Podcasts about so john

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." This is how John starts his gospel account. It parallels Genesis 1 - In the beginning, God. So John makes it clear that God and The Word are one and the same. He also tells us that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. That's Jesus. He is the Word of God. He is God. Everything begins and ends with him. He is also the one who is full of grace and truth. And from him we receive grace upon grace. That's the story of the Bible. God giving us grace in the person and work of Jesus Christ. And that's good news.

Riding Shotgun With Charlie#120John HickokYouTube Creator, Comedian   I reached out to John Hickok to double check the social media links for RSWC #101 with Hickok45. After he replied, I said I'd like to have John on the show sometime and he said he'd be up for it. I was heading to Nashville for a personal trip. I message John, giving him an idea when I would be done and he said he'd enjoy being on the show. I love my gig!   We all know that John is Hickok45's son. John grew up with the Hickok range in the backyard. He was shooting at 3 and shooting an Uzi (full auto) at 4.  Yes, it was only a few rounds left in the magazine, but it was STILL full auto!   John is the one behind the scenes for the channel. When YouTube was young, John noticed that there weren't many gun channels on site. While in college, he watched YouTube and realized that he missed shooting. There were only a few gun channels at the time and the ones that were on the site weren't very exciting. So John suggested that Hickok45 start making some gun videos, because they could do something way better than what was out there. John helped Hickok45 make a video about single action revolvers and some cowboy guns for Hickok45's class.  And that's when it started.    They were both surprised and shocked at the growth of the channel. There were certainly milestones along the way: 1,000 subscribers, 10,000 subscribers. Currently, the channel has 6,000,000+ subscribers and 1,700,000,000+ views!!! Holy schnikes!   About 5 years ago, John decided to get out from behind the camera and in front of the camera. He did a video or two a month on the channel. No matter how much video time he was getting some people still wondered who he was.   He turned to music and playing the guitar and doing stand up comedy as an outlet. He did some podcasting and started his own YouTube channel as well. He was really trying to find his own voice and personality on video.    I picked up John in the West End section of Nashville. We drove downtown and it was packed!  When I filmed the episode with Hickok45, there was a snowstorm and Nashville was a ghost town.  It was quite the opposite on the warm August day. The lower Broadway section of town was very busy and packed with people. One of the fun sights is the tractors transporting trailers with people doing some day drinking on them.    After we talk about the Hickok45 channel, we get into John doing stand up comedy. I was doing stand up occasionally over the last couple years. We talk about how it isn't as easy as some people may think.  It takes time to think of material, then work out how to say and phrase everything, and to get timing down.  Every comedian needs some stage time and John has been doing stand up nightly for a while, even hosting some open mics around Nashville.  We talk about writing comedy, dealing with hecklers, and John's Mount Rushmore of Comedy, too! We've got a lot of comedians that we love in common.    One of the things I really love about my gig is that I get to talk with folks and really find out what's going on with them. We all love firearms and shooting, but we've got other things in our lives and well.  John is just as passionate about comedy as he is about the Hickok45 channel.  And I think you'll get that from this episode.  Favorite quotes: “You can do something way better than this.” “If I hadn't basically been lazy…  the YouTube thing may not have happened.” “I really enjoy coming up with something in my head, creating it, putting it out on YouTube, and seeing what people think about it.” “It is a luxury to be a professional entertainer.” “All that is BS. There's no such thing as writer's block...There is no writer's block; there's only laziness.” Hickok45 YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/hickok45   Hickok45 & John Hickok Instagram:  @johnhickok45  @therealhickok45    Hickok45 Facebook https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100044290096493 You need to join the Second Amendment Foundation http://saf.org/   Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms https://www.ccrkba.org/   Buy RSWC & GunGram shirts, hoodies, & mugs at the store! https://ridingshotgunwithcharlie.creator-spring.com/   Help support RSWC and get some stickers! http://ridingshotgunwithcharlie.com/rswc-shop/ Please support the Riding Shotgun With Charlie sponsors and supporters.    Keyhole Holsters  Veteran Owned, American Made http://www.keyholeholsters.com/   Dennis McCurdy Author, Speaker, Firewalker http://www.find-away.com/   Or listen on:iTunes/Apple podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/riding-shotgun-with-charlie/id1275691565   Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/4EEPud0XzYz4wo0MYmA9uB   iHeartRadio https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-riding-shotgun-with-charli-30654270/   Self Defense Radio Network http://sdrn.us/   OpsLens App on iPhone & iPad https://apps.apple.com/us/app/opslens-network/id1498033459

Scripture For Today:Acts 10:30“Cornelius answered: “Three days ago I was in my house praying at this hour, at three in the afternoon. Suddenly a man in shining clothes stood before me…”What John Had to Say About Prayer pt 8The last several days, we have been studying what John had to say in 1 John 5:16 about a “sin unto death.” “There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.”  Notice that this is something God told us NOT to pray for. Amen! But, John also told what we ARE SUPPOSED TO pray for!  We can read this in 3 John 2: “Beloved, I wish above all things that you may prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers…” According to my Strong's Concordance, the Greek word “wish” actually implies, “to pray.”  So we could read this verse as, “Beloved, I PRAY above all things, that you may prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers.” Now, we have already established the fact that the writers of the Bible were inspired by the Holy Spirit in all things they wrote. If it were not so, they would not be included in the Word. Amen! So, if John was motivated by the Holy Spirit to pray for those believers he was writing to (which includes US, amen?), then it was the desire OF the Holy Spirit for every believer to PROSPER! It has to be for every believer – because God is not a respecter of persons (you can read that in Acts 10:34). So it is scriptural for us to pray that believers would prosper and be in health, even as their soul prospers. And notice, John said he prayed this – ABOVE ALL THINGS that he prayed for!  Now, I can hear some of those denominational mis-instructed preachers saying, “There he goes again, misinterpreting the Bible…”  But let me ask you, “old buddy,” is what I just read THE BIBLE?  If it is – then what does the Concordance say?  And if what I just shared is EXACTLY what the Word of God says, who is the one trying to misinterpret the Bible to say something it does not say? In other words – YOU need to repent for NOT praying that other believers, including yourself – PROSPER.  That's financial prosperity included, in-case you're too dense to understand the meaning of the Word of God.  I swear, some people need help to misinterpret the Bible. Amen! This scripture is talking about financial and material prosperity as well as good health and soul prosperity.  God wants us to be healthy physically AND financially! WHY? Because if we use the prosperity HE provides for us – it is to share the Gospel and NOT to kick back and take it easy and eat chocolate bon-bons all day long. He needs us to take the WORD out into the world and share it. Amen!  And that take MONEY. Amen. But notice something else here… God wants us to prosper, not just financially and not just physically. He wants our SOUL's to prosper, too!  In case you did not know, YOU are a spirit. YOU live in a body. YOU have a soul – which is made up of your mind, your will and your emotions.  And God wants your SOUL to prosper. That means you need to have a prosperous mind, a prosperous will and prosperous emotions. This entire scripture verse describes the Will of God for every believer to PROSPER in every area of our life: Financially, Physically, Mentally, Materially, and Emotionally.  WHY? Because that allows us to share the Word of God and the Gospel of Jesus with others without worrying about “How are we going to get there?” Because everything encompasses those three things. Amen! So John is making it very, very clear here, that we are SUPPOSED to pray for our PROSPERITY – in every realm of our spirit and physical being. Amen! I want to pray for YOU right now – just as John prayed! Let's Pray!  Beloved, I pray above all else, that YOU would prosper and be in health, even as you mind, your will and your emotions prosper – so YOU can share the Gospel with others and tell them what...

JOHN wants to make sure that you and I know a few things before he signs off on this letter. His parting words to us have this refrain over and over again. We know.  John wants us to know a few things. Now john is NOT saying know and believe all the right things. Because when you know all the right things in the Bible, than the world, and your life will all make sense. And many people pursue their faith in this way. I will try really hard to know all the right beliefs, and know all the right things to do. And then my life will make sense and everything will go well with me. But that's just not how life works. There are just too many things that happen in life. That will not make sense. We all face things in life that don't make sense at all, no matter how much we think we know about God, or no matter how buttoned down our beliefs are. That's what the book of Job is all about. The book begins with, of course, Job loves you, everything about his life makes sense. Let's see how it goes when it doesn't. And so John wants us to know something. But the things that he wants us to know are those things that can help us to trust when life doesn't make sense at all. If you want, go over chapter five again, and listen to all the things that john wants us to know. But underneath it all, is John's heart for people. He even calls us children. He wants us to know these things because they will help us to trust God, even when what we know is not enough. So John is telling us to trust that God is love. Trust, that you have fellowship with Him, trust that he is with you, even in your unknowing. And that's the prayer that I have for my own soul. That's the prayer that I have for my family from my wife, my daughters, my son and that's the prayer that I have for you may be so

John 13:23 One of his disciples, the one Jesus loved, was at the table to the right of Jesus in a place of honor (leaning on Jesus' chest). John 19:26 So when Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing there, he said to his mother, “Woman, look, here is your son!” ----more---- John 20:2 So she went running to Simon Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!” John 21:7 Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” So Simon Peter, when he heard that it was the Lord, tucked in his outer garment (for he had nothing on underneath it), and plunged into the sea. John 21:20 Peter turned around and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them. (This was the disciple who had leaned back against Jesus' chest at the meal and asked, “Lord, who is the one who is going to betray you?”) Who named John, “The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved”?  Since the only places where John is called, The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved, are in John's Gospel, he obviously up with the idea to refer to himself as The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved.   And there is no indication in scripture that John was Jesus' star pupil.  In short, John saw Jesus' love for them as the central motivation for everything Jesus did.  So John chose to define himself by Jesus' love for him.    Years later John speaks about Love more than any other writer in the Bible.  And in 1John 4:10 he reveals to the secret to understanding and walking in Love…  In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.   Perhaps other disciples might have believed Jesus' primary motivation toward them was His mission.  And that he basically valued them as Followers, or Ministers of His Gospel.  In which case they would have described themselves as The Disciple Who Followed Jesus, or …Served Jesus.  But because John identified with Jesus' love for him, that brought him into great favor.  And we too should identify ourselves by Jesus' love for us. Think about it… Is your relationship with Jesus defined by how you are towards Him or how He is towards you? Some people see themselves as having come to Jesus more than Jesus having come to them.  Some people see their relationship with Jesus as a more of a necessity on their part than a desire on His part.  They have a stronger sense of their need for Him than of His love for them Some people see their walk with Jesus being driven by their pursuit of Him more than His pursuit of them. Some people think GOD's motivation toward them is determined more by their correct actions toward Him than His perfect love for them.  When people see Jesus this way their tendency is to think, I'm not very spiritual so GOD's not very interested in me. If John had referred to himself as The Disciple Whom Jesus Forgave, or Took Pity On, or Tolerated, he would have been focusing more on himself rather than the LORD.  But when John saw that Jesus loved him, he overlooked all his own shortcomings and accepted GOD's promotion as the Disciple GOD loved!  That understanding transformed John's life…  1John 4:16-19  And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has in us. God is love, and the one who resides in love resides in God, and God resides in him.  Through this love is perfected with (in) us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because just as Jesus is, so also are we in this world.  [In this world we have the SAME relationship of LOVE with the Father that sustained Jesus here]  There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears punishment has not been perfected in love.  We love because he loved us first.    That understanding of GOD's love for him transformed the Son of Thunder into a man of exceptional calm and confidence.   Don't let your identity in this world keep you from the transformation GOD's love has for you… Mark 10:21-22 And Jesus, looking at him, LOVED him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”  Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. John's focus on Jesus' love for Him brought him into positions of great favor: Inside information at the Last Supper unharassed access to Jesus' trial Entrusted with Jesus' mother Given the Book of Revelation The only un-martyred disciple Many people identify primarily with God's mercy, or forgiveness, or His calling.  Though true, these are not our strongest connections to God.  1Cor. 13:13 And now these three remain (abide): faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. Faith that believes Jesus is GOD is great. And having Hope in Heaven is great. But knowing and believing GOD LOVES YOU is the greatest.

Today we talk to John and I have to tell you this a good one to listen to! So John have a long-term interest in Natural Language learning and Technology. He has lived, studied or worked in Madagascar, Japan and Mexico. John was born in Massachusetts and moved with my family to Florida, where his father worked supporting the early space program. He graduated in 1989 with a BA in French and spent the summer traveling in Europe, to France, Switzerland, Germany, Poland, and Spain. In 1991, he moved to Torrence, California to join a start-up Japanese Computer company.  In 2000, John became a director of LACIT and later added an additional role as Technology Implementation Manager providing technology support to the college of Liberal Arts. He retired in the Fall of 2018 and recently became a volunteer in the Teals program with a local High School. Ramblings of a Designer podcast is bi-weekly design news and discussion podcast hosted by Laszlo Lazuer and Terri Rodriguez-Hong (@flaxenink, insta: flaxenink.design). Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/Ramblings-of-a-Designer-Podcast-2347296798835079/ Send us feedback! ramblingsofadesignerpod@gmail.com, Support us on Patreon! patreon.com/ramblingsofadesigner

How to take six weeks off without stressing even a little bit. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back the Marketing Secrets podcast. Right now, I'm at Lake Powell. I've been on the boat, the houseboat and jet-skis, and we did a waterboard, it's a type of Flyboard where you literally feel like Ironman flying through the sky. We just got done wake surfing, our kids have been wake surfing. It's been an insane week and I'm here with my friend, John Jonas. I'll introduce you guys here in a second. And for me, it was a lot to take a week off. I had no cell phone access for a week and John hasn't worked in eight years, 12 years. Just kidding, he's basically taking six weeks off. He is the person in my life who somehow has figured out a systemized entire life. So he can just do whatever he wants whenever he wants. And so that's what we're talking about today is systemizing outsourcing and whole bunch of other stuff when we come back from the theme song. All right, so I'm back here. We're on top of the houseboat and I'm talking to John Jonas. Some of you guys know John, if not, he is the founder of onlinejobs.ph, which... Actually, do you want to tell them what it is and tell them about you? John Jonas: Yeah, thanks man. So when I was early on in my business, I just realized I needed help and finding help sucked. It was so hard. And everybody talked about outsourcing, outsourcing, outsourcing, and I tried India and it sucked. It did. Russell: The entire country. John: Well and then it's like, dude, I have nothing against the country. But outsourcing there was really hard and there's some really big cultural reasons why, and I won't get into it, whatever. And then you have Upwork, which was Elance and oDesk at the time, which is fine, except the whole system is based around 100% turnover. And as a small business owner, 100% turnover guaranteed in your business, that sucks, hiring a contract worker, that's so stinking hard. So one day I'm talking to John Brizzy, the owner of backcountry.com. And he says to me, "When you're ready to start outsourcing some of this stuff, make sure you go to the Philippines with it." And I was like, "Huh, really?" And he gave me some reasons why, and more than just like, "Oh, this is amazing," it gave me hope that maybe I'd find something different than what I had experienced before, because that was really the thing was there's so much loss of hope in outsourcing because it's just a babysitting job and people that you're outsourcing to suck and they can only do menial tasks. And so I hired this guy in the Philippines full-time, which he gave me a reference to hire someone full-time and I didn't know if I could do it. It took me two months to hire someone because I didn't know if I could keep someone busy full-time I didn't know if I could pay them I didn't know if they could do good work. It was the most liberating experience in my life. This dude's full-time job was doing anything I asked him to do. And yeah, dude, that was amazing. I taught him how to systematize this whole system that I had completely failed with on Upwork. It was Elance at the time, but I hired this guy to write articles and he wrote these articles and sent them back to me. And I was like, "Yes, I got these articles done," this was on Elance. And then I realized, "Oh, now the burden falls on me to do the rest of the work." And that's where most stuff breaks down is when it falls on you to do the rest of the work. So when I had this guy in the Philippines, I realized, "Oh no, he can write the article and then he just worked full-time for me. So I can teach him to do the posting and the headers and the resource boxes and the links and I can teach them how SEO works and he can do all the SEO." And this was like 2005. So since then, I've realized oh yeah, you can hire amazing people, programmers, designers, social media people, content writers, data entry people, lead generators, whatever it is, copywriters, you can hire a really good people. And in the Philippines, I was paying the company, this is 2005, I was paying them $750 a month they're paying him $250 a month for full-time work. So today that same person's probably going to be like $450 a month straight from you to them because of what online jobs is. Russell: Because you guys created a platform. Because prior to, so the first time I hired someone from the Philippines, there was a company I hired and they... I can't remember name of it. Agents of Value, yes. Agents of Value, yes. And I was so excited because it was like 700 bucks you get a full-time employee, which I was paying American wages prior to everyone and I was freaking out. And then yeah, like you said, you find that they're only making $250, $300. And so what John built is a really cool, I wouldn't call it a directory, it's more than that, but it's a place you go, you sign up for it, and then there's how many Filipinos are listed there right now? John: There's over a million Filipino profiles there. Yeah, so what I created was what I wanted for myself. So after a couple of years of hiring people through this agency, I went to them and they said, "Well do you want a programmer or a webmaster?" I was like, "I want a content writer." "Well do you want a programmer or a webmaster," was their response. And agencies, generally, this is how they are. They're going to three times mark up the salary and then they're going to give you the same person. They're going to go to online jobs today and try and find the person... They do, I know they do. So I created what I wanted, which was I just want to recruit some people on my own and I want to hire them and I want to pay them directly and there's no markup, so there's no salary markup. And there's no middleman telling me who I need to hire, giving me someone crappy who doesn't know anything, which is what Agents of Value did multiple times. And so now I can go and find someone, find the exact person I want. And it's crazy. I hired a programmer who was working for IBM and he's so dang good. Or I found a copywriter, actually, I hired a copywriter who wrote some ClickFunnels emails. And it's amazing what you can find on onlinejobs.ph. And the crazy thing about the Philippines, I had no idea at the time. This is why this guy's advice was so dang good. And he obviously knew, and I had no idea. So in the Philippines, there's a culture of honesty and loyalty and hard work and make people happy. So my guys in the Philippines have my credit cards, they have access to my email account, they have access to my servers. We've seen hundreds of thousands of people hire people in the Philippines and have seen very, very few people get ripped off. And almost every time when they do, it's because they tried to get the person to do some work and then not pay the person. And obviously, yeah, they're going to try and get paid. And then there's the loyalty thing. So the Philippines, their culture is loyal almost to a fault. So when you hire them, they'll never stop working for you as long as you gain their trust. So the first person I hired in 2005 still works for me today. Yeah, and he's amazing. He can do anything. When I hired him, he knew nothing. Today, he can do anything I want. So the culture makes such a difference of the Philippines versus elsewhere, especially for a small business owner. Russell: All right, so I want to tell a story and I'm not embarrassed, maybe a little bit. So you and I had a chance to go to Australia to speak at Mal Emery's event. Do you remember what year that was? John: 2012. Russell: Dang. So 2012. And for those of you who know me and know I wrote a book about the perfect webinar as my things I'm really good at closing people and selling from the stage and all that kind of stuff. So John and I fly down to Australia, we both speak on stage and you destroyed me. It was really embarrassing. I only sold a handful and John sold everybody in the room literally bought his... It was insane. But I'm telling you this because there was a story you told in there that I'm going to mess with the details, but I want you to share the story with people. Number one, they'll get to know you a little better. But number two, it's also I think a lot of you guys have probably heard me or other people talk about outsourcing and you're like, "Oh yeah," and maybe you hire someone here or there, but for you, there was something in your life that happened that made forced you to do it and then that ended up giving you the freedom that literally we've been here this week, everyone's stressing out. No one's got cell phone access and John's just having the best time ever. And you have six weeks in a row vacation time. What week are we on right now? John: Four. Week five. Russell: Week five of six and I'm like one weekend. I'm like, "Well, I'm good." So anyway, I want you to hear this story because it's powerful, but also I think I'm hoping you guys hear and realize that you don't have to wait for something tragic or scary like this to happen. But if you kind of try to force it in your mind, you can have something like this happen and give yourself freedom earlier. So with that said, here's John. John: So I've worked about 17 hours a week for the last 13, 14 years. And here's what happened. So my wife is seven months pregnant with our third child. This is 2007. We went to the doctor, he's run some tests and he says to my wife, "You have preeclampsia. And if you don't go on strict bed rest for the next three to five weeks, you're going to have a seizure and you're going to lose this baby." And to me, obviously, I was there with her and it was a shock. And on my way home from the doctor's office, I was just thinking, "I'm working full time and I have to two other kids and she has to be on strict bed rest. I'm not about to lose a baby over money." So I was thinking, "What am I going to do?" So when I get home, I sent an email to two of my guys in the Philippines. I had two guys in the Philippines at the time and I sent an email to them. And I just want you to know, as I tell you this, they had been with me for about 18 months. These were not guy. I pulled off the street. You're not going to hire someone new and this is going to work for you. It's going to take some time. But I told them, "Hey guys, here's my situation. I can't work. Here's why. I need you to take over everything I'm currently doing in my business." And so I... Everything, everything. For the next three weeks, I literally worked one hour. And that one hour... So after that day, when I got home, I sent them all the instructions I could, that one hour was just responding to their questions. And they took over my Google AdWords account and they took over my blog and they took over the marketing that I was doing. They took over the SEO that I was doing. They took over customer service. They took over everything I was currently doing. Three weeks later, my wife has the baby, this beautiful little girl Bailey, who just turned 14. And for the next two months, my wife struggled with postpartum depression. And so I just kept not working. It was a little bit more, it was one hour a week because she was allowed to get out of bed now. And so I spent three months not working basically. And it's expected to have a disaster with my business and came back to find my business had grown. And I'm not going to tell you it's because these guys were running the business. That's not the case. But the point here is that I had had the right help and my business didn't crash when I wasn't there. So from there, this is where you'll really recognize I hope what the possibilities of outsourcing are. So after these three months, I was like, "Well there's only so many times in a day you can take your kids to the golf course," and you get bored. Because that's what I was doing. I was taking my kids to the golf course twice a day. And so I started designing a business based around how far can I take this outsourcing thing? Because I had only had these guys doing menial tasks up to that point. And now I realized like, "Whoa, they're way better than I thought they were. And so can I build a business based around them doing all the work and me just being the CEO?" So I started designing this business. I'll tell you what it was. We were going to write reviews about products and post them on our website and then drive traffic to them and put affiliate links on all the reviews. So I record myself talking for 45 minutes explaining this whole thing. And I bought a domain and I sent the domain and my recording to this guy in Philippines. And again, he had been working for me for a while and he takes the domain, sets it up on my hosting account, sets up WordPress and changes the theme according as I've described and sends it back to me a couple days later and it was horrible. And I was like, "Oh crap." So I went back and described it better and better again. And we did this for about a week until we got it right. He got the website how I wanted it. It was amazing. So then he wrote the first review and it was terrible. And I was like, "Oh yeah, this outsourcing thing isn't as good as I thought it was." Russell: You're like, "No, I'll take it all to myself." For me, that's what I've been using. Like, "Well I'm done. I'm just going to myself." I give up usually at that point. John: That's not what I did. And because that's not my personality. I want to see if I can make this thing work really. So I worked with him through the review. I was like, "Okay, we've got to change this and this and this. And we've got to get more data from here. And we've got to do this." So we worked for a couple of weeks, got the review right. And I never wrote another review. So he had already done some SEO, but I start teaching him more SEO and he starts doing SEO and he starts doing some social marketing, even though social media wasn't really a thing. But we started doing Craigslist stuff. And we started doing RSS feeds and we started doing everything that I knew to do at the time, I did. Everything I knew to implement, I did. Which today all the things you know to implement would be build your funnel and start your Dream 100 and run Facebook ads to it and start doing some SEO maybe and get on a podcast or start a podcast. All these things that you know you should be doing I was doing, except I wasn't the one doing them. So that business in the first month made me about $200. Within three months, it was making three to $500 a month. Within six months, it was making a thousand dollars a month, within a year is making me 10 to $15,000 a month. And this dude in the Philippines, who, again, I told you they're super loyal and super honest, he built the whole thing. He joined the affiliate programs. He starts running Google AdWords on it. Because I taught him how to do it. He sends me a report every month. "Here's how much money we spent. Here's how much money we made. Here's what I think I can do to improve the business and make more money." And that was where I realized like, "Oh yeah, these aren't just dummies that can only do menial work. They can only follow exact instructions." No, he read between the lines so many times he figured out so much stuff. And I don't want you to think that he built this whole business for me and I didn't do anything. Because I did. I was the CEO. I knew what was going on. I knew what had to happen. But I never touched it. I don't touch WordPress. I don't write content now. Russell: So let me ask you, so I know that there's people listening right now who are thinking, "Well why doesn't the guy just make his own blog and then just do it himself? And then he'll make the 10 grand a month for himself and not have to just cut you out of it." And I've thought of that as well. I'm curious why specifically Filipinos, why that's not an issue for you. John: So yeah, because in India, that's the first question they ask. And that's our experience with outsourcing is, "Well what's your business model here?" I explained to him the business model. In the Philippines, they're not entrepreneurial. They don't want to steal your business. They don't want to steal your idea. They don't want to do it on their own. That's too risky for them. They are really job oriented and they want a job. They want a long-term stable job that they can take home and reliably take care of their family. And I've seen that so, so many times. I have people that have worked for me since 2005 and 2006 and 2008 and nine and 10. And they also work with me. Russell: Awesome, okay, my last question for you then is I think we had this conversation last year. So John's my Lake Powell buddy. And it's our third time renting house boat together, fourth time on the lake together. But anyway. Last year we had this conversation, I'm not sure if you remember it, but it was impactful to me because for me, those who know me, I'm a perfectionist, especially comes to my funnels and copy and design and everything's going to be reviewed by me because anyway, I'm super annoying that way. But our stuff does really well. And so I'm always thinking it has to be perfect to go live and get shipped out there and actually be a live thing. And last year was talking to you about it. And your philosophy is obviously different than mine. You were more, do you remember this conversation we had? And you were talking about how you're like 80% is it's fine. The extra 20% is... Do you remember this conversation at all? I'd love to get just your mindset on that because it's something I could use, but probably other people as well where it doesn't have to be 100% to make money. It's got to be close. John: So there are some things where it needs to be 100%. But most things, it's more important to get it done than to get it done perfectly. And so for me, my philosophy is ship, get it out there. So just before we left, we're driving down here and I checked my project management and saw that they had completed this big long piece of content that we had. And I said to them, "I'm not going to review this, but publish it because I'm sure it's good enough. You guys are good and publish it." And when I get back, maybe I'll review it. Maybe I won't, I don't know. Maybe the task will be gone and I'll never see it. But to me, just getting it out there and having people see it is more likely to tell you the problems with it than I am to tell the problems by reading it myself and to creating a bottleneck myself to let me give you 16 more things that I don't think are perfect. Even though you guys think it's perfect, there's three other people that have seen it, and I don't think so, but they do, which tells me maybe I'm wrong. I also don't have, and this is a personality thing, I don't have the design eye that you do and I don't care as much. I want people to see it and I want people read it and ship it, get alive. We ship software with bugs all the time because then it's live and then people will instantly tell you, "Oh, this is a problem." "Oh, okay. We'll fix it. Sweet." Russell: As opposed to figuring out all the problems, mistakes on your own. Oh man. Well I hope you guys enjoyed this episode, it's a little different, but I don't normally interview. I don't even know John, you're like the second person to ever be on my podcast besides me. But I think it's good for everyone to understand. So for those who are in some part of their business where they're trying to think of if they can use outsourcing more, join Online Jobs, and this is not a paid ad. I get nothing from this other than as long as online jobs keeps making money off of a boat buddy at Lake Powell, otherwise I've got to pay for this whole thing by myself. But there's no advertising, but let them know how Online Jobs works. Because it's different. It's not like Agents of Value. You're hiring and paying them and could you walk them through how it works and wants to get the count and how to set it all up and everything? John: Yeah, so Online Jobs is kind of like indeed.com, but for the Philippines. So you go on and you post a job and it's free to post a job. And then depending on your job, you'll get a few or hundreds of job applicants. And if you get hundreds of job applicants, that's a problem, you can't go through hundreds of applicants. That sucks. But you'll get a bunch of applicants. And then you can see the applications for free. You can do all that for free. You just can't contact anybody. You don't get anybody's contact information until you pay. And it's $69 for a month and then you get to contact as many people as you want, really. Or you can reply to everybody who sent you a job application, if you want. And then you just interview them, you're going to use their Disk profile. Russell talks about Disk profiles. And I think it's amazing. Almost everybody on there has a Disk profile and you're going to send them emails and ask them tons of questions. And here's a little bit of advice, don't do a Skype interview right off the bat. That's the first thing everyone wants to do is get on the phone with them. And that's the last thing you should be doing when you do interviews with people in the Philippines. They don't want to do it. So do that at last when you've narrowed it down to three. You can give a test task. You're completely on your own. Every application will come to your email inbox if you want. It's your Gmail inbox. They'll also be in your online jobs inbox, but then you interview them and you hire them and you pay them. And we don't take a cut of any of that. If you're interested in more, I have, very similar to Russell's one funnel away, I have the one VA away challenge. So I will walk you through the hiring process and I guarantee you'll find a great person if you go through my process at one VA way. It's my process of how I hire great people. I never think, "I don't know if I'm going to find someone good this time or not." I'm going to find someone good. I know I am because I've done it so many times. Russell: So onevaaway.com? John: onevaaway.com Russell: Awesome, all right. And I'm going to product this. So obviously I have click funnels that whole business and there's support and there's team and everything. But we started building some of these side businesses and some fun projects I was working on and all of them have customers coming in now and customer support and all these things. And I was like, "Aaaa!” and so I asked John, I'm like, "Hey, what would you do if you're me?" He's like, "Dude, you're an idiot. Of course go to Online Jobs." So we did, sent them to the count, we hired three new Filipinos, they're on a Slack channel with us and they have access to our help desk. Our help desk has all these little sub companies we're building and they're cross-training on all the different products and they're awesome. Every morning they check it on Skype, like, "Good morning, we're here." And then they check out at night like, "We're done," and they have questions asked in Slack, and then they're just cross-training all of our products. And so we'll just keep adding more products in there and they're supporting all of them and it's amazing. And we've got three right now. We'll probably have more as we start growing and stuff like that. And I'm getting really excited about bringing in more to do more tasks. Everybody can do funnels. You guys are training now on a lot of them are doing funnels, a lot of them are doing copywriting, a lot of them are doing a lot of other stuff too. So anyway, it's exciting. So go to onlinejobs.ph or onevaaway.com. And with that said, hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Get your mind thinking about outsourcing and the Philippines and a whole bunch of cool things like that. So in fact, one time you gave me... So I've done this four or five times. We build up huge scenes. At one time I had this guy named Mateo we hired from the Philippines and he built a team of like 30 writers for me, back when we were doing SEO really, really hard. We were cranking on it. Anyway, it's fun to do and fun to learn and to get to know some really, really cool people. So anyway, hope that helps you guys appreciate you all and we'll see you guys on the next episode. Bye.

"The one secret that I have found: it's not brains. It's the willingness to work. Nobody that I know that is very successful has not been a hard worker." - John Morgan How do you get all the people in your organization working towards the same objective? What keeps John going even after achieving so much? How does he keep growing the biggest PI firm in the nation? Why did John diversify into the attractions industry? A Start with Heart John Morgan sits atop the summit of American personal injury law. His firm, Morgan & Morgan, is the largest PI firm in the US with 94 offices in 49 states. John's law practice employs over 700 attorneys and tries more cases than anyone else in the country. John rose from humble beginnings. After growing up poor in Florida and Kentucky, John's older brother Tim was severely injured while working as a lifeguard for Walt Disney World. But Tim was denied help and compensation by his employer. So John dedicated his life to fighting for individuals like Tim, who had been denied help and treated unfairly. Outwork, Outgrow John has several philosophies that have brought him success. He shares these in his two books, "You Can't Teach Hungry" and "You Can't Teach Vision." To John, hunger is paramount. To be satisfied is to be finished. You can achieve all sorts of unbelievable outcomes if you are willing to put in the effort and never stop driving forward. As he says, "The most successful people that I know in my life — it's not that they were the smartest. They were the hardest working." To John, a leader's job is to find and cultivate people with that hunger and make sure they're all pointed in the same direction, towards the same goals. Another of his favorite phrases is, "If you're not growing, you're dying." John doesn't slow down. Even as leader of the largest PI firm in the country, he's constantly expanding geographically and vertically. Just this year, he's added new practice areas like toxic tort litigation. The growth never ends. Lending a Hand John brings the same passion to other areas of his life. He champions causes that he believes in, regardless of political affiliation. Fighting for the legalization of marijuana has earned him the nickname "PotDaddy,'' and he led the charge to pass the $15 minimum wage in Florida, a state not known for its progressive policymaking. He and his wife have also broken ground on the Morgan & Morgan Hunger Relief Center and started Harbor House, which provides help for abused women and children. John has expanded in business too. Since 1997, he has owned and operated a series of "edutainment" centers called WonderWorks. These attractions, often styled to look like a building crash-landed upside down, contain hands-on science exhibits and exhilarating educational demonstrations for kids. Now five locations strong, WonderWorks does gangbusters for John and helps engage local students in STEM education. True to form, he has found a way to make money while also helping the people around him. Key takeaways: Alignment is key. Make sure you and the people working for you have the same goals, otherwise you'll get nowhere. Believe in yourself. At the end of the day, you're the person you can rely on the most. Swim upstream. Resistance means you're moving in the right direction. Links And Resources The Game Changing Attorney Podcast Michael Mogill Facebook Michael Mogill Twitter Michael Mogill Instagram Michael Mogill LinkedIn Crisp Video Website Crisp Video Facebook Crisp Video Group Twitter Crisp Video Instagram Crisp Video LinkedIn Morgan & Morgan Website John Morgan LinkedIn John Morgan Books

Come talk to us on discord: https://discord.gg/JZYZHUgqGR I can easily answer no to "are expansions bad?", but it's much harder to answer if they are good. So John and I talk it through.

