a proximity presentation. So top chef, chef get that right. We don't want people to think, okay, go ahead. I'm sorry, but God, we got that quick. I'm sorry I couldn't, I'm spit balling here too, but no, go ahead. Saving, saving, saving. Um, so the, the thing that Scott Cochran believed in is it Derek's point that we're so overwhelmed with this is data being pushed at us that we ignore it. Now again, we've always self defense mechanisms. We turn off our phones, we don't have to hear the pagan, you know, and then, but then you really could miss that one really important alarm because you're so, you know, unconditioned to respond to it. The uh, that stuff became packing. They had say, generate so much. I. Dot. Matrix printing stuff that no, he didn't shred but then that shredding to him went back, got recycled back in the, in the shipping department. But I'm so yeah, so a, the raven thing was a real clever a response. So that not only did you restrict the amount of alarms you got, but they were, they were sent specifically to who needed it and it reduced all that additional traffic. Eric Stromquist: So yeah, Brent is a cool app if you haven't seen it. It actually works like with you know, notifications on your iPhone and stuff like that. So you can just set up just the notifications you want to see. So, uh, Scott Cochran's one clever dude and controls con's going to be a great conference and uh, we get, we actually have a discount code for that, don't we county. So we should do, if you put any controlled trends when you registered and put it in a controlled trends, you get a 10% discount and that you'll get 15 but I know it's just a matter of time for you blonder and it's going to cost you an alternate code, a code word. You get 20% off if you mentioned chafing cause that's right. So you are going to be a great cohosts. He's good. He's picking right up on this. Uh, but uh, but so what else? So the analytics, are these primarily the facilities managers asking for this or should it go on up higher? Cause I know you, you know, Dana and the rest of year or down to the rest of your sales staff deals at the c level suite a lot. Is it mainly being pushed down from the c level suite or consulting engineers asking for it? Or how is this even coming into consciousness? Well, it's a, it's interesting. So I'm going to go back real quick to the original question that you asked and mentioned something that, uh, you know, it Kinda all goes along with, uh, with the APP. You're talking about the raven, the alarms, and you mentioned that, you know, just kind of getting, you know, hounded with all this data. And it really does, you know, whether it's, you know, cause I'll, I'll copy myself on the emails most of the time for the alarms. And you know, sometimes it'll just, I think I went through this morning, there was a point that went in and out of alarm, I didn't delete like 600 emails. Brent Burrows: You get into the point of getting alarm fatigue. So yeah. So in the process, let's just say that you have something that does, does alarm and you get, you know, over the course of three or four months, 600 emails, you're going to be like, oh no, just delete all those. Don't worry about that. And sandwiched in there and one or two of those. Yeah. What was important data. So that's why it's important, you know, when you're doing the integration is the freestyle. Yeah. Make sure you set up, you know, your alarms and your, so there are going to be alarms that happened, but you know, maybe just only send out, you know, prioritize with your alarm classes. Um, but, but then to get back to a, to what you're mentioning about what level do you kind of see the requests from analytics coming? Um, I think it really depends. Uh, so a lot of what we, uh, we deal with customers we deal with in the Atlanta market. Um, you know, we'll go into existing buildings and whether, you know, we're upgrading them from, you know, DDC from the 90s or just straight pneumatics and everything, uh, you just hit it. There are different levels of involvement from, you know, different companies and, you know, different positions. So, all right know, I've got to figure out what's going on and I cannot, I don't have the time to pour through this site and I don't want to, you know, pay a monitoring company, you know, just every, every month. Because you know what, that's great. You know, the, there were a few people that we followed around in Atlanta or would go to and there was like, oh yeah, we paid this company $2,000 a month. Just watch this. It's like, but it takes you six hours to get him on the phone. And then sometimes they do it, sometimes they don't. But they'll always let you know when that checks in the mail. The, um, the analytic thing, one of the big impulse or impacts was when Niagara JACE started coming with 25 free analytic points to get you a taste of it, you know, and then we started to see people dabble at it, but we really didn't have a whole lot of, uh, you know, takers. And then once they got into it, uh, so it all became, you know, a basically about templating it. But, uh, the Phil fearless fills Zito had a really nice, uh, extract on when he did a synopsis on end for about what he said that what they added to inform and to analytics too. Dot. Oh, was that make capabilities where the preexisting analytic data model it was in, it was inherent embedded a base algor algorithm library and then a realtime on premise analytic control. So one of the things that we saw now was that people, if they wanted to start to dabble, they got a good free tastes that, or a complimentary tastes of analytic points that they could take a couple of points and do exactly what you're saying. Pick out the top, maybe ones that you're getting those multiple alarms, you know, and then have it so that you could control the amount of alarms that you got from that point. So, uh, again it's, it's still, it's just touching the, uh, the, you know, the top of the iceberg because a sky founding of course was the, the industry leader. I mean they basically defined analytics to us. Well, no, it's cool. We can, I've got a question where I think we might have a new vocab word here and I wonder if you've heard of this before. No, no, no, no, no, no. Alarm fatigue has the first time I heard that if you heard the term alarm fatigue before, actually I have this, but I heard it said in that perspective, that context. But you're right, I mean, so I think Brent is coach and he's got his first new phrase, alarm fatigue. Okay. We're, we're going to give you a nickname or get you a tee shirt. It'd be Brent Burroughs alarm fatigue. So I did write that down though. So that's a great one brand. I like that a lot. So bread for our integrators out there who may be, have not gotten into analytics or you know, Skype specifically sky foundry, um, kind of walk them through. I mean, how difficult is it? Is it to get started with it because know there are a lot of integrators, outdated, heard of analytics and maybe you know, think they can do it or don't think they can do it, but what do they need to know? If you're just starting to scratch your ears, assistant center grader and you haven't worked with analytics, sort of walk them through it. Uh, so obviously, you know, um, like the sky spark, um, sky spark software, you know, like anything else, uh, to be able to sell it, you know, you have to get signed up with a distributor, all that. Um, so, you know, first need to find somebody that can not distribute it. And it's really important, you know, when you're kind of going into a new software, I believe this with anything, is to make sure that you've got a good support channel. Um, you know, like in between you and then, you know, and sky foundry, which I'll say for sky foundry, their online database of like help, documentation, everything. It's phenomenal. Um, I have used that a ton. It'll actually basically walk you through setting up site, uh, comes with a great demo site so you can look at how everything's set up and then, you know, reverse engineer. Cause you know, as a, as a systems integrator or you know, anything else, it's, it's similar. You know, it's, it's just like physically, you know, kinda like building an engine or something. How do you really figure out how an engine works? Well, take one apart and put it back together and you're going to have a good idea of what those components do, where they go and everything. Same thing applies to the software. So, uh, getting started there. Go ahead. Eric Stromquist: No, that's a good analogy. And you know, and I think that's where you're talking about the division of labor and, and the, and the support structure, you know, some of the, some of the great products. And so the great applications that have failed, uh, did so not because it wasn't a great application is because people didn't take to it well, they didn't have a support structure, he didn't have that engaging support that you're talking about. And some of these new people, new products and solutions we see coming in, especially in North America, you know, the, the contracting mentality as they wanted so they can understand it and they want to be able to do that physically create an analogy. So this is how you put it together and it's how you take apart and by the time you do that, you know, the steps are all procedural and the methodologies very consistent and then you get really good at it. I think the, the commitment, this guy foundry is significant, but once you get there, you've got it's money well spent and you just, it's a gold mine, right? Can, it will listen and Brent, this is a, that a, you're going to probably have to do with Aaron Gorka called stable datum, right? Because we, as we're assuming that our entire audience listening to the show right now understand what Skype boundary disguised park is. So Kenny, if you don't mind, would you just give our audience just a quick overview of what it is because I think people have heard of analytics, they've heard of data, but they may or may not have heard of skies park. Uh, if they don't listen on a regular basis. Kenny, let's give our audience a little stable datum on exactly what guys foundry isn't what sky's parks are. Ken Smyers: All right. Well, you know, I would recommend everybody to Google or not Google, but to come to our website control to trends. And then just to take a look at John Patsy or look at sky found in there because we have multiple videos of John explaining it, what it is through interviews or whatever. But essentially the synopsis, The Sky Spark is an open analytic platform from sky foundry that automatically analyzes building data from sensors, automation systems, meters and other smart devices to provide useful building insights, sky spark insights, help facility managers, building owners and business managers identify trends, issues, faults, correlations. And opportunities for cost reductions and building improvements. Uh, and then also the, the, the growth of it. You know, so we were asking about, you know, who wants it and how is it implemented? And it comes from all different dimensions. It doesn't come from consistently the COO or the CTO or you know, a smart building owner. It comes from people that have problems that need them fix. So just give me an idea. There's more than 10,000 facilities around the globe that are using sky spark right now. They analyze buildings, data over 650 million square feet of buildings. Imagine that. Then they went over a billion. And by the way, that's further on, but commercial buildings, apartment buildings, apartment complexes, hotels, resorts, data centers, industrial facilities, educational campuses, government buildings, large multi-use retail spaces and other large complex facilities. But if you remember the one crazy thing about it is we start small with one building using the sky, spark and sky foundry or analytics, you know, because there'll be other versions of analytics. But in order to get to the smart cities, you've got to start small. It's a modular thing. So you'd go from one building building. Exactly. But this whole thing crescendos into a smart city where you're, everybody is getting that data there knowing that usages and aren't in and we're occupancies are they knowing when they have about, you know? Right, right. And I think, you know, again, John Petze used to be president of tritium, one of the brightest guys on the planet. Great Drummer too. Buddy rich has nothing on John Petze. But uh, you know, we only all went sky spark first came out or sky founder first came out. It was kind of cost prohibitive almost just simply because to connect the data points together really required somebody to go in and link this to this, to this, to this, to this. But that's all changed now. It's gotten super formed. Super, Super Price Competitive Kenny because of drum roll. HAYSTACK CONNECT. I tried to download, try new vocab words. I need another cup of coffee. That's a good one buddy. I know you want to do that. And Yeah, because again, we're trying to promote project haystack to the best of her abilities and really get the community excited about it. But I think we're getting other people excited about it. I think there's people that are learning outside of the HVC, bas industry that understand that haystack tagging. For instance, we had Samsung, uh, from, uh, the smart car. Don't trick me again here. Most of name again, can we need first and last name for try again? Go, go, go, go, go, go to the Control Trent website, highlight her name and then have Google pronounced that JMC futurist, right when, anyhow, she took the, the haystack tagging to heart and talk. It was an, you know, it's, it's just absolutely vital to eliminate all the friction and bring down to two. We're belongs as quickly as possible. There should be cooperative. You ready for an analogy? Haystack tagging is to sky foundry every other analytics or control system as gasoline is to a car. What do you, what do you think about how, how bad is like, you know, uh, I mean, you know, and not another analogy. I think one of the great things about having haystack, it's, it's basically this organization that says, yes, you know, hey guys, instead of re reinventing the wheel, here you go, we're going to give you the tools or instead of making all your own custom stuff, here's the tools to do it. You know, it'd be kind of like every kind of like, you know, I guess it's, you know, not using haystack tagging. I feel like doing your analytics to standardize it. It's kind of like going back to the, you know, Dark Ages or the prehistoric times of, you know, where you just have different tribes and they have like all their own forms of communication. Like, you know, I don't, most marriages, well, you know what I do, I think that's going to, that's going to work there because if you hear John pets he talking about, he actually gets mad, he'll, he'll start out real calm and mellow and hills. He'll start saying, but, uh, his patients in the industry I think is waning because it's a choice. And you know, again, a lot of people have, you know, big legacy investments and they've got, you know, look at corporations are run and, and they, they really truly have to control the rate of adoption and, and, and is it his money comes it. I mean we had the guy from Sweden tell us, you know, all these things could have been fixed many, many, many years ago if there wasn't a, you know, an economic reason not to do it. So brand have an economic reason to get them right. Now where I am, Brent needs to know this, cause I know your listener brown button it Kenny. This is the part of the show where we come up with are conspiracy theories. Okay. Okay. No, no, no, no, no. And I want to do something right now too. It's certain, Huh? Jam Fee. So that's not sued. Sud h a JMT j a m t h e. Dot. The Jaffe. Right. This Suda Hey, you know what I practice, come on. Say it. And you know what? I'm going to sit on this one because I, I haven't had a chance to write it down and sanded it out. But I think this is like a good idea for like a new bit. Eric Stromquist: You should do Kenny Kenny's words a week and put a word down and then have them like phonetically sounded. I know Kenny. No, no, we got one of this when Kenny's word of the week. Shaef Chase, rub your face with a scarf or something and you scraped, I think he's in a different context today, which is like the data was shaved off of the sound. No, it was to do with the wheat and, and the other stuff. Boys in the shaft, not the shape. You're not going here. Let's get back to those two words are a little too close. Well, you know what I think so. I have a lot of those. So look at that. That's a good sign. That means that your brain's working. Okay, so let's get back to Brent. Meanwhile, back to Brent. So Brent, again speaking to integrators out there that maybe haven't taken the punch to do an analytics and his specific way sky founder, you sort of walk them through the steps, you know, they can call Ken or Eric, that should be your distributor., STROMQUIST.COM And after you get with your distributor, what happens next? So after you get with your distributor, uh, hopefully they can set you up on SKY FOUNDRY Um, so you can get into the resources you can access. Um, it's pretty cool once you get everything set up. Um, sky spark actually has a demo and all you have to do is just pretty much upload the demo and then you can go through all the steps, all the steps they give you online. Brent Burrows: They give you like a five part, um, kind of do it yourself. Um, you know, set up the data points and you know, add the equipment, add the points, add the tags, go, go view the data and do everything. So you get practice, like kind of like we talked about putting something together. So you get practice doing that and then you start going, all right, I can see this, I can see how this will work. Uh, and then after you do that, you're going to want to go to one of the sky's spark, uh, analytics, uh, classes. Typically I think it's like a two or a three day class. Um, they get you all set up on there. After that you are going to be able to, uh, to sell the product and uh, and really do it. Um, and one of the cool things is, is basically, you know, if I had to like look at it and you know, just look at, you know, your customer set and figure out 10 rules, figure out 10 things that you want to look for. You know, the last thing you want to do is be like, oh, I got to come out with, you know, 500 something rules or I've got to figure out how much, you know, k w port per square foot. You know, when people, uh, you know, have a Dell computer or laptop in there, it's like, okay, just, just kind of back it off. Keep it simple to start, like one of the biggest ones, uh, that, that I see and you know, I see it around Atlanta a lot. You've got these, um, these old [inaudible] use that still have to use pneumatic a pneumatic actuators. So, and you'll see that and you'll see, you know, you'll use a DDC controller, goes to a, uh, goes to a transducer and then that sends the air pressure pneumatic actuator and you know, it, they've, they have it that way because the cost to retrofit one of those, as you know, it's like four hours and you know, maybe like a $340 part, you guys posted something a long time ago and I think strong Quist offered a retrofit part. It's for those, uh, to basically take that internal damper and then change it over to, you know, have an external, yeah, it was, it was trying, I wasn't sure if we were mentioning manufacturers or anything. So I remember that then. And we'll, you know, we saw a lot of that too. Yeah, that was a, that was an excellent demo and I'm very successful to do, to kind of move things on. I don't know. Hang on real quick. I can't, if you don't mind. There's one other thing I wanted to sort of bring around because Brent, I think it was brilliant. You know all the rules come up with 10 you can, you can come up with, so for example, for our property management people out there, you got building a and it is using 50,000 kw per month. You've got building B, it's using 25,000 kw month and you've got building c, which is just in 150,000 kw a month. Which one is most energy efficient? One uses the most energy. Well and you do that, that's easy. But you know, basically it, you can Kinda, you can organize the data because you know, what if one is a single story building, how many square foot, how many people are occupied. So you, and part of the reason I brought that up was you used the term earlier, which for our owners out there who might not think this was, I didn't think this way, it was explained to me part of what Brent's companies able to normalize your data because oddly enough, the small, the one with the least amount you spend the amount of money on might be the most energy efficient, the one that you're spending the most on because this maybe 10 times bigger might be your most energy efficient. So unless you can normalize it. Eric Stromquist: And what I mean by normalizes taking random data points or data points, bringing them together and setting their criteria like square foot footage, occupancy times a number of people and that, so that's a big part of us gotta be one of the first ones that you guys would go for. I would take if you have multiple facilities. Right. So, um, so I'll go, I'll go back. It was just kind of that the brief example with the damper, and I know I was kind of explained some technical stuff on it, but it's, you know, like a real real simple rule is like, you know, and you can compare it, you know, how many VAVs PKI use, things like that. Kind of like you're talking about. But you know, the big ones that you can see, you know, a Vav is it open at 100% not satisfying the CFM. Brent Burrows: So either we've got mechanical problem, we've got a design problem, you know, somewhere in the chain. And also the biggest thing, one of the things I see the most money wasted on, like with that particular style of box is this thing has electric heat strips in it. So electric heat, huge energy user. I mean just unbelievable. So it's got the heat going, right? Trying to satisfy the space and you've got a bad damper bladder and there that's not in 600 800 cfm through. So I'm simultaneously heating and cooling space. I'm basically dehumidifying your space when you get to pay for it. As long as this thing has occupied and you know, put that over a 15 story building and let that happen, you know, uh, on a cup on each floor. And just remember that the first real calm I become, and you've met right? You know, Smith and he said that, uh, their biggest, um, why I got this one. Can I do this one? Okay. You just cause I don't, I normally don't know much about, I do know this. So Brandon, Darryl Smith, random Microsoft campus back when Kenny and I first met him, and this is the best example of alarm first as rules base did I ever heard. And what Daryl was saying was a, this huge campus, huge, huge energy bills. They never got an alarm because the Microsoft campus was the most comfortable campus. You could be anywhere. All those buildings were comfortable. They put in a program similar to sky's bar and they realize the reason their energy was so high and the reason nobody complained about the temperature was that their heating and cooling ran at the same time to maintain temperature. They had no idea that was happening until they put the analytics package. And so then what happened, consequently, after that was, uh, you know, they fixed that problem. They started getting a lot of alarms and Bill Gates got mad at Darryl Smith. So there you have it. You have anything you want to add to that, Kenny? I'm sorry. No, no, no. It was, it was the whole thing we said to you, you know, some of the things that they were saying is the valve of the heating valve was clogged, blocked, open, you know, it wasn't Seton properties. So then it was leaving too much heat into the space and an air conditioning or the, you know, Viv is letting, calling in. So the bottom line was that you could have no, uh, alarms are no complaints that nobody's complained about the temperature of being too hot, too cold, but that's not necessarily a good thing. So what they started to analyze, uh, was if the state changes doesn't change over a certain period of time, that there's reason for concern, something that should be going up and down based on different, uh, the different, uh, aspects of the building, different times of day, different whatever. But nothing should stay the same. No temperatures and stayed 72 for longer than maybe like 60 minutes. And if it does, that'd be one of the rules we'd say somebody needs to look at it probably got, you know, something's going on there that you said requires some investigation. But um, I am, I'm a little bit concerned that we're, we're going to get the time, uh, isn't slip away so we should throw in some of these posts so that they get more friends. Comments on your bread. Eric Stromquist: This is part of the audition here. Now we're going to go through some post of the week and you got to make it yet like really astute comments about them. Okay. I don't want to suppress them cause you know, you're, you're a systems integrator and you bring like a different perspective. Absolutely. Is this relevant to your world or not? You know, what's one posts you want to talk about? For now, we'll just go kind of lighthearted cause uh, you know, again, the two and you know, nuggets to take away into some of this has kind of superficial stuff with like the next post you want to talk about and get Brent's comments on is the, the new facility manager might be a robot. Uh, and how will artificial intelligence affect your building? We know from Ken Sinclair that artificial intelligence is common. It's a real thing, how quickly they adoption rate's going to be and whatever. Or is it happening with or without our knowledge? Uh, and he calls it automated, intelligent, not intelligence, artificial intelligence. So the question would ask you there is that you, do you think that artificial intelligence has a foothold already? Uh, w what's the adoption rate with your end of the world or your from your perspective? Um, Brent Burrows: so, uh, in, in terms of, of running buildings right now where we're at and you know, Atlanta, Georgia, um, I haven't seen a whole lot of artificial intelligence in a, and the particulars particular areas where at, um, obviously that's the way am, I mean every, everything's moving that way, you know, whether we still really haven't seen a whole ton of, you know, a voice stuff come in to, you know, the building automation world. So I feel like you're going to see that come in and then you're going to see AI. But that's kind of the analytics thing too, is, you know, and we were talking about earlier, you know, it used to be you'd pay somebody to monitor this and they would watch it and now you have a computer that's doing it, you know, a, a program that that just looks at. It looks at rules, it compares the data, and then it gives you an outcome. So go ahead. So based on how you define artificial intelligence, in many cases, some of it's already there, it's just not called artificial intelligence. God was charging two grand a month to technical data. I mean he's already been replaced by a robot. Right. Which is a shame. That'd be a sweet deal. So Eric, uh, so I got it said Jan, Jan. Okay. Now, so the next, the Kenny, he's like, it's not jam. J A M is Shanthi. It's a softer version. Okay. So if we're doing artificial intelligence, let's take this thing to the next level. And we had this very intelligent futurist and she is the real McCoy. She is internationally, globally recognized for her, her understanding and divisions that are coming. You know what our world is going to look like in five 10 15 years. But she did this thing on smart buildings and powering smart buildings, smart cars and the whole idea of sustainable building, sustainable energy cars that are driving and they're basically collect the energy, putting in a battery. The car gets to the building that it works, it's parked at and plugs in and instead of the building powering the car up again, cars powering the building up in an emergency situation that you could really exploit this cause it's just moving energy. You know, cars are literally collect the energy and then moving them to where they needed nick actually plug into a building. Um, not, not that we're going to see this anytime soon, but what do you think that, uh, the Atlanta metropolitan area is that, is that kind of technology receptive? You see that? I know that a, with Eric, with your smart car, you're a customer, your test, the, one of your biggest issues at first was the charging stations. They could be busy, it might not be available, but you know, it was, it was trying that new technology. Does it fit, do you see us moving a year end of the world there, uh, Brent taking, adopting that kind of technology or is it kind of an out there kind of like, I dunno, I'm sure had you asked the question, you know, 20 or 30 years I had like, had you asked when maybe Eric and my dad were working together a little bit, like, you know, hey, where are you thinking we're going to be in 30 years with us in buildings? It's like snack. I'd be met that it's not going to matter. All our cars going to be flying around anyway. It's kind of