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Episode 31: ZonesThis episode is about Zones in Active Shooter Response and how they help us communicate the threat picture.Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management podcast, my name is Bill Godfrey. I'm your host of the podcast. I've got with me three of the other instructors from C3 Pathways, Ron Otterbacher, retired from law enforcement. Ron, thanks for coming in, I know it's been a while since we've had you on the podcast.Ron Otterbacher:Thanks for having me.Bill Godfrey:Good to have you back. And of course we have Bruce Scott, a familiar voice to those. Bruce, how're you doing?Bruce Scott:I am very blessed Bill and yourself?Bill Godfrey:I'm doing well. And we're thankful to have back Pete Kelting in the house, also with law enforcement. Pete still is not retired, still active duty. How long have you got left Pete?Pete Kelting:About seven months Bill, but thank you for having me.Bill Godfrey:Thanks for being here. So folks today's subject, we are going to talk about zones in an active shooter response. So we're talking about the hot zone, the warm zone, the cold zone and some other terminology as well. It's a serious topic and one that's there to try to help us understand the threat picture that we're walking into and to operate a little bit better with each other. And I think we want to start with the hot zone. So Pete, why don't you lead us off in talking about that first arriving officer, how we establish that initial hot zone which is also, we're going to come back to this, but also called the direct threat care zone. Can you start us off?Pete Kelting:Yeah, absolutely Bill. I mean, obviously the incident's dispatched and our arriving officers are en route, and they're having to make a decision once they arrive on scene. What they're going to declare as the hot zone, either the entire venue or maybe an area that they may have vetted intelligence where the shooting had taken place or that's going to be where they're concentrating their first arriving officer. So it's really important to get that hot zone identified and communicated to follow on officers and dispatch so that everyone knows where they're coming at first.Bill Godfrey:So Ron, I mean, one of the things that we teach in the ASIM program, we say to those first arriving officers frequently, "Look, if you're not really sure just go big, make the whole area the hot zone and we'll narrow it down a little bit later." Can you talk about why and what's the thinking behind that?Ron Otterbacher:Again, we're trying to identify the zones of operation that lets us know how big the threat may be or how we anticipate the threat from the information we receive, whether it'll be visually, audible, so we're trying to determine what it is. It's easier to shrink down an operational zone than it is to expand it after you've already put people in that area. So we're looking after to say, we are trying to identify safe areas to travel or be as safe as we can and let people know that we may not have a safe area to travel, so they've got to be more cautious as they move into the situation.Bill Godfrey:So obviously, and we'll talk about this a little bit more on the fire/EMS side, we don't really want to go wandering into a hot zone, but that is an area where law enforcement is expected to work. How important, Pete, Ron, how important is it for that initial assessment, that initial size up, that initial report to be relayed to the other officers that are coming in right behind them so that they know. Is that important for them to know exactly where that hot zone is and when to be prepared, to have their guard up? How does that work?Ron Otterbacher:Absolutely Bill, I think the additional following officers need to have a clear understanding of what that hot zone is and where the first contact team has decided to work and where the second and third contact teams or individual responding officers are going to link up to where the area of responsibility is to stop that threat, because that is still our first priority at that point in time, it's stopping that threat based upon the driving force and the stimulus that we see, hear or are told.Pete Kelting:In my mind it's critical. As the first arriving officer gets on the scene, there's only one person that knows what's going on and that's them. It's critical they convey it back to the follow-on responders so they understand that I've still got active shooting, it seems to be limited to this area but I can't call everything clear, but if they don't put that information out, everyone else would right, actually, walk into a zone that could be like shooting ducks in the park.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So hot zone, and we want to talk a little bit about terminology for the audience, so hot zone, warm zone, cold zone is the most common three zones that we hear discussed when we're talking about active shooter events. And that terminology largely got adopted out of the hazardous materials response in the fireside of life with the hot zone, the warm zone and the cold zone and normally a nice little concentric circle that you draw a ring around. And we're going to talk a little bit more about how that is not the reality in an active shooter events. But before we leave that, let's talk a little bit about some of the other names that are sometimes heard.Bill Godfrey:So in tactical emergency casualty care, TECC, they call that the direct threat zone, which I don't really know that you would need an explanation of that, direct threat can't be much more obvious than that, it's a direct threat, you go there and you're going to be exposed to a direct threat from a shooting, stabbing, bombing, whatever the case may be. Ron, Pete, what are the other terms that you've heard in law enforcement that have referred to the hot zone? That might mean the same thing, but some agencies may call it different.Ron Otterbacher:You got the kill zone, pretty simple, self-Explanatory, you've got the funnel of death. There's all kinds of things they talk about and they're all bad, so it's trying to get everyone in their mindset that if I go in this place, I'm probably going to get hurt if not killed. And then again, it gets back to the criticality of these zones and identifying them so people know how to move around in an operation so that they're not as exposed to the threat as they could have been.Bill Godfrey:And Pete, have you heard any others?Pete Kelting:Generically I have heard folks refer to it as the danger area or danger zone depending on their local response and what they're used to training in. But as Ron said, the point is that you want your first following officers to know that you're still in an area that has a great propensity for violence, either from gunfire or some other type of threat that is facing those first responders.Bill Godfrey:Okay. Bruce, how about you, have you heard it referred either in or out of the fire side of things, called anything else?Bruce Scott:No, not really, I mean, we've trained in the fire service so long, as hot, warm and cold. It's easily understandable to our partners in the fire service and fire and EMS folks, and since we preach so much integrated response, it's going to mean the same thing to a firefighter if you say this is a red zone, that they know that that's probably not where they need to be. We don't want to be in that red zone and sharing that information early on so those dispatchers can give it to those responding units, the fire/EMS units, to make sure that they don't get into that red zone. So for example, if you say the whole entire campus is a red zone, then we need to set up our initial staging areas outside of that campus area, so that's hugely important.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So before we leave hot zone or the direct threat zone, I want to talk a little bit about the fire/EMS role in the hot zone. And that is to say that there really isn't one, they shouldn't be there, there's not really a circumstance, none that I can think of, where we would, for fire/EMS, we would deliberately have them go into a hot zone. So generally speaking, that's a no-go area for fire and EMS. That doesn't mean that at some point in time that they couldn't be in a warm zone and have it turned into a hot zone. So let's talk just a few minutes, if you're fire/EMS and you find yourself accidentally or just because of the nature of the threat... well, for whatever reason, you're suddenly in a hot zone with your security detail. What are the things that the fire and EMS folks should do? What are the things that the security detail should do to try to make the team safe? Who wants? Pete, you want to start off on this one?Pete Kelting:Well, I'll even start before that in the sense of local training that your fire and law are trained together and that you practiced your response into a scene and what you're going to do if you go from warm to hot. And there's different processes out there that different agencies use, but that's got to be trained so that if the shots ring out, then your security detail has certain ways to protect your fire and EMS that are in the RTF package. And if that's finding an immediate exit plan backwards or retreating, or into a hard point of cover in a hallway or diving into a room, those things have to be worked out ahead of time in training so that you respond quickly to that change in zone from warm to hot because of that immediate threat that has presented.Ron Otterbacher:The other thing is the security detail for that RTF or whatever it may be, whatever you may call it. Their sole responsibility is security for that team. We don't do other things, we never leave that team, we provide what security we can. The other key thing is if that happens, the folks from the fire side need to listen to what they say and react exactly like pizza, we should have talked about beforehand, we should have talked about it just before we deployed and then when it happens, it's not time to question, you do exactly what you're told by your security detail and understand that they're not going to leave your side and they're going to be there to protect you. That's their sole responsibility.Bill Godfrey:So guys, is it reasonable to say that it's a good possibility that the security team may elect to hold you into some room that they feel like they... rather than trying to move you out of the hot zone, is it a reasonable possibility that the security team is going to elect to just hold you where you're at or trying to find something close by where they feel like they can stand their ground and let the contact teams go deal with the threat? Or should we always expect to be moving out?Pete Kelting:I think it's the immediate assessment of how close that engagement is and that if you need to move to a point of hard cover and in a hallway or move into a defensible room, that's the decision on what you train locally. And it also depends upon the local build-out of the RTF. Is it a minimum of two officers and two fire/EMS, or do you have a heavy package of five law enforcement officers and three medics? It all depends a little bit of what you're training if you're going to make a decision to quickly be defensible and then move out after that, that's a decision for a local jurisdiction.Bill Godfrey:I understand that cover does just that, it provides you cover which stops, it minimizes the threat as opposed to move through an open area. If you have to move to an open area, I'm not going to take the package that direction, we're going to stay there, we're going to do everything we can to provide security as we're requesting other resource to come help us and get us out of that situation. We're not just sitting and waiting.Bruce Scott:And the other thing Bill that we have to consider is at what point the RTF is in play, are they in the midst of treating folks at a CCP and it becomes warm, and you have patients to consider in that sense too. Casualties that you're trying to treat and continue with your medical care down range, and how do you react to that if it went from warm to hot?Bill Godfrey:That makes sense. And I've shared in one of the previous podcasts, my experience, the very, very first time I went through a training session and I started trying to treat a patient in the middle of a T intersection in a hallway, and my security detail was telling me to get off the X, get off the X. And I'm like, "No, I got to treatment patient." And they said, "No, you need to get out of the hallway." And, "No, I need to treat my patient." And then I lost that and got dragged into the room and with my patient. And I'm like, "What's going on?" Well, if you're standing in the middle of a T intersection, there's four ways that people can shoot at you and any number of doors that they can pop out of. And there's somebody already laying there, which means somebody already got shot, which by the way is where the X is, is where the guy's laying that got shot.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So that wraps up, I think, pretty succinctly the hot zone and hot zone components. So now let's shift to our warm zone. And the there's a lot of different definitions out there for the warm zone. None of them are wrong, it's up to the local jurisdiction to decide what they want it to be. The one that we use is that there are security measures in place, and it is that simple. Security measures in place, what does that mean? It can mean a whole range of things from there's one cop that's got security there to it's been cleared and there's a detail and a cordon. But what it does mean is that law enforcement has done something to put some security measures in place, and that is now a warm zone or what TECC calls an indirect threat care zone.Bill Godfrey:And we obviously want to camp here a little bit on this topic and talk about it because it's a source of some discomfort and some controversy within the fire and EMS community, always appreciating and understanding that. So Ron, let me let you talk, lead us off in talking a little bit about how you would determine that an area is a warm zone, that you've got it to the point where you feel comfortable that a room or a wing of the building or whatever is a warm zone. Take us through that.Ron Otterbacher:I think the key is, there's security measures in place. We feel relatively sure that we've done enough searching in that area, moving through that area, that the bad guy's not just sitting there laying and waiting, but again, because it's not 100% certain, we're a little hesitant on calling it clear, but we feel relatively sure and we feel sure enough that we're willing to keep our resources in there and protect the fire resource that may come through there. And again, as we move through a warm zone with our fire resources, those people assigned to that particular security detail have no other mission at that time than to provide security for that detail that's moving through. And I don't know how to say, because if you say you stake your reputation on it, then your reputation may not be any good if something goes wrong, but we do everything we can to keep everyone safe in that area and we feel fairly sure as we move through it that we have the ability to keep you safe. There is no 100% certainty, it could still kick off and go back.Pete Kelting:So coming in and what Ron is saying, it's absolutely critical that when we make that transition from hot to warm, that the contact teams or officer's down range can really paint that picture back to our tactical command, because I see so often that, especially in multi jurisdiction response or even a different unit response to an event, that folks tend to not take charge, they're waiting for someone else to take charge of that particular area that they're operating in, trying to stop the threat and then change it to a warm zone, transition down to a warm zone and communicate that back because we've got to get those RTS down range as quickly as we can. We have to feel comfortable that we have enough security measures in place for that to take place, and then that starts the domino effect of making sure that we're choosing good CCP locations, that they're accessible, defensible and we move quicker into a warm zone. When we get held up down range and no one's taking charge to communicate that, you see that clock ticking and we don't have medical treatment being taken place down range.Bruce Scott:And I think that part of it is we're not moving into obscurity, we're moving to where another team's at, another team's taken ground. They feel like the avenue they told us to move through is ground they've already moved through and checked, and that gives us a little more assurance that we're going to the right place, plus they're there providing security as we're moving up. It's just not the security team that's with the RTF, you've got other people that are already out there that are providing security as you move up.Bill Godfrey:Okay guys, I think that's a great summary. So Bruce, I mentioned earlier the reference to the hazmat and the nice concentric circles, but that's not really what warm zones are like in an active shooter event. Can you talk a little bit about that and explain that and let's go through that a little bit.Bruce Scott:Oh yeah, absolutely. And again, just get that out of your mind if you're thinking concentric circles, that's just not the case. We have to trust our law enforcement brothers and sisters as they identify those warm zones, whether it's a pathway into or an area that can be secured and we have that security element with us. That may look more like, I think you described it one time, Bill, is an amoeba. So it could have lots of different shapes and sizes, but again, it comes back to the training as Pete alluded to, and heck it comes back to the trust that Ron alluded to, that says that if I'm going down range with Pete and Ron, they're going to take care of me, they've identified this warm zone, they've got this ground that they can protect and it may be a narrow space into a larger space. And I just have to trust that my law enforcement brothers and sisters are going to take me through that warm zone so I can get in there and do what I need to do.Bruce Scott:I don't think it's any more complicated than that, and I also want to come back, just circle back around to, as a fire guy, as a firefighter and a paramedic for a really long time. If I know that I have to have a security element with me, I certainly want to be paying attention to what they say and move when they tell me to move and move where they tell me to move. Even if I've been assigned to a completely different mission, I think that's hugely important and the folks who listen to this podcasts are very probably tired of me saying this, but that's adopt what that policy looks like, get your administrators to adopt that policy, train everybody on that policy, practice that policy over and over again. And that's not just within your single agencies, with all your partner agencies, potentially your mutual aid agencies that may be responding, it's hugely important that we're all talking the same language.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a really, really important element that Bruce just hit on. And it's something that fire/EMS really has to understand, that the role of the rescue task force is medical, that's the mission, that's why they exist, that's why they're there. But the movement of that group, the movement of those people in that team is entirely controlled by law enforcement. And as fire/EMS, we don't get a veto, we don't get an override. They're like the safety officer on the fire ground. They say when we can go, where we can go, how we can go and when we can't go.Pete Kelting:We see this in our trainings all the time, Bill, we stress that RTS work for triage, they give us our mission, where we're going. But then that coordination that has to happen with the law enforcement element, again, they're going to tell us where to go and what they want us to do when we get there, but the law enforcement element and working through tactical to make sure those warm zones are set up, and then to protect us as we get there. And the movement that happens is just... unfortunately, so many times we end up figuring out the right way to do this on the day that those things, those bad things happen, and if we can take that off our list prior to, I think we're way ahead of the game.Bruce Scott:And again, it's done with critical coordination with the people down range, those that can actually see what's going on, they know what's going on. We don't do any movement until they say, "Yes, you can come up here, this is where we're at, this is exactly where we want you at and this is exactly the route we want you to take, because we're sure that it's a safe route to come in."Ron Otterbacher:And reasonably sure, right? And we talk about this all the time, statistically speaking as time goes on, active shooter incidents get more safe and which is not the way we were raised in the fire service and statistically speaking, the fire gets more dangerous so we have to understand the difference. Unfortunately, there are no absolutes in this business, I think Pete alluded to that, and the critical thinking that has to happen down range. But again, I think it really comes down to trust and understand that everybody has a role there.Bill Godfrey:You know Ron, you mentioned being close to the problem, the people downrange are close to the problem, and I think one of the other things that has to be really raised and it really beat the drum on it, for fire/EMS to a degree as well, but certainly on the fireside with our approach to command and ICS. In the fire service on a fire ground, it is a top-down driven affair. Now, we always say that command is built from the bottom up, that's what the ICS documentation says, we always teach that everybody sitting at this table teaches ICS and teaches that stuff. But in reality, the fire service doesn't build from the bottom up, we get that first unit that gets there and initiates it and then the rest of it is, the battalion chief shows up, takes over and it's a top-down driven affair.Bill Godfrey:And there's a lot of reasons why that's okay and why it works on a fire ground, not the least of which is the battalion chief can stand on the curb and see what's happening to the building in the fire and make some intelligent decisions. But that's not the case in an active shooter event. In fact, it's just the opposite. The guy on the curb has the least situational awareness about what's going on inside. You can't see the nature of the threat or the exact location or really even understand the lay of the land unless you've personally got familiarity with the building. And so one of the things that I think is really important to drive home on the fire/EMS side is that this is exactly the opposite of the fire where you have to trust the resources that are down range, you don't need to second guess them. If you don't think they're smart enough to make good decisions then don't send them down range.Ron Otterbacher:Or replace them.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. So that said, I want to talk a little a bit about something that's a sensitive topic here and we've seen it happen in a number of incidents where somebody calls for the rescue task forces and it gets overwritten in the command post. Oh, I'm not comfortable that we're ready.Pete Kelting:I'd like to talk about that for a minute.