Podcasts about so so

Listen to the latest from Michele's podcast book tour! Searching for SaaS: https://searchingforsaas.com/podcast/ep25-local-restaurant-app-to-geocoding-as-a-service-michele-hansen-from-geocodio/One Knight In Product: https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/michele-hansen/Indie Hackers: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/224-michele-hansenMichele Hansen  0:01  This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.Here's how Reform is different:- Your brand shines through, not Reform's- It's accessible out-of-the-box... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a timeJoin indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.Hey, Colleen,Colleen Schnettler  0:51  hey, Michelle.Michele Hansen  0:54  How are you?Colleen Schnettler  0:56  I'm good. I'm good. How about you?Michele Hansen  0:58  How goes week three now of doing Hammerstone and simple file upload.Colleen Schnettler  1:08  It's going well, today, I'm going to dedicate most of the day to simple file uploads. So I'm pretty excited about that. I'm finally back into my theoretical four days client work one day, my own thing and never really works out that way. Because I make myself way too available. But I have a lot of plans. But I do want to talk to you about something. Okay. I am I have not had any new signups in six weeks. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm not in the pit of despair, because I'm just generally pretty happy about everything else. But I haven't been really on top of I know, six weeks. Right. That's really. I mean, IMichele Hansen  1:54  I hate to say it, but that does give me a little bit of like trough of sorrow vibes.Colleen Schnettler  1:58  Yeah. I mean, I honestly, I hadn't even really noticed, which is a different a different thing. Has anybody been canceled? I don't know. Because I, yeah, so I don't track that as well as I should. And I think with everything that's been going on, I have been so busy that I haven't. Honestly, I've just been letting it run itself. I checked my email every day, but no one ever emails me, which is nice, by the way. So I hadn't checked it in a while a and I checked it in preparation to do this podcast with you. And I was like, Oh, crap. I haven't had a sign up since July. This is September 2.Michele Hansen  2:39  So have I mean, has your revenue gone down? Like?Colleen Schnettler  2:44  No, actually, it hasn't. So I've been pretty consistent. So without doing a full churn analysis, I don't think people are churning. But they're not signing up. Okay, that's not okay. Let me stop. That's not entirely true. People are putting their email address in and then bouncing. So people are still finding my website. But yeah,Michele Hansen  3:12  I feel like it was like the people who are paying you is that mostly people from Heroku? or from your website?Colleen Schnettler  3:19  It's mostly people from Heroku.Michele Hansen  3:21  So are you still getting that like you had this problem where people were like, signing up on Heroku, but then not actually activating it? And like starting to use it, like, Are people still doing that first step on Heroku.Colleen Schnettler  3:37  So people are using it. I actually had one person respond with what he's doing. So that was cool. In terms of like a new signup. So people are using it that sign up on Heroku, which is good. It's just a lack of new signups is really confusing to me.Michele Hansen  3:55  Did you ever get that work done on the homepage like and Roku site like we were talking about the code pen and improving the documentation? And like, did did all that happen?Colleen Schnettler  4:10  So I have a whole list of great things I'm going to do so what I have done this week last week is I actually started writing a piece of I wrote an article right, it didn't take that long. I should have what it doesn't matter what I should have done. I did it. So that's good. So I have seen on Google Analytics said that is getting a decent amount of traffic. Today, literally today. I'm going to get that freakin try it now on the homepage. That is my plan to do that today. Nice. I'm speaking it into existence. The documentation is a whole different animal because I don't think I mean, I really need to redo the documentation. But that's like a whole thing. Like it's not I need to add some things. I think I need to take it in baby steps because I added some things to the tech side that are not reflected in the documentation that are kind of cool. So I think, but of course, instead of just adding that to my existing documentation, which I don't really like the way it presents, like, I just don't like the way it looks. I want to tear that all down and make a new app just for documentation, which I will do someday, butMichele Hansen  5:17  so it kind of sounds like you need to put away your laundry. But you don't want to do that. So instead, you're going to completely build yourself a new closet, butColleen Schnettler  5:26  my closets gonna be so pretty, and so organized.Michele Hansen  5:33  Yeah, I'm sensing a theme where like, you have a task that you don't want to do, or it seems overwhelming to you or you don't feel like it plays into your strengths. And so your way to do it is to make it something that is one of your strengths, which is actually just throwing more hurdles in front of you actually doing the task.Colleen Schnettler  6:00  Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, that's, like, it's funny, because before we got on this podcast, my plan was still to rewrite the whole documentation and make it its own site, blah, blah, blah. And as soon as I spoke those words to you, as I do, I've really is that really a super high priority, like, the higher priority should be getting the fact that like, I emit events on, you know, successful uploads, that's cool. People can use that. It's literally nowhere in my documentation that I do that. So I'm probably the priority should just be getting it out there with what I have. And then someday, when I have more time, I can rewrite the whole documentation site.Michele Hansen  6:39  This is your problem with the documentation that it's ugly, or that people email you telling you that it's janky. And, like, difficult to use documentation specifically, or is it just an eyesore? It'sColleen Schnettler  6:53  a it's an eyesore. I don't like the way it looks. I don't like the way I navigate with tabs. I don't like the tabs. Like I think you can still find everything no one has emailed me saying I don't understand how to use this. Hold on.Michele Hansen  7:05  I need to like I'm I'm pulling look at it. So nowColleen Schnettler  7:08  Yeah, pull it up. Okay, so if you go to simple file, upload.com, and then click on Doc's documentation,Michele Hansen  7:15  you got that calm, like,Colleen Schnettler  7:17  I know, I win it names. So if you look at it, I was like so I also bought unrelated simple file. Wait, what did I buy? I bought simple image upload calm. Hmm, I haven't done anything with it. I just snagged it. I was like, okay, that seems like what I should have. Okay, so look at this documentation page. Like, I just don't like the way it looks.Michele Hansen  7:40  I mean, it's not the ugliest thing I've ever seen. Like, it's basic, but like,Colleen Schnettler  7:45  it's fine. I mean,Michele Hansen  7:47  it like has a little bit of an old school README file vibe, but totally does. That's not a bad thing. Because that's how documentation was distributed for, like 20 years. And it's still sometimes distributed that way. Yeah. I mean, the other thing is, is like, I think it's okay to like, give yourself that space to be like, you know, like, this is ugly, and I hate it. I'm throw the content in there now. But also, when it comes time to build the documentation, like, there's so many tools for this, like, Don't design your own documentation to you know, like, like, if you're going to build yourself a new closet for all this, like at least buy one from IKEA, and then you just have to assemble it, like, don't go actually go out and buy the two by fours. And you know, like,Colleen Schnettler  8:42  do yeah, you're doing, I don't actually know what tools are out there to build documentation. So what do you guys use? Do you remember? Cuz I know you're right. This has got to be a thing. Like, you're absolutely right. IMichele Hansen  8:57  think I know someone who, like just bought a documentation tool.Colleen Schnettler  9:02  This is interesting.Michele Hansen  9:04  Because, like it definitely I don't I don't remember what the name is of the thing that we use. But we've actually we've actually had people reach out to us saying that they really liked our documentation and wanted to know where we got it from. Like, I think we just got it somewhere. Well,Colleen Schnettler  9:19  this is an interesting thing. I didn't actually I didn't even think about that. But absolutely, you're right, I should there's there's a better way to solve this problem than me. Does that make rewriting this whole thing? So what you're looking at now, the here's the real reason I want to redo it. What you're looking at now comes through the application page, and the application app does not use tailwind. My. My marketing site does use tailwind so that my thought would be to rewrite all of this documentation, put it on the marketing siteMichele Hansen  9:52  using tailwind because would you design it yourself with like tailwind elements or would you grab a template from tailwind.Colleen Schnettler  10:01  Oh, totally. I pay for whatever that thing is with tailwind where I can just copy the code and put it on. I bought that. Yeah.Michele Hansen  10:09  But it's worth it. It was totally worth anything is worth it. Totally Great. So yeah, there's I don't know, I don't know, read me.io. Right. Like there's all sorts of, is that what we use? That kind of looks like our docks?Colleen Schnettler  10:23  See, I didn't know that. IMichele Hansen  10:24  don't know. I don't think I'll have to ask Mateus. Right.Colleen Schnettler  10:28  So this is this is a good point, though. I should, because I don't need API documentation too. So I need to think about, yeah, readme.io has a whole documentation tab. Ooh, this looks fun. Oh, all right. I'm totally gonna check this out after the podcast, maybe that is the right answer.Michele Hansen  10:46  I don't know how much it costs. But yeah,Colleen Schnettler  10:49  well, it's gonna be cheaper than five hours of my time. Right. Right. Like, there's no way it cost that money, yourMichele Hansen  10:55  time is not free. And this is See See, this is I always say that, like, you know, I studied economics and undergrad. And I'm always like, Oh, you know, it was interesting, but it doesn't really relate. But here is where it does. Because, yeah, opportunity cost is a very real cost. And that is a perfect distillation of it that your time is worth more than spending five hours rolling your own documentation. thing when this is like already a solved problem.Colleen Schnettler  11:31  You're absolutely right. 100% agree with that. You're right. I didn't think about it that way. But that is a true statement.Michele Hansen  11:39  But first, I'd really just like tell people about the stuff you mayColleen Schnettler  11:44  think. Okay, so like, let's get actionable. Because AI, today is my day to work on simple file. So I think the first step, okay, I don't love the documentation I have, but I need to get the information out there. So the first step is just add something that's set like this things that people can use, like these event callbacks, or emitting events, like, that's useful information. So I'm just add it, you know, just adding it'll take all of 15 minutes. And like, I don't want to, you know,Michele Hansen  12:11  I don't want to be like standing on my, like, high horse here that like, you know, oh, we tell users everything we do, because actually, something we were just talking about this week was like, oh, like, we need to, like, send out an email to people and like, tell them about the features we've added because we basically stopped sending product updates, email, like, we never so. And then also like MailChimp shut down their pay as you go at one point. And, and then we're like, migrating and all this stuff. And I think we sent out like one email since then. But like, we were just talking about this the other day, that's like, oh, like we added support for like, geocoding a county, like if you know, you like have like a street address plus, like Montgomery County, Maryland, for example, like in places that like, use the county rather than the city name. We haven't told anyone about it, because we haven't sent any product updates, email, and God knows how long so I'm all this is to say that I am. I also need to take my own advice. And maybe other people too, maybe there's somebody out there, you know, just tell people about the thing you made. The thing you made? Yeah. Just tell them. Don't Don't think about you know, marketing stuff and ads and get all in your head about that. Just tell people. Yeah, even if it's a plain text email, just tell them just Just tell me advice I'm trying to give myself and I'm, I am trying to manifest it into existence that we will do that whole step to send out an email to get people to opt in. And then after that, we send out an email that tells them with the stuff we did, maybe that can be one email.Colleen Schnettler  14:42  Yes. So people tell people got it. I like it. That's good advice, your marketing advice. That's my marketing advice for the day I get to tell people. Yeah, so that's kind of what's up with me. I'm going to try And get those things implemented today. So hopefully that'll move the needle a little bit on signups. It was Yeah, it's definitely been a very trough of sorrow six weeks though I was like, Wow, that's a long time. eek.Michele Hansen  15:13  So I mean, there's the reason why there is that product lifecycle, like chart that has the trough of sorrow on it is because the trough of sorrow is normal.Colleen Schnettler  15:27  is normal. Oh, okay. This will be interesting.Michele Hansen  15:31  Yeah, yeah. There's like this whole image that's like the I didn't know that. Okay. Yeah. No, I when I said trough of sorrow, I was referencing something. Okay. I'll have to, I'll have to find it and send it to you. And also put it in the show notes. So everybody else who's like, What is she talking about? And then like five products, people listening are like, Oh, my God, I know that. I forget where it comes from. I think it might be like, it might have been a business of software talk at one point. ThatColleen Schnettler  15:57  Okay, oh, no,Michele Hansen  15:58  I think it might be the constant contact. Founder person.Colleen Schnettler  16:03  Has she interested in her? I don't know. Okay.Michele Hansen  16:07  Yeah, I'm gonna find it. It'll be in the show notes. So listening does not have to, like wonderColleen Schnettler  16:13  what it was to go dig through the internet to try and find itMichele Hansen  16:16  like normal to have, you know, periods when you're like, Okay, like, nothing happened. I mean, granted, you said that you kind of weren't really doing anything with it. So the fact that your revenue didn't like crater even though you basically didn't touch it for six weeks, like, that's awesome.Colleen Schnettler  16:36  Yeah, that's super awesome. Like,Michele Hansen  16:39  again, you know, to our conversations of like, if you ever wanted to sell this thing, like the fact that you didn't touch it for six weeks, and it kept making money. huge selling point.Colleen Schnettler  16:48  Yeah, yeah, it's super. so far. It's been super low touch, which is awesome. It's so funny, because years and years ago, I used to obsessively read. Do you know, Pat Flynn is smart, passive income guy? No. Okay. He's got this whole empire built about trying to teach people how to build passive income on the internet. Okay. And I used to obsessively read his blog. I mean, we're talking like 10 years ago. And here I am with kind of sort of passive income ish. And that's kind of cool. Yeah, you did anyway. So, yeah. Tell me about how things are going with the book and your podcast tour.Michele Hansen  17:26  Oh, so they're going so I think you had challenged me to be on 10-20 I feel like it was 20. I feel likeColleen Schnettler  17:37  I mean, it's been a while, but I feel like it was more than 10.Michele Hansen  17:41  So okay, so I have been on a couple at this point. So I was working, I was on searching for SaaS with Josh and Nate which sweet By the way, so of like people like our dynamic of like, you know, somebody like who has a SaaS and then somebody who's like trying to start one and like different phases, you would totally love searching for SaaS, because Josh has been running his business for, like, quite a long time, referral rock, has employees like, and then Nate is kind of has like consulting and is trying to figure out a SaaS. So I was on searching for SaaS, they were my first one. Um, and I'm so glad I did one with like, friends, because I was so nervous about the whole like, and I'm promoting a book, but it feels like self promotion, and I just just like is uncomfortable for me. So. So so I'm really glad I did it with them first, and then I recorded another one. That's actually they told me was not going to be out for another three or four months. So we'll hear about that one when it comes out. IsColleen Schnettler  18:45  that a secret?Michele Hansen  18:47  No. I mean, I just, I'll just tweet about it when it like comes out. But that counts, right? That's two. Yeah. And then I was on one night in product with Jason Knight, which came out a couple like, yeah, a couple days ago. That was super fun. Because that's like a podcast for product people. And we like really like dove deep on some of the different books and the differences and like, my fears around like people using this to like manipulate others was really it was really good. Um, so that's three and then I was on indie hackers, that that just came out. So that was kind of fun. I feel like I feel like I don't know like, I feel like it is like so legit. Like I don't know, it was kind of it was kind of wild. Indie hackers. Yeah. Being on the indie now.Colleen Schnettler  19:46  Did you talk about Geocodio or do you talk about the book or both?Michele Hansen  19:49  we talked about Geocodio a little bit but mostly about the book. Just kind of Geocodio as background.Colleen Schnettler  19:58  Okay. Yeah. Oh yeah, getting on Indie hackers that's basically making it. Like, that's amazing.Michele Hansen  20:05  Yeah. Like, can I be like, starstruck at myself for like,Colleen Schnettler  20:09  yes, you totally can. Like, I just think like, that's like, you know, that's like my life goal. No, that's not really a life goal. But I'm like, someday I will be on indie hackers. Someday Courtland will ask. I know, if I just take a couple more years. No, I love that podcast. I think that's wonderful. And yeah, yeah. Now you're kind of famous like, totally. Once you're an indie hackers, you've made it.Michele Hansen  20:33  I know, you're so funny. So like, I you're talking about this a little bit when when we add Adam on a few weeks ago that like, you know, I for a long time, like, like, so I didn't know that this whole community existed and that I knew about it, but I didn't feel like, feel like I was like, legit enough to like, be there, which was not true and was just my own imposter syndrome speaking. But for years, I had this like, sort of self policy that I would only go to conferences if I was speaking at them, because then people would come up to me and have something to talk about. Otherwise, I would be like standing in the corner, like not talking to anyone and like feeling like super out of it. Um, and so now I'm like, Okay, you know what, like, now if I like, go to something like, I feel like there's a good chance that like, one person, like, knows me, and we'll have something to talk about.Colleen Schnettler  21:29  Yeah. Yeah, that's great. I mean, that's a benefit of sharing your work, I think the way you have been. Yeah,Michele Hansen  21:38  yeah. So um, okay, so wait, so I lost count. Okay, so searching first as you're coming out in a couple of months. And Indie Hackers. Oh, wait, I think I forgot one. No, no, that's four. And then I recorded one yesterday. So that's five and then I am recording another one. today. So Wow, six. And then I'm scheduling another one. like trying to get that one on the calendar. Um, that person is also on pacific time like you and dude, it is so hard for me to schedule things with pacific time. Like, yeah, that nine hour time difference is required at the top planning. So I guess that's that's six I have either recorded or in the hopper. And I think there was more people who reach out to me, but I think they DMed me and I need to like, cuts through the jungle morass that is my DMs.Colleen Schnettler  22:48  That's great. I mean, honestly, 10 would it be spectacular? Colleen said, I have really 20. I know, now that I'm actually thinking through the logistics? That seems like a lot. Let me out of this. That's really great. So my next question would be, have you seen any, any impact yet of being on these podcasts? In terms of sales or community engagement or anything like that?Michele Hansen  23:15  Yeah, I mean, I guess the the biggest bump was definitely product times. Um, like, I think I saw like that day, like, I sold like 20 something. Or like, almost 30 copies, I think out of, I don't know, because I'm probably at like 350 now, or no, actually, it's more than that. Almost 400. So, oh, wait, maybe I'll be at almost 500 soon. That would be fun. Yeah. So So yeah, so there was definitely a little bump out of that. I did look this up for Josh and Nate from Searching for SaaS. And I sold three copies a day that one came out. So they were pretty pumped about that. I mean, I think it's the kind of thing where, like, not everybody, like listens to a podcast on the day. It comes. Yeah. Like, I was, like a regular listener of us. And like, they were like three episodes behind, because, you know, you've listened to it whenever you can. And there's other stuff going on. So in many ways, it's like, it's not really for the immediate hit of that in the same way that say like product time was,Colleen Schnettler  24:27  um, yes, yeah, yeah, long game.Michele Hansen  24:30  The long game there we go. Looking for. Um, so I mean, I guess we'll see. Right, because it's like, this is you know, this is not a like Big Bang. Launch. Right. Like, this is like the the book is hopefully designed or like written in a way, you know, to be a book that people recommend to other people they buy for their team. Like it's not like it's not particularly timely or relevant to like current events? So it's okay, if it doesn't, you know, sell like a bajillion copies in the first two months. Like, that's totally fine. You know, it's funny I was I was, I came across a tweet by our mutual friend, Mike Buckbee this morning, saying that, you know, validation for something is when you're getting stranger money. Like people who don't know you, they're not your friends. They're not the people that follow you. They're just like people who, you know, come across it for a reason. And then they buy it, and they're happy with it. And the book is definitely getting stranger money. SoColleen Schnettler  25:42  wonderful.Michele Hansen  25:43  Yeah. So So I so I think that's kind of a sign that it's, it was like, I mean, it was actually getting that in the presale. So. So I think that's a sign that, you know, things are in the right track, but it's just like, this is gonna be a slow burn.Colleen Schnettler  25:59  Yes.Michele Hansen  26:00  Yeah. So I mean, I'm happy with things, you know, again, like considering that, I think it was like most self published books only sell like 250 copies lifetime. And then most published books sell 300 copies their first year. Um, I've already, like smashed that. So anything on top of that, basically, is gravy. And but again, like those numbers, like are kind of like I look at that I'm like, Yeah, cool. Okay, like, but mostly, it's like, people tweet out, like, somebody tweeted out this morning that, like, they had their first customer interview, and it was delightful. And they learned so much. And like, they had scheduled it for 15 minutes. But at the customer's insistence, it went on for almost an hour. And they learned so much. And it was like, and I was like yes. Okay, like this. Okay, the book did what it was supposed to do like that. Yeah, that is what makes it feel like a success more than Yeah,Colleen Schnettler  26:49  that's anything that's really cool. Well, in the money. I mean, you know, I was thinking about, like, what motivates you Because for me, I want life changing money, you could get life changing money, any, anytime you want it like you You, you could just snap your fingers because you have a successful business. So that's something that I assume does not motivate you, because you kind of already have it. And so you know, when I think about the book, and like how you've been motivated, it really feels like helping people like really literally helping people learn how to be empathetic is what has driven this passion project for you.Michele Hansen  27:27  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it's been a very, like, personal sort of mission, because it's not just about talking to customers like, and, and I guess what I mean, so one of them's actually this will be coming out the same day. So I guess I can talk about it. But I was talking about this a lot with Justin Jackson, on on Build Your SaaS about how, like, he was reading the book, and it made him realize like, oh, wow, like, I can actually use this in my personal life too. And like, it's like, not just a business book. And I was, you know, saying to him how, like, I think I've told you how, you know, people don't put be more empathetic on their daily to do lists, but they put, write the landing page, improve the documentation, get more sales, like, stop churn, figure out if people can use the thing I bill, like, that's the stuff that ends up on your to do list, and you can use empathy to solve those problems. And then in the course of doing that, you realize that you can transfer some of these skills to your personal life as well. Then it's like a double win.Colleen Schnettler  28:38  Wow. Yeah. So the other day, my 10 year old asked me what empathy was, and I literally handed him your book. Like, read this book.Michele Hansen  28:48  Let me guys this because this is the question that I get from children and adults, but children generally their first question, why is there a duck on the cover?Colleen Schnettler  28:58  He totally asked that. Yeah.Michele Hansen  29:03  Love it. Love it. Well, you know, you can tell him that he will find out when he gets to let me just flip through it here. I believe it's chapter 34. Um, you know, never accused me of burying the lede here. To get 138 pages, you will discover why there is a duck on the cover.It has been fun talking to you, as always, you too.Colleen Schnettler  29:45  I'll talk to you next week. All right.

In this Investor Stories episode, co-founder of West Irving Capital and Stessa power-user, Derrick Deese shares his investment journey. From strategy, operations, and portfolio growth, Derrick shares a wealth of information for investors. We also cover how Derrick uses Stessa for asset management, to simplify his process for procuring lenders, completing taxes and keep a finger on the pulse of his portfolio performance.  WestIrvingCapital.com --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum. And today with us, we have a very special guest, Derrick Deese out of the Pacific Northwest. He's an investor that started small on Rootstock and is now up to 40 plus units with his partner, we're going to talk to him about how he scaled, what tips he has for newer investors and what programs he uses to manage a portfolio that size. So let's get into it.   Awesome, Derrick. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to hang out with us today. Really appreciate it, man.   Derrick: Thanks, Michael. Appreciate it. And happy to be here. And thanks for inviting me and look forward to chatting.   Michael: Yeah, absolutely. So I want to hear about your background. But before we do, I'm curious to know, what was like your worst day ever since becoming a real estate investor?   Derrick: Oh, well, I will, I will let you now. So the worst day I think was actually someone called and said that there was poop and I'll use poop versus the other word coming out of your toilet. It was about 11:30. At night, I actually had just had my second child, my daughter, Evelyn and I was holding her about 11:30 I get a call saying that there's poop come out of toilet. What do we do? And so I had to deal with that. And it was just one of those things, we sort of have to sort of say s.h.i.t happens. And it's sort of one of those forescout moments.   But right that that was pretty, that was pretty funny at the time, I'd look back, but it's sort of one of the things where like, you know, you sort of deal with the good and bad with it. But that was probably one of the worst areas. And really, you know, we had to end up cleaning a pipe inside one of the buildings and following the plumbing stack was off or something. But it comes with territory. So   Michael: It comes it comes with the business. When they said what do we do? Did you tell them like, well put the poop back in the toilet, that's belongs, it's kind of a no brainer.   Derrick: Basically, I said, you know, just get a plunger and just call the day. I can't come out there. You know, figure it out. Just put it back in there. It's probably your poop anyway. So Michael: Yea better than someone else's poop.   Derrick: Exactly. So yeah, yeah, but that was probably the worst. But then in terms of and then in terms of this background, right. I mean, I, I can give you just a quick background for myself in terms of sort of where I how I got to where I am.   So I actually started off. I've had a career in a variety of different different functional areas. I started off after college, in investment banking, and did that for several years. And I actually covered real estate investment trusts when I was doing that, that's when I first started to learn about just real estate in general different asset classes across real estate and understanding how the business works there.   And then from you know, after banking, went to grad school, came out, I did strategy for a little bit. And now I actually work in the tech industry, and really the sales and business development function. And I've been doing that for the past seven years. And I really started getting into real estate, honestly, three years ago, and it was what the birth the birth of my first child a room. And I sort of said, You know, I got to figure out a way to diversify a little bit, but also just figure out a way to own my own time and spend some more time with my kids because I realized that I wasn't spending lot of time with him because he wakes up, I want him to work, I come back from work he was sleeping.   So that's really the the impetus behind me starting to invest was was really family related. And then as I've continued, you know, it sort of has expanded into writing different things which I can get into. But that's really why I started investing in the first place really, for my son, and now my daughter as as as well, and also my wife as well just disappear. We'll have more time to own ourselves.   Michael: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm curious what I mean, if it was the birth of your first child, that would truly was the wake up call. Because you were involved, we can say in the space and you knew about it. But why didn't you feel like it was for you? or Why didn't you take the time to invest back then? wasn't just Oh, it's for somebody else? I don't need to do that. Or just curious what your where the where your mind was at back then?   Derrick: Yeah, honestly, I think that that was one of the things where it's a it seemed almost unattainable. When I first started thinking about it. And again, working in banking, I learned about investing in general. So I had invested in the public markets and sort of was very comfortable there. It was very accessible. You could just go to, you know, fidelity and just buy and sell stocks. It was easy. And I and I knew it. And the people with whom I worked on a real estate side, you know, when I when I covered them, you know, they were all they owned 1000s of units and had tons of space.   And so I just it just wasn't clear to me that you could start off buying a single family or duplex and that wasn't something that I just realized. But then as I started doing more research into sort of Ever friends and people, I sort of realized that you have to start somewhere. And taking your first step is important. And you're not going to start off buying, you know, a 1000s for, you know, 1000 units ready to start off with just one.   And so really, it was just sort of a, I guess, a mis misalignment in my mind of what was like feasible to start versus what versus what I have seen that that was the biggest barrier for me. And once I sort of overcame that barrier, it just became much more easier.   Michael: Awesome. And so what was it that allowed you to actually take that leap to go from zero to one to make that first purchase? And I'm curious to know, if you remember, any, were you just scared out of your mind? Or would you think we confident because you'd seen it? And you you'd seen but it was possible, it was possible? Talk us through that? Yeah. So it's kind of funny.   Derrick: So it's kind of serendipitous that, you know, both Stessa and Roofstock are now one of the same because my first purchase was actually the Roofstock.   Michael: Okay, yeah.   Derrick: And, and I, I was looking at, I said, I don't, I said, I, I knew how the process of buying homes, I'd done it before my primary residence, I did not know, for investment home. So it was kind of daunting to figure out how to find an agent and find a property manager and all this stuff over time. And I ended up doing it. But when I first started, it was just daunting. So I, I literally looked up, like how to buy properties online, I googled it. And, you know, Roofstock came up, and then also, another company came up, I happen to start browsing through stock, love the UI, found a property in Ohio, and wants you to process the Roofstock. And literally, I bought it and I you know, you sort of expect like, you know, some Gong in the sky to like, you know, well, yeah, I'm just like, Okay, done. Like, here's your property. And I said, Okay, that that was it. Right. And after that, it just you started to just start moving forward. But my first property was actually bought the Roofstock. So   Michael: Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. It was funny. I was chatting with another member, who's who's from rootstock Academy. And I asked him, he closed on this property. And I said, so what did you think? And he goes, honestly, Michael, it was so anticlimactic. And I said, it's because you did all the legwork up front. It should be anticlimactic. It should be boring. Investing should be boring a lot of the time. So I love that. That's   Derrick: Exactly, Exactly.   Michael: So So you got that single family home? Was that a single family? Yes. Okay, so that was your first single family, your your first investment property single family out in Ohio. Talk to us a little bit about what your portfolio looks like today.   Derrick: Yeah, so the portfolio has grown. Over the past three years, now it's close to 40, or somebody units, I think, mostly in Ohio. And I primarily do my investing through a business partnership really is called West Irving Capital Partners, you can go to the website and check it out. It's just westirvingcapital.com. And it's really myself and two other partners who primarily do a mix of call it two to four units, and also some five plus units. So we have around 40 split up between duplexes and a couple of actual, you know, public apartment buildings in the world, but they're under 10 units. And so that's what a portfolio looks like. Now.   You know, we primarily invest in Ohio, just because, you know, we like the market, we think there's a lot of upside in that particular area. And again, our whole strategy is sort of focused on finding properties that we think are undervalued or mismanaged. We've we've seen that there is a lack of supply of housing that is, you know, high quality and also decently priced. That's where our niches, we focus on rents that are around 800 to $1200. We put in some capital expenses, some some ESM, some capex upfront. And that's what we do. And we've been doing that for the past three years.   Michael: I love that strategy. And so I want to come back to this strategy as a whole. But you mentioned targeting properties that are mismanaged. And I want to hear a little bit more about that from because I think a lot of people when they're looking for investment properties, if they see something that appears mismanage they run the other way. But what you're saying is they're running towards it. So what what do you mean by mismanagement? And what, at the risk of giving away the secret sauce? What kind of risk management things are you looking for?   Derrick: Sure, no, I try to give as much information, Michael, just because, you know, the market is so vast, everyone can win. You know, it's not like I'm, you know, I have the only manufacturer of widgets on the country, right, everybody can buy real estate, so I will give as much as I can.   It's sort of funny, as I look at listings, or even talk of talking to people on the ground, I think that I've realized that you can that when you look at the marketing of a property listing, I sort of tend to take with a grain of salt because it's like oh, like you know, some updates have been made to me that means nothing has been updated. So the bare minimum right now like you know, it says like, you know, newer water heater or something Um, like that probably means it's like 10 years old, right?   So it's like any things that I've seen over time, I sort of said look like people don't put in the capital and it is capital intensive, I get that. But people haven't put in the capital that's needed to sort of keep them up to date. And you can sort of see it through MLS listings, or even talking to people who are just around the neighborhoods and seeing houses, right. So some properties that we bought off market, for example, sort of fit the criteria, but it was talking to people and sort of seeing what the condition of the properties were in.   And, you know, most of the times, Michael, there's, I say, mismanaged, and there's mismanagement where it's like, the roofs falling in, or it's like, the, the house is just a little bit dated, and needs a couple of, you know, cosmetic updates, and some mechanicals, we sort of go towards that, you know, the ladder, like we don't want the roof caving in. But it's like, Look, if we need to replace a couple mechanicals, if we need to update some of the fixtures, and they could let you know, more more modern, we're going to do that because our time horizon is, you know, extremely long term. And we don't have any intention on selling anything. And so for us, putting the capital in upfront to start is, you know, an upfront expense, but ultimately, it will pay off down the long run for us.   And that's what we focus on. And so that's what we mean by mismanage is like deferred maintenance. People who, who don't really want to be a, you know, a property owner and want to sort of get out. You know, and obviously, there's there's things that there's other things that go into that whether it is, you know, not wanting to deal with, you know, poopy toilets not wanting to do a lot of things. That's we look for, and again, like, it's, it's worked for us. And that's what we continue to do.   Michael: Yeah. That's great. And so are you utilizing property management? Or are you self managing? So I know you got the empty toilet call? So is that talked about how you're structuring that?   Derrick: Yeah, so it's so it's so it is a mix. So so so the vast majority of the portfolio is through West Irving Capital Partners, but I do have some that I manage myself, and then I have through the partnership, so that would be that was one that I own myself. So that's, that's, that's why there, but I guess we do property management, based in Ohio, great to work with, they do all the leasing the rent collection, things of that nature. And this is sort of funny, like, this is one thing that I didn't know, as an initial, you know, investor, you hear property management, eager asset management, I thought that they were the same thing. They're not I realized, finally, I, you know, I was today years old when I realized that right?   You know, like property management, you know, rent collection, marketing, the property insurance, that it's sort of, like up to standards, great. Asset Management is sort of like, okay, what's the property look like? What are the aesthetics? What, how do I make it modern? How do I position this, you know, as within a portfolio, so that's sort of another piece of that we also do, and ensure that our properties, again, are in the highest and best quality shape, we can make them. So that way, our property manager can make their job easier, right, rent them easily, you know, get the top of the line rents, and get high quality tenants.   Michael: Yeah. Awesome. So I know. And we're kind of gonna shift gears here, since you brought up into asset management, talk to us a little bit about how you do manage your assets.   Derrick: We, we want our assets to be in the best shape that we can have them want to make sure that they're updated to the best quality that that they can be. And we tried to position ourselves as basically like the best landlords, if you will, in the market, in which we operate. And so for us, that means, you know, we could go towards, you know, basic basic fixtures, or we can go sort of like a little bit to higher up to make sure that they're sort of like, you know, nice and are going to last so that's, that's one thing that we choose to do.   Yeah, we can have many houses have sort of old, sort of like aluminum windows, like we try to get vinyl to make sure that, you know, we can maintain, you know, heat, moisture, etc. And it'll also like reduce utility bills down down down the line, we also ensure, you know, we want to focus on the actual property for the tenants, and, you know, the uses of that property is something that we're providing, but anything outside of that, whether it's utilities, water, etc, you know, we believe, you know, should be borne by the tenants are using that. So, we try to submitter all of our properties, such that, you know, the actual utility payments are coming from the tenant.   And again, when I say sort of like, mismanaged assets, right, many properly bought has not been submitted, and the prior owner was paying all the water and water bills is can can get expensive. I have, I have no bearing on water usage, but I can absolutely dictate what the property looks like. So that's sort of our strategy in terms of, from utility standpoint, from from from the asset as well.   And that's what we're really focused on, we're really focused on, on on, on ensuring that it's high quality, and then in terms of how we position our portfolio, you know, we want to make sure that that our assets are, are smartly leveraged, right. So we don't want to over leverage in the market, we try to make sure that we're around 65 to 70% LTV at purchase, we think that we can add we can then force appreciation to some updates that we talked about. So that way our LTV is Can, you know drop a little bit a little bit more such that we can then look to refinance over call a two, three year period and take a capital and then allocated somewhere else?   So that's sort of our approach to asset management. Yeah.   Michael: Oh my gosh. I love that, Derek. And for those of you listening to the episode, not checking us out on YouTube, when Derek talking about submetering, I got this ear to ear grin. And part of the reason I love being a co host on this show is that it's so self serving, and we get to ask our guests all kinds of interesting questions. A lot of them come from our own brain. So I'm very curious, because I have several buildings actually, that I've been looking to sub meter. They're they're smaller multi families, you know, in that five unit range, and I just haven't found an economical company or resource to do that with but it sounds like you have.   Derrick: Yeah, I mean, it really depends on it really depends on what like market you're in. So So may I ask you a question? Like, you know, what, what markets? Are you in Michael?   Michael: So I'm in Cincinnati, and Northern Kentucky.   Derrick: Okay, so those are my two main markets. So, okay, so it's a close, close, close ish. area, and I've been looking for something for ad Cincinnati as well. So So really, within within the area, again, like, there has been, um, spectra energy, which is one, and also, you know, Guardian, Guardian Water and Power has been our main provider, but they, I think that they've been shifting towards less, sort of, like, quote, unquote, smaller units. But I think that if you have five plus units, that actually would be a good one. I think that they're charging 20 bucks per per unit, to on an ongoing on an ongoing basis.   But then there's this the the setup fees, are the capital expense, right, and then it's the cost of the actual submeter, the cost of the installation, etc. That's where it gets a little pricey. But again, I think about it as an upfront investment, it's gonna pay off down the road, because the submetering will ultimately reduce your utility bills on the road.   Michael: Yeah, totally.   Derrick: So I would check out either Yeah, you know, either guardian and or spectrum energy. Especially since they may actually be available in either Cincinnati or Northern Kentucky. Again, I'm not sure if they serve those those markets. But since in Ohio, it's worth a shot.   Michael: Totally. And I'm just writing that down. Now. This is awesome. So for those of you that might not be familiar with, with Derek and I are talking about. So submetering is basically when you have a property that has contains multiple units, so that can make you flesh out like squat, any number of units, there's a different there are several different ways to meter, the energy usage of that property of the utility. So water meter, electricity and gas, if it has it. So if it's something is called master meter, you're going to have one single meter coming into the building that feeds all of the units. And in that instance, it's really difficult to say, Okay, well unit one use this much energy unit to use this much. So they send out bills accordingly. So that's an instance where the landlord typically pays all of the utilities, because there's no way to measure how much is being used by each individual unit, versus installing some metering like what Derrick is talking about is every unit will actually then go get its own separate utility meter installed.   So we can tell how much do you how much water or electricity or gas unit one use, and send them in appropriate bill, and so on, and so forth. So this is an instance I've got a five unit building, it's master metered. The water bill can fluctuate from like 100 bucks a month to like 1000 bucks a month. And we charge a flat bill back for the tenants. And so every month, I lose that on the months where the water bill is really big, I really lose. And that folks are incentivized to tell you if their toilets are leaking or their showers that he because they don't care. They're not paying the bill. So this is a really, really, really great strategy for folks that have multiple units in the same building that have a master meter in place. I love that man.   Derrick: That's a great summary. That's a great summary.   Michael: Awesome. So talk to us about some of the software that you use to help manage your 40 plus units. I mean, I know that you're you're a Stessa user, so I'm curious to get your thoughts on on the program.   Derrick: Yeah, Stessa has been pretty tremendous for us. I mean, honestly, we we do all of our at westerbeke. We do all of our accounting, tax preparation, analysis for the properties, all this. So it's been pretty instrumental, honestly, in managing our business. You know, we're outside investors. And so you know, we're not on the ground. So being able to look at the data, there's data to be able to understand what's happening at a portfolio level, but also at a unit level is great. That's our main source, right? I mean, so so we link all of our accounts. So we see all the rents that come in, we see all the expenses that come out, you know, we're able to track our ltds we're able to track our, you know, stress test scenarios, depending on what happens. That's great for COVID obviously, right, like there's a lot of stress in the market overall.   We use it to look at our overall balance sheet to see sort of where we stand. We use it to have a quick download to get information to lenders who need it when we're looking for additional financing. So it's it's it's, it's great. I mean, it's it is much tremendous tool. We've been using it since we first started and anybody who does not have you know, a system To manage your properties, I highly recommend it. Because it's been great for us, I probably would categorize myself as a power user. I mean, I'm probably in stessa. At least, if not once a day, once every other day, to met to manage it, but truly a tremendous tool and any and a powerful data visualization tool as well just as sort of see trends and be able to address things for the properties in the future.   Michael: Love it. And I'm sure everybody listening is gonna be very curious. Derrick, how much did we pay you for this demo? PSA?   Derrick: Negative $1? Yeah, no, I mean, it's I mean, there's Yeah, there's, it just so happens that this, you know, this podcast is on this. So but I've been using Stesa for the past three years. And it's been pretty incredible. And there's more features that come out all the time. With any product, right, there's obviously obviously things that can can be addressed and things that will come down the pipeline, but it's been great. And again, like literally anything that you need for your properties, whether it's tax preparation, understanding how your assets are performing, looking at the income statement, looking at cash flow, looking at balance sheet, looking at ledger being like anything, it's all there. So it's kind of like, why why you something.   Michael: Why go anywhere else? No, that's great. That's great. That's just me. What would you say your one fit your favorite feature is?   Derrick: I would probably say, I'll, I'll give, I'll give two. So what I what I will say is a dashboard, it's like really cool to see the visualization, that like the opening dashboard is to showcase like this snapshot, what's happened to properties where they stand, what's your cash flow estimates look like? etc, that's probably the one. The second I actually think, which I think is pretty cool. And this is probably a nerdy one is just the rent roll, because you can just download it and sort of see like, it's sort of like a, like a snapshot of your properties. And you can just send it to a lender to say, like, Look, here's our portfolio. Here's our LTV. Here's our estimated cash flow across properties. It has, you know, taxes, insurance, and they're etc. I think that was a pretty powerful one. Because like, we've used it so often, just to say like, is every lender asked same thing? What's your rent roll? Where's your income statement? What's your trailing 12 months? Give me I mean, so literally, you know, there's so many times I just feel like I'm sitting on our computer doing this on stuff like this, like downloading. Like, okay, rent roll, okay, here. So, the rent roll one, I think is a good one to take as I use it so often.   Michael: Yeah, it's such a good point, too, that all lenders, almost every single lender is gonna ask for the same stuff. So if you're using your own program, you know, have a folder of using Stessa. It's all kind of contained in one place. So I'm curious to get your thoughts too, because I know, I've heard that one of the qualms about is, oh, I gotta take time and set this all up and input all the information, all that kind of stuff. From your perspective, now that you've grown your portfolio? And I think you know the answer, but I have to ask it anyhow. Was it worth it? Was the time set up on the front end worth it?   Derrick: Absolutely. It's no different than capital expense for your property. The same thing, you just have these set up once and then after that just pays off. So like, thinking about it is like putting in a new HVAC system. It's like, Oh, my God, I have to buy a new furnace. It's like, well, you got to buy it. And once you buy it, you under bought, you don't have to pay for another one for like, 20 years. It's the same thing. You just do it once it takes so long, it takes like an hour. It's not like it takes 10 days. It's like it takes an hour to like, sign up your account and then put in your you know, your stuff. It's like an hour, so it's not totally worth it. I would do it again in a second. Take an hour. Yeah.   Michael: Awesome. Awesome. That's great stuff, man. So yeah, I want to wind back the clock a little bit. And have you talked to some of our newer investors. So when you after you bought that first property, what allowed you to go step two, and three and four, and really snowball into this massive portfolio that unit partners have been able to accumulate?   Derrick: Yeah, I mean, I really think that that part of it is just taking action. I mean, taking action is such a huge thing that I would say to anybody who's getting into it is that it's so easy to overanalyze, and to create blockers for yourself to say, well, this doesn't fit my numbers, like your first deal is never going to be the best deal. Let's be honest, it's gonna be okay.   Michael: Whhhat?   Derrick: Yeah exactly. Oh my god, it's not a homerun. Maybe you get maybe not even a single maybe you like bunt, and then like they pay you out at first. It's not gonna be the greatest, right? So set expectations, right? But taking action is the biggest thing, right? You have to take action. I think you have to make a conscious choice to say, look, I want to be I want to invest in real estate, I want to be a real estate investor. You have to start somewhere. And I think that getting something under your belt, learning from it, and then applying that to the next one, I think is what I would recommend. That's what I've done. I started off with Roofstock right, they sort of it sort of did everything for me it sort of got the property manager it got the lender, it sort of set it up.   So I said okay, like, they're, they're doing this so I can do it too. And again, it wasn't time investment for myself to do it upfront, right? For myself, my partners that West Irving, right, but now we have agents. We have property managers, we lenders, it's upfront investment. But it was the action that first started. So to me the action is really the biggest thing and being able to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, because it will never not be uncomfortable buying something that you may not necessarily see. That cost a lot of money. It's not it's not comfortable, but like you have to take action and get comfortable being uncomfortable as a as a baseline for stuff that sort of, I would say, is a very, very big baseline.   Michael: That's great. And I'm curious to know what some of your big takeaways were from that very first deal.   Derrick: Again, your first deal is not going to be on running. It's just not that's the takeaway. Yeah, the property and I still track it. And that's, that's what's still on there. So I still see it. But I'd that property had a tenant that didn't pay for seven months. I think at one point time, I had you know, then it then had to do a pretty extensive rehab, but it was cosmetic rehab, that was a decent amount of money. Yeah, now tend to now it's tenanted again.   But again, you never expect that you sort of see like, oh, if you buy property, and then everything is rosy, it's like no, it takes years to reposition an asset. And there's always lumps in terms of like, you know, using a spreadsheet to analyze properties, I've kind of I'm like, I'm a finance guy. So I understand why the like, the spreadsheets are never going to tell you the truth. You can make it say whatever you want to say, oh, cash 10% cash on cash return and like, my, that's not gonna happen. But someone may not pay rent, you have to replace a furnace, you have to replace a roof, you have to get a city ordinance. I mean, it's all kinds of stuff.   So it's, you have to just take a leap a little bit, the comfort with risk. And take a step right. So again, not gonna be a home run.   And then the second thing, I think, is to sort of like expect the unexpected, right? I think it's setting expectations. Were your first property, you just don't know what you don't know. But you should expect like, hey, at any point in time, right, I may, I may have some expense on are expecting something may break, a window may break, a tenant could leave. So having cash buffer is sort of like the metapoint because there's always something that may happen, and it usually does. So be prepared for that. Right? It's kind of no different than some of the conversations of people having expenses saved up for themselves. from a personal standpoint.   Same thing for reserves, because inevitably, something will happen. And you do not want to be caught off guard when it does, because it can spiral very quickly.   Michael: That's such a great point. And yeah, I've never heard anyone make that connection that bridge between Well, hey, you have an emergency reserve for your personal life. So why wouldn't you have one for your rental property? That just makes so much sense to me.   So, so what I'm just curious to get your personal thoughts. If when you look at a turnkey provider, and they say, Oh, the property is brand new, they have $0 for capex and $0 for repair and maintenance and their pro forma, what are your first thoughts?   Derrick: I take with a grain of salt. I say even brand new properties have issues. I mean, especially new bills today, I've had people who bought new who bought new bills for their primary. And this The stairs are thinking that things things go wrong. And again, like this is no particular homebuilder. I'm not saying this, but like, in today's environment, home go up very quickly, the materials are iffy at best. And it's kind of quick for reason is I will say so I would say I'd still save because realistically, something can happen even in new builds, especially when you know when something's new newly constructed, you know, flooring is shifting around because it's expanding, like, you know, like this thing's on your walls that could happen like the baseboards could turn yellow because they didn't paint they forgot to paint.   I mean, just all kinds of stuff. So I just say I'll add 5% for halfbacks and 10% for maintenance this to start because something's gonna happen. Yeah, even a new build. It doesn't matter. Even if a new build.   Michael: IF it is not today it'll probably be tomorrow.   Derrick: Not today, tomorrow. So I say, turn turnkey, is is is is I'll say turnkey. I'll call it like 180 degree turnkey now 360 because something will happen.   Michael: That's great. That's awesome. All right. And so I'm curious to know, Derrick, for all the new investors out there, especially folks that are part of our Roofock Academy are interested in joining the restock Academy or who are in their education phase, let's call it How would you articulate to them or what would you say to them in how do you know when you've had enough information? How do you know when you're ready to take that leap? Because, like any of us, I'm sure we've also come to analysis paralysis. I need to read one more book. I need to take it to one more seminar one more podcast before I'm ready. How do you how do you know and then how did you know?   Derrick: What I would say is I would make I would make an analogy for those who have significant others, boyfriends, girlfriends wives. It's like how do you know when you're ready? To get married, like, you don't really know, you kind of just kind of have a feeling. And you're like, there's gonna be some lumps. But you kind of have, it's kind of in your gut, right? I think intuition is a very powerful tool that we as humans have, that we sometimes go against.   Intuitively, you know, when that person is right for you, in two, I would make an analogy, like, intuitively you're like, Okay, I'm probably 80% of the way there, I've read this book, I've taken the Roofstock Academy, I've talked to people, I've got all my stuff and in process, the other 20%, the incremental value of that is pretty minimal. I would say, again, once you have 80% of the way there, you know, you want to be an investor, you've taken that step, you've gone through these things like Roofstock Academy, etc. You've gotten comfortable with understanding how the numbers work, right? You won't actually really learn to do it, but getting comfortable with understanding how things work, then taking the leap, because ultimately, otherwise, getting from 80 to 100. It's just gonna take forever, and at that point, you might as well just say, I'm just gonna stop.   That's what I would say, right? Like you, you take that leap from, you know, going from, you know, single on taxes to married filing jointly, like you don't really like, no, you're just like this person, is it? There's going to be some bumps, but this is it, I will make that analogy. It's no different than property investing because you kind of like you kind of there and you're like, wishy washy when we read that wishy washy point of like, I need this disc go. Because if you need that other thing, it's gonna keep prolonging it.   Michael: Ah, dude, I love that. I mean, your isms. Two for two on the episode, you're batting 1000 a day. That's so good. That is so good. Oh, I love it. I love it. I love it.   Derrick: Thanks, man. Thanks. I try to make I try to make try to make analogies things. Because otherwise, I mean, it's easier to comprehend those things personally for me. And people did the same thing when I was asking about these things, too. And it's, you know, people have analogies, I think resonate. And for me, at least, having those comparisons that are personal help make it a little bit easier, right? Especially in investing because it's never going to be easy. I think 80% and you have to make a call.   Michael: Totally, totally. Well, I'm gonna let you get out of here in just a minute. But before I let you go, I want to know where your portfolio's headed from here. What's next on the docket? What do you got your sights on?   Derrick: Yeah, sure. So again, check us out WestirvingCapital.com we're looking to continue to expand in your area, you know, just similar to you, Michael, right, Cincinnati, and Northern Kentucky, that sort of those sort of like, you know, markets, I think are ones that have upside. There are a lot of positive economic indicators. For those areas. It's affordable. With the work from home trend, people may look for places that are more affordable than coastal cities, that will continue to go right, we will continue to look to invest in those areas, again, looking for mismatch or mismanaged properties, both on market or off market.   And again, sticking to that niche, right to the 19 units is sort of where we want to stay like we don't need, we don't see the need to have 100 unit apartment building. For us, we think that there's going to be a great demand for high quality, multifamily housing. And that's what we'll say. I think from there, right, we, you know, our buy partners are always looking for other opportunities in terms of our business. So, you know, thinking about ways that we can also help other investors, right, whether that's through real estate services, real estate, back end services, things like that, is something that we're looking to expand into.   Yeah, nothing on the horizon yet. But again, we're thinking of ways that we can continue to help investors like us, you know, who who are smallish, want to continue to grow. So again, like trying to figure out ways that we can, you know, expand into real estate services is probably the other option, right? So we'd have an investing arm, and then the services arm is sort of where we're looking to trend probably over the next two to three years.   Michael: That's really exciting. That's what it is. And it seems like it's the next logical progression. Because you've got kind of your baseline built at the physical properties. Now going and supporting yourselves. You hear so much about property manager businesses, like I started out of necessity to manage their own stuff, and like, Oh, well, we'll help that that friend or that family member. That's really exciting. I can't wait to see where you take it from here.   Derrick: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks a lot.   Michael: And so if people want to reach out to you have additional questions is the best place check out wwestirvingcapital.com? Or do you want to share?   Derrick: WestIrvingCapital.com is our website, there's a Contact Us form there, which is really great. And again, our main email is info@westirvingcapital.com. So you can either submit a submit on the site for contact us, or submit an email to info and one of us will respond back and again, we're happy to help out any way we can. We won't have all the answers But again, we were sort of in many of the same shoes as many investors out there. Just you know, we started only recently, so we're still new to it as well. And we're still learning so happy to share, share, to share the advice.   Michael: That's great. And just so anybody out there I mean, my personal opinion, it sounds like you probably share it as well there. If anybody says they have all the answers run don't walk the other way. Because they're, they're full, they're full of that comes out of poopy toilets.   Derrick: Full of what comes out of poopy toilets. Yes, yes, exactly.   Michael: Man. Well, this. This was great. Derrick, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story and tidbits of advice. There's a lot of golden nuggets in there. I definitely look forward to touching base with you again shortly.   Derrick: Thanks so much Michael. And thanks for the time and again those those those those who are looking to invest Rofstock Academy is going to be great for you and again, using Stessa to help manage, it's gonna be awesome too. So Best of luck to all those out there who are just getting started.   Michael: Right on. Talk to you soon, man.   Okay, everybody, that was our episode a big big, big thank you to Derek after the recording of this. He and I were chatting we definitely want to have him back on. He has a wealth of knowledge. I highly recommend you go back and listen to this episode again. As always, if you'd like the episode, feel free to give us a rating or review wherever it is using your podcasts. If you're checking us out on YouTube, hit the like and subscribe button below us we can continue bringing you content like this. We look forward to seeing on the next one and happy investing.

Jason Hartman joins us to talk about how young investors can navigate the current housing market and succeed. We cover inflation - what it is, what it does, and how you can use it to your advantage as an investor; how to think about debt; his favorite asset class; his strategy for financial perpetual motion; and how to think about mitigating risk. Jason's Site: https://www.JasonHartman.com Free Book: https://www.PandemicInvesting.com  --- Transcript   Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the remote real estate investor. I'm Michael Albaum, and today I'm joined by a very special guest, Jason Hartman. Jason is the founder and CEO of the Hartman media company, as well as the Jason Hartman foundation. He's a longtime real estate investor, and also host of the creating wealth podcast. And Jason's gonna be talking to us today about some real estate tips and tricks he has, as well as how to use inflation to our advantage. So let's get into it.   Hey, Jason, super excited to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with us.   Jason: It's my pleasure, good to be here. And we're going to talk about one of my favorite topics, that is a topic most people hate, because they don't know how to use it. for their benefit. We're going to talk about how right all the listeners today and the viewers can use it for their benefit. And that is inflation.   Michael: Ooooh, dun-dun-duun! So before we jump into it, I would love if you could just share with everybody listening and watching who you are, where you come from, and kind of what your background is.   Jason: Sure, sure. Happy to do that. So I've been in real estate since I was 19 years old, I got my real estate license, my first year of college, purchase my first rental property at 20 and a half. I was about to get my license right before my 20th birthday. And I've been doing it ever since I've owned a lot of single family homes. Over the years, I've had a couple of big apartment complexes, 139 units, 125 units, 120 unit, mobile home park, and then you know, just a bunch of single families and in some other stuff like that I have not done any Self Storage, investing. But long term rentals are really my thing. And I know your company helps people with long term rentals, we had your founder on my show before. And and so does my company. So we're in the same space. It's a really big space, and a lot of people just love buying rental properties, rightfully so, you know, I like to say it's the most historically proven asset class in the entire world.   Michael: Yes, yeah. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. So that's awesome. Do you really done a lot of different things? And I'm just curious, which, which is your favorite asset class? Having seen a bunch of different ones?   Jason: Yeah, you know, that's a good question in the the answer, the real answer is it depends. And why do I say that? Well, I think the best asset is the good old fashioned humble single family home, that really is the best one, all things considered. However, you know, it is a little bit harder to scale it. So if you're a really wealthy investor, you may want to do bigger properties, bigger deals, and fewer of them.   However, in recent years coming out of the Great Recession, we've seen big institutional investors that own 10s of 1000s of single family homes, as you all know. And so that is being scaled pretty effectively by major investors. So you know, it can scale, you just need to treat it like a business have systems in place. One of our investors, you know, I'm not sure the exact number he's up to, but I think he's up to about 70 or 80 houses through our network. And he wants to go to 500 doors in single family.   Michael: Wow.   Jason: You know, I do think single family really is the best one. I think it appreciates the best, I think it's the simplest, and for most people, it's the best thing. But But again, if you've got billions of dollars to deploy, I understand that you may not want to mess around with, you know, hundreds of 1000s of single family homes.   Michael: Maybe a bit too slow, too cumbersome.   Jason: Yeah.   Michael: Love it. Awesome. Well, Jason, can you just give everyone a super simple definition, in your own words of what is inflation? Because I think this word gets tossed around by a lot from people. People love using it. People love to sound smart. But for everyone who might not be super familiar with it, just what is it at its basic form?   Jason: From an economists perspective, the real definition of inflation is just simply increase in the supply of money. Right. But what does it really mean? That's the important thing. And that's the real answer to your question. So, first of all, let's understand how it occurs, in most cases. Milton Friedman, the late great economists, who I'm a big fan of but some people don't like him. He said inflation is everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon. Meaning that there are two major influences on inflation. One is monetary policy, which means the central bank, the Federal Reserve, how they deal with money increases and decreases in the money supply. That's monetary policy.   On the other hand, fiscal policy is the policy of the government. It's the way the government taxes and spends. So when it comes to monetary policy, when the supply of currency units is increase, in our case, it's dollars, right. But it could be yen pesos, Brazilian reals euros doesn't matter, right? Whatever that currency unit when the supply of it increases, you have this effect of more, in our case, dollars, chasing a limited supply of goods and services.   And so naturally in any free market without major distortions, and we can talk about that in a moment, if you like. The price of those goods and services will naturally increase as more currency units chase them, they go into the market and they buy them. So when people feel richer, right, when there's a wealth effect, the value of their real estate goes up their stock market holdings go up. There's a wealth effect, right? They feel richer. So they spend more they spend more freely when they feel more comfortable. And if they think the future is rosy and optimistic, they'll spend more. If they think the future is going to be scary and contractionary, then they'll spend less they'll rein in their spending. And so that will tend to cause deflation versus inflation. Right. So I hope that answers your question. Sorry, for the long answer.   Michael: No, it absolutely does. It absolutely does. It's great. And so why is that something that real estate investors should concern themselves with? Or is it something that real estate investors should even concern themselves with?   Jason: Well, it's interesting that you use the word concern, because most, in most cases, concern would be a bad thing. And for most people, inflation is a bad thing. However, for real estate investors, it's a really great thing. And as much as I philosophically do not like inflation, as a real estate investor, owning income property, I love inflation. Okay. So this is where philosophy and just personal interests diverge, right? They really do.   I don't like inflation, I philosophically disagree with it. I don't think the central bank and the government should cause it, I think it hurts most people. But from a self interested perspective, I'm going to figure out and I'm going to help teach investors how to figure out how to align their interests with the two most powerful forces the human race has ever known - governments and central banks. And so most people from a sort of amateur level, say, well Real Estate's a good hedge against inflation. Why do they say that? They say it, because the price of real estate tends to go up with inflation, or a little better than inflation. So it hedges it, right.   So if inflation is, according to the official stats of the consumer price index, the most widely used metric for measuring inflation, the CPI, if the CPI is just say, for example, at any given time, 3%. And housing appreciates it 6% Well, then you beat inflation, right? You beat it by 3%. And so you're better off, right? You're exceeding inflation. And that's the hedge. That's the amateur view.   But the more advanced view is sort of explained in a phrase that I trademarked many years ago. And it's a mouthful, so I'm just gonna warn you it's a mouthful, and that is inflation induced debt destruction. Say that it's fast. Inflation induced debt destruction, or IIDD. Right. And what that really addresses is this hidden wealth crater, this beautifully hidden wealth creator. When you use leverage when you use a mortgage on your properties, then you're borrowing the money based on today's value. But you are actually not even you were tenants because we outsource our debt obligations to our tenants. Right? Which is another great thing about income property. You, we or our tenants pay it back in cheaper dollars. So that is really a beautiful thing. And that's inflation induced. That destruction, I can unpack that a lot more if you like, depending on how much time we have.   But when I started in this business about 18 years ago, hoping people invest in properties nationwide, I really wanted to come up with some new thinking, some new ideas, some things that made my philosophy of investing unique stuff I hadn't heard before, stuff that really just came out of my own head. And then I did find some examples of some of these techniques out there in the world. And the only one I really heard even alludes to the concept of inflation, which is debt destruction was Sam Zelle, who is a big billionaire real estate investor, who owns a bunch of office properties and apartment complexes and, you know, he's he's a wall street type an investor. And he alluded to this idea about, I want to say maybe 15 years ago, it's the only time I ever heard anyone really allude to it back in the time when I was talking about it, where he talked about his company equity office that owns office properties, how they borrow today's dollars, and pay them back in tomorrow's cheaper dollars. Right. So that's, essentially inflation does that destruction?   Pierre: So Jason, I think the common understanding is that inflation is a wealth distribution from the everyday person to those closest to the money because those closest to the money generation are the ones who get to spend it before the prices in the market react to it.   Jason: Yeah.   Pierre: How is there? You have a different way of thinking about this?   Jason: Yeah, no, that's what you said is you nailed it. Okay. So what you what you just address is something that an economist about 250 years ago named Richard Cantillon. postulated, and it's been called the Cantillon effect. Because the insiders, the banksters, Wall Street crooks, you know, they all have access, that the politicians, frankly, they all have access to this money before it hits the streets, if you will, and before it creates inflation.   So, you know, the folks at Goldman Sachs, for example, they basically, since they're on the inside of the game, right? They know that the money is coming, because they're consulting with Jerome Powell, and the other elites, right. They know what's coming. And they can buy up assets, before the effect of the inflation of those asset values has really happened largely in the market. Now, they'll usually continue to basically dollar cost average into a market as those prices are rising. But the little guys, the fools will be the last in. And, you know, that's, that's what, how it works, right?   And it is a wealth transfer, not just because of the Cantillon effect, which you just mentioned, but it's also a wealth transfer, just because of the way inflation works. So inflation is this insidious, hidden tax, that destroys the value of purchasing power of our savings, our stocks, or bonds, and even our equity in our real estate, because that's all priced in today's dollars, but today's dollars keep devaluing through inflation, right? If inflation is, and just to use that, well, let's do it. This one, let's say, say 10%, inflation occurs, whether that occurs in one year or three years, who cares, right? It happens, right? 10% inflation happens.   So if we own a million dollars in stocks, or a million dollars in bonds, or a million dollars in the bank, we just lost $100,000. Because the value those are denominated in dollars, and the value of those dollars is 10% less, but guess what? What if we have a million dollars in mortgages, and our mortgages have now been devalued? By 10%? Well, that's great. See, it destroys the value of everything denominated in those currency units, so in dollars, and thankfully, it destroys the value of debt too.   So beautiful thing when you're a debtor. So the lesson is, use mortgages, use leverage prudently, don't pay off your properties. You know, I had a question from one of my podcast listeners, the other day, emails me and says, Hey, Jason, should I sell one of my rental properties and use the the equity in that property to pay off another rental property? And I said, No, you should use my refi till you die plan and you should leverage them both to the highest possible value pull cash out and buy another property with that cash from the refinance.   Remember, there's no tax on borrowed money. So this is why my other technique called refi, till you die is a good technique for people, right? Because they take advantage of more inflation do set disruption. And of course, you know, you have to use this with some degree of prudence obviously. Right. But it is a it is a very powerful wealth creator.   Pierre: It's kind of a reversal of the wealth transfer kind of your you're absolutely right. It is. And you know, what's interesting, too, is you started off this conversation asking kind of what it means to young people specifically, and I'm not sure why you brought that up. But, you know, a lot of young people are interested in real estate investors, millennials, Gen Z people. And the interesting thing about inflation is that it is the most powerful method of wealth redistribution, most people think taxation is the most powerful method, but it's, that's not true.   The reason is, is because taxes are too obvious. Right? We all know, if our tax bill went up, there will be people rioting in the streets voting politicians out of office when they raise taxes, right, you know, the first George Bush Read my lips, no new taxes. Well, he lost the next election, because you know, that was the reagan is faced with that one, he gave it to the Democrats, right? And raise taxes.   And so, but inflation is something subtle, right? It's something people don't really notice, they sort of do, but they don't really understand why it's occurring. And they just kind of don't get it most people, right. And so it's a very powerful method of wealth redistribution, because it's subtle. It's sneaky, it's covert. But also, it transfers wealth and redistributes wealth, from lenders to borrowers, as we already talked about. But it also redistributes wealth from old people to young people.   Why is that? Well, I'll tell you why. In most cases, old people have hopefully savings, they own stocks, they own bonds, they have money in the bank. Hopefully they do. Hopefully they do, right. And young people typically don't have many assets, they just have a lot of debts. And so they get the advantage. It's an intergenerational wealth transfer without anybody passing away and having an inheritance, right? Because inflation just automatically transfers that wealth from people who have savings stocks, and bonds to people who have debts, because those debts are reduced through inflation induce debt destruction.   So if you're a young person, and you have a super high mortgage, and you have big student loan debt, and you financed both of your cars, so you're a young couple, right? You financed both your cars, and you've got some credit card debt, which is the worst kind of all right? I'm not recommending any of these consumer debts, obviously. But if inflation comes along, it will reduce the value of those debts and allow you to pay the lender back and cheaper dollars. But those aren't ideal debts. The reason real estate debt is ideal. Well, not real estate, rental property income property debt, is because it's self liquidating debt. We don't pay our own debt back. Right, our tenants pay it back. So we basically delegate the responsibility of the debt to people all tenants. Isn't that a great e quation.   Michael: amazing equation. Amazing equation. And I love the the refi till you die. model. That's great. We had a 1031 exchange, Ron, he said, you know, swap till you drop. So very similar methodology   Jason: Swap till you drop, I love it. That's good.  I am going 2 1031 exchanges on my own properties right now. And I agree with you that the 1031 exchange is a great tool right here.   Michael: I'm in the middle of one myself, and it's Yeah, the best thing since sliced bread. So Jason, I'm curious to get your thoughts because everyone always talks about, maybe not everyone, always, I'm over generalizing here. But a lot of people often talk about leverage and being responsible with it. And so what I'm hearing is that the more leverage you can utilize, the more advantageous it becomes in the long run because of inflation. So how should folks think about balancing that with not over leveraging themselves?   Jason: Yeah, good question. And it all depends first off on the person right and their personal situation. First off, right. But secondly, if you buy good properties, and we like we like to help our clients buy properties in linear Our markets. So we don't like these high flying trophy markets that have big fluctuations in pricing in value, right? We like slow and steady. You know, it's like the old parable, the tortoise and the hare. Okay? You know, it's slow and steady wins the race, right? The reliable properties in these reliable markets, mostly in the southeastern United States right now, that would be the example of it, and what I call linear markets, okay.   And so you have good properties with good cash flow characteristics, and, you know, appreciation is not very reliable, but cash flow is pretty reliable. It really is, even in in times of recession, cash flow is pretty reliable, you know, mostly, you collect the rent, mostly people pay in, you know, the money comes in, I mean, not always, but most of the time, it's pretty reliable.   So, good properties, good, linear markets. And using as much leverage as you can, which typically is not more than 80%, you got to put 20% of your own money into the deal. In most cases, you know, it's self liquidating debt, because the tenant pays the debt. Right? So I would never recommend consumer debt of any time. I don't recommend, you know, auto debt, although, you know, auto, that's pretty cheap. And if you finance your car and use that money that you would have done to pay for a car in cash to buy a property, I think that actually is a good idea. Okay.   Michael: Yeah.   Jason: But don't go out and get a super expensive car that you can't afford, right? That's the first lesson to that. student loan debt is terrible. I think it's a complete scam. And colleges are are just basically creating debt slaves. It's awful what they're doing. But that's a whole whole nother rabbit hole,   Michael: I can say we do a whole nother podcast on that.   Jason: We can I have opinions.   Pierre: So just going back to that younger investor, say they're just starting out, real estate has a pretty high barrier to entry for So to get started, how should younger investors be thinking about getting into real estate? Should they be saving their money for a down payment? Or should they be kind of taking bigger risks and playing in the stock market to build up that?   Jason: Yeah, well, you know, I'm never gonna be a huge fan of the stock market. You know, I, I like to say, Wall Street's the modern version of organized crime. Okay, you know, your Look, I mean, the point is, you're just putting your money, your financial future, your savings into somebody else's hands, right? When you buy properties, you're a direct investor, you control. Right, you you own it, you see if you understand it, but it does take more attention, right, you gotta pay attention to anything.   You know, if you're investing in stocks, you better be paying attention, right? I mean, the one way you are sure to lose or not get maximum return, at least, is to not pay attention, right, you can never just delegate this responsibility to somebody else. So in terms of saving for that first property, and the high barrier to entry, well, it's not really that high. I mean, you can buy a decent rental property with 25 or $30,000. Down, it's higher than it used to be for sure. But it's not impossible. And, you know, we have investors in their 20s, that are vying through our network. And, and they're doing it and, you know, you'd be amazed at it's like the old saying, most people overestimate what they can do in a year. And they massively underestimate what they can do in five years. So just living prudently and saving money for that first property. And, you know, letting that first property go to work for you paying attention to it, being a good manager of that property. And, you know, you'd be surprised in just a few years how things can really change.   You know, you buy a second property, we have an interesting calculator that we use for our clients. And it actually one of our clients kind of developed it, and then we expanded on it quite a bit. And that calculator basically shows people how to create a perpetual motion machine using real estate. And you might have heard about the old tales of how everybody, you know, in the late 1800s, I think it was was trying to invent the perpetual motion machine. And it's,   Michael: I can create it.   Jason: Yeah, it can't be done, at least not so far, right? Because energy, you know, has entropy to it, right? And it just loses its power. So you can't create a perpetual motion machine. The law of physics won't allow it, right. But with finance, you can. And basically, as you build your real estate portfolio, you use the cash flow from those properties, and use the appreciation from those properties. And then you get to a point where you do your first refinance, and use the proceeds from that refinances, tax free proceeds to buy another property. And this ultimately can create this perpetual motion machines. Absolutely beautiful.   Michael: That's incredible. That's incredible. I love that.   Jason: Yeah, we've got a calculator that actually shows people that where they can put in their own numbers, their own plan, how much they have to start with and, and create that perpetual motion machine.   Michael: That's great. As an engineer, I just love the analogy. You know, reformed engineer rather?   Jason: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What kind of engineer?   Michael: So I studied agricultural, but I used to work as a fire protection engineer for almost nine years. It was a lot of fun.   Jason: So if you if you if you got a student loan, that's a useful degree, right? People are actually hiring engineers, right. But they're not hiring for a lot of these other crazy things that there's they're selling fake, useless. putting people into you know, $100,000 worth of student loan debt.   Michael: It's, it's terrible. That's quite, it's like there's a whole generation of people that have a mortgage, they just didn't get a house included with their mortgage. You know, it's, it's ridiculous. Yeah.   Michael: It's it is crazy. It is crazy. Jason, I'm curious to get your thoughts, kind of on two separate investment vehicles. One is I don't have a big fan of the stock market, but curious to your thoughts on index funds. Because a lot of folks say, well, that's a great place to park money. So you don't have to be very active in it, kind of set it and forget it. And then alternatively, syndications, where you're involved in real estate, but not direct ownership.   Jason: Okay, so first off, you know, I have something called the 10 commandments of successful investing. And I must tell you, our 10 commandments has helped 23 commandments.   Michael: Funny how they keep growing.   Jason: You know, we got more. Yeah, so we're up to 23-10 commandments now.   Michael: Love it,   Jason: You know, we do math, government over here, okay. Funny math. Because, anyway, so commandment number three has really resonated with a lot of my podcast listeners and YouTube followers. And commandment number three is, thou shalt maintain control, you know, in other words, try as much as possible in your life to be a direct investor. Because when you are not a direct investor, you don't directly own the asset in which you're investing your money. You leave yourself susceptible to three major problems. Number one, you might be investing with a crook. And we've all heard about the scandals on wall street or Enron WorldCom   Michael: The Madoffs.   Jason: There's so many, Bernie Madoff. I mean, yeah, you know, global crossing. I mean, they're, you know, how long How much time do we have, right? There's just you know, that that Coffee Company in China, what's it called? luck in coffee? You know, there's so many stock market scams, it's unbelievable. So we know about that. And in real estate, there's certainly a lot of scams with syndicators, scamming people fund managers scamming scamming people, right? You know, most people aren't getting scammed. But, you know, there are certainly a good number of crooks out there.   When you're a direct investor, you can avoid these problems, right?   Number two problem, assuming they're honest, they might just be incompetent. And you'll lose money because they're either dishonest or stupid. Right. And that's no fun.   The third problem, assuming they're honest and competent, they take a big management fee off the top for managing the deal. And, you know, we've all seen these ridiculous salaries on Wall Street, as the shareholders are losing money, but they're still paying themselves big bonuses, right? It's just these things are not correlated, like they should.   Michael: Right.   Jason: And so so these are the problems you leave yourself susceptible to, don't directly invest in Listen, I'm not a direct investor, anything, everything I sell, okay, I mean, I have a lot of direct investments. But I have some non direct investments too. You just got to trust the person you're doing it with or the company, you're doing it with their competence. And their, their honesty. Right. So So that's, that's part of it. And then you've just got to look at the deal and see if they're charging ridiculous fees, you know, acquisition fees, disposition fees, management fees, are they using your money in the fund to go out and raise money from other people? Well, I mean, I don't know. Should that be an expensive the funder? Is that like an outside business expense, right? Yeah. So these are, these are questions you have to ask and do due diligence.   Michael: Yeah. Yeah. makes total sense.   Jason: But as far as index funds, the answer your other question. You know, it's, there are a lot of people who say and a lot of they have a lot of evidence for it. But you know, like anything, it's debatable because you can slice and dice things a million different ways that the index funds beat these highfalutin fund managers that charge big fees, right. So just by the index, there may be some wisdom to that.   Michael: Yeah. Yeah.   Pierre: Just thinking about risk taking on, you know, how to mitigate some of the risks that are inherent with taking on this debt, with an we're kind of depending On the government inflation to capitalize on that, what are some other risks that are inherent in government action? Like, there's a lot of talk about when people are deferring their mortgage payments, they're going to lose their homes when the government assistance stops, like, what are some ways to protect yourself.   Jason: Protect yourself? So, I mean, look at everything has risk, there's nothing risk free, even putting your money in the bank is very risky, because well, it's actually not risky. I know for sure what's going to happen with your money in the bank, you're going to lose it to taxes and inflation, guaranteed. Guaranteed loser money in the bank. Okay. That one is, is the guaranteed loss, right? Everything else has a risk, it could go up or down, right. And, you know, there's risk and everything, there's political risk.   So if you are investing in a blue state, the political risk is pretty significant. People are leaving a lot of these places. I live most of my life in California, and California has become a more risky environment with the political environment, they're New York, risky, right. And the other states, they're more business friendly, or a lot less risky. In fact, they're benefiting from the migration that's occurring out of these more or less left oriented places.   So there's political risk, and the political climate can change over time, right? For example, Texas, has always been very business friendly. But that's really kind of changing a little bit in Texas, even right, especially in Austin, which is a great city are really neat city. But politically, it's getting kind of risky here. So these risks are inherent.   But one thing that can really help directly when we're talking about risk in real estate is this. It took me 19 years to discover this, and I've been teaching it for a long time to it's called the Hartman Risk Evaluator. And basically, what the Hartman risk evaluator does, is it shows people by using what I call the LTI ratio, we've all heard of the LTV ratio, the loan to value ratio, right? Hey, you know, we'll give you an 80% loan, you need to put 20% down, that's the LTV ratio, right when you're getting a new loan, but the LTI ratio I invented, and that stands for land to improvement ratio.   So when people buy a property, they usually consider it to be just one thing, but it's really two major items, there is the land. And then there's the improvement for the house or the apartment building sitting on the land. So that's the LTI, the value of the land, versus the value of the improvements sitting on the land, the LTI ratio.   And the Hartman risk evaluator basically shows people that the higher land value markets are much more risky to invest in. And the higher improvement value ratios for that LTI ratio skews toward high improvement value and low land value are less risky to invest in. And I can give you an example of that, that I use personally in my own life. And this is kind of how I discovered a good way to mitigate risk on real estate. One of the first properties I bought out of state when I lived in California. It was interesting, because I was buying two properties at the same time. One was a home for myself in California.   And this was about 2004, I think, and I was buying this house in, in Orange County, California, and it was $815,000. And I was buying another house across the country for $159,000. So you know, you really see the difference there. Right? It was a rental property, that $159,000 pose. And I had this girlfriend at the time, and she was her mom was a new home sales. And she was telling me not to buy this $815,000 house because she just didn't think it was a very good deal. Right. And so we broke up. I bought the house anyway. And there you go.   But I also bought the other house across the country for 159,000. And here's what was interesting. My insurance broker Jennifer was insuring both properties. So she had an office in Irvine, California. And I remember she reached out to me and she said that the out of state property, we're going to give you insurance for $135,000. And you're your personal residence we're going to give you insurance for and I can't remember that one as well. I think about $200,000 Okay.   So basically, we all know the insurance company only insures what the improvement sitting on the land because the house burned down the land walls be there, right? So they don't insure the land value they just insure the house or the improvement. So what's the point of that, what does that tell us? Well, here's what happened. I bought both houses, moved into my personal residence, have a rental property out of state. And here's what happened, the personal residence went way up in value in the first year, even while they were building it, it went way up in value before it was finished. And before I moved in, so it was a great deal, I loved it.   And I moved into the house and about a year went by and I noticed the houses in the neighborhood really going up in price. So I called up my lender that did the original loan and I said, Hey, I think I want to refinance this property, pull some equity out and buy more rental properties. They sent over an appraiser the appraisers name is Eric, I tell you that for a reason. Because he also came back following year appraisal again. And that $815,000 property is now worth 1,300,000. And I thought, Wow, it's only been a year and my property went up. $485,000, do I ever love real estate, and I heard you, but that was in a cyclical market in Orange County, California, a risky market.   So I refinanced the property and pulled some cash out, I bought some more rental properties nationwide. And I really started thinking about that, because when I got the insurance on that property, on the out of state property, they told me, they were going to give me $135,000 worth of insurance, meaning by deduction, the land value was only $24,000. And in the California property, the land value at the time of purchase was about $615,000. So if, if the improvement value goes up, it will only go up by a small amount based on the cost of the construction materials.   And also what happened to the price of lumber went way up, came back down a little bit, etc, etc. But land value is just all over the board. It's not at all logical. land value goes up a lot, and it goes down a lot in rapid succession. And so the risk evaluator basically shows you that the risk is in the high land value markets. And it's a little bit hard to explain this without illustration. But look at it this way. If I've got $600,000 in land value and a property, and that goes down by 50%, I'm going to lose $300,000. And if I got $24,000 in land value in a property, it goes down by half and lose $12,000. The improvement cost is much more stable than the land cost. Because builders won't rebuild more properties if they can't make a profit.   So yes, there are times by during the Great Recession in 2008 or so that properties did sell below the cost of construction. But at the same time properties were selling for half to a third of their land value their prior land value. So the the price of the improvement of the building sitting on the land gives us a stop gap of where it will hold the value much better than high land value markets.   So I hope that makes sense. Again, it's hard to explain without illustrations and slides. But the moral of the story is high land value. cyclical markets are more risky than low land value linear markets. That's the moral of the story. And also, coincidentally, those low land value linear markets have much better cash flow than the high land values.   Pierre That's fantastic.   Michael: That makes a ton of sense. That makes a ton of sense. So I'm curious, Jason, what did you do with that 1.3 million place in Orange County? Did you refi to I mean, you're clearly alive. So not till you die. But did you keep it or did you get rid of it?   Jason: Yeah. So I did, unfortunately, keep it. And I kept living there. And the next year, Eric came back and appraise the house again. It was the exact same appraiser. And he said,   Michael: Good ol' Eric. Yeah, good ol Eric. I have bad news for you, Mr. Hartman. Your house is now only worth 1,215,000. So I lost $85,000 in a year. Okay. But I was still way up. And I still stupidly kept the house. And I stayed there and I kept living there. I wanted to move but frankly, I was just too busy to move. I wanted to move out of state. That's sort of a major decision. And I finally did get out of the Socialist Republic of California about 10 years ago. I'm glad I did. You know, California is beautiful. It's great place but I just don't want to pay the taxes. I just had it.   And so I moved to Scottsdale, Arizona. I lived there for six years. And now I live in Florida. And I just every time I move I lower my tax rate and so for 200 state income taxes. And so I kept the house, and I ended up selling it for only about $100,000 more than I paid. I should have sold it sooner and made $485,000. But you know, I just didn't. And I was just too busy with my business to really manage my real estate, my home as an investment really, really well.   But the moral of the story is, that's a cyclical high land value market, the cost of improvement when I sold it for $915,000, about 100,000 more that I paid, the cost of the improvement did not go down. It actually cost more to build that house seven years later than it did the day. I bought it seven years earlier. But the land value had gone down. Well, it was still up above what I paid for it. But it was still much a lot lower than the peak, which was 1.3 million.   Michael: Got it. And the reason that the property the improvements would have cost more to build seven years later when you sold it was because of inflation, right?   Jason: It just inflation. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was actually that's a that's a good point, Michael, it was inflation. But it was also inflation caused not just by bad fiscal and monetary policy, but inflation caused by a huge economic and construction boom in China, and to a lesser degree, India, they were just sucking up these raw materials, these commodities used to build houses.   And so if you think about it, another principle I teach is called packaged commodities investing or assembled commodities investing. And what that is, is, if you think of the houses you buy, or the apartment buildings you buy as commodities, just packaged up, right, you know, what are they they're glass, steel, lumber, concrete, petroleum products, copper wire, you know, etc, etc, labor, energy, all these things go into building a house.   And so that's what you're really buying. When you buy in low land value, good linear markets, like we invested. Like, if people go to my website, if they want to see a list of linear markets, just go to jasonhartman.com, click on the Properties page, those are all linear markets, okay, that we'd recommend investing in low land values, high improvement values as an LTI ratio. And you're basically a commodities investor.   And the neat thing about these commodities guys, is they are not attached to any one currency. These commodities, whether they be lumber, concrete, petroleum products, copper wire, they don't care if you're buying them in dollars, yen, Euro, pesos, whatever, it doesn't matter to them. They're they have intrinsic value, and they're used worldwide. And every human on Earth needs them. Because they are the ingredients of the places we live, the places we work, and the places we interact with all day. It's every building is made of these things.   Michael: Interesting. That's a really interesting way to think about it.   Jason: Packaged commodities investing.   Pierre: Yep, that definitely answers my question. Thank you.   Michael: Jason, we want to be super respectful of your time here. Any additional questions for Jason?   Pierre: Just tell our listeners where to find you, link them to your channels?   Jason: Yeah, thanks. So I'm on my podcast is called The Creating Wealth Show. And you can get that just look up Jason Hartman, wherever you get your podcasts, my website, jasonhartman.com. I've also got a special gift for your listeners and viewers. And that is a book a little mini book that is free. And what we did is we took a lot of my strategies that have been teaching for many, many years, and we adapted them to the crazy times we're living in. And that is available totally for free at pandemicinvesting.com, that's pandemicinvesting.com, and it's a small book on pandemic investing that you get right away. It's just emailed to you right away. for free.   Pierre: We'll put that in the show notes as well. So   Jason: Thanks.   Michael: Yeah, can't wait to take a read that sounds awesome. Because he has you mentioned that we are in a bit of a crazy time here.   Jason: You know, it's a really weird time and a lot of things that people expected. I think, you know, it's hard to even remember, try to think back how things were, you know, what, 16 months ago? Right? I mean, just think of what you thought back then. And everybody listening to this. Think of what how you were thinking back in, you know, maybe, I don't know, March of 2020. A lot of people just thought the world was going to end. Right. The economy was going to collapse. You know, there were riots that summer. You know, cities were being destroyed, burnt down. Windows broken, you know, massive looting and all kinds of crazy stuff going on in and and look at what really happened.   That's a lot different than most people would have thought it's counterintuitive, right? Yeah. But it is a wealth transfer. And a lot of people are still suffering. And a lot of people haven't even noticed how bad it is going to get. So it's it's uneven, it's unequal, and it's unfair. And just, you know, for people listening to your show, I know that you're trying to do it, and I'm trying to do it for my audience. You know, we're just trying to help as many people as possible, understand what's happening, and understand really how, how they're being played by the system. And inflation is hurting those people. And if you don't do anything about it, if you don't follow these techniques, you will be the victim rather than the victor.   And but you can you can succeed in this environment, just by aligning your interests with these two most powerful forces the human race has ever known. What are they governments and central banks, they have standing armies, they have aircraft carriers, they have police forces, they have missiles, and you know what, it doesn't matter what we think, or what we believe or whether we philosophically disagree. I do. You know, if they don't care, okay, they're gonna do what they're gonna do. And they have all the power, so we better align our interests with theirs, and follow the same business plan they're following. And that's how we'll succeed.   Pierre: Fantastic.   Michael: Love that Jason, thank you so much for coming on this and sharing this was this was really great. Really, really great stuff.   Michael: Hey, my pleasure. Thanks, everybody.   Michael: Thank you.   Pierre: Thank you, Jason.   Michael: Thanks, take care. Talk to you soon.