John Kao, Dubbed Mr. Creativity by Forbes on Creative Thinking, Innovation, and Their Crucial Role in Our New Future The Economist tagged John with the nicknames “Mr. Creativity” and “A Serial Innovator.” He is a thought leader, practitioner, and activist, who has played a leading role in the fields of innovation and business creativity for over 30 years. His knowledge is eclectic and blends the perspectives of former Harvard Business School professor, serial entrepreneur, musician, master facilitator, former CEO, Harvard-trained psychiatrist, best-selling author, and Tony-nominated producer of film and stage. Yamaha Music Corporation named him their first “innovation artist.” He is a trusted advisor to leaders of companies, startups, and nations that are on the hot seat to deliver meaningful innovation strategies and action agendas.  Connect with John https://www.johnkao.com/johnkaolive https://www.instagram.com/johnkaojamming/ https://twitter.com/johnkao https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnkao/ The Episode's full transcript John-Kao-on The Innovative Mindset Podcast [00:00:00] John Kao: [00:00:00] The need for innovation and the need to practice innovation never go away. It's kind of the long March. If you will. [00:00:13] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:00:13] Hi and welcome to the innovative mindset podcast. I'm your host. Izolda Trakhtenberg on the show. You get my conversations with peak performing thought leaders, creatives, and entrepreneurs. We explore how you can innovate through creativity, compassion, and collaboration. I believe that innovation combined with compassion and creative thinking can save the world and I aim to bring you ways. [00:00:35] You can do it too. If you're enjoying the show, I'd be super grateful. If you could support it by buying me a cup of coffee, you can buy me a cup@buymeacoffee.com slash Izolda tea. And now let's get on with the show. [00:00:57] Hey there and welcome to the innovative mindset [00:01:00] podcast. My name is Izolda Trakhtenberg. I'm so happy that you're here and I am ridiculously happy and honored to have today's guest on the show. The man's name is John Kao, and you've got to hear this, the economist tag, John with the nicknames, Mr. [00:01:15] Creativity, and a serial innovator. So you know how close this is to my heart. He is a thought leader, practitioner and activist who has played a leading role in the fields of innovation and business creativity. For over 30 years, his knowledge is eclectic and blends the perspectives of former Harvard business school professors, serial entrepreneur, musician, master facilitator, former CEO, Harvard trained psychiatrist, bestselling author, and Tony nominated producer of film and stage. [00:01:45] Wow, Yamaha music corporation named him their first innovation artist. He's a trusted advisor to leaders of companies, startups, and nations that are on the hot seat to deliver meaningful innovation strategies and action agendas. [00:02:00] Wow, John, thank you so much for being on the show. I'm so honored and thrilled and I'm tripping over my words, but I just want to say thank you for being here and welcome. [00:02:09] John Kao: [00:02:09] Well, the honors online. I'm happy to be here. [00:02:12] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:02:12] Oh, this is so there are so many things about what you do and have done that every time I read more or learn more, I, I giggle like I'm, I ha I'm a school girl with a crush. I'm going to say that right now, because so much of the work that you're doing is, is it's crucial as we move forward. [00:02:32] And especially this last year has been so much disruption. And you say, you talk about leading in a time of disruption and that you are looking for new and innovative ways to do that. And I would love it. If you would talk about that a minute, just as we get started, what, what does that mean to you? That we are now in this eight time of disruption and what makes this disruption different than the disruptions we've had in the past? [00:03:00] [00:03:00] John Kao: [00:03:00] Well, I'm glad you asked that because it's a great way to frame our conversation. And I think we need to be a bit critical not in a negative critical sense, but in a thoughtful sense about the word disruption, because it's kind of a word that carries some assumptions that once disruption has passed, things will return to a steady state or to a normal. [00:03:20] I actually did a article recently in my forbes.com column where I compared the word disruption to the word, this continuity. And I actually think discontinuity is almost a better way of describing our situation, which is to say we're like sailors that have set forth like Magellan in the great age of sail with maps that were incomplete because in the middle of the ocean the often the legend would be, you know, beyond here, like lie monsters. [00:03:47] And Magellan Vasco, da Gama and others set forth on faith that they would find India or they would find spices. And we are, I think, in an era of discontinuity in the sense that our. Existing [00:04:00] maps no longer suffice for helping us to navigate forward. And, and we're not in a way able to fall back on this idea that things will get back to normal or that a disruption will subside like a storm at sea that gradually gives way to calm waters. [00:04:16] You know, if we think about what we as global civil society are faced with in terms of issues of climate war and peace social inequity et cetera, et cetera, these are mammoth wicked complex problems that can only be resolved by innovation. And that leads to the second point you mentioned in the opening, which is the need for a fresh viewpoint on. [00:04:42] Innovation, as I like to say, we need to innovate innovation. Because innovation has been out there for a long time. It's like, Haley's comment. It comes and goes Praxis and wanes in terms of popularity and being in Vogue with management pundits and with business leaders. [00:05:00] But and, and the importance of innovation continues to be recognized in the C-suite in the you know, at the high levels of companies, CEOs recently polled said that innovation was one of their top priorities, but I would wager that a large percentage of them Can't even define the word meaningfully, let alone point to the practical expression. [00:05:22] You know, the innovation as a discipline, as opposed to innovation as a mood or culture building effort, or as my friend, Rita McGrath likes to call it innovation theater, we're going to be very innovative and we're going to let our hair down and come up with wacky ideas and we'll do that for, you know, the duration of a corporate retreat. [00:05:44] And then we'll go back to business as usual. So I think innovation Marvin Minsky who was one of the fathers of artificial intelligence once said that there were certain words that were like suitcases because you really needed to unpack them to get the full meaning. And innovation is [00:06:00] definitely one of those words. [00:06:01] And because it's so overused in a way we have this phenomenon, I see a lot of innovation, fatigue, or innovation, cynicism, or innovation complacency where people say, oh yeah, you know, we've done innovation. In fact, one person who is a Washington government official once amazingly told me that in his department they had tried innovation and it didn't work. [00:06:25] So now they were doing other things. Oh no, not to, not to turn government into any kind of a cliche, but I, I, what I find often is that there's innovation, cynicism. It's kind of like we did it, you know, it kind of worked but. It was, it was time limited, you know, there was a beginning, middle and end to it. [00:06:43] And in fact, innovation, the need for innovation and the need to practice innovation never go away. It's, it's kind of a, the long March, if you will. So we're in an, a era of discontinuity. We need to, re-imagine what the maps look like. And [00:07:00] innovation is more important than ever, but we need to have a fresh point of view about how to do it, and not just at the level of companies, but at the level of society. [00:07:10] And also bringing it down to the, you know, the trees versus the forest for each one of us as individuals in our lives and in our work, [00:07:21] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:07:21] I'm taking all of that in for a second. Wow. Okay. So. I first of all. Yes, absolutely. I agree. You're going to hear me say that a lot during this next few minutes, but, but yes, absolutely. [00:07:36] The need for reinventing how we innovate and what it actually means to each of us on the individual corporate and even global scale is great. Absolutely. I understand that. And yet, how do we, I mean, I named this podcast, the innovative mindset, how do we as individuals and then companies and organizations and nations [00:08:00] and, and, and the world, how do we get comfortable with innovation? [00:08:03] And if there's no sense of comfort, you mentioned something that was, that you said innovation as a discipline. What are the steps do you think of becoming disciplined as an innovator? What does that mean? And how do you practice it? [00:08:19] John Kao: [00:08:19] Well, in order to answer that question, we have to agree on a definition of innovation. [00:08:25]You know, I, I get into conversations about it often and I always have to start the conversation by saying, what do you mean? What do you mean by the word innovation? Because if we don't have alignment around the definition we really cannot have a conversation. So the dictionary defines innovation as if I amalgamate all the dictionary definitions, it it goes something like this. [00:08:48] Innovation is creativity applied to some purpose to realize value. So that's important to keep in mind because you know, creativity is the [00:09:00] human ability to generate new ideas, new insights and. It's something that all humans have, you know, it's the way our brains work. We free associate. We daydream, we dream at night. [00:09:11]We are able to come up with new things, but it doesn't mean that those new things are valuable. Just like playing random notes on the piano is very creative, but it doesn't lead to a marketable CD, you know, or composition. So creativity applied to some purpose. It has to be about something. [00:09:28] You know, this is a problem I run into all the time in companies where they say, well, you know, our, the goal of our creative efforts is to grow our profits by 5% a year, or it's to accomplish some tactical goal. When in fact innovation always has to be the answer to a a meaningful question because otherwise why bother, you know, it's why get out of bed earlier in the morning to serve that? [00:09:51]Cause, and then finally it has to be about creating something of value. And I would argue of enduring a value. It has to [00:10:00] change the existing order of things. They, the, the simple example is Edison who, when he created the first light bulb was an inventor, but he really wasn't an innovator until light bulbs became pervasive and elect, you know, our society became electrified. [00:10:17] So, you know, this whole notion that innovation is a discipline. You know, if you just take that dictionary definition, you have to be good at ideation, whether it's understanding your individual creativity or understanding how ideas emerge in human interaction collaboration, and then how it emerges in organizations in terms of culture and rewards and talent policies and leadership attention. [00:10:45] And then how it emerges in societies where. Societal goals and purpose and identity and leadership translate either into a environment that encourages creative expression or, or stifles it. [00:11:00] Right. So then we turn our attention to another definition. So I've spent a lot of time trying to think about how to make innovation more tangible for practitioners. [00:11:11] And you know, to me, innovation is a set of capabilities, capabilities, being things that require practice to acquire, like playing the piano, a set of capabilities that enables the continuous realization of a desired future. So, what that means is that you have to have some sense of almost moral purpose. [00:11:35] I don't mean moral enough, a religious sense, but moral in the sense of of what is good, what is virtuous? What is true. And it has to be something that you just don't do episodically, but is part of what you do all the time. And that in order to fully realize innovation, you have to have a vision of the future that you want. [00:11:55] You know, we, we have a vision of the future of our planet as [00:12:00] being in climate equilibrium and at peace. Well, you know, great. So how do we get there? And then the kippah capabilities break down into literally scores is of specific proficiencies that, you know, we, we, if we had 10 hours, we wouldn't be through that. [00:12:15]But ultimately have to do with how you. Linked the right kind of human talents to the right kind of resources, to the right kind of ideas blended with the right kind of processes to enable innovation, the flywheel of innovation to begin to turn. And this is, you know, my thing is really about how you do innovation. [00:12:34] You know, there are plenty of people who can tell you what it is and why it's important, but there are relatively few people out there who are focused on the how, and that's, that's part of my mission statement. [00:12:48] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:12:48] Again, I have to take a couple of seconds and take all of that in it's. It's fascinating to me how this notion of the different areas that [00:13:00] we have to combine the capabilities, the resources, the opportunity for, for innovation. The, the thing that, I'm the thing that I'm struck by though, is something that you said as far as your definition and the, how, I guess the thing that, that makes me go, Hmm. [00:13:18] I wonder is about creativity. That part of it is so you and I are both creative people and we're both musicians, which I think is fabulous. And one of the things that I do with the clients that I work with when I do speaking engagements, all of that is we talk a lot about thinking creatively, giving yourself permission to do that, to think creatively, because many people are afraid or think that they can't. [00:13:42] So if I were going to ask you the following, I'm wondering what your answer will be. You might just go, oh, come on is older. But maybe, maybe it won't be, it won't be a silly question to you, but how can we learn from that notion of innovation to think creatively and how can [00:14:00] we think creatively to move forward? [00:14:04] John Kao: [00:14:04] Well, creativity, as I said earlier, is an attribute of the way humans think and experience their environment. So everybody is creative in the literal sense of being creative, but where I think people get a little confused is equating creativity with talent, you know, so, so Mozart was creative, but he was also a musical genius. [00:14:26]And all of us, you know, in a sense can learn how to find middle C on a piano or learn to listen to our inner monologue in terms of coming up with new things. But creative is not necessarily to be talented or gifted in that, in that sense. So having said that anybody can learn how to be more attentive to their creative output. [00:14:49] They can be more attentive to. Understanding the conditions under which creativity flows for them and, and how to increase the odds of [00:15:00] generating creative ideas Twyla Tharp the choreographer wrote a great book called the creative habit where you know, she gets into very practical tips about, you know, how to record your ideas. [00:15:12]One thing that I, I adopted from her book cause I, I found it highly amusing and ultimately very, very useful was every time she has an idea for a new project, the first thing she does is she she purchases a box and labels it with the name of the project and it might be an empty box for a long time, but it becomes a way of making the idea or the impulse tangible often when I start a project I'll, I'll have a loose-leaf binder. [00:15:38] With nothing in it. I'll put a very nice cover illustration on it and label it with the project name. It's the same idea. And and then ultimately fill it in. But at the beginning it's creating a they're there for the idea to land and to be able to live. So there are there are mountains of of books and a lot of [00:16:00] knowledge about how to enhance ideation. [00:16:02] I, you know, I, I even in my own small way contributed to that. I wrote a book called jamming, which was really what can leaders learn from jazz musicians because jazz musicians are paid to generate new musical ideas. That sound good. As a capability, you know, they don't wish to be creative or, you know, prayer, rubber chicken bones together. [00:16:24] They sit down at the piano and play new notes. That sound great. And it's again, and it's not because they got inspired or, you know, they, they participated in innovation theater it's because they spent decades practicing and studying and learning and immersing themselves in a discipline. So that at the moment of inspiration they could generate something new. [00:16:45] It's [00:16:45] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:16:45] interesting that you said that it's. It's having the skill to back up the talent. It feels like to me, talent feels in Nate, it's something that you are perhaps born with and then need to build on or build the [00:17:00] skills, but skills you can learn, you can teach yourself the piano or you can learn from, from an instructor. [00:17:06] And, and yet there's a lot of failure in music. I mean, I grew up playing the violin for example. And boy, did I fail a lot because if you're not just right, what was that [00:17:18] John Kao: [00:17:18] takes a while to sound good when you're learning how to play the violin? [00:17:21] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:17:21] Absolutely. It takes a long while. Yeah. Yeah. And yet there, so just a little bit of a background on me, so, so that you can understand the question about to ask better. [00:17:32]I went to high school with the likes of Andrew LOPA and Jeffrey seller, and you're, you've, you've done work in, in, on Broadway. So you I'm sure you know who they are. And you could tell that they were different. Even in high school, even when we were doing musical theater together, Jeffrey was always going to be a producer of some sort that was his great passion. [00:17:51] And then, you know, because of his efforts, we have you know, and of course Lin Manuel Miranda, but we have the likes of Hamilton. We have the likes of rent. [00:18:00] Andrew was always different. Also, there was something about both of them that their talent, you could feel it was innate. And yet they, they both went on and just practiced and practiced and practiced. [00:18:11] And so I wonder for those people who are not perhaps innately talented, what are your thoughts about building those skills? What are your thoughts about saying, okay, this is a muscle that I can exercise and I can improve. As far as being creative, as far as being an innovator. Can you do it just like Malcolm Gladwell says with 10,000 hours or are you sort of out of luck if you don't have that innate talent to begin with? [00:18:39] John Kao: [00:18:39] Well, I think I, my belief is that we all have the innate talent to develop new ideas that could be meaningful. But as you said, and I was going to use the word muscle, there, there is a need to practice. And I think that innovation in companies especially is, is this kind of mental gymnastic that [00:19:00] says, well, you know, you read this book or hear this speech or learn this set of rules. [00:19:05] And then you'll, you'll be more innovative when I think. That's that's like, you know, that's like learning how to play jazz by having somebody show you PowerPoint slides of using you on how to play the diminished scale with the proper fingering. But until you actually sit down at the piano and practice, you're nowhere and practice is really the key to gaining proficiency and gaining skillfulness, so to speak. [00:19:33] So, so the question that I often ask when I'm working with people, whether they're in government or in business is what is your practice model for innovation? What are the things that you. Feel are most important that contribute to being an innovative organization that you practice on a routine basis. [00:19:52] So as to, you know, hone that proficiency and usually the answer is you know, we don't really, it's a hard [00:20:00] question to answer. We don't have to really have an answer to that. So training is important. The ability to establish objective processes that can be repeated. And you know, it's like if you facilitate a design thinking session, once you'll be okay at it, if you do it 50 times, you'll feel really, really capable. [00:20:19] Is the organization able to support that level of practice because, and, and does it have an answer as to why practicing that particular skill is important and how it relates to an overall innovation story for the organization? So it's, you know, once you pull on the thread of innovation, you know, you find that it links to quite a few other considerations, which makes it a complicated affair to manage. [00:20:48] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:20:48] And yet companies who want to, and people who want to and governments that want to become more innovative. And certainly we're seeing [00:21:00] this with the new administration coming in and all of these different things. As far as the climate different initiatives, how, how do we, as, as innovative thinkers, as innovative people or organizations, what's the messaging behind that? [00:21:17] How do we get other people on board or other organizations or other governments or other nations on board with the innovations for something like climate, for example, we're one country, won't one country doing something won't necessarily make. The entire planet healthy again, but a lot of countries working together will definitely make an impact. [00:21:39] What would your thoughts be on that? How do we get people and organizations and governments bought in to this new way of thinking? [00:21:47] John Kao: [00:21:47] Well, the first point is that issues like climate, the wicked problems that face the world are not American problems or Chinese problems or Indian problems, they're human or global problems. [00:21:58] And so they have to be looked at as a [00:22:00] global systems kind of a challenge. Cause you know, America could become net zero carbon, but if the rest of the world isn't, you know, we have to breathe there that belongs to everybody. So I think a lot of the challenge for making the shift to an innovation. [00:22:19]Oriented posture, whether it's in a company that's going through a transformation effort or whether it's galvanizing the world around an agenda like climate is, is creating a sense of urgency. Change doesn't happen in less. There is a reason to change. You know, people are busy enough with their day to day. [00:22:37] And the idea that you get out of bed earlier in the morning to address a challenge, won't really resonate and less. There's a sense that there are real consequences and th th the problem with something like climate change and the environment as. An example is that, you know, people may intellectually understand that it's a problem, but it doesn't show up in your day to day life. [00:22:58] You know, it's not like I, it gets darker [00:23:00] or you know, you get a bill for your electricity. That's twice as big. And, you know, there's a disconnect in terms of what you, as an individual would do to contribute to the environment. So, you know, you could recycle and, you know, you could try to be conservative about using your water and things like that, but there's no connection between that personal narrative and the collective narrative. [00:23:23] So instilling a sense of urgency, number one, and then creating a connection between individual action and the collective wellbeing. So, you know, There are attempts. And I think there's going to be a lot more of this coming down the line that almost creates personal dashboards where your activities around consumption and so forth and so on. [00:23:44]You know, your, your carbon footprint, et cetera, are reflected in recommendations about shifting your behavior. The, the, the, at the national or supernational level, the question is creating buy-in, you know, like if there were some massive disruption [00:24:00] in the global ecosystem that nobody could ignore, then action would be taken just like, you know, the Penn global pandemic has been for all of its unfortunate consequences are real accelerant of national governments taking a global point of view. [00:24:16] And I'm sure there's going to be a lot of call in the aftermath or even currently for new mechanisms for. Mitigating, if not preventing the next pandemic and figuring out mechanisms of international cooperation that go beyond the really unseemly kind of, you know people elbowing each other out of the way and finding that they weren't prepared. [00:24:37] And you know, all of the kinds of shifting things that happened around vaccine allocation globally and so on. So I think it's about it's about leadership and it's about the narrative and it's about creating a sense of of urgency. And once people understand what is needed, then they can fall in. [00:24:55] I mean, if there's no alignment around what the problem is and how to address it, then of course nothing's [00:25:00] going to happen. [00:25:01] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:25:01] Oh, you're singing my song. Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting. And. It's always been fascinating to me as I worked in earth system science at NASA for many years. And this notion of the difference between weather and climate was very it was profound for people because weather is whether or not it's going to rain tomorrow and climate is years and decades. [00:25:23] And so w the, the issue that we ran into was that people had there's a little bit of a problem. Societaly globally thinking. Long-term that you have to think that, oh, 50 years from now, 40 years from now, the climate will change 20 years from now. The climate will change. And that is important to me now. [00:25:41] So getting people to address it with that sense of urgency, I agree with you. It's really important that the, the thing that I think a lot of people, certainly a lot of my colleagues at NASA struggle with is how, how to, how to get that sense of urgency in front of people. If, if some people are still, [00:26:00] you know, trumpeting that it doesn't exist, that there is no such thing as human, human caused or human accelerated climate change. [00:26:07] So do you have thoughts on that? What are your thoughts on. Changing the thinking of people who either deny something like this or, or, or, or refuse to think that it could be important. Now when the consequences might not be felt for decades. [00:26:27] John Kao: [00:26:27] Well, so this is storytelling. I mean, one of the reasons why I delved into the cultures of Hollywood and Broadway is because I was fascinated by people who made a living, telling stories and selling them to hundreds of millions of people. [00:26:40] So it's one thing, if you publish a white paper or give a speech, it's another thing. If you create a a movie so one of the reasons why an inconvenient truth for its time was such an influential. A piece of media was because it told the story in visual terms and it made [00:27:00] the issues of climate really quite difficult to ignore. [00:27:03] I mean, you have to be in denial to watch the movie and not come out of it, feeling like there was a real a real problem and often, you know, a sense of urgency isn't felt it has to be created. I did some work for a guy named Jaan Timur when he had just taken over Phillips the big Dutch technology conglomerate. [00:27:22] And he in his first management meeting put one item on the agenda for discussion, which was a handout and the handout was a newspaper front page. And the headline story in the upper right-hand corner was Phillips goes bankrupt. And it was a well written story with a lot of analysis set in the future about how this great company, you know, sort of a general electric level company had gone bankrupt. [00:27:49] And that was the only thing that he discussed with his senior people that day. And so in order to take the long view we have to take the idea of [00:28:00] wellbeing, planetary wellbeing down from the level of abstraction, to the level of personal advocacy. You know, we have to be thinking about how it relates to the world that our children are going to be in. [00:28:10]It has to do with our sense of, you know, generative responsibility, as you know, the, the generation that right now is in the driver's seat to assure the, you know, the future viability of the planet, which right now is in some doubt, I mean, it's not horrible yet, but it's bad and getting worse by the day. [00:28:27] So this, this is where, what I call moral intelligence or the ability to craft bridges between innovation and purpose become really, really important. And to create that sense of moral activation. And again, not in the religious sense, but in the values based sense of virtue to to, to frame the right kinds of of activity. [00:28:50] And, you know, a sense of urgency comes from understanding the problem, you know, and I have this framework called the second, this intelligence is that I've been sharing with people, which is a refresh view of how innovation [00:29:00] needs and leadership. Need to work. And one of the key intelligences is context intelligence, or the ability to deeply understand the truth of what's going on in your environment and not to be constrained by denial or by your biases or by your inability to do good research or your ability to go outside of your institution or your frame of reference. [00:29:22] And it's only when you have an accurate point of view, uncontaminated by prejudice or bias that you can then say, oh, we really are in serious trouble. And now we have to really think about the scale at which we operate as innovators, both innovators as individual humans, but also innovators as the institutions of society. [00:29:44] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:29:44] I love that you've mentioned the six intelligences and I love the notion of sort of objective observation instead of, instead of letting your biases. Color what, what you think or what you do. You'll [00:30:00] try to be objective as much as possible. I wonder if you wouldn't mind talking. Cause I, I was, that was actually literally the next question I was going to ask was about the six intelligences. [00:30:10] What prompted you to develop them? And if you don't mind sharing, what are they [00:30:16] John Kao: [00:30:16] sure. So, you know, I've been exposed to lots of different leadership frameworks over the years, and I felt during the pandemic that at least for me, it would be important to take a fresh look at what you really needed to be good at in a time of of this continuity and, you know, turbulence that we've experienced. [00:30:33]And that a lot of the old playbooks around leadership weren't really that valuable in this, in this situation. So I took a leave from the. Notion of multiple intelligences, which is actually an education concept developed by Howard Gardner. Who's a former colleague at he's at the school of education at Harvard. [00:30:52] And you know, he said, well, there's the kind of analytical intelligence that you have when you take sat [00:31:00] tests or math tests, but really there are other intelligences, like kinesthetic intelligence, if you're a great dancer or a auditory intelligence, if you're a great musician or spatial intelligence, if you're a great architect and that we don't test for these are really. [00:31:15]Pay attention to them or educate for them in the same way we do for that more narrow kind of rational analytical intelligence. And I thought, oh, well, I have always believed that. So let me think about whether I can come up with a framework of archetypes of intelligence that are relevant for today. [00:31:33] So the, so there are six and the first is context intelligence and, you know, it's, it's, it's what so bill Bradley was a very famous basketball player in his day. And uh, you know, he was described as always having a sense of where he was, you know, a situational awareness and you know, people like fighter pilots know that they have to be able to not only have 360 degree perspective, but be able to translate that [00:32:00] immediately into A a, a decision and an action taking right. [00:32:04] In order to prevail in fighter pilot combat and things of this kind. So, so there's a whole bunch of knowledge and recommendations around how to create context intelligence, both for individuals and for organizations, moral intelligence, which we've already spoken about is the second, which is the kind of compass of values that basically shape the, the purposeful intention of an organization or of an individual for that matter. [00:32:29] And, you know, what are the values that undergird your your activities? Then you have human intelligence, which is basically cultivating the sensitivity to others that enables collaboration that enables the, the ability to read the language of people. So that. Culture building organizational transformation, narrative development, resonate with humans because so often management is this human free exercise of applying analytical power to, you know, your marketing strategy or your finance [00:33:00] strategy. [00:33:00] But people have a vote and increasingly in this kind of, and post pandemic distributed, you know gig economy world sensitivity and to, especially to talent, you know, and to creative process is really important. And then generative intelligence is basically how you generate ideas and realize value from them which is kind of a repackaging of innovation but and applies to individuals organizations, and even to societies as a whole, as a whole, then we have technological intelligence because. [00:33:32]I argued that many people in positions of leadership don't have a finger feeling for how the development of technology is accelerating and how technologies are beginning to. Blend and, you know, fit together in different ways. You know, the whole merging of the biological and the digital is both confusing and filled with opportunities. [00:33:55] And also how technology relates to your organization [00:34:00] and to the team that every organization is going to be influenced by artificial intelligence and digital technology, digital transformation and transformation for innovation are increasingly converging as topics of concern. And then finally transformation intelligence, again, borrows from some of what we've already discussed, which is, you know, what's your theory of change and how do you affect that transformation? [00:34:26] So whether it's transformation at an individual level or transformation at an enterprise level, you know, what are the levers for accomplishing that? What are the metrics? How do you know that you've been successful? What's the role of narrative, a culture shift, leadership behavior, et cetera. So the feedback that I've gotten and I've turned this into various learning regimes, there's an online course. [00:34:49] That's going up shortly that I hope will be available to lots and lots of people. The feedback I've gotten is wow. You know, here we are in this era of discontinuity, all of [00:35:00] these matter, these six intelligences they resonate, how do we get more? How do we learn about these? And, you know, I feel like you need all of them at least to a certain extent, cause it's like a wheel, you know, the wheel is missing a segment and it's flat on that segment, the wheels, not going to turn very effectively. [00:35:19]And it's also a great way of identifying gaps. Both in yourself and also in your organization, because if you have an organization that's not proficient at some of these things it's just, I would argue not going to be as successful in the current environment, [00:35:36] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:35:36] what a wonderful breakdown. And, and I'm so glad that you have a class that you'll be offering. I hope that you'll let me put that in the show notes so that, so that people can, can find it and perhaps take it. I'm interested in. You mentioned something while you were talking about them, about how often these various intelligences relate to each [00:36:00] other, like you said, well, we talked about that when we talked, you know, this is a callback to innovation, this is a callback to this. [00:36:06] It seems to me that they it's almost like firing synapses in the brain, that they are going to need to use the, all the different intelligences in order to, to, as you said, prevail. And that brings me right back around to music. I feel like when you're playing a musical instrument, in many ways, you need to access all of those intelligences as well in order to be able to Excel at your chosen instrument. [00:36:32] If it's your voice, your piano, your violin, whatever, what are your thoughts about that relationship? I know that you've used music in the past and probably still do to, to help others innovate and to help yourself innovate. How do you relate music to these intelligences and to innovation as a whole. [00:36:50] John Kao: [00:36:50] Well, it's really a great question. [00:36:52] And I, I think this is probably an opportunity for me to step out and reflect for a moment on exactly that [00:37:00] question. Cause I, I wouldn't say that I've thought about it in exactly that way before, so well, let's see. I mean, I'll relate this, especially to to jazz, right? So in jazz the performer needs to have a multidimensional awareness of what's going on and it's not thinking it's really it's sensory awareness, it's emotional Intel emotional awareness. [00:37:23] It's it's awareness of the traditions it's awareness of the sweet spot between what's familiar and what is new it's awareness of one's inner emotional state awareness of the performance environment. So there's a number of dimensions of context, intelligence that are required. Then the second moral intelligence well, you know, for, for me and for, I think anyone who. [00:37:47] You know, it, it takes it seriously. Sitting down at the piano is it's a commitment to purpose and a commitment to authenticity. And, you know, we fall short constantly, or I feel like I fall short constantly, [00:38:00] but the, what matters is picking yourself up and, you know, pursuing the path of virtue to try to create the most beauty and the most authentic way possible. [00:38:09] So it's purposeful and it's about creating that experience for other other people and then human intelligence. I mean, I, I have found that the most interesting kind of challenges for me have been on the self knowledge and mastery of self side, because you know how willing you are to take risks and how willing you are to be on stage and your anxiety to the extent you have it about performance you know, Kenny Werner, who's a music, music, educator, and jazz performer has this great. [00:38:40] A book called effortless mastery, which is all about really overcoming the inner voice of doubt and judgment, which is so important in improvisation. And you know, jazz is really a way of learning about yourself. I mean, not that it's about Naval gazing or narcissism, but that to be a good jazz player, you have to be in tune with yourself as well as the music. [00:39:00] [00:38:59] And then, you know, jazz is inherently about innovation because it's about creating new, new notes that have to sound good and create value. D the technological intelligence, I would say relates in a very literal way to, you know, I, I'm fortunate to have a really good piano and every day I look at it and Marvel at how. [00:39:20] Humans were able to create something so beautiful and also so functional. So mastering the instrument, but now, you know, we have all of this new technology for music. We have technologies that allow people to jam together at a distance over the internet. We have digital keyboards that include lots of learning, learning software and learning assets. [00:39:42] We have digital keyboards that can do everything, but stand on their head. There was a lot to know there. And then finally, transformational intelligence. So, you know, this relates partly to the issue of practice. You know, it's partly a division of, you know, what kind of musician are you [00:40:00] heading in the direction of who do you want to be? [00:40:01]But then also what's the practice model or the steps in the journey that will take you there. What's your theory of change? And, you know, I know for me that you know, my studies of jazz have occurred at two. Times in my life. One of which was when I was a teenager followed by a long hiatus and now I've picked it up again at, with really serious intent. [00:40:22] And so the issues of how my playing is evolving are very much on my mind. So transformation intelligence is important there as well. So there it works, right? [00:40:33] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:40:33] I, yeah, I had a feeling it would, because I've thought about this a lot on when, you know, they're the relationships, there are so striking and this notion of transformation, it's not specifically in strictly to the intelligences, but I feel like especially jazz, cause I'm a jazz musician as well. [00:40:50] Jazz singer. You, you have an opportunity to when you're special, when you're playing with other people too, to be in the pocket to really [00:41:00] make something greater than the sum of its parts. When you are all listening to one another and collaborating, and then your audience gets enriched by that collaboration by that jazz collaboration, or even if it's not jazz for me, traditional music in many ways is similar because there's a lot of improv and a lot of feeling out what the other musicians are doing so that you can again, make something greater than the sum of its parts. [00:41:25] So what role do you think the relationship with an audience has in the six intelligences and also within jazz? [00:41:37] John Kao: [00:41:37] Can you rephrase the question again? Yeah. [00:41:40] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:41:40] I talked so long that you're going, I don't know what's going on anymore. Well, I, the thing that, I'm the thing that I'm asking really is. When you, when you are innovating you're, as you said, it's with a purpose. [00:41:54] So it's never, well, it's almost been never just for yourself. It's for, for perhaps a greater good or for [00:42:00] bigger group. And the same can be said for when you're playing music, unless you're sitting at home in your bedroom and playing your piano, your guitar, and you never play out there. There is this notion of sharing, sharing the innovation, jazz musicians, who, who will get up in the smallest room and, and play that night, for example. [00:42:19] So, so how do we relate that? How do we, how do we do that? And what is the relationship there between the innovator, whether it's a musician or somebody in technology or a leader and the audience whose lives and minds and thoughts and hearts that they are, are trying to affect? [00:42:40] John Kao: [00:42:40] Well, What I'm taking from your question is the need to create a bridge between the person who's, let's say emitting the the new innovative experience or idea or musical expression or whatever. [00:42:55]And, and the audience. And, you know, it's like a sweet spot in, in [00:43:00] jazz. You know, if, if you are if you're. If you're what you're presenting is to cut and dried or elemental, it's not going to land, but if it's to expeditionary or adventurous, it won't land either. And that sweet spot, which you gauge by audience feedback, nonverbal cues the, the vibe in the room and so forth and so on is a moving target. [00:43:24] And sometimes it evolves in the course of a single interaction with an audience. I mean, being a public speaker as I am from time to time, you know, that reading the audience continuously is one of the key skills of delivering a great presentation over, over, you know, whatever, a 30 to 60 minute timeframe. [00:43:42] So having also then. The, the inner integrity of what's being offered, not just as a, you know an exercise in, in corporate entertainment. I mean, so, so much of what is going on out there in terms of keynote speaking is about, you know, can you make the audience laugh and [00:44:00] feel as titillated as possible? [00:44:02] And like they got a free admission to Ted as opposed to really thinking about the inner authenticity of the of what's being communicated and how it's going to land and how it's going to contribute in their own journey of transformation. So, you know, I think these, these elements that we've been talking about provide a really handy framework to be able to evaluate. [00:44:24]Your work as an innovator, what you're putting out there, how it lands with an audience, et cetera. [00:44:31] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:44:31] And, and yet it's interesting what you just said. It's a, it's a constant, almost on a micro level. It's a constant reinvention of the relationship with your audience. And on a macro level, you can iterate based on the feedback you got and, and how things went each time that you're, you're up in front of an audience. [00:44:50] And, and that brings me to something that I'm, that I would love it. If you would talk about just a little bit, you, you talked some about [00:45:00] intersections and where, where those connections are made, and I know that you, you have a live stream show called intersections, and I would love it. If you would talk a little bit about the show and what your process is, and also what your goal is for keeping this this live stream show going. [00:45:16] Sure. [00:45:17] John Kao: [00:45:17] Well, intersections is a livestream show that happens every Thursday, 10 30 Pacific. I do it with a partner named Brian Solis. Who's among other things, the global evangelist for innovation at Salesforce. So we have between us a pretty enormous network of people who are on the edges of their fields. [00:45:37] And intersections is basically where culture technology and innovation come together with conversations every week with a couple of pioneers. In their field. So it could be a one of the leaders of artificial intelligence research in China, it could be we just had the, the general manager of the San Jose sharks talking about the reinvention of the sports [00:46:00] venue and sports franchise experience and the role of digital in all of that. [00:46:04]We've had musicians talking about advanced technologies that are going to change the way music learning occurs. We've had military strategists talk about cyber security and the solar winds hack we've had big deal, domain experts in innovation, like read them and the graph. So it, it varies, it partly, it relates to our own interests. [00:46:26]And, but it, it, it exhibits a principle, which is that combustion in the sense of innovation combustion tends to happen when you bring diverse perspectives together and force them to coexist in a space in this case, say conversational space because it's we we've, we've had 34 shows to date, and each one has been more exciting and more exhilarating than, than the last. [00:46:50]There's also a website called intersections, live.com where we have the full interviews archive, because they're not. Really time-bound, they're, they're [00:47:00] quite evergreen and we're going to be doing a lot of additional work on the content to make it more available to others. So, you know, it's just another way for me to stay current and have fun talking with interesting people like you. [00:47:14] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:47:14] I'm so grateful. You said that. Thank you so much. And I'm, I, I have listened to just a couple of the episodes, but I want to make sure that I go and listen to more. I I'm I'm so like, honestly, John, I could keep you here for the next six hours and chat with you, but I know you have a life to get to. So I, I wanted to talk just a little bit if it's okay with you about a couple more things that you and I discussed shortly before we started recording this episode, one of them was John cale.live, and the other one is, and this one is so close to my heart. [00:47:46] About your thoughts on the need, the urgent need to reinvent music education. I was very lucky. I had incredible music education in the public schools, but I know that [00:48:00] the, the emphasis on it has really died down. And I think it's, it's a floundering in many ways. I teach nothing against teachers. Teachers do as much as they can, but I think we're, we're in an age now where we really do need to revitalize it. [00:48:16] So I would love it. If you wouldn't mind chatting about both John kao.live for a second, and also this notion that you have about re-inventing music education. I would really love it because both of those fascinate me. Sure. [00:48:29] John Kao: [00:48:29] Happy to do that. So, you know, one of the things that's been going on, especially during the pandemic is not only the need, but the ability of people with some, a bit of expertise to be able to reinvent their connection to their audience using social media. [00:48:45] Using video and using all of the new tools that are coming on stream the applications that enabled people to establish a fairly sophisticated interface with their audience. So I'm not blind to that either, even though I grew up in kind of like the [00:49:00] analog world where, you know, you would teach at a good business school and people would call you up and that would be it, right? [00:49:06] I mean, now it's far more complex and also the opportunity to have an impact more broadly is enabled by the technology. So John kao.live is my recent attempt to put my, some of my learning experiences online. To enable people to subscribe to my ongoing generation of content to be able to access me one-on-one under certain circumstances for consultations. [00:49:32]And we'll see how it goes. It's just in the process of being launched. I'm really excited about it. I mean, during the pandemic, I think even though it's had its own shortcomings and limitations put, has put limitations, it's also been a great enabler of a different form of social interaction. And so I'm, I'm eager to see how that plays out with John Cale live there's music. [00:49:55] Education is concerned. I have a real, you know, I tend to organize my work work based [00:50:00] on projects or causes, right. And so I've adopted music education as a cause, because I think it's both extremely important from a societal point of view and also really in need of some radical. Re-invention first of all, just taking a half step back music is to my mind, one of the most important things that humans have. [00:50:22] And it's one of the most important things that societies have. And, you know, some societies like you know, Finland for instance, has great music education and the highest per capita percentage of trained musicians of any country in the world. You know, China is investing in music education because they believe it contributes to brain development, which is necessary to be competitive in the global economy. [00:50:45]We in America have been divesting ourselves of music education, cause it's not a high priority relative to other things. And I think that's wrong for a number of reasons. I mean, music humanizes us and develops our brains and [00:51:00] gives us cognitive skills and emotional skills, relational skills that are really, really important. [00:51:06] But. And, and, you know, we have this social institution of music, educators public school, music teachers music schools, and what's happening. What I see, I recently wrote an article for the national association of teachers of music or music educators called music education in the age of innovation because I became, I gave some talks to music, educator organizations, and did some workshops. [00:51:32] I I'm, you know, Yamaha made me their first artists and innovation and put me in front of deans of music conservatories and public school music teachers in different ways. And I became aware of the fact that, you know, not to generalize, but that there was a whole world of music. Learning that was growing up around the traditional music institutions that had nothing to do with them. [00:51:56] You know? So today, if you go to YouTube, YouTube is the new [00:52:00] music conservatory, and there are thousands of citizen teachers out there who are happy to show you how to do, you know, urban, dirty chords, or you know, how to do patterns on you know, modes of the melodic, minor, or what whatnot, or help you learn how to use your, you know, Nord, electric, piano, and that. [00:52:19] Very often the people who know the most about things that young people are most interested in are not in the academy. You know, they're in this external space, so that music education has turned inside out. And also that there's now technology that enables people to learn without having to have a music teacher in the conventional sense. [00:52:38] So I believe that, you know, it's the sixth intelligence is music. Education has to know more about what's going on. They have to reaffirm what's important about it. They have to you know, get with the whole technological intelligence piece because there's an ocean of technology out there that most music teachers are, you know, to be Frank, not aware of. [00:52:59] And [00:53:00] then they have to have a model of how they want to evolve. So they stay relevant and serve these purposes. So it's a, it's a big topic. [00:53:09] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:53:09] Again, you're singing my song. Yeah, it really is. And it's interesting. I'm one of those people on YouTube. I have videos up on how to learn to sing for example. And so lots of us, I think musicians once you're, once you've, I can't say mastered, I will, I will forever be learning. [00:53:26] I will never be a master, I don't think. And that's okay. I'm I'm, I'm okay. As a, as a lifetime learner of music. Hm. But yet when we are in the process yes. Of learning, you know, the NIH has done incredible studies on the fact that you use so many parts of your brain when you're learning, when you're playing a musical instrument, but when choir sing together, their heartbeats synchronize. [00:53:50] I mean, it's, it's just incredible. And yet this, this is something that, like you said, the USA, for example, is divesting itself of music education. When I [00:54:00] think it's one of the most, I agree with you, it's one of the most crucial things. So do we. What do you think is the best way to revitalize it then? Is it to go through the music educators or is it to, like you said, create a sense of urgency in the intended audience, which might not be the music educators themselves, but might instead be the school districts and the governments and the conservatories? [00:54:26] John Kao: [00:54:26] Well, I think it's both in more, I think that, you know, the the move to music learning outside of the music school system is going to continue. And there are going to be new platforms for linking people who know something to people who want to learn something in music, but, you know, you have these, this massive number of music educators out there and. [00:54:49] I think they want to do the right thing. And I think that what they need basically is a bit more insight into what's going on and what their situation is and what they can do. And, you know, [00:55:00] it's kind of like the innovator's dilemma. If they, they they're locked into an existing model and they are improving that model, but they're not thinking outside that model as much as I think is necessary. [00:55:11] So I think to put more music into our world is a multi-pronged effort. And I, I chose music educators because, you know, my experience is they're very receptive to this message and making them more aware of the reality of their situation will produce a lot of benefits. I mean, I, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm all over, what's going on in the world of the app developers and YouTube educators but that, that has a momentum of its own. [00:55:38]Whereas music, education, I think needs a lot of re-imagining. [00:55:46] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:55:46] Yeah, yeah. Again, I you're saying things that I have to sort of take a second and, and let it soak in and really and figure out what my, what my thoughts are on it, because, because it's so rich with with [00:56:00] value and, and I really appreciate you being so incredibly thoughtful in, in, in this conversation, I have just a couple more questions. [00:56:09] First is what are you most curious about right now? [00:56:17] John Kao: [00:56:17] Well I always have a long list, curiosity, the, you know, kind of theme of my whole life I, you know, I'm, I'm thinking a lot about cryptocurrencies and the whole non fungible token phenomenon. So I'm trying to get my mind more firmly around that because for all kinds of reasons I'm spending a lot of time thinking about the offshore wind industry and the physics of energy generation from from especially all of the huge macro projects that are going on in the ocean. [00:56:49] And there are a lot of, a lot of reasons for that. And, you know, I'm, I'm curious to know if I'm ever going to master the The the modes of melodic minor to the point where they show up. [00:57:00] [00:57:00] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:57:00] Yeah. I don't know. I, I just, I just go with it because I there's, no, again, you can, you can know the theory, but on some level for me anyway, it's, I've I have to feel it and then maybe it'll happen. [00:57:15] And maybe it won't. And so a lot of it for me, depends on who I'm working with and who I'm singing and playing with because we play off each other. So good luck with that. I really, I look forward to hearing your pieces. Will you ever record them, do you think, will you ever share them [00:57:30] John Kao: [00:57:30] out? Well, I, you know, I, I think I got to spend a lot more time in the woodshed, but I I've had the entertainment fantasy of doing some some live streaming at some point. [00:57:39] Fabulous. And I'm always looking for a musical collaborators. So maybe we'll find a couple of pieces and we'll use a friend of mine, just invented some software that will enable. People in Brooklyn and people in San Francisco to play in real time or almost real time. Which has never been possible before. [00:57:55] So maybe we'll be able to jam on some tunes. [00:57:59] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:57:59] I would love [00:58:00] that. That, that would be my honor. That would be terrific. Yeah. I'll bring my, my fiddle and I'll bring my guitar and my voice and we'll see what we can do. And you know, it is interesting. I lead a holiday Carolyn group and of course I used to be in DC and I moved to New York city and they are still in the DC area. [00:58:17] So when we, when we have to sing and there were a few live performances this year, there was no way for me to be part of that because I could not, there was no, there was no software. There was no anything that would allow us to sound appropriate if you will, musically appropriate when we were in different, different places. [00:58:37] It just, so I'm really grateful to your friend for having invented that. That's fabulous. Thank you. Thank your friend for me. And yes, let's jam. [00:58:46] John Kao: [00:58:46] Okay. Great. [00:58:47]Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:58:47] And here's the last question, John, and again, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you taking the time. It's a, it's a silly question, but I find that it yields some profound answers. [00:58:57] And the question is this. If you had an [00:59:00] airplane that could sky write anything for the whole world to see, what would you say? [00:59:05]John Kao: [00:59:05] I would say two words remain optimistic. [00:59:12] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:59:12] I love that. I love that, especially right now. Thank you so much for sharing that. That's great. Is there anything else that you would like to say before we close out this fabulous conversation? [00:59:24] John Kao: [00:59:24] No, I think I would just like to thank you for being such a great catalyst and conversational partner and I've enjoyed it. [00:59:31] It's, you know, it's good to have the opportunity to step back a little bit and review one's thoughts about. Something that you know is almost at the level of an obsession, right? So there's a Parson, there's a tree's level of looking at it. And this got me back to the forest a bit. [00:59:47] Izolda Trakhtenberg: [00:59:47] Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for saying that. [00:59:49] I appreciate it. I had a fabulous time as well, and this has been the amazing John Kao on the innovative mindset podcast. I am your host Izolda [01:00:00] Trakhtenberg. If you've enjoyed the episode. Please. Let me know. I'd love to hear it. Go find John kao.live when it airs, go listen to intersections. Obviously, this man is incredible. [01:00:11] Knows what he's talking about and has ideas. We all need to be paying attention to until next time, this is his old, the Trakhtenberg reminding you to listen, learn, laugh, and love a whole lot. [01:00:29] so much for joining me today. I really appreciate you being here. Please subscribe to the podcast if you're new and if you like what you're hearing, please review it and rate it and let other people know. And if you'd like to be a sponsor of the show, I'd love to meet you on patrion.com/innovative mindset. [01:00:46] I also have lots of exclusive goodies to share just with the show supporters there today's episode was produced by Izolda Trakhtenberg and his copyright 2021 as always, please remember, this is for educational and entertainment purposes. [01:01:00] Only past performance does not guarantee future results, although we can always hope until next time, keep living in your innovative mindset.     NEW: Read the full transcript of the episode.

Tune in now and don't forget to sign up for www.solciety.co!Speaker 1 (00:03):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. online teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.Speaker 2 (00:42):What's up. So we're preneurs. Welcome to another episode and I'll be honest. This is the second time I am recording this episode right now. I had some fire money content that I was spitting, and I don't know what happened cause they didn't press record, but I go and replay the recording and dead silence crickets. So I'm back for another one. So hopefully it's even better than the first time I recorded it. Um, but I am currently in lake Powell, Utah right now. So just to preface this, if you heard some waves hitting the shorter that's, what's going on standing on top of the top of a houseboat right now, recording some content for my solar preneur peeps. So I'm dedicated. I want to show you guys that I am committed to helping you improve your lives as solar cells, professionals. So let's jump into it this episode today.Speaker 2 (01:37):I want to talk about gratitude. We've talked, had a lot of guests on that have talked about the importance of gratitude. Earl capuli was one probably about a month ago. He is known as Mr. Gratitude. So go listen to his, if you haven't already. But the reason I'm thinking so much about this is because I went to a conference a couple of weeks ago in Dallas, Texas. Um, you guys probably heard me talk about it was the knock star conference, Danny PESI Tanner McCarthy that had been on the show. They run the knock star movement. They did an awesome event to definitely check out, going to their next one. Bat this event, they brought a guest. His name is John Israel. And if you haven't heard of him, he is known as Mr. Thank you a little bit different than Mr. Gratitude, but Mr. Thank you.Speaker 2 (02:24):And what he did was he wrote, uh, um, five, thank you cards a day for 365 day streets every day. And it took him about an hour and a half a day on average to write these cards. So these weren't just little, you know, little notes. These were full-blown thought out, thank you cards. And he couldn't write them, write them to more than three people. Hey, so we're cutting. Just keep writing. Thank you cards to his wife. He could only do a max limit of three per person throughout the course of a year. Pretty incredible what he did. So he wrote a book on it. He's spoken to all types of, and he's really created a movement and change people's lives in the process. So super inspiring dude. And the reason I got thinking about him so much is because I am on this boat, reading his book, it's called the Mr.Speaker 2 (03:17):Thank you project. And then the book, he just documents the journey, what he did and talks about it. And so the reason I'm thinking about it so much, because I hadn't experienced actually, before I left on this little trip that went hand in hand with some of the things he talks about. So I'll get that, get to that in a second. And actually I shared this experience on Instagram. So if you're not falling already go shoot me a fall at Taylor J Armstrong. And I shared kind of a crazy story that happens, got some feedback from some listeners here, but there isn't that remind to me is Mr. Thank you. He talks about this thing called the gratitude loop. And what happened was he was at an event eight years ago and he speaking at it after he gets done speaking, one of the ladies at the event comes up and says, Hey John, I appreciate your message.Speaker 2 (04:09):This is exactly what I came to the conference to learn. He tells him, thank you. And his response was, yeah, well I missed a couple of big parts that were really important to the whole message. I was running short on time. I'm sorry about that could have been. So he basically shot down the appreciation that this lady showed and the lady's like, okay, well, I thought it was great. Then she turned and walked away. And has he went on to think about this? He's like, what was I doing? Did I just respond to someone's? Thank you with an apology. What is wrong with me? Hey, and so I got thinking about this. How many times do we do this? It sells people. How many times do we do this in our lives? Where someone is trained to give us thanks. We shut it down. We say, no, it's nothing.Speaker 2 (05:01):We got to change these things. And I've done it time after time. Even a lot of our listeners here, you all shot me messages like, Hey Taylor, thanks for the podcast. Thanks for what you shared today. That's exactly what I needed. This helped me close the deal, things like that. And I want to apologize to those that I have shot down that things at times. Cause I know for sure I've responded with people out is nothing. Uh, yeah, well that episode wasn't that good, but glad you got something from it. I've sent out messages like that and response. So this was kind of a slap in the face to me as I was reading. This is, and that's this point with it is we need to accept compliments and reflect gratitude. Okay. So was point is if someone takes the time to give you a gift, pay you a compliment or acknowledge the great work you do.Speaker 2 (05:52):Pause, soak it in and say, thank you for your welcome there's to be said for being humble. And there's another thing to be said for allowing others to contribute to your life. It's not as much about horrifying you as it is honoring the vulnerability in generosity of another person, bold enough to take the time to appreciate you. So it's, you're someone that struggles accepting. Thanks from other people. Let that be a lesson to you. We all need to practice this thing. He calls it the gratitude loop. What it is is when you open a gratitude loop, that's you expressing gratitude saying thank you. And if that loop is left open, how do you feel? He gives an example. If you went up to a crowd that says, Hey, thank you for, I don't know. Thank you for being my friends today. They just stare at you say nothing.Speaker 2 (06:45):What's that's going to feel like it's going to feel awkward. I'm going to feel weird. You go say thank you to the crowd. They do nothing don't even acknowledge. It feels like a slap in the face, right? It's an uncomfortable, it's weird. Almost seems offensive. So that's his point with the gratitude loop is when we go around, we say, you're welcome. That's closing the loop, right? So don't leave God two loops open. And then the second piece that I learned from his book, as I'm reading here is give up the need to be appreciated for your generosity. Hey, and the story that goes along with this, the reason I'm thinking about so much about this right now is because on my Instagram, I actually talked a little bit about what happened, but the experience was is that before I left on this little trip, I'm on, I made it a personal goal.Speaker 2 (07:41):I said, okay, I want to close three deals before I leave. I got Monday and Tuesday of all is all this week. I want to close three deals can be pretty good. Right? Two days of work in closed three deals. And the reason I set the goal too, is because I knew I had, I had a handful of solid appointments set up, given my I'd given myself a good shot to actually attain the goal. Okay. And so I go out some of this neighborhood they're condos and here in California, the good news is with condos. Townhomes, H ways can't restrict homeowners from putting solar up there. They can make it super difficult, but they can't restrict it. So I use this to my advantage. This area didn't have any solar yet. So I said, okay, I'm going to go off. I'm going to cause everyone in the neighborhood, they don't even know they can have solar.Speaker 2 (08:33):First thing I do, I talked to the HOA president. Okay. And I'll make this a short story since I already chaired the majority of it on my Instagram. But I, um, talked to her actually at several appointments, but then she canceled the appointment because of some confusion. She thought it was like a government program or she was getting free software. It wasn't. So she said, okay, yeah, you lied to me. I'm not going to meet with you. Canceled the appointment. My Mike, okay. I got three other appointments set up. No problem. I'm still gonna close some deals. These people are stoked. They're like no way. Yeah. We want to go solar. We didn't even know we could have Sawyer go to them as I'm about to close the first one on the week, the guy says, okay, Taylor, whoa, this sounds awesome. But you know what?Speaker 2 (09:21):Let us talk real quick to the HOA president. Just because I don't know, we don't want to be the first ones. The neighbors are doing this and we want to make sure it's all good. So what happened? They go and talk this HOA president and she just slams the door on him. She says this kid, he lied to our community. He told me it was a free government program. This isn't it. She just completely shuts them down, talks them out of the cell. And I lose a cell. And then the other ones cancel appointments, turns into a disaster. So it went from being this golden area. I was going to close all these deals there. Now this HOA president just completely, it throws a wrench in my plans and just ends my hopes hitting my goal on the week. So I was devastated. I come up with this plan.Speaker 2 (10:10):I said, okay, this area, there's guaranteed. There's going to be deals. And I can even probably go back and close these deals that they had. I just need to get back in the good graces of this HOA president. Okay. So her name's Carol. I go, I come up with this idea. I say, I'm going to go give Carol I thank you card. And to be like Mr. Greg, Mr. Thank you like John is, you'll give her a thank you note and even better. I'm going to give her a box of cookies to go with it. That's something we do for our customers. We send them little gifts, cookies, um, treats stuff to kind of stand out, help them remember us. Let's say how many she didn't buy it, but I'm going to send her some cookies. So I go, I pick up these cookies, um, box of four cookies from a dirty dough here in California.Speaker 2 (10:57):That's a Bennett Maxwell has company. They make some giant cookies that have all these crazy flavors. She's a single lady. I'm going to give her a box of 40, these giant cookies and a thank you card. So I go right to thank you card dropping on the porch. And then I'm just like, okay, she gets home at five. I'm going to get a thank you wife. I'm going to get a text from her, a call saying, Hey Taylor, I'm so sorry. You're the best? Come close my whole neighborhood on solar. So I'm waiting. I'm waiting. I'm working. I'll look at my clock at five. Dave, no texts, no calls Mike. Okay. Maybe she was running late. I wait, wait, wait. Six o'clock comes. Nothing. No texts. Seven o'clock eight o'clock nine o'clock 10. O'clock no calls, no texts, nothing. I'm like, what is going on? The Carolyn, I get this. Hey. And actually deliver it to another neighbor is the one that I had almost closed, but that's, you know, camp blow to them. Got a thank you. Text from them. So I'm like, okay. I know, I know they got him. What's going on? I wait two more days, Mr. Courtney. It's been about a week now. And guess what? Still? No, thank you. Texts. No acknowledgements. Absolutely.Speaker 2 (12:17):A N S yeah, it was, it was a little sad. I was hoping I'd get something, but I didn't. And that's the reality of it. They actually used to write, thank you cards to my customers. But this experience with Carol reminded me of why he got discouraged writing. Thank you cards because sometimes I would write dozens and dozens of thank you. Cards, get nothing in return. People wouldn't even acknowledge it. And I did get results from it. I did get an extra referral here and there. People remember him, but it was the scourging that sometimes people wouldn't say anything. So John's point with this is we need to give up the need to be appreciated for generosity. How many times have we given something then been discouraged when people don't say thank you. So John's point is now this may sound counterintuitive after explaining the whole gratitude loop.Speaker 2 (13:11):Yes. When people don't reflect back that they received or valued our gifts, compliments or acknowledgements, and the natural reaction is that something is missing. The loop feels open. True gratitude is, is expressed with nothing expected in return. When you feel the frustration that someone didn't appreciate what you did for them, just remember, you never know what other people are going through in their lives, except that you did a good thing, pat yourself on the back and move on. Hey, so this is reminding me. I go like, okay, well, I sent this good thing to Carol thought. I was going to change, change my success in the area, but it didn't. And that's okay. So I'm trying to be okay with that. Hey, and John goes on to talk about how, when he was on day, I think 50 of sending out all these thank you cards.Speaker 2 (13:59):He got really discouraged because after 220, thank you cards. Only 20 people responded to thank him for the cards or even acknowledged acknowledged that they got it. And he ended up talking to, um, one of his friends later they'd send a hardtail and they said, John, I got your card a few months back. But the reason I didn't even say thank you or respond to it is because I was going through so much pain in my life. I was going through a really tough breakup. I just couldn't be present to anything positive in my life. So thank you now. But that's why I couldn't. I just was in just, was in some pretty heavy stuff to be able to respond. So think about that next time. You're expressing gratitude, trying to say, thank you. Don't expect anything in return in return. Okay. Be happy with what people respond, whether they respond or don't respond in the challenges.Speaker 2 (15:04):First solar preneurs, go out and write. Thank you cards to your customers, right? Thank you. Cards to your managers. Write, thank you cards to those that have helped you get to this point of success in your sales career. Okay? And that's how we're going to change the industry. How many, how many sales people are out there? They're just focusing on the money. Don't care about their clients. This is how we show that we care about our clients. And guess what the side effect is going to be. You are going to get more referrals. You are going to get those people that send cards back. They express appreciation. Hey, but if you don't, it's not the end of the world. How about after you send a hundred? Thank you cards. You don't get one extra referral. You don't get one person saying thanks for the card back.Speaker 2 (15:49):Can you live with that? So that's the challenge. I'm going to get John Israel on the podcast. Soon. He's lined up. Um, we're waiting for him to lock down the time with him. So if you know, John Israel go out and shoot him a message say, Hey man, we need you on the solar prenuer podcast. Yeah, we're going to get them on. But in the meantime, he was actually on Sam Tagard store or podcast. You can go listen to his experience there. Do you want to search that episode? Hey, but let's elevate ourselves to that mindset of gratitude. That's how we're going to change this industry. And that's how we're going to really have a better attitude ourselves to go out and close more deals and be grateful for the things that are happening, happening to us. Even in times like this, when you're getting shut down by each way, presence.Speaker 2 (16:37):And when deals are canceling, when everything seems like it's going to crap, these are how these are. That's how you're going to get through these tough times is expressing your gratitude and elevating your level of gratefulness to something like John Israel. Okay. So I hope you enjoyed the episode and send it to someone who's going through a tough time. Go and write a thank you card today. Let me know your experience with it. And yeah, I hope this turned out better than the first time again, second time recording it, but appreciate our listeners. And I'm grateful for all you listening to the show and sharing this content in implementing the strategy we talk about. So go out and close some deals and we'll see you on the next one.Speaker 3 (17:22):Hey Solarpreneurs. Quick question. What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs, and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day. For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level. That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new solar learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with the top performers in the industry. And it's called Solciety. This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give solar pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and to help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds. For, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently society's closed the public and membership is by invitation only, but Solarpreneurs can go to society.co to learn more and have the option to join a wait list. When a membership becomes available in your area. Again, this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to www.solciety.co to join the waitlist and learn more now. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you again in the next episode. 

This Father's Day message is given by Mr. Dennis Basierbe. There was a technical glitch during the message. The Scripture Lesson is Matthew 3:13-17 Baptism of Jesus 13 At that time Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan River so that John would baptize him. 14 John tried to stop him and said, “I need to be baptized by you, yet you come to me?” 15 Jesus answered, “Allow me to be baptized now. This is necessary to fulfill all righteousness.” So John agreed to baptize Jesus. 16 When Jesus was baptized, he immediately came up out of the water. Heaven was opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God coming down like a dove and resting on him. 17 A voice from heaven said, “This is my Son whom I dearly love; I find happiness in him.”

Look, it's been a heavy string of Hard to Believe episodes, and as fun as it is to talk about conspiracy cults and death and Shakespeare, it requires a lot of research and prep and, to be honest, John was exhausted. And it's summertime, and summer is for fun. So John invited 2 Fast 2 Forever's Joey Lewandowski and frequent guest Teddy Smith for the dumbest, weirdest, and most fun story we've ever covered: that time Nicolas Cage tried to find the Holy Grail.  Check out Joey's new book club podcast, how to win the lottery. Check out Teddy's car show, A Valiant Effert. If you don't know who Nicolas Cage is I can't help you.

A New Step Matthew 3:13-17 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Matthew 28:19 (NLT) Then Jesus went from Galilee to the Jordan River to be baptized by John. But John tried to talk him out of it. “I am the one who needs to be baptized by you,” he said, “so why are you coming to me?” But Jesus said, “It should be done, for we must carry out all that God requires.” So John agreed to baptize him. After his baptism, as Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and settling on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy.” Matthew 3:13-17 (NLT) 1. Baptism is saying to the world, “I belong to Christ!” So you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have been made like him. Galatians 3:26-27 (NLT) “If anyone acknowledges me publicly here on earth, I will openly acknowledge that person before my Father in heaven. But if anyone denies me here on earth, I will deny that person before my Father in heaven.” Matthew 10:32-33 (NLT) 2. Baptism is showing I've died to my old life. Or have you forgotten that when we became Christians and were baptized to become one with Christ Jesus, we died with him? For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. Romans 6:3-4a (NLT) Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised as he was. Our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin. Romans 6:5-7 (NLT) 3. Baptism is living a new life. …And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. Romans 6:4b (NLT)

On this special edition of the Suite Spot, we are joined by AD1 Global's Director of Marketing and e-Commerce, Jon McMillian. Host Ryan Embree interviews Jon and gets his thoughts on the state of the hotel industry today and where we are headed. Jon shares the start of his journey in hospitality and discusses his experience managing marketing and e-commerce through a global pandemic. He demonstrates how to distinguish properties in your hotel group portfolio from local competition and how to get buy-in from your hotel staff for new initiatives at the property level. Ryan and Jon wrap up the episode discussing the long-standing partnership between Travel Media Group and AD1 Global, showcasing how TMG's digital solutions perfectly suited the needs of his group. To get more information about becoming a special guest on the Suite Spot or to submit a question or topic for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 76 - Moving Forward with AD1 Global's Jon McMillian Episode Transcript Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot where hoteliers check-in and we check out what's trending in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is your host Ryan Embree, with me today, a very special guest, he is a first timer to the Suite Spot. That is Jon McMillian, Corporate Director of Marketing and E-commerce at AD1 Global. So John, welcome to the Suite Spot Jon McMillian: Thank you, Ryan. It's a pleasure to be here. Ryan Embree: Awesome, and just a little bit about you. You are the Global Director of E-commerce and Marketing. Jon oversees the digital marketing, public relations, social media, and promotional activities for each of the AD1 Global properties. He's responsible for developing and carrying out the company's digital marketing plans, as well as ensuring that hotels stay up to date with technology. A senior marketing executive with more than 17 years of experience, his range of expertise includes e-commerce, advertising, public relations, SEO, SEM, social, and email marketing, branding, mobile, and big data and analytics. So John got a lot of experience there, very excited to pick your brain and get some insights to our listeners. I want to just start out, like we do with a lot of our guests on the Suite Spot, just asking how you got your start in hospitality and the journey that led you to AD1 Global. Jon McMillian: Well, I think my journey, you know, was, was interesting, at least to me, in terms of that I started off in the Air Force, in public relations that in the sense is related to hospitality. Part of my job was to sell the Air Force to the general public, inviting visitors to the base and conducting tours from the school children, US Senators, Russian Generals in the like. So that's where I kind of got my start all be it into actual hospitality itself, happened many years later, after a stent in SEO industry, working for companies such as Tropicana, you may have heard of before and overwhelming resorts for them, and simply with email marketing, which quickly transitioned into corporate directors because it was at its infancy,SEO, SEM email marketing, things of that nature. You know, we're talking many moons ago, not to date myself, but I started off with an Odyssey computer way, way, way, way back in the hot tub time machine doing programming. And so I've always had a love for computers and a love for people. So you put the two together that kind of makes it e-commerce and marketing. Ryan Embree: Absolutely. It's a very perfect marriage there. And you know, we hear a lot of those stories. Hospitality is rooted in a bunch of industries. So, you know,

The setting of Revelation 4 gives way to the drama of Revelation 5. In the right hand, the hand of power, “of him who sat on the throne”—the transcendent, awesome God described in chapter 4—there is “a scroll with writing on both sides.” This scroll contains all of God's purposes for justice, judgment, and blessing. Most people wrote on only one side of a scroll, the side with the horizontal strips of papyrus. Those who wrote on both sides were perhaps too poor to afford another blank scroll—or, as in this case, they had a great deal to say and wanted it to remain within the confines of one scroll. So this scroll in the hand of the Almighty embraces the fullness of God's purposes for judgment and blessing—that is why it has writing on both sides. Yet the scroll is sealed: this means that the purposes of God recorded in this scroll will not be enacted until the seals are broken.The angel's dramatic question (Rev. 5:2) is fundamental to all religion: Who is the agent who has attributes so rich, life so pure, capacities so unexcelled, as to be able to approach this God—the God before whom even the highest order of angels hide their faces—and to take the scroll from his right hand and bring to fruition all of God's purposes? When no one is found who is worthy, John weeps and weeps (Rev. 5:3–4). His tears stem not from frustration at being unable to see into the future, but from his awareness that, in the symbolism of this vision, God's purposes will never be carried out. There will be no justice in the universe, and no salvation. This is the despair of concluding that history is meaningless, that God is dead.But an interpreting elder consoles John (Rev. 5:5). The Lion of the tribe of Judah has “prevailed” (Rev. 5:5, KJV) to open the scroll: the verb suggests a horrendous struggle, but the Lion has won. This Lion is the king of the Davidic line. So John looks up and sees—a Lamb. The Lion is announced, and what John sees is a Lamb. This is not a separate animal. Apocalyptic literature delights in mixed metaphors. Here the Lion is the Lamb—at that, a slaughtered, sacrificial lamb, yet one with a perfection of kingly power (the seven horns). Here is the Messiah, the utmost in self-giving, the utmost in power, emerging from the very center of the throne. He alone brings to pass all of God's purposes. Small wonder that the entire universe explodes with a new song, the song of redemption (Rev. 5:9–14). The triumph of the Lord God and of the Lamb is what stands behind the transformation of Isaiah 35. This podcast is designed to be used alongside TGC's Read The Bible initiative (TGC.org/readthebible). The podcast features devotional commentaries from D.A. Carson's book For the Love of God (vol. 2) that follow the M'Cheyne Bible reading plan.

Jesus is always consistent, but never predictable. Even mighty John the Baptizer has a hard time understanding how Jesus' actions line up with who He is. So John asks. The God of the Bible welcomes—even requires—you to pursue Him: “ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matt. 7:7). But this is not an inquiry to find out if Jesus agrees with you. It's to figure out if you agree with Him, and adjust accordingly. Blessed are those who are not offended by Him.

