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How much do you really know about the only inhalable insulin? This week, Stacey interviews the CEO of MannKind, makers of Afrezza. Mike Castagna talks about how Afrezza works, misconceptions about the product, the worldwide market, pediatric studies and lots more. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. More about Afrezza Tim Street's blog Diabettech  Check out Stacey's book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode transcription below: Stacey Simms  0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dario health manage your blood glucose levels increase your possibilities by Gvoke Hypopen the first premixed auto injector for very low blood sugar and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms. This week all about Afrezza How much do you really know about the inhalable Insulet. I had a great conversation with the people who make it   Mike Castagna  0:34 For me, it's about using the right product to meet your needs to get you in control. And if you're doing well, great, we're going to avoid the long term complications. But if you're not doing your health, and you gotta really try to find the best set of tools, they're gonna make you successful and fit your lifestyle.   Stacey Simms  0:47 That's mankind CEO Mike Castagna. We talked about how Afrezza works misconceptions the worldwide market pediatric studies and lots more. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Welcome to another week of the show. We so glad to have you here we aim to educate and inspire about diabetes with a focus on people who use insulin. And this week, we're talking about the use of the only inhalable insulin, my son was diagnosed with type one right before he turned two, he is 16. My husband has type two diabetes, I don't have diabetes at all. But I have a background in broadcasting. And that is how you get the podcast, I have to say that personally, my family is very interested in Afrezza Benny really would like to try this seat. Of course, as I mentioned in that tease up there, they're looking at pediatrics, he is still under 18. So it's not proof for his age group. But we're watching it really closely. And I have a lot of friends. A lot of bloggers and people in the diabetes community have talked about this for years. And some things have changed. So I wanted to have them on the show and find out more. So a little bit of background for you. If you are brand new to all this, Afrezza was approved in the United States in 2014. And the company that makes it is mankind. For a while it was sold by Santa Fe, but then mankind took it back. It's one of those things where sometimes the business side seems to have gotten more attention than the product itself. So what is Afrezza it is a powder, it comes in cartridges, and you suck it in you inhale it with a special inhaler device. To me, it looks more like a whistle than a traditional inhaler like an asthma inhaler. It's not like a big tube. I'll link up some photos in the show notes. I'll also link up the Afrezza website so you can learn more and see their information. And my guest this week is Dr. Mike Castagna, the CEO of mankind now he has a Doctorate of pharmacy, he worked as a pharmacist behind the counter for CVS at the start of his career. But then he went back to school and he got an MBA from the Wharton School of Business. He's fun to talk to he doesn't mince words, and he truly believes in this product, I do have to tell you that Mike mentions monomeric insulin a couple of times, I'm going to come back after the interview and explain more about that give you a better definition. All you really need to know is that it's faster than how liquid insulin is made. And all of that in just a moment. But first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Daario. And over the years I find we manage diabetes better when we're thinking less about all the stuff of diabetes tasks. That's why I love partnering with people who take the load off on things like ordering supplies, so I can really focus on Benny, the Dario diabetes success plan is all about you all the strips and lancets you need delivered to your door, one on one coaching so you can meet your milestones, weekly insights into your trends with suggestions on how to succeed, get the diabetes management plan that works with you and for you, Daria is published Studies demonstrate high impact clinical results, find out more go to my dario.com forward slash Diabetes Connections. Mike, thanks for joining me, I'm really excited to catch up. And look, I'm stuttering because I can't believe this is the first time we're talking to you. But thanks for coming on. Oh, thank you, Rodney. I'm super excited before we jump in and start talking about Afrezza Can you give us some perspective kind of dial back because mankind is not. It's not a name that came out of nowhere? There's really important history. Can you kind of talk about that a little bit first?   Mike Castagna  4:14 Sure. Mankind comes from our founder named after Al Mann and Al Mann was a true innovator. He started I think 17 companies and everything from the cochlear implant to the pacemaker to insulin pumps that many of us know today as Medtronic used to be called mini med. And Al Mann built the insulin pumps over the 80s and 90s and was very successful and sold that company to Medtronic. And then he took literally $1 billion of his own money and invested in mankind. And he had put this company together through three companies he owned the technology to make Afrezza was really a combination of companies and the reason he was so dedicated as he saw in the pump market, which we now see today on CGM was that the variability in mealtime control was so high and the fluctuations you see that the influence takes about an hour and a half to kick in. And it's hard to get real time control if you can't get a faster acting insulin. And so he set out to make a real time acting insulin, so phrases and hailed as monomeric. And that was really what the magic was in our technology making a dry powder was was free dryness, if you heard of dippin dots ice cream, we have basically large dipping machines in our factory, but we free dry the particles to make a freezer and under stabilize the monomeric form. So when you're inhaling, you're inhaling influenza, as soon as it's in your blood is active, or when you inject it has to hold hexamer and has to break down there were about 45 minutes. And that's how you can make it stabilize an injectable form. But it has to break down and then it starts working. And that's why there's always this lag effect between we see injectable and foam in and help us is very different products were categorized with real time rapid acting, but the name mankind comes from elmen and the guy who probably 60% of people on pumps have their own pumps that he created. So amazing gentlemen, huge contributions to diabetes and millions of people were alive today because of his work and his generosity and roven to take that forward here and kids and frozen inhaled insulin.   Stacey Simms  6:06 I mean, never look at dippin dots the same again.   Mike Castagna  6:10 I see a large factory of they don't like it, you know, we can always make different types of things don't go well.   Stacey Simms  6:15 I love it. Let me ask you to go into a little bit more detail about how someone who uses Afrezza would actually use it. Can you talk a little bit about like a daily routine?   Mike Castagna  6:25 Yeah, I mean, I know, you know, well, you're in this disease. I mean, people sometimes graze all day, and they just kind of ride their sugars and take a little bit some along the way or many boluses. And some people you know, eat once or twice a day, or some people, you know, carb restricted and everyone has a different way. And I think that you know, the big thing difference was for the patients that I see is, it's in the moment, meaning you don't have to time your meal and your insulin, when you're going to take it and where you're going to be. As soon as your food arrives. You take your first dose.   Stacey Simms  6:50 Most people I know who use Afrezza take a long acting insulin with it. Is that pretty standard for people with type one?   Mike Castagna  6:57 Yeah, I'll take one year, right? Yeah, you need a basal insulin of some sort, you know, and, and a meal time was held, we do have some patients on pumps where they will use their punches for their basil, for example, and use a phrase for real time corrections. So you know, the average patient is very different. We have some patients that are type twos, you know not not on any basil, you'll need to be on basil for if you're type two. But if you're type one, you need to basil, long acting insulin, and you need your meal time. And we know the biggest problem in this country is still mealtime control is the number one thing people with diabetes struggle with. And it's a big reason why, you know, six, or seven or eight, you know, eight out of 10 people basically are not a goal on insulin because of the mealtime control. So it's a daily challenge for everybody.   Stacey Simms  7:39 Can you talk a little bit about how Afrezza is kind of measured out? Because when we think of mealtime, insulin, everything's a carb ratios. And especially as I mentioned, if you're on an insulin pump, you're you're putting in the carbs that you eat. So how does that work?   Mike Castagna  7:51 Yeah, it's funny, I get into many debates with people because, you know, I'm a pharmacist by training, but I'm not the smartest guy. But I couldn't do all the work people do every day to influence sensitivity ratios and carb counting and timing. And all I can tell you is everyone's masks off by 50%, one direction or another. And so we have this false pretense that we're that accurate. And dosing are influenced by down to the half a unit or one unit. And the reality is your angle of injection can decrease, you know, change your absorption by 25%, your site of injection can change absorption, your your stress level can change your impact with your insulin, there's so many things that go into your daily dosing of insulin, that, you know, being that precise, down to the unit is not as accurate as we all think. And I think that's that's one of the misnomers of, you know, the timing is what you really struggle with when you're using injectable insulin, and you just don't know what's going to happen. You know, when people I guess doctors often you know, you don't have to carb count with Afrezza . And they give me funny looks. And the reality is, you know, we've never done a study where you're carb counting to get your dose of insulin, that's, you know, so becomes a four 812 dose linear all the way up to 48 units, it's additive, and you just got to be close enough. And so it's about a two to one ratio, you know, there's no direct pulmonary equivalent to injectable insulin, unfortunately, but, you know, people are taking five units of injectable insulin per meal, they're gonna need about eight units of Afrezza and maybe even 12. And you're gonna figure that out, it's your first meal or two what what the right dose is for you. But you just got to be close enough. And that's a big misunderstanding for people of how accurate the dose has to be. This is the sixth dose cartridge is a big problem. I know plenty of type one patients who take for a 1224 meal, especially they haven't Chinese food or sushi, they just they dose a lot. So I think that's something people have been comfortable, so dramatically different than anything they've ever been trained or taught in their history of living with diabetes.   Stacey Simms  9:36 I would assume that a prescription for Afrezza comes with a doctor's visit where someone whether it's someone who works for Afrezza, or the endocrinologist talks to you about how to do this dosing. You said you figure it out, but I've got to assume that you're not just sending people home with this inhalable and say, just test it, I mean, right somebody, you're at a ratio   Mike Castagna  9:59 and I think That's the key thing is, you know, having patients understand because it's odorless and tasteless. So you inhale, and you're like, what did I get it? And I'm like, yeah, if you inhaled, and I have the second, it's in your blood, it's in your lungs, it's breath activated. So you can't really, of course, you can try to mess up something. But we have something called Blue Hill, where we can show proper inhalation technique in the office on an iPhone app or an Android. And so you know, we hope that patients are being trained either by our trainers or the doctors offices, and will propagation technique looks like that's number one. And then number two is the right dosing. And as you know, individualized dosing is important and fun. And, again, that's why I say we take a lot of the math out because it's either gonna be a four or an eight, and all of a sudden, you're like, Oh my god, I'm gonna take an eight units, it's a lot it's really not when you're taking inhalation units versus injectable units and that's what people got to get comfortable with if their first or second dose so they really do figure out this meal did this or pizza is going to take longer so pick another dose and now our people do figure it out pretty much within the first week. And then there's one thing actually I want to mention because I often forget this is because injectable insulin is such a long tail it's in your body for four to six hours before it's out and that feeds into your basal rate your long acting and so when people switch over presence pretty much out of your body in a net roughly an hour and a half. Sometimes people need to adjust their basil and that's something to watch out for if you do switch to Afrezza enter you're struggling with with some of the basil rates. Some patients you know I hear people anecdotally you know, we don't want to study their the bump up their basil 10 15% on Lantus. And I've heard patients on to see that because it does have that long tail of down there in front sometimes on the basil. So there are the other metrics patients have to watch out for when they are switching to the product. It's not just the uptime, it's also something that basil where you look at   Stacey Simms  11:38 I have a question and I i apologize because it's a it's a bit ridiculous. I'm gonna ask it anyway. Right back to the interview in just a moment. But first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Gvoke Hypopen. And our endo always told us that if you use insulin, you need to have emergency glucagon on hand as well. Low blood sugars are one thing we're usually able to treat those with fast acting glucose tabs or juice. But a very low blood sugar can be very frightening. Which is why I'm so glad there's a different option for emergency glucagon, it's Gvoke Hypopen. Gvoke Hypopen is pre mixed and ready to go with no visible needle, you pull off the red cap, push the yellow end onto bare skin and hold it for five seconds. That's it, find out more go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the Gvoke logo. Gvoke shouldn't be used in patients with pheochromocytoma or insulinoma. Visit Gvoke glucagon.com slash risk. Now back to my interview with Mike, where I will ask that ridiculous question.   You had mentioned it's tasteless, odorless, I recall hearing and I'll have to fact check this. But I recall hearing that years ago dandruff shampoo, they had to add like that tingly feeling because people didn't think it was working like it's totally fake. But people just didn't believe it was a medicated shampoo because it didn't have an unpleasant sensation. Have you thought or talked at all about adding like a flavor or a feeling to so people really know that they got it? Or is that just really bananas?   Mike Castagna  13:12 If somebody might company come and talk to you ahead of time? There's somebody internally who wants us to look at like cherry flavor Afrezza especially as they go into pediatrics? And the answer is, look, there's blueberry Metformin because the metformin smells awful and tastes awful, probably. So you know, those things are possible. We've never done them. And to my knowledge in this industry with dry powders, it is a question that came up recently. Is that should we be thinking about the cherry flavor Afrezza or some other flavor? And I think the answer is TBD. We I don't know what the date is on inhaling the food coloring dye or whatever. Yeah. But that's some of the stuff we have to justify that it's safe and effective. And along with FDA would want us to test but they come up recently and another internal discussion. And since you're asking, I think we'll look at it, even if maybe there's a way to even show a placebo, that's a cherry flavor or something right a one time dose to see what it's like. So I don't know. But now, but people like I said, it's sometimes you get a call, like you know, when you take a phrase of one out of four people will get a cough initially. And generally there were the first four weeks that cough goes away 97% of the people. So I always tell people, you're having a cough, like as long as not interrupting your life, it should slowly get to your first refill. And it should be mostly resolved by that your body's getting used to putting a powder in your lungs. But that's uh, you know, when people ask, what's the difference between injectable and inhaled in terms of safety, you know, you're putting a drug powder in for the first time in your body and your body could choose that. And the number one thing that's different, were injectable insulin. You know, you have other other things. You're dealing with injection sites and pump sites and scar tissue and things like that.   Stacey Simms  14:48 Does the body actually acclimate to the powder or is it just a question of someone gets better and used to the inhalation sensation?   Mike Castagna  14:55 You know, it's it's a good question. I don't know if I have a black and white answer here. bodies give. Yeah, my guess is the body's getting used to putting a dry powder in and just exit and you get used to like weed. You can drink a glass of water before and after and help you minimize it. But it's generally like that's what it feels like it's not a productive call frightening, there's not a call to happens 10 minutes later, it usually happens. We have to inhale.   Stacey Simms  15:17 You mentioned BlueHale , can you tell us a little bit more about what that is?   Mike Castagna  15:21 Yeah, so BlueHale  is to two different things. The first one that we're looking at is with the patient training device. So we can show you whether you had a good emulation or not a good emulation and show you that technique. The second version, actually, you can detect with those you put in the cartridge and hilar. So it has a proprietary software there that we can see what cartridge you put in for the adapter. And it'll tell you on your app, if you took a for a 12 or 16, how much you took in that session. And then we hooked integrate that with the CGM data. So now you can show those response curves on CGM one day and eventually I want to get into AI and predictive analytics. But we're not there yet. But we think that's the magic of what people really want, which is one that I use the thing when you live with diabetes, you just must remember and be that perfect to know exactly what those you did with them. You took it, what meal you were and then I simulated being a patient for a week. And I realized I could remember if I took a four and eight, I take a six or 620 is that 30 minutes or one hour like it was it was amazing. When you just think about life and people are human. They're there. They're human. So they're not keeping track. And they're not that accurate. They're just estimating. And that's when I talked about the dosing of insulin, like we're always estimating everything, we're estimating the time our food is going to come and how long it's going to work. You know, what the carbs are? How much am I gonna eat or drink? Like, it's all accurate? It's all off. None of it's that accurate. That to me is the thing I realized when I was thinking of doing one of those a disease, you don't you think they're perfect. They're not. They're human beings. And that's when I see one out of five doses of injectable insulin are intentionally missed. And the predominant one that's missed is actually lunchtime, which makes sense to wear out in a social environment. They don't want to inject. And by the time they get back, they forget it's probably too late. Or you're already high.   Stacey Simms  17:00 What do you mean by intentionally Miss? You mean? Like they people just forget?   Mike Castagna  17:03 No, no, they intentionally knew they should take a dose of insulin, but they're in a lunch conversation, or they forgot their insulin in the office. Or they'll have their CGM receiver on the bike, or they essentially don't they miss one of the five doses. So if you're missing 20% of your doses, it's really hard to get in control. And there's all kinds of reasons, but that's intentional omission versus unintentional. Which is I forgotten.   Stacey Simms  17:23 I'm curious what the sources on that that's, I mean, I don't doubt it. I'm just curious.   Mike Castagna  17:27 Yeah, I couldn't find it. follow up on that. I have your email, I'll look for it. Yeah, no, because I didn't believe it. And then there was a study done with one of the pens coming out that has digital connectivity. And I looked at it and I looked at the data and like, wait, if a person needs three times a day, seven days a week, that's at least 1721 doses, right? And I think the average person is taking like 1212 shots a week. And I'm like, Well, that doesn't make sense. But you realize, you know, again, we're human, people aren't always as compliant as we want, or they don't eat three times a day perfectly are the two big meals, you know, everyone does something different. So having insulin that meets your needs, and your lifestyle, I think is really important in the world. And you know, look, we like our products, obviously, we're here, we love the Afrezza. But But I also just for me, it's about using the right product that meets your needs to get you in control. And if you're doing well, great, you're gonna avoid the long term complications. But if you're not, you own your health, and you got to really try to find the best set of tools that are going to make you successful and fit your lifestyle. And, you know, obviously, we're not doing well when 80% of people on insulin on a boat. I mean, that's that, to me is the number one thing, I look at this country and say, well, despite all the adoption of pumps, and technology and CGM, we still have not made a meaningful difference in percent of people to go. And that's frustrating.   Stacey Simms  18:35 Way back in the beginning of this interview, we talked about Chinese food and pizza. And I'm just curious, you know, these are things that are hard to dos for, because they they kind of they come later, you know, what most people listening are very familiar with, and I think probably have their own system for dosing, whether it's an extended bolus or injecting more than once. How would you do something like that on a Friday? Is it a question of you would take what you think when you're eating, and then again, in a bit later, like, how do you account for those high fat foods?   Mike Castagna  19:02 Yeah, you know, I'm going to pick on Anthony Hightower, who I know you interviewed before. So I actually met Anthony on a bed over social media. And he had showed me your servers where he ate pizza. So I'll pick on him because I want the public discussion here, sir. He pizza and his sugars are basically flat over the two, three hours post meal. And I said, I'm like, shocked. He's like, this is something people cannot do naturally on the history of injectable insulin, they they always struggle. And when you eat pizza, you're going to struggle not just for hours, but potentially for the next day because just throws everything off. I think in his case, right? I've watched him he took a big dose up front, you know, let's say he's gonna take 12 units of injectable he took 24 units of Afrezza. And then he washed her wasn't an hour, and then an hour she was above where he started. He took another dose, maybe took a four and he has to tap it off. And then an hour later, just thought was too high or not right. But you can always keep your sugars in that kind of control. That's one of the studies we did back in 2018, called this test study was showing that you could do as soon as one hour with no more hyper risk. And that was a big concern of people, how can I do that one hour, well, pretty much hit its peak effect in one hour. So if your servers are still moving in the wrong direction, you can correct them at that point. And so that's where someone on pizza or Chinese food, like, yeah, it's a high dose up front and may manage it through the whole system. Or they may see an hour or two later, they're still high and to take another dose, that they can bring it down at some point.   Stacey Simms  20:20 Alright, let's talk about the big questions that people generally have. And that the one I hear the most is, Is it safe? Right? Is it? Is it okay to inhale this stuff into my lungs? Can you talk about the studies that you've done?   Mike Castagna  20:32 Yeah, I think if we were able to make inhaled insulin 100 years ago, we'd be scratching our heads those who would inject themselves three times a day. So I think it's just an unfortunate matter of 100 years of difference. But we studied a phrase that probably over 3000 patients 70, some trials $3 billion over 20 years, like, that's how much money time and energy is going into prove the safety and effectiveness of this product. And you know, and I tell people like you know, there is no data to say that it's not safe. We have all the rodent studies, all the CT scans that along looking for fibrosis looking for pulmonary issues, we found nothing. So it doesn't sit in the lung. There's an old product called exubera on the market years ago. And exubera was a sugar based manatal formulation which got absorbed over time into your lungs in a friend this case, the it's got water and human influence. So when we ask about what ingredients are you worried about the human influence, human influence, it's the whole AI base, but it's human influence characteristic, and water is purified. So we know that safe and the other only other carrier in our products SDK p which is a excluded product that is not metabolized in the body, it's just 100% extruded. So you know, there's three ingredients in our product. One is human insulin, one is water, and one is tkp. And SDK p comes out of the system. So I don't I don't think the body is afraid of human insulin. And what are so I think, you know, I always struggle with this topic. Because, you know, what happened is there was some lung cancer cases and Newser, were they there was a couple of our data. But you know, in the seven years since FDA approval, we've seen no safety signals come up in the postmarketing. We have almost 10,000 patients on the presidency. I know people in the drug for 1012 years. And so, you know, we don't see anything that gives us concern. And we're going into kids now, who would have to take the drug for 40 5060 years. So I think it's hard to prove something that you've never seen. But safety comes with time. And I think the good news is product has been approved by the FDA for seven years now. And we've not seeing any safety signals in our database, which we look every year, our rems program ended early by the FDA and and we've continued to show good data and all the studies we've done, we've not seen anything new come up in our anywhere safety issues. So if you're, you know, the populations, I would say if you have COPD, and asthma, this is not the right drug for you.   Stacey Simms  22:41 So a dumb question, though. If you have diabetes, and you smoke, can you get an Afrezza? prescription?   Mike Castagna  22:48 We would say you should not? Yes, we have a warning for that.   Stacey Simms  22:52 Well, I just wanted to be clear that there was an actual warning, it wasn't just a please don't because it's bad for   Mike Castagna  22:57 warning. Don't   Stacey Simms  23:00 tell me about the study with kids. Because I've got one, I've got a 16 year old who was quite interested in this product.   Mike Castagna  23:06 Yeah, no, I just found out Unfortunately, the dagga three year old cousin in the family have just come down with type one. And she will, she'll be four and our studies gonna go down to four years old to 17 years old, when we launch it. So I'm excited, we had to do a study to show that the pharmacokinetics and dynamics of inhaled insulin are similar in kids as it as adults. And so once that study was complete, we we wrote a protocol down to the FDA and said, We'd like to go into the next phase, and now run a larger study head to head against the standard of care. And the FDA has pretty much signed off on that protocol at this point. And we have contracted with a third party to now run that trial. And we'll be having our investigator meeting here in next month. And so hopefully, we'll see our first patient in the four to 17 year old range, probably here in September, October time frame. So super excited, long time to get here took too long from my perspective, but can't wait to help kids. But our founder Outman invested, he became very wealthy when he sold the insulin pump company. And he took $1 billion of his own money and made Afrezza inhaled insulin because he felt the problem with the injectable subcutaneous delivered insulin was it just took too long to work. And you know, somebody has an hour lag effects from food. That's real timing, it's always hard to catch those two even. And so he really wanted to make an inhaled insulin that really mimic a physiologic insulin that you see in the body. And he felt the only way you could get there was through a dry powder, lung delivered instantaneous insulin, you can also get there through an implantable pump. But that didn't work out when they tried that back in the 90s. I recall. So people got infections and things like that. So that would that didn't work. So they really were going to get a in my mind that physiologic inform that's gonna be monomeric stabilized is probably going to happen only through the inhaled route. So we have we have to get comfortable with this from overall efficacy and safety. Otherwise, you're not going to really ever get this control that people are looking for real time.   Stacey Simms  24:55 No man, he lived long enough to see Afrezza approved, didn't he?   Mike Castagna  24:59 He's All approved. And unfortunately, I'm here because he died on my daughter's birthday. So I was debating whether to come to mankind or not. And I'm very superstitious, the Al Mann pick the day he died. And he died February 25 2016. And then they made decision to join and help save the company and save a frozen kick on the market. Because I think, you know, I saw all these wonderful patients stories online. And I said, these patients like Anthony Hightower is one of them, what they did something that no one else did, they did something we never did in our clinical trials. And so I got to talk to them. And I realized we just didn't dose it properly. So you go back to the development of the product, a lot of the challenges were under dosing because everybody's trying to compare one to one to injectable insulin, and therefore one of underdosing patients, and therefore, they got equal outcomes didn't do any worse than injectable insulin per se. But could they have gotten better outcomes if we dosed improperly? Right? And I think that's, that's the state of we're now trying to generate to show that the kids buddy now be head to head, or if he knows him properly, what happens? Right, and that's we're really focused on right now.   Stacey Simms  26:01 Is there anything that you wanted to talk about that I haven't answered?   Mike Castagna  26:04 No. I mean, we're only available in the US, we're in the process of going to Europe. So I don't know if you have any. Yeah, we do. Though, so I know, we have patients on a name patient basis in Germany, and UK and Italy. So you know, their governments are actually important a president and pay for it. We're in the middle of filing for Australia. We were approved in Brazil, and we're going to India so so you'll see this more and more around the world. You have listeners in those markets. There's not gonna happen this year. And hopefully, the next year or the following year in some of these markets, we'll be looking at bringing it to more patients in those markets.   Stacey Simms  26:37 Well, and just got a big approval here in the United States for Medicare patients. Right.   Mike Castagna  26:42 Yeah. So that one, I, you know, we get a lot of questions on that one. And so you know, this market CGM patients were told you need to be injecting yourself, I think four times a day, we couldn't get your CGM. So then doctors were not getting patients Afrezza. And so we were able to ask CMS to change that, and they did to the year but rather haven't done they're not done. And so here we are a year later that that policy is now being updated. I want to thank CMS and all that you're helped make that happen. And I think it helps in people in CGN, because I understand that removes some of the other requirements to get CGM, even an injectable these patients so little mankind was the one who started that process. And then we're able to help a lot more people. So it's great. And we're trying to get Medicare $30 a month insulin. So we have Medicare listeners. And you know, we're trying to make sure we help get patients access that are on Medicare. I think that's important.   Stacey Simms  27:33 That doesn't stack up in terms of cost in the United States.   Mike Castagna  27:36 Yeah, I mean, you know, fortunately, the billion dollar debacle in this country is drug pricing, as we all know, and as a pharmacist, I know firsthand when people go through an LMS they're on how many co pays are on. And so we really have tried hard to make sure that no patients pay no more than $15. So we have copay card programs, we actually have a free drug programs, they really can't afford it, we'll give it to you for free. If you're going through the prior authorization process, we give it to you for free while you're going through that. So we all want payers and reimbursement to be the excuse of why a patient can't get access to our product, we think that people will do well on our product, we're willing to take that bet that they'll see good results. And if they see good results, the payers will usually pay for it. And it says you may or may not know that there's a monopoly in diabetes between two insulin players, and three payers, who are all working together to make sure there's no competition. You know, that's unfortunate, but they pay to make sure that patients have a difficult time getting Afrezza . And that's always one of my frustrations of competition or diseases. You know, 400 years, we've seen the precise the dispensing from 20 hours a while 95 and let's say miles, hundreds of dollars. You know, for me on the payer side, we want to make sure patients we try to bring it down to about $15 on commercial and Medicare, you know, they generally pay comparable to what they would and some Medicare plans a little bit higher I can you know, that's a hit or miss when you when you go to submit for reimbursement, but we try to do everything we can to make sure people will have access to our product   Stacey Simms  28:57 $15 for $15 for commercial patients, no, no, but what is it? What is it for? What do you get for $15? Is it a month? Is it a   Mike Castagna  29:05 my week? Yeah, whatever, whatever. You gave two boxes, three boxes, whatever is on that prescription for that month,   Stacey Simms  29:10 for the month. Okay, I didn't mean to interrupt you.   Mike Castagna  29:12 I don't think I know, I was gonna say I forgot we actually have a cash pay program. And people are paying cash for their insulin. And we do see several 1000 people a month paying cash for injectable insulin, we have influenced savings comm where it's $99 a month for frezza. And you know, can you a bigger box or more doses, you might pay 199 but we tried to make the cash price, you know, roughly $100 a month. If we if you had no insurance, for example.   Stacey Simms  29:37 I'm not sure you can answer this question. But I will ask it anyway, is the biggest challenge for you all the failure of exubera? Is it just people not knowing what this is? You know, as you move forward, you know, what is the big challenge to get more people to adopt us?   Mike Castagna  29:51 I mean, for me, the biggest challenge are the doctors. We created a program we basically gave it for free to patients for two years for 15 bucks. Like no no priority. Nothing, we just charge you $15. And that didn't change a lot of doctors from jumping on board. And doctors just don't know our data. And so they think this product doesn't have a lot of data behind it. And they don't know our data, they don't know. Like when I would ask a doctor, how fast from the time you inject your bolus, your pump to the time you look on a CGM, that your institute sugars are coming down, and I get in these endocrinologist, I'll get five minutes and mediate and 20 minutes an hour, the answers, I need 90 minutes, 220 minutes, that's the answer. And so they don't even know the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics differences between injectable insulin inhaled, and then you have doctors, right, you know, calling some of these ultra acting drugs faster, we'll look at the package inserts, they're no faster than their old products. And there's a lot of misperceptions out there some of these newer launches of old tracking insulin, and to me they're, they're really not that much different than the predecessor and look at the data, you know, there's not a faster, there's not dramatically faster onset or offset or, you know, a one c lowering or weight gains on very much the same. So, no, I think it's just a matter of doctors trying to really understand the data.   Stacey Simms  31:02 Before I let you go, are there any plans in the future to change anything about the way it looks? or different colors? I mean, I know it sounds kind of silly, when you're just trying to get people to adopt the new technology, but from a user standpoint, and look, I know, you've heard all the jokes of my friends who use this will make you can't comment on designers. They don't say anything, they'll make comments like, you know, taking a hit or whatever, right? I mean, it's it's inhaling, it's this little thing that you're, you're inhaling, it looks a certain way. I'm curious if the cosmetics of it are anything that are on your radar, or needs to be improved even?   Mike Castagna  31:36 No, I mean, I think when you spend, you know, $3,000,000,000.20 years doing a new drug development or taking 100 year old product and reinventing it, you had to get that right in terms of device design and airflow dynamics and consistency. And those. And I think all that's really important because, you know, misperception that oh, my God, it's going to be less can be more variable than injectable insulin. And the data just doesn't support that statement. And so for us, we have one of the world's most unique installation platforms across the entire pharmaceutical industry, we deliver more power to the lung, the most technologies out there. So that's why you can get consistency, those two those, and you don't have a lot of variabilities, because our technology and our device is called a low velocity inhaler. And what that means is there's a resistor that helps slow the powders as they're coming out of the inhaler. So they get deep into the lungs. And that's why you get that nice absorption curves that we see. And we're most inhalers or high gloss inhalers. So it's just enough sucking air as hard as you can, and hoping you get you know, 20 30% of lung drug into your lungs, and mostly stuck in your teeth to device in the back of your throat. That's most dry powder inhaler technologies out there today. And so that's something unique to us and our technology and our device, they all work really well together, you couldn't just take our powder and put into another inhaler, and or just as well would not work. So yeah, we're pretty happy with the device I we are going to other diseases. So you know, we're we're going down to the FDA with our partner for an approval in October for pulmonary hypertension patients. And we have several other orphan lung areas we're going into to help more patients with lung disorders. So you know, I think that's important, like our, our technology, our inhaler, our platform is gonna be used in more and more patients over the next decade than just diabetes.   Stacey Simms  33:13 Well, that's what I was gonna ask is, if it works, so well, you know, will you partner with other medications? That's great to hear.   Mike Castagna  33:18 Yeah, you know, we're really busy, we probably have about 10 to 12 formulations of products working on this year and five marone products in the pipeline. And so it's it's a really good time of mankind, we're super excited to be here. And it was a turnaround, the company struggled for many, many years. And we're on our way to success. And I think, firstly, you'll be you'll be hearing more about it. So I know it's been a long time. And maybe you didn't talk to us yet. But hopefully you'll talk to us more and more as we continue to generate new data and more more patients start using it.   Stacey Simms  33:45 I'd love to, I'd love to, especially with the kids programs. And like I said, I've got a 16 year old who is very curious about this. And, you know, once once safe and effective. Once we get all that safety stuff in here. It's mom says, you know, I'll definitely I know, I would like to check it out. So I really appreciate you coming on and spending so much time with me and my listeners and explaining all this and we'll definitely talk again. Thanks, Mike.   You're listening to Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms. More information at Diabetes connections.com. Always on the episode homepage. I also have a transcription as well, sometimes those podcast players don't display the show notes and the links. So if you have any trouble, just go back to Diabetes connections.com. And I just want to say that I did reach out to have Mike or somebody from Afrezza on the show. And you heard him say, you know, it's been a while, um, you know, it just took a while to connect to the right person. Let's just say that, and I will have them back on because lots of good stuff is happening. As you heard. I want to take a second and kind of explain Monomeric insulin and, you know, I'll be honest with you. The scientific points here are really not my strong suit. I'm a communications major, right. So I did what I always do, and I am People who know a lot more than I do to help me explain it. I went to the Facebook group Diabetes Connections as a group. And you know, I said, How do you explain monomeric insulin I know it's faster. And Tim Street, who is just wonderful and runs the diabettech.com page that's like diabetes tech diabetic, and I'll link that up as well. He provided this explanation, which really brought it home for me, and boy, I hope I'm pronouncing everything correctly. So Tim wrote, insulin naturally links its chains together to form stable molecules. Typically it connects two together and then links three of those two chains together. Additionally, to create six This is highly stable and described as hexameric. In order to use these chains, you have to break the molecules apart to single chains, which are monomers. Typically fast acting insulins are stored as dimers, two monomers connected, which are easier to split, then hexamers. by storing the insulin as a single chain, a monomer, the body doesn't have to break the chains to instantly use the insulin molecule it receives. And that is why Afreeza wraps the monomeric form in the capsules, to make it ultra fast. Thank you, Tim, that actually made a lot of sense. I gotta tell you, we have the smartest people and the kindest people in this Facebook group. If you're not there yet, and you want to join, come on in, I highly recommend it. You don't have to be a Tim Street. You don't have to be able to explain these concepts. You do have to be nice. And you do have to not post a lot of drama. I'm very tough on my diabetes groups. I run two of them. They're very nice and friendly places for a reason. But Tim, seriously, thank you so much. That was a great explanation. And I really appreciate it. Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. If you're a veteran, the Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitoring system is now available at VA pharmacies in the United States. Qualified veterans with type one and type two diabetes may be covered. Picking up your Dexcom supplies at the pharmacy may save you a lot of time to connect with your doctor for more info Dexcom even has a discussion guide you can bring with you get that guide and find out more about eligibility. It's all@dexcom.com backslash veterans, and all the information is always at Diabetes connections.com. Before I let you go, just a quick note about back to school, I have never done less. I packed up a bag for Benny to bring to the nurse. He brings his daily supplies with him every day in his backpack. But of course, like most people, our nurse has backup supplies for him. So I put those together. He brought them in along with our plan or orders, you know from our endo. And that was it. I haven't set foot in the building. I'm not sure when I will go in or if I will go in probably when you forget something or they run out there. But I've never done less work. You know, I did a lot of work over the years to go to school and meet with people and he's got it. So not much to report. It feels very strange. All right. Please join me this Wednesday when we have our in the news live on Facebook every Wednesday at 430 and then we turn that into a podcast episode. I love doing that. It's been a lot of fun. I hope you're enjoying it. Give me your news tips. If you've got any from this week, just email me Stacey at Diabetes connections.com thanks as always to my editor John Bukenas from audio editing solutions. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Stacey Simms. I'll see you back here in a couple of days until then be kind to yourself.   Benny  38:27 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs avenged

There are people who you talk with in business, or just in life that you tend to bond with for no apparent reason. My next guest is one of those people. I've known Tim Healy of Healy Success Solutions and podcaster of The Profit Express for many years now. Pre-COVID we would meet up and have business lunches, post-COVID we’ve been talking on the telephone. The one thing about this guy is that I feel like I've known him my entire life. He's excellent at what he does. And I know today's show, you will learn a lot. I'm Hilary Topper and this is Hilary Topper on Air. Tim Healy, welcome back to the show. Tim Healy- I think this officially goes down as my best interview introduction ever. That was, that was fantastic. Thank you so much for the kind words and yeah, we just have this chemistry, when we chat, we talk business over lunch. We've just always had a great back and forth together. Hilary - Absolutely. So let me ask you to remind our listeners about who you are and what you do. Tim Healy - Sure. Uh, as you mentioned, I own Healy Success Solutions where my purpose is to help my clients turn their prospects into profits. Right? That's what I get up every day doing, helping my clients turn prospects into profits, and I do it very simply very directly by helping them create winning sales organizations through the power of personal communication. That's how I do it. That's what I do. And that's how I do it at Healy Success Solutions. Hilary - Okay. What about your podcast? Tim Healy - The podcast is, as you've mentioned, The Profit Express, it's like over 11 years now and I've always had a focus, obviously, in the business side, Healy Success Solutions. I'm very focused on the sales process, everything from the first point of contact to close. But when I created, it was started as a radio show. It still is, it's evolved into a podcast, obviously. When I created the profit express, I did decide not to be just so specific on sales, but more focused on the journey of the small business person, the entrepreneur, the startup, what they go through each and every day to win the battle for business because listen, Hilary, you know what, and I know it each and every day, some days it's more challenging than others. But it's a battle and we are here to win at each and every day, each and every day to me is a competition and we're competing. And it's a matter of bringing on guests to the show who can help the small business owner who can help the start-up in everything from sales and marketing and branding, finance, anything and everything that can positively impact a small business owner. Because so many of them I have found that's been a big focus of the show. They kind of operate on an island to themselves, and I've always wanted to just be a resource for entertainment, for education, for information, for motivation, as they head in the direction of success for their small business. Hilary - So today we're talking about sales. And let me ask you something and I really want you to be really serious with me about this. Can everyone sell or are some people just natural salespeople? Tim Healy - That's a great question. Can everybody sell? No. But the reason I say no is if you don't want to sell, you're never going to sell. That's probably true for most professions. And actually, the people say, oh, some people are natural-born salespeople and they could be, but I think there's been a misnomer over the years that, oh, you know, that person has the gift of gab and they can talk to anybody. Believe it or not, I've seen over the many years, working with my clients, helping my clients interview and recruit some of the sales professionals who have the quote-unquote gift to get, who can talk to anybody that can make them a good networker, might not make them a good salesperson because, and I've had conversations about this, I wholeheartedly believe one of, if not the most important characteristic of a great selling professional, is listening and putting the prospect first. And if you were the kind of person who's got this great outgoing personality and you're gregarious and all that, and you know what, you might not give consideration in the conversation to the other, you might interrupt, you might not listen enough. And it's having the discipline to listen, to ask great questions, to have empathy for the prospect that I think can make a great salesperson. Hilary - I mean, how many people do you come in contact with and they just talk about themselves. It's all about themselves. Tim Healy - Well, it's good. Cause it kinda, it kind of keeps me in business to a certain extent because when the business is eventually not doing as well as it should, they reach out to people like me. But it, you know what, so much of sales is human nature. I mean, you have to understand human nature in order to relate to somebody because I think long gone are the days of feature and benefit selling. Because then you can't relate to, and you can't understand why somebody would need your products and services. So again, it starts with the conversation, starts by asking great open-ended probing questions. So those people who talk about themselves or about just about the products and services, there's no connection. There's no emotional bonding whatsoever. And I think it goes back to human nature. People like to talk about themselves, they want to show how smart they are. And again, if they don't listen, if they interrupt they never going to, I won't say never, but their chances of making great connections are greatly reduced. And I think somebody who's a great listener will eat their lunch every day. Hilary - Now, what about if you have a company and you hire a salesperson. What can you do to motivate them? I mean, you know, you and I both know that sales are tough and there's a lot of rejection. So how do you get people to be motivated? Tim Healy - There's, well, when it comes to motivation, I'm sure your listeners are probably familiar with extrinsic reward and intrinsic extrinsic is the compensation, the commission, the dollars, the bonus, the intrinsic is a sense of accomplishment. You know, doing the right thing, helping a client out, right. Both are very valuable, but how do you motivate somebody? A really good sales manager, a really good sales coach has an understanding of the salesperson and believe it or not sure money is a motivator. Of course it is, but it's not the only motivator. It really isn't. And if you just going to do the carrot and the stick for a commission, you're really going to miss, I think a lot of opportunities to increase somebody's ability to become a better salesperson. So you really have to understand what they want to accomplish, what they want to do. And it often goes beyond just the dollars and the commissions and the quotas. And, is it, you know, getting to another level of relationship, really just cracking into a client or a prospect that they've gone after for years and have never made headway. That could be a huge sense of accomplishment and reward and really connecting to clients. I think the best way to answer that is, as a sales manager, never make an assumption that your people are only motivated by money. Is it a key driving factor short, but it's not the only one that takes time to get to know your sales team, your salesperson, and you can often find out there are other things that they can relate to that can help positively impact their behavior. Hilary - So let's take this one step further and look, and can you offer our listeners some tips on how, if they are a salesperson, how they can be irreplaceable? Tim Healy - That's a great question. That's a great word. Think about that in, in just about, I never want to say a hundred percent, but in just about any industry, you've got competition in your field and what you do. So, most of us do some more than others and a lot of our products there's, people can't get across the street. While you may think that you have the world's greatest products, and you should absolutely think that it should be absolutely excited and pumped up about what it is that you offer, there are other good competitive products and services, and that's fine. So with that in mind, knowing that we are going up against the competition on a daily basis, I think it is a great way to start off a great mindset to develop. To ask yourself, how can I be irreplaceable in the mind of my client? So what does that mean to be irreplaceable? It's a big word, right? Not easy, not easy thing to do, what to do to, to accomplish, to achieve. So, typically, it goes beyond just offering and selling your product to service. So what can you do beyond that? What value can you offer your client beyond? You know, the exchange of money for service or money for a good, the better relationship that you have with the client and Hilary, it goes back to listening, the more that you know about what they're looking to accomplish, the more that you can help them. And I've often said, in becoming irreplaceable, when you get known as the guy or the gal, the go-to person, and somebody would just let me call Tim, maybe he can help. When a customer asked you for advice and something that you don't even offer, you know you become irreplaceable. Do you know what I mean? Because then they're like, they see you as such a resource that, well, I know Tim, I know Hilary doesn't sell this, but she probably knows somebody. And then if you just make a simple introduction, whether it's to a person or a resource or a book or link or a website, and you just help that client help your client. That's one more opportunity became irreplaceable. And that's another chance that they remember you again in the future. So you always want to be selfless and say, what can I do to be irreplaceable? Here's one thing I want to share with you. I think your listeners would love this. I like to remind myself every time I deal with a client and I try my best to do it as often as humanly possible. Sometimes I forget. I'm not perfect, but here's a great thing. Write this down. This is a pen and paper moment, Hilary, remind yourself that today may be the last time you see your client and I'm talking about a great client. I'm talking about clients, you’ve being do business for years. They love you. You've gone to their kid's wedding. It doesn't matter. And the reason I say this may be the last time you deal with them, may be last time you see them, it keeps you humble. It keeps you humble and you never take the relationship for granted because we all have, if you've been in the business, you're a sales professional, you have clients for years. If you're doing the right thing, right. We all have clients. If you're doing the right thing for years, never take them for granted and remind yourself: This may be the last time I see them. So what can I do value today for them? What can I bring different to the table? Let's not take this relationship for granted. And that's another way. Do put you in a place to be irreplaceable. Hilary - Love that. That's awesome. So before we move on, I have to say that I'm so appreciative of our sponsors and must take the time out to thank them. Please support our sponsors and tell them that you heard about them on Hilary Topper on air. Special thanks to the Russo Law Group, The Profit Express, Pop International Galleries, Gold Benes LLP, and the Pegalis Law Group. Now back to you, Tim. So we're talking about sales, but I'd like to shift gears a little bit and I want to ask some personal questions as they relate to sales. So for starters, what did people call you when you were a little boy? Tim Healy - Oh my God. How did you, we’ve never talked about this before we’ve never chatted. Okay. So this is, I talk about transparency and I know it's a big topic of yours and something you've helped me with. And by the way, for everybody listening to Hilary's podcast, keep listening and tell five friends because the things you can learn on this podcast from Hilary alone on branding, are phenomenal, it's worth the lessons. So as a kid, my name is Timothy Joseph. My middle name is Joseph. I always wanted to be called TJ when I was a little kid. And I grew out of that. So everybody calls me, Tim, I can't stand the word. Now people might use this against me now. I'm exposing myself here, Hilary. Hilary - No, I was wondering if they call you Timmy. Tim Healy - Oh, I hate it. I did have your father. May he rest in peace. He was, he was a sweetheart of a guy. He called me Timmy. I dealt with it cause I loved the music. Great guy, but that's the one thing I hated, but I was a little kid, it was TJ, since grew out of that. So Tim is, Tim is fine now that that's. Hilary - So if somebody calls you Timmy in business, do you correct them? Tim Healy - I really do because it's like nails on a chalkboard. I do correct them. Yeah. Hilary - What about now? I know your, your name is very easy to spell Tim T I M but what if someone spells your name or wrong or mispronounces, should you say something? Tim Healy - I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Like if somebody really botches your name, I actually did this. I won't say who she was a sweetheart of a guest and I take great pride. It's funny. She says, take great pride in pronouncing my guests names correctly. And for the love of God, I don't know how I butchered this poor woman's name. Her first and her last name, like three times on the show and she was so sweet about it. She ended up like, oh, I'm so sorry. But like if somebody, mispronounces it say, Hey, that's a great pronunciation. That's, I've never heard that before, but actually, it's pronounced, have some fun with it, thank them for the unique pronunciation. Hilary - How many times people call me, uh, say, write down Hilary with two L's.  I usually don't even say anything at this point, but this one person said to me the other day, oh, I was looking you up online and I couldn't find anything on you. Maybe that's because she spelled my name with two L's. Then is it's impossible not to find Hillary Topper, uh, online is you're everywhere. It's impossible. So. Let me ask you another question. This is also sales related, how often is too often to close the deal. You know, for example, somebody, you have a great relationship with somebody, you meet somebody. They love you. You love them. You write a proposal and then they go MIA, how often should you keep calling them or reaching out to them when they are MIA? Tim Healy - We could do a show just on this one topic. So, If the cause you are now, what you did say in the setup of the question was, you know, a great relationship and all this, then you give your proposal, then they go dark on you and it's MIA. For that to happen, there are a few, a number of things you probably did not do correctly as a sales professional. As far as qualifying as far as urgency, as far as timeline, as far as a decision-making process, in how I do it and how I train my clients and work with my clients, you qualify in the front end. You know, really you leave nothing to chance because it's on the one-yard line that you get surprised in this scenario that you just described. And there's a great scenario to describe Hilary because so many people get kicked in the backside with this, and I get so excited about it because it can be prevented. If somebody spends a time, they sit down and you do a meeting, you put together proposal presentation, do yourself the favor. And usually just a handful of good questions. Find out how they're going to decide on this is their competition. What factors are they going to use? Who else is involved in the decision-making process? And by the way, there's always somebody else involved when they're going to decide, okay, is having this something you'd like to have? It's something you must, that's a powerful question right there. Cause you don't get paid for proposals. You don't make a dime a proposal because here's one thing I would say, you have to earn a seat at my table. I don't deal with pipelines in sales. Okay. We've all heard of pipelines. Pipelines can be very dangerous. We just throw lots of stuff in them hoping that they'll close. It's a seat at my table. And you Mr. Or Ms. Prospect have to earn a seat at my table because I know that it takes time for me to put my presentation together. And I know that there are more people in this world. Forget the world, even, even just New York, I can't even, I don't have time to get to. So I have to talk to the ones who are most qualified, cause they deserve my time and attention. I don't want to waste my time with somebody who's not qualified because it prevents me from helping somebody who really needs Healy success solutions... Hilary - All right, let's take another route. So you're at a business meeting, you're at a lunch meeting and the salesperson decides to show you photos of their babies or their dogs. What do you say do you show your photos too? What does that say about them? Tim Healy - Well, it's what it says is it's a completely natural element of human nature. Everybody's favorite topic is themselves or an extension of their children or their dog, their cat, their Chinchilla, whatever. You look at it. Oh my God, Fantastic is beautiful that, you know, oh, what's the name of that? You have fun with it, you know? And then your next few, the second part is, should you show your pictures? Maybe you do, maybe don't you, you honestly played by ear because if they're so engrossed in their own stuff. Okay, fine. I'm here to learn about them anyhow. Hilary - And on that same topic where you are going out to lunch, and maybe the prospect asks you to go out to lunch, who pays for the lunch, you or the prospect, or do you go Dutch treat? Tim Healy- So this is a great question. It is never worth. Even if you go to a really nice lunch and you drop a hundred dollars, right. And that's not that common. Right. But even if you do that and you're in business, It's never worth the 50 bucks. If you split it to make an uncomfortable moment, you know what I'm saying? Can you believe Dutch? You know, especially if diner, you know, what is it going to be? 40 bucks. They eat it, you take it on it always because you know what, they can never take away from you. Hey, Tim bought me lunch. He's a nice guy. Even if we don't do business, I'm a nice guy. It was worth the 40 bucks. Always, always, always, always, always. And don't cry about it. Hilary - So you're at a networking event and the person that you are talking with is sitting there chewing gum. Well, I mean, what do you say to them? Do you say like, I swallow it, spit it out or you just ignore it and walk away? Tim Healy- Part of me would love to stay. Would you like a napkin? Cause it will be funny but I would, I would ignore it, you know, it just is sometimes, you know, but that's the funny thing about business. Again, you're dealing with human nature and there's a lot of you. One great thing is you can, I will never say I've seen it all. Because something's going to happen tomorrow that I haven't seen yet. So by the way, you're a fantastic host. I love I'm having a blast. Hilary - Right. Here’s another one. So now you are at a coffee shop and you both order cookies and milk. So the person that you're out to lunch with, or, you know, out for cookies with he’s dunking their Oreos or chocolate chip cookies into the milk? What's your reaction? Tim Healy- I think my internal reaction, which I do not share is I think cookie dunking is disgusting. That's me, my wife, who I love dearly, she loves to dunk cookies. So you know what is the great thing about life. She gets to dunk her cookies and I can be a dunk less cookie. You know what? Listen, some of your listeners may know me, some many, many, I'm sure don't. I could be a little wound-tight sometimes, I'm a type a personality sometimes. As long as, this is how I'd answer it, as long as they didn't dump their cookie in my milk, Hey, you know what enjoy life. If they decide to dunk their cookie in my milk, then I'd have to say. Wow. You know, what, can I get you to know the glasses? Hilary - Isn't it the same as when someone takes a fry off your plate? Tim Healy- Oh God. Oh, geez. God. I, yeah, I just, I can't I'm I don't know. In a business setting I'm talking about not, not personal. I mean, personal is not the greatest either, but what it is, this setting, you know what I, I would, I would let it slide and oh, okay. Here's a true story. I can not mention the client. True story. I'm at a dinner with a dear client, a great client. And there are 12 of us there. It's the owner, his wife, one of the VPs of sales and about seven or eight sales guys were there. Dinner comes out. We dinner, dessert and I saw an apple crisp pile mode kind of thing. I'm like, Aw, that sounds delicious. The owner sitting next to me, he goes, what are you getting for dessert? And I tell him, Oh, that sounds good. He's like, I'll have a piece. Oh my God. I love this guy. Can't say enough good things about him. So that's what he does. That's his thing. So the dessert comes out. The second it comes out, I dive bomb the dessert and I want to eat as much as I can. And then he goes, oh, and he grabs the piece. I'm like, okay. Oh yeah, good, good, good, good. And that's the last I have of it and I just, oh, okay. I start talking and I just let it, do you know, I'm fine. I got my couple of pieces in first. I'm good. My client was happy. He went to my plate, okay. Hilary - You're you're terrific. And you just one of those people that just keep making me laugh. Thank you. I want, I just want to find out how people can get in touch with you and learn more about Healy success solutions and also listen to the Profit Express. Tim Healy - Well, thank you. Uh, it's healysolutions.com you know, for and anything from anything and everything. Sales management, reach out to me. healysolutions.com and the show of course, you can follow me on Instagram at The Profit Express, at the profit express page on Facebook, that'd be great. Hilary - Terrific. All right. Well, thank you again for being on the show. And I want to thank our sponsors, the Russo law group, The Profit Express, Pop international galleries, Gold Benes LLP and the Pegalis law group. And last but not least, I want to thank you, our listeners for tuning in each week. If you want to know more about this show or any other show, visit us at hilarytopperonair.com or you can find us on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, apple podcast, Amazon Alexa, you name it. We're out there. Have a great week. And we'll see you next time.

Here in the future of the past, we’ve finally hit the point where lumber is almost worth it’s weight in silver. Pretty soon there will be a federal reserve of pine and plywood. Which then means we’ll get a Die Hard 10: Raiding Again where the nephew of the Gruber’s will rob it. And Willis will be partnered with some forgettable actor who’s popular on social media for a week. Until it’s discovered that they’re a vore loving baby fur. As we have some sort of news, Tim did Berserk. Being as it’s been a long time since we visited with this, think episode 73, it was time to really dig into the series. So Tim … Continue reading "Manga Pulse 448: Berserker Paradise"

Jump into the conversation with Tim Riley and Dave Seel as they talk about Rainbow Unicorn, energy drink. We take off from there, with Tim, who talks about this new show, BigSommEnergy. Those of us in the hospitality industry know that energy drinks have been ubiquitous! So Tim, who is a talented, knowledgeable sommelier has taken his skills in a new direction, and is just having fun!  How does anyone navigate caffeine, taste, flavor profile, and every other direction energy drinks can go.  Jolt, Surge, Monster and Red Bull might be ones you know. You also might know terminology of wine tasting.  Tim takes his wine scoring in a completely hilarious direction! Tim took his idea and put it on Tik Tok, and now has an active lively community within his 90K+ following.  Remember to support your favorite podcast by subscribing, reviewing and sharing. Thank you for following Holy Guacamole.  Find Tim Riley on IG here and on Tik Tok here. Listen, learn and laugh. 

