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Immunotherapy is transforming the treatment landscape for triple-negative breast cancer. Through patient cases, Drs. Ruth O'Regan (medical oncologist, University of Rochester) and Jacob Kettle (Pharmacist, University of Missouri) discuss the application of novel treatment options. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts | Additional resources: elearning.asco.org | Contact Us Air Date: 8/18/2021   TRANSCRIPT [MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. This is not a substitute for medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. RUTH O'REGAN: Hello and welcome to ASCO's Education Podcast episode, focused on new therapies for triple negative breast cancer. My name is Ruth O'Regan. I'm a medical oncologist and the Chair of Medicine at the University of Rochester. JACOB KETTLE: And I'm Dr. Jacob Kettle. I'm an oncology clinical pharmacy specialist and pharmacy manager at University of Missouri Health Care's Ellis Fischel Cancer Center. We'll start our discussion today with a patient case. So let's say we have a 64-year-old female diagnosed with stage two triple-negative breast cancer three years ago. She received neoadjuvant AC-T and then underwent mastectomy, followed by adjuvant capecitabine. One year after completing therapy, she presented with new neck masts. Imaging demonstrated cervical nodes, probable liver metastases, and lymph node biopsy confirmed suspicion of recurrence, and now metastatic triple-negative breast cancer that is PDL1 positive. So Dr. Regan, what, in this patient, would you be considering for therapy for her. RUTH O'REGAN: Yeah, so I think unfortunately this is a pretty typical history of a patient with triple-negative breast cancer having this recurrence within two to three years of diagnosis. So her cancer is PDL1 positive, so obviously that would mean that we would consider immunotherapy for this patient. And there are two options with regard to this. We can either use atezolizumab or pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy, which could be paclitaxel, nab-paclitaxel, or, indeed, gemcitabine and carboplatin. So just to very briefly review the trials-- so the IMpassion 130 trial randomized patients in the first-line setting with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer to nab-paclitaxel weekly with or without atezolizumab, and it showed a benefit and progression-free survival of about two months in patients whose cancers were PDL1 positive, and also an overall survival advantage that was quite meaningful at about seven months in the patients who received the immunotherapy plus nab-paclitaxel compared to the control arm. So that obviously would be a very reasonable option for this patient. The KEYNOTE-355 trial evaluated chemotherapy, which could be paclitaxel, nab-paclitaxel gemcitabine, carboplatin, with or without pembrolizumab, again in the first-line setting for metastatic triple-negative breast cancer. And so really, very similar results to the IMpassion study with about a two month improvement in progression-free survival in patients whose cancers were PDL1 positive. What we'll talk about later on is how we define PDL1 positivity in this patient population. JACOB KETTLE: Yeah, I think that's an important distinction. RUTH O'REGAN: Yeah, I think we can talk about that, because I think most of us now are actually doing both of the assays. But on the face of it, in somebody who has a cancer that's PDL1 positive, I'm not sure that there's a huge difference. Obviously you can't do cross-trial comparisons. I tend to use atezolizumab plus nab-paclitaxel because that was the first one that was approved. But I also think, in a patient who's had a recent taxane, using pembrolizumab plus gem/carbo would also be very reasonable. The other trial I was just going to mention was the IMpassion 131 trial. JACOB KETTLE: Yeah, absolutely. It's a game changer. RUTH O'REGAN: It really is, because in that study they use paclitaxel with or without atezolizumab and actually didn't see an advantage for the immunotherapy, even in patients with PDL1 positive cancers. We really don't know why that is, but it's definitely an interesting finding. JACOB KETTLE: I mean, I think that really speaks to the importance of sticking with what we know from the trials. RUTH O'REGAN: Absolutely JACOB KETTLE: I think there's a tendency, especially with pembro's FDA approval, says chemo. Just-- that's it, chemo. But the trial, as you mentioned, limits it to paclitaxel, nab-paclitaxel, or the combination of carbo and gemcitabine, but really to extrapolate that to other chemo regimens, other drugs, I think that's a little bit of a stretch. Because, again, we saw an IMpassion 131, maybe it's not, across the board, efficacious. There may be some subtle differences there. I'm glad you brought that up, because I think that's an important distinction. RUTH O'REGAN: It's all about following the data. I think that's a key thing. So Jake, just in your role as a pharmacist, I think will be very interesting for you to talk a little bit about toxicity of these agents, and if there's any difference in the safety profile between these agents. JACOB KETTLE: Yeah, I think what we've seen is pretty consistent as really all our experiences. We've started combining immunotherapy with chemotherapies that really it's not this new emergence of unexpected toxicity or an unacceptable level of toxicity. It's just what we would expect with chemotherapy agents and what we've already known with immune therapy agents. So there's nothing new and emergent or difficult to deal with. And from the IO toxicity profile, it's all the same stuff we're used to. Derm toxicities, GI, pulmonary, endocrinopathies for the most part. We are comparing to PD1 inhibitor in pembrolizumab to PDL1 inhibitor in atezolizumab, so maybe there are some subtle differences. I think some of the things I've read have suggested maybe endocrinopathies are potentially more likely with PD 1 inhibitors. But these are all subtle things, very nuanced-- I don't think anything that would really dictate a difference in choice of therapy. So I think from the side effect profile, fairly interchangeable, at least from the immunotherapy perspective. Obviously, we're talking about the biggest difference is the chemo backbone, and that's going to be a key driver in what regimen you pick. Again atezolizumab-- very limited to the nab-paclitaxel backbone, which is great drug. Like you said, it was the first out. And I think another important caveat is that is the only trial in this space where we have overall survival data. We don't see that yet in KEYNOTE-355. Although, as you pointed out, PFS looks very similar between the two. So we anticipate-- don't extrapolate too much, but anticipate those are, efficacy-wise, pretty interchangeable. But the chemo backbone-- big difference between the two. Again, you have a little bit of flexibility of pembrolizumab to use paclitaxel, nab-paclitaxel. Or I think, again, for those patients that have recently exposed to paclitaxel-- it kind of fits with our case. This patient-- relatively early relapse, pretty early recently exposed to taxanes in the neoadjuvant or adjuvant space, you may want to use a different regimen. Carboplatin and gemcitabine-- a great commonly used triple-negative backbone, especially again, if you have those folks with more disease burden, visceral disease, where you want to get that bigger punch up front. I think that's another potential role there. But one other thing is to talk about logistics. These kind of regimens are very different because of how the immunotherapy is dosed. So when we use atezolizumab with nab-paclitaxel, that aligns very nicely with a 28-day cycle. Atezolizumab on day 1 and 15, nab-paclitaxel on day 1, 8, and 15. An off day at 22 that flows really nicely. Pembrolizumab, when you combine it with carbo and gemcitabine, that aligns really nicely with the 21-day cycle. Again, pembrolizumab on day 1, carbo, gem, day 1 and 8 and off day of 15. The regimen that gets a little funky, for lack of a better word, is when you try to combine pembrolizumab with the taxane, because the taxanes kind of line up on a 28-day cycle, days 1, 8, and 15. And pembrolizumab is a 21-day cycle. So that could become a little bit cumbersome to navigate those waters and get those doses the right days. So you can just, from a logistical perspective, I think there's some differences there. And the challenge really is, how do we kind of get this nice balance of finding the treatment regimen that's compatible with the patient's lifestyle, the monitoring frequency, and just your clinical operations to make sure all those things align? And we do want to have some flexibility. I think that's one of the great gifts in modern oncology, is we have all these good choices, but both are really important. You also want to have some consistency. So anyway, that's a really long-winded answer to side effects. I don't think there's much difference, in terms of side effects. RUTH O'REGAN: I think your point is very important. Because this is all about the patient, of course. Because we've got metastatic triple negative breast cancer. So I think making it as painless as possible for them to come in, as far as their scheduling, I think, obviously, is very important. Now, I think one of the issues with the immunotherapy is that I don't think we got great biomarkers. So we use PD-L1, but really, it's imperfect. And as we kind of alluded to earlier in the IMPASSION study, they used PD-L1 on the immune cells as a marker, and about 40% of the cancers in that study were determined to be positive. And that's where the benefit was seen. In contrast, in the KEYNOTE study, they used what I think a lot of, outside the breast cancer world, is being used a lot, is this CPS, or Combined Positive Score, that basically looks at the PD-L1 positive tumor cells and immune cells and basically looks at them compared to the overall number of tumor cells. So at this point, we're kind of in a situation where we have to kind of check for both. The interesting thing that's been shown is that there's not complete overlap. It's only about 75%. So it is possible that you could have a cancer that was PD-L1 positive by one of the assays, but not by the other. And I guess that might help us decide which agent to use, although I've never seen that myself in my practice. But I don't know what your experience with that is. It would be nice to have a better biomarker, I think. JACOB KETTLE: Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Because I would be in the same boat. I haven't seen a case, but obviously it's possible to have some discordance. And we're looking at PD-L1 expression, whether you're looking at the tumor, or you're looking at expression in a combined positive score, regardless of the assay, it's on a scale. It's not a yes or no question. And little, subtle differences can be the make or break between determining whether someone's PD-L1 positive. I've heard-- and I don't want to comment too much-- but there could be discordance whether you're testing archived tissue, whether you're testing metastatic tissue, maybe some differences between what site the metastatic disease was found in. Did you find it in the liver? Did you do the biopsy from the lymph node? Again, that all speaks, it goes back to the imperfection of PD-L1 as a biomarker. It's just kind of this dynamically unstable marker that's not as predictable and not as viable as some of the other biomarkers we use. And we want to take advantage of it as much as we can, and find as many unique treatment options for patients, but also don't want to leave-- we don't want to leave anything on the table. RUTH O'REGAN: And I think the other interesting thing that we'll talk about later is that PD-L1 doesn't appear to be a biomarker at all in the earlier stage setting, which is, I think, very interesting. I think one of the things that's worth mentioning is that, of course, some patients do incredibly well with immunotherapy and have very, very prolonged responses. So trying to work out who those patients are, I think, would be just incredibly valuable. I have a couple of patients that actually came off the immunotherapies because of immune toxicity, but have remained, really, in remission for years after that, even though they actually weren't even receiving the drug. So it's really fascinating. I think the other thing, though, is unfortunately, the majority of patients do not have cancers that are PD-L1 positive. And I guess the question is, what would we do for those patients? And the only really standard is chemotherapy. And I guess I'd be interested in your thoughts on, is there a preference first-line chemotherapy that would be used in your practice, or what are your thoughts on that? JACOB KETTLE: I'd more defer to you on answering that. As far as our practice, you kind of have the whole mix of what you can pick from. You've got taxanes. You've got anthracyclines. You've got gemcitabines. We've got capecitabines of the world. Eribulin is a fantastic drug. Again, a lot of that goes back to what's best for the patient. And I think that is, again, the miracle. It's a challenge, because we all of a sudden have all these options, but it's the great blessing in practicing in oncology today, is there is this wealth of options, and we have the potential to really guide therapy to what's preferential to the patient. RUTH O'REGAN: Yeah, I completely agree with that. And my thought always has been-- and I think this is very much in keeping with the NCCN guidelines-- is that there isn't a huge difference, in terms of efficacy. So I actually quite often use capecitabine in these patients, even though there was some data at one point saying that maybe capecitabine wasn't as effective in ER-negative breast cancer. I think we know that's not true in actual fact. So I think that's a great option. If they haven't had a taxane, either paclitaxel or nab-paclitaxel is a good option. And then I think if somebody's got a large burden of disease, using a doublet like gemcitabine and carboplatin is totally reasonable, as well. Obviously, thinking about clinical trials, and particularly once you get past the first line setting for these patients is very important. And I think one of the complexities about triple-negative breast cancer is the fact that there's at least four different subtypes that probably do require slightly different approaches. But at this point, that's not really standard of care. We kind of just manage them all the same way. But I think that's what's kind of on the horizon, as far as selecting at the best option for patients. I think one very interesting subset is the subset that expresses androgen receptor, and which I think initially, we were super excited about. And I still think it's very interesting, but so far the data looking at antiandrogens in these cancers has not been that impressive, although there are some patients that benefit. JACOB KETTLE: Well, I do think, too, the immunotherapy story, we kind of got talking about biomarkers. Even if you're not PD-L1 positive, even if the tumor doesn't express PD-L1, that's not necessarily the end of the role of immunotherapy in breast cancer. KEYNOTE 119 showed that pembrolizumab monotherapy later on didn't work, but we still need to be assessing for tumor mutation burden, microsatellite instability or mismatch repair. Those are other avenues by which we do have some good data to support that there is a role for immunotherapy in breast cancer, these triple-negative breast cancer patients. Like you said, only about 40% are going to be PD-L1 positive. So that leaves 60%, more than half the pie, that are going to not have a route for immunotherapy. So I do think it's important that we always explore tumor mutation burden and microsatellite instability. Because again-- and you've alluded to this-- the great promise of immunotherapy is this potential for really long, sustained responses. And until we have really good predictive tools to find exactly what patients are going to be that, I think we should be striving to at least offer that glimmer of hope, that potential opportunity to as many patients as we can. But I think it's another important part of breast cancer is that, again, immunotherapy doesn't start with PD-L1. That's just a sliver of the useful biomarkers here. RUTH O'REGAN: I completely agree with that. I think for our patients, it's important to consider sending tumor genomics, for sure, for exactly the reason that you said. I'm obviously also doing genetic testing to see if they've got a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation, or indeed a PALB2 mutation. Now there's some data suggesting that PARP inhibitors might actually be effective with those germline mutations as well. So I think definitely, sending that off makes sense. Unfortunately, as we know, in triple negative breast cancer, we don't very often see actionable mutations. We see them, I think, more commonly in ER-positive breast cancers. But certainly we're ascending, I would think. JACOB KETTLE: Excellent. I think that was a great discussion. Let's shift gears and do a second case and talk a little bit about this emergence of immunotherapy in the upfront setting, in the neoadjuvant setting. We'll talk about that a little bit, and then what are some additional later-line options? So we'll do our second case. This will be a 45-year-old female presents with relapsed/refractory triple-negative breast cancer, metastatic disease in the bones and liver. Her initial therapy consisted of neoadjuvant chemotherapy combined with immunotherapy. And that would be what was discussed in the KEYNOTE 522 trial. So before talking about choice of therapy for this patient, let's dive in a little bit about and talk about KEYNOTE 522. What are your thoughts of up-front immunotherapy in triple-negative disease? RUTH O'REGAN: So KEYNOTE 522 took patients with earlier stage triple-negative breast cancer and basically randomized into the standard anthracycline taxane-based chemotherapy with or without pembrolizumab, and actually showed pretty impressive pathologic complete response rate in the immunotherapy arm. It's about 65%, and it was quite a bit higher than the control arm, where it was about 50% or so. And they actually have some data as well looking at event-free survival showing a benefit for the addition of pembrolizumab. It's not FDA approved yet. And obviously, you have to take into account toxicity, which I'd certainly like to get your thoughts on. But I think we know that pathologic complete response is very important, a prognostic factor in triple-negative breast cancer, at least in most subtypes. So getting a pathologic complete response rate that high, I think, is very important. And I have to say, I tend to reserve this approach for patients who have clinically node-positive breast cancers or locally-advanced breast cancers. Because-- I should have said this earlier-- because in KEYNOTE 522, all the patients got carboplatin as well. And that's one of the problems, I think, because it's hard to add carboplatin with paclitaxel. Just to mention that we also, at ASCO, just heard a follow-up of the GeparNuevo study that looked at durvalumab with a slight, somewhat similar anthracycline taxane-based regimen. They saw a higher pathologic complete response rate in the durvalumab arm. But actually, we're showing data, now, on longer-term outcomes, and again showing a benefit for the immunotherapy. So it is interesting. I think you're always weighing up longer-term toxicities with the efficacy seen here. But I think with a pathologic complete response rate that high, I think in a patient who has more higher-stage triple-negative breast cancer, I would consider adding pembrolizumab for that patient in this setting. But I guess I'd like to hear your thoughts on weighing up toxicity. It's a little bit different in this scenario versus the metastatic setting, I think. JACOB KETTLE: I completely agree with you. That PCR rate is supremely promising. Obviously, we need time for the data to mature. But I think there's definitely a subset of patients that I think we're going to find this, hopefully, to be very beneficial. And triple-negative disease is problematic, so any additional tool is useful. But again, it's a very intense chemotherapy backbone. Four cycles of carbo-paclitaxel, and then four cycles of an anthracycline and cyclophosphamide base with pembrolizumab throughout the whole cycle, that's not going to be something that all patients are going to be able to tolerate. So again, as the data matures, my hope is that we can really narrow in on the subset of patients that this is most likely to really deliver a lot of benefit to. And I've probably said this three or four times already, but I really didn't feel like this is the great promise. But again, the great challenge of oncology practice today is, we're going to end up with four or five different great options for up-front therapy in neoadjuvant or adjuvant treatment, and it's really going to be up to us to really tailor therapy and find this ideal balance of risk and benefit ratio to meet patients' needs, and what they value. And so some patients may have, they want to avoid the severe toxicities at all costs. And that's maybe how we pursue, is to get the best benefit with that in mind. And then you'll have patients that will say, I'll go through anything. I want my risk of relapse be absolutely as low as possible, and I'll take all the chemo you're willing to throw. And trying to figure out how to walk that line, I think, is our challenge. So with that in mind, remember back to our case, our second case here, we're going to assume that this patient's relapsed after immunotherapy in the front line. And I think that is another thing we'll explore, as the years go by, is learning, what do we do when we start seeing these therapies early in treatment, whether it's breast cancer or other tumor types? But what would your approach be, if they did relapse after initial immunotherapy? RUTH O'REGAN: Well, I think this is a data-free area. And I should have said when I was talking about the earlier phase studies that PD-L1 is not a biomarker in that scenario. So if we assume this patient has PD-L1 positive cancer, I guess it would really depend on how long it was since she got the neoadjuvant chemotherapy. But I could envision if she was a couple of years out, I might think about rechallenging her, particularly with a different PD-L1 or checkpoint inhibitor. But I think that's not the likely scenario, because most of these patients will have pretty high-stage disease when they present, and they probably relapse pretty quickly. So I guess we're kind of back to the case we talked about earlier, where you're really looking at the different chemotherapy options. So I think there is a potential for rechallenging with immunotherapy. I don't know-- and you may know this-- if there's any data outside of breast cancer, like lung cancer, where this has been done, for example. I'm just not aware of that data. JACOB KETTLE: Yeah. I'm not aware of any really solid evidence. I think you can find anecdotal reports or some retrospective studies that do suggest maybe it's beneficial. And I think, especially like you mentioned, for someone with a nice long response, good, strong tolerability, all those kind of things, may be worth considering. But again, the challenge with immunotherapy, it doesn't work quickly. So you always have that component. And like you said, these are aggressive, rapid relapses. That may not be something you can lean on too heavily. So I think it all speaks back to, we're very confident in pathological complete response as a very strong surrogate marker for long-term benefit. But again, we're using it in a slightly new space. And until that data is very mature, and we have the overall survival data, what we don't know is, how does this all translate to the whole picture for the patient? If we burn out of immunotherapy up front, I don't know. Does that mean it's not useful, and we've lost lines of therapy in the relapse/refractory setting? I don't know. Those are some of the big questions we have. RUTH O'REGAN: And I think it also speaks to what you said earlier, that the whole immuno milieu of the cancer may change, depending on what setting you're looking at. So there could be very good rationale for rechallenging with immunotherapy. But again, I think this is an area where we really would need some data for sure. JACOB KETTLE: Yeah, absolutely. Very tricky. So let's play out the scenario just a little bit more. Let's say we started carboplatin and gemcitabine, for instance, in this patient. She got about nine months of therapy, and then progressed again. What other, maybe, newer options are lingering out there for sort of later-line triple-negative metastatic disease? RUTH O'REGAN: So unfortunately, of course, that's typically what you see. They usually, patients usuallt experience disease progression within six to nine months. And so obviously, alternative chemo options would be on the table, a taxane, if she hasn't had one recently, capecitabine, if she hasn't had that. However, I think for a patient like this, I would strongly consider sacituzumab, which is a relatively new antibody drug conjugate that targets Trop-2. The data from the ASCENT study, which looked at patients with triple-negative breast cancer who'd had at least two prior lines of treatment were randomized to sacituzumab or to physician's choice of chemotherapy, and the data was pretty striking. And the progression-free survival, it was less than two months in the control arm, versus six months in the sacituzumab arm. But the overall survival was doubled from six months to 12 months by using sacituzumab. So that's pretty impressive in this scenario. And it appears that, although most triple-negative breast cancers do express Trop-2, there doesn't appear to be a definitive correlation between Trop-2 expression and benefit from this drug. So there appears to be some kind of a bystander effect from this antibody drug conjugate. I think it's a really interesting drug, and maybe you can talk a little bit about the tolerability of it. JACOB KETTLE: Yeah. So again, like you said, it's a Trop-2 target. That's the antibody component. And Trop-2 is a transmembrane glycoprotein. It's upregulated in a lot of tumor types. So this is not something that you necessarily would do additional testing for. It's not unique to breast cancer. And sacituzumab-govitecan has an approval now in bladder cancer as well. So I think we're going to start seeing more emergence and utilization of Trop-2. And then like you said, it's kind of an enriching biomarker. You might see a slightly higher response rate for those overexpressors. But again, low expressors still respond. But I think when it comes to the side effect profile-wise, it was all driven by the chemo payload. And that's Govitecan, or SN-38. This is the active metabolite of irinotecan. And so a couple of things make this really exciting to utilize in breast cancer. One is, we're all probably fairly familiar with managing the common side effects of irinotecan, predominantly neutropenia and diarrhea. So we don't have to relearn or come up with a new kind of management profile, side effect-wise. But I think part of why we see such a robust response is this is a mechanism of action. Govitecan, it's a topoisomerase inhibitor that almost, I'd say, the vast, vast majority of breast cancer patients have not been exposed to that mechanism at any point in their treatment journey. So you take advantage of that new option. And I think, all things considered, this is why we've seen this kind of recent-- it's not brand new technology-- but we've seen this recent emergence of a lot of antibody-derived conjugates. Because it really does allow you to take advantage of antineoplastic agents that may otherwise be too toxic, but we find a way to deliver it in a very sophisticated, precise manner. And by doing so, again, we're able to take advantage of chemotherapeutic agents that otherwise would be on the shelf. But we can deliver it in a very precise way. And so that's a really exciting piece of the promise for this drug. And again, just to ask you, do you any anecdotal experience or insights with the drug? RUTH O'REGAN: Yeah. I've used it a little bit. I actually started a patient on it today. But overall, I think it's well tolerated. It's unfortunate it causes alopecia, obviously. But I think most patients with the results of the ASCENT trial, they're OK with that, I think. And the tolerability seems to be very reasonable. JACOB KETTLE: I mean, a six-month OS improvement at this stage of the game is pretty clinically meaningful. RUTH O'REGAN: I don't think we've really seen that before, actually, and so it definitely is. I agree with you completely. I think antibody drug conjugates are really the way forward, because they're so much more tailored to the cancer than regular chemotherapy. The other drug, I think, that will be interesting to see in triple-negative breast cancer is trastuzumab-deruxtecan, which obviously is approved for HER2-positive breast cancer, but again, also has a bystander effect. And there's some data from one of the DESTINY studies basically showing activity in cancers that have low expression of HER2. So I think that's going to be very exciting. So I think there's a lot of exciting things happening in triple-negative breast cancer. There's a lot that I think we have to learn. I mean, biomarkers are going to be very important, particularly for immunotherapy. Do you have any other thoughts on other agents you're excited about in this setting? JACOB KETTLE: I'm always fascinated by precision oncology. And like you said, I haven't really found a lot of great targets for triple-negative breast cancer. It's tended to hold out its negativity. It doesn't have-- not as if we're finding a bunch of things. So I hold out hope, just that we come across a good marker, something else targetable for these folks. I share with you the enthusiasm about trastuzumab-deruxtecan, and how it might play a role in HER2 low. Interestingly enough, that's also a topoisomerase inhibitor type, very similar backbone, chemo-wise. But also just watching the IO story continue to play out, I think it was interesting just that breast cancer, really, especially the most common cancers, was really one of the last disease states to really see indications for immunotherapy. So just excited to see that story continue to unfold. And hopeful, always remain hopeful that we continue to push the needle forward, bit by bit, day by day. RUTH O'REGAN: I completely agree, and that was a great discussion. So that's all we have for today. I want to thank you, Dr. Kettle, for a great conversation. And thank you so much to all our listeners tuning into this episode of the ASCO Education Podcast. SPEAKER: Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the ASCO eLearning Weekly Podcast. To make us part of your weekly routine, click Subscribe. Let us know what you think by leaving a review. For more information, visit the comprehensive e-learning center at elearning.asco.org.

Hi, I'm Tom Rhoads, CEO of Spencer Health Solutions. Today we have invited Jake LaPorte co-founder and global head of The BIOME by Novartis to return for a second conversation on the People Always, Patients Sometimes podcast. On the previous episode, Jake spoke about The BIOME by Novartis and digital health innovation in clinical trials today, Jake shares his thoughts with our host Janet Kennedy on COVID-19 innovation, digital health, and more. I hope you enjoy their conversation on People Always, Patient Sometimes. Janet Kennedy (00:36): Hi, my name's Janet Kennedy and I am your host for People Always, Patients Sometimes, a production of Spencer Health Solutions. Today we have invited Jake LaPorte to join us again for part two of a podcast episode, where we are discussing The BIOME by Novartis as well as patient centricity in clinical trials. Jake, welcome back to the podcast. Jake LaPorte (00:57): Thank you, Janet. It's great to be back. Janet Kennedy (01:00): So for the folks that might not have caught the previous episode, can you give us your elevator pitch on what The BIOME project is? Jake LaPorte (01:08): I'll do my best. So the thesis behind The BIOME is that Novartis has made a big commitment to become a company powered by data and digital, but yet we're not digitally native. So we almost always rely on an external partner to some extent, to help us build digital solutions. And we recognize we need to get a lot better at partnering with companies in the digital and tech ecosystems. And so The BIOME was developed to break down the natural friction that exists between a large multinational pharmaceutical company and the data and tech ecosystems and help us partner with those companies more effectively to develop digital health solutions that have an impact on patient's lives. Janet Kennedy (01:54): You know, there are a lot - like a lot - of digital tools out there. How do you even sift through and figure out who is a good potential partner? Jake LaPorte (02:04): Yeah, that's a great question, Janet. And that's frankly, what our process is all about, to be honest, because what is not often acknowledged in digital health is there's a scarcity of evidence that is available to understand whether a specific digital solution is going to be scalable if that's even feasible. And that it's going to have a meaningful impact if it is scaled. And so The BIOME is really an evidence generating mechanism so that we can make better more data-driven decisions about how we allocate our resources within Novartis to make sure that we're allocating more resources to those things that are more likely to be successful and have an impact on patient's lives. So for instance, we're doing a lot of work to figure out how we can sift through this complex ecosystem more effectively and more systematically to even surface the right partners. We're doing a lot of work to think about how then we onboard those partners more quickly and how we do what I call healthy proof of concept work with them. So we're really thinking about what are the real meaningful hypotheses, the questions that we really need to answer so that we can get more comfortable, that we need to put more resource behind certain companies and solutions in order to scale them a lot of that discipline. And I think this is true of most of the industry did not exist in the digital space. And frankly, it was a paradox, right? Because we have a very healthy innovation management process when it comes to developing medicines, we certainly just don't plunk a tremendous amount of resource into medicines that haven't gone through certain stages of trials. And we certainly know about our portfolio of trials and allocating resources to those ones that have gone through certain milestones, like stage one, stage two and stage three of clinical trials. However, we weren't doing that as systematically with our digital solutions and The BIOME is really that innovation management process. That's helping us do that with external partners. Janet Kennedy (04:13): All right. So one of the pushbacks that so many young new startups get is how many clinical trials have you done? Well, you know, none because we need you to try us take a risk believe in us. Is that something that's hard to overcome internally? Jake LaPorte (04:33): There are still challenges because there are so many solutions that exist out there. It's impossible for Novartis to make a bet on every company from the very get-go and be the ones that are really sponsoring their initial work. We're trying to make as best decisions as possible. So we spread our bets. So there are some that are kind of very early on companies and we have to do our best to figure out if we believe in what they're doing without the evidence behind them. And that fits well into what we're trying to achieve. And we make a bet on them. There certainly are companies that we do that with there's others, where frankly, we might need to see a little bit more evidence behind them before we make a bigger bet. And so it's a balance that we need to strike as much as we would like to try to support everyone in the very early stages, it's just not feasible for us to do that. Janet Kennedy (05:24): Digital is a pretty broad word. So when you're talking digital, are you literally talking about apps, platforms, medical devices? What kind of things are you looking at? Jake LaPorte (05:35): So for us, we take a fairly loose definition of digital. It could be any and all of those things. Distinctively we don't play in an area where we're partnering with conventional biotechnology partners to, for instance, co-develop assets or license, an asset from them. That's a clear place that we play, but any where there is data to be generated or devices to be tinkered with. I think that's a natural area where the bio model that we developed can be very effective. Janet Kennedy (06:11): Before we jump into the bigger conversation, can you remind folks how they can find out more about The BIOME? Jake LaPorte (06:17): Sure. They could probably Google Novartis BIOME, and we have a page that will give you a little bit more information about what The BIOME is, give you links to some of the leadership team, and you can always feel free to reach out to me or others to get more information. Janet Kennedy (06:36): Alright. And we will include a link to that in the show notes. Jake LaPorte (06:39): Perfect. Janet Kennedy (06:40): So Jake, one of the things that I was very curious about is the sea change that has happened and we're golly, nine months into a COVID process. How has The BIOME changed from this time last year? Jake LaPorte (06:57): It's been a meaningful change, not so much to the operating model that we developed, because we think that's a good one for us to facilitate digital innovation and meaningful partnerships to create digital solutions that have an impact. But certainly when you factor in COVID-19, which is first and foremost, a human tragedy, it's also certainly surfaced some of the challenges of the healthcare ecosystem. And we have really focused on helping develop solutions that solve some of the challenges presented by COVID-19. So for instance, we have a big initiative as a company on helping to think about developing telemedicine solutions that improve the continuity of care for folks that now cannot necessarily set up regular doctor's appointments, right? So there's a whole second level issue occurring in healthcare, which is that people that normally should be going to the doctor and getting diagnosed with other diseases, simply aren't going to the doctor or their physician as much and are suffering from diseases that they normally wouldn't have suffered from. So how do we help patients and physicians connect more effectively? So we're working a lot on solutions like that, making them scalable and effective and providing more convenience to patients and physicians that are challenged in this new era. We're also re-diverting some of our resources to focus on specific COVID 19 challenges that have been posed by certain government. So for instance, we have a BIOME in the UK located in London and they work with the NHS and the NHS has defined some specific challenges that they wanted to try and solve. And so our entire innovation program that we have in the UK this year was diverted to helping solve some of the challenges that the NHS has presented. So I think COVID-19 has given us a new problem set if you will, to focus on. And it certainly accelerated a lot of people to really think about how to use digital solutions creatively to overcome some of these challenges. Janet Kennedy (09:20): Well, I think that's really exciting because in many cases we think about pharma as being the big engine. That's only rolling forward at a certain pace and suddenly the flywheel of COVID-19 has accelerated that. And I think it might be really exciting to be working in a company to know that this is not a solution five years down the road. We're solving something today. Jake LaPorte (09:45): Yeah, certainly. I think again, although it's first and foremost, a human tragedy, it's sad that this is the catalyst behind some of this digital transformation. I think the solutions that are being developed are solving some more fundamental challenges in healthcare that will have longer term benefits after we get to a better place with COVID-19. Janet Kennedy (10:05): I agree. Totally. And I think telemedicine, which has been in development for over 20 years is finally seeing its day. Do you see any other type of digital health solutions that we're going to be treating more as an everyday use that might not have been accelerated so quickly? Jake LaPorte (10:25): Yes, certainly the biggie out there is telemedicine, as you already alluded to Janet. But I think that frankly opens up a platform for a lot of other digital solutions to be incorporated into a telemedicine backbone. I think as telemedicine gets more widely adopted it's, there will be ecosystems of digital devices that collected data that can be used in a telemedicine forum to make better more data-driven decisions by a physician remotely. I think you'll see these ecosystems of devices spring up that are expressly designed to fit within telemedicine scenarios. So almost like a virtual checkup room, for instance, that the doctor can use to deliver care more effectively. And in remote scenarios, I think we'll also see more creative ways to do digital clinical trials. For instance, I think we'll be using data more often as telemedicine kind of increases. So does the data that's being collected. And as the data improves that we have on patients, the smarter we can be around developing hypotheses for clinical trials that make them more honed and more focused on answering the questions we need to answer and nothing more than that. So I think we'll see trials get more effective. So I think there will be a number of knock on effects that we'll see as this increase happens. Janet Kennedy (11:55): Do you see personalized medicine becoming something much more central to our healthcare system? Jake LaPorte (12:01): Certainly over time. You know, I think there'll be a certain amount of catalytic event that happens through COVID-19 with personalized medicine. But I think that will generally occur over time with more development. One of the things with personalized medicine is that we've often looked at what we've can do on the molecular level with the evolution of Omix. And we've seen that as a flagship for what we're going to be able to do with personalized medicine, but the conversation is often not focused on the other part of personalized medicine. What we really need is that really well, curated longitudinal data set of healthcare outcomes across a population that allows us to really link up what it means on the molecular level, to what it means for healthcare outcomes. And I think once we start getting these more curated longitudinal healthcare outcomes, datasets, possibly through digital technologies and starting to make those links back to the Omix, we'll be able to make greater strides in personalized medicine. So I'm very optimistic about the future of personalized medicine. I don't know if COVID 19 per se is going to accelerate a lot of that right now. Janet Kennedy (13:17): Alright, now understand that I'm speaking to a PhD in chemistry, which is not the degree that I have. So I'm going to ask a little bit of a 101 level question here. When you talk about getting more data, are you looking at beyond adherence and persistence? This is really digging a little bit deeper and how can patients be involved in providing that kind of information? Jake LaPorte (13:41): So if I relate it back to the question posed around personalized medicine, I think, again, this is something where the healthcare community could really come together and make great strides in how we advance personalized medicine. So personalized medicine has been a concept that's been around almost since we started the human genome project, right? The aspiration of course, is that we can deliver therapeutics and interventions that are personalized to a person's genetic makeup. But what we've realized over time is that we need more information to really interpret different gene sequences that people have and be able to better predict what that actually means for their health and how they will actually experience a particular therapeutic or intervention. And then more over, we have to also incorporate environmental effects that those people experience because different environmental effects obviously have different impacts on patient's health. So therefore the grand challenge, I think in personal health is to create a large dataset across a wide population of folks that is able to basically detail what their health care experience and outcomes have been over a long period of time, as well as their genetic makeup and their proteomic signatures and sequences to them be able to make that Rosetta stone translation, if you will, between certain sequences of DNA that might exist with one person and not the other, certain protein expressions at one person as versus the other, certain environmental effects that a person experiences versus the other, and then say, Oh, this is what that means in terms of how their health care and their outcomes have been. Right. And so this is where actually patients can make a tremendous contribution, right? And the amazing thing about it is there's long been this concern about privacy, right, privacy, around the types of data people are sharing. And that is a very big concern and people are very right to have that. But now with the advent of some of these newer technology paradigms, like blockchain technology, and distributed ledgers, there now becomes an opportunity for patients to own their data, their healthcare data, and share what they want when they want with whom they want and revoke access when they want. And not only that, it then becomes possible for this learning technique machine learning technique called federated learning, which allows you to kind of anonymously sample data from patients that may be on part of a distributed ledger and not have to take a lot of their personal healthcare information, but just take the information they've generated health and therefore anonymize that, and still be as effective in developing new, more sophisticated algorithms. So again, this is more of a grand challenge, but I think it's something that the community is the answer is how do we develop technology platforms that allow patients to be involved in contributing data throughout their lifetime, in a safe and effective way where they're recognized for their contribution, right? Cause that's another piece of it. They need to be recognized for the contribution that they're making, but it allows us to advance medicine and ultimately get better at treating people. Janet Kennedy (17:14): In the rare disease community - and I am not familiar with everything you all are developing - but are you working in rare diseases at all? Jake LaPorte (17:21): So we don't have a big focus on rare diseases per se. I think what you'll find is we work in rare diseases in a targeted way, and it's more platform driven. Like we have a cell and gene therapy business unit. And so one of our major products that we just got approved last year is Zolgensma, which is a gene therapy to treat spinal muscular atrophy - SMA - it's miracle, right? Because if you are able to get a treatment to a patient within a certain amount of time, it pretty much cures them from a disease where they would definitely die. So we work in rare disease, but we don't have like a rare disease business unit per se. Janet Kennedy (18:02): So one of the things that we're hearing from people who have COVID-19 is there long-term health concerns that may be a result, whether it's heart impact on lungs, et cetera. So co-morbidities become a much more important part of understanding how the data works together and then it gets really complex. So are you finding in The BIOME or in the industry at large, this awareness of the importance of pulling together very disparate pieces of data to try and understand health issues? Jake LaPorte (18:34): Yeah, so I think this conversation is starting to become more prominent throughout the entire healthcare sector. The understanding that we need to be able to have more datasets, talk to each other and be joined together in order to power things like machine learning and AI, right. We often talk a lot about the promise of AI and machine learning in healthcare. And it turns out that one of the biggest barriers to seeing more impact from this very impressive technology paradigm is just being able to have the structured datasets to train these algorithms. And so I think there's more recognition that number one, the healthcare data that we do have tends to be very fragmented and incomplete and that we need to as a community come together and be able to do something about that. So what that means is we need to come together and develop data standards and an ontology, which is basically a language or a way to relate data sets together in order to join datasets that we already have. And then in the future, we need to think about ways in order to collect data more effectively to sort of power some of these powerful technology paradigms like AI and ML. Janet Kennedy (19:54): And I think as you said earlier, digital health literacy is essential. Helping patients understand that their data is really needed to help themselves and others. Jake LaPorte (20:05): That's exactly right. It really boils down to ultimately increasing digital literacy, but also developing solutions that make sense, right? So I think we need to be very focused on the patient, what their problem is, how do we solve that problem and how do we protect their privacy? And then how do we communicate that to them to help them understand that that's what we're trying to do. Janet Kennedy (20:30): Well, and that's what should always be right? Focused on the patient for the patient, because that's what we're trying to do. Jake LaPorte (20:36): Exactly. Janet Kennedy (20:37): Well, Jake, what a fascinating conversation. And I appreciate your spending the extra time to do a part two episode of our conversation. I appreciate your being here very much. Jake LaPorte (20:48): My pleasure, it was fantastic conversation for me and I hope you and the audience enjoys it. And again, if there is any questions about the bio that folks want to follow up, please feel free to do so. Janet Kennedy (20:58): Thank you for downloading this episode of People Always, Patients Sometimes if you enjoyed our conversation, a review and a rating on iTunes will help us find more listeners. This podcast is a production of Spencer Health Solutions.