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, why don't you.Pete Kelting:I think, and I've had lots of conversations with fire chiefs over the years and I can tell you it's just their nature, they don't want to put people in harm's way till law enforcement tells them it is 100% clear. And I've had sheriffs, I've had police chiefs telling me and fire chiefs telling me, "You let us do our business, we'll make sure the threat is completely gone and then we will move those fire/EMS medical teams into place." And unfortunately, the person that's laying their shot, they don't have that time and we want to just change our organizational culture to say, "We are going to put people into harm's way, into that warm zone, if you will, with as much security and as much assurance as we can, but it's not going to be a hundred percent safe, but we do not have the time for you to completely clear a four story building that looks like three football fields, and folks are laying there bleeding to death."Pete Kelting:So we've potentially stopped the killing, but we haven't stopped the dying. That bullet is still in there causing damage and those folks are continuing to die. So we just have to change that mindset of our fire/EMS folks to say, "When we can make this as safe as possible, we need to put those fire and EMS folks into harm's way, into that warm zone, if you will, and begin treatment, coordinating the extraction of those folks and get them on the way to the hospital." I just can't make it any more clear than that, but it's changing hundreds of years of organizational culture that says, "Until you tell me it's completely clear, until my law enforcement brothers and sisters say it is 100% safe. We're not going to commit our resources." And it really is something we have to overcome.Bruce Scott:I've known each of you all for a long time, I would trust you if you told me you would do it, everything in your power to keep my grandchildren safe, and there's nothing more sacred than my grandchildren. And you told me you'd do everything in your power to keep them safe. I know that even if something went wrong, you did everything in your power to do everything to keep them safe.Bruce Scott:That's the relationship we've got to build between law enforcement and fire service is, we talked about it when we started teaching the command school, it's very easy for me to tell someone I don't know, "No, I can't do this." But if you've got a relationship and a trust built, and I tell you, "Look, I or my people are going to do everything I can to keep your people safe." Then you know that I've given must solemn vow to do everything. And if we've got a good relationship built, you know that I would never do anything to try and harm your people in any way or if I saw something that looked untoward, then we would stop and go a different direction. And I think that's what we have to do and that's part of what we do in this class, we build relationships. That's critical.Pete Kelting:Yeah. Bruce, obviously, you know I agree with you completely on that and I think you sum that up really well and stated it very clearly. The one thing that I would add that I would share, we've traveled all over this great country, doing this training for a long time now, over a decade, we've been doing it and met a lot of great people and a lot of police officers along the way. I've never met a single officer, ever, who left me with the impression that they didn't understand exactly what it meant when they were downrange and they said, "I'm ready for the rescue task forces," meaning send the unarmed paramedics to me, because I think it's safe and these people need help. I've never ever met a police officer that wanted an unarmed person added to their scene unless there was a really good damn reason to do it, and saving lives is a really good reason to do it.Pete Kelting:And I think that if the word trust has come up several times and it really is, but I think the other word is faith, because we don't always know the people that we're working with, but we have to have faith in each other and in the professionalism. And when there's an officer that says I'm ready for the unarmed paramedics to come down here and start saving lives, I've got to take that on faith and on face value, that that officer who spent six months, eight months going through probation or going through the Academy, another six months on FTO duty, I mean, he's got at least a year of training and before he gets turned. That officer understands exactly what he's saying when he says, "Send me the unarmed paramedics down here." Even though they're coming with security, he knows what that means.Pete Kelting:And I think it is ridiculous that someone with rank or a command position would presume from the curb, and quite likely the cold zone area of safety, say, "Oh, no, no, no. I don't think that's quite right." Now, the one exception would be tactical. If the tactical group supervisor, who's running this for law enforcement says to that officer, "I understand your request, but we're not ready to send the teams in, we've got something else going on." That's a different story. But for fire/EMS to override that from the command coast, because they don't have a warm fuzzy, I can't get with that.Ron Otterbacher:Unfortunately by the time they get warm fuzzies, more people have died. And I will share with you, in some of the after action reports we've read, law enforcement gets so frustrated by not being able to get those RTS in there and get those folks out that they start dragging them out themselves, potentially putting in them police cars and taking them to the hospital, which has just screwed up our warm zone too. If we start losing that law enforcement element down range that are protecting and turning that into a warm zone, and they start having to do patient movement completely out of the building, and loading them in their patrol cars and taking them to taking them to the hospital.Ron Otterbacher:That's a whole nother series of domino effect problems that potentially comes up by us losing some of our security element that may be downrange, and we've seen that time and time again and some of the after actions, you just read them, they just get frustrated that, "Hey, I need these folks in here and I need them in here now." And the hesitancy that happens for one reason or another, whether it's not having the warm, fuzzy at the command level or it is not having done staging right and they have no law enforcement element there to put with their rescue task forces that move them down range.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. I think we could do a whole nother podcast on that. In fact, we just recently did one on staging where that came up. Before we leave the warm zone, I want to talk for a moment about cordons and the idea of what a cordon is, if you could explain it to the audience, so we make sure everybody understands. And when it fits, when it's a really good idea and it's helpful, and when it doesn't always make sense. Pete?Pete Kelting:I'll add to that, and it touches on some of the things we just were talking about. And I'd like to say that I think we're also seeing a lot of progress in the training relationships in building trust and faith, as you're talking about, and I'll share an experience just recently in a local jurisdiction where I was an evaluator, and a newly promoted battalion chief came on scene and was designated as the triage officer and immediately came up to where the tactical officer was at. And as we preach here the importance of co-location between tactical and triage, they were able to communicate that information, although they knew each other and they'd trained together, they are able to communicate that information that built that faith and that trust of where they can operate. And one of the first words out of the battalion chief's mouth was, "Have you identified the warm areas that my RTF teams can operate in, and what are our casualties looking like?"Pete Kelting:So they already knew they were on the right track in that sense, and then they talked about resources and is there safety measures in place? And so they looked at the map together and the tactical command pointed out pretty much on the map and the footprint that they were looking at, is here's what we've got in place. So it's a visual that this battalion chief is looking at and that's making them feel even more comfortable that his RTF teams are going to be able to work down range really effectively. Then they talked about getting them from staging to the location that they're being sent to, and then the safety cordons and the resources of law enforcement being in place for those RTS going down range and then after that, predicting and leaning forward that there's going to be an ambulance exchange point set up and that those safety measures are in place with cordons and overwatch.Pete Kelting:So those are important things to make that faith and trust come together between the fire/EMS and the tactical, putting that plan together to get everybody down range. And you ask what is a cordon? It's simply that it is law enforcement in place and the way I've seen it done many times is, it's got a line of sight, and you know that you've got enough resources in place, either on the ground or in an overwatch capacity, that you have this warm area that's protected by law enforcement should another threat present itself, that immediate action can take place, but in the sense we're still going to bring RTS down range, although they're coming with security measures, and then we can bring ambulances down range.Pete Kelting:So they're extremely important if the resources are available and not tasked and purposed to something else that we can get those in place, that's the best outcome possible for security measures. Now, when they're not so effective is basically if you're trying to set one up without enough resources, because it's almost like a perimeter where you don't have that line of sight and you got holes and you got weaknesses. It's almost more unsafe if you're not sure you've got that in line. There, you have to determine if you're going to use what resource sources are down range to put in temporary safety cordons for an ambulance exchange point bubbling out to make sure that that ambulance is able to come in and maybe escorting that ambulance down with law enforcement.Bill Godfrey:Okay. Ron, how about you? You got any examples of when it really works and when it's not such a great fit?Ron Otterbacher:Again, like Pete said, if you get the resources to do it, then it works out well, it provides you a secure avenue of travel. And whether it be to move the RTF up to the contact teams where they are and we want to make sure we don't want to just say, "Okay, we got a warm zone for you to land in over here, but as you try to get towards the battle zone. So we've got to tell them the direction they can travel, we've got to tell them, "It's okay to come this way, we've got it secure, but it's not okay to come this way because we're still receiving aggressive fire from this direction." So we got to make sure they know their lanes of operation, we got to make sure our people down range know that they're coming to those lanes of operations, because we don't want to have a blue on blue situation, either a blue on blue and red situation. We've just got to make sure everyone knows where it's safe to operate and how to best operate in those areas, and we're prepared for it.Bill Godfrey:I think that does summarize it, I would observe that both of you mentioned the idea of having enough resources. With time, you'll have enough resources, the question is how long? And to me, that's one of the things that jumps up. I think cordons are great when you can do them, because it makes it so much easier to operate. You've still got your rescue task forces, but all of a sudden now you can build them up to a very large teams with a very, very low security footprint because you've got these cordon set up. But if you're operating in a large campus environment or a commercial environment or a big commercial building, multiple floors, you could be so spread out that it's difficult to cover that, Pete, like you said, you've got gaps in the line of sight and things like that. So the question is, how long does it take before you can get those resources in?Bill Godfrey:And I think that that's one of those decisions that has to be made at the time, on the spot, given the circumstances, and it's the job of the tactical officer or the tactical group supervisor to make that call and say, "Here's where we're going to go, here's what we're going to do." In conjunction, I think, right Pete? With the conversation with the triage group supervisor, the two of them are working together and they have a conversation. "Hey, can we do cordons?" "Well yeah, it's going to take this long." "Okay, well let's maybe put one or two RTFs down range, work on the cordons and see if we can get both of them in motion at the same time."Pete Kelting:It also comes down to priority of operation. You've got to determine what's the most important thing. You may have to forego putting your outer perimeter up so you've got to set cordon for travel and then follow up and put your outer perimeter up. So you've got to make those command decision, that's why it's so important and that's what we teach in this class is, this class is active shooter incident management. It's your job to manage the incident. It's your job to make the most sound decisions for what you're facing at that time and you may say, "It's more important that I have a cordon right now, than maybe have some other part of the operation that's important." But it's not as critical as saving lives at that time, so we create that.Bruce Scott:And I can't stress enough that it boils down the situational awareness from tactical command of what you've got going on down range, and to either continue the strategy and the priorities that's been set for the incident or make those minor adjustments with your resources to do exactly what Ron's talking about.Pete Kelting:And I think he brought up a good point about it, I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you, is that you can minimize that risk, right? So let's get one rescue task force in, let's get two in and we'd talk about the same thing as moving the ambulances to the ambulance exchange point, right? Let's not bunch up 10 ambulances in the warm zone, let's just get one at a time and get them out then send that next ambulance in. So you can, to a certain degree, minimize that risk before you have these warm fuzzies.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a great point, so let me sum it up this way. Cordons are a great tool in the toolbox and they're fantastic when you can get them set up. But that tool may not always fit in and it may not always work so you got to have other ways of getting that done. All right. So we've covered hot zone, the direct threat area, we've covered the warm zone, the indirect threat area. So now let's talk just briefly about the cold zone, which we define as an area where no threat is reasonably expected there. So TECC defines it as the evacuation care area where you can do without limit, what your procedures need to be or whatever medical care you need to provide. I don't think this one's terribly complicated, but Bruce, there's a couple of functions that should be in the cold zone that's so often seemed like they're not. You want to talk a little bit about that?Pete Kelting:Or staging, it should be in the cold zone.Bill Godfrey:You mean it shouldn't be across the street Pete? Ron? It's not supposed to be across the street from the target building?Ron Otterbacher:No, sir.Bill Godfrey:No. I thought it was.Ron Otterbacher:Your command post, obviously. And if you've decided that you want to put... based on that situation where you have to designate a treatment area or a treatment group, where you don't have enough resources to get them off the scene, that treatment area should be in a cold zone as well. Those are the ones that come to mind immediately.Pete Kelting:Yeah. And I think just what you all were talking about, one of the things we quite often overlook is, we talk about a cold zone and where the command post is located or where staging is. But too often, we've seen that it designates between warm and cold sites the goal line, our command post and our staging is like three yards off with the goal line. And then yeah, the bad actor and so forth is 30 yards into the area or has gotten into the warm zone, they're undetected and then all of a sudden your cold zone is not a good place to be that close to the goal line.Bruce Scott:I think the key is relatively. And I use an example in the early '80s, we had a situation out in East Orange County, set the command post as SWAT deployed everyone else, and all of a sudden this fellow that they were looking for came blasting through in a car and fired up the command post and everything else. And they were far away, but he had just made it out and they weren't prepared to stop it and he decided to shoot him. Luckily, no one was injured, but again, even though we may call it a cold zone, we're in a life of the unexpected and we've got to be prepared for the eventuality. The other thing we've done is we've changed our philosophy and our position to where anytime now we set up a command post, well, it was that way before I left, but we would always screen the entire area with bomb dogs and make sure that... and this came after the Atlanta situation where they were going to have to follow on responders. So, we take certain steps to do the best we can do and it's relatively safe.Bill Godfrey:Relatively safe. We're having a little bit of chuckle about this and we don't mean to belittle that this occurs with some frequency, because there is a very, very serious implication of law enforcement having their command post or their staging too close to the incident. And that's that fire/EMS won't go there. Fire and EMS just won't go there and that's a problem. Because now you end up with two command posts, that's a disaster, you end up with separate staging areas, that's a disaster. And so this isn't something that we're trying to make light of, it is a fairly serious thing to make sure that law enforcement and fire are sharing a command post, they're sharing a staging area and that those things are in a relative area of safety. And yeah. Ron, I think you make a good point. Why wouldn't you have a couple of officers that are responsible for securing the staging area, are responsible for securing the command post?Ron Otterbacher:And you should, you absolutely should.Bill Godfrey:All right. Anything else about the cold zone that you guys want to hit?Bruce Scott:I just think it's important. I mentioned earlier changing our organizational culture. I don't know how many fire chiefs that I've worked with, they absolutely want to be on a fire scene where they can see the scene. In this case, you may not be able to see the scene, especially if you have IDs, you have people that are using rifles, bad actors that are using rifles. That cold zone is significantly, may not be where you see the scene. And again, you just have to overcome that and understand that.Ron Otterbacher:It's a giant paradigm shift for all of us, because now we've got to set our positions, whether it be tactical which is closer to the incident, but it's not actually in the hot zone or even our command post and staging at a place where the fireside is more comfortable with being than we've got to understand. In certain areas, if we're at a big fire, cops aren't comfortable being up close to a big fire where you all are near it every day. If we're in a bad situation that involved law enforcement, that's where we operate. But we've got to understand both sides of the equation. And we've got to move back and make sure that as we set things, it's a place where you're more comfortable because if you're not, you're not going to be there and then our situation fail.Pete Kelting:And it might be a topic for another podcast, but we've also come a long way in a use of technology that when our command post now, a lot of times in a cold zone, we have the ability of the down link from the helicopter. We're starting to see drone usage in surveying tactical downrange operations and that information being able to come back to our command post or come back to our tactical command. So we're really making progress in those areas too, to keep us from becoming complacent or stepping somewhere where we shouldn't be just trying to glean some information that we could get it some other way and still remain safe.Bruce Scott:Absolutely. I think it's also important to say, "If it's wrong, fix it." If the command post is in the wrong spot or staging is in the wrong spot, yes, it's going to take us a minute to unscrew this up, but you got to fix it. You can't continue to pile on doing it the wrong way or in an area that they're under potentially direct threat. You have to fix it. And if we do it right to begin with, we don't have to fix it.Bill Godfrey:And Bruce, I couldn't agree with you more. The pain that you'll feel to fix it is nothing compared to the pain you're going to feel after the fact and in the after action report if you don't fix it. Because you're going to find out there was all things that went wrong that would not have gone wrong if you had taken the time to fix it. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me today to talk about this. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed the show. If you have not subscribed to the podcast, please click that subscribe button. And until next time stay safe.

A while back, I wanted to get a Ph.D. in psychology. I didn’t have a bachelor’s degree, so it was going to take a while. So Ron asked, “Why don’t you learn how to do something else where you can help people?”   Then I remembered that my Ph.D. therapist had decided to become a life coach; I trained as a life coach in 2006 to better serve my real estate clients (weird, I know, but it worked!). At that time, I discovered a thing called “NLP.” As I read more, I felt intrigued and a little apprehensive, so I let the thought of learning more about it fade into the background in my mind.    Later in 2009, I took a teaser course on NLP and loved it, but still, let it fade into the background… It wasn’t until I met an actual NLP coach that I got curious enough to give serious consideration to the NLP side of things, and I decided to get trained in NLP… and the rest is history. Here I am today as a master coach and trainer.   This podcast is like an open book of someone (me) who has taken their successful one-on-one, belly-to-belly coaching business and moved it into an online group setting. I’m sharing what I’m doing and how I’m doing it. You can learn right along with me what works and what doesn’t. Welcome to my what-you-see-is-what-you-get world where you see the real me in action.   As my students hear me say regularly, I’m right here doing the work with you.   Today, we’re talking about three superpowers you have right now that can be harnessed for your success. The beauty of these three is that the first superpower naturally unfolds into the second, which leads to the third. It’s like a cascade. But it all starts with this first superpower:   Your mindset. This includes your thoughts, beliefs, expectations, and attitudes. Working on my mindset is the most important thing in my life. Of course, I love my kids, Ron, and my work. But my mindset affects every single aspect of my life. It can make everything else wonderfully wonderful or wonderfully dreadful. Your mindset is the genie in the bottle that you’ve been wishing for. It just needs to be tended and managed. Trust. Trust is a superpower that will naturally flow from a positive mindset. When you know that you’ll get what you focus on, that will naturally lead to trust. When you have cultivated a positive, at-cause mindset, you can trust that things will work out for you.  Being authentically you. Being your true self will naturally follow once you have the mindset and trust. When you have the mindset and you can trust, it’s no longer scary to be vulnerable. You can own your imperfections and share what you’re learning. Being authentic is not a license to vent. It’s an act of service, and it empowers others to be themselves as well.   I don’t have the words to explain how big these superpowers can be. Cultivate your mindset and see where it leads. Your mindset spills into trust and then moves you to be your beautiful, authentic self — and then that will have a trickle-down effect on others.  Embrace your superpowers. They’re already within you!          Thanks for listening!   To share your thoughts:   Leave a note in the comment section below Use the “I have a question” button Share this show on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn  Find Brenda on Facebook and Instagram and YouTube Links from today’s episode:   Episode 40, the Imposter Syndrome episode   To help out the show:   Leave a positive review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews help, and I read each and every one. Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher or Libsyn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFbebed_F78 Want to know what happens to your real estate portfolio after you're gone? In this episode, we're talking with Ron Phillips—CEO of RP Capital, a real estate brokerage—about his client who passed away. It turns out, his family didn't even know what assets he had, or what to do with them, and it almost cost them a fortune in taxes. Tune in to hear what hoops they had to jump through, and how to avoid the same wealth transfer risks, so you and your family can be much better prepared.  Table of contentsIn this episode with Ron Phillips, you'll learn:Where Legacy Fits In The Bigger PictureLegacy & Wealth Transfer Risks, Conversation Highlights from Ron PhillipsHow Mindset Affects Your Real Estate DealsRon's Real Estate BusinessPlaying to WinRon's ClientsWealth Transfer RisksWills and ProbateWhat is a Legacy?Who is Ron Philips?Links and MentionsWant to Talk About Family Banking with Whole Life Insurance?Thanks for Tuning In! In this episode with Ron Phillips, you'll learn: The importance of managing your mindset in lifeThe costs of not preparing and communicating your legacy wellHow to ensure your assets do the most good for your family even after you're goneWhy it's crucial that your heirs know what you haveThe wealth transfer risks of putting off your estate planningHow to make leaders in business and in your family Where Legacy Fits In The Bigger Picture Creating a legacy is the capstone of a life well-lived.  It's the end goal of a life and business you love, and the greatest mission of our lives.  But we need an entire financial system to support our ability to do the most good. That's why we've put together the 3-step Entrepreneur's Cash Flow System.   The first step is keeping more of the money you make.  This includes tax planning, debt restructuring, cash flow awareness, and restructuring your savings so you can access it as an emergency/opportunity fund.  This step frees up and increases your cash flow, so you have more to save, and consequently, more to invest. Then, you'll protect your money with privatized banking, insurance, and legal protection.   Finally, you'll put your money to work and get it to make more by investing in cash-flowing assets to build time and money freedom and leave a rich legacy. Legacy & Wealth Transfer Risks, Conversation Highlights from Ron Phillips How Mindset Affects Your Real Estate Deals Once you figure out how to help others, you'll begin to reap benefits in your own life. You've likely heard, “If you help enough people get what they want, you'll get what you want.” In practice, you often get 10x that! (7:40) When Ron's deal was rejected, he felt destroyed. Yet he woke up the next day, he reflected on what he had learned and studied. He knew as long as he could solve the problem at hand, he could make a worthwhile deal. Then, he ended up launching his career, which has only continued in its success.   (10:05) Real estate, life business, relationships—everything throws wrenches into your world. Nothing goes the way it's supposed to, all the time. You have two choices in how you proceed. You can think that the world is against you, and that you can't win, or you can figure out a way through it.  Ron's Real Estate Business (12:38) Until 2005, Ron was in the business of rehabbing houses, until HUD changed the guidelines. So he “went out of business” virtually overnight. He essentially became a landlord, though it was not his goal. So Ron adapted. What he discovered was, many people don't want to be landlords (much like himself). Though they do have an interest in real estate. Ron had the teams and the know-how, and now he helps other people find success when they lack the right resources. This started before turnkey operators were really a thing. However Ron resists the urge to describe his business as a turnkey operation.  (20:20) … people think when something is turnkey that they ...