local conceptions out there. Oh, we'll get to your point. I mean, I look at this thing every day and I'm all, I marvel over the iPhone every day because I just, I can't get over it. Cause my wife's German, she talks to her sister's like we're talking, you know, across the street. And it doesn't cost a dime. They used to be my third biggest expense. You know, we had mortgage, car and then phone. Right. Well, you know, Kenny, I had been on my, I'm like, rephrase the question a little bit because you know, I think the car was just sort of an example of the fact that you could use a battery to power building and Nissan actually did with their corporate headquarter and a suit. The JMT talks a lot about, uh, about the fact that you can now contribute to the grid and said you're just drawing off the grid. And I think a more Germane sort of, uh, uh, question might be do see a day where maybe Ken Smyers: the batteries are powering the buildings. Um, yeah, I mean, you know, tech technology continues to evolve and to just things that you just never thought were possible. Kind of like, you know, like the analogy there of a, you know, thinking about a battery charging and building. I mean, you know, absolutely. It's possible. What, you know, what Ken just talked about, you know, with that right there, I'm sure you guys saw him back in the, uh, you know, maybe even the 80s, the early nineties. Like what are the first cell phones look like? Where did the first computers, they'll quite white mainframes hold clinic rooms and now this is more powerful than the first computer mainframe huge rooms that were created. I'm really glad you cleaned that up for me cause I'm not, hang on, hang on. I'm not done yet. I've got a Mike, my conspiracy theory and then you can come back to you Ken. So I have a conspiracy theory cat because Brent, you know, you guys hard Johnson controls is wanting the lines you handles was Honeywell on this tech Johnson controls is one of the largest car battery or manufacturers in the world. Okay. So you start thinking about that and then you put into the fact that Tesla developed something called the power wall, right in California. What that because you know, you could have the solar energy coming in but you pretty much had to use it or lose it. What the power wall, you were able to store it. Okay. So I think Johnson and Tesla are getting together right now. I think what's going to happen is you're going to have solar panels on the building. There's going to come down to some sort of a power wall that will hold the charge, that will charge the battery and then the battery will charge the building. Well Eric, to your point, I think, uh, I'm glad you did it cause I was thinking the same thing. We know that Johnson controls made a major investment and batteries. And one of the scenarios we saw Brent was really cool was that, you know, uh, with a DC AC wars mobile. Derek and I used to cover the Westinghouse versus Tesla and how, uh, it was a power station thing who could transmit the power of the further Stacy one but DC. Now it's coming back in. And many people were saying, why are we taking power, making it a scene and converting it back to DC inside of a building since every something inside of the buildings operating on DC. What about we put a big battery in the basement in, you know, some mechanical room or whatever and we power it up. And from there we power the entire building with 24 volts DC. Ken Smyers: And then you have power over ethernet and we have all these really incredible ideas. But so to your point, and I agree with you 100%, it's not, it's just a matter of when we get the opportunity to deploy these technologies are here. It's just, it's in the economic constriction. It says the economic, you know, friction, you gotta, you gotta make money and people have to transition from one technology to the other. But it doesn't mean it's not going to have, it's just the question of when. Right. So I, you know, it's really interesting to about, um, you know, buildings doing that. Obviously it'd be much easier, you know, as with anything, um, you know, if you're building a brand new building to be able to Spec that stuff and then absorb it into the cost of, you know, of doing the building as opposed to looking at a building that has everything that has ac powered, whether, you know, lighting, HPAC equipment, you know, literally everything and being like, all right, we're going to rip all this stuff out and then we're going to put all of this and, and it's going to cost you, you know, x and whoever owns the building or she come managers of the building, it's like, no, we're not. It's a great point, Brent and know that my father in law lives in New Mexico, right? And they used to subsidize solar panels, but then the electric company, conspiracy theory started, you know, not making as much money so they don't subsidize any more. So now it's cost prohibitive to do it. But I tell you what, I think, uh, I want to get back to Ed Tech and your dad a little bit because your dad is when I got to be kidding me, your dad is one of the brightest businessmen know. And when your dad would say is, if you want to have heard him say this over the years, you want to paint it blue, I'll paint it blue. You want to back you on a battery power building, not give you a battery painted battery power building. Right. So, uh, uh, and I, and I think at the end of the day, it's, this is, you know, a lot of conjecture on our part. It's fun to talk about, but at the end of the day, uh, what's going to make the most sense for the owners is what they're going to do. Yeah. My favorite ones are listen to the Paul Oswald and listen to, uh, George Thomas from contemporary controls. The, these guys are the more senior faculty in our, in our industry and they say, you know, we keep talking about this absolutely wowed off the wall technology when we still don't fix belts and we still don't do it. Most primordial maintenance you need, uh, you know, and keeping the motors running and stuff like that. So I think what you have to do is you have to keep one foot on its tectonics. It's moving and shifting when it applied. Yeah. Plate tectonics. There we go. Brent and we still have a vocabulary from you yet. What have we done? We got it. Tig. Hold on. Protect. Yes. Right. I'm sorry I got circled them when you said that. I will give you credit when I like something that somebody says something cool, I write it down and at the end of it when we have to write the show notes up or whatever, I can run through all these little circles, nuggets there and alarm fatigue is circled. We're going to, we're going to take this thing into a macro level again, and we're going to shift gears and just security, cybersecurity. We're going to go into your version of cybersecurity. How often you bump into it, what does it, what does it scare you to death or you got to, you got a handle on it. What's, what's going on from your perspective? Brent Burrows: Um, you know, cyber security, obviously you now have extremely important, I would say as important as, uh, eh, as anything you're, you're really doing in a building, you know, as long as you know you're not, when you're putting in controls, you're not just absolutely wrecking the equipment. What's the, the other thing, keeping, you know, unauthorized people from entering your site? Um, if you can isolate it. That, and that's the biggest thing was cybersecurity, uh, that I'm kind of saying, um, from our end is things need to be isolated. Um, so like you really do, you need to have like, you know, for your h Vac, building automation, security access, all that stuff. Um, like to isolate it if you can on, on separate networks. I mean, you know, you don't have to look far, uh, with different, you know, cybersecurity issues and large retailers, whether it's through, you know, the credit card scanners or you know, however these hackers get in to access, you know, a bunch of people's personal data at places. Like it's just kinda like, holy crap. I thought that was a very unimportant, this thing just turns the lights on, turns the lights off and now they've got access to, you know, social security numbers of all the data that we're keeping over here. So, um, there's some really cool products out there. I'm like, you know, one that y'all rep, uh, that, uh, yeah, that, that's it. I really liked that. Um, you want to talk about security like that is that, that is the deal. Um, the, the ease access is, you know, not as much like, you know, you can't just start grabbing a bunch of random devices and, and doing it. There's got to be a little bit more prep work, but you want to talk about secure and a and manage like dad is awesome. So it's not that expensive dye tee people. Cause I guess a part of the question would be are you running it up when you put a system or the it people now more concerned or they come, do you say you're going to try to what to my network or I know you guys work on a different sort of size building and stuff like that, but uh, yeah, uh, I actually had a meeting with a, with a 19 manager, um, just just recently within the last couple of weeks. And he was wanting to know like a, you know, what are you going to do or how does this need to be set up and everything like that. And uh, it's, it, it's a good conversation to be able to have with them in person. Like don't try and pass it off to someone else that isn't going to be working on the technical side because it's just that then things get misinterpreted and people get defensive. You're not putting this on my network and all this, you know, it turns into like a little peon contest when you don't need it. It's just, you know, a good conversation to have. And that's one of the things Tridium does a good job with is, you know, they have a, they've got it out there. I'm not sure what the most updated version is, but it's called the hardening guide, which, uh, um, basically goes through and it'll tell you how to most securely set up your system. And if you can go through that with an eye with, you know, manager or, or whoever, then everybody can be comfortable. All the data can all be out there. And then, you know, you make sure that you're putting in the most secure option. You know, so ironic you said that because I sent that to somebody this morning. Um, the issues were on the audit trails and about, you know, uh, who gets into the system and then when I have as the Niagara for hardening, it's from six 28, 2018. So I'm sure there's one, uh, more recent than that, but you're exactly right. It's, uh, I think it's a 48 page document. Let's see. Yeah. And it really goes deep dives into a 42 pages. So, um, but what we have, uh, for, for the controlled trans community is we have a responsibility to keep, keep cybersecurity as a concurrent trend is the top trend. We post the NIST released in ist and they give us, you know, the checklists and take people on an individual level and organizational level, uh, you know, a corporate level and then a city level. Ken Smyers: So we have two posts that I just want to bring them up real quick. One is the, a Schneider electric has a cybersecurity, a Webinar you can sign up for and it has a, a lot of great information. And then two, for the people that are really in the business dot have deep, we have a smart and secure city, the community challenge expo and Washington DC July 10th and 12th. And it's about security. Cybersecurity on a, on a macro level. So, and ist the US Department of Homeland Security and sciences, the technology, are they basically the sponsors of it? It's a free registration is free, but you have to preregister it's required for attendance. You can't just walk in there online and we have a hot button to it. But so cybersecurity is, you're right. So Brent, Brent, you just hit three correct answers in a row. So we're going to over and cybersecurity is one. It's as important as anything else. We're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're working with now if we have to have a responsibility, we have to own that responsibility and learn about it. We don't necessarily have the solution for it, but we can be part of the solution or part of the problem. Well said. Well said. Well, listen, dude, uh, let's, let's talk about a couple more things. A couple of other vets and then we're probably going to need to hop off here. But, uh, where Brent, you gotta talk to your dad about this cause you want to go to this conference? Edi. Oh, easy. Easy. I know they call it easy time. What are the dates on these? Okay, you want to go to Amsterdam with this bra? Yes. Sounds great. Yes we do. It's, it's May 17th through the 19th, and it's going to be in Amsterdam and it's going to be an extraordinary event. We're taking the lid off this thing now because, uh, there's, um, the importance of it is growing. Uh, what ECI is doing is they're going to really walk us through the roadmap and they'd been the innovators. It'd probably been the strongest leading innovator company of all the recent companies for just the, the ability to get things done quickly. Put an FSL server size to controller inside of a regular, you know, fit the build of a, of a know basically a controller that it's core for core processors, quad core processors and, and, and it just sort of new paradigm as shaking all the other vendors in there. You're doing something incredible now. They're kind of, they were going to reduce it. They're going to get fs 20. So it's going to use smaller compact is you had the same from inability. It's just cost less money. And so they do the wireless thing. So they've got the FTO for coming out and all those things. Clever and amazing thing. Lim who in charge came up with some very, very interesting things. Eric Stromquist: No, Kenny, you're, you're, you're so right about the technology. But listen, let's focus on the event itself because these guys know how to throw a party where up go to Europe. Okay. And write it off on your taxes. These guys, you'll learn stuff. But man, we've been to all the major soccer stadiums. I made these guys know how to throw a party. It is the best time you'll have. You'll learn a lot. You meet integrators from all around the world now Kenny, Brett and I are going to be there. Maybe Aaron Gorka even show up if he gets out of bed long enough to see what's going on here. But uh, but so that's going on. We've got that. We got real calm. Be Con coming up Kenny in Nashville, Tennessee and then we've got the Afore mentioned a HAYSTAK CONNECT. Hey look, get started. We got to start at the beginning here. We got national [inaudible] you got, what do you mean? We have to start at the beginning to see that much 26 this week we got a major event down in Baltimore. And anybody close to that, you go to it. It's one of the best, uh, you know, uh, in, in our, each department of the country and is great to network and get great training. Uh, it's start, just wait, we have controls con coming up May 2nd through the fourth up there in Detroit. And I'll tell you why that's another one. We have a discount code putting in control trends when you registered. Then we go to project haystack. Okay. May 17th and 18th. I'm sorry. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. May I have, we just had the post up so, uh, that's on the side. You can go to the site and check it out, but I'm just with my, my, my emphasis is on bang, Bang, Bang. But the, uh, it's gonna be uh, uh, a resort area too. That's extraordinary. Anyhow, you're right, it's at the Paradise Island, Paradise Island. And uh, it's May 13th through the 15th. I ride right before we go to go to Holland. But it last but not least, June 11th through the 14th real calm. I be con that's going to be in Nashville, Tennessee. And we also have a controls trans code coming from Jim Young and the, excuse me, Howard Berger and Lisa, which too. So we're excited about it because we're starting as a pivot point for this, this incredible information. Obviously people can't make it to all of them, but that's where you need to do your homework. If you're an integrator and you're learning about this stuff, uh, you know, you might want to go to a haystack because you can start using that template. If you're, you're into the integration and you want to work with the latest and greatest set of tools, do you need to get the easy Ios Global World Conference? You get the additional benefit of some travel and they do have a spectacular today program. Uh, and then if you're in the real estate business and you're servicing people that make the need to know how they can make a smarter, more intelligent, more connected building, then you need to go to real calm. So hang on. There's one more county. Hmm. Very well done. That was nicely done. Okay. Very succinct to the point. I love it. Now, if you need an integrator to put all this great technology and we know a pretty good one in Atlanta on name Entech Brett, tell us how people get hold of Edtech and, and some of the things you guys do, Brent Burrows: uh, to get ahold of Entek.com. Uh, you know, go to our website, all the contact information, um, or call Eric and he'll get you over to us. Um, but, uh, but what we do is we try to offer, you know, an an all in one solution. You know, we'd like to thank you. Now we'll do a little bit of everything. What we'll do. Anything that you let us do, you know, Kinda like you said before, you want me to paint it green, I'll paint it green. Yeah. Um, so, uh, so, you know, we do a, the HPAC controls, uh, cardax card access, integrating those systems together. Uh, and then the mechanical HPAC, uh, you know, do all that systems analytics. Um, you know, we try and be, you know, either an all in one solution or if, you know, take one. No, extremely happy with your mechanical company. We'd love to do your controls, vice versa. Eric Stromquist: Well, the other thing too, Brent and I want to bring up your dad and your company has and more national account work. So if you're a big box or even a little box retailer that has multiple locations across the United States, your dad's been doing that for the last 40 years with major accounts. So, you know, a lot of times people that they like assist and they want something put in and uh, uh, I'm going to tell us about your dad before we go. You'll like this canning, uh, all across the country. So you guys do national accounts as well and do a great job with that. So here's the story. How many of you know who doctor Laura is? I don't. Oh Gosh. He had to talk to her. She was like a battle ax. It's like, you know, you've got to be tough. You've got to do this and you, you know kind of like a doctor Phil on steroids, although Dr Phils Kinda cuter and she is but uh anyway your dad is doing a borders bookstore and doctor Laura is, they're doing a book signing and your dad's up on a ladder working, not working on the Vav box and all of a sudden he hears this voice, hey come over here and move these books and he kind of looks down and goes, who's doctor Laura or she's asking me to go do some stuff. So I just waved at her and went right back up and just anyone you ever get a chance to talk to branch dad had worlds, one of the funniest guys and then she wanted the best story tellers rent. Man, thank you so much for being on the show this week. Very excited about what you and Erin, you're going to come up with a herons. Episode seven is up on control, a controlled product. I'm going to see control controlled fence.com was a great episode and I guess starting at episode eight will probably be you and him working together. So excited about that and they controlled trans community is lucky to have you on board, so thank you for doing this. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me looking forward. All right, so now, now I know you normally listen to the podcast so we got to practice this outro, Ken Smyers: two more things real quick. I'm sorry this is part of the show. Okay, go ahead. Well anyhow, uh, we do have a shout out. We want to shout out to Bill Schafer. He commented on the Scott Cochrane, um, article that we posted in Scott's comments and the, you know, just to give you an idea of the flavor and the interesting inputs we get controlled transits that I've read Scott Cochrane's article on automated buildings. I've been involved in a couple of projects with temporary networks were necessary. So I found Stanford solution. Interesting. Your article left me with a couple of questions and thoughts about using Ip controllers versus MSTP controllers and how vendors in it departments handle them. And so we have, uh, an opportunity for we forward that to Scott for a response, but we invite all our control trans community to please, these are the kinds of conversations and dialogues we'd love to have because everybody benefits from it. You might get your own little answer. Uh, you know, you might get your own private answer or young interest answer, uh, responded to, but we all benefit from it. And then last but not least, I want to compliment Eric Strom quest, who's the most hardest working creative, innovative social media guy out there? Eric, he put up four youtube videos. Tell us, tell us about each one real quick. One minute or less on each one of them. Eric Stromquist: Why? Can't really remember all. But as we said on the show last week, we get content up quicker on the youtube channel. So Brent, I don't know about you, but you know how long, a lot from youtube. So we get a lot of questions. Like, for example, we have one on, what's the difference between two way and three way valves, which a ghuy like you knows , but we created a video for that. Uh, and so we are going to be putting more and more HVAC TECH TRAING VIDEOS on our YOUTUBE CHANNEL. Youtube content up here. So please subscribe to the channel. New Speaker: stromquist.com dmsconytrols.com ent https://kit.com/ControlTrends/gear-we-use-to-shoot-the-show https://kit.com/ControlTrends/books-we-recommened

Writer/producer Elle Johnson is currently an Executive Producer on the Amazon series Bosch. Previously she has worked on other TV series including CSI: Miami, Law & Order, Ghost Whisperer, Saving Grace and The Glades. Listen to this episode to find out how a New York City parole officer's daughter became a Los Angeles TV writer. Watch episodes of Bosch. Read more about The Passionistas Project. ----more---- FULL TRANSCRIPT: Passionistas: [00:00:00] Hi and welcome to the Passionistas Project Podcast. We're Amy and Nancy Harrington and if you enjoy listening to the show, please consider becoming a patron. Just a small donation of one dollar a month can help us keep the project going and you'll get rewards like buttons, access to premium content and invites to Passionistas Project events. Today we're talking to writer/producer Elle Johnson. In addition to her current role as Executive Producer on the Amazon series Bosch, Elle has worked on the TV series CSI: Miami, Law and Order, Ghost Whisperer, Saving Grace and The Glades. So please welcome to the show Elle Johnson. Elle Johnson: Thank you it's really wonderful to be here. Passionistas: What are you most passionate about? Elle Johnson: [00:00:40] This is going to sound bizarrely selfish but I am most passionate about telling my stories. I have gotten to a point in my career, in my life, where I realized that the way I best communicate with the world and also the way I best process life is through telling stories. Writing them down. I came to writing late in life, or later I wasn't one of these people who started out as a kid and knew that I just wanted to be a writer. I had to discover that for myself. And once I discovered that that was the thing that made me happiest, I just wanted to learn how to be the best writer I could be and tell stories the best way that I could. As I've written I've come to realized that I'm what I would refer to as a method writer in that I like to have an experience with something. So in order for me to write about something I feel like if I haven't already had a personal experience with it or some involvement with it, I like to go out and get that personal experience with it and kind of use that to inform my writing. And so that's enabled me to learn about everything and anything in the world that I want to and kind of insert myself into situations that I have no understanding of or no business being a part of. But suddenly I can learn about another part of the world. And to me that is I think the thing that drives me as a writer is being able to find stories that I can make my own and tell my stories. Passionistas: [00:02:19] How do you translate that into what you do for a living? Elle Johnson: [00:02:23] The great thing about being a television writer is so much of writing TV is exploring other worlds. And I primarily write cop shows. My dad was a parole officer in Manhattan for 30 years. My uncles were homicide detectives. I have a lot of law enforcement in my family and so I'm really comfortable with that world and also kind of with that character. It's a very particular personality who goes into law enforcement. I really feel like I understand that. So while I generally have ended up working on cop show. And when you do a cop show, usually what happens is you have the detectives kind of walking in and out of different worlds. Whoever the victims are, whoever the suspects are you're usually entering their world. And that's what makes it fascinating for me because it makes it, I get to enter worlds. I get to decide OK this this week I want to discover what's going on in the world of fashion or in the world of anthropologists or just whatever it is. And then you get to do kind of a deep dive and really explore that. And the best experience or one of the best experiences that I had in my career was working on a show called The Glades. And we had been approached about or asked by the network if we could find a way to do a story about NASCAR. And I said, "I'm a black girl from Queens. I don't know anything about NASCAR." But I started to do research and I realized it was this incredible world that in many ways was similar to being a writer or being in television in that they worked, most of the year. Like their season was I think you know 10 out of 12 months and the intensity of it and the passion with which they approached it I thought, "OK I kind of get what this world is." And I went to the Daytona 500 as part of my research and NASCAR opened their doors to me. They got me a hot pass. I was in the pits. I was meeting drivers. I was in the garages all of a sudden. And I just fell in love with this world and started going to races. And writing that episode I really had to kind of have my own experience with NASCAR and it ended up being a fantastic experience. NASCAR gave us cars to put it in our show. They gave us the trucks. We shot at a Homestead in Miami. We had four drivers in our episode. And it just ended up taking over my life. But it was such a wonderful experience because I really got to do a deep dive and understand that world. So much so that they invited me at the end of the year to their championship dinner and put me on panels and flew me out to Las Vegas to participate. And it's just like I was included in this family and that's exactly the kind of experience I want to have as a writer where you say, "OK I don't know anything about this world but I'm going to find out about this world." And I really found out about a great. Passionistas: [00:05:25] Tell us your path to becoming a writer/producer. Elle Johnson: [00:05:27] I really didn't know what I want to do after college. And the smartest thing I did. Through all of the mistakes that I've made was saying to myself that I needed to take time to figure out what my passion was. Like what it was that I really wanted to do. So right after college I rode a bicycle across country with a group of students called the Ride for Life and we were raising money for Oxfam America and Save the Children. So it was during that bike ride where we biked back from San Francisco to Boston that I just kind of allowed myself to think about what do I want to do with my life? And being on the road on a bicycle, seeing the country thinking, seeing the country and meeting all kinds of different people and really just seeing how other people lived, helps me to understand that I had stories that I wanted to tell. At the end of the ride, I ended up taking a job working at the American University in Cairo — an intern at the school. And I started my job was to write grant proposals for Egyptian students like soliciting American companies primarily like Raytheon. A lot of kind of defense contractors who were giving money to educate Egyptian students. And so I started, that was kind of my first quote unquote writing job writing those grants and proposals. And while I was in Egypt I just started writing stories about my life in the states like short stories. When I got back to the states I got a job as a technical writer for a small company called Lutan Technologies that had created the computer program that allowed the Bank of Boston to track asset backed securities. I know this sounds crazy. It was that it was the computer program that allowed them to track their home mortgage loans or mortgage loans. And it was one of the first computer programs that did that and it was a startup company. I mean I didn't realize I was in a startup computer company but I