Mason is joined by Jake Cassar on the show today. Jake is a bushman, conservationist, youth mentor and all round legendary character, who is out there doing good things for the planet and the community. Jake is a passionate bushcraft teacher with specialist knowledge in the area edible and medicinal plants native to both Australia and beyond. Jake works passionately to protect and conserve sacred land within Australia, and speaks with us today about the proposed development of the Kariong Sacred Lands by the Darkinjung Aboriginal Land Council.  "Good people have just got to band together and do as much good as we can. It's the journey, not the destination." - Jake Cassar Mason and Jake discuss: The mysterious big cat Jake has been tracking in the scrublands of Northern Sydney. Jake's work as a 'responsible adult' (Jake doesn't like the term activist) in the protection of the Kariong Sacred Lands and the politics involved.  The nature of activism; the sacrifice and the satisfaction. The value of coming together as a unified community, and doing what you can to preserve the land we live on with patience and persistence. The importance of appealing to the humanity in each person, and treating people with respect, even if you don't agree with their beliefs or behaviours. Moving from a survival of the fittest to a survival of the most co-operative mentality. Asking ourselves how can we best work together to create a safe and sustainable future.   Who is Jake Cassar ? Jake Cassar is a passionate Bushcraft teacher, youth mentor and conservationist specialising in edible and medicinal native and introduced plants in Australia. Jake is well known for leading successful campaigns to create new National Parks on the Central Coast and for his devotion to raising funds and awareness for local charities such as homeless outreach centres, mental health support services, suicide prevention networks, youth support organisations, animal welfare groups and many more. Jake is fast becoming known as one of Australia’s foremost authorities on edible and medicinal plants, and has been referred to as a “Bush Tucker Guru” by the Daily Telegraph and “Aussie Bear Grills” by the Today Show on Channel 9. Jake has featured on Triple J radio, ABC radio, The History Channel, and National Indigenous Television (NITV). Jake has spent most of life fine tuning his survival knowledge in what he calls “The University of the Bush” and has taught himself much of what he knows through personal experience spending over 20 years doing annual trips 'out bush' and living from the land for weeks at a time. Jake has worked with much respected Aboriginal elders in NSW and Central and Western Australia and has given presentations with well known people in Botany such as Les Robinson, Alan Fairley, Costa Georgiadis (Gardening Australia) and Aboriginal Bush Tucker Chef, Mark Olive. Jake has presented at Universities for nearly a decade with a presentation he calls " The Science of Survival" where University lecturers, Indigenous Elders and Indigenous students, all collaborate to share knowledge regarding the uses of native plants.  Jake’s presentations, courses and tours are upbeat, interactive, engaging and include a comprehensive display of native and exotic plants and an in-depth description of some of the plants uses. Jake will share information on how to make rope from tree bark, fire from sticks, soap from Wattle leaves and much more.   Resources: Jake Website Jake FacebookJake Youtube Coast Environmental Alliance Facebook Group     Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) Jake, how are you, man?   Jake Cassar: (00:01) Oh, pretty good. It's all happening here. How are you?   Mason: (00:04) Yeah, I'm good. I'm very good. It's good to see your face. It's been a few years, been following along on your journeys and grateful for social media so I can stay tuned in to all that you're up to. And I'm really excited for all the... We're on a different podcast than the one we did originally. We're on the SuperFeast Podcast now, and I'm really excited about everyone meeting you and learning about your work and the important work that you're doing down where you are. So Jake let us know, what are you up to? What have you been up to the last 24 hours?   Jake Cassar: (00:38) Well, the last 24 hours I've been chasing this mysterious big cat that's been seen in North Sydney. I do a bit of tracking in all of my spare time. And I've started working with a pet detective agency recently, locating missing pets. I've been out there over the years finding missing pets, that's one of the things I do. And I've even found a few missing people in the bush with the help from some friends, one Aboriginal friend, in particular, helped us locate a missing person a few years back, which got on the news.   Jake Cassar: (01:07) But this time round, I'm out tracking another sighting of this big cat. Some people call it a panther. I'm pretty certain it's not a panther, but I don't think it's just a regular feral cat either. It's only about an hour and a half from where I live, so I've been out here in Northern Sydney in the scrub tracking it for the last few weeks actually. But I've been here for the last 24 hours.   Jake Cassar: (01:29) Excuse me, my sunnies is probably holding my eyes in at the moment. Because I've had about half an hour sleep on and off throughout the night, just getting up and checking traps and checking cameras and laying just baits to draw it in the trap that we set for it, wouldn't harm it, it'll go into the cage and catch it. And then I'm planning on extracting a little bit a DNA through its fur with a little bit of a follicle on it. And then if it's some kind of big native cat, which Aboriginal elders have suggested may very well be, we'll let it go.   Jake Cassar: (01:58) If it was a large feral cat, then I wouldn't have shot it, I have in the past, but I've actually got a wildlife sanctuary, the huge enclosure at Calga, the Walkabout Park, that'd be interested in taking it if it was the biggest feral cat ever seen, which it must be, this thing's a monster, to educate people about the issues around feral cats. So it's been really exciting. Lots of people following that on my Facebook page, on my Insta page. And you know, there's been a lot of heavy stuff going on as you know, Mason and its been a nice little break from all the heavy stuff and that mysterious creature in the bush, that's been fascinating humans for probably hundreds of thousands of years. It's back.   Mason: (02:38) Because we've all grown up whenever we'd go into the... From growing up in the city and even Tahnee, my fiance, living up in far North Queensland, everywhere you go, I don't know if it's the same up on the West coast, but on the East coast, everyone's got those sightings of the big black Panther that escaped from the circus growing up and the story. And we wonder if it's native, we were thinking about, we were talking about that... I wonder if that could possibly be a native cat and I was going to ask you that. So, that's fascinating. Have you able to been able to get any fur at all, just from tracking or you need it to be like a live sample?   Jake Cassar: (03:19) No fur yet, but I've got some really, really compelling footage in the last 24 hours. I've seen it about the last week, but I only got here yesterday and checked my motion detection / night vision cameras, and I've got an image of it. The problem is I've got them set up along about a five kilometre radius. The problem with the footage is you can pretty clearly see an area where it's coming and going. And there's a couple of landmarks in the background that might give away its exact location. And I'd love to share this footage, but I don't want every man and his dog going into the area trying to trap it. Especially if it is a cat that's probably been here for thousands of years.   Jake Cassar: (03:55) I think it's most likely a cross between a Asiatic Golden Cat, they call it. It's like a wild cat that lives in the forest, Catopuma is the genus. And it's certainly, from some of the evidence that I've found both in tracks, and on my video, I've got about 25 images on my motion detecting cameras, a cross between the Catopuma species likely and just Felis catus, your standard domestic cat gone feral. But as we all know, they can get two to three times the size when they get out in the bush, they can get enormous.   Jake Cassar: (04:27) And you chuck a bit of other wild cat into the mix, which are currently apparently a lot of the Asian wild cats can interbreed with domestic cats. Then you've got this incredible mix, which some people, if they want to jump on my Facebook page or Insta, Facebook Jake Cassar official or Insta, Jake Cassar Bushcraft, you can have a look at that video. You can have a look at the tracks that I found near where the video was taken, the plaster cast in comparison to different tracks.   Mason: (04:54) The plaster cast...   Jake Cassar: (04:55) Yeah, it's been really fun. At the very low end of the scale, it's been a little bit of fun. On the high end of the scale, we could be contributing something new to science here.   Mason: (05:06) I can imagine it comes in at a nice time, because it's been heavy down your way with all the illegal land clearing that's happened all of a sudden. You've been there for many years. For lack of a better word, your activist work was something, when I met you seven years ago, maybe we met and did the bush tucker, Bushcraft little run through the shrub there. Actually the first time I met you, I was with the Strongs.   Jake Cassar: (05:41) Oh were you?   Mason: (05:41) Father and son.   Jake Cassar: (05:41) Yes, please. [inaudible 00:05:40].   Mason: (05:42) Yeah. And Michael Tellinger. So that was the... And we were up at the hieroglyphs there and you, I heard that they were coming and you strode in and out, just like a shadow, all of a sudden you were just there. And then from there, we went on that little trek. And I think I happened to fall in that time when there was a native beehive that hadn't gone up and checked in about three years and we went in there and we had a bit of native honey...   Jake Cassar: (06:16) I gave you some of the honey, that's a privilege, not many people get to experience that.   Mason: (06:16) That was an absolute privilege, but yeah, since then you've been going hard. I mean, just watching what you're, it's interesting. You want to talk to us about what you're doing and why it comes down to someone like yourself in order to fund yourself and fund the protection of land and species, species getting decimated for the sake of further development, further non-necessary development, a lot of the time. It's just developers is just wanting more, more cash in areas that have cultural significance. Why is it you, that's having to go and work your ass off in order to fund yourself to go and do this activist work, that should be something that's done by, I don't know, say the land council.   Jake Cassar: (07:08) Well, in this case, unfortunately it is the local Aboriginal Land Council that's acting as the developers. And they're the ones trying to develop an area known as Kariong Sacred Lands, they're saying that it's not connected to Kariong Sacred Lands, but that's the whole point of the official Aboriginal place listing, is that all of that land's interconnectedness. It's not my place to go right into the why, it's more of the traditional custodians. And I acknowledge those before I speak a little bit about this kind of stuff, but that whole area is a really, really important meeting place for many groups coming together.   Jake Cassar: (07:37) The good news is, is there's a lot of Aboriginal people coming together in the background and supporting us, are now more in the foreground, but it's an unfortunate situation where you've got the state government, actually they're calling it the Aboriginal sep where they're trying to empower, is one way of putting it, Aboriginal Land Council's to develop some of these very, very special places.   Jake Cassar: (07:58) And, basically if anyone tries to step in the way of these totally unsustainable and destructive developments, they call you a racist. So, which is interesting, because a lot of members of our group are Aboriginal, and certainly that's a fascinating situation to be in, to be called racist, which I was called while fighting to protect Aboriginal sites alongside traditional custodians.   Jake Cassar: (08:24) So it was very clever, good one, Rob Stokes, the Minister for Planning. He's obviously sat down with a few people, and if anyone gets in the way and believe me, they won't get in the way, the Greens don't want a bar of it, the big environmental organisations don't want a bar of it because it's too, I guess, politically incorrect to go up against the Aboriginal Land Council in regards to land development.   Jake Cassar: (08:46) To that point, should Aboriginal Land Council's have the opportunity to develop land, absolutely. Should they be able to make money off the land, and largely attempt to do whatever they want with the land, absolutely. I would prefer that than any other developer. And that makes sense doesn't it? But if it's an unsustainable development that could potentially desecrate ancient sites of human occupation, could cause extinctions, in this case the development they want to do, actually several developments they want to do on the Central Coast will severely impact or just wipe out potential koala habitat. Aboriginal sites are known to be in these areas and dozens of endangered flora and fauna species. If anyone does that, whether it's a overseas developer, an Australian developer or local Land Council, then Aussies irrespective of our background should have the right to object to it.   Mason: (09:35) What's the strategy that they have to be able to call you a racist? Because it seems from what I can tell from the Land Council and my dealings when I went to Alice Springs and dealt with the Land Council, as the elders were being pushed off the land for mining, when we went up there and we went and we probably had a bit of a pie in the sky kind of mentality at the time. We all serving them letters and cease and desists and that kind of thing. And you know, didn't really go anywhere because they just steam rolled it and pushed that mob off the land.   Mason: (10:06) And so I wonder, because when you look at who's working at the Aboriginal Land Council, a lot of the time there are Aborigines working there. But from what I went through, and what I'm reading about the developments that they're talking to you about it and from what I've just, what I'm seeing myself, it seems they're creating this ornamental Aboriginal protection culture there, within the Land Council. And then if anyone, as long as it doesn't get in the way of the development that ultimately the big business and government wants to have, there doesn't seem to be that much proper protection. Like, you know what, there's some species in there, and there's some sites in there. So you know what, you just don't go there.   Mason: (10:54) They will look for justification at whatever cost to make sure that they don't actually protect the majority of this country. The majority of the country is sacred. As long as you don't get in the way of that, we're okay to keep on pushing these nice Aboriginal cultural ideas and take you on nice little tours. And it seems like this ornamental version of what's actually potentially the oldest culture on earth. It seems like a terrible representative.   Jake Cassar: (11:27) Well, there's a lot of good people in the Land Councils, and there's a lot of good Land Councils doing really good things across the country. As I understand it, as I've been told, there's a lot of great people in our local Land Council. We got a letter of support from our page, Coast Environmental Alliance, from someone who's on the Land Council to stop the Land Council development. So more now than ever good people irrespective of our background may just stick together for the sake of our children. Is it not up to you or I to tell Land Councils how they make their money, with respect should we tell them that they should be doing cultural tours and different things? I'd like to see that personally, I'd love to take my daughter to that. I think it's important, but should they be able to determine how they make a quid? Absolutely.   Jake Cassar: (12:10) But what it really comes back down to for me mate is, is if it's totally unsustainable, if it's disrespectful to the environment and if it's going to destroy Aboriginal sites, I don't care who it is, I'll stick my neck out and I seem to be at the moment, one of the only people doing it. Not giving myself a pat on the back, because it's been full on, basically me calling a spade, a spade, and saying that the Land Council is set to benefit from the illegal clearing. Someone got through and bulldozed that land. They're threatening me with legal action, looks like they're taking me to court. I've had threats of violence towards me over the phone, the racism calls. So, so many hectic things have happened from this, but that's the way it goes. That's the way it goes.   Jake Cassar: (12:55) And that's when you know that you're on the right path, that you're making a difference. If we don't stop this from going right across the state or the greater Sydney area, the state governments actually used quite colloquial words. They've said, we're basically testing this out to see how it goes in the greater Sydney area. And, in the background, if we can get all these unsustainable development through, again the Greens, the Greens are for this development, they say they're not opposed to it, they don't see any problem with it.   Jake Cassar: (13:23) They'll be wiping out endangered species and potentially Aboriginal sites and encroaching on the Aboriginal sites in the area, the traditional custodians are totally against this development. And they're on our side, on the side of the land more. So you've got Labour, Liberal, we should call them laberal. And, the Greens now locally, they've got to me recently, they'll have a shot at me for saying this, but it's the truth.   Jake Cassar: (13:45) I can show you the letter. You can post it under this podcast. Basically they saying that they are for it, and this is all about Aboriginal self-determination. Tricky thing for me to talk about, for anyone to talk about. If this is about that, our Land Council's got tens of millions of dollars in the bank, they are the richest Land Council in New South Wales. I've heard them boast about that on many occasions and I use them loosely, some wonderful elders on the Land Council, and some friends I went to school with. I'm not just sugar coating what I'm saying, I actually mean that, and the largest private land owner on the Central Coast.   Jake Cassar: (14:20) So they have other options. It's just interesting to see them teaming up with the state government. So you've got a private, I'm getting a bit passionate here, you've got a private land developer, who's got a bit of a deal going with the government, who puts together these supposedly independent panels that they launched during COVID when people can't protest, to just rubber stamp any development going through, again a private developer, ok, with a relationship with the government. We know developers do have relationships with government, but you've never seen it so open, to just destroy some of the most important parcels of land, some of the most important places full of koala habitat, full of ancient engraving sites.   Jake Cassar: (14:59) And if you stand in the way they're going to do everything they can to bulldoze over the top of you, quite literally, they're illegally clearing the land. I'm not saying who's done it. I think I believe I've found who's done it, the guy's admitted to it. The Land Council made me take that video down because of some of the things I've said. Yeah, well that was part of the legal action, they gave me a few days to reply or else they're going to sue me, and I've worked really hard for the very little I've got to put my daughters, take my daughter to a decent school and get her a decent education.   Jake Cassar: (15:26) I'd like to keep my car on the road, keep my guitar and sound system. I don't know how that works when they do sue you, but they certainly got the power to. The good news is, is I've got a lawyer now that's going to be working for me at least for a while pro bono. So that's been really, really helpful, but they're basically just trying to tie me up. And the reason they're trying to tie me up is because this is a much, much bigger picture thing. If they can float this, if they can float this thing and keep these weak buggers purpose from the Greens and lie about supporting Liberal and their State Planning Panels that are too scared to be politically incorrect and I get it. I get it, believe me, I get it. I'm not saying it's good, it's gutless.   Jake Cassar: (16:06) Okay. But I absolutely get what they're doing. They are going to not only destroy massive areas of bushland, but the Aboriginal people that I know who I do not speak on behalf of, I can again, put you in contact with these people if you want to interview, my indigenous friends that are traditional custodians. They're going to be disempowering indigenous people, because they're going to be smashing their sites. They're going to be smashing their sites like they're trying to do here in Kariong, and right across the greater Sydney area. And if they can float it, if they can float it, then they're going to roll it out across New South Wales. The state government are saying this at the moment. So this is the time where we make a stand. This is a time where people have got to come together, black, white and everything in between. If we don't now, we're fucked mate.   Mason: (16:48) As you said there are lots of beautiful people that are working within these organisations absolutely, but what I said in terms of it being ornamental, anything that is there being under as a, basically being a bit of a chest piece for the government at large. And as you said this, them saying that they're testing out, whether they're going to be able to basically get away with it here.   Jake Cassar: (17:09) That's what they saying.   Mason: (17:13) It's not surprising because they know ultimately people don't care because they know they've ultimately again, got this ornamental relationship with a lot of beautiful people and beautiful people who are trying to do good work, but under the guise of that, and saying we're empowering Aboriginal people, we're going to go in and create, and basically clear whatever we want and develop whatever we want, as you said.   Jake Cassar: (17:35) And a handful of people make a shitload of money and what happens to the rest of the community?   Mason: (17:40) Well, who makes the money in this situation?   Jake Cassar: (17:44) I guess the Land Council as a private land developer because they pretty much come out and just said that they're private land developers, which again, I'm not anti-development mate.   Mason: (17:53) Your elders, where do your elders sit on in receiving coin? Or just a little bit of an acknowledgement that, that's their land. If this gets cleared and they make millions and millions.   Jake Cassar: (18:07) When you say my elders, what do you mean?   Mason: (18:09) The elders in your area?   Jake Cassar: (18:11) Okay. Yeah. Because to make it clear I'm not indigenous, dad's from Egypt and mum's Aussie going right back to second fleet. The local elders, where do they sit in, in this whole scheme of things?   Mason: (18:22) Where do they see, in terms of where, if this goes ahead, and this multimillion dollar development goes ahead in that area, where do they set to benefit?   Jake Cassar: (18:31) Well, they don't set to benefit at all. They've written letters absolutely against it because they want to continue to use those areas for the reasons they do. It's not, again, not my place to go into it, but we've got, Darkinjung as they pronounce it in our local areas. Some Darkinjung people, the [inaudible 00:18:50], and some Guringai people are, [inaudible 00:18:51], [inaudible 00:18:54], I think is another local tribe. I think that's how they pronounce it. They're absolutely, absolutely passionately opposed to it. And they know why, because they know that land. They know what the engravings mean and the significance of those sites. The Land Council has said that there's no sites of significance within the area well they passionately disagree. And whether I've got a right to, or not, whether I've got a right to care about those sites or not, I've been gently visiting that area since I was about 11 years old and turning 45 this year.   Jake Cassar: (19:29) So been around a little while and I've dedicated 10 years of my life to protecting the land right next door, which is all part of what they call Kariong Sacred Lands. Part of the reason it got listed as an official Aboriginal place of significance is due to the work that I've been doing there with indigenous and non indigenous kids in juvenile justice, and DoCS/FaCS for the last 16 or so years, I met with the government there, met with elders.   Jake Cassar: (19:55) The Land Council actually supported, Darkinjung Land Council actually supported that area, being recognised as Kariong Sacred Lands. And I think again, the term here was used, the cultural landscape. So the overall landscape was really important. The bush tucker in the area is really important for the ongoing education of both indigenous and non indigenous kids side by side. And as you know, I run in four major elections as an independent and was able to eventually leverage a government. Rob Stokes, the Minister for Planning was actually involved in making that national park. I guess he wrote the check and we stopped the biggest development within any national park in New South Wales.   Jake Cassar: (20:32) Kicked off the sort of grassroots activism movement on the Central Coast, about 13 or 14 years ago, when we started having blockades and camps, and proper peaceful community actions, having three, four, 500 people at rallies, five, six, 700 people at concerts. I worked out we had over 45 events, over nine and a half years to get that in the national park and thousands of letters sent. And just sign much hard work. You know, the elections in particular were a pretty full on experience for me, the first federal election I ran in I was living in a tent at an activist camp at the side of the road. And going to these big forums with over a hundred people that was quite terrifying, but yeah, you do what you've got to do.   Jake Cassar: (21:19) And, when I walked my little daughter down there, she's about to turn seven in October. But when I walked her down there as a little two year old to the grandmother tree and showed her the hieroglyphs and tried to explain to her, even though she was only really little, what her daddy had done and her mum as well at the time, and the community had done to protect that land. And it was a very, very profound moment for me. And so it's been blood, sweat, and tears into protecting this land here. And, it's an incredibly unfortunate situation, Mason that here we are against the Land Council, some members of the Land Council. Because again, we've got some that are coming on board.   Mason: (21:57) Which is amazing all right, far out.   Jake Cassar: (21:59) It is. Yeah, it's incredible. And we're also getting some people within the government that are just been bloody awesome as well. Because, people are just sick of the rubbish. The magic word is we're not against development, we need development. It's a shame that development is a dirty word because what a great place Australia is in general, for world-class sustainable, exciting development that we need. We've got room for all kinds of different industry and to do it sustainably, but stop going for our most special places.   Jake Cassar: (22:32) Stop causing the extinction of koalas, get serious. I'm not a lefty or a righty or anything like that, I'm more of a centrist. I'm probably a little bit conservative in my old age, but just use some bloody common sense that especially after the fires that ravaged, this part of New South Wales, the greater Sydney area is an incredible, it's a Garden of Eden of ecological diversity. And it's some of the last bastions for koalas and they're still smashing their areas, their habitat, which is what's happening up here at Kariong.   Jake Cassar: (23:09) That's exactly what they're trying to do. They're not trying to do that, they have knocked down probably a couple of thousand koala trees. Now that was the illegal clearing that happened, I've got that on video, I don't know if you caught that.   Mason: (23:19) I did.   Jake Cassar: (23:21) We're looking into making sure that fines are issued and that land is regenerated. That more archaeological studies go in to that area. Just trying to keep an eye on it again. I'm going to give another plug to Coast Environmental Alliance, a little group we've got on Facebook. We've actually got close to 6,000 members. If you want to get involved in something, people that are watching this, that will bear results, win, lose, or draw. It's getting results because good people are coming together, again black, white and everything in between.   Jake Cassar: (23:50) We don't care what your background is. Join with us to push towards something extremely positive, sustainable development. We're not a no group, we're a yes group, but how can we work together to start to head in the right direction. But every now and then you've got to dig your heels in and say no more. If we don't, for example in this area, it's going to cause the localised extinction of koalas in this area, which will contribute to what they're saying, koalas being extinct on the mainland Australia or in the wild, rather in Australia within three decades, it's just not good enough. We need to draw a line somewhere.   Mason: (24:31) That's not, and I love how inclusive you are. And I really do recommend everyone follow your personal Instagram and Facebook for updates. But that's great to know that we've got that Facebook page there, whenever I can join the community and find out what action they can take, because there's also look, there's going to need to be resources and funds and people on the ground. As you said, it took nine years, for you to secure that largest area of national parks.   Jake Cassar: (24:56) Well, it was us, mate, it was a team effort, it was everybody that sent a letter. It was people like yourself. And I don't expect everybody to be, I don't like the term activist. I consider it doing your best to be a responsible adult for the country that you live in and do the right thing by your kids. Caring for the land is the ultimate act of self-care because you're caring for future generations, even after you're gone. All people have got to do is just follow what's going on. Send the occasional letter. We're not allowed to protest anymore, another debate, but people can take action. People can empower themselves by taking responsibility for the country they're privileged enough to live in, send a letter, make the phone call. If you go and see, there's always somewhere to send a letter to.   Jake Cassar: (25:36) There's always an action to take. With respect to a lot of environmental groups, mate they're experts at having meetings and delicious finger food and all that kind of thing. But when it comes to action, there's always something to do. You can write a press release, anyone. You could write a press release about this and send it to anyone. You can make a phone call about this. You can send an email, you can get in touch with me and say, "Jake, what can I do to help?" Which is my favourite question that I get asked. There's always a way of getting involved in environmental protection in your own area. People do things in different ways. And as I said, I not only know that a lot of people can't, work sometimes 20 hours a day like I do to protect the environment, which is what you've got to do.   Jake Cassar: (26:16) And I even don't recommend it for a lot of people because you'll burn out really, really quickly. But you know, realistically there is things people can do, but you start to see a lot of that. I know we touched on this last time, but a lot of the new age kind of stuff, coming into bloody activism now where they're talking about, activism's all about balance, and self-care, and taking it easy and that. No, it's not, it's about sacrifice. It's about hard work. You know, grab that balance wherever you can, don't get me wrong. Grab the self-care wherever you can, because there's going to be times where you're going to go without sleep. There's going to be times where you're going to have a lot of hate and anger coming towards you and probably from your own camp, a lot of the time other activists.   Jake Cassar: (27:02) That's been my experience, there can be a lot of toxicity within that movement. It's why I believe the doof scene and sort of the young hippie scene, if I had to label it has become less about activism and more about what's become modern leftism, I suppose. Its hard work, but it's deeply satisfying and it's absolutely paramount, it's critical that people step up now. It's really now or never, look at what's going on, I'm sorry to rant, but look at what's going on in the world today. We're just good people, good people got to come together, to say the left and right again, the left and right of politics wants to keep us all divided.   Jake Cassar: (27:39) Imagine if the beautiful indigenous people of our country, the first people of Australia banded with the beautiful whatever background. I don't like saying non indigenous because I'm from here. But imagine if all the good people in Australia dug our heels in and said nup, nup, you're not taking this any further. You're not going to keep trashing the land. You're not going to cause the extinction of koalas and all the other fauna and flora, you're not going to attack our water tables. Do it peacefully, do it respectfully, but do it passionately and stick together. Again, mate it's now or never.   Mason: (28:11) It is now or never. And your inclusive nature is like, all right, whether you're in politics, this organisation, whether you've got a business, whether you're a mom, whether you're a dad, whether you've got heaps of resources, not, whatever. It's just, as you said, it is a part of your own self-care practise to get involved, start protecting the land and doing the right thing. And it comes with the betterment of yourself ultimately. Man, I love it. And I love the fact that, someone like yourself is like, it makes me, which isn't, I don't think is necessarily a healthy thought. It makes me feel good, that there's people like you, Jake on the front line going, but ultimately what that does is it does really inspire me to stay involved, I'll keep on staying involved. Let me know and let us all know when there's any mass push for anything that you're going to be directly useful.   Mason: (28:59) Otherwise, I do encourage everyone to go and join that Facebook page, which we'll pop in the show notes. Everyone can get involved and keep your finger on the pulse. And I think another thing I've learned from you is to not get caught up in that, the delicious endorphins of jumping in, and getting upset and angry about what's going on and then burning out, and realising you actually don't have the capacity to hold that emotion. But rather going in sustainably, if you want to be screaming from the rooftops for sustainability from the government, from the Land Councils, from all these people, which is all we want. I didn't mean to insult anyone who is involved in the Land Council before. I just had to get my emotional baggage out.   Mason: (29:42) But, it's not about dragging any of these things down. It's just about, gentle asking for us all to become better, and sometimes we're going to bump heads, but ultimately you want to make sure you're going in a sustainable manner so that you can keep this up for the rest of your life. It's an important element of being alive on this earth. It's something, if we're going to learn anything from mob is that we're custodians. And I learned that from you a lot, that's why I love following along with you, mate. So I really appreciate you taking the time, especially since you've been tracking for the last 24 hours.   Jake Cassar: (30:15) Well, that's been pretty exciting. Yeah. And, back to people doing what they can, even if people do, like a shooting star burn bright for a little while and then burn out, that's okay. If you go to the top of CEA page, Coast Environmental Alliance, you'll see a pinned post there. As soon, in regards to this development in Kariong Sacred Lands, we'll be able to make submissions against that official submissions. But on CEA, we've always got a pinned post at the top of the page, which gives lots of information. And then there's an email for people to send. You want to send that one email, you can either copy and paste, but it's better if you put it in your own words, and then just follow through with each person.   Jake Cassar: (30:53) Once a week is fine, make a phone call, follow-up with a phone call. And then the key is to just not give up until you get answers, you can share things. My email's on there as well. So you can send things back to me. I've got this response from the local mayor or the local state member. If you're lucky and you get a response, and if you don't, then give them a call, give them a call and just keep chipping away. If we were to look at it like this, they've got a certain issue over here where there's piles or paper building up on their table. And you look at this issue here in Kariong and it's building up, building up, when this becomes overwhelming, especially in the lead up to an election.   Jake Cassar: (31:28) And just your average person, you know what, I focused on my friends that are Liberal voters, there's not heaps of them, but there's a few. So yeah, I had a Liberal politician turn up to one of our rallies and I heard him say to one of his minders on his way out, "There wasn't a Liberal vote in that place." And the penny dropped, the penny dropped. Then we stopped trying to appeal to the tree huggers as such, and lucky we've always been able to appeal to the general public, but started to really try and do letterbox drops in a local area and just try to appeal to everyday people with the kind of language we use. And that's what changes stuff. When someone messages, and says, "Listen, I'm normally a supporter of yours. I would vote for you in the next election. I love it that you've done this, this, this, and this." But if you don't and you've got to watch your wording, because you're dealing with a human being.   Jake Cassar: (32:17) If you don't support this and sustainable development, and again, I'm not against development, then I'll certainly won't be voting for you in the next election. And it's that kind of language not put so raw because again, some politicians will just reject you for saying things like that. It will certainly catch their attention. And that's really the kind of grassroots activism that works when they think that it's going to cost them the election. They say it's not about votes, but if they don't get re-elected, they can't do all the wonderful things that they promised just before elections. Some do, some deliver wonderful things.   Mason: (32:49) As you said man, got to drop all those political labels, right? We've got to not be caught up in that. That's all a smoke screen. We're all beautiful humans. And you know, ultimately as you just said, we're dealing with humans, we can always appeal to our own humanity, therefore other people's humanity. I needed that reminder, it's fun getting caught up in a little bit of us versus them for a while.   Jake Cassar: (33:12) I think there is a little bit of that, mate. I think there are some people that don't give a shit about the land and about our future, and they are focused on short term goals. But I'm more talking about the way that you interact with people, on a lesser degree, some people can be quite petty, and you see a lot of it on social media too. People don't agree with something, so they block them or they're just nasty or disrespectful in the comments. There's a lot of that getting around nowadays. A lot of politicians can be quite petty, so if you say something that upsets them, they will just ignore you. I'm just, I guess, talking about interacting with other people, even if you don't like them, with respect and just edging towards trying to get a goal.   Jake Cassar: (33:51) If you get correspondence from a politician and your toing and froing, here's that paper metaphor again, you've got the paper building up on their table. If they're getting back to you, then it shows there's an interest there. And if they're getting back to 16 other people that week, 20 people, 30 people, 50 people, and that paper keeps building up. And when they speak to someone further up the food chain in their political party, and they say, "What are the main issues that are pressing in your region?" They say, "Oh, this one." 'Oh, shit, what are we going to do? We've pretty much promised that that development's going to go ahead." I'm not insinuating this, but let's just say, for example, we've even set up a stacked planning panel here that's just going to approve it. What are we going to do? Well, it might cost us the election. This is how that stuff works, Mason.   Mason: (34:36) All right, well, let's keep on pushing, pushing and pressing.   Jake Cassar: (34:39) Yeah, we're good at that.   Mason: (34:42) Well, I think you've given everyone some really solid advice to where they can take it next. I appreciate you coming on. Were there any last messages or any little things you want to drop on everyone? And as well, tell them about your tours as well.   Jake Cassar: (34:57) Yeah, I'm a bushcraft teacher. I've spent the last probably 25 years. Wow, it's pretty cool to be able to say that, one of the good things about getting a little bit older. Spent about the last 30 years, my God, more spending time in the bush. The first time I did a survival mission, wasn't meant to be a survival mission, I was about 17 and lived off the land for like three and a half weeks. Up in (inaudible) national park. And then just basically kept doing that throughout my life. Went bush, just when I left working as a bouncer for 10 years, the local pubs and clubs. And I lived up in the bush for around four or five months up the back of Kariong, up there with an Aboriginal family that stayed with me for a while with their kids.   Jake Cassar: (35:40) And we all sharing knowledge and learning tracking together and developing our skills. And, since then I've started teaching. I worked as a senior ranger at a local wildlife sanctuary for quite a few years and I've done bush tucker talks right around Australia, worked with quite a few Aboriginal communities. University of Western Sydney, I'll go there and they bring between 50 and a 100 indigenous youth from remote communities there each year. For the last two and a half years, I've been leasing a property up at Mangrove Mountain, only an hour north of Sydney and an hour south of Newcastle. And I run tracking courses, bushcraft courses, mainly plant based because my forte is edible and medicinal plants, maybe we can get on and have a chat about that one day.   Jake Cassar: (36:24) And in supporting my courses, you're supporting all my environmental work, my youth work, I work as a youth worker as well, and in the local juvenile justice systems and places and running some programs up on the property up there soon, we calling it the Youth Trackers Camp. And yeah. So if anyone wants to get on board, it's all about building community.   Jake Cassar: (36:48) I don't sort of say very spiritual as such things very often. And I know that's very, very popular nowadays, but I do say to people, if you want to get involved in this brand of what's going on, it's all about to me, if anyone comes at me with wanting me to go and get into the ayahuasca, get into this, or get into that and learn about these spirituality and that spirituality, if it doesn't have at the core of it, and I can be quite arrogant here and I'll own that, if the core of it, isn't helping to create a safe and sustainable future for our children, then I'm really not that interested in it because in my opinion, that is the conversation we need to not only be having that conversation now that's the action we need to be taking now. Because if we don't, we're screwed.   Mason: (37:33) Yeah. That is at the core of all cultures. That and...   Jake Cassar: (37:35) It was.   Mason: (37:39) It was. You're right.   Jake Cassar: (37:42) It used to be. There's some pretty amazing things happening in the background at the moment, mate. I'm having some incredible conversations around the campfire with some incredibly wonderful people, some gentle people, but passionate people that are ready to go. And I've had so many people coming to me saying, "We should go this way, we should go that way, we should do this." I said, "I'm just going to keep doing what we're doing." Looking after the land, looking after the youth, taking counsel from the elders, which includes non-indigenous elders, anyone who's had the life experience and knows how to create again, to etch towards a safe and sustainable future for our future generations.   Jake Cassar: (38:16) When, I say our children I mean that collectively. Good people have just got to band together and do as much good as we can. It's the journey, not the destination. I tell people to go and learn survival skills because we're going to need them, that's becoming more and more apparent now that, that is highly likely to be in our personal future or in the future of our children or grandchildren.   Jake Cassar: (38:38) So it's not only survival, physically, being able to live off the land, but it's also survival, I'll use the word spiritually, how we can interrelate to each other, how we can work together. We're in this survival of the fittest society at the moment, we need to move much more towards how the land works and how all of our ancient ancestors lived. And that was survival of the most cooperative, resilience comes into it, being fit and being strong and sometimes survival of the fittest realistically comes into it, but you know, survival of the most cooperative, how can we best work together towards a safe and sustainable future? That's where I'm at.   Mason: (39:21) Amen. Everyone, especially if you're in Sydney, Gosford, Newey, it's easy for you to get down and do... And you've got day courses, you've got overnights. It's available to everyone and the youth work. You've always been doing such good work with the youth work. So, if that appeals to you, go check it out and let's definitely line up another chat talking about the bush tucker, talking about what it's like to actually come back and eat the food from this land and learn how to track this land. That'd be great.   Jake Cassar: (39:49) Good stuff mate, it was great spending some time with you again.   Mason: (39:53) Yeah, absolutely. Hope I'll see you soon.   Jake Cassar: (39:55) For sure champ.