Michele Hansen  0:00  Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. https://nokotime.com/When you're bootstrapping on the side, every free moment counts. But do you really know how you're spending those moments? Which days you're most productive? If your product have time sinks that just don't pay?Here's one way to find out: Noko is a time tracker designed to help you learn from the time you track. And Noko makes it frictionless to give yourself good data, too — you can even log time directly from your Github commit messages. Try Noko today and save 15% off every plan, forever. Visit  Nokotime.com/SocialPod to start making your time work for you.Colleen Schnettler  0:52  Michele, it's so good to talk to you. So I have been following some of the things you've been tweeting about recently, and I saw that you did a Product Hunt launch for the book.Michele Hansen  1:05  Yeah.Colleen Schnettler  1:06  Tell us about that was quite a roller coaster. Yeah, I am fascinated. I want to hear all about it. Michele Hansen  1:14  So um, gosh, I don't even I don't even know where to start. Because it was it was kind of it was kind of a spur of the moment thing. Like I've been planning to do a Product Hunt launch for a long time, but I didn't really know exactly when. And I think it was a we've talked about how my, like, original deadline for the book was before I started Danish language classes, right. I feel like we I don't know. But yeah, okay. So I actually started them last Monday. So you know, even though like, when I finished my MBA, I was like, I am done with school forever, like, never again. And you know, here I am again. Um, so I started Monday of this week. And so the 20th I was like, I saw I was starting, you know, the in a couple of days. And I was like, You know what, I just need to do this. Now I want to get this launch done. Before I'm like thinking about school again, cuz I'm not gonna have as much time. So that's basically like, why I did it on Friday morning. Now, apparently, when you launch on product time, you're supposed to get someone like, well known to basically hunt the product for you and submit it for you. And then I guess it notifies all of that person's followers, and then it helps with your ranking and stuff like that. I did not do that. I just submitted it myself.Colleen Schnettler  2:46  Wait, okay. pause, pause, pause. Okay, so let's back up a little bit. So you were on Friday morning, you woke up and you're like, I should put the book on Product Hunt today? Is that like, what happened? No. No, IMichele Hansen  2:57  needed to send out a newsletter that morning. Because I had I had something I wanted to send out. And I was like, you know, why don't I just throw it up on product time. Like, let's just get that over with and do it and like, so like, I just like wrote up a post, I took a couple of screenshots of like the book and the table of contents. And like, I like put it up, like, apparently people hire like consultants and pay them like 1000s of dollars to try to get a good ranking on on product ton. And they spend all this time recruiting someone to hunt it for them. And like there's this whole, like product launch a Product Hunt launch strategy that I was completely oblivious to. SoColleen Schnettler  3:37  yeah, I've heard that. That's a hole that if you there's like so many articles about how to properly do product on and there's consultants, yes. Okay, so tell us what you did. Yeah,Michele Hansen  3:47  I guess it didn't. I don't know. I it didn't occur to me to research it first. Because I don't know. I just didn't so I just threw it up there. And then I sent it out to the newsletter and was like, hey, like, you know, Product Hunt today. And so it was like going pretty well. Like I sent it out like first thing in the morning European time. And by like lunchtime or so here it had like 30 or 40 upvotes which was like way more than most of the other products on the homepage. And I started being like in the people started being like I can't find your product like I searched for it. It doesn't show up like it's not on the homepage like like she usually like reach out to them or something because something is wrong. And this is somebody on Twitter who jumped in and they're like, Oh, they shadow ban info products, because there's so many of them that they shadow ban them by defaults, if you're submitting it and you're not like a you know a sort of name brand person submitting it.Colleen Schnettler  4:47  What is shadow ban mean?Michele Hansen  4:48  Oh, so shot. Shadow banning is when you post it and it looks normal to you and you can send people the link, but it doesn't show up on the homepage and it doesn't show up in search.Colleen Schnettler  5:00  Oh, wow.Michele Hansen  5:01  So basically you don't know you're banned from the homepage. So, so weird, but I guess there's like so many that I currently the logic is that there's so many info products that like, they basically want to cut down on the number of them going to the front page of product on. So and then I kind of like started tweeting about this and I'm not really sure what happened. But I like reached out to their support on their website and on Twitter. And then I think some other people also backchannel that to community people at Product Hunt. And then yeah, it was on the the front page. Like it just appeared at number four. And it was like, Oh, this is kind of fun. Like, we went from being like, completely invisible and thinking this was a huge waste of time. to like, now it's ranked number four. That's pretty amazing. And I just woke up and did this this morning. Like, this is fun. And that's all and then it kind of just kept going. Wonderful. Yeah. And I was actually I was getting like, last minute, like, you know, sort of, like, play by play advice from Arvid call in my DMS. I'm like, okay, like, here's what you do, like, make sure you reply to everybody, like, you know, all this stuff. And I was like, okay, okay, okay. Like, I was like, such like totally green at this. Um, and, yeah, it was it was wild. And then it ended up going up to number one. And oh, that's exciting day. And I just checked it a 512 up votes.Colleen Schnettler  6:36  That's amazing. Wild.Michele Hansen  6:40  Super wild. I've never really done a, like a Product Hunt launch. Like, we I mean, we didn't launch geocoder one Product Hunt. Like we actually launched before Product Hunt had their show h n launch, which when geocoder launched a show h n launch was like, what a Product Hunt launches now. I guess. Yeah. It was so funny. I remember coming across it in our refers for geocoder to and I was like, What is this product on thing and like, signed up? Um, so yeah, anyway, so that was, that was pretty crazy. Um, that'sColleen Schnettler  7:20  really cool. Yeah, itMichele Hansen  7:21  was it the whole thing about it, like, not showing up and like what was wrong and like, all these people kind of like rallying around it too. And like so many people tweeting out the the posts and commenting and like, I just felt like I was collectively being lifted up by people all over the world simultaneously. And it was, it was lovely. It was pretty, it was pretty surreal. It was it isColleen Schnettler  7:49  as bad. It's awesome. So have you seen the Product Hunt success? increase the number of sales of the book?Michele Hansen  8:00  Yeah, so I actually did get a little bit of a nice little bump out of it. So I learned later that the benefit of being number one on product one is not only are you number one that day, but you're also number one in the newsletter. And so you get another bump after that. Okay, cool. And so if I just pull up the numbers really quick. So the the total have sold 344 individual copies, which excludes a bulk portfolio wide purchase that a fund made. So okay, so it's been 180 on Amazon 160 PDF copies total, including the pre order. And then for audio book only pre sell copy, so 344 total. And so of all of that, so 23 of those PDF copies are from since the Product Hunt, launch, and then 59 print copies since the product launch.Colleen Schnettler  9:11  Wow. Yeah,Michele Hansen  9:12  so it's a pretty good bump.Colleen Schnettler  9:14  Yeah, that's great. Yeah. So how are you feeling about the whole feeling good, likeMichele Hansen  9:18  I'm starting to come across like podcasts of people talking about it or blog post they wrote about it, or people tweeting out like, I'm reading the book, I'm ready to do a practice interview, like who wants to pair up with me like, all that kind of stuff. But just that just gives me warm fuzzies when when I come across that kind of thing, andColleen Schnettler  9:42  I love it.Michele Hansen  9:43  Like for so many years, I you know, I tried to write blog posts, and most of the time they would just like land with a thought like there was a couple that did okay, but most of time I would like I would fuss over them and have friends edit them and like, then they would just go nowhere. And so it's still like kind of bewildering and surreal to have people like, be excited about something that I wrote because I'm so used to just like being nothing. Um, so all of this is just this really delightfully surreal.Colleen Schnettler  10:27  I love that. Do you think it's better, you didn't actually know you were doing Product Hunt wrong, because you would have not launched it, if you had realized how some people do it.Michele Hansen  10:37  I think it might have been sort of intimidating to look at. It's like, oh, like, shoot, like, people hire consultants for this. And like, there's, they're like, producing videos for it. Like they have, like, this whole, like, strategy around it, like, but I think it also goes to show like, you know, I mean, the, the real power of building in public or writing in public, and, you know, like, the people in the community were part of this from the very beginning. And, you know, so No, I did not pay a consultant 20 $500 to get to the top of product and like, the book got there, because everyone's been a part of this process. And contributing to it from the very beginning. It was on the strength of community. It's, there's, it's pretty, it's funny, I've had people like DM me now. Like, oh, like, what's your advice for getting to the top of product? And I'm like to Don't ask me. Like, dude, like, don't do what I did. Like that was apparently wrong.Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's people who have written guides about this, and everything.Colleen Schnettler  12:04  Oh, yeah. They're all over the I like someone recommended Product Hunt to me once. And I was like, Oh, okay. And I don't use Product Hunt. Like, I don't even think I'm on it. And so I googled it. And it was like, Oh, my gosh, there's so much information, how to do a Product Hunt, it needs to be Tuesday at 4pm. Because that is the optimal time. Like, it was a whole thing. And I was like, so this is so wonderful that it's worked out for you. And I also saw you are going to start your private podcast.Michele Hansen  12:30  Oh, yeah. The first chapter already went out.Colleen Schnettler  12:35  Sweet. Yeah,Michele Hansen  12:36  I think I'm gonna roll them up like so I was kind of trying to like couple weeks ago, we're talking like, should we do one chapter a week or like, do like two different drops a week because there's 50 chapters in the book. And so we did that, then it would take a whole year to get that book, which seems very long time, it's very long. So it seems excessive. So this week, I dropped the the title and the chapter one as two separate episodes on the same day. But I think for next week, what I'm going to do is I've rolled up several chapters, and basically all drop, do one like episode a week, that is multiple chapters, with a goal of that episode being 15 to like 25 minutes. So it might be like chapters 234. And then the next one might be chapter five, and six, depending on how long those chapters are, because some of the chapters are pretty short. SoColleen Schnettler  13:37  yeah, that makes sense. And try to make it likeMichele Hansen  13:39  normal. Normal podcast length, but more on like, walk the dog a little bit longer length rather than run three miles. Length if you run at my speed, which is not fast, depending on Yeah, so uh, yeah. So yeah, I think I'm gonna do that. So then it'll go a bit faster. But I don't want I mean, I don't want to like drag the whole thing and I already recorded like 18 chapters, I think. Wow. Yeah. So I'm going to do another recording day in a couple couple weeks. Maybe next week. Maybe I should do another one. I like surrounded my desk and pillows and like put a blanket gonna ask on my Yeah, I totally did a pillow for it. The NPR pillow for it. Yeah. of like, just surrounding my desk and pillows to improve the sound quality. And yeah, putting a blanket over my desk. So I feel like it should, you know, it should it should sound good. I don't want it to sound you know, homegrown and, or Yeah, you know, like I want it to sound Good question like people should pay for it. Yeah. SoColleen Schnettler  15:04  yeah, totally. That makes sense. Yeah, it's well, that's really exciting. Um, you've had a really exciting couple weeks,Michele Hansen  15:10  I've been talking to you a couple of weeks, and you have been doing seriously exciting, as we talked about a couple weeks ago. So you are now my cool kid friend, I moved to California and joined a startup. And totally,Colleen Schnettler  15:21  it was crazy. I can't even tell you like, everything just went crazy. But it is super exciting. And I think something that has not been well communicated is we are basically being funded because we are being paid to me really, to build out this product. And so and we get to keep the IP. So this is really exciting for me. I can't think of what else I would rather do with my life. Besides, you know, normal life stuff with do with my career, then build a business with people I like, like, that's my whole life goal right there.Michele Hansen  15:57  That sounds amazing.Colleen Schnettler  15:59  It is. Yeah. So I'm super pumped. It is a lot of stuff of new stuff. But it's a really cool opportunity. The guys that I'm partnering with are great. I've known them for years. And I finally get co founders, which I'm super happy about because doing it alone is lonely.Michele Hansen  16:17  So I feel like we should back up. Yeah, that's a very basic question. So So a couple of months ago, you took a job? Do you? Do you still have that job?Colleen Schnettler  16:33  I do not. Okay.Michele Hansen  16:35  So this is what we were talking about in decisions dishes and was should you? So you have you have that had that job? And then should you continue doing simple file upload? And how does this whole Hammerstone thing fit into it? And one of those options there we did not talk about was like, quit the full time job and like go whole hog and jump in headfirst on Hammerstone. So let's like,Colleen Schnettler  17:07  yeah, it was, I mean, I just everything went a little bit crazy. I announced that I took that job. And maybe part of this is building in public. or part of this is just the market right now. And I am not kidding you. Within a week I had three other people offering me jobs. Like they're like, Oh, I didn't know you were taking a job. So everything got a little crazy. When I took that job, I had every intention of being with that company for years. It was a great company. I love the people. I love their mission. But this opportunity came up to do really exciting work as part of this startup. And I had to choose because there was no way this startup stuff is full time. I mean, there's no way I could do both. So I unfortunately had to quit the job I had for what a month, maybe two months, and go all in with the startup. So it's very exciting. But it was a lot of stuff.Michele Hansen  18:04  Yeah, I mean, that must have been so much to go through in such a short amount of time. And then you're I mean, you're a very you're he You're a very reliable person who can be taken at their word and sticks to it. And yeah, for you to walk away from something after a month. I imagine that was very difficult for you. And also that shows just how excited you are about Hammerstone.Colleen Schnettler  18:42  Yeah, and I think it was really hard. It was a really hard conversation to have with my boss, who was super amazing and gracious. But it was just an opportunity. I couldn't turn down. It was so I mean, and it's high risk, high reward, right like this could burn out. And I could just be back in regular consulting land. But you know, when you're basically offered to be funded for something, but like, I don't know, that's literally what I want to do. So I couldn't turn it down. Yes, it was really hard, Michelle, because I think especially with what I do, like my business is built on relationships. And my reputation is the most important thing I have in this business as a software developer. And so I absolutely need to be very careful of that and how I handle these kinds of situations. And so that's why it was so hard to make this decision. But ultimately, the opportunities with Hammerstone are just and the problem space is really exciting. From a developer perspective, like the problem space we're working on. It's really cool. It's just really intellectually intriguing. So that coupled with like the equity it was, yeah, I mean, it was hard decision, but I think I made the right one. If I'm crying on the podcast in six months, it means I did it. Just kidding. As a joke. I made a terrible mistake. know if I made a mistake or not. But I got to go all in like, I'm in a position where I can go all in. Because you know, we have health really because we have health coverage through my spouse's job. So, man, it was tough though, because I took the full time job with every plan to stay there for years, and this opportunity came up and it was just like, I cannot This is literally what I want to do is build businesses with my friends, period.Unknown Speaker  20:25  Yeah. SoMichele Hansen  20:27  yeah, so there's two things I want to dive into there. The first is, yeah, like, what's so exciting about it? And what Hammerstone? Like, does and what you're gonna be doing for it? And then the second one, and I think I want to start there is is the funding side just to sort of, sort of distill that a little bit? So if I understand correctly, so there's the Hammerstone team, which is you, Aaron and Shawn, right? Correct. Correct. And then hit Hammerstone has a client that themselves has a client, then that that second level clients is paying your clients for Hammerstone, to build their thing into client number one's app? And then you get to keep the IP from that, is that? Right? That's,Colleen Schnettler  21:38  that's, that's kind of right. Yeah, that's kind of right. So basically, youMichele Hansen  21:43  know, if I dive I follow that fully, but okay.Colleen Schnettler  21:47  So I think, yeah, so basically, we have a client, that's a pretty big client, and then there's a middle layer, and then there's, well, really, there's the client, then there's Hammerstone, then there's me. So we're still we were separated as three layers. And so now I'm joining Hammerstone. So it's actually there's one less layer in there. So it's just, it's just the client to Hammerstone. And so the client has agreed to basically fund the development of this piece of software, the software is a query builder. And that sounds so exciting. Like when I say Query Builder, people are like, what I don't get the big deal. But the nuance and like, the power of what we're doing with this query builder is really cool. It's just, it's such a constant problem, like everyone I have ever worked for basic, smart queries are really tough, you're usually putting scopes on the model, and you're trying to chain those scopes together, oh, here, they want this here, they want this. So we're basically trying to extrapolate all of that away, pull all of that out of your model, and allow you to define these queries in a filter. And we're going to provide both the front end and the back end interface. And it's, I mean, again, we need to work on messaging because no one is excited when I tell them what it is. But once you see it in practice, you're like, Oh, this is amazing. SoMichele Hansen  23:12  that's kind of the product. Can we back up for a hot second? And I want you to assume that I don't know anything about web development. Colleen, okay. Yeah, what's the Query Builder?Colleen Schnettler  23:27  So, Michelle, what is your favorite online shop? store to buy clothes or shoes or whatever you're into?Michele Hansen  23:34  j crew.Colleen Schnettler  23:36  Okay, so if you want to go to the J crew website, and you want a V neck sweater in orange in stock in your size available at your store, tall order, that's a query. Okay, right. I mean, a lot of places kit. That's like a search, which is funny. Yes. Which is funny, because that's how I described it to my husband. I was like, show me the Nike website. And let me show you how we're gonna make Nike better, because that's his favorite shop. Got it. Okay. Um, so, you know, traditional, I don't want to get to it's like a search.Michele Hansen  24:10  So are you like competing with like, like, algolia orColleen Schnettler  24:15  so it's actually no, because we're, it's actually how you build up. So we actually build up the SQL, so you'd still use a like, you could still use like, this client is using Postgres timescale dB. So you could still use a different service for for your database, but we're actually building up this performance sequel in so it's at the model layer, but it extrapolates the the querying the scoping, we call it scoping and rails, I don't know what people call it another languages out of the models, so it like extrapolates all of that away. So it but it builds it The cool thing is like it provides both the front end component and the back end component. So ideally, it will be a drop in piece of software, but you as a developer Like, okay, so I have a client, they do real estate, right. And so they have this huge problem with search because people want this super specific things that they want to search. And this is a constant problem. tuning the searches to be exactly what people want to find. But for example, they don't want you to be able to search based on I don't know, like what on who the agent is, let's say that's just an example. So this query builder is actually a drop in software component that I can put in the app. But I as the developer, when I integrate it can also say, Do not let them search by listing agent only allow them to search by this, this and this. So it gives, it's just really powerful. And where it really shines is like in relationship building, because that is always a problem, right? When you have to reach through all these tables. And then if you have these huge SQL tables, like trying to join these tables is a problem. So we're trying to fix all those problems. It's a really interesting problem space for me, because our client is like big data. And not I haven't worked with like super billions and billions of records. So I haven't worked with that kind of big data before. So it's gonna be really exciting.Michele Hansen  26:06  You're really excited about this.Colleen Schnettler  26:09  I know this is like, honestly, this is what it came down to with, like jabber, jabber about SQL. But I think when it came down to making this decision, which was super hard, because my job was so wonderful. It came down to this is literally what's gonna what's hap what happened. So the Hammerstone guys, were gonna hire someone to take over for me. And then I just couldn't let it go. I was like, Oh, well, can I like I just because the, to me, the problem space is fascinating. They were like, they were going to hire someone. And they're like, Well, you know, you could mentor him or whatever. And I was like, yeah, and then we should redesign it to do this. And we should redesign it to do this, and I just wouldn't let it go. And I think to me, that was a indication that the problem space was so fascinating for me, and I just really, really want to solve the problem. You know, when you get a problem in your head like that, and you're like, this is amazing. I must spend Well, yeah, of course you do you. This is like I'm speaking Michelle. Right.Michele Hansen  27:04  Yeah, I know a little bit about what it is like toColleen Schnettler  27:08  to become obsessed with some Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's a huge change. Who knows if I made the right decision, but I made the decision that that I think is the right decision. I guess that's all that matters. But it's been a it's been a roller coaster of what? A couple three weeks here.Michele Hansen  27:26  So yeah, so what does this mean for a simple file upload?Colleen Schnettler  27:30  So simple, but it's still rockin and rollin? I think. So although i've you know, I'm working full time for these new guys, but it's gonna be kind of the same dear deal, wolf were full time is 32 hours per week. So I should still have that extra day per week to work on simple file upload. And I'll be honest, like now that I'm settled, I feel like a lot of energy for simple file upload. Like I feel I actually wrote a piece of content finally didn't take that long. I know, right. But um, I feel good about it, it's still not going to be super fast. But I feel good about putting energy into it and putting time into it and making it you know, keeping it where it was going to be, which was, you know, eight to 10 hours a week.Michele Hansen  28:16  Do you feel less pressure with simple file upload? No.Colleen Schnettler  28:21  Yeah, I do. I think I mean, if I had not that I would want to pick one to succeed. But I am super pumped to have co founders. I mean, I'm super pumped. The Hammerstone team is so great, because I'm going to do the real stuff. Aaron is like a layer of Bal Laravel. Laravel.Michele Hansen  28:40  Yeah. superstar, right. Yeah, he's like, really light stuff. People are like, super Hammerstone Yeah, okay. Okay. I thought but yeah.Colleen Schnettler  28:51  Okay. Yeah. So he, so he's kind of, you know, doing great things in the Laravel. World, he did torchlight. And he's trying to do some other things just to get our reputation out there as like a company that makes really quality software components. And then we have Shawn, who's our front end guy. And Sean also has a lot more experience from a marketing and success standpoint, if you will, because Shawn, in the past, has had a product that has been his only, you know, has supported his family. And so he's been there so he can actually see past that, which is really an interesting perspective. Aaron, and I is relatively, you know, we both have mildly successful products, but like, we're both kind of new to this. And so we're approaching it in different ways. So Shawn is like Yeah, sure. I think we can get to, you know, 200k or whatever. How do you get past your network? And Aaron and I don't have never gotten to 200k with a product so we can't even conceptualize that. Right. So I think we're gonna be a really good team.Michele Hansen  29:50  You I feel like what I'm hearing is like you sound really fulfilled by this hair. We're stone work. And I think for a long time, simple file upload came out of that desire to be fulfilled where client work was, like paying the bills, but not necessarily super soul nourishing for you. And then you took the job. And it was, you know, it was you had all intentions of staying there. And making that work and, and everything else. But it did not feel like a calling for you. Which, you know, for the vast majority of people, their day job is not their calling, or something that's fulfilling, and that's perfectly fine. Um, but I feel and then it shifted that that simple file upload was then like your source of like, personal fulfillment. But I feel like now I'm hearing you sound super fulfilled by the Hammerstone work. And that kind of takes some of the financial and emotional pressure off of the work that you do with simple file upload.Colleen Schnettler  31:07  Yeah, I think that's an accurate assessment, I think, yeah, simple file upload definitely fulfill that need when I was working clients. Yeah, I think I think you're right, like, it's really exciting to see where this is gonna go.Michele Hansen  31:21  And I'm super pumped you because we don't do side projects just for the money. Right? Like, you know, very often they come out of that, like, it's certainly, you know, I've talked a lot about how do cardio certainly did. But then we've also talked about how, you know, the book for me was like, you know, it was not for money. And it was not because it was a good decision with my time it was because I enjoyed it. And I needed it myself. And I think sometimes that's a really good space for side projects to be in where sometimes you just need an outlet for fun. And, gosh, I guess given this last year, when you're stuck in your house, and you can't really go do a lot of fun outside your house, like, you know, side projects can fill that need, you know, in the same way that we talked about, you know, when you're interviewing someone looking for the, the functional purpose of why they bought something, but then also the emotional and social purposes. And, and I guess I you know, in for me coming off of everything with with Product Hunt, and all of that community support, like I'm really thinking about those social and emotional components of launching things. And I hear you talking about Hammerstone. And I hear that fulfillment, and I think you have said maybe three times in the last half hour, how excited you are to finally have co founders like that loneliness and struggle and having to figure everything out on your own has been a running theme for you with simple fileupload.Colleen Schnettler  33:08  Yes, so I've basically figured out the rest of my life, because I'm now I'm wise. So I'm going to tell you, by my life, I mean your life to Okay, so you're absolutely right. Like, I kind of came to this realization. So this was a hard decision like agonizing, actually. And when it came down to it, when you're financially stable enough that you can make these kinds of decisions. As I think I said earlier, running a business with my friends, literally, if I could do that the rest of my career I'm in. So I think I've mentioned before, that when we started this podcast, I said, Michelle is gonna write a book, and I'm gonna launch a product and you were like, man, it is never gonna happen.Michele Hansen  33:48  Okay, so now you are actually like a clip of that, like, do we have a recording of that somewhere? Or is that I don't like the two of us talking about it. And like, I don't know.Colleen Schnettler  33:57  I know, like, I would love to go back. I've actually started listening to some of our all of our podcasts, which is amazing, by the way, kind of go back and listen to them, but I haven't come across it yet. But so Hammerstone is hopefully going to make me a ton of money. It's gonna be super fun. We'll do it for five years ish. And then you and I are going to start a business where we help people, women specifically start their own businesses. Oh, yeah. So you and I are definitely gonna start a business someday. It's like five to 10 years in the future. And it's gonna be an altruistic business. And we're gonna figure that out. But that is my life plan for us. You're welcome. For my life plan.Unknown Speaker  34:38  You know, I feel like I'm here.Michele Hansen  34:40  I feel like you like it. You like kind of dropped the idea of like software Social Fund, like a couple of months ago, like casually, and yeah, um, you know, something that I'm really intrigued by. So there's this guy Nick ramza in Maine who runs a nonprofit called Tor. labs, where he teaches people in rural Maine, how to have an online business. And it's a nonprofits. And these people are like making real money, real jobs, like, huge impact in their own lives. Actually, I've been meaning to have phone call with him. Hi, Nick. Um, so I mean, that's that's kind of the thing I feel like I think about, I don't think I would limit it to just women. Um, no, like, doesn't have to be evil. Yeah, yeah. But, um, but I love that if like doing an incubator, as a, like, a nonprofit or a, like, some sort of public benefit instead. But, but then of course, then you have to deal with like donor fundraising, and you still have to deal with investors, it's just donors and like, this, this is not happening anytime soon, becauseColleen Schnettler  36:01  they do not think about this. We're not doing theseMichele Hansen  36:06  years. Also, don't tempt us and send us offers to fund it either. Just like just not just know applications and just like, just just forget we, butColleen Schnettler  36:18  okay, I just wanted to get that on record. Because I see that as our future. Like, that's what I are apparently veryMichele Hansen  36:24  good at predicting the future. So like, when you say go buy here stocks and bet on some sports games, and heck, yeah,Colleen Schnettler  36:32  sure, sure.Unknown Speaker  36:35  So, anyway, well, that's fine. We're gonna wrapMichele Hansen  36:38  up today with the conclusion that Colleen is apparently Nostradamus and things are things are. Things are happening in a way that I feel like all of it, you know, they say that there's times when nothing happens, and then there's times when everything happens. And I feel like both of us are in this time where everything happens. Like in the past month, I have launched a book and it is number one on product time and you have actually taken one job and quit it and then taken another job that you are super pumped about everything is happening and who knows what's going to happen in the future.

Allen: Passive Traders, welcome to another edition of the Option Genius Podcast. In this episode I have the pleasure of introducing you to a fellow passive trader, Mr. Charles Betz. He is a passive trader and he is gonna talk about how he got started with a small dollar account and how he is using the Wheel Options Strategy to generate some very significant returns. I think you're gonna enjoy this one. Stay tuned. Allen: Cool. So tell me, tell me about Chuck, tell me about Mr. Betts, you know, what do you do? Who are you? How'd you get into trading? Chuck: I'm a high school teacher, I teach math and physics. It's a second career. My first career was in the restaurant industry. And you know, things just didn't really work out for me there. So then a teacher for then going into my 10th year of teaching. And the whole reason I got into trading was when I looked at the retirement system, the pension, everything that teachers can earn, it's like one of the few professions that still has a pension, I looked at how old I was going to be when I was going to be able to collect a decent income. And I thought, wow, I'm not sure I want to work to be that old one. I'm still working and retire at that age, like, how much am I going to have left? Who knows? So I started looking into other things that could maybe do to dial that number back. And I met with a buddy of mine, I have a real estate license, that's one of the things I got into while I was transitioning careers. He's he owned a, he ran his own little brokerage for a little while, and I was thinking about maybe, you know, selling some homes or listing some homes in the summer or on the side while I was teaching to make extra money. And he told me about options. He's like, you got to check this out. This crazy thing, like, and I'd heard of them, I'd looked into different types of trading, trading currencies and, and trading stocks. You know, that's one of the things I teach in one of my math classes was investing, you know, stocks and what are they and all that stuff. Just the basics, though. And I had never heard of options. So that's how I found out about options was through my buddy knows about two years ago. Allen: So okay, only about two years. All right. Chuck: Yeah. Allen: Cool. So instead of telling you to "Yeah, come on board and you know, love you sell houses for me", he just, he put you in a whole different direction? Allen: Well, he did offer to, you know, give you some leads, I could follow up on his real estate leads. But having done real estate full time in the past, I know how much time and effort and energy it takes to be successful in that industry. Yeah. And as a teacher, you know, I already had a few years under my belt, and I, I love this job. I love what I do. But I just don't want to do it forever. I couldn't see doing real estate and then teaching. At the same time, it just I don't know where I would find the time to do both. So I thought I'd look into options or something to do with the financial markets, because that's something that can be done without as much time to invest into it, you know? Allen: Yeah. What state are you in? Chuck: I'm in California, in Southern California. I live in the city of La Mesa is just outside of San Diego. Allen: Okay. And so they're unionized teachers there? Chuck: I was teaching at a school that had a union I was part of the Union have since left that school for.. Now, I teach from home. I was another thing I reason is because I had more time, I didn't have to go drive and be in a school building all day. I work with homeschool kids Allen: Oh, interesting. Chuck: It's homeschool them. And, you know, they get to that point in their schooling where they're like, I can't help you with that math, or I don't know how to teach you Physics. So that's where I come in. But we aren't part of a union. But we do still pay into the State Retirement where we get our funds from public schools. And from you know, the same way public schools do we are a public charter school. We're just not part of a union. So, that's the only difference. Allen: Okay, so I think you might have touched on this, but besides the money aspect, what drew you to trading? Chuck: I just wanted to not have to work until I'm in my late 60s. And I knew that if I could somehow increase our income, and put that into retirement savings. You know, we're we're starting to fund our Roth IRAs, and we're starting to give money to our 403B's. And we're, we also, you know, my wife's a teacher, too. So, you know, we're starting to we pay into the 403B is like a 401k. But.. Allen: ..for teachers Chuck: For teachers, right. And I was thinking, well, gosh, you know, it'd be really cool if we could just build up our investments faster. That way, we wouldn't have to rely on you know, that number they're gonna give you when you reach that age, it's all this calculator and this crazy math, and they tell you, well, if you teach this many years, and you're this age, we'll give you this much money. And I was like, that's all great, but I don't want to be 68 when I retire, how can I dial that back? So yes, it was about the money, but it was more about how can I start coming back from 68 and make it more like 65 or maybe 62? Or maybe even younger than that, you know, so yeah, that was really the goal was to not have to work until the 68 and how does your wife feel about that? She is on board like this whole thing is just been a huge eye opener. You know, I've kind of been a sucker in my life for all of these crazy money making schemes and it's something I learned from my mom growing up she got into all these crazy money making schemes and and you know, I've met a lot of really bad decisions and so it took a while for me to realize that no, this is legit like this is real. This works this this is not a scam it's not an overnight get rich quick scheme but but it's a legitimate way to increase your income and to reach that goal of financial security a lot faster than you normally would. So she's totally on board. Allen: That's awesome. That's really, I mean, I would say it's becoming more common. But in the.. Originally when a lot of people come to us, you know, they're like, yeah, you know, I want to do this, but my wife, she's totally against it. And she just thinks, like you said, you know, she just thinks it's another one of those things that I'm getting into, that I'm all excited about, I'm gonna spend money on course, or whatever. And then, either it's not gonna work, or I'm not gonna do it. So we have that pushback a lot from a lot of people, and I get where you're coming from. Because I mean, when I was little, you know, I've done it all to you know, network marketing, you know, real estate, sales, all that stuff, everything that I could think of, I even did those chain letters. I don't know if you ever did that, where no, you get a letter.. Chuck: I know what you're talking about. Allen: You get a letter, and it has like, 10 names. And you're like, Okay, you got to send $1 to each people on the name. And then and then you change the last and you put your name there, and then you send out 1000 letters, and then all those 1000 people are supposed to send you $1, and on and on and on. And yeah.. Chuck: Oh my gosh I totally remember those. Allen: That was cool. I think I got like, $1 back. Chuck: Yeah well growing up, you know, my mom bought into, I don't know, if you remember Carlton sheets, you know.. Allen: Yup, we got his programs Chuck: She was into Amway and selling Avon, and, you know, she was always trying to find that, you know, that next thing and, and so that's kind of the mindset I had growing up. But, you know, I just didn't really learn any financial literacy from her, you know, it was, it was kind of a struggle, really. So when I, when it found this, I've always, you know, when I got older, a little bit older in life, I started to realize, like, I don't have a whole lot of good financial knowledge from growing up. So I need to be a little bit more cautious about things. So I kind of made sure that this worked before I introduced it to my wife. And once she saw that it was working, she's like, Let's go, this is great. Are you kidding? Wow. Allen: Okay, so how did you so you said, you made sure that it work? How did you do that? Chuck: So we had a brokerage account that I had just bought some stocks in, we opened it up when our daughter was born, we had a few thousand dollars in there. And you know, just it was just sitting there not really doing anything and never really appreciated and value never went up. It was you know, over the years, when I was in real estate, some of the guys in the office, we're doing penny stocks, and maybe have a couple $100 of that. And, and so over the years, there was a total of a couple grand in there, I read that a little over 3000. And so when I first found out about Options, I used that because she really didn't even know about that. It was like this account that she barely knew.. Allen: She forgot about it.. Chuck: Whatever, it's no big deal. And so I used that to figure out, is this legitimate? Is this going to work? Or is this another one of those things where I'm just going to be like, oh, there I go again, making poor decisions about things don't really work. And at first, it didn't, you know, one of the the the program and the education program that my buddy introduced me to, the thing they used to get me into it was buying options, which totally went against everything that I heard from you, and from another podcast person that I listened to where all you guys talked about as being a seller of options. But the way they presented the course and all the information, it made so much sense. There was logic and you know, a program and a trading plan. And so I put that in, in motion with my little small account and lost a third of it over the course of about four or five months. So that's my start into option. Yeah.. Allen: Yeah that's pretty common. A lot of people go that route because it I mean, it's more appealing because oh, if you buy an option, you can double your money, triple your money 10 times your money overnight, you know. And it's great, because they have plenty of examples, you know, they can show you Oh, we did this trade. And we had this trade we did this trip, they don't show you the other 99 trades that didn't do well. But they show you the few that did. So great. So how did you find out about option genius? How did you get started with us? Chuck: I was looking for more education, more information. You know, I watched tons of YouTube videos about what options are. All the Greeks and all the details and all that stuff. And I go out, mental part of my daily routine is to go out for an hour long walk, walk about three miles every morning, I'll put my earbuds in and I started listening to podcasts about investing and and then eventually trading and now options. And yours was one of the few out there that I could find there aren't that many people doing consistent podcasts about options trading. So between you and this other one that I was listening to. Again, both of you were primarily talking about selling options, and here I was over buying options and like something is.. I'm not doing something right. I'm losing money, and these guys are talking about doing something different. I gotta get this figured out. So that's how I found you guys was through podcasts. So thank you for putting out the podcast. Allen: Okay, no, you're welcome. It's been a it's been an interesting journey for the podcast. So what was the the first product that you tried with us? or what have you had? Chuck: So I went to your website, I signed up for your emails, just your basic emails, here's what we do that kind of stuff. And you sent out a scholarship request, you were offering a scholarship for your passive trading program. And, you know, like I said, I didn't have a whole lot of extra money on the side, I was using a really small account, you know, to buy a program is like, Oh, I'm still not sure about this stuff. But you offered a scholarship and your your introductory video for what you want. And you're like, you know, I've offered this before, like, nobody's ever really done anything with it. I was really kind of disappointed by all the people who, you know, I've given the scholarship to I haven't really had any success stories. So maybe you can be a success story. And I'm like, Yes, that is me. I want to be that guy. So I put together my video and I sent it in and you emailed me, congratulations. You know, we're awarding the scholarship, and I just about my head exploded, it was fantastic. So I watched all the courses. I take notes on all the courses that you teach. I have my little options notebook here that I write everything down, like, word and awesome. And just right when it all was over started, started working the plan. So that's how I found you guys. Allen: And how how's it been? so far? That was about two years ago. You said? Chuck: A year and a half ago.. Allen: Year and a half. Okay. Chuck: It was actually February of 2020. Good Time to get started, right? Yeah, I started placing my first trades, and my first few trades were profitable. I hit my profit margins, just like the plan says everything was going great. Oh, my gosh, let's keep going. Let's do the next month beginning of March, you know, open up my trades, and then Coronavirus, right. And so everything went south, but I could see like this is working. I totally get that this works. We just had this huge adjustment in our market based on what was going on. So I just kept going and going after that. And it's been going great. Allen: But you had the hope, right? Chuck: Oh, yeah, no, I can see that it worked. That was the thing I saw the results, I saw that this new strategy I'd never used before. It works. What all of these guys talk about books that I've read, talk about selling options is the way to make money. It works. It was the first time I had ever sold an option. I was like, Oh my gosh, this stuff works. Kind of like how you talked about in your story where you're like, man, I was losing money. And I looked at the this one option. And it was the one I sold. And I was like what it was like a light bulb moment. Right? Allen: Yep. Yeah. So So how did you handle the the Corona bear market? Chuck: You know, I lost some money, but I just got right back in. Like, I think it turned around within a few weeks. Like actually, as it started going down, I start I just flipped to the other side of the options chain, you know, and started taking advantage of it on that side. And okay, because I could see, okay, we're gonna go down for a few days, or maybe a week or who knows how long but that's the beauty of options is, you know, if there's a clear trend and what's going on, you can jump to the other side. Allen: Awesome, cool. Cool. So how have your trading results been so far? Chuck: Um, I'm keeping track. So that account was so small, and I really wasn't doing what I wanted to do based on what the passive trading formula, you know, they're the three main types of trades and you break it all down by account size and my accounts, I was so small, and I wasn't having as much luck with what the one strategy to build it up. So I rolled over my 403 beat from my previous employer to my current brokerage as a rollover IRA and got it approved for options and started trading there. That was October of last year. Allen: Okay. Chuck: And since October, it's up 26%. Allen: Okay, so what does that like nine months or so? Chuck: Yeah, yeah. And also, if I, if I look at the graph, because most math people would like to graph things. As I look at the graph, I should be right around 30 to 35% on a year over year basis. So using using that strategy. Allen: Sweet, very nice. So what strategies are you using? Chuck: Right now and selling puts to get into positions.. Allen: Okay. Chuck: And once I'm in that position, I do covered calls, and I'm doing them a little closer to the money because I don't really care if it gets called away. As long as I'm, you know, not negative in that particular option, like position, I should say, I look at each position like a little business, right? If I'm going to put this money out there, I want to make me money. And as long as I'm profitable in that position, if it gets called away as long as I've made money on it, you know, when it's all said and done, perfect. So that's what I've been doing. It's just kind of been bouncing back and forth right now. I don't I'm not holding anything right now. I might get assigned this Friday. We'll see depending on where that put closes. So yeah, that's what I've been doing. Allen: Then what type of stocks? Are you doing this on? Chuck: Actually, I've only been using ETFs. Allen: Okay Chuck: So I found that stocks dip, you know, they move a lot I've been I've been looking at, I've been doing credit spreads a little bit like, you know, you're taught to do credit spreads. So, I've been doing a couple of those here and there, I'm starting to get back into trying those out and making sure I can figure out I know what I'm doing. But I like doing it on ETFs. Because I feel like you know, an ETF isn't going to go bankrupt, an ETF isn't going to go down to zero. So I've been using, you know, smaller ETFs, some of the different ETFs that have smaller, you know, price per share points. So that, because my IRA account isn't that big. So, you know, but and I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket, I don't want to do all of it one trade, so I want to spread it around. So I've been using just this list of ETFs that I found that, you know, fit all the criteria you mentioned in the course and just keep selling puts on them until I get assigned and then doing covered calls. And if it gets called away, then I just go back to selling puts again, and it just keeps going around around around. Allen: Awesome. So that puts your selling in the covered calls, they are what weekly every two weeks, three weeks a month? Chuck: They're on mostly I'm doing monthly, most of the time, I'm looking for like a 30 to 35 days till expiration, put to sell all of the ETFs do offer weekly options, you know, I want to make sure that fit that criteria of having weekly options. And there's lots of liquidity, you know, not that you necessarily need it if you're okay with being assigned. But still, you know, if there for some reason you wanted to get out of a trade, you got to be able to get out of the trade. But there is one where I've been doing it a little bit more like just testing out this idea of trying it every like two to three weeks. So I've been doing puts where they'll expire anywhere between 18 and 24 days instead of 30 to 35 just to see what the results aren't, you know, playing around with things and right, keeping tracking data and keeping track of everything to see if it offers any edge whatsoever. Allen: Right. And you're not and you're not keeping the stocks too long. So you're not really worried about the dividend? Chuck: No, not at all. I mean, I'm hoping to build, you know, to get to that point. And like you say in your program where it's like, Okay, you got this host of really good stocks, you get your dividends that are coming in, and then you're just doing calls on top of that to help juice those returns. So but my accounts not quite there yet. Allen: Okay, no worries. Chuck: Or size goes. Allen: Yeah, no, that's awesome. So okay, so you're doing like basic butter, I mean, bread and butter covered or naked puts, get some premium, maybe they expire, maybe they get assigned. And then you turn around right around and you do what like at the money covered calls are a little bit out of the money or.. Chuck: Depending on how if I do get assigned, you know, it depends on where I got assigned at. So if it did go through a couple of dollar drops, let's say it was trading at $40 a share and I sold that put and and then it drops to 38. You know, I'll make sure that I sell the call. So that I'm above my cost basis. I want to make sure I'm not losing money on the position. So sometimes it's a little further out of the money. But most of the time, I'm trying to sell it pretty much right at where I got it sound. Okay, awesome. and collect the premiums to build my account faster. Allen: That's cool. Yeah, I mean, congratulations. I mean, you're doing better than most people out there and a lot of Professionals. Chuck: Yeah it's amazing. I'm floored I really am when I started plotting everything and looking at the returns. I was like, Are you kidding me? This is crazy. Unbelievable. Allen: How long does it take you in the day to do this? Chuck: Oh, not long at all. I do in the morning. You know, before my workday starts or some sometimes before I go out for my morning walk. You know if it I'll look Monday or Tuesday. Okay, let's sell another put in, I just got my list of ETFs that I look at and I say okay, how much did that one expire? Cool, I've got some more money in my account. Let's sell another one. Did I get assigned? Okay, let's look at the chain where where do I need to do my covered call at. Okay, let's do it there. And then I go on with my day. That's it. It's I love it because it's so low maintenance during the school year, my days are unswamped. Like I don't have a whole lot of time to sit here and stare at a screen of the markets and go through and look at charts and all that. So this plan really just fits what I'm looking for. Allen: Okay, so okay, now, I don't know if you've done this. But if you extrapolate and say, okay, you know, I'm doing about 25-30% a year, if I can do that every year, which you know, with the style that you're doing, you should be able to do somewhere close to that, right? Does that help you or does that? Have you done the numbers and be like, Well, you know, I could probably retire five years earlier, four years early or something like that. Chuck: That's been a moving target. And it's really been hard to nail down because all of this is just so recent. It's also very recent, and you sent out that email. I don't remember like a month or two ago. What's your number and you linked it to that article. where, you know, that guy offered to give you as much money as you want you write a number down? How much money would you need to never work again for the rest of your life. And I'm going to ask for other people. And whoever gives me the lowest number wins. I thought that was amazing. Because then I got me to think, what is my number? I never, I mean, I know that this whole thing was designed to dial back my my want to work till 68. Right. But what would this get me if I were to project this out? Could I stop teaching at 62? Could I stop teaching at 59, I really need to look at all of the pieces of the puzzle, to get a clear picture of what that's going to look like and when. But it's very exciting. This is exciting stuff to get to do, you know? Allen: Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, if you, if you're still looking at that way, that's great. But I would like you to look at it from a different point of view as well, now that you've already seen, you know, that it works is power behind it. Now, let's figure out okay, how much do you need every month to pay the bills, so that we don't need to worry about what your big number is in the, you know, in the big number in the sky? Think we need X dollars every month to pay the bills? How much do I need in my account? To cover that amount? Right? So if you want to, you know, like, let's say your monthly expenses are five, six grand, and you know, as an example, well, hey, if I can make that much five, six grand from my trading account every month doing these simple trades, boom! I can retire today, you know, and then it's up to you. It's I could do I want to keep teaching? Yeah, that's great. Or do I want to go volunteer? Or do I want to teach for free? Or, you know, it, the sky's the limit at that point? So, you know, definitely, I don't want people to think that they have to wait till 6568, they could do it a lot sooner. And when you look at it, from that point of view, that's another like, aha moment like what really that possible? Yeah, it is. And it doesn't take as much as you would think, especially when you're, you know, bringing in like, one 2% a month. If you can build it up, then. And once you take a look at it, your expenses. I mean, you're in California, so maybe a little bit higher with the taxes and whatnot. But if you structure it in a different way, it might be a lot less than you realize. Chuck: I think I'm going to do that. Just knowing that, you know, I haven't done a full year, I think once I hit that October deadline, where I've been doing this a year, and I see that number, and I know that it works, that's a really good opportunity to say, hey, how much would I need in my account? In order to do this and live off of it, like pay my bills, pay my expenses, and not have to worry about going to a classroom every day during the school year, or teaching zoom classes or planning lessons or grading papers? Or you know, any of that just, you know, then what would I do with my time? No, I could, like you said, volunteer or tutor for free or do something else. Just Yeah, that's a that's a really interesting thought. Allen: I mean, I wouldn't want you to leave teaching because I know we need our teachers. But you know, just the fact of not having to worry. Like we've had multiple, multiple people that come into our system, where they get to that point, you know, where hey, yeah, I'm making as much as from my job as I am from my trading. But I love my job so much. I want to keep doing it. Yeah. So it feels really good. your self esteem goes up the way you think about yourself, the way you carry yourself all that changes, because now you're like, wow, you know, I'm in control of my own destiny. Chuck: Yeah I can see that I just just from the success I've had, I can kind of see that mindset shift for me, you know, what my thoughts are about the future and, and what's possible. Allen: Like, I know, like, you know, recently after Corona, we've had this really great bull market, you know, things have been going up things have been doubled, tripled since when they from the hit the bottom and they went up. So a lot of people have made a lot of money, especially the buying option, guys, right now they're walking on water, because they're like, oh, everything that every option I buy, it goes up, every call option goes up. So they're making money, but the thing that you're doing, it works in a bull market when things are going up, but it always works when things are going sideways. And it works really good even when things are going down. You know, so if you came to me and said, Oh, yeah, you know, I've been buying options, and I made 40% or 30% this year, really Congratulations, but you're not gonna be able to do that year after year after year. You know, but what you're doing, yeah, it can be done year after year after year. And then you start compounding that eventually, very quickly, within three, four or five years, you know, that number every month of what you're bringing in just exponentially grows and grows and grows and it gets huge. So I'm really excited for you. So it's like the, you know, future looks really really bright for you. Chuck: It really does. It's it's just an having come to you know, financial stability, I will say at a later age in life and thinking about okay, when I got into teaching at least I will be able to retire at some point, you know, even though that was 68 and then stumbling into this It just blows my mind. Because, you know, I wish I had found it sooner just like teaching. I love teaching. I wish I had started doing this earlier in my life. But yeah, the opportunities that trading opens up are limitless. This has just been amazing. And I can't thank you enough because you guys offered me the scholarship. And here I am. I'm loving it. Allen: Yep. Okay, so now we've talked a lot about the good stuff, right. But what now what was maybe the most challenging thing to get you started to doing this or achieve some success with this? Chuck: I think well, two things. One was the account size, small account to start with. But the second was more of a mental thing. And again, I don't know if it had to do with all of those horrible schemes, those money making schemes that I've come to in the past to really just trust and believe in this and know that it works and trust in the process and click Submit on that order and just watch it work. But I think the mental part of it was probably the hardest thing to get over. And I hear so many people that I listened to and read about talk about that aspect of what it is we're doing, where the mental part of trading is probably one of the most important things, because anybody can do a strategy. And anybody can come up with a trading plan. But if you don't have the right mindset about that plan, it's not going to work for you. It's just not. And I think that was the hardest thing that when it clicked for me, it was like, Oh, my gosh, why did it take so long? But I think getting the right mindset was probably the hardest thing for me. Allen: Okay, and how did you go ahead and get that mindset? Chuck: Knowing that there's limited risk, like what we do you limit your risk? You know, the, when there are certain things that you know, people talk about options, I have a friend who used to work in the financial markets. And I was asking him if he knew anything about options, because oh, man, I don't know, the only thing I know is those are really risky. But what we do you define your risk, right? You You have a, here's your maximum loss, you are willing to lose, you're not going to lose your house and your life savings and be destitute living on the street. There's a and you can make that as small as you want. And I think that helped comfort me a little bit and just saying, Well, look, if it doesn't work, this is what I'm going to lose. Am I okay with that? Yeah, that's not going to make a big deal in the long run. So let's give it a try. So that part of it really helped me get over the mindset of losing, or the fear of losing being greater than the fear of opportunity, or the the actual idea of opportunity. So yeah, just the mindset thing that really took a while for me to wrap my head around, and just do it. But I again, reading so many people talk about it, and great examples of how to get over it. Just, it's I'm so glad I did. Allen: Awesome. Awesome. Cool. So let's say if we have a listener who's in your shoes, where you were about year and a half, two years ago, what would you tell that person? How would you tell? How would you advise them to get started? Or what should they do first, second, third? Chuck: Educate yourself. Definitely, you know, I spent several months just educating myself as much as possible with from reputable people. Like I said, I listen to your podcast, I listen to podcasts of other people, I read books, watch the YouTube videos from reputable sources, you can kind of tell the snake oil salesmen out there, so I would always just kind of tell them, you know, ignore those. But, you know, there are plenty of valid sources of free material to educate you about what options are and how they can work for you. So first, make sure you know what you're doing. But then second, get yourself a somebody who knows what they're doing to help you out. This has been such a helpful community that you've introduced me to everybody in our Facebook group, you offer all of the support, you know, it's just been so helpful to know that there are people out there doing it with me, even though I'm here alone in my office, you know, watching the screen or doing what I'm doing, but definitely somebody who's new - educate yourself, find somebody who's going to help you, and then just do it. You just be okay, with losing a couple 100 bucks. Trust me, I think most people have probably spent a couple 100 bucks on something useless Anyway, you know, and so, I think it's worth it to see that this works. And that'll just be a complete different, a complete mind change for you. Allen: Cool. Okay, so now thinking back to the program that you were in the passive trading formula, give me like maybe two or three takeaways that you know, when you went through it, it really hits you and you're like, Okay, this you know, this makes a lot of sense. This is good. I need to start using this stuff. Chuck: There are rules for everything. You have everything there is a template, it's a pre determined, this is how you do it. This is what you look for this is when you see this go. And as a math teacher math is just rules, right? And what you do when you know there are rules for every type. Math. So if you follow these rules, you'll get the right answer. So if you follow that trading rule, you will get the desired outcome. You know that I think that was one of the biggest takeaways from your entire program was that there's a template, it's laid out for you, you know, here, here's what to look for, here's what to do when things go wrong. Here's what to do when things go right. Here's how to be successful at this and then just do it. That's it. That was the beauty of it is how simple it is. And the fact that I don't have to be glued to my computer screen all day. It's perfect. Allen: Mm hmm. Cool. Okay. Chuck: I hope that answer your question, I hope. Allen: Yeah, I did. Yeah, it's up to you is whatever I mean, you know, everybody looks at it from a different point of view. You know, when some people start asking the same question, it's like, some people they talk about, oh, yeah, you know, I'm gonna be able to do this. With like, some people have certain disabilities, and they can't, they can't work or they can't focus, or they can't do some some other things. And they get drawn to this. Other people look at it. And their takeaway is like, Oh, you know, I'm coming at this from like, let's say, a real estate background, we have a lot of real estate investors, they get involved in options, because it makes sense. You know, you're you're buying a house, you're renting it out, you're cash flowing it, well, you could do that same thing with stocks, you know, your covered call is cash flowing your stocks. So it's kind of the same thing. And so different, like I love your answer is great. Everybody looks at it from a different point of view. So I just like hearing what attracted and what people took away the template thing, you know, that that's something, I've heard it but not not too much? And I think it is, it's one of the things we like to do is just keep it simple, you know, you can, like you said, there are other people out there, they're teaching this stuff. But what I find is that they make it so complicated, that it stops people in their tracks from like, oh, man, I'm never gonna understand this stuff. What is he talking about? i? Geez. So that's what we kind of, you know, especially this program is like, yeah, this is really simple. You know, like, just get started, start with one foot, start with another foot, you don't have to go running, you just start walking a little bit, and crawling a little bit, and eventually you'll, you'll get the hang of it. So.. Chuck: Yeah, it's been great. I think the other thing that hooked me the most was you use the analogy of insurance a lot. And that really was like another lightbulb moment. For me. There was a book I was reading, where they talked about it from being an insurance company perspective. You've talked about it from that perspective, I used to work for AIG selling life insurance back before they had to get bailed out. That was an interesting time. But insurance for that perspective, and selling options totally makes sense to me. And being able to define your risk, you know, what insurance market Do you want to go into? Do you want to be a reinsurance company where you're going to handle all the crazy insurance that nobody else will touch? Or do you want to be a super conservative insurance company, that's really what trading options is, you're, you're out there taking on a little bit of risk and collecting some money and just do it month after month. And it's amazing. It's just amazing. And that so that whole insurance analogy just really clicked with me. So between that and and the step by step, here's the template, follow this process, and let it fly. That those two were the huge takeaways for me. Allen: Okay, cool. Awesome. So based on your experience, would you recommend Option Genius to others? Chuck: Oh, yeah, I already have! A buddy that I mentioned, options to he used to work for the wealthiest guy here in San Diego County was the guy manages several billion dollars worth of investments. But you know, his portfolio kind of shrank over the past several years, and he's just looking to hang it up. So he got laid off. And he was the one I asked if he knew anything about options, and he could get all freaked out, oh, they're risky. And I said, Well, you should look into this guy, you should, you know, go listen to some of his podcasts. That's how I was introduced. And if what he's saying makes any sense, you know, I'm happy to turn you on to what they're doing over there. It's It's amazing. It really is. And so, I don't know if he's, I haven't talked to him. I don't know if he's listened to the podcast and ran with it or done anything with it. But I'll probably check in with him here before I go back to school next month. Allen: I appreciate that. Yeah. I mean, you know, everything that we can do to get the word out there, because the situation for.. I mean, you're you're lucky that you're a teacher, and you have that built in pension, you know, it's kind of I've learned a little bit about it, but it's like your teachers are kind of in that situation, or better often. Most companies are most people that don't have that fallback plan. A lot of people are really, really and you have the other thing, I don't know if you, you're in high school teacher, right. So I mean, if you were unionized, I've seen these, it's harder to lay off a teacher. Chuck: Oh, yeah. Allen: But we have so many, so many people that come to us and say, you know, I was a high level executive. I was making a couple 100 grand a year, but then they decided to lay me off and they brought in somebody that's, you know, doing the work cheaper. And now I can't find a job that will pay me the same amount I was making so my family's used to a certain lifestyle. I can't provide it anymore. Yeah, I wish I had found this stuff so much sooner. And so that's why it's like I'm out there like man, you know, we really need to get this stuff out there. People need to hear about it. Chuck: I agree! Allen: Even if they're doing just the basics, you know, just, you know you already have, most people already have a stock portfolio, they already have their indexes, just, you know, just sell a few options every few years, every month, you know, not even every month, they can do it every few months, they can still make a little bit more than they're making now. And in the long run, it'll add up and workout. So Alright, last question for you. What do you think the future holds for you now? Chuck: That is completely up to me. You know, I've always been a believer in that, that I kind of control my destiny and my circumstances, don't necessarily, I'm here because of who I am. So, but I feel like my future has just, it's wide open. It really is I daydream a lot more. I think about the opportunities and the possibilities a lot more. You know, it's like you said, What if 5, 6, 7 years from now, this could replace your teaching income? Would you continue to teach, you know, or would you do something else? And those are the thoughts that I have. And I just, like I said, haven't really committed it to paper and, and, and talked it over with my wife to figure out okay, if I could, you know, would I? Or could I? Or should I, and what would I do? You know, what would I deal with all that time? But those are the, that's that's what I see for me and a future is just so many possibilities. You know, there's so many things that I thought I would have to wait to do until I'm much much older than I am now. And, and the thought of being able to get to do those sooner rather than later. It's really exciting. Allen: Yeah. Is there anything that one thing that you've always wanted to do that you're like, yeah, I'm gonna give it a shot? Chuck: So interesting story. My last job in the restaurant business, I was a brew master. And I worked for a company called rock bottom breweries. There used to be one I know you're in. In Texas, there was one in Houston for a long time. I don't know if it's still there or not. But I was a Brewmaster for the rock bottom breweries, and I absolutely loved it. It was a fun company. It was a fun job, that beer community, the craft brewing community, and this was back in the late 90s. No, this was before everything blew up like it is now. So and I had to get out because of a workplace injury. Well, you know, so many of these little tiny neighborhood breweries are opening up where it would be super easy to manage on my own and just do it part time, B 4 days a week, I've seen people do that business model. I think that would be a fantastic thing to do with my time. Just make some beer for the local community sponsor, some little league teams and some softball teams and just just, you know, work part time and have a great time. Allen: That sounds awesome. Yeah, yeah. So what are you gonna do it? I know, I'm pushing you here. Chuck: I know, I think I should I really do. I think if that's the one thing I could do, if I got out of this, what would I do with my time? I think that's what I would do. I really do. Allen: Sweet , cool. I like it. I like it. It's a good plan. I mean, I wouldn't want you to stop teaching but you could do this in your afternoons. Chuck: Tutoring is an option. And with tutoring, you can set your own hours tutors get paid fairly well, you don't have to, you know, be locked in a classroom for six and a half hours or glued to a computer screen teaching three or four hours a day. Tutoring can just be Hey, an hour here an hour there. And you know, you're still helping students out you're still passing down that knowledge that you know, and, and being a part of the education journey, you know, somebody who's who's never been, you know, to college, or whatever it may be. But at the same time, having all my other time to do other things that I want to pursue, like, like running my own brewery. Allen: That sounds interesting. That sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah, I mean, I'm in Houston. Well outside of Houston. So I don't remember that one. But there are several here. And like, I've been to a couple of them. There's one called St. Arnold. I think they they sponsor, you know, the MS. Ms. 150, which is like a bike race. They're big sponsors of different charities and stuff around. I don't drink, but it's just the vibe when you go there. And it's just a whole it's, it's just different atmosphere. So yeah. Chuck: Oh, yeah. And that's what drew me to it was the community, you know, as a job. It's just a job here. You know, it's pretty physical manual labor to run one of those breweries. Yeah. But it is more of the community, you know, sponsoring local events and just reaching out, you know, giving giving money away cuz brewing beer is like printing money. The cost of the materials to make that stuff is next to nothing. And they're selling it for four or five, six bucks a glass that's, it's like printing money. It's crazy. So you know, I would just love to be a part of my community here and give back. Allen: Yeah, I've always thought to get into something like snow cones or something like that. You know, you're just selling. Chuck: Yeah. Oh, my gosh, those used to come to my daughter's Elementary School. Same thing. Yeah. You know, just putting a little flavored syrup on a cup of ice and you're charging four bucks for that. Oh, my gosh, yeah. Allen: Fun thing. Cool. All right. So thank you so much for doing this. Thank you for your time. I'm so happy and proud of your success. Had you really, you know, you took that scholarship, you ran with it, it was all on you, you know, I mean, we we did what we could we supported you however we could, but it takes, like I said, you know, when you saw the video, there are several people that have been through that program, and they start everybody starts out fresh and excited. And you know, but then life happens and they kind of fall off. But not you. I mean, you took it, you ran with it, you're actually doing it. And I think that's the biggest thing, you know, you want to change your life, you have to set your goal, you have to set it and this is something that I'm going to do. And then you just do it month after month you keep at it and you work on it, like you said you had, you know, you lost a little money in the beginning with the different program, and then you found something that made sense. And that's like, the biggest thing is, oh, this makes sense to me, okay, I press this, I do this, I do this. And that happens. Okay, let me try, you tried it, it worked. Allen: And you're like, Okay, I could do this. And then you just kept building on it and building on it. And like you said, Now you're getting you know, you're trying to do the credit spreads, you're learning a different strategy, you're getting a little bit more creative and more advanced. You don't really have to, you know, you've had great success, you know, if the S&P was doing 30% every year, like, we'd all be billionaires, we wouldn't have to do any of this. But it does it. But if you could do that year after year, I mean, you'd be you know, you could be starting your own school and your own Brewmaster school or whatever you want to do. You'd be starting up pretty soon. So I'm really excited for you. I appreciate you. Thank you for taking the time to apply for that scholarship, and then just taking and run with it and doing it and it just makes me so, it makes me so happy. You know, it's like, yeah, you know something, I'm actually doing something that's making a difference for somebody. Chuck: I can't thank you enough, Allen, for extending that, for offering this all the support, you know, for the past year and a half that I've been part of the program, you know, the the coaching and the support community on Facebook, and just, you know, just putting that information out there and sharing your knowledge and your belief in other people. So I just want to extend that thank you to you personally, because I will be forever grateful. Allen: You're welcome. You're welcome. And I mean, you've made me come to the decision, that yeah we want to offer this scholarship again this year, you know, in the past? I don't know, man, is it helping anybody? We just wasting our time? But no, I, you know, I think we need to even if it helps out one person like it's, I think it'd be worth it. So normally, we do it around Thanksgiving. So those of you who are listening, if you're interested in the program, you want to wait till Thanksgiving, I wouldn't advise it. But hey if money's tight, then maybe that's what you got to do. Right. So we're on Thanksgiving, we'll probably come out with a scholarship again, for a limited number of people. But yeah, thank you so much again, Chuck. This has been awesome. Appreciate it. And we'll talk to you soon. Chuck: All right, thanks, again, take care. Allen: Uh huh. Buh-bye LOVE ALLEN SAMA - OPTION GENIUS AND WANT TO LEARN MORE TRADING TIPS  AND TRICKS? HERE ARE SOME NEXT STEPS... SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST FREE 9 LESSON COURSE: https://optiongenius.com/  WATCH THIS FREE TRAINING: https://passivetrading.com  JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps.

What an incredible opportunity it was to have Patrick on the show today.  He is a historian, public speaker, and bestselling author of 12 books and scores of films and documentaries spanning the American Revolution to the Battle of Fallujah. He is a leading expert on America's elite and special operations units. His latest book, The Indispensables: The Diverse Soldier-Mariners Who Shaped the Country, Formed the Navy, and Rowed Washington Across the Delawareis a must read for every American. This book details how special our revolutionary patriots were, where our ideas of freedom and liberty originated, and the real sacrifices they made to win. There is so much more to the revolutionary war than throwing tea overboard and Washington crossing the Delaware River and winning! So So much more. We were able to discuss many parts of his new book plus one of his others "We Were One" about the Marines who fought in Fallujah, Iraq. The common theme he agrees with is the "will" of the American warrior has always been different than everyone else's. Find all of the information about him and his books on his website athttps://patrickkodonnell.com/Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/millersmilitarymoments)

On this week's episode, join DeeAsia and SoSo as they uncork their latest auntie shenanigans, review their latest wine finds with Sip or Spit, explain the various price levels of wine, and answer the Wine Trivia question of the week.

Curt AlbrIght is one of the key leaders highlighted in my new book Shine: Ignite Your Inner Game to Lead Consciously at Work and in the World. He has over 30 years of experience in banking, investment banking, capital markets and corporate finance, and in 2011, Curt became keenly aware of the atrocities facing our planet and its inhabitants stemming from the dysfunctional food system. When I first spoke to Curt, he shared with me some of his spiritual awakening from investment banker to investing in plant based foods, fermentation companies and the cultivated meat technology space, and how he completely shifted his diet, his entire life, to be in service of a more regenerative food system that is in harmony with the planet. And he also shared his love of animals and I was so touched by his story and his commitment to people on the planet that I could not help but want to have him on the SHINE podcast to share more. On this podcast interview, Curt and I speak about the problems with animal agriculture, the fishing industry and the evolution of cultivated meat and plant based food products. We talk about what cultivated meat is and why it is the wave of the future, to feed our growing population in a way that nourishes life. If you have been interested and up leveling your inner game of well being, how to be mindful of how you consume and eat in a way that supports the flourishing of the planet and your body, this interview is for you.   Resources mentioned in this episode: Curtis LinkedIn Clear Current Capital   “Removing Animals From Your Plate” by Phil Wollen Eat to Live Dr. Joel Fuhrman Seaspiracy: The Movie BlueNalu, Inc. Good Food Institute Cowspiracy: The Sustainable Secret Forks Over Knives Meat Me Halfway Need to Grow How to be a Courageous Leader Amidst Climate Change SHINE panel discussion Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming by Paul Hawken Pachamama Alliance The Reducetarian Cookbook: 125 Easy, Healthy, and Delicious Plant-Based Recipes for Omnivores, Vegans, and Everyone In-Between by Brian Kateman   Carley's recommendations Just Egg Goodcatch Foods Abbott's Butcher Sweet Earth Miyokos REBBL Ominfoods Alphafoods Beyond Meat Lightlife Wholy Veggie Honey Mamas Good Karma   Connect with SHINE Conscious & Inclusive Leadership Retreat Leading from Wholeness Executive Coaching Leading from Wholeness Learning and Development Resources Shine: Ignite Your Inner Game to Lead Consciously at Work and in the World by Carley Hauck Contact Carley Hauck   Shareables: “I want to to have as great an effect for the good as I had for the bad before and get in the middle of this thing while I am still walking the earth ” — Curt Albright   “I believe the oceans are the lungs of the earth and that the oceans die, we die.” — Curt Albright   “Raising awareness in individuals can create people who can do unbelievable things… but not so much as to move the needle by getting more human capital to do the next right thing, which is getting animals off of our plate.” — Curt Albright   “How we're going to get food onto our plates is probably the biggest problem when I think about everything that we're facing from climate change to social justice issues. That is at the center of it all.” — Carley Hauck   “We're not trying to point fingers in the plant based food industry, we're trying to bring a solution as quick as we can.” — Curt Albright   “What I want to do is inspire other people to feel the goodness that comes from living an authentic lifestyle.” — Curt Albright     The Imperfect Shownotes   Carley Hauck 00:01 Hi, this is Carley Hauck and welcome to another episode of the shine podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things, conscious, inclusive leadership, the recipe for high performing teams and awareness practices. I will be facilitating three amazing interviews a month. Before I tell you about our topic today, if you can go over to Apple podcasts, hit the subscribe button, and if you love this episode, which I'm sure you will, please write a positive review, share it on your social media channel, or share it with some of your favorite people. It helps so much. Thank you.   Our topic for today is the future of cultivated meat is here with Curt Albright. Before I introduce Curt, I wanted to share a little context for the origin of the SHINE podcast, and how that directly relates to this topic. I began doing research for my new book, Shine: Ignite Your Inner Game to Lead Consciously at Work and in the World four years ago. And as part of the research, I was interviewing thought leaders, climate scientists, emerging leaders, business leaders that were really focusing on social justice, environmental responsibility, and I chose nine leaders and businesses that are really rocking it for people and planet. And out of those nine, there were three that I really focused on in the book that are all part of this plant based, cultivated meat technology, future of food movement. And it's been so incredible to watch where these leaders started in the journey as I was writing the book to where they are now and the momentum that they have gained, like Josh Tetrick of Eat Just and David Young of Omni Foods and Green Monday and Green Common. And Sheryl O'Laughlin, who was still the CEO of REBLL and now she's gone into so many other incredible different roles and leading the change and wonderful ways.   And Curt, he is in this space as well. He is the founder managing member at Clear Current Capital since September 2017. From 1991 until 2017, Curt was Senior VP and partner to a national investment banking firm located in Charlotte, North Carolina. He has over 30 years of experience in banking, investment banking, capital markets and corporate finance. In 2011, Curt became keenly aware of the atrocities facing our planet and its inhabitants stemming from the dysfunctional food system. Clear current capital's targeted impact mission thesis is his life's work.   When I first spoke to Curt, he shared with me some of his spiritual awakening from investment banker to investing in plant based foods, fermentation companies and the cultivated meat technology space. And how he completely shifted his diet, his entire life, to be in service of a more regenerative food system that is in harmony with the planet. And he also shared his love of animals and I was so touched by his story and his commitment to people on the planet that I could not help but want to have him on the SHINE podcast to share more.   Carley Hauck 04:17   So in this interview, we talk about the problems with animal agriculture, the fishing industry, and the evolution of the cultivated meat and plant based food industry, which is amazing. We talk about the problems with animal agriculture, the fishing industry and the evolution of cultivated meat and plant based food products. We talk about what cultivated meat is and why it is the wave of the future, to feed our growing population in a way that nourishes life.   If you have been interested and up leveling your inner game of well being, how to be mindful of how you consume and eat in a way that supports the flourishing of the planet and your body, this interview is for you.   Carley Hauck 05:05   Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining the SHINE podcast. I'm here with my new friend, Curt Albright. Curt, thank you so much for being here.   Thank you so much for the invitation.   And just tell our listeners, where are you zooming in from today?   Sure. So I'm just south of Vero Beach, Florida, on the east coast of Florida. Great. Thank you. And so one of the first questions that I usually always ask folks, because this is a podcast on conscious and inclusive leadership. What does conscious inclusive leadership mean to you?   Curt Albright 05:43   Well, conscious and inclusive leadership means to me, I think the word that really comes to mind is mindfulness. It's just being self aware enough to know that, you know, I'm a work in progress, and always will be. And now that I've, I'm in a position where I've founded a venture capital firm, you know, I've got responsibilities today that I didn't have before. So in today's world, I face one issue at a time, and it excites me to think that I can help balance a world that could use some extra balance these days. Hmm.       Carley Hauck 06:25   So I heard taking one thing at a time, and trying to bring more balance to the world. But that also means you have to be balanced on the inside that on the outside, right, I can't give what I don't have. And so you are managing partner at Clear Current Capital. And that is investing in plant based food fermentation companies and cultivated meat technology companies at more of the early stage of business, is that correct?   Curt Albright 07:05   Yep, you got it. I was just gonna say, you know, that was a mindful decision on my part that I didn't see coming, you know, not two years previous to making that decision. And I ended a 26 year career in investment banking to start Clear, Current Capital. And the reason that I did that was because I had become keenly aware of the atrocities that were happening in our food system. And I saw this as being the most core way to deal to bring bring a solution to most of the problems that speak deeply to me.   Carley Hauck 07:38   Yeah, so the reason that I wanted to invite you on to the podcast is, after one of the conversations we had recently, you told me about this big shift that happened for you. And I'd love to hear more how you turned vegan, how you became, you know, just very impacted by the suffering that was happening to animals, wherever you'd like to start. It was a beautiful story.   Curt Albright 08:08   There's a lot there. Um, you know, I don't know where to start. It was it's been a heck of a journey and a heck of a ride. And it was again, it was nothing that I signed up for it was because I had a lot of speed bumps in life that I didn't have answers for, you know, and I was brought up in sports in a very different lifestyle than what I had today. And, and I was a finance major when right into banking, I was in private banking, in DC area where I grew up and went into the investment banking world, all my customers were banks, and it was a very money oriented world, which I had parts of me that like that a lot. And I just didn't know how to balance myself and my life got out of control from every aspect.   And you know, at the end, which happened to me, I got a well, I'll give you one I didn't share with you before I was I was diagnosed in the year 2000 as a type one diabetic. That was the first thing that happened to me. And I believe that was due to my lifestyle. I was 38 years old, 37 years old. And so to get juvenile diabetes doesn't generally happen that late in life, but it was it was to me it was a God wink with what I know now. And I didn't do really much of any changing it took me five or six years of more pain. And in my very dysfunctional lifestyle to realize my life was not getting better. I had all the toys and that's what I thought was the big goal in life was he has been a sign of success. Yeah, that's it. I mean, at the big house and cars and you name it and a successful career and I was completely unhappy inside. And it just didn't make any sense to me on how I was taught to be happy to think in my head growing up and so I did some a bunch of therapy work.   My marriage was in a shambles. And that's what started it. And it ended up becoming a realization to me that I didn't know how to live healthy I just never I because I'd never done it before. And and that's what got me into recovery, which I got into in November of 2006. And that so that transferring from therapy to save my marriage to doing spiritual work on myself to find out why am I not happy to getting into recovery, around alcohol abuse?   It all started to tie together and it all started to make sense. And my self awareness just started to raise up and I realized that I was unhealthy because every aspect of my life was unhealthy. And so what am I going to do about it? Well, I got in the middle of the healthy lifestyle and just started looking for ways to be of service and, and one of the first things was I got introduced to Andrew Harvey, which I mentioned before and right. And, and his, his help to me was just, it was so core, I mean, I don't remember the exact meeting place, but but it was just one sentence.   He said, meditate over what breaks your heart, the greatest and I kept thinking myself, I'm waiting for the rest of it. No, that was it. And so so that's what I did is I just asked myself, What breaks my heart the greatest and I kind of meditated over that. And he said, you know, the other thing that can be helpful is if you see an ad on TV, what do you have to turn your eyes away from because you get too emotional. And it was easy. That was easy. For me it was animal suffering.   And so that's what started it for me and and, and so you know, I I cleaned up my, my lifestyle, I looked for ways to be of service to others and sponsored a bunch of men in recovery and still do and then started to look for ways to help animals and by bought 11 acres and donated it to a rescue in Charlotte where I was living. And what happened was, there was a mercy for animals undercover investigation at a Butterball factory in, I think it was Statesville, North Carolina and the director from the animal rescue was getting called in to help out with this undercover investigation rescue and it was absolutely horrific. And so that's what tied me into the food industry.   So again, it's these organic things that just got placed right in front of me. And and so when I researched it, and looked, I was like, okay, the reason why the rescue wasn't working out so well was because I was on the wrong end of the business. It's they do great work, they rescued a couple 1000 animals every year, but I wanted to to have as great an effect for the good as I had for the bad before and get in the middle of this thing while I was still walking the earth and and so I researched mercy for animals that got me into some of the nonprofits and and I was just blown away by the numbers. I mean, I'm a numbers guy and you know, seeing that there were 30 billion animals that were suffering and slaughtered every year on the face of the earth. And you know, what just the animal husbandry part of our food system does to the planet itself. It just, I was blown away.   And I knew that the animal farmed animal industry was not anything that I cared to know too much about. I was just afraid of my own emotions. That game was over. And and so I watched you know, movies and read books and just got in the middle of what was the truth was and what was going on and then began to look for ways to get in the middle of the the food industry.   Curt Albright 13:43   And so the the the video in 2012 by Phil Wollen was was another one that I watched the 10 minute video called Removing Animals From Your Plate, and I realized I wasn't doing enough on my own to support removing animals from your plate. That's what you said. I believe. I believe that's the title of it. If you just Google Philip Wallen speech, it'll come up.   Carley Hauck 14:12   Yeah, you mentioned it. I was saying it again for our listeners, because we'll be able to put a link to it in the show notes. Yeah, he was Citibank Australia. So having another banker talk about his emotions and feelings kind of validated what I was going through and gave me permission to dig deeper into the atrocities that were that is or animal based food system and, and so that got me looking for more ways to support so I ended up switching gears and and supporting a number in a philanthropic way, a number of effective nonprofits, like Mercy for Animals, like the Humane League. We opened up an office for the Humane League in Charlotte in 2013.   And so you know, it just the path just kept going and I just kept feeling more and more centered. I was selling things I was getting rid of my stuff I was trying to live smaller, you know, I'd never met, you know, other guys that live that way and were authentic before I met them from the nonprofit work and one of them was Bruce Friedrich who ended up founding the Good Food Institute. And, and Bruce was just super kind to me. And he lives in DC, it's where I grew up. And so, you know, he kind of introduced me around to the who's who are the effective workers that were doing this greater good work and, and I again, never met people like that before, and I wanted more of it.   And so when he started the Good Food Institute, you know, having the business angle to it, that was extremely attractive to me and, and watching them explode, watching their effects on the plant based food market in general in this country. I wanted to help and so not just try to make a bunch of money and give it away. And so we met in Atlanta. And that's where the idea came from, to start clear, current capital.   Carley Hauck 16:05   Wonderful, wonderful, beautiful story. And how long have you been a vegan?   Curt Albright 16:11   I think I officially turned to raise the flag in May of 2012. And, you know, just to kind of put a little extra in on that. At that time. I weighed 250 pounds. And so I had all kinds of health issues. What one of the things that I forgot to mention before was I met a doctor at right around that time, I had sleep apnea problems and this doctor, the first time that I met him, we had this heart to heart conversation, and I just blew me away to realize that this is the first time I met this doctor.   And he said to me, Listen, I want you to read this book, called, I wrote it down. I didn't forget Eat to Live Dr. Joel Fuhrman. And he said, I want you to read this book, because it was written by another doctor, I read it and it changed my life. And it just, it just floored me to have a doctor share something that heartfelt with me the first time I met him, and that was another one of those kind of God winks to me that, you know, I'd bought the book, I read it, and there was all kinds of accolades around losing weight, if you don't think Dr. Furman mentioned the word vegan in there, it's all about eating healthy.   And so I didn't believe it could work for me because I thought I was still different. And what I did is I started eating exactly like the book told me to eat and not only did I lose the weight, but I gained an energy and I just felt better and just everything, you know, again, it just started all coming together. So it's, it's been, there's been a lot of those on my journey.   Carley Hauck 17:55   I just really love the journey that you've been on, like listening to this, this transformation and, and really being aware of the signs, so to speak, and opportunities of what to follow and, and what I'm hearing, and it's interesting that your your business is called Clear Current Capital, but it's almost like you're flowing with what actually is calling to you what what is making your heart, you know, feel most alive, which is, which is doing good, which is being part of the solution to these atrocities that the food agriculture system has developed. I mean, not only for animals, but for what's happening to our planet, and what's happening to the potential of our, of our humanity and and our survival.   Curt Albright 18:52   Really. Absolutely. No, no, no, I love your analogy with the name because that was one of the feelings that I did have when we were naming the firm. In an early on, I was told that you know, I was living my life trying to force my will or force my way against the current and I could identify with that totally back everything was a battle and it was it was horrible. And once I let go and just, you know, let go the outcomes is just did the next right thing and started looking at ways to truly be of service and mean it.   Everything shifted.   Yeah, I mean, today, it's just it's got the flow. I mean, my life is nothing like I ever imagined it would be and and nor could I have ever imagined I'd be as happy with a different definition of what happy is to what it means to me today. Because today, it's really about, you know, self awareness and living a life of purpose. I can assure you that was not even on my radar screen 20 years ago.   Carley Hauck 19:57   Lovely well, you know, I, I wanted to highlight you a lot in this interview, but I can really relate to that. And I shared with you the book that I've been, you know, writing for the last four years. But one of the impetus for that book was really the crisis that I see us. And as a humanity, I mean, I believe the planet is going to survive. But I don't know if we are based on our behaviors based on how we're treating each other, treating animals treating the planet.   And I went to a conference at Stanford, about a year or two after I had started teaching there, and it was called Connect the Dots. And it was some of the world's you know, most distinguished climate scientists all coming together for one day. And they were sharing the research and what was at stake. And I thought that I knew the research, I thought I'd been tracking climate change science. And I was just blown away by how little time we have left.   And then very shortly after attending that conference, I was spending a day with my nephew, who at the time was four, who's now 10. And he looked at me, and he said, Aunty Carley, will you help me save the oceans? And I, I mean, I still get kind of tears just thinking about it, because I'm still in that fight. You know, I'm still standing for that. And I'm not sure if we're going to be able to save the ocean. And this, this will come back to our conversation. But I knew that if I said yes to him, I had to really say yes.   And as a little girl, I was very passionate about marine life, whales, dolphins, I went out of my way, many times to write letters to dictators of Japan, when I was seven or eight, you know, asking them to stop killing the whales, I was saving sea turtles, things like that. So I was also a very concerned child around this issue, and to have him say it to me.   So I started writing my book. And I really wanted to highlight companies and leaders who were very committed to creating a sustainable future. And, and I know neither of us really like that word, because it can be, you know, it can have different connotations, but a company that is really committed to social justice, environmental responsibility. And so some of the leaders that I highlighted in that book, are all part of this plant based cultivated me, you know, Business Technology, like David Young, like Josh Tetrick of East Just, Cheryl O'Laughlin, from REBLL.   And so that was kind of one of the ways that I met you, because it's an area that I also feel really passionate about. And so I wanted to just speak to why this is so important, and just some of the, the stats. So I believe these are pretty current. But what I found was that about 65% of Americans are lactose intolerant, and even more so in Asia. So as we can see, you know, in the plant based space, non dairy milks are having quite a rise. Oatly, I believe, had an IPO not too long ago. But we're, we're seeing lots of products like dyad, cheese, and Mykonos, and whatnot. And then we're also seeing that meat and dairy consumption is declining in Europe, and in the US. But it's on the rise in China and India. And I think that we need to really bring more awareness education around the clean, or the cultivated meat technologies, and why it's so important that we're eating more plant based, that we're not eating animals.   And so, and one of the conversations that you and I recently had, you were saying to me that you really believe that the chicken and fish industry is one of the most devastating ones can you speak more to what you know about that?   Curt Albright 24:23   Yeah. And, and I totally agree with what you said, on all fronts, especially when it comes to the oceans. Because, you know, I believe the oceans are the lungs of the earth and that the oceans die, we die. Right and, and, you know, I mean, there was a team of scientists, I don't remember how many years ago they did their study, but it was super in depth independent study, and basically what they came away with that it was the year 2048. If we continue to fish and and kill sea creatures at the level that we're doing it right now, the oceans will be dead by 2048. So we're literally in a race with time.   And you know, that's from the mind from the heart. For me, it's all about animal suffering, right? And so I concentrate on numbers. And, you know, again, when you look at how many chickens does it take to equal the weight of a pig, you know how much meat comes from a chicken versus a pig, how much? How many chickens to take equal one cow. It's, it's a huge multiplier. And so the amount of suffering and I don't know if you've seen what they put chickens through to slaughter them, but it's just it's, it's unbelievable. I mean, anyone could even come up with the contraptions that they use.   And what's going on now is is the, you know, the big meat industry is trying to get oversight and regulations further and further away from the industry because the animals don't have a voice. And so it's making the slaughter lines move faster. It's making the shackles buckle quicker. I mean, it's just, it's just, it's insanity.   And we know it causes cancer in human beings. So, so of eating animals that are dirty to begin with, because of their living conditions. And that's before you get to the growth hormones and the and the antibiotics that they have to pump into them. It's just mind boggling the amount of solution that comes from getting them out of the food industry. And that's why I'm doing what I'm doing.   On the ocean side, what really gets to me is, is you've got no oversight once again. And as we've witnessed over the past many years, when there's no oversight business tends to not do the right thing. Not big business. And because it's so profit driven, and and there's not that many mindfully operated huge businesses and especially without oversight. And you know, you've got dumping issue, you've got human trafficking issues, we've got, you know, slave labor, it's all in the seafood industry. And that's before you get to the mile wide net. And that what the mile wide nets will do is they'll catch if thereafter, say bluefin tuna, they'll catch the bluefin tuna or whatever's left of them, but they're also gonna catch everything else. Right. So the bycatch could be eight to 12 pounds of bycatch, of whale everything. And then, and then it's just they just kill them, their entire ecosystem, which is barely in balance is just getting annihilated because they're going after one particular species.   Right. So it's, it's, I see this and, you know, again, my process was not fast, especially living through it. And but I would never, I mean, I'm so grateful for going through it because it was painful. But it also taught me that we can't get there. In my mind, we can't get there quick enough, by trying to raise awareness.   Now, raising awareness in individuals can create people who can do unbelievable things. So I think that the messaging and getting it out is just vitally important, but not so much to move the needle, as it is to get more human capital into doing the next right thing, which is getting them off of our plate.   Carley Hauck 28:07   Right. And I wanted to just bring another statistic, and this actually came from Seaspiracy the movie, which I highly recommend. And in fact, Curt recommended to me and I hadn't watched it yet. And real Netflix, yeah, losing the sea floor, which is what happens from the trolling. And the nets from the fishing industry is basically you know, estimated that it's wiping out 3.9 billion acres a year of seafloor, deforestation. So that's killing everything in the ocean.   And again, like you said, if we, if we don't have the vitality of the ocean, we won't survive. We're 70% water. And when we're killing these big animals like dolphins and whales, when they come up to the surface, they're releasing phytoplankton, which helps actually nurture the rest of the ocean. So it's just and so many of these larger animals are dying, because they're full of plastic. They're full of fishing nets. And it's, there's, there's just some really big problems that we need to solve.   But I agree with you that the food agriculture system, and how we are designing how we're going to get food onto our plates is probably the biggest problem when I think about everything that we're facing from climate change to social justice issues. That is at the center of it all.   Curt Albright 29:45   And again, it gets worse the more you're open to doing your own research because like I remember, years ago, hearing years before I got involved, hearing about the Amazon rainforest, and it made no sense to me that the cattle industry had anything to do with it. The cattle industry has everything to do with it. And and now it's out in the open if you just Google it, but but it's just the the land clearing that's going on, and the devastation that's being done to this planet to, for animal agriculture is is crazy. And again, it's, it's, it's profitable at the expense of our planet. And it does not have to be that way.   And so that's what you know, that's what I'm excited about is, you know, we're not trying to point fingers in the plant based food industry, we're trying to bring a solution as quick as we can, because and the solution is not Well, number one, it's a math game. I mean, we're at 7 billion people ish now. And they're saying by 2050, will be a 10 and change.   We can't even feed 7 billion that we have on the planet right now in this dysfunctional industry. So how are we going to handle 10? There is not enough land, there is nothing sustainable about animal agriculture, you cannot utilize it and feed the number of people that we have today, or will be here in 2050.   And so the solution that's what I love about the cultivated meat industry, is the efficiencies that come from plant based food, which was our first to market because it was easier to bring that quickly at price points. The next really meaningful industry is going to be cultivated meat, and what can be done in those biomass reactors by you know, cultivating meat cells that are identical to animals, biologically, and and can be done vertically, and be placed right next to where the demand is, for me is it's mind boggling. And so I'm very hopeful that that is going to happen.   And I mean, the you know, we work closely with BlueNalu from from the beginning, and to see the PhDs that they've been able to hire and what they are putting together as quickly as they are it's been it gives me hope. And well, they don't knowBlueNalu.   Can you share a little bit more for our listeners?   Sure, BlueNalu is a is a cultivated meat but focused on seafood, sea creatures. startup company was founded, I guess it was founded in 2017. And so we were involved with them from the beginning, thanks to friends, and other VCs that we're aligned with that helped me in forming clear current capital, as well as the Good Food Institute. And Lou Cooperhouse is their CEO and founder. And Lou has done an amazing job of putting together their team, putting together their platform, their lab work and attracting capital from literally all around the world.   You know, because what's happened in the tuna industry, what's happened in the seafood industry is we're we've fished it to the point now where there are you can't plan for a whether the animal that you're looking for is even available, and be what the price is going to be. So their supply chain aside from the pandemic is horrific.   And so here's here's an opportunity to switch to something that's that is grown from cells, now the cells are removed from a living creature, there, they're then taken into a lab and grown by feeding the cells, allowing it to grow in a very clean environment, what you end up with is meat and muscle that is identical to the animal itself. And so it's a much safer environment. It doesn't have plastics involved with it, it doesn't have micro plastics or or, you know, mercury within the fish because it's never been in the water. It's grown from cells.   And so, you know, there's some concerns about, you know, whether consumers are going to accept cultivated meat, I would argue that, that it's an opportunity for us to educate consumers on where their fish is coming from right now, because so much of what's in the marketplace right now is not healthy in the least to eat this label.   Carley Hauck 34:08   Right? I was gonna share that even the even the products that say dolphin safe, there's no real regulation, like how do we really know that? So I was sharing this with you the other day I went, or just before the interview started, I went to this local grocery store here in Bend called market of choice. And I went to one of the, you know, store clerks and I said, Do you sell Good Catch? Because I knew that based on their website, they were selling it and so we went to the you know, the seafood aisle where the canned tuna and whatnot is, and it was very low down on this shelf. It was kind of pushed back.   And for people that don't know what good catches This is another alternative plant based seafood and it's pretty much made out of chickpeas. Six legume. Yeah, it's fabulous. Really great. But as I'm looking at all the other products around Good catch, it's all saying dolphin safe, you know, reef friendly. But how do we really know that?   And I don't, I don't believe that that's true, there's going to be bycatch likely in anything, and what are their nets. And so these are the things that we as consumers really need to poke holes in, and be concerned about, and, and speak up against.   Curt Albright 35:35   And so talk about that, in the spirit see that it's another one of those, you know, greenwashed kind of things that, you know, you've got companies that are making donations to politicians to look, the other way to put some label on that has absolutely no oversight or bearing it just, it just makes consumers feel good. Like they're making the right choice. And it's unfortunate for animals and for the planet.   Carley Hauck 36:00   And I think what's so interesting about cultivated meat is that, you know, we're trying to meet consumers where they are, right, like, people aren't willing to let go of fish, if we were all really willing just to eat fruits and vegetables, and beans, we'd be fine. But these industries are being formed to meet consumers where they are in the sense that there's been so much science around how a vegan and vegetarian diet is better for the planet, it's better for our bodies, you know, gives more resources to everyone. But that doesn't seem to be enough motivation to get people to change because we're attached to certain patterns and habits.   And so cultivated meat, doesn't need to be here. But it does, because people aren't changing their habits, they're not changing and choosing differently. And so tell me more   Curt Albright 36:55   What I was gonna say, that's a great point, I completely agree. And that's why we as a fund, I mean, we're an impact fund first. And and the other side of that coin is we're trying to provide above market returns to our investors, so that we attract more capital into this space, we only invest in scalable companies that are all protein that in other words, we're not looking to feed the vegans or the vegetarians. You know, and again, I'm one, and I eat super healthy, but I'm not the 98% of the consumers that are out there. And if we're going to say this planet, we got to get to the other 98 sooner than later.   And so we're looking for to invest in scalable companies, startup companies that we can help grow and put on a solid foundation that are going to remove animals from the from the food system as quickly as possible. Yeah, so we're looking for strong founders that can can deliver and can deliver centerplate solutions.   We're not looking for vegetable patties, we're looking for meat that's that taste as good or better than the McDonald's burger or the or the Whopper, there's a reason why they sell a gazillion of them every day. It's because they taste good. And they're cheap. And so that's what we're trying to bring as a solution taste good, cheap and convenient.   Carley Hauck 38:13   And that's also why we're why we sell one of the most, you know, successful brands to start with was the impossible burger, because they recognize that's where the market was. That's where the demand was, how can we create a plant based product that tastes like a burger, and many people now have decided they liked the impossible burger better. And then Beyond Meat came out, and now has all these different products. And they're a publicly traded company. And I think that's really changed the landscape.   Curt Albright 38:50   I remember the day that that IPO hit for Beyond, and believe me, I was watching and and, and it just blew me away to see that stock trade up in premarket before it was physically trading in the market. And so the success of the IPO just, you know, burned a new path for the next IPO for for plant based food company. And that's the awareness. That's the consumer demand. I mean, it is there and it is real.   And so at this point, in our early stage, we're trying to get enough product in the market to to feed the demand that's already there. And that's a gift from, you know, those nonprofits like Mercy for Animals and the Good Food Institute that have raised the awareness. It's not always going to be that easy, and we're going to have a lot of competitors, but at the same time, we're trying to replace a trillion dollar meat industry. So we're far from saturation. That's not a concern of mine. The concern of mine is is trying to get these companies scaled up during a pandemic when we have distribution problems. Right and so there's there's you know, there's there's always going to be challenges and issues, but but but the pandemic is also doing is, is showing how, how many health issues there are in our supply chain from every angle as human beings, and how little we really know about how things are run. And everybody eats, you know, three, five times a day. So we were making conscious decisions. It has it has a byproduct on our own health. And it's a byproduct to the health of our planet.   And so it's, it's, it'll take time to raise the awareness. And but the good news is, is there's a lot of companies that are that are coming up, I think the next couple of years are going to be really exciting. And the cultivated meatspace I think will, hopefully we'll get an FDA USDA approval from from the US government within the next, you know, 12 months, I think we'll start to see product coming, you know, within the next two years to shelves, and I believe that if it all comes together the way it looks like it could, it'll happen quickly, because again, they can put massive amounts of food into the system quickly, just by by nature of the business model.   Carley Hauck 41:11   Thank you. So I think you probably understand this cycle better than I do. So when we look at Beyond Meat, you know, they started off as an early growth, early growth companies such as some of the ones that you're investing in, and then they, you know, were able to get into this more commercial space where you can see their products, at Whole Foods, at regular grocery stores all over and just egg, which is from the Eat Just company, Josh Tetrick, and whatnot. He's another one of the leaders that I highlight in the book, I've been so pleased to see Just Egg, that particular product in most grocery stores. And now there's, there's more products of Just Egg that are being offered.   And I feel curious, like, how do you go from that early growth, to really getting that type of reach? Because that's ultimately what we want. Because the more choices we have, that are available to all these different types of socio economic status, they're in the restaurants, they're in fast food chains, like good catch now is at Long John Silver's, which is awesome. And I think, as impossible burger, I forgot what I mean, that's been a lot of restaurants, but it's also in fast food chains now as well, right?   Curt Albright 42:38   That's correct. Yeah. It takes time and capital. I mean, those are those are the ingredients and, and and, you know, good founders and management and, and consumer demand as well, correct? Yeah. Oh, no question. I mean, it could be, it could be the best product known demand. But if it's if the consumers don't want it, or doesn't fill some void, that's not gonna fly off the shelves, and the velocity is what the the retail grocery stores are looking for. So if it's not turning off the shelves, they weren't invited back. Right. Right.   But it's exciting to me back to Beyond Meat, I did want to mention that most people kind of have looked at the IPO and look at what's happened in such a short period of time, but I believe they were founded in like, 2009. This was not this was an overnight sensation that wasn't overnight. And so it takes time, it takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of capital. And and that's one of the reasons why I really look for the at those founders, you know, if you find a really strong founder, no matter what their background is that that's heart LED, and really looking at this from a greater good perspective. That means a lot to me, especially coming from where I came from.   Carley Hauck 43:46   Definitely. So let's pivot just a little bit. You know, I've heard you use the word that it's an impact fund, how is that different than a regular fund? For our listeners?   Curt Albright 44:02   Sure. I mean, so we're a venture capital fund. And we are we invest in early stage, which means that we're typically investing we'll invest in companies that are pre revenue, will invest in their seed to series A, where we look to be fully invested in a company by the time their Series B comes through. So these are not publicly traded, private private companies.   On the impact front, I mean, a typical venture capital fund is looking for returns only, I mean, that's it. I mean, it's it's 100% about returns and and so venture capital funds where we get our money from his his investors. And so we have 26 investors in our fund one all aligned all unders you know, it's it's been a great journey from from that front, too. So 25 others and myself are in fund one. And, and there they have, you know, there's a continuum. They all understand why we're doing this. That's their complete drive, return is it important to them others return is very important to them.   So that's another reason why for me I want to take big picture I want to the impact is in the food industry and what our mission thesis is all around, you know, making food healthier and removing animals from the food system.   The returns I believe will come from who we're trying to put in the marketplace. Those are scalable companies that are all protein oriented centerplate. So if if there, if we come up with three or four more beyond meats, we'll do just fine by our investors, and those returns will get out into the public eye, and hopefully attract a whole lot more investment into this space. And it's already happening. I mean, Oat Just IPO was super successful. We're hearing rumblings that Eat Just and and Impossible, maybe doing IPOs, you know, fairly soon.   I mean, it's, the successes are there, there's also huge amounts of money that are waiting out the curve, private equity, late stage investors and venture capital, those are the really big funds, we're a small fund or fund one was a little over 13 million, we're targeting 50 million with our fund too. And we're doing we're trying to stay smaller, so that we can stay in that early stage where I feel like we'll have the greatest impact in helping this entire space.   Carley Hauck 46:22   Right, and the more companies and the more founders that are getting into this space, that are successful, we're able to really change the food system. Yep. And that's the goal so that we can have a flourishing planet and our humanity is able to eat in a much more healthy way that's in harmony with the earth. Yeah, I mean, the planet needs to heal. Totally, totally.   Curt Albright 46:53   So talk to me a little bit about some of the Good Food Institute, because I know that they're really supporting this movement, nationally, and internationally. And your connection with Bruce?   Curt Albright 47:05   Yeah, so I mean, to me, Bruce was kind of like a mentor to me, coming from my unhealthy world into the world of animal welfare. And, and the effects of eating animals from the food system, both in its supply chain and the way it works in and on humans in the planet, I really hadn't made a conscious decision to learn more about that, until that undercover investigation in North Carolina opened my eyes and, and Bruce was just extremely generous in showing me what was happening.   And when the Good Food Institute started, I believe they were 2016. So there was a lot going on in that little clump of years. And I'm just there I was, and boy was I lucky. And and so to watch them start, in my opinion, in the US Good Food Institute probably had the biggest influence on the successes of the plant based food industry as a whole.   I mean, we have momentum within this space. That's the, you know, we're 10x to growth numbers that are coming out of the food industry as a whole. And so it's really exciting to see the demand, it's really exciting to see the new supply, and they're a nonprofit. So there's not, you know, there's there's no concern about stealing information and that type of thing. They're here to support, the greater good no matter what angle it's coming from. So I see them as a hub of knowledge.   So individuals can go to GFI.org and feel good because they're at a nonprofits website, which is there to supply information so that you can make decisions that are right for you and your family. then beyond that, it's a corporate hub. So they help founders found companies, they help investors find those companies, they help investors give data and information into their nonprofit to help them make better choices as to you know, what's the company that's whitespace, that we need to get into the food system as quickly as possible to fill the void.   Those types of conversations are conversations that we have, often and and it's very exciting to me now, what they've done over the past, you know, three years is gone completely International. And everything is done strategically. I mean, they've they've gone to markets that needed help, whether that's building bridges to governments that want to actively help our industry because it was healthier for them. And that has happened, they've got boots on the ground in other countries that had volunteers with food connections that might be vital to changing the food system in a country like India, where there's just massive amounts of people and change that needs to happen. So, you know, kudos to the team at GFI because they're tackling something that is just absolutely meant and just doing a stellar job with it.   So they they have conferences, they have conferences in other countries, they have hubs set up to help people learn what's going on and make those decisions consciously about what speaks to them the deepest so that they can plug in and be super effective in the work that they're doing to help help make this happen.   Carley Hauck 50:18   That's wonderful. Thank you so much, I think that's going to be a really wonderful resource for people listening. And we'll definitely leave a link in the show notes.   So what I like to do with each of these interviews is really bring awareness, education, inspiration, but then calls to action. So for people that are listening, that are saying, Wow, I had no idea, you know, how devastating the food agriculture system was on the planet, or my eyes have been opened even more, and I actually really want to make different choices and how I invest, but also how I consume, what might you suggest and we've already talked about some of them, some of these amazing products people can start to buy, but also, if they really wanted to put their money. And and, you know, what we choose to really pay for I think, is kind of a way that we're voting so to speak, how might you suggest people and invest?   Curt Albright 51:24 Well, well, okay, there's two different cuz my mind went right to the impact side of it. So yeah, investing, let me hit that. Second. First of all, the easiest thing that we can do as individuals is stop eating animals. I mean, it just is. And it's healthier for us, the planet and for the animals, obviously. And one of my favorite sayings is, is love animals eat plants. And that's how I live my life and boys, and it's empowering. It's empowering to live authentically with my own belief system. So So that's my first invitation.   From an investment standpoint, there's a lot of vehicles coming to market. I mean, there's crowdfunding of companies that are happening that are extremely successful, there are rolling funds, which I really don't understand the structure. I'm an old time banker, I have my kind of structured ways of looking at finance and so there's new there's new funds that are coming out that have rolling closes that you can access with lower dollar amounts, we are structured as a traditional venture capital fund so we have a 10 year final and it's and so it's a very planned out easy to kind of understand structure. However, it's not highly regulated compared to my banking career was and so the federal government makes it mandatory that only accredited investors can invest in venture capital funds.   And so you can google accredited investor and it can give you the definition of that but but there will be more venture capital funds coming to market we're raising capital for our second fund right now there are at least two or three other aligned funds that are being raised right now. There's so there's so much capital needed into this space.   And again, just do your homework. You know, make sure you know the founders, make sure you know, you're aligned with the structure of what you're investing into. And just again, realize that that you're doing more than 98% of the humans walking the face of the earth if you're making conscious decisions to not eat animals.   So I cut myself some slack in early vegan when I went vegan in the beginning to realize that I just didn't know before and now I do and I'm doing something about it and yeah, I want to do more but I could burn myself out if I don't paste this it's it's a marathon not a sprint but but I believe the answers are in the food system if we're going to get this thing turned around quickly and you know if I can help anyone access or map out what's going on I'm happy to do so but but there is a lot of information a lot of movies you mentioned Seaspiracy, the same producer did a movie, I guess two or three years previously called Cowspiracy. And Cowspiracy is another one that's just fact based.   And Forks Over Knives was one I watched early on that was good for me because of the health issues and there's there's a lot of data and a lot of information out there and invite you to look at it.   Carley Hauck 54:23   Definitely. Thank you. Thank you so much, Curt. You know, another thing for folks that are just kind of getting interested in vegetarian or veganism and hopefully many of you are already, you know, one or two feet already in but there's so much wonderful community that I would also say as a benefit. I mean, even myself, so I went into this grocery store yesterday. I've been shopping at it for the last five weeks since I've been in Oregon. And the sales associate that I spoke to who just happened to be, you know, stocking the aisles. I asked about this particular plant based process Good Catch.   And, you know, was was talking to her about it and she proclaimed herself to be a vegan. And I said, Oh, well, have you seen this product? And we just started talking about different vegan products that we were both very excited about. And she didn't even know about Good Catch. But she said, Carly, have you checked out the community group here and Bender, that's specifically for vegans, there's a Facebook group, and they have all these gatherings and potlucks and, you know, so it's just very welcoming. And as I was shopping throughout the store, she came back to find me because she wanted to have another conversation.   And so I would just say, even if you're, you know, in this time, we're like, I feel we're all really trying to find the meaning, like, why are we here? What are what are we really standing for? And some of these things you might be in a community where you feel passionate about being a vegan or vegetarianism or more, you know, food justice, but there's not a big community and, and there is a community that you could even find online. And maybe that inspires you to move to that community. So I just kind of want to invite people to follow their heart. Follow the the Clear, Current Capital, so to speak, just kidding.   Curt Albright 56:35   No, I appreciate it the current. I mean, it's, it's so true. And that spoke deeply to me and identify exactly with what you're saying, because I went through that in the early days and loved it. And that's what we set up in Charlotte through the humane league office that we opened up there. And I ran the Charlotte Veg Fest for five years, and that community was just so tight. And everybody, again, is only kind of a different place. And that's, that's great.   But, you know, the bottom line was, is that we had this core belief that, you know, things needed to change, and they needed to change, because there was so much suffering around us and that we were putting inside of ourselves, you know, every day that were alive, and it just didn't have to be that way. So it was very empowering.   And, you know, almost any city has a tribe. And I know, I know that, you know, all these nonprofits have recipe booklets, they have all kinds of support and for social media and zoom, now it's so easy to connect with people that, that share your belief systems and are there to really support you not to point fingers or, or any of that stuff. I mean, again, I mean, I came from a complete opposite world. So the last thing I want to do is shame somebody for eating meat.   What I want to do is inspire other people to feel the goodness that comes from living an authentic lifestyle.   Carley Hauck 57:52   Definitely. Well, Curt, this was such a wonderful interview, I really enjoyed the conversation. One last question that I have is, you know, I know that you've been very much on this spiritual path. And I feel curious as you're leading in such a, what do we want to say exciting, but I'm sure kind of an intense time with all the things and projects, how do you keep yourself balance? Do you use that word at the very beginning? Like what are the practices that are keeping you able to, you know, swim through all the other waves, so to speak, in addition to that, that, I mean, you feel very clear on why you're here and what you're here to do, but I missed that what else is supporting you right now?   Curt Albright 58:44   My entire life really, I mean, it's set up because it's, it speaks deeply to me I got remarried to someone who I share core beliefs with, I start every day with prayer meditation. You know, I have my tribe in recovery. I have my tribe in in this world. And I you know, I moved to Florida that was more of a personal choice than anything else. And I resource in nature. And so to resource amongst the palm trees, I kayak on the Indian River. I mean, having that offshoot, I probably don't feed myself those kind of things as much as I would like to just because there's so much that needs to be done but, but I know that when I start getting off my own balance beam, I start feeling it. And and that's not who I want to be. So you know, I have to take care of myself in order to be useful to others.   Carley Hauck 59:40   Thank you. Thank you. Is there anything else you'd like to leave our listeners or to share before we end?   Curt Albright 59:48   I'm just grateful to be here, I appreciate you inviting me and, you know, again, if there's any way I can be of service to your listeners, to help kind of open up this world. I would love to be there. So our website is clearcurrentcapitital.com and and I think you've put a link up to that and and feel free to put a link to my email. And and I'm on LinkedIn too. So happy to have you to help if anyone is interested in mapping out this side of the world. Thank you for having me.   Carley Hauck 1:00:26   Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did.   Curt is a human being I literally feel like I could talk to you for weeks and weeks.   Curt, thank you so much for your heart and your commitment to really creating a world that is living in greater harmony with the planet and is supporting all beings to thrive. Thank you for your leadership.   If you would like to speak to Curt and learn more about his company Clear Current Capital and how you might support him, his LinkedIn handle is in the show notes.   Before we part, I wanted to leave you with some research, some resources and a call to action. So this topic is something that I feel really passionate about, which is why I focused on three different leaders in the space in my book. But I wanted to leave you with some inspiring research. This was published in the peer reviewed journal Foods. This research was led by Dr. Kerry Syngenta of Arizona State University, where it surveyed more than 2000 US consumers and over 2000 Uk consumers to examine attitudes and perceptions of the general population on novel cultivated protein products. It was found in this research that consumers believe that cultivated protein could make up as much as 40% of their future meat intake, and an examined attitudes and adoption of cell based meats among US and UK consumers. The study also found patterns of greater willingness and interest from younger generations to try these products. Though general levels of acceptance was observed across all age groups.   Here's another sobering statistic.   The United Nations has warned that we have less than a decade left before the most catastrophic effects of climate change are irreversible. One of the reasons that we have these great challenges ahead of us is because it is estimated that 70 to 80% of deforestation in the Amazon is contributed to meat production. But as you heard from the conversation that Curt and I had, if you eat less meat, and you eat more plants, and you vote with your dollars, and you ask for products, that are living in greater harmony with the planet, are supporting the wellbeing of animals, you asked for this in your grocery store and you choose it.   This is one of the most significant things that you can do to start to mitigate climate change. be educated and be an active consumer. This is being a conscious inclusive leader. So if you would like a little more education and you'd like some wonderful products to try, here's some resources for you. Three documentary films I highly recommend: Seaspiracy, Meat Me Halfway, and Need to Grow. The producer of Need to Grow was in a previous podcast panel with Josh Tetrick, who is the CEO and co-founder of Eat Just. And he's also one of the leaders in my book, and that is on how to be a courageous leader in the midst of climate change. It's a wonderful panel and I think you might really enjoy it if you liked this conversation.   I also would love to recommend my book. In my book, I talk about the pathway of how to be a conscious and inclusive leader but in that there are a lot of practices and a lot of ways we can apply, how to be mindful consumers, how to be eating in a way that's in harmony with animals and the planet. And so there are lots of opportunities to practice if you listen to the audiobook or you purchase the hardcopy.   I would also recommend Draw Down as an incredible resource of a book. And there is a new online course of how you can actually follow along in the book that was put out through the Pachamama Alliance earlier this year. And the Pachamama Alliance is an organization I highly respect and the co-founder is Lynne Twist who is an incredible leader and wrote the foreword for my book.   I would also recommend the Riddick terian cookbook, which is a new book I discovered and it speaks to 125 plant based meals. And then of course, there's the wonderful Good Food Institute.   And then if you want to start eating more plant based foods, you want to reduce your meat consumption. Here are a few of my favorite products that I could not live without. So I'm a big fan of the Just Egg for me eat just I eat it a few times a week. I also really like Good Catch, which is a plant based seafood alternative. Abbott's Butcher has this plant based chorizo, I don't even like real sausage I've never had but they're plant based version is amazing. And Sweet Earth is also wonderful. They have a wonderful plant based sausage again, I've never really gotten into real sausages but their sausages are great. They taste like vegetables but kind of smoky and I love the taste of vegetables. Miyokose is a dairy free cheese. REBBL is another one of the companies and leaders I highlight in my book and they have some incredible smoothie and plant based elixirs that are full of superfoods. There's Omnifoods, there's Alphafoods, there's incredible products by Beyond Meat. Light Life has a really wonderful tempeh that I use all the time.Wholy Veggie is a new product that I just discovered, which is in the frozen food section and it's gluten free and vegetables. I am also recommending all products that are gluten free because I have had a gluten allergy since I was a little girl so I don't eat any dairy and I don't eat any gluten. And then my absolute favorite chocolate which is just honey and rocket cow is Honey Mamas. If you have not experienced them, they're amazing. I keep trying to get them in the North Carolina Whole Foods and they have refused but they are missing out. Luckily the West Coast knows what it's out what's up because I can find it out here. It's a little bit challenging to find it on the east coast. But hopefully with this podcast that will change. And then I also have plant based smoothies in the morning for breakfast most days. And I use Good Karma which is a flaxseed, protein milk that I really love.   So there it is, those are some of my suggestions. And if you're feeling inspired to bring more of this topic or conversation to your company or organization and you want to create a culture while being an inspired, conscious, inclusive leadership, please reach out to me I'd love to talk to you and you can book a free consultation and the link is in the show notes.   Until we meet again. I wish you good health, a nourishing summer and I have lots of incredible podcast interviews coming your way to keep you inspired so that you can be the light and shine the light.  