John 3:22-36John the Baptist Exalts Jesus22 Then Jesus and his disciples left Jerusalem and went into the Judean countryside. Jesus spent some time with them there, baptizing people.23 At this time John the Baptist was baptizing at Aenon, near Salim, because there was plenty of water there; and people kept coming to him for baptism. 24 (This was before John was thrown into prison.) 25 A debate broke out between John’s disciples and a certain Jew[a] over ceremonial cleansing. 26 So John’s disciples came to him and said, “Rabbi, the man you met on the other side of the Jordan River, the one you identified as the Messiah, is also baptizing people. And everybody is going to him instead of coming to us.”27 John replied, “No one can receive anything unless God gives it from heaven. 28 You yourselves know how plainly I told you, ‘I am not the Messiah. I am only here to prepare the way for him.’ 29 It is the bridegroom who marries the bride, and the bridegroom’s friend is simply glad to stand with him and hear his vows. Therefore, I am filled with joy at his success. 30 He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less.31 “He has come from above and is greater than anyone else. We are of the earth, and we speak of earthly things, but he has come from heaven and is greater than anyone else.[b] 32 He testifies about what he has seen and heard, but how few believe what he tells them! 33 Anyone who accepts his testimony can affirm that God is true. 34 For he is sent by God. He speaks God’s words, for God gives him the Spirit without limit. 35 The Father loves his Son and has put everything into his hands. 36 And anyone who believes in God’s Son has eternal life. Anyone who doesn’t obey the Son will never experience eternal life but remains under God’s angry judgment.”Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/yourdailybible)

Becoming a championship medalist — or an Olympic medalist — is an ambitious goal that many athletes dream of. But are we training the right way? In reality, training to be an Olympic runner is more than just stretching your physical limits; it's also about your recovery, mental strength, environment and so much more.   In this episode, famed Olympic runner Rod Dixon joins us to talk about his journey in becoming an Olympic medalist and his victory at the NYC marathon. He shares why creating a strong foundation is crucial, no matter what you’re training for.    If you want to learn from and be inspired by one of New Zealand’s greatest runners, then this episode is for you!   Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health programme all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to  https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.   Customised Online Coaching for Runners CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer  Without Burnout & Injuries Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles? Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler? ​​Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, your goals and your lifestyle?  Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.   Health Optimisation and Life Coaching If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you. If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or are wanting to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.   Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless. For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.   Lisa’s Anti-Ageing and Longevity Supplements  NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, a NAD+ precursor Feel Healthier and Younger* Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time. What is NMN? NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that is capable of boosting the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life. Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements that are of highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today. Support Your Healthy Ageing We offer powerful, third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today. Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 capsules NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 Capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 Capsules Quality You Can Trust — NMN Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combat the effects of aging, while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility Boost Your NAD+ Levels — Healthy Ageing: Redefined Cellular Health Energy & Focus Bone Density Skin Elasticity DNA Repair Cardiovascular Health Brain Health  Metabolic Health   My  ‘Fierce’ Sports Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Discover the necessary foundation an Olympic runner used to create a solid training base. Learn to believe in yourself and avoid being influenced by others. Understand how to build a strong mentality to handle self-doubt and hesitation. Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limit Podcast by becoming a patron! You can choose between being an official or VIP patron for NZD 7 and NZD 15 per month, respectively. Check out the different benefits of each in the link.  Rod’s KiDSMARATHON is a running and nutrition educational programme organised to help children in the United States and the world! Check out his website. Connect with Rob: LinkedIn Episode Highlights [05:01] How Rod Grew Up with Running Rod shares that his brother John was a significant part of his running career. John helped coach Rod while Rod was young.  He fondly remembers his time growing up and always running from place to place.  His father used to explore and travel around Australia by bike, while his mother played basketball and did gymnastics.  [11:42] Early Years of Training  Learn by doing. You can run the same race twice, but don’t expect a different result when you do everything the same. Run differently. Rod grew up loving cross country racing, especially the beach races through dunes.  It was during this time that he was inspired to reach for the 1968 Olympics. His brother, John, immediately put him on a training regimen.  Once you have a goal, you need to know how to reach it and what you’re prepared to do for it. Multiple amazing runners inspired Rod to keep going for his goal. Tune in to find out who! [19:13] Approach to the Foundations Get the timing right first, not the miles. The foundation is to start with running long and slow.  Rod's brother, John, also helped keep a logbook of his training. This enabled them to narrow down what to improve and work on.  Athletes don’t get better from training; improvement comes from rest and recovery.  Learn to prioritise your health. This will bring more results than just pushing yourself too hard on your training all the time.  Know that there’s a period for different types of training. There will be times when you’ll need to set your foundations and conditioning right first.  [25:20] Rod’s Journey Towards Becoming an Olympic Runner Getting acclimated to an area is essential to planning an Olympic runner’s training regimen.  With the help of John, Rod realised he was a strength runner. This knowledge became crucial in planning for his races. When you train with runners, it will be a race. Train with marathon runners, and it will be a long and slow run. Choose your training partners based on your needs. Rod’s training with runners helped him learn more than just racing. His nutrition improved, too.  Listen to the full episode for Rod’s exciting account of his Olympic journey—from qualifications to his training!  [36:47] Handling Self-Doubt Rod shares that he also had bouts of self-doubt. During these times, he would look for his brother John, his mother and his grandmother.  Ground yourself and just run, not for training but to clear your head and be in the moment.  In a lot of things, confidence matters more than ability. The more confident you are, the more it will bring out your ability.   Don’t be influenced by bad habits.  What matters is finishing the race. Finishing in itself is already a win.  [42:02] Life as a Professional Athlete Training effectively resulted in Rod becoming an Olympic runner, medalist and breaking records.  Rod shares that he works full-time in addition to taking on small jobs to balance the costs.  Tune in to the episode to hear the ups and downs of being an Olympic runner and a professional athlete.  [50:07] Transition from Short to Long Races After his experiences as an Olympic runner, Rod wanted to focus on cross country and longer races.   Once you have your foundations, you will need to adjust your training for long races. It's not going to be much different from what you're already doing.  Rod shares that he had to work towards the NYC marathon through conquering half marathons and many other experiences.  Build on your experiences and learn to experiment. Rod discusses his training in the full episode!  [1:04:47] Believe in Your Ability When preparing for a big race, you need to protect your mindset and remember that running is an individual sport — it's all about you.  Don’t be influenced by others. Learn to pace yourself and run your own race.  A race starts long before you set your foot on the track. Listen to the full episode for Rod’s recounting of the NYC marathon.  [1:21:23] Build and Develop Your Mentality People will often hesitate when they face a hill. When you’re in this situation, just keep going.  Sometimes, some things won’t happen the way you want them to. But certainly, your time will come.    7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘John would tell me. He said, ‘You know, you've run the same race twice expecting a different result.’ He said, ‘You've got to run differently.’  'He said, 'You know, you set a goal, but I won't tell you how to do it. So, you've got to figure out what you're prepared to do. And I think, [it was] then [that] I realised it was my decision making and I had to focus.' ‘You don't improve when you train, you improve when you recover.’ ‘Just remember to learn by doing.’ ‘I just thought this [the race] is about me. It's not about anybody.’ ‘I learned all that in my road racing. That sometimes, you just can't run away from people, but you can find out their vulnerable moments. And when they would come into a hill, they would hesitate because they’d look up the hill. And that's when you try.’ 'My mother had said that sometimes, things won't happen the way you want them to. Sometimes, you know, you're watching this, but your time will come at another point or another time. And I realised then what she was saying when I had one that was my defining moment. It just took longer than average.'   About Rod Rod Dixon is one of the most versatile runners from New Zealand. For 17 years, Rod continuously challenged himself with races. His awards include a bronze medal from the 1972 Olympic 1500m, two medals from the World Cross Country Championship and multiple 1500m championship titles from the United States, France, Great Britain and New Zealand. But most importantly, he is well-known for his victory at the 1983 New York City Marathon. Now, Rod is passionate about children's health and fitness due to the lack of physical exercise and nutrition among children. Through KiDSMARATHON, he helps thousands of children learn the value of taking care of their bodies and developing positive life-long habits. The foundation has since made a difference in many children’s lives.  You can reach out to Rod on LinkedIn.    Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn from the example of an Olympic runner. Let them discover how to achieve more as runners or athletes through self-belief and a trained mentality. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa   Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Your host here, Lisa Tamati. Great to have you with me again. And before we head over to this week's exciting guest, just want to remind you, we have launched our premium membership for our patron programme for the podcast. So if you are loving the content, if you're enjoying it, if you're finding benefit in it and you want to help us keep getting this good content out to people, then we would love your support. And we would love to give you some amazing premium membership benefits as well. Head on over to patron.lisatamati.com. That's P-A-T-R-O-N patron.lisatamati.com, and join our exclusive membership club, only a couple of dollars a month. It's really nothing major. But what it does is it helps us make this content possible. As you can imagine, five and a half years of doing this for love, we need a little bit of help to keep this going if we want to be able to get world-leading experts and continue to deliver such amazing content. So if you can join us, we'd be really, really appreciative of it. Head over to patron.lisatamati.com.   And a reminder, too, if you are wanting help with your health, if you're wanting to up your performance. If you're a runner, and you're wanting to optimise your running, then please check out our programmes, we have our Running Hot Coaching Program, which is a package deal that we have. We make a personalised, customised programme for your next event. Whether it's a marathon or a 5k, it doesn't really matter, or a hundred-miler, we're up for that. And we're actually programming people for even much, much bigger distances than that. So if you want to come and join us over there, we'd love to see you at runninghotcoaching.com. That's personalised, customised running training programmes that will include everything, from your strength programme, your mobility work, your run sessions, your nutrition, your mindset, all of those sort of great aspects, you get a one-on-one session with me. You get video analysis of how are you running and how can we improve your actual form, plus your customised plan. And if you want ongoing support, then that's available as well. So, check that out at runninghotcoaching.com.   We also have our epigenetics programme, which is all about testing your genes, understanding your genetics, and how to optimise those genetics. So, eliminating all the trial and error so that you can understand how do you live your best life with the genes that you've been given? What is the optimal environment for those genes? So right food, the right exercise, the right timings of the day, what your dominant hormones are, what social environments will energise you what physical environments, what temperatures, what climates, what places? All of these aspects are covered in this ground-breaking programme that we've been running now for the past few years. It's really a next level programme that we have. So check out our epigenetics programme. You can go to epigenetics.peakwellness.co.nz, that's epigenetics, dot peak wellness.co dot.nz or just hop on over to my website, if that's a little bit easier, at lisatamati.com, and hit the work with us button and you'll see all of our programmes there.   Right over to the show now with an amazing guest who is one of my heroes, a hero from my childhood actually. Now I have Rod Dixon to guest. Rod Dixon, for those who don't know who he is, maybe you were born only in the past 20 years or so, and you really don't know. But if you're around when I was a kid, this guy was an absolute superstar. He is a four-times Olympian; he won a bronze medal at the 1972 Olympics. He's a runner, obviously, he won in the 1500 meters bronze medal. He's won multiple times championships and cross-country running, and who really one of his biggest successes was to win the New York City Marathon and absolute mammoth feats to do back in 1983. So hope you enjoy the insights that Rod Dixon is going to provide for you today. If you're a runner, you will love this one. But even if you just love interesting, amazing people then check out this interview with Rod Dixon.   Lisa: Well, welcome everybody. Today. I have an absolute legend with me on the show. I have Rod Dixon, one of my heroes from way back in the day, Rod, welcome to the show. It's wonderful to have you on Pushing the Limits. Thanks for taking the time.   Rod Dixon: Lisa, thank you. I mean, of course, I've known about you and read about you but this is our first time, and it's come about through the pandemic. So, some good things have come out of this.   Lisa: There’s definitely some good things come out of it. And I've definitely known about you sort of pretty much my entire, since I was a little kid. So you’re one of my heroes back in the day, so I was like, ‘Oh, wow’. And the funny thing is, we got to meet through a friend in America who just happened to know you. And I was talking with them, and they're like, and I'm like, ‘Can you introduce me?’ Via America we've come, but to get you to Kiwi, so wonderful to have you on the show, Rod.    Rod, you hardly need an introduction. I think people know sort of your amazing achievements as an athlete and runner are many, and we're going to get into them. I think one of the biggest, most incredible things was winning the 1983 New York City Marathon. And that iconic image of you with your hands in the air going, and that guy behind you not such good shape. That's one of the most famous images there is. But Rod, can you tell us a little bit about your story, where you came from, how did that you were such a good runner? Give us a bit of background on you.   Rod: I think, Lisa, I started… I was born in Nelson, and living out at Stoke, which is just not far out. And my brother, John, three years older, he went to Stoke Primary School. And so, I was in a centre, I think. And my mother came out to check on me. And there’s a young Rod, and he sees, and he said in the centre, ‘I'll go and take my shower now’. And that was my chance to then put all the things that I've learned of how to climb over the gate. And I climbed over the gate, then off I went. My mother got the phone call from the Stoke school. ‘Where is your son, Rodney?’ He said, ‘Oh he’s at the back, hanging in the sand’, and she's, ‘No, well, he's down here at the Stokes school with his brother’. Because we used to walk John down to school and walk and go and meet him to walk him back. And so, I knew that way. And here is my chance, so I think, Lisa, I started when I was four years old, when I ran out.   Lisa: When you are escaping? And your brother John. I mean, he was a very talented, amazing runner as well. And actually, he's got into it before you did. Tell us a little bit of his story,  because he was definitely been a big part of your career as well. Tell us about John a little bit.   Rod: Yeah, well, my mother's family were from Mishawaka. They're all farmers. And fortunately, they were tobacco farmers, hot guns, and sheep and cattle. And so, we would be over with the family a lot of the time. And of course, a big farm, and John would always say, ‘Let's go down and catch some eels’ or ‘Let's go chase the rabbits’. And so we're on, outside running around all over time. And I think, then we used to have running races. And John would say, ‘Well, you have 10 yards and say, for 20 yards, 50 yards, and see if you can beat me down to the swing bridge.’ And I would try, and of course he’d catch me. So, there was always this incredible activity between us. And my dad was a very good runner, too. And so, we would go down for our, from the north we’ll go down to the beach for swim. Pretty well, most nights we could walk and run down there. So we would all run down. And then we would run along the beach to the estuary, and run back again.    And then my dad, of course, he would stride out and just make sure that we knew our packing order. Slowly but surely, you see John waited for his moment where he beat dad. And I think, dad turned around and came back to me and he said, ‘I won't run with John, I'll just run with you’. So, I knew what the story was that I had to do the same, but it took me another couple of years before I could beat my dad. So, running was very much an expression, very much part of us. We’d run to school, we’d run home. I would deliver the newspapers in the neighbourhood, most of the time I would run with dad. So, and then at 12 years old, I was able to join the running club, the Nelson Amateur Athletic Harriot and Cycling Club. There’s three or four hundred in the club, and it was just incredible because it was like another extension of the family. And so we would run on farms and golf courses and at the beach or at the local school, sometimes the golf cart would let us run on the golf club. So, there was this running club. So the love of running was very part of my life.   Lisa: And you had a heck of a good genetics by the sound of it. You were just telling me a story,  how your dad had actually cycled back in the 40s, was this around Australia, something like 30,000 miles or something? Incredible, like, wow, that's and on those bikes, on those days. And what an incredible—say he was obviously a very talented sports person.   Rod: I think he was more of an adventurer. We’ve got these amazing pictures of him with his workers in those days, they have to wear knee high leather boots. He’s like Doctor Livingstone, explorer. And so he was exploring and traveling around Australia, just his diaries are incredible. What he did, where he went, and everything was on the bike, everything.. So, it was quite amazing, that endurance, I think you're right, Lisa...   Lisa: You had it in there.   Rod: ...there’s this incredible thing and genetically, and my mother, she played basketball, and she was very athletic herself and gymnast. So I think a lot of that all came together for us kids.   Lisa: So you definitely had a good Kiwi kid upbringing and also some very, very good genetics, I mean, you don't get to the level that you have with my genetics that much. We're just comparing notes before and how we're opposite ends of the running scale, but both love running. It’s lovely. So Rod, I want to dive in now on to a little bit of, some of your major achievements that you had along the way and what your training philosophies were, the mentors that you had, did you follow somebody and started training? Who were you— so, take me forward a little bit in time now to when you're really getting into the serious stuff. What was your training, structure and stuff like back in the day?   Rod: Well, it's very interesting, Lisa. This was after did, in fact, incredibly, he was working, and with Rothmans, and he would travel the country. And he would come to the running clubs to teach the coaches, to impart his principles and philosophy with the coaches. And my brother being three years older, I think he tended to connect with that more so, as younger kids. And but we were just pretty impressed, and Bill Bailey used to come in as a salesperson, and he would come and we'd all go out for lunch with Bill and he would tell stories. And we were fascinated by that, and encouraged by it, and inspired by it. So, I think what John did, as we started, John will get to Sydney in 1990. And he noticed that young Rodney was starting to — our three favourite words, Lisa, it’s learned by doing. So I would learn from this race and I would adopt something different. I would try. When I knew, I mean, John would tell me, he said,  ‘You've run the same race twice expecting a different result.’ He said, ‘You've got to run differently’. And I would go out train with John and then he would say, ‘Okay, now you turn around and go back home because we're going on for another hour’. So he knew how to brother me, how to look after me or study.    And so really, as I started to come through, John realised that maybe Rodney has got more talent and ability than I do. So, he started to put more effort into my training and that didn't really come to us about 18. So, he allowed those five, six years just for club running, doing the races, cross-country. I love cross country — and the more mud and the more fences and the more steep hills, the better I ran. And so that cross country running say I used to love running the beach races through the sand dunes. And I love trackless, fascinated with running on the grass tracks because of  Peter Snell and yeah Murray Halberg. And also too fascinated with the books like The Kings Of Distance and of course, Jack Lovelock winning in 1936. One of the first things I wanted to do was to go down to Timaru Boys High School and hug the oak tree that was still growing there, 80 years old now, Lisa because they all got a little oak sapling for the end, and that is still growing at Timaru Boys High School,   Lisa: Wow. That was so special.   Rod: There's a lot of energy from all around me that inspired me. And I think that's what I decided then that I was going to take on the training, John asked me, and I said yes. And he said, ‘What do you want to do?’ And he said, and I said, ‘Well, I just listened to the 1968 Olympics on my transistor radio’ — which I tell kids, ‘That was Wi-Fi, wireless’. And I said, I want to go to the Olympics one day. And he said, ‘Right, well, they know you've made the commitment’. Now, obviously, during the training, John would say, ‘Well, hold on, you took two days off there, what's going on? So, that’s okay’, he said, ‘You set a goal, but I told you how to do it. So you've got to figure out what you're prepared to do’. And I think then I realised it was my decision making and I had to focus.   So I really, there was very, very few days that I didn't comply — not so much comply — but I was set. Hey, my goal, and my Everest is this, and this is what it's going to take.   Lisa: And that would have been the 19, so 1972.   Rod: No, 1968.   Lisa: 1968. Okay.   Rod: So now, I really put the focus on. Then we set the goal, what it would take, and really by 1970 and ‘70 or ‘71, I made the very, my very first Kewell Cross Country Tour. And I think we're finishing 10th in the world when I was just 20. We realised that that goal would be Olympics, that’s two years’ time, is not unreasonable. So, we started to think about the Olympics. And that became the goal on the bedroom wall. And I remember I put pictures of Peter Snell, Ron Clark and Jim Ryun and Kip Keino on my wall as my inspiration.   Lisa: Your visualisation technique, is that called now, your vision board and all that. And no, this was really the heyday of athletics and New Zealand, really. I mean, you had some, or in the 70s, at least, some other big names in the sport, did that help you — I don't think it's ever been repeated really, the levels that we sort of reached in those years?   Rod: No, no. know. It certainly is because there was Kevin Ross from Whanganui. He was 800, 1500. And then there's Dick Tyler, because he went on incredibly in 1974 at the Commonwealth Games, but Dick Quax, Tony Polhill, John Walker wasn't on the scene until about ‘73 right. So, but, here are these and I remember I went to Wanganui to run 1500. And just as a 21-year-old and I beat Tony Polhill who had won the British championships the year before. So we suddenly, I realised that —   Lisa: You’re world class.   Rod: First with these guys, I can — but of course, there were races where I would be right out the back door. And we would sit down with it now, was it tactics, or was it something we weren't doing in training, or was it something we overdid the train. And we just had to work that out. It was very, very feeling based.   Lisa: And very early in the knowledge  like, now we have everything as really — I mean, even when I started doing ultramarathons we didn't know anything. Like I didn't even know what a bloody electrolyte tablet was. Or that you had to go to the gym at all.  I just ran, and I ran slow and I ran long. And back then I mean, you did have some—I mean absolutely as approach what’s your take on that now like looking back and the knowledge we have now that sort of high mileage training stalls. What's your take on that?   Rod: Well, John realised, of course I am very much the hundred mile a week. John realised that and the terrain and I said, ‘I don't want to run on the right job. I just don't like that.’ He said, ‘Okay, so then, we’ll adapt that principle, because you like to run on the cross-country and mounds all around Nelson’. Yeah. And, and so we adapted, and I think I was best around the 80, 85 miles, with the conditioning. There would be some weeks, I would go to 100 because it was long and slow. And we would go out with the run to the other runners. And the talk test showed us how we were doing.   At 17, I was allowed to run them, Abel Tasman National Park. And of course, the track was quite challenging in those days, it wasn’t a walkway like it is now. And so you couldn't run fast. And that was the principle behind bringing us all over there to run long and slow. And just to get the timing rather than the miles.   Lisa: Keep it light then, the time is for us to use it.   Rod: So, he used to go more with time. And then after, we’d come to Nelson and he would give John time. And John would, of course, I would have to write everything down in my diary. And John would have the diaries there. And he would sit with Arthur and I would go through them. And afterwards, we would give a big check, and say that ‘I liked it. I like this, I liked it. I like to see you doing this’.  And because we're still the basic principles of the period with the base as the foundation training, as you go towards your competitive peak, you're starting to narrow it down and do shorter, faster, or anaerobic work and with base track. And John, we just sit straight away, you don't improve when you train, you improve when you recover.   Lisa: Wow, wise.   Rod: Recovered and rest and recovery.   Lisa: Are you listening, athletes out there? You don't get better training alone. You need the rest and recovery, because that's still the hardest sell. That's still the hardest sell for athletes today, is to get them to prioritise the recovery, their sleep, their all of those sort of aspects over there. And like you already knew that back then.   Rod: And I said once again, just remember to learn by doing. So, unless you're going to record what you've learned today, you're not going to be able to refer to that. Sometimes John would say, ‘Ooh, I noticed today that you didn't do this and this. Bring your diary over.’ And on those days, of course, it was a blackboard and chalk. And he would write the titles at the top. And then from our diary, he would put under, he would take out, and he'd put under any of those headings. And then we'd stand back and said, ‘Now look at this. There's three on this one, nine on this one, two on this one, six on this one.’ We want to try and bring the lows up and the highs down. Let's get more consistency because this is your conditioning period. We don't need to have these spikes. We don't need to have this roller coaster. I want to keep it as steady as we can because it's a 8, 10-week foundation period. So those are the ways that we used to be. And John just simply said, he would say, when you wake up in the morning, take your heart rate. Take your pulse for 15 seconds, and write it down. And then he would say ‘Look, the work we did yesterday, and the day before, yesterday, I noticed that there's a bit of a spike in your recovery on Tuesday and Wednesday. So instead of coming to the track tonight, just go out for a long slow run’.   Lisa: Wow and this was before EPS and heart rate monitors, and God knows what we've got available to us now to track everything. So what an incredible person John must have been like, because he also gave up pretty much his potential, really to help you foster your potential because you obviously genetically had an extreme gift. That's a pretty big sacrifice really, isn’t?   Rod: He was incredible. And I just saw him yesterday, actually. And he used to live in the Marlborough Sounds. And of course, now that moved back to Nelson and so it's wonderful. I mean, I would always go down there and see him, and I used to love—well, I wouldn't run around — but I was biking around, all around the Marlborough Sounds, Kenepuru Sound. and I do four- or five-hour bike rides in the head. He says to me, ‘What was your big thing?’ And I said, ‘Well, I saw three cars today, John, for three hours’, and he said, ‘Oh, yes, and two of those were in the driveway’. It was amazing. I just loved down there, but now he's back here we see each other and talk and we go through our bike rides, and we go for a little jiggle, jog, as we call it now.   Lisa: And so he helped you hone and tailor all of this and give you that guidance so that you boost your really strong foundation. So what was it, your very first big thing that you did? Was it then, would you say that for the Olympics?   Rod: I think qualifying — no, not qualifying — but making the New Zealand cross-country team, The World Cross Country Team at 1971. I think that was the defining moment of what we were doing was, ‘Well, this is amazing.’ And so, as I said, 1971, I finished 10th in the world. And then then John said, ‘Well, what are you actually thinking for the Olympics? Are you thinking the steeplechase or the 5000 meters?’ And I said, ‘No, the 1500.’ ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Oh, Jack Havelock, Peter Snell, John Davies’, and then, he said, ‘Good. You're committed, so let's do it’. Okay. Of course, once I have announced that, then, of course, I got all the — not criticism — but the suggestions from all the, ‘Well, I think Rod's a bit optimistic about the 1500. He hasn't even broken 1’50 for the 800 meters. He hasn't yet been broken 4 minutes for a mile. He wants to go to the Olympics. And I think he should be thinking, and John said, ‘Put the earmuffs on.’   Lisa: That is good advice. Don’t listen to the naysayers.   Rod: Off we go. And then slowly, but surely, I was able to get a lot of races against Dick Quax and Tony Powell, and Kevin Ross, in that. And then I remember, in Wellington at Lower Hutt, I was able to break the four-minute mile, then I got very close in a race to the Olympic Qualifying time. And then of course, you look at qualifications. And a lot of those runners didn't want, they already realised that they hadn't got anywhere near it. So they didn't turn out for the trials. So John gave up any idea of him going to the Olympics. And he said, ‘I'm coming to Auckland to pace you. And this time, you will stay right behind me. And when I move over and say go, go’. And so because we've done a couple of these earlier in the season, and ‘I said that I can sprint later.’ And of course, I missed out at the time, but this was it. And so, he said, ‘Our goal is for you to win the trials and to break the qualification’. And he made it happen. He said, he ran in one second of every lap to get me to 300 meters to go.  When he moved over, and he said ‘Go!’ I got the fight of my life and took off.   Lisa: You wouldn't dare not, after that dedication order. And you qualified you got–   Rod: I won the trials and qualified. And Tony Polhill had qualified in his and he had won the national championship. So he qualified when the nationals and now I've qualified and won the trials. So, they actually, they took us both incredible. He was an A-grade athlete, I was a B-grade athlete. You got everything paid for, be in your head to train.   Lisa: Yes, I know that one. And so then you got to actually go to the Olympics. Now what was that experience like? Because a lot of people, not many people in the world actually get to go to an Olympics. What's it like? What's it like?   Rod: So we went to Scandinavia, and to Europe to do some pre-training. And on those days, we used to say, ‘Well, no, you got to acclimatised’. I mean, nowadays you can kind of go and run within a few days. But in my day, it was three to four weeks, you wanted to have  —   Lisa: That's ideal to be honest.   Rod: Yeah, if they were right.   Lisa: Yeah. Get their time and like that whole jet lag shift and the changing of the time zones, and all of that sort of stuff takes a lot longer than people think to actually work out of the body. So yeah, okay, so now you're at the Olympics.   Rod: So here we were, so and John gave me a written for a track that schedule every day, and this was a training, and he had bounced with knowing that I was going to be flying from London to Denmark. And then, we're going to go to Sweden, and then we're going to go to Dosenbach. And so he expected in all the traveling, all the changes, and really a lot of it was I was able to go out there pretty well stayed with that. Now again, I realised that that wasn't going to work. And but what he had taught me, I was able to make an adjustment and use my feeling-based instinct, saying, ‘What would John say to this?’ John would say this because those all that journey, we'd have together, I learned very, very much to communicate with him. Any doubts, we would talk, we would sit down, and we would go over things. So, he had trained me for this very moment, to make decisions for myself. Incredible.   Lisa: Oh, he's amazing.   Rod: Absolutely.   Lisa: That’s incredible. I'm just sort of picturing someone doing all that, especially back then, when you didn't have all the professional team coaches running around you and massage therapists and whatever else that the guys have now, guys and girls.   Rod: It was the two days he knew that I would respond, it would take me four to five races before I started to hit my plateau. I found early in those days that — see, I was a strength trainer to get my speed. I came across a lot of athletes who had speed to get their strength. And so, what I wrote, I found that when I would go against the speed to street, they would come out of the gate, first race and boom, hit their time.   Lisa: Hit their peak.   Rod:  Whereas, I would take three, four or five races to get my flow going. And then I would start to do my thing. My rhythm was here, and then all of a sudden, then I would start to climb my Everest. I've been new. And so John said, ‘These are the races that the athletic, the Olympic committee have given us. I want you to run 3000 meters on this race, I want you to run 800 meters if you can on this race. If you can't run 800, see if you can get 1000. I don't want you running at 1500 just yet. And so, then he would get me under, over. Under, and then by the time that three ball races, now it's time for you to run a couple of 1500s and a mile if you can. Then, I want you to go back to running a 3000 meters, or I want you to go back out and training’.   Lisa: Wow. Really specific. Like wow.   Rod: He was very unbelievable. Also to that at that time, I had these three amazing marathon runners, Dave McKenzie, our Boston Marathon winner, Jeff Foster, who is the absolute legend of our running, and a guy called Terry Maness. And John said to me, ‘Don't train with quacks and all those other guys. Run, do your runs with the marathon runners’. You see, and they would take me out for a long slow run. Whereas if you went out with the others, you get all this group of runners, then they’d all be racing each other.   Lisa: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t race when you're training   Rod: Your ego. With the pecking order, when you ran with the marathon runners, there was no pecking order.   Lisa: It's all about pacing and —   Rod: And of course, and I would eat with them too because I learned how to eat because they were better eaters than me. I would eat more carbohydrates and more organic foods because it was the long run. I learned to do that. It was interesting because Jack pointed out to me said, ‘Now you see those two guys that were at the track today. And they were doing, and you are quite overwhelmed because they are your competitors and they were doing this incredible workout’. And I said to them, I said, ‘Woop, that what I was up against’. And Jack said, ‘Put it behind you. I want you to come to the dining room with us tonight, and we'll try and see if we can sit with them or near them.’ And I’m sure enough, there they were over there and they were talking. And they were pushing their food all around their plate and they weren't eating much’. And Jack said, ‘Look at you, you've eaten everything, and you're going back for seconds and thirds. If they're not replacing their glycogen, they won’t be able to run very well in a couple of days because they're not eating right’. So that gave me the confidence. Oh, I'm eating better than them. So they may have trained better. And sure enough, you didn't see them at the track. And the coach had taken them off because they were obviously racing too hard, they were racing their and not recovering.   Lisa: Recovering. Yeah, so don't be intimidated. Because it's very easy, isn't it, when you start to doubt your own methods and your own strategies, and you haven’t done it right, and so-and-so's got it better than me, and they're more talented. And this is — all that negative self-talk, and you found a couple of guys to go, ‘Hang on, you've got this part better than they've got.’ What a great sort of mentoring thing for them to have done, to put you in that sort of good headspace. On the headspace thing, how did you deal with the doubts? Did you ever have lots of self-doubts? I mean, I know I certainly I did, where you don't feel good enough. Like you're what am I doing here? The old imposter syndrome type thing? Did that ever rear its head in your world? Or were you able to focus and...?   Rod: No, absolutely, Lisa. I mean, I would often, fortunately, I could go to John with any question. There is nothing, no stone left unturned. He was amazing. Because he sensed it too, by the way, that being that brother, playing and training. And he was very, very connected with me because he would train with me, and he would sense things. And he'd say to me, he said, ‘Oh, you’re a little bit down today, aren’t you?’ and he said, ‘What's happened?’ There are like bit of a bullying going on in school and this or that, or ‘That girl won't talk to me anymore, and I love her’ and that stuff.   Lisa: Yeah, yeah, all that stuff.   Rod: And so he was like Marian, my mother. She was very, very on to me, too. She would sit with me and talk with me. And her mother, my grandmother, amazing, amazing people. And I will say this, right now, when my mother was 95 years old, she asked me to come and sit with her on her birthday. And she held my hand. And she said, ‘You can call me Marian from now on’. And I said, ‘Wow, this is fantastic’. And that was my mother's gift to me because I've always called her mother. I never call her mum. No. Always ‘mother’. And that relationship with my mother was very, very powerful, and it came through in my running. And John would now and again have to kind of toughen me up a little bit — that was incredible balance. So I never had anything that I had, I took to bed with me, I never had anything that I would go out.   Lisa: Get it all out.   Rod: I would say, sometimes, if you're running through the Dan Mountain Retreat. And he said, ‘I know what you get yourself wound up’. He said, ‘Stop, take your shoes off, and hug a tree.’   Lisa: These guys is just so like, what astounds me is that your mom, your brother, these good mentors and coaches that you had were so advanced. And this is the stuff that we’re talking about now, like, I'm telling my athletes to take your shoes off and go and ground yourself every day. And go hug a tree and get out in the sunlight and get away from the screens and do all these basic sort of things. But back then there wasn't that, like, there wasn't all this knowledge that we have now, and they obviously innately just nurtured. It sounds like you had the perfect nurturing environment to become the best version of yourself.   Rod: Yes, I think so, Lisa. I was very, very, — and wonderfully, even in the club, in our running club, get this, our chairman of our running club was Harold Nelson, 1948 Olympian. Our club captain was Carrie Williams, five times Australasian cross-country champion. And they took time to run with us kids. They didn't all go out and race. The club captain and Harold would come down and talk with us kids and we would run. And then, I remember Carrie Williams, when he took us for a run. And he said, ‘Right’. He said, ‘Now there's a barbed wire fence in, there's a gate’. And he said, ‘We've got the flag there and the flag there’. He said, ‘You got a choice of going over the barbed wire fence or over the gate’. He said, ‘Come on, you boys, off you go’. And of course, 9 out of 10 went over the gate. And a friend of mine, Roger Seidman and I, we went over the barbed wire. And then he said, ‘Why did you do that?’ And I said, ‘Because it was shorter.’ And they turned to the others, and he said, ‘I like his thinking’. And he said, ‘You've got to have, to jump over a barbed wire fence, you've got to have 100%, you got to have 90% confidence and 10% ability.   Lisa: And a lot of commitment. That is a good analogy.   Rod: Things like that, all started to, there's this big, big jigsaw puzzle. And all those pieces started to make sense. And I can start to build that picture. And when I started to see the picture coming, I understood what they were telling me. And once again, learn by doing — or another word, another thing that John had above my bed was a sign, ‘Don't be influenced by habits’.   Lisa: Wow, that's a good piece of advice for life. I think I might stick that on my Instagram today, Rod Dixon says.   Rod: And, of course, wonderfully, all these I've carried on with my programme that I did with the LA marathon, and bringing people from the couch to the finish line now. And when I was going through, we're putting through, I started off with five or six hundred. But I got up to over 2000 people. And basically, it's the matter that I used for my kids’ programme is, ‘Finishing is winning. Slow and steady. The tortoise won the race.’   Lisa: Well, that's definitely been my bloody life history, that's for sure. Finishing is winning and the tortoise wins the race. Yeah, if you go long enough, and everyone else has sort of stopped somewhere, and you're still going. That was my sort of philosophy, if I just keep running longer than everybody else, and whatever. Let's go now, because I'm aware of time and everything, and there's just so much to unpack here. I want to talk about the New York City Marathon because it was pretty, I mean, so you did the Olympics. Let's finish that story first, because you got bronze medal at the 1500 at the Olympics. Now, what was that like a massive, life-changing thing to get an Olympic medal? You did it four times, the first time?   Rod: I mean, my goal, and I remember, I've still got a handwritten notes of John. And our goal was to get to the sideline at the first heat. And if you can qualify for the next thing, would we give you this, that, if you're there, this is what we've worked for. And of course, and I remember 1968 again, when I was listening to my transistor radio, to the 1500 meters with Keino and Ryun, Jim Ryun, the world record holder, Kip Keino, Commonwealth champion from Edinburgh in 1970. And here he was, this incredible race, and we were absolutely going in there, listening to it, and it was incredible. And to think they said that four years later, I'm on the start line, and beside me, is Kip Keino.   Lisa: Yeah, it'd be, it’s pretty amazing.   Rod: And then the next runner to come and stand beside me was Jim Ryun, the world record holder and here I am. And I'm thinking because I don't pick it out, when we got the heats, well you've got the world record holder, silver medallist, and you've got the Olympic gold medallist in my race, and only two go through to the next leap. So I'm going for it but I never, I wasn't overwhelmed by that because John has said to me, our goal is, and I wanted to please John by meeting our goal, at least get to the next round. Well, history has shown that Jim Ryun was tripped up and fell and I finished second behind Keino to go through to the next round. And then and then of course, I won my semi-final. So, I was in the final, and this was unbelievable, it’s no doubt is –   Lisa: It’s like you’re pinching yourself, ‘Is this real?’ All that finals and the Olympics. And you ended up third on that race, on the podium, with a needle around your neck on your first attempt in a distance where the people sent you, ‘Yeah, not really suited to this tribe’.   Rod: And what was amazing is that just after we know that we've got the middle and went back to the back, and after Lillian came in into the room to congratulated me and Bill Bailey. And they said, ‘You realise that you broke Peter Snell’s New Zealand record’. And I was almost like, ‘Oh my god, I didn't mean to do that’.   Lisa: Apologising for breaking the record. Oh, my goodness. I'm sure that's just epic. And then you went on to more Olympic glory. Tell us from...   Rod: So at that stage, we went back to… New Zealand team were invited to the Crystal Palace in London for what they called the International Athletes Meet. And it was a full house, 40,000 people, and I didn't want to run the 1500 — or they didn't actually have a 1500 — they had a 3000, or two mark, this right, we had a two-mark. And that's what I wanted to run, the two mark, and that was Steve Prefontaine, the American record holder, and he just finished fourth at the Olympics. And I went out and we had a great race — unbelievable race. I won it, setting a Commonwealth and New Zealand record. He set the American record. And that was just like, now, it was just beginning to think, wow, I can actually run further than 1500.   Lisa: Yeah, yeah, you can. You certainly did.   Rod: So we got invited to go back to Europe at ‘73. And so we have the called, the Pacific Conference Games in ‘73, in Toronto. So, I asked the Athletic people, ‘Can I use my ticket to Toronto, and then on to London?’ Because I had to buy—may they allow me to use that ticket. And then Dick Quax and Tony Polhill said they were going to do the same. And then we had this young guy call me, John Walker. And he said, ‘I hear you guys are going to England. And could I come with you?’ And I said, ‘Yeah’, because he didn't go to the Olympics, but he ran some great races, we thought it was heavy. And he said, ‘Now do you get me the ticket?’ And I said, ‘No, you have to get the ticket’. And he said, ‘Oh, how do I do that?’ And I said, ‘If you, can't you afford it?’, and he said, ‘Not really’. I said, have you got a car? He said, ‘Yes’. I said, ‘Well, sell it’. And he said, ‘Really?’ So he did. And my reasoning is that, ‘John, if you run well enough, you'll get your tickets back again, which means you'll be able to buy your car back again.’ And that was John...    Lisa:  Put your ass on the line and forward you’re on, because this all amateur sport, back in the day. And it was hard going, like to be a world-class athlete while trying to make a living and  how did you manage all of that, like, financially? How the heck did you do it?   Rod: Well, before I left in ‘73, I worked full time, eight hours a day. I did a milk run at night. I worked in a menswear store on a Friday night. And then of course, fortunately, I was able to communicate with Pekka Vasala from Finland. And he said, ‘We can get you tickets. So the thing is, get as many tickets as you can, and then you can cash them in’. Right. But then, so you get the ticket, of course, there you wouldn't get the full face of the ticket because you were cashing it in. But if you got enough to get around. And you did get expenses, double AF and those rows you're able to get per diem, what they call per diem. Yep. But by the time you came back, you kind of hopefully, you equal, you weren't in debt.    Lisa: Yeah.    Rod: Well, then you go back and comment for the Sydney Olympics. Very good friend of mine allowed us to go do shooting and we would go out every weekend and then sell with venison. Yeah. And that was giving another $100 a weekend in, into the kitty.   Lisa: Into the kid. And this is what you do, like to set, I mean, I must admit like when I represented New Zealand, so I did 24-hour racing and it's a ripe old age of 42. Finally qualifying after eight years of steps. And I qualified as a B athlete, I did 193.4 in 24 hours and I had to get to 200. I didn't make the 200, but hey, I qualified. And then we didn't even get a singlet, we, and the annoying thing in my case was that we qualified for the World Champs but they wouldn't let us go to the World Champs. And I've been trying for this for eight years before I could actually qualified. And I was desperate to go to the World Champs and then just on the day that the entries had to be in at the World Champs athletics, New Zealand athletic said, ‘Yes, you can actually go’ and I'm like, ‘Well, where am I going to pull $10,000 out of my back pocket on the day of closing?’ So I didn't get to go to the World Champs, which was really disappointing. So I only got to go to the Commonwealth Champs in England and got to represent my country, at least. Because that had been my dream for since I was a little wee girl, watching you guys do your thing. And my dad had always been, ‘You have to represent your country in something, so get your act together’. And I failed on everything. And I failed and I failed, and failed. And I was a gymnast, as a kid, it took me till I was 42 years old to actually do that and we had to buy our own singlet, we'd design our own singlets, we didn't even  get that. And that was disappointing. And this is way later, obviously, this is only what 2010, 9, somewhere, I can't remember the exact date. And so, so fight, like you're in a sport that has no money. So to be able to like, still has, to become a professional at it, I managed to do that for a number of years, because I got really good at marketing. And doing whatever needed to be done —  making documentaries, doing whatever, to get to the races. So like, even though I was like a generation behind you guys, really, it's still the same for a lot of sports. It's a hard, rough road and you having to work full time and do all this planning. But a good life lessons, in a way, when you have to work really hard to get there. And then you don't take it for granted.   Now, I really want to talk about the New York City Marathon. Because there’s probably like, wow, how the heck did you have such a versatile career from running track and running these,  short distances? It's super high speeds, to then be able to contemplate even doing a marathon distance. I mean, the opposite ends of the scale, really. How did that transition happen?   Rod: Yeah, I think from ‘73, ‘74, I realised that John Walker's and then Filbert Bayi and some of these guys were coming through from the 800,000 meters. And so I knew, at that stage, it was probably a good idea for me to be thinking of the 5000 meters. So that was my goal in 75 was to run three or four 5000 meters, but still keep my hand in the 1500. Because that was the speed that was required for 5000. You realise that when I moved to 5000, I was definitely the fastest miler amongst them, and that gave me a lot of confidence, but it didn't give me that security to think that they can't do it too.   So I kept running, the 800s, 1500s as much as I could, then up to 3000 meters, then up to five, then back to 3000, 1500 as much as I can. And that worked in ‘75. So then we knew that programme, I came back to John with that whole synopsis. And then we playing for ‘76 5000 meters at the Montreal Olympics. Pretty well, everything went well. I got viral pneumonia three weeks before the Olympics.   Lisa: Oh my gosh. Didn’t realise that.   Rod: Haven’t talked about this very much, it just took the edge off me.   Lisa: It takes longer than three weeks to get over pneumonia   Rod: And I was full of antibiotics, of course. It might have been four weeks but certainly I was coming right but not quite. Yeah. So the Olympics ‘76 was a disappointment. Yeah, finishing fourth. I think the listeners set behind the first.   Lisa: Pretty bloody good for somebody who had pneumonia previously.   Rod: Then I went back to Europe. And then from that point on, I didn't lose a race. And in fact, in ‘76, I won the British 1500 meters at Sebastian Coe and  Mo Crafter, and Grand Cayman, and those guys. So, then I focused everything really on the next couple of years, I’m going to go back to cross-country. And I'm going to go back to the Olympics in 1980 in Moscow, this is going to be the goal. And as you know, Lisa, we, New Zealand joined the World Cup. And we were actually in Philadelphia, on our way to the Olympics, when Amelia Dyer came up to John Walker, and I said, ‘Isn’t it just disappointing, you're not going to the Olympics’. And I look at John and go...   Lisa: What the heck are you talking about?   Rod: No, and we don't? New Zealand joined the boycott. So at that stage, they said, ‘Look, we've still got Europe, we can still go on, we can still race’. And I said, ‘Well, I'm not going to Europe. I'm not going to go to Europe and run races against the people who are going to go to the Olympics. What? There's nothing in that for me’. And I said, ‘I heard there's a road race here in Philadelphia next weekend. I'm going to stay here. I'm going to go and run that road race. And then I'll probably go back to New Zealand’.   Well, I went out and I finished third in that road race against Bill Rogers, the four-time Boston, four-time New York Marathon winner, Gary Spinelli, who was one of the top runners and I thought, ‘Wow, I can do this’. And so, I called John, and we started to talk about it. And he said, ‘Well, you really don't have to do much different to what you've been doing. You've already got your base, you already understand that your training pyramid’. He says, ‘You've got to go back and do those periodisation… Maybe you still got to do your track, your anaerobic work.’ And he said, ‘And then just stepping up to 10,000 meters is not really that difficult for you’.    So, I started experimenting, and sure enough, that started to come. And in those days, of course, you could call every day and go through a separate jar. I had a fax machine, faxing through, and then slowly but surely, I started to get the confidence that I could run 15k. And then I would run a few 10 milers, and I was winning those. And then of course, then I would run a few races, which is also bit too much downhill for me, I'm not good on downhill. So I'll keep away from those steps to select. And then I started to select the races, which were ranked, very high-ranked, so A-grade races. And then I put in some B-grade races and some C. So, I bounced them all around so that I was not racing every weekend, and then I started to get a pattern going. And then of course, I was able to move up to, as I said, 10 mile. And I thought now I'm going to give this half marathon a go. So, I ran the half marathon, I got a good sense from that. And then, I think at the end of that first year, I came back rank number one, road racing. And so then I knew what to do for the next year. And then I worked with the Pepsi Cola company, and they used to have the Pepsi 10K races all around the country. And so I said, I’d like to run some of these for you, and do the PR media. And that took me away from the limelight races.   And so, I would go and do media and talk to the runners and run with the runners and then race and win that. And I got funding for that, I got paid for that because I was under contract. And so I was the unable to pick out the key races for the rest of the set. And then slowly but surely, in 82, when I ran the Philadelphia half marathon and set the world record — that's when I knew, when I finished, I said, ‘If I turn around, could you do that again?’ And I said, ‘Yes’. I didn't tell anybody because that would be a little bit too —   Lisa: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Praising yourself.   Rod: So I just thought I'd make an honest assessment myself. And when I talked to John, he said, ‘How?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I couldn't’. And he said, ‘Well then, we’re going to look at that’.   Lisa: We got some work to do.   Rod: He said, ‘What we will do in 1982, you're going to come back and you're going to run the Pasta Marathon in Auckland, and that was going to be my trial. And Jack Foster was trying to be the first 50-year-old to break 2:20. So, I got alongside Jack and I said, ‘Now this is my first marathon. What do I do?’ And he said, ‘I see all these runners going out there and warming up and I don't want to run 29 miles...   Lisa: For the marathon? I need to do some extra miles warmup.   Rod: ‘Use the first mile as a warmup, just run with me’. I said, ‘That'll do me’. So, I went out and ran with Jack and then we time in, started down to Iraq, and we're going through Newmarket. And he said, ‘I think it's time for you to get up there with the leaders’. He said, ‘You're looking at people on the sidewalk. You're chatting away as if it's a Sunday run. You’re ready to go’.  I said, ‘You're ready?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, go’. And so, alright, because this is Jack Foster.   Lisa: Can't leave him.   Rod: 1974 at 42 years old. Jack said, ‘You can climb Mount Everest,’ I would do it. Yeah. So, I got up with the leaders and join them and out to Mission Bay. And on my way back, and I was running with Kevin Ryun, he who is also one of our legends from runners. And Kevin, he said, ‘We're in a group of four or five’. And he said, he came out, he said, ‘Get your ass out of here’. I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘You're running too easy. Make you break now.’ So I said, ‘Yes. Kevin’.   Lisa: Yes, Sir, I’m off.   Rod: So I ran one that and then that was when I talked with John, that was going to be the guidelines that maybe not another one this year, but certainly look at 83 as running a marathon at some point.   Lisa: How did you work the pacing? Like going from such a shorter distances and then you’re going into these super long distances, where you're pacing and you're fuelling and all that sort of thing comes into it. Was it a big mind shift for you? Like not just sprint out of the gate, like you would in, say, 1500, the strategies are so very different for anything like this.   Rod: Certainly, those memories of running with the marathon boys in 72. And I went back to Dave McKenzie and Jack Foster and talked to them about what it takes. And then, John, my brother, John was also too, very, very in tune with them, and he knew all the boys, and so we started to talk about how it would be. And he said, ‘So I want you to do, I want you to go back to doing those long Abel Tasman runs. I want you to do those long road aerobic runs, and just long and slow.’ And he said, ‘I don't want you going out there with your mates racing it. I want you to just lay that foundation again.’ And he said, ‘You’ve already done it’, he said, ‘It's just a natural progression for you’.   So it was just amazing, because it just felt comfortable. And at that time, I was living in Redding, Pennsylvania, and I would be running out or out through the Amish country and the farms and roads, they're just horse and cats.   Lisa: Awesome.   Rod: I had this fabulous forest, Nolde Forest, which is a state park. And I could run on there for three hours and just cross, but I wouldn't run the same trails. I mean, you'd run clockwise or anti-clockwise, so. And then, but I kept — I still kept that track mentality and still did my training aerobically but I didn't do it on the track. Fortunately, the spar side, they had a road that was always closed off only for emergencies. And it was about a three-

John Davidson - Club Sandwich, Singer, Songwriter, Entertainer - We love John Davidson. Heck, everyone loves him...for the last 50+ years John has entertained us as a guest host on Johnny Carson, a square and host of Hollywood Squares, a singer and songwriter and of course, as a host for $100,000 Pyramid, and That's Incredible.  Jon Leon Guerrero and Pete A Turner have a blast talking to John and we're sure you 'll feel the same way.  Get to John's new club, Club Sandwich, in Sandwich New Hampshire, get up, get out and have a great time with John. If You're in the neighborhood, get to John's new joint , in Sandwich New Hampshire.  For the  of this episode head to  Please support the Break It Down Show by doing a monthly subscription to the show  All of the money you invest goes directly to supporting the show!​ ​​Haiku We all get older So John updates the lyrics The tune stays the same ​Similar episodes:  -   -    -  Join us in supporting Save the Brave as we battle PTSD.  Executive Producer/Host: Pete A Turner  Producer: Damjan Gjorgjiev  The Break It Down Show is your favorite best, new podcast, featuring 5 episodes a week with great interviews highlighting world-class guests from a wide array of shows

Readings for Saturday, May 1, 2021 “Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” -- Colossians 3:14 Morning Psalm 92 1 It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; 2 to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night, 3 to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre. 4 For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy. 5 How great are your works, O Lord ! Your thoughts are very deep! 6 The dullard cannot know, the stupid cannot understand this: 7 though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever, 8 but you, O Lord, are on high forever. 9 For your enemies, O Lord, for your enemies shall perish; all evildoers shall be scattered. 10 But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox; you have poured over me fresh oil. 11 My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies; my ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants. 12 The righteous flourish like the palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. 13 They are planted in the house of the Lord ; they flourish in the courts of our God. 14 In old age they still produce fruit; they are always green and full of sap, 15 showing that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him. Psalm 149 1 Praise the Lord ! Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the faithful. 2 Let Israel be glad in its Maker; let the children of Zion rejoice in their King. 3 Let them praise his name with dancing, making melody to him with tambourine and lyre. 4 For the Lord takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with victory. 5 Let the faithful exult in glory; let them sing for joy on their couches. 6 Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands, 7 to execute vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples, 8 to bind their kings with fetters and their nobles with chains of iron, 9 to execute on them the judgment decreed. This is glory for all his faithful ones. Praise the Lord ! Midday Jeremiah 31:23-25 23 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Once more they shall use these words in the land of Judah and in its towns when I restore their fortunes: “The Lord bless you, O abode of righteousness, O holy hill!” 24 And Judah and all its towns shall live there together, and the farmers and those who wander with their flocks. 25 I will satisfy the weary, and all who are faint I will replenish. Colossians 3:12-17 12 As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 13 Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Luke 7:18-35 18 The disciples of John reported all these things to him. So John summoned two of his disciples 19 and sent them to the Lord to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” 20 When the men had come to him, they said, “John the Baptist has sent us to you to ask, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?'” 21 Jesus had just then cured many people of diseases, plagues, and evil spirits, and had given sight to many who were blind. 22 And he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. 23 And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” 24 When John's messengers had gone, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? 25 What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who put on fine clothing and live in luxury are in royal palaces. 26 What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 27 This is the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.' 28 I tell you, among those born of women no one is greater than John; yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” 29 (And all the people who heard this, including the tax collectors, acknowledged the justice of God, because they had been baptized with John's baptism. 30 But by refusing to be baptized by him, the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected God's purpose for themselves.) 31 “To what then will I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? 32 They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not weep.' 33 For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon'; 34 the Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' 35 Nevertheless, wisdom is vindicated by all her children.” Evening Psalm 23 1 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; 3 he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name's sake. 4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me. 5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long. Psalm 114 1 When Israel went out from Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language, 2 Judah became God's sanctuary, Israel his dominion. 3 The sea looked and fled; Jordan turned back. 4 The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs. 5 Why is it, O sea, that you flee? O Jordan, that you turn back? 6 O mountains, that you skip like rams? O hills, like lambs? 7 Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, 8 who turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water. You can also find all of today's readings at PCUSA.org. The Daily Lectionary podcast is a ministry of First Presbyterian Church of Plattsburgh, NY, read by Pastor Timothy J. Luoma.

