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So Mike is coming out of his closet...his clothes closet and its gonna be pretty empty by the time he's done. Stop by to hear all about it. Mike's first ever single malt whisky, one that's near and dear to his heart and an Uplifting Uppity Women story from Europe. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/michael-a-glenn/message

Today we're checking out a couple of Jessika's latest estate sale finds: Superboy 109 & 110. Are these swingin' sixties stories about the Boy of Steel any good? Well, no. Not really. But they certainly gave us something to talk about! ----more---- Episode 13 Transcript Jessika: [00:00:00] Dude. It's always fucking Florida, Mike: I can't think of anything that comes out of Florida that's good. Jessika: Hello. Welcome to Ten Cent Takes, the podcast where we traverse tumultuous time continuities, one issue at a time. My name is Jessika Frazier and I am joined by my cohost, the dastardly dog dad, Mike Thompson.  Mike: That's a fair description.  Jessika: That was a segue. We need to talk about your newest acquisition.  Mike: What, Mo?  Jessika: No. We've talked about Mo. What was your newest acquisition in relation to the squad?  Mike: Oh, right. We bought a dog wagon over the weekend.  Jessika: Yeah, you did! Mike: And then, uh, already busted it out and taking them all over the neighborhood [00:01:00] and to the beach. I think it was proven to be a wise investment when this neighbor who we'd never seen before stopped his car in the middle of the road and yelled at us about how cute he thought it was. He was like, “that's the cutest thing I've ever seen!” He was this big old dude. I'm like, alright, I'm on board with this. All right. Success.  Jessika: Amazing.  Mike: It was very wholesome.  Jessika: Well, I think Mike'll have to post at least one or two pictures of the dogs  in this week's transcript. Mike: Yeah, no, we  can absolutely post photos of the dogs in this episode's transcript.  Jessika: Yes. Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Well, the purpose of this podcast is to study comic books in ways that are both fun and informative. We want to look at their coolest, weirdest and silliest moments, as well as examine how they're woven into the larger fabric of pop culture and history. Today we'll be discussing the boy of steel, Superboy. While there are many variations of this character, we are going to be focusing on the OG [00:02:00] comics from 1944 to 69 as the ones that we talk about, but we will also just briefly touch upon the other comics, TV shows, and movies sporting the same character, as well as touch upon the absolute nightmare that is the timeline continuity, or lack thereof, that is Superman's life story. But before we do that, what is one cool thing that you've read or watched lately?  Mike: Sarah and I have been watching a show called Motherland: Fort Salem. Have you heard of this?  Jessika: I have, I was interested. Should I start it?  Mike: Yeah, we really dig it. It's on FreeForm, but it's streaming on Hulu. It takes place in this world where the United States stopped hunting witches 300 years ago and there was something called the Salem Accords signed. So now we have a world that's dominated by the USA and witches make up, as far as I can tell, the entirety of its armed forces. Jessika: [00:03:00] Oh, snap.  Mike: It's really cool. And the whole thing is magic is based on sound and resonance. And it's really a unique spin on things, but the show follows these three young witches who are recruited into the army and then start navigating their way through it. And the larger society, that's a part of the military and it's very comic book-y in terms of its plotting and character development and then the meta narrative as well. It's really cool. And it's really diverse in terms of casting. The storylines are really thoughtful in a lot of ways, and it's very queer. Like, extremely queer.  Jessika: Yes.  Mike: And the shows in the middle of its second season. And it's gotten much better. Like, I mean, it was already, it was already very good, but it feels like the second season, they really got the kick things up and they've really upped the creep factor. There's a whole thing about witch hunters re-emerging in kind of striking back at witches and riling up public sentiment. It feels very topical. [00:04:00] And then the whole thing is that because which is get their powers from the sound of their voice, what these witch hunters are doing is they're actually like cutting out witches' voice boxes and then weaponizing them. It's really cool and really creepy. And I really like it. Jessika: Oh, damn. That is like horrific. And like wow, that's an interesting concept.  Mike: Yeah. Sarah and I have been really, really enjoying it. And it's definitely something that we put on when the kids aren't around obviously, but,  Jessika: Oh, yeah.  Mike: but it's really solid. So yeah, not a comic book this time. But certainly something that I think a lot of comic book fans would enjoy.  How about you? Jessika: Well, once again, Lauren from Outer Planes in Santa Rosa comes through on the recommendations. Because she suggested the Image series, Man Eaters: The Cursed.  Mike: Hm.  Jessika: It's so fun. It starts off with 15 year old Maude being forced to go to summer camps. So her parents can go on this romantic vacation by themselves without her.  Mike: [00:05:00] Relatable.  Relatable, mom and dad.  Jessika: Absolutely. Well, and it's so funny because they put these fun little, like. It's almost like little artifacts in there , for you. So they have the registration card where they're registering her. And so it's like, will you be on vacation while your child is at camp? And it's like, YES. Like it literally asked that as a question like it's expected.  Mike: Good.  Jessika: It's pretty funny. Another thing I found that's really funny is they have the campers have these buttons. They're like warning buttons for insurance purposes. And they say things like sleepwalker or lice, or like Gemini. Which like big Gemini myself, like absolutely issue some warnings.  Mike: I love it. Jessika: And I love that there is one male character so far in this, and he's the least prepared for everything and Maude totally [00:06:00] roasts him a couple of times.  Mike: Again, relatable. Because the one who does all the home repairs around here, it ain't me. Jessika: Oh my gosh. So yeah, no, I added that to my pull list.  Mike: Yeah, that sounds great. Jessika: All right. Well, welcome to another episode of Jessika's estate sale fines. This week we'll be looking at Superboy, the comics, and I'm going to run us through the timeline of the comics as they came out, along with the TV shows and movies that were associated with those. So a lot of this is going to be like informational about when the comic came about and the character, Superboy  as Kal-El Mike: I'm super excited.  Jessika: there was a lot to it. And actually there was a  lot of different weirded consistencies that we're definitely gonna get into. As I've already hinted at that, I think you'll find very [00:07:00] funny,  Mike: I'm so excited.  Jessika: Okay. before I get too deep into this topic, I want to give a shout out to the resources that I use to compile my information today: An article from DC on DC comics.com fan news blog by Megan Downey, titled “Reign of the Superboys: The strange history of the Boy of Steel,” the Wikipedia article on Superboy, a blog post on captaincomics.ning.com in a forum called the comics round table by username commander Benson titled “deck log entry, number 176 Superboy: the time of his life,” and IMDB. for those of you who are. For those of you who are somehow unfamiliar with the basic storyline of Superboy's origins. not to be confused with Superman's origins, which he swoops in a little bit differently initially in the comics than this. but Kal-El in this instance was sent to earth by his parents before their home planet of Krypton [00:08:00] was destroyed. He was discovered in the crater left by his arrival by locals Martha and Jonathan Kent, who adopted him, raising him as their own son and naming him Clark. At age eight, Clark is told how he was found and finds out more about his origins from Krypton. Martha makes him an indestructible suit out of a blanket that he was found with one that came from Krypton and is imbued with the same powers that he himself holds. And it's basically just like Superman fucking around and not being in school.  Mike: Yeah, it almost entirely takes place in Smallville, which… it's kind of like the DC universe version of Cabbot Cove from Murder, She Wrote, where you're just like, how many fucking people die in this town? You know, in Smallville, it's, it's more along the lines of how many fucking supervillains hang out in this town in the middle of nowhere, Kansas,  Jessika: That's just it. What is it? A convention?  Mike: I guess. Jessika: Oh, so Superboy as a character was created by Joe Schuster and [00:09:00] Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel in 1938, but was rejected twice by Detective Comics before the growing popularity of the comic Robin, the Boy Wonder, finally convinced them to change their stance and they then decided to use it to try to relate to a younger readership with a younger character, which makes sense. Thus, Superboy made his comic debut in 1945, but just as a feature in the anthology, More Fun Comics issue 101. Now, of course, it wouldn't be comics without a little bit of drama. Schuster had assistance from Don Cameron instead of Siegel, as Siegel was serving in World War II and stationed in Hawaii. And he actually had to hear about Superboy's and inaugural publication through a letter from Schuster. DC didn't send them any notification nor was he able to actively participate in the trajectory of the plot line  since he was serving. It [00:10:00] was kind of a fuck you.  Mike: considering how heavily Superman was a part of propaganda. There is literally a cover of Superman running a printing press that says, I think it says, like, “help slap a Jap.” Jessika: Oh, that hurt me.  Mike: Yeah. Like, I mean, Superman was very much part of World War II propaganda, and that's insane that they wouldn't let one of his creators participate in the storylines because he was serving in the, uh, okay. Whatever. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty, it's pretty rough. So apparently there was already a rift in Siegel and Schuster's relationship. And so this just increased that strain. After that first issue, Superboy appeared in More Fun Comics, bimonthly issues through number [00:11:00] 107, but was picked up by Adventure Comics debuting in April of 1946. So he was bouncing around, that was issue number 103. And he was the lead feature for the anthology on this one Mike: Hm  Jessika: and remained the headlining feature for over 200 issues and continued being featured in Adventure Comics until 1969.  Mike: That's such a huge, just, that's an incredible run. Jessika: Yeah. It's a ton of time. And especially considering like he had, this was just like a side gig for Superboy. Really. He had other stuff going that he was doing.  Mike: Yeah, I do know that at one point in the sixties, Superboy was I believe the number two comic in America and the only one that was doing more than that was Superman. Jessika: It's like you were reading ahead. No, seriously. That's in my notes.  Mike: Oh, really? Okay, cool.  Jessika: Yeah, Yeah, yeah, no. And actually was frequently number two. We'll just  get to it now. It was frequently number two for a lot of it's run.[00:12:00]  So notable storylines that we got from Adventure Comics were intro to Krypto, the super dog, the origin story of his rivalry with Lex Luther, which that continues pretty far. So it's interesting that they, like, created the origin story.  Mike: Yeah. They had like teenage Lex Luther show up in Smallville, right?  Jessika: Yeah, yes, yes. Correct.  Mike: I think he had hair  Jessika: Back when he had hair, yeah.  Mike: Yeah. And that's something that's continued up until modern times as well. Mark Waid's Birthright, I know, did that… where it basically revealed that Clark Kent had been for a short time friends with Lex.  Jessika: Oh, wow. Of course. They had to be friends before they were enemies. Frenemies. There was also the the debut of the 30th century superhero team, the Legion of superheroes.  As Superboy, continue to frequent the pages of anthology comics in April of 1949, he became the sixth superhero to get his own comic book. and was the first new superhero [00:13:00] title to succeed after World War II. Mike: Oh, wow. That's crazy.  Jessika: Right?  Mike: I had no idea that there were only six superhero comics back then. Jessika: Yeah. Not with our own titles.  Mike: I mean, that's wild.  Jessika: Totally. I didn't realize that either.  Mike: yeah Jessika: notable storylines from this namesake comic were intro to Ilana Lang and Pete Ross, the storyline of the first Bizarro and first appearances of Legion of superheroes characters, Mon-El and Ultra Boy.  He also appeared in Legion of superheroes volume. One, which was printed as an anthology. Superboy itself continued until 1976 when the comic was renamed Superboy and the Legion of superheroes. Superboy was involved in the storyline until issue number 2 59. When he leaves after learning new information regarding the death of his parents.[00:14:00]  Dramatics. Mike: Yeah, I haven't read a lot of those, but the idea is that he's displaced through time and he winds up hanging out with the Legion for a while. And then if I remember right, Supergirl winds up joining the Legion after a while, too. Basically, so they can have kind of a headliner. Jessika: I smell them trying to fix a time continuum. But that's maybe I'm biased. Based on the research I've been doing,     The series was then retitled Legion of superheroes volume two, and ended with issue number 354 and 1979. There was also a three-part mini series called Secrets of the Legion of Superheroes that was published in 1981. And despite the general decline of superhero readership, Superboys' popularity continued to grow and adventure comics and Superboy frequently sold over a million copies combined.  Mike: That's an insane amount of comics these days. You know, back then that [00:15:00] was wild. Jessika: I mean, it definitely groundbreaking for its time. I would say it was, it sounded like it was huge. The popularity may also have been due to the fact that Superboy was found on more than just comic book stands. He was also on the TV and in the movies, he appeared in a 26 minute movie called the Adventures of Superboy and multiple six-minute episodes airing with the New Adventures of Superman, which aired for 1966 to 70, the Superman Aquaman Hour of Adventure from 67 to 68 and the Batman Superman Hour 68 to 69. All of which were just continuations are within that same world as the initial comic book.  Mike: Right. And those were all animated series too, I think, right?  Jessika: they were. They were. And here's something fun for you to watch if you wanted to click on that link.  Mike: Okay.  [Superboy INTRO AUDIO PLAYS] I love the image of like infant CBRE, boy, just lifting a piano. All right.  Jessika: Very patriotic.  Mike: Yeah. I love the fact that they have Krypto in there. Like I've always had a soft spot for Krypto. I am a little offended that his cowlick isn't in the shape of an S though. Come on guys. You know, this is an amateur hour.  Jessika: Missed opportunity. Mike: Right. But yeah, that was super cute.  Jessika: Wasn't that fun? Yeah. So I can,  I could see kids get getting really excited about seeing that. And then they walk by the newsstand and they go, I just saw that on TV.  Mike: yeah, exactly.  Jessika: [00:17:00] So I think they had a good thing going with that at that point. Mike: Oh, a hundred percent. So that was in the sixties, you said, right?  Jessika: Yes.  Mike: So that was right when television was becoming the dominant form of entertainment in the United States. I think by 1959 or 1960, it was something like 90% of households in America had televisions. And Saturday morning cartoons were starting to become a thing, which by the way, you guys should go back and listen to that episode about Saturday morning cartoons. It's our first episode. And we talk all about the evolution of that and how it connected with Comics. Jessika: It was a fun one. So pretty much right after the Legion of Superheroes volume two ended, the New Adventures of Superboy was published in 1984. That had 54 published issues,  Mike: Okay. That's a respectable run.  Jessika: Yeah. It's not anything too wild. Yeah. In 1985, DC tried to tie up some of those pesky plot holes that we're going to discuss later [00:18:00] on, for sure, by creating a comic that told the story of Clark Kent's transitional years in college at Metropolis University, going from Superboy effectively to Superman. And while this was supposed to last for 12 installments, they only ended up publishing six, mostly due to the fact that Crisis on Infinite Earths was published  Mike: I was about to ask. Yeah.  Jessika: Yep. That actually featured the eraser of Superboy  and yet another attempt to correct a timeline.  Mike: Well, Crisis on Infinite Earths was the first real attempt by DC to sit there and stream everything into a coherent timeline. And at the same time they had John Byrne's The Man of Steel, which came out I think right after. Crisis on infinite earths. And that also streamlined Superman's very convoluted history. The problem is is that by that point in time, you had almost 50 years of continuity, which made no fucking [00:19:00] sense. Jessika: And we'll discuss it later, but there wasn't necessarily a need for continuity back in the day. I mean, they didn't have to have it. They were just there for like, we're doing this adventure. This is fun. They're going to enjoy it. And there wasn't a feeling that you had to necessarily link it with what came before it or what was going, coming after it in the same way that we want now as readers and as fans, we want everything to make sense because we want more of the story in that  way. Mike: We want that overarching meta plot. Jessika: Exactly. Exactly. So despite DC's attempt to write Superboy out of the universe completely, he appeared once again in Legion of Superheroes Volume Three, which ran from 86, 87 and while Crisis on Infinite Earths had erased Superboy. To some extent in other time, continuations, they now needed to recreate him in order to have a cohesive storyline for [00:20:00] Legion of Superheroes. Mike: God. Jessika: So they were like, what are we going to do? Oh, I know pocket universe.  Mike: Why not?  Jessika: Why not? So in this version, it's set in a pocket universe created by the villain Time Trapper.  Mike: I think the Time Trapper… so the Time Trapper is like a villain who has had multiple identities. It's the same villain ultimately, but it's different people wind up becoming the Time Trapper. And I think, Superboy became the time trapper point.  Jessika: This doesn't surprise me at all. What the hell?  Mike: Yeah, don't, don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure that it happened, uh, during one of their big, crossovers,  Jessika: Oh, no, Mike: Comic books are dumb and I love them.  Jessika: I do, too. This is actually part of the  reason I really do like them. Because I like seeing all of these little differences. It doesn't make me mad. I just find it very funny.  Mike: Yeah. so the Time Trapper created a pocket [00:21:00] universe and then they used him to bring Superboy back.  Jessika: Yeah, exactly. And so he, but here's the funny part. He was really just like a sideline character in this. He came in and issued 24 and he was killed off in 38. Mike: Superboy was going. Okay. I'm not going to ask question.  Jessika: Yeah. Cause he had to like sacrifice himself to save the world. I mean,  that's, you know, common trend in these, right.  Mike: Of course.  Jessika: Yeah.  It was convenient. If not obvious.  Mike: Okay.  Jessika: Superboy apparently would not, could not be stopped. As was apparent in 1988 with not only a comic publication, but also a TV appearance. Once again, this time live action.  Mike: I remember that show.  Jessika: Yeah, it was here and that was gone.  Mike: It lasted for a couple of seasons, but I think they had a couple of different actors play Superboy. Jessika: They did. Yeah. So it was four seasons and it started out starring John Hames Newton for season one [00:22:00] and then recast replaced for the remainder of the four seasons. So the rest of the three by Gerard Christopher.  Mike: Oops.  Jessika: So that was a 22 minute runtime, pretty normal for that time. but there again, it went along with the same year that the Superboy volume two hit shelves. You know, they did another one of those timing things thinking, Hey, it worked what? 30 years ago.  Let's do it again.  Mike: Yeah. It's that whole transmedia thing. Jessika: Yeah, exactly. the show ultimately lasted until 1992, the same year a one-shot comic called the last Superboy was published. But that seemed to be the last dying ember from the fire that is Superboy, as we've talked about up until this point, except one thing. And I know that we want to talk about it a little bit, which is Smallville. And I know we've mentioned it, but I didn't watch that. Did you watch that show?  Mike: Oh, yeah. Are you kidding me? I, I was all over that show for the first few seasons. Jessika: Okay. I [00:23:00] just really, it was just cause I had a crush on Kristin Kruek, but unfortunately she got involved with that horrific NXIVM cult.  Mike: I thought It wasn't her. It  was the… Jessika: It was Alison Mack, but  like, but  she was involved for a few years,  unfortunately. Big. Yikes.  Mike: I don't know too much about it. I just know that Alison Mack was one of the big ringleaders for it and it was wild. Jessika: She was, yeah.  Mike: Like she, I think she left Smallville to like devote herself full-time to that cult.  Jessika: That sounds right. Yeah, she was, she was definitely a big part of it. yeah, it was rough. I've been following it.  Mike: I really liked Smallville when it first came out. I remember getting so excited when they had a little teaser ad for it where I think it's Krystin Kreuk is wandering through the darkness and she hears something and turns and then you see Tom Welling step out of the shadows and he says something along the lines “Oh, Hey, it's just me. It's it's Clark.” and then it just says Smallville, and I was like, oh mother fucker. That's amazing. [00:24:00] And yeah, it was, it was fine. It was very teen angsty, but they had a lot of deep cuts for comic fans. And, I think I stopped watching around season four  because it just started to, it felt like it really sort of jumped the shark,  Jessika: Oh, okay. Yeah. I was going to, ask if it's  something I should rewatch. I don't know. Stuff from that. Timeframe is so cringey these days.  Mike: A lot of it's cringey. I remember a whole thing with his heat vision was tied to like him being horny.  Jessika: No. Why do you have to do that?  It's so unnecessary.  Mike: But you know, what's funny is they actually brought Tom Welling back in the whole DC Arrowverse recently where they have a version of Lex Luther. Who's traveling the multi-verse and he shows up at, he shows up at the Kent farm and Tom welling is there. I thought it was just, it was great. It was, it was just, it was a really cute little nod. Jessika: That is pretty cute. I do like that.  Mike: And then he got all mad because he was trying to suck Superman's powers [00:25:00] away. And then it turns out Superman gave up his power so that he can have a family and a normal life. And then the now powerless Superman pops him in the nose. It was kind of good.  Jessika: That is cute.  Mike: I was fine with this. It was very, it was very wholesome. Jessika: So there are other iterations of Superboy, but they're not necessarily Clark Kent and some of them are, but they kind of stray off into different timeline. And I could have gone down that rabbit hole, but Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: you know, I didn't. Here we are.  Mike: that's fine.  Jessika: So I also know that I, more than hinted, we've talked about a little bit, uh, the continuity troubles that plagued Superboy.  Mike: Right,  Jessika: I, I gotta say some of these transgressions are just capital B A D bad. But they get a bit of a pass again, you know, like I said, because Comics at that point [00:26:00] really didn't hinge on a time continuum.  Mike: Right. That wasn't a thing.  Jessika: No, it wasn't. So, we got to give them a little bit of credit except when they actually started figuring it out and they still did absolutely nothing about it, which is what we're going to talk about. Mike: Okay.  Jessika: Because after Superman, they kind of figured out, oh, people are wanting more of a storyline and we've already given Superman kind of a timeframe. And now this has to be Superboy. So it needs to be earlier. So they were like, Okay. Superboy is from the 30s.  Mike: Right.  Jessika: But Superman at that time, I think was supposed to be set in the 60s or the 50s. And the math did not add  Mike: Right.  Jessika: at all to get to that point. So right off the bat. You've just you're wrong about the dates. what's even more funny to me is that in the first iterations of the Superman comic, the origin story is always [00:27:00] that the first time he came to earth was when he came to metropolis, like as a full ass adult.  Mike: Right.  Jessika: So what's, what's up, you know, so that's where it's like, all Right. this is already… Mike: This is convoluted. Yeah. Jessika: exactly. So you and I read a couple of comics from the time period of those original comics, and we read them from specifically from 1963. What I love about these is you could actually, at that, I don't, maybe they still do this. I haven't seen it yet in my Comics. You could write in and they would publish the comments and the editor … Mike: they still do this.  Jessika: Okay, cool. So the editor writes a comment back,  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: So we have a few of these.  Mike: Okay.  Jessika: And I would love for you to read them for us.  Mike: Okay. So we have a few of these here. the first one says dear editor, since Superman was a Superboy before World War II and television sets, weren't perfected and [00:28:00] sold to the public until after World War II. How come you show TV roof antennas, and Superboy stories. Kevin Herron, Tiffin, Ohio. And the editor responded with you're right, Kevin, we're wrong. We made a booboo. Editor. Jessika: Okay. Mike: The next one is dear editor. How come in Superboy comics. You illustrate such modern inventions as a bombs, atomic subs, jet planes, television, et cetera, all devices, which weren't invented until 1945 for later. And which certainly weren't around when Superman was born, Ken parent Wheaton, Illinois. The response is historians refer to such inconsistency as anachronisms. They are a necessary form of literary license required to achieve dramatic effects. Movies exercise this option very often. For example, the first umbrella was invented in 1740 yet numerous period films devoted to the life in the middle ages have shown heroines protecting themselves from the sun with a parasol. Editor Jessika: I love how he's getting like a little salt here with his answers.  Mike: Just a little bit. [00:29:00]  Jessika: He's like, but Webster's dictionary says…  Mike: God. Yeah. I don't miss those days. These days. Usually when you see the letters section of a comic, it's usually people talking about how much something meant to them, or at least in the ones that I read it. It's always really nice. So.  Jessika: That's sweet.  Mike: All right. So the last one: dear editor in the recent story, the amazing bizarro you had Superboy dropping an atomic bomb on bizarro. How is this possible, as Superboys adventures. They're supposed to have happened before 1945 and scientists had not perfected the H-bomb until  1945. Steve Spangler, Sonoma, California,  Jessika: Boom representation. That's right down the road from us.  Mike: the response is “we goofed! From now on no more a bombs in Superboy. Editor.”  Jessika: Well, that's easy.  Mike: Oh, that's great. At some point it's like, come on guys, it's a comic book.  Jessika: Yeah,  Mike: I think it's, are you [00:30:00] really expecting the science fiction comic, starring an alien who just happens to look exactly like a human, but has more super powers than God is going to be historically and scientifically accurate all the time. Okay. Whatever. I don't…  Jessika: I know. I know. I know. I hear you. I do well. And what's funny too, is at one point, Lana Lang is in a beauty competition and it says 1952.  Mike: Well, it's reassuring to know that nerds were always this nitpicky. Jessika: Absolutely. That really is.  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: So the time in consistencies didn't end there. As I mentioned, there have been multiple timelines that have been created and destroyed to ensure some kind of consistency in the Superman universe. But whether or not that was actually a success is really anybody's opinion. It's up to the listener. [00:31:00] But if you're interested in finding out more about this travesty of a timeline, go check out that blog post I mentioned at the top of the episode, I'm on Captain Comics Presents, it's got a lot more examples of the inconsistencies from those OG comics. Mike: Yeah. Well, okay. One thing I will note is that DC kind of figured this out recently where they, ran a series called doomsday clock, and it's Dr. Manhattan from the Watchman universe with Superman. And the very end of it is revealing that there is now a “metaverse” in DC. Where it's like, oh yeah. So Superman arrived in the 30s and started being a superhero, you know? And then also he also arrived in the 60s and then he also arrived in the 80s and so on and so forth. And so it,  it sort of makes sense of that for those people who care. Jessika: Well, and it's like the same kind of Marvel multi-verse that we have going on with that, with the  Spider-Man is pointing to each other.  Mike: Yeah. It [00:32:00] basically, it takes the concept of a multi-verse and then it adds another layer and it does it in a way that feels, hm, I'm not going to say plausible, but it just, it kind of works and, you know, I actually liked it, but that's just me. Jessika: Yeah. you know what, and what's funny about Superman is I don't like Superman, so it's funny that we're doing this whole episode. I just thought it, was interesting. These Superboy comics when I saw them, well and I picked them up because like, honestly, like the titles were horrific and I will have some very liberal things to say about them, but yes, I, you know, but honestly, what's very funny, even though I hate Superman, I don't know what it was about the Superman symbol that I used to love.  And I didn't read the comics. I'd watch the show from the eighties. And I'd seen the Christopher Reeves movies. We loved those. But other than that, I wasn't like huge in the Superman, but if I had gotten a tattoo, when I was 18 years old, it would have been a Superman symbol. So I'm very glad my mom never, she never [00:33:00] listens to this. So she will never know that I'm confessing that, she talked me out of making a very bad tattoo decision because she doesn't need any more gloating rights,  Mike: Yeah. I don't know. I kind of viewed him like Captain America, where I thought he was really boring. And then I realized that if you find the right writer, Superman really, really works. I've come to really enjoy a lot of Superman stories, but you know, it depends.  Jessika: And I think you're right. That I, I probably just haven't found the right writer or the right style. And I did recently start do I start birthright? I started something recently.    Mike: I think it was  Birthright, based on our conversations. Jessika: yeah. So I will get back into that at some point in time. I just have such a stack now will obsessed. Oh no. Mike: Oh no,  Jessika: Oh, no. more Comics. So Mike, you and I read a couple of these issues that I found at that estate sale. That was Superboy boys. Numbers, 109 [00:34:00] and 110. So do you want to recap 109 us?  Mike: Yeah. Okay. You've mentioned that these are anthology comics and so Superboy at this point in time, apparently was having two or three storylines per issue. based on the two that we read, each one had two different stories in it.  Superboy 109 has the first story is the Super Youth of Brozz. The title story about the rival super dogs doesn't show up until later, which that always surprises me, when the cover action isn't the first story and everything else is in a backup, but whatever.  Jessika: It's a little confusing.  Mike: the Super Youth of Brozz is about how a young Clark Kent winds up sort of becoming friends with another teenage orphan in Smallville named Fred who's, quote, timid that's his like defining character trait. That's all that anybody used to describe him. And he gets picked on by the towns in crowd of teenagers. It's revealed that he lives in the [00:35:00] Smallville orphanage, which okay. He literally walks back to the orphanage and then Superboys spies on him and he's crying because he overheard people talking about how they didn't want to adopt him  because he was too much of a wimp I'm just like, oh, okay.  Jessika: Thanks for being super toxic Superboy. That's so great.  Mike: Superboy winds up deciding to give him confidence. And so he takes him to a planet called Brozz where Fred gains super powers from the atmosphere. And then Superboy actually loses his overtime for reasons that are not really well explained because you know, Superboy, he gets his powers from the yellow sun. And then later on, he gets his powers back sort of from the little spacecraft that they brought Fred over in, because it had some remnants of Earth's atmosphere, which that's not how science works. I was a history major and even I can tell you that. Superboy has this whole convoluted plot about how if he can get Fred to have super power's he'll gain confidence, which Fred sort of does. He eventually saves Superboy's life and then decides to stay on the planet and be a superhero. And he gets offered to be adopted, but he declines the offer for some bizarre reason, something about like, you know, basically he doesn't want to put his, foster parents at risk. And Superboy heads home to earth and has a final thought about how he wouldn't be the person he was, if it hadn't been for the Kents. The end. Jessika: Yeah. Yup.  Mike: Yep. But the title story, which is the Super Dog That Replaced Krypto is basically at some point, Superboy rescues a dog named Swifty, which looks like a Greyhound. Swifty winds up months later, tracking down Superboy in Smallville, which means that Superboy didn't [00:37:00] even drop this dog off at a shelter. Apparently he just got him out of harm's way and then just left him. So strike one, Supes.  Jessika: Yeah. It's not.  Mike: Then Superboy winds up temporarily granting Swifty the same powers that Krypto has. And then it seems like he's testing them out, but it doesn't quite work out that way. Swifty loses his powers and then he's, again, I guess, left alone. He's just as far as I can tell, he's a homeless dog in Smallville. Jessika: Yeah. There's  a lot of orphans in the story.  Mike: after his powers fade some villains who were trapped in the Phantom zone, but crossover and are sort of the Phantom zone wind up trying to take mental control of Superboy and Krypto, they don't have any luck. They are able to influence Swifty. And then they guide him through a process that grants him super powers. And then I think it also makes them evil, but it's not really well explained.  Jessika: Oh, it's because the Phantoms were  influencing him. [00:38:00]  And so their intentions were like his intention. So  because they had negative vibes against Superboy. That's what I got out of it, but it's, it's really vague.  Mike: Super vague.  Superboy decides to randomly hold a series of tests for Swifty and Krypto to be the new super dog. And like, he does this as opposed to like, just like letting  them both help him out. Jessika: that's what I'm saying. Like, it wasn't even to like, be the next super dog. It was like to  go be the ambassador on this trip  Mike: Oh, is that it? Okay.  Jessika: yeah. And then , why wouldn't  you want like an entourage of fucking, like super dogs with you? Why would you two super dogs is way better than one super dog. Like, I don't know what the fuck his problem  was Mike: 100%. So anyway, the Phantom zone criminals helps Swifty, win the contest, Swifty becomes the super [00:39:00] dog for at least this instance. And then he leads both Krypto and Superboy into a kryptonite death trap. Like there's literally a spring that like hurls kryptonite at them. And then at the last second Krypto manages to blast Swifty with the duplicate Ray, which creates a bizarro Swifty, who's good as opposed to the original version. Superboy comes up with a potion or, sorry, the Bizarro Swifty saves them. And then Superboy comes up with a potion that strip Swifty's powers and restores his good nature. And then he creates a collar that repels the Phantom zone ghosts so they can't control the dog again. And that's it like, Swifty's apparently the sad homeless dog in Smallville who just gets sad every time that he sees Superboy and Krypto fly by. And he thinks about how he wants to be Superboys' dog again. Jessika: It's really depressing. And I would never do that to Carl for the record. I would never. Okay.  Mike: I mean, [00:40:00] yeah, this, this issue definitely rubbed me the wrong way. Just for that, where I'm like, God, Superboy. it couldn't even find a home for the dog who tracked you down across the country and just wanted to be your friend. Jessika: You're fucking Superboy have two fucking dogs. Like, I don't know how difficult this is. Like, well, where Martha. Martha is like, no, we've already gotten one super dog in the house.  Mike: Yeah, right.  Jessika: No, this one's just normal, now! I swear. Mike: between the two of us, we have four dogs. So, I  mean, we're definitely the wrong audience for this, Jessika: for sure. And I bought this comic for the fact that there were like super dogs on there. I got very excited.  Mike: yeah. And the thing is, is that there's a whole menagerie, a super pets like you eventually get like Comet the super horse. Like it's no, there, there was a monkey. There was, I think, I think it was Streaky the super cat too.  Jessika: Oh, no.  Mike: It's not like, you know, [00:41:00] there wasn't a whole collection of super pets. But whatever.    Jessika: Yeah. What did you think of this since you haven't told, since you haven't started telling me already. Mike: It reminded me that Superman and Superboy stories from this era just a lot of times don't make any sense.  I have a collection from the late eighties called the Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told, and It's got stories from the forties to the eighties and even those early great stories, in quotes, they're pretty out there. And neither of these stories are anywhere close to what's contained in that book. I don't know. My biggest complaint is how Superboys' logic is always terrible. Like why does Fred need to be made into another version of the Superboy in order to gain confidence? Why not just help them with the core issue, which is that nobody wants to adopt them  from the Smallville orphanage, which again, lawl. Jessika: Yeah. Like what does it have two orphans in there?  Mike: It just, it seems like helping them find a [00:42:00] family would do a lot more good. And likewise, why not just adopt Swifty too? Like  it's shitty and it's dumb, but all of this reminded me of the site called Super Dickery, which I showed you.  Jessika: Yes.  Mike: It was the site that's originally focused on the absolute insanity of Superman comic covers. So many of these comics would feature things like Superman, just fucking over his friends. That was a repeated theme for years. There's one where he has Lois lane strapped to the grill of a truck and he's flying out after he drove it off a cliff. And just saying something to the effect “I'll see you later, Lois.” Jessika: Holy shit.  Mike: And there's another one where Aquaman, Jimmy Olsen are dying of thirst in the desert and Superman's just lording over them with this pitcher of water. the site was around at least in 2005, which is when I first came across it. It's kind of defunct. Now. I don't think has been updated for a couple of years, but you can go back on archive.org and just scroll through all these things. The [00:43:00] tagline was Superman's a Dick and here's the evidence and it's great. Like that is a way to kill an afternoon. Let me tell ya. Jessika: Oh, I definitely checked out a few of those today and I was  rolling. Rolling. He definitely came off  as an asshole in this comic. Like, no question, no question.  You know, what makes me the most mad is that he has the ability to give Swifty super powers. He has the ability to make both dogs talk.  Mike: Oh my God. Yeah. Jessika: What the fuck are you doing?  Mike: there was a cover on Super Dickery where it's young Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne, and they've created a computer that lets them see the future and like, Hey, we're going to grow up to be crime fighters and superheroes. So we're going to be best friends. It's like cool. You know, what also would be useful? I don't know. Maybe telling Bruce Wayne that his parents are going to get murdered and it can be avoided.  Jessika: Seriously. Holy shit. Oh my God. Yeah. But then he wouldn't have his [00:44:00] homie. Superboy's  just all in it for himself.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: And like, why does he just have something lying around the  has fandoms as I can get out? Why does he have that? Doesn't make any sense. Mike: We don't have another two hours to discuss the Phantom Zone. Jessika: Kal-El you silly boy. So let's, let's move on to the other comic we read, which, uh, we're just be just as angry about, by the way. Spoiler case you were wondering. So what happened in issue? Number 110? Cause I did get sequential ones, which is great, kind of.  Mike: Right. Okay. So again, we have two stores. We have the Surrender of Superboy and the runt of steel, the surrender of supervise story is the one that we actually get on the cover. It's Superboy in Krypto losing a tug of war match to some old man. And we're basically told, well, you won't believe who the old man is. In the Surrender of Superboy, Clark [00:45:00] Kent, and Lana Lang traveled to South America to accompany her, I guess he's a college professor, dad on an archeological dig. One of the flowers recovered is this legendary hate flower, which causes any living, being that smells it to hate the first human they see after smelling it. They're like very specific that it's, you will hate the first human. Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: When they get back to Smallville, Lana smells the hate flower by accident. She sees Superboy flying outside and then dun, dun dunnnn winds up developing an intense hatred for the boy of steel. She grabs. I think it's like, it's… do we ever get a name for this thing? It's like a devil's mask? Jessika: I think she just calls it devil's mask. Cause it's a devil's witch mask or something like that on the wall. It's very vague again.  Mike: So she's in this museum, she grabs this thing off the wall because there's no fucking security anywhere. And it specifically says what it does, where it's says the person who wears this can summon souls , or spirits from the past and have them obey them for an hour. And then she [00:46:00] starts using it to cause trouble. Sir Lancelot and then George Washington are her first minions, but they refuse to help because they claim that they've heard about Superboy's heroic  deeds and even in the past, which Jessika: No, no, no, It's not a thing. No.  Mike: I just, I can't, man, it's so dumb. Jessika: When I read that, I was like, what, what is actually going on right now? I literally stopped reading for a few minutes.  Mike: Everything about the story it feels like monkeys at a typewriter.  Jessika: Yes,  Mike: So then she summons Merlin to humiliate Superboy at this super strength exhibition that he's doing in order to benefit the old folks home and Merlin, it turns out is the old man who beats him in the tug of war on the cover. Which by the way, this is like three panels in the comic. And it's not that big a deal.  Jessika: it's really not.  Mike: yeah, after that she summons Edgar Allen Poe and [00:47:00] Sherlock Holmes. She says they're the two greatest detective minds of the past. So they help her solve a jewel highs that Superboy can't and then she framed Superboy by having Hercules, Samson, and Atlas tear apart the Smallville Scientific Institute. Um, let's see, she summons Venus, Helen of Troy, and Juliet to basically seduce Superboy. And then she spurns him at a dance. And also I'm sorry, but really? JULIET? Like, come on. Jessika: Juliet was a child who fell into a situation and was a tragic  figure.  Mike: Juliet was a stupid teenager. Like, I can't, I can't even,  I'm sorry.  Jessika: She probably had acne and Superboy definitely had that hair where it was brushed forward and then spiked up in the front. Mike: Yep.  Jessika: Absolutely. Yep.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Fuckin' assholes. All of them, Mike: So she [00:48:00] spurns them at this dance and her dad gets mad at her. He's like, I heard you were very rude to Superboy.  Jessika: Which by the way, the fact that he wears that fucking suit to every occasion, like,  come on, dude.  Mike: I just love that idea. Jessika: Can you have like a literal suit, like, a super suit. That actually looks nice?  Mike: Just get something, like, get a nice Navy blue, kind of slim fitting suits have an Ascot popping out with your Superman logo.   All the girls would be all over you. It'd be great. Jessika: Oh, my gosh. Can you imagine the Kent's first trip to a fancy restaurant where they have to like, get the borrow jacket, like the  loaner jacket from the restaurant, because he's wearing his stupid ass suit and they're  like, Oh, Sir, excuse me.  Mike: He's just walking around with his Cape, sticking out from under the jacket. I would read that  comic.  Jessika: I would too. [00:49:00]  Mike: Anyway. So finally Lana decides to pull Jor-El, Superboy's dad from the past, in order to help her discover Superboys' secret identity. Instead of, I don't know, reuniting Jor-El with his son who he never got to see, but whatever. Okay. Jor-El gives you this device that's supposed to detect Kryptonians. It leads her to a closet where Krypto the Superdawg is Krypto shakes himself, and basically gives off a bunch of dust. Actually counteracts the flowers' hate pollen. And it turns out that Superboy and Lana's dad switched the mask with a dummy, once they realized what was going on and then her dad disguised himself as GRL and then everything just  goes back to normal and nothing matters. Jessika: Yeah, we're again, they have access to these devices that are like powerful and they like have instructions on the wall, but don't use them. Like he literally says to his daughter at one point like, oh, well stay away from the superstition side of things. It's quite dangerous. And she's like, oh, what's that?[00:50:00]  Let me check out this mask. So fricking ridiculous.  Mike: So then we get the second story, which is the Super Runt of Steel, which is about a criminal named Peewee Reagan, who we don't know who this dude is, but he shows up at this dilapidated house, he pays some amoral super scientist to grant him super powers. Peewee goes on a crime spree that even Superboy can't stop because Superboys' powers are weirdly fading for no real reason. Peewee flies away to a distant planet because he spotted treasure inside it. He gets to the planet, he wrecks a bunch of the alien robots that are there and then goes inside this vault that's full of space gems and minerals, and he winds up screaming in pain. Superboy finds out the scientist it turns out leached his powers and transfer them over to Peewee. And he's able to track the criminal to the aforementioned planet. And it turns out Peewee died because the vault also contained kryptonite and then Superboy [00:51:00] buries Peewee and flies away the end. Jessika: Because he somehow gets his powers back by just being around him. It was weird.  Mike: Everything about this issue just made me roll my eyes. And a lot of the stories from this era, if you go back and read a lot of these things, they had those kinds of surprise endings. That just feel so dumb these days. Like it was that weird, ironic twist. They're not really ironic because they don't really make a lot of sense.  Jessika: Yeah, they're just kind of like a left field thought.  Mike: Yeah, there's a lot that just doesn't work. And it's like if you go down this very specific logic train that these writers force you along, it's like, you know, the whole thing. Having Lana's dad disguise himself as Jor-El, like Superboy, just, knew that this was going to be the next step. You're like, all right. Well, I don't know, and then also, I'm sorry. But she's supposed to be calling all of these characters from history, all these spirits or people from history and then it's gods and fictitious characters like [00:52:00] Lancelot and Juliet and uh, whatever. Jessika: No, they were really contrived figures. I mean, even when they had real people in there, they weren't used to their purpose.  Mike: No, and it's one of those things where you read it and you're like, this is just, this is so dumb. Oh, it's Samson and Hercules. Okay. Whatever, why not? Random characters from the Bible and Greek mythology. Why not? Jessika: Dude, where do I even start on this issue though?  They had so many problems. The beginning, when the scientists negate the word of the locals as superstition, even though it actually did have dangerous poisonous properties to it. They're like, oh, it's just a myth.  Mike: Because there's a whole thing where one of the boroughs winds up attacking a guide and then when they sit there and say, oh, it must have like gotten near the hade flower and they're like, oh no, it just got bit by a fly. All right.  Jessika: Yeah. And the scientists are like, I mean, gosh, darn. How big of a [00:53:00] supremacist asshole do you have to be to not trust the people who live there to know anything about the plants that they have been living with their whole lives. I truly don't understand that.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Then the scientists were like, oh, woopsie, Daisy. I guess they were right. Chuckle, chuckle. Mike: This was also still a period in time where anyone who was not white, especially native populations were viewed with a healthy degree of just kind of, well, like you said, it like supremacy. Like if you go back and read those old Tintin books, woof.  Jessika: Oh,  yeah. I've read someof those in the original French and they're... Yeah.  Mike: Yeah. And if you go back and read those and then like up until really, I want to say the 70s or 80s was one thing started to get a little bit better, but even mainstream in the 60s were still pretty awful when it came to depicting people who weren't [00:54:00] white. Jessika: Yeah. There was that whole segregation thing. You know, just that.  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Yeah, I, it was really gross when the quote unquote historical women came to give her beauty advice so that she could do seduce Superboy, like that was so contrived and odd and sexist and strange,  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Or the part where Superboy is not only supposed to be earning money for an old person's home. He's also making agist jokes about the quote unquote old man that ends up beating him. Both him and his dog, a tug of war.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: But  then the comic itself is so obviously like they so obviously made it agistly clear that this man only be Superboy because he was Merlin, the wizard, which yikes guys,  I know people way older than me that could kick my ass at most anything. So that's pretty [00:55:00] ridiculous.  Mike: yeah.  Jessika: Oh. Or the fact that the little guys or men that are like smaller and stature or timid, they are constantly the ones that need quote, unquote saving by Superboy in these really odd, like vague ways. Like they need to get physical strength to be appreciated.  And it's super toxic.  Mike: Yeah. And I mean, that kind of hinges on the old ideas of masculinity as well. Jessika: Oh, and I'm sorry, why Lana's dad keeping again, keeping legit magic items where people can access them. It just, I can not get past that because they just have all this shit sitting around where people are like, oh, let me touch it. Mike: look, here's the thing, like gun control, wasn't a thing back then you think they're going to seriously guard supernatural weapons of destruction. Jessika: that is a valid point. That is so valid.  at least he wasn't mistreating his dog in this issue, I guess.  Mike: I guess. I don't know. He locked him in the closet for a few hours.  Jessika: Shit. That's right. [00:56:00] Nevermind. Fuck. So that wraps up our Superboy conversation.  Let's move on to our brain wrinkles. And this is the one thing comics are comics adjacent that's just been rattling around in your brain. Since the last time we talked.  Mike: Yeah. So I was going to talk about free comic book day and how I was originally pretty excited about it. But now, we're recording this a couple of weeks before free comic book day is going to happen. And we are still in the middle of a pandemic when we record this, the Delta strain has started to rear its ugly head and lead to cases spiking all over the place, including here in the Bay Area. So, As someone who has immunocompromised kids who are too young to get the vaccine still, we're not going to be able to participate. Um, so yeah, I don't know. I think I'm instead going to talk about The Suicide Squad and actually how I'm really [00:57:00] excited about that movie. And it's getting rave reviews and it's opening this week on HBO max and in theaters. And then, because people can't leave shit well, enough alone, David Ayer, the director of the original Suicide Squad movie talked about how this one is great, but then he proceeded to shit all over Warner Brothers and talked about how the version of just Suicide Squad that got released back in 2016, was not his version of the film and how it's terrible. And he wants, vindication now. And I just, I can't go through another Snyder Cut. I just, I don't  have… Jessika: Alright like, you know, at least, okay. At least it's not the Justice League.  At least it's Suicide Squad,  Mike: But like the Snyder Cut almost broke me. Jessika: No, I hear you. I already don't like, I already wasn't like on board and I had to watch like so much Justice League that weekend.  Mike: I remember.  Jessika: Then I had prequel films I had to [00:58:00] watch. No, I don't want to do this again. I don't. Mike: I can't.  I am happy to talk about Suicide Squad. And I'm pretty sure there'll be jazzed up to talk about it after this movie. But I just, I can't bring myself to care about these auteur directors who are just… when I was working in the video games industry, we had this term that we used for certain people who were on the development side, who were all about their vision and how, they wouldn't compromise anything. And we, we just refer to them as the genius babies, because they would have these ungodly meltdowns. I can't bring myself to just, I can't bring myself to care about another genius baby throwing a temper tantrum. Jessika: I don't want it.  Mike: How about you?  What is, uh, what is sitting in your head these days? Jessika: I've been thinking a lot about representation in the media, including comic books. [00:59:00] And that's partially because we've been reading all these old comics where we don't see a lot of different representation. Versus the comics that I'm drawn to, which are full of representation, because that's what I prefer to read. I want to see everyone and it's been really nice to read destiny, New York and some of these other recent comics that actually show different types of bodies, different skin tones, different sexualities and genders. But I think there's so much more that we need to do, and that can be done to add and continue to build upon that representation. Like just in general, it's 2021. And we're still shaming people for being a certain size and, you know, airbrushing people who are already considered to be the epitome of beauty in our society. Like what is it going to take for us to allow people to just exist as we are. I mean, you know, besides the whole capitalist bullshit [01:00:00] game, telling women, they need more and more products to achieve beauty. But aside from that, but it's giving me, it's definitely making me feel better to see all of the representation, but there, again, it just reminds me that we need more. Mike: I was gonna say, it's that reminder of we've come a long way, but we need to go further. Jessika: Yep. It is. It is. You had mentioned, your inability to go to free comics day. and I feel like there are probably a lot of people who had a really difficult time getting anywhere. To go to something like that, you know? And so thinking about accessibility in that way of, what about those readers? Like what are we doing about them? So you know, it's just something I think about I've worked at social services too. I mean, I'm just, I'm a bleeding heart, but we need people like me or else, I don't know, get rid of that. We don't need people like me. So that's, that's, what's been rattling for me. [01:01:00] It's just more of a continuous disappointed buzz in my brain that we don't respect all people.  Mike: Yeah. Well, we do on this podcast.  Jessika: So on that uplifting note, that's it for today, but stay tuned for another episode in two weeks and until then we'll see it in the stacks.  Mike: Thanks for listening to Ten Cent Takes. Accessibility is important to us. So text transcriptions of each of our published episodes can be found on our website. Jessika: This episode was hosted by Jessika Frazier and Mike Thompson, written by Jessika Frazier and edited by Mike Thompson. Our intro theme was written and performed by Jared Emerson Johnson of Bay Area Sound, our credits and transition music is Pursuit of Life by Evan McDonald and was purchased with a standard license from premium beat. Our banner graphics were designed by Sarah Frank, who goes by. Look, mom draws on Instagram.[01:02:00]  Mike: If you'd like to get in touch with us, ask us questions or tell us about how we got something wrong. Please head over to Tencent takes.com or shoot an email to Tencent akes@gmail.com. You can also find us on Twitter. The official podcast account is Tencenttakes. Jessika is Jessika with us, and Jessika is spelled with a K and I am Vansau: V A N S A U Jessika: If you'd like to support us, be sure to download, rate and review wherever you listen.  Mike: Stay safe out there.  Jessika: And support your local comic shop  . 

In this episode of Making Chips, Jim and I chat with Paul Van Metre—the Co-Founder of ProShop ERP—about the process of selling his machine shop. We dissect the process, including how to understand the valuation of your company and how to make your shop more attractive to potential buyers. If you're considering selling in the next few years, this episode is full of actionable tactics and strategies that will help you succeed.  BAM! - Jason Zenger Segments [0:07] Amper Technologies machine monitoring systems [3:10] How to sell your machine shop [5:11] Ozark Technical Community College offering a two-week manufacturing bootcamp [7:49] Jim shares what's new at Carr Machine [8:42] Paul Van Metre's experience selling his machine shop [13:42] Is this a big change in the manufacturing industry? [15:27] Why would a strategic buyer pay more?  [16:40] Understanding the process of valuation  [17:35] Check out ProShop ERP for more information on manufacturing software! [26:10] The experiences of Paul's customers buying shops [28:12] How to make your company more attractive for buyers [30:53] How buyers can make sure they're getting a fair valuation Now is a great time to sell—or buy—a machine shop  I bought ZENGERS from my Dad in 2019, right before the pandemic hit. learned that there's a lot involved in buying/selling a machine shop. Not only that, but it takes multiple years to get to the point to learn how to run a shop by yourself. Running any business that employs a team of people takes a lot of work.  A lot of people are looking to retire and sell their machine shops. The youngest people of the Baby Boomer generation will be 65 by 2030. And of the 18,000 machine shops in America, the majority are owned by Baby Boomers. The vast majority will have some type of transition of ownership in the next 10–15 years.  Jim is getting calls from M&A companies all the time about buying his shop. He isn't even close to ready to sell. I'm on the buy side, and I think this is a great time to buy a machine shop. Whether you want to merge, participate in a roll-up, etc. now is the time. Even if you're not ready for several years, you need to start planning. The experiences of Paul's customers buying shops Paul notes that owning a business is one of the most significant financial decisions anyone can make in their lifetime. These shops are the baby of their owners. They've poured 10, 20, 30, 40+ years into them. Leaving that behind and passing it on to the next generation is a difficult and taxing process. Some shops may close their doors and sell off their machinery.  A client of Paul's, Mike, was deeply involved in the M&A and private equity space. He was trying to sell a shop where the owner wasn't interested in making her business attractive for sale. They couldn't sell the shop for years. So Mike decided to buy the shop himself. He knew it was a good business at the core and got it for a great deal. He also recently acquired another machine shop. Paul worked with a small shop in Colorado—Focused on Machining—who was in banking before moving into manufacturing. He looked at 4–5 shops before landing on this one. Because he was in banking he understood the financial side and has done an incredible job growing the business. Paul's experience selling his machine shop Pro CNC was founded in 1997 when Paul was just 23—straight out of college. When they sold in 2014, they were a mature company with 17 years of experience under their belt (Paul shares his story in episode #98 of Making Chips). In hindsight, Paul had been preparing the company for sale for many years. They started hiring people to replace the three partners so they weren't working in the business every day. They then hired an M&A company to take them to market (the whole process took around a year).  Sadly, Paul points out that 80% of businesses that get listed for sale never sell. Many businesses end up selling off their assets. Those people are likely making only a fraction of what their company could be worth. So how do you set your business up for success? What can you do now to make it more attractive to future buyers? Listen to the whole episode to learn the process! Resources mentioned on this episode Get The Boring Bar Newsletter - Text CHIPS to 38470 to subscribe! Ozark Technical Community College offering a two-week manufacturing bootcamp Paul Van Metre's Story: Episode #98 of Making Chips Check out ProShop ERP for more information on manufacturing software! Modern Machine Shop magazine Focused on Machining The E Myth: Why Most Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You Connect With MakingChips www.MakingChips.com On Facebook On LinkedIn On Instagram On Twitter On YouTube

The Baby-Sitters Club comes to Netflix! The beloved series features a character who lives with type 1 diabetes. How did the show do portraying life for a 7th grader with T1D? We talk to New York Times Bestselling author and winner of the National Book Award Robin Benway. Robin loved the books as a child and was diagnosed with type 1 as an adult. Also this week, Mike Suarez turned his son's story into an adorable picture book called Year One with Type One Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! In Tell Me Something Good – she had a huge goal for the JDRF rides this year – of course so much had to be cancelled this year but her story took a wonderful turn.. on and off the bike. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Sign up for our newsletter here The Guy's Guide to Diabetes ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode transcription: Stacey Simms 0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop created for people with diabetes by people who have diabetes by Gvoke HypoPen, the first pre mixed autoinjector for very low blood sugar, and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom. Announcer 0:22 This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms. Stacey Simms 0:28 This week, it's all about books and a TV show that's based on books. We're talking about the Baby-Sitters Club with a New York Times bestselling author who loved the series as a child and was diagnosed with type one as an adult. Robin Benway 0:43 Oh my gosh, I'm now something that I was a fan of for so long. I can now watch on television. You know, I was thinking about Stacey when I did start to watch it. I thought it was nearly perfect. Stacey Simms 0:54 Robin Benway is the winner of the National Book Award when we talk about Stacey and the babies sitters club, what we liked what we didn't, and about diabetes in media. Plus a dad turns his toddler story into an adorable picture book about type one. in Tell me something good. She had a huge goal for the JDRF rides this year, of course, so much had to be cancelled and changed. But this woman's story took a wonderful turn on and off the bike. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Welcome to another week of the show. I'm so glad to have you along. I'm your host, Stacey Simms, and we aim to educate and inspire about type 1 diabetes by sharing stories of connection. My son was diagnosed with type one, gosh, ages ago now he was almost two and in December it will be 14 years. Yeah, he's 15 and a half 15. And more than that, I don't even know anymore. My husband lives with type two diabetes. I do not have diabetes, but I have a background in broadcasting and that is how you get the podcast which we've been doing now. for more than five years, and I have been wanting to talk about the Baby-Sitters Club for a long time, I mean, we have talked about it because many guests over the years have said that it was very influential to them, either. They read it and really were touched by Stacey's story, the character who lives with type one, or somebody else read it and diagnose them because of it. That happened at least once to one of my guests. It's really incredible to think about these books, and the impact they've had on our community. So when I saw column in Elle magazine recently, about the Netflix adaptation, I really wanted to talk to Robin Benway, the author, I knew she'd be fun to talk to just by her writing voice in the magazine, and she really was and Robin also had some unique insight about the books and about the adaptation, and I was really excited to talk to her. We also talked about diabetes in other media, you know, I think a lot of us cringe when we know there's going to be a depiction of diabetes and a show or they mentioned insulin and we Oh, we know what's coming. So it was fun to talk to Robin about that. And to kind of spotlight some good stuff that's actually out there. All right, I'm going to talk about my reaction in more depth to Baby-Sitters Club in a little bit of a review, but I'm going to do that later on. Because this is a longer episode. We've got two interviews, we've got Robin. And I also spoke to a dad who wrote a picture book rhyming kids book for about his little boy, and it's called year one with type one, and that is with Mike Suarez. So that's coming up in just a bit but first, diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop, and I spoke to the people at One Drop was really impressed at how much they get diabetes. It makes sense their CEO Jeff was diagnosed with type one as an adult. One Drop is for people with diabetes by people with diabetes. The people at One Drop work relentlessly to remove all barriers between you and the care you need. Get 24 seven coaching support in your app and unlimited supplies delivered. No prescriptions or insurance required there. Beautiful sleek meter fits in perfectly with the rest of your life. They'll also send you test strips with a strip plan that actually makes sense for how much you actually check. One Drop diabetes care delivered, learn more, go to Diabetes, Connections comm and click on the One Drop logo. My guest this week is a National Book Award winner and a New York Times best selling author. She wrote a column about the Baby-Sitters Club and her reaction to it in Elle magazine. That's what caught my eye. I reached out and said, Would you talk to us but to come on the show? She said sure. And we had a great conversation. Now she grew up with a father who lived with Type One Diabetes, but she herself was not diagnosed until she was an adult. So her perspective on the Baby-Sitters Club, which she loved, as you'll hear as a kid was very different because she wasn't relating to the type one aspect about it right away. I'm also curious to know what you thought of the Baby-Sitters Club. I'm going to be putting more about this in the Facebook group. We've talked about it a little bit, but we'll put more posts in there and get your take. And as I said earlier, I'm going to put a little bit more of my review, although you'll you'll hear much of it in the interview. But a little bit more later on. Here is my talk with Robin Benway. Robin, thank you so much for jumping on to talk about this. I really appreciate it. It's I'm looking forward to talking with you. Yeah, same here. Thank you so much for having me. All right before we jump into the Baby-Sitters Club, and I have a lot to talk about with that. Let me ask you just the basics. You were diagnosed as a young adult, right you were in your in your mid 20s? Robin Benway 5:28 Yes, I was 26 it was July of 2003. I was diagnosed I was diagnosed with celiac disease at the same time I was having really low iron problems I was having anemia so they started doing a lot of bloodwork just to find out what was going on and started noticing that I had elevated blood sugar levels. And my father, who was my biological father was also a type one diabetic. So once they saw those blood sugar levels being elevated, they started to put things together pretty quickly. And so I in a, you know, a very strange way felt very lucky that I was diagnosed that way that it didn't progress to the point where I had to be hospitalized or my blood sugar's were, you know, four or five 600 or something like that, that I was diagnosed sort of accidentally and was able to catch it pretty early and could start, you know, meeting with an endocrinologist and started taking insulin pretty soon after that. So there was no mistaking at that age, oh, maybe it's type two, maybe it's something else because of your father, they pretty much went right there. At first, they were like, maybe it's type two. There was a lot of I think, you know, this was 17 years ago. So I think now, the way that people are diagnosing type one and people in their 20s and 30s is very different than it was 17 years ago. I think that was when people were just starting to see that, at least based on my experience and the responses that I was getting from doctors at the time. You know, I had grown up knowing that my dad was diabetic, but in our family, we had always sort of been under the impression that once you hit 12 or 13 years old, you're sort of out of the woods of that, you know, I think a lot of they used to call juvenile demise you know, because they were diagnosis of young. So I think it was a real shock because I had always thought, okay, I'm out of the woods. I'm fine. And that wasn't the case. But they definitely did think it was type two. They started me on oral medications at first Metformin, but nothing worked. And I remember I still remember the first time I took insulin, it was just like, oh, that was the problem. You know, that's what I need because my blood sugar's just came down to right where they should be. So, you know, it was a little disheartening knowing that I was going to have to go on insulin, but at the same time, that relief of knowing that now here's the drug that works was it balanced it out? Stacey Simms 7:36 Do you remember I've been told this by other adults that I've talked to that what that first dose of insulin feels like, Do you remember that? Robin Benway 7:44 I do. Remember, I was staying at my mom's house. I was living alone at the time and I thought I don't want to be alone when I take my first dose of insulin just in case. And I remember it dropped. My blood sugar's a little lower. They were like maybe in the mid 60s, and I just remember, I didn't feel shaky but I just remember feeling less. It's that feeling of a sugar rush basically, you know when your blood sugars are high I for me personally, I definitely feel a little agitated, a little edgy, you know a little bit more, I don't know Piper's the word but just a little fuzzier. And I just remember that feeling going away. And I remember also being so terrified of like having to give myself an injection like having to give myself a shot. And I was incredibly amazed at how easy it was and how painless it was. I had always imagined that it would just be a torturous experience, you know, mostly because your experience with injections is like vaccinations or inoculations. You know, it's Earth flu shot. It's a very different experience. Give yourself a shot of insulin. And I remember feeling that relief also of Oh, I can do this. Okay, this is something that I can do. Wow. Yeah. So Stacey Simms 8:50 the article that I'd mentioned, you start out by talking about this high spot in your career, the National Book Awards Gala and then the reality of being an adult with type one, which is go to the bathroom, I get up your formal gown, you know, giving an injection. And, you know, certainly a great way to start the article. But I'm curious, do you share your diabetes experiences with your friends and family? I mean, not everybody has to be giving themselves injections at the table. Right? I know. I'm sure you're not hiding things. I don't mean to imply that. Oh, as a mom, that was the first thing I thought of was, oh, my goodness in the bathroom. She okay. Yeah. Robin Benway 9:29 You know, I obviously all of my friends and family know about it. I'm not someone who would ever conceal that part of me. It's not something that I ever feel ashamed of, or feel like I need to keep secret. That's certainly not it at all. I think. For me, it's more about I'm very conscientious of other people's reactions to blood and to syringes or needles, and I just don't want to ever make someone I definitely have known people and I've heard of people who just give themselves an injection right at the table, you know, or will check their blood sugar under the table. And for me, I'm just not comfortable. That just in terms of making other people uncomfortable, but also sometimes things go wrong, you know, like, sometimes, you know, there's a little bit more blood than you thought there would be or you hit a blood vessel when you're injecting yourself with insulin. And, you know, sometimes it's just easier to be in, even if it's a public restroom, you know, it's still a confined space. And sometimes just the privacy is sorted out is something that I prefer but in terms of being open, I definitely I talk about it. I do a lot of school visits with my job, you know, writing for young adults and young people, I do a lot of school visits. And I always talk about how I was diagnosed and how that changed the trajectory of my life. And I always say to kids, who here knows somebody with diabetes, and almost every kid raises their hand you know, whether it's type one or type two, it doesn't really matter to me, I just, I know that they can make a connection with what I'm saying and relate it to either themselves or someone that they love in their lives. No doubt. Stacey Simms 10:53 Yeah, I think that's to is the difference between my my personal experience of type 1 diabetes is my 15 year old who has made a career out Have trying to gross out his friends. Yeah, no, since the third grade watch this. Yeah, slightly different experience than a grown woman in Robin Benway 11:09 that dress. You know? It's expensive. You just really don't want to get anything on this. Stacey Simms 11:15 So let's talk about the Baby-Sitters Club. Now I'm a little bit older so my guilty reading pleasure as a kid was worse sweet Valley High then Babysitter's Club, also say, okay, okay. But were you a fan of this as a kid, this was something that you read and you look forward to. Robin Benway 11:32 Oh, I cannot even describe to you like how much I love the Baby-Sitters Club. Like, I can just remember going to my local bookstore, you know, the Walden books that was in the mall at the time when there were still Walden books in malls and scanning the shelf and just looking for the new one and either being so excited when there was a new one or so disappointed when, you know, they came out every month and you know, on day 30 I'd be like, Where's the next one you know, and sharing with your friends or your Got the new super special, so then they would loan it to you and super specials were bad. But yes, I mean, just when I think about the Baby-Sitters Club, because I've also talked a lot about, you know, what is sort of my formative reading now as a writer, like, what did I read as a child and a young adult that sort of made me a writer? I think the two things about the Baby-Sitters Club is that they were so funny. And I think I learned how to write humor and really good dialogue from those books. I think you can't really teach how to write humor or write something funny, but I think if you can see it, you can see how either rapid fire dialogue or really smart responses or interrupting each other like, that was formative for me as a writer was seeing how they did that. And then also just as like a 11 1213 year old girl, you know, that is where, and I'm sure a lot of women and girls have had this experience, your friendships just kind of implode. And nobody really knows why. But suddenly, your best friend in sixth grade is your biggest enemy in seventh grade. And the factions are changing all the time and who's friends with who and who's not friends with who and who Did what to whom it's traumatic, it's a really difficult experience. It's a big part of growing up, but it's still difficult. And the thing with the Baby-Sitters Club was that at the end of the book, they were always friends. So you could see the sort of regeneration of friendship again and again and again. And for me, it was very comforting. You know, when sort of my female friendships were in turmoil, it was so lovely to see these girls work through things and stay friends in the end. So those were, I think the two things that kept me coming back to the book, but a great way to look at it. Stacey Simms 13:29 Yeah, but you as a reader, your type one experience was with your dad. So I imagined Stacey McGill, the character in the book who has type one wasn't somebody who could really relate to that wasn't what you were reading the books at the Robin Benway 13:42 time? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. You know, I actually I shied away from Stacey as a reader. You know, I loved I moved to New York when I was 18 years old. I've always wanted to live in New York. So reading her as a 12 year old I was like, Oh, that's she's a sophisticated city girl. You know, that's how they always portrayed her. She's From New York City, but that was my favorite part of her but there were books where either she was just diagnosed or I think there's a book later in the series where she was hospitalized. And I had a hard time reading those just because at the time my dad's health he had been a diabetic for 30 years at that point, so his health had gone up and down, you know, just the nature of the disease and the nature of treatment at the time as well. It wasn't as advanced as what we have now. So you know, it was scary to see my dad go through that and I, Baby-Sitters Club was my safe place. You know, that was my fun, safe, circular path of Stony Brook Connecticut. I didn't want a hospital or an insulin shot coming into it. So I don't say I didn't like Stacey as a character. I love Stacey as a character but in terms of what she went through, I just I really shied away from that. That wasn't I was much more a Claudia dawn girl. So yeah. Stacey Simms 14:54 How did you approach the Netflix series you've lived with type one now for a while. We all know that they never get it right in In media, I really looked looked at the show. I look very much forward with a lot of trepidation. I was almost afraid to watch it. What was your reaction? Robin Benway 15:09 I mean, I literally had an alert set on Netflix to remind me that the Baby-Sitters Club will be on Friday, July 3, and then I got the notification. I was so excited for it just because I had loved the books. And you know, I don't know any of the creators personally, but I was familiar with their work and their backgrounds. And I had read a lot of articles by that point about how they had approached the material and I just had a really good feeling about it. You know, I just thought that this is possibly in really good hands. And honestly, I wasn't even thinking about it in terms of Stacey and diabetes. I was thinking about it as oh my gosh, I'm now something that I was a fan of for so long. I can now watch on television. You know, I was even thinking about Stacey, so when I did start to watch it. I mean, I thought it was nearly perfect. I thought that they kept the spirit. I love that they kept the girls young, you do feel like you're watching 12 and 13 year old girls, b 12 and 13 year old girls, you know, and all of the struggles that go into that, but all of their I don't say immaturity, but just that feeling of they're still young, they're still figuring things out. They're not 17 years old in high school, you know, they're still little girls and I thought that was really important what the books were and to the show, and I just thought the way they modernized the material was perfect. You know, they talk about Claudius grandmother being in bands and our you know, Claudia is Japanese American and talk about her grandmother being advanced in our when she was young. And you know, at one point Marianne is babysitting for a kid who's transgender and that would have never been in the past 30 years ago, and I just thought they did a beautiful job of modernizing not only the characters, but the storylines while still staying true to what the spirit of the books was. They did Stacey Simms 16:45 a nice job with that too. And they did this many times where they would put something in like that, you know, the child who was transgender, but the storyline wasn't so much about that child. It was the babysitter character's reaction to it and reflection of it. But I thought was going to throw this word up. I really thought it was masterfully done. Yes, she learned more about her. And yes, there was a there was a lesson there. And, you know, I know there's a lot of criticism from people who get uncomfortable with those kinds of issues, but I thought it was so well done. And they did it many, many times over. And my 18 year old who's really conscious of those things right now, I was really impressed. I thought it was really well done. But I was very worried about the truth about Stacey, I was like, Oh, no, because we see this happen so many times in media, and I think they got a couple of things that adults would notice kind of wrong. Boy, did they hit it out of the park, in terms of what younger people would see. Robin Benway 17:41 What did you see in Stacey, what I see in myself. Here's a girl who has many, many things. But one of those things is diabetic. It is not the arc of her life is not the big picture of who she is. It's one thing and there's a scene where she goes to babysit and her blood sugar feels a little bit low and she pulls out a juice box and I realized that I had never seen that in media before. You know, I hadn't seen this girl or any girl or any woman just do that she feels better she keeps going. I mean, I have had literally hundreds of juice boxes on the road working, traveling, you know, so many so many juice boxes go down in bathroom stalls and downstairs bathrooms and you know, just you do what you have to do that's important. And then your blood sugar's come back up and you move on. And I was shocked to how blown away I was by that because it's such a simple act, but it is such a big part of managing your blood sugar and managing diabetes. Stacey Simms 18:35 Yeah. Didn't you expect her not to do that and faint or have to go home from a babysitting job? That's that's what I think we all expected her to do. It was such a nice normal. No, I'm fine. Robin Benway 18:45 Yeah. And I also I did like there is a scene I think at the end where it's sort of like a neighborhood meeting with all the parents of the kids that they watch and though the girls are explaining what it what this means for Stacey and how this works, and I liked that they introduced the doubt of the parents. Because I think that's, it's the pushback that you get like, are you okay? Can you handle this? You know, there's this feeling of, are you just gonna collapse at any moment? Are you safe and I like that they were like, this is how we this is how Stacey manages that this is how she handles it like these are factors in her daily life, but she's also smart enough and mature enough and knowledgeable enough to take care of herself. And I thought that that was a really good message as well to see that some people may not understand it. And here we are explaining to you what this is. Really, if we had had that exact discussion, not as a group of parents, because we aren't lucky enough to have a Baby-Sitters Club in my neighborhood. Stacey Simms 19:37 One of our babysitter's when my children were younger, has type one. And when Lauren would come over we the first couple times we talked about, well, what would happen if you had a low blood sugar and what would happen if this happens, and we talked about all of that, and it was funny, I saw a few adults in the community commenting on the show, and they that would never happen. parents wouldn't talk about it that way. And then they also and I said yes, well, I'm sorry, but we did. Mother's overreaction, right? No mother would overreact like that. I was like, Hello, I mice my son's very first low blood sugar when it was a bad enough low sugar that we had to treat with more than just a juice box. We were about three weeks in, I called my endocrinologist convinced he was gonna send us to the ER, Mm hmm. Right? Okay, we treated it. His blood sugar's coming up. What do we do now? They were like, What do you mean? But I thought we were gonna go in for tests or something. So that kind of confusion really made me laugh, because in the show, she actually did wind up going to the hospital for the day. But in our experience, I mean, I did call I can't say that I didn't. So it was pretty funny to see our real life reflected in that way. I did also like the mom turn around by the end, but it was more as we mentioned earlier, it was more about Stacey and less about the other character. She turned it around. Robin Benway 20:52 Well, going back to the mom, you know, I was diagnosed at 26 I know how much my mom still worries about me to this day like she would never Say that you're stupid ever say it explicitly. And I'm sure the way you worry about your children and your son, you know, there's just always going to be the worry. I think that's also very much based on who Stacey's mom and her parents were in the books as well. They were very anxious about her disease. And I think that was really important to see that, you know, Stacey is managing many different facets of this disease, including what is other people's reaction to it, including, what is her? What are her parents reactions to her? And it and I like that they were able to have that conversation and the confusion between this is who I am versus this is how you're making me feel. I mean, I think those are things that every young person feels even if they're not dealing with a chronic disease or not diabetic, how are you reacting to me versus how I want you to react to me, so I thought they did a really good job with that, but it's just tricky because every person you meet is going to react completely differently to your diagnosis and regardless of how you react to it. And so that's another thing that you're always navigating is, I mean, I'm sure your son has heard this. I'm sure every diabetic has heard this, but we Hear the Oh yeah, my uncle had it. He lost a leg or he now he's blind. You know, everybody write tragic stories and you have to sort of put up a barrier and remind yourself okay, well, that's not me that is your uncle or your dad or whoever. So I think that was for me as I bet seeing Stacey navigate the reactions of other people I thought was really important as well because that is a big part of it. Stacey Simms 22:22 Robin Well, I have you and as you listen, Robin is a National Book Award winner New York Times bestselling author, six novels for young adults. I want to ask you, Robin, why is it so hard to write genuinely for young people? Robin Benway 22:38 I think for me, you know, six books in now at this point is empathy. It's the very first thing that it has to be the biggest part of every book is empathy. I think it's very easy to like see young people today and be like you kids with your tic tac toe and your snip snap, you know, like they don't, you know, people it's very, very easy to look at what is this? What are we in now, generally See, I guess and look at them and think, well, in my day, we had this and not that we weren't on our phones all day. I mean, I'm on my phone all day. I'm a 43 year old woman. So I don't you know, I'm not gonna judge a 15 year old for being on their phone all day. But I think for me, the biggest thing is empathy, because nothing really changes, right? Like we're all still figuring out how to get along with our friends. Who do we want to be? How do we get along with our parents? How do we move through the world? You know, I as you get older, you hope you get wiser you hope you have more experience that makes you grow mentally, you hope that you maybe have a little bit more agency and a little bit more ability to vocalize how you feel and how to stand up for yourself but the struggles are still the same. You know, the way you get along with your teachers the kind of the same way we all get along with a boss or sometimes in a classroom, you have to be with people you don't really want to be with same as in an office space. You know, sometimes you have co workers. So I think the feelings are always the same. The technology doesn't matter. The place doesn't really matter for me. It's just The feelings whether it's love or family or friendships, Stacey Simms 24:03 have you ever considered putting type one into one of your books? Yes, Robin Benway 24:08 I have. I've definitely over the years, I've had conversations with different editors or people in publishing. And they've said, like, hey, you're diabetic, would you ever think about writing a book about diabetes? I think the thing is for me, and this is something that I've really, really, it's why I don't speak publicly about being a diabetic so much is that I don't want it to become the only thing that people think of when they think of me again, I'm not ashamed of it, I'm very open with it. But at the same time, you don't want to just become Oh, that's Robin, she's the diabetic, you know, we we are all more than just one thing. And so I know that if I do a book about being a diabetic or a character who has diabetes, I will have to talk about that book for years, you know, hopefully, you know, one to two years. You know, it will become the defining part of every interview that I do every, you know, work conversation that I have, and Worry sometimes that it will dilute down to just me being the diabetic when I like I said I am so many other things as are pretty much every other diabetic out there we are more than just that disease. And so I do think about it. Also for me fiction is such a wonderful escape. I don't write books because I have to I write because I love writing books, especially for young people. And I think that for me, I love that escapism of it. I love that I am not having to figure out a character's blood sugar situation. I'm already I've got enough doing that for myself. So I don't know I think about it. Maybe as the years go by, maybe in a few years, I'll engage it. There would have to be a really good idea. It wouldn't just be Oh, this character has been diagnosed with diabetes, there would have to be more at play for me so. So I think about it, never say never, but if someone else wants to do it, go for it. Stacey Simms 25:52 You know, it's funny, I don't want to put too fine a point on it. But the first part of your answer there, which is you didn't want to be defined by Diabetes Connections. What Stacey's story is all about to Yes. And I think that's why we like it so much, because that's how almost everybody I know with any kind of diabetes feels. Yeah, right. Agreed. I think anybody with anything Robin Benway 26:11 like that, you know, it's very easy, especially in sort of these wild modern times to focus on maybe what is unknown or scary or, you know, baby, if people don't understand it, that's what they kind of go to first. But that's just not how I view and that's not how I view being diabetic. It's just so it's just a thread that's woven into my life, you know, I, it will always be there. It's something I will always manage. But it's so inherent to me. I don't want someone just to pull that thread out and only look at that rather than the bigger picture. Stacey Simms 26:41 Is there any depiction of type one in media that just makes you mad? Like, can you think of something where you're like, Oh, I hate that one. When people refer to that one, Robin Benway 26:48 I can definitely think of one thing but I can't say Robin Benway 26:52 but I it was fairly recent and yeah, it just I for me, it was sort of like that thing where you're just like, Are you serious? Like, is this really like, this is what you had to do, and this is what you did with it. And it just it was petty on my part. And, you know, mean, and I can't say it, but I got so frustrated and so annoyed. And, you know, I think that was a long simmering feeling that once I got to the depiction of Stacey, I think those two feelings just sort of combined and became an article which was I can't believe I just had to read this versus Oh, I can't believe I just saw this, you know, and that the negative and the positive of that sort of combined together, but yes, Stacey Simms 27:32 definitely. And then Baby-Sitters Club has got to have a season two, you know, is there anything that you remember reading that you really liked them to see? And it doesn't have to be about Stacey, oh gosh, Robin Benway 27:42 I really want to see Don's mom and Mary's dad get together. I know they were together in the first season but I if memory serves, they get married. So I really want to see that wedding. Just because I love Dawn's mom both in the book and on the show and I love the way that they've treated Maryam dad is fun. This is kind of sad, but in the opening scene. Louis, the Collie, you know, appears with Christie. It's Christie's dog Louie Who's that Collie dog. And I was like, Oh, no, Louis because I don't. If memory serves things get a little dicey. Oh, no. Stacey Simms 28:11 Sorry. Spoiler Robin Benway 28:13 alert. I really, I when I saw Louis, I was like, Louis, you know, Stacey Simms 28:19 it is amazingly six with us from what we read in our childhood, right. Robin Benway 28:24 Well, I was talking with a friend of mine about this. You don't realize how much you buried in your brain. You know, I'm watching the show. And I'm like, oh my god. It's Louis. Oh my gosh, it's more been a destiny. I forgot about a bit of destiny. And just Charlotte Johansen, Jamie Newton and his sister Lucy and I'm like, how do I remember all of this? And yet I'm like, did I pay that bill? See now I'm Stacey Simms 28:45 jealous. I want it I like sweet Valley High. backer revel in those memories. Robin Benway 28:52 I'm sure it's developing somewhere. Stacey Simms 28:54 I kind of hope not really cheesy. Can I ask you are you working on anything new right now I know authors always hate that. I know just finished and Oh, that was great. But what's that? Robin Benway 29:07 I always say it takes a brave person to ask a writer somebody working on because oh tread carefully. I am working on something. Yes, it has been a slow road. But the book has evolved many, many times. And I've sort of distilled down to what the book actually is. And I have started writing it. I feel really good about it. I started it a couple times, didn't feel good, went back to the drawing board ripped it all up again and started over. So I do feel good about it. Now it has taken me a long time to figure out what it's about. And I think at the same time, I was coming down off the success so far from the tree and the time that that took, which was wonderful, no complaints, but it was hard for me to both work on a new book and enjoy the success apart from the tree. So I am basically staying with family for a few months. I'm sort of quarantined away here and just everyday I sit down and write 1000 words and it's going well, it feels very, very good to be writing. Again, I haven't written for a while and I have missed it very much. That's fantastic. Well, I look forward to reading that. I'm so glad that I read the article. That was an L. Thank you so much for joining me to talk about this. It was a lot of fun. And I continue to learn more about the Baby-Sitters Club baby. Those books. Thanks so much for joining me. Thank you call me if you have any questions about the baby sitters. Stacey Simms 30:17 You got it Robin. Robin Benway 30:23 You're listening to Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms. Stacey Simms 30:29 More information on Robin and her books on the episode homepage. I'm really appreciative that she jumped on with me and I definitely got to seek out her books now. It was funny to think about not just the Baby-Sitters Club books, which as I said, I was marginally familiar with as a kid I was a little too old. But the sweet Valley High books man, she made me want to see if my mother still has them. I bet she does. I guarantee you they do not hold up for where they are relic of their time. Right The 80s if you're familiar with sweet Valley High I know you know what I'm talking about. If you are not I will not suggest Due to any more of an explanation, all right, in just a moment, I will be talking to a different kind of book altogether a different kind of author, a dad who wrote a book about his son's diagnosis to help other kids and families. But first Hey welcome to our newest sponsor Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Gvoke HypoPen you know, almost everybody who takes insulin has experienced a low blood sugar and that can be scary. have very low blood sugar is really scary. And that's where Gvoke HypoPen comes in. Gvoke is the first auto injector to treat very low blood sugar Gvoke HypoPen is pre mixed and ready to go with no visible needle and that means it is easy to use. How easy is it, you pull off the red cap, you push the yellow end under bare skin and you hold it for five seconds. That's it. Find out more go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the Gvoke logo. Gvoke shouldn't be used in patients with pheochromocytoma or insulinoma. Visit Jeeva glucagon comm slash risk If you have a child diagnosed very young with Type One Diabetes, chances are you have a favorite book about diabetes that you read together. We were so lucky to have a couple of these Rufus comes home was one from JDRF. There was another one that I've mentioned before called Jackie's got game that we absolutely adored. There are a lot of wonderful books now for kids with type one. And this week, I am talking to one of the authors of these books. And that is Mike's for as he wrote year one with type one, four and featuring his son, Andrew, it's all about their diagnosis story and also a bit of a teaching tool. Here's my conversation with Mike. Mike, thanks so much for joining me. It's great to talk to you. Mike Suarez 32:43 Hi, Stacey. Thanks for having me on. Stacey Simms 32:45 One of the things I loved doing when my son was diagnosed was finding books that we could read together. And you know, My son was tiny, he wasn't yet too. And so when you have a picture book like this, it's really a nice opportunity to go through it with the kids. So I just want to let you know that They really appreciate what you've done here. I think it's great. Mike Suarez 33:02 Yeah, thanks for saying that. You know, it's kind of the same experience I had, you know, I went to Amazon when he first got diagnosed, and I was looking for books myself, and I found some pretty good ones out there. But I was, you know, really looking for one that really kind of resonated and something that I could share with my own family members and friends to really kind of drive home what it is that he goes through and what it's all about. Stacey Simms 33:23 Well, it's been a couple of years now since Andrew was diagnosed, but why don't you take us through? Even though you're talking about it in the book, why don't you take us through his diagnosis story? Had you all had any experience with type one Had you ever given an injection before and this, Mike Suarez 33:36 so I was unfamiliar entirely with Type One Diabetes. My wife was more aware of it because she had friends growing up and in college that had type one diabetes, and she was around people that have given themselves insulin injections. And for me, I was just totally unaware of this condition. I was totally aware of of the treatment for it. The only thing I knew of diabetes was unfortunately, just That joke that people like to tell around how if you eat too much candy, you get diabetes. And that's basically all I knew of diabetes, which obviously isn't true or isn't fair and especially isn't isn't true of type one diabetes. So I learned a ton, just in that that first few days in the hospital, Stacey Simms 34:15 when did it occur to you that with everything else that's going on, it would be a good idea to write a book. Mike Suarez 34:21 So it was probably a couple months shy of his first year with it. I don't know how the idea popped into my head. I was taking the train in and out of Boston every day for work. And I think just a few lines kind of popped into my head. So I took out my iPhone and just wrote him in my notes app. And I think part of it too, was that my wife and I were talking about bringing a book into school, to read to his classmates, know what it is that he has and goes through and know why it is that he has to leave and see the nurse and why it is he gets, you know, Skittles every once in a while and he's in class. And, you know, going through the books out there, you know, again, there were good ones, but I was just looking for the right one that told the story I wanted to tell his classmates in the way that I wanted to, you know, I've seen that a lot of the other books out there are actually self published. So I knew that the opportunity to do this was out there, you just had to kind of sit down and figure it out. So I utilize my train time in and out of Boston to kind of write and refine my lines and kind of do a little bit of research to figure out what the process was all about Stacey Simms 35:26 was the idea for you to write it for kids to read or for parents to read. I mean, it's the kind of book right, it's in rhyme. But there's some concepts in there that are going to be above a four year olds head. Mike Suarez 35:38 Right. I think what I wanted, most of all, well, I guess there were a few goals. There were a few readers I had in mind. One was the newly diagnosed I wanted for newly diagnosed children to be able to read this and be able to relate to Andrews story and be comforted to know that you're not alone in this that there's other people that have been through Through this and have dealt with it. So that was maybe my primary audience secondary to that would be kind of the friends and family of somebody who is newly diagnosed, including my own friends and family so that they can get an appreciation for what it is and kind of understand what it is that their, you know, diabetic friend or family member goes through. But I guess, you know, I was just thinking about when I read to my own kids, you know, a lot of time it's me reading to them, not them. I guess as they get older, it's more of them reading to themselves, but it's mostly me reading to them. So I can, you know, kind of pronounce the big words, but also the books that we tend to enjoy the most, or that I enjoy reading the most and they seem to be the most receptive to are the ones that rhyme. So I did want to have that kind of make it accessible for kids not make it kind of a chore to read. And that's something that I none of the other books that I saw did was was kind of right in verse so I wanted to have that aspect of it to be accessible. Similarly with the pictures and the drums I wanted them to be kind of, you know, light hearted in a way as much as it's a serious subject matter, but to make it accessible for kids to understand, Stacey Simms 37:08 the book tells the story of you know, your family's journey, and then educating people about the basics of type 1 diabetes. But at the very end, your son has signed it and say, thank you. How did that piece come about? Mike Suarez 37:23 One thing I haven't mentioned yet is I actually did this whole thing in secret, because I did it on my train rides, and nobody was watching me and then at night, I would, you know, once everybody wants it bad, I'd maybe work on it a little bit more. And this includes the whole process, finding the illustrations, kind of framing it for them, getting beta readers to help sharpen up the the rhyme and all that sort of thing. And I wanted this kind of personal touch because I wanted people to read it and realize that this wasn't a fictional character that this is a real boy. There was maybe the same day that I asked Andrew to write up a birthday card for a birthday party he was going to I just took out another piece of paper and just asked them to write on it. Thank you for reading love Andrew. And he asked me What's this for? And I just was like, I don't worry about it. Like I didn't really, I just asked him to do it. Then I put it all together. And then I when it was finally done, I got to read it to my family for the first time, you know, naturally they all loved it. But I think it was I read it first to my wife and son while my daughter was napping, because I didn't, I kind of wanted to, you know, have their full attention. But after she woke up, Andrew took the book, and he showed it to her. And he flipped immediately to that page that had his writing on it, and was like, so proud of having that contribution to the book. That was the first thing he showed his little sister. That's great. Stacey Simms 38:41 There's a page of the book that, you know, has him coming home and has gifts and things with a lot of beams on tags. Are those friends and family names. Mike Suarez 38:51 Yep, they were basically you know, the people that probably were the first to find out and you know, felt, you know, really bad and came to us with, with just some gifts for Andrew, including our next door neighbors and their kids, my sister and her husband and their kids, basically, you know, aunts, uncles, siblings, it just so happened that some of the names rhymed. So if you read them in order, even though the name tags kind of, you know, rhyme together, when I recognized that I was like, you know, I should put them all in there and kind of, you know, thank, you know, some of the people that were, you know, part of this journey and a part of kind of coping with all of this. Stacey Simms 39:31 Yeah, I think it's really well done. The one thing I would say is, there's this little bit about no sneaking snacks. We count carbs to know what goes into my body, but no sneaking snacks. That's beyond being naughty. Yeah, I'm no psychologist, but I always felt like sneaking and and associating any bad behavior with diabetes was something that maybe it was something that we never did. Let's just write that way in my house. We always said you can't get in trouble for anything to do with diabetes, it just flies off the books. So that's the only thing that kind of made my eyebrows go up a little bit. But Gosh, Mike, I'm not really not a critic here. Sure, you know, and I think that's also a good illustration, no pun intended that we all parent in different ways. Yeah. Right. I mean, there's no one size fits all you got to put insulin in, you got to know where your blood sugar is. Yeah. But you know, the way you parent is probably not exactly the way I parent and that's fine. Right. So that I was just curious. And you know, you showed it to your endo. I think that's, again, with my book, I did the same thing, right. You know, you're not a medical professional, but you're showing it to the medical professionals and hoping that they will flag anything that comes up. I'm also curious to know, your daughter makes a couple of appearances in the book, and she's one of those names that we mentioned. Who is she doing and how do you balance the son who gets all this attention for type one and trust me, I have the same situation in my family, right. I have an older daughter who doesn't have type one. How do you handle that with her? How is she doing? Mike Suarez 41:00 Yeah, I mean, she's just as used to it by now as as Andrew, you know, Andrew was four and a half, she was one and a half. So she has no memory, you know, whereas Andrew may may recall, he's he's a, he's got a pretty good memory for a kid his age, he may recall a time before all of this, she would have absolutely no memory. So this is all she's ever kind of grown up to now. So whereas if they were teenagers, then maybe if she was used to just, you know, snacking whenever she wanted, she would continue to do that, despite Andrews diagnosis, but because we're able to kind of be careful around that about that stuff from the outset. If it's not time for Andrew to eat, then we're not going to let her eat in front of him. But if we're you know, giving Andrew you know, something to bring his blood sugar up, if it's maybe a pack of Smarties or something like that, and we only need to give them eight of the 10 then maybe we'll give her the other two, but it is interesting to see how she internalizes as she gets older, how she responds to it, somewhat funny side note around it She sees Andrew take shots all the time and she doesn't get them herself. And sometimes she sees Andrew get shots and she like, asks or she at least at least did this. earlier on, she would say, where's Maggie shot? Where's Maggie shot? And we would explain No, Maggie doesn't need a shot. So I think it was last year when we took her to get a flu shot. She was all about getting her flu shot right. After she got it, she asked for another one. And she was like crying because not because she got the shot, but because she only got one, which was kind of backwards from what you'd expect a kid raised to do. And then another kind of similar story is there was one day where she closed like a dresser draw on her finger and her fingernail started bleeding and you would expect a kid her age to just start wailing. She actually picked up her finger and she was like check my blood sugar. Check my blood sugar. Mike Suarez 42:51 You also wrote a Christmas story. Yep. Why did that come about? Tell me that story? Mike Suarez 42:59 Yeah, sure. So When you're one with type one first came out, yeah, I created a Facebook page to kind of go along with it to give updates about Andrew and to kind of, you know, create some fun memes and things like that to kind of draw attention to it. And I created a kind of a spin on Twas the Night Before Christmas. And every once in a while, like a new couple lines would occur to me even after Christmas, and I would kind of go back and edit the post. And then at some point, I was like, you know, there's probably enough here and there's probably enough opportunity for reuse from my first book that, you know, I wouldn't even be that many more new illustrations. I could just turn this into another book, relatively inexpensively and you know, certainly justify the cost that goes into it. And so I said, Yeah, why not? So I just kind of thought through it and just kind of threw it together and I was really happy with the way it came out. Stacey Simms 43:50 So Mike, we celebrate Hanukkah. I'm not sure how well versed I am in this classic poem, right? But it seems to me that all of the reindeer have Dexcom on I'm not sure I remember that from the original Am I looking at this right? Do they all have Dexcom Mike Suarez 44:07 everybody everybody basically everybody in the story that the Dexcom the reindeer have all all of Dexcom on the Elf on the Shelf has one Santa has one basically everybody in the book and that's what I wanted to create was kind of a world where you know what, it's okay that everybody in the story has it. Stacey Simms 44:25 All right, so what's next? Well, there'll be another issue of this are you gonna move on to the elementary school ages Andrew, you know, with seven now so it's a little different than when he was little? Mike Suarez 44:35 Yeah, it's a good question. I'd certainly like to do you know, to continue Andrews story. I haven't really started anything yet. But I've got a few ideas floating around. I mean, I think one of the things I realized is that there's actually more children's books that are picture books than there are kind of chapter books. That's obviously a whole different ballgame. Then picture books, but my mother in law's actually she's an author. As well, and she's written lots of novels. So if I do decide to go down that road, it'll probably be a lot more work than I did for these other ones. But I certainly would have, you know, a mentor throughout the process. If I did go down that route. Stacey Simms 45:13 It'd be great to have more books with a protagonist who lives with type one. And it's not about type one, if I could put a request in. Yeah, no, it would be really nice. There's a few books and I'll, as you listen, I'll link some of them up in the show notes. But there are a few books Besides, you know, the Baby-Sitters Club that feature Stacey who lives with type one, but it's a little outdated at this point. And the lily books, there are some I hesitate to call them novels. They're like novelizations for middle schoolers and stuff like that. It'd be great. There's only a couple of books I can think of that have a protagonist who lives with type one, but the book is really not about the diabetes. Mike Suarez 45:47 Right. So yeah, Stacey Simms 45:48 that's, I'll put my vote in for that. Mike Suarez 45:50 Yeah, certainly. I think that's a great idea. Stacey Simms 45:53 Well, Mike, I really appreciate you coming on. These books are so fun. I have a lot of great memories of reading the book that we liked. When he was little Jackie's got game was our favorite. I don't even know if they're still printing that one. But that was the one we loved. So I hope that people find this and love it, you know, kind of just like we did that stories. Thanks for coming on and sharing your story. Sure, Mike Suarez 46:13 yeah. Thanks so much for having me. Stacey Simms 46:14 You can find out more about Mike's book, just go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the episode homepage. This is in the show notes. Every episode has show notes on whatever app you're listening to. If you listen to podcast apps, they will display a little bit differently. I think Spotify is finally letting people click through. In other words, if there's a link in the show notes, you can get there through Spotify, but you can always go to the homepage at Diabetes connections.com. if things aren't showing up in your player and find out more there, tell me something good is up next. And boy, there have been so many changes this year with COVID and the JDRF bike rides not an exception, but there's some really good news about one particular writer and I'm going to share that but first diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. Do you know about Dexcom Clarity. It is their diabetes management software. For a long time, I just thought it was something our endo used, but you can use it on both the desktop or as an app on your phone. And it's an easy way to keep track of the big picture. I check it about once a week. It really helps me in many dial back and sees longer term trends and helps us not to overreact to what happened for just one day or even just one hour. The overlay reports help add context to Benny's glucose levels and patterns. And you can share the reports with your care team. We've done that all this year with the virtual appointments makes it so much easier and productive. managing diabetes is not easy, but I feel like we have one of the very best CGM systems working for us Find out more at Diabetes connections.com and click on the Dexcom logo a couple of years ago I met a local woman here in the Charlotte North Carolina area who lives with type 1 diabetes. Dana Cumberworth first impression that she made me was that this might be one of the fittest people I would ever meet and come to find out she is really Just an athlete, just one of these people who is always always moving and pushing and thriving with type one she bikes she runs she weight trains. Dana was diagnosed as a student. She was a first year student at Wake Forest and their physician's assistant program. And how she was diagnosed is pretty incredible because they were doing the endocrinology part of the class. And when her lab partner tested Dana's blood sugar, it came back at 700. So she was diagnosed in the class while she was diagnosed at the doctor's office the next morning. Fast forward. She has since done I believe, three Iron Man races and then she started getting involved with jdrf. And the bike rides this year was two been a very big deal for Dana because this is her 10 year diaversary. It was just last week actually that she marks 10 years with type one, and she was going to do several if not all of the rides this year. Oh my goodness. But of course plans changed. Everything went virtual. So she and her husband and friends planned ahead To the beach to the east coast here of Charlotte, North Carolina, and do their own version of the ride there. This was supposed to happen this past week. But if you've been following the weather and the hurricane trackers, then you probably know that hurricane eecs was a big problem here in North Carolina. So instead of being able to complete this at the beach, in fact, with the way the podcasting time shifts here, she will have completed 100 miles in Charlotte with some friends and family. So that is absolutely amazing. She set a new goal she keeps surpassing her monetary goals. So her new goal set just a couple of days before that ride is $20,200 because as she said in one of the videos she makes 2020 has already been unbelievable. So why not push that goal? That way? She's not that far off. So 2020 $20,200 and oh, I have forgotten to mention that Dana and her husband announced a couple of weeks ago that she is pregnant, I believe at this point. She's about 1819 weeks along. Hi, I'm going to put some of her videos in the Facebook group because she's been talking about her journey this whole year. And I just think her story is amazing. I will link up some of the videos that she's been doing into the Facebook group at Diabetes Connections, the group, but yeah, hundred miles, type 1 diabetes pregnant. And when you look at her smile, it just looks like it's a piece of cake. She's so inspirational to me, especially to push on with everything that's happened this year and how this ride keeps getting changed and changed and changed. So congratulations, Dana. Continued Good luck and good health to you and your family. And we will cheer you on. If you have something good going on. It doesn't have to be 100 miles of biking while you're pregnant. It can be you know, a diaversary milestone that makes you and your family happy or something that you really want to shout to the hills. Let me know you can email me Stacey at Diabetes Connections comm or post in the Facebook group Just tell me something good At the top of the show, I said I was going to talk a little bit more about the Baby-Sitters Club, the TV show on Netflix. And I think that Robin and I covered it pretty well. But I just wanted to say a couple of more quick things about the actual depiction that I realized we didn't touch on in the interview. If you haven't seen it, or you've had I'm curious what you think the feedback I heard from my friends who have kids with type one who watched it was that I don't know anybody who didn't like it universally, very well received by their kids. They loved seeing a beautiful young woman who was accepting of her condition who told her mom, you know, I'm going to do it this way. Who asked for a fancy purse, she didn't get the fancy purse. But you know, she did this for that Gucci bag. And you know, other things like that, which made it seem very normal. You know, she was low during babysitting, she drank the juice box and went on her way. It didn't seem insurmountable and her friends, the kids, I don't think Robin and I talked about this. The other babysitters in the club, when they found out said Why does somebody with diabetes or you can still do such And so with that, right? Okay, no problem and they really just moved along. Like most kids do, it's the adults that have more of a problem, the things I didn't like about it, they still got stuff wrong, which amazed me because I know that they had to be consulted with people who have type one for this, or at least I hope they did. But what they got wrong was the seizure. Did you see that she had a seizure before she was diagnosed, and they talked about it like she went into insulin shock. Now, I am not a medical expert. Perhaps that could happen. But it makes no sense to me that somebody who is not yet diagnosed with type one, so they are not taking any insulin could go into an insulin shock that would make them have a seizure. Right. It just seemed kind of a stretch. They wanted to do something that would make Stacey embarrassed to push the reason why they moved. It was just this whole I don't know to me that was a big turn off, but it was quick, and I get it it move the plot along. The other thing was this weirdness where that one low blood sugar, which Stacey treated herself causes her mother to take her in for a day of tests. Now, having been a very Worried Mother, I'm still one, let's face it. But when I called my endocrinologist every single day of the first month that Ben he had type one, which I really did do, they never told me bring him in for tests because he had a low blood sugar. Right? I could see a parent calling. I could see a parent being alarmed. I couldn't see an endocrinologist going along with that. And given Stacey was talking about how she was in the hospital for a whole day taking tests. So that was also a little weird. Is it nitpicky? Yeah. But if you're going to tackle something like type one, it's really not that hard to get it right. So I hope they continue to follow Stacey and show her confidence and show we're doing lots of other things that have nothing to do with diabetes. There's definitely gonna be a season two of this show. It's a huge hit. That means there's a lot of room to get it right. So I stay optimistic. What did you think I'm really curious to hear what other people have to say about this as more people discover the series before I let you go, I have something to ask of you and it is about podcast reviews. If you are still listening, I know you were a big fan. I would really appreciate it. If you haven't moment to go to whatever podcast player you're listening on and leave a review. Maybe you're listening on the website or through social media, but especially if you're on Apple podcasts, I'd really appreciate a review there. If you're not, you can head over to Apple podcasts easily find Diabetes Connections and hit subscribe. It's free to subscribe. no cost. It is free on any podcast player and we are everywhere you can get audio Spotify, Pandora, Apple, Google Android, if you're not sure, go to the website, Diabetes connections.com. Scroll down, and you will see 15 links of places to subscribe to the podcast. And you just you can pick one, chances are good, the app is already on your phone and subscribe for free and leave review. I'd really appreciate it. All right, thank you to my editor john Kenneth audio editing solutions. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Stacey Simms. I'll see you back here next week. Until then, be kind to yourself. Benny 55:01 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs avenged Transcribed by https://otter.ai r iPhone      Click here for Android

Now that the country is opening back up again, many people are excited to see their loved ones, eat at restaurants, go to shows, and live their lives in a more pre-pandemic way. But as excited as we all are, sadly, many of our favorite places to visit no longer exist. They shut down during the COVID-19 recession and couldn't survive. So today I am absolutely thrilled to welcome back my guest to the show. While others weren't so lucky, today's guest is excited to give us an update. I'm Hilary Topper and you are listening to Hilary Topper on Air. Joining me today on this episode is Jeff Jaffe. He's the founder and owner of Pop International Galleries. They are an art gallery on the Bowery at the junction of Spring Street in New York City. Welcome to the show, Jeff. Jeff - Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here, given what we've all gone through this last year and a half or so. Hilary - Gosh, it's been, it's been crazy. Um, well, I'm very happy to have you back on the show and I'm so glad that Pop International Galleries, which is one of my favorite in New York City, is still open and doing well. Can you remind our listeners about who you are and what Pop International Galleries is all about? Jeff - Sure, The Pop Gallery started back, believe it or not, it's hard to even comprehend back in 1997 when I sort of came to realize that there was a need for an art gallery to focus on specific things. And in those days it happened to be pop art, which was Andy Warhol and Keith Haring and big names, John Michel, Basquiat, and Roy Lichtenstein and so on and so forth. And we did really well with that. But as things began to progress, it dawned on me that Pop International really meant focusing on pop culture more than pop art per se, that pop art fits into the realm and genre of, uh, what we're sort of interested in, but there were more things too, we were missing out on. And so we began to focus on sports, photography and rock and roll photography, and, more recently, street art and graffiti, and, as a consequence of which, Pop International Galleries has become this sort of iconic little center for focusing on anything that has to do with pop art and popular culture. Hilary - So, as we were talking at the beginning of the show, I said that this year had been like no other, how was the gallery doing? And how did you fare during all of this? And how did you survive? Jeff - It's funny. I was just going to say before you said the word survive that we dived into survival mode. There were choices that had to be made. And then there were decisions that were made for us that we had no power to overcome or resist or embrace. We just had to sort of take them on. And as a consequence of which, we sort of began to look at what the virtual world was going to offer us. What technology was going to offer us and help us with, that goes past the questions of having conversations with landlords and dealing with those kinds of things. And we were fortunate enough to have a lovely landlord who was willing to help work things out and help us through so that we could really remain in business. And then the other thing is I made a very, very strong decision. Some people questioned me why, but I decided not to let a single staff person go. I was just sort of, of that mind where I felt a certain amount of responsibility. And so I took steps to enable remote working and remote selling, which was very difficult because selling art remotely is not something that we would ever have thought we would ever encounter. People like to come to an art gallery, they like to look at the art and smell it and touch it and look at the frame and we really had to come up with different sort of means and strategies to get people comfortable with the notion that they could buy a lot this way. Hilary - So during this pandemic, you told me that you developed even stronger client relationships. Can you talk about that a little bit? Jeff - Absolutely we, well, again, it sort of goes back to this notion of virtual business and sort of doing things with Zoom and Skype and all kinds of things. And what we discovered was that by actually picking up the telephone as opposed to sending emails, reaching out to people individually and touching base with people, especially regular collectors about us. And we have, we have a huge collectors base and I mean, people have been buying from us for 25 years. We have thousands of people that we've sold out to and we decided that one of the things that we would do is reach out to people individually. And so it began. And emails became phone calls, emails became texts, messages, and text messages, became phone calls. And then it sort of blossomed into this ongoing dialogue between our consultants and our collective base and which led into larger events using a Zoom to have virtual openings and that kind of thing, which had been very successful. Hilary - So, can you tell us, or, share with us some of the interesting artists that you represent in your gallery today and why you represent them? Jeff - Well, we represent roughly about 25 artists or so from around the world. And again, it goes back to what I said a little bit earlier in terms of representing art is certainly pop related, but it has much more to do with the notion of what popular culture is. And subsequently, we still do represent Andy Warhol and Keith Haring and John Michelle Buskey out and so on. But we've edged out into other realms, which focus on things. Like, for example, we did a very, very special event with the godfather of street art, Ron English. And Ron was thrilled at the concept of making a type of work that he had never made before, which is paintings on paper in the manner he had never made them before. And so running this book has become a very important aspect of the pop gallery. We represent a Danish artist whose name is Ola Olberg and Ola has taken the cartoon character Tintin, who many people know lots of American people don't know about Tintin, but put Tintin into different scenarios, sort of naughty sort of sexual scenarios, which is something that most people don't associate Tintin with. But the idea of Tintin and popular culture and cartoons and things, that many people and I grew up with Tintin comics. So, that's been truly successful. We represent an artist by the name of Tony Ray Negro, who did all the backstage passes for the grateful dead. When, you know, from the age of 20 back in the eighties and nineties and so on. So the whole concept of rock and roll and music fits perfectly into this notion of pop culture. And then of course we represent two other artists that really fit into this concept so beautifully that I couldn't have even imagined it. It was just a natural thing. We represent the art of Dr.Seuss, which besides all this sort of nonsense and drama that occurred with the audit Dr. Seuss recently, we represent the estate of. Dr. Seuss, which means all the illustration drawings and things that he made limited additions of and the estate represents and a very special what we call the secret audit Dr. Seuss, which has stuff that he made in his spare time or the midnight audit Dr. Seuss, along with what he called the unorthodox taxidermy, which are these really beautiful, funny sort of taxidermy heads, which are just hilarious. And then we represent Tom Everhart, who was the protégé, if you will, of Charles Schultz of Peanuts and Snoopy fame. Tom was a young guy who saw Schultz Sparky as a mentor. And they had a really wonderful father, son type relationship. They and Tom started to interpret all the Snoopy characters and Schulz gave him permission before he died to be the only artist in the world to be able to make art using Snoopy and peanuts characters without a license. He has a lifetime license. They had a show together in the loop a number of years ago. So again, this whole notion of popular culture and pop, all these, The Seuss, the Tintin, the Snoopy Eberhardt pieces that all fit in really, really well. And then of course we move into street art and graffiti. And I have some lovely stories to tell you about that when you're ready. Hilary - Tell us we'd love to hear. So the very first sort of graffiti street art experience happened with pop and about 12 years ago, actually I got a phone call from a collector, a good friend collector. They said Jeff, these two boys who live in Bushwick in Brooklyn, I've started to collect their art quite, quite seriously. And I think you should go and visit them in their studio. And I said, Mike, if you are sure that's what you suggest, I trust you and happy to do it. So Mike set up this little meeting and I drove out to Bushwick 12 years ago. Bushwick wasn't what it is today, 12 years ago or so. And I arrived in this sort of funny little loft odd building where these two guys lived and worked. They had a studio together. Their names were, Mike Buck, Michael Bucca and, Fernando Romero, their street names, graffiti names were 2ESAE and Ski. So Fernando is Ski and Mike is a 2esae and I arrived at this place sort of not expecting a whole lot, but it was kind of exciting. And the first thing of course was they had a big pile of donuts and coffee for me on the table. And on the other side, they had a big bottle of Hennessy. They had no clue who I was going to be, and they were wondering what I was going to choose. It was really hilarious. And I meant, I went for the coffee and donuts just for the record, but, I'd forgotten to mention that they went by the name of a group that painted and work together. They went by the name of UR New York. And I saw their work around, you know, they used to sell this stuff on the street for a hundred bucks. And here I had this opportunity and as I went through the space studio, whatever you'd like to call it, I knew instantly that they belonged in the gallery. So I pulled him aside and I said, Fernando, Mike, we're definitely going to do something, but there are a few things that we have to deal with first. And they said, yeah, sure. I mean, they were really, really excited. And I looked at them and I said, you know, the 37 indictments that you have against you and the five years probation that you're on. I mean, these guys were like, looking, how do you know? How do you know all this? I said, how do I know it? Mike told me, you know, Mike referred me to you. He told me all of this stuff, they said. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But how does Mike know? And I had to sort of at that moment in time, decide, should I say how Mike and I figured out what the heck? I said, well, I hate to break it to you but Mike is the undercover cop who arrested you guys. It was always the uniform guys who took you in, but Mike was undercover. So you never knew who he was. And he developed a relationship with your love, of art and started collecting your art. Hilary - That's so funny. That's a great story. Jeff - There's a documentary in there somewhere. I'm sure. Mike, I'm telling you, they went bananas. These two guys jumping up and down hooting and hollering. It was just hilarious. And I said, and based on what. In order for me to put you in the gallery, we have to get rid of those issues that we just discussed and the way we're going to do it is by doing community work and getting involved with children in need and homelessness and whatnot. My attorney is a former judge. Mike, the undercover cop eventually became a DA. We're going to write letters. We're going to do all kinds of things that are going to sort of help mitigate this. And so the first thing we did was a big project in Chelsea in that there's a public housing center in Chelsea, on the west side of New York City. And we arranged for the boys to do a big mural and to work with all the children, helping them draw and paint and do all that kind of stuff. Got a fair amount of press and coverage. And one thing led to another. And the boys started working with children everywhere working with charities and organizations that we were able to connect them with. They went overseas, they went to Australia to work with Aboriginal children. When they went to South Africa to work with children in need, they went to Israel to work with Palestinian and Israeli children to show them how we're all the same. They really did some beautiful things and, as a consequence of all of this, all of those charges and probations were dropped and they have gone on to become two of the most important artists that we represent here. And my relationship with them is incredible. I mean, we are talking about a father-son relationship, and we've sold hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of their art since then. Hilary - Two boys selling their art for 50 bucks on the street, wonderful story. That's awesome, that's awesome. Thank you for sharing those stories with me. So let's take this a step back. Someone walks into your gallery and they're looking to start a collection. How does that process work? Jeff - So the one thing about Pop International Galleries, which I believe was a game-changer and for many reasons, was that we decided to break down that whole barrier. You often walk into these galleries where someone's sitting behind a desk and you can barely see them. It's a high sort of desk and it's just white walls and maybe three pieces of art on the wall and nobody even talks to you. And then they look at you and they want to know what shoes you're wearing or what handbag you're carrying or how big the diamond is, or the watch on your hand. You know, that kind of stuff. We broke that completely. We have a much more open, friendly, inviting, environment. And as a consequence of which people absolutely love coming into the gallery. And so we focus on people who have never bought a piece of art before and on people who have big collections. And so we don't differentiate. We just help people find all that they love. We've always had a policy not to sell art on the basis of investment, when people say to me, well, if I buy this print, you know, it's 3,000 bucks, what's it going to be worth in 10 years? And I say, well, I have a really good stockbroker who has an office down the road. If you'd like, I could send you there, but we try not to. If you came to me with 5 million bucks and said, hey, could you help me invest in art? That might be a different story, but we break down all those barriers. Hilary - That's awesome. Let me ask you something. Do you have any exciting exhibits coming up that you want to share with us? Jeff - I do. Actually. There are a few things that we're working on. I'll just tell you about two that we had that sort of part of what this conversation was about. Where these virtual exhibitions, the first one we did was with Ron English and it was a big test for us to see if we could sell art while the gallery was shut down, or while we have contracted hours or while there were rules and regulations about social distancing and so on and so forth. So we did a test actually with two artists, Ron English, and McKenzie Papa, British artists who I'd been working with for many, many years. And they were amazing, absolutely amazing. They were RSVP events only. So you couldn't come to the Zoom call if you didn't get, if you didn't RSVP, couldn't join the thing. The idea was to show some videos, moderate with questions. My team here had questions for Oscar, the artists, and then, we opened up some of the questions to collectors and again, moderated things well enough so that it didn't get drawn out in long, sort of like into a sort of drawn out thing. And we sold a whole bunch of art. And so it opened up this idea for us. To do some more of them. And, we're now going to be working on a curated show of street art, that Ski from that team that I was just telling you about Fernando Romero is going to curate, that's going to be absolutely amazing, it's going to be a smash hit, no questions about it because he's going to, he has a lot of connections, obviously in the street art world and graffiti world. And he's going to bring in people who we've never represented, um, and curated in a way that will sort of open up art that had never been shown before in this manner. So we're very, very excited about that one. The other one that I'm working on is an Australian couple, the names are Gillie and Mark a husband and wife team who make art together. And, they're actually very well known in New York City for their outdoor monumental bronze works. And, before the pandemic, they did this beautiful, beautiful exhibition of women of valor. They had come to realize that women bronze, sculptures and statues of women, we're sadly lacking female sculptures, and monumental sculptures of women. There were less of them than there were men and they were going to change that. So they did this really beautiful collection of sculptures of some fantastic women, from Ruth Bader Ginsburg and so on and so forth, it was just really beautiful. And then they've done these large outdoor installations. People may have seen it up at Astor Place in Brooklyn, the big rhinos stacked on top of one another. Monumental pieces and part of what they do besides them tease and make fun of themselves. Gillie and Mark, Gillie is a bunny rabbit and Mark as a dog in their paintings and they sit on Vespas and bicycles and do all kinds of sweet, lovely things. We're going to do an event with them online and sort of tied in with the time zone with Australia. Those are two really great things that are coming up. Hilary- So cool. How could our listeners get in touch and actually sign up for any of these events? Jeff - Really easy. All you need to do is shoot us either an email, to, you could send it to me, jeff@popinternational.com or just art@popinternational.com. And just say, Hey, I heard the podcast, or you could, um, just call the gallery. And the number is (212) 533-4262. And we'll put you on the list and, and sort of begin to develop a relationship with you the way we have with our many, many thousands of collectors that we have over the years, we look so forward to it. Hilary - This was really informative and congratulations on your successes. I really appreciate you being on the show. I want to also thank our sponsors, the Russo law group, The Profit Express with Tim Healey, Pop international galleries. Thank you. Gold Benes LLP, and the Pegalis Law Group. And last but not least, I want to thank you our listeners for tuning in. If you want more information on this show or any other show you could visit our website at hillarytopperonair.com or you can find us on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, apple podcasts, even Amazon Alexa, where out there you'll find you can find us have a great week and we'll see you next time.