Buy Michele's book! deployempathy.comMichele Hansen  0:00  Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. When you're bootstrapping on the side, every free moment counts. But do you really know how you're spending those moments? Which days you're most productive? If your product has time sings that just don't pay. Here's one way to find out. Noko is a time tracker designed to help you learn from the time you track. And Noko makes it frictionless to give yourself good data to you can even log time directly from your GitHub commit messages. Try Noko today and save 15% off every plan forever. Visit NokoTime.com/SocialPod to start making your time work for you.Colleen Schnettler  0:50  So Michele, I went to purchase your book yesterday on Amazon. And I saw that it is the number one new release in business books.Michele Hansen  1:04  Is this research and development. But yes. And I The crazy thing is is you were the first person to notice like I didn't know that until you tweeted.Colleen Schnettler  1:15  Yes, that makes me so happy. So I was gonna text you but like my number one Google searches What time is it in Denmark? It was like 4am or something. So I was like, Okay, I'll just tweet about it. And she'll see it when she wakes up.Michele Hansen  1:29  Thanks. I remember seeing that. And I was like, oh my god. Um, yeah, that was really, really, really unexpected. It's been, it's been such a week.Colleen Schnettler  1:42  Yeah. So how many copies Have you sold? Okay, soMichele Hansen  1:46  on Amazon, including paperback and Kindle 47. And then I also closed the pre sale on Monday. And so that was 127 copies there. Wow.Colleen Schnettler  2:07  Yeah, that's a lot.Michele Hansen  2:09  Yeah. So yeah, like over 150. which feels, which feels pretty good.Colleen Schnettler  2:16  Um, and,Michele Hansen  2:20  but, yeah, I mean, and it's kind of fun seeing the orders from around the world, like, you know, like us, Germany, Japan, UK, Canada, Australia. Like, I mean, I know, there's a lot of places where Amazon isn't. And I don't have that data for the PDF version out in Brazil, too. But, you know, I mean, this. I feel like this whole book was, like people from around the world, most of whom I have never met and had never met before. were part of making this book happen of encouraging it and sharing the newsletters and replying to them and sharing their own stories with me about their experiences with talking to customers and what they've struggled with and what's worked for them. And I'm just, I'm just so moved. Like, it's just, yeah, it's been. It's been quite a week.Colleen Schnettler  3:21  Yeah, that's wonderful. I'm so happy for you. And I'm happy the launch has gone so well.Michele Hansen  3:27  Yeah, and I think it's not like a like a sort of a big bang launch. here because it is kind of summer and you know, things are moving a little slowly. And also doesn't, doesn't have to be it'd be a huge thing. But so right now, kind of focusing on trying to get reviews of the book on Amazon before I tried to do a Product Hunt launch. I think that's kind of like, I feel like good right now with like launching it with the people who have been along for the journey and supporting it. And, you know, someone actually sent me some like, little, like, formatting quirks they noticed in their version. And so I kind of want to get those ironed out. Before you know, bring the book to people who may not be so understanding of, you know, yeah, seeing that. Some stray formatting or whatnot. Um, yeah. Yeah.Colleen Schnettler  4:27  Does Amazon have analytics built in to their book publishing platform? Because you mentioned you could see where people were coming from?Michele Hansen  4:34  Yeah, actually, I can pull it up right now. So the whole that the KDP or Kindle Direct Publishing is what they call it. They have this little dashboard, so I can see that. Um, so yeah, there's been orders from US, UK, Germany, Japan, and Canada, and Brazil. And it tells me like, what day they're ordered on and then also the Kindle reading percentage. Which I guess they use to determine the quality of the book. So like when you did on a Kindle, Amazon is kind of creepily like tracking that and basically, you know, but like, basically people buy this book, and then they read 10 pages of it, and then they don't ever open it again. Amazon takes that as a signal about the quality of the book. Oh, yeah, I mean, so maybe like, people buy it just to like, have it just in case. But so but it can show me for example, that super creeped out by that,Colleen Schnettler  5:31  by the way, like gender weird. AndMichele Hansen  5:35  65 pages have been read. Total. And then I think it can also show me like the there's been 24 pages read today.Colleen Schnettler  5:47  So Wow, that's wild. I didn't know that.Michele Hansen  5:51  I feel a little so.Colleen Schnettler  5:52  Yeah, a little bit. So tell me about the feedback you've been getting from people have a lot of people have been reaching out to you to tell you, you know, give you feedback on their experiences with the book.Michele Hansen  6:01  Yeah, people have been so nice. Um, as I mentioned, a bunch of people were posting reviews, but I feel like you need more before I launch it on product times are kind of go on some big podcasts to promote it. Because like those people, they don't know me, they haven't been listening. They haven't been following along. Like, why the, you know, why the heck should they care who I am and what I wrote about, right. So, um, so yeah, people have been just so generous with their time and their energy of helping to get the word out about the book. And any, I've gotten nice emails from people, it's actually been kind of funny to get texts from my friends about it, because I haven't really talked about it much with like, my friends and family because it's not relevant to most of them. Like, I feel like, you know, I feel like I describe it. And I'm like, well, it's like, super nice. It's like how to, like, create software products and sell them and stuff like that. And Mathias is always like, no, everybody should have this book. It's so relevant. Everyone, like, you know, I there's like this little like group of like real estate agents in Canada who are really excited about it, for example. Um, and, um, but so like, even just getting texts from friends of mine, who I haven't really talked to about, it has been such a nice surprise, like, one of my friends sent me a picture of her two year old son flipping through it when it arrived. And apparently, he loves the duck on the cover. Totally warms my heart. But actually, oh, negative, um, there was somebody who tweeted something negative at me, like, what was it? They're like, like my first tweet, where I like tweeted out about how it was available on Amazon, this person that doesn't follow me, and I don't follow and tweeted that. They replied to me, and they said, aka manipulation for Dummies. And I like looked at it. I was like, really? Like, you come to like, somebody's like celebration of this, and you show up with negativity like that. And then I thought they made the wise decision and deleted it. So. Okay, um, yeah, it was like a little is a little weird. And I mean, it hasn't weighed on me too much. And I think it is a concern of mine. I have right that like, people will manipulate people with this. But I think like people who are manipulative, like, they have long figured out all of this and more, and they don't need an instruction manual. Like those people intuitively understand how to manipulate people and use it for their evil and they don't need instructions. So So mostly people have been, have been positive. And it's, yeah, it's, it's honestly gone. So much better than I ever could have hoped. And, really, it really never would have come to fruition. Never mind been like this, had I not done it in public and had it not started out, you know, as just a humble little newsletter. And, you know, I think if I had done the image I had in my head of what a writer does, which is sort of disappear into a cave for a year and not speak to anyone or, you know, like, see sunlight for that period of time. And then emerge with this, you know, glowing tablets of wisdom or whatever, like, I never would have published it. And I also don't think it would be getting received like this. And so I'm just, I feel like I keep repeating myself, but I'm just so grateful for how supportive people have been and how so many people around the world have contributed to this. Whether it was you know, leaving anonymous comments on those early drafts on help this book or You know, tweeting support or reading rough drafts, like, you know, reading reading copies of it, like writing reviews, like just all of that is just, it's it's really deeply moving. To me. That's wonderful. And your support to Coleen?Colleen Schnettler  10:20  I'm taking full credit. I've taken credit. I feel like this was my idea. I feel like when we started this podcast, I said, let me tell you how this is gonna end. Michelle's gonna write a book and I'm gonna launch a product. And here we are, we went to podcasting.Michele Hansen  10:34  Anyway, so speaking of that, I have to mention that today is the one year anniversary of our first episode.Colleen Schnettler  10:45  Oh my goodness, can you believe it's been a year?Michele Hansen  10:47  I can't. I cannotColleen Schnettler  10:50  unrelated to this where we like recap everything that is soMichele Hansen  10:59  I just can't believe it.I mean, it's, it feels like so long ago that we started with also doesn't feel like that long ago.Colleen Schnettler  11:16  Yeah, it doesn't feel like a year to me. I was kind of surprised when you mentioned that. I mean, we've come so far. I think we talked about it a little bit last week or the week before when I was kind of bemoaning how I feel like I'm moving really slowly. Um, but if you look at what you've accomplished over a year, like it's, it's really been significant.Michele Hansen  11:39  Yeah, and I mean, you know, talking about the book too, like Patrick McKenzie is talking about friend catchers of like, things that you do that, you know, get you get you friends, basically. And I feel like this podcast has been such an amazing friend Catcher in a year that has otherwise been quite lonely and difficult with the pandemic, to have this going on to not only like, sort of force us to keep talking to each other were like, just for like, we used to be basically neighbors and meet up at a local coffee shop. And then now we have a nine hour time difference between us like, we would not be talking this much like an actually talking and not just like texting had, like if we didn't have this podcast, and I'm grateful for that. And and I'm also so grateful for everyone who has kind of jumped on to this like weird little project of ours and and want to be a part of it. Yeah, yeah.Colleen Schnettler  12:42  It's cool. It's cool. Speaking of, I don't I haven't heard that term friend catcher's, but it made me think of something I wanted to talk to you about. So I have some friends who have a business, and I've been consulting for them for about six months. And yesterday, they offered to bring me in as a full partner. Oh, and I don't know what to do. I mean, I do know what I want to do. But it's it's like a lot. And I think that these kinds of opportunities. I knew these guys be independent of the podcast, but I definitely think like expanding my reach has helped bring more of these kinds of opportunities to my doorstep, which is really cool.Michele Hansen  13:24  Yeah.Colleen Schnettler  13:25  Yes. So so I don't know. So that's something I'm considering. If I go in with them, there'd be three of us, it'd be a company of three founders. They don't actually have a launched product yet. But they have they own the IP of something. They built at work that they want to spin off and turn into its own product.Michele Hansen  13:44  Is this like, an open source? Like, I know you're involved with a couple of things? I think I might know which one this is. But they have some like open source stuff going on? Is it that one?Colleen Schnettler  13:56  Yeah, it's that one?Michele Hansen  13:57  Ah, sorry. Oh, a little bit cryptic here.Colleen Schnettler  14:01  I don't know if I'm gonna say yes. So I don't want to. I don't want to like, name them yet. But um, it's a really cool opportunity. I am really, I think their product is spec. They're not it's not a product yet. But I think their IP is spectacular. And it's making waves to like, yeah, yeah, people are excited about it. What they're doing is really cool. And I love the idea of, as we've talked about, like going in with, with people, and I know these guys really well. So it's not like random people that I'd be starting a company with. Yeah, I love going in with people that are unknown quantity. So that's exciting. SoMichele Hansen  14:41  like, just sort of, like recap. So I mean, so so when we started this podcast, right, like you were working full time as a, you know, software consultants, and had clients and you wanted to start a SAS and then you sort of finally picked something and started launching that in September of last year, and then bi, which is simple file upload. And then by December, you had something that was logical, you got into the Roku marketplace, it went public and you're allowed to start charging for it in February, you've gotten to this about 1000. Mr. Mark at this point, now you've kind of switch gears a little bit, you're still doing that you recently took a full time job that you're working Monday through Thursday, to lower some of that stress of having clients and and have work be a little more predictable and give you that space to also to still work on your SAS but not have it have that pressure of bringing in your full time income. And so you can kind of just just like a little. So how would being a partner in this project change that? Like, what would things look like on a practical level?Colleen Schnettler  15:54  I think practically, I don't know. So those are the details I'm trying to work out right now. Like, what would that look like? What would my involvement be? with them and selling their product? I think part of the reason is so so I built as, as a consultant for them, I built out a Rails or Ruby on Rails version of this product. So they kind of the reason they're asking me is because the bulls evangelist or the person who sells it to the rails community, essentially, because they cover a different a different back end community with their expertise. So I think that is a big concern is can I do all the things? I mean, that's, that's what I have to figure out. And I know we talk a lot on this podcast about trying to balance all the things. I want to do all the things. I need to figure out if I can do all the things and I can take advantage of this opportunity.Michele Hansen  16:52  Yeah.Colleen Schnettler  16:53  Oh, it's interesting, because as when when we try to grow like this, we always say, oh, I'll just hire someone, it is really hard to just hire someone. I think to find good developers, when I can think of the contract developers I know that I would hire to work on simple file upload, I think of two people that I have worked with before. And both of those people are incredibly busy. You know, like, I think when it's when it's your product, because theoretically, I could hire more help on simple file upload. And then I could try this other role with these guys on their product. But I'm hiring someone. It's not easy, like it's not, you know, I think everyone who's tried to do this can attest to that, especially good contract developers.Michele Hansen  17:41  So I want to run through some hypotheticals with you, and you tell me how you're feeling about them. Okay. Number one, is, you have this this this job you're working on Monday through Friday. And then on nights, you work on tipo, file upload, and then on Fridays, you work on this other thing. Let's just picture that in our heads for a moment. How do you feel about that?Colleen Schnettler  18:12  I don't feel good about that. Okay. And I think I think part of the background for folks that, you know, I don't know why you would know my life story. So I taught myself to code while I was working full time and had kids. And that was freaking exhausting. Like for, I don't know, two years, every sit if you go back in my Twitter history, like I used to do that 100 days of code thing, like, maybe not two years, but like, at least a year. I mean, every single night, I would listen to the code newbies podcast while I did the dishes, so I'd get pumped up about learning to code. And then I go every night and I was exhausted. And it worked out great for me, like, you know, I am exactly where I wanted to be when I did that. But that was really exhausting. And I'm in this really comfortable place now. And I want to be successful in my SAS. That's important to me. But I don't want to do that again. Yeah, I mean, it's just not not where I am right now in my life. Like, I don't want to be a slacker, but I also don't want to work 12 hours a day.Michele Hansen  19:15  Yeah. Understandably. I mean, you you did that like, and you know how hard it is. And it makes sense that you would not want to go back to that. Yeah. Okay. Here's another hypothetical. You keep the the nine to five Monday to Thursday job. You list simple file upload on micro acquire and it fetches one of those insane multiples that people are getting for stuff making $1,000 a month I require right now. And then you work on this other thing on Fridays?Colleen Schnettler  19:52  Yeah, so I thought about that. I feel like simple file upload though, is going to be so successful because I feel Like, I don't know. So I don't want to do that. The thing is, I don't want to do anything. I don't want to take on too many things that I do them all poorly, right? That's important. And I keep thinking, like the people who get what they want, are really good at focusing and not getting distracted. The people who spread themselves too thin no one wins.Michele Hansen  20:18  I mean, it's one who runs a company has a podcast and just wrote a book. I beg to disagree.Colleen Schnettler  20:25  You did them all spectacular. I don't know about that. But you know. So I think that I, so I thought about selling simple file upload, but it's almost feature complete, it's pretty much feature complete, and it just makes me money. If I don't touch it, it's just, it's just growing. Like, it's like magic unicorn over there.Michele Hansen  20:48  I mean, we just described a like cash throwing asset that doesn't need a ton of work on it that people would want to buy.Colleen Schnettler  20:57  Well, that's true. I mean, you could say that's why someone would buy it, because it literally, but I could also I mean, it's, I could just leave it my thought. Okay, so my thought is, what if I just leave it? Like, it doesn't need, we've talked about a lot of things like, my sister is working on some marketing plans for it, get it feature complete, there's like one or two things I need to add. I could just let it make me money, right. I mean, it's just or, or I turned down this other opportunity. And I go all in, not all in I mean, I continue with plan a plan A, which is focus on simple file, upload and see if I can grow it faster, while having that comfort and security of the full time job.Michele Hansen  21:45  I don't know. Okay, before we sort of move into that, let's just run through the last hypothetical that I thought of, and there's probably more, but we'll just stick it out with this one. You keep going with the nine to five, Monday through Thursday job. You work on simple file upload on Fridays, and you turn down this offer to work with these people who you think are working on. Okay, I'm not going to bias your, your.Colleen Schnettler  22:16  Um, so that's a good option, too. I feel like Okay, so let's let me take a step back and acknowledge the incredible, amazing position I'm in where I'm like, Oh, I have all these amazing opportunities. I don't know which one to take. So that's pretty spectacular. So I'm pretty happy about all of my choices. I don't think I can make a wrong choice here. I want to go in with these guys. Because I want co founders, I've always wanted co founders. I know it's hard it can it can bring conflict, and it's harder, but it's I think will be way more fun. And I think their product is really cool. I think it might be cooler than my product specials. SoMichele Hansen  22:57  how does the thought of not working on that and walking away from it feel?Colleen Schnettler  23:03  I think I'll regret it. Because I think when they start selling their product, they're gonna be millionaires. Like no joke. I mean, I think I don't think it'd be bad though. Like, I don't think it's a bad choice to walk away. If I walk away, then they'll just keep keep on keep on in and I can, you know, cheer them on from the sidelines. And we could always decide later, you know, they don't haven't even launched their product yet. Like, just so you know, so we can always decide later, maybe in six months, I have more time. And they're like, Oh, we really need a salesperson. Now, if I come in later, they're not going to offer me a full third. I'm sure they'll be like, we'll give you x amount. But I don't think I'm shutting the door completely on that opportunity if I don't take it right now.Michele Hansen  23:47  So they're offering you a full third. Yeah,Colleen Schnettler  23:51  that isMichele Hansen  23:53  interesting. Um, you know, to the the, I feel like that sort of brings us back to the option of, you know, you have a full time job, which is paying you then you have this SAS that basically doesn't need any work from you, where you casually make $12,000 a year, like without doing a whole lot like no big deal. And then you spend your Fridays working on this other thing. And maybe sometimes you have to put in some hours on simple file upload or you've got some help from contractors. How does that option feel?Colleen Schnettler  24:27  That actually feels good to me. I mean, I, you know, I just, I want to make sure I'm putting good products out there in the world. So that is important to me to make sure that if I do something like that, that simple file upload is not getting the shaft because I feel that's my thing. And I feel very, very strongly about giving that product the time and attention it needs. But it is feature complete, almost. And so I could just let it ride, keep doing customer interviews. I mean what if I took the next six months Once you've been telling me to do this forever, instead of like, obsessing over what feature to add, I just talked to people, I just talked to my customers once a week, for six months, and then I have gathered, that doesn't take a ton of my time, couple hours a week, then I have gathered this amazing catalogue of data. And then who knows where everything will, will fall out in a period of time. And then after I've gathered this catalogue of data, I can decide what to do next with it.Michele Hansen  25:28  I mean, I'm an advocate of doing, doing the research and doing the work at the same time. And, and doing, you know, doing the research on an ongoing basis. And, you know, you don't have to wait until you have a pile of data to make decisions.Colleen Schnettler  25:43  I know, but I'm trying, I feel like you're telling me not to not to take on too much stuff. And just be aware of that, like, I feel like, that's the vibe I'm getting from you is you're like, I don't know, make sure you sort this out before you accept it.Michele Hansen  25:55  It seems like it's, it's, it's justifiably important to you to be conscious of your energy and how you're spending your time. And also this sort of like pride in your craft and what you're selling to people and making sure that when you're selling them something, you feel like it's worth that money that they're giving you and you are not content to just collect a check.Colleen Schnettler  26:18  Right. And I have to make sure it's good.Michele Hansen  26:21  And and this is something where it, maybe it is a little bit harder for me to say sort of intrinsically understand this because I have to have multiple things going on. You know, we are we are different people with different neurological systems. And I think you're afraid that if you take on, you know, these three things, that you're not going to be able to give any of them 100%. And, and, and that worries you and and you took this job for your family stability, you know, to as part of being a provider for your family. And it seems like you don't want to stress yourself to the point where your work performance suffers, or your performance on simple file uploads anytime you're so proud of it that you don't want to sell it.Colleen Schnettler  27:20  Yeah, I don't want to sell it because I'm so free, cuz you see the opportunity there too.Michele Hansen  27:25  But the same time, there's opportunity there. And the fact that the foundry really pioneered people like well absolutely buy it. And like it might help if you you know, you, you decided to go, you know, all in so to speak for your side project time on this other thing, and then you were sitting on, you know, I don't know, a casual, you know, $20,000 or whatever. Um, or more Actually, that's really low multiple, like, probably like 50 or $100,000. I would not be surprised if you fetch that. Gosh, seriously, like I've seen stuff like, what's our episode last week or a couple weeks ago about multiples? They're, like, absolutely bonkers multiples going for these, like sort of low MRR? sasses, like, under like, 10,000 a month, like even under 1000 a month. Like, like, I thought I saw one that was like 24 times revenue, which isColleen Schnettler  28:19  wow, like, That's crazy. Yeah.Michele Hansen  28:23  Now, if you're making 500 a month, like, but still that's like, that's a huge premium.Colleen Schnettler  28:29  That's a huge Yeah, I don't know, I think you're right about, I think you're absolutely right about. I don't want to sell it because I feel very, I mean, it's my you know, it's my baby, like, I feel very invested in it. I'm excited. It feels like I finally finally, after you and I have been talking for years about my ideas, I found something that's working. So I then with me, their product is really cool. But they don't I think their products gonna work. I mean, it's pretty well validated because people have paid them to build it and let them keep the IP, but at the same time, they aren't actually selling anything yet. So they really haven't seen. Although I think you're absolutely right. It's going to be a, you know, a home run success. My thing is already working. So, you know, I'm hesitant to sell something that's working if I could just let it chill and get to it when I have time.Michele Hansen  29:31  You know, I remember I felt that way about when we were talking about God Oh, at first because we had this mobile app that was like working we had ad revenue like it was it was making us money and, um, and we desperately like, needed that money. And, and then it kind of came up that we you know, we need a geocoding for it to keep it going. And it was like she you know, should we put the time into it to make that into a product? Or should we focus on the thing that's already making money and just like, let it be just sort of something internal. And I remember having a lot of discussions with Mateus about that. And I remember I was on the side of, let's do the thing that's already making money. Because we know that's working. And, you know, lo and behold that app, I think it may be grossed $10,000, in its two or three years of existence. And, you know, God makes more than a day. So, like,Colleen Schnettler  30:35  it's, you know, theseMichele Hansen  30:37  things are really hard to predict. Yeah, you know, you were saying of like, I think you're trying to tell me to do this. I'm not trying to tell you to do anything. I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm here to help you think,Colleen Schnettler  30:50  think andMichele Hansen  30:53  I can't tell you what is going to be the right decision for you. I can't tell you what's going to leave you with the fewest regrets. Um, you know, there's this other option where like, you know, these guys, maybe it's worth saying to them, like, hey, like, I love to come on is as a full partner. Like, if you're okay with me, you know, splitting my time between this and simple file upload for a while, like, I'm not ready to decide on what I want to do a simple file upload.Colleen Schnettler  31:27  And,Michele Hansen  31:29  you know, because the thing about getting on something that you think is a rocket ship, like, there's no guarantees and like, rockets explode all the time. Like, yeah, they do. Yeah, like, and if you like, you know, and if you got, like,Unknown Speaker  31:44  you know, I don't know,Michele Hansen  31:47  little like propeller planes that next there that you know, is going to get you from A to B, like might not get you to the moon, but it's you know, going to get you a hop, skip and a jump away to where you want to be like, sometimes that's a little safer, you know? Yeah. And I mean, I think if you were saying I'm going to quit my job and simply file upload and work on this other thing, I would be like,Unknown Speaker  32:10  okay, let's, let's take a breath.Unknown Speaker  32:13  Um,Unknown Speaker  32:15  maybe you don't have to decide,Unknown Speaker  32:17  right? Yeah,Colleen Schnettler  32:19  yeah, I think more conversations. I think that's the right answer. I think I need to think a little bit. I liked your hypothetical. What does that look like?Michele Hansen  32:27  Yeah, just sort of went through it. Like, what are all different permutations?Colleen Schnettler  32:31  Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, tune in next week to find out what kylene has decided to do with her life again. Alright, so on that note, let's wrap up this week's episode of the software social podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a review on iTunes and we'd love to hear from you on Twitter.Michele Hansen  32:57  And thank you so much for listening. Whether this is your first episode you're listening to or You have been listening since the beginning. It really means a lot to both of us. And I keep wishing we could have like software, social con or something. We're just like, get together and hang out. Because I feel like that would be really fun. So yeah, thank you for listening.Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Join DeeAsis and SoSo as they uncork their summer hiatus, review their latest finds with Sip or Spit, share tips on how to drink safely while on vacation, and answer the Wine Trivia Question of the week. Follow: @badandboozypod Email: badandboozypodcast@gmail.com Call: (818) 639-2443 Review: 5 Stars Only, please

Watch the video version of this show on YouTube »Andy Carvell is the Partner & Co-Founder of Phiture, a mobile growth agency. Here he has worked with some of the biggest apps on the App Store, including Headspace, Spotify, Triller, and VSCO.Prior to founding Phiture, Andy worked on the marketing and growth teams at SoundCloud. His team built SoundCloud's activity notification system, which delivered over 500 million pushes per month, and increased M1 retention by five percentage points in its first few months of operation. Andy has been in the mobile industry since the late ‘90s, when he started working at Nokia. Andy has a deep interest in technology, strategy and the execution of ideas.In this episode, you'll learn: Andy's user retention techniques The most overlooked component in marketing your app How to optimize your customer's App Store experience Andy's formula for maximizing your app's notification strategy Links & Resources SoundCloud Headspace Spotify Triller VSCO Nokia RevenueCat Salesforce Intercom Elevate KiwiCo Braze Leanplum Iterable Andy Carvell's Links Phiture Phiture's Mobile Growth Stack Andy on Twitter: @andy_carvell Andy on LinkedIn Work at Phiture Follow us on Twitter: David Barnard Jacob Eiting RevenueCat Sub Club Episode TranscriptAndy: 00:00:00So the impact that you can drive with notifications is reach, times relevance, times frequency. What we learned from the time at SoundCloud was not all notifications are equal, and the really killer ones that are going to really supercharge your business, have high reach, high relevance and high frequency.And then, then you're in that golden quadrant.David: 00:00:35Welcome to the Sub Club podcast. I'm your host, David Bernard. And with me is always Jacob Eiting. Hello, Jacob.Jacob: 00:00:42Hi, David. David: 00:00:43It's a thundering in your neck of the woods, I hear. Jacob: 00:00:46It's, you know, it's cleared up now. I think we're gonna make it.David: 00:00:50I've got a plumber. Our guests might have some construction workers. It's going to be a fun one today!Jacob: 00:00:55Is it, David? You're breaching the magic of podcasting and it's going to get audited out.David: 00:01:01All right. Speaking of our guests, our guest today is Andy Carvell, partner and co-founder of Phiture, a mobile growth agency. At Phiture, Andy has worked with some of the biggest apps on the App Store, including Headspace, Spotify, Triller, and VSCO.Prior to find founding Phiture, Andy worked on the marketing and growth teams at SoundCloud.Welcome to the podcast, Andy.Andy: 00:01:23Thanks, David. A real pleasure. Thanks for inviting me on. Excited to be here.David: 00:01:27Yeah. So, you and I were chatting a little bit about your background as I was kind of prepping your bio, and you shared a really fun anecdote. So, I think I'm like, “Old man in the mobile space,” you know, or Jacob and I both; we both had apps on the App Store in 2008, you know, we were early. But you started in mobile a little, just a few years before that. Andy: 00:01:52Just a little bit more. David: 00:01:53Tell us about that. You were at Nokia making games in 1999.Andy: 00:01:58Yeah, right out of university, I graduated computer science in ‘99. I always wanted to be making games, and I was applying for roles in the games industry, and then the agent that was kind of helping me find those said, “Hey, there's this company Nokia. They make mobile phones.”I didn't own a mobile phone at that point. None of my friends did, but it was just kind of reaching the tipping point, and they wanted to put games on these things, and I'm like, okay, that's sounds interesting.I went along to the interview. I really was very kind of amazed at the, you know, the R and D center there. It was like, like pretty space age, you know, they were working on some real next level shit.And, I was actually pretty excited by the idea of like cramming, you know, decent games into like 16 kilobytes, which is what I had to play with building embedded games on a black and white 84 by 48 pixel display.Jacob: 00:02:55So, I was going to ask, are we talking like Snake, or are we talking like Java level stuff?Andy: 00:03:00It was pre Java. It was an embedded game. So, I was coding in C in Assembly, and I basically had to like build the whole game from start to finish. We had this shared designer who did the pixel art, and I had to cram it into 16K and make it fun. Yeah.I wrote a pretty game called Space Impact there, which was released on the 3310 phone, which I think wasn't available in America. But in the rest of world a lot of people played that game. It was like the first, side-scrolling arcade, shoot-them-up, on a mobile.David: 00:03:30That is amazing. Jacob: 00:03:31Well, it's pretty incredible. Just even think like the iPhone wasn't that far behind that right? Like you were doing 16K assembly and C, and like eight years later, we were going to have like open GL driven games. So just pretty wild.Andy: 00:03:51Yeah, it's moved on a lot.David: 00:03:53So after Nokia, you spent some time at SoundCloud, and there's a couple of things you did at SoundCloud that I wanted to dig into, because it seems like you've kind of continued that work at Phiture, and it's really relevant to our audience in subscriptions. So, one of those is the mobile life cycle program, and this is something I think so much about.There's such a huge story that's hard to tell, and hard to really understand. It's something like, you know, I think we can help with at RevenueCat that I'm constantly thinking of from a product perspective, and I think developers often it's like, you get an install, you get them to start a free trial and they convert and like, but there's so many other journeys and so many parts of the life cycle that, that need to be studied.So, tell me about this mobile lifecycle program, kind of the origins, and then, you know how you see it today?Andy: 00:04:53Yeah. Yeah. I was that SoundCloud for about four and a half years in the end. I was working on various teams, but ended up actually building out a cross-functional team focused on user retention, which is where I got really into the lifecycle topic.And yeah, it's, you're absolutely right. It's, it's a pretty complex topic. It's one that we have continued to develop processes and, and, you know, best practice around at Phiture, where we're helping companies like Cisco and, yeah. Blinkist actually is a, is another one that we're working with, recently. But yeah, everybody seems to struggle with this because it is such a, a giant topic, as you say, David, there's a lot to it.There's a lot of different touch points you can have with the user. And it all comes, starts with understanding the user journey, right. And understanding users probably better than you currently do. And that, for me, always starts with asking them questions rather than diving straight into the analytics and looking at funnels.I think it's something that's really overlooked in, in tech companies. You know, we have all this data available. And so the instinct is just to dive in and look at the numbers. Now, I think quantitative tells a very interesting story and for sure you need to be tracking what, what users are doing to, to understand those users quantitatively.But, you also want to understand the psychology of the user at these different points. What are they thinking? What are they hoping for? What are they expecting? And you know, I think a great lifecycle program from, you know, actually user life cycle starts outside of the store right outside of the app, rather. So it starts in the stores.Jacob: 00:06:38Yeah. So did the need, right?Andy: 00:06:40Yes. It starts with a need or what? and then, you know, hopefully. Somehow the user discovers the app. It's either through an advert or maybe a friend has mentioned it, or, you know, there could be many ways that they come to the App Stores, but then, you know, they're all going to go through that App Store, which is why the Phiture.We also put a lot of work into App Store optimization with our clients. You know, you start the user journey there, you're setting the expectation, in your ad creative and in your App Store page. It's a great opportunity to. To sell the benefits of the app and qualify your users, you know? Well, because you're, you're really then.You know, setting, setting that expectation, which you then need to deliver on in the very first session in the app. So then you get into onboarding and activation and, you know, that can be both within the product, but also augmented by a multi-channel messaging approach, which is we did a lot of work with that at SoundCloud.Because this is like, for me, this is the kind of the hack, right? The magic bullet. Is that not that. Not that CRM is the most effective lever for, for engaging users, actually that's product. but CRM is a great way to circumvent a six month product backlog and engineering backlog and, and, and rapidly iterate on ideas.And, and also it's got built in measurement and, and segmentation. So you can do some really interesting stuff. Sorry. You had Jacob: 00:08:07So, yeah. So when you say CRM, I mean, like, I know CRM is like in my world, Salesforce, or maybe Intercom or something, I guess, but when I've heard, I've heard this used in the marketing world, but what is, what is the more, seems like there's a lot more broad context or a broad definition of that term.Andy: 00:08:24Yeah. And there's so many different terminology and definitions around it. It's a, it's very confusing as with everything in tech, but. Yeah. So when I say CRM, which is customer relationship management, and, and that goes back to the sixties and seventies, you know, classic business, you know, theory actually, it's nothing new that we've invented it just with tech, but, when I'm talking about CRM in a mobile app scenario, I'm talking about leveraging a customer engagement platform like braise or Leanplum or, Iterable maybe.And, You know, it's typically what you've got available in that kind of stack would be, something sort of rudimentary analytics enough to do sort of targeting and triggering of messages as well as basic measurement around like what the effects of those messages are. Although typically you'd want to pair that with.Your product analytics to get a deeper view on how it's affecting retention or, you know, or monetization for that matter. but yeah, you're able to sort of carve out segments of users and then craft, interaction. So, so the, the tools you mentioned there, Salesforce, IndyCar, definitely still in that mix.We don't, we don't see them so much specifically Salesforce. We see it more in enterprise. most, mostly. Let's he around email as a channel. but you know, this sort of more modern or mobile first platforms such as prays, for example, you know, really kind of built to leverage, mobile specific channels, like, push and rich push, mobile in-app messaging, which is a killer channel for engaging users who are in the app.And it's where it kind of bridges the gap between classic products. Classic marketing, because you can really kind of overlay an old man. New experiences on top of what's what's built in the product, which sometimes causes some tension with, with the designers. But, but actually you can make them look, you can make them look super native.And, yeah, you can test and iterate on them quickly, which is the real benefit I think of using a platform like that is you can, if you have testing on onboarding for example, and you're looking at day zero users, you've got a fresh cohort every day. You can run. You know, if you've got enough, big enough cohorts, you can, you can iterate every day if you want, or at least every couple of days.Jacob: 00:10:45Yeah. As long As you're getting a few thousand downloads, right. Or, you know, or even like even hundreds, right. If you're getting hundreds of downloads, like those are significant enough cohorts, especially if you're running, you know, tasks very towards that, very beginning of the experience. Right. So you get like lots of exposure, but yeah.And then it's typically very high leverage too, right? Because we found this at elevate a lot. just the nature of funnels is that. There were all these like tests and kind of experiments we wanted to do further down the funnel, like, oh, how was like the last step look and all this stuff. And it turns out nine times out of 10.It was not really that important because what really mattered was the first step or the second step, because that's just where the most people were. Right. It didn't matter. We could get half the lift there, but it mattered more because they hadn't decayed all the way through the funnel. Right. Which is, there's a lot of these like unintuitive aspects of, yeah.I guess when you think about a CRM, it's like, The pre-experience finding you getting into the app. Re-engaging right. That are in some ways, like there's an overlapping piece with products. Right. But it's broader, right. It exists like sort of outside of the, the, the specific software itself. and, and yeah.Thinking about it holistically, as David was saying earlier, it's difficult. Right. It's difficult because of the time-based aspects is to, because it's, multi-platform, it's difficult because, you know, The tooling still leaves something to be desired. but, but, yeah, I think it's really interesting to, to, to talk about using your user interviews in that process, because, you traditionally think about doing that in a product process, right.When you're like trying to talk to users about what to build, but you actually need to be talking to them about how, how do they, what do they, want? Like, why do they, why are they here? Like, why did you want to inform, like, you know, how are you contacting them communicating with them, et cetera. Andy: 00:12:32Pretty much so. David: 00:12:33Yeah. And then. So part of that, life cycle management is this multi-channel notification systems. And you've kind of already mentioned that a little bit, but, so in mobile apps and the clients that you're working with at Fisher Phiture, and then some of the work you've done, you did previously at SoundCloud. how do you kind of manage the. The breadth of available channels. Now you've got email, you've got in-app, you've got push. you know, and have you seen kind of patterns in, in certain channels performing better with these kinds of mobile audiences?Andy: 00:13:11Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think to some extent it depends on the, the, the app itself and the audience for that app. you know, we still see SMS, for example, being a really impactful channel in, in some specific categories, like, you know, SoundCloud couldn't send SMS. I think it would be a bad idea.Possibly in some markets, you know, maybe they're a slightly less developed. They have all the funds, but I'd say it's probably not a great channel for SoundCloud, for example. But, you know, we, we did some work with, with good RX, which is a, like a prescription yeah. discount service in America is huge.I think they, I think they might've had IPO recently, but, yeah, in any case, SMS is still a huge channel for them. because they're, you know, a lot of their customers are older people. With, you know, with who are not necessarily engaging with, with emails or, or necessarily in app messages. I mean, I think an app is generally a pretty great channel for anyone who's in the app, but actually with some, some apps it's not a very valuable channel at all because the users barely in the app, if you're thinking about sort of very functional experiences, like, I'd say Uber, Uber is a, is a good example.Like there's definitely some room. To even with mobility startups to interact with users while they're in the app, but you don't want to get in their way because they're there to book a ride and get in it. So you have like limited surface area. So yeah, really, you know, when we go in this Phiture, you know, our retention team goes into to build out a, an engagement strategy with a customer.We very much like to understand not just their usage. But also, you know, figure out what is the right channel mix. That makes sense. We actually put up, I think a while back a, a, a matrix, which kind of highlights the pros and cons of each channel and how they can be used in combination. Maybe a I can, I can take out the link and we can include it in the podcast. David: 00:15:02Yeah. And you know, it's funny. I feel like I see all these like threats on Twitter about like, especially from like the kind of indie developer scene about like, you know, don't, you know, do a newsletter, like email is evil and like, and then I'm always the one that's like, I kind of liked newsletter. It's like, as long as it's not like overly aggressive.And then same with SMS. I found myself lately, just ended up with a couple of apps, like a thrive market. It's like a shopping. it's kind of like Amazon grocery ish kind of stuff. And they're texting me and I kinda like it. And I never would've thought, you know, cause like they're pushing notifications, they just get lost.But like I care about when my order shifts and I care. And so it's interesting how I think, you know, sometimes we in tech underestimate. That when somebody really cares about something, they don't mind. Getting notified about it, but that's where you have to like, be really careful of where you draw these lines and how you do your messaging and what the user really cares enough about.But when they do, you know, you, you know, it's always felt to me as a developer, like, oh, SMS is like, it's just off the table. Like, I wouldn't touch that. But then like, now I'm like, wait a minute. Like if it's something I use, it really cares about like, it's a Bible platform and as a Jacob: 00:16:21For transactional stuff, right? Like your ship order shipped and things like that. And then, you know, it's becomes something you can piggyback marketing messaging or expansion or product marketing onto. Right. but I always, I was the, at that point is super validated across to you is your Twitter is not really.Right. and, and it's totally true that like the developers and the communities and the styles that we have often as people who make software and our insiders is very different from the, the median consumer, which is not even a thing. There is a median consumer, right. You're dealing with this huge distribution of users and different, they have different tastes and they have different appetites for, for marketing and all this stuff.And yeah, I always believe. Give them control. Like obviously don't do anything on tour. Don't message people. If they say not to write and give people like an opt in opt out, like, you know, as clear choice in the onboarding funnel. But yeah, you'd be surprised. Like people don't have as much stuff going on sometimes or have as much noise in their, in their feed.Really want to engage. And those are the users that you really should be reaching. Right. Because they are like, they're, they're not only installing your app, but they're willing to show some intent to engage with you. Right. Because they have a real purpose to be there. Right. As opposed to like a drive by or something like this.Right. And so, yeah. I don't know. I think that that is. Goes beyond just this one particular topic. Cause like we, yeah, we hear developers all the time. Like being like, oh, I don't want to tell. I mean, I even remember me going back to elevate again, being when we started to, we hired a growth marketer and started to work some of these new notification channels.I was very against it. Like I thought this was like disrespectful to our users. It was just growth hacking. It was whatever. Then I saw the numbers, right? Like, I don't know the retention didn't go down. All the other numbers went up. I was like, well, I guess people don't care. Right. Or at least like the people that don't care aren't big enough to matter.I mean, they matter, but like, I don't know, I'm building a business here at some point. Right. So, it's, counter-intuitive,David: 00:18:17This goes to your earlier point though. And I was just going to bring it up up is 12 south. I just bought this forte stand thing. That's like one of my favorite products I bought in a long time. It's amazing. It's like wireless charging for my phone. I can drop my AirPods pro on there and it charges a little ad for them real quick.But I went to unsubscribe to their email because they were sending me like two weeks. I was like, well, I don't want to, I don't want to unsubscribe. It's actually like 12 south lake. They make good products. I love this product. I just bought from them. I want to know what they're up to. So I go to unsubscribe because I was like, I just can't, I can't do two emails a week from these people.And then the, the email thing was like, Hey, do you want to just hear from us, you know, twice a week, once a week or once a month, I was like, once a month. Cool. Like, I'd love to hear from them once a month. I wish more newsletters would do that. And the opposite. I subscribed to Kiwi co boxes for my kids.And they email me like four times a week and I've even talked to their Twitter team and they're like, we're going to put you on the like slow thing. And they don't, and I keep getting four emails a week, so I'm just going to unsubscribe.Jacob: 00:19:21A lot. It's a lot, right? Like it's a lot to, like, we're talking about, I'm sure, Andy, you deal with this all the time. Like just getting that first version of like a marketing product marketing campaigns going, it's hard to add in like, well, okay, you'll have the, the one month and you know, it takes time to build those things up, so it doesn't surprise me, but it is.Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to, well, it's a tough choice as product and builders. Right. We always have to decide like, what are the corners we're going to cut? What are the, like the boxes we're going to shove everybody in. Right. Because we're not gonna be able to like, perfectly meet. Everybody's like appetite for this stuff where they are.Right. That's going to be impossible. and so, I mean, I feel like that's where the measurement comes in, right? Andy?Andy: 00:20:00Yeah, so you've touched on so many interesting points there. I know we don't have two hours to discuss them all, but I would love to just quickly pick up on it. before we get onto to measurement and, and personalization, I think it's all going to flow. So, first point, you mentioned like, you know, developers. Maybe not the target audience for the app. That is so true. And I mean the less, unless you get, get up, you know, for sure. But, you know, for the vast majority of like consumer apps that are targeting essentially, you know, global audiences of more or less like, you know, broad audiences, like, you know, I don't know, 18 to 30 males and females or whatever, who were into a particular.Sport or something like this. These people are not, they're not engineers. They don't hate notifications. Right? You know, the only way you can prove that as a growth marketer is by getting a little bit of surface area where you are allowed to run experiments. or as, as we, as my team tit in, in, at SoundCloud in the early days, we would run them in places like Pakistan.We would just, SoundCloud's going to kill me when they hear this, but, you know, we would just. Just just not send them to Berlin, you know, where all the engineers were based, but we tested me the rest of the world, or if it was particularly something like a bit more daring, a bit more bold and you need to run Volvo experiments.Sometimes we would run them in Pakistan. We'd get a good feel for like, you know, what the uplift was and then we'd take it to the lawyers. Cause sometimes there was, you know, there were also even legal issues about where we could tread the line with user generated content and promotion. music licensing is a minefield, but, but yeah, my point.Jacob: 00:21:45Yes,Andy: 00:21:45It's only when you can kind of come back with data and show it to, you know, the exec team and say, look, we just moved retention five percentage points. This is huge. then they kind of give you a bit more leeway to, to send a few more notifications. and yeah, like the, the, but, you know, we had so much resistance from, from the tech team and, you know, the engineers.Convinced we were going to destroy the product and it comes from a very, very good place. You know, they care about the product. They care about the users, they just, they just are not representative of the users. and that comes to my second point. Which is, I learned a lot from my time at SoundCloud and from building out a, real-time notification system that was, you know, from, was kicking out around 500 million push notifications per month.So it was, you know, we, we got there in the end with the, with the volume. but, you know, one of the things which I kind of distilled later when I was at Phiture, I kind of thought back to that time and distilled it into a formula. So the impact that you can drive with notifications, is reach times relevance, times frequency.And I'll just break that down very quickly. So reach we're talking about, you know, your overall channel opt-in rate. So how many people are actually opted in for push or in this case? I'd also like what if your segment that, that whole, audience then what stage of the funnel they're at, which is to David's point earlier about how you have a greater surface area or a greater reach as I would put it, earlier on in the funnel, because more users are still around.So. yeah, so that's your reach and that's a big lever on, on how much impact you're going to drive with any particular notification. Is that is your size of your target audience. That's addressable, second one relevance, which you've also touched on, in your examples there. if it's highly relevant, users will tolerate not just tolerate, but actually welcome a high volume of notifications, which is th th the third, parameter there in that formula that the third variable, which is pretty cool.How frequently can you send this particular notification before people start to opt out and then it like brings you a reach down. So it's basically like a, it's not a Seesaw because there's three elements to it. Right. But it's some kind of 3d sea sore, where if you get the right balance and you're able to tweak, tweak those things, there's a tension between those three variables.Right. But if you're. April to increase relevance by, by personalization, you know, by providing in SoundCloud's case more relevant recommendations for content. Or, looking at what users have listened to before and, and telling them more things about artists that they've been listening to and things like that that would increase the relevance, which means you can proxy that by click through rate, they're much less likely to turn them off and you can send more of those notifications.You can increase that frequency. And so what I learned from that, what we learned from the time at SoundCloud. Not all notifications are equal and the really killer ones that are going to really supercharge your business, have high rates, high relevance, and high frequency. And then, then you're in that, that, that golden quadrant David: 00:24:51Would imagine. I don't know if you, if y'all have built things out internally to, to Phiture, but I imagine that kind of 3d Seesaw is really hard to measure. It's really hard to understand. Which, which ones are driving relevance, which ones.And especially once you get into personalization where now you're not dealing with just massive AB tests, you're actually like almost doing user level, understanding of what's relevant and what's not SoSo it brings us to the, to the next big topic and we can kind of dive into that aspect of it later, but you got to build out a stack for this.And so, and this is something I, I, you've done a great job of, of kind of boiling a lot of this down into the mobile growth stack. And I wanted to talk through a few kind of levels of the mobile growth stack. So a lot of apps. You know, I taught as developer advocate. I talked to a ton of revenue, cat customers.So a lot of apps all the way from like, you know, Hey, we just have an idea where we're like thinking about subscriptions to Indies, to like huge companies. And, but you have a lot of people super early who are kind of overbuilding and then you have people in the middle, like, what do I do now? So let's talk through kind of a stack for, for your MVP and then onto your kind of intermediate and then to your kind of growth stage.Like what's the like, MVP I'm want to get this out, but I want to have just enough, you know, measurement just enough analytics, just enough data to, to start growing this thing.Andy: 00:26:28Yeah. Great question. And, and, yeah, it's a, it's a really good topic actually, because you know, this mobile growth stack framework, which, which, which I published originally at SoundCloud, and we continue to develop a Phiture, you know, it's, it's huge, there's loads of stuff on this. It's basically trying to encapsulate everything that, you know, Could form part of your marketing strategy and your, your growth approach to growing, growing a mobile app.So, so sometimes people misinterpret that as, oh, I have to do all of these things have to tick all of these boxes in order to be successful. no, absolutely not. Like, you know, you have to play to your strengths and also to you. So your company stage and your, your priorities, right. And for sure, if you try to overreach, you try to do everything.You're going to do it all really badly, or at least most things, so much better to focus. And, yeah, I think this could be another good, blog post actually that I should write. But, but yeah, let's, let's dive into it now. Let's let's have a go. So like early stage, right. Prelaunch or, well, Let's skip pre-launch for a second.Let's say you've just launched into the market, with your, you know, with your new app. I think what I see often is a challenge with early stage customers and frankly why we don't work with super early stage customers. Because they have unrealistic expectations. They, they think they're ready for growth.But in, you know, accepted except in absolutely like, you know, stand out anomalous cases like maybe flappy bird would be a good example, that that was ready for hyper-growth pretty much from day one, I think just, just happened to catch the zeitgeists, but you know, you can't bank on that. And most 99.9% of apps will not have that kind of success.So actually what an early stage. Team needs to work on is product market fit. Whether they, whether they think they do or not. They're probably two, two or three years away from market product market fit. That means they need to iterate on the product and they need to iterate on the marketing and, you know, meet there somewhere in the middle with some level of, you know, kind of a retention curve that flattens out at least somewhere along that curve.Jacob: 00:28:34Was thinking about this, this, this product market fit meaning, and I don't know, it's one of these words that it's, it's, it's, it's constantly an enigma to founders and because nobody can tell you what it is, right. I think because it's different for every product is different for every segment is different for every market.Like what it actually looks like in our, in this space consumer subscription space, it generally has to do. The, yeah, the, I think that's the best, a very good definition of it. The pretension curves that do flatten out because like, you don't get in this face, you don't tend to get like, exp like super stable user cohorts.They always like drop off to some level, but you want to see like some reasonable level out in some like shortest period of time, which takes a while with subscription apps to really understand like 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 months, or like for the annual renewals, it takes a year to really understand it. but focusing on the product.Yeah, it's really what you need to do at elevate. We actually, before we even launched and we weren't subscription when we launched, but we. We had a, an just an or, yeah, we just released on, Android. So we had an Android app. We could, it was great. Cause we could release a new version every week, and do a beta list.And we could, we, we, we curated a list or it was sorry, it was Android and iOS. And we used like test flight, distributions. But, and we measured each cohort. Right. And it's not talking about, we weren't AB testing. We weren't like driving in massive downloads or anything like this, but we were just looking like each, like some subsequent cohort, like what was their first.10, you know, what were these like how many signed up? How many finished? Like activated and we just watched and like watched we iterated on the app until we felt like that number was pretty good. And then we launched, but we didn't do AB testing. We didn't like massively like go over the top and tracking.Right. It was just like a handful, like really things. Cause the thing is you're going to score. Right. Like AB testing is really hard. It's expensive. Not because of the tooling, it's expensive because operationally it's really difficult to get. Right. And you gotta put a lot of people on it. So, that, that really starting simple mentality will save you a lot of headaches. I think.David: 00:30:37Yeah, we had a great episode with Doris Maura from reflecting on this about just, just that minimally viable, like shoot for product market fit. And, you know, don't do sophisticated AB testing. Don't do all this stuff you think you need to do. And then even some of the stuff that they, you know, you could install braise or like try and do these big things early. You can find ways around it. Like you can do simple email surveys, you can do simple user testing. You can, you can, you know, use Zapier for things to kind of like bridge the gap and don't go build a ton of internal tooling around it, but like do the simple hacky things that don't scale early on and then move on.So then let's talk about like, okay, you've reached some level of market product market fit, you know, your, You know, your, your marketing seems to be resonating. You've got some decent retention and you're starting to really pour money into user acquisition. What's kind of that next level up, that you think companies should start layering on new new services and new sophistication.Andy: 00:31:46Yeah. So I'm talking here like primarily about, you know, growth stuff rather than Phiture building. I'm kind of assuming that there's, there's always more Phitures to build, although, you know, I would actually say. Probably people generally keep building Phitures when they should probably stop. They always think that another Phiture is going to be the thing, which really helps what right.Exactly. And can I say be detrimental to a point, you know, like when, when it becomes too crowded, so, but yeah, so talking about the, you know, the, the growth stack and the, the, the growth activities that would. Appropriate as, as you've got that initial traction and you're looking to scale it, which is where Phitured can get involved.By the way like this. Typically we work with either kind of traction and growth stage companies, or actually more mature kind of increasingly like enterprise folks who maybe have a very mature product in the market. And they're looking at they're kind of plateaued and they're looking to scale it, but yeah, in, in that growth place, super exciting phase, there, I think it's really about. You know, you want to be able to start to scale. So that's. You're going to need to upgrade your analytics, probably in stock, trucking more stuff, to get a better understanding of, you know, deeper understanding of your engagement, your retention, and for sure the performance of your acquisition channels, whether they're, whether they're organic, paid or some mix.Because you'd likely to want to start adding layering in more acquisition, either scaling the channels that are working for you, or when they max out or start getting expensive, you know, layering in other channels. I would also recommend like, you know, I wouldn't build it right at the start, but in this growth phase, it's good to experiment with virality.Like, you know, I always say it's, you can't really plan for virality, but you can at least. So the seeds and see if they germinate, right? Like you, if you don't cultivate the right conditions for virality to occur, it never will. but if you, you know, if you have like, you know, the ability to share content, if there's a content app, if you put those share Phitures in, then at least you can kind of see what the kind of natural PR, prediction of, of users is to, to share to their users, to share to their friends.For example, the networks, then you, if you see something. Some traction there, you can, you can optimize it, but even if it's just doing it a little bit, it may be it's helping to keep your paid acquisition costs down and you have your blended acquisition. Costco is a bit more sustained. and maybe you see that actually you go super viral.You know, I've seen it happen. So I think like, you know, building potentially referral systems or content shares depends on your app, but I'd say if you do them in a fairly cheap way, but just at least at least put those in and see if that, you know, is going to be something that's going to help you grow.Because if you find that it is for SoundCloud, virality was huge, you know, so, but of course it, it works better with, with social apps and content apps. Yeah. Apart from that, you know, I'd say like, you know, you're going to be, you're going to be continuing to iterate on the product. I'd say ASO becomes more important at this point.Like, so optimizing your App Store page for, you know, for organic discovery, making sure that you're ranking for the right keywords. and also start to think about international. I think a lot of companies. Focus on their coal market and the one that they know best, which is often, you know, us or, you know, whatever country that, you know, the team is based in.They often start there and they know that market best. But, you know, I think one of the things which going back again to SoundCloud, what are the things they did very well was, you know, even though they were headquartered in Berlin, they didn't have this German outlook actually that, that the founders were not even from here.And they built it global from the start, you know? So they, they basically, it was available everywhere. you know, when I came into to help them level up on, on mobile, you know, we made sure that we translated the App Store page into all the languages. When I came in, it was just an idea. but even English is a good start compared to, you know, most of the languages.But you know, pretty, I'd say at this growth stage, see, it's about exploring you don't necessarily, you know where those big leavers are for scale yet, but it's about discovering them. So maybe, maybe it's virality. Maybe, maybe there's a market that you're not localized in yet, which could. You just, you just catch fire in that market, you know, so it's not about doing huge installations, the launches and doing a huge, you know, traditional kind of PR push in, in, you know, launching in us or whatever, but, you know, at least making sure the apps available there are, you know, in, in, in as many of your big markets as possible, make sure that it's translated, you know, localizing the applicant, using the App Store presence and just seeing, you know, getting a feel for.You know, are you going to be a very local app or you, do you have a global, potential you have really trying to tease out, like, what are the acquisition channels that are going to work for you? And what are the, what are the other leavers for growth, you know? And, probably you want to start doing a little bit more in terms of CRM or customer engagement at this point. you know, Which, which does also doesn't make sense when you, when you're a superstar. But you're sort of building the foundations for the next phase of growth and then leading into the things which are showing promise. David: 00:37:05Nice. And then we are coming up on time, but, can you give us a, like a 92nd, two minute, quick drill? I think, you know, I, I don't know that that many, like massive apps are going to be listening to this podcast, so maybe it's not even quite as relevant anyway. Jacob: 00:37:23David, I think I like to think every apps can be a massive David: 00:37:25Every app. Yes. Andy: 00:37:27Right. The massive apps of the future Jacob: 00:37:29Yeah, David: 00:37:30Once you get to that stage of a head space of calm of disco, you know, what, what is the stack start to look like there?Andy: 00:37:37So, when you get to that kind of scale and we're working with folks like, you know, like, like this go, like, Blinkist, Headspace folks, you mentioned, an a and a whole bunch more, some that I'm not allowed to talk about, which I wish I could name drop, but, I'll get into trouble. but some, some really big enterprise brands and some household names.And when you're at that kind of scale, you know, when you're doing, oh, I can mention Trilla trailer's is a good one. I'm going to give them a call out there. They're a customer of ours, awesome platform. anyway, when you're at that scale where you're just seeing like, Insane acquisition, just on a, you know, that becomes the norm to get like more than a hundred thousand thousand downloads, you know, like a day, which, which we see with some of the apps, when you, when you're at that kind of scale.Even incremental gains can be really, really meaningful, particularly on monetization. Right? So I would say there, you really want to then focus on subscription optimization and revenue optimization, way more than you would in the earliest stages, because you're, you've proven you've, you've got all the elements in place.You can really then start to scale. And if you can, you can increase your, you know, average subscription lifetime by a month, or you can increase your conversion rate even by like, Point one of a percent on your, you know, your subscription conversion at that scale, it's it can be really meaningful.Right. So, I think activities which maybe you wouldn't have spent so much time on before, maybe you've built out rudimentary stuff for maybe you have rudimentary tech in place for it's time to start upgrading that stuff and, and going deep on these topics. So things, again, like, you know, ASO, it's more like.You know, something which you need to keep doing. You're constantly kind of optimizing there to get as many organics in as possible. You want to be of course, continuing to optimize your, your acquisition. But I would assume at that point, you've kind of got those things more or less nailed and it's, it's almost like a hygiene factor.It's more than a hygiene factor, but sorry, you said to keep this quick. yeah, I'd say I I'd say like big focus on yeah. Retention because you know, again, it's a slow moving metric, but if you can move it even, yeah. Point five of percentage point that'll give such compound growth and also like, you know, knock on gains for monetization work a lot, you know, diligently on conversion optimization and starting to sort of segment your user base further, to provide more segmented experiences, you know, because you will have those cohorts in that scale where you can start to do really interesting stuff and, and lean into AI and personalization to, to really get to that increased relevance in your recommendations and community.Jacob: 00:40:13This is why it makes sense to really do AB testing. Right? Cause you can hire a team, right. To focus on it. You had multiple data people. You've got engineers, you've got, you've got to have an entire growth engineering and experimentation team. and that's what you need. Andy: 00:40:28Bring in Phiture.Jacob: 00:40:29Yeah, there you go. Or, yeah, bring somebody in, right? If you need it in a pinch, you know?So, yeah, it's, it's, it's a different game. This is how all of these things go, though. It's like, you gotta every incremental compounding something like a business like this, like every, every, the next 10 X is always going to just be different, because, like different tools, different mindset, there's going to be different, different returns on different actions, right?And I think, you know, when I talk to people at different stages, a lot of times folks get this, get this wrong. They, they, they think they need you. You were mentioning at the beginning, Andy, like just thinking we're ready to scale when you're really not. Right. And so it, there is a lot of value in just understanding how different a hundred thousand downloads is from 10,000, from a hundred, right?Those are very different numbers. All of those, like none of those tell me, like, you're dead, right? It's just a different stage. And, and doing the right things at this stage is super important. So I, I really like how you break this down into like, different phases.Cause I think that's how, app developers should be thinking about it.David: 00:41:36I think as a, as a summary and talking through this with you and he's really helped me kind of frame it finally is that when you're early, you take big swings that don't need sophisticated measurement to see the result. You don't need sophisticated A/B testing. You don't need sophisticated analytics.You need to take big swings that give you big results. Those obvious results. Then as you grow, you can start taking smaller swings that require a little bit more sophistication. And then as you're scaling huge, that's when you get into minutia, and too many small apps are getting into the minutia too early.So, big swings early, you can take those smaller swings later. But anyways, as we wrap up we're going to put in the show notes your Twitter, Growth Stack, great places to follow. You're constantly sharing amazing content there. Anything else you wanted to share with our fine cadre of a subscription app practitioners?Andy: 00:42:36Yeah, actually I've got a really exciting announcement. This is the perfect audience for it. At Phiture we're hiring right now for a Subscription Optimization Lead position. It's a super exciting role. You get to really be in on the ground floor, building out a team and an essentially a new P and L line that we're going to breaking out from our existing services.I'm really doubling down on subscriptions because it's like such a big topic, and we're really looking for the subscription expert to come in and lead that team, you know, a fantastic place to work, et cetera, et cetera. You know, you'll work with some AAA clients, some great names that I can't talk about today.You work with a fantastic team of experts if you can come to Berlin and work with us here, because it's obviously not in Berlin today, but Berlin is an awesome place to move to. We'd also consider remote, I think, don't quote me on that, but, yeah. Get in touch. you can find the job spec to go to the Phiture site: phiture.com, and go to the careers page. You'll find it there and to subscription optimization.Yeah, we'd love to get that out to your audience, because I'm sure there's some people there that might be really interested in that role.Jacob: 00:43:44I'm looking at the requirements, here, proficiency in IAP management, you know, it's right in my wheelhouse. So maybe I'll throw my hat in the ring.David: 00:43:53Well, Andy, it was really great having you on the podcast. And, yeah, we're going to have to have you back on there's so much more, and Phiture does such great work. And we, we share some customers and so, you know, we see the, the results of the work you do on our end. And it's really great.so, thanks for being on the podcast, and we'll talk again soon. Andy: 00:44:15Thanks for having me on. Thanks, David. Thanks, Jacob. It's been a pleasure.