Check your Bawls But seriously, its been too long since we had a good ol rundown of whats going down. So Ron and Ace do just that #DrinkBawlsEnergyDrink --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

All right, it is now time for episode number 35. We are here at the Gut Check Project. I'm Eric Rieger with your host Dr. Ken Brown. We've got someone special here today right between us.Well, we are in some place special. We are.We're not in our home base.We aren't in the home base.We are in a basement in Austin. We are.Because we heard that this special guy, Ron Klabunde, the founder of Replenish Foundation and Generosity Feeds which you and I are huge fans. Definitely.You took your family to go do that. We went and did that. And what he's doing is amazing. And we decided to do a mobile show here. We had the opportunity to track him down. He's busy. He's an important person.Ron. Obviously we're going to introduce you-the founder as Replenish Foundation as well as Generosity Feeds but we came down here specifically for an event that you're hosting. Without further ado, Ron, just kick it off and then we're going to after you tell us what we're doing here today, we're going to back it up on how you even got here.Sounds good. So tonight, we are bringing the who's who of Austin together highly curated group of 100 people. And basically we're going to party on purpose we call it POP Austin "party on purpose." Too many parties happen it's just a party, right? What if we bring some meaning to that because all of us are looking for more meaning in life. So we've got the top people in Austin coming together to party on purpose. Obviously we know when the right people are in the room magic happens.Definitely. Happens from a business standpoint happens interpersonally. And then there's the purpose side. So tonight, now what you guys don't even know is that you're showing up and everyone there is going to have a chance to create about 2,500 meals for local kids struggling with hunger. And then flow in the middle of the party. Oh, that's awesome.That's awesome. And then on top of that, we're working to raise $60,000 tonight to help to help feed 50,000 children across America who are struggling with hunger and empower 64,000 volunteers that we're already working with, as an ongoing force for good. So there's our purpose side: party on...Say that one more time. So tonight, this party that we're all gonna have fun at, everybody's...Live band...everything.It's gonna be entrepreneurs coming together, talking, sharing ideas, but you're going to feed how many people you're going to raise how much money and this is a party on purpose. I love that. Yeah, yeah. So there will be about 2,500 meals created tonight throughout the course of the night. And then, and then we're raising money to help feed 50,000 children in 29 states across America, and then empower our 64,000 volunteers is an ongoing force for good.So we can't emphasize this enough here. So Ron and...Ken and I met Ron around a year ago through the Baby Bathwater network. And not long after we ran into each other you invited Ken and I to participate in the Dallas Generosity Feeds and we looked at it and we thought, have no idea what this is. And just like Ken said, I was able to get my family-his was actually out of town playing tennis. But loaded the kids up, met Ken. My wife and I we got together and we packed 11,000 meals in about an hour and 20 minutes.That's dead on.And it goes to it went to all those kiddos who simply correct me if I'm wrong, but they don't get meals on the weekend. They happen to be on a free lunch Monday through Friday right? But they don't have anywhere to turn for the food so kind of tell us a little bit about Generosity Feed.So, Generosity Feeds is kind of our...it is our premier initiative. It's what gave us influence and credibility across the country. It's It's why we have 64,000 volunteers today and we've helped feed over 170,000 children across America. I mean, it's crazy what's happened in...with this deal. And I can certainly give you the backstory on how that even started at some point here but but yeah, you came to our event in Dallas, by the way, our first event in Dallas.Oh, nice. Oh, was it?Yeah, our first event our first event there with you. And 11,000 meals created in less than two hours. You probably had about 300 people at that one event alone.That was...we were packed.So that was the thing that I was super impressed. I showed up. Everybody there showed up kind of deer in the headlights like, what do we do? And you just you have one thing in common? We're all here to help. So people are like, Hi, I'm Joe. Hi. I'm so and so. These are my kids. This is my wife. He's like, yeah, we're here to help feed some people. Everybody had the same mission. It was so cool. Because suddenly you have a purpose.Yeah, a shared purpose. A shared purpose. Yeah.Yeah. Well, and the beauty of this is it's these 300 people are coming from all aspects of the city. This is the business sector coming together with the nonprofit sector coming together with the local schools. And you probably even had some, some some politicians standing in the room. It but it goes further than that. Then you have people of all ages. You have kids with you-kids as young as three, sometimes moms or dads carrying the child on their chest, right as they're creating meals. And then we've had we had a lady up in Washington State 97 years old, helping start so it's crazy, right? But then it's beyond age, then it's it's the social economic difference. Because Ken you very likely were standing next to a single mom, whose child three weeks later was going to receive the meals that you were creating. Really? Yeah. And you didn't know it.Did not know I talked, everybody that was standing next to me. We formed now the beauty is Generosity Feeds does a great job of the logistics of getting the food that's there. This is how we're going to pack this how we're going to do it. It's a well run business. Absolutely. It's a very well run business and we're going to get into this because to have a good nonprofit...You better have a good business. You better have a good business. Well and I'll even add that it's good business for businesses to be a part of and I think I've shared this with you in the past and Ken you knew it but when we went to go and be a part of Generosity Feeds and of course I'm gonna say this several times because if you're ever interested and Generosity Feeds is appearing in your neck of the woods. Gather your friends and your family and go be a part of it. You'll spend two hours helping out tons and tons of kiddos who just simply need a meal.Having fun. Music. Yeah, music. Dancing. Dancing.It was fun! But, I had never been to a Mod Pizza and mod pizza happens to be one of the sponsors, title sponsors of everything Generosity Feeds does. Because of their involvement and the the fun and the giveback opportunity we had, I've been to Mod Pizza now probably eight or ten times in the last year and I'd never been there before. So I connect with the the business aspect of wanting to be a part of something good. And suddenly I found a good and worthy business that actually has gluten free pizza that my wife can eat. Because so it's, there's there's lots of reciprocity, if you want to be a part of an organization that gives back so if you're, if you're a company, pay attention, Ron's who you need to hook up with if you're interested.That's why that's why we're here. Atrantil KBS research as a company, we're here to support you. Because we are trying to heal people's guts. Yeah. And you are trying to feed people.And keep them full.And keep them full. And we want to be involved with a company like you. And I'm very honored that we're sitting here. I'm very honored that we have the ability to be in Austin, that we're going to be part of this. Thank you for inviting us. But I'm also honored that we work for a company that decided to do this together. So shout out to Chuck and Mike and Brandy and everybody and Anthony, everybody else on our team that said yes, go down to Austin. We're going to support thatThat's right. Absolutely. So, we've talked a little bit about generosity feeds and I believe you said it's a subsidiary of the Replenish Foundation. Correct. But there was a Ron Klabunde long before Replenished Foundation and Generosity Feed. So, where are you from? How did you get to...? Where my rear end is. Yes, yes, yes. That's where I'm from.Oh, yeah. So Ron is hilarious with with lots of cheap jokes where his rear end is where he's from. And, but Where, where, where do you originate from? How did you get to where you are now I know that you have a history of being a pastor, etc.So so yes, I was a pastor for 21 years. And in my own journey, as I've shared with you, I just became a little disillusioned with how local churches were talking about loving God and loving other people, and yet really weren't partnering with businesses to make a difference or really, I mean truly partnering with church, schools to make a difference or even other nonprofits they they tended to want to keep doing ministry on their terms. And I'm looking at this and I'm going, this isn't about what a church should be doing to for in a community. It's what a church should be doing with a community, based on what a community needs. Why are churches inviting people to come to them to meet their needs on the church's terms, instead of doing what I saw Jesus doing, which was going out and meeting people on their terms?Could you say that again, you said to what a church shouldn't be doing too.So a church church is so focused so much on doing ministry to a community in a community or for a community, that the moment we use those words, right, it's all about what it's about me and what I want to do to give, it's not about the other person. This is about with that, that it's what we get to do together. Right. That here's the principle behind it. Thanksgiving and Christmas, right? Your families you might be thinking, well, this Thanksgiving, Who should we who should we go serve? Sure.Or what nonprofit should we go serve with as a family? Right? Many families in America do this. That's a good question to start with, who are we going to serve? It's not the best question to start with. Because and here's why. That's an addition question. We are going to go serve them. That's one plus one. The better question is, who am I going to serve with?Say that again? Who am I going to serve with.With because, because if I want to if I want to make a difference in someone's life, then I need to be inviting you because now I get this relationship and my desire to do good begins to rub off on you. You come with me, and we together, go serve and something ignites in your heart. And now you're changed. And then you're like, you know, that just felt good. That was right. I want to live a more meaningful life, more purposeful life. We all want to do that. And so what do you turn around and do you go find another friend and you're like hey, you need to come do this with me. And so the power of the power of generosity is not found in what we do. It's found in who we do it with. It's about the relationship.You lead by example. Yes. You lead by example. You're not telling people to go do things. You say, follow me. I'm going to show you we're going to do this together, and we're going to make each other better.What he, what he's saying is not even just a theory, and I didn't get a chance to tell you this yesterday. So Ken had to leave the procedure facility yesterday earlier than I did because he had a he had an interview, and I stayed a little bit longer. We have a new center director, his name's Chris. So big shout out here to Chris. I told him while we were coming down here for the weekend, he thought it was it was an incredible opportunity. I said, Well, we'll have another Generosity Feeds event in Dallas. You may want to see it, the rest of the endo center would like to come be a part of it. He immediately said, what a great team building exercise for all of us to go down and give back to the community I mean, it bled from you encouraging us to meet your team. I just happened to mention it without any prompting from you. And now...Because it was just lift. Yeah, I think the center's gonna have next timeThat's a great idea a company like Digestive Health Associates of Texas and AMSURG these companies that we're affiliated with. Yep. We've got KBS doing it now we can just keep working our way up to the bigger and bigger companies that we have access to.Yeah.To help out.That's right that's it's pretty powerful message to to be able to go and serve with versus you're just going to go and serve.Yeah, well even take it take it to the business level now. Sure. Think about what's happened in business over the last number of years. We had Tom's come up with what the one for one model right. And it's it's all about a transaction you buy this we'll give this and that's as far as it ever goes with the customer. And then you have the companies that as you just said, this is a great team building opportunity. Let's bring our employees in Salesforce rocks it out with empowering their employees to go serve in the local community and the things that they're passionate about. But where's the where's the model? Where now as a company, you can invite your customers to come serve with you. And you're not just there, they already love your product right there. They're buying from you because they love your product. But what if you're inviting them now into your value system? And you build a relationship with them around your value system of giving back of doing good as a company becoming a force for good. The moment you do that, you turn customers into raving fans of your brand. Sure. That's the power of this. It's the power of with.Yeah. The power of with.And the interesting thing about that is that it cannot be faked. No, no. You, you either live it you say look, we're gonna we would love our customers. I would love everybody who's ever bought Atrantil to be part of something like this. But I want you to do it because you just want to do it. I don't want to do it for that you're not going to gain anything other than you're going to be part of a community you're going to serve, you're going to find purpose, where we want to be one of those companies that actually helps with something like that. You can't fake it.No, but you're inspiring something in people that's beyond a product. Definitely.We were talking earlier that there was a study when you stole the car earlier. We're...a study came out that millennials prefer to purchase from a company that they feel is doing good for the for their community for the world, whatever, because it's a very jaded society now we realize that there's just a lot of for profit things we're going to get into this because a nonprofit for profit the only way you're going to be successful is actually making a profit one way or the other. Was it Hollis or somebody else at Baby Bathwater that one time was talking about the best way for someone to have a good good experience with you and may I can't remember if it was Hollis or not but they essentially said your customers are always looking for the community net positive. Now I can't remember exactly who wasn't said that at the last meeting but they were talking about if I make this purchase then I know I'm getting this product. But what if I'm supporting a company that's also either helping the environment or helping my fellow man they're looking for the net positive with their interaction with the company because if I buy a pencil over here from let's say a name of a store but it's all about the transaction well it's it's only as cold as the money went here and I got...walked away with a pencil but maybe if I spent I don't know two or three cents more over here and they encouraged me to do one more thing in my community that brought somebody else in or made a piece of plastic.Man, I love where you're going with this it never even occurred to me that part of our follow up post purchase email should be something charitable like this. Yes, we should sit there and say not not now that you purchase this get on cuz you know it's business. It's post purchase email hope you enjoyed it we want to turn you into that promoter.You want to subscribe?Yeah do you want but but everybody's doing that. I want to do this and we're going to do this with KBMD and KBS yeah say thank you for purchasing this hey we teamed up with Ron Klabunde who has opened this thing if you are so inclined go look at it one time one email no more follow up though if then funnels this. No, just check it out. I like it you should check it out.So this concept of wanting to do things with lead you to basically change the way that you handled your approach to being a pastor. Correct. And then so when it when are you getting to the point where Replenish Foundation and Generosity Feeds and the other companies that are enveloped within begin to form on the horizon? How did that all come about?So I'll bring us back to the beginning. Okay. My wife and I were living in northern Virginia and this is pertinent to the story and that we were living in the wealthiest county in America. Okay.OkayIs this outside of DC? This is outside of Washington DC, okay. And so we wanted we we realized that people in Washington DC wanted to serve. They wanted to teach even their children the values of generosity and service, and all comes back to this. No one wants their kids growing up being an asshole. No one. And so we figured, but here's the problem. The problem is, it takes time to find a good nonprofit. It's even harder to find a good nonprofit that will let children serve because of insurance liabilities. So that's a huge thing. Never thought about that.Barrier entry point for families serving together. So what we did is we decided, well, let's create something that has a low entry level. Let's partner with the local school because the local school already has more influence than any other organization in the community. Sure. So This school is promoting it, people are going to come. So now I don't have any marketing overhead. Yay. And so then we go that we went to local businesses and we said listen, the local school we're doing this event with them. And in the wealthiest county in America catch this. There were 12,500 children struggling with hunger, the wealthiest county in America. 12,500 children struggling but the hunger back in the day. So we looked at this and we went, business leaders listen, why don't you come with us on this but also bring your employees with you as a team building opportunity. Let's just do this as a community wide and collaborative. It's a school it's the businesses, nonprofit sector, a church here or there.Can I slow you down?Please. Because I love and we've we've talked about this. I love how people end up where they get there. And clearly you saw the need.Right.I want to know even before that when you're sitting with your wife and you guys had the AHA moment you went, hey, maybe we should consider doing something like this. Because it makes total sense that you know that all these kids need to eat. It's it's those, it's those moments that build that can change the trajectory of a life.And did mine. Absolutely. We were we were, we were innovating ways to create easy entry levels for people to serve. So we tried a number of things before we got to Generosity Feeds. And we were sending kids we were doing food collection before and sending kids that who weren't going to eat over the weekend. We were sending them home with 20 pound backpacks of food. Now imagine imagine a six year old trying to get a 20 pound backpack it doesn't work right so we made some horrible mistakes in the journey, horrible mistakes. And eventually we innovated to this to this idea and and we mobilize 600 people. Event one. Wow. Wow. 600 people showed up to create 40,000 meals in less than two hours.You and your wife plan this. Yes.That is so cool. The logistics of that is so cool.Just the supply alone. Yeah.To have that. Yeah. That's pretty incredible.Now you see the community now is coming around this idea because it's an easy entry point who can't show up for two hours at the local high school to help create food for kids in that school and that school district.Yeah.Who would go hungry otherwise on the weekend?Now your experience in the church did did you kind of already know or at least somewhat predict that because it going through the Generosity Feeds event, and just like Kim described it, it was lots of instant team building with the people that were there. Yes.Did you kind of already know looking for your range in this? Yes. And I know there's there's wisdom in there yea.There's wisdom that I gleaned sure the years and there's there's a reason that every packaging station which you were both at is between 12 to 15 people There's a reason for that because we're seeking to create community. You can't create community with 600 people in one room. But if I take 600 people and I break them down into teams of 12 to 15 they're going to naturally build relationships with each other and that's what I want. I want everyone leaving with a new friend that shares the value of generosity and service.And the other thing which I thought was really cool at least when we did it was this fun competition. Yes. Yes.They're like yeah, this tables crushing it here I'm like, Come on guys, we're not gonna let them win, we have to do this. It's it's it's the human nature. That's right.Everybody was really excited as each one we would pack the boxes I can't remember how many food packs went into each box but regard...25 Okay, so you get to 25 and then basically your your tables excited because we'll we've we've sealed another one. But of course it's it's a victory for the kiddos who are gonna end up getting it in the end.So as a gastroenterologist the other thing that I was really pleased with...Yes.You guys chose a sustainable food source you had a good protein fat carbohydrate ratio. So you're not like putting Fritos in a bag and saying go home. No! Um. Here's where that came from. Um, in our family we eat as all natural and holistic and organic as we can. Nice. And part of that is my wife has autoimmune issues. I don't I don't think I've shared that before. And so she's also gluten intolerant and thyroid issues and before I give the whole medical thing that's going on with her, right? Well, here's what my wife said to me early on. She said there is no way that we are feeding millions of children in America what we're not willing to feed are own children.Good for her. So cool. That is so cool.That's the standard. And so everything we did was go out and find the healthiest we created the product but create the healthiest product we could that was lightweight. Sure. That could that a six year old kid carry home you know? Yeah, that was lightweight that could be created by the masses that could be a mobile manufacturing plant that would create community bring all the aspects of community together and could be a dance party when we wanted it to be.That's an absolute brilliant idea. Yeah, I mean, talk about a win win win. You around very clearly are not only a very generous person, very altruistic person, but pretty damn smart. Yeah. Because that is cool. You're a good businessman.Yeah. You could take you could take the letters, PDS sense PDGs already been taken.Yeah, yeah.That's right.Well, it was also it's not just infectious for the the event that we went to in Dallas We're in coronavirus season, we don't use the word infectious. Oh, sorry. Let me let me shed some light no shedding disease. No but I think two weeks before we did our event Lavich and Hollis had participate in the one was in Colorado and a very similar experience so y'all are obviously replicating all of the good parts building upon and improving. Absolutely.I'm looking forward to the to the next event we'll obviously be there but I don't want to steal the thunder we'll get to that in a moment to Generosity Feeds how people can look it up but so now you've you've gotten to the point of my wife and I have decided that we want to do something different like she's thrown down a great edict: we want to feed kids the same things that we would eat your piece it together. The first event had 600 volunteers you had 40,000 meals made. Now what?Within two weeks, I started getting phone calls from community leaders around the country going we heard what you're doing in northern Virginia. We need your help, will you come? Wow. And so theysame state?I mean, oh, no. Across the country, were calling meOh, across the country. Sorry. They were...How did they find out about it?I'm well networked. Okay, so because of just because of my background I used to...You're an Instagram model.You just got my mouth to close!So not that kind of networking, okay.No, um I used to and now I'm back at doing keynotes around the countries I teach leadership development around the country and so because of my earlier years of doing keynotes I'm just I'm well networked into the business sector and into the even into the kind of the faith sector of our culture. So people know...people are watching what I'm doing. They they saw, they knew and so within one year of that event, we were coast to coast.Holy. That's great.And that was the ah-ha moment-going back to your previous question. When was that kind of that that wake up moment? Yeah. When we were When we did our first event in Eugene, Oregon, as far as you can get away from DC. And it flew with all the same outcomes as we had in Washington, DC, my wife and I looked at each other and went, holy shit. We just started a national nonprofit that can go to any community in America. Yeah. And then it was just a matter of leading that to growth. Sure.Because growth doesn't just happen, you have to invest in grwoth, and so we began investing in the growth of the company. The other moment that was really big for us, is obviously it takes capital. It doesn't matter what we're starting in life, for profit, for purpose, nonprofit, it takes capital. I remember walking in my living room. And I looked at my wife and I said, listen, I need to write a $15,000 check to the foundation, so that this thing has a chance at living. Can I write the check? And I said, by the way, I think I'll have it I think we can pay ourselves back in eight weeks again. Keep in mind, I was a pastor. I was getting paid almost nothing. So 15,000 for me, you're going to know in a moment how close that was to my end. Wow. She says, yes. 10 weeks later, I walk back in the living room and I go, honey, I haven't been able to pay us back on that $15,000. I need to write the last $15,000 we have to our name. Can I do it? And my wife goes, "write the check."Holy cow. So just to clarify. Nonprofit, you took all your savings.Dumped it. Dumped it in there. Yeah. With the mission of saying we know we're onto something. Yes. But we're losing money right now. Yes. That's guts.Well, it was. Holy cow.It was this vision. It was the it this is a painful point to to be honest with you is that I had the we had the vision for feeding millions of kids who across America struggling with hunger but I was writing the last check not knowing if I'd feed my own. Oh.Goodness gracious. Oh my goodness. That's the level of commitment.That's the line.Dude. That is coolest thing I think I've ever heard. Yeah.I'm willing to take food out of my kids' mouths knowing that if I do this right, I can feed millions. Yes.And your kids did you sit and tell them that?Oh, they know all this. They're in the game with us.That's so cool. So cool. They knew. I know that you and I have a son, sons that are the same age. So my my youngest is 16 and I think yours is  1616, yeah.And then how many other kiddos you got?18 year old girl.Oh, that's what I have also.And a 15 year old girl.Okay, nice. I've got 18 year old son 16 year old son. You are 15...15 and 13. A 15 year old boy and a 13 year old girl.Nice. They they eat a lot. Both of them. If I sat with them and said I'm not gonna feed you for a week because I'm going to try and feed a million kids...actually I take this back, actually my kids, both Lucas and Carla are amazing kids, they will probably look at me and be like, you need to feed a million kids. Sure. We'll go forage. There's and that's that's, that says a ton about you that you went out on that kind of limb. And man, I'm so glad that you did. Because we saw the effect. Right.That you're you're doing and we only saw it on the local level. You see it all these other places we're going to, we're going to explode it tonight at this Party on Purpose. Gonna be amazing tonight.So how long ago was Eugene, Oregon's first event?That was eight and a half years ago. Wow.So now you hit Eugene, Oregon, you say to your wife, we are definitely in something that we can replicate in city to city. Yes. You're going to take this nonprofit worldwide. It's going to grow we talked about you need capital.Right. Where does Replenish Foundation Generosity Feeds began to take shape?So, we had some very wise councillors, advisors on the front end. So when we were even looking at this first event with 600 people, they said you need to start a nonprofit that is a um umbrella organization so that you can create an ecosystem of nonprofits underneath it. Because I don't want to lead six initiatives that all have their own 501C3, that's six different boards. It's too much management. It's not efficient. So far better off creating one nonprofit that can house various initiatives. So Generosity Feeds is a DBA of the Replenish Foundation. And that allows us now to be creating additional initiatives that all play off of each other.Sure.And are now working collectively to establish generosity as the new gold standard in America. That's what we're after. I know that Generosity Feeds is one of your biggest DBAs under the Replenish Foundation. What what DBAs do you have?Yea, the other one is Generosity Serves. So as of today, we have 64,000 volunteers across America. Remarkable number. Here's what's happening at events now. Oh, and we also partner with other nonprofits. Oh. So, so when we go into a community and all these meals are made, we don't do distribution. We bring in other nonprofits, we promote them at our event. Nice. And then we give them the food. So here's what's happening. These nonprofits are now coming to us going, you got 400 people from our community to show up at your event and we can't get 40. Okay. Would you be willing to mobilize your local volunteers to serve with our organization? Well, of course, I am.Sure This is about doing good. This is about becoming a force for good. This isn't about competition in the nonprofit sector. This is about helping these other nonprofits soar.Right.So Generosity Serves is a platform now where with our nonprofit partners across the country we can go into our database and begin to mobilize these people to serve with these other nonprofits in the rhythm that works for their family. Oh, wow. You haven't...you haven't you have built an army of generous people.Yes. That's where we're that's why we're seeing that we're seeking to change culture. Because we know if we can change the dial of generosity in America, even just three notches, three degrees from our present trajectory. Together, we can begin to solve every social issue that exists. I believe the timing is perfect. Also, I think I think the pendulum is swinging back away from that social media obsession and people are going I am done. I am unplugging. I want to be with somebody I want to talk I want and I think it's an incredible timing. I think that people are seeking this which is why they, you've been able to do this. Well, you've been able to do it because you're very organized and you did it the proper way. And you're very charismatic and there's a lot of reasons why your particular thing, but that's the platform that other people can go with. You know, we're doing KBMD is sponsoring Linda's Nebraska ataxia for the for the fourth year in a row. And I was just thinking the whole time when you said we team up with other nonprofits, she does, she is my med school roommate, been friends with her forever and she developed a type of ataxia. And meaning that she, it's, it's, it's like Lou Gehrig's disease, but she has the resources and she found a physical therapist that analyzed her and was able to put a vest on her with weights. And it actually allows her to walk without the vest. She can't walk. Oh my goodness. Yeah, so then so she decided on her own dime to do a Nebraska Ataxia foundation and all they do is buy them and given to people and there's just video of video of people in wheelchairs and they show up and give them a vest because that technology exists. Yeah, it's like this. There's kids not eating on the weekend. You can feed them and you can eat them good food and they're gonna they're gonna become great members of society. It's just that easy. It isn't like you're going and given some weird obscure drug. It's like oh my gosh and so like I'm just we need to get you and Linda hooked up with that or she needs that you have any events in Omaha Nebraska?Not right now. We'll set that on the through her but she's got a big network and we can we can do that.That's right. We did. I don't know what podcast that was but he came on our podcast and he taught Eric and I about toxic charity, how you can cause more damage, trying to do good by throwing...You know, it's so cool as we've had a handful of different charitable folks drop in on the gut check project and one of them that always comes to mind right off the top is another BBW guy and that's Robo Hendrickson with a I mean, he truly is...in but the way that he describes the passion behind why he does what he does transforming communities is very similar to what you're talking about. But even more to the point the way that it's not what you would consider what Robo termed was toxic charity.Throwing money...the fact that you y'all have yet another subsidiary, just simply called Generosity Serves shows that you're, you're enabling a community to feel comfortable and more community by serving together find and you even said it yourself finding ways to make it fit your schedule. And you're doing it without competition between people who are trying to do well, it's like, let's lift each other together. In my own small town. I told this to Ken we there's a man by the name of Ricky and he works through a church but he invites the entire community at least one Saturday a month to simply come and staff tables where we hand out food. That's all that we do. A lot of the different food producers in the North Texas, they donate it, they know there's going to be a big line. People come from all over. But regardless, they get shopping carts. They come out there in the parking lot. We load them up, and then they've got plenty of food for a couple of weeks. It's great. And it's giving and it's things like what you're talking about all we've ever needed as volunteers to help make it happen.So, side note, but this is a shout out and mad props to every single parent out there. Dad or mom Loy and Lucas spent two weeks in Mexico touring doing tennis. I had to try and figure out what to do with my daughter. Like pick her up from school, get her to her events, cook dinner for her. I want to say it was the two most stressful weeks I've had in my entire life because I'm trying to work. Now. I'm the boss. I started thinking, Wait a minute, I'm the boss and I do okay, financially. What happens and I started looking around my office I'm like, I have a lot of single moms working for me. Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh, I have a lot of single moms that are going to get fired when they show up late again. And there's, and they're they and I just I had this. Am I that big of a jerk that I have not until I lived it...Yeah. That's frickin hard. Yeah. And then when you don't have enough money to give your kid food on the weekend, the only food they're eating is at school. So then it's insult to injury where you're you're trying your best. Yes, they are. You want to give your kid food. And then something like this, where they just come home with a backpack and the food's already there. No questions asked. Nothing being said and it's healthy.You know what makes that story even better, is when that kid was at that school event, help create the meal and three weeks later, they open their backpack and it's sitting there and they kept their dignity because they helped make it Oh, yeah. Take it to the next level.Yeah, that's cool. Then that's that's the epitome of not a toxic charity. Because what Robo talked about is it doesn't do me any good to go to a community because just like you he's serving with them. He's teaching them how to take care of their animals, go get an education, give back to the people learn how to grow the food mill, it's very much the same thing you've removed the stigma of someone just gave me this to I created this for me and for some other people who are in similar situations. That is a pretty incredible full circle, give back. I didn't even think about that to the people that we were building these.That's where that's where I said, you very likely had no idea you're standing next to a single mom. You'd have no idea because the moment we unite ourselves around shared values, nothing else matters. You're right. Your wealth doesn't matter when you're united around shared value.This is...we do this, Eric puts my patients to sleep. I stick a camera in people's butts, the one thing that we see over and you may be a super rich guy, you may be this buff person, you may be old. We all have the same inner workings. We're all the same. That's what we totally forget. We're all the same. And I see that because I stick cameras and I'm like, your stomach looks like it looks like his stomach. We're all the same. That's right. And when we sit there and realize that if my kid was hungry, thank God, they have never had to experience that. But if we had something that I could, I mean, to be able to go and be a participant say, honey, we're going to go and we're going to pack some food and you're gonna have food for this week, but we're going to earn it. That's so cool. Non toxic charity.That's right. So we started off in northern Virginia. Yes. And then we've we've gotten to the point now where Replenish Foundation functions is a large company with a handful of charitable subsidiaries. Yes. Now today, you're in 29 different states with events correct? That's correct. So what what is Generosity Feeds is doing now? How can people that are tuning into Gut Check Project figure out where they fit in to learn how they can begin to serve with? Yes. In, in and around their communities with their neighbors at? What What can people do?So let me hit the business side of this first. Sure. So we work we work with over 600 businesses across the country. And you it's very possible that your that our listeners today have heard of something called corporate social responsibility.Corporate social responsibility.It's called CSR. And this is often used by the larger companies. Now, here's the problem with CSR. It's this. Its responsibility. No one wants to do a responsibility, something responsibility is something you have to do. Right. And yet these larger companies, most companies are looking for CSR. What's our corporate social responsibility going to be? No, we're throwing Corporate Social Responsibility out the window and we're saying listen, don't do a CSR. Do CSO, corporate social opportunity. Let us help you as a business, create a philanthropic strategy that engages your product, summit a piece of your profit, whatever you want your employees and your customers, and that customer pieces a huge piece. And so one of the things that we're doing now with companies is helping them develop their their CSO, corporate social opportunity, because when a company does it right, it's going to accelerate their business. I was talking with a very large business owner in Salt Lake City this last week, and they just dumped a lot of money into a nonprofit initiative. And I said, you know, you're about to open 25 restaurants around the country. And you're going to drop about a half a million dollars on every one. I'm sorry. $500 million on every restaurant. to open it said I would imagine what...500 million?500 million is what typically it takes to open these larger scale restaurants okay? Holy cow. So 500 million. When you when you open a restaurant, are you going into that with a strategy and a plan? Yeah, well, of course they are. Anyone would. I said, over the next 10 years, you're probably going to invest 200 to $300,000 in philanthropy. Do you have a strategy for that? And she's like, oh, I get your point. Why in the world would you take $200,000 of your profit and invested in, in nonprofits without a strategy? Right.Like, let me help you design a strategy with your marketing team that's wrapped with your values, so that so that you're doing your philanthropy with a with a purpose. So you can see the outcomes in a way that actually accelerates your business.I love this because what I'm hearing is that charity and giving back is not checking a box.No, this is this is about nonprofits. Yeah.And for-profits working together. And here's the here's the statement, not it. The linchpin is this, for profits that have the heart of a nonprofit, need to find great nonprofits that have the mind of a business. Say that one more time.Okay for profits, businesses, businesses that have the the heart of a nonprofit...Love that. Need to find great nonprofits who have the mind of a business.And you're allowing this so I'm like the fact that you said that this is a corporate social opportunity. You are figuring out how to do it well. You can come to a company like KBS and say you are leaving your customers in a position where they don't know that they can give back. And we all win.Yes. And I can coach you through I can guide...and here's the beauty of this, this isn't about the foundation. Because at the end of the day, I want your company doing what you're passionate about. Not what I'm passionate about, this is about your value system. And so if these companies choose to work with us, that's great. I mean, that's going to help accelerate what we're doing. That's not the point to this. The point is, if you're aligning your profits and your values and your employees and your customers with a great nonprofit that aligns with all of that, then guess what? You're doing good. You're becoming a force for good and that's all I want. That's all I want. Yeah. And so that's the end game. Like, why because we're seeking to establish generosity as the new gold standard. That's not about me. That's about you.You wrote your last $15,000 check, told your kids we're out of money. And you went from there to I'm now going to teach large corporations how to do it better. And it all revolves around generosity and you lead by example that day when you wrote that check.Yes.So cool. That is so so cool. I'm excited. We are leaving we are completely because we now we know everybody at KBS we're there. We all do charitable things, your donate money I do the thing that you're saying, which is you know, I, whatever, you know, I try to donate, like, even like Linda's foundation and stuff like that every year I sponsor, I'm not taking advantage of the fact that I need to spread that message because all it does is help everyone get in their lane and oh, this is where I need to drive. That's that's basically what you're telling people to doIt's the power of with.Yes, power of with.Now, that's a pretty powerful message all the way around. It just seems like that lots of corporate responsibility did turn into the checking of a box. We should be doing this. So let's be sure that we do it. And Carol, you're over there. Did we do that thing? Did we send the check did but there's there's no personality behind that there's no touch in there, you're really not seeing it.Well let's take it one step further as a pastor tithing. I grew up Catholic, right 10% Where does it go? Who cares? I don't know. I'm just giving it. It's right. Right. It's what they said we had to do.That's the world I was in too.Now, and it...suddenly just enters a world of obligation. What what was probably born as a as a good purpose. It's lost. Its lost touch. It's lost feel. There's no texture to it. It's just this this, this money is spoken for, and it's gone. So now I'm super intrigued as a business owner. I come to you, Ron. And I say I have a I have a business. We're growing. I want to get my company in this corporate social opportunity. What would be the first thing that you would do? What would what would you do with me?So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to I'm going to send you an assessment. I'm going to have you assess your own company as to where you're at. And that's going to do two things. Number one, that's going to help you understand wait a minute, we're not all bad. That's the first thing it's gonna do.I talked to I talked to Tim and Patrick about this that like we're doing the whole we've all read the book Traction. Yes. And so you know, you do like that, you know, you start that you start thinking everybody's bad. You're like, this is your this is your score. Eric, you're a two this week. You are a two.No, so you're gonna get some good news, right? Yeah, but you're also going to evaluate where you want to be when it comes to CSO corporate social opportunity. And then I'm going to walk you through a process of blueprint of helping you close that gap. It's that simple, and in a company your size. Four hours, you will walk away with a blueprint of going, oh my God, is it really that easy? And it is. And so if this is not rocket science, I don't need to consult your company for three months. Let's just sit down, I'll put you through the assessment. We're going to walk you them through our blueprint that aligns your social, your social good with your value system, your product and some of your profit, and boom, you walk out the door going, oh my god, here's who we can partner with. and here's how we can tie our business and our customers into it and everyone wins.We have when we launched our product, we know consistently because our research when we did the clinical trials, we know that four out of five people are going to get better, like really get better. Sure. And we when we launched we either had one star on Amazon or we had five which is not a placebo. Either we worked or we didn't. Yes. And fortunately we are four stars and close to 1000 reviews. Every single one of those people that we helped, we can say if we made you feel better, I'm going to ask a favor of you now. And then we do your process. Yes. Because you have somebody that Yeah, I do feel better. You changed my life I want you to pay it forward and be with and we can make a difference and grow this network. That's so cool. Corporate Social opportunity. Did you coin that term? Yes. That's awesome. Only because CSO doesn't it doesn't work. It's it again. It's a check a box. It's it's not the heart.Right.And we're we're seeking to pull out of people, the values that are in them, the values in there. It's just letting them come to the surface and begin living.Isn't that so interesting? Because you can see how many people want to have that pulled out of them. Because we think that everybody's own superficial stuff, but the reality is, when we went and when we did Generosity Feeds, that was an enthusiastic, it's not like...From the moment we walked in.Oh my gosh, everybody the energy was amazing. Yeah, people want to get off of this superficial thing. They want to be part of something. And if they know that they can, it just comes to them. I mean, I'm the same way. I mean, I was so excited. I only found out about it because Eric said, hey, one of our Baby Bathwater people does this. I'm like, Okay, what are we doing? I was on call that weekend and everything. And I was like, Okay, I had no idea. Yeah, loved it had fun. And I'm somebody that is perfectly willing to give back and try and help out wherever but it doesn't. Since it's not being fed to me. I'm busy. I forget. Now, if we can sit there and develop some sort of process where and we can get other companies, like some of the other companies that we work with,You know, it's kind of interesting is it KBMD Health, but also just in the direct patient contact that we have. We talk about diet, we talk about exercise, we talk about different things that people do to improve their own health. And since I was a kid, I've heard that many times just simply giving of yourself will reward you even more than than whatever, but you hear it. You don't always get a blueprint on how do I effectively give back and it sounds to me like probably what you're really doing is, it may sound elementary, but you're just helping people rediscover the new way to find their purpose and then suddenly you begin to feel better. Suddenly depression issues aren't nearly as bad as they used to be. Because if you think about a gym, do you think gyms existed back in the 1800s? Could you imagine in the 1800s telling someone, we're going to have this building, and there's going to be metal bars, and we're going to put weight on them. And we're going to lift them, and we're going to put things over our heads. And we're going to do some stuff like this, and we're going to do some stuff like this. You're gonna look great, you're gonna feel good, and some cowboy would have shot you between the eyes and go that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. Have you ever heard that whole Jim Gaffigan set where he's just like, what in the world? How do people develop a Stairmaster? Hey, I got an idea. You know, people love walking up stairs. Let's make one that's never ending.But, but people, they they've gone to do that because that level of exercise for whatever it is, is keeping them in shape and helping them feel better. It just seems like what you you're doing is reintroducing people back to what they've become this...they became disconnected from your core. It's why people do yoga. It's why people do meditation it's to return to who they are. This is not that different.I have an idea for you. I think you should make the food much heavier like 20 pounds. Put it on the kids Yeah, give him a little workout. And then let 'em do squats.Do Memorial Day Murph For Memorial Day you go to Generosity Feeds get your 20 pound pack. Go do some air squats.Oh my goodness.That That is so cool. I'm just I'm I'm loving the idea that we could sit there and send a post purchase email sequence that just says hey, it's time to give back time to give back if you got better great if you didn't get your money back because we have 100% money back guarantee. Yeah, you didn't get better. Here's your money back if you got better now you need to pay for it. But not you go give back. Give back with us.With us. relationship. Everything's relationship.Let us know how you're giving back also, I mean, justWhatever it takes. But it's not you know, I mean, what I like what you're doing is you go, I'm a company your size, I need four hours, I've got the process, you very clearly are a very detail oriented person. You think through all these things, you've got 64,000 soldiers, that got your back right now. That's what we would need. I mean I want you to come to me and be like, here's what you're gonna do. That's what I love about traction. It's and you can do this, this, this and this. Now for your charity, you're going to do this, this, this and this, not write one check every Sunday.Yeah. And walk or interplays with what you are doing from the book Traction. Because again, when we talk about our, our body and our health, it we're holistic beings, everything in our place, right? Same thing in it, same thing in business. What you do in the philanthropic side of your business needs to completely interplay with what you do in the profit side of your business. Let them intertwined they're not two different silos, and that's what we're bringing together.Yeah, man I love what you're doing I absolutely love what you're doing and I just I like hearing the story how I built this because people look at this they're like oh yeah he's charismatic guy, he's a coach whatever know you wrote a check with the last money in your bank and you went...It hurts.Yeah, just just to reiterate, in case you're joining us late in the podcast and you're just joining in because somebody else...If you're joining us late just rewind and start over cuz it's all really good.Generosity Feeds does not handout, cheap meals and sweet tarts. This is legitimate food for kiddos that don't have an opportunity to eat and don't have an opportunity to get a good meal on the weekends and you've stepped in and you've allowed people into your vision to serve in a serving with you, which I think is awesome.You know what I really like also having kids our age, Eric made it a point to make sure that it was a family involvement. Gage brought his girlfriend. Yeah, it was it was we're going to do this. I'm going to lead by example. I'm gonna put the hairnet on. I'm gonna put the gloves on. Yeah, you're gonna see your dad do it first. And then follow my lead. So it's the same thing you lead by example. You teach others to do that they teach others to do that now we're all with it. And the car ride home was was filled with smiles. It was rainy that day. Yeah. It was rained hard that day. But I mean, everybody was like, man, it felt great.Yeah. And then is the conversations as a parent, reinforcing the experience. Sure.That's the power. Definitely no curriculum needed. How do people find you Ron? How do people help out?Easy. Email me at ron@replenishfoundation.org that easy, different ways to help out. Look for an event in your area. That's one If we're not there yet, that's fine. How do they find that? Is that on Generosity Feeds?Go to generosityfeeds.org.org, o.r.g.Yep, generosityfeeds.org go to locations, you'll see what's coming in the next usually four months. And in we're already booking 18 months from now. Whoa, it's crazy. So that's but that leads to part two. If you're if you lead a business that is wanting to do good, or you're a community leader, have it, call us we'll come to an event with you, like will coach you on how to mobilize your entire community and work with you and support you in this because it's all about the width. So break. Let's do this in your community. Let's do this together. So that's the other pieces go to generosityfeeds.org and just contact us and we'll, we'll help get this going in your community.Do you hear that Linda? Nebraska Ataxia, hit him up. Omaha is gonna be the next place to do a Generosity Feeds spot. And then we're going to team up two charities that I support.29 states covered right now, which means there's 21 left just in the US alone. So knowing that if I were a corporate person who wanted to be a corporate partner, and I know that we said that you don't just want to write a check, but you do need supplies.We do well, and we have national level funders, that are helping advance the mission. So you have we have local people who support the local events. And then we have the national partners, which you guys are, that are helping mobilize us into new communities across America that are helping us empower 64,000 volunteers, because the idea needs to be needs to spread.I just thought about something here. So if I'm a I'm not a I don't know how to say this in the right way. But if I'm a a family, yes, that is a tight on budget, right. And it's just easier to spend $8 at McDonald's to feed the family, is there I just don't know how to say this. But I would almost like to tell my patients for instance. Because I hear this from my patients all the time. It's very hard for me to shop at Whole Foods or whatever, or it's just easier that I can get McDonalds and you know, and I try and get them off of that. Is there a price point? Can anybody be part of this? Can anybody use eat it? I mean, basically, I would I would tell my I would tell my patients, go to Generosity Feeds, pack your own bag, make sure you eat this on the weekends and don't eat that crap that you find cheap.At our events when people come to at the end of all of our events. Here's what we say if you are here today, and you need food, just come see us privately. Because you're going to walk away with food. So it's that simple. Yes. Is the food already designated to the nonprofits that are going to distribute it? Yes. That doesn't matter. Someone when someone comes to an event needs food. Just come talk to one of our team members. We're going to hand you the food that you just created. Walk away with it.So DHAT my company. We need to do something with this also as a gastroenterology as the gastroenterologists for all ages that are the premier gastroenterology group in the country, we need to lead by example, we need to do stuff like this. Definitely. I think everybody be on board too. This is another one of those things where you just delivering laser focus to a lot of people who want to serve, they just don't know how to do it, or how to do it together.Well, sometimes it's the conventions, like Mod Pizza, as you said, is a title partner with us-national partner with us. So they do a leadership summit with all their general managers every year, guess what we do? We go in and catch this. This year they're creating 50,000 meals, they'll do it in less than one hour with 2,000 people. Like so. So we can come into these conferences and conventions and and we do this. We're working with Microsoft right now. Like, the coolest thing ever. Who are they? Yeah, I don't know. I think an up and coming company to buy some stock. So again, it's In those are private events where it's just that Corporation but it's like you so cool. You got this group around the country, the doctors come together. You put them on. So many companies talk about doing good. Let's just do it will bring it to youDon't talk about doing good.Well, just and I'm sitting there thinking we've got my company, I'm just thinking how many of these single moms that work for us that probably would be relieved that they could go home with some food. Because I found myself running out of time not cooking for Carla for those two weeks and ordering food and we ate like, well, we'd like crap per our standards chair. Um, it's, it's relative, right? I mean, it's, you know, read a lot of Thai food and whatever, you know, which I like. But um, but I wasn't cooking whole food. I wasn't doing the stuff that we normally would do.No, I agree with that, and probably the epitome of a lot of the people that want to give back, who aren't always in the best position to give back happened to be those same people. I would never know who actually truly struggles, it is walking amongst us until sometimes they kind of hit a wall and they just like, for the last number of weeks, I've been dealing with this I'll look and I'll say I had no idea. But that same person, whomever that would happen to be, I'm certain would jump at the opportunity to help a neighbor or friend. And then of course they would have the opportunity to benefit and take something back to their kids. That would be kind of incredible.Wow, I want to thank you so much for coming on. Thanks, Ron. I want to thank you for you lead by example. You're certainly gonna make a difference with us. We're gonna we're going to jump on board with KBS KBMD DHAT. We're remembering we're going to have the corporate social opportunity be our new motto.Yeah. If you're only watching us on the YouTube you may have missed we are down here in Austin, Texas for what they call the Austin POP the Party on Purpose yes event where we have a handful of corporate entrepreneurs who've come down here to Austin basically to help Generosity Feeds and Replenish Foundation mobilize to more areas throughout our country feeding kiddos that just needs some good meals. So Ron, I can't thank you enough for just bringing to life an incredible vision for a lot of people who just needed it. So it's, yeah it's awesome.I appreciate it great being on with you guys this is honestly just been a lot of fun. Oh, good, good. And I'm sure it has been for everyone else too.I hope so!Well, hopefully this will kind of spread and this is a great example of leading by example living by example. Corporate social opportunity Generosity Feeds Generosity Serves everything you have said is just makes me feel like I'm kind of a bad person and I need to do more.That's probably going to do it for Episode Number 35 Ron Klabunde here from Replenish Foundation and  Generosity Fees and Generosity Serves look him up everything in show notes of course, check us out, like and share Gut Check Project KBMDhealth.com. Dr. Brown, anything else?Yeah, I'm going to task everybody with a personal social opportunity. Definitely like and share this particular episode, because it goes way beyond the Gut Check Project,Send it to your boss.That's a great. Send it to your boss, find something that where you work or with your team. If you haven't been an entrepreneur, how can we begin to work together? This is your team building exercise. It costs you nothing, and it gives everything.Here we go. I'm going to I'm going to share this with Loida right now, my boss, my wife.Thank you! Tune in to Gut Check Project. We'll see you next week, don't forget we have a giveaway Dr. Brown's signature package Episode 36.Find a “Feeds” event near you https://generosityfeeds.orgOrganization Info on the Replenish Foundation https://generosityfeedsportal.org/uploads/images/prospectusreplenishfoundation_email.pdf