03:31 - Uncovering Patterns * Making the Covert Overt * Reasons for Covertness 13:22 - Taking Care of People as Whole People * People Are Dynamic – Not Stagnant * Roles Are Constantly Changing * Iterating on Practices * William A. Kahn: Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work (https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/256287) * Financial Compensation * Metrics and Observability 28:43 - The Tech Industry: Now vs Then (aka we still have A LOT of work to do) * Gatekeeping * Accountability * Inclusivity * New Zealand Maori leader ejected from parliament for refusing to wear 'colonial noose' (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newzealand-politics-necktie/new-zealand-maori-leader-ejected-from-parliament-for-refusing-to-wear-colonial-noose-idUSKBN2A9329) * Whitewashing 45:59 - The Messaging Around Diversity and Inclusion * Doing the Right Thing 51:26 - Changing Mindsets * Using Privilege to Speak to Power Reflections: Rein: Capitalism and White Supremacy are the same thing. The Invention of the White Race (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Invention_of_the_White_Race_Racial_o/G4elgqb-MjwC?hl=en&gbpv=0). We have an obligation to not just make it possible for people to exist in the industry, but to also make it healthy. John: It’s always great to have these conversations as reminders. Tim: Figure out why something makes you uncomfortable. Look and uncover the pattern underneath that in yourself. Be comfortable with being uncomfortable. If you run away, you’re never going to grow and things are never going to get better. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: PRE-ROLL: Whether you're working on a personal project or managing enterprise infrastructure, you deserve simple, affordable, and accessible cloud computing solutions that allow you to take your project to the next level. Simplify your cloud infrastructure with Linode's Linux virtual machines and develop, deploy, and scale your modern applications faster and easier. Get started on Linode today with $100 in free credit for listeners of Greater Than Code. You can find all the details at linode.com/greaterthancode. Linode has 11 global data centers and provides 24/7/365 human support with no tiers or hand-offs regardless of your plan size. In addition to shared and dedicated compute instances, you can use your $100 in credit on S3-compatible object storage, Managed Kubernetes, and more. Visit linode.com/greaterthancode and click on the "Create Free Account" button to get started. JOHN: Hello, everybody. This is Greater Than Code, Episode 225. I’m John Sawers and I’m here with Rein Henrichs. REIN: And I’m here with our guest, my friend, and Dungeons & Dragons party member, Tim Banks. Tim Banks has a career spanning over 20 years through various sectors. Tim’s initial journey into tech started as a US Marine in avionics. Upon leaving the Marine Corps, he went on to work as a government contractor. He then went into the private sector, working both in large corporate environments and in small startups. While working in the private sector, he honed his skills in systems administration and operations for large Unix-based datastores. Today, Tim leverages his years in operations, DevOps, and Site Reliability Engineering to advise and consult with engineering groups in his current role as a Principal Solutions Architect at Equinix Metal. Tim is also a competitive Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner, having won American National and Pan American Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu championships in his division. Hi, Tim! TIM: Hi! Good to see everybody in here. REIN: Yeah, I did that on the first take and I'm very proud of myself. TIM: I am so, so proud of you. That was amazing. REIN: Tim, it's time for the question. TIM: Right. REIN: What is your superpower and how did you acquire it? TIM: So my superpower is using empathy to uncover patterns that people haven't seen in the past and I think that's a superpower because a lot of people can look at something, there's a lot of folks out there that can see a pattern just on the surface like this does that, this does that, this does that. But when you really talk to groups and you talk to people, you can see some common things that aren't necessarily things that are going to have an output or a metric, but you can see how people feel about a thing. And then when you get enough people who feel a certain way about a thing, that's not going to be a coincidence, it's going to be a pattern. So finding those patterns is my superpower. As far as how I acquired it, it's hard for me to say. The easy way to say is over time, but over time and myself being a person who necessarily wasn't listened to, or seen, or heard trying to explain how things are, why things are the way they are without having metrics. So having been on one side of that equation, I've been able to see people on the other side of it. REIN: So Tim, you said “to uncover patterns.” Can you say a bit more about the word uncover? Because I feel like that might've been a specific choice that you made to use. TIM: Yeah. There are typically, as we see with anything else, especially being tech or people that like to take things apart, I'm sure as we all did as kids, there are things that you see on the surface. There are things that you see, this pattern or this thing happening here, but you take the face plate off of something, or you delve down below the API, or you delve down below the operating system and there are so many other things that are happening beneath that. If you kick over amount of dirt and you see an ant hill, the ants have their own system, how they do things down there that you don't necessarily create, but you're just going to see it and you have to uncover a few things. You have to move things around. You have to look below the surface to see some of these patterns that happen just below the surface that bring the things at the surface to fruition. REIN: This reminds me a lot of I guess, it's a mantra that I learned from Virginia Satir, which drink if you're playing that game, make hidden things visible, make the covert overt and make the general specific and related to you, me, here, now, and the current situation. TIM: Yeah. I think that's actually a good – I had not heard of that one before, but I do like that a lot. REIN: So when you say uncover, that makes me think, make the covert over. TIM: Yeah, I think so. I like that. It's interesting because people sometimes think that things are covered up to make them hidden and it's not necessarily, they're hidden like someone has hidden them so you can't find them. A lot of times they're hidden in plain view. You don't find them because you're not looking for them and when you actually start to look for some of these things, some of the underlying causes, you'll be surprised what you find. It's like a lot of us here have done RCAs on things and oftentimes, if you do a good RCA, you're going to go through a few levels and different layers to find what the actual root cause. Like, most of the times the root of something is not at the surface, it's way down. So you actually have to go down and dig to uncover these things, to really find out what's at the base of something. REIN: So since this is the show where we talk about the social side of things, I want to ask you about these things that are covered that are maybe covered for a reason and maybe that the reason that they're covert is that people are trying to protect themselves and they don't feel safe to make them overt. So do you think about these situations and how do you go about making that safe to talk about? TIM: So I do think about these situations and there's a couple of reasons why. First, obviously, is in the professional world you can't always call people out immediately for things. Even if you know that there's something that's a lie or something that's not right, there are the political reasons why you have to be tactful or you have to be very deliberate and cautious about how you uncover these things because even if people aren't necessarily intentionally hiding things, or it is their mind that I must hide this as he'll feel safe, people's egos are the number one obstacle, I think to innovation. Someone has staked out a claim. Someone has a territory. Someone has some domain that they have, that they are a gatekeeper thereof and it is their ego that makes sure that you have to pay homage to them or to that ego in order to get anything done. So figuring out what they're protecting, whether they're protecting their job, whether they're protecting their ego, whether they're protecting levels of influence so that they can rise in their career. You have to figure out what that is, that what that thing is that is important to them so that way you can make sure that it's either protected, or you can make sure that there are more than one person that have access to that thing so you can make your way. At personal levels, there are things that people cover up because they don't feel safe and doing the work of trying to make them feel safe so you can talk about these things, I think that's the hardest thing that we do in the industry. Solving technical problems is easy compared to solving people problems, or cultural problems, or societal problems because those are the problems that we've had for millennia that we, collection of people in a common industry, are trying to figure out. Saying to somebody, “Hey, I see these patterns here of work, or absenteeism, or productivity, or whatever it is and I need to know what it is that's going on so that we can fix that,” and make them understand that you are there to help them and there to fix that problem, whatever it may be, that takes some work on the part of the person who's trying to uncover that pattern. It takes vulnerability and it takes confidentiality. It takes empathy. Especially if it's something that you've never dealt with before. Someone's going to tell you, “Hey, I have this problem,” and you're going to say, “All right, well, I know leadership or I know management or unknown this senior technical professional here, but I don't know the answer to this problem, but I can say that I will help you find it and then we can work together on it.” And a lot of people don't like to say, “I don't know the answer.” We see a lot of people that are very technically savvy and because they're very technically savvy, they are now considered to be experts in all kinds of domains. Nobody in particular—Elon Musk—but there are people that are looked to be some kind of great genius just because they happen to know how to code something, or architect something. I think when you display the vulnerability of saying, “I don't know.” Or you are upfront about your problems or upfront about your struggles, it makes people feel safer about being upfront about theirs and then you can go through the work of trying to solve those problems. Well, first of all, identifying if it's a pattern, and then solving the problem that's causing those patterns. JOHN: I like that you use the metaphor of anthill earlier on in this, because rather than when you describe something as pattern, it's very abstract and feels like an object. But when you talk about an anthill, it's individual entities working together in a system. It's something that exists on its own, made up of other individuals. It's not just some object that we can examine and I think that brings it into thinking about it in a different way and much like the way you've been describing how you talk about these things and how you work with people. Very humanizing and I like that. TIM: Yeah. I do think there's a lot of us when we're looking at an organization, whether we're looking at a society, or government, or whatever it is, a neighborhood even all of us have the role that we play whether we're aware of it or not. It's a role not necessarily either we're assigned, that we signed up for, or that we just have by nature of and by coincidence of our birth. But we all do something that contributes in some way to the organizations that we're in. When we look at that as that – okay, that role covers a lot of things. No one is just one thing; no one is just a software developer, or no one is just a cashier at a grocery store, or no one is just an artist. No person is monolithic. No one is defined by their job save except maybe the police and that's not a slam—they're always at work apparently. But there are all these things that we have that yes, as you look at an ant farm, this one ant does all these various things, but they have this contribution to the colony as a whole. And I do think that when we look at it as a pattern, if we look at one individual person and all the things that they do, it is important to see that they are more than just a worker. We are not ants. We're not that specialized. We have all kinds of things that we contribute to. So like the colony metaphor breaks down there just to understand that all of us have different things that we do outside of just what our role is to make money or to contribute. We all have dreams. We all have hopes. A lot of times, the fact that these dreams or hopes have been unrealized or worse yet, they have been forcefully deferred by the society as a whole affects that role that we have. It affects how we view ourselves. It affects how others view us. That's what we bring when we sit down at our desk every morning, that collection of all those things rides along with whatever your skills are, that is it's not compartmentalized. As much as people may want to say they can't compartmentalize these things, you can't. You can’t contain it forever. So when these things start to manifest themselves in different ways, we as people—whether we are neighbors, whether we are leaders in government, whether we are coworkers, whether we're management—need to do whatever we can to make sure that these people can become a whole and they can thrive. When people thrive on a personal level, they thrive on a professional level. Maybe not at the job that they're in, maybe not at the company that they're in, but wherever they end up, when they thrive as people, they are going to thrive as professionals. REIN: I also want to throw in another element of the ant colony metaphor, which is that ant colonies are dynamic. They're constantly changing. Tunnels are caving in, new ones are being constructed; the colony itself changes over time. You were talking about the complexity of a person in a given moment, but their roles within the company are also constantly shifting based on how they interact with other people. TIM: That's true; how they interact with other people and how the companies need change. I mean, no company is typically monolithic in and of themselves. They always have to be growing, they have to be thriving, and they have to be moving into different segments and as that happens, your roles change within that company. What's been being kicked around Twitter these past few weeks is people talking about like, “I don't understand why people leave jobs,” and I was like, “Well, yeah, they leave jobs because they want to go do other stuff.” People don't like to stagnate, typically and people who do like to stagnate, most companies don't want to keep them around. So stagnation is not really in human nature. As resistant as we are to change, we are all extremely adaptable. It's built into our damn DNA so we tend to do that well. I do like the fact that people are dynamic, or if you look at what maybe people had expectations of what 2021 was going to be in 2019, it's clear that a lot of things have changed due to the various circumstances around the world—pandemic, social uprising, Nazis, whatever it is. We've all had to make some big changes and even though it sucked and it has sucked, we're still here. We are in the new normal because we are adaptable and so are the dynamics of our existence lend ourselves to the fact that our roles are constantly changing. What does it look like when you were a working parent 2 years ago versus what does it look like you're a working parent now? What does it look like if you were a single person with a job 2 years ago versus if you're seeing a person with a job now? So many things have changed and it speaks to the fact that we are adaptable. That all said, if you're looking at how we can improve and make better for people, we can't look at the ideal state or the state we were in 2019 or whatever it was. We have to look at how things are now and then we had to look at what we have learned in the past year, year and a half will prepare us for what's yet to come because we know that shit is always going to roll downhill. So we have to figure out what have we learned here and what can we do next? I think a lot of the things that we still need to embrace is how to take care of our people as a whole people, and not just employees and not just take care of how they can contribute to us. How many commits can they do? How many tests can they write? Or anything like that. We need to take care of their needs as people and when we take care of their needs as people, they are more likely to be able to take care of us, our needs from them as companies and orgs. REIN: What Russell Ackoff always says when people talk to him about total quality management and all of these things about how to improve the quality of your business, what he always says is, “The quality that matters is quality of work life.” The quality of the lives of the people who are doing the work. TIM: That is absolutely true. It's absolutely true. Some of the worst cases of burnout that people ever have, some of the worst working environments, it's because they do not treat their people like people. They treat them like any other resource, like print, toner, cartridge, and the people personally as people cannot thrive and people burn out that way. People have a hard time setting and maintaining boundaries around their work life. Yay, capitalism. That's one of the things that we start from. It's like, if you want to get ahead, you’ve got to work real, real, real, real hard. Well, yes, to some extent, but the higher up you go, let's be honest that “hard work” looks way different. You're working hard on a yacht apparently, or you're working hard on a vacation to Paris apparently, but the people that are actually doing the labor to enrich the people higher up the chain, those basic human needs for rest, relaxation, recovery, they're oftentimes not being met and I think that's a fucking shame. REIN: Yeah, and if something is particularly incumbent upon leadership to show that by example and to encourage that behavior because I think lower down in the ranks, if they've probably been punished for any sort of thing like that, or they've seen people punished for that kind of thing, they're going to be highly resistant to doing that unless you can prove that it's safe for them to do so. TIM: Oh, absolutely. I think it's interesting when you talk about what it is for a person lower down in the rung and the common gatekeeping tactic you see is “Well, they've got to pay their dues.” They've got to suffer through this role so that way, they can make it for other people or they can be a better employee going forward. That is so horribly bassackwards. I mean, you really want to nurture junior folks. You want to nurture people coming into the industry. You want to nurture people who are just starting. You want to mentor them. You want to give them knowledge and guidance. You don't want to push their nose into the grindstone. I don't know what you're trying to accomplish there. That's fine if you're in the Marine Corps. That's fine if you're going into the military service. That's obviously, a consequence of the choice you made to join. But if you're not doing that, you don't need to punish people at the bottom ranks, really You should be, as a leader, like you said, modeling those behaviors, but you should also be making sure that they can thrive, whatever that looks like. Thriving for a junior person doesn't look like giving them a half hour lunch break and watching them clock in and clock out. It doesn't look like monitoring their bathroom breaks, or some of the stuff that I've seen the junior folks have to do. These people are whole people, they are not servers. They're not computers. They're not billed by the hour like that to perform X number of tasks. They really have to be nurtured and they have to be guided and mentored. The other thing we have to take into the fact is that not everybody learns the same. People are neurodivergent. So what productivity looks like for some persons, it’s going to look completely different for another person. For me, the worst thing I had as a senior person was to be expected to sit down and work 4 hours, take a half hour break, and then work another 4 hours straight. I have ADHD and anxiety and that is torturous for me. Now I did it and some people will turn around and say, “Well, I did it. So you can do it. too” like the motherfuckers that talk about student loans. But I would say, “I had to do it and it sucks. So I don't want anyone else to have to go through that.” That's what we should be doing. We should be iterating on our practices as an org, iterating our practices as a society to say that, “Oh, well, just because I had to suffer, that doesn't mean that you should have to as well. We should actually fix that so that you don't have to go through that.” Typically, in capitalism, that's how they say you're supposed to do. A 2021 Ferrari has more features than the Model T because you add features, and you add features, and you add features. So I don't see why we can't do that for the people that actually build these vehicles, or build anything else for that matter. REIN: There's a study that whenever this topic comes up, that I refer people to, because I think it's really, really good. It is from Kahn in 1990 and this is interesting because this is the study of the “Engagement of the Human Spirit at Work.” So even the idea that in a capitalist country, you could get a grant to study the engagement of the human spirit at work is amazing to me. But the idea is that there are three psychological conditions that relate to this. What I wanted to do was list them and then get your thoughts. TIM: Sure. REIN: Add them, change them, do they resonate with you? The conditions are meaningfulness. Do I find meaning in the work and my job title, my tasks, and so on? The second is psychological safety. And the third is the availability of emotional and psychological resources and this includes things like, am I emotionally drained at the end of the day? Do I wake up looking forward to going to work? Am I being supported by my manager or my supervisor? TIM: I like all of those. I think those are all really good, but I do think it overlooks the financial aspect and the reason why I say it overlooks the financial aspect is because those things are important for how you feel about your work. But if you are struggling financially, your ability to deal with the normal rigors of work are significantly decreased when you have to then go home and figure out how you're going to make the ends meet. Are you living paycheck to paycheck? Are you going to pay off debt? You're trying to figure out how to take care of your children. You're going to have to figure out how to do all these other things. Your overall capacity is reduced because you have these other concerns as well. So I think it cannot be overstated, the impact of making sure that people's needs outside of work are met to make sure they can also, you can also take care of the needs inside of work. But going back, I do think those are very, very important aspects of people feeling spiritual engagement at work. I think the meaningfulness and the psychological safety to me are the two most important. You can do meaningful work, but if you're getting harassed all the fucking time, it's not a great place. Or you can have a great loving and nurturing environment, but you're just toiling away in dumb anguish and it's like, “Oh, well, I don't know why I'm doing this job. Everyone's super happy and I'll stay here for a while because I really like everybody, but I don't really get any meaning out of what I do.” So I think I like that list. I would just add a fourth one talking about making sure people are financially compensated to make sure their needs are met plus, plus. REIN: And actually, the study doesn't consider that and I think you're right that that's a huge oversight. There's a second study that attempts to quantify these relationships to say how much each of these influence engagement and the result is that meaningfulness was the highest correlation, but the way they did this is interesting. They did a quantitative survey and the survey would include different sections with questions on for example, rewarding coworker relations with questions like, “I feel worthwhile when I am around my coworkers.” I think we should be asking questions like that more often. I think that the engagement surveys you get in the modern world are superficial. TIM: Oh, they absolutely are. They absolutely are. Well, I mean, it goes back to a lot of topics we have in observability. What are your metrics if whatever you measure is what you're going to do? I learned this lesson working in tech support call centers right out of the Marine Corps where if they're going to reward you for the number of calls or they're going to – the primary metric is the number of calls you took in a day. So people were going to do whatever they can do to take the most number of calls, then to like, “Oh, then we're going to do NPS scores after that.” But they set the NPS score pretty low and saying, “Well, we just need you to answer the calls. They don't have to be that good.” That's what you're going to get. If you were measuring things like, “Oh, did your manager make you feel good this month?” If you ask that and they answer honestly, maybe they made you feel good once a month or something like that since the last one, but primarily, they made you feel like crap. That's kind of what you need to ask. I do think the interpersonal relationship aspects, they're hard to quantify because it looks different for everybody and even the nature of the questions are different for everybody. What that question looks like to a cis, white, straight male is going to look way different to say, a queer Black woman. REIN: What if the question is: “I feel a real kinship with my coworkers and I'm like a little, eh about that one?” TIM: Yeah, that goes back to that we're a family thing and I don't necessarily like that at all because we aren't a family. You can't fire your family or lay your family off. REIN: But then there were questions like: “I believe that my coworkers appreciate who I am,” and I like that one a lot. TIM: That's a good one. The appreciates who I am, that speaks to being a whole person and the more that we can be whole people at our jobs, the better off we are going to be. If you have to bite your tongue, if you have to cover your tattoos, if you have to make sure your hair is undyed, or you have to wear clothes that you don't necessarily like because they’re considered “professional” whatever that means. That the more that a person has to distance themselves from who they are as a whole person, probably the less happy they're going to be in that environment. Less safe they're going to feel in that environment. JOHN: Yeah, I find that there is a gap between the rhetoric about bringing your whole self to work and the practice of building a space where it's safe to do that. Like I myself know some things that can lead us in that direction, but I don't feel like there's a great playbook on building that all out. TIM: There really isn't and part of the reason is that the tech industry started out, by and large, as an artifact of the US government, US military, which is never not really known for being very welcoming and safe for people outside of a certain demographic. You talk about what the industry looked like when I got in back in the late 90s, IBM had just stopped requiring people to wear suits to work and they were allowed to wear polo shirts and khakis. That look was what you had. It was the “business casual.” Couldn't have long hair, couldn't have accessed piercings, no visible tattoos; not unlike dress codes or appearance regs that you would see in the military. So you make everybody look like the stereotypical white guy, essentially, because this is what you have to wear because some old white guy said, “This is what people should look like.” Those things are hard to break because who still has power in those things and it's a self-perpetuating society. People that do not fit that mold do not last in that industry, or the people that do last in industry had to divorce themselves of who they are so much that it becomes hard to break that mold once you get into places of power, because you can very quickly be run out for rocking the boat too much and it was very, very self-standing. This is the one thing that I think came out of the .com bubble burst after Y2K and the early aughts was that it broke up a lot of these big companies, big old legacy companies and you saw a lot of smaller startups come out. A lot of these smaller startups that came out of it maybe had a different way of thinking because they weren't run by 70-year-old white guys who were defense contractors. But I do think, when we get into that, if you look at what a person in the tech industry looks like in 2021 versus what they look like in 2001 is dramatically different. I can have my hair long. I can expose my tattoos. I can have a beard. I can say, “I'm a queer, ADHD, Black-Mexican man,” whereas such a thing would be dangerous career-wise and maybe even personally, 20 years ago. I remember in the industry when the first person that I knew personally came out as being transgender and the harassment that she had to go through was horrifying, but it was considered perfectly normal in 2001. We have come a long way, but that just speaks to what a shitshow it was before. Not that we're doing great now, because we have so much farther to go and we are still here in 2021 seeing all white panels, all white male leadership, diversity being heralded when you bring a white woman onto a board or when you bring a gay white man onto a board. And that ain't it chief. That is not it. We have so much more to do and the hard part about that is convincing people that you can't rest on your laurels. Convincing people that you haven't done enough in the first place. Convincing people that there are still problems. That goes back to what you're saying about some of these questions, about some of these metrics that we have about people in the workplace. The questions that you have to ask on these to really get an idea of where you are, have to be uncomfortable. They have to be uncomfortable. They have to challenge people's safe spaces and not just a safe spaces of other people who are marginalized, but certainly, the safe space of the people who are overrepresented. It goes back to talking about, “Hey, do you realize that you have gotten where you are largely by privilege?” or that you've been able to fail up, or that doors have been opened to you that haven't been opened to others, or bars have been lowered for you that weren't as lower for others, or even at the bar wasn't lower, the bar was not raised for you like it was for others? People don't like to hear that. People get very upset when you challenge the notion that maybe they haven't had to work as hard as other people have to get where they have. If you tell somebody, “Well, you got here because you had a fair amount of pillars to help you along the way.” People don't like to hear that. Now I will very much, I've said in the past I may be Black and I may be queer but I'm still a man so I have some privilege that goes along with that that women and non-binary folks have not been able to enjoy. I typically don't have to go to a conference and worry about whether I'm going to be sexually assaulted. God help the person that tries at least with me. But that is a worry and a concern that people have to have going to a conference that's supposed to help their career and that's a big detractor. That is a big obstacle that people don't realize that they have and then worse. I mean, heaven forbid, we even talked about motherfuckers that actually do the harassing there that are still allowed to enjoy their place in the industry, that are still allowed to hold positions of power, positions of influence where they can continue to do this. Not even just keep their jobs, but they keep being by to back these places and they can continue to perpetuate that kind of harassment and making the industry hostile to brilliant people. But it's funny that I will say that here I am on a podcast and every podcast I've ever been on with the exception of one – well, no, all the podcasts I've ever been on hosted by all white people. Every last one. Some have had white women in them, but it's all white people. So when we talk about these subjects, it still comes from a certain perspective that white folks aren't going to have, or that men aren't going to have. It's good that we're talking about it, but we need to do something about it. We need to have more of these voices routinely, not just in our panels at tech conferences, but in our normal, everyday consumption and I think that's important. We talk about what do these things look like? What are the patterns we're seeing? If you look at a tech company, especially in Silicon Valley, tech companies look like the neighborhoods. It's not very diverse. People refer their friends, people refer their coworkers, or they have these things about what was that Google employee letter? “We only want people with Bachelor's from Stanford or Ph.Ds. from these places and no one else gets accepted.” Those places are already quite exclusionary in and of itself. They list no HBCUs on that piece of paper, because they don't value HBCUs. They don't value schools that allow people of lower economic or lower in the socioeconomic strata to attend. It's literally self-perpetuating, that kind of gatekeeping. These people who pass through these gates erect those exact same ones and only the people that fit that mold are going to go through it and you never fix the problem. We do not do enough to break those gates down. We don't do enough to model that kind of behavior that we should be expecting. It's good that we're talking about it, but we need to be more about doing it. REIN: Yeah, and our whole panel for this show is majority not white dude, but it might not surprise you that the people who most often have the spoons and the privilege to take time out of their workday to do this podcast are the white dudes. JOHN: Yeah. TIM: Yeah. But I think when we talk about going forward, it's one thing to see a pattern and I think people who, if they're looking, they can see what it is, but what do you do? Do you just throw up your hands, go, “We tried, it's hard to do, so we're not going to do”? “Ah, all right, we gave it a shot. We asked some folks, but they can’t do it.” Or what do you do? I've seen a couple of folks, to call out the good behavior when I see it, I know Ashley McNamara when she had said that she was going to step aside from doing conferences, she was like, “Don't talk to me about conferences. Go talk to underrepresented minorities about these roles. Don't talk to me. I'm not going to take it.” I've seen folks that will say, “I'm not going to speak at this thing if it's an all white panel or if it's all male panel.” “If you're not paying your speakers, especially of color, to come, I'm not going to do these things.” That's how we see it in action. Holding the people that build the platform accountable to make sure that everyone has access to it. I think the thing that the pandemic has taught me that I've seen, for the most part, is a lot of these conferences have become free or very, very low in price because there were virtual, a lot more people showed up. People that couldn't necessarily go before and sometimes, it was harder even for them like you mentioned before Rein, just to get off of work and now they can kind of manage to do it in between because they don't actually have to leave. So when we get to a point where we can have in-person conferences again, I think it behooves the organizer of these conferences that if they're really serious about doing something about being more inclusive about breaking these patterns, not to have them in Silicon Valley, in the most expensive real estate on earth. Have them someplace less expensive to lower the cost for people, if they charge it at all. If anything, you cannot tell me that AWS cannot put the cost of an entire – AWS, Microsoft, all these panels’ sponsors cannot put the cost such that you don't have to charge people for a standard price of admission. You can't tell me that they can't sponsor it to the level where you can pay your speakers, especially women, underrepresented minorities, people of color, like that to come in and appear and talk about these things. Especially if it's a topic on which they have to do the emotional labor for. That's what I want to see us do to break some of the patterns that we're seeing, to make things better for everyone else, and then once some start doing that, that is going to be it. Once you start modeling that behavior, you're going to see other conferences do the same, where these big trillion-dollar companies that are sponsoring these orgs or sponsoring these conferences can actually put some money into it so that more people can come. I don't really have a good understanding yet as of why that hasn't happened and I'm sure folks who organize conferences will probably have plethora of reasons. But I feel like the time has come to do these kinds of things and if it means we have fewer conferences, okay. Move them more virtual, it's fine. REIN: Yeah. I have liked that some conferences are starting to do two tier tickets where if the company's paying, you pay the higher price and if you're just an individual or whatever, then you're paying a much lower price, and then usually, there's also some sort of scholarship program again, to try and bring people in. But I think you're right. Especially if it's the much more company focused things like AWS re:Invent or whatever, why is there a cost to attend that? Even for the tickets, but on top of that, there's all the travel, there's taking time off work, there's childcare; there's so many other attendance costs to going to a conference at a place that even if the tickets were free, there's still a huge barrier there. TIM: You could even go as far as say some of these venue choices. You go to a place like D.C., or New York City, or someplace that have HBCUs, those HBCUs have [inaudible] and conference centers. You don't have to go to some Richie rich hotel. Why don’t you give Howard some money to use their facilities? Why don't you do it in the [inaudible] area? Why don't you give Home by the Sea Hampton University some money? Or Atlanta? Any of these places where you have – or some of these are just lower income schools that serve underprivileged communities, give them the money to host these conferences. Not some hotel. Have it catered by minority-owned businesses, have something, do some things to get more people in. Like, have scholarships for HBCUs CS students where if you're a student—junior, senior—looking for internships where they're like, “Hey man, you know what, come to this conference, we’re not going to charge you and we're actually going to give you a stipend for travel.” That's doing something and it is almost the peak of intellectual dishonesty for people to try and act like the money isn't there because it's there. We've seen time and time again, all these earnings calls coming out, all these market caps going up and up and up and up. The money is there; just people don't want to open up them purse strings, I guess. REIN: Before the moment passes, I do want to point out that you call this podcast out for not doing enough to schedule things so that all of the panel can attend. I gratefully appreciate the rebuke and we're going to go work on that. TIM: I appreciate that and I appreciate you for giving me a space that I feel safe to say that. That matters. Like, if you want to do something, give people space to talk about it and don't get butthurt when they say something. REIN: So when you were talking about white person dress codes and the need to assimilate into that, I was reminded of this thing that actually just was published by CNN about a Maori representative in New Zealand’s parliament who was objected for refusing to wear a tie. TIM: I think he called it a colonizer's noose? REIN: He did and when they changed the rule and he was allowed back in, I am still thinking about what he said, which is, “The noose has been taken off our necks and we are now able to sing our songs.” TIM: It's true and it's a big deal because I know for me as, especially as a young Black male, it is imperative for our survival to not be threatening and I'm not overstating that. It is imperative for our survival to not be deemed as threatening. If you go into a workplace and you don't have a comfortable appearance whether your hair's cut close, you can't have dreadlocks, you don't want to have anything that's let's say, too Black. You have to look a certain way. Your car has to look a certain way. You can't listen to certain music. Can't talk a certain way. Those are the guardrails which I had to perform under and I say perform early on when I was early in the industry, because that's what was expected. You would see when the few Black people in an org would get together and the white folks weren't around, we would relax and it looks a whole lot different. If you're a fly on that wall, you would look and sound a lot different because we could be who we were and the problem happened was that you would see, you'd have to go out there and you'd be like oh, man. “Hey, Tim you have a blah, blah. You don't really sound Black.” Hm, okay. REIN: You’re so articulate. TIM: Oh yeah, that's a good one. “You're so articulate,” “You know a lot of words,” and that kind of stuff. The problem with that is that in order to do that, in order to assimilate into that culture to make a living, you have to do that and then we have to go back to our communities and hear about it. Hear about selling out, hear about – and it's one thing to get a job. People like to see people succeed, but what they don't like people have to do is change who they are in order to succeed. But that's what was expected of us to fit into this predominantly white culture. White people didn't have to change. Not really. I can't recall how many dudes I saw walking around with mullets. Even to this day, you see guys walking around with khakis, the polo shirt tucked into the belt, the mullet, the wraparound sunglasses. That has been unchanged since like 1985. But Black people now are starting to be able to be our whole selves, but how many didn't last in the industry because they couldn't? There's a lot and that was just for being Black. Heaven forbid, people who are gay, people who are trans, people who were immigrants first generation, or immigrants that really had a hard time. It's not great. We have not done, this “progressive tech industry” has not done a lot. Did not do a lot early to be welcoming or to do anything, really towards inclusion. It had to be done kicking and screaming by people who have kicked down the doors and I think, honestly, we really need to be. I am grateful that you are kicking down the doors for me and I've done my best to kick down doors for people behind me, who've come after me. But we need to keep doing that and I don't think we acknowledge really, how bad it was because it's uncomfortable. Especially the folks who are still in the industry that were part of that. You catch a lot of these high-tech level CEOs, C-levels SVPs who say they've been in the industry 20 plus years. They were complicit. No one was talking about that. They want to talk about what they're doing now, but no one wants to come up front and be like, “Yeah, I actually participated in this. This is the things that I was doing back then.” Or “I didn't speak up for whoever, whoever.” I guarantee you, if people had an honest disclosure of all that, you're going to see that. It talks about what US history looks like if we don't whitewash it. If we're really honest about it. We can prevent making the same mistakes, hopefully because we don't have this narrative that we were great all the time. Companies are the same way, managers are the same way, people who are long in the tooth of this industry are the same way and I think it's important that we talk about that especially when we talk about even now. You take salespeople, that is a good foray into tech for people that don't have a technical background, especially people of color and women and they still have to look like they're fucking bankers to sell a SaaS to people who are wearing hoodies and boardshorts to work. That doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make a damn bit of sense. REIN: Can I share a hot take with you, Tim? TIM: The hottest of takes, please give me lava. REIN: I'm getting really frustrated with the messaging around diversity and inclusion that works and the fact that we have to use it, which is look how good this is for the business and I have a huge amount of respect for the people who do that work, sell that message. A lot of the people I've talked to who are doing this are Black women and they know how to get it done better than I do, but it must be grading to not be able to just say, “Look, we do this because it's right. We do it because it's just.” TIM: It's because the people that they have to placate in order to get this signed off on. Who are they? They are, by and large, white men and to try and give a message to them of doing it just because. People who are a hundred millionaires, billionaires sometimes, if you don't tell them it's going to be good for their bottom line, they're not going to do it. For the most part. Then there are some folks that I'm sure that wouldn't, but in the most part, you're talking about raging capitalists that will be glad to cut off. That would be the same people that didn't offer health insurance to their employees because they didn't have to. The same ones that give them shitty healthcare, but the executives get really, really nice healthcare. The stratification of the value that you hold to the companies is very apparent in the benefits package, pays, and other kinds of things they offer them. To expect them to do it for altruistic reasons is the peak of naivety. So yes, the people that can get those people to sign off on a diversity and inclusion program are fucking miracle workers. REIN: Yeah, and to be clear, I'm not mad at them for choosing that messaging. I have a huge amount of respect for their ability to be pragmatic and use the messaging that gets the job done. I mad that that's what they have to do because of how the system is. Because of how racism is. TIM: I wished we could live in a society where we can say, “This is the right thing to do so we're going to do it.” I've talked about this before, where you look at that AWS Leadership Principle of leaders are right. There's no impetus on doing the right thing. You can say, “Oh, I was right about this.” Well good, congrats on your fucking jeopardy win. But do you do the right thing? Doing the right thing is an ethical question. Do you do the right thing? Not for the business, right thing for the business. There's no parenthetical after that, there's no qualifying clause. If you are ethical, you will do the right thing and if that right thing isn't necessarily good for the business, okay. That's fine. All right. There's more money to be made and if your business cannot withstand you doing the right thing, then you're probably a shitty business in the first place. REIN: It’s not a means, it’s an end. TIM: Exactly. REIN: Okay. Well, there's my hot take for the episode. TIM: That was like medium hot. That was like jalapeno hot. JOHN: It's something we've all noticed, that language always comes up the moment you start talking about DE&I. TIM: What I think for me, the hurtful part is when I watch these things especially as you see these things like what you're seeing at Google because of fucking course, Google is that when people really start to move the needle, when people start to make a real impact, the powers that be get uncomfortable and then they start to let people go and they replace them with someone that they are more comfortable with. They don't realize that the discomfort that they feel is what's supposed to happen and you can make it very, very simple for them. If you were to talk about this as a digital transformation, as we say, it's like, “Oh, well, we're going to go from this monolithic gigantic system that we’re running on to microservices, cloud-based API, stuff like that,” and people say, “Well, these old school database administrators are very uncomfortable with it and they tell them.” It’s like, “Hey, well this is how it is now. You're going to have to deal with it, or you're going to probably have to find a different way to get the industry, because this is the way it's going and it's better for everyone involved.” They explain all these benefits and they tell people that discomfort is part of this journey. You're going to have to learn to swim in new waters and things are going to be different, but they're going to be better overall once you get on the other side of that, but they can't apply that to them fucking selves when it comes to about diversity and inclusion and I don't get it. JOHN: I mean, that's the privilege that they haven't had to be practiced at being uncomfortable in those situations, or even if it's a little bit of technical discomfort versus the much more impactful discomfort that comes when you start actually talking about race. TIM: Yeah, there's a level of introspection that they haven't had to do and they are seemingly unwilling to do. That's the part that's most frustrating; the people that have the least to lose in this are the most unwilling to change. REIN: Oh, do you think it's worthwhile if what we're talking about here is a change in mindset? It's a change in what these people strive for, what they want and I think that that change is incompatible with let’s call it, white supremacy and capitalism. So do you think that it's worthwhile to try to pursue that, or do you think we have to continue doing these pragmatic things? TIM: Well, first of all, I would say that white supremacy and capitalism are redundant, but I would say that we cannot change the minds of the people in power with anything other than pragmatic reasoning because if we could, they would have already. There has been more than enough reason, appeals to emotion, consequence, societal collapse, all these other things that we've seen, especially these past 18 months or so. A reasonable person would say like, “You know what,” or all the people who are reasonable about this and who are ethical about this have already changed their minds. At this point, anybody who doesn't see the need for it, the self-evident need for it without for the justification for business reasons, but the self-evident need for it will not be convinced. So you have to appeal to pragmatic reasons until they leave the industry. REIN: This is a Kuhnian paradigm shift: the people with the old views have to die or otherwise go away and be replaced. TIM: Essentially, that's it and so that's why it's so important for us to nurture the junior folks coming into the industry and the people who are mid-career to make sure that people who understand this, to make sure that the people who are underrepresented, and to make sure your LGBTQ, your people of color, any manner of folks that are not properly represented or that have been heretofore unsafe in this industry, stay in the industry by any means necessary. To make sure that the industry can change in the long run. It is incrementalism and as unpopular as it is in some circles to say, “Oh, we can't just change everything right now because we're inspired to do so.” I'm sorry, you don't steer a ship that quickly. This is a large thing we have to change. The industry is a lot of people and it's a lot of money. So you're going to have to change it a bit at a time and the only way to bring that change about is to bring and keep people in the industry that can affect that change. REIN: And for those of us who are more securely in the industry, whether it's because we're white dudes or we have experience, whatever it is, we have an obligation to do what it takes to keep them around you. TIM: You absolutely do and you also have an obligation to continue to push on the folks that don't see the value in keeping them around. Very openly. You have to use your privilege. You have to use your privilege to speak to power. You don't have to take anyone else's voices. You don't have to pick up someone else to sign a waiver on his own, certainly, but you have to keep them from being silenced and that is the important thing that we need to do. If you are a straight white male in this industry and you have seen the necessity of the industry being more inclusive, diverse, and to have a good sense of belonging, then what you have to do is you have to check your peers when people speak. REIN: And not just keep them around, but make it possible for them to thrive. TIM: Absolutely, absolutely. They have to have strong roots in the industry. They have to feel like they're safe here, that they can grow here, and that they belong here and then when they do that, that's when they can affect change. JOHN: Yeah. That is how you keep them around, either that, or you don't want to them to have to rely on just complete bloody mindedness to have the perseverance to go through all of the pain to stay in the industry. You want it to be them thriving in the industry. Like you said, they can be the tomorrow's leaders that can start that real change. TIM: The last thing I want to do is also say, I want to make sure that when we talk about doing that thriving, that again, we're talking about not just taking care of them in the workplace, but taking care of them as whole people. I will beat this drum every time I can get on, we cannot let, we cannot let women leave this industry. We cannot do it. We're losing too many women because they have to make the choice right now in 2021, in this pandemic, as to whether or not they have to be mothers or whether they have to be career professionals and it’s bullshit. It is bullshit and it goes two ways with that: we're not supporting mothers and we're not supporting our fathers. We can support our fathers, then they can play a more active role in raising their children and Mom doesn't have to take care of everything. Now obviously, work can't influence whether a father is a piece of shit father or not and there are a lot of them out there, I'm going to be honest about it, that won't change a diaper, that won't clean the house, shit like that. We can't do that, but we'll at least avail them the opportunity and not have them use work as an excuse. So we have to change the way we do business to make sure that working mothers can be whole people so they don't have to choose between raising their children and doing work. If we don't protect these women, and the reason I say that is because it is the women of color that are the most susceptible to having to make this choice, because they have fewer resources outside of that, typically. So we need to protect people. We need to protect these people so that they can stay in the industry and we need to do that now. Because we are bleeding off too many women as it is like way, way too much. And that goes beyond whether or not we're actually treating them as they should be treated like equals, like the brilliant engineers they are in the conference rooms. So that's a whole other problem. We need to tackle that too, but we need to at least keep them from saying, “Hey, I’ve got to leave the industry because I got to take care of my kids.” We should be fixing that and we should be fixing that yesterday. JOHN: Yeah, that’s part of bringing your whole self to work is the other selves that you're taking care of. Like, if you can't have that baby on your lap for the meeting, then you're not going be on the meeting and then it's snowballed from there. TIM: Absolutely. Absolutely. When we start coming back, whatever that looks like post-pandemic, think about what they did in World War II and beyond to keep women in working. They had daycares, like the companies had daycares. But why fuck can't we do that now? We have so much money. You mean to tell me Amazon can’t have a daycare at the facilities You mean to tell me that Microsoft can have a daycare facilities? You mean to tell me that fucking WeWork can't have WeWork fucking daycare that companies pay for? Like, there's no reason for it. People just don't want it and it comes down to greed and it’s bullshit. REIN: So maybe now is a good time for us to do reflections. I usually have two things, I guess, that's my pattern now. One is I wanted to point out that Tim said that capitalism and white supremacy are the same thing and I didn't want that one to go under the radar either. If you're a white person who doesn't know what Tim is talking about, I can recommend a book called The Invention of the White Race. Maybe Tim has some of his own recommendations. My reflection is that we have an obligation not just to make it possible for people to exist in the industry, but if we're dragging them through the barbed wire that is this toxic garbage industry, we're hurting them, too and so, our obligation is to make it healthy. JOHN: Yeah, I think that's really just been reinforcing a lot of my own thoughts on things like, I don't know if this is a reflection other than just it's always great to have these kinds of conversations as reminders. These are thoughts that happen, but sometimes they happen in the background or you're not quite sure to connect them to action and continuing to have these conversations to continually remind me what the priorities are and what the other perspectives are is incredibly useful to me. So Tim, if nothing else, I appreciate you spending the time talking with us, talking to me in specific about your perspective on this. So thank you. TIM: I want to take a moment again, to acknowledge and thank you all for giving me a space and a platform. I know it's difficult sometimes to hear criticism especially if you're doing what you think is right for someone to say, “Hey, well, you can do better.” It's hard, but I think it's important for us also acknowledge that growth is uncomfortable. Improvement is uncomfortable. One of the things that I learned in jujitsu, if it has taught me anything and it's something that I've reinforced in my life, is that adversity makes you thrive in some ways. Not adversity for adversity’s sake, but when you exercise harder, you get stronger. If you run faster, run harder to get faster. If you spend more time being crushed under a 300-pound man, you get better at jujitsu. In this context, the more time you spend listening to some of these things, the voice of the people that have been marginalized and it makes you uncomfortable, figure out why it makes you uncomfortable and don't figure out how to disqualify the person talking. Think about why you're uncomfortable, look and uncover the pattern underneath that in yourself and in your world and how you interact with it, and then once you find that pattern, fix the problem. Once you do that, you can then help others do it. But you have to at first be comfortable with being uncomfortable and to do, if there's maybe sound a little cliche, but it's true. If you just run away from that feeling, you're never going to grow, you're never going to improve, and things are never going to get better. JOHN: Thank you so much for coming on the show, Tim. TIM: I appreciate it, John. Thank you all for inviting me. I’m honored and humbled. Special Guest: Tim Banks.

Most of us rely on insurance. But when you suffer a Medical Emergency on an RV Trip, that insurance may not be adequate, especially if you need a land or air ambulance. In fact, many of those air and ambulance costs claims are rejected by the insurance companies, even if the transport was called by EMTs or the hospital. It's a giant loophole that is particularly important for RVers to know about because they often find themselves in remote locations where hospitals can be few and far apart. In RV Podcast Episode 333, we learn the startling high percentage of ambulance runs that are rejected by insurance companies and the catastrophically high costs for emergency air ambulance that also go uncovered by insurers. You can listen to the entire podcast episode in the player below, or go about 20 minutes in to hear the interview. Or scroll down and keep reading this post for a full transcript of the interview. Our guest is Tim Gustafson, who runs an outfit called the Medical Air Service Association (MASA) which offers a special program to cover those 100% of those ambulance costs. I met Tim a couple of weeks ago and after hearing some of the horror stories that RVers have had because of uncovered ambulance fees, I thought his information would be of great interest to RVers. Transcript: Interview about ambulance costs related to a Medical Emergency on an RV Trip Mike Wendland: Joining us now to talk about these issues is Tim Gustafson. Tim is with a group called MASA, for Medical Air Services Association. I met Tim a week or so ago, and we were talking about some of the issues that RVers encounter when medical emergencies happen on the road. He had some pretty scary stories to relate to me that I in turn want to relate to you. So Tim, thank you for agreeing to come on the program and talk about some of this stuff. Tim Gustafson: Well Mike, thank you so much for having me. Mike Wendland: So let's talk a little bit about a lot of us think that if something happens on the road, we're all covered with all the different insurances. Walk through some of the scenarios that we need to understand about ambulances, whether it's emergency air ambulances or even ground ambulances. When an air or land ambulance is called during a Medical Emergency on an RV Trip Tim Gustafson: Yeah. I've been an insurance broker for 16 years or so now. What that means is that I work for my clients, but I represent about 90 different insurance companies. One of the biggest gaps that I see is ambulance coverage, by ground or by air. Statistically, there's roughly three and a half million ground ambulance runs per year, and one out of seven is just outright denied, because it's not up to you, it's not up to the EMT to determine whether it's medically necessary. They have some heartless dorks sitting behind a desk at a home office and an insurance company to decide if it's medically necessary or not. So 14%, roughly one out of seven get denied. Most health insurance plans do not cover emergency transportation The denials by air ambulances are far greater than that. Denial rates are through the roof really, because air ambulances are not considered a medical expense due to the Deregulation Act of 1978. They're actually classified as a common carrier so they can just charge whatever they want whenever they want. The Department of Insurance, Medicare, Medicaid services, any insurance company, they have about as much influence over the pricing as they do over Southwest or Delta Airlines. Mike Wendland: Give us an example. The costs of an air ambulance during a Medical Emergency on an RV Trip Tim Gustafson: I had some great clients that were taking their RVup to Alaska in the summer of 2019. They got just North of the Washington border and the husband ended up having a heart attack. So they called 911, which is the number you call if you're in Canada, by the way. I didn't know that.

Sima Vasa is excited to welcome Tim Clover as her guest for today’s podcast. Tim is the CEO and Founder of Glow, based in Australia. Tim is originally from the UK and has been living in Australia for the last ten years. About Glow Glow is an online research platform, and people often compare it with SurveyMonkey on steroids. For Tim, it is about a lot more than just creating surveys. It is about the whole workflow for research. Some background As a kid, Tim was into engineering and finding out how things work. He started his first business after getting his engineering degree. He tried to use Excel macros to standardize processes and do things like process mapping. And he wanted to work out how to create channels into different markets. Although he earned enough to pay the rent and eat, he needed to gain more life and company experience, so he ended up working for a UK company, doing business simulation work. Not fitting the mold A friend called Tim and suggested that he apply for a role at the company he was working for because they needed someone with his skill set. Tim applied for and got the job. But he felt that did not quite fit that mold, which was generally very academic and did not involve much thinking outside the box. Assumptions Tim became interested in the sensitivities around many of the assumptions in the models that were being used in the company he was working for. He wanted to understand where the data was coming from that was feeding those assumptions. That pushed his career within that company into a role of story-telling, and into dealing with much more senior people in the organizations, to challenge them and help them form assumptions. From doing that, he became well-known within the organization. Australia In Australia, they were trying to do a similar thing. They wanted to build a team to analyze data and analytics from an operational perspective. So Tim decided to move there and help the company build a team in Melbourne. Retailers Tim did a lot of work with retailers. A big retailer called Coles was going through a major transformation at the time, and Tim’s team helped them pull together all their data together. The birth of Glow It took a long time to get their customer data together, and Tim started tinkering around to find ways to speed things up. Through his endeavors to find a better way to capture the information, Glow was born. Glow Glow, as a concept, was born because of a gap in the ability to reach consumers. It was a way that companies could tap into their customers more quickly and directly. Initially, Tim did not think of it as a survey platform. He just wanted to close the gap in hard-to-reach places and create experiences for the customers to engage. Good times and bad When starting a business, you have to weigh up the personal risk and realize that the path will be hard. If you’re not absolutely focused and completely determined, you’re going to find the ride pretty tough. Tim has had some fantastic times and some tough times over the last seven years. At first At first, Glow was all about getting data from hard to reach places and leveraging their tech to fund growth. In the background, they were investing more heavily in the ability to write the surveys themselves. Clients could log in After starting to write the surveys themselves, about three years ago, they released the first version of Glow where their clients could log in, look at their account, see the surveys running, and change some of the questions. Getting data Before, Tim was more of an insights person than a researcher. So when he got into research, it was about getting data. Online panel Three years ago, Schweppes asked Tim to do an online panel. He looked into it to find out how it might work, and it eventually took about two hours to get it working beautifully. The panel that Tim created takes people from building a survey to creating li...

Insufficient investment in water storage has brought about an almost yearly struggle in California, and another dry start to the rainy season is cause for concern.  A big part of the solution to inadequate water storage may come a project that has been debated for more than half a century – Sites Reservoir, which would be built in rural Colusa and Glenn Counties.  Sites Reservoir is the largest surface storage facility proposed to be added to California's water supply system since New Melones Reservoir in 1979. “Sites Reservoir, in my opinion, is sort of the poster child of modern surface water storage in California,” remarked Tim Quinn, who has 40 years of experience in water issues, including at the largest water district in the state, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. “In years gone by, we used to build dams on live rivers with great ecological damage. We’re not doing that any more. Sites is a wonderful example of an off-site storage facility that has virtually no footprint impacts, and is being woven into a comprehensive package in the Sacramento Valley to do multiple purposes... It’s a classic example of modern water management in 21st century California.” The three major water consumers in California – the environment, cities and farms – all stand to benefit if Sites is completed.  “The Sites Reservoir Project is very unique,” said Fritz Durst, a diversified farmer in Yolo County who serves as chair of the Sites Joint Powers Authority. “Because of Proposition 1 funding, Sites Reservoir would have its own unique block of water that’s solely for the environment… it won’t have a junior priority… it could be used for fish, for birds or for water quality, Delta outflow, for the many small critters that live in the Delta.” Durst said if Sites were built, it would not lead to major growth in acreage of Sacramento Valley crops, including rice, but it would create a more certain water supply, which would be invaluable to farmers, ranchers and support industries.  He added urban residents would benefit from Sites Reservoir, through a more stable water supply. Having additional water in storage would gather water in wet years and make it available during dry periods. Mary Wells owns and runs a ranch in Sites. Her experience is unique – decades of ranching in a remote part of the Sacramento Valley as well as a leader in water and agriculture in the valley. She calls the prospect of building water storage in the Sites Valley bittersweet, but something that should happen for the betterment of our state. “In terms of the physical viability of a reservoir here, it’s just amazing,” she said. “You have two major canyons that come in…. but when you consider an area of about 14,000-acres, about 14-15 miles from one tip to another, that’s amazing. It’s just a natural bowl.”  Jerry Brown, Executive Director of the Sites Project Authority, is among those determined to get this storage facility built. He said he sees growing momentum to get the project completed. “One of the key aspects of the Sites Reservoir Project for California is that it is creating flexibility for our system, which is badly needed,” he said. “You hear a lot about climate change and the fact that we’re getting a lot more extreme variability in our precipitation. We need storage facilities in order to regulate the water flow to some degree, to allow us to optimize its use.”  Sites would be an off-stream storage facility. It has recently been ‘right-sized,’ with some areas scaled back to help ensure the project can be built in a reasonable time frame.  Key aspects of the new plan include a slight reduction in the storage capacity, the elimination of a new conveyance pipeline that would have brought in and taken out water from the Sacramento River and pump back storage for energy generation. The changes reduced the project cost about $2 billion, to $3 billion.   Brown said if all goes well, construction on Sites could begin by about 2024, with the facility completed and operating by 2030.  Episode Transcript Jim Morris: California has natural beauty and tremendous commerce. We're the most populous state and the most productive farm state. We also aren't without significant issues. Besides COVID-19, we've had multiple years of devastating wildfires. Something that doesn't grab as many headlines has also proven to be a big challenge, a lack of adequate water storage. Without water in reserve, dry winters can cause widespread pain. I'm in Sites in rural Colusa County, which may be a critical link for a better future for our environment, cities and farms. Welcome to Ingrained, the California Rice Podcast. I'm your host, Jim Morris, proud to have worked for 30 years with farmers and ranchers in the state to help tell their stories. And today's subject is critical to all Californians, ensuring sufficient water for future generations. One brief footnote, these interviews were done prior to the state's latest COVID-19 stay at home order. I'm with Mary Wells, fifth generation rancher in Sites. And Mary, tell me a little bit about your family history and also the history of this area. Mary Wells: My roots in this area go way, way back. I am actually fifth generation Californian. My great, great grandfather was W H Williams, the founder of the little town of Williams. As a youngster, I used to come up here with my grandfather. We had cattle ranches in Merced. Spent a lot of time up here, my brother and I. After college, I inherited, when my grandfather passed away, inherited some properties and have since expanded. Went into farming and ranching on these rangelands. Very interesting place, lots of history, mid-1800s. John Sites came into this area, brought some sheep in and liked the area so much he came back a few years later. He was a man of great foresight. He had a brother, I think he had two brothers that came here. Had adjoining ranches, operated the same, grain, sheep, so on. The family retained the ranch that I have. John Lee Sites took it over and I purchased this from the Sites' family in 1974. So they had this for a long, long time. And the bottom line is that, at one point, Sites was a very significant little community in the foothills. Not was there dry land wheat farming on all of the flats and in the lower hills, there was a very prosperous sheep production in the hills. And, on the way into Sites, there is a very famous quarry and there was a narrow gauge railroad. The Colusa Lake Railroad that came from Colusa and the river of Sacramento and brought the slabs of sandstone that were cut in the quarry. And they would come up into Sites. There was a turntable, and they would go back to the Sacramento River and be loaded on barges and taken to San Francisco. And, if you've visited San Francisco, the Ferry Building the Emporium, a lot of the facades in San Francisco are from the Sites quarry. The train was also used on holidays to bring people up into Sites. They had an annual Easter picnic. You can imagine it, the women in their fancy dresses and parasol...I would not have done well in that generation, but they would come up for the day and they had games and picnics and food. And so it was a very thriving, thriving community. Hard to imagine today. As time moved on and highest and best use for land always prevails. The grain disappeared in the fifties and sixties, 1950 in 1960. The sheep went to somewhere along about the same line. There are no sheep here now, all cattle. In fact, almost all of the valley, which is about 14,000 acres. And then of course you have, the hills are utilized as well. So, you've got more acreage there, but most of that now is winter rangeland for the cattle. Jim Morris: Is it safe to say there are more cattle on this ranch than people that live in Sites? Mary Wells: Oh, very much so. Yes. From November through May, the cattle definitely have the upper hand on population. Currently there's probably 15 families that live here. When I first came here, there were 22, 23 are carrying on. The interesting thing though is, while we have cattle and this is a very integral part of our total operation, I would say almost everyone who farms or now ranches here also has significant investment and concerns in the Valley. On the other side in irrigated lands. Jim Morris: I know it's not an easy issue here because you have such an emotional investment in this area. We also desperately need water storage. So how do you reconcile those two? And tell me a little bit about this area as a potential water storage area? Mary Wells: Oh, that's a great question. When I first came here and of course you're checking out our ranch and all of the things, I was told that the Bureau of Reclamation clear back in the fifties was looking at this for a reservoir. And I said, "Oh, interesting." Did some research on it and found out that actually Sites was easily designated as a potential off stream storage as far back as the fifties and the Central Valley Project or CVP was very interested in it. They had done a lot of studies. In fact, I had some observation wells, studies going on in 1974. But it was shortly thereafter, about '77, that all went away, political change. The studies and maps were all rolled up and put away by the Bureau of Reclamation, never to be seen again. In terms of the physical viability of a reservoir here, it's just an amazing...you have two major canyons, if you will, that come in. I know the proposed project calls for the two major dams and nine small saddle dams. But when you consider an area of 14,000 acres, about 14 to 15 miles from one tip to another, that's amazing. It's just a natural bowl. Jim Morris: We do have a significant issues in California in terms of water storage. You also have 40 plus years of experience at the water issues, actively engaged also a leader in agriculture. So you're balancing all that out and I believe you've come to the conclusion that Sites should be carried out here for the betterment, the ultimate betterment of our state. Mary Wells: Yes, I do agree with that. In my early research, I knew that this was a potential reservoir. And I remember asking Bureau of Reclamation, Bill Martin, he was at that time the director, and I said, "Mr. Martin, should I repair the screen porch or not?" And he said, "Mary, I think you probably will do that two or three times before the reservoir." He says it needs to happen, but California politics, agencies grind very slowly. Jim Morris: Where would we be if we do not beef up our water storage in California? I mean, it's very dry right now. What are some of the things that you're doing that you wouldn't be doing if we had rain so far this fall? Mary Wells: We're feeding hay. I have a fortunately a fairly good well, but there are areas where we'll need to haul water in to make it through the winter. So, it's significant. When we don't have the rain we normally do on as I go out in the valley and I think about the operation out there of the potential for water shortages, the need to transfer or use groundwater for my orchard ground. That's on my mind, if it doesn't rain. The rice production, critical part of our total operation. We may be short or the seasons limited. It's not so much the water right now, but it's when we can use it out of the Sacramento River. From one end of my operation to the other, I am feeling the significance of lack of rain. Jim Morris: In your estimation, will Sites be completed in your lifetime? Mary Wells: Well, I have so much to do. I keep telling my kids I'm going to be around for a long time. I got a lot of unfinished projects. I don't know if they agree with that or not, but I laughingly say that. I really hope so. Leaders in Northern California, clear back in the early nineties, said we need to start thinking about this. This was a very farsighted group of leaders in Northern California Water Association that... Mary Wells: In fact, we had sort of a kickoff meeting here. I spoke on the steps of my house there to kick off the concept of getting it going again. And that was in the early 1990s. One other interesting thing I did to reach out, for three years I did tours every month, mostly year round with Metropolitan Water District board members and what a great experience that was. But more importantly, they went home. You would not believe the letters I received that they just did not understand how important the environment and all that we do up here is to the total picture of California. I did that for three years and hoping to get the word out for all Californians that this is a great project and we really need to have it done. Jim Morris: His career in California water has spanned more than 40 years. I feel very fortunate to visit with Tim Quinn. Tim's resume includes 22 years at Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves 19 million customers and is California's largest water district. He also served 11 years at the helm of the Association of California Water Agencies. So Tim let's get right into water storage in California. What is your assessment as to how adequate our storage capacity currently is in the state? Tim Quinn: There's no doubt in my mind, we need no more storage capacity, both above ground and below ground, which is where we've been heading through much of my career. Sites Reservoir is, in my opinion, sort of the poster child of modern storage in California, modern surface storage anyway. In years gone by, we used to build reservoirs, dams on live rivers with great ecological damage. We're not doing that anymore and Sites is a wonderful example of an offsite storage facility that has virtually no footprint impact. Very, very little compared to what storage used to do. And it's being woven into a comprehensive package in the Sacramento Valley to do multiple purposes. To serve the environment while it serves rice farmers, while it serves cities. It's a classic example of modern water management in 21st century California. Jim Morris: In your time at Metropolitan Water District, how did the water storage situation for your district change? And what are your thoughts about that? Tim Quinn: Water storage was one of the most important changes that happened in Southern California in the last quarter of the last century. When I went to work at the Metropolitan Water District in 1985, Metropolitan had 200,000 acre feet of storage capacity. Next to 4 million acre feet of demand a year. So next to none. But the leaders of Metropolitan realized...by the way, they have so little storage because they were counting on the state to do the storing water for them under the state water contract. Tim Quinn: By the time you got to the late 1980s, it was clear the state wasn't going to do that. So I was part of the team that really focused on expanding Metropolitan Water District Storage, and today with Diamond Valley Lake, with all the groundwater storage partnerships that I helped negotiate, the Metropolitan Water District has more than 4 million acre feet of storage capacity available to it. And that is what saved that economy during the last two big droughts. Jim Morris: There are three distinct water users in our state, the environment, cities and farms, and the environment is a big deal in our state. And how would Sites help in that regard, and how important is nurturing our environment in terms of water use? Tim Quinn: Nurturing the environment is absolutely essential in modern California. You didn't have to pay attention to it through most of the 20th century, but it is a driving political factor today. And I couldn't be more pleased by that. That is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. You have to design and manage a project like Sites for the environment as much as you do for water supply for the Sacramento region and other parts of California. I was one of the main negotiators that negotiated what became Proposition 1 and defined a new approach to storage in the state of California, where we were understanding that storage was going to be multi-benefit. It was going to work for the environment and for water supply agencies. And we got the public to agree to pay for the portions that were not for water supply. So, we are building expressly multiple purpose projects up in a place like Sites Reservoir. And I think all Californians should celebrate that. Jim Morris: So what is your guess as to whether Sites will be completed someday? Tim Quinn: If you want something done in modern California, you have to develop a coalition of support. Used to be the big water agencies could decide what they wanted and could roll over everybody else and get their projects built. That doesn't happen in California anymore or anywhere else. So, the people who are managing Sites understand that, and they are building coalitions of support. They always talk about multiple benefits. They talk about multiple partners. They're reaching out across old silo lines to deal with environmentalists and others. That's how you get complex, controversial things built. I don't think you can say Sites will never be controversial. There will be those that will oppose it, but I'm pretty optimistic that you can build Sites Reservoir. Jim Morris: I'm in the Dunnigan Hills in Yolo County speaking with Fritz Durst, a sixth generation grower. Fritz, what are some of the things that you grow? Fritz Durst: Out west out here in the dry land area I raise three or four different types of wheat. I raise hay for cattle. I also have some wine grapes and asparagus and I also run beef cattle. Jim Morris: You also grow rice in the Sacramento Valley and you're also chair of the Sites Joint Powers Authority. So tell me a little bit about what the Joint Powers Authority is. Fritz Durst: The Joint Powers Authority is a group of Northern California agencies. Some of them are water agencies, some of it is counties, cities, the city of Sacramento, for example, is involved. And we got together with a common goal of developing a more secure water system. It wasn't necessarily to get more water to expand growth in California, but as we all know, in the drought years the shortcomings harm the cities, the environment and agriculture as well. Jim Morris: If Site's reservoir is built, it doesn't necessarily mean that there's a massive expansion of rice or other crops in the Sacramento Valley? Fritz Durst: Yeah, that's correct. In 2014 and '15, we actually fallowed a lot of rice in Northern California. And, the water that would have been used on those fields was transferred to urban areas and also to environmental needs in the Delta region. What Sites will do, will backfill that water in those drier years and give us a lot more security. Jim Morris: How helpful would Sites Reservoir be for our environment? Fritz Durst: The Sites reservoir project is very unique. Because of Prop 1 funding, Sites reservoir will have its own unique block of water that is solely for the environment, and it will be managed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. And it won't have a junior priority. It will get as much water or what it's percentage of water, just like everybody else from the reservoir. If it's needed for fish, it could be used for fish. It could be used for birds or terrestrials. Or, maybe just water quality Delta outflow for the minutiae, the many small, small critters that live in the Delta. Jim Morris: So, this is a beautiful backdrop here in the Dunnigan Hills. And how important is the environment for you and how much does the environment factor into what you do? Because you sit on some water boards, et cetera. And it seems like more and more there is discussion about salmon and birds, et cetera, when you're looking at the agricultural community. Fritz Durst: The environment's really important to me. I spend a lot of my time out of doors. I just love...It's beautiful. Just this morning, I saw two Golden Eagles in one of my grain fields from this past year. And I learned as a younger man that I can either have a park or a parking lot. And I've chose the prior, the park. I want this place to be beautiful. I want to make...to be home for not just myself and my crops, but also to mother nature. Jim Morris: How impressed are you with the level of innovation and efficiency with water use in the Sacramento Valley? Fritz Durst: I think we have a phenomenal story to tell. When we take a drop of water and apply it to a rice field in the Northern part of the valley, oftentimes the water flows through the rice field, it's needed for culturally to grow a better crop, but then that water is picked up by another rice farmer and it gets used four or five times before it actually gets back into the Sacramento River. And, that's the rice farmer. And the rice farmer provides benefits for those who eat the rice, for the local economy, as I just pointed out. But also, the untold story is all the wildlife that benefits from that drop of water. You have birds, you have reptiles. Later in the winter, phytoplankton grows in that water. And when the water goes back into the Sacramento River, it feeds fingerling salmon. We're just on the tip of the iceberg learning about the fishery and how rice can contribute to the health of the fish. We know a lot about waterfowl already, and we're actually using, we're taking that model and applying it to the fish and with great results. Jim Morris: How helpful would Sites be for those in urban areas? Fritz Durst: It will be very helpful. As we all know, we're experiencing climate change and what I'm seeing out here in my fields, as we see with water, we're seeing huge variability between years. Last year we had an okay amount of rain. The year before we had lots of rain. This year so far, this fall looks very dry, does not look promising. Sites will capture those high flows in the wet years. It's an off stream storage. So what that means is it sits back in an area where there's just a small creek. We're not damning a major river. Unfortunately, we have to pump the water in there though. But when the water runs out, we can generate electricity. So it doesn't make a huge footprint in terms of carbon footprint, but it will provide us that stability in the wet years. So in the years when everyone has to stop watering their lawns and let things die and businesses struggle because they don't have an adequate water supply for their processing, it will help in those years. Jim Morris: From a farmer perspective, you have a lot of uncertainty in what you do. Yields and markets are two examples where there are wide fluctuations. How helpful would it be to have a more secure water supply moving forward? Fritz Durst: As a farmer, we have markets and then we also have commitments. So, in the case of markets, we'll develop markets for rice, for example, for processors to use our rice, to make Rice Krispies and other things. But when we can't supply them, then they go elsewhere looking for a product and then they have to retool their factories or food processing. So we lose markets. And then it's hard to get back into those spaces. And it's not just the grower, it's also our community. We have infrastructure. I personally have millions of dollars of farm equipment and some of that I have loans on and I need to make my payments every year. And having stability helps me to be able to make those decisions. We also have all the support people. We have people who in the trucking business, we have people in the fertilizer and herbicide business and the processing of these crops. And those people are all affected as well. So by offering them stability, it's a greater plus for the whole valley. Jim Morris: I know what you'd like to have happen, but do you believe that you will see Sites Reservoir completed? Fritz Durst: I do. It's still a bumpy road ahead of us here. And the reason I think it will be completed is because California needs more water. I know it's expensive, but we've done a great job in the last year trying to get the right size here for the project. I mean, it's like we were going to build a Greyhound bus when all we needed was a little minivan. So, we've got a better focus on what it is we really need and I'm confident it will get built. Hopefully I'll live long enough to see it. Jim Morris: Jerry Brown is Executive Director of the Sites Project Authority. Jerry, thanks so much for your time. Can you tell me a little bit about your background in water? Jerry Brown: Sure Jim. Thanks for having me and thanks for your podcast. It's really a wonderful to have you in the community talking about these issues and particularly on this one, talking about the Sites Reservoir project, which is so important to the state of California. My background, well, first of all, I'm the other Jerry Brown. Let me just say that. And I've been in water management and utilities in California for over 30 years, but in water management for the last two decades and the last decade from about 2010 to 2019, I was a general manager at Contra Costa Water District. And after that stint, I started my own firm Waterology Consulting, and then this opportunity came up to lead the Sites project and was selected and really pleased to be able to be a part of this important project. Jim Morris: The water situation in California is far from robust. So as we move forward, conservation and efficiency, more of that will be helpful. I think most people understand we need water storage. Why is Sites a good fit? Jerry Brown: Well I think one of the key aspects of the Sites Reservoir project for California is that it is creating flexibility for our system, which is badly needed. You hear a lot about climate change and the fact that we're getting a lot more extreme variability in our precipitation. We need storage facilities in order to regulate the water flow to some degree, and to allow us to optimize its use. We talk a lot about groundwater basins being depleted and issues with that. Jerry Brown: Well, those groundwater basins can't absorb the water as it comes naturally in the same way that we can when we have off stream storage reservoirs, where we can park the water when it's available and then regulate it out as needed for the various uses throughout the state. Jim Morris: Why is this area such a good fit? It does have a bowl shape, if you will. So comment a bit about that. And also Sites has been right-sized, I believe is the term. So tell me a little bit about all of those things. Jerry Brown: The Site is really unique and it's been considered for storage of water for over six decades. It's just the topography of the area is just wonderful. Its proximity to the river. Its proximity to existing conveyance facilities that are in place. The Tehama-Colusa Canal and the Glenn-Colusa Canal. Both of those are key aspects of getting the water into the reservoir. And a couple of years ago, we went through public process with the environmental document, and we went through a public process with the grant program with the state, the Prop 1 grant, and got a lot of feedback from folks about different aspects of the project. Jerry Brown: And before I came to the project, the team sat down and said, "Okay, well with all this feedback, what can we actually get done? What can we actually afford and get permitted?" And took a hard look at all those things and said, "Okay, let's try to optimize what we've got here and put a package together that can actually get built within a reasonable amount of time." Jerry Brown: And that's essentially what came out of the right sizing. Pretty much three key aspects out of that, number one, the size of the reservoir downsized a little bit from about 1.8 million acre feet, total storage capacity to about 1.5 million acre feet storage capacity. So that eliminates some of the footprint issues and also reduces a little bit in the storage, but not substantially. A big, big piece that was adjusted was the elimination of what's called the Delevan pipeline. That was going to be a new conveyance pipe that was going to bring water into the reservoir from the Sacramento River and take it back out to the Sacramento River. Just very controversial for a lot of different reasons and that has since been eliminated. Jerry Brown: And then finally pump back storage for energy generation was an original piece of the project. And that has been eliminated because it just didn't pencil out from a business case perspective at this time. Not that we can't do it in the future, but it just didn't make sense right now. Jerry Brown: So, all of those changes combined reduced the total project costs by about $2 billion, from $5.2 billion to about $3 billion. And so that sets us up for a more affordable situation. We also adjusted our assumptions about how often and when we could take water out of the Sacramento River safely and be protective of the species. And, with those adjustments, we are reducing our benefits from the project by about a half, to about 240,000 acre feet of new water supplies generated on average every year. All of those things factored together, give us an affordable, permitable and buildable project, which are three of the key ingredients for actually getting anything done in the state of California. Jim Morris: The environment is critical in California. How would Sites specifically help for the environment? Jerry Brown: I mentioned the protective diversion criteria. Using the existing state-of-the-art fish screens that are existing at Hamilton City and Red Bluff at the existing canal diversion points. Very key factors. Beyond that though, we have a major component of investment by the state through the Proposition 1 water supply investment program, which involves benefits for refuges. So, some of the water that we would be diverting and supplying would be for the purpose of supplies to refuges, to help the Pacific Flyway. And then another would be to improve flows in the river and into the Delta. Jerry Brown: We are inextricably connected to the Delta through the Sacramento River and, where we are located, positions us uniquely so that we can make some significant contributions to both the flow patterns in the Delta, but also to helping to bring some of the flow that's necessary to create and restore floodplains for the production of food for fish and the improvement of the habitat for the fish in the river. And beyond that, we're working with the federal government to coordinate our operations in a way that we might be able to help with the cold water that's available up at the Shasta Lake and Oroville Lake, to serve the needs of the spawning and rearing of salmon in the Sacramento River at times. So we're excited about that as well as in partnership with the federal government. Jim Morris: We've had a bit of a dry cycle since 2013. Ups and downs. Some years have been wet, but many have been dry. And here we are in December, it's beautiful weather but we need the rain desperately. So Jerry, how would Sites help equalize all of that moving forward? Jerry Brown: Those periods where it's wetter, we need to be able to capture that water and the Sites Reservoir...we went through that period 2013 to 2015, very dry period, lots of effects on various parts of our economy. And, then we came out of that and we got a few wetter years and things kind of felt like they went back to normal. Well, those are the years that we need to be bringing water into places like Sites and storing it so that when we go into these drier periods, which we could be going back into a drier period, that we have the water and it's available for our use. Jim Morris: The Sacramento Valley is a really unique and special place. How important is it, Jerry, to maintain what we have here in terms of the environment, the communities and the farms? Jerry Brown: One of the things that we recently did on the project is we went through a strategic planning process. And, as part of that, we revisited our vision, mission and values of ourselves as an organization, as an authority. And, I'm really happy that as part of those values, that our board adopted a key tenant of respecting and honoring the local community. And, we are not going to be successful without the support and the contribution of the local community. I mean, there are landowners that are literally giving up their farms for the benefit of all of us in California. And, I'm happy to see and very diligent about making sure that we maintain that, that contribution be honored and respected and valued as an organization. Including as we go forward, addressing concerns and discussing the project with folks and making sure that any issues or any sort of items that they feel are important for this local community, that we address those within the context of the project. Jim Morris: So, help for the environment, cities and farms. However, this has been discussed for more than a half a century. Not to be indelicate, but do you feel Sites will get done? And if so, what kind of timeframe is ideal? What's the earliest that Sites could be in place? Jerry Brown: I think Sites Reservoir absolutely has to be built for the state of California. In the last century, a lot of our water management system was built for what I call yield, and that is to generate new water, generate supplies of water for businesses and farms and people. Our next century, we're going to need flexibility because we don't really have a great handle yet on how things are going to change or what the changes are going to be. We know that things are getting warmer. And, we know with warmer temperatures that the variability in our precipitation is going to be more extreme. And so, flexibility is what we're going to need. And that's what the Sites Reservoir provides. Jerry Brown: What's our timeline? We are on a track to have this project built within the next decade. For the next approximately 12 months, we're working diligently to establish analysis and review and evaluations that are necessary to give to our local state and federal participants to make decisions about their investments. About this time next year, we're expecting that folks will be making that decision. If everything's a go, then we would be expeditious in our completion of permits and the other approvals for water rights and things that we need over the course of about two years, which would then put us into a final engineering and construction starting in about 2024 and completing the construction of the project and having it operational by 2030. Jim Morris: That will wrap up this episode. Thanks so much to our interviewees, Mary Wells, Fritz Durst, Tim Quinn, and Jerry Brown. You can find out more at Podcast.CalRice.org, including listening to past episodes. And we appreciate your comments and questions. There's also excellent information at SitesProject.org. Thanks for listening.