was. And I was tasked with writing the technical manual to explain to the bankers how to use the system. I was a fine arts major. So this was not in my wheelhouse at all but I needed to use the system and figure out how to write it clearly so that people could understand. So I sort of started doing a little bit of technical writing and while I was doing technical writing I realized this was not the type of writing I wanted to do. I wanted to write stories and short stories. So I applied for a Rotary scholarship to go to the University of East Anglia in England and learn creative writing. I did that for a year and started writing screenplays and while I was in England I was like, "Okay I've tried all these different types of writing. I want to try to get into film and television." So I went back to New York where I'm from and managed to get a job on a television show as a script coordinator, was my first job in television. I did not know what a script coordinator was but they said don't worry about it will teach you what it is and it's basically using the computer program to generate the scripts that someone showed me how to do it. And all of a sudden I was surrounded by these professional television writers and working very closely with them and taking notes for them and working on the scripts and seeing how scripts come together and I was like, "Okay this is what I want to do." I want to write TV for the reason that I saw that there was so much that you could learn every day as you're trying to write your episode. And also unlike film, television you have to produce a script. Like what you write is going to be produced because they need something for air. So something's going on the air whether it's good or bad and you're going to have something going on the air. And I thought this is great. This is a way to actually get your stuff made. And that was really my entree into writing for television. And when I was writing on this show I met a writer by the name of Eric Overmeyer who became my mentor and has helped me throughout my career. He gave me my very first job in television and he's hired me on other shows including Bosch where he was the showrunner. He also hired me to work on Law and Order. He got me a job on a show called Street Time that was about parole officers and parolees which he knew was in my wheelhouse because my dad was a parole officer. So through that one job basically I found my mentor and kind of got my career. Passionistas: [00:10:05] And what show was that? Elle Johnson: [00:10:07] It was a show called The Cosby Mysteries staring Mr. Bill Cosby as a forensic expert in the NYPD. It was a very quirky show. His character had a housekeeper who had been a dancer and she was a very eccentric woman who never clean the house and she was played by Rita Moreno. He had a sidekick who was a young African-American kid who, the actor's name was Dante Beze and he left the show to become Mos Def. So it was just in terms of the people who were involved with it was kind of incredible. And on that show were a bunch of writers also who who worked on Law and Order. And it filmed in New York on Pier 62 which at that time, before it got built up into the pier that it is now, was kind of well known as a Mafia dumping ground for bodies. Just like abandoned pier situation that has since been refurbished and is now a place where a lot of television shows shoot. But it was kind of like the one hour drama ghetto. Law and Order was filming out of there and a show called Homicide was filming out of there. And Eric Overmeyer who was a writer on The Cosby Mysteries when that show got cancelled went to work on Homicide. And I at that time was just trying to figure out how to actually become a working writer — make the jump from being a script coordinator to a working writer. So I'd moved out to L.A. and Eric Overmeyer and Tom Fontana were like, "Oh okay she's serious about becoming a writer because she actually moved out there." So Eric approached me about writing an episode of Homicide. And I was so grateful for the opportunity to do a freelance. He was doing something that at the time I didn't realize how incredible a gesture it was. He offered to split a script with me. Which I now realize is taking money out of his own pocket to give me an opportunity. But at that time Homicide was an NBC show and it was always on the bubble. They never knew if they were going to come back or not. So he offered me this with the caveat that they didn't know if they were going to have enough episodes or not. And as it turned out they ended up saying you know we can't give you an episode because we have a writer on the show and her grandfather was a writer and he needed a credit to keep his health insurance which is a situation that happens all too frequently in this business. You know it's so hard to have a consistent career and sometimes you just need to do a freelance episode to keep your health insurance. And I totally understood that. So they were gonna give him the episode that was supposed to go to me. His name was Julius Epstein. And if you know anything about writing you know that he is one of the twins who wrote Casablanca. So if I had to be bumped by anybody needed health insurance I was like, that's totally fine go for it. During the course of all of this happening Jerry Seinfeld decided that he was not going to continue with Seinfeld. So he told NBC. And NBC basically panicked and picked up all of their shows including Homicide. So all of a sudden they had more episodes so the guys say Homicide came back to me and said, "Oh we can give you an episode you can have one." I was like great. So I ended up writing the first part of a two parter. It was the ninety ninth episode. It was a big shoot out in the station. And they'd also said to me they wanted to do a story in the world of parole. And so they knew that I was a parole officer's daughter and that I would have a bunch of stories. So I went through my mental file of all the stories my dad had ever told me and came up with this story a very personal story to him that had really influenced him. There was one of the few parole officers killed in the line of duty in New York. He was gunned down in the streets by his parolee. So I kind of knew a little bit of the inside story of who they thought it was and why it had happened. And so I basically just pitched them that story and that was the story that I ended up writing. My first episode of television. It was directed by Kathryn Bigelow. It was a great experience and a great way to get my feet wet in television. Passionistas: [00:14:42] So then how do you make the transition from writer to producer? Elle Johnson: [00:14:46] Making the transition from getting a freelance episode to staff writer is the first difficulty as well. So I was already in Los Angeles when I got this freelance episode. But I was working as a secretary at Sony Animation. And my boss was a lovely gentleman who understood that I wanted to be a writer and that this was kind of a day job for me. And that I was going to get out of there at 5 and go home and start writing. I had written this freelance episode and was in the process of just trying to get a staff job. The writer who helped me was a gentleman named Kevin Arkadine. A friend of my sister's who was in the industry got in touch with him and said, "Will you read this woman's samples and give her notes? She's trying to get into the business." And Kevin said to me later that he does this favor once a year for people. So I was once a year favor of reading my script. He gave me notes. I didn't agree with all of the notes but I executed all of the notes because he'd spent the time to give me notes and I thought I want to show him that I can execute his notes. So he did his notes and gave him the script back and he was impressed. And when he got his own show he called me to come in and interview to be a writer. And that ended up being my first staff job on television. And he'd said to me because I had not only taken his notes but executed them, that he knew that I could do the job because I'd already kind of proven it to him. So it was a show called Rescue 77. It was about firefighters and it was another great experience because we, I knew nothing about firefighters especially firefighters in L.A. So one of the first things that they had to do was go out on ride along with various fire departments. Sleep over in the station houses. I mean it was incredible in terms of doing research. And I went to a bunch of different station houses and rode with the paramedics and the firefighters. And they loved having people because according to them, it seemed busy to me, but according to the firefighters inevitably have when you have a ride along nothing happens. So it was like a superstition like great somebody in a station house so it's going to be quiet nothing's going to happen we'll be able to sit down and have dinner. It seemed busy to me but to them they're like others is the great we're not getting as many calls because you're here. But it was just kind of my entree into the power of being able to call someone up and say, "Hey I'm writing a television show. Can I come and do some research?" And then like the door gets opened and suddenly you're invited into all kinds of people's different worlds. And you can see how they do their jobs and how they live. So that was my first staff writer job and I have been lucky enough to have worked every year since then. I've always had either a job on staff or have managed to sell a piece of development. That show Rescue 77, I think we only lasted five episodes. So this was at a time when it was primarily network television. We were on I think it was the UPN, like the Paramount Network, but there weren't too many choices in terms of television at that time. So we're dealing with a network and it was my first experience of being on a set and feeling the panic when network executive shows up unannounced which I then learned means that you're going to be canceled. Like at first you think, "Oh how wonderful they're coming to check up on your show." And then all of the more seasoned people are like, oh no, this is what this means, because they don't ever come to check up after a certain point especially not like on the fifth episode. So we were canceled when the network executive showed up and everyone's like all right we're canceled. So after that you know I had an agent and my agent was great in terms of getting me onto my next gig. Passionistas: [00:18:55] At what point did you make the step to be a producer as well? Elle Johnson: [00:18:58] So on Rescue 77 I was a staff writer and then I went on another show. I think I was a staff writer again on a show called Ryan Caufield which is a show about a 21-year-old rookie police officer. And that was another show again that lasted I think I think we got canceled after maybe seven or eight episodes. At that point I was able to get on a show called Any Day Now, which was more a character driven show starred Annie Potts and Lorraine Toussant as friends, two women who had grown up together in Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement. And it kind of followed their lives when they were little girls and also adult women. And we cut back and forth between their lives and their stories and it was a great show. I was a story editor on that and I stayed on that show for two years and made it into the Co-Producer ranks before Annie Potts decided that she she wanted to stop acting for a while. I think that lasted for a year and then she did another show. But because that show went down. I kind of ended it as a Co-Producer. And at that point Eric Overmeyer stepped back into my life. He'd met a gentleman who was doing a show about parole officers. The gentleman named Richard Stratton who had been like America's biggest pot smuggler had done 20 or was sentenced to 25 years in the federal pen for smuggling pot and he found a loophole in his sentencing and got out. And of course with that kind of background the only place that will take you was Hollywood. So he was able to sell his show about his experiences being a parolee and being a pot smuggler. And he'd met with Eric looking for writers. And Eric was like I have just the person for you about a show that includes a parole officer and his parolee. And so I met with Richard Stratton and he ended up hiring me to be on the show called Street Time which was a Showtime show that was like completely in my wheelhouse. It was so great we got to tell a lot of my dad's stories. You know a lot of kind of parole stories that I don't think I would have ever been able to put anywhere else because they were so specific. And it was a really interesting experience for me as a young writer. It was a very small room. I think we had I think we had there were only four of us in total. And I was the only writer kind of in a lower level producer range everybody else was an EP or a Co-EP but very seasoned writers but they didn't have the same experience as I did having a parole officer for a father. And a lot of the show also dealt with the families of the parolee and the parole officers. So I know I had a ton of stories and kind of understood what it was like to be raised in a parole officer's house. And in terms of building confidence and navigating that experience I was interesting to be in the room with Richard and myself and then these kind of TV writers who were used to writing cop shows and they'd be like, OK well in this episode you know we had a storyline where one of the parole officers had to kill a parolee in the line of duty. And the other writers were talking about how, "Yeah we want to do a follow up episode where the parole officer is kind of wracked by guilt over having had to kill this parolee and how that affects him." And I remember Richard and I looked at each other and started laughing and we're like, "That's not how the parole officer feels." And we were kind of just talking about from our experiences what we knew would have been going on and the parole officers had it's like it's him or me. This is part of the job. He's not racked with guilt. He did what he had to do. And so it was interesting to be in a situation where even though there's a lower level writer I kind of had experiences that could make the show more authentic. And that was another show where I met met a writer, a wonderful writer named Clifton Campbell who then became definitely another mentor to me and has hired me on other jobs. He was the creator and showrunner of the show called The Glades. That he then hired me to work on because we had such a good experience working together on Street Time. So a lot of it is relationships. A lot of it for me is getting into a room and doing the job and doing the job well with integrity knowing that you are mimicking somebody else's voice. You're there to make the showrunner job easier your job is as much as you want to infuse the stories with parts of yourself and tell your stories which I definitely want to do your main job is to execute the show and help the showrunner and get the voice of the show. So having learned that and having learned how to do that, that's always kind of kept me in good stead because I feel like people value that I'm going to come on a show and really try to give them what they need and what they want so that they're not constantly having to rewrite me. That they know that I'm going to try and hand in a script that's going to be as close to their voice as possible. As network ready as possible. And through that experience I kind of started to develop a set of rules for myself about how to how to be in a room what I wanted to be in terms of a writer. And I remember early on just through observation and how I interacted on a staff. I came up with three rules that seemed to be the way that you had to comport yourself in a writers room. One was even if you didn't respect someone you always had to respectful because I want to be respected. But even if I don't agree with someone or I think you know always treat people with respect. The second thing was to do every note even if I don't agree with the note our I don't think it's going to work. I have to try it and prove it. Like execute the note. If it doesn't really work then at least you can say I didn't. It doesn't work. I tried it. I've really tried it but then it might work. Find a way to make it work. So execute every note. And my last rule was more of a self-preservation one which was the money always wins. Which is you know we're artists we all want to we try to be good craftsmen you want to write something that's artful but at the end of the day you know the Medici is paying for them the Medici is the studio and the network and if they want something you have to give it to them because you'll get the note once and you might be like ah, I'm not going to. I'm not going to do that. And then you'll get the note again and you'll get the note and you'll get the note and you'll get the note until you execute the note or they fire you. So the money always wins. So you know we're there to not only execute the vision of a creator of a show but to provide a brand to provide something that the network is buying. And you have to find a way to maintain your integrity. Tell stories that you want to tell but also give the people who are buying it what they want. Passionistas: [00:26:46] We're Amy Nancy Harrington and you're listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Elle Johnson. Check out Elle's work on the TV series Bosch on Amazon.com, Now here's more of our conversation with Elle. What challenges do you feel like you've faced as a woman and as a black woman in Hollywood? Elle Johnson: [00:27:04] My experience as a woman of color writing in Hollywood has been I am... The reason I get in the room is because they're looking for a woman of color. They are specifically looking to fill that quota. They either feel like they have, there's a female character in the show so they're like oh we need a woman's perspective. There's a minority character in the show that they feel like they need that perspective and I kind of click off a couple of boxes for them. That's the reason that I get the first job usually. But then the reason that I get hired again by the same people is because I'm good. Yes I feel like that in a weird way, it's you know it feels like okay, maybe I'm being hired for something that seems like well it's limiting. But once they get in the door it's like I realized that my responsibility is to prove that I can write the show and write it really well. And also bring a perspective that people might not have. I know some writers feel like oh you don't want to be that person in the room where you're always pitching the black story or their gender story. And I feel the opposite way I feel like that's my responsibility. It's my... because nobody else is going to tell those stories. People are not... and I understand that to a degree when you're in a room and it's predominantly white men. They're not thinking from that perspective. So I have to bring that perspective. And always point out, "Hey there's another way of looking at this situation." Or you know this character has no life. I've been in rooms where you know you have kind of the black female character. She's usually a lieutenant. An interesting thing kind of happens where you're on a show and they're staffing a show and people will realize that they they're not representing women or they're not. You know they want to have a person of color. And that and usually that person is usually delegated to like the lieutenant or somebody who's not there on the periphery there. They're there in a high position. But you don't end up having to tell a lot of stories about them because they're not the main focus. I remember hearing someone joking about how if you watch television you would think that every judge in America is a black woman because that's what they cast because it's like, "oh right we need to put a black woman in here" or "we need to put a person of color." So they stick them into a role that you really don't get to see the full life of that person. There are a mouthpiece. You know they have a position of power but it's in terms of the story it's not really ever the main focus of the story. So I've been in situations and shows where you have the lieutenants or you know that that one character where it's like you don't go home with them. They seem to have no life. It's almost as though they only exist in the gaze of the main lead character who's usually a white man. And I feel like my job is to try to fill that character out. Like what do they do when they go home. I've been on shows where I've said, "If this character for our Christmas episode ends up having Christmas with the main character because they have no family or friends I'm going to slash my wrists." Like this is completely ridiculous. This person has loved ones. They have friends. They have a life outside of this office. Please do not make them show up at somebody else's Christmas. Let's give them a life. And let's make a bigger story for them. So I feel like that is part of my job. To fill out the world of these other characters and say you know there's more going on with them than just the job. Let's do for these characters as we do for all the other characters. Passionistas: [00:30:54] Do you have a mantra that you live by? Elle Johnson: [00:30:57] Over the years I have had several mantras. It's really interesting that you ask that because I I'm a person who likes to make New Year's resolutions. So I like I love the holidays. I love December because I start to close out the year mentally and reflect on what I've done and start to think about what I'm going to do next year. And project into the next year. And over the course of my career, particularly when I first started out, I would come up with these mantras that I'd be like okay this is the mantra for the year going forward. And I remember one of my earlier ones was "You know it you must do. It's inside of you for a reason. Don't deny yourself any longer." And I would say that to myself every day. Like I'd wake up and be like "OK. You know what you must do. It's Inside of you for a reason. Don't deny yourself any longer." And that's how I kind of got myself to be a writer. And one of my other mantras was it had to do with... "There's magic in the ether. You can do whatever you want. And you're responsible for whatever you have or don't have." But I love the idea of you know sometimes you look at a situation you look at like how do I become a television writer? How do I do this? How do people do this? And for me it was there's magic in the ether. You just got to go for the magic. There's there's something out there, I don't know, I can't explain how it happens but I'm going to believe that there's magic in the ether. And I'm going to make it happen somehow. Right now it's you know December I'm kind of trying to figure out what my mantra for the year going forward is. Two years ago my mantra was "This is the year that you're going to fail at everything. And I decided that I was just going to start swinging hard. I knew I was going to fail. This is the year that you can make mistakes. You're going to fail. You're going to fall on your face and it's OK. But you got to take those big swings, big risks for big rewards. So my mantra was "This is the year that you fail at everything." And I really approached it as just try to try and allow yourself to fail miserably and see what happens. Passionistas: [00:33:18] How did it turn out? Elle Johnson: [00:33:18] It was great. You know, that was a year when I believe I had started pitching pilots for the first time. And I sold a pilot like my first time out it was an amazing experience. But I was willing to fail. And that was also one of the things that someone had said to me early on in my career when I first moved out to Los Angeles from New York he said you have to gamble Vegas style. You've picked something that you know it's impossible. There's no reason why you should succeed at this. So you're already gambling. So if you're going to gamble don't do scratch off if you're going to gamble gamble all of it. All of it go all end. Gamble Vegas style. And I was like You're right that's how you do it just go all in. There's no plan B. This is working. I'm spending everything on the table and that mindset of like this has to work because what else I going to do that works. Passionistas: [00:34:24] So the journey so far what do you consider the most courageous thing you did? Elle Johnson: [00:34:29] Moving out to L.A. I know I was... I'm a born and bred New Yorker... Didn't learn to drive 'til I was 21. The idea of having to come to a city where I owned a car and car insurance that alone was like, "How do people do that? What is that? I don't understand that. There's no subway? How will I exist here?" So the decision to leave my life in New York which included a boyfriend who was a neurosurgeon and African-American. My mother wanted to kill me like that relationship. I ended that relationship because I realized I that wasn't my life. I had to try this. I had to come out to L.A. and my parents were not supportive at all. They like you're insane you're ruining your life. We're watching you ruin your life and getting on a plane and coming out to sleep on somebody's couch with no job. And I'm like I'm just going to get a day job and trying right. Passionistas: [00:35:38] Worked out okay. Elle Johnson: [00:35:38] Yeah it worked. It worked out. Yes. Passionistas: [00:35:42] Have you ever thought of quitting? Elle Johnson: [00:35:45] No. Once I started it was like I'm doing this. This is you know I tell people who young writers who are coming up like, "Don't get out of line. Once you're in line don't get out of line because the person behind you is going to take your spot. You're going to move up. Just stay in line and keep doing what you're doing. You only fail when you stop trying. So just don't stop trying. It's still trying. You're still you can still do it. Keep stay in line and keep doing what you're doing." Passionistas: [00:36:16] What's your secret to a rewarding life? Elle Johnson: [00:36:19] Secret to a rewarding life is finding a way somehow to do what I want to do which is write. Finding a way to tell my stories and within my career early on I realized that I had to learn craft to get on shows that would challenge me even if it wasn't exactly the type of show that I wanted to write. Finding a way to express myself and to learn craft and really write well. So that now, 20 years in, I'm at a place where I kind of look around and not that I can pick and choose but that I can be more selective in terms of the things that I do. So you know as I get older I just realizing you only had a limited time and what do you want to spend time doing taking shows that maybe have fewer episodes but you love the material. This last year I've been an Executive Producer on Bosche which is a dream job. A show that I love. It's just writing about L.A. Writing about cops in L.A. Writing the Harry Bosch character. Getting to work with Michael Connelly who's in our room is an amazing experience. And working with Eric Overmeyer again who was the showrunner who brought me on. It just it was an incredible experience. But I only did half a year this year so that I could work on another show... Helped develop another show about Madame C.J. Walker. Which is she was the first African American millionaire in the late 1800s early 1800s. And telling her story of how she created an empire of haircare products for black women. It's just such an amazing story and I had to do it. I've really wanted to work on this show. The only way I could do it was if I spent half of my time on Bosch and the other half working on this show. So I was co-running it with a woman named Janine Sherman Barrois, who runs a show called Claws. We were both in our writers room she was on Claws. I was on Bosch during the day. At 5 o'clock, we meet and start a second writers room to break the Madam C.J. story. But we were both so passionate about this story and the woman who created it. Nicole Jefferson Asher was this incredible feature film independent film writer. So the three of us were kind of like working on other projects full time and then coming together in the evenings to break the story because we wanted to. It's like I want to do this and that's what makes me happy even though it was like you know you're working until 10:00 at night doing two shows at the same time. But we were so passionate about the material and that's what makes me happy. Being able to work on stories tell stories that I want to tell. And incredibly like it having no time at all somehow you figure out how to fit it all in because you just you have to tell these stories. Passionistas: [00:39:23] What's your definition of success? Elle Johnson: [00:39:25] My definition of success is being happy. Being happy doing what you're doing. Being satisfied and being able to pursue something that is of interest and value to you. That's my definition of success. Passionistas: [00:39:42] Thanks for listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Elle Johnson. Check out Elle's work on the TV series Bosch on Amazon.com. And be sure to subscribe to the Passionistas Project Podcast so you don't miss any of our upcoming, inspiring guests.  