My next podcast is going to be another good one. I have ACO Mike Wilster from Surprise Police Dept. on with me to talk about A Day in the Life of an Animal Control Officer. I thought that it would be good for everyone to understand just what it is that animal control officers do on a day to day basis. So Mike is going to talk with me and discuss all of this.

Welcome to this week’s episode of the Thinking Big Podcast.    Today I welcome America’s #1 money mentor, Chris Naugle to the show.   Chris empowers entrepreneurs, and business owners with the knowledge of how money works.    Chris is driven to deliver the financial knowledge that fuels lasting freedom. To date, he has spoken to and taught over ten thousand Americans.   His success includes managing over 30 million dollars in assets in the financial services and advisory industry and tens of millions in real estate business, with over 200 transactions and an HGTV pilot show since 2014, and is the author of two books, including Mapping Out The Millionaire Mystery   My biggest takeaways from this episode are: How to become your own bank, and have money start working for you. The lies, or misinformation we have been told about how money works. I can now get a Money Gun!   Today we will be Think Big on money and how to use it   Connect with Chris Naugle https://www.chrisnaugle.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/thechrisnaugle https://www.facebook.com/thechrisnaugle https://www.instagram.com/thechrisnaugle/ Connect with Sean Osborn at Thinking Big Coaching http://www.thinkingbigcoaching.com https://www.instagram.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ https://www.facebook.com/thinkingbigcoaching/   Episode Transcript Well, everyone I want to welcome Chris Naugle to the podcast. He is the number one money mentor, and before we get too much into what you do, me and my wife had had a disagreement for the last. I'd say six to eight months that I'm hoping you can help with.   Oh,   yeah.   Okay, I want to go buy a money gun. You know, just load up money in there and just shoot that shit everywhere. I wanted money gun. She thinks that's not a wise investment of my money. What do you mean? You cannot go wrong with the money gun?   Oh my god. She doesn't think money guns a good investment here. See? I'm gonna prove that it is Hang on one second. All right, I did. I wasn't prepared for this. But let me show you how important a money gun   There we go. See?   That gotta have a money gun. So when she watches this recording, and sees that man Oh, man, it might just look like a bunch of things going at the camera. But those are hundreds.   So I am I am going to get a money guy. That's that's the first thing I'm gonna do. Come see. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it.   Got it now.   Yeah. God, see, Snoop made it look so damn good that I just have to get one. So there we go. That's that's a no brainer. Now. Now getting into so my audience you know, a lot of my audience is young entrepreneurs, people who are new into their career, new into possibly doing a side hustle new into trying to get have their money, start working for them instead of them working for their money. And that's where I know that you can add absolute tremendous value to, to my tribe and to my listeners. Before we start, what are some? How did you kind of get you know where you are? What drove you to do it? Because to me, you know, success leaves clues. And knowing a little bit about your journey on on, you know, where you came from, and, you know, kind of where you get your journey where you are usually loved to hear those stories?   Sure. I mean, you know, from a young age, you know, and I love you know, what you teach and what you talk about, she talks a lot about imagination and dreaming. And that's kind of where I began, you know, I grew up in a lower middle class family mom didn't have any money and dad wasn't really in the picture. And I had to just imagine things, you know, I wanted to be a pro snowboarder, and I wanted to skateboard in a dirt bike. And I couldn't just have those things. I couldn't just say, Hey, Mom, let's go buy a dirt bike, or Hey, I want to snowboard I had to first visualize it. Now, a lot of my upbringing was that was dreaming, visualizing so deep that you know, I would draw pictures of me doing it and then at night, I would literally dream about me actually doing that. And, you know, by the, you know,   trying to remember how old I was like 15 or so, I was so dead set on being a pro snowboarder because I watched all the VHS tapes of these pro riders. And that's all I want to do. So that materialized and I did become a pro snowboarder, but it's not like you could just think of it and then all the sudden happens you have to go out there and do what everybody else is unwilling to do. So that's kind of like a lot of how my upbringing was right to my first clothing line that I started in mom's basement. And that was just a dream. I actually hated my job. I worked at a restaurant I was degraded so badly that that job led me to the point where I said, I'm done trading hours for dollars. And the only alternative is what call, I got to make money somehow to go on these snowboard trips. So started printing shirts with my art teacher Mr. Mahal ski and selling them in backpacks. And then I'd get friends that would come in, and I'd say, Hey, I'll give you a shirt if you helped me sell these to people in school, and it just one after another. And then on the snowboard journeys, we would stop at the stores, you know, along the way, and I'd map them out on a back then we didn't have GPS, just so everybody knows I'm a little older, we have actually a map, and we'd map out all the shops, and we'd stop and ask him to sell the clothes and that materialized. And by 17. I'm like, you know, this whole, traveling around with a bag of clothes is cool, but I want my own store. And that became my next big dream. And that dream almost led me to my first like, you know, failure. I don't want to say failure. But you know, where you get to a point and everybody tells you you can't do something. There's no way that's possible. There's no way that's going to happen. You're a fool. That's a stupid idea. You're going to lose it all kid, you know, like that movie, you'll shoot your eye out, kid. Well, that was that was me. And I almost gave up. And I remember I needed 70 grant to open fat man board shops in 1994. And I couldn't find 70 grand I had no idea how to raise it. Every bank said no. But I, I got one bank that said, Hey, if you can collateralize the loan, we'll give you 70 grand. And to me, I didn't even know what the word meant. And they told me and I'm like, great, I've got a 86 Audi 4000, I've got a dirt bike and a baseball card collection Will that do? And they said now we're thinking something a little bit more. My mom knew that this was like the thing that stood in the way of me chasing my dream and not and she put her house the only thing she had in the world I grew up in a 700 square foot two bedroom ranch out in Lockport, New York. And she put that house on the line so that I could get that loan and chase that dream. And that's, that's where life got interesting. Because I was becoming a pro snowboarder, now I had these stores and I had a whole new obligation that was don't fail or mom and you want mom and me lose the house, you know, I don't have a place to live. So that's a lot of pressure on a 17 year old man. That's where it began. And I'll never forget, you know, everything started going well. And by the early 2000s, I had multiple stores was highly leveraged. And then the.com crash hit and I really had to make some decisions, I was either gonna deliver pizzas or go do something and I put my resume out. And I got calls from Wall Street firms of all places. And that's kind of where the story begins with money as I landed in Wall Street, it was just like the movie Wall Street with Michael Douglas. I mean, that was what I was chasing. That's kind of in my mind what being a stockbroker was even though it's not it, that's what I envisioned. And I dove in. And at first, it was a temporary thing. But it ended up being something I was really good at something I really enjoyed. And I still continued running my stores, but I wasn't working in the store anymore. And I remember who's kind of weird like a pro snowboarder, because at that time had gone Pro. And now all of a sudden, every day I'm wearing a suit, kind of like messes with your mind, who actually you actually have to, you know, mindsets, everything, you actually have to kind of separate, you know, that whole two sides, like one side is I'm going to wear my jeans, my hoodie, my beanie. And then the other side is, I'm going to go be an advisor, I'm going to put the gray suit on with the black tie. And I'm going to do that thing. And that was hard for me. But I was really, really good at the advisor role and I was working on my stores not in them anymore. So the stores actually started doing a lot better. And that's when I started learning a lot about money and stocks and bonds and everything was like a dream. You know, at that point, I was making more money than I'd ever made. And, you know, I was running my stores doing the pro snowboard thing. And hash man, I remember like from 2004 to 2008. It was just like a fantasy world. And I remember, you know, I flipped a couple houses 2006 and seven in 2008. I decided to dive in and I bought a dilapidated paint store to convert it into a strip mall where my main Batman store was going to be and I mean, you know exactly where I'm going. Because in 2008, many of you will remember what happened. Some of you might be too young, but in 2008 was the great recession that thing hit me like a Mack truck and I was one payment, one payment from being bankrupt. And at that point, that was my first like crush. You know, a lot of people realize that and I remember, you know, I was so beat up so down in the dumps that I came home to my girlfriend who had just moved into my house like, you know, all of us have that girlfriend that moves into the house, right? You show up one day and our bags are there. Or maybe that's just me, but I like to think everybody goes through that. And I came home to her and I said Sweetie, I need your help. I need your help paying the mortgage. I need your help paying the utilities. And by the way, my friend Pete's gonna move into that bedroom and my friend Jessica is going to move in into the bedroom upstairs. Any questions that go? Yeah, well, I thought I had a 5050 shot it 150 percent she was gonna walk out the door and never come back. And I had a 50% shot that she was gonna at least help with some of it. And I think she kind of liked me because she actually did stick around. And, you know, we're now married, we have a 10 month old, but so you can see where that one went. But that's how I made it through that time. It was it was hard. Working from 4am till 10 o'clock at night, I had a lot of changes. But that was my first crash and then 2009 to 14 and I'm going to get right to the point of how I learned what I did here. I got into real estate real heavily and I I thought I was doing everything right I read the books, I you know, I'd watch some videos, and I just dove in and I got up to 36 units I was so proud of myself. I'm like, Oh my god, I got this real estate thing figured out and and everybody that's in real estate knows that nine to 14 man was that a good time to buy because everything was on sale and sometimes on sale. 70%. So I amassed 36 units at great prices. But where I made the mistake is I didn't understand how money really worked. And by the 37th unit, the bank said no more. You don't fit in a little box, we're gonna we're not going to give you this next mortgage. And I thought that was it. But that led me to getting a little behind. Then they froze my lines of credit so I couldn't finish units and then then that story in 14 and I had to sell all 36 units in a went quick. I remember I was having a hard time making ends meet. We me and my wife are well she's my fiancee then But me and Larissa had just bought our dream house, I had the two Audi's in the garage, you know, everybody envisions like you get to that point where you're doing well, but now all of a sudden, everything was crumbling under me again, this is like the third time this has happened in my life. So you can see, I'm on this crazy roller coaster. Right? I have money and then I then it's all gone. And then I have money and assets. And then it's then it's all gone again. And this one hit me the hardest because I really thought I'd figured it out. I thought I'd made it. And then all of a sudden, just one turn of events, one change, one thing happens. And now all of a sudden, I'm right back at the bottom and life is falling apart. I'm selling that dream house, I'm selling the audio in the garage, I'm selling all my rental properties. And I just felt so defeated. And I had dreamed this life I dreamed up this house I dreamed up that as for in the garage, like all these things, I had dreamt and imagined them happening. That just all fell apart. And I'll tell you the next part is pretty miraculous. And what happened in it was I got a postcard to go to a three day seminar to learn how to flip houses. And I didn't want to go, you know, I wasn't going to the seminar to learn how to flip houses, but they were giving away a free iPod Shuffle. And I was like, I gotta have that.   So I want like a money gun.   It's just like, you go to an event and someone shoots the gun at you, you know, it's like, you're just thinking that so I go there, and I was so bored. I'm like, I'm the advisor in this room. And these guys, you know, you don't have an ego, I'm not gonna lie. You know, you go through life. And you know, you think you make it and you get an ego. And it's hard to shed that ego. But two guys got up in front of Mike and Greg. And they start talking about money. them like I perk up I'm like old money or now we're talking about something my life. And they start talking about money in real estate and what they're doing and how they're using it, how they're being the bank, and I've never heard the be the bank thing. Like my hat says BYOB. A lot of people like oh, bring your own beer. Well, no, it's become your own bank. And that's what they're talking about. And they started saying things that I'm like, listening to and I'm like, No, it doesn't work that way. Oh, no, it can't be that way. You're doing what? How are you? You know, I start questioning. All these things are saying and these are the two rock stars, these guys were very successful. One had an a&e show. And all of a sudden, by the end of that event, I mean, I remember they do their call to action. I was the first guideline, credit card getting maxed out for money that my lawyer said moved back in and I thought she was going to kill me. But I knew that I had just heard something that was about to change my life. And what they talked about was that one thing that changed my life and it was so simple. And that's what I liked about it was like all I had to do to do what they were doing is change one thing in my life. And at that moment, 2014 I began that transformation that change. And that's when everything changed at that after that I started going to masterminds and I had mentors, and I couldn't afford any of this. I want everybody to be clear to remember I just lost just about everything. So when people think about this, like oh, you must have had all this money. No, folks, I did not you know what I had? I had a VISA credit card, same one I still have today. And I max that sucker out. Over and over. I just I knew I had to have what these people knew. Because I knew the answer to why I was riding this roller coaster was lying in the secrets of the wealthy. I knew that these wealthy individuals knew how to do it, and I didn't and I needed to bridge that gap.   That's, that's very interesting because a lot of people won't, or don't spend the money to learn, they don't. And the way I look, the way I always look at is I would rather spend a few $1,000 and compress, you know, two to 10 years in two months, you know, learning what other people what other other people know. And then people who don't invest in other programs just aren't going to get very far. Now Now, one of the things you said I'm an I'm an out date you a little bit. So and we actually have kind of parallel back backgrounds a little bit. So I grew up in Colorado, and I was a skier. But this was way before snowboarding wasn't really even a thing back then. And I was actually and I was actually Hawking t shirts. That said, Give me Rossignol or give me head. Because those are the two big ski brands.   My at the end of my first I had snowboards was my number one sponsors, really.   So you know, and I was in like, I don't know, maybe sixth grade hockey and give me Rossignol or give me head. T shirts. So brings it brings back brings back some some memories. So what are you so money does not work the way that we think it truly does not. And there there is things that people with money know that people without money, don't know, there's assumptions, there's lies, there's, you know, just the perception of what what money really is, you know, what are some of the things that I don't know about money that I need to know about money,   it's easy. We are brought up and it's no one's fault. We're brought up in a society in a world where we're literally lied to every single day about what money is how money works, and everything else. And the biggest mistake, all of us make, and myself included until I learned what we're about to talk about is we are not in control of our money, we have been taught our entire life to give up control of our best dollars, like I'm holding $100 bill, like we've been taught to take these dollars, and give them to somebody else, deposit them in somebody else's bank. And we just think that that's right, we think that's normal. And then when things happen, like my story, we're not in control of the dollars that we need to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves, because we've already given up control because somebody somewhere convinced us that we are not capable of being a good steward of our own money. And I'll tell you break it down to every one of you, nobody, even a high level financial advisor like I was for 16 years, nobody will ever care more about your money than you do. So why? Why do we give up control of our money? The tool? Because that's all money is a tool? Why do we give it to somebody else? Why do we deposit money in the bank? Ask yourself, why do you do that? That's the simplest thing. You know what? Like, let me ask you, why do you deposit money in the bank?   Because that's just what we do. That's what we've been taught. my paycheck goes directly into the bank app, I never see it.   And it's because of what you just said, because that's what you've been taught to do with your money. And you just don't even think anything of it. What if I were to tell you that the bank makes 400 to 13 100% more money than you do on your dollars? Like you're like most people when I say that? No, they don't they can't they lend it out at six. And I'm making wonder if you're only making five? No, they're making 400 to 13 100% more than you are because what they're doing is they're moving your money continuously and consistently. I mean, most people when they take money into the bank it take this $100 and give it to the teller, you know, what do you think happens? You think when you hand that money to the teller the teller takes your $100 bill and puts it in a little box in the back with your name on it. Heck, no man that the money that bank takes your money and lends it out in those little glass cubicles, and does make 400 to 13 100% more because they're making the margin and they're giving you next to nothing. And we just think that's okay, folks, that's not okay. It's not okay. And then when you need your money, let's say you got a large sum of money or 10,000 or more in the bank and you want it all because you got a great opportunity. Go to the bank and try to take all your money out. Try just just, you know, a lot of people tried doing this back during COVID in March in April, and they realize the true fact they wouldn't give you all your money. They're like, well, we can't give you it all now and you're just you know, in most people are just like all that stuff. Okay. Well, can I just come back like houses were like, almost like we're asking permission for the bank to give us our money back, folks. You're brainwashed. You're brainwashed and listen, like I'm seeing this and I get so passionate about this because that was me. I just thought this is okay. And then not only that, like what else do we do like if any of you listening like have a job or you have a business that has retirement account, you get your paycheck and before you even get it, the money goes into that form. One key thing that you've been told by everybody is exactly what you should do to save for that fictitious day called retirement. Or when you're going to sell off on your sailboat out into the water. Very few people ever do that to see, you know, statistically only five out of 100 people are going to be financially secure at the age of retirement. So right there lies the problem. And the problem is our whole life, what we've been trained to do is to conform to what somebody else tells us, our future life should look like 5% only five of those 100 created their lifestyle and created their financial futures. And that is where the problem is. You all wait including me have forgot how to create.   And if we don't create it ourselves, no one is going to create a course they're definitely not back there trying to create the wealth bores now do you think the stock market? I'd like to get your insight on the stock market? Do you think it's a game? Again,   it's a fixed game. Yeah. And it's going to crash and burn in 2022 and 2023. And that's very controversial. I say that I upset people. You know, like, no, it's not, it's not going to crash Listen, like it will crash and to will in 2000.   Yeah. It To me, it's, it's all a perception of what people think it has. No, there's a lot of it that doesn't have merit on the back end, how things are valued, or, I mean, I lost millions in 2000 when the stock market when the dot bubble hit, millions just disappeared, literally, literally overnight. And so what do you think about like, you know, the hedge funds and like the the GameStop thing it to me that that just shows the complete when when a group of people could go and just obliterate a hedge fund. To me I kind of giggle when I saw that. I'm sorry, but   I thought it was great, man, I wish I could have went out and patted all those retail investors that played that game and but you know, they didn't beat the hedge funds. A lot of people like oh, we won this. No, no, you didn't you actually lost but you proved the point. And you proved the point that the hedge funds are not Invincibles you know, they can be beaten in now in today's digital world, if people band together keyword if people come together for a unique, you know, a uniform goal. And that goal was Hey, we're gonna drive GameStop up, then you actually can be traveling. But the problem is, unfortunately, it's called FOMO. Okay, fo mo fear of missing out. That's one of the most dangerous things I just did a recording the 10 biggest mistakes investors make and that's one of them is FOMO. People think when when GameStop was going up. Now let's look let's think about GameStop. Because everybody remembers this. It's pretty recent. When that was going up, like where did people forget the GameStop. On its best day, its greatest year was a $20 stock in its best day. And it got to $500. And people thought that it was a good thing to buy. It's called FOMO. It's just the same thing. When you go to the casino, and everybody's winning, and you see everybody like winning, you're like, Oh, my God, I'm missing out, put it all on black, and then you lose it on you're like, Well, that was stupid. Like, well, that's GameStop. That was stupid. I see in GameStop. I mean, I'm a professional trader been doing it. 20 years, I understood everything that was happening. I understood the short side the cover, you know, I understand why they were able to beat that because they pushed it so high that that hedge fund couldn't cover anymore, and they just had to just lay their cards down. But the thing is, is the retail investors actually lost that battle because they all jumped in it at the top and some of them didn't get out. And that's, you know, one of the biggest mistakes here's, here's the easiest rule. If anyone wants to make money in investing, here's his golden ticket. This is how you make money and you'll never be wrong. Follow three rules. Rule number one, buy low. Rule number two, sell high. Rule number three, don't lose money. And you know what the best part about rule number three, is it happens automatically when you do one in two. So why is it that every single person that invest unless they're a trader or professional trader? Does the complete opposite? In most people like No, they don't think about it right now. Are people piling money into the stock market? Absolutely. Why is the stock market going up like crazy right now? It's because people are piling money in, they get their stimulus check. A lot of people are dumping it in the market. Where's the market? all time high. So what are what are people actually doing and what do people do? They put they buy high? And then what do they do when the market goes down? Fear sets in and they sell   low? And what do they all do lose money. They do the exact opposite of what they get on they do everybody the second starts going down, people are gonna get beer kicks in and they're gonna, they're gonna sell. They're gonna say shit, sell it all, sell it all. And here's the thing that people who know what's going on. They're selling right now sitting back. When it goes back down there, they're getting. So I actually did that one year. So I think it was in 2008. I'm like, Mother, I'm not gonna do this again. I saw it going down. This wind went way down. I took out A loan on my 401k as much as they would do it when the stock market I think was like 13 or 14,000 at the time, and then I put it in an account. And then when, when the stock market was down to like three or 4000, I put it all back in. I just knew that. Because when I got burned in in 2000, with all that I, I started paying a little more attention to how the stock market, I'm no pro by any means. But I start paying attention. I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna try getting ahead of this. I pulled all this money out of it, and then put it back in when it was low. I probably lost it all since then. But you know, it's,   yeah, I did the right thing. And that's a hard thing to do. How did you feel when you were buying into that market when it was all crashing around you and you're listening to everybody around you losing money in every paper and every news channel is all you're losing? It's it's all going to fall apart? And here you are, you're buying because you just knew that you should do this. But what did it feel like to actually buy during that?   I was giggling he for once I might win something.   Now a lot of people when they actually do it, they're supposed to do they actually have fear doing it. They're buying into a market going down and mentally they're so like, it's I don't know what they call it. But when the markets are going up, there's something inside of us that makes us feel warm and fuzzy and excited. You know, it's going up. But when it's going down fear is there. And it's hard to want to buy an oil I don't know if I should it's going to go lower, of course it's going to go lower. Well, I'm going to buy in when it gets to the bottom, you'll never get the bottom and you'll never get the top you can't time the market. So the best thing to do is just when it goes down you just start buying systematically and consistently just by you know and it's it's funny you mentioned about like selling right now what are the wealthy doing right now? Like we're so everybody listening to this, you know, right now we're we just turned into April of 2020. What are we in 2021 COVID happened and we all forgot about what year it was, but 2021 and the wealthy individuals, I know, multimillionaires and billionaires are all selling my real estate portfolio that I built up over the last six years selling, selling just listed another three properties. I just sold two, I started with 91, about a year and a half ago, and I'm down to I'll be under 20. And people must think Oh, are you crazy? Like Is something wrong? Like do you need the money? Oh, absolutely not matter of fact, I don't need the money at all. But I do understand the principle of what I just said rule number one is buy low. I did that. Rule number two, sell high, the market is high. So I could hold these. But what why to ride the next cycle back down? Why would you do that? And that's the thing like with stocks? Why in the heck would you ever buy a stock and just you know, buy it at the top and you feel good? And then all sudden, you're just like, well, if it goes down, I'll just ride it out. No, you won't. And 90 plus percent of the people that buy stock or mutual funds or ETFs, don't ride it out. They've just conditioned you in your mind to believe that invest for the long haul you'll be okay, but no one ever does. Because when it actually happens, it's a different reality. Fear kicks in. But then reality happens next. And the reality is I lost my job. I don't have any money to pay my mortgage, I can't pay my kids college tuition. And Heck, I can barely put food on the table. And I got all this money sitting in my 401k. And I was supposed to ride this out because it's like 40% down I What are you gonna do? You're gonna you're going to put food on the table for your family? Are you going to worry about your retirement accounts loss you're going to sell? Of course you are and you're going to take major losses, which are then real, and then you're going to pay taxes folks like this is what people do. So why would you do that? Just do the opposite of everybody else, and you will probably be way better off.   And that that's in anything in life. If you see a herd of people doing something, do the opposite. Don't do what they're doing. Because you you will know I know that you do a lot of stuff in in real estate and I'm part you know, with COVID. You know, COVID happened. You see all of these companies, you look at downtown's now, like downtown Houston, I'm in Houston. And you see a lot of these high rise buildings that were businesses that they're now figuring out, hey, we might not need that real estate, we can do a lot of stuff from home. I'm person I'm waiting for a boom of conversions where people real estate investment trusts REITs come in, and they say, okay, we're gonna convert these two housing to living. Are you seeing anything in that in the real estate? I just think there's gonna be such a big thing in the in the business side, you know, we're companies are not going to need the space that they have that they currently have. And how is that can be repurposed? And how can we position ourselves to take advantage of possibly some of that real estate that I think is going to happen? It might not be in a year might be in three or four years, but it's going technology is getting better? More and more companies are going to go remote. And I think a lot of that real estate is going to be converted to something. I don't know what but something.   You're absolutely correct. You know, one of the biggest things that this country lacks is affordable housing in there's a massive need. for affordable housing, there's, there's not enough rentals for the amount of people there's people that will you know, very soon I don't know when when they stopped with this moratorium bullshit scuse my language, but there's gonna be a massive, like problem with people's mortgages with some, you know some companies that own some of these larger facilities, they think they're not going to be able to stabilize some of these buildings. Again, like you said, it might not be a year or two years or down the line, it's not going to be immediate, but you're going to have a major transition because these big sky rises that used to hold all these people, all those people are working from home on channels like this, or zoom. They're not in those offices. So how are these companies going to afford to pay all those rents? And, you know, pay all those overheads? They're not? So yeah, I think you're gonna see a massive switch, that these commercial spaces are going to start converting into living spaces you're already seeing in strip malls, you're seeing strip malls, be converted into self storage facilities, you're seeing old box stores like Kmart, and that being converted into storage facilities, Heck, even Walmart's so you're already seeing it happen. Because the world's changing, Amazon is obviously needing more warehouse space. And so is every single business in the world, because they're all going digital, and it's changing time. So how do you capitalize on that? Well, you get ahead of it first, but now would be too early. Because if you buy now, real estate way too high. And remember the rules, you got to always go back to the rules buy low, not high. And then what's going to happen, though, is when all this does settle. And the government, you know, stops with this modern monetary theory nonsense of printing, which they're just trying to drive inflation, if you see the price of things going up, folks, that is just your dollars becoming weaker, it doesn't mean that things are going up in cost, your money is becoming weaker, because the Fed is trying to do that they're trying to create inflation. But the problem is, it's not working. And it won't work. Because this thing's gonna all blow up and crash and burn. This is the largest experience or experiment in our history with the financial systems. And I don't think it's gonna work. And so to most economists, they don't think it's going to work. So if it doesn't work, what does that mean for you? It's not good. Because if you got all your eggs in the baskets, where they want you to put your money, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, that's where they want you to put your money, then you lose it all. But you know what, when when you lose, somebody else gains when the Fed increases inflation. Who wins the government do when when milk is double the cost of gas is double the cost when lumber goes up? 40% Oh, sorry, just did who loses? Not the government you do, the government wins, because the the deficit in the money they owe is now cheaper, because they can pay it back with weaker dollars. You see, that's the whole game. And there's only a couple ways to get ahead of this. And you got to just change. So a lot of people like well, it's all over. What am I going to do now? I don't know. I guess I'm just going to try to enjoy my life and hope for the best until this whole thing explodes, as says, you know, says this Chris Naugle guy, I know, there's more hope than you can believe. And it's so simple. You just follow what the wealthy to do change one thing. And that is where your money goes first, and then I'll teach, you know, and that's what we do with BYOB or the money multiplier. We teach people exactly how to do that. And how to do the same thing that the banks do the same thing that the wealthy do with their money. And it's something that's been done for hundreds of years, and it will not fail, and it will not crash and burn, and you will come out on top. And that's the beauty. It's like I can say that with the utmost certainty because it has to work.   Yeah. It always has. So is that Yeah, I know. You talk about your infinite banking. You know that that philosophy of of what you do that concept of what you do it? That is exactly what it I mean that is that exactly what you're discussing our Thursday, I'm thinking what,   what I learned in 14 was I sat there talking to you know, this guy, Mike Baird, about real estate, and he was lending me money. And he starts talking about this thing, you know, and call that his private bank. And awkward. That sounds cool. Tell me more about this private bank thing. I didn't learn that and Wall Street school. He starts telling me and he's going into it. I'm like, Wow, that's awesome. Wow, it's guaranteed to it's tax free. Come on, like, Dan, someone's lying to you. But keep going, keep going and telling me all this stuff that he's doing Oh, yeah, I can put money in and take it out immediately. And I still make uninterrupted compound interest on every dollar even though I took the money and I'm just like, Dude, what is this thing? And then he tells me, and I lean in, I'm like, someone's lying to you, man. I'm sorry, Mike. But I'm an advisor. And this is not how that thing works. And he leans into me and he says, Chris, if it doesn't work that way, then how have I been lending money to you all this time from this? And how has it worked? exactly the way I just explained I sat back huh? You got a point there. So Mike, how do I learn this thing? He's like, I can't teach it. I just use it. So call this Brent guy and you know, and that led to me watching a 90 minute video that was my my toll if you will to be able to talk to this brand guy. And that 90 minute video is what changed my life and I If anyone wants to know what a privatized bank is, you guys are not probably going to be ready for what I'm going to tell you. But a privatized bank is you creating your own bank, but not at a bank, at an insurance company, and you do it with a vehicle you all know and probably don't like called whole life insurance. Oh, that's right. But it's not the whole life you buy from an insurance professional or insurance store. It's a very specially designed and engineered whole life design that can get really the only people that know how to do this are the people that only do this, your financial advisors, I I'm hard pressed to find a financial advisor that actually understands this. They say they do because they, you know, they're like me, they think they know everything. No disrespect. But believe me, guys, you know, you think you know everything about money. And then when they actually learn about it like I do, they're like, I didn't know it could do that. I didn't know it worked that way. I didn't know I could give up my commission so that the client actually has access to 60 to 90% of their money immediately. Yeah, well, you should have studied with the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, and what every bank in this country has been doing for hundreds of years. And that's so my   financial, so my financial advisor that pulls up in a beat up, Camry might not know about how to how money works,   I find, you know, and I know a lot of advisors, and you know, a lot of them get mad at me, because I kind of beat up on them a little bit. But I've earned the right to, and I always tell them, I say you don't understand this. Well, yeah, I don't know what whole life is, again, exactly. You don't understand how this work, right? Otherwise, you'd be doing this. But then they don't do it. Because they don't want to give up their commissions. They don't want to, I mean, let me let me ask you this, your financial advisor that pulled up in that beat up, Camry, like, do you think he'd be willing to give up 90% of his income so that you could have access to 90% more money?   Absolutely not,   you're absolutely correct. And that's the whole name of the game. In order for privatized banking to work, the way that it works for the banks in the wealthy, somebody's got to give up a lot. And that somebody is that the money mentor, the advisor, or the IBC practitioner that knows how to build this, they have to give up their commission so that you have access to your money. And then that's where the fun begins. So once you get somebody that's actually willing to do that, and actually, I got to go back to that camera, because that's funny in Wall Street, when I was when I was an advisor, one of the jokes was, you know, why do people pull up to Wall Street in a Rolls Royce to take advice from some of you that took the subway and and very true. Most of the clients that I helped, and that I've dealt with had way, way more money than me, but for some reason, they took advice from me, it was a weird dynamic, but that gets the guy's got to think about that. We should all be taking our advice from the people who have done it, who have made it and who are living what we would articulate as the perfect day. And if you're not taking your advice from that person, or actually getting guidance on that, then you're doing it wrong, and you're learning about the big lie even more, you're doing everything backwards so that somebody else can have control of your money and make money on it. And that's that's what privatized banking does. It puts you in the driver's seat in in 100%, control of your money. And what else it does is it puts a perpetual tailwind behind your money. Think about an airplane right? airplanes. When they fly. They're either flying with a tailwind or headwind. And when you have a tailwind, you're like, oh, the pilot comes on and says, oh, we're going to arrive 30 minutes early, we had a nice tail, and you're like, That's sweet. The plane didn't have to work any harder, didn't have to fly any faster, nothing had to change. But we got here 30 minutes faster. What you don't realize that plane was going 150 miles an hour faster than it was the other time when you were on the plane going the other direction. The headwind is not something that most people think can change, but it can't. And it's it can change with something that Albert Einstein talked about a lot called compound interest. But let's add one word to that on interrupted compound interest. Imagine this, I'm just gonna do a visual if I can't, because I'm a visual thinker. Imagine I have $100. And let's say I change one thing, this $100 that normally would go into someone else's bank, you actually took this advice, and you say, you know, I'm going to change where this money goes first. So you change and you put this money into this specially designed and engineered whole life. So I got $100 that I just put into it. And I don't get caught up in the numbers, folks. It's just an example. Like, should be more than that. But now I get $100 there. What does the insurance company Give me that my bank doesn't? Well, right now in 2021. All the insurance companies we use which are mutually owned dividend paying insurance companies pay a guaranteed 4%. So does your bank pay you 4% on your deposits?   Hell no.   There you go. That's the right answer. Hell no. They don't barely give you 1%. So now I'm better off there. But then the insurance company because their mutual says hey, every year based on our surplus assets, we're gonna give you a dividend. So I'm like, Wow, that's cool every year. Yeah, it's not guaranteed, but we've paid dividends out for over 100 years, and we're gonna probably pay dividends for the next 100. So now listen, I'm not just making four I might be making six. So now I'm making 6% on my money. That's way better than the bank. But now, the reason I put the money in the bank is because I've been lied to and taught that. That's the Any place that can put money and take it right back out, and Oh, God, I gotta have my money. How many of you listening to this right now, when you look at your bank account on that piece of paper, you get warm and fuzzy, but the more there is there, the more money you have in somebody else's bank, the more you're losing the game, just so you know. But that's what you you feel warm about that, because you're like looking at it, you like touching it, that means your money's not working. Your money has to be working everyday because you only have so many hours in the day, most people work 40 to 80 hours a week. And after that you're just shot, right? So if you can't work any more hours, then how can you make more money? Well, I can get a raise, I can do things more efficiently, I can find a better job, I can start a hot side hustle. But you are always going to be research restricted by the number of days or hours in the day, you can only make so much the problem, or the thing that you need to do is you need to stop thinking about how much money you can make by trading hours for dollars, you need to start thinking about your dollars going to work because most people have equity in their homes have money sitting in 401, K's and money sitting in the bank accounts. And you know what, I want you to visualize this. Because this is the way I learned it. You come home after a really hard day, you open the front door of your house, you're exhausted, it's late, you just want to go to bed and you look over into your living room and you catch a glance of your couch and on your couch is your money. Your Money is literally sitting on your couch laughing eating potato chips spilling all over drinking your soda watching TV. And it's been doing this every day for the last week, the last month last year, and it looks over at you and it says What did you have another hard day? Because that's what you do, folks? you lent money was exactly it's exactly what in laws except for the money actually would go to work your in laws won't go to work. You could walk over to your money, you can say you know what, tomorrow, you're going to go to work, you're never going to get a vacation, never gonna come home, you're never ever going to stop working until the day you're gone. And your money would be very thankful because finally you gave it a purpose. People just don't know how to make money work. So let's go back to that one, change that $100. We put it into that bank. And we know the banks paying us better interest guaranteed. We know it's paying us a dividend. But now what about liquidity? You put your money in the bank? Because you can take it back out? Well, yeah, we have liquidity. In the first couple years, you might not have 100% access to all the money. But how much do you have 60 to 90% in the first year. So let's say I put 100 in and I want 90 back, I can go immediately in the first 30 days and take 90 out. Now that was your regular bank and you started with 100 new took 90 out how much money is still earning interest in your regular bank $10. The remaining amount in my bank, this privatized bank, which is the specially designed whole life $100 is still in my account. And I'm holding $90 like literally I've got no I'm just holding a bunch of money I'm holding $90 in my hand and $100 is still in the bank earning 4% plus the dividend. How can that possibly happen? Well, this 90 I'm holding in my hand, it's not even my money. See the insurance companies have all the money and they will gladly lend me money and alone of nine Duff. So all I do is I go online, I click a button, no application no credit check in 36 hours later, the money's in my hand I'm holding $90. Where did the 90 come from? Is what people typically asked me? Well, it came from the insurance company's general account. Yeah, I get that. But why would they just give it to you? And why wouldn't they ever want that loan back because you told me that I don't have to pay the loan back, who's making loans and not asking for the money back insurance companies. Why? Because all they did is when you took that contract out, they promised two things promise to pay you 4% guaranteed. And they promised you a death benefit the day you graduate from this world, or this earth or whatever you want to call it graduate means Dodgers so everybody knows. So what they do is they take this $90 and they subtract it from my death benefit, it's the same thing to the insurance company someday they got to pay that death benefit out. So it doesn't matter if I use it while I'm living or when I'm dead. They're just going to give me this $90 is the loan, they're gonna charge me interest on it, but not more interest in what I'm earning on my money. So now I literally have an arbitrage on money. And I'm holding $90 now the most important thing is, you just learned how to make uninterrupted compound interest on your money. But now you got 90 bucks. So what are we going to do with this 90? We're going to go put it on black? are we actually going to do something productive and make this $90 that wants to go sit on my couch? But really doesn't. We got to make it work. So where is it gonna work? could work in real estate? It could work? How about even easier how many people you know, have credit card debt. So let's just assume somebody's got a visa. And they're paying, you know, it's just for simple math. The visa is $90. Okay, that's their balance. And they're paying, you know, 10 bucks every single month on that visa trying to pay that $9 balance off, but visa is charging them 20% every single year. That's the headwind. So even though you're trying your hardest to pay this debt down, it just never seems to get paid down. Welcome to the world. Welcome to what you've been taught us credit card game. That's the game. So now let's change that game. I have $90 in my Hand of the insurance companies money that would, it just means that I'm going to get somebody when I die gets $90 less. So I got this money, I'm going to pay these off. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to take the $10 that I used to get the visa, and I'm going to change the name on the check. Because I'm not going to stop paying the $10 that I used to get my visa, let's be smart about it. Let's be an honest banker. I'm going to change the name on that $10 check. And I'm going to write Chris naugles Bank, and I'm going to put that $10 back into my bank. So what just happened? Well, some people are like, well, you took a loan from your private bank, that whole life thing you're talking about. You paid off visa, then you took the $10 you were given visa and you put it back in your in your account. Okay, great. You draw circle, you just went full circle. But in doing that I made money twice. I made money once on the 4% plus dividend. Okay, that arbitrage and then I made money twice, because I just recycled and recaptured 20% that I used to just give away. You see, when I teach people about money, I teach them that the biggest rotor or the biggest problem to most rotor of wealth is not so much that your ability to make money, you're good at that. It is the simple fact that you give all your money away to somebody else's bank, you do visa, Amazon, car payments, mortgage payments, all your money goes to somebody else 90 cents on every dollar goes to somebody else to build Well, why don't we start there, instead of working hard or taking on more risk, let's start taking back the money we're giving away to everybody else. If I can make 20% by just paying myself a $10 check instead of visa, man, that's wrong. And that's Yeah.   And that's such easy money to get back as I mean, people are pushing out hundreds or 1000s of dollars per month, on interest fees, that they're just pissing in the wind, you're never gonna see that never didn't get it back. Never gonna be now. So I did something back. I'd say maybe five years ago, and people thought I was stupid. And they said, yo, you never do that. That's the wrong thing to do. And I'm like, well, and again, I'm no financial person. I'm like, I would rather borrow from myself than a bank. So we were going to go buy a new car. And I said, well, rather than go get a note and pay them, even if it's 2.9%, or 3%, I'm going to go take a loan out of my 401k, which is already my money. I know it's not going to build the interest. I know that's stupid. But if I'm still going to be paying the money regardless, I would rather be paying myself that 3% interest in it going back into my 401k I know that's probably the stupid thing to do. But I'm like, why would I pay someone else interest when I can pay myself vendors? And what you're saying is the exact same thing, but instead of doing a promo 401k you're doing it from a, you know, from your from your other source? That is to me that that is a Oh, that's see, you're teaching stuff that people just don't know. I know people just don't understand that and don't know.   But let's talk about that. 401 K, so yes, am I I'm using the only difference between what you just described using a loan from your 401k. And what I'm doing with this specially designed whole life policy, the private bank is I'm earning uninterrupted compound interest in the 401k isn't because when you take a loan from your 401k, the money actually comes out of the 401k. It's no longer invested. But the cool thing about what you said, and I teach this as well, you took the money from your 401k that was just sitting there in the market. And you're just like, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to be the bank, and I'm going to basically finance my car. So you paid for the car, then you you should have taken and figured out how much the car dealership would have charged you per month to finance that car to you. And let's just say it was 500 a month, you take the $500 a month that you would have given away to somebody else for a car payment, and you pay the $500 a month back to your 401k it's the same thing. But now every penny of that $500 is going back into an account that you own that you control and that you benefit from. And the coolest thing people don't take loans from 401k sometimes is like Yeah, but I got to pay interest on that loan. Yes, you do. And that interest goes back into your account. It doesn't go to the financial company. It doesn't go to your employer it goes back into your account by law. Yeah, that's a pretty sweet thing. You just gave yourself a guaranteed interest rate. Plus you got yourself a shiny new car on the driveway. Yeah,   love it. Yeah, yeah, so and people but in all the people like advisors like that stupid you never pull money I'm like, but I'm gonna pull them 30 1000s gone regardless at that I've got the car. So either I'm going to be paying my own interest or I'm gonna pay someone else. The money's gone either way, you know, so it's   and why was that? Why do you think they would tell you that stupid why because managing it   because there's less money for them. They now control less money and it's in their financial best interest for me to keep my money there than to pull it out and use it myself. it to me You always follow the money. If if people are doing something some way it's because someone's making some money and they don't want to lose they don't want to lose that money. Now I've been to your you know, I've been to your site I've been looking at a lot of your love your stuff, the best way to Get in touch with you is just going to you're going to your website and all the people listening, it's going to be in the show notes. So you don't have to write this down. But it's gonna be in the show notes feel click, but you've got some great stuff up on your website, from your webinars, from your classes from your real estate, there is so much free, that's the thing, free valuable information. And you have you have courses and you have, you know, stuff that I'm actually going to do this, I've got to learn this stuff, because I'm, I'm sick of paying, paying everybody else. And I had the concept. I just don't know how to, I don't know the means to do it correctly. But go to Chris naugle.com. And that is the you know, all of your stuff is is up there.   I give everything away for free, including my book. I mean, you can go to the website and get my book mapping out the millionaire mystery or the private money guide. Totally free. I mean, I'm not gonna pay the shipping to your house, but you can have the books for free. And where that came from his remember those that hard time. When I hit in 14, I went to my first mastermind out in California with this guy, Greg, and he was like, just a superstar, right? And I remember paying all this money to go there. And I caught him. I got him aside and I said, Greg, give me the best advice. I'm down on my luck, like what is the best advice you can give me and he puts his hand on my shoulder and he says, Chris, I'm gonna give you the best advice. I can give you any in liens. And he says, give your best stuff away for free. And then he walks away. And I'm like, really, dude, I just paid five grand to come to this mastermind. That's the best thing you got. For me. I'm like suffering here. I'm broke. And that's what you tell me. If folks, it was the greatest advice somebody could give me because it goes back to the core universal law. If you give you get, I give it all away for free. So thank you for bringing that up.   Yeah, you can't you cannot get without giving. And here's the you know, here's another mental thing that people think they think that you know, the stuff that I teach and the stuff that I do. It's all out there for free anyways. It's, it's I just can put it in a different maybe a different format different way. But it's all out there. So yeah, giving it away for free. And it's like money, it goes against what we're taught that, you know, you got to hoard that stuff. You got to keep it like you know, that's, you know, your information is your goal that that's your company. You can't do that. But it does not work that way. It does not so, great stuff up there. Great stuff up there. And all the listeners I'm telling you, you don't know what you don't know. Go to the website, go to Chris Naugle comm go to the website and look at the three webinars, the free stuff that's up there, get the book, you've got two books up there, it, it this stuff's free. So why would someone This is what always gets me so you got all this great information up there. And people still won't a lot of general public still won't go do do that. And it just blows my mind. You probably spent years writing your book you spent you know 20 years of knowledge going into that book, and stuff that you're teaching and I can go there and get that for free. It's just blows my mind that people do not take these journeys to learn what other people people who who have made it are always willing to share their experience share their knowledge to grow other people. So again, thank you so much great stuff and I'm I'm telling you I'm up there and I think I might bring back the give give me Raj Nord give me head   you should gotta bring that back. And if I can just say cuz everything we were just saying can be summed up with a quote and this is I think, why people don't do things. And it's a quote that Will Rogers said he said the biggest problem in America is not what people don't know. The biggest problem in America is what people think they know that just ain't so. Stop taking advice from people that hold you down that hold you back that don't empower you stop taking advice from your broke ass brother in law and go out there and create yours future the way you want it to be.   Absolutely. Oh, again, Chris, thank you so much for for taking the time out today to be on the show. And and give you know give give back to your my community. And thank you so much. And just thank you that that's all I can say. It's great, great stuff. Thank you. Great talking with you.   You as well.

In today’s episode we are going to talk about THE LIES WE TELL OUR KIDS. We don’t advocate lying to our kids but sometimes these little white lies are the only way to get things done when reason fails. And let’s be honest here, kids are not generally very reasonable people so we resort to white lies. Think of those little white lies you tell your kids to get them to eat their vegetables or tidy their mess or just to get them to behave. So Mike and I have put together a list of white lies that so many of us have told our kids…and continue to tell them, some of them are absolutely hilarious, for example “It is not coke, it’s black water and you won’t like it”. 

It's Friday night. Mike (@WrestleWatcher) just finished watching Smackdown. And guess what - There's STILL not a Brandon (@WrestleBrand) in site. So Mike very tiredly sloshed his way through this weekend's WrestleMania crowd and announced that YES - the tradition continues. WrestleFania Live will return once again on Sunday at 4pm on the Fans Not Experts Youtube channel.

Here is the conclusion of the special conversation I had on stage at a Traffic Secrets event with a friend and a student, Nic Fitzgerald. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ---Transcript--- Hey everybody, welcome to Marketing Secrets podcast. I’m so excited, I’m here on stage right now at the Two Comma Club X event with Mr. Nic Fitzgerald onstage. A year ago I gave a podcast to him about how to make it rain and this is section number two. Now those of you who don’t know, in the last 12 months since I did that podcast he’s been making it rain and he’s been changing his life, his family’s lives, but more importantly, other people’s lives as well. And it’s been really cool, so that’s what we’re going to cover today during this episode of the podcast. So welcome back you guys. I’m here on stage with Nic Fitzgerald, so excited. So I made a list of seven things that if I was to sit in a room with him in front of a whole bunch of people I’d be like, “Hey Nic, you’re doing awesome, but here’s some things to look at that I think will help you a lot with what you’re doing.” So number one, when Nic first kind of started into this movement that he’s trying to create, I don’t know when it was, if you created this before or after. When did you create the Star Wars video? Nic: This was, we talked in July, it was September/October. So a few months later. Russell: How many of you guys have seen his Star Wars video? Okay, I’m so glad. For those who are listening, about 10% of the room raised their hand, the other 90% who are friends and followers and fans of Nic have never seen the Star Wars video. His Star Wars video is his origin story and it is one of the best videos I have ever, by far the best video I’ve seen him do, it is insanely good. It comes, do you want to talk about what happened in the video? It’s insanely good. Nic: So I told the story of, I’m a huge Star Wars nerd, so if you didn’t know that, now you do. When I was young my grandma who lived in the same neighborhood as me, she took me to go see Return of the Jedi in the movie theater and I was such a Star Wars nerd, even at a young age, that when I was playing at the neighbors house, and you know, it’s the 80s, so mom and dad are like, “Nic, come home for dinner.” That kind of thing, I would ignore them. I would not come home until they called me “Luke”. No lie. I would make them call me Luke, or I would ignore them. I would not hear them. Russell: Had I known this in high school I would have teased him relentlessly. Nic: So my grandma took me and I remember going and it was so fun because we took the bus, it was just a fun thing. And we went and I just remember walking in and handing my ticket to the ticket person. And then popcorn and just the smells of everything. And again, this is the 80s so walking in the movie theater; I almost lost a shoe in the sticky soda, {sound effects} going on. I just remember how my feet stuck to the floor and all that stuff. And then just being so excited to see my heroes on the big screen and Dark Vader, I just remember watching it. This is such a silly thing to get emotional about, but you know I remember the emperor and Darth Vader dying and all that stuff. It was just like, ah. It was a perfect day. Sorry sound dude. But it was just a perfect day with my grandma who has always been dear to me. So the purpose of that video, I’d put it off for a long time. I knew I needed to tell my own story if I’m going to be helping somebody else tell theirs. And I put it off for a long time, because working through things, I was afraid that if it sucked, if the story was terrible, if the visuals were crappy, that was a reflection on me and my skills. I had worked on a bazillion Hallmark Christmas movies, you know how they put out like 17 trillion Christmas movies every year, if one of those sucks, no offense, they’re not riveting television. Russell: They all suck. Nic: That wasn’t a reflection on me, I was just doing the lighting or the camera work. I didn’t write the story, it wasn’t my story. But this was me, so I put it off for a long time because I knew if I didn’t execute how I envisioned it, that it would reflect poorly on me, and it would be like I was a fraud. So the purpose of the video, there were three purposes. One to tell a story and get people to connect with me on a personal level. As I told that story here, how many of you remembered your feet sticking to the floor of a movie theater? How many of you, when I talk about the smell of popcorn and that sound, you felt and heard and smelled that. So it was one thing, I wanted people to connect with me and just see that I was just like you. Then I wanted to show that I could make a pretty picture. So I had that and I used my family members as the actors. And then I went and talked about how…and then I wanted to use it to build credibility. I’ve worked on 13 feature films and two television series and shot news for the NBC affiliate and worked in tons of commercials. So I’ve learned from master story tellers and now I want to help other people find and tell their story. And then I showed clips of stories that I tell throughout the years. So that was, I just remember specifically when I finally went and made it live, I made a list of about 20 people, my Dream 100 I guess you could say. I just wanted to send them and be like, “Hey, I made this video. I would love for you to watch it.” And Russell’s on that list. So I sent that out and made it live and then it was just kind of funny, it didn’t go viral, I got like 5000 views in a day, and it was like “whoa!” kind of thing. But it was just one of those things that I knew I needed to tell my story and if I wanted to have any credibility as a story teller, not as a videographer, but as a story teller, being able to help people connect, and connect hearts and build relationships with their audience, I had to knock it out of the park. So that was my attempt at doing that. Russell: And the video’s amazing, for the 10% of the room who saw it, it is amazing. Now my point here for Nic, but also for everyone here, I wrote down, is tell your story too much. Only 10% of the room has ever seen that video or ever heard it. How many of you guys have heard my potato gun story more than a dozen times? Almost the entire room, for those that are listening. Tell your story to the point where you are so sick and tired of telling the story and hearing it, that you just want to kill yourself, and then tell it again. And then tell it again. And then tell it again, because it is amazing. The video is amazing, the story is amazing. How many of you guys feel more connected to him after hearing that story right now? It’s amazing. Tell t he story too much. All of us are going to be like, “I don’t want to hear the story. I don’t want to tell the story again.” You should be telling that story over and over and over again. That video should be showing it. At least once a week you should be following everyone, retargeting ads of that video. That video should be, everyone should see it. You’ve got 5,000 views which is amazing, you should get 5,000 views a day, consistently telling that story, telling that story. Because you’re right, it’s beautiful, it’s amazing and people see that and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I need that for my business. I need to be able to tell my story the way he told that story, because the connection is flawless.” And I think my biggest thing for you right now, is tell your story more. Tell that thing. You’re telling good stories, but that story, that’s like your linchpin, that’s the thing that if you can tell that, it’s going to keep people connected to you for forever. Anyone who’s seen that video, you have a different level of connection. It’s amazing, it’s shot beautifully. You see his kids looking at the movies, with lights flashing, it’s beautiful. So telling your story more, that’d be the biggest thing. It’s just like, all the time telling that story over and over and over again. That’s number one. Alright, number two, this one’s not so much for you as much for most of everybody else in here, but number two is that energy matters a lot. I’m not talking about, I’m tired during the day. I’m talking about when you are live, or you are talking in front of people, your energy matters a lot. I was hanging out with Dana Derricks, how many of you guys know Dana, our resident goat farmer? By the way, he’s asked every time I mention his name is please not send him anymore goats. He’s gotten like 2 or 3 goats in the last month from all of our friends and family members here in the community. Please stop sending him goats. He loves them but he doesn’t want any more. Anyway, what’s interesting, I was talking to Dana, and he’s like, “Do you know the biggest thing I’ve learned from you?” and I’m like, “No. what?” and I thought it was going to be like dream 100 and things like that. No, the biggest thing that Dana learned from me, he told me, was that energy matters a lot. He’s like, “When I hang out with you, you’re kind of like blah, but when you get on stage you’re like, baaahh!” and I started telling him, the reason why is when I first started this career, in fact, I have my brother right now pulling all the video clips of me from like 12 or 13 years ago, when I had a shaved head and I was awkward like, “Hi, my name is Russell Brunson.” And we’re trying to make this montage of me over 15 years of doing this and how awkward and weird I was, and how it took 8-10 years until I was normal and started growing my hair out. But I’m trying to show that whole montage, but if you look at it like, I was going through that process and the biggest thing I learned is that if I talked to people like this, when you’re on video you sound like this. The very first, I think I’d have an idea and then I’d just do stupid things. So I saw an infomercial, so I’m like I should do an infomercial. So I hired this company to make an infomercial and next thing I know two weeks later I’m in Florida and there’s this host on this show and he’s like the cheesiest cheese ball ever. I’m so embarrassed. He asked me a question and I’m like, “Well, um, you know, duh, duh…” and he’s like, “Whoa, cut, cut, cut.” He’s like, “Dude, holy crap. You have no energy.” I’m like, “No, I feel really good. I have a lot of energy right now.” He’s like, “No, no you don’t understand. When you’re on tv, you have to talk like this to sound normal. If you just talk normal, you sound like you’re asleep.” I’m like, “I don’t know.” So we did this whole infomercial and he’s like all over the top and I’m just like, trying to go a little bit higher and it was awkward. I went back and watched it later, and he sounded completely normal and I looked like I was dead on the road. It was weird. Brandon Fischer, I don’t know if he’s still in the audience, but we did…Brandon’s back here. So four years ago when Clickfunnels first came out we made these videos that when you first signed up we gave away a free t-shirt. How many of you guys remember seeing those videos? I made those videos and then they lasted for like four years, and then we just reshot them last week because it’s like, “Oh wow, the demo video when we’re showing CLickfunnels does not look like Clickfunnels anymore. It’s completely changed in four years.” So Todd’s like, “You have to make a new video.” I’m like, “I don’t want to make a video.’ So finally we made the new videos, recorded them and got them up there and we posted them online, and before we posted them on, I went and watched the old ones, and I watched the old ones and I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is just four years ago, I am so depressing. How did anybody watch this video?” It was bad, right Brandon. It was like painfully bad. I was like, “oh my gosh.” That was just four years ago. Imagine six years ago, or ten years. It was really, really bad. And when I notice the more energy you have, the more energy everyone else has. It seems weird at first, but always stretch more than you feel comfortable, and it seems normal, and then you’ll feel better with it and better with it. But what’s interesting about humans is we are attracted to energy. I used to hate people talking energy talk, because I thought it was like the nerdy woo-woo crap. But it’s so weird and real actually. I notice this in all aspects of my life. When I come home at night, usually I am beat up and tired and worn out. I get up early in the morning, and then I work super hard, I get home and I get out of the car and I come to the door and before I open the door, I’m always like, Okay if I come in like, ugh, my whole family is going to be depressed with me.” They’ll all lower to my energy level. So I sit there and I get into state and I’m like, okay, whew. I open the door and I’m like, “What’s up guys!! I’m home!” and all the sudden my kids are like, “Oh dad’s home!” and they start running in, it’s this huge thing, it’s crazy, and then the tone is set, everyone’s energy is high and the rest of the night’s amazing. When I come in the office, I walk in and realize I’m the leader of this office and if I come in like, “Hey guys, what’s up? Hey Nic, what’s up?” Then everyone’s going to be like {sound effect}. So I’m like, okay when I come in I have to come in here, otherwise everyone is going to be down on a normal level. I have to bring people up. So we walk in the office now and I’m like, “What’s up everybody, how’s it going?” and I’m excited and they’re like, “Oh.” And everyone’s energy rises and the whole company grows together. So l love when Dave walks through the door, have you guys ever noticed this? When Dave walks through the door, I’m at a 10, Dave’s like at a 32 and it’s just like, he wakes up and comes over to my  house at 4:30 in the morning to lift weights. I sleep in an hour later, and I come in at 5:45 or something, and I walk in and I’m just like, “I want to die.” And I walk in and he’s like, “Hey how’s it going?.” I’m like, “Really good man. You’ve been here for an hour.” And all the sudden I’m like, oh my gosh I feel better. Instantly raised up. It’s kind of like tuning forks. Have you noticed this? If you get two tuning forks at different things and you wack one, and you wack the other one, and you bring them close together, what will happen is the waves will increase and they end up going at the exact same level. So energy matters. The higher your energy, the higher everyone else around you will be, on video, on audio, on face…everything, energy matters a lot. So that’s number two, when you’re making videos, thinking about that. Alright number three, okay this, you were like 90% there and I watched the whole thing and I was so excited and then you missed the last piece and I was like, “Oh it was so good.” So a year after that Facebook message came, you did a Facebook live one year later to the day, and he told that story on Facebook live. And I was like, “Oh my gosh this is amazing.” And he told that story, and he was talking about it, and I was emotional, going through the whole thing again. This is so cool, this is so cool. And he told the story about the podcast, and this podcast was an hour long, and the thing and his life changed and all this stuff… And I know that me and a whole bunch of you guys, a whole bunch of entrepreneurs listened to this story and they’re at bated breath, “This is amazing, this is amazing.” And he gets to the very end, “Alright guys, see you tomorrow.” Boom, clicks off. And I was like, “Aaahhh!” How can you leave me in that state?  I need something, I need something. So the note here is I said, make offers for everything. Think about this, at the end when you ended, and everyone’s thinking, I want to hear that episode, where is that? How would it be? Now imagine you take the opportunity at the very end that says, “How many of you guys would like to hear that episode where Russell actually made me a personal podcast? And how many of you guys would actually like if I gave you my commentary about what  I learned and why it was actually important to me? All you gotta do right now is post down below and write ‘I’m in.’ and I’ll add you to my messenger list and I’ll send you that podcast along with the recording where I actually told you what this meant to me.” Boom, now all those people listening are now on his list. Or they can even go opt in somewhere. But all you did was tell the story and everything and we were all sitting with bated breath and I was just like, at the end make the offer. You guys want the stuff I talked about, you want the thing? You want the thing? And then you send them somewhere and now you captured them and consider them longer term and you can do more things with them. It was like, hook, story, dude where’s my offer? Give me something. But it was awesome. How many of you guys felt that way when you listened to that thing and you’re just like, “I don’t even know where to find that episode. Russell’s got eight thousand episodes everywhere, I don’t even know where to look for it.” You could have been like, here’s the link. Just the link….if you guys can’t figure out how to make an offer, go listen to a whole bunch of stuff, find something amazing and be like, “oh my gosh you guys, I was listening to this Tim Ferris podcast, he did like 800 episodes, every one is like 18 hours long, they’re really hard to listen to, but I found this one from 3 ½-4 years ago where he taught this concept and it was insane. It was amazing; I learned this and this. How many of you want to know what that is? Okay, I have the link, if you message me down below I’ll send you the link to exactly where to find that episode.” Everyone will give it to you.  You’ll be like, “But it’s free on the internet Russell.” It doesn’t matter. You know where it’s at and they don’t. They will give you their contact information in exchange for you giving them a direct link to the link. Back before I had anything to give away for opt ins, guess what I used to do. I used to go to YouTube and I would find cool videos from famous people. One of my favorite ones we did was I went and typed in YouTube, “Robert Kiyosaki” because he was one of my big mentors at the time. And there was all these amazing Robert Kiyosaki videos on YouTube for free. Tons of them. Hour long training from Robert Kiyosaki. Four hour long event from Robert Kiyosaki. All this stuff for free listed in YouTube. So I made a little Clickfunnels membership site, I got all the free videos and put them inside a members area and just like, “Tab one, Robert Kiyosaki talking about investing, Robert Kiyosaki talking about stocks, Robert Kiyosaki talking….”  And I just put all the videos in there and made a squeeze page like, “Hey, who wants a whole bunch of free, my favorite Robert Kiyosaki videos?” and I made a little landing page, people opt in, I give them access to the membership site, and then I went and targeted Robert Kiyosaki’s audience and built a huge list off his people. Dream 100. Imagine with Dream 100 instead of doing just one campaign to all the people, if each person in your dream 100 you made a customized membership site with the free content right now, be like, “Hey, you’ve listened to a lot of Grant Cardone, he’s got four podcasts, 5000 episodes, there’s only four that are actually really, really good. Do you guys want to know what they are? Opt in here, I’ll give you the four best episodes of all. I currated all these for you to give you the four best.” And target Grant’s audience with that, now you got all his buyers coming into your world. Is that alright, is that good. Alright number four ties along with this. Number four, start building a list ASAP. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do a call to action to get a list anywhere, have I? After today’s session you’re …..just build a list. If you got nothing from this event at all, every time you do a hook and story, put them somewhere to build a list, because that’s the longevity. Because that’s where if Zuckerberg snaps his finger and you lose all your fans and followings and friends, and all the sudden you’re trying to build over somewhere else, it won’t matter because you’ll have those people somewhere external and now you can message them and bring them back into whatever world you need them to be at. But that’s how you build stability in business. It’s also how you sell this time, you want to sell it the next time and the next time, the list is the key. Funnel Hacking Live, the first Funnel Hacking Live it was a lot of work and we sold out 600 people in the room, and we kept growing the list and growing the list, the next year we did 1200. Then we did 1500, last year was 3000, this year we’re going to be at 5000. We’re building up the list and building up pressure and excitement and then when you release it, it gives you the ability to blow things up really, really fast.  Okay, that was number four. Okay number five, I wrote down integration marketing, adding to other’s offers to build a buyer list. So this is a little sneaky tactic we used to back in the day when I didn’t have my own list, but I had a couple of skills and talents which you do happen to have, which is nice. If you have no skills this won’t work, but if you have skills you’re lucky. So Frank Kern used to do this as well. Frank is sneaky. He used to do this all the time and I saw him doing it and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, he’s brilliant.” So Frank did a one hour presentation somewhere and he called it Mind Control, it wasn’t Mass Control, but it was something like about how to control the minds of your prospects through manipulation and something sneaky. And the title alone was amazing. It was a one hour presentation he gave somewhere. And he put it on these DVDs and what he did, he went to like Dan Kennedy and he’s like, “Hey Dan, you have all of your buyer and you send them this newsletter every single month,” at the time they had 13000 active members, these were their best buyers. He’s like, “This DVD I sell for like a thousand bucks. Do you want to give it to all your people for free?” And Dan’s like, “sure.” And all the sudden the next month, Franks got his best CD with his best stuff in the mailbox of the 13000 best customers, every single person that Dan Kennedy’s been collecting for the last 15 years. So think about this. With your skill set, look at the other people in the market, all the dream 100 who are doing things and how do you create something you can plug into their offers, and every single time one of those people sell a product, your face is popping up as well. It’s called integration marketing, my first mentor Mark Joyner wrote a book called Integration Marketing, it’s a really fast read. You can read it in an hour, but it will get your mind set thinking about it. How can I integrate with what other people are always doing? Because I can go and make a sell, and make another sell, but I was like, when we launched Clickfunnels I was like, “How can I figure out other people’s sales processes that are already happening and somehow inject myself into all these other sales processes?” That way every single time Steven Larsen sells something or someone else sells something, or all these people are selling something, it always somehow gets flown back to me. I want every product, every course, everything happening in the internet marketing world to somehow have people saying my name. That’s my goal. How many of you guy have been to other people’s events and I’m not there and they say my name? It makes me so happy. I get the instagrams from some of you guys, “Hey so and so just said your name.” I’m like, that’s so good. How have I done that? I spent a lot of my life integrating into everybody’s offers. Initially when I first got started, every single person who had a product, I was an interview in everyone’s product. I was like, looking at people launching a product, specific product launches coming, I’d contact them. Product launch is coming up, “Hey man, is there any way I could do a cool thing for your people? I could create this and give it to you and you could plug it into your product?” and everyone’s like, ‘Sure, that’d be awesome.” And all the sudden, boom, they get 5000 new buyers came in and every single one of them got my thing. They’re hearing my name, hearing my voice and it’s just constant integration. I think about how I met Joe Vitale, I talked about that earlier with the greatest showman. He was in an interview in a course I bought from Mark Joyner, I listened to it, fell in love with Joe Vitale, bought his stuff, given him tons of money over the years, a whole bunch of good stuff because he was integrated in that. So looking at other ways to integrate, the skill set that you already have into other people’s marketing channels because then you’re leveraging anytime any of these partners make a sell, you’re getting customers coming through that flow as well. Cool? Nic: Yeah. Russell: That was number five. Number six, I call this one rainmaker projects, because we talked about rainmaker during the first podcast interview. So rainmaker projects are, and again when I first started my career I did tons of these, where it’s like, I was really good at one piece. For you, you’re really good at video and story telling. And I look out here and be like, okay who is someone else here that is awesome? So and so is really good at making a product on Facebook ads. “You’re really good at Facebook ads, so I’ll do the video for this course, you do the Facebook, you do the actual ads for us.” And then, you’re awesome at doing the traffic and you bring in four or five people, like this little avenger team, and you create a cobranded product together and you launch it and everyone makes a bunch of money, split all the money, 50/50/50/50, that makes more than 100,but you know what I’m talking about, everyone splits the money, everyone splits the customer list and all the sudden you’ve all pulled your efforts, your energy, your talents together and everyone leaves with some cash, and you also leave with the customer list, and that’s when you start growing really, really rapidly. When I started I didn’t have a customer list, I had a very small one. But I had a couple of skill sets so that’s why I did tons of these things. That’s like, if you guys know any of my old friends like Mike Filsaime, Gary Ambrose, I could list off all the old partners we had back in the day, and that’s what we did all the time, these little rainmaker projects. We didn’t call them that back in the day, but that’s what it was. It was just like, we all knew what our skill sets were, and it’s like, let’s come together, let’s make a project. This isn’t going to be how we change the world, it’s not going to be something we’re going to scale and grow, but it’s like, it’s going to be a project, we put it together, we launch it, make some money, get some customers, get our name out in the market, and then we step away from it and then we all go back to our own businesses. It’s not like, that’s why it’s funny because a lot of times people are scared of these. Like, “Well, how do we set up the business structure? Who’s going to be the owner? Who’s the boss?” No, none of that. This is an in and out project where all the rainmakers come together and you create something amazing for a short period of time, you split the money and you go back home with the money and the customers. But it gave you a bump in status, a big bump in customer lists, a big bump in cash and then all those things kind of rise and if you do enough of those your status keeps growing and growing and growing, and it’s a really fast easy way to continue to grow. How many of you guys want to do a rainmaker project with Nic right now? Alright, very, very cool. Alright, and then I got one last, this is number seven. This kind of ties back to dream 100. The last thing I talked about was, and again this is kind of for everyone in the group, is the levels of the dream 100. I remember when I first started this process, I first got the concept and I didn’t know it was the dream 100 back then, but I was looking at all the different people that would have been on my dream 100 list. It was Mark Joyner, Joe Vitale, all these people that for me were top tier. Tony Robbins, Richard Branson, and I was like, oh, and I started trying to figure out how to get in those spots. And the more I tried, it was so hard to get through the gatekeeper, it was impossible to get through all these gatekeepers, these people. I was like, “Man don’t people care about me. I’m just a young guy trying to figure this stuff out and they won’t even respond to my calls or my emails. I can’t even get through, I thought these people really cared.” Now to be on the flip side of that, I didn’t realize what life is actually like for that, for people like that. For me, I understand that now at a whole other level. We’ve got a million and a half people on our subscriber list. We have 68000 customers, we’ve got coaching programs, got family, got friends. We have to put up barriers to protect yourself or it’s impossible. I felt, I can’t even tell you how bad I feel having Brent this morning, “Can you tell everyone to not do pictures with me.” It’s not that I don’t want to, but do you want me to tell you what actually happens typically? This is why we have to put barriers around ourselves. Here’s my phone, I’ll be in a room, like Funnel Hacking Live and there will be 3000 people in the room, and I’m walking through and someone’s like, “Real quick, real quick, can I get a picture?” I’m like, “I gotta go.” And they’re like, “It’ll take one second.” And I’m like, ahh, “Okay, fine, quick.” And they’re like, “Hold on.” And they get their phone out and they’re like, “Uh, uh, okay, uh, alright got it. Crap it’s flipped around. Okay, actually can you hold this, my arms not long enough can you hold it? Actually, hey you come here real quick, can you hold this so we can get a picture? Okay ready, one two three cheese.” And they grab the camera and they’re off. And for them it took one second. And that person leaves, and guess what’s behind them? A line of like 500 people. And then for the next like 8 hours, the first Funnel Hacking Live, was anyone here at the first Funnel Hacking Live? I spent 3 ½ hours up front doing pictures with everybody and I almost died afterwards. I’m like, I can’t…but I didn’t know how to say no, it was super, super hard. So I realize now, to protect your sanity, people up there have all sorts of gatekeepers and it’s hard. So the way you get through is not being more annoying, and trying to get through people. The way you get to them is by understanding the levels of that. So I tried a whole bunch of times, and I couldn’t get in so I was like, “Crap, screw those guys. They don’t like me anyway, they must be jerks, I’m sure they’re just avoiding me and I’m on a blacklist….” All the thoughts that go through your head. And at that time, I started looking around me. I started looking around and I was like, “hey, there’s some really cool people here.” And that’s when I met, I remember Mike Filsaime, Mike Filsaime at the time had just created a product he launched and he had like a list of, I don’t know, maybe 3 or 4 thousand people. And I remember I created my first product, Zipbrander, and I was all scared and I’m like ,”Hey Mike, I created this thing Zipbrander.” And he messaged back, “Dude that’s the coolest thing in the world.” A couple of things, Mike didn’t have a gatekeeper, it was just him. He got my email, he saw it, and he was like, “This is actually cool.” I’m like, “Cool, do you want to promote it?” and he’s like, “Yes, I would love to promote it.” I’m like, oh my gosh. I had never made a sale online at this point, by the way, other than a couple of little things that fell apart. I never actually made a sale of my own product. Zipbrander was my very first, my own product that I ever created. So Mike was that cool, he sent an email to his list, his 5000 person list, they came over, I had this little pop up that came to the site and bounced around, back in the day. I had 270 people opt in to my list from Mike’s email to it, and I think we made like 8 or 10 sales, which wasn’t a lot, but 67 that’s $670, they gave me half, I made $350 on an email and gained 300 people on my list. I’m like, oh my gosh this is amazing. And I asked Mike, “Who are the other people you hang out with? I don’t know very many people.” And he’s like, “Oh dude, you gotta meet this guy, he’s awesome.” And he brought me to someone else, and I’m like, “Oh this is cool. “ and Mike’s like, “Dude, I promoted Zipbrander, it was awesome, you should promote it.” And then he’s like, “Oh cool.” And he promoted Zipbrander. I’m like, oh my gosh, I got another 30-40 people on my list and there were a couple more sales. And then I asked him, “Who do you know?” and there was someone else, and we stared doing this thing and all the sudden there were 8 or 10 of us who were all at this level and we all started masterminding, networking, figuring things out, cross promote each other and what happened, what’s interesting is that all of our little brands that were small at the time started growing, and they started growing, and they started growing. All the sudden we were at the next tier. And when we got to the next tier all the sudden all these new people started being aware of us and started answering our calls and doing things, and Mike’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I met this guy who used to be untouchable.” And he brought him in and brought them in and all the sudden we’re at the next level. And we started growing again and growing again. And the next thing we know, four years later I get a phone call from Tony Robbins assistant, they’re like, “Hey I’m sitting in a room and I got Mike Filsaime, Frank Kern, Jeff Walker, all these guys are sitting in a room with Tony Robbins and he thinks that you guys are the biggest internet nerds in the world, he’s obsessed with it and he wants to know if he can meet you in Salt Lake in like an hour.” What? Tony Robbins? I’ve emailed him 8000 times, he’s never responded even once, I thought he hated me. Not that he hated me, it’s that he had so many gatekeepers, he had no idea who I was. But eventually you start getting value and you collectively as a level of the dream 100 becomes more and more powerful. Eventually people notice you because you become the bigger people. And each tier gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So my biggest advice for you and for everybody is understanding that. Yes, it’s good to have these huge dreams and big people, but start looking around. There are so many partnerships to be had just inside this room. How many deals have you done with people in this room so far? Nic: Quite a few. Russell: More than one, right. Nic: Yeah, more than one. Russell: Start looking around you guys. Don’t always look up, up, up and try to get this thing. Look around and realize collectively, man, start doing the crossings because that’s how everyone starts growing together and there will be a time where I’ll be coming to you guys begging, “Can you please look at my stuff you guys, I have this thing called Clickfunnels. You may have heard of it. Can you please help me promote it?” And that’s what’s going to happen, okay. So the level of the dream 100 is the last thing, just don’t discount that. Because so many people are like swinging for the fence and just hoping for this homerun like I was, and it’s funny because I remember eventually people would respond to me, that I was trying for before, and they’d contact me. And I was like, oh my gosh. I realized, I thought this person hated me, I thought I was on a black list. I was assuming they were getting these emails and like, “oh, I hate this. Russell’s a scammer.” In my head right. They never saw any of them. Until they saw me, and they reached out to me and the whole dynamic shifted. So realizing that, kind of looking around and start building your dream 100 list, even within this room, within the communities that you’re in, because there’s power in that. And as you grow collectively, as a group, everyone will grow together, and that’s the magic. So that was number seven. So to recap the seven really quick. Number one, tell your story way too much, to the point where you’re so annoyed and so sick and tired of hearing it that everybody comes to you, and then keep telling it even some more. Number two, in everything you’re doing, energy matters a lot. To the point, even above what you think you’re comfortable with and do that all the time. Number three, make offers for everything. Hook, story, don’t leave them hanging, give them an offer because they’ll go and they will feel more completed afterwards. Number four, start building a list, it ties back to the first thing. Make an offer, get them to build your list, start growing your list because your list is your actual business. Number five, integration marketing. Look for other people’s marketing channels and how you can weave what you do into those channels, so you can get free traffic from all the people who are doing stuff. Number five, create rainmaker projects, find really cool things and bring four or five people together and make something amazing. Share the cash, share the customer list, elevate your status, elevate your brand, and it’s really fun to do because you get to know a whole bunch of people. And Number seven, understanding the levels of the dream 100. Find the people at your level and start growing with them together collectively as you do that, and in a year, two years, three years, five years Tony Robbins will be calling you, asking you to make his video and it will be amazing. Does that sound good? Awesome.

In this episode, Nate Trunfio from Lima One Capital joins us to share essential knowledge about multi-family rentals and portfolio loans. Nate and Michael also share some important lessons learned throughout their careers. If you are looking to transition from single family to multi-family or want to bundle your loans into a portfolio loan this episode is for you. --- Transcript   Michael: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined again by Nate Trunfio with Lima One Capital. And Nate and I are going to be talking today about making the jump from single family to multifamily and some things to be aware of, as well as portfolio loans and a lot of different things to consider when to use them, and maybe when to avoid them. So let's get into it.   Nate, welcome back to the podcast, man. super happy to have you back on.   Nate: Man. I don't know how I made the cut for another one. But man, I'm just thankful to be here. So thank you.   Michael: So I thought today, we could pick up the conversation. We had you on the podcast last time and we started talking about portfolio loans. And then we also started to dovetail into talking about multifamily. So we'd love to start with talking about portfolio and then we'll jump into multifamily Sounds good?   Nate: Absolutely.   Michael: Awesome. So I don't remember if we covered it on the last episode, but maybe for those folks who didn't catch it, what is a portfolio loan? And who might be a good candidate to use them? I think there's a lot of misnomers around the name itself. So give us the quick and dirty about what it is.   Nate: Absolutely. Yeah, so just as a reminder, Nate with Lima, one capital providing financing solutions for all types of investors with a residential focus that's both single family and multifamily following the residential category, one of our favorite products is very large, a growing appetite for is portfolio loans.   And so essentially, a portfolio loan is in our world, at least anything that's more than one property. Alright, there's different functions of loans that are implemented when you have more than one asset, because it just things get a little complicated, right? What happens if one deal gets paid off, and there's were two in the loan, which we can certainly talk on, but our portfolio loans not only addressed the need for smaller size portfolios, you know, 2-5-10, but all the way up 50 and 100 plus, so there's a couple different variations. But the bottom line is if you want consistent terms, on all assets baked into one loan, that's when you're going to look for a portfolio. If you have one investment strategy for all of your assets, that's when you want to look at a portfolio. When you say when wouldn't I look for a portfolio and I own multiple assets, it's sort of back to what I just said, of, if you have numerous investment strategies, like you're very confident that you're going to want to take some assets to market soon, you might want to reconsider putting those into a portfolio. But the bottom line is if you have an investment strategy, and you own multiple assets, in all of the assets, that you're looking to finance have that same strategy, that's when you're going to go out and get a portfolio loan, it could be on the acquisition ends, you can buy a bulk property portfolio with a loan, you can take properties that are free and clear and combine them into a loan. You can take ones with existing debt and trying to get better terms on it, especially with nowadays low rates. Or you could have good rates on your existing loans on assets and want to recapitalize or refinance and take cash out. So a lot of different options. But the bottom line is multiple properties, but with a more singular investment strategy is when in a portfolio loan is going to be of good use to you.   Michael: Okay, awesome. And so I know that the loan structure starts to change when you make that transition from residential to commercial in the multifamily world. And that happens at five units plus, so does somebody need to have five single families in order to be eligible for a portfolio loan?   Nate: Yeah, great question. So with Lima one, we actually have two different products that will address both scenarios of sub five properties in a portfolio, or more than five properties in a portfolio. So I don't want to get too convoluted with that and simply say, No, you don't have to have the five plus properties in order to get a portfolio loan with us. But there is one of our subset of portfolio products that is only five plus properties. And it just has a couple of additional nuances. And I think you made a sort of great attribution to your point there is that product is more of a commercial type loan. And if you think of commercial loans, it's five plus units.   So that's probably a good way to delineate the two products. And there's different reasons why you take one versus the other, again, don't want to get too complicated because we offer numerous different terms and solutions, instructors, I should say, to all portfolios of all sides. So I'll just quickly go into that. And if we want to dig deeper, we can but the options would be interest only. So with us we have a five year and a 10 year interest only. We also have 30 year amortized products. So that would be a five one arm or a 10 one arm which means that the rate is fixed and guaranteed for five years or 10 years and the 10 one, and then it's subject to be adjustable thereafter.   And then we also have a 30 year fixed so you can tell there's numerous options there. If that wasn't enough options for you. There's other terms that we can play with and maneuver based on your investment strategy. Like one of the hot topics with portfolio loans is what are prepayment penalties. Unfortunately, for the most part, prepayment penalties are a nature of the beast of most long term financing options in the residencetial focused world. And so we can move those and make them wider and more impactful, which will hurt you if you're paying off assets in the near term, but you get a lower rate as a result, or we can shorten the impact in the amount of prepayment penalties, you just pay a little bit more in the rate for that.   So bottom line is no matter what your strategy is, you do want to work with somebody that has multiple options like us here at Lima one capital, because what we take pride in is customizing our financing products to what your goals are, because there's not really one portfolio. That's the same as another.   Michael: Yeah, yeah. Awesome. And for those who don't know, what is a prepayment penalty?   Nate: Good question. So a prepayment penalty is if you pay off a loan within the penalty timeframe, there is essentially fees associated with paying it off early. The natural question is probably why would a lender impose that. And it's really just because we're providing a very low interest rate long term debt. In order to do that, we as a lender have to hit some level of minimum returns. And so a prepayment penalty allows us to make sure that we hit the returns that are needed s o that you know, the lenders and anybody, you know, the banks, lenders on the institutional side, can make sure that they can hit their sort of return targets, if you will. So I hope that's not too convoluted there. But the bottom line is, you know, it's really hard to provide a call it 30 year loan at four to 5% if somebody pays it off in six months, a lender only made, you know, at a 4% rate 2% on that money. I mean, banks are, you know, getting money between one to two is not much margin for them to be able to stay afloat and provide more portfolio loans to other borrowers.   Michael: Sure. So it's a way to basically incentivize people to not pay off their loans early is what they're designed to do. Right?   Nate: Yeah. And unfortunately, that's how it would be interpreted. It's certainly not designed to do that. But it's it's an essence to allow lenders provide you with lower rate terms up front rather than no prepayment penalty and higher rate. And that's where with us, we can work through the option. So let me just get specific real quick. You typically on a five or 10 year, like fixed rate, or arm or balloon note, whatever you want to call it will have like a five year prepayment penalty, they usually call it a step down. The most common one is 54321. If you pay it off in the first year, it's a 5% fee penalty. The second year, it's for the third year, it's three, the fourth year, it's to the fifth year, it's one I hope you followed that.   We can also look to shorten it for a three to one, that's three years of penalty, the first year three the second year to the third year one. And because there's sort of less guaranteed revenue at the payoff early of the loan, you take a little bit higher rate on a three to one a three year prepayment than a five year prepayment. hope that makes sense.   Michael: Makes total sense. It's funny, I was just actually getting a loan on a triplex I have commercial loan, and it was having this exact same discussion as they they wanted to give me a five step down and I said no, make it shorter, just in case I want to go ahead and refinance. I don't want to be stuck in that loan if rates come down in the next three to five years.   Nate: And that's it, man. I mean, you hit it on the head. That's what we you know, financing service specialists will analyze, like, what's your investment strategy tied to a portfolio or an asset, and then we'll customize the solution and product to it. Because if you think you might sell in the next, you know, couple years, three years, call it, you're gonna want a lesser prepay and you'll sacrifice a little bit and payment rate, but if you know you're going to hold an asset for 10 years, you know, take the most aggressive, you know, an expensive prepayment penalty, because you're holding it for more than the prepaid penalty.   Michael: Right.   Nate: So in on a three year prepay, if you pay it off in the fourth year, there's no penalty, because it was only for three years with a prepayment penalty.   Michael: Right, right. Not such a great point. And something I've heard in the past is that the term portfolio lender, the name kind of gets thrown around a lot. And that's someone that actually keeps the loan on their own books and their own portfolio. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?   Nate: Yeah, yeah, great, great point. Another way to describe that is a balance sheet lender, right? Somebody that holds it on their own balance sheet, super passionate about, like the mechanics, the what's underneath the hood and underneath the skirt, if you will. But you know, most people don't know the mechanics that are behind the scenes. So there's really like two main I'll there's many, but I'll call it two main sort of function structures, and how lenders are capitalized.   It's one their balance sheet, or to what I'm going to call it, they use a capital markets, secondary markets, sort of methods and mentality balance sheet is they fund your loan and they hold it, it is on their books, right? It's it that's what you would call in the essence of a portfolio lender from that perspective, somebody that is a lender that use more of a capital markets and secondary markets mentality, they're funding your loan with their money up front. And then they're usually selling a loan off in the capital markets or the secondary markets, if you will.   So that's the difference in the two, a subset of capital markets secondary markets type lenders is they can either do servicing released or servicing retained again, I hope I'm not talking too much lending mumbo jumbo, as I like to call it,   Michael: No it's great.   Nate: But servicing released means that a lender sells their loan and the servicing is going to be done by somebody else, a third party, so many of you in in the residential world, this is a mainstay a common point except for some of the very large lenders, you know, like you think of your Wells Fargo's and stuff like that, but even they will use that at times on who is collecting your payments, you know, usually the first payment will be collected by the person who funded your loan. But if they sold it off quick enough, you might get introduced to a servicer, that, again, is servicing released. So now you've got the loan for one company, and then now you're paying a different one.   Servicing retained is when we fund the loan, and were the ones that you're going to see throughout the life of it from first payment to pay off, we are very pleased to say at least one capital, we always service our loans, we will never sell your loan off and and the servicing with it. And so you're always going to have an experience with us as your servicer. And in the investor world that is extremely, extremely important.   Certainly payment it makes it better with payment collection. Because we have in house I can go right down the hallway to get to somebody in servicing to talk to them, rather than call a third party servicer and get run up and down that the phone tree and things like that. But specifically for investors, when there's any form of financing and hold back of construction monies, it's important that you deal with one source that manages that construction funds.   So for us at Lima, one capital we have in house servicing in house construction management. So the same people that analyze your budget and approve your budget on a rehab, project fix and flip or multifamily are the same people that talk to you, as you're in work with you as you request draws. And that is very important, because, you know, we underwrite the budget and approve it. And then it's serviced by third party construction management company, most of the time, the left hand doesn't speak to the right hand, and that is just causes delays and getting clarity and the timeframe of reimbursement of draws is always slower.   So we're very proud of the fact that we have in house servicing, it's a big asset, certainly not only to us as a lender, but to all of our clients, because it just allows us to create true relationships and streamline communication.   Michael: Awesome. And so is there a difference in regulation when it comes to loans that are sold off in a secondary market versus serviced on the balance sheet or in house? Really great question. So specifically, I will reference like commercial lending because residential lending is a little bit different world and residential is very much an answer of there is heavy regulation in all regards balance sheet or capital markets, type based models are showing, in the commercial realm, it's a little bit different. There are the best way to describe it's there's overarching guidelines, put out by the CFPB to make sure that lenders aren't egregious, and they don't provide terms the fall into usury, meaning too expensive of money and taking advantage of people. So there's some big overarching guidelines there. But a lot of the nuances that are imposed on the residential sector like Fannie, Freddie, primary residence type mortgages are not imposed on commercial lending. It's one of the big differentiations.   So it's not as much in the commercial world, but yet the government is put things in place to make sure that again, people aren't being taken advantage of, which is one of the reasons why nowadays where you've seen all this uncertainty due to the pandemic, when you know, the financial crash happened in the 2000s. Lenders were scapegoated for you know, half of the crash, right? Well, nowadays that we've tightened up the control, mainly from sort of the government on down to make sure that lenders are more diligent, and therefore, there's not really much risk right now of lenders being some of the problem in any potential downfall to the market or crash to the market. Because there's just all the regulation to make sure that we're doing things right, which is very important that has been done. So I think that hopefully puts things into perspective. I think it's a great question. I certainly don't want to bore too much with some of these crazy acronyms in the in the guideline and regulation world,   Michael: CFP p ABC 123!   Nate: You got it, man. And just forget about like, I was six, seven years in residential lending,   Michael: Forget it!   Nate: But it is important for, again, the safety of all consumers. And I guess the mentality of the government is if you're looking for a commercial in business purpose loan, which is what like investor loans are based in, they think that, you know, hopefully, you're a little more sophisticated, they like to watch it as much that sort of mentality. And then also we in business purpose and commercial lending, hold ourselves now to a higher standard because again, we saw what happened in the crash. So we don't want that to happen. We don't want the government putting more on us. We want to be able to help investors.   Michael: Yeah, makes total sense. I reason ask the question is I was chatting with a buddy the other day and I got commercial loans and residential loans and I wanted to get a lower rate on my residential loan. And so I went to the bank and I said, hey, can rates have come down, what can you do? And they say, Oh, yeah, we can refinance. This is the rate, this is how we're gonna do it. And then I go to my commercial lender, and I was like, hey, rates come down, what do you do? He's like, oh, we'll just do a loan modification, your interest rate was here. Now, we'll just put it here. And then you sign a piece of paper, and it's all good. I was like, that's it cool. I don't do the whole refinance process. It was it's so much more flexible, like you're mentioning on the commercial side, they can just do things and it's an in house portfolio lenders, they keep it on their books, it's so much easier to deal with, as opposed to the entire refinance process jumping through all these hoops.   Nate: Absolutely, man. And I will say, you know, one of the biggest differentiations from as you called portfolio lender, balance sheet lender, for somebody who sells loans off to loan buyers, usually institutional sources, is balance sheet lenders do have that much more control. If you have to sell your loan to somebody else, then now I got to follow their rules a little bit.   Most of the time, there is certainly negotiations, because the originating lender typically like knows most about the clients that they're trying to service and provide loans for. So there is a little bit of a back and forth negotiation between the two. But at the end of the day, if you you know, it's the golden rule, He who has the gold makes the rules. So if you control your money, and you keep it on balance sheet, you're going to be able to make your own rules more so than if you're going to have to use someone else's money to buy the loan.   Michael: Sure, sure. And so for everybody listening, if they're interested in getting a portfolio loan or learning about at the lender they're working with are going to be working with is a balance sheet lender or not? Do they just simply just ask the question of the person they're speaking with? Hey, do you service your loans in house? You? How do you ask that question?   Nate: Honestly, man, you took my answer. 100%, the easiest way to do it is simply ask, you know, who services the loan? Or will you also be the person collecting my payments? And then you'll essentially get that answer. You know, you can also just ask them that direct question. A lot of sort of loan officers don't know how to answer that to be quite frank, because it doesn't necessarily affect them. But I think your question is spot on.   Michael: Okay, awesome. So let's transition a little bit and talk about multifamily, which is a fun topic. I'm a big fan of I know you are as well. So I think a lot of investors get their teeth cut with single family and then look to move into either small multifamily, residential, multifamily, and then ultimately, commercial multifamily at some point down the road. And so talk to us about some of the ways that you've seen that go well, and what products people should be on lookout for to take advantage of to help them make that jump.   Nate: Absolutely, man. And I'm also going to plug maybe bring me back a third time, because the other thing is new construction and like build to rent one of the hottest trends in investing nowadays, too. So because one of the things I always bring up when you talk about transitioning from single family to multifamily is there's specific reasons why a lot of people want to do it. One of the easiest ones is described as you know, economies of scale, essentially be able to bring in more income because there's more units in one asset versus a single property, you know, rent alone versus one tenant in one unit. So that's sort of what's so attractive.   The other thing is that, you know, look at where we're at with supply and demand of single family assets. It's sort of the same in multifamily, which is where people started ago, a number of years ago. But now that's, you know, really significantly high demand that people wanted to buy multifamily. So the next thing has been, alright, let's take land and go ground up and start building and now build to rent is a huge trend as well. So I did want to plug that and we'll tease everybody, and maybe circle back another time. So Mike, put me back on track, though, with the right question here.   Michael: Making that jump from single family to multifamily and what products might be helpful for someone to look into to do that?   Nate: Yeah, so let's also take a step back to and just talk about a lot of the differentiations for managing and running and investing in single family, first multifamily. But one of the first things is, you know, well, what I'll say is there's just differentiation between the two, as much as it's so simple like to think that it's the same there are very different when it comes to the actual strategies and logistics of multifamily versus single family.   So from a debt perspective, where you really will want a need to go is to a lender that can read in between the lines, and understand, you know, your business strategy and the ability to get your financing multifamily, because if you start to go to a multifamily lender that provides permanent type debt, a lot of times they're going to want to see experience and then you're in that conundrum of Wait a minute, how can I get alone if I don't have experience? And how can I get a property if I don't get a loan?   Michael: Right, right. Right.   Nate: You know, so you got to work with the in betweens there. So you either go local to your banks that you have relationships with, you know, maybe the ones you call depository banks, you know, the ones that have your checking and savings accounts. Those are a great route to finance you transitioning from single family to multifamily.   The other one is is us right, a private lender and institutional nationwide, private lender. All we do is finance real estate investors. We have a single family, multiple single family products and multiple multifamily products. We're able to work with people that don't have a ton of experience in multifamily or any for that matter, but there's certainly some guardrails there. And I guess the easiest way to put that is if you're not a high velocity Single Family, you know, operator meaning you own, let's just use a number of 100 doors. It's tough to come in if you own 10 doors single family to get multifamily loan for 100 unit complex, right? It's just very different.   Michael: Too big of a jump.   Nate: You might be able to get the loan if you own 100 single families in 100 unit complex, but even then, it's looked at with some pretty close eyes. So I'll pause there if you had anything you wanted to add. But I think let's talk about some of the other realms that are just different between single family and multifamily investing. Not even just lending related.   Michael: Yeah, totally. Let's definitely chat about that. But I just want to be very careful when we clarify and specify multifamily because the term gets thrown around so much and we've got duplex triplex quad, which you know, residential multifamily, of course, from an investment strategy and financing standpoint is is from a financing standpoint is quite similar, I would imagine to the single family space, but from an investment strategy standpoint can be different. And then as soon as you hit that five plus number, everything goes out the window. So let's just call it small multifamily to start for two to four units.   Nate: Well, and I don't know if this is the right term, but this is what I use. So maybe we can make it a term like I call two to four unit multi unit property I call multifamily five plus, I think I made that up. So if it works for everybody listening, just let me know, I'll go trade market or something. But yeah,   Michael: like multi unit multi unit.   Nate: So you know, look from our standpoint, as a lender and you know, private lender financing real estate investors, multi Unit Two to four units, we actually treat the exact same as single family. So for us, if you're not really going to try the methodology of like a fix and flip on on a multi unit, we can go up to 90% loan to cost on a multi unit or a single family or one unit.   So we call that you know, in the same world not to confuse people. But in the residential traditional lending, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, they do treat duplexes tries and quads a little bit differently than a single family residence itself.   Michael: I thought it was the same.   Nate: So usually there are reductions in cash out that you can get and on the acquisition financing, usually, not all, but a lot of them will, for example, single family conventional without PMI is 20%. Down he percent right in the multi unit. A lot of times lenders are Max 75% got it same with cash out will be up to 80% on a single family, Fannie, Freddie and 75 for a multi unit. Not all lenders, but many of them.   Michael: Sure. I have heard that as well. And so without getting too off topic here, with so much regulation in the Fannie Freddie world, I mean, how is that why do you see such a big disparity between lenders if they're all using the same programs and selling their loans in the same secondary market?   Nate: Awesome question dude really awesome question. So yes, the simple answer and the word that I will use in the lending world. It's called overlay guidelines. So what happens is, I'll just focus on Fannie Mae, right. I mean, there's multiple types of residential lending. It's usually government sponsored entities, maybe not so much government sponsored soon. There's a lot of talks about Fannie and Freddie not being government sponsored right now. But it's Fannie, Freddie. And then there's the FHA, VA and USDA, those are like the five main realms, right?   So I'm just gonna focus on Fannie Mae, Fannie Mae puts out guidance on what their overall guidelines are, and no lender that wants to have Fannie Mae back there. loans are essentially provide conduits and outlets that Fannie Mae and other people who buy Fannie Mae loans can bay them in. you can't go above and beyond those guidelines most of the time, right? You can look for significant exceptions. It's a lot more paperwork and due diligence from an underwriting perspective.   So Fannie Mae puts out these guidelines that are very wide, and then each lender that wants to write a Fannie Mae loan can impose their own guidelines that are stricter than Fannie Mae's wide guidelines, those are all their overlays. So very much. The reason why you would see some disparity is Fannie Mae might say you can do 80% LTV purchase on a multi unit, but Chase Bank might say, Yeah, well, that's a little too risky for our appetite, we're only going to cap it at 75.   Michael: Got it.   Nate: So the overlay guidelines that a lender will in place in order to hit with their strategies are sometimes that's tied to their investors behind them is where you'll see the differentiation between the two. It's really hard as a consumer to identify who's doing what and why and all that stuff. Don't go down that road. But the bottom line is, Fannie Mae's guidelines will allow for wider lenders have their overlays, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and all the other ones I listed have their own proprietary type automated underwriting guidelines they call them. And if you were to like print that those guidelines out with all the variables that analyzes in a couple clicks of a button, I don't know it's 1000s and 1000s of pages of code and variations of what can and can't happen and then lenders tighten it up.   Michael: Sure. Okay. So I couldn't go Google lenders with the loosest overlay guidelines and get any results?   Nate: Probably get some results but a bunch of junk.   Michael: It's not gonna be lending stuff.   Nate: And look, I mean, it's proprietary for the most part to lenders, because, you know, they don't want to give away their secret sauce. I mean, you know, nowadays, you know, residential lending is 100% a commodity, right? So there, they got to try and keep some proprietary nature to what they do and don't do. And then the other thing is the wind blows and they change their guidelines, their overlays will adjust, but you know, COVID hit, and people tightened up significantly.   So like, there were a lot of lenders even though Fannie Mae might allow it up to 80% cash out when COVID hit some lenders, because in order to reduce their risk, like shot, Max cash out loans down to like 65%, right, because they didn't want to take on that risk given the uncertainty in the market.   Michael: Right, right. Right. Yeah, I'd seen that happen, too. All right, cool. So let's get back on the rails here and talk about investing strategies for single family versus multi unit and then up to multifamily.   Nate: Yeah. So from a strategy perspective, multifamily is synonymous with either a buy and hold mentality, or in the residential world, you call it the BRRRR, right, the buy, renovate, rent, refi, repeat, that's very common as well. So the first strategy of just buying and holding without the other stuff is usually you're just getting permanent financing debt on something. It's what we call a stabilized asset, essentially, the occupancy of all the units is high, you know, definitionally, if that's a word,   Michael: It is now it is now   Nate: Just like multi unit, hopefully, yeah, find it in a a dictionary near you, or I'm sure media will pick up on it. But the bottom line is, like from an agency guidelines in residential in the multifamily world, there's just a lot more sort of restrictions out there. And from an occupancy and stabilization perspective, you need to be 90% occupied to be called stabilized in agency.   Michael: Isn't it 90 for 90.   Nate: Exactly. 90 for 90. You want to give the definition.   Michael: Yeah. So it's 90% occupied for the last 90 days. Right?   Nate: Exactly. Yep. So you have to season 90% occupancy for the last three months. And that will make you potentially eligible for like an agency financing and in the multifamily world, so that's sort of just straight down the middle, buy a property that stabilized cash flowing, well get a fixed rate, long term type loan.   Michael: Just quick question for you. So if I've got a five unit building multifamily, yep. But I have one vacancy. Now I'm 80% occupied. Because of that one vacancy, I'm up the creek, I need to basically be 100% occupied because I can't possibly mathematically be 90% occupied.   Nate: So a couple of things. The agency world of multifamily is not well suited for smaller what we call smaller balanced loans, smaller units, somewhat smaller unit size, more smaller dollar size. So typically, a minimum agency loan is about a million dollars, give or take some variations. Sometimes it's higher, even. But that usually will remove out five unit properties, at least in secondary and tertiary markets, your primary cities, you know, you you go to a boss in New York City, Miami, I mean, you're sure you get plenty of five units that are way more than a million dollars and million dollar loan amounts. But for the most part, the five unit, maybe 10 unit is usually best suited for a local bank, because they'll use some common sense. Like you said in the math, four out of five is 80. Not hit 90. But I mean, in reality that's pretty close to being stabilized without being 100% occupied. So there are options for it. But it gets a little tough for agency to wrap their heads around smaller unit types.   Michael: Okay, man us little guys scraping the bottom of the barrel, it's tough man tough.   Nate: Hey, look, I might go to traditional local banks, then it goes through agency stuff. So when I say agency debt multifamily, it's the same government sponsored entities that I just said a minute ago for residential. It's Fannie and Freddie and FHA, essentially, are the main, you know, agency, as they call them multifamily lenders hope that's not too confusing. But Fannie and Freddie and FHA, are in both buckets, and USDA, technically, as well. So they're just completely different products. And they look at things very differently.   The other strategy, instead of getting just down the middle cash flowing in permanent type options, is a property that needs value add. So that's the other option. You know, whether it's larger unit size complexes, as I'll call them, or smaller multifamily assets, you know, you don't have to have a stabilized property, you don't have to be 90 for 90. bridge loan options, as well as what is called will allow you to take loans without the supporting cash flow or occupancy, then more of a permanent financing option would would require of you.   So that's what we specialize in at least one capital is bridge loans. So we can do what's called, you know, low to no occupancy and not having an occupancy requirement. We have one version of the product for that. And we have our own, not to get confusing, bridge loan stabilized type product, but our definition of stabilized is 75 to 80% occupancy, so it gives that buffer and then what we specialize in as well is Fannie and Freddie fall out, which means somebody went to try and get a Fannie Freddie loan on a multifamily asset, and maybe it was they didn't quite have 90 for 90 or some of the other nuanced guidelines in the multifamily agency world, it fell out, it might not mean it won't fit in there eventually. But at this moment in time, it couldn't qualify for it. So they'll take a bridge loan, our stabilized bridge 75 to 80 plus occupancy to lease up the asset, or season the financials, and so on and so forth.   So that's sort of the two options of there's a value add, which uses a bridge loan type of play, or there's a permanent financing option, which is more of your long term debt.   Michael: And so just to recap, if I'm a multifamily investor, five units plus and I want to go buy a building, I can go buy a totally vacant building that has no occupants that needs a ton of work, and I'm gonna do some value add to it, there's a solution for me there. Or if I find a building that is 75% 80%, occupied, but maybe needs some rehab work done or is a little bit dilapidated. I can also go buy that building, and there's an option for me there as well.   Nate: 100%, you just got to go to Lima one.com. And we got you!   Michael: awesome.   Nate: Let me bridge this. Mike, can I talk about some of the things that just differ from investing in single family to multifamily? Is that cool?   Michael: Absolutely would love that.   Nate: Cool. So we talked a lot about the debt, I'm done. I'm done with that for now,   Michael: No more debt talk.   Nate: But a couple of different topics that are different. First is construction. So you would think you renovate a single family asset, it's no different, it's got X amount of walls and studs are not you know, whatever it is different. It can be very different in that usually I will not usually, but almost always code is different. You know, so the permit process that are different. So you need to be very cognizant of what the requirements are of now a commercial asset five plus units, I'm specifically saying versus residential, because the code is different.   That usually means you're getting a different type of contractor or GC to run the project. Because you have to know the code as well like things that pop up that people don't think of as parking spaces, different egress, which is you know, fire escape options, things of that nature can be very different in construction. And the other thing you got to keep in mind me do like renovations on multifamily, especially if you're talking the little bit middle to larger unit size is you want to have consistency in what you're doing with the product.   So you don't want to like you know, win single family on a single family asset. Let's say you know, the stove broke, okay, we just go to Home Depot or Lowe's and buy a stove, no big deal. You know, it's just what I need. But in the multifamily realm you want to think it through if you have a larger complex, because you're going to have to replace multiple stoves. Or if you're good, you don't want to replace the whole stove, you want to replace parts of it. So you want to get the consistent type of product, so that when the top burners break, you have the same type of materials to go get to fix it, making it a lot easier on the maintenance of it.   So a couple of just different reasons why the construction aspect is different in multifamily than single family.   Michael: Yeah, quick, just quick anecdote with regard to the code. I mean, you couldn't be more spot on I've talked about on a prior episode, but I'll share with you I was I'm doing in the midst of redevelopment project right now converting commercial space into residential. And I went to convert one of the floors and they're like, yeah, okay, cool. Um, your permits are approved, but you got to put it in an elevator for ADA.   But, and I was like, there's got to be another way around this. And like, well, if you convert the bottom floor to then you'll have ADA compliance. And you don't have to put an elevator, but you got to put it in a sprinkler system.   Nate: I mean, you hit the nail on the head look right now, because of the demands and lack of inventory in multifamily as well. A lot of people like to do an adaptive reuse, play in redevelopment play like you're referencing, which essentially take a different asset class, whether it's like industrial office, whatever hotel even and converted to residential multifamily. I can tell you that. I'm sorry. I hope I don't scare you, Mike. But most of the time, what we see is the ending budgets and costs, you have to expand to reposition those assets from that asset class to now residential multifamily. It's very hard to do it and be on point with the budget because of all these different requirements, man, so I'm hoping I'm not jinxing that deal for you, my man.   Michael: No, no, not at all. This project has gotten so far off the rails and so far off budget when it's done, I'll have to do a whole episode about it. But basically, without getting too deep into I had two fires in the building during the course of construction. So insurance got about I mean, it's just been a frickin nightmare. It's now starting to get pretty close to completion. But now you're so right. There's so many things that pop up unknowns that nobody could have predicted at the time. It's really, really hard. I probably will not be doing another one of these.   Nate: And they're so attractive because any pro forma on an adaptive reuse pilot, you know, you're your chief. So there is some more margin for error because they look really good. And you can buy them at a lower basis, as you'll say,   Michael: Right? Right.   Nate: But they're they're tough to navigate through. But I would tell you, man, you know, you get through this one successfully, you'll have much more knowledge to actually be better at the next one as scary as that may seem. And I need to do another one, my man. So   Michael: I know. I know. We'll have we'll have to chat offline about how to get some financing done because the lender I'm working with is just such a pain in my side. So   Nate: Yep,   Michael: We'll, we'll chat.   Nate: We'll do we'll do my friend. So another just couple more real quick. The the first one I'll say of differentiation from single to multifamily is your tenants, right? So like, okay, I own one unit, a single family home, I can put anybody in there I want because doesn't matter like the neighbor, I probably don't own the property next door. So I could put in a tenant that I don't have to screen as much. And they could cause a lot of ruckus. And yeah, it's a headache, but it's not gonna affect the rest of the asset outside of potential damage to it.   But in a multifamily realm, you have to be cognizant of what you call your tenant base, like, what is the sort of profile of the tenants that you have in an asset? And you have to be very mindful of that. And so when you look at, okay, I think I can get x rents on these units. Well, does that fit the other demographics that have the tenant base that's in there now, and this is a lot of the challenges even on five and 10 unit, you know, in that range properties that people don't think of, because they'll see Yeah, all right, a 1200 square foot apartment, very similar vintage, which means age and sort of style might rent for 1200. But it might be a little bit out of town. And it might be all, you know, higher end type of tenants, if you will, I don't know if that's the right way to describe it. But if your existing tenant base might not be of that caliber, it's gonna be really hard to take somebody of the a class type property and put them in, when the surrounding tenants are making a lot of noise.   I mean, one way that I'll probably politically correct for some not as upper echelon tenants is the elements that you can have in some tenant bases, you can't really get away at times. So like, if you're investing in an asset that's infested with gangs around them, it's hard to get those gangs out of there. So you have to be cognizant of who your tenant base is now. And is that going to work as you you know, move new tenants in it. And just be cognizant that essentially, everybody's sharing walls. And so if they're not of similar, you know, sort of demographics, per se, you know, we're not trying to redline Don't get me wrong there. But it just might not always work as easily as you will think.   And then, you know, the worst thing you have is then vacancies or people that don't pay as a result, because they move out because they're mad that you know, they're just not the right fit for them. Yeah. So another variation that is different.   Michael: It's such a good point. And something also I want to point out and kind of piggyback off that is, when I talked to people about this all the time, when making the jump from single family to multifamily, they might be evaluating a single family home at sale prices to 25 to 25,000 rents for two grand a month, versus they see a four Plex on the market for 150 that rents for 2000 a month, because each unit rents for 500 bucks, those are two very different types of tenants and two very different types of assets.   And people see that for you. And like oh my god, the cash flow is amazing. But that person renting that $500 a month unit is going to be a very different person than who's going to be renting that $2,000 a month single family. So super important to keep that in mind as well. We are getting long in the tooth here. And we've got so much more to talk about. We're gonna have to have you back on and pick up this conversation where we left off because this has been awesome.   Nate: Hey, last thing I'll say on the topic of single family to multifamily, you can do it. I don't want to scare you in any of this. There's great multifamily deals and as long as you do it diligently and if you don't know what you're doing, you can certainly research it but find a mentor, find a mentor near you, and they will help you along the way because there's a lot of things you can't read about investing in multifamily solve it, it's a self learned by experience.   So be diligent about your decisions. And if you don't have that experience, you can read up as much as you can, that will certainly help you but also find a mentor to help you help you get into it and know how to navigate through some of these deals, strategies and challenges per se.   Michael: Yeah, and go find a mentor who's missing a couple teeth that means they got him kicked in at least a couple times.   Nate: I love it. I love it my style too.   Michael: Awesome, Nate well thanks so much for hanging out with us again man.   Nate: Super appreciate it.   Michael: This was awesome and always always a pleasure and so looking forward to doing it again because we've got a lot more to unpack here.   Nate: Thank you appreciate you having me on and I hope your listeners get some value out of it.   Michael: Certainly more to come totally take care man.   Alrighty, everybody that was our show. A big big big thanks to Nate use a lot of fun to have on the show and we look so forward to having him again, when we can pick up the conversation and dive more into some multifamily asset investing. If you'd like the episode, please feel free to leave us a rating and review wherever it is. Listen, your podcasts those are super helpful for us and getting our show ranked. And as always, if you want to hear a certain episode idea, have a suggestion, leave us a comment and we can look at making an episode on that particular topic. Thanks so much for listening and happy investing.