Kori Covrigaru from PlanOmatic joins us today to share the importance of marketing your properties properly. Whether you are selling or renting your place out, things like professional, photos, 3D tours and a basic floor plan can diminish the time your listing is on the market, get you over market rent and mitigate the costs of vacancy. https://www.planomatic.com/who-we-serve/single-family-rental/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The remote real estate investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and isnot intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests aretheir own and should not be considered as guidance from roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Tom: Greetings, and welcome to The Remote Real Estate Investor. On this episode, I'm joined with   Michael: Michael album,   Tom: And today we're going to be interviewing Kori Covrigaru who is the co founder and CEO of PlanOmatic. PlanOMatic is the biggest in fastest full service property insights and marketing service provider to the single family rental space. Alright, let's do it.   Kori, welcome to the podcast.   Kori Thank you. Thanks, Thomas. Good to be here. I'm excited. I've been pumped for a while.   Tom: Awesome, awesome. So before we get into PlanOmatic, and cool stuff that you're working on there, let's learn a little bit about yourself.   Kori: I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, shout out to the Huron River Rats.   Tom: Is that a triple A baseball team there?   Kori: Yeah, may as well have been. My business partner was on the baseball team. So I'll have to ask him but know that for some reason they thought it was cool. We have the Ann Arbor Pioneers and we have the Anne Arbor Huron River Rats. So Ann Arbor doesn't have its priorities straight when it comes to mascot.   Tom: River rats must be really popular because in Sacramento there's the like they have a of a river rat team anyways…   Michael: Isn't it the River Cats? I don't think it's the river rats.   Kori: So we got to get the river rats and the river cats together.   Tom: Wonderful. That's wherre you grew up.   Kori: Yeah, I grew up in Anne Arbor two brothers. So we were three boys growing up. Went to actually played soccer at SUNY Buffalo for a year transferred to Western for a number of reasons. Western Michigan that is and then kind of migrated around the country. As we founded PlantOmatic ended up in Colorado, which is where I'm now married to my brilliant beautiful wife, Taryn and we have two boys six and three jack and Max. I'm the CEO here at PlanOmatic. So that takes up the majority of my time. Otherwise, I like to be outdoors. You know, like to cycle mountain bike camp, snowboard, ski, you name it. I'm pretty outdoors guy. Like spend time with the family travel. I speak two languages. I speak Hebrew fluently. I have my parents to thank for that. And yeah, that's that's me in a nutshell.   Very cool. And before planOmatic was that like pretty much started right out of college or what? What led you before PlanOmatic? And then we'll talk a little bit more about kinematic specifically.   Kori: Sure. Yeah. So in in college, I had been connected with a friend of a friend of a relative to help out with a photo and floorplan company, and did that for a while helped them out and decided to license that software and build our own company planOmatic plan medic was born we each put 500 to three partners put $500 in the bank each. And that's where we are today. Still wholly owned, full bootstrapped company. But at some point, yeah, we went off on our own and expanded the company from starting in Florida to California and then kind of everywhere in between. But that's that's what we've been doing. I never really had a resume. I understand that the marketing teams working on a one page resume for me. So that'll be a first never had to put one of those together. That was my goal. But apparently it's something that I need.   So yeah, it's not like I'm not a career guy wasn't. Didn't come from all the big consulting companies and start a company just kind of knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur early on, I knew that I wasn't employable. That was a big key. I knew that. Anyone, at least long term? Probably my dad, too. Thanks for that one. But, but yeah, we've been having a lot of fun ever since.   Tom: That's awesome. And how would you describe the problem that planet Matic is solving? for addressing?   Kori: That's a great question. The problem that planimetric is solving, the way I would summarize that is we are constantly solving problems that are two to three years into the future, right? I guess that's kind of where you want to be. If you're solving problems for today, someone else has probably already thought about it. So the way we see it, we kind of look and see, okay, what's the norm in the industry today? Where's that headed? Because it's not hard to predict. We have a whole lot of other industries around us that kind of for foreshadow what we're going to experience here in real estate because we're typically a little bit behind things are moving very quickly right now, but still at a slow pace. So So that's kind of our methodology. You know, the problems that we solve are generally on the marketing side. How do you market a property for lease appropriately, with a good return on investment on line. As we know, everybody starts online, everybody pretty much ends on line now to right I mean, or at least that's where we're headed.   And then on the property insight side, it's really it's to give a picture of perspective of what that property or portfolio properties look like. What is it going to take to renovate? What is it going to take to, to, to, you know, understand the layout of the property from before and without being there? Essentially, what is the whole property portfolio look like? Realistically?   Tom: So, Kori in in starting plan ematic, you guys jumped right into it was, was it single family rental space are what was the initial kind of customer base, I'd love to hear how that has evolved.   Kori: Yeah, our initial so so my business partner and I, we finished at Western Michigan, and we went straight up to Grand Rapids. And we were marketing to real estate agents at the time, you know, 2004 2005, the way to market a property online, which was barely on online, right, like 2005. I think that's when Zillow started, or right around there. They were taking pictures with their own digital cameras, we didn't even have iPhones, right? So agents were kind of getting by with taking their own pictures. And then we came along, you know, we were this like, innovative young company that shows up to the property, takes professional photos, right with a professional wedding lens, creates a floor plan on site, and then provides an interactive floor plan presentation that's available online, and we used to make CD ROMs, right, I remember being up all night, printing out CD ROMs with agent and broker, you know, photos on the front and a picture of the house.   I actually remember one night we were up all night, because we had I think we had burned like 30, you know, CD ROMs that were incorrect. And we had to redo them also, we were we were competing really with with photography that agents were taking on their own. And what's ironic about that is that the SFR industry is so new, that we're actually doing the same suite, we're seeing the same thing now, where owners or owner operators even are taking their own photos and thinking that's sufficient to market the properties online. And as time will will go on, they'll see that there won't be any more amateur photography, to lease a property is just going to be a thing of the past. And in fact, we'll start to see far more properties and in fact, all properties with some sort of 3d scan here in the near future. And so going forward it's a similar to similar competitors is self service.   Michael: That always cracks me up when looking for like housing on Craigslist when I was back in college looking for something to rent or looking at for sale stuff even on on Zillow. And you see like the picture of the bathroom and in the mirror is like someone's arm and then a flash of the camera. It's like, Oh man, I know these people are amateurs, like there's got to be a better way to do this.   Kori: Yeah, a lot of people think that because maybe the property isn't as expensive or doesn't lease for as high. I mean, you still want to give a good impression that property someone's gonna live there, you know, we Our mission is to show 1 million people their home for the first time, right. And so every time someone looks at a property online, they're looking at their potential next time and somebody is looking at their next home online, and you want to make sure that you're giving that great first impression, and that you're also making sure that your portfolio or your properties are standing out, as opposed to other ones that may have a close up of a kitchen that's all dark. Like that's not gonna fly.   You know, I mean, I've experienced buying homes, we just started a smallest so far find me and a few business partners. And I see the pain live. I mean, I'm skipping properties that have poor photos, regardless of what they might look like. And that's that's really a shame. You know, you don't want people to skip over your properties, because you haven't made the effort to get some professional photos.   Tom: Oh, yeah.I mean, that first impression is just so key. What do you what would you say some of the biggest mistakes of like, people taking their own photos, the most common things you could like, kind of ascribe it to something specific?   Kori: Yeah, I mean, leaving the toilet seat up in the bathroom is like it's like a cardinal sin for real estate photography. Yeah, yeah, you got magnets, like, yeah, if you're gonna do it on your own, like, take the magnets off the fridge. Nobody wants to see Jessie and Susie. Right? That's not going to help you get out a renter, or sell the property. If you've got a piano like open that piano. These are all things that I've learned 15-16 years ago.   You know, it's important to get a good perspective of the room use, you typically don't want to take a photo that's, that's just like, up and down, because it'll look like hallway. Unless you're an architectural photographer. And you know, you're worried about the composition, stuff like that. That's a whole different story. But you really want to get in the corner and give a good perspective of the home. And what we're finding is is even is just as important, is making sure that you actually just have a two dimensional floorplan like people can look at photos all day long. But if you have a floor plan, they're guaranteed to spend more time on that property because they can start to see and relate. Okay, the kitchens over there, the living rooms over there. We may want we can knock this wall down. Let's see how much open space we can create. I mean, a floor plan is key.   It's really key and it's underutilized. tremendously by even the institutional investors in the big companies that have big portfolios, you'd be surprised how they would be graded by us on their marketing. For that portfolio. It's really it's amazing to see,   Michael: Kory, I think that's a great point on the 2d floor plan, is planOmatic doing much in the 3d space. I forget what those cameras are called. But I think those are pretty Yeah, I see those a lot more comment on those things now as well.   Tom: Matterport, right, is   matterport. Yeah, they're, they're a great partner for us. And we utilize their software. So we're actually not software providers, I mean, we have our software for workflow efficiencies and data transmission API's to our system ordering, asset delivery, and so forth. But as far as 3d goes there, there are a few players out there and matterport to us has been the the premier, I'm told to not say the Cadillac of things until to say this Tesla of things now. So there's a test love of but but with metaphor, yeah, we outfitted our entire network with Rico 3d cameras, so that we're actually 3d agnostic, it doesn't matter if it's matterport Zillow, another company, we can, we can get out there and create it. And so we're finding a lot of adoption there, it's still not as quick as you might think. So there's still opportunity to be sort of, you know, first into market with this technology, but we're seeing it grow fairly rapidly.   And those 3d scans typically can export a floorplan, so you're getting the best of both worlds, like you can send us out to a property, we can do a condition report to assess the condition of the property to a 3d scan, so you can inspect it, you can use that 3d scan later for marketing the property, and we can create a floor plan and for their like, we may as well take photos, right, so you're kind of getting the whole package and ready to go ready to go to market even before you close through due diligence. And that's that's been a huge upside to 3d lately, is kind of being able to use it on Ops, as well as for marketing purposes.   Tom: Totally. There's, there's a lot of technology that I've heard of in the space. And I'd love to hear your opinion as well as maybe some ones that I haven't heard of. So one of them is digital staging. So like adding in I don't know, like a couch when there's not a love your will work through a list. But we'll start we'll start with this one is love to hear your your thoughts on it. And yeah,   Kori: Digital staging for the SFR industry. It's not cheap tech, it's out there. It's It's cool, but I just don't necessarily see a huge return on investment. If they do it really well, you can't even tell. Right? We can virtually stage 2d images, and that's no big deal. Now they can virtually stage 3d scans and models. I think that really right now as it should probably be reserved for higher end, maybe commercial space, or the ultra high end, you know, home for sale, potentially, which really shouldn't be vacant, it should be staged at the property. So I think it's really cool tech, there may be a use case for here in the future. Not for SFR not Class A, B and C right now i don't i don't see it, we need to kind of put the don't put the cart before the horse or whatever that saying is right.   Like, let's get professional photos out there people, right, let's make sure that we're presenting our property in a decent manner. Let's get a 2d floor plan so they can see, right, the perspective let's maybe get a 3d model. So it stands out so they can walk through the property. You know, virtually staging that 3d scan, it's To me, it's a little over the top right now.   Tom: I agree. I think it's the technology is like not quite there yet. Because I don't know you like look at it, it is something that looks a little off like it's Yeah,   Kori: Just like any it can be done really, really, really well. And you'll pay for that, or it can be done sort of, you know, half assed, or whatever. And you can tell that, I don't know. But hey, you know, for whoever's out there doing it, like, that is the future, right? Like, eventually that will be standard practice. It'll hopefully be automated. And and so that, but then here's the thing, how scalable is it? Right? How scalable Is it because your goal is to scale your portfolio as quickly as possible, but as efficiently as possible, right? Can you really scale that quickly? and automate it? Not right now, Not yet.   Michael: Yeah, I agree. I don't think it's it's quite there yet. I agree. Tom, I see those photos. And you can tell they're, they're digitally stage. The one place where this is really interesting is actually I'm doing a flip a really high end flip out in Portugal. And so it's a bit the, the way that the properties are sold there is a bit different and that the agent doesn't cover the cost of staging. Like is, I think a bit more common here in the States. And so I looked into just renting property to stage and it was like 10,000 euros, or I found a digital stager for like, 1800 euros. So I was like, nice, let's do that. And the photos blew my mind. I had to like call them because I thought that they had moved furniture and it was so well done. And so I posted pictures and stuff and I got people hitting me up saying who did this? This is unbelievable. But I think that's kind of the exception and not the rule.   Kori: Well, I mean, and you said it yourself right high end flip. I mean absolutely. No doubt you should be pulling all the stops. pulling all the latest cutting edge marketing? I mean, maybe it's not even a public listing, who knows you won't be able to blow people's socks off. And that,s, there's a great use case for that   Tom: Next piece of photography technology. I'd love your impact input on drone shots.   Kori: Yeah. drone shots. So where where are we seeing? Where are we seeing drone shots, we're seeing them a in in the property insight space. Drones are helping assess roof, you know, roof conditions. And that helps a lot in the due diligence process, we've been seeing a lot of that, we've also been seeing drone shots for communities, I mean, bill for rent is all the rage right now, because inventory is so low, though those builders and those investors and the managers want to see the progress of the community, and there's no better way to see that than with drone shots.   So we're seeing a lot of drones, aerial photography, for property insights, we're not seeing a whole lot of drone photography, on the single family rental space for traditional traditional markets, we're so we also operate on the real estate side for for sale, we work with agents, and brokers and so forth. And we see a lot of aerial photography on the coasts, right, or in the mountains where there's a lot of space, those are not things you have in the SFR industry right now at least not, you know, in mass. So we're not seeing a whole lot of drone photography for individual properties. Again, people, let's get professional photos of the inside of the house, right? Like that's where we need to start. Those are great technologies, great use cases.   I mean, eventually, what we'll see is we'll see people sending drones to a property to get a condition report and to video, the property and there'll be autonomous, they'll just, you know, or, or we'll show up, we'll let the drone go. And it'll go do its thing, that there's a use case, it's not, it's not inexpensive. And it's not the place where it can be scalable yet, but that is definitely the future of capturing property insights, data and marketing services. So I believe that there's a future for drones. I just don't think there's a use case for marketing a specific property roofs condition assessment. Absolutely. Absolutely.   Tom: Love it. And I guess the last one, I was gonna say isn't really much technology. And I think it's kind of the same answer as drone is talking just to my another agent locally is doing like sunset photography is like a big thing. Just the with the art. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Probably. Yeah, Twilight photography is that much, it's something that you guys do a lot are probably more on the the direct to sale,   Kori: We do more of that under direct sale, it definitely makes your property stand out. What we can actually do and with our partners is we can virtually Create Virtual Twilight photography at a very reasonable cost. And you know, that's, that's also underutilized. But it is here at a point where the price makes sense. So I don't have the exact statistics right now they're out there, though. But properties that have a thumbnail with with a twilight photo, get more clicks, they get more views, and people spend more time on them. So I would I would promote that service of virtual dusk, photography, it's you know, you can tell you can't tell what, you know, what's the difference, right potential buyers, or potential renters go to look at it. What's important is that it's different. And they click on it, why they click on it, it doesn't matter if they say, Oh, this looks fake. You know, that's not a big deal, or is it fake? Like the question and that's okay, you just want something to differentiate. And I'm a firm believer that that can really make a difference. In fact, on our real estate direct side, with most of our packages, we include a virtual Twilight photo.   Tom: Those are my technology. How about other, I'm sure I'm missing some, but I'd love to hear other pieces of technology. That is how advanced we'll go into due diligence in a minute, but I guess for now, just specifically on the marketing aspects, and you can include SFR SFR, or, you know, direct to sell or not direct to sell but you know, I'm saying yeah.   Kori: So other technologies…. I mean, matter ports a big one for us, right? We work with matter port a lot. Zillow is also a 3d provider and, and there's a definitely use case there are a lot of our SFR institutional clients as well as midsize clients. They rely heavily on Zillow. And so having that Zillow 3d home tour will help other technologies I mean, we work now on the appraisal side as well. And so we're seeing the bifurcation of appraisal. So kind of splitting out of the   Tom: ….desktop is is a desktop appraisal?   Kori: Desktop survey. So right, yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. So we're able to provide scans. And, and then people can appraise the property. So we're kind of the boots on the ground extension of their team to be able to provide that data for them. And it's not just the scan. It's also the data that's included in it. And so we're seeing a lot of change, rapid change in that space right now as well.   Tom: Huge cost saving versus sending a traditional where you could have a company like planet Matic just be the logistics and get out there and Yep, and do the capture.   Kori: It's a volume game, right?   Tom: That's right. That's awesome. How about specifically technology around the due diligence? How can this help investors?   Kori: So what we've done is well, you know, COVID hit right and everybody's scrambling like to be pivot to be this With that, like we've got contractors all over the country, we call them plan on tax and they're they're ready to be dispatched. Right? Like they need work. So they'll mask up, they'll wash hands, the whole thing, but what can we get out there to help our clients with and what we realized is planet Matic really was coming into the game or on the seventh or eighth inning, right? Like, there was an offer made and the property. They had an inspection, they they went through due diligence, financing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we come in after the property's been purchased, renovated, and it's ready for lease.   What we found was that our clients are having a hard time acquiring at a fast speed. That's the whole name of the game, and so far is how quickly can you build up your portfolio? How quickly can you scale it? Can you keep it efficient? And what we've done is, in 2020, we sat around said, what else can our team? Do we have boots on the ground everywhere? Can we put signs up? Can we put lock boxes in Can we put smart technology in these homes, and what we landed on was that the process for for the due diligence and for, you know, build for rent and seeing if if these properties are ready to lease is really outdated, we were having clients that were sending people in cars from one state to another just to look at properties potentially, to buy. And what we found was we were able to get out to these properties in 24 hours and provide the data back to the client 24 hours.   And when we go out to a property and due diligence, we can do a number of things. But what our clients really love is the property condition report first and foremost. And we have a light, standard advanced version of that. So just depends how many questions do you need asked, but there are things like what does the property smell like? Right, like how many doors and windows are there and then we're able to provide measurements with the 3d along with that property condition report that helped them scope out renovations help them figure out if it's if it's if it's a property that meets their portfolio standards, but most importantly, then they're able to utilize those 3d scans and potentially that floor plan to pre market and then market that property when it is ready for lease. So it's like we can get out there and get the whole package done. And it's really hands off for the individual, you know, homeowner or landlord or the institutional company or the mid sized company, it really helps them scale their operation. So they don't have to worry about that they have to worry about we need to acquire these properties, we need to get them ready for for lease and then we need to manage these properties. And that's really what these property management companies and owner operators really should be focused on.   Michael: No, this is awesome. Kory, I'm curious to know, in thinking about who your ideal client is, if I'm an individual owner, I'm looking at getting a property leased up or prepped for sale. You know, how should I be thinking about cost? And how should I be thinking about what services planOmatic could help me secure?   Kori: Well, I'm gonna invite you into our next exact meeting, because we're trying to figure out our ideal client profile as well. So maybe, maybe you can help us out there. But what we found is we so we work with a number of of well established institutional owner operators, but they weren't, they weren't that way when we started working with them. And we were in this game really early, we stumbled across, it was luck. I have a friend that tells me luck favors the prepared that I believe that's true. So you know, where we specialize is helping those small to mid sized companies that really want to get in to the SFR space, whether its management or owner operator, and help them scale their portfolios really high. I mean, does it make sense for a one off landlord potentially looking to get into the space to do this?   What I would recommend to someone who's new in the space is yes, get your hands dirty, right? Like, it might make sense to go there and take a look at it. If you are just getting into this and you've got one property, maybe you're buying a portfolio for properties, right? We just started Nestle fire fund a few buddies of mine. And we bought for four properties in Birmingham, we're closing on on July 23. We did utilize our services and it made sense. But we're really geared towards established companies that are kind of trying to get to that next level, whatever it may be, whether they're small want to get to medium, medium, large, large, super large institutional, that's where we help with the efficiency of their operation really dive in.   We've got a product called PlanOLabs. And we really dive into what what the operation looks like we build process maps, we recommend API integrations to help streamline the ordering and the asset delivery process. We take a look at how and where are you marketing your properties, and we actually perform studies is 3d making an impact on your properties, his professional photography or floor plans making an impact? And so you know, in in kind of talking out loud right now, I'm finding that yeah, it's the small, they want to get bigger. It's the medium they want to get bigger because we've seen it, we've seen our clients start small and grow to 10s of 1000s properties, you know, under management, and that's what that's where we like, you know, we exist to help our clients win. That's that's our purpose, and so seeing clients get to a next level. That's, that's what brings us here. You know, it helps us grow, right. And that's really fun for us too. But we really focus on the client and providing value so that our clients can scale efficiently.   Michael: That's great.   Tom: I'd love to hear about your SFR fund. You mentioned it. So have you guys always invested as well?   Kori: My first investment property was actually with my business partner out of college, we did buy a three unit rental in Grand Rapids, Michigan. That was two things that was the timing was perfect. I think that was 2005 or six.   Tom: Was this like a house hack where you guys were living in one of the units or   Kori: Yeah, we were living in one of the units we had some really interesting tenants we I remember my business partner showed up like Cheez Whiz on the shorts. In the closing, it was one of those It was a five year arm it was like it was it was perfect. And and we made it through right, because for some reason we we went on location and location doesn't take a dive as much and the rental market stayed strong. And you were able to continue to make our payments because of the rental income that we had. And so that was the first property we sold it probably six years later.   Since then, actually, when I moved to Boulder, I bought a place same thing lived there for a while as a condo then moved out, had tenants in there for a while, then I bought with my wife, we bought our first home, we moved to a bigger home and kept that home, right. And so it kind of like trickled along, you know, knew knew the process felt like I really had to know the process. But also I just believe in real estate as a great asset to hold short and long term. And so, you know, finally we said, hey, we've got all these intros, we know all these clients, we we have tools ourselves that will help us scale a portfolio. Let's start something and so we got six guys together. And in our first market is Birmingham. And we're kind of seeing that process live right now. It's so eye opening and while to be able to kind of walk in the footsteps of our clients Finally, and understand all the trials and tribulations that come with operating a portfolio. And we're just getting started. So yeah, it's been a lot of fun.   Michael: I'm curious. I mean, that sounds awesome. Have you made or implemented any process changes now being the end user of your own product? Did you recognize any gaps or any hiccups that that users were facing?   Kori: 100% 100% I mean, everything to me is the test, right? So we have someone outside of the businesses kind of handling the administrative stuff and scheduling. And so I said, Hey, here's what I want you to do, I want you to go place an order, pretend like you're a client, and you don't know me and just give me feedback. And and we were able to get such valuable feedback from that experience that we've already made changes to not only our product, but also our workflow and how we go about scheduling these things and notifying our clients about things and even registration on our site. It's it's absolutely invaluable to have people close to you that aren't afraid to give you their true honest opinion. And that know that you know, you're just going to benefit from their feedback. But, you know, it's been amazing to what do you say it's like,   Tom: Eat your own dog food.   Kori: Sure. Yeah, it's been, it's been a while to eat your own dog food in that respect.   Tom: I guess I got one more longer question, then we have some some quick, some fun quickfire. It's kind of like this or that type of questions. But what what's the PlanOmatic,   Kori: We are still so green as an SFR industry that we just see tremendous potential to grow within the industry. PlanOlabs is you know, and I mentioned that earlier PlanetOlabs is really was was born right at the end of the pandemic. And I think that that's really a lot of the future of our business is being able to help with the inner, you know, inside operation of of our clients and be able to walk through their footsteps and help them scale efficiently. And so, you know, again, anywhere from ordering an API integration to a business intelligence dashboard that gives them a perspective of their portfolio, what's happening, where and when doing studies on what types of marketing or due diligence processes work best for that client. even getting down to who does what along the way, in areas of the operation that may not have been updated, because that was just how we've always done things, right. So being able to say, what is it that you don't know you don't know? Maybe we can uncover something that will help you scale more efficiently.   So that's been big and then entering other verticals, eventually, we're sitting tight right now and so far, we love the space. We love the companies that are here. We love the the enthusiasm in conferences and an Iron Man and nrac coming up, coming up. Are you going?   Tom: I'm not we just had a meeting with the we will have a pretty big showing there but I will not be there.   Kori: Okay. All right. So I'll be there. And but we are you know, we are dipping our toe in that appraisal space that I that I did discuss earlier. So bifurcating that process desktop appraisers being able to be the extension of a team and gather the data on site so that people can do their work without having Having to leave their home. And then also getting into the insurance space. You know, that's, that's big for us. But our culture is also really important. I mean, sustainability is really important to us building a work workforce and workplace that, that thrives, that is excited to do what they do that feels a purpose. That's big for us too.   And then also building a workforce that is kind of more like a workforce that we the world that we live in, that's really important to us as well. So it's it's kind of inside out, we we believe that the improvements that we've make, you know, internally within the company definitely reflect outward, but from a product perspective, 3d is is really everything for us right now. Whether it be on the marketing side, or property insights, we're, we're all in.   Yeah, so so what we found is that property leads increased by 25%, with a 3d tour, and days on market, decrease 23%, when you have a 3d tour for that property, as well. So we're seeing tremendous value in 3d in the marketing space. And, of course, the operations.   Michael: Oh, that's so good to know, every owner out there listening to this should go push their property managers when they have properties vacant, to go get 3d pictures and 3d tours? Because I mean, the numbers don't lie.   Kori: Yes, they should. Now they, you know, they may be met with with resistance, because it's not free in that question of who should pay for it right? Should the owner pay for marketing services, or should the property management company pay, and you just mentioned in Portugal, it sounds like the agents aren't paying. Same thing with Australia, it's the homeowner that kind of pays to market their own property. And that's why you see so much better marketing come out of Australia is because the homeowners, like whenever we have an agent that comes to us says, Hey, this is my own property, surprise, they're like ordering everything they can that we offer.   We're gonna come to a time where it's gonna be the standard, or it's just gonna be those better property managers that understand the game and understand how to market properties properly, that are going to utilize it. And ultimately, when I mean, we're working with, with a cutting edge, national property marketing company that just actually got an investment to buy single family homes as well. And, you know, they understand how to market their property to kind of stepping up their game right now and including 3d and every everything they do. So we're starting to see it more as a standard for sure.   Tom: If you do it once on this turn, and you can, you know, use it for the next couple of turns, it's like, absolutely, yeah, as long as there's no like meaningful difference.   Kori: At least a couple years. I mean, you get to a point sometimes where you want to make sure that the carpet that's marketed in the photos is the carpet that's at the property, right. So like, typical lifetime, for a set of good photos, or 3d scan, maybe a couple years. Floor Plans are forever unless you knock down walls, right? So those always come in? Well, well, we see a lot, okay, here's, here's a little tidbit for the individual landlords out there. It's kind of a cheat, it's the property and may not be ready to fully market online yet, because maybe you're in the middle of a turn, maybe you're still renovating, maybe the tenants are still there. But you can pre market that property for lease using one good single primary photo and a floor plan.   And that gets leads and gets people interested, it's almost more mystifying because like people are like, Why is there only one photo that has generated so many hot leads for our clients, and they're able to actually reduce their days in between their vacancy days, by pre marketing that property online. And, and so if we're out there, for due diligence, we can take a single primary photo, right? We can create a floor plan, and we've already got the assets to pre market that property. And it's huge. That's like when we look at days on market, and we do studies, one client versus another. It's always the client that does the floor plans and has that single primary, that's pre marketing that kills it for days on market kills it like, like the least amount of days on market.   Tom: Michael, do you have any final questions?   Michael: No, that's great. I mean, we're gonna get Cory his contact information here at the end here. And I'm going to be reaching out to him because I've got some properties that different property managers to get some 3d floor plans drawn up for.   Tom: Alright, are you ready for some quickfire questions?   Kori: I'm in the hot seat. Let's do it.   Tom: Let's do it. Alright, so this is an either or questions. We got we got 10 of them. And let's do it. So consolidation or diversification?   Kori: Consoliversification.   Tom: Yeah, consoliversification. Trademark. Good. I like it.   High property taxes or high income taxes?   Kori: High income taxes.   Tom: High rent growth or low vacancy?   Kori: High rent growth, because nobody ever ran out of resources to provide a service or just not charging the right price.   Tom: Alright, I like it. Cash Flow or appreciation?   Kori: Cash flow all day. Cash is king.   Tom: Cash is king.  Debt or equity?   Kori: Well, when interest rates are below 3%, I'd say debt. So I'd go with debt right now. I'm personally refiling pulling cash out of my home so that I can To this SFR journey around   Tom: Yeah, me too. Single family or multifamily?   Kori: Single family all day.   Tom: Local or remote investing?   Kori: Remote because you can only get so big if you're local.   Tom: That's a good answer for the remote real estate investor podcast!   Michael: For the show, yeah.   Tom: Turnkey or massive project.   Kori: Turnkey.   Tom: Alright. Yep. final three questions. Unreal estate related. Midnight Oil or early bird worm?   Kori: Early Bird, which for some people might actually be Midnight Oil cuz I'm up about 4:30.   Tom: Yeah, yeah, that is getting after it. Text message or email?   Kori: Email.   Tom: And the last question, olive oil or butter?   Kori: Olive oil.   Tom: You did it You made it through. 4:30am are you getting a workout in is that this part of the routine?   Kori: You know, I get I get I have my coffee, which I am working. But I get quite my own, you know, six and three year old so my wife's also she's early she's out to work out but so I get my work in first and then I do work out. Right around six. So and you know, the key is to get to sleep early somehow.   Tom: For sure. Most definitely. Awesome, Kory. Well, thank you so much any so before we close out? How can people get a hold of planetOmatic? what's the what's the right way to get in touch?   Kori: Yeah, I mean, we you know, our website has all our contact info. But if you're looking to get in touch with me, my email is really easy. It's my first name at planOmatic.com. It's k o r i at planet Matic calm. My direct line is 720-414-2747. And I'm always looking to talk to people to you know, increase my network to just discuss SFR with people who are just getting in already established. I'll be down in IMS. I'll be at nrH C. I'll be at IMS down in Scottsdale in December. So I'm all over the place. You'll see me a lot but you know, anyone should feel free to email me. I'd love to start conversations.   Tom: Awesome. Awesome. Thanks for coming on.   Kori: Yeah, thanks, guys. That was a lot of fun. It was awesome. I've been looking forward to it. You didn't disappoint. So I hope to do it again soon.   Michael: Right, on.   Kori: Thanks, guys. Take care.   Tom: And as always, if you enjoyed this content, take a look at the podcast Subscribe, leave us a rating, all that good stuff. And we also still have a promotion running with Roofstock Academy. If you use the promo code, REMOTEPOD one word you take a discount off the purchase price. And as always, happy investing.   Michael: Happy investing.

Buy Michele's book! Paperback and Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/173744660X (or search Deploy Empathy on Amazon)PDF/ePub: deployempathy.com/pdfMichele Hansen  0:00  This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Orbit. Orbit is mission control for your community, grow and measure your community across any platform with Orbit. Find out more at orbit.love.Colleen Schnettler  0:14  Good morning, Michele. Hey,Michele Hansen  0:17  Hey, how are you?Colleen Schnettler  0:19  Great. So I hear that you have some new book updates.Michele Hansen  0:24  Yeah. So we finalized the cover this week. And I just saw, like just today just submitted it to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing and Ingram Spark, which is another self publishing print on demand platform and filed for the copyright. So things are happening.Colleen Schnettler  0:47  That's exciting.Michele Hansen  0:51  Yeah, you know, I was thinking about our conversation last week, and how you were talking about how you felt like you weren't getting anything getting anything done? And I was like, man, I feel the same way.Colleen Schnettler  1:03  Really? Has it just felt like for weeks,Michele Hansen  1:07  yeah, like, I feel it? Well, you know, it's kind of it's like this weird in between liminal space where like, the copy has basically been final for a month now. And it's just sort of been kind of waiting on other things. And, and then there's also the, there's sort of the fact that it's summer here. And like summer camps aren't really as much of a thing here as they are in the US. Which, you know, I guess if like, most people who work for other people get four weeks of vacation, and they have kids, it's not really a big deal. But if you're self employed, it kind of is sure. Um, and so I, you know, I'm just sort of working at night and whatever. Or maybe I wake up early and get a couple hours in and like, man, I don't I don't know how parents in Europe who are self employed, do it. Like, I really, I really don't know. And like, just for weeks now I've been I mean, like, yeah, like, today's the day, I'm going to start recording the audio book, private podcast, I'm super excited about doing that. Now that the copy is finalized, I'm, like, ready to go. And it just like that time just keeps not happening. And I feel like I'm not making any progress. Um, but this morning, I did submit it and then not now it has to be reviewed. And I wanted to get a proof copy. But I think I might have done something wrong when I configured that option. And it just says your book might be published in 72 hours.Colleen Schnettler  2:44  That's fast. Okay.Michele Hansen  2:45  I haven't even like I wanted to, like, look at it and make sure the, you know, the cover looked right. And like, you know, the pages aren't upside down and whatnot. So okay, so I'm alone? I don't know. So maybe if you search on Amazon next week, you'll actually find it even though I'm not gonna tell anybody.Colleen Schnettler  3:01  But it won't be a physical copy yet. That's justMichele Hansen  3:04  so that'll be that the physical copy? Yeah, who would be a physical copy on Amazon, Amazon printed like, book to Amazon. I know, they could upload a book to Amazon. And then they print it whenever somebody buys it. Really? I know I was going, I was like, they let just anybody do this, like this? Wait, this is soColleen Schnettler  3:25  easy. This is crazy. I had no idea. So so you submit to them your cover art and your book. And then when someone buys it, they print it on demand?Michele Hansen  3:34  There's some other stuff that happens. But basically, yes, that's cool. So I don't have to like go out and you know, buy, like, basically pay for a printer to print 500 copies or whatever, then mail them out myself, which I think is what you had to do before. Things like kind of KDP or Kindle on demand or Kindle on it was what they call it? Or, you know, sort of like Do you remember like cafe press in the 90s? Like, yes, people could make t shirts and then printed it whenever you bought one. It's basically like that for books. And then there's also in Ingram Spark, which is also print on demand. But I guess there's a lot of countries that Amazon doesn't serve. And also, I guess bookstores are more willing to work with Ingram spark than they are with Amazon because they can return books to Ingram spark because Ingram spark distributes a lot of non self published books to I'm learning all about this. So So yeah, so I uploaded it to them, and then they have to review it and like, I guess, make sure it looks good. Before it'll actually, I don't know, I don't know what's gonna happen next. So we're just, we're all going to find out together. I didn't really publish the ebook. I like, you know, Barnes and Noble and whatnot, like ebook platforms. I don't know. We will find out.Colleen Schnettler  4:58  That's exciting. So you are telling me in a matter of maybe five days, maybe less people will be able to purchase a physical copy of your book. I don't know, theoretically, probably, maybe we're gonna find out cheaper than this before. SoMichele Hansen  5:15  I, originally I was like trying to give people estimates. And I was like, Yeah, it looks to me, like end of June. And then I just realized, I have no idea what I'm doing. Well, I knew that all along. But I realized that I have no idea what I'm doing. And therefore I should not try to predict what is going to happen next. Because that is just an exercise in folly to try to predict a process that I have no past experience with.Colleen Schnettler  5:41  Sure. So does that mean from you will come out when it comes out? Does that mean from your perspective that it's finished? Like you're done?Unknown Speaker  5:51  Ah,Michele Hansen  5:52  I mean, yeah, like, like yesterday Mateus looks at me, he goes, you know, this is just the beginning. Right? What does that mean? It's like Kunkle in his IColleen Schnettler  6:01  started,Michele Hansen  6:02  because, I mean, after the book is like officially out, then there's there's the, the audio book to record, right. Like, I'm super excited about doing that as a podcast and recording it myself. You know, because then I can really make sure that the, the tone of voice is coming through and everything. And I just, you know, right. Yeah.Colleen Schnettler  6:25  Can I just say I'm super disappointed when authors don't read their own books.Unknown Speaker  6:30  Yeah,Colleen Schnettler  6:30  yeah. Like, that makes me sad. Like, there's a prominent bootstrapping book, which was great. But it was not read by the author. And I was sad. I don't know why. Like, I understand why people don't want to read their own books. Maybe they don't like to talk that much. Maybe they have an accent. And then yeah, me with it. I don't know.Michele Hansen  6:45  Yeah, exactly. I think people have different reasons for not recording their own book. But I am personally really excited to do it. And to do it as a podcast, too. Because, again, I feel like I never would have gotten the book out had I not written it as a newsletter, because for me, writing an email is a lot lower pressure and stress and just mentally, like cognitively easier than like sitting down staring at a blank cursor or thinking about writing a book. And I feel the same way about recording a podcast. Like it's like, oh, it's just a podcast. And actually, I don't even have to come up with anything to say I just read something like, great, versus the idea of sitting down to record an audio book for a 320 page book that feels daunting. But yeah, a bunch of podcast episodes for each chapter that feels easy. Feels written. They just have to be concatenated.Colleen Schnettler  7:35  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So how is this been for you? You've been working on this four to six months.Michele Hansen  7:42  Since end of February, middle, middle end of February is when I started the new Okay,Colleen Schnettler  7:47  so four months. So how do you feel to me? Yeah, right. You just knock out a book and four months? Can I just say how ridiculous that is? By the way. That's not normal.Michele Hansen  7:59  I feel like it was all in my head already. I don't really do any original research.Colleen Schnettler  8:04  It's just funny because I feel like the arc of our podcast, like your story, and the arc of our podcast is we're chatting, we're chatting. I'm like, you should write a book.Unknown Speaker  8:12  You're like, Man,Colleen Schnettler  8:13  I'm like, you should write a book. You're like, yeah, and then you wrote it. And it's done. like four months later. It's like, wait, what happens?Michele Hansen  8:21  When I commit to doing something, I do it. And usually very quickly, so but it might take me a while to actually get around to doing it.Colleen Schnettler  8:31  How is this? Ben? Are you excited to have some time back? Do you feel like I mean, has it been quite stressful these past four to five months trying to work your full time job and write this book has been overwhelming.Michele Hansen  8:45  No, it's been funColleen Schnettler  8:46  because you love it. You love the material? Fine.Michele Hansen  8:48  Like it's a little it's a little side project. And I need a little side projects. It's, you know, it's, I mean, I guess this podcast started out as a side project. And then this podcast kind of spawned the book. So like, you know, just side projects beget side projects. But no, I mean, it's been good. It's been a really good outlet for me, like most of that newsletter, writing time was actually at night, like, you know, after, put our daughter to bed and just kind of sitting in bed with my laptop and just sort of enjoying writing things out. And as I said, sort of mentally cleaning out my closet and just hauling out all of these things that mentally felt like old pieces of furniture from my head that were collecting dust or, you know, where were things I was referencing often, but didn't really have a good place to send people to. So it was it was a relief in a way to write it. And then I had so much fun interviewing people who read the early drafts. I think a really pivotal moment was when I got it into a draft and then I put it on health this book, which is Rob Fitzpatrick, the author of the mom test his new platform for launching books, and he also wrote a book that sort of goes with the the platform called write helpful books. That is, I think it's coming out now. But I was given a link to that on his help this book. Page. And that helped, that was hugely helpful for me. And then, and then, but actually getting the draft in front of people and then, and then talking to them about how they're using it and, and what kinds of books they find useful. And like, you know, it was just, it was, it was so fun. Like, I love talking to people about talking to people. And that was really fun. And then it was a little frustrating, I think, towards the end, like, I felt like I did a read like a major whole book rewrite of the book every week, in May in June, like, just like, that was probably when I did the most work. Like I was probably like, 7525 book versus giuoco do which was not super great. Um, but that was kind of what what I needed at the time. But yeah, I think I guess from like, now going forward, it's going to be lower lift things, like, promoting it. And yeah, we're podcast podcast. Yeah, the audio book and whatnot.Colleen Schnettler  11:15  Well, that's super exciting. Congratulations.Michele Hansen  11:19  It's not out yet. So I'm not gonna like,Colleen Schnettler  11:21  have you have you sent it out? Or they hatch? I think your chickens have hatched? Yeah, whateverMichele Hansen  11:27  it's for, it's getting reviewed. It's it's things are happening, things are moving, you know.Colleen Schnettler  11:33  So very exciting. Yeah,Michele Hansen  11:35  I think you're a lot more excited than I,Colleen Schnettler  11:38  I'm just really impressed. And to your point, you had this stuff in your head already. So it wasn't like you had to spawn content for the book, you had all the content. But you turned out a book fast like you, when you started doing those newsletters. I mean, you were sending a lot of newsletters. This is a lot of information.Michele Hansen  12:01  When I get really into something I like I go all in to the point where it can be a bit of a firehose, you know, like, so yeah, Marie Marie poulan. and I were talking about this a couple of weeks ago, where like, we sink our teeth into something, and then we just don't give up until we're done. Even if we wanted to. Um, I definitely I definitely feel like this has been an exerciseUnknown Speaker  12:34  in that.Colleen Schnettler  12:35  Yeah. Well, I think it's really cool. I think you should be really proud of yourself for all the work you've put in, especially during the summer, that's hard. And you're working, you know, your normal job. And you wrote a book, super cool.Michele Hansen  12:48  You're so supportive, Colleen.Colleen Schnettler  12:51  That's what I'm here for.Michele Hansen  12:53  I need you in my voice. You know, that voice in my head being like, you should be proud of this. You've come a long way, when I'm like, sort of knee deep and like filing copyright applications and stuff like that, and sort of not really able to see over the wall.Colleen Schnettler  13:07  Yeah. Yeah.Michele Hansen  13:10  Should I do a little numbers updates? Well, I don't think I've done one andColleen Schnettler  13:15  we haven't done one in a while. Go ahead.Michele Hansen  13:18  So as of right now, I have sold 93 copies for the pre order nice. Which by the way, people can pre order the it's the you get the PDF, the notion and Google Drive script templates and access to the private forthcoming private podcast with the audiobook, the boy empathy.com. So 93 people have pre ordered it right now I know a bunch of people have said they want the print copy and like I'm there with you. I don't really buy a lot of ebooks, especially for something I might want to reference later. And I don't seem to be able to do a pre order for the print book. So Oh, but anyway, so 93 people have ordered and so just looking at sort of the overall revenue for that not including expenses or you know, processing fees or whatever. That is $2,697 and I added it up with expenses a couple days ago. And I believe that puts me around sort of 12 $100 in net revenue from that so my Sunday expensesColleen Schnettler  14:32  that's great for a book you can't that's not even available yet. I mean, I know it's available yeah order but that's pretty impressive considering it's not on Amazon yet.Michele Hansen  14:43  It's kind of I mean, so I've like you know, I've heard about building in public for a long time and of course you know, I'm a big advocate of including your your customers in the in the process, but I've never really like built from scratch in public. And like just kind of outlined every step of what I was doing, you know, the, the highs and the lows. Yeah. And the massive amount of confusion in between. And so it's been a really, really interesting, like, I don't think I would have gotten to this point had I not started it as a newsletter and had that level of just motivation, you know, even from the, you know, the first five people who subscribed and would reply and say, Hey, this was great. Thank you for writing that, like that kept me going. In a way that, that I just would not have, like, actually, I think I started the book, right around the time of when, when that container ship was stuck in the Suez.Colleen Schnettler  15:45  Yes, I remember,Michele Hansen  15:47  little, that little part that nobody had on their 2021 bingo card.Unknown Speaker  15:53  And I was reading a book.Michele Hansen  15:56  Or there's a book I picked up off my shelf that I had been meant to read for years, I finally did, because of that called the box, which is a history of container shipping, which is a really interesting book, by the way. Hey, Peter shipping, revolutionize the world. And it's pretty new to like, since the 60s anyway, okay. Not what this podcast is about. So, but so I opened that book, and like the beginning of the book is The acknowledgments from the author. And it like starts out with the author talking about how lonely the process for writing a book is, and especially on a very niche topic. Yeah. And I think I had had some little like Inklings in my head of like, whether I should write a book at that point. And I remember reading that and being like, Oh, God, like that sounds really awful. Like, and I felt really bad for the author as I was reading this, because you've I've heard writers talk about how lonely of a process it is. And I like, and I think that turned me off from it for such a long time. But then it kind of like, occurred to me later that like, I can write a book, but I can do it my way. I don't have to do it the lonely way. Right. Like I could write it in public, I could include readers in the process and make it a social process from the beginning. So I didn't feel like I was just, you know, closed off in a windowless room for six months, because I think that's why I really never wrote a book before, like I was wanted to, but I was like, I don't think I could deal with that amount of loneliness that writers talk about. So yeah, it's been good.Colleen Schnettler  17:37  That's awesome.Michele Hansen  17:38  How are you doing?Colleen Schnettler  17:39  I'm good. I'm good. Yeah. So in the spirit of our podcast last week, I'm, I took some notes, and I think I'm gonna break it up every week into like, what I did this week, what I'm struggling with and what I want to do next week, to keep myself focused and keep myself moving forward. Okay, my tangent is I listen to a podcast with Angela Duckworth. Do you know who she is? She's okay. So for those who don't know who she is, she's the MacArthur Genius Grant winner. She liked her coined the term grit. So I have this podcast I really like with her. And it's her and Stephen Dubner. And it's called no stupid questions. Anyway, this week, they were talking about the difference between urgency and importance. And they were talking about how, basically, that the summation was people don't do things that they don't consider urgent. So you can have these things on your to do list, like go to the gym, which is important. We all know, that's important. But without a sense of urgency. Like, I have to be at the gym at 6pm for my weightlifting class. Instead of instead of that, instead of being like, I'll go whenever I want. There's no urgency to it. So people just don't go, oh, that explainsMichele Hansen  18:55  so much.Colleen Schnettler  18:56  It's so good. Like, I'm gonna send you this episode. It was so good. But yeah, so it was this concept. So I started thinking about it. In terms of my business, because I have all these things that I feel are really important. But I have no urgency behind them, right. There's no timeline for me, I can just sit here and this thing makes me money. And yeah, the ones setting the deadlines, right. And they're fake. I mean, and I'm not really even setting up. I'm like, oh, if I get to it if it's convenient for me today. So I just really liked this whole concept of something being urgent versus important, and how will we'll even do the less important things if we feel that they are urgent. And I say that because I'm now every week until I get to a place that I'm pretty happy with. I'm going to share with you kind of my goals. And so to make them feel a little more urgent, so I feel like I actually will do that.Michele Hansen  19:48  So I like that.Colleen Schnettler  19:51  Yeah, let's try it. It was really good. So one of the things I'm really excited about is this week, I finally got my app on rails 6.1. That's improved. To me, because I was patching in all of the CDN stuff for images because rails 6.0 didn't include that. So basically what happened is I had my app on 6.0, all the stuff was pushed on the rails master to handle CDN. And so I cherry picked it off of rails master onto my stuff, but I incorporated it as a patch to my app, which doesn't make me very happy, because it just feels brittle. So I got up to rails 6.1. So that's like a huge deal. And all of the things I have been telling you, I wanted to do, I wanted to do this first. Like, I feel like this is now going to set the stage for me to actually move forward to do other useful things. So IMichele Hansen  20:42  feel good about that. It sounds like it's gonna help your development velocity,Colleen Schnettler  20:46  it will. And I feel like some of these development blockers are really frustrating for me, like there's a really simple one, which won't take that long to do API access, but I didn't want to, I could have added new features, and then gone back and got it on 6.1. But it's smarter, in my opinion, since I have the time to get it on 6.1 before, you know, adding all the API stuff. So I feel like now that that's done, development stuff will go faster. So I'm pumped about that. And that was something that's like really kind of boring to do. I don't know if boring is the right word. But you know, like, upgrading is always kind of likeMichele Hansen  21:26  it's not shiny, right? Like developer happiness and infrastructure stuff. And, like, security kind of falls in this category to have like, stuff that's like really important. But it's not shiny, there's no, you know, revenue number, like floating over your head if you do it, right. It's more of a like, it's more of like a cost thing. It's like last time, you know, lost energy, like, it could be lost revenue, if it's security issues. Like, I think when we went full time actually, like the first thing we prioritized was like, What can we do for infrastructure and developer happiness stuff so that when we are working on stuff, it's more enjoyable to work on, more resilient, less brittle?Colleen Schnettler  22:10  That's exactly that's exactly how I feel about it. So I said, it's transparent to my customers. But it feels really good to me. For exactly those reasons. My development time now going forward will go faster. I won't have to worry about writing something I'm later gonna have to rip out when I upgrade. It's good. So I was pumped about that. Something I'm struggling with this week. This is kind of funny. So you remember like a month ago, I told you, I hired my sister to help me do marketing. That's just been kind of an interesting challenge for us, because neither of us know what to do. And so I'm like trying to do my development stuff. She's asking me questions. I'm like, I don't know. So we're both kind of spinning around. Not quite sure what to do. Hmm. So what we did is we ended up having a call with one of our mutual friends who has his own podcast, his name is Josh Oh, and his podcast is searching for SAS. And he helped us lay out a SEO content, Google Search their Google Search Console strategy. Oh, yeah. So we are kind of excited to go down that path. What I originally had asked her to do was more traditional sales Safari. And it wasn't working. Hmm. Remember how Shawn came on the podcast? And he told us he spent 80 hours like doing sales Safari?Michele Hansen  23:44  Yeah,Colleen Schnettler  23:45  yes. So my sister was trying to do that for my product. And we just weren't really, we just weren't really getting anywhere. It felt like we just weren't getting any useful information. So we are going to starting this week try to tackle this more from a content SEO perspective.Michele Hansen  24:03  Hmm. You feel like the sales Safari kind of approach was?Colleen Schnettler  24:10  I don't know I guess you you kind of already built something that's that's what Josh said. He was like, you're already you're already paying for it.Michele Hansen  24:17  So it seems like you know, I mean, Salesforce is useful at many different stages. But it sounds like you need to get eyebrow eyeballs in front of this thing. And because there are people are willing to pay for it. There's clear there's a need a huge competitors went into the space, which tells you all the more that there's need for this. You just need to tell people you exist.Colleen Schnettler  24:40  Yeah, that was his point as well. And I think that's a better use of our time is to kind of lay out a content strategy. So we're gonna try to do that I'm such a bottleneck in this process, though. It's hard to find developers to write content technical. Here's a business idea. technical content rating is really hard. I have a mutual friend who has a business way more successful than mine. And he hired a technical content agency to write some articles. They're not very good. So I'm just saying, I think that this is like a real bottleneck is like really good technical content. I'm gonna go on a limb here and say, technical content for developers has to be written by developersMichele Hansen  25:27  or by technical writers, I know that we have at least two technical writers who listen to this podcast, okay, reading my book, and like they focus on writing documentation and for develop them to do the whole job. Yeah, to dm Colleen. Colleen. And actually, I mean, they get, you know, a lot of the work, they were telling me that they get frustrated, because, like, in big companies, they get really insulated from the customers, which inhibits their ability to write dry, good documentation. Yeah. Right. Because, you know, as you're talking about the challenges with getting your sister up to speed, like, it makes me wonder, like, has she gotten to sit in on any interviews with customers? Has she gotten to do any? Like? Has she got to hear from the customers directly about what you're solving and why it's important to them?Colleen Schnettler  26:26  No, we haven't done any new customer interviews yet.Michele Hansen  26:30  Get her in those? Yeah, I think that'll really help. And you might still be the person who's kind of guiding, you know, API documentation and whatnot. But if there's a difference between hearing about what something does, from somebody who built it, and hearing about what it does, from somebody who bought it, and is excited about it,Colleen Schnettler  26:53  yeah, those areMichele Hansen  26:54  two really different things. And for marketing, what she needs to communicate is, why you should buy it and why you should be excited about it. And the technical documentation is part of that. But she needs to be able to speak to what will get someone excited about it. Yes. And who better to hear that from than someone who is excited about that themselves, ie, a customer of yours?Colleen Schnettler  27:19  Yeah, we have a whole bunch of new customers. So I think in a couple, probably starting next week, once my life's a little more organized. We're going to start trying to do more customer interviews and get back on that bandwagon because I haven't done any since I did them with you, almost three months ago. So that is definitely a priority to get that to get that going. Yes, so content is challenging, because I would love to just churn out some content. But I am struggling to find the time myself or find people that are making the kind of content that I need. So that is challenging, but I did I don't know if I told you so Drew, who we interviewed together, who was a simple file upload customer is a developer and so I paid him to write a piece for me. Oh, no. I need Yeah, do this. I was like, Drew knows how this works. Maybe he will do? Yeah, so that's it's not Yeah,Michele Hansen  28:18  dude. Like hiring your own customers is really smart. Like, I think we talked about Chris from from webflow, our mutual friend we didn't realize was a mutual friend, a couple months ago. And his first support hire is one of his customers. And it worked out like amazingly well because like the person already understands the product. Yes, he knows how it works. He knows where it might go wrong. Like, that's like that is been in the back of my mind of you know, when we need to hire for something even just you know, for something on a contract. Like, who in our customer base could do that for us?Colleen Schnettler  28:58  Yeah, I thought like, I was so pumped. So I threw you know, he said he could do it. I was like, Yes. I mean, that's the best. That's the best of both worlds. Someone who knows what they're doing as a writer. And as technical it was, it was great. So I haven't actually published it yet. Because see all these other things I've been trying to do with my life. But it's it's a guide on how to use simple file upload with react. And that has been on my to do list for four months. So let me tell you how great it felt to give it to someone who could do it better than me. It felt great. And he just got it done in like three to four days. I was like, Oh, you're you're amazing. So that was really yeah, it felt really good because you know all those things you're supposed to do. They they kind of like weigh on you and your subconscious like the things you haven't done and that is literally been on my list for four months only I have to kind of learn react before I can write about how like I kind of sorta know react but this this partnership I feel worked out really well. So that really He inspired me, it went so well with Drew, it inspired me to hire more people to write for me. But I'm definitely having a bottleneck, like finding the right kind of people, especially for the rail stuff, because I feel like I can do that better than most people. So it's a trade off.Michele Hansen  30:18  Well, so. So first, I wonder if you could create some sort of pipeline where you create one piece of content, and it can be recycled in many different ways. And I wonder if even just that one piece of content from drew like if your sister can take that and with some understanding of what the customers are trying to solve, and where they're coming from and what the product does, and recycle that into many other pieces of content? What does that mean, risk can be used in other places to further improve your SEO?Colleen Schnettler  30:49  I literally don't know what you mean. Like you mean, put it on? Like, like, yeah, so like, heMichele Hansen  30:55  wrote up this, like, long guide? Yeah. Right. Yeah. So but then you can also have landing pages that are how to do this with react. And it's like taking like bits and pieces out of that. Like if she can read that and understand it, and then be like, Oh, we can use it in these other places. You can put bits and pieces of that on your homepage on other pages like, right and use that. You're probably trying to do this, like, Look, read that article, and then look at everything in Google Search Console and say, Okay, what are the similarities in terms here? What is the actual term that people are using per Google Search Console? What is the word we're using in this piece of content? Let's change that to the word that people are typing in? Are there five variations of it? Let's make sure in this article, we have headlines that use each one of those five different variations, like, use that on other parts of our site, like, so on and so forth.Colleen Schnettler  31:44  This is the stuff we don't understand. Like I hear the words coming out of your mouth. Okay, but I'm a little confused. I mean, like, okay, so I set up okay, Search Console. So go me, I get that. So you've got keywords, right? Yeah, yes. Yes, it did. Keywords?Michele Hansen  32:04  Yes. Okay. That is the most useful part about that for me, okay. Like before, until we started using h refs, that was what I used all the time. Okay. And so that tells you all of the different keywords that are leading people to your site, okay. It's very, it's very basic, but it's like, it's, it's enough. And I think you can sort it by volume, and you know, the number of clicks and stuff that you're getting right. And then basically taking that and so so in, like in that long article that drew wrote. So I was just, you know, publishing that as a web page, not as a PDF or anything. And then search engines pick up on the headlines. So if someone is typing in, you know how to do image upload, or file upload with react, for example, then your headlines need to be like step one, like, determine which files you want people to be able to upload with react, like with your react app, like step two, like do this thing with your react app, if you want to be able to have them, you know, import files, or like what like, use different variations of that. But like, use it in the headline. So like, we have a million of these things on our website. It actually if you go to geocoded I o. And then like in the Help menu, there's one that says tutorials, we've all these step by step guides, that are all in this format, which I actually learned from another friend of ours, who is a total SEO, like genius. And then each one is like bullet points of step one, determine which addresses you want to find the congressional district for step two, take the list of addresses that you want the congressional district for, and upload them to geocode, do step three, you know, like, and it's just using those same words over and over and over again, it's kind of like, you know, in the 90s, when you saw like, a huge block of like, tiny font text at the bottom of a web sites,Colleen Schnettler  33:55  yes,Michele Hansen  33:56  that is basically how this is done now, but use different versions of that of that text to because people might be typing in different things. Like we saw, for example, we'll see that people type in lat long to Congressional District, which is something I would not type in personally, like I think of address to congressional district. So we make sure that it says address to congressional district, it also says lat lon to congressional district to GPS coordinates to congressional district, like all of those, many permutations of it, and then having as many things in headlines as possible. So that that is what the you know, search engine picks up on.Colleen Schnettler  34:36  Okay. Okay, cool. Yeah, we can work in that direction. And you're right. I didn't think about that. We already have this piece of content. SoMichele Hansen  34:43  yeah, and then just use it in many other places.Colleen Schnettler  34:46  Okay, great. Awesome. Cool. That's exciting. Yes. That's something to to focus on a little bit. I mean, I think that's what's been challenging for us is we're just what do you do next? I have no idea. I mean, I told her I was like, we're both learning here, right? This is part of the fun. This is why we're doing it like this is part of the fun of the process. But it's definitely can be a little intimidating or confusing, and to what you said aboutMichele Hansen  35:12  important versus urgent. I feel like important projects that are nebulous, get shoved to them.Colleen Schnettler  35:19  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Like, totally. So we, that's great. We'll work on that. And then what I really want to do this week, is get a test sandbox environment set up on my website. You and I actually talked about this ages ago. And then when I talked to Derek Rhymer a couple weeks ago, he said it again. And I was like, I should really do this. But all this rail 6.1 stuff was the reason I hadn't done it yet. So I'm hoping I'll be able to get something like that up in a week. And basically, that would be kind of test sandbox. Yeah. So you know, if you go on to upload Cara cloudinary website, there's a big button that says try it now. And you can literally just try and like that, you can see exactly what it does before you sign up for an account, and all of that stuff. So that is something I want to go. Okay. Yeah. And I think that would be great. Because that's going to give me higher quality leads. And I think it'll encourage more people to use the service because I think my service offers some things that these other these other services don't offer. SoMichele Hansen  36:21  show them what it does.Colleen Schnettler  36:22  Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's I try I have the video, which shows them what it does. But people like to, especially developers, like at least I do, I like to put my hands on thing, like you make it look easy. Is it actually that easy? So I feel like I think that's a pretty common feeling. Yeah.Michele Hansen  36:37  Don't tell me that it's easy. Let me experience how easy it exactlyColleen Schnettler  36:41  like I want to actually do it. So that's my goal for this week. That's a little ambitious, because there's a lot of moving parts in that. But once I get that set up, I think that's going to be great for marketing, and potential customers and stuff. SoMichele Hansen  36:54  yeah, what are some of those moving parts? Because maybe if there's five steps involved, if you get three out of five, by next week, that's still pretty good.Colleen Schnettler  37:02  Yeah. So the thing I have to do to do this, my plan, at least, first of all, if I have an open file uploader open to the world, I have to be really careful with security. And so I want to write a script that automatically deletes these uploaded files, like every 10 minutes. I don't know how to do that. I mean, I'm sure I can figure it out. But like, I've never done that before. So I have no idea. I don't just know how to do that. I, again, theoretically, it's easy, but I don't know. So I want to do that. And I guess I don't need a script, I can just do it in my app, but whatever. I also want to make sure those files go to a completely separate domain, like completely separate domain, then the files I'm serving for our production customers. Because if someone says it's open to the world, if someone were to upload an inappropriate file that could be that can be bad, right?Michele Hansen  37:58  I mean, it's files. I'm vaguely remember remembering somebody's like, warning you about like that. Yeah, it was like I think on Hacker News or something like this. It happened to somebody it happened to someone else app. And yeah,Colleen Schnettler  38:10  so there was, yeah, someone sent it to me on Twitter. And it was a there's this big Hacker News thread about it. Someone else who has a similar product didn't separate his domain. So he had everyone on the same domain. And so his whole site got blacklisted. Like he didn't even separate. I'm not saying he did, he didn't know. But he didn't even separate his app from his serving domain, like mine are already separate. So that's already good. But he had literally everything on the same domain. So when his site got blacklisted by Google, like, everything went down. Oh, yeah. And he said it. You know, the interesting thing, I read the Hacker News thread, and they didn't have problems for years. I mean, they had their file uploader open to the world for like, I think was like three years. And they didn't have any issues. And then one day, bam, everything, everything was shut down. So I've already taken many security steps. I have a wireless firewall, I have separate domains for my app and my serving domain. But if I'm going to open this to the world, I want a third domain for test files. So that's I already have that. I'm actually deleting the files.Michele Hansen  39:14  Yeah. is smart, too. I don't know if that other person did that. But that disincentivizes people from using it for malicious?Colleen Schnettler  39:21  Yeah, file. I mean, one of the good things is he wrote a really detailed what I learned I could just take all of that he's and that was one of the things is he was deleting the files, I think every 36 hours and he's like, that's not enough. Like you need to be deleting the files like every 20 minutes. Okay,Michele Hansen  39:38  that's a great he's got like a step by step,Colleen Schnettler  39:40  step by step. So what not to do, so. I want to make sure I hit all of those wickets before I open this up on my website. Absolutely. Yeah, but that would be a huge I'm really excited about that. Because I really think once I get that I really think I can I can push a little more and I really think that's going to help with my Yeah, so that's my goal for next week.Michele Hansen  40:06  Alright, so next week we will check in on whether the sandbox is live on your site and maybe possibly my book will be ready. Who knows? Stay tuned.Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Eli Dourado on how the sausage of technology policy is made, the relationship between total factor productivity and technological progress, airships, and more. Eli is an economist, regulatory hacker, and a senior research fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University. In the past, he was the head of global policy at Boom Supersonic where he navigated the thicket of regulations on supersonic flight. Before that, he directed the technology policy program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.. Eli's Website Eli on Twitter Transcript audio_only [00:00:00] In this conversation, Eli Durado. And I talk about how the sausage of technology policy has made the relationship between total factor productivity and technological progress, airships, and more Eli is an economist regulatory, hacker, and senior research fellow at the center for growth and opportunity at Utah state university. In the past, he was the head of global policy at boom supersonic, [00:01:00] where he navigated the thicket of regulations on superstar. Before that he directed the technology policy program at the Mercatus center at George Mason university. I wanted to talk to Eli because it feels like there's a gap between the people who understand how technology works and the people who understand how the government works. And Isla is one of those rare folks who understands both. So without further ado my conversation with Eli Dorado.  So just jump directly into it.  When you were on a policy team, what do you actually do?  Well that depends on which policy team you're on. Right. So, so in my career you mean, do you mean the, in sort of like the, the public policy or like the research center think tanks kind of space or in, in, in a company because I've done both. Yeah, exactly. Oh, I didn't even realize that you do like that. It's like different things. So so like, I guess, like, let's start with [00:02:00] Boom. You're you're on a policy team at a technology company and. Yeah. Yeah. So when I, when I started at boom so we had a problem. Right. Which was like, we needed to know what landing and takeoff noise standard we could design too. Right. Like, so, so we needed to know like how loud the airplane could be.  And how, how quiet it had to be. Right. And, and as a big trade off on, on aircraft performance depending on that. And so when I joined up with boom, like FAA had a, what's called a policy statement. Right. Which is, you know, some degree of binding, but not really right. Like that they had published back in 2008 that said, you know, we don't have standards for supersonic airplanes, but you know, like when we do create them they, you know, they're during the subsonic portion of flight, we anticipate the subsidy Arctic standards. Right. So, so for, [00:03:00] for, for landing and takeoff, which is like the big thing that we are concerned about, like that's all subsonic. So we, you know, so that sort of the FAA is like going in position was like, well, the subsonic standards apply to, to boom. And so I kind of like joined up in early 2017 and sort of my job was like, let's figure out a way for that, not to be the case. Right. And so it was, it was basically, you know, look at all the different look at the space of actors and try to figure out a way for that, not to be true. And so, and so that's like kind of what I did. I started, you know, started talking with Congress with FAA. I started figuring out what levers we could push, what, what what angles we could Work work with to ensure that that, that we have we've got to a different place, different answer in the end. And, and so the, like, so basically it's just like this completely bespoke process of [00:04:00] totally like, even trying to figure out like what the constraints you're under are. Exactly. Right. So, so yeah, so it was, there's like a bunch of different, different aspects of that question, right? So there will you know, there's, there is statute, you know, congressional laws passed by Congress that had a bearing on the answer to that question that I went back to like the 1970s. And before there w you know, there was the FAA policy statement. There was, of course the FAA team, which you had to develop, you know you know, relationships with and, and, and, and sort of work with you have the industry association, right. That we remember of that Had different companies, you know, in addition, you know, in addition to boom, there, there were a bunch of other companies Ariane, which is no longer operating. We had Gulf stream, which no longer has a supersonic program. Or actually they didn't Edward admitted to having it announced really dead. They, you know, there was, you know, GE and rolls Royce. And so you had all these companies like coming together, you know, sort of under the, [00:05:00] under the watchful eye of Boeing, of course also. And, and so like the industry association had to have a position on things, and then you had like the international aspect of it. So you had a, there's a UN agency called Oko that sort of coordinates aviation standards among all the different countries you had the European regulators who did not like this idea that there were American startups doing Supersonics because, because the European companies weren't going to do it. And so they wanted to squash everything and they were like, no, no subsonic standards totally applied. Right. And so so that was, that's really the. The environment that, you know, sort of, I came into and I was like, okay, I've got to figure out, you know, I've got to figure out, build a team and, and, and figure out an approach here. And and, and try to try to make it not be the case that the subsonic centers apply. So we, so, you know, basically we tried a bunch of things at first, right. Like we tried to like, get our industry association, like all geared up for like, okay, well, we've gotta, we gotta fight this and they didn't want to do that. Right. So like, like [00:06:00] the other people didn't want to do that. Right. We tried a bunch of different angles in terms of, you know, we, we, what we ended up doing w w we got Congress to get excited about it and sort of, they, they started to, you know, there was a.  Sort of a draft bill that had some, some very forward-leaning supersonic language that we, we you know, worked with Congress on it never passed in exactly that form, but it passed later in the 2018 FAA reauthorization. And then the thing that actually kind of ended up working was I had this idea in late 2017 was, well, you know, what. The, the sub the subsonic standard changes at the end of this year. Right. So, so so the end of 2017, so I was like, well, let's apply for type certification this year. Right. So we applied, like, we are nowhere close to an airplane. Right. And know we're close. Right. Right. And I was like, well, let's just, let's just, let's just like, screw it. We're going to apply like, like in 2017. And I had to like, get the execs to sign off on that. Right. We're going to do it, but we did. [00:07:00] So by the end of, I think December, 2017, we applied, I of course, you know, talk to my FFA colleagues and told them like, Hey, we're going to apply. Just so you know, they're like, well, that raises a whole bunch of questions. And, and that sort of got it, got them working down this path where they were like, well, you only have under part 36 of the FAA rules. You only have five years to to keep that noise standard. If, if you apply today and you're probably not gonna be done in five years. And I was like, that's true. We're probably not going to be done in five years, but we think that part 36 doesn't apply to us at all right. The way it's written. And then they went back and then they looked at it and they were like, oh, Part 36 doesn't apply to them like they're right. Like, you know, Eli's the first person in the history of Supersonics three per 36 and very closely. Right. And so and so then they went back and they like talked to their lawyers and, you know, they, I think came up with a new position in a new legal interpretation [00:08:00] w basically a memo that, that was, that was published that was like, okay, the subsonic standards don't apply and we don't have standards. We can start making some standards. And if we don't have one at any time for any particular applicant, we can make one for that applicant. We can, it's called the rule of particular applicability. So that kind of, once we got that, then in early 2018, like that kind of solved their problem. Like, and I think in in at least th th the domestic part didn't solve the international part, like from, from from Europe and so on. So. I mean, I, so, so if you think about like, what do you do on a policy team? Like you figure out like how, you know, how, how do you solve the problem that you have, that, that you were, that you were hired hard to fix and you just try things, try things until something works. It's part of the answer. Yeah. That's I mean, that's, I really appreciate you going into that level of detail because it's like the sort of like affordances of these things seem incredibly opaque. And just [00:09:00] for, for context, the subsonic standards are the standards that do not a lot, like that set a very like low noise bar. It's very stringent. I mean, the modern, the modern standards are pretty stringent. Like it used to be like, you couldn't, you couldn't basically like stand on a runway and have a conversation while plane's taken off these days. Like, I mean, it's, it's, it's gotten very, very impressive, but they, you know, the, the modern planes have gotten that way because they have high bypass ratios and the engines like big, big fans that move a lot of air around the engine core, not through it. Right. And so so that is, you know, that's just not workable when you're kind of trying to push that big fan through, you know, through the air at mock you know, 2.2 is what we were doing now. Now it's 1.7 that boom. But but but anyway, that's that, you know, that, that just doesn't work as a solution. So that's why, you know, it had to be different. Right. Right. And then did you say it's 30 S w w was it articles 36 [00:10:00] or 36? And volume, volume, volume, 14 of the code of federal regulations, part 36. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And that's that, that's the part that specifies all the takeoff and landing noise certification rules for bar, all, all kinds of aircraft. Got it. And, and you re and there's like, like particular wording in that part that does not apply to  that didn't apply as it was in, in 2018. I think they've now rechanged some of the definitions. They went through a rulemaking To, to cover some supersonic planes, although interestingly, still not Boone's plane. It covers the plane up to Mach basically between Mach 1.4 Mach 1.8 and below a certain weight limit. So basically biz jets, right. Business jets, small sort of low Mach business jets, but it would be covered under, under the new role, but as part of that, they might have incorporated. [00:11:00] I, I forget the details, but they, they might've changed the definition so that so that boom was at least you know, would, would apply the five-year time limit and stuff like that might apply. Got it. Okay. And so that's so, so sort of like they, at a company, the policy team is like really going after a specific problem that the company has figured out anyway, to, to address that I mean, that, that was, that was how that one was. I mean, I think that there are different, there are different companies, right. And the companies that are playing more in defense rather than offense. Right. So you could imagine oh, I'm thinking of like a company like Facebook, right? Where like the first amendment applies for 30 applies. Like they have like the legal, like they have all the legal permission to operate as much. As as they need to. And they're mostly just like putting out fires right. Of like, like people wanting to like regulate them as utility and things like that. So, so it's, it's, it's more of a defensive mode in those companies, I think. But, but yeah, it's going to [00:12:00] vary from company to company, depending on what it is you need to do. And you just have to kind of be aware of all the different tools in terms of, well, you can go to Congress and get them to do something, and you might be able to get the executive branch to do an executive order, or you might be able to you know, get a new rulemaking or a new guidance or, you know there's, there's just a whole host of different tools in the, in the toolkit. And you've gotta be able to think about them in the different ways that you can use them to solve your problems. And actually so this perhaps getting a little ahead of ourselves, but speaking of those tools, like what in your mind is the theory of change behind writing policy papers? I think that sort of among many people, like you see. Policy papers being written and then, and like policy happens, but like, there's this like big question Mark Black box in between those two things. I think there's, there's, there's definitely different theories, right? I think so before I started at boom, when I was at the Mercatus center, Sam Hammerman and I [00:13:00] wrote a paper on Supersonics and that was, you know, that one I think actually was really influential. Right. So we, we published it a month before the 2016 election, when we thought Donald Trump was going to lose and we titled it sort of as a joke make America boom again you know, so it was like, the slogan was perfect. And and then lo and behold Trump gets elected and that paper like circulated in the, the sorta like when, when his administration got constituted in, in January, 2017 you know, a DLT like that paper circulator and people are like, okay, this makes sense. We need to be very forward-leaning on Supersonics. And, and so, so that, you know, like we still haven't changed the law that we said was most important in that paper. Right. That what we said is that we need to re repeal the Overland ban and replace it with some kind of permissive noise standard that lets the industry got going on Overland, Overland flight. But I think it was  influential in the sense of, it was some reference material [00:14:00] that a lot of different policymakers could look at quickly and say like, okay there, you know, there's some good ideas behind this and we need to support this broadly. And, and, and it's, you know, it's a reputable sort of outlet that, that came up with this and it's, and it's got all the sort of info that we need to, to be able to operate independently and moving this idea forward. Got it. So, so really is like a lot of just sort of like tossing, tossing things out there and hoping like they get to the person who can make, make a decision. Well, I think  you know, ideally you're not just hoping, right? Like ideally like you're, you're reaching out to those people establishing relationships with the right people and and, and sort of getting, getting your ideas taken, taken seriously by everybody that, that matters in your field. And another, so, so this is, again, just coming from [00:15:00] someone who's completely naive to the world is like, how do you figure out who the right person is? Well, I think it depends on what you need to do, right? So like, if you need to repeal an act of Congress, you know, you've got to go to Congress. Right. So, so that's that's an example. So I, so I don't know. I think a lot of times the right person is, is not just one right. Person. I think that there's like a, there's also a move where you're really just trying to go after elites in society. Right. Like if you can get, if you can get sort of like elites, however you define, I don't know what the right, right definition of that term is. But but, but you know, if you can get sort of a consensus among elites that you know, that, that supersonic flight should be allowed over land or that you know that, that we should invest, you know, like the con the government should invest deeply in, in like geothermal energy or that you know, Wait, we need to like have a a Papa program for ornithopter whatever it is. You know, if you convince, like it leads across the board in society that we should do this, [00:16:00] like, it it's pretty likely to happen. Right. It leads still, still sort of control the stuff that at least at least the stuff that nobody else cares about. If it leads care about it, then, then they'll, they'll get their way. One. What sort of pushback to that then I actually wanted to ask you about would be that there's there's this view that in a lot of cases, regulations sort of a codes, a trade-off into a very like a calcified bureaucracy and then sort of like seals it off specifically like an example being you could make this argument that. Nuclear regulation, as opposed to sort of being about health and wellbeing or the environment is actually encoding a trade off that like in order to absolutely prevent any sort of nuclear proliferation at all we basically just make it so that you can't build new nuclear things. What do you w what do you think about that? Do you have technology [00:17:00] regulations? I mean, I think like nuclear is, would be like, I would think that that would be like one of the hardest regulations change, right? The, the, the sort of you're taking an entire agency, like the national the nuclear regulatory commission. Right. And you're saying like, we have to completely change the way, like, like if I were, if I were at one of these efficient startups, right. It'd be like, All right. My job here as the policy lead or whatever, is to completely change the way this entire agency operates. Right? Like that seems really hard, right? That is that's, that's, that's really challenging. And, you know, I don't, I'm not optimistic frankly, about, about their success. And so, you know, so in, in sort of the more like the research-y like nonprofit side of policy that I do now, you know, like a lot of what I'm looking for is areas where it isn't, that it isn't hopeless, right? Where there, where you can work and where you only need like small change and it makes a big difference. Right. And so you're trying to find those [00:18:00] leveraged policy issues where, where you can make a big difference. So that's, that's, that's how I think about it. And it's issue selection. Like when you're, when you're in the nonprofit world and you have the luxury of that, right. Which you don't necessarily in the for-profit world Like that's really, I think that's really important. And that's what separates like good policy entrepreneurs from bad policy entrepreneurs is, is that sort of like awareness of issue selection, and, you know, small changes that make a big difference. And, and so let's dig into that. How did, how do you sort of like, look for that leverage? Like what, what yells to you like that, that you could actually make a big difference by changing a small thing? So I mean like, like Supersonics is a, is a great example, right? That's one that I chose to work on for several years. And that's like, if you could get rid of the Overland band, right. One, one line in the code of federal regulations, the bands over land and flight over land, right. You [00:19:00] would unlock. Massive amounts of aerospace engineering development in a completely you know, new regime of flight that no one else has, no one else is doing. Right. You'd get rapid learning. Then that curve you get like engines being developed specifically for that use case, you'd get, you know, variable, geometry, everything being developed.  For, for airliners and so on and, and you'd make a big difference you know, in, in the future of the industry and, and in the, in sort of this state of the art for, for flight. So I think if you could change that one line, even if you could, even if you couldn't change it international, right. If you could change it just in the U S right, you would get, I think the U S is big enough that, you know, sort of LA to New York and, you know, other plus all the over plus all the transoceanic markets that, you know, sort of the, you know, like a boom is going for now, right. If you got, if you got the combined, combining those two markets, you're at like, you know, DUP say doubling the market size for those planes. And and you'd get a lot more investment. And so, you know, it would be [00:20:00] a, it would be a huge A huge improvement. Right. And so, so I think that's, that's a highly leveraged one, one that I'm working on, you know, a lot more lately, I'm sure you've seen is geothermal, right. Where sort of like, I think there's no like real policy blocker, but the sort of the thing that I've been focused on is permitting, right? So if you want to, if you want a permit you know, there's a huge overlap between like the prime geothermal locations and federal lands. And so, so a lot of it's on, you know, so you need to get the federal government to give you a lease and, and you need to get their approval for it to drill the well. Right. And so that, that approval brings in, you know, environmental review and so on and conveniently the oil and gas industry has gotten themselves exempted from a lot of those environmental review requests. And my argument is like geothermal Wells are like the same as oil and gas Wells. So if they're exempted, like geothermal should be two, and that would speed up the approval time from something like two years to something like two weeks. [00:21:00] Right. So you'd go, you massively speed it up. Right. And so, and so, so just that sort of speed up on federal lands that wouldn't even change anything on, on private lands or on, on state lands necessarily. W w that, that sort of acceleration, I think, would, would, you know, could bring forward sort of the timetable for sort of the geothermal industry as a whole, by a few years. Right. So, so one small change. And so that's, that's, if you think about that, like socially, like, what is the value of that? It's many billions of dollars, right? So if I spend a year of my time working on that and, and get that changed You know, like my ROI for society for that one year is, is many billions of dollars, which is pretty good. It's pretty good. Pretty good. Pretty good way to spend my time. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's, I mean, other things you know, like like I'm really interested in, in enhanced weathering, right? So olivine you're using olivine to, to to capture CO2.  And I think it's like, it was the neglected thing and I think policymakers just don't know about it and if I could [00:22:00] educate them and sort of, you know, get them, get them get buy-in for like some sort of, you know, pilot program or, or whatever, whatever would be, whatever the right answer is for for that. And I'm not sure what it is exactly. But if, you know, if you can get them going on that, it's like, oh, we, we, you know, potentially. Capture, you know, many gigatons of CO2 for, you know, 10 to $20 a ton. Yeah. That's, that's pretty cheap and we'd solve a lot of other climate problems. Right. And, and, and it would be maybe the cost of dealing with climate change would go down by something like an order of magnitude. Right. That would be that's, you know, like again, like pretty highly leveraged.  So that's like, those are some examples of like, why I've chosen to work on certain areas. But I think, I think I'm not saying those are the only ones by any means, and it just, just what makes a good policy entrepreneur is figuring out what those are. And, and I guess, like the thing that to put a little bit more is like, how, like, is there something that people could do to [00:23:00] find more of those leverage points? Like it was, it, is it, I guess there's like two, maybe two purchase. One would be just like take an area of interest and like, just like comb through the laws. Like basically like point changes that way to unlock things. Or is, is there a way to like actually sort of like look for potential point changes agnostic of the actual no, it's a great question. So, so, so I've been, so I've been, you know, trying to talk to people about like, what is the way to systematize this. Right, right. So I think that's the question you're asking and, and, and I've been, so I've been thinking about like, what, what is my, you know, what is my system, if I have such as I, such as it exists. And I think that the right answer is to come at, I mean, one is to come at it from the perspective of the entrepreneur. Right? So, so if you, if you think about it from the perspective of, you know, this is a company that is trying to do this thing, or I wish there was a company that was trying to do this thing, like, what would, what would, what [00:24:00] would they run into, right? What is that? What is the actual obstacle? What is the actual policy obstacle that they face? I think that that is the most construct. Way to do it. And, and, and to give you an example of a different approach, right? You can think about some, you know, a bunch of our friends, you know, we're working on this endless frontier, Zack, right. Which is like complete rethinking of the entire like science funding and technology funding thing. Like that is a different approach. And maybe that maybe, you know, we probably need some people working on that and that modality as well. But I, I think it's released for me, it's more effective to do this sort of more bottom up You know, think about it from, from the perspective of here's this thing I want to exist in the world. Like here's the specific narrow problem that they would face if they tried to do it, like, let me work on that as much as possible. Yeah. I think, I think another thing that's really important is you know, the, the policy analyst or whatever should try to learn as much [00:25:00] as possible on from on a technical level about, about the technology and how it works and like the physics of it or the chemistry of it, whatever it is. And I think a lot of, a lot of policy folks don't right. I think that they they're like, well, I'm going to deal with this like legal stuff. And I'm just, you know, I'll go to the engineers if I have a question, but I don't really want to learn it. And I think that that's, that's that's not helpful. I think you want to get in the weeds as much as possible. I mean, Boom. Like I sat people down all the time. It was like, I need you to explain this to me cause I don't understand it. And, and, and I just had tons and tons of conversations with the engineering team and, and, you know, people who weren't on the engineering team, but who understood things better than me and over time, you know, so it got to the point where like, okay, I understand, you know, these airplane design trade-offs pretty well. Right. And, and then, and then, and then when I'm talking to a congressional staffer or, you know [00:26:00] someone at, at a federal agency or something like that, that I can explain it to them. Right. And in sort of in a way that they can understand. So, so I think that you know, thinking from the bottom up you know, try and trying to put yourself in the position of the bottom of the entrepreneur working on it, looking at it from looking at it from you're not being afraid to dig into the technical weeds. I think those are. Those are the things that I would encourage sort of other people working in policy to, to experiment with and to try. And I think that would make them, you know, more, more successful. Yeah. And actually on that note another thing I wanted to ask you about is if you have any opinions about sort of how to get more technical people in to government and policy and like vice versa, help more government policy people like actually understand technical constraints. Cause I just find like very often, like it's like I had this instinct too, where I'm like, I don't understand policy, so I'm just going to like try to avoid [00:27:00] anything that touches government. And, and like that seems suboptimal. Yeah. So it's something that I think about a lot. We're thinking about a lot at the CGO actually is, is, you know, how can we. How can we, you know, either when we train people up, you know, in terms of, you know, young policy analyst, how do we get them to like, engage, you know, like maybe so we're exploring ideas right. Of how we would do this. Right. How could we, could we bring in young policy analysts and like kind of mentor them or like teach them how to, how to sort of, how to self-teach some of the technical stuff, right? Like, like like work through this stuff, or conversely, as you say, like we can take some technical people and, and sort of teach them the road. So policy, if that's what they want to do. Right. And, and, and give them that, that toolkit as well. And cause I think that the overlap is, is really, is really effective. If you can get it, if you can get someone that's interested in playing in both spaces, I think that that is really effective. [00:28:00] And, and the question is like, who are these people that want to do it? You know, there's not, it's not really like a career track. Exactly. Right. It's. And so, you know, if we, if we found a bunch of people that wanted to be that, that you know, in, in that sort of Venn diagram overlap, like we would, we would definitely be interested in training them up. Yeah. W w one thought there is actually sort of what we're doing right now, which is making the, the policy process more legible. In that, like, I, I think it's, it's very silicone valley has done a very good job of like, making people see, like, this is how you change the world by like starting a tech company, whether that's true or not. But it's, it's like very unclear, fuzzy how one changes the world by like helping with policy. So like just making that legible seems very important, you know, I think, I think the other thing about it is that you know, Silicon valley, you know, I think investors and entrepreneurs are too afraid of. You know, what they would call [00:29:00] policy risk, right. Or something like that, you know, like, like, you know, I think it's you know, I think it varies case by case how much of a risk it actually is. But I think it, you know, sort of my view when I was at boom was like, look, there's no way that FAA is not going to let us certify plane. Like, there's no, like, like w we will, they will run us through the ringer. It'll be expensive. Like we'll have to like, spend, you know, new, all kinds of tests and stuff like that, but they are not going to get, we're not going to get to a point where, like, we have a plane ready to ready to fly. And like, yeah, it's not certifiable because of like, something like, like noise. Right. And so, and so like, like there was, or there, you know, there is not like that much policy risk and, and a lot of things you know, I wouldn't feel that same way about like a nuclear startup, right. Like like efficient startup, but but, but sort of being, you know, I think that I wish that The investors were a little bit more savvy about like, what is a smart policy risk to take [00:30:00] and, you know, what, what can be, what can be worked and what can't in terms of policy risks. Yeah. And again, I think it's, it's one of those things where it's like, we need more ways of people actually understanding that of like, like how do you, how do you grok those things? And then I guess, I guess the last thing on, on sort of the regulation front is like, are there historical examples of like sort of like very broad deregulation that enabled technology, like actual, like, it feels like regulation is very much this like bracket where like we keep regulating more and more things. And every once in a while you get like a little bit better, like in the FAA case, but like, is there ever a situation. There's a really big opening up.  Yeah, there, there are a few cases.  Aviation is a perfect example, actually. So, so if you're, I don't know if you've read the book hard landing, but but it's an excellent recommended it if you're, if you're interested in this at [00:31:00] all, but it's basically a history of sort of the aviation industry up through what they call deregulation. Right. Which is there's happened in the I guess the late 1970s. Because up until that point from I don't remember when it started, but there was this thing called the civil aeronautics board that basically regulated routes and affairs. So if you were an airline, you got to fly the routes that the government told you, you could fly and the fares that they, and you, you, you got to charge the fairs that they Told you, you could charge. Right. And you couldn't give discounts or anything like that. Right. Like you had to charge like that fair. Right. And so, so like, what did you have to compete on? Like, like, not very much, right? Like you, you competed actually like on in-flight service and stuff like that. So So, I mean, you had sort of before that deregulatory era, you had a very lavish in-flight meals and stuff like that. And, and super expensive, super expensive, super expensive tickets and not a lot of [00:32:00] convenient route choice and so on. And then And then sort of in the late 1970s under Jimmy Carter, I think I think Ted Kennedy was was the, one of the big proponents of it. So was like getting rid of the civil aeronautics board. They got rid of it, right. Like they got rid of an agency. And so and, and so that sort of deregulated the, the routes and, and the city, you know, city pairs and, and times, and, and the fairs that they could charge. So now, like you can buy like, you know, a ticket to Orlando or Charlotte, or, you know, whatever for like 200 bucks or less. Right. And, and it's and you know, that's all thanks to deregulation. Oh, that's not really exactly an enabling technology, I think, which was your initial question, but it just allowed the industry to move forward and and, and become a whole lot more efficient. And so one could imagine something similar for. Like technology regulations. Yeah. I think in getting rid of an entire agency is pretty rare. But [00:33:00] but, but, but yeah, I think that but yeah, it's, it's not, it's not like a lot of people think like regulations a one way ratchet. That's not totally true. Like there have been, has been times in the past where we got rid of a whole lot of regulation. Yeah. And actually related to that, do you have any good arguments against the position of like, we need regulation to like keep us safe besides sort of well, we also need to like, like there is too much safety. Like I, I find, I wish there was like a more satisfying thing besides like, well, you know, it's like sometimes we'll have to take risks. Right. So I think, I think, I mean, it's, it's true that Like, there's not, there's not like from an economics perspective, like there's not really a good argument for regulating safety, because you would think that the customer could, could make their own choice about how risky they want to live their life. Right. And so so, so it is a little bit awkward from that point of view, I think we're never going to get a situation where the government [00:34:00] doesn't regulate safety and a lot of things, right. They just it's just reality is that you know, the peop the public like sort of wants the government to regulate safety. And so therefore it will. But I think that there is still a difference in the kinds of kinds of safety regulation that we could have. Right. So, so I think one example that I think about a lot is The way planes are regulated versus the way cars are regulated. So if you, if you think so with, with planes FAA sort of type certifies, every plane that is produced or that is registered  model of plane that is produced and you have to get that yeah, it has to get an airworthiness certificate and stuff when you register it. And so that's, that's an example of what's called pre-market approval. Before you go on the market, you have to be certified, right? Drugs are work that work the same way with cars. It's a little different, right? You have car safety standards that, that NITSA promulgates and enforces. But The way that that is [00:35:00] enforced or the way that that is, is dealt with is that the car companies, you know, know that they have to design to these standards NITSA monitors, the market, all right, the marketplace, they sample sample cars that, that and, and test them and stuff like that. And or if they observe a lot of accidents or whatever, they can go back and they can tell the, the car company. Okay. You have to do a recall on this car. And, and make sure, you know, fix all these things that we found that, that aren't up to snuff. Right. Right. And so, so, so that's, that's an example of post-market surveillance, right? So those are both safety regulations, but they have huge structural differences in how they operate in terms of, you know, how, how much of a barrier is there to like getting to market, right. The pre-market approval cases. It means you're, front-loading all of the costs. You're delaying you're, you're making it hard for your investors to recoup any, any returns, just see if the whole thing is going to work, et cetera. So there's like all kinds of effects of that. Whereas in the post-market surveillance model, like you're incentivizing good behavior, but we're not going to [00:36:00] necessarily like verify it upfront. We're going to, which is costly. We're gonna, we're gonna let it play out in the marketplace for awhile. And if we detect like a certain degree of unsafeness, we're going to make you fix it. Right. And so I think of that, I think of that structural difference is really important. And I would, I would like to see. It's more of that that post-market surveillance model. I mean, you could think about it even for drugs too. Instead of, you know, instead of upfront clinical trials, we could say, okay, like you have this technical here. Like we see that it makes sense as a potential treatment for this thing. Like, you know, you would have to test it on people one way or the other. Right. In terms of you know, w whether it's clinical trial subjects or patients who have had the condition we will allow you to use it on this, but we're gonna, we're gonna monitor like, carefully what the side effects are in those early applications of the drug. And if it turns out to be unsafe, we're gonna pull it. Right. And so that that's, that would be a different way of doing it. You know, you can imagine we could do that. Right. But that's, [00:37:00] that's just not where we are. And so I think it is hard for people with You know, sort of bought into the current system to, to think about like how we would get there or how that would be, you know, why we would ever do that. Right. It, it, it does seem much more attractable to just say like, okay, we're still going to regulate, but we're going to do it in a different way though. Like, I, I really liked that and I, I hadn't thought about that very much. I'm going to completely change gears here. And let's talk about GDP, total factor productivity. Your, your stated goal is for GDP per capita to reach 200 a thousand dollars by 2050. And just for the listener context, I looked up some numbers. The current global GDP is $11,000. So we're talking about more than an order of magnitude increase. The highest right now is Monaco at 190 K. So they're not even so I, so I'm, I'm, I'm thinking like S specifically I want to get to 200,000. I want to get everybody there [00:38:00] eventually, but by 2050, I think we, I think we could get the U S so the U S has 63 K right now. Which so, so like we've got a triple it, yeah, we've got it from the blood. And so the interesting thing that I think is like, so the U S looks like it's both low places like Ireland and Switzerland. And like, so, so, so my, the thing that I'd like you to justify is like why high GDP is the thing we should be shooting for, because I would argue that like, sort of on a, like, things that are going on there's like, I would rather be in the U S than Ireland or Switzerland. And so, but like they have higher GDP. Yeah. So like Ireland, is this a special case where like, they have a bunch of tax laws that are favorable and so a lot of like profits and stuff get booked there. So, so I, so I think that that's, I think that's what's going on there. So I would say so GDP is Is it not a perfect metric. [00:39:00] I think that the degree to which it's imperfect, it's often overstated by, by people. So it's, it's pretty good. Even, so I would say I like TFP better as a like, so I, I, I use GDP per capita because I think people are more familiar with it and stuff like that. But I, what I actually think about is in terms of TFP and so total factor productivity is just like, how much can you get more output? From a given amount of inputs. Right? So like, if, you know, if I have in my society, a certain number of plumbers and a certain amount of you know, lumber and a certain amount of, you know, any, all the inputs that you have, right. What can I make out of them? Right. Like how much, how much, how much was the value, total value of all the goods that I can produce out of all the, all the resources I have going in. Right. And you want that number to be as high as possible. Right. You want to be able to produce as much as possible given your inputs. Right. And so that's, that's the, that's the idea of TSP. [00:40:00] And just to like, dig into that, how do, how do you measure inputs? So like, like outputs is just like all, all like basically everybody's receipts, right. So I'll put, so, so in this, there's a very simple model yeah. That people use, right. It's called the, the sort of the solo model. Right. And the idea there is you have you have GDP, which is just a number, right? It's a, it's a dollar value  real GDP is what you're concerned about. And then you have how much, how much labor do you have and how much capital do you have. And then, and then you you take logs actually of it, and then you do a linear aggression. And then the residual, the residual term in that regression is your, is your number for a total factor productivity or log total factor productivity. And so that's, that's how you would do it. Is it, that's a very, very rough estimate right. Of, of how you do it. Sometimes people add in things like human capital levels. Right. So if we if we brought in like a bunch of an educated [00:41:00] immigrants and and brought them in, so, okay. Like labor productivity would go down. If it's measured naively, but if you include in that regression, like a human capital term to, to to reflect education levels, like then, then it wouldn't right. Ideally it wouldn't. So, so anyway, so that's, so that's how you do it is you, you, you, you take labor, capital and output and you figure out the relationship between them and you see that you're getting more output than you used to from ideally hopefully from the given amount of, of labor and capital that that went into it. That's not true in every country. Right. You know, actually our countries where you go down in an output over time. So Brazil, where I. Peaked in total factor productivity in the year of my birth in 1980. And so, so, so it takes about 50% more resources today to produce the same amount of output that they produce that in real terms. Right. And, and, you know, Venezuela is like a basket case, right. They produce way less. So, so so it's, it's, I think it's a [00:42:00] good it's a good concept for thinking about two things bound up together. One is technology and the other is the quality of institutions, and those are the two things that if you improve them, then, then your output, given a certain basket of inputs is going to is going to be higher. Yeah. That's, that's compelling. I buy into the school of thought that institutions are like kind of a social technology that like, should we just actually talk about it that way? And like, to sort of sort of like prime my intuition and like other people's intuition about TFP are there examples. In history of like technologies that like very clearly increased TFP. Like you can like, see like thing invented TFP, like brand of TFP increased shoots up. Yeah. So, so the the guy who's written the most about this is this guy, Robert Gordon. And what he actually would argue is the thing it's like thing invented like a few decades pass [00:43:00] while things like integrating it and figuring it out, then big increase in, in, in, in TFP and GDP. Right, right. And so, and so he, he had this paper and then eventually a book on the five grade inventions. Right. And I, and so things like the internal combustion combustion engine, the idea of. Like sanitation plumbing, et cetera. The idea of pharmaceuticals, chemistry, and pharmaceuticals electricity was probably one and I think that's four, right? And I, and the fifth escapes me right now, but he, he basically argued that we had these sort of five great inventions in the late 18 hundreds. It took a few decades for them to get rolling. And then from 1920 to 1970, you had this like big spasm of growth TFE grew 2% a year. And he basically would argue today that's unrepeatable because we don't have those great inventions. And all, all we really have, according to him is, is progress in it. Right. Like we have, so we have one great invention [00:44:00] and, and that's, you know, it really still hasn't shown up in the productivity statistics. It may still be coming, but he would argue. Yeah. There's just, you know, we've, we've eaten all the low hanging fruit, like there's no more great inventions to be had. And when we just got to settle for a, you know, half a percent a year or TSP crows from here on out, but as I understand you disagreed like I, I certainly share your biases. And so recently you posted a great article about like possible technologies stack that could come down the pike. Do you have a sense, like, and so like through the framing of TFP do you have like, of, of all the things that you're excited about, like which ones do you think would have the biggest impact on TFP and like, what is the mechanism by which that would happen? I mean, so, so, so I think probably the closest, the thing that's like closest to us, where we are now is it's probably like big energy [00:45:00] price reductions. Right? So I've, I'm really bullish on geothermal, I think like 10 years from now. It's totally possible that we would have you know, sort of a geothermal boom, the way we had like a shell boom, right. In energy, in the, in the last 10 years. And then we'll be talking about like, oh man, like energy is getting so cheap. And so energy is something that sort of like infuses every production process in the entire country. And, and so it's difficult to really explain like how exactly it moves iffy. It just moves everything. Right. It just makes everything. You know, if we get, if we get energy costs, you know, down by, by half or something like that, then it makes a lot of things twice as, as productive or, or some, or some maybe not exactly twice, but a lot more productive. So that's, that's one example, but then like other things like longevity, right? Like, let's say we, we we, we fix a fix, you know, extending lifespan and say compress morbidity. Right? Like we make it so that people [00:46:00] don't get sick as much. Right. Well, that manifests as lower real demand for healthcare services. Right. So, so it's like, you don't even go see a doctor until like you're 90. Right. And like, and you don't need to learn because like you're still healthy. Then show up in GDP. They do. Right. But they, but what would happen. See here's where you have to distinguish between real and nominal GDP. Right. So in real, in real GDP, like we would, we would get the same, like with, with proper accounting, right. We would get the same or better. We'd get better at levels of health with fewer dollars spent on it. Right. So we'd be more productive in that, in that sense. Right. And so so we would so we might spend less on health services. But we would also have, we would employ fewer people in those sectors. Right, right. The employ those people would, you know, smart people right now who work in the healthcare sector, those people would all get to do other things like, and they would, they would all become researchers or, [00:47:00] you know, other, other kinds of technicians or, you know, whatever. And, and, and those people would produce things in their new role. So it's like, if, if, if all of a sudden we did not need. As many x-ray tacks or something like that. Right. And all those x-ray techs are out doing new things. That's like getting the x-ray texts for free. Right. It's another way of saying it is like we're getting all that for free, that same output that we used to get, we're getting it for free. And now we are we're taking those same people and, and getting the produce even more on top of it. So, so, so when you think about real GDP, like jobs are costs, right? Like you don't want jobs and you actually, you actually want to reduce as much as possible, like the spending on the need to spend money on things even. Right. And so that's how you actually increase productivity and ultimately real living standards and real GDP. And, and do we actually measure real GDP? Is that like hospital or is it like, sort of like a theoretical concept? No, [00:48:00] we, we, again, it's, it's kind of like the FP, right. We infer it. So we, we sort of And we estimate nominal GDP based on just how we, how we spend, how people are spending their money and how quickly they're spending it and so on. But even that, it's not like we're counting every receipt in the economy and adding tabulating them. Right. It's it's still an estimate. So we're estimating nominal GDP, and then we're also estimating the price level changes. Right. And so you address the nominal GDP estimate by the price level change and that's your real GDP number. Got it. Okay, cool. This is, I really appreciate this because I see all these terms being thrown around and I'm like, what is actually the difference here? Like what's, what's going on. And last question on TFE, can you imagine something that would be like really amazing for the world that would not show up in TFP? Is it like as just like a thought. I think, I think stuff that improves the quality of your leisure [00:49:00] time is unpaid, right? Like, like or that, or that you almost get for free. So like you know, if let's say, let's say open a designer, like an open source video game or something like that. And like, everybody loves it and it gets super high quality leisure time out of it. Right? Like there's no money changing hands. There are utilities going up. Right. So, so like you would, you would think that that would improve living standards without, without showing up in measured GDP at all. Right. So that's, that's the kind of stuff that it's like, yeah, he's got, you got to have that in the back of your mind that, that that's the kind of thing that could, you know, throw off your Your analysis. Okay. And so, and this is actually what some people claim is like, oh, the value of, of the internet, you know, the internet has, has, has increased welfare to something sentence. It's like, okay, yes. To some extent, but, but is it, you know, it's not like a whole like percent, 1% growth a year. It's not, it doesn't, it doesn't account for the reduction in, in TFP that we've seen. Yeah. [00:50:00] Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Changing gears again make the case for airships air shifts. Yeah. So I think you know, you have. Cargo that is, there's basically two modes that you can take cargo on today. You can take them, put them on a 7 47 freighter, let's say, and, you know, get them to the destination the next day. And it costs a lot of money or you can put them on a container ship and it's basically free, but it takes, you know, a few weeks or even months to get to your destination. And, you know, what, if there was something in between, right? What if there was something that would take, you know, say four or five days anywhere in the world. But it's, you know, like a fifth of the cost of, of an airplane, right? That, that that's like a sweet spot for cargo you know, anywhere in the world. And. You know, so, and then, so with airships, there's an interesting thing about them is that they actually get more efficient, the bigger they get. [00:51:00] And so this is, I think the mistake that everybody's made when designing airships is, they're like, okay, we're going to design this cargo Airship to take like 10 tons to remote places. Well, no, you should be designing it to carry like 500 times, right. Because there's a square. Rule. Right. Right. If you, if you if you increase the length by a certain percentage, the, the volume increases by that factor to the cube, to the cubic power, through the third power and the the surface area and that the cross-sectional area increases by that power or that factor squared. Right. Right. And so your lift to drag ratio is getting better. Cause you, your, your lift is associated with the V with the volume and your drag is associated with the cross-sectional area. And so you're, you're getting more efficient, the bigger you get. And so I think if you designed say a, an Airship to go to carry about 500 tons a time at a time, so it's like four loads for 7 47 loads [00:52:00] at a time. And and, and, and sort of your target. Goods that had a value to weight ratio. That's sort of in the middle of the spectrum. So it's not, not computers or really high value items or, or electronics even, but more of the things like machinery or cars or part, you know, parts for factories and stuff like that. You could that be a nice little business and and you could. You know, provide a new, completely new mode of, of cargo transport. I think that would also be revolutionary for people in landlocked countries. You know, so, so, you know, I, I spent gosh, like a week in, in Rwanda about 10 years ago and, you know, just sort of like studying the country. And and one of the things that we noticed was to access a port on, in Tanzania, like, you know, you'd have to like, it's like 700 miles away or something like that, but you, you have to put the goods on like rail and the real [00:53:00] gauge changes several times between there and the port. And every time the rail gauge changes, like you would have to like pay a bribe to somebody to like move it and stuff like that, like just do their job. And and so that adds up to a lot of inefficiencies. So it's really cheap to get your container to the port on the coastline, but then to, to get it the last 700 miles, it's really expensive. Well, what if you could just get around that by, by taking something in the air ship, right. And so if you, if you designed the Airship for this, like transcontinental or, or Intercontinental. You know, ocean shipping market it would also work for that for that sort of landlord market pretty well. And you could, you know, you could, you could actually bring more than just machinery to a country like Rwanda from from, from that. And then I think there's also a high value remote services market, right. And this is, this is the one that people are going after and sort of like a standalone sense to some degree, like you know, smaller ships that carry 10 or 20, or maybe even 60 tons. It's like, okay, [00:54:00] yeah, you could serve that market, but even better if you design it for a 500 ton model. So, so anyway, that's, that's sort of, my view is like, this is a missing product that we should have. You know, it's over a hundred year old technology. We have way better materials today than we had in the last sort of the last Airship. Yeah. Think about like the, the rigid bot they ships of the past, they'll use aluminum for their internal trusses and you know, carbon fiber protrusions would have something like a six, six fold strength to weight ratio improvement. And let's say you double the, the safety factors. Okay. So your, your weight goes down by a factor of three for your, for your whole structure. You could do it autonomously today. You don't, you don't have to have labs and heads and, and galleys and all that stuff, and you don't have to have bunks. Like you could, you know, if you were on a a manned air ship, like you'd have to have multiple crews because, you know, it's like five day journey. So, or at least some of them would be so do it completely autonomously. [00:55:00] And then another question is like, could you use hydrogen as a lifting gas? Right. Because I mean, so there's a bunch of different arguments for why maybe you could, but if you were on yeah. You know, even, even, even the safety regulator would have to say, well, okay, like this might burn up, but like there's nobody on board. So so maybe it's okay. So, so anyway, I think that there's, I think there's definitely something really interesting there in terms of new, new vehicles that we could have that would enable, you know, a new mode of transportation for at least for Kartra and the so, and you've also written that it's less a technology question and more that sort of like a company that's willing to go all in on, on logistics question. And it seems like th th the way that I see it, it's like the problem is that there's not a like super lucrative niche market to go after. I think it could be super lucrative. And I think the, the, the big market is super lucrative, right? If you're, if you're let's say, you know, [00:56:00] you are. Yeah, let's say you can get 5% of the cargo of the container market, not the bulk cargo, like forget the bulk cargo. Don't don't do that. Like, don't go for the stuff that's already on air freight. Right. You might get some of that anyway, but, but just, just the, the stuff that's containerized today, right. If you could get 5% of that, I think that that would be 4,000 airships. And, you know, if you're, if you're the first one to market, like you have a monopoly right on that, or at least that, that segment of the market, and you could charge it like a decent markup. I think, I think it's like a, you know, you could in revenue, you could make like 150 to 200 billion a year, something like that. Right. And, and then, and then say you get you know, half of that in profit, right. An operating profit at least you know, like it's not a small market. So the culture problem that I see is like that it's, it's worth calling out is like, that is you need to like come out of the [00:57:00] gates at a certain scale.  That would make it very hard to sort of like ramp smoothly, I think is like, it doesn't, it doesn't work with a small airstrip. Like you can't do like a half size Airship and expect to be competitive or like a small company even. Right. Like you just come out of the gates with like a big fleet, right? Like you could say, you could maybe like, say like your first, your first five airships are targeting, like the remote market where they might have a higher willingness to pay. I think that that could be a thing you do, but yeah, you want to just, you want to rent production and just, just churn out you know, hundreds of, you know, hundreds of airships a year, right? Like that's what you want to do. It's hard to call out. It's not like that. There's like this gap here. It's like, there could be this amazing, this like amazing new thing, but it's just like the way that companies start now. Yep. It does exist. Cool. And so in this last part, I want to just do some sort of rapid questions take as [00:58:00] long or as little time as you want to, to answer them. Why is your love of vertical farming? Irrational?  I think it's, I like I am by no means a farming expert. Right. So like, so I, I see these th this sort of technology and I'm like, this is awesome, but I know next to nothing about it. So it's not like an informed like, well considered love it. It's sort of just like, I I think that this would be super cool if we moved to, into our farm. Right. And that's, that's about the extent I would say it's like potentially rational. It's potentially rational, but it's, it's, it's, it's not it's not well grounded. Okay. Why are there so few attempts at world dominance? Oh, man. I wrote a blog post on this a long time ago and I don't remember the answer.  Oh man. I don't know. I think it's, I think I think it's a, I think it's a puzzle, right? You, you see these people who become like globally famous and super influential and they and they just sort of they, they sort of Peter out and they become self satisfied with whatever they [00:59:00] accomplish. But like somebody like there, there are some really talented people out there that you would expect some of them to apply themselves to this problem that I feel like the power influence of like extremely like wealthy, powerful people is like shockingly small compared to what I would expect. Like, I dunno. It's like, I feel like Jeff Bezos actually has a lot of trouble like making the things that he wants to happen with the world happened. And I find that certainly certainly true with like blue origin. Yeah. Yeah. Or just like, sort of like any, anything, like, like you see, you see all of these people who like we think of as like rich and powerful and like, they want things to happen in the world. And like, those things don't seem to happen very often.  And that, that puzzles me. Like I have no, you know, I'd say that it does raise the question of like, whether there are people who actually are having a massive influence, which don't know who they are. Right. The, [01:00:00] the, the gray eminence. Yeah. The person behind the scenes who are, who's like really, really influential. Yeah. Yeah.  Sort of within your field defined broadly, or like, however you want who do you pay attention to that many people may not be aware of? Oh, thank you. Okay. But like in all seriousness  do I pay attention to, I mean, I think I don't know. I'm, I'm blessed to have have people who just like, you know, me out of the blue and like, like tell me things. And, and, and so so I, so I have a, I have a couple of friends, so like one that I worked with for many years who like still texts me, like interesting things all the time. And, and, you know, sort of like the, sort of the private conversations that that could, that could be public conversations. If there were like more public people, but they just like choose to choose to be like totally behind the Steens and choose to be gray. Eminences let's say. And, and like that, I think that that is a. [01:01:00] Like that's who I pay attention to. A lot of the time. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's fair. And I guess just like finally what are, what are some, we've talked about some of them, but like some unintuitive blockers for your favorite technologies, unintuitive Walker. So I think that that, like, I've written a lot about NEPA, right. This, so you may have heard me see me do a lot about this. This is the national environmental policy act. And, and, and so, you know, I think it's like sort of the theory behind it is like, okay, before we decide, we're going to like, Build this highway or whatever we're going to like study it and make sure that like the, what makes sure we understand what the environmental impacts are and that if, you know, if there are negative environmental impacts, we're gonna like study alternatives as well. Right. And, and so what got me sort of worked up about that was I was in a very high level meeting with FAA, got like, seen very senior, very senior people. [01:02:00] And, and, and sort of like the conversation like went to like, well, why can't we just change the, you know, the Overland bed? Like, why can't we do it? And so, and like one of the answers, and it's not the complete answer, one of the answers was like, well, we would have to do an environmental review if we were to change. If we were to change the. Of Berlanti rule and we don't have the data to justify, like, to even say what the impacts are like, what are the environmental impacts of, of Sonic booms on people? Because like, you know, and so this is why like NASA is doing a, a, a study to you know, they're, they're developing actually a many hundreds of millions of dollars.  Airplane T to be a low, low boom demo. And they're gonna fly it over you at the cities and like figure out what the response, the human response is, so that we can have that data so that we can do an environmental impact study. Right. So, so that's [01:03:00] so, so yes. And so, so under so last year there was a rule change in NEPA, sort of in the implementing regulations that said that if you don't have data, that is okay. You just have to say, you don't have the data in the environmental impact statement. That's supposed to be enough. That's supposed to be adequate, like NEPA is not a requirement to go and do science projects. Right. So I wonder if that conversation would go differently if we were having it today. But, but that was the answer at the time was like, we don't have the date. To do this environmental im