For All Abilities – The Podcast Episode Eight - Ron Kerns -    In this episode, I interview Ron  - Autism and Neurodiversity Advocate and Graphic Designer. On the podcast, Ron talks about his autism diagnosis later in life. We discuss how Ron uses his Neurodiversity in his career and how he found a career and a position that allowed him to work to his strengths.  To connect with Ron, please follow him  on LinkedIn (Ron Kerns) or email him at ron@StudioKerns.com.  Check out his work at www.studiokerns.com    Go to our website www.forallabilities.com for information on our software that enables employers to support their employees with ADHD, Dyslexia, Learning Differences and Autism. Thanks for listening!  Betsy     Thanks for listening to For All Abilities today!    Share the podcast with your friends, they’ll thank you for it!   Get our newsletter and stay up to date! The newsletter link is on our website www.forallabilities.com   Follow me   Twitter: @betsyfurler   Instagram: @forallabilities   Facebook: @forallabilites   LinkedIn: @BetsyFurler   Website: www.forallabilities.com     Full Transcription from otter.ai   Betsy Furler  0:00    Hi, everybody. Welcome to for all abilities the podcast. Today I have a special guest. And this is Ron Kearns. He is going to introduce himself to us talk about his diagnosis, which was later in life. And what that diagnosis means for him now in his life, and what it might have been like if he was diagnosed as a child, and how he uses his brain to be a highly successful person. So Ron, welcome to for all abilities, the podcast.   Ron Kerns  0:44   Thanks for having me.   Betsy Furler  0:45   Yes, thank you so much. Why don't you introduce yourself to my audience, tell us a little bit about where you're from what you do now. Anything else you'd like to tell us about yourself?   Ron Kerns  0:59   Okay.   See Where am I from? I grew up. I grew up in Detroit, in Michigan, and then four and then after college and all that for many years we lived in for 20 years. We lived in Dallas. And then 2016 we decided it was time for change and we moved to rural northern Arkansas. And that's where we are now.   Betsy Furler  1:32   Yeah, I saw that and one of the articles I read about you that you now live in Arkansas and you do have some fishing.   Ron Kerns  1:40   Yes, I'm that we live just a few miles away from the White River which has some of the best rainbow trout fishing in the country. It's absolutely fabulous.   Betsy Furler  1:49   That is great. I love fishing.   Ron Kerns  1:53   I am a professional graphic designer.   I have done work. in pretty much any environment, you can come up with over my almost 30 years career in house corporate, working in ad agencies on my own as a freelancer, and I could, and I currently work for a university. There is a small campus for Missouri State University. And that's a short drive away. Just across the border over into Missouri. That's how far north we live in Arkansas. Wow. So that's since I guess, so that's so that's I've been there at the university for it'll be it'll be two years in May. And so and that that particular job has just been going fabulous, best job I've ever had.   Betsy Furler  3:00   That's nice to hear. And you were diagnosed with autism as an adult, correct? Yes, I was 46. So tell us a little bit about what you were like when you were a little boy   Ron Kerns  3:15   there.   The one overpower the one overlying theme from when I was a kid was when I was in school. I can remember pretty much walking into kindergarten for the very first day, all of a sudden feeling like I did. And the bullying started pretty much right away and continued K through 12. So I stayed within the same school system trait the entire time. I was in school and it just so that was a huge part of being a kid when I was a kid.   I did find some   some   relief from that I   would say   refuge from that I when I was about seven or eight my parents got our family a piano. And so piano playing became my, my, my blanket. security blanket. I played and played and played forever. There. Oh, here here's an idea to give you an idea how That became such a huge thing. I can remember being in fifth grade and I would take a pledge black magic marker and draw all the keys on my desk. And so that way I can sit there and play the piano in my mind playing Wow. Wow. I'm   Betsy Furler  5:23   so you could kind of escape to that that would be right now   Ron Kerns  5:28   that was my that was my escape. I'm teachers in the janitors didn't care for so much. All right. I didn't have a quick didn't know I didn't have a reasoning for it. Um, there was one particular date with the entire class was heading to a field trip. So the class entire class was just abuzz with activity and just kind of overall madness is everybody was excited about going on this field trip.   I just kind of   hunkered down and was gotten to just zoning everything out, playing my panel on my desk. Then, at some points, the teacher put her head, her hand on my shoulder. And it kind of got me out of that. And I realized that everybody had left and they all got on the bus. And I was and I had no idea. And the teacher was like, it's time to go now. Kind of a thing.   Betsy Furler  6:40   And you really were able to hyper focus on that.   Ron Kerns  6:45   Yeah, um, so piano playing turned into once I got into junior high and was able to get in the band. I went into that played a couple of different instruments in band That led to later on within leader in junior high in high school, attending a performing arts camp in the summer, and then through that, I toured Europe with an orchestra for a summer when I was 17. Wow. So all of that kind of all started from   all started back from know the piano thing.   Betsy Furler  7:30   Did you were you a good student academically or did you struggle in school?   Ron Kerns  7:35   I struggled terribly. Um, a lot of it had to do with the, a lot of it had to do with bullying. Just self esteem, self confidence, all that kind of stuff. Just going into survival mode, I guess is the way to put it   and then   There was so much that I just couldn't comprehend. But like everything else, there was no set attribution to why I couldn't. So all through school. It was, well, he just needs to focus more. He needs to find himself. He needs to just work harder. You know, he has the potential to do this and   Betsy Furler  8:34   write some but they were seeing you as a smart kid, but they couldn't figure out what avenue to reach you.   Ron Kerns  8:42   Right? Because nobody knew anything about any of this sector. Right, right. So I just   kind of muddle through and   past I guess   And so   there was a, I remember, yeah, so Um, so yeah, so that was basically school for me.   Betsy Furler  9:12   And did you go to college after high school?   Ron Kerns  9:16   After high school I did. I didn't go to college, I had a very difficult time trying to figure out exactly what it is I wanted to do.   And then   I didn't even really pick even art classes when I was in high school, or anything like that. My older sister in the meantime, we had been going to this small business school in northern Michigan.   And   it was kind of my   mindset that a,   I knew in the back of my mind that going to a much smaller school. Were probably be better for me which it was   and then   going to school where my sister was already   wouldn't hurt either.   So I kind of focused it on Northwood University, which is a school in Midland, Michigan. And I looked at their offerings, and I saw the advertising marketing program. And I thought, Boy, that sounds like something that could be interested in. So and I realized that they were going to have a day for potential students in that program. So we went up there in and   then I was so   it was just seemed like to be a really good fit for what I wanted to do. And So I went there and did find it was   from there by the chairman of the apartment   was a huge factor in me doing what I do today. He hit his background, because that played a big part of his background was in the 50s 60s and into early 70s. Working with being working when advertising for Ford and Lincoln mercury.   He was a major.   He was the he was the creative director for when the Ford Mustang first was introduced. Oh, wow. And other other monumental advertising campaigns and such over the years through that time period. So When he would come to class, he would bring in all of these old big boards and storyboards of all of these campaigns that he worked on when he was in the business. And using that as an illustration for what he was teaching that day or whatever. And so one day, he sat me down and he said, Have you ever thought about going to art school? No, I've never had an art class in my life. And he goes in and he showed me all the stuff that I had done as projects in his classes and said, you really should think about it. So um, I did and, and after getting my advertising marketing degree there, I went to art school in Cincinnati, and did very well there. And then it's through that I earned an internship with Cambodia. Well, Detroit. They were the Advertising Agency at the time for Chevrolet. And so, especially with that with once I earned the internship there. I just did that really solidified that, wow, I'm, I'm where I want to be.   Betsy Furler  13:19   That's amazing. And it kind of shows that there can be one person in our life that we run across that can have such a large impact. You know, obviously he saw that talent in you and was able to communicate it to you know, you Yeah, really? That that was she was so pivotal in your life and sounds like Yeah, definitely. Um, so how did you finally get diagnosed? what led up to the diagnosis?   Ron Kerns  13:52   That's it. That's quite an interesting story. I've been interviewed about that before because it's such an odd story. Before I began to suspect that I was that I was autistic, I would have never have guessed. Um, anyway, so it was around 2011 when I was watching the show parenthood on NBC, huh? And we watched from know when Elizabeth recently aired from the very first episode. I was familiar with a movie that had come out us before, so I thought it'd be a good something nice to watch. So, um, as the episodes went on long, and there was that kid max who eventually got diagnosed on the show. I was just sitting there watching and watching and going, man.   He was   thinking, he is a lot like I was when I was a kid. Uh huh. And parent teacher conferences his parents would have won over that whole Same thing with not having Well, he's got so much potential for he just used to focus on the road. And then having all that same conversations, it was just like no.   mean it was like me being on the show.   And so one just just one night. I was like, Okay, that's it. So I was just sitting on the, on the couch, I grabbed my laptop and I was sitting there watching show I started Googling, like, undiagnosed autism, adult saroo, something like that. And as soon as I hit return, it just, that's just when the light bulb went off. And I started seeing what was out there about this and starting to reading the list of You just might be artistic F and then you have the list of different characteristics or traits. And it was like, Oh, my goodness.   And   I'm,   Betsy Furler  16:24   well, that's really interesting.   Ron Kerns  16:27   So while doing the googling, I came across a title of a book.   The book is,   which I recommend everybody by the way, it's a book called pretending to be normal, written by Leann holiday Willie, and she was also diagnosed later in life and like in her mid 30s. Mm hmm. And, but when I saw that when I saw just the name of the book, pretending to be normal. was like, that's me. Cuz especially in the workplace, it just always feeling out of place, like an intruder, and all that stuff. I always just, and I never really could put my finger on it. But when I stopped pretending to be normal, I was like, that's it.   And, and so I just felt like that's what you've been   Betsy Furler  17:27   doing your whole life.   Ron Kerns  17:29   Exactly. And so, so and so with that.   I just dug in and got more and more and then in 2014 a couple years later, it came to a point to where I was pretty much self diagnosed at the time. And I just knew that in order to get any kind of support services, that kind of thing, you know, I needed an official diagnosis   because at the time I was   without a job.   I has   my throughout my career while I've done some pretty cool stuff and have worked with some great clients and done some great projects. My career has also been huge difficulties landing a job when I needed to get one. The past decade 2010 to 2020 I was unemployed without a full time job for seven of those 10 years. Wow. I'm thankfully doing what I do, I can I was able to kind of scrape by doing freelance work. And   so   it says that   was getting them from a diagnosis got me in This with this nonprofit that was in Dallas that helps people with autism and other similar things, you know, help provide some assistance with no landing shops or work. So   Betsy Furler  19:15   yeah, that's a great point. I, I, I'm really passionate about workplace accommodations and understanding in the workplace about diversity. But it's a really great point because I often say to parents, yes, you need to get this diagnosis for your child, if nothing else, but for the services. But I, you know, we don't think about that as an adult, that there are still services out there that you can access but only if you have   Ron Kerns  19:42   the diagnosis. Yeah. And unfortunately, for adults, they're very, very hard to find because everything is geared towards children. I even I even had a hard time finding a provider that would do an assessment or evaluation for me Because I was an adult   Betsy Furler  20:03   Yeah, and not about that area and that was probably expensive as well.   Ron Kerns  20:09   Um, I got lucky on that, um, during this entire time of struggling to find a job and knowing that was self diagnosed,   I got a   wreck. I get somebody I know through one of my facebook group artistic Facebook groups messaged me one day and she said, Here this, this place might be able to help you out with the whole job thing. And it was a agency for the state of Texas called Texas Department of the system and Rehabilitative Services and our health, those with disabilities and such to find appropriate work. So I said oh, well that could they could possibly help. So I made it, I made a appointment with the person there at the office, which wasn't too terribly far away from home. And I went there, and and then she started asking me about my diagnosis as well I don't have one yet. And then she proceeded, explain that you're having a diagnosis is necessary because to be eligible, so you can determine eligibility for services. And then she said, because you came to us seeking services, will give you a list of providers, and we will provide you with that assessment to determine whether or not you're eligible, which means getting the diagnosis, right. So um,   I just got lucky with that and I'm   in so I Just the assessment and it was all taken care of by that state agency.   Betsy Furler  22:07   And now for people who are listening and might be in the state of Texas, it's now called the Texas Workforce Commission. They change their name a few years ago. So   Ron Kerns  22:16   yeah, I remember when they did that. Yeah, they kind of melded together with the Workforce Commission. Yes.   Betsy Furler  22:21   Yeah. Yeah. So well, that's the I hadn't even thought about that as an option for people that thank you for bringing that up. That is helpful. So once you got the diagnosis, how did that change your life?   Ron Kerns  22:36   Everything all of a sudden made sense.   Yeah, it was just it was just so much. It's almost like overwhelming for a while. Even looking back at, you know, being autistic, one of the things one trait is being able to vividly remember Member finnstrom had many many, many, many years ago, to me, our youngest age and and just thinking back at all these little different   situations.   And then now I know why or how I did that or this or whatever. And now it just like just makes so much more sense. It's it's almost indescribable   Betsy Furler  23:34   and I think one thing that's so remarkable is that a lot of people think that people who are autistic don't have much self insight. And you diagnosed yourself on by by being able to look inside yourself and see your traits and other people. I think it's a I you know, I think it kind of breaks the surface. Yeah, type of what it's like to be autistic.   Ron Kerns  24:03   Actually, it's work. It's quite common really for people for autistic people to be introspective, because   Betsy Furler  24:10   i i agree. I think they I think it is. But I think it's a stereotype that Yeah, you're not that people with autism are not introspective. from working with lots of people who are autistic over the years, I have found it to be totally the opposite, like, so it makes sense to me that you would be able to do that.   Ron Kerns  24:33   Right? Because right now, amen. It's quite, it's becoming more and more common for like adults like me to finally get that diagnosis. And probably one of the more common ways that adults are realizing that Ooh, maybe I should go get assessed or evaluated is they first have a child who is diagnosed Once or child gets diagnosed, they're like, Man, that child's always been just like me. I wonder you know if they have the same traits and difficulties or problems and and so once the kids diagnosed it's not easy stuff to, to say a person No. More and more. It's becoming more widely believed that autism itself is genetic. I for instance, I can I even know my father passed away in 2011 before I was diagnosed, I can almost guarantee you that if he would have gotten us assessed somewhere along the way, he would have been diagnosed. Right? Right. Just knowing how that all happened and all of that kind of stuff.   Betsy Furler  25:56   How do you think that your autism allows you to be successful in what you're doing   Ron Kerns  26:06   can sometimes be a tough one because especially with all my job in career difficulties with having a job and retaining the job, it's can be very hard to find that what's positive about a Geass? so often I see the negative.   Betsy Furler  26:34   Right, right.   Ron Kerns  26:36   And then a few years after I was diagnosed, I saw the movie   saw the movie.   Thinking in pictures.   The story about Temple Grandin. Yes. And that just blew my mind. It was like that's a that's another So, I've always done that, but never realized how or why. And so   that ties in   perfectly with me being a graphic designer, I think in pictures,   Betsy Furler  27:16   right. So that makes that job, your career, the perfect career free for your brain. And you kind of accidentally happened upon it. The   Ron Kerns  27:30   the difficulty lies in   being in the marketing, corporate communications field. So much of it is   personality driven,   Betsy Furler  27:49   right, relationship and all of that's   Ron Kerns  27:54   Miss so that's what's really been the hindrance more than anything. great example of that is, you know how I was, before I got this job at the university. I was without a full time job for five years. And so last my last full time job in 2013 1313. And then   anyway, so it was during that time when I was   out and I was constantly getting interviewed, it wasn't like I had a terrible habit, bad resume and I was constantly getting new people said that it was in the interviewing process.   It was the interview and that would always be the barrier.   And,   but   I was also from the freelancing. I did the I did an annual report for an organization in Baltimore called abilities network in 2014 2015 From like that, and I did an annual report for the Arctic, North Texas, and about the same time, maybe a little bit after. So here I was, I was designing and creating these annual reports for these large organizations. And these are projects that it would typically be done by a large team of designers with the nice, top design firms. And I was doing them all on my own. highly acclaimed, I was winning awards, you name it. And yet I was still having difficulty in finding a job.   And that was the frustrating part of it.   I knew I could do the work, but it was just getting past it in the whole interviewing thing was a massive hurdle. So in 2004, so 2016 comes around, I had a couple of interviews that were really should have been a slam dunk.   My one of my previous jobs was with   one of my previous jobs was with a   multinational veterinary pharmaceutical company.   I was the art director and graphic designer for the entire consumer brands division, I was a sole designer. So all of the packaging, point of purchase displays, advertising marketing, you name it was all done by me. And so all of my work was seen and put within Petco and PetSmart all over the country. And, um, and so then that job ended in 2009. But then, when I was in sometime in early 2016,   I was able to interview for a job with a   local chain in Dallas, a chain of veterinary clinics, who also had their own private label branded products that they would sell within their clinics. So it would be marketing the clinics and and the packaging and all of this all of the stuff for the products they had. And I was like, How can I not get this?   Right now that's just what you've been doing basically.   And I didn't get it. And I got some very good sets the flimsiest flimsiest excuses to why they chose somebody else. And that's what pretty much and so I was unemployed for almost five years at the time. We were getting close to getting foreclosed on our house. And in addition to that, my My wife's dad who was living who had lived in northern Arkansas for many years. At that time. His wife had passed away. And so he was up here all by himself. We were several, we were 810 hour drive away. And so she was certainly like, oh, wouldn't it be nice if we could up there be up near my dad, all that kind of stuff. And we'd always love the area. And I thought, well, maybe once I retire, we can move up here because there's really no jobs for somebody like me around here. Uh huh. But once those job opportunities just kind of continued coming and going away and I, we came to the conclusion, especially with the foreclosure house. It was like, let's just get out of here. I'm like, I'm done. got going. So I'm We sold the house. Thankfully, we avoid foreclosure and the market Dallas was just going crazy. So we we did quite well on the house in the long run. And so I did be opposite of what you would think instead of staying in an area where there's countless jobs, I came to an area where there's a mere handful of jobs. And so I was doing the tons of freelancing at the time so I figured hey, I could get by a few minutes and we could while just working from here at the office phone and, and doing what I do. So for two for two years, that's what I did. I just worked from home, doing my work for my clients from wherever in the world they were. And that worked just fine. And and then I saw on an on host one day for the job. at Missouri State, it was so perfect. That was perfect job. So my whole mindset was what   I knew would eventually happen was   how many other people could their candidates could they have possibly been have had my background experience applying for this job. We live in this extremely remote and rural area. Right, right. And   so I go to the interview   and it's a panel interview about six or seven people. And one of the people read this statement about how the university values, diversity, inclusion, and, and all of that kind of stuff. So I thought, Okay, that sounds great. And then came to the point where I showed him my portfolio and they were raving about my portfolio and the stuff I was showing enough work I've done in the past. And so then then it came to strengths and weaknesses, asked me about my strengths and weaknesses. And so that's what I had a pretty good idea that they would be perfectly fine with it. So I said, well, the weaknesses that goes along with   me learning I was autistic just a few years ago. And   it kind of went into my strengths and weaknesses, as far as you know, being a graphic designer, that sort of thing. So that was one of the few times I know. That's always a big conundrum for people who are on the spectrum, when the right is   Betsy Furler  35:57   whether you disclose your Yeah, quote unquote disability or not just   Ron Kerns  36:03   the disposer you to try to fake it.   Betsy Furler  36:05   right all right.   Ron Kerns  36:07   It was at that point to where I felt comfortable enough. I knew that of course, I knew from the get go like this is a major university they almost certainly are going to be understanding and even somewhat appreciate the fact that I've accomplished what I what I've done and being artistic. Mm hmm. And and so then that's what happened and, and I got the job.   Betsy Furler  36:38   That's amazing. I think that I think disclosing your condition was absolutely the right thing to do. proud that probably got you the job because then they realized   Ron Kerns  36:51   that   Betsy Furler  36:52   you know, the things about the interview that maybe you're the things that you do or say during an interview that maybe wouldn't get you the job in the past. They're like, Ah, that's why his brain works in this way. And he gave us the interview, clearly and then and then ended up with a job that is a great fit for you.   Ron Kerns  37:17   Yeah. And a lot of it was just having that feel for the people that were there. No. Had a good feeling that Okay, there. It's going to be okay to mention it. And, you know, it just, it's, it's no, so whenever somebody brings it up is like, it just depends. Yeah, because I can think of other times in the other jobs I've had to where I would mention it. So I'm on my first. So after I got the notification that just you have the job. I contacted my caseworker with the agency in Dallas who is a, it's a organization called lunch ability. And they're in Dallas. And they're now merged with another organization called my possibilities. And they help people just like me find appropriate jobs and work. And so I called my caseworker. And of course, she was excited and very thrilled that I finally landed the job. And so we talked through the one thing that we've always wanted to talk through was, okay, I have the job now. And, you know, making sure that no one can I had everything, all my ducks in a row for that first day, week, month, because how important it is to kind of get it off to a good start. And so we were able to talk through all of that. And so then on my first day or so, I'm kind of set my manager down and Well, as you know, I'm autistic. And I said I and I explained to her that I really didn't need any really accommodations really a whole lot. But I gave her a list of things to keep in mind. For thankfully, I do have my own office with the door. So I said no, quite often, I'll have the door closed, depending on what's going on elsewhere in the area there. I try to keep it open. My lights, my fluorescent lights are always off all the time. She even bought me on this small little desk area. Because I will I think for the huge I have a huge massive window on one side of the office. That's plenty of daylight and most times, but I'm really I'm really cloudy days. I have a little desperate that you got me help with light. That's not nearly as bright as those big fluorescent things. Right? Right. I'm just told her my difficulties with the whole executive functioning thing with, you know, organizing, organizing and prioritizing projects and work. And that can sometimes have   20 projects in varying degrees   of   in the queue   20 years old projects and varying degrees of completion or, and that sort of thing. And so she's always been very helpful with never   hesitated to   help in any way when I've come to her and say, again, we talked about this from insert, make sure you know that. I'm working on the right projects at the right time for this because I have a lot going on at the moment, or whatever. And so just share her being very, extremely Understanding and patient with me is just been, it's been a huge   Betsy Furler  41:06   well, and that sounds like you have there, you have some accommodations at work, but they're not expensive or big deal type of accommodations. They're things that make your life so much easier and allow you to do your best work. But it also wasn't super expensive for the university to put into place. And it probably actually that kind of back and forth on deadlines and, you know, possibly, you know, asking her to break down tasks or, you know, kind of getting her feedback on that. That's great communication for anybody.   Ron Kerns  41:47   Right. And so, then some of it goes back to learning. Things are learning difficulties now that I know I'm watching Stick. For instance, before I was artistic, I never would have never thought to get your plugs for when I'm in a crowded restaurant, I just grin and bear that. And then and then been an artistic adult Facebook group. People mentioned here places. And I was like, wow, that could actually be a really cool idea. Now I have several sets that I carry with me. So I'm never without a pair. Because I've never know when and where I'm going to be. And and it's like, well, why haven't I thought of this before?   Betsy Furler  42:38   inexpensive things that you can do and easy to do and make the world a difference. Right. Right. Right. And so   Ron Kerns  42:45   then with the accommodations, I'm a lot of I've read a lot lately about standup desks,   dusted can put on your desk and then raise up to where you can stand in kind of Move around a bit more and all that. And so that's what I have. So I talked with my manager about that. And so what is being ordered for me right now?   That's awesome.   To get one of those, so that would that is I think that will be helpful.   Betsy Furler  43:19   Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. I'm so glad you found that job and you made that leap of faith to move from Dallas to rural Arkansas and it sounds like that was just the best move you could have made.   Ron Kerns  43:35   One thing I just thought of about the move to Arkansas was after I got diagnosed   sometime or along the way I started   having meltdowns and panic attacks like while driving and traffic. Safety imagine the freeways and highways and roads in Dallas are Always very congested. just crazy as crazy as can be.   Yeah, and   the meltdowns and all of that we're amplifying. And that was something that was an eye. I gave up driving for the last couple years we were there as much as I could think he lived fairly close to the train station where I could take the train into downtown or wherever I needed to go. And that was another factor in the moving here was she I wonder how it would be if we moved out of this sensory overload of the city and out there to where it's calmer and the traffic is almost non existent. Right little thing. And so I'm just with In a few months, my wife and I had the conversations like the changes almost instant.   I'm just the change of environment.   It was just amazing.   Betsy Furler  45:13   That Yeah, that's a good point. I was actually thinking about that for myself the other day cuz I live in Houston, Texas, and traffic is terrible. And it's like, you know, I, I wonder, you know what it would be like, if we didn't have to have this traffic, we didn't have to be on traffic all the time. And I think we will eventually move out someplace that is not as bad because I think we're all of our brains. It's not good. You know? So that's, yeah, that but that is if if sensory overload is a problem for you, traffic is and just the big city bustle. That's a lot of that's a lot of sensory information you're having to process Maybe not for any good reason.   Ron Kerns  46:03   Yeah, again, that's just something that has.   Because there's a there's a thing called it's autism fatigue, I think is a word for it. And so that was something that started popping up. And so basically the idea that I was handling all of that for years,   fairly well.   But having the mask and camouflaging Bailey all the time constantly, constantly becomes the point when you come to a certain age when you just the mask starts slipping and you just can't have it on as much all the time. Uh huh. And, and so that is what I really think kind of was happening. Just started losing the ability to tolerate a That all the time because it just can't keep the mask on all the time as much because it's because as you get older, it becomes more exhausting more effort to do that day in and day out.   Betsy Furler  47:13   Right and then you're taking your energy that you could be using at work and with your family and all of that. You're having to use that energy to try to to put the keep that mask on for the with the sensory stimulation. Well that I'm I am so glad you moved to Arkansas. I think that was such a great I think that was such a great thing. And I I loved hearing your story and your your later in life life diagnosis. I think this interview is going to help so many people that are listening to my show, and how can people get in touch with you if they want to learn more about you.   Ron Kerns  47:58   I'm pretty much everywhere. In Social media. Ron turns Kieran s on Facebook. They can go to my website, studio Kearns that. I'm, I'm very active on LinkedIn. You can find me there round Ronald.   Ronald Kearns. Um   or just send me an email at Ron at Studio Kearns calm.   Betsy Furler  48:31   Awesome. I will put all of that in my show notes and the book suggestion because I think that I'm going to I haven't ever read that book either. I'm gonna I'm gonna read it. I'll probably listen to it on Audible, but I   Ron Kerns  48:44   pretended to be normal. Yeah, definitely. Another book that's also along the same premise that I found it. really helpful was john elder Robison, his book   Look me in the eye.   Betsy Furler  49:03   Yes, yes, that's a good one.   Ron Kerns  49:07   Both of those help was so helpful to me because, you know, both were on the same premise about this is how my life was. And then I found that later in life I was like   Betsy Furler  49:18   I will say, well, I'll put both of those in the show notes. And thank you so much for joining me today. You were a wonderful interview and great information for my for my audience.   Ron Kerns  49:34   Thanks for having me.   Betsy Furler  49:35   Yes, have a great day. You too and audience Thank you for listening and please subscribe to the show. You can also follow me on social media at Betsy Furler f you are le er or for all abilities.  