Concerned about the environmental impact of dairy milk? Heard unsettling rumours about some of the plant based alternatives? Confused about your plant milk options? In this episode you can find out how to get hold of delicious, fresh, environmentally friendly milks that are affordable and easy; We go behind the scenes of the world's massive soybean, almond, rice, oat, coconut, cashew, buckwheat, sunflower and pumpkin seed plantations; We consider the importance of packaging and also the importance of how milk ingredients are farmed (regardless of what crop it is). And, especially for kiwi's wondering if they should ditch dairy, we dig into how Aotearoa's farming practices compare to the rest of the world and why “buying local” really matters when you live in an isolated country in a far flung corner of the world's largest ocean. But let's be honest, if it is too expensive, tastes weird, etc we aren't likely to ruin our daily caffeine fix for the planet. So Tim and Waveney weave it all together in a one-stop-plant-milk-shop with taste testing, price information and a DIY plant milk demonstration. Overall, we pronounce “oat” best in show. It's one of the only DIY milks that require no soaking (we don't actually mention on the ep). It is also one of the cheapest options, one of the best for the environment, one of the easiest to buy organically and locally and - rejoice and be glad - it performed very well in the double blind taste tests. DIY NUT MILK INFOThe recipe used in the episode is: 1/2 cup of seeds / nuts etc of your choice, soaked overnightDiscard the soaking water and put the rest into the whiz/blender/bullet.Add 2 cups of water in total - just a little at first to ensure everything gets cut up well. Use a sieve to strain if you want to. (Most recipes online require you to force it through a cheese cloth, but the faf factor of that was way too high for us). That's it. Use any strained out bits in dinner - just throw into whatever your making for a bit more bulk, texture, flavour, nutrition...This recipe is the easiest you'll find online, even easier than popping down the road to buy it. However, for those with the time and desire to create their own award winning plant milks we highly recommend the YumUniverse review of 22 DIY plant milks, (www.yumuniverse.com/plant-powerful-dairy-free-milk) with excellent summaries on taste and nutrition. SOURCESThe globally relevant statistics and information in this episode come from Consumer.org; Oxford University review, Our World in Data; The Guardian, BBC science and wikipedia. Special thanks for the kiwi stats and info to the Lifecycle Association of New Zealand (www.lcanz.org.nz), Fonterra (www.fonterra.com/nz), the Organic Dairy and Pastoral Group of New Zealand (www.organicpastoral.co.nz) and Oak and Thistle (www.oakandthistle.co.nz). https://ourworldindata.org/land-useConsumer.org, Issue 589, April 2018Environmental Engineering Science VOL. 35, NO. 11 | ‘Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Milk and Plant-Based Alternatives',

Chris Newbold:                Hello and welcome to episode six of the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being Podcast Series, “The Path to Well-Being in Law.” I'm your cohost Chris Newbold of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. And our goal here is simple, to introduce you to cool people doing awesome work in the space of lawyer well-being, and in the process build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the legal profession.                                         I'm joined today by my friend and fellow co-chair of the National Task Force Bree Buchanan. Bree, welcome.Bree Buchanan:              Absolutely. Welcome everybody. Glad you're here joining us today.Chris Newbold:                Good. And today we're going to start a move down into the states, and I think our first five or six speakers have really been driven more by some of the national outlook and some of the research that's been done into the lawyer well-being space. And as we know, movements generally are driven by those at the grassroots level who live it day-to-day, who are trying new ideas. In other words, serving as laboratories of democracy or laboratories of new ideas. And in any movement, you need a few leaders, a few examples to jump out in front. And that's exactly what we've seen out of our friends in the Commonwealth of Virginia.                                           Across the country we've seen a swelling of task forces, work groups, round tables coming out of state bars and state supreme courts, and there are some lessons to be learned from the Virginia experience and their roadmap. And there are no two better guests than our duo today, Margaret Ogden who's the wellness coordinator for the Virginia Supreme Court and Tim Carroll who's executive director of the Virginia Judges and Lawyers' Assistance Program.                                           Bree, would you be so kind as to introduce our guests?Bree Buchanan:              Absolutely. Great. Just so excited. Margaret and Tim, thank you for joining us today. What's going on in Virginia really is a shining light for the rest of the states across the country. So we're delighted to have you as the first group of state national task force people on our show.                                           So Margaret Ogden, as Chris said, she's the wellness coordinator in the Office of the Executive Secretary, the Supreme Court of Virginia, which is one of the new positions that's being created by the Lawyer Well-Being Movement. And we have a few other states that are doing that as well. A lawyer by training, Margaret began her career in the Roanoke City Commonwealth Attorney's Office prosecuting criminal cases and then went on to defend criminal cases throughout the Roanoke and New River Valleys.                                           Prior to joining her job where she currently is now, I think this is so interesting, Margaret, you served as the staff attorney for the Pennsylvania Interbranch Commission for Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Fairness. What an interesting position.                                           And then Tim has probably one of the most unusual backgrounds I have seen for a Lawyers' Assistance Program director, and it's been brilliant. I met Tim five, six years ago, and immediately identified him as somebody who has a special kind of knowledge that he brings to the Lawyer Assistance Program that has really enabled them to just take off with the program they have in Virginia.                                           So he's the executive director of the JLAP there. He grew up in Virginia, and then joined the US Air Force after high school. And after 28 years of service and assignments around the world, he retired at Anchorage, Alaska where he became the chief executive officer of a fisheries related business. Fish and lawyers, I don't know. I'm sure you've made a connection there at some point.                                           In 2014, he returned to Virginia and assumed his current role in 2015. Mr. Carroll has an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Alaska and a masters degree in business administration from Virginia Commonwealth University.                                           So Margaret and Tim, welcome. We are so glad you're here. Chris and I always start off our program asking our guests a question about what brought you into this space? Because we really have seen the people that do so much of the work have a passion for it. And so we're really curious about what drives that passion.                                           So Margaret, what brought you to the Well-Being Movement? What experience in your life is a driver behind your passion for this work?Margaret Ogden:            That is a wonderful question, and thank you so much, Bree, for having us just as a preliminary matter. And thank you for that introduction. As you touched on, my last position was a policy position working for the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. And I got very interested in how court policy shapes not just the practice of law but access to justice, a court user experience, and really the lived promise of equal justice under law and how court policy, which might seem on its face kind of neutral and bland, can have a huge impact on that.                                           So the Pennsylvania Interbranch Commission is kind of cool because they appoint from all three branches of state government to look at racial, ethnic, and other marginalized people who may have bias against them in our court system and how policy can be used to combat that. It's a great organization, and it works out of a Supreme Court report from Pennsylvania from 2005.                                           And so when here, the Virginia Supreme Court had put out a report on wellness in our legal profession, I just think it's a fascinating institutional response to seeing how the regulation of our profession, how court and bar policy impacts those people who are actively involved in it. And the wellness of lawyers is so important.                                           I don't mean to only talk about policy. I have what I call a recreational interest in mental health and well-being. I was first diagnosed with anxiety when I was in law school, and working with cognitive behavioral therapy, medication, diet, exercise, creative outlets, I've managed to kind of handle that to varying quality within my law school and early professional career. So I love to talk about this with my friends. This is something that I've been very open with and I think young people... I still consider myself young people. I'm still a young lawyer by the Virginia State Bar's definition of that.                                           So I think that we're seeing a culture shift that is just happening with age in terms of talking about mental health and substance use. I'm also the granddaughter of two alcoholics, so I'm very lucky that I have... I don't mean to say I'm lucky that I have this that runs in my family because certainly these are major issues that face our profession. But I'm lucky that I was raised with an awareness of them. So that when I started to experience these issues within my own life, I could seek expert help because they're really not things that you can deal with on your own, especially if you're in a profession of public trust, like the law. And so that's why selfishly I'm very interested in this.                                           And being a Virginia lawyer, seeing our courts write about this with the level of product that came out of these court reports, the level of thought, research, really data-driven best practices that have been generated, for me it's the perfect intersection of policy wonk and anxiety brain.Bree Buchanan:              That's great. That's great, Margaret. Thank you for sharing that about your life. We really appreciate adding to the story.                                           So Tim, what brings you to the Well-Being Movement and to the LAP, the Lawyers' Assistance Program world? What drives your passion to this work? Because I know you have a passion for it.Tim Carroll:                      Well, first off, Bree, I want to thank you and Chris for inviting us to join in this. And I can't tell you what a joy it is to work with Margaret as we carry this mission forward. We really do have a great team here in Virginia, and I'm very proud of the team and the great work that's happening here.                                           As you said, my path to a lawyer assistance program was a little bit unorthodox if you will. When I came back to Virginia, I was basically retired and I wasn't looking for a job anywhere. And this opportunity crossed my path, and I saw the middle name. So Virginia, the program used to be called Lawyers Helping Lawyers. And somebody put this in front of me, and I thought, "Lawyers Helping Lawyers, what do I know about that? What do I know about the law? What do I know about lawyers?" And as we talked, I got really focused on the middle name of that organization, and that was helping. And I'm at a place in my life where I want to help others, and this is certainly a place to do that.                                           What really drove me towards the wellness, basically harkens back to my Air Force career. When I first joined the Air Force and I won't date myself anymore to say it was in the post-Vietnam era. The Air Force was really in a state of flux from post-Vietnam. And what I saw around me were a lot of people who were drinking, a lot of people who were smoking. I'd go to the chow hall and see the really, quite honestly, not the most healthy food choices that were available. And a good number of my friends who were still involved in drug use while in active duty. I saw a lot of my friends who were falling victim to those vices, and really I lost a few friends as a result of those things.                                           Over the course of my career, the Air Force really transformed itself and really moved more into a well-being and a wellness posture with smoking cessation, deglamorizing alcohol, really taking a hard stand on the drug use, and really transforming the chow halls to basically have a wider variety of healthy choices than unhealthy choices. We saw fitness centers having a newfound focus on the equipment and the programs that were being offered. And I saw a institution, the United States Air Force go from that post-Vietnam era to a wellness era, and that really effected the readiness of the Force, which we needed, as you know for the conflicts that we had in the '90s and beyond. So I saw a massive worldwide institution like the United States Air Force that could make that change in culture and transforming itself.                                           So when I joined the Lawyers Helping Lawyers organization, I saw us as a larger reactive organization. We would kind of play Bop-It. Someone would come to us for help, and we would help them. But we weren't really doing a tremendous amount of outreach and really trying to change why people were coming to us because we were so small. When I joined, I started part-time, had a full-time counselor. And with a staff of 1.5, all's we could do was be reactive. And I saw the proactive side was one that we'd have to embrace the well-being. And I was thrilled when I heard that the ABA was undertaking the National Task Force on Well-Being because I really saw that as an opportunity to transform the culture of the legal profession.                                           And to say that I'm passionate about it would be an understatement. I've lost friends to suicide. I've lost friends to poor eating habits. I've lost friends who were drinking and ultimately cost them their lives. For a profession as critical as the law, something as critical as what we have right here, it wasn't a large leap for me to get passionate about helping our lawyers, our judges, our law students, the entire legal profession in any way that I can.                                           So I'm honored to be here. I'm just a little piece of the puzzle, but that's really how I got here.Chris Newbold:                Yeah, great, Tim. But an important piece of the puzzle. Tim and I have had conversations. My father was career Air Force. So again, I think there are some examples out there for shifts in cultures that need to be studied and evaluated as we think about our path forward in the legal profession.                                           But let's turn our attention to Virginia, and I am a firm believer that leadership really starts at the top. And we've been really I think blessed in Virginia with folks who have seen the need for this issue to come to the forefront. Bree and I, as original kind of members of the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being, it was your Chief Justice Don Lemons who really brought the judicial powerhouse I think to the discussion. And I know the reason that we have Margaret in the positions that we do is because some folks I think in Virginia saw a need and then started to develop a plan, bring together the right parties.                                           So Margaret, maybe if you could kind of walk us through how did the Virginia Supreme Court ultimately find its way into launching the Well-Being Committee, and how did that ultimately came some revenue opportunities that created the infrastructure necessary to flow down to the things of the world and other programs in the state? So I'd just love for our listeners to hear about the journey of how Virginia got to where it is today.Margaret Ogdan:            Yeah, of course. And I'm kind of late to the party in this journey because I started in my position on October 25th of 2019, and I will keep that date in my mind forever because five months later our whole profession changed. But we need to back track it up because I am the culmination of many people's efforts, far smarter minds than me, and far larger levers of power needed to be pulled before we even get there. So what you have, as you mentioned, our Chief Justice Donald Lemons sitting on the National Task Force seeing these numbers coming out of these national studies. And I can't thank you all enough for highlighting not just the statistical data but this call to action that goes down to the states. We have some very preliminary data. We want more data, and we also recognize that this might look different in different states. This might look different in different practice areas. Let us empower states to go out and investigate how their state is regulating the profession and what can be done to shift the culture within these laboratories of democracy.                                           So that call was heated in Virginia, and Justice William Mims headed up the Virginia State Supreme Court Committee for Lawyer Well-Being. And that committee drew not just from the judiciary, although all levels are represented there. In fact, a court of appeals, which is our intermediate court of limited jurisdiction. We have the circuit courts, which are our higher level trial courts, and then the general district courts, which traffic, misdemeanors, preliminary hearings. We're recognizing that all of those court actors are facing different occupational risk and seeing different pieces of really lawyer unwellness.                                           So all of those folks we have the law schools. There are eight in Virginia, and all eight of the deans participated in the first law school summit that came out of this report. So it was a ground swell effort amongst academia. And then you also have the regulators, the state bar, ethics council, the disciplinary board coming to bring their expertise to the table and talk about the way the rules of professional conduct and our ethical obligations are playing out with lawyer empowerment.                                           And then finally, you have the private sector attorneys. This incredible organization of folks from bar organization, from employers, representing small firms, large firms, that are all kind of doing their own wellness thing before this even started. They're doing this at a volunteer level. They're taking this on on their own because they've seen these problems. The statistics didn't really come as a shock to people.                                           I think if anything, just anecdotally, we're waiting for the other shoe to drop for people to get more comfortable talking about these problems, and the numbers will probably go up as we destigmatize more of these conversations. But that means that more people will get help, and Virginia did a great job of bringing all these stakeholders together to put out a report that focuses on real tangible recommendations. Things that can be done that signals to the profession that this is a priority and that it's not a burden that you need to add to your already busy life to take care of yourself. That this is a foundation upon which your professionalism and your ethics are based. So much to the point that it's now been added as a comment to Rule 1.1 in our Rules of Professional Conduct that governs competency, that lawyers need to have the physical, emotional, and mental competency to practice law.                                           To see all of these different stakeholders really grasp onto this, and say, "Yes, we think this is important. Yes, we can make changes to our rules and our policies. We're going to hold up the mirror of self reflection. We don't like what we see, and rather than go to despair, we will be called to action." Because here's the other thing, it then required going in front of the General Assembly to get a state bar's due assessment to every active member of the Virginia State Bar. It's $30 a year. It started to be assessed in July 2019, and just because of the way our state government is structured, that required an act of the General Assembly.                                           To me, I love all branches of state government equally. But if someone says, "Margaret, you have to go to the General Assembly and get us money," that's the worst hill to try to climb. But if anything, that shows you how much belief there was in Lawyers Helping Lawyers because that is where the bulk of that funding was dedicated to go. It wasn't just, "Oh, we're going to assess a fund, and who knows what will happen." No. There was a really roadmap in this report that said, "Lawyers Helping Lawyers has been doing this forward since 1984. We believe in them because they're using evidence-based best practices. They have volunteers throughout the Commonwealth who have gone through these issues that have turned their careers around, and all they need is the money to expand." If they build it, they will come. To the point where you convince the General Assembly to do that, I think really shows a strong momentum.                                           And I'm also biased in favor of this because that also funded my position. So if we have Lawyers Helping Lawyers existing as a separate nonprofit, it's not part of the court system. And that's important because confidentiality is prime with these issues. We want people to be comfortable calling up Tim and they know they don't get me. But also it's important that the court bring the weight of its institutional gravitas to say, "Hey, go seek help. Let's destigmatize help seeking behavior. Seek it proactively."                                           So I'm excited to be living in the court and talking about institutional policies, talking education outreach. We've been putting out a bunch of CLEs. Our virtual judicial conferences now have a wellness component. I say virtual. They were virtual this year. Hopefully that will not continue into the future. But more of this kind of generalized health and wellness from an institutional level is what this ground swell of specific recommendations worked up to build.Tim Carroll:                      Margaret, remind me when the report... I'm pretty certain that you were the first state to produce a comprehensive report on well-being, right?Margaret Ogdan:            One of the early ones. I don't want to step on any toes. I know Utah and Vermont put out early ones too.Bree Buchanan:              You guys were first.Margaret Ogden:            Yeah.Bree Buchanan:              Take it. Take it. It's yours.Tim Carroll:                      Remind me of the date there because a lot of our listeners will be tuning in from other state task forces, and I want them to kind of understand. What is so unique I think about what Virginia has done is there's a lot of reports that come out of study and saying, "We need to do this. We need to do that." Really what everyone in Virginia should be so proud of is the fact that you took words and you translated it into action. And oftentimes it doesn't happen with task forces and so forth. Sometimes it's you write, author a report, and you maybe check off some low hanging fruit. But you guys have really systemically changed the playing field of this particular issue as it relates to Virginia.                                           So the report comes out in 2018. You got to think that the most substantive impacts of the reports were... And you already mentioned it. Rule change to the rules of professional conduct, that includes well-being, and a comment to the duty of competence, right?Margaret Ogden:            Mm-hmm (affirmative).Tim Carroll:                      You basically set in play, and we know generally, and Bree and Tim can speak to this firsthand, that lawyer assistance programs around the country are generally underfunded. ALPS is a malpractice carrier we give a good chunk of money to, what was formally Virginia Lawyers Helping Lawyers. But across the country, there's just not enough fuel in the tank for Lawyers' Assistance Programs to have enough impact and really take on not just the safety net but also the big picture realm of well-being. So explain for our audience then, report comes out in 2018. Justice Mims, who is really an unsung hero in all of this, but even Justice Mims, the Virginia State Bar and its leadership, and Lynn Heath produced an occupational risk report that's really critical as well. Kind of talk us through when did the money discussion start? When does it pass the General Assembly? And what ultimately does it do to transform the revenue side that enables us now to do so much more?Margaret Ogden:            I think you're exactly right. I mentioned Justice Mims briefly as the head of this committee, but I want to sing about this hero because I really do think that not only is he just an excellent human being, he's someone with an incredibly nuanced understanding of our Virginia state government. He is one of the few people in the history of our Commonwealth who's held highest positions at the top of each of our branches of government. He served in our state house. He was the Attorney General. So this man understands what it takes to create a culture shift within state government. And I don't know when exactly it goes to the General Assembly. I am still back in Pennsylvania in 2018. But in enough time to get the first bar dues funding assessed in July of 2019 on our annual state bar assessment. And part of this is also very good timing with the Client Protection Fund. That had been doing very well, and so those dues were lowered, which I think makes it more palatable to slightly increase and establish this fund entirely.                                           And then finally, there's this other piece that I want to touch on too is the Virginia Law Foundation and Virginia CLEs contributions because this all works much better when well-being is recognized as a key part of lawyer education, and in Virginia, we have mandatory continuing legal education. And that CLE board was very quick to change their... Well, amend an opinion, Opinion 19, to make it more clear that well-being programming should be approved for CLE credit. And the Virginia Law Foundation, Virginia CLE is one of our largest state providers. They signed on to say, "Hey, we're going to provide a well-being library that we're going to replenish every year online, and we're going to offer two of these free to every lawyer, judge, and law school student in the Commonwealth every year."                                           To me, that shows not just the funding coming from attorneys and going through the General Assembly, but also stakeholders saying, "We're going to be sure that attorneys see the value for their funds hopefully so that it is an easier sell to everyone who is in the bar to take this on collectively." Look, you're getting something out of this even if you yourself are not going to seek the services of Lawyers Helping Lawyers.Bree Buchanan:              So let's bring Tim in on this, and Tim, I was listening to Margaret's earlier answer about what all the work and support for the Lawyers' Assistance Program there in Virginia and with my ears of a former LAP director, and it must be so wonderful to work as an ally with somebody who so gets what an LAP is about.                                           So Tim, what I wanted to ask you is talk about this process of what happened in Virginia from the Lawyers' Assistance Program perspective. How did this come about and how did you all fit into this process?Tim Carroll:                      Yeah. So after the ABA Hazelden Betty Ford, after that survey came out, that was really the call to action. I know the ABA responded to that with the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being. But we didn't sit on our haunches here in Virginia. We said, "What can we do about that?" And we took the numbers out of that survey and overlaid it on Virginia. With our population, we could assume that if the ABA Hazelden study was accurate, that we have upwards of 12,000 attorneys in Virginia who are operating from some level of impairment. And when you can use that as a talking point, you really get people's attention.                                           I'll just insert real quick, thanks to ALPS back in 2014, the College of William and Mary Law School did a survey of Virginia attorneys. And while it wasn't peer reviewed and it wasn't published, I've seen it. And I can tell you that the numbers track very closely in Virginia to what the national report said.Bree Buchanan:              Wow.Tim Carroll:                      So I can speak with confidence so that we have upwards of 12,000 who for one reason or another are operating from some level of impairment. And we looked at what we were doing, what was the LAP doing? And we had on average about 100 new clients a year with our staff of 1.5 and one counselor. That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. So of course we went with our hat in hand and asked for more money so we could get some more staff. Dollars are tight. You can't expect everybody to just open up their coffers. So we built a business plan based on best practices that we saw around the country with other LAPs, based on what we saw the needs of Virginia being. We didn't put a dollar figure on it until after we had built the plan, and then we said, "What would something like this cost?" Because we wanted to be a best practice lawyer assistance program.                                           We took that to the state bar. We took that to the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association. We took it to the Law Foundation. We pretty much paraded that all over anybody who would listen, and everybody said, "Yeah, that looks really good. That's really nice, but there's not a pathway for funding for that." So when Chief Justice Lemons came back from the National Task Force and he challenged or tasked Justice Mims to head up the committee in Virginia, that committee was... I hope you'll be able to provide a link to the report. It's a profession at risk. It'll outline who all was on that, but take my word for it, it was the key stakeholders in the legal profession around the Commonwealth of Virginia. Some real movers and shakers.                                           The very first briefing that that committee got, after Chief Justice Lemons tasked them, was our business plan. That was the first thing they heard. And gave us the opportunity to pitch the need, to pitch the studies that had been done, and what we proposed to do about it. So that committee really took off with the challenge from the chief to study the National Task Force report and look at ways to implement that in Virginia. And they were armed with our business plan sitting on the side.                                           So it was very fortuitous timing for us, but if you also look at the composition of that committee, there are several former and active board members from the Lawyers' Assistance Program who served on that committee as well. So they knew what they were talking about. They knew the issues at hand and were very obviously, very well-versed in the legal profession of Virginia to be able to make the recommendations that they did.                                           So to say that we were on the sidelines would be wrong. To say that we were in there with our sleeves rolled up would be correct, and that was only because Chief Justice Lemons and Justice Mims invited us to play an active role in that committee. I didn't serve on the committee, but I was an advisor to each one of the subgroups of that committee. They could reach out. We could give them our two cents. We could help guide them through their discussions. And we weren't doing that with a parochial view towards the Lawyers' Assistance Program. We did it with a parochial view towards what's best for the legal profession in Virginia.Chris Newbold:                Yeah. Well, this is a good probably break point here because I think it kind of sets the tone for revenue source in hand, action plan in hand, and kind of where things come with Margaret coming onboard. Let's take a quick break, and we'll come back and hear the rest of the Virginia story.Advertisement:               Your law firm is worth protecting and so is your time. ALPS has the quickest online application for legal malpractice insurance out there. Apply, see rates, and buy coverage, all in about 20 minutes. Being a lawyer is hard. Our new online app is easy. Apply now at applyonline.alpsnet.com.Chris Newbold:                All right. Welcome back. And we are talking about Virginia and some of the trailblazing work that Virginia has done on lawyer well-being. Margaret, let's shift the conversation back to you. So the assessments made on Virginia lawyers and that generally, roughly creates about $1 million in revenue annually. I'd be curious as the first wellness coordinator for the Commonwealth, what do you work on? How do you think about your day? And ultimately, what's the game plan? What do you hope to achieve as you think about the allocation of those resources relative to making a difference?Margaret Ogden:            Right. It's smart to think about it in terms of allocation of funds. We have the Lawyers' Assistance Program, formerly Lawyers Helping Lawyers, getting the bulk of that funding allocation every year to expand their staffing. And this doesn't just allow them to provide direct services. It also allows them to really beef up these education and outreach efforts, and that's where my position comes in. Because we recognize that even though impairment is a very large problem in our profession, statistically the majority of lawyers will not themselves become impaired over the course of their career. But we can all do a little better. Even if we are not at the level of relying on substances to get through our day to the detriment of our clients, because of the unique occupational stressors of our profession, we are at greater risk for things like burnout, and that means we need to kind of take on more protective habits on our daily basis to ensure that we're meeting these higher standards.                                           And I think that's where my position comes in is looking at education and outreach on more general health and well-being. I love the Six Areas of Well-Being from the National Task Force report. That's a really great way for me to talk about it to attorneys because I think past workplace well-being efforts kind of have all focused on step challenges or weight loss, really physical fitness, and that can be isolating for a lot of people, particularly attorneys and particularly with an aging population. So I want to be sure that we're talking about wellness holistically, and we're talking about it on an institutional level.                                           I think of Tim and Jim and Barbara and Angeline and Janet, the staff over at the Virginian Judges Lawyers' Assistance Program, five people now, as really having the individuals covered. And I think of my role as the institutions and the stakeholders. Making sure that the associate deans of all of the law schools are talking to each other every month about trends in well-being among their students and what programs are working. This is my favorite monthly conference call, and I just sent out the agenda before this. So I'm very excited about talking. We talk every month, me and the associate deans of the law schools about what they're seeing.                                           In terms of coordinating judicial response, so my position very smartly I think was housed in the Office of the Executive Secretary of the Supreme Court. In Pennsylvania, our version of that was called the Administrative Office of the Courts. Think of it as the administrative arm. So HR lives there, court IT. And thinking that wellness is so pervasive that it needs to be part of our administrative function I think is very forward looking.Bree Buchanan:              Absolutely brilliant.Margaret Ogdan:            Yeah. Specifically I'm within our educational services department, and that's the group that puts on our yearly judicial conferences for all of our judges and then a bunch of other groups that the court has some education responsibilities for, like clerks, magistrates, other court personnel. And this is really exciting because having wellness on the judicial conference agenda blows my mind. When we were going to initially be in-person this year, I had an entire Wednesday afternoon of wellness activities. Justice Mims was going to be leading a jogging group. This was really fun to plan activities for the judges because they don't have necessarily the same strict CLE requirements that lawyers do, but showing them that wellness can be something they can incorporate into their conferences, that they take it on almost like a perk. And that it's led by their colleagues, not only does that help us just in terms of budgeting, we're not bringing in really expensive outside experts. But I think things are more exciting when you see your buddies doing them.                                           So we were able to transition that virtually, have a booklet made, and still do a couple Zoom sessions. And it's having the funding and the staffing in place before the pandemic I think was super key because it's much easier to adapt when you already have a person who's working in that space.                                           So law students, judges, and then of course lawyers, they make up the bulk of my outreach efforts, and the court is never going to be entirely taking over continuing education for lawyers. Thank goodness. No, I would never be able to do that on my own. But working with the folks who are doing that. So the Conference of Local and Specialty Bar Associations, presenting to them, and enabling and empowering our local and affiliation bars to incorporate wellness education into their programs. Working with CLE providers to... Especially when we do virtual programming, take into account some well-being. Not back-to-back-to-back in front of a screen, acknowledge Zoom fatigue, build in spaces for people to walk around and get moving.                                           So every day is a little different, which is fun because I am serving a few different audiences, and we are talking about organizational and institutional response to support healthy habits.Bree Buchanan:              Margaret, I love how you're able to come in because you've got that position there, and you're thinking about this obviously every day, and are able to put so much energy in it. And the conference, I looked at the agenda, I read the booklet. It was really impressive and that you have... This is so key, you have this very visible support from the top of the legal profession in the Commonwealth, and that's so key. You guys are so blessed to have that.                                           Tim, I wanted to ask you, what can you share with others, anybody who's working on this, and especially the Lawyer's Assistance Programs, if they want to start some sort of statewide, multi-stakeholder committee, commission, task force, what advice would you give to them?Tim Carroll:                      Yeah, that's a great question. I've actually talked with some of the other directors who have called and asked, "How did you do that?" And I really had to think about, but I didn't have to think very far because it was such a upfront activity that we were involved in. I guess the key to the LAPs is really to accept that for people to trust you, they have to know you. They're not just going to pick up a phone and call 1(800)LAP. They could call 1(800)ADDICTION CENTER. They could call wherever they want, but they have to know us if they're going to trust us. They have to trust that we are competent in what we do. They have to trust that we will hold their confidentiality. And they have to trust that we can help. So that's really the cornerstone of the LAP.                                           We built our business plan from that cornerstone. How do we get out, and how do we get known enough to be trusted? The first step is to have a plan. No one is going to throw money at the LAP if the LAP doesn't demonstrate what they're going to do with it. So the very first step is to build a plan, build a business plan, build a plan. The second step is to engage the stakeholders at every level. At the top, the middle, the grassroots, wherever it is, engage all of the stakeholders so that they buy into that plan. And then of course, have a champion. Our champion was Chief Justice Lemons. I'm going to say our co-champion was Justice Mims. Having those two at the very top of the profession in Virginia looking out for the LAP and looking for how could they make the biggest difference to the entire legal profession and seeing that we were ready to do it, that was really the key to our success.                                           So just basically to summarize it. If you want to do what Virginia do, build a plan, engage the stakeholders, and... Excuse me. Build a plan, engage the stakeholders, and make sure you have a champion somewhere, preferably at the top.Chris Newbold:                Can you spend just a minute on your program has really been transformed through the additional funding. So I want to give our listeners some insight into when you have a... I don't even know how much more revenue you had from before, but obviously you had a plan. Where are you at in your plan, and how has this fuel from Margaret's office and the State's Supreme Court done to transform your program?Tim Carroll:                      Yeah. If we're going to hire people, we have to have money. We have volunteers. Let me get that out there first. The foundation of our program is volunteers. We have not been successful since 1984 up to 2019 without our volunteers. You can't do it with a staff of one; you can't do it with a staff of 1.5. So the way we've transformed what we do includes the volunteers. That piece is constant. It has never changed. What we've done though, volunteers have full-time jobs most often. As any nonprofit has found, getting the time from a volunteer. They're willing to do it, but sometimes they just don't have the time.                                           So what we did was established a... If you're familiar with the geography of Virginia, there's Northern Virginia, which is sometimes referred to as another country. There's Southwest Virginia that really is another country. And if you're going to work in Southwest Virginia, you've got to understand the culture, you've got to understand the geography, you've got to understand what it means to be a lawyer or a judge in Southwest Virginia. When we say Southwest, and if you want to pull out a map and look, that's not Roanoke. Get that clear. It's farther out.                                           So we hired a licensed professional counselor with the moneys that we were given. That I said when I came onboard, the very first dollar that I would spend would be on somebody in Southwest Virginia. So we got Angeline out...Chris Newbold:                Oh, looks like we might have lost Tim. Margaret, you aware of kind of the three areas around Virginia [crosstalk 00:46:14]-Margaret Ogden:            Oh yeah. Definitely. And this is actually kind of a little fun story on my first week of work, I went to far Southwest Virginia. And I say far Southwest because I started my practice in Roanoke, and I made the mistake of saying Roanoke was Southwest Virginia. And the folks out in Grundy, at Appalachian School of Law quickly corrected me because that's another three hours past Roanoke. Virginia is enormous, and Angeline is very cool. She's out there in Rural Retreat. She's from that area. So she's been working very closely with Appalachian, the law school there and also just with serving the population of attorneys there. Because of the nature of the geography, the population is really under resourced area when it comes to mental health and substance use. So I think just having a presence there of someone who is from there and understands that area has been immensely helpful for cultivating that relationship, not just with the law school but with the bar and with the courts there as well.Chris Newbold:                So sounds like the strategy that Tim's organization is employing is more licensed professionals closer to the ground with broader geographic focus on-Margaret Ogden:            Exactly. And having folks who are there who are building those connections with these stakeholders who are already in place. So we have our eight law schools around the Commonwealth. They're great and not just for their education but for their alumni networks and for their educational programming that they send out with their law students.                                           The other piece is bar associations locally and then building relationships with treatment providers locally too. Making sure that mental health professionals are comfortable treating lawyers so that there's this really strong referral network. A lot of people have started calling JLAP not to be in a longterm, monitored, formal relationship. I get to see these numbers in the aggregate every month as part of our reporting. I never see any individual clients of JLAP. This is the great thing about them remaining a separate, independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit. But they are very transparent in their aggregate numbers, so we can see that people call them all the time to just ask, "Hey, I need a therapist in my area who will work with me as an attorney," or, "I need a marriage counselor," or, "Do you have the number for rehab place for my kid?" It doesn't need to always been an intense relationship. JLAP is there for whatever struggle a legal professional is having where they are, and they're developing those local relationships so that they can give people resources in those locations.Chris Newbold:                Excellent. Again, Virginia is such a cool story, right? And it looks like Tim is joining us back for hopefully the final question here. Tim, we successfully passed the baton onto Margaret. We're still rolling. She did great. Let me just ask you one final question, which is you guys are now a year, year and a half, two years into your plan and starting to probably really see results. And I'm sure there have been stumbling blocks and some things that have really surprised you. Just would be curious on lessons learned either the hard way or lessons that you think that are worthwhile for our listeners to hear in terms of things that have been really successful.Tim Carroll:                      Well, I'll piggyback. Don't let your power fail and take your internet with it. Sorry, my apologize for that. I think the lessons that we've learned are to get all of the stakeholders engaged. Really Margaret has been an amazing, amazing addition to our team. From day one, Margaret came down and talked to us about what she viewed her role was, about how we could work together. We do have that clear line of separation in terms of the client load, but we do have an incredible collaboration in terms of outreach, in terms of getting the word out, in terms of being present and support around the Commonwealth. I guess I didn't have a vote in Margaret being in that position, but whoever did hit the gold mine. So if there is a lesson to be learned, make sure that you hire the right person to be your wellness coordinator at the very top.                                           Make sure that you've got constant communication with your stakeholders. The various bar associations, the top level bar associations, the local bar associations continually engage with them to make sure that you're carrying the same message and that you're supporting the needs of their constituency is. I think that those are the most critical things to the success that we have.                                           Of course, our amazing team that I hope Margaret was able to talk about. We just have an amazing group of people. It's a joy to work with and top to bottom, all of the bar associations, the court, state bar, this is just a perfect world here in Virginia.Chris Newbold:                Feels a little bit like a symphony with Margaret as the conductor and when every piece comes together, you can really make some pretty sweet music.Tim Carroll:                      Absolutely, absolutely.Chris Newbold:                Yeah. Well, again, thank you both so much for joining us on the podcast. I'm sure there are listeners who might be interested in contacting you. With your permission, I think we'd like to include your contact information when we post the podcast so the people can contact you directly and hear firsthand the stories. And we certainly will be keeping our eyes on your successes as we continue to move forward because again, we need states like yours to be leaders up front and to be able to kind of demonstrate the type of change that can occur. As somebody who watches Virginia lawyers quite closely, me on the malpractice side, I know that there's a lot of pride in the legal profession in Virginia. And I think that that probably also speaks to why this has become an issue that folks have been about to rally around. There's just a high quality of lawyering that goes on in Virginia, and I think the focus on well-being is a natural compliment.Margaret Ogden:            Oh yeah. Lawyers from Virginia started our country. I'm always proud to be a Virginia lawyer, and I'm also always proud to talk to lawyers from other states and Commonwealths about what we're doing. And also, we'll talk about failures too. The important part of this conversation is honesty and vulnerability. So please share our information, and we will Zoom into courtrooms around our fair country.Bree Buchanan:              Thank you, Margaret.Tim Carroll:                      I would say just unlike my last two jobs, we do not have trade secrets. We are willing to share anything that we have with anyone at anytime. So yes, spread our contact information out. We're at the other end of the phone or the other end of the email. We can help anybody. We're here to be a partner.Chris Newbold:                Excellent. Well, again, thank you both for joining us today. We'll be back with the podcast in a couple weeks. Until then, be well. 

At the start, Jacques prompts me to say, have a pen and paper ready, stating not to believe all that he says. That he too, is endeavouring to work it all out, through intense research into old records and books on the web etc all about the ‘forgotten past. Saying that we have no understanding or even knowledge of what has come to pass. Because things are not as they are and as a researcher of both historical events as well as new technologies that are released on today's society, we can not necessarily believe the status quo. It starts with Tim mentioning his interview 5 weeks ago of Dan Hermansen - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guzOgNpZn1k - and the United Tribes flag of 1835 in early NZ, keeping Aotearoa NZ ‘as a free country’ and that King William the lV would have Great Britain protect it. However that flag was cunningly displaced by the Union Jack at the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, in 1840 - that contrary to what the Maori chiefs were aware of, New Zealand basically became a colony of Great Britain. Hence Hone Heke, the first Maori chief, to sign this Treaty, cut down the flag staff 4 times due to his disgust in which this Treaty was being administered.  That then, in the comments field of Dan’s interview was this - ‘The Auckland City Council is a Corporation listed on Dun and Bradstreet - So Tim did a web search and we find it in Wiki’ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dun_%26_Bradstreet   Also mentioned early in this interview was the British East India Company because it was an overseas extension of the British Government and was in many cases a ‘law unto itself’ where it cunningly introduced opium into China in 1825 that soon after, the Chinese addiction to opium expanded (to 4-12 million people).  So this opens the question who was this Company and who governed it?  As they had no apparent conscience. Yet, its flag was an ensign that was accepted by the British Government and Admiralty.   Adjusted for inflation, at its height, the company was worth $4.1 trillion. (Oct 17, 2018)  other searches suggest $7.9 trillion. Jacques, says he has worked for the Central Government in South Africa and in Local Government here in NZ and is horrified at what he believes to have found! Stating there are 2 fundamentals that are universal as it relates to the Law; in this case British Law. They are: 1) Contracts & 2) Jurisdictions Fundamentally all law is a contract A contract aims to control the behaviour / actions of two or more parties. Shortly after Jacques was born, the legal system in South Africa impelled his Dad to sign him away as a bonded surety to a ‘bankrupt franchise.’ Note that South Africa was part of the British Commonwealth until 1961 and rejoined again in 1994. Unbeknown to his Father, while he thought he was doing the right thing, apparently registering Jaques birth, and signing the birth certificate, was actually signing a contract; He made Jacques the surety to a bond in the ALL CAPITALS fictional name that the corporation had created to enslave Jacques for the rest of his life. This Corporation?    This will come later … ALL CAPITALS you ask? Yes, they use what is called Dog Latin, which is capitals or block letters. By the way, Dog Latin was used to trick and deceive back in the days when serfs could not understand what the more educated were able to control how Law was administered. Note The Latin alphabet started out as uppercase serifed letters known as Roman square capitals. Ancient Greek started off this way too. And it seems the legacy continues to this day; In the English language all capital writing is not a proper noun; A proper noun is the name of a man or woman, place or physical thing; That all capitalised name is not a proper noun and therefore not a name; For example a name used for an individual person, place, or organisation, spelled with an initial capital letter, e.g. Jane, London, and Greenpeace. Often contrasted with common nouns. Is it a lawful contract? No, because his Dad was never given full disclosure of what he was actually signing; So the birth certificates of everyone are traded on the capital markets and heaps of money is made from them, according to Karen Hudes, former World Bank lawyer.  (do your own research). ‘Everyone includes people who are born in countries like NZ, Australia - and very possibly Canada, and the USA plus UK. Is India and Pakistan? Research it. The Corporation establishes how much tax the child will pay over his or her lifetime and that birth certificate / bond is then traded on the capital markets;   Who is this Corporation and why does it trick parents into doing this? The answer to the why question is easy; control and trillions of dollars; But there is also a sinister reason, which he will come to later. But who is behind the Corporation? His research has shown that there is one massive Corporation; All the others are subdivisions of the main one; The biggest sub-division is the United States The corporation is known by a few names; Triple Crown; Tri-Regnum, Triple Tiara and Three-times Royal The Triple Crown was started as a testamentary trust in 1302 pursuant to the Papal Bull called Unam Sanctam, the Holy Singularity / Sanctified Unity; Pope Boniface VIII announced that he would depose King Philip IV of France if need be and issued the bull Unam Sanctam ('One Holy'), the most famous papal document of the Middle Ages, affirming the authority of the Pope as the heir of Peter and Vicar of Christ over all human authorities, spiritual and temporal.  (Bull = Decree or edict) Underlying the trust, is a global estate. The Pope claimed he owned all land, all flesh and all, wait for it… souls! All being part of the global estate. But surely the Pope had no say over the affairs of England? So did the Pope have control over King William the 4th when he said he would protect the NZ Maori Chiefs Freedoms in 1835? - even though the British were a Protestant country and had the largest seafaring Navy at that time.  Well, this is where things get interesting. So let’s go back to 1215 when King John was forced by the barons to sign the Magna Carta. What happened two years prior to that? Early on the 15 May 1213 King John went to the church of the Templars at Dover and there he knelt before Pandulph, the legate of the Pope, placed his crown in Pandulf's hands and took the oath of fealty to the Pope in Rome. Fealty is a feudal tenant / vassal’s sworn loyalty to a lord, in this case the Pope. King John also handed the legate a document stating that for the atonement of his sins against God and Church that he surrendered into the hands of Pope Innocent and his successors forever, the kingdoms of England and lordship of Ireland, to hold them henceforth as fiefs of the Holy See - the Pope. Many believe that John ceased being King when he laid his crown at the feet of a foreign priest;    So this is how the Pope claims he owns all land, But how does he own all flesh and all souls? Well, the ‘birth certificate’ is a contract remember? It is the commercial vessel which is floated upon the ocean of commerce. We are made to believe that that fictitious ALL CAPS name is our real name and as such we are made surety for the bond. But actually we have nothing to do with it and the so-called birth certificate contract is invalid because no full disclosure was given at the time it was signed or any time thereafter. So they are tricking all of us into believing we have to pay taxes and fines and rates when really it is all deception. But, because we pay it we contract to the Corporation. When we vote, for example, we are contracting with the Corporation and giving it legitimacy. We are given the illusion of a democracy, but there is really no democracy. It is simply another deception. How many believe that the Queen of England has anything to do with assenting to Acts of Parliament? Her title was changed and the Roman numeral of II removed and replaced by Queen Elisabeth 2nd If you don’t believe go and check out the NZ Governor General’s website. If a monarch’s Roman numeral, as appears in Queen Elizabeth II, does not appear in her name, they are no longer referring to her, but some fictitious entity. However, due to the fact that no full disclosure was given to our parents when they signed the birth certificate, the contract can be rescinded, which means the Pope does not lawfully own all flesh and ‘souls.’ The key to remove ourselves from this contract is to understand exactly how it was constructed, so we don’t get ourselves into trouble when we rescind it. The Triple Crown Corporation is made up of: The City of London in the City of London, which holds the land, law and banking and or monetary system. (Kensington and WhiteHall). The Vatican, which deals with the religious side of things and; Washington D.C. which was the completion of the Triple Crown, which is the enforcer / military might behind it. All the established nation-states were trans-migrated into corporations, which are the subdivisions of the Triple Crown. That he believes includes NZ & Australia. This was all supposedly done in the 1700’s - do your own research - it’s a quagmire  Jacques says if you go to the Securities and Exchange Commission website you will find the NZ and Australian governments there, of which he has screenshots. http://www.wakeupkiwi.com/new-zealand-corporate-government.shtml In NZ, most of our ministries, like the Ministry of Justice, NZ Police, Defence Force, Treasury, Ministry of Business Innovation & Employment, etc are all listed on the biggest business website in the world; Dun & Bradstreet as companies, with sales revenue. I have those screenshots too. So New Zealand and Australia seem to be very much part of this greater Triple Crown Corporation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dun_%26_Bradstreet - but do your own research as Wiki has been compromised for years.  Jacques sent an Official Information Act Request to Justice Minister Andrew Little asking if the Ministry of Justice is a company. He has 20 working days to respond. It has been 2 months and still no response from the Minister. Why? He has now referred the matter to the Ombudsman but found out that even the Office of the Ombudsman is listed on the Dun & Bradstreet website as a company with sales revenue of $6m. The reason Jacques is making such a fuss about this is because in our legal courts he is convinced they are not practising Law. He believes they are controlled by the Corporation to monetise we citizens (or the slaves) - because last time he checked the Ministry of Justice sales revenue in one year was $395m. Also if the Ministry is in fact a company, how can they administer justice, when there is a huge conflict of interest? How can a company or corporation be in charge of a country’s Justice system? If the NZ Treasury is a company, how can it control public funds? Our only saving grace, one would think is the old English Common Law but in 1986 the Constitution Act removed most of it. One has to wonder why? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_Act_1986  - But, was this the full account of what happened? And then in 1988 the Imperial Laws Application Act brought it all back. Since then many amendments have been made. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Laws_Application_Act_1988  - Again this is so messy - what can we believe? As Jacques has not had the time to investigate all of this yet -  He has brought together a few bright minds to assist him - this is ongoing. You see the English Common Law includes Magna Carta which was designed to protect individual rights. But, the Corporation does not want its slaves to have rights. Is that why when one becomes a barrister or lawyer or solicitor one has to swear an oath to the NZ Law Society and at the ceremony all have to bow to the judges? When you bow to someone they become your master. How can a lawyer fight one’s case properly if he is subject to his master. Some believe that lawyers are there to ensure you contract with the court. As soon as you contract - you lose your English Common Law and inalienable rights as man and woman. Then they can do to you as they please. Ask the Ministry of Justice about that and they refuse to comment. If any of your listeners would like to support the work that Jacques is doing, or want to be released from this system, you can contact me on trrassoc@gmail.com So the point that Jacques has been endeavouring to make here, is that a system was created to enslave us for our entire lives; a system which subtly robs us of the life God (or evolution) (or both) - gave you and your inalienable rights. Jacques mentions it is also a system which now believes there are too many people on this Earth and that we need to be culled, through unsafe technology like 5G, vaccines, nano tech, chips that includes  ruining the income of billions. That he has never consented to be controlled by this system and he does not consent now. Nor should you. He is preparing to throw off the shackles and so should you. People Around the World are Waking Up to this Deception. Jacques reminds us, if we don’t stand together the 1% will totally control us, because currently we have no rights. Look at Victoria in Australia. Do they have any rights? Look at how people are being grabbed by their throats. They have caused no harm to anyone, but are being treated worse than animals by the so-called police and no one lifts a finger. So Tim says - “NZers get serious and savvy and start to challenge the authorities on this and similar issues. This is what a participative Democracy is.” We have been conned into looking after the ‘I’ when the ‘WE’ is our safety. The Corporation does everything to isolate us from one another, so they can control the WE, because they fear us. They are after all the 1% and we are the 99%. Jacques says … do yourself a favour and switch off the mainstream media. They spread what they are told to spread and will brainwash you into their narrative every time. If you want to get out of the system, you need to get rid of the propaganda. In South Africa the Zulus refer to Ubuntu. For me it means we are all connected and we all need each other to thrive and survive. We have to stand against those that want to harm us or rob us of Ubuntu. If we don’t we, as the collective will be taken, one by one, like the protesters in Victoria Australia and lose everything our forefathers fought so hard and died, for us to have. In NZ we have Aroha and this too is a major statement of Love and unconditional Love that is the building block of Maoridom.  Other points in this interview: Sovereignty - Australia has ‘Australia Day’ on the 26 January every year - this is when they ‘supposedly broke away from Britain. America has Independence Day - the 4th of July when the became independent of Britain  Where is NZ’s day of independence from Britain? Some say it was sometime in 1947. On 26 September 1907 the United Kingdom granted New Zealand "Dominion" status within the British Empire. New Zealand became known as the Dominion of New Zealand. The date was declared Dominion Day, but never reached any popularity as a day of independence. In 1948 New Zealanders became New Zealand citizens – before that they had been British citizens. New Zealand gained full legal independence when Parliament passed the Constitution Act 1986. In 2003 a new Supreme Court was created, replacing Britain's Privy Council as New Zealand's final court of appeal. June 20, 2012 When is NZ day proclaimed in NZ?  We do not have one … http://www.wakeupkiwi.com/what_is_the_crown-City_of_London.shtml  Gag Orders   - In NZ Local Councils will not let you speak out about certain information. Does this mean that even if you are a Member of Parliament in NZ that you are not allowed Parliamentary Privilege - to raise points that you think are of national importance?  What are Gag orders - do you sign them when entering Parliament? Please look at the back of the NZ Passport - the North Island has printed on it NZ - whilst the South Island has nothing. Maps of NZ for the last 70 plus years have always had an even spread of ‘New Zealand’ across both the North & South Island , but not so on our passport.  Why? NZ IN 1967 changed their money from Pounds - to Dollars - a $100 bill was printed, yet though we have eliminated small coins we have not made a commensurate change by printing a $500 note - because NZers have forgotten that the $100 bill now is only worth $20.00 in 1967. That is an example of how docile and slumberous we have become - the bankers will most probably frog march us into a cashless society - sooner rather than later.   That people are encouraged to research  Jordan Maxwell - Matrix of Power and what is Admiralty Law?   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-cb1P-lZ_4  That so much is happening that it is all hidden in plain sight. Yet, NZ society as a whole - seems blissfully complacent and unaware. In 2003, I (Tim) took my class of language students to see Queen Elisabeth 2nd at the America’s Cup Village in Downtown Auckland. That I then found myself in the middle of a loud beseeching by two middle class men dressed in suits calling and addressing Queen Elisabeth ll of England. They honoured her as the Head of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith. They politely but forcefully asked her to outrightly condemn the Pope in Rome as the Anti Christ and in league with Satan - and that here I was 5 meters from the Queen and 5 metres away from the two men standing on some seats.  (this was more than astounding. Here they were still fighting the war between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants.)   That Treasury here in NZ has a direct line to the US State Department - Why? That Donald Trump has recently taken over the US Federal Reserve - which is a private Corporation - asserting US Independence from the City of London? When Donald and Melania Trump visited London in June 2119 they both broke a major royal protocol rule by shaking hands with members of the royal family instead of curtsying and bowing. To top it off, in a ceremony In London in front of the trooping of the colour and pomp and ceremony Donald Trump walked out in front of the Queen - which signified that he was in command and that the USA under Trump had made a major break with the City of London.  https://www.insider.com/donald-trump-broke-major-royal-protocol-visit-with-the-queen-2019-6  There have been whispers recently that Prince Charles in the last months has been crowned King to replace his Mother Elisabeth 2nd - so there are plenty of assertions flying around at present, that signify huge change is upon us. Also that all the Lord Mayors of London have been Freemasons for something like the last 200 years, until Ken Livingston from the Labour party broke that spell … from 2000 to 2008. What does this portend? When In NZ you receive a traffic infringement it is addressed to you in CAPITAL LETTERS  - why?  See above. The Pope says we individual humans can not have a direct relationship with God - that we have to go through the Catholic Church?  Why? Because this is how the Church funds itself. https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/francis-chronicles/church-essential-faith-there-are-no-free-agents-pope-says https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4svTOrMREA    Where does this leave Protestants? The United States Isn't a Country — It's a Corporation! https://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/us_corporation.htm https://wwwsolutionsempowerment.com   - if you want support against having to comply and have enforced injections against your will. Click This was more than an intriguing interview. It was also a call to waken NZ journalists who have become so distracted by political in fighting that they have become profoundly lost in their own drama. Next Week. What is the soul, why has the soul been such an important part of human endeavour for millennia?