Intro: tracking the weather, gardening, unhelpful aphorisms.Let Me Run This By You: memoryInterview: We talk to Paul Holmquist about making a difference through teaching, learning Laban Movement Analysis, and making career moves in theatre. Plus, a truly horrifying story.  FULL TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1: (00:08)I'm Jen Bosworth from me this and I'm Gina Polizzi. We went to theater school together. We survived it, but we didn't quite understand it. 20 years later, we're digging deep talking to our guests about their experiences and trying to make sense of it all. We survived theater school and you will too. Are we famous yet? How are you? Speaker 2: (00:32)Good. How are you? I'm pretty good. I mean, yeah. I'm I'm the Midwest is going snow. Are you getting snow today? Oh, don't. Oh God. Don't tell me good Lord above. Oh, hell Jesus. Um, I mean, I can not let me put it out into the universe. I cannot handle that. I cannot. Yeah, we're just going to put it out there. Nope, Nope. Nope. It's a big part path. I feel, I feel, um, I feel interested. I'm interested in that. You can, you can be. Yes. You can have a curiosity, curiosity, but I'm not, but I don't want it for the East coast, but just the Midwest, like a lot of stuff. I don't know, like wintery mix is how they put it. Speaker 2: (01:33)Okay. You keep tabs on the weather in Chicago. Yeah, because I'm, I'm really, I have to like really pump myself up that I moved. Like, it helps me to feel like I made the right choice. That's interesting. And um, my people in my family do that people in my family, like every once in a while, every once in a while my mom would call and she'll be like, she'll tell me, she'll say like, is it snowing there? And I'm like, what? She, yeah, every morning my family is obsessed with the weather. Yes I can. My cousin Roxie, she gets all the radars and she's tracking and she knows exactly what's coming this way. I mean, she should be a meteorologist frankly. She totally should have her own show on YouTube. She's a she's. So on top of the weather and my whole family is like that. Speaker 2: (02:23)I think it might be. I mean, it makes sense like that, that would have been handed down if, if it were from farmers, you know, like that would, it wouldn't be a big deal to like being to the weather. I that's like my favorite. Um, the only thing, well, not the only thing, but there was, when I went to, after my dad died, I went to the partial hospitalization program, um, in Highland park hospital. And um, in that time I had a bunch of therapists and some of them were horrible. And what, but one this one young and now looking Speaker 3: (03:00)Back, they were young as hell. There were young therapists and they were probably like, what? In the, uh, anyway, this one therapist said it was a gloomy day. It was a spring gloom or like summer gloomy day. And everyone was like, Oh, this weather. And he said, you know, I just have this story. You know, whenever I, whenever I have the glooms and I feel like, and at the time I thought he was a P an idiot, but he said, when it's I had planned to go to the beach today after our therapy. Right. But now I can't go to the beach and I was just thinking, it reminds me like somewhere I'm, I'm off and depressed and somewhere there's a farmer. That's rejoicing because his life is saved. Oh, Speaker 2: (03:44)Wow. Oh, wow. And Speaker 3: (03:46)I was like, it's great Speaker 2: (03:48)Perspective later. Speaker 3: (03:51)I was like, Oh my God, that is so deep. And this farmer is like dancing because his farm is saved. And I'm like, but you know, and it's not to diminish anyone's pain, but it's also just perspective. Like you said, like perspective somewhere, someone is happy and falling in love for the first time or somewhere, you know, like, Speaker 2: (04:10)Absolutely. And for some reason that also just reminds me of maybe just because talking about Chicago when I was an intern, social work school intern at Northwestern, inpatient, psychiatric, the thick people who worked that, I mean, people who work in psych hospitals are so interesting. Especially if they've been working there for a really long time and this, uh, OT, occupational therapist, guy, Fred Mahaffey. If you're out there, Fred, I love you. You taught me so much. Um, he, he's the person who introduced me to DBT. Um, and I was sitting in his group and he came in and he said, I just got a very upsetting, or I got a very troubling phone call, but I couldn't get into it because I have this group. And so right now, the thing I'm going to practice is, I can't know until I know Speaker 3: (05:06)Fred, you're amazing. Speaker 2: (05:08)Right? I mean, I think about that all the time. You can't know until, you know, which is really so much about worry and anxiety. It's all this worry about the things that we don't know. And sometimes that's appropriate sometimes. Yeah. You should be worried because something terrible is going to happen. And other times you just waste all of the in-between and then it turns out to be nothing. And you've just been tied up in knots for no reason. Speaker 3: (05:32)I am. The more, the older I get, the more I'm I sort of, um, am drawn to, um, Tibetan, Buddhism. And I am reading, I read it every couple years. I read Pema childrens when things fall apart, heart advice for hard times or difficult times. It's brilliant. It's it's saving me in terms of, it goes beyond just don't strangle your hustle. It goes beyond that into life. Has you licked life when life has you licked when you're licked, there is no hope. And that is truly where the new beginning begins. Oh, wow. I can get on board with that because when I, it reminds me of, and they talk a lot about, uh, she talks, Pema talks a lot about, and I'm sure she's not the only one, obviously in Buddhism. Groundlessness how we are. We are grasping for the ground at all times. And there is no ground. Speaker 3: (06:33)Now look, if you're in acute psychiatric distress, this is not a helpful book because it is, I'm not saying that, but if you have some perspective, like we're saying, if you have like, I have, I'm not in acute psychiatric distress, praise God. Um, but once, once you can get stepped back a little bit and see, Oh my, my addiction to hope my addiction to things are going to get better is actually, might not actually be helping me as much as I think that it is. Um, when I'm licked in my life, when I, when life has nailed me is true. And I can admit it is truly when I begin to settle in and good things happen in my life. It's just every time. Wow. Which is why 12 step programs work. Absolutely. Yeah. That's Speaker 4: (07:28)Notion of like clinging always to hope. That's very interesting. I remember this patient. I encountered also when I was in training, I think it was also at Northwestern. I think looking back, she had like low IQ, you know, if you have low IQ and personality disorder, that's a tough combo because a lot of the what's necessary for healing personality disorders, like a great understanding of what you're doing and how she's just so sweet in a way she'd come in. And she had all these aphorisms, she was, and I just got to keep the hope alive and I just got it. And I just got it's tomorrow's another day. And you know, and I w I always pictured her like a leaky bucket. Cause she'd get all filled up, you know, in this group with everything she needed. And then it's like, the minute she passed the threshold of the door, it all just leaked. Right. Speaker 3: (08:28)Oh my God. Speaker 4: (08:29)And I remember thinking like, maybe all these positive messages are actually really not helping her. Cause it's, it's, it's giving a, I don't want to say it's a false hope, but it's like, and I hate this and I've said this on the podcast before. So I apologize for repeating myself, but I hate the good vibes. Only no bad days crew, because it's so unrealistic. And it makes people paradoxically so much more. Speaker 3: (08:57)And I think it makes them enraged. So I think the under for me, what usually yeah, under and under rage is extreme for me is extreme sadness and hopelessness. And, but the rage that comes up w with, you know, life is good. Crew is like, when people don't jive with it, because it's like, if life is good, then dot, dot, dot, wired children murdered. If life is good, then why are police killing? You know, like what are you talking about? And I think that's a spiritual bypass people do. Speaker 4: (09:32)So if I'm going to make an inspirational mug, mine is going to say, life is good dot, dot dot sometimes because it is good sometimes. And then on the other side, life is bad dot, dot, dot. Sometimes like the point is you take the good, when you can get it, Speaker 3: (09:51)[inaudible] burn out. I loved that show. My God loved it. Speaker 4: (10:02)2d on roller skates. I lived and died by T I w I roller skated because her, Speaker 3: (10:08)I was going to say, is that part of your cause you're a roller skater. Yeah. Uh, I was a big Joe fan, Speaker 4: (10:14)Joe. Aha. Yeah, she was cool. She was cool. Hated Blair. Of course, Speaker 3: (10:17)Most people did, Natalie. I felt bad for her Speaker 4: (10:22)For Natalie too. I kind of felt like she wanted her to get off. Speaker 3: (10:27)She was a trope. You know, she was a sad, sad truck. Well, I have been accepted as, uh, an official member of the Myrtle tree climate action team. [inaudible] Speaker 4: (10:41)The name of the group that does your CSA or your, whatever, your Speaker 3: (10:45)It's, the Myrtle tree cafe. They that's where they used to meet before COVID Myrtle. I think put, forgive me. If I say this wrong, a Myrtle tree cafe, climate action team. It's amazing. We're superheroes. That's a crazy, like I'm an official member. So I get a key and an orientation Wednesday, I'm telling you that gardening has really changed and changed my life in terms of my health and, and feeling like I'm doing something for the planet, both it's crazy. It's just gardening. It's not like I'm, you know, Speaker 4: (11:24)But that's what they say. Little acts are revolutionary. Like just being responsible for like learn, learn, even just learning where all your food comes from. And like, that's, that's a smaller Speaker 3: (11:36)Food came from. McDonald's like, I literally thought that that McDonald's was the food source, you know, or Jack in the box. That's not actually what it is. I was going to ask you, what are you going to grow? That's my question for you. Uh, we have Speaker 4: (11:54)Some debates about the things to grow. And mostly I was doing this. I was picking things out with my oldest son and he, he was actually being quite logical about it. He, I wanted to get kale and co and he was like, mom, nobody likes kale, including you, which is really true. And you're the only person who likes Brussels sprouts. And you're the only person who likes cauliflower. Let's get broccoli and bell pepper. And he loves hot things. So we got some jalapenos. And so we got a broccoli, a jalapeno, a bell pepper. And then we have, um, uh, my daughter has, she was really into the seeds thing. She got like a lunch and I don't feel, I feel like none of them are gonna work out, but she got some flowers and Speaker 3: (12:50)Some flowers might they're super hearty. Some flowers might come up and last for about 45 years. So just sunflowers are hurting. Speaker 4: (13:00)You have a great spot for sunflower. So that'd be great. So anyway, so we're just starting like easy peasy because you know, we don't, we've never done it before and we're not sure how it's going to go. So that is one to invest a bunch of money in something Speaker 3: (13:12)We'll do that. And if you have pests that are non, uh, this is so interesting to me when you have like aphids or inch worms or stuff like that. A lot of times, not all the times, I'm learning a lot of times, it means that your soil health is in jeopardy, not the actual plant. This is crazy. So a lot of times pest the TAC plants that aren't doing so well. Anyway, it's so crazy. I never knew that. I thought, Oh, they attack it because they're. Well, no, they might be, there might be an occasional inchworm, you know, like a Trump worm. But, but, but a lot of times pest can tell when the plant, the soil, Speaker 4: (13:55)I'm carrying around a semi with a bit to pay or whatever, Speaker 3: (14:02)There's our chick there's McDonald's McFlurry in one hand. Um, there's our kids show right there. Let me run this by you. Speaker 4: (14:23)I have a thing to talk to you about that is, um, it's kind of a bummer and I'm feeling good. I'm not sure if I should bring it up, but maybe I'll try to have a new perspective about it. Okay. I've had a couple memory slips that have been troubling. Speaker 3: (14:42)Oh, tell me all about, it Speaker 4: (14:45)Was one moment. I just couldn't remember my passcode to my phone. Okay. It came to me a couple of hours later. Okay. But I thought it was this one thing, and then it was Aaron had my phone and he's like, what's your passcode? And I, and I give him this passcode that doesn't work in it. And I'm like, Oh, well, maybe it's. And then all of a sudden it just like vanished. And I really started freaking out, like, yes, I freaked freaking out because, and I think, I think this might be something I inherited from my mother is very concerned about losing her memory. This is like her biggest fear. So whenever she forgets something, she panics and to the point that I feel she doesn't allow for any just normal forgetting of things, which I haven't had that problem berating myself for the normal forgetting things. Speaker 4: (15:44)But that passcode thing freaking like, it just, it just was gone. It was there. And then it was gone. That was one. And the other thing I'm probably going to have a hard time remembering. Um, no, I think actually there, isn't another thing like that. It's just more that I, it's just more that I, you know, because kids have great memories and my kids are constantly telling me, remember when we, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, ah, thankfully I really did. We, did we do that? Is that normal? Or should I start my Gingko biloba? I do so many, a word puzzle. I should have good brains. Speaker 3: (16:19)So what, the first thing that comes to mind is that I know, okay, this podcast right. Is bringing up a lot of memories for people, for us and for people. Okay. I believe that sometimes trauma stored when it comes out or even, even, even all this we're, we're taking in other people's trauma too. Right. That's true. So your mind can only hold so much. So I'm wondering if that also is a response to an overload of other your, and you do all the editing. You do every, you listen and listen. So you're taking it in over and over again. And the, and people were traumatized, you know, not everybody, but a lot of people that we talked to have been traumatized by their experience. So, uh, in college and so, and subsequent and what it meant and all that. So I'm wondering if you're partially it is just a trauma re a response to a lot of information going into your brain. Um, Speaker 4: (17:32)It could be, and as a, as a mother, I do have to remember so many. I mean, honestly, the landscape of what I have to remember is it's astounding. Um, and, and people do say that there's like a fog of motherhood that, you know, you never, you never get it back, but you have an excellent memory. You have an excellent short-term memory. Well, your long-term though. You've struggled to remember things about Speaker 3: (17:59)I never, no, I also never remember your birthday to save my life. Now I have it in my phone. Like, it's just so weird. And it's not just your birthday. I don't remember people. People will tell me my birthday is September 22nd. And I'm like, no, no, it's not. I went so no. So my memory, my memory, I also don't have children, but also, um, I know that, okay. So when my, when my father was dying in the hospital, my memory, I couldn't remember where I parked ever. When I would go visit him at the hospital, I would be sobbing, wandering around the parking lot until one came to pick me up in a little cart and drove me. And he said, the guy said it happens all the time with people visiting loved ones in the hospital, because they're so traumatized. They never remember where they parked, even though I would re I would like, I didn't even write it down, you know? Cause I was so wigged out, but I would say C 14, C four, or whatever it is and no memory after I would visit my father in the ICU. So I just think trauma and, um, or just Speaker 4: (19:10)Even upsetting feelings can Speaker 3: (19:13)Overload, um, listening to other people's stuff. It's it's our brains are not that big. If you think about it's like we have a super, I mean, you know, there's a lot there's and we only use, they say part of it, but I would venture to say, we use more than they say. Um, Speaker 4: (19:28)Yes. I recently read that that's a myth. It's not true that we use 10% of our abuse, all of our brains. I mean, which is not to say that you can, I think what that myth comes from is like, you can expand your, you can flex your muscle, your, the muscle of your brain, you can strengthen it or weaken it. Um, which is why I'm like addicted to doing all these little puzzles. Speaker 3: (19:51)Yeah. I mean, I know that it's scary. So then it's scary. So I had a similar thing where when we came back from, I would have sworn that my code to the locker was we have a locker that has stores are male. It's like, it's really great package lacquer. And I just couldn't for the mine was more like, I just knew in my head it was a number. And so I kept entering it and it was like, no, no, no. And I was like, well, something must be wrong with this machine. I had the wrong number the whole time, but I was convinced that it was this one number. And I'm like, and anyway, I was dumbfounded when I found out it was really this other number. I was like, Speaker 4: (20:29)Yeah. I mean, I, I, now that we're talking about it, I, I do think it's normal, but it's also about aging. It's really hard to separate out. Oh, hang on. My phone is ringing. It's really hard to separate out the things that we should be worried versus the things that are normal. Right. Speaker 3: (20:50)Bought it with my ticker. I'm like, Oh my gosh. You know? And my, my cardiologist is not that worried, but then I get worried. It's just, um, you hit, this is what my in the hospital, what they told me, you hit 40, between 40 and 50. And the check engine light comes on 90% more than it ever does. And you're like, what is happening in what? And, and really what, we're, what I'm asking. Anyway, when I ask these questions of doctors and things is when am I going to die? Am I going to die? Is this going to kill me? And it's not, I'm not like we talk about, I'm not petrified of death. What I'm petrified of is losing control. Right? So I'm really asking, is this going to be something I have no control over? And like at any moment is some weird stuff going to happen to me. And the answer is maybe they don't know, but they, they know more than we do use because of all the schooling and the, and the research. But they, no one can tell you exactly when you're going to die. Speaker 4: (21:50)Dare I say, we can't know until we know always looking to land that plane right back and forth today, Speaker 3: (22:03)I'll tell you about my poop in the backyard story. All right. I was a latchkey kid, as a lot of us were. And my mom was a working mom who, who was very, very type a at times and mean at times. And, uh, woes talks about that. And Lee left my key, lost my key or left it at school or something came home. No key, no way. I was going to walk to my mom's office, which was only eight blocks away because I was petrified because I left my key. I was just going to wait until someone got home. Pretend I had just walked home. It was a whole orchestrated thing app. But then I had to go to the bathroom number two. And I was like, Oh no, what do you do? So a normal person might go to the neighbor's house. Who might, by the way, might've had a key and said, can I use your bathroom? Speaker 3: (22:56)But I was so embarrassed that I had to poop that I didn't. So then I'm waiting and I'm like, I got poop. So then I tried to break in the house by pulling screens out of the basement and I break a window and I'm like, Oh my God. Gosh. So it just, anyway, I ended up pooping in the backyard. Okay. This is rough pooping in the backyard doing my business. It was a whole situation. Uh, and then someone came home and I, I, my, I did my plan as a plan. Right. And did your scene, did my scene? It worked out, people were received really convinced. Don't ask me any of the technical stuff about the pooping, but anyway, so the point not that you were going to, but the, the, the point is then in the middle we're we're having, uh, a fine evening. And then I hear my mom's screaming in the basement. Oh no. She's like someone tried to break in and I don't say anything. This is the thing about fear and shame. I say nothing. They call the police. Speaker 4: (24:03)No. Oh dear. Uh, Oh, this is not good. Speaker 3: (24:07)He's come. And they're like, and I'm petrified. They're going to dust for prints. And then match as only a child who was obsessed with true crime. This was right around the time of America's most wanted and uncle mysteries. And I'm like, Oh my God, how do I get off my fingerprints? I didn't go down that road. I didn't cut myself or hurt myself in any way. Other than my pride and shame, the police are like, well, it, yeah, it looks like someone may have tried to break in, but so then, but they left, but then it didn't end there in the middle of the night, I set my alarm and I went down into the basement and I took the glass, the remaining glass, and I walked three blocks and put it in someone else's garbage so that they could never find my prints again. Speaker 3: (25:03)So I was telling this to a friend and they were like, Whoa, we were unpacking it. And I guess the thing is, I was so ashamed. It was so I was so ashamed of the mom thing, but it manifested in the poop thing. And like, just ashamed that I had needs of any kind or that I would make a mistake or forget something that I went to such lengths to cover it up. And I just, I think we do these things and it just reminds me of like, you know what we always say on this podcast, which is like, you know, it's better to just own up, but when you're a kid and you feel like you're going to die or something terrible is going to happen to you, if you, if you own up to your mistake, you go through such lengths. And I just am not willing to go through those lengths anymore. I just can't do it. I just, it's not worth it. And one of the things Speaker 4: (25:56)Is that we've learned from the people who have almost come on the podcast, but then ultimately said, I can't, it's too painful. Um, we've often had the experience that those people seemed perfectly happy, go lucky, et cetera. So, so, so we, as humans are constantly berating ourselves, like you say, for having needs, for having bad experiences, to the point that we won't share with anybody that we're having a bad experience, which of course makes us feel worse, more lonely, more isolated, more helpless, more hopeless. Um, so that, Speaker 3: (26:37)You know, it's almost like Speaker 4: (26:39)The dam, the dam breaks you, you, you can only shove or, or the image of the closet. You can only shove so many things in the closet. And one day you open up the closet and it just can't take it anymore. And it all comes spilling out. And it's understandable. I'm not saying that people should, you know, I'm not saying that it should be any other way than it is. I'm just saying, I guess what I'm really saying is if you're 25 and listening to this, and you're a person who's hiding all of your things, just ask yourself, what is it, what am I hiding? What am I really afraid of? And like, try to tease it out. Is this something you should really be ashamed about or afraid of sharing with other people? Because it's probably not that big of a deal. Speaker 3: (27:24)No, it's not worth it. It's not, usually it's not worth it now. I don't know. You know, for me, it has not been worth it. So I was thinking about that story, just the gymnastics. I went through the physical gymnastics. The, I could have cut myself on the glass, like what in the, but it just, it's a deep thing. And I was telling a friend that, and she was like, Whoa, this is so deep. So is it that you're Speaker 4: (27:49)Thinking because your mom is type a or you thinking she's, she's the kind of person who's definitely going to try to get to the bottom of this and would, would raise, would get to the point where she would be asking somebody to dust for fingerprints. Speaker 3: (28:06)It was more like, it was more like trying to put that floating Molly bolt shelf into the wall that, and the whole, it just, the story of my childhood was whenever I was doing the best I could. But whenever I, I would try to keep it all together. The whole would get bigger and bigger and no one would help me out of the hole. I think that's the other part is that I had to do everything by myself and that my mother would ultimately say, what is wrong with you? You should have X, Y, and Z. So instead of facing that shame, I just tried to do it on my own and it never worked ever, ever, never, ever. So I think, yeah, I think it's the fact of I was alone and I just kept making things worse because I didn't know. I couldn't, I didn't feel like I could share with anybody. So it's like at some point you got to step back from the hole in the wall and say, I'm licked. This has got me. I need to ask for a mechanic. A handy has, I don't even know a handyman to help, not a mechanic. Speaker 4: (29:12)The thing that also that, that tends to do in people, um, when they feel like they can never ask anybody for help is they can never develop intimate relationships with people because you, you, if you can never trust that. So when were you first in your life, was it with miles that you were first able to have real intimacy that you would just be yeah. Trust him too. Speaker 3: (29:34)Yeah. That needs to not go away to not leave, to not be like, Oh my God, you forgot your key. I'm never talking to you. You know, whatever it is. That was really, so I, that was, I was 30. I mean, come on. I mean, 30 years old, 30 years of not trusting. So it's really interesting. That takes a toll on your ticker. I'm telling you right now, you take a toll on your ticker. Um, yeah. So just, just a little, a light, poop story to wrap it up today. It's all, it's all, frankly, it's all poop stories. It's all food stories, right? At the end of the day, it's all, it's all shame Speaker 5: (30:19)Today on the podcast, we talk with Paul Holmquist Paul home quiz. We went to school with back in the day and after we graduated, he continued to be a theater actor for many years, and then transitioned into directing for the stage. At a couple of years ago, he felt he really wanted to make a difference. And he decided to become a high school English teacher, which is what he does now, in addition to being an artist he's thoughtful and kind his stories really were moving. And I'm so grateful that he decided to speak with us. So please enjoy our conversation with Paul home quit. This is my second year. I just joined the profile. Very new. You just became a teacher two years ago. Speaker 3: (31:06)Oh, that's cool. Where do you teach? Speaker 6: (31:08)Yeah, I teach at a South side, Chicago vocational high school called shop, uh, Chicago vocational career Academy. It's down by the Skyway. Like if you're driving down the Skyway, there's a giant, looks like a Batman villain, hideout. That's Chicago vocational. Speaker 3: (31:25)And so did you, um, how come you made that career shift? Yeah. Tell us all about it. Tell us all about it Speaker 6: (31:34)Is it's okay to talk politics. Sure. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, uh, you know, when Trump got elected, I was like, I gotta do something different and I don't quite know what it is, but maybe I could teach high school English because I have a background in theater, but it just seemed like maybe I need to do something because I was working a really great day job for like 15 years that had benefits in it, fairly decent salary, allowing me to do theater and stuff. But once the election hit, it was just felt like something I needed to change something. I was not very satisfied with. Um, you know, there was like no growth at my day job. What was that job? Uh, admin administrative assistant position at, at, uh, Columbia college. So I was still kind of close to the artistic community while I was working there. Speaker 6: (32:23)But, um, I had kind of a neurotic boss and I was there for 15 years and there was no, like, there was no growth. I'd kind of plateaued there. Um, and I wasn't making a difference anywhere, so it felt like I needed to do something. So I was like, I'm going to become a high school English teacher. Wow. Uh, so I went back to DePaul. I became a double demon and I that's what they call it. That's what they call it. Um, so I went to the college of education and got a master's, uh, there Speaker 2: (32:54)That's so great. Uh, education is a fantastic way to make a difference. Speaker 6: (33:00)Yeah. It's um, and it's, uh, a good segue from the, uh, from the theater work. I mean, there's, there's a lot of parallels Speaker 2: (33:09)Say, uh, beans. Didn't say her usual opening. Congratulations, Paul Holmquist you survived theater school. Speaker 6: (33:17)I'm still here to tell the tale. Speaker 2: (33:18)I want to be a double demon. I love this phrase. I think we should use it all ways. Even if you didn't get two degrees from DePaul, I feel I'm a double demon because I spent so much time talking about school. Speaker 6: (33:31)Right? You got a master's degree in the theater school after going to the funeral, Speaker 2: (33:35)By the way, I have masters in processing your theater school education. Speaker 6: (33:40)My I've been listening to your podcast now. And I had, I actually had to take a break before for the last week or else I'd be too neurotic about what I was going to say too, but I really find this podcast to be so personally helpful. Like I find it's like, it feels like a, like a group therapy kind of process, but protracted where Rouge taking turns, but hearing other alum, just talk about what they experienced. I was like, Holy cow, I'm not alone. I had similar experiences and wow. Wow. Speaker 2: (34:14)What's, what's an example of something that really resonated with you. Speaker 6: (34:18)Hm. Well, I guess I, I thought this is coming off of hearing, uh, interviews from, from friends like Bradley Walker and Eric Slater is I thought those upperclassmen guys had it all together. You know, Lee, Lee, Kirk, I thought these guys were like, just had just knew what they were going for and knew what they were doing. They just seemed so successful. And I was felt like, you know, like I was flailing along, trying to find my way. It's so great to hear that, um, to hear, uh, Bradley talk about his, uh, coin tricks with, with such despair, like as if it, but on my end, I thought he was the coolest dude. Like he had this cool thing and Slater was so awesome. Like, I didn't know he was insecure. Like all, I've just, all of that stuff is really, really great. Speaker 2: (35:10)I, I think that's, I mean, obviously that's part of why, why I think we do it is, is, is to, um, facilitate some kind of, if not healing, cause that's a kind of lofty word, but some kind of let's not go there, but, but, um, understanding or comradery in the fact that we all, um, went through this thing, it's true. And most people felt like an outsider. Most people. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I want to be like, if you're, if you're in theater score right now, spoiler alert, everybody look around you, the person on your right and bruise on your left. They also feel the same way you do. Uh, but unfortunately we cannot say that at the time because we're busy, like trying to seem like we have it all together. That's, that's a common thing. And there is also a little bit of like, you don't want to admit weakness in theater school, except at the exact moment you need to access it for a scene that you're in. Speaker 6: (36:10)Well, I, and it really it's. It strikes for me the difference between being an MFA and being a BFA is coming in as an adolescent. Like you're still in developmental processes that haven't resolved while you're going through this, you know, self-reflective, um, w all the body stuff, uh, that comes up, and that was so fascinating to hear that it came up for other people too. Like all of that stuff is part of while we're in the process of personality development to have to be under fire from these artists, from the seventies who have different politics and strange ideas, Bob Dylan taught us. Speaker 2: (36:52)Yeah, exactly. So, but when you were doing your day job, um, that you left work, you were doing theater at night. Is that what, Speaker 6: (37:02)Yeah. Um, I mean, for the past, like 20 years, I've, I've directed and acted in shows, um, pretty regularly. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2: (37:12)And w um, did you have like a, a place where you mostly hung out a theater company that you were a part of, Speaker 6: (37:18)Right? Yeah. So right after college, um, I didn't really hook up with a theater company, but that seemed to be the, the way for Chicago actors to go after graduation was to like either link up together or link up with another theater company to start. And I, I remember because the timeline was so new then, um, and I did a show with them, like their second show that Barry Burnett directed. And, um, and I had a feeling in my, I had like this investment in my heart, like, okay, I'm going to be a timeline guy regret. I'm going to join up with PJ. And, and we're, I'm going to be a part of that Juliet and be a part of that group. And it didn't pan out that way. I ended up, um, kind of gravitating up into Andersonville, working with the Griffin theater where another, uh, DePaul alumni and Rick Barletta was, uh, artistic director. Speaker 6: (38:11)Um, he was a good minimal director, Goodman train director. Um, so I still stuck with some DePaul people, um, kind of grew up with the Griffin theater. And then, uh, in 2006, I joined lifeline theater, which is up here in Rogers park, uh, where I live. So it comes through from where I live and I've been there since we do literary adaptations, um, all original plays. And, uh, so I've had the pleasure of directing amazing stuff, like the count of Monte Cristo and Frankenstein and the Island of Dr. Moreau and, um, you know, British murder mysteries and a wide range of really cool. Speaker 2: (38:49)Fantastic. How did you go? So you started directing then. So how did you bridge that situation? Speaker 6: (38:55)I, I, yeah, I kind of, well through my, a little bit of set up here. So through my day job, I got, um, trained in Laban's movement analysis, which is a movement theatrical, physical expressional, expressionistic movement, modality. It's kinda like, um, I don't know if you remember, Patrice did stuff with us about, uh, punch and float, like dad, that kind of stuff. So, um, through the department I was working for, I was able to get a graduate certificate in this modality for free, and I wanted to apply it to my own acting. And so I, I was doing, I was playing a cat in a, uh, in a, in a young adult show called Angus thongs. And full-frontal, snogging at, uh, at Griffin theater. I played, I played Angus. I had no lines, but I was a cat and I was doing all this physical stuff. Speaker 6: (39:53)And I was getting to know through that production, um, a lot of the, uh, uh, main players that lifeline, because they were doing a lot of the design on this show and kind of getting to know them and having a good rapport with them. They're designers not, um, are not, uh, acting, directing people. Um, but I've developed a good rapport with them. And that kind of started to introduce me to the people at lifeline. And eventually they invited me to direct a kid's show, um, just as an experiment. And I tried directing, uh, Ricky ticky TAVI, and that became a great success. Um, and then after that, my first, actually my first main stage show was, uh, the Island of Dr. Moreau, which was a 90 minute immersive, violent horror piece. So I like, I right away jumped into something that was really bizarre and, uh, unusual. And since then, it's been just a blast. I mean, I get to get a lot of creative freedom. Speaker 2: (40:51)I have to ask you a question. I recently have heard this term all over the place immersive. And I don't, if I knew what it was previously, I, it, it didn't drop in because when I think of immersive, I think like you go to a haunted house, Speaker 6: (41:09)Right? No. Right, right. I guess I think of immersive as be like a full sensory experience, as much as possible. And, um, you know, in storefront theaters, especially places like lifeline, where you can have entrances surround the audience, you can really have the sense of like an actor's right next to you that, and they're acting like an animal breathing in your ear and it creates a sort of sense of tension. I'm going back 20 years. And I'm thinking about this show, but that's what I think of an immersive theater. People might think of it as like you're wandering around from room to room. You're more interactive like that, I guess. Speaker 2: (41:47)Yeah. It's I saw cats on Broadway in the eighties. It was him. Cats came right next to me. So that was immersive. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying that because, uh, I, I thought it was one of those things, like I felt it was, it was too dumb to ask about. Okay. So where you, Speaker 6: (42:06)Uh, I'm from upstate New York. I'm from the Rochester New York area, a little suburb called Webster. Speaker 2: (42:12)Okay. And, um, but you have not ever returned there after school. You stayed in Chicago. You've been in Chicago, stayed in Chicago. Okay. Yeah. Did you grow up acting? Speaker 6: (42:22)Uh, yeah, I thought of this, of course. Like, I think it was around fourth grade that I was in my first school play and it felt like, um, uh, people liked what I was doing and it was, it was one of those, like I'm coming into my own. I'm like 10 years old, starting to figure out, you know, think about who I might want to be identity wise. And that seemed to, um, to work for me now, then when I changed schools in seventh grade, I was shy. I was never really athletic or, um, I picked up the trumpet, but I wasn't a great musician, you know, but I got a lot of great response when I did theater work. And that just kind of, uh, that's what grew, you know, you gravitate towards those things where you get the positive feedback Speaker 2: (43:12)That is. Did you have, did you have one of those intense, uh, like high school drama? I know you said you've listened to some of the podcasts. You've probably heard tell if some character, uh, teachers from high school. Speaker 6: (43:25)I had a wonderful drama person who was not, we had no drama classes. We did not take any acting classes or have any, any sort of immersion like that. We just did two shows a year, a play and a musical. And, um, uh, so you just hung out at the club and, and picked up what you picked up. But my drama teacher, she knew that I was serious and there was a, uh, a guy who's a year ahead of me in college who ended up going to Tisch, um, a year ahead of me in high school. I ended up going and he and I were, we did a two man show called the greater tuna. Can I show you something real quick? Hold on. I was like, tuna is hilarious. That's from greater China. So this is Mark and I in costume playing all of our different characters in high school. Speaker 2: (44:21)Amazing. Wow. That's some production value. Speaker 6: (44:28)So that's a high school. It's a two man show. Uh, multicharacter, it's kind of like mystery of Irma VEP where, you know, you run off stage and you change costume real quick and come back on. So Mark and I, we took, uh, our acting kind of seriously. We took ourselves somewhat seriously as actors. Um, and, uh, Tish was definitely on my list when I was looking for colleges. Speaker 2: (44:51)Well, yeah. How'd you end up at DePaul. I love the, the choosing stories or how they choose. Speaker 6: (44:57)Um, yeah, totally. So, uh, Tish, uh, I was accepted at Tisch and I even got a little money at Tisch, but they accepted me into the experimental theater wing and I had no idea what that was and it didn't seem like me. I mean, I had grown up in kind of a cul-de-sac of a suburb, you know, with very limited exposure to what experimental theater might even be. So, but DePaul just felt like so nice. I came to DePaul after, uh, visiting New York city and then auditioning there. And, um, so I auditioned at DePaul in the theater school building with Dave [inaudible]. He wouldn't remember that he was in my audition group, but I remember him in his cutoff jeans and his Janice chocolate. T-shirt very well. I was so enamored with him because he seemed so, um, organic. Whereas I was at wearing a black mock turtleneck and black jeans and slicked back hair, and I was trying to be very artistic. I was also in the middle of playing Tevya in a Fiddler on the roof in high school, the most Arion Tevya Speaker 2: (46:10)Well, you probably didn't have any Jews in your high school Speaker 6: (46:14)If I, yeah. I don't know if we did. They probably weren't involved in the theater department as much as I want. Yeah. So it was like, uh, I was coming in there trying to be a serious artist and I saw David, um, and I didn't know him, you know, at all. I was just seeing him for the first time. And I was like, this is wild. This is what I want to get into. So part of what inspired me was John Jenkins leading the, uh, audition, which I thought he was just a brilliant guy and watching David and the audition made me feel like I want to be there. Speaker 2: (46:46)Does he know that now? You we'll have to tell him to listen to this one. You just remind, I guess we haven't really ever talked boss, correct me if I'm wrong. Have we ever talked about the fact that we did part of the audition all together in the same room? Is that what you're talking about? Like the thing, Speaker 6: (47:07)So John, I remember this so vividly, uh, John had us doing a scenario where we were, um, a Hunter in a forest and we were going to like walk along one side of the wall and the animal that we're hunting does a diagonal cross across the room. And we chase after it and halfway through crossing the room, we leak like the animal is supposed to mimic the animals. And part of the crossing, like the hunting, we were supposed to step on rocks in a stream or something like that to cross it. And I was just like, Oh, you know, I had everything planned out. I remember overthinking it very much, but also like being in line, waiting your turn, you're observing how other people are doing it. And this is, this is where David really comes in because when he left like that animal, he seemed to take air in the room, uh, because he was Unbound by his own, you know, insecurity or at least that's the way I interpret it. Wow. I'm really, do you find David kind of funny? Speaker 2: (48:05)That's okay. It's okay. So you said taking yourself seriously and overthinking ding, ding, ding. These are things I really relate to. These are near and dear to my heart. What is your journey then of taking yourself seriously? And, you know, like, has there been any Speaker 6: (48:22)Evolution or moving on that, like, you're going to think I'm nuts for saying this, but I swear that the show has helped in a little way. So I feel like I'm still in a process of recognizing what my expectations were, you know, for myself and my career. How did those change was and how w how was I influenced to change my ideas about that? And where am I now? Like, what do I want for myself now as an artist? And then how has that shifted, uh, that, so I've done a lot of processing on those because I am in therapy and I have been for a while, but also your show has really helped also turn some pages for me. So, thanks. Speaker 2: (49:01)So welcome believably. Wonderful. Thank you. That's very touching. I just want it. So in terms of taking yourself seriously, I feel like there that's a way to go. I took myself. It was like, I had such self-centered fear that I didn't take myself seriously, but I took my fear really seriously, of the, of, of being at school. You know, it was different. I wish I had taken myself seriously as an artist, but really what I did was just dive right into my shame and feeling. I just really did a deep dive into that. And so I'm wondering, how did you learn to take you're like, I know we're saying like, taking ourselves seriously can be kind of a, it can be, um, an Achilles heel, but also like, did you just, were you just born with like, yes, I'm an artist and here I am at school? Speaker 6: (49:52)No. I mean, I think that what started up school was using alcohol and drugs to keep myself from feeling that kind of fear and insecurity. So, um, you know, going at school, going to classes with kind of a boldness and an energy while also fighting a little bit of a hangover, or maybe still maybe, maybe coming to class a little high, you know, that helped a lot. Now, there you go. That makes, and then, and it all fit in with taking myself seriously as an artist because artists drink get high all the time. You would talk about apartment, what was it through your car? And like, you know, we're going to get high and we're going to do space out there at work. Like I'm a serious artist, you know, I can really feel the weight of my space objects when I am stone. Speaker 2: (50:47)You guys, do you ever wonder, like, is that, do you think that's still part of the college? I guess it probably is. It's probably still very much a part of the college experience, Speaker 6: (50:57)Right? Yeah. I don't think drugs will ever stop being or anything that's illegal is going to stop. Speaker 2: (51:03)It's just that we T we talked to somebody last week who is at the theater school now he's graduating this year and I didn't ask him, but I wanted to know, like, so, like, what's the, I mean, he's talked very wonderfully about the experience of, of being an actor at the school, but I also kind of wanted you to like, what's the whole social scene. I want it to be like, where you like me drinking Mickey's forties, big mouth and peeing on school property, but I didn't ask him, but I did not ask that because I thought, yeah, he probably, he might not have wanted to say in any case in it. Speaker 6: (51:41)Well, um, my wife is on faculty there now, so she teaches, she teaches movement there now. And I've been back a couple of times that directed an intro there, and I've done some guest lecturing there. So I've been back in the new building and the old building before it was torn down. So I've kind of maintained some ties to the theater school over the years. Um, and I don't think, I think the students, the student experience has changed just because the times have changed so much, you know, and the, the, um, but, and I think they're a little bit more savvy than perhaps we were, they don't do the God squad parties, but I think they still probably have some form of God squad, but it's not the like, Speaker 2: (52:26)Right. That's probably for the best, you know, I was going to say the person we interviewed that is at the theater school, talked about your wife and said that one of the reasons that he loved the audition process was, or when he went, he took, I think, a movement class with her and, and that he talked about her. So anyway, we're coming full circle here. It's real crazy. Speaker 6: (52:47)That's great. And it's so fun to hear these stories too, and to talk about them with Christina, because she's working with Phyllis and Patrice, uh, she worked with John, she worked with John Bridges. She's, you know, she knows these people, so they're, and so that history is still living, you know, sensory still. Yes. Speaker 2: (53:03)So what did you, so you got this movement training and Oh, and you with it, you taught that's, that's Speaker 6: (53:10)A little bit of teaching that way. Okay. Speaker 2: (53:12)Sorry. Did you say where you were teaching that Speaker 6: (53:15)Columbia at Columbia college, Chicago, but not in the theater department. It was through this other, uh, graduate, uh, arts therapy department that I was working. Oh, okay. Speaker 2: (53:26)So now that there's no more cuts system there, isn't this a direct connection between the theater school and Columbia, because yeah. Speaker 6: (53:35)You don't have a feeder college going into going into the code base. Right. Speaker 2: (53:38)Is it still a very robust acting program there? Speaker 6: (53:41)Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And, um, and still has that sort of scrappy energy, um, you know, Sheldon, I think really established, uh, um, um, uh, pathos around that place around that building and that program that still continues. Speaker 2: (53:59)Um, I was going to ask you while you were at the, the good old theater school, I remember you as being a musical theater guy. Am I making that up? Were you a big movie musical theater guy? Speaker 6: (54:11)I, yeah. I loved love to sing. Absolutely. And yeah, and Vanessa was more of the singer, but she and I would do, um, we were in that, uh, Michael Maggio, Keith redeem musical, the perpetual patient then Clemente was the lead in that, um, was that your final year? Maybe that was, yeah, it was after you got, Speaker 2: (54:34)But I was there. I remember. Yeah. Okay. So perpetual paste, that was a musical. Did you say Michael Maggio wrote it? Speaker 6: (54:41)Uh, Keith redeem wrote it. It was an adaptation of the imaginary invalid. So it was an adaptation of whole year made into a musical that, um, uh, um, Oh my gosh, Mike [inaudible], um, Mark Elliott Elliott wrote the music for Mark Elliot with the music for Keith redeem, did the script and the lyrics and Maggio directed. So Keith came to, uh, some of our rehearsals, um, because Keith and Michael had a relationship. So I got a lot of scripts autographed that day. Speaker 2: (55:16)How cool. So what are, what are some other roles that you loved or didn't Speaker 6: (55:24)Right, right. Um, well, working with Michael, I think were the two roles that really helped me understand myself as a character actor, I, where I did a missile Alliance, which Eric spoke about. Um, and I provided you one of the pictures of me, all the pictures of me have a mustache attached to them seem to be my go-to, but yeah, being, uh, being in an Ms Alliance and playing a character role in that with a kind of a goofy dialect and silly physicality and extreme stakes and working with like Tim Gregory and, uh, you know, Louise Rosette and Eric and all these Ellen and all these great people. Like I was, I was a junior and it was my, it was the fall of my junior year and I was on the main stage. And I remember that being like, that was pretty prestigious. That was pretty cool. Um, yeah, I'll, I'll probably forget that show so that one, and I would say perpetual patient were both really big for me in regards to embracing my character actor stuff. Speaker 2: (56:32)Anything, anything that you weren't so pleased about? Speaker 6: (56:37)Um, gosh, I mean, going, even going back to intros, I tried to, you know, you try to make the most out of everything, even when I had like, um, a, like a walk-on role in something you try to, you ever hear the story about, um, Betsy Hamilton said the story about Don Elko and she saw him on stage once he was the third speared carrier to the left. And she, that he was so memorable in that role with no minds. And I remember her saying this, like, you can make anything out of, you know, if you working with the director. So I always try to make something out of the roles I was in. I remember Jenkins saying to me, after we did bombing Gilliad as an intro, and he had Joseph Cora and I flipped roles halfway through the play where Joe played the lead, the first half of the play. And then I played a double lead, like seconds before he got shot. And like, it was so hard to get into that role and to like, try and feel like I'm that character in the moment that I know I'm about to die. And like, that was really hard. And John apologized for that, but that was, that's the only regret. Speaker 2: (57:46)Did he do that? Because it made sense for the player. He was just trying to get people more staged. Speaker 6: (57:52)Yeah. I think that's the, you know, the sort of unspoken rule of the intros. It's like, you want to give everyone some kind of equal some sort of equal, but I was happy playing the role of the coffee shop owner in the first half in the first act. I would've stuck with that. That was fine with me. Speaker 2: (58:12)What about, did you have, uh, or do you have, now I know you are very interested in movement, but like other tendencies then, or now writing, um, I guess directing, you've done some of w are there other areas of the craft that maybe you wish you could have explored more than? Speaker 6: (58:34)Yeah. So voiceover is something that I, I was interested in since I was an adolescent, since I was young. I really love voiceover. Do you remember when I was in college and we had a voiceover instructor, she was like a friend of Susan leaves who came in for a quarter. She said to me, uh, the age of radio is over. You don't really have a place in this business. She was, she was all about the kind of a raspy, vocal fry, female voice that was popular at the time. So she was really promoting those female voices and was basically like, you need to take a back seat. I'm sorry. The age of radio is over. You're not going to have a place in this business. And I took seriously because I was 19. I was like, Oh. And so since then, I, I have experienced the, uh, repercussions of that, even though I'm looking intellectually aware of it, like trying to get into the voiceover business, I'm hobbled. Like I can't push through the difficult first months of trying to establish something. I can't get through that point. So I, I just kinda gave up on that. I liked the sound of my voice. Speaker 2: (59:52)Oh, I'm so surprised. You're not a voiceover actor that I, in fact, back in my mind, I think I assumed that you did voiceover, but wait, what are you, I'm trying to understand what you're saying. You're saying that you, when you try to establish yourself, you find yourself like undoing it or, or, or you feel that the hurdles are insurmountable. Speaker 6: (01:00:13)Well, I, I w whenever I've tried to get started, I feel like there's, and this is the thing with being a white guy, I think is like, there's way too many of me. I don't think that I have that much uniqueness to offer, to upset the business and become something that I, you know, to add something to the community. So at this point, I feel like now at first I was hobbled with the age of radio was over. And now I feel like I'm feeling a little like, well, I guess I don't really have anything new to bring to voiceover. I would just be really impersonating the guys that came before me. Um, so maybe that's believing some of what was told to me when I was an adolescent a little bit, and also kind of reckoning with, you know, just where we're at as a society right now. And as a culture right now, maybe it's a mix of both, but it's really nice. Speaker 2: (01:01:07)So the age of radio has never been over. Right. Cause then, right. Speaker 2: (01:01:16)It's also not true. So, so what I, what, what sticks out to me is that when we're 19 and these people in power say things like that, the repercussions hear me. Now, if you are an instructor of some kind, they ripple out until you are 45 years old, and you are still dealing with them. Now, I'm not saying they did it on purpose. Maybe some people did, but it's harmful. And so I think, I think it's. And I also think that I want you to meet my voiceover agent. And I also think that, that I, um, I just didn't shocked at what we say. And Gina and I talk about this because Gina has kids. I don't, but just that what we say matters to people and you have kids, and what we say matters to people, um, more than we could ever know, it drives me insane when I hear stuff like that. Um, because I've heard it too stuff, and it's not fair. And we were 19 and you have a fantastic voice and you're kind, that's the other thing it's like, you can hear the kindness in your voice, and I'm so serious, and we need that in this industry. So that's all I'll say on that. Get off my box. But man, Speaker 6: (01:02:28)Thanks for saying that. But I want to say something too, about what you were saying with the messages. There was something that I'll say his name. You can edit it out later, said to me in his office one day and I'm surprised, I bet there's a lot of stories. Speaker 2: (01:02:42)Oh yes. We believe his name on the regular. Speaker 6: (01:02:47)So he had me in his office. Uh, I think it was like sophomore year, like second year and he's, and I was sitting in his office and he said, all right, get up. Mike stood up. And he said, turn around. I turned around in a circle and said, no, turn your back to me. I turned my back to him. He was still sitting down and I was standing and he slapped me on the, both cheeks. He said, this is getting too big, sit down. And I sat down. He said, if you're going to get anywhere, you have to lose some weight. Your is getting too big. Speaker 2: (01:03:24)Oh my God, I'm sorry. That happened to you. Speaker 6: (01:03:32)Well, you know what I feel like at that time, and I've talked about this story a lot, but after listening to your show, I've been thinking about it more. Like, I feel like what he was trying to do. I think what he was trying to do, if I assume the best is he thought that that was the form that I needed to fit in order to be successful. You know? Like, and I, and when I was looking at my headshot and said, that's your, uh, can I come move your casting couch for your headshot? I was like, yeah, awesome. This is cool. I'm going to be the sexy young guy. Right. Um, but that wasn't me. And I didn't know that that wasn't me. I wanted it to be me. Speaker 2: (01:04:13)Sure. Of course you did. You want it to be liked and loved and picked and worked and feel Speaker 6: (01:04:17)And sexy and cool and stuff, you know? So I want it to fit those molds. I want it to lose the weight. I want it to be the casting couch guy. I wanted to be, you know, I wore a leather jacket with the collar, pop to my hair, you know, the sideburns and the Urim and stuff. And I did the whole thing. Um, and I went to LA and I went to meetings, but my personality isn't that. So I didn't follow through on the expectation. Speaker 2: (01:04:45)You didn't know who you were because people were helping you to say, this is who you should be. And it really, probably somewhere inside you were like, no, no, I can't just like, if you're not. Yeah, it makes perfect sense. How can you show up at 21 or 22 at meetings with adult people that are trying to, that want you to sell certain things? And in your core, something about your being is like, this isn't, this isn't me. It's going to not work out. Speaker 6: (01:05:12)I spent money on a really slim fitting, nice suit, you know, good sunglasses walked into the meeting trying to feel like, yeah, I'm this, I'm the sexy guy. That's gonna solve all your Hollywood PR problems. But I couldn't hold a conversation because I didn't have the confidence, you know, despite the cost, Speaker 2: (01:05:30)I wouldn't even know why, how could you have confidence when people are telling you you're too fat, you need to do this and you're, or, or you're you're yes. You're headed in the right. Speaker 6: (01:05:39)Right. Speaker 2: (01:05:40)You guys, I just feel so sick to my stomach about that story. And I, I, part of what makes it, so, um, sickening is that, I mean, he touched it, but he also, he made you turn around something about that is like, it just really is hitting me right in the center of my chest, because how dare you? How dare you. Speaker 6: (01:06:03)It was so vulnerable. You know, it was a really vulnerable moment. And I feel like we, we put ourselves in vulnerability with our, with our teachers in that, in that Mel you right in the conservatory program, um, whatever, the modality of art that you're studying, you're in a really vulnerable place for experiments. And you're putting stuff out there that represents you. Speaker 2: (01:06:26)That's right. And, and, and so like for anybody in college, probably the experiences, uh, that child has had pretty much the same set of people, their whole life, reflecting back to them who they are. And then you don't know this, but part of why you go to college is to have other people reflect back to you who you are, so that you can figure it out and decide which one, and which is why we all do that. So many. And in high school too, like trying on personalities and trying to see what's going to fit. And then in theater, it's like, you're trying to do that. You are receiving messages from people about how you're perceived, but then you're also being asked to be open, to be anything new. It's just so tricky and dangerous. And, and, and there are so many billions of ways that, that self-image can be, uh, splintered, right? Some of them might be good, but a lot of them are really not Speaker 6: (01:07:29)Well in the highest value that we bring into the classroom is our vulnerability, right. Being, being as open and open, open, open, open, open, and neutral as possible, right. Ego lifts is try to be as equal as possible. So we're so receptive Speaker 2: (01:07:45)Were so receptive and were so fragile. You know, people are fragile. We're also fragile. It's like, I just, I I'm just always shocked at how quickly someone will, someone can, um, crumple a child. [inaudible] the episode that era's today is the one with Erica who mentioned you she's she's actually, when, when we interviewed her, she said, have you talked to Paul? Yeah. And also she's the reason that week. I think I called your email. You sorry, later that day. Um, but Oh my God, I just lost my train of thought something Erica said maybe about, about the theater school. She said a lot. Oh no. We were talking in today's episode in the first part about, Oh, victim impact statements. That's what it was. We were talking about victim impact statement. Ooh, we should w maybe we can't do it in real life, but we could write a play where students gave their victim impact statements to their teachers. Speaker 2: (01:08:47)Right? Like you had the opportunity kind of like in defending your life, you have this long, it's not really like fighting in life, but you have, you get this kind of council of teachers. And then everybody who was their student, if a toxic teachers can come in and say, this is what you did, probably you didn't mean to probably no teacher would say what I really wanted Paul to do was, uh, never consider voiceover, even though that's what he totally wanted to do. She wouldn't have said, she thought she was doing, you're such a favor. Speaker 6: (01:09:18)Right, right. You'll waste your time. Speaker 2: (01:09:21)That's what it is. They think they're saving you from the humiliation that then they're reflecting on the moment that they're second. They think they're saving you. And really they're, they're slowly killing you. I mean, like it's real in a way it's real. Speaker 6: (01:09:36)Hmm. This feels like a non-sequitur, but I want to follow it. So, Gina, I know that you directed under milkweed. Uh, I also directed under milk. Um, we, we rehearsed at the theater building in the courtyard and so really had a strong connection to production of that play in school so much so that I really wanted to recreate that experience for another audience. Was that your experience too? Yes. Yeah. So he can't all be the devil because that play was so beautiful that it touched me. I mean, it moved me for the rest of my life, you know, and that came from him and his heart. So there was something about like, I really trusted him because he was so earnest and passionate about the capital T truth. So I fed, I thought that I totally bought into that. And I believe that he believed it. Speaker 2: (01:10:35)Dude, if we could interview him, he would probably have stories that would, you know, make your hair stand on, end about what people said to him or what people did to him. I mean, that's what we find. Right. And then his teacher would say, they literally beat me on the side of the head when I did something wrong. It's just this thing. It's just like what the, the traumatization is almost like an absolute value. Hopefully, hopefully not forever. Um, just the onl

Have you ever wondered what it takes to upend one of the oldest categories ever? To create real, radical innovation and do something that almost everyone in the industry said was impossible? If so, you're going to love this dialogue with our guest, John Spagnola. In this episode of Follow Your Different, John Spagnola talks about how he redesigned an old category and broke through expectations and preexisting ideas in the Spirits category. He is the epitome of a pirate , dreamer, and innovator. John Spagnola is the founder of Ublendit, THE pioneer in custom Spirits category. They create custom blended spirits for hotels, bars, nightclubs, and restaurants so they can have their own unique, custom-branded and blended spirits. Ublendit: Breaking the Fixed Mindset John talks about Ublendit and how he didn’t want it to be just another spirits company. At the time, the formula for making a spirits company was as follows: You build a brand, market it to distributors, and hopefully get your brand into different establishments through said distributors. There were those who commented that while John might start out with this completely new idea he had, he’ll eventually move into the same model eventually. John was having none of it. “The more I go into it, the more I thought: no, you're totally wrong. The way you're thinking about is totally wrong. There are so many angles that we can manipulate here, that you're not even thinking about.” – John Spagnola John has always been into trying new things. Creating something that was game-changing and can disrupt the status quo was the dream. He feels fortunate that his investors shared the same views as he did and were willing to take risks.  Going Against the Grain John further elaborates as to why most spirits companies follow the traditional category model. Eventually, it all boiled down to how big of an investment it can be, that they think it won’t be worth their time. Most of the people who tried having multiple blends end up discarding underperforming ones and just focusing their effort to their best-selling ones. “I kind of understand where people come from for there, but there's all these new, different elements that have opened up to allow us to, to be so versatile.” – John Spagnola John went against the grain and pushed forward with his custom-blended and branded spirits, and have not look back since. Nowadays, there are technologies that allow businesses to blend spirits in smaller scales, much like what Ublendit is doing. Yet John and Ublendit has the distinction of being the trailblazers for the category. Knowing Your Market As a Category Designer, one has to do their due diligence and know what you are working with. Otherwise, how can you change a category to something your target audience cares about? This is exactly what John did by going around and doing research on the target market. He identified what the pain points of various businesses are, and create something new that solves those issues. After doing his market research, he found two major factors that interest people. The first one was price, because they need to make money. The other one was having custom labels to promote their own brand. So John got to work in combining these two factors, and a new category was born. As for his clients, they wished Ublendit was created sooner. “The thing that stuck with me is (he said,) you're giving me goose for $5. He literally said, I wish that I had found you 10 years ago when I started this company. I was like, well, we weren't there yet. We didn't exist yet. He's like, well, now you have us forever.” – John Spagnola To hear more from John Spagnola and how to be a legendary category designer, download and listen to this episode. BIO: John Spagnola is the CEO of Ublendit, LLC. Ublendit is a pioneer in the custom spirts category. They are the first to create custom spirits for hotels, bars, nightclubs, restaurants and special events.