In this episode, Co-Owner of Champion Physical Therapy and Performance, Dr. Mike Reinold, PT, DPT, talks about his platform in the running for President-Elect of the AASPT. Today, Mike talks about the ‘why’ behind his campaign, what he’s going to focus on as president, and how to make the academy more accessible and inclusive. What is Mike’s vision for the academy? Hear his thoughts on adding value to the academy members, his plans to provide networking and mentorship opportunities, and his advice for his younger self, all on today’s episode of The Healthy, Wealthy & Smart Podcast.   Key Takeaways “I’m going to judge my success of leading the academy, if in the end of my term, you clearly asked the members ‘why are you a member of the AASPT?’ And they have a very clear and distinct answer.“ “The most important thing we need to do right now is to re-brainstorm the mission and the vision of the academy to make sure that we’re doing one thing: we’re focused on the goals and objectives of the members.” “I’m pretty certain at this point that everything I’ve accomplished in my career is because I specialised. You need to start general, but if there’s something you’re passionate about, every second of down time you have, learn how to be the best at that. Just be absolutely amazing at something.”   More about Mike Reinold Mike Reinold, PT, DPT, SCS, ATC, CSCS, C-PS is a world renowned and award-winning clinician, researcher, and educator. As a physical therapist, athletic training, and strength and conditioning coach, he specializes in all aspects of sports performance and rehabilitation. Mike is currently the Co-Founder of Champion PT and Performance, in Boston, MA, and Senior Medical Advisor for the Chicago White Sox after years of working at prestigious institutions like the American Sports Medicine Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, and as Head Athletic Trainer and Physical Therapist for the Boston Red Sox. He has authored dozens of publications, lectured at national conferences, and has an educational website and podcast at MikeReinold.com.   Suggested Keywords AASPT, Physiotherapy, Research, PT, Health, Therapy, Healthcare, Education, Mentoring, Training, Networking, Sport, Athletics, Election,   To learn more, follow Mike at: Website:          https://mikereinold.com Facebook:       Mike Reinold Instagram:       @mikereinold Twitter:            @mikereinold YouTube:        Mike Reinold LinkedIn:         Mike Reinold   Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website:                      https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts:          https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy-smart/id532717264 Spotify:                        https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud:               https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher:                       https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio:               https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927   Read the Full Transcript:  Speaker 1 (00:01): Hey, Mike, welcome to the podcast. Happy to have you on. Speaker 2 (00:04): Hey, Karen, how's it going? Thanks again for for having me on your amazing podcast. I F I F I, I remember being on in the past Speaker 1 (00:13): So long ago. Yes. It has been a long time, but here we are. We're back. Speaker 2 (00:18): That's what happens when we, when we're, we're both veterans we'll, we'll call it. We're both veterans. We, we, we did this in the past, but, but yeah, no, honestly, like big kudos to you for keeping this going and doing such an amazing job with it. Thanks for having Speaker 1 (00:31): Any time. And we'll talk about your podcast a little later, but now, you know what it's like to be cranking out episodes on a weekly basis, right. Speaker 2 (00:39): And staying up with it, right. It's like, it's a way of life now for us. Speaker 1 (00:43): It is, it is. That's why there's like a hashtag podcast life, I think on Instagram or something. It's, it's a thing. It's a thing. So today you're here because you are running for the president elect position for the American Academy of sports, physical therapy. So I wanted to have you on to talk about why you're running and what your platform is and what you hope to do if elected. So let's start with, what is the why behind your running. Speaker 2 (01:13): And I love that. That's how you started this off, because that's how I start everything off. Right. If we don't establish our why, right. Like what's the point of even coming out. But a lot of people, they, they, they don't focus on the end. Right. They focus on just doing the day to day. So I love that you started off with a Y so I'll, I'll be honest with you. This is something I've been thinking about probably for the last, I don't know, several years or so. I never felt that it was the right time for me. I've had a lot of my mentors pushing me to, to run in the past and the past elections. And yeah, I mean, trust me, it's really humbling to know that the majority of past presidents of the Academy are all pushing me to run and, and kind of, you know, it's really an honor to be nominated by them, right. Speaker 2 (02:03): Like, you know, Mike boy, Kevin Willett, George Davies, Tim Tyler. I mean, it's Melissa gigantic of past presidents that were kind of nudging me to do it, but I was resistant for awhile. And I think that was a good thing because at that point in my career, I don't think I was ready. And I don't think I would've, I would've done the Academy justice for what it needed. Right. So I was kind of resistant for awhile. You know, I, I started a private practice. I have like four jobs, right? Like we all do, right. Like to an extent, you know, I'm flying, you know, to, to work with the white Sox. I, you know, private practice doing all these things with the educational stuff. So for me, it was always like, it wasn't the right time, but things have changed a little bit. Speaker 2 (02:44): And I humbly say this now. And I, I really came to this conclusion the last couple of years of my career. I, I really believe I'm on the descent. Right. And don't you think at some point in time, it's, it's all it's about, okay. I am now on the decent portion of my career and I've completely changed my focus on trying to help others succeed. And I can't wait to see the people that I work with surpassing me. Right. Leapfrog me just like we did, like when we were 20 years ago in our career. Right. And that, that kind of point. So I got, so my why right now is that I am completely shifted towards more of a leader right. In a leadership type position with my career. So both educational, both with my, my companies and with the organizations I worked for that, I thought it was a great time to do this so awesome that I've been getting nudged by, you know, such, such amazing people, but I didn't feel it was right until, until now. And I think now I have the time I have the energy, I have a little bit of the head space to now be able to, to focus on this and it's time to give back and it's time to help the next generation. So that's my why. Speaker 1 (03:56): Yeah. And that's, I think it's really important for anyone listening. If you are thinking about being of service, whether that be to something, to a section or whatever you want to call them Academy of the AP TA that, you know, you have the head space and the time. Right. Because you just don't want to be saying, yeah, sure, sure. I'll do this. I'll do that. And then guess what, what happens if you get elected and you don't have this space, you don't have the time. Well, that's just not the way to, to enter into, be of service to others. And like you said, you're at that point in your career, at least it sounds like what I got from what you said, that you really want to be of service to others, that you've kind of, you're, you're content, you're happy within your career and probably the time of your life and everything else that you can now do this for others. Speaker 2 (04:48): Right. And, and I'm, I'm very eager. Right. I had a lot of good mentors in my career that helped open doors for me, but don't get me wrong. Like we need to be the one stepping through those doors. You have to have the energy and the effort to do that. Right. But for me, it's about opening doors for others. Right. And I saw how much the Academy helped me early in my career, and I really kind of want to do that. Right. And you know, it's funny, Mike Delaney and I were just talking about those. So Mike's running for vice-president right now as well. So I'm myself for president him for vice-president. And we are so similar with our, our beliefs and everything that we have, that we were like, let's team up to try to, to do this. So that way we can really give back and help. Speaker 2 (05:29): And we both said this. We said, if, if we don't get elected at this point in time, we actually think that our time, our window will pass. Right. At that point in time, we'll probably be in our fifties. Right. And I am not sure that we would be the right people to lead the Academy at that time, because we want to still be relevant. We still have students. We still work with like clinicians and educate all, all around the country, the world, right. Where we still are in touch with them. I'm not sure if I would be the right leader six years from now or seven years from now, it was probably one of the next election. We would be open if I would be the right leader for that. I, I, I'm not sure. Maybe I would be more out of touch. So Mike and I both said, I think this is our window. If we're going to do it, it's probably now or never. Speaker 1 (06:14): Okay. So let's talk about your platform. What do you hope to accomplish as, as president, what are things that you really want to focus on? Speaker 2 (06:24): So I, again, I love, I love how you start with the why, and then, and then you talk about, you know, what you want to accomplish. I love that because to me, it's not, it's not about coming up with like a list of things I want to do. What I want to do is I want to flash forward six years or whatever it may be. Right. I hopefully would get reelected if I get elected the first time. Right? So we'll say three years to be conservative maybe, but flash forward. And what I want, what I want to know is I'm going to judge my success of leading the Academy. If in the end of my term, you clearly asked the members, why are you a member of the American Academy of sports, physical therapy? And they have a very clear and distinct answer, right? Speaker 2 (07:10): That to me is going to define my success. Because right now, the number one thing I'm hearing from people, both veterans in this field, people in the middle of their career, early career professionals, students, they, they ask, why should I join the Academy? They don't know what they get out of it. Right? And it's, it's one thing to just be a part of a group. But the question always is, what's the value? What am I going to get out of that? So that's how I'm going to judge our success as an executive committee at the end of this, is, is it very clear that we achieve the objective that you know, why? And I think the most important thing we need to do right now is I think we need to rebrand storm the mission and the vision of the Academy to make sure that we're doing one thing we're focused on the goals and objectives of the members. Speaker 2 (08:00): It's not about me, right? It's not about my ideas, my initiatives, what I want to get. It's not about me or my legacy to me, it's about what the members get out of it. And I think it's actually pretty simple. I, I looked on the website, I'm just trying to like dig out like the mission statement. Right. And it's very like corporate, right? Very like, like very about like, you know, advocacy and like, you know, making, you know, sports, physical therapy like prominent, right? I actually want to see the mission statement changed the simply the American Academy of sports, physical therapies here to help you specialize in sports, physical therapy, right? You are going to become a specialist now because we're not learning stuff like this in school, we shouldn't be learning stuff like this at school. It was very hard to be, to graduate as a new grad and be a very well-rounded proficient physical therapist. Speaker 2 (08:44): Right. But if you want to specialize, if you want the best education to learn everything you need about to become a sports physical therapist, if you want to stay cutting edge, right. If you want opportunities and networking, to be able to become part of this group. And more importantly, if you want mentorship with some of the best people out there, that is why you joined the Academy. And I know right now, a lot of people say that all the time is I'm not sure what the benefit of my membership is, and that's why people drop off. And that's why people don't renew is they're not getting enough out of the Academy. So that's what, that's what I want to achieve. And that's how I am going to grade our executive committee. If, if we do get elected is at the end of this, if it's very clear, have we achieved our mission, that the members know that our whole goal is to help them specialize in sports and to get a job in sports. Right. I think that's what people want in sports. That's a big, big things is an advanced orthopedics. This is sports it's different, right? So that that's, that's kinda, that's kind of what, what we hope to accomplish. Speaker 1 (09:47): And how, how would you go about doing that? What changes do you think need to happen to number one, help more people join the section? Cause I know it, it is hard, you know, I'm part of, I'm part of the sports section I joined a couple of years ago. I let my orthopedic one last. So I left the orthopedic and I joined sports. And I'm also involved in the private practice section. And I know it's something that we're always trying to think about in the private practice section is how can we get more people to join? What are we missing here? You know, how can we be more inclusive? So how can the sports section be more inclusive to get those people in, to get them from what it sounds like you're saying, mentorship, education, jobs and just fulfillment within your career. It sounds like Speaker 2 (10:40): Here, and this is what I think it is. The past leadership has been amazing. Right? And the stuff that even the current board has done in this last few years is really evolved, right? So there's tarnished take the next step with technology and all these other things. They're doing a really good job with that sort of thing. To me though, I, I really think we need to refresh just the vision a little bit. And I want to reevaluate all of our decisions in all of the things we provide. And just answer that simple question. Does this help you become either become or become a better sports physical therapist. Right. And I think, I think we need to take a step back. Sometimes it's not about what we think is cool or what we think is a list of objectives. It's about how do the memberships actually get value out of the Academy. Speaker 2 (11:26): And I think that's, that's the biggest thing we're going to do. So that's a little bit of the vision, but we're going to reevaluate everything, right. There's, you know, one of the big ones is education, right? One of the big ones education and staying current with, with research, right. So recently just in the last year or so the Academy got rid of one of the free benefits of being a member was access to the international journal of sports, physical therapy. And I think that was one of the biggest reasons why a lot of people were members, right. They got, they get access to a free, very well like established journal. Right. So they took that away from the membership a little bit. And again, I just wonder why, I mean, if the reason you join is to, to learn and stay current about being a sport, physical therapist, I don't want to take away benefits. Speaker 2 (12:11): Right? Like there's, there's gotta be a way we do that. Right. so I, I, you know, there's, there's, there's a ton of different avenues, right? Like you said, it's hard to go over this and just like a quick like kind of podcast, but I think it's about like networking opportunities. Cause it's all about who, you know, in this world. Right. But for me, it's about education and mentorship, right? We have some amazing clinicians that are part of this Academy that we need to learn from and that we need to go work with. Right. So we have residencies, we have fellowships. Those are great well-established things. Those are large, those are daunting, right? Like, like that's a big commitment, both time and finance for you to go do one of those things. We need to have more accessible opportunities, either online or shorter term, those types of things. Speaker 2 (12:56): I think we need to leverage, remember sports, physical therapy. That's where my background comes in. That's all I've done. My whole career is work with pro athletes and stuff. Right. Is how do you get a job in pro sports? How do you get a job in the MLB or the NBA or the NFL? Right. We need to leverage our, our connections. Like I'm friends with people in all these leagues, the PTs and all these leagues. And I've reached out to all of them. And I said, we need to start collaborating more. What if we have joint education sessions? What if we have mentorship opportunities where you come to spring training with me for eight weeks. Right. And who do you think is going to get a job when a physical therapy job opens up now in major league baseball, somebody that's just off the street with a good resume or somebody that's actually done a mentorship program with somebody already established. Speaker 2 (13:40): So that's part of the things that I think that's what I bring to the table is these connections and sports. And these are the things I've done. Like I, to me, I feel like I am I'm representative of the membership. I'm a clinician, you know, we treat our butts off. Right, right. And we're still working with people, you know, all the time we published clinical research, right. Impactful clinical research that have great implications that everybody wants to learn from. Right. We teach this to everybody after we publish it. Right. So we're on the trenches. We're working with the pro athletes. We're working with the collegiate athletes. Like I want to give people the opportunities that I've been fortunate to have. And I think that's a big part through networking, mentorship, education. I think those are the three big areas that are really push. Speaker 1 (14:24): And I really loved the mentoring aspect or Avenue of that. Especially like you said, maybe some online options and things like that. Obviously during COVID these things have become more and more prevalent, but I think it also does well for members who may be don't have, don't have the finances. They don't have the resources to let's say, even travel to a continuing education moment or even go to CSM. So I think to make things more accessible to all members or to people who want to become a member, right. Cause you may have someone out there is like, I'd really like, want to be part of the sports section. But man, I don't know if I can, like you said, do a residency or fellowship, which can be very expensive and time consuming or maybe they're a later in life PT and they have a family that they have to care for and they can't go off for 12 weeks or something like that. So I think to have those virtual options would be really great. And, and for me, I think it would be something that would really generate some interest in the section. Speaker 2 (15:38): Yeah. And that's my wheelhouse. Right. And that's what, that's what we did. I mean, it's funny. Like I stumbled into online education. Like I don't even like 12 years ago now. Right. Remember where the we're the old ones again, Karen. Right. I stumbled into that and have all these online courses now. And I did it for one simple reason. I was unable to travel around and teach. Right. Because I, I was now in getting a new baby. Yeah. Well, no, I was, no, that was before that I was in professional baseball. Right. So meaning like I worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I can't take a weekend off and be like, Hey, I know you guys have a game tonight, but I'm going to go teach a course in Louisiana. Right. Like they couldn't do that. So I got in that, but then yes, then you get you, and now you add family on top of that, right? Speaker 2 (16:23): Like, yeah, that's a big deal. So, so I started teaching online to kind of scratch that itch for myself, to keep giving back right. And sharing and educating and men that it's amazing how many people around the world you can touch by, by doing it online. And again, we need to catch up with that and just shows again, like, like, you know, the current state of even like the AP team totally. That they don't, they don't even have a way to a good, solid way to be able to offer continuing education credit for people with online courses. It's a mess. It just shows you how, like it's a, we're, we're getting a little outdated. I think we just need to refresh the vision for modern day, you know, this next generation of VCPS and people that want to get further along in their career, we need to meet them where they are. Speaker 2 (17:06): And not just assume that like some of the old standards that they've done. Right. And I think that's why bringing some new vision to the board is helpful. Right. I mean, the board has been pretty consistent for a long time. Right. The board has been quite academic for a long time right now. Right. There's not a lot of clinical leaders that are in the trenches, like working with athletes every day. I think there should be both, right. Like, don't get me wrong. I think we need both. We need clinical and academic in there, but I think we need to collaborate on that because I do think there's different perspectives if you know, depending on what you do all day. So I'm pretty excited for those things. Cause I actually think that's going to make a big impact. And, and again, I just think like the benefit of being a member is going to skyrocket. You have all these opportunities. Speaker 1 (17:51): Absolutely. I agree. And now before we kind of wrap things up, is there what would you like the listeners to kind of take away from the discussion? What is your main point? Speaker 2 (18:05): Yeah. vote for me now. I'm just getting abs. No, in all honesty, I'm like, I, I'm pretty humble about it. Like if, if, if I'm not elected, like I, it's not a big deal to me. I CA I can't wait to continue to continue to contribute to the Academy and help people. Right. For me, it was like, this is the right time to kind of give back and to be able to do that. I think my experience, I think I've done what a lot of people join the Academy to try to also accomplish. I've been there. I've done that. I understand what they're going through. And I'm, I want to get the Academy back to helping exactly, exactly. Achieve your goals. And that's it, it's about the member. It's not about me. It's about the membership. So yeah, and I think that's it. Speaker 2 (18:47): And you know, again, just just you know, also throw up Mike Malaney again, as vice-president, because I humbly, I can't do this by myself. Right. We're all busy. Like you're busy, I'm busy, we're all busy, right. This is a team effort. And I think in some fresh vision of people that have this clinical background, like Mike and I, and I've been, I've been big sports PTs our whole career, like adding that to the current board that's already in place, I think is going to be quite a nice dynamic that is going to really help lead this Academy in the future. Speaker 1 (19:19): Excellent. And now let's talk a little bit more about you. Where can people find you, your, your podcast website, anything you want to share? Speaker 2 (19:29): Awesome. I'm easy to find, right? So I'm just Mike ronald.com. If you want to learn a little bit more about this election and the process with that, you can go to microsoft.com/vote, and there's some info on there that you can, you can get I have a podcast, I have a blog, you know, kind of blot for over 10 years. So there's like a thousand articles on there. So people always ask like, where should I, where should I get started? I'm like, well, you got a lot to catch up on. Right. There's a lot of articles out there, but yeah, no, I'm easy. I'm on social media. Like I just, I really am at the point in my career where I want to help others. So I, you know, we try to hit every, every channel we can to, to have the most impact. So, so yeah, just head to my website, there's a lot to learn on there. And and like I said, Mike reynolds.com/boat, and you get a little bit more info about this election. Speaker 1 (20:14): Excellent. And last question. What advice would you give to your younger self knowing where you are now in your life and in your career? What advice would you give yourself as that fresh face? New grad? Speaker 2 (20:28): You know, this is, this is actually funny because I, I just wrote this to my, to my newsletter last week. Right. It was kind of funny that I literally, I just wrote this last week and I just wrote like the next one for this weekend, that's going out this weekend. But I, there was one thing I accidentally did in my career that I stumbled into that I, I it's become clear now that that is what we should do. And I said, like, I am pretty certain at this point, everything I've accomplished in my career is because I specialized ready. And in this week's newsletter, I actually talk about like how to, how to arc your career path that way to do that. But like, I remember early in my career, like I got, I got some heat from some other physical therapists that I was too specialized. Speaker 2 (21:13): Right. And you were like, no, you need to be generally, like, you're not good with neurologic injuries or something. And I'm like, all right. But like, for me, like getting really good at one thing helped me achieve all the goals that I wanted to get to, to get a job in professional baseball, right. To win a world series, right. To, to open my own clinic, to open my own gym and sports performance center. Right. It was all because I specialize in something. So we need to be general, you need to start general, but if there's some your passionate about say, it's like soccer, football, whatever sport it may be. Right. You just, every second of downtime, you have learn how to be the best at that. Just be absolutely amazing at something. And I think that was the biggest key to my career is overhead athletes and shoulders, like in baseball. Speaker 2 (21:58): Like I just, I got super lucky that I engulfed myself in that environment and became a specialist in that. Right. And again, just, that's another thing that the Academy needs to do, and it needs to help people that want to get super specialized in one thing to be able to do that. So I think that would be my biggest thing right now. You know, it keeps evolving as we, as, you know, as we get older, but I think right now is for an early career professional is master the basics, but follow your passion and make sure you are just, you're putting your extra grind and hustle into like, become the best you can at that side. And then it'll grow, you know, grow over time. And then when you're lucky like us, Karen, and you're a little bit older, you, you go to work one day and you're like, gosh, I just have, I have six baseball players today. That's all that's on my schedule. It's like, it's pretty cool. You know, I played catch three times yesterday. Right. Like that's kind of cool. I got, I got paid to play catch. Right. That's kind of cool. So, yeah. So I think that would be my biggest advice really for the early career professionals. That would be good. Speaker 1 (22:58): Well, what, great advice. Thank you so much. I don't think I've heard that one yet. And I think that's a great, I think that's great. And hopefully that will help some of our students and younger clinicians as they try and figure out and navigate their career. So thank you so much and thanks for taking the time out and coming on today. I really appreciate it. Speaker 2 (23:15): Thanks for having me, Karen. You're the best. This is awesome. And I appreciate it. The LC in the future, I'm sure fingers crossed Speaker 3 (23:22): One day. We'll actually be able to see each other in person, right. Speaker 1 (23:26): And everyone, thank you so much for listening. Have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy and smart.

For this week's Feature Discussion, please join authors Michael Ackerman, Christopher Haggerty, editorialist Michael Rosenberg, and Associate Editor Nicholas Mills as they discuss the original research articles “Artificial Intelligence-Enabled Assessment of the Heart Rate Corrected QT Interval Using a Mobile Electrocardiogram Device,” “ Deep Neural Networks Can Predict New-Onset Atrial Fibrillation From the 12-Lead Electrocardiogram and Help Identify Those at Risk of AF-Related Stroke,” and “Trusting Magic: Interpretability of Predictions from Machine Learning Algorithms.”   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 cohosts. I'm doctor Carolyn Lam, associate editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore. Dr. Greg Hundley: And I'm Greg Hundley, associate editor, director of the Pauley Heart Center at VCU Health in Richmond, Virginia. Well Carolyn, this week's feature, it's kind of a new thing for us. It's more than our double feature; it's actually a forum, where we're going to have two papers discussed, we'll have both authors represented from each of those two papers, we'll have an editorialist, and we'll have one of our associate editors. And the topic, Carolyn, just to keep you in suspense, is really on machine learning and actually how that can be applied to 12 lead electrocardiograms. But before we get to that, how about we grab a cup of coffee and start off on some of the other articles in this issue? Would you like to go first? Dr. Carolyn Lam: Yes, I would, but you're really keeping me in suspense. But first, let's focus on health related quality of life. We know that poor quality of life is common in heart failure, but there are few data on heart health related quality of life and its association with mortality outside of the Western countries. Well, until today's paper. And it's from the Global Congestive Heart Failure, or GCHF study, the largest study that has systematically examined health-related quality of life as measured by the Kansas City cardiomyopathy questionnaire 12, or KCCQ, and its association with outcomes in more than 23,000 patients with heart failure across 40 countries, in eight major geographic regions, spanning five continents. Dr. Greg Hundley: Wow, Carolyn. That KCCQ 12, that has been such an interesting tool for us to use in patients with heart failure. So what did they find in this study? Dr. Carolyn Lam: Really important. So the health-related quality of life differs considerably between geographic regions with markedly lower quality of life related to heart failure in Africa than elsewhere. Quality of life was a strong predictor of death and heart failure hospitalization in all regions, irrespective of symptoms class, and in both preserved and reduced ejection fraction. So there are some important clinical implications, namely that health-related quality of life is an inexpensive and simple prognostic marker that may be useful in characterizing symptom severity and prognosis in patients with heart failure. And there is certainly a need to address disparities that impact quality of life in patients with heart failure in different regions of the world. Dr. Greg Hundley: Very nice, Carolyn. Well, I'm going to turn to the world of basic science and bring us a paper from David Merryman from Vanderbilt University. So Carolyn, myocardial infarction induces an intense injury response, which ultimately generates a collagen dominated scar. Cardiac myofibroblasts are the cells tasked with depositing and remodeling collagen and are a prime target to limit the fibrotic process post myocardial infarction. Now Carolyn, serotonin 2B receptor signaling has been shown to be harmful in a variety of cardiopulmonary pathologies, and could play an important role in mediating scar formation after MI. So Carolyn, these investigators employed two pharmacologic antagonists to explore the effect of serotonin 2B receptor inhibition on outcomes post myocardial infarction and characterized the histological and micro structural changes involved in tissue remodeling. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Oh, that's very interesting, Greg. What did they find? Dr. Greg Hundley: So Carolyn, serotonin 2B receptor antagonism preserved cardiac structure and function by facilitating a less fibrotic scar, indicated in their results by decreased scar thickness and decreased border zone area. Serotonin 2B receptor antagonism resulted in collagen fiber redistribution to a thinner collagen fiber. And they were more anisotropic. They enhanced left ventricular contractility and the fibrotic tissue stiffness was decreased, thereby limiting the hypertrophic response of the uninjured cardiomyocytes. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Wow. That is really fascinating, Greg. Summarize it for us. Dr. Greg Hundley: Yeah, sure. So this study, Carolyn, suggests that early inhibition of serotonin 2B receptor signaling after myocardial infarction is sufficient to optimize scar formation, resulting in a functional scar, which is less likely to expand beyond the initial infarct and cause long-term remodeling. The prolonged presence of the antagonist was not required to maintain the benefits observed in the early stages after injury, indicating that acute treatment can alter chronic remodeling. So Carolyn, it's really going to be interesting to see how this research question is pursued in studies of larger animals, including us, or human subjects. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Wow, that is really interesting. And so is this next paper. Well, we know that genetic variation in coding regions of genes are known to cause inherited cardiomyopathies and heart failure. For example, mutations in MYH7 are a common cause of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, while mutations in LMNA are a common cause of dilated cardiomyopathy with arrhythmias. Now, to define the contribution of non-coding variations, though, today's authors, led by Dr. Elizabeth McNelly from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and colleagues evaluated the regulatory regions for these two commonly mutated cardiomyopathy genes, namely MYH7 and LMNA. Dr. Greg Hundley: Wow, Carolyn. So this is really interesting. So how did they do this and what did they find? Dr. Carolyn Lam: You asked the top questions, because the method is just as interesting as the findings here. They used an integrative analysis that relied on more than 20 heart enhancer function and enhancer target datasets to identify MYH7 and LMNA left ventricular enhancer regions. They confirmed the activity of these regions using reporter assay and CRISPR mediated deletion of human cardiomyocytes derived from induced pluripotent STEM cells. These regulatory regions contained sequence variants within transcription factor binding sites that altered enhancer function. Extending the strategy genome-wide, they identified an enhancer modifying variant upstream of MYH7. One specific genetic variant correlated with cardiomyopathy features derived from biobank and electronic health record information, including a more dilated left ventricle over time. So these findings really link non-coding enhancer variation to cardiomyopathy phenotypes, and provide direct evidence of the importance of genetic background. Beautiful paper. Dr. Greg Hundley: Very nice, Carolyn. Dr. Carolyn Lam: But let me quickly tell you what else is in this issue. We have an ECG Challenge by Dr. Lutz on flash pulmonary edema in a 70-year-old; there's an On My Mind paper by Dr. Halushka, entitled (An) Urgent Need for Studies of the Late Effects of SARS-CoV-2 on the Cardiovascular System. Dr. Greg Hundley: Ah, Carolyn. Well, in the mailbox, there are two Research Letters, one from Dr. Soman entitled (The) Prevalence of Atrial Fibrillation and Thromboembolic Risk in Wild-Type Transthyretin Amyloid Cardiomyopathy, and a second letter from Dr. Berger entitled Multiple Biomarker Approaches to Risk Stratification in COVID-19. Well Carolyn, now let's get on to that forum discussion and hear a little bit more about using machine learning in the interpretation of a 12 lead ECG. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Wow, can't wait. Thanks, Greg. Dr. Greg Hundley: Well listeners, we are here today for a double feature, but this double feature is somewhat unique, in that we are going to discuss together two papers that focus on machine learning applications as they relate to the interpretation of the electrocardiogram. With us today, we have Mike Ackerman from Mayo Clinic, Chris Haggerty from Geisinger, Mike Rosenberg as an editorialist from University of Colorado, and then our own Nick Mills, an associate editor with Circulation. Welcome, gentlemen. Well, Mike Ackerman, we will start with you first. Could you describe for us the hypothesis that you wanted to test, and what was your study population and your study design? Dr. Michael Ackerman: Thanks, Greg. The hypothesis was pretty simple, and that is could an artificial intelligence based approach, machine learning, deep neural network, could that solve the QT problem? Which is one of the big secrets among cardiologists, which, as you know, one of your associate editors, Sammy Biskin, published a sobering paper over a decade ago, showing and revealing the secret that cardiologists are not so hot at measuring the QT interval, and heart rhythm specialists sometimes don't get it right either. And we all know that the 12 lead ECG itself is vexed by its computer algorithms at getting the QTC just right, compared to those of us who would view ourselves as QT aficionados. And so we were hoping that a machine learning approach would solve this and help us glean, one, a very accurate QTC, as accurate as I can make it when I measure it, or core labs that do QT measuring for living. Dr. Michael Ackerman: And two, could we get that QTC from just a couple of leads to be as accurate as what the whole 12 lead ECG would be seeing so that we can move it to a mobile smartphone enabled solution? And so that was our hypothesis going forward, and we studied a lot of patients. And that's something that machine learning and the power of computation does, that in my world, I'm used to studying a hundred or a thousand patients with congenital long QT syndrome and thinking that I've assembled a large cohort, but for this study, we started with over two and a half million ECGs from over 650,000 people. And then ultimately, through training, testing, and validation of about 1.6 million ECGs from over a half a million individuals to sort of teach the computer or have the AI algorithm get the QT interval not too hot, not too cold, but just right. And as we'll discuss, I think we hit the mark. Dr. Greg Hundley: Thanks so much, Mike, what did you find? Dr. Michael Ackerman: Ultimately, we were able to show that with this drill, we could get the deep neural network derived QTC to be give or take two plus minus 20 milliseconds from what would the standard of care, and that being a technician over-read QTC. But then we took, I would say, pretty unique to AI studies, as many AI studies, just do training, testing, and validation for study number one. And then a future paper of a prospective study. But we did that prospective study within this single paper with a subsequent about two year enrollment of nearly 700 patients that I evaluated in our genetic heart rhythm clinic at Mayo Clinic. And half of those patients have congenital long QT syndrome, half did not. And what we showed was that the deep neural network derived QTC from a mobile ECG approximated the subsequent or the just prior 12 lead ECG within one millisecond, +/- 20 millisecond territory. Dr. Michael Ackerman: And it's ability to say is the QTC above or below 500, which we all know is sort of a warning sign, that's a very actionable ECG finding, do something about it, that that 500 millisecond cutoff by the deep neural network gave us an area under the curve of 0.97, which from a screening perspective, that AUC is far higher than a lot of AUCs for a lot of screening tests done in the cancer world and so forth. And so we think we are very close to what I've called a pivot point, where we will soon pivot from the way we've been doing the QTC since Eindhoven over a century ago to a fundamentally new way of deriving a QTC that's precise and accurate and mobile enabled. Dr. Greg Hundley: Very nice, Mike. So using machine learning to accurately assess the QTC from just two leads of an electrocardiogram. Well Chris, you also have a paper in this issue of circulation that pertains to another application of machine learning and looking at the electrocardiogram. Can you describe for us your study population, study design, and then also the question you were trying to address? Dr. Christopher Haggerty: Sure. Yeah, thanks Greg. Great to be here with you all today. Very similar to Mike's study, the motivation for us was we believe very strongly that there's opportunities with using deep learning applied to ECG data to uncover not only new knowledge latent in the ECG itself related to the current patient context, but also to try to predict future outcomes, future events. And that was really our motivation, was to take that paradigm of looking forward, in this case to predict new onset of atrial fibrillation within a year. We used our Geisinger patient cohort, which is a largely rural population in central Pennsylvania. We have very longitudinal data for a lot of our patients, which allows us to have this kind of design going back in our electronic health records, in this case, our ECG database to 30 plus years. Dr. Christopher Haggerty: Similar big numbers that Mike described, and in our case, 1.6 million ECGs over 430,000 patients used to train the model. And we had several different study designs that we employed. One just being a simple proof of concept, asking can we accurately predict new onset atrial fibrillation one year? And then a second study design that was intended to simulate a real world deployment scenario. Obviously the main rationale for trying to predict atrial fibrillation is to then be able to treat and try to prevent stroke. And so we tried to, as best we can in a retrospective fashion, simulate a scenario in which we might use this model to identify patients who went on to have a presumably AFib associated stroke. Dr. Greg Hundley: And what did you find, Chris? Dr. Christopher Haggerty: So I think there are three main findings that we highlighted here. So first, obviously we were building on the great work that Mike and some of his colleagues at the Mayo Clinic have done, showing that looking at AFib using deep neural networks needs to be feasible. We extended it in this case by looking out further than just an acute sense, looking at that one-year outcome. And we had an area under the curve for our proof of concept of 0.85. So area under the curve of 0.85 to identify patients with new onset of atrial fibrillation within one year in our millions of ECGs. Looking at it another way, the second main finding was that that one year prediction was shown to have prognostic significance beyond that one year, which is really interesting and warrants a lot of further study. Looking over 30 years of follow-up, patients predicted to be at high risk at baseline had a hazard ratio of 7.2 for developing atrial fibrillation, compared to those deemed to be low risk. Dr. Christopher Haggerty: And then really the third, and I think perhaps the most exciting finding that we had here, was this simulated stroke experiment that we had, where we identified patients from an internal stroke registry and identified patients who had new diagnosis of AFib at the time or up to a year after the stroke. So we can assume that they were an AFib associated stroke. And subsequently, or I should say previously, had an ECG that we could use to run through the algorithm to predict their atrial fibrillation risk. And we showed that the model performed well in this setting, that of the 375 strokes that we identified, for example, over a five-year period in our registry, we were able to identify 62% of them within three years based on that ECG. So a number needed to screen for an atrial fibrillation associated with stroke about 162, which compares favorably well to other screening techniques that are out there, obviously. So we took that as a great proof of concept that this type of AI technique might have benefits for screening for atrial fibrillation and preventing strokes. Dr. Greg Hundley: Well congratulations, Chris. Well, we're now going to turn to our associate editor, Dr. Nick Mills. And Nick, you have a lot of manuscripts come across your desk. What attracted you to these two papers, and what are the significance of the results as they apply to ECG applications as we move forward? Nick Mills: Thanks, Greg. Yeah, this is a rapidly growing field, where the availability of data scale with digital archiving and lots of really interesting new methodologies are available to our researchers. So we are receiving a lot of content in this area. What I loved about these two papers is not just the quality of the work, but also the really tangible benefits, potentially, for patients. So AI does not need to be complex, but it does need to solve a tangible problem. I guess what we look for in the journal, beyond the kind of innovation and methodology, is quality, and these studies used prospective validation, really reliable end points, ascertainments, transparency, reporting, all the things that we know are important for high quality clinical research. I think the idea that we can bring QT monitoring to the drug store on a portable device for our patients is potentially transformative. I also think that to take a technology, the electrocardiogram that we've been using for over a century, and provide new insights that go way beyond my ability to interpret the ECG, that might help us recommend a different course of action for our patients is also just really exciting. Dr. Greg Hundley: Very nice. Thank you, Nick. Well Mike ... we're going to turn to Mike Rosenberg now, listeners. And Mike wrote a wonderful editorial, and I would invite you to work through this. As you have an opportunity to read the journal and interact with it. Mike, there are two different types of machine learning, I think, that you described were used by the two respective investigative groups. Could you describe those for our cardiology listeners? What were the differences in those two approaches? Dr. Michael Rosenberg: Yeah, sure. And thank you for the opportunity to write the editorial. Two very fascinating papers. I should say that they both use the same approach of what's called supervised learning, where you basically have a set of data inputs, and you're trying to predict a labeled outcome. And what I talk about in the paper is that what we've learned is if you have enough data and enough computing power, you can predict almost anything highly accurately. What's interesting about the two papers, and what I sort of tried to contrast in the editorial, is that the one from the Mayo Group and Dr. Ackerman, was basically predicting what's already a known biomarker for sudden death, which is the QT interval. And essentially, almost trying to automate that process of predicting it accurately and in a way that, in essence, could allow a home monitoring of patients for QT prolongation, which obviously would be a huge benefit for clinicians, all those alerts and things, to be able to have patients taking drugs that are known to prolong the QT interval and feeling comfortable that if they have any prolongation, it could be detected accurately. Dr. Michael Rosenberg: The second one, which is sort of interesting, and in contrast is from the Geisinger Group and Dr. Haggerty, was the approach of ... where actually the prediction itself is actually the biomarker. And we don't actually know exactly what it's using, which I talk about a little bit of what that means and the implications clinically, but in essence, what they showed was that it actually is a very good biomarker and on par with what a lot of us would consider to be very strong predictors of agents. So I think it was two very interesting approaches to, again, applying the same type of machine learning, but really approaching it one from a more discovery side and another from sort of validated or almost automating something that we do on a daily basis. Dr. Greg Hundley: Thank you, Mike. So Mike, just coming back to you again, as we read the literature, and most of us are clinicians or researchers practicing, what should we look for when these new machine learning manuscripts and research studies come out as to gauge, "Ah, this is a really good study," or maybe not so much? Dr. Michael Rosenberg: Yeah. And it's a good question. I think one of the biggest challenges, as I talked about, is interpretability. I think in the clinical world, we're used to understanding the code for the variables that go into our risk prediction model. And so I think first and foremost is can I even understand what this is predicting or am I sort of expected to take the predictions as sort of a black box, it is what it is type of approach? I think that there's other things that I just look at when I'm reviewing these manuscripts. I mean, as I sort of mentioned, what these models are really doing, it's not anything magical. What they're doing is identifying patterns in the data and then using those to make predictions, again, toward whatever label that you've assigned them to. Dr. Michael Rosenberg: It's important that your data sets are split and that you're training at one data set and then testing it in one that's separate. And again, you can't ignore epidemiology. Is the data set that you're training it reflective of the population that you're going to be using those models in? And we know from outside of healthcare, there's issues with models that have been trained in one population where it's potentially biased or it's potentially offering predictions that are using information we may not necessarily want to use. Recidivism is a big example of that. So I think that that's, first and foremost, it's sort of taking a step back as a clinician and saying, "If this was a biomarker that someone was proposing to use to predict some new disease, what would I expect to use to evaluate that?" And that's probably what I would start with. Dr. Greg Hundley: Excellent. Well, I'm going to turn back and go back to our panelists here, listeners. And we're going to ask each of our panelists in about 20 seconds to describe for us what they think is the next most important aspect of research in their respective areas. So first I'll start with Mike Ackerman. Mike, can you tell us what's coming next in this area of assessment of QT prolongation or other aspects of the electrocardiogram? Dr. Michael Ackerman: I think next is implementing this in the real world. We are having our suite of the AI ECG as a  hypertrophic cardiomyopathy detector. We've shown that as an ejection fraction detector, and now as a QT detector in AFib, from our work and Chris's work. And for the QT itself, I think where we are is we're really, really close to now having a mobile enabled digital QT meter. And a digital QT meter, once FDA cleared, then allows the QTC to truly emerge as the next vital sign. And it really deserves to be a vital sign. We use it as a vital sign. We know I want to know my patient's QTC every bit as I want to know his or her weight, blood pressure, saturation. It's an actionable finding, and we're now getting really close. We're just on the cusp of having a true digital QT meter. Dr. Greg Hundley: Excellent. Chris? Dr. Christopher Haggerty: I think for us to, in part address some of the comments that Mike brought up about the reproducibility of these types of models, we're very keen to demonstrate the prospective capabilities of our models to enroll patients in a prospective fashion, run their ECG through our predictor, and then screen them for AFib to determine how well we actually do moving forward, instead of just relying solely on our retrospective data. So we're very excited to do that. We're ramping up for that trial now and hope to be able to demonstrate similarly positive findings from our technique. Dr. Greg Hundley: Great. How about you, Nick? Nick Mills: I'd like to see the same quality and rigor applied to the implementation of these technologies as we have to other important areas in cardiovascular medicine. I think that's a really important step, not just to develop the tools, but to demonstrate their value. But I also think what we've done so far is relatively simplistic. We've taken an ECG and we've ignored almost all the other information that we have in front of us. And as these algorithms are trained and evolved, these and other vital clinical biomarkers and information, and integrating them into these neural networks will really enhance their performance for predicting things that are less tangible, like sudden death in the future or stroke. Dr. Greg Hundley: And then finally, Mike Rosenberg. Dr. Michael Rosenberg: Yeah, I actually see two challenging areas in this field. One is the access to data. And I think one of the things that a lot of companies are realizing is that even if they make hardware, that the data may be more valuable than the technology that they're getting the data from. So I think one is figuring out ways to get access to data so that people can reproduce findings from these studies. And the second is deliverable. A bottle like this is not like the CHADS-VASc score that I can calculate in my head in the clinic. I mean I need a way to actually run these models within an EHR, within a computer system like that. And I think it's going to be a big challenge to take a model like this and to deploy it at scale the way we would with the drug or any other innovation. Dr. Greg Hundley: Fantastic. Well listeners, we want to thank Mike Ackerman from Mayo Clinic, Chris Haggerty from Geisinger, Mike Rosenberg from University of Colorado, and Nick Mills from University of Edinburgh for really providing us with a wonderful discussion regarding the use of machine learning applications in one study to predict the QTC interval from two leads that may be applicable to wearable devices. And in the second study, predicting the future occurrence of atrial fibrillation and even stroke as an adverse event in people at risk. Dr. Greg Hundley: On behalf of both Carolyn and myself, I want to wish you a great week and we will catch you next week on the run. This program is copyright of the American Heart Association, 2021.  

Mike Lewis joins us in the Habitz Podcast studio talking to you about how to improve your SEO. You'll have seen agencies and marketing professionals talk about the importance of SEO and having a decent SEO strategy, but they rarely give you a few tips to rank higher on Google that you can do yourself. It isn't easy, and it's definitely not an overnight thing – ranking takes time. From ensuring you've got the right keywords, showing relevance and authority and link building – it's a month on month job. But the results of SEO will make the wait worthwhile. So Mike's here to give an easy way to improve your SEO ranking that anyone can do. Yes, even you.

Welcome back to the A.N.A.L. Podcast. Join Jared, Jon, Mike and I, with drop in from Rochelle and Matthew! Val-Day is close or here depending! So Mike decides sexy talk is the way to celebrate! That's as far as he got! So take this Quiz! That's what we do! Trigger warning! Sexy Talk! --- 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/analpod/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/analpod/support

In this episode of Unhackable, Mike Storm with his co-host and producer, Sean discuss the Unhackable Principle: Authentication. This is where they talk about passwords, multi-factor authentication, and what it takes to keep you safe when you are online. Today more than ever, it is critical to protect our family and friends, both online and off. So Mike and Sean wanted to do something really impactful and issued the Unhackable Podcast MFA Challenge, a simple pledge that anyone can make which can have a major impact on everyone’s online safety. They are challenging all Unhackable podcast listeners to take a small step and contact someone right now to tell them you’ll help them with MFA. Go to our website cisco.com/go/mfachallenge to take the MFA Challenge, and be sure to use the hashtag #MFAChallenge when making your pledge.

So Mike and I have been participating in Dry January, this decision was made before the UK went into lockdown and homeschooling became a terrifying reality (again!!! Thanks 2021). It has admittedly been harder than we anticipated but we can both feel the difference and it’s a good one. We did find two fab non-alcoholic solutions and in this episode we chat to spokespeople from both companies and we did a live tasting too. You want to know more right? Sarah from Sea Arch Drinks tells us more about their non-alcoholic gin and then we spoke to Dash from Three Spirit Drinks – these are very interesting plant-based concoctions which provide an actual buzz. Enjoy!

Tips To Reach Your Target Audience With Mike Maynard Breaking through the virtual barrier to improve your business You might be thinking now that a lot of us are working from home, how do we reach the right audience? Before COVID-19 you could meet people by doing lunch meetings and networking things where you might be able to find the right person interested in your product or service. We've got Mike Maynard here from NapierB2B, and he's going to go through some solutions and how you can find the right audience. So Mike, how would you go about making sure that you can reach an audience from home? Mike: That's a great question to start off with Josh. It's hugely challenging to reach people at home. Our clients who we work with tend to sell to big business, and almost all of the people they wanted to reach sat in an office and they could send salespeople to meet them. Now obviously, COVID has completely changed that. Even if people are working in the office, you still can't get salespeople out there to meet them. So what you need to do is understand what sort of media and what sort of information people are consuming at home and how that's changed from when they're in the office. There Are Multiple Channels Out There So it comes down to being in their social feeds, being in their news feeds and creating a strategy to be able to track down the decision-maker in the business?  Mike: We're seeing clients have success with different tactics. I think one of the things that's really clear, is that different audiences, different sorts of people you want to reach with your marketing, are actually going to prefer different channels. So absolutely social, for sure is bigger. You look at all the stats activity and social media is way up. Now, people are working from home,  but equally don't rule out things. For example, the good old email newsletter. Great newsletters can actually be very valuable today, particularly in some industries where perhaps people aren't receiving the trade magazines they might have been reading in the past. With social media, do you think the amount of noise is becoming a problem, or the message getting washed out? Battling Against the Noise Mike: Whatever channel you choose, you've got to battle against noise. I If you're trying to use email marketing, absolutely, you're still battling against noise and spam filters, trying to remove that noise. Unfortunately, sometimes that spam filter is going to think your messages are noise rather than signal. So absolutely, I think everybody's battling against noise.  We've seen a big move online, particularly from some of the companies who were perhaps a bit more focused on traditional media previously. All that's doing is adding to the noise. Now, of course, we have seen that some of the paid channels actually become slightly less competitive. So for example, if you want to advertise travel destinations on Facebook, now's a pretty good time globally, because there's not much travel advertising going out on Facebook. However, whether it's good for your business is a very different question. So it's not the case that everything has got more noisy and everything has got more difficult, but it's always the case that:  If you don't stand out and you don't add value, then people are not going to listen to you. So I would forget about the competition and how much noise or not there isn't any one channel and work out how you can create content and information that's actually going to be of interest to the people you want to influence. Focus On Your Target Market It comes down to making sure that you understand your target market, making sure that you've profiled your ideal client. Mike: Absolutely. So we're all about focus. I think today, it's not just about having your ideal client, but it's also understanding the individuals within that client. For example, let's say you're looking to market an IT services company. You might want to talk to somebody who's the I.T director, I.T manager, but you also want to reach the CEO of the company, and potentially even the finance director or the guy in charge of the money. All three of those people will have very different thoughts about what they want from an IT services company. So what you need to do is not just tailor your message for your ideal company, but also tailor the messages for each of those three people within it to make sure that they hear information that addresses their concerns, their worries, and makes them feel you're the right business for them. That information could also vary depending on who you're talking to. It could be analytical information, it could be emotional information. Once you found out that you've got that, then it just comes down to the channels that you need to be able to talk to or find people on. There's lots of different places out there that you could be throwing your content up. Your target will probably be on LinkedIn and might have an Instagram account too, but, do you want to spread the message too thin, or do you want to focus? Mike: You absolutely want to focus. I think you need to find out what really works for you. One of the interesting things is you can't always predict that, and we have companies where one has fantastic results on social media, and the other will have email as their primary vehicle for reaching people. Both of them will be doing great, both clearly doing the right thing. Yet, it's different channels.  For me, there's a lot of different factors that affect what's going to be the most important channel. There's no point marketing in a place where your audience doesn't visit. If your audience is never on Instagram, don't go to Instagram, it’s a waste of time. But if you're where they are, then it's about:  Building a presence Building authority Building an approach that works for you, and also works for your customer  It's about finding a platform or a channel, that's going to make a difference for you. That's going to reach your audience and a platform or channel where you can actually contribute. Going back to marketing with Managed IT services, you know that there are some companies with awesome podcasts, there are other companies that are not doing podcasts because they're much more introverted. I can say over the years, we've tried many different things. It comes down to working with what works. One of the things we do that we find can help connect you with the right person is we send out postcards to our ideal clients. We found no one gets a handwritten card in the post. So that's one way that we've made sure that we stand out a little bit.  Current Trends In Online Marketing With Facebook and any sort of online marketing, I've noticed a trend and I just wanted to see what your thoughts were. Do you think at the moment businesses are pushing it more or pulling back? What are you seeing out there? Mike: I think there's a mix of approaches. We did some research amongst the industries we work in. It really was interesting to see that there was a group of people who were carrying on as they've always done, there was a group of people who were slashing marketing budgets and a group that were actually increasing. We saw the same with our clients. Some of that is due to how people approach marketing and where they see marketing as a cost or where they see it as an investment.  We have a Managed IT services client, who literally more than doubled their spend with us. When everyone's working from home, there are huge demands on I.T systems which I'm sure you know. Whereas we had other clients where they've cut back because their business has fallen.  Targeting Specific Accounts Can Work If you are doing digital marketing and you are trying to be in people's newsfeeds, are you better off tracking down the decision-maker for the account as a marketing process? Mike: I think the more focused you can be the better. So just sending out content and hoping it reaches the right person is clearly the wrong approach. What we're seeing is a lot of our clients moving to targeting specific accounts. So, LinkedIn is the primary platform for most people where you can target by industry, you can target by job role, and you can even target by company. You need a certain audience size, you can't literally target one person at one company when you do that. But you can build up really focused audience lists.  We're seeing people do the same thing on email, as well, I'm being very focused in my work on building their email list, and making sure they understand within that email list. Different industries might have different concerns, and the IT director wants to hear very different things from the CEO of a company. That's hard work and it takes time. This is one of the reasons why I do say that, that people shouldn't try and do everything. Just trying to spray stuff across almost all channels is the wrong thing. Doing one thing well is definitely the best approach. How to Get Started If you don't have an email list and no digital leads, where do you start? Mike: It's one of these great questions that really needs to be answered with well, it depends. Where you start is your best guess as to what's going to give you the best return. Let's say you sell an engineering product. The big concern from all your customers is how to get prototypes of this mechanical engineering product. Perhaps you want to produce a lead magnet around 3D printing, for example. I would use that lead magnet across a number of different channels to see which one drives the most interest, because that's going to then start giving you an indication of where your customers are actually looking at information and looking for content. There are all sorts of different ways you can do that. You can do that through SEO, you can do it through paid search, you can do it on social media, you can even do it through targeted ads. We're seeing clients using Google ads to target display ads on particular websites. The one thing I would say as well as if you don't have an email list, the one thing you probably do have is visitors to your website. So retargeting is like a poor man's version of an email list where you can actually target ads to people who visited your website. That certainly is a good approach if you know that people who you can sell a product to are actually visiting the website.  For anyone that's not sure what retargeting is, it’s where:  If someone comes to you, you can hide a little sneaky thing on their computer that lets you continue to market to them afterwards.  It's fantastic for some businesses, for example, if you're a florist and you want to send flowers out and remind everyone the week before Valentine's Day, “hey, don't forget your partner”, it's great to know that you're in front of mind, even if they may have not have done something with you for 12 months. When it comes down to retargeting, the costs are significantly more cost-effective and efficient than virgin marketing when you are marketing to people based on long-tail keywords through AdWords. It's definitely a great way to go about it Understanding Your Sales Cycle What would be an average timeline that you'd expect going from A to B to actually seeing some dollars trickle through for a business in the IT Professional Services industry? Mike: That is so hard to say, but if we look at our clients, some of their sales cycles are pretty much immediate. They're eCommerce vendors, so they can pretty much immediately generate sales. But they've already got that email list. We have another client that makes baggage handling systems for airports and their sales cycle is 20 years. So 20 years from starting marketing all the way through. I think the first thing you've got to understand is how long your sales cycle is in your particular business. In professional services, you can certainly generate leads very quickly using lead magnets and producing great content should generate leads pretty much straight away. Converting those leads that sales process is very difficult. It can depend on a lot of things. For example, in your business, Josh, where you're selling I.T services, if they've already got an incumbent company, then you probably don't really have an opportunity to get their business until the contract comes up for renewal. So there can be a sales cycle of anything from a month to a year, depending on how long is left on the contract. Don’t Forget About Phone Calls I think it's very hard to say how quickly you can get revenue because it's very dependent. But the reality is you can get leads. At the end of the day, marketing can do a lot of things, but you've just got to pick up the phone. even today, with people working from home, if someone's interested, you've got to pick up the phone and talk to them. That will ultimately start driving that sale. Getting back on the phone is 100% something to be in front of mind, keep the personal touch. We use a lot of automation, we're always talking about automation, but I don't think you should ever automate the human connection. That's something that you should always just keep so you have that authenticity in your voice, keep the emotion, keep that connection with someone as opposed to just sending them just the newsletter.  Content Ideas That Work A lot of people always use the term “I don't have enough time”. I think it's just that they probably don't want to spend their time on doing certain things, such as content creation. A lot of people don't like that. But it is one of the cornerstone pieces of a good digital marketing campaign. How can you get people out of that rut? Mike: Since my business is an agency I probably should be saying everyone employ agencies, they're a fantastic solution. But that is not always the case. Sometimes you've just got to bite the bullet and do things slightly differently if you're trying to generate some content. If you're really not the sort of person that wants to sit down in front of a computer and type out a white paper, an article, or an ebook, it's actually very easy. Just record yourself talking about it, and get it transcribed.  I think one of the biggest challenges people have is getting that first draft of something down. So anyway you can do that, whether it's just scribbling, speaking into a microphone, or have someone just chat to you. You can transcribe it, and then turn that into an E-book or a white paper. All those sort of things make it easier to start. You can bring in an agency and they can make the quality of the text that much better and they can make the layout look beautiful, but the end of the day, if you don't start with something that's helpful to your audience, an agency is stuck, they can't do anything. However pretty we make it look, it's not going to help that potential customer, it's not going to get them to pick the phone up to you. So find the way that works for you to get that first draft. Then keep editing and editing as it is much easier than writing that first draft, I can assure you that once you've got that first bit of information down, it's so much easier. I always think the first five minutes is the hardest when it comes to any task you don't want to do. It doesn't matter if it's public speaking and you're talking in front of an audience of 20 or 2000. The first five minutes is the hardest. I used to hate making content, but I've fallen in love with it. Everyone out there that is looking for a client, as long as you've got a business that's out there to make a difference you should have a story that goes with that as to how you're doing something different. It shouldn't be driven by money. As soon as you start writing it down and you start talking about what it is and how your solution differs to other people, you'll start finding the people that resonate and become raving fans.  Mike: Just getting started is the key. I think people will find it much easier going forward, there's millions of tools on the market that are going to help you, whether it be creating emails, or whether it's creating E-books, there's tools to help you do that automatically. But the reality is, it's all about having a point of view. I can guarantee if you're in business, and your business is making money, you have a point of view. That point of view matters to somebody because you've got customers that value that point of view. We're seeing a lot of people struggle to get content created, because they feel that something written there's got to be 20 times better than something verbal, and often that's not the case. Avoid Buying Spun Content I've seen a lot pop up more and more recently is people that are using spun content. They purchase subscription content and make a few newsletters for your industry that you send out to your clients. They are vaguely about your industry, and my personal thought is knowing how much work goes into developing content and making sure my brand and my message comes through is that I don’t like this option. What are your thoughts? Mike: I think the answer is people are not looking for you to be a trade magazine. They've got trade magazines for that, they've got other newsletters, they've heard this information 100 times. So yes, if you've generated your own content, is the quality going to be as good? Maybe not, but is the value to your potential customer going to be higher? Absolutely. It's not about getting something that looks pretty. To me, the great thing about digital, perhaps the one thing I think the digital has done to completely change marketing is that marketing is no longer subjective. I can tell you, we run tests with ads. We'll have two ads, and almost unanimously, both within the agency within the client, everyone will go, “I love that ad” but  I hate that second one and we will run the two ads as an A/B test. The one that everybody hates performs best.  So subjective opinions, particularly your own subjective opinion, is quite often wrong. If you keep doing something, whether it's an email newsletter, or a podcast or a blogging, you will get better. I can tell you, we started our own podcast. Not only was I terrible in the first podcast interview, but actually I've managed to lose the recording as well. Every time you start, you know, you look back and you think, my first attempt was awful. Maybe it is, but actually, there are still people who think it's great.  Remember to Measure Your Engagement  I completely agree. Make sure you're measuring what you're putting out there so that you can see the results of your fruit. If you're going to the effort to make sure that you can see people are reading and clicking scrolling through and how long they're spending their session times on it. Whatever the content is, ask for reviews. This is something that people don't do, but ask your client. They may give you some feedback that you wouldn't have even thought about and give you information from a perspective of your client as opposed to what you think your client wants.  Mike: I totally agree. Also, the one thing I'd add to the measurement is to measure something that matters. One of the worst things about digital is that it's given people any number of different metrics they can use to measure their marketing campaign. We work with a small engineering company, and they're doing some email marketing. If you look at the click-through rate, there's a group of people that have fantastic click-through rates, in fact, they click on every single link in every single email. So measuring the click-through rate is crazy, because it's not a human doing it, it's clearly a spam filter that's looking at the email and making sure that there's no links that you shouldn't visit. Ironically, we found out for sure that one of these was purely spam, because we found out the guy who we were sending to was on furlough, and didn't even have access to his email.   It comes down to how you can measure whether what you're doing is generating either quality leads or opportunities, or ultimately customers. At the end of the day, as a business owner, I don't make any more money, if my click-through rate goes up 10%. I make more money if I get more customers. I think people really need to think about that and not get dazzled by some of the sparkly bits on tools. Mike’s Book Recommendation  The metrics have to matter. I like his story there on the spam filtering, because that happens quite a lot. I wanted to ask you one last question. What would you say is your favourite book that influenced the direction that you've got in your business? Mike: I'm going to pick a book that is a little bit different. I read Lance Armstrong's autobiography, “It's Not About the Bike”, which is interesting. Lance, I mean, he is a very interesting character. He's got clearly a huge number of character flaws and is certainly very imperfect. He wrote the book before the emission of cheating with drugs, so he's still denying taking drugs in the book. But he talks a lot about his life and his cancer treatment. There's a bit in the book that kind of talks about the people who survive cancer and the people who die. He said, there are optimistic people who survive, they're optimistic people who die. People who really look after themselves and survive, some of them died.  He really brings home the fact that you can do a lot to get yourself in the best position, but sometimes there's things you can't control. We could do everything right as a business, as an agency, and COVID could still take the business down. It doesn't make us a worse business. That's really influenced my thinking, all you can do is really do the right thing and then hope the circumstances make you successful. Getting in Touch  Anyone out there that's looking to get in contact with Mike, visit Napierb2b. You can find out a bit more information about the voodoo that he does and go from there. Stay good and stay healthy.

Admittedly the last 8 months have been rough on most of the world. Who could have imagined we’d be here, in a real-life pandemic? It’s straight out of a sci-fi movie. We’ve been dealing with restrictions, lockdowns, isolation, and businesses closing, evolving, and changing on a dime. It hasn’t been easy... But believe it or not, right NOW is one of the greatest opportunities in human history to actually amplify your capabilities using a concept Dan Sullivan and Mike Koenigs call “The Talent Stack.” Today on the podcast they'll let you in on exactly what “The Talent Stack” is and how you can use it to your advantage, but want they really want to share with you is how to make someone's dream come true by being able to create “stacks” of value that have higher perceived value than you could ever imagine. There are a few ways of thinking about this concept. First, imagine if you had the ability to stack value in a way to give your client, what feels like to them, more choices when in fact what you're doing is putting them inside a container so they can only choose you. It’s a way of thinking about your talents through the perspective of, how do you take value, put it in a container, then position it so you can charge 10 times more for what you're doing by changing the way your prospective clients think. Here's a little backstory to give you some perspective. Recently Mike worked with a new client who designs supplement ingredients and proprietary, patented ingredients. (in the supplement world, if you get someone to use your ingredient, you get paid royalties) In his case, his products have been in billions of dollars of different products and services. Come to find out, he’s been scheduled to be on the Joe Rogan podcast! (for anyone who isn't familiar with Joe Rogan, he has about 10 million subscribers on YouTube and hundreds of millions of downloads. It's in the top three of all podcasts in the world right now.) It just so happens that Mike's fantasized about being on the Joe Rogan podcast himself and he knew that his client being on Joe's show was going to change his life FOREVER. Mike's studied Joe and his show. He’s a guy who's very specific. He wants great guests but you've really got to earn your way into his world and some of that has to do with having shared experiences, shared relationships, and shared values. So Mike and his client sat down and watched some of Joe’s highest-rated episodes that had to do with personal development, personal growth, food, or nutrition and one thing that happens on Joe's podcast with a great guest is they come in with props and gifts. One big idea Mike came up with for his client’s appearance on Joe’s show was to order him a custom set of knives with a unique quote (that Joe said) on each one because Joe's a hunter and eats what he kills. Hunting is a spiritual experience for Joe and this unique gift shows that he’s done his homework and has a shared value. A deeper, more significant concept is an “artifact.” To explain... Mike's client is in the business of creating different kinds of supplements and nutritional products that you consume. So what they designed was a whole bunch of “stacks” that are good for you and meaningful to Joe. (like a longevity or gamer stack.) When Mike's client walks in with a box of super fascinating stacks, designed specifically for Joe that aren't available anywhere else… how do you think Joe and his audience will react? It naturally shows off Mike's client’s talents and skill set to the world and creates a deep bond and connection with Joe. It's hyper personalized and packaged in a way that’s meaningful. Mike's client truly has a goal to improve the quality of mankind and to develop a relationship with Joe that is not manipulative or yucky. He wants to be asked back someday, right? These stacks will help him accomplish those goals. To hear the rest of the podcast where they go deep into the definitions of “stacks...

If you have ever browsed the Roofstock Marketplace, you will be familiar with the neighborhood scores used for risk assessment. If you have ever wondered what goes into the calculation of these scores, join Tom and Michael as they interview the Head Data Scientist at Roofstock, Mike Polyakov, about what exactly goes into these values.  --- Transcript   Tom: Greetings, and welcome to the remote real estate investor. On today we have a special guest, Mike Polyakov, who is the head data scientist at Roofstock. And in this episode, we're going to be talking about the Roofstock neighborhood score. What goes into it? How is it updated? And what makes it special? All right, let's do it.   Tom: Mike, thank you so much for coming on to the episode. You are the lead data scientists at Roofstock.   Mike That's correct. Oh, yeah. Happy to be here.   Tom: Excellent. So before we get into the specifics of the episode, which is going to be on the neighborhood score, I'd love to learn a little bit more about yourself before you got to Roofstock. What were you doing? And then now that you're being at Rootstock for a little bit of time, what's your kind of day to day like, like, so let's start at the beginning. What were you doing before you came to Rootstock and to be the lead data scientist?   Mike: Sure. I have kind of an unusual background. So which combines political science. I have a PhD in political science from Berkeley, which I got in 2014 in computer science, which I guess, which is the kind of before a PhD, and then sort of went back after I finished the PhD, right before coming to Rootstock. I worked at crowd pack, which is a political crowdfunding startup, I believe they're still going. And there's some different leadership there in San Francisco, I was there for almost three years. Also doing data science there, since I joined Roofstock in 2017, worked on a variety of projects. Some of it is kind of typical data science things. So things like analyzing users trying to understand accorded the best leads, doing a bit of marketing work, and also more Roofstock specific things. So things like estimating rents, valuating variations of properties, and of course, the neighborhood score that we'll talk about here.   Tom: Super interesting.   Michael: Well, this is gonna get so off the rails so quickly. I mean, I would love to know what a PhD you know, what, what in most your classmates do after getting their PhDs,   Mike: So it's going to be like a Stuff You Should Know. So it really varies. A lot of them actually stayed in academia in political science. One guy from my class went to back to Singapore, where he was from, and he's kind of a middle level bureaucrat there, some folks have teaching jobs, others just went back into the world and two totally random things.   Tom: What brought you to getting into FinTech?   Mike: It wasn't FinTech specifically, but that summer 2017 crowd pack was, you know, a little bit on the rocks. And I was looking around, and I was actually interested in investing in real estate, didn't know a whole lot about it had invested at that point, and kind of find out about rootstock through one of my alumni connections, and it seemed like a perfect opportunity.   Tom: What better way to to learn than just jumping right in? Go ahead, Michael.   Michael: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I was gonna ask Mike, since learning about it, have you then since started investing in real estate?   Mike: Yeah. So I'm a little embarrassed to say that for the last year and a half, I've been in sort of analysis paralysis, where I've been wanting to, but our sport is the market selection for me. I've done the Academy of both these most of the lectures. So I'm all ready to go except I need to start.   Michael: Yeah, anytime you want. we'll hop on a coaching call. And we can talk through some of that analysis paralysis.   Mike: Sounds great, man.   Tom: Excellent. Excellent.   Michael: We could go on forever, I'm sure. But let's talk about the neighborhood score, Tom.   Tom: I know, I know. So first, I have a couple questions related to the neighborhood score. Let's start out with what are the different variables involved with it? And, you know, actually, I'm going to even take a step further back. Is there a general thesis of the neighborhood score of what we're trying to solve for? And how did it like internally on the data science team? What do you what is like the kind of the overarching goal when you think of the neighborhood score?   Mike: Yeah, absolutely. It's best to start at the beginning. Yeah. So in the real estate world, and you've probably touched on this in some of the lectures, there's this notion of a neighborhood class, right, you might assign letter grades ABCD a being the best. And from investor's point of view, this is the mechanism to account for risk associated with location, right, so that for an investment, you can compare returns versus the versus the rest. Typically what those letter grades capture is both operational risk and the expectation, appreciation or decline of an area.   And operational risk includes things like turnover evictions, effective age, rents, vacancy, all that stuff. The downside of that traditional neighborhood class notion is that one, there's no formal definition, right? It's kind of I know, when I see it sort of thing. And so when investors see might be not going to speed will vary even within the same market. But the other big issue is scale. Right. So most investors are focused on a single market. And so they lack national perspective, right, they might be assigned, might be able to assign some very accurate grade, so to speak with an Atlanta weather base, but really struggle to do the same thing as Charlotte. And so what the neighborhood score tends to do is to serve, operationalize it, make it scalable across the country, and use data to make it objective. So specifically for Rootstock neighborhood score, the goal is still to assign location based risk to properties, and specifically operational risk.   So that's the start. Another important thing to say is kind of at the outset is what is neighborhood mean, for us, right? Because it's very fuzzy term. People mean different things when they say neighborhood, in our case, neighborhoods pretty large. Specifically, it's the census tract. So the US Census divides the entire country into tracks. And each track should be roughly the same number of households, it's about 1500. In a metro area like Atlanta, it's going to be comparable to a zip code. So you know, it's not going to be your block, or what some people might sort of colloquially refer to a neighborhood. So a little larger than that, but it allows us to get a lot of statistical power when we look at the data. And so what data do we use a lot of is actually what would be the same as what the real estate professionals would looked at. So it's things like information about the housing stock, but the individuals in the area, but the households, school scores are going to be pretty important and crime data, high level that that's what goes into score.   Tom: Got it and on the size of the area. So you had mentioned like the census track is kind of a moving target based on how dense the area. Am I understanding that correctly?   Mike: Well, no. So the idea of a census tract is that it should be roughly the same population. So any track Yeah, they're not gonna be exactly equal, but they're gonna be pretty similar.   Tom: Does it relate to zip codes, or zip code plus two, or zip code plus four? And, and what does that mean zip code plus two plus, plus four?   Mike: Yeah, so it doesn't, they're completely separate in all ways, except that in certain areas, there will be roughly comparable size, like in Atlanta, I just happen to know that a lot of the zip codes are about the same geographical size as the census tract when you say a zip code plus two, which is pretty uncommon, zip plus 4 is a little more common. So the USPS separates, basically cuts up any given zip codes into these little areas. And simple plus four is basically a nine digit number. It's your five digit zip code plus four more digits, which usually identify your specific block. So it's block level, geographic region.   Tom: I'm already learning things. I always thought the neighborhood score was related to the zip at some level. So already as an employee, since for a very long time learning some stuff about the neighborhood score, and belaboring the point, but the size of the neighborhood is based on the census tract.   Mike: Well, it is the census, it is the census track.   Tom: Okay, got it. Yeah. You probably said that two times.   Mike: It's just yeah, I mean, you know, for sure, the simple reason for that is, that's where most of the data, most of the reuse is assigned at that level. Right. So most of our inputs come from the US Census. And they usually deliver it in multiple levels. So you could also get some of these inputs at census block level, which is literally your street block, but it's much more sparse, and it's much less exact. So a good balance of kind of precision. And also coverage is at the census tract level.   Michael: And Mike you touch on something there that I want to circle back to and make sure that I heard you right. In our listeners, we clarify for our listeners, did you say that the information that's going into the algorithm that builds the neighborhood score is coming actually from US Census.   Mike: Not all of it. So most of it comes from census. The other components are a school scores, which we get from a vendor and crime data which we get from different vendors.   Michael: Okay. So I think that's a question I get, oftentimes in the academy is where is this information coming from? Is it Zillow? Is it Redfin? Is it? Is it individually collected? So that's really interesting now that a lot of it comes from from the census itself.   Mike: Yep.   Tom: So we've had the neighborhood score out for a couple of years, has the waiting in the way that we weight different variables that go into it changed it all over time? And is there this kind of concept of like, I don't know, is it learning and getting smarter over time, I guess is another way to put it.   Mike: Yeah. So it's a great question.   Michael: It's becoming sentient.   Mike: Yeah.   Tom: I hope not just we have to worry about AI and what's what's it called?   Mike: The singularity.   Tom Yeah.   Mike: Not at Roofstock, it won't happen here first. So that's a good question. And I think a lot of people have that question of, you know, how do we come up with the weights? And so I'm going to kick out a little bit. I'll try to keep it high level.   Tom: Geek out away, geek out a little bit. And Michael, and I will raise our hands when we're drowning.   Mike: Yeah, no, it's fine. It's fine. So the neighborhood score is not a supervised learning model, which means that so for a lot of models in AI and machine learning, generally, they're supervised in the sense that you have a training set that's labeled, right. So if you think about training model to recognize hot dogs, you have a bunch of pictures which are labeled hot dog or not hot dog right. That's your label training data set. You're trying to get the model to learn something that you can sort of look at and know immediately, right, because we know how to do this, right? So you try and get them all to replicate something that you know how to do it when that score is an unsupervised model in sense that while So, you could imagine having a professional, you know, going through 100 or 1000 neighborhoods and saying this is A this is B this is C you could approach it that way.   What we chose to do instead is to say, look, this is the data that we know should determine the quality of this neighborhood. This is the inputs that I mentioned, we apply a process, that's known as dimensionality reduction, which takes all these different inputs, and then extracts a single number out of them. And the way it works is that imagine going to a doctor and getting your temperature measured, and maybe your heart rate measures, maybe your weight. And you can imagine all those measurements, giving you sort of an overall health score. Right? So having all those numbers, the doctor can say, Are you really good health, you create a health, or maybe not quite so well, maybe you're a grade B or C. The idea being that there's some underlying, sort of not objectively real, but an intuitive notion of health of a person that can be measured in these different signals. The same thing works for neighborhood score, you can imagine there's a kind of underlying quality of neighborhoods, which we're trying to get by these different measurements, looking at the school scores looking at, you know, household incomes, or percent owner occupied homes. These are all individual measures, which we combine them we can extract an overall quality, if that makes sense.   Michael: That makes total sense. And such a great way of explaining it. As a total side note, tangent there actually isn't this app, it's called I think fingers are hot dogs. And you like hold your fingers up, and it has the apple guess whether if they think it's a finger or a hot dog?   Mike: Yeah, well, that's from Silicon Valley, right?   Michael: Yeah.   Tom: Like Michael said, you did a really good job, like talking about the concept of unsupervised data versus supervised data in kind of understanding and how it is evolving in that way. So on the notion of evolving, how often are the variables that go into it being updated? Mike: Right, so to get to the more precise career question or that part, so the data itself changes on various time scales. So the US Census releases their data every year, and we're using the American Community Survey, which is part of the US Census, and they redo the survey every year. So that's updated annually, the schools personally, updated monthly, right now, for various reasons, we haven't been updating the score very much. What's important to know is that we've done some analysis to see how how much you would change year to year. And it's actually very little. So to give you a sense, from one year to another, I think less than 5% of census tracts, which change half a star or more. So most of them are quite stable.   Michael: And kind of getting back to Tom's question a little bit, Mike, the weighting of the different factors that go into it. Can you talk to us a little bit about how that looks?   Mike: Yeah. So the reason I brought up the unsupervised learning bit of it, it's that the weights are learned by the model? Well, so I think the back is, I wouldn't say that they're learned by the model, but they're assigned by the model. In other words, when the model looks at all the inputs, so going back to the doctor analogy, right, so maybe your your heart rate and your weight, and I don't know what what's another, another thing that they measure, blood pressure. Yeah, so maybe all of those are kind of pointing in one direction. So they're all correlated, but then your temperature is really low, unexpectedly low. So there's something going on that the other signals aren't picking up, but temperatures picking up really strongly. So what the model would do in that case, it would assign greater weight to the temperature than to the individual other inputs, because it thinks that temperature is showing you something that's not present in the other three signals. So in other words, if you have those four measures adopted, you could say that there is kind of two separate things going on in your body. One of them is picked out by heart rate, blood pressure, weight, and one of them is picked out by temperature. Interesting.   So similarly, with the real estate case. So we don't want all those inputs. And I think there's nine, nine or 10 different inputs, the ones that have sort of more information than the others, like more distinct information is going to weigh those higher. So given that the inputs don't change very much here a year, the weightings aren't going to change very much year to year.   Michael: But so, in theory, or maybe in reality, we could have different weightings for different markets based on the data set that's being provided.   Mike: Um, so yes, we could so one step that I didn't mentioned this kind of the Emperor script before, once we collect the inputs from these different sources, we do some normalization to the values across markets. So that I mean, what you want ultimately, in your score, is for it to mean the same thing in different markets. So for certain planet, in terms of things you care about, like all the operational risk factors I mentioned before, so a 4 star in Atlanta should be similar to  4 star in Rochester, New York. And to allow that to happen. We do some normalization inputs before we run the model on.   Michael: So that way you You shouldn't end up with a situation where a Atlanta market is more heavily weighted towards crime versus your neighborhood score. And Rochester is more heavily weighted towards, I don't know, appreciation potential, something like that.   Mike: Yeah, that's sort of handled in the pre processing stage.   Mike: Got it.   Tom: If I was to look at all of the properties that have a neighborhood score wouldn't form like a bell curve where the majority of them are in the middle like this three star in just a few of them have five star and very few have one star, how is this kind of the shape? If you looked at the full data set, look at me sending like a data scientist?   Michael: Great question.   Mike: And yeah, that's a great question, Tom. Right on? Um, yeah, so it's actually it's a slightly right shifted bell curve. So what you find is that about a quarter of properties in the country, or single family homes are less than three stars, about a third, or three, three and a half stars. And the remainder, which is a little more than a third is going to be four stars and above. So it looks kind of like a bell curve, but it's a little bit shifted off center to the right.   Michael: And is that properties in the nation or properties on Roofstock?   Mike: Properties in nation?   Michael: Wow, what about properties on Roofstock? Do we know what the data set looks like there? R   Mike: Roofstock have a look at the curve recently. But it tends to be a little bit more left shifted? I think our me, our average is probably a little less than three, or maybe three,   Michael: Which makes sense, because those are cash flowing properties.   Tom: So my less last question for you is, how do you see the neighborhood? And do you see it evolving over time? Like, is there a roadmap for ways that we're working with the neighborhood in the future? I'd love to hear your input?   Mike: Yeah, absolutely. So there's still like significant issues with the current input score. One is that we do have some areas which don't have any score at all. And this happens, because some of the inputs are missing. Sometimes it's from the census, we don't have a value for given track. Sometimes there's no school scores at the track level. So we're using, we're doing some work right now, to address this by improving our statistical methods, it should be more complete. In the near future. The other kind of issue more visible probably to the to the user browsing a website is going to be that you're coming back to this idea of neighbors corners being at the census tract level, that's a really pretty big region, right. So it's a very coarse scoring. And that also means you can have sharp boundaries. So it's not unusual to have with a two star neighborhood, adjoining a forced neighborhood, which, you know, looking at the census tract level, it may be fine. But around the border, there's likely going to be some inaccuracy. So if you pick up a property that's close to that border, but it's on the 2 star side, it's likely going to be a little bit in terms of separations, it's likely going to be a little bit more like a three star and vice versa.   And so we're our next step, which you know, because for a while, but may actually happen next year, is we're going to move down in geographic granularity down to census block group level, which is a division of a track, it's about a one third of the size of a census tract. So it's not a huge improvement, but it's going to be helpful. And then we have some other things that we're going to do to address this short boundary issue.   Tom: Excellent. Michael, do you have any any final questions for Mike?   Michael: No, I mean, Mike gave me the punch, I was going to ask how folks should be thinking about or working around markets that have kind of a block by block change, where you know, you have a really good block and a really rough block. But I think the answer to that question kind of addressed it, and that it's going to be up and coming. But maybe add on maybe the question is still relevant? How should folks be thinking about and evaluating properties in those neighborhoods that really are sparked by block or street by street changing?   Mike: Um, yeah, so a good rule of thumb. And actually, Tom can probably chime in on this as well. But a good rule of thumb is to look at rents. So at least within say, census tract, rent is going to be a pretty strong predictor of what actually sorry, so rent over price. So if you like, go on Zillow, and you look at the rent for property, and then it's so surprised, you can figure out the yield. And so within at tract properties that are more high yielding, will tend to have lower neighborhood scores. So for example, you know, you got a whole tract, that's a three star and then on the right, maybe it's closer to the highway. And you see, there's kind of like, if you look at a couple homes, that you kind of see a pattern of higher yields than the rest of the track, that's probably a slightly worse area.   Michael: That makes total sense. So Mike, I'm curious to know, because on Roofstock, we have the neighborhood score in stars. And then we also have the school score as its own category in stars as well. But you mentioned that the school score is actually one of the inputs into the neighborhood score. So just curious why we have separate and distinct call outs. And, you know, why is the school score included in the neighborhood score, and also on its own called out?   Mike: Yes, another great question. So it's including the input score, because, well, it's an important input, right? It's important signal of the socio economic index, which is what sort of neighbors score is, right? It's not necessarily entirely separate. So for example, if you took out school scores, and you kept all the other inputs, most scores won't change very much. So it's not contributing a whole lot of information. But it is useful as to why if we have the score, why do we have a separate school score? I think probably two reasons.   One, I think people just have a very strong intuition that they want to look at school scores in an area, right? That's just information they want to see. And then it does in search for certain buyers, depending your investment thesis, it provides information that's not so relevant or not really communicate, but neighborhood score. So for example, you know, if you have a family, or if you want to rent to families, school scores are going to be probably more important than if you want to rent to young professionals.   Michael: It makes total sense.   Tom: My last question, not necessarily neighborhood related, talking about some of the other projects that you're excited about that or the data science team is in science is excited about anything, any specific project that's you think particularly interesting that you're working on right now? Outside the neighborhood?   Mike: Yeah. Well, I'm hesitating because I'm sure, like any intellectual property, or what I'm trying to figure out, like, what yeah, exactly what what I should be revealing here. But I'll tell you one thing that's, you know, definitely not controversial. I think right now, we're not doing a great job helping people understand markets. I know because I need some help understanding markets. So we do have some work going on. In that respect. Some of it is more than short term. I think in the next month or two, we're going to have some market pages with better information, you know, it's going to help people make those choices and further down the road. Expect we're going to do more work on more machine learning and forecasting to help people understand markets now just as they are now but where they're going and how to think about that.   Tom: Beautiful. Awesome, Michael, any final questions from you?   Michael: No, this was super insightful. Mike, I kind of have my mind blown. This is this was awesome.   Tom: I know, we got to have another episode and got editor, PhD political science.   Mike: Yes. Absolutely.   Michael: Want to both sides of the science, the political science, the meeting of the minds.   Mike: Yeah, totally.   Tom: Very cool. Well, thank you so much for coming on. And I have a feeling we'll probably be asking you to jump on again in the in the near future. super interesting.   Michael: Great stuff.   Mike: Yeah. Anytime. My pleasure. Thanks, Tom.   Tom: Thanks, Mike.   Michael: Thanks, Mike.   Tom: Thank you so much to Mike for coming on today and telling us about the neighborhood score and a little bit about his background, looking forward to having him on again in the future. And if you like this podcast, like this episode, we would love it if you would subscribe, give us a rating, and all of that good stuff. All right. Happy investing.