Jake is the founder and CEO of Groundbreaker, a software application that helps real estate investment firms automate workflows in fundraising, investor reporting and investment management. Jake speaks with real estate GPs and LPs frequently, so here are some topics he could go deep with current knowledge on: - Deal structures and fees, what he is seeing on a day to day basis - Due diligence, Investor relations - RE tech (CRMs, tech stacks, scaling with tech) - Asset classes to consider during down time - Or any other topic you deem to be a match for your audience.   Thank you so much for listening! WE ARE SO GRATEFUL!!!! Our Sponsor:  Multifamily Foundation If you are serious about learning how to buy apartment buildings then don't wait, go to www.multifamilyfoundation.com and let us help you build your foundation. Investing for Lifestyle and Legacy: https://www.yarusiholdings.com/ Our ENTIRE Podcast, Books and Health Suggestions: https://www.amazon.com/shop/yarusiholdings Subscribe To Us On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1SuXB01d14DC8ZnEWpRQdQ?sub_confi rmation=1 Subscribe To Us on #Libsyn: http://multifamilyfoundation.libsyn.com/website Subscribe To Us on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-multifamily-foundation/id1484177595   Transcription: Hello, again, welcome back to the Jason and Pilli project. Super excited for today's show. You've got some dynamic things and is actually uncanny, that I would just searching for a platform itself, that we were diving into sc we have Jake Marmulstein the show, Hey Jake, how you doing? Hey, how you doing Jason? Glad to be here. Doing awesome, man. Doing awesome. So Jake is CEO of groundbreaker software application that helps real estate investment firms, automate workflows and fundraising investor reporting and investment management. If you're doing this back from 2014, he seen the market transition just really just has a ton of talk about one from really this CRE finance and technology side, but two from the psychology side. So we're going to dive in and get some great question, but Jake filling the gaps. What I miss here? Yeah. Well, the transition of companies moving into the cloud and being able to look at their tech stack now objectively and saying, what are the missing pieces that we have here that we can automate with technology that we can fill with technology? That's going to be available 24 seven, 365, that we can turn on that we can control that we can operate, across functions remotely in a in today's world. And once you have that technology, being able to look at, the world has, is changing and continues to change moving more towards the technology, uh, being a factor in every business and being a consideration to get up and running. And have it be a piece of your company. What was it about this specific space that stood out to you in 2014, that you took a hard look at it and decide to dive all in on? So, uh, when I was looking at it in 2014 to set the context 2012 was the passing of the jobs act. And in 2014, we had an article in venture beat written about us, uh, in democratizing real estate investing by having a platform where anybody could put their deal up and they could raise capital online from accredited investors over the internet. And it was a big deal for people who have been, uh, doing everything, um, but general solicitation so that they comply with securities laws. And we're thinking as a company, do we want to via crowdfunding solution? Do we want to get a big group of investors together and direct capital towards real estate deals? Or where is this really going? What's the big picture and big picture is that people are going to arm themselves with the technology. They need to be able to harvest their own investor base. Yeah. And when you look at that and some of the, the ability to create a platform, right? So your investors can, can feel as if, as if they're, you're, you're being a safe Haven, a safe Harbor for their capital, right? And so you're not just hiding with Excel spreadsheets where things can be manipulated, but you now have a platform that creates a rectal style for the brand. You're now seeing a lot of competition come into the market. How have you seen the space develop over the last six years since you started though space has developed segmentation, uh, groups that maybe were interested in going head to head with us, uh, as providers of an investment management portal, maybe segmented towards some of the back office functions of providing an escrow account or clearing house services or transfer agent services, um, or maybe moving across different industries and not being real estate specific, but doing sort of an investment manager, CRM for multiple different industries. And then we saw companies that came right in and want to go head to head with us, uh, on real estate investment management software, but they're either going up market and moving towards institutional groups, or they might be going downmarket. And as it currently stands, there's a wide space in the market between the lower market solutions and really the institutional solutions. Uh, so we are occupying the space in between there where we can be that scalable solution. That's not only easy to use, uh, and robust, but it's also very cost effective for companies that want to onboard now and grow and not have to switch to a different solution later on once they outgrow the, the, uh, a solution that they started with because the price was low enough. So we want to be that solution that people start with and stay with. What are some of the core components of Graham groundbreaker that really make it stand out for us? Uh, the ability to send and receive payments electronically is a huge differentiator that we offer into the market. To my knowledge, there's no other solution that does that. And some of the companies might be able to pay distributions by generating a NACHA file, but we actually integrate with the banking systems so that funds can travel, uh, through, um, you know, ACH and get triggered from within the platform And using that feature. I mean, that is something right. I have talked to other platforms where you have to use some third party or some other way that you're, or you're still going back and doing distributions as you were, you know, manually before. So to have that within the platforms, highly engaging for investors who now are working with an operator who's using groundbreaker, do they have access to the portal so they can go in and see really the, the life of their deal real time? Yeah, the, the portal has, uh, five different components, the investor portal for LPs to get access to their information and they can have their cashflows, their documents detail on their distributions, and they can also see new offerings and existing offerings that either they've invested in or open for fundraising, whether it's a teaser or an active deal, that's really collecting subscriptions and contributions. And then they can go through the process of funding and transacting before other parts of the software are really for the managers, which encompass fundraising, automation, investor reporting, investor, and distributions. Um, and then you have the CRM. Has there been an asset class that's using your technology? That's that, that was surprising that you weren't originally positioned for? Not really, actually we work with both single asset syndications and funds. Uh, there's some parts about the display of investor reporting that we're working towards being able to support for specific industries and giving sponsors the flexibility to drop in certain metrics in their dashboard that they care about because it's asset specific. Maybe when you talk about multifamily, looking at, uh, the increases in rents, uh, and those kinds of more, uh, property specific asset class specific metrics might be more relevant to multifamily. So being able to give sponsors the flexibility to do that, we don't have that yet, but that's going to be on the horizon. Um, and then funny enough, the other day I was talking with somebody about a commercial kitchen, uh, business that they were launching. So, um, because of, uh, the, the, the crisis, you see a lot more food delivery, um, on their eyes and then companies that maybe need more capacity to meet the demand of doing food delivery need, uh, additional storage and additional space to be able to produce enough food, to fulfill those orders in a, in a, in a process oriented way, that's gonna make sense for their business. Yeah. Looking forward, there's going to be a whole new wave of, of opportunity for entrepreneurs to figure out the highest and best use for available property, right. And especially looking at what groundbreakers doing, where do you see your platform going in the horizon in the next two, three, five years ahead? Well, we would like to be able to use the data on the system to be able to help our investment managers produce better insights about the decisions that they're making and the priorities that they are putting forth, uh, to be able to manage those assets or choose which deals that they will ultimately be investing in and how they represent those opportunities to investors. So by having all of that data online, having it structured and then being able to tap into other data sources over the internet, um, we can achieve some of those things. So that's very interesting also having all the collection of the data on the system gives us the ability to know how operators are performing, what asset classes are performing, um, and figuring out, uh, what good performance looks like, um, when you have enough data and the sample set, to be able to determine that, um, and there's many different things we could do, uh, by knowing that information in the aggregate, whether that would be, you know, introducing, uh, introducing capital or services, uh, or just providing information to people in the general market about how syndications are performing by asset class, by geography. That's actually very interesting, right? So if you can get down to, to I new share there and see that, right, you may find a different asset classes in certain areas, performing better for whatever's the reason, right. Do you find that what you're doing today that you're having a certain percentage of, or certain asset class or certain space that's consistently outperforming other asset classes just has to do with current market timing when you look at all the different asset classes, uh, like retail and, and, uh, getting crushed and multifamily doing well because people have to pay rent to live somewhere. They have to be able to pay rent after this situation happened. So all the hype about people, you know, not paying rent in April and may, uh, not being true and multifamily performing well. I think that it's pretty clear cut. That's going to be the best performing asset class right now for a while. And, uh, and for the foreseeable future too, I don't know what other asset classes are going to perform. Maybe self storage, um, might, might be doing well. Um, if who knows people like look to downsize during this and put their stuff away for awhile or manufactured housing, which again is I consider multifamily, but, uh, an asset class that's protected and recession proof pretty much because the price will go down to be able to live, um, in manufactured housing communities. So you speak to a lot of general partners and limited partners, especially just to just talk about the platform. Is there a general throughline that you hear from limited partners? So we won't talk to COVID. So it just say an overall consensus about the certain surety that they're looking for from operators or certain things that we're looking for for operators. I don't know how much of that I could, uh, tell you that would be original and unique. Generally, just, uh, investors might be concerned how assets are performing during all of this. And they're looking for communication from their operators when there's a crisis, people just want to know what's going on. And so they're going to be more concerned about keeping what they have than necessarily going ahead and gaining more. They just want to know that things are okay. And so operators that might not might be holding back distributions or, uh, no, not communicating as frequently need to be communicating. And that's what our system helps solve. So just being able to have a system that you can log into anytime and check, and just to know that your information is in there, your distributions are in there, your documents are there, and any activity, any reports are going to be in there. So it, It, it helps to allay those concerns. And, you know, it has been said before, but it's, it's very good to be reinforced because many people shy away from, from presenting the bad news, but most people including myself would rather hear it than have to think about what could be potentially the bad news. Right? So if someone is holding distributions, because they're trying to, again, preserve capital right now, you know, they first and foremost, you know, w we want to make, we want to offer returns, but the most important thing is preservation of capital giving back the capital first and foremost. And so if that's the operator's mindset and they're potentially not, um, they're not speaking that to their, to, to their investors, even though they have the right intentions, it can be taken a million different ways. So getting ahead of it and talking to your investors and just having the conversation out front, and it's, it's most important, right? Presenting the good presenting the bad and presenting what you're working to do to correct that. And having a platform like yourself, where the investors can also reconfirm the talk track with what's available on a platform, uh, is wholeheartedly important. Do you think that there's other parts of let's all talk multifamily where technology is supremely lacking right now that we may see an influx of technology and a certain component of multifamily that's missing, I'm not entirely sure what, uh, where the gaps are, uh, to be honest, but I do know that property tourists, uh, have gotten some creative ways of running. And I have a friend of mine who owns a company that does virtual, uh, property tours. And I think they're growing by like four or five X, uh, this year because of that, because everyone's moving to virtual tours, we're just thinking about the things that we need to be able to do when we're not able to get together in the same physical space, how can we make, how can we standardize that process and the information give access to people and what kinds of areas, maybe, you know, what kinds of areas do you see missing Property management is, is one, right? And a lot of the property management companies are mom and pop operations, or just operations that have that have, that have operated for many years. Right. And they haven't inputted the technology into their system. Right. You're still living in a, in a, basically a paper world in a lot of different ways. And just like you said, yeah. There's so many times over the course of history where people say, well, no, one's going to do that. No, one's going to rent a property just by seeing it, you know, over a computer. No, one's going to buy a house just by seeing it through pictures until someone says, well, why not try it? And then all of a sudden you see it happening right. Happening before your eyes, because people will, right. There's, there's always that group who may want to physically see it, but then there's the other group that says, okay, I understand. Yeah. Yeah. It's got two bedrooms, it's got two bathrooms, it's got a kitchen and I live in a room and it's on the second floor. Understood. You know? And so, and what's the, where do I sign it? It makes it even cleaner. Right. So even at that point of, um, if there's to have the Lisa's deal to DocuSign, just teach things that, that continue to be in some format automated, but not a full throughout process where like, you're talking about here with groundbreaker where lots of times you have platforms that have a lot of the steps, but they fall off in terms of the distribution. Right. You, you can't, you can't fluently do that. Right. So, so you have like 90% of it there, you see a lot of that with proper venture company, you may have like 60% of it. There are like leasing, like we're like 70%, but you're still missing that gap. That, that gap that just makes it a, if you're a tenant or prospective tenant, you want to feel, especially if you're looking at, um, you know, a flight to quality or potentially, you know, a best in class asset, that it is going to be that kind of operation fully through, like you have to an A-class asset and you're using a C class showing process where maybe you can adapt it to a new age showing process. Like you said, where their company is now is showing virtual tours. Right. They're able to use, you know, ways that you can really feel like you're there. And so, you know, I'm not smart enough to know any of these steps, but I know that, you know, like virtual reality, it's not there yet, but it's going to have a place, right. If you can use that and be in an apartment and no, the apartment with NB, I don't know you're moving. Right. And you're moving, you're a thousand miles away. You don't have to find, you know, and Betty who lives two hours away to go see the asset for you. You can just use virtual reality and there you're there. Yeah. You can choose your, your furniture and then put it in the right places and kind of figure it out while you're in the room. There you go. That's the add on. Right. You know, and if you're, if you're not company right there, and then you started, you started having the furniture company that is your second line. Right. And then you can literally furnish the apartment. I mean, things like that, they're in this, when you, when you look at that, but one thing the internet has created and continues to create, it's a one for speed. Right. So one for speed and, and, and easy. Right. And that goes on both ways. It goes like people see someone in front of a Ferrari and they want that. And they haven't gotten off the couch in three weeks. Right. But in the same part, that's the same thing with buying decisions. Right. You know, that's why Amazon, we have the one-click right. Where like, they they've now corner that because they're just one click, you know, I gotta be careful, my little kids, they get on, like my phones are messing around and we might be buying like 64 little Yoda things, you know, just, just because, you know, you can even like have, um, an Arduino connection. Like it's like this, this kind of internet of things where you can print out a button and then have it respond to a specific purchase action that you want to take. So it could be like toilet paper, and you've got a toilet paper button next to the toilet paper roll, and you just press the button and it orders new toilet paper for you on Amazon to actually do that kind of stuff. See what, think those are, those are the things that if you are able to offer those processes as if maybe you get wholly vertically integrated as, as a company, right. And as an operator, you're able to offer that. And you're even a property manager of construction. And then now some kind of manufacturing that's where someone stands apart. Right? Because now you're able to find your inefficiencies because for me, even, you know, we use third party management and they have a lot of construction in house. Sometimes they'll have to sub out for other points. And I have to look at it for a way where potentially if I was leading construction charge, I could probably save on that, but it may take me more time to find the right contractor at that time from being a thousand miles away. And it may, and I may lose that time on, okay, Hey, I saved 500 bucks, but it took me an additional three and a half, four weeks of downtime on the unit. And so what's the cost of that on the back end. So I may pay a little bit more for the speed, but if I had the integration in place, I would save that 500 upfront and still have the speed in front. And so there's a lot of things that to, to, to grow into, as we continue to move, I feel like, um, For the real estate tech space and technology that we see coming out now, there's so much of it that people don't know exists, and there's a lag effect of applying it and commercializing it and packaging it in a way that we're able to consume. And so we're developing technology faster than the rate that we can even apply it. And, uh, you're just seeing, I mean, even OCR technology, like the ability to read files and, uh, and, and be able to do actions, automated actions, based on your capability of reading files, that's been out for many years now, and Amazon has made it incredibly easier to apply and use that technology. Um, for example, so people can now use it and it takes, uh, companies like that to maybe refine some technology, make it more marketable inapplicable for companies to apply it. Uh, and with real estate tech, the challenge I see is that there's all these other co there's, all these companies doing bunch of different things, managing important data, but the data has no way of flowing between different systems. And so when you look at it at a high level, uh, there's probably going to need to be an immense amount of consolidation in the industry, uh, at some point for these systems to start to talk to each other and become useful across various functions in the real estate investment or real estate property management space. Interesting. Yeah. Right. So I think Elias will stand out and there'll be some kind of puppeteer or some other way to that that can make the connection. Right. Cause, cause almost sometimes the space gets so flooded that even from my own self, that it's so much information to take on, but like you, you get stopped by, you know, you're missing that component. So you're like, Oh, well where do I go for that? And you have to learn this whole other space. That's, you know, 50 deep accompanies. You're trying to figure out that space and how, how that connects to this, you know, and you'll go down a rabbit hole and eventually at the end strike out because you haven't met your desired outcome because you're, you're missing something. Right. And you don't because it's not there and it's not readily known because you haven't seen it before. You're, you're missing that question. Right. So who's question, who is this? Who is this solution? Who can give me that answer? Right. So yeah, I agree. It's, it's going to be interesting. Cause right now you're going to see a lot of different ways that, that the space is going to change, right? So you may have more people working at home. And just because everybody just like you said before with the virtual tours, well, you know, I can never manage people at home. And right now they're seeing, you know, production still happening in spaces that were heavily aligned on people working. And that's going to take office space and office space may have a new transition to whatever, you know, I don't know, like big warehouse, they may come trampoline parks. I don't know. But on some part, you know, you you'll see that transition and the more that we can facilitate easy user guidance, it's going to be interesting. You know, like my, my mind is almost flooded with possibilities right now. And even hearing you talk about certain lines right there, like the furniture, that's just a whole nother thing. There's an, there's always a level that you can add on to make the customer experience because that's the end goal, right? Your goal is groundbreaker, isn't make your user and customer experience the best possible. Right. And at all points where if we keep that in line, there's going to be some massive, massive, um, new concepts coming out in the next few years based on what's just happened. Yeah. And I, I think it's going to be the logical progression of all of this. If you look at like Salesforce, uh, they, in, in one way or another, they pioneered massive adoption of CRM systems that are highly complex and customizable to businesses. And out of that was this enormous consulting, uh, industry for Salesforce there's companies that exist just to implement and manage Salesforce. So in real estate tech, I don't, yeah, you, you look at like advisors, capital, formation advisors, uh, consulting companies, they're in some way, shifting their businesses a little bit, to be able to understand tech stacks and arrange them together for businesses that want to have a fully integrated technology system. And so you're going to also see those kinds of groups. They start to become active and help, uh, Real estate syndicators and investment firms adopt technology and get paid to do that right now. It seems like the user is, is a big part of the whole back, right? Just an unhide credit is what do you think? Is there something you talked psychology and beginning, one of your, your things you really interested in that really, really draw your attention. Is there anything that you're seeing across the board that that's holding us back from adapting to new things, Maybe it's our own, uh, anxiety to get things done and solved so quickly that we've become so used to this as a, as, as, as individuals in this technology, you know, technologically driven world that we want something we want it now and we can get it and technology takes time to build. So we all have to be able to educate ourselves. I think, more to understand technology and the way that it works, uh, and its limitations In order to be better users of technology. So, Mmm that's that's just one. No, that's great. And that that's sometimes the biggest thing is just knowing what, what is the limitation, right? Cause, cause that, that helps us understand the best use of it, right? The best, the best practical approach to be able to put that in and where it can implement. Right. And, uh, and there will be people that create solutions for those shortcomings and then you're on your way with what you're doing for groundbreaker. So Jake, this has been awesome. I've enjoyed the conversation. So talk to us about the site where people can come learn more about you and the company. Yeah. Well, likewise, Jason has been fun. Uh, if you guys want to find more information about groundbreaker, you can go to our website, which is groundbreaker.co and we've got the demo videos available. If anybody wants to go and check them out. Cool, man. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. I enjoyed the conversation. Yeah, likewise. Awesome. Everyone listened. Super appreciate your time. Think about everything that's happening right now. There's there's just so much that is going to transform. And like you heard Jake speaking there, there's just countless opportunities out there and we're just learning we're on the cusp of so many things that are going to happen and just transition the way that we look at things and you out there to confine those solutions through a wall of opportunities to be ahead of us. So thank you again. Super excited to have Jacob show's name. Awesome. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Digging deeper into recent news from and about Dexcom. Stacey talks to Chief Technology Officer Jake Leach about the news that competitor Abbott has received approval for it's Libre 2 CGM. What does that mean for the marketplace? She also asks Jake about G6 sensor issues, data gathering and more. Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Dexcom statement on data and privacy: Patient safety is a top priority at Dexcom, and we design our products to be as safe and secure as possible, as the data that comes into our system from CGM devices is extremely important for patients and physicians in understanding and improving diabetes management. Dexcom works with government agencies, industry partners and security researchers to apply current best security practices for medical devices to help ensure the integrity and availability of our systems. Our terms of data use are laid out for patients to consent or opt-out when they first set up a Dexcom account, so they know exactly how their data could be used and who will have access to it. In order for healthcare providers to access patient data, each patient must approve the sharing of their data to the healthcare provider through the CLARITY app. Another way patients can opt-out of sharing any of their data is by using the dedicated Dexcom receiver to view their glucose levels instead of a smart device. Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android   Episode Transcription: Stacey Simms  0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop created for people with diabetes by people who have diabetes and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom.   Announcer  0:16 This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  0:22 Welcome to a bonus episode of Diabetes Connections. So glad to have you along as always. A bit of an unusual situation this week in the very last episode, and hopefully you've heard it. I spoke to Dexcom CEO Kevin Sayer. we taped that episode before the ADA conference actually took place. You know, the time shifting nature of podcasting. we taped these interviews ahead of time and then a couple of days or a week later, generally, the interviews air. A a couple of days after taping that interview, the FDA approved Abbott's Libre2 and this is a different CGM is able to continue transmit glucose data every minute. And users can now set the system to send alarms when their glucose is too high or too low. And previously, you had to scan the sensor in order to get any kind of glucose reads. So that is a big change, and frankly, more direct competition to Dexcom. I have reached out to Abbott in the hopes of learning more and asking them any questions that you may have Dexcom though, immediately reached back out to me and asked if we wanted to talk more about CGM and how they stack up in the marketplace. Now, I am not going to pass up the opportunity to ask more of your questions. And that's why we have sort of a Dexcom double feature this week. My usual disclaimer Dexcom as you have heard, and longtime listeners know Dexcom is a sponsor of this show. That means they pay me to have a commercial in the show. That sponsorship gets them a commercial, it does not get them any kind of approval over content. And so what does that mean? It means I don't send them all the questions. I have of time, we don't plan out what we're going to say. I hope you know, as you've listened that I don't hold back on questions and criticism from them. But we do have that relationship. And it's really important that you you know it right because we were doing news interviews here. And this interview is with Dexcom CTO, Jake Leach. I will link up more information at the episode homepage. And as always, there is a transcript. So here is my interview with Dexcom’s chief technical officer. Jake, thank you for jumping on and spending some time with me and my listeners. We always appreciate learning more about what's going on at Dexcom. So thank you.   Jake Leach  2:36 It's a pleasure to be here. Stacey. Thanks for having me.   Stacey Simms  2:38 Absolutely. So I just talked to Kevin Sayer. We did kind of a high level, you know what's new, what's next? How are things going? Talking about the G7? It he's of changes that have happened to the G6 COVID delays, that sort of thing. My listeners had a bunch of questions as this is the backdrop of course of the Libre news that came out Abbott's Libre 2 have got approval for use of the United States. The number one question that my listeners had was, can they talk about the price difference? I don't know if that's a CTO level question.   Jake Leach  3:11 Yeah, as much as you know, I'm involved in it. We basically, when we think about the cost of the product, the most important thing to be thinking about is making sure people have access to it. So insurance coverage, we feel really good about the fact that 98% of the private insurance companies do cover the product, as well as Medicare started covers it. And in states, many Medicaid systems do also cover the product as insurance. That's where we focus our time is really on on that. And we very few of our customers actually pay cash for the product. The vast majority of everybody gets it through insurance coverage.   Stacey Simms  3:48 When I look at the Libre, and full disclosure here, my husband has type two diabetes and he uses the Libre and Benny my son has used the Dexcom since 2013. Now, wow, yeah, it's funny to think about how much time has gone by. But one of the things I look at with the G7 coming and the you know, the bit that we know about it is that it will be much more like the Libre in terms of the sensor and transmitter in one. Can you speak to that in terms of the G7 in terms of size, insertion, that sort of thing?   Jake Leach  4:25 Yeah, so the G7 is, as you pointed out as an integrated sensor all in one, so it's the wearable device that goes on the body includes both the sensor, the transmitter, as well as the electronics inside the wearable that are both monitoring the center and then taking that signal and sending it via Bluetooth to the different integrated display devices whether that's a mobile phone, so a smartphone with an app on it, Android or iOS, or a insulin pump for automated insulin delivery systems. Other display devices, we have our receiver that is our proprietary handheld, some people really like that as their way to access the information. So our goal is to make it as interoperable as possible, which is one of the key important points about IC GM is that it's interoperable device   Stacey Simms  5:16 you And with that, I always get hung up on it. Because when I heard about interoperability A few years ago, in my head, it seemed like, Okay, well, I could switch out my pump, or I could switch out my sensor, I could use a different brand with this thing and kind of mix and match. And of course, insurance for most of us is the biggest problem for getting different devices. But it doesn't really work like that, does it? I mean, if a Dexcom g seven works with say, Omnipod five horizon, and with a T slim X to control IQ, people aren't really going to be able to just switch out devices like that and use the same sensor, are they?   Jake Leach  5:51 Yeah, as usual, it's more complicated as you look at it under the hood. But the key thing about the integration is that systems have to be designed To be able to be integrated. And so one of the big moves that we made when we transitioned between Gen four, and Gen five, and then subsequently Gen six, and as well as Gen seven, we moved to Bluetooth technology, which is a much more readily available technology within the display devices. So we moved to that. And when we did that, we designed an architecture that the intelligence of the system is all on the the wearable. So all the glucose calculations, all the information that you need is actually on the little transmitter device in G6, and will be in G seven as well. And so that is the device that can be accessed by multiple displays. If you think about it, you can use your mobile phone and the whole share feature that comes along with our mobile system, the remote monitoring feature, you can use that and at the same time, you can use a tandem controller to pump doing automated insulin delivery. And so the system is really designed to have that type of integration where you've got the right information in the right places and makes it interoperable. The systems have to be designed To be connected, for example, horizon five Omnipod five, the system that is in development by insolate is being designed to be integrated with both G6, that's what they're doing their studies with as well as G seven. So you have to do the design work and do the testing to ensure that it operates safely. But interoperability is a great thing. But it isn't as simple as just pulling and pulling everything it has to be designed and tested.   Stacey Simms  7:22 Yeah, it was interesting. I in my head, I always had it as well, this, you know, I can mix and match, I can figure out what I want. But when I talk to technical people, they always kind of smile at that because they understand more of the intricacies, I think of what it takes within the technology to make that kind of stuff happen. Whereas as the user, I just want to hokey pokey it around and use what I want. But we'll see as it goes down the road. Some other G7 basics that my listeners asked was, will the G7 have a shorter warm up and does it have a lower MARD? Is it more accurate than G6?   Jake Leach  7:55 Great questions. The warm up time is designed to be shorter than g6. And so we're As we're landing exactly how much shorter it's going to be, but it's definitely going to be a faster warmup. Also, the mard is the average difference between the sensor and the reference measurements that we measured the performance of the device and so on. That way, we want to ensure that we hit those iCGM standards. And so I think G7 definitely has the opportunity to perform better, but it definitely will meet those CGM standards, which are rigorous and important to ensure the product performs accurately throughout its life.   Stacey Simms  8:30 Can you give me a hint on the warm up? Is it going to be more an hour and 45 minutes or more?   Jake Leach  8:35 No, no, no, it's gonna be It'll be an hour or less.   Stacey Simms  8:40 You know, just had to double check on that.   Jake Leach  8:42 Yeah, no games there. We're just we're still trying to dial in exactly what's going to be to ensure we you know, the system has to be accurate. Second, it starts up but we do value short warmup time because we know how important it is when you know you're without the sensor data for that warmup period. So you want to make sure it starts up as fast as possible.   Stacey Simms  8:59 Yeah, it's interesting too. Because I'm probably an outlier but previous to we use the control IQ system with tandem previous to using that the two hour warmup really didn't bother me too much. I mean, it was only two hours especially if you came from like we did seven years with no CGM. It's really did not seem to be that big a deal. But now that we're using this algorithm, and the pump relies on the Dexcom data, two hours just seems like way too long to be without it.   Jake Leach  9:27 I agree. Really interesting.   Stacey Simms  9:29 Speaking of wear time, we've been very fortunate. Again, as I said, we've used Dexcom for a long time we do not really have a lot of issues knock on wood with it. He's of sensitivity which Kevin mentioned in his in our interview together, we went over that, but also with where time, but a lot of my listeners wanted me to ask if you are really checking into the people who can and there are many who can never seem to make it to 10 days on a sensor. Right who really was it whether it's because they have a young  child or the body chemistry for whatever reason, it does seem to be an issue that many people can't get the full life out of a sensor.   Jake Leach  10:07 Can you address that? I know you're looking at it.   Jake Leach  10:09 Yeah, yeah, I've got, of course. So a couple things there. There's quite a few things we've done over time. And we continue to research on this. There's two aspects to sensor longevity. One of them is how long the sensor can remain accurate. And so within our device, we have algorithms that are checking the performance of the sensor at all times. And so there are times when we detect that that sensor signal is not accurate and not meeting the CGM standard. And so we we actually shut it off and that's when you get on the display, you get the sensor failed signal. That's basically we detected that that sensor is not working properly, and it's not going to return to functioning based on the data that we're seeing from it. As you mentioned, most people are able to get 10 days out of the sensor particularly now that we've made some changes with the adhesive as well. But there are some people who don't and with those folks, we often spend some extra time with our tech support, and kind of walk through what their issues are. And there's quite a few things that can be done to help sensors last longer. I mentioned the adhesive, we recently updated our adhesive, we've added an overlay. that's optional, people can ask if you have access to the clear adhesive that goes over the top of the white one that comes with the product. And so we're looking at lots of different ways. Because what we found is everybody's a little different in terms of what their needs are and what works for them. And so we're trying to do is have as many options that we can to make the sensors stay on and heared. And it's really that's our philosophy around sensor longevity is if I really wanted to I could I could run a study and claim that G6 goes 15 days because I know the performance would meet that the problem is not all the centers would last that long. And so what we're really after is making sure all the sensors, as many as we can get out to the labeled timeframe, not just some of them. And I think that's one of the key differences that you'll see over time between different CGM companies is we're very focused on a high level liability, you're never going to get 100%. You know, sensors will come off and they'll get knocked off. It's a challenge. But it's one that we're very focused on trying to ensure that we can have the highest flow reliability possible.   Stacey Simms  12:12 Let me just follow up on that, because sensor sticking is one thing, right? I mean, I know that that's an issue in everybody's skin is different. And you have the overlays now, and the adhesive does seem to be sticking better to many people. Butwhat about people who have no trouble getting the adhesive to stick in the wire to stay in, but get recurrent sensor failure? Are there any best practices for people who seem to get that over and over again,   Jake Leach  12:36 there are and it's actually often comes down to, you know, sensor placement and you know, the sensors indicated for abdominal use. And so, we often instruct folks to try at different locations. We've also, if someone's really having repeated challenges and where they're getting those sensor failures, we do have specific capability with our tech support to work with that customer and look at their data and To help determine exactly what is going on, there's a number of things to we tend to see, that happens when people are more dehydrated. So you know, kind of making sure they're well hydrated and drinking water. But if someone's having consistent problems all the time, then we really want them to reach out to us and talk to our tech support. And we can get someone who is experienced, but you know that those types of issues to talk to them and look at their data and help work through it.   Stacey Simms  13:22 I don't mean to harp on it. But I've just, and I'm, I know, you may not be the right person to try to pin down on this, so forgive me, but I'm thinking like, Is it an insertion thing is it I mean, we've, anecdotally, the community has said, drink water, stick in the fattest place you possibly can maybe rock the sensor a little when you're inserting it so it doesn't go as deeply in like it's more shallow. I'm just curious with all the data that you will collect in these phone calls. If there's any, like I said, a best practice that would help or if it's just you know, you've got to talk to your local rep, maybe get an in person or zoom call lesson or talk to tech support, but you know, just a more concrete business advice, I think would be so helpful.   Jake Leach  14:01 Yeah, I think a lot of it does have to do with that insertion saying, like you said, you want to put it into a place where you've got good interstitial tissue. The other thing I've seen, too, is, um, you want to make sure that it's not at a place where you're going to compress the center a lot, you know, if it's under compression, you're not getting the same amount of perfusion there have glucose under the skin. And so that can also lead to issues. There is something recently that we've released in a product that has really solved a number of issues in that people were getting sensor failures during really high glucose excursions. We've sent some solved that problem with a new version of our transmitter that is now out in the market, almost everybody has that device. Now, it did make quite a dent in those we were detecting the algorithm was detecting that really high glucose as a potential issue. And over time, we've learned through looking at the data that that wasn't an actual issue until we were able to correct that in a recent version of the device. But yeah, it does come down to kind of working through sensor insertion and placement in Don't have data that validates, you know, some of those techniques that you mentioned that says it will work if you do these things. But we have heard from the community, and in our own times speaking with patients that it has been very helpful. And some of those concepts you just mentioned.   Stacey Simms  15:14 Jake, I'm sorry, can I ask you to clarify? It may have gone over my head. But when you were mentioning the newer transmitter that is out, can you just clarify what you meant by when it was reading very high blood glucose? And that was affecting the sensor? And then it sounded like you said, but that wasn't the case. Can you just clarify that?   Jake Leach  15:31 Yeah, sure. So what it was, was that during really high glucose excursions, the device was detecting a potential sensor failure where it wasn't the sensor failure. There's nothing wrong with the sensor. It was working. But you know, it's one of those things that once you once you get a product on the market, you learn more about it. And so we've made several iterations to the G6 even since it's been in the market for several years to improve it. And that is one of the cases that we saw patients running into, that we resolved with the newest version of the device is that it doesn't give The sensor error when when there was really high glucose excursion,   Jake Leach  16:03 and I'm just curious cuz it does sound like you've resolved it. What is really high glucose? Like over 400?   Jake Leach  16:10 Oh, well north of 4, 5, 6 hundred.   Stacey Simms Oh my goodness,   Jake Leach  16:14 yeah, we're really, really high glucose.   Stacey Simms  16:16 So if somebody has a teenager who's like bumped up to 250 and getting sensor failure, that's not the issue.   Jake Leach  16:21 That's not the issue. No, no, no, not in not in those,   Stacey Simms  16:24 because everybody has a different idea of really high glucose. So Thanks for clarifying.   Jake Leach  16:27 Yeah, that's a good thing to clarify. Because, like you mentioned,   Stacey Simms  16:32 you know, another question that my listeners had was about data. And we've talked a little bit here about some of the data that you collect. And I don't know if it's different internationally, but to speak about the data.   Jake Leach  16:43 Yeah, sure. Of course, first of all, data privacy is very important, both just fundamentally and philosophically as well as to be in compliance with all the global regulation we're seeing in this area of data privacy. There's a lot of advancements in the laws and regulate Around consent, and users granting access to their data, because in the end, it's the users data. We're just a steward of it. And so we take it very seriously. And so in our processes and our controls, that's how we proceed. So the data that comes into our systems from the CGM devices are used for things like share. So we provide the share system, the remote monitoring, that connectivity is super important. The data is also through that same system made available to the clarity application for use by the patients or customers or their physician. And then we also have that data in a safe lockdown repository that can be used by our tech support agents. If users are having track challenges, like we talked about tech support agents can actually log in and work with that user on their specific data. But   Stacey Simms  17:48 hey, it's Stacey jumping in here. I need to insert myself into the interview with the episode here because we hADAn audio issue right there and it was completely my fault. So apologies. Dexcom is going gonna give you a full statement on data and privacy, and I will link it up in the show notes. So Jake can kind of continue his thought that way and give you the full statement. One thing he said that I thought was very interesting though was if you are concerned about privacy and want to opt out, you can just use the receiver all by itself. They don't collect any data that way. But then you can't use clarity or share the information online with caregivers or your health team. But if you want to opt out, that is one way to do it and still use the Dexcom system. I did follow up the data question with one about transmitting data and why it's limited to certain devices. If you use a tandem pump like we do, for example, the transmitter can send data to your phone and to the to the mix to pump but then not also to the receiver.   Jake Leach  18:52 Yeah, the ad goes down into the specific engineering of the device deep down inside the wearable, for example to the transmitter producer. There's a battery in there. Every connection to a display device takes a Bluetooth communication channel. And so today, which is six, we support two channels, one for mobile phone and one for a medical device such as the insulin pump, or the Dexcom. receiver, it can support to have those connections to the med devices, because we need one available for a phone. We are looking in the future to allow multiple different types of devices you can imagine watches and other things. And so that technology is we're working the architecture of that. But the key there is that circuitry has to be low enough power that it doesn't use up the battery. We specifically designed G6 to be reliable for that 90 day period for the mere life. And so we couldn't put that system you can't support more than those two connection.   Stacey Simms  19:45 Yeah, practically speaking for us. It's plenty. I was just curious about the thinking behind it. And is that going to be the same thing with the Omnipod five? horizon? I'm laughing because I have to figure out how to say that Omnipod five. will it be the same thing Work goes phone and PDM or something, or is that a different setup altogether?   Jake Leach  20:04 It's a little different. But it's it with the G6 integration, G6 will support the Omnipod five as well as a mobile app like a G6 app. So it does support that. And as we look into the future towards things like g seven and future versions of G7, we are looking at architectures that could support even more display devices, more than just two.   Stacey Simms  20:24 And I'll hope to talk to Insulet in the future to get the specifics. But as I'm asking you this question, that sounds a little ridiculous, because where would it show up on the pod? I guess it would show up on a PDF if you use that instead of a phone.   Jake Leach  20:34 Yeah, I think one way to look at it for all of these automated insulin delivery systems is you want good communication between the algorithm that is doing all of the calculations for how much influence to deliver, you want a good connection between that and the glucose signal and the pump that's doing the delivery. That's part of the system engineering of the of the product and part of G6 was designed specifically for interoperability with so that it can support use cases like that   Stacey Simms  20:59 you mentioned To watch, I did talk to Kevin about this. So I'm sorry to bring it up again. But my listeners are really waiting for that direct to watch component. Can you speak to that from your perspective?   Jake Leach  21:11 Yeah, sure. So, you know, it's a it's a feature that we've been working on in development for for quite a while. And as we've worked through it, well, it turns out, you know, on our side, as well as on the leaves, Apple Watches is one of the one of the examples other than a significant amount of engineering. I think that we all underestimated when we first started talking about that product in the way that it interacts with the G7, as well as the phone app. And so we've been working with Apple closely know, over the last couple of years, actually, when when they announced this feature, it was really kind of a prototype feature. We started working with them closely on it, making quite a few updates on both sides to support that type of a feature. And so while we don't have any dates, where we're going to launch it, it's important feature that we know, adds flexibility to users lives and so we will continue to work on it. But at this point in time, we don't have a specific comment.   Stacey Simms  21:57 Yeah, I'm curious um, before I let you go here, DiabetesMine, which is a really great news source, if as you listen, you're not familiar, I always read them. I think they're fantastic. They recently, earlier this year, put out an article, headline “39 potential new continuous glucose monitors for diabetes,” as some of these are never going to happen. A lot of these are, you know, non invasive wearables that, you know, look at a headline, and we may never see again, but some of these are going to happen. Jake, I know you all are watching the competition. You know, I know that, you know, Dexcom has enjoyed a long time here of not having a lot of competition, especially the United States. I'll give you the floor. Are you guys ready to take on these companies?   Jake Leach  22:39 Absolutely. I think the just notion that there's that many different companies and working in this space is kind of validating the concept that continuous glucose monitoring is the standard of care for diabetes management and so perfectly comfortable with Mark people working in this space and we continue to drive forward all of our efforts on advancing the technologies, whether it The performance of the sensor the longevity of the sensor, particularly the ease of use, and the integration of our CGM with other devices. And you know from what we've seen, it's a very large opportunity. There's a lot of people who could benefit from CGM, so we're comfortable not being the only player. And we actually going to welcome expansion of CGM space across the globe with other companies as well as tech from   Jake Leach  23:23 Well, thank you so much for jumping on. I feel like I got a double feature of Dexcom this week. So thank you for the info. It's always great to catch up.   Jake Leach  23:29 I appreciate it. Stacey. Thanks for having me.   Jake Leach  23:37 You're listening to diabetes connections   Jake Leach  23:39 with Stacey Sims.   Stacey Simms  23:43 More information in the show notes as always, the episode homepage and there is a transcript there there are important links. Same thing if you're listening in a podcast app, you should be able to get to the show notes. But you know some apps are weird and they don't post links and Apple podcasts which is the most common one. Used as kind of bad for that sort of thing. So I always put it on the episode homepage, which you can find at Diabetes connections.com. And a little bit on that audio error if you're interested. I mean, here's some inside baseball. But here's basically what happened. Whenever I do a remote interview, and probably 90% of the interviews on this podcast are remote, right? We're not together, I do them generally through Skype. And my computer is set up so that it automatically records when a Skype call is placed. I have a backup recorder. For those of you who are technical and want to know it's an h5 zoom, and it's fabulous. But it's an external recorder that's plugged into the computer and has an SD card inside of it. So this call like a couple I've done recently, our zoom calls, my computer is not set up to automatically record and you know, everybody knows zoom by now if you're not the host, you don't have the power to record well 99% of the time, I asked the host to please record it on their end and then send it to me as a backup and I just roll the h5 zoom over here. forgot to ask them To hit record, there's always a PR person on these calls, you know, Jake doesn't have to worry about it, they'll take care of it. But I forgot to ask her to do that. So I'm rolling on my end, but they weren't rolling on there. And then and this has never happened before, the SD card was full. And it's a huge SD card. I don't know what the data is. I'm not going to pop it out. Now, look, but you know, I cleared out periodically, but probably only once every six months. And oh, my gosh, I completely forgot to do it. So it just clicked off and stopped recording. I share this with you. Because I mean, we're more than 300 episodes in right. We're close. You know me, I know some of you, but I thought you might appreciate it behind the scenes look at some of the nonsense that goes on here. I was able to stop the interview, ask them to start rolling and then restart. But we did lose that part, which I hate about the data. I have talked to Dexcom in the past about data. I will link up the specific interview where I talked to them about that. And I will link up the statement that they gave me after the fact I asked them to email me some information about that. But you know, hey, we're not perfect around here and we don't pretend to be the next Episode shouldn't be an interview with tandem. if things work out. We're still in the process of moving some things around with ADA and breaking news, we always like to do the best we can. So tandem should be up next, please join the Facebook group Diabetes Connections, the group to stay up to date. And that's the best way to get your questions into these interviews. When I have something like this, I always ask and you guys are amazing at getting me great questions and letting me know what you want to talk about. So I appreciate that very much. Thank you as always to my editor john Buchanan's from audio editing solutions. And thank you very much for listening. I'm Stacey Simms. I'll see you back here next week. Until then, be kind to yourself, even if your SD card is full. Benny 26:45 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms media. All rights reserved. All wrongs avenged   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

