Podcasts about so jeremy

So Jeremy is still off chasing the scum bags so a pivot it is! Lee is the inmate running the Asylum this week so the mind took a strange right turn: Is Limp Bizkit really to blame for what happened at Woodstock 99? Lee breaks down the story shared by Rolling Stone after a documentary aired on HBO about all the damage that happened at Woodstock 99

The PROTECT Study is testing how well an investigational medicine works in children and teens with type 1 diabetes. The hope is that this drug, called teplizumab, would help people continue making more of their own insulin and reduce the need for injections, have better glucose control and/or fewer complications of T1D. To enroll in the study, you need to be within six weeks of diagnosis. That's a tough time to make a big decision like this. We caught up with the Lahners family - 16 year old Alex just marked one year with T1D and he's spent almost that entire year in the PROTECT study. He and his father talk to Stacey about the decision to take part and  what happens during this trial. Alex doesn't know whether he got the drug or a placebo, but he's only using six units of insulin or less a day! Info on the PROTECT study - including how to enroll Previous episode which included information on PROTECT In Tell Me Something Good  - A big achievement for one of the first families Stacey found in the online community. ThisIsCaleb is a high school valedictorian! Learn more about Medicare coverage for Dexcom: www.dexcom.com/G6-Medicare This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Check out Stacey's book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! 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 below:  Stacey Simms  0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dario Health. Manage your blood glucose levels increase your possibilities by Gvoke Hypopen, the first premixed auto injector for very low blood sugar, and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom. This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms. This week, imagine being newly diagnosed and having to decide right away whether to take part in a clinical trial. The protect trial is for kids and teens and needs to start within six weeks of diagnosis. Alex Lahners agreed to do it.   Alex Lahners  0:42 I know that I don't want future people getting diabetes. And I didn't want anyone I knew to get diabetes. So I ultimately was like, I'm not just going to do this for myself. I want to do this for other people who are in the future going to be diagnosed.   Stacey Simms  0:56 Alex is 16 he was diagnosed last year, he and his father talked to me about the decision to take part and what happens during this trial. And tell me something good. A big achievement for a kid I've never met but feel like I've known forever. One of the first families I found in the online community. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Welcome to another week of the show. Always so glad to have you here. We aim to educate and inspire about diabetes with a focus on people who use insulin. My son Benny was diagnosed with type one right before he turned two. That's 14 and a half years ago. Now. My husband lives with type two diabetes. I don't have diabetes, I have a background in broadcasting. And that is how you get the podcast. I told you a couple of weeks ago, I had a meetup It was my first in person parent meetup since COVID. I used to do these things all the time. And I've done them for years, I run a large parenting Group here in the Charlotte, North Carolina area. And it felt so good to see people again and have these meetups. But what was amazing, and this is what I told you about is that two of the families, newer diagnosed already have their kids in clinical trials. And we live in Charlotte, which is not where a lot of these take place. So I was really impressed. And I think that obviously speaks to the access that we have. We have fabulous endocrinology groups. And we have really great outreach programs from JDRF here in our area. But I think it also speaks to the availability of these trials. These were not happening back when my son was diagnosed back in 2006. And I covered one of these trials though, and we're going to talk about today. I talked about this briefly in an episode a few weeks back with Dr. Henry Anholt from prevention, the group behind the protect study. And here's what he told us at the time. If you missed that episode, I will link it up. But in a nutshell, the protect study is involving about 300 children and adolescents. They're in clinics across the US, Canada and Europe, you have to be eight to 17 years old, you have to be diagnosed with Type One Diabetes in the previous six weeks. So as I said in the tea's it's really quick, you got to know you have it and get in here to the study really quickly. You have to be positive for one of five T1D auto antibodies, you have to produce a minimum of your own insulin, they do those two tests as part of the study. And then you need to be otherwise generally Healthy Kids in the study are placed into one of two treatment groups, two thirds of the participants will get the actual medication here and 1/3 will be assigned to the placebo group. It's decided at random and the medication in this is decided at random and it is blinded which means nobody not your child, not you not the doctor will know what group you are in. And the medication is going to sound familiar it is teplizumab This is the medication that we've been talking about for several years. That is in many trials that is in front of the FDA right now, as a prevention for type 1 diabetes. It's been shown to prevent the onset for a couple of years. This is a little different, though, right? This is using teplizumab in kids who are already diagnosed, seeing if they get it right away. What happens. So the Lahners family was kind enough to talk to us about their experience here and I'm going to go ahead and sort of spoil the ending because I was amazed by this. Alex is Benny's age he is 16 He is not a small kid, and he is using about six units of insulin a day, a day a day. If you're at all familiar with teenagers, it just sounds absurd. We would love to say of course just from that that the city is a big success the medication works for Get Out Of course, you know, quick look, they don't even know if he was actually in the the part of the group that got that to close him up. He could have gotten the placebo and I guess be in a very long honeymoon be a really exceptional case. I don't know. We will talk about it in just a moment. But first Diabetes Connections is brought to you By Gvoke Hypopen.  our endo always told us that if you use insulin, you need to have emergency glucagon on hand as well. Low blood sugars are one thing we're usually able to treat those with fast acting glucose tabs or juice. But a very low blood sugar can be very frightening. Which is why I'm so glad there's a different option for emergency glucagon Gvoke Hypopen pen is pre mixed and ready to go with no visible needle, you pull off the red cap and push the yellow end on to bare skin and hold it for five seconds. That's it, find out more go to Diabetes Connections dot com and click on the Gvoke logo. Gvoke shouldn't be used in patients with pheochromocytoma or insulinoma visit Gvoke glucagon dot com slash risk. Alex and Jeremy, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for having us.   I'm really excited to learn more about your story. You know, it's it's interesting at the same age as my son, but very different circumstances before we get to the studies and to play the map and all that stuff. Jeremy, let me start with you. Tell me the diagnosis story. How did you know something was going on?   Jeremy Lahners  6:03 Well, it was a, it was a warm summer night almost almost a year ago. Now, we had noticed over the course of really a couple of weeks that Alex just was not feeling well. And he's always done kind of a good job of hiding some of his symptoms from us a little bit. And he had just not been feeling well. He was drinking a lot of water and was sleeping a lot. Probably the sleeping was the thing that we noticed more than anything. He just wanted to sleep all the time. Now, school had just ended maybe a week or two prior to this. And a lot of what we saw as symptoms we really chalked up to a teenage kid wanting to just be left alone. Now that school was done and wanting to sleep all the time. So we we sort of wrote a lot of stuff off, we did take him in because he had had indicated he had some symptoms kind of leading up to some of all of this. And our doctor at the time, based on the way that we described things really thought that it was allergies. And so we started allergy medicine, then the day before we took him to the hospital, we just noticed that he was really looking thin. And he's a wrestler, he has lost weight over the course of the many years that he's been wrestling and so we know what weight loss looks like for him. But this was very unusual weight loss. And so I actually asked him to weigh in that evening, and he had lost over the course of about a four week period he had lost about 30 pounds. And as 150 pound kid at the time, you know, losing 20% of your body masses is a lot. The next morning, he got up and he just he looked like a ghost you know, fail thin. And   Stacey Simms  7:53 Alex, do you remember how you felt?   Alex Lahners  7:56 I vividly remember all of this. I remember when it first started happening like that said I was drinking a ton of water. And it really just felt like my tongue was constantly sandpaper. And I would pour like, I pour water into my mouth and it would just wouldn't go away. And I was just drinking so much water. I think my water intake like quadrupled, or more. And it was really odd. I've never loved drinking water. But I think that was the first time I was like, Oh my gosh, give me all the water I can have.   Stacey Simms  8:29 What did you think when you got on the scale? I mean, 30 pounds is extreme. I   Alex Lahners  8:34 knew that I was losing weight. I knew that I'd lost weight and you know, every sickness you sometimes you just lose weight. But when I got on the scale, and I think I said I was at 134. And I had previously weighed in like 160 something. Yeah, I was that's not right. I remember weighing myself a second time, just to make sure. And it came up with the same number. And I was like, it's I went downstairs I told my dad I was like it says I'm 134. And we couldn't believe in I remember everyone like my mom, my dad and maybe someone else who was there. We were all just like really shocked at how much weight I had lost.   Jeremy Lahners  9:11 Like I said, the next morning he woke up and just look real thin. And so we took him to the ER, we kind of had decided that was that was the line where it just something was clearly off. We didn't know what it was. They ran all of their tests, and probably within 20 minutes or so they came back and said, we're not sure exactly what's going on. But by the way, your son is a diabetic that could Yeah, I mean it was it was very kind of in passing a little bit. And I remember, you know, this was all during COVID. So only one parent could be with him at the time. So I'm texting my wife, and I'm texting her I said they're saying that Alex has diabetes, and she says there's zero chance of that. Tell them to rerun tests because they have no idea Do what they're talking about. They came back in and said, Yeah, his blood sugar is at 588. And that's tremendously high. He's clearly diabetic, we think you should probably take care of this problem. They put us on an ambulance and drove us down to the pediatric hospital in Charlotte. And we spent three days in the ICU, and they were able to get his blood sugar recovered, of course. And it was just a massive, massive crash course in all things type 1 diabetes. At that point,   Stacey Simms  10:31 I didn't really have the opportunity often Alex to talk to you know, a newer diagnosed teenager who actually wants to talk about this stuff. I have to ask you, how difficult was it? I assume in the hospital, they made you do your own shots? And had you figure everything out? You know, what was that like? So give yourself the first injection.   Alex Lahners  10:48 Honestly, when you first get diagnosed, or at least when I got first diagnosed, I got really lucky because I have some people around me who I had known previously, who were type one diabetic, I got extremely lucky with having resources to reach out to and people to talk to, I have always released previously to diabetes, I had always hated needles, shots, I hated everything. But obviously, getting diagnosed with diabetes, you kind of have to learn to get over it. I just kind of put it in my arm. And I was like, this is going to be a new reality for me, and I just accepted it. And I never I don't think I remember feeling any sort of way with how the injection felt or how it made me feel. I think it was just kind of like a, this is how it's gonna be.   Stacey Simms  11:30 So you leave the hospital, you go back to trying to figure out how to do life now with diabetes. But your experience took a turn in that you pretty quickly got involved in a pretty cool clinical trial. Jeremy, how did you find out about the protect study?   Jeremy Lahners  11:46 Well, we sort of jumped headfirst into things, the nurses at the hospital were outstanding and, and gave us all the wonderful material on on jdrf, I reached out to our local jdrf contact to submit Alex's paperwork and material and whatnot. And, of course, that put us on the mailing list of the various jdrf webinars and things that are going on and we follow it on Facebook, join the Charlotte type 1 diabetes parents group, all those types of things, we sort of dove headfirst into all of those resources. Within maybe a week or so I happened to see a webinar about that was upcoming about this protect study. And we thought, well, we should we should at least listen in we we weren't really convinced that it was a great idea at the time. But we figured we're in this now we need to at least listen to what's happening in the space a little bit and try to participate. You know, it was hard enough, sort of coming to grips with all the things coming at us. But we really did want to try to educate ourselves on on the various medical things that were going on. So that was what led us up to listening to the the details of the protect study.   Stacey Simms  13:04 So what was involved? Tell me, you know, we haven't been involved in a clinical trial, much to my son's regret. He's always pushing me to get him in and we just haven't been successful. After all these years, I keep trying. So can you share with us a little bit of the process? Because it's not a local study?   Right back to Jeremy, but first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dario health. And one of the things that makes diabetes management difficult for us that is very annoying to me and to Benny. It isn't actually the big picture stuff. It's all the little tasks adding up. Are you sick of running at a strips, do you need some direction or encouragement going forward with your diabetes management, with visibility into your trends help you on your wellness journey? The Dario diabetes success plan offers all of that and more. No more waiting in line at the pharmacy. No more searching online for answers. No more wondering about how you're doing with your blood sugar levels, find out more go to my daario.com forward slash diabetes dash connections. Now back to Jeremy as he starts to take us into their study experience. I had asked him about whether there was a local site it wasn't a local study.   Jeremy Lahners  14:20 It's not it is a nationwide study. However, the nearest facilities to us were far from local. I think our nearest facility is technically Atlanta. But we had the opportunity during the the webinar they were interviewing Dr. Haller out of the University of Florida. And he was describing this protect study on to plumas AB and we thought it was a good study for Alex the sort of entry criteria for the study. They were accepting children kids under 17 years if I if I remember correctly, who either Were pre diagnosis or had been diagnosed within the last 45 days. So that immediately qualified us, I reached out during the webinar using chat tools inside the zoom to say, My son was just diagnosed, we'd like to learn more. And Dr. Haller reached out to us via email. The next day, we had a zoom call with just him a day or two later. And he talked to us in a lot more detail about how the study goes and and provided some options for us. So that was all the sort of pre work if you will, from there, we did take a day or two and, and we sat down as a family and talked about whether it, it made sense for Alex to participate. Both my wife and I had participated in some medical research studies. When we were in college, there was a paid program at our college, that you could take participation in some of those programs. So we had a background in it. And I think we were both pretty encouraging of Alex to participate in in the study. But, you know, Alex was 15, at the time, and we felt he was old enough and mature enough that he should really make the decision. And so we didn't leave it up to him, maybe with some heavy encouragement. But nonetheless, it was his call at the end of the day. And we would have supported that   Stacey Simms  16:27 Alex had to make the decision. What were you thinking?   Alex Lahners  16:29 So the decision was really, honestly hard for me at the time, I was still trying to get over like, just recently being diagnosed and trying to get everything under control, just to understand what was happening to my body. Ultimately, it boiled down to not only had mom and dad done, I guess, trial before they've done studies before, but I don't think anyone who has type 1 diabetes would tell you, oh, yeah, you should go out and get type 1 diabetes. It just it sucks. It's, it really is not fun. I thought if I would have had someone else 50 years ago, been able to prevent or tell me that I was going to get diabetes and have a drug to prevent the onset of diabetes, I would have taken it in a heartbeat, I would have done whatever it was. And I know that I don't want future people getting diabetes, and anyone I knew to get diabetes. So I ultimately it was like, I'm not just gonna do this for myself. I want to do this for other people who are future in the future going to be diagnosed or are going to be diagnosed later. I guess.   Stacey Simms  17:36 That's really a wonderful sentiment. I mean, Jeremy, I don't need to tell you this. Alex, you're, you know, you're so well spoken and really mature about all of this. So thank you very much for for sharing that. We can be goofy later, I'm sure. So Jeremy, you fill out the forms or do whatever you need to do what happened in this trial. This is not a survey, this is a go to Florida, go to the hospital, get a treatment, what happens?   Jeremy Lahners  17:59 We went down to Florida a couple days early so that Alex could get a COVID test. I think he was the first person in our family to get one of the touch your brain nose swabs. He really enjoyed that, I'm sure. And then we started the study. The study was sorry, the the first part of the infusion was 12 straight days of infusion. Generally, it was anywhere from three to four hours per day. We typically did that first thing in the morning. And thankfully, number one, Alex was at a school so it didn't interrupt school. Number two, my job is flexible enough that I was able to fulfill my work duties in the afternoons and evenings. So it really all worked out for us very much a perfect storm of good, if you will. But for 12 days straight we did the study, the infusion, and that first 12 days was probably the roughest simply because going in you don't know. It's a blind study. So you don't know if you're getting the drug or not. You could be getting the placebo. So there's a lot of trepidation and a lot of do I really want to go through all of this pain multiple times through if all I'm getting is the placebo? We really had a lot of conversation about, you know, what's this going to look like in six months or a year? That was ultimately the study we did, because of the nature of this drug. It is an immunosuppressive. So we did have to quarantine especially again, given it was the COVID times we really had the quarantine. We spent a lot of time in the hotel room just hanging out and like he does Alex slept a lot. That was the two weeks that we spend down there.   Stacey Simms  19:49 Oh, it's was it painful at all? I mean, is it just a blessing? Just I mean, is it just an IV and the pain is just sometimes when you get an IV put in that hurts, or is there more to it   Alex Lahners  19:59 honestly It's really just the IV, they do a great job of like, counting you down, like, they'll be like, Alright, we're gonna put dive in, you know, take a breath 123, and then they'll put it in, I have never had problems with it hurting too much. I still like clench my fist and my jaw when they put it in, because you know, I don't like needles, but it only lasts for maybe 10 seconds at the most. And it is really fast. And once it's in, everything else is super easy. They tape it to your arm, so it doesn't move, and there's no chance of it being pulled out. And they're just super careful when either the placebo or the supplements AB is injected into you. It just felt like there was cold, I would say water running through my body, and you get this salty taste in your mouth. But besides that, that's all I can notice.   Stacey Simms  20:52 Well, and I know. And Alex, as you mentioned, they they're very careful. They're very good. And Jeremy, when you and I spoke previously, you really said that this was a top notch staff, let me just give you a moment to give them the kudos that you had already mentioned to me off air.   Jeremy Lahners  21:06 Sure. I can't go into the details of how good a crew they really are. As much as I love our primary endocrinologist, she does a wonderful job with us here in Charlotte, having the opportunity to spend 12 straight days with an active scientist of the study of diabetes, good or bad than sort of being locked in a room with us for a period of time while they administered the drug to Alex, it really gave us an opportunity as a newly diagnosed type one family to ask a lot of questions for, like I said, 12 days straight. We had access to Dr. Haller, and the other doctors plus all of their nurses and assistants, some of whom also have type 1 diabetes. And we were just able to ask all of the questions that are just reeling around in our heads. And all of them had been through different experiences, or had treated patients with different experiences. And they were just able to answer so so many questions, so many of the fears that we had as parents and I think fears on Alex's behalf as being a newly diagnosed patient were so easily allayed as a result of just being able to spend so much quality time with such good individuals.   Stacey Simms  22:33 What happened after this, you you came home? I mean, I feel like I know the ending to the story. And you're spoiling a little bit in my introduction in that it doesn't seem like you've got the placebo, it seems like things are working out, let's just say very differently for Alex than for a typical teenager, in the first year of his diabetes. Is that safe to say   Jeremy Lahners  22:53 it is? And admittedly we don't know for sure. One of the disadvantages of participating in the study when we did was there's still that honeymoon period that many kids go through and and so a lot of what we experienced very early on was still questioning, are we just seeing the effects of honeymoon? Or are we seeing the effects of this study drug because his his insulin requirements have been very, very low. That really just continued, we would go back to Florida every four to six weeks, and do blood draws and just a quick one day blood draw to test absorption. So no more drug was ever injected. In fact, his next injection is coming up in about six weeks. But again, he just he seemed to stay in what we thought as new parents to be the the honeymoon period. And even today, nearly a year later, that's still where we're at, we're still kind of in this wonderful period where his insulin requirements are insanely low. From what I've heard from other parents.   Stacey Simms  24:02 Let's talk about that. Give me an example.   Alex Lahners  24:05 I currently have heard from my primary endocrinologist that a kid my size and just my age would probably take around 60 to 80 units a day, somewhere around there. I think I am currently sitting at total daily usage of like 6.4 units a day. So that's, you know, a 10th   Stacey Simms  24:28 I don't want to get too personal. But would you mind giving us approximate weight and height? I mean, you're 16 years?   Alex Lahners  24:35 Absolutely. I'm 16 I'm probably around 178 pounds right now and I'm about 510. So generally speaking, I should be taking substantial more amounts of insulin than I am not tiny, though. He's got a small kid.   Stacey Simms  24:52 I'm not even sure what to ask Jeremy and Alex because you without knowing the typical experience. It's I'm not quite sure we know What to ask you in terms I keep, I put it this way. And I'm stuttering around because I can't ask you what's the difference? Because you? Yeah, you don't know. I mean, my son is 16. He's 215 and almost six feet tall, which is great for wrestlers. We know everything about your bodies. We know how big you are, we know tall you are, when you weigh on a daily basis, but you know, and he probably uses definitely 80 units of insulin a day. I mean, it's, it's just remarkable. So how do you treat it? Do you I know you were an insulin pump? Can you use it? I mean,   Alex Lahners  25:30 oh, I do use my insulin pump. But the good thing about my insulin pump is and especially just the T slim in general, is it's all programmable. And you can set it up by yourself. So I have to set my insulin crazy low. And I have to make these crazy schedules. Because when I first got diagnosed, I think I was on a one to five, ratio of units to carbs. And then I hit my honeymoon phase. And my endo backed it off to one to 15. And I was like, Oh, yeah, this is awesome. And I remember I went out and ate like a fast food burger. And I took like, obviously, like a third of the insulin that I've normally taken, I was like, This is great. And then as time progressed, it just kept needing to be moved back, because I would take too much insulin, and I would get low. And I was constantly fighting lows. And I still have that problem today. So there was a time where I was at a one to 100 carb ratio. And I am currently at a one to add carb ratio. And I have to space out when my pump gives me insulin, because if it gives me insulin, like a correction dose throughout the entire day, the amount of insulin that I need to correct is so low that my pump won't let me put it in. So I have to default to the smallest amount which is like point 100 units of insulin in order to correction me down to where I need to be. That's your that's your basal rate. That's my basal. Yeah, so   Jeremy Lahners  27:00 his basal is point one units. And I think right now you're on every other hour. Yeah, every other hour. So   Stacey Simms  27:07 every other hours zero. So you go like a point one and then a 0.0. Yeah, that's amazing. I don't want to get too far ahead of everything here. And Alex, I hope this continues for you, you know, indefinitely. But Jeremy, what is the goal of this study to see kind of how long they can extend this honeymoon or keep these insulin uses low? Or, you know, what is the hope of they expressed it to you? Or do you kind of just take it, you know, month by month,   Jeremy Lahners  27:34 what they described to us very early on was that some of their participants, were seeing this honeymoon period effectively extend for two to three, sometimes even up to four years. That was really kind of the goal. When we started, as we look at where Alex was in his sort of mature ation process. We sort of thought, you know, if Alex could get through high school, and maybe well into college, still on the honeymoon period, that would be a wonderful experience for him, he'd still have the opportunity to do all of the sort of traditional things that you think of without necessarily significantly having to worry about his diagnosis. That was our mentality going in. I've heard suggestions that possibly there's maybe kind of a continuing dose that you can get over the course of, you know, follow on years. But that wasn't part of the study or anything that we did,   Stacey Simms  28:32 they are still looking for about 40 people for this study. This is for new onset, folks with type one. What would you say if somebody's listening, they found the podcast pretty quickly. And they're debating, is this something that you all would do again, because you said it. I mean, there's like I said, it's not as easy as you stay home and take a pill this may involve travel is definitely involves two weeks time and a lot of pokes.   Jeremy Lahners  28:57 Yeah, I mean, looking back, if given the opportunity, again, I would, we would jump on it in a heartbeat. I would say anybody who has the opportunity, and the ability to take the time to do this study, not just the drug itself, but again, the time with the doctors, the combination of those two things is nearly invaluable. So to me that there's no way that that I would turn down that experience again, even if Alex would have gotten the placebo. I mean, ultimately, even if he would have gotten the placebo, he was still gonna end up in the same condition just sooner. So at the very least the time that we got to spend with the doctors has paid for itself trillions of times over. I guess maybe the other thing that's that's worth noting is these are paid studies. So Alex got a little bit of money to spend on his car and turning 16 he he got a little bit of money to spend towards that mostly on gas. So there is some monetary value to it. As well, that's that's worth mentioning. But that wasn't our purpose by any means. It was really the drug and the opportunity to spend time with the doctors would be my two key selling points.   Stacey Simms  30:12 You don't have to go on the record with this question. But can I ask you how much it paid?   Jeremy Lahners  30:17 It paid? I believe it was right in the neighborhood of $75 per day of visit.   Stacey Simms  30:25 I mean, it wasn't $5,000 No, no, I want to be clear when people are you know, we're thinking about it. I wish Yeah. No doubt. It's a lot of gas.   Jeremy Lahners  30:34 They'll spend it. But But yes, no, it's not quite that much. But, I mean, hey, you know, absolutely, yeah. So we go back the end of July. And that will be our next two week visit. We've had a couple of visits since then, about every six weeks or so. We take a one day trip to Florida, just to do checkups. But otherwise, this will be the next big one. And then I think from there, if I remember correctly, I think our next visit is six months afterwards.   Stacey Simms  31:09 All right, Alex, I have two non study related questions for you. Absolutely. How do you keep your gear on when you wrestled? What do you do with your diabetes   Alex Lahners  31:18 stuff? Obviously, that was a really big thing. When I first got diagnosed and learning that you're going to have all this stuff stuck to the side of you, it was like, people are going to grab that when I wrestle. And especially at a high school level, at a varsity level, there is no holding back. If you have a knee brace or anything, people are just going to attack that. That's what I've learned throughout the 12 or 13 years that I've been wrestling, I just was like really worried at the start. But I learned that if I was able to at least keep it close, and you know, tight enough in and you know, obviously you wrestled well, and got off the mat sooner than you wouldn't have any problems. The way that I wrestle with my stuff is I have my Dexcom that's always on and never take that off for any reason. Never even take the transmitter out unless I'm changing the transmitter or changing my sight. For my T slim though, I just disconnected it and I'd put a stop in, I learned that the adhesive is just as good as the Dexcom adhesive. And if I kept it more on my torso every once in a while I'd put it on my legs. But if I kept it more on my torso, because the singlets are just so tight, it just kind of glues everything to you. And I never really had a problem, I think the biggest part was locations as to where you would want to put your stuff. Obviously, if I put it on like the back of my arm, that's a more high risk area, because that's a very frequent place for people to grab while you're wrestling. So I would put it on the upper part of my thigh, kind of closer to my groin or upper groin, and I would just put it in there. And that's where I would leave it. When I put my singlet on, obviously, I'd pull it up. But a big problem for me was writing like the singlet would write up my leg and I didn't want it to pull off. So sometimes I would just pull my singlet just barely above or right on the infusion site so that I could just keep it there. And if it did pull up, it wouldn't pull my site off.   Stacey Simms  33:20 Do you use anything to wrap it but or anything or everything just kind of sticks, okay, because of your locations. Generally,   Alex Lahners  33:26 I only use like over patches, I use like two Dexcom ones. And I think we had some like aftermarket ones, whenever the Dexcom ones would run out, unless it was like on my arm or something of the sorts, I wouldn't wrap it. But if it was on my arm, or I just didn't have any other choice, and it was in a very vulnerable area where I felt like it was about to come off. I would always wrap it with just some like simple athletic gauze. And then I put some athletic tape around it. And that always seemed to hold it. I also have a little like sleeve that I use for swimming and I guess for sometimes athletics, and I just would slip that on over it. It was like a dry fit sleeve. And that worked perfectly to   Jeremy Lahners  34:08 we did wrap your leg the first couple of times, but really, we found it wasn't necessary. So we sort of stopped doing that by the end of the season.   Stacey Simms  34:17 My second question for you was telling me about the socks.   Alex Lahners  34:21 So with Dr. Haller, I learned that we have a very similar passion for extremely crazy socks, because I wrestle I love wearing weird socks because there's only two things that there's three things that you can really change to differentiate yourself from the rest of everyone. It's your singlet, your shoes and your socks. When you're wrestling on a team or just for your school. There's set singlets so the main biggest thing, you can't get to change, you don't get to change it all right. And for shoes, there are some flashy shoes but really sometimes they get extremely expensive if you're going to customize them there. Similar to basketball shoes, so I decided the cheaper option, and the only one that I really had left was socks. So I started a while ago, just getting tons of weird socks and funny socks. I have, you know, pizza socks. Right now I'm wearing these weird math socks that say five out of four people are bad at math. Stuff of the sorts, I walked into the study for this two week study. And on the first day, I met with Dr. Haller, and he noticed my socks, I don't remember what socks I was wearing. Exactly. But he also showed me that he was wearing some like, funny diabetes socks. And from then on, we've just had this competition to outdo each other, even when he's not in the room physically. Like with me, like if there's a different endocrinologist in that day, he will send them pictures of his socks in order to show me to try and one up me, but I like to think that I'm ahead. And if he's listening, I want him to know I will be winning the SOC battle.   