Speaker 1: "Sometimes to begin a new story, you have to let the old one in." Author unknown. I am Cynthia Marquez and I am a Tri-City influencer. Paul Casey: And if we must assume, the only thing I would say is to assume a positive intent. So if there's a gap between why that person behaved as they did and you don't know the answer, fill in that gap with positive intent and check it out. Speaker 3: Raising the water level of leadership in the Tri-Cities of Eastern Washington, it's the Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast. Welcome to the TCI podcast, where local leadership and self-leadership expert Paul Casey interviews local CEOs, entrepreneurs, and non-profit executives to hear how they lead themselves and their teams. So we can all benefit from their wisdom and experience. Here's your host, Paul Casey of Growing Forward Services. Coaching and equipping individuals and teams to spark breakthrough success. Paul Casey: It's a great day to grow forward. Thanks for joining me for today's episode with Mike Denslow. Mike is the originator of Love the Tri, a sticker I have on my Hydroflask right here. And he's also a branch manager at Homebridge. And a fun fact about Mike is he's a creator. He can see stuff that is not there and make it happen. Mike, just give us a little glimpse of that real quick. Mike Denslow: I was telling you before we started the show that I like things that are just in my brain and then seeing them and touching them. If it takes a few days or if it takes months, that accomplishment of just the tiniest little idea, that spark, and then making it happen. I just love it. Paul Casey: Yeah, that is awesome. I can't wait to talk more. We're going to dive in after checking in with our Tri-City Influencer sponsor. Speaker 5: Mario Martinez, Northwestern mutual. Mario, what types of services do you offer? Mario Martinez: Hey Paul, thank you for letting me be on here. We run bifurcated practices and that we focus in two areas of a financial plan. The first one is, we do protection pieces which include life insurance, disability insurance, long-term care insurance. Really the things that people should be focused on to protect their families, their businesses. And on the other side of our practice is we do investment services. And on the investment platforms, we do both the brokerage platform and we do the advisory level services. So depending on what someone's looking for as far as guidance on their investment strategies, we can curtail and build a strategy for them to make sense. Speaker 5: Mario, how can people get in touch with you? The easiest way is you can reach out to me directly on my business cell phone. It's 509-591-5301. You can send me an email at mario.martinez@nm.com or you can reach out to us on our social media platforms, the easiest one being Mario Martinez Northwestern Mutual on Facebook. Paul Casey: Thank you for your support of leadership development in the Tri-Cities. Well, welcome, Mike. This is the first time we’ve met, but I feel like I know you because the Love the Tri stuff is all over the Tri-Cities. And even my pastor and my church wore I Love the Tri shirt. I think he called you on a weekend because he was speaking on how our church wants to love the Tri-Cities. So that's pretty funny. Mike Denslow: Yeah. I've met him in a Starbucks parking lot with a shirt and a hat and some stickers and did a handoff. Yep, well, happy to do it. Paul Casey: Pretty cool. Well, tell us a little bit about your journey. How can our Tri-City influencers get to know you in a snapshot? And why you love what you do. Mike Denslow: Well, born and raised in Tri-Cities. Grew up in Pasco, graduated Pasco High, went away to college, started a family, wanted my kids to grow up in Tri-Cities, just like I did, and moved back. Wasn't gone very long, really. And came back and after I got out of college, I got into the computer field for a while and ended up starting BOSS Computer Solutions with a friend of mine. And we did that for a while. Paul Casey: I didn't know that was you. Mike Denslow: Yeah, yeah. And we did that for a while and then it was time for the next thing. You do something for awhile, then got antsy. And guy that I went to high school with recommended getting into the mortgage business with him. And so that's been 15-and-a-half years ago now and I love it because I love helping and educating people, I love math. And the mortgage world, you wouldn't think this, but it's actually very creative because everyone's credit score and income and background, and everything's different, right. And so every single day, you're helping people. Paul Casey: It's like a puzzle, right? Mike Denslow: Absolutely a puzzle. And you're helping people with typically the largest transaction they're ever going to have in their life. And they don't look at it as a transaction. They look at it as, "I'm buying a house." Or, "I'm refinancing a house." Or whatever. And it's very much more rewarding than I expected it to be. But that's what gets me to here, is Pasco High and the love for the Tri-Cities and wanting my kids to grow up here. And now one of them's here, one of them's in Seattle, but they're adults paying for themselves. Paul Casey: You mentioned the word antsy in there. I keyed in on that word because creatives often have this inner juice that after a while doing the same thing, you’ve got to start something new. Has that been a pattern in your life? Mike Denslow: Not really. I wasn't a job jumper or anything like that. I think I was just looking for more. And in that particular case, something more rewarding. And then it ended up being so much more than I expected it. It seemed like a good career. And I had other people I knew who did the mortgage field and then it just, wow, you close a loan for someone and, "Thank you so much." That happened over and over again. "Oh wow. You explained that better than another person that I talked to." And getting it down to, "Well, did you think about this?" And one of the first questions I ask people is, "Well, how long are you going to be in this home?" And they're like, "What's that got to do with anything?" I'm like, "Well, you can buy down points or you can do this, or you can do this." There's all these different things that we can do to structure it so it makes more sense for them. And they're like, "Oh." Mike Denslow: And I had one educator tell me, "You should teach a class on this." And the funny thing is I come from a family of educators. My dad was a teacher for 30-plus. My mom was a teacher. Uncle was a teacher, grandparents were teachers. And I never really thought about it, but it became my style. Paul Casey: It's in the genes. Yeah, my parents were teachers too. So there is an art about breaking something down into a way that's understandable. Mike Denslow: For a lot of different people and educations and backgrounds, right. So you got to be able to explain some something to somebody who's in a trade and an engineer and maybe even English as a second language too. Paul Casey: Yeah. Of course, you have to size people up pretty quickly to see what they need and then custom communicate with them. Mike Denslow: Yeah. And you do that long enough you don't think about it, right. Paul Casey: It's just natural. Mike Denslow: Yup, exactly. Paul Casey: Well, what's been some of the biggest hurdles? Well, just give us maybe one hurdle you've overcome in your career because as you're on your journey to success, you hit some speed bumps. Mike Denslow: Yeah, good question. Well, it's tricky. You and I talked about some different things that have happened before. And in my world, I would say, when you're dealing with competitors that maybe 100% truth isn't what comes out. And so, especially early in your career, when you're going into a commission field, you lose out on some business because somebody else tells something that they want to hear. Then they're almost done with the loan and then they find out it not to be true, but it's too late to turn around. And so when you're relying on this commission business, and all of a sudden, you're dealing with unethical behavior, that's hard. I mean, but it's not like you're going to change who you are and go down to their level. But the first few years of getting into this business, that actually it was in the computer business as well. Just getting out in the real world and finding out that everybody doesn't want what's best for people, and having to accept that. And then, how are you going to be better? Paul Casey: Yeah. How to still operate out of your core values no matter what somebody else does? Mike Denslow: That's right, yup. Paul Casey: What do you think your biggest ongoing challenge as a branch manager is right now? Mike Denslow: Oh, good question. Well, right now, 90-plus percent of us are working from home. And so it's keeping that bond with the people that work in our office. I try to reach out through Skype and phone calls and those kinds of things. But when we're all in our office, we have things cooking. We're going to have birthday desserts in the lunchroom. And you have that decompressed time with people, "Hey, how are your kids doing?" That kind of thing. And now, hey, you don't know what somebody might be going through. Whereas you could visually see it if they were in your office. So it's that disconnect right now. The COVID, I would say, disconnect that we're all probably feeling from regular office people. Paul Casey: Yeah. Having to check in virtually, you just can't see it all anymore. But we have to keep trying, right. We have to keep trying to read her employees' body language and our customers' body language. Mike Denslow: Absolutely. You adapt, and then that's all you can do. Paul Casey: Yeah. Well, let's pause here because I want to know the story of Love the Tri. So how did that come to you? And take us through that journey. Mike Denslow: Oh man. How long is the show? Well, I always had a creative streak. I wouldn't say I'm the best draw-er or artist or anything like that, but I knew that I wanted to create something and it's probably going to be clothing and t-shirts and hats or something. And I was home one weekend and my wife was out of town for travel and I was eating lunch and it was just like, you know what? I just flown through Seattle or Portland airport. And I saw the I Heart Seattle. I think it probably originated in New York or they become famous for it, right. The I Heart New York. And I thought, "Well, why don't we have anything like that in Tri-Cities? Somebody should do that." And then I started thinking, "Well, Tri-Cities doesn't really exist on a map." Officially, because it's Pasco, Kennewick, Richland. Mike Denslow: And is there a Tri-Cities governing body? No, we're multiple cities. We're two different counties. Who would ever pick that up? And there's the Tri-City Visitor and Convention Bureau, which I found out about. And they're there doing it a little bit, but it's just a different thing. So I started thinking, "All right. Well, what would I call it?" And no joke. I mean, I thought about it for 15 minutes and I just said, "Love the Tri." That's the only name I ever considered going. And well, what would it be? And sunsets. Something, it's not business, it's not golf, it's not atomic, it's not wine. You know what I mean? Paul Casey: We have the best sunsets, yes. Mike Denslow: Right. But if you're not from here, you don't spend a lot of time here, what's really nice about living here? And the sunsets are amazing. And I was like, "Okay. Love the Tri. Sunsets. Check, check. Done." What would I do? Oh maybe t-shirts and hats. And what would it look like? And I started drawing a few things. And then here's another discussion. I've been a volunteer for water follies and boat races for a long time and I thought of Atomic screen printing. And I said, "Oh, I'm going to go sit down with these guys." And Brent over there as the lead designer. And he said, "We have people asking about this all the time. And we've always kind of thought, 'Oh, it'd be a fun project.' But we're doing shirts for this event and this event and this event." And they just never really set aside the time for it. And I said, "We'll do this and that. What do you want to do?" And it just started gaining momentum. Mike Denslow: I got a friend of mine to help build a website and the store. Atomic helped finish up the logo. I start the logos and the designs. I go, "This is what I want it to look like. And this is what I want it on." And they gave me these catalogs and then it just started coming together. And then it was boat races. Four years ago, I brought some hats and t-shirts and tank tops. And I gave them to some of my friends. And then I saw this woman walking among the thousands of people on the Kennewick side at the time. And she had one of my tank tops on and I looked at her and I said, "Oh, I don't know who that is. She bought one of my tank tops." And it was so cool. And I get a kick out of every time. You drive down the street, you see somebody with a Love the Tri sticker in the back window and everything. Mike Denslow: And I also thought, with doing the mortgage business and everything and successes there, I said, "What better thing to do with Love the Tri is to then donate all the proceeds back to local nonprofits?" Kind of a different angle. And I got that idea a little bit from Blake Mycoskie who created Toms. And I read and seen him speak and read his book and philanthropy. Entrepreneurship through philanthropy is what he called it. And so I was like, "Yeah, I'll just donate all the profits back." And that's been super fun. Oh my gosh, Boys and girls club and the Cancer center and veteran groups and domestic violence shelters. Paul Casey: Do you rotate who you donate to? Mike Denslow: Yeah, every year. And right now, donating to Second harvest and the Tri-City Union Gospel Mission. So going to dropping off checks when people don't expect it, they're like, "What's this for?" And it's been super fun. And a lot of people know about Love the Tri and they see the hoodies and the t-shirts and the hats and the different things. And then on social media, I post good photos, cool photos from the area as well, but they don't know about the donation part. And as soon as people hear that, "Oh, that is so cool." So you buy basically a $20 t-shirt, probably cost me $10, then I'm going to donate that $10 profit to a local charity. Paul Casey: That is so cool. Mike Denslow: Why not? If you Love the Tri, pour back into it. Paul Casey: Yeah. You did it, Mike. Some people did have ideas, but they don't put them into play. But you hit the go button on it. Mike Denslow: Yeah. It's very rewarding. It's my passion project. It really is. And I love doing it. I don't have enough time in the day. Paul Casey: Sure. Because it's just you, right? You don't have a team doing this. Mike Denslow: No. I've had helpers from now and then running errands and different things, but Kadlec has done a great job selling our stuff. Greenies, Tri-City Visitor and Convention Bureau as well, but right now, Greenies is really the only one that's open because the others are not as come in and buy stuff kind of things right now. Well, I've had a lot of fun partners. I've had release parties with DJs and all these different things and I'm just winging it. Just fake it till you make it. Paul Casey: Well, you said passion project. So what do you mean by that? And as the listeners listen to you say it, they can feel your passion in it. Would you recommend everybody have one? Mike Denslow: I think so. I think when my children were young, I was involved in whatever they were doing. So sports and choir, whatever. And now that they're adults themselves and have their own families, what was I going to do with my time? I'm helping with the water follies and the boat races and that kind of thing. And I've done that for a while and okay, what else? I don't know. I'm just not one of those people just sits around and doesn't do things very well. So I think people who have a passion about our community should figure something out. Either volunteering, do you have a charity that you're really behind or something like that? Why not? Spend some time, percentage of your time giving back to your community. I think it's a great idea. Paul Casey: Very cool. Now, most of influencers I know have a bit of a visionary inside of them, whether that's in your day job or your dream job. So where do you take time to dream about the future for your organization, for Love the Tri, for your own life? What does that look like? Mike Denslow: Well, for work, I have a great manager and she has a great manager and I have a monthly call with them. And right now in the mortgage business, a lot of good things are going on. And so we're very, very busy. So we're in the management. How do we manage all these different things that are going on right now? We talk about the future, but it's more about handling things now, marketing and that kind of thing. I like doing that, which helps with bringing in future business. But if I'm thinking visionary, it's typically more on the creative side, on Love the Tri and those kinds of things. I can imagine a day when I'm retired and spending a lot more time on it and what we could do. From scholarships and programs and getting other businesses involved. Just endless. Paul Casey: Let's get a whiteboard out right now. Let's start playing with these ideas. Mike Denslow: Absolutely. I'm up for it. Paul Casey: Well, hey, before we head into our next question, behind the scenes a little bit in Mike's life about his typical morning routine, let's shout out to our sponsors. Barracuda Coffee. Born and brewed in the Tri-City since 2003. At Barracuda Coffee, it's people first, then great coffee. Barracuda features freshly roasted coffees from their own signature roastery, Charis Coffee Roasting Company. With fresh coffee always on the shelf from all over the world, you can taste the distinct floral flavors of Latin American coffees from countries like Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras. Savor the delicate Berry notes that are dominant in African coffees from Burundi, Rwanda, Ethiopia, or Kenya. Or go for the full earthy tones of the South Pacific coffees from Timor, Indonesia, or Sumatra. Ask your barista what's fresh and try something new today. Barracuda has two locations over on Van Giesen in Richland or on Kellogg Street in Kennewick, and you can find them on Facebook. Paul Casey: So Mike, what's your typical morning routine look like? Before you go to work, once you arrive at work, do you have any rituals to start your day out strong? Mike Denslow: Yeah, I would say I'm a ritual-based person for sure. Get up, eat, and then check email at home. Shower and then get going. Lately, been working a lot from home, but when I wasn't, that was still the same routine. And then after that, I get a blank sheet of paper out and I look at yesterday's sheet of paper, which was at one point, blank, and the day before. Mike Denslow: And I start pulling things over that either weren't accomplished or need some more attention to some level. And so I take that sheet of paper and I'm writing down names and ideas and follow up and all sorts of different things. And it's funny because it's evolved into, this is kind of the work side, that the regular work side. And then there's the Love the Tri side and personal side, and it's a much smaller section. But that's absolutely, "What do you want to accomplish today?" And then throughout the day, I'm adding things to that list. People I need to follow up. "Oh, that's right. I need to take that licensing thing or this or that or whatever." And then that's the daily go back to. If you have a free minute, I'm looking at my list going, "Okay, can I check this off? Can I check this off? Okay." I emailed them or I left them a voicemail, so they're going to be circling back. And then that's every morning then. Paul Casey: So that's nothing fancy, just a sheet of paper. Mike Denslow: Nope, just a sheet of paper. Paul Casey: So it's not a fancy planner that's got little quadrants in it. It's just refreshing your to do list, then. Mike Denslow: I haven't had good luck making it digital. I've tried it on the phone and then in the Outlook and different things and it never worked. It's a breathing document. That is a piece of paper on a pad right there next to my keyboard and my mouse. Paul Casey: Yeah. Handwriting probably makes a brain connection. Mike Denslow: I don't know. It places a spot in my brain. Because I have a good memory and I can like, "Oh yeah, boom." And I just pull it out and put it there. And I use the previous couple of days' cheat sheets to help move it forward. Paul Casey: Influencers, one of you has to make a planner for Mike that has quadrants. Follow up with email, Love the Tri. No, just kidding. I love that. That sort of a brain wipe, but it's also a refresh and setting a new course for the day. So nothing falls off the radar. Mike Denslow: And then at the end of the day, everything has been touched. Paul Casey: That's great. Mike Denslow: And you stop when you're done. Not just when you're tired. You stop when you're done. Paul Casey: Yes. Which brings me to my next question. How do you do that and not burn out? How do you have this everyday grind plus this passion project and still keep high energy? Mike Denslow: That's a very good question because I'm not a caffeine person, but it just keeps happening. I don't know. It just must be in there somewhere, something I was born with. I don't take a lot of vacation. At the end of the day, my wife and I eat dinner. And then we try to relax either on the couch together or sitting outside together. But if it's 15 minutes or an hour and a half, just some amount of time just talking. I mean, undoubtedly, some stuff will come out from the day kind of a thing, but just that time and that'd be a time that I would talk to my kids on the phone potentially, or they would come over or whatever other family. Paul Casey: Defrag. Just sort of defrag thing. Mike Denslow: Yeah. And I like the creative time. The creative time doesn't feel like something that would add to the burnout. So if it's been a crazy week in the mortgage world and a lot of stressful situations, creativity will help. And just, "Oh, what about this? What about that?" I've got a million ideas. I've got scripts in my head. I'm not a writer, but, "Why don't they have a movie like this? This would be fun." It doesn't stop except musically. I like music, but I don't play it. And my singing is lip-sync. Paul Casey: Yes, yes. So it's like putting a hot coals on the fire for you when you do something creative as an entrepreneur. Mike Denslow: Yeah, yeah. Paul Casey: And influencers, they're not know-it-alls, they're learners. So where do you go to for the wisest advice? So people here in the Tri-Cities, maybe they've been mentors or another idea people, or is it people that maybe in your industry or authors or motivators, where do you go for inspiration and good advice? Mike Denslow: I would say definitely not within the industry typically. I mean, I'm looking for self-motivation. I read a good amount and when I find something I like, mostly non-fiction, but sometimes fiction as well. I like biographies, that kind of thing. Tim Ferris, big podcast guy, big author. I like his stuff because it's short and sweet. He's got a book, Tools of Titans. Paul Casey: Yes, I read that one. 606 pages. Mike Denslow: Exactly. But it didn't seem like that because everything was maybe three or four pages per person that he interviewed and he just took the highlights, right. Paul Casey: Yes, which is brilliant. Mike Denslow: Exactly. It's CliffsNotes from podcasts. And you took all these successful people and how did they do it? Right. And, "Oh yeah. I just want the CliffsNotes. I don't want the full story." That's been a good one. So I would say reading. I've got a lot of good friends in Tri-Cities that have done similar things and created a business and been successful, that kind of thing. So I like following up with friends and then reading. I think reading is underrated and I'm not a Kindle guy or anything like that. Paul Casey: Hardcover book. Mike Denslow: Not just the book and turning the pages. I want the trophy in the end. Because I've got a room that's got all the books that I've read and it's the mini study library at the house. And I want to add the trophy. Every time I finished, I'm going to put a trophy up on the shelf and I'm reading Yogi Berra's biography right now that my daughter and her husband gave me for Father's Day. And love it. So different industries, different people. Past, present, whatever, doesn't matter. Paul Casey: Yogi Berra. 90% of the game is half mental. Mike Denslow: That's right. Paul Casey: Those funny little quotes that you will have. Mike Denslow: I’ve read up til he's about 26 years old. And he hasn't even started with any of those. He's not known for any of those things yet. So I'm ready for those things, but it hasn't happened yet. Paul Casey: Tim Ferris, good stuff, tim.blog is where you can get his blog. And Tools of Titans, Tribe of Mentors I read this year, which is another 600-page book, but like Mike said, don't let it intimidate you because it's these little three or four page chunks of these great influencers and their habits. They asked the same questions actually. So it’s like, "What do you do when you get overwhelmed? What advice would you give a college student today? How do you say no to people in a respectful way?" And you just get to hear 50 people give the answer. Mike Denslow: And ultra successful people, too, right. How did you do it? And I think the key for him is that we've all looked at that. We've all seen someone, Richard Branson or somebody ultra-successful. His biography was great, by the way. And you look and you're like, "Oh, I wonder how they did it. They must have had rich parents or something and just followed them." And then you find out, "Oh no, it was just this one idea. And they pushed it a little bit further than anybody else. And then innovation happened and then everyone loved it. And they were then ready for that massive growth and the amount of energy." And basically, the planning that it would take to make that successful. They just wouldn't let it not be successful. And a lot of consistency there among most of the people. Paul Casey: Right, I agree. I agree. You also mentioned earlier in the conversation, your boss and boss's boss are, would you say inspirational? Mike Denslow: Absolutely. Paul Casey: So what makes them so inspirational? Mike Denslow: Good question. They're very good listeners. And they can wipe everything clean of what's going on at the time. And at the end of every conversation I have with them, they say, "Is there anything else that I can do for you right now?" Paul Casey: Oh, great question. Mike Denslow: And both of them do it. They're both strong, smart females, very well-known in the mortgage industry, even nationally. My boss has been in it, I'd say, probably about 25 years. And then her boss is more of 35 years. And so there's just no challenge they're not willing to take on. And, "Well, I'm having this problem with this." Or, "I'm so frustrated with this." They listen with purpose and then they act. They don't jump in. Okay, let's solve that problem right here, right. And I try to do that, but I'm still an impatient listener. I'm getting better. But when I know the answer, "Oh, I'm ready. I know what the answer is." And that goes back to elementary school and the flashcards. I was killer at that. Paul Casey: That should have been your quirky thing we talked about. You were a rock star at flashcards. Mike Denslow: Okay. Quick Facebook shoutout. Somebody posted a photo of our third grade class a couple of years ago. And this one girl, I haven't talked to her in 30-plus years. She put on there, "And Denslow was always killing everybody at the flashcards." Paul Casey: You were a fave. Mike Denslow: I was like, "Yes." Paul Casey: Yeah, it's funny. I did a Tim Ferris and I asked all my coaching clients the three top leadership skills to keep in mind; I would say active listening was the number one answer. I'm just validating what you said with your awesome supervisors. Mike Denslow: Well, you think about it. I mean, are you a boss or are you a leader, right? If you've seen the boss that's pulling everyone along. And then the boss that is sitting in the carriage and everyone else's pulling them along, what kind of boss are you? Paul Casey: Yeah. The leaders are more of the arm-around, so to speak, of what can I do to help you, which is a great posture for a leader. If you had a leadership philosophy that you'd put front and center on a bulletin board or an entrepreneurial philosophy, I'll go either side of the brain for you on this one, what would those messages say? Mike Denslow: Again, man, you're hitting me with the good stuff here. On the creative side, on the passion project side, nothing is not worth exploring, right. "Oh, that's a dumb idea. Someone would have done it by now." Oh my gosh, cross that off because we would never have innovation if that was the case. And on the work side, I'd go back to the listening piece. And even when it's crazy busy getting that focus and that's going to the disconnect of working from home right now, is having someone feel your level of focus when you were listening to them but yet you're not in the same room. So listening, and no ideas are bad ideas. But explore everything and then pick the best one. Paul Casey: That is good stuff, because that's going to help all new leaders, people that are leading right now grow and gain more influence. Mike Denslow: Listen intently, right. Paul Casey: Hear, hear. So Mike, how can our listeners best connect with you and connect to Love the Tri? Mike Denslow: Well, social media. There's Love the Tri on Facebook and Instagram that I'm updating all the time. Lovethetri.com, I just released a new website. What was that? Oh, it's probably been four or five months now maybe, but that's another place to see our products and kind of the idea of Love the Tri. And then professionally, email mike.denslow@homebridge.com for anything and everything basically mortgage and real estate related. Paul Casey: Fantastic. Thanks for all you do to make the Tri-Cities a great place and keep leading well. Mike Denslow: Thank you. Paul Casey: Let me wrap up our podcast today with a leadership resource to recommend. Earlier in the podcast, I talked about the Tribe of Mentors, how to say no. And I just finished a book by William Ury, The Power of A Positive No. And the concept of the book is saying No out of a yes. Out of a yes to your convictions and your values and maybe even your view of work-life balance. Then from that, you say no, and you do it in a very respectful way and then you invite people with another yes, so to speak, that allows them to not leave your presence feeling all bummed out, but that, "Hey, I tried to set you up for success or build a bridge so you can still get what you were asking me about accomplished." Love the book, The Power of A Positive No by William Ury. Paul Casey: Again, this is Paul Casey. I want to thank my guest Mike Denslow from Homebridge and Love the Tri for being here today on the Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast. And we want to thank our TCI sponsor and invite you to support them. We appreciate you making this possible so we can collaborate to help inspire leaders in our community. Finally, one more leadership tip for the road to help you make a difference. Influencer Travis Bradberry who's the author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0. He said emotional self-control is a result of hard work, not an inherited skill. Till next time, KGF. Keep growing forward. Speaker 1: Thank you to our listeners for tuning in to today's show. Paul Casey is on a mission to add value to leaders by providing practical tools and strategies that reduce stress in their lives and on their teams so that they can enjoy life and leadership and experience their key desired results. If you'd like more help from Paul in your leadership development, connect with him at growingforward@paulcasey.org for a consultation that can help you address your current challenges and create a strategy for growing your life or your team. Paul would also like to help you restore your sanity to your crazy schedule and getting your priorities done every day by offering you his free Control my Calendar checklist. Go to takebackmycalendar.com for that productivity tool, or open a text message to seven two zero zero zero, and type the word Growing. Speaker 5: Tri-Cities influencer podcast was recorded at fuse SPC by Bill Wagner of Safe Strategies.

Bible Reading: Proverbs 2:1-9For what seemed like the fiftieth time, Mike twirled the dial on his locker and silently prayed it would work. He glanced around nervously, hoping nobody noticed how long he'd been trying to get the locker open. This is a lousy way to start middle school, he thought, his stomach tightening into an anxious knot. He sighed and tried the numbers again, but nothing happened. In frustration, he tugged the handle harder. He was startled when someone behind him spoke."What's wrong, Mike?" It was Spencer, a friend who was a grade ahead of him.Mike leaned against the locker. "This thing won't open.""Let me try," offered Spencer. As Mike told him the numbers, Spencer flipped the dial this way and that. When he pulled on the handle, the door opened!"How'd you do that?" Mike was astonished. "It wouldn't work for me!""Try it again, and I'll watch you," said Spencer. So Mike began turning the knob. "Whoa," said Spencer. "You have to go past that number and stop at it on the second time around." Spencer took the knob and demonstrated for Mike."Oh, right!" Mike shook his head. "I forgot about that."Spencer laughed. "It's just like Pastor Burt said last Sunday. Remember?""You meanin church?" Mike asked.Spencer nodded. "You memorized your locker combination, but those numbers didn't do you any good because you didn't know how to use them. And memorizing Bible verses doesn't do us any good either if we don't use them. Just being able to recite a verse isn't enough--we need to know what it means and apply it to our lives."Mike tried the lock one more time, and it opened right away. "All right! Thanks, Spencer!" he said. "And thanks for the reminder about Bible verses too," he added as he took out his book for his first class. "I know just the one I need to apply to my life right now." Spencer gave him a thumbs-up, and Mike took a deep breath as he walked toward his classroom. "Be strong and courageous," he recited under his breath. "Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." Kelly M. SchaeferHow About You?Do you understand the meaning of Bible verses you have learned? Can you use them in your daily life? Think of one you can recite. Is it a verse that could comfort you in a difficult time? Warn you away from sin? Remind you of God's unfailing love?If you don't understand it, get help from a parent or teacher. Keep memorizing God's Word and applying His truth to your life.Today's Key Verse:Help me understand the meaning of your commandments, and I will meditate on your wonderful deeds. (NLT) (Psalm 119:27)Today's Key Thought:Memorize and use God's Word

Youngsters! We did it! It's our 21st episode so our podcast can now legally drink! So Mike whipped us up some Evening Coconuts and we dove deep into Re-ac-tor. A lot of mixed feelings about certain songs, but in general everyone was way into this album. The horse is back with a fury. We fight over T-bone. Luke likes it. Mike thinks it's too long. Russ is somewhere in the middle. We talk about Neil's use of the synclavier. Luke isn't wild about Southern Pacific. We compare the version of Shots on this album to some of his live acoustic versions. We share our re-ac-tions to them. (See what I did there...) Overall, this episode ain't got no t-bone. Just mashed potatoes. Long May You Young is a proud member of the Pantheon Podcast Network! Head to PantheonPodcasts.com to check out all their great music themed shows!

Youngsters! We did it! It's our 21st episode so our podcast can now legally drink! So Mike whipped us up some Evening Coconuts and we dove deep into Re-ac-tor. A lot of mixed feelings about certain songs, but in general everyone was way into this album. The horse is back with a fury. We fight over T-bone. Luke likes it. Mike thinks it's too long. Russ is somewhere in the middle. We talk about Neil's use of the synclavier. Luke isn't wild about Southern Pacific. We compare the version of Shots on this album to some of his live acoustic versions. We share our re-ac-tions to them. (See what I did there...) Overall, this episode ain't got no t-bone. Just mashed potatoes. Long May You Young is a proud member of the Pantheon Podcast Network! Head to PantheonPodcasts.com to check out all their great music themed shows!

Michelle Oates: I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel," by Maya Angelou. I am Michelle Oates, and I'm a Tri-Cities Influencer. Paul Casey: Your brain does not see the word "not". So if you're like "I am not going to eat chocolate," you know what your brain hears, is chocolate. So then you start moving toward it, and then you have actually more of a craving for it because the brain doesn't see that word. It's just a fun fact about the brain.   Raising the water level of leadership in the Tri-Cities of eastern Washington, it's the Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast. Welcome to the TCI Podcast, where local leadership and self leadership expert Paul Casey interviews local CEOs, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit executives, to hear how they lead themselves and their teams, so we can all benefit from their wisdom and expect. Here's your host, Paul Casey Growing Forward Services. Coaching and equipping individuals and teams to spark breakthrough success. Paul Casey: Thanks for joining me for today's episode with Mike Miller. Mike is the President of Moon Security here in the Tri-Cities. I always ask for something funny about each of my guests, and Mike's got this legal pad that he's always carrying around. Mike, what's the story of the legal pad? Mike Miller: I have a folder and it always has the yellow pads that I can write stuff on, take notes. I try to make sure I'm following up on stuff, and as I'm looking, hearing, listening to all of the different things that I have to deal with, and things will come to me, I just, "Oh, I'd better write that down," and I write it down for follow-up. So you can always count on me to follow up. Paul Casey: That's good. You don't even have a pocket protector on there. Mike Miller: No, no pocket protector. Paul Casey: But you're tucking it in your polo there. Mike Miller: I always have the pin right at my chest there. Paul Casey: Nice. Well we're going to dive in with Mike after checking in with our Tricity Influencer sponsor. Paul Casey: Barracuda Coffee, born and brewed in the Tri-Cities since 2003. At Barracuda Coffee it's people first, then great coffee. Barracuda Coffee features drinks that are sure to satisfy everyone. Everything from straight espresso to fruit smoothies, lattes, Americanos, and mochas, to lavender green tea or matcha, chai, or chocolate milk, you are sure to find a new favorite from the menu. Try one of Barracuda's signature coffee drinks, like the Fou Sel Caramel, a salted caramel macchiato with French vanilla. It's tres bien, oui! Or the Flapjack. It's just like it sounds, it tastes like breakfast, maple syrup and all. Not a huge coffee fan? Barracuda also has Red Bull infusions with about 20 flavors to mix. For a next level hack try a fruit flavor and add a touch of vanilla. It's a game changer. Barracuda's is on Kellogg Street in Kennewick, or on Van Giesen in Richland, and you can find them on Facebook. Thank you for your support of leadership in the Tri-Cities. Paul Casey: Mike, so our Tri-City Influencers can get to know you, take us through a couple of career highlights that led you to your current position, and throw in there why you love what you do. Mike Miller: Well I've been working for Moon Security since, actually, I was 11 years of age. I'm turning 63 in a couple of weeks, and I will have been there 51 years now, 52 years. You say well how'd you do that? Well, I worked school time and whatnot. So I've been involved with that, I've always grown up knowing that I was programmed to be able to run Moon Security down the road, second generation. We've had other families go, but one of the things that happened along the way is, parents divorced and remarried different people, and the gentleman that married my mother was in security, and that's how we got to meet Mr. Moon, and that's why we have Moon Security named Moon Security. Paul Casey: Wow. Mike Miller: So we have some of that, and when we bought the company from my stepfather then, "Okay Mike, you're the face of the company," and that's how come I'm involved with so many boards and committees across my life. I have served as President of several different entities, including Goodwill, Tricity Chamber of Commerce, or actually their previous name before that, before they changed that name. Then I have served as President for Alarm Association at the state level, and President for the national for a two-year period of time too. I'm a joiner, I'm a connector, I try to help where I can, and that's allowed me to help grow our business at the same time, just because we're involved in so many different ways. Paul Casey: It's funny, when you said "in security" I went "Oh, they're insecure." But yes, so it's a family business. What were some of the dynamics of family business throughout the years? Mike Miller: Speaking of family dynamics and insecurity, there are days when I just don't feel like I'm up to it to the level that I should be when it comes to, how do I deal with certain kinds of family actions, reactions, and people getting upset and all of that. That's a whole different level of, sometimes you just don't want to wish it on anybody. You should be smart enough not to hire family members. Paul Casey: You mentioned you're a joiner and a connector. Is that part of why you love what you do? Mike Miller: First of all, Moon Security itself has been providing security services, products and services, for the last 50-plus years. It allows us to really have a passion for our community we're here to protect. We have thousands of customers that we have protected over the years, and we save lives and properties, and we have stories talking about how systems that worked and got help when the customer or client needed to have help. So that's always a feel-good there for you to have, that you know what you're doing is important. Mike Miller: Then, when it comes to the connecting, I'm a Tricity Sunrise Rotary member as well, and it's really important that we give back to our community, and we can do that in so many different ways, whether it's money, resources, time. And I'm part of a group of people that do that, and we have a lot of volunteers. I'm not doing it alone. The other people step up and do things, depending on what their passion is for who they're wanting to be an advocate for. So I like that, I like to see how other people are doing what they do, and if we can, we can be a part of it. Paul Casey: Yeah, I really like that. I feel like part of your answer was saying that, from this base of stability that Moon has had in our community, that you can then look out at the community and go, "How can we add value". Sometimes when you're at the beginning of an entrepreneur journey, or in a new venture, you can't think out yet. You have to sort of stabilize, get your foundations strong, get your client base strong, and then you can look out. That's usually a sign of, all right, that person's got it together, because now they're reaching out to other people here in our community. Mike Miller: That's a good point, because cycle-wise, life cycle, let's face it, when you're early in the cycle you may not have the cashflow that you can help there, so what do you try to do? You use your brain power to provide, or you use your time to give. And all three are important, so it's pretty exciting when you start to see how you can give. Mike Miller: One of the things that we've kind of verbalized, or I have to myself, is how can we be helpful out there, and we've identified that we really like to be where, is it helping children, is it helping education? For many years I was part of an organization, the Bond Levy Committee, that did work for the Pasco School District. It's a separate entity, not to be wrapped into Pasco School District, but that Bond Levy Committee created lots of dollars by getting people to say yes on who they voted for, for helping build schools. So that helps kids and so forth. My other interaction is with Lourdes Foundation and all the work that we've done there to try to help from a medical standpoint too. You try to be a contributor in that way as well. Paul Casey: I teased you for years of all the boards you're on. Tricity Influencers, this guy was on so many boards that he couldn't even rattle them off to me at one point. So every time he walks up to me now he's like, "Paul, I divested myself of yet another one." So how many are we on now, Mike? Mike Miller: At the time that we talked about it I had 22 boards and communities I was on. Paul Casey: That's right. Mike Miller: So we decided and agreed that I was being stupid about it, and so the real word is, I'm trying to get fired. I try to fulfill my term of office and then it's just like, no, it's time for me to go. You need to get some new blood in there and all. So I think I'm down to five or six now, that I'm pretty active in. Paul Casey: Wow, that's impressive. Well throughout your journey, Mike, you've hit obstacles to success. So what's one of the biggest hurdles you overcame in your career? Mike Miller: Boy, that's always a tough question, because I got plenty of hurdles to deal with. One is just brain power. I've had to recognize ... And maybe wisdom is another. I have several people around me that help support me in so many different ways, within and without the business itself. So it's really important to have ... In my case, I'm a firm believer in having the insurance man, or woman, please no gender issues here, but a CPA, my banker, and my attorney. And you have those four key people, and then I still have some key people that I work with at the office to help keep us going, to be creative. You still have to deal with compliance issues and all of those kinds of things, but I'm not doing it by myself, by any means whatsoever. It's a team effort. Paul Casey: Yeah, hear, hear. We all need that rebar underneath us that helps us do, especially those things that we may not be the best at, but we know somebody else is. They're an expert at that area, so it relieves the load on us, but it also shores up that area of our business. So way to go for that team, that support team, and giving them the credit. Because they really are a support team. And leadership is difficult. Paul Casey: So let's bring it to today, Mike. What's your biggest ongoing challenge as a leader, and what's really stretching you? Mike Miller: It's funny, because we're going through the process of PPP, trying to make sure that we can get everything forgiven, and then of course we're waiting for the bankers and SBA to come out with whatever the requirements are. I'm getting stressed right now on a refinance with our line of credit, and loan activity. That's going to require buying out sisters, and I'll become 100% owner of the company. When they talk about 300 stress points in a year's time, I think I'm at 305. So a lot of things are happening there, and still having sales go, and keeping people happified. Mike Miller: Probably one thing, I've got a new HR manager who's bringing to me the concept of HR as a growth strategy. So we have some technicians who are apprentices, as an example, and they're about ready to become journeymen. So Mike, what are you going to do when you do that? So you go through this process, we're going to get them a vehicle, we have to then have more sales going on to accommodate their cost and so forth, and she's got the and-and question, and I'm going "What?" So she says, "You're going to hire two more apprentices. Because the only way you're going to grow the business is to grow your technical grid. Paul Casey: The pipeline, yeah. Mike Miller: Have a pipeline. Just like what you think of in sales, you've got to do the same thing with your line employees that are out there working their butts off to help grow the business too. So I've been getting to learn through some of those concepts, as well as to all of that. It's been an interesting ride this last year, with my new HR manager. She's awesome. Paul Casey: I love the word happified. It's another word for boosting morale on your team, is to help your team get happified. Well Mike, if you had a leadership philosophy that you would put front and center on a bulletin board in your office for all to see, what would those messages say? Mike Miller: I think one we talk about, it's probably more than just one, but "steady as she goes". In some cases, for us sometimes chaos reigns. You just have to understand that. So how do you deal with that appropriately? My job is to increase revenue, reduce cost, and reduce liability. Some of the other issues that I'll have, that's always in forefront of me, in fact it's on my yellow pad, is having a sense of urgency. When things happen, we need to take care of it and we need to take care of it now. Why? Because it's code compliant, for one thing, and then it's also just life safety concerns that we might have. Then once we know about something then we need to figure out how to resolve the issues, and then recognize that importance, and have clarity and focus to keep everyone going. Mike Miller: Probably the more important thing on all of that is, and I'm terrible at it, I'll put it that way, is to make sure that we're continuously communicating that out to our management group and our employees, that this is how they can contribute to the bottom line. Mike Miller: Probably the other thing I have to work on a lot is just celebrating the 95% that we do good. And what we tend to do is, we tend to concentrate 95% of the time on the 5% that we are not good. So we do have to take care of that 5%, but at the same time, not beat ourselves up so badly. Mike Miller: Then I guess the other one for me is just, what's the plan? I'm getting to that point where other people are in a position where they have to be more hands-on than me. So tell me what the plan is. If you've got a couple different ways to go, I might suggest one way or the other, but just get it done and make the client happy. At the end of the day that's really the issue, is what are we doing to make sure the client gets happified. Paul Casey: That question, what's the plan. I got certified in DISC survey, being able to do that for teams this year. The D style, the lion style, always asks "What". And I think probably the top leader in an organization probably asks "What" more than anybody else. The I style, which I call the otter, asks "Who". The golden retriever, or the C style, asks "How," because it's all about, are we getting along with one another, how are the relationships. Then the S style, or the beaver style, always asks "Why". It's all about the data and the reasons. I just thought that was interesting, the questions that the various personality styles tend to ask. Mike Miller: When it comes to the DISC I think I'm a ... What was C again? Paul Casey: Conscientious. Mike Miller: Conscientious, I'm not sure that's going to be the word. Paul Casey: You've got some D in you. Mike Miller: I'm dominant and controlling, is the big D? Paul Casey: Yeah, you're ID. Most influencers I know have a bit of visionary inside of them, in order to take that next hill. Where do you take time to dream about the future, and what does that look like for you? Mike Miller: I get to go to Hawaii every so often, I really love that. Paul Casey: Oh, nice. Mike Miller: Hawaii is my happy place. You know what, I actually have three groups that are conference calls now, that we do best practices. We will do, "How are you dealing with this HR issue, how are you dealing with job costing, how are you dealing with ..." Whatever the case may be. And we can get input from somebody else. So that's always a coaching, networking, mentoring kind of thing. I can call these people up any time, anywhere, any day, and send out an email, "Help, I'm suffering here," because I can't figure out how to get it going. I go to a couple different security conventions, and they're starting to learn, it's not the product. Most people have a similar product, but it's how you deal with the client, the customer service, and what your approach is, and how you communicate that, and all of that kind of thing. Mike Miller: I think I mentioned, in our last setting that we were to get together, I'm working, reading, trying to go through it, a book called Traction, with ... Paul Casey: Yes, Gino Wickman. Mike Miller: Yeah, okay, Wickman. Trying to be a little bit more specific in terms of the questions that I ask, and how we're getting there, and trying to set some processes in place that way. Paul Casey: It almost sounds like you do your best thinking with others. Is that true, or is there a solitude time as well for things to crystallize in your head? Mike Miller: Probably with others. Like I say ... when I served as President of National, it allowed me to meet all sorts of people all across the nation. So diversity is really a key word there for my ability to be able to grab somebody that I think might have the expertise that would help me and all of that. But I do tend to, when we're away on vacation or whatever, then there's always some quiet time that I am able to get, to allow, just to sit down with my yellow pad, and where do we need to improve, and just kind of cover different areas. Paul Casey: Fantastic. So Tricity Influencers, do you have a group? Do you have a small group of fellow colleagues, maybe there's a mentor in there, maybe there's just a mastermind kind of a group, where you get to play with ideas, and ask those hard questions, and really get some good feedback to make wise decisions? Because it's critical. Mike Miller: A part of that, just do not let your pride get in the way. Paul Casey: Be open to everything, right. Mike Miller: You are going to get some questions that are just going to tick you off and upset you, make you embarrassed and all of that. But sometimes you have to be able to look in the mirror and get that feedback, and then sit down and say "I might have to admit that I suck at whatever," and all of that. You have to be willing and able to take the feedback, and "Let me think about it, and let me come back and see how I'm going to respond to those things." Do not let pride get in the way. Paul Casey: Yep, because "ego" stands for edging greatness out. So if you want greatness, you've got to put the ego aside. Mike Miller: Amen. Paul Casey: Before we head into our next question for Mike, on his typical morning routine, a shoutout to our sponsor. Paul Casey: Barracuda Coffee, born and brewed in the Tri-Cities since 2003. At Barracuda Coffee it's people first, then great coffee. Barracuda features freshly roasted coffees from their own signature roastery, Charis Coffee Roasting Company. With fresh coffee always on the shelf from all over the world, you can taste the distinct floral flavors of Latin American coffees from countries like Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras. Savior the delicate berry notes that are dominant in African coffees from Burundi, Rwanda, Ethiopia, or Kenya. Or go for the full earthy tones of the South Pacific coffees, from Timor, Indonesia, or Sumatra. Ask your barista what's fresh and try something new today. Barracuda has two locations, over on Van Giesen in Richland or on Kellogg Street in Kennewick, and you can find them on Facebook. Paul Casey: So Mike, what is your typical morning routine before you go to work? And maybe if you have any rituals when you arrive at work that helps you start your day out strong? Mike Miller: It's so funny, because I'll actually get up and take a shower, clean ... Paul Casey: We don't need to know those details. Mike Miller: Thank you. After I get my medicine, then I say a prayer with my wife, and then I walk out the door, and I'll have whatever food that I'm going to eat on the way, or pick up. But one of the things that happens is, when I get to the office, then I think people call it email management. So I'm swiftly going through my email stuff first before I get to do anything else, unless there's some crisis that's going on. So it allows me to be able to look and see what's happening, what questions, who's following up with what, and all that kind of thing. And I’m on enough of the email groups in the company, obviously I have to be on all of them, and so there's some that will catch my attention, and I just make sure that they're getting worked on. That's number one priority there, to do it. But then I'll have whatever schedules that I have going. Mike Miller: It's prepping your mind towards, how's my day going to go, good or bad. It's just, that's the day. Then I just try to make sure that I'm working on it, and I fail miserably sometimes, just what's my reaction supposed to be to make sure, what is my outcome that I want to have come out of it. Can't say that it's really anything there. I will have a cup of hot tea as I'm going through all of the stuff, just to kind of relax and get my day in order. Paul Casey: So it's sort of like you're on a vista point looking out at your day, and seeing what the big priorities are, any fires that are going. It's a great first thing to do in the morning instead of just coming in with your hair on fire, and off the races, and then realize at the end of the day, what did I get done today? Mike Miller: That would go back to the yellow pad again. Because I already have my day laid out for the whole week. Then there's stuff that gets filled in. So I'm one of those that, "This is my day, this is how it's going to work," and "I'm going to accomplish this, this, and this." That's a feel-good. Paul Casey: That's right. Eat that frog, get it done. Mike Miller: Yeah. Paul Casey: How do you deal with the everyday grind of your work without burning out? Mike Miller: I try to get proper rest, I'll golf every so often, weekly, and I might sit outside with the dogs and play with them, and just do yard work or whatever. Just something else physically to take away. You know what, burned out, sometimes you can get tired about stuff, and then that's when you have to recognize that you have to schedule a vacation, a three-day, four-day weekend, that kind of thing. It's okay to do that for yourself on there, and whether it's staying at home. Mike Miller: As an example, my wife is, I have 11 grandchildren, and my wife has said "We want to see more of them. I see that you're not really getting ready to retire too soon, so I want some W days." So we take a couple of days, a couple Fridays each month. It could be going somewhere, but it very easily could be just staying at home and relaxing. And that allows us to talk about where we're at, fun stuff, budget stuff, and all of that kind of thing, to just kind of see where we're at, and then how we're wanting to do things as well. Paul Casey: That's a really good one. W days. You'll of course have to name it after your spouse. The principle here, of course, is to have something to look forward to as a couple, because if you see that on your calendar you're like, "I could plow through a little bit longer." As long as I see that time coming, I tend to stack my days very tightly, but I do it on purpose if I see a vacation coming, because then I'm completely off the clock, I'm not going to check my email, and I'm going to pour it into my family. That really helps. Mike Miller: It's called delayed gratification. Paul Casey: Oh yeah. Mike Miller: That's real important to have. Paul Casey: Eat your vegetables before you have dessert, right. Mike Miller: True. My guys that I have, my executive team, they won't let me buy a vehicle. Because we're on a mission for debt reduction and that kind of thing at the office. And I'm going, "Are you sure? I could really use a new vehicle." So I'm running around with an older vehicle. But drives nice. Paul Casey: Because you're keeping your purpose in mind. Mike Miller: That's right. Paul Casey: Love it. And family is a big deal to most people. You mentioned the W days. Anything over the years ... We've got some listeners that have young children, some married, some maybe not married. How do you keep family in that number one slot, and yet still be a high performer at work. Mike Miller: I think I fail miserably in that area. My wife would probably say that, and maybe my kids every so often would too. So maybe I'm the leader in telling you what not to do versus what to do. Paul Casey: Well step out of the confession booth for a moment. Mike Miller: That's right. But I have four kids, 11 grandchildren, and I find that I'm a better grandfather than I was a parent. Paul Casey: Wow. Mike Miller: It's always easier that way, because they get to go home, and so forth. Paul Casey: Sugar them up and let them go. Mike Miller: That's right. But if I were to do it again, I would say not as many boards and committees. That would be one thing. And you need to focus on the growth of your company. It's important that you do serve on some boards and committees, just so that you can do the networking and the service that you want to do. But at the same time, the number one deal here that anybody should be, if you're religious or not, is God, and then family, and then work down three or four. The issue then becomes one of, "Did I do that? No." There has been pain where, if I had done it differently, I wouldn't have that pain. You just have to make sure that, when you're at home then, you're not working at home. Which I tended to do anyway, because it's a full-time job. It's not an 8:00 to 5:00. Paul Casey: Never off the clock, yeah. Mike Miller: Yeah, so you have to be able to make sure that you're committing whatever time. Even if it's a half hour and you have a date with your wife, better not be working, unless you're asking her for advice on something. But you'd better not be working, you need to make sure that you're committing that time to the family that you need to. Paul Casey: Yes. You said the CEO, or the leader of a business, or a leader of a team, focuses on the growth of your company, focuses on the growth of your team. And we can just add on there, focuses on the growth of your family relationships. And I would add on there the focus on the growth of yourself. So leaders are leaders, they're not know-it-alls. You've shared that you go to some groups for wise advice. Who are some others that you've gone to through the years, and maybe still do, for wise advice? It could be literally live people, or live virtual people now, or maybe there's some authors, or motivators or industry professionals, that you tend to draw good ideas from. Mike Miller: Well because of the Alarm Association stuff, I usually get in two, sometimes three different conventions that you're able to go, so you get to hear speakers ... I've got one coming up, it's going to be a virtual one, that's all about, it's from Ritz Carlton, and they are known for their customer service. Paul Casey: Yes, they are. Mike Miller: So it's perfect timing for being able to have something like that. But back again to alarm industry, I have some people that I just called yesterday, probably one of them to see what the heck I was doing and keeping up. So I was able to call him back today and say "Here's what's happening," and all of that, and love you, brother, and on to the next. You have those people that reach out. Same way in Rotary, we have different people that we can talk to and enjoy, and they provide their, if you ask, you'll get them. Mike Miller: By the way, that reminded me of something too, that I think I talked about, was, are you able to learn? I have a couple of guys that, had kind of a rocky relationship when we first met, they're golfers with me, and invariably they were better golfers than me, so I would have to admit that too. But I would have some crappy shots that I did, and I would be upset with myself, and they'd come up to me and ask, "Mike, do you want to get better?" "Yeah, I want to get better." Then the second question was, "Can I give you some advice?" That was an opportunity for them to then, with those two questions, then give me advice. Then they watched to see if I would use the advice. Mike Miller: Then I realized later, I'm a slow learner and it took me a while later to realize that, if I had not tried to use their advice, then they would've said "Well up yours then," and not tried to provide me any more advice. But they saw that. I find that more and more, I've started to use that somewhat too, for asking permission. "Do you want to get better," and, "Can I give you some advice". Paul Casey: That's a real respectful way to go into giving feedback. Mike Miller: Yeah. It's real smooth, and not as offensive and all that. So I get stuff like that from my golfers, from my rotary, from my Alarm Association, from chamber, from our leadership classes that we had along the way. So you can learn something from somebody if you ask the questions to get what you need to have. Again, back to the pride thing, just ask. People are always willing to share. There's not too many secrets really out there involved. Paul Casey: Do you find it's harder, in this virtual world that we're in right now, that people aren't asking as much, because it's yet another Zoom call, or another one-to-one, or have you not seen a dip in the sharing of information? Mike Miller: You know what, I'm on the Tridec board, and we have Carl Dye, he's the new Executive Director, CEO, of Tridec. He's been doing these one-on-ones, coffee with Carl, on Fridays. It's fantastic. I've told him that he's doing a fantastic job for one thing, but the second thing is, it's allowing him to be able to share what other people are doing, so that then they can become a part of that, and it's basic education for all of us that are on the Zoom to watch it. Paul Casey: Nice. Mike Miller: For me, I think Zoom actually has been, in some ways, more efficient. We still miss the social distancing, we still miss getting to see each other and hug and handshake and all of that kind of thing, but in other ways it's allowed us to learn a lot more. So I tend not to look at it as a negative, other than the socializing aspect of it. But we're getting to learn a lot more. Paul Casey: The resources are plentiful. Mike Miller: Yeah. Paul Casey: And if you want to reach out one-to-one, you do have to be initiator and say, "I'm going to build my network," or "I'm going to reach out to my fellow influencers to try to get the best information that I need." Mike Miller: Yep. Paul Casey: Finally Mike, what advice would you give the new leaders, or anyone who wants to keep growing and gaining more influence? Mike Miller: Like I said earlier, don't let pride get in the way. And I really would say, make sure you're having fun. Whatever you're doing, have fun. Make money. It is okay to make money. Make sure you're paying yourself first, make sure that you're paying your taxes and all that so that you can make sure you take care of my social security down the road. Just be willing to listen, ask questions, read, network. Those are all things that come off, those are easy things to say, but do not let pride get in the way of asking what those questions are. You need to be prepared for tough answers, tough questions, that put you on the spot. Then, you don't have to say "I know right now." Let me think about that and I'll get back with you. Paul Casey: That's right, I'll get back to you. Well thanks, Mike, for all that you do to make the Tri-Cities a great place, and keep leading well. Mike Miller: Thank you. Paul Casey: Let me wrap up our podcast today with a leadership resource to recommend. If you're looking for one-on-one questions to do with your direct reports, I always feel like that's a great leadership activity to do each and every week, whether that's with one person or with your entire team, but there are some great questions, one-on-one questions, that great managers ask. And if you go to the website GetLighthouse.com/blog, you're going to find a whole slew of great questions to ask in your one-on-ones to keep them fresh, and to really probe for answers that are going to help your employees develop. Paul Casey: Again, this is Paul Casey. I want to thank my guest Mike Miller from Moon Security for being here today on the Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast. I want to thank our Tricity Influencer sponsor and invite you to support them, and we appreciate them making this possible so we can collaborate to help inspire leaders in our community. Paul Casey: Finally, one more leadership tidbit for the road to help you make a difference in your circle of influence. Oprah Winfrey said "Passion is energy." Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you. Until next time, KGF, keep growing forward.   Thank you to our listeners for tuning in to today's show. Paul Casey is on a mission to add value to leaders by providing practical tools and strategies that reduce stress in their lives and on their teams, so that they can enjoy life and leadership and experience their key desired results. If you'd like more help from Paul in your leadership development, connect with him at GrowingForward@PaulCasey.org, for a consultation that can help you move past your current challenges and create a strategy for growing your life or your team forward. Paul would also like to help you restore your sanity to your crazy schedule and getting your priorities done every day, but offering you his free Control My Calender Checklist. Go to www.TakeBackMyCalendar.com for that productivity tool, or open a text message to 72000 and type the word "Growing." Paul Casey: The Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast was recorded at Fuse SPC, by Bill Wagner of Safe Strategies.  

Mike Meissner is an entrepreneur, a people-oriented leader, and an industry expert in logistics and supply chain management as well as biological and environmental testing. He proudly wears 20 years of professional experience in many countries across Europe, the Middle East, the Americas, and the Asia Pacific, where he built several successful businesses “just for pleasure really.”   “We now invest in better quality and higher prices, and we shorten times. This means fewer headaches and issues. We provide what we promise.” Mike Meissner   Worst investment ever Barbeque, wine, business idea Mike and a friend had a barbecue a few months ago. After the second bottle of wine, they joked about inventing a digital container that would keep the required transportation temperature throughout the journey. The next morning, when sober, Mike and his friend researched their idea intensively. They found out that this kind of box doesn’t exist. So they started developing it from a design and an engineering point. Eventually, they came up with a fantastic container in different sizes for different commodities. The novel box The box is charged like a mobile phone for four and a half hours, you set your desired temperature, you lock it and the box guarantees to maintain this very same temperature for the next 72 hours. It has an integrated SIM card and sends push notifications with details such as the patient file, the box’s current location, who’s handling your product, at what humidity, luminosity, and at what temperature. Such details create transparency. So essentially, no more dry ice, ice packages that you freeze, and put on top of your package for your shipment. It doesn’t matter if your flight is delayed because 72 hours is plenty of time from anywhere in the world to reach its destination. What could go wrong? Nine months later, Mike’s box went into patenting and had a successful pilot with his clients. Everybody was happy. Mike was receiving compliments for a noble and promising idea. This box was going to be a hit. Nothing could go wrong. Or so he thought. However, the beginning has been terrible. Mike made a lot of silly decisions that cost them money and time. Once they had the box designed and assembled and the design documents approved by authorities, they started to source for components. Mike had two component suppliers. The first one was a friend who was selling the parts for $509. The second supplier was very far away, and Mike had no personal relationship with him. However, he sold the components for $240. Choosing the cheaper option So out of Mike’s nature of not being a big fan of finance and administration, he just wanted to get his box done. He wanted to touch it and was eager to put it on the table of the FDA for approval. So Mike chose the second supplier and placed an order for $25,000. Quite a considerable amount for a start-up. The components arrived six weeks later but got stuck in customs because wrong customs clearance codes had been used. They had to pay hefty fines for this. To make matters worse, the components turned out to be of the lowest quality possible. Mike had ordered for eco-friendly components because he didn’t want to be testing the environment with harmful materials or components. So when they sent the parts to an independent testing facility, just to give them the confidence of the materials used, they ended up having the worst PVC materials that you can launch in the market. So nobody would have ever approved this to be eco-friendly. It also cost him another $600 to recycle the components that they couldn’t use. So far, they’ve lost a lot of production time, and Mike ended up paying one and a half times as much as the first supplier. But, he’s glad he was able to learn how to avoid losing money on investments thanks to this experience. Lessons learned Find people who compliment you You will never have all the qualities needed to set up a successful company. So surround yourself with people who complement the qualities that you don’t have. Learn the basics Even though you don’t have the general interest or the general specialty in areas such as finance, administration, purchasing, quality control, you have to force yourself to learn at least the basics so that you at least know what is going on in your business. You cannot just go for your vision and your product without having the essentials. Andrew’s takeaways Manage your risks When starting a company, you’ve got to become a great risk manager to avoid losses. Finance adds no value Value comes from your ideas and the implementation of those ideas. Finance adds no value. It is a support function, a measurement tool, and a feedback mechanism. If you can understand finance, then you will be able to see where you’re at and the results of your prediction so that you can implement your ideas from the point of knowledge. Cheap is expensive Sometimes the cheapest option is, in fact, the most expensive. Actionable advice Think before you act, take a step back. Try to listen to more than two or three opinions of your family and friends, as well as your competitors. Be patient and think things through first. If you lose a day or two, that won’t change anything in your success. No. 1 goal for the next 12 months Mike’s goal for the next 12 months is to continue growing his start-up by improving its products and services. He also wants to start expanding into other geographies. Parting words   “If you’re on the edge of starting something, I encourage you to follow your dreams. Do it right, take the learnings from me and others so that you do not commit the same” mistakes. Mike Meissner   Connect with Mike Meissner LinkedIn Andrew’s books How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market My Worst Investment Ever 9 Valuation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Transform Your Business with Dr.Deming’s 14 Points Andrew’s online programs Valuation Master Class How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market Finance Made Ridiculously Simple Become a Great Presenter and Increase Your Influence Transform Your Business with Dr. Deming’s 14 Points Connect with Andrew Stotz: astotz.com LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube My Worst Investment Ever Podcast

The Baby-Sitters Club comes to Netflix! The beloved series features a character who lives with type 1 diabetes. How did the show do portraying life for a 7th grader with T1D? We talk to New York Times Bestselling author and winner of the National Book Award Robin Benway. Robin loved the books as a child and was diagnosed with type 1 as an adult. Also this week, Mike Suarez turned his son’s story into an adorable picture book called Year One with Type One Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! In Tell Me Something Good – she had a huge goal for the JDRF rides this year – of course so much had to be cancelled this year but her story took a wonderful turn.. on and off the bike. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Sign up for our newsletter here The Guy's Guide to Diabetes ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode transcription: Stacey Simms 0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop created for people with diabetes by people who have diabetes by Gvoke HypoPen, the first pre mixed autoinjector for very low blood sugar, and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom. Announcer 0:22 This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms. Stacey Simms 0:28 This week, it's all about books and a TV show that's based on books. We're talking about the Baby-Sitters Club with a New York Times bestselling author who loved the series as a child and was diagnosed with type one as an adult. Robin Benway 0:43 Oh my gosh, I'm now something that I was a fan of for so long. I can now watch on television. You know, I was thinking about Stacey when I did start to watch it. I thought it was nearly perfect. Stacey Simms 0:54 Robin Benway is the winner of the National Book Award when we talk about Stacey and the babies sitters club, what we liked what we didn't, and about diabetes in media. Plus a dad turns his toddler story into an adorable picture book about type one. in Tell me something good. She had a huge goal for the JDRF rides this year, of course, so much had to be cancelled and changed. But this woman's story took a wonderful turn on and off the bike. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Welcome to another week of the show. I'm so glad to have you along. I'm your host, Stacey Simms, and we aim to educate and inspire about type 1 diabetes by sharing stories of connection. My son was diagnosed with type one, gosh, ages ago now he was almost two and in December it will be 14 years. Yeah, he's 15 and a half 15. And more than that, I don't even know anymore. My husband lives with type two diabetes. I do not have diabetes, but I have a background in broadcasting and that is how you get the podcast which we've been doing now. for more than five years, and I have been wanting to talk about the Baby-Sitters Club for a long time, I mean, we have talked about it because many guests over the years have said that it was very influential to them, either. They read it and really were touched by Stacey's story, the character who lives with type one, or somebody else read it and diagnose them because of it. That happened at least once to one of my guests. It's really incredible to think about these books, and the impact they've had on our community. So when I saw column in Elle magazine recently, about the Netflix adaptation, I really wanted to talk to Robin Benway, the author, I knew she'd be fun to talk to just by her writing voice in the magazine, and she really was and Robin also had some unique insight about the books and about the adaptation, and I was really excited to talk to her. We also talked about diabetes in other media, you know, I think a lot of us cringe when we know there's going to be a depiction of diabetes and a show or they mentioned insulin and we Oh, we know what's coming. So it was fun to talk to Robin about that. And to kind of spotlight some good stuff that's actually out there. All right, I'm going to talk about my reaction in more depth to Baby-Sitters Club in a little bit of a review, but I'm going to do that later on. Because this is a longer episode. We've got two interviews, we've got Robin. And I also spoke to a dad who wrote a picture book rhyming kids book for about his little boy, and it's called year one with type one, and that is with Mike Suarez. So that's coming up in just a bit but first, diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop, and I spoke to the people at One Drop was really impressed at how much they get diabetes. It makes sense their CEO Jeff was diagnosed with type one as an adult. One Drop is for people with diabetes by people with diabetes. The people at One Drop work relentlessly to remove all barriers between you and the care you need. Get 24 seven coaching support in your app and unlimited supplies delivered. No prescriptions or insurance required there. Beautiful sleek meter fits in perfectly with the rest of your life. They'll also send you test strips with a strip plan that actually makes sense for how much you actually check. One Drop diabetes care delivered, learn more, go to Diabetes, Connections comm and click on the One Drop logo. My guest this week is a National Book Award winner and a New York Times best selling author. She wrote a column about the Baby-Sitters Club and her reaction to it in Elle magazine. That's what caught my eye. I reached out and said, Would you talk to us but to come on the show? She said sure. And we had a great conversation. Now she grew up with a father who lived with Type One Diabetes, but she herself was not diagnosed until she was an adult. So her perspective on the Baby-Sitters Club, which she loved, as you'll hear as a kid was very different because she wasn't relating to the type one aspect about it right away. I'm also curious to know what you thought of the Baby-Sitters Club. I'm going to be putting more about this in the Facebook group. We've talked about it a little bit, but we'll put more posts in there and get your take. And as I said earlier, I'm going to put a little bit more of my review, although you'll you'll hear much of it in the interview. But a little bit more later on. Here is my talk with Robin Benway. Robin, thank you so much for jumping on to talk about this. I really appreciate it. It's I'm looking forward to talking with you. Yeah, same here. Thank you so much for having me. All right before we jump into the Baby-Sitters Club, and I have a lot to talk about with that. Let me ask you just the basics. You were diagnosed as a young adult, right you were in your in your mid 20s? Robin Benway 5:28 Yes, I was 26 it was July of 2003. I was diagnosed I was diagnosed with celiac disease at the same time I was having really low iron problems I was having anemia so they started doing a lot of bloodwork just to find out what was going on and started noticing that I had elevated blood sugar levels. And my father, who was my biological father was also a type one diabetic. So once they saw those blood sugar levels being elevated, they started to put things together pretty quickly. And so I in a, you know, a very strange way felt very lucky that I was diagnosed that way that it didn't progress to the point where I had to be hospitalized or my blood sugar's were, you know, four or five 600 or something like that, that I was diagnosed sort of accidentally and was able to catch it pretty early and could start, you know, meeting with an endocrinologist and started taking insulin pretty soon after that. So there was no mistaking at that age, oh, maybe it's type two, maybe it's something else because of your father, they pretty much went right there. At first, they were like, maybe it's type two. There was a lot of I think, you know, this was 17 years ago. So I think now, the way that people are diagnosing type one and people in their 20s and 30s is very different than it was 17 years ago. I think that was when people were just starting to see that, at least based on my experience and the responses that I was getting from doctors at the time. You know, I had grown up knowing that my dad was diabetic, but in our family, we had always sort of been under the impression that once you hit 12 or 13 years old, you're sort of out of the woods of that, you know, I think a lot of they used to call juvenile demise you know, because they were diagnosis of young. So I think it was a real shock because I had always thought, okay, I'm out of the woods. I'm fine. And that wasn't the case. But they definitely did think it was type two. They started me on oral medications at first Metformin, but nothing worked. And I remember I still remember the first time I took insulin, it was just like, oh, that was the problem. You know, that's what I need because my blood sugar's just came down to right where they should be. So, you know, it was a little disheartening knowing that I was going to have to go on insulin, but at the same time, that relief of knowing that now here's the drug that works was it balanced it out? Stacey Simms 7:36 Do you remember I've been told this by other adults that I've talked to that what that first dose of insulin feels like, Do you remember that? Robin Benway 7:44 I do. Remember, I was staying at my mom's house. I was living alone at the time and I thought I don't want to be alone when I take my first dose of insulin just in case. And I remember it dropped. My blood sugar's a little lower. They were like maybe in the mid 60s, and I just remember, I didn't feel shaky but I just remember feeling less. It's that feeling of a sugar rush basically, you know when your blood sugars are high I for me personally, I definitely feel a little agitated, a little edgy, you know a little bit more, I don't know Piper's the word but just a little fuzzier. And I just remember that feeling going away. And I remember also being so terrified of like having to give myself an injection like having to give myself a shot. And I was incredibly amazed at how easy it was and how painless it was. I had always imagined that it would just be a torturous experience, you know, mostly because your experience with injections is like vaccinations or inoculations. You know, it's Earth flu shot. It's a very different experience. Give yourself a shot of insulin. And I remember feeling that relief also of Oh, I can do this. Okay, this is something that I can do. Wow. Yeah. So Stacey Simms 8:50 the article that I'd mentioned, you start out by talking about this high spot in your career, the National Book Awards Gala and then the reality of being an adult with type one, which is go to the bathroom, I get up your formal gown, you know, giving an injection. And, you know, certainly a great way to start the article. But I'm curious, do you share your diabetes experiences with your friends and family? I mean, not everybody has to be giving themselves injections at the table. Right? I know. I'm sure you're not hiding things. I don't mean to imply that. Oh, as a mom, that was the first thing I thought of was, oh, my goodness in the bathroom. She okay. Yeah. Robin Benway 9:29 You know, I obviously all of my friends and family know about it. I'm not someone who would ever conceal that part of me. It's not something that I ever feel ashamed of, or feel like I need to keep secret. That's certainly not it at all. I think. For me, it's more about I'm very conscientious of other people's reactions to blood and to syringes or needles, and I just don't want to ever make someone I definitely have known people and I've heard of people who just give themselves an injection right at the table, you know, or will check their blood sugar under the table. And for me, I'm just not comfortable. That just in terms of making other people uncomfortable, but also sometimes things go wrong, you know, like, sometimes, you know, there's a little bit more blood than you thought there would be or you hit a blood vessel when you're injecting yourself with insulin. And, you know, sometimes it's just easier to be in, even if it's a public restroom, you know, it's still a confined space. And sometimes just the privacy is sorted out is something that I prefer but in terms of being open, I definitely I talk about it. I do a lot of school visits with my job, you know, writing for young adults and young people, I do a lot of school visits. And I always talk about how I was diagnosed and how that changed the trajectory of my life. And I always say to kids, who here knows somebody with diabetes, and almost every kid raises their hand you know, whether it's type one or type two, it doesn't really matter to me, I just, I know that they can make a connection with what I'm saying and relate it to either themselves or someone that they love in their lives. No doubt. Stacey Simms 10:53 Yeah, I think that's to is the difference between my my personal experience of type 1 diabetes is my 15 year old who has made a career out Have trying to gross out his friends. Yeah, no, since the third grade watch this. Yeah, slightly different experience than a grown woman in Robin Benway 11:09 that dress. You know? It's expensive. You just really don't want to get anything on this. Stacey Simms 11:15 So let's talk about the Baby-Sitters Club. Now I'm a little bit older so my guilty reading pleasure as a kid was worse sweet Valley High then Babysitter's Club, also say, okay, okay. But were you a fan of this as a kid, this was something that you read and you look forward to. Robin Benway 11:32 Oh, I cannot even describe to you like how much I love the Baby-Sitters Club. Like, I can just remember going to my local bookstore, you know, the Walden books that was in the mall at the time when there were still Walden books in malls and scanning the shelf and just looking for the new one and either being so excited when there was a new one or so disappointed when, you know, they came out every month and you know, on day 30 I'd be like, Where's the next one you know, and sharing with your friends or your Got the new super special, so then they would loan it to you and super specials were bad. But yes, I mean, just when I think about the Baby-Sitters Club, because I've also talked a lot about, you know, what is sort of my formative reading now as a writer, like, what did I read as a child and a young adult that sort of made me a writer? I think the two things about the Baby-Sitters Club is that they were so funny. And I think I learned how to write humor and really good dialogue from those books. I think you can't really teach how to write humor or write something funny, but I think if you can see it, you can see how either rapid fire dialogue or really smart responses or interrupting each other like, that was formative for me as a writer was seeing how they did that. And then also just as like a 11 1213 year old girl, you know, that is where, and I'm sure a lot of women and girls have had this experience, your friendships just kind of implode. And nobody really knows why. But suddenly, your best friend in sixth grade is your biggest enemy in seventh grade. And the factions are changing all the time and who's friends with who and who's not friends with who and who Did what to whom it's traumatic, it's a really difficult experience. It's a big part of growing up, but it's still difficult. And the thing with the Baby-Sitters Club was that at the end of the book, they were always friends. So you could see the sort of regeneration of friendship again and again and again. And for me, it was very comforting. You know, when sort of my female friendships were in turmoil, it was so lovely to see these girls work through things and stay friends in the end. So those were, I think the two things that kept me coming back to the book, but a great way to look at it. Stacey Simms 13:29 Yeah, but you as a reader, your type one experience was with your dad. So I imagined Stacey McGill, the character in the book who has type one wasn't somebody who could really relate to that wasn't what you were reading the books at the Robin Benway 13:42 time? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. You know, I actually I shied away from Stacey as a reader. You know, I loved I moved to New York when I was 18 years old. I've always wanted to live in New York. So reading her as a 12 year old I was like, Oh, that's she's a sophisticated city girl. You know, that's how they always portrayed her. She's From New York City, but that was my favorite part of her but there were books where either she was just diagnosed or I think there's a book later in the series where she was hospitalized. And I had a hard time reading those just because at the time my dad's health he had been a diabetic for 30 years at that point, so his health had gone up and down, you know, just the nature of the disease and the nature of treatment at the time as well. It wasn't as advanced as what we have now. So you know, it was scary to see my dad go through that and I, Baby-Sitters Club was my safe place. You know, that was my fun, safe, circular path of Stony Brook Connecticut. I didn't want a hospital or an insulin shot coming into it. So I don't say I didn't like Stacey as a character. I love Stacey as a character but in terms of what she went through, I just I really shied away from that. That wasn't I was much more a Claudia dawn girl. So yeah. Stacey Simms 14:54 How did you approach the Netflix series you've lived with type one now for a while. We all know that they never get it right in In media, I really looked looked at the show. I look very much forward with a lot of trepidation. I was almost afraid to watch it. What was your reaction? Robin Benway 15:09 I mean, I literally had an alert set on Netflix to remind me that the Baby-Sitters Club will be on Friday, July 3, and then I got the notification. I was so excited for it just because I had loved the books. And you know, I don't know any of the creators personally, but I was familiar with their work and their backgrounds. And I had read a lot of articles by that point about how they had approached the material and I just had a really good feeling about it. You know, I just thought that this is possibly in really good hands. And honestly, I wasn't even thinking about it in terms of Stacey and diabetes. I was thinking about it as oh my gosh, I'm now something that I was a fan of for so long. I can now watch on television. You know, I was even thinking about Stacey, so when I did start to watch it. I mean, I thought it was nearly perfect. I thought that they kept the spirit. I love that they kept the girls young, you do feel like you're watching 12 and 13 year old girls, b 12 and 13 year old girls, you know, and all of the struggles that go into that, but all of their I don't say immaturity, but just that feeling of they're still young, they're still figuring things out. They're not 17 years old in high school, you know, they're still little girls and I thought that was really important what the books were and to the show, and I just thought the way they modernized the material was perfect. You know, they talk about Claudius grandmother being in bands and our you know, Claudia is Japanese American and talk about her grandmother being advanced in our when she was young. And you know, at one point Marianne is babysitting for a kid who's transgender and that would have never been in the past 30 years ago, and I just thought they did a beautiful job of modernizing not only the characters, but the storylines while still staying true to what the spirit of the books was. They did Stacey Simms 16:45 a nice job with that too. And they did this many times where they would put something in like that, you know, the child who was transgender, but the storyline wasn't so much about that child. It was the babysitter character's reaction to it and reflection of it. But I thought was going to throw this word up. I really thought it was masterfully done. Yes, she learned more about her. And yes, there was a there was a lesson there. And, you know, I know there's a lot of criticism from people who get uncomfortable with those kinds of issues, but I thought it was so well done. And they did it many, many times over. And my 18 year old who's really conscious of those things right now, I was really impressed. I thought it was really well done. But I was very worried about the truth about Stacey, I was like, Oh, no, because we see this happen so many times in media, and I think they got a couple of things that adults would notice kind of wrong. Boy, did they hit it out of the park, in terms of what younger people would see. Robin Benway 17:41 What did you see in Stacey, what I see in myself. Here's a girl who has many, many things. But one of those things is diabetic. It is not the arc of her life is not the big picture of who she is. It's one thing and there's a scene where she goes to babysit and her blood sugar feels a little bit low and she pulls out a juice box and I realized that I had never seen that in media before. You know, I hadn't seen this girl or any girl or any woman just do that she feels better she keeps going. I mean, I have had literally hundreds of juice boxes on the road working, traveling, you know, so many so many juice boxes go down in bathroom stalls and downstairs bathrooms and you know, just you do what you have to do that's important. And then your blood sugar's come back up and you move on. And I was shocked to how blown away I was by that because it's such a simple act, but it is such a big part of managing your blood sugar and managing diabetes. Stacey Simms 18:35 Yeah. Didn't you expect her not to do that and faint or have to go home from a babysitting job? That's that's what I think we all expected her to do. It was such a nice normal. No, I'm fine. Robin Benway 18:45 Yeah. And I also I did like there is a scene I think at the end where it's sort of like a neighborhood meeting with all the parents of the kids that they watch and though the girls are explaining what it what this means for Stacey and how this works, and I liked that they introduced the doubt of the parents. Because I think that's, it's the pushback that you get like, are you okay? Can you handle this? You know, there's this feeling of, are you just gonna collapse at any moment? Are you safe and I like that they were like, this is how we this is how Stacey manages that this is how she handles it like these are factors in her daily life, but she's also smart enough and mature enough and knowledgeable enough to take care of herself. And I thought that that was a really good message as well to see that some people may not understand it. And here we are explaining to you what this is. Really, if we had had that exact discussion, not as a group of parents, because we aren't lucky enough to have a Baby-Sitters Club in my neighborhood. Stacey Simms 19:37 One of our babysitter's when my children were younger, has type one. And when Lauren would come over we the first couple times we talked about, well, what would happen if you had a low blood sugar and what would happen if this happens, and we talked about all of that, and it was funny, I saw a few adults in the community commenting on the show, and they that would never happen. parents wouldn't talk about it that way. And then they also and I said yes, well, I'm sorry, but we did. Mother's overreaction, right? No mother would overreact like that. I was like, Hello, I mice my son's very first low blood sugar when it was a bad enough low sugar that we had to treat with more than just a juice box. We were about three weeks in, I called my endocrinologist convinced he was gonna send us to the ER, Mm hmm. Right? Okay, we treated it. His blood sugar's coming up. What do we do now? They were like, What do you mean? But I thought we were gonna go in for tests or something. So that kind of confusion really made me laugh, because in the show, she actually did wind up going to the hospital for the day. But in our experience, I mean, I did call I can't say that I didn't. So it was pretty funny to see our real life reflected in that way. I did also like the mom turn around by the end, but it was more as we mentioned earlier, it was more about Stacey and less about the other character. She turned it around. Robin Benway 20:52 Well, going back to the mom, you know, I was diagnosed at 26 I know how much my mom still worries about me to this day like she would never Say that you're stupid ever say it explicitly. And I'm sure the way you worry about your children and your son, you know, there's just always going to be the worry. I think that's also very much based on who Stacey's mom and her parents were in the books as well. They were very anxious about her disease. And I think that was really important to see that, you know, Stacey is managing many different facets of this disease, including what is other people's reaction to it, including, what is her? What are her parents reactions to her? And it and I like that they were able to have that conversation and the confusion between this is who I am versus this is how you're making me feel. I mean, I think those are things that every young person feels even if they're not dealing with a chronic disease or not diabetic, how are you reacting to me versus how I want you to react to me, so I thought they did a really good job with that, but it's just tricky because every person you meet is going to react completely differently to your diagnosis and regardless of how you react to it. And so that's another thing that you're always navigating is, I mean, I'm sure your son has heard this. I'm sure every diabetic has heard this, but we Hear the Oh yeah, my uncle had it. He lost a leg or he now he's blind. You know, everybody write tragic stories and you have to sort of put up a barrier and remind yourself okay, well, that's not me that is your uncle or your dad or whoever. So I think that was for me as I bet seeing Stacey navigate the reactions of other people I thought was really important as well because that is a big part of it. Stacey Simms 22:22 Robin Well, I have you and as you listen, Robin is a National Book Award winner New York Times bestselling author, six novels for young adults. I want to ask you, Robin, why is it so hard to write genuinely for young people? Robin Benway 22:38 I think for me, you know, six books in now at this point is empathy. It's the very first thing that it has to be the biggest part of every book is empathy. I think it's very easy to like see young people today and be like you kids with your tic tac toe and your snip snap, you know, like they don't, you know, people it's very, very easy to look at what is this? What are we in now, generally See, I guess and look at them and think, well, in my day, we had this and not that we weren't on our phones all day. I mean, I'm on my phone all day. I'm a 43 year old woman. So I don't you know, I'm not gonna judge a 15 year old for being on their phone all day. But I think for me, the biggest thing is empathy, because nothing really changes, right? Like we're all still figuring out how to get along with our friends. Who do we want to be? How do we get along with our parents? How do we move through the world? You know, I as you get older, you hope you get wiser you hope you have more experience that makes you grow mentally, you hope that you maybe have a little bit more agency and a little bit more ability to vocalize how you feel and how to stand up for yourself but the struggles are still the same. You know, the way you get along with your teachers the kind of the same way we all get along with a boss or sometimes in a classroom, you have to be with people you don't really want to be with same as in an office space. You know, sometimes you have co workers. So I think the feelings are always the same. The technology doesn't matter. The place doesn't really matter for me. It's just The feelings whether it's love or family or friendships, Stacey Simms 24:03 have you ever considered putting type one into one of your books? Yes, Robin Benway 24:08 I have. I've definitely over the years, I've had conversations with different editors or people in publishing. And they've said, like, hey, you're diabetic, would you ever think about writing a book about diabetes? I think the thing is for me, and this is something that I've really, really, it's why I don't speak publicly about being a diabetic so much is that I don't want it to become the only thing that people think of when they think of me again, I'm not ashamed of it, I'm very open with it. But at the same time, you don't want to just become Oh, that's Robin, she's the diabetic, you know, we we are all more than just one thing. And so I know that if I do a book about being a diabetic or a character who has diabetes, I will have to talk about that book for years, you know, hopefully, you know, one to two years. You know, it will become the defining part of every interview that I do every, you know, work conversation that I have, and Worry sometimes that it will dilute down to just me being the diabetic when I like I said I am so many other things as are pretty much every other diabetic out there we are more than just that disease. And so I do think about it. Also for me fiction is such a wonderful escape. I don't write books because I have to I write because I love writing books, especially for young people. And I think that for me, I love that escapism of it. I love that I am not having to figure out a character's blood sugar situation. I'm already I've got enough doing that for myself. So I don't know I think about it. Maybe as the years go by, maybe in a few years, I'll engage it. There would have to be a really good idea. It wouldn't just be Oh, this character has been diagnosed with diabetes, there would have to be more at play for me so. So I think about it, never say never, but if someone else wants to do it, go for it. Stacey Simms 25:52 You know, it's funny, I don't want to put too fine a point on it. But the first part of your answer there, which is you didn't want to be defined by Diabetes Connections. What Stacey's story is all about to Yes. And I think that's why we like it so much, because that's how almost everybody I know with any kind of diabetes feels. Yeah, right. Agreed. I think anybody with anything Robin Benway 26:11 like that, you know, it's very easy, especially in sort of these wild modern times to focus on maybe what is unknown or scary or, you know, baby, if people don't understand it, that's what they kind of go to first. But that's just not how I view and that's not how I view being diabetic. It's just so it's just a thread that's woven into my life, you know, I, it will always be there. It's something I will always manage. But it's so inherent to me. I don't want someone just to pull that thread out and only look at that rather than the bigger picture. Stacey Simms 26:41 Is there any depiction of type one in media that just makes you mad? Like, can you think of something where you're like, Oh, I hate that one. When people refer to that one, Robin Benway 26:48 I can definitely think of one thing but I can't say Robin Benway 26:52 but I it was fairly recent and yeah, it just I for me, it was sort of like that thing where you're just like, Are you serious? Like, is this really like, this is what you had to do, and this is what you did with it. And it just it was petty on my part. And, you know, mean, and I can't say it, but I got so frustrated and so annoyed. And, you know, I think that was a long simmering feeling that once I got to the depiction of Stacey, I think those two feelings just sort of combined and became an article which was I can't believe I just had to read this versus Oh, I can't believe I just saw this, you know, and that the negative and the positive of that sort of combined together, but yes, Stacey Simms 27:32 definitely. And then Baby-Sitters Club has got to have a season two, you know, is there anything that you remember reading that you really liked them to see? And it doesn't have to be about Stacey, oh gosh, Robin Benway 27:42 I really want to see Don's mom and Mary's dad get together. I know they were together in the first season but I if memory serves, they get married. So I really want to see that wedding. Just because I love Dawn's mom both in the book and on the show and I love the way that they've treated Maryam dad is fun. This is kind of sad, but in the opening scene. Louis, the Collie, you know, appears with Christie. It's Christie's dog Louie Who's that Collie dog. And I was like, Oh, no, Louis because I don't. If memory serves things get a little dicey. Oh, no. Stacey Simms 28:11 Sorry. Spoiler Robin Benway 28:13 alert. I really, I when I saw Louis, I was like, Louis, you know, Stacey Simms 28:19 it is amazingly six with us from what we read in our childhood, right. Robin Benway 28:24 Well, I was talking with a friend of mine about this. You don't realize how much you buried in your brain. You know, I'm watching the show. And I'm like, oh my god. It's Louis. Oh my gosh, it's more been a destiny. I forgot about a bit of destiny. And just Charlotte Johansen, Jamie Newton and his sister Lucy and I'm like, how do I remember all of this? And yet I'm like, did I pay that bill? See now I'm Stacey Simms 28:45 jealous. I want it I like sweet Valley High. backer revel in those memories. Robin Benway 28:52 I'm sure it's developing somewhere. Stacey Simms 28:54 I kind of hope not really cheesy. Can I ask you are you working on anything new right now I know authors always hate that. I know just finished and Oh, that was great. But what's that? Robin Benway 29:07 I always say it takes a brave person to ask a writer somebody working on because oh tread carefully. I am working on something. Yes, it has been a slow road. But the book has evolved many, many times. And I've sort of distilled down to what the book actually is. And I have started writing it. I feel really good about it. I started it a couple times, didn't feel good, went back to the drawing board ripped it all up again and started over. So I do feel good about it. Now it has taken me a long time to figure out what it's about. And I think at the same time, I was coming down off the success so far from the tree and the time that that took, which was wonderful, no complaints, but it was hard for me to both work on a new book and enjoy the success apart from the tree. So I am basically staying with family for a few months. I'm sort of quarantined away here and just everyday I sit down and write 1000 words and it's going well, it feels very, very good to be writing. Again, I haven't written for a while and I have missed it very much. That's fantastic. Well, I look forward to reading that. I'm so glad that I read the article. That was an L. Thank you so much for joining me to talk about this. It was a lot of fun. And I continue to learn more about the Baby-Sitters Club baby. Those books. Thanks so much for joining me. Thank you call me if you have any questions about the baby sitters. Stacey Simms 30:17 You got it Robin. Robin Benway 30:23 You're listening to Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms. Stacey Simms 30:29 More information on Robin and her books on the episode homepage. I'm really appreciative that she jumped on with me and I definitely got to seek out her books now. It was funny to think about not just the Baby-Sitters Club books, which as I said, I was marginally familiar with as a kid I was a little too old. But the sweet Valley High books man, she made me want to see if my mother still has them. I bet she does. I guarantee you they do not hold up for where they are relic of their time. Right The 80s if you're familiar with sweet Valley High I know you know what I'm talking about. If you are not I will not suggest Due to any more of an explanation, all right, in just a moment, I will be talking to a different kind of book altogether a different kind of author, a dad who wrote a book about his son's diagnosis to help other kids and families. But first Hey welcome to our newest sponsor Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Gvoke HypoPen you know, almost everybody who takes insulin has experienced a low blood sugar and that can be scary. have very low blood sugar is really scary. And that's where Gvoke HypoPen comes in. Gvoke is the first auto injector to treat very low blood sugar Gvoke HypoPen is pre mixed and ready to go with no visible needle and that means it is easy to use. How easy is it, you pull off the red cap, you push the yellow end under bare skin and you hold it for five seconds. That's it. Find out more go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the Gvoke logo. Gvoke shouldn't be used in patients with pheochromocytoma or insulinoma. Visit Jeeva glucagon comm slash risk If you have a child diagnosed very young with Type One Diabetes, chances are you have a favorite book about diabetes that you read together. We were so lucky to have a couple of these Rufus comes home was one from JDRF. There was another one that I've mentioned before called Jackie's got game that we absolutely adored. There are a lot of wonderful books now for kids with type one. And this week, I am talking to one of the authors of these books. And that is Mike's for as he wrote year one with type one, four and featuring his son, Andrew, it's all about their diagnosis story and also a bit of a teaching tool. Here's my conversation with Mike. Mike, thanks so much for joining me. It's great to talk to you. Mike Suarez 32:43 Hi, Stacey. Thanks for having me on. Stacey Simms 32:45 One of the things I loved doing when my son was diagnosed was finding books that we could read together. And you know, My son was tiny, he wasn't yet too. And so when you have a picture book like this, it's really a nice opportunity to go through it with the kids. So I just want to let you know that They really appreciate what you've done here. I think it's great. Mike Suarez 33:02 Yeah, thanks for saying that. You know, it's kind of the same experience I had, you know, I went to Amazon when he first got diagnosed, and I was looking for books myself, and I found some pretty good ones out there. But I was, you know, really looking for one that really kind of resonated and something that I could share with my own family members and friends to really kind of drive home what it is that he goes through and what it's all about. Stacey Simms 33:23 Well, it's been a couple of years now since Andrew was diagnosed, but why don't you take us through? Even though you're talking about it in the book, why don't you take us through his diagnosis story? Had you all had any experience with type one Had you ever given an injection before and this, Mike Suarez 33:36 so I was unfamiliar entirely with Type One Diabetes. My wife was more aware of it because she had friends growing up and in college that had type one diabetes, and she was around people that have given themselves insulin injections. And for me, I was just totally unaware of this condition. I was totally aware of of the treatment for it. The only thing I knew of diabetes was unfortunately, just That joke that people like to tell around how if you eat too much candy, you get diabetes. And that's basically all I knew of diabetes, which obviously isn't true or isn't fair and especially isn't isn't true of type one diabetes. So I learned a ton, just in that that first few days in the hospital, Stacey Simms 34:15 when did it occur to you that with everything else that's going on, it would be a good idea to write a book. Mike Suarez 34:21 So it was probably a couple months shy of his first year with it. I don't know how the idea popped into my head. I was taking the train in and out of Boston every day for work. And I think just a few lines kind of popped into my head. So I took out my iPhone and just wrote him in my notes app. And I think part of it too, was that my wife and I were talking about bringing a book into school, to read to his classmates, know what it is that he has and goes through and know why it is that he has to leave and see the nurse and why it is he gets, you know, Skittles every once in a while and he's in class. And, you know, going through the books out there, you know, again, there were good ones, but I was just looking for the right one that told the story I wanted to tell his classmates in the way that I wanted to, you know, I've seen that a lot of the other books out there are actually self published. So I knew that the opportunity to do this was out there, you just had to kind of sit down and figure it out. So I utilize my train time in and out of Boston to kind of write and refine my lines and kind of do a little bit of research to figure out what the process was all about Stacey Simms 35:26 was the idea for you to write it for kids to read or for parents to read. I mean, it's the kind of book right, it's in rhyme. But there's some concepts in there that are going to be above a four year olds head. Mike Suarez 35:38 Right. I think what I wanted, most of all, well, I guess there were a few goals. There were a few readers I had in mind. One was the newly diagnosed I wanted for newly diagnosed children to be able to read this and be able to relate to Andrews story and be comforted to know that you're not alone in this that there's other people that have been through Through this and have dealt with it. So that was maybe my primary audience secondary to that would be kind of the friends and family of somebody who is newly diagnosed, including my own friends and family so that they can get an appreciation for what it is and kind of understand what it is that their, you know, diabetic friend or family member goes through. But I guess, you know, I was just thinking about when I read to my own kids, you know, a lot of time it's me reading to them, not them. I guess as they get older, it's more of them reading to themselves, but it's mostly me reading to them. So I can, you know, kind of pronounce the big words, but also the books that we tend to enjoy the most, or that I enjoy reading the most and they seem to be the most receptive to are the ones that rhyme. So I did want to have that kind of make it accessible for kids not make it kind of a chore to read. And that's something that I none of the other books that I saw did was was kind of right in verse so I wanted to have that aspect of it to be accessible. Similarly with the pictures and the drums I wanted them to be kind of, you know, light hearted in a way as much as it's a serious subject matter, but to make it accessible for kids to understand, Stacey Simms 37:08 the book tells the story of you know, your family's journey, and then educating people about the basics of type 1 diabetes. But at the very end, your son has signed it and say, thank you. How did that piece come about? Mike Suarez 37:23 One thing I haven't mentioned yet is I actually did this whole thing in secret, because I did it on my train rides, and nobody was watching me and then at night, I would, you know, once everybody wants it bad, I'd maybe work on it a little bit more. And this includes the whole process, finding the illustrations, kind of framing it for them, getting beta readers to help sharpen up the the rhyme and all that sort of thing. And I wanted this kind of personal touch because I wanted people to read it and realize that this wasn't a fictional character that this is a real boy. There was maybe the same day that I asked Andrew to write up a birthday card for a birthday party he was going to I just took out another piece of paper and just asked them to write on it. Thank you for reading love Andrew. And he asked me What's this for? And I just was like, I don't worry about it. Like I didn't really, I just asked him to do it. Then I put it all together. And then I when it was finally done, I got to read it to my family for the first time, you know, naturally they all loved it. But I think it was I read it first to my wife and son while my daughter was napping, because I didn't, I kind of wanted to, you know, have their full attention. But after she woke up, Andrew took the book, and he showed it to her. And he flipped immediately to that page that had his writing on it, and was like, so proud of having that contribution to the book. That was the first thing he showed his little sister. That's great. Stacey Simms 38:41 There's a page of the book that, you know, has him coming home and has gifts and things with a lot of beams on tags. Are those friends and family names. Mike Suarez 38:51 Yep, they were basically you know, the people that probably were the first to find out and you know, felt, you know, really bad and came to us with, with just some gifts for Andrew, including our next door neighbors and their kids, my sister and her husband and their kids, basically, you know, aunts, uncles, siblings, it just so happened that some of the names rhymed. So if you read them in order, even though the name tags kind of, you know, rhyme together, when I recognized that I was like, you know, I should put them all in there and kind of, you know, thank, you know, some of the people that were, you know, part of this journey and a part of kind of coping with all of this. Stacey Simms 39:31 Yeah, I think it's really well done. The one thing I would say is, there's this little bit about no sneaking snacks. We count carbs to know what goes into my body, but no sneaking snacks. That's beyond being naughty. Yeah, I'm no psychologist, but I always felt like sneaking and and associating any bad behavior with diabetes was something that maybe it was something that we never did. Let's just write that way in my house. We always said you can't get in trouble for anything to do with diabetes, it just flies off the books. So that's the only thing that kind of made my eyebrows go up a little bit. But Gosh, Mike, I'm not really not a critic here. Sure, you know, and I think that's also a good illustration, no pun intended that we all parent in different ways. Yeah. Right. I mean, there's no one size fits all you got to put insulin in, you got to know where your blood sugar is. Yeah. But you know, the way you parent is probably not exactly the way I parent and that's fine. Right. So that I was just curious. And you know, you showed it to your endo. I think that's, again, with my book, I did the same thing, right. You know, you're not a medical professional, but you're showing it to the medical professionals and hoping that they will flag anything that comes up. I'm also curious to know, your daughter makes a couple of appearances in the book, and she's one of those names that we mentioned. Who is she doing and how do you balance the son who gets all this attention for type one and trust me, I have the same situation in my family, right. I have an older daughter who doesn't have type one. How do you handle that with her? How is she doing? Mike Suarez 41:00 Yeah, I mean, she's just as used to it by now as as Andrew, you know, Andrew was four and a half, she was one and a half. So she has no memory, you know, whereas Andrew may may recall, he's he's a, he's got a pretty good memory for a kid his age, he may recall a time before all of this, she would have absolutely no memory. So this is all she's ever kind of grown up to now. So whereas if they were teenagers, then maybe if she was used to just, you know, snacking whenever she wanted, she would continue to do that, despite Andrews diagnosis, but because we're able to kind of be careful around that about that stuff from the outset. If it's not time for Andrew to eat, then we're not going to let her eat in front of him. But if we're you know, giving Andrew you know, something to bring his blood sugar up, if it's maybe a pack of Smarties or something like that, and we only need to give them eight of the 10 then maybe we'll give her the other two, but it is interesting to see how she internalizes as she gets older, how she responds to it, somewhat funny side note around it She sees Andrew take shots all the time and she doesn't get them herself. And sometimes she sees Andrew get shots and she like, asks or she at least at least did this. earlier on, she would say, where's Maggie shot? Where's Maggie shot? And we would explain No, Maggie doesn't need a shot. So I think it was last year when we took her to get a flu shot. She was all about getting her flu shot right. After she got it, she asked for another one. And she was like crying because not because she got the shot, but because she only got one, which was kind of backwards from what you'd expect a kid raised to do. And then another kind of similar story is there was one day where she closed like a dresser draw on her finger and her fingernail started bleeding and you would expect a kid her age to just start wailing. She actually picked up her finger and she was like check my blood sugar. Check my blood sugar. Mike Suarez 42:51 You also wrote a Christmas story. Yep. Why did that come about? Tell me that story? Mike Suarez 42:59 Yeah, sure. So When you're one with type one first came out, yeah, I created a Facebook page to kind of go along with it to give updates about Andrew and to kind of, you know, create some fun memes and things like that to kind of draw attention to it. And I created a kind of a spin on Twas the Night Before Christmas. And every once in a while, like a new couple lines would occur to me even after Christmas, and I would kind of go back and edit the post. And then at some point, I was like, you know, there's probably enough here and there's probably enough opportunity for reuse from my first book that, you know, I wouldn't even be that many more new illustrations. I could just turn this into another book, relatively inexpensively and you know, certainly justify the cost that goes into it. And so I said, Yeah, why not? So I just kind of thought through it and just kind of threw it together and I was really happy with the way it came out. Stacey Simms 43:50 So Mike, we celebrate Hanukkah. I'm not sure how well versed I am in this classic poem, right? But it seems to me that all of the reindeer have Dexcom on I'm not sure I remember that from the original Am I looking at this right? Do they all have Dexcom Mike Suarez 44:07 everybody everybody basically everybody in the story that the Dexcom the reindeer have all all of Dexcom on the Elf on the Shelf has one Santa has one basically everybody in the book and that's what I wanted to create was kind of a world where you know what, it's okay that everybody in the story has it. Stacey Simms 44:25 All right, so what's next? Well, there'll be another issue of this are you gonna move on to the elementary school ages Andrew, you know, with seven now so it's a little different than when he was little? Mike Suarez 44:35 Yeah, it's a good question. I'd certainly like to do you know, to continue Andrews story. I haven't really started anything yet. But I've got a few ideas floating around. I mean, I think one of the things I realized is that there's actually more children's books that are picture books than there are kind of chapter books. That's obviously a whole different ballgame. Then picture books, but my mother in law's actually she's an author. As well, and she's written lots of novels. So if I do decide to go down that road, it'll probably be a lot more work than I did for these other ones. But I certainly would have, you know, a mentor throughout the process. If I did go down that route. Stacey Simms 45:13 It'd be great to have more books with a protagonist who lives with type one. And it's not about type one, if I could put a request in. Yeah, no, it would be really nice. There's a few books and I'll, as you listen, I'll link some of them up in the show notes. But there are a few books Besides, you know, the Baby-Sitters Club that feature Stacey who lives with type one, but it's a little outdated at this point. And the lily books, there are some I hesitate to call them novels. They're like novelizations for middle schoolers and stuff like that. It'd be great. There's only a couple of books I can think of that have a protagonist who lives with type one, but the book is really not about the diabetes. Mike Suarez 45:47 Right. So yeah, Stacey Simms 45:48 that's, I'll put my vote in for that. Mike Suarez 45:50 Yeah, certainly. I think that's a great idea. Stacey Simms 45:53 Well, Mike, I really appreciate you coming on. These books are so fun. I have a lot of great memories of reading the book that we liked. When he was little Jackie's got game was our favorite. I don't even know if they're still printing that one. But that was the one we loved. So I hope that people find this and love it, you know, kind of just like we did that stories. Thanks for coming on and sharing your story. Sure, Mike Suarez 46:13 yeah. Thanks so much for having me. Stacey Simms 46:14 You can find out more about Mike's book, just go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the episode homepage. This is in the show notes. Every episode has show notes on whatever app you're listening to. If you listen to podcast apps, they will display a little bit differently. I think Spotify is finally letting people click through. In other words, if there's a link in the show notes, you can get there through Spotify, but you can always go to the homepage at Diabetes connections.com. if things aren't showing up in your player and find out more there, tell me something good is up next. And boy, there have been so many changes this year with COVID and the JDRF bike rides not an exception, but there's some really good news about one particular writer and I'm going to share that but first diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. Do you know about Dexcom Clarity. It is their diabetes management software. For a long time, I just thought it was something our endo used, but you can use it on both the desktop or as an app on your phone. And it's an easy way to keep track of the big picture. I check it about once a week. It really helps me in many dial back and sees longer term trends and helps us not to overreact to what happened for just one day or even just one hour. The overlay reports help add context to Benny's glucose levels and patterns. And you can share the reports with your care team. We've done that all this year with the virtual appointments makes it so much easier and productive. managing diabetes is not easy, but I feel like we have one of the very best CGM systems working for us Find out more at Diabetes connections.com and click on the Dexcom logo a couple of years ago I met a local woman here in the Charlotte North Carolina area who lives with type 1 diabetes. Dana Cumberworth first impression that she made me was that this might be one of the fittest people I would ever meet and come to find out she is really Just an athlete, just one of these people who is always always moving and pushing and thriving with type one she bikes she runs she weight trains. Dana was diagnosed as a student. She was a first year student at Wake Forest and their physician's assistant program. And how she was diagnosed is pretty incredible because they were doing the endocrinology part of the class. And when her lab partner tested Dana's blood sugar, it came back at 700. So she was diagnosed in the class while she was diagnosed at the doctor's office the next morning. Fast forward. She has since done I believe, three Iron Man races and then she started getting involved with jdrf. And the bike rides this year was two been a very big deal for Dana because this is her 10 year diaversary. It was just last week actually that she marks 10 years with type one, and she was going to do several if not all of the rides this year. Oh my goodness. But of course plans changed. Everything went virtual. So she and her husband and friends planned ahead To the beach to the east coast here of Charlotte, North Carolina, and do their own version of the ride there. This was supposed to happen this past week. But if you've been following the weather and the hurricane trackers, then you probably know that hurricane eecs was a big problem here in North Carolina. So instead of being able to complete this at the beach, in fact, with the way the podcasting time shifts here, she will have completed 100 miles in Charlotte with some friends and family. So that is absolutely amazing. She set a new goal she keeps surpassing her monetary goals. So her new goal set just a couple of days before that ride is $20,200 because as she said in one of the videos she makes 2020 has already been unbelievable. So why not push that goal? That way? She's not that far off. So 2020 $20,200 and oh, I have forgotten to mention that Dana and her husband announced a couple of weeks ago that she is pregnant, I believe at this point. She's about 1819 weeks along. Hi, I'm going to put some of her videos in the Facebook group because she's been talking about her journey this whole year. And I just think her story is amazing. I will link up some of the videos that she's been doing into the Facebook group at Diabetes Connections, the group, but yeah, hundred miles, type 1 diabetes pregnant. And when you look at her smile, it just looks like it's a piece of cake. She's so inspirational to me, especially to push on with everything that's happened this year and how this ride keeps getting changed and changed and changed. So congratulations, Dana. Continued Good luck and good health to you and your family. And we will cheer you on. If you have something good going on. It doesn't have to be 100 miles of biking while you're pregnant. It can be you know, a diaversary milestone that makes you and your family happy or something that you really want to shout to the hills. Let me know you can email me Stacey at Diabetes Connections comm or post in the Facebook group Just tell me something good At the top of the show, I said I was going to talk a little bit more about the Baby-Sitters Club, the TV show on Netflix. And I think that Robin and I covered it pretty well. But I just wanted to say a couple of more quick things about the actual depiction that I realized we didn't touch on in the interview. If you haven't seen it, or you've had I'm curious what you think the feedback I heard from my friends who have kids with type one who watched it was that I don't know anybody who didn't like it universally, very well received by their kids. They loved seeing a beautiful young woman who was accepting of her condition who told her mom, you know, I'm going to do it this way. Who asked for a fancy purse, she didn't get the fancy purse. But you know, she did this for that Gucci bag. And you know, other things like that, which made it seem very normal. You know, she was low during babysitting, she drank the juice box and went on her way. It didn't seem insurmountable and her friends, the kids, I don't think Robin and I talked about this. The other babysitters in the club, when they found out said Why does somebody with diabetes or you can still do such And so with that, right? Okay, no problem and they really just moved along. Like most kids do, it's the adults that have more of a problem, the things I didn't like about it, they still got stuff wrong, which amazed me because I know that they had to be consulted with people who have type one for this, or at least I hope they did. But what they got wrong was the seizure. Did you see that she had a seizure before she was diagnosed, and they talked about it like she went into insulin shock. Now, I am not a medical expert. Perhaps that could happen. But it makes no sense to me that somebody who is not yet diagnosed with type one, so they are not taking any insulin could go into an insulin shock that would make them have a seizure. Right. It just seemed kind of a stretch. They wanted to do something that would make Stacey embarrassed to push the reason why they moved. It was just this whole I don't know to me that was a big turn off, but it was quick, and I get it it move the plot along. The other thing was this weirdness where that one low blood sugar, which Stacey treated herself causes her mother to take her in for a day of tests. Now, having been a very Worried Mother, I'm still one, let's face it. But when I called my endocrinologist every single day of the first month that Ben he had type one, which I really did do, they never told me bring him in for tests because he had a low blood sugar. Right? I could see a parent calling. I could see a parent being alarmed. I couldn't see an endocrinologist going along with that. And given Stacey was talking about how she was in the hospital for a whole day taking tests. So that was also a little weird. Is it nitpicky? Yeah. But if you're going to tackle something like type one, it's really not that hard to get it right. So I hope they continue to follow Stacey and show her confidence and show we're doing lots of other things that have nothing to do with diabetes. There's definitely gonna be a season two of this show. It's a huge hit. That means there's a lot of room to get it right. So I stay optimistic. What did you think I'm really curious to hear what other people have to say about this as more people discover the series before I let you go, I have something to ask of you and it is about podcast reviews. If you are still listening, I know you were a big fan. I would really appreciate it. If you haven't moment to go to whatever podcast player you're listening on and leave a review. Maybe you're listening on the website or through social media, but especially if you're on Apple podcasts, I'd really appreciate a review there. If you're not, you can head over to Apple podcasts easily find Diabetes Connections and hit subscribe. It's free to subscribe. no cost. It is free on any podcast player and we are everywhere you can get audio Spotify, Pandora, Apple, Google Android, if you're not sure, go to the website, Diabetes connections.com. Scroll down, and you will see 15 links of places to subscribe to the podcast. And you just you can pick one, chances are good, the app is already on your phone and subscribe for free and leave review. I'd really appreciate it. All right, thank you to my editor john Kenneth audio editing solutions. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Stacey Simms. I'll see you back here next week. Until then, be kind to yourself. Benny 55:01 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs avenged Transcribed by https://otter.ai r iPhone      Click here for Android