How to Work Out If You Are a Leader With Tim Spiker Josh: G’day everyone out there in podcast land. Are you a leader, a lagger or a micro manager? I've got someone here to talk to you all about the best ways to work out what it is the voodoo that you do in your business. With Tim Spiker here from The Aperio, and he's going to go through what it is and how to work that out. So Tim, tell me, how do you work out if you're a leader, lagger or micromanager? How do you make sure you're doing the right things? And you're not being under spoken, over spoken, I think or any of the other ways that you could be? Learn more about leadership with Tim Spiker at dorksdelivered.com.au Tim: I want to share a little research to start this off. But I know when you start to talk about numbers and research for some people, you know, their eyes glaze over and they say, just get me to the punch line. But for other people, it provides some background so that we know that I didn't show up on the podcast today and made up some ideas that I thought were true, it's going to be ground. So if you don't like numbers, hang in here for about, you know, 90 seconds and we'll get to the punch line. So here's the story about how that research happened. I was working for a small boutique consulting firm, and we had people for a week at a time on the west side of Pikes Peak in Colorado in the US to do leadership development with them out of doors. And we gave them a number of assessments. And we had enough assessments and our clients were asking the question, is there any connection between personality style, natural abilities and leadership performance? And because we had all that data, we could run the numbers and look for those statistical connections. And so we did, and I was excited to get the answer. And my colleague, Vanessa Kiley, she crunched all the numbers and I went into her office one night, what did we find? And she said nothing. She found no correlations between personality style, natural ability and leadership effectiveness. But I turn to go out of her office that night, I remember it vividly. And she said, but we did find something. This is a great part of statistical software, it will look where you're not looking. So we weren't looking for what we found, but it's going to look for any correlation it can. And what it found is within our leadership assessment, we had eight different areas that were being measured. And what she found is that just two of those eight areas were driving almost 70% of the variability, and two out of eight, if everything is equal, that should be 25%, and it was almost 70%. And then years later, we had 10 times the data points with 20,000 data points at that point. She ran the data, and that number went up to 77%. So the issue was, is that there were just two areas that were driving over three quarters of a leader’s effectiveness. And many years after I left the firm. I was looking at those two areas, and I said what is unique about those two, and this is the punch line. So if you don't like numbers come on back with this now, here we go. Here's the punchline. Is that those two areas were about who the leader was as a human being, who they were as a person. The other six that we were measuring were about what a leader does. And that's when it clicked with me, that three quarters, or 77%, if you want to be really technical, but three quarters of our effectiveness as leaders comes from who we are, not what we do. So, if we want to be the very best leaders that we are capable of being, doesn't matter what you're talking about a leader at work or at home or in the community, we have to work on becoming well developed human beings. And we could talk about those two categories that were the big ones, but that's the main punch line. Three quarters of your effectiveness as a leader comes from who you are, not what you do. So we have to work on who we are. Josh: Okay. So what does it mean to then be that leader? How do you find the who? Tim: So I'll give you some really specific examples here. So we can make this actionable for everybody. But the two big buckets that were the drivers were a category that we want to call inwardly sound. And another category that we want to call others focused. So if you think about, I'll just ask you, you know, Josh, if you think about a boat, if I were to say, hey, we've got a really sound vessel here, what are the things that come to mind for you, when you think about a boat, that's really sound? What kind of characteristics does it have? Josh: Sound vessel means that it's has a high level of integrity. Tim: Yeah, keep going. Yeah, keep going. Let's brainstorm a few of these. So that's a great high level of integrity in the vessel. What else? Josh: Yep. So high level of integrity. A sound vessel, if you're talking and that that is already has the prefix that we know we're talking about a boat, is that right? Tim: That's right. Yeah. Go with the boat. Josh: So if you know it’s a boat and you've got a sound vessel, I always say that it's a high level of integrity. Yeah, that's probably the most of it. Like, besides thinking about them, you know that it's going to be able to achieve the objectives that you put forward through. So if you own a boat that was not a sound vessel, it might be leaking, it could be having issues across water or whatnot. You're smiling at me like I've given you the answer you want. What’s going on? Tim: Yes, you may have given me the answer I wanted, but in fact, and gave the answer that everybody gives, which is, I can trust this thing. Like this thing is sound, it's going to get hit by waves, it's going to get hit by surf, who knows it might even get hit by a fish. But ultimately, this is a well constructed vessel that can take a beating, and still be stable. And this is what when we talk about being inwardly sound, it's exactly that. I was doing an interview a few weeks back. And we were talking about this concept of being inwardly sound. And the person who was interviewing me said, so what you're telling me the person is not a dumpster fire as a person? Like, you know what, that's probably a fair description. But the idea of being inwardly sound is that I'm secure in who I am, comfortable in my own skin. I'm not looking to my followers to validate me every single second of every single day because I'm so insecure. You get somebody who's self aware, they understand strengths, weaknesses, here's where I excel. Here's where I need some work. You got somebody who's principled you use the word integrity that falls into that category. Is this a principled person who I can trust? You got somebody who's relatively, you know, they're an emotionally healthy person. They're not swinging up and down with every move. I mean, we are living and leading in some very turbulent times right now. So you know, unprecedented is the most common word I think I hear these days. Do you want a leader who is wildly swinging back and forth with all the ups and downs that are going on in the marketplace right now? Or do you want somebody who's got a steady hand? Of course, we want somebody who's not emotionally being blown all over the place. And you want somebody who has a sense of purpose. So these are the things we kind of talked about. What does it mean to be an inwardly sound person? And these are the things then that we have to work on. This is the part of our message, the part of the research, frankly, that is a little bit out of the norm. And, you know, I went to graduate school for business, and we did not talk about this in graduate school. We talked about finance, we talked about marketing, we talked about some organisational behavior, but we didn't talk about how sound we needed to be as human beings in order to lead well, in order to provide that stable foundation that others can trust. So, that's half of the equation on the inwardly sound side, so you want to jump over and talk about the others focus side or do you have a question on inwardly sound? Josh: That makes sense. I was interested to hear what the Yin to the Yang, maybe or hopefully another cool boat analogy. Tim: Probably won't be with the boat this time. But others focused means that when I roll out of bed in the morning, to go and read in the places where I read, that it is not about me. Endeavor is not about my ego, the endeavor is not about my bank account, my next promotion, that I am here to steward something. You know, I love that word, because it means that I don't own it forever and ever, I'm here to be a caretaker of it. I'm here to move it along. I'm here to move the people along, you know, that are under my charge, that I'm here. I'm not here as the leader on high to be served, but actually I'm here to reverse that role. I'm here to bring up and train up and be about the people that I'm leading, not just about myself. So the things that we talked about there where we encourage leaders to do significant personal work, it's about being curious. So this isn't like, I don't have all the answers and I'm willing to admit that. We talked about being empathic. You know, my emotional state’s not the only one that matters in the organisation. We talked about being attentive, which I'll say on that one in particular, and more and more, as the world gets more and more distractible more and more easily, you know, easily moved. And you know, when you, on your podcast with Oscar Trimboli, he talked about the art of listening. He talked about, you know, not being distracted. With technology, it's actually becoming easier and easier to stand out as a leader if you'll simply give somebody your attention. I mean, it's kind of a sad state of affairs, but it becomes a strategic advantage. And then the last two bits in there are a Greek word Agape, which means to selflessly care for others, and it's got an unconditional nature. So it's not about how you're behaving, it's I'm going to treat you with dignity and respect regardless of how you treat me. And then finally, an idea that lots of people are familiar with, but it's kind of elusive in the human condition, which is humility. And so when you combine those things, now, you've got a leader who's not only inwardly sound, but they're showing up not for their own gratification, not for their own enrichment, but they're showing up so that others in the organization and the mission can move forward. And when you bring those two things in combination, that’s 77% of leadership. Josh: That's amazing. So I know myself I started off thinking 13 years ago when I start a business, am I doing the right thing and I was the only cog and the only person in the business so it's easy to lead yourself, you'd think. You have to have a little bit of discipline to not jump onto Netflix or the like that are some of these other distractions, but as the business has grown, you brought up Oscar earlier and definitely being able to listen and hear is very, very important as opposed to just being present, I guess, with being present in the now and hearing exactly what someone's saying and understanding where they're coming from to be able to shift what you're doing. And I guess, from what you've been saying with being a leader, you did touch on it a little bit earlier, being leaders doesn't just stop at work, it's about being a leader at home as well. And I'd imagine being a leader isn't just about a hierarchal change between yourself and other staff members, as much as it can also be a shift in focus between the family of the business and the way that you speak and deal with clients. Would that be fair to say? Tim: Oh, yes, it's 100% true, because when you break leadership down to its most core components, it's a relationship. It's a relationship between the leader and those that he or she is leading. And so when you start to think about what creates great relationships, anything that's going to create healthy relationships is also going to be a huge addition to effective leadership. So going back to those two things, if I am a stable, sane, safe person that you can count on, and then I add into that, that it's not all about me, that's great for any relationship. And so whether you're talking about work or whether you're talking about at home, I'll say one of the most gratifying things that we get through experience in the work that we do with leaders is we pause quarterly, we go through a variety of those things that we were talking about, the makeup, you know, what does it mean to be inwardly sound and others focused? We pause quarterly and say, hey, let's take a step back from the mosaic of the last 90 days. And let's take a look at what we've seen, good and bad. And I get to hear amazing stories. And I will tell you probably in the neighborhood of 25% to, you know, probably 35% of the stories that I hear from our clients don't come from work, they come from home. One of the reasons that's gratifying it's not just because we're, you know, helping to make a contribution there. But, you know, families, it's weird to talk about families in a bottom line, because it's obviously very different than a business. But there are some bottom line things that we're after in our family just happens to not be finances. And when you see greater effectiveness and greater health coming into the family, you see better results, just like in a business. And what our clients begin to understand for their own betterment and for the betterment of the people they're leading, we come at it through the context of work, because we're able to show a measurable bottom line impact in work. But the truth is, if we're going to work on who we are, we got to work on who we are. Like, this is not my work self that I'm working on, it is the whole of me that I'm working on. So whether that most obvious first bit of progress happens at work or at home, we don't care, that indicates progress for the person as a whole human being. And that's going, if it shows up at home, it's going to begin to show up at work and vice versa. So we love all of that progress, because it's helping people lead more effectively, regardless of how they measure their bottom line. Josh: How do I know? Or how do we, do you have some tool or ability to measure to understand or is it how well I am leading or other people are leading that are listening at the moment. And the reason I asked this is, I find that people are always talking about being happy on Facebook or probably the ones that need to tell everyone that they're happy because they obviously don't feel happy. Does that make sense? So how do you have a sincere self reflection on if you are doing a good job with leadership or not? How can you find your who and make sure that that who is able to be understood, so that you once you understand that that's something you want to have changed, you have to understand it to be able to change it and then migrate from that spot in your mind and your mindset and your belief systems through to the new spot that you want to be and the goal that you have? How do you work out that transition? Or how do you find out where you start out really? Tim: Yeah, in the Google age where the search, the search box wants to finish what you're typing before you even put it in there, I have a very wildly unpopular answer, which is it takes three things. And we're going to talk about depth community and time for us to really grow and who we are. And I'm going to start with the last one, it takes time. Think about the analogy that we use with our clients with our leadership model is that of a tree. And I want you to think about the biggest healthiest tree you can imagine. I mean, I'm now thinking of some of the trees that I've had a chance to see in the Botanical Gardens in Sydney, they're right next to the opera house. Those are some of the most magnificent, amazing trees that I've ever seen in my life. Josh: Ah, we can be friends! Tim: Good, good. I'm glad. Josh How long did it take those trees to become that big and that strong? It took a while. [Yeah, absolutely] There was no little matrix blue pill that the tree was given. And magically, you know, it came up. So the disappointing news for many people is that there's no tip or trick for becoming a well developed who. It takes work and time. And if I could make that different for people, I promise you, I would. Like I would wave the magic wand. But that's not how humans develop. That's not how life works. So the first part of it is understanding to really work on who we are, it's going to take time. It also takes, and we'll go back to the first part now, it takes depth. We have to be willing, and this is the scary part. And I'll just put it out there because there's a lot of people be like, you know, if I can't do it quickly and easily then I don't want to do it. But what have we ever done in life? That was a great value that was done quickly and easily, like almost nothing. On the depth part, we have to be willing to pull up the rocks and look underneath. So we're not just looking at our outward behaviors, but we're looking at our motives and we're looking at our perspectives. And we have to be able to, you know, it's not just a question of how do we come off to other people, but you know, if I'm working to be more others focused, and part of that is becoming more humble and part of being humble is an eagerness to give acknowledgement and recognition to other people. Then one of the things we want to do is, is take a look at that over the course of, we usually use about 90 days per subject and to say, I'm going to look at myself through the prism of humility, and see, do I get excited about giving acknowledgement to others when I could kind of hug it for myself? If I don't get it excited about that, look, that doesn't make you a horrible person. That just means you have space for growth, and we all have space for growth. So welcome to the human condition. We all have ways in which we can grow. But that pointed focus over a period of time, in this case, I'm suggesting 90 days for each one of these subjects, that's what we do with our clients, is to really look deeply and I mentioned that you pull up those rocks and say, what really is my motive? What really is my intent? Am I just trying to look good? Or am I actually trying to be, in this case, for this example, am I trying to be a more humble person, a person who is willing to you know, here's another thing, look at any 90 day period, and ask yourself, how many times have I said, I'm sorry, or I was wrong? You and I both know people that cannot put those words together. You know, they they get there. They're like, you know, can't say I was wrong. I can't say I'm sorry. Those are indicators that we have space to work on. So you know, you know one activities I could just keep track of that for 90 days. How many times did I say I'm sorry, how many times again, what were analysing is the condition of our hearts. We're analysing the condition because what happens is people want to bring the whole of themselves on board for people that are that are on board for them. And so this gets back to the others focused idea. So let me hit on the last thing here community. Let's say I want to get healthier. And I'm going to start a workout practice. And I say, hey, Josh, will you be my workout partner, my workout buddy? And you say yes. And the alarm goes off at five in the morning, and we're supposed to meet at the gym at 5:30. If I know you're going to be there, my chances of showing up go way up. Way up. Some would suggest as much as five times up. And this idea because this is hard work, and because it takes time. We need people around us on the journey with us that are willing to tell us the truth about ourselves in a way that won't break the relationship, and who are also willing to be a little bit vulnerable and share about their journey as well. So imagine that you had a group of three or four people and say, hey, we're going to work on being more humble over the next 90 days, we really want to become that, we're going to trade some stories and how we're working on that. And we're going to travel in this way together to encourage people because it's hard. It's not easy. It takes time. We're going to see some stuff we're not proud of, let's do this together. You find that people have a much greater follow through on the inner development of who they are, when they have community around them. So I would say those are the key three things that we involve with our clients and all the work we do. But people don't have to work with us in order to apply those three things, you know, you can go do those things on your own. Depth, community and time are essential if we're going to work on the core of who we are as people. Josh: What you said, their own community pretty much comes down to accountability, doesn't it or not? Tim: Yeah, that’s part of it. There's also learning element. Yeah, you get to learn from others as well. Josh: I know. Just only what you're saying with the gym membership. I was a member of a gym for six years. And weirdly when the card set in my wallet, I didn't lose any weight. The moment I changed gym. Tim: That is strange. Josh: I know. I was paying the same price, I changed gyms. And when there was a class to go to and they're expecting you to be the class, you've been speaking to people in the class and you have in the nicest way possible have some fun competition, you don't necessarily go hey, I'm going to do more reps, I'm going to say sorry more times in your or whatever the case may be. But you have to okay that person that there is this you're looking at their body types about the same as mine. They're about the same fitness as me. Next week, I want to make sure I'm a better person, you definitely have that community and that feeling that definitely grows. I could totally see five times as a very achievable number because you have that and that's really cool. Definitely, with being able to build that into your business, and do you have much pushback from different people within the business structure that might be old fogies, dead wood or otherwise, that they're not really interested in applying and becoming that new person that is interested in being in the back of the warehouse or the number push or whatever they're doing the Voodoo that they've been doing for 30 years, or what do you do with that? Tim: You know, not nearly as much as I would have thought, honestly. Occasionally, you get somebody that can't get over the hump of how they've thought previously and how they've oriented. What I've seen many more times, is people who are open to the research. And I think it's really important to remember that that's where this comes from. And it's not only research that I got to be a part of with this group. A few years ago, Harvard Business Review published a really telling article from a consulting firm called KRW. And what they were measuring was positive character qualities of executives and executive team. They wanted to look at the financial performance. And what they found in that study was nearly again, the five times in a company, I believe was 4.8 times return on assets from the highest rated executives and executive teams on characteristics. And I'll find that in just a second from the lowest. And so what they were measuring. This is really interesting in terms of the parallel, they were measuring integrity and responsibility, remember those two together, and they were measuring compassion and forgiveness. When somebody said somebody is measuring compassion and forgiveness from the executive suite, really, somebody is actually doing that research. I was blown away that it existed. But think about this for just a second. They're measuring executive and executive teams on those four things, integrity and responsibility, that's about being inwardly sound. Compassion and forgiveness, that's about being others focus. So the words in the research was a little bit different, but it points in the exact same direction. And so, there's other works. David Byrum, who is a consultant who works out of Sydney with Human Synergistics. They have done longitudinal studies. They have over 2 million data points. They've been around for decades, and they're cut across all cultures, any demographic split you can imagine, they have found this exact same trend in their work. They call it constructive styles. But it's the same content. And so you look at these various pieces of data. And when you start to look for it, you're going to begin to see it everywhere. And that is to say, back to your question, do people really push back against that? Once they understand that there's research behind this, and not somebody saying I had a dream and therefore I woke up one day and decided this is what leadership is really about. We weren't even looking for it. We were not looking for this. The statistical software found it. There's other places who have found similar stories. And I'll just put this as the sealer for it. If you want to go around and ask people who is the best leader you've ever followed personally, and they do that thought process and then you ask this question. Why is that person on that list? Why does that person come to mind? If you listen to the answer, the vast, vast majority of what people will say it when they answer why, you're going to hear them talk about who that person is, as a human being. I have never had somebody answer that question by saying, you can't believe how great he was at Microsoft Excel. Never. Not in the history of that question. And what's even more amazing is rarely in the business space do people even talk about profit, they immediately start to talk about the quality of the human being that was the best leader they've ever followed. So when people look at the data, and then they start to look at their own history, and they see alignment, I think many of them become open to the idea, then they start to do it, then they really see how it has worked and has been working and it's working whether they're aware of it or not. It's working all the time around them. It's a question, are you going to go ahead and embrace the fact that gravity exists or you're going to ignore it? And, of course, we want people to embrace it so they can move the leadership forward. Josh: Cool. So don't we ask the question around this time of the podcast around what's your favorite book? But I think you've got a bit of an interesting answer to that one that I think I already know what the answer is. Tell me about your book, unless it's not your favorite. Tim: Well, hopefully, I've got some other favourite books. But, I'll take you up on the question anyway. So the book is called the only leaders worth following. And what it does is it outlines the research. So that's the first part, let's understand what we're talking about. So it goes into greater depth of the themes that we've been talking about. And then it spends the rest of the book diving deeply into these various realities of being inwardly sound and others focus and how they play themselves out to create a more effective leader. And so ultimately, we want to give people not only the data, but also the anecdotes. I think we need both. I think stories help us understand data, data helps us understand stories. I think we need both. But that is the idea of the book, to help people understand the research and then see it in real life stories and begin to think about what are the things that I need to work on? What are the things that I need to do to become a more effective leader? Now there's a different readership for the book in addition to that, which kind of the title handset which is, you know, the only leader worth following. And if you're somebody that says, Look, I don't even know that I'm interested in leadership as something that I want to do. But I bet you're interested in choosing the right leader to follow. I bet because leaders have a profound impact on our day to day experience they can make life really, really rewarding and fulfilling, even when the work is hard. They can also suck the life out of us. And that's not just the work life, they can suck the whole of life out of us. And so to really help people orient towards how they evaluate the leaders they want to follow, that's another quality, that's another way that this book can be put to use. So the only leaders worth following is about unpacking what we've been talking about what we call the who, not what principle, it details the research on that and then digs deeply into it so people can really understand the truth of that 77% about leadership. Josh: What we're going to do is we're going to make sure to have a link there so that people can check that out on your website. I definitely think that sounds like a very good quality first step towards going down the path of leadership and finding out your who. Who is the leader that you look up to, Tim? Tim: Oh, my goodness. Well, there are a lot of leaders that I have looked up to over the years, and I've been very blessed to, I've been very blessed to be around some really exceptional leaders. One of those leaders is my father. My father, started a business. And I kind of watched him about, you know, one of the great lessons I learned from my father, fell into that category of humility. I would watch him interact with the top people around him, and then I would watch him interact with the cleaning staff, and it was identical. He didn't treat them any differently. And I learned, you know, learned about humility from him. I think probably for the rest of my life I'll be striving to get like halfway on that scale to where my father is. He's definitely significantly more well developed in that arena than I am. I played basketball collegiately and I played for a Hall of Fame coach here in the States named Gene Keady. He was another person who was really sound person, a quality person. And I know perhaps not a lot of folks in Australia will have heard of Gene Keady, but he's a great person to follow. Now, I've got somebody in Australia that well, not technically in Australia, but I'm going to say a name that the business community in Australia is going to be familiar with, who was very, very well known in Australia, and then recently has in the process of leaving his current position that is a bit controversial right now. But I'm going to name out this person because he has been an incredible leader in my life and he is a great example of these two things of being inwardly sound and othes focused. And that is Mike Kane, who is in the process of finishing up his post at Boral. Now, you know, I've read all the things that are in the Australian papers about Mike, and I know Mike personally, and he's been a huge influence in my life. And I'll just say that there is so much more substance than what is reported in the paper. So I'll just, I mean, perhaps the listeners aren't shocked to learn that there's more to what's being written in in a paper whose goal is to sell ads. So I'll say that. But Mike Kane had an incredible run up at the start of his time. I understand that some people watch the stock price have Boral in the last couple of years and they have some questions. And I get that around the strategy side, but as far as somebody who I would personally run through a wall for because he is those two things of been inwardly sound and others focused, Mike Kane is near the top of my list. Even though you’re going to ask me that question. And I realised that there are a variety of opinions about Mike right now flying around in the business community, especially in Sydney. But I will tell you, he is a first-rate leader. Josh: Different leaders for different reasons. Your father is a big figure, you've got Mike Kane there as a business figure as well as then health fitness and recreational stuff. I like that, I didn't know what you're going to say. So I was very impressed with that. Because when you said it earlier, it sounds like ooh, who would be my leader, I don't know Tim: Well, think about that. That's worth thinking about. Josh: I thought dad definitely, Nikola Tesla, not Elon Musk, the car guy. I'm like, no, he helped the world in so many ways with the technologies that he created. And his name wasn't even really mentioned or heard of for another 80, 90 years. And the money that he had, he died in poverty. He wasn't lavish with the money that he got, and he didn't want war. And so you'd go to several countries and give them the same presentation. So he was funded by lots of countries that no one had a different, more unique approach to be able to jump into war. So I thought Nikola Tesla would definitely be up there for me and that's as high level humility. And dad has always been there to teach me very much what you're saying. It doesn't matter who they are in business, everyone's at the same at the end of the day, just blood and bones. And we need to be able to have that knowledge that everyone's here for the same amount of time. We all live the same way, and they be there and everyone has a story and it doesn't matter who you're talking to, you should not talk down. You should make sure you're always there and present to hear what they're all about. Tim: I'll encourage you with this and maybe some folks who are listening, maybe they've done this, they started to do this exercise with us as well, who are the best leaders that you've ever followed? And you begin to think about for many people and family members and coaches and teachers at young ages are folks that especially influences earlier in our careers, as you think about who those people are, and you begin to maybe even make a little list of the whys. Why did that person make it on your list? I'll encourage you to do something that will bless you, the listener, as well as the other person is call them up and tell them, write them a note. Tell them that I was asked this question, and you came to mind and here's why. That kind of stuff in life is priceless. Don't miss that opportunity. You will never be sorry for letting somebody know that they came to mind, that that person came to mind when they were asked who's the best leader you've ever followed? Josh: I love that. That's fantastic. And when I started the podcast many, not nearly two years ago, I thought, who would I like to have on the podcast? And I thought of the people that really changed my mind and changed the way of my thinking. Are you familiar with Bob Berg from the go giver? Tim: I'm not. I'm not. Josh: Bob Berg from The Go Giver. Fantastic book that I read that goes through and describes how to make sure that you're giving more than you're receiving and you're doing the things the way that business should be done. And it's not all just about numbers. And the other one was by a guy named Dr. Larry Little, Tim: You did have him on the show? Josh: I did. I had them both on the show. I reached out to them, and I said you've impacted the way that my life has worked, and the way that I've done business, and I've bought your books many times as gifts for clients because the readings have truly influenced me in the direction that I've gone and I thought I'm going to ask them like they're not gonna say yes, they got better things to do with their time. And they both said, sure, I'd love to be on the show. That was my American accent. And it was fantastic. Tim: I'm not even going to try an Aussie accent because it would be awful. It would be awful. So, you had them on and they both came on and you got to do those interviews. Josh: Both came on both go to do the interviews and very, very blessed to be able to have them on the show and be able to hear one on one what they were all about. And I thought, no way would this Nikola Tesla is going to be harder to say I really like his leadership skills, I have to do some ulterior method. Tim: That would be a creative interviewing process. If you think about what Dr. Little talked about. He talked about servant leadership. And he talked about the question of why are you leading and that leads us right back to that others focused piece that we were talking about earlier. He He's on to onto that part of it that's so very important. So yeah, I'm not as familiar with Bob Berg, but Dr. Little's interview with you, yeah. Josh: If there's anyone out there in podcast land that's keen to hear a bit more information, Tim has been nice enough to give us a link, theonlyleaders.com. If you jump across there, he's got a fantastic opportunity for you guys to have himself and his team deep dive in with 20% off for your digital journey through them. Is there anything else you'd like to go through on that offer that I haven't quite covered off on there? Or do you want to jump into a bit more detail on what they're looking forward to seeing in that? Tim: Yeah, well, you know, in the internet space, you have to be very clear on what the website is, right? So in terms of, you know, you punch it in to the search, you're like, oh, I hope it's available. I hope it's available. So what's really important about what you said is the only leaders, you got to get THE, and so theonlyleaders.com. And you mentioned the 20% off we take leaders on what we call journeys. You can imagine given what we've talked about, I keep talking about how hard and difficult and challenging it is. So we thought, well, let's just call it what it is. It's a journey. And it's challenging. As we take leaders on that, we do have the 20% off there for your listeners. So what they do is they would put in a promo code there. And if you put in the BBF, for the name of your podcast, then that will lock in when we get those digital journeys ready to go. And then also, if you're not interested in buying anything, we certainly want to be of help regardless of whether somebody's buying something. So you go to that same website, you can sign up to get a free copy of our study guide that goes along with the book. I suppose now that I say that then I guess it's only valuable if you buy a copy of the book, but you would also receive other free material that we're putting out as well. So there's opportunity to just sign up to be a part of the email list and get some free information, free content from us that we're producing as well. Josh: Tim, I've loved having you on the show. And is there any other questions you had for me or our listeners, I can only answer for me though. Tim: You can only answer for you. Well, you know, I might just go with a rhetorical question that parrots back with Dr. Little says, and that is if you're a leader, why are you leading? I mean, and that is, and I mean, to me, that's a question to think about. What is the purpose of my leadership? Is it just to enrich myself? Is it just to make money? Is it you know, what is it? Is it just some of those things? And look, there are people who are successful at making money, successful in their businesses without having kind of a profoundly positive answer to that question. However, what I would offer as we close out and think about that question, for all of us to think about, why am I leading, is that if we're not able to get to a spot in our life, where the answer to that question has something to do with others, we will never truly know what our full potential was. And I don't mean that in like an esoteric out in the universe kind of way, I actually mean that at the bottom line. Even at the bottom line, you'll never know what your potential was, so long as you're only in it for yourself, because we don't get that discretionary effort out of people. if we’re there for ourselves, they're well aware of it. No matter what words we use, no matter how we try to cover it up. And so why are you leading? Yes, perhaps there's a fulfillment question that lives within that question. But there's also hey, what's possible? What could you and your family or your organisation, what could you see if the answer to that question was, well, part of the reason why I'm leading is for the sake of others, for the sake of what they get out of being under my leadership. So it's tough to answer those questions honestly, because we want the answers to be really, really nice. And really, really positive. But we have to be honest with ourselves if we're really going to grow and develop. So I put that question, the final question is perhaps not one to answer today, but to sit with maybe for the next couple of weeks. What if you were to take a piece of paper and just put it somewhere where you saw it repeatedly that said, why am I leading? And you put a little energy into thinking about that, and challenge yourself to think about being more inwardly sound and others focused. Josh: That's brilliant. I'll be having a bit of think about it myself. I've got a quote wall that that I have there and that'll be getting added to it so that I can make sure to continue thinking about the who and the why. That's really good. Anyone out there that's been listening, if you have enjoyed this episode, make sure to jump across to iTunes, leave us some love, give us some feedback, and stay healthy, stay good. And thank you very much for being on the show. Tim. Tim: Thank you. Really, really great to be here with you.

This Live Session is about how to heal the anger and anger that has been transferred to our inner child in our developmental stage. In today's session, Tim seeks to heal his relationship with his father and forgive him for abandoning him as a child. What he is doing is focusing his attention on his father, believing that he will find the answer there. What we discover in this episode is that blind spots are usually hidden in our inner child... When his parents divorced, Tom lived with his mother's unresolved grief. She experienced the loss of her father as her own and believed that it was her duty to take charge of her mother's suffering. When this happens we begin to occupy roles that are not ours within the family field. In other words, he went from being the child, whom they have to care for and protect, to being the man, the couple who comforts and emotionally supports his mother. This generates several disorders that affect the well-being and health of each individual in the family group. So Tim grew up seeing and judging the world through his mother's eyes. In this vision, their father was an abandoned person who had hurt them. It is usual for children of divorced parents to feel the need to take sides with one of the parents. And if parents are not in a healthy and mature emotional state, they often manipulate children to "support" them or encourage their suffering. Thus, the child inherits the wound and the vision of the "victim" and the "victimizer". Tim has remained in what he believed to be a "faithful" relationship with his mother. And for this, he had made the unconscious decision to reject his father and accompany his mother in her pain for the separation. The first step in order to free ourselves from emotional codependency we must stop living the world between "victims" and "victimizers". It is very common to find this childhood vision of the world when we begin to work on our childhood trauma. Only by managing to mature emotionally with respect and patience towards ourselves and our processes, will we be able to see our parents with loving eyes. Being able to recognize their human condition, and accepting that we all have active participation in our life, so that no one is a victim and no one is victimized. We are just people making decisions that lead us somewhere. How he achieves a healthy relationship with his father and mother: • Taking his place as a son and recognizing the wisdom of his father. • Allowing her mother to take charge of her emotions. • Recognizing the father and mother within him. • Taking the positive from them and letting them take charge of the negative. • From this new role of son, ask the father for advice to overcome his financial situation. Learn from parental wisdom • Get out of your mother's "partner" spot and allow her to re-establish a loving relationship with another man. If this theme resonates with you, I hope this episode can shed light on blind spots. If you are looking to go deeper or need my guide and help write to us at: healing@ninawasi.com Send us your details here and participate in an episode of Live Session w / Dr. Flores. All Live Sessions are framed in the CET METHOD® (Comprehensive Emotional Therapy Method). About us: Nina Wasi - To dig in our project on the Pacific coast of Ecuador, and the CET METHOD® Dr. Flores on Facebook Instagram: @dr.jflores Instagram: @nina.wasi healing@ninawasi.com - For information about our healing services and programs.

How to Restructure Your Business With Tim Wilshire Josh: G’day everyone out there in podcast land. We've got an awesome guest for you, we've got Tim Wilshire here, who is a networking number cruncher who podcasts people's perspectives. We've got him on to talk about how to restructure your business and when the right time is to do that. So Tim, first question, how do you know when to do that? I know you've come across businesses that are started as sole traders and other businesses are looking for asset separation and all sorts of stuff. How do you know when the right time is? Tim: Okay. Thanks very much, Joshua and hello listeners. But as far as restructuring is concerned, obviously, one thing that I've done plenty of over the last 20 years at my business is restructuring our clients from one structure to another. I guess, like a lot of the answers to questions these days, the answer is, it depends. Okay? You're probably hearing that quite a lot, this is the new 2020 thing, it depends. So it depends on what the different situation is. So if they're in the wrong structure to begin with, and it's not expensive to change them into the correct structure, that's usually a good time to restructure. So let's say they're a sole trader, let's say they've been going in business for a very short space of time and income is starting to come in the door, something that may potentially sell one day, then you can no longer be a sole trader anymore. It doesn't make sense to stay being a sole trader because number one, you're not protecting your assets. If you've got assets in your own personal name, all of a sudden those assets are at risk and the more at risk, the more risky behaviour that you're doing, the more at risk those assets are when you're a sole trader, so that's definitely a time to look at structures. If you're not out of the sole trader structure, get out of that particular structure. And there are two alternatives that we sort of look at, whatever the structuring is, do you want to try it as a company or do you want to trade as a trading trust? Or a combination of both types of structure as well. So that's one, I guess, time where it's quite common when it comes to restructuring. Another time might be, okay, I'm in the trading trust at the moment, but I'm basically making too much money and it's no longer viable, unless I've got a company structure. A company structure meaning, I can type my money and I can grow the business. So, a trading trust structure may no longer be applicable to those circumstances because, selling the business because you have less options. If you're in a company structure, you've got more options, easier ways to add and subtract business partners, shareholders, et cetera. If it's a trading trust, usually good for a smaller operation, up to a couple hundred thousand dollars of profit. Once you get beyond that, a company is certainly worth considering. So that's another time to consider, okay, what's it going to cost to restructure from that structure to that? What are all the processes that I need to do? It doesn't make sense to do that. So that's probably the two main ones you're sort of looking at changing structure because of the circumstances, the current structure don't fit what you're currently doing, and your medium to long term objective. Josh: And when you say trading trust, a discretionary trust and trading trust are the same thing? Tim: Yep, yes, exactly. Josh: Cool. So, you then have cascading setups where you have trusts that own companies, which I think you touched on a little bit there. And then you have companies that are sitting by themself and then you have some people that have multiple companies and asset companies, asset protection. Why would you have that? Tim: The larger you get us as an operation, the more it makes sense to. I'm not saying complicate things, but the more it makes sense to just do things that are going to protect yourself in the best way, shape or form. What you do see from time to time, not for every client, obviously, but once the clients get big enough, they might have one entity that's the training entity and then they might have another entity that basically looks after all the assets. Those items also, you might be paying staff. How do you pay staff in the most tax effective manner? And why would you do it, not in the trading company? Separation, if you're big enough, certainly justifiable. You just got everything in one trading company basket and you're growing and growing and growing, to me, you need to review that structure and you need to say, okay, well, what can we do to better utilise what's going on there? So certainly if you've got clients that are big enough that are turning over more than a couple of million dollars a year, really need to review their structures and say, okay, well, are we in the right sort of structure? Is there something going on that we can do a bit more separation? Can we protect our assets better than what they are? The moment it's all in one basket, and that company goes down, then what? What's the plan of attack if that were to happen? If you've got another company over here doing something, important stuff, whatever, you might be able to drop one or the other. So it just gives you a few more options. Yes, it's more of a cost. Yes, it's more of an administration to be able to manage more than one, but at least you're doing things. Separating and separating the risks. Josh: Okay. And you've talked about going forward, bigger, better, or potentially more complication and more administrative overhead. Is there any times that you would be pulling that back in? Going from a company structure and then going back to a sole trader or something like that. Tim: You never go back to a sole trader, unless you're not really running a business anymore. But you may sort of downsize your operations in it, if you've got too many different structures. And I'm thinking of a client right now who had way too many different things going on, different trusts. Once you stop using that particular trust, you can close it down, sort of get rid of it. So obviously if it's not getting used, get rid of it. You should be able to probably get rid of the different things that aren't getting used properly. Obviously if your sales are coming down, you're sort of downsizing the business, getting rid of staff for whatever reason, because you're downsizing the business. And then do you need that if there's no staff? I mean, all of a sudden you don't necessarily need that. Josh: Who opens the conversation to the structure? Is this something that people should be already aware of themself, where they're talking to their accountant about it, or does the accountant say, "Hey, look, you've turned over a million dollars as a sole trader, something's not adding up here. Let's look to restructure this." Or is this something that they sort of need to jump on their own steam? Or maybe they're listening to the podcast to work out the answer. But who should be opening up that conversation? Tim: I think us, as accountants and advisors, should be opening up that conversation with our clients. We've got to be proactive, we've got to see where the opportunities exist for those clients to get things right. And we've got to take advantage of those opportunities. So get the clients to think that they need to take advantage to get those opportunities. Josh: For us, I started off as the transitioning periods, as you've said, is pretty much what we did. So when everyone was 14 and nine months old and they were off getting their McDonald's job, I was getting my tax file number and registering my first ABN number. So as a sole trader, I started off just on 15 and continued through as a sole trader for a few years until I had the trust and then the company trusts and then the company trusts and then another company, to have asset protection. And then another company again, which was around some of the different grants and advantages that you can have that are pushed out to companies that are not trading as a trust. You can optimise your tax with multiple businesses and structures, but what would be the reason you'd want to have more than one company? If not for asset protection or a government grant or something like that. Tim: Why would you have more than one? Obviously, if you've got more than one business operation actually going, you want to separate them in different trading locations. There might be one location here, there might be one location there, it doesn't always make sense to put them in the same envy. That way, if things can be sold separately, you want to be able to treat them separately. Every different division of the business, you probably should have it in its own entity. And you should try to steer away from grouping them together as well. The reason you don't want to group them together is, it's definitely more messy when it comes to returning your tax. Also, if you've tried to group GST, that's messy. And also if you're grouping them, then you're losing out on some benefits sometimes as well. A good example is the government's recent cash flow boost. If you've got just one company, then you're only going to get one lot of cashflow boosts. Whereas if you've got two companies, you're going to get more benefits rather than just one. Josh: Fair enough. And you did touch on something there about if it's being sold. So when it comes down to exit strategies, if people are looking to sell their business, when's the right time to restructure. When is the right time? You don't want it to look like you've cooked the books or changed the books around or done something funky. You want to make sure there's some historical evidence there that the business is profitable, that everything is going as you would expect it to be. When is the right time to restructure if you are looking towards an exit? Tim: You don't necessarily want to restructure until it's no longer useful. So it doesn't make sense to restructure too soon. So make sure you get to what you're trying to do before you make that choice cutting these off. Josh: So, the main reasons you'd restructure is risk mitigation, tax optimization, and to allow for things to be sold off more easily or divided out. Is that right? Tim: Yeah, I guess all the reasons that I've sort of gone through. Growing, make sure you're structuring correctly, protecting your assets. You need to minimise tax, exactly what you said. And when it comes to the next step, you get to another step, keep reviewing. What's the benefit of bringing in another entity? And everything else that we've sort of discussed there as well. Are we running more than one business operation and can we separate them out? I see clients that shove three different car washes into one entity. They're all at different locations, it doesn't make sense. Josh: I'm going to say something that I think a lot of people, maybe even yourself, are going to disagree with. Companies are generally pretty straightforward to set it up. There's not too many things you can stuff up. If there's one company and then there's another company, the company as the Pty LTD, decides the division of shares and the amount of directors, et cetera, et cetera. The actual company itself, is a reasonably straightforward container. Tim: Well, I guess it's very easy to set companies up, yes. Making sure that it's set up right still requires a bit of skill. Who are the shareholders? The shareholders are a very important part of the company and how those shares are owned are very, very important. Putting mum and dad as a shareholder is not always the best way to do it. So is setting up a trust to own the shares, a better option? That's usually what we'd recommend. We'd say, look, you should want more flexibility. It's not owned by you as an individual, it's in the trust. Then we're talking asset protection 101, as far as making sure that things are done right. Josh: When it comes down to a trust though, it seems like there's a bit more of a grey area than a company. It seems that whenever I've gone to a bank or any lending Institute, they hear that you're running under a trust, they seem to think there's more complication. How come trusts inherently appear to be more complicated than a company? Tim: I mean, with trusts, once you sort of whirl into it, it's probably not as common. To some, it may not be as complicated as what you may think. So obviously it's a great structure. We're talking about protecting assets, we're talking about planning the long term beneficiaries, kids, children, that all make sense to find out about what all the particular roles are. You just need to know what those roles actually are in a trust, and a lot of people don't know about that unless they read it. So once there's a bit of understanding, then you say, well, this is not as bad as what we thought. But again, it's complicated because it's obviously different to that of an individual sole trader, different to a partnership, different to a company. So I guess that's the stigma behind it, that it is more complicated. Just requires a bit of understanding in order to make it not feel as complicated as what its outward appearances would suggest. Josh: Were they more open to abuse in the past? Or has that been sort of tightened down a bit? Tim: Self-assessment is obviously huge. So, there's a lot of trust given to people to do the right thing. And when it comes to trust, there's no exception. So just because you set up a trust, doesn't mean you're going to get an audit or anything like that. Obviously, the audits flags are going to arise if things just don't match up or add up when the ATO are looking at the back system. The government from time to time, have said they don't want trusts, but they've never done anything about that. The labour government, before the last election, tried to make some fairly drastic changes. I guess that's where we are with that at the moment. It's not like it hasn't flown under the radar, but they haven't done anything about it. Josh: What would be the advantages to not having the structure, where you have a company and then a trust and instead, you're just running solely as a company? Tim: You're talking about the shareholder situation and also the difference between having a trust as a shareholder and having an individual as a shareholder. So, the biggest issue with having an individual as a shareholder is, company makes money, makes a lot of money, it pays all its tax, there's only one person that can actually end up with that dividend. If they want to declare a dividend or get forced to declare a dividend in some cases, then that goes to one person's particular taxable income. And that could really jump their income quite high, depending on when and how they have to deal with that situation and the profit and all that sort of stuff. Whereas a trust, at least you got more flexibility. You've got the flexibility to look at the rest of the family group. Can we allocate that dividend to somebody who's on a lower tax income? It makes sense. Three or $400 you spend extra to set up a trust. It's worth it because, yes, you might have to do some dividends and you might have to split that and do another tax return but at the end of the day, it will more than pay for itself. Josh: So if I was to be a single bachelor or bachelorette and have no one that I can distribute anything to, have no business partners, I own 100% of the shares, still having it through a discretionary trust, would still put an extra level of protection there. Tim: It does protect the amount of assets that are attributed to yourself because it's a trust that owns the company. That means that, that's not a personal asset that belongs to you. Whereas if you were the only shareholder, whatever the equity in that company, is effectively your asset. If the trust has that there, then if it's not your personal asset, so it usually can be helpful in things like bankruptcy. Josh: Okay, cool. Well, I think anyone out there that's still scratching their head and has a bit of confusion, definitely make sure to contact Tim Wilshire. He'll be able to bring some clarity and hopefully leave you with the aha moments on how things should be set up. If you want more information or want to hear more about what Tim's doing there, jump onto his podcast from the Valley. We're going to chuck some links in there so that you can check out the website, check out his podcasts and find out what you're doing wrong and how to restructure your business. Tim: Appreciate you doing this, Josh. There's something I just wanted to finish off with. In 2020, and as it was in 2014 or 2015, if you're going into business with somebody else, set it up as a company. Yes, the shares held 50/50 by different trusts or what have you, but if you go into business with somebody else, make sure it's a company. It just allows a lot more flexibility, allows a lot more growth. It sort of ticks off all the common goals that two partners going into business should be looking at when they go into business together. Josh: If you were having a Pty or LTD and you had a couple of business owners, is there a restriction or any complication if you had one of those business owners that were not from Australia? Tim: We have clients where company's are wholly owned by overseas companies, it's always possible. What's required is, the operation to be here at the central management. So the central management being in Australia, one of the directors must be an Australian resident. That's the requirement. The shares can be owned 100% by overseas entities, or 50/50 here. Josh: That's good to know. Hopefully anyone out there that is thinking about their structure, has had that aha moment and is thinking a little bit more about it, how to set it up properly and yeah, jump down to you guys to get it all sorted. Tim: Thank you very much. Josh: Cool. Well, anyone out there in podcast land, if you've enjoyed this, make sure to jump across to iTunes, leave us a review, give us some love and stay healthy. Stay good in this COVID climate.

Transcription: Gary Bisbee  0:00  Good afternoon, Tim and welcome to the podcast.Tim Pehrson  0:02  Thank you. Happy to be here with you.Gary Bisbee  0:04  We're pleased to have you at the microphone. We've been talking a bit and all of us realized that the Coronavirus search is highly variable by region, what's the status of the surge in Integris Health's primary service areas?Tim Pehrson  0:17  Really the surge never happened the way that we thought it would in all of Oklahoma. We obviously were pretty good at sheltering in place, or we already just sort of live a life of sheltering in place because we're a little more spread out than some of the places where this has really taken off. We still have our eyes at the data and looking at what's going on but so far, it hasn't been that bad. So for context, we're a 19 hospital campus, 2,000,000,700+ employed providers system. And we've had 130 COVID patients total this whole time Integris. So we just haven't had a lot now we hit a lot of PUIs, but those PUIs eventually came out as flu or other types of things that were associated with a regular illness that was in the community.Gary Bisbee  1:08  Clearly, some hotspots 5,6,7 hotspots around the country. But a lot of the country has not received what was predicted. So what's your thinking about going forward? It's likely this is going to happen again, some other kind of virus, how do we begin to differentiate between regions of the country?Tim Pehrson  1:29  Well, I think we need to do just that. Find a way to foster creative approaches to problem-solving, whatever it is. So in these scenarios, we look at the data, we make the best judgment and then we adjust as the data suggests. I'm not critical of the country, and the world shutting down. I think that that was completely appropriate based on the data. But now we know that the case fatality rate is much lower than we thought and it is still a very contagious disease. Largely focused on a certain kind of population, mostly co-morbid and some of the elderly. So that takes you to a strategy that would be slightly different than the one that we pursued. But we didn't know that at the time. So you can't be critical of that but I think we should be critical of ourselves if we don't start reshaping the messaging around this. And I think that's happening. I mean, we're seeing loosening restrictions, and you just have to continue to look at the data as it evolves, and make adjustments along the way. Again, we sheltered in place to preserve healthcare capacity to take care of people, if the health systems are capable of taking care of people, then there's no reason to shut down completely the way that we're doing. Now, obviously, Oklahoma has come out of that. And we'll continue to make adjustments and look at the data and then make more adjustments. Gary Bisbee  2:44  I would guess that we would spend more energy and more resources on our modeling too, and try to make that much more sophisticated so that we could tell some of the differences in regions that we ran into with COVID. Tim Pehrson  2:57  Yeah, I think that's actually a great point, Gary. Because I think the modeling that I was exposed to was just the same that everybody else's really didn't have that regional approach. And we had some of our data scientists and statisticians and epidemiologists create a local model that was actually very highly accurate and was showing that we were on the downside of the curve well before anything IHME was showing or any of the other models. So I do think we've got to come up with some better modeling that factors in some local uniqueness. Gary Bisbee  3:32  We'll come back to that later. But what about the Integris supply chain thinking now about testing? PPE? How's that been? Have you had shortages?Tim Pehrson  3:44  The early part of the COVID shutdown was very frustrating from a testing standpoint. We were getting tests turned a lot longer, a seven-day type of timeframe. So we have these patients in the hospital that we don't know if they're COVID or not. So we have to treat them as if they're COVID. With all the PPE, we have a joint venture with Quest that's called diagnostic laboratories of Oklahoma or DLO. And when we work with them, they're a great partner to us. And we got more testing capacity that was initially closer to Oklahoma and then eventually right here on one of our hospitals, which gave us turnaround times within four hours or less, and that really helped a lot. That's been much better. We still see some of the issues with some of the testing supplies that continue the same type of supply chain stuff associated with testing supplies that the rest of the countries are facing but for the most part, that hasn't been a problem for a number of weeks. PPE continues to be a real problem, particularly N95 masks. The demand is such that it's just really hard to get our hands on it. That is probably our rate-limiting factor in us getting more back to normal absent any of the market dynamics that occur in people's psyche, about coming in for careGary Bisbee  5:05  Thinking about testing and PPE going forward. Some are predicting there'll be another surge, in the second half of this year, perhaps even next year. How can you get yourself a position in such a way that you can not run into problems with the testing, and PPE?Tim Pehrson  5:24  First of all, I don't want to tell that on a podcast because nobody else did the same thing.Gary Bisbee  5:30  No secrets here.Tim Pehrson  5:31  Just kidding. I'm in this with everybody else. But I'll tell you, we're doing everything right now to get as much PPE as we possibly can for today, as well as for tomorrow. And I think the long term strategies for America in general is we can't be so addicted to lowest cost, just in time. I think we still need to pay attention to that. That's an important part, but we need to have some manufacturing capabilities in other locations. So when we have these situations happen, the capabilities are there to deliver what's needed when it's needed. It's easier to spin up more production if you actually have a place to produce it than it is to have to create the production line from scratch. And I think that's where we found ourselves in the world, relying largely on parts of China to handle all of our needs? I think there's going to be some policy changes. I'm hopeful there'll be policy changes. And we will definitely be pushing our supply chain and our GPOs to work through getting some local sourcing, at least in the United States, sourcing for certain PPE. And I would say too, we're part of the silica deal. And that really is a guaranteed production level. It may have been addressed at a different source, right or different problem. But the concept is similar, right? It was, hey, if we can produce a certain amount and guarantee a certain amount. We're willing to pay a price for that, and know that we're going to get these pharmaceuticals that have been played around by some of these manufacturers. So I think not unlike that, we're going to have to think creatively about the supply chain and how we get more stability for such crises like what we saw.Gary Bisbee  7:17  Regardless of what happens at the national level, you and your colleagues are totally united and making sure you address this supply chain issue going forward. Looking at your caregivers, has there been any real negativity? It sounds like there hasn't been enough cases to really cause a lot of stress on the caregivers.Tim Pehrson  7:38  It was obviously very scary for everybody at first and there were a lot of concerns. I mean, we probably had the same types of news stories of a caregiver here or there write an email to a local press saying we weren't giving them what they needed to be safe. There was an inconvenience with what they thought they needed to be safe versus what the CDC was saying. And of course, CDC was shifting a little bit as the supply was tightening. So we were following the CDC guidelines that created stress and concern. But as we started communicating in a more robust way to the caregivers and providing alternatives and providing creative ways to preserve PPE, that really went away and then it obviously turned to, "oh my gracious the volumes have fallen out the floor." We don't have any work to do. And that has become a stress for our caregivers. Because they obviously need to take care of their families. And if we can't provide them work, it creates stress for them. So I think those are probably pretty similar to where everybody else in the country.Gary Bisbee  8:40  How about telemedicine. Did you see an increase in use of telemedicine visits?Tim Pehrson  8:46  I would say that this is going to be one of the things that we look back on and are grateful for COVID as we've been talking for years about the need to be more consumer-focused and friendly, but it's been a hard move. At least for here in Oklahoma and in my past life as well, it was just a slow slog. And I think largely that was just the providers having a hard time wrapping their heads around how to do it. I think there was some willingness with patience. Now you have two interested parties who want to get care and give care. And the only way to do it is to do it through a virtual setting. So 50% of our medical group's visits were virtual and have been virtual and they continue to stay as we've loosened restrictions. 40% are still that way. The way we'll be looking at it as it's between 30% and 50% of the care particularly for some specialties will continue to be done through virtual settings and will be a great thing for our consumers and a great thing for our physicians. I think that's going to be absolutely fabulous. We also introduced as many did a chatbot see a feature that created machine learning chatbots around self-diagnosing. COVID we saw that to be really positive for our community and an avenue for us to advance that beyond just obviously COVID when we were really worried about conserving PPE, we were looking at expanding inpatient consults to a virtual setting. And we never got to the point where we actually did that because the PPE ended up loosening a little bit. But that's also something that we need to chase down and explore even further and experiment with. Because I think that there in some instances, it can be just as good as the in-person thing.Gary Bisbee  10:44  Well, now with receiving more or less equal reimbursement for a physical visit or a virtual visit seems like there will be more incentive for providers to do the future-oriented work you're talking about. Would you agree?Tim Pehrson  11:00  That's a game-changer and it has to stay. It really does. I know payers and Medicare have been worried that there's going to be gaming and so forth. I think this is what the consumers want. And I think if you can get access to a provider early on and take care of these issues, you're going to save a lot of downstream costs through not needing additional work because it wasn't convenient to go in. I'm really hopeful that CMS will keep it and I'm hopeful that the commercial payers will put it in place and keep it there and not try to game it with some sort of discount factor because it's telehealth because it does cost money to put that infrastructure in place. We found still, that there was a reasonable amount of cost and just setting up the rooms now we might get better over time, in terms of how we have the other caregivers wrapped around for that virtual visit, that it might get more efficient, but still, I think there's still going to be costs associated with doing that. So I'm very hopeful that they don't try to monkey around with that because that would be a shame. And I think it might drive us back to doing some of the other things that we were doing that really aren't consumer-focused and friendly.Gary Bisbee  12:08  I totally agree with that. Let's move to elective surgeries. You're in an interesting position, Tim. I think you've been coming back to elective surgeries now for maybe two weeks, much of the country is just now beginning. So you're a bit of a test lab. Can you share with us how you found the last two weeks and moving back to elective surgeriesTim Pehrson  12:29  Before our governor put a hold on elective surgeries in March. And because of the PPE burn, we decided to just stop doing them because we didn't think we're going to have enough for this surge that was going to come. And so when the governor said, "Hey, I'm lifting the restrictions on elective surgeries on the 24th of April," we had physicians just ready to go and a lot of the community gone six weeks or so without those elective procedures. So we still have the PPE concerns so we've created an algorithm that our physician leaders created to help protect the PPE. We're working down the elective heart, surgical procedures and so forth on more urgent nature procedures. And we haven't yet turned on elective hip surgery, for example. But those are coming. I mean, today, probably 120% of normal on those surgeries. The first week, we were at 90%. Again, we could have been probably 140% that first week, if we would have just had enough PPE to handle it. Now that backlog gets work. I don't know what the demand will be if it'll just go back to normal or if it'll go back to this new normal that we think is which is normal minus a certain factor. It's hard to tell. We think it will definitely go back to normal plus a payer mix change to the negative. At any rate, it's been pretty encouraging that the volumes have come back. Now, emergency rooms are still pretty empty. And the revenue for my system is still 30% behind. And so we spent a lot that's not opening even though we've opened or functioning normally, just because people are nervous to come in and leave, send a message to stay home. And now we need them to start getting back. But people are dying from strokes and dying from heart attacks, because they're afraid to get COVID and they're at eight times greater risk of dying from heart disease, then COVID. So we need you to come in and get the heart procedures that you need done. Gary Bisbee  14:41  There's been a general concern that patients would be reluctant to come back for elective surgery because of their concern about COVID. Doesn't sound like you've found that actually?Tim Pehrson  14:52  So far we haven't and we've been changing our messaging over the last probably a week before we knew we were going to start reopening. We started sending out messaging and it was actually part of our medical group plan to get people into the clinics, or at least in the telehealth of saying, "hey, you can safely come in." We've got these different avenues we created, for example, in all of our check in points that we don't have waiting rooms, we just get people right in, we have people waiting in their cars, and we'll text them when it's time to come in. We try to create a just in time experience for the patients so that they don't have to sit in areas and then we've tried to communicate that that's the way we're keeping them safe. And so far, that's worked. But again, we're working off of six, seven weeks of backlog. So there's a lot of anxious people. We'll see how well that sticks as we start getting that backlog worked out where people's minds are coming out of this COVID crisis psyche.Gary Bisbee  15:50  Right. So Tim, you mentioned the revenues down by 30%. What will be the effect on the 2020 Integris financials?Tim Pehrson  15:59  End of June we finished our FY 20, and it's devastated. I mean, all of our metrics were tracking perfectly in our finances. We're where we had planned them to be. And that's been shot in two months, really a month and a half. And so we anticipate the rest of this year that it will have quite a deleterious impact. We took some pretty early actions as a leadership team. So there were several pieces obviously we volume adjusted everywhere leaning and we're all the direct patient caregivers are. That's something that we did even more purposefully. So for example, I have a big medical campus that has two campuses, one across the street from the other. They used to be two separate hospitals. They're now licensed as one. One of the hospitals had 10 or 15 patients in it. And so we said, well, we'll keep the emergency room but we're going to move patients over to our Northwest Campus because we can optimally staff that way. So we've been pretty aggressive in trying to look for direct patient caregiver volume adjusting, but then we also did a real furlough for our non direct patient caregiver, people. And that's never been done as long as I've only been here for 18 months, but from what I've been told, my COO has been here for 30 plus years, and it's never been done. So that's been an interesting shock. And we've been able to flex down our work hours about anywhere from 20% to 30%, of what we were running before. So that's going to be helpful, but not enough. Obviously, executives took a 20% temporary pay cut, we stopped the match for the 401k. And 403 B's this year. Something we don't want to keep in place forever, but it's something we've got to do. And we're just looking at new ways to try and survive and I think we're gonna have to do even more. Because the impact for a financial perspective is really great advice coming from a balance sheet. That's pretty strong. We have to react. And if we don't, then we're going to be hurting even worse. So 2020 is going to be a disaster. It's going to impact our fy 21, which starts in July. And we've got lots of different scenarios that nobody knows what's going to happen. I mean, this is the trick right now. Meeting with my board talking about next year. Normally, we're bringing in our capital and operating budgets. And our capital budget, obviously, is pretty easy to slow down a lot. But the operating budget is literally a guess. I mean, nobody knows where it's going to go. And how this is going to come out. We're trying to tell the board listen, we're a forever organization. Let's look out two years, we're going to take a best stab at what we think will happen here. And we need to not look at it as a budget, we need to look at it as a weekly monthly rolling forecast that we just keep adjusting to throughout the next 18 months and then we will get to a point where it'll stabilize. So we can predict a little bit better. And at that point, we can firm these up more in terms of budgets and forecasts. But right now, it's pretty murky. I think it's pretty murky for everybody.Gary Bisbee  19:10  I think that's right. Thinking about Integris health. Would you just give us an update on Integra itself? For those of us that aren't that familiar with Tim?Tim Pehrson  19:18  Yeah, sure. We're Oklahoma's largest health system, to $2 billion 19, hospital campus, and 153 clinics 700 and employ providers, about 1500 physicians that are clinically integrated. We've been in a community for more than 100 years. So it's a great organization. It's got a history of being the leader in the community. Medical first starts here, we end up taking care of a lot of the very, very high-end stuff, even though we're not an academic medical center, we do have teaching going on and the kinds of stuff that we do here. You would think It was a teaching facility based on the difficulties, the cases that we take care of at our flagship hospital. But we're also out in the community in community hospitals and some rural areas. And we have clinics everywhere. We're an important Oklahoma asset that is a thought leader in the community.Gary Bisbee  20:21  How would you describe the culture of Integris? You kind of referred to that, but how would you describe the culture? Tim Pehrson  20:28  I think it's kind of what I was saying there. I mean, it really has been built on being the leader and the leader in the community, the leader in the region, and doing hard things in the community. The culture is great. It's a wonderful family feel. People are really open to concepts around continuous improvement. You know, I came here, having been the leader of that at my prior life and another organization, and people have embraced that culture of continuous improvement and driving best practices. So it's been fabulous. It's a great culture.Gary Bisbee  21:02  Back to COVID for a second. Did you implement a remote working policy for any of the Integris? Tim Pehrson  21:09  Yeah, actually, for a period of time, even our whole executive team was remote. But we moved them off site, everything that could possibly move into a remote setting. We made those changes. And some of those are still in place. And I think that will stay in place forever. We're actually in the process. We've got a couple of buildings that are coming up for lease. And we've been thinking we created a new corporate office somewhere in the question, I think we'll still do that. But the question is, how much space do we really need? Because we think that a lot of this can be done remotely. And obviously we don't know what the long term furlough effects are going to be. And so we've got to just be smart about that. But yes, I think remote working has been great when I in my past life, before coming to integris LED that process for innovation. And then driving a lot of the remote working thinking. And because the region that I was responsible for was separated by a two and a half hour drive, so it was very nice to be able to organize that way. And I've just found it to be so effective to work in that environment. Obviously, I'd love to be meeting with people in person all the time. But if you can't do that, the next best is some sort of a virtual camera experience where you can see people and, and get better at it.Gary Bisbee  22:28  Do you think on the M&A front that COVID situation will increase M&A, or decrease M&A among our health systems?Tim Pehrson  22:36  I think it's gonna increase it. I think that the strong are gonna take the opportunity to do things strategically, and the weak will need to have help. It'll be interesting to see if the strong are super aggressive. Or if they're really more, what's the right strategic move as opposed to just getting bigger for bigger sake.Gary Bisbee  23:01  Where does scale matter?Tim Pehrson  23:03  I think scale matters all the time. But I think particularly like in the supply chain revenue cycle, your digital going out the markets, the financing piece of it. Clearly there are benefits from being bigger. However, I will say that the economy that we had was such that there was so much capital deployed into healthcare innovations, particularly in those areas that I was just describing, that you could almost acquire the expertise that someone else would have if they had an essential who has this big, broad national footprint. You can almost acquire that at a pretty good price and get much of the technical capabilities that you otherwise wouldn't be able to access to this in the case of Integris as a $2 billion health system. I still think that local relevance is really important. For the obvious reasons, but I think for the less obvious reasons of influence in the community thought leadership, let's just take, for example, one of the core, the number one strategy to Integris is driving evidence-based medicine into the organization. You can't do that as a small player. And you can't influence public policy to move in that direction. As a small player, so locally, you need to be relevant. If you're small, locally, but big nationally, you don't have any ability to do what I just described on the local level. I think there's two elements to scale, a local relative size and then a national presence. And I think the national presence, there is some leveling of the playing field based on opportunist capitalists who are out there trying to monetize some of these expertise that are out there.Gary Bisbee  24:55  Right, let's turn to your 18 months at Integris. As you mentioned, when you join Integris, how did you go about setting your priorities?Tim Pehrson  25:04  Oh, boy, it seems like that was just yesterday, I talked to a lot of executive friends from around the country and asked him that very question. How do you transition into one of these roles and the thing I think that was most helpful was just to read a couple of books. First 90 days by Michael Watkins is a must read for every transitioning executive. But also just the advice to just listen, you're going to want to get in there and do stuff. I tried to take a first hundred days, I was very clear: hey, I'm here to get smart. Help me understand the leaders, the environment, the strategy, the key physicians and community players and just meet with as many people as I possibly could. Once I did that, it was actually just right enough time for me to then really assess number one, what was my leadership situation, what changes if any I needed to make there I made these changes fairly quickly after that, and then simultaneously, what were our strategies? And then how were we going to execute on those strategies, which was developing this integris leadership operating system that I had developed at another place and personalizing that to this community. And the rest was history. It was just starting down the efforts of working on those key strategies and building the relationships with the board and building trust with the physicians and the caregivers and seeing some positive results from those activities.Gary Bisbee  26:35  You've got a very strong board there at Integris. Are you doing anything differently because of COVID?Tim Pehrson  26:41  I stay in contact with my board regularly. I think it's just the best practice to communicate, we meet on a quarterly basis. So my communications in between the meetings are just as important as the board meetings. So normal times, I'm writing a quick email once a week, maybe every other week, very high level. But pointed on a couple of things I want to express when COVID hit. I was emailing them a couple times a week. And then I just said, I can't do the second, I actually got to get these folks on the phone, I just made them aware of what's going on. There were so many moving parts, and it was moving so fast. So we started doing a board call initially, once a week, and then that turned into a video call once a week on Microsoft Teams. And we really got into a rhythm. And then as things started to normalize, I talked to my board chair and I said, I don't think we need to do this every week. Let's style this back. And so we just dialed it back a little bit. And I continue to do my emails and I continue to occasionally do a board call that has been very nimble, they're not doing anything else in a place that calendars are pretty wide open. So that's been really great. The Virtual PC has not been as bad as I thought it would be. I still would prefer to be in person for sure. But my board, I've got some national board members to travel in. And the ability to make this happen if something comes up is I think, going to be something we'll try and leverage in the future. Gary Bisbee  28:11  Tim, this has been a terrific interview. Thanks for your time today. Let me wrap it up if I could with one question. And you've made reference to it a couple of times today, and that's this thought about the new normal. What do you think is going to change as a result of COVID?Tim Pehrson  28:27  I think the payer mix is going to change permanently. I think we're going to see more government payer mix. I think there's going to be greater competition amongst the providers for the remaining commercial insurance. I'm hopeful, as I talked about earlier that there will be a continued trend to telehealth and virtual services. So those are going to definitely change. I think the other piece is our cost structures clearly need to be lower. We've known that for a long time. But I think that what this has really underscored is that our cost structures need to be more flexible, we tend to be very fixed, as I said earlier in the history of integris. They don't remember a time when you were following in a volume adjusted type of way than non direct patient caregivers. And I think we just got to say, all costs are variable in the long run. And so we probably ought to start treating them like that. So I think that's gonna be really important. I'll tell you one thing that has really opened up for me, the importance of communication is always there, right, but you're part of a statewide health system. And the ability to communicate in real time is so difficult to try and get out to all those places. It's obviously great if you can be there and in the olden days, shake hands with people. But we've been leveraging virtual technologies, and we've been experimenting with a lot of different solutions, virtual town halls, and these have been great I mean, our caregivers, our physicians, our hospital boards that have responsibility for safety and quality in the local markets, the ability to get out to them quickly and rapidly and share methods and shape what we're doing and build confidence has just been magnified by these virtual Town Hall. So we're going to keep using those forever. And I bet that's the way it is across the country, because there's just so much going on. And we become such a visual culture through YouTube and Instagram, and Marco Polo, whatever else we do, it's all video driven. And so this is a great way for people to do it. You can probably get better questions out of these virtual questions that they can ask on the side of the video piece and answer those as they're asking questions and you can in a big room of people because people are less afraid to ask the hard questions. So I think that's going to change obviously, the financials. I think that we're going to, this is going to leave a lasting mark on it. But I will say, I am still very optimistic that good will come of this. It's hard to go back and look and remember what it was like before 9/11. And all these security checks now we just sort of part of life, right? I think that we will return to normal. I really do. I think that it's easy to get in a funk to say that will mean it will feel normal, it won't necessarily be the same normal that we have. But it will feel normal, right? It feels normal to stand on the security line going through a checkpoint at an airport. But that wouldn't have felt normal before 9/11. And so I think that there's going to be some things like that where we'll have to adapt and adjust. won't feel comfortable at first, but we'll figure it out and it will feel normal and hopefully it's for the better I think it's going to be for the better in the long run, even though I think it's It'd be more challenging from a financial perspective to continue our missions and, and visions. But I think it's possible. I'm hopeful that it is. I'm optimistic that it is. And we're looking for every way to reimagine ourselves in this time. I mean, what a great time to rethink everything. You have all the reasons in the world to do it. And everybody sees the reasons why you need to at least think about it. They're expecting you to think differently, right? So that's what we've got to do as leaders and that's what we're doing. Gary Bisbee  32:28  Tim, great interview Integris is lucky to have you, and we'll look forward to seeing you in the future.Tim Pehrson  32:34  Thank you. I appreciate it. You'd be safe and we'll chat soon. Hopefully it'll be in person sooner than later.Gary Bisbee  32:39  Thanks, Tim.