James: Hey, audience and listeners, this is James Kandasamy and you're listening to Achieve Wealth Podcast where we talk about value-add real estate investing and we interview a lot of commercial real estate operators where you can grab a pen and a paper and start learning.    So today we have Jake and Gino from Wheelbarrow Profits. And Jake and Gino own around 1500 units with 1000 of that units were done solely by them without any syndication. And they have another 400 units, which they started syndication and their primary focus is on Southeast market. Right now, the deals are in Tennessee and Kentucky. So, Hey guys, welcome to the show.   Gino: Hey, James. How you doing? Nice to be here.    Jake: Hey, thank you for having us.   James: Yeah. Did I miss out anything in terms of introducing you guys?   Gino: Well, I mean, for me, I've got six kids. I mean that's probably my biggest achievement to date. I live down in Florida. I relocated two years ago from New York to Florida. I'm a certified life coach. I think that's a really big accomplishment for me and I've got a fantastic partner on the other end. So that's what I guess made my success, having an amazing partner, having an amazing person pushing me and telling me, Hey Gino, we need to buy this deal. Hey Gino, you know, we need to write this book. And I'm like, come on, another thing? So having a great partner really will excel you in life. Did leave anything out, Jake?    Jake: We're economic deserters. We left the high tax Northeast for a better life of sunshine and rainbows and I'd [01:54unclear] friend. No, it's been a great ride. You know, Gino and I, back in 2011, started really looking hard at multifamily. We wanted yield. We wanted something that was going to pay us every month. We had very challenging jobs at the time. I was under threat of layoff all the time. Gino was in the back of the kitchen trying to make sure that he could get dishwashers in every night. And ultimately, we knew there was more to life than what we were experiencing and we sought out to make it happen for ourselves.    So we got into the first deal. It was a tough one. It was a 25 unit and we've never looked back. We've done multifaceted, multifamily ever since. We have four core businesses, we have property management, we have education, we have a mortgage brokerage, we have an investment business and over 20 holding companies to go along with that. So we really look at multifamily, you know, being the place to be because we know that it's a basic human need and we've grown our brands all within the multifamily space. And it's been, again, just a fantastic ride. We've focused a lot on culture scale, and growing the business day in and day out. We had an epiphany moment a few years ago that we were working too hard and we're running around doing everything.    We call it the, 'I'm a' mentality. I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. I'm going to do everything. 'I'm a' could only go so far. So I'm ahead to bring some friends. So Jake and Gino, you know, brought some friends on and we started scaling up. And you know, we've got some really great people on the team and I think that's one of the things, I get so much of the enjoyment out of it. Cause I see these people coming on really with us and they just grow and they excel and then we've created a home for them.   Jake: And James, more importantly, that only started with a 25 unit property with $27,000 from Jake, myself and my brother, Mark. So that's the amazing thing. Talking about where to start. I'm too young, I'm too old, the market's too hot. I don't have enough money. Those are all myths that people want to tell themselves. What they're lacking is they're lacking innovation, they're lacking education, they're lacking creativity and they're lacking mastermind. Those are the things that I lacked when I used those excuses.    And if you want to use those excuses, that's fine. But we have so many Jake and Gino community members that are in their twenties and they're in their sixties and they've gone out and they're doing deals. So if you want to get into multifamily, you need to educate yourself first.   James: Yeah, very interesting. You guys are really, really vertically integrated. I mean, as you've mentioned, you guys own property management, asset management and also have a renovation team. And you also do some agency that representation right to the test lenders, I guess for the agency, which is really good. I mean I have the first three but not the last one. Question is, I mean, how did you guys do this 1000 units on your own? I can tell you there's not many people who have done like even like a what, 300 units on their own, right? Everybody syndicates, right? Including me; I syndicate, I used to own...I mean I still own some single-family, which I'm selling off right now, but all my deals are syndicated and a lot of people I talk to use syndication. But how did you guys go from that 25 units to 1000 units on your own?   Gino: We weren't that smart, first of all. We thought that's how you had to do it, to be completely honest with you. Because we said, Hey, we got to buy a deal. We'll buy the deal. We buy it, right? The three-step framework, if you see the wheelbarrow behind me, it's buy right, manage right and finance right. You need to do all three of those. We were buying them right and we're still buying the assets right.    It's truly important that you need to buy the asset right. So we buy these assets, we refinanced the assets and we wouldn't go and buy Ferrari's. We'd actually repurpose that money into the next deal. What really propelled us was we bought a 281 unit property. It was $11 million. It was owner finance. The owner basically said, here you go, here are the keys. We actually had about $120,000 come back to us at closing.   Now that doesn't happen every day, but that happens when you're ready and when you are integrated and you know the business model and you know, to take advantage of that. That really, really propelled us because we were able to refinance that property. So to date, we've refinanced over $9 million of our proceeds. We've rolled that right back into the business and we continued to grow that way. But James, to be honest with you, if we'd been syndicating through three years ago, we'd probably be at the 5,000 unit mark, which is maybe that's great, that's not great but that wasn't our path.    We started syndicating back in November because we saw we could create another multiple stream of revenue, create the asset management company, that syndication company, for syndication. And I had five or 600 investors on our platform because of the Jake and Gino brand. I just couldn't utilize them. We didn't have the space so we brought on another partner to start that business and that's been a fantastic business. We've done two syndications, we've got another deal in the contract right now and we're continuing to grow that. And James, as you know, they feed each other. It's just wonderful. You go to an event, you speak, you do podcasts, the education can sell education, sell books, and then you know what, you're positioning yourself as an authority leader. And on top of that, you're bringing investors on board and you're teaching people how to do it and you're getting the deal source. And it's just such a symbiotic, beautiful relationship.   James: Yeah, it's very interesting because I mean right now, like for example, I was told once, I mean you can do syndication, but your end goal is to own some of the units. But you guys are going the other way.   Jake: We started backward, James. I'm going to tell you something, and this is what I want your listeners to hear because it's the kind of thing where a lot of people are afraid of nonrecourse financing. And we'll tell you right now, non-recourse financing has made me rich and it's made Gino rich; fortune sides with him who dares. We took a chance on it. We couldn't even get into agency debt back when we first started. We were doing a lot of deals that would have been qualified for what is now known as Freddie Mac SBL. Okay. We took on the recourse debt. We had a lot of battles on the front end with the banks. I say a lot of times, it's just as hard negotiating the deal as negotiating the deal with the banks a lot of these times.    So we went in, we fought some good battles. As Gino said, we manage these assets, right? And then we were able to take the financing and sometimes we'd finance the deal once with a community bank and then sometimes you'll refinance it again and send it out to nonrecourse financing over time. So we just really did, we focused on buying these things, right. Adding a ton of value to them and then extracting the value, holding the assets longterm, not selling them, keeping the cost segregation going. And really my view of these is that we're going to buy them, we're going to manage them right. And the party is going to keep going because we're not going to sell them off if we're buying a deal in house. If we're buying a deal in house, we're gonna keep adding assets to it. Keep the cost SEG going and keep that party rolling.   James: But what's your end goal is syndication. I know syndication can grow very quickly in terms of unit counts, right? But your shared...   Jake: But it's not about just growing the unit counts for us, right? We want to have a tool in the toolbox that fits every deal. And we were talking before we got on the show today that we just bought a very hairy deal. It's 26 per unit. People were not being taken care of. It's 146 units. We have 40 vacancies right now. We didn't syndicate that. That was not a good deal necessarily for us to syndicate, but I know over time that deal's going to pay us back very handsomely. So was that a deal that we want to syndicate? Probably not. We're doing a deal right now. It's very clean. It's going to be a nice cash on cash return, right down the alley for syndication. We just want to, you know, any deal that comes our way, we want to, if it's going to cash flow, there's going to be an opportunity, we want to have a vehicle or tool to take that down. And syndication is just one of those tools. Find it in house is another one.   Gino: And I think the opportunity we have now, to piggyback off of that, as where we are in the market, in the market cycle right now, you just gotta be careful of what you're buying. You have to be buying assets in pretty good locations, with pretty good rent growth because when the economy slows down, you want to be able to continue to have your occupancy and run 94-95%. You don't want to see rents dropping. So you gotta be careful what you're buying. Would we've been buying these assets three and four years ago? No, the opportunity was more of those value-adds. Now there's less of an opportunity for our value adds because those prices are already built up. I mean, we went and bought an asset in November at 45 a door. Two years ago, it would have been 30 a door, but that's where we are in the market.    So with that value add, it's very difficult because you've got to put more loan to value. So you've got to put more money down on these deals and there's more risk, as going out 18 months or 24 months, if you're not able to make those preferred payments, you know, they're going to come knocking at you. And then the investor's going to say, well, why did we make the draw this and this quarter? Well, we were trying to reposition it for the long game. That's the thing with multifamily. Everybody out there, multifamily is a long game. It's number one, but debt and taxes, number two, it's about having a business. If you're not going to run the business, somebody has to run the business. And number three, it's a long game. You're not going to get paid today or tomorrow. You're going to be the farmer planting the seed, watering the seed, and waiting six months or 12 months for it to grow. That's why it's hard to get into multifamily because people love transactions. This is not so much transaction-based business unless you start getting into it and then a year, two years down the road, you can create some transactions by refing or by selling or by trading up. But when you start out, it's hard because it's that instant gratifying.   Jake: James, I want to say one thing that just piggyback on Gino here and what he's saying is many of you out there may be syndicating deals and we love syndicating. We love buying deals ourselves. Just keep in mind the syndicators that are the most successful are that they understand that the work starts after you bought the deal. Just because you're syndicating, you need to have that one on one connection, even if you're doing third party management. James, we were talking earlier that you know, he runs his own a property management group. That's when the real work starts folks. So you know, whether you're syndicating, whether you're buying in house, tee it up, make sure you're financing it right. Make sure you're buying it right. But then that managed piece, just because you know, you may not be running direct property management, you need to be having those weeklies with that property management, making sure you're nailing your KPIs.    James: Yeah. I also think that the managed portion makes the most money. Do you guys agree with that?   Gino: I totally agree with that 100% because that's where you're going to increase your NLI. You're either going to increase the income, decrease the expenses, create systems and be able to scale. But the problem that Jake and I had when we hit 650 units, we were still just telling somebody this the other day, we were still using rent posts and we fumbled upon that folio and that was the biggest aha moment. All of a sudden we said to ourselves, it doesn't matter how many units you add onto your portfolio, if you're not managing them efficiently and extracting as much value from them, that's going to be a big problem. So I think managing is the most important. It's ongoing.    Jake: There's more to it though, to James' point. Here's why. Once you buy the deal, there's no going back. You paid the money, you paid that price. That is fixed. That's why I always talk about the back leg of the wheelbarrow being fixed. If you finance the deal for 10 years, and I don't care if you have stepped down or you have your maintenance defeasance wherever you want to say, you're fixed, what are the levers do you have to pull? It's the management arm of it. That's the piece that you're going to be able to. Exactly. Right. That's a great point.   James: Yeah. Yeah, so that's why I always tell my friends and my followers in my Facebook group and all the people who come to me; the operations where you make the most money because before you buy the deal you are putting a proforma, right? You think it's going to be like that. You think it's going to be like that. You think it is going to be 3% operation. You think insurance is going to be this much. Right? So it's a lot of assumptions, but once you close on the deal, it's avail game, right? You are like, Hey, you know, now you have every tool in the box to really trap. That's where you really make the money and you, if you really work hard on the operation, you can make at least, you know,  2-3% more than if you give it to a third party management. Because third party management, they have a lot of other issues. It's not their baby.   Jake: You're not the only customer. Here, we're the only customer baby.   James: And they have a different profit center that they need to really make sure.   Jake: And we won't take on other clients. We only manage our stuff because it's ours and you're absolutely right. We're managing our baby, we're making sure our babies are doing well. There are little soldiers out there working for us. We want them to keep returning.   James: Yeah. Yeah. And also [13:28unclear] if you look at even your own operation, I can decide to, let's say my occupancy drop, I can reduce my staff today just by a phone call. Right. And reduce my expenses as well because my income is reduced. Right. So, but you can't do that on a third party. Right. You are like at the mercy of them. Right.   Gino: I agree with that. And you're also controlling; you're controlling. You can add on more employees. You can actually say to yourself, Hey listen, I want to implement this system. I want to raise my rents so you can have real-time. That's what's great about it.   Jake: Even think about the marketing piece. They may be using, you know, apartments or they may be using roof or whatever they're using and you tell them, well, I want you to stop using that. Well, that might be two or three emails or a week-long conversation to actually get that pulled out. And they may tell you, fly kite here, we just kill it.    James: Yeah, we just kill it. Yeah.    Jake: Move on. There's no question.     James: I have to give credit to my wife. She runs the property management side of it.    Jake: She must be a strong woman.    James: She's a very strong woman.   Jake: We should have her on the show.   James: She's at the property today. So I do the underwriting and investor relationship and acquisition and she does the construction and property management. And you need a lot of...   Jake: You're taking it easy, then man. Come on, you gotta get hurt...   James: My work is a lot on the front end. Right? But one it's closed, it's her work. And I do help out a lot too. Right? So, let's go back to a bit more details on syndication was owning, right? Because this is something that I've been thinking, right? Because Hey, you know, I was like you guys when in the beginning, I did a lot of short term loan, bridge loan and we make a lot of money for us. I syndicated, but my investor was so happy with it, he made so much money. But now with the market being at peak and there are not many deals out there, you know, we have to still get good cash flowing. We still do value-add deal, but no more deep value add deals. Right. So I presume that's what you guys are doing, right? Still, value-add deal but no more like a deep value add when you syndicate.   Jake: No, even the one we just did, we were talking about that; we did it in December, it was 26 a door and we're going in new decks, all new interiors and we have a ton of vacancies. I'm not afraid of it. The key is though, since we have our own management group, I don't want to take on five of these things at once because it's a resource issue at that point. We have resources to do one real heavy value add at the time so we're fine having one of those in the mix. But if you start stacking them, you know you really got to add team members and that's when it gets even more challenging. So for our size of scale right now, I'm very good with, you know, one at a time, getting it kind of rolled up. And we kind of we're just coming off the tail end of another one and then we ramped up into this one. So it's been working out for us.   Jake: So the problem with this deal, not the problem, the opportunity with this deal is we're using community financing. We've got an 85% LTV with loan to cost. So we've got 80% of the loan proceeds going into doing the cap-ex work. We're going to refi that property and bring it to the agency once it's all done. So there's the value there. And the only thing was when we bought it, we were able to have economies of scale. It's near a couple of our other assets are, we're able to use maintenance guys on that property. So that's another one of the reasons why we're able to do that cause just added to our portfolio. If this was something I was all by itself in, you know, down somewhere [16:30 unclear] assets, maybe you'd think twice. But there's always other reasons for doing the deal. And that was really one of the important factors that we saw.   James: And at what point did you start syndication? What was the timeframe? Was it like last year, two years ago?   Gino: So we started, we actually when we came off of our first event, I signed up like 30 people in our event back in November of 2017. I said to Jake, I've got all these investors floundering and that's the thing, when you're signing up investors, James, you have an important role. You need to reach out to those investors and you need to make substantive relationships. You need to start giving them value or else they're going to fall off. So I felt compelled to say to Jake, we need to start creating these relationships with these investors. We decided to hire somebody on and become a partner of that company. The beginning of 2018, February, March, April, we started ramping up, took us a few months to find our first deal. We find our first deal in August and that period timeframe for us, our first syndication, getting the PPM is soft commitments, emails.  It was pretty overwhelming and daunting but we did a small deal. It was only $6 million. It was 132 units. It was something where you can like consume and do your first deal for us. We raised $2.6 million in two days because we had all the framework, we were ready to go, we had the investors, they were prime, we had the podcast, we had the brand out there. But one thing with syndication that's a little different is things move really quickly, and it's a little nerve-wracking that you have to get everything in order. You have to get your emails out, you have to have your documents down, you have to have everything in order. You have to make sure that, you know, you get your webinars going and everything's spelled out clearly to your investors. And that's why it took us a little bit longer cause we had never taken money from the investors. So when it's your money and cash flows and come into the month, Jake says, Gino, septic fields scrapped out. We're not getting paid this month. I can deal with it.   Jake: Plus there was a demand thing we had people asking for it. And it was kind of like at some point where they're going to do, we flirted with the idea for so long as either we're going to do it or not. So we gave it a shot.   Gino:  And that's the thing we could have bought that deal without syndication. But I think it was just the ideal opportunity. It was a new market. It was small enough for us to say, you know what, we can handle this with the syndication. Let's try it. You just got to commit and then figure it out. And that's what we ended up doing. We committed to doing it. We worked with a great attorney, Kim Taylor. She walks through the process. We had great team members and then we just ended up pulling the trigger and we ended up closing in November of 2018 and we followed up with another purchase in April of 2019. About six weeks ago, we closed on a deal and at an additional 240 units in that market. So it's a great learning plus. Once you do one, you figure it out, you figure out the ramifications, the webinars, adding the investors on the documents. And then it's just 'rinse and repeat'.   James: Yeah. I think you guys are the example of why syndication exists, right? So syndication is not like a get rich scheme, right? Not everybody can do it. Not like somebody who was doing W2 can or can do, I'm not saying they must do syndication, right? So in my mind, syndication is like a mixture of an experienced operator, right? So you guys have proven that operator and there are some passive investors which want to place that money into this experienced operator, right? So if I'm getting some guy who was coming up from a boot camp or a  2-day course and trying to do syndication that he doesn't have the experience, I mean he might be coached by someone who's experienced, but I think that's where the syndication comes very powerful, right? When you marry people who really want to be passive with people who are really, really good at what they're doing that's where you get the beautiful marriage there. Right?   Gino: Also students who want to raise deals for others. So James, let's say you're coming short on a raise and you say, Hey, listen, I need to get some way, maybe you can get somebody to raise money for your deal. Obviously they have to be comfortable with you as the operator, as a sponsor. And Jake and Gina is a sponsor with a lot of students start that way by raising money for other people's deals, getting in the game, putting a little lower skin in the game and learning how the syndication process works. And then learning how much work there really is and saying, wow, this syndicator is not putting any money in this deal. But there's a lot of work and there's a reason why there's no money going on the GP side of the business. It's they're signing under debt and they're doing a lot of work for this and that's a great way for people to start getting in the business. Raise a little bit of money for another syndicator if they need that platform, then learn that process. And that's how you learn the process and then you can move on and succeed in getting your own deals.   James: Yeah, absolutely. What's the structure? Can you guys walk through the structure of your company, right? Because you have property management, asset management, you have renovation team, you do some kind of a mortgage brokering as well. On top of that you have an education platform, right? So how big is the whole team?   Jake: You know, probably and not including vendors and whatnot, it's probably just shy of 60 people,   James: 60 people. And how many people...I mean, property management would be the biggest, I guess.   Jake: Oh yeah. Property management is definitely the biggest. And you know, I'm really excited. You know, we do these weekly meetings. I'll meet with every property manager weekly. You know, we meet with the managers of the different divisions of our companies and we call them weekly L10s and we're just really looking forward to this year cause we're gonna really bring everyone together. I think one of the biggest things is when you start to scale and you start to grow, that culture piece is tremendous. Last year we did this big whitewater rafting trip. We brought everyone out. So we're looking for another event this year, but we're going to break down the barriers. We're going to get the core values going, get the tee shirts, bring everyone together for an event. And it's going to be interesting because what we're trying to do now is even get those synergies amongst the different companies jamming that much better together. Get everyone walking to the same beat and so I'm very excited about that.   James: And how many of the 60 people, like a property management. Do you have a number?   Jake: Well, we're going to be creeping up close to 46-47 on that soon. So, you know, we'll have a couple on the investment side of the business and then a handful on the continue education side.   James: Okay. Okay.   Jake: Okay. Property management and that's including our renovation team called the cap-ex crew. They are the elite Navy seal ninjas of property management and they go in when others can't, they get it done.   James: Yeah. So your renovation crew is supposed to be, I mean it's in house, but it's not really announced in terms of financial, right, because they're not supposed to be part of the P& L right? Is that correct?   Jake: Yeah. So that's basically going through the property management group.   James: Okay. Okay. Yeah. That's very interesting. And how did you guys...   Jake: He wants to see an income statement now, Gino.   James: Because...   Jake: I'm just messing with you man.    Gino: So James, I'll dive into the education a little bit more. We started the education about four years ago. October 2015 we launched the book with our profits behind me and it was just me basically quit my restaurant and said, Jake, I need to do something. I'm in New York. Let's start a podcast. And we didn't know why we started the podcast. We should have probably started it to get investors. But we just started because we wanted to learn. I mean, how many times can you speak to Ken McCroy or you know, Robert Kiyosaki for an hour, right? I mean, it's just amazing. So that's where we started. And then from that, we said, okay, how do we continue to build this? So we started selling, creating educational products. We wrote the book, we have trainings on Kajabi, we have mentorships, we have coaching.   And to grow and scale that business, I can't be doing one on one coaching all the time. So we hired a community director. We've got an operations manager in that business full time. We've got three part-time, we've got three full-time sales guys. We've got four coaches right now. We have two deal review coaches on top of our accountability coaches. So as you start growing, you commit, you figure it out, you start scaling up. But the real thing that you need to do is you need to get really qualified people. You need to get great people. Like Jake talks with the culture and our culture is basically a blue-collar work ethic. It's we don't want to hear 'it's not my job' because I'm still packing books. I'm still doing $5 an hour work when I have to. And Jake's doing the same thing. And I want that to convey those small startups with Jake and Gino and we're going to be able to expand this. We're gonna be doing weekend events to just start selling more products and we're going to start bringing on more sales guys. And as the community grows, I think that culture is going to be pervasive throughout all of the entire organization where it's like customers first, you know, students first. It's not me, it's we and whatever it takes gets done. I think that can permeate throughout all of the layers and all the multifaceted multifamily. And that's really important. So when we first thought about Jake and I, Jake will tell you, he thought culture was crap and it was working corporate because it didn't serve him. But I think as he sees it, it's everything right now. Because when they see Jake and I working hard and doing that, it just, you're the leader, you're supposed to be part. If you're going to put in a mission statement in words, and I got house rules over here, if you're not following your own house rules, how do you think your employees are going to follow the house rules.   Jake: James, nothing fires me up more than 'it's not my job'. You want to see the roof come off this house right now, smoke start coming out of my ears. That's the one thing that I can't handle.   James: My wife and I get upset when somebody said I do not know, I said, don't tell me 'I don't know'. Tell me, 'I'll figure it out'.   Jake: Or you know, let's ask and work on it. You know, it's like I can handle that a lot easier than 'it's not my job'. Cause that's like a moral and a work ethic issue and everyone else is working so hard and you're going to sit there and say something like that.   James: It's a clash between ownership mentality. I mean, especially with the property management, right, with the ownership mentality and employee mentality, right? Because a lot of times in property management, the people are working with employee mentality, but owners, we are more, we want to see the profit. We want to be really part of the profit center. Make sure everything runs as how we want for the investors. At the same time...   Jake: Gino knows about the blue-collar work ethic. We finished up a podcast with who was the guy that used to be in Bigger Pockets, who was the guy there? It was Brandon and Josh. And we got a video. We were out there one day. A tree fell across one of our assets that we just bought and was laying across the sidewalk. You know, we didn't have anybody at the time to do it. So Gino and I went down there, took out the chainsaw, chop that bad boy up, threw it in the back of the trailer and made a day of it. We got a video, I think it's still out there on YouTube, so it doesn't matter. I don't care what job it is, I'll do it all myself if we have to.   That's not how you scale, number one. That's 'I'mma' mentality. But if it comes down to it, if it needs to be done and there's no one else to do it, I'm going in and I'm going to do it. It's just period.    James: Awesome. Awesome. That's the work ethic, right? Sometimes you have to do it.    