Have you ever wondered what it takes to upend one of the oldest categories ever? To create real, radical innovation and do something that almost everyone in the industry said was impossible? If so, you're going to love this dialogue with our guest, John Spagnola. In this episode of Follow Your Different, John Spagnola talks about how he redesigned an old category and broke through expectations and preexisting ideas in the Spirits category. He is the epitome of a pirate , dreamer, and innovator. John Spagnola is the founder of Ublendit, THE pioneer in custom Spirits category. They create custom blended spirits for hotels, bars, nightclubs, and restaurants so they can have their own unique, custom-branded and blended spirits. Ublendit: Breaking the Fixed Mindset John talks about Ublendit and how he didn’t want it to be just another spirits company. At the time, the formula for making a spirits company was as follows: You build a brand, market it to distributors, and hopefully get your brand into different establishments through said distributors. There were those who commented that while John might start out with this completely new idea he had, he’ll eventually move into the same model eventually. John was having none of it. “The more I go into it, the more I thought: no, you're totally wrong. The way you're thinking about is totally wrong. There are so many angles that we can manipulate here, that you're not even thinking about.” – John Spagnola John has always been into trying new things. Creating something that was game-changing and can disrupt the status quo was the dream. He feels fortunate that his investors shared the same views as he did and were willing to take risks.  Going Against the Grain John further elaborates as to why most spirits companies follow the traditional category model. Eventually, it all boiled down to how big of an investment it can be, that they think it won’t be worth their time. Most of the people who tried having multiple blends end up discarding underperforming ones and just focusing their effort to their best-selling ones. “I kind of understand where people come from for there, but there's all these new, different elements that have opened up to allow us to, to be so versatile.” – John Spagnola John went against the grain and pushed forward with his custom-blended and branded spirits, and have not look back since. Nowadays, there are technologies that allow businesses to blend spirits in smaller scales, much like what Ublendit is doing. Yet John and Ublendit has the distinction of being the trailblazers for the category. Knowing Your Market As a Category Designer, one has to do their due diligence and know what you are working with. Otherwise, how can you change a category to something your target audience cares about? This is exactly what John did by going around and doing research on the target market. He identified what the pain points of various businesses are, and create something new that solves those issues. After doing his market research, he found two major factors that interest people. The first one was price, because they need to make money. The other one was having custom labels to promote their own brand. So John got to work in combining these two factors, and a new category was born. As for his clients, they wished Ublendit was created sooner. “The thing that stuck with me is (he said,) you're giving me goose for $5. He literally said, I wish that I had found you 10 years ago when I started this company. I was like, well, we weren't there yet. We didn't exist yet. He's like, well, now you have us forever.” – John Spagnola To hear more from John Spagnola and how to be a legendary category designer, download and listen to this episode. BIO: John Spagnola is the CEO of Ublendit, LLC. Ublendit is a pioneer in the custom spirts category. They are the first to create custom spirits for hotels, bars, nightclubs, restaurants and special events.

Contact John Lemmex: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnlemmex/Covestro: https://www.covestro.comFULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:Adam: (00:05) And we are back with episode 117 of Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. Once again, this is your host, Adam Larson, and today's featured guest is John Lemmex. John is Vice President, Chief Financial Officer at Covestro LLC. In that role, he is responsible for all aspects of financial management and controlling. So in this episode, he joined my co-host Mitch Roshong, to talk about digital transformation, John shares many personal experiences and great perspective on how finance leaders can play an integral role in transformation projects. So let's head over to the conversation and listen to what he has to say now. Mitch: (00:51) So John, from what you've seen, how do digital transformation projects typically get started? John: (00:56) Typically in our company, they get started in different parts of the business. It could be, you know, something happening within marketing or R&D or even finance. So it tends to be kind of individual and what our company has done is kind of putting together a digitalization group that's global, and they have kind of the skills and the ability to bring it all together. They are operating a data lake, and they have that kind of expertise, so when people put projects forward, sometimes they'll run as pilot so then you look at and see if they're scalable globally. And then we implement them, look at them and then move on from there. So anybody can kind of bring forward a digitalization project. Mitch: (01:44) Now let's focus mainly on our listeners here and we're talking about accounting and finance. So how important is digitalization for finance? Why should these finance leaders really get started on these projects as soon as possible if they haven't done so already? John: (01:59) Yeah, to me, with the digitalization projects it always comes with efficiency and cost savings and, you know, and there's a business case behind them. So generally, I found most of these cases, we've been able to find a business case, been able to save money, gain efficiencies, reduce complexity, and it helps drive the business forward and make finance more efficient. So it's been, you know, waiting doesn't help drive the business forward so you need to drive these projects to gain those efficiencies. Mitch: (02:34) Let's talk about that a little bit more, how does the finance team, or the finance leader go about building this business case, who is really the target or, the individuals who are most responsible for pushing this project forward? Who should the finance leader really focus on within these projects? John: (02:57) Well, I think that the finance leader for us is kind of internal, I'm kind of thinking of a project that we did. It was something internal in the finance area that was causing us pain. We stepped back, we took a look at it and the answer came using digitalization, using machine learning and robotics was the answer to try to solve the problem. And so then, the business case was put together, and again, it resulted in efficiency through FTE reductions, but it also ended up on a higher accuracy and more accuracy in the financial statements. Or one side, it was cost efficiency, the other side there was accuracy and when that case was put together, we piloted it and moved it forward. Mitch: (03:51) Now you talked about machine learning, obviously there's robotics, a lot that goes into these different projects and for some in finance, that might not be necessarily their first language per se. It might be something that's a little bit outside their comfort zone or they need to upskill in that area in order to drive the project forward. So how do you really engage all these stakeholders and really keep the momentum going for these digital transformation projects? John: (04:15) Yeah, the one thing that we've done to try to get people engaged is actually offer kind of a, you know, online training, in the machine learning in robotics, to get people to start to increase their skill levels so that they may not be become experts in it, or be able to run a project, but they understand what maybe the IT or the data people are going to be asking those kinds of questions and they learn through that, how to drive these projects forward or at least understand what goes into them and there's been quite an uptake rate in our people and trying to do that online learning and develop their skills. Mitch: (05:01) Are there any other obstacles that you've seen, anything else that may prohibit a digital transformation project from progressing how you anticipated? John: (05:11) I think sometimes we get into resource questions, you know, how much resources do we have, and if a project is simply kind of re-engineering a process and using the software, it's much easier maybe to get those projects forward when they maybe require, and I'm thinking of supply chain digital project, those require maybe capital investment using barcode readers, scanners, infrastructure upgrades, and then it becomes more difficult to find those resources and drive them forward. So less capital investment seems easier to drive the projects forward, more capital investment a little more difficult, but again, too is how many projects do you have going? I think sometimes, you get into project overload and there's just, you have to prioritize and get your biggest bang for your buck. Mitch: (06:05) That was actually going to be kind of my next question and obviously there are many areas of the business where you could look for digital improvements, and I'm sure, like you just said many different projects going on all at once. Have you ever come across a case where a project just didn't pan out, you know, the digital transformation just never happened, for one reason or another, can you speak to that a little bit and what the company did in order to respond? John: (06:33) We have one project that in our end to end supply chain, where we feel like we could really upgrade our ability to track materials, move materials and we try to compare ourselves say to an Amazon, we're very far behind. I kind of think of them as the leader when it comes to digitization and supply chain. We had a project we wanted to move it forward, but it stumbled on cap ex and some of it was a business downturn, other parts was then entering the pandemic, but I wouldn't say the projects are dead, but more shelved until the business environment changes. I think if there's a good business case, and then you get into a resource issue, it may not move as quickly as you might want it and get those returns, but you know, you shelve it and continue to push on at a later date. Mitch: (07:32) That's a good point. And, you know, prioritizing, like you said earlier, with so many different things going on and so many functions of the organization being involved in these projects, while it may enhance the efficiency, let's say in finance, obviously you're going to rely on IT and other departments. So, how important is the communication across the organization, with these different projects going on and really, what is that communication path? How do you typically, speak with and listen to other departments while these projects are going on? John: (08:09) Absolutely, the communication is key in all these projects and how to prioritize. And we have a, we call it a digital governance board. So all projects have to go through this digital governance board and be prioritized and that's whether it's a finance project, supply chain, innovation project, they all go through this digital governance board. In fact, our digital governance board is actually chaired by our CEO. That's how important it is to us. I think he acknowledged that he wants to drive digitalization, but the other time we have limited resources, so this board engages in the prioritization of the project. Mitch: (08:55) So it might be the same answer that you just shared, but when it comes to communicating and working, cross-functionally putting these projects out there, how do you ensure that what you're doing really aligns with the core values or the overall business strategy. I'm sure the governance board here that you've mentioned has a lot to do with that, but how do you really make sure that what you're proposing and actually doing aligns with the business strategy? John: (09:22) I think you hit on it that this digital governance board, there's always a question when presenting, how does it fit into the strategy? What is the strategy? And sometimes, if it's cross-functional, it's a little more clear how it fits into the strategy and then other times you can have a simple digitalization, maybe it doesn't have to go through the board because it's such a simple project, that there's just gains from it, but doesn't take so many resources that you can just drive it forward, because it might make sense within the finance area. Mitch: (09:54) Whether you're driving forward or working with all these different departments, you know, governance, what's the typical timeframe? Some people who might not be so familiar with these projects or are interested in starting for the first time, obviously you want to get it done. You're very results oriented in gaining those efficiencies, but what's a realistic timeframe for some of these projects. John: (10:17) Yeah I think sometimes they, when it gets involved into machine learning and into robotics, I think they take a little longer than people might think. Our first foray into that, it took a lot longer than we expected. I mean, we got the gains we expected, and the benefits and the quality we expected. It just took a little longer than I would have liked to get there. So I think you have to learn from that and okay, how do you drive the process faster going forward, and other cases, with respect to digitalization, we've been able to make very quick gains, seeing results within months, not necessarily with machine learning or that a different type of digitalization and with that I kind of refer to, here during the pandemic, or just actually prior to the pandemic, we realized we were printing checks. You know, we still print checks. We put them in an envelope, we put a stamp on it and we mail it. And well, some of the vendors are electronic we said, well why can't we go to a hundred percent electronic? It's really just changing the vendors. And again, you have some leverage with your vendors. So we went from printing 3,000 checks a month, and we're now printing 50 or 60 checks a month. But when we started that project, we started to see very quick returns because we didn't have to involve many departments. It was kind of an internal finance type thing, working with vendors to do that. But, by the time we got into the pandemic, we were no longer worried about printing checks, putting them in envelopes and mailing them to customers. Again, for me, that's kind of a digitalization taking something that was coming out of the computer and into paper and move into complete electronic transfer and we gained a lot of benefits from it. Mitch: (12:13) So that's an example that probably has a much longer return also, but I'm kind of thinking just digital transformation projects in general, what's the typical shelf life? And what I mean by that, is when you complete a project and you recognize these efficiencies, when is it that you then again, have to kind of revisit that project or that area of the business and see if it can be improved even further, how do you really prioritize what needs to be done new and what needs to be done again? John: (12:45) Yeah, that's a hard one. I think technology keeps changing and I’ve seen it through my career. What we thought was leading edge technology five years ago, today is not leading edge technology. I think sometimes report delivery and doing automated online report delivery through reporting factories, those types of things. What's cutting edge in one time quickly becomes no longer cutting edge and you have to go back and say, okay do we change the technology? What's the cost to change the technology, what are the benefits to change the technology? So, I think some things can have a shelf life of up to five years, others might be shorter. I even go up to looking at SAP, you put an SAP system in and all of a sudden, eight, nine, 10 years later, you're looking at redoing it all over again as the technology keeps changing. Those are a little bit longer shelf life I would say, like an ERP system, but still your ERP system eventually becomes outdated and you have to reevaluate and move on with them. Mitch: (14:04) Absolutely. I think it really lends itself to the fact that finance particularly, and really just organizations in general, need to stay agile, right. They need to be nimble and flexible and adapt to everything that's going on. Obviously it's really hard to predict and nobody has this crystal ball, but I like to give our guests an opportunity to kind of share their perspective. If you could look into the future a little bit, what kind of predictions do you have as far as what might be coming down the road for finance and how might digital play even more of a role and whether it's a certain aspect of the day to day or bigger projects that you look to implement, how do you see the function changing even further in the future? John: (14:49) Yeah, I think as, you know, in the future, things like, SAP HANA as those types of things change and what it does to the information that it starts to create within your system. And then how even finance closes the books, you know does things, implements new legal entities, that entire package I think is going to continue to change as the technology changes. Even the fact now that we're no longer sitting on assets and server farms anymore, it's going to the cloud. So how SAP works and how your ERP system works in the cloud, how people interact with it and work with it. I think those things, whether it's Oracle or SAP or others, how that finance function works and how things are integrated with them, I think is going to continue to change and move forward. I think I already touched on a little bit end to end supply chain. I think the Amazons and those types of companies are really good at that end to end supply chain. I think we're going to see it build those same applications in chemical companies. Obviously it's big in retail, but I think you're going to start to see it in business to business, as it goes on. I'm no expert on Bitcoin and blockchain technology, I think we're going to start to see with blockchain technology, how companies transact with each other is going to start to change. And again, we'll see the disappearance of sending checks, receiving checks. Those transactions become much more real time, and I think it starts to change how you run your business. Liquidity planning changes when things become instantaneous, and it just changes the finance people, how they look at it and then how they measure their business. Closing: (16:49) This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast providing you with the latest perspectives of thought leaders from the accounting and finance profession. If you like what you heard, and you'd like to be counted in for more relevant accounting and finance education, visit IMA's website at www.imanet.org.

As marijuana becomes legal in more states and countries the debate about the legalization of all drugs continues to rage. So John set out to research and discuss one of his favorite things: weed! Join us as we talk about the history of cannabis, how it became illegal, and why Kevin is still hesitant to smoke out of a bong after an incident in high school. Spark up a J, order some Taco Bell, and enjoy along with us. Brought to you By: The Sonar Network

The Essentials of Water Baptism Matthew 3:1-3, 13-17 (NLT) In those days John the Baptist came to the Judean wilderness and began preaching. His message was, "Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near." The prophet Isaiah was speaking about John when he said, "He is a voice shouting in the wilderness, 'Prepare the way for the Lord's coming! Clear the road for him!'" John's clothes were woven from coarse camel hair, and he wore a leather belt around his waist. For food he ate locusts and wild honey. People from Jerusalem and from all of Judea and all over the Jordan Valley went out to see and hear John. And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. Then Jesus went from Galilee to the Jordan River to be baptized by John. But John tried to talk him out of it. "I am the one who needs to be baptized by you," he siad, "so why are you coming to me?" But Jesus said, "It should be done, for we must carry out all that God requires." So John agreed to baptize him. After his baptism, as Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and settling on him. And a voice from heaven said, "This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy." The Essential of Repentance Matthew 3:1-2 In those days John the Baptist came to the Judean wilderness and began preaching. His message was, "Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near." Matthew 4:17 From then on Jesus began to preach, "Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near." Matthew 3:6 And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. The Essential of Turning to God Matthew 3:2 "Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near." Matthew 3:8 Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God. Matthew 3:11 "I baptize with water those who repent of their sins and turn to God. But someone is coming soon who is greater than I am - so much greater that I'm not worthy even to be his slave and carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. The Essential of the Kingdom of Heaven Matthew 3:2 "Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near." Acts 2:36-38 "So let everyone in Israel know for certain that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, to be both Lord and Messiah!" Peter's words pierced their hearts, and they said to him and to the other apostles, "Brothers, what should we do?" Peter replied, "Each of you must repent of your sins, turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ to show that you have received forgiveness for your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Essential of Obedience Matthew 3:15 But Jesus said, "It should be done, for we must carry out all that God requires." So John agreed to baptize him. Matthew 28:19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Essential of Heavens Approval Matthew 3:16-17 After his baptism, as Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and settling on him. And a voice from heaven said, "This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy." Acts 2:38 Peter replies, "Each of you must repent of your sins, turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ to show that you have received forgiveness for your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

This week, join author authors John J.V. McMurrary and Milton Packer, and Associate Editor as they discuss their Perspective article "How Should We Sequence the Treatments for Heart Failure and a Reduced Ejection Fraction? A Redefinition of Evidence-Based Medicine." TRANSCRIPT BELOW Dr. Carolyn Lam: Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the journal and its editors. We're your co-hosts. I'm Dr. Carolyn Lam, associate editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore. Dr. Greg Hundley: And I'm Dr. Greg Hundley, associate editor, director of the Pauley Heart Center at VCU Health in Richmond, Virginia. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Greg, this feature discussion is going to knock you off your seat, because it did me. It's about treatment sequencing in HFrEF and discussing it with some luminaries on the field, Dr. John McMurray and Dr. Milton Packer. You are going to love it. I loved it. But I'm going to make you wait. How about you grab some coffee and let's start with some of the other papers in today's issue first. Dr. Greg Hundley: All right, Carolyn. How about if I go first? I'm going to start with a paper from Dr. Liam Brunham from the University of British Columbia. Well, Carolyn, the high density lipoprotein or HDL hypothesis of atherosclerosis has been challenged by clinical trials of cholesterol ester transfer protein, or CETP inhibitors, which failed to show significant reductions in cardiovascular events. Plasma levels of HDL cholesterol, or HDL-C, declined drastically during sepsis. And this phenomenon is explained in part by the activity of CETP, a major determinant of plasma HDL-C levels. So Carolyn, these authors tested the hypothesis that genetic or pharmacologic inhibition of CETP would preserve HDL levels and decrease mortality in clinical cohorts in animal models of sepsis. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Huh. Interesting. And what did they find? Dr. Greg Hundley: Well, Carolyn, results from both the human UK Biobank and the mouse model experiments suggested that inhibiting CETP may preserve HDL levels and improve outcomes for individuals with sepsis. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Wow. So is this ready for clinical applications somehow? Dr. Greg Hundley: Well, Carolyn, two conclusions from this work. First, high density, lipoprotein cholesterol, a commonly used biomarker for cardiovascular risk assessment, may also predict risk of death from sepsis. And then second, cholesterol ester transfer protein inhibitors that have been tested in clinical trials of cardiovascular disease could be repurposed and studied in clinical trials of sepsis. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Ooh, exciting. Well, Greg, for my paper, I'm going to ask you a question. Have you ever thought about what the temporal changes in medical prevention and adverse outcomes are in patients with symptomatic peripheral artery disease after revascularization? Well, wait no longer. Our next paper addresses that. It's from Dr. Sogaard from Aalborg University Hospital in Denmark and colleagues who identified all patients with a first open surgical or endovascular revascularization procedure in the lower extremities or abdomen in Denmark from 2000 to 2016. And this is what they found. Dr. Carolyn Lam: First, the profile of patients with PAD who underwent lower extremity revascularization changed towards older age and a higher prevalence of comorbidity. Despite increases in age and co-morbidity, medical prevention of adverse events improved substantially over time, particularly in the first part of the study period and among patients who used medications chronically. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Now in contrast, initiating treatment after revascularization increased modestly among treatment-naive patients. Now concurrently, prognosis improved for almost all adverse outcomes in patients of both sexes, all age groups, and in all high-risk co-morbidities. In particular, the risks of myocardial infarction and cardiovascular death declined by more than 40%. Dr. Greg Hundley: Well, Carolyn, are there any other findings with clinical implications here? Dr. Carolyn Lam: Yes. So that was the good news earlier. But despite overall improvements, significant disparities remain. Less than 40% of treatment-naive patients initiated cardioprotective therapy after revascularization, underscoring the need for raising levels of awareness and education in the vascular community, general practitioners and patients of this. Major amputations also remained unchanged and thus more work is needed to understand relationships between the preventive measures, revascularization and amputation. Dr. Greg Hundley: Great summary, Carolyn. My next paper comes from Dr. Rachael Cordina from the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, University of Sydney. Neurocognitive outcomes beyond childhood in people with a Fontan circulation are not well-defined. So the investigators here aim to study neurocognitive functioning in adolescents and adults with a Fontan circulation and associations with structural brain injury, brain volumetry and postnatal clinical factors. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Okay, you got our attention. What did they find, Greg? Dr. Greg Hundley: Thanks, Carolyn. So participants with a Fontan circulation, without a pre-existing major neurological disability, were prospectively recruited from the Australia and New Zealand Fontan registry. And the investigators found that neurocognitive impairment is common in adolescents and adults with a Fontan circulation and is associated with smaller grey and white matter brain volume. Understanding, therefore Carolyn, modifiable factors that contribute to brain injury to optimize neurocognitive function is paramount. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Indeed. Well, this next paper I want to talk about is the first detailed endothelial cell cysteine-S self-hydrome. Dr. Greg Hundley: Self? S self-hydrome? What is that, Carolyn? Dr. Carolyn Lam: Good. I needed to catch your attention. Let me tell you about it. So in vascular endothelial cells, cysteine metabolism by cystathionine gamma-lyase, or CSE, generates hydrogen sulfide- related sulfane sulfur compounds. And these exert their biological actions via cysteine-S self-hydration of target proteins. So the paper we're talking about today by Dr. Fleming from Goethe University in Germany and colleagues, they aimed to map the S self-hydrome, which is the spectrum of proteins targeted by this hydrogen sulfide-related sulfane sulfur compounds, or H2Sn, in human endothelial cells. And they did this using liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry. Dr. Carolyn Lam: So here's what they found: vascular disease was associated with mark changes in the S self-hydration of endothelial cell proteins involved in mediating responses to flow. Integrins were most effected by S self-hydration and the modification of beta-3 integrin resulted in reshuffling of the intramolecular disulfite bonds to preserve its extended and open confirmation. Loss of beta-3 integrin self-hydration, on the other hand, inhibited endothelial cell adhesion, impaired mechanosensing and attenuated flow induced phase with dilation. Thus, short term H2Sn supplementation could improve vascular reactivity in humans, highlighting the potential of interfering with this possibly to treat vascular disease. Dr. Greg Hundley: Very nice, Carolyn. You know, just more from the world of hydrogen sulfide and endothelial function. Thanks so much. Well, the next paper I have comes to us from Dr. John McEvoy from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. So Carolyn, recent clinical guidelines support intensive blood pressure treatment targets. However, observational data suggests that excessive diastolic blood pressure lowering might increase the risk of myocardial infarction. Therefore reflecting, does a J or U-shaped relationship exist when we're following the treatment of diastolic blood pressure? So Carolyn, these authors analyzed 47,407 participants from five cohorts with a median age of 60 years. First to corroborate prior observational analysis, the authors used traditional statistical methods to test the shape of association between diastolic blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Okay. So was it J or U? Dr. Greg Hundley: Okay, Carolyn. So interesting, traditional observational analysis of the cohorts suggested a J-shaped association between diastolic blood pressure and myocardial infarction. However by contrast, linear MRI analyses demonstrated an adverse effect of increasing diastolic blood pressure increments on cardiovascular disease outcomes, including myocardial infarction. Furthermore non-linear MRI analyses found no evidence for a J-shaped relationship. Instead confirming that myocardial infarction risk decreases consistently per unit decrease in diastolic blood pressure, even among individuals with low values of baseline diastolic blood pressure. So Carolyn, in answer to you, no, the J or U-shaped curve does not exist. Dr. Carolyn Lam: I suppose depending which way you look at it. Very interesting. Well, let's finish up with what else is in today's issue. There's an AJ update by Dr. Elkin on COVID-19 at one year, the American Heart Association president reflect on the pandemic. A white paper by Dr. Zannad on challenges of cardio kidney composite outcomes in large scale clinical trials. A research letter by Dr. Kass on  the reduced right ventricular sarcomere contractility in HFpEF with severe obesity. Another research letter by Dr. Messas on the feasibility and performance of non-invasive ultrasound therapy in patients with severe symptomatic aortic valve stenosis. A first in human study. Dr. Greg Hundley: Right, Carolyn. So I've got an exchange of letters from Dr. Vazgiourakis  addressing a prior publication entitled Right Heart Dysfunction in COVID-19 Patients: Does Mechanical Ventilation Play an Additional Role? And then finally, an exchange of letters from Drs. Carrizales-Sepúlveda and Topalisky regarding the prior paper, The Spectrum of Cardiac Manifestations in COVID-19. Well, Carolyn, I'm really excited to get to that feature that you explained to us right at the beginning. Very exciting. Dr. Carolyn Lam: So am I. So am I. Thanks, Greg. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Wow. Today's feature discussion could not be more star-studded in my point of view. We are talking about the very, very hot topic of how do we sequence treatments in heart failure with reduced ejection fraction now? A really hot topic because just last year in 2020, we suddenly got a bonanza of positive trials and everybody's grappling with how to put it all together. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Now who better than the two authors I'm going to talk to today, Professor John McMurray from University of Glasgow and Professor Milton Packer from Baylor University Medical Center in Texas. So welcome both. John, Milton, I'm almost tripping over myself to talk about this because this is an amazing perspective piece. Everybody must get your hands on it and even look at the figure while you're listening to this. We're going to divide today's discussion into just three simple questions. Why do we need a new sequencing approach? How in the world do you come up with a new sequencing approach? Based on what? And finally, what is that new approach that you're both proposing? So maybe I'll start off with you, John. What's wrong with what we've been doing? Dr. John McMurray: So Carolyn, I think we've maybe neglected the fact that while we think of, for example, cancer as something that's incredibly urgent to diagnose and to treat as fast as possible, to give the patient all those life-saving therapies, we haven't had the same urgency in our treatment with heart failure. And our existing approaches, as you know, being largely one of start with the first treatment that was ever tested in the trial, up titrate to the pill dose, take your time, then on the second, third and so on. And of course, what that means is that it takes months for patients to be treated with all of the fantastic life-saving options that we have available for them. And we know that that's failing. Dr. John McMurray: We've seen from numerous registries, CHAMP registry in particular springs to mind, where that's simply not happening. It's probably taking too long. It's too complicated for both the doctor and the patient, and we need to change it. And I suppose Milton will tell you his view, but I think my view and I think his as well, was that the SGLT2 inhibitor story really brought this question, I think, to the fore because here is our fourth life-saving drug that if we do things the same way might not get started for six months. And we really felt that we need to rethink what we're doing. Milton, I'm sure, will say whether he agrees with that. But I think that was sort of where the starting point was. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Great. But if I could interject a bit, so now we're talking about that left side of the panel, where in your beautiful article where you're showing, we start with ACE inhibitors and ARBs, and then go on to beta blockers and mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists, and so on. I would love to know, and Milton I'm sure you'll add, is it the sequence that's wrong? Or is it really just the timing? Or the fact that we're just all too lazy? What do you say to people who go, "But that's how the trials were done." Especially because you guys both led those amazing trials of ARNIs and SGLT2 inhibitors. It's just awesome. Dr. Milton Packer: So Carolyn, what's really amazing is that everyone assumes that that's how the trials were done. But two things, one, just because we did things in a certain way, developed things in a certain way, doesn't mean we have to prescribe them in a certain way. I mean, we developed digitalis before all of them and so does that mean we need to use digitalis in everyone? But a lot of the early trials, all the patients were, or most of the patients were, on cardiac glycosides. Dr. Milton Packer: There are four things that we've learned from the large-scale clinical trials. One is the order of drugs does not matter with respect to efficacy. The beta blockers work the same whether people are getting ACE inhibitors or not, MRAs are not effected by background therapy. Neither is neprilysin inhibitors. They work pretty much the same regardless of background therapy, so you don't have to sequence them in the order in which they were developed. Dr. Milton Packer: Two is low doses, low starting doses of these drugs seem to work amazingly well, perhaps surprisingly well. And the third thing is that they work very early. So in a lot of the clinical trials, nearly all the trials that were carried out, there was a meaningful separation of the curves and in effect size in the first 30 days of all of these trials. And in many of the trials, in the first 30 days, patients were still on the starting dose. Hadn't been uptitrated. Dr. Milton Packer: The last point is that these drugs can influence each other's safety profiles. So the result of all of this was for us to rethink what the sequence should be based not on how the drugs were developed, but how they might be most logically used with respect to relative efficacy, safety and ease of use. Dr. John McMurray: So, Carolyn, to go back to your question then is sort of what Milton is saying is that it's a bit of both of the things you asked about. It is about timing, but it's also about the order of the drug. And that last point Milton made is very important about the potential synergies in terms of making it easier to use treatments, but timing is critically important as well. I mean, we do tend in the conventional approach to therapy recommended in the guidelines to perhaps spend too much time trying to reach that target dose, and then doing that before moving on to the second drug. So again as Milton pointed out, if you're getting early benefit from all of these treatments, fundamentally what you want is as many of these treatments started as quickly as possible as you can do safely. And that may be facilitated by some of the synergies between treatments as we, I think, rather provocatively suggested in the new algorithm, might even be possible to start two treatments at once. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Okay. Now I know everybody's really, really wondering what that new algorithm is, but I'm going to lengthen the pain a little bit more because this is critically important. You've already started discussing the how did you come up with an algorithm. It seems a lot of, yeah, very reasonable approaches, but could you give us specific examples of actual scientific interrogation of the data from the trials that you've led, frankly, to show us these points, that maybe support that we can come up with a reasonable new approach? Those points that Milton very rightly put, the treatment benefit of each class is independent. Give us some examples of that. The dose issue, the side effects, how one could help in that too. Could you give us some examples? Dr. Milton Packer: Oh, my God. So let me say that there's so many pieces of evidence and please read the article. We try to summarize as much of them as possible. But in all of the major clinical trials, there was a separation that occurs within 30 days. That's true across every single major trial. Anyone who thinks that the treatment effects of these drugs are delayed, that it takes months to evolve, we're getting statistical significance within two to four weeks across all of the drugs. Dr. Milton Packer: Second is, in many of the trials, for example, COPERNICUS trial with carvedilol, the trials with MRAs, even the trials with ACE inhibitors, during that first 30 days when the curves were separating, patients hadn't been uptitrated. They started on low doses and remained on relatively low doses and the curves were separating. So we knew that the drugs had early effects at low doses, low starting doses. And we also have randomized trials that really tell us that if you go to high doses for some of these drugs, you get a little bit more benefit, but you don't get as much benefit as starting another drug with a different mechanism at a low dose. Dr. Milton Packer: And lastly, we know that some of these drugs actually prevent the side effects of others. There's evidence that neprilysin inhibitors and SGLT2 inhibitors mitigate the hyperkalemia produced by spironolactone and aplerno. So these are just a few examples. Dr. John McMurray: Sorry, Carolyn. To add a couple more, we obviously know that the treatments work independently. We primarily knew that from subgroup analyses, but also from trials like RALES for example, where spironolactone was tested in addition to an ACE inhibitor, but very, very few patients were on a beta blocker. Subsequently we tested different a MRA in patients who were taking both an ACE inhibitor and a beta blocker, and the benefit was essentially the same. And of course, our very first trial with an ACE inhibitor, the CONSENSUS trial, was actually done in a population where more than half of the patients were on a very large dose of an MRA. So you can sort of put all the trials together in a type of jigsaw and figure out that these drugs all clearly work independently. Dr. John McMurray: And then maybe the only other thing I would mention, because it's perhaps relevant to the new algorithm, is that we do have another key trial, which is, a trial I think often forgotten about, the CIBIS III, which was a study that tested whether or not you could start treatment with either a beta blocker or with and ACE inhibitor in patients with HFrEF, showing that you could start with a beta blocker in patients who had not yet received an ACE inhibitor and do that safely and efficaciously. So there's a lot of material out there that you can sort of put together to answer all of these questions. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Great. And now drum roll. Okay. What is the new algorithm? John, you want to introduce it? Or Milton? Up to you. Dr. Milton Packer: John can start. That's fine. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Well, which one, Carolyn? I suppose the one in the Circulation article is a three-step algorithm. It starts with the combination of a beta blocker, based as I mentioned, so there's three plus an SGLT2 inhibitor. So again, thinking about synergies, thinking about tolerability, thinking about size of effect and thinking about repetity of onset of benefit. So I think most of us would agree, beta blockers are incredibly effective treatments, life-saving treatments, reduce the risk of sudden death. We know that you can start a beta blocker safely as first-line therapy. We do know that there may be more intolerance in patients who are volume overloaded. So why not give a treatment that has a modest, initial diarrhetic effect when you're starting the beta blocker? In other words, the SGLT2 inhibitor. SGLT2 inhibitors work extremely quickly. There's no dose up titration needed. So they seem like the perfect combination to start with. Dr. Carolyn Lam: In step two, we suggested moving then to sacubitril valsartan, which in itself is two more drugs combination of an angiotensin receptor blocker and their prolines inhibitor. And then there's the third and final step. We suggested using a mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist. But Milton and I have had a lot of discussion about this. I think we're not saying that all those are necessarily the three steps for all patients. There may be different approaches in different people depending on patient's characteristics. But really the point here was, the provocative statement was we should be able to do this quickly in all patients. And this in fact was an approach to get all four of those drugs started potentially within four weeks. Dr. Milton Packer: So Carolyn, the mantra here, our motto going forwards, is four drugs in four weeks. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Okay. Dr. Milton Packer: An angiotensin receptor blocker, a beta blocker, an MRA, an SGLT2 inhibitor. Four drugs in four weeks. And if you're going to start all four drugs in four weeks, in all honesty, the order probably doesn't matter that much. John and I happen to think that if you have to define a first step, a combination of a beta blocker and an SGLT2 inhibitor simultaneously as step one makes a lot of sense. And then you can follow up with sacubitril valsartan and an MRA. Dr. Milton Packer: But here's the thing that's really important: do not take months to follow up. What we're proposing in this algorithm is you start a beta blocker and an SGLT2 inhibitor on day one, and you then follow through with sacubitril valsartan and an MRA within the next couple of weeks. But here's what's really important and we really need to emphasize this: this is a algorithm that assumes that someone's not on any of these drugs already. And of course, most of these patients are taking some of these drugs already. But the other thing that's really important is that we're also assuming that physicians are being very meticulous about background use of diuretics, so that patients really have to be maintained in a clinically euvolemic state in order to make this algorithm work. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Okay, well, I'm picking myself off the floor because it certainly was provocative. I love it. I love it for that. It's the first time I've ever seen any algorithm start with a beta blocker and SGLT2 inhibitor. You first go, "Where's the ACE and how come the new kid on the block is right on top?" So I really like that because it must challenge our current thinking. In other words, if we just look at the data for what it is, let's see how we could think it over. So salute you for that. But let me just press on a little bit. So four drugs in four weeks. That's really great. Are there any particular patients you may say the ARNIs come on top or the MRAs? Specific situations or...? Dr. Milton Packer: Well, Carolyn, as John has already said, the physicians need to understand the principles, but the application of those principles have to be individualized. So if a patient has a borderline blood pressure, you would probably be well advised to put the MRA before sacubitril valsartan. Depending on renal function, you may decide to advocate one drug a little bit earlier or preferentially compared to another. There are hundreds of individualized nuances, but to get tied up in these is to miss the point of our paper. The point of our paper is that we need to do things quickly... Four drugs, four weeks... And we need to not rely on our historical testing in order to determine the optimal sequence. If you embrace those conclusions, then patients and physicians can individualize their care to the greatest optimal degree. But our current approach, which is a historically-driven algorithm that takes six months to execute, it doesn't work. Dr. John McMurray: Carolyn, we obviously did give a lot of thought to the initial treatments, and we did realize that it would potentially be a surprise to people. But just to reiterate, I don't think there's much debate about the incredible benefits of beta blockers, the size of that benefit. We know that the benefit is apparent within 30 days. So Milton and we had Henry Krum's very nice paper about that in JAMA from the COPERNICUS trial, but we're seen it in the other trials. You know that SGLT2 inhibitors have had early benefit. You think about these two drugs being used in a newly presenting patient with HFrEF, probably don't even need to do any electrolyte monitoring, provided your patients not volume overloaded or recently decompensated. That patient's very unlikely to have any significant intolerance to these two treatments. Dr. John McMurray: They don't, in those sorts of patients, substantially reduced blood pressure in either drug, beta blockers certainly don't affect kidney function. SGLT2 inhibitors have minimal effect on kidney function. If your GFR is relatively normal, you probably don't even need to check it. And of course, there's no effect on potassium. So in terms of getting two treatments onboard quickly that will have a rapid benefit, are likely to be well-tolerated in the type of patient that we just described, and where they might have monitoring necessary is minimal, then this seemed to be the best option. And as Milton said thereafter, it's maybe less important what order you do it in as opposed to the speed with which you do it. And you're right, you would definitely probably tailor this approach according to the patient characteristics, but this was a general starting point to stimulate debate, which it seems to have done. Dr. Milton Packer: So Carolyn, there's something important. If you believe in what we've proposed, then at the end of four weeks, every patient with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction would be on low starting doses or four foundational drugs. Our estimate is if doing that would provide them with a substantial benefit, maybe 70, 75% of the benefit of bringing all of those doses to target doses. And if you can do that, you can do all four drugs at starting doses at four weeks and provide that magnitude of benefit really quickly? That has a big impact on patients. And that has a big impact on public health. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Wow. Just thank you so much for igniting this debate. I wish we could go on forever. I just had to share that when we editors looked at this paper, it did spur a very robust debate. But as you can see, we're publishing it as you've proposed it because we do see where you're coming from. It is very interesting. And I just want to reiterate what you both just said, to listeners out there, remember this is referring to a patient who is compensated. Diuretics are still part of it. Remember that the key message is to get everyone on the four foundational therapies within four weeks. And I just love the way you pushed the boundaries with this. Really, really appreciate it. Milton, you look like you want to say something else. If you'd like closing words, I'd love to... Dr. Milton Packer: We really thank Circulation for having the courage to do this. And please understand, John and I strongly feel that this is the start of a debate. This is the start of a discussion. This algorithm is a proposal to get people to start thinking differently. This is not the final word on the subject by far. We think this is the beginning of a very important discourse that will evolve over the next year or more. And we just wanted to remind people what the clinical trial evidence actually shows about these drugs, because we think it has been frequently misunderstood much to the detriment of patients with heart failure. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Yes. And John, any last words? Dr. John McMurray: I would go back to where I started, Carolyn. In a way, what's important here is to inject a sense of urgency back into the way in which we treat patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction. It deserves that sense of urgency, as I mentioned that, for example, cancer does. And also thank you for summarizing, I think, what we tried to get across absolutely accurately. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Okay. So John, Milton, so far I take it. I take your points well, but as a practitioner, what I would do, frankly, is if I have a patient that I'm starting a beta blocker and an SGLT2 inhibitor, I would surely just start an ACE inhibitor perhaps, or ARNI, at the same time. I don't see why I need to delay it. How about that? Even faster? Dr. John McMurray: Okay, well, I'll let Milton answer the faster, but I would say one thing, Carolyn, the new algorithm doesn't mention ACE inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers as a monotherapy. Because I think those days are gone. I really do think that we shouldn't go through that cycle of starting a RAS blocker, uptitrating it, then switching to an ARNI because that's a waste of time. You're delaying the introduction of life-saving therapy. And this is the whole point to, again, get that sense of urgency across in implementing all of these treatments as quickly as possible. Dr. Milton Packer: And Carolyn, if you want to go faster, that would be fine. Maybe we shouldn't have proposed four drugs in four weeks. We should have proposed four drugs in four days. But Carolyn, I think that changing the way people think is a gradual process. Perhaps four drugs in four weeks is a good starting point. If everyone feels comfortable with that and understands why we are proposing that, then in another six months or so, Circulation can invite John and I to come back and propose four drugs in four days. But let's see what happens. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Kudos. Thank you so much. Well, thank you once again, John and Milton. That was an incredible discussion. A beautiful paper. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Thank you so much, listeners. I'm sure you enjoyed that as much as I have or probably more. But thank you and please don't forget to tune in again next week. From Greg and I, here's Circulation on the Run. Dr. Greg Hundley This program is copyright of the American Heart Association, 2021.  

In this episode of AppSec Builders, Jb is joined by security expert, John Steven, to discuss his BSIMM study findings, the fundamental shifts in AppSec, software-defined security governance, and much more. About John: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/m1splacedsoul/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/m1splacedsoul/) Twitter: https://twitter.com/m1splacedsoul (https://twitter.com/m1splacedsoul) Through his firm Aedify, John advises innovative security product firms as well as maturing security initiatives. John leads one such firm, ZeroNorth, as CTO. For two decades, John led technical direction at Cigital, where he rose to the position of co-CTO. He founded spin-off Codiscope as CTO in 2015. When both Cigital and Codiscope were acquired by Synopsys in 2016, John transitioned to the role of Senior Director of Security Technology and Applied Research. His expertise runs the gamut of software security—from managing security initiatives, to cloud security, to threat modeling and security architecture, to static analysis, as well as risk-based security orchestration and testing. John is keenly interested in software-defined security governance at the cadence of modern development. As a trusted adviser to security executives, he uses his unparalleled experience to build, measure, and mature security programs. He co-authors the BSIMM study and serves as co-editor of the Building Security In department of IEEE Security & Privacy magazine. John is regularly invited to speak and keynote. Resources: https://www.bsimm.com/download.html?cmp=pr-sig&utm_medium=referral (Latest BSIMM) https://www.linkedin.com/company/aedifysecurity/ (Aedify Security) https://www.concourselabs.com/ (Concourse Labs) Transcript [00:00:02] Welcome to AppSec Builders, the podcast for practitioners building modern AppSec hosted by JB Aviat. Jb Aviat: [00:00:14] So welcome to this episode of AppSec Builders. Today I'm proud to interview John Stevens. So, John is the founding principle at Aedify where he advises product security firms. John, before that, you led ZeroNorth as a CTO and before that you were leading as co-CTO at the Cigital firm. Welcome, John. John Steven: [00:00:36] Hello, how are you? Thanks for having me. Jb Aviat: [00:00:38] I'm great, thanks for joining. So John, another thing that you've done is that you co-authored BSIMM, so could you let us know what it is and how it can be a useful tool to AppSec builders? John Steven: [00:00:50] Yeah, it's worth clarifying because it's frequently misunderstood. The BSIMM is the building security in maturity model observational study. We went out and over a period of 11 years we've studied about two hundred and over two hundred firms and asked the question, what do you actually do to build your security initiative and to secure your software? And it doesn't prescribe what to do, but you can use it to look at what firms that are within your vertical or that look similar to you in terms of maturity, are doing with their time and money, and decide whether or not you want to replicate those behaviours or cut your own. Jb Aviat: [00:01:29] So you are interviewing like CISO application security practitioners, developers like every actor of the security game. John Steven: [00:01:38] Yes. Historically, the list has looked like what you described. What was interesting to us about the last two years of this study is that when we began talking with the CISO, they'd say, oh, you need to talk to the VP of Cloud on this, or actually you need to talk to the SREs and to to delivery or to the VP of engineering. The people we had to talk to fundamentally changed over the last two years. And that was a key finding that we we wrote about this year, that the people doing the work of security were shifting from the security group to the engineering, digital transformation and cloud groups. John Steven: [00:02:20] And that's a big deal, right, because there's been these phrases...