Eric has been having some weird dreams lately. So Eric and Josh sit down and try to get to the root of Eric's mental mayhem.

GUEST BIO: Eric Vanderburg is a cybersecurity leader, consultant, author and thought leader.  He is Vice President of Cybersecurity at TCDI and Vice Chairman of the board of directors for the Technology Ministry Network. Eris is a continual learner who has earned more than 40 technology and security certifications and he has a strong desire to share technology insights with the community.  He also the author of several books, a frequent writer of articles a regular presenter at conferences, seminars and other events. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil’s guest on today’s show is Eric Vanderburg who is a leader in the cybersecurity field. He is a consultant, author and thought leader who leads the cybersecurity consulting team at TCDI. Eric is also the Vice Chairman of the board of directors for the Technology Ministry Network. This not for profit organization equips those involved in the ministry with technology tools. He is also a part of the advisory boards for several colleges. Eric has earned 40+ technology and security certifications. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.09) – So Eric, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Eric goes on to describe himself as a creative guy who worked at a college and created a curriculum for others to teach different programs. In time, he got into consulting, so has ended up working for lots of different companies. Over the years, he has been able to find some really interesting solutions for all kinds of problems. (1.53) – So, how did you find your way into cybersecurity, in particular? Eric explains that he has always found himself asking – “How could this system be broken or how could someone misuse it?” He became fascinated with trying to work out ways to defend against the ideas that he came up with. Basically, his curiosity led him down his cybersecurity career path. (2.43) – Phil asks Eric for a unique IT career tip. Eric’s biggest tip is to seize those opportunities that will stretch you. It is important to get outside of your comfort zone. Eric often finds himself working outside of his comfort zone. If he had to wait until he had learned things 100%, he believes he would always be the “laggard at the end.” IT moves so quickly, so you really have to push yourself in order to keep up. If you do not do that, you miss out on many opportunities. (3.52) – Phil comments that many of us forget to be on the lookout for opportunities, as a result they pass us by. Eric agrees. (4.03) – Eric can you maybe share with us your worst IT moment and what you learned from that. Eric’s worst experience taught him to keep life in balance. A few years ago, everything was going really well. His business was growing as was his social presence. Yet, he was still able to spend time with his family and help his community. Everything was moving along well, the only problem was he did not have any buffer built in. So, when someone in the family got sick he had no choice but to put other things on the backburner. Fairly quickly, things that were not urgent started to become critical, deadlines were missed. So, he had to hand things over to others. At that point, Eric realized the importance of not maxing out your time. You need to leave a little breathing space so you can cope with change in your life and have some time available to take advantage of great opportunities, when you come across them. (5.41) – Phil asks Eric to tell the group about his best career moment. Eric starts by stating that – any great achievement requires a lot of work. For example, he is really proud of his first book. Eric had to dig deep to write about storage. A subject he thought he understood, until he started writing about it. At which point, all sorts of questions popped into his mind. Questions that he discovered were not being fully answered. So, he felt compelled to dig a little deeper and provide true answers to those questions. He took the extra steps necessary to do so. This included calling companies up and getting down to the nitty-gritty and solidifying his knowledge. It felt really good when he finished that book. His next two books were a lot easier because he knew the process. (8.04) – Phil asks Eric what excites him about the future for the IT industry and careers. IT is a part of every element of our lives. All of that needs development, support and security. So, there are plenty of opportunities for IT professionals.The way technology is hooking into and interfacing with real life makes now a particularly interesting time to be involved in the industry. (9.12) – Are there any directions or technologies that are of particular interest to you? Eric has always been interested in virtual reality. But, now, it is augmented reality and IoT that fascinates him. The potential applications for these technologies are almost endless. (9.41) – What drew you to a career in IT? Eric says he has always been interested in computers. He used to read the manuals and fix the neighbors computers, so it was natural for him to get involved in IT. (10.31) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? Eric says that came from his father. He told him that your integrity is everything and that you should never compromise. If you do you may gain something in the short term, but, it will always come back to bite you in the end. This is especially the case now. Everyone is connected, so we are all exposed to an extremely high level of scrutiny. (11.07) – If you were to begin your IT career again, now, what would you do? Eric says he would not focus on the things he is working on now. Instead, he would probably research the human/computer interaction and the ethics of technology’s impact on us as humans. (11.46) – Phil asks Eric what objectives he is focusing on in his career, at the moment. Eric says that right now he wants to “empower the next generation.” He is heavily involved in information sharing via social media, blogging and public speaking. Plus, he is giving those that work for him more opportunities to challenge themselves. (12.25) – What is the one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Eric says it is probably his ability to organize. It has helped him to put the right pieces in place to succeed. He is continually improving his internal processes. (13.07) – Phil asks Eric to share a final piece of career advice with the audience. Eric encourages everyone to seize opportunities, stretch themselves and always be learning. BEST MOMENTS: (2.54) ERIC – “Seize the opportunities that are going to stretch you as an individual.” (5.30) PHIL – “So, you'd recommend not maxing out your time? Making sure you got an element of flexibility available for anything that does come up.” (10.43) ERIC – “Your integrity is everything, never compromise it. Gains that might seem worth it in the short term, will always come back to bite you.” (11.55) ERIC – “I'm kind of at this stage of my career where I'm trying to empower the next generation.” (13.15) ERIC – “Everybody can teach you something. S,o be humble enough to learn and be excited about what you do.” CONTACT ERIC VANDERBURG: Twitter: https://twitter.com/evanderburg @evanderburg LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evanderburg/ Website: https://securitythinkingcap.com/

Dave unravels the truth about the theory “Practice makes Perfect” and explains how this is not always the case.  If you are practicing bad habits, you will never achieve perfection. Accountability and coaching are both very important tools to use in achieving goals and seeing results. Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business: Taking massive action (0:45) The importance of a coach (1:20) Tweaking the form (3:30) Quotable Moments: "Practice makes permanent" "Little tiny changes and tweaks make massive massive differences" "The best investment is in you personally" Links:FunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar ---Transcript--- Speaker 1:     00:00       Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here is your host, Dave Woodward Speaker 2:     00:17       [inaudible]. Everybody. Welcome back to funnel hacker radio. I'm your host Dave Woodward. And this is a crazy topic that people, uh, hit me up on all the time. That is, I keep doing. I keep practicing, practicing, practicing, doing everything right, but I just can't. I'm not getting better at it. What's wrong? Let me just tell you what's wrong. So the key here is the old saint as far as practice makes perfect, is wrong. So practice does not make perfect what practice it actually does make his practice makes permanent. So if what you're practicing is bad form and bag techniques and, and bad copy, you're going to make that. You're going to make that permanent. You're going to have bad form, you're going to have bad copy your. And so understand. I'm a huge believer in the fact that yes, you always want to make sure that you're taking massive action and that you're practicing and doing everything. Speaker 2:     01:02       Don't get me wrong on this, so take massive action, but the key to taking massive action is you've got to make sure that you're making changes. Too often people take massive action and they're taking all this action, but they never look at the results they're getting and it never tweaking and changing that to get to where they need to go. This is why I'm such a huge believer in having, in hiring coaches are currently. I've got two different coaches. I'm actually three different coaches, one for my finances, another one for getting me in shape. Finally. And the third one actually is for my business and personal life. So it's been interesting. All of my, uh, anytime I've ever had a coach, they've always talked so much about the importance of form. So Eric cafferty is the guy who literally beats me up at. I get up at 4:30 in the morning, 4:00 every morning. Speaker 2:     01:48       I'm sorry, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, not the gym at 5:00, at Russell's gym there, and he acts. Rustled actually comes and works out with Eric the next hour at six and it's kind of crazy because what I've realized is I've, I've never really been big into lifting weights. I've always tried to kind of keep in shape, but I've never been in the gym, has never been something that, uh, if you look at me, I don't have, I don't look like Arnold at all. Uh, but the key here is I'm want to get back in shape and I want to be in better, in better shape because I know the impact of health has on my business life, my emotional life, my family life, my relationship, all that kind of stuff. It's just a huge, huge, important part of my life. And what I've realized is I wanted to hire a coach because I wanted to get the correct form. Speaker 2:     02:35       The reason I say that is what I've seen happen for, for me is I'll go in the gym and it becomes all of a sudden this testosterone infusion here because I've got A. I'm typically in there with my boys, so I've got four boys, my oldest chandler, 22 parker's 20 Christians, 17 in Jackson's 15 and all of them were blessed with these Adonis Greek Life God bodies where they literally just look at a weight and they just. Their shoulders pump up there just pumps up. I'm like, this is so unfair. It takes me 10,000 times the amount of effort to get any attempt of the results of these guys get, but needless to say, being the dad, I cannot ever admit defeat and so I've been in the gym many times with them where I'm like, I will lift whatever they lift just because I got to lift that number, that weight. Speaker 2:     03:25       And what I've realized is I typically have created a ton of bad habits of a form and Eric has always tweaking my form whenever we lift in the morning. And the crazy thing is it's not like a massive drastic change. Sometimes it's literally moving my shoulders or my elbows an inch, two inches, and then all of a sudden the weight drops. I'm like, what happened? I was lifting all this weight. He goes, because you're using the wrong muscles, you're not. That's not what this exercise is for, and my only reason I mentioned this to you is I want to make sure that when you're taking a look at your business that you're, that you're making changes along the way that you actually are learning. And yes, I agree. I totally agree. You got to practice and you've got to keep keep at it, but you got to make sure that what you're practicing is the right thing and the way you practice the right thing is by getting a coach the way you practice it. Speaker 2:     04:14       The right thing is by looking at the results that you're getting. Um, Julie. So I did the most amazing podcast the other day about funnel math. If you haven't listened to it, a check out Julie's podcast at the laptop lifestyle. I forget which number it was like 22, 23. Anyways, it's called funnel math. And the reason she, she did it was because funnel math. So often people get discouraged because they're looking at the wrong numbers. They're looking at the wrong results and they're judging their funnel based on on wrong numbers, and so she did an awesome job of going through and explaining exactly what are the actual numbers that you should be getting on. What's a good number for an optin, what's a good number for your first sale, what's a good number for an order form bump, what's a good number for an oto, how does that translate into a facebook ads and when do you know your funnels working versus that your ad costs are too high. Speaker 2:     05:06       So she went through all of that and the reason I mentioned this is that's why practice is so important because you're always reevaluating you testing, you're tweaking and if you keep practicing without evaluating where you're at, all that's happening is you're making bad habits permanent. Like for me, as far as weight lifting, I had some terrible, terrible form habits that I'm not tweaking and changing and I'm starting to see results which are, which is what everyone. That's the only reason we practice stuff as we want results on the other side things. Um, another thing I'm, so golf is one of the things I'm starting to get back into a years ago I asked you used to be a pretty decent golfer and then I had four boys and uh, since then I just, it's been 20 plus years of no golf and so we hired a coach and it's interesting again, it's the little tiny things where it's, it's the angle of the golf club not only at the impacting the ball, it's the angle of, of how you're bringing the club head back and the trajectory as it's coming through. Speaker 2:     06:07       A little little tiny changes and tweaks make massive, massive differences. But you have to have a coach. And the best way of getting a coach is to find someone who's already got the results that you want and modeled that. Russell's talked about this. A ton of Tony Robbins has talked about this. This is one of the things we are huge in a we. Oh Gosh, I wish. I wish you guys had all joined. Are One funnel away challenge. I'm sure we're going to be rolling this out again. Uh, so if you haven't, go to one funnel away challenge.com and sign up so you at least get the notifications of when we do this. So we did a 30 days.com, uh, where basically what happened was we went through and Russell reached out to people and said, listen, if you were to lose absolutely everything and all, and these were all two comma club award winners. Speaker 2:     06:52       People that made over a million dollars on funnel said, listen, if you lost everything and all you had was click funnels and your marketing knowledge, what would you do to get back on top in 30 days? And so each one of them came up with a plan and we put these plans together in a 564 page book. And what happened was as they went through the funnel, what they had the opportunity to doing was to sign up for our one funnel away challenge. Now the one funnel only challenge is Russell, Julie, and Steven. So Russell gives you 10,000 foot level. Julie breaks it down into a bite size pieces so you can actually consume it. And Steven is the executioner where he's literally every single day out there feeding, feeding the drum, making sure that you're taking massive action and more importantly that you're looking at what's working and what's not and you're making the changes. So again, go to one funnel away challenge.com. Sign up so you get the notification that we're probably going to open this up sometime in 2019, but make sure that you're getting that. So if you don't already have a coach, that's one of the easiest places to get one. Uh, another one is to find someone and go out and basically find someone who can hold you accountable. And sometimes that coach is just an accountability coach where they're literally just holding you accountable to doing whatever it takes. Speaker 2:     08:06       The reason for this you'll find is too often we get all, we got whole bunch of goals and a whole bunch of ideas and, and everything's set to go, but we don't take the action that's necessary. And an accountability coach is one of the best things you will ever have to do that. And again, this is where they're holding your feet to the fire to make sure that you're practicing. And then what's going to happen is then you can have, you can hire someone else to help you basically evaluate what's, what's taking place. One of the best things to do to help someone from an accountability standpoint is live. And I've, I've done this myself, actually got this tip from Russell that was, um, Speaker 2:     08:43       find a dollar amount that is extremely painful for you to give up for, for you might be $100, might be a thousand dollars, it might be 10,000 feet. And for some of you guys were listening to a hundred grand and you basically go and you find someone, you've set a goal and you find someone who's going to hold you accountable and you literally write them a check and you send them the check and they have it's made out to them and they can cash that check. If you don't reach whatever it is that you want them to hold you accountable for, you will be amazed where all of a sudden, if it was a goal to get up early in the morning workout, if all of a sudden you realize, listen, if I don't get out of bed, that's going to cost me a thousand bucks. You know what? Speaker 2:     09:21       You'll get out of bed in the morning and sometimes that's all it takes. So realize you've got to find an accountability partner or accountability. Partners are fantastic. Another thing is a mastermind. You don't have to join a expensive, you know, $25,000 mastermind and if you can't afford it or anything else right now, just find two or three people that you get together with on a regular basis where they're evaluating your ideas and your evaluating their ideas. You're coaching them, they're coaching you, and realize that as you're doing this, you're going to find that that accountability and that open mindset and as you start coaching other people, you will be amazed at what happens to your own, your own thoughts and your own abilities. So again, I started this off of this whole idea as far as practice makes permanent, so please understand you have to continue to reevaluate on a regular basis. Speaker 2:     10:07       What type of success that you're having are, is what is the practice that you're doing is getting you the right result and sometimes you're going to have to actually pay a coach to really help you get, get the results as I'm doing right now with regard to my form and those are things that are are critical and it's worth it. Don't ever. It always amazes me when people shy away from the expense of a coach. That's the investing in yourself is the most important thing. I wouldn't invest a dollar in the stock market or real estate or anything else until you invest in yourself first. You're the best investment is in new personally. By investing in you, you will find that you're able to make a ton more money to invest in the stock market or bitcoin or or real estate or whatever widget or gadget one invest in, but you got to invest in your very first investment is for yourself. Speaker 2:     10:57       So invest in yourself first, find a coach, finding an accountability partner, join a mastermind, do whatever it takes, and just realize that I'm just doing the practice by itself. That's not good enough. You've got to make sure that someone is evaluating that practice to make sure that what you're practicing is the right forum. It's the right technique. Take massive action, realized practice makes permanent, and if what you want permanent is perfection, you'll find that as you practice the right things, you actually will get it and it will become permanent and it will become perfect. So having an amazing day, getting so many different things happening right now. One of the things that actually is coming up, I've forgotten. I want to make sure if, if you haven't already signed up to attend funnel hacking live, please go get your tickets. Go to funnel hacking live.com. Speaker 2:     11:39       Register. Get your tickets. I would love to meet you there. Love to have you come up and say, Hey, I heard your podcast, Dave and your podcast is what got me to funnel hacking live, or whatever it might be. Anyways, whether it is or isn't what got to funnel hacking live, most important thing is get to hacking live, so we'll go get your ticket@funnelhackinglive.com. Can't wait to see you guys. Thank you so much. Again. I appreciate everyone who takes the time to listen to podcasts. I know you've got a lot going on in your life. I hope I'm providing value to you. Please reach out. Let me know if I am a. You can connect with me on instagram and on facebook. You can email me. Uh, just let me know whatever I can to be to provide greater good or value for you. Have an awesome day and we'll talk soon. Speaker 3:     12:16       Hi everybody. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to podcasts. If you don't mind, could you please share this with others, rate and review this podcast on itunes. It means the world to me or I'm trying to get to as a million downloads here in the next few months and just crush through over $650,000 and I just want to get that next few 100,000. So we can get to a million downloads and see really what I can do to help improve and, and get this out to more people at the same time, if there's a topic, there's something you'd like me to share or someone you'd like me to interview, by all means, just reach out to me on facebook. You can pm me and I'll be more than happy to take any of your feedback as well as if people like me to interview more than happy to reach out and have that conversation with you. So again, go to Itunes, rate and review this, share this podcast with others and let me know how else I can improve this or Speaker 4:     13:02       I can do to make this better for you guys. Thanks.