JEFF BERGMAN, voice of Bugs Bunny in upcoming SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY and Yogi Bear in new HBO Max series JELLYSTONE!, premiering July 29thABOUT JELLYSTONE!, DEBUTING ON HBO MAX JULY 29thHey, Hey, Hey! Yogi Bear, Cindy Bear, Huckleberry Hound and a Universe of Hanna-Barbara Characters Welcome You to Jellystone! Yogi, Boo Boo and Cindy, alongside an epic ensemble cast of Hanna-Barbera characters, are returning to television screens in the all-new animated comedy, Jellystone! The Max Original series helmed by acclaimed showrunner and executive producer C.H. Greenblatt and produced by Warner Bros. Animation, presents a reimagined take on these beloved characters, modernizing them for today's family audience and introducing them to a new generation of fans. Season one premieres Thursday, July 29 on HBO Max.Set in the charming town of the same name, Jellystone! follows an ensemble of Hanna-Barbera characters as they live, work, play, and (as is often the case), destroy the town in some silly way together. Huckleberry Hound proudly serves as the town's mayor; Cindy, Boo Boo and Yogi are the town's medical staff; Jabberjaw works at Magilla's clothing store where they supply all the bow ties and hats to the town's citizens; and every character has a specific role in the community. Their paths cross in fun and ridiculous ways, turning everyday activities into hilarious pandemonium."I grew up watching tons of Hanna-Barbera cartoons and have a deep love for these characters," said Greenblatt. "The massive amount of both classic and not-so-classic characters we were able to use from the Hanna-Barbera library is what really makes the Jellystone! universe special. Rather than recreate the feeling of cartoons of the past, we wanted to have silly, weird fun with these characters and expand their personalities to give them more depth. Chances are if there's a character you love, you'll see them somewhere in this world eventually. We hope longtime fans appreciate our take on this world, and we're excited that parents get to introduce and enjoy their favorite Hanna-Barbera characters with their kids."Greenblatt serves as showrunner and executive producer, and voices several characters including Doggie Daddy, Boo Boo, Peter Potamus, and Benny. Joining him in this talented voice cast includes: Jeff Bergman, the voice of Yogi, Mr. Jinks, Wally Gator, and Lippy the Lion; Jim Conroy, the voice of Huckleberry Hound, Captain Caveman, and Pa Rugg, and more; Georgie Kidder, the voice of Auggie Doggie, Brain, and Floral Rugg; Grace Helbig, the voice of Cindy Bear, Yappy, Taffy, and Granny Sweet; Niccole Thurman, the voice of Jabberjaw, Squiddly Diddly, and Dee Dee Sykes; Thomas Lennon, the voice of Top Cat; Ron Funches, the voice of Shag Rugg; Bernardo de Paula, the voice of El Kabong and Mildew Wolf; Dana Snyder, the voice of Snagglepuss, Touché Turtle, and Lambsy; Katie Grober, the voice of Yakky Doodle; Paul F. Tompkins, the voice of Magilla Gorilla; Jenny Lorenzo, the voice of Bobbie Looey, Hardy Har Har, and Choo Choo; Fajer Al-Kaisi, the voice of Shazzan and Hadji; Lesley Nicol, the voice of Winsome Witch; Ulka Simone Mohanty, the voice of Loopy De Loop; and Andrew Frankel, the voice of Fancy Fancy and Jonny Quest.Here's the trailer:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HAVgdujUWQ ABOUT SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY, IN THEATERS AND STREAMING ON HBO MAX FRIDAY JULY 16THWelcome to the Jam! Basketball champion and global icon LeBron James goes on an epic adventure alongside timeless Tune Bugs Bunny with the animated/live-action event "Space Jam: A New Legacy," from director Malcolm D. Lee and an innovative filmmaking team including Ryan Coogler and Maverick Carter. This transformational journey is a manic mashup of two worlds that reveals just how far some parents will go to connect with their kids. When LeBron and his young son Dom are trapped in a digital space by a rogue A.I., LeBron must get them home safe by leading Bugs, Lola Bunny and the whole gang of notoriously undisciplined Looney Tunes to victory over the A.I.'s digitized champions on the court: a powered-up roster of professional basketball stars as you've never seen them before. It's Tunes versus Goons in the highest-stakes challenge of his life, that will redefine LeBron's bond with his son and shine a light on the power of being yourself. The ready-for-action Tunes destroy convention, supercharge their unique talents and surprise even "King" James by playing the game their own way.James stars alongside Oscar nominee Don Cheadle (the "Avengers" films, "Hotel Rwanda"), Khris Davis ("Judas and the Black Messiah," TV's "Atlanta"), Sonequa Martin-Green (TV's "The Walking Dead," "Star Trek: Discovery"), newcomer Cedric Joe, Jeff Bergman ("Looney Tunes Cartoons"), Eric Bauza ("Looney Tunes Cartoons"), and Zendaya (upcoming "Dune," "Malcolm & Marie").Lee ("Girls Trip," "Night School") directs from a screenplay by Juel Taylor & Tony Rettenmaier & Keenan Coogler & Terence Nance and Jesse Gordon and Celeste Ballard, story by Juel Taylor & Tony Rettenmaier & Keenan Coogler & Terence Nance and Terence Nance. Based on "Space Jam," written by Leo Benvenuti & Steve Rudnick and Timothy Harris & Herschel Weingrod. The film's producers are Ryan Coogler, LeBron James, Maverick Carter and Duncan Henderson, and the executive producers are Sev Ohanian, Zinzi Coogler, Allison Abbate, Jesse Ehrman, Jamal Henderson, Spencer Beighley, Justin Lin, Terence Nance and Ivan Reitman.Warner Bros. Pictures Presents a Proximity/The SpringHill Company Production, a Malcolm D. Lee Film, "Space Jam: A New Legacy." The film will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures. It will be released in theaters nationwide on July 16, 2021 and will be available in the U.S. on HBO Max for 31 days from theatrical release.Here's the trailer:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCsEKvz2mxs JEFF BERGMAN BIO INFO (FROM TV TROPES.COM)Jeff Bergman (born July 10, 1960 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) - Jeff's first big break in voice acting came with 1990'S Jetsons: The Movie, where he was called in to finish the remaining dialogue for George Jetson and Mr. Spacely done by George O' Hanlon and Mel Blanc after the two men passed away during production of the movie. It's from there on that he would voice them in all future Jetsons projects.It was around this time that he also replaced Mel Blanc as most of his Looney Tunes characters such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Foghorn Leghorn, Sylvester, Tweety, and more. He would be replaced as the characters by various other actors such as Joe Alaskey, Bob Bergen, Greg Burson, and Billy West before returning to many of the roles full time beginning with The Looney Tunes Show.He's also been the official voice of Fred Flintstone from The Flintstones since 2001.Jeff Bergman's voice-acting credits include:Looney Tunes (1990-present) as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester, Tweety, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepe LePew, and others (in tandem with Joe Alaskey, Bob Bergen, Greg Burson, and Billy West for many years until fully taking over the roles starting with The Looney Tunes Show)The Jetsons (1990-present) as George Jetson, Mr. Spacely (initially did their remaining dialogue for the 1990 movie when original voice actors George O' Hanlon and Mel Blanc died during production, and has since voiced them in all official media since then).Tiny Toon Adventures as Bugs Bunny, Daffy DuckThe Flintstones (2001-present) as Fred FlintstoneFoodfight! as Charlie the TunaBatman: Return of the Caped Crusaders and Batman vs. Two-Face as Joker, Desmond Dumas, BookwormTom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes and Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory as DroopyOur Cartoon President (2018-) as Donald TrumpWe Bare Bears (2018) as NarratorAmphibia (2019) as JonahJurassic World: Camp Cretaceous (2020) as Mr. DNAWords cannot describe how versatile Jeff Bergman is. In addition to the multiple roles already listed, he's also provided the voices of Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo, Snagglepuss, Squiddly Diddly, Top Cat and Officer Dibble, Peter Potamus and So-So, Manny from Ice Age in the Ice Age: Arctic Blast app... let's just say a LOT of characters.

#PWC #SitMpodcast #Africa In this episode of the podcast, the fellows are joined by Paul Woode & George Amemo (Author of “The Return” Book to be released), and they are the founders of Soso App - Esoor. We touched on traditional savings vs. Morden methods of savings, trust, and loyalty when dealing with business partners, how do you invest your dollars, George Spoke wrote his first book, “The Return” & More! Dive into Palm wine Central & let us discuss!

To celebrate shark week I decided to dive into the classic franchise that spawned some Soso sequels but nothing as ridiculous as this. I'm talking about 1987's JAWS The Revenge! So sit back relax and let's do this! Wanna watch this film and help the podcast out? https://amzn.to/36Im62V Everything associated with this podcast can be found here https://linktr.ee/Shutuppopcorn Go Follow these awesome people on Twitter @BMS_Billy @BMS_Derek @BMS_Jared @BMS_DogPoop‪ ‬‪@BMS_VoiceGuy‪ @BMS_Aaron ‬‪@BMS_Daniel11 @keeblercholo39 @‪BastardProphet‬ @TitoisWild ‬ ‪@ViejaPastrano ‬ @1EverettAnthony @DosMasPorFavor @BooBooKittys @Jcard812 @MemeMateoSA @Okie_Chad ‪@beanerbandito ‪@Mandos_Mundo ‬ ‪@momurda_eternal ‬@MikeDurband @Lil_Deb_man_210 @Rockysu11 @JRabbit55 @NYShaveGod Go check out @BMS_Aaron on Twitter and Twitch http://twitch.tv/The_SwiftDude Go check out the #NetworkFamilia on Twitter. Show some love and check them out! Podcast Links That's Wild Podcast https://open.spotify.com/show/0TvfhCmjQ45pcy4hErXVQ8?si=hxtvCCMOSR2_yOWcQND7bA (@TWildpodcast) B and Mike D Show https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/b-mike-d-show/id1087154399?mt=2 (@B_MikeDshow) ‪The Geekdom Fancast‬ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-geekdom-fancast/id806911850 (‪@GeekdomFancast)‬ The After Show.... But Later https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-aftershow-but-later/id1445790739 (‪@AfterShowBL‬) German Chocolate https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/german-chocolate-life-of-a-mixed-girl/id1450757423 Don't Make Me Think https://www.spreaker.com/show/episode-1-im-scared Musical and Physical Artist links DayReign facebook.com/dayreign/ (@dayreign) DJ Chicken Joe https://m.soundcloud.com/dj-chironex (‪@murcielagoSV4)‬ DirtyFWhite https://linktr.ee/DirtyFWhite ‪(@dirtyfwhite)‬ Icecoldmmind https://open.spotify.com/artist/4IBab8ekjXwPfAuIo01QNf?si=uV8WdmSFSemqLQ_kzNBtOw (‪@icecoldmmind)‬ Mr. Z Note https://open.spotify.com/artist/4IVqb3bi8O7fgGTPUuLo4F?si=ZHxVD_FZSV6lwCiHLe_F7A (@Mrznote) #NetworkFamilia Music: Moon Bay Site: https://icons8.com/music/ --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Show Resources Here were the resources we covered in the episode: Here were the resources we covered in the episode: Global State of Sales Report 2021 Sean Callahan LinkedIn Learning course about LinkedIn Ads by AJ Wilcox NEW LinkedIn Learning course about LinkedIn Ads by AJ Wilcox Certifications   Contact us at Podcast@B2Linked.com with ideas for what you'd like AJ to cover. Show Transcript:   AJ Wilcox LinkedIn released the state of sales in 2021 report, and I can confirm, it's fire! Welcome to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Here's your host, AJ Wilcox. AJ Wilcox Hey there, LinkedIn Ads fanatics, I have a confession for you. I am a marketer. I'm a marketer through and through. And I don't consider myself a salesperson. In fact, I consider myself to be the furthest thing from a salesperson. But after years of internal debate, and reconciling the image of the sleazy used car salesman with what I do, I finally come to admit to myself that sales performance is deeply and undeniably connected with my LinkedIn Ads efforts, it's absolutely not uncommon for us to be absolutely slaying it for a client and getting incredible costs and results and low cost per lead. But then just to find out that their sales team doesn't know how to handle the leads, they don't close any, and it makes us look bad. Or the other way around. We can be doing decently, but maybe we haven't quite hit our stride with optimizations yet. And then sales happens to close something. And suddenly, we look like rock stars. No matter which way you slice it. We as marketers live and die by the performance of our sales counterparts. Because of this connection. I'm pleased to have Sean Callahan from LinkedIn as our guest this week. I've gotten to collaborate with him on many projects, I'm lucky to call him a friend. And his team has recently released the state of sales report. And I know you're going to find it fascinating, as well as it will help you become a better marketer. First in the news, in May, LinkedIn released several new features. So let's walk through those. The first is boosting posts, basically, like a really simple version of campaign manager for maybe a social marketer who doesn't do much on the paid side to be able to boost their posts to target audiences. I'm not very excited about this, I kind of think, meh, because I would much rather use campaign manager. But maybe you've got folks on your social team, or maybe even organic team that would be interested to know about this. Next, LinkedIn officially released their event ads. And on the roadmap episodes in the past, we've talked several times about event ads and what they're going to be in my testing, I haven't found them to outperform a single image sponsored content ads when promoting an event. But it's definitely worth testing to see if you can get them to help perform. One thing of note in our testing is that you can't have multiple copies of the event for like individual campaign tracking. So it's kind of like boosting posts, you pretty much create one event, and then share it into multiple campaigns. I don't like that for attribution. So I hope we'll have a little bit more control over attribution for event and in the future. The next one I am really excited about this is we're now able to go live on LinkedIn live without a third party app. So I absolutely love using Restream.io. They're my favorite streaming platform. But every single time I go live on LinkedIn, I always have some sort of a technical hurdle. Because I'm trying to run through, you know, three or four different applications, it runs my laptop so hard, that it's just you know, the fan is screaming. And so now we get to do this by broadcasting directly through something like zoom or a WebEx that you might already be using to go live. It simplifies things. And it's going to give me a lot more confidence when going live. And hopefully, you'll be able to see me go live a little bit more often. We also got some beefed up event analytics. So these are more insights into your LinkedIn events, which is something we're super grateful for. We've really wanted this ever since events came out. Every time LinkedIn releases a new feature, we want to you'll have all kinds of insights into whether or not it's working. And now we actually have that for events. In the same release, LinkedIn also released mobile page insights. So if you've ever wanted to see how your LinkedIn page was performing, but you were on the go, you were just pretty much out of luck. Well, now LinkedIn have released the ability to see your page analytics, right from the LinkedIn mobile app. And this is fantastic. I applaud anytime we get more control and insight in the mobile app. Something else really exciting. I've been asked about this for years and years, LinkedIn just released their official certifications. And not only are they free, but if you get certified within the next 30 days. It's probably like the next 20 days after this podcast goes live. But you'll get one of the like bragging rights of being one of the very first people to be certified. So check the notes down below. In the show notes, you'll see a link right to the certifications. There are two that you can take right now and get them attached to your LinkedIn profile to show off that you rock at LinkedIn Ads. And our last piece of news here something I'm really, really excited. In many of the last episodes, I've kind of hinted and teased about this. But as of this week, the official LinkedIn Ads course update is now live. So to give you an idea, I recorded the last LinkedIn Learning course about LinkedIn Ads. It's been several years now. And the content was about an hour and five minutes long. And I've been collecting feedback and questions, and you know, all kinds of different insights over the last several years. And I've now gotten to put that into the update. So if you've taken the course in the past, I would highly recommend go and take the updated course, I think it's about an hour and 45 minutes long, and it is chockfull. I couldn't be more proud of the information and the learnings that you'll have within the course. So hit the link in the show notes, go to LinkedIn Learning, and take the course you'll be absolutely pleased you did. Popping into recent reviews, first of all, a huge thank you to the one person who rated this podcast with one star and didn't even leave a review. I don't know what I did to piss you off. But feel free to reach out to me to discuss what I could be doing better on the show or how we can better support you. We had a review from Max in Thailand, and he says, "This is Max. I'm an Italian living in Thailand, I just want to drop a note to say thank you for your work, and really appreciate the level of details in your podcast. I'm not a podcast listener, and I stumbled in your channel by chance. But I have found this to be one of the best free radio sources I have ever seen. Congratulations, and thanks again." Max, thank you so much. It means the world to me that someone who's not into podcasts would become a podcast listener because of this show. So thanks so much. And on behalf of the medium of podcasting, I hope you find lots of other valuable stuff here too. We also had David leave a review who said, "I'm an intern, and our founder has assigned to me with finding the absolute best podcast. So I had to reach out to you because the LinkedIn Ads Show podcast is absolutely amazing. Our company is focused on providing the necessary tools and knowledge to our customers to fill their calendars with demos through cold emails and LinkedIn." David, thanks so much for sharing those experiences. First of all, I'm glad that the show showed up in your searches, as you were out trying to find this for the CEO, and boy, glad to have you as a listener. Okay, with that being said, I want to feature you all of you here in the reviews highlight. So make sure you go to whatever podcast player or hub and leave us a review on the podcast. Of course, I would prefer not leaving one star reviews. Especially not saying why. But certainly, please leave a review. Let us know what you think of the show and we'll shout you out. Okay, I'm so excited to have Sean Callahan. Let's jump right to the interview. All right, Sean Callahan. Welcome to the show. Sean is a Senior Content Manager at LinkedIn. He works out of the Chicago office. Personally, he's the author of several children's books, including the most recent Voting with a Porpoise. He helped create LinkedIn's latest state of sales reports. Sean and I go way back. We met at CES several years back. We've gotten to collaborate on a bunch of different projects and things. And now I'm really excited to get to talk to you about this latest report. So welcome to the show. Sean Callahan 8:25 Hey, thanks for having me on. AJ, it's great to connect again. AJ Wilcox 8:29 Always, always fun pleasure for me. So first of all, tell us about the state of sales report. And why you and your team decided to take it on, how long it's been running, all those goodies. Sean Callahan 8:40 Yeah, well, this is a this is a report. This is the fifth time we've done this state of sales report. It's a survey of what's going on in sales. We're trying to talk to our customers for the LinkedIn Sales Navigator product and the LinkedIn Sales Insights product about where sales is headed. We're just trying to be useful to the marketplace. And this report is pretty extensive. So it's global in nature. We interviewed or we surveyed more than 7500 people in 10 countries, the US and Canada, Netherlands, Germany, France, UK, Brazil, Mexico, Singapore, Australia and India. And I think that's actually 11 because we did have the Netherlands this year. And we asked them a huge battery of questions. It's buyers and sellers were asking, so we're getting both sides of the sales process. And we also use LinkedIn data for this. You know, on our platform, we're able to tell through Sales Navigator analyzing actions by salespeople, what actions work and what don't. We find generally that if you share content on a regular basis, but not overly sharing that you do better, same with sending emails, we've got some data on that. And we also interviewed 30 to 40 sales experts and sales leaders for this version of the report, which was something new. So we brought in different perspectives from the industry, not only in the US and Canada, but around the globe, Latin America, EMEA, and APAC and got their points of views and included those in the reports, there's a global version of the report that's coming out in a month, we have already released a US version, UK version, a version for France just came out this week. We have Brazil and Mexico already out and a version of the Netherlands in English out and the other reports will be coming out over the next several weeks. So it's a pretty extensive project. And and again, we're just trying to be useful for the sales industry and and talk about what's happening, I can go into the seven trends that we found here, I'll just list them we'll talk in more detail, I think as we go along in this conversation. But number one was virtual selling is good for sellers and even better for buyers. Number two is sales organizations and managers must adjust to a remote working world and the just now, sales organizations are preventing sellers from putting buyers first I think this is a really interesting one and I can go into detail on that as we dive in a little deeper. We found six sales behaviors in particular that are killing deals. We found that sales technology provides, especially in this virtual selling world, a key pathway to building trust. Number six was for sales organizations, data is more crucial than ever. And number seven was buyers and sellers are ramping up their use of LinkedIn. AJ Wilcox 11:35 Oh, so first of all super interesting trends. I loved reading all of them. What I really like about this report is it really is an amalgamation of so many important things. Of course, there's the survey. So you're getting data from your customers, but then you brought in experts. And my favorite part is you're actually using LinkedIn data. I can't imagine anyone else who has more insights about what sales folks are doing than LinkedIn. And so I'm so glad that you've gotten to bring that to the table. Sean Callahan 12:03 Yeah, I think it makes our report unique, and gives us a view of the sales world that is almost impossible to replicate. AJ Wilcox 12:12 Oh, yeah. So because our listeners are for the vast majority, LinkedIn Ads professionals, mostly in the marketing job function. I'm really curious, what sort of impact do you think this data and these findings will have on us as marketers? And what insights can we take from it? Sean Callahan 12:30 Yeah, well, I think one of the key things is that marketers should just understand that sales is in a period of change right now. And I think that may help as a marketer myself, and working with a bunch of salespeople. I understand, you know, and throughout my career, that marketing and sales don't always work together, as well as they probably should have, or as well as certainly as well as we want them to. But I think understanding that there's a huge shift happening in sales right now, with virtual selling technology coming on, remote work coming into play, I think it's important for marketers to understand that that's number one. Number two, I think there's some interesting stuff in this report about the power of brand for salespeople. And it can give marketers sort of a leg up in explaining to salespeople the power of marketing for them. You know, I think sometimes it's hard for salespeople to appreciate what marketers can do for them. And this helps, because, for instance, in the six behaviors that are immediate deal killers, and this is all data from the US Canada report. One of the top behaviors that is seen as a deal killer by buyers is that the salesperson is affiliated with a brand that I don't trust. So putting money behind branding is something that is going to help salespeople gain the trust of buyers. I think that's an interesting, you know, thing that I think sometimes it's hard for marketers to communicate that and here we have it. In our survey, we also had buyers rank the factors that are important in influencing the purchase of a product or service. And number one was trust in the brand of product or service, like it had nothing to do with the salesperson, you know that number one thing is about the brand of the product or service. And I think that speaks to how marketers can begin to talk to salespeople about what marketing and investment in marketing brings to the table for salespeople and helping to close deals, meet their quota, etc. AJ Wilcox 14:42 Oh, I like it. Okay, so that leads me to another question here. What can we do to strengthen our sales teams with the findings from this report? Is this as simple as like forward it to the sales team and you try to get them to read it? Like do you have any tips for us as marketers to help our sales teams act on this? Sean Callahan 14:59 Yeah. I think talking about brand is important. And I think salespeople understand it in their gut, you know that if they walk into a customer, or if they're emailing a customer, the brand in the.com, you know, is one that they're confident that the customer, the prospect is going to recognize and has as a good feeling about. I think that's very powerful and seeing it come from not a marketer saying this, but buyers saying this, you know, I think that's very valuable from the marketing point of view. It's kind of a recapitulation of the idea that no one ever got fired for buying IBM. Buyers, like the comfort of a brand that they recognize. And marketers can use this to argue for more investment in brand, which ultimately is not helping the marketer, but helping the salesperson and helping the salesperson close deals. AJ Wilcox 15:54 So true. And we find this time after time, anytime that we're running an account based marketing or an ABM campaign, if our clients are doing active outreach from their sales departments to their buyer, we find that as soon as we start advertising, our advertising gets a lot more efficient. And their success rates get a lot more efficient, just because these people now if heard of you, they know who you are, they assume there's some legitimacy to your brand. And so I definitely second that branding is super valuable to what we do. Sean Callahan 16:25 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm partial to the phrase or the slogan that if they don't get into the top of the funnel, you're not going to get them to the bottom of the funnel. AJ Wilcox 16:34 Oh, yeah. So without spoiling the exciting stuff in the report, can you talk about what went in to finding these trends? And maybe a little bit about what may have surprised you? Sean Callahan 16:44 Yeah, one of the surprising things is this concept of buyer first is interesting to me. And it's interesting that in what we found is 65% of sellers say they always put the buyer first. And only 23% of buyers agree. So it's about 1/3 of buyers, but there's more closeness in there, then you would think so what we found is that it's it's kind of a necessity to put the buyer first, especially in the first days of COVID happening, you didn't even know whether your buyer was, you know, in business anymore. So you really had to think buyer first, you know, some companies were doing very well like say Netflix or Peloton in the first days of the of the pandemic, they were doing well. And so maybe they were going to buy products. But then there were other at the other end of the spectrum, there were companies in the travel industry, let's say where they were probably completely on hold and that and not going to buy buy anything. So So we found that but this buyer first thing is very interesting with sales people sort of wanting to be buyer first. And buyers obviously wanting salespeople to be buyer first. But there's a disconnect in whether it's actually happening. And we found, we identified that we had six behaviors that we said, okay, these behaviors are inarguably buyer first. And some of them, for example, are providing free and easy access to product reviews and other content, that's a buyer first behavior. Staying actively engaged after the sale, to ensure value delivery, being completely transparent about pricing. All those are what we would call buyer first behaviors in the sales process. What we found is that both buyers and sellers totally agreed that these were important in the buying process. So we found that there was total agreement on that, but where we found the disagreement was, you know, buyers saying that sellers practice these behaviors all the time was, you know, around 30%. So similar to the number that said that, you know, sellers are putting buyers first. But we also found that individual sales people are saying like I put the buyer first. But, then they were also saying that we asked them about whether their organization puts the buyer first. And they said kind of they said no. They said I am, but my organization doesn't my organization put the buyer first all of the time. And the you know, for these buyer first behaviors that we were talking about providing free and easy access to product reviews and other content, staying actively engaged etc, was around 40% of the time they said that their organization put these behaviors into practice all the time. And so I think what that speaks to is that there are barriers in the organization to being buyer first and we found some of these barriers are kind of obvious, right like emphasis on short term sales or revenue goals. limited budgets, maybe limited commitment to training or inadequate coaching. Maybe it's just the organizational culture, or the lack of the right skill set among existing sales talent, because we know sales has gotten much more complex, especially in, say, the technology industry or you know, even old smokestack industries like manufacturing, etc, are relying more and more on technology. And so the sales process has become more complicated. But organizations aren't adjusting, and they're making it more difficult than it should be for the average salesperson to place the buyer first. And that's what we found. I think that's like one of the key takeaways from the state of sales report. AJ Wilcox 20:45 It sounds like the sales reps are ready for this change. They're creating the groundswell. And now it's the organization's time to catch up to come and do the right thing. Sean Callahan 20:55 I think largely, that's true. I mean, I think some sales organizations are well ahead of the curve. But yeah, I think sales managers and sales executives, you know, they need to take a look at their organization and kind of assess whether they are enabling their salespeople to do what they need to do to, you know, really, to sell in this current environment. And I don't think this current environment is going to change very much. I think remote work is kind of here to stay and virtual selling is going to continue to remain important. But there probably will be a hybrid as the pandemic begins to recede, where you're doing some in person along with virtual selling, and you're probably going to need to be skilled at both to be successful. AJ Wilcox 21:40 Oh, totally agreed. How do you think COVID has impacted virtual selling? And I know you already said this, but what do you think in the future? Why do you see that this is a change that that is so permanent? What makes you think that the world can't just go back to where we were pre-COVID? Sean Callahan 21:58 Yeah, I think that's a really interesting question. I was listening, we just happen to have a live event, live virtual event today where we were talking about this very thing. And it was a sales expert, Alejandro Cabral, he works in Argentina, for Kimberly Clark Professional. He said that evolution never goes backwards. And he was referring to you adapt these sales technologies, and they become de facto how you how business gets done. So the technologies that enabled salespeople to sell virtually in the pandemic, companies saw that, you know, hey we can close deals without getting in front of customers, we can reduce our travel and entertainment budgets, and still close deals. Buyers told us in this report that 50% of them in the US and even more globally said that buying became easier when they did it virtually. And they were working remotely. And buyers said by huge numbers that they would love to work more than, you know, I think it was something like 60 some percent wanted to work remotely more than 50% of the time. So this this remote work, which kind of requires a virtual selling approach is not going away. Companies see it as valuable, their employees like it, not only from the personal standpoint, but from the business standpoint, in fact that it makes buying easier. So I don't think any of this stuff is going away. I mean, obviously we're going to start to go back to conferences and meeting people as the vaccination levels go up. And the disease begins to recede. But these changes are permanent to a large degree. And it's in some way, because these changes were already happening with sales technology, enabling a lot of this virtual selling and closing deals without ever actually shaking hands with a person in the flesh. AJ Wilcox 24:03 Yeah, I agree with that. It's more like it didn't change the way that we do business. It just accelerated the change that was already in the works. And now we're living the way that Yeah, we probably naturally would have within three or four years, but COVID sure accelerated us towards it Sean Callahan 24:20 Yeah, accelerated is the word. I mean, this was coming. But it made it happen much faster in something that you know, your marketing audience might remember is like, I think 2008, 2009 that downturn really had an impact on the adoption of online advertising. I think online advertising was something that companies were doing, but in that downturn, they understood that it was cheaper, and they could prove immediately whether it was working or not. And in that era where there was such tight money, companies really move towards that much faster than they would have normally. And they moved away from things like print where it was harder to prove the value to online advertising. And that changed, you know, the value of advertising online like almost overnight. AJ Wilcox 25:13 And what a beautiful change that was. Yes, for you. It was a great, great change. True! You said something earlier that made me think of a quote that was actually in the report. I absolutely loved this quote. It's by the CEO of Flockjay, Help me with his last name, it's Shaan Hathiramani, is that close? Enough? Sean Callahan 25:32 Close enough AJ Wilcox 25:33 Okay, cool. He says the digital world is here to stay. The inefficiency of travel of in person business meetings, late night dinner appointments will make face to face meetings less common and not necessary. In many cases, organizations will use more data, more video more telesales? I don't think that we will go back to the world that was Sean Callahan 25:53 Yes. I totally agree with Shaan. I think that's he's absolutely right in everything. And I think we're seeing right, I don't think anything, you could argue with any aspect of that, quote. AJ Wilcox 26:06 Yeah. So it'll be interesting to see. Because there's, there's a lot of this stuff that was in person that was really annoying. And we wish we could do it remotely. And then there was a whole bunch of things like events and conferences, where, you know, we did a lot of that, for fun and for work. And I'm interested to see if that comes back, you know, raging. People have been locked inside for a year and a half or two years. Now, I can't wait to get out and meet people again. Or if people are just gonna say, oh, I found that I really liked being in my house. I don't think I need to do conferences anymore. Do you have any insights into maybe what can happen there with public events? Sean Callahan 26:41 Yeah, I think events will come back. And we talked about this hybrid idea, right? I think it's going to be harder to meet individually, like a buyer at our office, for instance, I think that's going to be hard, especially in the near term. Because I don't think companies want people from the outside coming into the office, it's just, you know, they're not sure it's safe yet. But I think that these conferences, especially the best ones, are going to thrive, because people still in this hybrid model are going to want to get together. And it's going to be maybe even more important than it was in the past. Someone was telling me a long time ago about why they thought that the events business would thrive in B2B, where publications might not. And this is, I think turned out to be true, is that events are the only thing that Google can't do. You know, in person, it's something that the online world doesn't enable us to do. But these events, you get to meet people meet new people, shake hands, go out to dinner, have a drink, whatever, that stuff is going to be more important at these events, because it's kind of going to be at least in the, say, foreseeable future, the only place you can do it. AJ Wilcox 28:00 I totally agree with that. My thought is, you know, so many of us are so burned out by zoom, we've participated in so many virtual events. And really, no matter how you slice it, the type of learning that you do in a virtual event is significantly different than the type of learning that you would do in person. And so I think people will be excited to get back to that level of learning where they're not multitasking. And yeah, thanks during that. Sean Callahan 28:25 Yeah, I mean, I'd love virtual events. And I think virtual events are here to stay. But the one thing that they lack, to the degree that an in person has is, you know, the aisles, the conference hallways where you meet people and talk to you know, that's an important part of a conference. And I think that's something that we're going to crave. AJ Wilcox 28:44 Yeah, good point, someone's gonna find a solution for that. Sean Callahan 28:47 Yes. Well, there are like, you know, there's sort of, you know, you got breakout rooms that virtual events and you have the chat down the side. But they're trying to approximate I think, the conference aisle-ways in hallways, AJ Wilcox 29:02 Yeah, you get some of the serendipity and meeting with those types of things. Boy, it's gonna be hard to replicate the I was just randomly standing behind this person that, you know, at a food truck, or we were both in line to ask a speaker a question and ended up striking the conversation. I hope we get to preserve those kinds of things. Okay, here's the quick sponsor break, and then we'll dive into the rest of the interview. The LinkedIn Ads Show is proudly brought to you by B2Linked.com, the LinkedIn Ads experts. AJ Wilcox 29:34 If the performance of your LinkedIn Ads is important to you B2Linked is the agency you'll want to work with. We've spent over $135 million on LinkedIn Ads, and no one. I mean, no one outperforms us on getting you the lowest cost per lead. We're official LinkedIn partners, and you'll deal only with LinkedIn experts from day one. Fill out the contact form on any page of B2Linked.com to chat about your campaigns. We'd love to work with you. And definitely let us know that the podcast sent you. Alright, let's go ahead and jump right back into the interview. Out of curiosity, we've talked a little bit about how COVID really affected selling. But tell me how you think COVID affected the buying of the buyer side of all this? Sean Callahan 30:17 Yeah, well, I talked a little bit about the the remote work. And I think that's part of what's going on here that buyers 50% of buyers say that working remotely has made the purchasing process easier. That's from our survey data. And we also found that remote job postings, they're not going away, they've increased by more than 5x globally since the start of the pandemic. And that's, that's LinkedIn data, LinkedIn platform data, 64% of buyers in North America are working remotely more than half of the time. Again, that's our survey data and 70% of buyers want to continue working remote they have for more of the time in the future. So that's really transformational, I think. And for selling, it's huge that, you know, how we work in offices is going to change forever. I'm lucky or odd in that I've worked from home on 1, 2, 3, like five straight jobs. I've had a home office job since 1998. I've been working. But I think more and more people are going to be like that. Working from home all the time, we found that it's doable. There are obviously downsides like your resume, fatigue is a real thing. And people want to have connection with people. That's why conferences are going to continue to work. But there has been a definite shift. Like I said before, that that idea that evolution doesn't go backwards is real too. We're not going to be able to walk this back, the genie is out of the bottle. AJ Wilcox 31:49 I love that example you shared about the 2008 downturn and the adoption of online advertising. I hadn't considered that before. And I've been wondering like, ooh, is the world going to go back to the way it was? I think you just cemented in my mind that no, it's not this, this is an evolution. Sean Callahan 32:08 I really think so. Because that we didn't really go back to print advertising, you know, it hasn't really recovered AJ Wilcox 32:16 Oh yeah. Alright, so shifting gears here a little bit? How are sales organizations using data? Sean Callahan 32:21 Well, I do know that sales organizations are using tons of data and more all the time. And one of the key things is their metrics, how they measure success. And that has changed over the past few years. You know, the cliche is that sales organizations measure quota, individual quota and team quota. And what we're finding is that customer satisfaction, and customer retention are two of the top metrics for sales organizations, rather than individual quota and team quota. Those are still important. But they are not what they used to be as far as like far and away, what organizations are measuring organizations are taking a longer term view of the world. That's an important thing to take note of. They're also using a lot of data in how they go about identifying customers. They use it to identify accounts they can go after, industries they can go after, geographies they can go after. And you know, LinkedIn, frankly, is one place where you can find that kind of data. And that stuff is becoming more and more important. And one of the quotes in the state of sales is that you know, data for sales organizations has become table stakes. If you don't have data, you're sort of driving without your headlights. AJ Wilcox 33:56 Oh, beautiful.That was an amazing answer to a question I didn't think through very well before I just read it off. So let me ask you this one, how are sales organizations using the data from this report? Sean Callahan 34:10 Well, I hope they're they're using it to look at where they're headed, where this industry is headed. I think what this report does is there are several key insights about how to become a buyer first sales organization. And I think that's crucial. And I think the report also works to confirm what I think sales leaders understand in their gut, that remote working is here to stay. The virtual selling is a skill that you are going to need to succeed. And those kind of insights, I think this report can help sales organizations to prove to the rest of their company that there are certain changes that need to be made AJ Wilcox 34:59 Wonderful. Because we've talked about this report, it's obviously awesome is the furthest thing from a fluff piece that we've ever seen from from anyone. Where can we go and find this report? Where can our listeners go to, to actually, you know, search through these insights themselves? Sean Callahan 35:13 Yeah, we have a short length. That is, well, it could be shorter. Let's put it that way. But it's lnkd.in/stateofsales2021. So it's lnkd.in/stateofsales2021 AJ Wilcox 35:31 Perfect. And we'll throw that in the show notes as well, for those of you who don't have a pen around or just want to scroll down from your podcast player and hit that link. And, Shawn, and this can be either for you, business life or personal life. What are you most excited about that's coming up? Sean Callahan 35:50 Well, I'll do a business one, I've been talking about state of sales, this whole thing, we've got a little piece of state of sales, that's going to come out a little later in the year. It's what top performers do differently. So in the state of sales survey, we're able to identify sellers who met 125% or more of quota, and compare them to others who took the survey, and were able to identify certain things that these sellers do differently. And I'll give you a couple examples. To whet your appetite for this piece. It's top performers do more research, they actually spend a little bit less time selling than average performers. And they do their research those they're totally prepared when they they have a call. They by about 15 to 20 percentage points, they do more kind of things like look up person's LinkedIn profile, visit the company website, find out who's on the buying committee through Sales Navigator. They do those kinds of things, more than average performers. There's some other material in there, too. That's very interesting. But it's that that research piece and that total preparation piece that top performers have. And I will also tell you that this may be coming out after this, but I have the entire week from July 5 through July 9 off, and I'm looking forward to that. AJ Wilcox 37:12 Oh, very cool. Without divulging too much. Is there anything on vacation that you're really looking forward to? Or you're you're gonna make sure you do. Sean Callahan 37:20 I waste a lot of time in my life playing golf, and I will probably do that over that period of time. AJ Wilcox 37:27 Cool. I love it. Well, I'm super excited for that next report because that sounds exactly what we want to share with all of our clients and their sales teams. Let's get more of those 125% of quota folks out there. So Shawn, if people want to connect with you, what's the best place to do it? Sean Callahan 37:44 Well, you can always look at my LinkedIn profile. Or you can send me an email and my LinkedIn address, which is scallahan@LinkedIn.com. I would love to talk to anybody who wants to talk state of sales. AJ Wilcox 37:57 Love it. All right. Sean, thanks so much for joining us. We'd love to have you back again, sometime here soon. Maybe even talk about the what top performers do differently piece. So anyway, stay in touch. And thanks so much for coming on. Sean Callahan 38:09 Hey, thanks for having me. AJ really enjoyed it. Talk with you soon. AJ Wilcox 38:13 All right. See ya! Sean Callahan 38:14 Alright, I've got the episode resources for you coming right up. So stick around. Thank you for listening to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Hungry for more? AJ Wilcox, take it away. AJ Wilcox 38:35 All right, I've got some great resources for you today. First of all, there's a link to the state of sales report down in the show notes. That's lnkd.in/stateofsales2021. It's a little bit long. But yeah, just go click the link. Next is Sean Callahan. He mentioned his email address is scallahan. So that's scallahan@LinkedIn.com.. And there's also going to be a link to his LinkedIn profile, he'd love to connect with you all. I've also got a link to the new LinkedIn Ads certifications. So make sure you level up your own resume and go and get those ASAP. And I've also got a link to the new LinkedIn Ads course that I told you about. I'm super proud of it. Of course, I want you to take it, but certainly if you have anyone in your organization who is trying to level up or learn LinkedIn Ads, point them towards this course. It is by far the best resource out there. If you have any suggestions, any questions about the podcast, anything like that, reach out to us at Podcast@B2Linked.com. Please do look down at whatever podcast player you're listening to right now. And rate us you know, subscribe. And definitely leave us a review as well. We'd love to shout you out. All right, with all of that. We'll see you back here next week, I hope. Cheering you on in your LinkedIn Ads initiatives.

Erin McCullough is a thought leader, an in-demand speaker and an international teacher that helps people create IMPENETRABLE JOY so that they can be calm, have peace of mind and meaning in their life, NOW! Erin had an Anxiety Disorder that had her holed up in her home for nearly a year. Through that experience she learned how and why that happened and developed strategies to overcoming and preventing it, which is what she now teaches. Erin vowed that when she found solutions to overcoming and preventing anxiety, she would do whatever she could to make sure that no one had that experience, so that has been her mission. Erin spent a decade studying the Mind/Body connection, Visualization and ways to still the mind. Over the decade she has created simple strategies to Overcoming and Preventing Anxiety, Stress, Worry and Overwhelm so that all her clients live a life intentionally in Joy. She has been an entrepreneur for 21 years and consulting businesses and business leaders for 16 years. If you question who you are and what you are meant to be doing in this life, let Erin help you discover your own path to joy. Connect with Erin at https://www.erin-mac.com/ The transcript below is machine-generated and unedited. Brandon Handley 0:41 Hey there spiritual dope. I'm on here today with Erin McCullough. She is a thought leader in the main speaker and an international teacher that helps people create impenetrable joy so that they can be calm, have peace of mind and meaning in their life. Now, Erin had an anxiety disorder that had her holed up in her home for nearly a year, through that experience to learn how and why that happened and develop strategies to overcoming and preventing it, which is what she's now teaches. and vowed that she, when she found solutions to overcoming and preventing anxiety, she would do whatever she could to make sure that no one had that experience. So that has been her mission. There's been a decade, studying the mind body connection, visualization and ways to still the mind. Over the decades, she's created simple strategies to overcoming and preventing anxiety, stress, worry and overwhelm so that all her clients live a life intentionally enjoy. She has been an entrepreneur for 21 years and consulting businesses and business leaders for 16 years. If you question who you are, and what you're meant to be doing in this life, let Erin help you discover your own path to joy. Erin, thanks for your work in through the technical difficulties. As a as I told you, I'm working on this newer platform. But thanks for thanks for joining today. How you doing? Erin Mac 2:05 Oh my gosh, thanks for having me. I'm wonderful. How Brandon Handley 2:08 are you never been better. My whole life has led up to this point. So you know, here we are. Here we are. So I like to start these off with the idea that we are deal sources. We're talking about like a little bit before we got started here that we are all our source and that the universe speaks through us. And that right now in this moment, the universe is speaking through you to one of the listeners today. What do you have to tell that listener? Erin Mac 2:36 Well, first and foremost, I believe it is our birthright to be predominantly in joy all day, every day. And if that's not the experience you're having, then keep listening. We're going to talk about all the things strategies, and you know why we're here what we're meant to be doing. You know, all the things, Brandon Handley 2:59 all the things all the things that I love, I love that you kind of chose joy had to go out and I had to go out and grab my, my joy mug. Oh, no. It's actually like pretty much one of my favorite mugs right as the idea of what you kind of see out first thing I pick up and I carry around, I see I get to see the word joy everywhere I go when I'm drinking out of the mug. So definitely enjoy it. definitely enjoy the word joy and glad that we have the opportunity to talk about it. And I'm also going to be very honest with you. Before I went in, I checked you out a little bit more I was like what kind of fit is this? Right? What kind of fit is this? Because, you know, being a you know, more of a thought leader and all this I suppose like what's the spirituality fit me and you know, so in your mind, though, like the work that you do is spiritual, you know, the the personal development is spirituality work. Is that set? Right? Is that fair? Yeah. Well, let's talk about let's talk about the journey, right, let's talk about breaking through anxiety. Let's talk about, you know, how you found yourself in an anxious position and kind of some of the things that you did to work your way through it. Erin Mac 4:06 Awesome. So you know, my story has kind of like three moments, defining moments, if you will. The first started with the anxiety disorder that you spoke about. It actually came about in talk therapy. I was going to a couple's group counseling with my husband at the time. And in that first session, I had a panic attack and I never had one before so I had no idea what it was. And the counselor picked up on it right away she explained all you know what it was and first she told me what it was she didn't really exactly explain what it was. I figured that out later, but she told me that's what was happening and and from there, you know, she said something's obviously coming up for you. Would you like to do some individual work and In that individual work, you know, I was telling my trauma story over and over and over again. And what my body decided to do was put up the defense mechanism of anxiety. And so it got so bad that as you said, I hold myself up in my home. You know, it didn't, it wasn't an overnight thing and happened gradually, panic attacks, more panic attacks, then, you know, I had one was running, and I was training for a race at the time. And so I felt like I couldn't run anymore, at least temporarily. And so I stopped running. And then I stopped teaching, I was a teacher at the time. And so it happens that way, you know, slowly, it's not just one, you know, wake up, and, and no candu. After about nine months of that, she referred me to a homeopathic psychiatrist, who gave me a remedy after a three hour interview, that in 20 minutes basically cured me from the experience of anxiety. That's the physical chemical piece, right? And I thought, wow, I have a new lease on life, you know, I can go and do all these things. But because of that experience, I was afraid, right. So I decided to move to Hawaii, and move to a small town and have a simpler life, right? Thinking that, you know, then I would never get triggered. And I would just live my life happily ever after in paradise. And unfortunately, while the chemistry piece was handled the mental emotional spiritual piece, not so much. And so I was still there. So in that simpler life, of course, I created anxiety, stress, and all that. So I moved to Hawaii. Immediately, in the first 24 hours, I started a business and I had a client. Within 18 months, I had 20 employees, multiple six figure contracts. And, you know, I was on my way to stress and anxiety. And the second thing that happened that really rocked me to my core was I 10 years into my business of just being frantic and crazy, stressed all the time. A client called in the morning, she was upset, and I would just get so frantic about clients complaining, they got in my car, raced over to a friend's house, backed into a driveway to drop my daughter off, and I sideswiped her husband's car or her his truck with my car. And come to find out later, when I came to pick up my daughter, that her husband was under the truck working on it while I hit it, and he thought it was gonna land on him. And that just rocked me to my core, I thought, This is ridiculous. Like, this is no life, you know, running around like a crazy person all the time. And so then I dove, you know, into self development, got involved with a seminar company did all their seminar staff for them, and started to see that there was a different way to be in this world, and starting to make some changes, that we're having an impact on my life and other people around me. And then about five years later, I found myself in the middle of a divorce. And for whatever reason, it just leveled me, I was in a dark place. And I thought, you know, I'd spent 10s of 1000s of dollars on seminars, reading all the books, you know, trying to do this other life, but I didn't really have any legit strategies to doing life differently. So then a series of things happened. I picked up the book, maybe you've heard of it, the Course in Miracles, and was about a month and two reading. It's a daily passage for about a year 365 passages. And nothing I was kinda like, this is interesting, but not really rocking my world. Then all of a sudden, month two, this crazy thing happened where the word started, like popping off the page. It was like the path is joy. The answer is joy, joy, joy, joy. And I was like, finally after a couple weeks of that, I was like literally threw my hands up in the air. I was like, I got the answer. How do I get there? And a series of things happened. I got an email from a gentleman I met. He was teaching a seminar in a wahoo and I thought I'll fly over for that. I have no idea what it is doesn't matter just need something positive. And I went and it was a day long seminar on a visualization process that he teaches. And I was so excited by it. I came home and I started using it immediately called my broker who had had my business for sale for like nine months with no bites. And I was like look, I just want to let you know my business is going to sell by the end of the month and there's going to be a bidding war. And it was like, okay, and long behold a week later That's exactly what happened. And then I went back and trained this gentleman that I had gone to that seminar, he was having a seminar, to train people to teach his main seminar. And I went and trained for a week I came home, put on my first seminar, and I stood in front of this group of people, and I ditched my notes, five minutes in, because I had this crazy experience where like, everything that I had ever learned, all of my life experience, everything I had ever read, just came together, like at one moment, I went, Whoa, like, this is what I'm supposed to do. Like, I'm supposed to teach people how to find their joy, cultivated daily, and live the life that they're meant to be living now, without waiting for all the things or the, you know, whatever they think they need to have in order to have that, like, that's available now. And I happen to also during that few week period, meet the love of my life in these very random circumstances, which I don't believe in random anymore. And, and so it just all lined up. And that's what I've been doing for the last almost four years. Brandon Handley 11:11 That's awesome. I mean, and it's interesting, right, that you came, you kind of came out of a, from what I gathered was more of a business oriented kind of thing versus this pursuit of joy, right, are you that you're doing now? And I think that I heard you say, on another podcast that, you know, maybe some of this is Woo, but if it is, woo, it's working out for you. And and you're okay with it, right? Erin Mac 11:39 I mean, that's the thing, you know, people always say, Oh, that's kind of woowoo. For me, I'm like, I'm looking at woowoo people, they look pretty happy as all I can say. Something too, and Brandon Handley 11:50 it's pretty amazing. The idea to have, you know, just try some of these things out for the first time. Very go into a very skeptical, right, this vision process that you're doing that you're thinking about, while it seems pretty cool. But then you you go and you try it. And then things start working out. Right. I mean, talk to me a little bit about that. So how did that have that come? And like kind of manifest itself? What was some of your initial reactions when you saw, were even calling it the universe? And what were you calling it? Well, like, what was your know, kind of how, how was that for you? Erin Mac 12:30 You know, it's kind of crazy, because you know, how it's like life. I mean, again, it's like life unfolds slowly. And you don't recognize exactly what's going on. So you look back and go, Whoa, like, look at all these things that happened. That's crazy. It took me a while to even recognize how much I knew that I was feeling better that I knew. And honestly, you know, I just, I thought I knew what joy was, I thought I knew what happiness was. The thing was, is I was on this, like, roller coaster ride of things, right? It was just like I was so 100% bought into the idea that if I had all the things, you know, a stack of cash, and the house and the car and the successful business, and all the things that we're told is gonna make us be happy. I had all those things, and I was so miserable, right? But I didn't even know that it was possible to experience joy. Do you know what I mean? Like I really just didn't even know what was available. Brandon Handley 13:39 So I think it's really interesting that you bring it up, right? I think there's this, you know, Tale of Two Cities type of thing, where you went, and you got all these things, and you did all the things because this is what we're taught. But that's been my experience is like, hey, go through all these things. Because this is what you're taught. Right? And you're not doing it maybe with the same intent that some of these other people are doing it right, you're doing it to a mass and acquire and to be happy and to have status versus what you're doing now, which is to implement, purpose, intent, and service, right, and the outcome that you're headed towards now. Right? If you haven't, I'm sure you've already achieved. I mean, listen, if you landed in Hawaii has some clients on the first day and you know, whatever, you know, a mask pretty quick like that, you know, whatever it is that you're doing right now, I'm assuming is successful, in one way or another, right? And but now it's aligned to who you are with your purpose and there's fulfillment and joy in that and the rest of it just kind of comes naturally, right? It comes as a byproduct of that intent and that purpose versus if you could compare To the way that you are running life before, right? You were miserable. You were like, anxious and you know, knocking people's trucks over on him. Right? And now I'd like you're doing maybe the same work, I don't know. But what's the effort feel like, compared to what you're the effort felt like before. Erin Mac 15:21 I mean, you're, you hit it right on the head, like I am 100% in service of people and myself. And while that may sound selfish, it's, it's, it's kind of where you got to be when you're in service to people in this way, you know, and it's a whole different experience, you know, before it just felt like I was grinding, grinding, grinding all the time, you know, like, it took all these things in order to make success, like I really, you know, there are these ideas that we have from a young age, you know, success looks like this formula. It's right. It's like, it's like, hard work plus luck, right, you know, like this, you know, formula of success. And I was 100% bought into that, too. And now, it's not like that, it's like, it doesn't seem like work. It's not a four letter word anymore. For me, it's 100%. Like, like, when I give to clients, I give to myself, like, it's such a win win. Whereas I definitely didn't function that way in my life before 100%. And now it's like, you know, while I still have to negotiate, you know, time, you know, balance the things out in my life, this never feels like something I've have to do. Like, I'm excited to do it all the time. I feel called to share what I know, because it's had such a profound impact on my life. Brandon Handley 16:51 I think it's interesting to how, you know, on your first seminar, you kind of tossed off to the side and everything you ever knew, kind of fell into this framework. Right, and you were able to just let it freely flow. Right? I mean, what, what looking back, what would you say happened there? Erin Mac 17:15 Oh, I, I was, you know, I think we're guided all the time. I think we have support all the time, from all the things, you know, universe, energy in general, you know, I mean, scientifically speaking, energy cannot be destroyed. So every person who's lived, their energy is here to you know, and, you know, that's why people talk to loved ones that have passed, and, you know, like, they still the energy is still hear it's exist, so why not tap into those things? I think, you know, it happens to me all the time. And I'm not gonna lie, it was freaky. You know, because it's, you know, for somebody who's like a recovered control freak, you know, a bunch of people and all of a sudden, just free flowing. And not to say it was just random all over the place is still stuck to, you know, we had a workbook and things but, you know, to go off the notes, I still do that. And I just, and I, and I recognize, I mean, even sometimes when I'm on podcasts, like, I'll just, I'll wake up in the middle of it and go, Oh, like I, you know, I wouldn't say it's me, I want to say channeling, but it's like, it's taking energy that exists. Like what I'm telling what I tell people and how I'm in service to people and the information that I share with people. Like it's not new to me, like I didn't make this stuff. Right. Right. Right. This is a real learning. Right, right. And when I'm teaching, I see it in the students, it's like, they can hear me on a deep level, even if they're not consciously aware of what I'm saying. They're feeling on a deep level. And that's coming from not me, you know, I mean, I hear it and I can disseminate that information, distill it down. But it's, it's exists, we're all connected to it one way or another. Brandon Handley 19:06 No, 100%, right. Truth resonates. And that's the kind of that that's the experience and you're talking to somebody else. And you're in a room with with these people and and you're having a truth session on the value column, right? It's your truth, this is kind of coming through you. And you're like, I don't even know, I didn't even know I could do that. Right? But then, but then the rest of the room is resonating with you. And to me, that's kind of what it sounds like as happening. And you know, call it channeling. It's funny too, because, like we we still have our limitations on what we'll call it, right? Like, I don't know that. Yeah, I don't know, I call it channeling I don't know, you know, whatever. But you know, what you're doing is you're at least letting yourself open to, to it, whatever, whatever it is, to come through and to to and through you. Right as a kind of a receiver translator as it were. Erin Mac 19:59 That's it. receiver for sure, yeah, yeah. And yeah, and I think we're all we all have that ability. Brandon Handley 20:07 I mean, it's an eight, right. And so, I mean, I don't know how old your kids are, you know, I've got my, my nine year old. And it's so and and my older child to 11. But you know, it's so obvious just how like innately in tuned. The children are, right as as as it is and, and then you can kind of watch it literally be kind of like almost a brainwash, but brainwashed out of them, right, like, you know, just kind of have those senses gold and like, you know, go through like this other thing, and you just kind of watch it, you're like, wow, that's crazy. Because we go through this relearning experience later in life. Are you an Alan Watts fan? I don't know who that is. Oh, my gosh, come on now. All right. Alan Watts. Yeah, Alan Watts. You know, he's a kind of philosopher made. Popular lies, Zen Buddhism. And in the West, West, it's like in the 60s 70s, right? English guy, you really enjoy him. One of the things that he talks about those, it's like, it's like, we're like salted beef, right? We get all salted and you got it. You got to desalinate that beef. And then you're like, you're back to your natural state at a certain point. And that's, again, sounds to me. I like the way you're the way you're going. Right? You're feeling into it. The what was the cure? I mean, because you had the homeopathic guy, right comes and gives you the cure. What was it? Do you recall? Was it like, a miracle pill? You know, help me out here. Erin Mac 21:51 Now Now what? homeopathy is so interesting. It's so distilled down the amount of whatever the substances may come in. Have you ever taken it before? That's like little tinctures, tablet. They're little pills. Yeah, no, tiny, tiny little granules. And, and they taste like sugar. And they have just, I mean, it's almost like they have essence of the thing. And it really is for the purpose of sort of writing your own self, right? So you introduce it to the body, and the body goes, Oh, that's right. We use a function fairly normally, in this stage. Here's the thing that I need. And interestingly enough, when she gave me the remedy, she told me what it was called. And she said, I don't want you to research it. And this is pre internet. It's not pre internet, but it was definitely internet was not a thing. Really. This was like 99, there was no Google. Yeah, it was not, there was no verb called Google it. And so, you know, she was just like, I don't want you to research this. And, you know, just see what happens or whatever. And, you know, and I, I mean, I almost don't want to say what it is because I don't want people with anxiety to think that that's the cure all it's not the cure all, it was just the thing that made me feel better enough to get on the path to recognizing that the work is internal, emotional, spiritual, and then the body follows. Brandon Handley 23:29 It's so interesting, though, right? Because we, we've, we believe the other way around, right? Because we see the things that everybody's doing, but we can't see the inner work, we can't see how they're thinking, functioning, or directing themselves internally to get to that point. So we're like, Alright, well, I'm just gonna go do all those same things. Right? And it doesn't it doesn't work out, right? Because we're not we're not aligning all three of those pieces of ourselves together. We're just like, we're hammering on one at a time. Right? Erin Mac 24:02 Yeah, I mean, I think you know, you see people they have you know, I work with a lot of people who have cancer and other diseases because that's mental emotional, spiritual two, I believe were three equal parts you know, mind body spirit. And if any of those are out of alignment or out of balance, it's going to show up in the other ones right and in a negative way or and that not wanted way. And often we can, you know, we can skip past mental and spiritual right we can we have all kinds of ways to not feel and acknowledge and, you know, the obvious ones are drugs and alcohol, the less obvious ones are things like being super busy, not ever having any stillness in our life, you know, being helicopter parents, you know, the SWAMI we spend all day every day Trying not to feel any. And, you know, and so you can imagine, and we've done it from a young age, like, it's not really our fault. It's, you know, we've grown up to this idea that we're not supposed to have emotions, we're not supposed to feel those things, only very controlled and in very specific ways, depending on the environment, you know, like, can't cry in a business meeting, you know, you know, are you crying out to lose it? No crying in baseball. Brandon Handley 25:32 I know, my first, my first go around, like in the podcast room and coaching space was fatherhood. And a big point of what you're saying there's is especially as Western civilization, men, emotions, come on now. You know, yeah. That's it. I mean, and that's a brilliant question too. Because we don't know, we don't know, one of the one of the tools that I use, often is the blue check wheel, right? Just just has the emotions kind of listed out, I hand it to my clients, I'm like, you know, go through it. You know, take a look at this every day, if you don't know what this one means. Or if you if you think that you do, go double check the definition of that and just see kind of how you're applying it in your life and how you can use it to, you know, acknowledge your situation, because we don't we, I suppose I was like, 40, or something I didn't know, I didn't know. I was, I guess, like, you know what, because I had a, I had a coaching friend, he goes, because Brandon, I'm not hearing anything emotional, or there's nothing emotional. I was like, Oh, let me go check that out. I was like, Well, I Erin Mac 26:32 mean, unfortunately, our society, especially for a man, like you really only allowed to anger is the only like, standout emotion and now, that's just as tragic. But that's changing slowly, as Brandon Handley 26:45 well. You know, I like to call kind of where we are right now in whatever culture like a hippie 2.0 situation. Right? Right. We're kind of like a hippie 2.0 situation where like, okay, like, maybe if we don't deal with all the drugs, it'll work out better this time, right, like, cut it out on like, the illegal substances. And, you know, we can still get to this place, mentally and spiritually, right. And, and, and since we're seeing that, there's, there's the actual benefits are being seen and heard, and, and I think that the pandemic had such a huge influence, because nobody was spared. Right? If anything good came out of level, it's like, it's like, level set everything. So, so for the, you know, for the CEO, or business leader that could normally like hop on a plane and do everything that like, his employees couldn't, he was stuck at home to with the kids having to deal with the zoom meetings. He wasn't getting a you know, he wasn't getting a free ride out of it. Right. And so his mental, her mental health was impacted as well. And they're like, Oh, shit, everybody's gone through this, we'd better do something. Right. So we see, right? I mean, so I think there's some benefit out of this whole COVID situation to huge, right, right, the right mental health space of people, spaces, places and things. So if I am coming to you, and I am like, the client type I am is who you were before you got to this choice spot, right? Um, you know, I've got success, not like, you know, I'm not Whoo, kind of guy, my calendars, you know, tight and all this stuff. What are you what are some of the first things that we're gonna do together? Erin Mac 28:39 First, we're going to acknowledge and begin to make some separation between the story that's been running your life, you know, the story of all the rainbows and sunshine, a story of all the, you know, the yucky, the fit, the unfair, the unjust, the abuse, trauma, all those things, not for the purpose of wallowing in and you know, it just to acknowledge where we started, and maybe what's affecting some of the ways that we see this world, how we perceive people and circumstances, and then take that story and recognize it for what it is the gift that it has been, and will continue to be in terms of showing us where healing and growth can take place. And you know less about all the things all the details in terms of, you know, who and what happened and all of those things. It's really more about what did you decide about you because of that story. Those are the beliefs and then when we recognize some of those beliefs, then we can understand that, you know, that's been playing out in the background, that's the wallpaper so to speak of our lives, you know, where we make decisions from and a lot of the decisions are fantastic. We need not mess with those, but the ones that aren't serving the future that we want to create. Those are the ones we want to take a closer look at. And so then, from there, I have people do a day, I have them write out a narrative of the day in the life of everything they ever wanted to create in our life, you know, all outcome based, you know, all you know, all the fields, you know, touch, taste, see, smell the whole deal. So exciting, you know, ever, like literally for a moment, wake up until moment go to sleep one day with everything in it, all the people, all the circumstances, all the outcomes. And then they use that in a visualization. And they start their day, because that's where I found my joy was in that visualization. Understanding a day in the life now, is it about manifesting? Not exactly. It's really about elevating the emotional experience, because you have that at your disposal at all times. And so we learn that we can our body doesn't forget things. So when I'm in my visualization in the morning, like, My arms are in the air, I'm like, super excited, like, yes, that just happened. And then yes, that happened to and I mean, tears of joy streaming down my face. I mean, it's all the things, I'm 100%. And on every level, I've raised my emotional experience. And then, like I said, the body doesn't forget. So when you have that experience, you can recall it at any time. So when you're going throughout your day, things start to go south, you can put yourself Take a moment, close your eyes, put yourself back into that moment, refocus and move on, versus what most people do is go out, this thing's not working out. And then there's all these other things that aren't working out, there's that thing, and then there's another thing I didn't like, and then this other person, and then you know, and so just got to read the brain and just, it loves to do the same stuff over and over again, and act like it's new. Brandon Handley 32:08 Yeah, it's not. I mean, I think the idea of the brain, right, it's, uh, likes to be an efficient piece of machinery, right? consumes so much energy, the more efficient it can be. And so let's just keep doing this thing, because it's just, you know, hasn't killed us in the past? Right? If we just keep doing this, we will die. And we may not be enjoying our lives. But you know, it, you know, hasn't killed us before. So I enjoy I enjoy the visualization. And and I think that there's a big piece of what you're saying there that a lot of people when you're doing these exercises, don't hammer home, I think, quite enough. And that's something I think you're touching on is the idea of the feels. Right. So my guess is that this is kind of a writing in the present tense exercise. Right? Erin Mac 33:00 Yeah, preferably, you know, again, outcome base, so you want to say in gratitude, right, because of high vibration, it's, you know, I'm so grateful that, you know, all these things are happening in my life, you know, as though they've happened already, as they exist in the now. Right. And they will, in your visualization, they exist as already taken place, and done deal. Brandon Handley 33:25 Right. And I think that, that the idea is that I'm just, I'm just feeling your words now. Because I heard you saying earlier today, the idea is that, you know, what wants to give us the idea that right, so if I can feel it right now, then what's that doing for me? Erin Mac 33:42 Yeah, that's creating, so I can't tell you how to get all the things. I mean, I think, you know, for me, they've come by being in that elevated state. And so, you know, I, what I help with is changing the experience of life, you know, and I think that's a heck of a lot more important than amassing things, you know, if, if I could show you how to change your experience in your life to joy, right now, by doing this visualization, that seems more valuable to me than, you know, telling you how to make six figure seven figures, whatever, you know, to me, other people, you know, they have other ideas, and that's wonderful. And, and I don't proclaim to, you know, claim to be able to help with those things. But I know how to find joy and I know how to cultivate it so that you can have that experience. And that's, you know, that's the first step is to recognize that you are responsible for your experience and when you know this, not in like fault blame shame kind of a way, in an empowering way, then you can just choose and choose and choose. Just keep choosing that thing that makes you feel good now, it doesn't change anything, have goals, do all the other stuff, too. That's amazing. But, you know, given that we only have this moment here, guaranteed why not make this one enjoyable? You know? Brandon Handley 35:16 Yeah, no, agreed, agreed. And, you know, if I'm, if I'm, if I'm a law of attraction guy, if I'm, you know, in that space, right, this is how I would, you know, kind of liken it would, and I don't know who it is, there's plenty of them out there. That's like, you know, the happiness doesn't kind of come later comes now, right. And if you can be happy now, and whatever the circumstance, like you're talking about, then you can make that choice. Again, like you're talking about all the time. You can find joy all the time, and anything and all you've got to do is again, like you're saying, If I go through the morning, and I had this visualization, I'm like, Well, I'm feeling the feels. It's all there for me, everything's great. Ah, and then like, you know, late in the day, I'm not so feeling the feels. And I'm like, Well, wait a second. early in the day, I was feeling the feels. And this was like that kind of anchor point. Right? Let me get back to that for a second. Because I created that moment for myself. Right, versus kind of letting something outside of me create that it was me who did that Creator of all these things, then, here I am. I'm always like, kind of high vibe. And I'm always like, buzzing, right. And then, you know, you're basically sending that out into the universe, right? Like, just kind of this this high vibe. And, you know, if we act as if the universe is a force multiplier, right? We know that like anything, you'd come out and throw out, there's coming back at you like, Well, I better stop, throw a monkey poo, right, like and start the things that I could really use in my life that I want in my life. And then you know, and visualize that and see it, feel it and release it right. I think that's important, too, is kind of just like, release it and not hang on to the idea that it has to happen, right? You're talking about the people that are like, well, this, Aaron, I tried this for three days, and it didn't show up. My life did not change the way you said it was. And I've you know, I've been doing all the things you tell me to do. But I mean, the idea, again, is to go through those fields, have them do the visualization. And release it because again, you're creating your own, you're creating your own space, please in time, let's face that, right. Erin Mac 37:25 Yeah. And I got two things to say about that. One is I want to talk about the difference between happiness, his idea of happiness and joy, because they're different. And I forgot what the other one is. But I'll talk about the happiness, the joy, that one the rest will come. Right. So to me the difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is fleeting, right? It's you get the new car, it's amazing. Eventually, it's just a car, right? It gets you from A to B, and this game of, you know, getting the things to make you feel good, it feels good for like this amount of time, right. And I only know that because I did all those things. I had the houses and the cars and the successful business and the time flexibility, all the things that everybody would want. And I literally kept like going over finish lines. And going, yay, hooray. I'm happy right now. And then, like, when I was doing trap all the stuff of go across the finish line, I would go home after celebrating for like five minutes. I mean, maybe like half hour or whatever, go home and find another race that I could either crush my time in that was longer hard or whatever. Like there was no end to it, like a couldn't win that race ever. Joy, on the other hand, encompasses some of the you know, the exuberance and all of that Not always, but it can include those. But it also has these nuances of like stillness and peace of mind, which is not thinking all the time thing. Or overthinking and calm. Right. And so those nuances are available and so rich, you know, they're either things I didn't know existed. I had no I mean, maybe I'd heard those words before, but I didn't really understand them on a deeper level. You know, and so, those differences are important, because the one you just can't win out. So yeah, get all the things and be super abundant and all the ways just recognize that the journey inside is the one that has purpose and meaning the one on the outside where we collect things. Those are super cool and fun too. They just don't. They don't fill you up as a human Brandon Handley 40:01 I think that I think that those are important distinctions, right? Happiness quick and fleeting, right? and joy is a little bit more kind of like a long lasting coal and Ember of warmth, right? Yeah. But a state of being. Yeah. So let me see here. Two things, two things. So I liken this, what we're doing here is like spiritual speed dating, right? Like somebody's gonna, somebody's gonna tune in, they're like, you know, I'm looking for my next spiritual date. Right? And, and this could be you. So I'm gonna ask you at least one kind of, you know, question is that, uh, you know, let me see here, whoa, yeah. Why are so many people depressed? Erin Mac 40:47 Okay, so call it depression, call it anxiety, call it whatever you want any low level experience, which is anything that doesn't feel good stress, overwhelm, worry, all those lovely words, they're the same thing. They are the experience of the human wanting to control people and circumstances to fit in how they want them to show up, or they don't feel good. And the unconscious recognition at the same time that it is impossible to control people and circumstances and events to fit into your agenda. And so you can see where that those two things butting up against each other would create some confusion. And so that confusion looks like anxiety, depression, you know, all the it's, we have this new, we've touched on it before the belief thing, right? So it's foundational, we made up everybody has them. I've not met anybody yet, who does not have these very core ones that are things like, I don't deserve, I'm not worthy, I'm not good enough. I'm not lovable, you know. And they're all basically the same thing. Like, I'm not good enough. And so those are underlying all of our decisions and how we're feeling about ourselves. And then we interact with other people. Based on those beliefs, we have decided what's right and wrong. So that's how people are supposed to show up for us, and how circumstances are supposed to show up for us. And so we got into this habit of we learned this piece about when this person says something or the circumstance doesn't turn out how I want, then somehow it's their fault, right? So if that person said something, and they're rude, instead of that person said something triggered something in me that did not feel good. What is that? And why is that there? When we look at that with wonder and curiosity and go interesting, because I guarantee whatever is triggering, you is not triggering me. So that's how, you know, it's all you. Brandon Handley 43:06 It's true. Um, you know, if if I was spiritually looking for a date, then then I would say, Hey, what's up? I'm good. And I agree, you know, I don't think there's a piece in there that I disagree with. So So thank you, I think that's a great answer to to it, right? Everybody's still trying to control the outcomes in some way, shape, or form. And when they're not turning out the way they want them to. They're not they're not accepting it. Right? They don't see it. And I think that the idea of approaching these triggers with wonder and curiosity versus like, kind of anger and angst is also really why is this can trigger still here. Right? So it makes sense. And I love it. So and what else I know that we talked about, you know, you're doing the work that you're doing now, but you've got a new endeavor, what are you, you know, what are you leaning into next? Erin Mac 44:00 Oh, my gosh, I'm so excited. I'm working with couples right now. I just finished doing my pilot course, on partnership. And the reason I'm so excited about it is, well, first of all, I truly believe we are here for spiritual development, or you call self development or whatever you want to call it consciousness. And when we recognize that that's why we're here and that all these you know, challenges that come into our life are for the purpose of our growth, then we can, you know, grow and heal and enjoy ourselves, right? Well, what happens when you bring two people together, that understand that there's a process to healing and growing and understand that same process in a way where, you know, in couples, it's like, it's easy to see how escalation can happen because it's like, especially when I've just told you what's going on. Right. So You said this thing, it made me feel bad, you know, right. So instead of, you know, we do this responsibly, so then we go, Oh, you said this thing, I feel bad. There's nothing that you can do to make me feel better, I'm in charge of making me feel better. And then they can support you in that, right? And then instead of escalating it's support, right? So it's not, you made me feel this way. It's, I feel this way, and it doesn't feel good. And, you know, support me in that instead of like, get your beliefs and you know, the things in your life that aren't working out and escalate, escalate, escalate, it's like, no, this is mine, I own it, it doesn't feel good. And then the two of you work together in that capacity. And it's just amazing to watch couples, it's exponential, because not only is their relationship so much better, but think of the impact that will have on their kids, the rest of their family, when they can see two fully functioning adults coming together, helping support each other in their spiritual growth. It's phenomenal. And so that sounds awesome. That Brandon Handley 46:15 sounds awesome. So where does, you know? What, who's your ideal client? Like in this space? Right? So I think we got two types of ideal clients, you got the partners, ideal clients, and then you've got your, your, your standard practice clients, what is what are they? Erin Mac 46:30 So ultimately, you know, being an entrepreneur for like, 21 or two years now, entrepreneurs, like me, for some reason, because I get their craziness, I understand that they are under the gun and responsible for a lot of things. And those, typically, and leaders to write just people have a lot of responsibility. That, you know, like to make all the things work out, you know, like to control all the things, those are the people that I ended up working with, because I get them, I was them. And I still have nuances of that, of course, you know, so working on me, and all that all the things. And then couples who are recognizing that, you know, especially when you're coming together as maybe two, what do they call that the set called the two families come together to blend in? Yeah. Like, I've noticed quite a few couples that are interested in working with me, that have that situation, because it's, you know, it's already challenging being in partnership, but then you bring in the kids and just escalates all the things. And so, you know, any couple, of course, who's having an issue, wanting to communicate in a deeper way or, you know, deepen their relationship in some way. Fantastic. And, you know, it's super challenging when you're bringing in, you know, other kids and into the mix and all that. Yeah, it's Brandon Handley 48:05 hard enough with your own, right. Yeah, for sure. So and where then, where Then should I send people to come and find you, if they're interested? Erin Mac 48:18 I think probably the best place to find me is on Instagram. My handle is Aaron, er, I N m A C LLC. And I post like a weekly video on some sort of strategy or something to think about. And I put like, inspirational memes and my stories. And my website URL is in the profile as well. It's a good way to interact with me, you can DM me, you can private message me or whatever. You know, and I always whenever I'm on a podcast, I offer a free I call it step one to joy call to just get you on the path, you know, maybe I you know disseminate the, the visualization process a little bit further so that you can get started on that and your life or whatever that looks like. And if afterwards, you still want to hang out with me and learn more than great if you don't, no strings attached. It's just my way of being in service. Brandon Handley 49:21 Awesome. And thanks so much for being on today. Thanks for what you do, right? You know, being able to help people make that transition from a Bumble of nerves into something, you know, a little bit more usable and functional in society. I mean, there's the there's a reason why that's your calling. So thank you for being of service and doing that for everybody out there. Erin Mac 49:47 Oh my gosh, thanks for having me. And thanks for having these platforms. It's really important to have these conversations, giving people hope and strategies and just something to think about that's, you know, positive I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you so much. Absolutely. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

This week, join DeeAsia and Soso as they uncork their recent masked up shenanigans, review their latest finds with Sip or Spit, get you ready for the holiday with some wine and grilled food pairings to enjoy on your porch or in your backyard, and answer the Wine Trivia question of the week.

if you're willing, I'd like to ask you, Charles. Hansel, what is the BIGGEST RISK?   Charles Hadsell  32:36   Yeah, sure. Darrin, I think, you know, when I thought about this, I think the biggest risk I think about is technology rescue, you know, even even alluded to it a little a little earlier in our discussion, right of kind of the early generation water bugs having so many like false alerts that it kind of caused the owner to like be dead in because the alerts and now you have a real issue. And now you're, you miss it. So I think technology changes rapidly, you know, and this kind of comes back to my time and some doctor as well, we look at the pace of innovation on putting more electronics into smaller places and asking like these, you know, end nodes of the network to do a lot more you rather than sending it back to some centralized server, you're having decisions made at the very edge of the network. So reliability is like is like very important for these, these these applications. And I think with semiconductor technology, reliability is continually improving. But there's always that risk of a component failing at the wrong time and leading to like a bad outcome. You know, so that's why we kind of like to take the approach of kind of layers of redundancy, you know, like, so for example, like to prevent, like water loss in your basement or in the basement of a building, have a sensor to tell you, if someone left the exterior door open, then have a sensor that tells you it starts to get cold, then a sensor to tell you that there's a water problem, you know, so you have kind of three layers of redundancy there that could kind of prevent, prevent a disaster. So So that's kind of how I think about risk is like a technology is changing rapidly, you need a platform that could adapt to that. So you're not kind of stuck in the stone age's with the platform that's, you know, out of date are no longer relevant. And then also like the kind of I say that the connectivity risk, you know, of a, that power outage happens, what happens to your system, we saw what happened in Texas, you know, a few months ago where all that led to all that damage. So that's why we covered this a couple different places on the show today, you know, cellular i think is the right technology medium for these IoT systems and these rental property and like landlord applications, just because it's up, it's up when everything else is not up. So that's kind of my overall kind of thought of you technology risk is kind of the big one and that's how we really like to wrap your head around minimizing the impact and putting redundancies in place.

durée : 00:27:25 - Le Warm-up Mix - Propose tes sons préférés à Muxxa pour des gros mix en direct pendant 30 minutes. De quoi bien commencer tes après-midi !

This week, DeeAsia and and Soso read reviews on some of your fave wines and spirits. Join them as they uncork their latest shenanigans, share what their latest and greatest finds with Sip or Spit, and answer the Wine Trivia question of the week. Follow @badandboozypod on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to keep up with the show. Follow @brainsnbuns to keep up with DeeAsia on Twitter, Instagram, Clubhouse, and Delectable. Follow @fabfreshandfly on Twitter, Instagram, Clubhouse, and Delectable to keep up with SoSo.

durée : 00:59:22 - First Mike Radio Show - Cette semaine dans le First Mike Radio Show, découvrez les nouveautés de rap français et des remix et des sons inédits...