Jake: It's gotta get done. Somebody has got to do it. And the idea is to build a machine and put the systems in place to make sure it runs fluidly. You know, every day the best work that I can do is help working on the machine and building the machine. But it's not always going to be there. And sometimes, you know, a bolt falls off and if I gotta be the guy to screw it back on, I'm going to do it.   Gino: I think it's important to say that the machine isn't built from the very first day. From the very first day you're going to grow as a person. So four years ago, I wasn't doing the best work of what I had to do. I was just doing whatever work I needed to do. But now as you scale, and as you're able to do that, as you become financially free, you can start thinking about working on the business as apart as the working in the business. And the first three or four years, Jake and I were really working in the business. And we weren't able to create these multiple streams of revenue. We're just surviving and learning. And that's fine. That's what everyone's progression is. But once you get into it, when you start doing it, you can start transitioning out and start like what Jake said, start creating those systems. But if you don't start with a 25 unit property, you're never going to be able to do what you know, what actually transpires after.   James: Awesome. Let's go to some market selection questions. So how did you guys select this market?   Gino: Well, it's funny, Jake was going down in 2011 he moved down there and I had it on one of my other podcasts with my wife. He went to Knoxville, move there for six months without his wife, struggled. I mean, it's not an easy thing. He left New York, he abandoned New York and I'm up there at the restaurant. I had just met him and I'm like, Jake, these numbers work down here. Let's start looking at deals in Knoxville. His metrics for moving was; there were no state income tax, close to New York, decent weather, cost of living is great. So he moves to Knoxville. And ironically, enough, that's what makes it a pretty good market to invest in multifamily, right?    James: Population growth.    Gino: And we got lucky, we got lucky with that one. But we started investing, we started looking at deals. I think, you know, the Southeast is great. So like you said, we're vertically integrated within three hours of Knoxville. So that's what we're looking. I mean, throw a dart, there are so many great cities around there to invest in that market. We don't want to go up in the blue States, we want to stay. Texas is a little bit overbought. I mean, you know why. I mean, you have been an engine of economic growth there. People are flocking there because there are jobs there because there's infrastructure there and because people want to live there. So, that's what's happening. So I think, you know, as far as us, we just got lucky. We picked Knoxville and now we're able to go out into these other markets that mirror what Knoxville is.   Jake: And in addition to that too, we have a specific strategy that we're looking to be the best customer service property management company for C and B apartment complex. We own some A stuff but it's kind of because the deals worked and we bought it, but we see a discrepancy where C and B operators typically do not have that good of customer service. I love what Chick-fillet does with a $7 chicken sandwich. How are you doing today? It's a pleasure to serve you. How can I help you? It's that great customer service and I truly believe that is a blue ocean. That is our blue ocean strategy. It's going to separate ourselves and we rebrand all our properties, brand as our property management company so that when people pull up, they're going to know that these people care. We believe renting is personal and our residents are our number one priority. Okay, that's what we're about and that's the difference in how we run our properties and I think longterm it's not going to happen overnight. That's a longterm strategy is going to take years to fully implement, but that's the separator from us and the other guys.   James: So how do you guys standardize this? You know, the awesome operator experience for class B and C, how do you standardize it across the organization?   Gino: Yeah. Well, first thing you do is you start going on training platforms like Grace Hill, you start systematizing platforms and training. We're creating our own internal training right now for our maintenance techs. And then we're going to transitional to training our leasing techs. That's really important to have something standardized to train them. And I'm doing the same thing on education. So when we were onboard, as a coach, I created a training platform for our coaches to watch videos and show how to coach them. And it's the same way in anything. You want to be able to have something standardized where they're all playing from the same drum.   Jake:  So I'd like to elaborate on that a little bit as well because, so it starts with the basic stuff, like Gino mentioned Grace Hill. Now we also have a product called Kajabi where we've taken the Grace Hill training and we have, it's basically our elevated in house training that we're putting on the Kajabi platform where we're teaching our guys if they don't know how to do something, we're having level one, two, three and four for maintenance techs, for example. And then there's a YouTube page where they can go on and actually from their phone remotely check the video, Oh, this is how I need to change out this garbage disposal or thermostat, whatever the case may be. And so as we're going through, you're talking to us as we're in the middle of launching this entire customer service training program. In addition to that, it started with Grace Hill. We're moving to down to a Kajabi and we're working with Grace Hill on Kajabi at the same time. Once we're done with the maintenance end of it, and we should be done in the next couple of months with that end of it, it's then going to the full-service customer service piece. We have weekend trainings now. I don't want you to think that we're just starting this, but this is how we have the full-on slot of our strategy implementation. In addition to that, we've started working with Petra, they work with scaling up. I don't know if you're familiar with that.    James: No, not Petra.   Gino: Okay. It's Verne Harnish's book, Scaling Up.   Jake: And essentially, they look at people, strategy, execution, and cash. And you know, we've gone through top grading and making sure that we're getting players on the team. But the one piece of that is we fill our funnels up really full. We have all these ideas that we want to implement. So we have a good strategy, we have good people, we have good cash, but it's that execution piece that we need to get better at. So, you know, while we have an education company, we're open-minded and we know we can always grow and get better. So we're bringing in the best of the best. This is, you know, from everything I've seen, the best scale company in the country and they're working on our business as we work on our business to make us the best customer service property management group in the industry. So that's where we're going.    Gino: The cool thing about the whole education platform is we never would have done this training internally if we didn't have Jake and Gino. Because Kajabi is our online training platform for education. So it just bled over. And I've mentioned that, I said Jake, we need to do these videos to show the maintenance tech when he goes in, how to change a toilet, how to fix a hot water heater. This can all be documented by training videos. So if we didn't have the education platform, this never would have been even been a thought in our minds. And I think the other thing when you are going out as a business owner, keep your eyes open to what other businesses are doing.    My son had gotten a job down the street or at a restaurant and I was amazed at how many applications these people were taking in. They had an ADP platform and I said to Jake, this is another scaling up option where we can start onboarding our employees. And it's just a great tool. So, you know, a tip for everybody out there, if you're in multifamily real estate, see what other industries are doing because you can adapt and pull from other industries and use it to your advantage.   Jake: I want to talk about that a little bit though, Gino, because what we're basically getting with that is we've used ADP for years, but they have, I'm going to call ADP plus. It's their, whatever, you know, higher-end product. But they will give us for all our different brands, we will have a very corporate and professional landing page now. So we have something called the ran pride video. It's showcasing our folks, talking about our culture, which, you know, not have a history of the company video. All of these videos will go on these landing pages. So when potential employees want to look at us, Hey, that's what these guys are about. So we're selling ourselves; let's not kid ourselves, we are in the tightest job market in 60 years. So we need to be recruiting the best people in and we're not going to have a good organization.   So we're doing everything we can to make it a great work environment, get great people in the door and keep them. Because once they come in, we have a very low turnover. But you know, from ourselves, marketing ourselves to the outside world, we need to let them know what we're about. And then as they're coming through, they're putting their W2 information all into the ADP. It's all electronically saved in the cloud and that carries them through. It also has the HRS software so that our HR folks can manage that throughout the entire lifespan of their time with us. So we're really focusing, like I said, on scale culture and operations because, you know, the other things, the people, the strategy, the cash we've done very well with. So it's that execution and pulling it through I think is gonna propel us over the next 10 years.   Gino: And James, do you need it when you have 100 units? Maybe not, but if you're thinking of getting bigger, you're going to have to implement all these systems. Don't be overwhelmed with it now at 100 unit market, just think that you know, as you grow as a person, as you grow as a business person, you're going to be able to figure out those ideas and go...   Jake: Yeah, we're laying the framework to go from 50 to 500 employees.   James: Yeah, that's really good because I know Grace Hill, because I use it as well, we use ADP, but I've never heard about HRS and I mean I know about Kajabi, but I didn't know that you guys are using Kajabi as well.   Jake: So we blended the two together and then we're actually using a YouTube page for the videos so that they can get it right from the app on their phone. And it's coming together pretty nicely actually.    Gino: And there are so many app platforms out there. You can use Lightspeed, you can use Kajabi. We are one of the founders on there seven or eight years ago when they launched. So we've been using it for a while and we just got comfortable with it. There are so many different, you know, LMS systems that are out there.    Jake: The executives within our company, they love building this because they see the need for it. So they enjoy it and they're great. You know, there some of the ones out there filming, well not filming uncle Shawn's doing that, but actually, doing the tutorials on the maintenance or the customer service videos. So everyone's getting involved   Gino: And they're creating the assessments too, cause you want to actually have them watch a video and then do the assessments. So they're creating all that also, which is awesome.   James: So let's go into a deal, deal level detail or how do you, I mean, let's say today you get a deal today, right? From broker, off-market, right? So what are the things that you would look at, look at it quickly to either reject it up? Cause I presume a lot of deals, you guys don't even underwrite it, right?   Jake: We do a quick underwriting. So we're looking for cash flow from day one and the opportunity to force appreciation in the future. So what does that mean? You know, if it's a stabilized deal we want to be, I'd love a six and a half cap, you know, if we're a little bit lower than that and you know, six to six and a half cap, I think we can typically make it work if it's in a good location, if we're going to syndicate that deal and we're seeing, you know, 8% cash on cash, we like that. And you know that typically, we'll take it to the next level and start looking a little deeper.   James: Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it. And I presume deep value add, it really doesn't matter on the entry capital, on any of that.   Jake: Let's talk about that. So the deal we just bought, you know, if you're talking about actual is was a, you know, like probably like maybe like a...   James: 2%   Jake: And it was a beat to crap 1970s build. But you know, what are we talking about? Like do we really care what the cap rate is on that deal? No, because we know when it stabilizes the cap rates going to be more like a 12 so it's again keeping your mind open to each deal. What can I do and what's the opportunity with this deal? How do we want to take it down? Is it going to be an in house buy? Is it going to be, you know, a bridge financing, whatever the case may be as an agency? Or is it a syndicated deal? You know, all of these things weave together.  And that's the beauty of this game is that we have multiple things that we can do to extract value and create great things. And so, it gives us an opportunity to have fun with it.    Gino: And James, Jake's speaking up specifically, if we're in the 26,000 a unit, we need to add another four or 5,000. If you're into it for 31,000 a door, I know that that asset in right now is trading over 50 a dor. So I know that that right there is a whole month for us. So that's another way I like to look at the per-unit cost of what we're buying. And I like to look at the expenses. If I'm underwriting a deal, we know that the expense should be 4,200 and the operator is running it at 4,900, you know there's value in there. If there's other income that they're generating, that's only 2%, we know typically we can get 10 to 12% of other income. There's another income, there's another value add right there so we're looking for those.    And you know, you'll hear from brokers every day of the week that you can raise rents, you can raise rents. So I have to spend 10K a door to raise a $50 rent, or can I spend 3 K a door and get that same $70 rent bumps. So you have to really try to analyze the market. And I think the other thing you need to be careful is where you're buying. You know, marginal areas, you're not going to get as much elevation right now and it's a little bit riskier. So, you know, we're just buying an asset right now; if it's in a great location, we'd like it. And Jake likes to say he likes to be your Kroger's Wholefoods and Chick-fillet if you can buy in that location...   Jake: Starbucks, bring it on.   James: You guys do value add, right? So let's say your rehab budget got cut into half, right? 50% of what you have. First of all, let me ask you, what is the most...   Jake: Why did that happen and are we playing the what-if game.   James: You never know. Yeah, that's a good question because I want to, tune your mindset to the question that I want to ask. So what is the most valuable value add that you guys have seen? Jake: What is the most valuable value add? Like what is like did we get the most out of doing flooring? Did we get the most out of...?    James: Correct. Let's say you have a budget got cut. Now you have a small amount of budget.   Gino: That's a great question. It depends on what property you're looking at because some properties may, if you put a dog park and you fix up the clubhouse and you do a good job of the pool, you may not see incremental value on that. But all of a sudden you're keeping the tenants and in your act you have to compete with the property down the street. So on one of our properties, we put a dog park in, we've put a fitness center and we did a nice job in a clubhouse and we actually did a pool and the decking. That didn't translate...I'm thinking, it translate into increased value and increased rents, but it also made be able to compete with other people in the market space. I think landscaping, people don't understand; power washing, landscaping, and painting are three of the most important things.   On our property, when we took over November, we actually had rents at 525; they went to 675. And we saw them in the Google reviews. These tenants were saying, you know what, these people were raising rents, but they care; customer service. That's one of the biggest value adds, customer service. We put out exterior lighting so they feel safe at nighttime. We took care of the landscaping there. We put in a gazebo there. We stripped the parking lot and seal the parking lot. We put in a dog park there. Signage was really important. Not huge amounts of money, but anything to turn the look of the property, the feel of a property, you want to show your tenants and any of your customers that you're adding value and not just going there and raising the prices. At the end of the day, why are you raising the price on me if you're not giving me some type of value?   Jake: I'll dive into it a little bit more too. I mean, the basics that, you know, I feel like that you have to go with a lot of times are, I personally love sheet vinyl. I know a lot of people want to put in the plank and this thing. We have this amazing, it's called nature's trail. If anyone wants to go out and look at it, it's skinny, it's white. So it looks like the barn style flooring, it's beautiful, it's got great, great tones in it. Installed, we're $1.74 a square foot. I mean, that's phenomenal. And it goes in, it looks beautiful. It looks like there's hardware throughout. So if I had to really get down to bare bones and I'm turning a complex, I'm going in with my nature's trail, I'm going in with my proposed gray and I'm going white on the wood. So the woodworks, the trim, and the baseboard, I'm going a nice pure white Sherwin Williams and it gets like a 7004 or something like that.   Jake: And then, in addition to it, the property we did in December, we were like, okay, let's pull back a little bit because we're painting the cabinets. And we saw a little bit of a spike in our available units. So we went back in, we reassessed it, and we said, you know what? It looks too damn good not to, it's an extra 350 bucks. Let's just keep painting the cabinets and then we're back to zero available units. So it's always, I think, and this goes back to what you were saying earlier about being a hands-on operator; looking at these things, looking at your KPIs, saying, what the hell, why do we spike? Oh, it was my fault cause we're being cheap. So we went back in and now we're filling it back up like that.   Gino: At the same time, Jake also, you don't have to spend $170 on a ceiling fan. Maybe you see your supply spiking like they did a year and a half and saying, hold on, this unit doesn't need $170 ceiling fan.   Jake: It's a beautiful $75 ceiling fan. They're beautiful fan blades. You get the multicolor here. So yeah.   James: What do you guys think that, I don't know, this is my experience that I see. I mean a lot of times you can put in Capex and all that, but I think the management itself, just managing it correctly, people are just so happy paying you 50 to $75 more   Jake: But you're talking about customer service then.    James: Yeah, customer service. Yeah, correct. I'm not saying that's the most valuable value add, but I'm just saying in terms of...   Jake: I'll say it. Listen, if you come in and you say it's a pleasure to see you, it's a pleasure to serve you. How may I help you? What can we do to make your unit better? We have this unit today. We're gonna treat you like gold. I'll take that over the new paint.   Gino: Jake also, the other thing is when they call for a maintenance request, don't want to wait six days for hot water heater, you have to get to them.    Jake: You're not going back to the hot water heater on me again; are you? Comeon man.   Gino: I love the hot water heater in my house the other day. 44:20crosstalk] We took over the third property. I remember I was in the restaurant and Jake is sending emails, we're turning units. And we had a client come in and started crying cause we've fixed the stove. He didn't have his stove for how long Jake? It was just like the silliest thing in the world. I mean come on. So, I mean, the customer service is really, when you get a maintenance request, send out the maintenance tech and get it done. You know, that's simple.   James: Yeah. It's just amazing on you to just take care of the tenants or the residents and they are so happy to pay you so much money compared to, why didn't a new ceiling fan you? I mean that's all secondary for me. So it looks like we share the same concept as well. So, let's go back to a bit more personal stuff flow. Maybe, one by one, right? Why do you guys do what you're doing?   Jake: Yeah, I'll get into that. It literally is about control and freedom for me. I am responsible for myself and my family and I was not in a position of control or a position where my family's life was secure. It was in the hands of others and I did not feel good about that. I, ultimately at the end of the day, am responsible for everything that comes into my environment and I need to handle that. Multifamily gave me an opportunity to take control of my destiny. And you know, by adding value to others, I was able to in return receive value. And it's been a phenomenal thing for me because I don't want to be, you know, dependent on Wall Street. I don't want to be dependent on a CEOs decisions. I have a lot of faith and confidence in myself and Gino and I know if we do the right thing it'll come back to us. And again, it's something that I don't ever want to be in a position where my family is worried about, you know, where's their next meal gonna come from. Great thing about all this is we've created abundance in our lives.   And you know, we started something called Ran Carriers last year and we were able to actually feed 10,000 kids for Thanksgiving. And so, you know, we'll see if we can match that or do about 15 this year, Gino. And so it's when you bring abundance into your life, you can't help someone else if you don't have the means to do it. So by us driving the ship, we've been able to create abundance. We've been able to create good homes for folks and we've been able to give back. So it's been pretty special.   James: Awesome. What about you, Gino, why do you do what you do?    Gino: I wouldn't  know what to do if I didn't know what I wasdoing right now. I mean, honestly, I'm pretty much financially secure. If I didn't have Jake and Gino, I could just probably live off of the draws of the property. But that gets to be a little boring after a while. So I'm doing what I really like. I mean, the education, growing a business, I always wanted to grow a business from the ground up. I was wanting to help people out by buying properties and by coaching them in motivating and inspiring them. And if I can monetize on that, it's a home run for me. So I enjoy what I'm doing right now. I mean it took me a long time to figure out, and it's funny cause I feel sad for kids coming out of college. What do you want to do when you get older? If you're an adult and you figure it out by the time you're an adult, you're a little lucky. Most adults can't even figure that out.    So Jake talks about it, you know, don't follow your passion. I mean sometimes if you're passionate about opening a restaurant and that's what you want to do, but sometimes it turns into a job. So you just be careful. You know, if you're lucky enough to become financially free and then figure out what you want to do and do something that you love, I think that's like the most important thing in the world for me.   Jake: He's been humbled right now. The G dad is a giver. He likes helping people and you know, not for nothing. The education has allowed people to buy over 3000 apartment units. And I know that's what Gino gets excited about. You know, it's helping other people and, and it's that giving back piece because it's a tremendous community that we have. And the folks inside the community are all like-minded, hardworking individuals. And I think it's because of the, you know, the sort of persona that we give off and we tell people about the values and necessarily what we're about and people are connecting, they're converting and it's been amazing to watch. And they'll get inside the private Facebook group, Hey, we just knocked out a hundred units today and then everyone gets on and start congratulating, how'd you do it? Let's hear about the deal. And it's become great networking. We'd love to see the continued success.   Gino: The phone calls that you get and the 48:42unclear]  year-round. When a student says, I just left my job, or I'm leaving New York and I'm moving somewhere else. That's really worth a lot, man. Because when you get those emails saying, Hey, you know, you've changed my life. There's something that, you know, you can't replace that; that's something that you can't put a dollar amount on, cause you're helping others and you change somebody's life and you change someone's family's life. And that multiplies in effects of people that they know. So that's really cool. That's one of the cool things about education.   James: Yeah, that's one thing that you bring to your end days, right? So it's not about the money. I mean, you usually forget how much you've made, but the appreciation that people have shown you for you're helping them, it speaks. Second personal question. I mean, this is probably, each one of you can answer it. Maybe you can combine together. Is there a proud moment in your life that you think you will never forget, that that moment really impacted you then and you are really, really proud of that moment and you want to tell their stories to your grandkids?   Jake: Yeah, I got one. I got one coming up now. And it's not about myself. It has to do with Gino as well. We were at the event last year, we had a phenomenal event in Nashville, you know, and Gino calls them the 'do rules'. We had over 500 people there, whatever. And it was all about multifamily for two days and just great speakers. It's our annual event, multifamily mastery. And that it wasn't necessarily anything other than it created an opportunity for my daughter. And she went out there and Gino's kids were there and they were learning business and we had some fun shirts that said like Jake and Gino are multifamily masters or something. But my daughter at the time was three years old, she went out and started networking with people and she actually sold a shirt for like 15 or 20 bucks and then she came over and she was so proud. She hugged me and told me about it and I was able to announce it to the whole room and the whole room like erupted because it was just, you know, it's this little girl going out there and then she was making it happen. So I'll never forget that. And it just is, you know, because of the community that it created that moment for me. So that was very special to me.    Gino: So we'll leave it at that cause I've got so many stories, but that's one story.    James: Take one story.   Gino: I mean one of my proud moments March 1st, 2016 when I left the restaurant and it wasn't because I was leaving a bad situation. It was finally saying to myself that I achieved something that I had been working for forever. I finally was saying to myself, I don't have to do that anymore. I have been there doing it for 20 years, over 20 years, locked in the same job and if I can change after 20 years and having those limiting beliefs and being able to grow and do something different, I think I just wanted to inspire other people that do that. So that was really a proud moment in my life.   James: Awesome. Awesome. We're at the end of the show, why not you guys tell the audience and listeners about how to get in touch with you guys?   Gino: He's the sales guy, so I'll let him shoot.   Jake: Listen, if you can't find this, we're not doing our job very well, but it's really simple. Jakeandgino.com, ranpartnersllc.com if you're looking to invest or rancapllc.com if you're looking into the debt side of things   Gino: and please subscribe to the podcast. We have the number one multifamily podcast on iTunes called Wheelbarrow Profits. We have four shows now. I've actually launched the show with my wife called Multifamily Zone. We have the Movers and Shakers podcast, which highlights a student's success every week. And then we have the Rand Partners podcast on syndication. So we're doing shows, we like going out there as part of our fashion.   Jake: Hold on, Gino, there's more. We're going to give a teaser. So we had the best selling book, Wheelbarrow Profits on Amazon and we're phoning it up this year, right? We've got the honey bee coming out in October. We put a lot of work into this thing. It is a phenomenal book. And it tells a great story and this is not your traditional business book. Gino give a little bit more on that. What would you say about the honeybee?    Gino: It's a parable basically about a gentleman who's frustrated, is very similar to Jake's story. Going around, has a boss, hates his job, and then just stumbles upon an older man who's willing to mentor him and find out that, you know what, there's more to it. How do you have all this? The analogy of a river with little tributaries growing into a big Russian river and it's all about creating multiple streams of income, starting small and making the stakes, and then all of a sudden, five years later, you've created something really great. So we just wanted to translate our success and just have people open up to the idea of that you can start small but create those businesses and then from one little stream of revenue, you can end up having four and five like you do James. And like we do.    Jake: And I'll just leave with this because the one thing that I really picked up from Gino early on in our investing career was to get rid of limiting beliefs. I know it's like a big Tony Robbins thing as well, and people talk about this, but it's so impactful because you know, you'll sit there and say, Oh, I can't do that. Well, you're right, if that's the way you're going to think about it, you're right. I grew up in a super small town on a dirt road out in the middle of nowhere. And that's the truth. And you know, we've been able to grow this business to, you know, over a hundred million in assets and you know, created financial freedom and generational wealth for our families. So there was, you know, literally in the town that I grew up in, you could work at the school, there was a factory that made chairs and you know, my family was like, well, maybe you should be a cop... Gino:  Or a gym teacher.  Jake:  You know, I literally went to school to be a gym teacher because I played sports and that's all I knew. So don't limit yourself because look, multifamily is not rocket science. It really isn't. Get educated. I always say education times action equals results. It's possible for anyone out there to do it, especially a pizza guy and a job rep were able to do it.  James: Yeah, I always tell people, if you think there's no deal out there, you are right. If you think there are deals out there, you're absolutely right too.   Gino: I love that.  James: It's that mindset that you have to get away from. Jake: Listen, look at the deals for two or three weeks and then having them not pencil out, it can be very discouraging. Try two years. That's how long it took this guy and I to get into our first deal. So yeah, I always say, you know, the best thing we ever did, we were pesky. We hung in there. We kept driving.  James: Exactly. All right guys, thanks for joining this podcast. You guys added tons of value and we're happy to have you share.  Gino: Thanks James.  Jake: Thanks James. 