Stacey Simms  36:01 Before he let you go. Jeremy, you have said and I forgot to ask you have said that. While he uses so little insulin you do? I guess. I don't know. I don't know if I'm struggling because I was gonna say this is a downside, I guess it is, you guys have still struggled with low blood sugars Is that something that you are still dealing with?   Jeremy Lahners  36:20 It is the struggle that we run into right now is again, because his settings are so low, right now, it's very easy for him to go low. We don't struggle with highs too much at all. And even when he does go a little bit high, he comes back down very quickly. But seemingly every day, I would say almost every day. He has a slight low episode. And and even overnight, you know, we'll we'll have to wake him up sometimes and say, Hey, buddy, you're, you're low, you know, eat some sugar. And he'll groan at us and tell us that we're wrong. But nonetheless, that is probably the one downside that we have seen. And And listen, we'll take that downside all day long. But that has been probably the one downside that we've struggled with a bit.   Stacey Simms  37:09 Alex and Jeremy, thank you so much for joining me, it's great to talk to you it was really interesting was really fun. And, you know, thanks for spending so much time with me and my listeners. Thank you, Stacey, this has been great. And I really should say thank you as well for doing the study. These studies are so important. And Alex, as you said earlier in the interview, people who take the time to do this aren't necessarily helping themselves, but they are helping the people yet to come. So I would be remiss if I wasn't thanking you and thanking your family for taking the time and the effort in going through all of this. So I think I speak for all of my listeners when I say thank you so much for taking part in this study. It's our pleasure.   You're listening to Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms. Much More information at Diabetes connections.com or in the show notes wherever you are listening. And they are still looking for kids for this study. So I will link up more information. If you know someone who has just been diagnosed if somebody is maybe going through trial net or the jdrf testing for you know a sibling or another family member has type one, and they want to find out if they haven't, this is the kind of thing where they have to get in so early, it's really hard to find people. So they are still recruiting. It was amazing to talk to this family and find out what their experience was like because boy, 16 years old, and using that little insulin really just makes you sit up a little bit straighter. I mean, that would make a very big difference. Gosh, all right, much more to come. And again, you can always go to the website or show notes to find the links, find the transcription and share this with a friends because you never know who might know somebody who could be in the trial coming up. We've got Tell me something good. But first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. And I get a lot of questions about Dexcom coverage for people on Medicare. And why not it's not as though you stopped needing a CGM, the minute you turn 65 The good news is that the Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitoring system is covered for Medicare patients who meet the coverage criteria. If you have either type one or type two diabetes and intensively managed insulin, you may be covered. To find out more about what that means that if you qualify check out dexcom.com backslash g six dash Medicare. I will link that up with this episode. You don't have to write it down. You're going to want to talk to your doctor and you may even be able to get your Dexcom supplies at the pharmacy saving time and money learn more again it's dexcom.com backslash g six dash Medicare.   In Tell me something good this week is scrolling through Facebook as one does and a bunch of graduation pictures caught my eye now this time of year of course there's so many beautiful prom and graduation pictures and I'm so happy for all the kids and you know as my kids have And older we've grown up with so many people who are now sharing their beautiful graduations and prom pictures. But I had to stop because Lorraine Sisto posted pictures of Caleb. Now, those of you who had kids diagnosed around the same time as I did or earlier, or kids were diagnosed like 2006 2007. During the heyday of blogging, it really just started. There weren't that many, but it was growing. And man in the next couple of years, there were hundreds of diabetes blogs that so many of us met each other. And now of course, there's 1000s of Instagram accounts and social media stuff, and it's changed and it's still great to connect. But there are some moms and I think you know, who you are, that I connected with in the community and we may have never met I never met Lorraine in person. And as the kids have gotten older, we have kind of communicated to online a lot less. But I have basically watched these kids grow up and Caleb her son was diagnosed just one month after Benny. Benny was diagnosed in December of 2006. Caleb was diagnosed I think he said, He's obviously a year or two older since he just graduated high school, but he was diagnosed in January of 2007. So we have been in this together for a long time. And I have watched her post these pictures of this fantastic kid and sharing so much information. And so I will link up her blog she hasn't written in a while. But if you have a small child, and you want to see a real go getter of a kid who met Nick Jonas, they just did so many wonderful things. And she shared a lot of great information over the years that's still really relevant. But I'm talking too much because the reason I wanted to share all this is because it Caleb's graduation picture, he graduated as the valedictorian of his class, holy cow. He's going to school for engineering, he is strongly considering biomedical to research type one, I mean, just fantastic. So congratulations, Caleb, congratulations, Lorraine and to your whole family. He's got a brother and a sister and she shared about them as well. I think it's really important to include the siblings too, but so many fabulous graduation stories this year. And if you've ever read this is Caleb or you want to look back on what blogging was all about back in the heyday of diabetes blogging, I will link that up as well. If you have a Tell me something good story, feel free to reach out I might stumble upon on on Facebook again. But you can always find me Stacy at Diabetes connections.com or reach out and our Facebook group Diabetes Connections, the group. Before I let you go, a couple of quick notes on the next couple of weeks are gonna be really interesting on the show, late June, early July, I have some late breaking types of interviews. So stay tuned on social, I'm gonna be posting and Diabetes Connections, the group on Facebook, with the behind the scenes stuff, I don't believe there's gonna be any scheduled disruptions. But you never know. So stay tuned on that some of the stuff is embargoed. I can't talk about it. It's technology news, as you can imagine, and I just want to get it to you as quickly as possible. podcasting is tough that way. It's not exactly an immediate medium, you know, like radio, but I do my best. So I'll keep you posted on that. I will be friends for life. That is July 7 through the 10th. And I'm always excited to go and this year more than ever, just because this is the first for me diabetes conference that I'm going to be going to in person since COVID. I cannot wait and I'm doing a new presentation called reframe your diabetes parenting brain. I will be sharing more about that in the weeks to come. But basically, I do this online anyway, do this in my local group too. When somebody posts mom fail and talks about what they did and how they messed up their kids diabetes, I try to reframe it and show them how they really did a good thing. I mean, he wrote a whole book about it, so why not? And then, as I'm taping this episode, we are getting Benny ready for his trip to Israel. I have talked about this on and off for the last year on this show. Many of you know how nervous I am about this. As you listen as this episode goes live, he has gone he is away he has started his trip. And I don't know that I'm going to get too much sleep. Because while he goes away to camp every summer for a month, and while he's with fabulous people that I trust, he's not with us and He is very far away. So I'm probably not going to speak about it or post about it very much because many of you know me, I'm very superstitious, but I cannot wait till after when he is home and after I hug him. I will see if he wants to talk about how it went diabetes wise and hopefully we can report back. Oh my goodness, I'm you guys know, I'm just I'm so nervous. I'm so excited for him. But this is really hard for me. All right. Thank you, as always to my editor, John Bukenas from audio editing solutions. Thank you so much for listening. We've got Diabetes Connections in the news every Wednesday 430 live on Facebook and then here on the podcast on Fridays. So hopefully I'll see you back here for that until then be kind to yourself.   Benny  44:52 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs avenged

In this episode, Optimal Self Coach, Jeremy Herider, talks about how he discovered, and strives toward, the Optimal Self. Today, Jeremy talks about “the Art of Becoming the Best Version of You”, why it's important to you but more important to those who look up to you, and why we should prioritise #GenerationalHabits over #GenerationalWealth. Hear about the moment he started re-evaluating his identity, his three most important values, and his advice to his younger self, all on today's episode of The Healthy, Wealthy & Smart Podcast.   Key Takeaways “If I'm going to have success in any endeavour, it's going to come from what happens when no one's watching.” “Don't get your identity caught up in things that are out of your control.” “Integrity is do what you say you're going to do. Character is ‘be who say you are.'” “You can be what you want to be but, at the same time, not at the expense of someone else.” “If you're lacking motivation today, normally it's not lacking motivation, it's lacking clarity. When you get clear on something, motivation jumps out of you.” “You either give that thing 100% of you, or dont, because 99% wont work.” “You're leaving something behind whether you like it or not.” “Stay the course. It's going to take work. Don't be afraid of the work.”   More about Jeremy Herider Meet Jeremy Herider, life coach, business consultant, professional athlete, podcaster… the list goes on. How can one person even have so many titles? That's just what you get when you're living as your Optimal Self. As a pioneer in two professional sports, Jeremy has spent a lifetime building the elite habits necessary to thrive not only in pro sports, but in every other venture that he's been a part of. Originally from Lancaster, California, Jeremy found his strength as an athlete from an early age. He was a three-sport letterman in high school and an MVP in baseball. He graduated from Gonzaga University where he was an All-Pac10 Infielder. His pro baseball career took off not long after. But his drive didn't stop there and neither did his list of accomplishments. Jeremy was the first contracted player with the Diamondbacks to get a hit in the history of the organization. He was later drafted by the LA Reign, officially making him a two-sport professional athlete. More recently, Jeremy has been named a CrossFit Champion, taking home 1st Place for the Deadlift/Box Jump event. Of course, now Jeremy has shifted his focus once again as a productivity consultant for Fortune 500 companies, private business coach, and motivational speaker. Jeremy's Optimal Self Coaching program and podcast boil down this lifetime of achievement into tangible, attainable habits that anyone can adopt for success. No success story, including Jeremy's, happens by accident. Begin yours with Optimal Self.   Suggested Keywords Motivation, Identity, Improvement, Habits, Wealth, Health, Smart, Success, Achievement, Integrity, Character, Generational Habits, Priorities, Clarity, Empathy, Empowerment, Choices,   To learn more, follow Jeremy at: Website:          https://www.optimalself.today Facebook:       @OptimalSelf1 Instagram:       @optimal_self YouTube:        Optimal Self TikTok:            @optimalself Optimal Self:   Optimal Self linktree   Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website:                      https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts:          https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy-smart/id532717264 Spotify:                        https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud:               https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher:                       https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio:               https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927   Read the Full Transcript:  Speaker 1 (00:01): Hey, Jeremy, welcome to the podcast. So happy to have you on today. Well, Speaker 2 (00:05): Thank you. It's so happy to be here. I know Speaker 1 (00:08): A fellow podcast host, we'll get into your podcast later on in the, in the episode, but I always love to have a fellow podcast host on for a number of reasons. Number one, being good sound. Speaker 2 (00:21): That's so important. That's so true. Speaker 1 (00:24): So important. All right. Now, before we get into the meat of the interview, what I'd love for you to share with the listeners is how your background of being a professional athlete baseball, CrossFit I can Zaga, right? Almost they almost did it. Oh my gosh. Are you just dying? Speaker 2 (00:53): Was except for that game, we didn't really almost get it. We really got crushed by Baylor. So hats off to Baylor. They, they, they did not miss a beat and they crushed us about halftime. I was, I was already turning the channel a little Speaker 1 (01:06): Defeated, but close. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So enough NCAA talk. So let's talk about how your life as a professional athlete kind of shaped your views on your life now and kind of what you're doing now. Speaker 2 (01:25): But I love that question cause it can, it's, it's so many different things in, in regards to, you know, you see what most people see is the end result, right? Is, is you running on a field? In my case, it was baseball. They, they see the end result. They see you on a field with the stadiums packed and the lights are on, you know, and, and, and it's, it's incredible, right? Cause we all watch it. If those of you that are out there that are, that are sports fans, you know, it's just, but we get to see the end result. What we don't see is the work and we don't see the behind the scenes. We don't see it. So as far as is shaping me today is it's still the same way. What I mean by that is this, is that what I, what I loved about athletics was truly not the game. Speaker 2 (02:14): Although the game is the icing on the cake. I enjoyed practice. I, I love getting up and going to practice. My mom tells a story, you know, cause you know, with my girls, I have two girls in, you know, mine were like, they didn't want to go to practice. They were like dad, really again. And my mom tells the story that she's like, no, you'd get done with school and you'd walk in the door and already being your uniform ready to go. And you're like, no, I know you got like two hours and I'm like, no, no, no, let's, let's go now just drop me off. She said, you know, she'd be pulling up and I'd be, the door would be open before the car was even stopped and I'm running. So it's, that's kind of the thing that's been ingrained in me since a kid. Speaker 2 (02:57): And, and so I enjoy that work and, and moving into your adult life. And when that, you know, when that side of my life ended moving into other aspects, which now I'm in a real estate and in starting optimal self and doing what we do now, you know, I just love the work it's so it's, it shaped me the same way. Is that what I know to be true? Is that the true success that actually people see? Cause a lot of times, you know, people see that success and I, let me be clear. I didn't, I didn't reach my goal. My goal was to be a 20 year major leaguer and a hall of Famer. And you know what I mean? And, and be, you know, Canton, Ohio and be putting on that hall of fame jacket and giving a speech and B I was nowhere near that. Speaker 2 (03:43): I didn't get close to that. You know? So my w but when most people see the accolades and they go, oh, wow, you've done this. They, they think of success, right? So again, that is kind of the outsider looking in, but what they, what they never see is, is the work that's put in and that's what you have to love. And, and that happens today is whatever people think is fine. They what they see and what we see of others, that little tip of the iceberg, that's, it's poking out, right? You always see these memes and these things on the internet. It's, what's underneath that water. Well, what I learned is if I'm going to be successful or have success in any endeavor in my adult life, it's going to come from what happens when no one's watching it. What happens when they're not looking with those, those sessions in those days, in those moments. And so that's, that's probably what I learned the most. And it's, it's what I've brought into my adult life from, you know, into these other businesses, from being an athlete. Speaker 1 (04:44): Yeah. And that makes perfect sense. And, you know, I liked practicing too. I like the games. I like the practice. I like the teammates, the camaraderie, that feeling of being on a team is always so great. And that teaches you a lot as well. Just being part of a team and being responsible to someone else for someone else and, and being held accountable as well. Yeah, definitely. Speaker 2 (05:07): I, yeah, you're, you're spot on. Which is interesting because going from, you know, being a baseball player again with 25 guys on the team, nine guys on the field at a time, right. Is, is you are, you're, you're a hundred percent responsible for, for everybody around you. And, but here's what I'll say. And it kind of goes into optimal self as well. Cause it's the optimal self is the art of becoming the best version of you is that one of the things that I think I failed at in those days was not is, is focusing on, on wanting to be the best at my position or in that league or whatever. And what I should have been doing, what I've learned over time is just truly be the best version of me. Like that guy is still, could be the best, but, but if I'm just stopping and always, then I lose sight of just truly who I am and what I can do. Speaker 2 (06:03): And so, and what you're saying is, is very true because going from baseball to where I was accountable to all those guys and coaches and, and, and, and the team, and then when I got into CrossFit and you're all by yourself, you're all by your lonesome, in that a lot of lonely nights at the gym, lonely mornings at the gym training, because nobody has that same goal, right. To, to be a champion or to want those things that a lot of guys would come to the gym and train with me, but I would have to literally put a different guy in at each time, like, oh, we're running, I'll get the good guy, the guy that likes to run, oh, we're lifting the B find the guy that likes to lift. Oh, we're, you know, and so you put, you, you put in all the different people. Cause there was nobody that was just going to be like, yeah, Jeremy, I can't wait to get up at 6:00 AM with, you know, Jeremy, I can't wait to be there until nine o'clock at night with you. So again, I, I, I love what you're saying. Cause that's true. And the truth of life is you do have to have some accountability and the team would definitely show that. So yeah. Speaker 1 (07:03): You're spot on. Yeah. And now you mentioned sort of the art of becoming the best version of you. So mentioned it a little bit. Nice segue into why is that important to you? Speaker 2 (07:16): So it goes back to that same timeframe is when, when baseball ended and for most people in, in an athletic endeavor, it doesn't end on your terms. Very often, there are very few people that, that get that right. They get to Speaker 1 (07:32): Be Derek Jeter, Speaker 2 (07:36): Jeter, Tom Brady's like very viewed people are, are those, those people, right? That get to win the world championships, get to be the MVPs and then get to say CNR when they, when they choose. So, you know, most are on, on, on my side where they, they tell you to you're you come to the stadium and the uniform is not in the locker room anymore. We're not renewing your contract. And thanks for your service. It's no. So, but I mean, that app is everybody. It's, it's nothing, but what I learned and I went through a time and I'll be honest. I didn't know it was this right. Is that I was in a form of depression if you will. Is that because I didn't have an identity, my identity was attached to a hundred percent to baseball. Like I was a baseball player and I knew I was in trouble. Speaker 2 (08:28): It wasn't that the game was over. I was okay with that. Honestly, like I knew that there was more things I had, you know, two little, little girls in those days, they were tiny, right? Like dad got to be around and we got to go to the park and I got to, I get to do stuff that I, that I hadn't been able to do really. So that was wonderful. But what I was, what I failed to, to start to understand was how my identity, how I had attached myself to being a baseball player. And I was in the store one day and I ran into a gentleman that, that knew me. And he was like, yeah, Hey Jeremy. And all his Isley comes over and he's like, how are you? And I say, great, man, how are you? One of those guys that you see their face, you know, but you don't remember their name. Speaker 2 (09:09): Right. And he's like, can you stay here for a second? I want my son. So he calls over. Then here comes his little dude rolling up seven or eight years old. And he goes, Hey, you know, Mason, this is Jeremy, this is the baseball player I was telling you about. And I hadn't played baseball in a few years. Like I hadn't got a paycheck or been on a baseball field in a few years. And it crushed me inside. It was that moment that I realized like, oh shoot, something's wrong. And so I talked to him and we talked baseball and you know, gave him some pointers and you know, you can do this kind of thing. Right. I was the little guy and, you know, we, he was like, he's so small. And I was like, you know, so it was, I, I didn't grow till after. Speaker 2 (09:53): Yeah. And we talked a few stories, but when I left there that day, I knew, I was like, okay, I got it. I gotta get this together. Because that, that it shouldn't feel that way. Right. And I knew at that moment that, because he called me a baseball player and I knew I was not a baseball player anymore. Right. Or in the side of being a physical, getting on the field, practicing, playing, getting a paycheck from the Mino, a major league organization. So that's when I knew, I was like, okay, we got it. We got to work on some stuff. We gotta figure some stuff out. Cause th and again, now it becomes getting away from putting my identity to anything more than just being me. And who is that guy? How does he show up in the world? How does, what is the, what are those fulfilling things that happened that I can do on a daily basis that beat me up. Speaker 2 (10:45): They, they get me excited. So that, and again, when somebody says, Hey, you're not a baseball player. Cause I almost stopped them. Like I almost had to say, Hey, no, I'm not what to mean. It was just like, oh my goodness. And here's this little boy, you know, and you know, try to keep it together on the outside because on the inside I was just dying. But I hope people, what I hope people get out of that is understanding that don't get your identity caught up in things that are out of your control. It was out of my control of being a baseball player. Somebody had to give me a chance. Somebody had to say, yeah, this is this guy's good enough. Here's a contract. We'll take a chance on you. Somebody has to say, Hey, here's a scholarship. We'd love for you to come to play at our university. It's it's, it's not totally in your hands. The practice, the work, the time, the energy, the effort, the desire. Yeah. That's stuff that I can control. That's the stuff I got to work on, but not tying my identity to the actual act. Right. It's what I do. It's not who I am. And that was a big turning point for me. Speaker 1 (11:48): And what advice do you have for someone who maybe is at this crossroads of, you know, maybe they lost their job. Maybe they are came out of a relationship, a long-term relationship where that was part of their identity. So what advice do you have for someone or maybe an exercise or something that you did that helped you pivot that at that moment? Love Speaker 2 (12:13): It. That's such a great question. Perfect. So, you know, there's a lot of different ways to look at this and what I, what I go back to is, is the clarity piece in the sense that, who am I? And so then it becomes, start answering that question of what do I stand for? What's important to me. Right? And you know, there's so many different catch words and I'm just going to give you mine for people. So when I sat down and said, okay, what, what matters? Well, what matters the most to me is, is integrity. And so that is a pillar of my life. One is integrity. And what integrity means to me is simple. It's do what you say you're going to do. If you're going to meet me here at five 30 Pacific standard time, then I'm going to be there and I'm going to be ready and I'm going to be prepared. Speaker 2 (13:01): So, so integrity, just, just living that way. And then the second thing is, is character. And a lot of people associate those two things together, but here's the difference, integrity being, do what you say you're going to do. Well, character is be who you say you are. If you're a dad, then be the dad, right? If you're that, that worker. And I think that character shows up in many ways, especially for people. Like what you're saying right now is, you know, if you, if you had that breakup and it's going tough because, oh my gosh, now who am I without that partner? Or a job or whatever is understanding first, we got to dig inside ourselves. And so, okay. Who, who do you want to be? How do you want to show up in the world? Well, for me, character means be who you say, you're going to be, if you say, you're going to be that, then you be that every step of the way, and that type of clarity will, will, will actually help you make all the decisions in your life. Speaker 2 (13:55): And so, and the third one is empathy for me. So I'll just give you my three integrity, character and empathy. And so I've built it around their empathy. Again, to me was I grew up with women. My mom was a single mom, right? Since she only had sisters, right. Nana and Papa pop was there too. But, but my, my grandparents but, but it was a lot of Nana, right? I was, I was, I was the first born. My mom was 16 when I was born. And so that was not something, you know, no, I don't think there's any 16 year olds in the world that are truly ready to be a parent, right. Or a mother at that at that matter. And so would that being said, right? Like I've been around women that I hear, I get these. And I get blessed with two little girls. Speaker 2 (14:36): And my job for them was to empower them, to know that they can be and do anything they want in this world that, that the gender was not. And so I say this in this regard is that empathy means I need to put myself there. I need to listen to them. I don't have to agree. Right. Even if it was, you know, you can go down, whatever. I don't have to agree with you. We don't have to believe the same things, but it means a lot. If I can, if I can listen in and at least try to understand your point or your view on something, it doesn't mean I have to agree, but it does make it a lot easier. And if that, if that's reciprocal, man, how powerful that can be. So I've always wanted those girls to, to understand that. And to know that yes, you can be what you want to be, but at the same time, not at the expense of someone else, you don't have to put somebody else down for you to be for you to be great. Speaker 2 (15:26): You don't, you can just be great. It's okay. You can be unapologetically. Great. And, and the thing is, is, I mean, as we grow, so to go back to kind of summarize. So in what you asked was how could somebody would just start with yourself, start with who you are. What, what are those words that you have? And I mean, there's so many different things out there. I mean, I'd love to, free to use ours. We have, when you could sign in and get in, put your email address, we send it to you for free. It's an identity creator. It has steps in it and all that kind of stuff. But even so again, it's free, but if you don't want ours, you can, I can Google. There's so many great things out there that can help people. You know, I'm not, I'm not the one to say, this is the only way there's not, there's so many different ways, but I know this. Speaker 2 (16:16): If you're lacking motivation today, it's not, normally it's not lacking motivation, lacking clarity, because when you get clear on something, motivation, jumps off out of you, it will jump out of your skin. Right. And most people can identify with that when they go, oh yeah. When I knew right where I wanted to, where I was going, man, did I take them steps to get there? Right. So, so I think taking it back in that sense for me was all right, who am I? You're not a baseball player anymore. Who are you? What do you want to stand for? How do you want to show up in the world? And let's go be that guy. And again, it also allows you to make incredible choices because the moment you have that clarity, it's like, wait, does, is, is this who I am? Nope. Okay. That doesn't go in my mouth. Speaker 2 (17:07): Okay. That's not what I do. Okay. That's not what I, I choose to. You know what I mean? Like you can literally go from every single piece of how you move, what you eat, the people you hang around, you can start to see. And what's really crazy. Karen is this is that you start to implement those things in your life. You start to be it not no other way. Not words on a page, not just talking about it. Yeah. You actually start living it. You start to see the people around, you change all of a sudden other, your, your whole, your identity starts to attract that when you're being that. And it's an amazing with, without even, without even purposely doing it, because what you radiate, what people hear, what people see when, when they say, because again, I'll go back to my life. Like those guys that I was hanging out with, even at the end, right? Speaker 2 (17:58): Like it was nothing to go to Monday night football and have, you know, eight or 10 beers on a Monday night and drink a bunch and eat a bunch of wings. It sounds fun. And it's great. But I can tell you this, the moment that, that I, that switch started to happen for me. And I started to pay attention to it. Those weren't the choices that I made anymore because they weren't serving the life that I wanted to live and where I wanted to go. And, and it, and again, it makes things a lot easier for yourself. Cause it's, I call it a hundred or nothing. You either give that thing 100% of you, or don't because 99% won't work because there's always that 1% time that somebody something's going to crack when you leave a crack open, that crack will get used and it will get destroyed and it will be, and it will get bigger. So the more you can give to exactly what you say you are going to give, when you give that a hundred man hundreds easier than 98 or 99, because 98, 99, you haven't really made a full decision yet. And you know, this decision is the, is the key to all of it. Cause the moment you do make that decision, man, how the, how the universe will conspire with you to make it happen. Speaker 1 (19:08): Yeah, absolutely. So it sounds like I'm just going to recap quickly that when you're at that sort of crossroads of, of your identity, of, of who you are as a person, you really want to try and get clear on your values, write it down, write down the value, why it's important to you and really like dig deep, you know, it's might be uncomfortable. It might Speaker 2 (19:34): Be uncomfortable making that. You're, you're Speaker 1 (19:37): Really asking yourself the tough questions. And if you don't like doing this on your own, like you said, there are tools out there. You have a tool, there are tools out there, ask your friends, ask your family. If you have good relationships with said people if not, you can hire someone and they'll help you. But really getting deep and asking those questions. It's the same thing that you would do if you're an entrepreneur and you're trying to figure out your vision of your business, you know, you just want to figure out that vision of yourself as well, and it'll probably help your business. That's a whole, that's a whole other conversation. We'll be here for hours. Now I love when you were kind of talking about what people can do when they're at that crossroads, and you talked about your mom and your grandparents and your children and, and you know, we're talking about generations of a family, right? And so a question I have for you is why generational habits should be taught versus generational wealth. And if you can even explain what you mean by generational wealth, do you mean wealth of money, knowledge, X, et cetera, et cetera. So I'll hand it over to you. Speaker 2 (20:56): Yeah. So that's, again, what we see in, in, in at least in our country for sure is, you know, we, you know, that there are families that have, you know, through industrial age, in, in, in all the different times that have handed down, then let's talk w in this case, we're talking money, right. Wealth, right? Whether it be real estate, whether it be, you know, the buildings and things like that, whether it be business, the railroads or the steel or, or whatever that is. And what's, what's, what's incredible is that the majority over time gets, it ends up failing by the third, by the second generation or the third generation. And the