Networking 101 | Coffee is for Closers You’ve always heard that it’s not what you know but WHO you know. Of course, the best relationships are two-way streets. That is the goal of in-person business networking. You establish real-life connections and create win-win situations. And I had a big-time win-win happen for me at an event a few weeks ago. It was an event called Secret Knock. When I got there, I ran into a young man named Eric. I started a conversation, thinking that I’d make a new connection and share my expertise. We started chatting away and hit it off. I had mentioned I’m looking for unique guests for my podcast, Success Unfiltered! He knew Kevin Harrington, a Shark Tank original. I figured I’d try my luck at connection, as I knew he’d be a perfect fit for a guest spot on my podcast. But I had no idea what was about to happen… I mentioned that I pitched on Shark Tank. He asked me if I knew Kevin Harrington. Turns out my new friend Eric was a friend of the famous former Shark. So I asked if he’d introduce me. Not only did Eric say YES...he also said, “Let’s do it right NOW!” So Eric shot a quick selfie video so I could say my “hello.” Then he texted the video to Kevin Harrington himself, and copied me on the text. Not only did I meet my person of interest, I got his cell phone number. All because I took the time to chat with someone new in the spirit of service and connection. And guess what? This past week I got my interview with Mr. Harrington himself!! Networking is priceless. You never know who you might meet. And that one person that you casually strike up a chat with just might change your business! But what if you hate the idea of trying to make a connection in a room full of strangers? What if you’re so freaked out about real-time convos that you always stay home? Don’t let fear cheat you out of making a potentially life-changing connection! On this episode, I show you how to make a plan, perk up your courage, and get out there with confidence. **** Do you want to learn how to sell without the sleaze? My simple 5-step system will help you boost your confidence during your sales conversations and teach you exactly WHEN to ask for the sale – so you get a YES with confidence and ease! If you’re ready to take the stress out of selling for good, get the FREE 5 step Pitch Queen System now! *** Join me every Saturday Morning with your morning cup of joe or tea for your special Success Unfiltered bonus episodes of Coffee Is For Closers. Each week I’ll share my best sales tips, secrets, and tricks for entrepreneurs to learn sales without the sleaze, so that you can close more deals and serve more people with your product or service! To share your thoughts: Email The Pitch Queen @ hello@thepitchqueen.com Ask a question over at www.ThePitchQueen.com Share Success Unfiltered on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, & LinkedIn To help the show out: Please leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe to the show on iTunes. Connect with The Pitch Queen & Join the others in the Royal Family: Website: http://www.thepitchqueen.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepitchqueen/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thepitchqueen/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/thepitchqueen LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelleweinstein/   **** Do you want to learn how to sell without the sleaze? My simple 5-step system will help you boost your confidence during your sales conversations and teach you exactly WHEN to ask for the sale – so you get a YES with confidence and easeyes! If you’re ready to take the stress out of selling for good, get the FREE 5 step Pitch Queen System now! Here’s to brewing YOUR Sales Success! Music produced by Deejay-O    www.iamdeejayo.com  

Signal integrity expert, Dr. Eric Bogatin, shares why best measurement practices have become his go-to topic when speaking with PCB designers around the world. As Signal Integrity Evangelist at Teledyne LeCroy, a leading provider of oscilloscopes, protocol analyzers and related test and measurement solutions, Eric lectures around the world and he will be one of the keynote presenters at AltiumLive 2018: PCB Design Summit. Listen to Eric and Judy talk about the importance of best measurement practices and where to learn more — from webinars to conferences to the Signal Integrity Journal and Rule Number 9. Eric also has some real insights, so tune in and learn more in this episode of the OnTrack Podcast.   Show Highlights: The OnTrack Podcast is in 84 countries! Congrats to Daud Zoss who was the closest guess at 37 countries. He gets a free pass to AltiumLive as Judy’s guest. Dr Eric Bogatin will be a keynote speaker at AltiumLive in October 2018 Best measurement practices - how do you get the answer to the performance, root cause, characterization, etc. as quickly as possible? How do you know what the performance of your instrument is, so that you know its capabilities and what the device is doing compared to your measurement instrument? It’s important to know what the properties of your scope in the probe is, to know the properties of the device you’re testing. Measurement data: Such as the rise time, frequency or figure of merit must be excavated to give you useful information. How do you get the information so it’s high quality and can be trusted, how do you turn it into information that you can turn into action? Eric is also the Editor of Signal Integrity Journal, working with Janine Love and Patrick Hindle. Expert content - if anyone is interested in writing a technical article for Signal Integrity Magazine, please write: Eric or Judy. Janine Love manages the EDI CON coming up in Santa Clara in October (a couple weeks after AltiumLive). Part of this is EDI CON University offering tutorials by industry experts. Industry Experts on the Editorial Advisory Board: Bert Simonovich, Yuriy Shlepnev, Larry Smith and Steve Sandler, Rula Bakleh, Jay Diepenbrock, Vladimir Dmitriev-Zdorov, Alfred Neves, Istvan Novak, Doug Smith, and Lisa Ward. Rule #9 - Before you do a measurement or simulation, think about what you expect to see ahead of time, and if it’s not what you expect, there’s always a reason for it. You need to identify the reason why it’s not what you expect. Hands on learning is a necessity for students. Eric and Mike Horowitz put together a five-week, standalone crash course on how to design a board. Designing for connectivity is just about driving the board to enable finding the parts and laying them out for assembly. Really simple. The lack of experience with Oscilloscopes is surprising because nobody has ever taught these students the correct method. Hands on experience is giving students an edge in the marketplace. There isn’t enough of the ‘real world’ activity in most Universities. Links and Resources: LeCroy webinars Upcoming events at LeCroy SI Journal webinars Upcoming SI Webinars   Hyperloop competition AltiumLive 2018: Annual PCB Design Summit     If anyone is interested in writing a technical article, please write: Eric Bogatin or Judy Warner To see ALL show notes and watch the video recording please visit:  https://resources.altium.com/altium-podcast/signal-integrity-expert-eric-bogatin-on-best-measurement-practices     Hi everyone, this is Judy Warner with Altium's OnTrack Podcast. Thanks for joining again, if you would please connect with me on LinkedIn I like to share lots of information relative to PCB designers and engineers who are laying out boards and on Twitter I'm @AltiumJudy and Altium is on all the usual places; Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. So please let us know what you'd like to hear about on the podcast and we will do our best to get it done. So today I have a rock star with us and he needs no introduction . But before we get going with Dr. Eric Bogatin; I wanted to say that a few weeks back I had put a challenge out there to see if you guys could guess how many countries the On Track podcast has reached; and we have a winner! So congratulations to Daud Zoss. He's a Senior Staff Engineer at Dexcom; he guessed 37 countries and he was the closest one, unfortunately it was only about half, because we've actually reached 84 countries, I kid you not! So anyways, thank you for listening and engaging with us and all across the world. We really appreciate it. So today, as I mentioned, we have Dr. Eric Bogatin with us who needs no introduction; who is a signal integrity guru. You might know him from many conferences in North America and I suppose around the world Eric has has presented, and I'm lucky enough to be here in California, where I've seen him present many times on Be The Signal and now the Be The Signal and Eric Bogatin brand is flying under the Teledyne LeCroy flag. So he has lots of lectures and demos and things and I'll let him tell you more about that. So Eric, welcome, we are glad to have you. Hey thanks Judy, I'm happy to be here with you today and tell you about all the things I've got going on. Well, we're super excited to have you as a keynote at AltiumLive, so we really appreciate you coming out for that and we've done some neat things together with students, so we'll talk about more about that. So why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about your day job at Teledyne LeCroy? Sure yes, so many of you may know, and I know you - - I knew you back when I had my own company it was Bogatin Enterprises, and I literally went around the world and did training classes. And about seven years ago, my training company was acquired by LeCroy and we continued the training classes and then began to make a slight transition to, most of what I've done over the years has been best design practices. How to get the design right the first time and LeCroy is in the measurement business; we are the third largest manufacturer of oscilloscopes and some of the highest end oscilloscopes; and our CTO Dave Graef, he likes to say that that in designing, the goal is to get it right the first time, but if you don't get it right the first time then the goal is to get it right the second time; and the way you get it right the second time is, you have to find the root cause of the problem and invariably that involves some measurements. So that's kind of the connection with LeCroy, is we're number three in the  scope world and have the highest end performance scopes out there. We really specialize in the business of helping customers get it right the second time; kind of a faster time to insight. And so we started out when I joined them seven years ago, doing the same Best Design Practices presentations and classes I used to do, and then over the years since then, I've been working on this new area of Best Measurement Practices and so, with my day job at Teledyne LeCroy, I am still Signal Integrity Evangelist, but I spend more time now going around talking to folks about, and doing presentations on what are some of the best measurement practices. How do you kind of get the answer to either the performance, or the root cause, or the characterization, or get the Figure of Merit? How do you get that as quickly as possible? And recently, in fact, I've got a couple of live events in the Bay Area coming up - actually next week - in last week in August, and then in Boston in September. And you can check the Teledyne LeCroy website for the events page to see where I'm coming next, but those presentations are really focused on, how do you - I call it kind of two aspects of in best measurement practice - one is situational awareness. How do you pay attention to - how do you know what the performance of your instrument is, so that you understand what its capabilities are, so what your device is doing, compared to your instruments. So you make sure that you are not seeing an artifact in the measurement. Wow that's interesting. Situational, because I find in talking a lot of folks about measurements; gosh there's a lot of confusion about what's the scope doing. And unfortunately there's no such thing as the ideal instrument; they're always - - or ideal probe, for that matter. There are always interactions of the probe and the scope with the device we're looking at, and it's important to understand what the properties of your scope in the probe are, to know how far away you are from the properties of the device you're testing so that you're getting good quality information about the device you care about and not an artifact of how you're doing the measurement. So that's the first piece of what we try to present and teach - those principles. And the second piece is - and I see this with my students all the time - that they sometimes feel that just getting the data, just getting the measurement is enough. So they, push the right buttons and they get a screenshot and say: okay , here's my data. And I see a lot of engineers doing that as well, and the data is just the starting place. That's not - you're not done with the data - you need to take that data, the measurement and turn it into information. So you need to extract out, what's the few pieces of valuable information. Like what's the rise time, or what's the frequency, or what's the jitter? It's a figure of merit that takes a lot of data and gives you one or two numbers that you can do something with. I was giving a talk at one of my events a couple weeks ago, and as I mentioned, that we have this huge amount of data in a scope. I mean, one acquisition can be we can take up to five Giga samples worth of data - but you know stupidly maybe - 10 - 20 mega samples but that's 10 or 20 million data points in one acquisition. It's a huge amount of data but you only want one or two numbers out of it. And so I used to call it data mining, and someone said: hey with all that data there it's not mining, it's excavating. So it's kind of excavating the data for useful information, and then the third piece - once we have the information - is this: so what? It's how do you turn that information into action? How do you use the information you've got, to tell you is this good or bad? Should I, raise the line width or decrease the line width? What do I want to do with that information now? How am I going to use that to influence a decision? So it's those three steps that we talk about in our workshops; of how do you get the information, do you have high quality of confidence for the data, do you have high confidence in it? How do you turn that data into information, extract a couple of figures of merit, the nuggets of valuable information and how do you take that information and turn it into action? So that's what I'm focusing on these days, the idea of best measurement practices. In addition to the stuff I've done forever, of best design practices. So that's kind of what I'm involved in now, spending a lot of time going around, doing live demonstrations, incorporating them in my workshops. Now we've got some really cool scopes and bring a lot of test vehicles and structures, so we can do live measurements of various signals. And so it's always a lot of fun when you can have... A physical scope there, right. -yeah a working device and the scope, and then people that come to these; you know I love working the crowd, and we talk about: well, if that's really what's going on, if you made the the rise time shorter, what what will you see? Or if I expanded the time base, what's the signal going to look like? And so we can do that as a live experiment in the group. So they're a lot of fun, very interactive activities. So that's that's what I do is my day job now. Well, that's a lot, and it sounds - you make it sound really fun and engaging. So also, Teledyne LeCroy will have a table at AltiumLive, I hope we can talk you guys into bringing an oscilloscope so we'll let you work our crowd and I'm sure. You know, another thing - oh by the way - I would encourage people that are listening to connect with Eric on LinkedIn, or connect with me I've been sharing those classes that Eric is teaching, so you'll be able to pick those up and see the different locations that he's teaching those courses. And we will also add those links below here in the show notes. So if you're in those areas you can hop into one of Eric's classes, and he's super fun too it's a very plain spoken - and like I, can learn things from Eric Bogatin, and I am not, my technical prowess is limited, so I really appreciate that about Eric. The other thing you do, we have some friends in common which are Horizon House, the publishers of Microwave Journal, have published a new magazine called the SI Journal, which I am very excited about and you are also the editor of SI Journal, and we have friend in common Janine Love and Pat Hindle and the whole group. I used to write a blog for Microwave Journal that is put out by the same publishers on their website, talking about making RF boards and all the fun that goes along with that. And so now, Eric is editor of SI Journal, so you can also subscribe to that online. We will also share that link. So how's that been so far? Tell us about your job - how long has it been now? It hasn't been too terribly long? You know what, I think it was about - - it's almost 2 years now, so I'm just going to... Wow! I was gonna say a year and it's like two years. Wow. So I think it was it'd be - - between Pat and Janine they kind of came up - they've been focusing on the Microwave Journal which has been around for 30-some years and this is one of the - I think it's the top... I think it's like 60 years or something. Is it 60 years? I don't know I might be... It's a long time - it's been around forever. And it's been a real icon in the industry for good quality articles about microwave technology and with Janine's experience with the Design Con and in the signal integrity world; I think between she and Pat they realized: hey, the industry could really use another kind of curated source of high value information and so many of the magazines that we're used to getting have - - the print magazines have disappeared and they're all online, and so Pat and Janine decided to create this as an online journal initially. And they asked me to come on board as the editor; really the technical editor right at the beginning - about two years ago - and so since then we've been kind of planning it out, putting together the editorial review board - of really some industry heavyweights and kind of creating a lot of new content, soliciting content from other experts in the industry, in fact, while I have a captive audience here, if anybody out there listening, is interested in writing technical articles for us, that'd be great. Drop me an email or send it through Judy, and I'd be happy to take a look at what you like to do. We created this and our focus is to provide high value content that's curated. That there's so much information out there online right now. If you do a google search on Signal Integrity or Power Integrity it's not that you don't find anything, you find like 10 gazillion different sources. You get flooded. Yeah it's hard to know what's the good stuff and what the stuff is that I should waste my time with and so I think that's really the value of having an online publication or portal that is curated, and that's what we try to do is between myself and Janine and Pat and the editorial advisory board; we try to curate the content so that it's in our opinion what we would consider to be high-value content. And so we don't want to waste people's time or our own time and so there's, we think, a lot of really good valuable content. We've done the traditional stuff of short columns, of feature-length articles. Janine manages the annual conference EDI CON, which is now coming to the Santa Clara area in October. I think it's a couple weeks after AltiumLive. Yah, it is, it's really close. And part of that is now I think Janine's calling it the EDI CON University which is going to be tutorials by industry experts that are available for all the attendees. And then she also manages webinars, and if I can just plug a previous webinar. So we had Rick Hartley do a webinar... Which we love and you know as I mentioned you and Rick are just so well respected and the SI field so I'm glad you snatched him up. Yes we got him to do one a couple months ago and then that's recorded and posted on the... Oh great! -and then I did one a couple weeks ago that's also up there. So we have maybe it's 20 or 30 different webinars and they're all free and all available for anybody if you go to the SI Journal.com website, and you can look under videos and webinars, anybody can access all the content on the SI Journal is free as well. So, there's some other people that are dear friends Bert Simonovich I know is on your team on the magazine who - - I think is Yuriy on that team as well? Yeah Yuriy's been involved Istvan Novak has been on the Editorial Advisory Board. We just brought on Steve Sandler - - let's see; Larry Smith who is, he's my buddy, we worked on a book together that came out last year on Power Integrity and he now is at Micron; used to be at Qualcomm, he's maybe the one or two world expert on power integrity. So I learned a lot working with Larry. Let's see - - so yeah those are them. They're all heavy hitters I mean, all really, they are the industry experts you really have, kudos to Horizon House for putting together such a crack team with you at the helm, which is just incredible, and like you said curating that content. Because there's so much noise out there. How do we bring the noise down and just cherry-pick, the best pieces? And I was kind of around before and as they were launching EDI CON and I was really glad to see them, as the high-speed digital and the RF world kind of moved together and some of the challenges were kind of overlapping to launch a show like EDI CON I think is really exciting and this magazine so, yay! Very excited about that so I can't... and again we'll put all these links below. I'll even I'll see if I'll go pluck out some of those webinars and put those links in too if you didn't send those to me already. So while I'm plugging webinars can I plug one other webinar too- Yeah, -that I should have mentioned. So I've been spending a lot of time, too much time, traveling doing these live events but also doing webinars; I mentioned the one with SI Journal. I've also been doing some through LeCroy, and we have a whole landing page on what LeCroy has done. Yeah there's a lot there. There's a lot of high value content that's all free. Anybody can view them and I'm hoping you'll put up a link to the webinar page from from LeCroy as well. Okay. I've put a series together on, a little bit about fundamentals of measurements, part of this best measurement practices series that I mentioned earlier they're one-hour webinars on various scope measurement principles and I'm doing them on a regular basis. I think we have two or three more scheduled for the rest of this year and then we'll have another series starting up in January. Exciting, I like the idea of this best measurement practices, it's like really practical. Yeah and it's the same thing with design practice. There are accepted practices that you want to follow unless you have a strong, compelling reason. Otherwise these are the right ways of doing things. Right. And same thing with measurement; there are just as many ways of screwing up a measurement as there is a design and so you've got to pay attention to both of them. And there's a human in the loop too besides your probe and all that, so. Oh absolutely. So if the human isn't 'tuned up' - Yeah - now so one of the principles that I teach my graduate students and at University and also engineers I talk to, is I call it rule number nine and... have I talked to you about rule nine? Okay I'm definitely gonna be mentioning it at the at my keynote because I think it's one of the most important rules for any engineer and basically it says: before you do a measurement or simulation, you want to first anticipate. Think about what you expect to see and I have found that to be the most valuable kind of habit to get into, because just like you said, when there's a human involved it's easy to make a mistake. And how do you know that you don't have the connector connected where it should be, or how do you know: I think I'm looking on channel two, but I'm really going on channel three? Or I typed in 17 but I meant 71? How do you know? You can check yourself but there's a limit to, how well you can check yourself and so, if you think about what you expect to see ahead of time, whether measurement or simulation and you look at the result and it's not what you expect, there's always a reason for it and you shouldn't proceed with that information until you've identified how come it's not what I expect. And when I do these live demos in front of groups, I'm constantly making mistakes because you know, it's under pressure. I get a screw in that connector and I'm not sure which demo am I on right now, and so I'm always looking at the screen to see, is it what I expect to see, and I can tell instantly when I've done something wrong because I use rule number nine. And I sometimes play a game with the audience, the engineers there, and say: okay, we expect to see this waveform go up and then down and it's flat - how come? And it's good experience, good practice, that thinking of what could go wrong in the debugging process because that's what we all end up doing and the more experienced we can become at finding the root cause and why it's not what we expect I think, the quicker we can get to a good answer and move on to the next problem. So it's an incredibly powerful habit that I use all the time and I try to teach all my students. This is what I love about your classes and things you teach Eric. I've sat in a few of them over the years is, that they're insanely practical and intuitive and memorable. Like rule number nine, I can remember that right, so I really have to say that about you. Of course, don't forget I also reinforce good behavior with chocolate so that... Oh yeah he does! He throws chocolate out at his classes so yeah it's like Pavlov's dog, yeah it's so true. Well I wanted to jump into the way that you and I started working together, is I think a month or two ago Iconnect007 came out with a magazine with an empty pair of shoes walking down the street, and it said, who's gonna fill your shoes? And everybody seems to get on this bandwagon about all the people that really, fundamentally understand PCB design in regards to, not just designing but manufacturing, assembly, the whole, all the stakeholders that are kind of implied in that process are greying and gonna retire, and so you know, there's been studies out by UP Media saying - by a pretty large sample - saying that in under 10 years half of PCB designers are going to be gone and so everyone has sort of gotten to this hysteria about it seems like the unanswerable question. What I appreciate that you've done is I'm going to call you professor now - he wears lots of hats - professor Bogatin called me up and said, Judy, you know, I'm gonna do this program, he's used different tools right now that this - I think the students were sort of driving, or somebody was driving one at Altium Designer, so you kicked off this amazing semester-long course at the University of Colorado Boulder and you - I think co-teach that right Eric? Yeah so I can give you the quick history. Okay let's hear it. So I've been teaching a graduate signal integrity class at CU Boulder for a number of years, based on my textbook and in talking to folks there, we realized that our students - so CU Boulder tends to be very project oriented very hands-on we believe in that, you know you learn from textbooks, you learn from studying, but you understand by doing. And it's the hands-on part that you really - everything comes together. And there were a number of classes that required building circuit boards and I would get called in as a consultant to help them in designing the circuit boards and there's relatively simple boards, two layer boards. But these kids had absolutely no idea. They could push the buttons on the tool, but they had absolutely no idea how the performance was influenced by it by what they do in the layout. And so it became really clear that, boy it sure would help if they had a little bit of guidance in how to design boards correctly. And so a number of us got together and realized: hey, we need this more formal training and a buddy of mine Mike Horowitz, who is an expert at design of circuit boards, we got together and put this course together which was - and it's kind of a funny organization too - we're also trying another experiment. At CU you are semester based, and some courses are typically like 15 weeks or so. But we are experimenting with creating short five-week modules so it'll be the full regular course, that is a normal schedule of of 3 hours per week but it only lasts for five weeks. And so, Mike and I were tasked with putting a course on Printed Circuit Board Design and Manufacture together, that would have a five week beginning piece that could be a standalone so that most students, undergraduates, would take that and that'd be enough to get them going on their projects and then everybody else would continue for the rest of the ten weeks. And that would go into more detail so it gets them more experienced at circuit board design. And so that's how it got started, and Mike and I worked on it - it's every semester; so we did it twice last year and now. So that was kind of our joint development. And now Mike has gotten more involved in his CEO activities and so I'm gonna solo it this semester. Oh okay. So the format is basically a five-week crash course