Rdv avec le rappeur marseillais Soso Maness, à l'occasion de la sortie de son nouvel album Avec le temps sur lequel on retrouve Jul, Sch, Gims et PLK. Retour sur ses débuts dans le rap à l'âge de 9 ans, sa collaboration légendaire avec Intouchables, sa vie de voyou jusqu'à ses projets de musée du Hip-Hop. Pour cet épisode, c'est Demon One qui offre la vidéo mystère et Aurélie Pomponette le billet d'humeur.

https://youtu.be/2SgF028apLA (If you're reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://anythingbutidle.com for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.) Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening! If you'd like to continue discussing any news from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast | Commentary on Apple WWDC 2021 Event Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Michael Sliwinski, Nozbe CEO Michael is a productivity guy - he's the founder and CEO of Nozbe, where they have two productivity apps, Nozbe Teams - an uber-functional to-do app for small and medium teams and Nozbe - a project management and collaboration tool for busy professionals. Both Nozbe Teams and Nozbe are web-based tools with apps for all the major platforms. Michael is also a speaker, author of a few best-selling books, a podcaster and a blogger. He is happily married to his wife Ewelina and they have three daughters. Headlines & Show Notes | Commentary on Apple WWDC 2021 Event Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. https://youtu.be/0TD96VTf0Xs Raw Text Transcript | Commentary on Apple WWDC 2021 Event Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast's audio). Read More Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:06 Hello personal productivity enthusiasts and community, welcome to Anything But Idle, the productivity news podcast. I'm Ray Sidney-Smith. Augusto Pinaud 0:14 And I'm Augusto Pinaud. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17 And we're on camera now, and welcome to Anything But Idle. This is Episode 64. And we're recording this on June 8 2021, in honor of the Apple Worldwide developer conference that is ongoing for 2021. The keynote was yesterday. And so we are doing our commentary episode, a special episode today to do that. And of course to do that we are bringing back on the show, Michael Sliwinski . He is a productivity guy. He's the founder and CEO of Nozbe, where they have two productivity apps Nozbe teams and Uber functional to do app for small business and medium teams, and Nozbe a project management and collaboration tool for busy professionals. Both Nozbe teams and Nozbe are web based tools with apps for all the major platforms. If you can think of the the OS there's an app for it. Michael is also a speaker, author of best selling books, a podcaster and a blogger. He's happily married to his wife Evelina, and they have three daughters. Welcome to Anything But Idle Michael. Michael Sliwinski 1:13 Hi, thanks for having me again. Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:15 Yes, welcome back, as always to talk about Apple all things Apple, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna sit back and let you to take over the show at essence. So So talk to me, what what did you feel like was good about the show this time around about the keynote? What was the biggest thing that kind of stood out for you in Apple's WWDC keynote, Michael Sliwinski 1:38 I think the biggest thing as a theme is that they kind of caught up with the pandemic. And with us working from home and being from home, like all the improvements to FaceTime all these, you know, sharing and all that stuff, like all these improvements, is they like, they were kind of, you know, kind of a late response to what happened the previous year, I mean, it's better late than never, because I hope this will be this will mean that people who will be working from home and will stay working from home or in hybrid mode will have just better tools. So, for me, this was like, the main theme, and this was like the main show, you know,

durée : 00:53:56 - Le grand urbain - par : Eric Metzger, Quentin Margot - Beaucoup l'ont découvert grâce à son couplet explosif dans Bande Organisée, pourtant Soso Maness n'est pas un petit nouveau dans le monde du rap : il revient cette année avec son 3ème album, Avec le temps. - réalisé par : Jérôme CHELIUS

durée : 01:00:38 - Dirty Swift : Dirty Mix - Un Dirty Mix 100% rap français aujourd'hui...

Woot woot happy Friday listeners! We know we've been a little MIA so we are back with a regular episode on our new upload day! Life's been super busy and hectic so we are now a Friday upload podcast. In today's episode Sarah leads us through a chat about the MLM Monat and since she had so much to say we've split this episode up into two parts. If you're curious about what Monat is, what they sell, how they recruit, etc. this episode is for you and be sure to tune in next week where we're diving into their controversies, lawsuits, all that good stuff. Have a beautiful weekend and thank you SO SO much for the support!! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barefaced.podcast/ Email: barefaced.podcast@gmail.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BarefacedPodcast/

durée : 00:06:59 - Le Wake-up mix - DJ First Mike prend le contrôle des platines de Mouv' tous les matins. 8 minutes de gros son pour te sortir du lit comme jamais.

Dre took a trip Abroad and sat with some cool Cats; @shadesofsoso @blessed.nuhu to talk about the pandemic, the hustle amongst other interesting things. Are you shopping in Covid?? (6:42). Blessed has blessed hands (12:57). Soso of All Trades (15:10). First Huzzle(16:10). $$$$$ (21:30). U go'n Notice Me (22:50). Roadblocks in the game (25:59). The talking stage (32:17). Aspire to perspire (40:20). Those Nicknames (42:27). AC on or OFF? (52:47). Manner of Approach (55:09). How Much are you wearing?(1:00:06). Song of the Week (1:04:16). Check out songs of the week on our Backyard Radio playlist on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3FGXrqi5PGQdz0z0O67kNd?si=8bdae187265a4ab3

durée : 01:00:28 - Mouv' Rap Club - Soso Maness était l'invité de Pascal Cefran, Céline et Fif pour nous parler de son nouvel album "Avec le temps" à venir le 4 juin...

Want to Rock Some Good Food? Pair With A Great Beverage and Even Better Music with Josh Kemble There is nothing better than good food, a good beverage, and great music. We talked to Josh about how he goes about pairing food, beverage, and music. Some times it can start with the music, something that might remind you of a trip you were on. Then of course there are the sides. What goes good with a brisket? Mac and Cheese? Is there a way to jazz it up some? Listen for more. About Josh K. “Yosh” or Chef JK. Proud Husbo and 3x Rad Dad. Exec Chef. Punk Rock. Beer and Wine Pairings. Podcast Host of The Family? Cast:  Food and Music Is Life, Yes? Spiritual Free Thinker. PMA. Expert level fluency in Movie Quotes and 3rd Grade Spanish. CA Teaching Credential Culinary Arts. Food Safety and Hospitality Management Exam Proctor. Restaurant, Event, and Strategic Planning Consultant. Usually hungry and or thirsty.    www.feedingfatty.com Full transcript Below Want to Rock Some Good Food Pair With A Great Beverage and Even Better Music with Josh Kemble Sat, 5/29 8:53AM • 56:01 SUMMARY KEYWORDS people, food, eat, pairings, pairing, music, punk rock, vegan, good, chef, big, beer, play, texas barbecue, diet, cook, fun, meat, based, called SPEAKERS Terry, Josh, Roy Barker Roy Barker  00:14 Hello, and welcome to another episode of feeding fatty. This is Roy. This is Terry. So we are the podcast that's chronicling our journey, my journey through wellness, trying to get healthy, lose some weight. And, you know we talk about what's going on in our life some and we also have guests from time to time and today is no different. We've got Josh Kemble with us, Terry, I'll let you introduce him. Terry  00:37 Yeah, Josh Kemble is an executive chef and credential teacher for the culinary arts. He specializes in pairings particularly pairing music and food and beverage. He's been singing in a punk rock band since he was 17. And has helped other bands and musicians write and record their songs. And he loves both industries. He hosts a podcast called family food and music is life. Yes. And they talk about they talk to people on both, either or both food service and music industries and how the two intersect. Josh, thank you for coming onto the show. We welcome you and are excited to talk to you about all these pairings with food and drink and all of that. Josh  01:26 Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. I was thinking as, as the intro music was going painting, we should have just jazz us up with some. Yeah, that'd be fun. Right? I liked that song, too. The one you had is pretty fun. Roy Barker  01:42 Yeah. Yeah, we try to find try to find something a little bit whimsical. But yeah, you also talk about I mean, I know your love for food and music kind of puts you in this space. But tell us a little bit number one about how you got here. 01:55 You know, Roy Barker  01:56 a lot of us in I think we've had this discussion prior that you know, it started out going to some wine tastings and wine pairings. And, you know, after about three, four is like, to me, my palates, not that delicate. So it all tasted the same. But I tell you where I had fun was with beer, because there's just so much beer out there now. But we didn't have that musical element. So I think it's the kind of cool, cool deal to think about not only the food and the drink, but also putting some good music with it. So how did you? How did you put all this together and end up here. Josh  02:34 Um, I think I think probably started when I was learning how to cook as a kid, with being my grandparents were always cooking in the kitchen. And they also always had music playing. Okay, so it's probably always just been, it's been a sensory, almost like a sensory pairing. But from when I was first learning how to cook. And there was also singing happening at the same time and dancing. all at the same time in the kitchen. Both of my grandparents, these are my Mexican grandparents. And I was always in the kitchen with them because I was always, you know, at their side. And my grandfather had a farm but you know, animals and stuff like that. So he was always there was always just music playing and no matter what they were doing, so the activity of life was always paired with music already. Yeah. And then you know, who would eat with music, we would go to parties, and there'd be music playing. So it was always just the sensory experience to have those things together. And I think if you go to those restaurants, any resume, or coffee shop, they're probably playing music. They're sure that there's a certain pattern that we're we're maybe not aware of, Roy Barker  03:38 I don't know. No, didn't even think about that. But you're right. Usually there's some little background music going on. Josh  03:47 Yeah, and if there's not, it's it's it. Maybe it's awkward. It's too quiet. You're gonna have to hear each other talk. Terry  03:52 And then you have everybody eating crunchy and down the street. Yeah. Yeah. scraping the forks, Josh  03:59 weights. Exactly. So. So it's a good thing to, I think to do it because also it's, it's a little bit fun. It's fun to do it together to kind of figure out what goes with what. So it's not just your average run of the mill tasting experience that most people have had at one point or another. Whether it's sipping wine or sipping coffee. One of my favorite ones that I've done recently was actually with the Texas bourbon company, garrison brothers, where they came out here and they did a they brought their big ol hat cowboy hat 10 gallon hats, and they were telling telling everyone how bourbon in Texas is made. And you know, we paired food with it. And they Yeah, it was just a good time. Awesome. Roy Barker  04:42 So where do you even start? I mean, like, you know, it doesn't matter if it's beer bourbon wine, but you start with the drink. Do you start with the food do you in and then how do you add music and on top of that Josh  04:58 sometimes it starts with the music actually. I just I think it depends on how you're inspired first. And whether it's if you hear something and you're like, oh, wow, this reminds me of taking a trip to Hawaii. And we went to this place and there was a, there was this band playing on the cliff side, and we were drinking these drinks or having this good food or even just having a good experience with the music. You say, I could imagine, like, relaxing in my backyard listening to this music, you know, having my favorite coffee in the morning or cocktail night or whatever the case may be whatever you do or don't enjoy. But so sometimes it starts with the music in that sense. And then sometimes it can be like the food experience. Well, you know, some people can't have peanut butter and jelly sandwich or cookies without a cold glass of milk. Like, there's automatic pairings that you you think are what's it called? You have to have them, it's a guarantee that you're gonna have milk. And if you're gonna have cookies, yeah, but it? I mean, it doesn't have to be like that, but it's good. If it is it makes friends. Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense to your brain growing up as mac and cheese, you know, certain things that go together, you know, they don't have to be that way. But it's just the way that it works. So you take that pairing, and you say, Can we do a different kind of cheese with the mac and cheese? Can we do a different kind of jelly, and so you start playing with it. And then you expand from there. And then you pair different kinds of, for examples, coffees with different breakfast foods or different excuse me different sandwiches with that milk, or you know, you can play around with whatever, yeah, take it from the experiences that you may or may not already know, Texas barbecue, everyone has this idea what that should or you know, should be, there's like the Bible of you know, Texas barbecue right there. And then you kind of do pairings based around that. So it's automatic, you know, if you want it to be, it just has to ask to make sense to some degree. But there also has to be a sense of showing the person enjoying your, your, your pairing, like why it works, because it's so crazy that it works. Yeah, it's always sometimes it's crazy. Roy Barker  07:04 Yeah, and I've got a good example of that we, like I said, we went I went used to go to a place that we did the wine pairings for a long time. And it just got boring. So the shift started doing the different beers. And one of the things that he took was he had, I don't like dark beer, I like light, lighter colored beer. But he took this dark vanilla beer, and he paired it with a chocolate. I mean, like a deep dark chocolate cupcake with sea salt on the top of it. And who I wouldn't have thought I would like that either. But it was amazing. When you had those two together, it just tasted, it changed the texture and the taste of both of them where the beer was actually good. And this chocolate cupcake, you know, because if I eat a cupcake by itself, it was way too chocolatey. And it just I don't like that much. So But anyway, I think it's just interesting, the way that the different taste kind of meld in our mouth to make something we probably wouldn't even enjoy to something we really like. Josh  08:06 Exactly, yeah, you might not like, like, like you said, it's not it's not about them separately, it's about them together, and they, they should elevate each other in your on your palate, your scent. And you kind of I kind of teach people when we're doing the pairings, it's I use it as a educational experience, too. So you're trying to use all five, maybe even six senses, when you're doing the pairing. So you got to look at your drink, and you're going to you're going to touch the glass and you're going to smell everything and taste everything, see everything, you're going to even listen, if it's a beard, you know, for the for the carbonation. So you want to make it a full sensory experience, so that it evokes everything from either your memories from the past that we're doing something that's like, say like a Girl Scout cookie pairing or, you know if it's something fun, or especially with Texas barbecue, because there's all the smoke and all the flavors of that just the inherent, you know, history of the being that we're trying to portray. On on the plate or on the menu. So we explain every dish, we explain every course every pairings I do it with I could do it with beverage maker, whether that's coffee, tea, liquor, whatever. Beer wine, like you said, I do love a good, there's some really good beers coming out of Texas these days. And so we've done some beer dinners with some of those beers as well. And it just has to the beer, the beverage and the food should elevate each other. And then you add music into that layer, another layer of sensory, you could say sensory overload to some degree, add another layer to that. And it's going to make the pairing experience that much more unique and memorable. And, you know, it could be the highlight of the menu if there's a perfect song with this perfect pairing or whatever, you know, like eggs can be can be really awesome. For some people. Some people like I didn't like that one. And maybe Maybe it was because they didn't like the way the music sounded with you know, whatever. Yeah, Terry  09:58 so it all has to Work together. So it should Yeah. So what kind of I'm very curious. I am old, old school punk rock. So I'm thinking, you know, remotes and the B 50. twos before love jack, you know? Yeah. So bands like that, you know, the clash, Sex Pistols, all of that. So what kind of what kind of food would go with punk rock? Josh  10:28 Oh, that's a really good question. So, so So my first experience with with the genre of punk was was the clash, you know, back then, I heard it on the radio, I think they started getting radio play in in California and like, 7980 Yeah, around there. When the I heard it on the radio, I was like, What is this and, and my uncle, he remodeled car redid cars. And we drove around cool looking old cars around around town and stuff like that. So he would restore old cars, and they had old stereos, but he would always get radio. And so we're cruising around, you know, cruising low red or cruising around the city, and the clash comes on. And so we're one of the only like, low rider cars cruising through not playing all these is playing the clash. And I'm like, What is this because I'm used to hearing other music coming out of history. He's like, Oh, that's punk rock, you know, this, this the bank of the clash, you know, because there wasn't a lot, there wasn't a lot of that on the radio. Right. And so I had already started associating kind of that, that music with, with, with my experiences in the in the Mexican culture. Because Because we are driving to a backyard barbecue, you know, we're we're gonna have a bunch of, you know, kardinya, salad steaks and tortillas and all this stuff. So I had already started doing some kind of, you know, not I wasn't trying to bury it, but I was already doing those pairings. So when I hear when I hear the clash, or some some of those older punk rock bands in my from my life, they were like, I learned about those bands a little bit later in my punk rock career, actually, after I really found out who the clash was, and what they stood for. And all this stuff started learning about, because they have a lot to say about government and politics, rebelling, and being yourself and, you know, speaking up for the lesser person and stuff like that. So I so in that vein of punk rock, I really latched on to that. And then the more you get into punk rock, ethos, and values and stuff like that, it's more like, Oh, we have a lot to learn as a society about major corporations and big food and small farms. And, you know, learning about like what Cesar Chavez did for the farmers in California, and what, what the heck, the class was actually talking about when they're talking about, you know, the stuff that they were talking about in England and coming to America and all this stuff. And I think that a good food pairing with punk rock would be anything that's kind of against the norm, anything against McDonald's, anything against mainstream food, or like, you know, like I said, corporate, like Tyson and Monsanto, and conagra and those kind of things. So, to me, being a punk rock chef, excuse me, is being able to make kind of make your own menu, and or play off of those things that people know, like I said, like, for example, a Big Mac, and you make it you make your own thing, you know, and that's punk rock, because you're taking the established, like Bailey's, you know, punk rock solid, like, anti establishment, right? You take the established, like, say, McDonald's, for example, I hate I hate given them shout out, or whatever company big corporation, but everyone knows McDonald's because they're worldwide. You take their food, and you make a play on it. We do a whole McDonald's inspired menu. And it's punk rock. It's, it's not the Big Mac, it's whatever we do, but it's like, you know, organic produce grass fed beef homemade buns, the way actually technically the way McDonald's started, as was like that. And then they started growing and growing, growing. So yeah, in the punk rock spirit of things, you know, how big do you how big do you can you get and still be punk rock, you know? or? Yeah, How big? How much can you grow without hurting yourself? Or your fans? or whatever, you know? Yeah. So to answer your question, it'd be any kind of food that's anti establishment is that I guess Terry  14:17 that makes tons of sense. Roy Barker  14:18 So you brought up something good memory is, you know, things that we relate to when that song was popular when we were younger and things. So like, when if you were going to start putting a menu together, do you? Do you kind of rely on that experience that you had to think about? Oh, well, you know, when I was listening to the class, we were going to the you know, the backyard barbecue, so that's pretty cool. Or do you think about now I've eaten this food before, and it kind of has that texture and flavor. It may go good with this and because that's what I don't really like. Like I said, my palate is not that deep. delicates I'm not the right guy to be talking about it, but Terry  15:03 not just everything. Roy Barker  15:06 But you know, thinking about just, you know, the different things that may even go together. And I guess that's even the probably the fun part of your job and getting to do that is you get I guess you do a lot of taste test and to see how this goes. And Josh  15:21 yeah, yeah, we call it a we call it quality control. Right? Yeah. Because, because also, because we're in we're here in San Diego, some people call it the craft beer capital of the world. And I have so many really good breweries and wineries around around my kitchen around my house around the county around the whole area. Right, right. So we want to figure out what tastes the best with what, right. So I mean, you can have an idea, like once you do the pairing, like like your friend did the pairing with that certain beer, and that certain cupcake, yeah. And you could do something like that again, and make a little bit different or use a little, little different. I mean, a different beer company that has a similar beer, and put it in there. But the memory, the memory, part of it is definitely a strong, a strong way to I mean, I think we eat with our memories sometimes. And we eat with our eyes first, as the saying that we've talked about in the kitchen, when we're when we're pleading the food all beautifully, or whatever. And if you have an experience at a restaurant, or a wedding or event or anything like that, I think and this, you can both correct me if I'm wrong, but more people talk about a negative experience with food than they do a positive. Yeah, it's Oh, my gosh, the food was, you know, or the one thing that you remember at a wedding, besides the actual marriage is the food. Yeah. You know, like if whether whether that's food I ever had, or Whoa, whoa, everybody got sick from the food? That's all we talked about. Roy Barker  16:52 Yeah, no. Well, there's so there's, there's a scientific evidence on that the people that have a bad experience will tell eight people and somebody just told me that that number up to 12. Now and if you have a good experience, you're lucky if you tell one person so yeah, definitely. The bed makes the rounds quicker. Josh  17:13 Exactly. Especially in the days now of Yelp. And other other Oh, you know tattletale websites or websites that are meant websites that were meant to help other businesses or have now just become like a complaining that a complaint forum rent, as it were, you know, that can hinder the businesses at least have an independent chef or food truck or whatever. Yeah. So the memory part of it is almost like, we don't, we don't, some people are not even relying on the memories anymore, because they're just, they'll just go to Yelp to look for something and up to many negative reviews. I'm not gonna go there and check it out myself. Somebody Terry  17:50 is worried that they don't even know. Yeah, Josh  17:52 exactly. Yeah, exactly. So. So that's, that is part of it. But But if, like, if you can think of say, you know, your favorite song or whatever, you might even have memories associated with that, where you were cruising around in your car, eating something and drinking something with your friends, you know, automatically without even having a chef's mind behind it. It might be like, Oh, yeah, we used to go to this place and drink the actual Texas Dr. Pepper and like, do this stuff. Or, you know, Roy Barker  18:20 it's funny, it's, it's, uh, you know, I was just saying about that there used to be. We were, it was talking about one of my first business experiences, we me and a friend of mine, you know, when we were like, 14, we, we sold, we sold what we cleaned out of barns for fertilizer. But it's funny, you mentioned that because that was kind of our reward was the 711 had a two for two hot dogs and a Dr. Pepper for 50. That's Oh my god, that sounds terrible. But anyway, you know, so thinking about that, I think, anyway, the memory and the memory of those hot dogs and us being out, you know, hauling that fertilizer around that that does go together. Josh  19:04 Exactly. Yeah. So So now hopefully, when you think about hot dogs, you're thinking about fertilizer. Terry  19:12 fertilizer. Josh  19:14 I mean, I do love I do. And I mean, most chefs will agree no matter how healthy you are, or what you've gone through in your eating career in life or whatever. Sometimes we this love late night junk food thing, you know, like we go to a taqueria that's open till 2am or whatever, because we're making good food all day long for hundreds of people. I just don't I just want to talk you know you want somebody else to visit there's nothing wrong with it but I just want to or I just want to come home and put food in a tortilla and eat it you know what no plate Roy Barker  19:42 simple you know that's that's what I like to though simple is good and that you know we have that discussion all the time because Terry's always trying to outdo herself and make something that's more fancier than last time like simple can be good and overcomplicate it and that you know Something not this the shift that I had mentioned earlier, that's something that me and him had a conversation about. Because, you know, we had what I would call some snooty people at the wine event. And, you know, they'd get on to him about this or that. And, you know, when when he came over to the beer crowd, I'm like, you know what, take a chance, take a chance and gamble because you know, what, if this isn't any good, there's a McDonald's or Taco Bell on the way home is like, we're gonna die. And we're not we're not gonna starve to death. But I think that's how these creations I think that's the best creations is when somebody really steps out there and takes a chance on the the food, drink the music. Josh  20:41 Yeah, definitely. And that's, that's kind of a it's a fun way. For brewers and white wine makers and chefs, distiller it's a fun way for people to kind of show off the stuff that they've been making. Or, and or it's a fun way to experiment. You know, sometimes I tell people, we're gonna have an experimental dinner, you know, it's not going to be your, your classic pairings that, you know, people who go to the dinners a lot, they kind of know what's going to be there, right now, there's always gonna be the X amount, of course, it's going to be around this price. So you kind of have to play to them a little bit and or you talk to those people and say, I need you guys to come to this one, because I just really want to try something, but I can't try on the general public kind of, right. Yeah, and especially with something like a music pairing. That's very specialized. It doesn't have to be it could be very, it could be very simple. Like, hey, we're just gonna have we're just gonna listen to like the Beatles while we're, you know, doing this food or I had some I had one plan for last year that we're gonna have to bring back. Now that things are we're kind of reopening in California. Slowly but surely. Basically, it's a like a Metallica themed brunch. Right? So it's a metal, heavy metal. And all the food. Food is that we're cooking is based on like food puns based on their song titles. So so people, yeah, so it's not necessarily specifically paired with the music per se, because it's all about one band. Yeah, but it's all it's a theme on the band. Everybody's gonna kind of land we're gonna say it's not snooty, we're gonna you're gonna come dressed like you're going to a concert, you know, denim, denim vests, you know, whatever you want to wear to a Metallica show. Yeah, and we're gonna have brunch. And we're going to try to get, you know, Metallica has a bourbon Metallica has a beer. And they're going to have a friend come and play acoustic Metallica songs on the guitar and whatever. So it's just gonna be a fun time. And it's brunch, Saturday or Sunday morning, whatever. But it's not like other pairings where it's like, you go into a dinner, I mean, to a restaurant, or whatever. And you have to have your restaurant manners on, you know, like that. You have to pay, you know, this high a super high amount of money. And you're going to have this kind of a steak that you might always have or whatever, we're just at a higher price because it's appearing. So I like to have fun with it, and make that unique experience. So that's kind of one of the musical pairings. It's like, I just pick a theme and say, we're gonna we're just gonna make puns that have all their song titles, because they have like, over 100 songs, so why not? You know? Terry  23:20 Surely there are some pens and yeah, that's awesome. Josh  23:23 Oh, yeah, just, you know, just just making dad jokes all day long. Roy Barker  23:29 When we can get back to it, there's nothing better than you know, going out and listening to a band and you know, having some good food and good drink. Josh  23:40 Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we have. Yeah, definitely. Something something we've been longing for. Oh my Terry  23:45 gosh, we have we have stones tickets. We were supposed to see him this time last year. And still, you know, we still don't know anything, which is fine with me and hanging. I'm hanging on to them because I've never seen them. I've seen a lot of people but I've never seen Oh, never seen them. So if they do it, that'll probably be fun. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they Josh  24:10 were supposed to play here in town, actually in our at our stadium, but we're our baseball and football team used to play but they they actually tore down the stadium during because they canceled you know, at the beginning of everything kind of last last spring. It was like, well, the stones aren't going to play here anymore. Let's just Terry  24:27 get rid of it. So they took it down. It's gone. That's good reason. Good enough. Okay, so we are we have just started a plant based diet. Okay, so what kind of use as a chef you cook with organic and grass fed Whole Foods and all of that. Yes. Josh  24:54 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. sustainable and all that kind of stuff. Yes. Terry  24:57 sustainable. That's what I was looking for. I'm so I'm just a whole bunch of words. Yes, there really are. So I'm just kind of throw in stuff to get I'm doing, you know, I've been doing some reading and we've been doing some interviewing of, I mean, everything points to plant based as, as, you know, helping with inflammation and diseases. And yes, and we're getting older and needing to worry about things like that, which you should do all the time, then you won't have to worry about it later in life, necessarily. But so what do you have any good? good ideas for me for like, keen? Any good? keen, Wah or? lindo? Josh  25:44 Yeah, so a lot of it's based on, you know, how much of one thing you're trying to get, like, so it's, even if you're doing a vegan diet, or plant based, or keto or any of the diets, you still have to, I believe, you still have to have some kind of balance for your own ecosystem. body. So some, if you do too much of what, you know, for a while it was the fad was Atkins style dieting. And that's basically though, if you break it down, though, that's all high cholesterol, fat, you know, which is bad for some people to do that. It has the benefits of the diet, but then what are the end? What are the end results? You know, what's your return on investment for doing this diet? Right, you know, so, for the plant based, plant based and what I mean by the balances. I'm not, I'm not a vegan person, but I understand the value of eating having a vegan part of my diet. At my kitchen, we do. We do all the lunches for this company called Dr. Bronner's. They make all the soaps and stuff like that. But they, they, they, they are feeding, we're doing 125 meals a day for them. And they're 100% vegan and organic, right? So we have to think of every single week, every single two weeks, we have to think of new menu items to feed 125 people every single day. So you take like your basic, say, even the first food item that comes to your head, no matter what kind of diet, we say, Okay, can we do that? We do shrimp and grits as a vegan thing. How do we do that? So? Or can we do like a clam chowder and turn it vegan so so there's, there's there's always ways to do it. Not every single thing is a hit, you know, but there's, but there are there are ways to incorporate those things into your into your life and cut out. You know, things like, you know, meats that are too Fatty, or dairy, too much dairy, too much dairy in your diet, too much gluten in your diet, right? Because our bodies are designed a certain way to not really handle that there's a really good argument to be to have a vegan and plant based lifestyle because we you may or may not be able to digest that because you were probably not created today, just that we started doing that it's through and through our own macro evolution as humans, we started digesting animals and animal products and stuff like that out of some necessity or just, or just the way that that America was conquered. You know, yeah, he came. came to America. Terry  28:14 Yeah. And that's kind of why Roy, I mean, in that, Roy Barker  28:17 yeah, there was just a couple there's a couple things I was reading and you know, we've talked about it because no, like, beef and meat, it sets heavy on me. Now. I don't you know, I think we are plant based. I don't think we're like never ever again. You know, we were talking earlier tonight that you know, Terry said she may be getting hungry for a piece of fish or something. So you know, we can go out and have but we're just kind of like yeah, making the focal point more the plant based but you know, I read some material that said, like, dairy that we should be, it should make people sick. We're the only humans are the only people that drink other animals milk. And it's and we're the only people that drink milk after infancy because but they said that that was an evolution that milk was very, it's very high caloric. So people found a way to use it, you know, to live and then also some of the shepherds that that's what they had to so the other thing I read was that our bodies you know, we are more the omnivore because we're not totally meat base because we don't have the fangs and our in our digestive tract is too strong. And vice versa on the plants. Our teeth aren't right for that as well. And our digestive system is too short. So you know, I think some write some meat or beef or protein is as good for us. But you know, it's just all the, the we've just read some healthy benefits of that and also doing some intermittent fasting. So it's just something we're going to give a try to see if it's any bad. You know, I think yeah, we kind of preach that as well as that everybody has to find what works for them. I know some people that you know, they're on the keto and they love it. That's good. You know, we're Of course we're not doctors, nutritionists or dieticians, you know, anything with the language behind our name. So, you know, we really report on is kind of what we're trying what's working for us and what's not. And, sure, anyway, we're just gonna see, but it's all about, Josh  30:17 you got to add some exercise into the mix, you know, like, kind of work off whatever is coming into your body, because I have a lot of vegan and vegetarian friends that are still still struggle with weight loss or keeping weight on or whatever the case may be, because, you know, they're still eating stuff like vegan doughnuts or cheese, you know, like they're still eating, they're still getting full all the time and eating high fat, high caloric diets. But just because it's not, you know, meat or their ovo pescatarian, like you said, they eat eggs and fish still. They are not there. It's not a balance, like I was trying to say it was not, they're not getting exercise, they're not drinking half gallon of water a day. You know, so they're they, they're they strict, they adhere strictly. And, you know, I, it's not for me, it's not it doesn't work in every part of the world. I don't think like being having the choice to choose your diet is very awesome. And a nice privilege of being an American, I think because I've traveled a lot. I've traveled all over all over the continent. And, you know, choosing your diet is is so it's so rad that we get to do that. Because when we went to Alaska, I stayed up there for, you know, half a month with one family and all the kids, the kids were responsible for hunting for the family, you know, for meat. Well, think about it, though, in Alaska that the northern most state in our country, right, there's no farmers markets. There's not having they don't have the produce that we have here in San Diego. So what do you do for survival and putting it like that, like you make it happen? Okay. And you can grow stuff? Sure, you can make your own garden but like, it's not, it's not the wealth, the bountiful, the bountiful farmland that I have here in Southern California, you know, so they do it that way. Yeah. And then in southern parts of southern parts of Mexico, they can't afford to eat meat. So they are vegan by default. Right? So they everything's, they have some really good Vegan Cuisine in Mexico that a lot of people don't may or may not know about, but they can make anything into an awesome spread of food with not, you know, with either the worst parts of the animal in the food, like, you know, they make something good out of it, or they just don't have it at all, because you can't afford it. Right. Right. So there's the kind of two extremes of our and we're, you know, we're sitting here in the middle between those two extremes that I just talked about, I guess, we get to choose because, well, I mean, that's just what's afforded to us, we get to do that. And so I, I have to keep that in my mind that I have that. I have that awareness of that privilege that we get to choose what we eat, you know, just verges. I'm thankful. I'm thankful for that. Yeah, Terry  32:53 I know for sure. Josh  32:55 Yeah. And there's some places even in California, like when we I lived in San Francisco, we thought we did a food training program in the more impoverished neighborhood up in San Francisco area. And there was not even there. It's they call it a food desert. There's nowhere to even buy healthy food. Yeah, they're there. There's like liquor stores, and, you know, cheap pizza joints and whatever. But there's no way to buy farmer's market food in that neighborhood. You have to go somewhere else to go to even like a whole foods or the nearest whole foods was like a pretty long bus ride from where we were, you know? Yeah. So it's not accessible. Terry  33:32 I think there's like that in Dallas as well, aren't there? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think every big city has something like that. Roy Barker  33:41 Well, and we're lucky in the fact to that some countries, it's like, you know, we get to walk into these nice grocery stores, and there is a selection. Whereas sometimes, you know, some countries you walk in, and you take what they have that day. I mean, it's Yeah, you know, it's one thing and there is no so we Yeah, we are definitely lucky that we not only live in this time, but we live in this country because we do have so many choices. And Terry  34:03 some people got a big wake up call to that, you know, just because of COVID because everything was gone. It's like you go in just tried to get a couple of things. I mean, who knows toilet paper and all that stuff would be going for Clorox I'm still trying to get some this Josh  34:18 break. We had we had a little we got a little smidgen of what other people I guess experienced in those. Yes, in that sense, I guess, you know, so. But so I try to keep that in the front of my mind. You know, be aware that we are we're, you know, just I guess be aware of my flute privilege in a sense, you know, yeah. And my son, my son is he's allergic not allergic bees. You know, he's basically allergic to lactose, garlic, and gluten. Oh, so I so I have to be able to I you know, he's, he's lucky and blessed that I am a chef and I can cook different things for him because he would screwed otherwise you know like yeah, like it's easy to get almond milk and cashew milk and stuff like that or whatever. But he you know how we have to make it I have to make him a special dinner that we can all enjoy. I don't want to make like three different dinners right I want to make like one thing that we can all have so we do a lot of we do do a lot of plant based cooking here. But I have to make it have to be able to make it garlic free and still taste good. No dairy and still taste good. You know say I could do a separate one but Roy Barker  35:26 I could do without the dairy but the garlic. That's, that would be a problem. Josh  35:32 Yeah, it's tough. So like if he's gonna if he spends a night at someone else's house, we're like pizza. Roy Barker  35:39 So tell me um, so what is the biggest surprise and you know from the meat from all three standpoints? The music, the food and the beer? What's the big what's the, I guess your biggest success that you put together? And you're like, that was awesome. Terry  35:56 Oh, so many isn't there, Josh? Josh  36:00 Oh, my gosh, too many to choose from a cool one. I have a list right here. I honestly I feel like I feel like, aside from aside from being able to have a family that's a big success. No. Wife and Kids. I think that every time I finished like someone's wedding, I feel like it's a big success. Because I just you know, you feed you feed 30 250 people, all this food, you know, all these courses? And does it you know, everything start to finish make their dreams come true. You know, whatever on this night. I feel like that's a good success. I feel like it's a big. I feel like a little six on a smaller scale. But it's still a big success is when I can make those non garlic non dairy non gluten foods and the whole family is still stoked on the food. Yeah, you know, yes. So because, because sometimes, you know, sometimes it doesn't work. Roy Barker  36:52 Yeah. Is there? Is there a particular pairing that you've put together? That you can remember? that really stood out? Yeah, Josh  37:00 yeah. The last one that we did was really awesome. It was we did try to on a big Santa Maria grill, which is a style of cooking out here. It's kind of like Texas barbecue, except in the fact I mean, don't nobody shoot me. Terry  37:18 Oh my gosh, it's disclaimer. Josh  37:22 Yeah, it's a California style of cooking that was invented by the by rancheros, the Mexican ranchers that were coming up from Mexico through California, with all the cows, and they basically cooked over an open fire. And they the tri tip is a cut of meat that you can really only get and kind of it's really only the western states. They don't do it out west of Texas, you know, maybe not. I don't even know if they do in Texas. But I have never because I know you guys are big on brisket. So you don't need Yeah, it's it's it. It's a special cut. And I did a whole dinner based around it. Excuse me, and I paired it with one of the local breweries who does. They also do gluten free beer. And we did a whole dinner with and everything was basically it was really cool because we brought up the huge grill. Yeah, and everything was cooked on the fire. Everything from the talk, you know, the chicken for the tacos, the tortillas. Everything except for the desserts because my sister's a baker and she didn't want to do her desserts on the fire. But but it was just it was a success in the sense that I was a little scared doing tacos at a beer dinner because it's not it's not super high end. But you charge a little bit more for a beer dinner right than you would for maybe just if I'm selling tacos and beer. It's a full dinner. But but people who were like taco connoisseurs were there and they're like, this is the best taco ever had the pairing made it so much better. You know, like, pairing was is the key when you ended the success comes from when you actually nail the pairing? Yeah, because the because the beers already good. Food The food's already good. Like I have to. I bet the validation comes from when you people are like, the pairing made it awesome, you know? Yeah, so I am like, Yeah. Roy Barker  39:02 Did y'all have music? Did you have music there? Josh  39:06 at that one, that one. That one wasn't music pairing per se, but I told them to. I gave him some ideas of what kind of music should play, you know, like more like, up up tempo, maybe Mexican inspired punk rock. So bands from Mexico that do rock and roll a punk rock would pair well with that. Yeah. All right. It was fun. And it worked. It worked. Roy Barker  39:27 So now you know, the next question come in is what was the biggest flop that you've put together? Josh  39:39 Trick question. Yeah. Well, I think it would be more like, I think that'd be more maybe in the, the, in the music side of things. When you know as if you put out a record, and it doesn't do as well as everyone's anticipating or whatever because like as as music as music trends abin flow, and we put out a record and it doesn't sell as much as the previous record or whatever, right. And we change the style of it, you interrupt the fans perception of what you think music should be or whatever. And I see chefs do the same thing too, if they put something new on the menu, and it doesn't go over as well. So I think, I don't know if it's the biggest flop ever, but like, you know, we've on that kind of, for example, on that vegan menu. But we have to, we have to entertain so many people every single day. 125 people a day. And we put curry on the menu, like just the regular kind of a delicious little Thai curry. Yeah. And we did it twice. And we got feedback that that they said nobody liked it. They liked everything else. Surprise, well, but it's something that it's funny though, because I you make it, I make it for weddings, I make it for different events. And it's always like, Oh my gosh, it's so this is so good. And then you give it to this one company. And they're like, we didn't like it. So we take off the menu. But it's such a weird thing. Because you're used to it being like your go to Yeah, and so, so they don't get it anymore, they decided that they're not going to have that, you know, so it feels like a flop in a way. It's like, well, what am I? It's hard to ask somebody, What don't you like? Yeah, they just don't like it? Well, you can't, you know, Roy Barker  41:22 we've all got different tastes and different backgrounds. So do you find that you put something to get, you know, we're looking, we only have to talk about the curry. But, you know, just in general, you put, you put these two things together that you just think, oh, man, I knocked that one out of the park these tastes so good together. But then other people's taste is just not, not where yours was? Or, you know, are you? Has it gotten to the point that when you think it's pretty good, you know, generally the following is pretty good as well. Josh  41:57 Yeah, I think that even even at the if it's a three course, a three course tasting. And let's say there's like, even if there's 20 people there, and it's like a smaller one. Yeah, almost every single person will have a different favorite of the night. Yeah, they're like, I really miss one. So this will this are like the song you miss chorus, whatever, everyone's gonna pick and choose a different thing. So it's hard to it's hard to gauge my success or failure on on those kind of events sometimes, because, you know, like I said, it's almost like, like a, but when you when the people are at your event in front of you, at the table, or at a wedding and you're trying to impress the bride, or the bride's mom, or whatever the case may be. It's like a living Yelp. Right, right there. Right. And I'm not I'm not like going on the website saying like, Oh, what's this restaurant? Like? Let me let me find out about their their meal, Hawaiian tacos special or whatever. They're right there. And they'll be just be like, yeah, it wasn't good. Like it or whatever. Or, I really liked it. Thank you, I'm going to tell everybody about it, you know, so you wait for that validation. And that's, you know, and that's, that's hard to do as an artist or creators, like, get that validation from people, or, or get that constructive criticism, or feedback. Hey, I just wanted to let you know, I think that blah, blah, you know, I mean, there's ways to do it. And I'm, I'm mature, and I can hear people, I can accept people saying, you know, maybe it wasn't as good as your last time or whatever. But if they do it in the right way. You're sensitive baby. erry  43:35 Yeah, they are. Right. Roy Barker  43:39 Like I said before, and I mean, it is that I think we have to encourage our local chefs to, to take a chance. I mean, we would all be eating meat, potatoes, and green beans, if people didn't take a chance, so may not be our favorite. Terry  43:53 Those aren't bad things. But they're now the same thing over Roy Barker  43:56 and over, we just have to encourage our chefs to take a chance, it may not be our favorite meal, but we got to encourage them to keep trying and coming up with all these different cool things. I mean, there's, that's the other thing, you know, talking about the grocery stores and how plentiful food is, if he just stop and take all the local restaurants that people have around them, you know, in urban areas. There's so many different varieties of food, not only the Mexican, Italian and different ethnic groups like that. But even within that group, you know, like we've got two or three Mexican food places that they're they're just totally different. But they are still good in their own right. Yeah. So anyway, they're Josh  44:37 just, I mean, it's a huge country. So they're everywhere, right? Yeah. Yeah. Different. cuisine is all over the place. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And there's like Texas barbecue versus Missouri or Kansas Terry  44:49 City. Yeah. States, California. Yeah. Roy Barker  44:52 Yeah, for some right. I get that. Yeah, Tennessee, and I guess Missouri, St. Louis. They all want to have their own Are we? I don't know. I mean, I'm not that much of a connoisseur I guess I like I'll eat it it in. If it's good now. Terry  45:05 Well, I grew. I grew up in Nebraska and we had some good beef. I'm telling ya, I am. This plant based stuff was very hard for me to say yes to. I mean, it's, it's good, but I did make a really good I was gonna tell you I mean, it was really good 10 pay Boland ace. Oh my gosh, it was getting squashed. And I had never cooked with Tim pay before. So I didn't really know what to expect. We've kind of played with some tofu, but it turned out really good. I was proud of myself. That was one one good thing. Yeah. Josh  45:39 That's a good one. Yeah. A lot of stuff with that. Roy Barker  45:41 That's good for the home audience to to, you know, step out there. And like I said, I encourage Terry to take a chance that we're not going to start we'll throw it out whip something else up. It's not a big deal. But she's about 100% she never she never misses. So I'm lucky. Terry  45:54 He just wants to eat. He knows. Josh  46:00 Yeah, I mean, you got to have an adventurous spirit to know, some of the stuff that you like is already vegetarian based. You know, grilled cheese sandwiches vegetarian? Yeah, mac and cheese is vegetarian and vegan necessarily. Right. You know, I guess it depends on when you say plant based if you're talking like full vegan, or vegetarian with, you know, or, you know, most of the, you know, like I said that balance? Terry  46:23 Yeah, we're trying to do the full thing because Josh  46:26 some some of the some of the diets or some of the diets are calorie based also, like, it doesn't matter what you eat depends on the calories. Yeah, you know, right. So like, there's all different ways to pends on your own health, you know, your own your own goals, their, for your health, you know, I was, I was overweight as a kid, you know? And oh, yeah, Terry  46:47 we can talk about that a little bit. Yeah. Okay. I mean, if you want to, probably pertains to the title of, there you go, we need to tie back. Josh  46:59 Yeah, cool, baby. Sir. I think that I think that some of it was, like I said, I don't know about the food desert thing. You know, we were we're not, we're not a rich family by any means. But I think a lot of food that was brought home was not healthy food. And then, you know, it was a tumultuous family situation, too. So I think the trauma adds to adds to some of the weight issues with some kids, you know, growing up and not having, when your parents are so involved with what's going on in the, in their relationship, they might not see everything that needs to happen for the, for the diet, for the health needs. And you know, a lot of a lot of the kids in San Diego and Southern California in different sections to two meals of the day, maybe sometimes two and a half meals are coming from the school, you know, not even coming from their house. So. So that says a lot about like food, and you know, nutrition and homes and stuff like that. It's like some parents just aren't aware of how much a kid actually needs nutritionally. And yeah, there's tons of calories in the house, but it's like, what is it? Twinkies otter pops Kool Aid row, big, big macs, Happy Meals. You know, I don't want to cook tonight. Let's go get a happy meal. This other other bullshit, you know, like, so like, I think that people it's okay every once in a while. Sure. I love I love eating out burger. I mean, Oh, you don't have that in Texas, but Terry  48:22 Oh, yeah, Roy Barker  48:23 yeah, we just got Terry  48:25 in and out. Yeah, Josh  48:27 I I good. Yeah, I everyone loves them for their good reason. It's it's fresh stuff. It's still fast food. It's still a hamburger. Yeah. So if you eat a ton of it, you're gonna get sick, but it's better than other things, you know. So like I said, Every once now might even okay, but when your parents are heavily relying on, on that to support your nutritional value and our nutritional, you know, outcome and your life and stuff like that. It's not it probably won't end up well for the kids. You know. Luckily, I got into, I started getting into sports and music and other things so that I could tone it down a little bit, you know, because the coaches don't put up with that. Yeah. And then, and then if you're into music, you just can't be, you know, you have to be a little bit healthy to be able to play on stage every night to like, you'll just get sick. Yeah, he basically just get sick. Yeah. So, yeah, that was a thing I went through. Roy Barker  49:17 Yeah, um, you know, as well, and we were guilty even as, as adults, you know, it's, it's easy and quick and hitting the drive throughs and it's just, you know, it's making the commitment that, you know, we're going to eat at home and just, you know, try to cook and try to do all these different things, but it's, you know, it's an easy habit to fall into, unfortunately. And you know, I can speak from that that's, you know, why I gained so much weight is just not only poor eating habits, but poor, poor choices of foods are placed to go to so. Terry  49:52 Yeah, and I need chocolate. Yeah, I need it. So you do yeah. Do you need chocolate? It's good for your heart. Yes, it is. Yes. Oh snap this pic how much you think you got to pick how much Yeah, but right and I can just do a little I can just do a bite and be okay. Roy Barker  50:11 It is plant based so I mean, yeah nothing wrong with that all right Josh sweet yeah all the all the all the old stuff. Yeah. Well, any last word before we wrap it up. I know we've gone way long we appreciate your time and you being Oh yeah. Terry  50:31 Yeah, yeah, just the name of your restaurant and and your band and all of that too. Josh  50:38 Oh sure. The so I worked at I worked for harvest kitchen. And so we're we're, you know, a catering a boutique catering company in San Diego, and we got a food truck and we go all around all around the state and stuff like that wherever, wherever food, food festivals, music, festivals, golf tournaments, whatever, weddings, but but we're really focused and committed to like grass fed and organic and local, as local as possible farms and stuff like that. Eating, we don't say healthy, typically we say helpful, helpful, you know, balanced stuff, balanced diet, because like I said, we do love a good braised short rib or like a really good juicy burger. But Where's it coming from? Yeah, and do it. Do I know the person that grew this produce? And you know, so I talked to my reps all the time. And you know how organic stuff like that. Blah, blah, blah. It's a whole it's a whole other topic. Right? But yeah, so harvest kitchen. And so that's, that's, that's where my main chef gig is. And so I do my events based out of there my pairings and stuff with the local breweries and everything like that. And then yeah, my music is I was in a band called dogwood for a long time. So we were all over the place with that I did that full time straight out of high school for about 14 years or so. Yeah. And we put out records and went to Texas a lot, you know, all over Texas, every, every every cool place you could be. And then now now, now I do music called it's called St. delicous, which is the patron saint of San Diego. And so I just, I thought that'd be fun. Yeah, and now, you know, I have, I have different things to say now that I'm, you know, a dad and seeing seeing the world the way it is now versus when I was in high school and things change. So now, that's how I do it now. Yeah. And then, and then I do the podcast, the food and music podcasts, because so many people from both of my careers are kind of doing similar things, whether it's musicians who cook or brewers who used to be musicians, or people who put on concerts or whatever. So I was I just wanted to talk to those people and kind of give voices to you know, more more women in the industry. Because Because in our in the music and food industries, the women have lesser voice a little bit, you know, like they have they have big voices, but they're not always heard. Right. So I kind of wanted to give a platform to more of those people, more of those creators who are kind of keeping helping keep the industry afloat and doing cool things. So yeah, my my show coming out tomorrow is with her. We're kind of a local female chef who used to do music. So it's kind of cool. doing all this stuff to see. And then hearing people's stories. Really, when I do these shows. I'm like hearing Everyone's story. Yeah, learning. Like that. So yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Roy Barker  53:27 So tell me one more time Josh  53:29 10 parting words of wisdom is usually just stay safe and be kind to each other. Roy Barker  53:34 So tell me one more time about the love the catcher's mask. poster behind you. Is that is that a that is? The padres? Josh  53:45 Yeah, it's, it's from the deep padres and the Detroit Tigers 1984 World Series nice. Just a local artist was commissioned to do it. I found it at some thrift store in the corner, like oh, we're getting rid of this. Because that was that was the first time when I was little the Padres had gone to the World Series. Yeah. And they got they got killed in the World Series, but they still went Yeah, so I have this. Yeah, I don't know. It's just a funky colorful back. Yeah. Does my son Terry  54:22 likes baseball? Josh  54:23 Yes. I like baseball. Yeah. So that's fine. That's what it is. All right, Josh. Well, thanks Roy Barker  54:29 a lot. Y'all go visit Josh podcast. It tells how the if somebody wanted you to put on a pairing for them out in the San Diego area How could they reach out what's your email Josh  54:42 either Yeah, either through my my podcast page the family cast on Instagram or or even just my personal one is Josh camp EMB. That's my and then at the through those two it kind of links to all my other stuff too. So I got I got a food page and a music page and hardest kitchen page. So Kind of active all over the internet. Yeah, Terry  55:01 good. Good. You're everywhere. Roy Barker  55:03 All right, we all go out everywhere. Go visit Josh and see what he's got to offer. Thanks so much for your time. We certainly do appreciate it. Terry  55:10 Thank you, john. Yeah, it's been fun. Roy Barker  55:12 That's gonna do it. I don't know that episode. You bet. that's gonna do it for another episode of feeding fatty. Of course. I'm Roy. Terry  55:18 I'm Terry. Roy Barker  55:19 You can find us at www.feedingfatty.com. We're on all the major social media platforms as well. video of this interview will go up when the episode goes live. We're on all the major podcast platforms as well Google, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify. If we're not a one that you listened to. please reach out we'd be glad to add you. So until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your family. 55:50 Yeah www.feedingfatty.com

Today I sat down on a whim with my friend Ashley Broderick and we just talked all things womens health. This episode was also released on their platform (hence the intro). We talk everything from how your hormones actually work, how hormonal contraception works, what the REAL side effects are that most doctors aren't talking about, fertility awareness, cervical mucus, periods-- whats normal, whats not and SO SO much more.  If you have listened or followed me for a while you know I am incredibly passionate about women understanding their bodies and giving alternative options besides the pill to shut down natural hormone production to help women who struggle with heavy or painful periods. Or plain old educating women on how their bodies actually work.   We had a great response on their platform so I decided to also release here. ENJOY! As always all information heard on the podcast is to be used as INFORMATION ONLY and does not provide medical advice (or nutrition or mental health advice) :)

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger and Wilson Pang, authors of the new book, Real World AI: A Practical Guide for Machine Learning. We sit down and talk about some of the biggest misperceptions about AI, as well as some practical advice on how to tackle creating, building, and maintaining AI projects. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help you rethink, reset and remix yourself and your organization. Each week, we're bringing the latest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses, as well as the tools, tactics, and trends you'll need to thrive as a new innovator.Interview Transcript with Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger and Wilson Pang, Authors of Real World AI: A Practical Guide for Machine LearningBrian Ardinger:  Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing set of guests. Today we have Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger and Wilson Pang, authors of the new book called Real World AI: A Practical Guide for Machine Learning. Welcome to the show.Wilson Pang: Thank you, Brian. Really excited to be here. Brian Ardinger: We are excited to have you both here. This is an exciting world of technology and new trends that are happening. AI is obviously on the forefront of a lot of people's minds. And I'd love to get your input on what do you really mean when you say real-world AI and how does that differ than people's perceptions out there?Alyssa Simpson: I think one of the things that we wanted to address with this book is sort of the in-between space between, you know, the hype and maybe what you read about AI and the headlines, or what you see AI or very smart futuristic systems depicted in the movies. And then, you know, also a very academic or technical approach to machine learning that you may have come across a textbook or learned in school.And this is kind of the middle reality, right? Is, you know, what are real companies who are using machine learning based technology? How are they using it? You know, what struggles are they having? What successes are they having? And then how does it work in the real world. In the reality that we all live in and share and products that you probably use frequently in your everyday life?Brian Ardinger: Well, I think there are a lot of misconceptions about what AI even is. Maybe Wilson, can you tell us a little bit about some of the myths or misconceptions about AI that people commonly struggle or fumble over? Wilson Pang: There's a few major common misconceptions. Number one, it's really, a lot of people think AI, they think is the kind of a machine can do whatever human can do, right? This is called Artificial General Intelligence. Basically, AI can repeat human. So that's happening in those small ways but it's far away from the reality. In reality, what AI, all the real-life AI, is really the application, which can be taught or learn to carry a specific task without being programmed to do soSo, the machine can learn from data. And then performing some tasks. So that's kind of a like what real world AI is. So that's number one misconception. Number two misconception is that people are thinking to build an AI, the team needs to spend a lot of their time to tune the model, work on the model, and get the best performance. It is more related to the signs or the model tuning.  In reality, science is a big part of AI, for sure. But for the AI team, they spend a majority of their time, on data. Need to collect the right data, clean up the data, make sure the data has all of the representatives and also make sure that data has quality. And then the data complete the magical part is to really improve the AI performance. So those are the two major misconceptions. I hope everyone can really learn and understand that. Brian Ardinger: You know, you often see two sides coming out, when you talk about AI. You have one side of the spectrum where everybody talks about AI as a panacea of opportunity. And it's going to change the world for the better. On the other side, you have the folks that think AI is a massive danger and a menace and a lot of unknown repercussions. Where do you guys fall on that spectrum? Alyssa Simpson: I'll argue all sides of that one. I think both are true and neither are true. As with anything, machine learning and AI technology is disruptive. It already has changed the world as we know it and will continue to be an incredibly powerful and disruptive technology in almost every industry. On the other side, it's just technology, right? And there's a lot of things that are powerful and it's only as powerful as what you put it towards and how you shape it.And in other ways, it's incredibly brittle and really narrow as Wilson was referring to, this is not a magic eight ball. It's not generalized. AI often is very narrow and specific, and only is able to accomplish a fairly narrow and specific tasks that you train it for, if you have all the data available to train it really successfully to perform that task.And so, you know, what we see in reality is companies having a lot of success. If they are able to find a use case that this technology can perform really well and do things that previously were undoable before and open up new streams of opportunity. Brian Ardinger: Where are some of the industries that are getting the most out of AI right now. And where do you see the trends moving, when it comes to folks capturing the benefits of AI? Wilson Pang: AI only become a buzzword in recent years. But in reality, AI has been there for a long time and high-tech industry who has big company like Google, Facebook, all those tech giants. They have been using AI for a long time. And AI has been used to optimize their price sprints, to help you find the right product, to give you a better recommendation. To show you a better content. So those have been there for a while. The usage of those AI technologies is pretty mature, and that's also almost embedded in every part of their product. So, for high-tech industry, very mature. Meanwhile, in recent years, it's also a lot of other industries, they are catching up. Like the finance industry. The medical industry.  All kinds of industries are catching up.So, you can see the train of AI is already, the adoption of AI has become much broader. And also, the speed to adopt AI is also a leverage spot. Meanwhile, as you mentioned earlier, AI can really bring on a lot of benefits. Can also create a lot of harm. So, with this even wider adoption, we really need to make sure people understand how to use AI in the responsible way. So that way we can get the benefit part, but meanwhile not really doing a lot of damage to the society. Brian Ardinger: Yeah, you definitely hear that. And you hear the use case scenarios when it goes bad and that's oftentimes hyped up. I actually just read this morning. I think it was a fast company article talking about how the New York City Council is considering new rules meant to curb bias in hiring when it comes to AI and putting AI in hiring practices and that. What's your take on some of those challenges that you're seeing in that particular space. Alyssa Simpson: Yeah, I know Wilson and I both feel really passionate and strongly about the importance of responsible and ethical applications of AI. You know, one of the places where I see challenges is that people don't think about the potential harms or bias from the beginning.And don't look at their data and training set really critically, with a critical eye to inform whether or not that training set is appropriate for the use case that that model will be applied to in the future. So, in take your hiring example, you know, there was a famous case a couple of years ago, where Amazon tried to use machine learning to look at resumes and figure out which ones are going to be the strongest candidates and put those forward. And, you know, they found it was really biased from a gender perspective.  That's because the training data set that they were using was mostly men because Amazon mostly had men working there. And so, the system wasn't trained to be biased against women. The training data had more examples of men having more success at Amazon. And so, the model ended up amplifying the biases that were there already. So often, that's sort of a classic case of what's happening, Is that the model is supercharging, right, any existing biases in our society. And so, as we all know, are at least in the United States, right? There's a lot of biases against women. There are racial biases, you know, there's all sorts of different challenges that exist in hiring practices. And if you are not careful, or if you are not actively sort of proactively correcting for some of these challenges in the data, you can end up with a model that reflects those back to you. And at that times makes it worse. Brian Ardinger: With that, are there particular ways or opportunities for folks to do better job at that particular training. Is it just coming to light now? We're getting better at this, and so we're, we're learning from these mistakes. And so, they're being amplified, but we're getting better at it or walk me through the state of AI and specifically around the bias of the training of the system. Alyssa Simpson: Yeah. I mean, I have to think, unfortunately, most people who are training models are not thinking about this at the beginning. You know, perhaps more and more, but I think it's often really overlooked at the data stuff. And they only realize it later once deployed some big into production, like, Oh woops. You know, but if you think about it from the beginning, it's a lot easier to correct for. So, I'll take a, perhaps a different example. If you're building like a voice assistant, like a Siri or an Alexa or something. And you want it to work for people in the United States? Well, that means you need to capture voices from people in the United States, right? Not just white men. You need to also capture voices from people who speak English as a second language or from children or from elderly people or from people in the South who may have a Southern drawl.So, you need your training data to be reflective of the population that is going to be served or be interacting with the system. So, in say New York's hiring case, if they're building an AI model and they don't want it to be biased, well, you know, look at the candidate pool, right. But you know, everyone who lives in New York state, do you have a representative sample in your training data of everyone who lives in New York state or is your training data biased already you know. And there's a lot of different types of biases. This is like, you know, sort of a sample bias or collection bias. There's a lot of different ones, you know, but is it bias towards a particular demographic that you could look at it more critically and then include a much broader set of examples that are more reflective? That's probably the easiest thing that most people can do, but certainly not the only thing. Brian Ardinger: That makes sense. So, let's dig into the book a little bit. Wilson in the book you outlined some of the key characteristics and the things that people should be looking at and working on when deploying a new AI system. What are the key insights in the book that people should take from it?Wilson Pang:  Our book actually walks through the whole journey, from identify the problem, to problem of the team, from defining strategy to how to get data. And also talking about a buy a model or build a model, right. There's a lot of details around how to really develop the AI journey. If we can make a quick summary there's a few super important points there. Number one is really to identify the right problem to solve. And you always also want to start from small instead of wanting to boil the ocean, in the beginning. So, the right problem, which should be a, really small problem or a specific, and also, you know, what a success looks like if you are successful, and you knew how to measure that.And that will give you a good start. And then after you have that right problem, then you need to assemble a right team. On the right team, you need to also have multiple different roles. Besides everybody can think of I need a data scientist. I need a machine learning engineer, right? You also need the people who really need to know the business, either product manager or business eminence to help you to understand the problem. And then a data scientist can connect the department to a science problem. I also needed engineers to have you deploy this tool production. And after you deploy to production, you also need to monitor and the operation, all of those AI model, right? So, assemble a right team is super important. So that's number two. After that, I think another super important part comes is really to get the data. Get the right data. So, the right data also has a lot for meanings on there, that can mean you need to have the data quality, right. You need to have the data to be representative of different categories or groups, right? Alyssa mentioned earlier, if you don't have the right data to represent the different group of users, you can create a lot of bias. So, data cleanup, data quality. That's another big piece. After that, you probably get the right data to run properly. You will have a successful pilot and they get some good results. Or the company will help you to celebrate the success. And they'll also want to what's next. So that comes with data. You need to scale from a pilot to production, where you also need to invest a lot more to consider how you come to the production. How you can access the data regularly. You need to refresh the model. You need to refresh the data. And also, you probably also need to define some common process to help you manage the data, manage the model. And that you also need to continue there, like at a production scale. Now we are not really running a pilot that you, maybe your model is serving meetings or hundreds of meetings for people. You have to make sure the model is available. And you can deploy the increase the demand. So, there's a lot of things to consider, once it comes to the production. And also, once you start to have more and more productive use case, you know, AI is impacting the business in a huge way. So that is the part, consideration like a lot of ethical consideration or responsive governing, a lot of those kicks in.  So you need to define not just the product, but a program, also a product to make sure you can get the benefit of from AI across the whole organization instead of just the one product.So those are the key points to consider when you really want to deploy successful AI. I know that's a lot. And I think I only covered a small piece of it.  And if you might want to learn more check out our book. Brian Ardinger:  That's an interesting point because I think a lot of companies want to dip their toes into AI and get better at it. But there's so many different moving parts. So, what recommendations would you have for ordinary folks, ordinary companies trying to get up to speed on this topic and prepare. How should they look to find an expert on the outside to lead them through this process? Should they start building a team? What are some steps that people can do if they want to get more into this AI world?Alyssa Simpson: Well, there's a book that we wrote, that might provide step one. Step one, read the book. You know, but in all honesty, you know, I think that's part of the reason we wrote the book is because we got asked this all the time, and this was a way for us to kind of brain dump on paper in a little bit more scalable way of like, Hey, here's a quick guide of how to get started.There is no one size fits all approach. It depends on your company size. It depends on your budget. It depends on your risk appetite and a lot of other things. But I think generally speaking, my guidance would be, find a problem that is well-suited for AI. We talk about this in our Goldilocks chapter, which is pick the right problem that you want to solve. Is really important to solve for your business.It's not a good approach to say, Hey, I want to do AI. Let me like sprinkle this AI magic on top of my company. And that's not how it works. It's Hey, I have a really hard problem to solve. And, you know, I think it's really well suited to be solved by machine learning technology. And that's a much better way to approach it, right.It needs to be a problem that is really important to your business. That's critical to get done, right. That has high value that you have a lot of data in order to solve that problem, that you can train a model to help you solve. Brian Ardinger: You've been around in the AI space for quite a long time and seen a lot of changes. What are you most looking forward to in the years ahead? Wilson Pang: I think there's a lot of evolvement in this AI data field. There are a few areas, particularly I'm super excited about.  Really the kind of this big language model are, you probably are really seeing like what kind of a magic AI can help you to play. It is those kind of big language models, they leverage almost every piece of information on the internet, seeing all like terabytes of data and also almost capture all the knowledge from all over the word and with all of those data, they can perform a lot of amazing tasks, like write an article for you, and also maybe even write a program for you. Right. I know it's still early. They're, the people, they discover ability, but they don't really know how to really use this. And also, there's still a lot of use cases that even the big model cannot really handle. Right. But I do think they are missing. So now it’s you GPT-3.  When it comes to GPT-14, GPT-15, there might be a lot of magic it can do to this society.So that's the one part I'm super excited. On the other hand, also say AI now is not only a research problem, or a problem where only a high-tech company can tackle. Now I see a lot of different tools, to have a developer to build AI. Or maybe have a data scientist to deploy AI in production. So, with all of those tools, I feel the adoption for AI will be much broader. And the speed to adopt AI will be much faster. So, obviously a lot of different use case from any kinds of industry can be supported by AI. Some of those use cases, maybe we can, we cannot even imagine today. So those are the two areas I feel super excited Alyssa Simpson: For me. It's more personal. I'm excited to like, not have to repeat myself to Alexa. Or you can turn the lights off. Or I'm excited that, for new drug discoveries. You know, I suffer from migraines and, you know, neurology and the best medicine in the Bay Area, which the fanciest doctors have not been able to, you know, help me that much. And you know, I'm excited for new drug discoveries and things that are going to impact my everyday life for myself and those that I love. Whether or not it's a customer experience improvement or real big medical breakthrough.For More InformationBrian Ardinger: Absolutely. It's going to be an amazing world. We're, we're looking forward to it as well. We'd love to have you back on the show in the future to continue this conversation. But in the meantime, if people want to find out more about you Alyssa or Wilson or the book, what's the best way to do that? Alyssa Simpson: You can find me on LinkedIn or AlyssaSimpsonRochwerger.com. Our book is available on Amazon. We'd look forward to hearing your feedback and thanks so much for having us, Brian. Wilson Pang: Yeah. And you can always find me through LinkedIn. And Brian thanks again for having us here. Brian Ardinger: Well, thank you both for being on Inside Outside Innovation. I'm very excited to see where this world is going, and I appreciate you all sharing your insights.That's it for another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. If you want to learn more about our team, our content, our services, check out InsideOutside.io or follow us on Twitter @theIOpodcast or @Ardinger. Until next time, go out and innovate.FREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER & TOOLSGet the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE HEREYou can also search every Inside Outside Innovation Podcast by Topic and Company.  For more innovations resources, check out IO's Innovation Article Database, Innovation Tools Database, Innovation Book Database, and Innovation Video Database.  

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger and Wilson Pang, authors of the new book, Real World AI: A Practical Guide for Machine Learning. We sit down and talk about some of the biggest misperceptions about AI, as well as some practical advice on how to tackle creating, building, and maintaining AI projects. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help you rethink, reset and remix yourself and your organization. Each week, we're bringing the latest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses, as well as the tools, tactics, and trends you'll need to thrive as a new innovator.Interview Transcript with Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger and Wilson Pang, Authors of Real World AI: A Practical Guide for Machine LearningBrian Ardinger:  Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing set of guests. Today we have Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger and Wilson Pang, authors of the new book called Real World AI: A Practical Guide for Machine Learning. Welcome to the show.Wilson Pang: Thank you, Brian. Really excited to be here. Brian Ardinger: We are excited to have you both here. This is an exciting world of technology and new trends that are happening. AI is obviously on the forefront of a lot of people's minds. And I'd love to get your input on what do you really mean when you say real-world AI and how does that differ than people's perceptions out there?Alyssa Simpson: I think one of the things that we wanted to address with this book is sort of the in-between space between, you know, the hype and maybe what you read about AI and the headlines, or what you see AI or very smart futuristic systems depicted in the movies. And then, you know, also a very academic or technical approach to machine learning that you may have come across a textbook or learned in school.And this is kind of the middle reality, right? Is, you know, what are real companies who are using machine learning based technology? How are they using it? You know, what struggles are they having? What successes are they having? And then how does it work in the real world. In the reality that we all live in and share and products that you probably use frequently in your everyday life?Brian Ardinger: Well, I think there are a lot of misconceptions about what AI even is. Maybe Wilson, can you tell us a little bit about some of the myths or misconceptions about AI that people commonly struggle or fumble over? Wilson Pang: There's a few major common misconceptions. Number one, it's really, a lot of people think AI, they think is the kind of a machine can do whatever human can do, right? This is called Artificial General Intelligence. Basically, AI can repeat human. So that's happening in those small ways but it's far away from the reality. In reality, what AI, all the real-life AI, is really the application, which can be taught or learn to carry a specific task without being programmed to do soSo, the machine can learn from data. And then performing some tasks. So that's kind of a like what real world AI is. So that's number one misconception. Number two misconception is that people are thinking to build an AI, the team needs to spend a lot of their time to tune the model, work on the model, and get the best performance. It is more related to the signs or the model tuning.  In reality, science is a big part of AI, for sure. But for the AI team, they spend a majority of their time, on data. Need to collect the right data, clean up the data, make sure the data has all of the representatives and also make sure that data has quality. And then the data complete the magical part is to really improve the AI performance. So those are the two major misconceptions. I hope everyone can really learn and understand that. Brian Ardinger: You know, you often see two sides coming out, when you talk about AI. You have one side of the spectrum where everybody talks about AI as a panacea of opportunity. And it's going to change the world for the better. On the other side, you have the folks that think AI is a massive danger and a menace and a lot of unknown repercussions. Where do you guys fall on that spectrum? Alyssa Simpson: I'll argue all sides of that one. I think both are true and neither are true. As with anything, machine learning and AI technology is disruptive. It already has changed the world as we know it and will continue to be an incredibly powerful and disruptive technology in almost every industry. On the other side, it's just technology, right? And there's a lot of things that are powerful and it's only as powerful as what you put it towards and how you shape it.And in other ways, it's incredibly brittle and really narrow as Wilson was referring to, this is not a magic eight ball. It's not generalized. AI often is very narrow and specific, and only is able to accomplish a fairly narrow and specific tasks that you train it for, if you have all the data available to train it really successfully to perform that task.And so, you know, what we see in reality is companies having a lot of success. If they are able to find a use case that this technology can perform really well and do things that previously were undoable before and open up new streams of opportunity. Brian Ardinger: Where are some of the industries that are getting the most out of AI right now. And where do you see the trends moving, when it comes to folks capturing the benefits of AI? Wilson Pang: AI only become a buzzword in recent years. But in reality, AI has been there for a long time and high-tech industry who has big company like Google, Facebook, all those tech giants. They have been using AI for a long time. And AI has been used to optimize their price sprints, to help you find the right product, to give you a better recommendation. To show you a better content. So those have been there for a while. The usage of those AI technologies is pretty mature, and that's also almost embedded in every part of their product. So, for high-tech industry, very mature. Meanwhile, in recent years, it's also a lot of other industries, they are catching up. Like the finance industry. The medical industry.  All kinds of industries are catching up.So, you can see the train of AI is already, the adoption of AI has become much broader. And also, the speed to adopt AI is also a leverage spot. Meanwhile, as you mentioned earlier, AI can really bring on a lot of benefits. Can also create a lot of harm. So, with this even wider adoption, we really need to make sure people understand how to use AI in the responsible way. So that way we can get the benefit part, but meanwhile not really doing a lot of damage to the society. Brian Ardinger: Yeah, you definitely hear that. And you hear the use case scenarios when it goes bad and that's oftentimes hyped up. I actually just read this morning. I think it was a fast company article talking about how the New York City Council is considering new rules meant to curb bias in hiring when it comes to AI and putting AI in hiring practices and that. What's your take on some of those challenges that you're seeing in that particular space. Alyssa Simpson: Yeah, I know Wilson and I both feel really passionate and strongly about the importance of responsible and ethical applications of AI. You know, one of the places where I see challenges is that people don't think about the potential harms or bias from the beginning.And don't look at their data and training set really critically, with a critical eye to inform whether or not that training set is appropriate for the use case that that model will be applied to in the future. So, in take your hiring example, you know, there was a famous case a couple of years ago, where Amazon tried to use machine learning to look at resumes and figure out which ones are going to be the strongest candidates and put those forward. And, you know, they found it was really biased from a gender perspective.  That's because the training data set that they were using was mostly men because Amazon mostly had men working there. And so, the system wasn't trained to be biased against women. The training data had more examples of men having more success at Amazon. And so, the model ended up amplifying the biases that were there already. So often, that's sort of a classic case of what's happening, Is that the model is supercharging, right, any existing biases in our society. And so, as we all know, are at least in the United States, right? There's a lot of biases against women. There are racial biases, you know, there's all sorts of different challenges that exist in hiring practices. And if you are not careful, or if you are not actively sort of proactively correcting for some of these challenges in the data, you can end up with a model that reflects those back to you. And at that times makes it worse. Brian Ardinger: With that, are there particular ways or opportunities for folks to do better job at that particular training. Is it just coming to light now? We're getting better at this, and so we're, we're learning from these mistakes. And so, they're being amplified, but we're getting better at it or walk me through the state of AI and specifically around the bias of the training of the system. Alyssa Simpson: Yeah. I mean, I have to think, unfortunately, most people who are training models are not thinking about this at the beginning. You know, perhaps more and more, but I think it's often really overlooked at the data stuff. And they only realize it later once deployed some big into production, like, Oh woops. You know, but if you think about it from the beginning, it's a lot easier to correct for. So, I'll take a, perhaps a different example. If you're building like a voice assistant, like a Siri or an Alexa or something. And you want it to work for people in the United States? Well, that means you need to capture voices from people in the United States, right? Not just white men. You need to also capture voices from people who speak English as a second language or from children or from elderly people or from people in the South who may have a Southern drawl.So, you need your training data to be reflective of the population that is going to be served or be interacting with the system. So, in say New York's hiring case, if they're building an AI model and they don't want it to be biased, well, you know, look at the candidate pool, right. But you know, everyone who lives in New York state, do you have a representative sample in your training data of everyone who lives in New York state or is your training data biased already you know. And there's a lot of different types of biases. This is like, you know, sort of a sample bias or collection bias. There's a lot of different ones, you know, but is it bias towards a particular demographic that you could look at it more critically and then include a much broader set of examples that are more reflective? That's probably the easiest thing that most people can do, but certainly not the only thing. Brian Ardinger: That makes sense. So, let's dig into the book a little bit. Wilson in the book you outlined some of the key characteristics and the things that people should be looking at and working on when deploying a new AI system. What are the key insights in the book that people should take from it?Wilson Pang:  Our book actually walks through the whole journey, from identify the problem, to problem of the team, from defining strategy to how to get data. And also talking about a buy a model or build a model, right. There's a lot of details around how to really develop the AI journey. If we can make a quick summary there's a few super important points there. Number one is really to identify the right problem to solve. And you always also want to start from small instead of wanting to boil the ocean, in the beginning. So, the right problem, which should be a, really small problem or a specific, and also, you know, what a success looks like if you are successful, and you knew how to measure that.And that will give you a good start. And then after you have that right problem, then you need to assemble a right team. On the right team, you need to also have multiple different roles. Besides everybody can think of I need a data scientist. I need a machine learning engineer, right? You also need the people who really need to know the business, either product manager or business eminence to help you to understand the problem. And then a data scientist can connect the department to a science problem. I also needed engineers to have you deploy this tool production. And after you deploy to production, you also need to monitor and the operation, all of those AI model, right? So, assemble a right team is super important. So that's number two. After that, I think another super important part comes is really to get the data. Get the right data. So, the right data also has a lot for meanings on there, that can mean you need to have the data quality, right. You need to have the data to be representative of different categories or groups, right? Alyssa mentioned earlier, if you don't have the right data to represent the different group of users, you can create a lot of bias. So, data cleanup, data quality. That's another big piece. After that, you probably get the right data to run properly. You will have a successful pilot and they get some good results. Or the company will help you to celebrate the success. And they'll also want to what's next. So that comes with data. You need to scale from a pilot to production, where you also need to invest a lot more to consider how you come to the production. How you can access the data regularly. You need to refresh the model. You need to refresh the data. And also, you probably also need to define some common process to help you manage the data, manage the model. And that you also need to continue there, like at a production scale. Now we are not really running a pilot that you, maybe your model is serving meetings or hundreds of meetings for people. You have to make sure the model is available. And you can deploy the increase the demand. So, there's a lot of things to consider, once it comes to the production. And also, once you start to have more and more productive use case, you know, AI is impacting the business in a huge way. So that is the part, consideration like a lot of ethical consideration or responsive governing, a lot of those kicks in.  So you need to define not just the product, but a program, also a product to make sure you can get the benefit of from AI across the whole organization instead of just the one product.So those are the key points to consider when you really want to deploy successful AI. I know that's a lot. And I think I only covered a small piece of it.  And if you might want to learn more check out our book. Brian Ardinger:  That's an interesting point because I think a lot of companies want to dip their toes into AI and get better at it. But there's so many different moving parts. So, what recommendations would you have for ordinary folks, ordinary companies trying to get up to speed on this topic and prepare. How should they look to find an expert on the outside to lead them through this process? Should they start building a team? What are some steps that people can do if they want to get more into this AI world?Alyssa Simpson: Well, there's a book that we wrote, that might provide step one. Step one, read the book. You know, but in all honesty, you know, I think that's part of the reason we wrote the book is because we got asked this all the time, and this was a way for us to kind of brain dump on paper in a little bit more scalable way of like, Hey, here's a quick guide of how to get started.There is no one size fits all approach. It depends on your company size. It depends on your budget. It depends on your risk appetite and a lot of other things. But I think generally speaking, my guidance would be, find a problem that is well-suited for AI. We talk about this in our Goldilocks chapter, which is pick the right problem that you want to solve. Is really important to solve for your business.It's not a good approach to say, Hey, I want to do AI. Let me like sprinkle this AI magic on top of my company. And that's not how it works. It's Hey, I have a really hard problem to solve. And, you know, I think it's really well suited to be solved by machine learning technology. And that's a much better way to approach it, right.It needs to be a problem that is really important to your business. That's critical to get done, right. That has high value that you have a lot of data in order to solve that problem, that you can train a model to help you solve. Brian Ardinger: You've been around in the AI space for quite a long time and seen a lot of changes. What are you most looking forward to in the years ahead? Wilson Pang: I think there's a lot of evolvement in this AI data field. There are a few areas, particularly I'm super excited about.  Really the kind of this big language model are, you probably are really seeing like what kind of a magic AI can help you to play. It is those kind of big language models, they leverage almost every piece of information on the internet, seeing all like terabytes of data and also almost capture all the knowledge from all over the word and with all of those data, they can perform a lot of amazing tasks, like write an article for you, and also maybe even write a program for you. Right. I know it's still early. They're, the people, they discover ability, but they don't really know how to really use this. And also, there's still a lot of use cases that even the big model cannot really handle. Right. But I do think they are missing. So now it’s you GPT-3.  When it comes to GPT-14, GPT-15, there might be a lot of magic it can do to this society.So that's the one part I'm super excited. On the other hand, also say AI now is not only a research problem, or a problem where only a high-tech company can tackle. Now I see a lot of different tools, to have a developer to build AI. Or maybe have a data scientist to deploy AI in production. So, with all of those tools, I feel the adoption for AI will be much broader. And the speed to adopt AI will be much faster. So, obviously a lot of different use case from any kinds of industry can be supported by AI. Some of those use cases, maybe we can, we cannot even imagine today. So those are the two areas I feel super excited Alyssa Simpson: For me. It's more personal. I'm excited to like, not have to repeat myself to Alexa. Or you can turn the lights off. Or I'm excited that, for new drug discoveries. You know, I suffer from migraines and, you know, neurology and the best medicine in the Bay Area, which the fanciest doctors have not been able to, you know, help me that much. And you know, I'm excited for new drug discoveries and things that are going to impact my everyday life for myself and those that I love. Whether or not it's a customer experience improvement or real big medical breakthrough.For More InformationBrian Ardinger: Absolutely. It's going to be an amazing world. We're, we're looking forward to it as well. We'd love to have you back on the show in the future to continue this conversation. But in the meantime, if people want to find out more about you Alyssa or Wilson or the book, what's the best way to do that? Alyssa Simpson: You can find me on LinkedIn or AlyssaSimpsonRochwerger.com. Our book is available on Amazon. We'd look forward to hearing your feedback and thanks so much for having us, Brian. Wilson Pang: Yeah. And you can always find me through LinkedIn. And Brian thanks again for having us here. Brian Ardinger: Well, thank you both for being on Inside Outside Innovation. I'm very excited to see where this world is going, and I appreciate you all sharing your insights.That's it for another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. If you want to learn more about our team, our content, our services, check out InsideOutside.io or follow us on Twitter @theIOpodcast or @Ardinger. Until next time, go out and innovate.FREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER & TOOLSGet the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE HEREYou can also search every Inside Outside Innovation Podcast by Topic and Company.  For more innovations resources, check out IO's Innovation Article Database, Innovation Tools Database, Innovation Book Database, and Innovation Video Database.  

This week, join DeeAsia and SoSo as they uncork a recent change in their lives, review their latest finds with Sip or Spit, and stage an intervention to free you from the chains of bad and overhyped wine.

Ohhh who lives in a pineapple...pysch! None of us do, we just love it on our pizzas. It's a weird episode for y'all today, we wanted to do something fun and def different than what we typically do and in this case it's Sarah asking Hanna weird-ass questions about death, conspiracy theories, Taylor Swift, missing airplanes, and more! We had a ton of fun recording this so we hope you like it! Please like, share, subscribe, and rate us and let us know your thoughts. We are on Instagram, we have email, we even have a Facebook although we don't use it too often ha but we will if you want us to! Thank you all SO SO much for listening and for the support - enjoy the episode! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barefaced.podcast/ Email: barefaced.podcast@gmail.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BarefacedPodcast/

Beyond the Bump is a podcast brought to you by Jayde Couldwell and Sophie Pearce! A podcast targeted at mums, just like you! A place to have real conversations with honest and authentic people. In our seventy-fourth episode of Beyond the Bump, Kristy @thesleepteacher is back and this time we chat all about newborn sleep! We chat about what’s “normal” when it comes to newborn sleep, sleep deprivation, should you use dummies/comforters, tips for getting your newborn to sleep during the day and SO SO much more!We hope this episode helps everyone feel a little bit like the sleep, or lack thereof, that they're getting is completely normal.We hope you absolutely LOVE this episode! Follow us on Instagram at @beyondthebump.podcast to stay up to date with behind the scenes and future episodes. Goodies mentioned in the episode:Calm App – The #1 App for Meditation and SleepSleepy SoundsSwaddleMeSnooLove To Dream suitesTo view Kristy’s sleep programs, click HERE. This episode of Beyond the Bump is brought to you by H&M:Let's talk about newborn essentials for a hot minute - clothing your newborn child. There's one thing that we can honestly say between us and our five children, we have mastered the must-haves from the must-nots. Thanks to H&M they have created an incredible newborn collection that takes all the boxes. One of our favourites is the wrap open bodysuits as they make it super easy to put on and off when changing nappies. H&M have also got stretchy feet in their leggings to accommodate for all different size tootsies. And for any clothing directly touching the baby's skin, labels are printed inside rather than having a separate potentially irritating tag - absolute genius. H&M pride itself on design, comfort, sustainability and affordability whenever possible. To check out H&M’s newborn collection, you can pop in-store or head online and get those newborn essentials delivered straight to your door. 