reason we say that is the person who built it. They might be handing over the wealth side of things, but they haven't handed over the habits that it took for them to get there. Speaker 2 (21:50): And so when you start to get second and third generation away from the actual being that that created it, it starts to dissipate. And so they don't have those same habits, that work habit, that work ethic, that, that mindset that they, that this was built under. So when we talk at optimal self, when we talk about it, we talk about leaving that generation. We start talking about generational habits. And the reason we say that is this is that you're leaving something behind whether you like it or not. You're leaving a legacy, whatever the term is you want to use, you're leaving that now, right now, somewhere, somehow you, because you have interaction with people, whether you have children or not children, you have interaction with people. You're, you're either at a job. Your, you know, if you're in school, right, they're going to know you, somebody, some they're going to be able to describe you and what are they going to describe? Speaker 2 (22:45): What are you leaving behind? So what, what we talk about is, and this goes back to what we started this with, is that the only way I can help and I, and I use my family, I use because that's the direct connect, right? My girls, the only way I can help them is by me being a better me. Because again, how many of you out there right now are telling your kids to go make their bed? And they walk by your room and your bed's not made, what are we really telling them? Right? What are we really teaching them? And so when I talk about generational habits, I'm talking about, listen, be the person, right? You've, you've heard Gandhi. You've heard it for years of, of all kinds of Nelson, Amanda, about we have to be the change. Well, well, truly, all you have to do is you can be the best version of you and you will inspire others to do the same. Speaker 2 (23:35): What are the habits that you want those children or the people around you to have? What do you want them to learn from you? And if you, if we can at least frame it up that way, then the chances of us living to our own standard are much better. Because sometimes that's what it takes. You know? I mean, our world today is built around social media. Let's be clear, right? It is whatever your view is on it. I don't want to go into my own view because it's really doesn't matter. But there is a bit of it that is corrupting all of us in, in ways myself included. And that's what kind of spins us away from it. So let's get back to saying if, if, because you, we do, I like to tell people I don't care what you think, but I do. Of course I do. Speaker 2 (24:20): Like, and I don't mean that I'm going to do something different because of it. If you don't, if I, if I'm living to the best version and you don't like that, then let's have a conversation. Cause, cause I, I, for sure don't want it to hurt somebody, right? That that's, that's not the case, but with generational habits, if we can leave, if we can start to create and be the difference in our own households, that's how we start to create better environments at all times. So we put our kids in better environments. We choose better environments because those environments are, are more conducive to what our habits are. So yeah, we talk about generational wealth as well, because there's nothing greater than that. I mean, if, if my girls can have more than I had, how incredible would that be? That's that's and their kids' kids, right? Speaker 2 (25:09): Like, let's talk, let's, let's make it. But at the same time, what I have to be able to help them and what they need to be able to see from me. Not just words on the page or words out of my mouth, but what they need to be able to see from me is how I live. How do I personally get up every day? What is important? What, you know, my hydration, how we eat, the things that we do, the things that we consume, right? Consumption what, not just what we eat, but what we hear, what we watch, what we say, because those words are very powerful. Every word that we, we say, we say to ourselves, you're your cells are eavesdropping that they're paying attention. That subconscious is paying deep attention to that. So again, generational habits or what are you leaving behind? What habits in art. Speaker 2 (26:01): And again, because you asked that question and you're like, oh man, as I've done it for myself, I'm like, oh my God, I do do not want my kids. When the kids are a little, this is this is some of you out there that our parents can remember the time that you said something, maybe to you, your wife or your husband or whatever, and your kid repeats it. And you're like, oh, you don't even realize it. Right. We're like, oh my goodness. So again, thinking along those lines, just even if you don't have kids, is what are the words that I'm saying, how am I being and can I help? So can I show people better habits that can, that can inspire them to do the same? Speaker 1 (26:43): I love it. That makes so much sense. And, and we'll hopefully be able to instill confidence and allow those next generations to keep building on whatever it is. You're leaving from a wealth, even from a wealth standpoint, from a health standpoint. It's, it's just a great, great way to look at that. Handing down of one generation to the next. I love it. I love it. Okay. So before we start to wrap things up here, where can people find you? How can they get in touch with you? Great. Speaker 2 (27:19): So we are on all the social media platforms, Instagram, Facebook optimal self Facebook is optimal. Self one. Igg is optimal underscore self as well. But our, our webpage is optimal self.today, optimal self.today. And on there our, we do have some courses everything up there that we're even showing, right, right now is, is free. So we can, you can jump in we'll, we'll get you in. We have a private Facebook group that we, we put a ton of stuff in that you can actually, you know, it's getting, it's getting pretty good. There's a lot of really cool people in there doing some really cool things. Because again, it's not about us. It's not about me. It's about building a community of like-minded people that want to pull for each other root for each other. You know what I mean? Like environment matters. And so we're trying to build an environment that, that, that people are, are, are trusting of. But they're also contributing back to, because man, to see some of the things that these people are doing just using some of the principles of optimal self is pretty amazing. So we'd love to have everybody. So if you're interested, please optimal self that today. We'll get you there. Speaker 1 (28:30): Awesome. Thank you so much. And who can want a little more encouragement and support in their life. And now before we end last question that I ask everyone is knowing where you are now in your life and in your career. What advice would you give to your younger self? Speaker 2 (28:48): Man, so much. No, I think that I, I think for myself is the thing that when you, when you ask that the, the, the very first words that came to my head is stay the course and what that means, what I mean by that is a lot of times we, we believe something. We want something we're afraid to talk about it. And I will say this as an athlete. You know, when I was very little, yes, my, the, you asked me what I was doing. And I was like, I'm going to be a baseball player. Like, that's what I was doing, you know? And I wasn't the best. Let's just be very clear. I wasn't your all-star game guy. I wasn't the kid hitting home runs as a kid who was getting tired. I was opposite. I didn't make all star teams. I didn't have all that stuff. Speaker 2 (29:40): And so, you know, it was, it was a turning point. I'll share this really quick because I think it'll help people out. There is I was 13 years old and my best friend's dad was our coach. My best friend was the best player, if not in the league, definitely on our team. And we grew up together. He's still one of my best friends to this day. And he was, it was a bigger kid growing up. You probably, you guys probably remember this. I was not that kid. I was the little munchkin kid, you know, you just hit over at second base or, you know so, and at 13 we won the championship in our league and it was probably the best year I ever had as a, as, as a baseball player at that young age, I thought for sure, man, this is the year I'm going to make the all-star team, right. Speaker 2 (30:23): This is the year and I didn't make it. And our team had won. So we had this, you know, the, the, the, the pizza party after. And, and so I went up to coach who was also, you know, I'd been on vacation with him because I was, you know, got to, you know, he's, his son was my best friend. And I said, you know, he's like, what's the matter? What do you want? And I said how come I didn't make the all-star team? And he looked me dead in the face. Can I can tell you this? I, I can tell you to this day, which is not even know how many 40, 30 years later he, and I said, and he, I could tell you what he was wearing. I could tell you what he smelled. Like, I could tell you everything about it. Speaker 2 (31:02): Every I could tell you what I was wearing. And he said, because you weren't good enough now don't get me wrong. The crushes, any 13 year old boy or girl, probably. But that 13 year old boy in me was crushed. He was, he still is to this day, but I'll tell you this. And I went to the side, you know, and got away from where everybody was. I went up to the lady, the pizza counter, and I asked her if I could use the phone, if she'd call my mom, because her mom wasn't there, she could dial the number for me. I asked her to come get me. She's like, what are you doing? I said, mom, please come get me, please come get me, please, please, please, please swish. She's like, find them on my lap. I didn't even wait. I just went out and sat on the curb, waited for her. Speaker 2 (31:39): She pulled up and she's like, what is going on? And as soon as I got in the car, man, tears just pouring out and she's like, what is going on? I'm like, just go, please. She's like, I'm not leaving, moving this car until you tell me what's going on. So I told her, right. I said, I wasn't good enough. And she was like, ready? Any mom? Right? Like, and here's the thing. She, you know, I said, please, don't go in there. I mean, bears don't please, please, please. Well, what do you want? What do you want Jeremy? And I said, can we go to big five? I don't even know big five as a place anymore, but in California was at sporting goods store. And I said, please take me there. And she said, what do you want? And I walked in, I showed her. Speaker 2 (32:18): I said, can we please buy me a tea? I'll never forget. It was their big yellow sign, $19 and 99 cents. And that tea is still with me today. That was my 13 year old year. And that tea, I went in the backyard and I hit minimum a hundred balls off that tee every single day. No one's watching. I didn't have many balls to start and I'd tear them up. I started using tennis balls or racquetballs and anything I could find to hit off and a hundred swings. I would not. Everyday when I got home, I'd go out and do a hundred swings or now, or I wouldn't let myself do anything else. Right. All the way through, by the time I was 18 years old, I was, I was in all league player. I was the MVP of our team. I got a scholarship and the rest is kind of history. Speaker 2 (33:02): But that, that, that T stays with me as a symbol is because that it wasn't that he was saying, I want people because most people, even when they hear this, they go, what we should have knocked that guy. And what is it? You know, where's he at today? And I'm like, it was the greatest thing that ever happened. And here's why is because he was honest with me. He wasn't saying I wasn't good enough ever. I wasn't good enough in that moment. So again, there was 12, 15 teams in that league. There's, you know, whatever, 15, 16 kids on everything. There's 80 to a hundred kids in that league. It's not like I'm the only kid that didn't make it there. 15 kids and made that all star team. If I was the 16th best kid that year, then I wasn't good enough. Right. But it's not that I'm not good enough forever. Speaker 2 (33:47): It depends on how I, how, how you look at it. But I knew this, no one was ever going to say that to me because I, because of lack of effort, you, weren't going to tell me that because I didn't work hard because I'm not, I'm telling you, I'm still not best of that in my, you know, I wasn't the best player of all time now, but I maximized my ability. I will say that like that, that's something that I want people to understand, but I want what I wanted them to see is there's somebody out there right now that has probably been told they're not good enough. They're not, they're not pretty, they're not smart. You're the dumb sister. You're the dumb brother. You're this, whatever, right. It happens to all of us. There's so many people out there that did that lives with us forever. Speaker 2 (34:26): And I'm here to tell you it lives with me today, but it lives with me in a way that he told me that, because in that moment I wasn't good enough. And I needed to prepare. I needed to get better. That was in my control. That's the thing that was in my control because I didn't make it at 14. I didn't make it a 15. I didn't make it to say let's be clear. Right. And, and I, and you probably heard this, I think it was a bill gates and say, we underestimate, you know, we, we overestimate what we can do in a year. And we underestimate what we can do in five. And again, and when I look back at those years, I think, oh my gosh, because if I would have expected after that, you know, to go out side and hit a hundred balls and then leave and go make the next all-star team. Speaker 2 (35:07): Cause I did it once I would have been, it would be a full, everybody would be like, yeah, you're crazy. Right? It's the same person that goes, oh, I went to the gym once. Like, no, it's not, that's not going to work. Oh, I had us salad. No, that's not going to work. This is about consistency. This is about finding your thing and doing consistency over time will create those results. But, but that story in that, that T is a symbol for me to remember like, Hey, starting a podcast, starting this. You're not good enough. You're not, you have to get better. And that takes the work are you with? And if you're willing to do the work, man, you get to be on cool podcasts like this with Karen. And that's that's, that's what ultimately happens. Right? You get the, you get the plug along and, and cool things happen. So I would just tell myself to understand that, listen, it's going to take work. Don't be afraid of the work. Don't be afraid of putting in the extra hours. Don't be afraid of getting up early. Don't just, just keep going, man, stay the course. Don't be afraid of the work. Cause if you do that, anything's possible. Speaker 1 (36:18): Oh, you went on mute. You're on mute. I was saying excellent advice for anyone and certainly great advice for any youngster out there trying to get better at things I want to get better at. So thank you so much for that advice. Thank you. And thank you so much for coming on today and sharing all this good stuff. We will have all the links to all of your stuff at podcast dot healthy, wealthy, smart.com. One click will take you to social media. We'll take you to the website, everything, to all the free stuff you mentioned. So we will have all of that over at the podcast website. So Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on today and giving us up, giving up some of your time. Speaker 2 (37:07): Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I really, really appreciate it. I really enjoyed it. So looking forward to the next time. Speaker 1 (37:14): Pleasure, pleasure, and everyone. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy and smart.

Jeremy Jones is not your usual publishing magnate. He came to the industry in a very round about way. First he made a stop in the military. Once his service ended, he moved into business coaching. But he learned something from his best-selling author clients. They often signed away the rights to their books, sometimes received no marketing and little royalties.So Jeremy designed a new system, and he knows it works because he's a successful best-selling author! And he can help you too. If you have a book in you, you need Jeremy. Even if you need help writing, Jeremy is the publisher for you.He lays out his successful formula in this episode of 2 Girls Talking.And find out more at his website Jones Media Publishing.  

So Jeremy had another question to ask... // SUBSCRIBE on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC29nXqutcLXNYCSCqFUZVw FOLLOW on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rec.society/ Tristan: Follow on YouTube via https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQC9jevhtUIq9FIS1PQN0PQ Follow on Instagram via https://www.instagram.com/tristanpresents/ Vyky: Follow on Twitter via https://twitter.com/vyky44 Follow on Instagram via https://www.instagram.com/vyky4/ Jeremy: Watch The Turning, available now on VOD

Do you find yourself talking to the same people about bourbon every day and realize you talk to them more than your best friends? In fact, maybe they are your new best friends. We're all in that situation now and that's what today's episode is all about. Bourbon has a magical element that seems to bring people together across every demographic to share a common bond. Perhaps you're getting started and want to figure out, how do you find your bourbon people? We sit down with Jeremy Mandel, he's an admin and founder of a few online communities and one of our Patreon supporters. We go through what it takes to find connections with other like minded individuals that can be done online with people around the world or perhaps in your own backyard with meet-up groups, bourbon societies, and much more. You'll come away at the end of this realizing you probably followed some of these same steps without realizing it. Show Partners: The University of Louisville has an online Distilled Spirits Business Certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry. Learn more at uofl.me/bourbonpursuit. At Barrell Craft Spirits, they spend weeks choosing barrels to create a new batch. Joe and Tripp meticulously sample every barrel to make sure the blend is absolutely perfect. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about money. How did you get into bourbon? What was your introduction to the online bourbon communities? Do you ever have events with your bourbon friends? Do certain groups create more bonds than others? What about your local society? Do you think raffle groups encourage camaraderie? What did you think of the Bob Dylan whiskey? Would you rather go to someone's house to drink bourbon or a bar? Can these bourbon networks get bigger? How can people find a bourbon community? What relationships have gotten you a really good bottle of bourbon?   0:00 Are you interested in pairing your expertise on the distilling process with key business knowledge such as finance, marketing and operations, then you need to check out the distilled spirits business certificate from the University of Louisville. It's an online program that can be completed in as little as six courses. The program is taught by both UVL business faculty and corporate fellows. So you are getting real experience from experts at the most renowned distilleries, companies and startups in the distilling industry. We're talking leaders from Brown Forman beam Suntory, jack daniels and more. get enrolled to this online program at U of l.me. Slash bourbon pursuit. 0:39 My dad's famous line is nothing I said is on Episode One is if you're if you're drinking beer, you're watching the party. If you're drinking bourbon, you are the party 1:01 This is Episode 243 of bourbon pursuit. I'm Kenny, one of your hosts. And how about some pursuit series news. Now, we don't want to use this as a self serving platform. But lots of people want updates on what's happening. So here's the latest. Last week, Ryan and I visit our barrel broker where we get to do what's sort of unusual in the bulk source market, where we get to actually hand select every barrel. Now, we've talked about this before, and you're going to hear about it more, but this time we tasted through 22 barrels and wound up choosing three barrels of 10 year Tennessee bourbon, and then we also selected two barrels of a special ride. We've got a few months until the Ryobi bottled, but this stuff blew our minds at only four years old, because it had such fruity and bubblegum flavors that I think it's gonna take everybody by surprise. We've also purchased four more barrels from Finger Lakes distilling, and we'll be releasing more of those relatively soon. We've got other things in the works as well. And you can get all those updates for upcoming barrels in our Patreon community. 2:00 Lastly, we have finally touched down in Georgia and more specifically in Atlanta, where there are select retailers with limited amounts of Episode 21 and it tastes just like candied pecans. Next week we have two more barrels going up for sale to our Patreon community first before they are released to the general public. And one of these barrels is our first ever 15 year old bourbon release. It might just be one of my favorites because you know, I love that oak. Alright, let's get on with the industry news. Right now Corona virus is on everyone's radar and we all know the travel industry is hurting because events held worldwide are being canceled. But what does that mean for the spirits industry? Chinese consumers are really tailored more to scotch and cognac and buys you where it's going to be hit hardest. biagio has already cut its full year 2020 profit forecast by up to 260 million as bars and restaurants and Greater China remain empty. beams and Tory said that the coronavirus situation is 3:00 Creating challenges in key Asian markets and its 2019 full year results. For no record anticipates the outbreak will have a severe impact on its China and travel retail business and cut its guidance for organic growth in profit from reoccurring operations for fiscal 2022, two to 4% from its previous expectations of five to 7%. In response to the industry demand for greater clarity during global threats, I Ws our drinks market analysis, which is the leading authority on data and intelligence on the global beverage alcohol market has revealed plans to launch the AWS our Corona virus risk assessment model, also known as cram. The tool will quantify and forecast the impact of key global events, giving industry leaders data driven insights and situational forecasts to navigate the situation and manage risks. To commemorate the celebration of its hundred and 50th anniversary pulled forcers opening the first ever whiskey row retreat. It's going to be a huge 4:00 immersive bourbon apartment experience. one lucky winner and a guests will be invited to stay at whiskey row retreat during National bourbon day on June 14, and the entire guest experience at the whiskey row retreat will center around unprecedented access to the production of the bourbon, the brand and the people behind old forester. The contest winner and a guest will be invited to partake in special activities at the old forcer distilling company, including experiencing the process of creating a barrel. Joining Jackie's I can in a single barrel selection and custom cocktail classes, such as learning how to make the brain signature perfect old fashioned to enter the whiskey row retreat contest fans 21 and older can enter by sharing an essay on why they think they should be chosen to win and stay at the whiskey row retreat. And you can do this by visiting old forester.com slash whiskey row retreat. The entry for deadline is April 20 of 2024 roses small batch select is expanding beyond 5:00 2019 initial launch of only being in five states. new markets were small batch select will be available in the coming months include Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin. 5:18 independent state company and the Boswell family who you might remember Brad Boswell the CEO back on episode 185 are giving $1 million to the university Kentucky to further spirits research at the James been Institute for Kentucky spirits. The gift will fund a new maturation facility that will allow the dean Institute to experiment with barrel aging spirits produced in its research distillery, the only one of its kind in the United States. This new warehouse will have a 600 barrel capacity and become an interactive classroom and laboratory where students and scientists can tackle real life industry issues. Do you find yourself talking to the same people every day about bourbon and real life? 6:00 You talked to them more than maybe some of your best friends from school. think we're all in that same situation now. And that's what today's episode is all about. bourbon has a magical element to it that seems to bring people together across every demographic and share a common bond. But perhaps you're getting started and you want to figure out how do you find your bourbon people. We sit down with Jeremy Mendell, he's an admin and founder of a few Facebook communities. And he's also one of our Patreon supporters. We go through what it takes to find connections with other like minded individuals that can be done either online with people around the world, or perhaps it's in your own backyard with meetup groups, urban societies, and much more. You'll come away at the end of this realizing you've probably followed some of these same steps already without even realizing it. And hey, if you want to be a part of another community, join us on Patreon where you're 700 plus members strong and growing every single week. As a final reminder, we are doing our 2020 bourbon pursuit audience survey and we want to know more 7:00 More about you, our listeners. So if you've got 30 seconds to spare and I promise it's only 30 seconds, please visit bourbon pursuit calm slash 2020 survey. Alright, it's time for the show. Here's Joe from barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred minich with above the char. 7:18 It's Joe from barrel bourbon, myself and our master distiller a triple stimpson spend weeks choosing barrels to create a new batch. We meticulously sample every barrel and make sure the blend is absolutely perfect. Next time ask your bartender for barrel bourbon. 7:33 I'm Fred MiniK. And this is above the char money. Oh, we talked about it. It's the root of all evil. And we wish we had more of it and people tell themselves that money can't buy you happiness. Well, you know, money is very, very, very important. And right now you have distillers from Washington to Florida and from Texas to South Dakota. 8:00 All scrambling going to banks, venture capitalists, private investors, Angel share people, friends, family. Hell, you might even just randomly run into someone on the airport, you're hitting them up for money. There are so many people looking for money in this space. And people just don't understand whiskey. I sometimes wonder what the world would look like in the distilling business. If mainstream businesses understood what this world encompassed, that in fact that bourbon is its own audience. bourbon is as big as a sports team or NFL franchise or even a sports league. It's bigger than a lot of TV shows. And if people would actually just kind of wake up and look past the alcohol aspect. We may be hearing about brands that you never even knew about, but because somebody can't get the money 9:00 That they need to start the distillery of their dreams. We're not going to hear about them. 9:06 And there are people like Cedar Ridge and Iowa where the farmer, the winemaker, he leverages his house, everything that he owns his land. I mean, I think he might even leveraged a kid near to just to start the brand Cedar Ridge. He kept believing in it, he kept believing in it, and he kept believing it and then finally he got a big big break. And that is just it. Everybody needs a break in this business. But it all starts with the money. And I'll be damned if there's just not enough of it to go around. 9:43 And that's this week's above the char. Hey, did you know that I have got a new podcast. It's in the music interview section. So help me become the number one music interview podcast on Apple. Go over there and search for my name the Fred MiniK show. 10:00 Then we'll have the number one bourbon podcast and the number one music interview podcast. Go check it out. Until next week, cheers. 10:11 Welcome back to the episode of bourbon pursuit, the official podcast of bourbon. Kinney, Ryan and Fred here talking about a fun cultural topic. You know, this is, this is something that even this podcast wouldn't have started if it wasn't for the type of pot or the topic that we are actually talking about tonight. And it's kind of really, I guess, you could say it's a way that you you branch out a little bit you end up growing, we've all had friends that we get through school and college or work or anything like that, and then you end up finding Oh, I can find brend friends and other things such as hobbies, and, and really, bourbon is one of those things that we talked about all the time. It's what brings people together. And that's kind of what brought this podcast together. I mean, Ryan was 11:00 Really on the idea of Hey, let's start a bourbon podcasts. And I think I know this guy named Kenny. Yeah, we weren't really friends. And so we were we were we were acquaintances at that point Really? Well, we, ironically enough, we both liked etn. Before, before bourbon, so that was the introduction. And then the bourbon kind of brought us together. But yes, bourbon has definitely like, I'm amazed at how many people and how vast my network has become just because of bourbon. And like, it's crazy. Like, it's just nuts. It's it's a cool, very cool thing, and very humbling thing. So yeah, I'm excited to talk about it. Because it's, I've been so blessed to meet so many fortunate people, Fred included. 11:42 Not just doing your yard. We're now friends. 11:46 I feel we were actually friends before that, too. Yep, exactly. So yeah. I feel good because we're rep Fred and I were you know, we're Facebook official friends. So I feel like I made it. Yeah. Good. Good to see everything that's happened in our person. 12:00 So wives and kind of grown since they're now and now we're going to the point where I think is there a day that goes by we all don't text each other. 12:09 I don't think there is actually. Yeah, so it's like it's like texts like part of our dinner as long frightened as text chain started like 6am Kenny challenges in about 10am 12:22 Yeah, you already get started way too early. I don't know how you do it. It's not my choice. Yeah, I got a five year old elbowing me in the back. Daddy Get up, gotta get out. 12:32 So our guests just chimed in there. So let's go ahead and introduce them and kind of really start talking about the meat of this subject. So tonight we're joined by Jeremy Mendell, Jeremy is a member of our Patreon community and came to us with this topic. So Jeremy, welcome to the show. Thank you guys. been listening to you forever. Really happy to be here. Hopefully we're making a dream come true. Tonight. We're on bourbon pursuit. Thanks for putting up with us all these years. For I can't even tell you how long 12:59 Yeah, 13:00 dum dum meet your idols 13:02 Yeah, it's terrible and you were laying 13:05 So Jeremy let's hear your kind of coming to age tale of bourbon. How did how did you really get into it was their first sipar some sort of introduction rolling up 13:17 I had a you know like I would imagine a lot of people do just in high school. I guess I shouldn't say that but I'm pretty sure it's common we've amassed even master distillers say they started yet but we had a little poker room with some friends and there was we would always try and get a bottle of something for our games and 13:38 we found because then it truly was finding we were fine. We found a bottle with a nice little horse on the top and it was around little ball and 13:48 my goodness it was delicious. 13:51 So that was back when you let go into a store and buy some blends. 13:56 But that kind of kicked it off went through college. 14:00 Then, 14:01 probably two, three years after graduating college and went to the University of Arizona 14:08 was talking to a buddy of mine, Tori Levy, who was in my fantasy football league. He beat beat all of us. And when I sent him the money, he sent me a picture of him cracking a Pappy 15 and I had read about that, but I'd never had it or even knew anyone that could get it. So I said, How the heck did you get that thing? 14:33 And then he showed me oh my goodness, there is bourbon on the internet. 14:39 So it was just kind of a spiral from there. 14:43 But you know, from there, you meet a whole bunch of people, which I'm sure we're going to talk about, kind of create a little bourbon community and that's kind of how this whole series of cardboard boxes behind me came to be. Yeah, we're about to say that that kind of justifies your your level of music 15:00 But to this I think I think all of us have a room in the house or a closet of something that just has boxes of herbaceous ages cardboard boxes stacked with inside each other commitment so much as it's a level of cheapness. 15:17 I certainly don't want to pay $4 for a box. So my goodness. Yeah, yeah. Every time I get an Amazon package, I'm like, is this gonna be good for future use to ship something? Well, it gets it gets the point now where you can train your significant other when they understand what the right size boxes and they'll be like, honey, I save this for you. Yeah, my wife said, you know, this is the perfect box to get some of those little stupid bottles that you do with the stupid bottles. The two ounce the two ounce stamp. Gotcha. Yeah, little bit. It's perfect for your little stupid bottles. 15:54 She's supportive of the hobby. That's great. I'm supportive in that this is existing, but she 16:00 Certainly gives me crap all the time. Oh, yeah. Well, is it isn't that her job though? To give you a little shit? I think so. Yeah. Just join the club at that point. So you're fine. 16:11 So I guess let's go ahead and kind of talk about, you know, we can each share some of these stories of how we got introduced to it. And Fred, I don't know if we've ever heard your story, like kind of how were, you know, did did somebody introduce you to bourbon and sort of how did that that process? Yeah, I've man I was drinking bourbon. And 16:36 you know, I didn't actually drink in high school like that. So I was not, you know, the only times that I had drank in high school definitely was wasn't bourbon. He was smoking when I 16:48 was doing hard drugs. He's doing those Double Dragon drinks. 