This going to be my favorite episode because it is one of my dear friends, my brothers, my soul brother, business partner friend for life that I just don't think I could ever live without. And we call him the vegan Superman. He's known as lean green dad. He's known as C for social. He's known as the guy. Who can break the ice. Talk to everybody brings smile and joy to the world while helping hundreds and hundreds of companies absolutely crush their digital marketing strategy, growing and scaling with a heart centered approach. So the first question, and you probably know this one, if you've listed, what is the biggest mistake that you have ever made in business? And what did you learn from it? Corey:  I go right to the first thing that I think of. And I'll have you people know, like George didn't send me these questions. I just don't operate that way. I don't want to practice or rehearse or think through them deeply. The biggest mistake I've ever made in business is taking things personally.And so I care a lot about my clients and the people that I work with. And sometimes in the past, when I would get, you know, feedback I would take it as a personal attack on me and it had nothing to do with me and so I think that when we are focusing a lot on ourselves and forgetting the bigger picture it details us.And so I had to get back to just how can I help? How can I serve, right. And how can I help whatever this question is, problem that my client, my friend, my partner is having, how can I help solve that and make it more about them and less about me. And that's been, I'd say the biggest mistake, but also the biggest growth for me as a business owner.And I loved every second that every day I feel like I learned something new and every day I get an opportunity to. Test myself, I mean, just the other day I was on with George and my friend Craig from high speed down and, you know, he, they called me out. On the fact that  I violated my promise to myself in a sense of, I was going to bed early and waking up early.And I didn't do that. I slept in the other day, I stayed up too late and I didn't work out. And so the boys made me do and they didn't make me do I chose to do how about that? I chose to do 75 burpees with a pushup. I added that pushup in Jordan.But getting, getting back to the original question, that is the biggest mistake I've made is, is taking right things personally and getting, you know, I don't want to say emotionally involved cause emotions are great and it's great to have passion and emotions.I'm not saying being an emotionless robot, I'm saying stop thinking that it's all about you all the time. Cause it's not. And that's, that's been the biggest thing that I've learned and the biggest thing that I've made a mistake of.George:  you know, Donald Miller captures this perfectly with Story Brand cause he says the mistake that a lot of people make is they try to make themselves the hero. But our job is to make our customer the hero. And  you know, this is something you and I have talked about in depth. I mean, we've been talking about this for three, four years with both of us back and forth and back and forth. And you know, for me personally I took things personal because I either had expectations or like you said, I was doing it for the wrong reasons.And sometimes I had to remind myself like, Oh, these guys are paying me the money. And I was like, Oh, that's about me. That's about me. Then there was also a part of me that gets attached to the outcome as well. Right. Like I was like, I give it my, all, I give it my all, and then they don't give me any feedback or a compliment or even, you know, an insult or whatever the case may be.It's not insulted screaming for help and sharing and growth. So I had to learn really, really quicklykind of like how to navigate it and fill my own tank. And I'm interesting to hear your perspective on this because for me, what it was is it was I was into deals and relationships and client work, and even these podcasts with an empty tank. And so therefore everything that came out on the other side was done for the wrong reasons. I did this podcast and it's only good if everybody listens to it and reviews it. Or I made this for this client and it's only good if they utilize it in a hundred X their company.And so, you know, I had a mentor who said your value will never be predicated on somebody else's execution. And it took me a long time to like really embody that. But what are some of the things that you've done understanding that like learning that lesson like if you could go back to the beginning of C4, right.When we were having that Instagram conversation of a hallway of a conference that will not be named on this podcast, and we were having that conversation and you were getting ready to forecast where you are now. How would you go into client work, service work, or even your own brand or business cause you have an amazing agency who runs all of our companies our digital marketing, our strategy executes.And he also is the Lead green dad. And so he has his hands in both sides of the game. But what would you do differently now? Or how would you set yourself up to win when it comes to doing client work or creating your own content? Like where do you navigate that now? I think the biggest thing for me was I was having conversations with absolutely anyone that wanted to talk to me and I'm all for helping.CoreY : I want to help anyone I can, but there's a difference between someone calling and having no idea, you know, what they want to do and how they want to do it. And just kind of wanting tojust chat and literally just chat versus reaching out to an expert who has, you know, years and years of experience and a team, a full team of, you know, 10 plus people with an average of like 10 years of experience each.And so I had to prequalify who I was going to have conversations with, and I think that was the biggest thing for me. And I don't want to sound like an A hole here. I'm not saying like anyone let's listening to this, please don't be afraid to reach out. But I have a couple questions that I need to ask business owners before we talk.And it's more for them than it is for me.  These are questions, very simple questions like what is your profit margin on your product? What is your product? Who is your potential customer and what are their pain points? What do they want to learn? You know, George talks about this all the time, whether it's the captain's assessment or, you know, an avatar evaluation, whatever you want to call it, guys.You have to know who you're talking to, why you're talking to them and how you want to help them. And if you don't know those things you're not, I'm not ready to take money from you. It just doesn't work that way. I want to be able to send you to some other resources like this podcast like a show that I'm going to be starting soon.That's just helping business owners that are just starting out. And you know, the biggest thing for me is I don't want to be one of those agencies that takes advantage of people that don't know what they want and sells them on a bunch of fluff stuff that they don't need.  I don't use  big words on purpose.It's funny. I say, don't drop the names of the people you've worked with and I'm going to drop names right now. Listen, when you talk about Disney and Fox and Amazon and Netflix and Ford, like I've worked with all of these brands.But it's not the thing that I'm going to drop in someone's face. When they start talking to me if they ask for a case study, if they want to go deeper into that stuff, I got you. But the biggest question is, how can I help? And I would say qualifying and helping them understand the answer to some of these tough questions. Before I talk to them would be the most important thing, because the last thing I want is 20 minutes conversation, that is, Hey, what's your name? Where do you work? What's your website? Let me check it out, right? No, I want all that garbage to be out of the way so that when we do talk for the first 20 minutes, you can walk away with a crap ton of value that will help your business, whether you work with me or not. And that's what it's all about.George: And so before I get even any deeper for everybody listening, I'm just going to recommend this right now. Find Corey at C4socialcom.We go live on every client platform in the world, but like go find Corey Warren. Either lean green down, if you want some delicious plant based recipes that you can eat.  I have three things that I want to dive into based on what you said. Before I do that goes at the end of the episode. I asked Corey to kind of come on and I said, Hey, at the end of the episode, can we give everybody the three most important things to help them succeed?He's going to be sharing like three to four things that are absolutely required for you to maintain your business, build and scale, and even have a chance to succeed based on hundreds and hundreds of experience dances and companies that he's worked with.Corey, the moment you said, you were like what's your name? What's your website. It reminded me of the old chat bot days of AOL messenger, ASL. Like what's your age? Sex and location. 22. I'm a dude. And I live in Massachusetts.Like, it's the new way of doing that now? And it, and it doesn't work like whatsoever. What I loved, I loved about what you said, and I thought of a tweetable quote. You know, one of the things that I think you embody better than most people that I know and work with is that you allow the results of your beingness to be your testimony. It's not about the results of your clients. It's not about your case studies. That's not about anything. Like you will allow your beingness in the experiences and touchpoints to be your testimony. And I think that's one of the biggest differentiator for people that are listening to this can do in their business.And I fall prey to this. There's days that I'm insecure. Cause I message everybody that adds me on Facebook.  And I get 25 to 40 requests a day now and we approve everybody and we send them a message in the first masters.Like, thank you so much. I am super stoked to connect. How can I support you? And normally 10 to 15 of them come back with, well, what do you do? And my response is like, Whoa, why did you add me? But I don't say that. But there's times that I want to be like, well, I did blank and I, cause I get.Emotionally involved because I care so much. And so I think it's an amazing test, similarly to how you do this. And everybody listening, like we get to allow the way in which we interact to be the testimony, right. And people don't buy the best product or best service they buy the best relationship.And that first touch point sets the entire paradigm for what the context of that relationship is going to be. So I love that you said that. And I think one of the other things that I really want to dive into because you and I have worked on this a ton and this applies to everybody.One of the mistakes that we see all the time is that people get customers too early. Too early. They convinced them to buy when they're not ready, they convinced them to come in when they are not fully indoctrinated and you nailed it. And it's not a, it's not an, I don't want to talk to you. But if you get on the phone with somebody before you have all the information or they've discovered it, you've set your both up to fail and you're not being what you teach.If you sell a supplement to somebody who doesn't have the habits or lifestyle to support it, you've set them end you up to fail because now they're going to have a negative experience and not achieve the results. So can you talk a little bit about, so obviously from an agency perspective for you.How important it's been and how you kind of go about navigating that to make sure that you're serving people at the right level. And then even if they don't end up as a customer, that you're leaving it better than when they came in.Corey:   There's two things I want to touch on that you hit earlier, right? So like, let's talk about Scarface for a second. Alpachino and Scarface. Do you think he has to prove to anybody like who he is and he's going to like, I'm a bad ass.And so like, when you talk about embody and like proving and stuff like that, like. Any agency or any quote, unquote competitor or whatever that I go, you know, and might, you know, talk to, or I'm sorry, not talk to you, but compete against for business.. I compete against people all the time. There's RFPs and stuff. I actually don't submit proposals it's kinda, it's kind of weird. It's kind of weird, like, but because I believe in providing that value and letting the work speak for itself.  I have case studies.I have examples of work on our website and stuff like that, but. That's that's the first thing.I had someone that I was talking to the other day and they said that basically the price that I had for them was too expensive. And I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna, I'm fully transparent here. I'm going to just drop the number. I'm not going to say the name of the person, but it was 6,000 a month that I was proposing for something.And it was a lot of services and it was going to really help them out a lot. Well they said that's too expensive. And I went awesome. And I knew right then this was the wrong fit. Because you want to know how much one lead would have gotten them as far as revenue goes, $12,000. Okay. So I knew hands down, I would have brought them 30 leads that would convert at around $12,000 per month. Now I'm not math wizard, wizard George. But if you're spending $6,000 to make 30 times six, what's that 160,000. Okay. So that's a lot of money. All right is it expensive then the problem is that person didn't value appreciate or respect, or even on a very basic human level, like have the. The decency to have a conversation with me.  So let's talk about ad spend, for example, right. $3,000 or a hundred dollars a day. That's super expensive. It might be for some people. And it might be for not, not be for other people, big brands who cares, they're spending millions a month, whatever don't even talk about, what political representatives and government officials and people in elections are spending forget about that.But $3,000 doesn't mean that expensive when you make three times the return on ad spend. So if you're making 9,000 off a 3000, no they're spent, and those are new customers that are going to potentially come back, especially if you have a consumable. That 3000 bucks. Isn't really looking like that much.Is it then you want to scale from there? So that's little bit that I wanted to chat about real quick. I know I'm kind of jumping all over the place, but okay.George:  I think what's really important too is, and thank you for acknowledging, like you take it personally, because I want everybody to understand there's no finish line in this game, right? Like we have awareness, we get grounded. We're having those great days, but there's always going to be times that like it sneaks in.. It gets in it. Smacks us the key is to recognize it and move forward. But what I think is important to understand, because we talked about this a couple minutes ago that like, they have to be ready to comment. And they have to be, and there's times that I struggle. Like I invest in things in my business and I'm like, Aw, I don't know if I can spend that. And my brain, like my logical brain knows that 60 days from now, it's going to pay off a thousand times. Right. My physical body's having a reaction. My fears are coming up.And I'm the only one that loses in that situation, but it's not really, it's still a learning lesson. And so the reason I think this is so important because you do this right, and you said this earlier, and I don't want it to get passed over because it's something you and I both do. The moment the distinction comes that this is going to be a no, or that they're not going to commit.You will immediately shift the lens from. This isn't about closing a deal. How can I add value and leave it better than when I found, which is the way that you become a magnet and they will come back or tell their friends about it. So I just wanted to make sure that we, we hit that because it's such an important topic where I watch people walk away at the L.It's only Lost if you quit. If you understand that it's not permanently. It's just, no, right now that could shift in six minutes when you're like, okay, I've seen this happen by the way, because you know, I I'm just like Corey and I do a lot of the same stuff. I don't send proposals. I hate making them. It's a waste of time. I'm like, tell me what you want, how I'm going to help you. This is exactly what it'll look like. We'll record the call and like, let's go. And I've had people I've given my price to. And like everybody, he knows when I work with some big companies, it's $50,000 a day.And so companies have paid me a hundred grand, 150 grand. And they've come in and made 10 million, 20 million, 50 million. Some of them only made 300 grand and they were like, yeah, this was worth it. But one of my favorite ones and Cory, you said this I've closed more deals because of how we show up when they're like, Oh, we can't do it. I'm like, okay. Okay, fine. Well, I have 30 minutes left. Let's just get started now. And they're like, what? I'm like, well, screw the deal. I was like, I got through 30 minutes in my calendar. What can I fix right now? Remember on the call, you told me you needed help with email, hit record, get out your notebook and let's go.And I'm like, let's go through a buyer fulfillment sequence. And sometimes they're like,  no, I can't, I'm not, I don't, I don't want you to pay me. I don't write. And they'll come back an hour later or six hours later, a month later. I had one that came back nine months later, like I had literally forgotten about that.And I was like, Hey, it's fine. Not a good fit let me help. And we spent that our designing their business, their path, they call me nine months later. Like we did everything you said now we'll pay you.  and so it's, it's really important, right? Like it's never a game over. It's never an end. It's a not right now and you're really good at that. So I just wanted to make sure. I guess I'm sharing an example, but Corey embodies this at a level that is impeccable. And so you can go back on your tangent now.  Corey: After I figured out that they were not the right fit, I immediately switched to how can I help them if they're not the right fit right now, but how can I help them? And there were two people on the call, one person who I'd worked with in the past that went through some hard times, had to step away and then they're coming back now that they're in a good place.And he had a business partner and the business partner had never met me. So this is a 20 minute discovery call. And so, you know, we real, I realized she's the one that was like osteo too expensive, whatever. And I'm sure he was embarrassed because he didn't know that that was going to happen. And so I said, I know we haven't had the opportunity to meet and talk, but over the two years that I've worked with your business partner, I think he knows who I am and what I stand for. And this offer extends to you as well. If you need anything ever as you're going to try to find your partner that is going to work with you and you need maybe some fact checks, fact checking, or maybe some.You know just thoughts or knowledge because they were being sold on like YouTube advertising at like a hundred dollars a month or something like that. They're like, Oh, you should spend a hundred dollars a month on YouTube advertising. I'm like, Oh, awesome. That's really going to get you a ton of results. You know, it's like, and then how are you going to measure it? Like they had no, no answer to any of these questions, but they're going to go try to find a cheaper option. Right. And that's good. I want them to do that. And thenat some point they're going to come back and they will remember that I. I said, you know, Hey, reach out if you need anything. And it's funny, after that conversation ended, I got a private text from my, my contact and he thanked me for my time. And it couldn't, I couldn't have had any better results than him saying thank you for hopping on the phone with me and extending that, you know that to me. So that was really cool.  So if you are a brand, like I'm talking about this from agency stuff, right. But I'll just give lean green data as an example, because it is my brand. Lean green dad was a hobby. Don't get me. It's still very fun for me. And it just brings me so much joy to feed people, vegan food.But I never really monetized it. I never really thought about that. I was like, man, I'll think of it. I work with some brand through some sponsored posts here and there. So I started this thing called the lean green meal plan and it works. It works really great. And I said, you know, I know this is going to be cool because I'm speaking to people that just don't have enough time.No freaking rules, no specifics, no, anything like that. And so we talk about investing and being scared, you know, how can I advise companies to invest in ad spend and things? Now, look, we're able to very quickly, we make the ad spend pay for itself and then be profitable. Like that's, that's my game. As an agent, I see like very quickly, but it wasn't the case so much withwith the lean green meal plan.It took a month and a half or two for it to be profitable. And I was investing a lot in my own ad spent. I mean, I want to like close to $5,000 a month. And that's a lot of money out of my own pocket, but I'm like, if I don't believe in my own self, who the hell do I believe in? So I went ahead and did that and yeah, it's already profitable.I mean, it's a recurring revenue is, is pretty crazy. It's far exceeded, you know, what I've spent on ad spend. So it's doing well and it's working. But if you think about. You know, lean green down and its purpose. And I want you to apply this to your brand guys. Like my job is to help people eat healthier and on a planet based diet and to make a plant based diet easy. If I can make them believe that eating a plant based diet is actually easy and I can show them how to do it. And it can actually taste good, not like cardboard then. I win and if they get the meal plan, that's cool. If they don't get the meal plan. That's cool too. And so every recipe I do, and I want you to think about this with your social media posts.And I learned this from George. I want you to put all the value in the post. Don't make them click through to get the damn recipe. Just put the whole recipe right there, the ingredients, the method, because I promise you there's a thousand other recipes out there that are just as good as yours. And you are not the first person to think of an original recipe for a plant based cheese steak.Whether the person buys or not, they got the value in the social post and they will come back to me and they will see it. And you know, what, if they don't, they'll be retargeted by my darn good Facebook ad strategy. So it's all, it's all connect acted, folks. And then you think about the whole process of helping people, you know, whether it's a lead magnet before they even come into my world and see that recipe and I'm offering them the top 10.You know, vegan or plant based protein sources. And then, you know, they end up watching the video and then they get a couple emails and they get retargeted with a Facebook ad and they buy after that, you know, like George talks about what the buyer nurture sequences again, you're giving them value. You're just here to shine your light, as George says, and be there, guide them and help them get to where they want to go on their end result, whether they buy your product or not. That's, that's his whole game people. That's his whole game. Just be a good person, work with integrity, work with value, and, you know, just focus on helping people and everything else will take care of itself.George: So I wanna have you dispel a myth that I see on the internet all the time, because there's nobody better to talk about this. Cause I see this all the time. I'm ready to scale. I just need traffic. I'm ready to scale. I just need traffic. And I was like, if you were ready to scale and you just traffic, it would be coming because if your offer was that good and people were converting that well, everybody would be knocking on your door to send more traffic. It's never a traffic problem. In my opinion, what are your thoughts on that?I keep getting these messages and these things like, Hey, I am selling like five a day. I'm ready to scale. Like I just need more traffic. I just need more traffic. And without even looking at it, right. Understanding the way that digital marketing works, affiliate marketing works.When offers convert the marketing handles itself, right? Like companies don't accidentally scale. You watch these and be like they're a unicorn. They must have spent a ton of ads. I was like, no, most of it was done themselves because of word of mouth marketing, the results they speak for themselves. And so, you know, for me, I believe I like it just came to me so much and I, it didn't have a response to it. And then I started thinking about it. I read Justin golf, talked about this cause he's releasing a new course and it's a really prevalent thing that's been happening for years where, you know, there's this context that like the only thing stopping me from scaling is traffic. If you're making fun five sales a day, that means yeah. In 30 days there's 150 customers that went through. And if no one of them are telling any of their friends, there's a deeper problem. If none of them are standing off, if none of them are, are standing on the rooftop, shouting your name, there's a deeper problem, right?Like we talked about this earlier, right? Like you can pick one path in your business. You can be the business that talks about how great you are, or you can be the business where everybody else talks about how great you are. Right. So what are your thoughts on that?  Corey: Some people might think this is foolish and we'll hang up right now. But like guys, I don't advertise my, my marketing agency. I don't advertise at all. I don't have any ad spend. It's all word of mouth. Word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing out there. And so my clients actually recommend me to other clients.And then the people that, you know bring clients to me are people that I know and trust and love and you know, know what I'm all about. And so it's a, it's a little different, you're not going to see a Facebook ad with my Lamborghini in the background, like showing you how muchmoney I made on the latest transaction, like taking a fake screenshot and manipulating it in Adobe to show you like some upward trend that doesn't really exist. So I think that, you know, before you can "scale", like before the horse kind of thing, like get, get focused, get I've got a client that has a product that cleans walls. But it sells itself and I'll tell you why. The traffic brought itself, right.So I think they're making like $90,000 a month now on this one product that cleans walls and you know what everybody told me, they were like, nobody's going to buy that. I've never cleaned my walls in my entire life. What in the world of cleaning solutions? It'spretty saturated. There's a lot of cleaning out there and there's, you know, maybe even cheaper options who knows, but how many times have you seen someone cleaning their wall? Like never. And why would they clean their wall? Well, it's an opportunity to add, well, I have a three year old, so I cleaned my wallet lot.Well, did you also know that a sneeze travels at a hundred miles an hour and has a 25 foot blast radius? I actually didn't have that. How many times have you sneezed in your house? There's sneeze product. There's sneeze, you know, snot on the wall and there's dog dander, and maybe there's a smoker in your house. Maybe somebody has bad video who knows, but anyways, the product alone is incredible. It stands on its own. And you know, we probably spent, you know, a dollar for every dollar. We, we made like $4. And that was absolutely ridiculous, but what's happening is customers are coming back and they're leaving reviews so authentic that I could never think.To leave the things that they're leaving and it's on the product page. So you talk about marketing, taking care of itself and traffic taking care of itself. Even in some of my Facebook ads, people are talking to each other in the Facebook ads, tagging each other in the ads. Hey Stephanie, this is the one I bought. No way. This is wicked. Does it really work on your walls? Well, totally. I use this Mitt and it's a perfect color. Oh, but it didn't get this out. Oh, well it does. And then the brand chimes in, well to get it out, you could do this. Oh, thank you. What excellent customer support. I mean, People are having conversations in the ad. It's unbelievable. So you do need traffic. Traffic is necessary, but it's not the main thing. And just like we talked about, it's not a guarantee that you're going to sell anything. You've got to know that the three things that we're going to talk about at the end here coming up are going to be the most important thing for you, because you've, you've got to have these three things before you can even talk about scaling and, and your ad spend and all this other kind of stuff.George:   So that's  I I'd like to say that that company is where it's at because they had heart. They cared. They created a better solution for a problem. And then Corey and I both touched this company and now it's skyrocketing because they were open and willing to take what they had and put their ingredients in the right order.And it's been mind blowing to watch what happens. And I didn't expect it as well. I was like well that tripled my projections. So I'll take it that all day.  But I mean, it's really, really a Testament. We talk a lot about word of mouth marketing, right? Like, you know, I've quoted the same number it's way more now, but I know it's more, but I stick with my 85, 80 to 85%. Cause it's pretty accurate and I think it's one of the most neglected. Conversations in brands. Like when, when we work, one of the things I like to ask myself is if this is what I put into the world and somebody buys it, what are they going to say about me? What are they going to say about my product? What are they going to say about my experience? And I watch all too often, people being like, as soon as they get the credit card they're done, right. They do everything to get the sale. But if you don't give somebody something to say about you, either with direct words or a direct experience, then you're leaving that up for them to choose to say whatever they want or nothing at all.All of it comes down to customer experience, fulfilling on what you promised value agnostic of their credit card. Understanding just like all of us, like the other part, Corey. And I think you solve this well, cause obviously we talk customer journey a lot, but. We literally expect our potential customers immerse to take a different buying journey than we take in our personal lives. Like when was the last time we're likeI need a new product. I know what I want right now. Buy it right now. But yet we'll go flip it and we'll be like I have this new product. I'm going to sell it. They see it once they got a buy, they see it once they got to buy. Yeah. And so what are your thoughts on.How do you go about looking at a customer journey? Cause you don't go out and you're like, okay, we have the product that's running out to sell it. So like, what are the things like, what are some of like the tangibles that you think about. When you're thinking about that customer journey, right? Like I produce content on the front to add awareness themselves, select, you know, if they don't buy, this is what we do. Not necessarily the tactics, but like, what are some of the questions that you ask? I love that in your company, you do good words and bad words, you pay attention to your customers. So like, what are some of those non-negotiables that you need to basically at worst, somebody has a positive experience with the brand.  Corey: So the first thing you want to do guys is, is if you do have customers, you want to ask your freaking customer what they think of your brand. And the words that they use to describe your brand and their experience with your brand are going to become your marketing ad copy of your potential. Add pieces of content and everything. So that's the first thing to start with. And I think it's important. I don't know if you follow like the whole 80, 20 thing, George, right?80, 20 rule in general with products like 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your skews or whatever.  mean, there's a lot of brands that we've talked about in the past. It's like they have hundreds of skews, but two of them are responsible for 90% of their revenue. and we know who we're talking about.But it's like  that story is over and over and over and over again, any brand, it is had a major amount of success. It started with one or two products. So, you know, survey, survey your people. That's the first thing. The second thing is like, Maybe go find out and, and become a member of Facebook groups where these people are living and talking and look at how they're, they're chatting.Now, you're going to have to earn your space in that group. You don't want to spam the group and not talking about going in there and be in a Ninja and spamming the group or something. I'm talking about just getting some value. I'm providing some value and just like. Engaging in the conversation, you know, earn your little coffee cup badge that you get as a conversation starter, or like you're high with the new hand, a little symbol to say I'm a newbie and ask questions and do it for several weeks. You're just going to learn a ton but then the process with me, it's alarming to me, how many brands that I start working with that have been around and are doing millions and millions, tens of millions of dollars in revenue a year. And they don't have one cohesive brand guide and way that they speak about their brand.Maybe it's you know, a short story, a medium story, and a long length story. Like all of these things are so massively important because as you're creating content, And, you know, I talk about this good words document I have. It's an internal document that, after I meet with a brand, I onboard them. It's the longest meeting I'll ever have with the brand ever, but it's two hours. And during this two hours, I asked some really weird questions with every single team member on the call. Like if you imagine it's kind of like a George intensive, that happens over three days in a two hour period. And so they leave this meeting and I'm just like, I never thought about some of these things, you know, And those things, the way they answer, like it's being recorded by two different people, with two different brains on how they think like a marketer, one's more of a word Smith.And that turns into the brand guide with yeah. In 24 hours after we talk, you know, and then from there you can create all the content and everything like that. But asking tough questions, surveying your, your existing customers. If you have them. And then getting involved in groups in places where they hang out is going to be massively important to help you understand that customer journey. And then George has a couple of resources that you all have heard of before, but. You know, evaluating the pain points, what it looks like before they meet your brand and what it looks like after they meet your brand. Now keep in mind. I didn't say after they buy your product, I said after they meet your brand.So before they meet your brand, what's their pain point after they meet your brand? How are they feeling? Because feelings are super important because if you're developing content ads and writing copy without emotion involved, then you're failing. So those are the things that you need to think about and everything has to be customer centric. We don't talk about how great the brand is without talking about the pain point that that person is going through and the benefit. And I'll just say not the benefit, the level up that your product is going to provide because you, as the brand, your job is to help these people. You're going to help them get to their desired result.Your product is just a level up or makes getting to that end result a little bit easier.George: You mean that a feeling isn't my products on your shelf or by, you know, thing is on your counter and what what's not is like, we can think about that and all of us can go open our phone right now, scroll through our Instagram, scroll through Facebook and see ads or content that we would click on that all invoke story and all invoke emotion. And by the way, guys, I did an amazing podcast with Alya on storytelling that you should all go listen to.But you know, what's interesting is that we get that when we consume it, right. We get that in theory, but content without this and content, without this, his plan does the exact opposite of what actually converts because it's focused on the product.Corey: The three biggest mistakes and these are not, are these my three things? No. Okay. These are not my three things. The three biggest mistakes that I see are one, they make decisions subjectively.So they say things like, I, I, you know, I personally really don't like. You know, cleaning my walls. I feel like that's a waste of time.So why would I do that? And because of my feeling, I'm going to not advertise that product at all. That's a huge mistake because you don't know what's going to work. And if you go out there and you look at know, there's a couple companies that pride themselves on selling, like add, you know, software and stuff like that, to make it easier for you all good, like cool.But they spend. Tens of thousands of dollars testing things. And one article I read was like, what's the best. Copy length for a Facebook ad and we've, we've surveyed 30 marketers and here's what they thought. And then here's what it actually was based on the tens of thousands of dollars of spend complete opposite. Like all these marketers would like it's short, just short one line. And then the content sells it. That's one and then the other was like six paragraphs of description and then the content, the truth is all of it's BS because it depends on the product. All right. If the product's easy to explain.Let the content speak for itself. Like, I'm pretty sure you know, what a shoe does.. A shoe goes on your foot and you wear it, but you don't need to explain a shoe, but you know, like if you have some kind of supplement that is weird, that nobody's ever heard of before, maybe you need to explain a little bit deeper through six paragraphs why and have great content because content is always going to matter.So there's no right answer to that, but you can't make decisions based on what you think, because that's always going to be skewed. So look at things objectively. The second thing is, again, big broad statements. Like we don't do sales, right? What do you mean you don't do sales? Everyone does sales.A sale is something that's on sale, not discounted, right? So like you can do a discount, but you need to understand. How much it's costing you to do that discount. And if it's still probably affordable and maybe it's not profitable, maybe you're trying to acquire customers that cost new customers, that it, it pays for itself. A self liquidating offer. Maybe that's good enough for you. That's awesome. We see other people do it all the time. Like free plus shipping free plus shipping. That's fine. If that's your goal, that's good. But you can't just say like, we're never going to do a sale or we don't believe in this or that even if you're a premium brand.There's still a way like don't we don't even use the word sale. Call it value. All right. Give a tremendous amount of value. Don't take anything off of it and just put like a ton of really great products together, knowing your profit margin on those products and just give it away as a great value price.Maybe you don't even need to show you don't want to be in it. Discount culture. Don't get me wrong. So like I'm not saying take your a hundred dollar product and exit out and put like only 5.99. right? Like, what is that doing? Nothing for you, but. There's ways to still provide value without being on sale.So think about that. And don't just say that you're not going to do that and then I would say the third thing, I guess I'm just coming up with these right. Would be like going on autopilot and not measuring things on a consistent basis. And so I have monthly ROI meetings with my clients and we have to walk through things that matter, like numbers. There's things that are really pretty and cool and like things that get posted on the social feed, like look at this pretty picture isn't there, like so amazing. My team graphic design that's cool. So like, how did it perform engagement wise compared to the other things that you've been posting on my account?And why do you feel like we should continue doing that? Or maybe stop doing that? Or, you know, Hey, check out these, we wrote 15 emails this month. Oh man. They were so great. What was the open rate? Oh, well it was 7%. Oh, so congrats on wasting a ton of time that didn't do anything and no one saw it. So why did you do that?So evaluate things frequently. Don't be afraid to look at numbers. Don't be afraid to ask tough questions and don't be afraid to hold people accountable. Because you have to keep pushing people, agencies going autopilot all the damn time. I love it when they do that, because it makes me look so much better.  George:   Well, you have to, you have to push people and hold them accountable. We have to push ourselves and hold ourselves accountable. If you can't measure it, nothing moves. Everything is a blind. Really really bad decision because there's, it's not right based on anything that's there. Like we have to have feedback.So Mike  talks about this and fix this next, right? With his business hierarchy of needs. Like every 30 days, like looking at it, like, what are the goals? What are the targets? How do we hit it? How we not hit it? Like I'm back on Instagram now, for those of you who don't know, I decided to get back on Instagram and I am on it Instagram, like a fucking machine right now.And I've probably changed things 40 times in the last three weeks, because Instagram, if I'm going to be on Instagram, it's not about me. It's about you.  So I have to figure out how to capture attention in a feed. Get your attention, identify where you are, take you on a journey to better serve you in your business or life. So I'm using pinks and yellow backgrounds now where, before it was pictures and be in black and white, I'm like making carousels. When I used to just make images, I'm making stories that I didn't used to do. Did it not work? But here's the secret. When it doesn't work, you don't keep doing it. You're like, Oh, let's try something new. Let's try something new, which is actually, we're going to cover a at the end when Corey shares his three things for you. But Corey, there's a lot. I know about you a lot. I know about you and I love it. Of every single thing that I know about you. What is one thing that nobody knows about you that you've never shared on an interview or publicly.Corey: The amount of silence I get as a heavenly silence is good. It just means you're okay with silence. Is it something that, you know, cause you really know a lot, is it okay if I share something you already know or, you know, whatever you want, man, it's yours. All right, listen I'm super proud of something that only less than 0.1% of the population has done. And that was an iron man triathlon. So I did that and I never really talk about it anymore because the truth is a double thing I haven't shared publicly. I used to be ironed dad, guys but I received a cease and desist from the Ironman triathlon, which is so funny because I was so proud of it and I was talking about it and they were like, so I knew I made it right then.And that's how lean green dad was born because iron dad was lean green dad before that.And so I completed the Ironman triathlon triathlon is the first kind of one that bridges into, I received a cease and desist from iron man, which is like victory, but then I  I got this iron dad tattoo.And if you are listening on the podcast, you can't see it, but it's basically the Ironman M dot with a dad underneath and a neck tie. My sister made it for me and I had it put on my arm. And so. That's something that I don't really talk about or share publicly but it was pretty awesome to get, I don't want to say sued. I wasn't sued. I just received a season.  George: I think you did an amazing job at marketing because you did what our job is to do, which is to get their attention. So just so everybody knows an Ironman is a three mile swim a hundred and what's it. What's it come out to like 112. It's 140.6. Okay, great. 140 mile bike and a 26.2 mile run. No, you got the first two wrong. So it's 2.1 mile swim. 112 mile bike. It was 112. That's what I thought. And Corey was one of the most humble dudes. I know. So he never talks about himself. So I'm proud of you for sharing that.So thank you for being a super dad and iron man getting a cease and desist letter, being a master marketer. I have a question that I ask everybody because it's really important to me understanding the value of relationships. But when you think back about like your life for your business, like where has the power of relationships had? Like the biggest dramatic, positive impact for you could be an instance, could be a moment, could be anything.Corey: I was sitting  across from one of the other say biggest leadersfrom one of the biggest grocery chains ever. I was come out like, I'm not going to say who it was, but it was whole, so whole foods market has like some big juggernaut leaders. And I was at dinner in Austin with one of these leaders and there were so many opportunities for me to further my personal career by pitching a couple things, things to him and byjust having his undivided attention. And I didn't talk about anything except the food that was right there. His family, and I did a hell of a lot of listening again. And old-school Corey probably would have forecasted how I was going to go in and what angle and how I was going to pitch this and say this certain thing, but guys, I gotta tell you, like, just being present and listening, and calm and being who I was and showing up as Corey with that sunlight like inside of me, that energy ball that radiates out to other people served me way better than any strategic relationship manipulation that could have furthered my career. And that dinner was a turning point for me. And every single relationship that I have with anyone going forward is. A genuine relationship.And you want to talk about the difference between C4social and anything else out there. We pride ourselves on relationships. You know, relationships, speed algorithms. As George says, relationships are everything to my agency and they are now everything to me as a human being and the people that I associate myself with feel the exact same. And that's why we're friends. And that's why my clients are my clients. And if you're not the right fit, you're not the right fit.George:  And I will say, it's not a relationship if it's agendized manipulative or deceptive, that would be any of those definitions. And so proud of you, man. So I think it's time.I think it's time we give everybody the gift. So what are these things that people can take right now? And if you're listening to this. Remember the time pack. If you don't have a pen, if you're driving, do not take notes, take mental notes. If you were sitting there and you can write, write these things down, because these are going to be extremely important for you to be able to help you move the needle in your business and set you up to win in the future. So Corey let's have your zone of genius, my friend.  Corey: There's three things that you can do right now that will help your business move forward. The first. Is knowing your why? Why are you doing what you do? Because if you say that it's to make money and be rich is probably not a good goal. I want to challenge you to change that a little bit.Your why is something that's tied to your family? Your why is something that's tied to your inner motivation? Your why is about more than you? Who are you trying to help and why? If you don't know your, why. And I'm talking deep down. If you, if you don't know how to find your wife, just try talking to George, he'll pull it out of you. Might be with a couple of tears, but it's worth it.  So that's number one, number two. And that's intangible, or that that's intangible, you know, like you can't really like. Touch that know your why. So I'm going to give you the second one, which is a more tangible. And that is know your cogs, your costs of goods and services.If you have a digital platform like lean green dad that sells a digital meal plan and your cogs are very low because they are things like my time. How much time does it take for me to buildthe meal plan each week? And it is custom built each week. Trust me You know, but how much is your time worth? You should know that is a cog, right? That is a cog. And then, you know, the biggest thing, like I'm serious guys, like a spreadsheet, an actual sheet with formulas in it that maps out every single thing that you have because I've put together offers for companies before that they were super excited about and we blew it away, but they had a 10% profit margin. The profit margin was so low because it costs them so much to ship their product. It was a unique product, but still like no back to the drawing board, don't start your advertising until you have a call sheet in place. I think I know what that company is, right?  I think everybody knows. You can go to the Facebook page and look at page transparency and find the ads that competitors are running. Just because they're running ads doesn't mean they're successful and doesn't mean that you should just.Like try to do the same thing. You need to have your own twist on it and you need to not doubt your own brilliance. ou have ideas, you have great thoughts. Test them out. Be original, like do something yourself. I'm not saying you can't copy the model don't or the format. Cause maybe something has worked and you can see how long an ad's been running. If it's been running for eight months, clearly it's profitable. And maybe you should do that. You don't need to recreate the wheel. But you do need to infuse your own excellence and not do something the way that someone else has done it just because that's the way it's always been done or that's the way it happensLike this game will only work if you flip it on its head, this game, you will stand out by carrying more everything. George does like you stand out because you care more out care, your competition. Don't worry about outspending your competition, or, you know, getting to this first or. You know, whatever, just, just out carrier competition.George: And it actually, when you, when you talk about that card at the end, you talked about this earlier, right? Like you can copy and paste all day, but it never works. I watched people rip funnels and rip ideas and rip products, and then they get pissed that it doesn't convert. And I'm like, of course it's not going to convert because it's not, you it's incongruent. It doesn't match. Your morals, your values, your customers, and your journeys, and you get punished for it.And so, you know, the whole thing forever has been modeled genius, not copy genius.You know, like the thing is, is like, if we know that like this is like the three steps to start a car, well, great.You need to follow those three steps, but can do it at your speed, your way, whatever. So what you're looking for, and this is what I challenge people all the time. What you want to look for is you want to look for the foundation, right? You want to look for the things that aren't. I'm changing every single day, right? Like best principles, right? It's like,they have an ad that, not that it says this, or it does this in the video that like, Oh, it's a piece of content that adds value without a call to action. And then, Oh, it leads to a, a blog post that and try to do anything.Don't copy the blog post, but be like, wow.I wonder if my audience would respond well to this video for five minutes. That's all value-based and then goes to a blog where I help them put it into practice. And you're looking for the principals. Don't, don't try to match everybody's wrapping paper or try to forge their signature. It doesn't work. But you know, that like certain things and certain processes work because that's how customers respond and that's human psychology. And that's what you need to look for. So core. Those are absolutely. Absolutely amazing tips. And so just for everybody wondering again, I want to make sure that you understand Corey,find him @ wwwc4orsocial.com and listen, I'm pretty direct with everybody that listens to this.I wonder if my audience would respond well to this video for five minutes. That's all value-based and then goes to a blog where I help them put it into practice. And you're looking for the principals. Don't, don't try to match everybody's wrapping paper or try to forge their signature. It doesn't work. But you know, that like certain things and certain processes work because that's how customers respond and that's human psychology. And that's what you need to look for. So core. Those are absolutely. Absolutely amazing tips. And so just for everybody wondering again, I want to make sure that you understand Corey,find him @ wwwc4orsocial.com and listen, I'm pretty direct with everybody that listens to this.Some of these things that Corey shared are things that not a lot of people understand, and they miss them all the time and corn, I've worked with thousands of companies combined, and these are the things that get in the way of companies succeeding. And sometimes it's hard to even see them because it doesn't hurt bad enough until it's already too late. And so utilize these things, put them into practice, take one thing from this episode and put it into practice. So, Corey,I would just want to give you the floor. Anything you want to say, closing thoughts, anything that you want, you can go full.Corey: My time here in the spotlight has to be about someone else.So like my, my spotlight, I'd like to use to just say, thank you to you. Okay. Because  you're changing people's lives, man. You've changed my life. You changed a lot of people's lives if you're listening to this podcast andyou just keep showing up on a daily basis, man. You know, I sit here and I talk about all this stuff that I know, but. A damn lot of it comes from the man on the other side of this microphone. So man, you're, you're, you're an inspiration to me. You are an absolute fucking genius and my opinion and everything you do, the way you show up, the way you care, it's it doesn't go unnoticed. And I've told you this before, but there's not enough people out there that take the time just to say thank you.You're the man, dude, I wear your shirt all the time and I will totally be honored and proud to be associated with you any day of the week.George: For those who you're listening, you don't see the tears running down my face right now, but those two on video, I'm trying to sign them. They cry over here. Thank you for putting my measuring stick into place. My friend, thank you  for doing it. And thank you for being here and everybody listening to this, Cory's a walking Testament to what happens when you play the game the right way and you play it the long way. And there is no short game success.And you know, there are definitely days that like you can win a play. And you can win plays all day and still lose the game. And so play the long game, play this the right way, add value, make sure you're improving upon the silence. Do everything in your power to ensure that people succeed in your world and everything you touch is improved upon. And that might mean sometimes saying no. Honoring yourself, honoring your team, honoring your commitments and honoring your customers by being the one willing to hold them accountable. When everybody else is trying to take their money, there is no way to lose this. And I think it's something that all of us should focus on.So Corey absolutely honored and just. I'll just use the word flabbergasted. I feel like tubular supercalifragilisticexpialidocious right now. So thank you for being here. My friend, everybody go check out Corey and this has been another episode of the mind to George show. And so until next episode, which will be Monday and Monday minutes. So you better listen to it for a couple minutes and put it into practice. Remember that relationships will always beat algorithms.

And I am excited about today's episode. As I sit here, drink a  gorgeous cup of coffee. Cause I don't know. I guess coffee is gorgeous that's what I call it. Actually, as you're listening to this, I want you to send me a message or leave me a comment. How do you take your coffee? I have this theory that you can tell a lot about somebody by how they drink their coffee and it's totally made up, but I love thinking about it too.So just in full disclosure, I want to tell you. How I drink my coffee. I drank my coffee the same way every single time. And it is a black Americano. I love Americanos. I have no idea why I've loved them for a long time. I also love espresso, but I like the ability to take the flavor of that espresso and spread it out over a good half an hour. And enjoy it for a prolonged process. So I love drinking. Americanos are my drink and every Americano I drink, I add two scoops of Bubs collagen., Bubs naturals.  Every single day my cup of coffee is the same. It is a black Americano with two scoops of Bubs collagen included because I'm all about habit stacking here. And speaking about habits, let's talk about the habits of building or scaling your business. So as you know,  I did an episode, I think it was last week on the five non-negotiable books  for leaders. And today we're going to be featuring another book. But we're going to be talking about your business hierarchy of needs.  So Mike Michalowicz, which is an absolute genius when it comes to business. The way that he's able to take complex ideas, break them down and put them into book form, and then literally give you a seat step by steptep guide on how to implement or fix it is mind blowing. And he's written books called the Pumpkin plan, Profit first. Clockwork which is one of my big favorites. And then his new one, which is now my new favorite book by him and a book I'm going to recommend for the rest of my career is called Fix this next.  Now, if you're familiar with human psychology  you have what's called the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And basically what that states is that at the bottom level, if you don't have access to safety, food, water, and shelter, you can never ascend up that hierarchy into greater things. Growth, enlightenment or anything along those lines. And so Mike took the Maslov hierarchy of needs and made the business hierarchy of needs and talk through every single thing you need in your business, to be able to ascend up to the very tip top of your business.And the truth is we see a lot of companies all the time that have  some thing but they have a big hole missing on the bottom of the pyramid. Or they have a few holes on the pyramid and they start building from the top. They build in the wrong order. They don't plug the holes. They don't set themselves up to win. And these are the companies you see that have to raise rounds, arounds or they build it and then it crashes. There are certain things that are required to sustain a business. And the first one is really simple. You need to make sales. Unless you're a nonprofit and you're raising money, no matter what your business is predicated on your ability to sell.So Mike breaks this down in the business hierarchy of needs and the visual is insane. So, two things I would recommend right away. Number one, go buy fix this next by Mike Michalowicz,  non negotiable. And I actually bought the physical version, the audible version. And I'd go to his website, www.Fixthisnext.com and he will give you a printout.Just give him your email. He'll give you a printout and I don't even know Mike. So if you know Mike, tell Mike, I talk about him all the time, please. Actually, what would be amazing if you listened to this, I would absolutely love it, if you bombarded Mike with this episode, like Mike, you don't know this George Guy, but he talks about you all the time.Send him this episode because Mike. If you listen to this, when you listen to this, I'm going to future cast right now, and I'm going to speak like it's happening when you listen to this. I just wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart, as an entrepreneur and the hundreds and of thousands of entrepreneurs that you have helped you genuinely solve a giant problem and a big gap in this industry. And so for everybody listening, I recommend all of Mike's books.  So in Mike's book fix this next, he breaks it down into the business hierarchy of needs. And there's five levels in the business hierarchy of needs. The foundational level, the base of your pyramid is sales. The second level is profit. The third level is order. The fourth level is impact. And then the fifth level is legacy.  And we see, or we talk about building a lighthouse. We talk about building a hundred year vision. We talk about building a company that can sustain past your time. And in order to do that, it has to be built from the bottom up so that it can we stand. The pyramids weren't built from the top down, lighthouses aren't built from the top down houses. They're built from the bottom up because the bottom is where the core is and at the core of your business is sale.  So when Mike breaks this down, he talks about all the things that are required for you to do this. Now, I want to be clear with you and what I love about Mike, when he talks through this, it doesn't mean that you necessarily have to do all of these things in order means these are the things you want to come back and look at because you might hit a point. Where your sales were good, you're up in the order wrong, but then something in your process changed, you have to come back down and look at the sales, reinforce that foundation before you can ascend back up.And he's way more eloquent at breaking this down in his book than I I am. But I'm the sales level all we're really doing the reason this is the base. Is because without cashflow, you don't have a business. If you're not generating revenue, there's no point in investing in $30,000 website designs or 8 million influencer campaigns, or you know, thousands of units of inventory when, at the core of it, there isn't creation of cash.And so what Mike breaks down in this and the five notes I have from this absolutely loved number one in that sales level in the hierarchy of needs. It's, you're focusing on the creation of cash, but we talked about the lifestyle congruency. Like how much do you need for your lifestyle because we're entrepreneurs. You have a monthly nut, you have bills, you have school, you have food. And you need to know what that number is so you can generate it separately. You need to know what that number is. So you can generate that number and sustain your lifestyle, which will allow you to be an entrepreneur. So the first level of sales is number one, lifestyle congruence.How much do you need for your lifestyle? Number two is prospect attraction. Where are you going to find your potential customers? How are you going to communicate with your potential customers? Then next level or the next I don't want to call them levels. The next section of the sales level is client conversion. Once you find all those prospects, how are you going to convert them? Are they converting? Can it be improved? Can the process be improved?  Then he next step is delivering on commitments. You found a prospect, you converted them because you made a promise. Then you have to deliver on the commitments of the promise that you made. And then you can collect on those commitments. I E getting paid on time or clients fulfilling their commitments. And one of the things that I want to note here is you don't have a business because you sell a service or a product you have to deliver on all of those commitments in order for you to collect.So the base level of the sales or the business hierarchy of needs is sales. So that's level one, then level two, we get into profit. And this is where you get to focus on the creation of stability.  Focus on the creation of stability. And Mike recommends doing this in five areas.  Number one, debt eradication. You need to be eradicating debt. Not piling on debt right now. There are creative things that you can do. And in this, Mike wrote a book called Profit First, we run all of high-speed daddy Profit First. My amazing business partne, high-speed daddy, Craig Rizzoli. He's a mechanical engineer and he's got that brain, but we run the entire company on profit first. Like the entire company is run based off that book. Our job is to always be eliminating debt. So debt eradication is step one.  Step two is margin health. And, but margin health means is that before you go out and try to scale your business, you need to figure out if you can increase your margins, right? Because scaling something with a small margin, a thousand customers to make a thousand dollars. But if you increase a $10 margin, well now you only need a hundred customers to make a thousand dollars.  And so margin health is massive. Now every industry has different margins. But you can figure it out and you want to make sure that you're setting yourself up to win, especially in the beginning, because in the beginning, if you're doing a lot of this organic or small paid traffic, and then you start to scale and you have small margins, you won't be able to effectively scale because you won't have the cashflow or the margins to be able to pay for that traffic. Because as you go wider or deeper,  your ad cost or acquisition costs, most of the time goes up.  So in the profit level, we have debt eradication. Then we have margin health. Then we have transaction frequency. So these are repeat buyers, working on transaction frequencies. You know, we, this longterm nurture, we tell this lengthy customer journeys, like. Transaction frequency. Then you have profitable leverage and I love this profitable leverage is strategic debt. Debt without strategy is just debt, strategic debt. It means, you know that when you use this hundred thousand dollars, it's going to generate. X not. I'm going to get this a hundred thousand dollars of this $5,000 to $10,000. And I'm going to try,no without a plan you are guaranteed to fail and then you are going to increase debt. And then you're going to have to go back again to start eradicating that debt again. So strategic debt.  And then the last level of the profit tier is cash reserves. And in the business, that's a minimum of three months or longer. So the first level of the business hierarchy of needs is the sales level. We went over that. The second level is the profit level. Now we get into the third level, which is the order level. And in the order level, what your focusing on is organizational efficiency. So you want to be minimizing wasted effort.You want to remove bottlenecks and inefficiencies because at this level you have a consistent sales cycle. And a consistent profit cycle. And so you've increased your margins. You have predictable business coming in, and now it's time to increase the efficiencies with your systems and processes to start replicating yourself and being well to move out of the business. Hiring people in. And so the first thing is you want to as wasted effort, you want to remove bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Then you want to get into role alignment. Our roles matched to the talent, everybody in the company doing their best work. And in this Mike wrote another book called clockwork, which helps people identify what their queen bee role.  In your company you have a queen bee role, but also in the roles of the people, they have a queen bee role. What their sweet spot is to where they're aligned to the role that's going to deliver the maximum amount of results. After that you want to get to outcome delegation, the people well close to the problem are they empowered to solve it? And notice how this doesn't say micromanagement or tasks. It's delegation. This has outcome delegation. You're outcomingyou're delegating the outcome. You're delegating the ownership to where your not a bottleneck to where they are empowered to solve it with or without you. But primarily without you or without anybody else. And that means they have to be in the right role so they can empower that and they have the support to do that.  Then you get into linchpin redundancy. Is your business designed to operate seamlessly. If key employees are not available? Can you take a four week vacation and just disappear tomorrow? Can you get sick for three days? Can one of your employees go on maternity leave? And if the answer to that is no. Well, you know that you have to have that redundancy. And then the last one is mastery reputation.  So the last level of order is mastery reputation. Are you the best in the industry at what you do? And what I mean by that, if you're going out and telling everybody how good you are, you aren't. If everybody else is telling everybody how great you are, you are. And so we covered sales, then profit then order. And then the fourth level of the business hierarchy of needs is impact. And this is all about client alignment and transformation.  So you want to have a transformation orientation. So we talk about this all the time. I say people don't. You know, when, when transactions, they, when the transformations, people don't buy the best product or service, they bought the best relationship and you don't have a business unless everybody has transformed with what you promised. And so you want to be focusing on transformation, orientation, transformation beyond the transaction, then mission motivation. Is your team motivated by the company mission? Are they excited to come to work? Do they own it like it's their own? Do they embody it? And if not, how do you get there?  The third one is dream alignment. So is your work aligned with the individual team member's life dreams? Like, do you know, where are your employees want to be in their life? Are you supporting them in getting there? Do you know what they want? Their financial situation look like their house situation, their family situation, their hobbies situation to look like. When you can get your your business and your team all aligned and you can align your company to support your team members dreams. You'll be absolutely unstoppable.  The next one feedback integrity. Are you receiving honest, constructive feedback and compliments from team and customers? And then the last one in the impact phase is a complimentary network. Are you collaborating withother businesses and competitors? Now? This is the entire impact level of the business hierarchy of needs.  And then the last level and the very tip top of the pyramid of the business hierarchy of needs is the legacy level. And your entire job here is to focus on the creation of permanence legacy forever with, or without you.It's not a legacy if it's involves you with legacy. It has to be bigger than you. It has to live on without you. And so what you're looking for here is community continuance. Do your clients fervently defend, support, and help the business. Are they more invested in the business than you are because they've received such transformations from the previous level that you've promised them. Is there intentional leadership turn? Is there a plan for leadership to transition and stay fresh for people to grow for them to escalate up the ladder for them to transition out and put new perspective and fresh purpose perspective in.  The next one, do you have heart-based promoters? Do you have people inside and outside of the organization promoting the company without the need of direction? Now this is a very big one. We cover this when we talk about contagious with Jonah Berger. I don't know if I've done that episode yet, but I've recommended a book a lot. To where your job is to show up in such a manner that your results speak for themselves, but also your customers have a clear understanding of what it is you do and how you do it so they can go tell the world about it. And these are your heart based promoters.  The next section is quarterly dynamics. Do you have a clear vision for the future and dynamically adjust quarterly to make that vision come true? And then the last one is ongoing adaptation is the business designed to constantly adapt and improve, including finding  better ways to invest in itself.And those are the five tiers of the business hierarchy of needs with the five. Chapters per se, or containers or sections within those tiers. And so I'm going to cover them again before I wrap this episode. And when I say this again, this book by the way, I've read this book three times in the last two months and I've utilized it on myself quite a few times. And I look at it, add it fresh all the time. I keep this chart just near me on my phone. I can look at it and like, Oh, I need that today making sure that I'm aligned to where we're going, the impact we want to having the legacy we want to leave. And so in your business, you are the person responsible for the vision. You are the person responsible for looking at this chart. You can be an employee and you're still responsible for looking at this chart because leadership doesn't have to happen from the top. Leadership happens everywhere. When we're intentional about business, we're guaranteed success because at the intersection, right so you have intentionality, you have disciplined and then you have a vision. If you have the vision and you are intentional about going there and you have the discipline to follow it, you are guaranteed success. The road might not look like you want it to look and it might not be as straight as you think, this is entrepreneurship after all, but you're guaranteed to get there as long as you utilize this in your business.  So the five levels of the business hierarchy of needs, again are level one is sales, level two is profit. Level three is order, level four is impact and level five is legacy. And I'm going to run through the individual components one more time, really quickly. And then I want you to go pick up Fix this Next by Mike Michalowicz . It's on audible. It's also, I recommend getting the hard copy so you can take notes and then go to his website, www.Fixthisnext.com  And yes, I mean this gold bombard Mike and let him know how big of an impact in the world, because I'm recording an entire podcast for him on this. I've read all of his books. We've sold. Hundreds of them recommended them all to you. And Mike needs to know Mike. You're amazing. Thank you for doing your work and thank you for not quitting back in the day after you published that book, and you didn't get a sale on your first book on the first day. And thanks for sticking it out, brother.So when we think about the business hierarchy of needs, the sales level, your job is to focus on the creation of cash, lifestyle congruence, prospect, attraction, client conversion, delivering on commitments and collecting on commitments. The next level profit focus on the creation of stability, debt, eradication, margin, health, transaction frequency, profitable, leverage, and cash reserves.Then order, focus on organizational efficiency, minimize wasted effort, role alignment, outcome delegation, linchpin redundancy, and mastery reputation. Then you get to impact, and your goal is client alignment and transformation. Transformation, orientation, mission motivation, dream alignment, feedback, integrity and a complimentary network.  And then the final level is legacy where you are focusing on the creation of permanence community continuance, intentional leadership churn, heart-based promoters, quarterly dynamics and ongoing adaptation.  And that is the business hierarchy of needs. And so my question for you is when are you going to download it and go look at it and start intentionally plugging these because this is probably one of the best gifts to business I've ever seen in the last 10 years. And it's been transformative in my career. Hundred of my clients lives, my mastermind, students, yours and everything and it is the best representation of what it takes to build and scale a business ethically. Focused on the right reasons, having the impact on the world that we need to have to make a difference. And we're all responsible for getting it done. So go grab the book, gall bombard, Mike, and I will see you guys in the next episode to remember that relationships always beat algorithms. 

Yes. It has been a bit too long. So Mike and Liam decided to take it upon themselves to record a podcast about how one shouldn't compare themselves to other photographers. Join in as they talk about their past experiences, faults and mindsets along with the usual banter that happens between two creatives.

So Mike picked 2 random beers for the show, and it's his birthday weekend. He picked Great Lakes Brewing Eliot Ness Amber Lager (Cleveland, OH) and Southern Range Deranged Red Ale (Monroe, NC). Everyone head over to facebook.com/beerandshenanigans to wish Mike a Happy Birthday using #HappyBirthdayMike If you hear this later, still use the hashtag and let us know when you hear it. Check out how we review these brews! Don't forget to Subscribe and leave us a 5 star review! Facebook: facebook.com/beerandshenanigans Twitter: @ShenanigansBeer Home Page: tinyurl.com/beerandshenanigans email: beerandshenaniganspodcast@gmail.com Online Store: teepublic.com/user/beerandshenanigans YouTube Channel: tinyurl.com/beerandshenanigansvideo --- 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/beerandshenanigans/message

We’re delighted to have Mike Berland, the CEO, and founder of Decode_M, joining us on the show today. Mike is with us today to talk about data collection, analytics, and momentum. About Mike We currently live in a world that runs on data, and Mike holds the belief that everything is knowable, as long as you know where to look. Mike is the former chair of the Gotham Chapter of the New York City Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), and he is a Commonwealth Scholar from the University of Massachusetts. He has worked with many leading brands, including Airbnb, Lyft, Nike, Microsoft, Facebook, Estée Lauder Companies, National Hockey League, and Major League Baseball. Mike has written three books. In 2009 he released a book that he co-authored with Doug Schoen, titled What Makes You Tick? How Successful People Do It and What You Can Learn from Them. Then, in 2005, he co-authored the number one bestseller, Fat-Burning Machine: The 12-Week Diet, with former Olympic triathlon coach Gale Bernhard. And he has now written a new book called Maximum Momentum: How to Build it and How to Keep It, which got released in January 2020. Mike has two adult children, and he lives in Manhattan, New York, with his wife of more than twenty-five years. About Decode_M Decode_M is a research, analytics, and insights firm that decodes data into momentum for its clients. It is a fast-moving firm that arms its clients with the actionable information they need to make critical decisions. As a team of passionate problem-solvers and data-driven storytellers, they use a diverse mix of data sets to identify the right answers and solutions so that their clients can take the right action immediately, with confidence. Collecting & analyzing the right data is where the job starts for the Decode_M team. Strategy, activation, and how the data gets used is what they are all about. Why Mike started Decode_M Mike started Decode_M because he felt that there was another analytical tool needed in the data research and analytics space. The most important question        When he started his career as a pollster, Mike asked questions, and he received answers. However, the answers were always limited to the data set. And Mike explains that when you’re a pollster, the most important questions are usually the ones you did not ask. So when you get the data and analyze it, you often realize that there are many other things that you wish that you had asked. Going beyond polling Over time, more and more data started becoming available, so Mike wanted to go beyond polling. He wanted to start analyzing all the data that was out there, using a new approach, new concepts, and new tools. New ways of gathering data fast In the old days, Mike had to call people on the phone and ask them questions to obtain the data that he needed. Now that he has a computer and cloud computing, he can process as much data as any top research lab in a matter of hours. And he can now also continuously go back to the social media data, or the behavioral data, rewrite the queries and keep building. Completing a project Before, with surveys, the project was complete once the report had been presented. Now, with Decode_M’s current analytics, the project is never really done because the data can continue to get mined. Momentum    Mike wrote a book called Maximum Momentum, with the idea that momentum is an amorphous word that may work in many different and varied contexts, and he wanted to quantify momentum. The M-Factor In physics, momentum equals mass times velocity. So Mike had to create the metrics from mass and velocity and then put them together to create what he calls the M-Factor. Mike explains that the mass is the volume of conversation, and the velocity is the engagement and the sentiment. How the market was getting things wrong Mike thought that the market was getting things wrong because all the metrics for social med...

On this week's episode of Startups, Sparks & Serendipity, we have a bit of a changeup. Mike is alone this time. You know how synching schedules can be when business is picking up, and that is just where we are. So Mike takes some time to talk about two very important mental models he uses. Inversion - solving problems by working backwards. Instead of asking yourself what can you do to be successful, ask yourself what might you do that can prevent your success? Handlem's Rasor - Do not attribute to malice what can be explained to be a mistake or forgetfulness. Think of your own mistakes and think about how they could be perceived by strangers. Recommendations: Books: The Precipice by Toby Ord https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/50485582-the-precipice Tools: Posture Corrector https://www.Newsletterstack.com

What if you were an Apparel Brand and created your own "Kickstarter-like" app on your site, released a new product every Thursday, sold the pieces before you made them, and then manufactured only what you sold? For Mike Maher, Co-Founder & CEO at Taylor Stitch,  that's exactly what he and his Co-Founders did. But that's not all. Did you know that 85% of all apparel ends up in landfills? So Mike and his team have also set out to make sustainability one of their main directives by making clothes that last. Here's his story.   In Part 1, Mike discusses The Taylor Stitch origin story, What is negative conversion cycle, Building an internal crowdfunding platform, 3 things the crowdfunding strategy does, How their clothes may put them out of business, The 5 Pillars of Responsibility, How they are helping their manufacturer provide living wages, How Taylor Stitch is Mike's first and only job out of college, How they responded to COVID, Why he believes in the 1to1 relationship model with customers, What he asked his store employees to do, Their Stand Small initiative, Why they aren't a luxury brand and why, How & why they make their own fabric, Living your brand values, and so much more.    Join us while Ramon Vela interviews Mike in Part 1of this episode and gets the inside story of this amazing brand.   For more on Taylor Stitch visit: https://www.taylorstitch.com/     Gorgias -  Gorgias.link/story Fenix Commerce - https://www.fenixcommerce.com/ Retention Science - RetentionScience.com

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Please ignore any speech-to-text errors) Hello, everyone. My name is Penny. I'm so glad you joined us today and welcome to this next session of Get Sellers Calling You with Beatty Carmichael. Beatty is the CEO of Master Grabber, the creator of Agent Dominator and one of the top marketing experts in the real estate field. Beatty, I am super excited about this call with you today. What do you have for our listeners? [00:00:29] Well, I've got a really exciting call for today, and that is it may sound kind of boring, but when you really understand the impact, it's really exciting and is how to do marketing right. [00:00:41] Because, you know, in real estate, I love what Gary Keller says in all of his books -- millionaire real estate agent, Shift and others. He says the most important thing in real estate is lead generation. And then he says the second most. Would you like guess what? The second most important thing is in real estate. If the first generation was the second most important thing. [00:01:09] Has to be. If I were to guess something to obtain buyers. Almost, yes. [00:01:16] So it's tied to that second most important thing in real estate is lead generation. He says the third most important thing. Would you like to guess the third most important thing in real estate is. [00:01:28] Let me guess. [00:01:29] Lead generate lead generation. Right. In commercial real estate. Location, location. Location is very real estate business. Lead generation is everything. So we're going to talk about today is how do you generate leads not on a tactical process, but more a strategic process. [00:01:52] Does that make sense? Yeah, sure. [00:01:55] Okay, so let me give you a background on this. I was speaking just a couple weeks ago with a real estate agent named Mike. He's not the typical real estate agent. He also has his investment license and his primary business is a financial advisor. So he has a block of clients that he manages their assets on. He makes a lot of money from that, but he also works in the real estate world and helps buy and sell real estate because part of his financial advising is to purchase investment properties in real estate. Do you see the connection? Yeah, sure. Okay, so he had the perfect fit. He had this brilliant idea. And I want to share this idea because I know there is some real estate agents out there who may not be a series six. I think it is a financial adviser, but they are friends who are that they can partner with because this is a beautiful partnering opportunity. We're talking about lead generation. You typically think out of the box if you do what every real estate agent does to generate leads, you're going to be like every real estate agent, which is working 60, 70 hours a week, scrapping for every deal you get. And when a shift in the marketplace happens, like what's happened recently with Cobian 19 and the corona virus pandemic stuff, your business falls apart because you're doing what everyone else does. By the way, I've got I've got to make this one comment. We have a number of clients whose business has not faltered at all during this period of time. We have other clients whose business has fallen apart. And you know the difference between the two. [00:03:50] Personal connection with the agent. I was going to get personal connection with the agent and their client. [00:03:58] A little bit deeper than that. That is a tactical part. [00:04:01] But strategically, those whose businesses have not faltered, they've built their business on right principles that always drive in business. Those whose businesses have faltered are what I'm gonna call hacks at real estate. [00:04:19] They they just because the market was good, they were able to pick up business, but they really had no process in place, whether it's those personal contacts and relationships or whether it a strategic marketing plan. They just had nothing. They just kind of threw stuff out and it worked. But now that their shift has happened, or at least a shift in their business has fallen apart. So they had no foundation. They had no foundation. So I digress. But I want to bring it back to the comment of where I was going. And that is, if you do what all other agents do, your business is going to look like all other agents and all other agencies average. And if the definition of averages is the cream of the crop and the crap or the cream, I don't want to be there. If you want to if you want to have a above average business, you got to think outside of the box and do what others are not. So here's an idea. Thinking out of the box, it's this connection between you as a real estate agent and a financial adviser. And so let me share the story that this guy sharing. I thought it was brilliant. And then I want to use this to start to talk about the marketing topics, marketing concepts and understanding to really bring something like this together. [00:05:39] So Mike has a financial adviser. He's helped his clients buy investment property. So this is like duplexes, small apartments, retail stores and things of that sort. And so that's where he's used his his real estate license. And so he makes a commission off of the transaction. He also makes commission off of managing their assets. But he's kind of tapped out most of his clients on the things that he would honestly recommend for them. And he's looking to grow his business. He wants to grow his client base. So he had this brilliant idea. A lot of people have for one case, he wanted to market to people with one case, get them to convert it to a self directed irae. And then he could help advise them on their when they do that, he would become their financial adviser. So now he gets their assets and then he could advise them on investments that they can do to their self directed. Right. And if it's a real estate investment, he's going to be in the deal as well. So, first off, just make sure we're on the same page. Do you know what a self directed IRA is? [00:06:53] I believe that when you've got investments, you get to choose delegates, a percentage of the account or type of account that you put your your money into. [00:07:06] Very close. So it's a little bit different, but very close. So if you think about a faurot one K, you get to have some choice in what type of investments you do. Right. But someone else is managing the investment, meaning you buy a mutual fund or you buy or something like that in a self directed IRA. You get to manage the money yourself. So if you want to buy a piece of property or buy stock, you're actually directing it one hundred percent. And to a degree, you're managing it. There are some restrictions, but you're fully in charge of it. Okay. So it gives you much greater leeway on what you do. So brilliant note for professional real estate agent out there. This is a source of great money to then sell investment property. Okay, so this is the connection. So that's what he wanted to do. And then we started to talk about this and he said, I want to mail 10 or 15 thousand people and start generating more business. And so we started talking about it. I said, well, I'd probably I'd start something smaller than ten or fifteen thousand people. And he said, Why is that? He said, Because you don't really know what works. And he thought about that for a moment. I said, well, that's interesting. But I don't fully understand. He said, all you do is you put together a postcard and you put a call to action on it. I said, well, call the actions or know all that they're cracked up to be, say most agents. They hear these words. And the purpose of this call is, I want to get away from what you hear and you think, you know, to really helping you understand. Have you heard? Do you know what a call to a CPA or call to action is? Have you heard that term? [00:09:00] I've heard the term, but I honestly probably could not define it properly. [00:09:05] So let's define it because it's important. A CPA, as it's called, Call to Action, is simply a statement you make to call your prospect to action. Pick up the phone and call me thinking about selling your property. Call me now. That's a call to action. And what happens is most real estate agents, they pick up these terms, they see they see something. That's the secret. It's all about a call to action. And the people that are making money with their marketing because they have a call to action. I don't need to put a call to action there. And I was telling my ex said, call the actions are worthless unless you do it right. So now I caught him at this point that he's now ready to learn and understand what he has no clue in. [00:10:00] Now, remember the comment one of my friends was sharing? I went to a real estate training class that he did years back and he put up a slide for the realtors in the room. [00:10:11] And it basically said and he was talking about this is kind of how you approach when you're engaging a property owner to sell their property. The statement was, if you think hiring a professional is expensive, try hiring an amateur. And in marketing, that really applies because my mike was willing to go spend 30, 40, 50 thousand dollars his first year thinking all it was was a call to action and he would make money. So with that, let me get real this in and start talking a little bit about marketing. Does that work with you? [00:10:49] Yeah, absolutely. [00:10:52] So the first thing in marketing is you've got a test. And the reason why. Can you guess why you want to test? [00:11:03] You don't know what works. [00:11:04] That's right. That's right. Not everything works, okay, until you've tested it. You don't know if it works or not. [00:11:13] And so this is why a lot of times if we take postcards, for example, because this is a common thing, a lot of mail postcards and they don't work. No e-mail postcards. And what you put on the postcard did not work. Not the postcard postcard system. Delivery method. Oh, I did online advertising. It doesn't work. No online advertising works. What did you say? Okay, so the first step is you have to understand that marketing is two components. What you say and how you deliver what you say. A postcard. Pay per click and funnel sales funnel into ads that drive into that. All of that is just a delivery. It's the mechanics. But what you say is the most important, in essence, marketing, is salespeople. You've automated the sailing the selling process and you push it out in mass. And just like salespeople, one salesperson is going to get higher results than another salesperson, for one thing. Would you like to guess with that? [00:12:24] One thing is I'm scared to guess. [00:12:29] They say things differently. They say things differently. They know what to say and they know how to say it. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So there's a lot behind what they say and how they say it. But ultimately it's what they say and how they say that causes a sale to happen or not. [00:12:48] And that's the same thing it is with your marketing. So the reason you want to test is not everything works. So you want to you want to test small. Okay. And then once you know something works, then you can scale it up with the delivery, the delivery. [00:13:06] I mean, I think about like when you said that, like, I went to buy a car, for instance, and I went to two different car lots and they both told me the same thing as one of them. The way they spoke, the message to me and gave me that information, their delivery was better and more convincing. Well, then I'm going to buy the car from them. [00:13:26] That's exactly right. If they're selling the same car, but you resonate with one person and the other person to finish you with what he says. There you go. It's what you say and how you say it. Okay. But then there's something else in there. So it's not just what you say and how you say it, what it is. But if you go if you dissect that a little bit further, is are you saying it in a positive format or negative format, meaning let's say if I wanted to focus on home sellers, I could say the same thing in a positive statement or a negative statement. The positive statement, if you're thinking about selling your home. Here are four things you can do that will get you a lot more money. I can make the same statement in a negative if you're thinking about selling your home. If you don't do these four things, you will lose a lot of money. [00:14:35] They're really the same things. It's just a matter of time. Does that make sense? [00:14:39] Yes. Yes, it does. [00:14:41] So here's one reason to test. If I come to you as a homeowner and I say if you're thinking about selling your home these four secrets. We'll get you 20 percent, more or less say that your three hundred thousand dollar home as much as 60 thousand dollars more for your home. Or I come to you and say, if you're thinking about selling your home, Veith, if you fail to do these four things, you will lose as much as 60 thousand dollars on your home. Are you going to respond the same way or do you think one generates a different response than the other? [00:15:25] I feel like one of those would be more convincing to me. [00:15:30] Okay, so for you. Which one would be more convincing? Which one would. If that's all you saw. And right now, we're just talking about the offer articulated as a headline. Okay. The positive offer or the negative offer? Which one motivates you more than the positive. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Interesting survey says when you survey we actually did this test. Okay. [00:15:56] We tested positive versus you're going to tell me that I don't fit in the box. Do I. [00:16:03] I'm not I haven't said anything yet. I'm just I'm just laying you up, okay. I'm just letting you off on this question. When we tested this, we tested thousands and thousands of postcards and what we call split a marketing test, which you take we would take a farm and we just randomize half the addresses would get a positive offer. Half the addresses would get a negative offer. And then we did that all across the country. And then we tabulated the results to see which offer positive or negative increased results and which ones decrease. [00:16:41] Would you like to guess what the offer? Produce more results. [00:16:49] Based on that, I'm going to go negative. [00:16:53] You don't have much confidence in yourself, any positive offer outperformed the negative, just like you said you would find it more positive. Okay. Now, here comes a big question. Okay. So positive Forfar outperforms negative. The question is by how much? What would you guess would be the difference? In other words, how much more likely are you to respond to that positive offer versus if it was a negative offer, just a little bit more or a lot more? [00:17:28] Yeah, it's really more like I feel like I would. Yeah. [00:17:33] And how much would you say would you think that would be for you? [00:17:38] Percentage wise, I would probably be 90 or more percent more likely to respond. [00:17:47] Okay, so here's the thing. Until you test it, you really don't know which way to go. And this is what I was telling Mike. He wants to spend a lot of money going after all of these strangers to try to get them to come to him. Give him all of their money and then invest in property. Okay. It makes a big impact if you spend forty thousand dollars in a year, whether you get if you've got one cell versus 400 cells, that would be a big impact difference. Okay, so what we found is the test and the homeowner market is eight hundred percent difference. In other words, we got eight times more people responding to the positive offer than the negative offer. But think about this. That's going to a homeowner. Now, if we're doing this for Mike and sharing this with Mike, I said someone with an investment. [00:18:47] Are they more interested in gaining money or or more interested in not losing money? We don't know. I know in business. More businesses are motivated by risk mitigation, which is not losing as opposed to opportunity to gain. So in a business environment, the negative offer would likely outperform positive offer. But in the homeowner market, the positive outperforms. So these are the things you have to test. Maybe it's another thing to test is the offer. Okay, so homeowners. [00:19:25] Is the offer these for seekers will get you more money? Or is the offer I can sell your home immediately. Or is the offer something different. Okay, so you test these different things, you start to figure out what it is that your market is going to be most likely to respond to. And then when you know what that is and you test it and you start to get results, then at that point you start to scale it up. [00:19:51] So that's why you test. That makes sense. Yes, it does. [00:19:55] And without testing, you really just don't. You're shooting in the dark. If you don't test, you're an amateur. [00:20:03] And that's a lot more expensive than hiring a professional. So then the second thing you want to do is, is how do you test? So it's easy to say let's test it. Next question is how? And this is what Mike was saying. How do you do it? And so what I was telling Mike is I said, look, you've got the budget to do 15000 homes. Then the best thing to do, because 15000 prospects for him said the best thing to do is let's maybe do a marketing test of 2000 people where we can do a thousand with one and a thousand with another and test two things. And he said, well, why do you want to test two things? I said, because if you test more than two, you don't know what's causing the difference. So think about this. If I if I test a if I test a positive offer. For secrets to make more money and I test a negative offer. The five biggest mistakes most people make when selling their home. I get different results. I don't know if it's the offer for secrets or mistakes or if it's the positive, make more money or the negative. Lose everything you have in your house and end up destitute so you can't test multiple variables at one time. You have to do a test. It has to be only one difference between the two so that if there is a change in results, you know, there is only one change in what you did and therefore you can tell which one produces more. Does that make sense or did I can you know, that makes perfect sense. [00:21:53] I mean, the more information that you're putting out there in order to test something, the harder it's going to be for you to come to conclusion. Like you said, which one was the actual one that worked or didn't work? [00:22:06] And so in the whole world of testing, you want to eliminate every opportunity for. An unknown variable to influence it. Let me give you a simple example of how this can be done wrong. So you have someone doing, let's say, geographic farming, for example. And they want to test two offers. So they test one offer to one farm and they test another offer to a different farm. And they get one offer, outperforms the other offer. Is that a valid test? Yes. Wait. Okay. All right. Different types of people live in each of those farms. Yes. Could it be that one type of person has an average income of 100000? The other type of farm has an average income of fifty thousand? Yes. Do you think that could make a difference in how they respond? Absolutely. Do you think if one neighborhood is black and the other neighborhood hood is white? Do you think that could make a difference? Yes. So what happens if you test one farm against another? By changing your offers, then you've mis unknowingly you've included another variable that you didn't know was there. And that is one farm is a different type of person than the other farm, potentially. So it could really skew your results. So if you wanted to. Good test. You want to either do one farm and randomize the addresses and then 10 one offer to one set of addresses, the other offer to the other set. [00:23:58] Or if you're going to do both farms you randomize each farm into individually and then you send it out. In other words, you have to eliminate every opportunity for another variable to accidently crop up. Then people ask, well, how do you how do you randomize? Really easy. This is the easiest part I found. The easiest way to randomize is if you've got first name, last name and address, sort by first name. [00:24:33] Totally randomise is everything. You take the first half of first names and you send them off for one in the second half of the first things and send them off or two. And now you have no variance in what is going on. So the first step is, is in testing, the best way to test is going to be the split test. We call it marketing A split a B test. Everything is totally the same except offer A versus offer B.. [00:25:05] This also means you have to have a simple way to track it. An easy way to track. Which one do you get the most phone calls from? Okay, you get that person's name and address and you look it up in your list and you figure out which offer they came from. Okay. [00:25:22] More sophisticated the way we track because we have more technology, as you know, we have a what we call stealth tracking technology. So we send into a Web site. And instantly when they go to the Web site, we're able to pinpoint the address that they responded to. So this is if we're doing a postcard that matches it back, if you're doing online advertising to do split marketing like PPC, paper, click type advertising, you can set all of those to do split tasks. You just have to have a little bit more difficult than just running an ad. You have to do a few things more. But they will actually alternate the ads for you, send them to a Web site. And there's code that you put on the Web site that goes back into, let's say, Google AdWords, and I'll let you know which offer is working better. So lots of ways to do it. There's another real simple way to testing. It's not as good as the split marketing test, but it's a lot less complicated to do that simply. This is why most people do it. They put a postcard or an ad together and they run it. [00:26:39] And if it gives good results and they just keep running, it doesn't get good results. They stop and say, well, that didn't work. So you can just do what I'll call it either worked or it didn't type of work. But if you can test it, test two different things, you'll find that one thing will always outperform. [00:26:56] The other thing I remember, this is real interesting. So one of the things that is important and testing is the offer. In fact, this is the most important thing. And they offer to see if I can clarify this for you and simplify it. It's the. What do you say that gets them to respond? Maybe this is an easy way to understand. Ghuneim Gary Helbert taught this to me not personally, but vicariously through his marketing training. And he was talking about the offer. Any expressed it this way. Imagine for a moment that your very best friend or your daughter, depending on how old you are and your very best friend is a woman and she's pregnant and she's really close to giving birth. [00:27:57] I mean, it's like any day now you're out shopping someplace. And this stranger comes up here in Birmingham. [00:28:11] You have the car, basically, you have the Americans and you have the car and the Mexicans. But basically the Spanish speaking Latinos, they come from south of the border. And there's a big group of Spanish speaking folks here. [00:28:30] So this stranger who doesn't speak any English, only speaks Spanish. He comes up to you and he points to his watch and he points way, a way somewhere else. And he puts this great big makes his ball over his tummy like a great big basketball. And he's pointing over in the direction of the hospital. What immediately comes to mind is. [00:28:55] His wife is about to have her Beatty. His wife. [00:29:00] Or maybe your best friend. My best friend. Yes. Right. Okay. Okay. So without saying any words, he's able to express an offer. Instantly. You know what it means. Instantly you have interest because it's important to you. Does that make sense? Okay, so that's the offer. Now, assume that the same person then says Penny, your best friend Suzy is in labor right now. The hospital get there immediately. Do you act faster if he's able to articulate it better? Yes. But it's the same offer said a different way. Okay, so you had the offer and you had the headline. The offer is what you're communicating. The headline is how you communicate it. So most important part is the offer. If we go back to Mike. With his prospects that he wants to target is the offer. I can get you a better return on your Faurot one K money. Or is the offer? How to protect your investment and your four one K. With a rock solid recession proof. Financial investment income stream. Do you see how those may be two different offers total? Because that was his whole approach. Hey, right now stock market is crazy. It's going nuts going down. People are losing money in there for one case. How do you protect that? How do you protect it in an investment that is recession proof? His ideas, you invest in multi-family housing. People are always going to pay their rent. And if they don't, they move out and someone's going to take their spot. So this is the that's the offer. And then the question is, how do you phrase it? So another guy was talking about how to write a headline. [00:31:05] And this is something that is important in your messaging. So in terms of what do you test, you're going to test the offer. So let's say if we go back to the fourth secrets, for example, for secrets, these four, if you're thinking about selling these secrets, we'll get you up to 18 percent more money on the sale of your home. So the offers for secrets that get you more money. [00:31:33] The headline, how you write the OP. Here's another way to write it. If you're planning to sell your home, these four secrets can get you as much as twenty eight thousand dollars more on your home. Or another way to write it. If you're planning to sell your home and normally sell for three hundred thousand dollars, these four secrets will get you as much as three hundred and thirty two thousand dollars for it. It's all the same offer expressed differently. Do you see how that works? [00:32:04] I sure do. [00:32:05] What do you want to do? You want to take that offer that you've tested. So when you're testing one offer against another, doesn't really matter how you write, you want to write it as well as you can. But generally, when you write out the copy for the offer. What I do is I'll write fifteen or 20 different ways of saying that same message. And then I'm going to analyze those and say which one articulates it better? It's just like that guy who comes up to you who can't speak English. [00:32:36] So he just kind of points that things and show you a sense of urgency vs. being able to better articulate it. So here's an idea. I want to just show you how this applies. Back in the 80s when we were having a major recession. Gold and silver were going through the roof financially. And so there was a company called Numismatic Company. They sell gold and silver as investment. [00:33:06] And they had relationships with some financial institutions that would actually loan investors up to two thirds of the purchase of gold and silver as an investment. [00:33:18] So they were running an ad in The Wall Street Journal and the ad said two thirds buying financing on gold and silver. And then they were making money, but then they hired a professional and that professional started testing different headlines because in your marketing, your headline is the most important part of your entire marketing piece, because if it doesn't grab their attention, they're not going to go any further. [00:33:48] Does that make sense? Yes. And also, by the way, in lead generation, because we started the most important thing in real estate is lead generation. Right. Lead generation is almost entirely headline based. The call to action only is effective once you grab their attention. Created interest and create an environment that they now want to respond. Then you give them a call to action. And that's where Mike was missing it. He'd heard this term call to action. Well, that's all it is. Those people making money have a call to action. Those people not making money. Don't need a call to action. No, there's a lot that goes before it. The call to action is the final stage. So this company hired a professional marketer. He tested different headlines and a headline that outperformed everything else, said this. Okay, first, let me give you the headline again. Two thirds financing on gold and silver. [00:34:48] The next headline that outperformed it by 20 times said this If gold is selling for three hundred dollars an ounce. Give us just one hundred dollars an ounce. We'll buy you all the gold you want. [00:35:03] Do you see the difference? So. [00:35:08] The differences. If your headline can more clearly articulate what the offer is, you grab a lot more interest. So this is when you start putting down what is my offer as a real estate agent? [00:35:24] Well, my offer what do I do? I sell a house. My offer is no different than anyone else. Well, then you're just going to be average. If you're offering, it is no different. You've got to come up with something that's different. You've got to think it through. [00:35:40] This is where you and I with our clients. We talk about what's called a USP, a unique selling proposition, which ultimately is a unique offer. Does that make sense to you? [00:35:52] You test the offer is most important. You figure out, okay, if I phrase this offer positively or negatively, which one is best, by the way? You don't have to do that test as a residential real estate agent. Positive always works best. So you don't have to do that. But then you have to test. Okay. How do I phrase that offer? Because phraseology determines how clear it is to the prospect, what the benefit of that offer is. Okay. What does that value to them? So two thirds financing on gold and silver that articulates very statically some sort of a value. But when I can say if gold is selling for three hundred dollars an ounce, give me just one hundred dollars. Now I'll buy you all the gold you want. Now, that creates an immediate understanding of the value. [00:36:47] Here's something else that's really interesting. What did those headlines is longer. [00:36:53] The second one. [00:36:56] I can't tell you how many real estate agents have told me. Oh, that's too much. That's too many words. [00:37:04] That's an amateur speaking right? Because that long headline was a lot more words, but more successfully convey the message. In fact, we actually tested this. Would you believe that? I tested short headline versus long headline. [00:37:22] You tested that? Yes. What were their results? [00:37:27] Long headline outperform, short headline if it better articulated the value. In fact, years back, we were doing some marketing for business opportunity companies. [00:37:40] Okay, so these are people trying to get people to respond on some sort of a business opportunity offer. And one of my clients came up with tired of living paycheck to paycheck. Question mark. And one more money question mark. OK, so one is negative, one is positive. [00:38:02] And that was a headline there, Mark. The marketing piece that they did wrote a copy underneath it. So he said, well, let's test that. Tired of living paycheck to paycheck versus are you tired of living paycheck to paycheck? And we tested may make more money versus do you want to make more money? All we did is we added some words. And in both cases, those extra words increased results because they better articulated the full concept and therefore inferred the value of what we were doing. Does that does that make sense? Yeah, it does. So wordiness is bad, but clearly articulating the offer is good and it produces more results. [00:38:56] Here's something else you can test. This is real important. Using a photo. Now, in real estate, you always you're always using photos. But the question is, does your photo make an impact, your little stamp sized photo in the corner or full size photo? Maybe if you're doing farming, you do that played a test and you have to do it over period time. But maybe one set of postcards is going to have a full set of full sized photo of you. The other one's going to have a little thumb stamp size photo. Another thing may be family photo you and your family versus not. And here's what happens. A lot of agents say, well, I'm a professional real estate agent. I don't want to get my personal life involved. But here's what happens on the consumer side. The consumer says. I want to trust the person I do business with. Okay? And what we have done and we have been watching this, but we have not done a split test on this at this point. But we've been watching. And what we have found is when we send out postcards that have a personal photo. We tend to start to get more responses from that postcard than others. When I say personal photo, I'm talking about a family photo. [00:40:26] So think about this. You're a homeowner. You're getting postcard mailing from this real estate agent. And they're all very professional. I sold this house. I knew house listed, and it's all about their business. You know nothing about the person. But then you get a postcard and you see their family. See that real estate agent has some little kids. Five, six, eight years old. [00:40:50] They go to the local school. All of a sudden, now that real estate agent becomes a real person, not just a professional does that. And sometimes that real person is all it takes to kind of break through the ice and say, I want to call this person. I can trust. In fact, I was talking to one of our clients out in California. He got a phone call from this agent offering this homeowner who wanted to sell her house. And she said, I'm thinking about selling. I got your postcard a couple of months ago with your family. And I immediately thought, oh, that's a great, sweet family. I can trust this person. Now. Yes, it makes you relatable. Okay, so these are the things that you want to be testing. Okay. So back to the whole idea is how do you do marketing, right. Well, you got to test. Because not everything works. You can't just say, well, I tried pay per click advertising, it doesn't work. I tried postcard mailings and it doesn't work. You got to test it and say what does work? Because it's not the medium, it's the message. And when you test the message is first going to be your offer. [00:42:07] It's going to be obviously in this case is always going to be a positive offer in Mike's case, where we're dealing with investments. We don't know if his positive or negative. So we have to test that. Then once you find the offer, then you test different headlines. Two thirds buying financing on gold and silver versus gold is selling for three hundred dollars an ounce. Give us just one hundred dollars an ounce. We'll buy all the gold you want. Figure out a way to articulate your offer so clearly that it drives more of those prospects into you. And then test things like making it really personal. Put your family photo there. Show picture of you on you doing your normal stuff outside of outside of being a real estate. I remember this kind of inside, but long lines here in town. There is a federal judge named Dave and most people know him as judge. Okay, I won't use his last name, but he's been on the federal bench now for many years. And he's very good. And he wields a lot of power as a federal judge. People come before him and they respect him. [00:43:25] Judge So-and-so, may I have a moment of your time, please? I know him as Dave. He was in our Sunday school class. His kids were friends with our kids. And we grew up around the corner from each other. [00:43:40] And he's just Dave. Okay, so there's two sides to judge, Dave, the professional size side and the personal side. But, you know, on the personal side, I have no problem calling to say I have a friend that's going through some legal challenges. I was wondering if you could just kind of give me some guidance on how this how the process works. And I would never call up a federal judge just out of the blue and do that, I'd be intimidated. Dave is just a friend. And I think as one of the things the test is, do they want to deal with someone who strictly in only a very professional age or do they want to deal with something that they can trust as a friend? These are the things you test. And once you do that, then what happens is a positive versus negative eight hundred percent increase, one offer versus another might be another 10 percent. Another 10 times increase or three times increase. How you write the offer may increase it by another 50 percent. So when you start adding all these things out through your testing, then you have a really well honed system that consistently works. And as we talked about earlier, some of our real estate agents. Their business hasn't missed a beat. And others right now, their business has crumbled. And the difference is one was based on solid principles that the strategy of how to grow business. And the other was a hack. If you simply throw things out there and see if it works, that's a hack. This is helping. [00:45:16] Sure. And I was thinking, too, like on the positive and the negative side. For me personally, for a homeowner, I feel like if I get a message that's more on the negative side, let's say it's, say, a real estate agent that's trying to promote themselves to be a postcard. I feel like it almost gimmicky, if I can even use that word. Positive messages, a lot more appealing to me. And it doesn't feel as much of a gimmick. And I'm sure it's not either way. But there's something about that mental connection with that negative approach that makes it feel like it's a gimmick. [00:45:54] That's that's absolutely true in marketing and copywriting marketing. There is a term, I think they call him Saper words or power words. And what they have found is in different rooms, whether it's a consumer product, a pain relief product, financial product, that they're key words that resonate and drive people to a more sense of urgent action, revolutionary new scientific clinical studies, different things. And so within the realm, even in real estate, you'll find that the word choice you use is going to resonate with the type of response you get. That's part of what you're talking about with a negative versus positive. The response of the negative offer is generating a gimmickry approach. But you can even do a positive offer and it comes across the key word selections that kind of take those emotions. So all of this is fine tuning. It works. And once you find what works. I've got a friend. We put out a podcast recently by a guy named Stuart Sutton. And what was interesting is every time the market tanked, for most people, his business always grew. Every time the reason is he understands marketing. And he has written his own marketing content very specifically with his words, selection is very specific because he's determined what words resonate best and generate the best results. And his postcards and his marketing pieces and his Web sites and stuff look to be immaturely done. But they produce amazing results. So there's a whole science behind there. I hope this is helping our listeners to figure out to take your business to the next level and to protect yourself in downturns like what we've just come through and probably still are in this Crono via stuff. How do you do it? And this is the first step in doing it. [00:48:20] While this has been so great, Beatty, I do think that this has been super beneficial for our listeners and just really, like you said, maximizing their potential to capitalize on business growth and income growth during this time and not missing. I just keep seeing this as an opportunity for them to miss out on what they think could be downfall, but could actually be the opposite, can be a way for them to increase their business. [00:48:49] Yes, exactly. And can I put a plug in? I know I can't because I'm your boss and I control this fire. Right. All right. [00:48:59] The plug unashamedly is marketing is a science, and you can't just be an amateur and do it effectively. So if we have some listeners out there that want to really do something special in marketing in their business, check us out. You can go to Agent Dominator dot com and we will do geographic farming for residential agents. We have another service that is more advanced because we do a different have a different approach market and that's for past clients and sphere of influence. We actually guarantee some tremendous results in marketing to your past clients or sphere of influence, or we'll give your money back if you are in the commercial sector investment property. Okay. So that's going to be multi-family, small retail. Then we also do Legian ratio for generating listings. And we guarantee that result there. And if you're in property management and looking for more doors under management and primarily in the single family home and small multi-family, we do specialty work there as well. So love to serve you guys. Also, if you liked this podcast and you have not subscribe to our podcast channel, please do so. If you listen to your podcasts on your mobile phone, then chances are you have some sort of podcast service, like an Apple podcast or stitcher or something. Then just go in and look up. Get cellar's calling you and just subscribe to it. If you don't do that, you can go to YouTube and just go to our video and subscribe to our YouTube channel. I don't think it's called Get Cellar's calling you the YouTube channels, but not you. Just look up, get cellar's calling you on YouTube and subscribe there. Then that way you never miss an episode. [00:51:07] That's right. All the great ways to stay in touch. Thank you so much for putting your time and effort into this call today. I think we're about out of time for this podcast call. And I do wish all of our listeners tremendous success, Beatty and I both. And that if we can help you in any way, please reach out. And we wish you all a great day and we'll be catching up soon on the next one. [00:51:30] Great. You'll be blessed. Thank you. P065 [/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Mike and Teeg had a podcast back before podcasts were cool – The Fish Schtick, a fishing podcast with Brian Bennett from MoldyChum.com.Now, Mike hosts Wild & Exposed – an awesome podcast for people who are interested in wildlife, photography, and for sure wildlife photography.Mike sent an amazing case of candy, and we dig into it today. We don’t try it all, but we give away a giant gummy hamburger that Mike sent to us.First candy is the Super Cola. Super Japanese. Smells like a cleaning product. Michelle spits it out immediately. Ryan is shocked. Tastes like a cleaning product at first. You have to power through that, and then it’s like having flat generic cola.Ryan, “It’s like an extreme lemon drop dipped in Lysol.”Michelle, “I can’t remember the last time candy caused physical pain.”Ryan, “On some of the trips we go on, you’re in the field for 10 or 15 days. If I had this, I’d gut through it on those trips because you get so hungry for sugar.”This candy came from an Asian market in Chicago. It’s like a bunch of little food trucks, but inside. You order by picture. But in addition to that they have a grocery store, and they have these crazy candy aisles. So Mike went through there, and got the funkiest stuff he could find.10 years ago, Mike & Teeg shot a TV pilot. Michelle helped with one of the early versions. Randy Joe Heaven, Marcia Rubin were the co-hosts.We were going to fish 50 states in 50 days, you’d see it as it’s being made with daily “webisodes.” There would be events every three days or so, so people could be PART of the show. We were before our time – the world wasn’t ready for that kind of thing. We had some network offers but they were bad offers.We were going to start in Hawaii and end in Alaska.The pilot: https://vimeo.com/4668897?fbclid=IwAR3wGAAyGz5ZUKQ8IeoZWKUcpzUzCjh3f_4Y12rcxOAMqe6Tu39-W5i8XYUDifferent Edit: https://vimeo.com/9728709Mike has shot other pilots and full shows – but rather than digging into that, we dug into one of his most recent adventures. He rebuilt a 1987 Toyota truck that he always loved. Then he drove the Al-Can highway from Denver to Anchorage by way of Yellowstone … that’s like 3500 miles. First breakdown happened by the time they reached Yellowstone.Canada is just so vast … and by the time you get to Alaska, you still have 10 hours to drive. You don’t see other people. You might see one car an hour up in the Yukon.There are two routes, they did the northern route because it has more settlements. The other way is prettier, but they wanted to play it safer with this old vehicle.They thought they’d camp along the way, but not knowing if it would have been safe, they ended up staying in little hotels.Mike’s advice: if you ever do it, give yourself three weeks minimum, one-way.Jumping into Candy #2 – another Michael Mauro find. Japanese Flower Kiss Candy. The wrappers are all different colors, but the candy inside all seems to be the same. This is Grandma candy dish candy. It’s good. It’s kind of like the strawberry wrapped hard candies. Fruity and good. Nice. Sweet. Sweeter than a lot of Asian candy. Like American candy sweet.Michelle: “I’ll carry these in my purse in about 20 years.”Mike: “Kind of like grapefruit, passion fruit, lychee.”Ryan: “Too bad it’s not Durian!”Mike started out in biology, and he tells his origin story at Mesa Verde National Park. He chaperoned a photographer in the back country.The gear changed a lot, he was shooting just stills when he went to Antarctica but back then, carried a mix of film and digital.Going to Antarctica on a Russian icebreaker crossing the Drake Passage, one of the roughest pieces of sea in the world. The crew didn’t speak English, so Mike just watched their faces “to see if they seemed nervous.”There were 110 or 120 people on the ship, and the first morning, only 10 showed up for breakfast. The seas are so rough that everyone has an upset stomach. Walking down the halls was like being a pinball in a pinball machine. Laying down in your bunk and looking out the window, you’d see sky … then sea … sky … then sea.Mike was hired not just to take photos there, but to teach people on the way there during the over-seas passage how to take good photos. He was a presenter.You’d expect Antarctica to be all ice. In reality, you see beaches, cobblestones, rocks, grass. The ship would be in the bay, and they’d run ashore in inflatable Zodiac rafts. They photographed all kinds of penguins, seals, whales and birds like cormorants.Since those animals see so few humans, they’re not afraid of us. But the fur seals will run you down.Beaches were surrounded in ice, and glaciers and icebergs calved off all the time. You could gauge if it was a big enough piece of ice to get you wet by if the penguins would run.Teeg can’t resist post-holiday candy, so Teeg had to get us into some after-Easter super discount candy.Russell Stover Truffle Eggs and Russell Stover Sours Watermelon Eggs.The Truffle Eggs are of course delicious.The Sours … it’s impossible to imagine that any company made this with the intention of producing pleasure.Ryan: “This is uncool. It’s white chocolate with sour watermelon flavor, but it’s extremely gross.”Michael: “THE AFTERTASTE!”Ryan: “It’s like someone said, ‘Hey, I got an idea!’ And now they’re fired.”Michelle: “You know how Super Cola started disgusting and then got OK? This starts OK and then gets awful.”Teeg starts out liking it … keeps on liking it … conversation about potted meat … STRUCK BY ABHORRANT AFTER TASTE comes later, and Teeg can barely talk.Meanwhile, Mike talks about eating food in Africa. “You never know what you’re eating. It’s some sort of meat in a sauce with noodles or something.”He gets sick every time he’s in Africa … but he doesn’t think it’s from the food. He thinks it’s from weird germs over there.Eating zoo animals: “I had elephant and I didn’t like it. They cherish it. It was dried meat. I wouldn’t search it out, but I’d eat it if I was really hungry.”The best eating is in Argentina. The best meat in the world.But Mike also lives in Alaska part of the time, so he eats moose, elk and bear. He doesn’t hunt bear, but he gets it from people. Favorite is moose. If you like bison, you’d like moose. It’s the most natural eating.Mike hung out with Sean James, the guy from the myselfreliance YouTube channel for a week. Sean follows the footsteps of Dick Proenneke. He has a cabin out in the wilderness of Alaska.Last show we had Teeg’s brother Ben on, he has the Benstown YouTube channel, he built a cabin and does antique tool restoration.Mike’s taken an interest to watching YouTube channels about guys building tiny experimental planes, and he’s had his share of time flying into the back country in small planes, landing on skis or floats.We rate the candy, talk about Sporting Dog Podcast, and Mike teases a potential future show: our friend Travis Ford recently shot a documentary about a chocolate maker in Guatemala.