For more than seven years, Jake Harriman was a US Marine, serving as a platoon commander in the Infantry and in a Special Operations unit. He was deployed in Southwest and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, and served two combat tours in Iraq. During the second tour, he earned the Bronze Star. Jake believed whole-heartedly in the mission of fighting terrorism. But in Iraq he started to question how that should be done. He came to see the greater enemy as extreme poverty: while terrorist leaders may be evil or insane, their foot soldiers are often motivated by desperation. So Jake left the Marine Corps and went to Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. There he gained the knowledge he needed to create Nuru International, a nonprofit dedicated to ridding the world of extreme poverty in our lifetime. There's more at dastardlycleverness.com.

Press B to Cancel... evolution! After 8 episodes we get all poetic about our earliest Pokemon memories, and discuss the inspiration for our podcast name. Episode Transcription: The below is a machine based transcription of this episode. Sorta like Skynet if it was 2 years old, and wanted a cookie. Take it with a grain of salt. Wulff 0:00 This week on presby to cancel, we discussed the evolution of Pokemon Gotta catch them all. AgainWulff 0:29 Hello everybody and welcome to presby to cancel I figured eight episodes deep might be time to jump into a topic reflecting the podcasts namesake presby to cancel so, with that in mind, we're going to be talking about Pokemon today to cancel that evolution. Wait what?Palsh 0:48 Sorry, I just had to do that I was trying to think somethingWulff 0:50 witty, Ching goo Jayco magic keys make you feel all better?Palsh 0:55 We ran. Okay, so here's our intro You may continueJake 1:03 or be very proud of. SoWulff 1:06 today's episode, I know I normally do things a little bit more structured, but today I'm going in a little bit more freewheeling. So we're going to discuss things a little differently. But I'd like to start with Pokemon beginning in the West. So I remember seeing I had kind of gotten into import games and stuff like that shortly before Pokemon released in the West. And so I remember seeing Pocket Monsters merge at import stores and stuff there was a place I used to go called game cave in Southern California. I don't think it's around anymore, but I I'd go there once every month or two and I just see all this pocket monsters crap wall scrolls, stickers, cards, you name it was there and I was like, What the heck is this and they tried to explain it to me and I just didn't get it. Bought a year or two later, it finally released in the West. And I remember seeing a new story on TV about Topeka, Kansas, changing its name for a day to Topeka to Kansas. Nintendo, I'm guessing threw a big sack of money at Topeka, Kansas and said, Hey, we want to change the name just for a day have a big event there. Kick off the Pokemon North American events in Topeka and they were like, Yes, please. So they have people I'm pretty sure they had pretty sure they had people dressed in Pikachu outfits and they had the, the fleet of 10 Volkswagen beetles done up like Pikachu that said, gotta catch them all on the side. And from there, they just started sending those beetles out to everywhere in North America to do the events. Do any of you recall that at all?Jake 2:55 No, but I just find out where they didn't do. Topeka, Kansas because took a piece of Cute little Pokemon.Wulff 3:02 But I think topi was generation toJake 3:05 shows you the extent of my knowledge.GP 3:08 Actually, I do remember this as somebody who lives about two hours south from I love that we're saying Topeka. Sorry, everybody in Kansas says just tipica like it's to a PK, but it's, it's spelt Topeka, but it's like Quebec or Quebec. It's to be here. But I love that you say, it's like saying Comanche instead of Comanche. Anyway, doesn't matter. Gotcha. No, I remember this and trying to figure out why the heck I should care about it. Because it got, you know, like you said, national coverage and all this stuff. It's a big deal. And I just remember, how do you wanna say it looked and seemed so bizarre? Yeah, it seemed like not just the people my age were getting into it. But it was these adults, you know, wondering are not wandering around but stomping around and, and these these thematic and brightly colored anime type shirts. And to that point, all I'd ever really seen of like anime and then that kind of stuff was Dragon Ball. So I'm like, why are we not having a Dragon Ball Z day? What the hell this picture? But yeah, so I remember the event from Topeka, but I just remember being, like, bewildered and confused.Wulff 4:20 Yeah, I was just I was not into it at all when I had first heard about it and then I saw this new story. And I was like, and I lived in Vegas at the time, so it got that far at least. I was like, What the hell is Pokemon like, why is this such a big deal? And then I think I had Nintendo a Nintendo Power subscription at the time. So when my Nintendo Power came in, they started like really hamming it up with Pokemon and everything. And I was like, Hmm, okay, I can see. And then I got a little curious and I think because of the craze, my parents decided to get a copy for both me and my Brother interestingly enough, they got us both blue.Palsh 5:04 I was about to ask do they get the same color each? Because that would be justWulff 5:08 yeah. So we yeah we had a we had a house without a few Pokemon but I remember I was so into that game at the time I played the crap out I was playing it on Super Gameboy mostly because I I lived in Vegas I had lived there for a short while didn't really have any friends so I wasn't wasn't playing it at school. I just played it at home so I didn't care. I got super into it. I I'm pretty sure I beat it. Within a couple weeks, like caught new to everything. Or maybe I missed my chance to catch me too. I think I wasted my master ball is what happened. Now what was I talking about?GP 5:51 You had missed your chance to get to you? Oh, yes,Wulff 5:54 I I had missed my chance to catch me too because I blew my master ball and I think zapped or something. And so I was kind of disappointed and I ended up starting my file over and played through the game a second time over the next few weeks to finally catch me to it. That's how into it I was I do need the master ball to collect to catch him. I don't think you needed it but I think it was such a slim chance to catch him without it that it was just a pain in the butt.Palsh 6:23 Okay, that's fair.Wulff 6:25 I probably tried 2530 times and failed every time as I now I'm done. Yeah,Palsh 6:32 piece ofJake 6:33 you every time I looked it up the guides always said just save your master ball from YouTube. You want themWulff 6:37 But see, they'd sold me on the birds being the legendary Pokemon. I kind of thought I needed the master ball for that.Palsh 6:43 You know, I would have probably done the same. I wasWulff 6:45 tricked. Anyway, moving on from that. That was my experience with Gen one. How about you guys?Jake 6:52 So my Express Pokemon will see I was a pretty cool kid in high school. I know. I know. Hard to believe but all the cool kids used to play Magic the Gathering during recess and lunch. So all my friends play matches the game we played for years. And then I used to do the occasional tournament. He's one of those guys went to the local comic book store the coolest place on Earth, everybody knows. Anyway, after a while, I realized that a lot of adults stop playing magic and start playing this new game with colorful, weird, bizarre characters. And I didn't quite understand it. And one of the mentioned to me was Pokemon. And then pretty soon within a month, they stopped doing Magic the Gathering tournaments. They stopped doing Star Wars tournaments. They didn't do Star Trek anymore. They didn't do miniatures, all the all the grown men were playing Pokemon the card game, it sweeps my area. Like I've never seen anything. be such a fad before. for single lonely middle aged men in conference stores. I can't believe it.Palsh 7:50 I just like to say that pokeyman is how Canadians say it just like how we say merio not Mario.Jake 7:56 Exactly. It's the Pokemons so my experience was was here about the franchise from that. And then a friend of mine showed me an episode the cartoon and kind of went from there. And after the cartoon I've watched a few episodes cartoon, which we can talk about later. But from there I tried the video game and actually I quite hooked on the game, but I didn't play Pokemon until a couple years after the fad kind of hit. And I was probably considered too old for the franchise. I was not a kid but I played the first game. But for an RPG I've always been a fan of RPG and despite the you know, the aiming at a lower younger audience, the game is quite good. This is very solid game challenging and parts collectible hit all right, you know the edges for you. And it's great fun.Palsh 8:37 See, I I'm like from nowhere in the middle of nowhere. So we were always late when it came to getting games like that. So I remember reading it and magazines Of course. And the show Actually, I caught first before I actually played the game and I was like, Okay, I'm not a big anime fan, but this one caught my attention. I was probably in grade eight going to grade nine. Maybe I was in grade nine, something like that. So just just catch my attention. I was like, this is kind of cool. And, of course, when I watched the show made no sense because it was never aired in order. So I remember seeing probably the end of the season first and then like, then I see ash start off, you know, so I get really confusing. But I remember one guy had the game and he had both of them. You had one game boy, he had two of the games, and he had the transfer cable, but he didn't have another game book. So he gave me I think, read the play. And so that was my first experience. And I was like, Okay, let's try it. And I was like, okay, where do I get Pikachu? You don't have pika choo. I was like, Oh, you know, and so you know, I chose Squirtle because I was like the water Pokemon Pokemons over the fire ones. And I just remember, it was really fun, and I wasn't expecting it to be. So I don't know what the word is like. So straightforward. Like it felt almost like a beginners RPG I thought my head at first, but then it had, like, very simple strategies and stuff, but it was easy for me to catch on to and it was just kind of addicting. Right, right from the get go. And it's just, I remember playing it, I don't know how far I got because I didn't own it. And then, you know, my friends like deleted my game so he could play it and I was like, but I just remember seeing a meme about 10 years later, and I'll it shows the intro screen like when you first start a new game. And it says, no matter what you do, you'll never be able to experience this the same as your first time. It was like rip from like, you know, it's supposed to be like your first time with a significant other, but they basically didn't, and they dressed it up to make it look like a Pokemon game and I thought that was hilarious and ever since then, like the intro to the very first game. I was thought was really cool because of that. It's just like a very Personal feel to it. And I'm not even that huge, a Pokemon fan, so I just thought that was really nice. I thought they had, they couldn't have nailed it better.GP 11:10 I growing up had been into like tabletop type games like hero quest and like x men Mutant Chronicles and all those kind of ones. And I had itGP 11:22 here, right.GP 11:24 I was just slaying Poon, left and right. No, sorry, I shouldn't say that. I was 12. But I had a friend who had just a ton of Pokemon cards. And it's time I was living in Missouri. And he tried to show me the game and explain it to me. And I'd stayed the night over at his house one night, and I loved it. Not enough to go out and buy him. I didn't really see the need because my friend Adam. I loved you know, doing like the deck And you know it's back when you played with like the marbles or the bubbles or whatever they're called you know and not just all these things that I have is completely new and and awesome. And then he of course went out and he just had all the Pokemon stuff so he ended up getting the first two Gameboy games Forgive me for not remembering exactly which colors they were and I played one or both of them. I don't exactly remember which, but I loved them and then all of the generation to stuff started happening and I immediately lost interest. It was almost like Mega Man seven came out all over again. And I just to me, it was already this big well thought out thing. And now I've got more that I have to learn and I just, I honestly hardcore fell off after generation two and it was kind of the same with pokemon go if we end up talking about that later, Pogo came out and I loved it until like Gentoo came out. And then I'm like, Well, that's it for me. But I that's my memory of it. I loved it.Palsh 13:06 Yeah, I gotta say I'm the same way. When I played the first one, I was like, I'm the kind of guy that wanted to go for all all of them. And I knew I couldn't because you know, there's multiple playthroughs I knew I'd have to do it all myself because there was nobody to trade with. I was like, I just couldn't do it. And then I found out you can do it all over again with the next next game. I'm like, No, no, no, sorry.Jake 13:28 You mean I gotta walk bore man.Wulff 13:32 See, I was I was actually excited about golden silver. When I when I first learned about it, I was I was on board. But then a friend of mine got both of them. And he played through one of them. And then while he was playing through one, he was like, you can borrow the other one for a while, if you will. And I was like, all right, so I bought it for about a week or two. I tried playing it for a little while, and I got so annoyed with the fact that not only was it across different versions, but now The Pokemon only spawned at certain times of day. And under certain weather conditions, I guess the game had weather. I don't remember if that's if that was implemented in that one yet. But even just the morning, daytime and nighttime, completely threw me I was like, dude, I have other things to do throughout the day, I can't be expected to play Pokemon to try and catch a specific one at a certain time. I'm not going to fire the game up at three different times in the day to try and catch a certain thing or see if something different appears like it was just outside of the realm of reality for me, being a high schooler. It's like Okay, first off, morning and afternoon. They're just not going to happen.Jake 14:46 Yeah, I used to work night shifts. So try and catch Pokemon the daytime muscles be sleeping. No, thank you.Palsh 14:51 I think that's one of those things that would be really good in theory more than execution. Like if they had like an end game clock. MaybeWulff 15:01 Yeah, I thought it was a great idea. But it was not practicalGP 15:05 but right. And the reason they would never do that, like with an in game clock, and we've kind of talked about this before Simon's quest, and so I'll leave that there.Palsh 15:16 Now all of a sudden, we need Pokemon Gold and Silver redacted.GP 15:19 Oh, yes, that'll play.Jake 15:21 Well, okay, I got a question then. So if Pokemon were available during night and day time, Pokemon, generally is targeted children. Kids have to sleep at night. So does that kind of skew the game to either keeping kids out of bed or kind of doing a non to adult surveillance series? It's kinda interesting.Wulff 15:41 I think Yeah, I'm not sure I believe the timing on it was from something like 5am to 11am was considered morning. And then 11 to six or seven was day and then after that was night Okay, wasPalsh 16:00 this like based on your console's timezone? Like, how does it work onWulff 16:04 your cartridge actually had an internal battery that maintained the time of day? Okay?GP 16:10 Which one? Which game was the dinnertime Pokemon? Cuz that one would be okay.Palsh 16:17 I just send it to my friends on the West Coast Hey, hook me up.Wulff 16:21 So I I did get into the card game quite a bit as Jake touched on earlier, I had some friends who played magic but I didn't have any magic cards. And I had some other friends who liked magic, but they also didn't have magic cards. And we all kind of felt like well, it's a little late to jump on the magic train at this point. Everybody's got these badass decks, we can't really keep up. So let's try Pokemon. It's got one set out right now there's 150 cards won't be that hard to start getting into Fred right off the bat. So we did that. And I do believe at one point I actually collected the entire first set and then Pretty much the moment I did it, I was like all right, well now I don't want to have all of these anymore I'm going to start trading them to get the best deck I can make. So away my charas are away with my Venus or I started making other decks and I actually created a deck that was really overpowered that was just water type it was basically blast toys and gear it was to just own everything. We ended up spending so much time playing Pokemon and we had friends who wanted to join in to start playing with us that we altered the rule set at it at a point in time to where we figured out analogues for everything to where it could be played like magic.Palsh 17:42 Oh, nice.Wulff 17:46 That's That's how similar they were is that we figured out a way to wear anything like if the rule said one thing in Pokemon. You change it to match another rule in Magic the Gathering and you're set. See wipe off the zero On the HP and you've got it covered.Palsh 18:02 I like that because I didn't touch the card game so I could have just went straight into that and played.Wulff 18:07 Yeah, it was it was pretty wild that we did that. Some of our friends were like, Well why are you doing that? Or like, I don't know, we just we played so much Pokemon. Now we want to try it as magic.Jake 18:17 You could just by magic, you know?Wulff 18:21 Evil we already had the Pokemon cards.Jake 18:23 damn kidsPalsh 18:26 get off my lawn.Wulff 18:27 Plus that friend and I had art class together and we never did the actual assignments in that class. SoPalsh 18:35 we just blew all that time playing Pokemon or turning it into magic. Were you the kids that were making your own magic cards and Pokemon cards?Wulff 18:43 No, no, no, that was another friend of mine.Palsh 18:46 Oh man. I've never tried to no good with Photoshop now so I can't even do that to this day.Wulff 18:51 Oh, no, no, he drew them.Palsh 18:53 Oh, wow. Okay.Wulff 18:56 Anyway, um, so yeah, from the Gen one that's kind of where that stood for me. I don't think I touched so I don't think I touched the franchise again until it hit GPA. And even then it wasn't the first generation that hit GPA was when they remade red and blue as Leaf Green and fire red. I was like I haven't been into it for a while I haven't been able to but since this is a remake, maybe it'll be able to recapture that that I have been missing with the previous games. And I jumped into it. It helped me for a while I think about 3540 hours and then it lost me again. I never beat it.Palsh 19:35 That's good. That's the intro to like an Elder Scrolls game right there.Wulff 19:39 All right. 3540 hours is nothing to sneeze at for holding you But yeah, pretty sure. I mean, I played through 80 hours of the original blue the first time and then probably another 40 hours to get to the everything the second time soPalsh 19:53 respect, I played the Sapphire one on Gameboy Advance because my friend I'll never forget Get this this is what got me into it again because I didn't touch it again like after like after you said, you know just kind of dropped off like with GP you know, you got to do this all over again now. So I'm minding my own business working. I was working at a gas station I was probably 18 maybe 19 my friend came down just to visit me at work and like I'm working in the shack like it's literally smaller than a sheet of plywood is the shack that I was working in. And my friend came in so there's barely enough room for both of us stand up and he takes his pocket takes his thing and it was pocket and I thought it was like a makeup kit and I was like you bought makeup. He's like Nah, man. scam boy. I was like what so he had the Gameboy Advance SP and I never even heard of it. And what is it he goes game is the advanced is the Gameboy Advance SP. I was like, okay, and he opens up his I got Pokemon. I goes really? And he goes, Yeah, they made new one. So he had Ruby in there and he let me play it. He basically brought it down and immediately gave it to me and let me play And just like pick up and I was just collecting stuff for him and I was playing it for like 40 minutes at work, you know, I take a stop to run out and serve a customer and come back and I was playing the game. And I instantly was like, This is amazing. This is amazing. So, but I didn't have an sp right I just had the old school Gameboy that you need to be under a fluorescent light to play. And so he said, You know what, how about I get, I get the original one and you can get one and we'll play I was like, okay, cool, because you know, we could play together that way. And so we ended up ordering red for him because he had Ruby and I got blue. We're both playing it That was really mad because I had to play out in the basement in my house under fluorescent light while he was in my room, in like hanging down like in the couch that I had in my room. And so the first thing I did after I went on, I went to go to school, I went to Walmart bought an sp bought a carrying case, but Sapphire and started playing incessantly until Christmas. And then I came back and absolutely wrecked him because he stopped playing a month after I left. Wow. So I felt like a king and I still do to this day. So if you're listening thanks for we have an up buddy.Wulff 22:13 So Jake and JP Did either of you touch anything else from Gameboy or gameboy advance?GP 22:20 No, not so much I. Honestly, my exposure after that really has been from Twitch and from watching other streamers who have that deep rooted devotion to the franchise, which I do admire. But it's one of those franchises for me now, where I get a little bit of nostalgia for the old stuff. I enjoy watching the new stuff, but I don't know that I'll pick it up again.Wulff 22:49 Yeah, I'm kind of on the fence about some of that. I don't think I touched it again until Diamond and Pearl for the DS. And that one held me even less than Leaf Green and fire red. So I kind of learned Lesson and I haven't bought another one since now, when go released Of course, it was free to play. I had a smartphone. My wife had a smartphone so we were like sure let's give it a shot. So we downloaded it and played the crap out of it for about two weeks. Were like our phones were just never ending we plugged inPalsh 23:24 yeah I invested in those cigarette lighter chargers two weeks from now I'm a millionaire because of that.Wulff 23:34 Oh invested it No we bought some that's what I mean by invested in chargers we we just bought itJake 23:41 I can retire on us cables and car chargers. I'd be rich by now. But for me, I I also work I worship the Gameboy Advance SP I love that system. It's one of my all time favorite system especially very handheld. I think it's King and what kind of sold me When I first saw the commercial and advertisements for fire read, and just that wave install Joe, you know, I had read, I put the hell into that game. Sure. And then you know when the game starts up, and you see ash first leaving town and that hero rock soundtrack kicks in. It just nails me it just hooks me right in. I love the hell it if I read, but then after that after I and I played that, I mean dozens if not hundreds of hours. But after that generation, I kind of fell off and I didn't touch it for years. And it really wasn't until which McCall it was new Gameboy called Gameboy 3dsPalsh 24:36 the 3ds watch mycologist chocolate,Jake 24:39 right, it's not a Gameboy. Hopefully, if you pretended really hard with the power of imagination, it could be the 3ds I end up getting 3ds and that of course every system has Pokemon games and I played Sun and Moon. I think I played the moon version. And I enjoyed it. I love how they took the game into 3d, a little bit of the models. They kind of I mean, they always alter the formula from generation to generation. But for sun and moon that kind of moved away from the idea of going to various gyms to battling Gym Leaders instead of this kind of weird Pacific Island you know quest fighting looking for these let these special Pokemon to learn from them. It was kind of a weird take on it. I didn't quite get into it. So I actually don't ever finish moon I got a couple hours into it and kind of give up.GP 25:24 And at this point, it's not that it's saturated. But he really you guys talk about like, Pearl and Sapphire and, and I just, I don't know what the differences are anymore. I think I would be tempted if I ever got like a super Gameboy. I think I would be tempted to find the the original two and replan. But aside from that and Pokemon Go like you know werewolf was talking about earlier a bit night we put in so many miles with the kiddos just wandering around Wichita, and we even we would go and take over Jim's Like actually we had one in Topeka to bring things full circle there for a little while Topeka and so I really did love polka when it first came out and again it's just the the de generation to drop down like man do I hope they do what they did with wow classic World of Warcraft. Just bring back g one everything and I'll be happy I'll go back through it.Jake 26:24 Well the fire fire red is is the perfect way to experience the first generation Pokemon again it's the same game just remastered it just looks better sounds better, but it's the same gameplay same story if you're into that there was there a storyWulff 26:39 Yeah, I think it added an island that had Pokemon from other generations like selected Pokemon, butGP 26:47 well that I can do pretty much itPalsh 26:48 Yeah, I would check that out. Like I said, I love the game when it first came out on Gameboy but one thing now going back to it and watching somebody else play it or playing it myself is the audio and it's just because mainly because Because of the sound is you know, so limited on Gameboy but the low health warning. I remember one time it gave me a headache to the point where I got a migraine. So now I just cringe when I hear. So I if I ever play it again, I'm just going to go for five red or Leaf Green.Wulff 27:17 Yeah, it's that sound kidding. Great. A. That is one thing video games have from any era, when they have that you're almost gonna die beep it just starts to get on your nerves. I don't know why that's a thing. Like I get it. If the game is really in your face with a lot of action and stuff. And it's like beeps delay, you know, Zelda is not that fast paced game. And they just throw those beeps at you until you get enough hearts. Pokemon is the same way you're in a turn based combat you all that's on screen is your Pokemon and health bars. You know you're dying.Jake 28:00 The top 10 worst sounds and video games i'd agree that the Pokemon death sound is probably up there linked to the past is probably number one but Pokemon death is up there.Palsh 28:10 I'll put it that number one it seriously it like wearable says it greats and it's just I think it's just because it's ingrained in my head now at this point where I had that one one experience I'm just like, oh no.Jake 28:23 What about the Pokemon sound effects themselves? Do you find those charming or just annoying? I thoughtPalsh 28:29 actually it was pretty impressive to go from watching the show, you know where they all basically say their own name was how the hell they make noises. But then when you actually play the Gameboy game, the original ones and you know Jigglypuff makes the same music that Do you know, it? They they kept true to that and I think even with the limited audio hardware they had, it was really impressive.Wulff 28:58 At least with some Pokemon it didn't Seemed like the they were trying to make it almost sound like they they were at least inflecting their Japanese names because a lot of them didn't have the same name in the US like bigger two and right you pretty much it least from Gen one a lot of them had very different names aside from that.Palsh 29:17 Anything noteworthy thisWulff 29:21 I think Squirtle was zinna Gamay oh wow yeah rolls off the tongue.GP 29:25 Yeah, I'm not hearing the difference my brotherWulff 29:27 had a my brother had a toy that he picked up at some toy store in Florida at one point I guess it was an important because all he said was like he hit the button and he goes and Danny You know, he was saying his Japanese name he wasn't saying the western name.Jake 29:44 My favorite Pokemon is trash bag. He balls to the trash fire.Wulff 29:51 Some Pokemon are just horrifying, like drif Loon. I don't know if you guys know of drift or not. I don't remember what generation It came from but it's a Pokemon that looks like a balloon. And what it does is it hangs out near children to try and coax them into grabbing this like going and chasing it down because oh boy, cute, pretty balloon. I must have a balloon. I'm a small child, and it'll grab their arm and steal them away.Palsh 30:20 Wow, that's like,Wulff 30:21 it just takes the children away. It's like Billy's balloon from what is that guy's name? Don Hertzfeld with all the little balloons taking the kids up into the sky and dropping them.GP 30:37 horror movies are you guys? Well, I'm sitting here thinking about penny. Well,Wulff 30:40 dude, this is a cartoon. Okay. Little tangent here. If you guys remember the Pop Tarts commercials with the really weird people, like the weird looking handwriting people were they were like chasing the Pop Tarts duranium. Those were done Hertzfeld animations for pop tarts. So Billy's balloon was an independent piece he did years before that, where it didn't have to be market friendly. It just exists.Palsh 31:11 Just exists.GP 31:13 Well, I have to chime in real quick for two things. One because I just remembered, and two is a callback to a conversation a moment ago. I completely forgot about this until just now. Pokemon Snap. I love that game. Still love that game. That game is rad. You guys can find me. I don't know if that game is popular or if everybody hates it, but I fucking love it. That's a great game. Okay. Wait, what?Wulff 31:37 It's think snap is pretty well received.GP 31:40 Okay, cool. And the other one. The other comment I have to get in here was about the most hated beeping noise in video games. And I would like to point out the soundtrack to 1942 because that doesn't just be Pichu when you're about to die. That's just the soundtrack.Jake 32:00 You know the real speed runs 1942 you have to blur the soundtrack otherwise cheatingWulff 32:04 oh my god have real speed run is to beat it in 1941GP 32:09 that is some some Marty McFly stuff that I'm not prepared for. That's okay, so yeah, that was my two cents. Pokemon Snap THUMBS UP 1942 shit soundtrackJake 32:23 when you guys mentioned like badly named Pokemon like Drake foon the one that stands out for me and ash, he's a favorite of mine in Pokemon moon. It's me muku. And it's let me just read the descriptions from Sun and Moon just so you have an appreciation for why like this one. Its actual appearance is unknown. A scholar who saw what was under its reg was overwhelmed by terror and died from the shock.Palsh 32:46 WhatJake 32:46 after going through all the effort of disguising itself, its neck was broken. whatever is inside is probably unharmed, but it's still feeling sad. Wow. It's literally a Pikachu. It's a rag on a stick With a crudely drawn Pikachu face in ears it's hilarious Pokemon as you can tell if it's a description What is this thing called? Me Miku it's just it's just hilarious I it's sad and disturbed but I love the Pokemon origin stories are terrible like they're frightening for kids game.Wulff 33:15 One Which one? The mimic you? Okay, my firstJake 33:19 sudden moon by a Maven in an earlier game.Wulff 33:22 Yeah That thing is nightmare fuel.Jake 33:25 I love it though, because it can take a free hit and then it's disguised goes away, and it's basically invisible to ghost Pokemon, but it gets that free hit no matter what. So it's a fantastic Pokemon. It's my favorite.GP 33:35 It looks like one of those yarn doll versions of a Pokemon from like little big world or whatever it was. Oh, sackboy Yeah, yeah.Wulff 33:45 Little Big, Little Big Planet. Thank you. sackboy was the main character.GP 33:49 Okay, I thought maybe it was a translation difference between the lower 48 in Canada.Palsh 33:58 There's a metric equivalent in there somewhere. Yeah, sure, sure, sure.GP 34:02 Yeah, so I at some point, I do feel like it's not that they haven't kept trying when it comes to the naming and designs of some of the late Gen Pokemons. But they have kind of become Forgive me for this the equivalent of like, Stephen King novel plots. It's like are you really trying right now? Is This Really? Is this really part of what you're What were you just joking? Like that's how that's where it's at. for me. It's like how, how many Pokemon are there as of September 2019. Something like 800 I'm sorry, I had a stroke. How manyGP 34:40 800 807GP 34:45 I can barely keep up with 151 that's all I'm saying.Palsh 34:49 Yeah, sameJake 34:50 Okay, Pokemon wrap. Let's go 123 anybody?Wulff 34:56 Okay, man, Pokemon GOGP 34:59 ninja. Ninja rap. Yeah, I thinkWulff 35:05 I just couldn't remember the Pokemon rap. So that's where I went.Palsh 35:08 Slow po YouTube dedeker route aerodactyl. That'sGP 35:13 right. We got we're going to have to pay some money. No polish.Palsh 35:17 Yeah. Okay. Let's go make instead let's go make a toe mimic you instead of Topeka, choo. Oh,Wulff 35:27 speaking of Topeka to you. They they actually did it again. Last year and 28th anniversary.Jake 35:37 Oh God, they did it again. Same city.Wulff 35:39 Yes. Same city for the 20 year anniversary of it. They did it again for a day. Okay. thought that was interesting, butGP 35:48 that speaks a lot to the mentality of Kansas. Here's what I mean by that. Topeka has to be come to peek at you. There's a place here that is called Hutchinson better now. North of where I live, and that is widely considered as Smallville what Smallville from the Superman mythos would be if it were real. And so where I'm going with this is the idea the ideology for Kansas tourism is, Hey, come here and we'll pretend it's somewhere else.Jake 36:22 It's like trying to bring back the rim sunglasses. They're terrible idea and tacky in the 80s to bring him back now in 2019 is just pathetic.Jake 36:32 Is that a thing? I've seen some people were in I'm in my city. Every every 10 years yeah,Palsh 36:37 that they Yes. You see a trend. Come back.GP 36:40 You say that. But the matrix is coming back. So that's cool. So it's hit or miss.Palsh 36:45 But yeah, never went away.GP 36:47 Yeah, that's if you come into Kansas ever. The state line sign says, Welcome to Kansas. We're sorry.Palsh 36:57 It's the Canada of the United States.Wulff 37:01 So, moving back on to the Pokemon I did actually get to try let's go recently Oh yeah, my kid got it a while back my brother actually got him the, the the poker ball plus. So we started playing that a while back and he he loves it he has a blast with it because he gets to pretend he's a Pokemon trainer throwing the ball and catching the Pokemon. It's a blast, right? And when we fired it up, it said that there was a gift inside the poker ball. And when it told us that the poker ball made one of the sounds that you know one of the Gameboy Pokemon sounds from way back when and I didn't know what Pokemon It was. It was like I spent ages I don't know, I don't even think I knew which Pokemon made what sound back was back then. You know. So we played far enough to see about opening up this gift and seeing what was in it and then we opened it and it was a freaking newJake 38:00 Wow that's pretty awesomeWulff 38:01 he's not even at the first gym yet and now he's got a mew is randomized or does everyone I don't know if everybody gets a mew or if it's kind of random for rare Pokemon in general and we just got really lucky or oneJake 38:17 of us part of it didn't look into the only way you can get them you in that game is if you pay the 6070 bucks for the Pokeball accessory oh wow like in the original game that I think they gave me away there's usually had some kind of like public event and they let you get access Yeah,Wulff 38:31 they did mall events all over the place. And you had to go wait in line and have your Gameboy and your cartridge just fired up trade get your meJake 38:44 wants to do that again recently with sun and moon or pokemon go one of the two there's a new one that is literally a bolt like a nut like a metal and steel not that's a Pokemon now I think his name is meltin and I want to say done locket. You had to go What was events?Wulff 39:01 But I do have to say I kind of enjoy how let's go plays it feels less tedious since encounters with wild Pokemon or just throw balls at it and catch it move on. There's no beating it up to try and catch it there's just smashing the A button over and over to get it over with because every interaction if it's not a trainer battle, it's over in like 15 seconds. If that is you try using enjoy. So that was actually kind of nice. Um, no, we haven't played it with the joy con yet. He's just been playing with the poker ball playJake 39:33 with the joy con because you can play with two players kind of in that game. I play with my kids and we don't have the pokemon ball. But joy cons are hot garbage with it. And you spend 10 balls trying to hit a goddamn Pokemon. But it's all trade.Wulff 39:46 Oh, he catches it every frickin time with the poker ball. Plus, it's ridiculous. The little tiny circle. He's getting excellent, amazing. Yeah, I don't know what it is. But he's also playing like five feet from a 42 inch TV. That At his eye level soJake 40:02 well clearly he's destiny a Pokemon master he just said him outside world with a baseball hat and a backpack and said Good luck.Wulff 40:09 Yeah, well he's not 10 yet he's only five he's halfway there.Palsh 40:13 Hell I'm 35 and I'm not ready for thatWulff 40:18 Alright, so let's let's let's touch on the anime and the movies a little more. I'm going to openly admit and open myself up for mockery here. I saw a Pokemon the first movie Pokemon 2000 and Pokemon I don't know what it was called Pokemon three. I don't know if that's what it was called. Something else the one with MJ. I saw all three of those in theaters. I never saw a single one of them to be honest.GP 40:43 I'm sorry. What was it? Hint hint? A No You saidWulff 40:48 I it was some big orange dog thing that looked kind of like a growl either andGP 40:54 it was bigger googling hint a right now and it's it's not popping up anything like what you're talking about?Wulff 41:01 That's that was the last one I saw that I was kind of like and now my phone crashed but but when I when I saw the first one in theaters, I legit teared up. I don't know if you guys have seen that movie, but toward the end,GP 41:17 I think the only one I saw was Pokemon 2000 and that was at a drive in theater. That was also showing Casper Do you guys remember that with Christina Ricci? That was like the double feature, and I think that's the only time I saw Pokemon 2000Wulff 41:37 pretty sure that movie came well before Pokemon 2000GP 41:40 Oh yeah, I'm not saying it was topical. I'm just saying that's what was playing.Jake 41:44 It was a classic. For me it was the less the movies and more the cartoon the first season and Pokemon the anime that's like a guilty pleasure for me. I watched it with my kids not too long ago and every time Pikachu I know it's me fine. I know his will never die ever. But anytime he's in mortal peril and he's just beaten up, and he gives that little cry and clutches them tightly like a baby. I should have single tier every time. I don't care who hates mePalsh 42:14 hates you. Everybody relates to you now.GP 42:17 Yeah. Who would show hate? Like how dare you have feelings toward this cartoon? Yeah,Wulff 42:22 it's it's funny how much more prevalent Pokemon is these days than it was when you know generation one released but with Gen one they had what two or three musical albums that released with the anime and it was ridiculous and I don't know what they they do that stuff anymore. I'm pretty sure it's just the games and plushies mostly at this point.Jake 42:44 In terms of merchandise. Oh, there's all kinds of merchandise. Yeah.Wulff 42:48 My my brother had one of the CDs that to be a master album. Attract microphone master. Turn offPalsh 42:55 the tape right the ghetto blasterUnknown Speaker 42:58 Exactly.Palsh 43:00 That's That's some 41Jake 43:01 but I went over overseas to Tokyo there. We actually went to other Pokemon centers, but we didn't even we didn't need to go to that store. There's Pokemon everywhere in Tokyo I guess that goes up saying but from cookies to juice, the vending machine to underwear, literally everything. And I still see a lot of that over here too. I still I still see the occasional Pokemon figurines and toys and stuff.Wulff 43:21 We went to the mall a couple weeks ago here and I saw a little like one of those stands and it wasn't really a kiosk but it was like a standalone vending machine kind of thing. But it was called a Pokemon Center and it had a vending machine on one side with a bunch of Pokemon merge in it, and then it had a poker decks on another side where you could like look at the different Pokemon and it was kind of wild.Jake 43:45 Well, I was just actually just at the CME in Toronto. It's basically a big fair exhibition in the UK carnival games, that kind of thing. And some of the prizes are obviously knockoff Pokemon merchandise, right? And I saw a family like with three kids and strollers One of the kids was clutching a I mean a gigantic Pikachu. Like it was probably two three feet long. It's huge. And this pair of guys and I mean, buff, gym looking dudes, six and a half, seven feet tall, just the toughest guys walking down the street or the the avenue and they see the kid with the giant Pikachu and they walk up, hands on hips like yo yo, would you get that Pikachu and the basketball game? Oh, thanks so much and then they just ran ran for the carnival game but the games to get their own tickets you know just to show you that the generation who love Gen one are all like you know 30 plus now for the most part and have that just love a peek into stuff.Wulff 44:45 Oh yeah, Pikachu. I mean, they knew that was a gold mine from the get go. It they were in Topeka you there was friggin Pokemon Yellow. I think to this day, they still brand pretty much Every console with a Pikachu to some extent, even if it's a limited release, ridiculous. But yeah, I gotta say I'm I do like the older cartoons. There's probably only one line I still remember from the original movie. Or maybe it was the second movie I don't know is from one of the movies, there was a really bad line that I choose, you know? No, no, no nothing. And I'm pretty sure it was the second movie because it was a bunch of people on a yacht. I don't know, it might have been the first movie I really don't remember, but there's a bunch of people on a boat and you overhear them talking like there's people at different tables eating and talking and it passes by one table and you hear a guy go, and I said, No, I just had crab bees and everybody burst into laughter. I was like, Oh my god, that is not a kid friendly joke.Jake 45:56 Even crabs is a Pokemon.Jake 45:59 Gotta catch mallGP 46:05 Okay, here's a question. Because I legit don't know, in the Pokemon universe, are there what we would consider normal animals? Like is there like a like a dog just a regular canine? Or is every single animal in that universe of Pokemon?Wulff 46:27 I feel like generation one the way we were introduced to Pokemon made it sound like there were other animals that were not Pokemon. But the further we get into the franchise, if you like, the less, that seems to be the case. Right? Which is really bizarre because I'm pretty sure oak said that all the Pokemon shared a lot of common genes. Okay, and so that means they're like, all these Pokemon are just weird mutants and we're just living on their planet.GP 47:00 Just how uneventful and underwhelming and potentially scary would it be to be like a dog? Or like a regular domestic house cat in the Pokemon world be horrifying, and you'd be let down to everybodyJake 47:17 with your account Oh, you're sure the cow will eat you will grind you into burgers but you know mu tanks or whatever the cow pokeyman is? Yeah milk bankWulff 47:27 andJake 47:28 Toro him. He's a Pokemon special. Eat that goddamn cow, rightGP 47:38 Okay, thereWulff 47:40 we go question can you carve up a milk and eat some of it leave it alive take it to a Pokemon Center and heal itJake 47:49 the question doesn't want you to think aboutUnknown Speaker 47:52 right yeah.Wulff 47:53 With the with the hard questions will be getting that cease and desist very soon.GP 47:59 There's always He's that kid at school who runs up and you're like, oh, man, check it out. You know, I got this cool new thing that everybody has. And it's the offering thing that you know, you had to get from the dollar store that that was me growing up so I can make this year. But that kid shows up with a pokey ball. He's like, Can I just check it out? I got like a Meowth. And he opens it and it's just like a cat. Like, damn it, Randall. You know, go back to the corner. That's horrible. That's how bullying starts. And it's not funny.Jake 48:34 Robots aren't real transformers. Back to eat and paste. I'm just picturing now somebody's taking a cat into Pokemon battle. just pulling in a cat carrier like the opponent's like charges are going from smokey ball. And then some guy with a cat carrier. Smell with go nuts.Palsh 48:53 And it's like I said house can literally a house. Yeah. And it's like way more feral than the He hasGP 49:00 a Pokemon delivers takes down the gear dose, and it gets disqualified but like kindaPalsh 49:07 like Karate Kid, you know wins with that illegal kick to the head.GP 49:12 Yeah, but at that point everybody had already stormed the man. I'm sorry. Effective.Palsh 49:20 Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, the press beat cancel. This is how we normally talk. Yeah, I apologize. SoWulff 49:28 I think it's almost time to hit be so let's go ahead and go around and see what everybody's favorite point in the series was. I think for me, it's pretty safe to say it was just Pokemon blue period. I that's I played the crap out of it. I played through it two or three times. I traded for every single Pokemon And that my friends and I figured out how to do the missing no nonsense and all that. It's blue holds a special place in my heart that no other entry in the game has in the French has been able to replicate.GP 50:02 Cool, cool. I think for me, my favorite moments, or era of Pokemon is the day after I was introduced to Pokemon, because I got the idea of what it was. And my mind was like being expanded to see what the rules were for the card game and then gradually introduced to all this other stuff. And it was just this amazingly fun idea. And so to be at the front door, of all the stuff that you know, you're about to learn, it's going to be awesome. That was that was magic. That was absolute magic. So for me, that was my favorite part.Jake 50:43 You know, for me, it's Pokemon. It's when's the spin off? That's the stuff I enjoy the most and actually quite like what they're doing today or nowadays with it. Detective Pikachu is probably good. Good spin on I believe there was a game on the 3ds for that. And I just love how to peek at you with a little character, and he's in he's in this combat situation or you think he's going to be with his friend there who has tried to peek at you. And he's like Pikachu use Thunderbolt. And detective Pikachu just looks at this guy and says use Thunderbolt. And to me, that's just like, the funniest thing in the planet, right? Like, humans order around animals do battle, and the animal turning to you and say, What the hell are you talking about? I love to pick at you that the recent movie, the CGI movie, I thought was actually really great. And I hope to do more crazy stuff like that. Like the mainline games are fun at all. But when they take Pokemon and put it into different situations that spin off, I love that kind of stuff.Palsh 51:39 Yeah, that's, that's really cool. I like that. And I haven't even seen the movie yet. So now I really want to see it. But for me, it's definitely I want to say Sapphire because I was playing it so much like it was probably from like August to December. I didn't really play anything else. I'd be watching the movie gravity. We're watching a movie and I playing the game. But I think it's just that introduction to Sapphire, by playing Ruby is probably my fondest memory of the entire franchise just because my friend came down out of the blue. And it's just one of those things like we were both at a high school and I just remember that it was just is a memory that I'll always cherish and I don't know. It was just cool. It's It was like a new era of video games for me, soWulff 52:27 I think that's fair. Alright, so I think we can go ahead and wrap upPalsh 52:34 this list of her favorite Pokemon real quick,GP 52:37 Ryan Reynolds.Wulff 52:38 Oh, I see. I can't talk today. debido Danny DeVitoWulff 52:47 could youGP 52:50 honestly, if I could have like a real life Pokemon. I'd want it to be a growl if they're so cool looking. Yeah, they are pretty cool. And I feel safe and cuddly? You can't cuddle a gear a doseWulff 53:04 I'm not even a cat person but I liked Persian don't know whyGP 53:10 I think that silence is a little bitWulff 53:13 it was a cat that could literally create money out of nothing soPalsh 53:18 yeahGP 53:18 yeah that's a great option only keptWulff 53:19 the least if you evolved it from mouth and Persian was way cooler than me out soPalsh 53:24 that's true that's good solid logic I'll agree with you for there Matt that it's not gonna be my favorite but it's respectable. Jake What do you just like the one you actuallyJake 53:35 I like them we're actually gonna go with Ryan rattle on that goes right right I love rock Canadian Ryan Reynolds is a fantastic Pokemon But no, I like the one I don't even know his name. But it's basically a steel ring with keys attached and that's a Pokemon. I love that one. I'm not I'm not even kidding. I don't notice they marryWulff 53:53 you coming up with the jinglingJake 53:54 key Pokemon is the best of all.GP 53:58 The okay real quick, just to Bring this whole thing home. Sick Jay, did you play with Gobots I think somebody who's played a trick on youJake 54:08 know Gobots I had one Optimus Prime and I had my toy that was itPalsh 54:13 turns out he's kept attacking YuGiOh or, or digium on all this time.Wulff 54:19 This is Pocket Monsters not digital monsters.GP 54:24 Also, I think if if you have a life that you know, you want to escape your life than the me the the Mewtwo sorry, is the Pokemon that you want. Because then if he's cool, he can just get in your mind and you can live whatever life you want. Yes,Wulff 54:41 that's true,GP 54:43 too, and introduce people like, Hey, this is my Pokemon. It's kind of a dick. Or you'd be like, Hey, I don't feel like doing anything today. Can you get in my head and making things that I'm on Jupiter.Wulff 54:53 So you're wanting you to be your own personal Total Recall.GP 54:58 That is exactly what I'm saying. That was perfectly stated where I was going to say he wanted a pet Dr. ManhattanPalsh 55:03 but okay.Jake 55:06 A pet What? Whoa, wait a minute 12 his penis and a Pokemon sounds good to me.Wulff 55:11 I got that reference.GP 55:17 Okay, first off, I have to point out stick Jake uses metric. I don't think he knows what bobbins means. Man I think Sorry guys, I'm sorry. I've loved this this episode, but I'm sorry that I've been the main reason we've gotten off track. I'm so sorry.Palsh 55:44 I think it's fine. minds fit my favorite Squirtle By the way, dicks.Wulff 55:52 Oh, yeah, there's a good question. What was your starters from Jen one Squirtle realPalsh 55:57 quick. I always go with the Pokemon if given a chance,Wulff 56:02 mine was CharmanderPalsh 56:03 sucka.Wulff 56:05 Being original I named him Bernie.Jake 56:08 I use I always wanted the fire type or the ones that look like a cat. I was a cat person and like half this team, and I usually named them stupid things like dog food, frozen peas, creamed corn, stuff like that. Don't ask me why, dude. My dude, no.GP 56:26 Actually, I was watertight to I went with with Squirtle. And I kind of want to change my answer to my favorite being cubone because of how heartbreaking The story is that yes,Palsh 56:36 I love the cubone Yeah, let's not bring it up here because I don't want to cry. But, uh, anybody who's listening, if you don't know the story of a cubone, you should check it out. Because it's Yeah, it is actually worth looking up. SoGP 56:49 just yeah, here's all you have to Google is whose skull is cubone wearing And if that's not the most emotion you've ever heard Yeah, I love it. Also, I mean but yeah, the key chain one is nice to J it's fineJake 57:05 I have look his name upWulff 57:09 anyway this has been presby to cancel I was your host this week thank you for having me for a second week now.Palsh 57:14 Who are you aWulff 57:17 werewolf? You can find me on Twitch and TwitterPalsh 57:21 w ar EWL ffWulff 57:25 I was going to leave it to the imagination this time but thank youPalsh 57:28 all right Polish take it away Hi my name is sick Jake you can find me on Twitter as well as a weight not I'm post one on you find me on Twitch at pulse 109 pls HWulff 57:41 and GPGP 57:43 know go for it. Go for it Jay.Jake 57:47 Thanks GP. For the record. His name is Cliff key cholesky the key chain Pokemon it resembles a key ring with four keys aspherical head and a small pink oval on his forehead anyway That's that's his life story. That's pretty much it. It's also dark and jiggli My name is sick Jake you can find me sick Jake on Twitter or on Twitch. I'm a part time by annual never streamerWulff 58:10 and then our resident derailer Gp.GP 58:14 Yeah, this is GP. Typical spelling. Sorry. And you can find me on the retro therapy, which is of course on Twitch. We're also on Twitter and Instagram, as the retro therapy.Wulff 58:29 Alright, thank you everybody for tuning in. band EQ pqPalsh 58:36 certain music here. Wait, that's not how the song goes.Jake 58:45 Special thanks for music go to Arthur, the ancient found on Soundcloud or the last ancient on YouTube. The more episodes please visit our website presby to cancel.com as well Feel free to like or subscribe at Apple iTunes, Google podcasts or anything. Where else you'd like to listen to your favorite shows? As always, thank you. This has beenWulff 59:06 a do againSpecial thanks to Arthur The Last Ancient on soundcloud for our podcast theme. For updates and more episodes please visit our website www.pressbtocancel.com, or find us on Twitter @pressbtocancel and Instagram @pressbtocancel.