Dr. Shannon Orr (Professor of Political Science whose research focuses on environmental policy, director of the Master of Public Administration Program at BGSU) and Dr. Tim Davis (Ryan Family Endowed Professor of Biology, member of the Lake Erie Research Center and the Environmental Protection Agency Subcommittee for Safe and Sustainable Water Resources) discuss algae blooms, water quality science, and policy in Lake Erie.       Transcript: Introduction: From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas. Intro Song Lyrics: I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment. Jolie Sheffer: Welcome to the Big Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Dr. Jolie Sheffer, Associate Professor of English and American Culture Studies and the Director of ICS. Jolie Sheffer: Today I'm joined by two BGSU faculty members. Dr. Shannon Orr is a Professor of Political Science whose research focuses on environmental policy. She was recently recognized for her outstanding community involvement at the 2019 Faculty Excellence Awards, which lauded her for 100 service learning projects, among other activities. Dr. Orr is the director of the Master of Public Administration Program at BGSU. Jolie Sheffer: Dr. Tim Davis is a Ryan Family Endowed Professor of Biology, whose research focuses on algal blooms and aquatic ecosystems. He's a member of the Lake Erie Research Center and the Environmental Protection Agency Subcommittee for Safe and Sustainable Water Resources. Dr. Davis was recently honored in Washington DC for his work in the prevention of harmful algal blooms. Jolie Sheffer: Shannon and Tim, thanks for joining me. Dr. Tim Davis: Thank you. Dr. Shannon Orr: Thanks for having us. Jolie Sheffer: Tim, you've done substantial research regarding harmful algal blooms, especially around the Great Lakes region. How did you come to focus on that area in biology? Dr. Tim Davis: I mean honestly, it kind of started my senior year of undergrad. I was at Southampton College at Long Island University, and I went to the South Pacific with a research professor to do a winter term study abroad course, and even though you're supposed to have a project, I didn't have one. So I just started working with that faculty member, and he was working on algal blooms and we were doing some work with damselfish in Fiji and Solomon Islands. Dr. Tim Davis: So I started working with him, and then when I got back to a university, I joined his lab. Harmful algal blooms seemed to be a hot topic. Water quality is always something that's been a area that I think is really important, living and growing up either near the Atlantic Ocean or in the Great Lakes. I just kind of took off from there, and harmful algal bloom seemed to be popping up everywhere, and it presented a great opportunity to conduct meaningful science that would be applied to society. I thought this is a good way to spend the rest of my career. Jolie Sheffer: Shannon, your background is in environmental policy. How did you become interested in water issues in our region? Dr. Shannon Orr: Well, it was really because of the students when I first started teaching at BGSU. When I came here I had been working on climate change, and specifically looking at the United nations and the treaty negotiations that were going on around climate change. I was teaching in my very first semester, my very first class at BGSU, I was teaching an environmental policy class. I was using a lot of references to climate change. I had moved here from the Canadian Rockies, and so a lot of my examples were kind of Rocky Mountain based, Western Canada, Western US. Dr. Shannon Orr: And then the students started talking a lot about Asian carp, and they had so much passion for the issue and the concerns and threat of Asian carp as an invasive species posing a threat to the Great Lakes. So, I started reading about it based on their interest and then I got really captivated in it. Then I kind of caught their passion and then I started to become more involved in issues around kind of water quality, Great Lakes invasive species, from a social science perspective. Jolie Sheffer: So both of you are obviously doing important work on the Great Lakes and water quality. So, what does it mean? What are some of the particular issues that are maybe unique or distinctive in the Great Lakes compared to the South Pacific or the Rockies or other places. What do you think is distinctive about the issues locally? Do want to start us, Tim? Dr. Tim Davis: Sure, I can. Well I guess taking a step back, harmful algal blooms are not unique to the Great Lakes. They're happening pretty much on every continent except Antarctica, so they're a global issue that have regional implications. What's really kind of unique about this area is that we hold about one-fifth of the earth's available fresh surface water, and we rely on our surface water resources so heavily, especially for drinking water. That because of our actions in the watershed, we're impacting the water quality of the water that a lot of us are consuming. Right? Even in Bowling Green here, we drink water coming directly from the Maumee River that's obviously been treated. Dr. Tim Davis: So, when you look at the amount of fresh water, which is a finite resource, we need to take care of it, we need to protect it. The fact that we live in an area where we have to substantially treat our water even though there's such a ... It's not a quantity amount, it's a quality issue. To me, that's where it differs a bit from other areas where a lot of other areas are dealing with water quality and quantity issues. We don't have a quantity issue, especially right now. Our lakes are really high. We have a quality issue, and it's one that was self inflicted. Jolie Sheffer: Could you talk a little bit about what some of those causes are to our watershed problems? Dr. Tim Davis: Sure. So, the algal blooms in the lake are essentially the visual symptom of an unhealthy watershed, right? So when we look at our watershed, we essentially live in what was the Great Black Swamp. However, we've converted most of that area into agricultural land because it's very good agricultural soil. The problem there is that in order to farm, farmers routinely add fertilizer, nitrogen, phosphorus, to their land, and not all that gets taken up by the plants that they're growing, and if you don't apply it at the right time or there's a large rain, it can run off into our big river, especially the Maumee River and end up in our lake. Dr. Tim Davis: These algal blooms, they're essentially microscopic plants. They need sunlight, water, and nutrients to grow. Well, they have a lot of water, the sun's not going anywhere, and we're giving them an abundant of nutrients, so therefore we're going to see these blooms and they're going to continue to occur into the future unless we fix our watershed. If we fix our watershed, we'll fix our lake. Jolie Sheffer: Shannon, in terms of Asian carp, what are the particular conditions in the Great Lakes that are making this an issue here? Dr. Shannon Orr: So, building off of Tim's great answer just now about the science, now I turn and look at the politics and why can't we solve problems of water quality and why do we have these problems around Asian carp? So much of it is about competing interests. So, if we look at Asian carp in particular, Asian Carp are an invasive species that actually we brought to the US into Arkansas for treatment of aquaculture ponds. So one of the things about Asian carp is that they have a voracious appetite, so a great, clean, green alternative in the 1970s as an alternative to chemicals to clean these aquaculture ponds. When we brought them in, people said, "Well, they won't survive and thrive in the US, so it's fine, and they won't escape," but nobody told the carp that. So some epic flooding happened, the carp swam out of their aquaculture ponds, entered the water systems, and they've been slowly moving ever since closer and closer to the Great Lakes, and so now they're just a couple of miles away from entering Lake Michigan. Dr. Shannon Orr: The reason why it's so hard to stop it, it seems kind of easy and people say, "Well, why don't we eat them? Why don't we catch them?" It's a little bit more complicated than that, which we can go into later, but one of the biggest issues is that we have all these competing interests around water. So, we have farmers, we have the fishing industry, we have the barge industry, which is really dependent on using the lock system to transport goods. So then we have economic interests, particularly in the Chicago region. Even just here in Lake Erie and looking at the water quality issues that Tim was just talking about, we have farmers, we have homeowners, and then at the same time we also have competing political jurisdictions. Dr. Shannon Orr: So we're talking about the Great Lakes. So we're talking about the United States and we're talking about Canada. We're talking about multiple states and we're talking about the province of Ontario. We're also talking about counties and cities and tribal communities, and all of these different political jurisdictions have different ideas, different solutions, different ways of making decisions, so trying to solve our problems are really challenging in the Great Lakes region. Jolie Sheffer: Could you talk a little more, Shannon, about kind of what some of the approaches are to solving the Asian carp problem? Dr. Shannon Orr: Sure. So, there's lots of ideas out there about trying to solve the Asian carp problem, and technology is often cited as kind of an option. The big extreme option that is being proposed and seriously looked at is actually creating a wall. So we put up a wall and we stop the carp from being able to enter into the Great Lakes. So, very expensive proposition. It's about a 20 year timeline according to the Army Corps of Engineers. It would work, but the barge industry is against it because we have a billion dollars worth of goods transported along those water systems, so putting up a wall eliminates the barge industry and create some major problems for the shipping industry about how do we get the goods from one side of the wall over to the other. Dr. Shannon Orr: There are some technological options for that are being proposed, but they're all very expensive and have very long timelines, and the carp aren't that far away. Some people have proposed fishing and eating them, for example. I actually got to go Asian carp fishing, hunting actually, with a bow and arrow, which was pretty fun, but there's so many carp and they're actually pretty hard to catch on a large scale. There is a very government subsidized fishing industry for carp. Illinois has put in a lot of money to support the fishing industry, specifically for carp, and the processing industry. So, what do you do with all the carp once you catch them? So, one of the proposals has always been, "Well, you know what humans are really good at is eating things into extinction, and so why don't we do that with carp?" Dr. Shannon Orr: One of the problems when we think about a North American diet is that when we tend to eat fish, we tend to eat it as a filet, so we like a nice fish filet on a plate that you cut with a knife and fork. In Asia fish is often served as fish balls, fish cakes, fish that's flaked, and then served that way. The problem with Asian carp is it's really, really bony, and so people describe it as a very mild tasting fish, but in order to actually cut out a filet, there was a restaurant in Chicago that tried to do it. They're like, "We're going to eat the fish. The carp, we're going to make people like it." They realized that by the time they cut out a filet, they would have had to serve it at the price of a lobster, and who's going to pay lobster prices for kind of a mild white fish that's called carp, which we don't think of as a very good eating fish. So, the eating solution is a little bit challenging. Dr. Shannon Orr: There is an industry that's sending the carp back to Asia, kind of irony, because they're promoted as a clean fish, not a lot of pollution, a safe a healthy alternative. It's also being turned into fertilizer. There's pet food. My parent's dog is a huge fan of the Asian carp treats. Dr. Shannon Orr: So, those are some of the kind of the major solutions that are being proposed. Right now we have electric barriers that are in place that kind of, when the fish swim up to the barriers, they get kind of a tingle. It doesn't kill them. They get the sensation from the barrier which repels them so they turn away. It's not a perfect solution, and there are concerns that perhaps fish have gone through, that metal bottom boats disrupt the current so then fish could swim under a boat as it moves through the barriers. So those are some of the solutions, but there's no consensus yet about how to actually stop the carp. Jolie Sheffer: Tim, what are some of the solutions being investigated for the algal bloom issue? What are some of the approaches that you're studying? Dr. Shannon Orr: Sure. So what I always start out by saying is that there's no in lake solution. We have blooms that have these surface scums. Those big green surface scums that look like paint being spilled on top of the water, and they can be over 700 square kilometers, so they're huge. Four times the size of the district of Columbia. So really, really big events. There's nothing we can do in the lake. Once the blooms are formed, they're there, and there's nothing we can sprinkle on the lake. What we need to do is folks in the watershed, and that's difficult. Because we have to work with our agricultural community, and not that they're difficult to work with, but a lot of farmers work on razor thin margins, so there's just not a lot of money. A lot of the solutions, we talk about for R's, right place, right time, right depth, and right amount for fertilization on fields, and yo that's a good solution but a lot of the technology to get there is expensive. Dr. Shannon Orr: Governor DeWine just introduced the H2Ohio Initiative, which is a really great piece of ... it's a good bill because it provides $170 million dollars up front, and if we are able to get another round, if it's refunded again for five years, in total it's about $900 million in financial resources coming in to solve this problem. But we need to figure out one, how to use less fertilizer on farms, which there's about a third of the farmers that are always doing pretty much everything they can. There's a third of the farmers that would if they were incentivized to do so, and then of course there's a third that just are kind of stuck in their ways and are kind of recalcitrant to change. Dr. Shannon Orr: We really need to work on reducing the amount of runoff and reducing the amount of nutrients in that runoff, and that's going to be particularly challenging because climate change is going to make that more challenging. So, climate change is going to impact precipitation patterns. Right now, this past spring is a great example. We had a lot of rain over extended period of time and there was a lot of farm land that didn't get planted. So even though we had a lot of rain, we had a lot of runoff, and this was the fifth biggest bloom in recorded history. The amount of phosphorus that came in was about 30% less than what it would have been if all fields had gotten planted and fertilized. Dr. Shannon Orr: So, changing precipitation patterns is going to change farming practices, and climate change is going to continually impact our ability to fight the nutrient overload coming into the lake, and it's only going to get more difficult so we need to act quickly and aggressively. Dr. Shannon Orr: Again, it's a political issue. It really is. Farmers don't want to get regulated. There's a lot of folks that are worried about that we're going to turn into the nest next Chesapeake Bay, where there's a lot of regulations. So, we have a lot of scientists both at BGSU and across state of Ohio who are working with the agriculture community to implement new strategies, implement different ways of farming or just bringing back cover crops, for example. Winter cover crops can help stabilize soil, stabilize nutrients, reduce runoff. Dr. Shannon Orr: We have a lot more large animal farming operations. We call them CAFOs. It's consolidated animal feeding operations, and there's a lot of manure that is associated with that. So then what do you do with all that manure? Because manure is expensive to transport. Because a lot of it, manure is like 97% water. So if you can get rid of the water, you can transport that manure. It still has the nutrients, but that's expensive. So we're working on technologies to try to solve that issue. Jolie Sheffer: Tim, you're a member of the EPA Board of Scientific Counselors and part of the Safe and Sustainable Water Resources Subcommittee. How have you applied what you've learned in this position to your work as a Lake Erie center researcher and your work at BGSU? How are they informing each other? Dr. Tim Davis: I would say a lot of what I've learned through my research at BGSU has helped me more inform and advise EPA on their larger national policies, their national goals for their water research. So EPA is not just a regulatory agency, they also have research. What are their national goals going to be? What are their overarching goals going to be? So we take the expertise that we've built up through my work at BGSU and help them kind of define what their goals are for the next three years. Dr. Tim Davis: But then we can also kind of take what we know is important to EPA and then apply it when we're trying to apply for grants or assisting other colleagues in what's important to EPA, because we help advise them on ... They give us topics what they think are important. We help clarify and better define what their research is going to be, so we know what's important to them. And if we know it's important to them, we can write grants that BGSU researchers can help them do their work better, and it also helps BGSU and our research portfolio and individual faculty members. But it's really that that give and take. So we can take the knowledge that we've gained through our research here and help them, and then take the information and what we know is important to EPA and be able to apply it in our grant writing. Dr. Tim Davis: That helps us, quite frankly, maintain our research labs and, and help get students involved in research, which is something that we're all very passionate about. Jolie Sheffer: Shannon, you do a lot of work with students in your role with the Master's of Public Administration program. Can you talk a bit about how your students are connecting some of these policy issues with partners in the community? Dr. Shannon Orr: Oh yeah. That's a really part of our Master's of Public Administration program and the classes that I teach. A lot of it is that I want to give students the opportunity to make a difference. Our tagline for our MPA program is Education for Public Service. I also want students to understand that as individuals, they have a lot of power, and I want them to care about things and be engaged in their communities. Regardless of what careers they go off and pursue, that they can go out and do really great things and make a difference, and do impact studies and evaluations or strategic plans and help to make our communities better and stronger. One of the things that I really emphasize a lot in my classes is the idea of stakeholder collaboration, and really sitting down and listening to different perspectives, different ideas, bringing together different actors that so many of our decisions have to be made from that lens. That it can't just be people working in isolation or groups combatively arguing and yelling about solutions and decisions and the future. Dr. Shannon Orr: Aristotle defined politics as the search for the good life, and so that's kind of why I'm a political scientist, because I love that idea. People have different ideas about what the good life is. People have different ideas about what a Great Lakes should be, and so I really want my students to embrace the idea of listening to all of the different stakeholders involved in these issues and finding ways to come together and to create solutions and make meaningful, positive impact. Jolie Sheffer: We're going to take a short break. Thanks for listening to the Big Ideas podcast. Introduction: If you are passionate about Big Ideas, consider sponsoring this program. To have your name or organization mentioned here please contact us at ics@bgsu.edu. Jolie Sheffer: You're listening to the Big Ideas podcast. I'm here talking with professors Tim Davis and Shannon Orr. I'd like to ask next about some of the particular projects that each of you have on. So Tim, you're a part of a team at BGSU that received funding in October for a project titled Monitoring and Event Response for Harmful Algal Blooms. What are you learning from that project, and how are you hoping that that will directly be applied to solving some of these problems? Dr. Tim Davis: I'm really excited about this recent award from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA. This is a three year proposal or grant that we are taking technology. So, this is technology that allows us to measure these algal toxins. So, the toxins that caused the Toledo water crisis in 2014, it allows us to take these units out into the field. These portable rapid toxin detection devices, take them out in the field and measure toxins right in the field. These units that we're going to be using are about the size of a tissue box, about the size of a Kleenex box, and we have these cartridges that help us quantify the amount of toxin in a sample. What's really fantastic about that is that we're linking this advanced technology that's easy to use and rapid with citizen science, or community engaged science. Dr. Tim Davis: So we're working with water treatment managers, we're working with beach managers, we're working with the phytoplankton monitoring network, which is a volunteer network that's run through NOAA, and we are working with charter boat captains that are out on the lake every day. We're distributing these units to all of our partners, all of our community partners, and they're going to be out on the lake and they're going to take a sample. We're going to teach them how to do this, of course, and they're going to extract the toxins from the sample, then they're going to analyze it. Then they can go to their mobile phone, we're developing an app where they can open our app, it'll download their coordinates of where they are on the lake, and they can upload their data, which gets put into a central server. Dr. Tim Davis: So as scientists, we know that partnering with community stakeholders who really want to be part of the solution is a great way to expand our research. Because there's no way we can ever have enough students to do everything we want to do, but we definitely have enough stakeholders. So by partnering with them, we are going to be able to track the toxicity, or the toxin contraction of the bloom, in ways that we've never been able to do before, and that's really exciting. Dr. Tim Davis: So we're combining this new technology with citizen science, and hopefully be able to build a better picture of how the bloom is changing in its toxicity over time, over the course of a bloom season, which will then help us to better be able to predict when the bloom is going to be most toxic, least toxic, and that's really important for water managers. Because right now we can predict where it is, we can predict where it's going, we can even predict how big it's going to be on a seasonal scale, but we can't predict toxicity, and that's the one thing that we really need to improve on, and this work and partnering with citizen scientists is going to help us do that. Jolie Sheffer: Could you talk about that project in terms of its interdisciplinary scope? Because it sounds like you're not just talking about working with biologists, but there's also computer science. Talk about the scope of the project from a disciplinary perspective. Dr. Tim Davis: Yeah, absolutely. So, all of the work that we do is cross disciplinary. We have chemists, we have biologists, we have engineers who had to design this technology, and then of course, we have the computer scientist. So we're seeing this interdisciplinary work become more and more prevalent in our field, and quite frankly, it's allowing us to do work better than we have when we were working in silos. When we were just working with biologists or chemists. We were able to make gains. There's a lot of work that was done that was fundamental, and we build off of all of that previous research, but by combining these groups, not only are we able to do more, but we can now take these big data sets and actually analyze them in ways that we couldn't previously. That's really important, because scientists, we always get dinged for saying, "We need more data," but really we have a lot of data, it's how do we analyze all that data now? Dr. Tim Davis: So gathering data, we have been gathering data for years. Analyzing all those data to understand longterm and big trends, that's where the biological sciences is kind of really exploding, and it's an exciting time to be part of this work. Jolie Sheffer: How does interdisciplinarity function in the work that you're doing, Shannon? Because, you are also kind of really connecting different disciplines. Dr. Shannon Orr: Yeah, and so my work on Asian Carp, which is a book manuscript that I just finished, really draws on the work of biologists and the work of political scientists, but also the work of economists and sociologists, so I'm kind of bridging all of those disciplines to really look at the issue from what we would call a policy analysis perspective. So, I'm not trying to kind of advocate for any particular solution, it's to lay out kind of the complications and the political jurisdictions, the competing interests involved in the issue that really make it so hard to solve. Dr. Shannon Orr: So I'm not sure the book is kind of like, it's not really uplifting, because [inaudible 00:26:03] I think the end of it is, that it's just really hard, but what I hope is that people can see that the richness and the depth that comes by pulling in interdisciplinary approaches and understandings of an issue like an invasive species. I was doing an early interview when I was first starting to think about this project, and doing it as more than just something that I was adding to a class, and I had a biologist say, "Well, why would a political scientist write a book about Asian carp?" And so I said, "Well, it's all about kind of the decision making and the economics and the different interests in the barge industry versus the environmentalist's," and then he said, "Oh yeah. No, I get it. Like that really, really makes sense." Jolie Sheffer: What are some of the lessons that scientists, policymakers and others have learned from past mistakes in water conservation, and how are some of those lessons learned guiding current research and policy? Dr. Tim Davis: What we're learning now, what we've taken away from the success that we had in the late 70s into the 80s, and then the subsequent kind of failure is that one, we know that we can clean up Lake Erie. We know that it's possible to bring Lake Erie back to a spot, maybe not where it was pre-industrial revolution, but at least back to a state that doesn't have these annual algal blooms that are so large and toxic and disruptive to the environment and to the economy. We realize that one, it's going to take long term monitoring, so we are going to have to, once these policies get put in place, once we have these remedial actions that are put in place, we need to continue to monitor to make sure that what we're doing on the land is actually getting translated to results in the lake. Dr. Tim Davis: Even after we hopefully achieve those results, we're going to have to continue to keep our eye on the lake to make sure that things don't sneak back up on us the way that they did. So, we've learned a lot. We learned a lot from our failures. Sometimes we learn more from our failures than we do from our successes. But I would say we have a much better idea now of what we need to do. Sometimes the problem comes in more of the political arena where we're in this for a career. Hopefully we have this solved before the end of my career. That would be ideal. But the politicians, it's a two or four year cycle, so sometimes priorities change. So it's continuing to say, "Hey, we've cleaned this up. We've made progress. There are other issues that are always going to come up and that need attention, but it doesn't mean that we take our eye off of the issue that we used to have just because we're not having it anymore, because that's what we did in the past and it crept back up on us." Jolie Sheffer: What about for you, Shannon? Dr. Shannon Orr: I think I would say three things. I think the first one would be, as Tim said, the importance of monitoring and evaluation, and particularly looking at how government policies come into place. That's not the end of the story. So now we need to look at longer time horizons and we need to see how, as Tim was saying, has the lakes changed, but we also have to be open to the idea of making mistakes. That perhaps we've made mistakes. Dr. Shannon Orr: That would be my second point, would be learning from arrogance. I think the carp is a good example about that, right? So we bring in the carp and then we say, "Oh, well they're not going to escape," and then they, in fact, do. I think a lot of the mistakes have been made because of a failure to think about longterm thinking, so that would be my third reason what we need to learn from our past mistakes. Dr. Shannon Orr: It's very hard for politicians to be able to say, "I stopped Asian carp from coming in 20 years," because they need to be reelected now. One of the things in political science we say is that politicians are motivated primarily by two things, which is claiming credit and avoiding blame, and it's hard to get a lot of credit for doing things like not letting a species invade the Great Lakes. Because it didn't happen, nobody knows what efforts it took to stop it. So I think keeping those in mind about those three things, I think. Jolie Sheffer: Both of you have mentioned, in different ways, the role of students and ordinary people in both creating these problems and also solving them. For each of you, what would you say are some of the things that local citizens can do to help with some of these water issues in the region? Shannon? Dr. Shannon Orr: I would say to be educated and to read about them, because, I mean, this impacts our daily life, right? I always tell my students there's no alternative to water. We need it for cleaning, we need it for drinking, we need it for cooking. So learning about, do you know where your water comes from? Right? Thinking about water treatment systems. Thinking about the issues that are facing the Great Lakes. We live in 2019, it's not hard to do a Google search using good sources, so I encourage people to stay informed, and if you're upset, to call your local representatives. Because they need your vote, they will listen if you call. Now they may not always agree with you, but it's that public record of individuals in the community, interest groups, whatnot, everybody standing up and making their voice heard, and there are ways in which you can do that. You can just pick up the phone and call a representative. You can send them an email. You can attend a public forum. You can vote. Dr. Shannon Orr: I mean, all of those things really make a difference. I think they are things that, yes, we're busy, you've got to get your kids to dance, and make dinner and go to work and do all of that kind of stuff, but a little bit of action can make a big difference. And because water is such at the heart of our lives and particularly here in the Great Lakes Basin, it's about more than just drinking and cooking and cleaning, it's also about livelihoods and economic development and the wellbeing of this region. Jolie Sheffer: What about for you, Tim? What would you recommend for citizens who want to do something? Dr. Tim Davis: There was a study that I saw, at least a slide from a presentation, where they polled Democrats, Republicans, Independents, what their top three priorities were. Number one was always the economy, but regardless of whether they're Democrat, Republican, or Independent, in this region the second was health of the Great Lakes. So as Shannon said, politicians listen. They don't always listen to scientists, sometimes they don't always listen to their constituents, but if you have enough of them, a lot of them know it doesn't matter what side of the coin they're on, they're not going to get elected if the Great Lakes aren't in their platform somewhere and health of the Great Lakes. Dr. Tim Davis: But if you want to get involved, there are many ways to get involved. Whether it's trying to join one of these phytoplankton monitoring networks or any other environmental group, best thing you can do, I'm just going to agree with Shannon on the too, is just educate yourself, because there's nothing worse than someone who's kind of half educated making statements that they think are fully informed. Right? So fully inform yourself, because there are no enemies in this solution. It's not a blue versus red, it's not urban versus rural. We are all in this region. We all live here, we all drink the same water, we all use the same resources. Jolie Sheffer: We have some students who'd like to ask you a few questions. Courtney Keeney: I'm Courtney Keeney, and I am a graduate student in the NPA program. I was just wondering if you could both talk more about the best ways to communicate with each other, especially with contentious issues. This one with Lake Erie, but also other issues in general. Dr. Shannon Orr: It's always hard when you have people on different sides and you're trying to bring together passionate environmentalists and farmers who it's their livelihood and they're just trying to provide for their families, and to bring together really different interests together. I think one of the most important things to do is to create forums in which people feel comfortable sharing their views. Not creating hostile situations where people yell at each other, but trying to find the things that truly are in common. Dr. Shannon Orr: No one wants to drink contaminated water, right? Nobody wants the lakes to have algae problems. I mean, we all agree on that, right? So if we can start from some of those. And at the same time, we all need to eat food, so we need the farmers, we need healthy lakes. So, starting from those bases, instead of saying, "Well, one interest is evil or the other one is." That doesn't get to anywhere, right? I think creating mechanisms to bring together people who are willing to actually discuss and engage in the issues in kind of respectful ways where we really truly listen, and people are willing to be open minded and perhaps change their minds on either side. I know that's hard, and in 2019 it's very easy to be very isolated and to kind of only connect with people who share the same views and perspectives that you do. But to be challenged and to really listen and to see what we all have in common, which are clean water and healthy food. Jolie Sheffer: Do you have any recommendations perhaps, for young scientists and how to their knowledge and their priorities in ways that the nonscientific community can be more responsive to? Dr. Tim Davis: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's one of the biggest gaps that we have currently is that as scientists, we don't communicate our science well, because part of it is how we have been trained, right? We're trained to write scientifically. We're trained to present scientifically. We're working on developing science communication courses so you can take science and drill it down. We don't say dumb it down because people aren't stupid. You need to be able to package it in a way that you can communicate it to people that may not have taken a science course since they graduated high school, because their occupation doesn't require it. Dr. Tim Davis: It's practice. Everyone has friends who aren't in the sciences. Talk to your friends about what you do and if they don't understand you, keep talking to them until you figure out a way to get across your research in a way that they can understand and appreciate. Because we always say if people don't appreciate what we're doing, if they don't understand it, they're not going to care about it, and they're just going to write it off. Dr. Tim Davis: We can't be seen as just being in our ivory towers. For decades scientists, especially in academia, we are sitting in these ivory towers and we just look down and say, "Well, this is what science says, therefore that this is what you have to do," and a lot of it is somewhat in comprehensible. Even some of the science that goes on, I don't fully understand. So, practicing talking to people, getting people to care about our science, because we need them to care about what we're doing and see how it's actually going to be positively impacting the Great Lakes. Because if they understand and care, they're going to be more passionate about finding these solutions. Dr. Tim Davis: I would say also to young scientists, just listen. We are in an age now where it's so easy to voice your opinion on so many different platforms, and sometimes everyone has an opinion and maybe not everyone should have an opinion. We're all guilty to some degree of that, and I think the best thing that we can say is just listen. There's a lot of knowledge out there where you can not just inform, because again, in the way that we teach science, A is you get nothing wrong. Sometimes I feel like we're training these robotic know-it-alls. It's okay to be wrong and it's okay not to know something, and it's okay to listen and continue to learn. If we can do that, that's great. I've learned so much from my friends in the agricultural community that I didn't know before, and it's made me a better scientist and it helps inform the work that I do. Jolie Sheffer: Tim and Shannon, thank you so much for talking with me today. For more information on the water quality of Lake Erie, please visit the Ohio Department of Natural Resource's webpage on conditions. You can visit that at coastal.ohiodnr.gov/howslakeerie. Jolie Sheffer: You can the Big Ideas podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. Our producers for this podcast are Chris Cavera, Marco Mendoza. Research assistance for this podcast was provided by ICS Intern Emma Vallandingham, and editing was provided by Stevie Scheurich. This conversation was recorded by AC Luffel in the Stanton Audio Recording Studio in the Michael and Sara Kuhlin Center at Bowling Green State University.  

A young discovered he wasn’t suited to joining the British Army and killing people - what else could he do? Quite a lot it seems, including being a bloody good surgical prosthetics salesman. His problem was that he had values. Questions nagged at him, ’maybe I’m not in the right job?’ and ’there must be more to life than making money?’. So Tim recast himself as ‘’ and he’s one of the reasons that Aotearoa-New Zealand is one of the fastest growing communities in the world. Tim chose our sponsor’s () 2015 Pinot Noir. Nice!

Teeg & Tim are live this week at “The Space,” a co-working space for creatives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Ryan’s back in Iowa, Michelle’s at her home studio in Colorado. Ryan’s beard is looking especially on point this week, but it’s no match for Tim’s. Tim comes from a long line of beard growers. Everybody called his grandfather “Curly,” for his big barbell moustache – and he got the wax at Sally Beauty Supply, which is a funny image.Tim’s daughters get in on the beard fun with “whiskerinas,” which is where girls craft beards to get in on the fun.They once all won their categories in a beard competition in Wisconsin – a fun family moment.Tim’s trophy said, “Best under 6 inches,” and if there’s one award you’d get for “best under six inches,” better that it be a beard contest.We went down the beard competition rabbit hole – Tim mentioned that most of them raise money for a cause, which is what he likes about them. The “freestyle” competitions make crazy shapes out of the facial hairs, they’re the ones you see in the memes. The ones Teeg & Ryan sport are “business beards.”If we were going to take a page out of the Crazy Flippin’ Mom’s book, we’d buy a few cases of these Mint Chocolate Twinkies, which are our first treat this week. They should have good shelf life, and we know they’re limited edition, so we ought to stock up on them now.Ryan got fudge covered Twinkies. He said it was good, but it tasted less like a Twinkie than just waxy chocolate. The film-inside the mouth, like when you eat a candle feeling.Tim’s take – the chocolate cake overwhelms the mint, it’s not very minty. The picture is a little deceptive. The box shows a ton of crème inside. Really it’s a little squirt of mint crème inside.Tim made us an Etch As Sketch of the Try This At Home Show logo, and it’s super cool. You can see the video on our Facebook.He got a 99 cent Etch A Sketch at a thrift store for his kids six years ago, and that’s when this started. He moved, found it after the move, and then in 2016 found it again. He looked it up online and found a few other people who do art on Etch A Sketch. He found a little community of people who do it and became a part of that community. He started getting commissions, and it went to another level.You can check it out @bearded_border.His first commission was from Snap On Tools through his etsy shop.Tim loves seeing people doing it too, so he brings Etch A Sketches to his shows so that people can try it.It seems like his finished works are one shake away from all going away, but he preserves them by cutting open the Etch A Sketch and taking out all the aluminum powder. Sometimes it takes him longer to do the preservation part than it is to create the image.Teeg & Ryan found these aweome little Oreo Crème Eggs – Michelle struck out on ‘em but found all these crazy Oreo flavors. These are kind of like Cadbury Crème Eggs that you’d think of, but the seam goes the short way around the egg, not the long way. The crème inside is thicker than a Cadbury egg. It’s more like the crème inside of an Oreo, if you ground up the Oreo cookie and put it in the crème, and filled a milk chocolate egg with it. It’s good, and kind of like a Crunch bar. Everybody loved it. But one’s enough. They’re strong. And moderately fancy. Not like fancy candy gift level, but like, stocking stuffer quality for sure.We get into the topic of Tik Tok, and Tim’s got videos that are going crazy on there. It is one of the most downloaded app in the world right now.Next year is the 60th anniversary of Etch a Sketch and there are some fun things coming out with some of the artists. There’s even an annual Etch a Sketch Day.So: ever heard of “Acro-Yoga?” It’s a two-person yoga where you do different movements together. Tim’s advice: just Google it.He takes Yoga into a lockdown juvenile detention facility in a method called “trauma informed yoga.” For a period of time he was one of those kids, and he loves bringing mindfulness and breathing to kids in ways that can really help them.“I like all the things,” Tim said – he’s also a juggler, skateboarder, slacklining – he’s a “multi-potentialite.” His encouragement: there’s so much we can do.RayGun is this cool midwestern brand that makes funny T-shirts about live in the Midwest. They make space available at their Cedar Rapids location to people like Tim.Have you seen The Kindness Diaries? Tim made a “Be Kind” Etch a Sketch inspired by the show, and got connected with the show by making that one.For our final snack, we did the Reese’s Holiday Lights. They didn’t look like lights to us, they’re eggs.Michelle had the Reese’s Christmas Mystery Shapes. Dadbod Snacks checked in to say that “mystery shapes” seem to be all the rage. He said to try the Shake & Break eggs.We all know that Ryan loves Reese’s. With them, it’s all about the ratio. Chocolate to Peanut Butter. These lights (eggs) are good, but Ryan thinks the ratio’s off.Tim’s take: overwhelming on the peanut butter. But still good.Teeg thinks that Reese’s just uses their Easter Egg molds and calls it a Christmas Light this time of year.Unbelievably, Ryan picked Oreo Eggs as his #1 pick this week, beating out the Reese’s.Tim and Teeg are in agreement, Michelle let Reese’s have the top slot.But everything was good this week!So: Tim tried one of Brian Miller’s Durian Milk Candies to finish the show. He described it as when they threw the pink powder on a kid’s throw-up when we were in elementary school. When he ate it, it filled the room with the smell of rotten cantaloupe.

Tim’s done with being a TV critic and is trying to be all positive, but he put in nearly 11 months of work and Jason’s demanding a list! So Tim and Jason both present their lists of their favorite shows of 2019. Plus we answer your letters. Host Tim Goodman and Jason Snell.

Alright, welcome to the Gut Check Project. This is episode number 23. You're here with your host, Kenneth Brown, MD. And I'm Eric Rieger. Let's, uh, let's talk a little about what we got going on Ken.Well, we're, like always we're trying to push some boundaries. And one of the things that I see as a doctor is that I want to make sure that my patients are very healthy, both mind and body. And when ever my patients come up, and they're going through a stressful situation, they manifest it in their guts. And one of the most common things I see that I can't help them, which is why we brought our guests on today is that when people go through financial trouble or when they're stressed out about their money, they can manifest in their guts. They show up with all kinds of stuff so they end up at a gastroenterologist office, and I can't give them any real advice on their finances and how to help them with that. So like we always do with the Gut Check Project. Let's bring him in. Let's check our egos at the door and let's learn a little bit. We got some experts here with us today and that is Mr. Patrick Brewer and Mr. Tim power both from Surepath Wealth.Yeah.Thank you guys for coming up all the way 35 to Dallas from Austin. How y'all doing today?It was a joy. Well, we didn't die. Yeah, that's the first step. We made good time on a rainy Thursday morning.Now, that being said, I know that you said we didn't die. But Tim said, but if you would have your family would have been covered.They would have been covered. Yeah, least 3 million. Maybe more than that.So Surepath Wealth Management. It's far more than just taking care of someone's finances. Correct?Yeah, I mean, the way we think about it, it's similar to being a doctor, right? And you have a holistic approach and you want to solve the person's problem. And sometimes they present with one issue that they think is really important, you know, they may have some issues with their their stomach or I'm not going to pretend to know exactly all the things that people could present with. I'm sure there's some, some strange ones out there, but they present with a particular problem. And they you know, that's what the that's the problem that thye think they need to have solved but in reality it's it's more than that there's other things that are contributing to the initial problem and making it worse. So our role similar to a physician, I think, is to lay all the pieces of the puzzle on the table and then start to assemble them and really get to know what's driving our clients and or people in general, and just figuring out what their motivations are and what they're trying to accomplish. And then, once we have a good sense of that, just putting it all together and hopefully solving the problem.Absolutely. I mean, there's a lot of similarities. I mean, people come to you people come to me with very intimate problems. People come to you guys with similar issues. Yeah, When people somebody shows up to your office, they're saying, I'm going to give you my world, the world that much like the great prophet Kanye West said, money isn't everything but not having it is. And so when you get to the point where they're like, look, I've got this What can I do to grow it? What can I do to not lose it? That is one of the most vulnerable things just slightly less vulnerable than somebody taking their pants down and letting me stick a finger in their butt.I don't know. I mean, I think it's about equal.For some people that can be really stressful, there's some there's a lot of shame around money. There's it's a very intimate discussion, because you don't know the beginning of the conversation, what their experiences have been. Maybe they've made some poor decisions in the past, and they're reluctant to admit those, maybe there's some controversy with them and their spouse, they could view money differently the way they were raised, and the way that they think about money in general about how they could use it in their life or even their preferences for what they're going to do with it and retirement or when they pass away and they want to leave a legacy, do they not? So there's all these embedded psychological and emotional factors that go into how people interact and make decisions about their money. And the first step, similar to being a physician, I think is to peel back the onion a little bit and see what are what are the driving forces here that are actually contributing?I want to get into all that Eric, can you explain actually that it isn't exactly like we just bumped into you guys on the street. Can you give a little history as to why we have these two super smart guys here on the show?Sure. So we are a part of a mastermind group and Tim and Patrick both happen to be a part of it. The reason why we joined that entrepreneur group is we're all aligned from the same orientation that we want to be able to serve our fellow man the best way possible for us through healthcare. It's how do we reduce stress and increase health for y'all? It really is, just as you said, Patrick, it's a holistic approach to managing your own wealth and finances. And the great thing that I've seen and learned from both of you all over the course of the last year is you treat your clients like family, because this isn't an opportunity to shame someone with their previous financial troubles, etc. The thing I found really interesting though, is you and I have talked over the last several episodes and over the last several years about how can you help someone reduce their external stressors, right? Because by having that you lead insomnia, you lead to catecholamine circulation from high stress situations. So we've talked about people that regularly see a doctor usually end up decreasing chance of disease they, they come in to see a gastroenterologist, they're usually not going to have a polyp that turns into a cancer because it'll be detected. So what I found kind of interesting is someone who turns to someone for wealth management actually has less potential to gamble. They actually are better prepared for their financial future, obviously reducing stress so they reduce stress, they reduce their risk of bankruptcy, regardless of their income level. And then obviously, their family conflict is reduced. I don't remember what the crazy stat is, but it's well over 70% of marital strife comes in originates from some element of financial problems or disagreements in the first place, simply by having someone that I didn't have someone tell me when I was younger simply by having someone help you forecast and help you put your money where it would serve you better will ultimately reduce your stress and work out better for you and your family. So that's how we met Surepath.I think we just met on the side of the highway.When no one knows because you muted your mic.I didn't mute my mic. I said, I think we met on the side of a highway. But I guess maybe we met...Well, I mean it. And Eric said I was stupid for standing on the side of a highway with a sign that said, I'm looking for better than 8% yield. And you stopped. Let's talk. Because, and I said also, I'm looking to diversify my risk by hiring 20 advisors. And you're like, yeah, let's have a little talk. Yeah. So one of the things that I was really impressed with is you gave a lecture at the conference we're at , and I wrote down a few notes, which was really very interesting to me because everyone tries to outsmart the market. Everyone tries to do this stuff. We want to invest in America, America.We're Americans.You said several different things which were really interesting, like how percentage of stocks in the stock market that is outside of America. Can you get into some of the stuff you talked about in the lecture?Yeah, for sure. So I mean, with investing, there's so much that you can do. And what I found is that investments that they're kind of like a bar of soap, the more you handle them, the less you're going to have the highest level. A lot of physicians, they, they overcomplicate things. So the biggest thing that I've seen is the desire to have passive income, which I think is great, you should pursue passive income, you work really hard and you should have investments that are working on your behalf when you're asleep, and you're not having to trade your time for dollars or scale up really complicated like multi specialty surgery centers. There's, there's ways to generate passive income that put you in a position later on where you don't have to work as hard. But what I've what I've seen is in our industry, when you start to take things that are really complex, different investment processes that could be really complex and you start to layer them into your portfolio, you start to drive up expenses, you start to drive up something called turnover, which increases your taxes, and you start to drive up your tax and your legal bills, because then people have to figure out what the heck is going on in order to give you advice. So what I've found is that most people, physicians or otherwise would be best served by starting with owning every single company in the entire world. You know, a lot of people just focus on the companies in the United States. And they're like, well, I own a couple stocks or I own, you know, the s&p 500. And when we think about the markets, we always ask like, well, how's the s&p doing? How's the Dow doing? Well, the Dow is only 30 companies, and yes, and s&p only 500. But there's over 12,000 stocks all around the world. And what most people don't realize is that only 44% of the global market cap is in the US. There's actually more stocks available outside of the United States and there's a lot of benefits to holding securities that move differently during different periods of time. So we generally talk to people about international and even emerging markets investments as a way to increase the returns potentially diversify and expose themselves to different areas of the world that might move in different directions in the US.I just want to make sure that we get Tim in the picture here. He keeps leaning back further and further.Relaxing back there. Listening.Great tea. It's Yeah, this is actually really good stuff. Well, let's talk about that real quick. So what do you think about this tea that we've had here?Think I burped three times.Yea it's really good.I quit drinking beer three years ago, and I love the taste of this because it tastes like a beer. Yeah. Yeah, there's not a drop of alcohol in it whatsoever. It's tea with with some hops in there. Thanks to Lovich.Yeah.Introducing this. Boulders finest too. Yea. Straight out of Boulder, Colorado.Yeah. So let me ask you a question. So as somebody who tried So I have my own company Atrantil Atrantil go to lovemytummy.com/spoony still are we doing? We are all right, lovemytummy.com/spoony or go to KBMD for your CBD. So as somebody who is a physician that has tried to raise money for a startup, yeah, I was a little bit shocked. And then when you and I talked a little bit where you said, Yeah, well, physicians tend to do some of the most esoteric investments and not be not actually tend to be patient and do exactly what you're saying, just invest in every company in the entire world. And eventually you will win. Yeah, in the long run. So when I was over there out there trying to raise money and like, this is an opportunity. Yes, it's a startup. But it's in a field, you know, it's a you know, we can sit there and do this and we can grow it. I was absolutely shocked at the conversation that I had most of the time was, I would love to, but I lost 50 grand and an emu farm. I tried to do you know, I lost money in three restaurants and I'm like, What are you doing in the restaurant? By the The time doctors get asked to do investments and stuff like that. I pretty much think the good money is already out. Yeah,yeah. I mean, unless you're like an early mover you have controlling most private investments, the people making the money or the the managers of the private investment i mean if you think about it, right, they've put together a deal. And on average, just take private real estate as an example, you have private real estate investments. There's actually huge public real estate funds and the public real estate funds have way better liquidity. They have the same types of properties. On average, they're better diversified because they have properties across different geographies and different scopes, buying power and they're mark to market so they trade every single day. So you have full liquidity on that. But if you take a private real estate investment, it sounds a lot sexier, like I buy private real estate, and I get 8 to 10% rate of return. But what you don't realize is it's not repriced every single day. It's not liquid, and the people that are managing it are charging you a pretty significant management fee for finding and sourcing these properties and managing them and yes you may get a good rate of return, but why would you expect a different rate of return in a private investment versus a public investment in real estate? It doesn't make any sense to me. So what I found is that our industry, this is not the physicians fault. Our industry has done a good job of manufacturing products that sound really good, that are actually available in a much lower cost more liquid environment, but it's not as sexy. So if you don't really understand exactly how the markets work and how returns are created, and what a fair return is, you can get sucked into these schemes. And these schemes are what keep you locked in your seat having to trade your time for money. So I love entrepreneurialism. I love what you guys are doing here. It's a fantastic product. I take it myself. I think the key is figuring out what lane you want to be in right and how much money is enough like at what point can you say, I can if I produce this amount of income, I can relax and maybe relax to you or any other position or person listening is I want to go out and build more companies. Well, that's great. Well at least now you have a passive income stream that's coming into allow you to do that where you don't feel like you have to put your foot on the gas if you're not really feeling up to it. So I love entrepreneurialism, I think if you're a physician and you're called to continue to build companies and to continue to create jobs and do those things, that's absolutely where you should put your time, your energy and your money, you just want to make sure that you don't get pulled into some type of a scheme that isn't really designed to enrich you. It's designed to enrich someone else.I think, during your lecture, the way you described, that is first achieve stability, then go for growth.Yep. Yeah, you want to you want to figure out a baseline, you want to know, you want to make sure that you're protected. You have a sufficient asset protection in place could be insurance, it could be estate planning, trust, things of those nature. And then it's really like what what's the baseline living expenses for you to be able to be okay, and then after that, you can take, you know, strategic investments and growth and that might be in yourself. It might be in your business, it might be in the markets, it might be in real estate, a lot of it just depends on your preferences as far as how hands on you want to be?Yeah. Let me throw this to Tim. So we, at that same meeting several questions. So the thing I like, let's get back to why I think doctors don't do this, which is the same reason why people come to me. And at times, I'm like, why didn't you come to me sooner? And it's the same thing. It's, I'm, I'm embarrassed. I'm whatever. Like, it's embarrassing to sit down with people. And I'm, I'm technically a highly educated person went to school a long time doesn't mean I'm highly educated. No, it doesn't. I didn't go to i didn't i didn't go to Texas Tech. So I'm already starting lower than everybody else. Yeah, it's not your fault.You were born in Lubbock, but you ran away. I know. So you know, had I had I been gifted to be able to go to Texas Tech. Things would be different. I wouldn't be on the podcast right now.Yeah, you can be the sidekick like me.Tell us toto.So, but it is it is really interesting because what I would I'm embarrassed that I have this, you know, whatever, however many years of education and I I'm gonna say, should I get whole life? What the heck is my wife? Simple things like that, that to you is like no big deal.Well, it is. I mean, it took me years to figure out what was behind the curtain of some of these products that Patrick was talking about earlier. I mean, they there's this incredible sales training to get folks into these products that seem very good for your family, you're protecting your family, you're doing all these great things, but there's all sorts of underlying fees and costs and limitations to access in that money. And so I think a lot of times we we get products pitched at us they sound like they solve a number of problems with one deal so it's great you know, cuz I don't have the time to deal with 15 different things so perfect. This one thing does it all and and then you don't even know really what you're in or why you're in it. 10 years later, you like what happened to this thing? You know, and it's yeah, so it just it's not part of a plan always. It's got to you know, planning has to be part of a plan just like diet does. So yeah. Whether or not you should have whole life term life or universal life. I mean, it really just comes down to what your needs are, how much money do you want to put away, if you've already maxed out all these other areas, maybe you can use some. But it's also a great tool for like estate planning or tax preservation and things like that. Because insurance offers immediate leverage, it kind of buys you time to build up $10 million in assets, you can just buy a policy for $10 million, and you're immediately worth that. Explain that a little bit. Yeah, so insurance offers an incredible benefit. I mean, if if, if you are your life right now, as a physician, you have what I would call a massive human capital. So if we were to look at a pie chart,Look dude, I'm trying to lose some weight. I don't really consider myslef...I'm working on it.I mean, stressed I got several companies.You can can barely fit at the table.You know, I got I got a great solution, but so no, the so your life is part of your investments. And you're a big part of that because you have a human capital, you have a big investment in you and so that's a risk right there. So the rest of your portfolio should be weighted appropriately. Because you don't need to take on a ton of risk because you have a risky profession. And you could have all sorts of liabilities in there. So we look at the whole picture. And if you needed to protect that risk of your human capital, what it's worth call it $10,$20, $30. And you pass away young and you leave your wife and children on the lurch, and they don't have all that future income coming in. You could have solved that problem by buying a life insurance policy and just immediately having a you know, $3 million policy sitting outside or $10 million.The problem is like when you're first coming out of school, and you're really busy, and you're trying to do a million different things, and you get approached by someone who tries to use a product in order as Tim said, to solve your problems and then you get a bad taste in your mouth because you're like, wow, I bought this product that didn't work for me and it's just it's it's not really the physicians fault and it's not really the financial services person's fault. It's the system. The system manufacturers this because you have someone who's really busy a lack of attention, and they believe that everyone else is about is out to help, which is the physician because that's their out to help generally, right. So they project that image on to other industries. And then you have the financial services industry, which is originally created to monetize people's lack of attention, right? So they find people that...Monetize people's lack of attentionThey put a lot of time into these things, like oh, yeah,It's like, I'm busy, you know, give me a product and you're like, okay, yeah, we'll manufacture something for someone who's busy, who doesn't want to do the due diligence and doesn't want to do the hard things, right. The way I think about it is, you know, going to the gym and lifting weights consistently and eating healthy versus getting the steroids shot. To me, products are kind of like the steroids shot. In most cases. It's like, I don't want to do the hard things like have conversations with my wife, I don't want to think about where I'm going to be in 15 or 20 years. I don't really want to think about you know, saving for my kids college just like give me the steroids shot and I'll be on my way and then 10 years later, you didn't step foot in the gym and you're like, man, I'm all kind of chunky and I don't look good. Like, yeah, man, you just took steroids and you didn't go to the gym like, of course, you're going to look bad. But it's it's kind of like, it's an unfortunate situation that that is really transpired between, you know, the medical field and then financial services. But I think we're starting to come full circle. And the reason why is there's a lot of really great financial advisors and wealth managers, and a lot of them are in kind of hiding in secret because there's so many advisors out there that say their financial advisors, but there's a collective group, I would call it about 40,000 around the country that are CFP, use fancy words like fiduciary, you know, and they really take into account everything that's going on in someone's situation. So if you're lucky enough to meet one of those folks, it's usually a little bit later in life after you've kind of had one of those situations where somebody kind of burned you with the product. But at that point, you know, you're able to slow down and create enough space and both of the parties at that point are in a position where they can really help each other.What about for someone who isn't trying to bridge the gap between a high income level such as medical and still knows that they need to seek wealth management or financial management or they happen to be coming right out of school and they haven't even put together anything. How do they find someone to turn to?That's a challenge. Yeah, it's a really great question. There's a couple organizations that I'd recommend people check out. There's one it's called NAPFA. NAPFA.org I believe it's National Association of Financial something. But they're all advisors had been vetted out they're generally fee only they tend to do what is in the best interest of the client. So I'd say that's a really good starting point. But choosing an advisor is kind of like choosing a doctor, right, you know, your bedside manner. That's really important. It's hard to evaluate that through a website, you know, or through credentialing. You know, I feel like trust is a fairly simple equation. You know, I've read it in a book it was a couple years ago, but it's stuck with me. And I think this holds true for any service based profession, but trust is really credibility, plus reliability plus intimacy, divided by self orientation. And if you're a physician and you're only prescribing one, one drug, let's say, you know, you have a very high level of self orientation, because let's say that you get kickbacks for that drug. I know you guys, and this doesn't have it's not common practice and practice at all in your industry. But in our industry, like maybe somebody is maybe somebody only has one or two products, right? So they have a very high level of self orientation, which makes it a lot harder for them to build trust or to sustain trust. So I think it's really taking into account based on your interactions with with that advisor or that doctor, like, are you picking up signs of credibility? Are you picking up signs that these people are going to be reliable? And then also, are they doing a good job of asking you good questions and understanding what drives you and like, you know, how you think and what you want, right and creating that intimate relationship?Well, you bring this up, but it's always like, like everything. It's a two way street. So describe to me, both of you, your ideal client.Yeah, I mean, I think it's... Your ideal partner. Because it's really because at that point, it's no longer a client. We should be partners in this situation.Yeah. And and Tim, you can answer this as well. But I would say from from me and Tim, Tim and I, I think every person is a little bit different in our industry, I really like significance driven people that want to do something be bigger than just provide for themselves. So whether that's their family, where they want to build a business to help others, where they have charitable endeavors, or legacy goals that they want to nurture over time, those type of people light me up because there's more opportunities for advanced planning, there's more opportunities to have discussions about things that are really going to help them and frankly, it's just better for the world, right? There's more humans that we can help if we have bigger vision, so I'm kind of a big vision guy, and then I use financial services as as my vehicle to be able to help folks. So that for me, that's kind of my ideal client, but I know you know, I consult with hundreds of advisors around the country and want to have a similar podcast to this focused on the financial services industry, but every advisors a little bit different, you know, some I talked to and they're like, Hey man, I'm feel really called to serve widows and others are like, you know, I really like people, that are getting close to retirement because I feel like I'm great at retirement income and I can counsel those people, as you know, the markets go up and down. So I think a lot of it just comes down to like, what's your frequency? Like, what what type of people really light you up? And for me, it's kind of that significance driven person.Yeah, I would say very similar in a lot of ways, but it's almost like the law of attraction. If that's such a thing, but where you feel like you're finding other people that are in a similar spot in life, but you can add a lot of value to them just through your knowledge. So I've always kind of looked at the relationship side of things and just going deep with people and kind of hanging in there. And I feel like similar to Pat, like I do this as a mechanism to be able to stay in touch with so many different people and then continue to stay relevant and help them and just win that trust. And it's like the the financial aspects of it and what we make off it, it's, of course, it's there. Of course, you're always thinking like, hey, we have some things we'd like to pay off debt, get a bigger office, all these different things are of course we're human, help the children, you know all those things, but it's very much more about the relationship and seeing those, the trust, build and then helping them and then making a big difference and seeing their accounts doing what they're supposed to do. And there's tax savings in line with what they want to do. And it's just I don't know, it's kind of a anyone that's willing to be open to advice and values that but also sees it as deeper than that. Those are the people I like working with. That's actually how Eric and I started working together. I mean, one of the things one of the bonds that we have is that we're both, well, dude, I mean, we're both really into being dads. And I knew that Eric was really into his children. When I went to his house one time and his son gage was on a unicycle and Mac was juggling. Like these these flame things, they weren't lit yet. And I was like, What are you doing? He's like, in case since he is in the same boat as me, where there's lots of risk and if he dies, the family's dependent on it. He's like, I'm not going to leave my family destitute these kids will learn a circus skill before I get out of here. And that's when I realized we're on the same boat. We're going to take care of our families.We were in the middle of building the spinning knife throwing wheels.That's amazing. It is amazing. Thanks, Tim. Because what we do our side hustle as a family is circus acts. And it is awesome thanks. So anyway.But that just shows it's similar things. So now this is why I thought we could have you guys on you don't have to do that anymore. You can actually get insurance.Yeah,To help with that. And we lost we lost a couple...And now you have to admit to being psychotic.You have to but and we got a cousin that lost a few digits last week. But other than that, it's okay.Well, go ahead.Well, the other really thing, the thing that you talked about in your lecture, the other really thing that's good, that's good English.Solid grammar. SolidThe other thing that really impressed me with your lecture was the fact that you when you with clients a lot of times the spouse is not involved. And you know we already discussed that financial issues can be a real stressor on on spouses and and I was thinking about that this morning I went to an article on investapedia where spouses don't just the six things that are not discussed that you should discuss with your wealth manager mine yours ours Have you actually discuss what is what actual debt didn't even dawn on me that like people hide debt and then get married. And it's like, surprise, there it is. Yeah. personality type saver versus spender power play children. Do you know that it costs $233,610 to raise a child right now to the age of 18? That's a bargain.Yeah, that doesn't sound anywhere close.I was like, I think I spent 233,000 on tennis trips last year. No, I did not. That's been sarcastic.They start making bad decisions and it can get even worse.Oh, my gosh.It doesn't say after 18 what that cost is.Well alright. Alright. You caught me Patrick. I bet on my kid and I lose a lot. So yeah, you're right. Yeah. But it's funny. And then the thing that really hit me on this is the extended family. So at my age, I'm in this sort of sandwich situation where I've got my mother and my father's passed away. My father in law passed away. I've got my mother in law, and I've got my kids and you start looking at this and you're like, Oh, this is you starting to feel a little bit. Yeah, for sure. And this is gets thrown into your guys's laps. And so I was very impressed when you said now you got to sit down and just wow, talking about being vulnerable. Yeah. Saying look, this is everything I have going on right now.Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, Tim, do you want to take that? I mean, I feel like you've done a great job with a lot of that.It's huge. I mean, I think pulling we really don't move forward in a planning relationship unless the wife is on board or the significant other and that matter, so we just make sure of that because even when you got the hard charging entrepreneur type that we're working with, and there's they think in their mind like no, no, my spouse doesn't want anything to do with this and, and guys and girls, I mean, it's sometimes the women driving it, sometimes the guy driving it and their spouse is either taken to hear the kids hanging out, doing other things. They just don't want to be involved. But then you get the spouse talking, and you start finding out all sorts of stuff. They just help their mom who went through hospice, she had Alzheimer's, she was alive 17 years with Alzheimer's, it was this long drawn out, you know, event that they had to take care of. So she's got a whole different set of priorities and fears and thoughts about money. And the other person, the other spouse might not even be thinking that. They're just so focused on on doing what they're supposed to be doing that they lose, you know, they forget to pull them in. And so it's important to make sure everyone's on the same page. And then it's a real holistic plan. And then that way, you're making sure that everything's covered and that they have legacy they have charities they want to give to and you're making sure that the spouse is pulled in on that. So good piece. Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing is making sure that your accounting for both sides of that that sandwich, right? You know, it's easy to not think about the future and just live in the present and not realize what's eventually going to happen. And it's like, we've had a lot of issues where, you know, we've encountered people too late in the cycle, and they're like, Oh, my parents are moving in with me. And we're like, Okay, well, I mean, based on the projections, I don't think there's a whole lot you're going to be able to do if you want to actually provide care for them, it's going to have to be you because they didn't make the decision early enough on in their life to get something and protect themIs that a really common thing that you're seeing? I meanIt's starting to become a little more and more.Yeah cuz people are just living longer at this point. And part of the challenge is long term care is not a product that people want to buy, you know, it's not like, again, it's not a sexy product.You don't think about someone's like pulling you out of bed.I could never lose one of my five you know, core abilities right.We hear guys say it all the time. Oh, my long term care plan is a boat without an anchor or something. And I'm like, what? And you know, it's just a very bad idea of what it is.Well it just sounds dangerous and silly. It does sound dangerous for anyone.That's not to go off on a tangent but that is something that I'm very interested in because when we discuss lifespan versus health span Mortality verse morbidity. Yeah, so when you're sitting there talking about these kind of things so as a as a physician what we're trying to do right now is for myself, I'm like when I think about me working out and stuff I think about my my personal trainer is my 80 year old self saying don't do that. That that that looks stupid. Don't do that.No more no more back squats. You're done. No, yeah,Well, I pretty much tell my trainer to you know, beat it. I'm gonna try it anyways. This guy next to me just did and I'm sure I can do it.Load it up, six plates.So but it is interesting because right now I'm viewing everything as well. I need to be healthy when I don't want to be in a situation. My my whole our whole message is brain gut. You have to I believe that health begins and ends in the gut and I believe that it affects the brain and we have an epidemic of dementia and Alzheimer's happening. So we're having this situation where a lot of people are losing their capabilities. So even if you wanted to have a long boat ride without an anchor, you forgot it. Yeah, yeah, it's no longer in the boat and you don't even probably own the boat. Someone stole it, because you left the keys out, ya know, like, it's, yeah, we're seeing that a lot more frequently, as you guys probably have noticed an uptick in a lot of what's called inflammation related diseases, and those come into your brain. And then before you know, it's an epidemic, and that epidemic is going to work its way into the financial side. And we're starting to see the outcomes of that now. There's the link. That is fascinating. That is exactly because if I can help prevent some of that it can help some of your clients down the road. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we used to do, part of our company was helping people with Medicare and it was crazy like the people that would come in that lived in more, let's call them like rural areas where they didn't have good access to food they didn't have good access to you know, good information around diet, their reaction time and their ability to process information and just how they could retain information, even in their mid 60s blew me away compared to other areas that were a little bit more affluent where, you know, they had access to food and that type of information. I mean, those people were, you know, whip smart, and they were able to, you know, have dialogues and remember what we talked about I was I think it's going to be a really big problem and it is now I think it's gonna get worse.An article just came out today, Bill and Melinda Gates are investing in a company to do micro encapsulation of nutrients they can actually get through in a be absorbed, so they can just sprinkle it as a powder in third world countries to try and help with these sort of micronutrient deficiencies. That when I see when I see stuff like that, when you guys are dealing with people, when you say, you know what would be really cool is to work with clients that can leave a legacy. That's pretty cool.Yeah. Being Bill Gates is probably pretty cool, too.Yeah. It's his... Bill, if you're listening we're open for business.Yeah. Like or subscribe or both.Yeah, yeah, it is a big epidemic that's coming I think... Melinda, I'm gonna give them a thumbs up. Are we cool with this? Yeah,It's tough too with the one last thing on care the care part of the plan most financial plans don't even think about that, you know, they're thinking so much about right now they're thinking about paying off debt and they're not looking at your family's your mom and dad or your mom down the road and how you're...The interesting thing is like, you would think our industry would be proactive in solving their own financial challenges, right? You think if you're a financial advisor, I'm sure you have your estate planning done. I'm sure you have all of your insurances in line, I'm sure you do proper tax planning, you know, got your investment portfolio property allocated for my, you know, work andYou didn't say Elvis collector plates, which is what 70% of my portfolios andWell, I mean, you're a great investor. So, you know, we can discuss that later. But you think that financial advisors would be the probably the first one on the list to get their financial house in order, but it's interesting how many Don't Oh, I've been on the consulting side, prior to starting my own firm and just having conversations with these folks and kind of looking through some of the, you know, the numbers and things in their own practice, it's, it's alarming how many people really don't do their own proactive financial planning, even if they're a financial planner, wealth manager. So I think it's, you know, if you're feeling any apprehension to like coming in and having those discussions, I mean, you're really not the only person. Like, it's pretty common.I just realized that we share a common spot here, which isbuy health insurance, or prepare for the future. A lot of people have to make this choice.Yeah. Now it's a good point.And I didn't even I didn't even think about that, that my parents generation did not really prepare for the future. And it's not their fault. They were post World War or my dad was post Korean War. And I don't know it was just they didn't really plan and soyeah, Yeah, I mean, Social Security's. I mean, a lot of folks are just retiring. And all they have is Social Security and Medicare. And I mean, it's medical expenses are through the roof, I don't need to tell you guys this, so I'm curious to see how we were able to address this problem, I think there needs to be a big change and, you know, outcomes for folks on the health side, because the health really drives your ability to either create or preserve wealth. And the worse off the average American is from a health standpoint, the more they're going to take from the system. And I just see that number keep going up and up and up. So hopefully, you guys can do good work and solve some problems. That's fascinating. I think that doctors and wealth managers need to be teaming up more and figuring out how, and be much more much more transparent about every Absolutely. Because even the way billing and all those things, there's so many things we can do now that are much more better outcomes and better for the client. The one other last thing about our parents generation, it's really tough about it all is that they were also conditioned to be very closed. Not every one of them but man. It's really really hard to talk to like, a dad or a mom sometimes and they don't always tell the children what they what they're doing with the money and you try to help them or different things. It's a, they're not super transparent. I don't know what it is, but it's a little tough.I think each generation has their own challenges. I think, you know, the silent generation is just like very close to the vest, you're not getting any information from that generation, the baby boomers, it's kind of hit or miss, you know, some of them done a great job with planning and others, you know, not so much. I think our generation like the Gen X, Y, I would say Gen X is the type that is reluctant to ask for advice, because they want to seem, you know, like they're an expert. You know?Gen X is?Gen X is, I don't know the exact age cuts, but I would say probably like 37 to 50. So early 50s. You know, and and this is really just kind of a heuristic. And this isn't like actual science or anything but just my observation interacting with folks. And then I would say Gen Y is done a terrible job of just saving in general. You know, like, it's more about living in the moment and travel and those types of...Gen Y is?20...late to mid twenties.So this is, so it's Gen Y millennial... Millennial. Yeah, Gen X is I think, a Gen X. But I think each generation presents with their own set of challenges that need to be worked through. And that's what I've learned over time as, as people walk in, and we have conversations with them, probably similar to you guys, when you meet with patients, you kind of know, generally what to expect and how to open up the dialogue and how to have questions to help them understand kind of the value of, you know, either good eating habits or good, you know, saving habits, depending on kind of the context that you're meeting them.You addressed a little bit Patrick and Tim, what it's like to have someone who now has a parent whose outliving  or outliving the coverage that they thought they were going to live. So we're talking about the health span versus lifespan situation and whether or not as you referenced they're going to move back home. What about the way that things have changed in terms of inflation specific to people as they plan for college now, probably over the last 15 years, and we've seen reports probably over the Last 10 where more and more people at the age of 18 don't tend to move out of the home. So, in other words, how do people retro actively kind of back plan by coming and talking to you on how they can readjust finances, because oftentimes the pride kind of plays into it. They're like, I don't want to look like I didn't plan for this. But the truth is, it's okay to say, I didn't plan for this. Help me get out of this. How do you approach someone like that?So just so I'm clear and clarifying. It's someone who hasn't adequately planned for some of these expenses, and then they're coming in and how do we kind of help them get through?Yeah, the environment changed to where whereas when, whenever I graduated was, whether you're going to go to college or service or just going to go and start your own business at 18. You're leaving, and over the last 15 years, more and more people graduate. They they stay at home. It's very expensive. The rate of inflation both for collegiate education is completely changed. I mean, my most expensive year or semester was 1500 dollars. Yeah. And that's obviously not going to happen anymore.I mean, I think it starts with just an acknowledgement that it's a trade off, right. So you there's only so much money to go around. And you need to rank your priorities. And if you have people living in your home, and that's taking away money that you could be putting towards your retirement. I mean, basically, what you're saying is that right now supporting your kids and making sure that those types of expenses are met outranks the priority of saving for retirement and other goals that you may have in the future. But it starts with an honest conversation about what are your priorities, and it is someone else, whether you love them or not, are they hijacking the vision that you have for your life? And are you okay with that? And I think that's really the first step. It's not really like, did you make good decisions or could you make better decisions, it's more, you know, here's where we're at, and it's not for good or for bad. This is a situation that we're in. Let's figure out what we want. If we can figure out what we want, then we can figure out the best path forward. And I think to add on to that, for people that are starting to have kids or maybe have young kids and you know, at some point they may be sending their kids off to college, should they put money in a savings plan for that, should they not? I think a lot of it just comes down to, you know, just being intentional about what you're you want. And then also, you know, what your, your kids may want too because I think that college will eventually decrease in cost. I think there's going to be, you know, opportunities for people to learn skills, and the workplace is rapidly changing. It's getting more competitive, in general to do business. So I think people are just going to be expected to have more skill sets in college right now the structure of it doesn't really lend itself to that. So I think we're going to see more dynamic learning environment, which should cut costs and be on average better for folks around the country.It's funny when you said to be saving that my I joked about tennis, but I do have a really big tennis family and I remember my son was 8 years old, and they brought in this consultant from England to talk about growth and adolescence. And somebody actually asked of the kids that you coach, how many of them went on to get a full ride scholarship? These are eight year olds. She lost it. She goes, here's a great idea. All the money you're doing spending on traveling all the money you're doing spending on private lessons, everything. Why don't you just put it into a college fund? There you go. And I just went, oh my god. Yeah, that's right their eight and they're asking you about college scholarships. Holy cow. We are. I mean, completely misguided here. So..Especially with the college system today in a lot of ways it's pretty broken. I mean, you definitely don't learn anything about real finance. You don't learn how to balance your budget. You don't learn about the tax code. You know?What if you happen to make it all the way through be a star athlete in football and get paid tons of money if you don't have a financial plan? Someone straight out of Austin, not that long ago, was a national champion quarterback has nothing to show for it and netted over 20 something million dollars?Yeah, I would say most athletes are just the deck is stacked because they have such a short career span, and you get that rapid rise. And they don't get good advice because the people giving them advice are the agents and it's a very kind of... It's an industry loan, you're loaning it for 5,7,10 year contract. Just the way that it's structured.And then it pays it back to the contract owner.It goes back to exactly what Patrick said, you have to be intentional. You have to be intentional with what you want to do. So if you want your kids to go to school, do something intentional and save for it. If you're going to make it all the way up, be intentional with this nice, this nice cash sum that you have it because it's not going to last forever. And there's no guarantee that even if your kids good enough that they're even going to want to play that sport when they get to school.Yeah, totally. You know, being intentional because we're talking we jumped right in and just started talking about all the stuff that we want to be excited about which is health and finances and stuff. But the reality is, how in the world did you guys meet? How did you form Surepath. Let's let's get into the stories now. I mean, clearly you guys, clearly you guys know what you're doing clearly you have the best intention of your of your partners, your clients. Now I want to know how this thing even came about how you built this.I mean, I I'm from Boston, Pat's from Philly area, and I moved down to Texas in 2013 2014. And so I had had a practice up in Boston and my family was that ended up down here in Austin. And so I was going back and forth just to service those clients. And there was an incredible time I was able to stay with some great families, and Finny Kuruvilla and a bunch of people like that who I only bring up because he's disrupting education right now with Sattler College. Their tuitions five grand a year and it's a fully accredited college Finny's a doctor and everything went to Harvard and MIT. But anyway, so I got to meet a lot of amazing people build some incredible community and things. But during that time, when I would come back to Austin for a few weeks, had a lot of downtime. I was going through a lot of family transition and things like that. So I started volunteering at a prison. And every Tuesday morning for about two years, I would go down there. And, and it was like towards about 18 months in. One of the lead guys in the prison ministries wife was a big financial advisor in town, and she wanted to talk about working together. And I'm like, that'd be great kind of having my practice here. And so let's talk. So, another new volunteer overheard us talking in prison, and they were walking into the actual prison to meet the men in there that we would meet with every week. And the new guys like, Hey, I heard you talking in the lobby, like what do you do? And I'm like, I don't really network at prison, but I will tell you, I do a little finance and things And then I walked up in a jumpsuit.That makes total sense why you guys felt comfortable stopping with me while I was holding the sign.If we can get this guy 10%.But anyway, long story short, he said, you ought to meet my partner. We do some Medicare things and he's a great guy. He's a CFA and a CPA and I'm like, Medicare CFA CPA. Interesting. So yeah, I'll meet I'll absolutely meet with him. So the next day I went and got a haircut and met with Pat and we just really hit it off. We were at Whole Foods in Austin it's about a coming up on February's of 2016 is when we did that.Did they give you a release?A temporary release, I had to wear one of those weird anklets. And I have like a guy following me.But yeah, so we met there. And then I think really just Pat was unwinding some other companies. He just moved back to Austin. He was doing some stuff back and forth in California another wealth management firm. And where I was at in life where he was at, like we started sharing some clients and ideas and before you know it, he's like, hey, man, here, the new business cards, website, everything like whoa, man, okay, this is awesome. And I didn't realize that he was as hard charging and together as he was, I mean, I knew he was but it was pretty impressive to see what he had already built out. So I left my other practice and full time we started Surepath. That was July 1 of 2016. And so that's how we met just a lot of good similarities in life. He's a bit nine years younger than me or so but about 20 years smarter than me. So it's a really good partnership.But that didn't prevent y'all from sharing some toilet wines. So that's pretty sweet.True. So that's, that's my side. You might have a couple of little details in there. But I think that's... Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great summary. I would say that, you know, what attracted us together I think, was just the the different skill sets. So Tim is like, great at meeting like if you're, if if you're a physician, and you go and meet someone, and if let's say Tim was a physician, and he would walk into the room, he would, every person would like him, like, in like two seconds, they go, Oh my god, I love my doctor. He's great. So Tim is great at building trust very quickly. On the relational side. I am more strategic and analytical. So I like to focus more on the practice and making sure that we're, you know, structuring everything correctly with like taxes and investments and financial planning and just better controlling the outcomes for folks and doing everything we can to deliver on our promise which is to help them reach the goals. So it's just a great combination where you know, I would, I get drained if I have to be in front of people like 10 hours a day, but Tim will be in front of people for 12 hours a day and then he'll go talk to a fence post for another 6.I'm sorry! I'm aware of that but it's just a...Alright seven seven hours.You want me to pull the splinters out or what? I gotta go talk to this dandelion.You're really going out with that guy? yeah, yeah he's a good dude. Okay, so great story about Tim is when the last time we were all together we're listening to live music. Remember, Tim took off to go to a friend's wedding up in Boston.Which shows which which in itself just shows total loyalty. which is...Total loyalty to your friends because you left that morning to go yeah, what's up Matthew don't know you. But I know this guy loves you. Because he left early in the morning from Salt Lake and then suddenly, he appears late night while we're listening to Christian Mills bands, right? Yep. And then... They're doing a Stones cover I think yea,Yea Tim rolls up with his with his beanie on and then... It was cold that night. It was snowing.Well wait, let's let's go ahead and paint the picture a little bit better. It's on the top of a mountain.Yes. Very top of the mountain. I could barely breathe.Yeah, high altitude sickness potential And much like Ron Burgundy here comes. But it was also kind of set up in a way that the top of the mountain had like different camps so if you want to be down at the campfire if you want to be at the live music, so I was kind of hanging out at the live music for most of the night. And then I just heard it as I was walking by it was loud. I mean, you can hear the on top of the mountain but it was yes. And then I'll stop talking.You know what, I'm gonna disagree with that because basically I saw your Uber barely make it up to the top mountain. Then you jumped out you're like I told you to wait till I got here.You pulled your your harmonica out of your sleeve and... You did jam though. Do you have your harmonica on you?You know I left it in the car.Can you go get it? Yeah. While we're sitting here talking a little bit. Just keep the mic on you're good.Yeah.Even if it's turned on?Don't go pee or anything and pull a Naked Gun move.ooh?I got you muted until you get back.All right, while we're sitting here waiting, let's talk personal stuff like, what's what's going on like the wife married?Yep, married. My wife is Brazilian. So we met about 10 years ago. She is a you know, she she was a crazy story. I wish she was here to tell it. But she, she started as a babysitter. She flew over from Brazil was going to school here. So she's an Au Pair program. And I grew up in Philadelphia, you know, we all look the same and Philly, like, you know, and then I'm out for my 23rd birthday. And I'm like, well, I had a couple drinks. So you know, a little bit stronger than hop tea. I look arond and go, you look a lot different than everybody else. So I walk up to her and you know, 23 years old and I'm like, Hey, how's it going? And she's like, couldn't speak English at that time. So, you know, I'm trying to talk to her and she's like, I can't speak English. And I'm like, that's okay.Did you ask her can you not speak English? Or am I just really drunk?Yeah, I think it was a combination.But no she really couldn't speak at that point. And I was like, Hey, can I get your number? Like, can I get you a drink? And she's like, No, she totally shut me down. I'm like, all right, well, I'm going to go then. So I accidentally, coincidentally rather ran into her three months later, at another place like 45 minutes away, and she recognized me at that point. And she could speak so that's that was the beginning of our relationships. So and she went from that to being like the head of sales for a tech startup in in Austin. So she covers like all of Latin America and is always like kind of in the air and manages a team of sales professionals and blows me out of the water.Next time she goes to Cabo man, that'd be a great trip for you guys but...Every time she posts on LinkedIn, like I do a lot of social media stuff like of a podcast and videos or I may  post something I get like 12 likes, my wife posts one thing 274 likes, like what, how do I how do I capture some of this start. She's a great woman.Awesome. Awesome person. No she's she's fantastic. No kids yet so we're planning on that soon. And I live in Austin, Texas. So I've been there for ever since I moved from Philadelphia really sitting there for about 10 years. How do you guys like Austin? We love it. Yeah, not probably not going to move, honestly. I mean, it's one of the one of the things like we're in an industry and wealth management, wealth management industry where I feel like it's important to be part of the community and like, have a physical presence so that we can actually meet with folks. So I do believe that being in Austin is important for our business, but I also really just like it, you know, it's a great, great city.I saw the other show are you guys actually in Georgetown. Is that where your physical office is?We have a Roundrock location we're actually getting hopefully a new office here. Like this week or next week. We're potentially moving spaces down towards downtown so we have a couple satellite offices and you know, but we're getting the main hub which will be fun.Yea it's a nice place. You'll have to come down. We're hoping to have a nice little setup like this.That's awesome. Hey, what was the song that you played?Oh, it was a was a Rolling Stone song and truth be told I don't play harmonica regularly. I just happened to have it in that bag because when we were in Croatia, the acoustic guy in Croatia was playing a lot of really pretty songs and I was like, man, I wish I brought my harmonica because I know I didn't bring mine too so I said I'll bring mine to the next event. So I had it with me and I didn't know if he was gonna be playing it was Christian Mills and it was the other guy with the longer hair... You weren't there you were in Croatia so that's why I brought it so I just had it on me for that reason. Where did you get the tombstone style hidden gun thing where do like a little spring loaded thing?Did I do that you know when I pulled it out? Yeah. Yeah. You know, well, I was talking to Christian you know, as musician speak you just kind of ,I'm not really a big musician, but I was looking at him I was like, I held up my harmonica and I just pulled it out and then when I went up there...you know if you play that we can't, we won't be able to layer it on YouTube.Oh, that's right. You can't just play other people's I was gonna I was gonna play the same song. And let you kind of rock on with it.It was the Stones? What was what song was it? It was a I forget the name of it...It wasn't give me shelter.No, it was.Are you able to do that?Yeah, inverted yield curve?  That will probably be you. Yeah.Well, I was just gonna say what I want to do is hear a little I want to hear a little harmonica. And one of the neat things that we have here in the studio is we've got a whiteboard and I want to ask, I just want to draw out something that is typically kind of hard for somebody some, I'm just a simple country, butt Dr. from Texas. And so I if I could see it on a whiteboard. And one of the things one of the things you were talking about during your lecture was this inverted yield thing and I was like, I don't know what that is but...I'll give a little intro for the inverted yeild curve.So let me go ahead and set that up.This things kind of a little old so...Some set up music here by Mr. Tim Power. Oh there's no reason to stop we're just now pulling the curtain back. There was nothing wrong with that at all.If the music's playing I can jump in I play a lot better just on my own it's a little harmonica is a little insolated.That harmonica means the whiteboard is coming out.Maybe it was a little higher up than i thought. The air was a little thin and all of us were like...Well with the band like the Christian Mills it was it was just a no brainer so I knew I could get up there and just play anything and it would sound okay.Well I'm gonna throw it to either guy but it's kind of interesting because inverted yield. I was trying to talk to.Pretty weird right?  It is super weird. So we got some markers here. I'm going to bring you a camera. Tim you can narrate while you draw and then Pat, wait I'm sorry, Pat, you can narrate Patrick.So Tim if you want to narrate or who's gonna draw? Yeah whatever.You just move your chair.I get the cordless mic. Sure. The director's chair.The director's chair.And I might move that a little too. First time we're trying to move. There we go.You get that okay? Good enough? Good enough. Alright.We're gonna do a whole little lecture on inverted yield and why this is important to understand that so that as we're looking at investments, You can just draw kind of a vertical horizontal guy. And so you're going to do Time, time over here, interest over there. Yeah. So time.Time is going to be on his x axis, and the interest is going to be on the Y the vertical.So generally, just to kind of set the stage here, because this is actually a fairly complicated topic these guys gave us absolutely no heads up on the inverted yeild card. But usually what you would expect as you go out over time that you would be compensated by increased rates. So for example, let's say a bank was going to lend you money and they were going to lend you for, you know, 15 years, right versus a year. Imagine, actually, let me back up. So imagine you were gonna to lend someone money and and you could lend them an amount of let's call it $100,000 for a year, or you could lend them $100,000 for 15 years. Imagine why would so why would you ever lend them $100,000 for 15 years, if you got a lower rate of interest, then if you could lend for one year, right? So the weird thing about an inverted yield curve is it's exactly that. You can lend in the short term for higher rates than you can lend in the long term. So if you think about it, from an investor's perspective, there's really no reason to take any risk. There's no reason to go out and lend for 10,15,20,30 years out on the x axis, because you're not compensated for doing that risk and return are generally related. So what you would expect is if you're going to lock up your capital, and you're going to land for 5,10,15,20 years, and you're not going to see that back for 5,10,15,20 years, you're going to want a higher interest rate. Well what happens with an inverted yield curve is you actually get a lower interest rate, which is counterintuitive. So it's the market generally signaling that interest rates are expected to fall in the future.So where where does that signal come from? This is where I'm confused.So the way that markets price interest rates are securities, it's kind of there's a number of factors, right? So there's supply and demand. There's people coming to the market and saying, I want to lend and I'm, I'm willing to lend and other people saying I want to borrow, right. So part of that is going to drive the interest rate. So supply and demand. The other thing is market forces, right? So you got things like quantitative easing, and have happened, you've got, you know, just fluctuations in, you know, how how liquid capital is, and how available it is money supply. So there's a lot of factors that could potentially go into the shapes of the yeild curve. But there's really no explanation that is 100% accurate to say how the yield curve is going to shift or change. It's very, very hard to predict changes in the yield curve. So really the only thing that you can do is act based on the information that's available to you. And what this yield curve that Tim has so beautifully drawn up here tells me as an investment manager is, I'm not going to take turns, it's called term risk. There's really no reason for me to go out and take term risk, because I'm not compensated for it. I'm not willing to lend for 10 years for 1%. I'd rather lend for 10 years 1% I'd rather lend for one year and maybe get three to four. Right? There's, there's no reason for me to take that bet. And the interesting thing is, yeild curves, if you look at the data, they can also have some predictive power as far as how financial markets are going to go. This is a this is a, a bad sign, gen