Intro – Age of ZealotsGood morning! For those of you who I haven’t had a chance to meet my name is Brian Baughman. I’m a husband, a father, a Life Group leader, and we’ve been attending the church for roughly 6 years.Today’s message is titled Age of Zealots, and we will be in John chapter 2.Maccabean Intro2200 hundred years ago a group of men packed into a room with only a few flickering lights. Times were tough in Jerusalem, and the leader looked around and said, “Guys, you know why we are here. Zeus in the temple, pigs on the alter, the outlawing of Jewish tradition and our way of life…we aren’t going to stand for it!” The Jews were looking to overthrow the ruling Greeks. Revolts are high on optimism and low on results. Generally speaking they fail. This group faced long odds. High probability of death. Low probability of success. Insane amounts of testosterone. The revolt would later be knowns as the Maccabean rebellion. They won. They rededicated the temple. Today when a menorah is lit in December of each year the Jewish people remember their bravery. Later in our message we will circle back the Maccabees, and why I used this illustration.But first, let’s go 150 years after the Maccabean victory, into the future, we find ourselves right here, in John 2. A lot has changed, but let’s think about three things:1.The Romans reign over the JewsHerod the Great has built an amazing templeAnd a carpenter from Nazareth has just begun his earthly ministry.Here’s a picture of the temple: Herod’s temple was huge, 37 acres. It’s hard to do justice with this photo. But to put things into perspective, after the city was destroyed numerous times since the time of Christ, one wall is standing: This wall is over 60 feet tall. It’s called the Western Wall, or the wailing wall. It’s where Jews stick little pieces of paper with prayer written on them and pray to God. Today it’s considered one of the holiest Jewish places.The temple and an outer court and an inner court, which including the Holy place and the Holy of Holies. That will be important for later. The farther into the center of the temple, the more sacred the worship.So John 2 reads:The Passover is a huge deal. They would have hundreds of thousands of worshippers pour into the city to offer a sacrifice. Jesus is going to the temple with his disciples. He sees folks selling animals and exchanging money. Both of these things were necessary. They needed to sell animals because people would travel a long distance and then purchase a temple sacrifice, or they would show up and their animal would not be spotless. Often if they came from another country, they would need to exchange currency upon arriving. Jesus sees these folks, in the outer courts of the temple, and passion filled his heart.So imagine these vendors selling their wares, “Who wants a spotless lamb? Currency for sale!” only to have Jesus, at that time some random guy, get so upset he makes a whip and starts cracking it. Can you imagine? What makes a person go from a normal day, to taking aggressive action? Action that would cause a huge stir.This is the part of the shows Cops when things get crazy and they have to bleep out the swear words because people would have been ticked. “I’m just here trying to feed my family, what’s your problem?”  “Hey dude, the high priest and all of Israel is being served through what we are doing. This is a ministry, not a business.” Imagine how mad the accountants were, with every penny lined up and then the table gets flipped over. It’s like having your QuickBooks deleted, and there is not backup on the cloud.Here’s the problem: the temple, even the outer courts where they were situated, was not a place to be conducting business, but especially not this business. There was a crooked, manipulated system in place where the high priests could disqualify an offering, and then folks had to buy their sacrifice at a higher rate.You might think: Jesus really hates corruption. That’s true. You may be expecting me to talk about preachers on TV that get rich by manipulating donations, or churches you’ve seen the past that fleece their congregations for financial gain.It’s easy to imagine practical things he’s mad about, but if you think about it more, he is fighting for the purity of worship. Gentiles who converted to Judaism were forced to worship in these outer courts, which turned into Best Buy on Black Friday, it was a mad house. He even calls the temple his father’s house. The Holiness and purposes of God should be very important to us. Throughout the Bible God says “for the sake of my name” I do these things. God’s name and his worship is something worth fighting for. And so, verse 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” After he has cleared out the temple, the disciples, see his actions and realize that he driven by a zeal for God.  We will address zeal more in depth later, but for right now, what I’ve said is summarized in point #1 is:Buddy, it’s just a few animals and some tables with money. Is it a big deal? Yes, to Jesus it was. And the purity of worship is still something we should be zealous for. And point #1 is feeding right into point #2:Let me explain. The Jews demand a sign. Like Moses who parted the Red Sea, or Elijah who called down fire from heaven. The religious temple authorities said, “Whoever you think you are – prove it, and give us a sign.” Later in this chapter, we see in verses 23 Jesus would do signs, that very weekend, but wouldn’t perform on demand.When asked for a sign, He goes over their heads. They are like, “What? It took 46 years, including for the first ten years, in which 18,000 men worked full time.” Verse 22 tells us, when he was raised, not right away but after his crucifixion and resurrection, they realized he meant his own body. Here is something I found really interesting: the Greek word that gives us ‘destroy’ means “to dissolve a life by killing, or to set free something that is bound.” The way he phrases this, which doesn’t come across super clearly in an English translation is: If you even dared to try and break this temple up, I’ll bring it back in three days.This is critical: in verses 14 and 15, setting up the narrative, the Greek word for the temple refers to the temple structure. When Jesus says temple, and when the Apostle Paul later uses that word he is referring, not to the structure, but the holy of holies. Maybe you think, “This is all old stuff, we don’t have a temple to clear, or sacrifices or any of that, how does it apply to me?” Think about this, remember this temple?Once a year the high priest would offer sacrifices in the holy of holies. The glory of God would appear. There was a veil protecting this small, inner part of the temple, not a bathtub curtain, it was four inches thick of woven fabric, almost like a super thick blanket. The High Priest would pass through this veil to get into the presence of God, once a year on Yom Kippur. If you watch any of the old Indiana Jones movies, and they are searching for the Arc of the Covenant, because even Hollywood people know of its power, that Arc, was in the holy of holies, where they made this annual sacrifice. One sacrifice, once a year, in the presence of God.So we have a temple and sacrificial system, but it’s going to change. “And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom,” (Matthew 27:50-51). From the top to the bottom. From heaven down to earth.What once was only for the high priest to do once a year, was now accessible to all. Now the ultimate sacrifice had been made, for all time, by the ultimate high priest. Jesus was replacing the temple. Destroy this temple, and I’ll rebuild it. And, I’ll be greater than the temple. The temple was so important to Jewish life. But it was going away. Jesus even boasted that this would happen when he said in Matthew 12:6, something Greater than the temple is here. He is saying I’m greater than what you think is the purest worship you could ever have.People, who confess their sins and cry out to God for forgiveness, no longer need a temporary sacrifice, now can go boldly to God’s throne, not as strangers, but as children of God.Jesus, before his crucifixion, told his disciples, he would send a comforter, who would guide and teach them. This comforter is the Holy Spirit. Very much a complete part of the Godhead. The holy spirit of God would now reside in a new temple. Friends, if you a believer today, the temple, the place where God dwells, has changed and you are that temple. Don’t believe me? Check out what the apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians says:Jesus is zealous for worship. But the dwelling place of God was going to look significantly different when his ministry was completed. If you are a Christian today you are a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit of God, and a representative of the mission of the Jesus, which we carry on. This brings us to point #3: Zeal comes from a place of humilityZeal must be honest and transparentZeal … needs a sparkWhen I think of zeal, I think of person who is just really passionate about something. That’s not totally wrong, but it is not what I would initially think.Zeal is rooted in humility Godly zeal is rooted in humility. The Old Testament verse the disciplines remembered when they thought of Jesus comes from Ps 69: 9, “For zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.”That word consumed means eaten up. Zeal has totally overtaken me. What’s interesting to me, is how this Psalm is not a really fired up person ready to take over the world, but a really humbled person, crying out to God. That zeal is motivated by seeing God clearly and crying out to Him. Consider these phrases from that Psalm:  The waters are up to my neck, my eyes are weary with crying, my prayer is to you, answer me in your steadfast love. Zeal in the way Jesus used it, was a clear understanding when God’s name is profaned then your name is profaned. Let the dishonor of God be something that we cannot abide.Remember our introduction story? We are right back at the start. The Maccabean rebellion was legendary. And during the time of Jesus, men young and old would have said “our forefather rose up and fought off the Greeks, why can’t we do the same with the Romans? What is stopping us?Imagine this: What if China took us over, and was ruling over us? What if they were here saying, “Pay us taxes, carry my pack for a mile any time I ask.” The Maccabees were legendary to the people of the time of Christ. Friends, if you have caught your passions raging recently this is a feeling you could relate with.But when Jesus walked the earth, an even grittier band was rising up. This group was called the Zealots, who heroically battled, and lost to the Romans. According to Josephus, Zealots, "agree in all other things with the Pharisaic notions; but they have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord." They were so zealous; that they lost themselves a little bit, and even started to go after Jews who they felt were not loyal enough. It is a fringe belief that even Paul, prior to his conversion, was a zealot. The name Zealot means “one who is zealous on behalf of God.” Friends, the word zeal is in the name.We don’t have a lot of information on some of the original disciples of Christ. But let’s think for minute about Simon the Zealot. He was known as a zealot. You have “doubting Thomas,” and Matthew the snitch, turn coat, tax collector, and Simon the Zealot. That’s the opposite of Simon the wuss.Forgive for the anachronisms here, but I think it makes a little bit of a point. Imagine Simon rolling with his homies, trying to avoid the Romans, 9 mm strapped to his thigh and a few AR’s hidden in wagon pulled by a donkey. These dudes remembered how valiant the Maccabees were, and said, “We’re not going to let them down.” They said stuff like, “Our founding fathers wouldn’t have put up with this,” or “Paul Revere didn’t ride so that we could have the Romans put their foot our necks.” What would it have been like for Simon’s little band of Zealot to pass Jesus on the road and for their eyes to meet, and Jesus to pause, stare him down in the midst of a busy street and say, “Simon, come and follow me.” Imagine the internal battle, his friends would have said, “We are trying to stay under the radar, how does he know your name?” Simon thought he was following God, only to realize there is a far greater mission to be accomplished. One that is not of this world.Friends, in our current world, just like back then, we are living in an age of Zealots, where passions and tension are running high. Can you be humble enough to put everything else in your life in second place and say, “God you are my priority, and nothing else can get close.” Revolutions will come and go, and you can’t stop them, but you can humble your own heart before God and to be used by him. In the crowed and polarized world that we live in, on the road of life, the King of Kings knows your name, and he still asking you to follow him. If you can be humble, you can move on to the second part of zeal,Zeal must be honest and transparentIf you can be humble before God, then the next step is to be honest and transparent with others, so you can truly get beyond the natural tendencies we all have holding us back. If the Pharisees or other Jewish leaders had been honest with themselves they would have been able to see their own legalism. They were the problem. If the vendors who had moved inside the temple had gotten out of their world they might have realized they should move the shops outside. It’s natural to cloister people who affirm us, often our personal detriment. We start to justify some behaviors and over condemn things that we don’t struggle with. In fact, I want to challenge you to ask ten people, most of whom you aren’t exactly like, “How can I live for God and how can I help you live for God?” You’ll be amazed at the edification that comes from generating conversation like this.Let’s have some real talk. Both of my grandpa’s, one only very rarely, but the other one kind of all the time, used racial slurs. They’ve both passed away and would have been in their 90’s if they were alive today. The use of slur by past generation usually generates two different responses, you’ll lean one way:  That was cultural at the time and that’s just who they were, which is not ok, anti-racism is my idol, and love judging people because I have a better handle on this than they do. We can respect the many good things, while openly and honestly talking about the sins of our past. But rather than look at our past, are you willing to look at you, today? Are you willing to be honest about your own life and your short comings? Do you have people in your life who aren’t exactly like you, that can give you feedback you will take?I hope. I truly hope, that humility and transparency grows in the church of Jesus Christ, that the Spirit of God moves in such a way that my great grandchildren will not just have a few bad things to say about me and this generation. I hope that they are so captured by the holiness and purposes of God that they are disgusted with 2021. I hope they are disgusted with Millennial Generation great –grandparents. They’ll say, “Wait, you gave in, hook, line and sinker, to an outrage culture, distracted by such dumb stuff? Wait, the foster care was overwhelmed with 400,000 kids, and you just watched Netflix like nothing was wrong? Wait, were you just going to pretend the pornography was sweeping across the globe and taking no prisoners? Approaching 100 billion dollar industry. Wait, 40 million people were being held in modern slave conditions and it never crossed your mind? Wait, you had all the free time in the world and you didn’t get to know any of your neighbors? People were crying out for community, signing up for zoom counseling, zoom therapy and even zoom psychics, and you did think to walk next door to even say hi? Wait, people were concerned religious freedoms being eroded, but you weren’t sharing your faith to begin with? Oh my word, what if Big Tech censors us?! What will we do? Were you even sharing your faith when you had all the freedoms in the world?” For many of you, if the government made evangelism illegal your life would have little to no real-world changes. That George Orwell, 1984 type government inspector would come to your house and say, “Oh, you shared your faith once in the last 15 years. Oh good, threat level, low.”Oh my, there’s a Democrat in the White House, what are we going to do? Bro, are you a Christian? Jesus said his servants were not of this world, but a lot us sure act like we are. Many people in this country, and some of you, need to take a hard look at what you put on social media, but more importantly the heart behind it. I’m not casting stones unnecessarily, I’ve made a fool of myself many times online, but we can be better. I’m like an alcoholic showing up to AA telling the other guys, this is crazy but if you stop drinking for a few weeks life will be better. If there is a Facebook Hall of Fame for morons, I’m on that list. When they do tours of Facebook, they’ll say, “Here is Brian Baughman, whose peak was really 2010-2015, the Babe Ruth of Facebook dumbness.”But here is why it’s important to me. I know people, who should be involved in discipleship, and I try to connect people, and I’ve said to a friend, “What about that those people disciplining you, getting to know them?” And very humbly, but honestly, the response was, “I’ve seen the stuff they put on Facebook, and I don’t think that will work for us.” Think about it. Could your social media presence, which reveals your heart, be a part of you holding back discipleship opportunities? Do not put your guard up. Ask yourself, “Do I want to be part of what God is doing, in a radical way, by being honest with myself, or do I want to come to church, sit in a pew, and coast through the end of my life?” Friends, this is where the rubber meets the road. Where you are forced to look yourself in the mirror.On a lighter note, I feel bad for those of you who have only been with us for a few weeks, maybe just visiting. Driving home from church “How did you like the sermon dear?” “The bald preacher… he’s mean. Where is the tall, good looking preacher? The one who uses science analogies.” Don’t worry, he’ll be back soon.If you can be humble, and honest, and transparent, desiring to grow, then our third application for zeal can take placeAsk God for a Spark  Ask God to light a tiny spark of zeal in your heart. Light just a tiny spark for zeal. Say, “God, use me. God, take my life and let me make a difference for your name.”Jesus cleared the temple which was both physically aggressive and dramatic, but also displayed zeal for God in ways that were less assuming. Jesus left the comfort of the city and went to the far reaches of the region. He visited leper colonies and people that were outcasts. I know people who are quiet and don’t make a scene, but they are committed to God and getting to know them or hearing of their actions will inspire you. Bottom line: when you see someone acting in zeal, you’ll know.Today, I want to ask some of you wake up and be zealous for God. If you are a Christian the time is now to cry out to God that you would be zealous for his name and his worship, and it starts in your own heart.  What do you need to remove from your life to get back to really focusing on God? What tiny changes might be necessary? What radical changes might be necessary? Some of you should say out loud to your friends, over the course of this week and beyond, “I want to make changes in my life to live with zeal for God, what should I do? What should we do?”   Don’t say, “I’m too old.” In the last few years, I reconnected a friend, a Christian man in his sixties, who had lived for decades, doing just fine. His whole life had changed, God used his story and that lunch circumstances to show me that God can reinvigorate lives, and he wants to. I remember telling my wife, “I had lunch with so and so today and he is like a new man,” and I am totally inspired.Today I want some of you to commit to making changes for God that will rewrite your obituary. I want you live in such a way, that it will reframe what people say and think at your funeral. “Oh Bill was nice and loved to fish and loved his grandkids. No! Bill was a Christian, and he was consumed with God. In big ways and small, he lived for God. He is an inspiration. I want people to say on that day “Everybody knows that this guy was sold out for God. Or, everybody knows that this lady was small is small in stature and a giant in prayer.”Today I want to call some of you to be zealous for God. Unplug your tv, or delete those apps for a while so you can reconnect with God. Walk as Jesus did, with a heart for the marginalized and outcast, not just your own easy life. Join a bible study or start a bible study. Look for discipleship opportunities. Be involved in the foster care system or adoption, or partner financially and prayerfully with families or ministries who do. Some of you need to think about adopting a family in prayer. Imagine starting a prayer legacy. Some of you are older, partner with a younger family and adopt them in prayer.Say you, until I die, I’m praying for your family and your kiddos. Commit to sharing your faith in the next 30 days. Meet your neighbors – they are weird – honestly you’re probably kind of weird too.Friends, the Lord Jesus Christ lived with Zeal that exploded on temple grounds, but never left him throughout his complex and dynamic ministry. It was with him in remote places and when he was dealing with very difficult circumstances. It followed him all the way to the cross. This year’s theme is Life in His Love. So let’s live that life in his love by being humble, transparent, and asking God to light a spark.

BONUS Episode! This would have been Episode #20 but we decided to put this one out early! So John and Mike are left all alone, no Katie, No Lexi, No Greatest Tag Team Partner who ever lived. So what do the kids do when they are left alone. Find the sickest most twisted Serial Killer we could find and make that our topic for this BONUS Episode!! Richard Rameriz is a full-blown Serial Killer, Serial Rapist, and all-around piece of garbage. We discuss his victims and the case surrounding them. Did we miss something? Drop us a line and tell us all about it at takeontheworld411@gmail.com We will take on most any topic with Our Take On the World! #TakeOnTheWorld Music Credit to Whiskey on the Mississippi By Kevin MacLeod https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4624-whiskey-on-the-mississippi License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/takeontheworld/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/takeontheworld/support

John the Baptist was a very influential preacher. He was not a limousine evangelist; he did not fly into town on a jet and get picked up in a limo. He did not stay at the finest hotels and eat off fine silver and china. None of that with John. He was a plain man. He was a voice crying in the desert, Prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight! He wore a camel-hair coat with a leather girdle and ate locusts and wild honey. So John lived in the desert, dressed plainly, and ate what was at hand. For this reason, John was a dangerous man. Evangelists who have no personal motives—of profit, personal gain, and power—are really the most dangerous kind. People listen to them, respond to them, and then look around at the evangelists who are living a different lifestyle. John was extremely popular and very influential among the common folk. As a result, the religious establishment could not ignore him. In Matthew chapter 3, John gives them something of an early warning of a sea change: But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits befitting for repentance: And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham as our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the ax is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which brings not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that comes after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit, and with fire: Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the barn; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. Matthew 3:7–12 KJ2000

Join us as we explore God's ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church. I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening. Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I'm your host Richard Agee. We probably all celebrate the fact 2020 passed away a few days ago, and 2021 began. But 2021 will only improve if we allow God to improve us one by one. Only by letting his Spirit change us internally will this year be any better than last for you. Well, that's tidbit number one, but not what we will talk about today. This week we celebrate Epiphany. It's an exciting day in the Christian calendar, observed in various ways across the Christian world. The word itself takes on a definition used outside religious connotations today, and when you look in the dictionary, you'll find the following: the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi (Matthew 2:1–12). the festival commemorating the Epiphany on January 6th. a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being. a moment of sudden revelation or insight.   The Greek word is seldom used in the New Testament and generally used with Jesus' second coming, rather than his birth. In New Testament times, the term more commonly found its way into secular writing, referring to visitations by one of the panthea of gods worshipped by the pagans. Today, outside of the Christmas season, we most often hear the word used to describe a remarkable or sudden discovery. For instance, the COVID vaccine creators might have had an epiphany as they found the key to finally finding the answer to fighting the disease. But on the Christian calendar, January 6th marks the Epiphany, the festival commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi. Why January 6th and not some other day? The Gregorian calendar and Julian calendars didn't match and weren't even around when Jesus was born. I expect Mary and Joseph didn't even own a calendar. Most people didn't in those days. Days of the week were kept to remember sabbaths, but otherwise, phases of the moon were enough to keep up with the months of the Jewish calendar. The priest let you know when sacrifices came due. No one needed to set an appointment for 9:15 on March 24th. Businesses and personal lives just didn't work that way. So why January 6th? The best explanation may come from examining the habits of early Christians in their worship. Arrangements of the earliest ancient manuscripts of the gospels follow a liturgical pattern. We assume the original manuscripts were probably written in letter form. Still, as early Christians gathered, read, and studies them, the new arrangement made it easier to incorporate this new faith into their lives. If a congregation started the year reading Mark, their first reading might have been the baptism of Jesus, since most scholars believe Mark wrote his gospel first. They would have found these words: This is the Good News about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It began as the prophet Isaiah had written: “God said, ‘I will send my messenger ahead of you     to open the way for you.'  Someone is shouting in the desert,     ‘Get the road ready for the Lord;     make a straight path for him to travel!'” So John appeared in the desert, baptizing and preaching. “Turn away from your sins and be baptized,” he told the people, “and God will forgive your sins.” Many people from the province of Judea and the city of Jerusalem went out to hear John. They confessed their sins, and he baptized them in the Jordan River. John wore clothes made of camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. He announced to the people, “The man who will come after me is much greater than I am. I am not good enough even to bend down and untie his sandals. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” Not long afterward Jesus came from Nazareth in the province of Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. As soon as Jesus came up out of the water, he saw heaven opening and the Spirit coming down on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my own dear Son. I am pleased with you.” (Mark 1:1-11 GNT) From reading historical records from the early church leaders, scholars also believe that the first Epiphany celebrations included the commemoration of not just the visit of the Magi, but also Jesus baptism, and possibly his first miracle at the wedding in Cana. Each of these three events marks the revelation of Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah. His actions at Cana proved his abilities as a prophet like Elijah, who performed incredible miracles through God's power. His baptism by John revealed him as the son of God to the Jews. His visit by the Magi presented the new King to the Gentile world. The Magi's visit to King Herod made the arrival of the Messiah known to the political world through messaging that must have rippled through the Roman empire at the time. Today, we separate traditionally separate the other events from the Magi's visit in celebrating Epiphany and use the passage in Matthew that describes their visit to remember the incredible story of God's revelation of Jesus to the world. It goes like this: Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem in Judea, during the time when Herod was king. Soon afterward, some men who studied the stars came from the East to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the baby born to be the king of the Jews? We saw his star when it came up in the east, and we have come to worship him.” When King Herod heard about this, he was very upset, and so was everyone else in Jerusalem. He called together all the chief priests and the teachers of the Law and asked them, “Where will the Messiah be born?” “In the town of Bethlehem in Judea,” they answered. “For this is what the prophet wrote:   ‘Bethlehem in the land of Judah,     you are by no means the least of the leading cities of Judah; for from you will come a leader     who will guide my people Israel.'” So Herod called the visitors from the East to a secret meeting and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem with these instructions: “Go and make a careful search for the child; and when you find him, let me know, so that I too may go and worship him.” And so they left, and on their way they saw the same star they had seen in the East. When they saw it, how happy they were, what joy was theirs! It went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. They went into the house, and when they saw the child with his mother Mary, they knelt down and worshiped him. They brought out their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and presented them to him. Then they returned to their country by another road, since God had warned them in a dream not to go back to Herod. (Matthew 2:1-12 GNT) Why is it important we celebrate Epiphany? First, It reminds us of God's intent to restore our relationship with him. He wants an intimate relationship with us as he had with Adam and Eve before the fall. Second, it reminds us of God's intent to restore humanity's original purpose to care for his creation. Jesus came to show us what true humanity looks and acts like, caring for and loving humankind and God's creation. God wants to renew that in us. Third, Epiphany reminds us God will restore heaven and earth, recreating it to its former glory repopulating it with those he redeems, called by his name, those who believe in him for salvation. Epiphany reminds us God had a plan ready in the event we failed. We did, and he put his plan into place. Adam and Eve invoked the punishment on all of humanity when they disobeyed God's command in the Garden of Eden, but God will restore the garden one day. It would take the reversal of the curse of death for it to happen, though. Humans had to pay the penalty for sin, and humans had to conquer death. A human had to do that. The only way for it to happen was through God's plan to become human and pay the penalty and conquer death himself. So he did – in Jesus. For those who believe in Jesus as the son of God, who came to pay the penalty for my sin and yours, who died on a cruel cross, who rose from the dead, conquering death for all time, the curse is lifted. Restoration began with his resurrection. A new heaven and new earth are in the making as his Spirit comes to reside in us, empowering us with new life in him. Epiphany celebrates that revelation. Take time this week to stop and remember, not just the Magi finding him in Bethlehem and bowing at his feet, but the opportunity we also have to bow at the feet of the one who conquered death, lifted the curse, and gives new life to all who believe in him. Epiphany is a sudden revelation or insight, a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being, the celebration of Jesus' revelation to us. Make his coming a real epiphany in your life today and every day. You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible-based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day. Scriptures marked GNT are taken from the Good News Translation®: Scriptures taken from the Good News Translation® (Today's English Version, Second Edition) Copyright © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved.  

We are in a new series on the gospel of John entitled the story of Amazing love. Last week introduced the book from John 1:1-5.And we saw from this text 2 things:That Jesus Christ did not have a beginning. In the beginning was the word. God had no beginning. In the beginning God was wasing. In the beginning God was already there and had always been there.That Jesus Christ was the creator. All things were made through him. That all the energy in the universe, 10^70th joules of power were not made by Jesus, they were made through Jesus. You’ve perhaps heard the creative act of God being described as ex nihilo (out of nothing). Well, if we want to get technical about it, that’s not quite true. The universe was not created ex nihilo. It was created ex christus. Or more accruately still, propter christo. The universe was created THROUGH Jesus Christ.So the first five verses begin by making this point. Why? There’s a definite reason. In the pages that are to follow we will befriend this real flesh and blood Jesus who eats and tires. A man who is filled with the emotions we are familiar with - sorrow, joy, anger and empathy. We will meet a man who is beset with human weakness. And John intends us to connect the man who is described in these pages to the omnipotent, all-powerful, creative LIFE-GIVING God of the pre-created world.John is going to argue that the man Jesus is in fact, God. Nobody would be expected to come to that conclusion by merely looking at him. Why? because he looked so NORMAL. The prophet Isaiah predicted this.Jesus wasn’t born with super powers. John knows that you are going to make a snap judgment concerning the nature of this man. We stereotype and you are not to be blamed. Who in the world would believe that this guy you are looking at, this guy who looks like a man, and an average one at that, is in fact God himself, the creator of the entire universe?John was written for this very purpose - that you might believe that this man, this Jesus, is in fact, the Christ (Messiah) the son of the living God and that by believing you might experience LIFE in his name (spiritual life and physical life).Or you could put it this way: John 1:1-5 is the claim that Jesus is God. The rest of the book is going to try and defend the claim.The Prologue of Revelation.John 1:1-18 is considered the prologue. It’s the word given before the word. It’s the 20,000 foot view of what’s to come. And the prologue begins with the concept of REVELATION.The REVELATION IS THE CLAIM. The claim of John 1:1-5 is that Jesus is God. Revelation, according to the Christian tradition, is God choosing to disclose himself. In order for us to know anything about God, he’s got to make the first move. Without God initiating, we could never know Him and we could never fully know ourselves.Perhaps it’s obvious but it’s worth noting that divine revelation is by no means a given. There’s nothing that says that God had to reveal himself. He could have just as easily created the world, walked away and left us to our own demise. A deist believes that there is evidence of a God but he is unknowable because he has not chosen to reveal himself. God wound up the world like a clock and then left it on a shelf and he has simply gone elsewhere, wherever Gods go. But that is not the claim made here. God has chosen to reveal himself. And he did that through his Son, Jesus Christ.Now that self-revelation was preceded by a messenger named John and that’s where our text today begins.Revelation here is pictured as light that slices through darkness. Imagine being in that dark cave we described last week. Am I in a chamber 8 feet high or 800 feet high? What colors are in the rocks? Is there water? Are there crystals or stalactites or are the walls smooth. It’s all there, it just can’t be known because we don’t have light to reveal it.Without a source of light/revelation we are blind men groping in a dark world. Without light/revelation, our observational abilities can only get us so far.Consider what is knowable about God from mere observation of the created order. No REVELATION just OBSERVATION. Let’s assume you deduce from looking at creation that there must be a God. There is too much complexity to explain it away by chance. But let me ask you just one simple question about this creator: Is he merciful or merciless?What evidence could you begin acquiring?Zebras get taken out by Tigers. That’s pretty violent. That doesn’t seem too merciful.Innocent people get murdered, women are oppressed, defrauded? God does not seem merciful at all by that metric.On the other handIt doesn’t seem that we are not destroyed instantly by our evil actions. It seems like we are given a second chance. That seems merciful.The wicked and the righteous alike are given gifts of a beautiful day, the opportunity to love, wonderful food. That seems merciful.It’s inconclusive. We can’t know. But here’s an even more fundamental question. Is being merciful good or bad? Without God revealing himself, we can’t even answer which is more noble?If there’s no revelation, if there’s no place where God has spoken and told us what is right and wrong, then all morality can be nothing more than a matter of opinion. It can’t be absolute.If there is no revelation, then a woman might rise up and object to being treated like a slave. But from the perspective of the one enslaving, it’s a good thing. He gets a free servant. There is not a way you can consider one inferior to another. You have no basis for saying so. Does not the natural world operate according to the principle of survival of the fittest?When it comes to our sexual ethic, our sense of justice, our sense of right and wrong, there cannot be absolute answers to these questions without revelation. We need the creator to intervene and say:I did not intend for you to behave like this. I intended instead for you to behave like this.This is acting according to design. This is acting against my design.Only a creator can say that. Do you see how lost we are without revelation?We need intellectual light.We need moral light.And Jesus Christ comes bringing both. Jesus is the LIGHT.Now we are going to save the story of John the Baptist for next week but suffice it to say that God used John not as the light, but as the man who would announce that the light was coming.John was to Jesus as a map of Disneyland is to Disneyland John was to Jesus as a sign to McCall is to McCallJesus was the light of the world. John handed you the flashlight and told you where the on switch was.So the prologue begins by telling us that light came into the world. Again, the prologue is the overview of the entire thing. So John’s going to show us people’s reaction to the light. **John essentially says, “I am about to tell you a story.** I am going to tell you about that period of history when the Messiah, Jesus the Christ, The LIGHT of the world, was REVEALED.”But BEFORE I tell you the beginning, let me first tell you the end. Here’s the summary of how people reacted to that REVELATORY claim. The claim itself divided. The claim itself was a WEDGE.Some loved him. Some hated.Some worshiped. Others cursed.Some gave everything they had for him. Others gave everything they had to destroy him.Some believed. Others disbelieved.So John begins with the end. He starts with how the REVELATION itself was ultimately and finally received.Now let’s look at the response that people had to this light.Let’s start with rejection.At first he points out the irony. How could the creator, the one who owns everything, made everything, is the source of life for everything, be rejected?How could the owner and creator be rejected by the creatures?Several years ago, I remember reading about the CEO of Mozilla. He was an entrepreneur and built the firefox browser and this giant company from the ground up. And even though he was the founder and developer and CEO of the company his board fired him for being unwilling to support a political agenda. How can it be that the man who built the company be fired by the company he built?That’s what’s being described here. Jesus Christ is the creator of all things, and specifically the human machine.Jesus Christ is the inventor of DNA with it’s 3 million base pairs.He didn’t even need a patent because it’s so complex nobody could copy it.The inventor of the eye with it’s ability to differentiate between 10 million colors.The inventor of the ear complete with it’s ability to magnify sound and provide feedback for balance.The inventor of neurons that chemically transmit information at 120 m/s.The inventor of the brain with it’s 100 billion neuronsSo God invented, gifted all this, graced the world with all this and then here’s what happened.We used the eye given by Jesus to see Jesus.We used the ear given by Jesus to hear Jesus.We used the neurons given by Jesus to transfer that sensory information to the brain given by Jesus to evaluate JesusAnd then we used the mouth given by Jesus to reject Jesus.The world was made THROUGH him, yet the world did not know him. It can’t get any more IRONIC and can’t any more TRAGIC.But this is not merely the summary of the response of men to Jesus’ ministry. This is the summary of men to God all through the Bible.I heard someone recently say that the Bible is basically a summary of man’s search for God. I laughed out loud when I heard that. You could not possibly do a worse job of describing the Bible than that. That one sentence undoes the entire Bible. Quite efficient.If you read the Scripture, you will see the Bible is one story piled on top of another story of God revealing himself to men and women who were not looking for him.God revealed himself through prophets. What did they do with them? They stoned them.Jonah’s running.Samson is womanizing.Saul is hiding.Gideon is cowering.Time and time again you have men and women trying to get away from God as far as they can. Are men searching? Well they are searching! They are searching, searching, searching for every possible way to get out of his presence.I have kept my hands out all day to a disobedient people.I have spoken to those who did not seek me.I have answered those who did call out to me.Jesus Christ is the climax of divine revelation. And the climactic revelation is attended with climactic rejection.The response to the REVELATION of Jesus Christ is not surprising. Most people rejected him. But others accepted him. Others received him.Look at verse 12ReceptionSome received him. Some accepted the claim. Some believed that Jesus was God.And he describes the result of that belief as those who become children of God. What’s the significance of becoming children of God. Why that metaphor? Here’s the idea.When a lady bug lays eggs and new life comes out. What kind of life is it? It’s ladybug life.A grasshopper gives birth to grasshopper life.A squirrel gives birth to squirrel life.The point is that whatever the parent life form… a moose, a salamander or a human, a parent can only give it’s offspring the same type of life that he himself has.And here we are told that by believing in God we are given the right to become children of God which means that we will be given the same kind of life as God. Remember the purpose of John. These things are written that you might believe and that by believing you might have LIFE in his name. You partake of the same type of life as the father because now you are his children.And what type of life is that? Eternal life. Perfect Life. That’s good stuff folks.Now if that is the case, why would anyone reject him? If all you have to do is believe in Jesus Christ to have PERFECT LIFE, why in the world would ANYONE reject him? Let’s think.What the Light RevealedWhat was it about the light that caused such violently different reactions? What was this piercing, dividing quality of light? What did the light reveal? There must have been something about that light or something about what it revealed that was either attractive or offensive. We see that in the next verse.Now this is helpful. Here we get our interpretive key to vs. 1. In the beginning was the Word. Who is the word? The word became flesh and dwelt among us. So the Word is Jesus Christ.Why not just say, “In the beginning was Jesus? And Jesus was with God and Jesus was God.” Why refer to Jesus as the WORD? Just as words reveal what is in the mind of a man, so Jesus Christ reveals what is in the mind of God. Jesus Christ reveals God. And this is the most complete, most full revelation that could ever be given.Perhaps you have heroes of the faith. It’s one thing to read about a man… You can read their biographies. That gives you some idea of who they are. But wouldn’t you love to live among them? Wouldn’t you love to see how they respond to stress? How do they balance all the important priorities. What do they do when they get tired? How do they play? What kinds of things are funny to them? What does righteous anger look like? How do they respond to criticism?This is whey Jesus coming to earth is so significant. It’s the ultimate REVELATION. Immanuel - God with us. God among us. It was God revealing in a way he had never done before.Jesus come in the flesh was like revelation on steroids. It’s why the life of Christ is such a powerful, never-ending insight into the person of God.The way John describes the experience of that REVELATIONis that we beheld his glory. Normally when we think of glory we tend to think in terms of splendor, light, perfection. That’s a glorious sunset. That’s a glorious melody.The Greek word for glory is δόξα which ACTUALLY comes from the Greek root dokéō which means to think.What the word really means in it’s most core essence is to think in such a way as to develop a high opinion. What do I think of something. If I think very HIGHLY of you, you have lots of glory. If I think very LOW of you then you have very little glory.And so when we say, that is a glorious sunset, we are of the opinion that the sunset has reached a level of perfection. This sunset has the perfect combination of colors, the perfect contrasting hues, the perfect crisp lines and muted blurred clouds.When I look at it my mind identifies it as perfection.Here’s the point. When the Jews of the NT saw Jesus, they saw perfection. They saw in him something they instantly identified as completeness, unstained, undefiled, beauty. They saw glory.The Attraction of PerfectionNow I think it’s interesting that of all the things to call out in a prologue high/level overview, this is the aspect you’d highlight. I mean the guy walked on water. The guy could raise people from the dead. The miraculous isn’t even called out. Yes, he did miracles. Yes, he had power. But that’s not what John primarily identifies as the thing that makes him glorious. What makes him glorious is the perfect embodiment of grace and truth. Think about this.Life is full of balancing acts isn’t it. And we never get that balance right.- We see it’s important to be critical but it’s also important to accept. How do you get that right?- We know it’s important to speak up but it’s also important to listen. - We know it’s important to stand your ground but it’s also important to back down.What we see in Jesus is perfection. We see glory. We look at the balance of how Jesus lived his life and we say, "Wow, that is glorious." We marvel. That’s perfect. It’s the perfect balancing act. It’s beauty in it’s perfect form. Consider a painting. To much black and the eyes don’t look good. Too much white and it’s washed out. There is a perfect balance. There is a mixture that is absolutely perfect. And that is what is being referenced here. We beheld Jesus, full of grace and truth.When the light came, it was perfect. It was so beautiful. White light is the combination of all the colors of the rainbow. We see in the white light of Jesus all good values contained and balanced perfectly. It’s so beautiful. You just gaze on it in wonder. The picture of perfect light.Look at how this perfect white light is further describedJohn begins his gospel with the stunning REVELATION of God in the person of Jesus Christ. God has ‘made himself known’ through the perfection of JESUS.The fact that Jesus was utterly glorious, utterly reflective of the glory of God can be demonstrated by this simple question, “How in the WORLD did Jesus get ANYONE to believe the CLAIM that he was God?”Think about the difficulty of this problem. It can be summarized with four words. Jesus was a man. If Jesus was talking to a Greek well maybe you could convince him. Because after all, the gods to the Greeks were just men blown big. To the Greeks, the gods were just kind of like Marvel characters. They were more or less men, but men with amazing athleticism, incredible intellect, strong reproductive prowess. And so you could conceive that if Jesus was especially talented in some area, he may be able to convince a Greek that he was a god.But Jesus was a Jew, and he was talking to Jews.Jews believed the OT which revealed that God was a Spirit who existed outside the world.He was the creator of the world.How could God be in the world?He couldn’t be a man because a man was created.By contrast, God was a being of infinite power who created everything by the word of his power. He just whispers and the dust of galaxies obediently fling into existence, 10^70th joules of power strong.For a man to say, “I am God…” To a Jew? This was heresy of the most laughable form. Indeed, many tried to stone him for it.And yet many believed. How did he do it?Now, we aren’t done setting up the difficulty of the problem. Here’s the most problematic part. Think about this. It’s not like he got people to believe in him who lived far away and were simply mesmerized by this romantic idea of God come down in the form of a man.He got people to believe in him who actually lived with him and ate with him and laughed and cried with him. It’s one thing to love a comedian on stage. You think, man he looks so natural, so warm, so welcoming, so likable. You think he’s likable? Talk to his wife. It’s another thing entirely, to live with the guy.Think about this. Jesus had been living with the disciples for 3 years in close quarters. Day in day out. Hungry, tired, opportunities to be irritable, opportunities to be grumpy.Before Jesus heads up to Jerusalem to be crucified, Jesus turns to Peter, and says, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter replies, you are the Christ the Son of the living God. Just think…what kind of life must Jesus have lived before them such that this was the answer that comes out of their lips? Can you imagine that? I know my wife and kids love me, but when I ask them that question, “Who do you say that I am?” I’m hearing different stuff.When the disciples looked at him, what did they see? They saw perfection. When they looked at him they saw a man who was GLORIOUS, brilliant was full of grace and truth. He hurt their eyes. Normally, the longer you live with someone the more normal they become. With Jesus it was opposite.The longer you lived with him, the more amazed you became.The more astonished you became.The more you get to know him the better he.He’s better than you expected. Why?Because you are beholding, not a great man, you are beholding God himself.You are staring right at God.Do you not think that would be an amazing experience?They saw in him perfection embodied.Remember I began by asking the question is it good to be merciful or merciless. What is the answer to the question? What does God reveal? Is it good to be merciful or merciless. The answer is Jesus. It’s the perfect combination.There are times when he overthrows the tables of the money changers.He shows no mercy.His eyes are fire.There is a whip in his hand.He is sharp, bitter, hard merciless.You brood of vipers.You white washed tombs.Justice.Other times when God shows absolute mercy.Go and sin no more.He washes the disciples feet.He’s dining with tax collectors and prostitutes.Here he is. Full of grace and full of truth. They saw in him virtues that had never been combined.You have here tenderness without any weakness,strength without any heavy-handedness,humility without any timidity,firm, unbending, unyielding convictions and yet utter approachabilitypassion without prejudice,power without insensitivity.Never a jarring note when you look at him. Never a false step. Never. What do you see here? You see the surprises of perfection.You want to know what the Jews saw that allowed them to rearrange their conception of Messiah. They saw God. The Word became flesh and dwelt among them. Full of GRACE and full of TRUTH. Perfection. The perfect combination.Who is this that the winds and the seas obey him?Never has a man spoke as this man spoke.Who is this?In the end, they had to come to this incredible conclusion. It must be GOD.The Problem with LightSo let’s come back to it. If you had perfect grace and truth, why would anyone reject him? If believing that he was God was the source of life why would anyone reject?Let me explain through analogy: Who wants to join me in a sun staring contest? The person who can stare at the sun longest without blinking wins. Who’s in? Why not? Because when you look at the sun, it hurts your eyes. I fact if you stare longer than just a couple seconds it would damage them. Whose fault is that? How foolish it would be to blame the sun. The problem is not the sun. The problem is my eyes. My weakness cannot take it in. I need the sun.But if our eyes were adjusted to see what’s really there we would see something like this:It is by the sun that you can see all things.It is because of the sun that all things live and exist and have their being.What we need is not to get rid of the sun. What we need is increased capacity to take it in. And when you suddenly filter it out so you aren’t so overwhelmed you begin to see the layers and layers of beauty.“We beheld his glory, full of grace and truth.”The Problem with the Son.So the light came and revealed perfection but we were not capable of taking it in. It hurt our eyes. Yes, we were mesmerized by it, but it hurt us.But here’s another thing about light. Because of it’s nature. Yes it, in and of itself, is beautiful. But the nature of light is that it reveals. It illuminates things around it.And what it illuminated was not pretty. You see the glory of Jesus reveals that we are not glorious. The glory of God shames. We are simultaneous attracted and repulsed. We are attracted to beauty and perfection but we are repulsed by what that beauty and perfection says about our sinful condition.And we want it to go away. We want to remove the revealing light. It was just better not knowing.A few years ago we painted our house white. My wife is a color fanatic. So she spent approximately 7300 hours picking out the particular white that she wanted. And we painted it white. And she just loved it. It was perfect, until it snowed. And then when the snow fell, the snow looked so beautiful, so clean, so fresh and our house just looked dirty and grimy. All the imperfections were so obvious.People thought they were patient until they saw perfect patience. Then suddenly their best patience looked like violence.People thought they were loving until they saw true love.People thought they were compassionate and tender till they saw it in its perfect form.We didn’t know the first thing about it. Never did a man speak like this. When we see the glory of God we are compared and found inadequate. That is the precise reason why some want nothing to do with the light.A couple years ago I watched a documentary called No Place On Earth that re-enacted the story of 36 Jews who hid in a Ukrainian cave for over 420 days to escape the Nazis. Can you imagine this? The men would leave the cave to get food and supplies but the women and children stayed there the entire time. What would it be like to live in a cave for over a year without seeing the sun. There was a period of time in which they went a month without light because they were out of candles and they were fearful of being detected. Night after night after night after night of darkness. There’s no information about your surroundings.Now for the adults it was much harder than for the children. Parts of the movie was from the perspective of this little four year old girl who survived the experience. She entered when she was 3 and she had forgotten that there ever was such a thing as the sun. The darkness was her home. Most people her age would have felt scared in the dark but she felt safe. The Nazis were in the light so she felt safe in the darkness.When she finally exited the light scared her. She was disoriented and confused. The light of the sun was so bright and so overpowering and it revealed so much of the world it just overloaded her senses and she wanted to go back into the dark.She had a conception of the world that was framed in by her darkness. She didn’t feel like she was in the dark. She felt like she understood reality. Darkness was all she had ever known. As soon as the light of the sun entered her world, everything was turned upside down.What this illustrates is that there are unique problems with people who are born in darkness. People who are born in darkness don’t know what they are missing. And interestingly, the Bible says we are all born in spiritual darkness. And when the light comes initially the response is fear and terror. The father of light sends his Son and his glorious brilliance lights up your soul and it terrifies you to see how you’ve been living. Can you imagine how much filth would be in a cave that held 36 people and had not been cleaned for 420 days? Most of that filth would not be visible because there was so little light. But imagine how horrified you’d be if you threw a few thousand lumins into the mix.It’s a metaphor for our hearts. The Son of God comes and he throws light on invisible corners of the heart, places that have never seen the light of day and when that happens, you can’t even recognize your own heart. Your self conception was framed in darkness. And what the light reveals terrifies you.But it’s a necessary step. You have to remember, it’s the heat of the presence of God that removes the roaches. How can we face into the light if the light reveals so much of the ugliness of our soul. How can we bear it? Because we have grace upon grace in Jesus Christ. We have a friend in Jesus, the perfection of grace and truth, who will never leave us or forsake us. A friend who will take, the ugliness, take the reproach and shame of sin upon himself.This is who is revealed to us in the book of John. And I can’t wait to glory in Him! Are you excited?

Sermon for the Feast of St. John, Apostle and Evangelist 1 St. John 1:1-4 by William Klock Sermon for the Feast of St. John, Apostle and Evangelist 1 St. John 1:1-4 When I was growing up I often heard the story of how my grandfather discovered the truth about Christmas.  He grew up in one of those houses where the Christmas decorations didn’t go up and the presents weren’t put out until after he’d gone to bed on Christmas Eve.  He would awake to the surprise on Christmas morning and everyone would tell him that Santa Claus had come while he was sleeping.  They wanted Christmases to be memorable and fun for him.  His father, my great-grandfather, died in an accident when my grandfather was only two years old.  After that he and my great-grandmother went to live with relatives.  I expect that at Christmas the older family members enjoyed having a little boy around again—someone who got excited about the season of Christmas.  I suspect they probably over-did things at least a little for his sake. It didn’t last, however.  A few days before one Christmas my grandfather was playing in the yard and notice a trail of pine needles leading to the basement.  Down the steps he went and there he discovered “Christmas”, prepared and packed away, ready to be sprung on him Christmas morning, obviously not by Santa, but by his aunt and uncle and mother.  He was crushed.  Not only was the magic gone, but he realised that people he loved and trusted had been lying to him. There were Christians in the middle of the First Century who were feeling similarly disenchanted.  People who had walked with Jesus, who had heard him teach, who had seen him perform miracles, who had seen him crucified and then seen him again, raised from the dead, told others who hadn’t seen and eventually they were telling the next generation that hadn’t even been alive when the events of the Gospels took place.  And it was in those years and decades that followed that persecution began to take place.  The Jews refused to accept this new way of following Israel’s God.  If the Christians were lucky they were simply cut off from the synagogues.  If they were unlucky, they were stoned like St. Stephen or dragged before the authorities by men like Saul of Tarsus.  Some years later persecution by the Romans began, and while it wasn’t widespread, it was horrible.  Men and women were crucified, they were thrown to the lions in the arena—Nero even covered them in pitch, nailed them to stakes, and set them on fire to light his garden parties.  It was hard enough for some who had seen Jesus to persevere.  Many of those who hadn’t seen him questioned.  Were the apostles for real?  Was their story real?  And if it was, where was this new age that Jesus was said to have ushered in?  Why were things getting worse instead of better for them.  And they doubted.  As I said when we began our study of Luke’s Gospel, I think it’s a strong possibility that the “Theophilus” to whom Luke addressed both his Gospel and the book of Acts, was just one of these second generation converts in whom doubts were beginning to arise.  Luke wasn’t an eye-witness either—at least not to Jesus.  He gathered first-hand accounts and recorded the story for the sake of those who would come after.  In fact, all four Gospels were written as the eye-witnesses themselves were aging and realising that word of mouth wasn’t enough.  The testimony of the eye-witnesses had to be written down. St. John was part of that effort.  John, along with his brother, James, and with Peter were part of Jesus’ inner circle.  They knew him better than anyone.  Tradition says that John also wrote the three epistles we have near the end of the New Testament and that during his exile on the island of Patmos, he wrote the book of Revelation.  In all three cases—in his Gospel, in his epistles, and in Revelation—John writes to Christians who are being beaten down by the present age.  He reminds them of Jesus, of his ministry and of his sacrifice and of his promises, and he urges them to persevere—to persevere in faith, in love, and in hope.  In Revelation he repeatedly calls the churches to “conquer”—to stand firm in Jesus and to overcome, interestingly enough, not by responding to hate with hate or violence with violence, but to stand firm in their suffering and in their persecution.  As Jesus triumphed over sin and death with the shedding of his blood, so the Church will triumph and will conquer through rejection, through suffering, through persecution, and even through martyrdom.  It seems counterintuitive.  Many wanted to give up and throw in the towel.  But John reminds them—and he reminds us—that this is how God’s kingdom works.  It’s how Jesus overcame and it is how the Church will overcome too. And so John begins his epistle—an epistle exhorting fellow Christians to stand firm in Christ-like love—by going back to his being an eye-witness of what that love looked like when he saw Jesus displaying it.  Again, this is 1 John and our lesson begins at the first verse: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.  And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. (1 John 1:1-4) John begins his epistle by taking us back to Jesus—to his life, to his ministry, to his teaching and preaching, to his death and resurrection.  This is what started it all—or, better since Jesus came into the middle of a story that had been unfolding for a long time, this is what changed everything.  This is what John’s epistle is about.  And yet the message of radical love in the epistle is a challenge.  It’s especially a challenge for those who weren’t there when Jesus was walking on earth and who now have questions or doubts.  Love is sacrificial.  That’s a very difficult kind of love to live—especially when it comes to your enemies.  As John talks about in Revelation, sacrificial love means persecution and martyrdom.  And people thought: “How do I know it’s worth it?”  So John goes back to Jesus.  John was an eyewitness.  Not just that, he was one of Jesus’ closest and best friends.  He’s saying, “Trust me.  The story is true.  I and so many others heard him, we saw him—especially the empty tomb!—and we touched the risen Lord.  Thomas put his fingers into the holes in his hands.  We ate fish with him on the beach.  Jesus is life itself and this is what we eyewitnesses testify.  Testify—put us on the witnesses stand and we’ll swear to it. And he describes what he and the eyewitnesses proclaim: eternal life.  Our English translations don’t capture very well what John is getting at here.  The Greek word, aionios, means “eternal” but it’s also the word for “age”.  We get our word “aeon” from it.  “Eternal life” tends to come across as otherworldly in English.  We start thinking about a strictly spiritual existence, about heaven somewhere “up there”, and many people think about the pop-culture idea of angels floating around on clouds and playing harps.  But John, like Jesus and Paul, when he talks about “eternal life” isn’t talking about the life Jesus brings in otherworldly or non-corporeal terms.  That’s how it often comes across, because none of our English words captures the full sense of the Greek word they use.  Again, the Greek word is freighted with meaning.  It’s not just that this life is “eternal”, but that it’s the life of “the age to come”.  Jews looked at history as divided into two ages—two aeons.  There was the present age, which is full of pain and suffering, injustice and unrighteousness, and then there was the age to come.  God would send his Messiah, he would rescue his people, not by taking them out of the world, but by coming in judgement to deal with all the suffering and injustice.  God would rescue his people and his creation and set everything to rights and reign as King eternally.  It’s this Jewish understanding of history that we need to keep in mind any time we see the New Testament writers telling us about “eternal life”.  It’s the life of the “age to come”—it’s life in God’s presence, it’s life in Creation set to rights, it’s life in which God has wiped away every tear from our eyes. This is what the Jews expected.  And it came in Jesus.  But as see throughout the Gospels, Jesus didn’t bring it about the way people were expecting.  This is what got him into trouble with so many people and with the Jewish authorities.  But what John’s saying here is that in Jesus it happened—maybe not the way we expected—but it most certainly did happen!  Somehow, through Jesus’ becoming one of his people, through Jesus dying, and through Jesus rising from death, that future age to come is breaking into the present age.  It’s not the clean break that people expected, but it is happening.  The present evil age is passing away.  Jesus dealt it a death blow.  Its days are numbered.  And the age to come is breaking in.  It will come in all its fullness just as everyone longed for it to come—just as so many of us still long for it come.  But the world isn’t ready yet.  God has a plan.  There’s a reason he’s working this way. It might help to understand this if we go back my grandfather’s childhood basement where his family was preparing for Christmas.  Over weeks or months, presents were carefully wrapped and stashed away in the basement.  Boxes full of decorations were already there.  A day or two before Christmas the tree was brought home and hidden away.  Think of your own homes: presents for the kids stashed on the high shelf in the closet where they’ll never find them, decorations carefully stored away in the garage or the crawlspace, a turkey thawing in the refrigerator.  Everything is being prepared, but it’s not out yet.  We’re waiting for the big day.  And yet I think of when I was a kid.  We couldn’t wait.  In our house the tree went up early and the presents slowly appeared one by one under tree.  For a week or two we shook them and tried to peek through the seams in the paper, trying to figure out what was inside.  We didn’t sit down to start opening things until after Christmas dinner.  It was a long wait, so we kids were allowed to open one present on Christmas Eve—something to tide us over.  That one present was a foretaste of what was to come on the afternoon of Christmas Day. That’s something of what has happened in the ministry of Jesus.  The kingdom of heaven—all the wonderful things of the age to come—are being prepared and carefully made ready in heaven in anticipation of the great day when all will be revealed.  But Jesus came like a present opened on Christmas Eve.  He gave the world a foretaste of the age to come as he preached good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, as he brought healing and forgiveness and reconciliation—and most importantly, as he poured out the Holy Spirit on his people, uniting us to himself, transforming our hearts and minds, and giving as much of the life of the age to come to us as our broken and unresurrected selves can handle right now. One day the present age will fully pass away and the age to come will be here in its fullness.  One day all things will finally be made new and Jesus will return, bring the life of the age to come with him—and everything that goes with it—restoring Creation, finally conquering evil once and for all time, and setting everything to rights.  We often miss all of this.  We think the Good News is escape from the evils of the world.  But that’s not the Good News.  That’s not the way of seeing history that the Old Testament had established.  Back to my grandfather’s basement.  His family didn’t go down to the basement to enjoy Christmas any more than you just celebrated your Christmas by squeezing everyone into your refrigerator to enjoy your Christmas turkey.  No.  Everything we’ve been prepared is brought out and our homes are transformed with all the good things that have been hidden away.  Just so with the age to come.  The Good News is, at its most basic, that Jesus is Lord.  Not just Lord of heaven, but Lord of all—Lord of this earth, Lord of Creation—and that he will deal with pain and suffering and injustice and unrighteousness and sin and death not by whisking us away, but by coming and defeating evil and its minions once and for all.  The vision St. John gives us in Revelation is of the dragon—the serpent, the Satan—being allowed to do his worst.  After his beast—Rome—is finally cast down, the Satan whips the nations into a frenzy, encouraging every last vestige of evil to rise up against the Lamb.  And with every evil exposed, Jesus conquers it all—and then the dragon, the Satan, is cast into the fire.  It’s as if Jesus uses the Satan to sweep the dust from every dark corner and from under every piece of furniture into plain view, in one pile for Jesus to deal with—and then, having swept up every last vestige of evil, Jesus throws the broom itself into the fire.  There is no more evil in his restored Creation, which means heaven can come down.  And John gives us that image of the New Jerusalem descending to earth—God’s realm and our realm, now joined back together as God originally intended.  And it can finally happen because the sin that split them apart has been dealt with. That’s the life of the age to come.  As John says in verse 2, this is the life that was “with the Father”.  In verse 3 he describes this life as “fellowship” and specifically as fellowship with the Father.  This is what we’ve been missing ever since humanity’s first sin in the garden.  The holy and unholy can never be together.  Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden, out of God’s presence.  They were cut off from the tree of life and began to die—because they had sinned, because they had become unholy. This is what was so remarkable about Jesus.  He is one of us, but he has fellowship with the Father.  They are in communion with each other—it was never broken.  And people could see this wherever he went.  He had power over sin and death, he had power over the minions of the devil, he had power to forgive sins—because he was full of the life that sinners lack, that we reject in our sinfulness.  And yet the whole point of Jesus ministry was to bring this life to the rest of us.  He lived, he died, and he rose to life to break our bondage to sin, to wash us clean from the stain of our sins, so that we can share his fellowship with the Father—so that we can have the life of the age to come. And John says, this is what he and his friends had heard and it’s what they have proclaimed.  This is the Good News.  And it’s Good News—not just good advice.  As I said a couple of weeks ago, we too often proclaim the Good News as if it’s something our friends might like to try for themselves—like something from the smorgasbord.  Take it or leave it.  If you like it, great!  If not, oh well.  But, Brothers and Sisters, that’s not what the New Testament means by Good News.  The Greek word is euangelion.  It’s the word from which we get “evangel” and “evangelical”.  In the Old Testament the word is used to describe the good news of victory brought by messengers from the battlefield.  Think of Isaiah 52:7 and those familiar words, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news.”  That’s the word there.  It’s the image of a messenger running as fast as he can to tell the people in the city the good news that their forces have been victorious.  That’s one half of what it means to proclaim Good News.  A victory has been won by Jesus against sin and death.  Now, think about that.  Is that the sort of “news” you present as a “take it or leave it” sort of thing?  Not really. But the other aspect of Good News and one we see especially in Paul’s epistles, comes from the way the word was used in the Roman world.  When a new Caesar ascended to the throne—often by having defeated his rivals—imperial heralds were sent throughout the empire to declare the Good News: Caesar is Lord or Augustus is Lord or Vespasian is Lord.  He has put his enemies under his feet and taken his throne to rule.  It was a call for loyalty.  If there was anyone still fighting for the losing side off in the fringes of the empire, now was the time to lay down their arms and swear allegiance to the victor. This is the other side of the Good News we proclaim.  Jesus is Lord.  He has conquered his rivals.  He has crushed the serpent’s head.  Yes, Caesar pretends at being Lord, but his days are numbered and so are the days of his empire.  He’s part of the present evil age that is passing away.  So to proclaim the Good News is to announce that Jesus has been victorious and it’s to call the world to allegiance to Jesus.  Again, this isn’t a take it or leave it option.  Imagine Caesar’s heralds running through the empire to announce that Caesar had defeated his enemies and now ruled Rome—but you can take it or leave it.  We often talk about “sharing” the Good News.  This is a pretty recent phenomenon that started in the mid-Twentieth Century.  But consider how silly it is to think that Caesar’s heralds went through the empire to “share” the Good News that Caesar was emperor.  No.  This was news they announced and proclaimed.  Judgement would come on any who rejected it.  And consider how this is even more the case with Jesus.  Horrible judgement came on Jerusalem for its rejection of Jesus and his lordship and that judgement was a small foretaste of the judgement John points to in Revelation that will come on the last great day when Jesus deals once and for all with all those who insist on continuing their rebellion. So, Brothers and Sisters, proclaim the good news of Jesus’ lordship with power and with confidence knowing what it means.  Live in the story and live in the life of the age to come and live in it with joy.  That’s why, John says in verse 4, he has written this: so that instead of living in doubt or fear when we face persecution for our witness and proclamation of the love of God in Jesus, for our witness and proclamation of his kingdom, we may live in joy, knowing that Jesus is Lord and that in the Holy Spirit he has given us a taste of the life and of the kingdom that is coming.  It’s like the gift we give to our children to open on Christmas Eve, a gift that gives them a taste of the wonderful things still waiting for them on Christmas morning.  A gift that says, “Christmas is here,” even if we have to wait for the rest of it.  But, Brothers and Sisters, remember that Jesus came not for the sake of a few, but for the sake of the whole world—to offer forgiveness to all humanity and to call all humanity back into fellowship with his Father.  What Jesus has done for us is not meant to be merely a foretaste of the kingdom to encourage us as we face the ongoing evil of the present age.  We ourselves—our transformed lives, the love we live, the hope we have, the Good News we proclaim—is meant to be a foretaste of the kingdom for the people around us.  Through the lives of his people—through our lives—Jesus lifts the veil and gives the world a glimpse of the age to come.  Think on and ponder our usual words of dismissal when we meet together: “Go out in peace to love and serve the Lord.” Let us pray: Shed upon your Church, O Lord, the brightness of your light, that we, being illumined by the teaching of your apostle and evangelist, Saint John, may so walk in the light of your truth, that at length we may attain to the fullness of eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Subscribe to How To Trade ItJohn Meli’s dad was a racecar driver. So John grew up believing that he had no limits. If someone else could do something—so could he. John worked in construction and things were going well until the recession hit in 2008. He went from making $16,000 a month to barely getting a neighbor to pay him $50 to paint a room. He asked some friends about the stock market and decided to give it a try. He played around with penny stocks in the stock market. Then he got hooked on Forex. He put money into it without knowing what he was doing and he blew two accounts. But he emphasizes that he isn’t a quitter. He doesn’t give up. He believes if you are willing to walk away, you don’t have what it takes to be a trader. So what path did he take to turn things around and become a profitable trader? Listen to this episode of How To Trade It for his story!You’ll want to hear this episode if you are interested in...[1:12] John’s backstory: construction to trading[5:30] The biggest challenges John faced[7:19] Dealing with discouraging losses[14:39] How Winners Edge Trading changed the game[19:26] How John manages multiple accounts[21:55] Managing accounts for cashflow[24:15] John’s trading strategy[28:38] John’s experience teaching others how to tradeResources & People MentionedWinners Edge TradingConnect with John MeliForex Master Strategy Trading RoomConnect With Casey StubbsWebsite: https://caseystubbs.comSubscribe! https://www.youtube.com/caseystubbsTwitter: https://www.twitter.com/caseystubbsFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/caseystubbsLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/caseystubbsNewsletter: https://financeandmarkets.com/Subscribe to How To Trade It Support the show (https://caseystubbs.com)