All right, gut check fans and everybody at KBMD health. Thank you all for joining us again for a third installment of the COVID file. Dr. Brown and I are here to talk a little bit about the physiology and kind of how people actually get sick. And Dr. Brown actually asked me to do a little role reversal. So can you want to explain a little bit what's going on here?Yeah, so this is COVID files number three, and we got a lot of feedback when Dr. Ackerman and I did 2.5 we're all we did is talk about the gastrointestinal stuff. Then everybody else is in the news is talking about respiration, pulmonary stuff. And so we got a lot of questions about that. And I just happen to see that like, a world renowned infectious disease doctor, Dr. Peter Hotez was on Joe Rogan. And Joe was asking all these lung questions in detail, so I realized that you know, you're an expert in this your training is a crna. This is right in your wheelhouse. So I thought that we could just do some of that. Even on some of these other shows, they're interviewing virality and they're interviewing epidemiologists and they go really, really into the science. What we know that calm is contagious. And we know that the more information you have that can actually calm you down. And that's what we're trying to do in this show. We're trying to get people through this crisis. But I do believe that if you understand the physiology, then it makes sense why some people can get really sick and it makes sense why some people get better. And so you being an expert in this is just perfect. And we're getting questions like this like from a Mike Logzen from Texas. Interesting. We have one of those working for us also. Yeah I know, names like that. Just keep popping up there's Mike Logzen one, Mike Logzen two I wonder if there's a Mike Logzen three.I know, so Mr. Mike Logzen and asked what are your thoughts on why younger people and healthcare workers are getting hit hard as this disease goes on? That's a great question. And in fact very relevant. Newsweek just did an online publication that I received this morning, where it said the over 100 healthcare workers have died from COVID-19 So this is this is an important question. So really what we're going to do with you today is talk about the pulmonary physiology and what happens and when people say, oh, this can affect you, and you get this rapid progression that can be very frightening and different things like that. But just understanding what's going on, I think is the real important thing. So, I just want you to take it away. I'll interrupt. I'm hopefully not too much, because I have a tendency to do that. And if I am just gonna wait I got a slide on that. We'll get to that. SoA couple a couple of quick apologies that we learned in technology since we are all practicing social distancing and Dr. Brown or Ken is, is addressing his patients over in the Plano area I'm trying to help out over here in the in the Denton area. We actually are not together obviously, it's while we're recording like this, so I had to make some really bad drawing slides. Ken, you're gonna love these they are they're really, really artistic. And as I share them with you gonna pull our faces down from the screen. So bear with us, it's not normal. But we'll try to take some breaks in there, we've learned we can't put them all up at the same time at least we're not smart enough to do that. And Ken if I go too deep, if you feel like I'm losing votes just going back, hang with us though. The goal here is to show you how the disease itself is probably going to affect your lungs. And then to get to a point of showing you how we think we can work through it. I'm going to show you the tough parts, but at the same time, what it is that we're hoping to do to really get people through it. So that'sReally even if this is not relevant to you, I I do know where we're going to go with this. And right now, the mayor of New York City is thinking about bringing in a doctor draft where basically they're going to pull doctors out of retirement, they're going to ask doctors in different specialties to try and help out with these pulmonary issues. So you can even forward this to your doctor if you have family or friends that are in the healthcare field. This is something you could forward to them. Because if I happen to get called in, I want to be informed on how to treat people with their pulmonary situation, not just their gastrointestinal. So this this could also be very relevant for healthcare workers, our frontline people.I agree, I agree. And I'm hoping that we can make some make some light of not necessarily light but bring some information that gives some people some comfort. So you'll see here my very first drawing right off the bat did not load the way I wanted it to. So that's a little bit of humor there. And that's about as good as these drawings are going to get. So I'm sorry, these are loans. That little green arrow is pointing up to a diaphragm, just a quick refresher, as a diaphragm contracts, it pulls down on the lungs, giving a negative pressure or pulling air into the lungs. And that's important when you're healthy. You're pulling air in, you're not necessarily having it pushed in some but what you need to recognize is that the lungs are made up of five different lobes the left lobe has two the right lobe has three and every single one of those lobes has tons, literally over 300 million alveoli per lung. So you a 70 kilogram average adult has around 600 million alveoli and that gives you tremendous surface area for oxygen and co2 exchange. That's what keeps us alive and that's what the oxygen keeps us alive in the co2, of course, is our waste gas that our body is pushing out. And if you were to spread it out flat, that equals to roughly a little bit larger than a tennis court, so Ken.Wow, and so the analogy I always thought about this is a tree the main bronchus is the trunk, then you get split, and then it keeps going into smaller branches where the leaves could kind of represent the gas exchange or the alveoli. Do you visualize it like that?Yeah, tree is exactly what they call it. It's a tracheobronchial tree and it runs all the way out. There's actually I believe, 23 generationss of tubes getting smaller and smaller and smaller until we get out to the alveolus itself. So alveoli is all of them. Alveolus is a singular one, don't hold me to it, I often interchange them myself while talking about them. So one particular alveolus. I've just drawn an arrow, it's in the lungs, it's everywhere. But I'm making an arrow and a draw here, because this is what we're really going to get started with on how it all functional I'm sorry, here's the heart. We'll we'll talk about this a little bit later in positioning but know that the heart lies anterior towards the front of your body a little bit, and a little bit over to the left. So but that's where the heart is located as it receives blood pushes it to the lungs receives the blood again and then pushes it out to your body. So let's look at that alveolus. The alveolus right here, you'll see inside the circle, that's actually the external air that we've just breathed in. So that's where our fresh air oxygen, oxygen rich air will come to, and it will be taken up by the capillary. The capillary is the blood supply that's bringing up the gas that needs to pick up oxygen and let go of excessive co2 carbon dioxide, that's the waste gas.So that's the exchange, the oxygen goes in carbon dioxide goes into the little alveoli, then we breathe that out.That's exactly right. And you'll notice, even though my drawings are poor, you'll notice you'll see the capillary here in a moment is going to start to kind of pull away in distance and that just makes it harder for that gas exchange. Inside the alveolus there are two specific cells that we have in there pneumocytes. So site means cells, pneumocyte one offer gas exchange pneumocyte two are there for surfactant, they make surfactant. Now, granted, the there are more pneumocyte twos than there are pneumocyte ones, but the pneumocyte ones actually take up far more real estate for gas exchange but the pneumocyte twos make that very important surfactant which allows the alveoli to expand without collapsing. And that becomes a problem for us as we as we move along. What we've returned to you here in this particular drawing, I've only drawn a pneumocyte two because that's where the infection occurs with the current virus that we're addressing the coronavirus.We'll just say Remember, a lot of people were talking about the ACE two receptor, this is what they're talking about on the news, the these type two pneumocytes have a lot of these h2 receptors. So that's the target. That's correct. I didn't throw that on there. But that's, that's a definite point. H2 receptors are located right there on that type two pneumocyte. The little blue dot at the top is going to represent a Coronavirus. And it's going to attach to this type two pneumocyte. So next what happens we're just going to be reminded here that surfactant is important. It breaks the surface tension. Without it, the alveolus will collapse. Very important. I'm going to remind you a few times about that. So now, the little blue dots inside of the type two pneumocytes represent the replication or basically the the increasing number of viruses that have just now been transcripted. They're they're multiplying, and now it's infected the cell.So just to go back to our very first COVID episode, the virus gets into the cell hijacks, it gets the cell to produce more of the virus. That's why they're growing inside the cell itself.They definitely are. And then this is not what the cell is programmed to do. So unfortunately, the cell is going to rupture and die, and the virus is going to escape to the alveolus. Now I'm going to stop real quick and remind everyone. Remember, I said that there are type two pneumocytes actually out number the type one. So the problem is it's not just one type two pneumocyte in this particular alveolus is is infected, probably most, if not all of them in this alveolus certain thing. And so this is happening all over this alveolus. Well, not only is new virus going to escape. These little red dots I just added in there represent inflammatory mediators, and they carry a message. They are searching for help. And not only that we now have a ruptured and dying and dead cell. So you'll notice I've drawn in here, Ken, what would be inside an alveolus like this? What are these things called? You remember?Yeah, I believe you're going to talk about macrophages now.Yeah, macrophages. Exactly. They are the janitors of the immune system. And he's there to just generally clean up regular debris and cellular debris and then take it in and then basically, it usually gets ushered out or absorbed by left, etc. But what we have now is a crisis situation because it's not just happening at this time to new massage. It's happening probably to most of them. They all begin to be picked up these inflammatory mediators are picked up by the  macrophage itself, and that's going to activate it. It now knows it needs to release some messengers of its own to call for help. And right here is the beginning of something they've been talking a lot about in the news, especially for young people. And that's the cytokine storm. Because these interleukin one, interleukin six, and tumor necrotic, factor alpha are all cytokines. And they are going to be released and picked up by the blood supply the capillary right down here, and they are going to have some immediate local action. And as this is happening, remember I said there are up to 600 million alveoli throughout the throughout your lungs is this begins to happen in this section. Imagine all of the interleukin one, six and TNF alpha that will be picked up by the blood supply and now begin to spread throughout the body. So you can see now they've made their way into the capillary bed, and a few things are going to happen right off the bat. Once they first enter the capillary bed. The capillary itself is going to dilate. That's going to lower the blood pressure, but it's going to increase the blood flow. This happens with injury all over the body we we have an injury, you have swelling, it's very, very normal because you're bringing in other things to help repair. But when this happens over and over again kind of an uncontrollable situation like we're going to talk about, that's why we know that we need to manage this particular situation. The permeability of the capillary itself is going to increase that's going to allow for some fluid to escape the capillary bed, and then begin to infiltrate the alveolus itself. So fluid, also known as blood plasma escapes to the interstitial space, which is the space between the capillary and tissues, and then also goes into the alveolus. So, the permeability or now we've got a leaky capillary bed. Permeability is not necessarily something that is in response to it it is because the capillary basal dilation is stretching it too much, are you aware of how the leaky capillary happens?In a, in a really microbiology term, I think what happens is that those cytokine, if I'm recalling correctly, the cytokine mediators activate endothelial cells, which are the cells inside of the capillary. It actually caused them individually to constrict which makes holes. So if you can think of two large men and suddenly they become skinny men without moving their feet, there's now space between them. Does that make sense?Yes.That's kind of that's kind of how I remember it anyway. But that allows the blood plasma which is normally contained in the capillary bed to then escape go into the interstitial space migrates into the alveolus. And this is not what we want. I'm going to reiterate that surfactant is important. It breaks the surface tension of liquid. Without it, the alveolus will collapse. Well, we just had those type two pneumocytes that were producing surfactant. But now they are beginning to be damaged and not produced surfactant at all. And when they were producing it, they were producing the correct ratio, which meant that for the fluid that was there, remember, when we breathe in it's 100% humidity in the alveoli. Once we don't have surfactant, now we don't have enough in the ratio to help keep it open. So losing cells that produce surfactant, and then we dilute the existing surfactant that is going to increase our surface tension. And the potential of collapse of the alveolus is inevitable.So the surfactant the way I've always kind of thought about it when you don't have surfactant, the alveolus they will stick to each other they cannot slide and open up and so it becomes a very in the dumbed down terms like it like a stuck balloon that's that can't expand.That's correct. Now written consolidation up here, it may be a little premature at this point. But we will return to it. This is the method of how consolidation occurs. Like I said, forgive me for my drawings, I just did these and snapped them and loaded in the computer. I knew, I knew I couldn't draw and talk at the same time very well. But regardless, you'll see that fluid's beginning to build up. Little red dots in there represent cellular debris. Also, some virus is still trapped in there. Some proteins which are broken ours are still stuck in there. But remember, I warned you earlier, the capillary beds beginning to pull away, right, the interstitial space is also continuing to fill up along with the alveolus. That pressure outside the alveolus and in the water on the inside of the fluid on the inside, will basically make this alveolus you have the potential to collapse it will not expand nor contract with each breath. It basically just kind of floats as a membrane would between two liquids. I've also drawn oxygen up here at the top and co2 still in the capillary bed. The sheer distance for the diffusion is going to render This alveolus is incapable of gas exchange. That's that...So in this picture, just to clarify the oxygen that you breathe in hits this fluid, because the alveoli is filling up, and it's not getting to the other side where it needs to go.That's correct. It cannot just really won't diffuse that even though macroscopically may look like a short distance. It's it's still far too far for efficient gas exchange for oxygen and co2. So remember, this is what it should look like the oxygen will come in you right next to the alveolus to the capillary co2 goes, goes out O2 comes in. No big deal. That's just not what's happening right now. The next step that happens and takes us to full consolidation is going to be the summoning of these neutrophils another part of our immune system, they normally would come in, and in a healthy IV alveolus would more or less be able to target viruses and other pathogens that could be found within the lung. But in this particular situation, especially with the amount of fluids taken on, they actually become a little bit indiscriminate. And they use two agents primarily: the reactive oxygenation species and various proteases. And instead of a targeted attack, with the dilution here, inside the alveolus it actually just becomes kind of a, a wide away, wide array spray of attack. And not only do they grab ahold of some of the proteins that don't belong there and some of the cellular debris that needs to go. They'll also end up attacking indiscriminately against healthy lung tissue, healthy pneumocyte ones and pneumocyte twos. So when people talk about a bacterial pneumonia, this is the beginning of having a super infection in addition to the damage that the virus has already caused.It is it is and again, Brown and I are not telling you any of this stuff so that you become panicked. But really it's the opposite. knowing what's happening may help you understand number one, what it is that your health care provider needs to do to keep you and your family safe if you happen to find yourself in this situation. And number two, I think here in a moment, as we wrap up some of this, this discussion, you'll see maybe some things you could do at home to outrun some of this.Yeah. So what we're doing, what you're doing is you're setting the stage work that you if you understand the physiology and the pathophysiology, then you can start doing some modifications to try and improve. And that's where we're headed here.Definitely. And again, this is called consolidation at this point. This just basically establishes it's just a word that says that this side has been consolidated, it's not functioning, air will not be exchanged here, we will not have oxygen pick up nor co2 blown out by this alveolus. Now you kind of have to picture not just this alveolus but the entire portion of the affected lung is now experiencing a portion of consolidation. So let's talk about what's happened so far. We've lost type one and type two pneumocytes: one is how we breathe or the gas exchange two makes the surfactant to keep the alveoli open. Our gas exchange, of course is going down. Our surface area, our tennis court size of surface area for us to pick up oxygen is being decreased. And our diffusion distance at the alveolar level is increasing, even for those that haven't been consolidated, right. So we have a decrease in gas exchange. You'll see this little abbreviation I've debated on whether or not to put it up there, they'll PaO2. That simply just represents the pressure of oxygen in the artery. Big P means pressure little a means artery. O2. So that's just a cool shorthand that medical workers use to identify the partial pressure of the oxygen in a particular location. Inevitably, it just means that we have low oxygen and that gives us a word called hypoxemia.Low oxygen.Yeah, low oxygen. Can you just on that note right there because we use pulse oximeters all the time, and even get them at Walgreens, can you explain the difference between the number on the pulse oximeter and the PaO2?That's a, that's a great thing. So on a pulse oximeter that really is only reading the percentage of the red blood cells that are fully saturated. So there are actually four binding sites on a normal red blood cell for an oxygen molecule to bind on to an iron molecule. If all four of the sites are occupied before the red blood cell has delivered it to a tissue, and it will be counted as one that's saturated. So if you have 98% saturation, that means 98% of your red blood cells have all four sites occupied before they deposit one. This is a little bit different. This is actually the carrying capacity of, of the red blood cells and how much of the oxygen is actually present to make a difference. So SPO2 talks about how well the red blood cells are actually picking up the oxygen to take it somewhere. But let's talk a little bit about this. Ken you said that your son went to play in in I believe was in Mexico?Yeah it was Mexico, very high altitude. He was there for four weeks, I think. Yeah, very high altitude. So essentially it was high altitude training in several tournaments.We can use that kind of an example, when he was up there, do you think for one second that his oxygen saturation was ever at risk? Probably not. No. He was saturating them just fine. But what he didn't have was a high enough oxygen pressure. So his body sensed that sensed the decrease in oxygen pressure and begin to produce more mature red blood cells to become more of the bus carriers to pick up more oxygen and take it out. So we probably remained at 99% saturation the entire time, but he actually just needed more oxygen molecules themselves to sustain it because there's just less atmospheric pressure at 7,000 feet.Yeah, and that's what we had to come to that conclusion because when it came back, we he got to work up by his pediatrician. And we were all a little bit alarmed to see that his hemoglobin and hematocrit had jumped way up. And it was in response to being in high altitude. So it was the body's adaption to it.Well, that's I completely agree with that. And that's actually you guys, that's actually a normal thing to have happen. You have a higher red blood cell count at a higher altitude.So now you're going to talk about the thing that's, that's the hard part, which is the work of breathing goes up.It definitely definitely work of breathing goes up fighting this tougher distance of diffusion losing a portion of your lung capacity to move gas is going to increase the work of breathing and then throughout this theme Ken, you're going to see the word work pop up because it works in the complete opposite direction of what's happening in the lungs for someone to more or less recover on their own. So cough is going to set in if it hasn't already, that's going to increase the work of breathing. And don't forget these viruses are pretty smart. That's actually going to help spread the virus. So that's a, that's no good either. Work by the body requires more oxygen again, that's why I'm going to highlight that and just kind of think about that for a moment. If I'm decreasing my availability to get oxygen, but the work and the demand is going up. I've got an intersection of a problem here. And if not recognized soon enough, it could just get worse. So let's talk about why the why hurting your lung and recovering from an injury is probably more important than just hurting your ankle now. This is Mike Logzen's number three. This is his ankle.Yeah, he sent us a picture. He said you can use my ankle as an example. Thank you. Yes. So Mike number three thank you for sending in this photo. And Mike is into jujitsu and he showed me after one of his injuries that he has that ankle twisted, and he said ouch. But the good thing about hurting your ankle, okay? You do get edema just like what we're having up here, the fluid buildup in the lungs, you could get edema have a swollen ankle. But the good thing is I don't have to breathe through my ankle, there is no mouth there, I'm not going to have to draw any air at my ankles, so I can just lay up and rest. The problem with having adema or fluid buildup in the lungs is we're compromising our ability to simply recover. And so that's why it's such an urgent situation. And I didn't I don't think we mentioned this before we moved on here Ken. What we're describing here is a acute respiratory distress syndrome. And so that's ARDS. You may hear people in the news reference, acute respiratory distress syndrome or ARDS. This is kind of more or less getting to the point where we're spiraling a little out of control as far as the lungs are specifically. So let's look systemically or all over the body. Remember interleukin one and interleukin six. Well...Those were the the initial inflammatory mediators set off when the virus attacked the type two pneumocyte, then the response of that is to release these inflammatory mediators.That's correct. And they were picked up by the capillary beds. And now remember, they're not just working locally. If we have a large portion of the lungs, releasing these same mediators, they're going to eventually make their way to the central nervous system or the brain and spinal cord. They're going to trigger the hypothalamus, which will then release prostaglandins, that raises your body temperature. And guess what, that's what we end up turning into a fever. And unfortunately, fever is just going to be more work. It requires more metabolic work for your body. So we are still yet increasing the demand for oxygen. We as we referenced earlier, PaO2 remembers just a simple shorthand for the pressure of Oxygen or the number of oxygen molecules in the artery. It's low. So this is hypoxemia. Now the trigger that Lucas had whenever he ended up producing red blood cells was they his chemo receptors, noticed that they were a little bit low on oxygen carrier, so they produced more red blood cells. The chemo receptors here are going to try that. But in the interim, they're also going to trigger the sympathetic nervous system. And when they do that, that's going to set off anxiety, getting people a little bit worked up, but it's also going to be don't forget the sympathetic nervous system is your fight or flight response is going to increase your heart rate, it's going to increase your respiratory rate. That is just more work. The demand for this oxygen just keeps going up.And all of that just on that last slide there, Eric, remember that the heart rate is that that's compensatory, because it says we're not getting enough oxygen. So if I pump faster, we'll at least get more oxygen around if I breathe in, quickly I'm hoping to bring in more oxygen in the heart tries to pump it fast. And that just becomes a bit of a slippery slope. And that's where you're going to get into right now.You're right. And think of healthy lung at this point. If we were simply just had healthy lung at just this point and these are the triggers that high heart rate and a high respiratory rate would basically put everything at ease because hypoxemia would be solved. That's not what we're dealing with at the moment. So this is obviously a progressive disease, we have this increase in cytokines, interleukin one, six, TNF alpha, you can have what they call SIRS for short or systemic inflammatory response syndrome. Then this is kind of interchangeably been used with cytokine storm, but essentially, this is what's happening. These cytokines are triggering all levels and manners of other problems throughout the body. And what we have because of the dilation everywhere, is we have a decrease in peripheral vascular resistance, that's just the resistance that we have at the edges of our of our water, right, we have an increase in permeable capillaries that Dr. Brown described earlier just means that they become more porous. That's where we're leaking that blood plasma, the fluid when we leave that fluid that decreases our blood volume. And we have this systemic all over the body vasodilation, so all of the vessels have lost this resistance. And it's because all of the vessels are trying to get more of the blood flow, that basically we're running out of that amount of blood.When I did Critical Care Medicine, the way to think of that when the body's when the body's trying to compensate by trying to get more blood to everything. If you open up the arteries, or if they vasodilate, and you can keep up with it. Then you get more blood flow where it needs to go. But if you can't keep up with it, imagine a hose. You know the hose that has a little nozzle on it. You can run water and that the smaller the hose, the higher the pressure it goes through. If you keep putting on bigger hoses, then it just comes out as like a little trickle. And that's what's going on and that's what creates this hypotension or severely low blood pressure.Now it's a it's an excellent visual. Yeah, it's a high pressure with a garden hose. Same amount of water through fire hose. Not so much pressure.Exactly. Yeah.So just like Dr. Brown just described, we now are hypotensive. We don't have that pressure everywhere. So now we're systematically hypotensive. That comes with its own consequences. It's going to retrigger the SNS as if we didn't need more agitation.SNS-sympathetic system: fight or flight.Thank you for batting clean-up there. Sympathetic nervous system, there poor profusion of organs. This is where things begin to really kind of spiral out of control if we didn't get there soon enough. Okay. So we we have the lungs that's that's a set of organs right? But we've got brain, heart, liver, kidney, also very, very important. If we have poor perfusion we risk getting multi system organ failure or msof. So kidneys liver and heart. Here's here's the the reason why I'm highlighting these is these are the ones and almost in this order which will begin to throw off markers that we can we can sample for with laboratory with laboratory work and see the status of a patient. As kidneys begin to lose perfusion, they will increase our blood, our blood, blood urea nitrogen will begin to increase as well as the creatinine and it's simply because the pressure is not great enough for to be cleared by the kidneys. And the problem is is those are toxic at high levels. We don't we don't need those circulating like that. The liver itself will begin to sustain some acute damage because it's not being perfused and the wastes aren't being carried away. So we have an increase in AST increase ALT and an increase in bilirubin We also may end up detecting later as we progress an increase in C reactive protein. More interleukin six, just in case we didn't have enough of that circulating around your, your liver guy here is going through us and interleukin six as well as possibly some fibrinogen. And then if we get to this point and the heart begins to not be able to perfuse, the myocardium or the heart muscle, the heart could begin to throw off some chaperonin or CKMB markers, very similar to what we would test for for somebody who's had a heart attack. Or they may also, unfortunately be at the point that could suffer uh...Looking at this looking at multi system organ failure. When I was a resident or when I was a medical student, you'd show up and you have to do rounds. And so you'd have your patient the attending would show up. You'd go 24 hours, what's gone on the last 24 hours you tell them you're like okay, well we've got blood pressure has consistently been dropping, we either try and keep it up or we keep an eye on it. BUN has gone up creatinines gone up. We've got a slight bump in the liver test. So far troponin is normal. And that's almost how you would say it because you're like, we're heading there. We have to stop it before. Because once that heart once you start having a heart attack, that's your last. That's that's the thing that's going to really give up, so...No joke. There's there's a, and let's reiterate, before we get to this point, this is why we want you to know what's happening. We don't want to get to this point. We're going to reiterate what we want to steer away from.This is why whenever they talk about the healthcare resources, why it's so important, because one thing that I want to get out there right now, because we're learning data about COVID19. And now it looks like we're getting close to 30%. I've seen some studies when you're looking at the data of young people getting it not dying, but needing hospital facilities to stop them from going into multi-organ failure. So it is no longer just very old and sick people, they just have, they already walk in before all this starts happening with some other underlying problem. We believe that's why they go into multi-organ failure quickly. So this is relevant for everybody, that this is why we need to make sure that we continue to practice social distancing so that we do not overwhelm the health care system 100%.That's, that's what we're trying to work against, for certain. So let's look at this patient right quick. We've had a decrease in oxygen. Remember, our lungs are damaged. And I've kind of just made a summation of the workload, these are the demands, we've increased the work on the work of breathing, the fever, the heart rate, respiratory rate, the anxiety, not to mention, the organs are starved for it. We've got hypotension everywhere. We're in a little bit of trouble here. So come in, whenever, certainly when it's appropriate, and you have the right signs and symptoms which we've addressed in in the COVID files one and two and two and a half. But what will happen if you end up getting managed in this particular situation, first, they're going to try to find out how much fluids that can give you to resuscitate some of that blood volume. And it's not just as easy just giving you what's missing because remember, we have permeable capillaries, giving too much of fluids. This is a delicate balancing act, giving too much of the fluids could actually exacerbate or make the problem worse with some of the interstitial fluid bonds. So we'll be using some medicines as well. Some medicines that will help what we call pressors to bring your pressure up some diuretics to help pull off some of the excessive fluid. So there's there's a significant balance there, butIt just shows why people like you get subspecialty training and ICU doctors and pulmonologists that anybody that works in a critical care unit. That's why it's so important. They're really good at this and there's an art to it, and it requires definite increase learning not just this is what's a little bit scary. If they ask a gastroenterologist like me to come in and say, hey, look, we're losing people, we need your help in the ICU. One of the reasons why we're doing this is because as a health care worker, I feel like I need to refresh myself on things that I've not done in a long time. That's a really good point, because a lot of what you do is a long term solution as you take care of the patient and a lot of what I do both in anesthesia and then whenever we were doing critical care is, it's very acute. It's very short term. Most of the medicines we use are, I mean, they're they're instant, they're in and they're gone, right? So it's very much like that. So what happens after this is fluids and medicines aren't going to do it. Well we need to ventilate, which is how we breathe, duh. But if you can't do it on your own, we're going to look at mechanical ventilation. That essentially means that we're going to have to insert an endotracheal tube to control the airway now. Ken at a later time or if we have enough time today, we can talk about some of the alternatives between just breathing room air to this but for this particular episode not to get too far, let's just go straight to ventilation if that's okay.Absolutely, yeah. Okay. Because that's that that's what everybody's been hearing on the news also is just we're gonna run out of ventilators.Well, yeah. Very, very good point. So some of the other stop gaps in between the cpap, the bipap and in high flow in the tents over the head. Those are all great if they work. I mean, goodness gracious, high flow nasal cannulas absolutely but there's there's peculiarities with each one of them. The critical part here is we just don't have enough ventilators if anybody gets pushed to this area. So we're going to have to connect that endotracheal tube to the ventilator. And you're gonna love this drawing. I mean, anybody would obviously recognize this anywhere that's that's definitely a ventilator, or a flux capacitor.Yeah, I was gonna say it looks more like a flux capacitor than a ventilator but...The blue represents the endotracheal tube that goes down through the trachea there, but I want to call your attention to one small thing, that little bitty red circle represents a balloon. We...after we put a tube into someone's trachea, we actually inflate this little balloon, and it secures the tube in place. And it gives a true closed circuit meaning air is not breathed around it, we can now control the ventilation. And in this particular case, with such a contagious virus, we can prevent the spread of the virus from coming out of the lungs and through the mouth of nose because it's closed.That was the that was the big argument in the very beginning. Is this just droplets or can this be aerosolized and in the beginning, it felt that possibly if you don't have a closed circuit, then you're allowing somebody to aerosolize it in a room. And now we're putting healthcare workers in a room with higher amounts of virus and so the likelihood of getting infected without proper protective equipment. I think that's why health care workers are our frontline people and they're putting themselves they're heroes because people taking care of these patients especially in the beginning, that's why so many Chinese doctors died when they didn't realize what they were dealing with.Yeah, it's it's a pretty hairy topic all around and the intermediary steps to getting someone from, you know, being able to walk around to the event, where do you stop and is there enough...is there enough PPE for the others outside of this little bitty ballooned cuff to handle that? Some things that we're going to do with and I don't want to get too deep here, but some things that someone would do when they when they put somebody on a ventilator is they would have to look at small measurements, one called tidal volume, that's just the amount of air that you're breathing in and out with each breath. If the if, for instance, the average 70 kilogram person takes in around 500 to 550 milliliters or cc's of air, which with each breath and blows it out at rest,So that that's just your normal breathing. So everybody that's listening to this, their breathing normal, that is your tidal volume. That's what you normally do.Correct. And the amount of times that you breathe in a minute is just a respiration rate. At rest, relatively healthy people, adults about 12 to 14 times a minute. So you can see something here though the bottom two minute volume and PEEP, those are those are our calculations and and therapies that are specific to a ventilator and minute volume is simply the respiration rate times the tidal volume. So if somebody breathes in and out 500 cc's, and they do it 12 times a minute, their minute volume would be six, six liters. Does that make sense?It does. And I think the key here is the PEEP because this now the physiology that you taught in the beginning, pathophysiology. This is where the PEEP becomes really interesting.Yeah. So let's, I'm so glad you said that. So everybody remember PEEP, we're going to address it. This is what the vent can do for us, and that we can't do with without it, okay. So just just looking at what we would do with someone who happens to be sick and dealing with an ARDS situation acute respiratory distress syndrome, we've lost some of the lung availability, so we can't put in the same volumes as normal. So we're gonna have to turn it down. But we want to maintain a relatively close minute volume. So we're going to increase the respiration rate to make that equation somewhat balance out. Now, that's just to get us started. Granted, we will be able to check what we call arterial blood gases and make certain that we're doing it the right way. And we can check our therapy but at the same time to get someone set up. These are some of the calculations that we would make, but what we're going to do is begin to apply PEEP, okay, and I'm going to break that down here in just a moment. But first, you may wonder why am I seeing people on TV or why do I see someone that I know who's being treated for ARDS or specifically COVID ARDS in this prone position. Prone means face down spine to the sky laying on their abdomen or stomach, and getting respiratory therapy. If you recall, I drew the heart earlier in one of the earlier slides, and I showed that the heart is located a little anterior, so towards the front, and a little bit over to the left. But essentially, when you lay on your back, that gravity is still pulling down on the heart, you're you're kind of occluding a good portion of the lungs that lay along the back part of your body. Does that make sense?It does and I think that this is something that we need to get through because this may be early intervention. We're seeing a little bit more of this, and here's why.Yeah, so that's exactly right. And something you can actually do at home, even if you're not feeling great. Recruitment I've written on here, increasing recruitment, recruitment just simply means I can make use of these alveoli all those allow the alveoli everywhere else. If I can use them, I'm recruiting them to be a part, right. So if the heart is more anterior and I'm getting more exposure to more lung tissue that's still healthy, I'm increasing my recruit. So we're going to have to monitor for status after we get onto a ventilator. Like I said before, we're going to look at arterial blood gases. These are just figures that we look at. I'm going to show you the numbers but you don't have to memorize them of course.You make it seem like it's a test.I know, I know, I want everybody to write in email. If you can recall this you can recall this slide. Normal pH which is how we measure our acidity or bass or alkalinity is 735 to 745. CO2 is 35 to 45. That's that's what we breathe out. HCO3 is bicarbonate. Okay, that's what our kidneys are doing to help give us balance. But remember, they're not being perfused so they're not really making it like they need to in our PaO2 we've referenced it several times, but that's the pressure of oxygen in the arteries. It's normally for a healthy person. 80 to 100. Well, this is what it looks like when we run the first ABG, we're going to be acidic, because we're not getting rid of waste gas, and we're not producing enough bicarb. Okay. And so our oxygen is really what we're going to have to get control of first. And then we're going to work towards a better acid base balance as we as we treat the patient.So for non healthcare workers. This is an arterial blood gas. This is a measure when somebody is in the ICU. And these numbers tell a story, depending on what's happening, they say if you're getting slightly better, slightly worse. And by the time what's really cool, as I'm looking at all of this, usually there's involvement of multiple specialties, helping out which is why one ICU person can occupy possibly a critical care doctor, possibly infectious disease, possibly a nephrologist-a kidney doctor, and they all look at these numbers and make decisions and tweaks on the patient. This is just shows how complex a patient in the ICU really is.Without question. Positive end-expiratory pressure. This is our PEEP. This is PEEP. So we drew attention to the few slides back. And if I've done a little bit better job of putting them in the correct order, we would've hopped straight to this. A healthy person when we bring them into, to the OR, and we end up having to use intubation or something like that. Super healthy, you may not have to give PEEP at all. Generally, people end up having, you know, two, three, and all the way up to five. A healthy person can have up to five centimeters of water of pressure and just represents pressure, but just look at the five. And what that does is that holds open the alveolus after you've expired gas. Now this is kind of important in that when we breathe and you're healthy, remember at the very beginning so your diaphragm pulls down, you're pulling air in your chest wall, is expanding out. It's literally pulling an external force outward to create a negative pressure to pull air in. Well, that doesn't happen with a ventilator, we're having to force air in. So we use people and healthy people, just so that we can keep recruitment up of healthy alveoli already. Well remember, right now we're not only fighting the fact that we're pushing air in, we're actually fighting the fact that we've got fluid trying to leak into our healthy alveoli. And if we lose an alveolus to consolidation, it's 99% chance that we are not going to reareate or re-recruit that alveolus we end up just losing it. So somebody who is already in ARDS, we're going to start start at 10 to 12 centimeters of water pressure for P and that's a healthy dose of P and does a few things for us for certain it keeps the alveolus open. It allows us not to give too long of a period of time of high flow oxygen which is 100% oxygen and that's a whole that's a whole 'nother issue. But it really will allow us to save good good parts of the lung. And I should say here Ken, there are possibilities of applying PEEP, where you're not necessarily intubated somebody with a cpap or bipap mask on this solely secure. You can still experience PEEP in that particular situation or even I think some high flow nasal cannulas are credited with some some portions of PEEP.So yeah, so just the whole PEEP thing was always confusing to me when I was studying it, but the way the way that you're describing it, we know that when these alveoli start to go through that whole process that you talked about in the beginning, capillaries start dilating. Well, these, it starts to put pressure on the alveoli. And by the PEEP, you can actually force that alveoli to try and maintain at least some gas exchange so that the leakiness and the fluid creeping in doesn't win. It doesn't completely close off the alveoli.100%. It's this, the PEEP is...you're exactly right. The peak is literally there, not only to keep the alveolus open, but in this particular situation on an ARDS patient, we've increased it because we need that extra help to help keep that fluid at bay in the capillary bed. We're not we've already lost the part of the lung right now during this disease state that we can't re recruit while it has fluid in it and is going through its consolidation phase. We need to maintain what we still have. So I wrote right here, increase area recruitment, maybe. It's a really, really, really slight, maybe. We're doing that but by proning and turning down. We're doing that by oh, and Ken you've seen these beds before, there are beds that actually are are specific for ARDS patients where you lay them in prone, but they actually turn them from side to side and move them around. And that's literally to increase and maintain the area of recruitment,And those are very high level high specialty beds, specifically only for this type of patient. And there's if we are, we have few ventilators, we got even fewer of those real specialty beds.That's exactly what I was thinking. But we our main job here with PEEP, our main job here with the ventilation is to preserve the area of recruitment. And of course with the PEEP like as I mentioned earlier, we want to decrease the need for 100% O2. Some people have even even to ask why. Why would you want to do that? The here's the danger of the fine line here working through mechanical ventilation. Yeah, so to higher pressure. So we want to be able to dial in and give someone enough of the air that they need to ventilate. We've lost part of the lungs, so that's going to increase the pressure if we don't dial back the volumes etc, etc. Just remember, if we are apply too much pressure, we can actually spread ARDS because we're causing damage to healthy tissue. If we give 100% oxygen for too, for too long, we can actually spread ARDS because it leaves reactive oxygenation species, which is exactly what the neutrophils were using to destroy what remained of the virus and unfortunately, healthy tissue. I know this is not ventilators are not like the way I treat a microwave which is just on high every time and just turn it on and let it roll. Ventilators...it's such a it's such a nuanced art. And, you know, and nobody's discussing that on the news where they're like, you know, we're going to run out of vents Well, we're also going to run out of people like you that know how to run these vents. So, you know, and I, this was not to scare anybody, this is not to get too sciency. You and I talked about this. I feel that here on gut check project COVID files, we see that there are going to be some doctors. And when I was watching the Joe Rogan show, they were they were talking about how doctors are stepping up, they're switching and trying to help out in this area. And I know that there are probably some doctors like me that are like, okay, I want to help out. There's going to be or if we get recruited to get in there, then I better do a refresher course. And all I have are a bunch of, you know, really old textbooks that will take a long time to get through. This is just the beginning of something so that they can at least go talk to a family member maybe so that maybe other people will go oh, I understand why my grandpa's on a ventilator now, not necessarily to COVID. This is just what happens. So I really appreciate you taking the time to do that. I think this is the opportunity to teach a lot more people about this kind of thing. And hopefully this will spread with some healthcare workers. So it will make them feel more comfortable.And when I told you that was a a because you only asked me a couple days ago if I could, if I would consider, you know, kind of throwing these together and, and I threw something by you. I said what, what would you think if somebody kind of had an idea on something they could implement that actually would be positioning, but not necessarily related to ventilation? And then you threw out the idea of what how did you say if you feel like you're getting sick, and you're not feeling well get ahead of the curve, lay down down on your stomach...why you kind of talk about...Well, it was just one of those things. So an ER doc did an observation. And he he published something where he showed that he actually published it on Twitter, of a patient on there in the prone position on their phone, kind of said when she was on her back, she was struggling. So when when she rolled over, she could breathe easier. I think one of the problems is when we feel real sick, and we're just laying in the same position the whole time by rolling around and at least laying on your stomach for a bit...then you could switch to your side and back to your stomach. This is the same thing you're talking about this could actually help recruit. And in the early stages might be able to buy a little time. And maybe ER doctors watching this would understand, okay, if somebody comes in, put them on their belly, then we can do some of these other things like high flow nasal cannula, or this this particular guy was looking at it and he was trying to give a whole flow gram of what he's been doing, and preventing people from going on ventilators. So it's a it's a really cool concept. And by understanding the pathophysiology that you explained...now that makes sense, why that could be a way to help people out.It's interesting that you say in that in those terms, too. And what it is he's doing with the flow gram because it reminds me back when I first started helping manage some, some ARDS patients. We were told that it's just not common to have to get into this. It's not commonplace to have to always do ARDS patients. It's usually your larger hospitals that really kind of encounter those right? Yeah.So being reminded of that, I will say that the one takeaway I had from well over a decade ago is whenever somebody is in ARDS, they can't be proned fast enough. They they cannot be proned fast enough, nobody will say that's too early, you know, actually getting ahead of the curve. Recognizing that you're having a loss of gas exchange real estate built, get some for yourself lay down on your stomach begin to breathe. It doesn't matter if you look a little funny. So what saves your life. But if you began to feel sick or have shortness of breath while you're waiting for someone to go and seek help for you, get yourself in that position so I mean, ER, home, waiting to get a ride,, whatever it takes.Because well, yeah, I mean, so if this actually pans out, this may make a big difference, especially if what what he discovered. So we have a lot more cpap machines available and bipap machines, which are just the same thing that many people have obstructive sleep apnea. If what he's suggesting is that he's seen people he'll put prone put them on a bipap or a cpap machine, increase the PEEP. Basically that's what they're doing is increasing the PEEP, put them on a prone position and saving them from going on a vent. There's a lot of people with cpap machines next to their bed including this guy right here talking. I've got apnea, and I wear a little nasal pillow. I know I'm not alone because Chang Raun did a social media post about how people if you have sleep apnea, then you're going to be at risk for developing something, also. So make sure you wear your CPAP machine if it's dusty in the closet.Yeah, that article. I found that really interesting how, how well he described being able to do some of the intermediary steps to cpaps the high flow nasal cannula. I don't disagree with the thing that he's saying the and he even addresses it in there. If you could just simply answer the question of the danger of the aerosolization of the disease versus preventing someone from having to get some mechanical ventilation, but the one thing he uses that several people still do is the rocks equation know the threat. But essentially you're taking some status measurements to see...okay, are we beyond any of these intermediary steps, do we need to move to a ventilation? But I think I think that his piece is...it preserves equipment, it still requires people that don't feel well, they feel like that they're beginning to lose their breath to go seek help now.Yeah, that's, that's, that's the key people are like, well, when should I go in? And, you know, the ERs are trying to say, well, if you've got a mild fever and see if you can ride it out if you can do this, but the second any shortness of breath starts happening, I think you got to get in and get some of this equipment on you to prevent you from going into ARDS. It's almost like you have an obligation to get there before because it's becoming a slippery slope, then.Hey, you know, Mike wrote that question over to you and I and he was asking specifically about the healthcare worker, and younger people, you and I kind of have similar takes on what we think and maybe maybe slightly different. Did you have an idea on what you thought could possibly total theory but just could possibly be lending itself to younger people or healthcare workers? Yeah, I mean, my my view on the healthcare worker is just repeated exposure and repeated exposure and repeated exposure. You took a little different take on it on the workload. So tell, go ahead and tell me your take on that one.I mean, I number one, I completely agree with repeated exposure. I think that somebody who's healthy and they're a healthcare worker, they probably can fend off a couple of small assaults, right. But if it's continuing to attack other healthy pneumocytes, kind of what we laid out today that you're going to initiate a cytokine storm, unfortunately for somebody else who had they just small, you know, had a small encounter probably wouldn't even notice that they have been contaminated. But yes, the workload, ultimately, that's, that's the sign of failure for really any organ system is their workload, and there's just not enough supply whatever that supply happens to be for any one of our organs. So when the lungs just simply cannot produce and share enough oxygen for the rest of the body, but the rest of the body is churning and it's programmed responses to basically kind of amp up. It's a tough scenario to work out on one's own without some medical intervention for sure.Mm hmm. And that's it. So that's a really good point that maybe the healthcare workers themselves number one, repeated exposure, but number two, are still yeah, they're still running around still, you know, busting their butt and, you know, maybe subtle changes in that tidal volume like you're talking about is really what what starts the downhill, slippery slope. So, but it's so you know, the whole point is to educate on this and hopefully, if a healthcare worker gets something out of it, that's why we're doing this one. Normally, I think you and I try to be a little bit more lighthearted and jokey but I asked you as a favor to me to refresh my memory. So thank you very much for doing that. I've I'm dusting the cobwebs off, but I think that...If you have any specific questions and if I can answer them, shoot, I don't mind answering questions about vents or any of that kind of stuff. So any questions about any of the episodes you know, you can always email us at kbmdhealth.com go to contact us and let us know or gutcheckproject.com same thing. Well, probably...You know what, I mean I think that's thing once we get on Instagram, I have a I would like if anybody is a healthcare worker, a respiratory tech or an ICU doctor and ICU nurse and we got something wrong let us know because...Oh, yeah. This is this is not you know. My specialty is a gastroenterologist so this is a learning curve for me on this one, but yeah, I think we did. We're right at about right at about 55 minutes or so. So we try to keep this around an hour we you know, and see what we can do and you covered a lot of material in an hour, so that's awesome. That is absolutely awesome.Hey, man, my dry erase board is worn out.Yeah. Oh, Yeah, because you would have to erase...oh, you only had one.Man it was it was it was draw, take a picture and then wipe it away. Yeah and unfortunately I didn't have I didn't have Gauge or Mac available to help me kind of sketch those out because those are really really rough Picassos I just threw together.Yeah and you know what it looks like your drawing skills were just starting to improve if you would have done a little bit started looking like real lungs. If only you knew how long it took me just to print the words I used.Well, that's awesome. All right, well, I'm gonna call this our COVID-19 file number three in the books. Share it with somebody if you think that they could benefit from this information. So great job, Eric. We'll see y'all next time. Thank you.Take care.

Tips on how to gain confidence in public speaking with Mike Acker When it comes to public speaking it's either confidence that's holding someone back or understanding that's holding someone back. Communication is currency. It's the currency we use in everything. Ultimately, anytime someone's giving a message, you are the message. A huge aspect of speaking. It's "Let me help you get what you want." _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ SHARE THIS EPISODE: HOW TO GAIN CONFIDENCE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING [just click to tweet] HOW TO GAIN CONFIDENCE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING When it comes to public speaking it's either confidence that's holding someone back or understanding that's holding someone back. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Doug: Well welcome back listeners to another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. In-studio today, I've got joining me, Mike Acker. Now Mike is a speaker, a leadership coach, he is a best-selling author, he has over 19 years of experience in speaking in leadership development and organizational management. In our conversation today, he revealed what was shocking to me but maybe common knowledge to you is that confidence comes from your identity. And one of the biggest issues that speakers have is confidence. So Mike is known for his authenticity, his humor, and his engaging presence. He specializes in fostering personal and organizational awareness, allowing the audience to personalize his presentations. And I'm sure you'll get that as you listen in to our conversation. Doug: His expertise is in communications and leadership and he's drawn a wide range of engagements, including executive teams, emerging leaders, not for profits, churches and public schools. Well hey Mike, welcome to the Real Marketing Real Fast Podcast today. Mike: Thank you so much, Doug. Great being here with you. Doug: I'm super excited to talk to you. I've done some speaking. Not that it doesn't scare me every once in a while, but I still like to get out there and share my message. So you're the expert on this, so you do you want to give our audience just a little bit of background on what you do and how you help your clients? Mike: Yeah, absolutely. It started really with me being a speaker for many, many years. So after traveling around doing conferences, doing workshops, speaking at churches and all these different environments, I started leading. And as I started leading people, I had a lot of people come to me and say, "Mike, can you help me get better?" And so people were [inaudible 00:01:44] just to show up at the church that I was leading at the time. And I would train speakers up and help them out, give them some feedback and it was really from this faith perspective. Mike: Then as time passed, I started seeing that there was a need outside of the realm of the small world that I was living in. That people in all these different environments were needing help as communicators, as leaders, as CEOs, as executives. And I started developing little by little, just working with them on a speech here, speech there. But as people came, we started talking about, "How do I develop confidence? How do I do this? How do I do that?" They brought questions to me and I started writing that content. This turned into a book, so I wrote a book called Speak with No Fear. That's one of the biggest aspects that people would come to me, would be about, "How do I speak without feeling so anxious and nervous and I want to throw up. How do I get over that?" So I wrote a book about that. Extremely well received, picked up by Forbes. I wrote a second book on how to write a speech. So all this together created really this whole company that I developed on how can people take their potential and turn it into their actual? Mike: So I do that speech coaching, through programs, through books, through workshops. Helping people take their potential as a speaker, their potential as a communicator,

To help you pass the time during this weird and scary quarantine, we'll be dipping into our back catalog of Beerists Minis to keep you entertained between our regularly scheduled episodes! Recorded Feb 12, 2018 The Beerists Mini 215 - All The Beans Because of Justin Frick, we got Sixpoint's Four Beans and Five Beans! So Mike got us some Three Beans to compare them with. And Rubio brought some frickin churros to pair with them. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or point your podcatcher to our RSS feed. You should also subscribe to our YouTube Channel. Support us by making a per-episode pledge at patreon.com/thebeerists and get some sweet rewards! Follow us on twitter, facebook, and instagram. Want to send us beer? Check our beer donation guidelines, and then shoot us and email at info@thebeerists.com

In today's part two of two Chuck is talking once again to Mike Nunez about his tips for being a successful buyer. We first heard about Mike's nine tips for a successful acquisition, and today he delves into the types of things he looks for in a business he is considering for purchase. We're also diving deep into one tip that Mike shared on part one of this two-part series. Finally, Mike also shares some great efficiency tools he's loving these days. Episode Highlights: What Mike looks for when buying a business. What he brings to the business with his own expertise. Examples of things that stand out to Mike in a listing. Advertising account criteria he checks for in a potential new business. Goals and intentions he has and the opportunities he looks for when on the hunt for a business. The importance of keeping criteria lists. Tips for content sites looking for affiliates. Certain synergies to look for in a search. Lessons Mike has learned through his acquisitions. Tools Mike is using and recommending these days. Transcription: Mark: Chuck in the last podcast episode that we had we had Mike Nuñez on. He offered nine very actionable tips on how to be a very good buyer; how to be a buyer that can win deals by having the right disposition. And I know you guys talked; you guys are friends, you live close to each other there in Florida and all that. So you guys are friends and naturally, your conversations are long but also Mike's got a ton of content to share with us and you guys got into a second episode. What can we expect from the second episode with Mike Nuñez? Chuck: Yeah, so let's start off by saying if you haven't watched the first one or listen to it make sure you do because it kind of leads into this. On this one, we talked about what are the types of things that he's looking for as a buyer and you should be able to get some stuff out of that to help you figure out maybe some ideas for the types of things you're looking for. We also talked about; there was like one tip that we gave that he gave us somebody at Rhodium conference a year or two ago and it gave that guy a 25% boost in his revenue like overnight. So that was a nice little take away there and then at the end of the call, one of the things I always like to do is just ask for any special tools or things that he uses so he gives us a list of additional tools he uses so a pretty little bonus at the end. Mark: Fantastic. Mike is a great guy. I'm super glad that he was able to come back on the podcast. Let's get right into it. Chuck: All right welcome back everybody this is Chuck Mullins here with Quiet Light Brokerage and this is part two of a two-part segment with Mike Nuñez. Welcome, Mike; welcome back. Mike: Thank you, Chuck. Thanks for being accepting of my long-windedness. Chuck: No, I think we had a lot of great stuff in the last one. If anybody didn't get a chance to watch it you might want to go back and watch that one first. What did we end up on; nine super-secret tips? Mike: They go to 9, yeah 9 super-secrets. Chuck: 8 or 9 super-secret tips of how to be a great buyer which Mike Nuñez is a great buyer. Now we wanted to segway in and Mike wanted to make sure that everybody know that he's not wearing, or he is wearing the same suit but only because we're recording these back to back because the last one went pretty long. So you still look great Mike. For anybody who didn't watch the last one, Mike purchased a custom-tailored suit business from us so this is probably why he's wearing the suit because I've never seen him wear a suit before he had purchased that business. So he's definitely stepped up his wardrobe game since then. So today we wanted to talk about what you're looking for when you buy a business and maybe some of the lessons you've learned along the way. So again maybe let's start off; before we jump into that just give a brief introduction for anybody who didn't watch the first part of the series about you. Mike: Well, so I think it's important if you're listening to this one you probably should listen to the first one first because it does set up a lot of the things that we're going to talk about here. But for those that just don't listen, I've been in internet marketing for about 20 years now. I spent most of it working for an agency or owning an agency. I worked for Google for four years in their paid, search division. And so today I own a company called AffiliateManager.com that manages affiliate programs as well as the performance company which manages paid search for companies as well. So that's the super brief synopsis. Chuck: Perfect. So let's jump into what is it that you look for when you're buying a business? Always people come to me and they; Chuck what kind of business should I buy? And I say okay well what are your interests, what are you good at? So I think you probably you're looking…well, let me just let you tell what are you looking for. Mike: Yeah, so I think it's important to say what I look for or what we look for; so I do have a pretty solid team around me but what we look for is going to be very different than what somebody else looks for. And so please take that with a grain of salt; everything that I'm going to say today and I think is important for everyone to just recognize, just be self-aware what is it that you are incredibly good at? If you're good at sales go find a company that has an incredible product and but they're bad at sales and you plug yourself in and you now have an incredible business overall. Or if you're fantastic at operations go find a company that's selling like crazy but their operations just can't keep up with all the offers and plug yourself in there and that's going to work. I like to say that real opportunity is at the intersection of two different expertise or two different types of expertise. So for me, it's online business and online marketing and I'm not so great at everything else. So I'm not an operations person, I'm not a finance person so I don't look for companies that are lacking in those areas. I look for companies that are strong in those areas and that are; I don't want to say lacking because I think that's potentially disrespectful to either the people that I purchased businesses from or will in the future but it's more where I see opportunity where they wouldn't know unless they worked at Google for several years or they wouldn't know unless they've been in online marketing for 20 years or they never had an affiliate program. They never thought about it and we're incredible at it. So plugging what we are really good at into things that maybe they've tried that they're above average at because you have to be above average if you're going to own an online business but they've spread themselves so thin that they couldn't be an expert at just one thing. Another nice side effect that I've seen with buying these businesses, some of the previous owners they just worked so long and hard in the business that when you're so down in the weeds like that it's hard to pull yourself out and kind of take a 40,000-foot view picture. When acquiring a company it's almost a natural thing that happens along the way and you start to say okay let me take a step back and look at this not so closely; so close I can't tell exactly what this is and what's going on. And then as you start to peel that back and say okay this is something that the previous owner did, is this something that I need to take over, do I bring the value? The previous owner either maybe they enjoyed it, maybe they liked it, or maybe they were really good at it but I'm not and so the answer there is who else within the company can take that over. And I got to say that's probably one of the biggest benefits of purchasing an online company not only for the buyer but for the seller that they're able to peel themselves out and all the while that's the transition of okay these are the daily duties that this person does and this is who can take that over. So the new buyer; so myself as an example can go focus on what we're good at. So with that caveat to what it is that you're asking some of the things that I look for and I think just another quick note on this; this is an ever-evolving list, just because I've written this today doesn't mean that there's not more to come. Every time we go through a business or every time actually we have a call we run into an issue with the current business. I say okay that sounds like an opportunity that when we purchase the next business that we need to look at and say can we help there. So some of these are super simple and most listeners might say oh well that that's kind of common sense. Well, it's not always common sense. Somebody on this call is going to really or somebody listening to this podcast is going to really benefit from it but I listed because it's things that I want to make sure that I go and check every time that we're looking at a business. So, for example, we are like I said really good at online marketing specifically affiliate marketing and paid search. So we'll go look do they have an affiliate program? Are they overpaying? Are they not paying out commission based off of the influence that each affiliate had on that actual transaction? It's actually super interesting to see how much people overpay for things. And even more interesting to see when they're underpaying affiliate. So for example affiliates, they are business just like you, just like me and they want to maximize their revenue for their inventory. A lot of people get stuck and they look oh my competitor pays 5% commission, that's what I'm going to go pay. But a really good affiliate is equivalent to an upper-funnel page search keyword. And if you're paying a two to one for an upper funnel page search keyword; let's use my custom suit business, if I'm willing to get a two to one for the keyword custom suits or men's custom suits, if I'm willing to take a two to one return on ad spend for that I should be willing to pay an affiliate who is upper funnel; who's educating customers about me, I should be willing to pay them a 50% commission because they're upper funnel. Chuck: Alright so that makes a lot of sense to use something that you do on a day to day basis with your main business to look to acquire a company. So can you give some examples of specifically what something you might look for is? Mike: Sure. I'll give two examples one of where we succeeded at this and one where we failed but then you use that failure to learn and regroup. So the first business that we acquired we identified that there was a significant amount of overspent. It wasn't the previous owner's fault. They had hired an agency who was just; they were doing good. I would give them a six out of 10. But within 20, 30 minutes we can evaluate a Google Ads account and say we can save this account 10, $15,000 a month. Chuck: And you were talking about like an Ad Words account as opposed to affiliate stuff? Mike: Correct. Yeah, a Google Ads account that maybe this ad, the Google Ads accounts is spending 50, 60, $70,000 a month and if we can look in there and say we can save 10, 15, 20,000 on this and still get the same level of sales based off of our expertise we're adding 1 to $200,000 straight to the bottom line; straight to EBITDA and we did exactly that. We actually just finished reviewing January through October and we actually generated more sales than the same period last year and we spent I think it was $160,000 less to do so in that period. Chuck: It kind of goes against the thought of ad expenses are going up, right? There's more and more competition every day for ads so people think that but yet you're able to cut ad spend and make more money with it. Mike: That's 100% correct. You have to know what you're doing. There are very, very few good paid search companies out there. And I know because I used to work with a lot of them when I was at Google. Kevin who's on our team; his job was to go out and train agencies on how to appropriately use Google Ad Words. Pat who's the mastermind on our team has been doing Google paid search since Yahoo or as Yahoo started before Google was in existence. So it's just such a level of expertise that we have on our team overall that we can go and then apply and get these level of savings overall. And again it's straight to the bottom line and we take that money; the first acquisition was partly done via an SBA loan and the savings that we've got doesn't quite cover the SBA loan but it's about 75% of it. It's almost like we acquired the company for the price of the down payment and a much smaller SBA loan so to speak. So that's got to be our number one criteria; same thing with an affiliate program again with the first acquisition they weren't doing attribution based commissioning. It was a smaller effect on the overall business. We probably saved somewhere between 30 and 40,000 for the entire year on that one. So it's again a much smaller effect but that's a part-time person. That's an initiative that we can go fund now because we're saving 30 to 40 grand that we wouldn't have to spend otherwise. Chuck: So let's call out specifically there what it is you're looking for. So Mike looks at a company, requests access to their ad account, and then Mike looks for what? Mike: So in their ad account I'm looking at are they using negative keywords appropriately, what bidding algorithm are they using on Google, what matching types are they using, are they using segmentation correctly. And this is all super 40,000-foot level things but as Pat, our behind the scenes masterminds like to say, a poorly run paid search program is typically death by a thousand paper cuts. It's not one of these things. It's a thousand of these things that we meticulously go and identify, find, correct, and improve. Chuck: Alright so you will go into an account, you see all these things and they're doing everything right does that mean okay it's a great company I'm not looking to buy this one; like are you specifically, if there's not something you can fix you're not going to acquire it? Mike: Yeah, that's a fun question. The good news is for me at least I've never seen one. That's good. And to be fair I've seen; when we are getting an RFPN for the agency business I've seen two or three that were so well run that we tell them we can't help, they're doing an amazing job. You're going to look to us for growth in three or four months and we're not going to deliver because your current company is doing fantastic so don't leave them. But when acquiring a business and the research that I do before making an offer I have not yet come across that. If that were the case yes it's not a kiss of death but it is a factor in whether or not we feel like we should purchase the business because we know that there's so many out there that do it so poorly. Investing; I know I'm not teaching anybody on the call anything new with this but investing is where's the next best place to spend your dollar? And if they're doing a bad job with paid search that's a good place for me to spend my dollar because I know we can fix that. If they're doing an incredible job well there's probably a better place for me to go spend my dollar. Chuck: Sure. And I don't think it's a negative thing for you to say nope I'm just going to move on to the next one they're doing everything right. Like you're looking for specific things in order to want to acquire and like you said you've only got so many dollars to spend. You need to place it where it's going to do the most good for you. And if somebody else is doing everything right like that's not your area of expertise to grow the business. Maybe again they're not doing sales well and that's not what you're specifically looking at so sales is where the person that is going to end up ultimately acquiring the business is good at. And there's also people who maybe they don't have necessarily an expertise at something and they're just looking for an overall good run business that can keep chugging away for the years to come. And that's not a negative like just because you don't have some really specialized thing that you're good it doesn't mean that buying a business would necessarily be a bad idea for you. Mike: Yeah it's one of those things begin with the end in mind, right? And if the if your end goal is that you want a super stable business but it's not going to grow because everything is so well optimized and you're willing to pay the same multiple for it and you just want to kind of run that business day to day as is without expectation of growth then that's it. And there are people that want that. I would even consider a business like that if it was strictly almost a lifestyle business. But the businesses that we're buying; our goal, our intention is to take this 15 million dollar company and turn it into a 25, 50, 100 million dollar company and so there has to be opportunity when we're purchasing and the bigger the opportunity that we identify that we can do so fairly quickly with what we have the more we're willing to pay for it and the more we're willing to compete for it overall. Chuck: So we were talking recently we had lunch and you said that you recently discovered something with one of your businesses that was something you know I'm going to start looking for that and it revolved around shipping. Do you remember what we were talking about? Mike: Oh yes I have it. It's on my list. And that's funny and that's yet another reason to have a list right, right? Chuck: Right. Mike: And so as we're talking like; I know I'm not alone in this, right? I know you're like this Chuck. I'm sure you, the person listening to this right now is the same way. And I'll wake up in the middle of night and I feel like sometimes not thinking about things or telling yourself think about this in the back of my mind and you'll solve problems; like I'll get things out there just to solve them. I'll wake up in the middle and be like that's the answer to this and literally I'll roll over, I'll pick up my phone, and I'll just type a note to myself and say this is the answer and I'll go back to sleep. And the one that you're talking about is we have a warehouse for both of the business but the one that we're talking about now has a warehouse, a large warehouse; tens of thousands of square feet, I'm not sure exactly how big it is but we were getting fined by the shipping company because the dimensions of our packaging was incorrect. And so as we printed out the shipping labels for it, it was off maybe by an inch or whatever it was. And so when we send it to FedEx who was our shipping carrier and they would measure it we would be off by however much and they would actually fine us and so it added to tens of thousands of dollars in fines that we are receiving; not shipping costs, fines because our dimensions were wrong. And so for less than $10,000, we purchased a dim scanner and basically eliminated that. That dim scanner pays itself in one to two months and then from that point forward we now recovered yet another 20, $30,000 back. So you see the recurring theme here; paid search, this is how much we can save by doing it better, affiliate, this is how much we can save by doing it better, shipping, this is how much we can save by doing it better and then here's the freaking key. Like this is the thing though; don't just sit on that. And again I guess this depends on your goal. If your goal is to just absolute squeeze every penny out of these companies that you want then go and do it. My goal is growth and to turn these companies into large companies so that one day I may list with Chuck and get a great multiple on these companies. But take those dollars that you're taking and now do all of the things on the list; in that plan and the things that the previous owner said I could never afford, I could never get to, I can never pay somebody to do it. Now you found the funds to go and actually do those things. Use that money to fund that growth. Again I'll refer to Pat who runs our paid search; he calls that feed the winners starve the losers, so just taking the wasted money and putting it back into reinvest on growth and winning. Chuck: So with the shipping fines that you discovered how long have you been running this business; it's been a year and a half? Mike: A year and a half, yeah. Chuck: And you just discovered it now. Is there something that you are having; we don't know what we don't know, right? So we don't know what to look for. Is this something that you could have identified on day one to have seen even more value? Mike: Yeah, thanks for pointing it out Chuck. It's always painful to look back and say oh we could have made an additional 30 to 50 grand in the last 12 months if we just would have found this. Chuck: And this is probably not a common problem, right? But it's something you're going to look for in the future. Where would they have identified that; what due diligence would you have done in order to have seen that? Mike: Yeah, looking at the shipping invoices and seeing exactly what those are. And there are some pretty cool companies out there that will A) look at that for you and B) they'll actually monitor your shipping and make sure that it arrives on time. There's one called Late Shipment it's I think the one that we use; LateShipment.com and if FedEx doesn't deliver within the agreed-upon time; the one to two days, they'll actually refund; we get a refund on that shipping cost. So that's another example if they're not using; if you send out a million dollars or if you pay a million dollars in shipping costs every year and I think I know ours is above a million but I'll just use that, so a million dollars, if you can recoup 2, 3, 4% that's 20, 30, $40,000 back in your pocket that just appeared out of nowhere. So that's another one on my list. So are they using a dim scanner? Are they getting fined for this? Are they using LateShipment.com and getting a refund on anything that's late? Again stacking up this $160,000 in savings in paid search, $40,000 in savings in affiliate, 30 to 50,000 in dim scanner, late shipment another 30 to $40,000 just stacking and stacking and stacking. Another one is credit card fees; are they using a good credit card process? Have they negotiated their rates since they grew from zero to 15 million dollars in sales? And if they haven't that's an opportunity like just a one or two; what do they call them? Bits I think is what they call it but it could mean a huge difference in your overall company. Just one or two bits is 15 to $30,000 on a 15 million dollar business. Chuck: And so in your defense, I think on the shipping thing the company that you purchased did have one of those companies in place that were looking at the delayed shipments but that company wasn't looking at the penalties you were receiving. Mike: That's right. Chuck: So even if somebody is using a company that is monitoring the late shipping and getting those refunds they may not be looking at the fees which is strange. You think they'd be doing it but they weren't. Something I've heard you say at conferences when looking at it from a different type of business, so right now we're kind of talking about e-commerce but you also work with people who are doing content sites and their affiliates with other people. So what's your number one tip if you purchased a content site that makes money off affiliates; what's your number one tip for those people? Mike: Go ask for a raise. Chuck: What does that mean? Mike: Go to the affiliate management; either the advertiser or the affiliate management company who's managing them and say I want to make more. And there's many ways that you can position that. One is if you're a content site just know that my affiliate company, AffiliateManager.com is always looking for more content sites. We want to bring that value to our clients and you are in a position; it's a content site's market, let me put it that way. We all want what you have and some make the mistake of because they've been beat down and offered 1, 2, 3, 5, 10% commissions in the past day they just turn away affiliate marketing. Don't do that. You're leaving money on the table. If you find a good advertiser or a good affiliate management company that knows what they're doing and they know that this content site is upper funnel and bringing incremental business to the table they're going to be willing to pay for that and they might pay 20%, 25%, 30%. One of our clients pays 100%. Another one pays up to $150 for an acquisition and they might make zero on it. So it's just one of those things where you have to go and be willing to ask for a raise. And again a good affiliate management company they're going to look at the incremental value, we; not to get too much into us because I know this is more about acquisition but we actually have an attribution tool that we built because it didn't exist that shows where in the clickstream each of these sites are. And if it's a content site going back to your point and we look at their overall numbers and 70% of the time they're the first touch for anybody who's making a purchase on your site, yes we want that incremental traffic and sales coming from that content site. So to you content sites out there you are in a position of desire. We all want to work with you more and go and ask for raises. Somebody who recognizes your value is going to very much be willing to pay it. And if they're not go find somebody else; they're going to be willing to pay it. You are valuable. Chuck: And just to give an example of something like that. I've got a number of content sites and one of them the affiliates that I was getting paid from is a Canadian company and they send me a Canadian check. So every time I cash the Canadian check I get hit with like a 10 or $20 cashing fee. And it's just like annoying and it's small amount of money but it's annoying so I emailed them and I said hey can you just like PayPal me the money or wire me the money or do something else because I want to get ahold of the $10 fee every time I cash your check and they go oh how about we just double what we pay you? Okay, that'll work. So they really are willing; if they see the value in what you're providing them they are willing to pay more, so just a nice little tip there from Mike Nuñez. Mike: Yeah. And there was a guy Greg; I won't say his last name at Rhodium one year and I said that at a table and one year later he came back and said by that one tip that you just said because he was a content site or is a content site, I have grown my revenue by 25%. All I did; I didn't do anything else but go back and ask for a raise and the revenue on my site grew 25%. Chuck: Amazing. Mike: Free, yeah. Chuck: Alright, so we've talked about shipping, we've talked about affiliate, we've talked about ads, is there anything else specifically that you're looking for when you're acquiring? Mike: Yeah if they're not on Amazon I think that's a pretty obvious one. If they are on Amazon and either doing a poor job or no job at Amazon ads; Amazon ads I probably the biggest opportunity right now for everyone that sells on Amazon. Chuck: And this is kind of new to you in the last couple of years, right? Mike: Yeah. Well, I mean it didn't really exist a couple of years ago or it was very nascent. So it's still one of those things like if you remember Google back in the day when clicks used to be available for a penny or five cents and such. Chuck: Yeah man they sent me a refrigerator. I had spent so much money I got a Google refrigerator. Mike: So I'm not saying that pen that clicks are available for a penny on Amazon but if you incorporate the right system and how to manage it you can gross it; like I'll give you physical numbers year over year in November even those Cyber Monday fell outside of November this year. We grew Amazon sales on that outdoor brand by 50% using Amazon ads. So it's another example of having expertise in this paid search world and finding opportunities within it. Amazon ads; I think maybe that's super-secret number 10. I think we've gotten away from the super secrets but maybe super-secret number 10 and it's probably one of the most powerful ones I see right now available for people. Chuck: So what else are you looking for? Mike: So besides being on Amazon and Amazon ads, me personally I'm looking for a strong operational foundation because I'm not an expert at that. I'm not good at that but thankfully the businesses that I purchase have that. I'm looking for a barrier to entry like how replicatable is this business and what is the barrier that people have to get through? And this is a little bit less quantifiable but this is just a general do I want to be involved in this business; how hard is it for somebody who's just as good at paid search as me or Amazon or whatever, if they just got a hold of my supplier could they replicate this and do I want that? And if the answer is it's too easy then I move on. Is it a learnable industry? One of the things I was worried about with the custom suit company was maybe before purchasing it I wasn't as sharp a dresser, Chuck. Maybe my wardrobe might have consisted of free conference t-shirts but I was worried about that and… Chuck: You're pulling it off still. Mike: Thank you. And once I got into it I learned no this is a learnable industry. I can do this and it's worked great since then. Is it Amazon resistant? And I know that's a little counter to saying are they on Amazon. Is Amazon going to move into that space? Are they going to want to replicate what it is that you're doing? And on the outdoor brand, it's more of we joined to them; we couldn't beat them so we joined them and a good 50, 60% of our sales are on Amazon on that brand. On the suit brand, we're looking to sell accessories; expand our brand awareness because you can't sell custom suits on Amazon and it's unlikely that Amazon is going to get into that realm. So we're thinking how can we use Amazon to expand our brand awareness, generate some confidence in the brand, and yet not have to; since we're not able to send custom suits and sell custom suits on Amazon directly so is Amazon a threat to the business is something that we look at overall. Inventory management optimization; so leveraging just in time inventory because anybody that's involved in an inventory-based business knows that a lot of times your profit can go straight back into purchasing additional inventory. And if you want to realize any profits before you sell the business you've got have inventory optimization. Is the current ownership leveraging that inventory optimization? Are there conversion rate optimization opportunities; have they ever even tried it before? I just had a call today for the suit company and this is going to be ultra-specific but it is an indicator of what we've done. We launched a new cart in early November and we just ran the numbers and today on desktop for new customers we have doubled our conversion rate which anybody knows that the lifeblood of a business is acquiring new customers. So to do that is pretty amazing. Now on mobile, it was pretty static but we've also generated significant amounts of more traffic on mobile to the suit company. So that's a little bit misleading to say that it's exactly the same. Well anybody who knows conversion rate optimization and knows how traffic works; if you increase traffic the quality is potentially a little bit lower and so the fact that we slightly beat our previous conversion rate on mobile is a huge win. So are there conversion rate optimization to opportunities in the acquisition? Here's one that you know is near and dear to my heart, Chuck. What is the current platform; are they on Net Suite, on Shopify, on Magento? Because the one thing I never ever recommend is changing platforms. So can you accomplish all of the things on your list that you want to do on the platform? We use Net Suite as one of them and it is extremely difficult to get changes done but we are not moving. So it's just something that I think everybody should really consider. Or are you on an archaic platform like at Yahoo stores; something that's not being updated anymore and there's seven people in the world that can code to Yahoo stores? Now you're beholden to them. You have to pay exorbitant rates for their development because they're the only one that knows it as opposed to a Shopify or a Magento that developers are plenty. Chuck: If you're on Yahoo shout out to Rob Snell, look him up if you need help with your Yahoo business. Mike: There you go. See I didn't even mean that. That helps. And I think the last thing; us particularly we enjoy custom products, so custom made suits is a really good example or even for the branded products; things that other people makes, turning them into custom products. We really think that that's a good market to be and again slightly more defensible against an Amazon. And then finally this is my last on my company acquisition algorithm that I'll share today just I know we're limited on time is what synergies can you participate in? So if you listen to the last call you heard me talking about a brand that we made an offer on that it was a full price offer, quick close, no due diligence because it was a trusted brand. And before Chuck chimes in, he recommends that you never do that but the reason why we wanted that brand is because it was geared towards outdoor enthusiasts and we have tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of outdoor enthusiasts that come to our website every day. So looking for synergistic brands that are out there to acquire and diversify the income and now not only sell other people's brands but also sell your own brand; white labeling things like that, finding things with opportunities like that, that's the last opportunity that we're looking for in our algorithm. Chuck: Awesome. Alright, so now let's maybe move into what some of the lessons you've learned from the various acquisitions you've done. And you had acquired some stuff before Quiet Light as well. Mike: Yeah. So I think a lot of them are listed on what I just said but I will say there's; because every time I learn a lesson to me it's an opportunity for the next acquisition. So again I will buy another business on Net Suite but I wouldn't have bought the first one knowing what I know now about Net Suite. But now that we've had to learn it, now that we've had to; our developer is familiar with it now and can make the changes that we need and want, now I'll buy another one. And so to me there's an opportunity there, right? It's harder for people to do that than it is for me. It's yet another level of expertise. So that's one thing is a lot of the lessons are kind of listed already in that but there's one I would say recently and again it's with the custom suit business, don't get so caught up in your own expertise. Again we are really, really good at paid search and one of the reasons why is because we're so return focused. A mistake that we made with the custom suit business is we went straight for a return. If a dollar didn't turn into five; I'll just use that as an example, we didn't spend it. And because of that, we saw sales drop. And I talked to the previous owner about it and said hey we're seeing this, why? And he's like well yes cross-device tracking is good however it doesn't capture everything. And mobile devices; think about who buys suits these days, and it's somebody with a mobile life. It's a lawyer that's always in the courtroom. It's a doctor that's always walking about. It's a financial person that's not necessarily sitting at their desk, they're going to meeting after meeting after meeting and where are they searching up for their next suit? Well, it's probably their mobile device. They find it and then they go on the desktop and they go on and they purchase it. And we had pulled back pretty significantly on the mobile spend because the conversion rate just wasn't as good. And so that's one example of us kind of getting in our own way. But to our credit, we were able to kind of step back and say okay we learned a lesson here, let's get better at it and change our approach. And since then that's when we now had some of our best days that we've ever had. So I like to think of it as a lot of these owners or the previous owners they had levels of expertise; they were doing something right and so it's our job as experts that are better at it to take the lessons that they've learned and apply our expertise to it to just throw some gasoline on it. Chuck: Alright Mike so one of the ways I like to usually end these things is just to ask if you have any kind of tools that you use on a regular basis; just some things that can either help with productivity, it could even be outside of work. One example the other day I was kind of upset about it because you ordered the chicken sandwich from Popeye's through Uber Eats so that you didn't have to wait in line and you didn't bother sending me one. That's a great little life hack. So what else do you have? Do you have any tools that you might recommend or any other little things? Mike: I did the same thing with Amazon two years ago when they were operating like the one-hour delivery and we had a hurricane coming to Florida and I just ordered all the bottled water and had it delivered while everybody else is fighting each other at the store. But now that secret's out. That's no longer an advantage but yeah some tools that I like that we use; so for Google Ads, I'll say if you're using things like maximize for clicks run we prefer an enhanced CPC bidding algorithm or a target CPA. We always test to see which one's better. Prioritization, I love Air Table. I got to give a shout out to my business partner Daniel for that. Air Table is a prioritization tool and basically, it can help identify what is the easiest to implement to get the most impactful change that you can make. And so it just really helps to prioritize what it is that you're doing and the changes that you're making to the company because obviously, we all want to make the biggest impact as quickly as possible. I love Grammarly for sending emails so that I don't sound silly. Chuck: That one saves me all the time. Mike: It's so good. I haven't used their pro version but even just the regular version is fantastic. For the affiliate management company, I got to give a shout out to Mail Shake. We love Mail Shake. We use that very often. It's a terrific tool. I love Moz. So the Moz toolbar is something that I use a lot. And then I think we use a lot of the things everybody else uses like the Evernotes and Google apps and things like that. So I think the first ones that were probably some of the others may not have heard them. Chuck: Awesome. Well, I think everybody who's been listening appreciates your time. I'd love to have you back at another time. We can talk about some more stuff once you've hit that next goal of purchase through us we'll talk about that one. But again thank you for the time today and we'll talk to you again soon. Mike: Thanks, Chuck. Links and Resources: Affiliate Manager

Roddy Galbraith is a Professional Speaker, Coach and Master Speaker Trainer, having worked 1-to-1 with around 10,000 different speakers from all over the world over the last 13 years. John C. Maxwell (#1 New York Times bestselling author, coach, and speaker) describes him as the "best speaker trainer he has ever seen, anywhere in the world". Roddy believes that we are all speakers, whether we realize it and accept it or not, because we all interact with other people, all the time. He firmly believes that the best thing any of us can do for our business success, our career success and our life success is to become a better communicator, because it will do more for us than any other skill we can develop. He has spoken around the globe and worked with, shared the stage with and developed programs with some of the very best speakers in the world including Les Brown, Robert Cialdini, Bruce Lipton, Bob Proctor, Wayne Dyer, Bonnie St John, Seth Godin, Nick Vujicic and John C. Maxwell. He has a genuine passion for helping people find their voice so they can stand up and speak out in every different area of their lives. As you’ll tell from his accent, he’s English but now lives in Jupiter Island, Florida with his wife Susan, and their 4 beautiful children. You can connect with Roddy on Instagram @roddygalbraith and find out more at  www.SpeakerPro.com. So Roddy, thank you so much for being with us. You've really made a big impact on me over the last several years and working with you I've been able to apply your teaching not only to myself but to others that I'm coaching as well. So I'm really excited to hear what you're going to share with us today. I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to talk to you Jill and share a message with you and your listeners. So very excited. I thought today what I'd speak on, I have been thinking about this, I think the key to success and happiness really is growth. I think growth is important to one of those things. I think it's particularly true for leadership or anything really, but one of the problems with this is fear often stops us from engaging in the growth promoting activities that we need to do in order to get in the growth. And so if we want to be successful, we have to find ways really. We have to find ways to face the fears or any emotions that might hold us back and get in the way of that. So that's why I wanted to share with you today. Simple process for facing fear, stepping forward into growth in spite of the fairs. I love that. I hear that so many times that what stops people, I'm afraid to fail. I'm afraid that something might go wrong. I'm going to look bad and it perfectly right, which means why. Right? And it stops and it's with everything. So it's not just at work, but it happens at home. So I'm really excited to learn a little bit more. So tell us a little bit more about that. Well, let me start with the words of the German philosopher Johann von Goethe, I'm sure you have heard of many of your readers will have heard of. He said that “if you treat a man as he appears to be, then you make him worse. But if you treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, then you make him what he should be.” You know, as a leader, I think our job is to our team, isn't it, amongst other things? So this quote is particularly true for other people, but I think is never more truer than for ourselves. We need to think about this for ourselves and I think it's far easier to put a 10 on the head of everyone in our team or everyone we meet or everyone, everyone else. We can treat them as if they have already fulfilled their potential. But it's much more difficult to do it for ourselves, isn't it? It's so true, isn't it? I think very often we believe in the potential of other people more than we do for ourselves more than you know, we see our own potential and I think if we think about this Jill, well, I use you as an example. If you imagine someone else taking the actions that they need to take to move forward into growth and to ultimately, that will lead them to being successful.  It doesn't really change the way you feel when you do that, does it? You just kind of consider it intellectually. Maybe you think about it for a moment and that's it. But if you imagine yourself taking the actions that you need to take, you know, to grow in order to lead to being successful. When it's you, then it's very different because that forces you to come up against yourself and all your baggage. And so it's a very different situation, isn't it: I fully agree with you that it is so true in the work we do, helping other leaders do this and grow and see themselves in that different light. I don't get the butterflies in my stomach when I'm helping them visualize themselves much further but when I do it for myself, I get those butterflies. Exactly that you've hit on it. Exactly. I think that's it. So we use speaking as an example now I know you, you enjoy speaking, but the lots of people that don't know, and as a leader, I think this is one of the best ways, the fastest ways that you can define your leadership with within an organization. If you can stand up and speak convincingly and appear comfortable and look very natural and at home, even if it's only for a minute or two, people will see you as a leader and you maybe you only need one or two moments like that a month, a few times a year to really define yourself as a leader within that organization, in the minds of other people because they'll see you as a leader if you can do that. But if speaking is a growth area for you, even though it's a great skill to develop, I think probably the most important skill for a leader or anyone really to develop no matter what you do. But if speaking is a growth area for you and you just think about speaking, then you're probably going to experience some doubt, or the butterflies that you were just talking about maybe you're going to experience strong emotions of fear and anxiety and unworthiness and you don't get those feelings when you imagine someone else doing it. But you do get them in it yourself. And, and actually we, you know, we can look at other people and we think, yeah, you should do it. I know you can do it. And if you do it and you keep going, you keep doing it - I know you're going to get better and better and better. So you should do it. But it's very different when it's us. It's very different with us. And then when we experienced the fear, so the fear is a problem. And I think probably the biggest problem with the fear is not the experiencing it in itself - is because it tends to lead to avoidance tends to lead to us kind of running away, doesn't it? Well, I mean, what do you do when you experienced those butterflies often you kind of think of ways that you can avoid doing whatever it is. Is there any way any kind of outlet, any way to escape? So now avoidance, it's really worth thinking about because it's avoiding the thing, like let's say speaking in this case, but actually it's really the feeling that is the issue. It's the feeling you want to avoid. We think it's the thing, but it's not. It's how we feel about it. And so we want to avoid anything that means that the feeling will stop. And I think most people miss this Jill, the importance of it. The feeling is not the facts that we fear. It's not the information that we fear, its the feeling. And this does take a little bit of thinking about, but what's something that you fear like flying or dogs or spiders or snakes or is there anything that you fear? Oh, spiders! I will scream!  Spiders is a great example.  Would spiders for you be worse than speaking? Oh yes, yes. Isn’t that interesting. Now commercial flight I think is, uh, is a great example. So spiders, I'll come back to in just a moment, but I've got an interesting statistic for you. I suppose commercial flying is the safest way to travel on a commercial flight because it's so regulated is very, very safe. If you look at the U S census data, then it puts the odds of a dying as a plane passenger about one in over 200,000. There's some, depending on the statistics and how it's interpreted, they come out slightly differently. But for these purposes, one in 200,000 the chances of dying as a cyclist, they say about one in 4,000 so I look at the difference between those two. Cycling is like 50 times the risk, but people aren’t scared of bicycles are they? People are scared of a bomb going off five miles up in the air and being hurled into the screaming darkness to their death because it's much more emotive. The fear of drowning is one in a thousand, chances of dying in a car crash are around one in a hundred according to this, one in 24 for stroke, one in five for heart disease. But we're scared of the emotive things. We're scared of the scary things, irrespective of the logic - we're scared of speaking and what the chances of dying when you're speaking?  Very slim, very slim. We're scared of bears. We're scared of alligators. We're scared of sharks. About one person a year in American dies from sharks, about one person dies in America. It's about one person that dies from bears.  About 58 people die from hornets. More people are scared of hornets, admittedly, more than bees and wasps. But the biggest number of deaths from animals is deer in America. 120 people die from deer in America, whereas one from sharks. But people are scared of deer, they are scared of sharks.  So we're scared of spiders and its about 0.24 I think in America people die a year. But your scared of them.  Terrified, terrified!   I run out of the room screaming, I can't take it. Yeah. This lesson is for you then actually by the time we get to the end! So it doesn't matter what the fear is, it's not logical, the fear is not logical, but that doesn't matter. The body isn't reasonable like that. Emotions aren't reasonable, its kind of learned programs and so they're lying to us.  Basically, what I'm saying is we can't trust those emotions. They lying to us. It's easy to say that they're wrong, but still we put total faith in them. We trust them anyway. And every time we turn away and allow them to control the behavior, we're reinforcing their validity. So then they become a self fulfilling prophecy and then they create our reality. So we start number one, let's say we're usually speaking of spiders, spiders, I'm scared of spiders and I'm scared that it's going to be dangerous so I don't go anywhere near them. And so I can't go anywhere near them and so I am right all along. It just kind of repeats the same kind of process over and over. Same with speaking, I'm scared I might not be able to speak in front of other people, so I avoid it. I don't do it, so I can't do it. So see, I was right all along. So it creates, the reality - its not based on logic or reason or facts or anything actually that holds up to reason.  It's just that learned process. So I think really what I want to share today, Jill, is that the answer to all of this is pretty straight forward. How do we do what we know we need to do, even though we really, really, really don't feel like it? And then also linked to that, how do we not do what we know we shouldn't do? Because it's the same thing, isn't it? Even though we really, really, really do feel like doing it. So it's acting in defiance of the emotions that stop us from growing. And so I got a simple process for that. But why I'd probably like to do, first of all, if it's okay with you, is just give them a little bit of the science and background into emotions because then it makes it easier to follow the three steps. So I think the first step or the foundation is you've gotta be convinced of the fallibility of emotions because the mistake people make is they assume it's the reflection of reality and then it really isn't. And so this comes from Dr. Albert Ellis’s work, who for those of you who don't know, he was a towering figure of psychology for many years. He, um, he was working, I think he'd died 94 when he died. And he was working into his nineties 16 hours a day, really, really very well respected doctor and his work was REBT - Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy work and he came up with this model called the ABC model that makes emotions very simple to understand. So imagine I'm your boss Jill, and I tell you that you have to speak to the shareholders at the AGM next week. Okay? So this is something that you're going to do and I know you enjoy speaking, but let's imagine you don’t, you're filling in for somebody and kind of like sprung on you. You're going to experience fear because it's like, Oh my goodness, you weren't experiencing fear before we had this meeting and I told you you're speaking, but now you very definitely are. So you think to yourself, I made you scared because you weren't scared before I told you you needed to speak at the AGM. And so now you're scared. You're experiencing the fear. And so the “A” at the beginning, and you might want to write this across the page, if you're the sort of person that takes notes as you listen to this, the “A” is the activating event. So the activating event is you've been told you got to speak. Now the “C” on the other side of the page on the right, that’s the consequence. This is the feeling that you experience. So you, the activating event, you need to speak at the AGM and then the consequences is the fear. So the consequences can be an emotion. It can also be thoughts, it can be actions, it can even be symptoms if the feelings are repressed and then come out in your body and symptoms. So here we're saying fear. So there's an emotion, the consequence is fear. The activating event is, I told you you need to speak - so it appears that A causes C so we can draw an arrow across the top from A to C, A causes C.   You know when people's like ‘he made me so angry, she made me so cross’. It's the same kind of thing. They did something. We're experiencing emotion and so it appears that they are causing the emotion, but they're really not. They're really not. So a simple way to dig into this, into the fallibility of emotions to, to reveal itself and say, well, I know you're feeling fearful in this situation, Jill, but imagine a number of people in the same situation. Would they all feel the same way as you? And you say, ”well, I don’t know. What did you mean?” I say, well, is it possible that some of them might be even more terrified than you? And when you ask that, most people will agree. Yeah, I think, yeah, they probably, you know, not that bad. I'm a little bit apprehensive. I'm fearful, but I'm not terrified. I'm sure some people could be terrified in this situation. Okay, well, could some people be looking forward to it? Well, I suppose, you know, if you're like that, then maybe yes, some people could, could enjoy it. Some people could be angry that they're forced into this situation. Some people could be apathetic, you know, whatever. It's pretty easy for us to agree that there's a whole range of different emotions that are possible in this situation. Most people will agree to that. Would you agree with that? That sounds useful to you? That does. Yeah. So if that's the case and you agree that a range of consequences as possible, it can't be the event that's creating the consequence. If, because if it was, it would always be the same. So something else, it's not the activating event that's causing the emotion – it is something else. It must be something that is specific to each particular individual. That's how we get these different emotions, these different consequences. And that's the B in the middle. It's the beliefs that these people hold that are responsible for the emotions. So its not the A that causes the C. It's not the activating event that causes the emotion. It's what you believe about the activating event and yourself and you know, whatever, whatever is relevant to this situation. It is what you believe about the activating event, which causes the emotion. So it's the B about the A that causes the C, that's the way to remember it. So we can see now that beliefs and emotions and really counterparts, they work together. What we've learned about the world is the meaning that we apply and creates the emotions that we then experience. And the important thing to realize here as we've kind of seen with emotions already, but now will apply directly to beliefs. Beliefs are the result of a learning process, not a reflection of reality. I'm sure you've heard that many times, but it's really worth thinking about with regard to fears. Beliefs are the result of the learning process, not the reflection of reality. Same with the emotions because we can use them interchangeably. And so you mentioned spiders. I had some experience with our children growing up with dog. Do you have kids Jill? I do, yeah.  Are they scared of spiders?  No, not too bad. Now he'll take care of it for me when I scream sometimes. Yes. Well we um, growing up we had dogs when our kids were growing up. We had dogs from right from the very beginning. You know, we've got four kids and they've all grown up around dogs all the time. And what they know about dogs is that dogs are fun. In fact, dogs are great fun. They've all been kind of crawling in the dog basket with them their whole lives. Now let's imagine somebody, let's pick two kind of fictitious people. Mary, who's similar to my kids, grew up around dogs all their lives. So she believes dogs are fun, all dogs are fun. But then hundreds of miles away, Mike grow up in a home where he never met any dogs until he was about six years old. He's walking down the road, turned a corner, disturbed a stray German shepherd dog spooked it, jumped up and uh, and attacked him and bit him and uh, mauled his face and he had a scar on his cheek because of this kind of experience with the dog. Unfortunate, horrible experience. So Mike understandably is now terrified of dogs. I think we could all understand that, we feel like it is a reasonable response. So Mike believes that all dogs are dangerous. Mary believes all dogs are fun. Now, years later in their twenties Mike and Mary get together and then now we're kind of walking down the road together and here they are. They just started dating together. They're walking down the road together, holding hands, and then they meet a dog unexpectedly. They are both going to have completely different emotional responses in their body, aren't they? To the same activating event, but totally different responses in their body.  Mary’s instinct is just to go and play with the dog and Mike's instinct is get away from him as quickly as we can because all dogs are dangerous and this is a dog and this is potentially gonna, gonna be a threatening situation for us. So what's Mike thinking? He's thinking escape.  And what is Mary thinking - oh, how cute. Let's go play with and pat the dog. Who's right, which one is right? Which one is a reflection of reality. It's interesting, isn't it, when you're thinking about it like that, but obviously we don't know. We don't know because it depends on this particular dog, doesn't it? We don't know anything about this dog. So looking on, we can see that you've got these two scenarios, but we can't say because we don't know anything about this dog. What each of them really needs to know is what is this dog actually like? But the response in their body is based on dogs that they met years ago, dogs that died years ago, and that's driving their experiences with this particular dog. Neither of them is thinking about this. They're just experiencing the emotion of course, and that emotion as a result of a previous learning process, not a reflection of the reality that they're now facing. So the ABC model is, I think it's really powerful to expose beliefs for what they are -  expose emotions for what they are. Because the consequences can be emotion of course, as we've just said, but it can be thinking, it can be behavior, it can be acting as well. So if the beliefs are a result of a learning process our thinking or feeling or acting is also the result of a learning process. Mike isn't thinking objectively he's thinking emotionally. He's thinking scared. He's thinking, how do I get out of here? How do I escape? He's not thinking objectively. So am I articulating the fallibility of beliefs here Jill? Exposing the weakness or the potential weakness? You are spot on. I loved the way you explained that as well because I'll tell you as you were telling that story, I just met with an executive earlier today and we were doing some coaching and one of the things he said is, I hate speaking public speaking. I don't understand the value in it. Um, I don't want to deal with it at all! And so that example really came up to me and we had some other conversations about -here's some actual facts and this is how it is. And um, I started to share the beliefs a little bit with him, but I love this model because we all know that we are beliefs and you've taught me definitely that we're all combination of things that we've had experience to us and we don't really recognize that or realize that. And it stops us. And I wonder if you could share, one of the fears that tends to come up a lot is the fear of having a conflicting discussion, managing conflict. Giving feedback to an employee, a feedback that the employee might not like. How did that show up here? Okay, so it's the same thing. Really any fear, any emotion is based on our interpretation or meaning. What have we learned about this? What we anticipate. So the activating event, it could be it's actually seeing a dog, but it could be real or imagined. It could be just you imagining what's going to happen. So the same process is at work. I think the thing with beliefs is they kind of lurk in the subconscious. So if you draw a circle and draw a horizontal line across the middle, then put a like a  B underneath for what you believe about dogs, what you believe about your ability to interact with other people, your worthiness, you name it. I mean it's endless. We've got all of these different beliefs here, but they're silent until they're activated. The belief isn't shouting at Mike saying, be careful of dogs around this corner. There might be a dog, there's dogs here that doesn't happen. It takes the activating event for it to be tripped for, for then it to influence our feelings and our actions and our thinking. So if there's a fear of giving, well fear of anything really, it's kind of how we're thinking about it based on what we've learned, previous experiences. So the approach is still the same. And I think if you take that particular interaction, so let's say your, you're giving a performance review, you're interacting with some people on your team, you need to challenge some inappropriate behavior or you know, whatever it may be that you're a little apprehensive about. The key is the same that I'm going to come onto - the steps. What you want to do is dilute that fear through repetition and exposure and think about the different steps that you're going to go through. And I would recommend, you know, speaking, is a good example of this, but so is appraisals. Practice going through what you're gonna do.  Same with job interviews. They're all performances and so you can treat them all in the same way. So if you think about being assertive or challenging inappropriate behavior or something that you feel the other person is not going to take, well practice it. Role playing is another great example that, that helps with this because you're moving through the process and you end up systematically desensitizing the triggers to the emotions, the more you do it. So a seasoned manager that's used to speaking to people, a great deal is going to have moved on from those kinds of feelings.  They gained skills, knowledge and experience over the years. But initially they probably felt apprehensive. So you either wait for the experience or you fabricate the experience kind of laboratory  side of your life. So you create that experience. Speaking is such a great example of this because if you and I went on a, no, I won't use you, I will use one of your listeners. I'm sure there's someone called Mike listening. If me and Mike went on a speaking tour and he was gonna speak at the beginning every day, five days a week for 10 weeks, he would be a significantly better speaker at the end than he was in the beginning. And we all can laugh and say, yeah, that's true. But if he just had one or two speaking events coming up and he still was starting out with the same kind of feelings, we could manufacture a lot of the lessons from that 10 week speaking tour with a video camera and training program and the confidence would build in the same way and the anxiety would dissipate in the same way. So it's the same process. We need to understand that the feelings are something that we've learned. They may or may not be helpful. They may or may not be realistic. They may or may not be logical. They may or may not be something that we need to challenge and that is holding us back from what we want to get. Then, um, we probably do want to challenge them. But just because it's uncomfortable, it doesn't mean that they're necessarily wrong. It might just be that it's something that we've not done before and is trying to stop us maybe from appearing foolish or, or making mistakes or maybe just stop us from making effort to prepare or effort to do something. So the process I would recommend is the same. First of all, understanding and really buying into the fallibility of the emotions we've just been talking about. And then taking responsibility for the change. It's a funny thing. I don't know. Are you scared of heights or, or anything Jill? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not great with highs and so this is another, you know, personal experience example for me. If you take someone who's scared of heights and put them in a position where they would not be at all comfortable, you know, i.e. up high somewhere, but they say because it's not logical, the emotion, so it doesn't mean they need to be safe so that you could, you'd do it. But if you do that, you're still going to feel the emotional response, but it doesn't last forever. It's kind of brutal. But if you're immersed in that situation, you'll be fearful and panicking and Oh my goodness, Oh my goodness, and the fear kind of runs itself out. And you're still concerned that you're not experiencing the fear to the same degree. If you went back up there the next day, same thing. And so exposure to whatever it is, we're forced to acknowledge and to recognize the belief you saying, you know, “we're gonna die, we're gonna die.” And the body is responding appropriately for that as if we're going about to being by a lion or whatever. But if you stay there and you don't, you're forced to acknowledge that actually you can do it. You have to because it's happening. That that's the evidence. And so as I say, it's a brutal way to desensitize yourself to the triggers, but it works. A much more gentle approach is systematic desensitization, first of all in your mind and then in real life, but still baby steps, which, um, you know, is a, is a great, great way to deal with facing the fears and learning what you're really capable of. So it's challenging, but it's not too much. And I've been using this process for years with speakers and it works fantastically well. And if it works with speaking, it will work with anything because so many people are fearful of speaking. Well I'll, I'll run through the three steps now and really quickly if, if that suits you. That would be great. Yeah. We all have this fear and what can we get better here to help us and then help us help the people that we lead? Exactly. Yeah. So the first of all is that, you know, agreeing that the emotions are fallible and they're not a good gauge. We shouldn't be looking to our, in fact, emotions are terrible guide to our potential, terrible. They try and keep us where they are, try and convince us to stay where we are. So that's the foundations that we have to accept that and the responsibility for change. No one's going to change it for us and we have to do that. But then when you've done that, lets use speaking as an example, who do you need to become to do what it is that is going to help you grow? Think about that. And here it's useful to think about role models may be people you admire, people you see who are doing what you need to do or know that you should be doing, but you're kind of shying away from. If you can get like real people, that's very helpful so you can see what it is that done what you want to do. So step one, who do you need to become to do the things that you need to do? And then step two, this is like, you know, the first kind of baby steps towards the desensitization. Visualize yourself being the person that you need to be.  So visualize yourself living that way. I'm sure you probably had people talking about visualization already. If you haven't, I'm sure you found them coming up so I won't go into too much. But it's interesting that the unconscious doesn't know the difference between what's real and what's imagined. So the body responds to the images we accept on the screen of our mind in the same way. A simple example going back to Mike, which makes it kind of self evident in Mike's walking down the road with Mary and he sees a dog and his body responds with the fight or flight response. Mike's body will respond that way whether he actually sees the dog or whether he just thinks he sees the dog. Remember the activating event can be imagined. In fact, he might just sit down, close his eyes and imagine this dogs, and he is going to have that same response, isn't he? So this is a great way for us to get experience in a safe way. So step two, imagine yourself, visualize yourself being that person. And then step three, now we're out of the mind and into the real world. Take action steps in increasing ambitiousness. Baby steps, start small, but going up escalating in the direction that we need to go. So actually do those things. If it's speaking, start just saying your talk out loud or your ideas for a talk unattached to doing it perfectly. In fact unattached to the outcome completely. The only thing you're attached to is that you're engaging in the activity. It doesn't matter what comes out. So just start speaking out loud and use notes if you want. And then when you're ready, audio record yourself and then maybe do it in the mirror and then maybe video yourself and then watch it back. And then when you're ready, maybe get a couple of your friends together and say, I'd love your feedback on something that me. Let me share this with you. And then onto real audiences, always videoing yourself and always reviewing, cause this is the evidence you need to see what you're really capable of achieving. And so each time you're watching unattached to the outcome, you know you'd like to do a good job, but don't get hung up on that - and don’t let perfectionism stop you from even starting this. Many people that are scared of speaking. Do you know what they're actually, I'm convinced of this, I've asked so many people discussed it with so many people, I'm convinced of this. Do you know what they're actually afraid of? They're not afraid of making a terrible mess of it. They're afraid of not doing it perfectly. When you think about it, but we don't think about it. That's the beliefs that are kind of lurking and creating this thinking. So you know you gain the insight, your beliefs change as you proved yourself what you can do. You have to, you're, you're faced with the evidence, your confidence builds, the anxiety dissipates, the emotions will change. But you have to start with the emotions you have. You have to start with the anxiety and then eventually the confidence will come. So powerful Jill, honestly it really is. If it works for speaking, as I said, it will work for anything. I've seen so many people who they would never believe, would able to develop their speaking and being in front of people and then going on to, you know, to speak in front of thousands of people. And actually I know I've spoken way too much, but just one kind of final point here. If you follow this process of something like speaking, which I recommend all leaders though because it's a great, great skill to develop. Yes. Once you prove to yourself what you can do, you know the process works and then you can help the people in your team to develop this particular skill or any other growth area where they're being held back. You can help them with the process of you like going through this process yourself and facing fears and overcoming fears. Then you're able to help everyone else in your team and help them grow as well. Yeah, you gave us so much great stuff. I just, one thing was really sticking out for me, and I know you hit it a couple of times, but I think it's just important to reiterate that you said don't get attached to the outcome. Just the activity. Yeah, that's it. We're responsible for the effort and not the result. That is one of the spiritual groups say that all the time and I think that's a great way of putting it. You just got to do it. You're responsible for the effort. Not the result. Yeah, and that is, that's really powerful to think of, especially when your experienced, your a leader, you don't want to fail at anything and it's just trying it, just trying to stick to learning and trying it and I think that really stuck out for me that I think is important. Can I make one more point on the leader because I think people, when they're in charge of people, they put this pressure on top of themselves that they're supposed to be good at everything. They're supposed to be better than everyone else in the team at everything including speaking or leading or whatever. And so you don't want to risk speaking, using that as an example, because you don't want your team to maybe say you're weak or you can't do it or, and I think there's a danger in that thinking because when we shy away from something that we feel we ought to do or when we know actually we're scared and we don't do it, our self-esteem takes a hit. Our self-esteem is impacted. Even if you think you're saving yourself from the possibility of making a mistake, the self-esteem suffers. But when you take an action and you do it, even if it doesn't work out as you wanted, your self-esteem goes up. And so that kind of resilience comes from taking action. And in fact, many people don't like speaking and so they respect you for having a go as well. So I think that that's a very healthy way of looking at it as a new leader or an existing leader, that people are going to respect you for stepping forward into growth much more than they are from hiding away and trying to pretend you're perfect. Yeah, I love that. That's so true. We feel like we're supposed to be the perfect model when we actually embrace it when we see some, some people actually not doing everything perfectly, it makes us feel like they're human. Yeah, humanness is a great way to connect with your team isn’t it? You're gonna end up being connected because you have this humanness about you and pretending you're perfect is a great way to kind of create a gap between you and your team. So everything to be gained from being just stepping forward into growth. Well, Roddy, I'm curious, how have you applied this to yourself? Yeah, I mean I've used this, I used to struggle with panic attacks years ago or so, I kind of fell into speaking as like an antidote to that. So I've, I've studied this in great detail, great detail and applied it to myself and gone from being terrified to speak in front of people, to speaking in front of, you know, thousands and thousands of people and completely changing my life as a consequence. I've also, as my kind of key role with the John Maxwell team, worked one on one with about 10,000 different speakers over the last 10 plus years and I've seen many of them bloom and go from like terrified into like, Oh my goodness, I've tasted blood now and I, I can't go back. I just love this. I just love it. And sometimes it's just little things. I remember working with one lady and it was as simple as getting her feet right, and her stance right and her hands right. She saw herself on video. She was terrified. She still has her cell phone video, cause I always video everyone when I'm working with them, so you know, so you can see (A) what we're working on and (B) you can see you can do it. And she said, yeah, you're right. I do look kind of graceful. And she still felt uncomfortable but she was, basically, she came to me cause she had to give a presentation at work. But she still felt uncomfortable. But she looked like a speaker because her hands were, yeah, she he good neutral hand position and feet. She was standing up straight and feet close together. She looked very elegant and that changed everything for her. Somebody else I was working with who um, there was like a merger of departments and she had this opportunity to stand up. She had a small team and she needed to talk to the people of the combined team. And so all of the managers were going to do this and she was really worried about it. I worked with her for about an hour and a half, that was it, on this like five minute presentation and I used her phone and videoed her from the beginning and she was cringing. Like I said, right, if you have to do it now, what would you do? And she was like, I don't know, we haven't, then we videoed. And she's like, Oh, that was awful. But she like, she got over the fact that I was going to be videoing her and making her doing it quite quickly. Two or three times of doing this kind of two or three minute videos, watching it back. Okay. This time, what do you think you would change? Okay. Yeah, that's great. Right? So we went and we did this for 90 minutes, pretty much constantly. We would talk about it, we'd have some ideas. She said, I need to introduce my team. We'd do it. We'd watch it back. And I'd say, you know that, that that's a little dull, the way you're doing that, is there any stories that you have or anything you could, you know about each of them? And we talked about it and she came up with a couple of little anecdotes that she could use, have another go, watch it back and by the time we'd done this for 90 minutes and she went home to practice afterwards and the next morning I got a call after the thing and she said, you will not believe how well it went. She said everyone else like stood at the lectern and was gripping the lectern and talking down into their notes and I stood up and I didn't need notes, I was walking around, I knew it inside out and I was making them laugh and they were clapping and people came up to me afterwards and said, Oh, you are such a natural leader. You look so comfortable in front of the audience. And it was just because we spent 90 minutes working on a five minute presentation that she was going to give. I've worked in organizations for a big global organizations in the finance industry for many years, and I've seen the difference it makes when people stand up and they can, even if it's just a one minute like leaving speech or a, you know, a new joiner. If you take those opportunities, you can, you can stand out as a leader if you, if you do it and you don't if you don't. So I think speaking is a great way to define your leadership. It's something I've worked hard at and made significant progress from where I was and I've seen much, much greater progress in, in other people that I've worked with. I love that story.  Yes, it works with everything, not just speaking. Yeah, thank you. And you made another great point where they come up and say, Oh, you must be a natural. You're so good at this. Yeah. Assume that you were born with this gift. It's so true. We don't think about the process. Even if we know they've been through the process, we don't think about it. You just kind of see the end result and think, Oh, well you're lucky you're that. I mean, and it's not, I think the natural comes from when we, when we're doing something habitually and it looks like we're doing it without thinking about it. People assume, oh well they're not thinking about it, therefore they must be born this way. You know, different genes. We might as well use it to our advantage. Exactly. I love it. So fear, fear is really getting in the way of us growing to our full potential. And yeah, you said two things. (1) We need to understand fallibility of emotions and (2) take ownership of the change. Yeah. And then you gave us three steps that we need to take. You said (1), identify who we need to become and look around us and see who's around us that maybe mentors or models. So we can do the thing we know we need to do. Step (2), you said visualize ourselves being that person that we need to be doing that. You know, actually seeing ourselves doing it, visualization because we can do this in a safe way and step (3) was take actions but take those small steps, small and slow steps towards where we want to go. Did I get that right? You go that right, but I'll give you the super hack for those people who have got no patience for the process. The super hack is go straight to step three but be prepared to be uncomfortable. Be prepared to be uncomfortable. Just start doing it and videoing yourself and watching it back or you know, video is great not just for speaking actually cause the video is great for everything cause you can see yourself as other people see you – posture, everything, interviews, Q and A. Anything, anything that you're involved in - golf, swimming. If you can see yourself, it gives you a different perspective. It really helps you learn and grow martial arts, dance, everything. But yeah, if you want the super hack, just do it. Jump straight into step three and as long as you, you know, you don't get overwhelmed and give up, then you'll make rapid progress that way. I love this. I love this. I got to think about how I'm gonna apply this to spiders, but maybe later. Yeah. Its something that it's been proven time and same as snakes, systematic desensitization is a very, very popular approach with phobias like that. Well I better get used to it. I just moved to a big farm so yeah. That's okay. Increased exposure. Yeah, I'm getting, I'm getting increased exposure right now. Yep. Well Roddy, is there anything else you wanted to share or anything that you're working on right now that you want to share with us? So we have, uh, my business partner, Paul Martinelli, who maybe some of your listeners will know. We have a business called Living Empowered and so we have free content that we give out in different formats. Every week we do a show on Saturdays, we have a lesson in the week and it's all free. Some of it goes off to become paid at some point in the future, but every week there's free stuff that you can dive into. So if you're interested in finding out more from me and my business partner and other people within the community, then you can go to www.Yourempoweredlife.com  www.Yourempoweredlife.com and see how you can jump into those. We have a free program coming out starting on the 16th called the science and getting rich, which is based on an old book. It's got lots of great stuff in it with Paul and I discussing that for about 15 hours, all in all, we just finished the filming and you can find out more about that SGR2019.com if that interests you. If you're interested in developing your speaking, I'd highly recommend the John Maxwell team. If you want some more hands on help, then you can email me Roddy@speakerpro.com and if I can help you then I'd love to. I love it. I can't advocate for that enough either. I met you through the John Maxwell team. I've really engaged in the Empowerment Mentoring. I'm bringing more friends through the book study Science of Getting Rich, we already did your other study around As A Man Thinketh.  Hmm, I love that. I will continue to share everything that you do because you just help people grow and I really appreciate what you shared with us today as well.  It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me.  Bye everybody. It's great to chat with you. You're welcome. It's great to chat with you too. Thank you so much. Yeah, you're welcome. Bye. Bye. God Bless. CONTACT INFORMATION: You can reach Roddy at Roddy@speakerpro.com and check out his free content at www.Yourempoweredlife.com You can reach me, Jill Windelspecht at jillwindel@talentspecialists.net and my website is www.TalentSpecialists.net.  I work with leaders and help them through coaching, organization consulting and leadership development.    

When Mike Brcic started his mountain-bike tour company, it was slow going at the beginning. The first year, his company Sacred Rides had one client. In year two, the startup experienced 100% growth -- two clients.Fast forward, however, and Sacred Rides became a complicated business doing 7-figures in annual revenue with investors and lots of employees -- operating in over 40 countries.Fantastic right? From the outside it would seem so, but Mike was far from happy. Very far.What he found is that pursuing scale for scale’s sake is ultimately deeply unfulfilling. Most of the time it’s an ego’s hungry quest for recognition and validation.So Mike carefully planned to remove himself from the business, and eventually sold it. He had already started the business that would become Mastermind Adventures, a new but intentionally much smaller business that fulfills his sense of passion and purpose.Now, Mike is inspired by asking bigger questions:• If the purpose of an entrepreneur isn’t to scale, then what is it?• What does it mean to live a good life?• Can a company remain small (and profitable) forever?These are the questions that essentially drive the creation of a 7-figure small business. Tune in to hear Mike and I discuss the answers in the context of Mike’s evolving entrepreneurial career.