After decades with just one not-so-user-friendly option, another shelf stable rescue glucagon enters the market. It’s called Zegalogue, FDA-approved and coming soon in both an auto injector and a prefilled syringe. One additional future use will be in the Beta Bionics iLet pump with two chambers – one for the insulin and one for this glucagon. Stacey talks with Frank Sanders, President of Zealand Pharma U.S. and Dr. David Kendall, Senior Global Medical Advisor. This interview covers everything from the use of Zegalogue now to cost and a look at how far treatments have come. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Check out Stacey's book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Episode transcription below Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android   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 autoinjector for very low blood sugar and by Dexcom keeping you in control with an integrated system for diabetes management.   Announcer  0:21 This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  0:27 This week after decades with just one not so user friendly option, another rescue glucagon enters the market. It's called Zegalogue, one future use will be a pump with two chambers, one for the insulin and one for glucagon.   Frank Sanders  0:43 So, with insulin being one side of that equation, when glucose does go lower, instead of simply shutting off the insulin and waiting for it to clear from the system, you have counterbalance, or the ability to counter regulate with the glucagon infusion in small little delivery boluses.   Stacey Simms  1:02 That's Frank Sanders president of Zealand pharmacy in the US, he and Dr. David Kendall, their senior global medical advisor, join me to talk about everything from the use of Zegalogue now to cost and to look at how far treatments have come. And spotting a diabetes pump in the wild never gets old. I'll tell you a quick story about what happened with us. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Welcome to another week of the show. I'm so glad to have you all here we aim to educate and inspire about diabetes with a focus on people who use insulin. My son Ben in the state is 14 years ago with type one, my husband lives with type two, I don't have diabetes, I have a background in broadcasting. And that is how you get this podcast. Thank you for the great feedback out last week's not really a bonus episode. But second episode that I've been doing, I changed it up again. And I released Diabetes Connections in the news, many of you have already listened to it. But I'm thrilled that I'm getting reaction. I don't even mind if it's constructive criticism or just I hate it. I really would like to know what you think I'm experimenting throughout the month of May. We're going to do four episodes of in the news live on Facebook first on Wednesdays at 430. And then a podcast episode that will turn around probably Thursday night or Friday morning and get you caught up on the week's news. So please let me know we have a post going in the Facebook group as well. You know, six years ago, I launched this podcast and I liked that I'm still experimenting with it. And I hope that you do too because the idea is just to get you good information that you can use whether it's long format like we're going to do today, or short headlines, like I'm trying with that in the news stuff. And of course we throw in some personal stories here and there. And after this interview, I'll tell you about Benny's first wrestling match and how you know we spotted diabetes in the wild. Alright, my guests this week are from Zealand Pharmaceutical, they just got FDA approval a few weeks ago for Zegalogue. The newest shelf stable emergency glucagon, you know, it really is incredible when you think about it the last 40 or 50 years more than that all we've had for emergency glucagon has been the stuff in the red or orange emergency box, the kind that you have to reconstitute yourself you know, and studies show that most people even those trained you don't use it very well especially under stress. And now we have three options vaccine me and G vo hypo pen and Vega log. You're going to hear from Frank Sanders. He's the president of Zealand pharmacy and Dr. David Kendall. He is their senior global medical advisor Frank Sanders has been in the pharmaceutical industry for more than 25 years. He has been with a company called therapeutics he's been with Johnson and Johnson's pharmaceutical arm many of you are familiar with Janssen pharmaceutical. He's been with GlaxoSmithKline and Dr. David Kendall has held many leadership positions in the diabetes community including at mankind at Lilly at the American Diabetes Association and at the International Diabetes Center in Minneapolis. Dr. Kendall and I also go way off topic toward the end because he served as a clinical investigator with the dcct and edic trials here homeless tourists will remember those evidence based on hope episode, which is one of my all time favorites, I will talk about the DCC T and edic trials at the drop of a hat. And I was so excited that Dr. Kendall can too Okay, quick disclosure gotta tell you, your competitor to this product is a sponsor of this show. In fact, I'm about to read an ad from them. But as you know, Diabetes Connections is here to help you get information about the diabetes community and I don't limit who we talk to because of who spends money on advertising. Now on the flip side, the advertisers are also on board with all of that so I give them a lot of credit to longtime listeners are familiar with all of this, but just in case, I like to talk about it every time and let's keep things on the up and up. Okay, let me tell you then 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 frightening which is why I am 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 and 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 gvokeglucagon dot com slash risk. Frank Sanders, Dr. Kendall, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm really interested to learn more about this. I appreciate you being here.   Unknown Speaker  5:50 Thank you. We're glad to be here as well. Yeah. Thanks so much,   Unknown Speaker  5:52 Stacy.   Stacey Simms  5:53 You got it. So Frank, let me start with you. If I could just, you know, to give us an overview a little bit. We've never talked before, if you could kind of catch me up on what Zealand is all about. And then we'll talk about Zegalogue.   Frank Sanders  6:05 Yeah, sure. Thank you for the question. I appreciate it, Stacy. So I'll start by saying that Zealand is a global biotechnology company and a world leader in peptide therapeutic development. Well, it may seem like a new company, the company was actually founded in 1998. It is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark. And we have our US presence and our company in our corporate office in Boston in the seaport area. So the company has approximately 330 employees worldwide. And our we believe our distinguished advantage is our unique peptide platform that allows us to design and engineer highly innovative peptide and peptide like medicines for, you know, for multiple conditions. So we have a 20 year legacy in r&d and peptide therapeutics, and we're very proud of what we've delivered.   Stacey Simms  6:50 Can you take just a second and I when we hear peptide on this podcast, we just think about that C peptide test, right? That helps figure out if it's type one or type two diabetes, what does a peptide therapeutic be?   Dr. David Kendall  7:02 I'm happy to take that one. And Frank, please feel free to chime in. But Stacy, a peptide in the common ones that I'm sure this audience knows about are things like insulin, glucagon, or modifications there. But they are very simply the proteins. In the body peptides generally referred to proteins which are made up of these building blocks we call amino acids, usually up to 25 to 50 of these amino acid segments plugged together glucagon, which we'll be talking about today, and LC glucagon is made up of 37 of these building blocks. So peptides that are commonly known are just those proteins that circulate in the body or makeup, the structure of the body.   Stacey Simms  7:46 Alright, let's talk about Zegalogue. I think most of my listeners are familiar with the concept of needing emergency glucagon sometimes, but tell me the specifics about Zegalogue Frank Sanders  7:56 So the clinical profile Zegalogue  is compelling. And we are actually out in active dialogue with payers right now. And we have been in dialogue with healthcare professionals and patients around the profile through market research before we execute a full product launch following approval. And the approval of Zegalogue is based on the results from three randomized, double blind placebo controlled controlled phase three trials, that's a mouthful in both children and adults with type one diabetes. And what's marketed and notable about Zegalogue is the median time to blood blood glucose recovery of 10 minutes that we've seen across all three phase three trials. More specifically, in the phase three trials. 99% of adults recovered in 15 minutes in the main adult trial, and 95% of pediatric patients recovered and 15 minutes in the pediatric trials. So So we believe the dialogue offers patients and caregivers in an important new choice for the for the management of severe hypoglycemia, which is a condition where minutes obviously matter, so we're eager. So the launch the product, in just over a month and late June,   Stacey Simms  9:02 didn't take me into that study a little bit more in terms of how low people were, if you can share that.   Dr. David Kendall  9:09 Happy to do that, Stacy and as Frank mentioned, glucagon, the native peptide or protein that many people have known about, and I'm sure many of your listeners are familiar with has been around and available for treatments since the 1960s. But what Zegalogue and dasiglucagon the active molecule was able to do is make modifications in that peptide chain to ultimately lead to chemical that we felt was suitable for development that went through those clinical testing programs that Frank talked about, and specific to those trials to bring this forward as a medication that could be reviewed and approved for the treatment of severe little bunch of blood sugar, or what we call severe hypoglycemia required that in controlled fashion, taking volunteers, courageous and really volunteers to whom we are incredibly grateful to use an insulin infusion, so give insulin in their vein in a controlled way, bring their blood sugar below a specific level, usually that level is 70 milligrams per deciliter or lower, slightly higher in the studies with children, and do that in as controlled away as possible, then stop that infusion of insulin. And this is really meant Stacy to mimic what might happen in an unexpected, unanticipated severe low blood trigger event. And those individuals then are given a dose either of placebo medicine, or in the case of these studies, Sega log and its pre Approval Form dasiglucagon, and then in those same trials, not for direct comparison, but just to understand what the world was familiar with, we also gave selected individuals, the traditional glucagon from the emergency kit that many people may know, which is the one that requires that it be reconstituted, mixed up, drawn back up in a syringe and then given so the studies took experimental, low blood sugar, let's say on average, the value is just below 70. Got the dose of medication. And then we measured the so called time to recovery that Frank talked about which in all of these trials was how long it took to see that number no matter where it started to come up by 20 points. So a very consistent measure of recovery time. And as Frank said, the median time to recovery was 10 minutes across each of the three larger phase three trials. And you looked at the 15 minute time point, which is a very important one for watching loved ones recover and making sure that they either are responsive or another dose of medicine can be given 99% of adults, 95% of children had recovery   Unknown Speaker  11:55 in that time period.   Dr. David Kendall  11:56 So very important to understand how the trials were done. But ultimately, it led to our review and approval as a treatment for severe low blood sugar.   Stacey Simms  12:06 Wow, I appreciate you going through so thoroughly, I have a couple of questions, because I have a couple of friends who have gone through clinical trials for products like this. I don't know if they were specifically in this one. But as you said, You don't just sit there and say, Okay, give me all that insulin, no, I'm gonna go low. You know, we really have to thank those people. But you mentioned some of them got a placebo. So I know it was a safe environment. But what does that mean? Like they just sat there and went low for a while?   Frank Sanders  12:32 Yeah, I'm always amazed the Food and Drug Administration, their regulators are thoughtful and cautious about how these studies are designed, we are as well, in placebo, obviously, is done only in a controlled setting where we understand what the potential risks of giving, essentially, no therapy might be. But knowing that in these studies, as I said, Even though zega log is approved for the treatment of truly severe low blood sugar, these were not patients that lost consciousness couldn't manage for themselves, but in a controlled setting where we could give them an intravenous injection of glucose if we needed to, or ultimately rescue them with safety glucagon administration, these were individuals who had to understand that they were going to go low, probably feel something they felt before not necessarily feel comfortable, and then know that there was a chance they were getting just saltwater sailing, or potentially getting one of the other two therapies. And obviously, they were monitored very carefully. And we didn't allow this to go on, you know, indefinitely. They were ultimately treated either with glucose by vain or given something to eat.   Stacey Simms  13:42 I'm curious to, again, I appreciate you letting me go down this rabbit hole. There is an interesting conversation all the time in the diabetes community about letting those go. And I know some of you, as you listen gasped. But I mean, there are some times where you'll sleep through a low or you'll just won't notice although you know, you're 7075 and then you'll, you'll float back up because your liver has kicked in it. You know, I'm curious, I know, this wasn't what the study was designed to do. But was there any information from the placebo folks of them kind of recovering without treatment?   Right back to Dr. Kendall answering that question. But first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dario. And the bottom line is you need a plan of action with diabetes. We've been lucky that Benny's endo has helped us with that and that he understands the plan has to change as Benny gets older, you want that kind of support. So take your diabetes management to the next level with Dario health. There are published Studies demonstrate high impact results for active users like improved in range percentage within three months reduction of a one c within three months and a 58% decrease in occurrences of severe hypoglycemic events. Try Dario’s diabetes success plan and make a difference in your diabetes management. Go to my dario.com forward slash diabetes dash connections. For more proven results and for information about the plan now back to Dr. Kendall, answering my questions about those that kind of resolve on their own.   Frank Sanders  15:13 So the the proportion of people who recovered with placebo therapy was extinguishing Lilo, I will say, at least in the 15 minutes time period, by 45 minutes, either they had recovered or we allowed them to recover. I know a bit more about this, because I spent my early years of research doing these experimental low blood sugar studies. And your comment about letting the logo is not something I certainly would advise as a health care professional, but it does happen. And the risks if it's not a severe low, are often you know, an inconvenience or disrupted sleep or in some cases, complete lack of awareness. The risk there, Stacy is any low blood sugar makes a subsequent low blood sugar more likely. And the typical symptoms and responses that the body has, will diminish when the body has seen multiple episodes of low blood sugar. It's as if the body's saying I've seen this before, I'm going to quit warning you and treating it. And that, as we've learned over time is one of the risk factors for an unexpected and more serious and severe hypoglycemic event. So I would not recommend letting the logo   Stacey Simms  16:24 be either, I want to be very clear. But it is something that is discussed. It's not as though that's something that to be very clear as you listen and to you all to, it wasn't something I said in that I endorse it. It's just that it does happen. And we see that sometimes you don't treat a low and sometimes it bounces back. So I didn't mean to imply that we should be twiddling our thumbs while our kids are low.   Dr. David Kendall  16:48 Right? And you're absolutely right, the body does maintain some of those defenses as ecolog. What we're talking about here is there for those circumstances where the defenses are no longer adequate, someone loses consciousness, the ability to care for themselves. Alright,   Stacey Simms  17:05 let's let's get back on track here. Again, thanks for following me down that rabbit hole. And I'm always fascinated by studies and the process. Frank, let me ask you what so what is this is tell me a little bit about the product itself because we have other products on the market. Now you mentioned already the rescue kit that needs to be reconstituted, there's a nasal spray, there's a shot.   Frank Sanders  17:22 Now this was this is so second log is indicated for the treatment of severe hypoglycemia, and pediatric and adult hit and adult patients with diabetes. Ages, six years and above, we're going to be launching it with two forms available. We're one of those is going to be an auto injector a single dose auto injector and the other will be a single dose prefilled syringe, but both of which can be used immediately without requiring reconstitution that may allow for easier use at that moment when it's needed. And so you know, that really at a basic level, that's that's core to what what Zegalogue is. And we again, believe that based on the clinical study that David David has talked about the study data all three is that what distinguishes like a log is really the the median time to recovery of 10 minutes across all clinical trials and the consistency of response rates and adults in pediatric patients again, referring back to the data that David presented. So we're eager to introduce this product again and a couple short weeks here and offer this begin to offer this to patients and caregivers alike.   Stacey Simms  18:25 shelf life, you know, do I need to put in the fridge? Can you speak to that?   Frank Sanders  18:28 Very good question. So I'll talk a little bit about the storage and stability and David if I if there are details to add, please add but Zegalogue has a three year total shelf life when stored in refrigerated conditions in once removed from refrigerated conditions that can be kept at room temperature for up to 12 months. So stability and storage conditions of Zegalogue provide for options for people with diabetes, you're at risk of severe hypoglycemia to have this available at home, you know, in the refrigerated conditions for up to three years or out of you know, refrigerated conditions, either at home or away from home for up to a year and event that it's needed. So we believe that these dual storage conditions will be attractive to the lifestyle of patients with diabetes   Stacey Simms  19:12 couple of years ago, gosh, was it ready for the pandemic It must have been in the fall of 2019. So not too long ago, I ran into Ed Damiano of beta bionics and asked him you know what's going on? How are things and you know, they've got their own, we're actually talking to them in a couple of weeks. So let's talk about this as well. But my understanding correct me if I'm wrong, is that this is the brand of glucagon that they want to put in the dual hormone pump down the line. I don't know how much anyone can speak to any of this. So feel free to say no, because I know it's it's not coming. Now, this is not what we're talking about here To be clear, but this is one of the most anticipated developments in pump therapy. And I'm curious, can you speak to this is that correct?   Frank Sanders  19:57 Well, let me tell you this and then David, you could you can add to this as well. as you see fit, but yes, I mean that's a glucagon we consider this a platform therapy, you know. So obviously we're launching dasiglucagon in the form of Zegalogue as a rescue therapy for severe hypoglycemia. But it's the first of a long string of other potential launches with dasiglucagon. In the future you had mentioned, the partnership that we have in place with beta bionics that what I will say is that it's a great partnership, we're very pleased with the progress that we're making with this program, as we near the initiation of phase three trials. And so you know, everything is really moving forward at a steady rate there with that partnership. And we also have the David can touch on as well with dasiglucagon a program and place for use in congenital hyper and hyper insulin emia as well. So so the product itself is being studied for multiple applications to benefit multiple patients, not just with severe hypoglycemia, but with other with other specialty and rare disease areas. So it's just the beginning, if you will, it's like a log is this really the beginning for the use of the molecule much, much more to come over the next three to five years. Like Frank said, we're   Dr. David Kendall  21:05 really excited to be in the partnership with beta bionics I had in his team dasiglucagon is the platform and that Frank described, we see it as helping us leverage opportunities across what we call the hypoglycemic spectrum. So testing it, we hope in weeks and months ahead in phase three in the bio hormonal we call it artificial pancreas, the bionic pancreas, with beta bionics, but also for other hypoglycemic disorders, some in the setting of diabetes, like small doses that may be used for exercise or during illness, where it's not an emergency situation, all of these are planned investigations, but not yet part of the approved use of Zegalogue. Similarly, the condition, Frank alluded to congenital hyperinsulinism, where children are born with the dysregulated continuous secretion of insulin, so it's not diabetes, but they suffer recurrent and significant hypoglycemia, then there are very limited therapies. Thankfully, it's an ultra rare disease, but one that is really want for better therapies. And similarly, there are other health conditions where unexpected low blood sugars occur outside of the setting of diabetes. And we think because of some of the unique characteristics that deci glucagon has the stability at room temperature that it can and we hope will be applied, certainly in clinical studies, we hope in the future for patients with some of those conditions.   Stacey Simms  22:38 So it's interesting a couple of weeks ago, maybe a couple months ago, now we spoke to Leo Brown, who was on The Amazing Race, we will he lives with diabetes, I guess, but he has congenital hyperinsulinism. And his they basically removed most of his pancreas. And is that the kind of thing you're talking about where this would be an alternative treatment for somebody like that, perhaps?   Frank Sanders  22:57 Precisely. And so that's one of the approaches, historically to this condition, congenital hyperinsulinism was to remove the offending organ, the pancreas, which, as you witnessed, will leave somebody living with insulin deficient diabetes, so a form of type 1 diabetes that's surgically induced, but it was one of the only available therapies, we feel like that see, glucagon. And other approaches can counteract that hyperinsulinism, particularly in the youngest children, where there are the greatest dangers for these low blood sugars. And we hope either limit the need obviate the need for surgical interventions, and add to the tools that pediatricians in particular can use to manage this incredibly challenging disease.   Stacey Simms  23:45 And just back if I could to beta bionics, can you share anything about Gosh, I feel like we've just been waiting for this for a very long time. In terms of how it works. I know that, again, that's in clinical trials coming up. So you can't talk about a lot, but I'm just trying to picture what I you know, we fill the insulin pump with insulin, then we just fill the other chamber with the gun. I mean, it just to me seems so revolutionary. I'm trying to kind of parse any information that you can share with us.   Dr. David Kendall  24:10 Yeah, it's you're spot on Stacy. It's basically a two chamber pump. So think of how current insulin pumps are programmed. And in fact, with the hybrid closed loop systems, they were tied to continuous glucose monitoring to adjust the insulin delivery and those systems that have that capability. Add to that the same sort of functionality, but with glucagon, or in this case, dasiglucagon infusion that is regulated by the pump and by the glucose measurements. So with insulin being one side of that equation, when glucose does go lower, instead of simply shutting off the insulin and waiting for it to clear from the system, you have counterbalance, or the ability to counter regulate with the glucagon infusion and small little delivery boluses just Like insulin does for higher glucose is so similar to and in fact managed in much the same way as the insulin infusion for high glucose. The glucagon chamber and infusion wouldn't give those doses as glucose values declined, or were at certain levels,   Stacey Simms  25:15 if they're a second inset on the body for that I can't imagine goes to the same inset as the insulin.   Dr. David Kendall  25:21 Yeah, so So all of that is part of the development process. Obviously, these are two separate hormones. And one of the components of dasiglucagon, as Frank talked about is it's, it's stable in this so called aqueous solution, which for you will need that saltwater, the things that circulate in the body. So you know, while in theory, they could come through the same system, the plans in place, and the previous studies have been done with two separate fusion sites. But again, connected to the same pump system. So yeah, there's some sophistication involved. And I think back to pre CGM, when people said I have to wear this device now people often do quite well wearing two devices, their CGM and their pump. So depending on the ultimate design and approach to this, we certainly see the clinical promise as being something that's very encouraging. And then overcoming those engineering and technical challenges will be part of what faces our team with the beta bionics team. Really interesting. I   Stacey Simms  26:22 can't wait to talk to them to to get more information. Thanks for sharing what you could I appreciate? Absolutely. Let's talk about cost and access. What is this going to cost? I mean, I know that a lot of it depends on insurance. You started out by saying you were talking to payers, it's so sad that that's the first thing we have to talk about.   Frank Sanders  26:38 That's a good, it's a good question. These are obviously obviously amongst the first questions we always get when we're launching any product. So so we our strategy, from a pricing perspective, is the price Zegalogue at parity meaning add or are the same as existing products on the market? And we've based this strategy really on the value that psychologic provides? I think you're the bigger question is, is it going to be accessible for patients at launch. And you know, and really, that's, that's the reason why we are out actively engaging managed care customers today, both at payers and pbms, and Medicaid providers. And so I'll share that the the conversations have been have been very good that the profile Tagalog is being received very favorably, and we do expect to have favorable accesses, that is ecolog. At launch, that will continue to build as with any new product launch that will continue to build and improve over the first six months of launch. And I think as as you know, Stacey, from our conversations a little bit earlier, as I'm a caregiver myself, in my in my life, my my wife is been, you know, suffering for from stage four cancer for a number of years, and she's doing doing very well. But we we every day, interact with the healthcare system, and really have to think through barriers to access, whether that those are financial barriers or barriers to delivery of the product through specialty pharmacies, and we are really designing our patient support capability at Zealand. With that in mind, meaning, how do we make sure that when we're launching a product, we're able to provide the resources and forms of financial assistance and other resources to help address any sort of access barriers that may exist. So so there's really don't become transparent, so do we, so to speak, or, or, or a barrier for patients. And it's not just things like financial assistance, we are also putting programs in place to be able to make access easy in terms of product acquisition and distribution, for example, by looking at at home delivery solutions and other things so so we really are going to roll out a patient support system that is really fit for launching a product like this, in this error today where we also have to worry about COVID. So we're ready to go on all fronts in that area.   Stacey Simms  28:50 And we'll link up information as it comes out on patients assistance and access and things like that. But I'm always curious. And I I know the US health system is very complex. But why budget parity, why not launch and say we're gonna be $30? Less? How come nobody ever launches and says we're gonna come out and we're gonna make it affordable out of the box?   Frank Sanders  29:09 Yeah, I mean, we we look very carefully at multiple different pricing options and research it very carefully before we make a decision around it. And the price that we choose, really any company chooses. But in this case, I'll just talk about what Zealand does is the one that we that we think is going to ensure that we are going to get the best access possible for the product at a price point that that is representative of the value, the clinical value that the product brings to the market and that and that really led us to a parody pricing strategy, not a premium pricing strategy, not a discounting strategy, but one that is at parity with the rest of the market. And you know, again, based on the feedback that we've had in advance of setting the price and after setting the price and discussing with managed care organizations, we feel that we got it right.   Stacey Simms  29:56 Yeah, but you didn't get that from patients with all due respect. I can't imagine a patient said that's the right price.   Frank Sanders  30:01 Well, I think if we ask anyone, any consumer about about the price of the medicine, you know, the will will always get the response of, can we why that can cannot be lower? Can it be lower? That's absolutely fair.   Stacey Simms  30:14 Before I let you go, as I was looking through everybody's bio here, David, I can't let you go without asking you about the diabetes control and complications trial and the edic trial, I love to talk about these studies. I have I talked to a lot of parents whose children have been diagnosed, you know, recently, I run a very large Facebook group for Charlotte, North Carolina area. And I always say like, you've got to look at these these amazing trials that were done years ago, that show how much better things are getting. And I would love to just, I don't even know what I want to ask you. But I would love to give you the floor to just say that we didn't even know that a one c mattered, we didn't know the control made a difference. And to me, the edic trial is the one that shows me how much things are getting better. I do my right on any of that.   Dr. David Kendall  30:59 And well, you're talking to a very biased audience of one in me. So I grew up in the dcct edic era, I started in diabetes research in 1981, just as dcct was kicking off. So I've been either close to or seeing patients in dcct edic, through its entire history. And we're now 40 years out from the start of that trial. And yes, absolutely. These are 14 141 of the most courageous, incredible people who committed literally decades of their life to helping us understand what benefits may come from improving glucose control, particularly early on in the course of type 1 diabetes. And what I love is that many of these are patients I know to this day who are celebrating their 17th and 18th birthdays, I'm in the setting of type 1 diabetes. And unequivocally dcct, in my mind is one of the 10 great research studies in medicine, it demonstrated the benefit of having blood sugars as well controlled as possible, as early in the course of diabetes as possible. and maintaining that for as long a period as possible that I always catch that by saying, you know doing it as rationally and safely as possible. And what we're talking about here today, meaning severe hyperglycemia was first really made evident to us in the dcct. where, you know, on average, every patient had a severe event per year during the study, because we were working so hard to control glucose. So it ties back to our topic. And yeah, for the next three and a half hours of this podcast. I'd be happy to add more if you'd like. Frank will never invite me back. So   Stacey Simms  32:48 Oh, no, no. Okay, wait, one more question about the dcct edic. Is there a follow up? Will we get another one of all these people soon? Or is it kind of   Dr. David Kendall  32:58 it continues to this day, and there are various components to it, it is much less thorough and intensive in terms of the follow up, but the 30 and soon 40 year follow up of those patients has been and will be published and presented as the years go ahead. So this is the study that probably will only end when we run out of investigators and individual volunteers for the study.   Stacey Simms  33:26 I gotta say I look at those studies. And I'm so glad you mentioned the brave and wonderful people in them. Because that has my son was diagnosed right where he turned to 14 years ago. And what they have done, has changed his outcome. It's just fabulous. So thank them next time you see I'm telling Stacy and Charlotte. Before we finish it, was there anything about that video segment that we didn't cover?   Dr. David Kendall  33:48 Yeah, I'll close and then toss it back to Frank. But I think one of the things that first attracted me to Zealand but also the work around Zegalogue is that hyperglycemia really remains one of those conundrums, one of the rate limiting features of managing diabetes most effectively, and bringing forth the two legs Zegalogue to help patients have the peace of mind make a plan for when the unthinkable might happen, a severe event. And doing so with the data that we've talked about where you have this very rapid and reliable response to Desi glucagon and the clinical trials for this, like many other emergency therapies, you don't want to have it, but you certainly want it on hand if you need it. So all of that, to me is central to what we're doing, not just with the clinical studies, but with the clinical launch of Zegalogue.   Frank Sanders  34:43 Now very good. I would just just close by saying what excites us about this launch in particular, is that there are 4 million people in the United States with diabetes on multiple daily injections of insulin and these patients are at higher risk of having severe hypoglycemic event. And despite the fact that there are 4 million people in the US with diabetes on on multiple daily doses, only approximately 14% of that population is prescribed a glucagon rescue therapy. So So what's been interesting is and positive is this is with the introduction of newer innovative therapies over the last year and a half, two years, more people are becoming aware of these treatment options, and the market is growing by by 10%. And we believe that that's really just the beginning is the you know, having Zegalogue in the market, that's yet another innovative option has the ability to further grow this by increasing awareness. And we're excited about the positive impacts effect that will have on patients and their caregivers.   Stacey Simms  35:44 Well, Frank Sanders, Dr. David Kendall, thank you so much for joining me and explaining all this. I really appreciate you spending so much time with me. Thank you.   Announcer  35:56 You're listening to Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  36:02 I will link up more information about Zegalogue. And about the DCCT EDIC trials as well. And if you haven't heard our episode, evidence-based hope, I highly, highly, highly recommend it, especially for newer diagnosed people and families. It's not just a look how far we've come kind of thing. But it also puts in perspective, a one see numbers, things right now that you can do to live a long and healthy life with diabetes. And it doesn't mean that you need to always have you know, a super low A1C I think especially as parents, we often lose track of the happy, good life thriving with diabetes, because we're so focused on getting that that time and range and those super low a one season those trials really put it in perspective for me, and what you need to really live well. And it's not what a lot of people on Facebook, what have you believe in just a second, I want to give you an update on how Benny's doing and wrestling has started. And oh my goodness, but first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. And it really is hard to remember what things were like before we started using Dexcom. I had a woman asked me what was our plan for kindergarten. And we were still a good four or five years away from Dexcom at that point, so it's really interesting to look back because it is so different. Now we were doing something like 10 finger sticks a day when Benny was going to kindergarten. I mean, even when he got older, we still did at least six to eight every day more when he wasn't feeling well or something was off. But with each iteration of Dexcom we've done fewer and fewer sticks. The latest generation the Dexcom g six eliminates finger sticks for calibration and diabetes treatment decisions. Just thinking about Benny's little worn out fingertips makes me so glad that Dexcom has helped us come so far. It's an incredible tool and Benny's fingertips are healthy and smooth, which I never thought would happen when he was in kindergarten. He for glucose alerts and readings from the G6 do not make symptoms or expectations. Use a blood glucose meter to make diabetes treatment decisions. learn more, go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the Dexcom logo.   Aren't if you've been listening for a long time or you follow me on social media, then you know that Benny is finishing up his sophomore year in high school and he started wrestling when he was a freshman he got injured right at the beginning of the season. He tore his meniscus. And he was out for the 2020 season, which was right before COVID. They were able to get a full season in and he was part of the team. He was like manager and he went on crutches to every match. And he was pretty incredible season they won the state championships for the first time. It was just a really fun year, but he had to sit on the sidelines. So that was kind of a bummer. But he is back. He's worked really, really hard. And of course with COVID they kept putting off the season. And we always thought there is absolutely no way there's going to be wrestling. So he actually went out and got a job. I've mentioned before he got his vaccine, he's at a grocery store. And he's been working really hard. And so when wrestling came back, it was kind of a tough decision to make. But he was able to work it out with his work schedule. And this kid is so busy, and they had their very first match. As you're listening it would be last week. So Benny had his very first you know, match. But that's not the story. I want to tell you what was amazing. And by the way, I can't watch wrestling. Do you watch wrestling if your kids wrestle? I can't watch any sport my kids play because I'm the loud mouth mom. So I'm always the one like trying to look at her phone. So I'm not screaming I'm not being rude. I'm not not paying attention. But I'm shockingly I have comments. So I try to keep them to myself. But wrestling is just so gross. It's so rough. I can't stand it. But they come out on the mat and the ref comes out and he's like you know our loved ones with clean Theodora and I'm looking at the ref and I immediately Look at his belt line because there's a T slim pump. He's wearing a T slim next to you know, it's right on his back. And I was sitting very close. So part of me wanted to yell like, excuse me. Hello, sir. But I didn't do anything. I didn't say anything. I did take a couple of pictures which was probably very inappropriate, this poor man, but I couldn't help myself. It was so exciting. They faced two different schools. So it was the match that He was in and then there was another match. They didn't wrestle in, and my daughter had just come home from college. So after that first match, I said goodbye. I said, Okay, if I go and I left, I went home because my daughter, Lea, I haven't seen her in a while. So I wanted to run home to her. And I couldn't talk to the ref, because he went from one match. Immediately, he crossed the gym and went to the other match. Then he came over to kind of talk to me as I was leaving, and I told him and I, you know, it wasn't sure if he'd be like, Mom, it's so lame. You know, who cares. But he lit up, he was excited, and he wants to go say hi, but it was just such a busy night. And these reps are just working, working, working that, you know, as I said, I didn't get a chance to talk to him, but he didn't get a chance to talk to him. So I'm hoping that we see him again, as these wrestling matches go on. But hey, if you're listening ref in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, drop me a line. And thank you very much for not noticing the bananas lady behind you taking pictures of your back.   Before I let you go quick note I will be speaking at the camp Nejeda event survive and thrive. That is on June 5. It's a virtual event. We are looking forward to friends for life in July, I will be there I'm not sure in what capacity as a speaker yet waiting to hear from them. Because it's very different this year, far fewer speakers, but I will be there as a vendor. So I hope I can meet at least some of you. And please join me tomorrow. If you're listening as this first drops on Wednesday, May 12, as I'm doing every Wednesday in May 4:30pm. Eastern on my Facebook page Diabetes Connections i will be doing in the news, my newscast that I'm trying out and then we'll turn that around and drop it as podcast episode. They're very short. My goal is to make them not only less than 10 minutes, hopefully less than eight or seven minutes. I'm really trying to keep it very tight and just have some headlines. But the top stories of the past week, all types of diabetes really be useful for you to make it bite size make it relevant. So let me know what you think. Thank you, 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 just a couple of days. Until then, be kind to yourself.   Benny  42:19 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms Media. All rights reserved. All rounds avenged

Transcription is AI driving from otter.ai Unknown Speaker 0:01 But can you get a couple of BJJ reports in this period of time? So first of all, I will say that if if the sound quality on these isn't the greatest, that's simply because I don't know where my lav mic is. And be, I'm driving in the car. But, you know, we live in this, this land of high productivity and all these other things. And there's, there's some times where I just want to create versus consume a and b. maximize my time. How do you how do you maximize your time? Where do people always like? Where do you find time to? To do all the editing for your podcast where you find the time to? To do anything? And sometimes the short and simple answer is you just you just fuck us free, you make the time Unknown Speaker 1:09 you find the time, if it's important to you, you will find the time to do it. I always say that because get up at four 447 so that I can snooze for at least three minutes Unknown Speaker 1:30 and drag my ass to resilient jujitsu. So I can get there at 530 in the morning. So that I can get the exercise that I like, was available, I haven't done it for mostly year, in once. But creating that time to do what's important. So like I said, I'm maximizing, maximizing this 20 minutes to just kind of pop in here and tell you, you know, hey, if it's important to you, you'll find the time and when you do it, you're going to be you're going to be pleased with yourself, you're going to be glad that you took that time to do that thing that you kept saying you wanted to do. And you did it. And you finally fucking did it. I was a couple conversations I had yesterday that that illustrate this, again, just really kind of glad that something went out in Florida or not in Sweden, or Texas. So things haven't been this wide open this a way that has been for some other places. So being able to get out and see people has been great. So yes, I was able to get out and see see a couple of people. And, you know, talking about making that time again, going out to grab breakfast with somebody that I know, admire, know, like, and trust and respect. And is the finding that time to find somebody who also has the capability to elevate you and and has good questions and is also just a joy to talk to and not like this just a friend, right? And then so so finding that time and getting that time in yesterday was was awesome. Again, had the wake up, you know, actually didn't have to wake up to do to get there on time. But I still woke up at 530 so that I was able to meditate, so that I was able to journal that I was able to put my gratitude stuff down in the journal the way that I aim to do every day. And if I don't do it first thing in the morning. And that time that I have set aside, it's not usually it's not, it's not going to get done. So So woke up and made and created that time where it would have been so much more comparables as lay in bed we're doing great. And I wouldn't have had outset either way. However, I'm just telling you that if it's important to you, you'll make that time so make time for that make time for that breakfast and you know, just it was meaningful. And so that's another place where again, if you're trying to find that time and trying to have that time, proofreading it and asking somebody to to repeat part of a group, I'm not sure what kind of groups out there these days, I know there's a number of groups like Toastmasters and all these others, there's all kinds of organizations that he doesn't have to be, you know, waking somebody up out of their bed and saying, hey, let's go, let's go grab breakfast, there's all kinds of groups that you can find that are willing to spend that time with you. And my guess is that they're starting to pop up again right now. And the second part was of the day was, had I grabbed once with another friend slash, you know, working, working co here, you know, the partners that I work with in the industry. And, you know, she and I were talking, and she was talking about wanting freedom, and in her life, and I asked her, I said, you know, what do you what do you want to do with that free time? She said, I don't know, like, wake up and, and exercise when I want, you know, just do things on my own schedule. I saceur is the point like, What? What's stopping you from doing that right now? And she tells us, he goes, nothing, I guess, and I'm like, okay, you know, what, that's often that's often the thing that we find. And we talk about these things that we want to do. And the first question that's gonna come to your mind, is what's stopping you from from doing that thing. And you'll hear a lot of people say, money. And you'll hear a lot of people say, time, we've already talked about time, we know that time isn't the enemy, that the time is available, Unknown Speaker 6:41 the time is available for you, you've just got to make the decision, that that's what you want to do. And a lot of other people talk about money, you know, being in the way of what they want to do. And that's also simply not true. Because my guess is my question is, you say, first thing you say is Oh, money stopping me from doing what I want to do? And the first question that somebody got, gotta ask is, is that true? What How do you know? What have you found? That, you know, if it's money to stop me from what you want to do? My guess is that money is stopping you from the scaling up of the thing. Money stopped me from the scaling up in the thing, meaning? Maybe you've got an idea. Have you tested it? Have you put it to the market? Have you gone to the bank? Have you asked for a commercial loan? Have you looked for partners? Have you exhausted the truth of that statement of you know, what's stopping you from doing what you want to do? And you saying that it's money? Are you certain that the only way that your plan could ever happen is money my other than, then I would say that chances are, what it may be stopping you from is accelerating the process, accelerating the scale that you're trying to achieve or trying to get to, and you know, what you're trying to do and accomplish. And this was the other part of the conversation yesterday was like, when you go from one level of being a professional in the industry, in any industry, and you swap roles or, or you know, things that you're doing in life, then you're not going to be at the same level, there's a good chance, you're not going to get paid the same. And there has to be a willingness to, if that's what you say you want to do, there's got to be willingness for you to absorb that, and be doing what you say you want to be doing. Otherwise, chances are, we go regardless of how much you say, that may not be what you want to be doing. Right. And you can always be doing something, you can always feeling something to take slow and steady steps towards it again, the money is going to be the accelerant. And since we're, since we are, since we're spiritual beings living a physical life, I think that you know that intent and that fear, getting rid of that fear, Unknown Speaker 9:21 and starting to take steps into that space of the thing that you say you want to be doing. Unknown Speaker 9:29 Or you know, even aligning yourself spiritually. So the things that you are doing, will begin to change will begin to change the way you approach it. And so what does that mean? It means that again, once you start taking action towards the thing that you say that you want to be doing, it's kind of like this signal to the universe. You're sending out a signal regardless whether or not you think you are to the universe. Or even somebody else like sitting around and looked at and seeing you. You're signaling them, you know, so maybe you've got to take it from 100% exterior way of seeing things. And you feel that if people see you doing what you say that you Unknown Speaker 10:17 want to be doing, they will recognize it. And if you share it with them verbally, maybe they say, you know, yeah, Unknown Speaker 10:27 I've got somebody that you should talk to. Right? Or, you know, Hey, I know a guy that sits in the same industry, would you like to talk with them. And that happens in more ways than then then then acts your way. So if you see an exterior only, that's fine. You could do the same thing with just taking the actions and not even telling anybody else really what your intent is. And I promise you that the universe, the world, whatever is going to see your intent. And how does that how can you validate that for yourself? This is along the same lines of letting go. And it's, it's when you again, you start to start taking small, tiny steps that maybe other people aren't even going to recognize what it is that you're doing. And suddenly, you know, after you take this first couple of steps, you're going to recognize that a, Wow, you are taking steps. And that you can start working towards that thing you said you want to be working on. For me, it was the first the first podcast I did, as fatherhood for the rest of us. And, you know, it was it was just awesome, because like, I was really scared to start it. I didn't know how or what it was that I was doing. But as I began to do it, I began to learn more about learn the things that I didn't know, learn, learn that right, you begin to learn as you start to do, and, and then the resources of people that would reach out to me, because of what it was that I was doing in the industry that I was in, again, just simply podcasting in an industry that I was in an area space, that area that I was interested in, gave me confidence to reach out to people to say, Hey, I'm in the Dad, I'm a dad podcaster looks like your dad, he's off about being a dad, wherever you are. And he has some tips and tricks to help other fathers to be successful in fatherhood and in life. And that opens so many doors and the more people that I engaged, the more confident I became. And the same time more opportunities just started falling from the sky, like falling from the sky. Again, one of those that I can share I was being contacted by the state of North Carolina, who was I think they're working with students is working with either foster children or something else. And a big part of of that system. Is that fathers, fathers, fallouts, fathers aren't there and so, you know, makes it challenges the family life and then like, you know, at a certain point, these kids got to go be fostered. So I was being contacted to speak on that to help create a program. And so things like that would just kind of open up for themselves with simply because I was doing and following something that I was interested in and had had signal to the universe simply by stepping into that direction. Please show me and share opportunities that are in line with my my spiritual intent. And so my question again to you is what is it that may see your spirits saying, right from my friend she's wanting to Spain's you want to do or exercise? Have more of that in her life? And, you know, what would it look like? You know, what would it look like? Cast yourself what would a perfect day look like for you? plan it out, and go do it. Take that vacation days, go do that thing that you you say that you want to do and see That's your perfect like if you had the opportunity to do it for a week doing what what is that? You know, how does that look for you? How Unknown Speaker 15:08 does it actually feel to experiences and try it on you know, let your let your spirits say let your hearts follow your heart song is the lose debut I had with Tom Cat shoe was was released, check out him and his content with you talking about involving your heart song. He went from being a lawyer to a therapist to use kind of this holistic energy, spiritual author and coach and therapist and bringing all these pieces into his own practice. Now I stress the word practice, because these things are something that you never do you never finish it. You never and this type of search or goal seeking or living way of life and feeling, feeling your bliss. So yeah, make the time for it. Like I said, the BJJ for today's today's thing is you're making that time for the thing that you said it's important to you kind of brushing off the excuses. That that you're suppressing, if so, you're essentially you're suppressing yourself from having the life that you say you want, and there's nobody else that's that's keeping you from it. And, and once you once you make that time, and once you take a couple of those steps, and once you see this evidence of it, I promise you that you'll have at least that experience of of having that time for yourself and doing that thing that you said you wanted to do. And having that heart song, and feeling and following your bliss and feeling feeling into it and experiencing it. And once you kind of had that experience, I don't think that you can quite ever look back. That's it for the BJJ report. If you're enjoying this podcast if you're enjoying the guest please go to good iTunes and leave a review shoot me an email Brandon at spiritual dope.co if you've got a topic that you want me to hit on, in particular, and from any angle, let me know Susan do an email like Hey, what do you think about this? And how does this line up into spirituality? If you've got some questions, happy to attempt to answer them from from my perspective, but a lot of this happens through dialogue through questions through comments and questions. So take it easy. Thanks for listening. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

One of the major upsides of investing in real estate is the tax benefits you can take advantage of as an owner. This episode covers a powerful tax strategy, the cost segregation study. Scott Roelofs from RCG Valuations, explains how they work, who they are good for and why you might want to start employing this strategy now to save big on taxes.  Visit RCG at https://rcgvaluation.com/ --- Transcript Michael: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the real estate investor. I'm Michael album, and today I'm joined by a very special guest, Scott Roelofs. With RCG valuations, and Scott's gonna be talking to us today about all things cost segregation study. Some of you may or may not have heard about, but let's jump into it. Well, Scott, thanks so much for joining me today. Really appreciate you taking the time, man.   Scott: Yeah, man. It's exciting.   Michael:              So I just have to ask, I mean, you've got a ton of letters after your last name. I'm just curious. What do they all mean? What do they represent? Let us know give us some insight.   Scott: The big ones, CFA, Chartered Financial Analysts, you know, three years of study, average pass rate is 45%. So basically 8% of the people who try to get it actually do get those three letters. So that's kind of the big one ABV, that's   Michael: Your alcohol by volume.   Scott: Yeah, alcohol by volume. Yeah. It's an auditing. It's a construction, auditing. accreditation, then you have a IMS, which is asset management, AWS, which is a wealth management. I also have 679 1063 life health. It's actually funny, my cousin who is smart as I am, she comes up to me, and she's like, so are you done educating yourself? And I'm like, Yeah, I guess so. I guess,   Michael: I guess I shouldn't be.   Scott: So yeah, so I guess I'm, that's an…   Michael: Awesome,   Scott: You know, you may not know what they all look like, but you're like, there's a lot of them. So, yeah,   Michael: Totally. So there's not a whole lot that you don't do in the financial world. That sounds like?   Scott: I feel like I can walk into any room and hold down in any kind of conversation, whether it's, you know, in business or, you know, venture capital or anything like that.   Michael: Awesome. And so did you are you the founder of our CG Valuation & Monetization?   Scott: I am, yeah, I started doing cost segregation, kind of like in a selfish ways I had owned my own office and didn't want to pay as much taxes. So I started looking around and got introduced to it. And then I found a company that actually allowed me to do them, and like, actually kind of do the work. And they would help with some of the engineering and that worked out great for a while, but what happened is, is I started to look at things and go, okay, you know, you send me out with a measuring wheel and a measuring tape. And some of these places are huge. I mean, just my first one, which was our office, I own a portion of, like, the land of a whole bunch of offices, it was eight acres. And we had to, you know, count and measure, you know, is something like 2500 shrubs, you know, it was bananas.   And I'm like, this is an awful way of doing this. And so I started searching around, I first found, I got into, like, the drones, which is kind of a hallmark of what we do. And then we added the interior, I saw commercial for matterport cameras. Yeah, that's kind of like used for real estate. And I saw that commercial, I don't, man, if that can measure, like, I really got something and turns out again, so well, voila. So now we have the, you know, interior exterior, you know, kind of all this stuff. So but what happened, and I think this is, you know, just an a general business since this is interesting. But I started to try to implement the technology with the other company. And we kept running into roadblock after roadblock after roadblock. And finally, like, had a conversation with the founder of the company. And he's like, Listen, we just don't do it that way. You know, like, we've made exceptions, but you know, it's just, it's just not gonna work. And I go, all right,   Michael: Well, neither am I.   Scott: Then neither am I right. And so I'm like, well, then I'm going to start my own company. And that's kind of how RCG valuation came to be.   Michael: Awesome. Yeah. And so we're going to be diving deep into cost segregation studies, all things cost segues. So yeah, I would love if you could give us just a high level overview for those who are not familiar. What is a cost segregation study?   Scott: Yeah. So the government allows people who buy investment property to depreciate that property. depreciation is really just an understanding that stuff, there's wear and tear. And because real estate is, you know, heterogeneous, or, you know, in other words is every house is different, or every building is different. They don't have a good way to understand how you depreciate it. So they set a general rule 39 years for commercial 27 and a half for residential and multifamily. And that's really just kind of like an admission that they're just going to listen, we don't know how this is.   Michael: So you figure it out.   Scott: Yeah, yeah. So you figure it out? Well, that is, you know, what they would call the composite method, but they did through different case laws and everything. They decided that you could break up a piece of real estate into its individual components because they do run out at different times. However, you have to have a professional who knows what they're doing right. So as a property owner, you don't have an inherent skill to you know, Identify, quantify and cost every piece of like commercial construction that's in your building.   Michael: Right. Right.   Scott: What we do is we come in and we scan the property, we identify all the different components from carpet to plumbing to electrical roof, you know, site and permit. And then we use the different case law that allows us to break those out into different depreciation schedules. So five 715, and then the remaining like structure remains at 27, half or 39, that allows the, you know, kind of push that forward. So if you would understand it this way is in year one, you would have all of the 27, all of this 15, all of the seven and all the five, in year two, you have the same, but in year six, you've used all the five, so you have only 715 27. And then in year 16, you only have 27 left, so that pushes it accelerates the depreciation towards the front end. And then with the new tax laws, anything under 20 years, you can bonus depreciate, so you can take all in one year. So anything that is 15, seven, five and below, you know, can be depreciated all in the first year, and then you just appreciate the remaining 27 years for the rest.   Michael: Got it. So just in full disclosure and transparency, Scott, you've done several cost segregation studies for me. And that explains why that number was so big on the front end of your one depreciation was because this bonus depreciation you're just mentioned, right?   Scott: Yeah, that's right. It depends on what your goals are. We've always said Our goal is never to give you the largest depreciation, our goal takes a step back. And we want to give you the largest tax deduction for the longest number of years, right. And that's important because sometimes bonus is good for you. And sometimes it's not, if you had $180,000, you want to write off, but you have a bonus of 1.2 million, you don't lose that bonus, but you have to carry it forward. And the problem with having to carry it forward is if your next year of income happens to be 20,000, you use that 20,000, you'll carry forward your deduction, but you're not writing off, those are low tax dollars, I would much rather see you instead of having 1.2 million go so your incomes 180. We want to write off 170, but then have that 170 every year for a number of years. So the number of years you have you're all knocking off that top and 40% tax rate. And then instead of using it on the 10%.   Michael: Got it. Got it. And so if I heard you, right, there's the year breakdown is five 715 and 27 and a half. But did you say that there's something that are depreciable for a shorter lifespan did I miss here?   Scott: There are there's an IRS documents, that's how to depreciate property. And there are some individual items that they put out there that are different. We actually just did one on on Native American land, which was interesting. All of the fives go to three, the fifth teams go to nine and and then the 39 goes to 22. It's strange. But yeah, so there's just different ways to depreciate different property. A lot of that doesn't apply to actual real estate.   Michael: Got it? Okay, so the big categories we need to be aware of are five 715 and 27 and a half.   Scott: Yeah, that's pretty much where it falls.   Michael: Okay. And so how does it work? Like, if I've got this house, right, let's say I bought it for 200,000? Is the cost segregation based on the purchase price is based on the taxable value? And then how do you know how much electrical is in that house? versus how much plumbing versus how much drywall?   Scott: Sure, the nice thing with us is that we actually don't go off of valuation, we go off of cost basis, so we go off of what you actually paid, or what you actually put in the property.   Michael: Okay.   Scott: So for us, that's maybe not be a benefit for some people, because like, they go, Hey, my values way up. But for us, it makes it a lot easier, because then we're not making having to make a judgment or, you know, say, Hey, you know, I think my property's worth a million bucks. Here we go, Well, that doesn't really have anything to do with it, you bought it for a half a million, right? So that's what we're working with. So it's very simple in that way is that, you know, I bought it for half a million I put 100,000 in, and those are the numbers that we work with.   Michael: Okay.   Scott: And then how we do it is, you know, this kind of gets into why, you know, some of the people never heard of it, because there are why they're CBA never brought it up, is because we work with construction, right? We work in construction engineers. And so part of our process is, you know, scanning, identifying and measuring, you know, all the different components. So start with the easy stuff, right? The stuff that you can physically see, right, so we actually create a floor plans and we have something that's really cool and very helpful called a ceiling plan. So imagine you have an office that is 20,000 square feet with 200 offices, right? Okay, try counting the fluorescent lights in that.   Michael: I'd rather not   Scott: And here's where the trouble kind of comes in is you go Okay, so I'm standing in this office now trying to picture I'm standing on an office with 200 rooms and 40,000 square feet amount that's accurate. But whatever, yeah, and you have to count anywhere between 120 and 130 different items. So do you count, just like the fluorescent lights and circle the entire building once? Or do you count all of those items that's in the room, and then go room by room counting, you know, 50, to 100, items, all those things, so becomes very, very difficult. And so that's where our scanning comes in, it actually looks upwards at the ceiling, because we scan the whole thing. And so on one sheet of paper, I can actually just see every single light in the entire thing, it also helps us see, one of the kind of one of the tricks that we have is if you can see like a floor plan, but that looks at the ceiling, you can see where all the vents are. And HVC will run the length of the building, and will branch off of a main pipe.   And so we can actually draw the hvac from that plan. So that's, you know, kind of one of the ways that, you know, we were able to kind of fix things and identify them, there's other little tricks of the trade that we don't want to give everything away. But for the most part, we can see everything, you know, I know you do multifamily, there are large multi families here in you know, in Arizona, that you know, there, but 200 doors or something like that, one of the difficult things is there's usually about 5200 square foot squares of gravel that are throughout the entire property. And when you're not looking down like a satellite, that's almost impossible to count, I think about this all the time, and how we can, you know, work with other competitors, I'm going there's no way. Standing on the ground and actually counting and measuring because, you know, frankly, a lot of these shapes are not squares, you know, they're, you know, different shapes. So, you know, without a computer, how would you get the square footage of these little tiny bits of gravel all over a place?   And I think the answer is I don't, right. So what happens is that with a lot of cost segregation companies, you'll get a cost allocation. So they'll say there's, you know, $100,000 of gravel on this whole big lot. But there won't be a quantity allocation, you know, they're not actually measuring it and then multiplying it by four footage, they're just going to the end and getting an estimate,   Michael: Why is that a bad thing, if they just give the number of seemingly that's what's the important thing anyhow, at the end of the day?   Scott: Everything has to do with accuracy. And so the IRS puts out guidance, and they actually named several levels of cost segregation, the highest level being actual cost and engineer base. So you go out and measure everything you measure, count everything with the actual costs. And then the next best is, you know, engineer base with estimated cost, which is we do a combination of those two items, mostly. So a lot of times, you know, if you just build or you've remodeled, you actually have the actual cost, right. But if you bought a property, you know, you paid a price, you know, many times you don't have any idea what your actual costs are going to be. And so estimate is the net, but then, and then it kind of goes down from there. And so then, you know, you kind of fall into rule of thumb, which is essentially what that is, is, you know, based on a property that's this expensive, a rule of thumb would be, you know, 30%.   I'll explain it this way. This is kind of like a, you know, a financial evaluation. But there's a rule of thumb in like companies that if you ran a company, you would pay two to three times revenue, right?   Michael: to purchase that company.   Scott: Yeah, to purchase that company is, you know, if they made a million dollars in revenue, you would buy for about 3 million to these companies that each do three, you know, do a million dollars in revenue, but one has 85% profit margin, the other one has a 15% profit margin, right? Are those two companies valued at the same?   Michael: No they shouldn't be?   Scott: They should not be? Right. So your rule of thumb is helpful, right? It is a good starting point, you know that you would pay 3 million, but if you paid $3 million, and your profit margin was 15, versus paying 3 million for a profit margin of 85. You one person got ripped off?   Michael: Yeah!   Scott: You're getting what you're paying for. I think the issue would be as if you're paying for an engineer based study that's at the highest level, because you would like to have some level of audit protection. You're paying for that, but you're not getting it, then you're getting ripped off. I'm not trying to accuse anybody of you know, ripping people off, but you have to deliver what you say you're giving and that's where we shine, we're very clearly able to deliver it and only that we can deliver your property to the IRS if need be. We can just send them the the walkthroughs and the 3d models that we have. And if they want to count the trees, they can count the trees they want to measure the drywall measure the drywall, they could actually do that. And that's you know, I think the difference that would that we bring versus other people.   Michael: So if somebody was going to go get a cost segregation study done, and they were into being by different companies, much like I did, How would somebody ensure that they're getting the most, you know, bulletproof study results that they could? What questions should they be asking?   Scott: The first question is an engineer base? That is what the IRS is mostly looking for. Okay. And this is this question would bound to come up to most people is when you're searching, you will find the DIY. And I mean that in a general sense, right? Like do it yourself kind of thing. So what you would do with those is you send in where your your addresses, maybe a few items, like roof type, and you know, things like that. And then they send you back within a few minutes, your allocation,   Michael: The breakdown of your 5 -7 -15-27.   Scott: Yeah, breakdown, five 715. So that would be really a rule of thumb or an estimate. And so and then what they add is, you know, kind of an audit insurance. And that is an interesting to cover, because when you read the fine print on that, what that means is, is that if you were ever audited, then they would actually come out and do an actual cost segue for you.   Michael: Try and catch up.   Scott: Yeah, but I go, that's not how that works. Let's think about our tax system. Right? our tax system is an honor system. So they're expecting you to do your taxes correctly. Right? Right. That's the expectation of the honor system, once you've been audited, you don't get to go to them and be like, Oh, whoops, I meant to not take that deduction that I didn't. It's too late at that time, you don't get to change the numbers. The numbers are what they are. You submitted them, and you signed off for them as they are true. Okay.   So even if they did come out and do a cost segue, what are they going to do perfectly match them to the estimate that they gave you, that's the thing that I just don't really understand is, you know, it's kind of like back and you probably remember back in the mortgage days, you know, it's like, guy selling a house. He's like, dude, I need this appraisal to be 300,000.   Michael: Right, make it so.   Scott: And then the appraiser comes in, like, hey, it hit 300,000. What do you know, you know, what do you know? Yeah, you know, not trying to degrade anybody who might have been in that industry. I mean, that, you know, as a whole system, starting from the financial side down, that, you know, that messed everything up, the whole thing was so messed up. So don't want to attack any one person or industry in that time. But facts are facts, you know,   Michael: It happened, right? Yeah, that's how it went down. Okay,   Scott: You know, we kind of make a joke about it, you're like, Listen, if you want to, you know, take your $500 and say, I took a couple bags down to Goodwill. And, you know, that's my charitable donation, I get 500 bucks. You know, a lot of times, you're not going to need a receipt for that. But the area that we'll deal in, is we're going to give you a $1.5 million tax deduction. So hold on to that receipt, you know, it's like it's Dumb and Dumber, right? This 250,000 IOU you might want to hold on to that one.   Michael: Such a good reference.   Scott: Yeah, I know, right. So we're gonna document document document, you know, we're gonna give you everything, you know, that any other company gives you from the exact numbers, you know, you have access to 600, 4k photos, 3d models, and a 3d walkthrough of the property. And I don't know if you want it to go to a different topic. But one of the interesting things about the doing a walkthrough, versus a photo is very, you know, I think it's actually really interesting. And how that is, is, if I were to say that I had 40, fluorescent lights, and my proof that I had fluorescent lights was a picture of a fluorescent light, right? There's no context there, right? I could take a look up, take a picture of my fluorescent light right here and say, Hey, you know, there's a fluorescent light, and there's 60 of them.   Michael: There's 40, right?   Scott: When you can physically walk from room to room in a virtual walkthrough, you know, hey, I'm in this room, there's four lights, and then I walked out of this room and walked into the next one, there's four there, so you can actually count them and know that he didn't miss anything.   Michael: Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I love the 3d model, too, because I took this statistics course in college. And the first day, the professor handed out like a thing, it was a cylinder and said, Okay, I want everyone to measure it, and come right down what your measurement is. And everybody, of course, had a different measurement and the variance between, you know, the whole class was massive. It's like, we all have the same measurement stick we all have, we're all measuring the same device, but yet the disparity is huge. So I could definitely see that with someone walking through and measuring versus a walk through tour, where everything is, is is modeled out, we're all looking at the same thing.   Scott: Sure. Well, I think to I mean, dive right into it. Let's look at the economics of it. Right. You know, the reason one of the reasons people didn't know about cost segregation studies, is it used to cost $30,000   Michael: Hmm.   Scott: And so in order to make it economical, you had to own a $10 million building, right? Because, you know, you better get a massive write off and have a lot of profit to pay 30 grand, right. Well, now those prices have come down, you know, they push down to the I don't think we do many under nine. I mean, you know, there's always massive buildings that are complicated, but you know, it's more in the three to six to seven ish range. The question is, is that how have the cost change. And we think about this constantly, the best part is we're super transparent, we've cut costs with technology is we don't have to send a construction engineer to your property, we can have a pilot operator, go to the property, scan it. And then we can have our engineers working from a computer. So it's a lot more efficient.   And so we go, we can cut costs, because we've added tech, right? And we go, how have you got caught? We look at those things. And we go, you're supposed to be sending an engineer out, and you go, right, but you make $10,000. Now you make three or four. Right? Okay, so what's cut?   Michael: Right, what are you doing differently?   Scott: You know, we have some guesses, we think that the, the amount of time spent on a property is being cut? No, here's some examples of that, you know, I don't want to be too accusatory. But, you know, we know how we do it. We use technology, right? And we use efficiency. And that's why, you know, how you're still able to get the top quality with the prices coming down. You know, and that's, you know, I'm sure your question that most people are going to want to know is, how is pricing set? And how much do these things cost?   Michael: Right. So let's talk about that. And then we'll jump into who these are good and bad for? So is there a kind of a ballpark estimate? Or if I've got a $500,000 property, a cost segue might cost me this much? Or how do you determine price.   Scott: I actually wrote a program that you can run a quote on our website, so it's our CG valuation calm, and then you just click the quote button, okay? It's absolutely free. And most importantly, you don't have to give us your information to run the quote,   Michael: Awesome, I don't have to give you my social and credit card and my email address,   Scott: You don't have to give us anything, you can just sit and run quotes all day. And it's free, you can make adjustments and see how the variables work, because that will adjust the price. And you know, how much you can depreciate. So the two different types of properties. So there's a few variables that kind of go into it. I mean, basically, it's pretty simple. It's, it's more expensive and more complicated, the cost goes up. If it's short and smaller, and simpler, the cost goes down. But the number one discount that we give people is doing multiple properties. So if you're running a quote on our system, and you go, Hey, I own 10 properties, but I'm, you know, I'm only looking at cost, like for this one, you can run several quotes and add that multiple properties thing up, and you'll watch your price, you know, drastically get cut. So, it's, you know, it's an it's an incentive to do more business, which we're, again, pretty transparent about, you know, yeah, we want you to do lots and lots of business classes. And maybe that's just, you know, kind of my background, but how do you incentivize someone to do more business financially, right, you know, like, your cost is gonna go down if you do more.   Michael: So most of our listeners are in the single family space, I would argue in the 100 $150,000 purchase price. So let's talk about boo are good candidates to have a cost segregation study done. If I said that verbally correctly, who would benefit from a cost segue study, and Who wouldn't? You know, who should avoid these?   Scott: Absolutely. So let's just start with the who wouldn't, is probably a lot easier, you know, and more narrow, and then you can just kind of balance yourself out, most flippers, just don't, and the reason is pretty simple. You want a very, very high cost basis, when you sell a property, because you're gonna pay a lot of taxes, we give people a very low cost basis. So you know, it doesn't fit, we'd like to see probably a five year hold. Some people say, three, I'm not super comfortable with that I would like to see over five years, and there's, you know, there's reasons that we can get into why that is, the cost can be prohibitive, right? Because what happens is, when you're when you get to a low enough number, we hit like a fixed cost, right?   So, for even for a pilot to go out, it's just like, Listen, it's gonna cost x plus time, right? So at the time, isn't that great? It still costs x. So you know, there are some hard floors that we hit that we try to do. But you know, that's kind of where you but if you'll see in our coding system, it is designed to make it cost effective. It really is just kind of a ratio. So you go, Well, I own this property, it's 100,000. Is it worth it? You got what you pay for it? Right? If it's, you paid nothing for it. And yeah, if you paid seven grand for it, then no, you know, so you have to understand what your costs are. Also, you're gonna have to understand what your tax year is going to be like, Well, you see some people that it might cost a little more, but they had a major windfall, and they just don't have any other way of reducing their taxes.   So give an example somebody that is trying to 1031 a property, they they bought a property, you know, 200,000 they're selling it for 2 million, and you know, they're trying to get the 1031 through and it's November and it falls through right. So now you got $1.8 million of gain and you owe capital gains on that. So I don't know what does that 400,000 ish, whatever,   Michael: It's a crap ton.   Scott: It's a lot. You know, let's just say that you don't have 400,000 in cash, you know, and whatever, I don't know. So in that scenario, you know, having $100,000 house and then you do a cost segue, that's, you know, 1000 $2,000, maybe 2000s a little rich for you, but you're not going to have a $2 million tax bill every year, it becomes imperative that this year you need as much tax deduction as you can get. And so then you do you know, several of them and, and, you know, you take the bonus on all of them, we had a client that had sold the business and had a windfall of somewhere in the range of $20 million. What are you gonna do?   Michael: Yeah.   Scott: You're going okay, so I just got this, and now I got a $5 million bill, I need to write a check for 5 million, what can I do, and and I'm not going to need it next year, right? The windfall is a once in a lifetime opportunity, I need the depreciation now. I have another client too, that they inherited double e bonds, basically, you don't pay any taxes until they come due. And these bonds they inherited were like 50 years old. So every year, they add an additional $120,000 coming due that was fully taxable, but it was only going to come due for another four years. So does depreciating over 39 years sound like the right way or maybe accelerate that over a four year period sound like a good idea for you?   I don't want to call it a game. But this is what we do with the IRS, the IRS is indifferent to tax timing. And that's why cost segregation doesn't necessarily raise your audit risk is because if you are allowed by law to depreciate a million dollars, and we keep that and that's the one thing that we make sure we do you don't depreciate a penny more or penny less than a million dollars. As long as you do that. They're more indifferent to when you do it. So they're because they're going okay, you're gonna take your million dollars early linear won't get it late. And so that's why that's different than tax credits and tax deduction, you get a refundable tax credit, they are not only out money, but they may have to write you a check, like just straight out money.   Michael: Yeah. Scott: So they're going to verify that your tax credit is legitimate with tax timing, you know, I don't want to be misconstrued that they don't look, but it's less of a priority to them. Because they're just going well, it's a it's a timing issue. And the IRS never really cares about timing. That's why they, they don't need to catch you. You know, like, if you're, if you're cheating the IRS, they don't need to catch you this year. They don't care about time,   Michael: They'll get you next year, the year after.   Scott: And if you if we get you seven years later, the penalties are going to be pretty bad. So yeah, they're not in a hurry. So time is not necessarily matter. But what you can do is make that to your advantage. One of the secret sauce that we have is it does come from me being a CFA not a CPA, you know, I have the greatest respect for CPAs. And what they do, you know, we, you know, we feel we're an expert in about four to five tax codes, there's 9800 of them. So this is no eight denigrating what CPAs do, but it's just a difference of how I look at the world, right?   So I'm looking at things from a financial standpoint, how to grow a business. And so what we try to do is we go okay, so not to call it anybody's age, but we're decently young for property owners. You know, I think a lot of property owners are, you know, in their 50s and 60s, but if we had accelerated depreciation over seven years, how many times do I have to repeat that before I retire to three, maybe not a lot. And that's a tax timing thing. So I'm in my high income, earning years, where I want my highest appreciation, and I want to defer them to a time that I'm in a low income in retirement is one way of using timing to your advantage.   Michael: Sure. And so it sounds like if somebody is contemplating getting a cost segregation study done, it really needs to be kind of a three way conversation. One is themselves the owner to is with their CPA, their tax planner. And then third is with a cost segue study to find out what the impact is going to be on their taxes and and the CPA can tell them, Hey, this is going to be beneficial to you now, or maybe you want to hold off, is that fair to say?   Scott: I agree. The CPA is going to be absolutely integral in the cost segregation. And I think one of the questions that, like we were talking about a little before comes up is Why can't my CPA just do it? And the answer is, they don't employ engineers, right? They're, they're not construction specialists. And that's, you know, we have, you know, kind of three parts to our business. I was a joke with people I say, there's at least one part of my business that people's, the eyes roll in the back of their head, you know, it's like, oh, technology. That's super cool. Construction. Love it. Like taxes. You're like, yeah, oh, god, this is awful. Are you like taxes? You're like, dude, I'm a tech guy, man. I'm like, you know, love the numbers and the tech school and you're like, sweet, go walk, you know, do a bunch of construction. You're like, no, that's not that's not really my thing. You know? So So yes, it gives us a little protection for our business that somebody One part of what we do so the CPA has has their role, and they have to fit it into the overall picture, make sure all aspects of your tax life work and cost segregation is going to work for you.   We work very closely with a bunch of CPAs to, you know, help them understand, you know, exactly, just the ins and outs of a specific tax code, right. So we try to be experts in about four or five codes, which, like I said, they have to cover 9800. So insane respect for what they do. But when it comes to the four or five, you know, we can offer some help to the CPA and, you know, and to the client to help them understand a little bit.   Michael: Awesome. So, when you did the costsegs, for me, I had just done some major extensive rehab on a couple different properties. So I had heard that, you know, cost seg are great for rehabbers people that have done a lot of value add people that have spent a lot of money on properties, but I had also heard that you could buy a turnkey property and still take advantage of a cost segs, is that true?   Scott:: Absolutely. I think that when you dive into it, so let's just take the, you know, look at them as two finished property. So if you have a multifamily residential, you'd be looking at somewhere about, you know, 30 to 35% of it that we'd be able to allocate towards a faster schedule. So like, kind of bonus side, right. So that's where you would kind of start now. Now go to your rehab, you not only had you know, all the remodel, but you had what we call disposal, or it's a partial disposal, I'll explain it this way, if you bought a property for a million dollars, and you found out you had to put a roof on it, and the roof costs $100,000. So on your balance sheet, a lot of times people would put that their property is $1.1 million.   But that's not true. Because you don't have to, you only have one, so you took a piece of property, and you disposed of it. And whenever you dispose when you have an asset that isn't worth anything anymore, then you have to take an immediate write off for that asset. So let's say that the old roof was still worth about $40,000, what we would do is you would have all of the depreciation, just like a brand new place plus, anything you had to rip out, and the cost involved with that, in order to, you know, to add to the cost segregation, you got 30,000 to the cost segregation, but then you would add, like the 40,000, for the roof you tore off and you know, all of the carpet and the toilets and whatever you pulled out of there, and that the stuff that you threw out, would also add to the cost segregation. That's why a rehab is very, very good for you. But it doesn't take away from that you still get about 30% you know, extra bonus right off just from buying a turnkey place.   Michael: Wow. Okay, so is that kind of a ballpark estimate, then if I buy something turnkey? Let's say go buy $100,000 property? Roughly? I should I could expect 30,000 in bonus depreciation in your one ballpark?   Scott: Depends what your land is.   Michael: Oh, sure. Okay.   Scott: But yeah, so we're talking building land is a big thing. And that's one thing that we can cover. And actually one of the things that I think that we do a very good job of, there's actually a lawsuit that came out of LA County. There's a property owner that wanted to reduce the value of land that they were appraising in his building. And what came out of that lawsuit was that property owners do not have a specific ability to differentiate the value of the building versus the land, they do have an ability to value the total purchase, because that's what they do. Right? They buy the entire thing.   So the it was ruled that the property owner was not able to do that. But that's where I come in, is, and we go back to what we're talking about with me having, you know, construction on it certifications being evaluation specialist, right. So I'm, you know, one of 40 cfaes in the state of Arizona, right. And I'm, you know, there's probably about 1000 of us in the entire country, right? So do I hold the specific credentials, to be able to value land versus building? I certainly do.   And we use that we will look at those and work very hard to make sure that your land is allocated correctly. And if it's not, we will provide the proof that it should be reallocated an example that we would see, and sometimes they're accurate, and sometimes they're not right, but the example that we would see is, you know, you have an allocation of land that we think is far too high. We will go and find land sales in that area over the last, you know, 10 years, and we use pretty conservative numbers too.   But let's say that they say the lands where you know, it's a million dollar building and they say the land is worth 400,000. We will go through and go there hasn't been a piece of land sold in that area over a 10 year period over 100,000 and so we would just go, the actual sale of land is more accurate than whatever calculation you're using to assess that land. And so, we would use statistical analysis. So, you know, you know, over 30 options, you know, pulling out and reallocating, you know, different outlier, high and low and, and use some very strong statistical analysis to revalue your land at, you know, at a much lower level, you know, if need be.   Michael: So, Scott, this has been awesome, man, thank you so much for coming on. If people want to get in touch with you, Rcg for your services for cost segues, what's the best way for people to do that?   Scott: Yeah, so RCG Valuation.com is we that's where we were in a quote on that, quote, you'll see somebody whose name his name is Tyler Baldwin, he is our Director of Sales, you can call him directly and by have anything to say about it, they'll call you really, really quickly. I really work on that very hard. And you know, I think Michael, you, you know, obviously, you've worked with us and you can attest to this. You know, once you start working with us, you will have my cell phone, you just call m . So, and I try to answer and we try to be as available as possible, you know, so we like to get out. You know, get our quotes and get the people as quickly as you can and help them save taxes.     Michael: Love it, love. Yeah, Scott Roelofs Thanks so much, man. Really appreciate you coming on. And I'm sure I'll be calling you from the next caustic studies shortly.   Scott: I appreciate it. We love it.   Michael: Big thank you to Scott for coming on the show was a lot of fun. I learned a ton. Hopefully you did too. If you'd liked this episode, please feel free to leave us a rating a review whatever it is, you'll see your podcast and we look forward to seeing the next one. Happy investing.

**THIS WEEKS EPISODE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY** WWW.SOMEDAYSAREDIAMONDS.CO.UK This week: Sinead Matthews. Stunning actor, so ridiculously gifted. What drew me to talking with her was her performance in Jellyfish. She does of course have an entire back catalogue of very committed and brillaint work which I have now taken a look at, as should you. We talk about her journey but also how she was held back and had to learn to deal with a stammer from a young age. A subject that really developes the episode. If you need something different in your life then go here: WWW.SOMEDAYSAREDIAMONDS.CO.UK Theres the Limehouse Podcast episodes and blog along with my short film, comedy pilot and music. So So much! If you enjoyed the show it's a great way to re-pay me. BYE!

Spring is here and so are DeeAsia and SoSo. Join them this week as they uncork life since the last episode, review their latest finds with Sip or Spit, discuss what the future of dining/drinking out post-pandemic, and answer the Wine Trivia question of the week.

Selecting strong renters can be the difference between a cash-flowing property or an alligator. Even if you can get a judgment on a tenant that owes you big, collecting on that judgment is not a guarantee.    On this episode, Steve White From RentPrep gives us the scoop on how you, as a landlord, can do the proper due diligence on your applicants to save you time, money, and headaches.  Website: https://rentprep.com/?utm_source=roofstock&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=steve-media-outreach-2021 The "RentPrep for Landlords" Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rentprep-for-landlords/id851540886 The "RentPrep for Landlords" Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/RentPrep --- Transcript   Michael: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of remote real estate investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by Steve White, founder and CEO of rent prep. And today Steve and I are going to be talking about all things tenant background check related. And we're also going to delve into some things that you can do personally to boost your credit score. So there's a lot of fun information in here. Let's jump into it.   Well, Steve White, thanks so much for joining us today, man. Really appreciate you taking the time.   Steve: Yeah. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.   Michael: Absolutely. So you're the founder and CEO of rent prep, right practice? Yes, I really want to want to dive into what that is. But I would love to get a little bit about your background first, and how you got into the space?   Steve: Sure, yeah, I'm totally on accident. I never intended to be doing background checks at all. So I, I got out of the Marine Corps, I served eight years took an opposite direction. And most of the guys that I knew that were getting out and becoming police officers, or getting into law enforcement in some way, and I sort of went the corporate america route, and I worked for a company that played a really niche role in a legal process called a replevin order. Nobody's probably ever heard of that. But…   Michael: No, what is that?   Steve: So if you can imagine, as you're driving down the road, and you see these really big, like, street paving machines, that, you know, like construction equipment that are usually like a million dollar piece of equipment, the company, if the company stops paying for it, and the bank wants that piece of equipment back, you can't just go and pick something like that up. And so if you   Michael: Take a put on a tow truck,   Steven: Right, no, it's a huge process, you usually got to break it down into pieces and ship it in on multiple vehicles. So what we were doing was arranging those replevin orders that were that had to be organized in the local municipality. So we would have to coordinate with the sheriff's department and local attorneys and, and get all this stuff organized. So I was doing that, you know, on the corporate side, kind of in the banking world and decided I could do it on my own and started a company that did exactly that. And I started it in 07, which was perfect timing for the big financial recession that happened two years later.   Michael: Right!   Steve: And, yeah, that definitely put a damper on things and made us get really creative for looking outside of the box with different business ideas. And we had a client that that basically came to us and said, hey, I've got rental properties. And you guys are using software to track down pieces of equipment and figure out where you know, where job sites are, where people might be where people might be hiding things, do you think you can tap into that or use some of that same, you know, access that you have to let me know if somebody would be a good tenant or not. And like any good entrepreneur, I said, we can absolutely do that for you before I knew how to do it.   So the business started there really what it is today, and we ended up within about two years selling, we split it up into different divisions, sold the replevin side and put everything into the background screening side. And that's really where we got our start working for usually, at that time, large property management companies, large apartment communities, mostly local, I was, you know, going around knocking on doors and trying to set businesses up.   It wasn't until we started doing, I started doing a lot of speaking engagements at like landlord associations or real estate investor associations, as I started to really see this need for these smaller market landlords to have access to really good screening. And we didn't provide any screening for them at that time. We were just doing this for bigger businesses and larger property management companies. And it seemed crazy to turn away all that business and so we created rent prep as a brand, specifically to give landlords access to really good high-quality screening that typically only the large property management companies are getting.   Michael: Interesting. And so what what type of services reports background checks, can rent prep run?   Michael: Anything that you can imagine in terms of what you would think you would normally get so we're talking credit reports, criminal records, judgments, liens, bankruptcies, eviction records, obviously, address histories, income verifications. So we can reach right into a bank account and get a an average or a summary of data to tell you what their average monthly income is so that you can do a proper income to rent ratio.   And really what makes rent prep different is that we are not always trusting the the courts or the databases to get things correct. So we will live in an age now where if you're somebody like me, my name is Steve White. There are 2600 Steve whites around the country. And in fact, probably somewhere near near you. In California, there's a middle school named Steven M White, which is my exact name. So common names are very common. What we realized was there was a piece missing when you're talking about automating data in that piece is really a human element that you need someone who's trained, who understands the FCRA, which is the compliance arm that that manages our industry, and somebody who can make decisions beyond what, you know, simple filtering can do, and really get better access to data.   So with with the way that we do our screening, we are typically able to find about 50% more eviction records that are filed than what the, you know, what can be found in, let's say, the National eviction database. And so we're in a lot of cases, going directly to the courts in searching, you know, for information, especially if it's a common name, making sure that it is the correct person, anyone that's ever ran a background check for John Smith knows that you're going to spend a good amount of time trying to, you know, determine if it is your john smith, that's a sex offender, or if it's some other john smith, that's a sex offender. So we're taking that responsibility off of the landlord's hands and saying, we'll do that we'll make those determinations, and use our trained eyes to to make sure that you're getting the correct and accurate information.   Michael: Awesome. So this sounds like a service that would be great for somebody that's looking to self manage a small time landlord. But if let's say that's me, I'm I've I have properties and professional property management. And I want to do my own property management now for local properties I own. I've never seen a background check. I've never seen what those reports look like, Is it pretty easy to decipher, and understand and digest that information? Or do I need a technical degree degree to read and digest it?     Steve: Sometimes you feel like you need a technical degree, depending on the person you're running the information on, right?   Michael: How much background they have to show.   Steve: Yeah, yeah, you know, it's funny, because if you get a good tenant, it's really counterintuitive, right? Like, our reports should be super boring.   Michael: Show nothing.   Steve: Yeah, right. Right. A lot of times we get calls from landlords, they're like, yeah, we ran this and nothing came up. Well, that's good. That's, that's what you want. Right? Yeah. Right. But you know, the nice thing is, again, I really my intention is not to come on, and like sell rent Reprep.     Michael: This is this great.   Steve: Yeah, this is really what what I believe separates us from a lot of our competitors in this industry is that for landlords, if they run a background check, and they just say, Hey, I don't know what this means, or I don't look at a lot of credit reports, what, you know, what is this section here? Or really, what is a good credit score, right, so we can offer interpretation. So the landlord can call and speak to the exact screener that built the report and compiled it. So that screener has intimate knowledge of exactly what's on there and helped go through the information with them. We can tell them what the average credit score is for a tenant, which is 650.   Michael: And was that nationwide?   Steve: Yeah, across the country at 649. So, and we can also dive in a little deeper and see, you know, because for one landlord and one property, you know, asking for a minimum credit score of 700 might not be unreasonable. And, and for another landlord and a different property, asking for a 700 might be very unreasonable. And so we want to know, what's the property? Like? What are your you know, what are you getting for rent? What type of tenants are you looking for? and help them try to make a good decision based on what their criteria is.   And every landlords different? Sometimes they know really well with that criteria should be sometimes they know they don't, so we can help kind of guide them in that right direction as well.   Micheal: Oh, that's really interesting. So do you guys collect then, kind of the reverse feed of data with regard to property type and locale and average rent, to then be able to offer that to landlords that come ask you that question?   Steve: It's not something that we're automating. And we're not building that into our reports, although, I feel like you just came up with a really good idea.   Michael: So that one's on me, Steve!   Steve: Right, right. suture idea? They're not, you know, it's really, you know, it's, it's in the moment when they're asking us because we're walking a very clear black and white line, when it comes to report interpretation, we've got to be very careful on our end, we can never make a decision on you know, for landlord. You should or you shouldn't rent to this person, we can only give them based on our experience and based on what their criteria is. So, you know, if a landlord says, you know, I've got this bar and it's pretty high and you know, this, this rental property means a lot to me. I raised my kids in this place, and we moved on and now we're renting it out. And, you know, there's a little bit of an emotional attachment there, and maybe they've got some higher end fixtures that you'd normally see in a rental unit. And so they want to make sure that the quality of tenant they're getting is very high quality.   We'll take that information. And that's how that's exactly how we're interpreting that report for them and saying, either this looks good, or, you know, I look at 200 reports a day. And there's a lot of red flags or risks here and this person doesn't seem to meet the criteria that you're reaching for. So usually, it's it's based on, you know, what the landlord is telling us in that moment, what they're looking for.   Michael: What would be interesting to chasing this rabbit further down this new idea hole is if you collected then eviction records from landlords based on tenants that you had screened, to be able to kind of look at the big data. And if somebody says, what are the most influential characteristics or criteria for a tenant who's going to be evicted? You can have predictive analytics.   Steve: So we do reduce sort of do that right now. There's a feature that, yeah, there's a feature that we have on our credit report, to TransUnion credit report that we're giving a score to that's called a resident score versus a traditional FICO score. And it's taking into consideration exactly like what you just said, there is there are, there are certain patterns and characteristics that people tend to follow who are either good renters and good, good paying renters or not. And so we're waiting, we're weighting those that data a bit different to to generate a little bit of a different score based on knowing that it's built for a rental.   Michael: Interesting. Very interesting. So, Steve, I got to ask the question that might be on everybody's mind. And I mean, all this information sounds really helpful and powerful. And it also sounds expensive. What is it going to cost the landlord to run some of these reports get some of this information?   Steve: Well, again, I feel like you're putting me in the sales man mode. So my sales answer is it's a lot less expensive than an eviction why, right?   Michael: The classic answer!   Steve: Right? Well, listen, you know, in our, our mantra here is always that an ounce of prevention is certainly worth a pound of cure. If you, you know, for landlords, you know, the kiss of death for any landlord is having a bad tenant, I mean, that's the difference between cash flowing positive or not, or having to put a ton of money into repairs, or having to just deal with the headache and nightmare of a bad tenant. You know, we've, we've all heard the horror stories, and a lot of us have seen the pictures that accompany those horror stories, and no, like, I don't ever want that I don't ever want to be in that situation.   So that front end, you know, due diligence that they're doing really is their best chance, especially in today's era, where evictions are next to impossible, if not impossible, depending on what the reasoning is right now. You know, this is the only chance that they have to really, really mitigate that risk is to make a good decision or the best informed decision that they can on the front end. So the cost is relatively inexpensive, and in most states, it's going to probably be less than what they're allowed to charge for application fees. Some states like California and New York, of course, it's going to be potentially outside of what you can charge for an application fee.   So it can range from 1895, for some real basic information, to $38 for a kind of, you know, the full boat of information, and then, and then you can add all kinds of things on there, like the income verification for an extra $10. And those sort of pieces, which are super helpful, because again, you're not you're, especially with the income verification, the last thing you ever want to do is take someone's word for it, or take their information and assume that it is accurate or truthful, and I'm not, I swear to you, I'm not that type of person that has trust issues and doesn't trust them.   But having having done this for a long time, I will tell you that it is far more common than you would probably think, to see doctored credit reports we've seen where the font is slightly different for the score, or you can tell that certain things have been omitted or deleted out paychecks that we've seen that are just completely fabricated. So, you know, with all of our products, we're taking that trust element out and we're you know, we're gathering that data outside of the tenants ability to interfere. So even with our income verification, we're getting that information straight from their bank, not not even their employers because a lot of employers nowadays too are trying to protect their employees information and they won't release salary information to you.   So the only way the only way around that is to go straight to the banks and and start taking a look at how much money is being deposited on a monthly basis. And we can, you know, share all that information with the landlords and tell them exactly what their income is, which may include, you know, we're also in the age of the side hustle. So a lot of people have their job plus their side hustle job and gathering some extra money. And so we want to look at the whole thing, you know, in as a as a, as a total or as a full picture versus, you know, gathering information from one employer and then trusting that they're, they're giving us accurate information about their 1099 side hustle money that's not really trackable, and you just sort of have to take them at their word what they're making on it.   Michael: Sure. Oh, that makes sense. Well, I experienced the horror story with my first tenant $10,000 in damage on the way out and small claims court eviction, the whole nine yards. So I do have trust issues. So I get it. It just, it kills me when people don't go to that level of due diligence, or they cheap out and get the basic and, again, not not promoting Rentprep or any other service, but like, just don't get the cheapest package you can. It's the equivalent of getting a property inspection, we do so much work on the diligence on the physical property, inspecting it, looking through it with a fine tooth comb. Why aren't we doing the same thing with tenants, this is the equivalent. So don't skimp on it, folks. Just pay the 10 bucks the extra 20 bucks and get it run.   Steve: Yeah do it now in a lot of times, that information that you may be skipping out on may hold the key to exactly what you want to avoid. So if you're looking at, for example, you know, property damage, and let's say that tenant that you were talking about that did $10,000 worth of damage. I'm assuming did you end up getting a judgment on them?   Micheal: We did. But collecting on that judgment is a whole nother story.   Steve: I guess I yeah, I could spend an hour talking about just collecting now. And I'll give landlord. I'll give landlord some good tips. And I'll give you a good tip too that might help you collect on that. But you know, that's a good example, like credit reports omitted judgments about three years ago. So judging is no longer included on a credit report at all.   Michael: Wow.   Steve: And it's we can thank our court system for that because no two courts are alike in the country. The courts are like the what courts are like the Wild West, it's the craziest thing you've ever seen. So you can have neighboring counties and different courts. And let's say you and I both owe money to Old Navy, we both got an Old Navy card. And we wanted to spend a ton of money on jeans and T shirts. And we just said let's do a   Michael: They've gpt great, great deals.   Steve: Right? So and then we both defaulted on the same day. And Old Navy Old Navy took us both to court on the same day. And we both got a judgment against us on the same day. And my my county court filed the judgment in your county court one county over not even in a different state, but just one county over filed that exact same judgment, same amount, same creditor all the same information, there was a very high chance that my record would end up being reported on my credit and yours would not. So only about 50% of judgments were being recorded on two credit reports which created a really unfair system, because why should I be punished for it right? In New nappy or vice versa. So right, so the credit bureaus decision was okay, the only we can't fix the courts, nobody can seem to do that.   Michael: That's a whole nother issue.   Steve: It is a whole nother issue. But since we can't fix the courts, then the only real fair thing to do here is just leave that information out omit it. And for landlords, you know, that became super dangerous, for obvious reasons of you're not going to be able to see that information, the other dangerous reasons because literally overnight, 22 million people saw almost a 10% increase in their credit score, just because of a you know, back end office move. That doesn't doesn't mean that they're trying to improve because of credit behaviors. But because we eliminated a an adverse piece of information that wasn't going to affect them negatively. So everybody's scores went up.   Michael: Wow. So in a kind of just real world example to paraphrase and make sure I understand this, if I'm I find this Navy Old Navy, credit card user and I went really crazy, like really crazy and I owe a let's say eight grand a month to old neighbor. And my income shows five grand a month getting deposited into my bank account, which is the income verification part of that I have a negative $3,000 a month habit burning a hole in my pocket, but you as the landlord or end user of that report will not see that.   Steve: You will not see any judgments just like the judgment that you have on that that tenant that did $10,000 of damage. Now obviously, as a landlord, you want to tell other landlords like, hey, beware, like, right? Don't let this guy do what he did to me. I wouldn't wish that on anybody. Most landlords have that mindset of, You know, I don't want someone else to have to suffer. But unless that landlord, that new landlord is doing a judgment search specifically, they'll never know about that judgment that you got on that tenant that that judgment will not haunt them, like every tenant, or every landlord wishes that it would in your mind, in your mind when you're going through all the steps to issue that judgment and get it and you finally have in your guess, this is a moral victory. It's a principle win! It's not unless it's unless someone else is looking it up. Otherwise, it's, you know, does it exist? Does a tree fall in the woods? if no one's around to hear it? It's like, you know, is that does that judgment even really exist? If the landlord's not looking for it?     Michael: But so this is a searchable thing that that rent prep can do?   Steve: Yeah, these are civil court record searches that are now emitted from credit reports. But we can reach into the courts and pull those those records out. So yeah, so a deeper dive is certainly worth it, especially in cases like yours.   Michael: Oh, yeah. So Steve, curious to know, in your experience, what are some of those major red flags that somebody who's looking at a red prep or some kind of other background check information report, could see and look to glean and say, Okay, if I'm seeing these four things, are these three things I either need to stop and pause? Or this is a definite non starter for me?   Steve: Well, I'll start right from the application process, because I feel like almost every landlord has run into this situation where somebody doesn't want to give their information. And they're going to claim that it's because they don't want to put their social security number down because they want to keep that private.   Michael: Yep. I've done that as a renter.   Steve: Okay, so now that one or two things are happening here, and it's important that landlords understand this, too. And I'm not saying you were wrong to do that. And you may have been very reasonable to do it. And so   Michael: I'm great renter.   Steve: Yeah, right. Okay, so, perfect point. Great renters want great landlords, right? If you don't trust this person that you're giving your information to, you're not going to give all your information. So part of the what we're doing like with our private Facebook community, or even a lot of our educational content, on rent prep calm, is really talking about how to be a good landlord, because good, the best tenants want good landlords. And if you're, if you're not presenting yourself, well, you're going to run into that more often than you want to where people are closed and don't want to give you the information because they, to be quite honest, they just don't trust you with it.   So that's one thing. The other thing is, what we have seen here and learned here and processing, as many reports, as we do is that more often than not, if somebody does not want to get the information, or if they intentionally give the wrong information, which we see a lot of somebody's flip flops a social security number, or adds a zero where it should be an eight. More often than not, they're they're trying to hide something that they're doing that knowing like, I don't want them to find this information. And it's better to have a no result or can't find the result versus seeing the negative result that would come up.   So I would say, you know, for a landlord, that first red flag is going to be if you start seeing a lot of generic information on a on an application. And, you know, first thing might be check yourself, make sure you're you're not the problem is the landlord like am I am I presenting myself well, and this thing, well, my, my professional and my handling this thing properly? Or do I seem like the type of person that somebody is not going to be comfortable sharing their information with, after the after that I would say, you know, for looking at the actual reports, what those red flags might be, I would set the obvious ones first, if they have a judgment from a previous landlord on their, or a property management company. And the tip I would give landlords is property management companies are obvious, right? It'll be ABC property management or, you know, ABC apartment community or whatever. But if you just see a person's name on there, you know, if it's just a Steven White as the creditor, or the plaintiff, there's a good chance that that's probably a landlord and it's definitely worth either calling the screening company to get a little bit further information, maybe they can help and tell you what it is. But it's not going to show up always as super obvious, like a judgment from Old Navy, or a judgment from ABC property management company.   So keep an eye out when you see individual names like that a lot of times it's it's from a landlord.   Michael: Okay.   Steve: The other one is going to be their their payment history. So if you're looking at a credit report, understand that most people pay things based on priority. If I, you know, that I'm going to collect a late fee, and maybe even have my vehicle repossessed if I don't make the payments on it promptly. I'm going to make sure that I pay that car payment ahead of some other payments, like my dentist bill who, maybe he hits me with a little late fee, maybe not, maybe I can call him and talk to Nancy, you know, the office manager and talk her out of a payment, you know, late fee or something.   But really, it comes to a prioritization. So if you start seeing late payments and a shaky payment history, and it's even for things that I would consider to be high priorities, such as housing, rent, those types of things, that's usually a red flag, too, because if these are high priority items that they can't make timely payments on. That's usually a sign of distress, and not that they're creatively trying to manage their finances and choosing, okay, well, maybe I can pay this thing late this month. But this one's a priority, I need to pay it. So good. renters always prioritize the rent payment, above all else, you know, that's their housing, that's the thing that needs to get paid above their Old Navy bill or buying, you know, beer and smokes for the weekend. So you want to make sure that rent payment is its top priority.   So you're looking for somebody that knows how to prioritize, and evictions, evictions are obvious. You know, that's that probably the single most important piece of data that you can gather to show somebody prior history with renting. Now, the issue with that is, obviously have an eviction moratorium, right now that's going on. You have some states like the wonderful state of New York that I'm in that eliminated evictions from being viewed at all. So landlords cannot even look at an eviction when they're considering or doing their screener in considering a new tenant makes it really tough. It's like, you know, tying one hand behind your pack and trying to trying to fight.   So, but that eviction data is super critical, because evictions don't always you know, what the media or people sometimes portray as sort of a victim situation where somebody, you know, their kid got sick, and they lost their job, and they can't pay their rent, and now they got evicted, you're evicted. And it's tragic. Those are not the typical scenarios, you know, the typical scenario is the guy who has parties and kicked holes in the wall or flushed his socks down the toilet, and, and you don't want to rent to this person or in New York's case, they're in their mind, they're trying to protect tenants. But it's, it's so counterproductive. Because if you if you evicted somebody for being aggressive to a neighbor, or another tenant in a building, and that was the basis for the eviction, now you're eliminating the next landlord to be able to see that information and make that decision and, and putting all the other tenants at risk. So the eviction data is critical. And I would say more often than not, the evictions are not some really sad, tragic story about somebody whose circumstances were well beyond their control and they're, they're a victim of, you know, a broken system. Most of the evictions that we see are certainly well deserved. And landlords need to be aware.   Michael: Yeah. So are we entering now, a new cycle? I mean, whenever evictions, the the moratorium gets lifted, the fact that that information from this stretch of time is not going to be able to be viewed by landlords. Do you? Do you foresee a really tough next rental cycle where landlords are going to be dealing with a lot of crummy tenants because they didn't have access to the full picture?   Steve: For sure. And I would say, you know, the mindset for the terrible mindset in a lot of ways, but I know a lot of businesses have had the mindset of, this pandemic has been rough on business, obviously, some more than others. But I heard somebody say, never let a good pandemic go to waste. Like if you're going to, if you're going to try to make lemonade out of being handed a couple of lemons, you're going to take that opportunity and don't think that tenants aren't going to do the same. So anything that would have been maybe just bad, you know, bad character or bad payment history or being irresponsible now has the easy go to pandemic blame to say like, Well, that was related to the pandemic. And so, you know, you can't count that. So I think a lot of people are going to abuse that, you know, and especially when it comes to evictions, or even just simply their own personal finances. You know, we're seeing that here, pretty much on a daily basis where somebody never lost her employment never took a pay decrease throughout the entire pandemic, but as using the pandemic as a legitimate reason to be able to get out of paying things on time or taking full advantage of it, and so that's gonna, that's gonna take a while to work its way through the system for sure, unfortunately.   Michael: So how can landlords combat that or what is rent prep doing to help landlords combat that?   Steve: Well, one of the things that landlords are going to need to be aware of his credit bureaus themselves are working really hard to hide information. That was pandemic related. And again, you're not going to avoid people who abuse the system, if they're going to be out there. And it's going to happen, unfortunately, but at least you're not putting on putting it on the landlord to have to make that decision.   So the idea is, if we just hide that information, and you don't see it, the landlord can't make a mistake, and, and use a piece of information against somebody that they shouldn't have.   Michael: Got it.   Steve: So at least at least it's holding them, you know, less liable in terms of a compliance error or discriminating against somebody who they shouldn't be. But beyond that, I would say the landlord's like, like always, nothing's really changed, have really good communication, ask a lot of questions. If you see something come up on a report, or credit report or, you know, criminal record or anything, start asking questions.   It's not always a black and white thing, when you're looking at this type of data, it's not always as simple as well, they've got a criminal record. So they must be bad, we're not going to run through them. You know, people change and a lot of times, you know, they don't need to suffer endlessly for a mistake that they made. And a lot of times, they come out a lot better afterwards. And so those conversations are critical for a landlord to be able to say, does this criminal record, really truly impact whether or not this person is going to be a good renter for me or not? And a lot of times, even a criminal record with with some clarity around it may not be as concerning as it as it seems, initially. So good communications to key there.   Michael: Yeah, it's such a great point. And I know for I know, for me, too, as someone who, when I was first looking at credit background checks, that was a big scary one for me, but the fact that you could chat with an account rep at RentPrep and start to have those conversations with the tenant, it doesn't necessarily need to be a non starter, it can be Oh, let's try to understand what's going on. Because you're right, it shouldn't. People's past doesn't need to haunt them for eternity.   Steve: Right. And I'll say this, too, especially when it comes to evictions, we know that the data shows that somebody is three times more likely to be evicted again, once they've been evicted once, hmm, the reason for that is because that fear of the unknown is gone. Right? Like, if you've never gone through an eviction, you don't know what's gonna happen, like, are the police gonna come and throw me out what, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to think have, you know what the potentials are, because I don't know it. And it's scary. Once it's happened, and they know the ins and outs of it, it becomes a lot less scary.   So if you see somebody that had an eviction, five years ago, four years ago, it may not be as big of a red flag, as you might think, you know, number one, they've only had one and not three. So that's, that's a positive, right? But it's always it's always worth the conversation. If you're on the fence, if everything else looks good, and it's this one piece that you're like, I just don't feel great about this. Don't be afraid to call that person up and say, Hey, I saw that you had an eviction on here, talk me through that, what what happened there? And you might find that it was a, something that happened, that's not going to happen again, or something that they learn from and doesn't seem like, you know, it's it's a it's a pattern or something that is going to creep up again.   And so it's always worth having good communication. Background checks are great conversation starters. You know, so rank that way. Yeah.   Michael: Great point. Steve. I'm curious because we were chatting about it a little bit ago that I was someone that never liked when I was renter putting my social security number on on applications. What is the impact for a renter of getting a background check or a credit check? I mean, does that does that affect their credit score? Does that show up as a true inquiry like if you get a new Old Navy credit card for instance?   Steve: Yeah, so thank god TransUnion, who is the In my opinion, the best credit bureau the best one to work with certainly, and I think the ones who really have had their stuff together, you know, working with the all three different credit bureaus TransUnion, as has been the best one for us to work with. And about two, maybe three months ago, they passed, sweeping changes that in the housing industry for rentals that Inquiries were no longer going to be hard inquiries or affect their credit. And this was a huge, huge change, right?   Because if you live in an area like Portland, OR San Francisco or, you know, there seems to be a million of them now, even even if you have perfect credit, the chances of you applying to someplace and getting it on the first shot are almost slim to none like, most people, most people are applying to 10 different places. So and hoping that one of them hits and one of them lands, you know, so Long gone are the days where you put in a rental application with a solid background and you're guaranteed going to get it there's a real high chance that you're going to end up submitting multiple and having multiple background checks ran on you. So TransUnion saw this and and i think handled the issue correctly, which was make it a non issue, it no longer affects anyone's credit to pull their credit for rental purposes.   The way it used to be, was the same rules that applied for anything they want to do eliminate credit fishing. So if you go to Old Navy, and I'm trying to think of some tribal colloquia here and get this local stuff where so you got an Old Navy, and you get a card and Trader Joe's and I don't know, can't think of another one here, but some other, you know, department store or wherever that they're offering you, you know, credit, the Bureau's would see that as this is not good, if this person's applying for all of these things in a short window of time, it's usually an abuse of credit, it's usually what they call fishing. So if you get denied for one credit card, and then the next thing you do is apply for another one, and then another one until you get the credit limit that you want or the line that you want. That was something that they would punish people for. But in the rental industry, obviously, that's not the case, like you could very well apply 5-10 different places and doesn't mean that you're fishing, or you're doing anything weird, it just means you live in a really competitive area that there's more applicants than there is housing.   Michael: Well, that's great. And that's great information to know both as a renter, someone who's going to be potentially renting and also as a landlord to have those conversations with folks that don't want to give your social security number for fear that that that's no longer an issue.   Steve: Yeah, that was a huge deal for us. Because we would deal with a lot of inquiry disputes, which was a real, a real administrative pain for us on the compliance end of things because somebody would say, Hey, you know, I applied to this place, but I didn't think they'd actually pull my credit. And I want to get this credit inquiry off my credit report. And we'd have to go through this really lengthy process with them. And so now that doesn't even exist. It's been Yeah, it was like a real smart, one of those rare times where you're like, Man, that made sense. And in every logical way, and everyone did the right thing. I feel like that just doesn't happen all the time where you're like, we solve the problem efficiently.   Michael: And now it's working.   Steve: Yeah, right. Right. Right. But in that case, TransUnion really did get it right. Beyond that, I would think most people that their reason for not wanting to share their social security number is, you know, they're afraid of who's looking at it, what's going to happen, does this mean that my information is going to get stolen? Right, and the ugly truth that nobody wants to hear, but I see it from a different point of view working on the data side is your information has probably already been stolen. And your your information is far easier to access than anybody would ever wish or hope. That's that's the that's the unfortunate ugly reality that we pretty.   Micheal: It's pretty scary what you can find when just by googling stuff.   Steve: Yeah, yeah, for sure.   Michael: I've got a question, Steve. And then I want to wrap this up. And I don't know if there's a quick answer for this. You tell me if we need to do a homebuyer episode around this. But why in the heck, are there three separate credit agencies to begin with? Why can't we just have one?   Steve: Good question, I think so I can tell you maybe a little bit of the, the genesis of it and the reason why there's three bureaus and why the three bureaus have different scores. That's something that we hear we hear a lot like my TransUnion scores 600 but my Equifax score is 650. Like, why the discrepancy? So So first off, when it comes to scores, those are, especially if we're talking about FIFO. Everyone knows FIFO or is from the word, but FIFO is an actual accounting company. That's fair. Isaac's Fair, Isaac's companies with FIFO stands for. They're a privately held company, and they don't share their algorithm for scoring even with the credit bureaus. So nobody knows the secret sauce of what it is that that goes into it.   So the issue with so many different scores really comes from who's doing the who's doing the algorithms? And what are the what are the scores being based on? So after the big financial crisis in oh eight, the A lot of companies responses to how do we, how do we get back, you know, economically from a recession? And unfortunately, the answer was, well, we should create like a bell curve for credit scores. And so there's different FICO models that have, you could take the exact same information and put it into the model. And depending on the, which version of the FICO model that you're using, if it's an old four model, that would be from 2004, that's what they would consider to be the classic model, then there's an 08 model, which is like the recession model, so you're gonna have a much more inflated number.   And so the answer is that because there's a lot of different industries, so that's the same reason why you have a lot of different scoring models. And the same reason that you have three different credit bureaus is because at one point in time, the credit bureaus, each sort of specialized in an industry. And it's a lot less of that now, they're pretty broad. Some of them might specialize more, that's why sometimes you might have like a Verizon bill that shows up on TransUnion, but not Equifax or something like that. Or some sort of utility bill is usually what we see that shows up on some and not others. So that's the real reason, the reason that there's only three? I don't know. Those became sort of the accepted standard, and anyone else who's created anything, has not had the adoption rate that you would need to legitimize that type of information. And we've seen it over the years.   Michael: A true rating agency.   Steve: Yeah, exactly. So, you know, they've become the standard, they've they carry credibility. Lenders trust them, obviously, landlords trust them, you know, all different industries are trusting them. And so for anyone else to sort of step into the arena and want to create the same thing, it's a really, really high, high barrier to climb over because they're missing all of that credibility that the three bureaus have.   Micheal: sure they're already the three 800 pound gorillas in the room.   Steve: That's it? Yeah. Okay. You know, the one thing that I would say landlords need to be aware of, too, is, you know, I know the government right now has been talking about creating a centralized Bureau, that's something that we're keeping an eye on really, really closely in our industry, and I, I don't necessarily hate the idea, right. Like, I love the idea of standardizing as much as possible, it makes things a lot more accurate. My concern there, especially for landlords is, you know, be really interesting to see how the government achieves that or what their plan is for it. But again, I feel like there's, you know, there's a lot of missed information when you start talking about those types of things.   So what's going to be included? What's not included? Who's actually determining what information is fair or not fair. And again, you know, using New York as an example, the best example I can come up with is those evictions, you know, where New York determines that it's not fair to use them and talk to any landlord here in New York? And they'll tell you, it's absolutely insane. And why shouldn't we use that. So, you know, when you lose that type of control, then you start losing your grip on that type of information that you might be able to make a really well informed decision on. So that would be my concern with with having one central credit, credit bureau is who's determining what gets reported and what's not.   Michael: Makes total sense. And I've got one final question to kind of reward all the listeners who stuck through with us till the very end and understanding fully that we don't know what the secret sauce is, but a question I get all the time, just in life in the Roofstock Academy. How do I boost my credit score? What are some things I can do? Do you have any insight, any tips?   Steve: I do? I do. And it's it's funny, we some, you know, all the screeners here pretty much every employee here at Red prep, we look at so many credit reports we really do where it is our own badge of honor, we probably talked about our own personal credit scores more than the employees normally what. It is like bragging rights, like, Oh, I got my score up over 800 because you sort of see you see how the game is played and what you're trying to do?   So first and foremost, if you are not automating every payment that affects your score, you need to stop what you're doing and do that right now. Go set it up in your bank, or with the with the creditor, whoever it is, whether it be a car payment, whatever, if it affected their reporting, your payments, you need to make sure that you automate those payments so you can never miss a payment even accidentally. That would be first and foremost. Payment History. Bears so much weight on a score, that if you screw it up and you miss a payment, even if it's accidental, even if you have a legitimate reason, even if it's a great reason, it's going to impact your score in ways that you don't want it to. So first and foremost, automate your payments that impact your score and then prioritize from there.   Second would be careful what you apply for, don't think that you can go to five different auto dealerships and apply at five different places. And that's not going to affect your score negatively it will, the rental industry, like we just talked about is about the only industry that you can do that now, sort of fish for credit, anything else, if you do that, that's going to negatively impact your score, even if you get the credit. So, you know, if you apply for three credit cards over a stretch of three months, and you get every credit card that you apply for, that still has the chance to negatively impact your credit score, because too many inquiries for a specific industry.   So if you apply for an auto loan, a mortgage and a credit card all in the same month, it's not going to impact you, that's three inquiries. But if you apply for three credit cards in a month, that's going to impact your credit, because they're all they're all from the same industry. And then I would say, the other thing is carry, depending on your depending on your credit, if you don't have any debts, it's not always a good idea to just pay things off and close them out. So if you don't have a lot of credit bearing accounts, and you just happen to pay everything off, it's for sure a good idea to keep one or two cards, buy some stuff, pay it off monthly, just just so you can generate payment information because no information is not always good either, you know, a lack of information, lack of payment details, what we hear in our, in our industry, we call that a thin file, somebody who just doesn't have a lot of payment information seems like it would be not bad, right? Like, well, it's not bad information. So it must be good. It's not, you know, no information, sometimes it's you know, can damage your score almost as much as bad information.   So keep something you know, keep a credit card, have a low balance, pay it off, but show that you're making payments on it, so that at least it can tick that box every month showing that you're making consistent payments, if you just pay everything off, and there's no record of anything, it won't take long before your score starts slipping.   Michael: Okay. And something that I've heard is to increase credit limits. So that way you end and continue spending the same amount. So your available credit goes up. But the amount you're utilizing stays small.   Steve: Your debt to limit ratio, right, like what you actually owe, and what your limit or ability is to borrow. That is calculated. So if you can, because what you don't want to do is you don't want to be maxed out, or even close to or above 80%. Because that does start to impact your score because they're looking at it as if things go bad. What's your ability to pull yourself out of that situation? If you don't have the available credit to erase that debt that you have? Then you're you're in a bad spot? So yeah, that's a really good point. If you can get a line increase or limit increase, do it worth it. You got to be responsible. I mean, it's like a load.   Oh man I feel dangerous like giving this advice. But yeah, if you're going to be responsible, and you're doing it with that intention, not a bad idea. If you can't be trusted with credit, and you're trying to really repair your your credit, your credit score, you know, then you're good. But for some people, I feel like they, you know, they shouldn't be trusted with a two year limit. It's just yeah, it's bad idea.   Michael: That's, that's that's playing with fire.   Okay, awesome. Well, Steve, I want to be very conscientious of your time. Thank you so much for hanging out with us today and talking to us about RentPrep and just landlord screening in general, what's the best way for folks to either get ahold of you or rent prep or utilize any of the services that that you offer?   Steve: Everything's at RentPrep.com it's a super good resource for landlords to look anything up from tips on how to turn over a property tips for good showings, tips for screening, obviously, and finding the best tenants. And then we've got a private Facebook community that we're really proud of. It's about 12,000 landlords, we will actually not allow landlords, more landlords are not allowed in the group that are allowed in the group we are super picky with who gets in the group and who doesn't. Because we want to try to keep the streets clean and keep it a really safe place for landlords to go and, and share knowledge and help each other out. So there's no no selling in there. You can't be a guru and sell your latest course and that kind of stuff. We want to make sure real landlords and helping each other we see a lot of really great you know, interactions in there, like, you know, somebody has a house fire in their rental property and they're scared to death and don't know what, what's next what to do and, and you'll, you'll see, you know a handful of landlords three or five of them that say, you know this happened to me within the past year, here's what you can expect, here's what you need to do. And so it's filling in those gaps for those landlords and erasing some of that fear of the unknown for them.   So that's our Facebook community, rent prep for landlords, and then also our podcast, which is the rent prep podcast, which I'm sure you can find on iTunes and Stitcher. And we're about 300 plus episodes in tons of great knowledge there. Obviously, you should be listening to Roofstock's podcasts as well. So I'm not trying to steal your audience or anything. But our podcast is, is hosted by Andrew Schultz, who is a professional property manager. And this guy has seen it all and shares a ton of really, really useful information. And it's a it's a good podcast, if you're a landlord, who is looking for, you know, ways to manage your property better or looking to you know, what's going on in the industry currently.   So that's a good way to connect with us there and live chat call in mean, we're a real company. got real real here. seems crazy nowadays, like many people call us and say like, oh, it caught me off guard, like somebody actually answered the phone. But yeah, we're, you know, we're an old school company, you can call us and talk to somebody, you can reach us on email and live chat and all that sort of stuff. You know, we're here to answer questions. And I would even say, there's no such thing as a crazy question. Here. We get it all.   Michael: So just just crazy people, right?   Steve: Plenty of those.     Michael: Thank you so much for hanging out with us. Really appreciate it. We'll have to have you back on a future episode and take care man.   Steve: Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate you having me on.   Michael: All right, everybody. That was our episode a big, big, big thank you to Steve. This was a lot of fun. I learned a ton. I'm going to be definitely putting a lot of this into practice and look forward to using a lot of these features as I look to self manage a few properties. So again, thank you everybody. If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever it is listening to episodes. We love Comments, feedback, additional episodes, ideas on the things that you all want to hear about. We look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing.   