Tim Puffer – Self Storage Investor in Lansing, Michigan and Managing Member of Focus REI, who also has experience in the insurance and risk management industry, talks to Neil Henderson and Brittany Henderson, the hosts of The Road to Family Freedom podcast. Tim discusses how he transitioned from house hacking to investing in self-storage, how he learned and found financing, and what an average day in his life looks like to keep business running smoothly. Read Full Transcript (#) Neil Henderson [0:29] Are you going to make it for the interview question mark? Greetings friends and families. I’m Neil and I’m Brittany, you’re listening to the road to family freedom podcast. Our guest this week has a background in the insurance and risk management industry. He jumped in real estate in 2016 purchasing a duplex as a house hack. After coming face to face with the realities of toilets, trash and tenants, he has since transitioned to self storage. He’s part owner of one facility and as a few more in the works, Tim puffer Welcome to the road to family freedom. Tim Puffer [1:35] Hey guys, thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Neil Henderson [1:39] Silence my phone and take care of that. So Tim, tell us a little bit. How do you recall an aha moment for you when it comes to real estate in general? Tim Puffer [1:52] I think it’s, it goes back to where a lot of real estate investors get started. So read and register Poor Dad. I mean, every time it’s it’s that’s just what it was it one of my best friends lives in northern Michigan and he kind of got into real estate as an accidental landlord with a condo. And he kept trying to get me to read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And I’m like, No, you know, out of college, I don’t need to read anymore. And you Well, that’s that’s the thought process of a lot of people unfortunately. And so eventually said, Okay, you got this real estate income coming in. That sounds great. And so I finally read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And that was the big aha moment like, whoa, whoa, you know, I can’t work a day job for the rest of my life and expect to get to the level of success that I want to get to. And, you know, reading that helped me realize that and help me jump into real estate and get my real estate license. Neil Henderson [3:03] So, you started with a house hack, correct? Yes. Was that first that was the first real piece of real estate you ever bought was that for the first investment property? Tim Puffer [3:14] first investment property first piece of real estate was actually my wife and I bought a used mobile homes to live in. So that was our first foray into owning a piece of real estate. And you know, that wasn’t going to set us up for long term success that we didn’t keep buying it those individually. But yet, the house had go was derived from reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad getting the real estate license and we decided we wanted that passive income coming in. And so we started looking for properties that were listed on the MLS using my real estate license and couldn’t find anything. You everything was either overpriced, they were really in really, really bad shape and or just weren’t in the right neighborhood because with having the forethought of wanting to do a house hack, I needed to feel comfortable with my wife walking our dog at night. And so we need to mesh a few different things to make the property be the right one on top of getting the correct rental rates and not having the numbers look good. And so not finding anything, we decided to do a handwritten thank you card campaign which is kind of different than most things so people do to just you know, like yellow letters or things like that. I like love psychology so like people love to be thanked for something and it doesn’t matter what it’s for. And so doing, doing a nice thank you card and you know, first line is that thank you for taking the time to read our letter, and then going into Hey, we’re looking...

Tim Wise was a dad just trying to find care for his child when he and his wife wanted to work. He found it difficult to find a space for child as well as the money. Any parent knows how expensive childcare can be. So Tim decided to create an app. KidNest is still in its infancy, but if it takes off it could revolutionise the way we care for our children. CEO of KidNest Karen Monaghan explains how the app works, and where they’re at in the development phase.

Conversations with Sam Ames, producer of SoCal's RockCobbler and El Gravelero and Tim Farrar, producer of Canada's Paris to Ancaster. Rockcobbler Website Paris to Ancaster Website Thesis Website  Tech Corner sponsored by Thesis: Today we’re going to talk about one of the most fundamental yet overlooked aspects of getting the perfect bike: fit.  Put simply, a bike that’s fit to your unique body and biomechanics will reduce risk of injury, improve comfort, power, and efficiency, and ultimately make you a faster, happier rider. Here are the components to focus on:   First, frame. Everyone starts with frame size, but unfortunately many get it wrong and few go any further.  Second, crank. Getting the length right will enable a smoother pedal stroke throughout a wider range of cadences. I’m 5’11” and perform best on 170mm cranks. My cofounder Alice is 5’2” and needs 155s to get a similarly dialed fit. Few companies offer cranks this short, so if you’re a smaller rider or have flexibility issues, pay special attention here.   Third, handlebar. You want the width at the tops to be roughly equal to that of your shoulders, and for gravel I recommend some degree of flare for increased control in the drops.   Forth, stem length. This determines where your handlebar can be positioned in space, which in turn affects effective reach, hip angle, mass distribution, handling, and aerodynamics.    Of course, the right parts are just a starting point. To truly become one with your machine, you need to calibrate it to your body. This is why I always recommend working with a professional fitter. Whether you’re dealing with pain or discomfort, or looking for a performance edge, a professional fit as the single best bang-for-buck investment you can make in your cycling.   And with that, back to Craig and this week’s guest. Automated Transcript (forgive the typos): Sam Ames -- Rockcobbler + El Gravelero Sam, welcome to the show. Well, thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm excited to talk to Sam. I always like to start off by learning a little bit more about you and what your background is as a cyclist and then how you came to event promotion. Yeah, happy to share. , I got into road cycling during the summer of 1985, early 85. Uh, actually I picked it back 1984. , I had seen a, uh, bike race on TV, which at the time was Paris Roubaix. Uh, and in those days we were getting to the John Tesh tour to files coverages and those sorts of things. So I just kinda got inspired sitting there watching very rubric and people sort of, you know, riding through the mud and, and you know, gnarly conditions. And so I'd worked all summer pulling a great boxes onto a truck. It's called there being a swamper here in the central valley as I was making a whopping $5 an hour. And I felt rich. So I immediately went to the bike shop and, uh, bought my first motor, a road bike for $235, and, uh, started riding in sneakers and just, uh, loved the sport. So stayed after it and stayed on it. , did a little bit of racing in Europe when I was younger, uh, raised at the cat one level for a while, , and then really gravitated towards, , rotting into dirt more. So cyclocross became a big love for me and I had some good success, , on the cross, serve it as, as an elite for a little while, uh, way back in the day and then pick the sport back up after a hiatus, , with jobs and kids and their parents and life and a little bit of masters and using in and around southern California and other parts of California and really loved cross. So that sort of was the precursor to what everybody knows as gravel now. And, uh, that was something that I kind of felt like I've been doing forever and ever. , so yeah, there's the sports just been, uh, a huge, huge part of my life. And from there we, , we really got into, uh, I had a business partner for a few years, uh, well for many years. We started in 2010 and we started sandbar and promotions. , and I dabbled in a few races here in Kern county, in Bakersfield for awhile, but then we started the promotion company and really wanted to, to share some of the venues that we had. We've pretty good with the course and pretty good area to do some cyclocross races and mountain bike races. So we did that for quite a while. And, , I think some of the emphasis was shifting that the stars are lining up differently and we really, , what having some of the successes Bakersville kind of in a funny location geographically, we're part of southern California, but we're really not and it's just sort of stuck in the middle. So it was difficult for us to get decent attendance. And, uh, so we kind of started slowly putting a few events on the show and, uh, and then we, uh, when we got into the cobbler and all the stuff we're doing now, so there's a, there's the brief history. And when did the cobbler, the first Rockcobbler event come to be? So the rock cobbler was created out of say, or, you know, what was your inspiration or what were you seeing? And it was, it was two falls and it was actually quite specific. We had gone, I had been riding, you know, rode bikes in the dirt and all screwed and glued to a few already bikes, you know, that I eventually broke several of those. And those were kind of the hot cycle cross bike back in that early 90, late eighties. , I was, you know, doing a ton of what I would call gravel or adventure riding. And so I never really thought much of it. I was really maybe one of only a handful of people that was doing that besides traditional mountain biking. And, uh, so we , went one year down to event that we had heard about, which was the Belgian waffle ride and a, of course mark, everybody has Michael Marks now. And I did not know Michael. I knew of him and he had actually come to bigger scope for one of our cross races. So we went to, I think it was either the second or third VWR and wasn't a ton of people compared to what they're doing now. It started at spy headquarters. It was maybe 150 people. And when I heard more about it and kind of knew what the course was and there was going to be dirt sections on a road bike, I was like, oh, this is, this is going to be gray. So we have an awesome cha on. Often times we'd defended Michael and shared some, some fun stories with him and kind of hit it off. So the next year we came back and we kept talking about VWR and talking about all local trails and stuff we wanted to do. And so we just started pitching around names and this was in maybe November and a buddy of mine, we were, I know exactly where we're geographically, he's like, what about rock toddler? We, I'll stop and look at each other and that's the name that's going to stick. So this will be our seventh year. , so we started with uh, the , the cobbler in 2012, I guess 2013. So, , yeah, it's just something that we, we kind of wanted to put our own spin on and , that's how I, that's kind of literally how it was born. So I went back and toasted beers and they were like, nobody's going to come to this. We'll have, you know, 15 people and sharing them. After we got a phone call from Neil Shirley and he said, hey, I heard about your ride. I think I'd really like to come, you know, doing some stuff that road bike action and that, that was really a failure on the hat for us from day one. He, he was a big fan and he hadn't even been here. And I could just tell by talking to him that I thought we really would enjoy the route and what we did. And uh, and he did. And the, you know, the successes, it's sort of grown very organically and, and very naturally since then. And what was your intent with the original route? How far is it, what's the elevation gain and how has it evolved over the last seven years? So the terrain that we have, if you, if you really kind of define, , gravel, I think, , dirty Kansas, some of the Midwest events and things that have been going on, you know, longer than astro or at least an equal amount of time. There's really kind of true traditional, , gravel starts on gravel, finishes on gravel, whether it's got a lot of elevation and it's flat, I think it doesn't necessarily matter. So the cobbler very similar to, to BWR and it's concept is not really a gravel ride or I mean you, we, we kind of say it's sort of a mixed bag of multi surface. , so we, we looked at it and we said, well, we don't really have the, the, you know, the, the true ingredients or the gravel race. So we're going to take the best of what we call our, our backyard special, the or out. We'd have some private property that we were very fortunate to get early on orchards and vineyards and in various components. So we looked at the distances and we sort of settled on anywhere from 80 to a hundred. , and then the elevation would, we'd just kind of evolve, you know, we tried to find, you know, stupid trail that people didn't necessarily want to do that were too steep. And of course that led into our every year legendary, you know, Hika bikes that people can't believe, I'm gonna make them hike, uh, offend. Uh, so we're kinda known for that. So that was sort of the distance and then maybe five to 7,000 feet of climbing in total. So we try to really do a little bit of everything, single track, double track, gravel, road, asphalt, , you know, any, anything that we can find. And then we changed the route every year. There, there were a few staple features, , a couple of canyons and goalies that we always try to use, , certain sections just because of how the route has to go. , generally stay the same. And then from there we just try to find new stuff and then add that into the mix. And, and obviously we're well known for keeping the, the Shenanigan meter high as well. So yeah, that's kind of our m o we, we, we, the little team of guys that I worked with on and we say, you know, we're not changing every year and doing stuff that other people aren't doing. We got to really look at it. So we just, we try to be different and they're very, , they're very Bakersfield where, yeah, that's awesome. I think, you know, it's interesting, there's, there's something to be said for going back to the same course every year as an athlete. But for me it's super exciting. The prospect of going to an event that I know is well put together who spices up the course. So we have different things to think about every year. Yeah, that's, you know, that was really a big element for me. And sometimes I think a lot, you know, male, female, doesn't matter. Friends and cyclists and people that are very, , very passionate, very energetic, very excited that to want to share, you know, we, we'd love, we're get so happy to bring people to Bakersfield or even for local people to kind of have that like, oh gosh, I wonder what they're going to do next. And I wonder if we're going to ride through his house again. Hey, I wonder if we're going to ride through a church. I wonder if we're going to do that trail. I mean, that for us really is the reward gets turned into a tiny little business and, and we're grateful for the support. But that's really the fun element for us is how can we keep tweaking it? And you know, after, after a couple of beers, everybody starts getting excited and they're like, hey, let's, let's hang bags taken off of sticks. And I'm like, no, no, somebody's already done that. Let's, uh, let's put a water slide and nobody's done a water slide. We just, we just have so much fun trying to prove with respect to events that really don't change. And the first one that comes to mind, which is actually my favorite gravel event, is the, uh, texture crusher. So a Burke swindlehurst came to getting concerns with Neil and he's come to a couple of cobblers and, and I really hit it off with him as well. And, you know, he's got a route that's very traditional every year and he sells it out and in like lightning speed. And I've been three times and every time I go, I just love it, you know, so maybe it's enough time as tab. It's got enough features for me that I really love how it all sort of comes together. So, you know, I think people dig the changes and that's sort of our emo. But the big part is, you know, we, we are all cyclists and we caught out. We have a mom culture that's, you know, quality events by writers, for writers. That's part of my San Blind, uh, you know, slogan. And, uh, and that's really true. Put on a great event, keeping me and have fun with it. So as with the diversity of terrain that you put people through, what kind of advice are you giving people? As far as the type of equipment and tires they should be riding? So because it does have elements that can be a little bit more dramatic, we've had a lot of people with great success on a mountain bike and by and large most people are bringing a gravel or cross style bike with 38 up to 42 millimeter tires. I mean we've, we've had a few people attempt and actually succeed with doing the a cop, a lot of road bike. , very difficult with some of the rocky sections and things that we have. So you know, I think like other events that are similar to ours that you, that have the multi-surface elements, you get a pretty wide variety. But if we were to align all the machines that, you know on the morning of rock harbor, we recommend to them, you know, minimum of 34 millimeter definitely, you know, file tread are more aggressive and uh, and that's sort of, you know what, we're after, you know, 34 by 36 I'm daring for, for somebody that needs a maybe a little bit lower, you can go lower. It's always safer. So we're still kind of recommending that sort of gravel bike adventure setup. And usually when we're testing the course and we're trying to find the features, you know, you've got that varying degree of ability. But somebody will do on a mountain bike, I might be crazy enough to try out a road bike, but then there's somebody else who's going to be walking down, you know, a trail or whatnot. So we try to have fun without being too nutso. , but then you have another nature and you can't do anything about her. So sometimes things can get a little treacherous. So now, long story short, gravel, gravel bike was a slightly bigger tire and wheel veering we think is a great setup. It going back to shenanigans, I'm not exactly sure how riders are going to understand how to plan for riding through a house on their gravel bike. Yeah. Yeah. So the short story of that evolution was obviously what I previously discussed. We wanted to try to find, you know, you need crazy stuff. , so the riser, the house thing had come to me many years ago before we even did it the first time and I couldn't figure it out. Number one, whose house we were gonna use. Although we did use my house last year and it, it's sort of [inaudible], it's hard to have to turn people around and go down the street. He came in and whatnot. But we, we made it go. So the first year we did it, two years ago, I have a buddy who actually worked with and he lives not too far away just around the corner and you have a, a dirt field entrance to his backyard. Just luckily enough. And then a good street ran out in the front. So we got the talk and I think we're getting ready to remodel. And his wife is just, she's such a game where she's kind of one of the guys and so we were drinking wine and sitting around and he says, I check you out. Let's do it. And we didn't really expect that response. So we worked pretty hard on how are we going to get across this road. It's recently busy. , and sort of hide the house. We didn't want anybody to see it or they got there and it, it really couldn't have gone better. Like they dropped in off this little trail with a bunch of tall grass that they couldn't see and it was like right into the fence and people were just, you know, his whole family and friends are over there. People were just going nuts. And some of the early, some of the video's still floating around. You can, you can see the look on people's places. I mean, they're riding through a gate, they're going around a cooler and going through a sliding glass door and you know, out the front. I mean, it was just, it was just so ridiculous, , that it was just so good. So we accomplished the first year of riding through a house with a cobbler. And last year, you know, we all sort of look at each other and said, well, nobody's going to envision that. We're going to do this twice. Like we didn't breathe a word about it. People would ask, they can, I don't know what we're going to do that again. And I said, no, there's no way we're going to do a house fly if we can't do it. While, while the meantime, we were secretly plotting of whose house are we going to do and how are we going to do it? So we ended up putting it all together and doing the best we could to make the route sort of script work. And it worked out just fine. And, uh, you know, it really did cost me a trip to the beach and a trip to the beauty salon. For my wife. She was like, I am out of here. She wasn't quite the game or that my buddy Randy's wife is and about writing through it, write it in that chesty and fantastic. We had red carpets, , that a local rental place had used. We'd had a lot of rain and they'd had supplied into a wedding. So he called me because he saw my need or the event was coming up and said, hey, I got all this red carpet that were thrown in the trash because it's ruined. And I said, I will take every bit we can. So we cut up the red carpet and I think it's still the, the, the photo on my Facebook page with a caption that says, you know, why stop now? So we rolled out the red carpet and that went over as a big hit and rolled everybody down my front lawn. So you know where we go from there on, you know, a other thing I do, it's tough to call. We, we won't beach balls at 'em. We've, uh, had dark girl, Langley done some fun stuff and we do have a pretty good list of shenanigans so we'll, we'll certainly come up with something. So 2020. Yeah, I have to say I have seen some of those videos and some of the images from riding through the house and it is just, it's, it's so funny to watch some of the expressions and everybody's having such a good time. I'll definitely put a link to some of those that I can find in the show notes for this event because I do think, you know, these shenanigans as you were saying earlier, such that they go viral and it makes people enthusiastic too. You know, I'm in northern California, maybe a four hour, five hour drive down to Baker's field, but it's like it's on my list of things to do because I want to go see what kind of shenanigans you're going to throw out next. Yeah, no, the fun part is bigger. So at that time of year, you know, we always do bigger self help stuff. I founded my entire life and I have lived here my entire life. People asked if I'm from Bakersfield, I'm like, I wasn't born here. I was actually born overseas and I, my parents were both in the military, but my mom was on Bakersfield. And so yeah, I've lived here my entire life. So instead of [inaudible] things get quite green and usually the, the dirt is he wrote there and we just had amazing weather every year. Last year was the first year we had rains. And in some ways I'm really glad we did because it, it wreaked a little bit of havoc was , some course marking. I learned a couple of valuable lessons. We had a few people go the wrong way, but the funny part is not all, but almost all of those writers turned around and went back. So they had already done this gnarly hike, a bike, and it was money. They ended up going back and finishing, you know, the whole course. And, and that's to kind of talk about shenanigans or people smiling and having fun. The rider base of what cobbler brains or a BWR brains. And, and we, we don't call the cobbler race. I mean it's definitely much more of an organized ride and you know, people can make it as competitive as they want, but having fun is just paramount. And for us, we've, you know, want to call it gravel on surface or adventure rides or whatever. That's really the name of the game. We, we get a large audience of people that, some of them I've known for some time in the cycling community that things very competitive and still are. But there's just a, I think there's really a desire for, for people that want to just go and have a great experience, you know, they want to have good party, they want to have a hard ride, they want to feel challenged. But you know, sending a number on and trying to be everybody. A ritual for use is really not that, not the name of the game for us. So we just, we really, really want to treat him like a customer. I think that leans into everything that's great. A great bow, gravel, that kind of intention. Like there's plenty of opportunity to go fast and push yourself and try to be the first one across the line. But it's also about enjoying the day, making new friends, having a true adventure. , two rock cobbler was in February, so we missed it this year. But you've got a second event that is going through a name change. So can you tell us about how Grapes of Wrath has evolved to El Gravel Arrow he'll grab aware of. So yes, we had, uh, one of our good supporters and riding buddies, , and family friends, uh, his family operated in those at a table grade company and kind of just out in Kern county, but just outside of Baker. So for a long time, like 80 or 85 years. And unfortunately they, they ended up kind of closing up shop and some family wanted to do something else, so it sort of went away. But we had an event called Grapes arap and it was another route that was probably more BWR. Like it didn't ha it doesn't have all the cobbler elements pretty straightforward on, on the gravel road. You know, there's no single track, there's not a lot of, you know, technical dirt descending was very, very straightforward, but it was an amazing route. Uh, so unfortunately when there great business, , folded, we lost the venue, we had a kind of a big dirt field in the vineyards and had these really big reservoirs. We'd go swim in the reservoir. So it's just kind of like a camping weekend of some deer riding and some road riding and a ton of eating and drinking and campers and cause it was awesome and it was slowly starting to gain some traction. This last year, , Ryan steers came. We've had several other writers of note that are known that just like, man, here's a little nother little kid in gym that these guys as they're doing, so it's spaced out enough that it works. So we needed to retool the event with a new venue, which we have fortunate enough to go back to some private property that we use for the cobbler, which is real Bravo ranch here towards the mouth of the canyon that goes up to Lake Isabella. So we'll be positioning the venue and the food and our festivities and things that Real Bravo and we've retooled the route. And in that process we came up with grab Alara, which is actually a trademark name that belongs to another cycling buddy. We just happen to love the name. I said, man, if there was anything that ever worked for, you know, the free spirit of adventure riding, it's these guys that called themselves the gravel Leros. And uh, so my buddy Alex, yeah, let's, you know, let's, , you can use it like near the name and we wrote out on a cocktail Napkin and, and here we are. So it's a shorter route. We've taken some of the climbing out, but we really think it's just another great combination of a little bit of everything. And this year we will have the opportunity to do quite a bit of dirt descending. So there's a very long road. It's actually almost a 34 mile climb. If you go from the bottom and it just runs this entire ridge of some of the southern Sierras and it's called furniturea. So we're going to do the course clockwise instead of counterclockwise so it will still get all the farmland and oil fields and some of the funding preachers there. And then we've got a pretty gnarly three mile section of climbing, , averages 16% in 1500 feet in less than, less than like a mile and a half, two miles I think. So it's pretty, pretty nasty. But then you get this really cool sort of mentally challenging, physically challenging focus, challenging descent on a pretty chopping, uh, sections of ranch area. And then now we'll drop people right back into the end of the ranch where the venue is. So I think it's just going to work wonderfully. We've got a ton of traction already. People are excited and I'm so we're, we're very, very much looking forward to bringing that one into the fold and, and evolving it. That's awesome. Well, I'm excited to see more about that later in the year in October. And I wanted to thank you, Sam, for joining us on the show today and thank you, especially for putting on such great events. , it's really important to the gravel community that we have events that are professionally produced and are stable and kick up these amazing experiences so that people want to keep coming back and keep talking about why having an adventure style bike or a gravel bike is so important and such a great opportunity. So thanks for making the time, Sam. I can't wait to hear about the events later in the year. Well, thank you for having me. And, uh, we, you are welcome to out at our house anytime. So don't, don't be a stranger. Come, come down and play with us and we can experience it all firsthand. Cheers. Tim Farrar -- Paris to Ancaster Tim, welcome to the show. Well, it's great to be here. I'm excited to learn about Paris to Ancaster. I've read a little bit about it. I've seen some pictures and for anybody listening, go online and check out pictures from this event because it seems like you have everything from tarmac to double track to fire roads, to county roads to a single track, a heap of mud. It looks like a hell of a lot of fun. And then to learn that 2020 is going to be the 27th edition of this race. I was pretty staggered and excited to have you on board. So Tim let, let's start off with just learning a little bit about your background as a cyclist and what got you to the point 27 years ago to organize this crazy event. Well, my cycling background goes even deeper than they started cursing cast or I started a bike racing as a road racer when I was 13, 14. And got progressively more involved. A actually hit category one status on the road when I was uh, in my twenties. But more recently, I've just been, uh, a masters, masters Roadie and even more recently just a bike rider rode for a ride. So that's where I, uh, but when I came into organizing, I was a recently, uh, recently I graduated college student with a couple of buddies and that's where Paris and gastro started. So it wasn't commonplace obviously for people that are putting on gravel events that the pure term as we think about it today wasn't even invented at that point. What made you decide to put an off road event that wasn't a mountain bike event at that time? Well, at the time we had a, uh, same two buddies, uh, and the, I in college had a business doing, uh, photo timing and results for bicycle road races, you know, like, uh, stage races and stuff. And that grew out of our first event, which was a criteria in which grew to a road race, which could, was stage race. And we had some pretty, uh, big international years in the early or the mid eighties, late eighties. And, uh, we were looking for an event to basically get our season started. In nearly early spring. We had lots of work between May and October, but we didn't have much in the spring. So we, uh, basically put on a Perry Roo Bay tribute event as a closet mountain bike race. And I believe you shared with me that you had 266 participants that year. What were they writing? What were they into interested in doing? Well, the, the kind of interesting thing I think about race is that the, uh, they were the people, men, women, the one we're on cross bikes right away. And that was partially deliberate because I was pretty well tuned into the local, uh, road racing scene. So anybody that, uh, thought they needed a mountain bike, we sort of told them it was really more of a cyclocross race. And, uh, as it turned out, the guys, the men and women that won the first year were, you know, oh, actually one of them is from, uh, uh, northern California, Mark Halati. Uh, your listeners might know him in the, uh, group from the group ride community in north, in North San Francisco area. That's where he lives now. But he had a career as a division three pro, um, around the time that he won the race. And the first woman, the one was Krissy Retton who, uh, went on to represent Canada at the Olympics. I think it was Sydney, I'm not sure which year off offhand. So the, the thing about our sanctioning body at the time was they had all these mountain bike races starting up in the, uh, early and mid nineties. And there were all kinds of crazy things, you know, like, uh, you know, bike stage races that had a hill climb, a, uh, a descent competition across country and trials stage. So they had no idea how to officiate all of this, uh, all this of, but they did have a category for a, a mountain bike citizen race. And according to the rules of mountain biking at the time, it only had to be like 60% on, uh, unpaved surfaces. So that's what we called it. But we told everybody it was a cyclocross race. And, uh, most of the, you know, a good portion of the distance was on, you know, Polish dirt roads. So it was fast, like a road race and that's how it took off. And has that course changed over the years? Well, quite, uh, quite a bit. Uh, but we do have one guy who's written every edition, so he's probably a better authority on it. Uh, but two of the, two of the largest sections of our race are on rail trails and they have been for the entirety of the event. But one of those rail trails in the first years was, you know, they just taken the rails up. It hadn't been regraded or you know, uh, a chip, uh, filing, you know, the, to pack it down. It was, you know, rough rail bed with the railway ties still in place. So it was more of a hike and bike section in some, uh, some areas. But, uh, other than that, there's been a few, um, a few roads that were gravel that have now been paved. And, uh, we've recruited more and more private landowners to let us daily on their property for, uh, a couple of hours on a Sunday morning in April. Nice. So if I'm an athlete, considering it for 20, 20, walk me through the length of the event, the amount of climbing and what type of terrain I should be looking at. Well, the [inaudible] of the race is basically, it's a two hour winning time from their back. It could be, you know, anything from, uh, well a couple of seconds to a couple of hours covering all the, uh, uh, all the age groups. But we started off in waves and the basic principle is the fastest guys go first. So people have qualified well from previous years, get into the elite wave, invited pros and stuff, get into the elite wave, and then the other wave is fill up, um, as after registration opens. So we think it's pretty egalitarian in that mean two hours. So if you're in the neighborhood of two hours, two and a half hours of your regular ride, the ride is within reach. Uh, as for the, uh, the elevation, there's really not a ton of climbing, but the climbing that there is this kind of rolling hills, uh, you start off on one or Riverside rail trail for 10 kilometers, that's, you know, virtually flat. Then there's some punchy little, a little climbs, but nothing, uh, sustain into the seven or eight minute range. You know, they're, uh, they're short. But at the finish line, you finish at the top of the gravel road that's got, well, it, they seemed like 25% pitches. They may, they may not be too, might as well be a lots of people walk, let's put it that way. The final pitch, and it's, so over the years, how have you seen the equipment evolve from, you know, the winners to the participants? What are people riding? You said, you mentioned the sort of started with a, a cyclocross sort of skew and imagine that's where the bikes were at that time, but over the years, what have you seen show up at the start line? Well, we've seen almost everything show up and, uh, but the, the bulk of the top 100, even since year one has been cyclocross oriented. And I don't differentiate in recent years between cyclocross oriented and gravel oriented cause it's, but, and you know, but right from the very first year the men's and women's women's winters were on cyclocross bikes ever steel with canteens. But you know, the pilots were good. Um, but in the meantime, we've also had, uh, mountain bikers with, you know, 26 year olds size wheels, uh, paired right down to one inch slicks on and, uh, they would be well in the mix. And one a few years, uh, we had a guy who went two years in a row, uh, first on a cyclocross bike with candies. And then next year on the, one of the, uh, newer, uh, 20 niners years. Never seen that before. And then, uh, recently it's been guy gravel bikes and cyclocross bikes. But we also had a year where a guy won on road bike. And, um, of course he later that season he was world junior time trial champion. So you had a little bit of an engine and some good luck. Well, it certainly, it looks like you've created a interesting event. Uh, again, like looking at the pictures online and some of the videos people have shot over the years. It just looks like it. It's a great way to start your season in that part of the country and kind of push your limits across a bunch of different types of terrain. It looks like the event has grown quite substantially. Is there a rider cap next year? Yes there is, but it's a, uh, uh, it by distance cap. So we do have a limit in the 70, uh, nominally 70 kilometer race and nominally 40 kilometer race. But the, we also have a 20 kilometer family ride, which we're nowhere near approaching a limit on. So, uh, yeah, there is a, uh, there is a limit, but the, uh, um, registration opens in November. Typically when we get all our stuff together, um, and, uh, it doesn't sell out right away, that's for sure. Okay. And where can people find out more information about the event and if they wanted to register, where should they go? Well, a, our website does lead you to a, uh, uh, address. It's a pair of thank after.com. Um, a lot of the questions that website will know likely most likely be somewhat out of date. That's why if this is been broadcast in real time, uh, but generally where the last weekend in April and a lot of the FAQ is, or no answered there. But uh, we'd certainly like to talk to anybody about the race it's been, you know, yeah. Well, well yeah, hats off for, for completing 26 additions of the race so far and it continues to go on and on and on. So I'm excited. I appreciate it. On behalf of the community, always appreciate talking to event organizers because it's a lot of hard work. I know you've got a, a big volunteer base team that puts a lot of effort in every year and it's not inconsequential. Keeping the website up and doing all the logistics and making sure everybody's safe and having fun. So Tim, on behalf of the community, thanks for putting on the event. For everybody out there. Definitely do a Google search for some videos and images. There's lots that I found out there. It looks like a hell of a lot of fun if you can find yourself in that part of the country. Um, during the spring season, said, Tim, thanks for joining us. Hey, that was cool.