on how to design a board so you have a good chance of success when you build a two layer board. And then the other five weeks are more the same, more the technical detail about measurement technique - this idea the best measurement practices. How do you bring up a board? How do you design a board for simple tests and bring up? And then we'll do four layer boards, and then a little bit on the more high-performance systems. So it's a little bit more advanced and really you know, the way we've positioned it as: there are two levels of design. The first is if you can build a prototype and build it with a solderless breadboard and have wires going all over the place; if that works then designing the circuit board and having it work is really straightforward. We call it designing just for connectivity you don't have to worry about performance, it's about, you want to be able to manufacture it, but performance isn't on; the interconnects don't matter, and and some of the student designs are just designed for connectivity. It's just about driving the board so you can find the parts of the library and build it in the schematic and then place them on the board and lay them out, so you can assemble it by hand - pretty straightforward. But many of our student designs these days, are getting more sophisticated. They use a Wi-Fi connection, so you have RF on the board, they have sensitive analog to digital converters on the boards, they have components that sometimes -even BGA components - where the microcontrollers are using a really fine pitch; hard to design by hand, and some of these have a couple nanosecond edges where ground bounce is a tremendous problem. And so we're focusing our class on how to design a board. Not just for connectivity - that's the easy part - but for performance, so that you can designed so it's manufacturable, it's lower-cost reduce the - so much of it is risk management - and then kind of the basic performance issues to worry about. And in my keynote, I'm thinking that I will probably present on what we have found to be the two most impactful design issues in designing a board, not for connectivity but for performance. If all you think about is connectivity you're gonna run into two significant problems. And so one of the topics is this idea of rethinking how signals propagate on interconnects and I've done this at PCB West and I did it at some of my other courses - and I had a couple people come up to me afterwards and tell me that it was a life-changing moment for them. Because I completely changed the way they've been working on boards for 20 years, and I completely changed how they thought about signals on boards. So I hope it will have a similar impact at AltiumLive, but it's going to be about how to rethink and how to train your intuition to think about how signals really propagate on interconnects. I loved your Be the Signal.... so... and I'm sure this is a little bit more complex than what you're gonna present, but I remember the first time I ever sat in a course by Eric Bogatin, and he was talking about 'be the signal' and he's like: if this signal's moving from A to B what do you think is gonna happen to la-la-la... and I'm sitting there as a non-designer and he's like: no, be the signal. What would you do? And kind of helped us to frame, kind of this visual - and I'm a visual person - so I like to kind of visualize, what the things that were going on, in that signal path to create whatever it was. So I really loved that. And that's basically what I'm going to be talking about, that Zen approach to thinking about signals propagating and and how to apply you know -  I'll probably mention it once, in my talk, about how to apply master's equations but in an intuitive way, to understand what's really going on in the interconnect. So Eric's talk is called 'Living in the White Space' and that will be relative to signal propagation and I'm sure all of us, our brain will explode a little. I have these moments with Rick Hartley from time to time too where he says something and I'm like: nah! You know it could be that simple or whatever and I'm sure, you know Rick Hartley is a student of Eric Bogatin so, I'm sure it's more of the same. So, well I really appreciate you Eric, taking on these students at university level. Here at Altium absolutely, I think I would do this part of my job for free; is to help students get equipped with not only tools - like I can give them free tools - but that's a really incomplete model, for them to learn. They're learning about electrical theory in school but really how to design a board, and how does - - I just finished a podcast today with Julie Ellis who's a Field Applications Engineer from TTM - what about stack-up? What about all these variables and how they come into play, that are not taught at university? But I love that you've brought them in at a university level because I think these are the kids - I think these are exactly who's going to fill some of those shoes, and they may be EEs laying out boards, they may end up like Rick Hartley did saying, I like just designing boards better than circuit design. Who knows? We don't know. What has been some of your surprises by the way? What feedback from students? So I think two things absolutely surprise me; one is, their lack of experience with oscilloscopes. That their way of using oscilloscope is first to push the autoscale button. And I slap their wrist if I catch them doing that, or pushing every button without knowing what it is until they see something, on the screen... Until the light goes on, they're looking for the LED. -and and so they, just the basic understanding of what an oscilloscope does and how to control the vertical/ horizontal and the trigger. You know the very basic things. A lot of these kids; nobody's ever sat them down and talked to them about it, so we focus on good - again - best measurement practices in the class as well as the design. The second thing is, there is a disconnect between what you learn in the textbook and what you see in the real world and it's the same thing, but you have to know how to apply what you learn in the textbook. And I don't think any university does enough of that hands-on, real-world activity. We try to do it a lot at CU, we have a lot of projects that students get involved in. Most of them are really about designing a little robot or designing some gadget that does something with the code that you write in there. So a lot of it is - some software, as well as the hardware. But in our class we try to close the loop of the; here I do an estimate or calculation, and here I do a measurement. Like one of the first labs we do is blowing up traces. That's fun! It is. Everybody likes blowing up something. Everybody likes to blow shit up [laughter]. And so the question, the first question I ask them is: okay, you're gonna lay out a board and you're gonna put some tracer - what line width should you use? You can select it to be anything you want.What line width should you use? And so one of the things that surprised me is, when I asked the students is, they thought that a six mm wide line, just the narrowest that most fab shops will do. A six mm wide line, was too narrow because it's way too much resistance, or I can't put more than a couple milliamps of current through it. So I gotta use a twenty mm wide line, or fifty mm wide line. And it's the kind of thing that, the very first day in class, we calculate or we look at how do you calculate the resistance of a trace? How do you calculate what the maximum current handling it, using the IPC guidelines that Doug Brooks has been so heavily involved in. And when you put in the numbers you realize: oh my gosh, it looks really narrow on this board it's only six mm wide but but gosh; it's resistance is going to be still in the tens hundreds of milli ohms for typical lengths. So it really isn't that high a resistance even though it looks really narrow because copper is an incredibly good conductor. Exactly. People don't have good calibration of that. And then, so I'll give you the number, and I hope none of my students are listening to this because they're gonna figure it out in class. But if you look in the IPC specs for maximum current handling for a six mm wide surface trace; it's like two amps or three amps and when we put two amps through, we have a test board with the different line widths on them. When you put six amp - - two amps through it, you find we can monitor the voltage across it with constant current and see the voltage increasing because it gets hotter, as you see the beginning of the runway, and RNDF around three amps, IPC's around two amps, around three amps, darned if it doesn't go to thermal runaway and we zap the trace and so, you can really get a good estimate by putting in the numbers ahead of time, of how some of these interconnects are going to behave. But it's that habit of putting in the numbers doing simple estimates, applying what we learn in class to the real world, that the students don't have that good experience with and that's what we try to do in our class at CU. Well to your point of hands-on, I feel like that's something that for whatever reason has left our education system too much right there's no shop at school anymore, there's no metal, there's no like just - and it's not just, what they would consider low labor skills or whatever. It's just hands-on learning the kinesthetics of it because I bet you dollars to doughnuts that kid, is gonna remember blowing up a three amp trace, more than if he read something about it in a book right? Right, and sees the smoke and it pops and, there's this feedback well, what I was telling you about is, again one of my favorite parts of my job is, we just came back about three weeks ago from filming these kids that are doing the Hyperloop Competition - Oh I'm gonna send you this video Eric - you're gonna die because what they do is so awesome and it's just because they get to do hands-on and they make a good - - there's no way they're not making, more mistakes per minute than everybody else in their field, but because of that and because the lack of constraints they have on them as far as businesses and law and whatever, you know this one team we sponsor is from Munich Germany, they just broke the world speed record inside the tube that Elon built at 290 miles per hour. Crushing! There's commercial  companies with venture capitalists that haven't hit that number. Because they're young and they're hungry and they're hands-on, and they're excited. But these are the kids who I think, there needs to be much more of what you're doing. I wish every University would, hopefully you'll set an example that others will follow. And by the way, I've cited your course to a group of six universities I was invited to speak at UCSD, UC Davis was there, five other universities and I put a screenshot of your course - Oh that's great -and so I, so if you start getting weird phone calls... (laughter] -because I'm like see what he's doing - you all need to do this you know, so hopefully the word will spread but until that happens things like the Hyperloop competition, the FSEA competition, where kids get to get their hands on it and blow stuff up and do it wrong, until they do it right, and learn how to use an oscilloscope in this really hands-on manner well these kids are coming out of college and the internships of these kids, one of these kids from University Wisconsin in the Hyperloop team he's a Qualcomm right now, the team lead is going to SpaceX on internship - companies are plucking them out because of the hands-on. So I think the more we sort of beat this drum and spread this message, I again, something I'm very passionate about - I know you are too - and thank you so much for doing that course and we cannot wait to hear from you and about Living in the White Space at AltiumLive. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule. Well I look forward to seeing you at AltiumLive and all the other viewers that you have and I hope folks come up in and say hi while I'm over there. Okay will do, and make sure - well not make sure - see if we can get LeCroy and company to bring out an oscilloscope so you can - - We will definitely have one at our table. Okay good, good I think that would be something notable and something that people, the attendees would enjoy so thank you again Eric this has been... Thank you Judy. Thank you again, this has been Judy Warner with Altium's OnTrack podcast and Dr. Eric Bogatin of Teledyne LeCroy. We look forward to being with you next time. Until then, remember to always stay on track.

It's the World Cup. Do you have the fever? The only cure is more World Cup. So Eric, Rodrigo, and Wes give their predictions for the World Cup.

This is a awesome epiosde make sure to check this one out. Eric has seen Detriot and Jordan seen Dark Tower. Ed has seen neither. So Eric and Jordan go Head to Head to convence Ed to see the movie of their choice. 

In this episode, we chat with Eric Siu about growth hacking!. Eric is a badass when it comes to growth hacking and how to implement little-known strategies and tactics into your business to spur new growth. We discuss everything from CRO, to ninja paid traffic secrets, and everything in between!   Resources Mentioned conversionrateexpert conversionxl.com growtheverywhere.com growtheverywhere.com/marketingschool Transcript Jeremy Reeves: Hey what is going on guys. Jeremy Reeves here with another episode of The Sales Funnel Mastery. And today, we have on the line, Eric Siu. Eric is the CEO of digital marketing agency Single Grain which has worked for Fortune 500 companies. It is a pretty big one such as Sales Force, Yahoo, and Intuit. And what they do is they help to scale the revenues using a combination of SEO and advertising strategies which we are going to talk about that today. He also owns Growth Everywhere which is a marketing podcast where he dissects growth levers that help business to scale. He has had guest from -- on the podcast from Echo Sign founder, Jason Lemkin; Eloqua co-founder, Mark Organ, Andy Johns, (inaudible 1:01.4), Facebook, Quora, and Twitter and a whole bunch more. He also contributes to Entrepreneur Magazine, Business Insider, Forbes, Fast Company, Time Magazine, and more. By the way, if you guys are not listening, he also does a podcast with Neil Patel, it called Marketing School and I listen to it every morning. I also highly recommend that you guys listen to that as well. So Eric, how are you? Eric Siu: I am good man. Thanks for having me. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. It was a pleasure getting you on here. I think we can have a pretty fun conversation. What we are going to talk about for everybody listening is basically what is working now because Eric is kind of like me you know, we do a lot of similar things and he is -- he is kind of dabbles in a lot of different areas, so he knows what is working in a lot of different industries and a lot of different parts of the sales funnel everywhere from getting the traffic to actually making the traffic convert to making -- helping people become repeat buyers and you know, and raving fans that kind of a thing. So we are going to kind of walk through that process, but before we do why don’t you dive a little bit more into your story and tell people a little bit more about you. Eric Siu: Yeah, absolutely. So like you mentioned you know, I have an agency called a Single Grain and yeah, I mean you know, we mostly help technology companies, a couple in Fortune 500 in there and yeah, you know, we talked about growth everywhere that is why we really interview a lot of different people. We just talk about marketing and you know, talk about business and personal growth stuff and then the new one you mentioned Marketing School, that is a daily marketing podcast where I just you know, Neil and myself nerding out on marketing every single day, but we do a lot of different things you know, in addition to helping clients grow. We have our own projects too, so we kind of live and breathe marketing you know. Our ultimate goal is to really just accelerate the great ideas in the world and we just have fun while we are doing it. Jeremy Reeves: That is awesome. Yeah, I like that quote, accelerate the great ideas in the world. That is awesome. I like that. Yeah, so you are actually you know, a lot of people kind of just you know, they read things and then kind of just repeat that to their audience -- but you are actually in the trenches doing it you know what I mean which is kind of cool. Unfortunately, a little bit unique -- you know, I wish it was not -- I wish that was not a unique thing, but it is you know. So before we get into the you know, the content of this, all the you know, what is working basically. I like to do a couple really quick questions just so everybody can kind of get to know you a little bit more as a person right and there are 4 questions and the first one is. What is the worst habit that you have ever had and how did you get rid of it? Eric Siu: Worst habit that I have ever had well, I think it was probably -- I think I was just being kind of get everything at once. I think that is something that (inaudible 3:50.0) sometimes it will pop up every now and then but you know, trying to do too many things and not being able to prioritize that is something that you know, easy people struggling with quite a bit because there are so many opportunities coming to you and you just do not know what to do with them. So that is what it is. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, you know what, I struggle with that myself sometimes. I definitely feel you there. Alright. Next one. If you could cross off one item on your bucket list like -- you probably have cross off a bunch of things. You probably have a whole bunch that you have not you know, done yet. If you could only cross off one more thing, what would -- which one would that be? Eric Siu: Yeah. I think it would be to the ultimate one, is to give away $60 million to the charity. Jeremy Reeves: Nice. I like that. And if you could change one thing about your life instantly, just you know, flick off the rest, what would it be? Eric Siu: You know what, I do not think I would change anything. I think you know, just you know a couple of years ago or a year or two ago, I started doing the 5-minute journal and that has really taught to be a lot more grateful (inaudible 4:44.8) as long as you are grateful, I think you just have to be happy with what you have, I think you are good to go. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. You know what, I have recently started doing a similar thing myself. I write down every morning 3 things that I am grateful for and then -- I write it on a note card and then when I go up -- when my wife wakes up, I am up like quarter to 6 and she comes down around like 7, I do not know, 7:30 maybe. I do not know, something like that and when I go up for coffee I give it to her and she writes hers on the back you know and then -- the other night we actually asked both of our kids what their favorite part of the day was you know. Yeah. You know, and we are teaching -- they are only 3 and 5 and they are learning that skill already you know. It is so, so important. Eric Siu: It seems like really (inaudible 5:28.7) stuff like I used to be like you know, that stuff you know, I do not need that whatever, but it genuinely helps you know for the long term. Jeremy Reeves: Yep, yep, absolutely. And if you had to choose a spirit animal, what would it be? Eric Siu: Well, my spiritual animal -- Jeremy Reeves: Just the top of your head. Eric Siu: I think it would be the bull. Jeremy Reeves: Okay. Eric Siu: Because I used to like the Rock. I mean that brahma bull on his arm (inaudible 5:52.1) yeah it will be a bull. Jeremy Reeves: Nice. Yeah, the Rock is awesome. Nice. Okay. So with that said, now that we kind of get to know you a little bit better. Let us start with you know, getting people to the website you know, because there is kind of like -- if you really break it down, there are really only 2 pieces you know, there are getting people to the website and then actually converting those people. So I think we focus there you know, we can help a lot of people out. So you know, what are some of the things that you are finding that are working for the most amount of people in terms of getting people to the page whether that is -- and maybe you want to split it up (inaudible 6:27.6) like free stuff versus paid traffic. Eric Siu: Yeah. So I am going to keep it simple. I mean, you know what something that works well right now that not a lot of people are doing is Gmail Advertising. So that is literally you are advertising within a Gmail platform and you know, they are able to see an ad there and you click through it and (inaudible 6:46.8) to your website and the clicks are you know, really not that bad right now and the good thing about it is that you are able to target people that are opening emails. For example, if you are Coca-Cola you want to target people that are opening emails from Pepsi or you want to target people that are opening emails from Red Bull, right. And you are able to do that with a Gmail and bring them back and then drive a good you know, conversion rate and you know for 1 client that we had you know, they target cost per acquisition number was $150 that is for lead and we are getting that (inaudible 7:14.9) $7. So that is definitely worth trying. Jeremy Reeves: That is crazy -- I am actually -- I have heard about that, but I never actually done it. Is that through Adwords? Eric Siu: Yes. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. Okay, I thought so. I am going to have look into that more. You got my curiosity peak on that one. And how about, anything with Facebook? Eric Siu: Yeah. I mean Facebook (inaudible 7:36.0) a lot of people pushing people to you know content or to webinar (inaudible 7:39.9) whatever it is. I think Facebook is you got to be doing Facebook nowadays. I mean, it is -- even it is retargeting people or getting people you know on your email list. That is kind of the bare minimum. So definitely, you know, target cold people to your content perhaps or you can warm traffic you know, these are people that know your brand. Target them to content and then you know, try to drive them down to funnel you know, even deeper. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. You know what, you know, you are talking about content and there is kind of 2 schools of thought you know. One is hey, just you know, take it right from Facebook to your landing page whether it is a webinar or but you know, whatever it is, to your opt-in page and then the other one is you know, know (inaudible 8:15.9) content first, get super cheap clicks and then retarget them back to your opt-in pages. Is there any -- have you done any you know, because -- like a lot of people are doing really well, doing both of those, you know what I mean. Have you ever done any like straight test where you literally took the same audience, same offer, everything and tried both? Eric Siu: Yeah. I think we have and I think it really does -- (inaudible 8:39.1) it depends on the offer. It depends on what you were selling exactly. If it is something that is free you know, you might just (inaudible 8:43.8) directly to it or you know if it is a higher ticket like $1,000 or $2,000 course and they do not know who you are. You probably going to have to build that relationship and try to get into the webinar. So obviously, the less steps you have, the better because you know, my argument with (inaudible 8:57.1) what their content in the beginning was like, you know, why you want to add that step in the beginning but you know, it does in fact work because you are building a relationship you know, (inaudible 9:05.5) a piece of content and you are able to retarget that later. Really depends. You have to you know, work out the numbers on your end and then -- I think at the end of the day, if you were able to just make 1 tweak, sometimes all it takes is just 1 tweak for a campaign to sky rocket. So definitely test you know all the different ways, try to direct or (inaudible 9:23.1) piece of content and see how that does for you. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, definitely. And you know, when it comes to you know, when it comes to -- because a lot of people really they do not focus enough. And I am actually building -- I am in the middle of building a course on doing webinars and one of the things that I am talking about is pre-selling people, you know what I mean, because so many people it is like you are taking them from you know, wherever it is, Facebook or Adwords or whatever it is and they have never heard about you and it is just like plop you know, right into the ad and I have seen a lot of people try where the ad itself had. It was more of curiosity thing you know and then when they get to landing page, they have like -- there is no context. There is no pre-sell whatsoever and they are getting a lot of clicks, but they are not getting a lot of conversions and you know, kind of the theory behind that is because they are not pre-sold you know. What are your thoughts on pre-selling people like do you try to really -- well I guess without giving it away you know, when you are writing ads for let us just say Facebook just for example. Do you try to you know, do you try to write the ads in a way that it kind of you know, targets a specific audience or do you do it more you know, maybe you are having a success with doing it more curiosity based you know, what are your thoughts on the actual ad itself? Eric Siu: Yeah. So, when I target people I mean you know, obviously you wanted to go to the you know, the message to whoever your target instead of just writing a general one. I mean -- I think you know, in general, the logic is you know, obviously (inaudible 10:55.6) target, it is going to resonate, it is going to get better, click to rates, better engagement in overall it is just better you know, better (inaudible 11:01.2). So yeah, that is generally what we do on that front. Jeremy Reeves: Okay, sounds good. You know -- and actually you know, while I am here, have you found anything that is working best for different price points you know. You know usually I find it usually like higher price points are webinars, have you found anything else -- I guess more in getting people kind of into the you know, the lower end product like for example. I have a client right now and they are selling a product for $250 right. It is a physical product, it is this mask that you put on your face. It is for like, you go out in the sun and it rejuvenates your face that kind of thing, right. So it is a beauty product. So we are not really going to do a webinar on that, probably a video at some point, but you know, it does not really fit into like a webinar category, but it is also not a just like, hey you know, here is this thing go buy it type of deal. Now we are going to try Amazon ads, but you know, besides Amazon because there are already buyers so they buy a little easier. Have you found anything that works best for you know, something like that where they are not high enough to really get them on a webinar, but it is not really low enough or it is an impulse buy you know, have you found anything that works in that like kind of a middle range? Eric Siu: Oh yeah. I will give you a couple of examples here. These are little more low tier but you know -- I have a friend at (inaudible 12:24.8) E-commerce company and they sell leather cases right, mobile phone cases and you know, it is like you know, they were $7 to $15 product and they are literally just tried the Facebook traffic to the product page and it is actually working for them believe it or not. And so that works and then you know, also we have a client that -- they have, they sell these brushes, really nice brushes, it is a subscription service. I believe it is about $20 a month and literally yeah, Facebook traffic is going straight to the product page and that is working out. So yeah, you know, the easy stuff people say you cannot really use Facebook to drive people directly to a product page. It does in fact, work. Jeremy Reeves: Nice, okay. I am going to have to -- because I have some clients that have lower end stuff and you know, a lot of what they are doing is like -- I am one -- especially when people are first starting like I always try to you know get some wins first without going into paid traffic and then once the funnel is converting, then you pay traffic rather than kind of just jump to gone over right in just because I am little bit more risk-a verse that I think most people are. So I like to do things like you know, for example, that client that I was just talking about one of the things that we are going to do is reach out the bloggers, have them review it that kind of thing you know, do like paid sponsorship type of situations that kind of thing. Just to kind of like get some feedback first you know, because it is one of those products that we have to be kind of sensitive with the objections and the way that we handle certain things. It would kind of take too long to explain it, but -- You know, brings me kind of my next one is, what are some things that you know, so you said the Gmail advertising right. So I think everybody you know, most people listening to this, they know about the like the big things you know, Facebook and Adwords and SEO and that kind of thing. What are some -- do you have any other kind of unique traffic sources that most people are not doing that they typically it makes a little bit easier to make something work you know, it kind of like the Gmail Advertising? Eric Siu: Yeah. I mean, the Gmail Advertising has followed the (inaudible 14:26.6), but I think at Youtube you know, Youtube has been something that has been you know, it is the number 2 search engine in the world and still not a lot of people are giving it even though it has continued to get bigger and bigger. I mean you look at your Facebook you will see everything single day you are seeing more and more videos. Facebook video has done well, but you know, people continue to neglect the power of Youtube advertising, but you have to think you know, you are able to retarget people. You are able to you know, to retarget or target certain channels, target certain keywords it is pretty powerful, still do not neglect Youtube advertising. Jeremy Reeves: Okay, that is a good one. And are you doing -- that is one actually that I am going to be starting to do actually with this webinar course. That is one of the things I am going to test out and also for client that I am working with now. It is also -- we are kind of (inaudible 15:12.2) you know. When you are doing Youtube, is it -- I am trying to think of the way to say this. When they are looking at the ads, is it -- do they only pay for it if they actually watch the whole -- I think there is a certain amount, they have to watch a certain number of seconds or certain percentage of the video or something like this and how that it works? Eric Siu: Yes, so the way it works is if they click on the ad you get charge for it or it is either you have to watch 30 seconds or you finish the video, which you know, whichever one comes first. That is how it works. Jeremy Reeves: Okay, nice, okay. You know I guess kind of a similar question is. Are you sending people, is it like or I guess maybe kind of depends probably. Are you using that more like an opt-in kind of strategy or you are selling it right from the ad? Eric Siu: (inaudible 15:57.2) I mean some people do opt-ins and they are getting you know, CPAs for as low as $1 to $2 or you can drive them directly to a page to sign up so either way, you know you just test it up probably (inaudible 16:08.5) and make it work. Jeremy Reeves: Okay, yeah. I guess you know, the easy way to -- I am huge you know, kind of a just hey you know, test a couple of things and see which one you know works the best and then put all of your effort into that as well and it sounds like you are kind of the same way. You know, I think an easy way to kind of figure out where to start like what strategy to start with you know, in terms of like opt-in or just a straight sale. It is probably the price point mixed with the complexity you know like the market sophistication of whatever you are selling you know what I mean. Would you agree with that? Eric Siu: Totally agree. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, okay. I think that -- for anybody listening you know, if you want to try that out or even Gmail or whatever you know, I think it is like, if it is an easy buy you know, if it is just like hey, here is what it is, here is what it does, buy it now. Those typically tend to sell pretty well just straight from the ad versus like if you have to explain it. If the market does not really know what it is and you have to explain what it is or how it works that kind of thing, typically it is a little bit harder I think to you know, to make it work right off the bat, right. Okay, so that is -- I think that is, you know, pretty good amount of you know different traffic tips for people rather than the typical stuff do they hear or do Facebook advertising. That is like kind of it you know what I mean. I think 9 out of 10 times it is just oh do Facebook ads you know, but yeah, I mean there are a lot of other -- I am actually working with client right now who is doing a CPA offer you know, for a supplement you know, and it is like, a lot of people do not do that type of stuff you know what I mean. There are big opportunities because everybody is doing Facebook and everybody is doing Adwords so if you find things that people are not doing there is less demand there and the clicks are less and you know, and you get CPAs that are less which is you know, which is awesome. I think it is important to try some of this you know, some of these alternative strategies. So with that right, so we have the traffic now we covered that. How about some you know, conversion you know, once they -- so we are getting them to the page you know, how do we sell them once they are actually on the page you know, do you have any kind of you know, ninja tricks for you know, for doing that? Eric Siu: Yeah. I do not think there is really any ninja tricks nowadays when it comes to conversion. Nothing that comes into my -- I mean you can look at the digital marketer stuff, what they do when it comes to -- oh dragging people to a low dollar offer like a $7 offer and then doing some upsells right after you know, some one time offer you know, you up $7 and you upsell them to you know $200 product and you can upsell like another round. So you can use a tool (inaudible 18:48.4) to help you you know, set that whole thing up, but I mean in general, if we are going to talk about new conversion stuff that showing up. Generally, I just like to look at conversionxl.com or conversionrateexpert just to see what they are talking about, but I have not seen anything groundbreaking in the last couple of years. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, you know what, and honestly I think that is a good thing because I think that -- I used to be really, really heavy into the CRO world. I actually -- conversionrateexpert actually reached out. This was a couple of years ago and they wanted me to work for them, but I am just not really an employee kind of a guy, so I said no. I actually worked with Peep too from conversionxl.com. He is super, super smart dude. And you know, I think when I am talking about conversions with people, I think a lot of people miss the basics you know. They want to focus, it is like, oh, what button color is or what color background or you know, what about you know, flashing arrows and then they are focusing on that stuff, but they have not really nailed down the core message right. They have not nailed down the objections. They have not nailed down the emotions of the market’s feeling or why their product is unique and like all the big thing is really you know, drive like 99% of the conversion you know what I mean, is that something you found as well? Eric Siu: Yeah, I mean, you know, generally people will talk about the colors and things like that just because you know, they read an article but really it is about more than that. You have to look at the data. You have to survey the audience and you have to you know, come up with the hypothesis before you start doing all this run and test and I think you know, growth hackers they just launched a tool called Growth Hackers Projects where it allows you to organize all of your tests get everyone on the same page. I think that is a great tool for you know, team to start using. Jeremy Reeves: Nice, nice. I like that. I am going to have to look that up. Because we are doing a lot too and it is like -- it is sometimes it is hard to you know, organize various tests because you have a whole bunch of them going at the same time and you forget you know what is even happening with them. I am going to have to look into that. I am going to write that down. How about you know, have you ever tested things like you know price points. I know digital marketer, (inaudible 20:55.4). He did a thing a while ago about you know, about pricing you know and I have kind of seeing the same thing. I think there is a lot of price elasticity when it comes to you know, when it comes to selling things and I have actually had a lot of different cases where a client came to me and they were selling something for whatever just say, it is $47 and we rewrote the copy and increased the price and kept the exact same conversions, but the price was you know, 50% higher. And I think that comes down to just good copy you know what I mean. Just explain (inaudible 21:30.1) the value more you know, building up the value more and reducing the risk you know more. So I guess you know, have you ever tested any types of pricing strategies that you have worked like that, like you know, you had one thing like I know with Ryan is one of the big things. He did was -- he had a $97 and he did 2 payments in 97 and it was like the same conversions with double the price that kind of thing. Have you ever done any test with that or any like kind of cool pricing strategies that works? Eric Siu: Yeah. I mean most of the time, I think people are just you know, afraid to increase their price. I mean that is the easiest way to kind of just start to scale your business and I think you know, I have certainly you know, victim to that you know, still sometimes I will be as well, but just to give you an example you know, for some clients come to us for a marketing strategy you know, (inaudible 22:16.6) marketing strategy as you know, $1,500 offer well you know, recently we started increasing into $5,000 (inaudible 22:22.9) it is literally the same thing. We just increased the price. So I think it is a matter of just saying, okay, well you know, I am just going to increase it you know, screw it. I am going to see how it works out and you know, we never got any complaints. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah and you know what, how is your -- how was the quality of your client has been, since you did that? Eric Siu: You know, it is even better. I mean you know, when you increase your price, you get different types of -- you get different kinds of people you know, if they are willing to pay that price, great right and they are not complaining you know, it is a different type of client versus the ones that are trying to you know, trying to negotiate that price down to you know, a $1,000 to $500 or something like that you know, it sets a different type of expectation I think. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah you know, I was thinking the other day about like micro continuity sites where it is like $7 a month or $10 a month versus just you know, versus just like alright say you have you know, like which is easier if you had $10 a month and you have to get whatever a thousand people to make $10,000 a month or you can charge a $1,000 a month for some kind of like you know, lower end service and have 10 clients you know, which one is easier to service or you know, $10,000 a month and have 1 client you know what I mean. And I think that is something that a lot of people you know, a lot of people missed you know. When you work with people, do you look at things like that like if they have low end and you think the price can be higher or you know like when you are working with clients -- I guess the question is rather than just like do you look at it more holistically versus more transaction I guess you know, things like that you know, pricing and the strategy behind it, the positioning rather than just like okay, lets us you know, do this traffic source and do this copy or whatever. How do you work with clients when you are -- you know, when they come to you and they have a problem that you are trying to solve? Eric Siu: I mean we would not get feedback. I mean, we have you know -- 1 client they have a type of service that is based off on subscriptions and we came to them saying, hey, you know, maybe your (inaudible 24:27.0) is a little too high, maybe you wanted you know, figure out, maybe making it just like a set price instead and try testing that out. So the thing is you know, we will take a look and we will give our feedback (inaudible 24:36.9) price at first you know that is really reserved for you know, agencies out there like price intelligently that can really help nail things down and really have a more scientific process to it. Jeremy Reeves: Okay, got you, got you. And how about -- how does your testing process go? So like you know, once you actually -- because this is, I know from an experience you know, this is an area that a lot of people get hung up on is they will put together a funnel, right, and they are all excited and then they run traffic to it and either it totally bombs right, and it is just like does absolutely nothing or it does a little bit, but it is not quite ROI positive right and then you know, of course and that is one we will focus on and then of course the other one is they launched and it does really well and you know and that is fine (inaudible 25:18.3). What is your process for going and actually like you know, taking a funnel that is -- it is kind of showing some light you know, because some of them just do bad. The messaging is all off you know, it is just not a good product in the market but you know, I think most of them will show at least some legs you know what I mean. They show signs of life they just have to be optimized you know. What is your process for actually going and optimizing funnels once they are actually launched? Eric Siu: Yeah so for us I mean we do not specifically specialize in funnels, but (inaudible 25:51.5) mostly for our own stuff I mean, when it comes to testing especially with ads I mean usually what you see with people is that they will say, okay you know, we have this $5,000 budget you know, let us test like a $100 or $200 a day and let us spread it over you know a certain amount of time. Our thing is we rather just put all that money up front and then collect all the data as quickly as we can. Get that data and then you know, try to (inaudible 26:13.3) shall we continue on with this? Are we seeing traffic with it? If we are seeing traffic let us continue and move on. So we are looking for any signs of you know, growth and then you know that is how we kind of continue to innovate. Jeremy Reeves: Okay, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. I am on the same way you know, I rather just get it all out there because why wait 2 months when you can just get it in a week you know, and then you could spend the next 7 weeks tweaking it you know what I mean and seeing you know, seeing what is wrong in that kind of thing. So when you are looking at results you know, are there any -- are there any certain KPIs that you, you know, that you typically look at -- For anybody who does not know the term, Key Performance Indicators. Any certain matrix that you look at as kind of like a benchmark? Eric Siu: Yeah. I mean there is a lot (inaudible 26:57.3) I am sure you do that too, (inaudible 27:00.4) we are looking at cost per acquisition you know, we are looking at -- or cost per acquisition, cost per lead whatever you want to call it and then we are looking if that numbers increase and decrease in overtime and then we also wanted to look at you know, also how much volume we are driving and you know, you can look at other matrix such as you know, click the rate as well, conversion rates too. Those are kind of the you know, the matrix that we look at and also cost per click too. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah and there is also going to be -- I think that is a good summary of like the you know, the basic one. Then there is -- you know, for different industries there will be a couple other like you know, specific-like industries, specific lines. Eric Siu: Yeah, the lifetime value things like that. It really depends and yeah. Jeremy Reeves: Okay, sounds good. Alright. Well, hey you know, I have a blast. I have learned a lot. I guess my last question is, is there any you know, is there a question that I have not asked or something that -- that you want the audience to know before you get off, that you would you know, you feel bad if you got off and they did not hear this one big tip. Eric Siu: No. I think that’s about it you know, if you are into marketing just listen to marketing school every single day. Give us feedback and give us topic ideas because we are always aching for more. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, definitely. And before you hop off. Let everybody know where you know, where they can find you. Eric Siu: Yeah, absolutely. Just go to growtheverywhere.com and then you can find me on that podcast or you can go to growtheverywhere.com/marketingschool to listen to the podcast with myself and Neil. Jeremy Reeves: Sounds good. And for everyone listening, those will be in the show notes as usual and I also give my personal recommendation you know, for his podcast. They are topnotch you know, like I said, I listen to you know, to the one Neil Patel literally every morning which is cool while I am making my coffee and it is a good just kind of you know, quick insight you know, kind of just gives you new idea, nice little you know, spark I guess for the day and yeah, it is a good stuff. It was great having you on. Thanks for coming on. Eric Siu: Alright. Thanks for having me Jeremy. Jeremy Reeves: Sure.

This past weekend after learning that the legendary Clarence "Blowfly" Reid had passed away, I got to thinking about just how many times I had the good fortune of seeing him live. My first time was in 1993. I heard he was doing a show in Austin, and all I knew was that he was not only hilarious, but he was also basically the first rapper ever. His "Rap Dirty" single was straight up hip hop, before anyone even knew what hip-hop was. And like the title implies, it was basically a funny ol' sex rhyme. Blowfly hailed from Miami and it's no coincidence that many of the rappers from his town followed suit and released controversial, often over the top dirty songs as well. I wanted to meet the man who had so much influence on the culture that I loved, but really never got the recognition for it, especially not back then. So Eric "CeePlus" Castillo and I hopped in my old ass Toyota station wagon with only an am radio in it and headed to Austin from Houston. We had no hook ups and no connection to Blowfly, and honestly didn't know anything about the band who would be opening for him/backing him - Dino Lee's Luv Johnson. The way I remember it, we went to Austin early in the day and went right to the venue. We started asking questions as to when Blowfly would arrive and someone gave me Dino Lee's number. Called him up, let him know we were there to do an interview, and he set us up right around soundcheck. The interview is actually with both Blowfly and Dino Lee. Blowfly's reverence for Dino and his music opened my eyes to a lot of things. Before that, I was about tired of white boy funk (#Austin) and especially white rappers. But after hearing Blowfly's opinions, I was pretty much a changed man (sort of). A man who pretty much invented a style, and continually innovated, and not to mention wrote many hits for himself and others under his actual name (Clarence Reid) was giving it up to bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Dino Lee's Luv Johnson. Shit tripped me out, I was 21 years old. And I got to sit and talk to Blowfly for an hour. Later in life I was working for a festival and met Tom Bowker, a dude from Miami who flew up to Chicago specifically to catch a Blowfly show, and ended up playing drums for him and managing him in his later years. Got to see him perform so many times in different capacities and even got to sit in while he crafted songs with Devin the Dude (which to my knowledge have never come out). Thanks to Tom Bowker, Blowfly's career rolled on literally until his final days. Dude was touring in a van punk rock style up until last year and if he would have pulled through this last time, would probably hop in the van again. He left us an incredible body of work, and for that I am thankful. And I am even more thankful for getting to spend some time here and there with him over the years. I don't remember who I did this interview for, or if it ever even came out. I know I played part of it on my radio show on KPFT that year and I think MAYBE it was for either Texas Beat or Thorazine. Not totally sure. Anyway, at the end Blowfly asks me to be sure and send him a copy. Pretty sure that never happened. Hope he can hear this wherever he is right now. We love you Blowfly! Pushermania Podcast Network.

How do you deal with bad service. Indifferent customer service is still widely prevalent in Bulgaria. So Eric and I are joined by Nina Alexander to explore our experiences and how to cope with the culture shock. From Club Alcohol, Municipalities to some shops there are things you should know before arriving in Bulgaria. We take a look at our favourite events. Thank you to this week's sponsors http://www.aidos.bg - Accounting and Legal Services you can trust Bansko Blog and Bansko App http://www.banskoblog.com - About Bansko https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bansko/id491461324?ls=1&mt=8 - Bansko App http://www.appfactory.bg Links http://eatstaylovebulgaria.com https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/bulgaria-now/id889642431?mt=2 -- Bulgaria Now Podcast in iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bulgarian-history-podcast/id733259236?mt=2 -- The Bulgarian History Podcast (Eric Halsey) https://www.facebook.com/groups/1752281848329730/ http://www.bulgarianow.bg http://www.banskoblog.com/mobile-apps https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bansko/id491461324?ls=1&mt=8 http://www.overcast.fm http://www.soundcloud.com If you enjoyed this show then help other people find the show by rating and commenting in iTunes. Your feedback, questions and ideas are welcome. iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/bulgaria-now/id889642431?mt=2 Feed http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:95925292/sounds.rss

Founder of La Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley and President of Sol2Economics, Eric Leenson discusses economic change in CUBA.TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Method to the madness is next. You're listening to method to the madness. I Biweekly Public Affairs show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. Speaker 2:Okay, Speaker 1:[00:00:30] I'm Lisa Kiefer and today I'm interviewing Eric Linson precedent of soul economics. So economics is affirmed that builds strong links among the socially responsible enterprises throughout the Americas. Eric has been involved in socially responsible investing in business for over 25 years. Speaker 3:Welcome to the program, Eric. Oh, it's [00:01:00] a pleasure to be here. You are involved with Cuba Speaker 1:and economic relations there, but you also are president of a company called soul economics, right? I want to talk a lot about Cuba, but tell us what you're doing right now as president of solely economics. Speaker 4:Basically sole economics. It's all about enterprise solutions and solidarity. So the soul is really solution and solidarity in the Americas. It's an effort to link up initiatives around socially responsible enterprise in the U S [00:01:30] and Latin America. So right now my primary project is in Cuba, but I also am working a bit in Central American, Brazil, and other places as well. Speaker 1:Okay. So what are you doing in Cuba with Obama's announcement in December? It feels like the flood gates should be open. What are you doing and what are your concerns about? Speaker 4:We actually started working in Cuba six years ago, so we had a sense that at some point there would be an opening in Cuba in both directions. One, we thought the U s would be looking at changing relations, [00:02:00] and of course that took a lot longer than we expected. And why did you think that? Because it's just so obvious that the u s needs to do that. I mean, the pressure from Latin America has been mounting over long period of time. The policy was totally outdated. It was a failure. I really thought that once Bush was out of office, things would begin changing fairly quickly, and Obama did make some changes that have really helped move things along. But it's taken quite a while to get to the point where, Speaker 1:and even now, a congress has to approve it, releasing the Embargo Act, [00:02:30] right? Yeah. Well, there's a lot of things that need to be done. Right? Right. Speaker 4:Basically what our work has consisted of is I have helped put together a coalition called socially responsible enterprise and local development in Cuba. And the idea of this coalition is to take the best practices of socially responsible enterprise that exists, particularly in the western hemisphere, to Cuba's kind of a menu of what's possible if one believes, and I, I did think this six years ago, that the Cubans would [00:03:00] need to make some adjustments to their economy. And sure enough that part came true pretty soon because four years ago, basically the Cubans announced to the world that their economy wasn't working properly and they would update it in various ways, keeping socialism of course, but at the same time bringing in a certain number of market type, uh, reforms that would allow for more innovation. So essentially our time and then the Cuba side was very good because what we've done over these years is taken about 50 experts, mostly [00:03:30] from Latin America, pretty much entirely from Latin America, but also from Europe and Canada to a lesser extent from the u s to Cuba for conferences to talk about subjects they'd never really talked about before that cover the range from corporate social responsibility to different types of cooperatives. Speaker 4:The idea was to give the Cubans kind of a menu of things that are happening in other places because they've been kind of cut off and let them choose. I mean, if they're going to be redesigning their economy, why not try to take advantage of mistakes and lessons learned [00:04:00] other places. Speaker 1:I'm sure one of the things you talk about is retaining the good things about Cuba. Capitalism can be a freight train when it arrives and how are you teaching them? Or at least talking about keeping the things that are good about Cuba. You know, they have pretty good at health, right? Medicine. And you know, I know there's a couple of things that I've seen some documentaries that they're pretty strong. Speaker 4:Well they're extremely strong in healthcare medicine and I would say in many ways a developing senses of community and participation. We had a [00:04:30] sort of sum up the work of the project along the lines you're talking about. I would say what we're asking constantly are two questions. One is very similar to what you said. How can Cuba maintain the achievement of the revolution while significantly improving their economy? That's like a new paradigm. Right? And the other question along the same lines is how can they skip 20th century capitalism move right into 21st century sustenance Speaker 1:cause they don't even have internet, right? Speaker 4:Very Limited, very limited internet. So basically, I mean I, what [00:05:00] I find also very interesting about this whole project is that if you look around the world today, I think everyone recognizes that our economies are broken. I mean certainly in the capitalist world we see now for quite a while and it really came home to roost with the 2008 financial crisis. I think if you talk to young people anywhere in the world today, in the capitalist world, the future doesn't look necessarily so great. This economy isn't working. So what's really interesting is I think the Cubans have come to the same conclusion that their economy really isn't working. They've said that publicly many [00:05:30] times. Interestingly, they phrased it in a way, typically many things that go wrong, Cuba are blamed on the u s blockade. Now. There's no doubt that blockade is incredibly strong. Each time at the embargo, the embargo, the Cubans called blockade, oh, sorry, the embargo, there's no doubt that is, it is incredibly intense and it really hurts the Cuban economy. Speaker 4:But the Cubans are now in a mode where they recognizing that they've made mistakes as well. So this comes to light in the idea there needs to be some adjustment in economy. Now [00:06:00] what that means is they are not giving up the notion that Cuba will remain a socialist country. The idea is that strategic economic services and industries will stay in state hands. They will not be privatized. Like for instance, for instance, anything to do with education, healthcare, power generation, large, large producers, utilities will stay in state, public hands, all those sorts of things, but that there's a huge realm within the economy that really can be privatized [00:06:30] and let's say if before Cuba was 95% the employees were state workers. Their goal over the next few years is reduced that to about half and half so that half of the economy would become private. Is there any model in the world that is doing something like that now? Speaker 4:Not quite like that. I mean, you know, keep in mind that Cuba is one of the few holdouts of the old socialist world. There aren't too many socialist countries and when eastern Europe and Russia, Soviet Union fell apart, [00:07:00] they were basically bought lock, stock and barrel by the local capitalists or by international capitalists. Cubans are very sensitive to that, where you could make a comparison perhaps, and this is something that Cubans do look at a lot would be China and Vietnam because in China, in Vietnam, while you have a communist system and the state still controls much of the industry, there is a huge private sector and this is one of the debates raging in in Cuba of course, is if they're going to adopt new ways of doing things, who are they looking [00:07:30] to? It's a complex discussion, but very fascinating. First