After successfully having a career in the restaurant industry, Gino Barbaro became increasingly interested in the opportunities that investing in multi-family units could bring and the financial freedom one could attain. After conversations with his friend, Jake Stenziano, Gino and him decided to form a business partnership founding their real estate education company, Jake & Gino. Gino Barbaro is an author, real estate investor, and entrepreneur who is the co-founder of the real estate company Jake & Gino. Currently, they are in control of 1,400 units and are passionate about mentoring others to follow their long-term wealth strategies.   In this episode of Multifamily Real Estate Investments with Don and Eden, Gino will share his unique story and path that led him to multifamily real estate investing. He also will talk about the importance of the right mindset into becoming involved in real estate syndications and why having the right mindset is so important.     Highlights:  Gino’s Beginnings in Real Estate  Why Gino Decided to Not Only have a Career in the Restaurant Industry Forming a Partnership Importance of Mindset  Current Projects and Future Outlook   How to Connect with Gino Website: https://jakeandgino.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jakeandgino Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jakeandgino/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Transcription Hey guys, I'm very excited to tell you about our new website DonandEden.com. We have put a lot of hours into making the website very accessible, beautiful, and comfortable. You could find ways to contact us for a variety of options if you would like to network, we always want to hear new stories and get to know you better. We would displace some of the past deals we were involved with, you could learn from each of those deals. The important lessons we have also experienced on the website, you would be able to invest with us on our future deals if passive investors, and even as general partners. Today, Don will interview a person who is very dear to both of us, and his name is Gino Barbaro. Gino is the part of the famous duo Jake and Gino who is in control of over fourteen hundred units. Gino will share his story and the path that led him to real estate investing as well as the right mindset you need to be able to do this. Also at the end of the episode, Don and Gino will discuss one of our deals that are coming up, and we are very excited about the development of 28 units in Hollywood, Florida.  So stay tuned and enjoy the episode.  Welcome to the real estate investing podcast with Don and Eden, where we cover all aspects of real estate investing with special attention to multifamily apartment buildings and off-market strategies.  Hey, Gino welcome to the show. How are you doing today? I'm doing really good. Thanks for having me on. Of course, I'm honored. If anybody, I'm honored to have you on the show it's going to be you the person that helped me so much in my career and developing myself as a real estate investor. I've learned so much from you. So I'm very honored as I mentioned. Thank you for putting the time to do this. Thank you. Yes. So you are a very accomplished man, and it seems like your whole life is about doing and creating. So I want you to tell us a little bit about your career how it started and what currently drives you.  Well, my biggest accomplishment, I think, is being a father of six children.  That is by far the most important thing to me, and that's the reason, believe or not why I got into real estate because I was in a tough business. I was in the restaurant business, and it just took a lot of time.  It took a lot of energy, a lot of effort, a lot of long hours and a lot of long weekends working on the holidays- it was difficult, and I was the son of an immigrant. So that's what I thought everyone did. I mean, I was working hard, but I didn't feel fulfilled, and I seemed like I was always away missing those important things with my family. So I was back in 2008, the Great Recession came in, and I was making pretty good money. The restaurant and everything changed, and I said to myself I need to go on a different path. I need to find something different, and I already had a job. So I didn't get into a residential real estate. I didn't get into fixing flips. I tried to get to the multifamily, and I think that was the saving grace me.  Try and get into a multifamily business, buy properties still have the restaurant, but do this on the side and make some extra money because as to have a large family it's a lot of mouths to feed. That was my priority to do something where I can get a little bit of extra passive income on site. And over the years from 2008 to this point continue to buy. Continue to grow. I just got fortunate enough that back in 2016 of March I left the restaurant and I dedicated my life full time to real estate.     That's beautiful. So you decided to focus on multifamily whereas other investors typically when they start they try to focus on single families because they have the conception that this is the safest thing to do and that was our conception when we started doing business in real estate.   But you challenged that and so you tackled multifamily right from the beginning. So tell us a little bit about that? How was it? How difficult was it to get into that arena?   Well,  in the beginning, everyone believes what they think. If you believe it's easier to get into single families, that's what you're going to believe. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Everyone knows how to buy a home so they think, hey single family's easy I can get into it I've done it before.  Everyone hears the word multifamily commercial, and they start shaking their boots, and they think of commercial financing, and real estate is a team sport. And for me, I didn't want to have another job. I didn't want to fix and flip a home. I mean, I love that process, it's a lot of fun. But once you think about all the hours and the time that you need to do a house, the capital gains, the risk factor, and where you are in the market cycle. All of a sudden you've done all that work, and then you've got to go and repeat it; it didn't seem like it was a really good strategy for me. I wanted something that would have at least residual income. I wanted something more I built long term wealth. Yeah, I wanted something where I could have the capital gains to avoid tax benefits there. I want something where I could build a business where it was scalable. So if you're thinking about buying single-family homes take a step back and say to yourself, how is it going to be when I have ten or eleven or twelve houses spread out all over the city. They're all different. It's going to be harder to manage every single one of them if I've got ten homes and three of them are vacant. That's a big vacancy. As Jake and I started on our twenty-five-year property they were all in one location. I was working full time. I could manage these part-time at the very beginning, and it was easier because they're all in one location. There was one landscaping bill. There was one garbage bill. There was one utility bill. There was one roof there. So it was just easier for me. There was an economy a scale thing. There were scalability factors and all those other factors that I've mentioned. It just made more sense.  Yeah. Also when you flip a home it feels like a job.   you make good money. I mean I've done that before, and you make good money. I get a good day you're placing your time so that you can earn money. So it's a good job, but essentially it's a job. It doesn't create residual income for you as far as multifamily does. And also I mean you could get there it’s not scalable, but it's possible. I mean it's possible to hold 20 single families and make residual income, and welfare. But it's not as easy and as convenient so I can relate.  Well, I think the problem is most people like that don't mean effect. It's so much more rewarding to actually buy a house fix it and then flip it three months later and get paid. It's a great feeling right, that's a transaction. It's a lot harder.  using my immigrant background to be a farmer plant the seed water the seed weed the garden take care of it let it grow and wait six months and pray that it doesn't rain hardly ever hail. There's a lot of risks involved that's an entrepreneur's journey because you're holding on and you're delaying the gratification.  Whereas I think single-family homes you're fixing the flipping it's a different process it's a different mindset. You're going to get into multifamily think of yourself as an entrepreneur. You think of yourself as someone who's solving problems for tenants. And the more tenants and problems you can solve the bigger portfolio, the more money you are going to make and the more as you scale bigger and gains the more property and more units the more cost savings you're going to have the more revenue generator rate are you going to have and that's how you start becoming really successful in this business.  Yeah, I agree. So you've entered the multifamily business. I mean a few years back so it's not like you've been doing that for 30 years while you were in the restaurant business. So how did your life change ever since you got into multifamily.  Well I mean for me, the best thing was I went to coaching school. I became a life coach because I didn't know what I wanted right.  I mean, I think the most important thing that everyone on this call has to figure out is to keep becoming clear with our lives, what is the clarity in your life? I didn't want to work twelve hours a day doing more at a job that I didn't like anymore. Now I'm working just as hard, but I'm doing something that I feel fulfilled in, and to me, it's not a job.   I don't even know what day it is today, to be honest with you. I mean the weekends to me are just like any other day or whenever I want to. For me, it was hard because I was working and it was like you said every week the week is over you get paid you start the next week, and it was just boring, and it was not fulfilling. Also when we bought our first property it was exciting because it felt like we did something different. Then three months after that first property we bought our second property. So we had 60 units within the first three months of buying the first deal. It took us 18 months to get our first deal. I mean it was hard out there I had done some coaching I had gotten together with mentors I had gotten together with Jake as a partner. So Jake and I took 18 months to get that first deal. But that second deal came right after the first because we had the credibility. We had met the broker we had understood the market. We had chosen the market and focused, and we had built a team. And I mean things are changing. I started seeing real estate as a business which is what it is whether you're going to fix a flip whether you're going to wholesale whether you're going to master lease whether you going to buy commercially. It has to be treated as a business. And you want to take yourself out of the day to day operations and think more long term and think bigger picture and build a business. And if you can't if you're out there trying to buy a business you can't scale that business then it's not a business, it becomes a job. That's why when you're buying a couple of single-family homes that can't be scaled if that model can't be scaled and you can't pull yourself out of it then it's not a business it's a job.  Here’s some that I learned from you, is the famous scent as you always say that transactions pay equity bill make you rich. That's right. I've learned that pretty well, and that's what we are trying to establish as well. So I know you wrote two books two of which bestsellers. So let's talk about these books a little.  I know the first one is we'll get our profits, and then the other one is family food and the fairs. So just from the titles, I could understand that these are two completely different books. So what's special about these books for you? And how has the experience of writing them?   Well, the great thing about it was back in 2008, I was trying to do something in the restaurant that we call multifaceted.  I had seen back then it was a shift. I mean all of a sudden you have to see trends you have to see what's going on with demographics, and it's exploding now. If you understand the new demographics now we're where people are not going out to eat they want to have delivery they want to have stuff brought into their house. Whole Foods is taking over a lot of it. Trader Joe's a lot of prepackaged foods. I said to my brother we need to do something different here at the restaurant we need to create other streams of revenue whether that is writing a cookbook which is what I did. I wrote a cookbook called family food in the fryers, and I wrote it for a bunch of Catholic brothers where I would go down and do a lot of mission work for and they were terrible cooks. So I said that was the mission, I said let me write a cookbook for them. And I ended up branding the restaurant then we created the company called Geno's family where I wanted to have my family teach other families how to garden, how to grow vegetables, and how to bring it into the house how to cook with them and then what I did with that company as I was sourcing physical products from China where there was cutlery whether it was vertical garden bags whether it was e-books and all that kind of information. And I was creating a little business within the restaurant and career multiple brands or multiple revenue streams. I was also joined tomato sauce selling it.  Unfortunately, as I'm doing that, Jake and I find out while this real estate is pretty cool and my brother was not ready at the time to start transitioning; he didn't see what I saw so since my brother Mark I'm surprised it's real estate. So Jake and I start buying these properties and about at about a year and a half after we start buying. We wrote this book with all our profits. And the reason why I wrote the book is it makes you go in there and research and learn and become a much better investor because even though you're learning you never stop learning is always things changing in the market and I electric let's write this book just for fun. We sat down, and it took us about a year to write the book believe right. I mean we're not good writers, and we're not that smart. So it took us a lot longer than what it should have. But I mean it gave us the clarity on what our strategy was we were buying these deals from mom and pop owners, and we were using the simple buy right manage right and finance. That was our three-legged framework on how to buy a multifamily property. So it gave the clarity, OK this is it let's put it down on paper. And then from there, we said what. Let's start coaching people and teaching people how to do what we're doing. So from that book, came up the Jay congenial program.  Beautiful. So tell us about how you met Jay and the other half of the famous duo Jake and Gino? Well  I mean sometimes people they gravitate towards you. He was a pharmaceutical rep back in 2010-2011, and he was using a restaurant, and he was good friends with my brother.  My brother is handling all the outside of the restaurant his deal dealing with the pharmaceutical reps that he was getting catering from our restaurant going to doctor's offices and selling pharmaceuticals. And when the sunshine came in that all changed the whole health care model changed and he saw that as a threat. So he decided to move down to Knoxville Tennessee, and I said Jake when you get down there let me know, we'll start looking at deals.  I know what kind of person he is, and for anybody out there looking to get into partnership with other people, you have to stop and think of why you want to in partnership with people.  I saw Jake as someone similar to me; he works. Rick is a super hard worker; he's always working. He's always thinking about the next step. He's got value-based decision making where he's got a great core belief; core values are really powerful. He's got a lot of integrity. He's got a lot of ethics, and he does the right thing. So I gravitated towards all of that, and I liked the way he worked because I worked just as hard. So if you're going to partner with other people make sure you look at that make sure you look at the background make sure you look at them saying what. It's not my job, It's not in our vocabulary, It's all about helping each other out. So I met him he went down and like I said from 2011 to 2013 we're looking to buy a property. He ended up buying a house because his wife moved down and then we bought that first property. He is the property manager because he was in the market, so he brought value that way by managing the property. And I was the one who had the experience the education I knew how to read the deals I don't want to raise the money. So I had that experience between the two of us. We just hit it off. We had a great partnership, and we just decided to stick with it. And like I said once you started growing we're like what let's start a podcast. What's the worst they can have. We've just started the podcast, started meeting people, talking to people and just really learning the industry from the inside out.  That's beautiful. So how do you guys currently divide the workload between you two now that you've been in a partnership for quite a while?  each other well.   Well, what ends up happening is there are certain inflection points, in any business, I think after we got off two-hundred units all of sudden Jake said I need to property manager and I need to hire some property managers we had 60 units the third deal was one hundred thirty-six units. So when we had that third deal we started hiring full-time property managers full-time maintenance. So we did that. That was the first step. And then when we hit about six hundred fifty units we decided to hire a regional manager. We just needed more staff. As you start staffing up and at that point, I was doing. I was sold to the restaurant I left the restaurant. Jake was doing day to day in the property management, and I was pitching in.  I was helping out filling out quick books and doing all the reporting. And then when I said Jake I'm going to do the education day in a day full time, there's a lot of stuff involved in the very beginning creating lessons creating videos getting people to come on the podcast. The date you do day to day with the property management. And then from there, those were the two streams of revenue on top of the investment which was the third stream of revenue, so those three streams. A year and a half ago, we decided we've got about 900 investors on our database. Jake, I can't reach out to them and set up thirty-minute meetings and you can either one, or we create a syndication company gets another partner for that which we hired Dillon Obama. He's our third partner. We have another partner Mike on that so let's do that. You have these symbiotic relationships between a syndication company that is raising money in an education company that is teaching people and also fulfilling them over to our syndication company. If they have extra money they can they can invest with us a property management company that runs these investments and the investments themselves.  So as we started scaling up we saw that we'd rather share the pie with other people who felt our core beliefs then try to keep for ourselves because it's hard to start scaling up and picking out what you do what you don't like. I love the education aspect of it. Jake loves the property management aspect of it. Our partner loves to speak to investors. He loves to underwrite deals, so if we can all work on our strengths and grow the business and try to keep it as a multifaceted business where each entity is helping the other entity it works well, and you'll figure that as you start scaling.  That's the hardest thing for an entrepreneur when do you hire somebody else. I mean we hired our first sales guy for Jacob Gino about two years ago 18 months ago and then only three to four months ago we hired an operations manager. We should have hired sooner; we just didn't know you'll figure that out. As you see, you start yourself growing and, you start doing tasks that aren't necessary if you aren't there to generate revenue. That's why you say to yourself OK, I have to pull myself out of this task and hire somebody to do that. Does that make sense?  It does make a lot of sense especially because I'm also in a partnership and I know exactly how important that is to have a mastermind, and sometimes you're not sure about things, and you could talk to somebody about the way you say things, and then they see things differently. And then you come up with the best solution. So it only makes sense to me, and I think it's beautiful that you guys are so symbiotic as you mentioned and that's amazing.  So I'm going to see you be doing that very soon. Trust me because once you have a great system and a great business it's all a communication right. We have something that we call Level 10 meetings every week.  We are on meetings with every single one of our entities and then might take up five or six hours a week, but it's really important to have her be on board. We've done something called scaling up with Patrick coaches because as you start growing if you're going to be an educator you have to believe in your product. You have to go out there and invest in yourself and invest in your company. So for you to grow and you're doing something new you've never done it before you really to go out there and invest in yourself and invest in your company, so that's first and foremost.  But I see you guys doing the same thing? You've got a beautiful model. You already employ virtual assistants amazingly you have a system set up. You are going to be teaching your process and then from that money make what you do the money you make. You replicating put into other investments and you start multifaceted, and I can see the picture already being painted with you guys as well.  Yeah. I mean I think it's what's special about our motto is that we came from the background of being a residential wholesaler. So as a residential wholesaler, you like a multifamily investor on steroids.  That's the way I like it because you're able to do some things that other people are not doing since it's just not a part of the industry.  a lot of people say, hey talk to the brokers and an established broker they should ship which we're doing, and we're doing everything, but the off-market strategies that we are implying are getting us ahead. And I can already see that we're getting to sellers that otherwise, we have never sold the property because they never had even that idea. So you're essentially the broker when you're addressing the sellers directly then you're essentially the broker because you're getting them before other brokers do. And then you're also saving the commissions that they would pay for brokers.  So it makes sense, and that's the best so much value. You guys have so much value that model and what's great about it is that you're in a tough market right now.  Can you imagine when the market cycle resets, and you're going back to the buyer's market you guys are going to clean up? So continue to do what you're doing because everyone always says now's not the right time to get in the market. It's never the right time to get into the market. It's never the right time to have a child. It's never the right time to leave your job. It's never the right time to get married. It's only the right time when you decide is the right time and what you need to do is learn what strategy to employ in that specific market cycle. I mean the real estate comes out three pillars it comes down the market cycle, it comes out to debt, and it comes down to exit strategy. If you can employ all three of those who make a wise decision on all three of those you can buy in any market, you just need to know. So as you'll see as the market resets you guys are going to you're poised to crush it as this market is going down because you've created the relationships you've already spoken to the sellers three or four times so when they're ready what are they going to call they're going to call you because you're already in touch with them a couple of times.  Exactly. I could always see that coming, and what else. When we started doing residential wholesale then a lot of people told us not to do it in Miami. The Fort Lauderdale Miami area because this market is very competitive, and it's very difficult for beginners.  So it was competitive, and it was difficult to get in, but it was very rewarding when not the first deal. So it's the same thing, and in today's market and multifamily, it's hot. But if you get a deal then it's good for you because you couldn't so easily. So there are advantages to this as to every market. And if we're already talking about the market I wanted to ask you a question which I've already preferred. So what do you think are the adjustments that the investors that are trying to get into multifamily or investors that have already done a deal or two in multifamily? What do you think are the adjustments that they should make in today's market?  I have a couple of different ways to look at that question. The first thing is when Jake and I started all I knew was that I'm going to buy a deal on myself.  That's not the only way you need to buy multifamily nowadays. If you have a strong balance sheet and you can be a sponsor on a deal, you can get it into multifamily. If you have sweat equity and you live in a property you live in a market, and you find a deal you can run day to day you can get a deal that way. If you want to find a partner and partner up with somebody you can get a deal that way. If you want a syndicated deal and raise funds for your deal you can get the deal that way. If you want to raise funds for somebody else's deal you can get into a deal that way. There are so many different ways to get into multifamily as I said; it's a business, and everyone that's out there sees these hundred unique properties in two hundred unique properties, and you see all these syndicators out there saying I'm closing two-hundred-fifty units. Yes, they closed, but they had a lot of help from a lot of people raising money. It wasn't just them for the majority of the people. Jake and I raise our funds for our own deal we've had a couple of key people bringing down payments, or we've given them a little part of the general partnership, or for the most part, they are our investors. If we had problems raising the money we would go out and ask you or someone else, hey can you bring money toward deal raise money? You are compensating. That's one way for you to start. I think what people need to do more than anything else is they need to decide that multifamily is for them.  I think once they understand it multiplies for them. And that is the right business model to employ going forward. Because, I guess food water shelter, and those are three basic needs.  You can buy it on the internet yet it's very hard actually to replicate it; there's not enough affordable housing coming online. The demographics going forward whether it's the immigrant population, the millennials or the baby boomers, they're all going to rent more. That's just a fact. Read the book Big shift, a great book about demographics and what's going on if you can understand that you can see what's going on in the rest of the world as far as having negative interest rates as far as people wanting to park their capital in a viable asset. That's why multifold is hot right now, and I think going forward in the next five to 10 years you're going to see that trend continue. Now the important thing is I think you need to focus on a market and you should South Florida is very competitive red hot. Why is that? It's because there's a lot of jobs down there. There's job growth down there. People are moving to Florida I think a thousand people a day relocate to Florida all the baby boomers. That's right. It's the baby boomers coming down, and they're actually selling their houses in New York and California, and cashing out and coming down here buying a small condo or renting an apartment right. And jobs are coming down here that's why. So it's the quality of life. It's the actual tax savings. There's no state income tax, and it's just a great place to live. The people here are great. I moved from here two years ago from New York. I love it. I cut my tax property taxes in less than half — no state income tax. I love the weather. People are visiting me now. This is not the Florida that I knew ten years ago. It's not.  It's going to reach a different conclusion completely, and I think the other thing to finish that point, focus on a market.  That's why the Southeast is competitive because that's where people are flowing. Texas is going to continue for the next five to 10 years because they're leaving California they're going to Boise Idaho, they're going to Salt Lake City, they're going to Nevada, they're coming to Texas because of the tax savings and the quality of life. So focus on a market that you like that U.S. population and job growth continuing on and if we do get into recession those people are not going to buy homes they're going to have to rent. So if you can play buying a place that has enough supply and demand there you're going to have better chances of withstanding any recession.  Yes. So assuming there is a recession you think that the eight class properties are the first ones to get the impact by the big class and the secrets are safer? I think so.  it's really weird, my mom used to have a condo in Deerfield about four or five years ago, we're still going down there every year.  I was amazed at Boca on a ten; there all the new builds that were going on there; the old builds were vacant, and they were putting up new stuff like you couldn't believe especially the commercial. My fear is as we get a slowing down a recession will rebuild us continue to do. They continue to build through the slowdown because they have the permits and that's what they do. So any new stuff coming online. Just be careful in your market take a look at concessions as you see a concession is basically, hey let me give you microwave for free let me give you a month's rent for free. As you can see those concessions going up, that's when you're going to see that there can be softening made in the space. Now what might happen in that a space, it may trickle down into space and say,  what I can get an apartment and be a lot cheaper. I can be where we play in the B and C space, they're not going to be as effective as much because those tenants never really buy homes, and they're not really you can't compete with the 1970s and 1980s build with a brand new 2018 build that has a pool, clubhouse, café, and a fitness center. It doesn't they won't compete there's no competition with mine. So the strategy of buying right, if you can buy those assets right and you can weather the recession the downturn. The only thing that I want to that would worry about in a recession is you're hoping that rents don't decrease a lot. I mean you think occupancy is going to stay in the low to mid-90s but if your rents start decreasing and there's a lot of competition a lot of people fleeing that's where you're going to have problems. But I think space is the first one is going to get affected in the recession.  I agree.  I wanted to tell you about the deal that we've done in Hollywood since the area so well. So everybody is saying that it's so difficult to get a good deal in multifamily. So then there is another very efficient strategy, and we've started to implement it which is to buy lots that are zoned for multifamily based on the city that you live in.  Right, they currently have a single-family on them. Now what happens in that scenario is that it's not multifamily like syndication like the classic syndication, but your dancing with the developers. What happens is that a developer would come over and give you a quote to develop the land for you, and the land becomes the equity. So you bring in the equity, so if you could syndicate the money to buy the land. Right. It's sometimes expensive because some multifamily land that you could work with the developer to develop. That's another strategy that we are implementing currently we're going to build. I believe it's twenty-eight units, but some people say 36. We don't know yet, in Hollywood a lot that we bought. So we bought this thought. We bought it for I would say half the price than what it's worth. Even less so 30 cents on the dollar. And then now developers are coming over, and they want to develop it because the multifamily market is hot. So that's another strategy that I know is good for the market that we are at right now. So I know we've already discussed that, but I wanted to mention it since I love that strategy. So why? Because you're going to have a brand new building that has no deferred maintenance that's going to have nice rents and you're basically in it.  I don't want to see it for no money down, but you're basically in it for a little bit of money down, and your equity is that property, so you've created a ton of value. You're not the classic entrepreneur, or that is taking something you repurposed it; you've taken something, and you've made what we classically call a higher and better use. You've done that. You attract a lot of values from that. And it's market, that's worth something maybe ten years ago. It wasn't worth it because the land was a lot cheaper back five, six years ago but now the land is at a premium. These builders are looking for that so that they come in and they need to split some of the profits with you, but they get that land at a decent price per door they're willing to do that. So any author listening listens to that stretch don't do in Hollywood, don't do it in Miami. You can do it anywhere else in the country, but that's an awesome strategy. Great. Great idea.  Love it. So one of the best ways to connect with you in case anybody wants to invest with you or listen to your podcast go onto our website.  Jake and Gino come on there; we have all the podcasts we do for weekly podcasts.  We have the multifamily zone podcast with my wife and me, just talking about working with your spouse growing the family how to teach kids about money and all that. We do a ramp partner syndication podcast, and we do a movers and shakers podcast with our students highlighting students. We closed the deal, and we have our flagship will our profits podcast and just gone. You can do your outcome. Reach out close there, and just ITunes we are on. We have an Instagram page or a Facebook page, and you can reach out to me. Jake & Gino and general if you have any questions I'd love to talk to people.  Wonderful thank you so much for being on the show today. I appreciate it. And it's always nice and a pleasure to talk to you.  The pleasure is all mine. Thanks for having me on. All right.  Thanks for listening to the real estate investing podcast with Don and Eden. Stay tuned for more episodes till next time.

The first horror film of the podcast means Nikki is not involved :( So Jake tackles it alone in IT Chapter Two starring James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, and Bill Hader.