Lots of ends to weave and finished objects to discuss this week. Plus we announce the winners of our Winter Weave Along.  Show notes with full transcript, photos, and links can be found in the podcast section of our shop website: TwoEwesFiberAdventures.com. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Subscribe on Android or Subscribe on Google Podcasts Marsha’s Projects Walk Along tee by Ankestrick (Ravelry link) Abington Mitts by Jennifer Lassonde (Ravelry link) Almost done.  I started the heel flap on the pair of socks (Ravelry link) for myself using Drops Fabel Print that I bought in San Luis Obispo.   Spun three more skeins of merino green and brown three ply. Have a total of five skeins and 716 yards Kelly’s Projects  Finished! Iced Matcha socks (Ravelry link) from the Coffee Socks Collection by Dots Dabbles Designs. I used Invictus Yarns Seraphic.  Finished! Frog and Toad (Ravelry link) from frogandcast.com.  Finished! Reading in Bed blanket (Ravelry link) Started the Huck weaving sampler from the Jane Stafford Guild Winter Weave Along The Weave Along is over and we drew winners! Listen to see if you won! Extremities Knit/Crochet Along This KAL/CAL was inspired by the generous donation of these patterns: Abington Mitts, Jennifer Lassonde, Down Cellar Studio Coffee Socks Collection, Dotsdabbles Designs, Deborah It ends on April 25, 2021. Knit anything for your extremities (hands, arms, legs, feet). Full Transcript Marsha   Hi, this is Marsha Kelly    and this is Kelly. Marsha   We are the Two Ewes of Two Ewes Fiber Adventures. Thanks for stopping by. Kelly   You'll hear about knitting, spinning, dyeing, crocheting, and just about anything else we can think of as a way to play with string. Marsha   We blog and post show notes at to Two Ewes Fiber Adventures dot com Kelly   and we invite you to join our Two Ewes Fiber Adventures group on Ravelry. I'm  1hundredprojects  Marsha   And I am betterinmotion. Kelly   We both look forward to meeting you there.  Both   Enjoy the episode. Marsha   Good morning, Kelly.  Kelly   Good Morning, Marsha. Marsha   How are you today? Kelly   I'm doing all right. The sun is finally coming out. I would say if you want to travel to my neck of the woods don't come in April. April's not-- I don't think April is that good of a weather month for the Monterey Bay Area. It's cold. It's very coastal feeling this morning that cold ocean breeze and overcast and the sun is now finally coming out. So maybe I'll get my hat and my fleece vest off att some point today. Marsha   Well, we are having beautiful weather in Seattle. Kelly   That's good. Marsha   I haven't checked the temperature but warm, you know, Sunny blue sky. Yeah, no rain in the forecast. I think it's gonna be up to 70 Kelly   Oh, nice. Marsha   I'm sorry. I don't know what that is in Celsius for those who are on Celsius. Kelly    30? Somebody in the Ravelry group posted and they said they have like milestones, like body temperature is 37. Marsha   Okay, Kelly    I think they said 30 degrees was like a 70 degree day. Now, I may be totally wrong on that. But but that's-- I'm just doing that from memory and then you know, zero is freezing. And below zero is nobody wants to, nobody wants to feel that! Marsha   Anyway, Well, anyway, it's beautiful. So I have Mark came up and helped me move the patio furniture app onto the deck. So we've been sitting in the furniture and we got the umbrellas out yesterday  Kelly   Wow! Marsha   and, we've had so and I'm... you probably saw my Instagram post that I painted the south side of the garage. Well, primer and first coat yesterday. I have to do the second coat today Kelly   You and Robert so I just have to ask. Did you vacuum it before you primed it? Marsha   Well, Ben power washed it for me. [laughing}   Kelly    Okay. Because I looked out at one point when Robert was... and he's got the vacuum up on the roof of the garage and a paintbrush, like to brush off cobwebs and stuff like that. Oh my gosh, he is meticulous. Marsha    He is meticulous but he's doing it the right way.  Kelly   Yes, yeah. No, I have no complaints. I just laugh when I see. I mean like, Who in the world looks out the window and sees someone vacuuming the garage wall? [laughing] Marsha   Well, I have to say I did not vacuum it but I, as I say Ben went out and power washed the south side. And then what started this whole thing, I probably talked about this but what started the whole thing is he was super excited about power washing and he powerwashed the driveway and I said well why don't you power wash my pots, my the planter pots, which he did. And then on the south side of the driveway where I have the tomatoes, the neighbors have a fence so it creates shade like from the pots down. And so it's super mossy, there was like an inch of moss over there. And he was--can hardly wait to get over there and attack the moss. He powerwashed that whole walkway, power washed the pots. I said Well then, if I'm pulling the pots away... Because they're so heavy, I take all the soil out, which is now piled up in front of the garage so I can't get my car in the garage. If we're going to do all this I should paint the garage because the garage has not been painted in, I don't know, 15 or 20 years? I don't know. A long time. I don't remember when it was painted. Kelly   Well that's what led Robert to paint was that the he wanted to get the garage painted before the grape came back. You know, he pruned it. So it was all pruned back and you can actually see the garage wall. And, and he knew you know, within a couple of weeks that was all going to start leafing out again and so he's like Okay, I gotta get this garage wall painted. Yeah. So so good to do it while the pots are out of the way. Marsha   Yeah, but then I have a tendency, well I was like, just put the paint on there. It's okay. And it's like no, my father was a painter. And I can't, I can't do that. So I, as I say Ben power washed it, I primed it. I put my first coat on. So and I'm gonna go put the second coat on. So that's the right way to do it. Now, all of this, that was just one side of the garage. I have, you know, it's a rectangle. So I have three more slots. [laughing] Kelly   Yeah, that's the west side. So that's one of the sides that gets the most Marsha   No, it's actually south side.  Kelly   Yes. The South Side. Yeah.  Marsha   But I, you know, my parents built that garage. And my father taught me how to put the shingles on it. So it has cedar shingles from probably 1968. And he showed me how to nail shingles onto the side of the garage. So when I was-- okay, let's see. I was probably 10. And I sided, at the age 10, I sided the south side of the garage.  Kelly   That's cool.  Marsha   Yeah. Anyway, and he told me how, like you put a double row at the--the first row at the bottom is a double row, double thickness. And then and how to use the now I don't even know what they're called. Is it a snap line? Chalk line?  Kelly   Oh, yeah.  Marsha   You know, to to get a, to, so that they're all even. And so I was out there painting them. I thought I did a pretty good job at the age of 10. Kelly   That's nice. Yeah.  Marsha   Child labor.  Kelly   Exactly. Exactly. Marsha   But I remember as a kid thinking, it was really fun. It was, yeah, it was super fun. So he left, he showed me how to, he showed me how to do it and then he left me on my own out there one day, and I just did the whole thing. But I will say, I'm not 10 anymore. [laughing] And  painting, so you know, primer, and then the first coat, my right hand holding the brush. I can't hold-- I in fact, I intentionally did not buy as big a brush as my dad would have used. He had like an eight inch brush, they would use like my hand can't hold that you know. So I have a smaller brush. But by the end of the day, my right hand was really sore and my left elbow. I pinched a nerve or something in their, I--or done something. And I think what it is now with my left hand is or my left elbow is from holding the paint pot. You know, just imagine holding something in your hand.  All day,  Kelly   Right Marsha   So it's-- I think it's affected my elbow. Yeah, I'm a wreck. Kelly   Well, even with all of that you still are able to knit right? Marsha   Yes, I'm working on socks right now as we're recording. So I'm still able to knit. Yeah.  Kelly   All right.  Marsha   Anyway, enough home improvement. Should we talk knitting?  Kelly   Yeah. What are you working on? Marsha   Well, I'm working on my socks. Just the you know, vanilla socks. In fact, I don't even have it in the show notes. It's the What yarn is this? It's the Fabel yarn that I remember we bought it down-- I reaching over to my bag to grab a label--when we went to San Luis Obispo years ago for the yarn crawl. Kelly   Oh, right. Marsha   And this is Drops Fabel Print. I've talked about this before, but not for a while. This is the second sock and I'm just starting the heel flap. It's you know, it's an easy project.  Kelly   Yeah. Marsha   So since I'm talking about these should I just talk about my projects? Kelly   Sure! Yeah, that's a good idea. Marsha   Because I don't have much to report. Marsha   I've been periodically picking up the Walk Along Tee by Ankestrick. And I have-- I really have not progressed much since we last talked. In fact, I have to tell you, I listened to the last two episodes while I was painting the garage. And knowing that we were going to record today, thinking Well, there's not much more to report. I think I've knit four more rows since we last talked. So but as I say, there's been so many projects here. Oh, and I should say too. Not much knitting got done last week because Ben had his wisdom teeth taken out. And so,last Wednesday, a week ago, so there was a lot of up and down the stairs changing ice packs making milkshakes and getting him to take pain meds. He alternated between ibuprofen and Tylenol. So yeah, I have not made a huge amount of progress on that and then the Abington Mitts also haven't... Kelly   Oh no! You jinxed them when you said you hope they're not like your skull. [laughing] Marsha   They are like my skull but as I said, again as I'm out there listening to the podcast the last episode while I was painting, we reiterated the deadline for the extremities, extremities knit crochet, macrame along. And I need to get going. Kelly   Yes. April 25th, right? Marsha   Yeah. So I need to get going. So I'm so close. I just have to do the thumb. Kelly    Right! So yes, Don't jinx yourself. Marsha   Yeah. You know what I also, when I listened back to myself, I always, this is what I always say. "I'm going to do that tonight." [laughing] I'm not saying that. That seems to jinx me too.  Kelly   Okay. Oh my gosh. Marsha    But the one thing I have been working on though, is the spinning. So I plied... have made three more skeins, I plied three skeins of yarn. So I now have a total of five, which is a little over 700 yards. And I think I'm going to get at least two more skeins, and maybe a bit more. But I had the idea that I was going to make a sweater out of this the green and brown three ply. But I'm not going to have enough. So I do think I will have more of the brown left. And even if I don't have enough of it. I can order more. Which I should probably do that sooner than later. So I was thinking well maybe I would just add stripes to the sweater. Kelly   Yeah. Marsha   To to extend it. So I think that will look okay. If I have like that barber pole yarn mixed with a solid but it's that same, the same color. I think it will be okay. Kelly   Yeah, I think that would be really pretty. Marsha   We did have a conversation though. Just thinking about spinning. We did have a conversation. I called you. Do you remember I called you last week, I think or this week that?  Kelly   Oh, right. I want to know how that how that went. Marsha   Yeah, well, so I'll tell people what happened. So and this probably happens to a lot of people, is that you're single is-- you're plying and one of your singles will break. And then you can't find the end on the bobbin. And that's what happened. And so I called you and I said because you know, you have been spinning a lot longer than I have, you've probably had this experience too. And you said a couple of things to do. One of them is put the bobbin back on the spinning wheel and spin the opposite direction that you plied it. But, and but loose. I mean, you don't have the yarn coming--well, because you're trying to find the end, right. So you just let it spin on there. And it will sometimes just fly out. Kelly   Right Marsha   That didn't happen. Kelly   I don't have too much luck with that. I haven't had too much luck with that technique either about Marsha   that didn't happen. But I think what it did is it must have loosened it some way because I finally took it off. And I just took it out in the sunlight. And I actually found the end Kelly    Oh, nice. Oh, that's good. Marsha   So because I had done that before I took it outside in the light and I could not find it. So I do think that that spinning, did must have jarred it some way that I could find it. But just the other advice you gave me too. And this is not-- this doesn't help find the end. But just when you're spinning, don't let the singles pile up too high as you're spinning across the bobbin and keep moving at across the hook sooner. Because I sometimes you know, as I'm watching TV, or I'm talking, I lose track of what I'm doing. And sometimes they get a little too high and then they can fall down onto the next row is that the right way, how would you describe it? Marsha   Kind of like the next layer the way I would... Marsha   Layer,  right.So I'm going to keep that in mind for next time. Because that has it's happened to me more than once that Kelly   And a lot of people use something called a Woolly Winder. And Robert from the very beginning, when I first got my spinning wheel, he was like this needs to have something where it's you know, laying the laying the thread down or the yarn down, going evenly all the way across and then coming back. Like you know, like a fishing reel. And I said, No, you just move the yarn on the hooks. And then I discovered, you know, this was back in 98. And then I discovered that there was this thing called a Wooly Winder that I think that's what it's called, that does do that it it winds your yarn onto a bobbin more like a fishing reel would do so you're not moving the hooks yourself.  Marsha   Make sense. Kelly   Yeah. I like to move the hooks because it helps me remember not to sit in one position. Not to put my hands in one position. Not to, you know, not do things that could give you a repetitive stress injury, the more adjustments that you make to your body, the better. But a lot of people like to have that and just be able to get into that rhythm. And, and it, you know, people think it helps, and it probably does helps them make a more consistent yarn to, because every time you stop and start again, you have the possibility of your yarn not being, not being consistent. But I'm old school enough to think that that moving the yarn from one hook to another is, is good for you. But I also am guilty as you are forgetting and then, Oh, no! And the finer you spin, the worse it is, the more careful you have to be about that happening. Marsha   Yeah, and I also think, too, is if you, if you have the the single on the bobbin. And you  just went and decided that you were going to wind it into onto another bobbin or something. Not that you would do that. Like so you're just going to take it from the one bobbin and put it onto another bobbin...  Kelly   People do that. They put it onto like a storage bobbin. Marsha   Right, I think then you might not have as much of a problem. But when you put it on the the lazy Kate, it has to have some tension on it.  The bobbins that you're plying off of have to have some tension. Otherwise, if they move too fast, then it all starts twisting back onto itself.  Kelly   Right, right.  Marsha   And so I think that tension also then forces the single down into the layers.  Kelly   Yes. Marsha   And I don't know how to get around that other than, as you said, spin... change more frequently.  Kelly   Yeah. And the other thing that I have done with my lazy Kate, when I wanted to make a super, you know, try to be super consistent in my plying, I was taking a class and I was trying to follow you know, the instructions of the class. And so, on our wheel, the lazy Kate on the little Herbie, is connected to the wheel. And I mostly ply from the Kate on the wheel. But if I have a yarn that I think is going to be really temperamental, what I learned in the class I took a while back, is that if you have the Kate away from you, it gives you the chance, it gives the yarn a chance for the twist to even out in the singles. And so if I have something that I think is not going to behave nicely, I'll take my Kate off. And, you know, put it behind me, like four or five feet. Kind of prop it up behind me four or five feet. And that does, that does help. Because it doesn't get so tight. You know, you know that that that tightness when you're when you're trying to pull it up, up from the bobbin instead of out from the bobbin. Marsha   Yes and I--and so we have the same wheel and I find that I tried plying with the lazy Kate attach to the wheel the way it's designed. It was a nightmare, because I, it kept...Yeah, I was not able to do it. So you had shown me that trick. And so now I always like I sit in my chair in the study, you know watching TV,which is probably part of my problem [laughing]  with my applying and then I put the lazy Kate behind me and I block it with the table leg to try and hold it up. So, because you want it to stay upright and not have the bobbins hit anything. So that stops them. The other thing is Kelly, you remember when I got the Ashford wheel?  Kelly   Yeah, Marsha   It came with a lazy Kate.  Kelly   Oh okay. I don't remember that. Marsha   And so I tried that too. And it's, it's basically it's like two posts that stick up. Wood posts that stick up and then the bobbins go in there. Ours are put in perpendicular to the ground, right?  These bobbins are parallel. But there is nothing to slow them down. So they just--and I tried I thought, well maybe it'll be easier. No. It did not work at all. It's-- I think that's just going to be for storing bobbins because they look pretty. Kelly   So my my Wyatt wheel has a Kate like that built into the wheel and it does not have a tension--any tensioner on those bobbins. And so what I've done is I've taken the springs, the springs that do the tensioning for the Herbie and I just put them on there so you might try it. It might not fit the same springs or those springs might not be long enough. It depends on how long the, what are they called, the sticks that go through the bobbin are. But if you can find springs to go on the end of them to provide a little bit of tension.  Marsha   Yeah, I could just go to the hardware store probably and get something.  Kelly   That might be a better Kate because you're not pulling up from the bobbin you are actually pulling out from the bobbin. And it's a little bit, it's a little bit easier to keep your attention even in that case. But you have to, you really need to have some tension on the bobbins in the Kate. Marsha   Right. I think I'm going to, I'm going to bring that lazy Kate from the Ashford to the hardware store, because what I've discovered? Men love anything to do with spinning wheels. They'll be like, oh! Yeah, they're gonna love it. It's engineering, right? Kelly    Yeah. Get some assistance with those springs for sure. Marsha   So that's it for me with projects. Kelly   Okay. Well, I'm glad you didn't have to waste yarn, you know that you didn't have to cut through your yarn. Because just to finish that conversation, the last resort to try to find your end is really just to cut the yarn and start spinning, or start unraveling. I've just cut the yarn and then started plying, from that, you know from that section just to wait to see what happens. And sometimes it makes a tangle. And then you have to cut even more off. And sometimes you found the end and sometimes. And sometimes you end up, you know, your cut end you ply back to the one that was hidden. And then you can find where you need to start up again. So but that's not much fun, because you often will end up having to unwind a lot of yarn. Marsha   Yeah. Before and put it in a compost pile. And that's and I was really hoping and I'm glad it didn't happen because I want to use every bit of yarn... Kelly   your already short Marsha   ... that I can  Kelly   Yeah, yeah. Marsha    In fact, I even like I've had some sections that have, you know, when you're plying, and you get the twist in one of the singles, but you can't get it out, it ends up just plying into the three. And that's not nice. I cut some of those out but I saved them. Just in case I need it for some something and then also when you skein the yarn on the niddy noddy, and then you have to tie it in four places. Well you don't have to, but I do tie it in four places. I have some waste yarn of some other commercial waste yarn that I tying the little... because each one say it's four inches, right? How many stitches how many knit stitches is four inches? You know, like maybe I could get the maybe that four inches what I'm gonna need, you know,  Kelly   Your yarn chicken stitches.  Marsha   Yeah, so I have my little stash set away.  Kelly   Yeah.  Marsha   And also, you know, on the niddy noddy, too, it doesn't always-- as you're winding, it doesn't always make-- two ends don't always meet so sometimes you have to unravel a bit and so that'll be 18 inches, 20 inches or something. And so I've been saving all of those.  Kelly   Sometimes what I do there is I'll take waste yarn and tie it. It depends on how precious the yarn is. Most of the time, I don't do this, but if I'm trying to keep as much yarn as possible, I'll tie waste yarn to the end of my handspun and then use that waste yarn to finish the, to finish the loop around and then tie it to the starting end. Marsha   Oh, that's a really good idea too. Kelly   That saves you. It saves you, you know, a yard  or less than a yard. Saves you Marsha    yeah  Kelly   Saves you from having to throw that little piece away. So so you maybe haven't had a lot happening with your knitting, Marcsha, but I had a Finish-a-Palooza! I'm sure you can see it in the in the show notes finished, finished finished! Marsha    Mm hmm.  Kelly   So the biggest finish of all was Frog and Toad. Frog and Toad are finished and delivered. Marsha   Well, and I want to ask you about that too. Yeah. So Kelly   they turned out so cool. I was so happy with how they turned out. And I I definitely have somewhat of a desire to knit them again. We'll see if that actually comes to comes to pass but Marsha   so and will... and were they a big hit? Kelly   They were a big hit. Yeah, so I had my I've had my second vaccination. And that was right before Easter. And then so I was gonna deliver them on Easter but I didn't feel well. So I just stayed home that day and laid low. And you know, the reaction wasn't fun, but it only lasted a day and I think if I had been--if I had been a little more, a little less stubborn, the nurse at the vaccination site, she said, you know, if you're not feeling well after the vaccine, you know, go ahead and take a Tylenol or, you know, go ahead and take Tylenol or Advil, you know, that's fine. And, and I know when they did the trials, they didn't tell people, you know, don't take anything after you have the vaccine. And so I'm sure people did who didn't feel well. And, you know, the vaccines are 95% or 90%, something like that, effective. You know, in the trials with people possibly taking something afterwards, but I had gotten it into my head that you, you know, you want your immune response to kick in, and I don't I, in talking with one of my colleagues, she said, You know, that's not really logic. That's not really that logical, even though it seems logical. It's not, it's not really the way the body works. But I had kind of thought, Well, you know, when you're sick, you kind of want that response to happen.  Marsha   Mm hmm.  Kelly   And, and so you know, as much of your immune, letting your immune system deal with the problem as you can is good. And so, you know, maybe not take something right away. So I didn't, and I think I would have felt much better if, as soon as I started feeling a little sick, I had taken something and for some reason, I thought, No, I should probably let my body just do this. Anyway, I don't think that's, that's not really good biological logic, according to my biology teacher friend at school, and the nurse at the at the vaccine clinic. So if anybody has their next vaccine coming, listen to what they say.  Marsha   Yeah. Kelly   And they tell you if you don't feel well, to take something, I would say take something. But anyway, enough of that. I didn't get to deliver them on Easter. But on Tuesday after Easter, we were, my mom who has been vaccinated fully and met her 14 days. She had like her freedom... what my aunt Pat calls her freedom day when her vaccine was, you know, fully the 14 days afterwards after her second vaccine. And Aunt Betty had passed her Freedom Day and Dennis had passed his freedom day. And Kye, who who runs the Post No Bills brewery,  my nephew, he'd had his freedom day. Anyway, so we all met at Post No Bills. Even though I really hadn't had my freedom day. We all met at Post No Bills, and Sarah brought the kids. Of course Post No Bills is a is a, you know, brew house. So we sat outside, they couldn't even come up on the patio. So they were down. They were down, out, you know, out from us a little ways. But I went out there with them and gave them their presents. And, and Faye was really happy with her Frog and Toad. She had never read the books before. So she was excited about that. And and then, of course, there was a little bit of throwing of Frog and Toad between her and her brother. Which I knew was gonna happen, I mean, their stuffed things. So it doesn't really matter. But it was kind of funny. That's the first thing they do is start throwing them back and forth. And then, you know, taking off the clothes, putting on the clothes, she was having a good time with them. So So yeah, very big hit. This Frog and Toad project was a very big hit. So she's now taking them to the grocery store to teach them how to grocery shop, according to Sarah. Because they've never been to the grocery store before.  Marsha   Mm hmm.  Kelly   So anyway, she's having fun with them Marsha   very cute  Kelly   Yeah, yeah. And I had a great time making them so. Lovely pattern Really well, really well done. Yeah. So. Marsha   So I'm looking at your picture on Ravelry. They're very cute. And their mouths, their mouths and their eyes it's very... well and their little toes and it just.. Kelly   Yeah, there's every little detail about them is fun. And every time I do a little detail, it was just, it made them even better. So it's a really-- I think they're really fun. It's a really fun knit. And there are just so many things. I just kept telling Aunt Betty, Oh my gosh, I'm so delighted by this. She's like, I don't think I've ever seen you so delighted by your knitting before. But the little knees and fat little calves and anyway... Very cute project and well received. So I finished that. I finished the Iced Matcha socks last night. So they're done and I did have to redo the toe on one of them. Thinking of sock toes and Robert, it kind of made me laugh. I decided I was going to just follow the pattern and not just do the toe I always do. And it's slightly different. I mean, it wasn't wildly different. So I don't think it was the pattern. I think it was more that I jumped the gun on how... Well I think there's two things. I think I jumped the gun on how soon to do that first toe, which often happens to me. It's like, Oh, yeah, they're far enough. I'm ready to do the toe. And really, they couldn't use another quarter inch of length. And then I want to say,  I can't remember exactly in the pattern, but the number of stitches that people typically decrease to before they Kitchener I've actually found that I like to have more than that. So like I'll use at a minimum 16 stitches on my needles when I Kitchener. So and I think like when I was first making socks, I want to say they were having me go down to like 10 or something.  Marsha   Yeah, Iusually leave 10. So what is, why, what was your thinking? Why? Kelly   [laughing] It just, it cramps my toes. Marsha    Oh, okay,  Kelly   They just seem a little smaller. I just like the I just, I just like to have a more blunt end to the toe. Here we back... Marsha   You don't like looking at the pointy toes in your drawer. The dresser drawer. Kelly   Yeah. Except it's, you know, my eye. For some reason, it just feels more comfortable on my foot to have a little bit wider. Like they're not, I don't think of myself as having particularly wide feet. Especially when I was younger, but I do have now on one foot a pretty good size bunion. And so maybe that's why, you know, maybe that my foot is just wider at that. At that.  Kelly   Yeah,  Kelly   Now and so. So anyway, I took that one sock out and added to the toe. And now I'm and now I'm done. So the pattern's very cool. We talked last time about how I was gonna-- thinking about making a pair of them inside out.  Marsha   Right.  Kelly   But the thing I didn't think about is when you stretch them over your feet. That ribbing doesn't look the same... that wobbly ribbing isn't wobbly anymore. Okay, so if you stretch them over your over your leg, it would just look like a one stitch stockinette ribbing. So I don't know I would use... I would use that reverse pattern on something that didn't have to stretch. Because then you could actually see how that ribbing wobbles in and out. But the right side of my socks, I really liked that. I really liked the pattern. I think it would be a good one for a highly variegated yarn. Mine is a little bit variegated. It's a little more variegated than tonal. But it's not--it's not a really wild variegation. But I think in a you know, pretty wildly variegated yarn, this would make a good pattern for that too, because it would break up that, you know, it might break up the... not that pooling is bad, but it just kind of gives another texture to the way the yarn is is changing. So those are done in time for the Extremities Knit Along. Kelly   And then I finished the reading in bed blanket.  Marsha   Oh, nice.  Marsha   Correct. Yes. Kelly   Yeah. And Robert will say it's not entirely finished. Because, I'll tell you why. Because I washed it. And this is a little bit of a cautionary tale for people who want to weave with different yarns. Like when I do the blanket with the Gotland yarn that you bought, I really won't have to worry about this so much. Even if I'm doing wide stripes. It's all the same yarn.  Kelly   It's dyed different colors, but it's all the same yarn. But as you know, different yarn felts in different ways, right. And I always like to full a blanket so it doesn't feel like and look like burlap. I like the all the yarns to kind of snuggle together and I maybe like it a little more felty then fulled. I don't know. I just I like that look of you know, nice well fulled blanket. And what that means is that some of them had the tendency to shrink in more than others. So the one of the yarns in there was the Tasmanian Comeback and that shrunk up more than the other yarns did. And so I have a stripe--well, I have different stripes, but like I have a five inch stripe and a two inch stripe of the Tasmanian Comeback. A couple different stripes. And those stripes shrunk in so on the edges you could see it pull in. So I laid it out on a table and I stretched, pulled those out. So they were even, you know, I did a pretty significant like block, you know, stretching that part out. I tried to get all the edges as even as I could. And I did a pretty-- I thought I did a pretty good job. But I didn't want to leave it on the table to dry. It was a nice breezy day. And I thought I'm going to hang it up. So I took it out and I hung it up in the tree and then it blew. And so anyway, it ended up with like hanger marks. So  Marsha   Oh  Kelly   Even though I had made the edges straight, once I hung it up, now my edges... One edge is kind of wobbly. So it's not permanent, I have to just wet it and do that blocking process again, let it dry flat, so it'll be straight, and it won't have little bumps where the clothespins were.  Marsha   Right?  Kelly   But so that's what Robert was saying is, well, it's not done because did you rewet it and straighten it out? No.[laughing] But I'm really happy with it, it's got a nice drape to it, I used a twill threading, a point twill threading, so  that it's like denim. Right, twill is like denim. So the the diagonal goes up and then turns around and comes back down for a point twill. So it's got some diagonal interest in it. And then I have the, you know, the horizontal stripes of the different colors. And if I wanted to avoid that, that differential shrinkage, what I think would have been a good strategy would be to, first of all have more shuttles than I have. So that I could stripe the yarns in a small, smaller section. So like to, you know, throw two weft picks of one color, throw two weft pics of another color, throw one or two weft pics of a third color. You know, just alternating like I did in the warp. The warp doesn't have any one thread more than a few times in a row. Marsha    Yeah.  Kelly   And if I had done that with the weft, I wouldn't have had any worry. But because I had a limited number of shuttles. I thought I'll just use this one, I'll just use this one shuttle. And you know, fill it with one color, use it up, fill it with another color use it up. And so that's what I did. So in stripes, but super happy with it. I twisted the fringe. That took a while. But I you know I did like, you know, a certain number of strands twisted one way, another group of threads twisted the same way, and then ply them back on each other and knot it. So I have, I don't usually do things with fringe. But I have a fringe on this blanket. So yeah, I'm super happy with it. I have not yet used it to read in bed. But maybe tonight. Marsha   And you don't have a finished picture of it. Kelly   I know. I don't! I have to take a picture of it.  Marsha   That's funny. I guess he's using that as you know, all the last little bits that you have to do before the project is actually finished. That's funny.  Marsha   And then I also, I thought when you were talking about Robert about like saying that it's not really completed. I thought he said something the other day and I thought what was it about weaving in ends and I looked and it's on Instagram. He said the front the garage is complete and complete is in quotes. And then in parentheses, he says "I do have a few ends to weave in." Marsha   Yeah, yeah. Anyway,  Kelly   That's a good, it's a good expression. Marsha   Yeah, no, it is. Kelly   At least we all know what he means when he says that. His family's probably What! Marsha   Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, he's picked up he's picked up our jargon. Kelly   Yeah, just a few ends to weave in Marsha   And, and then anything else? Have you started anything? Kelly   I haven't started any... Well, I haven't started any new knitting projects. I still have the crochet blanket and I've been off and on working on that. You know, nothing really new to say there for a while. I'll just be working on squares and octagons. But I did start, once I got the blanket done, I thought okay, I'm gonna put the  next Jane Stafford project on my table loom. So I had already wound the warp for it. And so I put it on, and I did a little weaving. I did a little weaving of the sampler. In fact, I'm knotting, I'm knotting ends right now. It's a seven yard warp. So I cut off I think about it's a little more than a yard that I've woven so far. It's a purple silk. It's the same purple the coned purple yarn that I used for that sweater that Cherry Vanilla.  Marsha   Yeah Kelly    that I made, I held a strand of this, along with a strand of gray linen. I think those were the two yarns I used for that sweater. And I love that sweater. And I've had this yarn, my God, for a long time. I think I bought it in the early 2000s. And I thought, Oh, I'll just, I think I'll use this. The the sample that that Jane is weaving is a purple bamboo. And it just reminded me that I had this yarn, so I went got it. And that was the yarn I wound for the warp. And I also used it for the weft. And it's the the weave structure that I am practicing is called Huck. And it's a lace weave structure. And I don't have a picture of it either. I'll take a picture for you to see while we're talking here.  Marsha   Oh, yes,  Kelly   Huck lace is related to Canvas, we, which is the last week the last episode. So it was kind of similar. It has kind of a similar look, there are some differences. But this was you know, just a little experimental piece that I've done. And so now I'm knitting the fringe on this. I'm not actually sure I'm going to leave it with fringe or if I'm going to hem it. It's just a sampler. It's long enough that it could be a scarf, but I don't typically wear-- I don't typically wear scarves. I mean, I may give it away to somebody at some point, but I think I just might keep this as a sampler and hang it on the wall in the studio.  Marsha   Yeah, yeah. It's nice.  Kelly   So I have a lot of... maybe, six more yards, I think. Yeah, I think was a seven yard warp so I, I have five to six more yards to play around with. I don't have enough of this yarn to continue using it for very much longer as weft. So I'm going to have to get creative with what I use as my weft yarn, which could be kind of fun. So but yeah, I'm keeping up with the Jain Stafford Guild, which is, this is a first. I've never... This is the first year I've ever woven along and not just watched the videos for you know, while I was knitting or you know, before bed or whatever. So yeah, I'm actually doing what the what the video is talking about. So that's been fun. But that's it. So I have a kind of alarming status have nothing on my knitting needles. I do have ends to weave in and pictures to take for a couple of projects. my sweater, for example, that striped sweater, the striped pullover. I still have ends to weave in there.  But yeah, nothing is actively on the needles. That's a little odd. Marsha   Yeah. Kelly   So well, stay tuned. There'll be something next time. Marsha   Yeah. Well, since we've covered projects, we should talk about the Winter Weave Along since we've been talking about weaving.  Kelly   Yeah, Marsha   It actually ended. And should we say anything about it? Before we talk about our prize winners. Kelly   Well, just that it was really fun. And we had, I think over 600 posts in the chat. Of course it was going on since, you know, November. But lots of really good discussion in the chat. And some people that... I always like it when like an episode will strike a chord with somebody and somebody who's never posted before will post in the episode thread and say, Oh, I was just listeni ng. And you said such-and-so.  It's always fun to hear from people. I mean, of course, it's fun to hear from people that  I feel like I know online already. But it's it's fun to see new faces show up. And this year, in the Winter Weave Along, there were a lot of new faces who showed up. And that was fun. It was nice to get to know some people that you know, have not participated in the Ravelry group until now. So that's been fun. Marsha   So should we just start with our prize winners then?  Kelly   Yeah, let's do that. Marsha   Okay, so I'm going to go first. Before we go on, we should just say, too, that we pick names with the random number generator. Kelly   And mostly from the finished object thread, although I did, I did also select one from the chat thread. Marsha   Yeah. So this is gonna--The first three are from the finished objects. And our first winner is number two, which was JoanneCarol. Joanne from Santa Cruz. And I want to make a comment about this too, that she made woven potholders with a potholder loom. And I had one of those as a child and I had a huge bag of the... they kind of remind me like, hairbands kind of there, that you stick on that loom and then I think you crochet around the edge to finish them. And I remember I had one of those and I made so many of them that I started walking around the neighborhood knocking on doors, trying to sell them. You would never let your child do that now. But anyway, that's what I did. Kelly   Did you actually sell any?  Marsha   Yeah, I did but I can't believe that, you know, in this day and age, you would never let your child just go and walk around the neighborhood and knock on random, I mean, neighbors we didn't know.  Kelly   You know, we did that all the time selling Girl Scout... you know. Well I wasn't in Girl Scouts, I was in Bluebirds, Campfire. Selling campfire Mints. Oh my gosh. And then the number of candy bars that we sold for school things. Yeah, we did that all the time. Marsha   Yeah. So I was in Campfire, and we sold Campfire Mints, and we actually literally just went knocked on people's doors. And  now nobody does that at all. They're all you know...Anyway, but that's another rabbit hole conversation that we won't go down. But anyway, so congratulations, Joanne. Yeah. And Kelly, do you want to announce the second winner? Kelly   Yeah. So the second one is a weaving book. And I haven't, I haven't purchased it. I'll go ahead and and purchase it and have it sent directly. And since we had quite a few Weaver's using rigid heddle looms, it's a choice one of two books, either the Marguerite Porter Davison red paperback book, which is the paperback version, newer version, of the one that I always use to find interesting weave structures. So that's for a four harness loom. And then or there's a  Liz Gipson rigid heddle book that has 17 projects in it. And so depending on which kind of Weaver you are, and which book you would like, I will send you one of those two books. So the winner of that number 40. Teaandknittingtoo is Colleen in Ohio. And she made napkins as her first double heddle project. And I think she has rigid heddle loom and bought a second heddle is what she did. Because I did see she was weaving on a Cricket in one of her project pages. And then she also made a scarf later on in the weave along and has  posted that as well. So congratulations, Colleen and just let me know what which book you would like and your address and I'll get that sent along. Marsha   And I have to just interject I made a mistake on the first prize winner. Joanne I didn't say what she won.  Kelly   Oh, how do they do that on the on the game shows?  Well tell Joanne what she won!  Marsha   Yes, Joanne, I do apologize. I'm sorry. I actually am reading notes believe it or not. [laughing].  So a pair of Christmas dish towels that Kelly that you wove. Joanne, also I know you'll contact us and send us an email or through Ravelry and we will get your address and get those to you. So okay. And then I will... the third one is a class that was generously donated by Erica at Weavolution. And she has a great website for weaver's with projects and discussions and classes and lots of resources. And the winner of that is number 51 Heddicraft and she is also in Santa Cruz. We have a little bit of a Santa Cruz... Kelly   We had a large Santa Cruz contingent in the weave along this year, I have to say. Marsha   But Heddi made, she made, she entered a lot. She had quite a few projects but the number 51 was some spring tea towels that she made. Kelly   So she was a weaving machine!  And I think she's new to having a floor loom if I'm remembering correctly, she's a relatively new weaver and and maybe it was weaving with a rigid heddle at first or or maybe last summer and then started and then got... I'm, I'm mistaken. I think she has a table loom that she bought a stand and treadles for because I was asking her about her stand and how she liked it. Because I have also a table loom and I was trying to decide do I want to buy a stand or do I want to put it on just a card table or do I like having it on the six foot table that I just cart in from the garage when I need it. But yeah, I think I do think she's a relatively new weaver as well. So all right. And then the next prize is a gift certificate, a $70 gift certificate for the Jane Stafford guild or for the Jane Stafford website. You can use it toward whatever you like. You can use it toward a guild subscription. You could use it for yarn or kits. She has equipment on her site has quite a few different things on her website. And so I'll give certificate for her site is going to CindyQ, our friend in Washington, yes. Now CindyQ, she made a queen size blanket. She had had a large collection of handspun. Sounds familiar. And over the years, you know, had just been spinning and you know, certain handspun she didn't have a purpose for and so she just been collecting it. And she put them all together and made a beautiful blanket. Sort of, I want to say purples, blues, grays all from her stash. And yeah, that was a fun project to see. And she finished it fairly early in the Weave Along. If I'm remembering correctly, she talked about it, you know, from the, from the stage of getting out all the yarn and identifying what she had, and then planning the project and everything. But but once she got going, she really got that done quickly. And yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah, it's really nice, huge. Marsha   It's huge. Yes. Kelly   Queen size bed blanket. So, very inspirational there. So Cindy, let me know, I, I actually I think I have your your email address, but just confirm for me your email address so I can get that gift certificate. It's like an E, you know, an E card, gift certificate that will be emailed to you. So all right, congratulations.  Marsha   We also have a drawing for the chat thread, we're going to pick out-- we've picked one person from the chat thread. And they're going to also win a pair of Kelly's Christmas dish towels. And the number we drew is number 538. And that's Cian also known as Suzanne in Florida. And she posted a canvas weave sampler. So congratulations to everybody who participated. A couple things I just wanted to note about I went through, you know, I've been following everybody and noting what they were saying about their projects. And it seems like a lot of people were new, that was like the first time waiting on their new loom. In fact, it sounds like Suzanne, that she just got a floor loom and that's what she was weaving on, her new loom. And there was also making things I hadn't thought about making out of handspun-- or I'm not-- sorry, out of hand--excuse me. Hand woven material. Sorry. Um, the one thing is a lot of people made dish towels, right. And I was struck by Kelly11 that she made potholders where she doubled up the fabric and then put an edging around it. And really cute potholders and they are... Kelly, you told me this, it's called overshot is the technique. Kelly    Oh, yeah,  Marsha   Really beautiful! And the other thing she did too, was she made tote bags, a tote bag out of the dish towels. Which I thought was a really clever idea. Kelly   Really clever. I have a dish towel addiction. And that means that my dish towels take up two drawers in the kitchen, plus a part of a shelf in the upstairs linen closet. And so yeah, that's a really  good idea for a dish towel warp, if I feel like making dish towels, but I don't I don't find another drawer to put them in. Yeah, that's a good idea.  Marsha   And then the other person that was was interesting, too, was MissIssabel. And she made shawls using an elongated hexagon pin loom. Kelly   Mm hmm. Marsha   And those were really interesting too. And a pin loom is something that is not a huge investment. You can just make one. I actually watched a YouTube video about how you can make your own pin loom, so that was interesting. And then oh, and then Seine1. She talked about was the first time seaming a weaving project. I never really thought about that as I am assuming, Kelly, you know more about this. It's where you're taking two pieces, I guess. And you're seaming them together to make a larger... Kelly   right.  Marsha   Then to make like a blanket or an afghan Kelly   Something wider. Yeah, like Stella last year made a baby blanket seaming the two strips. Well Heddi made panels that-- she didn't seam them, but she hung them as a as a closet door.  Marsha   Yes, Kelly   That was interesting. But yeah, even when you have a narrow width loom, you can still get a wider width piece of fabric by seaming them, by seaming them together.  Marsha   It was, it was very interesting what everybody was doing. I enjoyed seeing all the finished projects.  Kelly   Yeah, I did too. I have to say this year... I've never I've never really been a big fan of overshot. I always think... Well, I have some scraps, some overshot quilt scraps or you know, coverlet scraps that I bought at the quilt show. Gosh, a number of years ago, the Pacific international quilt show. They had a booth that was selling all kinds of things, but one of the things that they were selling, they had this big bin of, of cut up pieces of old coverlets, hand woven coverlets and that those are traditionally done with overshot and I like, I like it for that look, right. For the sort of bedspread, old fashioned colonial style coverlet look. But I had never really thought Oh, I would love to weave something in overshot. But the projects! There were several overshot projects this year. I think there was a class going on that people were taking And out of those several projects it's like okay, this is kind of inspirational. This is not, this is not your grandmother's overshot.[laughing] So I I'm like, Okay, I'm looking forward. I don't know when we'll do overshot in the Guild, but I may just put something on the lumen and work on overshot. The only overshot that I've ever woven was some potholders, some Christmas potholders. So real small project that, you know, just took me a couple of weeks at the weaving class. I wasn't really studying it or anything, I think the loom was actually maybe already even warped. You know, I was just weaving off an old warp from someone else. So it wasn't like I really learned anything. I mostly just followed the directions. But I was really impressed with the kind of versatility of overshot that I didn't really think of. So, yeah, it was fun.  Marsha   Another year. We'll start  Kelly   And now we're ready to start our, uh... not quite yet. But pretty soon we'll be starting our summer spinning.  Marsha   Yes. We'll talk more about that later on. But we're planning on doing that again this year. Kelly   Thank you to everyone who participated, it was a lot of fun. I learned a lot. I think a lot of people learned a lot. It was really informational and educational, and fun to get on the thread every morning and read what people were doing and making. So thanks to everyone!  Marsha   And so just a reminder, we talked... we touched on this briefly earlier, but our Extremities Knit Crochet Along or any other type of crafts you want to do for your extremities. And that is underway and that ends April 25. And the prizes are the pattern for the Abington Mitts by Jennifer Lassonde and the Coffee Socks Collection by Dotsdabbles Designs. Marsha   So get your finished objects in I and I'm saying that to myself. [laughing] Kelly   Let's see what's today? Today's the 14th so you have 11 days Marsha.  Marsha   Yeah,  Kelly   And how many rows? Marsha    Five Kelly   And how many stitches?  Marsha   12.  Kelly   So 60 stitches in 11 days. You all you have to do is six stitches a day.  Marsha   Well, maybe tonight.[laughing] Kelly   All right. You officially jinxed yourself. [laughing] Marsha   I know! It's not it's not happening tonight.  No, you know what I need to say is I am not doing that tonight. Right? Kelly   That's right! I have too much going on. I'm not doing that tonight. Marsha   I am not doing that tonight. So we'll see what happens now that I've put that out there. We'll see what happens tonight. Kelly   Oh my gosh!  Marsha   Anyway, Do we have anything else? I don't think we do. Kelly    No, I don't think so either.  Marsha   Well, I will get off the phone and I will go put that final coat of paint on my garage right? Kelly   Yeah, I have papers to grade Whoo hoo. Marsha   Put on your...put on some latex gloves. Kelly   Well, actually, yeah, no, they're not really papers. But yes, I have  Marsha   Oh, they're not real actual paper.  Kelly   I have virtual papers. I have grading. okay. That's what I should say. Yeah, integration practice to grade. So. All right.  Marsha   All right.  Kelly   It's been fun.  Marsha   We'll talk in two weeks! Kelly    All right.  Kelly   Thank you so much for listening. To subscribe to the podcast visit Two Ewes Fiber Adventures dot com/ Marsha   Join us on our adventures on Ravelry and Instagram. I am betterinmotion and Kelly is 1hundredprojects. Kelly   Until next time, we're the Two Ewes Both    doing our part for World Fleece!

    Wordpress site permalink: http://odaatchat.com/index.php/2021/04/14/lovesober/   Bit.ly:  https://bit.ly/3mPxYXS   YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/1trx31ywwSY   Guest Links:      https://amzn.to/3wWOdas   http://www.LoveSober.com    Book recommendation: The Sober Revolution: Calling Time on Wine O'Clock by Lucy Rocca and Sarah Turner   Favorite Quote: I haven’t come this far to only come this far. What I wish I knew: How important connection is.   Title: OC151 Kate Bailey - Love Yourself Sober: A Self Care Guide to Alcohol-Free Living for Busy Mothers    Social Media Post: So. Much. Fun! Kate and I talked about all kinds of things. Being highly sensitive, early intervention, and the science of happiness. Click here to listen: https://bit.ly/3mPxYXS     Show Notes:    Transcribed Episode of Love Yourself Sober - Episode 151 with Kate Bailey & Arlina Allen   Arlina Allen  0:08   I'm super excited to talk to you. I, I know Mandy Mathers. She actually had me on your podcast, as you know. She and I were in the same coaching class. So that was super fun. That's how we met and I'm so excited to get to meet you and talk to you about your book.   Kate Bailey  0:27   Yeah, cuz It's not long been out in the States. I think it was just about a month.   Arlina Allen  0:34   Yeah, that is so exciting. Listen, I have so many questions for you about the book. It's called "Love yourself sober, A self care guide to alcohol free living for busy mothers". And, you know, busy moms. Super cute cover   Unknown Speaker  0:59   who designed the cover?   Unknown Speaker  1:01   You know, I don't know someone in the publishing house. But I love it. It's Yeah, it's great   Unknown Speaker  1:08   Yeah. I'm matching   Unknown Speaker  1:13   If you're not watching this on YouTube. Yes. Mandy is matching her book. Right. So cute. Was that deliberate?   Kate Bailey  1:20   It's Kate. Do you know as we keep doing this, It's like we've become the same person. And if sometimes we're talking to someone both of us on the pod. And someone will say how are you to me? I'll just go on. We're fine.   Unknown Speaker  1:40   Oh no, I'm so sorry! We we need to ship your names like you know, like "Brangelina". Like Manate. Wait no, that doesn't sound right. hahaha.   Unknown Speaker  2:12   Oh my gosh. Okay. Yes. So this is such an important book. Because, you know, it's so funny. Not funny, but peculiar is that people when they are struggling with recovery, they hate themselves, right? And it's like, you can't hate yourself well. It's like trying to run a marathon with a broken leg. And so the reason your book is so brilliant, love yourself sober. It's like, that's how it has to be done. You know? And I don't know about you. Like, when I first got sober, I would go to these rooms. And people would say things like, oh, we're gonna love you until you can love yourself. And I was like, wow, somebody's got to because that ain't me.   Unknown Speaker  2:50   It's so true, isn't it? And it was definitely that piece. It was the sort of the self care the self love. It definitely started almost outside in for me that journey. Yeah. Because I didn't have the internal resources. So when I discovered self care, and so retreats, and filling my toolkit, that's when I started to build my capacity. So it's definitely an outside in journey and that and that's what changed my recovery and my sobriety for me. 100%. Yeah,   Unknown Speaker  3:26   Right! You know, there's I have just found that there's just a million ways to do it. And I i bristle at people who are like, oh, all you have to do is this. And that's all you have to do.    Unknown Speaker  3:41   So I like to start with a fun little game. I'm calling the lightning round. And I'll just ask you a few questions. And it doesn't have to be fast answers you can answer as quickly or as slowly. But your book is obviously going to be an amazing resource. But when you first got sober, what books were really helpful to you? Hmm.   Unknown Speaker  4:06   Well, I got sober with sober sisters, which is an online forum, which launched about eight years ago. So before that, there was nothing that I could access that that appealed to me at all. And so Lucy Rocco, who founded sober Easter's wrote a book called The sober revolution. And it was the first book that I'd ever read that referred to the kind of relationship with our culture rather than it like you said being a prescribed way or received messages and when we've moved on, on a long way in the in the UK in the conversation, and this really she likened it to a disc, you know, a bad boyfriend, a destructive relationship. And that was hugely that just spoke to me. I was like, Oh, yeah, that's that's me. And the other one I really liked at the time was Jason vales. How to quit. Drinking, how to kick drinking easily. I think it was calling bs on the kind of social piece and the brainwashing around it. That was super helpful to me. It was unpicking all the messaging really helped me.   Unknown Speaker  5:14   Yeah, that's great. I was talking to Claire Pooley. and she said the same thing. She's she also mentioned Jason vales book and I was like, so did you stop drinking easily after that?   Unknown Speaker  5:23    Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I read those ice quit for a year. straight off. Once I found so baristas and read those two books. I was like, that's it. And I did go back after a year, which is another part of the story, which then where the self care piece came in and all the other stuff. So that Yeah, okay. Yes, definitely part of toolkit. Yeah, I   Unknown Speaker  5:51   have lots of questions about relapse stuff. I mean, I feel like everybody who's tried to quit has struggled with the stopping part, obviously. So, we'll talk a little bit about that. Do you have a go to mantra or quote that you find yourself coming back to?   Unknown Speaker  6:08   I do. I love one, the one that really got me out of some hot water, and I find myself repeating it a quite a lot. Not so much to myself. But when, with with clients may be who are struggling and we tell when we are generating mantras. And it was, I haven't come this far to only come this far. Because I was like, Yeah, right. Yeah. in all senses. Yeah. Like, what's the what's the next bit look like? What is the next bit gonna look like? Oh, shoot. Yeah,   Unknown Speaker  6:42   like come this far to only come this far?   Unknown Speaker  6:45   Yeah. That's fighting talk.   Unknown Speaker  6:50   Words. That's awesome. Okay, and do you have a regular self care routine? Like, do you have like a morning routine? Or do you think of it more in terms of like, a weekly, or weekly schedule?   Unknown Speaker  7:03   Do you know what this is a really good question. And it's something that has really evolved for me. And one of the reasons why I realized I have a really elaborate self care practice, on one of the reasons is because of my dysregulation, because of what I believe is now neuro some neuro diversity. So some sensory processing anxiety, I identify as a highly sensitive person. So I need a lot of external resourcing in terms of routine boundaries, not taking on too much. checking my diary and then taking a third off, do your calendar and then take a take that off that is my that is my aim. I don't always manage it. But that is my intention, because I always overestimate what I can do and then get stressed out. I know if I take a third off, I'm getting in the right area. Yet, so I do a lot of yoga. I love yoga, but we've been in lockdown in the UK. So I'm doing online yoga classes, but usually go to a yoga studio, where I also work. I'm not a yoga teacher, but I help out that's my contribution to the community. What else? And I mean, just I know what what is also my routine is Netflix.   Unknown Speaker  8:34   Is that your downtime?   Unknown Speaker  8:36   That honestly it is literally like if I watch an episode of whatever it is I'm into, because you know, I get quite I get a bit annoyed and a bit bored when everything has to be Like who? Because I do love yoga. Right? And I do you meditate. But I don't I hate it when things get too wordy, because as modern busy women, we still need quick fixes and modern things like so if I'm rewatching Don't tell anyone I'm rewatching Downton Abbey at the moment. I just finished down to a sec. Oh, I love it. Oh my gosh. So   Unknown Speaker  9:14   good.   Unknown Speaker  9:17   luck if I watch an episode of Downton Abbey, I literally switch off. I'm not I'm not thinking about me. I'm not thinking about the kids. You know, it really is. So So yeah. So better Netflix. What else?   Unknown Speaker  9:31   Have you been to Downton? Abbey?   Unknown Speaker  9:33   No, it's a bit. It's up north. It's up north. In the UK.   Unknown Speaker  9:38   It's South here as well.   Unknown Speaker  9:41   No in terms of what you're used to. It's like probably only about four hours drive. But for us it's like, like, possibly it's like a different universe. But I will do I really want to so when things open up again in the UK. I have to exist. beautifies Yes.   Unknown Speaker  10:00   Please do take pictures for me. Yeah. Check it out early. No, I made it. I'm okay. Yes. So the self care It sounds like you have lots of self care in terms of are you Where are you with the higher power situation?   Unknown Speaker  10:16   Well, AI is complicated.   Unknown Speaker  10:20   How How long have you got like your face?   Unknown Speaker  10:25   So I had a religious trauma as a child. Okay, God, we got loads in common right without you   Unknown Speaker  10:35   have you know, religious, you know, first chicken? Have you heard of the term super churched?   Unknown Speaker  10:41   No.   Unknown Speaker  10:44   Seek church.   Unknown Speaker  10:45   I was super churched. I interviewed this lady who was the pastor's daughter, girl, those poor girls, they go one of two ways, either either super good, or they're like me. Yeah. And so anyway, it sounds like you were super churched to some extent. Yeah.   Unknown Speaker  11:03   Yeah. I know, interestingly, but it was my parents weren't but there was that's a whole other story. But my aunt was a born again, Christian. And I got really into into that for various various reasons. Sure, but it became really dark for me. So I managed to sort of remove myself from all of that through education. And when I did my a levels, so went to college, and started studying philosophy and comparative religion. I was able to unpick it I unpicked it intellectually, but there was still a lot of that fear. And that, yeah, that that trauma, so I couldn't go anywhere near so I, you know, you know, we tried to go to traditional AIA stuff, like the first time I think when I was about 27. And I understand now that that was very, that was like, re traumatizing me. Yeah. So there was nothing This is why I mentioned sober Easter's because it was like, what's the first thing I could that I could access? Right? Because like, they were not safe space to me, but I had no idea. I had no idea that that's what was going on until fairly recently, actually, when I started looking at what trauma is. So I'm not great with but having said that, I my mic. So we had to lovely when we as a friend of ours, a dear SOPA sister called Rachel Welford, who's who right who has he she does meditation and stuff and Gong laughs and she said she caught me spiritually slutty because I basically love anything to do with ritual religions. But in a kind of I'm very interested and I like to play with them. So it's so it's a funny one it's a yes or no, it's like I'm not I'm not in I suppose a traditional higher power person, but I just think we're connected to something the universe and something much, much greater just because for the size of it. It's like something bigger, bigger, so I don't feel complicated about it. Yes, it's on my terms. That's That's for me.   Unknown Speaker  13:20   Well, I mean, it means needs to make sense, right? Yeah. Like that was always the thing for me is like it needs to make sense. Yes, there's a lot of things in an organized religion that don't really make sense. Have you ever heard of Carolyn Miss? She was on Oprah. Do you ever watch those super soul Sunday episodes?   Unknown Speaker  13:41   No,you know what happened? We’re really busy watching Downton Abbey. Or and the walking dead?     Unknown Speaker  13:52   Oh, yeah. Did you get into Game of Thrones?   Unknown Speaker  13:54   Oh my god, I love it. Literally I didn't know what I was gonna do when Game of Thrones ended because I loved it too much.   Unknown Speaker  14:02   Yeah, I always there are some books and some and some movies and TV series that when they end I'm just devastated.    Unknown Speaker  14:13   Yes.   Unknown Speaker  14:14   not totally religiously slutty but that is hilarious. But I was going to tell you about Oprah and the conversation she had with Carolyn Miss because Carolyn Miss gave one of the best exam or explanations that really resonated with me. She said that God is law. Meaning like gravity law of attraction cause and effect. I'm a little nerdy with like quantum physics, like the theory of entanglement. And there are some actually there's some great Netflix series on entanglement. If you're ever interested. I think you know what that Yeah. And it's it's framed under the title of something about quantum physics, which sounds super nerdy but it It explains a lot of things very practical things like have you ever, like thought about something that somebody random or is and then they call you or you get an email or something? And you're like, Whoa, I was just thinking about you. Yeah, that kind of explains it through the theory, I think, yeah, you'll like it.    Yeah, I could tell you're a science girl, because we're going to talk about the autonomic system and some other things. neuroscience, love me some science because it's like, you don't have to have faith. We have evidence.   Unknown Speaker  15:28   Right. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, we do. And that experience. Yeah, it's a funny subject. I mean, I just, I think experientially I, even though it was difficult for me as a teenager, I used so what I used to do is go to my room, and I used to pray and so meditate for two hours on my own. And I used to get so high. I always said that when I, I, you know, experimented with drugs, like this late teens and early 20s. And I was bit like, I'm not really gonna bother with them, because I just used to get they didn't get me as high as meditation used to. And I'm prayer, um, you know, to heighten a battle, but I mean, that's the kind of saving grace right, I suppose. I mean, I definitely took to alcohol. That was my drug of choice. I was your drug of choice. Okay.   Unknown Speaker  16:30   We'll have to we'll have to get into that. I think I only have a couple more things. What's one thing you wish you knew when you first got sober? Like, is there anything that sticks out is like Gosh, would have been nice to know.   Unknown Speaker  16:47   Yeah, I wish I'd known all the kind of the holistic this the self care toolkit,   Unknown Speaker  16:53   or sick self care. That's good. Yeah, money, but body, mind and spirit, right? We need to take care of all of them. And then what do you do for fun? We talked about chickens a little earlier. We had chickens. I love   Unknown Speaker  17:06   my chickens so much, because we've just got to say you have chickens, but you haven't got   Unknown Speaker  17:13   them with you. You don't have them anymore. Yeah, we moved. I couldn't bring them but they're beautiful. What can I so talk about what kinds do you have? Because there's so many varieties most people don't know.   Unknown Speaker  17:25   Yeah. So I have a Dutch barn founder. Who is we've called for lion and Galena.   Unknown Speaker  17:36   We have   Unknown Speaker  17:36   here No, this is down to my daughter's buff Orpington. They've got to buff orpingtons. They've got the big fluffy bottoms and fluffy legs. They're hilarious. They're hilarious,   Unknown Speaker  17:47   especially when I run.   Unknown Speaker  17:48   Yeah. But like they've got like, they're like they're on wheels or something. That's amazing. So my daughter's one is blonde. And she's called Lady ieder. And you know that lady down snap a   Unknown Speaker  18:02   man. That girl was never gonna get her day.   Unknown Speaker  18:08   So true. I can't remember that. Because I've watched it before. And I watched it when I was sober. And it's getting to that interesting part with her wish. Where that that end is gone. Yes. And I and I genuinely can't remember what happens to us.   Unknown Speaker  18:26   Before   Unknown Speaker  18:27   I was spoiler free, I know that's, that's the benefit of getting a little older as you forget.   Unknown Speaker  18:33   Oh, that's right. That's amazing.   Unknown Speaker  18:35   surprised and happy all over again. Oh, no, I had a Polish chicken that had one of those big fluffy hats. Yeah, they called her Lady Gaga. Amazing.   Unknown Speaker  18:49   So yeah, like,   Unknown Speaker  18:50   well, that is a lot of fun. The chickens are fun. It sounds like your kids like them, too. Yeah.   Unknown Speaker  18:55   So we do that. And I also when things are open, I do musical theater. So I do sing. That's how I met my husband. We were in a band together, years and years ago. And now I don't because that was all very like, I thought I was really cool. And we had this band and we've gigs and we all like proper musicians. And then I discovered the love of absolutely ridiculous frivolous musical theater. And I've got a local group that I do. So.   Unknown Speaker  19:26   Oh my gosh, do you have anything recorded? Because if you do, you must send me some links.   Unknown Speaker  19:31   Do I don't think we do. So I love it.   Unknown Speaker  19:34   Yeah, my son in high school   Unknown Speaker  19:37   was obsessed with the   Unknown Speaker  19:39   he's it like the stage he did like sound and stage prop he like he built things and oh my gosh, it was such a fun world to be in.   Unknown Speaker  19:48   I had no idea right? And it's lovely doing the amateur stuff because as somebody told me and I love this because amateur gets this. Like you know, I don't know what it's like in this But if you say, oh, you're just an amateur, it's all   Unknown Speaker  20:03   No pressure.   Unknown Speaker  20:04   Yeah, you want exactly the love of the amateur. But you know, it's almost like code for a bit shit. Right? Which suddenly, yeah, maybe maybe. But somebody said, one of our directors said, It amateur comes from the French for for the love of, because it comes from the word or more, which is we do it for the love of,   Unknown Speaker  20:29   for the love of her. That's Brian, I love that. Got to have some fun. All right, that I and I think you've probably experienced that too is when people first gets over there, like bored out of their minds. You know, their whole dopamine reward system is is skewed,   Unknown Speaker  20:46   shall we say? Yeah, yeah. And that's why you need that. Yeah, you need the holistic thing. You need the happy hitch, you need the sober treats, you need the silly things. You told   Unknown Speaker  20:56   me sources, right, lots of resources. Well, I want to talk about resources and the book, obviously. But um, maybe we could talk a little bit about your story. Do you want to just take a few minutes to walk us through the things that people that are they tell me that they love to hear? As you know, it sounds like you started drinking and doing drugs? kanyang. And, but what people really want to know is like, what made you finally decide to quit? You know, I have a I have some coaching clients that are like the spouse of the alcoholic, and, you know, they just need a little hope that it's possible that maybe their spouse is gonna quit. So yeah, anyway, but you want to just start with like, I'm always curious about like, family of origin as well.   Unknown Speaker  21:46   Hmm. Well, again, I think I've pieced a lot of this together over the last few years in terms of self study and recovery, and knowing Mandy and talking to her most days, and she is a great mental health advocate. So I've learned a lot about my own mental health journey as part of this, which I wasn't really aware of. Okay, so I was very anxious. I had, you know, various aces growing up. And my father, I'd say, identified as traditionally what I what I always identified an alcoholic, as Okay, I'm sort of, you know, yeah, pretty much wheels off the wagon kind of kind of stuff.   Unknown Speaker  22:35   Was he violent, or just absent or just absent?   Unknown Speaker  22:38   Yeah, just stops him. And I feel sorry for him now, because he was a sailor. And in those days, you didn't get any leave to see your family, you're away on the boats on ships for months on end. And they partly they used to get paid in tops of rum. They literally were enabling a whole, these poor young men who were away from their families in really cramped conditions, giving them alcohol, so and no mental health support, and no awareness of neurodiversity. At that point, any kind of autistic spectrum ADHD, highly sensitive, nothing. So, you know, it's, it's, I'm understanding that through a more compassionate lens, I think, you know. So yeah, I didn't really know him. And then I saw, I was very anxious. And like I said, I sort of took to the kind of religion as my first drug of choice, I would say, to try and self soothe in a very anxious mind. And then again, later on, I've sort of identified as highly sensitive. And through parenting, my son, who is now we realize has ADHD and is on the tourism spectrum. Obviously, that allowed a mirror into me and in my family and that sort of genetic piece, and realized that this runs through generation. And so there was, I really feel like that's a massive piece, like we said, in the kind of in the recovery conversation and alcohol use disorder, addictive behaviors, pieces, is that neuro diversity, I'm sure talk about that bit later. But for me, I don't know if you heard that the kind of phrase the sort of gray area drinking.   Unknown Speaker  24:29   Oh, yeah,   Unknown Speaker  24:30   yeah. Okay. So, I mean, that very much like me, in that. It looked pretty normal on the surface. Nothing, there were no particular issues. My husband was worried. No, none of my friends my friends just thought I was paranoid. Just thought I was absolutely batshit crazy that I was even worrying about it because everyone was getting pissed at the weekends. So there was this kind of normative drinking culture in Britain, where, if you are in that, that sort of on the alcohol use disorder spectrum slap earlier on and hazardous and harmful but not dependent, which is where I was   Unknown Speaker  25:15   harmful or harmful, but not dependent.   Unknown Speaker  25:17   Yeah. harmful and hazardous, but not dependent. So earlier on in the on the alcohol use disorder spectrum, right? Yeah, what you basically get mirrored back with, when you Eve, if you go to your doctor, or if you go to a counselor, or if you go to your friends, people will generally tell you, you haven't got problem because you're doing what's normative, right? They don't know, or maybe you don't know, underneath that. It feels like a crisis. It feels devastating to you, it feels hard work, like you're thinking you're planning and trying not to do it. You're regretting waking up at three in the morning with anxiety, but maybe only drinking twice a week. So that that was kind of where I was, it was like this awful, toxic relationship with it. And yeah, the bad boyfriend, but nothing that anyone outside could particularly put their finger on. But I had this just feeling of landslide. You know, I was like, what I'm also getting married to me is so the normative drinking culture or the alternative, which is like AA, or some of the traditional recovery, which tells telling me I have to reach a rock bottom telling me I'm I'm powerless. And I'm like, Well, no, that doesn't fit either. But if there is no early intervention, if there was no entry points to recovery earlier, then I might end up down there. But why don't want to wait for that. I don't want to wait. So there's a lot of fear, there was a lot of confusion. And there was a lot of what looked like normal and there was a lot of beating myself up. And I'd say that was going on from my late 20s through my early 30s through to my mid 30s. And I sort of managed my mental health by a mixture kind of hot yoga, I was always working out. I had enough I had enough resources that alcohol was one of them. And when I became a mom, we moved to a new town. And I moved away from all my friends. My husband was working in London as a journalist, I'd stopped working in London as a journalist. So I was literally at home stuck on my own, not knowing anyone. bored, lonely, tired, angry, I wasn't hungry. I had all the other frickin triggers. And it literally was like now I understand that that's why our call I think dance center stage at that point, because there was there were no other resources for me. I couldn't get to meetings because I didn't have the childcare like there is no support in the UK for you. Unless you are totally up shake Creek. Right. Wow. So it's changed a lot. But I think that's why the rise of the cyber forums in the UK has gone stratospheric there are so many it's because necessity is so often the mother of invention. And it's like and it's no and it's also no mistake, I don't think or no coincidence that many of them are women LED. It's like women are really leading the kind of new alternative patchworks to recovery. Right. Right. So, so that was it. So I found so barristers you know, I tried to stop every week. I was like, I'm never drinking again. Every Sunday morning. I was like,   Unknown Speaker  28:44   are you just waking up with headaches? And yeah, like hung over and feeling bad about like, maybe not paying attention to the kids and that kind of thing?   Unknown Speaker  28:53   Yeah, exactly. So it was very much that Yeah, and very Yeah, just feeling really guilty. About Yeah, just all of it. I always say that there was before that there was this kind of dichotomy between there was this healthy Kate you know, healthy Kate who wanted to go for our goals and kind of really wanted to? I've always, you know, wanted that kind of health happiness high quite high. vibing Yeah. And then there was this kind of you know, that this kind of destructive thing with the Hedden ism the coping with the anxiety with drinking and then not being able to control that. And then so that there was this there were these two bits to me and I would go between the two. And I think what motherhood did was just open that chasm even more It was like, none of this is fitting with my values about how I want to be and how I like what if they need to go to hospital and my house spends at work. And I've had a couple of glasses of wine in the evening. I can't, I can't, but I didn't know how to chill out. I didn't know how to relax. I didn't know our back. And also we've got mummy wine culture in there, which is massive. Saying, of course, you need mommy juice, you know, seven o'clock. So it was very confusing. It was so confusing. So when I found so Brister, I was like someone's prep throw me a lifeline. That's it. I'm in and I was ready, willing and able, not feeling like I was able 100% but I was going to give it my darndest, you know? So   Unknown Speaker  30:40   that was the beginning. The beginning. How old were you when you started drinking?   Unknown Speaker  30:46   16 I think Yeah,   Unknown Speaker  30:47   just like a typical like, let's try this out kind of stuff.   Unknown Speaker  30:51   Yeah, cuz I was such a good girl. You know, I stopped and start smoking. And I did drain. I was so like, didn't do it until it was what actually it's 18 in the UK for alcohol, but you know, everyone does. When everyone's drinking. Everyone did when they were Yeah, yeah. Especially for my generation when you could fake all your ID and just no one asked.   Unknown Speaker  31:17   Nobody care. No, that's funny. Um, okay, so you get sober. And you go through the sober. He says, did you experience and you're married at this time, right?   Unknown Speaker  31:29   Yeah. So we got married. I've been with my husband like 25 years now.   Unknown Speaker  31:34   I think. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. My husband and I, you must have been he young when you met him?   Unknown Speaker  31:41   We were in our 20s. Yeah.   Unknown Speaker  31:43   Okay. I'm not gonna ask you how old you are. But my husband and I got together in our met when he was 24. And he seems like, like, my son is almost 20 mine. And I was like, Oh my God, he's a baby. So I can't believe we were so young. We got together can't believe that. Oh, yeah. My   Unknown Speaker  31:59   husband is 23 when I met him.   Unknown Speaker  32:02   Wow, we do a lot of parallels. That's so funny. So okay, so you get sober was he? How did he feel about you getting sober? Was he like, oh, what about hot sex? Like, is that guy?   Unknown Speaker  32:16   He was definitely that. And there was, but there was this, he was so bored of me saying this. He was just like, stop moaning. So what I decided to do is I decided not to tell him for about a month. I just did it. Because I wanted to say to him, I have this is serious this time, I haven't been doing it. And this is what it what I'm up to. Rather than say, I need your help to do this. I just was like, by the way I'm doing this. And, and I said I did tell him after about three weeks, I think because I was on my phone or my tablet all the time. So baristas. And I thought he might think I was having an affair. So I better tell him. Because I think because I was never on it before I like going back like nearly 10 years like social media wasn't what it is. Right? Now. Anyway, me. Yeah, you.   Unknown Speaker  33:19   Did he ask you or did you just share it? No, I   Unknown Speaker  33:22   just caught him looking at me kind of and I was like, Look, just by the way, this is what I'm doing. And I'm on this forum. It felt very risky, though. It really did. Like, I think one of the hardest things for that portion of drinkers, I'd say that, you know, one of the hard things is that there's a lot of fear for you and of the relationship changing. The fun going and the what are we going to do and we have to kind of re reinvent things, you know, yeah,   Unknown Speaker  33:57   you have to readjust a little bit,   Unknown Speaker  33:58   too, don't you?   Unknown Speaker  34:00   Yeah. And then my husband's over. But it's, I mean, that's the one thing I hear a lot it's like well what do you do if your husband still drinks You know, that's the main people like everybody has to adjust. So you're just thought it was okay.   Unknown Speaker  34:16   Yeah. And I think well i think what you realize as you go down the line is that that is symptomatic of how important alcohol has become in your own heads and your own life. Because once it isn't, it's like well we do loads of different things we go walking we walk the dog we go out for dinner we go on holiday we tour I mean we do we do loads of stuff. We don't do anything at the mangas we're in lockdown, but that's a whole lot and try and find space all of us just going to a different corners of basketball right now. I'm just going but yeah, but that is that's the fear and I think that really goes with time because you realize As alcohol diminishes, it's great. And it becomes less and less important. It's like, well, I can't even remember doing drinking with him now, which is   Unknown Speaker  35:09   bad. So he doesn't he doesn't drink that much.   Unknown Speaker  35:11   He know he drinks a bit. But yeah,   Unknown Speaker  35:14   it doesn't matter. You   Unknown Speaker  35:16   know, I didn't, I never did care, to be honest. Because I just, I was always like, this is mine, I don't want anyone else to be part of it. Because if they are, they will knock me off, I got it, it's mine, I'm gonna be in control of it. And like audit my little sober flame that I was just gonna go like that to protect it, yeah, protects it, and it's mine. Otherwise, if someone else gets to near it, they can blow it out. And I'm not gonna let them   Unknown Speaker  35:41   you know, right, right. You know, that's not taking full responsibility of your recovery. And I think that's amazing. So what were some of the things that you learned in the summary status?   Unknown Speaker  35:53   Early Well, can the connection, how important connection is. And again, I didn't realize that at the time, because all of my recovery that has happened since I then, you know, I said, I went back to drinking, because I hadn't got the toolkit, I hadn't got the tools for living. So all the bad old habits crept back in, but the main thing that I got, there was that connection, and that just literally rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat day in day out one day at a time, right? Just that, that that sort of some of the habit change muscle power behind me, I definitely had that. But I didn't have the tools about Nervous System regulation. I did not know anything about self compassion. I had, I went on to study the Science of Happiness. And that really changed my life and my entire outlook on what it is to be human. Because they look at all the keys of happiness, and what's right with us about our pro social natures. Gratitude, compassion, self compassion. Or, you know that that side, we were talking about higher power, and I and, you know, all for me has always been a big thing, looking at the night sky, forest walks, but actually starting to skillfully incorporate all of those things and work with them and develop them as in or as resources. I started to get better properly. Like, my mental health got better, I was able to take third off my   Unknown Speaker  37:34   list. Did you say Science of Happiness?   Unknown Speaker  37:38   Yeah, it's called the Science of Happiness. And it's basically an online course you can do at Harvard and Barclay, with the ED x platform. So it's a MOOC modular online course, over about 10 weeks, and it's an evolutionary theory and neuroscience around what it is to be mammalian pro social effect, the about the 16% of happiness that we can actually do something about. Yeah, it is just a fabulous, fabulous, fabulous course. And it was that that then I realized this a lot of people on forums talking about similar things, right. So it was at that point where I was like, You know what, I'm going to train as a coach, I don't see any courses that I like. So I'm going to do a grounding in life coaching like a two year Diploma in life coaching, then, I'm going to build a my own course, on my own package that incorporates positive psychology and the Science of Happiness is I think that's what we need. Oh, yeah. So So that was my journey. And in between all of that I sort of met Mandy and started our work together.   Unknown Speaker  38:53   Yeah, you guys are doing brilliant work, you have the you guys are cofounders of love, sober, calm, change your relationship with alcohol. I know you have courses and coaching and community with accountability. Brilliant, I just love it. I love what you guys are doing.   Unknown Speaker  39:09   It's just you know what, that whole one thing that that we feel really passionate about, sorry, I'm sort of like veering off in different directions. But that idea of community connection, collaboration, which I know that she recovers is so brilliant. But Mandy and I because we're both busy moms, we could not be doing any the work that we're doing, if we weren't collaborating. And also then we have certain people in the in our in our community that that help as well. And we just were a sort of a more collective and a community interest company, basically. Right. Um, so yeah, I yeah, so all of this kind of growth. I mean, I think one of the one of the The keys for me and I don't really know how to explain it other than this was like, a such a seminal moment for me. And it was the last time I drank was my last day one touch word. You know, don't take it for granted. But it was my last day. Last day one. And I had gone through the whole shallow shallow shallow shot, I'd stopped drinking five months and a half drink then I stopped again for a few months and, and I went up to London, it was my sister in law's 40th birthday. And, anyway, To cut a long story short, we did end up I did end up drinking. And I woke up in the morning. And I it was a beautiful, hot, sunny day, and I was paralyzed with fear. It was like, the darkness had come on me so badly. I could barely move for the shame. It was like I was, I was fucking broken. Like, and I don't know why, particularly that particular night. I don't know, my I was just done, right.   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

DeeAsia and SoSo are back from their annual Spring Break. Join them as they catch up with Uncorked, review what they've been sipping on with Sip or Spit, get into the latest news coming from France regarding the frost and how it's affecting the 2021 vintage, and answer the Wine Trivia question of the week.