16:52 So when I went to college, I became a big, you know, beam drinker. And you 17:00 My first legal drink was you know, Jim being white and I remember going into the liquor store at that time and there there was like old Fitzgerald and well I mean think I've all I've thought about this a lot I wish I could travel back in time to Stillwater Oklahoma when I was you know just turning 21 which would have been 2000 and and just like clean those shelves out because they were loaded loaded with stuff that now I would you know, have spent four or 500 to 1200 dollars on so it's 17:34 I definitely was not drinking well, but when I when I was drinking 17:38 bourbon it was always Jim Beam white label if I was like, you know, wanting to you know, live high on the hog and getting Maker's Mark, but, but who's who's the person introduced you like you did? Did you actually just go into the store and say like, I think I feel like drinking or you ever been to a fraternity party? I have. Yeah. So who gave me the bottle 18:00 I don't know. 18:02 You know, I will say probably the moment that I fell in love with it, it was it was probably on a fraternity bus on our way to New Orleans from Baton Rouge. We were there for like some kind of convention. Man, it just it just felt it was very tasty. I love the taste of it. And then I found myself like ordering jack or Jim 18:30 instead of beer, or sometimes both. And you know at that at that young age, and then when I was when I was in Iraq, I you know, we couldn't 18:42 you know, was against the our general orders to, to have, 18:47 you know, to have liquor or have anything, so I would have friends, you know, pour out Listerine bottles and fill it with Jim Beam or jack daniels at the time and 19:00 Those are your stupid bottles. Yeah. 19:03 If you were if you were, if you compare like a traditional bottle of Listerine next to like beam or jack, they had the same color. So the MPs couldn't, couldn't crack it open, you know, because they couldn't, you know, they wouldn't necessarily, you know, think to look at that but so that's how I used to do it. And I actually did have there was a unit 19:27 that would go into like northern Iraq in our bill and they would buy cases of liquor and occasionally like the South African contingent that was there, they would break it out. So like bourbon is, in my adult life. bourbon has always played a role in terms of like, where I really fell in love with it. Be honest with you is with my wife, you know, because she's, she's a big bourbon drinker, like you know, and I started, you know, I was just drinking it was I appreciating it prior to her 20:00 Probably not. But I don't think I appreciated many things until my wife. No. I want to make sure she gets that sound bite. What about you, Ryan? We're I think we talked I think this is actually episode one right episode. One of verbiage suit is where we talked about ours, but let's go ahead and rehash yours. Yeah, so thinking back down memory lane. It was in Bardstown As you may or may not know where I'm from, but no. Yeah, definitely for that, man. That's all I know. You get like bourbon. royalty DNA in your blood. Yes, analog connections. Yes. Throughout. But now the first time it was like at a field party and my buddy, his name's Pikey. I know weird name. But uh, he had Evan Williams and coke. 20:50 And I was like, let me try that it was first time I kind of return I was like, all this tastes like sweet nectar. Like this is this is amazing. And then from there, yeah, just 21:00 drank so much Jim Beam white label in college. Oh my god, I can't even drink it now. Like, I can't even look at it, because it brings back so many bad memories, but good memories, but uh, I didn't really like start getting serious till I don't know, after college. I mean, my dad does a lot of work for the bourbon industry. He's a machinist. So he does tool and our pair and I would deliver parts to him or for him to the different distilleries. And I remember you know, just seeing the bottles they would always give them stuff and then I would take it to 21:35 and so I vividly remember taking like some alijah correct 20 ones and Noah Mills 15th and taking them to college parties and like, totally mixing them with coke or ginger ale and like, just had no clue what you know what I had, and so, yeah, just kind of progressed from there and then like, really start appreciating when I went I went to school at Rutgers and New Jersey. Kind of 22:00 Nobody there really knew it. So I kind of preached the gospel of there and kind of started really diving into it. 22:09 And then I met Kenny and then found out there's this whole world of collecting and trading and flipping and collecting, you know, all this stuff and then so you go down that rabbit hole and then I'm like, why don't we? I can't just like have the hobby I gotta start a business about it. You 22:25 can't just leisurely enjoy bourbon with friends. So like, let's start a podcast but yeah, it's, it's and now you know, I I'm no one's a stranger to me. And so like, I've just reached out to anybody that has the same interested in me. I'm not afraid to talk to them and reach out to them. So 22:45 I've met so many people that enjoy bourbon and it's been like, crazy and it's cool because I'm from there. And when I grew up, no one gave a shit about it. And now everybody gives a shit about it. And you know, just seeing the towel. 23:00 flourish and stuff it's pretty cool. Yeah, absolutely we'll touch more on like meeting new people and stuff with instead of bourbon all kind of recap mine I know I've probably said it before. I have the same sort of coming of age tale is Fred over there. So I joined a fraternity and university Kentucky's campus. And I mean, I remember back it was $10 for a 24 pack of Natty light and being an undergrad. Yeah, you always just get you have 10 bucks you give it to one of the juniors or seniors within the fraternity they'd run out you come back and like that's your that's your that's your drinking for the evening. However, I remember hanging out with some of the older upperclassmen in there, they were all sitting around drinking bourbon and coke and back then, our drink of choice was Kentucky tavern. That was that was our go to. And that was kind of like my first introduction that they were actually known as an attorney was actually known as one of the biggest bourbon drinking fraternities on campus. I don't know if that was a good thing or bad thing at the time. 24:00 Time, but because everybody knows what happens if you get a little too bourbon drunk when you're a little young and stupid, but back then it was, it was a it was a way to kind of get an introduction to it. So of course mixing the bourbon and coke. However, at the time, you know, this was also a time when you're drinking, not to sit there and enjoy your drinking to consume and have a good time. And, you know, all that aside, you don't feel as bloated when you have a few bourbon and cokes after you do try to have like eight to 10 eight to 1012 beers so it actually made you feel a little bit better going throughout the night. And now you're interrupting my dad's famous line is and I think I said this on Episode One is if you're if you're drinking beer, you're watching the party. If you're drinking bourbon You are the party. 24:50 So I've always loved that line. But anyways, so let's go on to the next t shirt. Yeah. 24:56 But yeah, I mean that's that's sort of how it started for me And ever since I did that. 25:00 Like I was always one person that was kind of like preaching like always do bourbon and cokes. During college, it just seemed like the easiest way to do it. And not only that is me and my roommate at the time we became social chairs. Social chair is a nice word to say party planner for back in college in the fraternity days. And so our biggest Actually, this is what I truly miss about college is that your biggest worry is where we're going to party on Thursday and Friday night. And that's that's what you had to set up. And so back then UK was a very dry campus and you couldn't have any alcohol with inside the fraternity houses at all. So our goal was to say how do we have house parties and still serve liquor? And so what we did is we get we got those massive Gatorade jugs that you see on the sidelines of football stadiums, and we filled those and it was one handle a Kentucky Tavern two to two liters of diet coke and so 26:00 Everybody drink bourbon and coke at the parties. And that's how we we continued that to flourish for a while, but after after college then is kind of when the appreciation started. I didn't stop drinking bourbon, it was still bourbon and cokes and that's where the progression starts where you start getting rid of the coke, you start getting rid of the ice and you start learning to drink it neat. Old forester became a staple for me. Every once in a while splurging on small batch. You know, Fred, you talked about going back to the store and, and thinking of all those bottles that you could have had my God even I went to the liquor store and when I was there buying for parties, I would buy, probably, gosh 10 cases of six or 1.75 liters of Kentucky Tavern every single week. I don't think I even looked at any other bottles on the shelves. I always looked at figure out where could I get the cheapest premiere like it's overpriced. 26:57 I mean, that was didn't really know any better at the time. 27:00 And be honest even when I even after college, I didn't really know any better either. I was drinking for as a small batch I didn't know limited limited editions even existed until I was working at a company and I there's a guy that worked there and we talked about bourbon all the time. You know, we we'd sit there and talk about bottles we come together and and he's the one introduced me to limited editions. And this was 2012, late, early 2013 timeframe, something like that. And he's like, Hey, I got a few extra things. I'll just sell them to you at cost because I'm just overflowing and and so he sold me a four roses hundred and 25th anniversary, an old rip squat bottle. 27:42 Jefferson's I think it was 21 maybe it was and they were all at retail at the time. I was just like, Oh gosh, like 27:54 80 bucks a bottle like you sure about this. And, and so that's that's kind of what got me on to that. 28:00 Train. And then of course, as as Jeremy said, you find out about online forums and then the whole world of different things start opening up to you if things that you never even knew existed. Yeah, and that's, I think that's really where the rabbit hole starts for most of us. And I think that's kind of where the conversation keeps going for a lot of us here because the online community is really where a lot of the relationships are built. It's also where a lot of relationships go to die and 28:30 let's be honest, there's a lot of butthurt that happens out there. 28:34 So feelings journals for the bourbon world, what are you talking about? Yeah, right. You mentioned one thing and then all of a sudden you get people either hating on your loving Yes. So Jeremy kind of talk about your introduction into like the the bourbon online communities. So my buddy Tory said, hey, yeah, I got this happy 15 years I finally found a good use for Facebook. So I 29:00 got invited to one of those deals. saw that, you know, my first love bourbon was was Blanton's. And I got on there and within five minutes 29:10 I saw somebody was selling a blends. It was dated in like 1988. And I didn't realize that whiskey existed before I drank it. 29:22 So bought that 1988 Blanton's and still have about a quarter of it. 29:28 And really from there, it's sort of just went into a networking you can almost fall into this accidentally and I'm sure that you all his experiences are very similar. 29:38 But you know, you find some people that you've got good relationships with. And now I'm a part of a few groups that I really proud to be a part of, and it's been really cool. And you know, I've got a network, really across the country coast to coast and actually even out of the country, just from those stupid Facebook groups. Can you enlighten me 30:00 Major towns if you needed to sleep on someone's couch, he would do bourbon. I'm going to Florida for business on Friday and I am crashing in the spare bedroom of a bourbon friend that night. No way. It's awesome. We're going to be drinking. Well, have you met him before in person? Yes, a couple times. Actually, he and I have not picked a barrel together. But we got to take part and what to me is my favorite part about a lot of this stuff is the charity component. 30:30 And there was a guy in Florida who 30:34 had a really terrible cancer diagnosis and young guy about 21 years old 22 maybe. And without getting super deep in the details of it. I went down there last year because we raised him about 17 18,000 bucks. And I went down there to 30:54 to go with him to present the money to him and his family. And that was the first time that I cracked 31:00 His little No I didn't crash his place but we met that time. 31:03 Like here's a here's a check by the way Can I stay in your spare bedroom 31:11 This is actually the first time crashing his house but we have met before but that's that's always a lot of fun and of course you know my wife thinks it's ridiculous but you know we're in this city I gotta go see this guy. 31:25 So, but yeah, you get you get this network and I'm sure you guys are all the same in that regard you got kind of people all over the country that you know from random, you know, this guy helped me find this thing I was looking for. And of course, my my wife would say well, why are you looking for that in the first place? You have 200 something 300 31:47 but this sounds all too familiar. 31:50 Never heard that before, right? Yeah, but But yeah, it's you know, you form these communities. We've we've been able to do a lot of good. 31:59 We've been 32:00 able to do a lot of bad too but but it's a lot of fun and it's this whole kind of separate world that you get to be a part of all around this brown water stuff that we all like to bring 32:13 up good. I was gonna ask you know like you talked about like meeting up like with it with individuals but do you ever like, like throw get togethers where your your buddies that you've met online or whatever you guys go to a house or you go to a bar Do you all have like special events or anything like that? So nothing that's terribly scheduled but 32:36 one of the bourbon groups I'm in is called karma. And we did the first one was, it's kind of always centered around barrel pics. So about a summer of 2017 we all got together did a four roses pick and not Creek pick a couple other things that I'm not remembering right now. But you know, there was a good 3035 of us they got together. Remember, we all 33:00 Went to Haymarket one night and that was a blast. And it's all these people who I recognize from one single picture. 33:08 But it was really cool. So we we've done that a couple of buddies. We Ribeiro, the whole bunch of Nashville number one, I think it was from Buffalo Trace and we threw it up in a barrel at a buddy's farm in Tennessee. And we all got together about two months ago, to see if it sucked. 33:31 And fortunately, it didn't suck. 33:35 So we had a weekend at an Airbnb on a on a river or lake or somebody of water. And it's a it's a great time and so and those people end up becoming some of your best friends. It was really, really bizarre but actually ends up happening that way. Every time I go meet my bourbon or internet friends, my wife's like, what are you doing going to meet your internet friends, you're going to be on dateline one of these times. 34:00 The barrel pick that I went to my wife was convinced I was going to be raped and murdered. She was. 34:07 Yeah. 34:09 Oh, gosh, I think we all get that, that every once in a while I think my wife is getting a little bit more tuned to it. Because of course, you know, through our community through Patreon, we get emails all the time, and we try to make it when we can have people saying, you know, we'd love to just come and meet up for a drink and, and sometimes we can make it happen and, and, and she's always kind of like, Alright, well just make sure you text me at the table in case you need. 34:33 Yeah, I remember one time I was going to meet with Kenny and doubled Patreon guys and I got the Uber and to me, it's like, text me as soon as you get there and like make sure as soon as you leave text me and I'm like, Okay, I'm promise I'm gonna make it home. They're not going to kill me. Or a tag team. We can we can take anybody. Yeah. But back to cut it. Go. Go ahead, Jeremy. I'll see you say you guys looked up so you could take them now. Yeah, Kenny's not. 34:59 Well, 35:01 I haven't worked out in a while you gotta he doesn't wire your wire sorry. Yeah, I am. So let's kind of back to the you know the community aspect of this. You know, you had mentioned karma. I mean, are you are you in in with other groups and stuff like that where you kind of find those ends? And I guess are there are there certain types of groups that create more bonds than others? 35:29 What do you get if you mix Seattle craft, Texas heritage and Scottish know how that's to bar spirits to our spirits traces its roots to a ranch in rural Texas run by the founder, Nathan Kaiser his family for six generations. Nathan grew up on the ranch was stories of relatives bootlegging moonshine, and after moving into Seattle, he wanted to keep the family tradition alive and he opened to bar spirits in 2012. They're very traditional distillery making everything from scratch and each day starts by milling 1000 pounds of grain their entire plant 36:00 product lineup consists of only two whiskeys, their moonshine and the only bourbon made in Seattle. Both bottles are being featured in rack house whiskey clubs next box. rack house whiskey club is a whiskey the Month Club, and they're on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories that craft distilleries across the US have to offer rock house ships out to have the feature distilleries finest bottles, along with some cool merchandise in a box delivered to your door every two months. Go to rack house whiskey club.com to check it out and try some to bar for yourself. Use code pursuit for $25 off your first box. 36:37 What's up everyone? i'm john Henderson, your admin over at the bourbon pursuit Discord server. As a coordinator for the Christmas fundraisers held by the bourbon pursuit. I'd like to thank everyone who contributed. I couldn't be more proud of this community. One perk of joining the bourbon pursuit on Patreon is that you get access to real time chat with other members along with Kenny Ryan and Fred through discord from photo sharing and sample swaps to 37:00 events where ultra limited releases like willet bottles are exchange. There's always something going on. Right now over 300 members of the Patreon community have joined and are connecting over our passion for bourbon. If you're not on Patreon, now's a great time to join us and get involved with the community in a whole new way. Come check it out for yourself and be part of the behind the scenes chat photos and video calls. We'd like to have you join us on a live virtual board where we all discuss a pursuit series release just 37:28 are there certain types of groups that create more bonds than others? So community wise, I'm a part of two groups that really are my bourbon community, I would say. One is karma. That was a cost plus shit group which I'm sure we'll talk about what that is. 37:47 But essentially, it's, you know, I because of that I feel comfortable that if there's ever anything I want to try from some what's a good example? I'm up 38:00 Four roses, that four roses my top of the line, particularly the Oh, so recipe, and liquor barn had a Oh yeah, so barrel a month ago or so 38:13 I got two bottles over there. But I'm down in Texas and that's because of the connections I've made my cost call ship group karma. 38:21 That's been a great deal you meet all kinds of great people. 38:27 Then I'm also a part of a barrel picking group called 21 kings. And I've made a bunch of great connections there. I'm going actually I'm going to be up in Kentucky a couple weeks to pick a four roses barrel and willet ride barrel. And that's really it started more as a we want to be able to pick barrels and not share it among 200 people kind of thing. But you know, you make these connections with you. There's, it's really interesting. There's not a lot that I've experienced in the world that Bond's people together like picking a barrel of bourbon. Just 39:00 I don't know what the secret sauce in there I know what the sauces but 39:05 the common denominator. Yeah. 39:09 You pick a barrel of somebody, your pals, 39:14 you know, talk talk the whole thing through it's a painstakingly excellent process if you do it right. And I've been really lucky to get to do it a few times and I'm really excited to get to do it again here in a couple weeks. But it's been a really cool experience, you know, you get to get really, really good bourbon or rye or whatever it is you're picking, and you get to, you know, make connections with people that you wouldn't do, at least for me, certainly I never would have made those connections otherwise. Now I'm totally with you. And I guess that that also kind of thinks about you know, really where does the relationship start and how does it build and it I have the same things with with two other buddies that really 40:00 We we knew each or we didn't really know each other and then we've kind of found each other through bourbon and then their their personal lives. You start knowing about their children you know about their vacations, you know about you know, where they're buying a how their IRAs. Yeah, everything getting 40:19 better. I mean that's that's kind of like how it kind of blips like that where you it's just a really kind of snowballs where you kind of have this common foundation. And then from there, you start talking to them more than you did. The people that you went to school with years ago. And and they become something because it seems like bourbon is like an everyday thing. It's constantly changing and the people that care about it are always in tune with it. Yeah, absolutely. The you know, 40:47 it's really nice. You know, aside from just the personal connections, it's just great to have a network of fellow dorks that we can talk about that stuff with. 40:55 You know, there's I live in San Antonio, which is 41:00 You know, it's got a good bourbon community here, but it's sort of 41:04 from a maturity level. It really only became a big thing down here in the past three to six months. 41:12 So, you know, I always thought the Esquire bar had a really nice bourbon. So I guess choir is fantastic. And you know, they do the San Antonio cocktail conference down here. Yeah, I come every year was in the back of the room last time you did one. You can stay on this couch next time. Yeah, that's right. Do you mind? I mean, St. Anthony's expensive. Yeah, if you don't mind golden retriever sniffing around Yeah, you can always got a couch here. 41:40 But 41:42 there there's a few people here in there but like as compared to say like Houston with Houston's I mean, you guys know you guys had 41:51 the Houston bourbon society on a while back. That's been a big deal for a few years now. 41:57 So like, just as a 42:00 An example and I mean, no disrespect in saying this, but in the San Antonio group, the old Ezra seven year is a big damn deal right now. 42:09 And it's a good, it's an excellent drink. I really like it for what it is. But if you've been into the hobby really deeply for five plus years, then you know, you're you're drinking other stuff too. 42:24 So it's locally it's not as far down the line as say like a Houston or obviously anywhere in Kentucky, 42:33 which made the online community is a really great thing for us. And I guess another question with that is, are you seeing a lot of I mean, so you have your local society, and that's another place where a lot of people can go in and find some of those those bourbon connection those bourbon friends that live they live in your local area. Most of the time, you might find it on, you know, the the local page or the San Antonio page and then you see each other and me 43:00 And then all of a sudden things can happen through there. Yeah, the it's funny I'm hosting. And you know, Ryan, you joked about IRAs but that's 43:10 that's what I do for a living and I can't tell you how many times one of my bourbon friends would send me a text message or an emails like hey, do you mind if I ask you about this thing? So actually do know about a lot about the IRAs of some of my bourbon friends 43:23 have ESP gift but yeah, you end up I just right before we got on here, my buddy Josh Hayes gave me a call I talked to him for about a half hour and bourbon didn't come up. 43:40 So yeah, it's it's really cool to have connections like that. 43:44 You know, another thing that we kind of talked about earlier, too is and we'll kind of keep this train going with the kind of online community theme is we talked about raffles and and how these these kind of groups that are based off raffles, it also kind of creates a little bit of camaraderie. 44:00 Because you've got people that either they all try to play the same number and they fight each other for they get to know each other through there, or there's somebody that consistently win somebody else's raffle all the time. And so you have you have this also built into even though it's an expensive hobby, but it's something Yeah, we like in, in karma, my cost ship group the stupidest thing in the world, but when when mega ball went from 15 numbers to 17 or 19, or whatever the number is not 15 anymore. We were all very upset because that diluted our chances of winning stuff. 44:39 So we had to create our own weekly drawing, which is I got a bingo machine back there some somewhere did our own damn drawing because we didn't want to split a bottle 17 ways I want to split it 15 ways. 44:54 But yeah, you end up particularly in some of those secondary raffle sites you can lose just 45:00 an absurd amount of money if you don't really check yourself. Yeah, hey, Kenny for introducing me to raffles and risky whiskey in particular. Yeah, well, after a while, you figure, you know, that's the reason I'm doing it. I had to delete social media during the week. Thanks a lot. 45:17 But after a while, you end up as we were talking earlier, you kind of put planned but, you know, back to the, the community aspect of this, you know, we look at it as as an opportunity as as well to branch out, you know, my myself gotten to know people through these communities. And, and, you know, Jeremy, as you mentioned, you'll travel you go somewhere, you know, I've got connections now and a lot of states and so you can you can travel somewhere and know that you can confide in somebody and you can hang out and have a good time. You don't have to go and meet up at a bar somewhere to go and, and hang out. And ultimately, I don't know about you all, I'd actually rather go to somebody's house and dig into their collection. 46:00 Try something unique and I would just rather meet up at a bar. Well, it's funny we, my buddy Craig Lyman was here probably six months ago and there's three guys here locally they're a part of the karma group that we're that we're all a part of. And 46:18 we went out to a bar at all meet up and about halfway through my trying that Bob Dylan whiskey. 46:26 We all that stuff. I hate to break off on that, but what did you think of the Bob Dylan whiskey? I wasn't a tremendous fan of Oh, it's gross in it. 46:37 Like it like it all. It was bros about it. So there is a Okay, so it's, it's it's decal, and they got like the bottom of the barrel of the decal barrels. Because it's just it's like metallic. You know, there's like there's like this crazy like weird metallic note in there. Yeah, there was something to it that I had not tasted in bourbon. 47:00 before and I don't mean that in a good way. 47:03 And it inspired us we were 47:07 you Fred, you mentioned the Esquire we were down the road from the Esquire so maybe that was our problem. 47:13 But we all 47:15 that that drink inspired me to tell her because the best bar in San Antonio for whiskey is at each of our individual houses. Can we please just go there? 47:24 So that's what we did a lot better than the Bob Dylan whiskey. Yeah, I'm sorry, I interrupted you, but I had to ask your opinion on it. No, I don't totally remember where I was going with that. But you're absolutely right. That's up stuck by you, Fred. I mean, Fred, if you if you had enough connections now when you go somewhere that you'd rather not go to a bar and you'd rather go to somebody's house and dive into a you know, well, or gold vein or William Lou Weller, some old dusty Kentucky Tavern or Evan Williams or something like that. I've had you know, I've had some weird expense. 48:00 SS 48:03 please do share it out. Yeah, I've had some weird ones. But I'm you know it, I'll say that I still like to see what's going on in the town five years ago, I was like, I don't want to go to a whiskey bar because I have everything and I don't want to spend that kind of money. And I'd rather just kind of go hang out and see something else. 48:26 Now, I'm kind of going back to the, I feel like these, these bars are working hard to, you know, promote my culture, what I love, and you know, I gotta throw them a bone, I gotta, I gotta go in there and pay my respect to what they're doing. So that's kind of how I think of it now is like, I don't think of it as like, you know, look at them and their prices is just what they are if they're price gouging, you know, be very vocal about that, but 49:00 Often to like I end up correcting spelling errors and menus. I mean, for God's sake, why can't people spell will it correctly? It's true. 49:10 But I feel like I have, I have a purpose. And I'm supposed I need to be visiting these great temples that are bastions to whiskey. And you know, if they invite me and I'm going to go on a show, you know, check it out, but indeed do I like going to someone's house and going down in the basement and seeing seeing the collection? I mean, that's like to me that just doesn't get better than that. Now, what's weird is when like, you know, I come in the house. 49:45 And then the guys wife's down there, and I'm like, oh, oh. 49:53 And did you like she's like, who's this guy in the ass guy? 49:57 Oh, man, just ignore 50:00 Weird. So I didn't sleep on their couch. 50:04 Like I'm gonna go till now. 50:07 Yeah, well, I mean, it's, it's, it's fun to look at this and look at the relationships that you do build over time. Because it does seem like a lot of these hopefully will stand the test of time you never really know. Because it I don't know, maybe this is another kind of question is, 50:27 you know, as bourbon becomes more prolific and becomes more scarce and it's even harder to find these things and, and really, I don't know how much bigger these networks that people are creating right now can actually get, 50:42 you know, can they get bigger or you feel like, you know what, I don't have any more room in my life for new friends. We're just going to kind of keep it where it's at. For me and we I don't know if we actually call the episode this but you said the term finding your bourbon people 51:00 For me, selfishly, I found my bourbon people. 51:04 My biggest group of people that I care about is about 150 people and that's about as big as it needs to be and we're all having 51:13 like, 51:15 I don't know when this is going to air but right now there's this whole bsm bourbon secondary market thing going on Facebook, we couldn't care less. And it's been incredibly entertaining for us because I know because I've established my community. There's not really anything that's going to come out that if I really want to try it, I can't try it. from a store pick that comes out to got a buddy with a bottle of Red Hook ride that I'm going to see if I can't finagle announce it Oh yeah, battle. If you can find your your community then these groups of 50 some thousand people really don't matter all that much. So I guess another question is is so you found your people we've already decided three's enough. We're not bringing on a fourth co host 52:00 So we've got our people but how do you what would you say is is a good way for people to start getting introduced and sort of like find their you know, find their because you say they're missing connections they're getting to the gangs of the bourbon community. To me every every good bourbon connection I've come into is because somebody was doing something nice for somebody else. 52:25 You know, whether it's you know, there's last year almost city liquor here had a fantastic Elijah Craig pick, bought a bunch of it and help some friends that otherwise wouldn't have been able to get it. 52:38 Get it and they became good friends and that favor is I've been on the receiving end of that favor, you know, from different places all over the country. 52:50 And great bourbon connections for me rarely come from trying to price gouge somebody on a whatever store pic of 53:00 The month it is. 53:02 But if you, you know, just be cool with people and treat everyone this is you know, I guess cliche but 53:11 treat people the way you'd want to be treated. 53:15 You'll end up knowing some really cool folks and that's what's in that's what's happened to me. And that's the advice that I typically give people on between karma and 21 Kings I really don't need to know anybody else. Be able to know you guys 53:28 can be your friend. 53:31 Give me your card. Jeremy. One of my favorite things is like I get you know, when when I travel I do often like just kind of connect with someone who's a listener or reader just like or, you know, follows me on Instagram. I really do try to make an effort when I'm out to like, go hang out with people. And my favorite thing to do is like learn about their jobs. You know, because I find that we have 54:01 in people's pleat people's beliefs, because what I have found is is that bourbon is not. It doesn't attract as one race or one occupation or one political or religious belief. I mean, it attracts everybody. And to me that is what's so beautiful about this category is that I could be in a room with a staunch democrat and a staunch republican and they absolutely hate each other politically. But they'll just sit there and talk about how beautiful a new riff barrel pick is. And I'll talk about that now. They have three they might get into some, some fighting but once they cross the threshold, but it's kind of like, you know, Henry Clay, you know, the great Kentucky statesman, he said he wants said that bourbon was used to lubricate the wheels of justice. 54:59 It's like this 55:00 Great like, door opener for conversation? Well, I think even if you have the three drinks if you have committed commit each other from a place of respect, I mean, one of my, one of my good friends that I've met Andrew Goodman is a very far left person I am not. 55:17 And he lives in New York City. I was there for a business meeting. We went to one of the bars there. He bought me some vintage 17 rye, or no finish 21 rye. 55:30 And we talked politics for a good hour. And we walked out of there not hating each other and it's magic how that happens nowadays, you practically can't do it. Yeah. What problems you solve? I want to know down can 55:46 we solve the problem of how to get more Oh, yeah, so four roses, but we really solve any, any national issues, although that's become a national issue. 