of all, China is deeply embedded economically throughout Latin America. Speaker 4:Many of the countries that were, you know, typically u s client states economically now have more trade with China than they do with us, including countries like Brazil, Peru, and across the board. Quite a few of them, number one. Number two, there's another thing that needs to be dispelled that most Americans don't understand, which is about [00:08:00] the embargo. Really, the United States policy was to isolate Cuba. The United States wound up only isolating itself because everyone else in the world is in Cuba. It's true. The Chinese are making significant investments, but the Europeans are there. This larger South American countries are there, Russia's there. It's the u s that's high still. Why do they need us? Do they need us? Well, there, there are a couple of factors here. Look at the geography. The U S is so close. I mean, it's 90 miles away. It's a logical market and a [00:08:30] logical trading partner. Speaker 4:I mean, it would reduce costs significantly if Cuba had access to u s market and vice versa. Number two, and right now, from a strategic point of view, it's actually probably more important is because the United States has Cuba on the list of terrorist countries. It has incredibly chilling effect on other countries and institutions willingness to deal with Cuba financially. So where are the United States has been successful with the blockade? The embargo is in financial transactions [00:09:00] over the last couple of years, and this is sort of ironic. Under Obama, the financial embargo has strengthened considerably, and over the last few years, several banks in Europe have been fined hundreds of millions of dollars for having transactions, normal transactions with Cuba. Yeah, it's, it's remarkable. And the reason it's gotten tightened is because there've been so much emphasis on the whole issue of anti-terrorism. So Cuba is maintain laughably and artificially on the terrorist list [00:09:30] just to hurt, you know, harass them. Speaker 4:It's got nothing to do with terrorism because Cuba doesn't threaten anyone. In fact, Cuba's been involved, you know, significantly in the whole peace process going on in Columbia, which everyone would love to see results in, in a truce between the government and the guerrilla movements. And haven't they been helping us with the drug trade in Mexico and the drug cartels? And hasn't there been some cooperative? There's been cooperation on a few fronts. You know, the whole question of us politics towards Cuba, it's got nothing to do with foreign policy. It's all about [00:10:00] us domestic politics and a few Cuban American politicians that just have a, have had a stranglehold over the, over US foreign policy. But getting back to, okay, how could Cuba try to benefit from encouraging certain elements of capitalism, uh, while maintaining socialism? One other thing that needs to be said and I don't want to really underestimating the Cuban economy is a really bad shape. Speaker 4:I mean it's really questionable my mind, how long it can go on in the condition it's in. [00:10:30] And one other thing that's become very interesting, I think symbolic is the fact that you have more and more immigration, legal immigration from Cuba to other places because young people don't see opportunities. Some of the best and brightest people who believe me, they're not against the system. They're all in favor of a socialistic system, but they don't see it performing in a way that we'll assign them to stay. Right to start. Cause there's not really an entrepreneurial, no, no. Cuba's very advanced in certain areas [00:11:00] such as biotechnology. They're actually big exporters of biotech products around the world. But you know, the number of positions are limited and because of the embargo and other factors, you know, if you're a professional, your resources are going to be very limited in terms of what you can do. Speaker 4:So it's, it is very important that the Cubans improve their economy and several of the measures are taken to do that or one that are opening up the idea that there can be a lot more private enterprise, you know, allow people to develop their skills. I mean right now [00:11:30] it's still kind of, it's in its emerging stages and about 500,000 people know in Cuba are self employed or have small businesses. Unfortunately the government is very tightly regulating with those businesses can be and for the most part they tend to be service businesses. And how are they approaching these people money to start businesses or are they, there are loans available, but the reality is most people that start businesses in Cuba are doing it based on having connections in the exterior family [00:12:00] members who send them capital. So there's huge flows of money going from say Miami to Havana to establish small businesses. Speaker 4:So that's, that's one area. The other area that's important is the government is really looking towards the development of cooperatives as a really key part of the economy in terms of furthering private enterprise because cooperatives are private. But at the same time, you have any cooperative serve? Well, it's interesting. Cuba [00:12:30] has a long history of agricultural cooperatives. Ever since the time of the revolution, Cuba has fostered the cooperative movement. Now people don't realize this, but about 30% of land in Cuba is still privately owned. I mean, one of the promises of the revolution was to give land to the peasants. They actually did that. And that land, the private nature, Atlanta's remain sacrosanct over time. Uh, so there's a long experience with cooperatives in agricultural sector with mixed results. There's never been a policy of cooperatives [00:13:00] in the urban sector. So for example, before every business, restaurants, beauty parlors, taxi drivers, little bus companies, all state owned and regulated. Speaker 4:Now these are becoming cooperatives and it's giving people that are members much more incentive to produce. They can earn better. And from the Cuban perspective, it's desirable because it's a more socialistic type of enterprise. What the Cubans are very, very clear about, and I have to admit, coming [00:13:30] from the u s it's almost hard to understand sometimes how totally obsessed they are about trying to not have disparities in income. So they really work hard to try to have income, you know, different levels of income equality and this is creating this new opening is creating a big problem because it is creating inequality gaps, especially against people who don't have relatives in exterior. And guess what, if you're black, if you're, you know, living in the countryside as opposed to city [00:14:00] a, if you're probably a single woman, you probably don't have the same connections that other people do. Speaker 4:So this is exacerbating we experience in the West are appearing there. Is that, yeah, I mean so lesser extent because there is a strong commitment to a social safety net. It's not the same. It's not like people got get left behind in the same way at all. But there's the potential for that and the government is very conscious of it. Is this going to happen quickly? Do you think this is happening slowly? It's going to be slow. It's going to be slow. I mean, I think [00:14:30] a lot of people would say it's going to slowly because in a way there is a race against time to make the economic improvement. And the other piece I, I forgot to mention, it's very important is while all this is very central to improving the economy and building more democracy within the economy, Cuba's not going to be successful if they can't reform their state industries. Speaker 4:No words of the big companies are staying state owned or and they're now bringing in more foreign investment on the state on companies. They are making [00:15:00] some really important reforms about the centralizing them. Whereas before everything was planned in a ministry in Havana, they're giving a lot more control [inaudible] decentralizing to those companies but also to the local governments and there they're hoping that the local governments miss admissible. Governments will work closely with the economic groups to really look out for the welfare, more of local communities. But this is in theory. I mean this is something that's just being rolled out. Now [00:15:30] the other element of course is the Cuba needs a lot more foreign investment and you know, it's going to be very interesting to see. Are we able to now? Well you think that will happen? That's the embargo act. Yeah. I mean, in other words, if you look at the reality of the u s situation, let's be real clear what's happened is President Obama under executive authority, it's pretty much going about as far as he can without having to get things approved by Congress. Speaker 4:Although with the Republican Congress, [00:16:00] they're looking for ways to sneak in ways to control control, things like approving budgets like the Senate has to approve an ambassador, that sort of thing. But essentially what's happened is there's been a normalization of diplomatic relations, which means that there can be upgrades from the current relationship. There's going to be embassies, you know, in the respective countries. President has also said he is going to make significant adjustments in trade and commerce relations. There are things that [00:16:30] he can do under presidential authority. So for example, a number of years ago, even after the embargo went into effect, the, uh, the strengthening of the embargo in the 90s, there was legislation passed by Congress, which allows the president to authorize the sale of US goods to Cuba in the areas of food and medicines. At one point, the United States was selling $700 million worth of food to Cuba a year. Speaker 4:That amount has fallen off, not because the Cubans are interested [00:17:00] in buying. It's because under the embargo, it's interesting they can sell food, but they can't offer credit. So one of the things that they're looking at now would be to make credit more accessible. It's estimated that the Cubans would probably be buying $2 billion a year of goods from United States. So in other words, creating a situation where they can be in greater debt. To us, when you talking about trade debt, you're talking about generally short term debt. It's not going to be necessarily longterm. The other thing that's happening is that the Obama saying he's, [00:17:30] he's going to allow us banks to begin relationships with Cuban banks, which right now doesn't happen. That he would expand the nature of a people to people travel to Cuba so that people, many more people could go to Cuba more easily and they could actually use their credit cards when they're cubed. Speaker 4:What you can't do today. And really importantly is one of the announcements was that the US would re-examine whether or not Cuba should be on the terrorist list. That would be, [00:18:00] and that would be really important and I would be willing to bet almost anything that's a formality. They're going to take Cuba off the terrorist list. They just didn't want to do it all in one fell swoop. They want to make it look like they're really making an effort. But you know it's, it's almost funny when the u s does report they have to, the person has to sign off I think every six months on countries if they should remain in the cherish list or not. When you read the report, this presented the president, there's nothing to even suggest that Cuba is a terrorist country and yet you have countries like North Korea, which isn't on [00:18:30] the chairs. Speaker 4:Are you involved in any of Obama's consultations about Cuba? Indirectly. I mean we have developed a number of resources around different things. We have very good contacts in Cuba with different sectors that are promoting these things. And Yeah, we have informal contacts with the State Department and other places. You've got quite a background in the Americas both for you know, social enterprise movements and various things. You also were a co founder of La Pena Cultural Center [00:19:00] here in Berkeley. Right. I want to talk about your background and how did you get so involved in the Americas and Latin America specifically? We know, it's funny. When I was um, I grew up in the east coast and when I was 15, I went on this trip organized by Minister with about 30 other teams to Mexico and I just fell in love with it and somehow I got interested. I started, I was studying Spanish and then when I was in university I studied international affairs and Latin America. Speaker 4:I got a Fulbright scholarship [00:19:30] and arrived in, in Chile one week before a young day was elected president. So my wife is from Argentina, so it's a pretty deep relationship. And how did you end up in the bay area then? Basically, I came out here on kind of a lark and just said, you know what, this is great. Okay, here, I think I'll stay in the bay area. So I've been, I've been in the Berkeley area since late 71. You were CEO of progressive asset management. Let's talk about that a little bit because it was a first at the time, 25 some years ago, right? Well, when we started progressive asset management, it was the first full [00:20:00] service brokerage firms specialize in socially responsible investing. And to be fair, I mean there were a group of us who started, it was a group of about eight or 10 people and basically if you remember me, remember Peter can meho. Speaker 4:He was instrumental and he was the first CEO of John Harrington and other person. And I was there from the beginning and uh, as an officer and as, as an investment advisor. And I became CEO later on and I was CEO for a number of years, but not as the founding CEO. But it was, I think was an important experience and one which allowed me also [00:20:30] to really see the role that business and finance can play in trying to advance progressive social ideas, social ideas. Tell me about La Pena because you know, that's kind of an institution here in Berkeley. How did that get started and why? Well, essentially, as I mentioned, I was in Chile during the yen, the government, I was there for about the first year and a half, and then when I got back here and came out to the bay area, you know, it was obvious that the United States was intervening in Chile, even before the coup. Speaker 4:They had a [00:21:00] economic blockade going against Chilean. They were obviously supporting the military and others. So a group of US began organizing around that issue. Penn years or popular throughout Latin America. Well, especially in the southern cone, Chile, Argentina, and traditionally they were gatherings at the time of harvest to celebrate the harvest and to socialize, etc. What happened was in, in Chile in the 1960s there was a new type of Pena created in urban areas, which [00:21:30] essentially Avital at the potter was one of the founders of this, of this movement, brought the new song with it. So in other words, it became politicized in which it became places that were talking about struggle, talking about the need to make significant political change. Now in Chile, one of the leading proponents of that really love beloved person who was part of the Pena [inaudible] was a folk singer named Victor Hotter, who has became internationally famous. Speaker 4:He was killed by [00:22:00] the junta at the time of the coup. Just coincidentally, I got to meet him and we became friends. So I did know him during my time and chill. I would go to his house for dinner and that sort of thing. And we were in communication before the coke. So at the time of the coup, of course, all of our work escalated. As you know, the dreadful events became clear. So we really started organizing our work here in the bay area, pretty much through Chile. Solidarity work through a group called non-intervention in Chile, of which I was the first coordinator, [00:22:30] but we decided that if we could open a place like opinion that could provide cultural entertainment, political discussion, food and drink, that would be a great way of trying to educate people about the struggle really not only in Chile but worldwide about what imperialism was all about. Speaker 4:So as kind of our response, some of you may remember that the coup and Chili took place on September 11th minutes, a deadly day apparently. So we organize, we incorporated [00:23:00] La Pena on September 11th, 1974 the year after the coup as a sort of symbol of our resistance against it. And at that time there were very future land in this area that were involved. Over the next couple of years there began to come a small stream of Chilean refugees who had been ex political prisoners, tortured, et cetera. That became kind of a social base also of La Pena. Fortunately, we were able to provide work for a number of them. And you know, it really consolidated a relationship [00:23:30] between the bay area and the Chilean community, which is something, of course we're all very proud of and continues to this day. So if I was going to ask you what your involvement is today? Well, no. Speaker 4:Right now I'm actually the treasurer. I've come and gone at at different times. We're in a moment where we're celebrating our 40th anniversary. What are they seeking to accomplish now? We've just gone through, I would say a a a needed generational transformation that up until the last couple of years, you know, most of us, most of the people involved were, you know, [00:24:00] people who'd grown up in the sixties or seventies right now we have a wonderful new executive director, Kristen [inaudible], and a young staff, probably the average age is in their low thirties so we're sort of in the process of redefining what's relevant today, 40 years later now there's a strong, strong tradition around Latin America and that will continue. There's a great deal of interest. Still a lot going. Oh yeah, no, there's all, there's always things going on. You. Latin America will always remain a focus, but we've got to look at [00:24:30] what are, what are the crucial issues of the day. Speaker 4:Not only that, but for those of you in Berkeley who have been around La Pena for a while, I think you'll recognize that La Pena has always been open to oppress people in its history. You know, people don't, don't know this, but even before we opened, when we first opened back in 75 a couple of the groups that use La Penny very regularly where one was the, I'm getting these students in United States who were studying here. You know, this is before the war ended in Vietnam. It ended, [00:25:00] you know, in in 75 sanctuary for a, yeah, it was the place where their reign students, men who were fighting against the Shah of Iran. It became really important. Obviously all those years and the struggle is Chile, but also during the wars, the civil wars in Central America, revolutionary wars and Bla Penny was a real center of activity. It has been a place that I think a lot of people have always felt comfortable. Speaker 4:Um, gays and lesbians have always felt like Pena was open to them. Uh, members of the black community [00:25:30] have felt that way. It's Kinda been a space that I hope has really promoted this idea that we're all here together living and struggling for a better world. So I think each generation has to take on what are the struggles of this time. If I have one message that I'd like to shoot out there, I think it's the following and that is kind of what I was saying before, that we're all looking for alternative economies that can work and that can provide good standards for human beings that [00:26:00] aren't just all about profit for large corporations. Right? This is being approached in different ways in different places. Cuba's particularly interesting because Cuba's coming at it from a socialist point of view, whereas the rest of us are coming at it from a capitalist point of view. Speaker 4:But there's actually a number of things that we share in common. I think it's really important that we hear in the states. Take a better look at what's going on at other places around the world because we tend to be little provincial here and and sort of us centric [00:26:30] where we think everything is happening here. And in reality there is much more going on in other places and trying to do some of these things that is happening here. From my perspective, Latin America has really been a leader in this. If you look at what's going on in countries like Ecuador, Brazil, we'll Livia some of the experiments going on in Venezuela. It's kind of interesting, but it's not only in those countries you have it in Europe. I mean when you have severe economic crisis, [00:27:00] it kind of brings out new inventions and new ideas. Speaker 4:So innovation. So you see it a lot in Spain, in France and in Europe. There is a world movement. It's called, I mean there's different names for it, but it's called social and solidarity economy. And we have some of it here. I've been amazed. One of the countries is leading the charge right now is South Korea. There's really a vibrant alternative economy movement in South Korea. But the point I want to make is I think we need to be more engaged with them. Another, another thing that I learned [00:27:30] on this voyage is Canada, for example, not all of Canada, Quebec, they haven't thriving social and solidarity economy. Something like 10 to 15% of the economy is made up of, we would call kind of alternatives that are much more sensitive towards the needs of people. So I think it's really important for us to get engaged in that participation of a social enterprise and social enterprise. Yeah, that's part of what I'm trying to do in, in, in the work I'm doing. Speaker 1:Well. Speaking of engagement, how would a listener who is interested in what you're doing get ahold of you [00:28:00] and do you have a website? Right. Speaker 4:Well, I think the best way is to look at my website and that's www, sol, s o l economics.com there's lots of information about Cuba. I mean, the biggest focus is on the work with Cuba, but I also try to promote other ideas about understanding what's going on internationally. So you can actually learn a lot about some of the other movements that are happening internationally. Uh, interestingly, one organization is becoming a stronger, stronger [00:28:30] proponent of social solidarity economy is United Nations and they're doing some really interesting things. That's great. So Eric, when are you going to Cuba next? For the next month or so? I tend to go three or four times a year. Yeah. And I certainly encourage people to go to Cuba to see it, to get a feel for it because it is really, I mean every place is unique, but Cuba is really unique in a sense. It's so different from other places and there's still such a sense of community one and the other hand historically so [00:29:00] fascinating because you still are back in the sort of 50s and 60s. Speaker 1:It's a time capsule time capsule. Okay. Well Eric, thank you for being on a program. Great. Well thank you. Speaker 2:Right. Speaker 1:You've been listening to method to the madness, [00:29:30] a biweekly public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. If you have questions or comments about this show, go to the calyx and find method to the madness. Drop us an email. Tune in again in two weeks. At the same time, have a great weekend. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code) Discussion 01:47 - Static sites vs Wordpress Jekyll 03:33 - Important parts of a Website Placeholder sites Contact information 04:27 - Getting contacted Wufoo 07:43 - Blog Posts theAdmin.org 08:45 - Portfolios Eric's Portfolio Landing Pages 11:05 - Testimonials 11:55 - Mailing Lists/Newsletters Trustbuilding Waiting list of clients 14:13 - Landing Pages Small pages Guide people to their goal 16:33 - Social Media 17:22 - Logos LogoWorks 19:22 - Static Site Generators 21:07 - What do you want people to do when they visit your site? Welcome Gate: LeadBrite Contact Me littlestreamsoftware.com (Eric) intentionalexcellence.net (Chuck) 23:40 - Products/eBooks 25:49 - Landing Pages Headline Subheadline Call to action 29:23 - A/B Testing for Wordpress Optimizely 30:33 - Analytics 31:23 - About Pages Use “I” not “We” 34:07 - SEO 36:35 - Project Inclusion in Portfolios Picks Arkon Portable Fold-Up Stand (Eric) Oversized Low-Profile Creeper (Chuck) Floor Jack With Rapid Pump (2.5 Ton) (Chuck) Transcript [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you'll get 50% off when it's released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 39 of the Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week we're going to be talking about "What Should Be On My Website". And this was kind of my idea as far as something that I wanted to do mainly because I've been playing with the idea of putting together a website for my freelancing business. It's kind of shocking, I think. To think that I've been doing this for two and a half years and still don't have a really functional website for my business. But at the same time, I mean I have some ideas of things that I think should be on there, and I know Eric has been doing this for a while and has a website that does bring him business. So I thought we could just jump in and talk about some of the things that we think should be there or some of the things that people put on there that maybe they "un" put on there or maybe don't give them as much of a win as they think it gives them. So Eric, I'm a little curious before we start talking about what's on the website, is your website built on like WordPress or anything? Or is it something you built on Rails? ERIC: Yeah so right now I was just using WordPress. Let's say I started with a static site, built a custom Ruby, or actually Rails CMS, scrapped to because I'd rather work on client projects or paid projects than to maintain my own CMS system. And I jumped around to just different stack side generators, but I ended up going back to WordPress just because it worked, it's functional, and I can get basically all the features I needed without having to tip-down and write code and maintain all the code for it. So yeah right now, it's for now on WordPress and I got a custom VPS built for it. So it's all of my sites are actually hosted on a private server, it's not like a shared host or anything. CHUCK: Yeah that makes sense.

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code) Discussion 01:47 - Static sites vs Wordpress Jekyll 03:33 - Important parts of a Website Placeholder sites Contact information 04:27 - Getting contacted Wufoo 07:43 - Blog Posts theAdmin.org 08:45 - Portfolios Eric’s Portfolio Landing Pages 11:05 - Testimonials 11:55 - Mailing Lists/Newsletters Trustbuilding Waiting list of clients 14:13 - Landing Pages Small pages Guide people to their goal 16:33 - Social Media 17:22 - Logos LogoWorks 19:22 - Static Site Generators 21:07 - What do you want people to do when they visit your site? Welcome Gate: LeadBrite Contact Me littlestreamsoftware.com (Eric) intentionalexcellence.net (Chuck) 23:40 - Products/eBooks 25:49 - Landing Pages Headline Subheadline Call to action 29:23 - A/B Testing for Wordpress Optimizely 30:33 - Analytics 31:23 - About Pages Use “I” not “We” 34:07 - SEO 36:35 - Project Inclusion in Portfolios Picks Arkon Portable Fold-Up Stand (Eric) Oversized Low-Profile Creeper (Chuck) Floor Jack With Rapid Pump (2.5 Ton) (Chuck) Transcript [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 39 of the Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week we're going to be talking about "What Should Be On My Website". And this was kind of my idea as far as something that I wanted to do mainly because I've been playing with the idea of putting together a website for my freelancing business. It's kind of shocking, I think. To think that I've been doing this for two and a half years and still don't have a really functional website for my business. But at the same time, I mean I have some ideas of things that I think should be on there, and I know Eric has been doing this for a while and has a website that does bring him business. So I thought we could just jump in and talk about some of the things that we think should be there or some of the things that people put on there that maybe they "un" put on there or maybe don't give them as much of a win as they think it gives them. So Eric, I'm a little curious before we start talking about what's on the website, is your website built on like WordPress or anything? Or is it something you built on Rails? ERIC: Yeah so right now I was just using WordPress. Let's say I started with a static site, built a custom Ruby, or actually Rails CMS, scrapped to because I'd rather work on client projects or paid projects than to maintain my own CMS system. And I jumped around to just different stack side generators, but I ended up going back to WordPress just because it worked, it's functional, and I can get basically all the features I needed without having to tip-down and write code and maintain all the code for it. So yeah right now, it's for now on WordPress and I got a custom VPS built for it. So it's all of my sites are actually hosted on a private server, it's not like a shared host or anything. CHUCK: Yeah that makes sense.

How can rugby union secure a sustainable future in Australia's crowded sports market? We don't know! So Eric decided to ask recently retired Rebel and ex-Wallaby Adam Freier instead. We dare you to listen and try not to get excited about the 2013 Super Rugby season.Sports Polygamy Podcast 30_11_2012 Subscribe to this podcast on iTunesFollow this podcast on Facebook