Episode 16 #8 What are you doing with community partners?10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief SeriesQuestion 8: "What are you doing with community partners regarding Active Shooter Hostile events?"Bill Godfrey:Welcome back to our next podcast. We are continuing our series on 10 questions for the mayor, the city manager, the County manager to ask their police and fire chief together. Today we are covering topic number eight what are you doing with community partners regarding active shooter hostile events? Today I'm joined by Tom Billington, retired fire chief, Stephen Shaw, Sergeant with Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Ron Otterbacher, retired division chief of the Orange County Sheriff's office and Don Tuten, Chief over Homeland Security at Jacksonville Sheriff's office. Welcome guys. Thanks for joining me. My name is Bill Godfrey. I'm one of the instructors at C3 pathways along with the gentleman I just introduced, also a retired fire chief. So Ron, let me start with you because you've got an interesting perspective from the hospital side as well as just decades of law enforcement experience. Talk a little bit about what are the things that we should be doing with our community partners and what in particular you think are the relevant things with hospitals?Ron Otterbacher:The big thing is you need to talk to them. There needs to be some adequate discussion and then the private entities or the community partners need to understand what law enforcement or fire or EMS may need should we have an active shooter event. Some of those things is do you need to create a go bag? The go bag should contain such things as your floor plans for your buildings, your keys, your access control cards. If you've got video capabilities, do you have access to view those video capabilities while the incident is ongoing? Is it a permanent position or do you have an iPad this hook to your video systems that you can, the first responders as they're moving through the building have access to that because not every place they go in a building will they be able to be accompanied by someone from your business.Bill Godfrey:Interesting stuff. Steven, I'm going to tangent over to you is just a little bit some of what Ron was talking about with the go bag planning and the response planning. You of course have a fairly sizable university in your region, right in your backyard. Talk a little bit about some of the challenges with that large student population working with the university. They have their own police department that's there on campus. Talk a little bit about working with them as a community partner in this.Stephen Shaw:A lot of times what it takes is working together ahead of time on just regular incidents, regular calls. Can we communicate over the radio? Do we know who we are? Can we navigate around campus? Can we navigate around town? A lot of this stuff is pre-work that is done before we have a significant event and then as we're planning these significant events, we need to work together on our exercises. Are we training the same things? Are we teaching the same principles? Do we have the same line of thought as far as reunification, as far as intelligence gathering? Can we use each other's facilities? All of these questions need to be asked ahead of time and a lot of it takes place on the regular call level as far as when we go to traffic crashes, can we communicate with each other? If we have a crash that happens on campus, but our jurisdiction responds to for whatever reason.Bill Godfrey:I'm curious have either one of you, Steve or Ron worked out, beyond the idea of a go bag, any type of prearranged access plans for responders. I mean obviously we don't want to get into specifics here on a general public podcast, but what are the types of things that, if you've got a large, and I'll call it a campus facility, just using that generically, whether it's a large business, a large hospital, a large school, university, large church, what are the types of things that those folks should do to prepare for receiving responders and having access beyond just the typical go bags? Where do they keep the go bags? Can you guys, Steve, you want to talk a little bit about some of that again? Avoid any specifics to those facilities, but just in a general sense?Stephen Shaw:Well, one of the things that we try to do is, especially, so say for example, a new apartment building, a lot of times they will have secured doors that have punch codes for a password or something like that. What we try to do is they have to pass that information usually along to the fire department per codes and so what we try to do as our community services people get up with the fire department, get up with those entities so that we have access to those codes ahead of time. If it's not a code, is it a key and something like a Knox box? Do we have access to the Knox box so we can get in there, finding all that stuff out and then if we have access to floor plans, can we get that information again, in my area, the fire department generally has access to floor plans of new construction. The same with the university. Do we have access to that ahead of time and our people in the field that deal with that kind of stuff? We try to remind them to try to gather that information as much as possible. So it is put out to responding officers and also to incident commanders for an event.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, it's a really interesting comment. Tom, I'm going to come over to you. Can you talk a little bit about the general idea of Knox box. Not everybody listening may actually know what that program is, but certainly something in the fire service generally has been doing for years and address a couple of those things that Steven just mentioned.Tom Billington:Yes. In the fire service, the Knox box program is a key vault that either holds keys, so you can enter a facility 24 hours a day, seven days a week or it may have some codes in it that you can access coded doors and it's usually accessible by a County fire departments and even law enforcement if they share that information. And so it's a good way to make access 24 hours a day, seven days a week to these facilities.Bill Godfrey:And Tom while you're talking about it, what are some of your perspectives from the fire and EMS side on the community partnerships or the outreaches? What are the things that when you were a fire chief concerns you about this that you'd want to meet and talk with folks about?Tom Billington:Well, most of your county managers as mine did know that the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) requires a local emergency planning council, which has, you're supposed to have politicians, responders, hospitals all involve meeting to discuss plans. As a County manager, I would want to know are we using the LEPC (Local Emergency Planning Council) to talk to these partners about an active shooter plan? How are we all responding together as a community or a county? And so if you have a LEPC (Local Emergency Planning Council), which you should, hopefully this is an issue or these issues are brought up here on a regular basis on that committee.Bill Godfrey:That's a really interesting perspective. The getting the LEPC involved, which then loops you in with a whole bunch of community partners. Don, you've got some experience with some fusion centers and I know that not everywhere in the country is necessarily covered by one, but there are a number of them that are pretty active. Is there a role here for the fusion centers? Do we need to work with them ahead of time? How does that fit?Don Tuten:Absolutely. So most places around the country do have fusion centers, either on the state level or local level and both. The local levels will talk with the state levels as well, but the local fusion centers, primary contacts are within each one of those agencies. For instance, I know locally where I'm at, our fusion center works directly with our critical infrastructure unit on some of the same things that our other guests have talked about and in conjunction with specifically keys and plans, we put critical information into our CAD system and also share it with our fusion center. For instance, some of the critical infrastructures within our areas may have products that they produce that have certain standoff distances if there is a fire or if there is an explosion or certain security concerns if somebody were to break into that facility. That information is shared with the fusion center who then works directly with our intelligence community, pushes that out in a pretty timely manner and in fact has the access also to push that out to our patrol officers while they're on scene or conducting an investigation at a specific location.Bill Godfrey:Don, speaking of pushing out information, I'm curious when we have some of these tragic events that have occurred frankly in the world, not just here in the US but where there's targeted attacks, whether it's terrorism or religious attacks. Do you reach out to the community partners and kind of brief them out, obviously, I know you can't go into specifics, but can you talk in general detail about what you would see as being best practices for sharing information or talking to those community partners?Don Tuten:Absolutely. I think each agency has to have that community element, whether it's run through the intelligence side of things through the investigative side of things or through community services within that agency to foster those relationships with your leaders of churches, synagogues, a mosque, as well as the school system as well as private schools. A lot of times private schools get overlooked because nobody wants to take that responsibility on. So that's one thing they have to be made a part of the team for lack of better terms. And it's incumbent upon the agencies that oversee those areas and provide services to them to engage in that two way communication in a timely manner, especially after a significant event in the world to foster those relationships. And then the most critical is maintain those relationships even in times when there's not a critical incidents going on around the country.Bill Godfrey:You know, it's really interesting you mentioned private schools, which some of you who work in the office with me or know this, but too long ago, my youngest daughter attends a private school and I had a conversation with the superintendent about their plans and their level of preparedness. Now granted I'm biased and obviously pay great attention to these things. Let's just say there was plenty of room for improvement which we went to work on right away. And to the school's credit, they did a 180 almost overnight and really implemented some, great cutting edge stuff. Is that a problem across all our communities? I mean, Steve or how are you guys up there in your area? Do you see that same problem where your private schools or your daycares and churches may not have the level of planning that the public schools do?Stephen Shaw:The biggest reason is because the state schools basically fall under state guidelines. State guidelines have requirements for SRO’s (School Resource Officer). They have requirements for where they keep information as far as floor plans and keys to the school. Private schools don't have those same guidelines and so we see a lot of variants. Some of them want to be prepared, they just don't have necessarily the tools to get there. So we see a lot of variance there. So it's up to individual agencies. It's up to the schools themselves to make sure that those people are educated, that they're current on best practices. And that's one of the things that we try to do with our community services people is try to reach out to these places and make sure that they're getting up to date on lock down procedures, what information they should have, do they know what to expect from responding officers in the event of an active shooter or any sort of critical incident. Making sure that they are aware of best practices surrounding how they do reunification, how they keep track of people. All that stuff comes into play and it's important and it does vary, especially for private schools.Tom Billington:And then Steve, if I could jump in. I know in my community there's a big issue with charter schools which received funding from the state but don't necessarily fall under the same rules and we found that some of the charter schools in our community do not have the same plans as the public schools, and so that's another group that needs to get together and talk about how they're going to work together.Bill Godfrey:Interesting stuff. Ron, I'm curious, I know I said this in the last one. Obviously you've got a lot of background with schools, but you've spent years running patrol. Who needs to go knock on the door of the school and make that initial contact? Is that something that we should be encouraging more at the line level trying to build those partnerships with these private schools, with these churches and talk to them about the issue? How do we get that done?Ron Otterbacher:Absolutely. Most of the public schools have SRO’s (School Resource Officer) or DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) officers, whatever there may be assigned to those schools, which is no problem. We can't negate the fact that the private schools may not have it and we've got to do community outreach. Maybe your community policing groups can go out there and talk to them. There are all kinds of groups that can do it. If for some reason the agency doesn't feel it's right for them to step in there, there's also organizations throughout the country that will help and those planning such ASIS International, which is American society for Industrial Security. They've got people that are trained and board certified. Actually they can go out there and help with those assessments too. So if the agency doesn't feel that they should be the ones stepping in, they should have community partners in those organizations. They can step in and also help in those areas.Bill Godfrey:Interesting stuff. And I know on the fire side we're having some really serious conversation at the national level about the fire safety codes and the alarms in schools and the fire alarms being triggered and some of those not necessarily being the greatest plans for some of these hostile events. And we're trying to work through those. And unfortunately that's going to take time and there aren't necessarily easy answers in that. Gentleman, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join me this afternoon to talk about this topic. And if you're listening, I hope that you will return and join us for our next in this podcast series, we'll be coming up to question nine where we're going to dive in a little bit more into schools, specifically both public and private, to talk about what is our comfort level with not only their violent event procedures on campus, but also their plans for offsite reunification. Hope you'll join us next time. Thank you.

MIDGE IS DEAD!! NOO! Now it’s time to double down on this Blackhood plot to avenge his death?? Sherif Keller, fueled by the slap of his life, is trying to solve this murder. Archie gets VERY triggered by this, so he goes back to Svenson’s and gets ambushed by a gang of blach hood’s lead by NICK ST CLAIR! Ron tries to pay his ranson, but Hiram (fianlly) admits that Archie’s not his son and won’t help him. So Ron takes things into her own hands! Meanwhile, Betty’s trying to find out who Chic REALLY is an, spoiler alert, he’s lying about being Charles! So they do the only rational thing, lock him in a basement and beat the shit out of him till he confesses! But then Betty gets a call, and it sounds a bit ~sweet~. Will Ron get Archie out from Nick’s clutches? Will Chic ever stay consistent in being either scared or tough? Will Hiram be able to repare the broken shambles of his relationship with Archie? Of course, never, and NOOO, BADDIE DADDIE IS DONE!! As always, follow us on: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/riverdalerd Twitter: https://twitter.com/RDriverdale Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/riverdalerudedudes/ SUPPORT US ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/RDriverdale ALSO, DOWNLOAD TVCO AND TUNE IN EVERY THURSDAY AT 8PM FOR SEASON 4 UPDATES! You can also email us at RiverdaleRudeDudes@gmail.com

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号:VOA英语每日一听Mari: Hi, I'm Mari. I'm here with Ron. Ron is from Hawaii. So Ron, what is so special about Hawaii?Ron: Well, Hawaii is my home, but to people not from Hawaii, I think Hawaii is famous for its nice weather, its warm all year ‘round, also it's known for its beaches. The beaches are very nice. And it's also known for its warm hospitality. The people are also very nice.Mari: So can you tell me more about the weather? It's always sunny? It never rains?Ron: It does rain, but often it rains and it's sunny at the same time, so we have a lot of rainbows. Hawaii is also famous for rainbows.Mari: That's nice. Can you tell me more about the beach?Ron: We have beaches on all shores of the island -- all our islands. There's many beaches to choose from. And often, some beaches have big waves, some beaches have small waves, and you can choose which beach to go to depending on whether you want to surf in big waves or you want to swim where there's no waves.Mari: Can you tell me maybe about the nature in Hawaii?Ron: We have forests, so there's lots of animals, like birds, and small animals like wallabies: we have Hawaiian wallabies and they live in the forest.Mari: What's a wallaby[ /ˈwɑː.lə.bi/,沙袋鼠]?Ron: Wallabies, they're those little mammals from Australia and they were introduced in Hawaii and now they're wild in Hawaii. They've become their own species.Mari: What do they look like?Ron: They look like little kangaroos I think.Mari: Interesting. Any other interesting animals in Hawaii?Ron: We have a lot of pigs, wild pigs. We like to go hunting for them and we like to eat them.Mari: Are there any animals that live in the sea?Ron: We have nice coral reefs, so there's lots of beautiful fish in our coral reefs and many people like to go snorkeling[/ˈsnɔːr.kəl.ɪŋ/,（用水下呼吸管）潛遊] to look at our reefs. We also have turtles and seals in Hawaii.Mari: Are there any whales?Ron: We do have whales during the months of March till February I believe. They come from Alaska and they come to Hawaii during those months and then they return to Alaska.Mari: Wow, there are a lot of animals that live in Hawaii. Sounds like a great place to visit.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号:VOA英语每日一听Mari: Hi, I'm Mari. I'm here with my friend Ron. Today, we're talking about food. So Ron, what's your favorite cuisine?Ron: My favorite cuisine has to be Hawaiian food. I grew up eating Hawaiian food so every special occasion we had Hawaiian food, so now when I eat Hawaiian food, it always brings back good memories.Mari: What exactly is Hawaiian food?Ron: Traditional Hawaiian food is usually cooked under the ground in a hole with hot rocks and it cooks for maybe six hours or seven hours and when you take it out, it's very salty because we use a lot of salt and it tastes really good ... usually meat ... usually pork and other vegetables like taro and potato.Mari: So then what's your favorite Hawaiian dish?Ron: My favorite Hawaiian dish is called Lao-Lao. It's pork or fish wrapped in leaves and put inside the underground oven and it's very salty and very good.Mari: So the flavor is just salt?Ron: The flavor is salt and also the leaf flavor that it's wrapped in.Mari: What's your favorite dessert or junk food?Ron: My favorite dessert has to be cake and ice-cream together. I love to eat cake and ice-cream together.Mari: What's your favorite ice-cream flavor?Ron: My favorite ice-cream flavor is strawberry, and I like to eat that with chocolate cake.Mari: Mm, sounds good. Do you like vegetables?Ron: Not so much. I don't like to eat vegetables but I can eat them if somebody cooks them for me.Mari: What's your favorite vegetable?Ron: My favorite vegetable ... I don't have a favorite vegetable but I can eat vegetables like asparagus, broccoli, carrots. Those types of things.Mari: Do you eat your vegetables raw ... like salad ... or do you prefer them cooked?Ron: I prefer them cooked.Mari: Thanks, Ron.Ron: You're welcome.

Ron Martin is a Texas Wine Specialist and a Texas Wine Lover! Ron didn't really start drinking wine until around 2010 when his doctor told him he needed to stop drinking beer. So Ron started his wine journey drinking Pinot Noirs, which is the lightest structure wine that he could tolerate at that time. Ron and his wife took a trip from in 2011 from Texas to Napa Valley and went to find the best Napa Pinot Noir. They enjoyed that trip so much they returned in 2012, however this time, Ron was introduced to Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah. This began his understanding and appreciation for different styles of wines. In 2014, Ron and his wife downsized from their dream house to something much more comfortable for two people. Since he and his wife had begun this wine journey, they were introduced to Kiepersol Estates, which is surrounded by the vineyards of Kiepersol. The idea of living next to a winery, vineyard, restaurant and the neighborhood at Kiepersol helped influence their decision to move here! The morning of this podcast, Ron mentions that he saw everyone pruning the vines, which gives a sense of being emerged into the process. Once they were living at Kiepersol, it helped open Ron's eyes to the quality and variety to the Texas Wine Industry! Ron talks about how he and his wife, find some of the best Texas wines or wineries through a website Texas Wine Lover by Jeff Cope. Where they highlight some of the best Texas-specific wines, wineries, and destinations. This website is where you can see an interactive map of some of the best wineries, any Texas Winer Lover blog posts made about them, that winery's website and hours. This helps Ron to plan for 3-4 wineries a day when he goes to visit, to maximize opportunity and enjoyment. Ron visits the 290 corridor often, where there are Texas wineries between Johnson City, Tx and Fredericksburg, Tx. Which is how Ron has found some of the best wines in Texas. The other cool community and tool that Texas Wine Lover created that Ron uses to find Texas Wine is the Facebook Group - "Texas Wine Lover Website", which is meant for any Texan who loves wine can join! This group is dedicated sharing any great wine your enjoying or ask questions that don't necessarily have to be Texas-specific. This provides a lot of education as people share pictures of videos of their wine. This is how Ron and his wife have found out about a lot of wines or wineries that they didn't' even know existed. Some of the people in the group are well connected or know exactly who you need to talk to, in order to have the best experience while visiting some wineries. In many cases, because of people in the group giving suggestions to Ron and are connected to the winemakers, Ron has shown up to wineries with the winery staff is anticipating his arrival. These experiences are unlike anything else out there!

Can a tomato change a child’s life? “Yes,” says artist and designer Ron Finley, also known as the Gangsta Gardener. Ron planted a curbside garden in the strip of soil in front of his house in LA. The city tried to shut it down. So Ron accidentally started a revolution.

Can a tomato change a child’s life? “Yes,” says artist and designer Ron Finley, also known as the Gangsta Gardener. Ron planted a curbside garden in the strip of soil in front of his house in LA. The city tried to shut it down. So Ron accidentally started a revolution.

TRANSCIPTSpeaker 1:Method to the madness is next. Speaker 2:You are listening to method to the madness, a biweekly public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators I have in the studio with me today, [00:00:30] Ben Simon, the CEO and cofounder of imperfect and Evan Hayslett, they're ugly produce enthusiast. You guys are solving a really important problem and that is food waste. Speaker 3:What is imperfect? Imperfect is America's first ugly produce brand. So ugly produce is all that food that doesn't meet the strict cosmetic standards of grocery beauty and supermarkets won't take it. So it ends up in the landfill and that's about 20% of all produce that's grown in the country on farms, which amounts [00:01:00] to about 6 billion pounds of produce annually. That just goes into trillions of dollars in just waste. So the National Resource Defense Council actually estimated that all sources of waste in the country amount to about $165 billion. Wow. Still enormous though, and it's just wasted resources going right down the drain. I want to know how you got to this story and I understand that there were three main founders, you and Ben Chesler were in school together. Speaker 4:Yeah. So I was at [inaudible], I was a student at University of Maryland and uh, Ben Chesser just [00:01:30] graduated from Brown University. So throughout the last four years together we work together on a co-founding this really cool nonprofit called food recovery network. What was that about? Yeah, so it was also in the food waste space and food recovery network is a, a student movement at 150 colleges across the country that basically start this movement together. Yeah. With us and a few other friends at different colleges around the country started it. We noticed there was a tremendous amount of food going to waste from our campus dining halls every night. [00:02:00] Basically the surplus food that the dining halls had prepared, uh, but not sold that night. So we basically developed partnerships with the dining services to go in there, collect that food and donate it to local homeless shelters and started at University of Maryland and Brown University. Speaker 4:And, uh, just really grew really quickly as, as word spread to other students at other colleges. Do you have any problems with that? Just taking food from one place to another? What were the legal challenges or were there any, you know, it's, it's [00:02:30] surprisingly easy and there's a lot of misconceptions around the legal challenges. So if you talk to the average restaurant owner or dining a dining hall manager or grocery store manager and ask them, can you donate their extra food? Typically you'll get an answer. That's, you know, no, unfortunately we have to throw this away because there are, you know, legal issues, we'd basically get sued. I have heard that too. Yeah. You know, and we meet all the people all the time. Um, it's a very common misconception. [00:03:00] And so there's actually a law that was passed in 1996 called the bill Emerson Good Samaritan food donation act. Speaker 4:And as a federal law protects people in all 50 states, any food donors who want to donate their surplus food to people in need in their community are protected under the law, every community in the United States. Absolutely. So you had this great idea, it was obviously a success. How did you measure whether or not it was a success? So we measured it in terms of, you know, how many, uh, pounds [00:03:30] of food we are donating and how many meals that amounted to a number one. That was first and foremost. And so we were donating just a ton of food right away. I mean, we're done any amount, 150 or even 200 pounds of food every single night from just one dining hall at University of Maryland. So very quickly, you know, in our very first semester did about 15,000 pounds of food and all of it went to people in need. Speaker 4:And so, you know, again, just word spread. And today actually food recovery network is right about to reach [00:04:00] a monumental milestone, which is about a million pounds of food donated. And our first full universities again are in this network today. 150 for university of California Berkeley. Yes it is. One of them is the entire UC system in this network. You know, I don't think the entire system is, so if people are interested in uh, applying to start a chapter on their campus, they can just go to food recovery network.org and apply. Okay. So that's still going strong. But you've taken it to this next level, what happened then? [00:04:30] Yeah, so a few years ago at, at food recovery network, uh, you know, we really started asking the question, okay, if we were students and we were just able to, you know, really reach this scale and if there was really this much food going to waste in college dining hall settings, where else was food going to waste? Speaker 4:And where were the big opportunities in America to take food that really otherwise would go to waste and develop a market for that and redirect that food towards going to people instead. And so we [00:05:00] started talking to different advisors and some of the leading authors and experts around food waste in America to try to get a better sense of the issue. And it turned out farms are actually the number one place in America where food is going to waste. And you know, as I think I'm in my, I mentioned, so it was about 20% of all produce in the country is going to waste according to the NRDC. And so, you know, the number one reason is, is these cosmetic issues. And so when we heard about that, and uh, actually last December [00:05:30] I came out here to California and did a tour throughout the central valley, uh, with Ron Clark who then became my cofounder for imperfect. Speaker 4:And Ron basically introduced me to all these growers and I, I witnessed all of these packing houses throughout central valley where they would literally be sorting a million pounds of an item in one day and 15% of that would just be a byproduct. That's what they call this by-product. It goes to the landfill. Why isn't it going to feed or other animals, farm animals. Some [00:06:00] of it is, uh, so the, the, uh, 20% statistic is supposed to speak to what is going to landfills, compost and animal feed. So basically not going toward human consumption. And so, you know, a lot of this product basically is just re rejected from the grocery store because of these cosmetic challenges. I think it's fine that the animals and the compost, that part works right. I mean that's part of our whole system. But what percentage of that actually goes [00:06:30] to the landfill of that 20% you know, I couldn't give you an exact percentage. Speaker 4:And, and that's one of the challenges within food waste is that we need more data and more research on that methane and these landfills does create, yeah, creates methane food waste is one of the biggest emitters of methane in the country. But to rewind for just a second, different people have different takes on this, but while compost is definitely better than the landfill, there's sort of a hierarchy that the EPA has put out. It's called the food recovery hierarchy, [00:07:00] which basically draws these sort of different tiers of where food waste can be redirected. So basically compost is better than landfill. Animal feed is better than compost, you know, and then human consumption is better than than animal feed of course. And you know, first and foremost, reducing food waste in the first place is the best thing we can do. So I want to talk a little bit about Ron Clark because he's very well known in this area of reducing waste and repositioning food. Speaker 4:He does this farm [00:07:30] to family program here in California. Yeah, Rob Tom played a big role in helping to develop that. And that's part of the food bank system, is it not? That's correct. So what does he do for you guys now? So Ron has transitioned out of the California Association of food banks of the last few years. He played a major role over the last 15 years with the food banks to develop farm to family. And so that's about 140 million pounds per year of this product, not going away. It's getting redirected towards the food banks. [00:08:00] And so throughout that time, Ron was feeling really awesome about being able to redirect some of this towards the food banks, but it was also scratching his head a little bit because you know, for every one pound he was able to redirect. There's about 20 more still going to waste just in the state of California. Speaker 4:Did he seek you out or did you find him? It was really serendipitous actually, and it was the connection happened right here on UC Berkeley's campus last October. There was a major food waste event. It was called the zero food waste forum. So we're literally just actually sitting at [00:08:30] a picnic table and I was talking to one of our advisors for food recovery network about how we were sort of starting to experiment with this idea of selling produce that otherwise would be wasted. And it was gaining traction in the DC area, which is where I'm from. And wondering, you know, how we can sort of tap into better supply sources. And our advisor, who's Tristram Stuart, he gave a Ted talk on food based stuff like that is they're like, oh, that's your challenge. You got to talk to Rod. And I was like, who's Rod? And he's like, he's the guy with the, uh, the orange, you know, San Francisco [00:09:00] giants sweatshirt. He's sitting twos, two seats down from me at this picnic table. Let me introduce you to Ben, and so that's really how it happened. That's great. Yeah, and so he became really entrenched in, he's still with you guys, right? And he's with us full time. Yeah. Speaker 5:Let's listen to a short segment. Tristram Stewart's Ted talk, but when we're talking about food being thrown away, we're not talking about rotten stuff. We're not talking about stuff that's beyond the pale. We're talking about good fresh [00:09:30] food that is being wasted on a colossal scale. The fact is we have an enormous buffer in rich countries between ourselves and hunger, and when we chop down for us as we are every day to grow more and more food, when we extract water from depleting water reserves, when we emit fossil fuel emissions in the quest to grow more and more food, and then we would throw away so much of it, we have to think about what we can start saving. When you start going up the supply chain, you find where the real food waste [00:10:00] is happening on a Gargantuan scale. Go one step up and you get to farmers who throw away sometimes a third or even more of their harvest because of cosmetic standards. Speaker 5:This farmer, for example, has invested 16,000 pounds in growing spinach, not one leaf of which he harvested because there was a little bit of grass growing in amongst it. Potatoes that are cosmetically imperfect or going for pigs, parsnips that are too small for supermarket specifications. Tomatoes in tenor reef, oranges in Florida, bananas in [00:10:30] Ecuador where overs did last year, all being discarded. This is one day's waste from one banana plantation in Ecuador, all being discarded, perfectly edible because of the wrong shape or size. If we do that to fruit and vegetables, you bet we can do it to animals, to liver, lungs, heads, tails, kidneys, testicles. All of these things which are traditional, delicious and nutritious parts of our gastronomy go to waste fish. 40 to 60% of European fish [00:11:00] are discarded at sea. They don't even get landed if we regard it as socially unacceptable to waste food on a colossal scale. If we make a noise about it, tell corporations about it. Tell governments we want CNN food waste. We do have the power to bring about that change for the sake of the planet we live on for the sake of our children, for the sake of all the other organisms that share our planet with us. We are terrestrial animal and we depend on our land for food at the moment we are trashing our land to grow food that they want it. Speaker 6:Okay. Speaker 4:[00:11:30] Can you talk a little bit about the byproducts of food waste? You know, we're using a lot of water. There's a lot of fertilizer that goes into this food and then it's wasted. And then lastly, um, the fuel that it takes to even do these crops Speaker 1:and then to throw them away, isn't that enough economic incentive to, to do this? Speaker 3:[00:12:00] Oh yeah, absolutely. Again, you know, some, I think has been mentioned, it's, it is really difficult. There's not enough data around this issue, but we do have some really hard facts about food waste contributing to 33 million tons of landfill waste and growing a lot about 11 trillion gallons of water waste. And when you think about California as the major producer of produce in the country and the drought that we're going through, and you hear about all these really important things you can do in your home domestically in your business to [00:12:30] conserve water. But one of the biggest things that's happening is there's all this food wasted on the farm that all that water isn't going to productive use. And again, as I said, I'm Dana Gunders from the NRDC producing this awesome report on food waste, about $165 billion in wasted resources. And then I think as we mentioned, methane emissions again, so food when it decomposes anaerobically in the landfill, produces about 18% of all methane emissions in the u s so it, yeah, it's this enormous, enormous environmental resource, economic impact. Speaker 2:[00:13:00] If you're just tuning in, you're listening to method to the madness. A biweekly public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators, 20% of produce grown in America is rejected from grocery stores because it is ugly. Imperfect allows consumers to get a chance to buy this produce at a discount. And farmers make extra revenue. Today [00:13:30] on the program I have Ben Simon, CEO and Co, founder of imperfect and Eben Hayslett, imperfect, ugly produce enthusiast. Speaker 1:How are you introducing this idea to the consumer market? Speaker 3:What we're doing in a, in a number of ways. So one big way is just through events. We're trying to get involved in as many kinds of food related waste environmental [00:14:00] events as possible. That way we meet the leaders in the community, we meet big movers and people who would be champions of this idea. Um, we know that most people find out about imperfect through friends. So it's really good to meet lots of people at people who are, is very excited about it. We're also trying to go directly to the consumer. We're just trying to get out there and talk to people. And you're also offering boxes to the consumer rate, like a CSA kind of thing. Right. So that's exactly what we do. That's the majority of our offering is um, these boxes that we deliver right to your home. So you can order weekly, biweekly, [00:14:30] and you get this box of we'll do it on the campus here. I understand. Yeah. We've got partnerships with about six of the student collapse on campus and that's been really fun. The students are loving it. You know, students have this really great vibe and energy and they're really excited about the environmental impact, but also obviously very excited about the affordability. Right. So how much cheaper is it than a regular, Speaker 3:it's significantly cheaper than your regular CSA. It's probably about 20% of like a farmer's market CSA. But compared to the grocery store, [00:15:00] I'd say it's about 30 to 50% off usually. So if there's students, you know, we talked to students all the time of saying, oh my goodness, I just came from Safeway and you're telling me that you're selling this same stuff for half the price. It's usually about a dollar. Speaker 4:And they just brought a box into our studio and I'll tell you it's, it's beautiful. The, the, the produce looks like something you put in the centerpiece and also you buy this stuff in the supermarket and then you wait for it to ripen. This stuff is ripe, it's beautiful, ugliest, beautiful, ugly as beautiful. And that's part of the message, [00:15:30] this empowerment message of kind of reclaiming imperfection. And that's why we call the company in perfect as, because we're all imperfect and you know, it's just so ridiculous that we have these standards of beauty in all areas of our life. And it's like wow, now even food, even in the grocery store, if everything looks so perfect, I tend to just keep walking. I'm not [inaudible] a little bit, it looks fake. Or the apples, they all look the same. They taste the same. It's boring, you know? Speaker 4:[00:16:00] And when they work so hard to, you know, produce different technologies and stuff like that to keep all of the produce basically looking the same and they're, they're really growing produce to look a certain way. Often it's tasteless. And we hear that a lot from our customers. A lot of the customers that have come to imperfect have come to us because they're really tired of that aspect of the food system. Now I understand you have a deal, I don't know if it's complete yet with Rayley's the supermarket chain. [00:16:30] Yeah, absolutely. So, so Evan, we'll talk exciting. Yeah, we're really excited about that. And so that's, you know, working with 10 of their stores in the Sacramento area. Uh, it's been going on since July. Uh, and so it's really kind of the first major grocery store chain in America selling ugly produce. And so know they do it in France. Speaker 4:They do do it. They do it in France. Yeah. With Inter Marshay. Um, there's, there's several chains in France, I believe. There's a couple in Canada, a couple in Australia, South Africa, Germany, the UK. So [00:17:00] really all over the world. Ugly has been named kind of like one of the top five trends in the food system. Um, so we're really, you sort of noticed what's going on across the world and are trying to bring this trend to America. Okay. So you've got it in Railey's, you deliver boxes, you tried to get the word out by taking part in speaking events. What other challenges have you come up against? Just got four months old. Yeah, we just said on into a warehouse in Emeryville. One of the challenges that we often [00:17:30] get is kind of a need to educate people around it and people wonder, okay, why imperfect? Speaker 4:You know, why is it and perfect, why does it, why does it shape that way? And actually we get the question often. Like for example, we're selling persimmons. I'm not sure if that was in the box, but did it look really wonky and crazy? I liked it. Yeah. So, but, but obviously not the same shape that you'd see in a grocery store. Right. So, you know, we have persimmons that look like kind of like a stool on a second and that not that [00:18:00] one of them had a nose. Yeah. It has like those or it has like three big legs kind of coming off of it. Um, and so basically, you know, people see that sometimes and they wonder, Oh, is it look that way? Because it's like GMO crazy or like, you know, it's mutated and stuff like that. Um, and often it's, it's actually exactly the opposite. Are you going out to schools and educating young people? Like elementary schools and, Speaker 3:yeah. Yeah. We're, we're, we are definitely trying to connect with elementary schools, connect with kind of parent teacher organizations. [00:18:30] There's a lot of farmers markets at elementary schools throughout the week in this area. And so we've connected with some of the leaders of this farmer's markets, especially another amazing food organization in general called Food Corp. They have volunteers all over the country in elementary schools educating around food. And so we're connecting with them and I would think they would connect to the ugly. Exactly. Yeah. Static Speaker 4:business majors in college or something completely different. So I was a, a government and politics major actually. I kind of bounced around, ended up with that for me [00:19:00] in college. I kind of went into it knowing that I wanted to do something to change the world because there are so many huge challenges right now to society. And so it's kind of what I ended up with. What was your [inaudible] Speaker 3:major? Um, I double majored in Econ and environmental studies. So not business, but it's relevant and it's, it was a, it was a very fun and exciting major. Yeah, but you're both from the east coast. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And you're living here now. Speaker 4:Happy to be out here. Oh, you love it out here. And wanting to live here for a long time. You did an Indiegogo [00:19:30] campaign for this warehouse. That's right. How long did it take you to raise the funds? I think we, I think there was a 30 day campaign. That's short. It was short. Yeah, it was definitely exciting. You know, in the end we surpassed our goal and raised 38,000 from donations from friends and family. So yeah, it was great. So what are your plans for the future? Do you feel like you need to roll out more warehouses or are you just going to sit with this and we're, we're good with this way house for now it's, it's [00:20:00] 5,000 square feet. So it's room to grow. It's an Emeryville right in the heart of the warehouse district 63rd and Hollis, feel free to pay us a visit. Speaker 4:Anybody. Right? Kind of near cliff bar and Pixar and all those folks now it feels great. There's, there's plenty of room to grow where one of our next things we're doing, we're installing like a walk-in fridge. So, you know, it's gonna give us a lot of room to grow in terms of, you know, how much produce we can distribute each week. Um, since we're significantly had a schedule [00:20:30] in terms of how many customers we thought we'd have, cause there are a lot of CSS in this area. I mean, yeah, a lot of delivery, our years organic produce ever. We're working on that. So our sustainable farms and we're working on developing an organic line. We've heard that from a ton of people. Obviously walking around Berkeley. Yeah. Um, get the question a lot. So we've been developing an organic waitlist. I got a 102 hundred people or something on that. Speaker 4:And so we're, we're hoping to roll that out and early 2016 [00:21:00] and right now we, you know, there's always a couple items in the bunks that are organic depending on who we're switching from at the time. But yeah, it'll be good to get that all organic. Organic is the only issue. I mean, local sustainable farms who maybe haven't met all of the criteria yet. It's good stuff. Still. I understand you distribute to some areas of the Oakland food desert, the so-called food desert. How do you do that? Are you working with Rama Matti at People's community grocery? We've touched base with Rama. [00:21:30] My Co founder, Ben Chester sat out with him a few months ago and I think we're still still sort of figuring out the best way to partner together. Yeah. We're, we're looking for any type of partnership, especially to reach more folks in food desert neighborhoods within different parts of Oakland. Speaker 4:You know, that's a big part of our mission. And so we actually provide a reduced cost box each week. Our normal boxes already pretty reduced at, at just $12 a week for 12 pounds of produce. Uh, but we an [00:22:00] even further reduced costs for just $8 a week. And what is your criteria for that? Even more reduced. So we use the same government criteria for snap benefits when people register@imperfectproduce.com for for our produce, they can just sort of select that and put their information in. How do you see your impact? Let's go out five years time. Where do you see your organization? Where do you want to see it? Absolutely. Yeah. So, so imperfect has a huge vision for what we [00:22:30] can do to reduce food waste. So, you know, one of the biggest issues that makes up food waste is the fact that we are currently wasting about 6 billion pounds of fresh produce every single year because it doesn't meet grocery stores, cosmetic standards. Speaker 4:So you know, we are trying to build a sustainable and scalable business model around reducing this food waste and getting as much as possible of this 6 billion pounds of perfectly good product to market. So, you know, we're doing that through retail, [00:23:00] through our produce delivery subscription here in the bay. And so we want to expand both of those. So we're continually growing each week by about 50 or a hundred customers in terms of our produce delivery subscription here in Berkeley and Oakland. And so we want to continue to scale that up. We're trying to be at about a 2,500 or 3000 customers in a, in the bay by next summer. Um, and in terms of retail, we're, we're working on some really major partnerships. Actually. We've got a few really interesting things coming up. We're working on three [00:23:30] pound grab and go bags for mandarins that are not quite cute enough to be, let's just say QT brand or any other brand, um, hinder ends. And so they're a little bit too big. They've got some scarring on them, uh, but they taste, so we're basically working with a few major retailers on, on getting that and, and, and now it'd be great because with that we'd actually be able to get the parties out to consumers in a variety of different states. I'm doing hopefully several truckloads of the produce [00:24:00] every single month. It sounds like you're really growing. Speaker 3:Did you have a defining moment in your life that set you on this path? Speaker 4:I had one experience personally when I was, um, in high school, uh, my dad actually ended up taking in this guy for a couple of years who, uh, really otherwise would've been homeless. Um, this is in the DC area and it was just some guy that he met playing tennis, uh, at a public court, you know, had played, played with him maybe three times. And uh, the [00:24:30] guy had kind of been bouncing around on different couches and sort of asked the question in my dad, you know, hey Vic, is there any way I could stay with you? I'm in this situation. It was supposed to be for a week or two, ended up being two years. And uh, you know, the guy really ended up sort of being part of our family. And so I think, you know, from, from that perspective that kind of allowed me to gain insights in terms of like some of the struggles that he was going through. He had a job, he worked 40 hours a week. It was a night shift at a grocery [00:25:00] store, stocking shelves, but making minimum wage as a man who's about 50 years old. Um, and having, not having healthcare, having high costs, you know, just different things, different challenges of, um, America's working poor. How about you? Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't even know if there's really one defining moment. I think, you know, if I look back, food has really always been kind of the centerpiece of my life. And I think I took that for granted. I was lucky enough to have parents who made dinner every night and we would sit down and it [00:25:30] was kind of that, that old style traditional sit down as a family and have a dinner. Um, and that's kind of a privilege these days. And I, when I, when I realized that I think later in high school and into college, and I began to realize kind of all the injustice and it's just so hard to find access to fresh produce, fresh, affordable produce for most, for a lot of people in this country. And so I was moved by Ben's work with food recovery network. Um, there's so many awesome nonprofits doing work in this space, really, really inspirational [00:26:00] authors and activists around the country. Speaker 3:And I, for me, it's really, it's really about food being the centerpiece of community and health and vitality and wellbeing. And to be able to be a part of a movement that makes that more accessible to everyone is amazing. Cause it breaks my heart that that's not the case. Yeah. How would our listeners get ahold of you if they're interested in knowing more about your company, maybe working for your company? Oh yes. So you can go to www.imperfectproduce.com. [00:26:30] You can find all the information there. We're actually about to roll out a new and improved and awesome, exciting website so you can look forward to that. And you can also feel free to reach out. I'm Evan. This has been heavier on the right. Yeah. They can reach you through. Yeah. Yes. So you can, um, and you can, when you go online and you sign up, you can get your first box free. Actually, if you use the coupon code cal ex, that's k a l. X. So for your first recurring box you can get, get it free, become a part of the imperfect family. Speaker 2:I told both Ben and Evan [00:27:00] that they can drop by their food here anytime of day 24 seven because it will go instantly. Believe me, you guys are both pretty young, but you seem pretty wise for your age. What would you tell other entrepreneurs or hopeful entrepreneurs, something maybe you learned in this process and some wisdom to pass along to other entrepreneurs who are thinking about an idea maybe, you know, trying to solve a problem like you have. Speaker 4:So you know, [00:27:30] one thing, this is just straight forward, but you know, I, I think it can be easy to sort of over intellectualize, making a difference. And, and often it's, you just kinda need to go out and get started. And I, I think that I personally didn't get it right the first time or the second time. I think, you know, I had sort of experimented with a lot of different projects. Some of them were more successful than others before eventually stumbling upon a few projects that were successful. So [00:28:00] I think it's important to, you know, just there's so many problems in the world, so many social issues. And you know, I talked to a lot of young people today and they feel it. They know that there's all these issues out there. So I think there can be a gap though sometimes between seeing the issues and getting started. And I just really encourage everybody to take that leap. Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I would just add that I think youth have a lot of power. I think more power than they, than they realize. And we have a lot of great ideas [00:28:30] were an incredibly across the country. I'm just percentages, incredibly kind of forward thinking, progressive body of people who want to see the world become a better place. And I think that you can get a lot of amazing advice and wisdom from mentors and your professors and your teachers and your parents, but you always have to take it with a grain of salt. The kind of limitations that they may tell you in terms of what's possible, because everyone's going to give you advice that works for them and that's great. But you take what you can from that. And then remember, just like Ben [00:29:00] said, get out there. You can start having a difference. Speaker 3:Bannon, the bands as we call them, venture has an event. Simon, they started food recovery network when they were in college. This is now the largest student run food waste movement in the country. It's student led, student volunteers get in touch with their administration, they build the movement, they donate all the food. These are students doing this. And it's an enormous movement. And so I would just say, get inspired, get in touch with other students, realize the power that you have read up, get educated on an issue and then go out there and do something. Cause [00:29:30] you can't. Speaker 2:I want to thank you both for being on the program. Evan Hayzlett and Ben Simon. I hope you can come back again some time and um, bring more food and time. Thank so much. Speaker 6:Yeah, you've been listening to method to the madness. We'll be back in two weeks. You can find all [00:30:00] the podcasts on iTunes university. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Toody Maher, founder of Pogo Park, discusses her project to help Richmond’s tough Iron Triangle neighborhood by redesigning a park and creating a safe area to foster free play for the neighborhood’s childrenTRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:You're listening to KLX Berkeley 90.7 FM, university of California and listener supported radio. And this is method to the madness. I show coming at you from the Public Affairs Department here on Calex that is dedicated to celebrating the innovative spirit of the bay area. I'm your host [inaudible] and today we are lucky to have 2d Mara with us. Hi Judy. Hello Ali. Uh, and today is the founder of pogo parks coming out of Richmond, California. So to the, um, welcome to the show. Thank you. And um, the first question I always ask [00:00:30] entrepreneurs like yourself is, give me the problem statement. You know, entrepreneurs are all about solving problems. What problem are you trying to solve? Speaker 2:Probably is all about children in play. I mean to, um, in order for children to be happy, they ha, oh, in order for children to be healthy, they have to play. And um, so I go into so many of these city parks and they're just so boring and so dull and homogenous and they all look the exact same. And when you really [00:01:00] break it down, there's very few opportunities for children to actually play in, in, in wild ways, which, which is how kids need to be playing. So kinda my first thought was just play leads to health. Speaker 1:[inaudible] define wild way. It's an interesting term. You just use. What's, what's wild? Speaker 2:Well, always, I mean the, I think back into my own childhood, you know, I think that if you look at every entrepreneur, anyone who's done well or has been successful creatively, [00:01:30] they've started a company, they've created a product, they've made a movie. If you look deep into their childhood, they all had rich play ex experiences. So for me, um, I mean I started a s uh, um, uh, block newspaper. I, um, created a, um, play inside our garage and sold the tickets to people in the neighborhood. Um, we, we, we built forts in dark rooms and um, [00:02:00] you know, all sorts of things. So, um, rich play experience, kind of this wild play where you can, um, build whatever comes in to your mind, set up games. I mean with no adults to come in and tell you what to do and not do. Um, yeah, that's wild play. Speaker 1:Okay. Thanks for that definition. Um, and so that's a really, you know, um, exciting and noble cause and I believe you went to cal, right? Yeah, Speaker 2:I did 1978 [00:02:30] to 83 and I took one year off and I lived in Switzerland, but I also actually was a part of the UC Berkeley, the volleyball team. So I was the first wave of scholarship athletes. So I like saying that I got into Berkeley, not because of my brains, but my Bronx. Speaker 1:Was that, is that all because of the title nine stuff? Correct. Speaker 2:So first wave of, um, scholarship athletes at cau. Speaker 1:Wow. Okay. So, um, so you were a volleyball player [00:03:00] was, um, and then you graduated, you probably didn't graduate with the intent to go and, um, champion wild play. So give us a little bit about your background and your story and how you arrived at this kind of problem you wanted to solve. Yeah. Speaker 2:Um, so I graduated in 1983 and the funniest thing is I had never first second thought what I was gonna do next. I never even thought about a career. And suddenly that I was out and I had no clue. Like, now I've got to earn money and what am I going to do? [00:03:30] So I knew somebody who owned a bond firm in La and my job was sitting in this back room with absolutely no windows with four men who smoked. And my job was to type up the transfers on bonds. If someone would buy a bond from the bank that I would actually type up the transfer slip. And, um, so, uh, they made me wear nylons. My nickname is 2d, but my given name is Susan. But I've never been called Susan my entire life. [00:04:00] They insisted they put a plaque on my desk saying Susan. Speaker 2:So they took away my name. They may be wearing nylons. I was stuck in a room with four men smoking. And I just, um, so it turned out that I had played volleyball in Switzerland and one of my, uh, teammates cousin was the inventor of the swatch watch in Switzerland. So I just thought, wow, man, I mean, um, could I import the swatches into the United States? So you'd seen them before they'd come. And so I had seen them when they had [00:04:30] just come out in Switzerland. They hadn't come to the United States yet. So what I would do is I'd go to the bond from each day, from eight til five. I had my hour lunch, then I'd get on a bus and go to the, um, I'd go to the, uh, business library at UCLA and started to look up how to import, export, how to start your company, what is cashflow, what's a balance sheet. And then I contacted swatch and just happened to get the head guy who, uh, who asked [00:05:00] me to do a business plan. And I said, sure, I'll do one. Then I went straight to the UCLA Library to figure out what is a business plan. And I wrote it. So when I did the presentation that he'd said, you know, your, your plan is, is bold, but, um, I like your Chutzpah. And he gave me the starting capital to, to found swatch watch in the 11 western states. Speaker 1:Wow. So, um, you're the reason when I was [00:05:30] in school, like I was in school in the 80s that everybody had swatches in California. Is that right? Yeah. So that, that was my main thing is just getting sweat and swatch was so creative and, and uh, so for our younger listeners who maybe don't know what, what was watching, it was a huge craze in that time. What was it? W I made it so cool Speaker 2:was that, um, they took a Rolex watch, which was one of the, you know, the, the greatest, the watches in the world. And they took, they figured out how to slim the amount of part parts down by a third [00:06:00] and then have a robot make the entire thing. So they were very cheap, inexpensive wrist watches from Switzerland for $30 at retail. And then they got all these incredible artists to come and make them really a design. Um, statement and this, um, kind of formula of just inexpensive, high quality, but high design just took off and swatch became a phenomenon. Like we started with zero in sales in 1983 [00:06:30] and then, uh, and then in our region in 1986 that the watch sales were 30 million. Wow. In three years, three years since swatches became a phenomenal 30 million in $86. It's a lot more right now. So part of it, and then one of our most, uh, the most successful product at swatch was the clear swatch watch. Speaker 2:Um, so what I did was I started another company called fun products and we made the world's first clear [00:07:00] telephone with lights. So, um, that was a fortune magazine's product of the year in 1990 and then in 1990 then I was also, um, awarded inc magazine, um, entrepreneur of the year. So kind of my thing was taking an idea and making it happen. So anything that you can think of, Oh, you know, why don't we make it clear telephone? Why don't we sell these watches all over California? Just give me idea. And I can make it happen. So that's kind of my specialty. But my goal was always [00:07:30] like, I'm going to get one day, I'm going to get so rich. And as soon as I get rich, I'm going to open a city park. Cause the city parks have always been my passion. Just like there's so much good can come from great city parks. Speaker 2:I mean, it's a watering hole for the entire community. You know, it's where everyone, the one thing that everyone loves is to just go places and sit and watch other people. You know, that's kind of like some sort of a town square and you can go and get, um, food [00:08:00] and your children can play and you, you don't know what neighbors that you're, you're gonna see. And, um, you know, just, uh, so I'd always wanted to, you know, that I've kind of like, uh, yeah, really excited to Kinda create these public spaces that are just incredibly vibrant. Speaker 1:Speaking with a Tutee Mar, the founder of pogo parks out of Richmond, California here on method to the madness on k a l x Berkeley 90.7 FM. I'm your host deleon is, are. So that's a good transition [00:08:30] to talk about, you know, you went on this entrepreneurial adventure, I'm assuming you didn't have to wear nylons anymore and you could use your name that you wanted to use. Correct. So, um, you start out on this path, you learned that you had the power to do whatever you wanted, you built companies, sold a bunch of products, and then somehow you ended up in Richmond and you started to actually execute on your passion of, you know, helping parks be something Speaker 2:that are the vibe part of a vibrant community. So take us through that story [00:09:00] of how did you transition from this kind of, you know, very entrepreneurial, but a more, um, private company focused, uh, type of efforts to what you're doing now? Yes. So, uh, when it turned out in 1987 that I wasn't getting rich, uh, my partner just said, look, you know, rather than waiting to get rich to do your part, just do it. You know, I never even thought about that and just doing it. So I was living in Richmond and I just started going to every single park in Richmond. [00:09:30] I, I w that Richmond has 56 parks and I went to all of them and probably the ones that I was most taken with are eight little small pocket parks that the city calls play lots and uh, two of the best play lots. Speaker 2:It was one Salono play lot right by my house. Then I fell in love with. And the second one was elm play a lot, which is a little pocket part lose in the middle of the iron triangle neighborhood in Richmond that's known throughout the Bay of just being [00:10:00] a really challenged, violent high poverty, um, inner city neighborhood. And um, so I kind of, uh, I just, um, started doing a lot of research and I looked at all like the greatest parks around the world. Like, what made them work, what were parks used for? What are the, who are the leading thinkers on parks, what are the history of parks and basically took all the best ideas from, from, from around the world and then applied it to creating this model [00:10:30] in Richmond. I'm calling Pogo Park, you know, where'd you come up with the name? Let's suppose apart from, well we've tried, I mean I'm from the business world. Speaker 2:Everything's branding, you know, so we got brand all things. So what is the name of this different kind of place space? You know, we wanted to have something that wasn't, if people were speaking English or Spanish or Vietnamese that everyone could kind of say it. It wasn't like a boy or a girl. So we were just, you know, again, sitting around one night and my partner Julie was thinking like play [00:11:00] opportunities, something po and then it just suddenly come up. Pogo. So it's a good little name, Pogo Park. It's pretty catchy. Yeah. Yeah. And you guys just were recognized by Google. That's actually how I found you about um, this, uh, grand bearer giving. And you got, I think you guys, we got a part of the top tag. Yes. So, um, of a thousand nonprofits that applied that they selected 10 finalists and the 10 finalists all got 250,000 and then ongoing [00:11:30] technical support from Google. Speaker 2:That's great. So branding's working people are finding you guys and recognizing you. That's so exciting. So, um, today I wanted to kind of, I was looking on your website and there's some elements of, of parks, uh, and it's probably from your research and now your experience and how many parks have you at this point kind of touched and, oh, just like hundreds. I mean now, once he's, I mean now all I do is when I go around, I look at parks I or look at any kind [00:12:00] of spaces that could be children's play spaces, airports, hospitals. I mean, so our thing is just creating like a different kind of play space that is really focused on letting children experience different kinds of play. There's creative play, there's physical play, linguistic play, social, emotional play. Um, so how do we create these spaces that give children the most wide variety of play opportunities? Speaker 1:Okay. So, um, [00:12:30] you're, you're always looking for the opportunities to create these play spaces. And it sounds like you've now in your research and your experience, gotten some best practices that you've published. And I'd like to kind of talk about some of these. I think there's some interesting insights here. You have. So one of them is that you use community designers and builders, which I think is really interesting because there's other models out there for doing in a neighborhood beautification. But a lot of times it's bringing a bunch of outside people in. Right. So tell me a little bit of how [00:13:00] you came to that principle of Pogo. Speaker 2:Yeah, probably if I was operating in a different, in a high income neighborhood, I would have a t a a different approach like that way, like good design can be brought in from people from, from the outside. And the people who are living there have such respect for quality that they're not gonna trash it. But in inner city neighborhoods, the only way is to build from the inside out. I mean you got to engage people who live right there. So they are a part of the whole [00:13:30] transformation of the neighborhood. And the transformation of these city parks is the vehicle for the transformation of the neighborhood. Um, so that is what I realized when my little shit blew into elm play lot, uh, in the iron triangle, I had no intention of starting to work out in a neighborhood like this is just fate had it. I got on my ship and the ship started sailing and I landed in the city park and this is where I had to start my work. So it had, it demanded a different [00:14:00] kind of approach. Speaker 1:And, um, in a place of the iron triangle, which has a lot of gangs and all, and not a lot of, um, I wouldn't think that there's a lot of, you know, um, interior designers who are experts in play are, I know who a kind of designer you have, but how did you find this community partners in this neighborhood that you were in? Speaker 2:The community partners? Yeah. Well, so, um, we've just been so blessed with kind of who we've met. So the first thing is I just started going and knocking on doors of all the neighbors that live there and [00:14:30] started getting to know them. And it took, maybe it took about four years of just constantly showing up for people to actually start acknowledging me, talking to me because it's just so much distrust of, uh, you know, a tall, white liberal person coming in to try and change things. And everyone's seen this procession of failed experiments that everybody comes in and in time that everybody leaves. So [00:15:00] it's really been like a trial by fire to get to know all these different folks. And, um, now we've really become this kind of this real family. And um, and uh, what I just started doing is like every time that I would raise money, I'd, I'd hire somebody or keep pumping money into the community so people were getting a job and their job is we have to transform this park and your job is [00:15:30] to help us make this park work and you're going to be running it, you're going to be in charge and we're gonna. Speaker 2:So we really have like this wonderful band of, of rookies who have learned to do everything that you could possibly think of. So, um, but one of the main things is we have learned a new language how to do the design, how to create the park on site. So rather than handing it over to a designer who comes in, give, get some input from the community [00:16:00] and then goes and does a design for the community, the community's actually generating the entire design themselves and it's like been working fantastically. Then the, we were blessed of connecting with this company called scientific art studio. They're a fabrication shop, really famous for and known for building the Mitt at the giant's Ballpark, that big million in left field. And they just finished a three point $5 million renovation of the [00:16:30] zoo at the playground, at the San Francisco Zoo. And so, um, the owners, Ron and Marin husband and wife are, are just, um, their businesses in the iron triangle. Speaker 2:So they're eight blocks from our park. So they'd been like, our key partners is teaching and training local people how to turn their ideas into reality. So Ron and Marin are basically like our master trainers of help us build and they've got incredible confidence [00:17:00] with the c. The city of Richmond is confident in these folks as well for helping us now that we've got this wonderful partnership going is the neighbors are building the park themselves and it's all passed all the certification and the Ada and the whole thing. So, and the, the money that we're raising to redevelop this park is in large part being directed back into the community, the community. So the community is getting jobs [00:17:30] to actually do the work themselves. So as everybody walks by, everybody knows somebody who's working there. So it's been, I mean in the few years we've occupied this one park that we've not had a single incident of graffiti or tagging or anything because that's just such a respected place. Speaker 2:The of the park again, elm play lot. Ellen play lots of trees. Yeah, this was the first kind of flagship first juggle park. This is the first pilot and it's really like right now [00:18:00] if, and just come down to eighth street in Richmond and see it. It is spectacular. So you were talking about you starting kind of getting involved with parks in the 80s but pogo park itself started relatively recently, it sounds like. Yeah, it started in that January, 1997 so it's been like a seven year journey of getting here. Okay. And I'm listening to today Mara, the founder of Poco Park here on Calex and this is method to the madness, a show dedicated [00:18:30] to the innovative spirit of the bay area. I'm your host, Ali and his are, and some of your other design principles I think were really fascinating. You talked about dedicated staff, which I think is a big part of what you do, right? Speaker 2:As you, you feel like the transformation can't just be the park, you have to have someone there who's helping to facilitate the freed, the play. Is that right? You're right. I mean the one innovation with Pogo Park, which isn't really an innovation, it's just what we're doing is ripping off the idea of the great ideas from, from around the world. There's many countries [00:19:00] now that have people that are trained in something called play work and they are trained. How do you use play to foster the healthy development of children? So in Norway, in Denmark for for instance, and also in England play that you can get a degree in play work. So these folks come into the playground and they seed the playground each day for high, high quality play. Like if it's a hot day, they're going to put out water or some sort of water play. Speaker 2:If it's a, [00:19:30] um, they'll put out, um, things called loose parts of sticks and stones and natural materials and fabric and boxes of, so children can kind of can create their own environment rather than having the environment in posts like, OK, here's a slide and you've got a slide on this mean kids can, you know, turn a log into a spaceship and they can. So, uh, so what we want to do is install play workers at Allen play lot is just have people there all day long that their job is create [00:20:00] this incredible mansion, uh, imaginative, high quality place space for children that is your job and create a safe and welcoming environment for all the families. So you're, you know, you're like the vibe master make, make everyone come in and have a good vibe and give kids a place to play. And this becomes the watering hole of the entire community. And even now people are starting, they're trying to buy houses around our park because [00:20:30] they all just want their kids to run outside and go to the only safe green space in the iron triangle right now. Nice. I think that I want that job title, vibe master prejudism. Uh, okay. Here's another, a w of your design principles I found. Um, interesting cause Speaker 1:you know, this is your kind of feels like you're building your template cause you want to do this a lot of places. So, um, you talk about, um, having basic amenities, there's must have amenities that must be there. [00:21:00] Um, comfortable places to sit, shade, drinking fountains and restrooms. So how did you arrive at that conclusion? Speaker 2:Well, if you ask anybody in the entire world, if you go to a playground, what, what do you want? And everyone's gonna have that same thing. Like first of all, you know, you gotta have a drinking fountain. You know, if kids are playing the, you know, you gotta get some water. Second, you gotta have a bathroom cause you, you, you don't want to go to the playground with your four kids. You got one kids kind of go to the bathroom or where are you going to go? And then, um, parents, the whole thing [00:21:30] about going to the park is you want to sit in the shade, chill, talk with your, talk with the other parents. Oh, watch your children plays. You don't have to deal. You know, I mean this is the good, it's supportive of the parents. Right? And then if you ever want to make a public space come to life, bring food in and bring music, you know, so, uh, we manage and our first pogo park at Allen play a lot in Richmond of getting all those things in. Speaker 2:And um, [00:22:00] the a snack bar was really tough cause I went to the city of Richmond, said, hey, look, the community would really like to have a snack bar and we want to cook our own food and we want to serve it. And the city said, hey, today, great idea. The only problem is we have an ordinance that prevents the sale of foods from city park. So no go. Um, so we worked with, um, a group of nonprofit attorneys in Oakland to come in and work and it took us two years to work with the city to overturn [00:22:30] the ordinance to allow the sale of food from a city park. So Pogo Park in Richmond is the pilot. So we've got food, we've got bathrooms, we've got cool places to Shay to, to sit in the shade and we've got just an outrageously great play environment. Speaker 1:Wow, that's a, that's amazing. You're actually overturning laws to get what you, what you want and that I guess, you know, we'll definitely engender the, the trust that you talked about building with the [00:23:00] community. They see you as a major partner in getting stuff done, which is really exciting. Uh, what occurs to me though is how would you, how would you be able to, this is a long project. How would you think about replicating this in other places when you know, the timeframe? I want to be shorter to actually make the impact. Sounds like it's been a years long project. Yeah. Speaker 2:Well, we got kind of have like the pogo park and big Taj Mahal pilot ship. And then we also have these little, the little tugboat pogo park where we can go [00:23:30] in to any kind of unclaimed forgotten land and quickly and rapidly build a children's play space and then put a shipping container in for $3,000 that doubles as an office and just put somebody there in a hat with a badge and a radio that looks official. And suddenly in two, three months you've got a playground. So, uh, that could run these high quality play experiences for children. So there's, that is kind of where I see as the [00:24:00] future of Pogo Park is we kind of have an all a cart, um, items that we, but, but um, the, we can go two ways of doing like this deep community transformation by reclaiming and doing it like big time or do these small little, um, guerrilla tactics. Speaker 2:Like just go out there and set it up and get it occupied, which by the way, that we're already, that we've been doing. Um, so we've had that we have a couple of parks that are, are pop-up [00:24:30] parks that we've just gone into and claimed and operated that were low in cost and deepen impact. So two ways. And that's exciting. Um, and you know, because one of the keys is having a staff, uh, there, it seems like that's a big question for the organization is how do you fund that? If you're going to have be hiring people, which I think, you know, objectively outside that seems like a brilliant move because then you have a community member whose livelihood [00:25:00] is tied to the park success or they're going to be much more motivated to actually, you know, drum up the support and get things going. Speaker 2:But how do you view that in terms of, you know, making that a long term sustainable position that you're creating? Yeah, so I mean I, I've sat and thought about this many, many a night. Uh, cause this is the, the key thing is how do you sustain the funding for the staffing? And you know, it really just looking from a business perspective, you have to have the diversified income [00:25:30] stream. So it could be quarter of the funniest going to come from the government. So it could be the city of Richmond is coming in with city staff on certain days. So that cuts part of our staffing down. It could be then it's also gonna be, um, contracts with, um, uh, you know, our earned income, um, that we've got, um, you know, and then, uh, foundation. So it, it's, it is going to be a diversified income stream through multiple [00:26:00] ways of, of raising the funding for staffing. Speaker 2:Okay. All right. Um, and we know one more question I want to ask and kind of the, um, you know, w intrigued me was this idea of the oasis of safety. And I know that the staff is a big part of that, but um, that's, you know, really when you talk about transformation, like a place like the iron triangle from, at least from an outsider perspective, all you hear is, oh, it's so dangerous. You know, you don't want to be there. You don't want to be there in a night. Falls. [00:26:30] You're talking about an oasis of safety in the middle of that. It. Tell me a little bit about how you think about that. Well, our little Park Allen play lot has become that. I mean it is become the one place that all good guys who want to do bad things now don't go and do it there. Speaker 2:Cause the community's really has taken it back. And the beautiful thing around this one park is there's all the houses that face it look right over the park. And everybody who's living there is totally investing in keeping [00:27:00] out it, add it up. And um, the way that it's become safe is it's busy all the time and somebody's always there. So if you're going to go do your s your bad thing, everyone knows, go do it over there. And uh, so there's been tremendous respect from the community and also a lot of people doing the bad things are relatives of people or people who are at our park know all their families. So, um, it does feel like there's some [00:27:30] sort of code to not touch it, you know. And, um, the main thing though is to take, to keep that there is to you know, is to keep investing in having this staffing cause really that you think about at work, we're spending $72 million on the police in Richmond, somebody too. Speaker 2:And that it might cost 100,000 in staffing time to just create this oasis for literally thousands of kids. Cause the iron triangle is one of the most densely populated com has [00:28:00] more kids per square foot than any other neighborhood in Richmond. When we looked at the census would, I'll tell you the numbers are low because there's a lot of families don't report. Um, there's something like 3,500 children within a five minute walk of elm play a lot from age oh to 11. So there are thousands of kids all locked inside watching video games, just blowing their mind, drinking sugary drinks, and suddenly here's this place that they know if your school's not doing well, if you're [00:28:30] not doing wallet home, that you can always walk outside Monday through Friday, there's an adult at the park, you're going to go to an environment that's safe, where people care about you. Speaker 2:And it's just been, a lot of kids were having problems at home cause their parents are just, you know, out. They're just coming there all day long. So it's really become, you know, it's safety comes in numbers. The more people are there occupying it and using it, the less problems that we're having. So that's really exciting. We're talking to Tutti Mar, the founder of Pogo Park [00:29:00] out of Richmond. Um, and um, today we have about 30 seconds left. Give me five years from now, if everything goes exactly the way you would want it, would pogo park, you're doing pogo park would be sending teams out to help communities build these little pop up parks all over the country that we'd be sharing all of our best prac practices at no charge to all with the underlying goal is like, let's as a country become known as a place that is creating [00:29:30] great magical places for children that would play cause with high quality play is the way to really build healthy and innovative and managed of children. Well, that's a great vision Speaker 1:from a great entrepreneur and one of cal zone and alumni. So thanks for coming back on to campus and talking to us. Thank you. Um, and this has been method to the madness on KALX Berkeley. You can learn more about pogoPark@pogopark.org. Is that right? D correct. And you can learn more about us by going to the calyx website and searching for method to the madness. [00:30:00] Uh, thanks for joining and have a great Friday. Everybody. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ron finishes his series on Tzimtzum with a stunning and simple talk on Jesus as the ultimate expression of God's 'Tzimtzum' character. But Tzimtzum is about more than character—it is about how God works. So Ron paints a gorgeous picture of Jesus as Governor of the created order—and our invitation to sit beside him. This is rare and profound material. Ron's framework of God could well have spared the early church their vexed debates on exactly what the 'divinity' of Jesus means.