55:56 For sure. But you know, it's it's a conduit for 56:00 A really good conversation to like that, that I never would have had otherwise. And we continue to have it frequently. And then when it gets to be too, 56:08 too much we both saying I, you know, we don't want to fight with each other. Let's agree. 56:13 So I had kind of talked about it earlier, you know, with with my connection, pretty much my my mentor taught me that these are what limited edition releases are and he was able to, like I said, he gave me it at cost. So just to make sure that I'm not dealing with a story like this. I want you all to kind of talk about what are what are those relationships that you formed, that you've gotten, like a really, really good bottle of bourbon out of it just because of fostering relationship like that. I've had a lot. I've had a lot of guests. 56:48 And 56:51 the gentleman, you know, the gentleman passed away unfortunately he was his name is Dale Hamilton. And he 57:00 He was like the last. He was the guy who like got cola approvals for states of Weller. And he was like the last, you know, last guy from United Stiller's, the you know, for, you know, before they close, that's a Weller. And so he has this, you know, he had an incredible collection. And I helped him figure out what some things were, what some bottles meant. And, you know, we just and he came to my legend series at the Kentucky Derby Museum and we just we just became friends. I would visit him at Christmas. You know, he would come and we'd have lunch, he'd play with my kid. And he gave me a 1935 bottle of Weller. 57:46 And that was like a green Green Label blend. And it was fantastic. And the first time I opened it, I cracked it open with Tom Colicchio. From 58:00 Top Chef has just that right after my Top Chef appearance. And I wanted to celebrate with them and so I cracked it open with them. So I had like two, two really cool friends. You know that that that bottle kind of connected me to, you know, coming out of the gate strong here. Yes. Right Ryan, I think you should follow that. Well, I've had some great connections and relationships with people like Bill Thomas was kind enough to invite me to his house and stayed the night crashes. We didn't crash his couch. We had a room but but just his collection like we were at his bar and he's like, Guys, let's just go to my house. It's so much better here. And he had a green, you know, Green Label or not green or green bottle Van Winkle raw one early ditions it's one of the best bottles I've ever had. Drew Cole's been grew up with him from Willits. I mean, he's, he's one of the kindest, generous people he shares a ton of stuff for me, but the one the person I remember the most is probably my 59:00 Brother in law 59:02 I won't name any names but he works at heaven Hill and 59:06 he likes bourbon but he knows how like obsessed I am with him and he always goes out of his way to give me like a Parkers or an old fits release that just came out like he always is just finding ways to give me something and I'll always cherish that so it's all it means a lot to me. That's that's a relationship by blood that's hardly fostered over birth. 59:31 But we grew up friends before you know, brother in law's we were friends before so but yeah, those those are the bottles that are that need the most to me. Absolutely. In my case, it was really about people knowing what my tastes are. And as I kind of grew up in the hobby and grew up in the community, I would have people that would know the things that I enjoy and would suggest that I try something and oftentimes the suggestion would come with a 1:00:00 two ounce bottle of it showing up at my doorstep. And that's how I figured out that I love national distillers products. 1:00:08 Some I was telling somebody kind of the things that I liked about certain things that were my favorites and then before I knew it, there was a bottle of 1960s old granddad bonded 1:00:18 that showed up at my doorstep and 1:00:21 I guess I should be upset with them because it's caused me to lose a whole lot of money after that. 1:00:27 It sounds like that sounds like Ryan Ryan went on a huge old granddad kick for a while. Oh, gosh, you know it for me any of that old nationalist killer stuff is really just killer. It kind of hits me right in whatever my sweet spot is, for whatever reason, I'm telling we're Barban friends now. Hey, 1:00:44 I got some stuff to send you. 1:00:47 But 1:00:48 that, for me is the big is one of the cooler parts of the community is, you know, people who know you and I know other people's tastes and if I see something for 1:01:00 example I got a buddy who was a big q lover at four roses, and I'm not. And anytime I see a really good q i know exactly who it's going to a CPA office in Indiana. 1:01:15 Because I just, I know that somebody that will appreciate it for more than I. That's where we go. Yeah, it really is. I mean, and I think that's a good way to kind of start wrapping this up because we, you know, we really hit on a lot of things of, really, how do we how do we find your bourbon people? Right? I mean, it all starts by a friend or somebody introduces you to bourbon. It's very rare that any of us just stumble it on our own or, or maybe maybe you do get turned on to it by social media or for the general Media TV or purposes and stuff like that. But for the majority of us, there's somebody that gives us that introduction, and I think that we have all been in 1:02:00 situation to, and I know anybody that's probably listening to this podcast, you know, you're, you're one of the you're one of the geeks out there, you're one of the people that truly hone in on this craft, and you really appreciate it. So odds are is that you're sharing the love of bourbon with somebody else. And so that's just how everything continues to flourish and grow. And then from there yet, then it becomes like, oh, add me on Facebook, we add you to a few groups. And then at that point, you you've just you're all in and as, as Jeremy had mentioned earlier, the boxes just start showing up on your front door and, and your PayPal account gets a little lower, but that's just how it works. 1:02:39 That's just how it works. So, gentlemen, and Jeremy, thank you so much for joining tonight. This is again, a fun topic. And you know, I'll go ahead and kind of let you kind of say what you're gonna say there. I don't think I was gonna say anything. 1:02:55 To Are you 1:02:58 looking at me 1:03:00 You 1:03:01 know, it's it's the rule of thumb is just, I mean, I guess it's the rule of thumb for more than just the bourbon community, but don't be an asshole. 1:03:10 Yep. So you know, if you if you just be a nice guy, it's amazing what kind of connections you're come up with. And 21 Kings is picking up a barrel of will it right here in a couple weeks, and I'm fortunate enough to be one of the people doing it. And I never would have gotten the chance to do anything like that. Had I not been able to be a part of these communities. And it's really cool. It's some of the coolest experiences I've gotten to have and really thankful for that. You know, I guess the other bad thing about being in these communities too, is I didn't realize for years, I could just drive down to willet and just go pick up bottles in the gift shop and 1:03:47 I could have been doing it. I could have been doing it all along. And I just I just didn't know. So 1:03:53 that's the that's the bad part of it. But it's, it's also a good thing because you add a lot more appreciation for what you do have so 1:04:00 Again, everybody, thank you so much for joining tonight. Jeremy, do you have any kind of social handles or anything like that where people can find out more about you? Anybody who wants to I guess I'm around on Facebook Jeremy Mendell Twitter at Jeremy Mendell, Instagram at Jeremy Mendell, if you want to talk to me for some strange reason I'm available. Never know, I know where to send. If I see I know he so I know who to call and all of your VSOs to me, and I'll figure out some way to repay you that you'll be happy about. Very interesting. Very interesting. I know you kind of want to just go pick a whole barrel of Oh, yes. Oh, now just get out of them. I actually did I like I'd have one. It was from my pics from the icons of whiskey when I picked those fucking which was at the 17 or 18. 1:04:53 Yeah, we had all the recipes. It was I think that was a 1:04:59 I think it was like a 1:05:01 11 year old Yeah, that was I think the 2017 one that was really good and it's incredibly dorky that I can just pull out of my head 1:05:13 so that was when I was with whisky magazine and yeah that we did that. And that was like the one of the only times you saw all the all the recipes and that was back when four roses. I think they brought out 40 barrels from for us to taste and guide you lucky forget for now. So it's the way the world now. Alright, let's go. Let's go ahead and we'll sign off. So again, Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on tonight. It was a pleasure talking to you. And seriously, thank you so much for bringing this topic up. Because it's it's fun to kind of, you know, really take a retrospective look into really kind of how we all got here and why many people are still actually listening to this podcast because they all have some sort of coming of age tale that's probably very very similar. So 1:06:00 Make sure you check out Jeremy and all those social handles, make sure you check out bourbon pursuit as well as spread MiniK on the Twitter, the Facebook and the Instagrams. And if you're like Jeremy, and you want to help support the show, he's part of our community, you can be part of our community as well. patreon.com slash bourbon pursuit. So thank you, everybody. That is a part of it. And thank you, everybody that joined into the chat and watch us live. Another perk of just being a part of the community is you can be a part of these things as they're happening and be able to just chat along with us. So with that, thank you, everybody, and talk to you all next week. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Welcome to the new location of the gut check project. I'm your host, Eric Rieger along with your other host, Dr. Kenneth Brown. How you doing Ken what's going on?So well, we've moved from the Spoony studio and we are attempting our first own podcast over here at the new studio at the KBMD Health studio. We are and guesswhat, you know we are still on the Spoony network, but I can't express how nice it is for you to now have a studio that's closer to the clinic. It's closer to where we do the procedures. It's the same distance for me no matter what.And most importantly, it's closer for our guests like Jeremy who just flew in from Austin. All the way from Austin because we got so much closer. Yeah, thank you guys. Much closer. Awesome. So our firstguest here in the new studio is going to be Jeremy Kinder here with CBD Takeout and I'm going to let Jeremy kind of take it away a little bit about what is special about CBD Takeout here in just a moment. Dr. Brown real quick, do we have any catch up items that we needed to do to kind of put in front of Jeremy to see if he wants to weigh in on anything?Well, we got like several visual on so first of all, we want to hear the story about how you and Jeremy met Sure. We want to talk about how much synergy there is. Whenever you start meeting people and you start connecting with people. We came back from the baby bath water event and just met incredible people. We had Tim powers over here who we're going to have back on because we actually had the equipment. We were unpacking the equipment when our first real guest showed up and he was kind of helping us just show how to...like we were like wiring this stuff together. Check thisout. Before Tim came over here, he was over at a hotel and then put his iPhone down to simply turn around and pay a guy at the bar. No, no, no, he was going to turn around and refill his ice tea. Oh fill his iced tea.Like five feet away at like a Homewood suites are just like some. Yeah, you know, like normal family.A little hotel. Did somebody grab his phone?  Withinlike three seconds, three seconds took off. So he was in town. And so me my wife, my daughter, my son was out of town, me, my wife and my daughter, we're going to take him out to dinner. And I pick him up. And this is what we have to do is figure out so now we're, I'm learning how to move the camera. So now we're back on me. Yeah, nice. Sweet. So we're working on that. And I picked him up in like a boss. I mean, like a boss. He was like, Hey, man, what's up? I'm like, why did I have to face you know Facebook you?  Yeah, funny thing and he stops in the car, funny thing my phone just got stolen I'm like when? He's like, I don't know eight minutes ago. I'm like, you are a boss. I stopped the car. I'm like do we go to BestBuy? Do we get you a flip phone? What do we do here? This is crazy. So was he calling youfrom like an iPador something? He sent me and I'm not a Facebooker and so he sent me a message said hey, phones, phones not working. It was cool about it phones not working. message me through this and I'll I'll do it through my iPad. When I picked him up, I mean, he was just like, I would have been curled up in a corner, crying, whatever. And he's like, yeah, let's just go to dinner. It's all good.Let's go get a drink.Let's just I mean, he was just cool and super, super neat about it. And then that evolved into a realization for himself and go ahead and expand on that. The coolest thing was is he found how addicted he was to his smartphone.Yeah, he said he began to sleep better, he communicated better with people that are in front of him. His anxiety level, he said, the first day was palpable, where he didn't feel captivated by the phone constantly vibrating for something for him new to look at.So, man, I don't know how much y'all want me to talk because I bet I'm a talker I'll throw in stuff on everything. But my wife and I have been talking about how do we decouple from our devices and I've tried everything if you're getting a second device or getting an Apple Watch and you know, all kinds of different stuff and honestly, the thing that that's helping me the most is just discipline you know, but I'm not going to you know get on my device and it's freaking hard I mean it's really like a you know like a drug fix of it My mind is telling me Hey, I need to check my phone go through the cycle of okay check Instagram, check the email check, you know. And then 15 minutes later I've been on my phone the whole time and I I literally don't need to be on there. But that's probably about a year ago we started talking about how how we can improve our lives and have better sleep quality and a lot of that stuff and decoupling from electronics was a big part of thatI don't remember was that Aaron File at baby bathwater who made the statement that there's a boxthere's a box..No it was Jack Olocka. Oh Jack Olocka. So it was Jack Olocka . So Jack Olocka...I'm  a little bit echoed here. Is that you know what, whatever we're just we're just gonna run the first one is studio thinking first one new studio figured out. So Jack Olocka . So Jack, so this group that we're with is like, it's like, you know, like when you like meet a bunch of people and you just go oh my gosh, I'm I'm like around a bunch of like minded people yeah well Jack Olocka is a PhD in psychedelics, all his research has been in this and like not like, Oh, I'm really good at psychedelics like he actually has a doctorate on the neuro plasticity and what happens I mean, just brilliant guy. And he gave a little speech there's this thing called a Baby Einstein, we're just going let it echo doesn't matter now. Where the Baby Einstein where everybody kind of gives either an ask or a give. And you know, his give was there's something called a kitchen safe. And what you do is you put your phone in the safe in the kitchen. Yeah. And when you set the timer, you nothing can get that phone out until the timer stops. Like there's like like even if somebody breaks it, it's just pretty much like yeah, you better have a landline going Yeah, yes. You know. And so unless you have dynamite and a crowbar and the reason is is because people are so addicted to their phones and we know that the blue light affects sleep. If you look at the how important sleep is and how affected it is just getting in just shutting your phone off and not looking at it is probably the most important thing that you can do.Yeah, yeah. My problem though, is you know, I come from the technology world and my house is wired like I have sono speakers everywhere and I have lights that are on smart plugs and all that stuff. And I did all this before I knew the the harmful effects of emf and so now I kinda thinking. So if I put my phone in a safe like I can't turn my lights on or I can't listen to music. Or turn the air conditioner down. I'm hosed. Just honey. I can't flush the toilet. Right. My phone's in the safe.Yeah, yeah. So you know we're talking about how to it maybe shut all that down and all that butyeah. That's funny. So let's talk a little bit about CBD take out that's why you You came up here today we're going to explore opportunities that are synergistic between the two of us. I was going to kick it off by saying one of the things that allowed you and I to get on this wavelength to start talking. So I went down to Austin to join a friend of mine. Marie and I are really good friends with the Leath's. Rennon Leath is basically the founder of a podcast called Lazy Sundayz Lazy Sunday, Lazy Sundayz and that's with a Z. So lazy Sunday's podcast. It's really kind of cool. It's four people who got together and have anxiety issues. So they forced themselves to start a podcast to confront their anxiety and now they just recorded their 50th Show and The 51st comes out this weekend. Yeah, so They wanted me to come down and help him see it. They held it at the Tequila 512 headquarters. Thanks to Scott Willis. Oh, can you do me a small favorover there and hold up that bottle. oh yeah that's the old vintage bottle.  this is so now I'm going to change the camera here so this is the vintage bottle. This is the original bottle of tequila 512 that when a they were in a tasting contest according to your buddy there that he said that they call this a shit-tastic label. They did. Shit-tastic.Once they replaced it with the new and they said yeah old label kind of cool pretty shit-tastic . Yeah,the tequilas phenomenal . The label is bad. So can you guys hear that?Yeah.I don't know. Maybe it? Is it? Is it too loud on me? It's been first podcast.It might just be the headphones popping?I don't know. It's probably something that we did with the microphone.Ron. So run. Shout out to Ron and Paul, everybody else that helps us out with this that they're going to be dying laughs I'm going to try and puttogether Episode 21 good content from Jeremy bad audio from me.So, anyway, we go down to do the podcast we did it at Tequila 512 casita there in Austin and man great turnout. Yeah, they had what...60 people? I was running down to the liquor store trying to buy more liquor. Yeah, everybody was having a great time. Theymaxed out the what 512 made available to them. Yeah. And then we had to shut the party down at nine. That was the rules of that particular neighborhood. So, great podcast, great turnout. And then Jeremy, I'd heard Jeremy's ads on the podcast previously, I've listened to my friends podcast before and I was really intrigued because your first and second interview specifically talked about what y'all do at CBD takeout is essentially you're going to find CBD on CBD takeouts website. It's been vetted. You've made certain that the certificates of authenticity are real, and that the measurements of everything that's in there, it's real CBD per the label that's given to you now. It was at baby bathwater that we learned that just on the retail side 26 to 28 offerings of CBD to 1 are fraudulent for every good one was 26 to 28, which are not so thankfully for someone like Jeremy and CBD take out. This is a bastion of where you know, everything that you're going to find on there is vetted. And I think that hopefully over time, you'll find the KBMD will be  a part of their repertoire.I think that would be awesome. And so I mean, Jeremy just get everybody up to speed you come from a long lineage of CBD growers. You're the seventh generation of a hemp grower you have extensive experience with CBD, your great great great great grandfather was the first original CBD producer. And now you decided to go digital but am I a little off on that?No that's spot on? I guess you read my bio. Yeah, like that couldn't be further from the truth.No. So my, my career's been is in technology, so I've worked for a lot of software companies and sold, you know, really high end platforms to major corporations and may have had a great time doing it, But I wanted to do I wanted to do something different that I was passionate about. And so at the same time that I was building technology companies and doing all that I just have always had a passion for health and fitness. And I think that that goes back to being a collegiate collegiate athlete. So I was a cheerleader at the University of Kentucky. Oh, yeah. went there on a full ride. That's fantastic. died doing that. Yeah. My wife's also a cheerleader. She was a cheerleader at the University of Texas. So, you know, we grew up as gymnast and so athleticism is in my background. But then about, I don't know, age 21-22 I started and that's really kind of when things peaked I started having gut issues. And back then I didn't mean that was, what 25 years ago, something like that i there wasn't research that was readily available, you couldn't go to the, to the grocery store and find gluten free products, none of that it was really really difficult. You know, I went to doctors and had lots of blood work done and they always came back with your you're healthy, you know, but I didn't feel something just didn't feel right. And so that kind of started me off on this whole exploration of, of diet and trying to find balance in my body. And you know, I've been tweaking that for 25 years and that that's what really led us to starting CBD takeout and and getting into this industry.Were you ever normal or more did you actually feel that there was an event that took place that changed everything?Yeah. So when I said that, you know, around 21 22 is kind of when all of that peaked when I started peeling that onion and going back, so I had spinal meningitis when I was six months old. So massive amounts of antibiotics, you know, had IV's in my head, all that good stuff. And, you know, at that point, nobody really knew about balancing flora, and that, that antibiotics could basically just kill all the good bacteria in your gut. And so I think from, you know, six months old that I was at a disadvantage. And then by the time maybe 15 or so, you know, just like, you know, normal teenager started having acne, and I got on tetracycline, so I took an antibiotic every single day for, you know, maybe two years. And I remember around that 15-16 I remember my body changing not in the teenage way. Just I remember Remember things with, you know, with going to the bathroom and stuff like that, that there were changes, but I didn't know. I didn't know why. So I started having a lot of athlete's foot and a lot of rashes and stuff like that. But so it was there an event? Yeah, I think there was probably a lot of events along the way that then you couple that with a college life style of shoot we were we were sponsored by Papa John's, at the University of Kentucky. I mean, we could call up and get a large pepperoni pie for like four bucks. We were We were rocking that every other day.I have this image of Jeremy and his buddy catching that one cheerleader that they throw up in the air and she keeps getting heavier as the season goes on. It's like yeah, we gotta find a new sponsor.Yeah, yeah. What thank God we had ephedrine back then.That's great. So Jeremy, when when you realize that there was an opportunity there to basically take...Well, no, actually you went to this where you are starting to realize some changes. So what progressed? And how did it take to take you to where you are now?So back that up to the question? So how did my dietary issues affect? So yeah, I think that that that just spawned a passion within me and starting to research that there were ways to put my body in a position that it could heal itself versus looking to a quick fix of let me take a pill let me you know, kind of that that approach tothis was during college when you were starting to think about this, or when did you start to do this? Yeah, yeah, that's, that's about right. It's really interesting, because everybody that we've met, that we've met in this field, when they start doing that they really get drawn to medicine. Yeah, and you didn't. Well, I, I mean, career wise.Oh, gotcha. Yeah. So I think What I really contemplated back then getting into more of dietetics and and going about it from the diet route, but man I am not a scientist by nature I think and and even at that stage that the issues that I was having, that you have concentration issues so, so to follow a, you know, a profession and medicine, It just wasn't in the cards for me So, and plus I like to talk so it kind of led me into more of the sales avenue of business.You know, Eric puts people to sleep for a living and he talks the whole time so you can still do medicine. yeah, you can do it, but they don't ever respond to anything I say. So yeah, pretty much.Yeah. He has full on conversations with all my patients and they wake up happy like subconsciously they love communicating with Eric.Yeah, it's always a good dream. Yeah.So obviously then you still pursued, your career, you said that you got into software sales correct? And but you didn't lose the passion for trying to find something that was going to allow you to heal. And I like that you say it that way, find something to heal and not a quick fix. Oftentimes the companies that cater to the medicine world now, it's pharmaceutical, and it's always a quick fix. It's a patch. You know, I didn't know that growing up. I always felt like well, you may be dependent upon medicine that's just the answer. And what I've learned is that's oftentimes absolutely incorrect. You can learn to heal from the inside and get so much better. So what turned you to that for your own personal health?So the point around pharmaceutical companies and that methodology if you look at foundationally how how they are built, they're not financially, they're not, they're not compensated to heal you, to fix you, they are compensated to get you on a regimen, that you come back and be a repeat customer. If anybody knows about publicly traded companies, the the end goal is to increase the stock price. So pharmaceutical companies, they they don't have and this isn't a political statement, this isn't a perspective of whether they're bad or good. It's simply foundationally they have to satisfy that stock price and if they get people off of their drugs, then that stock price does not go up, it goes down, right? So, from from that perspective, they they are not going to be in the business of healing people.clear my throat there. It's alright. Sofrom the perspective of,of healing yourself, I come from the perspective that of that we're creative beings and then We, God created us in a way that we should function properly. But what stands between us and that is desires. So does the food tastes this way? Do you want? Are you chasing the way that that tastes? Or do you not want to exercise because you're too tired? So there's the I think that there are things that stand between us living an optimal life, that it comes down to choice. So I begin to peel that onion for myself in my own life of what was standing between me and optimal health. And over time, you know, I have experimented with different supplementation or different diets and so on and so forth.So that my perspective. I want to expand a little bit about what you just said, because that's never really been addressed before, which is that our health is related to our desires. Now we know that fast food industry we know that processed food industry, they hire, I have patients who are chemical engineers, their sole job, and they've told me this is to figure out how to make the food more palatable, more satiable, more like everything about it that you want more. How do you put a coating on a freedom? So it goes down easier. Yeah. So we have the pharmaceutical industry over here trying to combat high cholesterol, obesity, coronary vascular disease. We've got the food industry over here trying to figure out how to how do I get you to eat more Doritos? How do I get you to eat more Fritos? And I love how you said that because what you basically said is something I've never thought about. We battle our desires, but our desires are influenced by both the media scientist there's some really smart people trying to get us to take certain things.Certainlylet's go back to the beginning of this conversation was about technology. So I was in the technology business, and the exact same thing that you're talking about of how they create foods so that they're more palatable, they look better, whatever they do the same thing with, with technology. So your, your phone is created in a way that they call it gamification. How, how do they attract you? And it's really like a drug, how did they attract you in a way to keep you using the device? And once again, I'm not saying something bad about the company companies are here to be to be profitable and build a company. It's up to us to choose if if we're going to engage that or not. So it goes back to your desire. Are you do you have fomo right? So do you have to look at your device and start figuring out what am I missing? What am I missing? And I need information or you know what be at peace that you're world and things going on in your life is what's important to you versus everything else.We're getting super deep, real quick, but I asked just another No, no, I love it. But I want to ask a couple quick things because Eric and I talked about our family and our kids all the time. You have kids, family, wife married Tell me about that real quick. I've been married for 17 years.Two kids, 14 and 8. Two girls. They're fantastic. Beautiful.Yeah. So the reason I bring this up is because a lot of times since I've had kids, so I have a 14 year old a 12 year old about ready to be 15 and 13. Eric has his sons. And when we sit there and you live your life, when you start thinking how do I want my kids to live? It really changes your perspective. For sure You suddenly just go Oh, no, I want and the fomo thing like you don't realize that you're on your phone, but when you see your kids on the phone, you go Wait a minute, and they look at you and go, but you're on yours. That that puts you in check. I mean, Eric and I talked about this all the time.Yeah, it's difficult. I remember the when Ken and I actually just started working together. Whenever my oldest got a an iPod, they would communicate with other iPods. And I remember saying, Man, this is kind of weird. I don't know if I like it or not, but he does every now and then need a ride because he's going to soccer and basketball back then. And it helps. Maybe it was the lure that conveniently lure at that moment sank its little teeth in and then about three years later, he's got a phone and then suddenly we're like, well, that's certainly certainly is convenient in the younger we didn't have to wait till he was the same age. He actually got one about nine months later and honestly, looking back at it, I wish we had just never jumped off of that cliff. I do think that we both Marie I both have looked back and tried to carve out the time that we just absolutely don't have a phone at dinner when we're  having family conversations etc. But the thing that stinks, is it when it's on you and you're not planning the formal talk with with whomever you whomever you're talking with even if it's your family sometimes you like oh yeah, yeah, two seconds let me finish real quick. That never existed growing up and in all I feel is more fatigue at the end of the day just because of that.It's kind of weird. So wesomebody shared with me this YouTube video that you should probably share with your daughters. It is a Harvard psychologist which is talking about the affects and I've shared it with Eric before but it's essentially thatthethe fact that we have these desires and things when we get a like or and I say we because we're all human or get a like when we get a share when we get whatever it releases dopamine. Yeah. And dopamine makes you feel good for a quick second.They knew that when they created it. Isn't that nuts?  