It’s the topic everyone loves to hear about, but hardly anyone is willing to talk about. And that’s the inside secrets of distribution. Distributors “hold all the chips” so it’s time we find out how deals are made. We sit down with Mike Bridges, who owns Jack's Liquor Beer Wine in Fremont, Nebraska and was once a rep for Nebraska Wine and Spirits which was later purchased by Republic. He talks about what really happens behind those closed doors, who gets allocations (high volume stores vs small mom and pop shops), and consumer frustrations. There’s a lot of ground to cover in this one. Show Partners: Find out what it’s like to taste whiskey straight from the barrel with Barrell Craft Spirits. Learn more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about the smoked grain debate. How did you get into bourbon? Tell us about your time in the food and beverage industry. How did you transition into a distributor position? What was the distributor called at that time? How do allocations work? Is there any transparency between the rep and the business? Do they tell you how you can get the allocated items? What motivates a distributor to sell products? How do distributors spend money to get retailers to carry products? Talk about high volume retailers vs mom and pop retailers. Do your distributors take price gouging seriously? How much blame are you putting on the distillers for not getting allocated items? Are they using the distributors to take the blame? Would a distributor advise a brand to raise a price? Do stores ever do favors for distributors in order to get allocated items? What would be a better system? Are allocations really down every year? How has your view changed as a retailer now? 0:00 I'm not bashing the wholesaler so to speak, you know, I consider him like my wife can live with her can live without her. I mean 0:21 what's up everybody it is Episode 236 of bourbon pursuit. I'm kenny. And we got some news to cover, so let's get to it. The Kentucky Derby Museum is back with the legend series. It offers three nights of casual in depth conversations with pioneers and titans of the bourbon industry. And each night in the series is hosted by our very own Fred MiniK in each evening features a different bourbon master who handpicks a selection of Bourbons to go and taste or each legend shares his or her expertise and engages with guests through their senses as they taste fine Bourbons and enjoy appetizers as well, on January 23. We'll have Peggy noe Stevens who was our guest back on episode 198. 1:00 into a fourth on Thursday, January 30. We have none other than Freddy Johnson who we all know and love. And he's been back on episode 59 in 115. And wrapping it up on February 6 is Connor Driscoll who you heard most recently on episode 231. tickets to each event is $75 or there is a complete package for $200. You can buy your tickets right now by going online to Derby museum.org Woodford Reserve has released its annual expression of the double double oak bourbon. It's part of its annual series that celebrates master distiller Chris Moore's his commitment to innovation and craftsmanship. double double oak is the result of finishing fully mature, Woodford Reserve and double oak bourbon for an additional year and a second heavily toasted but lightly charred new oak barrel. The extra year in the barrel creates a bourbon that is distinctly spicier than its original counterpart, known for its sweeter taste and finish. The product is available in limited quantities at Woodford Reserve distillery. 2:00 And select liquor stores around Kentucky coming in at 90.4 proof with a suggested retail price of 4999 for a 375 ml bottle. Oklahoma Attorney General Mike hunter issued an opinion Tuesday that could affect who could potentially obtain a license to sell alcohol and the state. residency requirements for obtaining a retail license for wine and spirits or even though wholesalers license and Oklahoma are likely to be found in violation of the Commerce Clause and the US Constitution. Oklahoma currently has a five year residency requirement for those seeking to obtain a license to sell Wine and Spirits at retail or wholesale level. In other words, a liquor store owner has to approve he or she has been a resident for five years before applying for the retail license. The same goes to wholesalers. Tennessee had this similar requirement of two years residency for some liquor license. And that rule was challenged in the US Supreme Court deemed it unconstitutional back in 2019. So we'll see where this is gonna play out this weekend. 3:00 celebrates 160 years of early times whiskey. So here's a quick history lesson. early times was originally produced using the clinical early times method of whiskey making, and this consisted of mashing grain and small tubs and boiling beer and whiskey and copper stills over open fires. This unique method of production continued until 1918. With prohibition, five years barrels of mature early times whiskey sat idle in the distilleries, classic ironclad maturation warehouses, in dire need of whiskey to operate as a bottler and wholesaler during Prohibition owlsley Brown owner of brown Forman acquired early time stocks in 1923, the company's first ever purchased brand, and it resumed sales under its medicinal whiskey permit. As prohibition came to a close brown Forman geared up to begin distilling early times once again. To keep up with the bourbon brands growth brown Forman acquired the old Kentucky distillery which later became early times distillery providing a brand a home of its own. 4:00 Whiskey popularity grew early times one of the first brands to recognize and capitalize on the mixability of bourbon and cocktail trends, which led to become the number one Kentucky bourbon in America back in 1953. Today the historic plant has now named the brown Forman distillery. But it remains home of early times and stands as the longest continually operating distillery under the same ownership in Kentucky. This year early times is honoring their tradition with a throwback advertisement that once said, The whiskey that made Kentucky whiskeys famous. If you follow bourbon pursuit on any of our social handles, you seen that Ryan and I we took a quick trip to Woodinville whiskey company last week. We took the 6am flight from Louisville to Seattle drove up to Woodinville, which is surrounded by 100 plus wineries and sat down with the co founder Brett Carlyle and got to know more about their story and what they're producing for an upcoming podcast. Then after that we tasted through some barrels and selected to that will become prestigious 5:00 series, y'all, Ryan and I, we can't even begin to describe how good their bourbon is. They're doing everything right with locally sourced grains, a finely tuned still an operation that was under the guidance of the late great Dave pickerel. He goes going into the barrel at 110 proof aging and Rick structures two hours away that mimic the climate of the Midwest, and nothing is getting pulled until it's the least five years old. And if you're in the know already, and you've tasted it, then you're probably already a fan. But we are super excited to be able to get these special barrels into the hands of all of you soon and looking forward to an eventual release from Woodinville whiskey as well. Make sure you follow us on social and Patreon for all the latest updates for pursuit series. For today's show, it's one of those podcast topics that people love to hear about. It's the inside Secrets of the trade that usually no one's willing to talk about. However, we sit down with Mike bridges. He owns Jack's liquor, beer and wine in Fremont, Nebraska. He was also once a rep for distributor for 6:00 braska wine and spirits, he talks about what really happens behind those closed door deals. Who gets the allocation? Is it the high volume stores? Or is it the small mom and pop shops? And where does most of that consumer frustration really stem from? We cover a lot of ground in this one, I'm sure you're really going to like it. You know, we like to see what people think of the show as well. Leaving reviews helps new people searching podcasts, find us. And you can help us by going to rate this podcast.com slash bourbon. And you can leave a review for iTunes, Spotify or pod chaser. We always appreciate seeing these as it helps grow the show and find new listeners. All right, now let's get on with it. You can sit back and relax. Let's hear what Joe has to say from barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred minich with above the char. 6:46 It's Joe from barrell bourbon. Tasting whiskey straight from the barrel was truly a life changing moment for me. In 2013. I launched barrel craft spirits so everyone could have the experience of tasting whiskey, a cast strength next time ask your bartender for 6:59 barrell bourbon. 7:01 I'm Fred MinnicK. And this is above the char. If you follow me on Instagram, you may recall this post I put up a few few months ago. It was when I was in California. Somebody had brought me a bottle of war Bringer mesquite, smoked Southwest bourbon finished in a Sherry cask. I was very excited to taste this because anytime I see mosquito on anything, my mouth starts to water. And I think of my childhood days eating all that great mesquite smoked barbecue sopping up that sauce with a piece of white bread. I love mesquite barbecue, so good. But anyway, I digress. I'm not talking about barbecue. I'm talking about whiskey. So I was very excited to taste this stuff. And which bag did I put it in? I put it in my carry on not my check in so TSA was very glad to take the bottle from me. They actually thanked me later and said they would have a good time with it. So 8:01 You're listening to say, I hope you enjoyed it, but you also kind of suck. So anyway, I get a bottle sent to me from the company because I really wanted to taste this stuff. And I tasted just the other day and I was kind of like nervous about tasting is because I love mesquite so much that I kind of, I'm always I'm always a little nervous when someone plays around with one of my favorite flavors. And sure enough, it kind of hit the mark. I tasted the musky, you really cannot. You can't. You can't taste this without getting a big ol mouthful of mesquite and it got me to thinking what are some other products out there that are using smoke techniques for the grains? Well, there's actually quite a few. One of my favorite is the MB Roland dark fire they use a dark 9:00 Fire technique to smoke their corn. Dark fires a term that they use in Western Kentucky for a procedure in which they kind of like slow smoke the tobacco before they roll it up and in be rolling, which is in Christian County, Kentucky, applied that nice local technique to their whiskey and it shows and they're fantastic. But here's the thing. They are so far left or to the right, of what we anticipate bourbon to taste like that. If you put if you put this in a flight of regular Kentucky bourbon, you know this mesquite smoke bourbon or the dark fire bourbon, you're going to think it's flawed if you don't know it's got a special smoking technique to it. So over the years, we have had all of these incredible debates about whether or not barrel finishes such as angels envy. 10:00 In fact, urban on now, when you have the smoking techniques being applied, we might have to start applying a new debate to the conversation of what his bourbon is bourbon allowed to have smoke applied to the grains. I think that's a question. We need to start asking because traditionally it has not been applied to grains. Now it's, it's applied throughout in scotch and Irish whiskey. But if we start seeing a political of smoke grains enter Kentucky bourbon or other states Bourbons, then what we're going to find is there's going to be all kinds of different flavor profiles in Kentucky bourbon, or Missouri bourbon or whatever type of bourbon. You may think that's good, some traditionals may think it's not. Either way. I'm open for 11:00 debate. I think it's a good conversation to have. So hit me up on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook and let me know your opinion as to whether or not smoked bourbon should in fact be bourbon or should it be called something else? So I look forward to your comments and we may even read them on the air in the next episode of bourbon pursuit. And that's this week's above the char. Hey, hit me up on that Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at Fred minich. Until next week, cheers 11:37 Welcome back to that episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon the trio here tonight talking for a really fun subject because this is actually one that we had talked about it for probably Ryan and I, we probably discussed it for maybe over a year to now of trying to find somebody from the I don't know it's tough to kind of say like put an adjective to a 12:00 But from the distributor world, and having to come on the show and kind of reveal some dirty secrets, because it's, it's something that's really, really hard to get, you know, nobody for the actual companies seem to want to talk about it. But we kind of backdoored a little bit to actually make it happen. So I'm kind of really excited to get this juicy scoop on what happens and why liquor stores get certain allocations why some don't do some play favorites. Some, some maybe do some don't. I don't know. But I guess we'll find out. Uh, you know, what do you all think we're going to get into tonight, Ryan, I'll hand it over to you. 12:36 Well, I think distributors are an evil empire and an organized mafia. 12:44 But I you know, with that, I don't exactly know what all goes on what takes place. So it would be I am interested to see what goes on and what takes place and you know, maybe there's a world we don't understand and and why. Maybe 13:00 Our negative outlook on distributors is maybe not the correct one but I have a feeling it might be and so yeah, just bring it to you. You're already like my magic eight ball I already know what it's gonna say exact I'm trying to give him the benefit of the doubt you know so that's why we have them on but I know for sure really excited about because like I said we we hit on distributors all the time and especially being in the business now we've made them more so well I mean, let's give some context of the story like so what what is it that that we're it let's not say hate right we're not hate because we have to work with them. It's it's a nice Yeah, well, but kind of talk about like, what is the what what's what's the what's really grinding your gears right now with it? I mean, basically, it's just a pastor in you know, for big brands, I can totally understand because the distributors out there marketing and selling for you, helping push product but like small brands, it's really just a pastor and it it seems like they're just getting a piece of pie just because it's mandated through law. 14:00 And it just doesn't seem fair right to the people that are actually making the product don't make as much money as the distributors or percentage as much as distributors or the retailer. And and you know that's that's why I don't like it. Wish we could all be DC Yep, exactly we got a we got a long way to go until that happens. What about you Fred Do you have a Do you have a probably as a more realistic outlook on love or disdain some of my best friends are distributors like very higher up high very high up in the food chain and San Francisco world spirits competition has several fellow judges who are distributors so I know the business very well. And and I know kind of you know that they are the they are the cogs that really make this this world work. And they also have a very powerful lobby and it's 15:00 It's incredible. It's incredible, because, you know, what a lot of Ryan said is is not untrue. And the distributors would say the same thing. 15:14 You know, big, but at the same time, the reason why distributors are they have so much power is they can always go to like, you know, the government and say like we are the We Are the line of legal age drinking, like you don't have 15:36 people ensuring that accounts aren't serving, 15:41 you know, serving to minors and the distributors actively, actually kind of, you know, police that so they they have built in a network in the in this country that our government cannot cover and so when 16:00 It when we ever come to talking about getting rid of distributors, they can always raise their hand and say, well, we're kind of the reason why your 16 year old isn't getting drunk all the time. And that and that's the picture they paint. And you know, maybe it's accurate, I don't know, but 16:17 they're very good at protecting themselves. It kind of sounds like the TSA because the TSA is never actually stopped a terrorist attack there a false sense of security in the day, so I don't know. I mean, so I'll give you my TSA story. The, in their defense, I was in, I was unlovable, and a guy ahead of me, had a loaded handgun and shin and as he should know, he should I mean, I think the general populace knows you can't walk in with a handgun today. This is like a 55 year old guy and he's like, oh, man, I left him in there. No, I thought it was a my check in. Yeah, I don't know what happened to him. I mean, I I looked but I never saw 17:00 reports about it, but he, but I don't know what he was going to do with that. But I know that TSA stopped that guy with a loaded handgun from getting into the low level plane. So Well, that's a first I'll give you that. 17:15 Alright, so let's go ahead and introduce our guests tonight. So tonight we are today, whoever whenever you're listening to this show, we have Mike bridges. Mike is the minority owner and general manager of Jax liquor and wine in Fremont, Nebraska. So Mike, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's great to be here. Absolutely. So before we kind of dive into this, you know, I kind of want to give people an understanding of you would always like to start off with one question is, how did you get into bourbon 17:42 to the modern age bourbon, I got into it. When a guy named Brett Atlas stumbled into our store, and he's, he's a, he's a he's a friend of the show. I think we're all pretty relatively familiar with him. 17:55 Before that, it was just drinking it but you don't only walked up to the counter 18:00 With about 17 different bottles of things. And so I started asking questions and, you know, we had some Elijah Craig 12 year old label both sizes, we hit, you know, 750s 175 we had some before 18 years and different things. And that conversation led to another conversation which, you know, he mentored me on things to look for and things to ask my distributor for. 18:23 Oddly enough things that they wouldn't volunteer to me, unless I, you know, started asking the questions. When I worked for the distributor, six, seven years before that. 18:33 My biggest experience with bourbon is when Maker's Mark we couldn't get 175 or leaders because they ran out of juice and they were low on supply. So that would have been 2007 2008. So it was, it was pretty interesting. But yeah, it's a it's been a world of change since basically 2015. You know, that let you say that. I don't even think Maker's Mark still makes the 1.7 19:00 Five do they favor? Do they ever come back? I can't remember they do. Absolutely they do now right that's the number one the number one skew in like you know five or six party martes no 19:15 big ballers up in there then so I guess kind of let's okay let's let's rewind the clocks a little bit, kind of talk about you know your time working in the the food and beverage industry as well because I know you had mentioned that before we started recording. You know, when I was in Phoenix for the 16 years I was there I was at the Venetian resort all 16 years, and was everything from a banquet server all the way up to director destination services when I left and move back to Nebraska where I'm from so that's kind of where it was, but those years were all spent in the wine world. So when I came back to Nebraska and got my job within Nebraska wine and spirits, I was considered quote unquote a wine expert and did a lot of 20:00 My own wine dinners for my customers and things like that. And again, other than drinking knob Creek back in the day, and learning what Maker's Mark was when we didn't have it to sell and getting yelled at by every account. 20:14 That's kind of where it was and how it went. 20:19 And then so that was at the Venetian and then kind of talk about your transition into working for the distributor side. You know, oddly enough, I just took a director of food and beverage job at the brand new Hilton in downtown Omaha, when I got a call from an old high school coach of mine who was in the distributor business, and asked if I really had any interest in moving to my back to my hometown, as he had a salesman job that he thought I'd be really good for and good at. And that's how that started. That's how that came to be. And that was back in 2006. It's always about knowing the right people. Very true. Nobody, nobody actually applies for a job anymore. It's just all inside handshakes. I think that's how it all goes. 21:00 You know, it's ironic about that I had applied at three different distributorships before that, and never gotten an interview. 21:07 This will show them exactly right. If I didn't do Fred's yard, or no Kenny, they would not be part of bourbon pursuit. So there you go, that 21:18 looks nice this year, by the way. 21:21 Let's see what happens. You know, he actually sharpen my blade on my mower. Fred, does he do that for you? Fred doesn't know. You know, I actually don't mow my yard right now. 21:35 So back to conversation here. So you were working. What was the distributor called at that time? Because I know you had mentioned it. It eventually got either bought out or purchased by a larger one. Yeah, at the time it was Nebraska wine and spirits. And then there was also united distillers which was a separate side. So Nebraska Wine and Spirits was being if you will, and united was brown Forman and then Republic national distributing company came into 22:00 State bought both companies and then you had a Falcon and Eagle division in Nebraska, and are in DC. Gotcha. So just that the Empire just keeps growing for, for Republic then correct? Yep. So let's, um, you know, I guess let's let's kind of dive into the meat of the subject here because this is, this is one of the things that people are always fascinated to know more about. And I mean, let's just kind of just go blunt and straight into it, like, how do allocations work? Like how do people get something of one thing versus something else? 22:35 You know, it's gonna sound wrong, but it's pay to play. And I don't mean illegally pay to play. It's I asked that question for year three years ago. How do I get more allocated items? How do I get barrel pics? How do I do this stuff? And basically it was support the brands that those portfolios are part of stack them high in the store, and you know, so we did it and we have an owner, a majority 23:00 owner with with endless funds and we bought and stacked and if you came into our store it would, it would kind of probably surprise you for the for the small sizes, the amount of displays we have and how big they are. I know we're talking bourbon but it's not odd. We buy 1200 cases of Windsor Canadian at a time just because it's so popular in Nebraska. I've always got 100 beam on the floor. I've got 50 to 80 Maker's Mark. And then you go to Sam's rack and everything they they do often 200 fireball, you know everybody's favorite whiskey on the floor. And that's how we got to where we are. And it really did you know last year when we got to do an O w a barrel a Blanton's in a Buffalo Trace all at the same time was kind of, if you will, our arrival and yeah, but we had to really invest in that to get to where we were. Then if you fast forward to where we are now. I've got some executives from RTC coming out tomorrow because I don't feel I'm getting what we deserve. 24:01 was certain things that are coming out. 24:04 And based on allocations, so they'll tell you that but yet, when things like old fits 13 year spring edition come out, every account gets one bottle. So whether you buy a lot or you don't I know that's a different distributor. But it gets very frustrating to display what you do and invest what you do, and then sell it and then get the same one bottle allocation everybody else does or the other 60 people in the state and nobody wants to believe that they come into your store and you tell them, Hey, we got one bottle and it went to our best customer. They will not leave you they'll sit there and argue with you. 24:41 Is there any like transparency that happens between a rep and the business? Because when I when I think about this, you know, I come from a tech background and there's a lot of stuff out there about like open data collection like the government does it and you have access to be able to see exactly like what's happening here. 25:00 There, but is everything sort of like, Hey, my name is Jim, I'm your account, whatever you want, you have to go through me. And you say, Jim, I bought, you know, XYZ cases last year, I want to be able to get a, b and c. And he's like, that's just not in my calculator. Like, is there something that like, there's their level of transparency there? Or is it just completely like, all blocked off because of one person? You know, it's a little of both. You really, it's constant, constant constant, you know, badgering of that salesperson who then has to get ahold of his boss, who then has to get ahold of his boss. Just recently, As matter of fact, last week, whistlepig became available in the state of Nebraska. Well, we've known it's been coming for about, I don't know, six weeks. So I texted my salesperson to say, Hey, I hear whistle pigs in stock. When will it show up? He's like, No, it's not. And so I screenshot at an event in Lincoln or in Omaha, Nebraska that was doing a launch party for whistlepig 26:00 Yeah no idea and neither did his boss and so that's why nobody's get nobody sharing emails is no that's why they're coming out to me with me tomorrow you know because then I throw a fit to say listen I'm not saying that I should get all this allocated whistlepig or I should be the first shot at it I just want to be communicated to because we have customers that walk through that door or text or message me all day long about hey, I see whistle pigs here I'm going to stop out and get some oh sorry we don't have any and then they again some will understand and others flat out call you a liar that oh yeah you did who who got it Brett who got it George who got it you know and they'll sit there and try to pick off names about who gets what and why they got it. 26:45 So I think up front like say like so this is how many Is it like you said the walkers whiskey. I don't even know what she said blended whiskey, and this is how many This is what it's going to take to get on those how allocation was 27:00 Or did they even give you a number to shoot for? Or like, here's the plan, you know, to get to those? 27:06 Or is it just like, spend as much as you can? And we'll get over that later. We'll figure it out. Yeah. That you know what, you just nailed it. It's like, you know, by everything we have to sell, yeah. In the month each month, we're going to have deals and not listen. I'm not bashing the wholesaler, so to speak, you know, I consider him like, my wife can live with her can live without her. I mean, 27:30 we need them as much as they need us. And that's the frustrating part. But so yeah, it's, you know, 27:39 to start, you know, or one of the little story was two years ago, after all the beats that came out and Pappy allocations came out. They came in into November, wanting to know if I would do a buy on 1792 small batch. And I said, well, what's the deal and that was something like buy 20 cases get a free and I don't think they thought I was going to say yes, I said, Well, yeah, that's 28:00 a no brainer. 28:01 Yeah, they had their bosses with them. And all of a sudden he's like, yeah, you know, getting the computer, I think we can get him another three GTS is, you know, for doing this. And so I looked at him and I just said, that's what irritates me. You got extra bottles because I bought this now Come on What will you know, what is the deal here? Why wouldn't that have been distributed according to who buys and who deserves it? A month ago when it got distributed? Why do you have bottles sitting back? You know, they'll tell you Oh, we had people that didn't pick up or, you know, named me one retailer that gets allocated three bottles or something like that, that doesn't pick it up. We're going to do it every time. So you know, it's a little bit frustrating. But yeah, that's to answer your question. There's no general number other than, hey, just buy and we'll make sure you get taken care of so we're getting taken care of is you know, there's never enough to go around. You know, if I get last year, probably mix and match. 29:00 13 to 14 bottles of Pappy Van Winkle between the 10 year all the way up to the 23 year. Well, those are gone before they even hit the store. Because we sell them to the to our best customers. 29:11 We don't play favorites, but I've had people come in the store and just yell at me as to why I don't have the lottery for those. Well, I understand that but at the same time, then how do I explain to one of my regular customers that spends $1,000 a month? Oh, yeah, you're not going to get any because we're going to we're going to raffle these off. So people that don't shop here get them. 29:33 So let's go back to your distribution days for a minute. Okay, what was your What was your last year as a distributor? 2013 14 Okay, so you wouldn't you have you experienced a little bit of the boom you experience some of the rise of the craft, the craft brands. This is something I get told by a lot of craft distillers. Now craft is that you know 29:59 People can, can say it's good, it's not good. But the fact is, is they get distribution in a lot of these markets. 30:08 And then the bottles just sit in their warehouse. The distributors do nothing to try and promote the brands or get them in a store or To my knowledge, even put them in a catalog to say, Hey, this is why we have an inventory. They're just sitting in a warehouse and hoping that and those those distillers are hoping that someone finds out about them. 30:32 What what gets a distributor to get off their ass and try and move product for a supplier? The distiller you know, Fred, I think there's there's two ways about that. Oftentimes, 30:48 I read all your guys's publications and listen and so forth. I learned things from you guys, months before our distributor has a clue. So I will like do a screenshot and say hey here 31:00 A particular product that please look out for me put it on my list. I really want this. And all the way up to the top that respond. Never heard of it. Well, yeah, it's coming. You know, the most recent one was well, or full proof. 31:13 You know, an Elmer t hundred anniversary or the 100 proof that's coming. There's things like that that they don't know about. So to answer your question, a lot of those craft distilleries and craft products, it has to be something that we as retailers have heard about, that we asked about, and then they will, they'll research or so to speak and then oh, yeah, I do carry that by the way. Unless somebody is really putting the pressure on them to get it out into the market. It has to you have to ask about it. Those salesmen have too many other brands and too many other pods if you will, that they have to hit to get it out the marketplace and you're right even as a salesman. I'm going to be honest with you. If it was the end of fiscal whether that was June or December for a certain brand, I was going 32:00 After things that I was going to make a bonus on, I was going after, you know, our biggest suppliers on the on the liquor and the wine side to make sure I hit those numbers because that's what ensured I kept my job. So, so let's stay Let's stay on the distributor side. Yes. One question about that because I heard some lingo and there wasn't familiar with what's a pod? Yeah, what's a pod? A pod is a placement. So if Yellowstone which is in Nebraska and I happen to be a big fan of hits the market, they might have certain amount of pods they have to hit and a pod means they have 15 accounts they need to do a placement of which is basically a three bottle placement. If they get a three bottle placement at our store, that particular sales, we got his pod for that brand. The problem is they come into the store with 22 different brands that need placements or pods, and then it becomes a real estate issue within a store. 32:54 Gotcha. Now we're now we're starting to talk your language. All right. So when we so let's take a look 33:00 Look at like, 33:03 like how the distributors spend money with with on premise and off premise. As you know, it's illegal for them to say, Hey, here's some cash carry this correct, but they do spend money in stores, what? How are they able to how are they able to slip under the law to give retailers and bars, money to carry products? You know, I don't think a lot of that goes on in Nebraska anymore. I'm not going to say that it doesn't because I think there probably are some exceptions and some things that just don't add up. But it was something that wouldn't add up. Give me an example. You don't have to name any names. No, it's a certain store getting four bottles of let's say, Buffalo Trace William Lou Weller 34:00 The antique collection and I look across the street going huh? They do about a 10th of the business we do. And all of a sudden they got these bottles and the same time those bottles showed up Look at this huge Southern Comfort display that showed up well Southern Comfort Zone by my sash rack. So they need to go in there and figure out a way to get that Southern Comfort in there. To me to Southern Comfort number What a way to entice them is with some bottles, or I know it's tapping with with cash or, or goods dealer loaders as they call them. 34:35 That from golf bags all the way to whatever that used to run rampant when I was a salesman I saw that all the time. But to that question, Fred, the 34:47 the how the mom and pop distributors going away and corporate america if you will, the southerners the r&d sees Johnson brothers, that corporate cultures kind of put it into a lot 35:00 That stuff. Again. I'm pretty sure it goes on. I've heard stories and I see things but yeah, that that's kind of how that works. 35:09 Well, you know, you go to certain resort destinations and Dr. Usha will own the entire bar. You know, they'll own entire liquor stores. You go to Vegas and beemo have an entire hotel. You know, so it's like these things are not just happening because the the the bar owners and the hotel owners happen to be big fans of those particular products. I mean, something's happening somewhere. Yeah, there's somewhere Oh, there there absolutely is, you know, it could come down to to free goods or any of that stuff. You know, the conversation as the retailers I had because we are one of the bigger ones in Nebraska from a volume standpoint. 35:56 You know, if you ever thought about trying to give us money or bias 36:00 You know what, take whatever money you were going to give us and knock the bottle costs down so we can make money. 36:06 It's never come to that and we never do that. But yeah, I guarantee you, there's some of that stuff going on. Now my son, my oldest son happens to be at on premise salesman in Omaha. And yeah, there's times where brown Forman or or beam or people will go into a certain bar or a ballpark or college world series, a certain bar down there. I remember Cruz and Ron took over probably the most popular bar in Omaha. I'm assuming they give them all these umbrellas and all this other good stuff. And yeah, they'll do that. So. But if if there's money under the table or things like that, I'm not I can't 100% say that it happens. I'm sure it does. So your son's in the business. That means Thanksgiving and Christmas must be kind of heated sometimes. Yeah, the dumb little kid. Thanks craft beers where it's 36:58 from all of our barrel pics. 36:59 crying out loud. He's the you know, he's, we he's been to Kentucky with us three times. We're going back again in July. And, you know, every time he shows up for the holidays, he wants to bring some pretty beer. 37:13 So there is a there's a good question that came in in the chat here from Mike bliss. And it's kind of talking about the difference in high volume retailers, you know, you're talking to the total wines and liquor barn to the world versus some value, add specialty retailers that are sort of your your mom and pop your corner shops and stuff like that. Where did the where does the line draw in what distributors do in in what they're able to allocate? Or how do they decide, oh, well, this this store does insane amounts of business. You know, we don't even have to sit there and have an argument with them. We're just going to go and sell a bunch of stuff. You know, sure. They've got it. They've got to take care or make happy multiple entities. You know, you've got on premise you've got off premise so yeah, sure bars 38:00 Need a certain allocation as well, you hope that they expose that to more drinkers based off of you know, 20 something pours out of a bottle that's going to go out to a bar customer whereas we're selling it by the bottle 38:14 it's a 38:16 it's my argument with the wholesalers. It's my argument it's my fight to say how does a little bar out in western Nebraska in a town of 300 people get just as many bottles of blood off pack five as I do, I don't understand that. Especially again, even with that portfolio, I support Rebel Yell and all those brands as well. 38:39 And it gets tiring for me because I have to then throw a fit and have a conversation with people as to what's going on. I don't want those people to not get products I understand that they need to build a business. But building a businesses in this this industry bourbon, if you will. You got to spend money as well. It's no different than any 39:00 else did you invest money in to build your business? So I guess I kind of want you to talk about that a bit more. Because you know, you were talking about, you know, how does this bar in the middle of nowhere with 300 people get the same allocation of something. But honestly, like, how does that happen? Like, is there? I mean, you were on that side at one point like is, is the internal 39:22 workings in here to say, all right, well, let's say all four of us work for a distributor, we all cover different patches, we all get 25% of the allotment, and we go decide how 25% we're going to go and do it in our particular market. Like is that is that a typical thing? Like, how does it happen internally, Kenny, don't say that 39:42 happens. That's the other frustrating part. They'll get these allocated items that come into the warehouse, and they'll say, okay, Division Two, you get five bottles, Division Three, and I'll go down the line and then they'll let these guys decide where they go. Well, you can then get up you can say, Well, I have a really good friend that owns 40:00 liquor store, I'm going to make sure he gets a bottle. He doesn't even buy anything from that portfolio. But he does carry Barton vodka as well. And so they'll get those certain things where my fight with them has always been, hey, somebody at the top of your company needs to start looking at these Bourbons it is what makes this this liquor industry tick right now and make sure that you're taking care of people that that one work hard to get it in the right people's hands, you don't want to get it into flipper hands and things like that. And yeah, I take a lot of criticism at our store. Because I asked for ideas when people come in to buy stuff I want to know who they are, I want to get to know them and I want to make sure I'm not going to find it on the secondary market. And you know, as I did yesterday, oddly enough with one of our knob Creek barrel pics that just came in, 40:52 you know, in the in the state of Nebraska, if you will, it's and I know I'm getting a little off off par here off topic, but it's 41:00 illegal to buy or sell alcohol if you don't have a license, or you can't buy it from somebody without a license. So that flipping market or secondary market is is very much against the law in Nebraska. But you know, I want to make sure the people that are buying bourbon and so forth, it's getting into the people's hands that want to enjoy it, share it and develop it. So that's my other fight with the wholesalers to say because there are stores in Omaha that we can all walk into right now and you can pay $199 for a bottle of Elmer t that sitting on the shelf you can pay 199 for a bottle of Blanton's, you can pay 3000 for Pappy and, and I don't understand how those people get an allocation when that's how they put it on their shelves. And the distributors have now said they agree and that they will not get future allocations because of that. We see it all the time here in the local. There's plenty of stores that Yeah, the right now you can go you can find a bottle of one as well or 107 it will have a 42:00 $99 price tag on it. There's a few stores in the city that do it. However, it's not stopping them from getting allocation continual. So I mean, do you mean when you were on that side? I mean, I don't think gouging or price markups were that big I think in 2014 timeframe, but I mean, are you starting to really think that distributors are taking this serious? I think they are. I think they're starting to figure it out. Again, this is all new to them too. This is brand new territory for them, you know, they have to understand that retailers like myself and others. What's most important to us right now is those allocated items and those Bourbons and that diversity and that's that variety and selection. 42:43 You know, when will it came to Nebraska, all I'm gonna say six months ago. 42:48 Maybe it was a little longer than that. But you had to buy everything they owned before you could get a couple bottles of their family estate stuff. And sure enough, we did we bought all the pot still the nose mill the roads. 43:00 yield Bardstown, pure Kentucky, all that stuff. And I've still got it all over our store, still have yet to see any family estate stuff come in. And the Johnson brothers distributor will say, well, we got to take care of, you know, some of our other customers. Well, this is where I will point the finger. Well, those other customers are the ones that buy hundred cases of barefoot wine. And we all know who those customers are. So I don't do that. And I won't buy barefoot wine at 100 cases at a time. So I can sell it at $1 higher than the grocery store. But that's where you're going to find the family estate stuff in Nebraska. 43:35 So let's take a look at the suppliers to distillers. 43:41 You keep bringing up these portfolios. And you're talking about, you know, largely Sazerac. You've mentioned a couple others you just mentioned, will it you know, at what, 43:54 how much blame are you putting on the distillers here in this equation? 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You know, the Steelers are pretty hands off. You know this. The distilleries, they've got the people that their suppliers that go to market. 45:47 I think some of the distilleries would be pretty amused and amazed at what actually goes on in the marketplace. I don't think they have the time. It's like a you know, 45:58 a time or that time to under 46:00 And all that goes on with that. They're probably like, if you're taking 25%, you better earn it. I don't care how you earn it. 46:08 You know, listen, those suppliers put those financial goals to those wholesalers to say, this is what needs to happen. And so then I think the wholesalers do whatever it takes to do it, because they don't always know what they're dealing with and what products they have in their portfolio. 46:24 So does it would a distributor like tele brand, say like Buffalo Trace, for example, because we keep using them because they're so popular, but 46:34 would they tell them or advise them that, hey, you need to raise prices because we need to kind of slow down this demand or what a distillery does that that who decides pricing? I guess, I think that comes from either to, you know, on that particular case that either comes from Buffalo Trace or SAS rack. And I can speak to that that's most definitely the distilleries they dictate SRP which dictates the wholesale price 47:00 Mt. 47:01 Mike if I'm wrong with this, correct me, but the the wholesaler price is usually half of what the SRP is, and then they mark it up, you know, 15 20% to the retailer and then you guys mark it up whatever is left in the margin about right. I would say that's pretty close. from what I gather, I don't think there's as much margin on that first leg that you mentioned from the to the wholesaler what the wholesaler buys it at, so to speak. 47:34 You know, so that they are that's a little tricky, if you will. 47:40 Again, and maybe it's because I'm biased from a retailer standpoint about how much we mark stuff up. But you know, I just saw somebody got a barrel of Blanton's here in Nebraska, ours isn't going to be here for another six weeks and I saw what they posted their bottle price and I'm just like, holy crap, did plans go up again? Or am I just stupid selling it for 55 48:00 dollars a bottle still, you know, also, but our customers, you know, that's what we want to do so, but yeah, to your to your point. I think that's really strong at the distillery and that's why I've always respected Sazerac and Buffalo Trace. They're pretty adamant about trying to catch those people that are abusing that retail markup in their retail stores. Right now, you're not just saying that so you get a better allocation of Pappy 48:31 damn right. I am. 48:34 Son and he's just got a sweet talk his son? Yeah. 48:38 I guess the devil's advocate to like pay to play what do you what would you say to like, you know, the mom and pop stores have been in business forever. And they can't compete on the pay to play just because they're in a smaller town or in a smaller market, but they still have customers they want to take care of and get, you know, some allocation and they've been getting them for years. And they were kind of you know, there before the 49:00 Before everything kind of happened, well, that that's just my counter argument to this. No, I agree. You know, because I've often thought and role played Hey, what if I went out on my complete own and opened up my own little mom and pop store? You know, I know at that point what I've done with the store we have now will Linda No. allocations are what I deserve to this new place. It's just one bottle at a time. That's what we did at our store. And I think that's what any mom and pop has the ability to do. You know, pick and choose your battles if you can't pick and choose every supplier that's out there. Go after if it says rack and Buffalo Trace will then really support those brands. And then yeah, you're going to get bottles at that point. You know, I think the other misconception is, there's more bottles that come into each market than we realize when you realize how many stores are going those bottles are going out too. So there's there's product available to then develop a customer base and develop 50:00 A relationship with some key customers. So I got a kind of a doozy of a question here. You mentioned a little bit a while ago talking about there might be like this favorite scheme that somebody that works a distributor, they have a certain store that they'll go and hook somebody up because they carry a well, whatever it is, and they can potentially slide into their store. How much do you think of allocated items go to things like I don't know, if you consider this something like insider trading, where say all of us here we get 25% of a pie. I know that I really want the new Booker's, whatever it's going to come out this year, but we'll just whatever it's going to be. And what I'm gonna do is I'm going to go to a store that I like, I'm going to say, Hey, I'm going to get you this bottle but this bottles mine. 50:50 You mean the the salesman or their manager coming in saying, hey, you're going to get this ball allocated to you, but you're going to sell it to me? Exactly. 51:00 happens all the time. See, that's the that's the crazy thing. It's like, people always talk about access and trying to make a free access to everything. And when you talk about even the I've seen it before with my own eyes, it happened with a with a victors bottle. I think it was a 20 or 25 year bourbon. And I know the store that ran through, and it was just kind of like, Oh, it was a favorite from distributor. And they just ran it to the store for somebody to go there and pick it up. Sir. They just had it laying around just for that. I mean it it kind of blows my mind that that there's this sort of like insider game that you can do, because you have access to all this stuff. And yeah, what how how fair is it that 51:47 you know, bourbon has, you know, a, you know, in order to get your allocation of a bourbon. How in the world is it fair to be 52:00 expected to carry a vodka or a low level gin? Or an unattractive tequila? It seems to me like that. That's, that's the most egregious thing of all happening right now is you're being forced to carry shit, you know, to get the good stuff. 52:19 Fred when you walk into our store, and you take your first step in and right to your left, you've got about 90 cases of vodka all into the price of 999 for a half gallon, or a 175. From Fleischmanns departments and school and platinum in summit, well Smirnoff a little higher Pinnacle, you name it, and that's why they're there. And yes, we sell a lot of it, don't get me wrong, but those are brands are there for a reason because there's other brands we could choose pop off and others, but hey, those are all part of a lot of those who are part of the soundtrack portfolio 52:58 to you 53:00 you're you're you're front loading your store, because you feel like it gives you a better chance for that allocation. Absolutely. 53:09 I agree it's horseshit. 53:11 To say that what if what if we all just kind of work together because this could be the way to end vodka if you think about it. 53:19 The only reason why stores are carrying vodka then let's just Yeah, the wagons and you know find a way to put bourbon there and when your vodka revolt 53:30 the biker rebellion, Fred 53:33 I this just 53:36 it just feels scammy to me it's always felt like 53:43 you know, very 1930s you know a mafioso kind of like we were saying, but how else are they supposed to dictate who gets what what is a better system? Better? I mean, if you think about it, why not just a free market system like okay, 54:00 This is what I want. Like, if people aren't buying x y&z like you shouldn't be has to be like forced to be able to carry those like that should. The thing is is nothing triple all the way back to the distiller where like they have to rethink their strategy or they have to rethink their go to market on a particular product because it's just sitting on the shelves. And if it's if you get to the point where it's not moving, then it comes all the way back to the producer. It's hard, it's tough, because in those categories, they're all commodities. They're, you know, they're, they're, 54:32 you know, base price like, and so they have to buy shelf space to compete to kind of get their product out there. It happens in cereal, it happens in groceries and in everything, you know, you buy shelf space to kind of get your product that it's this is how it is. That is true. When you walk into Barnes and Noble. Those books right there. Those are all purchased that space was purchased by the publisher. That's true. Yeah, and you know, and I I've heard stories, you know, with some of the chain accounts that 55:00 You know, hey, you want this in cap, it's $800 cash, you want this in cap, it's $400 cash, if you want, any of the back end caps is $200 cash. Again, that's never happened to me directly as a salesperson. 55:13 I will tell you that, you know, and these people are no longer there. When I was a salesperson. I often got asked when I would go in and pitch a deal, well, what's in it for me? And that's when I would walk away, and nothing against who I used to work for. But, you know, I had the dubious title of the lowest market share and what was the biggest grocery account in Nebraska? Every CL sales meeting, I had to hear about how I did that or had the lowest market share but I wasn't going to play that game of somebody else more company wanted to do that great Go for it. But you know, I was going to do it the right way. 55:47 But because I was new and scared, but I you know, again, I don't know the other answer to what you're saying. Fred is if you know how do you distribute it? They came to me and told me that 56:00 The liquor commission is standard rasca said those allocated items need to go to the people that support that portfolio. So will we I guess you have to define the portfolio. Does that include just the bourbon portfolio? It's as or accurate, does that include everything in it, if you will? I do know last year I'm sorry, in the end of 2017. 56:22 You had to buy eight cases of Southern Comfort to get a case of Blanton's. 56:27 Wow. And that's where I flipped out. And I said wait a second, you know, so, you know, it's it's, it's interesting, and it's odd. Again, I don't know that you can blame them again. I think this is all new to the wholesalers to this this crazy game we're in with with bourbon right now. And 56:48 you know, it's um, it's tough, but somebody at those disturbed those distillery somebody at those wholesalers needs to be burning the midnight oil and they're not doing that to figure out how 57:00 this all works and where these products are going and how they're being sold. Because the guy from SAS rack right to my face and the guy from Brown Forman that was in the store a couple weeks ago, flat out said they will not support these retailers that are gouging the public. So I'm hoping that assignment, you know, they're forcing the wholesalers hands to not necessarily just give whoever you know, is on the buddy list allocated items because then like like, we've just talked about how do you deal with these mom and pop stores that have been in business for 20 years, 30 years in Nebraska, that have stumbled onto the bourbon world as well you know, how do you not take care of them? 57:43 You know, it's that you bring up a good point to it should be noted that it is illegal. Federal code, you know, does not allow a distiller or supplier to dictate where, where their bottles go. So like 58:00 The best they can do is tell these distributors like we don't want this we don't want that they can't outright say don't go to Bob store because he's price gouging. But they can say something like, Hey, we don't want to see price gouging, you know, but there there there is some, there is some very particular laws that that the distiller must follow the distiller to the wholesaler. Yeah, yeah. So the distiller to the wholesaler like what they can say to dictate where things go. It's very, you know, if there's a paper trail there, you know, they always get caught, you see people get, you know, million dollar fines every other year from these, you know, from these larger wholesale companies, because they get entangled in into these like, messes and, and that the, the federal government does, like track wholesalers quite a bit closer, you know, then I think people realize, Oh, yeah, absolutely. They do it. 59:00 I completely agree with that. And I've heard it firsthand and actually seen it firsthand. 59:05 You know, an odd story when I right before I left to take this job at this liquor store, and then, you know, through the luck of success become an owner, 59:17 my boss at this particular wholesaler, you know, we got, you know, we started seeing things in our computer like, Oh, I didn't sell this account this many cases, what's going on here? I didn't think much of it just thought it was a computer glitch. And so we're all in a sales meeting. And we get asked to go down to this boardroom and there's a State Patrol. And it turns out that our, our boss and our division was taking things and billing them to accounts and and selling it out of his trunk. Oh, nice. Let me tell you what I that you want to talk about that, that moment where you start shaking, 59:56 you know, and then it becomes like 1:00:00 accounts that Wait a second, you know, Mr. salesman in Lincoln, Nebraska, how did you not know that this guy hasn't bought Jagermeister in five years? You know, where do you think he's been buying it from? And so it became quite interesting. And I'm thinking, you know, we're the ones that turned this guy in because we started seeing things on our computer. So yeah, I'm assuming there's plenty of ways to get in and around these rules for wholesalers. And again, Canada, you're one of the original points there is zero transparency. I can't ask the wholesaler Can you tell me how much Buffalo Trace antique came into the state? And when I can ask them how much birthday bourbon came into the state and what accounts Got it? All I know is I got one bottle. Yeah. So it is one good thing about the controlled states is that you can you know, because it's all tax related and public record. You can see exactly where all those bottles went in Pennsylvania, there's mysteriously five bottles that 1:01:00 disappear every year when they get their allocation to the county when they all go to state senators. Yeah. 1:01:08 So we've we've now established the fact that there is no map and it's just all kind of like just a crazy process. There's no process there's there's literally there's nothing I think we've established that at this point. But here's here's the funny thing that I always find. I mean, it doesn't matter you you ask any store owner in when it comes to fall release season and I'm sure that Mike you hear the same exact thing is and you're going to say it every single year to his allocations are down this year. It's I mean, literally, I've heard that same exact line for the past five years in a row how our allocations always down every single year. You know, I don't know that. I'm going to tell you I was very happy with my Pappy allocation this year, this past year in 2018. What was extremely upset about my Buffalo Trace antique collection, so I don't know if they decided to, to cut me on one and give me more. The other thing 1:02:00 That would keep me quiet and keep me happy if you will. 1:02:04 But yeah, I can tell you I got one bottle of birthday bourbon this year I've always gotten to and not that that's a lot, especially when I hear and see other markets and what they get. 1:02:14 And so I flat out asked the the brown Forman guy two weeks ago when he was in the store, you know, hey, I'd be glad to do a jack daniels barrel. Again, I'd be happy to do a Woodford Reserve and an old forester barrel at the store because I know we can sell him. Is that going to get me any more birthday bourbon, he flat out looked at me said no, because the state of Nebraska is only getting so much. You know, you know, then at that point, we have to make a decision, but at least he was honest. And he was he seemed to be pretty clear about you know, he doesn't really like I think Fred said he doesn't control where those bottles go once they come into the state of Nebraska, as far as what account gets them. Yep, absolutely. So to kind of wrap this up, you know, and this has been a fantastic conversation and you know, Mike, I really love the passion that you have here. You can tell that you 1:03:00 You've got a lot of a lot to talk about in this but you know, since you've gone from, I don't know one dark side to the other maybe you're seeing the light I don't know which which is the better end here. But now that you're on the other end how's your view changed to be now dealing with the people that you once worth of a salesperson 1:03:21 you know, somebody sent me a I don't know what you call them a GIF or whatever those things are 1:03:27 a Forrest Gump running You know, when in a movie when he takes off down the lane and it's out on the road and takes off. And I literally said, that's me at the end of the month when I see the sales people come in. 1:03:39 They all got some deal, that's the best that's ever been and, you know, and and but again, my perception is I've learned how to control it and learn how to understand it. And you know, with all this innovation from all these different flavors, you know, 1:03:55 that there's only so much real estate in a store and even the big stores, you know, 1:04:00 There's only so much they can put down and carry on their shelves before they run out of room. And so something has to give. So I just kind of look at basically what's the value for that particular product that comes in into one of Fred's points earlier, I kind of look for those craft distilleries. I'm just looking for a variety of whiskey that I think tastes good. I don't want to sell something to you or anybody else that you're going to take home and whether you pay $30 or $100, and be like, Oh my gosh, I've had Buffalo Trace. And this is horrible compared to that. 1:04:35 It's a shame that you have to do your own research as a store owner, because these craft distilleries are paying these distributors to push their brands for them. And that you know, they're not you as a store owner going out of your way to get those people involved in a chance on the dance. 1:04:51 And it just sucks because like, what is the point of a distributor for a brand that's, you know, a craft brand because it's just a pastor and it doesn't 1:05:00 Seemed like they're doing a service for them. And also, would you like to iterate what they're usually costing on top of of the cost? What do you mean? Well, Ryan, we mean we go we know what how many points that distributors take on top of it. You want to kind of talk about that? Yeah. And it's, you know, you're paying, you know, for us to do distribution here, we're paying 25% margin, not 25% markup, so it's 25% margin on the fob costs that we're sending to them. And then on top of that, the retailer's taking 25% margin. On top of that, we go through all this hard work to go pick the whiskies decide throne, go through all the risks, the legal stuff, all the taxes, all this stuff, and the end user is getting the most margin, and the distributors are two versus the end. So as a craft brand, you know, we're like, well, what's the point? You know, so, what is the point? 1:05:54 That's why I just right. 1:05:57 But you know what, that's th

So Mike and Nick Screwed up and explain what happened. Nick's daughter is dating.... Uncle Detective Mario calls in and wants answers on the "boyfriend". What's up with Epstein's "suicide"? Celebrities and cops, are they just bitching to bitch or can they put up or shut up? Disclaimer By accessing this Podcast, I acknowledge that the Roll Call Room Podcast (RCRP) makes no warranty, guarantee, or representation as to the accuracy or sufficiency of the information featured in this Podcast. The information, opinions, and recommendations presented in this Podcast are for general information only and any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk. This Podcast should not be considered professional advice. Unless specifically stated otherwise, the RCRP does not endorse, approve, recommend, or certify any information, product, process, service, or organization presented or mentioned in this Podcast, and information from this Podcast should not be referenced in any way to imply such approval or endorsement. The third party materials or content of any third party site referenced in this Podcast do not necessarily reflect the opinions, standards or policies of the RCRP. The RCRP assumes no responsibility or liability for the accuracy or completeness of the content contained in third party materials or on third party sites referenced in this Podcast or the compliance with applicable laws of such materials and/or links referenced herein. Moreover, RCRP makes no warranty that this Podcast, or the server that makes it available, is free of viruses, worms, or other elements or codes that manifest contaminating or destructive properties. THE RCRP EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL LIABILITY OR RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR OTHER DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF ANY INDIVIDUAL'S USE OF, REFERENCE TO, RELIANCE ON, OR INABILITY TO USE, THIS PODCAST OR THE INFORMATION PRESENTED IN THIS PODCAST. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/therollcallroom/message

When Mike Slagh separated from the service, he had to find a job in areas he didn’t have experience. This was a common problem among veterans moving out of the military and into civilian life. So Mike started Shift, a hiring pipeline for vets that offers career advice, fellowship opportunities and more. --- Find Your Mission is presented by WeWork in partnership with Dell Small Business.  To learn more about WeWork and the Veterans in Residence program, visit we.co/veterans. 

We had a lot to process after our two-part conversation on Fear with Kyle Hoffman over the last two weeks. So Mike, Tom, and I realized we needed one more go-around on the topic to figure out what we took away. Freel free to join in on the conversation.

Hunting for rare bourbon is hard these days so many people have gravitated to single barrel selections as a way to combat it in the hopes of getting a stellar bourbon that is less expensive and more appealing. On this episode, we blind taste our way through a series of five comparisons where we try to see if a single barrel store pick can compete with past limited editions. We see if Weller CYPB, Booker’s Rye, 2016 Four Roses Single Barrel, and Elijah Craig 18 are worth the price. We also talk about flavors we prefer over others and how to create your own small batch limited edition bourbon as well. If you’ve done something like this before, drop us a comment with your results. Show Partners: The University of Louisville now has an online Distilled Spirits Business Certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry. Learn more at uofl.me/pursuespirits. Barrell Craft Spirits is always trying to push the envelope of blending whiskey in America. Learn more at BarrellBourbon.com. The 2019 Kentucky’s Edge Bourbon Conference & Festival pairs all things Kentucky with bourbon. It takes place October 4th & 5th at venues throughout Covington and Newport, Kentucky. Find out more at KentuckysEdge.com. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about the return of bourbon. Is it worth waiting in line or camping out for bourbon? Tasting store picks vs. limited releases. Weller CYPB vs Weller 107 pick by Cork N Bottle Booker’s Rye vs Knob Creek Rye by Westport Whiskey and Wine 2016 Four Roses Limited Edition Single Barrel OESK vs North Atlanta Bourbon Society OESK Elijah Craig 18yr vs Elijah Craig Loch n Key Wild Turkey 17yr Decades vs Russell's Reserve by Cork N Bottle How many barrel picks have you been on? Is there something on the flavor wheel that you don't like to get out of a bourbon? Have you tried to create your own small batch before? 0:00 Hey everybody. If you have a bachelor's degree and live anywhere in the United States, there's now a way for you to take your bourbon education to the next level. The distilled spirits business certificate from the University of Louisville is an online program that can be completed in as little as 15 weeks and will prepare you for the business side of the spirits industry. It's offered by the AA CSP accredited college of business. And this certificate was developed in partnership with industry experts to be one of a kind and it's going to prepare you for your next adventure. Learn more about this online program at U of l.me. Slash pursue spirits 0:37 dry oak or the sweet Oh, I'm more of a circuit. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, that's what that's my nickname. So they call me Coleman sweet. Oh 0:56 what's up everybody? It is Episode 219 of 1:00 bourbon pursuit. I'm one of your host Kenny, and we don't have a whole lot of news but it's festival season. And for bourbon pursuit, we are fortunate that we are going to be at some of the most prestigious ones around. We had a blast last weekend at hometown rising and now we are headed into bourbon and beyond weekend, the whole bourbon pursuit team is going to be there. And we have different sessions throughout the entire weekend. So make sure you go and check out the schedule so you can be there. bourbon and beyond.com. Of course Fred's gonna be there and he's scattered everywhere. But Ryan kicks things off on Friday at 1230 with beer drinkers bourbon, and I have the final session on Friday at six o'clock pm called what is a master distiller. On Saturday, I kick off at 1225 with barrel finished versus traditional bourbon. And we're going to be joined on stage by all the personalities that you've heard on the podcast before. So we would love to see you all there and please come say hi to us. There's always going to be bourbon pursuit t shirts. 2:00 Hats available at the Fred MC merchant so make sure you take a second and stop by their last week mark 65 years as Jimmy Russell being an active master distiller and now he is considered the longest tenured master distiller around Happy Anniversary Jimmy from the whole bourbon pursuit team. Maker's Mark is unveiling its first ever limited release bourbon that won't require a special trip to Loreto Maker's Mark wood finishing series 2019 new release, RC six will be available nationwide this fall. It marks the first of many upcoming whiskeys in the wood finishing series. As Maker's Mark plans to release a new one for a limited time nationwide each year. You probably already know about maker's 46 and the private barrel selection program that utilizes flavoring staves. This release was finished and secondary barrels containing 10 wouldn't staves dubbed RC six the staves made from Virgin America. 3:00 Or season for a year and a half and then baked in a convection oven. Before being introduced to the cast drink bourbon, Maker's Mark made 255 barrels, it's bottled at 108.2 proof. And you'll be able to find it nationwide in October with an MSRP of around $60. Not only is it festival season, but it's also release season. And release season means all the crazies come out. And for today's podcast, we look at really what that means because they're going to be bourbon lotteries that happen around the nation folks are camping out in parking lots. And there's a lot of hate around flippers and liquor store owners that are trying to get the most money out of these secondary values for these allocated Bourbons. So our goal in this episode was to see if we can help folks out there not feel the fo mo or the fear of missing out. We did our best to blindly set up samples of past limited edition Bourbons and compare them to single barrel private pics. The results are interesting, but the best part about this is that you can do this 3:59 At home, find a group of friends and get together and have a blind taste off and use some limited edition Bourbons versus some single barrels out there. Heck, if your taste buds prefer stag Junior over Big Boy George t stag, you're going to save yourself a lot of headache and money in the process. But you can do this as well for things like ego or 17 versus just standard single Eagle rare store pics. And there's a lot of them that spread the whole gamut of a lot of the big distilleries are out there. And if you ever get around to doing something like this, we would love to hear your results. Drop us a line on our Facebook page or mentioned us in your Instagram or your Twitter posts. All right, it's time to dive into the good stuff. Let's hear from Joe over a barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred Minnick with above the char. Hi, Joe from barrell bourbon here. We're always trying to push the envelope of blending whiskey in America. Find out more at barrell bourbon.com. 4:53 I'm Fred Minnick, and this is above the char want to take you back in time, a time and bourbon will 5:00 wasn't cool when bourbon wasn't selling when Julian Van Winkle had to trade bottles of 23 year old Pappy, just to get a magazine advertisement. I'm talking about the 1990s. In the 1990s there was a very important event that happened that would shape the bourbon economy for the next 20 or 30 years. And that is the Japanese market crashed. You see up until that point the Japanese market was the number one thing kind of keeping bourbon alive. You had brands being specifically developed for the Japanese such as Blanton's Booker's know as mill the entire small batch collection essentially anything that was a an ultra premium of that time was being sent to Japan because the Japanese absolutely loved and continue to love bourbon. When the market crashed. You saw how the company's decided to deal with it. You had some 6:00 Who decided to put their efforts on domestic sales. So heaven Hill basically shifted their efforts to focus on the southeast and throughout the United States. Jim Beam really tried to double down and like places like New York and Chicago and San Francisco, they had really concentrated programs there and united distillers, now the CEO decided to sell. Up until that moment, they had actually been making more of their weeded bourbon to sell to Japan under the Rebel Yell label to compete with jack daniels. They had this excess of weeded bourbon and they decided to sell it and they also decided to sell their brands. They sold Rebel Yell eventually to the company that is now Lux go. They sold it old Fitzgerald to heaven Hill, and they sold Weller the Weller brand and the stocks and the archives to SAS racks. 7:00 Those are three companies who really wanted the bourbon and they really wanted to promote it. And as we all know, that particular whiskey was quite good and made an impression on anybody who ever tasted it. And I often wonder what would have happened if united distillers decided not to sell their whiskey and their labels to three companies who really did care about promoting bourbon? I've thought about that a lot. And I've come to the conclusion that I don't think bourbon would have ever has been as hot as it is today. The reason why united distillers has always been a scotch centric company and they've never put much effort into American whiskey. The exception being bullet and you know, George decal is kind of like barely, barely gets any budget, you know, at least they're now they're, they're paying attention to it, but that particular company has never really put a whole lot of focus on 8:00 American whiskey. So I look back on that time today as we celebrate bourbon Heritage Month. And we enjoy this incredible growth and all the fandom that we have in bourbon. I look back to the 1990s as the people who truly made the right decisions that got us to where we are today. 8:22 And that's this week's above the char. Hey, if you want to learn more about the history of bourbon, check out my book bourbon, the rise fall and rebirth of an American whiskey. Until next week. Cheers 8:37 Welcome back to the episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon, Kenny and Ryan here in our secondary recording studios in my basement if you're watching the video you you may notice the background it looks familiar. And we have a new guest on today and I'm sure usually when people come here they're always like, I can't wait to see Kenny's basement through all his bottles, bottles, bottles. I like upstairs studio better. We got more room. 9:00 On the dining room table, you were a little tight down here, but we'll make it work. So you can see the bottles. Yeah, so when I was planning the basement I never really planned this to be like a recording space. But it kind of turned out that well now you have lights and the whole shebang. You know, it's like, real deal. We'll make it work. We'll make it work in the cramped space. It'll, that's how to happen. But, you know, today, today's topic really came as it was a good suggestion by our guests. Because when we think about the significance and what it really takes to go in chase after unicorns and limited edition releases, it's becoming almost it's been it's difficult. Yeah, it's very, very difficult. It's either your, I don't even do it. I just gave up on it. Like two or three years ago. It's like no, not camping. Yeah, you're either camping or you're paying secondary prices, or, you know, CP and other people are kind of like, Oh, yeah, well, I've got a great relationship with the store manager. I buy everything there. And and that's great. But sometimes you also need to take a step back and think like, Okay, well, I 10:00 If I just keep buying a bottle of bourbon every two weeks, and I keep buying a 12 pack of beer odds are I'm probably spending almost two months as well and I could just bought off a secondary and in my case my store relationship it caused me a probably about five to $600 in tickets to like concerts and football games and all that stuff per year so I need to add that tax on to my math whenever I'm like I'm getting these a cost Yeah, maybe not. Yeah, I was like that big man. We've a lot be actually cost you more than the second Yeah. No doubt. That's definitely how it happens. But So with that, let's go and introduce our guest today. So today we have Mikey Conrad Mikey, welcome to the show. Welcome. Glad to be here. Yes. beautiful, magnificent basement. Yeah. See, we like to hear that it's all about the ambience. Right. That's the town. So Mikey, you know, first off, thank you for coming up with this idea because this is this is great because we get to kind of look at more of the bourbon culture side of things here. We get to look at really what does it take to look at a 11:00 Very good store, pick somebody that is from a Baroque barrel selection group, or whether they're stores that are very well known for it, versus chasing after those limited releases, which sometimes they're pretty much the same exact thing as those barrel selections just either aged longer or selected by the master distiller for various reasons, something like that. So kind of what was your your reasoning behind bringing an idea like this? Yeah, I mean that the main reason is kind of already been hinted at, like, it just got really almost ridiculous to camp to spend time, energy effort, money into chasing things that you weren't always sure if they were going to pan out to be what you think they're going to be because of everyone else telling you that you got to get this bottle. It looks pretty, you know, whatever it may be. And so you know, you start to take store pics or single barrel pics from clubs or stores or bars and you're like man says really 12:00 Good, this tastes better than you know the special release that came out. And so it really is just come to a simple like reality that time is something you don't get back. And so for a guy who's married, you know has three daughters. I'm like, Man Am I am I just spend too much time trying to always chasing bourbon. Yeah, man. I mean, come on. So Miss three genetics and glasses of the past. 12:25 I mean, that's where some of the really practical I mean, thought came into play as like, really, like, how much time should I be spending and it's like, man, there's access to so many great stores in this area alone, Kentucky, Indiana, like man, there's gotta be some a better way. So yeah, that's what and Ryan always talks about opportunity costs. Being when you say yes to something you're saying no to something else. Yeah, you definitely always gotta think of the opportunity costs. It's that and then it's also you know, in the value of your time, you know, Ryan being an entrepreneur and owning a few businesses. He he has this sort of level. 13:00 Thinking, because I go back and I think of like my 2014 days of camping in front of liquor barn and being like one of the first three people there and coming away with a 23 at the end of the day. Yeah, sure. It was fun. They were good times. And now if I think about it, like what I ever do that again, like, is my time more valuable than actually waiting in line? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you gotta look at like your salary or what your earning potential is like as someone and and you're like, all right, I just invested nine hours to get this bottle. And it's, you know, 1300 1500 bucks, you're like, wait a minute, I could have just done my regular job and you know, done a lot better. But you know, but it's also fun to you got it. You can't discount that there's something in about going to the store going out for the hunt, hanging out with people to you know, get those bottles so that you can't totally just make it a numbers thing, but it's a Yeah, yeah. And nine hours is probably on the short end of the stick. Yeah, exactly. So it's even lower cut, you know, or even bigger opportunity costs. So, so I'm going to talk you know, we're going to talk a little more about these topics as we go but one of the 14:00 things that we're doing today is we are going to be kind of going into a double blind here. And this is going to be store pics versus limited releases. And these are store pics that I've had access to that I've purchased as well as limited editions that I purchased. And honestly, I told my wife I said, Let's set these up. We don't want to know if this is an Elijah Craig pairing. If this is a four roses pairing, I don't really know what it is. She really want to expose us. Oh, I mean, this is gonna make us look real bad. Yeah, okay. So so we're going to not not only know what the brand name, the mash bill, whatever it is, but then inside of that we don't know which one either one or two is the limited edition or is the store pick? Yeah, so we're going to go through and we're going to start off with our first one here. We were going through so we always know number one is on our left and number two is on our right. So we've got a lined up. So let's go ahead and kind of start 15:00 The process of nosing through these and figuring out I know what it is. Oh yeah, just by that. You're so fast, huh? Think it's a well or one of seven. You think you're going straight with the leader off the bat, huh? So I actually I have no idea I can I that was the first thing in my peripheral vision. 15:22 So I'll give you some ideas of what we have up line today. So we've got on the store pick side we've got a Russell's reserve from cork and bottle. We've got a knob Creek pick that was done to knob Creek right pick that was done by Westport whiskey and wine. We've got a nine year nine month OESK that was done by the North Atlanta bourbon society, which I chose that one because we're pairing that against a Brent face bottle which was the 20 1614 year old SK in addition to that, you know, we already said we got a well or 107 which is also cork and bottle pick versus a Weller 16:00 After perfect bourbon, which was a sample sent by Matt q six So Matt thank you so much for sending that along and hopefully we don't disappoint you here or hopefully hopefully we can yeah yeah 16:12 I really enjoyed the nose on this one I wasn't in love with the taste or finish or anything about it Mona maybe it's just cuz my first one 16:22 I'm kind of with you on that one. The nose is there but what taste might be a little weird Yeah, I mean we all profile on any of those on so they're trying to register in my head so this is also kind of the the issue with some store pics too is that a lot of people and a lot of stores? They will they always go and they want to find something unique. Yep. And so they try to find that that off profile one and so that could be the one here that is that is the off profile side of things about you Mikey need to have a guests on me and my guess is going to be way off. That's okay. It's got my brain. Ivan land I totally just glanced over. 17:01 But there is a big drop off on the back end of this thing. Yeah. The only thing I noticed up front when I first knows it was like some cherries and always get cherry out of like Weller's. But 17:13 that's the only reason why I said that. 17:16 I don't know. Wow, this is actually pretty hard if I just tasted the second one. 17:22 The taste is a lot better than the SEC. Oh, yeah. The second one's the first one. I'm going to go back to it because it was a little, like musty gonna, like funky? I don't know. Yeah, a little bit. I mean, it kind of had that weird finish to it, but I'm like some like I said, that's that's one of those things where you know, you go into a store and that's what they try to do they try to differentiate it by having some unique pick like that. They taste totally different, which is crazy, like did Laurin do these right? I hope 17:52 I can't be 100% on that one. But I hope so. 17:57 Mikey, how many barrel pics Have you been on? I know you came with 18:00 On one. Yeah, I think, right around five, and maybe, maybe one or two more, but at least five. Yeah. Have you found to find those like off profile ones? Have you found them before, I have felt small profile ones. And my brains always go in toward the masses. Unless there happens to be a large group of folks that just wants something really off profile. But if that's off profile can be off putting to someone that has an expectation of something that they want to, they want to sip or drink that's, that's within their, you know, their taste, right? And so we even at a place like New riff, like we, we got down to our two, we did them blind, and one was just significantly different. And my thinking was, man, guys, if we pick this one, people are going to think we're crazy. Yeah, they're not going to want to ever again, right, but the other one was just it was great, had a great nose, super sweet on the front, and this long lasting kind of sweet oak. And so we chose that one. So 19:00 But usually when that barrel picks I'm pretty simple like I have this very like Check. Check. Yes, yeah. Minus or check plus and yeah, if the nose on something is really weak I have a hard time putting it into the the check plus category but 19:15 I do like the nose on a second one a lot better than the first there's Yeah, like everything about the second one better. So I'm not entirely sure what it is. Yeah, I'm gonna put my vote for two on this one. I agree as well. But I mean, we've had so Ryan lands he's been on the show before he sent us a sample. A blind sample once Brian if you remember that. Yep. And we were we were dumbfounded by it. We were going through because we were like, is this a ride? Like it's got this minty flavor. It's like, totally, that means we couldn't pin it down. And then he was like, No, just a nine year Buffalo Trace. 19:50 Like, yeah, we're like, I didn't expect that when we were thinking I was like, some will have families day, like eight years or something from MTV, you know? But it was 20:00 Buffalo Trace Oh yeah, it was a crazy one. So I think I got my vote in number two Yankee what's your vote in? Yeah number two hands down all right all right so i think you won't do the reveal I'm already on the guess oh how about just trade them off you guys can you guys can both do reveals about that so you're real all right Mikey go ahead all right I'll reveal all right so here we go here we go number a number a number 20:27 oh boy sorry guys a one number one is Weller craft your perfect bourbon OC at least now I new 20:39 stuff right 20:41 the craft your own bourbon you whoever crafted it did not 20:46 you screwed up 20:49 yeah, that's I mean that kind of goes to show you right i mean we're out of the gate we already just said that doesn't work yeah, I mean and go me wrong like store pick one oh sevens like they trade upwards of 21:00 Like $100 now, but the crappy perfect bourbon i think is somewhere around 300 400. So you know, yeah, I mean, it was a limited release. It came in a fancy white label, but I'm just like, thrilled. I got it right on the nose. I was like, you should just leave now. Yeah, I'm done. See? 21:19 My drop word done? Well, let's uh, let's go ahead and refresh or reset here and he does dump dump bug it Here we go. Here's a here's a dump glass that you can use. Just go ahead and do that. All right. Have you done a 107 pic? I have not me either. 21:35 on the list though, I had the opportunity to do it. Which you know the Yeah, I mean, the honest weird thing about doing Yeah, we're going to have a just a big ol Weller mix mix, right here. So we'll just do that. We'll save that one for later. Is it pretty similar to like doing a Buffalo Trace where you know, you get it's 46 barrels and it's very similar. I don't need that here. So one 22:00 So when you do the when you do the well everyone oh seven pick. I mean, it's there's literally no difference than what you were doing with a Buffalo Trace or anything like that. 22:09 Except you have you have this high anticipation going into it. Yeah. Right because you're like, we did it like we're here like we're getting the Mecca. Yeah. I mean, you think like, it's going to be like crazy and like off the wall. Like you're super excited for it like you get it takes more than a little Yeah. You got barely a taste there. 22:30 And then so and so we're going to use it. So like I said, you go in like super, super amped for it. However, 22:38 when we did ours, I was actually sitting there with a few of the guys and I'm kind of like, it might be like one of the few times in my life where you're like, like so crazy going into it. That you say 22:53 can we get some new barrels? Because life's all about expectation? Nothing. No, yeah, nothing was like you 23:00 We're over the moon about any of them. I mean, so it was just kind of like Well, I guess we'll just choose one of these. Yeah, I mean, they were also kind of doing us a favor of giving this group that I'm in a 107 pick at the story behind it was this is all part of the the bourbon cartel as we've had on the show before doing a 1792 foolproof pick. And we are the team that was there chose the barrel and come to find out that barrel was already pre sold. And everybody had already left like guys came in from California for this all this other kind of stuff. And they were like, Oh, I'm so sorry. What can we do? What can we make it up for you? I don't know exactly how you want no seven pick and they're like, okay, let's make it happen. Yeah. And I guess when that happens, you might get the the last barrels all the rejects right into the year. Yeah, it's like when Eddie Russell was that the Russell's pig and they're like, well, operations is on air. Nevermind. 23:59 So we got 24:00 UV here. So with BO buddy. Oh, here we go again. So I feel like this is filling 24:10 or something logic correct maybe 24:13 behind you might be, you might have he's got this he's got his senses dialed in every night. Every night he goes home and just practice I actually do now ever since we've done pursuit series like I've kind of like trying to not take it seriously but really 24:30 put some effort into it. I can train my nose and palate. I don't know. I mean, it's I don't know I enjoy it and you know, so I've really, I'll probably with on this one so I don't hide me up too much. 24:44 But I just know it's like an alleged occurred to me up the gate. All right. I can tell you after the taste. I don't think it's Elijah Craig. Oh. 24:52 I think it's a rye. Oh, yeah. Because I had one Rive blind set in here. Maybe it's like a 25:00 bourbon and then you get four roses and some of the different recipes you get some of like a minty profile to it as well so yeah there's this earthy 25:10 earth you bite at the end 25:13 yeah it's definitely like you said get the ride and it's really standing out 25:20 we are more like a kind of peanut II nutty kind of, well, one of the things that threw in here I said there was a ride blind so there's a problem is the rods that you did are like gateway rods. Yeah, well, I know I don't know if their gateway rise because of the ride that I did. I did. I did a knob Creek Westport whiskey and what it was for what sports really known for a lot of good store pics. Chris has been on the show before from there. But I said what's a good limited edition to pair this up with and there's not I ok. I tried to be a smart consumer so I didn't go out and buy like the knob Creek hundred and 30th or whatever it was. I came in the box. That was like 26:00 150 bucks, but I had these. These had a bottle of knob or a Booker's rye sitting around. And so I said, well mean it's still Jim Beam at the end of the day. 26:12 Both of them like art super dry, heavy on the taste. So let's see if we can see if we can figure it out and blind. Hmm. I'm worried. Yeah, she's like, 26:25 I'll tell you a story because Booker's right, I bought a few bottles of them. When I told myself I said, You know what, like, I have a lot of money sunk into these things because they came out at 303 50 retail. And I said, I said maybe when it hits 1000 What's the perfect boogers raw? Is it cash flow? Its cash. Yeah, I mean, I think it's like around 100 and hundred and 10 hundred and 20. Some most most of the Booker's around 120 proof. So yeah, you could probably expect that now. I'm also it just seems like there's a huge difference in the 27:00 First and second one. I don't know. Maybe it's just me. Yeah, you might be right. I'm getting more ethanol knows on this first one. 27:08 But which one do you enjoy more? And the first one that I'll call like really 27:13 overpowers kind of everything for me there obviously, now that you said there's a lot more ethanol on the nose, 27:20 like on the nose and the palate and just really just takes over well and you know, also I can't be 100% of these are rise or not So, but the second one is so light, 27:34 and gullible. Is that word gullible? Not even close now, or do you think this could be I don't love either one of them, but I like the second one better than the first like now that I'm tasting it. I don't know if it is awry. I don't think it's a wrong at this. This might be the difference in the four roses. Yeah, because it could be the Brent face 14 year OESK versus the 27:57 the nine and a half year or nine nine 28:00 nine year nine months, North Atlanta Bourbons pick and I I chose both of those. I chose the North Atlanta one because the Brett face bottle was all OESK and this was one of the last store pics that I had that was also only OESK. Alright, so if you had to choose one where do you going with 28:25 I know hopefully their listeners I'm bored. Well 28:28 the comments going rolling around like I said, I don't love both of them. I think if I had to pick I'll pick two just cuz 28:37 like one just so I just get so much alcohol that I can't really taste much else whereas to I can kind of get some 28:46 basic bourbon notes you know a little bit better. They're both pretty underwhelming for me. Not underwhelming, but just very average number one has a bit more of a punch to me. Yeah. Which a lot of people think that 29:00 is hot or its heat. Yeah. I don't typically mind it as much. However, number two definitely has a little more subdued. Little more oak. Yep. And I like my tannins. So I know he does. Like, yeah, he's cheap for tenants. 29:19 Dry oak or the sweet. Oh, I'm more of a shadow. Yeah, I mean, that's what that's my nickname. So they called me come to sweet. Oh. 29:27 Alright, you want to reveal this one? Kenny. All right, I'll reveal this one. So I'm on number two. Ryan. I'm number two as well, man it is it's a close tie. But the ethanol knows on one. I yeah, I got I gotta go with to, to just got much more sweeter kind of reveal. All right, well, we kind of nailed that one. So this was the four rows. Okay. 29:49 Number two was the bread face bottle. It was the 14 year OESK barrel strength Limited Edition. And then the first one was the nine year nine months. 30:00 SK gotcha so in this particular instance the limit earliest when the limited release me yes so how about it? Alright, so let's go ahead and dump them out and get ready for them the first one was a store pick right the Yes The first one was the store pick that's correct grab another glass over there Ron if you can and will create our glass or dump glass over here. Mikey are the ones you've been on where the most memorable barrel pics or any stories from those two mean hopefully the one you went on with us but yeah you know no pressure 30:33 I mean Buffalo Trace is always on someone's just picking a barrel there and doesn't matter really what whiskey it is the set to get into a pickle Buffalo Trace it's on everyone's list right? So that one was great. I really as far as like tours go and overall barrel picking experience, man I mean castle and key. They they even though they don't have anything on the market yet, like the ability to taste arrived or weeded and then lay it back. 31:00 down. I mean, the experience overall was really great there. So I feel like Yeah, it was. That was overall my best so far. And you know, Buffalo Trace was great as well. But out of the out of the few that I've done, castle and key was, was hands down my favorite. And usually I'll try to point people toward a tour there for coming in from out of town, the castle and key I was kind of blown away with like, I'd seen it before the renovation and went, I knows time sensitive information. But last week, you know, last weekend did a pin hook pic with the breaking bourbon guys and man, that place is awesome. Like it is like the gardens are beautiful. Like all the architecture inside like it's a great blend of like modern architecture with old architecture like I just 31:47 I mean, it comes with a steep price tag. I think they said their tours are like 30 bucks. Yeah, for an hour. But I mean, but I know that I mean it's totally different. Like you could literally spend Well, we did spend six hours 32:00 If you wanted to you could spend all day there. I mean, it's it's a great beautiful location. Yeah. If you're a history nerd like I am. So there is that kind of on beyond that adds to the experience. Yeah. I mean new riff they're new, but man, they take care of you really well, there as well. So some of it is just, it's just different. So that's, that's the reality of some of these pics. Like, some might not be better than the other but who's our least favorite? Should we not say that we bought and again, bye bye. Yeah. My bad. No, don't do that. 32:32 There's really not some that are, like terrible, right? None are actually terrible. 32:38 I mean, the only ones that are terrible. 32:41 Maybe my opinion is terrible is that you don't even actually go in the barrel pick. You just have the sample ship tonight. Yeah, like that's just Yeah, I don't know. I mean, obviously, geographic geography kind of plays a role in that. But yeah, it's it's not as exciting. Well, it's just part of what it is though. There's probably very few people that go on a barrel pick and walk away, saying 33:00 I wish I would have done that barrel pick. 33:03 Yeah, that's that's probably very true. So I just so we're here at letter C Now I keep wanting to say the number c so letter C, and often knows like the nose right away like I'm like pulling number two, like way ahead of the pack here. Yeah. 33:21 They're both the both noses are far better than the ones from the last rounds. Like on the these two. So we're tasting right now trying to figure out exactly I know where we are. Right? We are. We are easily and Eliza Craig land. Yeah, this is totally worked on. I gave that spiel about how I'm taking seriously, I'm failing pursuit series. That's okay. But I mean, this is a work in progress. So, you know, the life of Craig brain in itself, like I'm a huge fan of it. Oh, yeah, they're, they're doing it. They're doing a lot of good things in regards of not only putting out what people have been asking for for years, which was a very 34:00 Proof release, you know, they brought out should I say reintroduce the 18 and 23 year expressions A few years ago, the only thing that you can't find anymore is the 21 year expression. But you know, honestly out of those older expressions and by the way i can tell you OA you can totally tell right just first said what each one is. Yeah, so I can tell you exactly the comparison here what we're looking at and ones and Elijah Craig 18 year another is an Elijah Craig store pick that was done by the lock and key society so lock Oh, I thought you were saying the first class logic Craig. I'm like, No, it's not. A second one is why I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, but I'm just saying. I'm just saying the lineup and so anybody that's unfamiliar lock and key is based out of Julio up a New England. They're a pretty big player in that that store pic world. They've been doing it for years and years and years. I've actually got an old store pick. I'm down. I think my last job 35:00 of one of the the last ever Bernheim we store pics that were ever available. Heaven Hill what opened up to doing your own Evan Williams your own Bernheim, your own header mechanic all that sort of stuff then they kind of put the handcuffs on you to is definitely got to be the 18 and one is the 35:21 it's that eight to 12 year like Elijah Craig got the nutty toffee candy bar notes like stuff I enjoy so I'm definitely like one year program pick to the Hollywood pick two. But you know when I was when I was talking to Mikey about this and we were talking about store pics versus limited releases I actually thought I didn't do it but I thought about doing it because it's not actually technically a store pick or store release. But I said what if we did an Elijah Craig barrel proof versus like a nine year like will it family estate? Oh, yeah, I was like that one actually might be that would be pretty comparable. Well, obviously it is comparable. 35:59 It's the same exact 36:00 Liquid but both of these are really good Actually, I prefer one just because it's kind of got some of the sweeter not your candy bar kind of notes that I like. But that's just preference and I think number one, it's pretty easy to see that the 94 proof plan Oh yeah. And that's I think that's also evolving on both of them. They're both very light. Well, I mean, Mikey, like, tell me about this like, what would what in the market would change if heaven Hill opened up a logic Craig program and they just said, Yeah, put it a barrel proof. Yeah, I mean, you're going to get a wider range. I think of a first off people wanting Elijah Craig. Because it is it is very 36:44 I don't want this I don't want us to use the word delicate but I will use the word LB feels very delicate. When you put it next to the the UCLA team. There's a lot more depth to it. I think there could be a lot more depth to a single barrel pic of alleged credible 37:00 Proof if they would just open that up I guess it just depends on your consumer so like if you're you know the the first one like for what I think it's going to appeal to more of a almost a common but i mean you know like you know it's just because it's it's not the it's not the enthusiast in mind here it's very approachable very enjoyable but like get to you're definitely gonna get like you said more complexity depth 37:28 to might be more off putting to like a common consumer I'd say common but like, you know, or new consumer but I don't know depends on your consumer but I want the barrel proof because it's logical. Operators are always home runs like I've never had a bad one. Can't say I've ever had one. Well, I mean, there's the mean. So you know, Mike Sahni personally so you know that there's a lot that actually goes into making sure that an electric guard barrel proof isn't just a mistake, either right? Like Like they, they choose barrels specifically that go in 38:00 into it 38:02 which is a little bit different you know we've we've talked to the people that haven't Hill and when you talk about Elijah Craig 23 or when you try to find 23 year old barrels, it's actually very very hard. Yeah, and end up dumping a lot of them into like, just Edwin's Black Label because it's so it's so it's undrinkable. Yes. It's the oak is just overpowered. There's a bank on that point, right? There's, there's Law of Diminishing Returns without like, you know, can and somebody went the good thing I learned to catch lucky with the Pinot guy, because I was like, so how do you? You know, you have a really good barrel it say like 12 to 14 years. Like do you bottle dinner? Do you let it age? Do you know to keep will I keep improving? And he's like, No, he's like, Do you want something that's going to age you need something that's really soft, elegant, sweet at that age, because the folks really at 15 1617 is really going to start to overpower it. If it's already ready, you know, does that make sense? Oh, no, it makes sense. And so that that was kind of an 39:00 Lighting because we talked about, you know, US buying some 14 year and sitting on it for three to four years. But we were like, how do you This one's really great. Should we just because it's so great we hang on to it or should we look for something that's will do better with age? And that was kind of good advice. Yeah. And it's always a it's always a costly mistake if it never works. 39:21 Well, we'll just bottle it anyway. 39:24 No, okay, so let's go ahead let's reveal this one because I think I think this one yeah, is as bad as it sounds like I knew the bottles I chose them going into it. However, I let my wife figure out exactly what we should do. However, I thought we had Yeah, it's it's I mean, we want to live correct tangent for 39:44 a bit funny. It feels like not Brussels. 39:48 It would have been funny, but yeah, this one's too easy. The locking key and see Tuesday 18 years. Oh, yeah. Alright, so good work. So I mean, but the thing is, is like I don't mind 40:00 lock and key one like you're right like it's totally like a good drinkable bourbon. Yeah, for an average consumer that just wants to get into it. However, 40:10 I don't know if a lot of the electric barrel pics are speaking to the the enthusiastic market yeah maybe they'll keep going it's still fun it's still fun to go you know you talk to people from like bourbon Crusaders and they come out with a lot of good pics too. And the thing is, is though it's just kind of like I just wish they didn't take it down in 94 proof you know there's there's something about when you cross under that hundred threshold that I don't know Mikey, have you found anything underneath 100 that you're like, Hey, you know, like I can do this every single day like there's one there's one bottle and Brandon I do and I did this in the blind. So that's how I know. But maybe I don't know the proof. Exactly. But George Remus. I tend to like I like that bottle. 40:59 Not a fan of 41:00 why they chose George Remus of all people But anyways, you're part of the ground 41:07 and stuff is not necessary someone to model your life after. But But Remus Yeah, I love I love that bottle. I love the bourbon in it. I think it might be 90 proof. Yeah, typically under 100 proof like, like, you have to get into some dusty. He's like, okay, dads, and I mean, and we're like, 41:27 you know, like Victor's 20s or something, you know, because they're 94 proof or they actually might be right I don't know I've got one back there but I don't feel like getting up and looking at it. And so we're handing everything to Ryan do not mix see one and see two together like because 41:44 ECA teams just too good. I like it like it. Yeah. For me, for me. I love Elijah Craig a team when I am I'm sitting in the basement, and it's late at night. And like, I can't do like a barrel proof. Like it's just it's just like 42:00 I'm not able to go to sleep at night if I if I got that back in the bottle well who knows I've got it's a long day ahead of us still so yeah, you know I liked 18 I mean it for me the tags really sit and kind of dry and just like on the in which it kind of sits there and lingers for a bit and I'm like hi go away please 42:20 see not me I mean I'm Mike What about you like Do you like tannins? Because I like I said I like a lot of rich oak complexity complexity that what those really bring into it. I mean, that's it for me when you when you get a lot of oak that means that the barrel is doing something like tremendous and that's that's really what I get out of it. Yeah, I I'm a fan of the sweet oak if you can give me a finish with a sweet oak and like a dried cherry name that just last four days. Yeah, I mean, sign me up. Sign me up. Not a fan of the dry. Oh because much. I feel like it's got my get your lip smacking back and forth. 43:00 And just makes you thirsty. Not a big fan of the drive but the sweet Oh yeah, it doesn't make you feel like oh man you can you can almost taste the process. Yeah a little bit so I'm with you on that one and that's what I mean I'm a fan of just open general because it definitely is more of an overpowering flavor like up. I'll put it to you guys is like is there is there something on the flavor wheel right i mean we've all seen before that that you don't like to get out of a bourbon. 43:33 The 2019 Kentucky's edge bourbon conference and festival pairs all things Kentucky with bourbon. It takes place October 4 and fifth at venues throughout Covington in Newport Kentucky, Kentucky's edge features of bourbon conference music tastings pairings tours and in artists and market Kentucky's edge 2019 is where bourbon begins. Tickets and information can be found online at Kentucky's edge calm 43:58 as the saying goes 44:00 Portland is weird. Perhaps it's something in the water. It turns out that there might be some truth to that. The Oregon capitals primary water source is supplied by the Bull Run watershed. It's also the key ingredient in one of the city's most popular watering holes, Bull Run distillery. The boulder and watershed is a very unique water source. 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Use code pursuit for $25 off 45:00 Your first box 45:04 I'll put it to you guys is like is there is there something on the flavor wheel right i mean we've all seen before that that you don't like to get out of a bourbon. I mean for me definitely like some people some people are like oh I don't like like orange zest or orange peel or whatever No, I mean honestly I like freer freer whiskies I really like 45:25 like I'm with you know we're talking the barrel guys I really like when you get those like great notes and just too much because very off putting for me, like like he said, he gets dry and you're smacking your lips and like trying to get some moisture back into your 45:42 region, you know, but 45:45 other than that, I mean, I obviously I hate young stuff like where you just get green forward, you know, grassy or like, where it's like hey are you know, we I won't name any names, but we've had, we've had 46:00 You know, that's just very off putting for me. I agree. I agree. It's the last thing you want to do is sit there and expect something and then all of a sudden, it's like, Did I just mow my grass a second video? And that's in my mouth? Yep. Yeah, for sure. Alright, so now we're on letter D. So, you all won that one. Right? Well, I mean, I should say you all, like I said, I'm a nice person. Yeah, I think like I said, I'm just a fan of of what they do there. However, you know, that's the limited release, you know, so limited releases up to two one. Well, that's a hard one, though, because it's because it wasn't the same proof. It wasn't, you know, yeah. You can get in the gift shop almost every day. Right. Exactly. So no, not this isn't limited to Maryland, Maryland. Okay, that's a hard one. Yeah. And, and, you know, there's it To be honest, like there's a lot of things that we thought about that we couldn't do today. So, we looked at the the potential of doing an old forester single barrel versus an old forester birthday. 47:00 But I would have been a good one. Yeah, problem is, we haven't been on old forester. 47:05 And I guess we need to probably line that up. But the other thing it was like, just weren't thinking ahead of time enough to be able I sounds like a little like, let's go ahead and get it. And then the other one was looking at 47:20 Oh, gosh, I'm like looking at the bar thinking, Oh, yeah, we're looking at doing like a and this is not even a store pic versus limited release. But this is like a Sazerac rye versus a Thomas h handy. Yeah, it's like the proof 47:33 is me too crazy. Like you go you'll be able to pick it out like well that's and that's the problem is that like to do any of these with the the antique collection actually be pretty difficult to do. Because you could do a stag where's the stag Jr. Maybe? That was about as close as you could probably get. But you know, when you look at Eagle rare 17 versus regular Eagle rare, I think you're gonna hit the same exact problem that you saw at the Elijah Craig. It's just gonna be 48:00 Rich of depth of the oak. The same thing was Sazerac, 18 and Sasha cry, it's just going to be the richness and depth, I mean, you're going to hit that same problem no matter where you go. 48:12 So there is there is a reason why they make limited releases. It's just trying to find some of those limited releases that matched sort of the either the same proof or profile or age that I think that you really need to try to find and get out of this. 48:27 I love the nose on both of these. Actually. 48:31 That's pretty common with Russell's, which I think this is I don't think so. The other thing is the Russell's, or anything. It's raw, I guess, right? I mean, I haven't tasted it yet. But it's only because I know. 48:43 Because, you know, right now see, I need to stop it. Okay. 48:50 So far? Yeah, we've been pretty good. So Mike, you all kind of point this question over to you because I know that there's a lot of people out there. Travis Hill. He's been Oh yeah, for totally rock and 49:00 Yeah, there you go. And there's a lot of people out there that try to make their own four roses. Limited Edition small batch. I mean have you have you looked at creating your own kind of like small batch out of like different store pics or anything like that before I've not done it with great strategic content to create a certain brand or for the lease I have done the you know, the classic blend bottle or simple call infinity bottle. It was infinity until I tasted it and liked it. Then I stopped and then they became my blend because I stopped putting things in it. Yeah, so people would people tasted like this is great. And I give it out. And you had a record of it out like Exactly, yeah, regret it. Yeah, I do keep your record but I yeah, I lost it. But yeah, I would give it my dog always doing like bottle shares and things like that. Get people assemble, get everything done what it was, and they were like, this is really good. What is it like? It's actually just a blend of like 17 different two outs for else and things that were time, but I've never done it intentionally. I haven't 50:00 guys that's tried you know the the poor man's Pappy and have tried to recreate the the Al young with the blends that they think will work but sometimes it's 50:09 in there 50:11 there is something to it. You know, there was there was a blind taste in that Blake from bourbon or hosted years ago that I was a part of as well as a few other people. And oddly enough, like he sent six samples and we had to rank each sample kind of like flavors and everything notes and everything that we're getting out of it. 50:31 And, and it was it was it was so climatic at the very end because it was all happening. You know, he sent the samples we submitted him. And then at the very end, you know, we all got on YouTube or Google Hangouts and promoted on YouTube and we all got on there and come to find out the variant. The number one bourbon we all love was a exactly what you said a poor man's Pappy that was mixed in a ninja blender. 51:01 Me and I don't know if it has something to say about aeration. I don't have the something to say about anything else but it's this like, Yeah, he literally threw in a ninja blender. Yeah. And that's what one out of like, six different Bourbons. So it's crazy it kind of goes to show that you can 51:18 can always just think that the most limited things are going to be the best things. Yeah, I'll probably be adding a ninja blender to my Amazon wish list here Yo, I have they are fantastic. My quick smoothies and movies and bourbon What else? What else you want to mix just don't mix the smoothies with the barber. Alright, so for me I already know like what this is I can smell it. I can taste it. So two is going to be it for me. tues definitely, I mean, I'm torn one would be a great everyday drinker. It's got a lot of complex like great it's a great poor but to is like, to me is like really like something special. Like 52:00 That I would want out of a limited release or like a store pick, you know, something special. Like, that's I really like to so I they're both really good I already I mean, I can just buy the nose and it tastes like already know what they are. So my camera on a push over to you is to worth like $950 more right now. 52:20 That's a great question. 52:23 What is that? Because that's that's ultimately I mean, I'll tell you what if if it's reversed in the reveal, I will I'll just go ahead and wrap it up. I'll put my card like listen bourbon pursuit over my case the was 15 point proof difference, you know, between the wanting to 52:42 which kind of gives you a hint, but yeah, it'd be funny though if they are reversed. Hey, is the 52:49 question, but I think it has an easy answer. And there's no price difference wise, there's no way 52:56 if you want something that's simple, and there's there's nothing 53:00 off putting about this, right? To me, there's nothing like putting at all. But this one does have the number two has a lot more depth character. And the proof differences, definitely evident. 53:15 Especially on the back end it just stick in there to your tongue in a good way. I mean, at this point, there's, there's a lesson to be learned here. Right? I mean, we're, we're four or five deep. And I think we've already noticed that when it comes to special releases that the age the age is the important part. You know, the age adds a level of complexity and characteristic to it that you necessarily won't get anywhere else. Yeah. So far, we were dumbfounded by one, right. Yeah, having a 53:45 Weller 107 pick that actually beat out the Weller craft your own perfect bourbon. From then on. It's been really a difference in age. Yep. From there, I mean, it's Yeah, it's hard to replicate well, and that's why I mean, 54:00 With like NGP you know people go crazy with like the 1012 for it. It's more has to do with age like the age age whiskey is great like these Tennessee age whiskeys are fantastic. Like Kentucky age stuff it has to do with age like it's not necessarily the magic pill, the Jews, whatever, it's when you get to that 10 to 14 year range it there's magical, you know happens right there and it's it is it is what it is. Alright, so I'm going to go ahead and do the reveal. Because I can't wait anymore. Yeah, that's exactly what we thought it was. So D one was the knob Creek from Westport whiskey and wine in D two was the but they didn't try. They did a great job on do you want I mean, that's a sore pic for me. Yes. And that's what I mean. That's, that's the thing that we talked about the whole entire time is that you can get that for what 60 bucks versus 950. You know, it's I mean, even if you were if you were even on top of it, even when it was 450 55:00 Yeah to even get your hands on it so and this was years ago so it was definitely a tough way to to make it happen so again this is one we're not going to mix yeah do not do not mix these guys after the show is over y'all we are going to be probably just celebrating with the rest of the stuff we like to drink covers. Yeah the leftovers right. So the best of the all infinity bottles if you will. So Mikey, ending on a lot says elimination we have Russell's we 55:33 can i can tell you right now because I was a part of it. We're pouring out letter E. And we do with letter E like I already know what it is versus the brand. However, these guys don't know what it what it is. So I'm going to go ahead and just kind of reserve my comments for absolutely everything and just let them figure it out. So you know as we as we start going down this path though. What do you 56:00 You found like the most interesting well so far I mean the three three limited releases have one versus the store pics wishes Do you think it's a Do you think it's an oversight on our part that maybe we didn't choose the best comparisons because as I mentioned earlier like it's it's age versus a lot of stuff some I don't know though because I mean it store pictures still getting really good pores I mean, but think about it like think about other brands like I mean look at the shelf like is there anything else that like we missed going into this like think of like, like I said, we already talked about old for certain for suburbia urban bag would be the bag and stag it's Junior would probably be a good one as well. Like I said you could do like you could do a 7092 full proof versus like a Kentucky alpha later. Oh, cuz cuz you you think that's where it comes from? I think so. So that's your that's your excuse guess? Yeah, I think so. But I was way off on Sunday. 57:00 These guys have them. So, but yeah, I mean, other than that, I mean, because you got some MGP stuff, but like, they're all there. There's such a wide range like from person. It's hard and it's not often there's not like a ton of everyday offerings with MGP. Well, we had talked about this beforehand. I've tried to figure out like, Is there a single and that's that's an I guess that's the problem when you get when you get to what we can do this but it might kick us in the teeth like a pursuit series versus 57:31 decal, you know. 57:34 We're not well, just kidding. Well, 57:37 it doesn't exist. Yeah. So that's the other thing. Yeah. But the other the other part of it was ready barrel, I guess. Barrel versus procedure. They do a lot of blending. Yeah. So that's not a true comparison. So I mean, it's it's an Indiana country, I think the will it will it versus Elijah Craig barrel proof would be a good one because just to get it out there. 58:00 Yep, I mean, who knows, but I mean, when I look at it like I, it would have been good to do like a regular Booker's versus I mean, Booker's I didn't want to open up a book or 25th for this I was sorry just be honest with you, I'm not going to achieve f4 but I mean, that versus Booker's 30th or something like that like Booker's vs Booker's because at the same exact, you know, the end of the day, like each one of those is very good in its own right. However, like the the proof points are can be a whole lot of difference. Yeah. When you get to that high improved and you're in the hundred and 25 230 130 proof. Yeah. Who knows if your your your your taste buds in your flavor profile can actually discern a lot of stuff that's actually happening at that level. Yeah, right. Actually. Oh my gosh, like I'm tasting these I'm knows the side by side. I don't think I can tell the difference now. So now we're doing a wild turkey comparison. Russell's reserve versus the 17 year decades for 59:00 Nice. And I mean on first on first knows, like, there's no difference. There's no discernible difference whatsoever. The first one? 59:12 I don't know, they're pretty close. I was like, the first one may have a little more alcohol, but I don't know. That's they're pretty similar. You mean and this is and this also goes back into each conversation right? I mean like when we talk about age like 17 years you expect to have a lot more depth on the complexity a lot more more of this sort of stuff. However, we've we've seen the praises of Russell's reserve for years. It's one of the best single barrel pics that you can get out there today. You know, me and the best I can I'm one of the not been altered and pick yet I'm turkey pick y'all man, but you're the one actually brought today's pic. I didn't know. So I'm getting I mean, maybe it's because I do get a little more ethanol on the first one. And then I go straight to the second one. The smells a little sweeter. Yep, I'm totally getting a little sweeter on the second one. 1:00:00 But they are very very close. I love both of them. I knew that was was like I mean Russell's are one of those things you can just knows all day. Both these are fantastic. I mean it, it's actually very good number one is really good. 1:00:15 It's actually very hard to find a discernible difference. I mean, there's a little bit of difference in the taste, but it's not so much that you're like, Okay, this is this is a difference of $100 right here like it's it's it's very, very different. tues got I don't know I like the mouth feel have to like it's got and it's got more like a little more sugary brown sugary, kind of syrupy kind of texture to it. One is very good, but two is kind of more I don't know just real rich and sugary to me like syrupy like they're they're pretty damn close are very close. I mean for something that's almost like a mean it's not it's not a decade's worth of difference, but I mean, you're looking at at least six to nine years. Right of what you see between 1:01:00 Some of the older reserved pics from Russell's versus the decades releases so I'm going to go with two but not that much. They're they're pretty close tues oily on the panel I don't know you kind of want to yeah two is got a longer lasting finish the nose is sweeter 1:01:20 sounds like for you it's a landslide one this is a yeah for me it's a landslide too so too Alright, so Ryan there go ahead and reveal the last one we have today. 1:01:30 haha what do you think? 1:01:34 Well it sounds like it sounds like you're gonna toss balls with sounds like well so two is actually the CFPB pick Oh 1:01:44 decades There we go. So yet another chance where we get the final store pick Yes, you do single barrels making a comeback. I mean, when we look at the results from today, I mean it's three to two but it's not it's not a it just said a landslide victory. I mean, it's it's something that is it's a 1:02:00 It's almost comparable, if you can find that, that one little place that does really good things, versus somebody that just, I don't know just accepts it or finds the barrels at the store and does whatever. There's there's actually validity to the, to the that. By the way, this was all for science. Yeah. So make sure that everybody knows is all today, but it's all subjective and we don't matter. Yes, that's also very true. And you cannot buy any of these anywhere. So it's it's it's all it's all gone. So yeah, I mean, the first two I mean, we're really like, you know, with the 1:02:40 the CYLB. I mean, I was amazed at how bad that was. Like, I just did not like it at all. Well, not bad. Not a bad for the money. Ryan we get a lot of stuff. Yeah, yeah, it's not bad. We know what bad whiskey I guess I was just after revealing it. I was like, pretty disappointed. And if anything, 1:03:00 I feel like what it does is helps people see to not fall into the trap of fo mo to fall in trap of hype because the fact that CYPB is for 500 bucks and you can get a single barrel pick a low WA for 150 or if you're lucky enough good at retail 60 bucks it's like man chase chasing one that tastes better yeah and so and it should bring some validity to those who are still into those who are blending because Ed lie is a blender and he picked this barrel at turkey so there is some validity even to like hey they they're getting paid lots of money every year to do this professionally. So let's end even if you go to a liquor bar party source or cork and bottle they have tasting bars Yeah, so you can taste these things before you get into all the gotta have it because there's a line well maybe you don't even like the bottle that you're standing line for. Yeah, it's hate tastings before you before you buy them but I mean there's there's some psychology there to the line thing. Oh for sure. I mean every everybody thinks that like 1:04:00 We've all been there. We've been in the morning, and then all of a sudden, there's somebody that walks up be like, online for. I know, like 1:04:10 there's, there's, there's a there's a group mentality to it, right? Yeah, for sure. It's not fun, but it's reality and what it is, it's animal spirits, you know, we're all we all just follow the herd, you know, so. 1:04:23 But I mean, for today, I'm actually very pleased to kind of see the results because coming away with at least two out of the five that weren't limited releases, give some justification. Yeah, well, and we're thinking today into what I mean, when you're doing store pics. It's really based on who's going who's picking what they like and whatnot so like, you know, find a store or find someone that kind of meets your what you like, and you know, that's, you can find stuff that's just as good as the big price tag Islam releases. It's not even that I mean, we had we had some unfair 1:05:00 competition to. Right mean, if you think about it, like the logic reg. Yeah. 18 year versus like a nine to a 12 year? Yep. It's not it's not a fair competition. So when we think of which I preferred the nine to two, I know 1:05:17 a lot of people f

A conversation with Mike Kuhn and Gunner Bergey about Pennsylvania Gravel and the Unpaved and Ironcross events. Upaved Websiste Unpaved Instagram Ironcross Website Ironcross Instagram Thesis Website Thesis Instagram   TECH CORNER sponsored by THESIS Thanks, Craig. In recent years, 1x drivetrains have taken over the mountain biking world. Today I’m going to argue why 1x should also be the default for most gravel riders. 1. With no front shifting, there’s less to go wrong, and less skill needed to dial things right. 2. With 1x, the user interface is vastly simplified. There’s no possibility of rubbing or cross-chaining, and you can just focus on the terrain ahead. 3. 1x drivetrains are cheaper to buy and generally cheaper to maintain. 4. In the case of some mechanical front shifters, you can modify them to activate a dropper post. This is actually super slick because it puts your dropper post at your fingertips at all times, whether you’re on the hoods or in the drops. Now there are two primary objections that I hear. First is range. This one’s actually a non-issue. You can get the same or greater range these days, with consistent jumps between gears as well. The second thing that often comes up is gear spacing. However, on dirt, the terrain is generally changing so frequently that you’re never at the same cadence for very long. Additionally, many riders, especially those of shorter stature, are running cranks that are too long for their inseam. Having a crank length that’s proportional to your inseam will allow you to spin at a wider range of cadences, which would in turn cancel out much of the perceived benefit of tight jumps. So that’s why, for most gravel riders, I recommend a 1x drivetrain. I’d love to get your feedback on this topic. In the meantime, back to Craig and this week’s guest. FULL EPISODE: Automated Transcript (please excuse the typos) Mike, Welcome to the show. Okay. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Yeah. I'm excited to talk about unpaved, but before we dig in, how did you get into event organizing and what attracted you to being a gravel cyclist? Uh, I, I know we don't have a whole lot of time so we'll try to keep it brief, but um, but many years ago and in Lewisburg where we based on pay from a, I went to school and I got involved in collegiate cycling at the time and we, we put on a couple of events and I put on my, my very first, uh, event production involvement was, was there, um, we did, we did road race weekend, we did a mountain bike event at Arby Winter State Park. And that over the years has blossomed into other things eventually. Uh, I was, I was part of that crew that brought an event called iron cross together, which, uh, is now 15 plus years in two years. Sort of a mixed, um, mixed surface type ride. Uh, and then the Transylvanian mountain bike epic was one that I did for almost a decade. And through those experiences in some bike racing experience too, we got to know the folks in Lewisburg and the tourism office there, the, um, Susquehanna river valley and, uh, have built a really wonderful relationship. That's why John Paved this point. For those of our listeners who don't know exactly the region you're talking about, can you describe where it is in the state of Pennsylvania? Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty central in Pennsylvania. So, um, you're, you know, a couple of hours from Philadelphia. You're a couple of hours from Pittsburgh and north of both, both of them, um, and, and pretty central in the state. It's into what we call the ridges and valleys, uh, portion of Pennsylvania at Lewisburg itself. That's sits on the Susko Hannah River, which is one of the, uh, made perhaps the main, um, you know, uh, body of water that flows into the Chesapeake Bay. So it's a pretty big river. And then, uh, we, uh, we ride west from there. We ride West from there into, uh, towards state college, Pennsylvania. I'm at Penn State University and through the ridges and valleys of Pennsylvania. So what's your [inaudible] this is the second year of unpaved in the Susko Ohana Valley. Sounds like you've done a ton of event organizing in the mountain bike space and earlier in the road space. What drew you to this opportunity around creating a gravel event? So the gravel, I know the gravel things. So first off being in that area in college, you know, I was exploring some of these roads. Um, even back then I think that even even before we had sort of the specialized equipment that we do today though, the gravel in Pennsylvania is really welcoming to a wide range of bicycles. And so, uh, even getting out there on some, some road bikes as, as possible, um, from just south of there and Pennsylvania and have, um, and had that experience too. And then, you know, really iron cross I think was sort of the first, um, venture into this world. Uh, iron cross is a hundred kilometers. It's mostly gravel. We mix it a little bit. We didn't purposely mix in as much pavement and a little bit of single track and to that event so that we can, uh, we, we really try to make it hard to figure out exactly how to set up your bike. I mean that's really the purpose is like what, what is the, you know, how do you, how do you figure this thing out? But then within that, also as, as gravel grew, we, we started something that we called the a great gravel gathering, which was just a weekend, kind of in the same area in a little town called the Ohio. Um, that it, that, that on paved kind of reaches on its, its exploration of the Bald Eagle state forest. And, uh, and, and that once we figured out that, that a rail trail was being built because the rail trail that we use to get from Lewisburg, our starting location out to kind of the first section in the last section of the course did not exist. Um, until, and, and I'm going to get to, you know, I'm going to get the exact timeframe wrong, but I don't want to say until maybe eight years ago or so. And once we figured out that that connection was there that we could get into the volleyball state forest and have sort of this gravel connection, um, from Lewisburg out there, that's when we really, you know, went back to our friends at Susquehanna river valley and said, hey, this is gravel stuff is looking pretty cool. Um, that's probably about six years ago that we did that. And let's, let's start exploring this. What's it gonna take? And have worked through that process over a couple of years with and [inaudible] and, uh, which is our department of Conservation and natural resources in Pennsylvania. And now working with, uh, with those two entities in a whole lot of others to, to kind of bring the city together. Yeah, it's great when you can get those agencies involved because they can help open spaces that might not have otherwise been opened and really help show the athletes and the community how special those open spaces are. It's, um, you know, Pennsylvania has thousands and thousands of miles of trails and, um, kind of millions of acres of property between, you know, between the state portion and something else we call the state game lands and the gravel roads. It stretched through all of this stuff. And once you get to, I mean gravels everywhere in Pa and then especially once you get to kind of to the Louisburg area and endorse in the state, I mean, you could ride for days if not weeks, um, and on gravel. So it's really, it's pretty spectacular. First state that's as old as we are and as developed as we are, we also have this really wonderful way to escape into the back country. Yeah. Geographically speaking, as I mentioned when we were offline, Pennsylvania is so well located amongst a whole bunch of states. I, I gotta imagine you draw athletes from all over the place wanting to sample the trails you're talking about. Yeah, we just, um, W I mentioned Transylvania, you know, we, we were drawing folks from around the world to continuing to as a, as an a just kind of been reborn this year, uh, under a new director and continuing to draw writers from around the world to that event. And, uh, it's, you know, the, the trails here are technical and, and rocky and challenging in a different way than what most people are used to. And then, like I said, the gravel, just amazing how many miles of Babel roads exist. Um, w what we typically refer to in the northern tier of the state, but even, even coming down through the central part, and, uh, you can just, you can just find it everywhere. Um, it's, uh, it is geographically really well located in the u s and has some great, you know, between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, couple of pretty big airports. Harrisburg offers another, you know, travel option in, it's about an hour or 15,000 of the venue. Another good place to travel in and out of. Uh, and certainly from, you know, from a connect connectivity by a interstates man, there's all sorts of stuff. 80, 81, 76, um, which depends on what you turned by all of them. All right. Pretty close to where we are. So it's pretty easy to drive fly, uh, access land rovers there if you know, you feel like paddle and then you can probably make that work too. But yeah. Good spot to be for sure. Absolutely. So speaking to you from the west coast and just sort of having an understanding of sort of the number of athletes we have here in northern California, in southern California over the last few years, have you been doing iron cross and last year with unpaved? How is the scene on the east coast? Is it growing as quickly as we see it in the West? Yeah, good question. I have not had the pleasure of making it a trip out to your negative woods, but eh, I mean I, if it's not, if it's not growing as fast, um, holy macro must you guys be blown up and you know, and say at an insane rate. Cause it's, it's picking up really, really quickly over here. I mean, we've gone from zero to 1,002 years at on and we have, you know, our friends putting on events like keystone gravel, just selling out, you know, immediately a little lack of Waco Hondo, uh, sells out immediately. Those are, you know, relatively big events. Of course. Yeah. North of us. There's some, some great stuff happening, um, in the New England states like the Vermont overland, you know, ted King has his event coming on. Um, it's big, right? It's big and it seems like it's getting bigger. Yeah. Well that's exciting to get that report from the east guest. I didn't doubt it. There's certainly a lot of effort and a lot of great events that have been going and are cropping up. When I look at the unpaved website, and I'll certainly put this in the, in the show notes so people can get to it, it's pretty easy to be attracted to the trails when I'm an athlete thinking about coming or signed, signed up already, what do I need to think about from an equipment perspective? Yeah, good question. I feel like, you know, I end up feeling like that so personal, so much of the time, it's so much, it depends on the experience that you've, you know, that you have, that you bring with your equipment I suppose. But I'm going to think a general rule of thumb is you for the most part. Now I'm going to, there's a little caveat in here because on the really long day on the one 20, on our longest distance, we throw a wet long well draft people along. They'll draft a is, is it very sort of chunkier type experience. It's not a, it's not Pennsylvania single track, but digging in pretty decent size, embedded rocks on a, on a downhill grade. And uh, and that's kind of its own thing. And if you're headed out there, you really want to protect yourself and protect your, you know, your equipment and they lessen the chance of flats or you might, you know, a little bigger tire might be a good choice for you. But you know, the vast majority of this course, the gravel is, um, unless we happen to hit a time when decent art has just graded one of their roads and kind of kicked it up a little bit and turned it up a man really well packed, really well maintained. And I've done, I've done large portions of the course on, you know, on, on 28. Now I don't recommend that. That's not the most enjoyable way to do it, but it can be done. Um, so maybe, maybe that, does that help you figure it out? It does. And when, when you talk about Pennsylvania fat tires, what, what kind of with are you talking about for that? Yeah. People who are experienced 40 ish really want to feel it. You know, if you're 40, 45, he really, he really want, like, if you're really like, mm, that's pretty, you know, I'm maybe really out here for the cruise and enjoy it. Just want to be, just want to be safe and happy or whatnot. You know, throwing something a little wider on there is not a, is not a bad idea. If you're taking on the one 20, I don't think I would say. I would say if you're not doing the one 20, there's a little section that gets pretty Chunky, um, early on in the course. But you know, you can really, I think most people are probably going to be pretty comfortable on that 40 45 sort of choice. Yeah. Yeah. It was. I recently had Alison Tetrick on the podcast and we were sort of laughing because she tends towards, in my mind what's a narrower attire. I told her I routinely run fifty's here in Marin County and she sort of laughed and she laughed at me and said, well actually I think that's stuff that you ride down in Marin county's actually mountain biking, which is probably true. Right. So that is fun. I mean that's why and how that's all changed. Yeah. I don't, I, you know, despite having this podcast, I don't like to geek out or agonize too much over equipment choices. I am very much at, you know, ride what you got and there's going to be advantages and disadvantages. Certainly when that the group is, is hauling butt through some of this, the uh, the more paved sections, having an hour or tire and lightweight setups going to be great. But as you said long into the day, that little bit extra comfort, you really need to balance that. If you, you know, are you out there really to, to kind of win and go for it? Are you just out there to kind of have a smile on your face all day long? Yeah, right. The last, right. You protect yourself a little bit, a little little, you pay a little penalty for, for carrying a little extra weight, but you don't have to stop, you know, you don't have to stop you on problems. There's, there's joy in that too, right? Like it just makes a day that much more fun potentially. So. Yup. Yeah, exactly. So you mentioned there's multiple distances for the event this year. There are, and I'll tell you what man, we are, we are so excited and so grateful to say that we're essentially, we have, we have literally one spot laughed and our three longest distances. So we do a one 20, a 90 and a 55 as of this morning. There is one spot last, um, in across the distances and it's in the 55 90 category. We kind of combine those for the field by met. So we do have a, we do have a uh, a little shorter category. It's kind of a taste of gravel. It's a lot of rail trail, a little bit of pavement. It does, you know, it hits the rest of the rail brewing company, which is, which is pretty cool out there. And Muslim various one of our aid stations. And uh, that one's about a 30 mile, a little less than that, about 27 I guess this year. Um, yeah, I saw that on your site and actually I was really excited to see that cause I think it's so important if you've got the terrain that you can make into a very enjoyable beginner experience. It's so important for the sport because obviously you're not going to sign up for a 121 miles with some steep technical terrain if you're a road rider that's never written off road. So I appreciate the efforts of inviting, you know, all categories to kind of join the event. Yeah. And it's, you know, for us to, uh, again get this wonderful experience up there and let us Berg w with school and, and we've got these great partners, not just the, uh, since Wayne at river valley, but the Miller center as well as our start finish location downtown Lewisburg is rolling out the, you know, red carpets for riders with, with stuff going on all weekend and they're really leading the effort on that, which is really cool. And we want to, we really want to encourage the, the local community, Lewisburg, Williamsport, even Harrisburg is not that far. We would encourage that community to come out and try this and be part of this weekend. And you know, and, and, right. I mean, every, you get a taste of this, you get a taste of this fun. The people that are involved and then you're like, I just want to do more of this. And you know, hopefully we over time encourage them to try the longer distances as well. So that's definitely part of what we're thinking too. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you see, you see the events that have been around eight, 10, even longer number of years. And you've got kids who started their watching their parents who are all of a sudden now able to toe the line, which is, I mean obviously what the sport and what cycling needs. Absolutely. 100%. So when we look at the longer event, when I'm done with it, when I'm done with my one 21 miles, what are three sections that you think we're going to be talking about at the end of the day? Okay. Longwell draft, which we talked about, you go down long. Well, you're like, okay, I've had enough of that, but it's a good part of the courts, uh, and, and long, well, sort of that, that extra 30 mile loop is, is that meant that takes the 92, the one 20, uh, Dave, my coconspirator in this whole thing, day prior now calls out the difference in, um, it, you know, you feel that there's a lot of climate in Longmont wrapped in there. So, so long while that is, is, is a piece of that, I mean, there's, uh, Pine Creek, Raj, and we do roll out of town and it's relatively flat, a couple of rollers, then you hit, um, John's mountain road and John's mountain is, uh, the first climb of the day and it's one of the bigger clients of the day. I think that often sticks out in people's minds. There's a wonderful vista just over the top of it. Um, kind of have to, you know, heads up to, to catch it. But man, what a, what a wonderful spot for pictures and, you know, taking an idea if you can spare a second. But then after that, it is just this wonderful slight downhill grade for 10, 12 miles. And, um, something that we don't see a lot of in Pennsylvania actually. And that is probably my favorite part of the course. I mean, you can just grow and roll and roll and Rovell uh, on this beautiful gravel section of the course. And I really love that one. Um, and then we have some rail trail in there and then that doesn't sound very exciting, but man is that beautiful along Pans Creek. He goes through a tunnel as you come out of Pope Patti State Park. Uh, and, uh, and to me that's one of the other kind of unique features and highlights of the course as well. And then when we're all done, are you getting together for sort of a festival type atmosphere? Yeah, I'll tell you what we are, we're throwing a party all weekend long. You know, I say we, I mean, all those partners, it's, it's far more than just, uh, just unpaved that's doing that. So starting even earlier, as early as Friday evening, uh, a little fun. Graveled we're going to get on garage raveled unraveled on graveled uh, oh on Friday night with some fun town's Saturdays Expo. We've got a bunch of wonderful partners coming in salsa as they are, stands as their, uh, I think Floyd's and Ergon are coming in and it looks like, you know, a Jira will be there and a number of others. Vargo which is, uh, which, which some of our folks know, maybe not everybody would bargo make some really cool equipment for bike packing in there, right in town. They're actually based out of Lewisburg, which is a really cool connection. They're going to be, you know, part of this, we got all this stuff and then there's a bunch of local artisans. There's a wooly where and festival, which certainly appeals to me, but it's gonna appeal to my kids even more. Um, that's going on as part of this, uh, the wheeler center is working with us on daycare opportunities. So, you know, both parents want to come. Uh, maybe you can't, maybe there's not enough daycare for the full one 20, probably they may be for Alison Tetrick or somebody that fast. Maybe you can, you can blow through quickly enough, but from a mere mortals, you know, if you're going out for the 30, uh, one of the parents wants to do that and, and have the kids kind of engage in some super fun activities. That number center's got family friendly stuff going on. Uh, and then Monday even we've, you know, we have some rides happening conjunction with like at Buycott, Lewisburg, sort of local advocacy, um, folks there for, for cycling and pedestrian activities in those groups. So [inaudible] entire full weekend of fun, family friendliness, you know, Clyde peelings rep, they'll land reptile land is just up the road. That's a pretty fun stop for families while you're in town. So just tons and tons of stuff to do even in, you know, kind of small town Pennsylvania. But man, is it a beautiful spot on the Bucknell University and uh, and some good things that weekend. That's awesome, Mike. I appreciate the overview. Certainly from all accounts. Last year's event was amazing, so I'm sure this one will be even better. I hope the weather holds for you guys and you get a big turnout. It sounds like there's only maybe one slot left for some lucky, lucky person online who hears this. Go over and grab it. Say I'm Mike. Thanks again for the time. Hey, thank you very much for having us. Really appreciate it. I hope you can hope you can make it and, and you know, not this year decent. Our, we're hoping to work with us and we get this thing bigger and better. Next year or two, we're going to keep, keep a foot on the gas with it too. Right on Mike, I appreciate that. Cheers. PART 2: Gunner. I want to welcome you to this all Pennsylvania edition of the gravel ride podcast. It's great to be here. Craig, thanks for having me today. I'm really excited to help fill you in and get the listeners up to date on what's going on with iron cross. Yeah, I'm stoked to continue the conversation about Pennsylvania riding cars. As I was mentioning to Mike, I've done a bit as a mountain biker when I was living in the mid Atlantic. I love the terrain and I can see how it totally lends itself to gravel riding. I'm excited to get into a little bit to the, into the history of iron cross, but let's start off by just learning a little bit about you. How do you come to the sport of cycling? So I grew up, my dad got me into mountain biking when I was pretty young. Uh, I raced mountain bikes as a junior year and I eventually transitioned to focus on cyclocross. Um, I've raced with the national team over in Belgium. I went down to these McCray where I raced, uh, in college and was part of some teams that did pretty well national championships and uh, and just sort of grew from racing my bike to I got Lyme disease and it sort of took me off the racing side of things and that kind of opened up the door to help put on races. And I've been really enjoying being on the other side of the core state. Interesting. In Pennsylvania, is there a big cyclocross contingent? Okay. Yeah, the mid Atlantic has a pretty awesome series a, the mid Atlantic cross, they put on some really great events. They host a bunch GCI events. It was really helpful growing up as a junior to have such high quality events. Uh, you know, so close to where I grew up. And you mentioned Mike was there one of the original founders of iron cross. What was the vision? What time of year did it sit in and what was the intention to contribute to the cyclocross racing community there? So Mike definitely pushed that cross as a, when he started that race. This'll be at 17, 2019. We'll be at 17th year. So it was quite awhile ago when Mike got that off the ground and he was sort of doing something that no one else, no one else was offering. There weren't a whole sampling of gravel races back then. There were some minor cross claims to be the first one in North America and it was based off of, I believe it's called triple cross, that triple cross or triple peaks that was over in the UK. And that was sort of where he got his inspiration there and it was an old race where they would actually ride to the pills and then hike their bikes to the top and come back down and ride to the next step. So that was sort of what Mike used as says, um, idea and inspiration behind it. And it sort of grew from there. Um, it's interesting because it's, oftentimes it's with falling this year. It's on October 20th, 2019. And uh, it is in the middle of cross season and a lot of serious cross raisers have a hard time working into their schedule. You know, they're trading for short hour long efforts. So, you know, depending on how quickly you're going up, three to five hour effort on the bike doesn't really suit that sort of training. But people come out and they make adjustments to their schedule to make it because it's a, it's a pretty unique event. Yeah. It's interesting that you mentioned the three peak cyclocross race in the UK. My cousin Tim had competed in it, shout out cousin Tim Tebow Dalton. Um, and I remember seeing some of the pictures and I remember talking to them about how friggen hard that race was and seeing him struggle over those peaks carrying his cyclocross bike on his shoulder, you know, going back a decade ago or so. So it's a pretty interesting model and I think like three peaks, it's clear that iron cross is put on the calendar as a big adventure, which is, I think it's really cool and exciting for someone who maybe specializes in cyclocross to kind of go out of their comfort zone and tackle a longer event and tackle the adventurous route that you guys have laid out for people. Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's great. It's sort of pools, iron cross pools in a racers from road mountain and cross backgrounds. We've had people do it on road bikes with big tires. I wouldn't recommend it, but it is possible. Uh, and then you've got serious mountain bikers that are in the middle of their off season and then you've got serious cross racers in the middle of their, you know, racing season and they all sort of come out and they have a pretty good battle. It can neat to see a different groups that maybe don't get to race with each other the rest of the year. Um, sort of meet each other and, and meet people that maybe they do training rides with but don't, don't attend races but together cause they focus on different disciplines. Yeah. And I imagine it's fascinating as you look at the different parts of the course where they favor one bike or another, how you see athletes in that specific discipline close gaps or create gaps depending on their skill and their equipment. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, you've got, you know, sometimes there'll be road racers that know that their technical skills are lacking and are a lot for a mountain bike because they think that they can overcome, uh, the larger tire with and the drag on the road, uh, to be a most, maybe go faster on some of the offer sections and then they'll be the opposite people that are used to going downhill and used to navy riding, drop par bikes on some rough terrain that are worried about having to fitness to get up or some of the hills. So if I'm lining up at the start line, can you walk the listener through what an iron cross races, like, what's, what's the terrain that they're tackling, how does it unfold? And we starting out with more technical terrain. Are we starting out on fire roads? Just give us a brief overview of the exciting sections of the course. Yeah, absolutely. We can totally walk through the course here. Uh, so we start right outside of Williamsport in south Williamsport, uh, from the South Williamsport senior center. We go a neutral rollout through south Williamsport. And one of the cool parts about iron cross that we've been able to pull together in the past few years is it's neutral. And we have a replica cannon on the side of the hill and people always say, well, how will we know when the river starts? And I tell them that, well, the race starts from the cannon goes off and not everyone thinks I'm serious. And we have a full cannon that gets loaded with a, you know, gun powder in it. It makes a loud, loud blast. There is no confusion on when the race starts. So as soon as soon as the candidate goes off, they roll through the Williamsport. What authority property? It's kind of a nice intro, some rougher double tracks, smoother double track, and that sort of just gets the blood flowing and let everyone know what they're going to be in for for the rest of the day. Um, after that, they've got a road climb and he kind of works through the tie dot and state forest. Uh, just some absolutely beautiful views. Uh, some great descents, great climbs. Um, then the, the main thing that everyone fits, stands out in everyone's mind is the hike a bike. So we've, we've got a pretty, pretty unique section of trail where it just goes up this, this rocky in bank men and, uh, there's photos of people and there's often, often times you've got three points of contact with the ground, both your feet in one of your hands because it is so steep that, uh, when you leave for not that far, your, your face is right off the rocks and everyone's carrying their bikes. Some people put it on their shoulders, some people put it on their back, some people roll it up next to them. Um, and then about halfway up that climb is the unofficial aid station called Larry's tavern. And, uh, we often have someone there from SBDC and they're in the past, they've grilled bacon, they'd grilled a deer meat, venison. They've had all sorts of stuff on the grill there. They've had a, sometimes they have some, some special drinks. They're hanging out. And last year that the, uh, the winner of the overall winner of the race actually stopped. And, uh, took a Ciroc shot and kept going on afterwards. So it's a pretty cool spot to hang out. The Syrup shop might not be that bad of an idea. I get a little sugar and yet at the end of that climb. Yeah, absolutely. And after that you've got some more dre gravel and other descent and another climb and then the course finishes with a mountain top climb. Uh, and it's a pretty brutal, it's about two miles long, really nice double track. And uh, up at the top we normally have hot coffee cookies. And, uh, then it said, then you just take your time and roll back to your car, the race at the top of the hill. You've got a nice three, two mile descent back into town. And then, uh, that's sort of it. And then what do they expect after the race back in town? Do you have some events going on afterwards for people to enjoy themselves? Absolutely. We've partnered pretty closely with, uh, um, the brick yard restaurant and the stone house restaurant there. There are two restaurants that, uh, are operating under the same management open company. So laughter in everyone's ready to bag. They get a token for free beer and a burger or pizza for after the, um, after the events and they can come down and we do award ceremony in the courtyard and there's lots of lots of hanging out and people talking about the event and whether or not they had a good time and uh, there's been some, some really cool cool nights and it ends up people hanging out for a long time and really enjoying, enjoying what sport has to offer. Awesome. I was looking at the GPX file for the, for the race. So it looks like it's, it's just shy of 60 miles and about 6,200 feet of climbing, is that right? Yup. [inaudible] and looking at the elevation, there's no break in this bad boy. It goes up and down and up and down. And I could see that, um, that last finishing climb is as big as anything else earlier in the day. Yeah. The, the last line definitely. I mean when you're done, I don't care if you're the first finish or the last minister, you are happy to be done when you come across the line. The last time's pretty tough. It's a good one. Um, and it, it's when you get to the top and have that hot coffee and cookies, everyone's usually pretty excited to be wrapped up for the day. I bet. I bet. Are All these trails open to riders other times of the year or is this any private property? Uh, most of the courses open all the year. The glands. What, what our authority, uh, grants the event access. You're allowed to go there and ride. Um, and we, and uh, there's just, there's some rules there saw posted on a side but, but you are able to ride all the course all year round. Awesome. Well I encourage everybody to go to the iron cross website because there's a video of that cannon going off. There's a course profile across the board and a lot of information about how cool this event is and about the history. Like when we were talking to Mike earlier, I think this region is just so cool for people to visit for riding. And I can see how gravel riding is just exploding in the mid Atlantic area for, for events like this, just sort of setting the stage for what that community can can do. We'd love to have the hour, um, that there's a really, really great gravel community going on in PA. Uh, and then I think that you'd have fun at anything that's going on in the state. There's some really great stuff and we'd love to have, well I appreciate you taking the mantle of continuing the history of the Iron Cross race and continuing to have it evolve as new opportunities arise. It's amazing when I think multiple people in the community dedicate themselves to putting on events and thinking about this cause it really helps. It really helps people visiting the area to know where to ride and find some great loops. And it's just amazing to have these things on the calendar year after year after year. So gunner, thanks for joining us. I know you've got a busy weekend racing ahead of you, so thanks for the time and we look forward to another great iron cross later this year. Thanks for having me, Craig.