The opening paragraph of 1 John 1 boasts many treasures. I want to focus on verse 3, with a sidelong glance at verse 4.Assuming that the author is the apostle John, the “we” that is doing the proclaiming is most likely an editorial we, or a we that is self-consciously speaking from the circle of apostolic witnesses. Thus in this context it is distinguished from the “we” of all Christians; it is distinguished, in particular, from the “you” who constitute the readers: “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard” (1 John 1:3). The previous two verses specify what John and the other witnesses have seen and heard. It is nothing less than the Incarnation: “That which was from the beginning” (1 John 1:1) one with God was nothing other than what appeared in real history and was repeatedly heard, seen, and touched. The eternal Word became a man (John 1:14); here, the “life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us” (1 John 1:2). So John reiterates, “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard” (1 John 1:3).There is no Christianity without the Incarnation. Moreover, the Incarnation is not some vague notion of the divine identifying with the human. It is relentlessly concrete: the Word that was with God and that was God became flesh (as John writes elsewhere, John 1:1, 14). That is fundamental in John’s day, when he is combating those who presuppose that what is truly spiritual might don human flesh but could not become a human being; it is fundamental today, when we might be combating a philosophical naturalist who insists that the only reality is what occupies the continuum of space and time.John tells his readers that he proclaims this truth to them, “so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). Fellowship in the New Testament is more than warm fuzzies. It is committed partnership, in which personal interests are subsumed under the common mission. The first witnesses entered into fellowship “with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.” John’s readers may enter that fellowship by entering into the fellowship of the apostles. That is why John proclaims what he has seen and heard. The apostles mediate the Gospel to others. We cannot enter into fellowship with God and with his Son Jesus Christ without entering into fellowship with the apostles who were the first witnesses of the Incarnation.None of this fosters stuffy religion. John writes to make “our” or “your” joy complete (1 John 1:4): whichever variant is original, it tells the truth on this point. This podcast is designed to be used alongside TGC's Read The Bible initiative (TGC.org/readthebible). The podcast features devotional commentaries from D.A. Carson’s book For the Love of God (vol. 1) that follow the M’Cheyne Bible reading plan.

WHY ARE YOU COMING TO ME?   Today’s reading is Matthew 1 – 4.  We are reading from the New Living Translation. Why are you coming to me?  That’s what John said.   “I am the one who needs to be baptized by you,” he said, “so why are you coming to me?” (Mt 3:14 NLT) The message of the Law and the Prophets teaches us that we need to come to God, and that’s a good message.  John the Baptist is shouting it as best as he can.  Come to God!  And that’s the message we get from all religions.  John says the way you come to Him is through confession and baptism. But now, God, who has nothing to confess, shows up.  And he wants to be baptized by human hands.  And John says, Wait a minute! Why are you coming to me.  That’s not the message.  We need to come to you!   Jesus came because we are incapable of coming to him.  The need is there but the gulf is too wide and the distance is too vast. The Gospel is God coming to us – God doing for us what we can’t do for ourselves.  Try as we might, we falter, fail and sin.  We know God is worthy and deserving of our full allegiance and obedience but we fail.  We try to come to him, but we can’t seem to make up that vast distance, and the Law is a great reminder of that.   So John asks, “Why are you coming to me?”  And Jesus, in effect, says, I had to come because you are incapable of coming to me.  The Law has shown us the distance that there is and Jesus comes to do all that the Law requires.  He covered that infinite distance that we’re incapable of covering, so that we can know his Love and His Life.  That’s the Good News.  That’s the Gospel.  That’s what love does.  It was God’s plan all along. The Law showed us the distance between us and God, and Jesus met the Law’s demands, honoring his Father, and showing us the vastness of his love is for us.   Hear Jesus’ answer to John’s question. He came to you because you couldn’t come to him on your own.  And He did it out of love for you.  Let Him transform your thinking, your will, and give you joy.

How do you get access to the unreachable? How do you become unforgettable? That’s the focus of this episode of Capability Amplifier. 15 years ago, Mike Koenigs called a good friend who was buying three people $12,000 Rolex watches and thought he was crazy. "Why?" He asked! Keep reading or start listening... You know that amazing, warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you receive or give a gift? Did you know there’s a psychology and science behind gift-giving that could help you build incredibly strong business relationships, grow your business and make a ton of money? Today on the Capability Amplifier podcast, Mike's special guest is John Ruhlin, the author of “Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Retention.” John says that gratitude isn't a “woo-woo thing,” it's an ROI driver because “nobody cares about gifts, but we all care about relationships.” John didn't grow up with a silver spoon in his mouth or in country clubs, in fact, it was the complete opposite. He’s a farm boy from Ohio who grew up milking goats and baling hay in a town of 417 people. Then his life completely changed because of a mentor. When John was in college he had a girlfriend who’s dad, Paul, was this rainmaking attorney in a small town. When you're poor, you notice when people are generous and Paul was radically generous with everybody, whether it was the assistant, the janitor, or the CEO. Paul would find deals on noodles and everybody at church the next Sunday would walk away with 200 cases of noodles and John would say to him, “that was $30,000 or $40,000! Are you nuts?” Paul would just smile. It wasn't tactical for him, it was just who he was. He exuded generosity and because of it, he owned oil wells, banks, real estate, and everybody came to him because he was the most liked, trusted, and top of mind person in the community. John was selling Cutco knives at the time and decided to pitch Paul the idea of giving away pocket knives to all of his high-end clients. Paul didn’t like the idea of pocket knives but instead told John he wanted to order a bunch of his $100 paring knives. John was confused. He didn’t understand why Paul wanted to give a bunch of grown men and CEOs of billion-dollar companies a kitchen tool! What Paul told him next changed his life forever. Paul said that after being in business for 35 years, he found that if you take care of the family in the business, everything else takes care of itself. It was at that point John had the epiphany that it wasn't about the silly knives. Paul understood that the knife was a delivery vehicle for an emotion. People loved and trusted Paul because he was always around even when he wasn't there because of gifts like this. So John started mimicking Paul’s ideas and pitching to CEO’s of multi-million dollar companies. But rather than say “hey, I want to pitch you knives,” (because he’d be hung on real quick) he would mail these guys $300 carving sets with a handwritten note that said, “carve out five minutes for me,” and he’d get the meeting every time. Inevitably when he’d walk into the board room for his meeting with guys in their 50’s and 60’s they’d be shocked at how young John was and they’d ask him, “Are you here to sell me knives?” John’s answer was always, “no, I'm here to help you and your thousand sales reps do exactly what I did to you and your top 10,000 relationships.” By the time he was a senior in college, (out of 1.5 million sales reps,) he became number one at Cutco by applying what he now calls the Giftology System. It's really about understanding the psychology of building relationships, inspiring them to refer you, open doors, be loyal, be engaged. All the stuff that we want in business with humans can be accomplished if we show our love and gratitude in a certain way. That's the core of Giftology that started 20 years ago by mimicking somebody who did it naturally.

This week’s episode includes author John McMurray and Associate Editor Brendan Everett as they discuss the effect of dapagliflozin on outpatient worsening of patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction. TRANSCRIPT BELOW: Dr Carolyn Lam: Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the journal and its editors. I'm Dr Carolyn Lam, Associate Editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore. Dr Greg Hundley: And I'm Dr Greg Hundley, Associate Editor, Director of the Pauley Heart Center, VCU Health in Richmond, Virginia. Well, Carolyn, I hear you might have an interesting feature paper? Dr Carolyn Lam: Oh, yes. I think everyone's going to look forward to this one, because we cannot get enough of the DAPA-HF study. This is another very important prespecified analysis, looking at the effect of dapagliflozin on outpatient worsening of patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction. Very important stuff coming right up, but first, I've got two papers looking at congenital heart disease that I'd like to share with you, Greg. Have you got your coffee? Dr Greg Hundley: Yeah, I do. Let's get going. Dr Carolyn Lam: Well, as you know, the mechanisms of congenital heart disease associated right ventricular dysfunction are not well-understood. And so, in this first paper, Dr Reddy from Stanford University and colleagues assessed lipid peroxidation, a potent form of oxidative stress, as well as mitochondrial function and structure, in right ventricular myocardium, collected from patients with and without right ventricular failure. And what they found, was that right ventricular failure was characterized by increased oxidation of membrane phospholipids, known as lipid peroxidation and its products, such as 4-hydroxynonenal, or 4-HNE. Now, 4-HNE binds to metabolic and mitochondrial proteins, and was associated with decreased myocardial energy generation and mitochondrial structural disruption with increasing severity of right ventricular hypertrophy and right ventricular failure. Mechanistically, the authors showed that 4-HNE was sufficient to decrease energy generation by inhibiting electron transport chain complex activities and mitochondrial dynamics. Dr Greg Hundley: Dr Carolyn, a lot of mechanism here. So clinically, what are the implications? Dr Carolyn Lam: I thought you'd ask. Well, since standard heart failure therapies, such as ACE inhibitors and beta blockers, are ineffective in the treatment of right ventricular failure, developing therapies focusing on new targets, such as what we talked about, the lipid peroxidation, could improve right ventricular function in congenital heart diseases by improving mitochondrial energy generation and cardiomyocyte survival. Dr Greg Hundley: Ah, very interesting, Carolyn. Dr Carolyn Lam: Thank you. The next paper, also very interesting, this time focusing on Tetralogy of Fallot, the most common cyanotic congenital heart disease. Now, this is from Dr Marijon from Hôpital Européen Georges-Pompidou in France and colleagues who highlighted, first, that sudden cardiac death represents an important mode of death in these patients with Tetralogy of Fallot, yet data evaluating the ICDs in these patient population, really, has remained scarce. And so, they use the nationwide French registry to include 165 patients with Tetralogy of Fallot with an ICD initiated in 2010 by the French Institute of Health and Medical Research. 63%, by the way, of these ICDs, were used for secondary prevention. Dr Greg Hundley: Ah, Carolyn, I can't wait to see. What did they find? Dr Carolyn Lam: So during a median follow-up of 6.8 years, 47% of patients received at least one appropriate ICD therapy. The annual incidence of the primary outcome was 10.5% overall, 7.1% in the primary prevention, and 12.5% in the secondary prevention cohorts, respectively. 43% of patients presented with at least one ICD complication, and, importantly, QRS fragmentation was the only predictor of appropriate ICD therapies. So, even before you asked me, Greg, the take home message is, patients with Tetralogy of Fallot and an ICD, experience high rates of appropriate therapies, including those implanted for primary prevention. The considerable long-term burden of ICD-related complication, however, underlines the need for careful candidate selection. A combination of easy-to-use criteria, including QRS fragmentation, might improve our risk prediction. Dr Greg Hundley: Oh, very nice summary, Carolyn. Learned a lot there. Well, I'm going to steer us to two other papers in the issue, and the first one is from the world of basic science, and it's from Dr John Cooke from the Houston Methodist Research Institute. So Carolyn, the angiogenic response to ischemia restores perfusion, so as to preserve tissue. Something we all know. A role for mesenchymal to endothelial transition in the angiogenic response is controversial, and this study utilized a murine model of hindlimb ischemia and an in vivo Matrigel plug assay, together with lineage tracing studies and single-cell RNA sequencing, to examine the transcriptional and functional changes in fibroblasts in response to ischemia, to determine if resident fibroblasts contribute to angiogenesis. Dr Carolyn Lam: Ah, it's so interesting. Do fibroblasts contribute to angiogenesis? What did they find, can't wait? Dr Greg Hundley: Yeah, Carolyn. So, in both mice and human-isolated fibroblasts, these author studies indicated the presence of subsets of tissue fibroblasts, which seemed poised to contribute to the angiogenic response. And the expansion of these subsets with ischemia was dependent upon activation of innate immune signaling, and this signaling contributed to recovery of perfusion and preservation of ischemic tissue. Really interesting findings. Didn't suspect the fibroblasts as being the contributors here. Dr Carolyn Lam: Very nice, Greg. Thank you. You've got another one. Dr Greg Hundley: Yes. So the next study is from Professor Phillips Tsao from Stanford University School of Medicine. Well, Carolyn, this is a genome-wide association study, and it's from the Million Veteran Program, testing 18 million DNA sequence variants in patients with abdominal aortic aneurysms. In the study, they identified 7,642 cases and 172,172 controls in veterans of European ancestry, with independent replication and another study in 4,009 72 cases and 99,858 controls. Dr Carolyn Lam: Wow. Dr Greg Hundley: So it's nice, they have a replication study. The authors then use Mendelian randomization to examine the causal effects of blood pressure on abdominal aortic aneurysms. And they examine the association of abdominal aortic aneurysm risk variants with aneurysms in the lower extremity, cerebral, and iliac arterial beds, and lastly, derived a genome-wide polygenic risk score to identify a subset of the population at greater risk for disease. Dr Carolyn Lam: Wow. So a GWA study with replication to identify those at risk for abdominal aortic aneurysms in huge cohorts. What did they find? Dr Greg Hundley: Well, Carolyn, this study was managed by one of our experts in GWA studies, Dr Wendy Post, and through GWAs, the authors identified 14 novel loci, and there were already 10, so it brings the total number of significant abdominal aortic aneurysm loci to 24. So a new finding there. And in their Mendelian randomization analysis, they demonstrated that a genetic increase of 10 millimeters of mercury in diastolic blood pressure, as opposed to systolic blood pressure, likely had a causal relationship with the future development of abdominal aortic aneurysms. They observed that 19 of those 24 aortic aneurysm risk variants associate with aneurysms in at least one other vascular territory. And then lastly, a 29 variant polygenic risk score was strongly associated with abdominal aortic aneurysms, independent of family history and smoking risk factors. So Carolyn, in conclusion, the authors in this study identify novel abdominal aortic aneurysm genetic associations with therapeutic implications and identify a subset of the population at significantly increased genetic risk of abdominal aortic aneurysms, independent of their family history. And their data suggests that perhaps extending current screening guidelines to include testing for those with high polygenic abdominal aortic aneurysm risk, would significantly increase the yield of many of our current screening algorithms, as you know, that predominate based on smoking and age. Dr Carolyn Lam: Wow. Very, very impressive and convincing data. Thanks, Greg. Let me tell you about other papers in today's issues. There's a research letter by Dr Tiburcy on inhibition of prolyl-hydroxylase domain enzymes, and how that protects from reoxygenation injury in the engineered human myocardium. There's another research letter from Dr Ohbe, entitled, The Risk of Cardiovascular Events after a Spouse's ICU Admission. And, one more from Dr Ganatra, on chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy-associated cardiomyopathy in patients with refractory or relapsed non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Dr Greg Hundley: You know, Carolyn, our research letters, they really pack a punch. Such very interesting research, in a nice concise format. I've got some other publications. So first, there's an On My Mind piece from our own Charlie Loewenstein, and also Dr Solomon from Boston, Massachusetts, involving, Severe COVID-19 as a Microvascular Disease, does endothelial exocytosis drive COVID-19? And next, there's a case series entitled, ECMO Therapy for Cardiac Lymphoma, and it's from Dr Oscar Cingolani. And then finally, Carolyn, a very nice ECG challenge from Dr Bansal, related to identifying the location of an AV block. Well, Carolyn, I'm really excited to get onto your feature discussion. Dr Carolyn Lam: Let's go, Greg. Today's feature discussion looks at a prespecified analysis of DAPA-HF. My goodness, I don't think we can get enough of the data from DAPA-HF, and we have none other than be corresponding author, Dr John McMurray from University of Glasgow, to discuss this exciting paper, as well as our associate editor, Dr Brendan Everett from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. So John, today's feature paper, all about outpatient worsening of heart failure. Could you please start by defining what we meant by that, and why is it so important? Dr John McMurray: Our interest in this actually started back when we did PARADIGM and we had collected, in a not very systematic way, information about episodes of outpatient worsening, so by that, I mean episodes of worsening symptoms and signs, not leading the patient to go to the emergency department or be admitted to hospital. The sort of worsening that a patient might tell you about in your outpatient clinic, say they're a bit more breathless or they've got a bit more ankle swelling, and you do something about it. And that's the critical part. You decide to increase their dose of diuretic, add another drug. And in PARADIGM, we find that those episodes, first of all, were quite common, and secondly, and most importantly, we're actually prognostically very significant. They were associated with worse outcomes. So in that HF, we decided that we would collect these more systematically, we would try and define them a little bit more robustly, so we would require the investigator to report worsening signs and symptoms, and we also wanted evidence that additional treatment had been given and then that had been sustained for at least a month, because, as you know, diuretic dose can increase and decrease. Then we prespecified, as you said, Carolyn, that we would then incorporate those manifestations of worsening, as an additional component to our primary composite endpoint, which was cardiovascular death, heart failure hospitalization, worsening of heart failure requiring intravenous therapy, so an urgent visit for that, that would often be in an emergency department, and then in addition to that, this further manifestation of worsening as the extra component to this broader composite outcome that we hoped would encompass the whole range of worsening of heart failure that a patient might experience. Dr Carolyn Lam: Thanks so much, John, and you actually preempted my question of how it differed from the original primary outcome that included urgent heart failure visits, intravenous diuretic use, but not these nuance outpatient intensification of heart failure therapy that I really salute you for prospectively collecting information on. So could you summarize what you found, please? Dr John McMurray: Well, first comment to make, Carolyn, is that we included those urgent visits requiring intravenous therapy, because, as you know, in the U.S., I think there is a move to try and avoid admission and to treat patients in the ambulatory care setting or non-ward setting. Although, I have to say, as it turned out, those episodes of worsening were very infrequent. There was, I think, 33 in total in DAPA-HF, compared to almost 600 of the other episodes of worsening. The ones that we almost feel at a brainstem reflex level when we see patients in our clinics. So what did we find? Well, we find that when you add those episodes of worsening, then, of course, you considerably increase the proportion of patients who have, from what you might call, the most trivial manifestation, worsening the events we just talked about, all the way through to the very worst, in other words, death, from cardiovascular causes, in fact, so much so, that by about two years of follow-up, the Kaplan-Meier rate for that expanded composite endpoint was about 33%. And, as you know, Carolyn, we're talking about a trial that enrolled patients who were very well-treated by conventional standards and who, by and large, had mild symptoms, but 70% were NYHA class II. And yet, within two years, if you take into account all of these different manifestations of worsening, we had about one-in-three people in the placebo group that deteriorates, and we reduced the risk of deterioration with dapagliflozin, we reduced the instance of that expanded composite endpoint by 27%, and that was a highly statistically significant result. And if you like numbers needed to treat, then for that expanded very broad composite endpoint, the number needed to treat over the median follow-up of 18.2 months, was only 16. And by the way, we did confirm that those outpatient worsening events were prognostically significant as well. Dr Carolyn Lam: Very good. Brendan, could I bring you in on this? It's got such great implications, maybe you could share a little bit about what the editors thought when we saw this paper? Dr Brendan Everett: One of the key things that the editors thought when they reviewed this, was the fact that, as you pointed out, you collected these outpatient worsening episodes prospectively across the trial and did so in a very rigorous and systematic way. And I think for those of us who take care of patients with heart failure, which of course is most cardiologists, these kinds of episodes where your patient calls you and their weight's gone up, or where they've gotten a little more short of breath, then you, over the phone, intensify their diuretic regimen, are incredibly common, and, of course, bothersome to the patient and challenging for the clinician who's caring for the patients too. So I think, in that sense, it's a really important paper. That was the other aspect, I think, that the editors were interested in. But the impact, the clinical impact on day-to-day care of patients with heart failure, was substantial. The other part that I found intriguing, because of course, when you're caring for individual patients, you don't have a sense, necessarily, of what these episodes mean in a broader population for those patients' overall risk of bad outcomes. So you mentioned it right at the end when you were speaking a moment ago, about the association of these outpatient intensifications of oral diuretic therapy and their association with future bad outcomes within the trial. Could you tell us a little bit about what those were and why they ended up seeming so important, both to patients and to you as the trialist? Dr John McMurray: We write about these being common, in fact, in the placebo group in DAPA-HF. I think it was 14% of patients had one of those episodes of outpatient worsening. And again, as you correctly identified, in the majority of cases, the therapeutic intervention by the physician, was simply to increase the dose of diuretic, although, actually about 40% of people also, at some point, had the addition of another drug. So, in terms of the significance of those events, in PARADIGM, we find that they appeared to be associated with almost the same impact on mortality as being admitted to hospital with worsening heart failure. But in fact, in DAPA-HF, where we collected more of these events, so maybe we collected, perhaps, the more severe cases in DAPA where we collected them systematically, we find that the prognostic impact wasn't quite as large. So for example, if you were admitted to hospital with heart failure during DAPA-HF, then you were six-times more likely, subsequently, to die in that rather short follow-up period, than if you had no manifestation of worsening. On the other hand, if you had an outpatient episode of worsening, then it was around a three-fold higher risk of death than if you had no manifestation of worsening. So, my take home from this was that these episodes really do matter to patients. Not only, of course, do they matter because it means the patient doesn't feel so good, but they matter because that patient suddenly is on a different prognostic trajectory, and you can change that by intervening. So these events are common, they're prognostically bad news, and fortunately, we can reduce them. And maybe the last thing to say, which I also didn't mention, I apologize, was that, of course, if you look at that expanded endpoint, as you can imagine, because there's so many events now, you see the effect of treatment very, very quickly. So by day 27 after randomization, in other words, by day 27 after starting dapagliflozin, we had a statistically significant reduction in the occurrence of that comp standpoint, that then remained significant thereafter. Dr Brendan Everett: Thanks, John. I had one other question that I hope doesn't take us too far into the weeds, but I think as a clinician, when you care for these patients, you try to intensify their outpatient therapy, and when that seems to fail, the patient then becomes admitted to the hospital. And I thought it was very interesting and thoughtful the way that you approach that problem, in other words, you have potentially, of this composite endpoint, you have the outpatient worsening that comes first, and then it's followed, in many cases, by a hospitalization for heart failure. How did you tease those two apart? And what analyses did you do to make sure that what you were really measuring was the effect of the outpatient intensification, rather than really just a prelude to a hospital? Dr John McMurray: Very good question, Brendan. So, obviously, we were concerned about the possibility of double counting, so we did a primary analysis in which we built in a blanking window. So, for example, if you had an episode about outpatient and you or I increased the patient's oral therapy, but within 30 days, they were admitted to the hospital, then in our analysis, that patient only counted once, and the event that counted was the hospital admission, not the outpatient episode of worsening. And then, as I said, we did a number of sensitivity analyses where we adjusted the length of that blanking period, because we recognized, obviously, that some people, that episode of outpatient worsening that you intervene for, your intervention may not work and they may still get hospitalized. So we try to, as you obviously identified when you read our manuscript, we tried to counter that by not double counting episodes of outpatient worsening that were closely adjacent to the hospital admission. Dr Carolyn Lam: Could I end with just one quick question? You've published many times with us at Circulation, and I'd like to think that that's from a very good experience with us, with working with us, and I've noticed even in this discussion, it's just so interesting the exchange. And so, John, could you say a few words about publishing in Circulation, and why do it? Dr John McMurray: Well, obviously it's our leading cardiovascular journal. As I was being trained as a fellow, it was every fellow's aspiration to publish a paper in Circulation. So reputationally, obviously, it's very, very important. But why do I like Circulation other than that? Well, first of all, you handle papers quickly and efficiently. I think you're very fair. I really like the reviews. So I would say one of the greatest frustrations most authors, and certainly I know that from my own experience, is when you get poor reviews. I don't think I get those from Circulation, so you obviously have a much higher quality review. I like the way the editors give you guidance about the manuscript and how to respond to the reviewers. That's really, really helpful, because sometimes you think, "Well, that reviewer’s comment doesn't make sense. Do I have to really do that?" But often, your replies to me, come with guidance about how to handle the different reviewers’ comments. So, all in all, it's fair. I would say that's always important. Everybody will not get every paper accepted, but I think you get a very fair response from Circulation. It's good. It's thoughtful. So, that's fine. Dr Carolyn Lam: Thank you so much, John. I'm sure I'm speaking on behalf of Brendan as well, and kudos to him because obviously he managed this paper so well. Thank you, audience, for joining us today on Circulation on the Run. So don't forget to tune in again next week. Dr Greg Hundley: This program is copyright the American Heart Association.

Many people who ask me to be their executor commonly make their will using do-it-yourself methods. DIY estate planning can be tricky, so here are some tips on how to maximize the chances your DIY estate plan will actually work. Our Methodology We created identical estate plans using 3 popular free DIY will sites. Here is the fictional persona we used: John Doe is a solo ager. That is, he's unmarried with no children Unless your will is super-simple, you should work with a lawyer. So John's plan is very basic: he'd like to give his estate in equal thirds to two friends and one charity John would like to nominate me as his professional executor John will hire a lawyer to supervise his signing, as we recommend. Therefore, we did not review each site's signing instructions We generated John's will on the 3 free sites. Then, my trusted colleague Maureen Pritchard, Esq. and I reviewed the results. FreeWill.com Our top pick for DIY will software is FreeWill.com. The site is well-designed, and pleasant to navigate, and John's will had zero errors. The only caveat is the constant requests for donations. The site was funded by various charities, and they're not shy about asking to be named in your will. We were interrupted several times with prompts asking if John would like to add charitable beneficiaries to his will. But if you're thick-skinned and can ignore the pushy requests, or if you plan to give to charity anyway, this is a great choice. Pros Very professional product. The will did not have any typos or substantive errors Well-designed site. A very pleasant user experience Includes health care documents, too Cons Barrage of requests for charitable donations Your will includes signatures lines and initials on each page. These are not legally necessary, and feel like overkill DoYourOwnWill.com DoYourOwnWill.com is truly a 100% free option for making a DIY will. You don't even have to give you email address (unless you want to save your will). This means that you're not even paying with your personal data. But, just as in most of life, you get what you pay for. It may be completely free, but it has a few problems. Pros 100% Free. Not even an email required Most private option Easy-to-follow user-interface Includes health care documents, too Cons Several typos in John's will. Despite the typos, the will was substantively fine John's burial instruction is written into his will. In real life, this doesn't make much sense, since in many cases no one even looks at the will until after the funeral,. RocketLawyer.com RocketLawyer is the most well-known brand on this list but be prepared to be up-sold from their free option to one of their more profitable packages. It doesn't feel like they spent a lot of effort on this free version. The user-experience is very clunky, and John's will has substantive errors. Maybe the plan is to nudge free users to a better, paid version?   Pros RocketLawyer is big name in legal DIY You may already have a RocketLawyer account and feel comfortable with their platform Cons You must create an account, and it feels like you'll get up-sold a lot John's will had a substantive error (the will treated the charity as an individual. Not necessarily fatal, but can cause headaches later during the probate process) We couldn't find healthcare documents as part of the free package There are many DIY estate planning sites out there. We hope that our review and recommendations will help you pick the one that's right for you. To learn more about the process of planning your estate, complete the info below to receive a FREE copy of my best-sellingbook. FREE Copy of “The Solo Ager Estate Plan” Complete this form to receive your complimentary copy of Anthony’s Amazon best-seller, “The Solo Ager Estate Plan”

Today I have a special, special, special guest. It’s a very good friend, Michael Brenner. And he's a CMO influencer, motivational speaker. You have to check him out!  Also, he owns the Marketing Insider Group.  And I use that website quite a bit, actually. There's a lot of useful contents regarding content marketing, search marketing. So anything digital marketing related. So welcome Michael.   Michael Brenner: Yeah, Pam. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. Pam Didner: Am I loud enough? Michael Brenner: No, you're perfect. You're perfect.   Pam Didner: So, 2020 has been an interesting year, especially for all of us marketers. Obviously for me, I want to be 100% transparent when March hit, like all of my pipeline just like disappeared. So what have you been seeing in the past four months? Your observations? How is the B2B marketing landscape doing as a whole? Do you have any insight to show with us?   Michael Brenner: Yeah, a couple of things. One is I think that there was a pretty early on a shift out of, let's say, blatant promotional ads. And it started in B2C. I think even the CEO of Coca-Cola said “brand advertising is completely ineffective,” which I love that quote. I'm like, says the largest, most recognized brand in the world. And I always explained the context for that quote with, during the pandemic, but why is it not applied normally? You know, like why does he think brand advertising isn't effective now, but it is in other times? So I think B2B, marketers shifted budget out of those kinds of display ads and things like that.   Pam Didner: More promotional centric. Yeah. More promotional things.   Michael Brenner: Yeah. I think they shifted away from sort of, you know, having a banner ad next to a bad story on online about people dying and stuff like that. But also event events weren't happening--as you and I know, cause that's where we always get to catch up and see each other--either shut down or moved online. And so a lot of brands I think, shifted their budget out of events. I mean, we got a couple of clients who just basically said, “Hey, I was going to spend this 30 K on this event, but can I buy your services for a whole year? And so we got one or two clients just because they shifted out of an event spend.   Pam Didner: Fantastic! That’s fantastic Mike. Way to go!   Michael Brenner: I feel very, very lucky. And, um, to have been able to support some fun clients with that stuff. Uh, what else? We also saw I think marketers were really, really struggling just emotionally and mentally, but, really feeling the pressure of delivering, you know, ROI.   Pam Didner: 100% agree. Yeah.   Michael Brenner: Yeah. Yeah. So I, I did like Jay Baer and asked me to do like a video. He was working with Oracle or some company, I think it was Oracle. And he's like, what's what are you seeing? And I said, we're seeing a return to focus on the corporate blog, which I think is really interesting. It's cause it's, you know, and lucky for me cause it's what we do. But, um, you know, it's just, it's, it's SEO, it's organic traffic. It's measurable. It's not spammy ads. Just original thought leadership, helpful kind of content. What I'm hoping is that it continues and, you know, I love telling people like “the future of marketing, ain't what you thought it was.” It's what it was always supposed to be. And that was helpful content to live deliver consistently. You know, it's not going to be AI and AR and VR and all these fun, voice search. And all of those things are trends that we should all be paying attention to. I think it's just back to the basics, focus on customers, deliver content that they want and try to figure out how to convert them.   Pam Didner: Yeah. I, uh, I saw similar trend, as well, in terms of the marketing needs to actually showcase the ROI. At least from my perspective, you are talking about the content--that shifting back to the basics--which is the original content, creator content. What I have seen is to show your ROI is an another approach, which has worked very closely with your sales team. And that's a thing I see that the more and more marketers, especially actually on the B2B side, they actually why to make an effort to align with your sales effort, whatever seems to be doing, we try to compliment, compliment that such as account based marketing. And even they do re-targeting ads nowadays. It's pretty, pretty, uh, specific.   Michael Brenner: Yeah. Isn't that funny that it's sales and marketing alignment, you know, you and I were talking about that 10-15 years ago.   Pam Didner: Don’t you think that’s kind of basic (laughs) but anyway.   Michael Brenner: It's true. And a lot of it's because I think salespeople who are used to being out on the road and going to events and shaking hands with people. And they're sitting in their front of their computers like you and I have been, and they're like, “wow, I think I need the marketing team to help me with content.” And with, like you said, account based marketing, you know, all of those kinds of things. Um, the sales and marketing alignment conversation came back to the forefront.   Pam Didner: Yeah, I totally agree. Totally agree.   Michael Brenner: Yeah. It's kind of fun.   Pam Didner: Yeah. In terms of the shift, I have seen some challenges I heard from at least my clients or talking to some marketing peers. And obviously one of them is the buyer’s purchasing behaviors have changed like 50% of the buyers, especially on the consumer side. I'm using this as a data data point that they actually tried a purchase through a new brand. I mean, the first one I have to can tell you is probably everybody's using Zoom, but before the pandemic Zoom was not a popular, right? And that's the new purchase. And also another thing that everybody's using is the, this selfie ring. (makes ring sound) Right? So that's also a new purchase. Obviously, if the customers are spending money on something else, that means they are not necessarily buying stuff from the existing brand. So, with that being said, what do you suggest that marketers should do? Because they obviously like, like,us, they probably see some of the existing customers disappearing or going somewhere else.   Michael Brenner: It's a great, question. I've always talked about retention as the sort of stepchild-- it's the lost, lost child of marketing objectives. There's only four: reach, engage, convert, and retain. But we never talked about retention. And I think in what we're seeing now, it exactly to your point is we need to make sure that we're keeping the customers we have first and foremost.     Pam Didner: I totally agree. And the sales goal has changed as well. For the longest time is always a net new. Right? Try to get the net new, which is the new customers. But during a pandemic, they shift their strategy is basically what can we do to retain our existing customers? What can we do to cross sales and the post-sales? So it's a similar strategy.   Michael Brenner: We have one client where we worked with them on a gifting strategy. You know, we talked about, you know, instead of sending pens and pencils and, you know, um, you know, t-shirts with logos on them. I actually have somebody on my team is really good with puns.   Pam Didner: Really? Do you know a tool called Aoyce? A-o-y-c-e ?. So check it out Michael. It’s algorithms to actually crawl customer’s social media profiles, and then the machines will come up with some interesting ideas and the marketer to suggest what kind of ideas you should gift them.   Michael Brenner: Interesting.   Pam Didner: Yes, I know   Michael Brenner: I’m checking it out.   Pam Didner: They’ll do fulfillment as far as I know. So check that one out.   Michael Brenner: I like it,   Pam Didner: But keep going. Sorry to interrupt.   Michael Brenner: No, no, no, that's great. I'm, I'm going to check that out because it's, like I said, it's something we've been asked to do for clients. It's something we're doing with our own clients. Um, I'll, I'll tell you one of our strategies. So John and Kira’s does a chocolate it's a bumblebee. It's kind of a famous sort of gift thing of chocolate. And so I send it to our clients when we first sign up with them and say, “looking forward to creating buzz-worthy content with you!”   Pam Didner: I like it! I love it!. So that’a also kind of aligned with your message and what you offer.   Michael Brenner: Exactly. So, yeah, so I, I, you know, but I see large brands trying to figure out how to do that at-scale. It's kind of like account based marketing in a more personal –   Pam Didner: In a different way. Yeah. I was going to say that: it's another form of account based marketing. I know we don't use that term for like, you know, gifting, but it's a different form of account based marketing and full retention.   Michael Brenner: Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like account based marketing and personalization and being more human, you know, just kind of being more, more like literally personalized, not just like “Dear Pam” in my email, but like actually Dear Pam, I'm sending you a personal gift that might be, you know, something you like.   Pam Didner: Yeah. But on top of it, everything, all the benefit you say plus on-brand. Yeah.   Michael Brenner: Yeah. And it all comes back to relationships. Right? I mean, I think that's, what's, that's, what's winning, what's winning in these days. Yeah, the AI can help, but in the end it's really because it's…   Pam Didner: … it’s building the relationship. It's a full circle. So. Obviously marketers are all making changes, small, large, right, to accommodate the current situation. And we know that we probably in this for a long haul. (laughs)   Michael Brenner: Yeah.   Pam Didner: Do you actually have any suggestion in terms of if they are making changes right now? Obviously there's so many things we have to tackle first, right? What are like one or two things that needs to be done first?   Michael Brenner: One is I think marketers need to better define what marketing is to the rest of the organization. And what I mean by that is there's always been two kinds of marketers. There's the strategic value driven, “I'm only going to do stuff that drives value” marketer and that's kind of what I've always tried to be. And then there's the people--and we all know them, we all, we've all worked with these people--they're the ones that just, they just want to do what they're told. And we, you could say that the brown-nosers are, they're the, the butt kissers or whatever you want, whatever analogy you want to use for them…   Pam Didner: But you know I have to be … the thing is Michael, I have to be a devil's advocate sometimes like in the big enterprise--both of us work in the big enterprise for a long time--you have to deal with politics. And sometimes you just have to play the game. I mean, not all the time, but in certain situations.   Michael Brenner: Sure, yes So like, if your boss says, I want you to go pick up my dry cleaning, do you do it? (laughs)   Pam Didner: Probably not, I was like, someone else do it. But I'm talking about like content, like sometimes your boss want you to create, but sometimes he was just like self-serving. That's the things I struggled the most, a lot of times.   Michael Brenner: So this is--and I talk about this in Mean People Suck-- there's this, I call it the “you can't have your cake and eat it too” problem. So, um, basically, and I use this analogy with, with a difficult stakeholder a couple of years ago, when I was at SAP, she was asking for leads. And I said, “Great. That's what I know how to do. This is the program is how we're going to do it. I'm going to use existing budget. You don't need to spend anymore. We're just going to shift away from the stuff that you liked to do, but didn't work and put it into this other thing.” And she said, “No, I want a chocolate cake, but I want you to use vanilla icing.” And I'm like, Nope. Or “I want a chocolate cake and I want you to use the sand from the beach.” Like I, so I, I remember telling her I'm like, “you can't have a cake and tell me how to bake it.”     Pam Didner: Yeah.   Michael Brenner: If you want a chocolate cake, I know how to bake a…   Pam Didner: Like let you do your job..   Michael Brenner: Yes, exactly. So, sure. There were things we did for her that weren't adding value, but it was only after we made sure we were doing things that were going to give her the goal that she wanted to achieve. And that that's a conversation I think marketers need to have today. It's listen, we, we can't just be the team of people that go do stuff for you at the whim of any executive. Um, we can do things like you said, and playing devil's advocate, I think that's important. There's always going to be times when you have to play the game. But it should only happen in let's see over time, right? Like in the four quarters, you know, again, following the same analogy, um, during the heart of the game, you need to make sure you're going to win. And if that means doing a little dance in the end zone or what, you know, or whatever, then you can do that. But, but it has to only be after you've met the business goal. That's the first thing. The other side of that coin is so we have to redefine marketing as strategically delivering value for the organization. The other thing--and this one's even probably harder--I think marketing needs to help lead the cultural transformation inside companies to focus on customers. And it's just like, it's just like we, you know, the people that are butt kissers at work? that we've worked with before? In the same way, we know the companies that don't give a crap about customers and, you know, they'll say, “well, I'm here to support the brand. And the brand has to drive profit.” The best way to get profit is to focus on customers and the best team that can lead that transformation is marketing. It means that they're talking to the CHRO. It means that they've got the mandate from the CEO to deliver employee engagement policies that focus on customer service; they are training on customer service; they're enabling their employees to not only be engaged at work, but also to make sure that they're engaging with customers and driving value there.   Pam Didner: Yeah. But that's a total older, would you say? I mean, in terms of marketing, a lot of times we focus on content creation. We focus on the marketing outreach and I don't think that is something that the marketing usually takes on. Right?   It’s usually HR’s job to drive the cultural difference, the cultural transformation, and even is Operations job to kinda make sure everybody focused on processes. But the customer part of it, uh, some, some of them actually within the sales team because they've worked with, uh, uh, customers and those will key accounts. Yeah. So I liked that. And that's actually, like I said, um, it's something that marketers needs to focus on internally.   Michael Brenner: Yeah, absolutely. And, and, you know, I mean, I have a client who's CMO is a product marketer by training and wants to bring a product marketing, focus into all of their marketing. And it's the opposite of strategic. It's the opposite of customer focus and it's shortsighted. And it sounds great in the ears of the CEO, but it doesn't work. And you and I have talked about this, Pam, is bringing together the product marketing and the content marketing mindset to work together because we have to work together. Content marketing doesn't exist in a vacuum. It exists to sell more products. But it, it works because it doesn't lead with that message. It doesn't lead with, “we have great stuff, you should buy it: because no one wants to listen to that. No one cares about your speeds and feeds and, you know, texts and specs or, whatever, whatever phrase you want.   Pam Didner: What? That’s not acceptable. (laughs)   Michael Brenner: But, you know, when we let product marketers run the ship, it's a disaster and we all know it. We've all seen it. And it's, it's why we have to redefine what marketing is, focus on results and put customers first across the entire organization. And that's a winning strategy for marketers. It's a winning strategy for marketing. So what's the opposite? The opposite is marketers are just people that do shit that people ask him to do. And what's that mean? It means creating brochures for products and making the banners for when we go back to do events. I mean, that's what marketers are going to end up being and that's what marketing is going to end up doing in those organizations that don't make those changes now.   Pam Didner: Yeah. Any other additional point that you want to add in terms of planning 2021 discussion?   Michael Brenner: I think the two things that marketers should be doing at a tactical level for 2021: ask your customers, what are their greatest challenges for 2021?   Pam Didner: I like that. I love that. Yup.   Michael Brenner: Have a plan to address those challenges, create the context for your solutions. And ask the sales team what their greatest challenges are. They're going to say leads. They're going to say having leads more qualified, they're going to say, you know, net new, they're going to say what retention strategy, whatever those, whatever they are, ask them what they are. Quantify it and create strategies to address them. That's it? Simple stuff.   Pam Didner: Understood. So tell our listeners, how can they find you?   Michael Brenner: Well, I would love to say just Google me, but you know, the problem is, is, um, is there's a really famous, I swear to God, there's a rocket scientist and a brain surgeon that show up first in Google.   Pam Didner: As a Michael Brenner? (laughs)   Michael Brenner: And then there's a historian. Well, there's actually two there's the political writer and a Jewish historian who writes like a book every three months it seems like. Uh, so these folks come up for me. So I, I wish I wish I came up first, but I do think the brain surgeon, the rocket scientist, the political writer and the historian probably should come up before me. Um, but yeah, MarketingInsiderGroup.com go to LinkedIn. And if you do search for Michael Brenner on LinkedIn, it should show up.   Pam Didner: Awesome. Hey, I want to ask you one question. All right. Kind of silly question, but I love it. What is the useless talent that you have?   Michael Brenner: This is, this is the most useless talent, and there's gotta be some sort of a name for this, but I, for some reason, even as a kid, um, read words backwards. So when I see like a billboard, I read it backwards in my head to see if it creates funny words or funny sounds.   Pam Didner: I love that! I absolutely love that!     Michael Brenner: Yes, So your first name is "map" backwards, right? Very, very simple. Yeah. So I'm Leahcim Rennerb, Michael Brenner. So, yeah, so,   Pam Didner: Oh my goodness. So when I see you, the only thing that pops into your mind is map. Okay, great, fine, I feel the love.   Michael Brenner: No, no, no. It's not that it's not that crazy. It's just, when I see words, I see my brain just does this, like little it's, like I don't have a boredom or something, I don't know. So I told my kids that this morning, and they were actually using bad words backwards to kind of make a joke about it. (laughs)   Pam Didner: (laughs) Isn’t that the saddest, when you tell something like this to a kids, the first thing audio into my mind is, “okay, what is the word I can think of that sounds bad? Ok fart!   Michael Brenner: it's "traf." Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So how about that? Hopefully you've never heard that.   Pam Didner: No, never, ever. And I was like, alright, you are literally on the number one spot in terms of useless.   Michael Brenner: I know I'm going to go, I'm going to Google it right after we're done to see if there's a name for it. But yes, it's, it's uh, it's a sickness. It's a disease.   Pam Didner: Oh man. Hey, Michael, thank you so much, so much for coming to my podcast and sharing your insight. Love it, love it.   Michael Brenner: Thank you Pam.   Pam Didner: Yeah, that's the least I can do. Um, you know what, I'm going to bring you back in 2021 and obviously with additional clients and additional insight that you see working with them, we will love to hear from you.   Michael Brenner: Love to come back at any time.   Pam Didner: I hope you enjoy the podcast. I'd appreciate that you leave a five star review on Apple podcast or my website, Pamdidner.com. If you think this is useful, please share with your colleagues and friends. I also love to hear from my listeners. So join my Facebook community, Build Marketing Skills to Get Ahead. I'd answer any marketing questions you may have. I mean, any marketing questions you ask? I answer. All right. See you there have a great week.  

Be honest with yourselves. Do you have any idea how your computer works? John sure as hell doesn't. And he's an insanely talented podcast editor! It's easy to take computers for granted in our everyday lives. But in reality, these are incredibly complex machines. So John's been dying to know, how exactly do computers work? As the podcast's go to computer guy, Ryan will break it all down for us. Ryan's computer: https://imgur.com/a/hPych5j Sound effects acquired from http://www.freesfx.co.uk and https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music?nv=1 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt Pt.3 Sunday, August 9, 2020 This morning I am going to review quite a bit and then get into where I believe The Lord wants us to do for today. Next week I will not review near as much and I believe next week is extremely important. ”I believe revival will be sparked and marked by healing, but Not just God supernaturally healing everyone. Believers growing in and learning to receive their healing by the finished work of Jesus and in turn flowing in the power that is available to them from the finished work to heal others. This will spark revival and lead to true awakening. When I say healing in this sense I’m talking about healing, deliverance, miracles, etc... The signs that Jesus said would follow believers who... well believed.” It is not that difficult to convince most believers that Jesus healed the sick while He was on the earth. The more difficult task is to convince them that He STILL heals! Can we establish, from a biblical standpoint, prove the following beyond a reasonable doubt; Healing is for today. Healing is always God’s will. The authority and power to heal has been given to every believer. We must be willing to repent. to change the way that we think in order to change our perspective. Repent/Metanoia: literally means to change your mind. Not just to think different thoughts, but to change your entire thought process by changing what you believe about reality. The focus of repentance is to change our way of thinking until the reality of His Kingdom fills our thought process. Romans 12:2 AMP 2 And do not be conformed to this world [any longer with its superficial values and customs], but be transformed and progressively changed [as you mature spiritually] by the renewing of your mind… Transformed; from the Greek word meaning “metamorphosis.” Refers to an internal transformation that leads to an external manifestation. When we change the way we think about healing it opens us up to receive healing. Remember, Perception determines reality. Something can be completely and readily available to me, but if I don't perceive it to be true I can not receive it. Perception vs Perspective. I don’t have time to review. Refer to the podcast or our website and listen to the first message. My notes are available there as well. If my perspective (the lens looking through) has been transformed, not conformed to the world any longer, but in line with God’s perspective, then my perception of healing will be in agreement with His word which will cause faith to rise within me to actively and aggressively pursue healing for myself and others! Mike did a great job last week talking about this subject. One of the things that stuck out and encouraged me the most from his message is that while the overall process of renewing the mind will take place over a lifetime, getting to a place of thinking from a Kingdom perspective does not. I loved how he brought out the 40 days Jesus spent teaching the Kingdom to the disciples after His resurrection and pointed to His 40 days in the wilderness as our example. I know my mind is renewed to Kingdom perspective in the area of healing when my initial response to pain or sickness is not to reach for the medicine or call the doctor, but to stand on the word and declare healing! I know my mind is renewed when impossibilities look like opportunities! (In order to make sure our perspective is correct) We must establish a standard by which everything else will be judged. Your experience can not form your belief system. We can not lower the standard of Jesus to explain or justify our lack or results. We must begin to see things through the finished work of Jesus and the example He gave us until our results are raised to His standard. If Jesus is the example, the standard If what we believe does not line up with what He taught and what He demonstrated, then we have believed a lie. If we have believed a lie, we must identify it, reject it and replace it with truth. Is healing a peripheral issue or a central issue to the Gospel of The Kingdom? In 37 recorded “miracles” in the Gospels performed by Jesus, 28 of them were physical healing or deliverances! 76%! Healing was a major part of the ministry of Jesus. If healing was a major part of His ministry then, why wouldn’t it be a major part of His ministry now? 23 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people. 24 Then His fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics; and He healed them. 25 Great multitudes followed Him—from Galilee, and from Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan. Why did Jesus heal? To establish the dominance of the Kingdom of god. Jesus came with a mandate to restore the dominion of The Kingdom of God. 1 John 3:8 …For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. Acts 10:38 38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. Matthew 12:28 28 “But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.” To prove that he was the Messiah, the coming king. Healing offers scriptural proof of Jesus’ clear identity as the Messiah. The Savior! In Isaiah 61, the prophet describes the coming Messiah’s healing ministry. Luke 19-22 TPT “19 So John dispatched two of his disciples to go and inquire of Jesus. 20 When they came before the Master, they asked him, “Are you the coming Messiah we’ve been expecting, or are we to continue to look for someone else? John the prophet has sent us to you to seek your answer.” 21 Without answering, Jesus turned to the crowd and healed many of their incurable diseases. His miracle power freed many from their suffering. He restored the gift of sight to the blind, and he drove out demonic spirits from those who were tormented. 22 Only then did Jesus answer the question posed by John’s disciples. “Now go back and tell John what you have just seen and heard here today. The blind are now seeing. The crippled are now walking. Those who were lepers are now cured. Those who were deaf are now hearing. Those who were dead are now raised back to life. The poor and broken are given the hope of salvation. John 14:11 TPT 11 Believe that I live as one with my Father and that my Father lives as one with me—or at least, believe because of the mighty miracles I have done. Jesus, out of His own mouth, said believe because to the miracles you have seen! Healings, miracles, etc…. Proved Jesus was the savior… Correct? Jesus expects us to reveal to the lost He is the savior, correct? Why would Jesus demonstrate one way of proving who He was and then send His followers out to win the lost without the same power can authority. Why would miracles not be needed or used today too prove Jesus is who He we say He is? “Now we have the Bible”. Why would an atheist believe what the Bible says? To demonstrate the will and nature of the father. It seems that one of the hardest things to convince believers of is not Can God Heal, but WILL He heal. More specifically, will He heal me? Is healing His will in this situation. Why is it important to know weather or not it is God’s will for you to be healed? Faith begins where the will of god is known. It is not possible to have faith in an area where you question if it is God’s will or not. You can not have faith for healing if you are not absolutely certain that healing is His will. When we know His will on a situation, we are equipped to fight the battle that the enemy will bring to stop us from receiving what God has. 1 John 5:14-15 14 Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 15 And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him. AMPC 14 And this is the confidence (the assurance, the privilege of boldness) which we have in Him: [we are sure] that if we ask anything (make any request) according to His will (in agreement with His own plan), He listens to and hears us. 15 And if (since) we [positively] know that He listens to us in whatever we ask, we also know [with settled and absolute knowledge] that we have [granted us as our present possessions] the requests made of Him. TPT 14 Since we have this confidence, we can also have great boldness before him, for if we present any request agreeable to his will, he will hear us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we also know that we have obtained the requests we ask of him. When I know the will of God for a situation, then I can release faith to see His will manifested in the natural. If we have a question or something we need to prove, we go back to the reference point or the standard. Who or what is the standard? JESUS. Can we prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, by The Word, that Healing is ALWAYS God’s Will? Jesus is the will and the nature of god demonstrated. 1 John 1 He is the word manifest in the natural. God’s word is His will, so you could say Jesus is the will of God manifest. The Greek word that is used here is “LOGOS,” and it denotes “the expression of thought–not the mere name of an object” (Vine’s Expository Dictionary). Jesus totally expressed the thoughts of the Father and was manifest in a physical form so all the world could read them. Hebrews 1:3 3 who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power TPT The Son is the dazzling radiance of God’s splendor, the exact expression of God’s true nature—his mirror image! The Greek word translated “express image” speaks of an identical copy or a perfect representation. This reveals that Jesus is the identical copy and perfect representation of His Father. Colossians 1:15 AMPC 15 [Now] He is the exact likeness of the unseen God [the visible representation of the invisible]; He is the Firstborn of all creation. Jesus totally represented the Father in actions, nature, and character. Jesus said, “He that has seen me has seen the Father” By doing the works of God, Jesus gave the world the most accurate picture of who the invisible God is. Jesus said multiple times “I only do what I see my Father do; I only say what I hear my Father say.” Can we conclude that, according to the Word of God… Not opinion, experience, or circumstance, but by the Word only, that everything Jesus did was in agreement with the will of the Father? Healing is always the will of God! Every person that came to Jesus that was sick or bound, HE healed and set free! Jesus never said, “I’m sorry, but you will have to wait until you get to Heaven to get healed”. Jesus never said, “You just need to suffer a little more so that you can grow spiritually.” Jesus never said, “God is trying to teach you something through this sickness." Religions teaches us that God uses sickness, but the Bible does not reflect that! The bible shows Jesus demonstrating the will of God every time He comes into contact with a sick person and the result is always HEALING!!! What God does anywhere, he wills to do everywhere! What Jesus does for anyone, He wills to do for everyone! Matthew 4:24 24 Then His fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics; and He healed them. MATTHEW 8:16 When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and HEALED ALL THAT WERE SICK: MATTHEW 12:15...and great multitudes followed him, and HE HEALED THEM ALL; There are seventeen times in the Gospels where Jesus healed all of the sick who were present. There are forty-seven other times where He healed one or two people at a time. John 5:14-19, 30 The works of Jesus give us a clear view of God’s will to bring healing and wholeness to the earth, because the Son only does what He first saw His Father doing. Look at Matthew 12:22-28 A kingdom divide can not stand. If Jesus is the reflection of The Father on earth and, by His own admission multiple times, only does what He sees the Father do and only says what He hears the Father say, THEN WE MUST CONCLUDE THAT HEALING IS ALWAYS THE WILL OF GOD!

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt Pt.1 Sunday, July 26, 2020 Matthew 4:17 NKJV 17 From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”… 23 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people. 24 Then His fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics; and He healed them. 25 Great multitudes followed Him—from Galilee, and from Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan. ”I believe revival will be sparked and marked by healing, but Not just God supernaturally healing everyone. Believers growing in and learning to receive their healing by the finished work of Jesus and in turn flowing in the power that is available to them to from the finished work to heal others. This will spark revival and lead to true awakening. When I say healing in this sense I’m talking about healing, deliverance, miracles, etc... The signs that Jesus said would follow believers who... well believed.” Beyond a reasonable doubt is a legal standard of proof required to validate a criminal conviction in our legal systems. It is a higher standard of proof than the balance of probabilities (commonly used in civil matters) and is usually reserved for criminal matters where what is at stake, someone’s liberty, is considered more serious and therefore deserving of a higher threshold. This phrase kept coming to me over the last couple of weeks as I’ve been thinking on the subject of healing. It is not that difficult to convince most believers that Jesus healed the sick while He was on the earth. The more difficult questions are; Does He still heal? Who does He heal? How does He heal? From what does He heal? Is divine healing for today? This is what I am going to attempt to establish, from a biblical standpoint, prove the following beyond a reasonable doubt; Healing is for today. Healing is always God’s will. The authority and power to heal has been given to every believer. Today we are going to establish some foundation. We must be willing to repent. Metanoia: literally means to change your mind. Not just to think different thoughts, but to change your entire thought process by changing what you believe about reality. For most believers, repentance is asking for forgiveness of sin because you are sorry for your actions. We were taught that to repent is to turn from sin. In reference to sin, repentance is thinking about the sin differently. Turning from sin is the fruit of repentance. “Re” means to go back. “Pent” refers to top, like penthouse is the top floor of a building. Means to go back to the original way of thinking, to God’s perspective on reality. Repentance means to go back to God’s perspective on reality. It means to return to our original way of thinking which was God’s way of thinking. (Adam) It means come “up” to God’s original design for your way of thinking. Going back to God’s perspective on reality and living as if we really believe it. Jesus said, “repent for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand” The focus of repentance is to change our way of thinking until the reality of His Kingdom fills our thought process. Romans 12:2 NKJV 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. AMP 2 And do not be conformed to this world [any longer with its superficial values and customs], but be [a]transformed and progressively changed [as you mature spiritually] by the renewing of your mind… TPT 2 Stop imitating the ideals and opinions of the culture around you, but be inwardly transformed by the Holy Spirit through a total reformation of how you think…. Transformed; from the Greek word meaning “metamorphosis.” Refers to an internal transformation that leads to an external manifestation. When we change the way we think about healing it opens us up to receive healing. Remember, Perception determines reality. Something can be completely and readily available to me, but if I don't perceive it to be true I can not receive it. Perception vs Perspective. Perception is what you interpret - it is your understanding of a given situation, person, or object. It is the meaning you assign to any given stimulus. Perspective is your point of view - it's the lens you see the world through and determines how you view yourself, others, and everything else around you. It’s fair to say, your perspective will determine your perception and your perception will determine your reality. If my perspective on healing is based on my experience, lack of experience, negative experience, secular teaching, cessationist teaching, etc… my perception of healing may be that it is not for today or its only by God’s choice or… fill in the blank. Then I will not have the faith to pursue healing for myself or anyone else. Why? Because my perspective (the lens I'm looking through) is distorted so my perception (my personal understanding) of healing is it may or may not happen so my pursuit of healing is passive. If my perspective (the lens looking through) has been transformed, not conformed to the world any longer, but in line with God’s perspective, then my perception of healing will be in agreement with His word which will cause faith to rise within me to actively and aggressively pursue healing for myself and others! This is why it is important that from the beginning of our study we must be willing and open to allow Holy Spirit to identify why we believe what we believe, expose any lies we have believed and reveal truth to replace those lies. (STOP AND PRAY) (In order to make sure our perspective is correct) We must establish a standard by which everything else will be judged. Your experience can not form your belief system. Jesus life and what He did and accomplished is the foundation for everything that we believe. It is where we must put our faith. No matter what we are talking about, Jesus is the reference point. We can not lower the standard of Jesus to explain or justify our lack or results. We must begin to see things through the finished work of Jesus and the example He gave us until our results are raised to His standard. If Jesus is the example, the standard If what we believe does not line up with what He taught and what He demonstrated, then we have believed a lie. If we have believed a lie, we must identify it, reject it and replace it with truth. Is healing a peripheral issue or a central issue to the Gospel of The Kingdom? In 37 recorded “miracles” in the Gospels performed by Jesus, 28 of them were physical healing or deliverances! 76%! There are a lot of things that Jesus taught and modeled that we for some reason exclude or dismiss from our lives today. Healing and deliverance chief among them. Healing was a major part of the ministry of Jesus. 23 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people. 24 Then His fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics; and He healed them. 25 Great multitudes followed Him—from Galilee, and from Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan. Why did Jesus heal? To establish the dominance of the Kingdom of god. Jesus taught the gospel of The Kingdom. That message releases the Kingdom through miracles! The gospel of salvation is contained in the gospel of the Kingdom. The good news of the kingdom is the proclamation that God’s dominion is in effect now! The message of he Kingdom is the message of the King’s domain that is in effect here and now. Whenever Jesus proclaimed this message message, miracles followed. Jesus understood that there were two conflicting kingdoms at war on the earth; The Kingdom of God and the kingdom of satan. Jesus came with a mandate to restore the dominion of The Kingdom of God. 1 John 3:8 …For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. Acts 10:38 38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. TPT 38 “Jesus of Nazareth was anointed by God with the Holy Spirit and with great power. He did wonderful things for others and divinely healed all who were under the tyranny of the devil,[a] for God had anointed him. Practically speaking, God’s Kingdom advanced through healing and deliverance. Luke 13:16 Jesus dealing with religious leaders (often its the “religious” that are opposed to the supernatural because it introduces people to a power greater than their own!) said; “So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound—think of it—for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?” 17 And when He said these things, all His adversaries were put to shame; and all the multitude rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by Him. Matthew 12:28 28 “But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.” TPT 28 “On the other hand, if I drive out demons by the power of the Spirit of God, then the end of Satan’s kingdom has come!” To prove that he was the Messiah, the coming king. Healing offers scriptural proof of Jesus’ clear identity as the Messiah. The Savior! In Isaiah 61, the prophet describes the coming Messiah’s healing ministry. Luke 4:18:19 NKJV “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed; 19 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” Luke 4:18–19 TPT “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and he has anointed me to be hope for the poor, freedom for the brokenhearted, and new eyes for the blind, and to preach to prisoners, ‘You are set free!’ I have come to share the message of Jubilee, for the time of God’s great acceptance has begun.” Luke 19-22 TPT “19 So John dispatched two of his disciples to go and inquire of Jesus. 20 When they came before the Master, they asked him, “Are you the coming Messiah we’ve been expecting, or are we to continue to look for someone else? John the prophet has sent us to you to seek your answer.” 21 Without answering, Jesus turned to the crowd and healed many of their incurable diseases. His miracle power freed many from their suffering. He restored the gift of sight to the blind, and he drove out demonic spirits from those who were tormented. 22 Only then did Jesus answer the question posed by John’s disciples. “Now go back and tell John what you have just seen and heard here today. The blind are now seeing. The crippled are now walking. Those who were lepers are now cured. Those who were deaf are now hearing. Those who were dead are now raised back to life. The poor and broken are given the hope of salvation. John 14:11 TPT 11 Believe that I live as one with my Father and that my Father lives as one with me—or at least, believe because of the mighty miracles I have done. John 10:38 TPT 38 But if you see me doing the beautiful works of God upon the earth, then you should at least believe the evidence of the miracles, even if you don’t believe my words! Then you would come to experience me and be convinced that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” SIDE NOTE; John 10:38 and Acts 10:38 point to the same thing! Jesus, out of His own mouth, said believe because to the miracles you have seen! Healings, miracles, etc…. Proved Jesus was the savior… Correct? Jesus expects us to reveal to the lost He is the savior, correct? Why would Jesus demonstrate one way of proving who He was and then send His followers out to win the lost without the same power can authority. Why would miracles not be needed or used today too prove Jesus is who. He we say He is? “Now we have the Bible”. Why would an atheist believe what the Bible says?

How to Go From Land Hobby Enthusiast to Business Owner (LA 1278) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Happy Friday. Steven Butala: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny, Southern California. Steven Butala: Today Jill and I talk about how to go from land hobby enthusiast to business owner. This topic came from a conversation that Jill had recently, very, very recently, with one of our members. One of our long, long time members. Jill DeWit: Four years. Steven Butala: Yeah. So... Jill DeWit: Cool. Steven Butala: Before we get into it though, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community, it's free. Jill DeWit: John asked, "Does anyone know where the land use and property indicator fields come from and what they mean in personalfact.com or neighborscoop.com?" By the way, it's the same for both. "I contacted the county and they don't know anything about them." Steven Butala: Yeah. There's 330 columns of data in the dataset for Parcel Fact and Land Academy and Neighbor Scoop. Neighbor Scoop is Parcel Fact on steroids, so really this question is about Neighbor Scoop, not Parcel Fact. Parcel Fact is just real estate, Neighbor Scoop's got so many more features. And some of those columns are useless. Jill DeWit: Like phone numbers, by the way. Steven Butala: Yeah. Phone numbers and flood plain data and all kinds of stuff. So, some of these columns are very, very helpful and some of them are not helpful. And the county, because they're all exactly the same, there's 3200 counties in the country, approximately, 3144, and the assessors look at things differently. What that is is the assessor role for the county. So a rural county in Texas where the assessor is also the sheriff, and she's also the diner owner doesn't spend a lot of time on a lot of these [crosstalk 00:01:56]. Jill DeWit: And the only notary. Steven Butala: Yeah, doesn't spend a lot of time versus the County of New York or Manhattan, where they do utilize all that data pretty dramatically. So urban counties and rural counties and everything in between, are very highly different. Land use, if it's used at all, I'm telling you, it is meaningless, and so is property indicator. What you see all the time, I don't know why, is land use 400, which means vacant land. Do I rely on that in any way, significantly, to make any decisions? Absolutely not. So John, forget about it. Jill DeWit: Yeah, skip it. Steven Butala: That's why they don't know anything about it. In fact, the aggregator in this case, Real Quest Pro, may even just fill that in for no reason. It may be a post data collection from the assessor or data manipulation. Jill DeWit: Everything that falls in this category, they just call it that. Steven Butala: So to wrap this up in a little package, you'll know if it makes sense to you immediately. Jill DeWit: I was going to say, land use and property indicator is not zoning. Steven Butala: Right. Jill DeWit: That's different. Steven Butala: So in a County like LA and zoning's awesome. Jill DeWit: Then I care. Steven Butala: We do zoning based mailers. Jill DeWit: I care about that. Steven Butala: But in a rural county, like most counties in Arkansas, if you call and say, "Hey, what's the zoning of this property," what they'll tell you, literally, quite literally is, "Anything you want it to be. Please don't call again." Jill DeWit: That's hilarious. Steven Butala: Please don't call again, you Yankee. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Jill DeWit: You yuppie from Scottsdale. Steven Butala: How do you stop it? How did it go from a land hobby enthusiast to business owner? This- Jill DeWit: Or... go ahead. Steven Butala: This is the meat of the show. Jill DeWit: Or you liberal nut from California. Steven Butala: Yep. Jill DeWit: I don't know. Steven Butala:

John was in prison. Surely the Messiah would rescue. So John sent two men to ask Jesus. In a bit of "coded" language, John asks Jesus to spring him. But Jesus doesn't do it. He sends the messengers back with little encouragement. How do you react when Jesus tells you something you didn't want to hear? Have you been furloughed or laid off? Jesus says you will be blessed if you can trust him rather than taking offense. Can you trust Jesus with your situation today?

Billion dollar companies rely on competitive intelligence to stay ahead in their markets. What lessons can the rest of us take from how they use CI to make better decisions? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Cipher Systems VP of Marketing John Booth talks about what competitive intelligence is, and how companies can use it to inform decision making. Cipher's customers are some of the largest companies in the world, and they have highly specialized units dedicated exclusively to competitive intelligence. Not every company has the budget, or the team, to support that, so John explains what the rest of us should be looking at, and how we should use information about our competitors to develop marketing and business strategies. Highlights from my conversation with John include: Many marketers use the terms data, information and intelligence interchangeably, but they are very different things. Intelligence is the product of analyzing information and data, and it requires people to do it. There's also a lot of confusion around the difference between business intelligence, market intelligence and competitive intelligence. BI is the information you have within your own business, whereas MI is the information about what is happening in the market.  Competitive intelligence is information about your markets and also your competitors and how that influences your ability to sell within your markets or deliver the services that your business does. There are three kinds of software tools used in competitive intelligence: 1) Generic tools like Sharepoint or Google Alerts that can be used or many things: 2) Specific tools like Klue that are built to fulfill a very particular need, such as sales enablement; and 3) Purpose-built tools like Cipher's Knowledge360, which are built specifically for competitive intelligence professionals. Before any business engages in competitive intelligence, it should start by developing a deep understanding of its differentiators, strengths and weaknesses. Resources from this episode: Connect with John on LinkedIn Visit the Cipher Systems website Listen to the podcast to learn more about competitive intelligence and how businesses both large and small can use it to get an edge.   Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm Kathleen Booth and I'm your host. This week, my guest is none other than my husband John Booth. Welcome John. John Booth (Guest): Well, I mean, it only took 150 some odd episodes for me to get an invitation. Kathleen: Saving the best for last. So I don't know if my listeners know this, but John and I, so John and I used to own a marketing agency together for 11 years and somehow miraculously, we're still married. And when people ask me what he does now, I always say he does the same thing I do just at a different company. He is also a vice president of marketing. He is VP of marketing for a company called Cipher Systems, which is in the competitive intelligence space. So John, for those who may not know you, who may not know Cipher, can you just tell my audience a little bit about yourself as well as about Cipher systems and what it does? About John Booth and Cipher Systems John: Sure. So as Kathleen said, I was a part of our digital agency for about a dozen years or so. And before that I held different sales positions started out in the staffing world and then held lots of different positions there. But since Quintain, I have joined Cipher systems and Cipher is a small, there's probably about 20 of us now, competitive intelligence firm. John: And we'll give to the definition of that because it's, I think it's very important. I see a lot of similarities in the competitive intelligence to what I saw in the content inbound marketing world maybe 10 years ago. So it's it's a, it's a developing industry and I think more and more people within the organizations, particularly certainly larger organizations are finding the need for, and using competitive intelligence today. But so we have a classic kind of services side of the business. And, and then in addition to that, we have a technology or a software side of the business where we have a software platform. It's a cloud based competitive intelligence platform that acts as a knowledge management system, as well as the competitive intelligence tools for all of your competitive Intel and dashboards and reports and newsletters and, and information like that. Kathleen: And what kinds of companies does Cipher work with? John: So Cipher works with large organizations. So our ideal buyer has more than a billion dollars in revenue. Typically at least 5,000 employees, they're headquartered in the United States and they operate in industries that have one or one of two key kind of characteristics. The first is they're either highly regulated. So think financial services, insurance, healthcare, or the industries are incredibly competitive. So think about things like technology government contractors those types of industries. So those are, those are kind of the, the ingredients that make for the need for competitive intelligence. Kathleen: So side note, I just think it's really funny this doing this interview because I am interviewing you like I don't know the answers to these questions already. But everyone listening doesn't so I still need to ask them. So one of the reasons I wanted you to talk about who you work for or with the kinds of companies you work for is that, it's the thing that I have found interesting, kind of watching as you've worked there is that prior to you working at Cipher, you know, I was familiar with the field of competitive intelligence, you know, roughly but there are such different levels of it, right? I mean, the stuff that you guys do, like you were saying, it's really big companies that have, you know, the stakes are high. They have a lot to lose. It's highly competitive or regulated or this or that. It's serious business. And they have teams of people whose jobs are just to do competitive intelligence. And then you have like the kind of competitive intelligence that, that smaller companies do where you're like, I've got a Google alert on my competitor, you know, that sort of thing. And so it's, it's very interesting to me the different shades of it. So segwaying from that, you mentioned defining competitive intelligence. So like how do you guys see it? What is it, how do you define it? What is competitive intelligence? John: So so there are a couple of key definitions, just so the audience and, and the two of us are on kind of the same page here. So the first one is the difference between let's define data, information and intelligence. So an example of data might be the number three. Okay. So that is data. Alright. Information is a series of data pieces. So an example, a pretty example of information is a streetlight. So a streetlight has three different colored lights, right? Red, yellow, and green. All right. And so when red is on, I stop when yellow is, I slowed down or hit the gas. And when green is, I continue on my way. So that is, so that is information. So there's several different data points there. There's the number of lights, what the, the, the meaning of those lights. Intelligence is the product of analysis. So intelligence requires people today. So so you might hear a lot of the impact of artificial intelligence on competitive intelligence and market intelligence and things like that. So today, intelligence requires a human being to perform some type of analysis and deliver some types of insights to the business that's intelligence. And that is that's what has value. So just simply gathering information, there's no value that's delivered to the organization. It's not until a person actually applies the filters and understandings and kind of teases out what this might mean that there is any value delivered, and that is intelligence. So then I'm going to define three other terms that are often kind of used interchangeably. And they shouldn't be much like a, when we had our agency often found that people would use marketing, advertising and PR interchangeably, when, as marketers, we all know that those are completely different you know, services and they mean different things, but to the lay person, they kind of get interchanged interchangeably. So competitive intelligence market intelligence and business intelligence are often interchanged kind of the same way. So let's use business intelligence. So business intelligence, we define that as the, the information that the business intelligence is based off of information on your business. So if you think about if all of the information that we have within our four walls of our business, that is our business intelligence. Okay. So if you manufacture something that might be how many widgets that you can manufacture in an hour and how many people you need and the profitability of those widgets, et cetera. So business intelligence really means focused on your business, right? No external sources or information, it's all internal data. Market intelligence is just that it is the market. It might be trends in the market. It, it might be consumer behavior and how consumers are responding to certain trends or, or things along those lines. And then competitive intelligence is information about your markets and also your competitors and how that influences your ability to sell within your markets or deliver the services that your business does. Kathleen: So earlier you mentioned that competitive intelligence requires people, but you guys sell competitive intelligence software. So like, how does that work? John: Because software, obviously it doesn't have people in it, but so think of it as think of it as this. What's a good analogy? So if I am a marketer and I have a tool like HubSpot, which we love, because it allows me to host my website, allows me to post and schedule my social. It allows me to have my content and edit it and do keyword work. All of that helps me with my marketing strategy and deliver a strategy. So you wouldn't buy HubSpot and say, Oh, well, HubSpot is going to do my marketing strategy. It's, you know, it's going to, you know, help me be a better marketer. Yes. But it still requires people to deliver that strategy. You know, you you're using a tool. Yes. but the tools can never, they, there are at least the tools today can not replace what an analyst, a researcher, a strategist, a person, a marketer, could be a product marketer. You know, what a person does. What kinds of tools are available to support competitive intelligence? Kathleen: And I feel like there's this vast array of tools out there for competitive intelligence. Like I mentioned earlier, it's everything from a simple Google or all the way up to a platform like you guys have that is used by huge corporations. So maybe you could speak to like, kind of what that landscape looks like. John: Right. So one of the one of the things that we're trying to educate people that are looking for tools are the different types of tools. We believe there are three different kinds of tools out there. There are what we call generic tools, and those are tools that are typically they've been built for a different purpose, but they're often adopted or adapted to a competitive intelligence use. And a good example of that is SharePoint. So SharePoint wasn't built for competitive intelligence, but SharePoint is, it can be an adequate kind of knowledge management source. It can, you know, you can have teams adding information to it and downloading information. You could even, you know, use some of the collaborative features there, et cetera. And so that's like the use of a generic tool. And then you have your your second type of CI tools, a tool that is built for a specific really for a specific person purpose. And, and an example of that is, so there's a company, one of our competitors, Klue. And they do a very good job of sales enablement. So if you have a large sales team and you want to empower your sales team to close more deals, and you want to give your sales team the resources that they need to have the right information at their fingertips, when they're on calls and and kind of, and, and sell against other competitors, they're a great tool for that. And then you have the third category, which is kind of that the tool that is built specifically for competitive intelligence and, and those are tools that do primarily three things. They gather information. So they're going to allow you to aggregate information and that information could come in from newsfeeds. It might come in from subscriptions to information, the research that you have it, it might be internal documents that you have kind of those business intelligence documents that we talked about. It might be information that your sales or marketing team uncovers maybe during the course of their day. So one of the things that, that we help companies with is most companies have just, just dozens, if not hundreds of nuggets of information within the organization, but they just don't have the ability to give it visibility. So, you know, it's, you know, the salesperson that knows what he's up against for a particular deal, because the prospect shared this with them and it's sitting within his inbox and he's the only person that has access to his inbox. So the product marketing team that is getting ready to do the roadmap for their product, can't see what the customer, the prospect is looking for because they don't have access to this information. So that third tool allows all of this information to go into it. And then with our tool, we use artificial intelligence and natural language processing to automatically tag this information. And we use semantic learning for it to identify things like location company and individuals by reading through and analyzing the, the, the content that you're adding to the system. So, there are those types of tools and, and it's interesting. We did some research a couple of years ago. The pharmaceutical industry is by far kind of the most advanced commercial, competitive intelligence kind of industry. Most other industries, they're still kind of developing CI practices and, and most outside of the pharmaceutical industry. And I kind of call that life sciences. So not strictly just pharmaceuticals. Most organizations have I think it's like 1.2 people working on their CI. So not big teams, not, not at all. How can marketers use competitive intelligence? Kathleen: Yeah. It's so interesting. It's such a specialized field. I feel like you know, now coming back to kind of, the focus of this podcast obviously is inbound marketing. So a lot of marketers are listening and this can seem very unapproachable because like, for example, if you guys, you work with really large companies and they have these dedicated people let's start with what, how are those companies using competitive intelligence and how is that helping them make better business decisions or get better results from their businesses. And then we can kind of bring it back down to, for smaller companies, what are ways they could begin to approach this? So let's begin some like actual examples of how this plays out. John: Okay. So so I think that that, that the marketers marketers today, this is, this is my own belief. I believe they're, they're waking up to this need for competitive intelligence because your inbound marketing is no longer delivering the results that you were seeing before. So for just about a decade or so, we have as marketers, we've been really focused on the content I'm creating and attract, creating content, solving problems, answering questions, et cetera. And we've been rewarded with that with prospects and customers and results, and kind of the, you know, Marcus shared approach. They have questions kind of, you know, answer their questions and, and, you know, you'll be rewarded well. In the beginning that was really, really successful because there were fewer people doing it and, and the people that were doing it for the most part were really doing it. You know, it's not until much later that you're downloading the ebook and it's actually just 18 PowerPoint slides with two bullets on each slide and has nothing to do with an actual book. So we have to, as marketers look for things that are going to give us results. And so, as we were focused kind of internally on what we're talking about, what our prospects and customers are talking about, we're really ignoring what was going on in our market and our competitors. And so we were ignoring these macro issues. And so competitive intelligence is kind of the other side of the equation. So you know, you've take your prospects and your customers, and that's one piece of success. And then, but, but you can't do that in a vacuum. Those that do SEO work understand that. So you find out what your teams are, you know, what you want to rank for and what your competitors are ranking for. And then you do SEO work to help change those rankings. Well, your competitors, don't just sit still. They're also looking at what's going on in the market and looking at the actions that you're doing. And so, you know, we found this need to to address, well, how do I understand what's going on in the marketplace and how do I position myself against my competitors or the other options that that my prospects and customers have. So that's a long roundabout way of explaining how companies are using competitive intelligence to better deploy their resources. And so when, when you're doing this before, you can get to actually doing competitive intelligence work, you have to have a really clear understanding of your differentiators and, and your vulnerabilities. So that's where, you know, somebody who wants to begin doing competitive intelligence work, I would challenge them to to, to sit down and do the, the work on how are you different from your competitors, you know, and, and where do you have overlap and where is that overlap? Where does that lead to, or where could you be vulnerable because of that overlap? What impact does competitive intelligence have on businesses? Kathleen: So the larger companies that you guys work with, obviously have that part figured out. They, you know, they have their teams in place, they understand their differentiators. So when they undertake competitive intelligence, how are they using it? Like in practical terms to get better business results? Do you have some case studies or some success stories or anything like that that you can share of how, like, how does competitive intelligence produce better outcomes for these companies? John: Yes. So this was this was a very kind of rude awakening coming from the marketing agency world where you know, you have clients and you're working with clients and you're doing great work for them. And you ask your clients, Hey, you know, would you mind providing a testimonial, a quote, being a part of a, you know, a white paper case study you know, sharing your experience and, and usually it's, Oh yeah. You know, they're very supportive of that when you are in the competitive intelligence world, nobody wants to talk about the tools that they're using, what you're doing for them, because by nature of it, you are, you know, you're giving away intelligence for your competitors to use against you. Kathleen: You know what other industry is like that? Cybersecurity. I know that, of which you speak. John: So let me, I can talk in some kind of in general terms. So we estimate and Cipher has been around for 20, 25 years. We estimate that most most people doing CI work spend about 70% of their time gathering and organizing information. If we go back to the definitions that we had of data, information, and intelligence, data and information add zero value to the business. So you're spending 70% of your time on things that have no value add to the business. Only 30% of your time is on the analysis, developing the insights, you know, all of that information that your CI consumers, whether it be your sales teams, your, your C suite, your product development team, your marketers, they all need this information, but the bulk of your time is spent gathering it and, and organizing it. And, that is because your business is complicated and information comes in lots of different forms, and some of it is structured. And some of it is unstructured. You know, you have information internal reports. You have, as I mentioned before, you have emails that are received from salespeople. You have teams that are out in the field and going to trade shows and seeing you know, what your competitors, their messages at their trade show boots, you have competitor websites that are changing and messaging. And so so what our tool does is it automates a lot of that. For example we have many customers before they started using our tool Knowledge360, that would have 18 number. And some of them would have more that would manually go out to competitors' websites and look at their websites and look for changes in their websites. And that could be pricing changes if you're in an industry or, or, you know, a market that is price sensitive, you want to know about those changes. And, you know, it could be messaging changes. So by using a tool like Knowledge360, we can automate that. And so the tool goes out, it gathers the information. It says, Hey, this page has changed. It highlights the, the, the new information, you know, and, and that's, that's there in one color, it highlights the information that has been changed or removed and another color. And now an analyst can take a look at that and say, Oh, this is really meaningful. You know, so that's, that's an example of how are a tool like ours or how anyone can use competitive intelligence. So, to monitor the messaging that your competitors are using, or if they have a pricing page, you know, you can, you can monitor that for changes in their pricing. How do companies use competitive intelligence? Kathleen: So it sounds like the tool itself can be used to save time to streamline the process, but like, what are these companies doing with this information? How, like, why are they spending all this money on competitive intelligence? What is it doing things successful? John: So if you think about this so it's helping them be successful by giving insights and providing this intelligence that your decision makers are looking for. And ultimately, hopefully you're, you're enabling them to make better informed decisions. So if you think about think about someone that has you know, you're wearing glasses, but they have blinders on, and you can only see right in front of you. And you're making your decisions based on your field of vision that is just in front of you. Now, you take those away and you have a wider field of vision, and you have more information. You may, you may make a different decision. Kathleen: What's an example of something, a marketing thing that I might do differently based on the information I would find? John: So here's, here's an example. So if I have a, let's say I'm a nationwide company and I compete with someone on the East coast. Okay. And they're a good competitor. I went against them. Sometimes they went against me sometimes. But I have offices on the East coast and also on the West coast. Well, if I had a CI department, one of the things they might be monitoring or looking for is job postings with my competitors. So if all of a sudden, one of my competitors is posting a sales manager position in the Seattle market, and they're not in the Seattle market. And one of my key customers is in the Seattle market. Oh, that's something that I want to know about because it looks like my competitor is coming into, if they're going to invest in building out a sales team, putting an office in Seattle. Now, all of a sudden, my sales people that have only had to deal with maybe the competitors that were in that local market without this East coast competitor, they now need to be aware of this new competitor coming into the market. And that may change how we position ourselves. It may change how we price things. It may change, you know, the terms of her contracts. It could have all types of different information, you know, of, of business decisions that we make. How Cipher uses competitive intelligence for itself Kathleen: So I'm assuming that you guys are, as I like to say, drinking your own champagne, because I don't like the phrase eating your own dog food. So how does Cipher use competitive intelligence? John: So so we use this fantastic tool called Knowledge360. It's very comprehensive. We have several dashboards that we use. And one in particular that is called our competition crusher. And so with our competition crusher dashboard, it's a feed of news announcements on it's a feed of social. It has intelligence that our salespeople gain talking to prospects and customers. Our marketing team will add information like messaging changes that we might see and all of this battle cards. So if we know we're going up against a particular competitor, we want to, you know, we want to draw attention to these benefits of using our product. And, and if we know that there are gaps, you know, we want to ask our prospects about, you know, the gaps that we know our competitors have. So, that's one example of how we're using it to kind of gather all of that information, organize it in a way, you know, and the beauty of using something you're using a tool that provides dashboards is the dashboards are updated in real time. So unlike, you know, most people, if they have any experience or exposure to CI work it's typically a part of the, you know, quarterly sales meeting. And there's somebody that comes up that says competitor ABC is doing this. And then, you know, they share the PowerPoint deck and, you know, a quarter later another report comes out, but there's a lot of time and a lot of change that goes on between, you know, the publishing of those two different reports. And, you know, you may make different decisions having a dashboard that's always on always available, always monitoring. You're always getting the most up to date information. And so we share that with our leadership team, our sales team, marketing team, customer, all of them add to, and, and consume information from those dashboards. Prediction markets and the future of competitive intelligence Kathleen: And then real quickly, because I feel like this could be an entirely other podcast episode. I feel like with competitive intelligence, you're looking at things that have already happened, right? You guys have something I find fascinating, which is this other side to your business where you can do much more predictive stuff. It's super cool. And you have something called predictive markets. So can you, somewhat quickly because we are coming up on our time, just give people a sense of what I mean, cause that's really like competitive intelligence looking into the future, if you will, or trying to figure out what's gonna happen in the future. So how does that work? John: So that is really cool stuff and it is relatively new. So Cipher systems and another company Consensus Point, we merged towards the end of last year. Consensus Point is a a research company. So as competitive intelligence professionals, they gather information and they do research. You have two primary types of research yet. Primary research and secondary research, secondary research being research that's available to anyone and those might be market reports or things that are publicly available and anyone has access to those or they're not restricted. Primary research is research that you do, you hire someone to do on your behalf and that's information that you have. And that if, if done correctly and on the appropriate things could be a competitive advantage having this primary information or more information about a particular topic. Well, what you're talking about is predictive markets research. So if you think about primary research, most people are familiar with polls and surveys. And so that is a traditional kind of primary research method that is it's, it's very effective for certain things. It's also riddled with problems for other things, for example human beings in general, we are very poor predictors of our own performance. So you know, just ask anyone with a child and ask them how bright their child is. Nobody is going to tell you that their child is below average average, you know, they're Oh, you know, top 1%, 10%, 5%. Well, that's not true because most of us are average. Kathleen: That's why it's the definition. 90% of us are not in the top 10%.  John: That's exactly right. So what a prediction market is, is it is think of a market, probably one of the most common is the stock market. So, you know, the stock market is a platform where people have are placing wagers on whether or not, you know, the value of a company is going to increase or decrease. So if you think about this, and this is a great book that I'll have to give you. It's by a poker player. I'll give it to you so you can add to the show notes, but basically if you ask somebody, you know, do you think Apple stock is going to be higher than it is the value of it is going to be higher in one month from today's point you know, you might say, yes. Okay, well, how much are you willing to bet it's up? So if you put real money, your hard earned money, like how many shares of Apple stock are you willing to purchase at today's price? Check out "Thinking In Bets" by Annie Duke John: You know, and it is, are your beliefs, do they change? So a prediction market is, you are using the social behavioral characteristics of individuals and their collective kind of wisdom of the crowd, thinking about whether or not the probability of something becoming true or taking place. And so that is a much more accurate indicator of actual events that happen than simply asking someone in a survey or a poll. So now, what we're so excited about is the two of those together. So now you know, our platform, not only do we help aggregate information that you're gathering and do that analysis on it, we are now adding this research component to the tool as well, so that you can do your research. You can, you know, you can store it within one central repository and you can make it available to the organization as it needs to be Kathleen: Cool. And I know you guys are using it for things like trying to predict what the world post COVID is going to look like and all kinds of other really interesting forward looking applications. So thank you for sharing that. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: We are now coming towards the end of our time, so I wanna make sure I squeeze in my couple of questions that I ask everybody. The first is, of course we are all about inbound marketing on this podcast. So is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it with inbound marketing right now? John: Let's see, you know, I I just recently became aware of a tool MarketMuse. I think that they're doing a very good job with their messaging, kind of very classic, kind of inbound marketing freemium model, et cetera. So I would say that they're one company that does a really good job of inbound marketing. And I have to say then another one that comes to mind and you know, full disclosure here, I'm a customer and and a big fan of Databox. I think Databox, and Pete Caputa's doing a phenomenal job there. He cranks out more content and they use their chat panel to support customers and are really all about helping customers solve problems. And they're, they're doing a fantastic job. I think, of inbound marketing. Kathleen: Yeah, Pete's awesome. And fun fact, he was a very early guest of this podcast. So if you want to get some insight into how Pete does marketing, you can listen to that episode with him. And I will put that link in the show notes. Question number two. The biggest challenge I hear marketers share with me is that so much changes so quickly in the world of digital marketing. So how do you personally keep yourself educated and up to date on everything that's going on? John: I have a hugely unfair advantage being married to a fantastic marketer who is constantly scouring the interweb for the latest and greatest tool and slacking me at home because yes, we have our own personal Slack channel for our youngest son and Kathleen and myself. But, selfishly I rely heavily on what you share with me. Kathleen: Well, that's a valid answer and it's true. I mean, it's so funny. So we're sitting here, it's during the COVID pandemic and of course we're still working from home. So I am up in my office, which is on the second floor of our house. John is in his current office, which is smack dab in the middle of our kitchen. And we are Zooming with each other from two rooms away and yes, we Slack each other from two rooms away all week long. So we are the big old marketing nerds that do that. How to connect with John Kathleen: All right. If somebody wants to connect with you learn more about Knowledge360, ask you a question about competitive intelligence. What is the best way for them to connect with you online?  John: I would say the best way to connect with me is via LinkedIn. John Booth, like the guy that shot Lincoln, but not related. And if you want to learn more about Knowledge360, you can go out to Cipher-sys.com or TryK360.com and learn. You know what to do next... Kathleen: Awesome. I will share that in the show notes. Thank you for joining me, John. I know you have a busy day. We are recording on a Sunday and I'm pretty sure there's like some kind of house project that you want to be working on instead of recording a podcast with me. And if you're listening and you learn something new and you like what you heard, please, head to Apple podcasts, leave the podcast at five star review. That is how other people find us. And I would really appreciate it. But that is it for this week. Thank you, John. John: Thank you, Kathleen. Kathleen: And happy father's day. Because we are recording on father's day. You're the best for doing this for me. Thank you. Alright. That's it for this week. Thanks for listening everyone.

In Japan "Kagome Kagome" is an old children's game and the song that goes along with it. It's interesting because the mysterious lyrics have several different interpretations and most of them are pretty grim. So listen to episode 53 of Uncanny Japan where I talk about this creepy song and several of the theories behind those odd lyrics. You can also find me on: Twitter: https://twitter.com/UncannyJapan Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/uncannyjapan/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thersamatsuura Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uncannyjapan/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqAtoUS51HDi2d96_aLv95w Website: https://www.uncannyjapan.com/ Notes: Intro/Outro and that final creepy Kagome Kagome piano and rain bit by Julyan Ray Matsuura. Here and here. And here. Transcript: An Introduction to Kagome Kagome Let’s play a game. You’re in a field on a warm, breezy spring day with a dozen or so children. Everyone gathers around, and then a boy calls out: “Saisho wa gu!” All of you stretch out your arms and in unison make a fist when he says the word “gu”. Then without breaking rhythm the boy calls out: “Jan ken pon!” Next, perfectly timed, at the word “pon” everyone makes one of three hand shapes: a fist for rock, called gu; two fingers for scissors called choki; or an open palm for paper, pa. After a quick glance and noticing it’s a draw with mix of rock, paper, scissors all being shown, he quickly sings out: “Aiko desho.” Another draw, “Sho sho sho!” “Sho sho sho!” Over and over until finally you’re standing there, your arm outstretched, your hand flat showing “pa” or paper, while all the other children are sporting scissors, choki. You lose. Everyone laughs. You’re It. In Japanese games if you’re “it”, you’re called the “oni” or ogre or demon. A little girl pulls a long piece of cloth from her pocket and makes you sit on the ground. She starts to tie the blindfold around your head. Before everything goes black, though, you see all the other children join hands and make a circle around you. The cloth is tied tightly. You are effectively blinded. The children begin to sing. “Kagome kagome” Welcome to Today's Show Hey hey, everyone. How are you all doing this pre-rainy season. I’m doing okay, thank you. I hope you are all healthy and happy. One cool benefit to living in this old house is that my backyard is literally a series of rice fields. Last week I watched the farmer till them, flood them, and then plant them. I don’t know how frogs work exactly, like why don’t they get ground up into mulch when farmers till? But there is one thing I do know, the day after the water hit that dirt, they came out en masse. Listen to them all jolly-like. A heads up to my five dollars and up Patrons, you’ll be getting a 30 or 40-minute binaurally miked frog symphony to chill out to soon. Longer if you’d like. These guys are at in all night long. "The Hell Carrot" Animation Now before I get into today’s topic, I’m really excited to share something wonderful and free with all of you. We’ve made an animation for an obscure Japanese folktale I translated and retold. We being John Cairns, writer, director, editor, and animator. He did the movie Schoolgirl Apocalypse. Absolutely check him out, and watch the trailer for that movie on Youtube if you get a chance. So John did the animation for the story. Second was Rich Pav, who you’ll remember does all things sound and tech-related for Uncanny Japan. He did the sound effects. And finally me. All I did was find the story, retell, and narrate it. The story is called “The Hell Carrot”. It’s on the Uncanny Japan Youtube channel. But you can find it by simply Googling The Hell Carrot. If you listen this podcast and have an inkling of interest in Japan and quirky stories, I really think you’ll enjoy it. I am so proud of what John and Richard did. So if you’d be so kind, while you’re there, you can give the video a thumbs up and even let us know what you think. Okay, on to today’s topic. After last week’s “putting a curse on someone” episode, I thought I’d do something light. But, um, that didn’t happen. Sorry. You see, there’s this other topic I’ve been dying to talk about and, again, since I have more time now, I was able to read up on it some more. And the more I read the more I wanted to share it with you. Have you ever heard of the Japanese children’s song called “Kagome Kagome”? The game itself is a little like blind man’s bluff. One child is chosen to be an oni, blindfolded and made to sit on the ground while all the other children hold hands and walk around the oni singing the Kagome Kagome song. How to Play Kagome Kagome The last line of the song is basically, Who is behind you? So when the song stops, the seated child guesses which one of their friends is directly behind them. Not scary at all. What’s chilling are the lyrics. Not outright scary in and of themselves, mind you, but nuanced in such a way that there are dozens upon dozens of theories about what they actually mean. And most of these meanings are quite dark. I guess it’s like those old western nursery nursery rhymes that have sinister meanings, like London Bridge and Ring Around the Rosies. But we all know about them. I thought Kagome Kagome might be new to you, so here we go. Meaning of the Lyrics First, here is the most common version of the lyrics: Kagome kagome / kago no naka no tori wa Itsu itsu deyaru / yoake no ban ni Tsuru to kame ga subetta Ushiro no shoumen daaare? Very generally that would be: kagome, kagome, a bird in a cage, When oh when will it come out? In the night of the dawn, the crane and turtle slipped Who is behind you now? That’s more or less a literal translation and probably what little children think when they sing it. However, there are a lot of people through the years, scholars included, who have different interpretations of the song. So let me talk about a few. But first the words kagome, kagome. It isn’t even agreed upon what those two repeated words mean. Kagome could mean: 1. The holes in the basket that is referred to 2. The shape of those holes, which would be a hexagon 3. A pregnant woman 4. A caged bird 5. A corruption of the word kakome, which means to surround or circle Or finally number 6, it could mean to be lost Now let me take each line of the chant and shed a little more light into what they mean before getting into the various dark speculations. Kago no naka no tori wa: The word kago can mean cage or basket, so a bird inside a cage or basket is the obvious meaning. However, some believe the word tori isn’t bird but a torii, or a shrine gate. And that kago means a bamboo fence. A torii surrounded by a bamboo fence, would mean a shrine. Then you have the people who translate kagome as a pregnant woman. In that case the bird inside a cage would refer to the woman’s unborn baby. Next line: Itsu itsu deyaru Deyaru could be translated as deau. When oh when will we meet? Or When oh when will it come out? Next: Yoake no ban ni: This line threw me. Yoake means the end of night, so dawn. But ban means night. So it’s a contradiction, in the night of the dawn. Some think it just means nighttime, some say it means from morning until night, some believe it means an inability to see light, and some hold that it refers to a time of day that is neither night nor day, a twilight time. Okay, next: Tsuru to kame ga subetta: Tsuru means crane and kame, turtle; both symbols of long life and good fortune. Suberu means to slip. Subbetta is past tense. They slipped. The idea of two lucky symbols slipping could mean misfortune or a life that has been shortened, or even death. The last line: Ushiro no shoumen daare? Literally, who stands behind? I read that it could also be ushiro no shonen daare? Who is the boy behind. But either way the line is asking who is behind. Sounds innocent enough. Well, let’s get into a couple of the theories and they’re all grim. Interpretation 1: The Forlorn Prostitute The first one is that the song is about a woman who was forced to be a prostitute. Kago no naka no tori wa: She’s the bird in a cage. Itsu itsu deyaru: When oh when will I be able to escape this life. And very sadly, the last line meaning who stands behind is her asking who is next in line? Interpretation 2: The Murdered Pregnant Woman A second notion states that it’s a song about a pregnant woman. Remember that some interpret kagome as meaning a pregnant woman? Well, the tori in a cage is referencing her unborn child and she’s asking when oh when will it be born? The twist, at some strange hour she is murdered, one version saying she was pushed down some stairs: tsuru to kame ga subetta. The last line is her ghost asking ushiro no shoumen wa daare, who is standing behind me, who is it that murdered me? Interpretation 3: The Executed Convict Okay, idea number three. That it’s a tune about a convict about to be executed by having his head cut off. The bird in the cage is the convict. The crane and turtle slipping are both his bad luck and the fact his life is going to be shortened very soon. The last line is really interesting because there are variations on its meaning. One, simply who is behind me or who is the executioner going to be? A second more exciting theory, the prisoner get executed, his head is now on the ground in such a way that he sees his own body but doesn’t recognize it. Who is that behind me? Interpretation 4: The Monstrous Child Okay, one more dreadful idea is that this sweet children’s song is a song being sung by a monster child. He’s locked up, kago no naka no tori, and wondering when he will be released. But the truth of the matter is, the child has killed his entire family. No real details, but there is also the idea that by joining in on the chant, the children circling are invoking some kind of god to descend into the child sitting in the middle. What for? I don’t know. And lastly the only positive interpretation I could find was that it was a a chant giving hints to where a treasure is buried. But no thoughts as to what those hints aer or where exactly that treasure might be. I mean those are some pretty vague hints. Something I find intriguing about kagome kagome is that while the children’s songs I grew up with might also have a more sinister underlying meanings, it’s generally agreed upon that there is a single hidden meaning per song. For example: Ring around the rosie a pocket full of posies ashes ashes we all fall down is about the black plague. Kagome Kagome has so many different interpretations and no one can agree on any one of them. Which is kind of mysterious in and of itself. So which story do you like best? The prostitute, the pregnant woman, the prisoner, or the monster child? Maybe you like invoking gods or searching for impossible to find treasures. Or have you heard of a different theory of the meaning to the old children’s song Kagome kagome? If you have please let us know. Or have you made up one yourself? The lyrics are definitely up for interpretation. So that’s all for today’s show. Remember to search for The Hell Carrot and watch the animation John Cairns, Rich Pav and I made. It’s a hoot. And if you’d like to support the show, you can on Patreon for as little as two dollars a month, although for $5 you can get access to over thirty retold Japanese folktales, binaurally miked soundscapes, recipes and more. My patrons are made of awesome and sweetness and I think you’d fit right in. Thank you all for listening, stay healthy and safe, and I’ll talk to you again in two weeks.

John Hartson broke up my Spanish detention with a brilliant remotely-recorded Big Interview.Big Bad John was the kind of centre-forward who defenders hated marking. If they were smaller than him, he would just knock 'em over, then pick 'em back up. So John was shocked when Valencia's Roberto ‘The Mouse' Ayala gave him his hardest shift in a Celtic jersey.There's great stuff here about John's time as an old-school apprentice at Luton, when he looked after his hero Mick Harford's boots, and there's chat about losing a European final with Arsenal in agonising circumstances. But he never blamed David Seaman for his horrible mistake.Thanks, big man.Graham See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.