For sure that's nuts! It's the gamification.See that molecule right there? That's dopamine, advancement of dopamine because we sit there and look at this, and I just think, wow, I want to actually...when we talk about it, we don't want. We don't want dopamine pleasure, you want happiness, Serotonin is the happiness molecule. And when you release dopamine, you actually reduce your happiness molecule, which is serotonin. So everything that is done, and unfortunately stopped, sorry. Everything that is done is to get people to do more of it. We're talking about tequila companies we're talking about. And the beauty is this is a great segway for us to talk about this, that this isn't a discussion of desires or everything. It's a discussion of how do we start healing? Yeah, well, one way to start healing is is that because of all this crap that's going on, we as a society, have an Endocannabinoid deficiency. And I think that's kind of what you were gonna get at that you were you went from the space of digital to realizing I need to start helping people.Yeah. Well, I got to this place in my life whereI had enough money to where I could just say, you know what, I'm not going to do this anymore. And I mean, we could go down that route of, should I have done that in the beginning anyway, I don't know. But I decided I'm going to apply everything that I've know that I've learned to this point, and apply it to something that I'm passionate about and giving back to people. So all of this research that I've done, and you talk about not going down the route of, of medicine. I did it in my own way. Right. It was, it was experimental. And, and so I gained a lot of knowledge along the way of what worked for me and I wanted to I wanted to give back so we took that that knowledge especially in the technology space and applied it to I mean if you go to our site it's I'm going to brag a little bit our site is is fantastic. We've got a....what's the URL real quickCbdtakeout.com so we've got a bot on there that readily answers questions now it's about to get an upgrade so he's not perfect right now but we're we're growing and we're we're making updates to the system but technologically we're we're, we're spot on. So we wanted to build a fantastic site that was really easy to use. And then we saw an issue in the market with this flood of CBD products that were unregulated and because I have toyed with supplementation for so long, I there's so...You can say so much and it's hard to weed through all of that junk and so we wanted to help people by vetting those products and having a marketplace of fantastic products in one place that like you talked about that have the the lab tests and every product has the lab tests that you can pull up and see on our site.That's awesome. I think it's I love it when people have a success in one industry and then want to give back. That's essentially what you're saying.Well, I wanted to do that all along, but it...No we don't want to tell our audience that I made you take off all your gold chains and your watches and what you've got like for Lambos out front right? Right. Not that well. I can just pay my bills. Let's say it that way. But it is it's just fascinated because you come from a background of health and there's no doubt about it, dude. I mean, Kentucky cheerleading. I have had friends that have been cheerleaders and they're like the most. I mean, they're like now CrossFit beasts that I work out with. I'm just like, holy cow. Yeah, these guys like that is hardcore. Yeah, Kentucky cheerleaders a dynasty. I think they're on their 23rd national title, I lose count. But my my teammates still a coach their Jamal Thompson. And they are, they are beasts. They're fantastic.It's so I mean, essentially you're a an elite athlete, gets sick, tries to discover his route develops a successful business. And then wants to give back and you're giving back by CBD takeout by trying to make sure that people have access to proper material, proper products, proper supplements. I think that's fantastic.Yeah, I think the other thing to say there is, we were dedicated to the process. You know, when there's a product that everyone wants and needs, it's very easy to get on the latest gimmick and we refused to do that. We We're taking our time to vet these products to vet these companies and, and really vet the trends. And that's that's not easy to do that takes a lot of time to figure out what is right for for people and what products are right for people. So that's important to us.I was just looking at something because I don't hardly ever get to correct anybody but I want to have some fun since you went to Kentucky. Kentucky did win a ton of national championships in a row. And they finally were unseated by the Texas Tech Red Raiders this last year. I just had to throw that out there. So welcome to the show.WhichI love the I rarely get to correct anybody just asked Marie. Yeah, I'm going to use this opportunity even though we're on our first podcast and I'm going to insult our first guest, but I never get to do it. I never getto do it and do it becauseHave you seen Scott yet?Since we were... Oh no I haven't. Okay well the nevermind. I'm holding that okay. Yeah okay. But back to Texas Tech now look them up and see how many they have won. I think it's one.You're right. We just did it we just did it so you can come on the show.In fact, you know, they are always...I work for the organization that you know for that competition. Varsity spirit worked for them for a long time. They want someone else to win because nobody wants to go compete because like well, Kentucky's already won and the competition hasn't started yet. So there are they're actively hoping that someone comes and beats the team.I went I went to the football game this last weekend because gage went out to go visit Tech's campus and when we were there, they talked about how there was finally a school to unseat Kentucky. Yeah, I'll still give mad props. I mean, that's, that's a huge thing. I mean, so it's basketball and cheerleading. Everybody knows that about Kentucky. It's becausethe university really supports the program. If you go to other universities, they just don't support the program and I understand cheerleading is a huge liability and it doesn't make any money. Kentucky just really appreciates. I mean that there's there's been a guy there. T. Lynn Williamson he is the university attorney. And he started the cheerleading team at the University of Kentucky. Dedicated.How dedicated Kentucky is to finding talent, too. He doesn't come from Kentucky. He's originally from Denver city, Texas. Yeah. Yeah. I'm from Texas.Yeah. How'd you end up going to Kentucky? Doing cheerleading? Yeah, yeah.So I went to a junior college first. And I got recruited. So the junior college I went to was really good at cheerleading as well. And you come from a background of gymnastics is that correct?  yes. Yep. Man that's impressive.Well, now I'm just old and...You're not that old.So one of the things I want to ask you did you have to quit gymnastics after you grew the mustache because the aerodynamics threw you off, or is that something that you can still do gymnastics with? Actually when you twist it makes this cool whisp.you spin faster.So one of the secrets if you guys are not out there the reason why Kentucky wins and gymnastics every year is that all the men have to have mustaches because it actually it actually augments the twists and turns. Yeah, yeah, that is awesome. So you have this really kind of cool background and then you do CBD Takeout and you're doing it for one reason. It's one reason is to source proper supplements. Is it only CBD or do you guys have other supplements or what are you doing? So it's all CBD in different shapes and forms, right? We've got salve, we've got capsules, we've got tinctures, we've got massage oils, there's quite a few different we stay away from the gimmicks like CBD candles, CBD toilet paper, that kind of stuff. We don't carry that. We want good value for our customers, you know, if you if you can't absorb it into your system, and there's really no value to it, we don't carry it. But, you know, honestly, I've built a business for scale to be able to help as many people as we can to reach as many people as we can. So in terms of direction of will we can carry other products, I'm open to that. Does it help people? Does it increase the benefit of CBD? If there's a product out there, maybe cue  Atrantil. That that works together that has a harmonizing effect, we would consider that.When he and his wife went home, he let me know that she'd already picked up Atrantil from people's pharmacy. Oh, that's awesome.Yeah. Well, what I love about this is that you're not doing the death by 1000 cuts. You're staying true to one thing. We're going to do one thing. We're going to build a really good website first. Yep. We're going to make sure that the thing that I'm good at which is digital, we're going to do it well. And then we're going to offer this. Now you have a calling to this, why do you think it's going to make a difference?I think in that goes back to you talking about building it in a way that we can execute properly. I, I'm convinced that and I mean  there's science behind this, you can talk about this that our bodies need cannabis. And and so I, I think that there's some interesting reasons why people have been have been kept from cannabis for so long. And I'm frankly I'm just excited to be a part of call it a revolution Call it whatever. I think the impact that cannabis can have on people lives because you can remove so many pharmaceuticals, you can aid with cannabis. And then that puts you on a road. I don't think cannabis is the end all. I think that it can still be a crutch depending on how you use it. I think it is. It has the potential to put people on the road to healing. So I think it's very powerful. I think that there is a fantastic opportunity. If we can wade through all of the noise and trust me people there is a lot of noise in the business right now. The the people that I talked to day in and day out. There's some great people that are getting into the cannabis business, but there's a lot of people that honestly it's the the old culture of just drug dealers that have moved one step over to legitimising and they still have the same principles and so  we're really committed to the culture of cannabis and representing it in in a proper way and we could spend probably an hour talking about what I think the the proper way to do that but... Let me just clarify really quick for the listeners here so cannabis what you're talking about right now on your website is purely CBD correc?t Correct. Yes and we split that up. We have some that are guaranteed THC free we've got a filter on that. If you need something that is guaranteed THC free you can find it easily. But everything is hemp derived so it's all . 3% or less so all federally legal.And it's so frustrating because when we get into this we understand that the confusion about it. Cannabis where you're knowledgeable about it because we know that comes from the same genus species of the plant, but everybody hears cannabis and they have a connotation of it.Yeah but in and that's the that's the thing that I'm talking about changing because I believe in the power of THC as well in proper dosing. But here's the thing is we don't even in legal states, the the science has not come along enough for people to get accurate. dosing, time and time again, it's still trial and error. And so while you can't overdose from THC, you know, from a medicinal standpoint where you know, you can't kill yourself, but it can cause psychological issues if you consume too much THC. So that's the culture that I'm talking about where THC has this, this negative connotation because it's been attached to this attitude of rebellion. How high can I get, can I get the strongest THC product available, and I just think that's wrong. And because it's been represented that way, then we don't get the the truly beneficial aspects of THC and and so many people have dismissed it, but then they'll go get, you know, an anti anxiety drug that causes 15 other issues. So how do we move back to this culture of, you know, business people should be able to consume small amounts of THC that are blended with other cannabinoids. So if it's just THC, that's where that's where you have issues with. I'm super paranoid and I'm freaked out. If you were to consume a nice dose of CBD in conjunction with that, it balances it out real nicely. So I just think that the industry is in the elementary stages right now and I'm talking to all of the the entire cannabis industry. I think it's in the elementary stages. And we're excited to be a part of that.You know, we if anybody's interested in getting a little bit more into this Chris Cresser just had a little client in both friends of ours just had a little client who is CEO of oh hi energetics on his show. And Will went into deep detail about the history of hemp, CBD, marijuana, Cannabis, whatever. And it's been ingrained in our culture for so many years, our genetics actually eat a certain amount of it. And one of the things that's really fascinating to me is that we used to feed our livestock, hemp. And when they would eat that, like a chicken would have an anecdote of 250 milligrams of CBDA in it and then our bodies would convert it. That would be the acidic version of it to get all sciency and stuff. But basically, we were getting CBD in our diet until the US government decided to say. Okay, now wait, this is an illegal product, we're going to ban it and then the farm bill came around just recently in the last five years and started changing things and now it's become more available, but I think you're exactly right. I think that the black and white notion of I'm going to get high or I'm not going to get high I'm going to do this and that am I  doing something? No I was testing mine. But we're...Eric you could probably attest to this remember that the Joe Rogan does a whole set about how people have done that they get the little gummy. Eric and I, Eric and I are huge comedy fans. Yeah, yeah, like like he actually takes his sons to comedy shows when they buy and don't like to see what you see. Who the guys you've seeing live?In the last year we've seen Bill Burr, Tom Segura, Marie went with us on that and we also saw Hannibal Burris. Yeah. I mean it's it's a pretty rich and actually gauge for his birthday last week he and his friends went to go see Eric Andre that's off the chain. Wild stuff right there.Yeah, Who was the comedian at  baby bathwater that just wrecked it.Oh, goodness. What is her name? She killed it.   She's a total amateur and just gets up there and just starts. She was inShe was in between bands on the top of a mountain and when I mean she nailed it. It was like, you gotta have your own Netflix special nailed, really. And she just sat there with her iPhone. She's like, I just don't talk about this and just killed. Love it. I respect comedy at that level, just having the balls to get up there and just do it is nuts. No kidding. So anyways, I'm digressing, but basically Joe Rogan does a whole set about how the guy gives him a gummy and he goes, just eat the arm. He'slike the arm? What kind of shit are we making these days? They just are gummy bears.They just they are. I can't tell you how many times I hear that story of people. They're like, oh, I'm going on vacation. My wife and I are going on vacation to Colorado. And we're going to eat some gummies so they eat gummies and they're like, man, I got so high. I was freaked out and like what I mean, that's what I'm talking about. You don't have access to how do you dose properly and edibles are especially bad because you're going through your digestive system and how much did you eat before that? How hydrated you are? So you know the insulin uptake yet all of that... Jeremy, have you ever tried alcohol? Drink this bottle.Right? Right just chug it. Yeah.yeah. Can you guys hear me crackling? Yeah, I don't know. What's up with that?Yeah, I think so. You know what I'm gonna go take a little pee break real quick. Okay, figure we forgot the crackling you guys keep talking and you're on camera right now. All right. Okay so what we'll do is we'll hit here real quick about whenever someone does visit CBD takeout something that's interesting to me. We get feedback a lot about people that take CBD currently and order it from KBMD health. Most of our feedback though, is directed towards people who come to see Ken for gut issues in particular, IBD such as Crohn's, ulcerative colitis, advancing proctitus, even to a lesser extent, a lot of folks who have found issues with celiac disease, but that began to open up a completely different arm of people who have systemic autoimmune disease. So a lot of IBD's are viewed as are viewed as an autoimmune disease in and of themselves, but so is psoriatic arthritis or all the way up to Alzheimer's. Where do you get a lot of your reviews from? Because the thing I really love about your right, your website's great, and I've seen it before, but as I'm watching it scroll now. You get so many athletes on here. Yeah. And Brandon, the host of lazy Sunday'z podcast, has his own CrossFit gym. So the synergy there and your application obviously the way that you're marketing to these folks, where do you get mostl of your reviews and do you see them kind of branch out a little bit?Yeah. So one of the things that we looked at when we we developed a site was what are the the markets that we want to to support and athletes is definitely one of those you can see that pretty quickly when you go to the site. And the reason that we wanted to focus on athletes is because the CBD's ability to help with recovery is is really, really great. So and what I mean by that is I don't think it's any secret that CBD helps with sleep, sleep quality. So if you can improve your your sleep quality, then your body is going to recover better and more quickly and for athletes that that's key, especially within the CrossFit, CrossFit world. It's how much how much output can you get out of your body, and so recovery is the biggest is a big deal there. And then the other thing is, you've got receptors in your skin, Endocannabinoid receptors and so you can use topicals to reduce soreness. So athletes use our products very consistently. So obviously a group that we we wanted to service. Another group is the aging community that does have issues with specifically arthritis, because, like you mentioned, Eric arthritis is a symptom of, of inflammation. And so CBD has shown that it has the ability to lower inflammation. And so we get a lot of feedback from that group. I think also that group is, I don't know, I feel like they are more open to providing us feedback. We get more more feedback from that age group than we do from our athletes. Athletes are always talking about it when we see them, but that aging community man they give us a lot of reviews and feedback, a lot of emails and we hear fantastic stories, you know, you want to talk about reaping the benefits of creating a company. We talked about this quite a bit of, you know, customer saying, I haven't been able to walk in, you know, six months because of my arthritis. And now I it's changed. This was a word that was used, it changed my countenance I had to go look it up. But it really is helping with that arthritic community. In fact, we've written a couple of blogs on on how it helps with arthritis.Wasn't Chad Hudson, his father, one of those that..He was, yeah, he got off of opioids. I mean that that stuff blows me away when we look at the opioid crisis that that we're having in the United States. If if we are directly directly related to helping people get off of opioids, man, I'll keep doing this forever.That's that's, that's no joke. So Ken, just while you stepped out. I was talking about how we get feedback through KBMD mostly it originates around gut health gut issues, gut inflammation about what we've started to basically branch out and get reviews from people going, I have autoimmune disease, etc, etc. But essentially, like Jeremy just outlined, it all is based around inflammation. So according to their website, if you look at everything and it's it's based around athletes and recovery is where they started getting their reviews, but now, just like what we experienced the KBMD health, you're starting to get reviews from all different facets and it's the geriatric community is pretty impressed I think with their, their access now to CBD. And it's unfortunate that it took until their golden years to start finding something that is going to work for them.There's a couple of, if I can, a couple of other areas unless you're going to if you're going to change the topic. We gotta goat in here. We've got a goat. Goodness gracious.So a couple of other areas that we are focused on on the site. One is, is pets because they also have an endocannabinoid system. And, you know, we hear dogs freaking out on the 4th of July.I'm sorry, I was trying to time that to open for you. I was going to have a bark and I tried to download an animal sound and it became a goat. So but one of the things that people don't realize is that goats take CBD too. Yes, if you have goats. Let's make sure that...We have a goat section...look for the goat tab.So one of the things so I I've actually talked to a lot of high goat athletes that have been going to your site CBD takeout Yeah, yeah. These are elite goat athletes. These are goat jumpers goat runners, and they love it.Yeah, yeah. We're thinking about rebranding it to just be I mean the feedback we get from the goat community.Of the animal species they're some of the best credits in there. Yeah. And they can they can actually afford high level CBD.You'll find that selection in your takeout C Billy DeeI was trying to think of something, something snappy, but that was good.I'm really good. I'm really good at URLs, man. Yeah.So yeah, so um, unfortunately, I have to, you know, one of the one of the addictions that Eric does have is that he buys basically he owns every domain name.He spends hours on Godaddy.I got an ideaAll of a sudden you'll be like oh, that'll be funny to have like goat CBD athletes but somebody bought that?I have JeremyKinder.com if you want it?Yeah.Just kidding.20 grand.I'm sorry. No, I mean, the same endocannabinoid system so it it helps with anxiety and you know, dogs freaking out on the Fourth of July and if they have arthritis, I mean it's really beneficial. So we've got dog treats and tinctures and all that stuff for cats and dogs and animals.So let's just really quick because when we talked on the phone, we were talking more like my whole role is science. So not to sit there and a joke about goats and goat athletes and all sort of stuff but let's be honest about something. We we have a system called the endocannabinoid system, just as important as the cardiovascular system, neurologic system or gastro intestinal system, which I'm a specialist in. Eventually we're going to have doctors labeled as Endocannabinologist. Yeah. It's that important that it will be incorporated into med school, we will have specialists. And what we're going to need is people like you that are sorting through people that are just trying to make a buck, and you're able to put stuff up there that can actually help some people. So much like I like a website called examine.com. Where they vet products, you're doing the exact same thing for the CBD industry. And I commend you on that. And I want to thank you for coming out of your other other profession and being able to put your digital expertise into something to help people.Yeah, it appreciate it. You're right. We talked about the mess. I mean, what do you say 22 out of 24 products I don't know.Actually what they said was 26 to 28 to one yeah, is a fraudulent product.I don't know if you guys listen to the FDA hearing on CBD, but one of the things that kept coming up over and over and over maybe the most consistent thing was, how many fraudulent products there are out there. And it's it's bad. And I think, I mean, that's where the benefit of having the FDA regulate. You know, what can be said and what can't you know, from a marketing perspective is important because you've got people that just want to make a quick buck and they look for situations like this on a early to market, non regulated product that actually works. It is a quick buck type business person's dream. But you got to balance that with how do we vet all these products out and vet these companies. And that's what we we partner with those companies that we feel like are going to be there for the long term. And, and those are the products that we have.What I feel I like the most though about CBD takeout and this approach is that oftentimes with something like the FDA, you're right, they may try to put in some tools or mechanisms to prevent something from happening. But what ends up happening oftentimes is they block access to legitimacy. Yeah. So really, what Jeremy and his company are doing, I think, is from the inside, you're basically beating them to the punch saying no no no we've got a mechanism here. We can filter out the bad, we want to bring you the good so having a resource like that to turn to say, if I shop here this is where I'm going to find the high quality product it's no different than going to a natural grocers and knowing that every time you buy produce in there it's going to be organic regardless of the supplier Yeah. Or going to a whole foods and saying when I shop in the organic section here, I know this has been vetted, it's been tested I can trust what I'm buying here. There's lots of other reputable grocery stores I'm not just singling them out but there's a market for the market itself to police itself and they will rise.Yeah, you know where I think that's going to be particularly important at where I think that we're we're going to really take off is when the other cannabinoids start catching on when that research research starts showing that CBN CBG and blended cannabinoids because we will have already shown our community that we vet CBD companies and it's going to be the same companies that are doing the research on CBN CBG and we will be able to offer that very quickly to our customers as that comes to market.For somebody who is a former cheerleader slash digital marketer who doesn't believe that he should have get on a new medicine you are you are speaking like a doctor. And it is phenomenal. You're speaking like a researcher. What you're describing is, you understand the next wave of this. The majority of people don't even have any clue about CBD or anything else like that. But you're talking next level type stuff. Because the way that I envision it is the endocannabinologist will sit there and say, oh, my goodness, you have ankylosing spondylitis with ankylosing spondylitis. What I believe is that you need a ratio of THC of 10% CBD of 30% CBG of x and this is going to be the response you're going to have in order to be able to control your immune system. And we're not gonna have to put you on prednisone would not have to put you on infliximab, but Remicade or Humera, and the future of this is essentially real medicine. And when, because what I would like to do, I mean, when you sit there and say I love the fact in the very beginning of the show, you said, Well, I made enough money doing this other thing that I can focus on my other thing, I would like to make enough money doing my thing that I can sit there and do my real passion, which is research. I love research. I want to be able to sit there and say, Jeremy, I believe that I'm going to do this study, we're going to pay for it. We're going to look at what these different Endocannabinoids do in different diseases, and then I can go to somebody like you that can actually promote it in an ethical, honest way to say that this is the research that's there. If this is something that you believe that you need, that's awesome, but we've done our homework on the products that are there. And quite honestly, if it's OhHi energetics if it's elixinol that CBD line with CBD plus, these are all really good companies. Yeah, we need to get the word out. It doesn't matter who's putting it out there. Yeah, it's Not a competition anymore. It's a matter of let's start helping some people.Yeah, yeah, man, you're hitting on a lot of a lot of great things that I'm it. I'm wondering how how deep I outta go into this, but you talk about ethics. And I mean, that is a common thing that you hear in business people talking about, we want to do this ethically I'm to the point that if if we can't do it ethically, I'm not going to do it. And that that really becomes a complicated issue. When you look at you gotta pay your bills, you got it, you have to decide, do we make this dollar or do we do this ethically, and I just got to the point where if I'm very solidified in that fact of the company will grow if we are servicing enough people in the right way. And when you talk about doing that research Doing what you're passionate about, and doing it ethically. I just encourage you to stick to that. And things, things will happen to reward that in a way because we need that research from from a humanity standpoint, we're our, our society is so written with anxiety, and I mean, everybody it is, I hate to use extremes, but everybody hates each other because they're on this political side or that political side and I'm just tired of, of our society being that way. And I'm susceptible as well. And and so, I, you start sparking, sparking these emotions in me when you start talking about those things of ethics and what you're passionate about and all those things because, man, our country has, has falsely said that We we were on this righteous pursuit and and we've said it for a long time as a country. And honestly, I don't think that was the deal. I think we were in the pursuit of of making money. And so I'm hoping that we can heal as a nation and go back to, to this place of being responsible and helping each other out even when it might be detrimental to ourselves. And what I mean by that is, okay, I'm going to help you even though that's going to cost me money in a way where I can't pay my bills. So stepping out there in a way to help each other like we should be doing.That reminds me of the book Atlas Shrugged by Imran.Imran. Yeah.The definition of altruism to actually do something where you are not going to benefit. Yeah, that is the definition of it. So...Big shout out also since we've been talking about CPG to Dan and Kayla Wright from Green Sweet are a small company that is started just out of California and they're going around finding all organic land from California is as far east as Texas to plant basically hemp and cultivate before it grows too big so that they can simply go to CPG. Because they want to do research. Yeah. They want they are dedicated research and they're going to work with OhHi. And hopefully us as we go forward.It's one of those things this is like this is it's it's super cool that we're setting up this conversation because that means is essentially the first time we've met but it's crazy. How many people want the same thing. You want your kids to be healthy. You want to live a healthy life. Yes. You want to be able to pay your bills. Yes, you want to do all this stuff, but the majority of people want society to rise as a whole. Yeah, we really want to help and I think that one way that we can do this is to focus on the endocannabinoid system. Yeah, and just get everything back in balance. Yep, that's my thing that I tell all my patients The endocannabinoid system. What it does is just mediates everything to get everybody back in balance so that you're not over firing. It's not a big nerve that's setting off.Yeah. Yeah. The cool thing about that is, you know, Eric, you were talking about the feedback that we get. And yeah, I think CBD might be getting a bad rap for all it fixes everything. But the weird thing about it is when you balance your body, I mean, I was talking to somebody the other day that said that they had male male pattern baldness and they said, Well, my hair started growing back. And you could you could save what the CBD is not going to do that. But the thing is, is CBD is putting his body back in balance to do what it was supposed to do. So his body was just out of balance in a way. Alright, so I mean, not to not to interrupt, but a great example is when I see patients and they're like I've have I'm having weight loss. I'm having a hair falling out having this and that and then we can get to the point where you realize oh, you're not sleeping well, you're stressed. Your your thyroids out, and then we fix that. And then everything starts fixing itself. They don't think anything of that, right? They're like, Oh, well, we got your thyroid back to normal. Yeah, your hair is growing back, you're sleeping better. You're having normal bowel movements. It's all good. They're like, Oh, yeah, my thyroid's back to normal. That's cool. And we did that through nutrition usually, yeah. Because I'm not a not an endocrinologist. So I don't just you know, but we usually do it through nutrition and you know, change in lifestyle. Nobody thinks anything of that and, and then when we do the endocannabinoid system, ahthat can't be true, yeah. Guess what? Yeah, it essentially is like a hormone. Yeah, it's essentially it's a system. The endocrinology system is everywhere in your body. Your neurological system is everywhere in your body. The endocannabinoid system is everywhere in your body. Why can't it just come back to balance and cool things started happening? Yeah, it can That's awesome well I think that'll do it for our first podcast from the first studio our first our new studioWell we want to we want to end with one, okay. We always want to end with something with our guests. Yeah. So Jeremy tell us one last time about CBD takeout where they can go to find you where they can find you on social media the usual stuff and why supporting you supports the industry and helps people.Yep. Right on. So CBDtakeout.com. You can find us on Instagram CBD underscore takeout Facebook CBD takeout you know all the normal stuff you can find this if you go looking for us. We are a marketplace that vet CBD companies and provides the best slash high value CBD products and that has many different forms. You know, tinctures, salves, all that good stuff. And in one fantastic, easy to use website, one place to find that you know, going back to the the benefit of the industry is we're doing the work you know speaking to you customers. We know that you're overwhelmed with trying to find a good CBD product first you're like, what does this do? Second, why is it everywhere in the gas station or whatever? Third, how do I choose the product for me? I would recommend you go to CBDtakeout.com, we're doing that work for you and constantly reading laws, reading science, reading the research and vetting these companies to provide great products for you to use.It's awesome. I got one question for you. I've been looking for the best CBD toilet paper. Do you guys offer that?Yes and it's made of goats hair.No, no mo nomo hair.There you go. That's great.So and I wanted to add one of the things that you said when we first met to your website that ya'll wanted to add and the reason why I wanted to get you in and and Ken here together is soon ya'll like to be able feature educational videos. Basically walk people through the application of CBD and what to look for. Yeah, certainly. And we're about to launch a video series. It takes time, you know, coming from the technology world. I don't have video, well, I didn't have video equipment. I didn't have all these microphones and all this stuff and so acquiring that and figuring out what equipment do we need and, and hiring a good editing company and because if you outsource everything, you guys have probably figured this out, you lose your voice. And and so we figured that out pretty early that if we had a marketing agency doing everything for us and videographers and everything, then they were telling us what to do and they were chopping it up in a way that we didn't necessarily want to do. So we have decided to slow that down. Everything is done in in house and then we we will dictate, you know, hire out certain things but it takes time to build all of that but we are coming out with a video educational series. And y'all frankly, let us know what you want to hear we we don't want to just be talking about stuff that we're interested in. We're directing this to you guys and to educate, educate our customers, so let us know.Well, I'm going to offer this to CBD Takeout that the thing that we can offer Eric and I, which is science, yep. And so, you know, if there's, we have access to graduate students that look up a lot of articles. I just got into several articles today from our favorite graduate student, and she sent me some crazy stuff on the endocannabinoid system and autism and you just eat it up because then you start breaking it down. What I want to do is I want to say the how and the why that these things can happen. Yeah, for instance, it isn't that oh male pattern baldness gets better with this. I'm going to say, here's the markers that get improved when you take CBD because your own endocannabinoid system will decrease the inflammatory brain markers aisle 12 aisle 23, TNF alpha, TNF beta and it's done in animals and it's done in humans and they look at it and people go there's no research. No, there's tons of research. Yeah, there's tons of research, you just got to put the work in and we fortunately have somebody who's a rock star at finding this kind of information and I get daily emails that when I have my next job when I make enough money and I can do what you're doing into the thing that I really want to do, then I can sit there and spend all day looking at it but that you're exactly right. So our our, our gift to you, we want to make sure that CBD takeout is successful. And we want to help you in any way. So if your if your audience if your listeners ask questions, we want to make videos for you CBD takeouts and not for a product for you that we can offer some help for your listeners and explain different things.Yeah, yeah, fantastic. I think that'll be great because one of the things I mean, it's why I'm here is there, there are people out there that don't want to be guinea pigs and don't want anecdotal evidence they want science and frankly, I don't blame them and, and so that's one of the things that we want to get better at is providing hard science as it's coming out and being on the cutting edge of all the research we want to be leading with with that information.Sweet. Jeremy, thank you so much for hopping on the show. So you'll find Jeremy's fine offerings at CBDtakeout.com that is CBDtakeout.com also brought to you today by Atrantil. Go to lovemytummy.com forward slash spoony save some money. But you're giving me hands here. I'm just giving hands because I'm just like oh wow this is sponsored by so many wonderful thingsThat's right. Sponsored by love, sponsored by God, this is sponsored by the world, this is sponsored by...Yeah, I wanna I want to thank lazy Sunday'z Podcast for bringing Jeremy and I together Tequila 512 casita, you can find about find out more about tequila 512 at tequila512.com. And of course, the new website for KBMD Health should be rolling out pretty soon KBMDhealth.com. If you don't like the current site, you have no one to blame but me because websites should not be built by anesthesia providers. Shitty website.Right? So Jeremy, so this is this is one of the things and this is this little piece of advice to everybody out there listening. So I have a patient who's an extremely successful business person. And the one of the things he told me was that you want to know the number one reason why businesses fail. I'm going to ask you this. What's Jeremy, what's the number one reason why businesses fail?I would say lack of execution.That's much better than me. I said lack of funding. Okay, so he said, they never jump. They never jump off the dock. Yeah, there's essentially execution. Yeah, they never just jumped anf go well, Eric and I are jumpers and sometimes we don't build real build the best thing.It's a long way down. A really, really long way. Yeah.And then when you smack, then what do you do? There's a quote from Mike Tyson that that I love. And he said, I'm gonna mess it all up. I'm paraphrasing. Everybody's tough until they get hit in the mouth.Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. That's his classic quote. Yeah, I mean. Everybody says I'm gonna do this, this and thisNow, what do you do? So jumping, I'm also a jumper. And I've had to learn over time when you bounce now what do you do? And I've learned to think before I jump a little bit, man, when I was young, I would just jump. Here we go. You gotta jump. I mean, that's how you start, but then when you bounce then what do you do? How do you execute from there on out?Well the beauty of this is that I'm not a jumper by nature I'm a I'm truly like and it's funny when I think about it I'm truly a scientist by nature I've been Yeah, I've been a nerd my entire life. I've been in healthcare my entire life. And then you meet somebody like Eric and you get inspired and then we developed a product called Atrantil. And all of a sudden you realize that you become a jumper but I'm like, does not necessarily parachute but it's more Mary Poppins. My umbrella is science. Yes, well, I'm gonna jump but I'm pretty good idea that because of what's already been discovered what's already been shown, I'm going to land softly. Yeah, and I'm not going to do a dead cat bounce and, you know, just smack. And that's an old stock term, I think where people would sit there and say when the stock just plummets, it'll have a little bounce and that adds a dead cat bounce.  I'm not trying to offend the feline lovers and thing