Behind the scene’s access to a late night conversation with the two comma club coaching students. On this special episode Russell rants to his Two Comma Club X members about how to build a list and why it’s so important. Here are some of the super awesome nuggets you’ll be hearing about in this episode; Hear nearly a billion ways Russell has built his list over the years, and how you can use them as well. Find out why email lists are still the most important lists to build. And when creating a product, why listening to the market is key to giving them what they want. So listen here to to all Russell’s creative and genius ways to build your list in the market of your choice. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. I hope you guys are doing amazing tonight. I want to welcome you back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I just finished an hour long Facebook Live with my Two Comma Club X members and it was all about list building and I kind of went off on a rant. And it was a lot of fun. And as much as they all needed to hear it, my guess is that some of you guys need to hear this stuff as well. So with their permission, I’m going to be posting this here one the podcast so you guys can learn from it and hopefully start refocusing all your efforts on building your list. With that said, I’m gonna queue up the theme song, when we come back you guys will be jumping directly into my rant. What’s up everybody? This is Russell. I know it’s a late night. I’m sure I’m not going to get more than one or two of you guys on Live right now. But I’m hoping in the morning that you guys are all going to listen in on this and you’re going to freak out and then you are going to be focusing on one thing and one thing only, for the next year of your life. So there we go. So this whole conversation is starting out because, and I’m going to call him out a little bit because I love him, Nick Fitzgerald, he just did his launch this last week. And it did good, considering the percentage close rate and low in the fact that his list is really, really small. So he sold a ton of product to a really small list, which made not as much money as he wanted. Anyway, I was going back and I was re-listening, because I’ve done two special podcast episodes for him. One- two years ago, one-last year, so this is going to be the updated version for him and for you guys and it’s going to be going deep on list building. So if you haven’t listened to any of those episodes, if you go back to the marketing secrets podcast, I found them today, the first one was episode 18, it was July 19, 2017 and the episode was called, How to Make it Rain. So I highly, highly, highly recommend that you guys go back and watch that one. It’s me driving around Bear Lake telling Nick, this is before Nick knew anything about our world or Funnel Hackers or anything, and I was kind of just laying down the ground work of how people make money in this world, and it was really fun. So go listen to that one, number one. And then a year later he came to Funnel Hacking Live, joined Two Comma Club X and then at the Traffic Secrets event I pulled him onstage and had him tell his story. And then I did a second round, a second round of podcasts with him live, in front of everybody, which is really, really fun. And oh great, Nick’s on here. What’s up Nick? You’re going to have so much fun. Alright, so that one I posted, for some reason I stopped doing episode numbers, but….oh I remember why. ITunes didn’t like that for some reason. Anyway, November 21st there’s a podcast in Marketing Secrets podcast called My Conversation with the Friendly Giant part one of two. And then November 26th is part two of two. So go listen to those because Nick tells a story which is really, really cool. And then the second half is I gave him spot consulting right there, I think it must have been five or six things or whatever. What’s interesting is one of the things I talked about is the same thing I’m talking about tonight. So I must not have said it loud enough, so tonight I’m going to say it really, really loud, because I think my wife and everyone is asleep in the house, so I’m going, we’re going ranting. But it was talking about building a list. So that was a year ago. And now that he went through this experience of this launch and it didn’t do as well as he wanted. My heart broke for him and hurt for him, but then part of me is angry because a year ago I didn’t yell at him loud enough about this thing. So I’m yelling at everybody here inside this coaching program. I’ll probably turn this into a podcast episode as well, so I am yelling this for anyone who can hear the sound of my voice. This is the warning, are you guys ready for this? Until you own traffic, you don’t have a business. Until you own traffic you do not have a business. What does that mean? It doesn’t mean, I think a lot of times us entrepreneurs we think that the business is the product. Like, “I created this amazing product, and business.” The product is not the business. Your customer list is the business. That’s the only thing that actually matters. If you look at companies that are purchased, the only thing that matters in a valuation of company is customer list. Like if somebody was ever to buy Clickfunnels, they are not buying Clickfunnels. They couldn’t care less. They spend a couple million bucks on really good development, they could clone Clickfunnels. They would be buying Clickfunnels because of the customer list. That is the only tangible, valuable asset inside of my business, is my customers who are paying me for something awesome. It’s the customer list, it is the big, big secret. Does that make sense? I remember a few years ago, in fact, I’m writing the Traffic Secrets book and I have like a two chapter rant about this as well in that book. But when EBay bought Skype for, I think it was like 4.2 billion dollars. EBay at the time was the biggest company in the world, why’d they spend that much money for Skype? They literally could have cloned Skype in a weekend. They did it because Skype had 420 million users at the time. That was the asset they bought, the customer list. Why did Zuckerberg buy Instagram? He could have cloned Instagram in 35 seconds right. He did because he wanted the customer list, the subscribers. That is the only valuable, tangible asset in your business. So until you own traffic, until you have your own list, you do not have a business. You can have promotions, you can have some cash here and there, but until you have a list, you don’t have a business. Okay, so knowing that, our entire focus should be building a list, that should be it, that should the focus, that should be the thing we talk about, we think about, we eat, sleep, breath, drink, that should be the number one focal point. I know, somebody told me this a decade ago and I listened to it, and I tattooed it to my brain and I’m going to tell it to you guys all again. I want you all to get out a mental tattoo and tattoo this to your brain. Oh Nick started to repent right now. He’s saying, “I’m recording and creating freebee’s to build my list.” Good, we’re getting deep into that, but I’m going to go a couple of levels deeper than that tonight with you, if you’re okay with that. So list building, my friend told me, he said, “On average you should make one dollar per month, per name on your email list.” That’s what he told me. I remember taking that to heart. I was like, “Okay.” I don’t know what it is, I have this really weird problem where if somebody tells me something I just believe it. So I’m like, ‘Sweet okay, a dollar per person per list. How much money do I want to make. I want to make $100 grand a year.” Because that was my big thinking back then, so I’m like, “I need a list of ten thousand people. A list of 10,000 people is $10 grand a month, $120,000 a year. Boom, I’m in.” So that was goal, and that was the game plan. So I started running and started doing everything I could dream of, I was trying to be as creative as I could, how could I build a list? What can I do to build a list? Who has a list? How can I get that list? What do I need to do? And because that became the focal point, I started thinking about it right. And I remember in a very short period of time I got a list of 217 people, then it grew to a thousand and then to 5 thousand and then 10, and 15 to 20 then to 100 thousand and then to a million, and that became the focus. And it was interesting, it was 2 years before Clickfunnels hit, my business was stagnating and stalling. We were stuck at 2 ½- 3 million dollars a year for 3 or 4 years in a row. I think you guys have heard me tell this story before. I remember we were trying to figure out, what’s the big thing I gotta figure out. And I remember Daegan Smith, he asked me one day, “How many people join your list every single day?” and I was like, ‘What do you mean?” I was like, “Well my list is like ( I can’t remember) 130,000 people.” He’s like, “No, no, no. I didn’t ask how big your list is. How many people per day are joining your list?” And I was like, “I don’t even know.” And he’s like, “Well if you don’t know, that’s why your business is stalling. If you don’t know how many people joined your list today, it means you’re not focusing, which means it’s not happening, which means that’s the root problem of all…like the root of all evil is the fact that you have no idea how many people per day are joining your list.” Notice he said, “per day” wasn’t per week, per month, or per day. It was how many people per day. I remember I was in a mastermind group, this is back, this is going to date me a little bit for those SEO nerds out there. But there was a time when article writing was the secret to getting leads and all this stuff. And I remember this guy was in a mastermind group and he was talking about, he wasn’t getting traffic to his site and all these kind of things. And he was doing article marketing. And I asked him, “How many articles a day are you submitting?” and he’s like, “I can tell by the way you said that, that I’m doing it wrong.” I’m like, “What do you mean?” He’s like, ‘Well, I’ve submitted two articles so far, and you asked me how many per day I was submitting.” I was like, “Yeah, you’re doing it wrong.” So that was like ten years ago when article marketing was this thing. But fast forwarding to now, it’s like, if you’re like, “Oh my list 10,000 or 100,000 people.” That’s not the question. The question is how many people per day are joining your list? So Daegan told me that, and I was like, “I don’t even know.” So I remember logging into my software, and the software had the stats of how many people that day joined your list. So we started writing it on the whiteboard. I think at the time it was like 23 or something. It was like 23 that day and I was like, ugh. And the next day I looked at it and it was 20, and then 19, and these little numbers. But then I started looking at it. As soon as I started looking at that number it started making me so angry because I was like, “It’s so small, I need to make it bigger. How do I make this thing bigger?” So what’s interesting is when you track something it grows. It’s just, except for when you’re losing weight. When you track something it shrinks. But for most things, if you track it, it grows. So a number became the driving force. That was the metric for my business, how many people each day are joining my list? That’s all that mattered. We’re looking and focusing and that became the number. And so every single day we’d come in the office and that was the number. How many people joined the list yesterday? How many people joined the list yesterday? Every single day we came in, that was the number that was on the board. And it was crazy, we went from 20-30 a day to 50 a day, to 100 a day, to 200 a day, to 250, to 500, to a thousand. And I remember when we crossed a thousand a day and it was insane. If you would have asked me a year earlier, “Can you get a thousand a day?” I’m like, “That’s not possible.” But we got to the point where we were doing a thousand a day, new people joining our list. And guess what happened to our business? It all just kept growing. Because it’s the new fresh blood coming into your universe, your business is all about getting that fresh blood, the new people in all the time, consistently, focusing, focusing, focusing. And so I want you guys to understand, until you own the traffic you don’t have a business. So that’s got to be the key focus. Without me teaching the whole Traffic Secrets book right now, there’s three types of traffic. There’s traffic that you control. So Zuckerberg owns it, or Larry and Sergei over at Google, they own the traffic. So that’s why they’re so freaking rich and so powerful. I was talking to my dad today about how if you look at the entire internet, you’ve got Zuckerberg who owns Facebook and Instagram, you’ve got the Google guys who own Google and YouTube, that’s 90% of the internet owned by 3 dudes. It’s insane, they have all the power because why? They have all the customer list. They have everybody. So they own traffic. So if you go and buy ads, you don’t own that traffic. You can control it, so it’s good. And you should do that, controlling traffic is one way to build your list. I’m going to go buy ads to build my list, but I don’t own it. I can control it. I can buy an ad and say, “Point it to this landing page, and go there and give me your email address.” Number two is traffic that you earn. So that’s me going on a podcast, or me doing a FAcebook live on somebody else’s page, or me doing a summit, or me doing all these things trying to earn traffic and get into their mind. And then the third traffic, the third and best and most important, the only thing you should be focusing on is traffic that you own. That’s your list. That’s the big secret. When you have a list this game becomes super, super easy. I always tell people that internet marketing is pushing a boulder up a hill at first. Because you’re pushing and you’re pushing, and it’s hard. And at first you’re making no money. And you’re like, ‘I’m spending 80 hours a day and no money is coming in. No money’s coming.” And you’re pushing and pushing it. But as you’re pushing this boulder up a mountain, that rock is your list and it’s getting bigger…I guess the rock is not the list technically, but it’s picking up the list and the list is getting bigger and bigger. And there comes a point, this tipping point when the boulder gets on top of the hill and starts bouncing down the other side. And as soon as it starts bouncing down the other side, this game becomes really, really easy. For me that started happening about 30,000 people on my list. I was making, I was averaging about $30,000 a month. And it became easy. I could literally wake up in the middle of night and send an email to my list and be like, ‘Hey tomorrow I’m going to do a training on how to wake up happier. If you want to come to this training, pay me $10.” And I would wake up and there’d be $3,000 in my inbox. Insane, right? Any crazy idea I wanted to pull out my “bloop”, pull out of my whatever, I could make money with it because I had a list and it was simple right. So that’s what you gotta get. Like getting from zero to a hundred to a thousand to ten thousand, twenty thousand, thirty, that’s the hard part. As soon as you get over the edge, then it becomes so, so, so easy. So that needs to become the focus point and the goal. How do I build a list? How do I grow this thing? And it’s going to be painful to a certain point. And as soon as I get it over the top, then it becomes easy. Because you have a list, now you have leverage. Now it’s like, you can go to somebody else and say, “Hey, promote my product and I’ll promote yours.” There’s reciprocity, right. When you have no list and you go to somebody like, ‘Hey, promote my product?” They’re like, “No. What’s in it for me?” I guarantee, as cool of a person as I think I am, if I were to call Tony Robbins a decade ago and be like, “Hey Tony, guess what? I’m a super fan. Can I come speak at your event in Fiji? Can I hang out? Do you want to be friends? You want to be business partners in the future? Do you want to promote my book?” He’d be like, “No.’ When I went to Tony, guess what I had? I had something that was of value to him. I had this thing it was called a list. And a list is a platform. I could say, “Hey Tony, man you’re amazing. I want to promote you to my list of 500,000 entrepreneurs, would you be interested?” and he’s like, “Yes, I will listen to you because you have a platform.” Your list opens up doors, it opens up any doors. I don’t think there’s a human being on this planet I couldn’t get to right now because of my customer list. That’s how powerful of a tool it is. It’s the key. And when you have a list, you have power. You can do swaps, you can promote other things, you can sell your products, sell somebody else’s product, you can have an idea, you can brainstorm, it becomes easier because you don’t have to, again, right now we’re creating products where we’re guessing, we’re hoping, we’re putting stuff out there and we try to sell it and it doesn’t buy. And we’re like, “oh, we spent all this money on traffic and it didn’t work.” Whereas if you have a list, you don’t even create the product. You’re like, ‘I’m going to send an email to my list and see if they buy.” They bought, “Sweet, I’m going to go out there and create the thing.” The other powerful thing, I think it was John Lennon, was it John Lennon or Paul McCartney, this was them writing, and I remember the story. They were sitting one day and they wanted a swimming pool. And he said, “I’m going to go write myself a swimming pool.” and he walked inside and he wrote, I think it was Yesterday. Boom, got the royalties and bought the swimming pool. He wrote himself a swimming pool. I remember Dan Kennedy, he, I love Dan. I’m a lot more, he calls his list his herd. Like, “Build a herd of people.” And I remember he used to always say, ‘If you want to buy something in your life, figure out what it is you want to buy,  a new car, a new house, whatever, then send the bill to the herd.’ That was what Kennedy used to always say to us all the time, back in his mastermind group. “Send the bill to the herd.” So it’s like, “I want to buy a new car, what’s it gonna cost? This one costs $150,000 for a new Tesla. Cool. Send the bill to the herd. Write an email, send it out, have them pay for it. Everything is free.” That’s the power of a list. You have to make that the focal point because that is your business. Everything else is good. Having a webinar is good, but the reason why it’s good is because it builds a list profitably. Having a book funnel is good, but why is it good? Because it builds a list profitably. Having a summit funnel is good. Why is it good? Because it builds a list. All those things, the only reason why they ever even matter at all, is because they build a list. That’s it. Every funnel I’ve ever created in the entire history of my life, is about one goal and one goal only, and it’s to build a list profitably. That’s it. If I have a list I can sell whatever I want. I can sell them software, coaching, supplements, underwater scuba lessons, I don’t even know. You can do whatever you want. That’s the magic. The list is the key. Alright, have I drilled that into everybody’s heads enough? I hope I have. If not, I will rant even more. So now you’re all like, “Sweet, I got a list. Now I get the thing, I need a list. But how do we get a list?” So a couple things. Number one, you need to make on your whiteboard a big thing that says, “How many people have joined my list today.” And you look at that number. And if it’s zero, you need to be angry. If it’s one, you gotta be angry. Start being angry because the anger is what’s going to get your mind to be like, “What’s the next thing? What’s the ideal? What’s the thing I gotta create or do to get somebody to get on my list?” Alright, so that’s number one, putting that number and making it front and center of your entire business. Looking at it over and over again so you see it, so you start thinking about it. That’s number one. Number two now, it’s like, “Okay, if I’m going to build a list, I’ve got to…” List building is basically, you’re trading. Like, give me something in exchange for your email address. So it’s like, I need to create something really, really cool. It doesn’t mean it has to be big, doesn’t have to be a book, doesn’t have to be a thing, but something cool that’s unique, that’s fun, that’s interesting that you can, that’s got a really good hook. It could be as simple as, this thing I’m yelling my rant right now, this could be very simple and easy a lead magnet to put on a squeeze page. I could be like, “One night I went to my coaching members and I ranted for 45 minutes on the power of list building and I showed them 5 or 6 of my most powerful ways to build a list. If you want to watch that video right now, go opt in right now.” That could be it, this could be me ranting. You could get on your phone and just rant for 15 minutes on the phone and that could be the lead magnet, that could be it. It doesn’t have to be something that’s huge and hard, it’s got to be something really, really cool. So you create that and then it’s like, you create that, you create a really basic landing page, squeeze page, and a thank you page where you give it away, and that’s phase one. That’s why when we started this round of two comma club x coaching, the very first training I did was a two hour training on lead funnels, how to build a list through lead funnels. And I apparently didn’t rant loud enough in that for everybody to hear. So I’m ranting loud now. If you haven’t gone, go back to that training. I show, I think I show 110 different examples of landing pages and lead funnels and how they work and how people, different opt ins people use, and different bribes and the layout and structure of the pages. So it’s all in there, so go check that out. So a squeeze page is good, but now it’s like, okay how do we get people to opt in. Because it’s like, traditional just Facebook ads, yeah, you can go buy Facebook ads, and you’re looking at anywhere from a buck to 5 bucks per lead. So especially when you start, that’s a heavy pill to swallow. So for me, Facebook ads are awesome and they’re great. I didn’t my very first Facebook, I didn’t buy my first paid ad for over a decade. So for the first decade I was like, ‘I gotta figure out other ways to build a list.” And what’s fascinating, back then we did not have Facebook, we did not have Myspace, Friendster wasn’t selling ads. Google slapped everybody, so it worked for like a week, you know when I got in, it worked for like a week or two and then it stopped working for everybody. So I didn’t have an advertising platform to build a list on. It wasn’t a thing. So I had to be creative. I gotta build a list, “How do you buy a list?” It wasn’t like go buy ads somewhere. It was like, you’ve got to be creative. How do you build a list? So pretend for a moment, I don’t have Facebook, I can’t pay for leads. How am I going to generate leads? I start looking, there’s other people that already have a list. So if they already have a list, how do I get access to…You have a list…. Do you guys remember the Wedding Singer when Adam Sandler goes to the bank with Kevin Nealon there, and he’s interviewing for a job and Kevin Nealon is like, “Why should I hire you?” and he’s like, “Well, you’ve got money. I need money. So I was hoping you could hire me and give me some of that money.” It’s the same thing. “You’ve got a list, I need a list, how do we do something together so that your list can join my list and I have a list too?” As dumb as that sounds, that literally is what went through my head all the time because I didn’t have a list and other people did, so I’m like, “How do I build the list?” A lot of it was going out and like, “Okay, how do I create something with this person? How do we do a partnership?” I did summits like crazy. I’ve been in more summits than you guys would ever believe. If you ever go back in the internet archives you can see a lot of them. But I did a lot of summits. I put on my own summits. Why did I put on my own summits? Because I knew that all the other people I was going to interview in the summit had a list and I didn’t. I didn’t even position myself as an expert initially. I just “okay, I’m going to do a summit. It’s called the Affiliate… in fact, it was Affiliate Boot Camp.” I think I’ve launched affiliate boot camp six times. But my very first one was Affiliate Boot Camp, and I just found six affiliates, excuse me, I think it was 12, I can’t remember it’s been a long time, a decade or so. A whole bunch of affiliates, I put them on a summit, and I was just the interviewer. I wasn’t teaching anything, I just interviewed people. And then I had everybody promote this summit, I interviewed all the people and I got a list. And it wasn’t a ton, I think I got 1500-2000 people to join my list. Now I had a list. And I leveraged that list. I went to someone else and said, “Hey, your product is really cool. I’ve got a list, it’s not huge but I’ll promote your product if you promote mine.” Someone’s like, “cool, I promote your product.” And all the sudden we did exchanges. They promoted mine, I promoted theirs. And what would happen is I’d make a little money, they’d make a little money, but I’d get people joining my list. Then I started thinking, okay, I know all these people that have lists, and a lot of them are affiliates, they promote other people’s products. So what if I created something really, really good and most people are paying them 50% commission on the product, what if I came back and paid them 100% commission? And at the time no one had ever heard of that before. So I go to people, “Hey I created this amazing product. Check it out.” And they’re like, “That product is really cool.” And I was like, “What if I pay you 100% commission to promote it?” and they’re like, “Why would you do that?” “I don’t know. Because I’m a nice guy and I feel like you should get all the money because you’re the one who built the list, and you spent the hard time, energy and effort, and you’re way cooler than me. So I’ll let you sell my product and keep 100% of the money.” And so many people said, “Dude, that’s an awesome deal.” So they would promote my product and they would keep 100% of the money, and guess what I would get? The list, their list would join my list. And all the sudden those people became my people. And the next thing I sold, I kept all the money from. That was the magic. I remember I had one friend, he did a really cool thing. He had these CDs that he used to sell for, I can’t remember, I think it was $300 for these CDs. And he was doing okay with it, but not killing it with these things. And he’s like, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to take my $300 things…” and back then he put them on CDs or DVDs, so it doesn’t work as good nowadays because people don’t really have DVD players, but back then it was a thing. And I remember he did this big Christmas promotion and he went to all these big, huge people’s lists and said, “Hey for Christmas, how would you like to give your list my $300 product for free?” and people were like, ‘That would be awesome.” He’s like, “It’s free, so you’re not going to make any money. But they get a cool gift and it’s coming from you and it’ll be awesome.” So he sent these pages for each person, and I didn’t do it, but it would have been like, it was called The Marketing Quickie, so it was like marketingquickies.com/Russell. So you go to Marketing Quickies and you see that the CDs are like $300, if you go to /Russell it was like, “Hey this is, (what was his name? Was it Andrew?) I did this partnership with Russell because you’re on the list, normally when you go to the homepage, you can go see it, it’s $300 for this product, but because you’re Russell’s subscriber, I’m going to ship you out a CD for free, all you gotta do is put your name and address down below and I’ll ship you a CD for free.” So he came to me and I don’t know, like 400 other people, he asked tons of people and most of them said no. But he had 30 or so people say, “Sure that sounds awesome. It would be a great gift for my audience.” They all sent emails to their list, they went to the page, filled out the form with the shipping address everything. He went and burned CDs all Christmas long and sent them out to people. And when all was said and done, he ended up with a list of 18000 people, boom, by giving away his product for free. “But Russell, now I’m not going to make any money.” Again, your business isn’t your product. Your business is your customer list. Now you got a customer list, now make another product, figure out the next thing they want to buy. I remember Tellman Knudsen, Tellman I remember I had just been building my list at the time. I thought I was a hot shot. I think I had, how much was it, I probably had 40-50,000 people on my list at that time. And he messaged me one day, I didn’t know who he was, some of you guys may not know Tellman, he’s not as big in our market as he used to be back in the day, but he’s more in the personal development, hypnosis market now. But he used to be in internet marketing, in fact, he owned listbuilding.com for a long time. But anyway, I digress. He came to me and said, “Hey Russell, I’m doing this really cool summit where everyone’s talking about how they built a list. And I want to see if you’ll promote this summit to my squeeze page, and then you can be on the summit?” And I was like, “No dude, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” And he’s like, “Why?” and I’m like, “I’m not going to email my list to your squeeze page, then half my list will go on your list, and what’s the benefit for me?” anyway, I told him no and hung up the phone. And then like 6 weeks later I see this big launch where every single person on planet earth is emailing their list to this brand new newbie’s squeeze page, Tellman. It was like, in fact, if you go to, I wonder if it’s still there. It used to be listcrusade.com I wonder if it’s still there. Crusade is a hard word to spell. I spelled it wrong. Anyway, I’m sure if you go back to the Wayback machine you can find. But it was just a page that was like, “Hey learn list building secrets from (and it had all the people’s names). Give me your email address and I’ll give you access to all these interviews.” And he did it, and like I said, 6 weeks later I saw all these people emailing. Boom, boom, boom. Person after person after person, all these big names. I was like, “What in the world.” And I remember, I watched his campaign and he built a list, I found out later, of over 100,000 people from this campaign. I remember messaging afterwards. I was like, “Dude, how did you pull that off? Because you asked me, I thought you were insane and I told you no.” and he’s like, “I know. Most people thought I was insane. I asked 70 people and all 70 of them told me no. Then I asked the 71st person,” and his name, I think it was the nitro guys, Matt and Kevin Wilkey, he them and they said yes. And he’s like, “Oh my gosh, I got my first yes.” So then he went to the 72nd person and said, “Hey I’m doing this project, these two guys just said yes. Do you want in on it?” and then that guy’s like, “Yes.” And he went to the next person. “Hey I’m doing this project, that person and that person said yes. Do you want in?” “Yes.” The next 40 people said yes afterwards. But he got 70 no’s in a row before he got his yeses. Is that crazy? And then boom, at the end of the campaign 100,000 subscribers. I think year one in his business he made $760,000 and all he did was email to those lists, all the other people’s products and sold their products. He didn’t even have his own product that first year. He just built a list from everybody else’s list and then sold other people’s products. Do you guys see this? It comes down to this creativity. How do we do this? How do we do it? It’s like how do I create cool things that I can somehow incentivize somebody else to promote? One of the things Nick said, and I’m going to tease him a little bit about this, but he said, “I thought that I had a bunch of friends who I assumed were going to help me promote the product.” Why would they help you promote the product, there’s no reason why someone would help you promote the product. I have to make a better offer to my affiliates than I do to my customers. People always think, “Well Russell, everyone promotes Clickfunnels.” Why do you think everyone promotes Clickfunnels? Number one, we pay 40% recurring commission for the lifetime of the customer. Higher than any other SAAS platform on this planet. Number two, I paid for a dream car for everybody. Number three, I bring them onstage and give them street cred. Number four, a lot of times we have 100% affiliate commissions on books, on offers, OFA. Number seven, book deals when we do the book launches we always do $20 to give away a free book. I work harder to get my affiliates to promote than I get my customers to buy. So you have to understand if you want somebody to promote for you, it’s not just like, “Oh promote me. You should promote me because we’re friends or because we know each other.”  No, don’t ever expect that. My best friends on the planet, I do not ever expect them to promote my stuff. I still go out of my way to sell the crap out of every one of those guys as well. I gotta make an offer for every single one. I don’t care if I’ve been friends with them for a decade and a half, for them to promote me, I still sell them on why they gotta promote me. And we make those offers insane. So when you thinking you want affiliates to promote you it’s like, “What do I give them? Do I give them 50%? Do I give them 100%?” I can’t tell you how many messages I get from people like, “Russell, I have an idea for a product, if you promote it, I’ll give you 50%.” I’m like, “Dude, really good affiliates don’t take 50%.” Especially for info products, they don’t want 70 or 80 or 100. We’ve got deals we’ve done in the past where we’d pay 150-200% commission on things. Why? Because we want the list. One of my very first mentors, his name was Mike Lipman. I remember seeing him onstage one time and he said, he was talking about doing these offers, they make these free DVDs. “We sell these free DVDs, somebody buys the DVD and we call them on the phone and we sell them coaching.” He said, “Guess how much money I spend to sell this free DVD?” And I was like, “I don’t know.” And he said, “$30. I pay an affiliate $30 to give away a free DVD.” I was like, “What? You’re going to be broke in like 13 DVDs. How does that work?” And he stopped and said, “Russell, you have to understand, amateurs focus on the front end. Amateurs focus on the front end. Professionals focus on the back end.” He’s like, ‘I spend $30 to give away a CD, but I average, if every CD I give away I average $200 in sales on the phone within 6 weeks.” So for you guys, start thinking about that.  How do I create something at such a good deal for the affiliates to promote, I give them so much up front….Why do you think we pay 100% on our OFA, One Funnel Away challenge? We pay 100% because right now we got, last month 6500 people joined OFA. 6500 buyers, guess how many leads came from that? A whole lot more than that. I think, yeah, a lot. And it cost me a ton. In fact, I lost money. I think we spent $70 per box, maybe $60. I might be misquoting, 60-70 dollars per box for the One Funnel Away Challenge. Plus 100% commission, so it cost me for every box I sell, I lose $50-60. But what happens? Amateurs focus on the front end. I focus on the backend. I get a customer, I bring them into the value ladder, I bring them to the things and they ascend and they get stuff, and all sorts of stuff like that. That’s what I want you guys to understand. It’s coming back down to how do we create something amazing? And if you’re nervous, again, it comes back to especially at the beginning when money is tighter, paying Facebook a dollar to 5 dollars per lead is scary. But it’s like, what if we come back and what if I took my $300 product and put it on CD and people pay $4…maybe not CD, maybe MP3 player, whatever, and pay $4 for me to ship it out to them. Or maybe it’s a book. Maybe I take my best presentation, my best Facebook live, my best whatever and I get it transcribed where it’s like a book, and I get affiliates to promote it and they give it away for free, and I’ll print it and ship it and send it out to people and they pay $5 for me to print it and ship it to them. And I get the lead and they get whatever. Or maybe it’s co-branding. I used to do this all the time, where I would find somebody who had a list, who was better than me. I’ll tell you if I can think of somebody off the top of my head. Mike Filsaime and I used to do this. We did it a couple of times, where we had both done a pre-launch, in fact, if you go back to the internet archives and you go to prelaunchsecrets.com, go to the wayback machine, you’ll see it. But basically he had done a bunch of pre-launched, I had done a bunch of pre-launches, we came together and created prelaunchsecrets.com and it was basically a telesummit where it was like, ‘hey come listen to the summit and you’ll hear Mike talk about his pre-launch, I’ll talk about my pre-launch. We’ll talk about what we both did and then you get it for free.” So Mike promoted it to his list, I promoted to my list, when leads came in, we both got the leads, so they joined both our lists when they came. So basically, he got some of my leads, I got some of his leads, we both got better. We gave away this really good training for free. And I think we had an upsell where you could buy, I can’t remember, something we put together for an upsell, to try and make a little money off it. But that was it. And then I did another one with Josh Anderson, and with Jeremy Burns, I’m trying to remember some of my old buddies from back in the day. It’s the same kind of thing. I would interview them, interview and we’d put together a thing, where it’s co-branded, we both create something together, we both promote it, we both split the leads, and boom, both of our lists got bigger. So it’s like looking at people who already have lists, looking at people who have a following. Co-branding and going into each of these different markets and doing that. The first part of your business, you guys have to understand, the first part of your business is all about getting land. It’s getting people. In fact, at a recent inner circle meeting, it was interesting, Brandon Poulin was there and he was talking about how the first half of your business is all about gaining ground. And th second half of your business is about protecting it. And hopefully none of you guys have to go through that part of the process, but we get to the spot when now it’s like, you know we have legal crap, and other stuff to protect your land. People throwing lawsuits at you all the sudden. That’s the part of the design that sucks. You guys are in the fun part of the business where you’re like gathering land. This is the great, if I could sit down in this range of how to get more land, it’d be the greatest thing in the world. But it’s thinking about that. This is the part of my business where I gotta gather land, I gotta get people as quick as I can. So it’s doing a little bit of a lot of things consistently, every day. Your full time job, this is your job, this is an 8 hour a day job, to hustle to build an audience. Until you have an audience, you don’t have a business. Until you have a list, you don’t have a business. So it’s going out there and buying ads, doing affiliate deals, you’re doing partnerships, you’re getting people to email, you’re doing summits, you’re doing podcasts, everything you can do to capture land. It’s just not one thing, it’s a whole bunch of things. Just trying thing after thing after thing, and if it doesn’t work, don’t freak out. Do the next thing and the next thing. It’s going to a potential dream partner who has got a list. “Okay, you’ve got a list. What can we create together?’ or coming to them with a plan. “Hey, I’ve got a really cool idea. I can, your audience is good at this, I’m good at this.” Like Noah St. John did this back in the day. At the time he had no, he was a personal development guy and his whole pitch is like, a lot of times he’s like, “Russell, you teach people the most amazing marketing stuff in the world. They’re sitting there, they got their foot on the gas because you gave them all the information, but they’re all freaked out, so the same time their foot is on the gas, the other foot is on the brake. So they’re spinning out and nothing is happening. Your product helps people put their foot on the gas, my product helps them take their foot off the brake. Let’s do a partnership where your people can come in and buy your product, and then they get my training. My training will help them take their foot off the gas.” And if I remember right, this was a decade ago that he first pitched me on this. He didn’t want money for it. He was like, “Just put this on your thank you pages and have people click the link, they go over and fill out a form and then boom, I’ll give them access to my course.” And when they filled out the form, guess what they did? They joined their list. One of my buddies, Joel Marion and Josh Mazoni, they launched biotrust which is a supplement company. If you look at how they did it, they didn’t go and buy a bunch of ads initially. What they did is they went to all the people who already had traffic right, they already had funnels. They went to the thank you page of every single person’s thing, and on the thank you page they’d have a button that said, “Thanks for buying my info product about how to get 6 pack abs. Click here to find out my number one recommended supplement.” They’d click there and go over to a squeeze page and put the name and email address in and then boom, they were put on Josh and Joel’s list, and then those guys emailed the list every single day selling protein and things like that. And as they were selling all those things, all those commissions were going, excuse me, all the commissions would go to the person who referred them over to the squeeze page and they just sold, they’d sell people like crazy and all the commissions went back to that person. Just like in Clickfunnels. When someone sells one of my books and we get them to buy Clickfunnels, that affiliate still gets them money.  So he just put a squeeze page on every one’s thank you page. So it’s looking at that kind of thing. How can I go to other people that I know in my market who maybe have a little bit bigger following than me, and how do we start partnering together and we tag team together and we create cool things together? I’m trying to give you guys as many different tactical ideas to jolt your brain as possible. What else, what else? One thing is I’m thinking more just tactical ideas, I remember when I first got started in this game, Ifirst got the gist of list building, and I remember I started looking who the list builders were. And if you don’t know how the list builders are in your market, that’s your number one homework assignment, that’s even before writing the number on your board of how many people joined today. Who are the list owners in your market? And I’m talking about email lists. There’s so many different types of lists, but emails still to this day, are still the most powerful. Getting on someone’s podcast is good, and it’s awesome, but getting them to send an email for you is better and it’s faster. It just still is. Someday it may not be, but as of today, it’s still the best. So I’m talking about email list builder. So who are the email list owners in your market? So I remember that was the first thing I learned about building a list. I’m like, “Cool, who are the list owners?” and I started listing them out. I remember the ones at the time were like Joe Vitale, Mike Gillespie, who are the other names? All the different names. So I was like, “Okay, I’m going to do a deal.” And I remember Joe Vitale was the first one, I thought he was so cool. And he is cool actually, but I remember at the time I was like, ‘Joe Vitale is the man. I wanna be the like, I want him to promote my thing.” And I built this whole thing up and I remember I built a whole, I remember studying his stuff and going through and learning stuff, and I was like, “okay, I have something I can provide his audience, it’s going to be a huge deal.” And then I emailed him and guess what I heard back? Nothing. Crickets. Crap. So I emailed him again, nothing. I emailed him again, nothing. I’m like, ‘What a punk. He should be responding back to me. Doesn’t he know that I spent all this time and energy learning about him and focusing on him?” I say that because I’m being vulnerable but, I guarantee that happens to me all the time. I get people hitting me on Instagram, on Facebook, all sorts of places and I don’t respond back to them because I can’t. I’m drowning. Looking back now I’m like, “Joe, I get it. So sorry. It totally makes sense why you didn’t.” But he didn’t right. And I was trying all these people that were at this level up here, I’m reaching out to them, and none of them respond back to me, and I was all angry and mad. And then I remember I was just like, “Man, this game sucks. No one’s out here for the little guy. I thought this was, everyone was here to help each other, and apparently not.” All the bitterness that I could possibly have was all there. And then I went to this forum at the time and I met a dozen guys, who were all about my level. We’re all doing that same kind of thing, and no one had a huge list. I think my list was 200 people at the time, Mike Filsaime was one of the guys in there. Mike I think had a list of like 5 or 6000 people. He had just come out with a product called Carbon Copy Marketing and he had them on CDs and he would burn the CDs. I remember that I think he was charging $5 or $10 for them, and it was like a $97 product and it was cheap, and he was using it to list build.  Looking back now it’s like, oh he was doing it to list build. He started building up this huge list. So that’s what he was doing. And I emailed Mike and sent him a copy of my product, he’s like, ‘This is really cool. I’m going to promote it.” He promoted it and then I was like, “Cool man, thanks for promoting it. Who else do you know?” and he’s like, “Oh, you should meet this guy, this guy, this guy.” And he told me two or three other people, who same thing, had a list about the size of mine, maybe a little bit more, kind of the same area. And we got to know each other, and had another one promote me, then another guy promote me, then I promoted this guy. And we started, it was interesting, all these guys were at this level down here. And I remember looking at all these guys up here, like the Joe Vitale, Steven Peirce, all these guys that were untouchable, and we were down here. And we start promoting and cross promoting and helping each other out. And what happened was interesting. At that level we started getting bigger and started getting better and our list started getting bigger, and they started responding more and they started getting more people. And then every single person we brought in knew three or four other people and we’d get them in and we’d get them in. And pretty soon I’d have this network of 30 or 40 people and we’re all helping each other and cross promoting each other and doing deals together and co-branding products together and we’d both promote the product. Do all this stuff, and soon, in about a year, year and a half time our list got to the same size, or bigger, than these people I was looking up to. I remember by that time I was doing a project and I was like, “Oh, it’d be cool to do this thing with Joe Vitale.” But I was like, “I can’t message him. He hasn’t responded to like 6 of my messages.” I’m sure I said something stupid in there. I don’t even know. I probably said something, I don’t know, probably something embarrassing. But I was like, “I’m just going to email him.” And I emailed him and Joe’s like, “Oh man, I see you everywhere right now. I’d love to do something with you.” Emails me back instantly. I was like, “Oh my gosh. I’m in. I’m in the cool kids club.” Then we started doing deals with people at this level. And guess what, all of us grew to the next level and kept growing and growing and growing and that’s how we started growing. So I think it’s a big thing for all of you guys. Look in your market. Start looking around, who are the list owners and then get to know them. Build partnerships, build friendships, take them to dinner, buy them a party. And then actively try to figure out things. A lot of times I see people doing the dream 100 and they send gifts and try to do nice stuff, but they never ask for something. Ask for stuff! You’re both trying to help each other. Get on the call and be like, “How can we help each other? I’m really good at this, this, and this and you’re good at this. What can we do? Can we do a summit together? Can we do a cross promo? Should we create a product together? You promote it to your audience, I promote to my audience, we cross pollinate. What can we do?” And then after that stuff be like, ‘Who else do you know that I can work with?” they introduce you to people and you introduce them to those three people that you knew and worked with in the past. You start building this network of people that becomes super, super powerful. In fact, I’ve actually just written this in my Traffic Secrets book. This is a lot of spoilers for you guys, for when the book comes out in the near future. Do you guys remember the movie, Never Been Kissed with Drew Barrymore in it? It’s one of those cheesy movies, that I don’t know why I watched it but I did. I’m sure my wife made me. But in the movie Drew Barrymore goes to high school, she’s a complete loser, and then she leaves high school and then she gets a job as a reporter. And then her boss wants her to do a story on all the cool kids in high school who are all into drugs and all the stuff. So she’s like, ‘I’m going to go back to high school.’ And she goes back to high school and instantly within 5 seconds she’s back in with the nerds. She’s in the chess club, the music, and all these things like that. And all the stories she’s bringing back to her boss, he’s like, ‘I want a story about the cool kids. I don’t care about chess club and things like that.” So she tried to get into the cool kids club, and just gets rejected every single time. So she goes back home to her brother who is David Arquette and tells him this whole thing. And he was like the cool kid in high school. He was like, “You’re so lucky to be back in high school. I want to be back in high school.” And she’s like, “No, it’s horrible. The kids are so mean.” And he’s like, ‘If I were back in high school, I’d be cool again.” And she makes fun of him like, ‘No, you couldn’t be it.’ So the next day at school, she goes back to school again and all the sudden she sees her brother come in and she’s like, ‘what are you doing?” and he’s like, “I just registered for high school.” And she’s like, “Whatever.” Anyway, he walks into the lunch room the very first day and he grabs a big old tub of coleslaw from the lunch lady, stands up on the table, and starts trying to eat the entire thing of coleslaw. So he eats this whole thing of coleslaw, and all the jocks, all the cool kids around him chanting and cheering and by the time he’s done he’s just covered in coleslaw. And they pick him up and carry him out of the lunchroom. I maybe exaggerated the story. I can’t remember perfectly, it’s been about a decade since I’ve seen it, but you know what I mean. All the sudden he becomes the cool kid. And Josie, who’s Drew Barrymore’s character, goes back to him later and is so mad at him and frustrated. And he said, ‘No, no, I want to show you something.” So he walks over and teaches this principle that’s so, so powerful. Again, I’m slaughtering the story, but conceptually hopefully this makes sense. So he goes over and he starts telling people, “Hey you see that girl Josie over there? We used to date but she broke up with me. She is so cool, she is so blah, blah, blah, whatever.” And the guy’s like, “Really? She’s that cool?” “Oh yeah, she’s amazing.” And then all the sudden he goes and tells someone else and tells three or four people and all the sudden, within a day or two, all these people come over to Drew Barrymore’s character and bring her into their thing, and all the sudden, that quick, she’s one of the cool kids. And David Arquette’s character says something that’s so powerful. He said, “If you want to get into the cool kids club, all you need to do is get one cool kid to think you’re cool.” Boom. Are you guys getting this? So for you, as you’re building your dream 100 looking at this thing and trying to figure out, how do I get in this network of people? You don’t have to get everyone to say yes, you have to find one cool kid to think you’re good and you’re in. That was the moral of Tellman’s story that I told you guys 20 minutes ago. Tellman called 70 people in a row. 70 people told him no, and then one cool kid said yes, and the next 40 said yes. All you need is to get one kid to think you’re cool and you’re in. So who is that in your market? And if you don’t have a list of 10, 20, 30 people that are in your market, these people right here have my customers, they’re on their list right now. If I can figure out a way to work with them, their list will become my list. This is what we’re talking about. I’ve been preaching dream 100 for a decade and for a decade and for some reason the majority of people never do it. And dream 100 does not mean sending out big packages in the mail, it means Facebook messaging someone saying, “Hey, what’s up. What do you do? How can I help you? I’ve got a product, you’ve got a product, let’s do a deal together. What can we figure out?” that’s what dream 100 is at its core essence. It’s getting in there and networking and trying to find out who’s the cool kid. Because you get in with one cool person and that person thinks you’re cool, it opens up all the other doors. Does that make sense? For me, my cool kid was Mike Filsaime. As soon as Mike Filsaime said I was cool. He did my first promo on ZipBrander, one of my very first products ever, he went out and he’s like, “Hey Gary Ambrose, hey so and so, he so and so, this guy’s named Russell, he’s really cool. You should do deals with him.” And I did deals with all three of those guys. And I asked them, “who else do you guys know. You guys are awesome. Do you know any other cool guys like you?” They’re like, “Yeah, you should meet him and him and her and her and that person.” And brought me in, and then within months my network grew very, very big. And then all of us started cross pollinating, cross promoting and all of us as a market grew to the next level, and grew to the next level, and grew to the next level. Alright, does that make sense you guys? There’s a million tactical ways to build a list, but it just comes down to thinking about it differently. Think about it like that is your business, that is the core thing. How do I do it? Who already has my customers on the list? How do I get to know them? How do I become friends with them? What can I create with them to get them to promote my thing and I can promote their thing? How do we do these kind of things? And maybe, let’s say, coming back to Nick specifically on this one. Nicks new course in on Facebook live. And it’s like, okay who are people in your market that have a big, like have a fan page with 30, 40, 50, 100,000 followers right now. And come to that people and say, “Let’s be live together to your fan page, and let’s talk about the power of Facebook live’s and at the end we’ll make a special offer. I’ll pay you 75% commission on every single one.” Boom, that fast you’re in front of their entire audience. There’s a reason why I launched my book I said, “Tony Robbins, can you interview me?’ He’s like, “Sure, I’d love to interview you.” I’m like, “But not on my page. My page has my fans. I want to be interviewed on your page.” He’s like, “What?” I’m like, “Yeah. Let’s do the interview on your page.” And he’s like, “I guess.” So we do the interview on his page and guess what? His 3.2 million fans saw the interview because it was on his page, and I got all his people to come and buy my book. And then I asked Tony, “can my team login to your ad account and buy ads? I’ll pay for the ads, you’ll get affiliate commissions on it.” I’m selling my partners harder than I’m selling my customers. “I will login to your ads, I will pay for the ad cost and I’ll pay you affiliate commission and we’ll keep pushing the interview.” He’s like, “Sure.” So we logged into his ad account for like 3 months after that. I was spending as much money as possible to show every one of Tony’s fans my interview with Tony on his page. And we ended up getting, I think that video had 3 or 4 million views on it during that time. So it’s that thing. Aaron said, “The first step is admitting that we’re not the cool kids yet.” Exactly, exactly. Toby said, “I’m building a list of agency owners and marketing freelance, I have about a thousand so far. DM me if any of you guys want in.” You know as much I think Gary Vaynerchuk’s a…I’ll leave it there because this may be public some day. As much as I love Gary Vaynerchuk, the best thing he said, “You guys know what business development is, business development is getting your phone out, going to instagram and going to your DM’s and DMing each person. Not copying and pasting. Literally DMing each person a personal message. Like, ‘Hey, you’re awesome. Hey, you’re awesome.” By the way, I’m going to geek out for a second because I got really excited about this. My favorite author right now is a guy named Ryan Holladay, he’s written some of the most amazing books ever. So many good ones. Trust Me, I’m Lying is insane. It will change the way you look at the news, Perennial Seller about how to create works of art that last for forever. Super powerful. Then he wrote, Ego is the Enemy, The Obstacle is the Way, a whole bunch of other ones. So I follow him on Instagram and he’s got a new book coming out and posted a manuscript. I commented, “Dude, I love your books. I cannot wait to read that.” And then he DM’s me, my favorite author on the planet DM’s me personally. I’m like, “Ah.” So I DM him back and we’re back and now we’re like friends, that fast. I’m talking about “How can I serve you? Can I help promote your book? Can a do a thing? What can I do to help serve you?” I’m not asking for anything. I’m just trying to legitimately help him and serve him, and I guarantee some day in the future, who knows, a year, 5 years, 10 years something cool will happen from it. But I’m reaching out. So Gary Vaynerchuk, business development is sitting on Instagram DMing the cool people and trying to get in the cool people’s club, and commenting and saying stuff and being active in their lives, so that you’re not just some dude who shows up one day on their news feed, in their DM and they’ve never heard of you. Anyway, just a thought. Anyway, alright. The last thing I’ll say, just within this community you guys, and I’m saying this right now inside the Two Comma Club X community, the same thing if you’re listening on the Clickfunnels community. We create these communities for a reason and obviously there’s a lot of, not in the Two Comma Club Community, but in the Clickfunnels community there’s a lot of people that come in there and try to poach people and try to get customers, but there are amazing people in there as well. It’s like, how do you go in there and start looking around. Who are the people that are legit? Who are the people commenting, giving good value? Those are the people you should get to know. If they are in the forums commenting and posting and stuff like that, they’re trying to create business, they’re trying to do good stuff, they’re trying to help people. Those are the kind of people you want. Go in there and comment on their post. Yeah, that is cool. And go back to their FAcebook page, follow them, send them a message, get to know people. That’s part of this game. Yeah, that’s how this whole game is played. So anyway, I hope that helps all of you guys. I hope that helps you Nick. I hope it helps everyone here in Two Comma Club, and again, if I post this as a podcast, I hope it helps everybody else as well. It’s just shifting your mindset and start focusing on that. Because as much as I love funnels and as much as I love coaching, as much as I love software, as much as I love all that stuff, the only thing that matters at the end of the day is your customer list. Every funnel is built so I can grow my list. That’s it. That’s the purpose and that’s the reason. So I don’t know how long we’ve been going for tonight? Anyone know, anyone timing this? Anyway, I hope this is valuable to all you guys. I hope that it just becomes the focal point. I think within our community here in the forums be posting how many people joined your list today. “We got 10 today. We got 50 today. Got 20.” As soon as you start focusing on it it will keep on growing. I can’t tell you how much, the times that business has stalled, that’s the number to look at. Right now inside of Clickfunnels, it’s interesting. If you look at the Clickfunnels, every morning we do what we call the daily pulse, and it’s all hands on deck Charfin style meeting, we all jump in. It’s a 7 minute long meeting and guess what the meeting is? The meeting is each department sharing their critical numbers. And the critical numbers are like our traffic, how many books did we sell today, how many Clickfunnels trials did we sell, and how many new are on our list. That’s the numbers. And we’re looking at it every single day because whatever you look at grows. If you don’t look at it, it shrinks. Focusing on that, focusing on it, focusing on it. Gene says we’re 46 minutes in. Sweet. That’s almost as long as the first one Nick. So for those that don’t know, this is part three of his podcast coaching episodes. So the first, I’ll re….I talked about this at the very beginning, but for those that jumped on late, the very first one I did July 19, 2017. If you go to the marketing Secrets podcast and go to episode number 18, it’s called How to Make it Rain. And then a year later we did two more on November 21st, it was called My Conversation with a Friendly Giant, part one of two. And then November 26th is My Conversation With a Friendly Giant, part two of two. All of that is in the Marketing Secrets archives, go back and check them out. This will be the third installment. So next year, Nick, the whole, my goal for you is at that point your list is going to be at least 50,000 people big, and money will be flowing like crazy. And the questions are going be like, “so where, how do we invest this money. What’s the next step? I want to make sure I’m protecting my family and my future.” Because that’s the best place to be. And one more thing I want to comment o

Campbell Brown, President and Managing Director of Old Forester is back on the show. If you've been a long time listener, you may have remembered him back on Episode 98. As the President of Old Forester, he oversees a lot of the brands momentum and strategy. We get his take on bourbon tariffs with international expansion along with his hope for future movie partnerships. Anyone interested in a business background, you're going to find this one entertaining. Show Partners: Barrell Craft Spirits takes blending seriously. They spend months obsessing over hundreds of combinations until they figure out the perfect blend for you. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order with code "Pursuit" at RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about Marianne Eaves. Talk about the Brown influence on our city because you've got the Brown Hotel, The Brown Theatre, the Hot Brown, etc. Is there pressure to keep the Brown tradition going? How did you work your way up at Brown-Forman? What got you into the Old Forester category? Talk about the building and distillery. What about the fire in 2014? What chapter are we in right now in Old Forester history? Let’s talk about international markets and tariffs. What was the international growth plans for Old Forester prior to all the tariffs? Did they change or are they staying the same? Where do you see the Old Forester brand? What are you doing to elevate the Old Forester brand into a premium category? Talk about your team and what goes into the bottle. Do you take a Bill Samuels approach about not interfering with what goes in the bottle? Is there a brand rivalry in the company? Do you have to fight Woodford for barrels? Will you ever have 100% of production here? What impact did the Kingsman movie have on Old Forester business? Do you have a strategy to do more than Statemans? If you could do a movie tie in, which movie past or present would you do? How far down the gene pool are you to George Garvin Brown? 0:00 Basically what I'm hearing is Chris and Jackie go into a room, and they're fighting over a barrel. And Jackie's winning the fights right now. You know, I wouldn't say that I would say I mean, I mean if it did come down to a physical battle, I would put my money on Jackie. 0:28 This is Episode 201 of bourbon pursuit. I'm one of your hosts, Kenny. And let's go through a little bit of news but really the big news this week, and maybe you're living underneath a rock you weren't looking at social media you weren't looking at any of the news articles that came out but Marianne Eave's the master distiller castle and key, the one that was renowned as being the first female master distiller since prohibition, in a joint press release has announced her resignation from the distillery with mixed emotions and various news articles she expresses that she isn't done yet being a master distiller. 1:00 And we'll continue to stay in the industry as a consultant. We recorded an episode back on I think it was actually was 18 back with Marianne and this is before castle and key the name was even ever conceived and it was being referred to as the former old Taylor distillery. So make sure you go and you check that out and kind of check out her past and her you know, everything that she had built because we started this podcast pretty much the same exact time she was coming online with castle and key. So we wish Marianne all the best and her future opportunities endeavors. And we look forward to having her back on the show. Once again. This didn't get much publicity, but I was a part of Media Day at Churchill Downs during Derby week. And Fred along with I we got to hear Chris Morris and listen to the call talk about Woodford batch proof. And we didn't really know all the details about it. But come to find out it's going to be a new product line extension and will only be released one time per year at the beginning of spring which happens to be around Derby time. Of course, batch proof is somewhat like barrel proof but not exactly what's 2:00 they do is they have their standard offering of Woodford Reserve. And then every barrel is rinsed out with a gallon of water and added back into the batch. And most of us kind of know that or we call it the devil's cup. So just a little tidbit of information. So if you're looking for a more higher proof version of Woodford, and it's gonna be different every single year, go and check out Woodford batch proof 2:22 on our news pursuit series episodes 10 and 11 are now on sale this week to our Patreon community at first, you know, we've been talking about Episode 10 for a while and we're super excited release it because this is a five year we did bourbon coming from Finger Lakes distilling, and this distilleries getting crazy good accolades. We featured them back on the Empire right episode, and they get good reviews from pretty much everywhere. bleak driver of bourbon or as well as and Aaron Goldfarb of hacking whiskey sold out a barrel of their Ice Wine finished bourbon in 48 hours. Michael Veatch recently reviewed their Mackenzie bottle and bond bourbon and breaking bourbon even named that 3:00 bottle and bond bourbon, one of their best Bourbons of 2018. And now we have the first ever barrel proof release at five years old. Episode 11 is right around the corner as well and it's a short barrel. And who doesn't love short barrels only 112 bottles were in this barrel. And it is the second highest proof we have released thus far coming in at 114.3. It's also 10 years old. So it's got that good middle age Eurostar, middle of the road sort of age to it. As usual, first access is to our Patreon community, so make sure that you're checking out your emails to get your password for access. We're excited to have Campbell Brown back on the show. If you've been a longtime listener, you may have remembered him being a part of the legend series partnership that we have with the Kentucky Derby Museum. And that was back on episode 98. As the president of old forester he oversees a lot of the brand's momentum and strategy with anyone interested in a business background. This is what you're going to find entertaining and with that, 4:00 Let's go hear from our good friend Joe at barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred Minnick with above the char. 4:06 Hi, this is Joe from barrel craft spirits. I work with a team that takes blending seriously. We spend months obsessing over hundreds of combinations until we figure out the perfect blend for you. lift your spirits with barrel bourbon. 4:22 I'm Fred Minnick, and this is above the char. When I walked into the brown Forman office to interview Chris Morris, I sat down in a nice leather chair. The PR person's office was surrounded with like fishing photos and family photos. It felt very friendly. And then in walked a young woman I hadn't ever met before. She was tall, blond hair, very pretty. And she extended her hand and said, Hi, Marianne Epes, so nice to meet you. 4:52 Chris looked at me and said, Marianne is our new master taster. Brown Forman had just named Marianne 5:00 To be the master taster of the Woodford Reserve brand. I later learned that she was on a path to become the next master distiller for Woodford Reserve. Imagine that being in your early 20s and having the opportunity to become the master distiller for one of the greatest bourbon brands on the market. Now, at the time I thought to myself, I never met her, and what is this young woman know? And despite my 5:32 my background and covering women in whiskey writing the book, whiskey women, I had only just met Marianne, I felt like Marianne needed to prove herself a little bit before I could officially think in my mind that you know, she is capable of being a master distiller and so I talked to her. And what I learned from her within 30 minutes, was that she was one of the brightest young minds, not just in Kentucky, but in all of 6:00 American whiskey. She could tell you everything there was to know about corn and how much starch to extract and how to distill it and what are the different distillation techniques to get whatever you need out of something. She was an engineer. And she chose to go into bourbon versus making ethanol or something else because bourbon was her passion. And when she announced her departure of brown Forman for a new distillery that would be starting up at the old Taylor facility, which is actually near Woodford Reserve. I was kind of stunned because who, after all, would leave the opportunity to become the master distiller of Woodford Reserve. And then I got to know Marianne even more. She has that entrepreneurial spirit. She wanted to do her own thing. She wanted to be a part of something new. Well, this past week, Marianne announced her departure of castle and key 7:00 It's a little bit of a historic one from an American whiskey perspective. You see, Marianne was the first woman to take the title master distiller at a Kentucky distillery. Now don't get me wrong, there were women in the past, who actually were doing master distiller work, but they did not take the title. And I think when you put the master distiller title on your card, you got a little bit of a target on your back. And after her departure, you saw that target, getting pelted for Marianne. There were people who were making fun of her for her how she is on social media saying things like well who will take selfies now, at the distillery there were people who were pointing out the fact that heard bourbon had not yet hit the market. How can she call herself a master distiller and I gotta tell you, all of that disappointed me greatly because here was a young woman who took a risk 8:00 And left one of the most comfortable position you could possibly be in the distilling business. She took a risk for something new. It didn't work out. It happens to all of us. We don't know the reasons. It could be personal, it could be professional, there could have been conflict there. She may have not gotten along with her bosses and who here has not? Who here has not been in a position where they were working for someone they couldn't stand? Maybe that's what it was, or maybe it was vice versa? I don't know. I don't know the reasons why Marianne left. But she did not deserve the vitriolic comments that she got from people on social media didn't deserve a single one of them. But I also know Marianne rises above all that, because at the end of the day, she's a very talented young woman, and she can do whatever she wants to include being the first master distiller and Kentucky whiskey history. And that's this week's above the char. Hey, if you have an idea 9:00 For above the char hit me up on Twitter or Instagram at Fred Minnick. That's at Fred Minnick. Until next week. Cheers. 9:11 Welcome back to another episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon. The whole team here today recording at the I guess you could say me, the old forester studio, something like that. We're actually in the old forester distilling tasting room, actually seeing a pretty cool behind the scenes, kitchen esque cocktail mixing sort of area. But this is going to be a fun episode because our guest today was actually somebody that unbeknownst to him, he was he was on the show before from the Legends Series, but of course, 9:45 yeah, the Kentucky Derby Museum legend series that was that's probably my favorite of the of the legend series I've done because Campbell's one of these guys have been so instrumental not just in bourbon, 10:00 But all spirits and people, people just here you know, he's a member of the brand family and everyone thinks I just get things handed to him. This guy worked his way up, you know, worked in foreign markets did a lot of grunt work that a lot of people in bourbon royalty wouldn't do. And so he's one of those people I like bringing to the forefront and telling his story a little bit because he's done a lot. He's done a lot to help people like us. You say grunt work I also know that at some point he was the the soco Ambassador at one point right so that's a little grunt work. This is so co by Soca we mean Southern Comfort and you know i one time that was a that was a brilliant brand. Oh yeah, absolutely. And it helped it was a part of the brown Forman family of course they sold it to SAS rack and and you know, I think we should ask him about like what was that like for him because he did have such an emotional connection to it and of course he's also came out with soco long shots you know. 10:58 I'm not really interested. 11:01 Well you You're always wanting to drink fireball or something comfort sounds right up my alley, you know, should we really mean should we have him on anymore? With all this like, whiskey? I don't know. I mean, he tell you what we before we started recording, you know they offered us a drink and Ryan kind of piqued his interest so tell everybody what we're drinking as well we got him in front of us. Well, so Jackie was in the cabinet, you know picking some selections when she said I have some president's choice barrel she kind of whispered Campbell and he was like No, no and I was like I heard that will be like that barrel proof or appreciated Jackie. But as you can see, I think this episode will be a lot juice here then the legend series because we've been here boozing all day and the the research lab Yep, just kidding responsibly, we respond. 11:44 Absolutely. So with that, let's go ahead introduce our guests. So today, we have Campbell Brown Campbell is the president and managing director of old forester for brown Forman. So Campbell, welcome to the show. Good to be here. Thank you. Absolutely. So, you know, we kind of gave you a little bit of 12:00 Have a head start of what you did and growing up into here and doing some grunt work and kind of cut your teeth in the history but I kind of want to take it back a little bit because as some of our listeners may not know, you're from originally Montreal. I was born here in Louisville. I turned five I moved to Montreal and I turned five in Montreal. Yeah and I grew up there Wikipedia my research Yeah. 12:26 We get it right. So somebody update the Wikipedia page before I have to but I also want to give anybody that's from out of town in in fretted already hinted at it to have the name Brown. And what that means to the city of little because you've got the brown hotel, you got the brown theater, I mean, you got a damn the Buddha Cancer Center, you got the brand, you've got all different browns, you've got the hot brown you got every night, right. So kind of just talk about kind of wish that one was 12:53 but kind of talk about the brown influence of just in Louisville just for anybody that's listening. That's across the nation. 13:00 Well, our families, you know, been a part of this city 13:05 in for generations even going back before George Garvin Brown, you know, we've had, you know, family in Kentucky and and i think involved in, in the state from a political standpoint from a commercial standpoint, philanthropic standpoint. 13:24 You know, it's it's our home. I think we're so proud that you know, the city's been really quite good to our family and to this business. 13:34 My, you know, my, you know, I was born here in 67. Kind of spent my early years here, but growing up in Montreal, it was all a little bit foreign. I remember, you know, coming back here in the summers for a couple weeks and just remembering how incredibly hot sweating your ass off. Yeah, yeah, it was I was like, wow, that's, that's a new heat that we don't get up and can 14:00 Uh much and then, 14:02 you know farms everyone like everyone had a farm and so we would go out to my grandmother's farm 14:08 or you know, an uncle and and you know, you just, you know, see these animals you just don't see and in West Mountain Montreal where we grew up and then you know eating like lima beans I never really was into lima beans until I got here and frankly, I don't think I've been into lima beans until about 10 years ago. That's really an acquired taste. That's something I never thought we would start talking about. 14:32 The lima beans is Pat Steakhouse. It does Yeah. Yeah, right. 14:37 on track. We expect a royalty check from Pat's after the yes he 14:42 Well, he's a cash operating business. He actually started taking credit cards. Yeah, yeah. 14:51 That'll do it. So yeah, I mean, look, Louisville, Kentucky, obviously, you know, our family's been around here for a number of years and generations. I 15:00 I think, you know, it's a great city. 15:02 It's got a great attitude. I think it's an exciting time to be a part of the city. And I think, you know, 15:10 I like having a family here, Mike, you know, I, my eldest child was born in Annapolis, my youngest was born here in Louisville. You know, 15:18 it's great raising a family here. It's 15:22 good. I just I like, I like what's happening and sitting, I want to be a part of it. And I think that, you know, most people that have been a part of this city for a lifetime, you know, we talked about our high schools and where we went to school, I mean, that I think there's a reason for that is that we all have these great, really strong emotional connections that go back to childhood and you've got people that come in and out of the city. I mean, I was out of here 15:44 for six or seven years, always knowing that I was going to be coming back in so it's, yeah, it's a unique place. And I think we've been fortunate that we got into the right business at the right time, and it's thrived for for quite some time. Now. And 16:00 gives us a chance to 16:03 kind of enjoy being in an industry that's got so much to do with, with the city in the state. And I'll add to, you know, a little bit of the brown legacy. You know, 16:11 Campbell mentioned politics, they've, they've had a lot of people in high places there. But to me, the brown family is really about philanthropy. And 16:21 if it was not for the brown family, I mean, we wouldn't be talking about whiskey row today. I mean, they essentially saved whiskey row where we are right now. And they when a Louisville was crumbling from an art perspective, the brown family kind of held it up, you know, so you go around our museums here, and you'll see a brown at the top of every one of the donors. So they're a very, very important family for our community. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so is there like, you know, as Kenny and Fred said, the Browns are like one of the most famous families probably in the city is there like a pressure or like something to get out like, we got to keep this 17:00 thing going or How's that feel to be a part of that tradition and keep it going? 17:04 Well, 17:06 I don't know. I mean, I think you just, you certainly you want to be respectful to what the city represents and reflect that, you know, appropriately. I think, 17:18 you know, I don't know if it's pressure. I think that at all, really, I think, you know, you're many of us have different jobs and doing different things. And I think there's a, there's a, I think, a bias towards staying engaged, staying interested understanding kind of the issues and the opportunities of the city and figuring out ways in which we can help, like anybody would really in our own individual ways, 17:45 you know, to help to find solutions and empower people and empower ideas. And I think that, you know, frankly, there are so many people in this city in particular that are doing that every day. I mean, I work with Holly McKnight, her husband, JK me 18:00 ignite is done a ton for this city through, you know, his Philip philanthropy, philanthropy and through his interest in music and they can throw a party party. Greg great taste. You know, so I think that and there's, like, individual after individual like that are that are here, you know, looking I think because it's a city that's fairly manageable size it gives individuals an opportunity to kind of make things happen that would be much harder to do even in a Nashville certainly in a New York or Miami but I think there's still as an economy of scale that allows a good idea or a strong individual to make something powerful happen. It's a big small town. Yeah, yeah. So also want to kind of just talk about your, your rise with inside the ranks of brown Forman too, because little research shows that you started off in the mailroom at Brown Forman so kind of talk about the steps that you took up the ladder to to kind of where you are today. Well, I mean, we've got 19:00 Great internship. I mean, the internship programs gotten a whole lot better since I was a part of it. 19:06 And that's how I got involved. You know, I didn't know anything about really the business I grew up in Montreal, had a chance to move spent a summer in Louisville. I got a job in the mailroom. I think, you know, those types of opportunities in a mailroom gives you a real perspective on who people are in a company, what different groups do individuals do you learn about the brands, I remember walking in and to my cousin Mac Brown's office, and I think he was part of the Jose Guarino company at the time, and was running maybe Martel and just seeing the point of sale in his office and going God, he got this job, this would be great. Look at that. I mean, you know, just some neat stuff and, and I think it's a business that kind of captures your imagination and you see kind of neat things that you can touch and feel and and so that certainly gives you a nice kind of 20:00 insight into, 20:02 you know how people get their jobs done. And it's a beautiful campus. If you've ever been down to brown Forman it really is set up like a university campus. And it's a great place to work and so that that certainly draws you in. And then, you know, I went and got a graduate degree and came back in 94 and started to work actually, we were talking you're talking about in the intro about Sasha Sasha Mark Brown, who run says rack was hired me at Brown Forman when he was running the advancing markets group. And so I began working in that like our emerging markets group in 94. I went to Chicago for a bit of supposed to be there for a couple years and an opportunity opened up for me overseas and I got asked to come back to go over to interview for the job, but they wouldn't tell me what the job was. And so I you know, I spent basically the better part of a day trying to figure out why 21:00 I was in what I was, what job and then I kind of figured it out. And as it turned out, they wanted me to go to India. And I think they were just nervous about telling me that while I was living in Chicago thinking I might not come for the interview, just because it's such a far way to go. And you know, it's a it's a difficult market. It's not like, you know, when you're 2425 years old, and somebody says, Hey, do you want to go to Australia? Yes, I do. When did you want to go to India, it's such a foreign place. And you really don't have the same kind of immediate 21:34 interest, frankly, and kind of moving up there and go into a country that big and that vast, 21:41 and I ended up moving there. I was supposed to go there for four months, ended up spending a year and I left that place in tears. I absolutely loved it. It was one of the best experiences of my life. I got to travel all over the country helping set up a joint venture where we were local bottling Southern Comfort. So that was my first kind of 22:00 introduction into a relationship with the brand that I had off and on for over a decade at the company. And I was just great. It was fantastic. Great people great food. What was your favorite Indian food dish? Chicken Tikka Masala. Oh yeah, yeah, like Assad pioneer London on yet naan bread delicious. I mean everything about it I loved 22:25 and then I moved to the Philippines to help set up the joint venture over there also around the Southern Comfort brand, and was on my way to Thailand to be a country manager and I got 22:39 persuaded to go help open up an office in Istanbul in Turkey for regional marketing office that we had there and I went to do that and I ended up staying in Turkey for three and a half years before coming back to the US. As a US brand manager for Southern Comfort. You should have been the dosa keys and World's Most Interesting Man 23:00 Well, yeah, maybe like some nice locations, but not nearly the exotic experiences that that guy had. For sure. Yeah. And so what got you into the, I guess the old forester category? Was it to the point where you said, I kind of want to move on or was at the sale of Southern Comfort and you said, Okay, I'm looking for a new home, you know, what it was? 23:20 I think we began to see some interesting things happening for old forester. We had we had had a great brand team that was coming up with some pretty wonderful ideas that are now we're drinking, you know, the whole whiskey roll concept. And there was an opportunity with the, you know, with the we finally got the approval to go build this distillery at the location we're at today. 23:45 And we wanted to bring that story together a little bit like you know, the story of a brand that's been around for 100 and almost hundred and 50 years that's been in our family and our company. That kind of the business we started with was old forester and 24:00 Bringing that story of our family, the business and the community together. At that point, I had about 20 years experience. So, you know, here's a person that actually, you know, may have the, you know, commercial sense to go lead this and, and, and had the, the obvious, you know, the right DNA to connect the dots on this five generations story and so I, you know, I was asked to kind of head up the building phase of this and the capital project and then help lead the brand and tell the story of, you know, one of America's unique alcohol products and and it's really been a pleasure to be able to kind of have that role. Let's go to the, the construction part of this first. I mean, first of all, 24:52 it from a business perspective. You gotta be nuts to try and build a distillery in a good little lab. 25:00 better places to do this right? I think this area burnt down yet two times. Yeah. Can you take us through that process of like? 25:09 Well, I what I loved it what makes me feel good, like smarter people than me made the decision. 25:16 So, yeah, that that location site was picked well before I started. 25:21 Yeah, I think it will I mean that but that's what makes it so special. You know, like, here's a location that we actually like our founder office out of, for from whatever 25:33 1882 to 1919. And, you know, we get to move back in here decades, generations later, I mean, so that's a special thing that when you get a chance to take advantage of that you do it. 25:47 We I feel like one of our core capabilities at the company is building wonderful home places that allow us to tell 25:56 great brand stories while displaying a process. 26:00 And we worked with some great partners here in town and out of town that 26:06 you know, frankly put together a proposition that was hard to say no to and that you know, and frankly, you know, as you get into these projects, you like any kind of renovation or building you know, something happens all the time that you're not expecting certainly the fire being a big obvious one. Tell us about that. let's let's let's let's go there because 26:30 Was it 2014 Yeah, the right one. I started right when you started so 2014 fire there's smoke all downtown Louisville, the news crews are here. I see it on the news. That's how I find out about it. How did you guys work because it was over you your tweet, you know through here I'm a first responder so I was I was the fights right? I actually I forgot I came on the site and I was tweeting about it. I forgot about that. But what was what was that like for you? Where were you? Yeah, what was going through your head when 27:00 When the fires when the fire hit, so I was in the office at 850 Dixie Highway and I got a phone call from a buddy of mine in corporate development who had a friend down here works for one of the law firms or one of the banks I don't know and he was looking out his window and called my colleague and said look, I think think buildings on fire and so I got the phone calls I get Look, I just got a friend a call from a friend who says that the buildings downtown on Main Street are on fire I don't know if it's the distillery or not but you may want to check it out. And so I just you know, I had my computer up and I i there was this live feed on I think wave or one who is one of the stations of a helicopter and I pulled it up and 27:46 for sure, it was obvious that the block was on fire. less obvious was was it did we was it in our building or was it down the block and you knew no matter what it was going to be a problem. 28:01 And your first reaction was, it was shocking how violent the fire was how much flame there was the, the number of the amount of smoke, the amount of water being thrown at it. It was it was a big, big time fires like yeah, like watching a movie almost. And you're kind of paralyzed. And I called Mike beach and Mike and his team are already down here. And Mike is the project manager who really is the guy that built this place, manage all the of the contractors and whatnot. 28:34 And so, you know, we had our folks down here and kind of trying to understand it and really you're thinking about safety. I mean, what happens if somebody is killed as they're trying to kind of put this fire out what you know, and you know, that they're taking the right precautions, but it was pretty 28:51 it's pretty devastating. You know, 28:53 I and my wife You know, my wife hears about it, you know, we're then we're later at night we're at home, the things still burning 29:00 I begin to get a lot of phone calls, just from friends and and, you know, they're trying to find out about it, it was pretty awful. And you know, 29:10 you we were already planning on the groundbreaking right? Like, what that ceremony was going to look like and everything else and, and so that everything gets put on hold and Now fortunately there there were no injuries. You know, we're standing we're sitting in the building today So look, it was it was a horrible thing when it happened, right? It's now a chapter and a long story. And this whole block looks stunning, you know, and so I think we're pretty fortunate and given the work it took to get it there because you a lot of people would have just let it you know, kind of tear down the facade and start from scratch. You all invested the money to actually save the the front Yep. And hold the brick in. I mean my I mean the we have braces out here for months. Yeah. 30:00 You guys are trying to protect the integrity of the bill as much as you could I mean, it was a dangerous dangerous 30:06 construction site for a long time. I mean, even as you're trying to clean up the inside in there been so much water put on the on the on the building site to to extinguish everything that it just eroded the ground and eroded all the brick and then you know, things are loose. When you're up front on Main Street on this side as we're trying to kind of dig through that and brace it all things are kind of crumbling as it's happening. And, you know, 30:35 we had to call in special engineers, it took a lot of time. A lot of smart minds looking at it, figuring out ways in which we could make it a safe environment to allow people to go back and work and so we really just had, you know, you know, 30:50 experts in there and just very few at a time and that took it just took a lot of time and you know, you kind of make these connections in the romance copy of what we do you know, we're in a business 31:00 Uh, you know, we're we spend our time waiting around for stuff to get ready. And so 31:06 you know, you want to you want to be you want to be quick and you want to make decisive decisions, but you also want to make the correct decisions. And, you know, 31:13 we took our time, I think we've got it right. You know, 31:17 this building, I think is fascinating the way that you have constructed it now, and it's a beautiful facility, I think, you know, 31:25 whether you're coming in here on a tour, or you're going to George's or you're just here to, you know, 31:31 walk walk around Main Street, it's, it's been done right. And, you know, 31:35 again, the fire is a chapter of the long story. Where are we at right now in the chapter? 31:42 Yeah, I think this is that whole fun Renaissance chapter. Right? It's, 31:46 it's the chapter you want to be writing and, you know, we're thrilled with what's happening with the brand. I mean, even in Kentucky, I mean, this brand has always been a great brand for the city and for the state but to see it grow 32:00 And the out, you know, the rural parts of Kentucky, embrace old forester in a way that I mean, I just never saw in my lifetime. It's fantastic. You know, there's, there's always been this core heartbeat of the brand here in town. And it's just kind of expanding there. And then you see what's happening in these other markets. And you know, how people are responding to some of the whiskey, the innovation, it's exciting, you know, I think there's a lot more to be written 32:27 with the whole category, right? I mean, we're just scratching the surface as it relates to bourbon in an American whiskeys outside of the US. And I think that's going to be really exciting and a lot of fun for us. I think innovation continues to kind of push the envelope of the category in a neat way. You know, 32:46 we've got bourbon in general, you know, it's just, it's, it's, you know, it's, 32:53 it just can be consumed in so many fun, different ways. I think it's really really versatile. And so you bring it you bring up the international 33:00 markets and, you know, this is very, very crucial time in American whiskey history because we haven't had this kind of export interest before. And now, we're in addition to having that interest we have we have some trade concerns where people are pressing tariffs. And 33:21 and, and you know that I can't think of a company that's more vulnerable to tariffs than brown Forman. Yeah. And, you know, I think that's, that's one of the tough outcomes of this as as these this terror of things going on. You know, we're an industry that's for the most, in most cases, it's single source production, right? We don't, the inputs of this product are 100% American. 33:51 And so it's an easy target for tariffs outside of the US because it doesn't really impact 33:59 any of the 34:00 Any supply side stuff that would be occurring from a European market for instance. I mean, pretty much everything is for bourbon and American whiskeys are made in America. So it's isolated. And so it's the perfect target to be in the middle of a territory, unfortunately. And it's it's a timing couldn't, you know, it's it's, 34:21 it's not great, you know, it's not a huge deal for old forester. Obviously, we're, we're a smaller brand that's got, you know, some nice momentum. 34:33 But it's not, it's not, you know, 34:36 it's not it's we don't have a huge footprint, a global footprint yet, but jack daniels, you're in the sister brand that's in Tennessee. That's, that's correct. It hit some hard. It does. It does. So you're not going to think of any sort of long term effects that old forester could have on this. I mean, is it because I'm sure you've had some sort of international expansion and thoughts. I mean, so we're lucky we actually have a nice 35:00 Really nice business. That's, that's got some great momentum in Australia. But that's not a tariff issue. You know, 35:06 we're in the UK. 35:09 And and that is more of a thing for us, but it's still a small brand that's being built in the on premise and, you know, 35:17 friends, right, I mean, this is really about the Woodford and the jack daniels of the world and and, and that that this has a real impact on on those brands and how we go about resourcing and how we go about brand building in, in in the European and Asian and Latin American market. So I'm not the best guy to talk about, you know, the, you know, 35:39 how that's impacting those brands, but it's obvious that I do think that like, yeah, you get the PDF every morning that says like, Oh, I will. I will say that. If there's, if there's a brand within the brown Forman portfolio that would survive like a tear for the countries that would be old for sure, because 36:00 It is. It is such 36:03 that powerful. Yeah, there was an article. My brother lives in London. And there was an article that came out and it was kind of a tongue in cheek thing. Okay, five things to do facing this terror floor on bourbon and American whiskey and I think one of the points was make jack daniels popsicles and last longer. I think people are coming up with ways in which to survive this period of time, I think will will survive, although i've i've screamed about it enough for the past. 36:39 So I want to ask a question is about the old forester brand and kind of where you see it. 36:45 You've probably heard of finishing beer using whiskey barrels, but Michigan distillery is doing the opposite. They're using beer barrels to finish their whiskey. New Holland spirits claims to be the first distillery to stout a whiskey a folks at Rock house whiskey club heard that claim 37:00 Had to visit the banks of Lake Michigan to check it out. It all began when New Holland brewing launched in 97. Their Dragon's milk beer is America's number one selling bourbon barrel aged out. In 2005. They applied their expertise from brewing and began distilling. At beer barrel finished whiskey began production 2012 and rock house was the club is featuring it in their next box. The barrels come from Tennessee get filled with Dragon's milk beer twice, the mature bourbon is finished in those very same barrels. rack house whiskey club is a whiskey the Month Club on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories from craft distillers across the US. Along with two bottles of hard to find whiskey rack houses boxes are full of cool merchandise that they ship out every two months to members in over 40 states. Go to rock house whiskey club com to check it out. And try a bottle of beer barrel bourbon and beer barrel rye use code pursuit for $25 off your first box. 37:55 So I want to ask a question is about the enforcer brand and kind of where you see it. Do you see it as a 38:00 An everyday category premium category in are you doing anything to kind of elevate into a premium category? Well, for sure, I think it's a great question. And it's the one we wrestle with most regularly 38:15 is, you know, one of the wonderful aspects of the brand, if you talk to anybody that's been drinking it for a while, or that's familiar with it. 38:24 It's so accessible, you know that it's a great value bourbon, and, and I think that's something that is core to that brand DNA. And so maintaining that accessibility, both in the flavor profile and the price point. It's part of how we look at brand building for old forester so that's always going to be a thing. 38:46 Now, recently, we've been we've had some success with the introduction of whiskey row, which allows us to play in price points that are, you know, attractive, you know, these are $40 and above price points. There's a ton of 39:00 consumer interest in those price points and I think if you create a bourbon that's worth that price, or even considered a value at that price, it's a special place to be. So I think we'll always try to look for ways even at $40 and $55, or even looking at birthday bourbon, which is basically 100 bucks. Now, that's still a good value for a 12 year old, you know, 39:22 a highly allocated bourbon that you know, is got a recommended sales price at 100 bucks, it's hard to find it for that, but 39:31 know that that's, I think that's, that's part of, you know, what we look at and in our strategy so I'll say that, you know, if we take a look at some of the, of the releases of the last two or three years of what's really hit the mark, and in our community, old forester has been right there in the thick of it. The 2018 birthday bourbon, has probably the best birthday bourbon of the past decade. The 39:58 camera should have some 40:00 By the way, me a bottle. But I think you know, you never gone well you all. 40:08 But I mean, everybody really regarded the 2013 is one of the best. Yeah, it was very good. And then then the old forester 1920 is fantastic. Yes. And I look at i and i look at, you know, what has changed within your within your team. 40:23 And I think I feel like Jackie, and you may be a moral compass it like have happened. I feel like you've got somebody inside, you know, who's doing a great job of selecting stuff for you. So what Yeah, and I've also noticed that you walk around here, this is probably the most diverse distillery in the state. 40:49 You see more diversity, see more women, more people of color here, and I applaud you for that. But talk, talk us through your team and who's actually you know, picking 41:00 What what's going into the bottle right now? Yeah, well, I mean, I mean so Chris Morris is the continues to be our master distiller and leads the innovation. 41:11 You know, one who works at this distillery is you know, he's a big part of making sure what's coming out of here. Tastes like what we've got at Brown Forman distillery where the vast majority of old foresters made. Jackie's came on board I think about three years ago, right when I came on board, she was one of the first people that kind of was on our radar screen and the first person I think I hired as when I took over. 41:39 And there's no question that she has had an impact on how we talk about these brands, how we present them both in flavor and in kind of the copy and the positioning of them. She's allowed us to think differently about innovation. I think she's worked really well with Chris 42:00 And helping kind of you've got these two characters, two individuals that are really good at what they do that have I think fairly 42:13 I mean, they I think they just have they they have very well refined palates. Basically what I'm hearing is Chris and Jackie go into a room, and they're fighting over a barrel. And Jackie's winning the fights right now. You know, I wouldn't say that I would say I mean, I mean, if it did come down to a physical battle, I would put my money on jack. 42:34 But I think that they work well together now and Jackie, I mean, look, the birthday bourbon, how we proofing some of this stuff. I mean, she's really the the brains behind president's choice. 42:47 You know, it's we are lucky to have her and and she had a great impact. Do you take a little bit of a bit bill Samuels approach, or at least what he used to say is like, I don't mess with the whiskey. Do you? You let people kind of 43:00 make the decisions on what's in the bottle and you just kind of official Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 43:05 I'm a great consumer. Yeah. 43:08 And and I'm proud of my, you know being a good long time responsible consumer. 43:14 But I mean, since I've been in this job I've probably spent more time thinking about, you know, my palate and like, frankly my biggest problem with you know, being like a whiskey taster is that I just don't have the reference points like I don't know what a scone Welcome to the crowd. 43:33 Like I can't Fred starts revealing or like, Yeah, he's got he's got his t shirt on it says like got marzipan. Yeah. 43:42 I don't know. I mean, I just so I mean, I feel like I've got a sense of what I like But yeah, I mean, Jackie's I can feel it yet figured out what consumers would like. Yeah, yeah. You know, 43:54 and there's frankly there's just people that are you know, it's in their DNA and 44:00 They've worked really, really hard to develop a palette that's responsive to liquids that they're tasting. And we've got some really good people at that, that do that here. But there's a little bit of responsibility your shoulders because there's another bottling called president's choice, that kind of falls within your realm. Now, I can talk about that more involved with that. But, you know, 44:24 Jackie, narrows it down to a point where it's hard to make a bad decision. Yeah, it really is. And will you were part of the first one I've leaned into, you know, a lot of really good. I know. 44:41 We all we all certainly looking around the room and look at how people are responding. But I mean, it was it was, it was interesting, you know, and, look, I'm still learning you know, frankly, you don't want me picking going out there. And, you know, you've got to understand where the barrels are and why those are 45:00 barrels would possibly taste different than another barrel. Certainly as you kind of fluctuate the proofs around, you know, it's easier for me to kind of taste stuff that's below 110 proof and get a sense of, you know, the character of that whiskey. But 45:18 yeah, I mean, I, I'm not the whiskey. 45:23 I want to I want to talk a little bit about that culture of brown Forman, you know, so you have three really prominent, you know, arguably all three iconic American whiskeys and jack daniels, Woodford Reserve, old Forester, and it feels like within the company, it's a little bit like University Kentucky versus University of Louisville. Like there's like a rivalry rivalry with within the company. would you would you do you see that or are you too close where I think Fred's creating one. 45:59 I have never 46:00 Done. Yeah, no, I I don't look I mean, the one thing you recognize any if you're fortunate enough to have a brand in your portfolio that's jack daniels or anything remotely close to that. It's a benefit. There's no doubt about it, you know it in so many different ways it's even hard to put into words opens a lot of doors I mean, it sure does and but they don't have a president's choice jack daniels you know you can hang your hat on that 46:29 they have a Sinatra Yeah, they got great they got a great portfolio I mean what if it's got a great portfolio you have to because 46:38 Woodford does you guys kind of share some some barrels you know, they you know, the warehouses Do you ever have to fight for barrels? Or do you already have everything kind of allocated to you within the company we have we need? Yeah, yeah. When will you be closer to like 100% of production here. Never. 47:00 They'll always be you'll always have a little share a little still time at Shively. Oh, for sure. I mean, that's Yeah, I mean, we have the capacity to do about 100,000 cases here. The brand's already, you know, everything all included is over 200,000 I think and so we're, we're, we're, you know, 47:19 we're growing so the majority will continue to come out of Shively. 47:24 Another question I cannot bring up is the statesman. Right? What kind of impacted old forts or statesman and aligning yourself to a movie? kind of have it as an impact on the business? 47:36 Interesting question. Yeah, so that was a little bit out of left field, right. It's not you know, if you look at how we've innovated or come up with products, it's been basically using our, our history to drive that and we had, you know, a really unique shot, that brands of this size with the kind of awareness we have would never get and we jumped at it and it basically 48:00 We took a brand that didn't really exist, and we put it on the market. And so that's, you know, close to 10,000 cases in under 12 months. And it was a, it was a huge impact for us. It You know, 48:13 it got us new points of distribution, all of a sudden, we're in all these amc movie theaters and, and around the introduction of that film when it came out, and we're doing, you know, some menu development in those places. And so, you know, 48:26 we got, we had a great partnership going with total wine, they got behind the product, and so it opens a bunch of doors, it allows you to talk for one, it you know, 48:37 that that movie itself has such a huge following in the around the world, that I think it probably gave us an avenue into consumers that would never ever buy a bourbon, or old forester for sure. But they love the movie and they see z and the cast drinking and they're like, well, geez, I gotta try that and wonder what that's all about. And so you get your already 49:00 Kind of as a recruitment tool it's wonderful market like Korea where we're nowhere we really don't have any product if it's there it's come through duty free in some way shape or form. 49:11 That's the number King's been was the number one movie in the country historically, it's the biggest movie. It's there like Star Wars. And that's weird. You explain I know I have no idea. No idea. But I mean, and so all of a sudden, you know that our Korean markets call and say hey, we got to get some of this stuff. So we're like getting pallets of it and flying it off to Korea. So that's available in the market there and you know, if you look on you know, I follow whatever old forester on Instagram and so I'll see a lot of these Instagram posts from Asia 49:46 as tax days when Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then the kind of what you know, Campbell from, 49:53 from a historical perspective, that was very big for bourbon like I I'm glad to hear that. It in it. 50:00 was a success for you but from a category perspective, if you look back to the 1960s you know James Bond really started dictating what a lot of people would drink from a spirits perspective. You would start seeing people go to white spirits over brown spirits in large part because he wanted a martini shaken but not stirred. And so to see bourbon to continue to have this pop culture presence and madmen Boardwalk Empire the state's been that's a huge play for continuing to capture consumers are you will? Do you have a strategy, you know, to do more than just the statesman. I mean, are we going to start seeing you when 50:36 some TV series or anything like that? I mean, look, our strategy is like, be lucky. And and so I approached us about it. Yes. 50:48 So there's a show that just started I think on 50:52 Amazon called the Romanovs and so they reached out to us and they needed a, you know, a period type of a decanter. So 51:00 Grab them one of our old holiday decanters. And they use that in the TV show. I have not seen the show. But I mean, you know, you're always getting these types of opportunities. This movie came out recently called, like, father was like a huge hit on Netflix. And that movie has old forester in it and Woodford Reserve in it. And that was something that just came around because, you know, somebody knew somebody and they needed a, you know, some Bourbons for the scene and turned out that movie did really, really well on that Netflix platform. So a lot of people saw it and, and I think, yeah, you look for opportunities to do that all the time. It's a great tool. It's fairly inexpensive and it gives you a huge audience if it turns out to be a hit show or hit movie. Alright, so are you a movie buff by any means? I like movies. So if you were to do a movie tie in and have old forester being anything, what would it be past or present? Oh, gosh. Oh, good question, man. I mean, you already said Star Wars. So I don't think I'm 52:00 Lucy sitting there, oh, he's afraid that star wars are handled it. Like, you know, it's it's tough because movies I like are a little darker and so you don't always want your product feature 52:15 darkness 52:17 like like Unforgiven you know, okay, I love that movie, you know, but pretty dark, you know. And and so that that's a tough one. I mean, I look, I think it you know to me, jack daniels is the example of great products showing up in great scenes of great movies that are unforgettable. I mean, whether it's Animal House or any Paul Newman film, I mean, that that jack daniels is by these heroes and villains by their sides, and it's, they become it becomes part of the character and I so I think that's what's important that if you're going like we're with Matthew Vaughn and King's Men mean he really built a big portion of his movie, around the 53:00 idea of distillers from Kentucky. And that's pretty spectacular. I mean, each of the his characters were, you know, had a very specific trait and they were, you know, associated with a particular style or a whiskey or a tequila or whatever it was. And it made sense. I mean, the story when we got into the how we got old forester that was that is that he actually referenced as he was kind of given us the short stick on it that look, this is like 1919 pre prohibition and he goes on and fit in. So he finished his telling me the story. I was like, hey, look, you mentioned pre prohibition. Is that why? Why would you know about that? It's like, well, I just need something if these guy if the the agency was started in 1919, Kingsman, right, you know, on the heels of the First World War, you know, 53:50 that would have been around 1919 so have been pre prohibition. So I think you need to have this, like look, the brand new want to do it with that is old forester. We're the only brand that's been around before 54:00 During and after prohibition is like you're right, I'm going to do with old forester and so just fit his story and I think that's when these things work well, and it's something like that. I mean, do you have to 54:11 how does how does it work? are they paying you a royalty? Are you paying kind of like a get in any of that? 54:20 He's because he's not going away to expand the Ascot business. 54:25 By the way, 54:27 I did their main, the guy 54:31 who plays The Big Lebowski, what's his name? 54:34 is 54:36 Jeff Bridges he weren't asked God in the film. He was here for Derby. Who's the worst Fred minute this guy? 54:45 Is that you said there's only three people in the world. It's still women. Yeah. So now we got two of them. Got to find that third. Yeah. 54:51 Guys, some random winemaker in France. 54:55 And so there's kind of like one last question that we got to do and just part of the service of this is you 55:00 You know, you'd mentioned the history of this building and being able to be at the place where we're George had his own office and stuff like that. We're actually sitting in his office. Oh, can see that photo right there. That's him and whether 55:16 that's him sitting back there leaning in the chair. Oh, it's amazing. Is there a cool windows? Is that a Samsung or an iPhone? It's an iPhone. 55:24 I think it's a Canadian, Blackberry. 55:27 Pony Express. 55:29 But the how because I guess we everybody kind of wants to know is either I'm sure you've looked it up in the family tree like how far away You're moved from the gene pool of George himself. I'm George Garvin. 55:43 Fifth Generation fifth generation so as your great great, great grandfather, okay. Yeah. Now the internet. The funny thing is that So Mike is gonna want to swab your cheek later 55:54 on a test we're going around right now. So we're going to get the 23andme this done the 56:00 So my dad was a George Garvin brown the third. I was born in 67. 56:09 My grandfather, George Darren Brown, the second passed away in I think 69. And so my brother was born in July of 69. And he was named George Garber on the fourth. So you can imagine, as the eldest child, why, how come I didn't like Hamlet? 56:33 How come I don't get the loom? The Roman numeral, you know, and so you end up there. I mean, the reason was, is that I think it's a little distracting when you've got three gardens running around the same kind of household. And my grandfather just passed away and my my, you know, my mom, my dad had got my my brother and so that was a nice tribute to him. So yeah, we're so he's my great, great grandfather. real cool. Well, yeah, definitely a good story. And I want to say also 57:00 So thank you again for taking the opportunity in time to come on the show and tell us your story. The history. More about statesman. I think it was your favorite movie. Yeah, then yeah, yeah. So that movie was cinema, movie tickets, and then we'll go watch a deep dark mystery movie or something. I would like to say that I think old force would fit very nicely in the hustler. But yeah, was actually centered around a lot of bourbon. Oh, yeah. It wasn't here. He was a he was a wholesaler. Yeah. He was a wholesaler. And he was like a big he came down to Kentucky for tournament. Yeah, I'm getting hammered on JT is brown eight year old and it was eight year old bourbon that that drew him in. So it's a Seattle thing. For sure what a fit there. I was thinking like Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump would be a perfect fit. Yeah, I know that Lieutenant Dan needed rock get stuff. Yeah, he didn't want anything in quality. He just wanted to get hammered. Very true. Yeah, yeah, what do I know? I would just say like something like Jurassic Park, just like running through the rest of the fields at the bottom portion here and I can see it right. 58:00 Yeah something like yet the short Art Museum Park 58:07 Well, thank you i this is a lot of fun. I appreciate you guys having me always a pleasure. Absolutely. And you know people want to learn more about you they can Google apparently there, you know getting the Wikipedia and fix all the stuff that I was getting incorrect. I'm very nice if there's anything I mean Wikipedia. You'd be surprised most of what's good. Yeah. Most of it. 90% Yeah. But make sure you also you follow actually, you should come to the old forester distillery distilling company here downtown, go and take a tour. It's a great experience. They've got literally everything here. They've got bottling, they've got Cooper fridge, they've got distilling, they've got a barrel warehouse, you mean you name it, the lady salary? As you can see, get lit on fire. It's it's the coolest elevator experience you'll ever see. There's an elevator here at the old forester distillery that I would say rivals something Disney. It's a fantastic elevator ride. I'm going to say Charlie mention 59:00 aka flattery, something like that I was gonna rival that one too. I haven't seen that in a while. I mean, you know, it goes up it goes, maybe it goes in there like can have like, Charlie Chocolate Factory bourbon ball with old forester. We're thinking, now we're thinking. So make sure you go you check that out follow bourbon pursuit, as well as Fred Minnick on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And also, if you haven't done so yet, subscribe to bourbon plus, because there's a lot of great news stories that come out through their great magazine. It's thank you again, just great imagery and everything like that. But if you also like what you hear, support the show patreon.com slash bourbon pursuit, because without you the show, it would be very tough to keep going. So we want to say thank you, for everybody that helps support the show to do that, as well as all the questions. I mean, some of the questions we asked, are actually from some of the Patreon supporters out there today, all the show suggestions, questions, feedback, we've listened to you all, and we asked, so we really appreciate everyone listening and keep those comments. And, Fred, good to see you, man. Always a pleasure to see you. Thank you. So we'll see you next 1:00:00 Cheers Cheers.