This podcast is sponsored by, SVSLearn, the place where becoming a children’s book illustrator starts! Oh The Places You’ll Go! This is the season of people embarking on the next step of their life journeys, graduating from high school, college, etc. In today’s episode we discuss ways you can move forward in your creative journey. In the last few weeks Jake has been visited by a handful of high school kids and college underclassmen asking for advice on what they should do to prepare to get a job in the art world. In response to that, he asked a bunch of his artist friends at Emerald City Comic Con what was once piece of advice they had for someone graduating high school who wants to be an artist for a living. To watch that video click here Lacking from that video was our advice. He has some things to say to people who have chosen to walk the creative path. If that’s you, then settle in. If it’s not you, please share this with a person you know who’s going to art school, or recently graduated. You can read it too, of course. This advice is universal and it just might help you no matter what stage in life you’re at. To read Jake’s blog post: click here. Or keep reading since this show is a mix of Jake’s thoughts with Will’s and Lee’s, that’s why we call it 3 Point Perspective, of course. A Career In Art Is Possible. By now you’ve probably figured out that it is possible to have a career in art. Some art careers make more money than others. Some are more stable than others. But for anyone who has the skill, the drive to improve, a healthy work ethic, and isn’t afraid of the unknown it’s possible to get to the point where you can support yourself and even a family with a career in art. In school there are grades and personal opinion that plays into things, but in the professional world it seems to sort things out. It puts everyone where they are supposed to be, the good people get work, the average people struggle to get work, and those that aren’t so good don’t get much work. It really rewards talent and drive and is pretty fair, there aren’t too many people who are super talented that aren’t getting work. It also depends on what you classify as success. A lot of people land in art related jobs that weren’t exactly what they were aiming for but for those people they end up loving them. There are some who have book deals and who struggle to make ends meet between book deals, and there are others who struggle to get book deals but are really good at business and are making even more than those with book deals because they are good at freelance and are business minded. There is a combination of being business minded and finding ways to generate passive income and those who are really good at the craft and struggle with the business side of things. There are two sides to the coin if you want to really be successful as an independent artist. This is mostly for independent artists. There are some people who have day jobs who work at studios. This is good for people who aren’t as business minded, you show up and provide a service to the company and they pay you for that service, and then you go home, and repeat. If someone had sat us down and told us these things as a high school kid it would’ve saved us years of spinning our wheels. 1 - Focus on one path. “Find out who you are and do it on purpose. “ -Dolly Parton You need to be a heat seeking missile focused one thing. A heat seeking missile works by finding a heat target and then ignoring any heat signal that doesn’t come from that target. That’s why heat seeking missiles don’t just fly straight towards the sun when they’re launched. Picking one thing to do does not mean that’s the thing you’re going to do forever. In fact, it’s very rare to be ONE THING you’re whole life. Steven Pressfield tells us of this truth in his book The War of Art: “As artists we serve the Muse, and the Muse may have more than one job for us over our lifetime” That said, you have to start somewhere, knowing how to do something. So pick something and learn what you need to master in order to get a job in that discipline. Learn how other artists got their job. Study the art of people who work where you want to work. That’s the bar that you need to reach. Visit the studios, meet up with the artists, acquaint yourself with recruiters. Do internships. Insert yourself into that ecosystem. Make it so that when you finally apply for that job, it’s a no brainer for whoever is hiring, to hire YOU. As you go throughout your career you’ll probably do a variety of things. You won’t find success until you nail one thing and get good at that one thing and then can branch out from there. We’re not saying, become the master of drawing eyeballs. There was a discussion on the forum about this, whether you should discover your personal voice and then decide which market you want to go for or to pick the market and match your personal voice to the desires of that market. Becoming a jack of all trades comes from going down one path and focusing on one thing and then branching out. Jack of All Trades: they can design, paint, model, animate, storyboard, etc. Pick a style, pick a market, pick an aspect of that market. Jake’s example: he was taking art classes at a community college, and then he got a job opportunity and decided to leave and learned how to animate for 2 years. When you pick one specific path, there are side benefits: he had to learn to draw the figure, understand dimension, shape, form, proportion, and style, because he was focusing on one thing. On the other hand he could have said, “I want to focus on animation, and work on a comic, and do a children’s book, and try to come out with an animated short this year..” That would have lead to a lot of wheel spinning. Rather than going shallow in a bunch of directions, choose one path and really become great at it. The side benefit to doing this is that whether you want to go into animation, illustration, video games, film, comics, or children’s books the skills you learn to do one of these jobs has applications for other jobs. If you get into it and realize it’s not quite for you, transitioning to another job isn’t going to be an impossible feat. Go deep in one direction, then you can be more prepared to transition to another thing later on. You can find work in that one thing and then you are better able to make any necessary transitions. Lee had this experience, he was working on children’s books and then realized that his work could work for art fairs as well, he didn’t set out trying to do children’s books and art fairs. You want to try and overlap your personal interest and what the market wants, this will give you a greater chance of success. You don’t want to be chasing a market you aren’t interested in, or be creating your own personal work in a vacuum oblivious to what the market desires. The more you focus on one thing, the easier you are to hire. As soon as you get a job in art, that leads to so many things, because then you are working with people for 40, 50 hours a week who are just as good as you and better, and then you get to learn from them and with them. The sooner you can start getting work at something, the sooner you can insert yourself into that world. A market is a semi-broad field: i.e. children’s book illustration. 2 - Learn your craft. “We don’t rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training.” -Archilochus It’ll take you about 4 years to learn the fundamentals of art and then a full lifetime to master it. Learn the fundamentals, and most importantly learn how to learn. It’s going to take a lifetime, therefore, it’s so important to learn how to learn, because the most successful artists we know are continually pushing the limits of their abilities. They understand that the levels that can unfold in art are inexhaustible. They aren’t content with the art style they learned in their twenties. Draw things you’re not comfortable drawing. If you’re bad at drawing people, draw people. If you’re bad at drawing environments, draw environments. If you are good at drawing hands but not good at drawing heads, draw heads. Learn everything you need to learn about your one focused path. Read books on the subject. There’s an amazing amount of information stored in these relics. Find a good school that can teach you these fundamentals. You’ll know it’s good if the work coming out of the school is good. If not the school, then find a teacher who knows her stuff. Your focus at school isn’t grades or a degree, it’s skill, portfolio, and friends. Those are the three things that matter and are going to stay with you as you leave the school. Learn from your peers. It’s not who you know, it’s who you help, so look for ways you can help others succeed, and in return you’ll be made better for it as well. Find a mentor. A mentor doesn’t have to be someone older than you, just someone more experienced than you. Again, see how you can help them, become a linchpin in their system, so that they need you as much as you need them. When you get into that training mode, you need to treat it like something that is actually interesting. Some people go through it like it’s eating their vegetables and it seems like they don’t really want to be there. Sometimes they put numbers on it (i.e.draw 100 heads), whereas if you really are interested in something, you’ll naturally want to learn more about it. Train your weakness. But you don’t want to only train your weakness. Be interested in it and find a way to love it, don’t just do it because you are supposed to. It makes a big difference in the result. Someone who is really interested in drawing the head will have much different results than the person who just draws 100 heads to try and check it off. Don’t just draw things to check things off. When you get really interested in things it takes you on great paths. Lee feels really comfortable in value and it’s a strength of his, and he’s experimenting to see if you can create interesting images that when the color is all gone it’s just a grey square meaning, trying to push the boundaries and deliberately not lean on value. Avoid contentment. Of all of the artists that Will knows that gave it a go and then gave up and became a realtor, the main thing in common is that they became content with their craft. Will knows this because he was guilty of that and felt like he had already achieved his style years ago. Art is about taking risks, if you aren’t taking risks and challenging yourself, then you will be stagnant or worse, experience art atrophy. You need to be very forward thinking. Every drawing you do, every project that you finish should be better than the last one. Carve out R&D Time. Jake would try and carve out R&D time each week to draw something new, a new character, vehicle, etc. Recently Jake had been doing a lot of contract work and hadn’t really taken time to push himself creatively and he got out of shape from character design because and he sat down and it took him over twice as long to come up with a character in an interesting pose compared to how long it would normally take him. He had become rusty. No matter what is going on in your day and week, you need to carve out some time each day to keep your skills and your creative muscles sharp. He came up with a character and wanted to put them in a cool pose, it’s not that he couldn’t draw, it was that his instincts were rusty. Even when you’re a pro, you still have to carve time out to train yourself. Sometimes there is a relief that comes when you can sit down and draw because you spend so much time taking care of contracts, emails, and administrative stuff. The Batman Bruce Wayne principle, we went over this last episode, but to review: There’s no Batman without Bruce Wayne. There has to be a head in the real world and someone managing finances to support his night time crime fighting. The same is true here, you need to train and learn so that you can have fun creating. 3 - Get a life. “It’s more important that you go off and learn what to make movies about, than how to make movies.” - Advice given to JJ Abrams from his father You’re going to be learning your craft, and you will never “arrive”, maybe something that’s even more important is what you are going to use your craft to do. Sometimes as illustrators we become so focused on beautifying things and making things beautiful but can make the story and the content take second priority. Some people fall in love with rendering. We can be in love with the craft and not with telling stories. What to tell stories about? That’s why you need to have a life! You need to have experiences and live life to help inform and fuel your drawings. Don’t be shallow and vapid. You want to have some tooth and some depth to your work, when people leave they are changed and they are engaged by it. Jake just drew his take on Darth Vader. If he just copied exactly how Vader looks in the film, it would be contributing nothing to Vader’s story, people could go online and look up a picture of Vader if they wanted to. Instead, Jake thought, “Who is Darth Vader? He is mostly machine, he is mostly heartless, he is very intimidating and foreboding.” So Jake did a version of Darth Vader and really pushed those qualities and made a more exaggerated more comic book like version of him. If the goal of mastering your craft is to be able to show the world your vision, then the goal of every artist is to have a vision that’s worth showing. In order to do that you need to live life and have experiences worth building off of and sharing. Cut the fat, and live deliberately. Live less online, and more in life. Make friends. Date people. Get married. Go places. Whether it’s exploring the south side of town or the southern hemisphere, there’s something to be gained from every excursion outside of your home. For more on this, be sure to check out our “Work / Life Balance” Episode. The purpose of this is to fill your creative bank account with enough creative capital that you can barely contain it. 4 - Do one personal project a year. “You make your place in the world by making part of it.” - Art & Fear Just by creating something and putting it out into the world, you become a creator who creates. You can’t be the noun without the verb. Every year, try and create a physical something and put it out into the world: i.e. a comic, a book, a new website, a print, etc.) Something tangible or something that someone can experience in the world. The great thing about a personal project is that it encapsulates focusing on one thing, mastering your craft, and sharing from your own life experiences. The way to get work is by creating work, by creating personal projects. We often get asked, “My work is great, why won’t anyone hire me?” (which is also the topic we covered in our very first episode. If you aren’t being hired, you need to start creating that thing that you want to do and fill your portfolio with that type of work or even create a project or product that you can sell of the work you want to do. Job offers from books that you’ve done on your own. Take all your pent up creativity and use it by putting out a finished product at least once a year. Something tangible. Something you can point to and say, look, I made this thing. Pump all your experiences, the craft you’ve attained so far, and your passion into this project. You only become known for your projects you make, not for the craft you’re privately learning. No one will know the experiences your privately having unless you share them through your projects. Oftentimes if you are a professional artist you will have people critiquing your work, asking you to make revisions, and everyone has their 10 cents to add. Personal projects can come to your rescue. Personal projects can help you hold onto your sanity. A group in Singapore saw Will’s personal fanart, then they looked for him online and found his Youtube channel, then looked him up that he is a children’s book illustrator, and they are having a conference for children’s books and they are having master classes and they are having talks about maybe flying him out to Singapore. Your personal project is going to give you a benchmark for yourself. This year I made this, and this is the best thing that I can make. This will give you something to aspire to beat with your next project. This will also be a calling card and something that other people can point to and say “look, this person made THIS.” Some ideas for someone, maybe just out of high school. If you want to do comics or a children’s book, you don’t need to do a full 32 page story. Maybe just do a short story, with just 5 pages that tells a simple story. Back in high school, Jake didn’t have energy and had a 20 page comic and so he just made it into a 5 page comic and at the end it said, “to be continued…” He printed it and gave it to friends. Start out small. 5 - Share your work. “An artists job is not to be perfect, but to be creating.” - Jeff Goins The students we’ve talked to are a little afraid to share their amateur work. If that’s how you feel, quit thinking of social media as an art gallery with wall space reserved for your best work. Instead, think of social media as a peek into your studio. Invite them in, give them a glass of water and a comfy chair, and show them what you’ve been working on. No pressure there. Use twitter, facebook, or instagram as a way to document your progress online. Think of it as a public journal of your development as an artist. Don’t make your social media a monster that you have to feed with only your best most perfect work. Don’t be shy, share your work. Put out work, even if it’s a struggle. Create daily, then use social media to document that. It will help turn some people into fans as they see you work, learn, grow, and struggle. Be honest, tell people who you are and what you’re about. Tell them what you’re going to be someday, and invite them to watch your journey. What will happen is your audience will grow as you grow. They will be your online cheerleaders sharing your work with others, and first in line to buy whatever you make. The [SVSLearn Forums]((http://forum.svslearn.com/) are such a supportive place, and you will find a community that is generous and always trying to help lift and encourage each other. Be sure to check out SVSLearn.com, it’s the place to go if you are interested in learning to illustrate children’s books or to learn art fundamentals. In review: Focus on one path. Improve your craft. Get a life. Do one personal project a year. Share your Work Lastly, I just want to share this quote from Bob Dylan: “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night, and in between does what he wants to do.” Remember, life is too short to be stuck doing something you don’t want to do, and it’s also too short to waste time doing something that isn’t working for you. I hope these five things give you a head start down that path of doing what you want to do in life. As the good doctor once said, “Your mountain is waiting. So...get on your way!” Lee’s favorite quote, from a fortune cookie, “A good beginning is half done.” Spend time being interested in the early part of an image and doing studies and sketches and stuff. Don’t rush to the finish. Start slow, build it up, and the nice finish and the portfolio piece will be a byproduct of that. LINKS Svslearn.com Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44 Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt Lee White: leewhiteillustration.comInstagram: @leewhiteillo Alex Sugg: alexsugg.com Tanner Garlick: tannergarlickart.com. Instagram: @tannergarlick If you like this episode, please share it, subscribe, and we’d love it if you left a review! These podcasts live and die on reviews. If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on.

Season 1- Bonus Episode- I know that our season of Failed Movie Franchises. Before we started recording Jake, Ryan and I talk about life and things that are going on in it. Th3 Sunday before we recorded I asked if they had seen Endgame and Ryan was the only one of us to have seen it opening weekend. So Jake and I watched Endgame before we recorded and I asked if these two would be willing to talk about the movie and they were willing to talk about it. So, we talked abut Endgame and there are massive spoilers in this podcast. So, if you have not seen this movie, see it before you listen, you were warned. Also, there is spoilers in this description so Stop reading if you want nothing spoiled. If you are okay then move forward.  So, Jake, Ryan and I talked about what sins we thought there were. I didn't have any I talked about what I liked about the movie. We talked about the beginning of the movie. Ryan and Jake discussed what they where sins of the movie. Jake and I disagreed with Captain America destroying the timeline. Who do you think is right in this argument. I didn't back down a little at the end but as I edited this podcast I am actually going to stand by my original claim. Come and find out what we think of this movie! Thank you so much for being willing to Subscribe, Rate and leave a comment!! If you like video. We have a Youtube Channel Called Crackers N' Milk! Thank you so much!!  

Jonathan's not here this week. So Jake is joined by Amr from AJ&Smart. Deja vu, anyone? Here’s a peek at the topics discussed in this episode: 01:00—Amr's journey to becoming a designer 19:20—Apple & VR 31:20—Snap's new Snap Kit 45:40—Pinterest's approach to growth 51:50—The moral & ethical implications of design Links: Amr Khalifeh on Instagram Amr Khalifeh on Twitter Amr’s master studies: Usability Engineering, M.Sc. — Hochschule Rhein-Waal Apple has reportedly hired Arthur van Hoff, a founding executive of the Disney-backed VR startup Jaunt, as a senior architect—Variety Segway—Wikipedia Book: Ready Player One—Ernest Cline—Amazon.com Bird Lime Design Sprint—YouTube AirPods Google Glass—Wikipedia M.G. Siegler’s Newsletter Snap Kit To stop copycats, Snapchat shares itself—TechCrunch The anti-Facebook: Inside Pinterest’s slow and quiet rise—CNN Hippocratic Oath—Wikipedia Don’t be evil — Google — Wikipedia Book: Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It—Mike Monteiro—Amazon.com Book: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies—Nick Bostrom—Amazon.com Book: Buy Sprint!

So Jake is pretty hungover in this, "The Super Mario Bros. 2" of podcast episodes, but he powers through with the help of Trav and Red Bull (not a sponsor). Discussion around the games that they are playing like, Apex Legends, Crackdown 3, and RDR2 keep things moving until they get to the mad-lib discussion. 

How to Be The Best Art Student Will got a letter from a listener who shared that her favorite episode was the first episode, “My Art is Great, Why Won’t Anyone Hire Me?” She requested an episode where we focus again on that and expand more on that topic. She also said that “and by the way that is the best episode you guys have ever done thanks to Will Terry.” Will may have embellished the letter some! She continued by saying something along the lines of, "The idea of self audits is great and I am taking to heart the idea of really honing my craft over the next year. I would like to know as an artist taking your classes the best method to take and absorb those classes since I only have a few hours in a day after work to learn and get better." So that’s what we want to talk about today. We will split this episode into 2 parts: Part 1: How to Be the Best Art Student Part 2: How to Get the Most Out of Our Classes at SVSLearn.com and Online Learning We did these things called 3rd Thursday’s and they were Webinars that we did live and then we would put the recording of it on Youtube. We put all of those webinars on SVSLearn.com. So we are taking some content from one of our Third Thursdays from a while back and presenting it in a more creative way. Part 1: How to Be the Best Art Student, 5:35 Addressing Poor Mindsets: “I’m going to art school to get a degree.” First off, in all the years that Jake worked for studios and being apart of the process of looking at portfolios for people that they wanted to hire, never once did they ask if the applicant went to school. The portfolio always was first. They always would look at their portfolio to see if they could do the work and then they would ask what school they went to but wouldn’t check if they graduated or anything. The degree, as far as the real world is concerned in concept art, in children’s books, etc. does not matter, what matters is that you can do the work. It’s a meritocracy. It’s all based on ability. How well can you perform the task? Would you say that people who have gotten far enough in a degree program should quit? If it is your last semester and there isn't a job offer yet, then finish it out. If there is a job opportunity that is available and it is what you are going for, it might not make sense to turn that job offer down just to finish out that last semester, and then if you are ever in a position to you can go back and finish that last semester. But we're pretty sure that once you are working in that field that you are wanting to work in and you are good, and already getting job offers as a student then you will keep progressing and odds are you’ll keep getting better and never look back. Unless you want to teach for a University at some point, if there still are Universities in 10 or 20 years. Some job postings do require a degree. But really it all comes down to if you can do the work. If you have a great portfolio, and show you can do the work and especially if you already have some experience under your belt. There will be some companies that want you to get a degree. It's all about your portfolio and skill set. You could have two people who graduate from school and they both graduate and get a degree, however one of them may have worked 2, even 4, even 10 times harder. That person will be so much more prepared for the job field. If the prize was the degree then they will get killed in the job market. Maybe mom and dad will be happy about the degree, but it’s all about the learning. The mindset you should be trying to develop as a student is don’t have your eye set on the degree. The degree should be the byproduct of you trying to get the experience to get a job. Looking at the college kids that Jake works with as assistants, everything they are doing to get that degree is totally going to help them get a job. But it is not about the degree, it is about the experiences they are getting as they work towards that degree. Your senior project or your final art show, that should be the thing that gets the employer’s eyes on your work and interested in you not the degree. Will would give himself assignments or choose to do different assignments that he felt would get him closer to his goals in terms of portfolio. His classmates would sometimes get freaked out and ask him what he was doing and he would say that he was wanting to do freelance after graduating and that he was focused on preparing his portfolio. There is a middle ground with ignoring what your teachers are asking you to do. Lee would ask for permission to adapt assignments and would shoehorn what the teacher said to what he wanted to do. He would do what worked best for him and his portfolio. Jake had an assignment to draw himself as an animal and instead of doing a portrait, he did a landscape with animals in the background, because he wanted to do a piece that could become a part of his portfolio, and he ended up using the piece in his portfolio to get a concept art job. What Animal? We got into a random side note. What animal would we all be? Jake would be a horse, because that’s what he drew himself as in that animal self portrait assignment, plodding along in the distance. Lee would be a squirrel, like Scrat from Ice Age, he’s just scrappy like that and will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Will would be a walrus, chill with cool facial hair. Bonus, if you want to draw animal versions of us then share it with us, we’d love to see them. “This homework should not take me more than 12 hours based on university guidelines for out of class, in class ratios.” Some students are not willing to go beyond what the thing calls for. Some students are used to immediate rewards. Lee would have students come in saying, “I spent all night working on this!” And it turns out they had spent 3 or 4 hours, which is nothing. Lee’s average amount of time spent on a piece was 12 hours. Sometimes 9, sometimes 10 or 15 but the average was 12 hours from start to finish. How long do you need? The answer is, as long as it takes. Let’s say you spent 9 hours on a dud, and you budgeted 12, you have 3 hours to keep polishing that dud or you can start a new piece and sacrifice something else to have the time to finish it. Another thing to be wary of is the ‘speed class taker’. They are trying to take as many classes as they can to try and graduate a bit earlier. You should take fewer classes and allow yourself time to do the work, be able to mess it up and make mistakes and learn from them and do it again. Jake did this drawing of animals flying and his friend, Scotty Young told him that it was good but nothing special. So Jake redid it and pushed it a lot further. He spent 2 or 3 times as long on the second iteration. Jake’s first graphic novel was about 170 pages long and he timed it out the amount of time spent on each page was around 10-14 hour and that was around a year, while working a full time job. If you really want something you have to learn to get that thing done. Perhaps college is the best place to learn that, where you go from amateur to professional by one by one doing these assignments and after each one evaluate what you did well on it and what you can do better. How could you have spent more time on it, and better yet focused time. Until eventually you don’t even bat an eye if you have to redo something. In a year: what is your percentage of illustrations that you feel are your best work and better than the rest, that you really love a lot more than your other stuff you did. As a pro mostly everything you do should be at least okay, usually pretty acceptable. Then there are those ones that people really respond to and have that special quality to them, for Lee, he is stoked if he can get a couple really awesome pieces in a year. Every year Jake does 1, 2, or 3 pieces where he feels he really leveled up and they act as a benchmark for the following years. Even as professionals, the work created is still professional, but only a few pieces a year are seen as extraordinary compared to previous work. So if you are a student even if you are working very hard, not everything is going to be absolutely amazing. So it becomes a game of numbers, if you want to get a some stellar pieces done you need to do a bunch of pieces and work. Lee would review senior portfolios and he noticed that everything would look nice and cohesive but would usually come across one that was really over rendered. He learned that they came from the students rendering classes and they couldn’t give them up because they had spent so much time on them. “This is how I make my art, it’s unique, the teachers need to help me with my vision.” You can say that after you’ve learned the fundamentals; after you’ve learned composition, light and shadow, some color theory, some anatomy, perspective, proportion, and line quality. Once you have figured those things out, then you have the freedom to say, “Now I want to do my style this way and this is how I draw.” Up until then that’s a crutch and you can use it as something to lean on. Jake likes to compare art to music. You can’t just step up to a piano and pluck the keys with awful timing and make up your own stuff and expect it to be good. You have to master the fundamentals. Once you can play the basics then you can start to mess around more. “Don’t let your style be the byproduct of weakness.” That is an out, it makes you feel good, but really it is a lie. Mary Grandpre, you look at those and they are really well done, but perspective is not really all there. Some objects have dimension and there are objects that are more designy. She can draw that way if she wants to, but could draw them all “more correctly.” She does this deliberately and she can because she has earned it. Student’s want the teacher to support their vision. How many students would enter a college level writing class, and argue that the teacher shouldn’t critique their work but support their vision. The teacher will surely point out bad sentence structure, bad grammar, too many main ideas in a paragraph, etc. All art is the same, they all have a lot of similar principles. You can’t get around it, you never will get mad because you have good draftsmanship and you learned to draw something well. Even Jake is still learning. He has been working on relearning anatomy, he has leveled up a lot just since he started studying it more since a few months ago. He has already seen his drawings level up since he’s been studying this stuff. If you think you’re done learning, you’re not. This is a lifelong pursuit, and you need to be committed to lifelong learning. You need to have an open mind and be open to receiving feedback. Will identified all of these problems that his students had. Every year it’s the same: there are 3 or 5 that really get it and are doing really good, and then on the other hand there are a few who don’t get it at all and are not present, the rest are in between. In 9 years teaching over there, he has only seen like 3 or 4 students who went from the lower or middle section to the high section. He had one student who after school Will was really impressed with how her work had leveled up a lot, he asked her why she had gotten so good and she shared that, she looked around and she realized that her work wasn’t at the level as everyone else’s. So she decided to make a change. Still doesn’t know why she was able to do that, while others really struggle. Lee had a friend in school and they all shared their portfolios with each other that they used to get accepted to their program. His portfolio was not that great and it matched his classwork. He was pretty clumsy and not much of a stand out for those first couple of terms. And then around the 4th term he really started to stand out some more and started to have some pretty good pieces from time to time. By the time that they left he was smoking, he was so good. He really did his very best with everything, every assignment, starting with the basics. And he just did it right, he really transformed as an artist. It was not through talent, but due to sheer hard work and listening to feedback. Will loves to see that transformation. Will went through that transformation himself and now he loves to see that transformation in his own students. The cool thing about teaching is that you can find teachers that really resonate with your learning style. How to Know if You’re Good 5 Common Denominators that show you are getting good enough to start making a living at this: People naturally gather around your work, without you having to point it out. You’ll start to win things: contests, awards, etc. You start getting unsolicited recommendations, “I want to introduce you to, so and so”, “You should consider applying to such and such.” You start getting scholarships. You start getting paid, you have people that start asking you to do things for money. It’s the people who put their head down and just work. They don’t keep their head down and work in a vacuum but they learn from other people too. Do Not’s Will’s list of things you should avoid as a student (and as a professional). Chronically late Chronically unfinished work Always talking and having side conversations during lectures Always giving excuses and shifting the blame Asking the teacher to change the assignment (if this is a norm, rather than an exception) The last person set up to paint Feel guilty because they haven’t made progress since the last time you were given a critique Wearing headphones during class, half of your learning is going to happen from the people sitting around you. If you are not hearing side conversations or building friendships, you are missing out on a lot of learning. Overly critical during critiques, but their work was unfinished or sloppy. Packing up 15 minutes early. Leaving class early. Turning in scribble sketchbooks, if you don’t want to do it, just don’t do it. The art director from Sony was giving a lecture on, “How to Make Me Hire You” and there was a student clickety clacking typing on their keyboard really loud and they weren’t taking notes. Lee was furious and really got after his students after the lecture for being so disrespectful. Pencil Mileage Jake had this student that was just heads and shoulders above the rest of the class. Jake asked her why she was so good, and what her process was. She said that since the 7th grade she filled a sketchbook every month until now she was 22. So a lot of growth comes from pencil mileage. Kim Jung Gi: he is the guy who can draw for hours creating a mural without any reference and draws with straight ink. We were talking about this and why he is so good and we decided that it probably came down to: He just loves drawing, even more than those of us who really love it. He probably draws from morning till night everyday. He loves drawing to the point that his life is maybe not quite balanced. Don’t drop the ball when people are counting on you. People who get hired are people who are fellow working student’s friends and people who did good on group assignments. Don’t be a person who bombs it at a group assignment. Part 2: How to Get the Most Out of Our Classes at SVS Don’t treat it like Netflix and just have it playing in the background, instead watch the videos, do the assignments, get a sketchbook for notes, and take notes. Look at it as your school, and really take it seriously and treat it as your school. Look at your schedule and see what you can do daily and then try and have a day in the week where you can give 3 or 4 hours to apply what you are learning. Really evaluate your goals. What do you really want to get out of it. A lot of people say that they want to work professionally. But do you really want to work professionally full time? Maybe you just want to do some freelance on the side, maybe you are trying to get better to do a personal project, maybe it’s just a hobby. It’s important to take inventory on your goals so you can approach your education more wisely and strategically. Attack classes appropriately. Post and participate on the forum. Give and take. Take the classes that attack those different weaknesses that come up in critiques. It’s not Netflix, there’s this weird phenomenon where when you are watching someone do something it seems so easy that you feel like you could do it too. Lee would watch these tutorials, of Feng Zhu a concept artist on Star Wars, and feel that “Yeah i can do that!” Then when he would try and replicate it he would totally flounder. You need to put the pen to paper and put some marks down to learn, you can’t learn just from watching it. Until your hand has done it, you haven’t learned it. If you only have a couple hours a day, you shouldn’t put the pressure on yourself that someone who is in art school full time (9 hours a day of class). You should take one class at a time and really go through that class thoroughly. Sometimes people run through the classes and it doesn’t really show fully in their work. We have talked about having illustration tests and that hopefully we would have enough staff at that time that we can give you a critique on your illustrations, like we do in our interactive classes. Take it slow, when starting to post on the forum, and make sure you are looking at other people’s work and sharing comments and feedback. The atmosphere on the forum is extremely supportive. It’s a nice community Sometimes it is hard to get an honest critique out of people, they might say, “Well, I’m not an instructor, but this is my opinion…” You don’t have to be an instructor to give valuable critique and feedback, your opinion is valuable. You should go in there and read and engage and then people will be more willing and happy to give you a critique on your work. Be specific about what you are looking for in a critique. There are a lot of things that can be learned from this episode. If you are already a professional, you can look at it as how can I be the best professional that I can be? Best of luck with being the best student and lifelong learner that you can be! We are all learning. LINKS Svslearn.com Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44 Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt Lee White: leewhiteillustration.comInstagram: @leewhiteillo Alex Sugg: alexsugg.com Tanner Garlick: tannergarlickart.com. Instagram: @tannergarlick If you like this episode, please share it, subscribe, and we’d love it if you left a review! These p odcasts live and die on reviews. If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on.

Sometimes problems yield creative solutions. This week Jake and Stephen both tried something different with their podcast recordings. This resulted in both of their video's turning out weird. So Jake came up with this solution. Let us know if you like it! Welcome to Chortle Cast our weekly podcast for the channel. This week the guys discuss Smash DLC Characters leaking, Stranger Things Season 3 and 12 games that may or may not come out in 2019. If you like what you see give this video a like and if you wanna see more click subscribe! We have all kinds of great content 6 days a week. LetsPlays on Mondays and Wednesdays Live Streams on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays Gaming Podcast on Fridays If you wanna be more involved consider joining our Discord and following us on social media. DISCORD: https://discordapp.com/invite/zSwabYdt TWITTER: @ChortleGames FACEBOOK: @ChortleGames If you wanna go the extra mile consider giving us a tip! No pressure though, we do this cause we love it! MERCH: https://teespring.com/stores/chortlegamesstore PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/ChortleGames STEAMLABS: https://streamlabs.com/chortlegames

MY ART IS GREAT, WHY WON’T ANYONE HIRE ME? Will got a really long letter from an artist who felt that they had done everything they were supposed to, they felt that their work was great, and they were frustrated that they still weren’t getting work. Jake and Will looked over this artist’s work and felt that the work was pretty good but not great. It was missing the style that fit the market that the artist wanted to go into. The style didn’t match the genre. You can’t do characters that look like they belong in World of Warcraft for a children's book. Often, it’s not that you can’t draw or paint, but that you are missing the mark on where you need to go. Your style isn’t hitting the mark with what you want to go into. Your style needs to match the intended audience. WORK ON YOUR CRAFT Sometimes we feel that when we can render something nice, we have arrived, and we feel really good about ourselves. While that’s a great start, and an important step, this is really “fool’s gold.” There is a lot more to good illustration than just drawing well, and making things look 3-dimensional. You never “arrive.” There is always an area to further grow or to better master. Never convince yourself that there is nowhere else to grow. There is a difference between drawing well, and creating a very engaging product. The first step in getting professional work is to work on your craft, develop good drawing skills, good perspective, shadows, and light and color. After mastering your craft, the second step is discretion. To not over render things, to not add too many highlights. You need to learn what to leave out. You need to learn what to illustrate and add. The artistry is figuring out what to put down, and what to leave out. CONDUCT A SELF-AUDIT You need a combination of a self audit, and a professional audit. You need to conduct a Self-Audit, as outlined below: You need go through this honestly, it will take some time. Study the published things in the realm that you want to go in, and have the “right heroes” Pick 8 top illustrators, who are getting their work published, by the big publishers, i.e. Harper Collins, Random House, Scholastic, etc. Make a 9 Square grid. Put your best piece in the middle and surround it with a piece from those 8 illustrators that you admire Identify what you like about it. Don’t just say, “I love this!”, you need to verbalize specific things that you love about their work, create a specific list, and write it down. These are the things that you need to work on incorporating into your work. Hang the list by your desk in order to remember these principles and to try to incorporate them. See Bart Forbes. When you have an image that you really like, really analyze it, and dissect it. Don’t just say, “I like this image” and then move on. Really dissect it and look for specific things that are working well for you. Ask yourself, “What am I responding to?” COPY, COPY, COPY Many people have the attitude of: “I don’t want to look at other people’s work because I want to be original, I don’t want to copy.” There is a false idea about originality that says you shouldn’t look at others people’s work, or that you shouldn’t copy or take inspiration from them. Jake still looks at others work for inspiration. All great artists do. You really don’t need to make it as hard as you’re making it! You say it comes from within, but really it comes from without and you process it and make it your own thing. Find the right artists to look at and let them flow through you. There is no way you can perfectly copy all things all the time, at some point you’re gonna mix something with something else, and with a little bit of yourself and a little bit of this other person, and you’re gonna find your own style that fits into this world that you want to get into. When you are at the level that you want to be at, then find the right people for your work. I.e. Landscape painters will find the right gallery, not a children’s book publisher. Do you know anyone who is going through med school? What is their total work hours per week? Basically, if you are in med school and are doing well, you pretty much have zero life, and have tons of focus, attention to detail, etc. And if you do well in school, you pretty much have a good job waiting for you with a good salary. Illustration is every bit as hard, to develop a unique style and a product to beat out other artists for jobs, and there is not a guaranteed job waiting for you. You should be treating it like you’re in med school.   You won’t get paid to learn and do research. You need to find the motivation within. No one will tell you everything you need to do. You need to make a schedule yourself and be self motivated. After you develop the skills it becomes more and more about making an interesting image, something that people grab onto. Extra element of storytelling, interest. The idea behind it. Am I bringing something new to this subject matter, some new idea, some kind of unique viewpoint, or perspective? See Chris Applehans. ADD INTEREST TO YOUR LIFE There is nothing interesting there? It may be because you aren’t an interesting person. But you can become more interesting, you need to have a rich life outside of art. Art is just a way to express the interestingness that’s inherently inside of you. If your work’s not interesting: go out and do something, talk to somebody, travel, go to the other side of town. You need to fill your creative bank account. You have gotta have creative capital. If you’re dry and empty, your just gonna have dry and empty work. The lazy man doesn’t get too far, the perpetually busy man doesn’t get much farther. Some people are just drawing, drawing, drawing, without much thought. Stop, what kind of images am I making? Is there something better or more interesting that I should be creating. Don’t just draw and draw without any direction, you need to be more deliberate. You can’t just exhale, you need to inhale. To summarize: If you're not getting work: Audit yourself, audit your work, evaluate your work based on others. Work on craft, do master studies, copy. Add interest to your life. Find an outside source who can give you some honest critique and create a feedback loop (get feedback, improve it, then get more feedback again.) You have to work towards getting your skin thick enough to beg for a really honest critique. A pat on the back is not a critique. 4 Step Process to Evaluate If You are Really Good People naturally gravitate towards your work. People put up work, people naturally are drawn to it. Online, people naturally gather around it. Mom, or significant other doesn’t count. People start seeing work and recommending you for something or to others. You’re gonna start to win things: contests, scholarships, free classes, etc. People will start paying you. WHY SHOULD I COPY? Top art schools have there students create master copies. It’s a proven exercise. Steps: Create a master copy, the more exact the better. Then do a new original piece as if you were that artist. When you get stuck, look back at their work and try to figure out how they might solve the problem. What would ______ do? Keep a copy sketchbook, this is a sketchbook that you can just throw away when your done. That’s it, don’t need to show it to anyone. The most valuable thing from doing these master copies is what happens in your brain and your muscle memory. The most valuable thing is inside you. When kids start to learn to play piano, the teachers don’t say, “Alright, just make a piece of music, just write whatever you want!” The kids start by playing other peoples music and learning to sight read other people music. The same is with martial arts, and with sports. They teach you moves. They teach you what the greats before did. STORY TIME Jake was working on an illustration of Santa’s sleigh being pulled by a bunch of different animals. He got an honest critique from Skottie Young, and Skottie told him that it looked like the stock image version of what Jake was trying to do. So Jake went to Pinterest and started looking up cartoon animals, made a Pinterest board with cartoon animals and saw, “oh this is how you would do a killer whale… oh this is how you would do a llama… I wouldn’t have thought to do that..” Then took a little bit of this guy, and then took a little bit of what they did in this drawing, etc, and mashed it together and made it his own. But really it was from absorbing from all of those different artists. There are pinnacle and milestone pieces where you have breakthroughs. Eventually you get to where you can focus a lot more on the creative and imaginative side of things because you don’t have to worry so much about how to actually create it. Eventually you’ll get to where you don’t have so much hurt from something not working out. You need to learn to not take it personally, or take an emotional hit; to be able to I don’t mind looking at something and saying, “Ahh, that’s not working out” and then you go back without taking an emotional hit, and say, “you know I can make this better.” Sometimes you will ask, “Why am I not impressed with what I just did? If you yourself aren’t kind of impressed, then no one else will be. You should be stoked, not trying to convince yourself, “uh, it’s good, it’s good..” There are times where Jake has worked on a piece for a few hours and then had to scrap it because it just wasn’t up to par. You need to get to the point where if your dog chewed up your piece, that you don’t mind because you know you can create it again or maybe even do something better. A WORD TO THE PROS If there is a professional illustrator out there, or close to professional who has great work and you are saying, “I’ve done this guys.” Then maybe your problem isn’t your craft, but your network. If you don’t know people in the field you want to go in, then you need to find mentors, get your work out there online, and up your game. Current Projects (What are you working on?): Jake: Skyheart, finishing things up there. Will: Reading Book, about a bunny that out foxes a wolf. About to start the sequel to Bonnepart Falls Apart. Lee: Writing a children’s book about natural disasters, and just came up with a dummy, and is learning a lot. Important Links: svslearn.com Jake Parker, mrjakeparker.com | Instagram: @jakeparker Will Terry, willterry.com | Instagram: @willterryart Lee White, leewhiteillustration.com | Instagram: @leewhiteillo forum.svslearn.com If you like this episode, please share it, subscribe, and we’d love it if you left a review! These podcasts live and die on reviews. If you want to join in on this discussion, log on to forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on. Podcast production and editing by Aaron Dowd. Show notes by Tanner Garlick.