It’s no secret that Tim Bratz is a real estate workhorse. Starting out as a commercial real estate broker in NYC, Tim first immersed himself in the business, quickly learning the ins and outs of real estate. Over the past decade, he went from flipping homes and wholesaling to transitioning his business primarily into the multi-family realm and has never looked back. Managing a team that has over 2,500 units currently under control, Tim has managed to, in a short period of time master multi-family commercial real estate investing. As a mentor and active investor, Tim’s “Keep it Simple” approach is one that he puts into play with his very own business transactions every time proving that his methodologies work.    On this episode of Multifamily Real Estate Investments with Don and Eden, Tim dives into his unique approach to investing and the lessons he learned along the way perfecting his business strategies. He also discusses what his typical deal size is, how he finds motivated sellers, and what his number one strategy is for conducting business in commercial real estate is, “Keep It Simple.”  Highlights:  Tim’s Beginnings in Real Estate  Average Deal Size for Tim  Why he Choose to Move into Commercial Real Estate  How Tim Finds Motivated Sellers  Current Projects How to Connect with Tim LegacyWealthShow.com LegacyWealthShow Podcast CommercialEmpire.com - For Training ------------------------------------------------------ TRANSCRIPTION   Hey guys. This is your host Eden today. Me and Don are going to interview one of the biggest investors on the show to date. Tim Bratz team has over twenty-five hundred units under control and he's about to purchase four other projects in the next month.    Welcome to the real estate investing podcast with Don and Eden where we cover all aspects of real estate investing with special attention to multi-family apartment buildings and off-market strategies.    Hey Tim, welcome to the show. Don and Eden excited to be here. Thanks for having me guys. Thank you. Thank you. Tell us a little about your day. How's it going so far.    It's going, man. Been in meetings all morning working on opening up an investment fund and launching that in the next 30 days here so we're really really excited. And I got a bunch of deals closing next week actually 648 units amongst four different properties. So we're pretty busy.    Yeah I know you're a busy man and I'm so happy and grateful that you actually got on the show on a Monday morning.    Yeah I know typically because Mondays are always so crazy in the office we all have that. I actually do my team meetings on Tuesdays now just to give everybody a day to catch up over the weekend get updates on all the projects all the properties and that way they can come prepared on Tuesday morning.    So Mondays worked for me bud. Yes, that's great. So Tim for our audience tell us just a little bit about your real estate background how you got into real estate and what are you currently doing. Yeah yeah sure.    So I mean high level I started paying attention to real estate when the market was going gangbusters last time remember 03 to 07. If you had a pulse you could make money in real estate and I was going through college then and realized I wanted to be involved in real estate so I was money motivated guy back then and had like a painting company in the summer where I employed a bunch of my buddies, we'd go around paint houses and then I worked for- interned for one of the largest homebuilders in the entire country. And my brother was living in New York City at the time. I'm from Cleveland Ohio.    And my brother said Hey come on out live with me and get a job out here in New York after you graduate. So moved to New York City became a commercial real estate agent and I brokered a deal that was 400 square feet in Greenwich Village of Manhattan and I signed a lease with a tenant for the landlord front for square feet was ten thousand dollars per month on a 12-year lease term with 4 percent annual escalations. I realized quickly after doing the math that this landlord was going to make almost two million dollars off of doing something at one point in time over the next 12 years. I quickly learned about residual income right passive income and the opportunity and lifestyle that can create. And so I ended up moving down to Charleston South Carolina. Just wanted some better lifestyle whether that kind of thing this is 08-09 now when the market crashed and I'm a punk Twenty-three-year-old kid at the time with no money. The worst real estate market history and deciding that I want to go and start a real estate investment company. And so nobody would lend me money. I remember going to a seminar and somebody is like oh yeah you could just call up your credit card company they'll increase your limit. So that's what I did,    I got my limit increased. I bought a dumpy little duplex in the hood for about fourteen thousand dollars put another five grand into it and then I just went and knocked on doors and pass out flyers held an open house I sold it to one of the neighbors who is going to run it as a rental property for thirty-three thousand dollars so after closing costs made about 13 grand on that deal. And it was like seventy-five total days and I was like oh my goodness I don't even know what I'm doing I'm making money on this. So let me go do it again.    I think we got this natural progression as investors and we get into wholesaling we any money or at least I didn't at the time low risk. You don't need any credit you don't need money so I got heavy into wholesaling single-family, got into flipping houses. People came to me and said 'Hey listen man and you obviously know what a deal looks like. But I have money but I don't have the time I don't have the bandwidth or the knowledge or the expertise. Why don't we split deals?' And so I end up partnering with people that way. And then nice in partnering with people on buying some and holding some single-family rentals and then got into some bigger stuff retail flips and buying some small multi-family and then eventually got into apartments and I remember just kind of reflecting a few years back and looking at where was I spending my time where was I getting the highest return of my on my time highest return on my investment and what met my long term goals the best and I realized that apartments checked every single one of those boxes. And so I decided to double down on apartments I'd burn the ships on everything we had going on and residential we saw all the deals we had in the pipeline- we saw those to the finish line at that time we were flipping probably 80 to 100 houses a year and I'm back in Cleveland at that time right.    I got married to a girl from Cleveland so I moved back to Cleveland about six years ago and I've just been looking at all that stuff. We've got some big management company and just realize we need to dedicate all of our resources to buying apartment buildings. So had a few hundred units a couple of years ago and over the past, about thirty-six little over thirty-six months almost 48 months just been doubling down on apartment buildings. And I'm currently at a little over twenty-five hundred units with that package of well not a package but four other closings this month put me a little over thirty-two hundred units in my current portfolio. Ninety-five percent of that is apartment buildings. The other 5 percent is some vacation rentals and some office buildings. So that's what we're at now. So I just dedicate all my time to apartment buildings. That's our niche. That's what we're really really good at. That's what we know inside and out. My team's comfortable with it. Every time I go outside that box. I get kicked in the crotch either from a financial perspective or wasting of time perspective. And so now we just focus on apartment buildings what we know is what we're good at and it's what's making us a lot of money right now. So everything's going great.    Yeah. So first off that's amazing that you're doing so many deals and you're so active and you've grown so much and I know you’ve only just turned 34 right? That's it last week. Thank you. Well so happy birthday.    So yeah we have been in that position to where we were making a lot of money in residential real estate whether wholesale or flipping homes and I gotta tell you making the move to commercial real estate was difficult because it requires to put the focus there and you have so much going on in residential. And so I want to ask you about making that move. When was that point that you decided to do it and how did you take the risk of shifting your entire business which was successful at the time, especially when you're still young and have your whole life ahead of you?   Yes, so that's a really really good question right. It's one that I actually get quite often for people who are scaling into apartments. I think again all of us go through this natural progression of wholesaling, flipping and we get out of flipping as fast as we get into it because we're like there's no money in that. Right? Then we get into like some turnkey type stuff or buying and holding some single-family rentals and small mall ties and then bigger apartments and commercial real estate. And it's a natural progression that a lot of investors go through. And how do you make it happen sooner than later? So to answer that, I got to tell you- for me, when we were flipping houses there were five of us. So it was me, a CEO, kind of a visionary, going out raising money; that's what I spent my time on. I had a COO, Chief Operating Officer that ran the day to day operations and just met with the team and making sure that all the daily minutia stuff is taken care of, fires are put out,  all those kinds of things. And there were three other guys on my team. One was an Acquisitions Director, two a Project Manager and three was a Dispositions Manager.    So from a tactical standpoint, it was very easy to pivot everybody on my team and move from single-family into apartments. So I took my acquisitions guy and I said ‘Hey man, you're not looking at single-family houses anymore you're only looking at apartment buildings;’ ‘Hey project managers that are renovating houses you're going to renovate apartments;’ ‘Hey, dispositions guy sort of selling houses you're going to manage the management company and you could be an asset manager.’ And so is this very small pivot from a functional operational standpoint it was a very big mindset shift right. You've got several deals a month five six eight deals a month closing and now you're like, ‘What do I do with my overhead right?’ I have all these expenses I have all this payroll I have all these other things that have to pay for. How do I do that? So we didn't just like take deals that were in the pipeline and throw those away we still saw all those through. So we still had a pipeline of another three-four months worth of deals. Right. So at the time that we pivoted, we knew that we could still cover our overhead for the next three or four months. And it's amazing when you make three-four a declaration to the universe how the universe responds. I'll give you an example when I was wholesaling houses I was a total prostitute I would take any kind of deal any kind of wholesale commission that came across my desk if it was five hundred bucks I remember doing one for two hundred dollars and I was like it was such I'm banging my head against a wall and like what the hell am I doing for two hundred dollars. But it didn't matter I would just do that. So it got to a point where I told my team feels like we're not doing any wholesale deals that we can't make a minimum five grand happened. We didn't see any deals that were less than five grand anymore we only saw deals that were eighty-five hundred and eleven thousand dollar wholesale and a fifteen thousand dollar wholesale on a seventy-five hundred wholesale. And those are the kinds of deals when you focus on those opportunities they expand. And the same thing happened when I got into apartments when I said to burn the ships. We're not doing any more single-family. We'll see these ones through that are already in our pipeline and we're only working on apartment buildings moving forward.    Do you know the next deal that came across our plate was? An 11 unit apartment building that had a big renovation that we didn't want to spend the next 12 months renovating this thing with four or five hundred thousand dollar renovation on only eleven units. That's a massive rehab but we said Hey I bet we can wholesale this thing pick up the phone I call up six or seven people. One of them says yeah dude I'll take that. We made a wholesale fee of ninety-five thousand dollars had a double close on it pay some fees. We walked away with eighty-seven thousand dollars wholesale fee from our next deal that came across our desk. So the universe whatever you want to call it responded to us making that decision and it gave us then enough overhead enough cash to cover our overhead for another three months. Right. So it got us to the point where now I got six months in reserves. I'm good to go. And now we start buying apartment buildings renovating apartment buildings have the cash flow coming in and have these things performing and that's what we end up doing.    We flipped a couple of apartment buildings made some big chunks that way. So it's an 18 unit couple months later made about one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars on that. And then we were sort of buying and holding a 74 unit portfolio a 48 unit building a 20 unit building and some of them were stabilized some of were not stabilized and you just kind of you kind of roll with it man when you solve problem by problem. And you understand what the long term vision is and then as long as you can get past each issue that presents itself on a daily basis and move the needle forward. That's just kind of what we did. We know what our long term goal was. We know what our long term benefits of reaching that goal would be. And we just we didn't let the daily issues get in our way. We knew that there would be hurdles we'd let the hurdles keep on coming and we just kept on rocking and rolling. We roll with the punches knowing that eventually one day it would be OK. Right. Eventually one day we'd get to where we want to be.  Yeah.  So if I'm getting you're right you're recommending to the residential real estate investor to if they want to make the move to commercial real estate that they're just better off stopping all the transactions or just finish everything they have in the pipeline? But not taking any new acquisitions in residential if they ever want to make the move because I'm in the same position where I used to be in the same position where me and my partner Eden- where we would buy properties and we would have more deals coming on daily or weekly and then we would get so busy with the deals that we wouldn't really be able to make that move because there's no time with real estate wholesale or flipping homes. It takes it's a full-time job. So if I'm taking your advice and you're saying stop doing this and just start focusing on whatever it is that you want to do?    Here's the thing that I know what I'm capable of right. Like if there's somebody listening to this I don't know what their capabilities are and what their background is like I'm a workhorse like I'm willing to get my hands dirty, I'm not too good to do any any role of responsibility, I'll pick up the phone and do acquisitions, I'll go and meet the contractors and kick the table, I'll go and pick up the phone and try to sell the property or meet with a broker in order refinance or whatever that looks like. And so I can speak from my own experience that that's what worked for me was always easy. Absolutely not. There was a lot of very skinny days a lot more money going out that's come in over the past several years because I don't make an acquisition fee. I don't take an asset management fee. I don't take a fund management fee. I only get paid when my investors get their principal returned. So we buy value add properties apartment buildings that are distressed in some capacity. We go in we fix them all up. We renovate them. We rent them all out. We put better management in place and then we refinance in 12 to 18 months and then we're able to cash out our investors. They get all their money back and then we have all these refinance proceeds and then cash flow in perpetuity from then on and then we help hold onto the asset long term. So that's my business model it's the Byrd method for apartment buildings. I buy an apartment building I'm all into it for 65 percent of the after repair value and then I go and refinance it at a 70 or 75 percent LTV loan.    So if I'm all in for six and a half million bucks and the banks willing to give me a 75 percent loan and on a 10 million dollar valuation I'm able to then put a seven and a half million dollar loan on the property pay off the six and a half million dollars to investors in the acquisition loan and then I have a million dollars a refile proceeds that then I carve up amongst me my partners and the equity investors. So that's my entire business model and it was very difficult early on because I didn't take acquisition fees. I had those again a lot more money going out than money coming in. So what I do it exactly the same way. I don't know probably because it got me to where I am so I can't I don't have any regrets in that regard. But what I've taken an acquisition fee or maybe wholesale a few more properties or flipped a few more apartment buildings maybe just to help soften a little bit of the financial stress and cash flow management of it. But at the same time on our model's awesome our investors love our model our partners love our model and it is it's worth really really well for us. So for somebody else to come in and say ‘hey Tim should I burn the ships? Dude. I don't know what your work ethic is right? I don't know what your unique ability is. I don't know what your team's capabilities are. I was able to go and just focus on raising more money and finding more deals and doing a bunch of marketing stuff because I knew that my day to day operations was handled by my business partner my COO and my team. So it depends on what your resources are. But if you are resourceful enough you will be able to make this work and you can make the transition no problem. I will tell you this, I wish I would have made the transition weight way sooner than I did as far ahead as I am. Can you imagine buying apartment buildings I could buy in for 50 cents on the dollar if I would've gotten involved this heavily a year or two in advance- 50 percent of what they're going for today? So there's no better time to get rolling and then to do it right now today is the best day kind of a thing. Don't put off what your long term goals are. Whatever you're doing does not meet your long term goals. Burn the ships.    I actually think that it motivates you more when you do burn the ships to go out and get your head out of your ass kind of thing and figure this stuff out because now it's a little bit of a wakeup call knowing that if you either have to succeed or you've to die - that's the way the whole ships comes from.    Yes, I see what you're saying and I couldn't agree more. So tell us, Tim, what other types of sellers do you usually buy from and how many units you like to work with?    Yes, so I'd say now my average deal size is around 100 to 150 units per building of the four properties and closing on next week. Have a 40 unit which is right next to some bigger buildings that I have I have 116 units. I have a two hundred fifty two-unit and a two hundred forty unit. I'm buying all those buildings next week. So it ranges and depends on I'll buy stuff under one hundred units. If if there's paired up with one of my buddies usually 100 units are bigger. The reason for that is you can provide on-site property management and onsite meet its personnel it can withstand having that payroll there you'd see a lot of people getting into like 30 unit, 40 unit, 50 unit buildings. That's it's almost like it's a hell zone. It's a goldilocks zone in a bad way because you don't have the scalability of having on-site property managers or personnel or anything like that. At the same time, you don't have the scale of property management companies willing to give you a big discount or know it's just there's a lot of stuff going on in that realm once a little bit tougher.    So we try to say it usually over 80 units is the minimum that we'll go to and hope in four hundred two hundred units. I like two hundred units and bigger is my ideal clientele. But then you get the hedge funds and stuff that come in there and they're buying up everything that stabilizes. So my niche is really the value add stuff. It's stuff that's physically distressed or managerial or distressed and that comes from one of two sellers typically. One is mom and pops own the building great grandpa bought the building a while back or a couple bought the building 20 30 years ago and they've lived off of the cash flow for the past 20 years and so they've sucked every drip every drop of cash flow out of the property and never reinvested anything into it. And when you do that for 20 years guess what happens. Eventually, the roof goes. Eventually, the parking lot goes eventually the windows go. Eventually, the mechanicals goes and they don't have any money set aside in reserves and then reinvest it into the building. So now they're in a tight spot. They're not financeable, they don't have any cash. Their only option is to sell the property. So Mom and Pop owners who have owned the property for 10, 15, 20 years or longer -typically that's one of the people I buying from. And then the other people I buy from are smart wealthy entrepreneurs who are not full-time real estate investors are not full-time apartment investors. How is that possible? Because they make money in their traditional business and they need to park it somewhere and they think real estate is a safe investment. And it is if what you're doing right? So they go and they park it into real estate into an apartment building and then they don't have a joint venture partner. They don't have any equitable partner, boots on the ground who gets paid based on the performance of the property. They don't know how to manage a management company. They don't want to review the profit loss. They don't know what the expectations are and what happens is the management company ends up ripping them off. They don't hire the right management company or they hire one that just rips them off.    Eventually what happens is they're bleeding so much money on this property that they take their eye off the ball and the primary business is still going through the learning curve on the apartment building side and they end up losing one or both of their businesses because of it. I just bought seven-hundred units last year from a couple of stockbrokers out in New York. These guys make millions. Each of them makes millions of dollars every year. Brokerage stocks on Wall Street to buy a few hundred units down at Georgia. They think they're all set. They don't have a partner down there that interview the management company that knows what with the right questions are to ask. And because of that, the management company rip them off they're bleeding all sorts of cash flow from these properties because they're bleeding cash. They don't want to reinvest anything else into these properties because they're not sure if they're getting ripped off or not. So now they don't have enough cash flow to reinvest into the property to turn units. And then it's just a downward spiral that happens from there.    So we come in and we bought 700 units for 10 million bucks. That's fifteen thousand dollars per unit at a peak of a market right in the middle of the summer of 2018. How is that possible. Because we found motivated sellers. Now we had to put a bunch of money in I put another 15 almost 20 grand into every single unit. But now I'm all in for thirty-five thousand a unit. One of the buildings just appraised for sixty-eight thousand dollars per year. Wow. So I'm all in for almost 50 cents. Just over 50 cents on the dollar in that portfolio and it's going to be I'm all in for 25 million bucks let's say it'll appraise for just shy of 50 million dollars. So there are deals out there. I don't sixty-eight care who you are. Whether you think you can or you think you can't you're right.   I know that deal finding is a mindset. And I know that there's a motivated seller in every single market in the United States right now. I just need to find it there aren’t before a broker finds them. And so I try to find direct to seller off-market relationships the same way that you do in wholesaling. And I've just taken a lot of the same strategies and wholesaling residential real estate and I've moved that into acquiring apartment buildings so directly. Oh great. You can. You can do direct mail for apartment buildings to driving for dollars. Great. There are houses with tall grass and boarded up windows. Guess what. There's an apartment building with tall grass and boarded up windows. Dialing for dollars instead of calling for sale by owner residential. I call for rent by owner apartment buildings. So we say hey I'm not interested in renting your place I'm interested in buying the whole thing. Do you have any interest in selling? Just get the conversations out there. Start planting the seeds and eventually they will sprout. I don't know if it's going to be 60 days later, six months later, six years later but eventually, the seeds will sprout. You've got to keep on planting seeds. It's a much longer-term mindset than wholesaling real estate. This is for long term wealth. This is not a get rich quick. So you've got to have a long term vision and a long term mentality and realize you're building wealth for generations to come. Don't expect that you're going to get all these apartment buildings in the first two weeks.    Yes, I totally agree with you. Because you can make good money or even great money in residential. But I guess it's safe to say you truly start to get wealthy when you think bigger and understand that it's a longer play.    So tell us a little bit about your underwriting. A lot of people look at they got these fancy calculators. They're paying hundreds of dollars for it. See if Facebook ads for it. I think it's all B.S. I don't use any fancy calculators. What I do is I do some back of the napkin math on what the stabilized rents can be. So I don't care if it rents for five hundred bucks a month right now. I go and look up what market-rate rent is for a two-bedroom unit and if it's 750 a month then I'm going to take one hundred units or however many units are at the complex times 750 gives me seventy-five thousand dollars a month in gross potential rental income. I know what my expense ratios are. Most of my buildings are 40 to 45 percent expense ratio, so I can five thousand a month. That's nine hundred grand a year. And then multiply it by let's say point six because of a 40 percent expense ratio. And that gives me was five hundred forty thousand dollars of net income of NOI. If I want to buy it a 10 percent cap rate that means the most I've got to be all into that thing four is five point four million dollars. Then I back out my construction budget. It's gonna cost on average ten thousand dollars in unit times one hundred units that's a million bucks so my maximum allowable offer on that is four-point four million bucks. We'll go in somewhere around four million dollars and hopefully close the deal somewhere between four and four-point four million. And then from there, I get all the due diligence from a seller. Rent rolls, Profit Loss Statements, trailing twelves, tax returns, and Utility bills. All that stuff I handed over my commercial mortgage broker who then packages it all up and pulls all the data from co-star and all the different commercial data aggregators and puts together his entire package that the banks are going to underwrite as well. It's not like he's making up any numbers these are actual numbers. They've all come from somewhere. The real financials I let him underwrite the deal. If a bank's going to underwrite it and put up the first mortgage of 80 percent of the purchase price and cost of this thing guess what you do they're gonna do their due diligence. Absolutely. So I let them do their due diligence. Why do I need to go through all the brain damage in under in order to underwrite this thing? I just do back the napkin type math. Make sure it works submit the letter of intent and then I hand everything over to my commercial mortgage broker. He underwrites everything then tells me that it makes a lot of sense to go ahead and do it. And usually, my math is much less than what we can actually pay for it. When he does his math he might say hey we can actually pay five million bucks for this thing is that a four-point four million. And guess what. That's just extra juice and a squeeze for us because we went in the right number. So that's it then that's all I do.    So you think what makes you such a good investor is the fact that first of all, you came from residential and you had some residential techniques as far as I'm doing direct mail and marketing to get to the sellers? And so the other thing that I want to ask you about that is also I mean how do you get to these people? Like what else do you do besides just sending them letters and getting in touch with these millionaires that have a lot of money that they're looking to park somewhere because it's not really easy to get to these people. They're rich people they're busy.    So how do you get in touch with them for private money? I know I'm talking about when you're finding motivated sellers for properties from the properties that you were talking about.    Motivated sellers everywhere. What are the 4Ds? Death, Disease, Divorce, Disaster. Right? You go to Pensacola and like Panama City, Florida and that hurricane that went through last fall decimated Panama City. Guess what? That's a disaster. There's a lot of people motivated sellers in that area going take their insurance proceeds and let the property go. There are some deals there. So that's disaster death. I just bought four hundred units earlier this year and in Georgia from a guy who inherited 400 units from his parents who passed away a few years ago he's been living off the cash flow. He lives in a little bungalow on the beach on the Gulf Coast of Florida. And he just doesn't care. And so does he want to do the work in order to try to get 16 million out of this apartment building or is he willing just like let it goes and for 13 million dollars and he let it go for 13 million dollars and we came in bought it and got a good deal on it and stabilized it and now it's worth north of 25 - 30 million dollars.    So like there are deals out there death disease divorce disaster in every market going. You can do probate leads and apartment buildings the same way you do probate leads in. It's just reaching out to these people just because like I'm a millionaire. Right? So I get mail the same way that everybody else gets mail. I have a cell phone that rings the same way that everybody else's cell phone rings. So if you can get a hold of me, I am selling properties I am buying properties and I'm a passive investor in different properties as well. So if you build any one of those funnels you're building all three of those funnels because in commercial real estate a buyer is a seller is a private money lender. It just depends on timing. I'm right now a net buyer, I'm buying more than I'm selling but I am selling some of my smaller buildings right now. So if you if I'm on your list and you see me that buying properties you can wholesale property to me you can buy a property from me, you can joint venture on a deal with me because I'll passively invest in other people's deals and bring the equity I'll maybe sometimes even co-sign on the loan sponsor their loan and get involved in different capacities that way.    So if you feel any one of those funnels you're looking for private money or you're looking for buyers of multifamily real estate or you'll more sellers of multifamily real estate find a marketing funnel that works for each one of those. And by building one of those funnels it builds all three of those funnels and then you can drip the same marketing content. I had everybody into a simple email drip campaign and I sent him an email once a week said hey I'm looking to buy properties. You got anything you're looking to sell? And I let people send me deals and ninety-nine percent of them are crap but there's a needle in the haystack. Every once in ninety-nine while the other thing that I do is I give content they look at I'm joint venturing with this person and here's how I under underwrote the deal and here's how I structured the deal. They have 30 percent equity but there's in the project. I have a percentage of equity, our investors have a percentage of equity and guess what everybody gets paid. This guy couldn't get involved in this apartment building deal unless I came in and partnered up with him. Now he's able to start building generational legacy wealth for his family. How does that sound? Great. If you want to bring me deals bring it to me. I'll fund your deals. So now I have people who want to partner with me on projects I people want to wholesale deals and the people who want it so I'm just I'm telling people all the time on social media through my email campaigns of what I'm doing of how I'm doing it and I'm not the biggest investor in the country but I'm one of the best known because I'm just consistent with my marketing across the board.    I see well these are amazing techniques and I really think you're doing things differently from all the guest we had on the show. Nobody is doing things the way you're doing.    One of the things I do is I just keep it simple. I think commercial real estate is such an antiquated, old school method, methodology and how everybody does it they all do broker relationships. You don't have a broker relationship and how are you gonna get a deal. And so you've got to be willing to do just kind of off the cuff different kinds of things that other people aren't willing to do. You'll find deals that other people can't find. So one of the things that I do is again all these different strategies on the residential side that I implemented and I do the same thing on commercial real estate. And none of the other old school investors in town are doing that. They're not doing direct mail they're not doing it like that. The only people I'm competing with on direct mail is brokers. Do you think somebody calls back a broker or a callback actual buyer rather callback a buyer?  Of course, so and then I develop relationships with residential wholesalers, residential investors and I let everybody know that I buy apartment buildings so they come across apartment buildings too? They just don't know how to underwrite them or don't know what to do with them can't raise the money. And so then they sent him to me because I'm top of mind all the time and we get a lot of deals that way. But during my deals actually, come from that. I don't spend much money on advertising.    Yeah. So once you purchase the property what kind of value strategies do you usually apply?   Yeah. So a good question. Apartment buildings are 100 percent based on the income approach. That's how they're valued that they're valued based on how much income does this property achieve right? On an annualized basis they don't care what the building on the down the street sold on a per-unit basis because that size could be different. It could be tenant-paid utilities versus landlord paid utilities it's a lot of differences and variations. It will depend on a building down the street is the cap rate that it's sold at. That's the only thing that's based on a comparable per-unit is the cap rates in the area. So if you can increase the income or the net income of your apartment building then you can increase the value and it's very predictable how you can do that how you increase the net operating income you could do two things. One is you can increase the gross income but you can also to decrease the expenses of the property. So we do both of those so we increase the rents. How do you increase the rents? It's by renovating units know by attracting better tenants who are willing to pay more by having nicer cleaner safer more functional more aesthetically pleasing type units. You do that. You could also add amenities dog parks, workout rooms, pools, clubhouses, laundry, covered parking, storage like there are a thousand different things you could do to increase the income and add additional revenue streams to the property. Like when I was in New York everybody to have cell phone towers on top of the buildings they got rent from that- there'd be billboards on the side of buildings they make rent from that. There's a lot of different avenues to generate income on these things. So once you generate all the income that you possibly can. Now you're looking at how do I decrease all the expenses. So you could do all the energy-efficient, plumbing fixtures, light fixtures all that stuff's going to reduce your utility bills. We harden our units and what I mean by that is we don't put carpet in because carpet wears off replaced every few years holds bugs and holds dirt. It's hard to turn when a tenant moves out. You gotta wash it and then not walk on it for a day. Time is there. So what we do is we do luxury vinyl tile in every single one of my units and you can sweep it in mop it and be done with it in 30 minutes. It doesn't wear the same way. Carpet does it doesn't hold bugs, it doesn't hold dirt, people can't put their cigarettes that burn cigarette marks out on it and it just looks nicer it attracts better tenants. So we do things like that to harden the property and minimize ongoing maintenance as well. The reason we do larger apartment buildings is that the whole management thing. So now I can have onsite property managers and onsite maintenance staff to reduce my ongoing maintenance, to reduce my ongoing management, attracting better tenants and more qualified tenants. Screening them better and having nicer units than down the street and still just charging market-rate rent. Not trying to get a premium out of it. We're able to attract the best tenants and they stay longer. Your biggest expense and only rental property are going to be turnover. So if you can minimize your turnover you're going to be able to increase your income increases your returns pretty significantly long term on that apartment building. So you do all those different kinds of things. You increase the income, you decrease the expenses, and the end of the day your NOI is much greater and then the cap rate that it appraises at is a multiple of that and now you're able now you're in the ballgame. It's very predictable what the stabilized value is going to be on our properties. I know what I know it's going to praise for before I ever even buy it. So we know what numbers we just back into the numbers that way.    Yeah. So it sounds like here you're doing things differently. Also in and renovating the property so I'm curious to know about how you raised money because I bet you have some secrets over there as well.    Yeah, that's one of my unique abilities I'd say I'm pretty decent because I've done everything else so it's easy for me to talk from an operational basis, from an investment basis to my investors. And like on these deals that are closing next week we just raise six point eight million dollars over the course the past probably three weeks. It took us to raise almost seven million bucks and it was not as I wouldn't say it wasn't difficult but it wasn't as hard and it wasn't as much work as I thought it would be it was actually a lot simpler and smoother of a process than I thought. It's the most I've ever had a raise in a single deal before I've ever raised 3-4 million bucks in a single deal before but this is the most I had to raise. I've not got a single deal but in closings, all occurring in one day know how it lined up but all four of these properties are all closed on the same day. So how do you raise money? You tell people what you got man, you gotta tell everybody what you do and how you do it. And I think you need to have an offer that cannot be beaten. That's just it's so good that everybody has to listen or at least entertain the idea of investing with you and so what we do is we pay a 10 percent preferred rate of return regardless of the property's performance we're paying a 10 percent fixed pref. So you invest a hundred thousand dollars with us you're making ten thousand dollars a year regardless of the property's performance. And then when we refinance it's a pretty quick turnaround usually 12 to 18 months. Our investors get all their money back and then they keep equity in perpetuity so they get a little bit of equity in the deal forever. So they get a percentage of those refinanced proceeds that come off the table. They get a percentage of the cash flow they get a percentage of the depreciation and they get a percentage of any future sales proceeds. So now it's an infinite return because they made a solid return double-digit return respectable return on their money while it was in play. They get all their money back and now they have an infinite return on their investment because they have five proceeds. Cash flow forever and equity in the deal and they don't have anything invested anymore. And the next question is ‘hey Tim let's go do another deal. Do you have anything else? I don't want my money back. Let's roll it and do another deal.’    Then I roll it into another one and another one and another one in ten years down the road. I'm in seven or eight different deals that I'm partnered up with this person and they have these little almost annuities right here in their bank account on a monthly basis of the cash flow from all seven or eight different properties. They made a phenomenal return while their money was in play. They have all their money back and they have equity in seven or eight different deals that will pay off these big pops of re proceeds and sales proceeds whenever the property sells. And then every month their equity increases that we pay down the mortgage balance on these properties and every year that we bump rents and the property appreciates their equity increases over time. And now they're building real wealth. Right. So not only that making a good return on their investment but they're actually building wealth for them and their families. And it's a win-win all around. Now I don't have to work as hard because they want to do more deals. It breeds a lot of loyalty with my investors and it just makes sense that way. But I tell everybody that I invest in real estate. I tell them how I structure deals you cannot pitch people. There are S.E.C. violations to pitching people that you don't know or posting something on social media like I don't do anything like that. I post about deals that I have going on and post about case studies that I did and from that people inquire and they say ‘Hey man I'm sitting on some coin. Do you have anything that I can roll into?’ Well, let's develop a relationship first. Tell me a little bit more about your background. Tell me a little bit more about what you have going on right now. It's about a little bit about your experience in real estate investing. Tell me what your long term and short term goals are. Once I develop the relationship then I can tell them, oh this deal just came up. It fits and meets your needs. You're a good match for this. You're accredited. You're not accredited. Whatever that looks like. And then you can move to the right project.    That's amazing so yeah you're the first person that ever told me that they're paying 10 percent to prefer return but somehow it makes so much sense to me, to be honest. I mean that's amazing that you do things so differently than anybody else.    And it's a dude. It all boils down to finding good deals one and being an awesome Operator. You gotta be able to oversee the value add project management you've got to be able to oversee. I mean on that 700 unit deal I bought last summer we put 10 million dollars of renovations into this thing. So you think about that in a year and three months. We invested 10 million dollars. What is that  That's six and a half or six under fifty thousand dollars a month. We're doing renovations it takes a hell of an operator to be able to do that right. So what's not all of our deals. Some of them are less but I mean on on our projects they're gonna be able to find really good deals and or do really good project management in order to force the appreciation by putting in that sweat equity and that's why we can pay the returns that we pay because we take on a lot of that responsibility on our side as the operators. Yeah but again I told you at the beginning man I'm cool with it. We're cool getting our hands dirty work, we're cool with doing the work that nobody else is willing to do because then we get the deals that nobody else is willing to- they can find and or they're willing to work on.    Yeah and I bet there are bigger rewards for these kinds of deals.    Massive. I mean I'd rather buy a building that's worth 10 million. Like the hedge funds go in and buy 10 million dollar building for 10 million dollars and hope that it appreciates by 3 percent every year for the next 10 years. I don't come from that world. I'm an investor. I gotta find a wholesale deal right. So I'd rather buy and renovate something that I could be all into for six and a half million dollars. That then it for 10 million and still and still appreciates by 3 percent every single year. So that's more, my business model. And by doing it that way I'm also very safe for any market corrections or any anything that happens in the marketplace. I'm at a low enough basis in my properties. If and when shit hits the fan I have options right. I could sell. I can refinance. I can hold. I can do whatever the heck I want because I bought at a low enough cost basis and I've created appreciation versus speculating for appreciation.    Yeah and that's amazing. I think if I if I'd be investing in multifamily apartments as a passive investor I'd definitely be interested in talking to you. So what are the best ways to connect with you?    I'm active on social media Facebook. I'm really active. I have a podcast my own called LegacyWealthShow.com - I got a lot of free content there and I do a little bit of mentoring not a lot. I'm not a guru. I was approached by some guys who have an education business and they said ‘hey man you keep on doing what you're doing as an active Operator we'll do the education side’ but it's a good way that I'm able to train people on how to go out and find apartment buildings and be great operators and at the same time sometimes they have needs that they can't fill and I can invest in their projects. I can raise money I can sponsor loans for them. They can be boots on the ground they can find the deals do the project management and I can fill any voids that they might have. And there are other people who can come out to my events and I came out of it sitting on money I want to get involved in commercial real estate. I don't have the time or the bandwidth to do it myself but can I marry up with a great operator? There's a lot of passive investors that come out to my events that then we pair up with awesome operators or they invest in one of my projects or whatever and we're able to do deals together. So it's one of those things where one plus one equals three and a rising tide floats all boats. I give all the content that you could ever want to go out do deal on your own and if you want me involved and want to partner up some way knowing that you have somebody with my expertise my experience my team's experience in your corner is a big deal for a lot of my students. So I throw events three-four times a year as well and that's pretty cool it's kind of a way that I can kind of give back and help people build some of that wealth for the family too. So that's called Commercial Empire and if anybody wants information on that they go to commercialempire.com. That's more formal training.    Ok, wonderful. So Tim thank you very much for coming to our show today and I really hope we are going to have a beautiful rest of your day.    I appreciate you guys. Thank you for all the value that you guys give and all that you're doing for the real estate community and obviously if there's anything I can do to help you guys out as you guys transition into commercial real estate let me know.    I'm here for you. All right thank you very much.    Thanks for listening to the real estate investing podcast with Don and Eden. Stay tuned for more episodes. Till next time.   

So Tim, did you know you are growing irrelevant!? • 2 Chronicles ear-tickling • Psalm 26 boldness • Wrong & Strong

Zach sits down with Guide co-founder Mike Yates to discuss the future of learning. Mike shares what he thinks are the top three things that are changing within the world of learning. He also lists a few ways he thinks organizations will need to adjust for future workforces.Connect with Guide! We've got their website and socials: Twitter, IG, FacebookTRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach, and you're listening to Living Corporate. And today we're talking about the workforce of the future, okay? So you've heard some conversations that we've had with Tim Salau a few times about the future of work, and, you know, it's just a really prominent topic because the workforce is changing, and the dynamics and the cultural makeup--not just from an ethnic perspective or sexual orientation, but from a generational perspective--is shifting, so we're really excited to talk about the future of learning with Mike Yates. Mike taught in a traditional school setting for five years before entering his current role, where he designs curriculum, plans projects, and motivates students to break all of the rules. His passion is in change and finding the next set of large innovations to the classroom through the use of adaptive learning technology and artificial intelligence. The world is rapidly changing and innovating, and it is his belief that schools must follow that trend. So with that being said, Mike, welcome to the show, man. How are you doing?Mike: Thank you so much. I'm really good. I'm excited to be here. I'm actually a pretty--I'm a regular listener, so I'm excited to be on this podcast.Zach: Stop playing. You listen to Living Corporate?Mike: Yeah. I'm a listener. I listen to it through Apple Podcasts, and I love the--I love the podcast. I actually saw stuff about Living Corporate via LinkedIn or Twitter. I cannot remember where I saw it first.Zach: Okay.Mike: Yeah, yeah, but I started listening a while ago. So, like, I've recently listened to the one--like, Ramadan at Work.Zach: Whaaat? Stop playing.Mike: Yeah, yeah. Respectability Politics, yeah.Zach: That's awesome. Okay, well, hey. First of all, we're already--we're honored, but definitely certainly flattered and happy about the fact that you enjoy the show. So look, we gave a little bit of an intro for you from the top. For those of us who don't know you, what would you mind telling us about yourself?Mike: Yeah, yeah. So one of the things--like, I just saw this meme on the internet that said, like, "I wish I loved somebody the way that people from Houston love being from Houston," and I'm one of the people that makes that true. I love being from Houston. That's where I'm from. So, you know, NBA Finals time I'm a little hurt, 'cause I thought the Rockets should have played better, but--Zach: Yeah, man. It was tough, right?Mike: Yeah, yeah. But I'm from Houston. I'm from a family of educators. My mom is a teacher. I basically grew up in school. I grew up in the classroom. I am married. I have four amazing children, an amazing wife.Zach: Oh, man. Congratulations to that.Mike: Thank you, yeah, yeah. Our house is nuts.Zach: I'll bet.Mike: Yeah. [laughs] It is. But that's one of my favorite parts about my life, the grind that I have for them. And so my passion is education. I have tried to avoid the career field for as long as I could, because when growing up I thought to myself "Oh, you know, educators don't make any money," but the gravitational pull of education was too strong for me. I became really curious about it after I graduated from college and I got into planning education programs for the United Way in-between Austin and San Antonio. Once I started doing that, I entered the classroom as a teacher and fell in love with the field. I'm also an educator that is convinced that everybody is lying when they tell you that you can't make money in education, things like that. "You can't be happy in education." "You can't have work-life balance in education." I am seeking to create trends within education that show you that all of those things are possible.Zach: Man, that's incredible. And, you know, I really respect--first of all, you know, there's articles--I feel like you see articles every other month about the importance of even having just black male teachers in the classroom, so shout-out to you, shout-out to educators. Shout-out to my wife who's an educator, as well as my--Mike: Your wife?Zach: Yeah, man. My wife is in education. She's been teaching for some years, and then my mother is a principal of an elementary school. She's been in education for 32 years.Mike: Wow, that's great. That's phenomenal.Zach: Yeah, man. And then, you know, my in-laws, they come from a--there's a deep family of educators there as well. So yeah, man, shout-out to educators. Shout-out to those who, like, reach back and are really trying to shape the future of the world. Like, it's so undervalued and just underappreciated. So yeah, definitely a shout-out to you, and a shout-out to your family, man. That's awesome. So look, let's talk about this. Let's talk a little bit about the future of learning. So in your profile, right, like, when people look you up, you know, you talk about the world changing and, by relation, learning methods along with it. So what would you say are the top three things changing within the world of learning?Mike: So that's a great question, and I think that the #1 thing is--the way I would describe it is the urgency. There is going to be a shift in the way that people attend school, and that's what I mean when I say urgency. Like, how you get information and how quickly it comes to you. So right now, especially through K-12 education and even into college, education is sit and get, right? It's like, you trust that this person has the content knowledge to teach you, and so you sit and listen to lectures and take notes, and hopefully you retain enough to prove that you should get a job later in the future. The future of learning is different. The future of learning is gonna be on-demand. Learning is going to come to the person. The execution that you can see today would be, like, a Western Governors University where all of their courses are online. You can take them at your own pace. You have one mentor that you interact with your entire time, whether you're in undergrad or grad school, and you can get your college degree that way. The second thing that I think is changing in the world of learning is quite honestly students. One of the saddest things to think about in education is the idea that, like, education is the last frontier in the United States of America that remains without innovation. You walk into any public school, you will see desks in rows, you will see--you might even see chalkboards that have been there since the '60s, '70s, '40s in some cases, right? It is a model that is antiquated and has not responded to the change in people, the change in interest, the change in, like, you cannot educate students the way that you used to, right? And then the last thing that I think is changing in the world of education is technology, technology in and outside of the field. You know, artificial intelligence, machine learning, like, we have figured out how to make machines and devices do more for us today than ever before. When we were in school--I don't know if you remember this, but my teacher used to always tell me, "Mike, you have to show your work when you're doing math, because you won't always have a calculator with you."Zach: Yes. [laughs] Wow, wait a minute. Pause right there. Yo, that was a lie. Like [inaudible]--Mike: Right?Zach: The teacher definitely said you're not always gonna have--they'd be like, "What are you gonna do if you don't have a calculator with you?" Like, there's nowhere--you always have a calculator with you now. You have a phone.Mike: Always, yeah. I have a calculator, a media company, a personal assistant. I have [inaudible].Zach: Everything, yes.Mike: Everything, right? And that's what's so beautiful about the future of learning, right? Because up until now teachers tried to prepare students for the existing work world, but now you have a movement of educators and a movement of schools that are trying to prepare students for jobs that don't exist yet, right? And the calculator--you know, the iPhone is the perfect example. Like, no teacher in 1995 would ever believe you if you would have told them there's gonna be a flat glass device that you're gonna touch, and you can call, it can talk to you, it can be a calculator, right? They would never believe that. So I am fortunate to have been raised by an educator, you know, being my mom, who would tell me, like, "We don't know what the world's gonna look like when you go to work, so you have to be in your head. You have to imagine. You have to always look forward." And my mother very much so made me a futurist, so all I do is think about "What's the world gonna be like 10, 15 years in the future?" And that's why I think technology is so exciting, and it's--you know, if I'm talking about, you know, the last major change, you know, adaptive learning technology is going to do more for students than the best teacher ever could, and I--you know, adaptive learning tech is--if you don't know, it's technology that--like, let's say I'm in a math application. If I'm in 6th grade, it will give me a set of questions that are at a 6th grade difficulty. If I do well on those questions and prove to the app that I know 6th grade content, it will automatically move me up to 7th grade math. If I don't know a 6th grade concept, it will move me down to 5th grade until I master that concept, it'd move me back up to 6th grade and let me keep mastering and moving up. That is so much more efficient than even your best math teacher that it will change--in the future, that will change the role of the adult in the room. All of a sudden, you no longer have to disseminate information, but you have to create projects to help students use that information. You have to create real world connections and learning experience. And honestly, it helps teachers get to the part of their job that they love and away from the part of their job that they hate, which is lesson planning and lectures.Zach: Yeah. Man, that's incredible. That's incredible, and it's just so interesting because--so my father also--he also taught math for a little while as well, and, you know, he was on Living Corporate last season, and he talked a lot about the various jobs that he had, and one of the jobs he had was actually--he was a teacher's assistant, and he also taught high school math, and he was talking--he's a bit of a futurist himself. He was talking about, like--this was back in, like, '90. Like, '89, '90, and he's talking to these kids, and he's like, "Y'all, one day you're gonna have machines that are gonna be doing--a lot of these manual processes that we're doing, one day machines are gonna be taking over. They're gonna do these things." And, like, at the time all of his students were like, "What are you talking about?" "No, that's, like, way, way later in the future." And he's like, "I'm telling y'all." And, like, he was just talking about it, but he was just kind of, like, waxing poetic. He wasn't, like, really trying to, like--you know, he was just talking, but he wholeheartedly meant it. You know, it's rare though to have folks who can see, right? So yeah, that's definitely a blessing to have, folks in your life who can talk to you about those things. You know, so what would you say your top three predictions are for how organizations will need to adapt to future workforces in light of--you know, in light of what you're sharing about the future of learning, what ways do you think that organizations, like, you know, professional organizations in any industry--in oil and gas, in technology, in healthcare--how do you feel like these organizations are gonna have to adjust for future workforces?Mike: Yeah. So I think that they're gonna have to be comfortable with remote workers. That's my first big prediction is, like, they're gonna have be comfortable with remote workers, because today's internet allows you to do so much more than ever before. You know, like, now you have IT companies that no longer have to be in the building with you and can take over your desktop or your laptop and y'all are not even on the same Wi-Fi network. Like, that's how advanced we are. So if that's possible, then, you know, oil and gas companies or software companies or even, like, the National Basketball Association, who could be playing a game in Toronto and reviewing replay footage in live-time in Secaucus, New Jersey, right? So I think that they're gonna have to be comfortable with remote. The next big prediction that I have, and this is a really, really big one, is that in the future of work, the college degree will lose value. And I don't mean it will be completely worthless, but I do think because we came up in this generation where everybody sort of forced us to go to college, and I do think that there's somewhat of an oversaturation of bachelor's degrees in the marketplace right now, but what I think is because of things like lambda school and because of things like University for the People, Western Governors, there will be a pressure on any university that is outside of the top 20. If you're not in the Ivy League or if you're not a top 20 school that produces the best doctors and lawyers, you know, all of those positions that require advanced college degrees, then you are going to struggle to get students to sign up for your school after the next economic collapse. Like, things have been going financially, economically in this country pretty well for the last nine years, and my big prediction is in the next five to ten years there will be--economic collapse is the wrong turn, but there will be an economic recession, and when that recession hits--like, my alma mater, Texas State University, I don't know if students will enroll there and take on debt when they could go to a lambda school for free, or they could go to University of the People and get a bachelor's degree for $2,000. Like, you know? So I think that the college degree requirements are gonna have to change, and my last big prediction about what the future needs to adapt to is--it's the scary one. It's not [inaudible]--Zach: [laughs] I hear you hesitating. Go ahead.Mike: Yeah, [laughs] it's robots. Like, it's--there is a robot that can open doors. Like, there are companies, like [Boston?] Dynamics, that are designing robots that can deliver packages, right? And so I think we're gonna have to get used to--and this may be, you know, 20 to 30 years down the line, but there may be a robot that walks up to you and greets you and drops a package off at your door, right? And I think that, you know, direct-to-consumer business is gonna change. I think, like, Amazon--we'll see Amazon finally have to compete with, like, Old Navy and other brands, because everybody's gonna be able to use drone delivery and robot delivery to drop packages off at your door within the hour. So I think that, you know, that big artificial intelligence in that sense, like robots, drones, those are gonna be really, really important in the future of work, and companies are gonna have to start bending and altering the way that they operate.Zach: So, you know, first of all, everything you're talking about--like, Mike--and I'm not trying to poo-poo you--I don't really hear anything crazy in your predictions. Like, I think they're all very realistic. Like, so first of all--especially when you start talking about schools, because we're already seeing that today, right? Like, we're already seeing it, like, in MBA programs. If it's not a top 20, top--lowkey top, like, five, ten to five, you're not gonna get--you know, 'cause some folks think that, you know, you get an MBA--and we talked about this, we talked about this--this was early in season 1. There's a misconception that if you go and you get a graduate degree, then that automatically lines you up for paper, and it's like, "Eh, not necessarily," and it's because--it's because of the economic demand. It's also because of perception, but, like, there's no reason to--there's no reason to not assume that the trend that we're seeing within grad schools, we won't just start seeing that in, like, universities, and we do see that in universities already, right? Like, we already know that there some undergraduate degrees that are worth more than others, right? Like, we know that already, but, like, it hasn't been, like, super stark yet, but it will be one day.Mike: Yeah, it will be. Absolutely.Zach: Man, that's incredible. So, you know, I think this really, like, leads well into your current role as the chief operating officer of Guide. So, like, what can you talk to us about when it comes to Guide? Like, what can you share?Mike: Man, Guide--Guide is amazing. So Guide came together because a couple of people online were all having the same conversation about education. I was--you know, about two months ago, I sort of--you know, this is my first year outside of the traditional school system. I work for--my day job is at a school called Alpha, which is a school that uses adaptive learning technology in place of direct instruction, so we don't have any lecture. There's no classrooms. Our school looks like an open co-working space. It looks a WeWork for kids, right? And once I got out of the traditional school system, I had this opportunity to pick my head up and sort of look around, and I saw, like, there was all this stuff that I was missing. I saw that I was misusing LinkedIn and that I didn't know how powerful it could be. I didn't really know how to build community. So two months ago I started doing that. I went hardcore on LinkedIn. I went all in on, you know, Twitter and community building, and Tim Salau and I sort of started crossing paths because we were both posting about the future of learning, the future of work, sort of interacting with each other on LinkedIn, until one day Tim reached out and was like, "Hey, man, we've got to talk about this thing I'm working on." So Tim, myself, and our third co-founder Taban got on a call and talked about what has now turned into Guide, and Guide is a social learning app that is tailored towards high school students specifically to teach them life skills. We're going to create a new media called Snapshots, which are 30-second courses where a creator, any content creator, can come to our platform and break down transferable life skills into 30-second segments so that students can digest them and so they can remember the steps, go back and rewatch, and start to learn skills that are gonna benefit them in the future of work. So LinkedIn Learning is sort of, like, the adult version of this, but, you know, to get a certificate in LinkedIn Learning you may have to spend 12-15 hours doing that. Students [inaudible]--yeah, students don't have the capacity to think that way.Zach: No, nah-uh. We don't have the capacity to think that way. [laughs]Mike: Right, yeah, so imagine being able to build a course where a student could spend 15 minutes and get the same amount of material, the same amount of value? And now you have high school students, community college students, early college students, that are starting to build up this connection between skill building and the future of work, because--so I think the official number is, like, 65% of all, like, elementary school kids are going to fill jobs that currently don't exist. With that being the future, you have to build up this sort of tool-belt of skills that you can use in multiple ways. Ones like public speaking, ones like community building, ones like adaptability, ones like creativity, that are not as easily taught in skills. So that's what we're doing with Guide, and my role specifically with Guide is obviously managing the personnel that we have. We're sort of--we're in startup mode, so we sort of do it all, but I specifically create teacher content. I manage all of the curriculum on the app. I do strategic partnerships. And so our founders team works really, really close together. You know, Tim is doing most of the UX and user experience design. Taban is our CTO, and he's actually code--like, hard-coding the app and everything like that, so we have a phenomenal team that's ready to do some phenomenal work. So I'm super excited about Guide, and I'm glad you asked me about it.Zach: Man, that's awesome. No, no, no. I'm glad that you guys are working on it, and I'm really excited for what it's gonna be. Where can people learn more about Guide today?Mike: So you can learn more about Guide at guideapp.co. That's our website right now. We have sort of, like, a "Coming Soon" page. Our website is currently under construction. Our communications lead and our content team is working really, really hard to get the website up in the next couple of weeks. You can also follow myself on LinkedIn. You can follow me on LinkedIn or Twitter. My Twitter handle is @justmikeyates, like j-u-s-t Mike Yates. You can also follow and connect with Tim. We are constantly posting about Guide. We're posting resources in the--for all the educators out there, in the coming weeks we will be posting some teacher toolkits and some quick-start guides so that you can use Guide and our Snapshots in your classroom, and we'll sort of, like, break down what a school day would look like with Guide to where you don't have to abandon all of your curriculums trying to teach life skills. You can do it within the course of your math class or your history class or your English class.Zach: Oh, I love this, man. It's so disruptive, but, like, for all the right reasons. It's not like guys from California trying to disrupt, like, your local bodega. This is, like, something that we need. This is awesome. Well, look, man, you know I could keep on going, but let's go ahead and wrap up, man. I want to give you a second though. Do you have any words, any shout-outs for us?Mike: Yeah. So one of the things that--sort of my goal in terms of online communication, the goal that I had set for myself for online communication has been to tell educators out there this very simple message, and that's that you need to be building a personal brand. You need to be on LinkedIn, active, and interacting with other business professionals and other fields as well as professionals in education, because #1 there's a larger conversation being had about disruptive education technology, about the future of learning and the way that that's gonna look. I want you to be a part of that. I want you to be a part of shaping what school looks like in this country forever. The other thing is that school districts all across the country quite frankly are running out of money and teachers are getting laid off. It doesn't pay enough for you to put all of the time and the passion and the heart that you do into your classroom on a day-to-day, so you should have a plan B, and that plan B can be your personal brand, because everybody's looking for expertise that comes from the classroom, it seems like at this point. So I want teachers to know that. And in terms of shout-outs, I want to shout-out my wife, Alex. She holds it down like no other. My wife a stay-at-home mom and we have four kids, so she is--she's working a lot harder than I am. So shout-outs to her and my kids and the whole Guide team. Shout-out to Tim, Taban, Monale, Jonathan. We are doing some phenomenal work.Zach: Man, that's awesome, man. Well, look, that's gonna do it for us, y'all. Thank you for joining us on the Living Corporate podcast. Make sure to follow us on Instagram @LivingCorporate, Twitter @LivingCorp_Pod, and subscribe to our newsletter through living-corporate.com. If you have a question you'd like for us to answer and read on the show, make sure you email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. This has been Zach, and you've been listening to Mike Yates, learning futurist and COO of Guide. Peace.

Speculation has hit the Disney Parks hard in recent months and with the anniversary just around the corner it's no doubt that Disney will do whatever it can to inject something new into its repertoire. Most recently, sites have reported the possible closing of Country Bear Jamboree to make room for a Toy Story themed show. Well, here at 3 Sheets, we think if you're gonna change something, make it for the better. So Tim, Mikey and Scott take on imagineering something bold and new to occupy the space of Country Bear Hall. Catch all the grizzly details on this unbearably delightful episode of 3 Sheets to the Mouse. Please rate, review and subscribe!! Twitter @3sheetspodcast insta @3sheetspodcast facebook @3sheets teepublic shirts Magical Meltdown Opening Credits by Jonathan Young Mr. Young’s Awesome Music

As the caretaker of GreenplanetFM.com and its ‘container’ Ourplanet.org how did Tim come to obtain two powerful US web names - especially now that Sir David Attenborough is the main focus for Ourplanet.com ? Of the 7.7 billion humans who inhabit ‘our planet spaceship earth’ - more and more are rapidly recognising that ‘we are Crew’ - who have been ‘absent without leave’ - AWOL. Now the message and command of the moment is for all crew to return to their posts and consciously cooperate and collaborate to stabilise both the ship and its complement - and save the mission!  But more so, they are finding out that their ship is a Mothership - a ‘super living organism’ that science is belatedly holding back in recognising. Tim says that back in 1996, when living in Australia and the www was still in its infancy, he met a web savvy youth who helped him immensely in building a site and to register Ourplanet.org  At that time ourplanet.com - was registered to the United Nations. So Ourplanet.org was the only option. He was happy with this as our planet is an organism - in actual fact, a super organism - whom the Greeks called Gaia, which was the basis of how Tim saw our planet. To him it was not a ‘com’ or anything to do with commerce - it was an organic unfoldment.   How it all started: Liz coaxes and finds out about his upbring in a remote farming community in the rural sector of NZ, surrounded by many impoverished Maori - and his realisation that there is a lot of inequality in the world. First Breath on Earth. She starts with some history of Tim and his place of conception Te Poi (the Ball) and his emergence in Matamata (point, summit, bluff) now known as Middle Earth where Hobbiton is situated where scenes from the movie Lord of the Rings took place - So Tim admits to being a hobbit. Rural Upbring Liz draws Tim out on his early life, that there were many Maori living as neighbours and the extremely poor living conditions that they lived in. Living in two room shacks, no power for lights, hot water, stove, plumbed toilets etc and he recognised early how fortunate that he was being a dairy farmer’s son. (Albeit a cowboy). One of the more profound experiences in 1972 and 73 was driving 16,000 kilometres through Africa and hitch hiking and catching trains throughout East and Western Europe and then from London travelling overland back to NZ, hitching, bussing, plus trains (boat to Perth Australia and Sydney NZ by air). That having witnessed so much suffering in his journey at the age of 22 and 23 that he thought that it was too difficult to bring about change - so ‘let’s have a good time instead.’ However, not far at all from where he was acting out ‘being a party animal’ - he met some Auckland people who made him think ... What was it that nothing living was permanent?  Why are our bodies continually breaking down? Who built the Egyptian Great Pyramid? Why are we here and why now? What are UFO’s and ET’s. Who was Apollonius of Tyana - and how did he de-materialise his body in front of Emperor Domitian in Rome. These were some of the subject matter that came up that he had not given much, if any thought to or knew anything about. This situation - this turning point - where he hit ‘critical mass’ and experienced and realised a spiritual awakening that over a profound few weeks - changed him forever. This was a major epiphany that in a matter of days -  turned his world not only upside down - but inside out as well. This was when he realised that ‘we are spiritual beings having an earth experience.’ This metaphysical overhaul was so transformational that daily he was recognising that we humans had all been conditioned by hundreds if not thousands of old outmoded stereotypes - especially the financial power controllers, politics  - the war machine - but more so we were destroying the ecology and biosphere at the same time. That the destruction of nature had to stop - hence Tim had to make a stand. That since this time in the Christmas of 1974 - he has continued this quest to both further his questioning whilst at the same time saying - if I, a fairly simple human can experience a major epiphany for want of a more defined word, then everyone else can. We just have to find the will, search for truth and be courageous and honest. However at the same time, with no job or income - his name came up for an interview with Air NZ - and he was accepted as ‘a trolley dolly on a big tin budgie’ - As a steward, later called a Cabin Attendant - flying on DC 8’s DC10 and 747s and 767’s. Budgie - a native bird of Australia and an Aussie and Kiwi slang term for wide bodied planes - especially 747s. Also, in those days it was not commonly known that aircraft were burning off huge amounts of C02, and there were nowhere the number of aircraft in the sky at that time either.    Perceptions of Flying in Low Earth Orbit This shift to long distance air travel opened him up to the whole planet, to what he called ‘open university’ where he eventually flew Trans Pacific, Trans Continental North America and Trans Atlantic into Europe - plus Trans Australia and up into the Near East. Tim describes his perspective of flying as always ‘flying around the curve’  - he saw our planet from the outside looking in - Like the Timothy Leary, Moody Blues song - “He’s outside ... looking in.” That (we, living in) NZ could be perceived as being situated - tucked around the underside of our planet and that when a flight takes off from NZ - the plane after gaining height of 10,000 metres would hour after hour ‘claw’ its way ‘up the planet wall’ over the Tropic of Capricorn then after numerous hours pass over the equator and eventually the Tropic of Cancer and down into Los Angeles, 11 and half hours later. That during this long haul flight, our planet would be also rotating on its axis towards our eventual landing.      This planetary overview allowed Tim when he was able to, to study all the ancient civilisations that had come and gone, and what caused their eventual demise  - usually corruption of the psych or self caused environmental, for example cutting down of all the forest.. He also studied the various world religions as well, to see that at their start they offered so much for the human spirit. Visiting Global Centres of Holistic Learning Tim also visited many ashrams, intentional communities, centers of learning, going to festivals like the Mind Body and Spirit Expositions, Whole Life Expos - as well as visiting gurus, teachers on consciousness and metaphysical scientists and experts in their field. Also checking out new technologies, like the solar farms in California and the large windmill farms there as well. This led him on to follow up on hydrogen power and free energy devices among many other things as well.      Liz asks; What can we do to become Empowered Tim talks to the metaphor that we are all seeds and we are have been underground and in darkness that when a certain timing occurs - that with an impulse - moisture, warmth etc - that seed can sprout and put down a tap root and push up a stem - that breaks out into the light of the sun and ... not being surrounded by blackness any more. This is a huge transition for a seed - to be in the light. Then with photovoltaic leaves growing until the plant grows many - that eventually a bud, and then a blossom - to flower - petals open up - a fragrance of perfume may unveil itself - where does this essence go? (this process includes pollination). Can the perfume of a flower be seen as a metaphysical analogy for something beyond the physical? Is the essence of a flower a hidden message for us all? If we were deciduous as a tree for example, this could happen year after year after year … and in another way … an egg,  a caterpillar - chrysalis - butterfly and a metamorphosis. The cycles of life … That we are also an energy field in a greater universal energy field. “That every baby born into this realm is an energy bundle of exponential potential.”   So what can we do? Liz asks; Doing good in the world. * Lifting up people’s vibes * Pay it Forward - very easy to do - * Random Acts of Kindness * Being a Volunteer - As Volunteerism is the glue that is keeping our planetary society together. Lia and Tim volunteer for GreenplanetFM.com Tim plants voluntarily plants trees to sequester C02 out of the atmosphere. Ask yourself daily during a quiet  time. How much love is in your heart at the moment? Remember that all of humanity shares the same breath The holy breath … connects us all. Our Inner Candle That we all have an inner candle inside of us - that Tim shares this thought with children all the time and that we have to keep our inner candle burning - and strongly - that there is one thing that flames like - and that’s oxygen and by breathing deeply - as in Tai chi and Yoga - or meditation - we can feed our inner candle with the rich breath of oxygen, albeit 21% of our breath. We are a Global Family That we are all a global family that are slowly awakening into being - that we need to innovatively and consciously find ways to connect with our society and community. Grass Roots Change Connect as cells and with other cells and then clusters of cells to initiate localised ‘grass roots' change - together we can be the change that is so necessary We are a global family awakening to our connection through the sharing of the invisible breath. All 7.7 billion of us. References: This below is the 1996 web site. The graphics have gone a bit awry and the population figures are old - but the idea is still very relevant today. https://www.ourplanet.org/original-site/index.html https://www.ourplanet.org/original-site/spaceshp.htmlPart One https://www.ourplanet.org/original-site/wakeup.htmlPart Two https://www.ourplanet.org/original-site/gaia.htmlGaia Gaia sees us as flowering jewels of our planet and that as the petals open up towards the sun - we can realise that we can also grow into the light of our own true selves - and in essence realise our spirituality - as extensions of God. Our Planet Lends us bodies Lends us free air As well as free rain water And until recently - a free food chain What do we do in reciprocity? Hence Ourplanet.org and GreenplanetFM.com A work in progress. How should Crew respond when meeting other Extraterrestrial Civilisations? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvDAHmQ1_tw 3 minutes. Star Trek - Errand of Mercy Ps - I spoke directly with Spock - Leonard Nimoy when in Moscow in 1986 on a Peace Mission, about this particular episode and he said he remembered it well. (Tim) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j_aGdMinIM    5 minutes    Star Trek - The Transfiguration. Local Earth Situations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdneZ4fIIHE&t=4s    7 minutes    This is about our - Heart    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAObE1r_RFM        9 minutes    The Way-shower manifestos     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OibqdwHyZxk        3.5 minutes  Some of the Challengers. Thrive movie    Our Planet Spaceship Earth 1964 "We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent upon its vulnerable reserves of air and soil, all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave to the ancient enemies of man, half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all." Adlai Stevenson, John Kennedy’s US Ambassador to the United Nations, 2019 A message to Crew of Our Planet - Spaceship Earth Calling all crew … All crew to 'Action Stations' the ship needs you like never before … For eons she’s bequeathed us with her holy breath - Same with her sparkling waters - baptising our being to a higher frequency … And nourishing us with her tantalising foods. All within her overarching sun and moonlit vista’s, with eye quenching panoramas of her majestic biosphere and pulsating life. But, pirates have infiltrated the ships systems and leveraged into critical areas of control. These marauders have their hands on virtually all levers of power. Crew quarters have become expensive to live in - air, food and water quality are questioned. Inter deck fighting, wars and violence are throughout the ship, whilst drugs and alcohol are rife   Now propaganda has become the norm. Fragmentation, dysfunction and separation are causing alarm bells in more and more areas of our ship. At many levels, we are forced to give away more and more freedoms, whilst unknown agents snoop on every message and call. YET, there is a stirring throughout most decks, living quarters and compartments. A holistic notion - or knowing - that our spaceship is actually a mothership, that she is a colossal, living, pulsating - super organism from her - all life has issued. That we are here on board to be part of a greater galactic symphony - in a movement premised on team spirit, cooperation, creativity and fulfilment - of the potentialities of an unheralded, but exalted future - where a new human emerges … as a supra human the message being transmitted … that we at heart … are embryo gods and our time is now. We … are being compelled ... to wake up. If you wish to donate and assist GreenplanetFM share the message to all crew please click on this link. https://www.ourplanet.org/donate  Thank you . Naku Noa - Tim and Team - Lisa Er, Liz Gunn, Stephen Grant-Jones.  