Jeremy is a good friend, construction planner, Spartan runner, new father, good boyfriend, Sun Devil's fan (unfortunately), festival-goer, and just a really cool guy. Even though he now lives in Phoenix, he came back to visit me in Las Vegas (well, me and the Life is Beautiful music festival) the same weekend that the "Storm Area 51" thing was supposedly going on. So Jeremy wanted to talk about his fear of aliens. And to help us do that without running away in fear, we decided to drink a few Einstok Olgerd Icelandic Arctic Pale Ales. Jesus that is a long name for a beer.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/beerfreaks)

Jeremy Griffin is a classic entrepreneur who has put his resources into starting a new kind of shooting sport. Dropzone Gunner is basically an outdoor obstacle race with shooting mixed into it. Those races are very popular and people have a great time competing in them. So Jeremy thought why not include shooting and have people who never shot a gun before, get out and try it. You also get experienced shooters who want to add a different element to their competition. Dropzone Gunner has both and looks to be a lot of fun. Links mentioned in the show: dropzonegunner.com

Everyone's schedule this week was out of wack. So Jeremy offers his deepest apologies for the lack of a new episode. But hey that gives you more time to sharpen your knives and your recipes for when we return. Follow us: https://twitter.com/ichewspod Email Us: ichewspod@gmail.com

Why Dave Decided to talk to Jeremy: Jeremy Griffin is the epitome of Mr. Hustle. His marketing prowess and ability to be the "crazy guy from the outside" has given him opportunities to build multi million dollar businesses. He is also a member of the "2 Comma Club" Jeremy details how he has been able to create a national event paid for by sponsors. He provides the keys you need to take your show on the road. He also reveals how to breakthrough the resistance of people saying, "My industry is different." Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business: Merging industries together to bring success: (16:45) Taking risks (19:45) Learning the fundamentals (20:08) Quotable Moments: "No matter what business you are in, you are in the people business." "If you are going after national fame, you better be ready for national humiliation!" "Every company needs a signature event that is outside of your facility that will bring everyone in your industry together, and  you can put your name on it and control." Other Tidbits: A lot of people focus on how can I bring my company the most value… when in reality, how do I put an event together that gives the sponsors the most value? If you don’t have the sponsors, you don’t have an event. Links: FunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar ---Transcript--- Speaker 1:     00:00           Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here is your host, Dave Woodward. Speaker 2:     00:17           Hey everybody. Welcome back. You guys are in for the ride of your life today. This is gonna. Be One of the fastest, craziest, next 20, 25 minutes or so. I have the opportunity to bring a dear friend on. Jeremy Griffin. Jeremy, welcome to the show. What's up my man? How are we doing? Oh, I'm so excited for this. You know, the fun part. I wish I could actually record and put it in. I made it. I'll have it at like the end of the. I should start recording there as soon as I start. First start talking because Jeremy, right Speaker 3:     00:41           dude, stop. Yeah. You know the show behind the show is always the fun show. Speaker 2:     00:49           So Jeremy feels the same way I do about title. So let's just say that Jeremy is just an amazing entrepreneur, has been crushing it and killing it. It's whatever. Two Comma club winters. He's got so many different businesses out there from real estate to blow and crap up on with events and honestly just one of the coolest guys out out there and a guy you definitely want to get to know. So check them out. Jeremy Griffin on facebook, but right now we're gonna dive in and kind of talk about. I'm still, again, I was going through all this, so background elite realty, real quick, your gut, but I don't know, $500, million different real estate properties yourself and you're going through and selling a couple here and there. Speaker 3:     01:24           Yeah. That, that's all kind of just been a natural extension of, you know, growing up in the construction thing. I got the opportunity to turn a guy's portfolio around about 10 years probably. And um, you know, when we're growing up flipping houses and whatnot, you're, you're basically doing management and doing this, that, and the other thing and showing them. And I'm just doing it anyways because I'm just aggressive and I've always selling something. Right? So I got the opportunity to do that, hopped on it. Uh, you know, got there, got that revenue up to that, that portfolio right there is probably about four to $5 million worth of assets and got increased their revenue by literally about 35 percent in 12 months and really haven't looked back with that man, you know, so all growing up with crazy uncle Larry paid off. Speaker 2:     02:13           Well, for those of you guys for listening, literally this is going to be just a popery of just random topics here. So with that, I'm going to just off the cuff here, how the world you. I've got a lot of real estate increase in real estate. Thirty five percent a year. What? How'd you pull that off? Speaker 3:     02:27           Twelve months. Alright, I'll, I'll be, I'll be really honest with you. My whole key to we do a lot of property management stuff and the real estate area, my whole entire key to that is to, and this sounds crazy to a lot of your audience, to look at it from a marketer's perspective instead of a landlord's perspective. Okay. You will be shocked how many people treat the properties that they're running. The people that are renting them, their customers has a giant pain in the ass. Okay. I've had, I've had no listen. I've had three women in my office up there, got three offices in Tampa. I've had three women in my office in the last five years up there who were moving for whatever reason I want to move, started crying and saying, I've never had somebody treat me with a level of respect that you have. Speaker 3:     03:11           You treated me like a human being and I will do everything. I'm getting referrals from people that rented it from, from our company, from 10 years ago. Still, you know, so it's. Everybody has to, oh you got to be tough. You got to be. And I'm like, so this is the first industry in the history of industry where if you act like a giant Dick, you'll get better results than if you're nice. Like, no, no, like, stop that, you know. So, and that was really the whole key to it was establishing really turning apartment complexes into actual legitimate communities. Okay. That people can be proud of. And when you do that, people stopped moving and you start. The one thing that I found was key. I started running and newspaper Ad. Think about who still reads the newspaper ads. Older people or people. Quieter people. Speaker 3:     03:58           Okay. And I started off the headline. It says very, very, very, very, very quiet apartments for rent ads. Say the same thing. That. So if you're a party animal, like you're not even, you're not even messing with that, right? Like, and I get people that are sick of all the nonsense and, and I promise I will do everything in my power to maintain that, you know. So it's uh, it's that delicate balance of, of coming off his, you know, his understanding, but also assuring them that if things do need to get dealt with, like trust me, I'll get them dealt with. Okay. So that was it man, you know, get out, get out a lot of the bad problems, tweak the way that their portfolio here. They were actually renting everything on a income based on. They were negotiating everything. Everything. And I'm like, guys, it's like, they're like, well, what if you have to turn somebody down? Speaker 3:     04:48           I go, then your marketing isn't strong enough. Okay, you should have an unlimited amount of people that are coming here to rent these things if you do it right. You know? So streamlining the operations, get the marketing right, develop an actual real community. I mean we're talking with you guys with culture, you know, and culture is so important and it's, it's, it's so definitive how things are going to go and do that. And I'll be honest with you, that is the honest to God's truth, man, with that whole entire portfolio. Thirty five percent by the end of that year and I haven't looked back since then. So Speaker 2:     05:22           for those, you guys are listening, I know we're talking real estate. People are going, gosh, it has nothing to with the funnel. Understand everything is always marketing. You're always, always, always marketing. And it's one of the main reasons I wanted Jeremy on. We're going to talk about a whole bunch of different things, but I want to make sure you guys understand if you're listening here, everything is marketing. I love what you just said, Jeremy, as far as you shouldn't have to be catering to different things. You should literally, if your marketing works, you got enough customers. It's not okay. Speaker 3:     05:46           Exactly, exactly. And it. And here's the thing. It is all marketing, right? And if you want to get into what you guys do, there's no reason why anybody in any industry at this point is not creating their content, putting it out there, driving the traffic, capturing the information and then remarketing to them so those people and then also taking the previous and current clients and remarketing to them through other means as well to get the referrals and all that stuff up. I don't care what industry you're in. Right? And that is kind of what's been really neat over the last three to four years of me jumping into marketing, into management and now I'm in manufacturing with grizzly over there and now we're launching this national event tour thing too, is that you start to find a lot of synergy between industries, between business and, and, and I tell you what man, and you probably will agree with me on this, almost everybody that you talk to when you start getting into things and you come at it with a very simplified way of how we can fix this as well. Speaker 3:     06:44           You don't understand this industry is different. I don't know. This industry is different and I'm like, actually no, they're not. They're all people. Okay. That is the main variable with all of them. They're all the same. So, and you know what I mean, they have different minor differences and whatnot, but everybody always feels like there is this unique. And it's like, no, come on, I'm sorry. It's not, you know. So I've, I'm trying to get further down my goal of eventually becoming the next. Marcus limonus were being all over the place is my emo. Right? Right now I'm too right now too small and everybody I know that like as cash, it's like, dude, you're an idiot. What are you like, you're all over the place. I'm like, you're right. I am. How old am I going to learn all this stuff? You know, I going to get to a point where I could walk into any company and be able to put together a formulation to fix them, you know, and eventually then it get so good at it that I can walk in and get equity out of it too, you know what I mean? Speaker 3:     07:39           And all that. Which is basically what I just did with grizzly. So you know, that's it man. You, you, you, you can watch all the youtube videos on the planet on how to change your brakes. Okay. I assure you when you go out there to actually try to change your brakes, it is a whole nother ballgame. Right? So that's the only way you learn. You got to do it, you know. So. Speaker 2:     07:59           Oh Man, I hope you guys are listening to just writing a ton of notes. I mean, Jeremy's dropping value bombs like crazy here. Again, just to restate real fast, I want to make you guys all understand because if we just said it real quick and that is understand, everyone's always going to say that my industry is different. You are in the people business no matter what business you are in, you are in the people business and focus on people, people, people always. And then the other thing I just love is the fact that you've. You learned by doing so, get off your butt. Go out there and work. Next one I'm going to dive into here. We're going to go real faster and that is grizzly targets. Fascinating business. Dude. You've got equity in this business, so tell people what Grizzly grizzly targets is. Speaker 3:     08:36           Okay, so grizzly targets makes a lot of steel reactive targets. You shoot them, they bounced down and pop back up there. They range anywhere from like 100 bucks a pop. We've got a couple of systems that are $2,500. We sell two military installations, endusers professional rangers. Uh, it's a lot of BDB grizzly targets. I started there with two other guys seven ago out of a guy's garage. I came up with the knit and marketing guy, right? Came up with the name this day and the other thing, all that about 15 months ago, the sole principle in that was like, I think I'm going to go try some other stuff out. I was like, no bro, like, come on man. No. So I was like, give it to me. And he goes, what? I go give it to me. And he goes, what do you go? Give me the business. Speaker 3:     09:16           He goes, so you can do one with it. And I was like, what do you mean? So I can do what I want to do, you know? So we came up with a really, really, really great deal. Went out, found some investment partners, reopened the door and I have been on a terror to take that. And of course it's 12 months from a company that not a lot of people have heard about. Small company to an industry icon. And I got to tell you a like we are well, well, well on our way, I've got the whole product lineup is all fixed. We have literally have the best products in the industry. There are some of the most expensive products in the industry too. But when you're dealing with things like that that are functional and let's face it, like people are shooting at them, I want the best stuff. Speaker 3:     09:59           Okay. So we got the product line all lined up. We've been doing a ton of. I mean honestly straight up just ripping off daily Vee, right? A lot of day in the life video. I do that with all the clients now, right? And they're like, well can you explain that? I'm like, go watch daily Vee. That's it right now when we do it with, when we do it, we make it a little bit more polished because I'm not trying to crank five of them out in a day like that. Maniac is right. So if there's a little bit more music in the b roll is better and this a little bit more set. But we started doing a lot of that, that really caught a lot of people's attention, um, and you know, by doing all of that and then taking that drops on gunner event and merging that in with grizzly has the lifestyle side of the whole thing. Speaker 3:     10:44           I've really, I mean, and we're getting ready to. We're getting ready to grab a possibly merge with something else here coming up. I can't talk about it, but that's another seven figure business that is going to only further this whole thing. And uh, yeah man. Well I'll be honest, my goal was within six months to do all of this. Okay. That was bat shit. Crazy possible to do all of that six months. Right? So it's looking like by the time it's all said and done, we'll be on tour for drops on Grizzly with the drop zone gunner event will be on tour by the end of this year. Um, I just got back from a giant conference. Nobody in those boots is not hurting us at this point. So. And big boots. So I'm talking about boots that are like, you know, 10,000 square feet maybe with offices and I'm like those giant trade shows, right? So it's going to be about 18 months, man, where I've taken them from a company that nobody's heard of and turned it into an industry juggernaut and I tell you what, the formula that I created for this to do this can be applied to almost any other industry too. So you know, once we're done with this, we're going to put people on the hook here and hang on because I want to keep that little bait Speaker 2:     11:54           out there. That's the hook. You guys, this people are listening. They don't know what drop the gun drop zone gunner is and you've got to get the backstory here because drops on. Gunner hardly know what it is. Explain to me, but I can. I think this is where people have to understand is this is what is so cool about when you get involved in marketing and you really get it and you understand it, opportunities present themselves. Here you've got this crazy business where you've got these grizzly targets and all of a sudden it segways and leads into what really the byproduct of grizzlies actually and become a bigger business possibly think grizzly targeted. So tell people what is drop zone gunner. Speaker 3:     12:29           So drops on gunner was an insane idea I had about three years ago to essentially combine tough mudder with Spartan, with American Ninja Warrior, and then throw a bunch of pistols, shotguns and ars in the mix. Okay? And it was, it was crazy. It was, um, I learned on that first one, two and a half years ago that if you are going after national fame, you better be ready for national humiliation because works. One that I put on two and a half years ago was, dude, it bombed, it bombed. It was a sticker. It was an egg. Okay. And I tell you what though, a couple of a couple of really influential people in the industry flew down to check it out. And they said, you know, Jeremy, they said, everybody's always talked about doing something like this. And he goes, holy, holy cow. He goes, you're crazy enough, you actually did it, and I go, yeah, I go and look, it's working now. Speaker 3:     13:19           A lot of people said, boy, that was a disaster. I bet you're never going to do the good thing that's done it, but you're never going to do that again. And I go, what are you talking about? I go, did you have any idea how much I just learned from that, like I logistically cracked the code on how to combine those two worlds in a safe monitored way that anyone can compete on. So I've taken the OCR world obstacle course racing world and then the shooting competition world, the gun industry and merge the two together in this act of fun medium that nobody's done before. Right. And, and I will say I'm very proud of that because you know, the, the word entrepreneur gets used a lot these days. I think a lot of us are small business people. We're not the entrepreneur that's trying to put something together that's never really been done, you know, which is kind of what that word used to mean a lot more. Speaker 3:     14:07           That is something that actually, I mean, it was crazy as shit man. So I did it. It was awful on the first one, um, we couldn't even build most of the obstacles. The obstacles were, a lot of them were supposed to be built like 10 feet tall and 20 feet wide. They all came in and reverse why 20 feet tall guys flying over these things, like they're all going to. Everyone's going to get hurt. I mean it was, it was bad dude. Right? So it's. But we got through it. I put on another one once we figured out that we're doing this grizzly thing, I'm like, cool, now I can merge this right in with grizzly. Right? Because I think every company needs a signature event that is outside of your facility. I mean you guys know, you know, you need that signature event that's outside of your facility that will bring everyone in your industry together that you can put your name on and you can control. Speaker 3:     14:56           Right? So that was essentially the initial event for startup street because I always wanted to have the craziest and I've toned it down a lot over the years significantly. But I'm like, no, we're going to be the craziest part getting group over. Like I found out that you can be too crazy. People won't call you. Okay. So that was supposed to be for that. So I was like, who, we can merge this in with grizzly now. And we put on another one. I got it all sponsored up. I mean it was uh, it was about $150,000 event that we put together. Okay. And I mean hundreds and hundreds of people were running it. A card, Owen's wife Elena, she's on team grizzly. She ran it. She was like, Jeremy, you are the craziest sop I have ever seen in my life. She goes, what is this? This was awesome. Speaker 3:     15:42           And I was like, I don't even, I don't even know what this says at this point. I'm like watching this machine function, right? And I'm just like, whoa. Like how did we do this? So, so we did it in January, perfected the concept, just got back from that trade show a month ago, walked out of there, we needed about a quarter of a mil and sponsorships to put this national tour together, um, walked out with half of that ready and delivered a more than half of it promised, but has, we all know you can't count it until it's, the check is cleared and you took the money out, right? So, so we got enough money to get that going. And basically what we do now is I've built something where the tour is going to take place and go around the country and what we're doing is we're going to different firearms manufacturers, hometowns, and essentially what I'm doing is I'm bringing Lollapalooza to the gun industry and I'll be honest, I think that that is really unique and that's really different because you have an industry that has a lot of challenges obviously. Speaker 3:     16:41           Right? And then this always takes some crazy guy from the outside in every industry to come in with something and push it through. And I got to tell you, man, if you saw the reactions of everybody in January, which I've never seen that many happy people in my life, right? So, so we're doing a national tour and that's how we have a setup is where we go to the home towns of these major manufacturers and essentially throw this party in their backyard and they love this because. And there's something to that I don't think a lot of people realize when they're putting events together. A lot of people focus with events on how can I do this to bring my company the most value, right? It's all about me. How do I get the most value out of all of this? When in reality, for most of us it's about, it should be about how do I put an event together that gives the sponsors the most value, more so than the other events in this industry. Speaker 3:     17:33           Because if you don't have the sponsors, you don't have an event, right? So if you start off with that in mind, you end up with something that you can get sponsored, which is a hell of a lot better than having a really cool idea that no company wants to write a check for and it's dead on arrival. Right? So, so that's it. All of the company stuff is all staged. It's all getting used. We got backpack companies and people are running through the trails with their backpacks on, right. The gun companies sponsoring all the guns are getting used. Um, I mean, you name it, if it's a sponsorship item, it's getting used in it, which is just the most incredible user content. Right? So we'll see. Man, it's, it's, it's pretty far fetched. But uh, you know, I mean, I don't see why it's not gonna work at this point. I'm just going to keep hammering at it until it does. Anyway. So Speaker 2:     18:21           dude, that's just so awesome. Again, you guys are listening. I hope you're taking massive notes. I mean, it's, you're listening to a guy who's out there just taking massive, massive action. And I love journey. I just totally transparent. You know what? Sometimes it just flops, it just doesn't work. But it's what you learned from that flop. Speaker 3:     18:37           Yes, yes. And almost. And there's a rule of thumb generally in most media companies when somebody's putting on an event, don't sponsor the first one, right? The first one is the learning experience, you know, and, and I gotta tell you it like most people never even make it to the first one. Okay. And then they make it and they're like, Oh God, that was awful. We shouldn't do that again. And it's like, no, this is the time when you have to be so stupid and competitive that you're like, no, we're doing it again against all freaking advice whatsoever. Right. He threw up, we threw a party when I was like 17 or 18 and we called it. It was a keg party. We have bands come out and all that. And we called it. The freaks come out at night. And I was, the cops were called. I mean, for all intensive purposes, it was a disaster. Right? And I was the only one that was like, no, it's a good start. And everyone's like, no, never. Again. How about that Jeremy? So I, you know, I, I'm more than willing to fail a little bit and, and embarrassing myself a little bit for the good of everything else in the end because it is, it's the only way you get there and somebody has to be the one willing to risk the humiliation. You know, what risk it. You get all the freaking praise afterwards. If it works too though. So Speaker 2:     19:52           and you've been getting again, you've been crushing it. It is so cool to see the different things your success. Again, I love the fact that you're in multiple industries and yet you're finding ways of bringing them together and you're using the same skill set that you've learned and I think I hope people understand how important learning the skills that you've got to learn the fundamentals. The fundamentals are the most important part in business. I've, you know, you're joking around about this whole idea as far as entrepreneurial right now it's kind of a popular word. I, I remember when I first got started as an entrepreneur basically meant that you couldn't get a job anywhere else. That's how most people looked at me, like, oh, so you can't make it, so that's what you're calling her. Speaker 3:     20:26           So there's a lot of, there's a lot of truth to that. Speaker 2:     20:31           I think there's these days. I, I love just your, your sticktuitiveness. I mean, no matter what, you just keep going. And that's the fight that I hold. People who are listening, you understand the only people that are successful, they keep fighting through all the losses. So as we kind of get close to wrapping things up, Jeremy, what other words of advice would you have for our listeners? Speaker 3:     20:50           Um, I, I don't know, but thinking about what you were just saying, I think that, you know, not so much a word of advice. Maybe Elon Musk is sleeping in his factory right now. Okay. They're so backed up. He is sleeping at the factory. Okay. Now one guy did bring up a good point. He said, well, doesn't he have like five kids or something you think that might have something to do with it? But I mean, so not really. You know, that's not a word of advice, but if you take that and you look at that guy's level of success in what he's still willing to do to get those preorders taken care of for that new Tesla model or whatever that is, that is everything you know, and, and, and there's a lot of smash talk going on out there right now against old hustle. Speaker 3:     21:32           Hustle is, you know, hustles overrated and all that. And I always say that it's very interesting that once that whole hustle culture came to fruition was about two to three years ago and most of the time in business it takes about two to three years to burn somebody out, right? So now we're seeing this, this whole movement came and it's a few years later now, all these people were like, oh, that's all overrated. Like, no, dude, you got your ass kicked. Okay, you couldn't hang man. You know, so that's it, man. It's, it's the, everything is the drive. You cannot work your competition. You can eventually hammer that square peg into that round hole if you hit it hard enough. And I'm not trying to, you know, undermine strategy or work smarter, all of that. These all have to happen. But that is the, that is something man, that everybody's got to take through it a to take from it because everybody who turns into a really, really, really, really big name has that. Speaker 3:     22:27           I love it. It's the one common factor. So I have to agree. Well, tell me, people are going to be dying to reach out to you. What's the best way to connect with you? I would say just go, just go hop on the drop zone gunner page on facebook or go check out the grizzly pages. The one that's most pop in these days. That's where most of the efforts going into a grizzly targets on facebook. There is a lot. I do a lot of contacts and a lot of interactive stuff. We have a Friday night faceoff video series that we're doing now where people can bet and gamble on Monday mornings on who's going to win between a and B and under what time? And on Friday night, like Friday night fights at 9:00 at airs and whoever gets closest and picked the correct winner wins xY, , z. So definitely check that out. It's a, it's a lot of fun. So there, you know, I always love talking to you. It's so great having you on the show. Thank God. I know you've got a million things going on and today wasn't the most productive, as you've mentioned earlier. So, uh, I appreciate you suck. You saved by day. Okay. I haven't smiled all day and I'm so happy. Speaker 3:     23:32           Uh, Jerry, always a pleasure. We'll talk soon. Awesome man. Thank you. Speaker 4:     23:36           No, one of the things that means a ton to me is the personal reviews that you guys leave on itunes. You wouldn't mind going out, rate the show, let me know how I'm doing. Just go to Itunes, click on the episode and rate and leave a comment. I read all the comments. I appreciate all the stars and everything differently already left for me. Again, I really appreciate it and it's my way of finding out how I'm doing. So if you don't mind, I'd really appreciate it. And I again, thank you so much for all you guys do. Have a great day.

Hile DTR fans! Our Ka-Tet like Roland's is spread across many whens and wheres but the palaver must continue. So Jeremy sits down to catch up on all the latest Stephen King news. Including the new Dark Tower posters and TV spots, merchandise, a new Firestarter adaptation is on its way and Netflix's Gerald's Game has wrapped up filming. Jeremy is not alone as he has drawn a fellow Tower Junkie to join in on the palaver, die hard Stephen King fan Cabal Corner's own Jeremy Slaygoth. Two Tower Junkies from different eras hunker down to palaver about their history with the Tower, the movie and the future. So grab some popkins and gather around your fire and tune the dial to Dark Tower Radio. 

After interviewing Fred Ewanuick, Jeremy and Jules had some questions regarding Patterson's Wager. So Jeremy invited Corbin on to talk about his movie. We delve into the movie, but also comic books, Sasquatch and Star Wars.