Weltall and Tim, once again, can never seem to agree on the varying pronunciation of the term for comics depending on the source. There may be an official and sanctioned way to pronounce the subtle differences between manga, manhwa, and manhua but looking them up would take something akin to effort. Even if they wanted to, you’ve come to expect far less and we can’t break with tradition now. So Tim has Iron Ladies, a manhua. In the future of this world there is space travel and other planets. They are conquered and fought for by cyborg women. Our hero is broke, beyond graduated from college and his girlfriend is leaving him. … Continue reading Manga Pulse 399: Jesus Ladies →

What if you could launch your project and have a super-engaged audience lining up to buy your product? So many blogs, and guru’s harp on having a big email list before you launch. What if it wasn’t about that? What if it was about how engaged they are?  "90% of the people who sign up for my Giveaways end up reading their email, and about 50-60% respond to that email", Timothy Moser, MasterOfMemory.comThis rings true for a lot of things. If you have a tiny list of raving fans, I guarantee you will convert higher rates, and get MORE sales from that list then you would have if you only focussed on the quantity.   Using a Giveaway Strategy in another niche has helped Timothy Moser get an almost unheard of 10% conversion rate (from lead to sale). This unique selling strategy focused on nurturing your leads, and getting them super engaged, and ready to buy anything you’re selling.   Before Timothy Moser started Master of Memory, a website that offers free information and courses on how to memorize anything, he was a lot like many people trying to get their start on the internet.   He had been listening to podcasts and reading blogs on how to start a business online.   Memorization and learning had always been a passion of Tim’s. One day Tim was googling around for more information to improve his own skills....   But he didn’t find much.   He mostly found forum posts, but certainly no central hub to learn the best techniques for remembering someone’s name you just met, or Spanish verb conjugation.   So Tim threw up a website for fun hoping to make some beer money with banner ads…   When Timothy’s website, MasterOfMemory.com, blew up!   Even though he decided early to focus his brand around giving away ALL his information for free, he was still able to monetize the site within 3 months by selling a course on learning Spanish where enrollees get personal attention from native speakers online.   His Unique Selling Proposition for that course was to use the advanced memorization techniques he had learned and apply it to learning “boring” vocabulary and grammar.   This podcast isn’t on how to memorize anything… Go to MasterOfMemory.com for that info…   You will learn:   Why Timothy spends hundreds of hours offering free, one-on-one teaching to people who haven’t bought yet even though he knows it is not likely that the people he helps will actually buy his course Why you need to focus on a BIG first day for your launch How to set up your own Giveaway with nothing more than a Gmail account and a spreadsheet How sometimes making people do MORE work is better for sales than making a task as easy as possible. The psychological difference between a “launch” and “drawing :) ”, and how it can drive sales Contact Khierstyn at www.khierstyn.com  Show Notes: MasterOfMemory.com The Ultimate Guide To Use Hangouts On Air For Webinars - By Pat Flynn of SmartPassiveIncome.com

On this special episode we will hear part one of Russell’s first presentation at Funnel Hacking Live 2018. Here are some of the inspirational things you will hear in today’s episode: Hear stories of other funnel hackers in the community and some of the things they have done. Hear a little of Russell’s story and how Clickfunnels came to fruition. And be introduced to Todd Dickerson, Clickfunnels co-founder and Russell’s business partner, and hear some of the stats of Clickfunnels and it’s members. So listen here to hear part one of this very special three part presentation from Funnel Hacking Live 2018. ---Transcript--- What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I hope you enjoyed the last few episodes, we brought in one of our, my favorite presentations from Funnel Hacking Live number two when Sean Stephenson came and talked about all his amazing stuff, insecurities and finding people, and I hope you loved it as much as I did. With that said, right now I am cramming for the 10x event, I’m going to be speaking in front of 35,000 people in like 10 days. And then right after that we’ve got Funnel Hacking Live coming up, where we got 4000 people. Anyway, my life is a little bit hectic and crazy as you can probably tell. So because of that, I thought let’s bring another amazing presentation from one of our past Funnel Hacking Live’s to share with you while I am prepping for Funnel Hacking Live. And I’m sure I will be slipping in a couple more really fun episodes as I’m planning and preparing, and probably post 10x event to probably give you guys an update. But I didn’t want the podcast to slow down. So what I’m going to do right now actually is my very first presentation from last year’s Funnel Hacking Live event.  For those who were there, I hope you loved it. For those who weren’t there, it’ll hopefully tease you and get you excited for Funnel Hacking Live. So if you haven’t got your tickets yet, we’re probably sold out by the time you hear this, if not we will be sold out very, very soon. You gotta go to FunnelHackingLive.com to get tickets. But this whole presentation is one, the event happened at Disney World, so I talked a lot about Walt Disney and shared some really cool stories from him. I talk about Value Ladder, I talk about the three phases of a company going from, you know, phase one-figuring out the what and the how. Phase two and phase three, I’m not going to ruin the surprise for you. Anyway, a lot of fun. So I hope you guys enjoy. We’ll break this up over the next couple of days. But I hope you enjoy these episodes and it gets you excited for Funnel Hacking Live. For those who are coming, I cannot wait to see you. For those who aren’t coming, this should push you over the edge. Go get your tickets, FunnelHackingLive.com. Thanks so much. With that said, let’s queue up the intro, and then we’ll start with the next presentation. Oh man, are you guys excited for this. I was in my room and I could feel you guys screaming and shouting when the doors opened, it was amazing. Thank you guys so much for coming here. I am insanely excited. We have killed ourselves over the last few months putting this together and I’m so excited to be here today with all you guys here at Disney World. Now to kick this off, this year’s theme is a little bit different than last year’s. Hopefully all you guys got your t-shirts yesterday. And we made a really cool video that I want to show you guys that will kind of introduce this year’s theme and what we’re trying to do, so I’m going to queue up this video right now. Video: “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently, they’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, about the only thing you can’t do is ignore them, because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some might see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” Russell: Thank you. It’s pretty special, when we were planning this event last year we thought, how cool would it be to go to Disney and do this in Disney World? There’s so many amazing stories about their whole journey and how Walt Disney built this company. And I was researching Disney and studying him and his life before we came here and I heard a really amazing story. On Walt’s death bed, he was literally in a hospital, he was about to pass away and this reporter wanted to interview him. And they kept getting pushed off and pushed off because he wasn’t well enough to do it. And finally this reporter got the ability to come in and interview Walt. And he came in and started asking questions and he couldn’t understand a word that Walt was saying. So Walt motioned to him, “Come here, come here.” So the reporter actually laid down in the bed next to Walt Disney, and he’s laying there for 30 minutes and Walt was looking at the ceiling showing this vision to this reporter of this place that we’re in today; of Disney World. And he started explaining, “This is how we’re going to do the restaurants and the rides, this is where people are going to come, and this is how it’s going to change their life.” And he sat there for 30 minutes. Spent 30 minutes describing this place where we’re at today, five years before it was ever built. Not only was he describing his vision, but he was describing his role that he would play in that future, which is crazy from someone who is about to pass away. And I think for all of, as entrepreneurs, as people, as leaders, this is what I want all of us to be thinking about this weekend. The way to live, to truly live, is to believe so much in your vision, in your mission, that even on your death bed you’re going to whisper it in another person’s ear, explain what your vision is so it won’t die without you. What’s interesting is five years after Walt Disney passed away, they dedicated, they were opening up this place, Disney World and all this stuff was happening, he was going crazy and one of the reporters actually came up to one of the main people at Walt Disney, in charge of Disney, and said to him, “Man, it’s a shame that Walt couldn’t have lived to see this moment.” And this person looked back at the reporter and said, “you don’t understand, he did see it, he did see it and that’s why we’re here today.” And when I heard that story I was just like, how powerful is that? How many of us have a vision and we just know no matter what happens we have to get it out, we have to do whatever it takes? I guess that’s why most of you guys are here today, which is really fun. This is one of my favorite Walt Disney quotes. How many of you guys have seen the movie, Meet The Robinson’s? If you have kids you’ve probably seen it. If not, it’s one of my favorite movies. At the very end of the movie they share a quote and it said, “Around here however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things because we’re curious, and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. And that’s what entrepreneurship is all about. That’s what we’re doing. Every day we have a chance to wake up and figure out what we’re going to create, what we’re going to make, what we’re going to, whose life are we going to change, which is like, the most exciting thing in the world. Now in this room right now we’ve got about 3000 of you guys and every one of you guys have a different story. And I wanted to share a couple of the stories here. I wish I could share everybody’s story, but we’d be here for like 6 months. But there’s a couple of stories I wanted to share that had a huge impact on me over the last 6 months to a year, as we’re building Clickfunnels. We hear these stories of people coming in and they have emotional impacts on us. I hear this story and on our team meetings with our entire company I tell everyone the story, because I don’t want anyone in our company ever feeling like we are a software company. As soon as we believe we’re a software company, we become like every other software company. And we become boring and bland and you crazy people don’t run through the door screaming like you did earlier today. We’re more than that, we’re changing people’s lives. So when we hear these stories, I love sharing with everyone on my team, and I want to share a couple with you guys today. So this one right here, first off, is Paul and Stacy, are you guys here? Can you stand up? Let’s give them a round of applause. I had a chance to meet these guys a few months ago, they came to Boise, Idaho, the greatest place on Earth. And while they were there I met them really briefly and then I had a chance after they went to the first event, they signed up for one of our higher end coaching programs and they stayed for another couple of days. And I didn’t know much about what they did or who they were. And then they got onstage in our little office and they shared their mission, what they were doing. And they told their story and most of our businesses are built out of something painful in the past. Something happened that we didn’t like that made us cause a change, which made us create something which now gives us the ability to help and serve other people. The wounds we have are typically wounds we heal for other people. And Stacy and Paul they were telling their story about how, I think it was 18-19 years ago they were in a relationship and the relationship started to break and it was horrible, it was a horrible thing. And Stacy realized that to save this relationship she had to change. It wasn’t like, “I gotta change him.” Like most people do in a relationship, she’s like, “It’s me. I have to change this if we’re going to work.” So she did the most difficult thing that human beings can do and she changed. And because of that they ended up making an amazing relationship and a marriage, and over the last 15 years of their life, they’ve helped over ten thousand couples to save their marriage and bring back the spark for more than 10 thousand more. Yeah, give them a round of applause. One of my goals for this entire event is hopefully to give them one or two little ideas so they can help 10 thousand more, 20 thousand more, 100 thousand more. When they came to the last event, they, her webinars she told me, converting at .5%, is this right? One half of one percent. What was your last webinar converted at? 28.5%, amazing. That’s why we do what we do. The next one I want to share is Annie Grace, is Annie in the audience? There’s Annie right here, give her a round of applause as well. So Annie came to this event last year, that was your first Funnel Hacking Live, right? She came last year and she was on a mission. So her backstory, she was in corporate America and the job she had they basically told her, “Hey you need to be able to socially drink. That’s how it works, if you want to raise up the corporations. You gotta be part of this.” So she was going on these business trips and she was drinking, and eventually she kept drinking and drinking to the point where she became addicted to it. Alcohol is very addictive. And after a couple of years she realized, “This is not the way I want to live my life anymore. This is not how things are supposed to be.” So she decided to try and break the chains of alcohol addiction. And for anybody who’s tried that process, you know it’s not a simple thing. And she didn’t want to go to AA and things like that, so she figured, “I gotta figure out a different way to do this.” And she went through a journey for 18 months, figuring out how to break herself from the chains of alcohol addiction. And then she did. And then she could have just left right there and been like, “Okay cool, I’m fixed.” But she said, “No, this is something I now need to help other people with.” And so she went out there with this message to share with other people and as I asked her the other day, I’m like, “Give me some impact numbers. What’s happened in the last year or so?” Over 50,000 people are now in her online communities doing a 30 day alcohol experiment helping themselves to break the chains of alcohol addiction. Is that amazing? Awesome. Think about that. All these numbers are amazing. 50,000 people are amazing, but think about for each of those people there’s a family and there’s kids, and there’s other relationships and the ripple effect that grows from it is amazing. Next one I want to share is from Pamela. Pamela, where are you at? Let’s give Pamela a round of applause. Pamela is actually going to be on Dr. Oz Thursday, right. So we gave her a pass to skip whatever sessions so she can watch herself on TV, it’s kind of a big deal. But I met Pamela last year as well, she came to one of our events. And at first I didn’t know what she did, and she came back and did a little presentation to our group and she told her story and within about 15 minutes, all of us were crying our eyes out. What Pamela does, she’s a doctor. And when she was going through medical school, medical school is tough. I’ve never went through it, but it’s a difficult process. And she was telling me the other day, she was actually at a funeral for the 8th or 9th suicide victim, doctor suicide, one of her friends. And at the time she was like, “I have to fix this.” So she started a suicide hotline. And I don’t know if you guys knew this, doctor’s have the highest suicide rate of any profession, almost double the number two if I’m correct, and there’s no one out there helping them. No one’s talking. So she spent the last three years filming a documentary. She’s been out there writing books, she’s written two different books talking about this thing, she has a hotlines for doctors to call in. She runs retreats and she’s literally save hundreds of doctor’s lives. But on top of that, each of these doctor’s lives, who she’s saved, he’s been able to impact thousands and tens of thousands of patients on top of that, which is amazing. And I love Pamela and her story. She’s such an amazing person. The funniest thing she told me on the message, she’s like, “Hey, before Clickfunnels I didn’t dare to take payments online, so I made people mail me checks, in the mail, to try to change their lives. Now I can get people to give me money online and we can actually help them, and it’s growing very, very fast.” So she’s going to be on Dr. Oz this week and she’s going to impact millions more lives, which is the coolest thing in the world. So I’m grateful for her. And like I said, there’s so many stories. One last story I want to share with you guys, because we’re going to be talking about this actually a lot today, this is Tim Ballard. I don’t know if Tim’s in the room right now, he may not be. So Tim runs an organization called Operation Underground Railroad. Who here has ever heard of Operation Underground Railroad? Very cool. So this is a mission I’ve gotten behind a lot in the last 6 or so months. Tim goes to the darkest, most evil spots in this planet and goes and finds kids, takes them and rescues them from a hell they can’t escape by themselves. And last year he saved over a thousand children and he’s helped arrest over 433 traffickers and it’s growing from there. Now tonight you guys are going to have a really cool opportunity. At about 5 o’clock tonight I’m actually going to bring him onstage and also another guest. We spent the last few months actually filming a documentary. And him and Nick Nanton’s going to come up here. And Nick and his team actually went down to Haiti during these raids, strapped GoPro camera’s on their heads and on their guns and actually went and saved kids and filmed a documentary. So 5 o’clock we’re going to show you the trailer of that documentary and you’re going to have a chance to meet Tim and meet Nick and then we’re going to have a break where we’re going to do this vendor speed dating, which is going to be a ton of fun. And we’re paying for dinner tonight, which will be a lot of fun. And then after that, for those who would like to, we’re actually going to be showing the entire documentary. It’s 85 minutes long, and you’ll have a chance to see what’s happening in the world. And not only see, my goal from this event, I want to make an impact. And not a little impact, I want to make a huge impact. We’re going to save a lot of kid’s lives during the next four days and then I’m going to ask for all your guy’s help on Saturday. After Tony Robbins talks to you all, we’re going to talk about how we can take this, this darkness, this evil. If you look at how slavery was broken back in the time of Abraham Lincoln, the way it was destroyed was people shone a light on it. What I want us to do as funnel hackers, I want to shine the biggest light possible on this problem so that the cock roaches in the room have to scurry away and disappear. And we’re going to disrupt this and make a lot of noise and I need all your guys’ help to do that. Are you guys okay with that? Alright. So there’s four of the 3000+ stories in this room, you guys. And that’s the reason why we do what we do. That’s why our team is so obsessed with making the software better, with training, with making you guys better at what you do because I know that every single one of you guys are not going to change one person’s life, you’re going to change hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands. And that’s why we do this. So my question for you guys, I want you to think about right. What’s your vision? Why are you here? Why did you jump in a plane? Some of you guys got stuck in tornado warnings for hours, flying around in circles trying to get here. What is your vision? Why are you here? What are you guys trying to create? Who are the people you want to serve? Because that’s the key to business. As soon as, for me and I don’t know about you guys, but for me when I started shifting my focus from “How can I make money? How can I make money?” to these questions, who is my mission? What am I trying to create? Who can I serve? That’s when the money came. That was the shift. So I want you guys thinking about this the entire week. What’s your vision? What are you trying to create? Who do you want to serve? And again, this is the quote, the theme for this entire weekend. Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers (that’s all of you guys), the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently, they’re not quite fond of the rules, they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. The only thing you can’t do is ignore them, because they change things and they push the human race forward. And while some of you may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do. I love that. And then for those of you guys, some of you are kind of new to our cult-ure. How many of you guys are kind of new to this whole world? Welcome. For those of you guys who are quite sure what is your vision? What’s your mission? Who has no idea yet? Like, “I’m here, I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m just excited.” How many of you guys are that? So for you guys, that’s okay. I want to share with you, this is one of my favorite quotes of all time from Winston Churchill. Winston said, “To each there comes in a lifetime that special moment when they will be figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents.” It’s true, for all of you guys. God didn’t put you on this earth just to walk around. There’s a purpose for all of you guys here. You’re here training, learning, trying to understand that. And that’s why I’m so grateful for you guys making the effort to be here. We have a lot of Clickfunnels members, 5% of you are here. The rest aren’t. You guys are the ones who are here to try to make the biggest change and the biggest impact. The quote goes on and says, “What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.” A lot of you guys don’t know what that is yet. I didn’t know what it was for me for years, for decades. And the more I moved forward the more I keep finding out, what’s the mission? What am I supposed to, I don’t know what it is. I’m just running forward as fast as I can. So don’t be nervous if you’re not sure yet. Just know that you’re in the right spot, you’re around a whole bunch of people who are here to help serve you, and to keep running forward and you’ll find that you find those things that you can do, and eventually it will come to you. And you’re going to be like, “This is my thing. This is what I was created to do.” And you’ll find that out. So I want to talk really quick about the vision for Clickfunnels. Now that I’ve kind of challenged you guys to think about your vision I want to share my vision. So Clickfunnels was created with a goal. Our goal was to free all entrepreneurs so they could share their gifts with the world. I honestly believe that entrepreneurs are the only people that can actually change this planet. I don’t think it’s politicians, I don’t think it’s government, I think it’s entrepreneurs. We’re the ones who are crazy enough to go out there and try to change things. Right? Do you guys agree with that? Yeah. So that’s the reason we want to free all entrepreneurs so that you guys can focus on changing your customers’ lives. That’s our goal. Now, I want to actually introduce a special friend and a partner. And before I bring him up I wanted to kind of tell a quick story. So this is my cofounder and my business partner Todd Dickerson. And a lot of times I’m the one on stage jumping around like a dancing monkey and people know who I am. They’re like, “Russell, you created Clickfunnels.” And I’m like, “I didn’t create, I don’t know how to code.” I hate to break that to any of you guys who didn’t know that. All I know is when we had this vision, this wasn’t a unique thing. I was not the very first person to say, “We should build a platform where people can do all their entire business on it.” Many people have tried over and over and over again. I tried three times myself in the past and failed. It wasn’t until I met Todd, we were sitting there in a room one day and we start mapping out this vision once again, for the 4th time, and Todd said, “I can do that.” And I was like, “Everyone’s tried dude, I don’t know if we can.” And he’s like, “No, I can do that. I can do it.” So we mapped out the vision in Boise, Idaho in front of a whiteboard in our little tiny office at the time. He jumped in a plane, flew back home and spent the next 6-8 months of his life in a room coding what became Clickfunnels. And this was not like the easiest thing in the world, as you can image. Most companies that we were competing against have dev teams of 80-90 people. We’ve got a Todd, and Todd built the initial Clickfunnels, and he is one of the most amazing human beings I ever met in my life. So what I want you guys to do, I want everyone to stand up and give Todd Dickerson a huge round of applause as he comes up onstage. Todd: That’s awesome. What’s up Funnel Hackers? Russell: This is such an honor for me to be onstage with Todd, this is like the coolest thing in the world. So just so you guys know, September 23rd 2014 was the day that my life, Todd’s life and all your lives changed forever. That was the day that he clicked live and Clickfunnels actually went live. Now this is obviously a lot of work on his end, prior to that to get to that point. But do you want to talk about what’s happened in the last couple of years since we’ve gone live? Todd: Oh my gosh. Well of course our original expectation was we were going to have 10,000 member week one. It ended up taking us about one year to get there though. So year one we ended up with 10,000 people. And then year two we actually rolled up and hit 20,000. Year three, we went crazy-50,000. Russell: Dude, that’s awesome. Todd: Well today, I pulled the latest stats, this morning, as of this morning we have 60,000+ active members. Insane, absolutely insane. Russell: That is amazing. Todd: I got another awesome stat for you guys. So this is insane, right. You guys have officially joined the three comma club, as a group. Processed over a billion dollars, through Clickfunnels, that we can track. That’s not even everything, we can’t even track everything. So it’s pretty crazy. Russell: That’s a billion with a “B”. I want to put this into perspective for you guys. I’m not that good at geography and math and all that kind of stuff, but there are 15 other countries who GDP is not as high as that. What that means is that if Clickfunnels was a country and we were the people of Funnel Hackers, we have a higher GDP than 15 other countries here on planet earth. Is that insane? Todd: Yeah, that’s awesome. Insane. Russell: And Todd’s going to run for president of that country, it’s going to be amazing. Todd: Clickfunnels Island. Russell: A couple other amazing things about you guys, what you guys have accomplished in the last few years. 258 of you so far have joined the Two Comma Club. Todd: Congrats. Russell: Where’s my Two Comma Club. Stand up here, stand up really quick so every can see them. Todd: Awesome. Russell: I want everyone to look around. These are your peers. Some of these people were in this room last year, thinking the same thing, like, “Holy cow. That guy made a Two Comma Club award and now he’s sitting next to me.” It’s amazing. Alright, you guys can sit down. We’ve got a new award. You want to announce the new awards coming out this year. Todd: Oh yeah. So we’re going to announce this for the first time ever, we have just created the 8 figure award. 17 people have qualified for it at this point, 17 of you. So ten million dollars in Clickfunnels. Russell: Where’s our 8 figure award winners? Can we stand up? Insane. So last year before the event, before we launched Two Comma Club award, I told Dave, “Can you pull the stats and see how many won the Two Comma Club.” I’m like, “I’m guessing it’s probably 15-20 people or so that made a million dollars with clickfunnels.” I think last year was 93, and now we’re at 258. And this year 17 have made over 10 million dollars in a funnel. And there’s people who encroaching upon the 9 figure one, so we gotta go make another award for next year, there are people who are getting close. The four minute mile, just so you guys know, it got broken, and then it got broken again, and it’s about to get broken again. So for all you guys who are sitting here wondering, these are the people who have done it. Grab them during the breaks, ask them questions. It’s possible. We’re seeing it happen all the time, so don’t dismiss it, it’s true, it’s real. Todd: You can do it. Russell: it’s insane. Again, our mission for Clickfunnels is this, is to help free all entrepreneurs so you guys can focus on changing the lives of your customers. With that said, let’s all give Todd a huge round of applause. Todd: Thank you, thank you very much. Russell: So tomorrow, not tomorrow, Friday we’re going to be bringing up all the Two Comma Club Winners and awarding their trophies, as well as the new ones, so I want to make sure you guys are all in for that. I promise you, if you’re in the room and you watch that, it’s going to be something that’s going to change your life because you’ll be like, “That’s my new goal.” If you’re in the Two Comma Club, your next goal is for X, if you’re just beginning, it’s going to be Two Comma Club. And I want you guys to see that and see all the people who are doing it. Because for me, as soon as I realized it was possible, then I was able to do it. And I want you guys to all see that it’s possible and it’s happening every single day.

Jesus teaches people in such a way that people would need to resell with his teaching. So Tim is looking on Mark 8:1-33 and helps us to understand God's word. This talk is part eight of our series 'Mark' from Sunday 25th November 2018.

KEY TAKEAWAYS: ­­­(1.02) – So Tim, can I ask you to expand on some of those things and tell us a little bit about yourself? Since Tim was a boy he has had a fascination with all things tech. This is part of the reason he is now a generalist with a deep understanding of everything from the hardware to the software. Over the past couple of years, he has focused on the public cloud, in particular Microsoft Azure. (1.50) – Phil asks Tim for a unique IT career tip. Tim explains that developing the ability to organize your thoughts and present them clearly is very important. Public speaking ensures that you learn and practice those critical skills. (3.06) –Tim is asked to share his worst career moment by Phil. Fortunately, Tim’s worst IT career moment has a silver lining. Tim has always been a teacher as well as an IT professional. So, when he was in the running for an IT directorship in a local private High School he focused on securing that role. But, the school changed its mind and decided not to go in that direction. This was a big blow and very depressing. But, the experience taught him the need to keep the prospect of a future position in context. IT moves at the speed of light, so you need to take a flexible and agile approach to your career. (6.00) – Phil asks Tim to tell everyone about his career highlight, his greatest success. That happened when Tim was speaking at a big conference about WireShark. The audience was a big one and they were eager. So, eager in fact that some of them were applying what he was telling them immediately. There was even a group of programmers from one company who were instant messaging his troubleshooting advice back to their datacenter. That experience demonstrated to Tim the importance and practical value of the technical education he was providing. It was great to see people developing their careers, live, right there in front of him. (7.50) – Phil wants to know what excites Tim about the future of the IT industry and careers. Tim loves the fact that industry work can now be done from anywhere. There is no longer to spend ages in a car traveling or to work in a data center. Cloud computing is definitely the future anyone involved in IT cannot avoid working with cloud computing. However, it is a little worrying that newcomers are not likely to be able to do any actual cabling. Tim’s experience of interfacing with the hardware has helped him to develop software-defined networks that work properly. (9.00) – What first attracted you to a career in IT? Puzzle solving and the fact that you become a perpetual student, there is always something new to learn. Tim was inquisitive from an early age, so for him IT was the perfect fit. (9.55) – What is the best career advice you have been given? Tim said his grandfather told him “if you're doing work that you would do even if you weren't getting paid for it, then you found your right career.” It was a good piece of advice and one of the reasons Tim continues to work in tech and information. (11.38) - If you were to begin your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Tim says that is tricky because today’s IT industry is very different than when he started. He sometimes wishes he had majored in computer science. He advises someone entering the field today to survey as many different disciplines as possible. Then whittle down where their interests and aptitude lie. (12.20) – Phil asks Tim what he is currently focusing on. Tim is still creating Microsoft Azure training and doing consultancy work when he wants to do so. Tim is also doing his best to give back to the IT community, by talking at workshops, mentoring, teaching and attending meetups. (12.58) – What would you consider to be your most important non-technical skill? For Tim it is public speaking. There are plenty of ways to learn this skill and it is well worth taking the time to do so. Being confident and able to be concise and persuasive will help you with job interviews, pitching ideas and selling your case. (14.03) – Phil asks Tim to share a few final words of career advice. Unless you enjoy the work, Tim advises considering another career. IT requires a lot of time and effort, so it is not something you want to be doing if you do not enjoy it. BEST MOMENTS: (2.33) TIM – “The ability to organize your thoughts and present your thoughts clearly is going to carry your career.” (4.46) TIM – “It’s important to be that flexible and agile in your approach to your career.” (10.03) TIM – “If you're doing work that you would do even if you weren't getting paid for it, then you found your right career.” – Tim’s grandfather.” (14.00) TIM – “You really can't go wrong with by honing your public speaking skills.” (14.09) TIM – “In information technology careers, you're never going to be hurting for work.” CONTACT TIM WARNER: Website: https://www.techtrainertim.com Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/TechTrainerTim

Tim Hagerty is the voice of the Triple-A El Paso Chihuahua's...and before that the Tucson Padres and before that the Portland Beavers (with friend of the Pod Rich Burk).  They're all the same team and all different teams.  So Tim takes us through his MiLB journey, his rise quickly to the highest levels of the minors, his working on his voice and covering his accent and more.

Can you imagine if there was a Rick and Morty manga? The combined smugness of the weebs and R&M fans would be enough to destroy the world as we know it. Crushing everything into a ball or self righteous, self referential memes that exist only to masturbate the knowing. Anywho, it turns out the Japanese also like using public domain properties. So Tim reviews Tokoku no Moriarty a Sherlock adaptation that focuses on Moriarty. Not the clever professor, arch nemesis we know but rather his origins. Though we skip over most of his childhood, we’re not interested in finding out how Moriarty developed a crime syndicate and why. Burn It … Continue reading Manga Pulse 372: Perfect Sherlock →

Da na na na na na na na Batman! Ben or Bale? The question was asked by listener Chris Garner about Who's the better batman. So Tim, Jules and Al jump into the booth-mobile to discuss who is the most triumphant cinematic batman! EXCELLENT!

Slave Stealer cohost, Mark Mabry, admits none of his kids (ages 16 down to 7) have seen the documentary "The Abolitionist". Mark talks about the difficulty of explaining something as sensitive as sex trafficking even after going on numerous operations with Tim.  So Tim takes the challenge of explaining trafficking to Mark's twelve-year-old son, Bo. Bo is no stranger to the microphone. He hosts a podcast of his own, you can check it out on iTunes or at Dumbitdownpodcast.com If you have ever struggled to find the words to explain this great plague to young ears, this conversation with Bo and Tim could give you some ideas.   

In, out, or still shaking it all about? With the general election in the offing and manifestos flying in all directions, you could be forgiven for not knowing each party’s exact stance on Brexit. So Tim kicks off the weekly round-up with a rapid-fire run through of who is calling for what and why. Welcoming back co-host Warren, they then discuss how German chancellor Angela Merkel is likely to put Brexit negotiations into a holding pattern, how the UK’s fishing industry is (or rather isn’t!) in deep water, and look at an emotional plea from food critic Jay Rayner over labour shortages in the food processing industry. Tim finishes by introducing a new section – BrexTwit - where he piles into Twitter to look at some of the more insightful tweets of the week from our expert guests. As always, please do get in touch through Twitter and Facebook, and let us know what you think. #Podcast #Brexit #BrexitPodcast #Referendum #EUReferendum #VoteLeave #VoteRemain #VoteIn #EU #UK #TimHeming #JenniferHahn #WarrenPole #News #Politics #AngelaMerkel #France #Germany #TheresaMay #JeremyCorbyn #Election #LembitOpik #Fishing

Since the beginning of the year I've been reflecting on the podcast, and where it's headed.  In all my New Years energy I attempted to plot out a 3 month plan for the podcast, so I've got both the ideas, the guests lined up, and that many podcasts recorded ahead of time, so I don't have a pressure filled Wednesday and Thursday getting the podcast out on time, which was becoming the weekly norm, and so I felt like that would be serving you better. That just wasn't working, so instead of the trying to fix the situation with more rational planning and organising, I've thrown planning almost out of the window.  I enjoy each episode because I learn so much, and each episode reveals new things to me.  Planning ahead took much of the adventure out of the podcast, because the plan dictated what interview I gave you each week instead of seeing what emerged.  So I'm doing the latter, planning less to maintain my sense of awe and surprise.  I didn't know this at the time, but recently learned that this has a name - what Nassim Taleb has coined being a rational flaneur, being the French word for a person ambling or strolling, who makes decisions at every step based on observations and new information - not the prisoner of a plan.  So out of more chaos hopefully greater insights will emerge, though I may drop a week here or there…and by all means please keep sending me suggestions for future episodes, I'll just be ruminating on them a bit more than I did last year. It is in that spirit that I invited Tim Austin to have a chat.  Tim leads the WHS function at AACo, one of Australia's largest vertically integrated agriculture businesses.  I recently read an elegant and thought provoking article Tim wrote on the Safety Differently blog about psychological safety, which he is in a good position to do since he has a background in psychology and is currently studying for his honours in psychology, while working full time which is no mean feat.  Tim's article focussed on psychological safety in organisations, drawing on the research to explore what it is, and how we might both understand, and influence it.  It got me thinking - what's the psychological safety like within our profession?  Are we at risk of disengaging, hiding, causing mental anguish, failing to learn, if there isn't a high level of psychological safety? So Tim enthusiastically agreed to open that can of worms with me.   Here's the link to Tim's original article on psychological safety And a TEDx talk by none other than Amy Edmonson.   [activecampaign form=5]

This solo episode is about the importance of taking the first step, from Ever Better Podcast host, Lisa Conners Vogt. Do you ever go through this thought process? “I should try this. I might be good at it. But then again, I might be a total failure.” “It seems like this would be fun. I’ll meet new people who do interesting things. I’ll have a more interesting social life. But then again, maybe I won’t fit in. Maybe I’ll feel out of place.” “I’m sure I can figure out how to do that. My friends will be so proud!  They’ll say ‘Look what you’re doing! How awesome!’ But what if I try it and fail? They’ll laugh and say ‘I told you so.’“ “There are so many things to think about. What would I do first? This is way too complicated. I don’t know where to start. I’ll think about this again next week.” And so it goes. You put off, yet again, that project that deep down, really interests you and could change your life. Does any of that sound familiar? People go through this all the time when they’re thinking about starting a new project or taking on something new. The gym tailspin Are you thinking about joining a gym? I listened to a friend work through a series of questions that stopped her from actually taking the first step of even visiting a gym. She was caught in a tailspin wondering… "What gym should I go to?" "What are people wearing to the gym these days?" "Do I have to get new clothes? What about sneakers?" "I’m sure I don’t have the right sneakers or workout clothes. Whew! That’s a lot of shopping!" "I don’t look as good in yoga pants as those women do. Is there another option?!" "If I join a gym, what will I do there? I haven’t used any of that equipment in years. It’s probably all different." "Will I do classes? What’s Zumba? What’s Pilates?" "I’d probably be one of those people who pay the monthly fee all year and never show up." "When would I go? I’m too busy already!" Does this sound at all like your thought processes? Are you in the same tailspin about the gym or something else? It could be about taking a college class, playing a musical instrument, finding a new job, starting a business, trying online dating, or creating a blog. Each of these ventures involves a lot of steps if you stop to break them down. But if you do that, you risk getting caught up in a million details and never taking the first tangible step that will lead to another step, and another. Don’t get me wrong. I truly believe in project management and have practiced it throughout my career. When you’re working for someone else, you need to establish a start date and an end date, a project budget and think through anything that might derail a project. However, if it’s a personal project that will stretch you physically, socially, and creatively, you don’t need to know every little step in advance. You don’t need to know exactly where you’re headed or even how you’ll get there. Once you get started, if you like what you’re doing, you’ll find your way. Tim takes the first step About 18 months ago, my husband Tim, who has always worked out, wasn’t as fit as he used to be and wanted to improve his cardio fitness. A few of his friends at work were running, as was his brother, and two of my brothers. And in our area, you can’t drive down the street without passing a group of runners, regardless of the weather. So Tim thought about running. He did A LOT of reading online and talked to others who ran. Our chiropractor suggested that he start very slowly with short distances and to not worry about speed. He suggested mixing walking and jogging to let his body adjust to the new workout. One day, Tim was ready. He stopped researching and decided to start running. He started by doing a circuit through our neighborhood of about one mile. He ran and walked and ran and walked. His first time out was more walking than running. And so was his second and third. He wore the same clothes he had been wearing to the gym. He didn’t buy special sneakers. He just went with what he had. And he kept at it. The first time he ran through the whole neighborhood without stopping was a big milestone! And then he added a second loop and was eventually able to run two times around without stopping. Soon, he felt strong enough to venture outside of the neighborhood. His running wardrobe grew. He bought new shorts and a few shirts. Several said “Run” on them. I think they might have given him an extra dose of confidence. It got cold and he got a hat and gloves and running tights. And then, about 15 months in, he signed up for a 10K, which is 6.2 miles. He hadn’t run that far yet, but he was getting closer to that distance every week, and now he had a new goal. The week before the race he ran 6 ½ miles - .2 miles further than the course distance. On race day he ran with 22 thousand others over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge from Annapolis, MD to Kent Island. That was a great milestone! This past Christmas, Tim got a special watch to track his miles, his times, his calories, and who knows what else! And now, he’s up to 8 miles. Because he started slowly and adjusted, he’s never been injured and he’s continuing to build his distance and speed. His new goal is a half marathon. And, I know he’ll get there eventually. When I look back on this running journey that he’s been on, I’d have to say that his biggest milestone was taking the first step out the door. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t ready to run the neighborhood loop yet. The important thing is that he got started. He didn’t have the right sneakers, shorts, shirts, watch, hat, gloves, or socks. But over time, he figured out what he needed and slowly built up his running gear. When he started he didn’t know he would do the Chesapeake Bay 10K. I kept asking him about doing 5Ks and he would say, “No, that’s not for me. I’m just doing it for the health benefits.” But one day, it was for him but in a bigger way! He skipped right over the 5K and went directly to the 10K! He didn’t get caught up in figuring out all the details before he got started. He consulted with a doctor and then he stepped outside and TOOK the first step! I mean, he LITERALLY TOOK THE FIRST STEP! As Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” That’s what Tim did and that’s what I did when I wrote this podcast. The first step for this podcast episode If you’re familiar with my podcasts, you’ll know that I’m not afraid to jump into new projects or subjects, but writing a solo show isn’t something that I do regularly. But, it’s something that I want to do more of in 2017. This one took me more weeks that it should have to get started. I’ve been creating a list of topics, but I always found something to do other than sit down and actually write. The first step wasn’t deciding that I wanted to do a solo show, or even making that list of topics. That part was easy. My first step, my first REAL step towards making this happen, was scheduling it on my calendar. Because when I put something on my calendar – I get it done! And for this step, I have to thank Sarah Shaw, my friend and guest from Ever Better Podcast 37. Sarah helps entrepreneurs market their products and specializes in celebrity placements. She holds group coaching calls for her clients so that they can learn from each other’s questions and from her coaching. I recently participated in one of her calls and a client asked about the best way of planning for a trade show. Sarah talked about the importance scheduling to the level of detail that helps you get to where you need to be. She explained that one of her clients even schedules when she’s going to do laundry. Scheduling laundry! What?! That was a lightbulb moment for me. I’m a big calendar person. Discussions with my podcasts guests are scheduled well in advance and guests get automated reminders in the days before our discussion. I schedule my Pilates and Spin classes and my work days revolve around my calendar. So why didn’t I schedule the time to write a solo podcast? If I’m going to be my own podcast guest, why not set it up on my calendar so that I get my own automated reminders?! So that’s what I did! My first step in creating this episode was scheduling time for myself to write. The cool part about my “aha” moment from Sarah is that she has a signature saying: When in doubt, take the next step.” Sarah says that if you’ve taken the first step and you’ve started on a journey, don’t allow yourself to get stuck! It might not be the perfect next step, but if you take it, you’ll continue to move forward. And I’m telling you today that if you take the first step, and then the next step, eventually you’ll find that you’re ready to run a 10K, or write a 10th podcast episode, or take your 10th Pilates class, or whatever else you’re thinking about doing. A first step you can take now If your calendar is in your phone or your purse, take it out. If it’s hanging on your wall or on your refrigerator, walk over to it.  Write down when and where you’ll take your next step. After that, schedule your next step. And your next. And before you know it – you’ll be off and running. Don’t get sidetracked by thoughts about what others might think and whether you’ll fail. Who cares what anyone else thinks! You’re doing this for you! And, you’ll be better off for it. I’d love to hear about how you took your first step to get on your way! Visit the Ever Better Facebook Group and share your first step story to help motivate others. Discover What's Next If you’ve taken the first step and you could use some help reaching a larger goal, or if you’re having a hard time getting started, check out my Discover What’s Next coaching program. Or, send me an email at Lisa@EverBetterU.com to learn more about how we can work together. I'm putting together a Discover What's Next Workshop in the D.C. area in March. Let me know if you'd like to get more information by sending me an email.

Cass and Bob converse with Tim Flynn of right here in Nashville. He was raised Southern Baptist in west Tennessee but unlike some of us, was not good at the fake-it-til-you-make-it gambit to maintain faith. Once he got his driver’s license and some autonomy, he stopped going to church and never looked back.  Tim realized relatively early in life that no matter how hard he tried to establish a personal relationship with Jesus it just never took, and in so doing he avoided years or even decades of tension and confusion and wrestling with doubts and trying to make the Christian narrative hold water; which, once conceded, is followed by shame and embarrassment for taking so long to get honest. So Tim models a less painful way that one leaves their childhood faith, and we witness a snapshot of how many millennials are reacting to their inherited religion. His ability to trust his own common sense and be less prone to need something to be true when you know deep down that it’s not saved him a lot of heartache and we hear that in his calm, pleasant disposition.  We taped these conversations on October 23, 2016. We hope to encourage people in the process of deconstructing their faith and help curb the loneliness that accompanies it. We think the world is a better place when more people live by sight, not by faith. Please subscribe to our podcast, give it 5 stars, and/or leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Our show is available on most podcast platforms.  Also, you can support us monetarily in two easy ways: you can pledge one dollar per episode through Patreon; that’s www.patreon.com/eapodcast, or leave a lump-sum donation through PayPal at our website, www.everyonesagnostic.com. The smallest contribution is greatly appreciated. Our Indigogo fundraiser is here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ea-podcast-equipment-upgrade#/ Credits: "Towering Mountain of Ignorance" intro by Hank Green https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3v3S82TuxU Intro bumper "Never Know" by Jack Johnson The segue music is by Sam Maher recorded on a handpan in the NY city subway. Thanks for listening and be a yes-sayer to what is.    

  Mark Mabry talks to Mark Stott, an O.U.R. veteran, about the miraculous meetings that made the production of "The Abolitionists" possible. Because of the financial contributions of two very important donors, O.U.R. created and promoted the film without dipping into any of its regular donations reserved for funding rescue missions. They also discuss the importance of talking about trafficking and other sexual abuse in our society, as well as with children at an appropriate age.     Mark M.:    Hello, and welcome to the Slave Stealer Podcast; I'm Mark Mabry. Tim Ballard is standing by, and with me right now we have Mark Stott who was with O.U.R. from the very beginning, served as a board member, served as an advisor, a sounding board to Tim, getting it going, and now, is working as an executive with "The Abolitionists" to get that movie out there.   There were so many interesting...we'll call them miracle stories. We're not scared of miracles on Slave Stealer Podcast because ending this is what it's going to take, is a miracle. But we've got awesome stories in bringing about this movie, "The Abolitionists," - even more awesome stories bringing about O.U.R. in general - but I want to talk about him because there needs to be a bit of recognition and a feeling of the inertia and momentum. And so, Mark, if you would start us out, with addressing the problem. The problem was we had an idea to push this thing further via a movie - or Tim was approached with that - but we didn't have any money. So, take it from there. Mark S.:      Yeah. Yeah. Back in 2013, the summer of 2013, we met Gerry… We were introduced to Gerry Molen, and uh... Mark M.:    Gerry Molen. Mark S.:      ...the producer of Schindler's List and Jurassic Park. And he sat down with us and said, "You guys can go save kids one by one, but if you really want to make a movement, you need to make a movie. And if you'll do that, it will motivate and change the hearts and minds of people across America. To get really behind this." Any great anti-slavery movement had the people behind them. And so, with that in mind, we always knew we should create a movie. That has had, along the way, some really interesting side effects that we didn't know would happen.                             The first initial problem was we had no money. Funding a movie is not cheap. You have to fund the individuals to video it, take the time to edit the movie... So, once O.U.R. was funded, we thought, "Ok, what do we need to do?" One night, Tim got a phone call from an individual he had not met, and said, "I'd like to meet you. I heard about you on the radio, and I heard you want to do a movie. I'd be interested in possibly funding it." So Tim called me up and said, "Mark, let's go," and it was 10:00 at night, and we needed to meet this individual at a hotel, which seemed rather suspicious and strange, frankly… Mark M.:    But not the most suspicious or strange meeting you've ever had in this business. Mark S.:      You're right. Mark S.:      Multiple times, we've met people in hotel rooms. So, we went with Chet and Fletch, myself and Tim, and met this individual. It was a rather strange moment: there's five guys sharing the story of what we plan to do and the challenge of saving millions of children. We're crying. Five guys crying in a room. And once we shared this story, this terrific individual decided to fund the movie. And it was a significant amount of money. Mark M.:    We're talking in the millions. Mark S.:      Yeah. Yeah. And so, we - Chet and Fletch and I - walk down the hall; Tim continued to speak with him. We were standing in the elevator... And Chet and Fletch have tried to raise funds for movies before, and I looked at them and said, "Has it ever happened that way before?" They started laughing and said, "Never." In the meantime, Tim is hugging the funder and he comes walking down the hall - and coming from the government, he had no experience in raising money like this - and he came and asked the same question, said, "Does this ever happen?" And we said, "Never." That was the first…one of the first significant moments we knew this was important - that frankly, God had placed this individual in our path and he offered to make this movie possible. The significant... There were other miracles as we keep going here. What we didn't realize - even though it was part of the plan - but we didn't realize how significant the footage would be in saving these children. Mark M.:    Yes, why? Mark S.:      Well, most of the time, when children like this are saved by police authorities, they are asked to testify and they - particularly in foreign countries - often the predators will go and begin to threaten their families. And the kids will never go take the stand. One is it's too embarrassing, but particularly if they get threats, they won't do it, and these people get off for free. And so what's happened is when all of this video is taken and these films are taken, it's taken from the beginning of the deal to the closing of the deal. All of that is used as evidence and turned over to the authorities. When a jury sees these videos, they don't need the children to testify. So, the over 500 children that have now been saved... Not one of them have had to stand to testify against their abusers. Mark M.:    Because of the work of "The Abolitionists." Mark S.:      Because of the work of "The Abolitionists" movie. Mark M.:    So it's so much more than a film because it…as you were saying, it was the thing that got these kids off the hook from having to testify. It was the thing that locked shut tight all these cases. Mark S.:      Yeah, it's used as significant evidence. It's absolutely, 100%, solid evidence. Mark M.:    And it's going to be... And we've seen it turned the tide of battle and change minds and hearts and introduce this horrific problem in a way that's just about palatable. Mark S.:      Yes. That's one of the great things that, what I also think the genius of the directors. They've been involved in this, they have been there. They are as close to all these people, as close as the team from O.U.R. is, because they have cameras and they're up close and personal. But because of that experience, I believe they did such a great job on the movie because... I've had some mothers say, "You're talking about a terrible topic, but you've done it in such a respectful way, particularly of the children, that rather than leaving feeling dark and ugly about the topic, I felt motivated to help." So, my hat's off to the directors who put this together; they did it in such a way that we didn't have to get into the real, real ugly, because that's easily imagined. We don't need to see it. Mark M.:    Disclaimer, though. It's definitely not a Disney flick. Mark S.:      It's definitely not a Disney flick. Mark M.:    Don't bring your kids right off the bat. See it first. Mark S.:             Right. Right. Right.  I've had my 10-year-old son see it, my 13-year-old daughter see it. Mark M.:    Wow. Mark S.:           They liked the show. They like it. We had a couple kids the other night that the mothers said, "I want my sons to grow up with a purpose in life, and I want them to be the kind of people that these men are." And so she had them watch it. Mark M.:    Wow. Mark S.:      We asked them how they liked it, and there's enough cops and exciting things going on that the boys liked it. So, it was interesting, but certainly, parental guidance is suggested. You need to have your... Mark M.:    Strong. Mark S.:      Yeah. Mark M.:    Parental preview, even, maybe. Mark S.:      There you go. Yeah. Mark M.:    I agree. Because I've been wondering: do I take my 11-year-old, turning 12, son? You may have just helped me with the decision. There was another miracle: so, movie made, evidence secured, and it's expensive - I mean, there's tons of equipment, like little hidden spy gear. There is finding filmmakers gutsy enough to get arrested in third-world countries over and over and over... Mark S.:      That's right. Mark M.:    And a lot of travel. Tons of editing, I mean... You're shooting these things from 12 different angles... Mark S.:      Sometimes up to 25 cameras in one room, yeah. Mark M.:    Yes! It's insane! And so, someone has to sift through this footage, and that's not cheap. So that's... A film budget can be gobbled up very quickly. Mark S.:      Yeah. Mark M.:    As this was. And I think, man...talk about holy dollars in terms of the film world, because it was evidence. Mark S.:           That's right. Mark M.:           But we ran out of money and how do you promote the film? Enter guy number two, miracle number two... Mark S.:   That's right. Yeah, Tim called me about five months ago and said, "Mark, you know, Gerry Molen had this vision of what this would do... The movie is now shot; it's done, it's been edited, it's ready to go, but we're down to nothing." And again, this was privately funded so it didn't take from donor dollars because we felt it was very sacred if people donated to... Mark M.: Very important point. Mark S.:   ...if people needed to donate to O.U.R., that money was set aside to make sure we're saving children. So the movie was privately funded so it was very clear that it was for the movie. So we sat here and Tim called me up and said, "Mark, we need some funds to promote this and get this across the world, and across the United States particularly." So we, again... The second miracle, financially, is we were on a plane - and we have a friend of ours that does pretty well. We told him of the problem, and he basically said, "If you'll gather a team of individuals to promote this and present a plan to me, I feel it's important enough that, frankly, if I don't get my money back, if we can show the world what's going on, I'll give you the money." And again, it was over...it was a seven figure number to promote the movie, and he handed them over full well knowing he may or may not ever get that back. Mark M.: And the promotion of this film... To make the film was one thing. Promoting it is so important because that was the point of the thing, is to get the word out in a way that people could understand it. Mark S.:   Yeah. Mark M.: And wrap their hearts around it. Mark S.:   Yeah. And we've seen significant... As we've shown previews, as we've done pre-screenings and had audiences come in... One is the motivation to get involved, and all of a sudden there's people that are a little nervous to come, particularly mothers, and we've seen that with the audience. And after we've encouraged them to come - because, again, it's a heavy topic - but we've seen people come in the door and once they're done, we always ask them at the end, "Are you now an abolitionist? Are you willing to join this fight with us?" Audiences of hundreds of people now have raised their hand and are joining the fight because of this movie. They now see the problem. They realize there is a solution. They realize that when people join together that we can solve these significant problems. People are raising their hand, they're getting involved, they are doing different actions, they are donating, they're gathering their friends and families to come to this movie. And it's really amazing to see what's happening to people. They feel like they have a purpose. Mark M.: And of course the end goal is "save kids": save two million kids. Mark S.:   That's right. Mark M.: And our highest and holiest is that people walk away and say, what can I do? Well, at the very least, and probably the very most important, is to become an abolitionist in the donation sense. And I can plug the donation thing easily without Tim on the mic. If you go to Operation Underground Railroad's website, ourrescue.org, it says, "Become an Abolitionist." There are high school and junior high kids that donate five bucks a month. There are adults - five bucks a month. There are amazing people that send $1000 a month. Whatever. Mark S.:   Yeah. Mark M.: But there's a price tag on every single kid's head. There are economics to the rescue, and it's... Depending on how many kids you get, or how many bad guys you get, it always takes money. Mark S.:   That's right. Mark M.: Because you've got to find the best law enforcement people to come on board full time, leave their comfy job, often being paid less when they come here - most of the time being paid less with worse benefits - but the benefit is that they are kicking butt in a really fast way. Mark S.:   And making a difference. Mark M.: And making a difference.   Mark S.:   The amazing thing... As this movie is going out, we're getting more and more demand for O.U.R.'s help. We've had multiple countries now opening their doors and inviting us, whereas before we were asking to go in. They are now pulling us in. We have, probably, over five to ten countries now that have basically said, "Come and do what you need to do." We have state attorneys, district attorneys, asking us to come into their districts, and that takes resources. But the team is very effective in their training. It's really quite amazing. The other...and I'll mention one more thing that's been miraculous, is that, as people come and watch the movie, multiple times we've had individuals that have never shared their story of abuse and they share it with us. It's interesting because this movie has made it an acceptable thing to talk about and has given courage to people that have been abused, and now we've started, actually, several investigations as well of people that have seen this, realized they weren't the only ones, and they said, "I'm no longer hiding what happened to me in the past, and I want people to be held accountable for what he did to me or to somebody that I love." And that's a fantastic thing happening that people no longer... This is not acceptable behavior any longer. This is not something we need to hide. It's something we need to stand up and fight against. Mark M.: Fantastic. Mark Stott, thank you very much. I'm Mark Mabry for Slave Stealer - I'll see you next time.

Episode 27 of See Hear Podcast is ready for your aural consumption. So Tim, Bernard and Maurice are discussing a film about a band who go on the road and…well…shit happens. Could be any number of films? It’s a mock-documentary. Hmmm….still leaves a couple of choices. Okay, it’s been cited as one of the greatest ever films out of Canada. Okay, now you just have to know that we’re talking about Hard Core Logo. Bruce McDonald released this gem in 1996 about a punk band that reform to do a benefit gig, then follow up with five gigs through western Canada.  Different ambitions and egos collide, medications go missing, goats get sacrificed, and home truths get told. The film is about friendships, trust, putting on a macho face to cover insecurity, and investigates whether you should be able to have the same ambitions and life at 35 year old, as when you were a 17 year old. Not without humour, but it is certainly a darker film than the one it’s frequently compared to, “This Is Spinal Tap”. The See Hear crew really enjoyed recording this episode for you. They even make links to some other films you would not obviously think to compare HCL with. What were they? Tune in and find out If you dig what we do, could you please rate us at iTunes or even better, spread the word that the show exists so more folks can tune in. You can download the show by searching for See Hear podcast on iTunes or download fromhttp://seehear.podbean.com/ Please join our friendly Facebook discussion group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/seehearpodcast/ You can send us emails at seehearpodcast@gmail.com  

Want the sexiest, most explosive way to blow up a retirement account that you can ever imagine… and it’s hiding in plain sight?  Get ready to have your mind blown YET AGAIN, my friends.  I’m Bryan Ellis.  This is Episode 197.-----Hello, SDI Nation!  Welcome to the podcast of record for savvy, self-directed investors like you, where we have one and only one purpose:  To help you make great investments that are simple, safe and strong!And BOY-oh-BOY do I have a great strategy for you today!Let’s take a journey into imagination, shall we?Imagine that you’re presented with an array of dozens of locked “treasure” boxes.  You can buy any of these treasure boxes you want for $1,000.  And when you do so, if you’re able to get the treasure box opened, there’s a multiple of your investment waiting inside… maybe $20,000…. Maybe $75,000… maybe much, much more.Of course, there’s the chance that there’s nothing inside at all.  And there’s the chance that you never figure out how to get the treasure box unlocked to begin with… and thus, your $1,000 is wasted.Sounds like a gamble, doesn’t it?But what if the predictability is MUCH higher?  What if a certain portion of those treasure boxes have a particular marking on the outside, which means that there’s treasure to extracted from within?And what if, before ever ponying up your $1,000, you were able to closely inspect the lock itself, to determine with a high degree of accuracy whether you can break the lock and pull out the treasure?Well, my friends, that’s exactly what I’m going to teach you to do today, and for those of you who are looking for a way to increase – potentially dramatically increase – the size of your portfolio, this is a special strategy… and it works particularly well for those of you using a self-directed IRA or 401k.Here’s how it works:There are hundreds of thousands of houses out there that have real value – they’re treasure boxes – but unfortunately, that treasure is bound up because of tax debt.  The owner of the house has some tax problems, there’s an IRS or state tax lien against them, and because of that, all of the equity in their treasure is totally ZAPPED.  It’s worth absolutely nothing.And that’s why it’s possible to buy these houses for virtually no money at all… because they are, from a wholly objective perspective, worthless.But why would you buy a worthless house, even if only for a small amount of money?It’s because you know two things:What the house would be worth without those liens against it, andHow to pick the lock – how to have those tax liens reduced far enough that there’s a big profit waiting in it for you!Here’s an example that’ll really get your juices flowing:Tim, a member of the SDI Team, recently found a property that’s worth a bit over $400k.  Unfortunately, there was about $900,000 of debt against that property, nearly all of which was tax debt.This house was to Tim one of those treasure boxes I mentioned to you.  Because he was able to acquire title to that property for virtually no money at all.But why would he do that?  Sure, it’s a $400,000 property… but it’s got absolutely no value.  And isn’t it just a crapshoot to invest in a property on the assumption that you’re going to be able to get the owner’s tax debt reduced?Well sure… it would be a crapshoot if that’s all the information Tim had.  But it wasn’t.  Tim was able to determine, in advance of putting a single dime into the property, that the entire situation – the owner, their financial situation, the property location and property value, all of the pertinent details – Tim was able to determine in advance that all of those things lined up such that there would be an overwhelmingly strong probability that he’d be able to work with the IRS and state taxing authorities to either reduce the debt or just remove it from the property, such that Tim would be left with a substantial amount of equity and a strong profit potential.So Tim’s “treasure box” gave clear signs on the outside that there was some real treasure inside, because he could see that the property was worth over $400,000.  And the lock on the treasure box – the tax liens – gave Tim enough information to know that there’s a very, very good chance that he could “get at” the treasure inside.The net result?  Well, Tim’s received a cash offer to buy this house for $374,000.  And when it’s all said and done, he’ll pocket around $90,000 in profit……all from a house that most investors would see as being utterly valueless, but is anything but that.This treasure box was stuffed with cash, and Tim was able to make a highly informed, high-probability decision whether to risk a tiny amount of capital – usually from $1,000 to $5,000 – in order to extract many, many multiples of his investment less than a year later.  He did have to get some funding to carry the property for a brief interlude, because the IRS isn’t flexible about the deadlines they set for payment arrangements.  But no matter… the numbers worked, and worked incredibly well.Think of it, my friends… think of the potential for buying well-selected “worthless” real estate like this in your IRA or 401k…  for a TINY amount of money… and then by using some legal expertise that can be purchased for a few thousand dollars, you’re able to “pick the lock”, creating substantial equity spreads that simply did not exist before you came into the picture?That, my friends… is brilliance in investing, and that is why you listen to SDI Radio.And you know what?  You’ve heard of this strategy before, but under a different name.  You’ve heard the term “short sale”, right?  That’s when you ask a lender to take less money than they’re owed because, in the grand scheme of things, it makes sense for them to do that.  Well, this is a short sale, too… only with tax debt.It turns out that it’s possible – in SOME cases – to do that with tax debt.  Just like with mortgage short sales, you can’t reduce just any tax debt.  There are certain situations where the IRS isn’t going to budge, and they shouldn’t.  But as much as we all dislike the notion of having the IRS breathing down our necks, the truth is that they’re not stupid, and in some situations, it makes sense for them to work with taxpayers who are in trouble.And it is those situations which create this opportunity.Want to know more?  Then be sure you’re subscribed to the SDI Radio private email discussion group by texting the word SDIRADIO with no periods or spaces to 33444.  That’s because on Monday, I’m going to email everyone on that subscriber list an invitation to a special webinar where we’ll teach you how you can profit from this strategy, without having to be an expert in any piece of it!  So again, be sure to text the word SDIRADIO with no spaces or periods to 33444.My friends… invest wisely today, and live well forever! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Rosemary Collard is the owner of Snapdragons Nursery and it's her birthday today! So Tim sat down with some of the toddlers and sang her a familiar little ditty.

Today I will be talking to Tim Castleman. He did something amazing. He wrote two 8k words in under 8 hours. Both books became Amazon bestsellers and ended up generating him over $3k in royalties in just 2 months from the launch + hundreds of glowing reviews! Tim's Story been doing online marketing since 2009. He found a partner with whom he worked for a year. And then, when they parted he had his lowest times of his life. He almost quit and was already thinking of going back to 9-5 job. That was when his friend contacted him telling about the Amazon self-publishing. So Tim decided to do it. He hired a ghostwriter for his non-fiction book. But when he received the text he realized that he could not release it under his name. It was not his voice and was not written well. So Tim had to write the book in 48 hours because he had a deadline. He wrote his book, which was over 8k words in just 4 hours. Now that book is an Amazon bestseller for 90+ days. And being frank with he Tim admits that he did not expect such good results in the beginning. Q: Once you finished the book and it was ready, did you do anything with the marketing of the book? A: I mentioned already that I am Internet marketer and I do have a customer list. Some people will turn immediately off and say “Oh that’s how he made all his sales”. Let me tell you I actually tracked with software the sales that actually came from customers that were on my list vs. social media. And for my last book the clicks from my customers and the clicks from my social media were between 200-300 of each other. Meaning that if you don’t have a list you can to do what I will share with you via social media. The key is you need to find a group of people, that you’re talking to and they actively involved. My first book is called “The creativity Checklist”. That’s a checklist that I use to create products and services for my market. So I’ve already been in several Facebook groups and several forums. I’ve already made my presence known there by being useful and active contributor. So I didn’t just show up by saying Hey everybody here is my book buy it. I showed up I said hey let me help this person. Let me get my name known. And then when it was my turn I said hey guys I have this book out. It is limited for 3 days if you be so kind please purchase it and enjoy the discount. And it’s really all I had to do to get that initial push. I really think when it comes to sales and marketing Amazon looks at 2 things. Your sales obviously initially but then they look at your reviews as well. And the best way I can describe this is imagine you have this friend. And you want to introduce this friend to all your other friends. If Amazon sees that you are making lot of sales and people are leaving positive reviews, then they will show your book to other people. Because Amazon does the majority of marketing for me now. They e mail out their customers, they tell people about my book. And all I had to do was get the initial burst of sales and reviews and Amazon takes from there. Q: Do you know how many books were sold to have that initial push in the beginning? It’s always gonna depend on your niche and your genre and your industry, but I would say if you could do 10+ sales initially you’re gonna at least get that initial momentum. Cause what happens is you get those sales Amazon puts you in a ranking category, so let’s say you’re the 5th most popular book on writing. They also put you in the Hot New Release list. So Amazon puts it in front of the customers, they start buying it and it basically just becomes a big snowball Q: Did you launch the book at 0.99 cents?  A: It was 99 cents. Here is how I do all my launches. I do 99 cents at the very beginning for 3 days. I tell everyone hey it’s for 3 days and then from 99 cents I bump it up to $2,99. The 99 cents is meant to get sales and get reviews at cheapest price possible. Q: You have big amount of reviews for your books. Were they organic reviews or you did something to get them? A: I did something and then they started to come organically. So here is what I did. I basically sent to my list and my social media contacts “hey if you buy the book just do me a favor and leave a review. And if you leave a review and send me a copy of the review to my e-mail address then I’ll send you either another book or a bonus video or something along those lines. They key there you obviously can’t tell to leave a 5 star review so if you get 1 star review you still have to send the book. But the whole goal is to get those reviews initially up there. So I would say 2/3 of my reviews came from the initial push. What is amazing to see is those books continue to get reviews that are what I would call organic reviews. That is you see a book you read it and like it so much that you leave a review of it. Q: Can we say that if you launch the book successfully and get the initial push and reach the momentum, later on there is much less to do? A: Right, exactly. Like I haven’t done anything with either of my 2 books probably in the last 35 days as far as advertising, promotion, sales, discounts, etc and I still make thousands of dollars out of them. Q: The problem with Amazon is that you don’t get the contacts of your readers. How do you deal with that? Do you have an opt-in form in the books? How do you engage people, who have bought your book? A: I have an opt-in form right at the very beginning of my book. I think it’s the first or second page or the third. They see the title, they see the table of content and right there I give them a free gift for signing up. The key is to be successful you have to be a frequent publisher, so you have to be producing content on regular basis. No fewer than every 60 days. You have to build a list of your buyers. There is so much information out there that the only way you can get to them is to have their e mail addresses. And then frequent promotion. KDP days, Kindle Unlimited, you can bundle your books… there are many things you can do to increase your availability and ability to make more sales. Q: You mentioned that every 60 days one has to come up with a new book. Why 60 days? A: Here is my belief and this is untested but it is based on my own experience. Q: Do you send your e-mail list anything before your new book comes out? A: You can send out a survey with possible book subjects, which they choose. I also make teasing by telling that my book is almost finished. Then I send e-mail the day it goes to Amazon. Then the day it launches I send them the e-mail that it is live and priced 0.99 for three days. Then I ask for a review and offer them a free book for the review. The most important tips Tip 1: Come up with your hook or angle before you even start to write your book Tip 2: Come up with the outline Tip 3: Come up with a system or process that works well and then trust that process Bonus Tip: [spp-tweet " Done is better than perfect!"] Links Tim's website 8 Hour Bestseller Don't Forget to Get Your Free Book Click Here to Download  

So Tim, how did you see it? Phil Cornwell is joined by Paolo Hewitt and pod debutant Norman Giller to reflect on the FA Cup defeat to Arsenal and Tim Sherwoods start to life as Spurs boss over the Christmas period. Youll also hear details of how you can win a signed copy of Normans brilliant new book, Bill Nicholson Revisited. Produced by Paul Myers and Mike Leigh A Playback Media Production Free 20 bet - Paddypower.com/TheSpursShow iPhone App - http://bit.ly/spursapp http://appstore.com/spursshow

Tim Robertson is a little iPaded out. Love it or hate it, everyone seems to be talking about the iPad. So Tim asks, what about the Mac? It is the very best computing platform in the world, and it’s time to get it back into the limelight.

This week we not only do a taproom take over we also talk Beer MKR Ultra a super secret top of it's class ultra exclusive government penetrating Beer Maker. Which makes no sense. So Tim also has an awesome week to speak of while Zach doesn't so much. Video Games, Tech and beer this is one gaming podcast you must here.

This week we're celebrating 192 episodes on 192nd Ave in Vancouver Washington at a Tap Room. This week is a little different as we won't be clean and proper BUT we love out live recordings. So Tim this week went and saw Deadpool 2, revenge of the mailboxes and breaking into your place of work. Zach on the other hand wantsa to know WTF is your wife doing Tim? Other than that Zach is pretty lame. This week we tried to many beers to count BUT they are mentioned in the show so listen up. Tech Talk this week gets weird and we give a big squishy middle finger during Kickstarter. So subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform and get in touch with us on Facebook ( http://www.facebook.com/plugandplayshow/ ) , Twitter ( http://twitter.com/plugandplaycast ) , Instagram ( http://instagram.com/plugandplaycast ) or on our site Plugandplaygamer.com ( http://plugandplaygamer.com/ ). #PlugIn

This week we're back for a special episode of "How was your Mothers Day!" So Tim and Zach walk us through their eventful and exciting days they planned for their wives. Tim and his family again are sick, Zach is still buying DLC for Yard Work 2k19 and Mario Maker 2 is talked about. This week in Kick It we got some cool new items and we talk about a tech filled umbrella during Tech Talk. So Plug In!