Anybody, selling anything, should be studying the craft of selling because if you don't understand how to sell in person, you'll never be able to sell online! That's why I brought Butch Bellah on the podcast to show us his secrets for selling. I even put him on the spot and force him to sell me something during the podcast itself! Regardless of what type of business you run, you need to understand the fundamentals of selling. Butch nails it, so listen in and leave a review! Check it out, share it, leave us a review and let me know what you think! Resources Mentioned http://www.ButchBellah.com - Butch's main website http://www.ButchBellah.com/salesfunnelmastery/ - 10 Essential Habits Of Sales SuperStars (free download) Want To Work With Me? Visit http://www.JeremyReeves.com or email me at Jeremy@JeremyReeves.com Enjoy! Transcript Hey guys this is Jeremy Reeves here back with another episode of the sales funnel mastery podcast and today, I have a pretty special guest on the line today. His name is Butch Bellah and Butch you are going to have to tell me if I got that right. Butch Bellah: No, you got it exactly right, that’s excellent. Yeah. Jeremy Reeves: Perfect. So, this is Butch Bellah and he is a speaker, he is a sales trainer, he is an author of couple of different books. In fact, he actually just launched one last week that I’m sure he will tell you about which is actually going to be going on my reading list and he is on a lot of different things that he will talk about, pretty impressive resume he has got actually. He has been featured in the Entrepreneur magazine, The Boston Globe, Fox News, NBC, and a whole bunch of CBS, and a whole bunch of other ones. He is, like I said, he is an author of two different books. He actually, at the age of 35, he acquired a controlling interest in his first company which he helps take from, what was it, $35 million to, what was the, I think it was around $250? Butch Bellah: Almost a quarter of a billion in sales when we ended up buying it. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. So that’s pretty impressive. So instead of me talking about you, you know, tell our audience a little bit about yourself and some of the cool things you have been doing. Butch Bellah: Well, as you said, I’m a speaker, sales trainer, and an author. I have spent my entire life in sales. I will be 50 actually next week and my first sales job was, I was 10 years old selling grit newspapers. Jeremy Reeves: That’s nice. Butch Bellah: That was all I ever known. I was blessed to find my 152 at a very young age. I was always wanting to get out and, I mean, I was the kid that when he get a comic book, you know, a lot of kids, you know look back there for the decoder ring. I always looked back there for the things you could sell and it would just, it blew my mind that I could buy grit newspaper for 50 cents a copy and sell it for a dollar and I got to keep the other 50 cents. That was my introduction into the world of sales and was blessed to get hired by a gentleman who is still my mentor to this day at 21 years old into the wholesale distribution business, and as you said, just had a rocket ship right up the career path from, literally I had to get promoted twice before I could see the bottom rung of the ladder, and then I was division sales manager and then vice president of sales and then acquired the company with the business partner. Jeremy Reeves: Cool. Butch Bellah: I spent 10 years doing standup comedy professionally across the nation which was great public speaking training but it was the best sales training that I had ever had and I did not know it at the time. Jeremy was one of those things that as the years past, I went back and that’s all men this was, you know, what great sales training this was and from scripting to voice inflection to you know just ways to set up and deliver a punch line and it was so much like asking for a sale, so it was a lot of fun. So it has been a great ride and as you said, I just published my second book, Sales Management For Dummies, came out last week, you can get it at my website and so forth, that is really, really exciting, it was very flattering to be asked by Wiley & Sons to be on the for dummies lan and Zig Ziglar wrote Success for Dummies, Tom Hopkins wrote Selling for Dummies, and Butch Bellah wrote Sales Management for Dummies and I tell everybody it’s kind of like the old Sesame Street song, “One of these things belong here.” You know.. Jeremy Reeves: That’s funny. Yeah, it’s kind of interesting. You know, as you were talking about how you were a stand-up comedian and the kind of looking back, you know I have noticed that a lot of the biggest lessons that I have ever learned in life or be on a business, you know personally or on a business, kind of come in retrospect, you know, you don’t really notice them at the time but then you looked back and it’s like, “Oh yeah, that’s what happened, so it’s interesting you said that. You know, one of my audience basically, you know the average person listening to this has, you know, they have a business, they have either offline or online, a lot of times they are doing both things. It is primarily online business owners that I have write either from business. Butch Bellah: Sure. Jeremy Reeves: So, and one of the things that I like to talk about that a lot of people miss you know when they’re building sales funnels and you know building all these marketing campaigns is, you know when it comes down to it, what you’re doing is selling. You know, a lot of people tried to get off fancy and you know kind of only think of all they need a landing page and they need an autoresponder sequence and all that kind of stuff, but what you are really doing is just a selling process. But instead of doing it in person where you have a half hour or 45 minutes or whatever it is to sell the person on whatever you’re selling them, you do it overtime through emails and through a sales page and that kind of thing. So let’s talk about some of the -- I guess you know, do you have like a specific kind of formula you used or you know, if you were put in front of somebody and they say, “Butch, you know sell me on whatever, sell me this car or sell me this house, whatever it is. Do you have kind of like, either written down or just kind of internal formula that you used to take them from the point where you are starting to talk about it to the point that you are closing them? Butch Bellah: Sure, and it is all what we have learned our whole life but we get away from and that is asking questions and, I don’t know why this was reminded of the story I have not heard or told this story in probably 30 years, but I heard Zig Ziglar speak one time and he said, he checked into a hotel and his name was on the marquee and this was back when Zig was in his hay day probably the mid 80s and he checked into a hotel late and the front desk clerk says, “You’re the great Zig Ziglar, the greatest salesman that ever lived” and Zig said, “Well, you know, who am I to argue with everybody else” and the guy said, “Sell me something Zig.” Zig said, “Now, you look, I just want to go to my room” you know I just checked in. This is back in the days where you smoke everywhere and there was an ashtray on the check-in counter at the hotel. The guy said, “Sell me that ashtray” and Zig said, “Look, I just want to get” the guy said, “Oh, come on, I want to tell everybody I got sold something by the greatest seller around the world” and Zig said, “Well, why would you want that ashtray ?” and the guy said, “Well, because I smoke and it’s a nice ashtray” and Zig said, “Where would you put it?” and he said, “Well, it would look good in my den, I could put it right on my living room table” and Zig said, “Well, you know, what would you give for something like that?” and the guy said, “$10” and Zig said, “Sold.” Jeremy Reeves: (Laughing). Butch Bellah: So that illustrates Jeremy what we all have to do. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. Butch Bellah: Is we have to ask questions and here is the thing that I tell everybody. We get so hung up with doing needs analysis. We forget that people don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want. Jeremy Reeves: Yep. Butch Bellah: So are you taking that need and converting it to get a want. In May 2009, I had triple bypass heart surgery at 43 years old. Now, I got lucky, I caught it before it caught me. So, I didn’t have a heart attack. If you would have asked me on May 18, 2009, “Butch, how would you like triple bypass open heart surgery, we have got it on sale.” I said, “Yeah, but I want it, I don’t need it and I cannot afford it.” That is the stuff we hear every day, but on May 19th, when they showed me I had a 70-80 and a 90% blockage, I changed my tone, I’m all in. Now, I want it. I don’t care what it costs and I want an expert doing it. Now, here is my question to you and your listeners. What changed? My heart didn’t change. I need it if we want to focus on needs. I needed that heart surgery probably 6 months or year before that. My heart didn’t get worse, my findings just didn’t get better. The only thing that changed was the information available to me, and they converted a need to a want by showing me the blockage and that’s what people on land, off land, up land, down land, wherever your business is, you’ve got to find the blockage for your customers. You have customers out there or perspective customers. I don’t care what you sell. Their business isn’t as bad as shaped as my heart was, they just don’t know it. So, in asking these questions and then these funnels you developed, you’ve got to take that need to a want and show them the blockage and once they find that you are the expert, they will gladly pay whatever it takes to solve their problem. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, that is really a good point and one of the best things I have ever kind of figured out in my own business and selling either B to B or B to C, more B to B specifically for this one, but it is really not about all you can increase 30% or whatever it is. If you can show people what they are losing right now, that is usually you know, if they are already making, let’s just say, it’s a million dollars and you say, my projection is we can increase 25% this year. They just think of kind of 25% not the fact that they are losing $250,000 or $20,000 a month right now which means that after every week that they make a decision they just lost an extra $5,000 and then another $5,000 and another $5,000. That is kind of one lesson that I completely agree on that. Butch Bellah: Yeah, and it was proven a long ago. People are more motivated by the fear of loss and the desire of gain for some reason, most people are. You know, good sales people always want that desire of gain but if you really want to find what motivates somebody or what their internal motivation is, see if it is a fear of loss or a desire to gain. And for most people, it is a fear of loss. The health scare, you know, for me that was a fear of loss of life. That kicked me into gear. So, you are exactly right, most people will take more action on what they are losing than what they potentially could gain. Jeremy Reeves: Absolutely. So, with that and I think how you brought up the fact that it is just about questions and actually one of my neighbors here where I lived we were talking about that and he said the exact same thing. He sells and just to show everybody that this -- it doesn’t matter what you’re selling, it’s still the exact same thing. He sells multi-million dollar deals for like a health, for hospitals and stuff like that. They come in and they you know they have vendors that help the hospital save money, and he is one of their main salesman and he helps sell like multi-million dollar deals and he said it just comes down asking questions, finding their pain points and then showing them that you’re the best solution for the big thing that’s really hurting them and getting them to that one kind of place, you know in their mind. Butch Bellah: People want an expert Jeremy. They want an expert to help them figure out and find out how to get to where they want to get to. We all know that people, you know, when we do the “needs analysis” we are finding that gap of where they are and where they want to go. Well, guess what, you can point that out a million times but until they find out that you’re the person that can take them by the hand and lead them across that 1224 they are not going to take action. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, exactly. So with that, you know one of the things that I have heard and I have my own opinions, I would like to hear yours on it and I have a feeling what is going to be but you know, I have always heard you know all people are you know “I’m just not a good salesman, I wasn’t born that way and that that kind of thing.” Yeah, so what are your thoughts. Do you think people are, do you think it’s like, is there a salesman gene or is it a learned skill? Butch Bellah: Every bit of it is a learned skill, but the problem is, is that we are not teaching it to people, and I have published a post on LinkedIn recently that you know the problem with the sales profession today is that people think, “Well I can’t get any other job. I guess I will just go be salesman.” Really?. You know, I cannot just go put on white coat and start pulling teeth , I go to jail. In most States, you have to be licensed to cut hair, yet you can just grab a box of business card and say, “Padda, I’m a salesman.” But you may not be a professional salesman and everything that we do is a learned skill. The problem is most people are not trained and they don’t take the time to learn it. The great thing about sales is that whether it is the initial process, the asking for the sale or whatever, at any given time you can get better at all of it and even the greatest sales people continue to learn, they continue to grow but to answer to your question, again, parking back to Zig Zigler, he was just an extremely influential person in my life and he said that you know, he would never opened up the newspaper and saw where Mr. and Mrs. Smith gave birth to a 8-pound, 9-ounce salesman. Everything we do is a learned skill but are you going to take time to learn it, that is the question. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, okay, definitely and I 100% agree with that too. It is definitely something I know I definitely did not know how to sell in my early years and it is a very much a learned skill. Hey, actually, while you are talking, I actually got an idea, would you be up for kind of doing, I think it would be a really cool experience for everybody listening. Would you be up for doing a little bit of selling right now, we will just kind of pick something at random and then you can sell me on it? Butch Bellah: Sure. Jeremy Reeves: Alright, nice. Do you want to pick it? I have nothing in mind right now. Butch Bellah: You tell me. You pick. Jeremy Reeves: Okay. Just for all the listeners, this is not scripted, whatsoever. I just thought it right? Butch Bellah: Yeah. I just broke out a cold sweat. (Laughing). Jeremy Reeves: Let us say, having a new computer? Butch Bellah: Okay. So let me ask you Jeremy, how do you use your computer today? Jeremy Reeves: I actually have two computers, I have a desktop computer that I am on right now and I use it for my business. I write most of the day and do planning strategy, planning that kind of stuff for my clients and then I also have a standing desk and I use that for part of the day and typically my desktop computer is used for writing and then my stand up desk is used for more of the planning kind of stuff. Butch Bellah: Now, the computer you are looking at here today would it replace one of these or would it be an addition to what you have already got? Jeremy Reeves: I would say it would definitely replace one of them. Butch Bellah: Now which one? Jeremy Reeves: My standing desk probably because it is starting to get a little bit slow and I am kind of in that stage where I -- it has been getting slow and I know I have kind of needed a new one for a while and it is just laziness basically for you know, I have not gotten to look for another one. Butch Bellah: So tell me what you are going to use it for, because it sounds like it is a very important integral of your business What are you expecting this computer to do? What do you need it for? Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, for me, you know, because I could just use the one computer but it is more for just kind of, you know health, making sure I stand up and I am not just sitting for 10 hours a day and that kind of stuff, you know, kind of going up and down moving, because even when I stand a lot of times, I sit there and I will do squats or you know like kind of just move my feet around and get some blood flowing. Butch Bellah: So now I know that you write and you do podcast would you be doing that sort of production on this computer? Do you need it to perform in that manner? Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah, so I kind of split up my tasks so that the one that I sit on is typically mostly for writing and then the standing desk I use that is for more of the things, I just get in the zone when I write so I like to have I have listened to like a certain music thing, kind of like classical music and that kind of thing and the standing one is more for after lunch, I kind of split up my day, the first half is more really, really intense writing and then the second half you know, either way before or after lunch then I kind of switch into more of like the planning mode that kind of thing, you know delegation to employees that kind of stuff where it is not -- I do not need quite as much you know brain power. Butch Bellah: Now, you said that your current one is getting slow, can you elaborate on that, tell me what is that -- does that slow you down in your business? Does it cause problems in your broadcast of your podcast? Tell me how is that affecting your business. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. So it is more of -- since it started to get slow, and a lot of times like you know I turned it on and it is not coming on and there is errors, because it is like 4 years old, which for me is really long because I use the use the computer so heavy. I have noticed that I stopped using it as much because it is hurting my productivity because I will stand there for 20 minutes trying to get it to work. Butch Bellah: I hate to butt in, but when you say you stopped using it, does that mean you go back to the sit-down desk that you just said you did not need to be at? Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. Butch Bellah: Oh, wow. Okay, alright. So go ahead. Jeremy Reeves: The kind of the big thing is it is making me sit way more and it is when I do try to stand up I am losing productivity because I am spending 15, 20, 25 minutes just trying to like get to work right and not freezing, you know that kind of thing. It is a lot slower than my desktop computer because it is a little bit older one. So it’s kind of hurt my productivity there. Butch Bellah: Sure. Let me ask you a question because I know you do a podcast that a lot of people listen to. Who is again, because I love podcast, I have got tons of them on my phone. Who is the biggest name you have had or ever interviewed? The interview you are most proud of? Jeremy Reeves: Definitely has to be Butch Bellah. Butch Bellah: Oh, wow! Yeah, and who would not be proud of that. But now let me, and I just want to ask you this, I am not trying to scare you, because obviously the computer you have got is sounds like your getting by, you want to get better, but let me just ask you this question. Let us say you are in the middle of that interview and this computer crashes. What happens? Jeremy Reeves: That would be bad. It would be bad in several cases because even if it is not an interview with somebody else, I have actually had it happened to me where I actually was writing on that computer which I do not do all the time but it was at this time and it froze and I lost probably even an hour of work but you know, more typical things you know if I was doing a podcast or something like that. In fact, actually, I usually used to do podcast and I actually just realized now that I switched to the sitting one because I was afraid of that happening because it actually did happen probably about 6 months ago. I was on an interview, I think I was making my own and I got in about half hour and then it just froze and you know, so I lost that half hour and to be even worse if someone else is on the line because that not only do I lose the half hour then we have to redo it plus it makes me look like a moron. Butch Bellah: Say, you sound like me, I am a lot of times more concerned about putting the other person out than me and it sounds like if you have a guest on the line with a podcast interview you crushed your time and theirs too. Is that safe to say? Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, definitely. Butch Bellah: Well, now let me show you what I have got because based on what you have told me, we have got this model right here it is 47 gigabytes of memory. It has got all the built in features that you need for your podcasting and so forth, in fact, it is one that a lot of podcasters use. Now, it is normally $1,400, it is on for $999 right now, but here is the great part about it, it comes with a 12-month warranty. Watch this, turn this thing on, that bad boy fires right up. Now how much faster is that than the one you have got? Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, mine would still be loading and not even close to being done. Butch Bellah: Now, and here is the thing, you figure a few minutes here, a few minutes there. Here is the great thing about time, time is -- there is a paradox for time. We have got more than we think and less than we believe. We waste a lot of time and you going to wonder how much time are you wasting waiting on this piece of equipment that you want to use it. So if you look at this model, $999 you can take this thing home today. The great part about it is it some out of the box model, meaning that you take it out plug it in, it’s going to work for you. I can box this thing up for you and you can actually take it with you today. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, 2201 basically be sold there. In fact, I’m actually -- you actually kind of did sell me because, that was all true too. Butch Bellah: But here is the thing that we did and one thing I want to point out for the listeners because we really, we honestly did not plan that, but I let you talk and you found your own pain point, because you talked about how slow it was, you talked about your need to stand up and here is the thing, I am not selling a computer. I am selling a solution. My computer just allowed you to save time and to stand up, it’s better for your health. It has absolutely nothing to do with that piece of hardware that is in that box and we get so many times I could have bored you with all the gory details about, you know, this gig, that gig, this monitor, this plugs, you didn’t care about that. Does it turn on fast and cannot stand up. Focus on what is important to the customer and again this is the all features versus benefits. You know, people buy it for what it does for them. You bought that computer because it solved a problem you had and all I wanted to do was I wanted to let you tell me in as much gory detail as possible how bad that problem was and the more you talked, the worse that problem got. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, the more I put myself down in the rabbit hole. Butch Bellah: And here is the thing about it, that’s not unlike what happens every day. You go to any of the big box retailers that sell computer s and all they want to do is tell you about the latest greatest model and what all it will do, yet they have not asked what do you want it to do for you. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, you know, and we could have even got into soft like, you know, asking like what I charge per hour, and you know, it’s like if you charge $300 an hour just how many hours do you think your losing a week. I do not know, maybe you know, an hour a week. Butch Bellah: But here is the other thing to point out is when I asked you what would happen if that crashed during an interview, now I knew what would happen but it’s much more powerful for you to say “Oh, it would be horrible” than for me to say, “Boy, it sure would be bad if it crashed during an interview, wouldn’t it? That has one meaning yet when it comes out of your mouth, it has a total other meaning and I trained B to B sales people all the time and here is the great thing about this and now you are going to get me to get off on a tangent a little bit. If you know something about a competitor, if you know of a weakness they have and we’ll just say that they have -- let’s say that they have, you know, trouble meeting delivery dates as far as production or something like that. If you know that about ABC Company and you are calling on somebody that is doing business with ABC Company, do not walk in and say, “I bet you are having trouble with delivery dates” because the first thing they are going to do is they are going to say, “No we are fine” because they do not want to look like an idiot because they are doing businesses with the ABC Company and you know they are having problems. The way to handle that is to say, “So, you are doing business with ABC Company, they are a very reputable company, tell me how is your delivery process, how is that working for you?” Because then they are going to say, “Oh, I am glad you brought that up, because let me tell know what they did last week.” Now, it is so much more powerful when they hear it from themselves yet you just as you said led them down that rabbit hole with the right question. Jeremy Reeves: Absolutely and like you said, in most cases you really don’t have to go into the details all that much you know it’s kind of just you let them get them to the place where they know they are going to buy and then, for example, I have a friend who, he is just like an electronic geek, so he would be the one that says, how many rams, and how of this, and how many that, but then you just kind of go in like question and answer mode but they have already sold themselves on getting it, it’s just picking up the specific one. Butch Bellah: And here is the other thing too is I knew when to hush, I knew when you were sold we didn’t take that conversation any further. Once you get them sold, don’t talk yourself out of the sale. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, exactly. Butch Bellah: You know, we talked about doing a stand-up comedy and what I learned from it, I heard Jerry Seinfeld say one time that even for him and I think he is the one of the greatest that there is or ever was. He said at 45 minutes I think you are the funniest thing that I have ever heard. At an hour they are thinking is this guy ever going to shut up. So there is our fine line between getting them to that point and taking them too far. So once you get them to that point, go ahead and ask for the sale let us wrap this thing up and let you take it home today. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, and I have done that in the past, you know, I have been in the situation where I over sold like kept asking questions or kept talking when I should not then and I realized that after -- it’s a terrible feeling when you know that you had it and then you basically lost it. Butch Bellah: And you kicked yourself. Alright, I’m glad that you brought that up 2723 to get off on another tangent. Anytime you lose a sale, it’s your fault. Do not get in the habit of blaming the customers or the prospects because here is what I will tell you in 30 plus, 40 years of experience, if they will listen and they give you their attention and they don’t buy, it’s your fault. Now, you can say well they could not afford it well let me go back and point out to you that you should have qualified them in the beginning and found that if they can afford it you are not even going to take them through the process. Let’s shake hands and part friends. But if you get all the way through to asking for the sale, if you have done your job correctly, you should close everybody and here is the thing about it is nobody is going to close everybody that is why I said earlier that even the greatest are always practicing in getting better, so where did you missed it at and you just talked about you knew when you done it, alright. The great part about that is a professional sales person will go look themselves in the mirror and go, “Oh, I blew that one, okay here is what I should have done, here is where I messed it up at,” and you will learn from that and there is nothing wrong with that, that’s how we get better. We are lucky. We don’t have to go through what our heart surgeon, they don’t get to practice, you know, I don’t ever want people practicing on prospects but if you missed a sale, go back and analyze your own performance and say, “Where could I have done better.” Don’t get into the habit of it’s the government, it’s the economy, it’s my company’s advertising, it’s this, there are too many people in this space online, it’s this problem, it’s that, no guess what? It’s you and I hate to be that blunt, but it just means you need to analyze where you need to get better. Jeremy Reeves: Absolutely, 100% agree. So one question it kind of just came up was you know, thinking in terms of taking everything we have been talking about over the last half hour or so, and putting it into a kind of like a systematic process for you know, for doing it online, you know, is there -- and you can actually relate to this with speaking you know, if your end goal is selling you know, whatever it is, consulting package or product or whatever it is your selling at the end, is there kind of like, like a formula or kind of a path that you take to get people from the start, the speaking engagement to the end where you are selling them because in that case, basically, in any case where you cannot -- where it is not one to one selling, it could be a webinar or it can be whatever that is where you can ask the questions. How do you kind of take those selling skills that we have been talking about and kind of transfer that. Butch Bellah: The great Stephen Covey always said, “begin with the end in mind” and here is the thing that I see too many people is they begin with the beginning in mind and then they get to the end and they think they will figure it out when they get there. No, start where you want to end up and then backed your way up from there. So understand what result do you want to come from this webinar, the sales funnel, the speaking engagement or whatever. Now, I have a speaking engagement today, my goal at the end of it is going to be, to hopefully sell some books in the back of the room and so what I will do is in that speech, I will sprinkle in some things about the book and get peoples appetite whetted so that when I ask at the end, “hey guess what, the books are $26.99 you can get them today for $25 unless you want two then they are $50, you know I always start a joke in there or something like that. I always tell, “hey I have got very limited supply but if I ran out, I got another limited supply out the truck or something like that. Begin with the end in mind, where do you want to take them and then the thing is, is to take steps backward and make sure that you are leaving a trail for them to follow that you are dropping little nuggets along the way that as they take each one of them from the beginning of that funnel that there is a reason that you are -- every step should have a reason. There should be no wasted process. There should be no wasted steps in the sale and whether it is from the initial prospecting to qualifying or whatever, the whole thing starts at the other end and that is why they are asking for the sale obviously getting a yes. But I tell you this, the greatest thing a prospect or customer or potential customer can say is yes. The second best thing they can say is no, because now you have got something to work with. You don’t have this, let me think about it, all this cost just tell me no, because guess what, I can work with that, because when somebody tells you no, here is the greatest, if you don’t hear anything else I say here is the greatest no close in the world. So Jeremy why do you say that? And then 3225 list all one of those why did you say no because number one, I’m going to learn something about you but guess what, I’m going to learn something about me. I may learn exactly where in that process I screwed this deal up. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, as a quick aside, just to show everybody that that’s very, very true. I actually just did that this week actually. I had somebody and I send the proposal for one of my sales letter or sales funnel, they came back and said no, and I said, what is the reason, I’m just curious, and they told me and so I was then able to take that and overcome that objection and number one, I’m actually getting not that same project but a different project and then there is a $15,000 project so it was a good chunk of project and then the second part is I learned what was off in my sequence that I have for when I send proposals, and I noticed a couple of weak points in there so I can then go back and actually one of the things on my list this week is fixing that little weak point in there. So it’s definitely about kind of taking that and getting the feedback and making changes, even going back, if you are selling anything on the phone or even taking this online you can do surveys, you ask your audience why they didn’t buy, they have been on your list for 60 days or something. So hey, I’m just curious, why haven’t you purchased yet and obviously, you put a better language in that, I think it’s spot on. Butch Bellah: Here is the thing is that, let us just and we will take this a step further. Let us just ask Jeremy, why do you say that, and you say well, it’s just not the right time for me right now. Really, tell me more? I love that just really tell me more. There is nothing wrong with that. Now, because here is the thing, everybody says well I don’t want to make him mad, you don’t have a sale at that point, they have told you no. Don’t be afraid of that. So when you say, really why do you say that, well it’s you know, there is that at the other end and if it’s another spoke strain, really? Tell me more. Ask. We get to where we accept mediocrity. We accept something less than success too many times in this world and if you want something bad enough, find out what you did to find out how you could do it better and if they say “well, you know, what do you mean tell me more?” “Well, I always wanted to get better in what I do, and I really felt like this made a lot of sense for you to take ownership or it made a lot of sense for you to join this program or be in this master matter whatever the case may be and so I’m curious as to what part didn’t work for you. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, that’s brilliant. It’s something a lot of people just don’t do the leg work. Butch Bellah: I use an inbound software I know a lot of people are using Infusionsoft or anything, I use Act-On and I love it because I get lead scores for people at my website and actually if they ever signed up for anything, I can track them through my website and everything and there is a task where I will send an email to people, say “Hey, I noticed you have been at the website lately and you were reading a couple of articles on this, I want to send you my top 5 blog posts on referrals or whatever and if you like to have a 30-minute phone call and say if there is something I can help you with, here is a link to my calendar. You would be surprised I mean people could “is this automated?” “No, this is really me.” I picked out a few people every week and I go through it, I just wanted to stay in touch with people that are at my website because if they are taking their time to come to your place of business or they are taking their clam to come to your website or whatever the case may be. It’s worth it for you to take the time to spend with them and I’m going to give you little tip and while I’m thinking about it because, Jeremy, I will forget, my first book is called, The 10 Essential Habits of Sales Superstars, and if your listeners will go to butchbellah.com, you can get a free copy, you can download a free PDF copy, go to butchbellah.com/salesfunnelmastery and there is a special page there sales funnel mastery, yes you are going to put in your email address as you may all know but you get a free copy of that book but there is one thing that I tell everybody in there and it’s called the top 10 list and David Letterman made millions of dollars for the top 10 list and I always ask people when I’m training them or coaching them, who are your top 10 prospects, you should know that, because guess what, everyday of the week you should get up and go how do I move these relationships forward. If they are a top 10 prospect if they are truly a top 10 -- and I’m not talking about a wish list or some 3733 would like to hit that deal or I hope you talk to them. Now these are people you have established some sort of relationship with. If they are truly a top 10 prospect, they deserve your attention in how to move the relationship forward, a phone call, a personalized email, maybe a Google hangout chat, maybe a Skype call, however you can touch that person. If they are truly a top 10 prospect that’s for tomorrow’s paycheck is coming from, but here is the great part about it what you will find is when you start focusing on how do I move the relationship with number 5 forward, you are going to start pushing on number 4 and then 4 starts pushing on 3 and number one becomes a customer, it’s the old ferris wheel example, but in the book there is a link there and the thing that you can download it at my site of top 10 list, it’s a PDF and you can use your own or build your own whatever, yeah if you go to butchbellah.com/salesfunnelmastery they can get a copy of my first book. Jeremy Reeves: Sounds good and I will put that in the show notes for everybody who wants to read. I know you have to run off and you are actually going to your speaking engagement, so let’s not 3843 fantastic episode and for anybody, if you are doing your own sales funnels or even if you are selling I mean anything at any manner whatsoever, I definitely recommend both of Butch’s books, go to that URL and then also pick up his new book. So Butch, we are kind of just talking about that but as kind of a final reminder, tell everybody where to go to find out more about you and that kind of thing. Butch Bellah: Sure, you can go to butchbellah.com over 400 blog posts there available free, video blogs, you can sign up for my weekly E-zine newsletter, you can order my Sales Management for Dummies which is the new book, you can order it direct from the website there, I would be happy to sign it for you, just click on store. I have also got a new DVD out called the Game of Sales and that is one that I’m really, really proud of and it’s about a 40-minute DVD and it goes through what I called game, goals, attitude, motivation, and education and that is the cornerstone on which every successful salesperson is built and when I always hear “she has got game or he has owned his game” and I found that that is what it stands for its goals, attitude, motivation and education, you could pick that up there. I would love to hear from you, you can drop me an email at butchbellah.com I’m on a link down you can find me on tweeter at salespowertips. Heck, I’m on even on Instagram at imbutchbellah and it’s because Butchbellah was already taken which is crazy because, but it was taken by me and I forgot the password. True story too man, so I had to come up with “imbutchbellah” so if you own Instagram and you want some daily motivational quote and stuff like that, you can follow me there. But Jeremy it has been absolute blast man, thanks so much for having me on and I love sales funnels, I love the thought process that goes into it because I love the psychology of selling and as I said earlier, if you would begin with the end in mind and think what I want that customer to do and then back up every step from there then you can create a much more productive funnel. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, absolutely and before we sign off, I also want to agree very, very highly with that point, when I write sales letters I always start by writing out the offer first and then going backwards and coming that down to the offer and even when I’m building sales funnels like putting the structures together, I always think of, okay what is the end goal, and when clients come on, it’s different sometimes it’s just revenue, sometimes it’s revenue but they only want to work 8 hours a day, whatever it is and the sales funnel is going to be different based on that goal. So you have to know that first to then bring it from the beginning to the end, so I 100% agree. So with that said, thanks again for coming on, I loved putting you on the spot, that was really fun. Butch Bellah: Hey, that was fun, keeps me on my toes. Jeremy Reeves: I hope the listeners enjoyed that one, thanks again for coming on. Everybody, go to butchbellah.com and I will put all the links in the show notes for you and make sure because when you are building out sales funnels I mean if you want more sales, you have to become a better salesman it is just period end of story. There is no other -- there is nothing else to even say about it, you just have to do it. Butch is one of the best trainers in the world on it so I highly recommend that you head over to his site, get his books, go into his blog, go on various social media channels which, by the way, are on the -- they kind of pop up when you come in to the website I’m on there now. So, yeah, so that’s it. So I hope everybody enjoyed that and I will talk to you soon. Butch Bellah: Thanks Jeremy. Jeremy Reeves: Thanks again Butch. Butch Bellah: Alright.

How do you secure a killer domain name like swag.com and land a massive first client like Facebook within a matter of months? Today Jeremy Parker, founder and CEO of Swag is sharing how he was able to do just that and scale to $300,000+ of revenue within their first year. Jeremy had been working in the promotional products industry for a number of years before he decided to launch Swag, during which time it became clear to him that most promotional products companies were on a race to the bottom. In order to undercut on prices, companies were sacrificing the quality of their products and customers were suffering the consequences. Meanwhile, Jeremy also noticed that the demographics of the average promotional products buyer was shifting from a middle-aged office manager to a 20-something that wore Patagonia to work. This new consumer was much more quality-conscious and was willing to pay a bit more for high quality promotional products that they would be proud of. Also, these consumers didn't say "promotional products", they called it "swag". That's when the idea for Swag hit him. There was clearly a demand for high quality swag, but the companies willing to supply products at this level were not out there. So Jeremy decided to start putting the pieces in place for rapid scale. Through a $1M+ creatively structured deal, Jeremy was able to secure the rights to use swag.com before he had sold a single product. And with a domain name and a few samples, Jeremy and his co-founder decided to swing for the fences on their first client...they were going after Facebook. Listen to the full podcast for the rest of Jeremy's story along with his advice for aspiring young entrepreneurs! 0:00 INTRO 2:05 Swag Backstory 4:10 Landing Facebook As Their First Client 7:35 How To Get To Decision Makers 9:25 How Swag Fosters Inbound Marketing 11:00 Early Issues Encountered 13:58 Where The Name Came From 16:35 Raising Capital 19:50 Prioritizing Different Projects 25:10 Marketing vs. Product Development 29:45 Advice To His Younger Self 31:35 Jeremy's Businesses Before Swag 35:45 Partnering With Others 37:45 Industry Publications 38:55 What Jeremy is Excited About 40:50 Habits 41:40 Non-Scalable Practices 43:15 Jeremy's Contact Info 44:05 Closing Thoughts For more, check out Apple's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/applecrider This episode is sponsored by TONOR. For 20% off the TONOR Q9 Mic Kit, use the code SMARTMONEY20 on either Amazon or TONOR's website. Amazon: https://amzn.to/2XUwoc3 TONOR's Site: https://www.tonormic.com/collections/usb-microphones/products/tonor-q9-usb-microphone-kit Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands