Podcasts about steve how

List of Life Principles Cut 1: (Nicki's #1) Start every day with daily prayer and Bible reading. Nicki - explain how that works for you. Cut 2: (Nicki's #2) Stay in a right relationship with God no matter the cost (peace of mind). Nicki - why is this important? Cut 3: (Nicki's #3) Know who you are in Christ - my life has a purpose! Nicki - what does it mean to know who you are in Christ? Cut 4: (Nicki's #4) Invest in family relationships. The only thing you can take into eternity with you is your family. Nicki - how do people that have very little or no family deal with this? Cut 5: (Nicki's #5) Walk in truth (no deception or lying). Nicki - why is this important? Cut 6: (Nicki's #6) Work hard and keep improving. Nicki - what would this look like? Cut 7: (Nicki's #7) Think and pray before you speak or act. Words and actions have long term affects. Nicki - how has this impacted you over the course of your life. Cut 8: (Nicki's #8) Tithe with the spiritual impact in mind. Nicki - what kind of spiritual impact should we be looking for? Cut 9: (Nicki's #9) Control my anger - don't let it control me? Nicki - what do you see as the biggest reasons for this? Cut 10: ((Nicki's #10) Make it a priority to laugh every day. Nicki - why should laughing be a priority. Cut 11: (Steve's #1) Make sure God is first and foremost in your life. Steve - why is this a priority for you? Cut 12: (Steves #2) Be a truth teller - not a liar. Steve - what do you see as some of the biggest hurdles to doing this? Cut 13: (Steve's #3) Treat folks like you would like to be treated. Steve - How has this impacted you personally? Cut 14: (Steve's #4) Learn a trade or get an education and work for a living. Steve - how important are trades to our society right now? Cut 15: (Steve's #5) Treat your parents with respect. Steve - tell us a little bit about your parents. Cut 16: (Steve's #6) Don't expect respect. Respect is earned, not given. Steve - what are some ways that respect can be earned? Cut 17: (Steve's #7) Learn to shoot a gun. Steve - why is this important? Cut 18: (Steve's #8) Learn to camp, fish, hunt, and farm. Cut 19: (Steve's #9) If you're married, love your wife and stay married. Steve - why is this such a challenge for people today? Cut 20: (Steve's #10) Learn to become a good father and grandfather (or mother and grandmother). Steve - what are some of the most valuable results for being a good parent and grandparent? Cut 21: (Charlie's #1) Love God and make Him known. Cut 22: (Charlie's #2) Truth is the greatest asset you will ever possess. Always run toward truth. Cut 23: (Charlie's #3) If you don't have peace, then don't do it. Cut 24: (Charlie's #4) If you don't want to fall into the Grand Canyon then stay away from the edge! Cut 25: (Charlie's #5) Help and serve others. Cut 26: (Charlie's #6) Try to always think with the end in mind. Cut 27: (Charlie's #7) You only get one life. Know your purpose in what you're doing. Cut 28: (Charlie's #8) Failure is a great teacher. Never be afraid to go to school. Cut 29: (Charlie's #9) Forgiveness is the great vaccine of anger and resentment. Cut 30: (Charlie's #10) On time is late. Never be late. Nicki Knows Facts: Cuts Bucket List Items: Cut : Would love to purchase a large piece of land (good for camping, fishing, hunting, and farming) and have my kids and grandkids move there. Cut : Take an Alaskan cruise with my wonderful wife. Cut : Take a Hawaiian cruise with my wonderful wife. Cut : Do a 7 - 10 day mountain hike. Cut : Purchase an old school bus and convert it into an RV. The Book Corner (NEXT WEEK): The Great Divorce, Chapters 5-6 Cuts

Patrick reads and responds to Jose’s email. Jose writes: STOP the conspiracy propaganda (00:36) Zack - I want to become Catholic but my wife is hesitant. How can I alleviate her fears? (07:21) Steve – I’m a retired fire captain. Eaton fire was where I used to be stationed and I was told by the head of forest service that we were over doing our job. People who sat and did nothing got awards. Fire fighters are quitting because of DEI hires. (15:25) Terri - If you don't live in CA, you don't understand. This is political and we need this water problem fixed yesterday (23:07) Steve - How could Gavin Newsome have predicted or prevented this? It’s a natural disaster (27:15) Frank - I am a Grand Knight for the council here. My fellow knights are hurt by this fire. Half dozen of us have lost our homes. (34:51) Francis (13-years-old) - How would you baptize the Wicked Witch of the West, seeing she is allergic to water? (39:34) Marco – I wish Newsome would spend more money on dams to help water movement and be more productive with money. (42:58) Tom - What are the minimum requirements to gain salvation? Do I have to be a Catholic? (46:48)

Original Air Date: 04/10/24 Are you unnerved by the idea of a cashless society? Today, Patrick ponders whether it's a step towards totalitarianism or just a change in currency mediums. He tackles the mark of the beast and privacy implications, discovering a balance between caution and freedom. In a world swamped with pessimism, Patrick shares advice on overcoming media-induced anxiety—counseling a focus on faith, family, hobbies, and unplugging from the news cycle. Patrick shares a powerful scene from the movie Days of Wine and Roses where a husband admits to his wife that he’s an alcoholic and that she is too, and they need to stop drinking to survive Steve - How many degrees of separation are needed to use deadly force to protect my family? (05:42) Jorge - I need some guidance on everything that is happening in the world today and in our Church (25:46) Joey - Killing out of self-defense: Do you think that counters what Thomas Aquinas said? Francie - I would like to support the woman whose kids are fallen away. My children all fell away from the Church. I have been lukewarm Catholic but then I had a conversion and prayed really hard. Tony - My kids do martial arts. When they walk into the dojo they bow before they enter and before they leave. We bow in Church so is it confusing for kids to bow before the master? (45:42) Al - God does have an angry side to him. If the government decides to do digital currency, we have a right to defend ourselves.

How can those outside the Catholic faith, like Protestants and Buddhists, handle mortal sin without the Sacrament of Confession? Patrick explores the teachings of Jesus about faith, repentance, and the necessity of baptism and confession. Jim – Sometimes things pop up in real life, just like they do on the internet, and you need to ignore it and move on (01:36) Peter (email) – We went on an Alaskan cruise and made sure one of the stops would allow us to attend Mass Mary - What is a Synod and why is there so much talk about it lately? Mary Lou – Regarding the young girl shooter in Madison, WI. The phenomenon with young people and their extreme phone usage, is it affecting the part of the brain related to empathy? (24:06) Steve - How are protestants restored in the Body of Christ since they don't have confession (28:35) Koko – Did Mary and Joseph have marital relations? (38:48)

Patrick dives into a day of reflection and prayer as he discusses the one-year anniversary of the Hamas terrorist attack and the ensuing war in the Holy Land. Patrick shares a poignant request from the pope, urging everyone to pray, fast, and do penance for peace. He also presents a thought-provoking perspective from Professor Scott Galloway on the double standards Israel faces in its defense efforts. Later, Patrick engages with caller Dolly from Albuquerque, who inquires about the significance of the Jewish faith as God's chosen people and their historical role in monotheism, leading to an enlightening discussion about biblical teachings and Catholic doctrine. Join Patrick for an hour of meaningful reflection and insightful conversation on pressing global issues and deep-seated religious beliefs.   Pray and Fast for peace (01:34) Audio: There is a double standard when it comes to Jews and the state of Israel (02:53) Dolly – Are the Jews important because of all the countries in the world they were the only ones who believed in one God? (05:54) Steve - How long were we celebrating the Latin Mass Tridentine form of the Mass and which form of the Mass was before the Latin Mass? (10:44) Audio: David Sacks - AI Will Kill Off Call Centers In 2-3 Years (23:04) Page - What do I do with Protestant Bibles? Should I burn them? (27:10) Audio: College kids want socialism until it was applied to their GPA (41:11) Cliff - I think I had an experience with AI and tech services. I don't think it's a good idea. (47:54)

Patrick answer phone calls about novenas, balancing Catholic life, complying with office pronoun requirements and more.   Steve - How do you pray the Surrender Novena Correctly? Can a Protestant pray a novena? Billy email – Trying to discern the balance of Catholic life and include fun? Patrick - You were speaking with the woman who was dating a girl and you told her that praying 'extra hard' doesn't make God answer them better. Is that true? Can you clarify? Christopher email – Is it worth debating or following someone on X that sometimes bashes the Church but is mostly a good Christian? Emily -How do I approach a coworker who takes the Lords name in vain a lot? Marisela email – Do I have to comply with using pronouns at work? Patrick responds to listener about parishes charging a large fee for services like weddings and funerals

Are you unnerved by the idea of a cashless society? Today, Patrick ponders whether it's a step towards totalitarianism or just a change in currency mediums. He tackles the mark of the beast and privacy implications, discovering a balance between caution and freedom. In a world swamped with pessimism, Patrick shares advice on overcoming media-induced anxiety—counseling a focus on faith, family, hobbies, and unplugging from the news cycle.   Patrick shares a powerful scene from the movie Days of Wine and Roses where a husband admits to his wife that he's an alcoholic and that she is too, and they need to stop drinking to survive Steve - How many degrees of separation are needed to use deadly force to protect my family? (05:42) Jorge - I need some guidance on everything that is happening in the world today and in our Church (25:46) Joey - Killing out of self-defense: Do you think that counters what Thomas Aquinas said? Francie - I would like to support the woman whose kids are fallen away. My children all fell away from the Church. I have been lukewarm Catholic but then I had a conversion and prayed really hard. Tony - My kids do martial arts. When they walk into the dojo they bow before they enter and before they leave. We bow in Church so is it confusing for kids to bow before the master? (45:42) Al - God does have an angry side to him. If the government decides to do digital currency, we have a right to defend ourselves.

Patrick in this hour answers questions related to heaven, deliverance prayers and baptism and also shares what makes people convert, including the story about convert Colin Smith who convinced his family to convert as well.  Patrick shares his new son-in-law's serenade (2:56) Sherri-Since we will have our physical bodies back, will there be a physical element to heaven? (4:33) Susan -Someone did deliverance over the phone with me and now I am feeling like I am being attacked by an evil force. I have been saying the rosary. Is there anything else I can do? (11:14) Susan -What is the proper form of baptism, do you say Amen after In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? I saw a baptism and am wondering if it was done right? (22:48) Patrick shares what makes people convert (27:26) Patrick shares the story of Colin Smith who converted and then converted the rest of his family.  (29:52) Colin Smith's conversion story of him and his family: https://x.com/Colin4Tradition/status/1827194121078944074 Steve -How do you know if your baptism is valid? (40:22) Jack-Devine Mercy hour between 3-4 in the afternoon. If you do it at a different time do you get less grace for it? (45:44)

How do Catholic theologians decide what is literal and what is figurative? It starts with the early church fathers, who learned directly from the apostles. Through tradition and scripture, they've preserved Jesus' teachings, ensuring the authentic meaning is handed down through generations. Patrick explores key biblical passages that illustrate this continuing tradition.   Laurie (email) - How is it that the Rosary only dates back 800 years? (00:41) Barbara - If I didn't have the presence of mind to properly bury a child I miss carried, what do I need to do to make it right? (02:37) Shirley - Is it okay to be an organ donor? (05:34) Matthew – Did anyone see Mary ascend into Heaven? If no one saw her, why do we celebrate the assumption? (08:29) Steve - How do Catholic theologians discern which of Jesus' words were metaphor or not? (13:48) Nancy (email) – You refer to the “exit interview” as if it's a real conversation. How can that be if we don't have our body? (21:53) Mark – What does “do not lead us to temptation” mean? (27:44) Larry - Have you read the 'Mystical City of God' by Mary of Ágreda? What are your thoughts? (32:26) Mary – Organ donation: Isn't it true that the organs are taken while the body is still alive? (38:48) Jamie - Family member doesn't want last rites or catholic burial. What can we do? (42:07)

AJ, Charles, Dan, and Steve dive deep into all things JavaScript and TypeScript. In this episode, they discuss the pros and cons of arrow functions and the ongoing debate about using semicolons at the end of JavaScript statements. They also explore the use of different types of quotes for strings and the rise in popularity of TypeScript among developers. Additionally, they cover a wide range of topics, including array manipulation, coding laziness, and the challenges of reading and understanding JavaScript code. Join them as they navigate through these intriguing discussions and gather valuable insights for our development journey.SponsorsChuck's Resume Template Raygun - Application Monitoring For Web & Mobile AppsBecome a Top 1% Dev with a Top End Devs MembershipPicksAJ - Chaos Walking: The Complete Trilogy: Books 1-Charles - SaltconCharles - MysteriumDan - CatanDan - Documentary about the history of Zionism and the founding of Israel: "Pillar of Fire"Steve - How archaeologists reconstructed the burning of Jerusalem in 586 BCESupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/javascript-jabber/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

We are running an end of year survey for our listeners. Let us know any feedback you have for us, what episodes resonated with you the most, and guest requests for 2024! RAG has emerged as one of the key pieces of the AI Engineer stack. Jerry from LlamaIndex called it a “hack”, Bryan from Hex compared it to “a recommendation system from LLMs”, and even LangChain started with it. RAG is crucial in any AI coding workflow. We talked about context quality for code in our Phind episode. Today's guests, Beyang Liu and Steve Yegge from SourceGraph, have been focused on code indexing and retrieval for over 15 years. We locked them in our new studio to record a 1.5 hours masterclass on the history of code search, retrieval interfaces for code, and how they get SOTA 30% completion acceptance rate in their Cody product by being better at the “bin packing problem” of LLM context generation. Google Grok → SourceGraph → CodyWhile at Google in 2008, Steve built Grok, which lives on today as Google Kythe. It allowed engineers to do code parsing and searching across different codebases and programming languages. (You might remember this blog post from Steve's time at Google) Beyang was an intern at Google at the same time, and Grok became the inspiration to start SourceGraph in 2013. The two didn't know eachother personally until Beyang brought Steve out of retirement 9 years later to join him as VP Engineering. Fast forward 10 years, SourceGraph has become to best code search tool out there and raised $223M along the way. Nine months ago, they open sourced SourceGraph Cody, their AI coding assistant. All their code indexing and search infrastructure allows them to get SOTA results by having better RAG than competitors:* Code completions as you type that achieve an industry-best Completion Acceptance Rate (CAR) as high as 30% using a context-enhanced open-source LLM (StarCoder)* Context-aware chat that provides the option of using GPT-4 Turbo, Claude 2, GPT-3.5 Turbo, Mistral 7x8B, or Claude Instant, with more model integrations planned* Doc and unit test generation, along with AI quick fixes for common coding errors* AI-enhanced natural language code search, powered by a hybrid dense/sparse vector search engine There are a few pieces of infrastructure that helped Cody achieve these results:Dense-sparse vector retrieval system For many people, RAG = vector similarity search, but there's a lot more that you can do to get the best possible results. From their release:"Sparse vector search" is a fancy name for keyword search that potentially incorporates LLMs for things like ranking and term expansion (e.g., "k8s" expands to "Kubernetes container orchestration", possibly weighted as in SPLADE): * Dense vector retrieval makes use of embeddings, the internal representation that LLMs use to represent text. Dense vector retrieval provides recall over a broader set of results that may have no exact keyword matches but are still semantically similar. * Sparse vector retrieval is very fast, human-understandable, and yields high recall of results that closely match the user query. * We've found the approaches to be complementary.There's a very good blog post by Pinecone on SPLADE for sparse vector search if you're interested in diving in. If you're building RAG applications in areas that have a lot of industry-specific nomenclature, acronyms, etc, this is a good approach to getting better results.SCIPIn 2016, Microsoft announced the Language Server Protocol (LSP) and the Language Server Index Format (LSIF). This protocol makes it easy for IDEs to get all the context they need from a codebase to get things like file search, references, “go to definition”, etc. SourceGraph developed SCIP, “a better code indexing format than LSIF”:* Simpler and More Efficient Format: SCIP utilizes Protobuf instead of JSON, which is used by LSIF. Protobuf is more space-efficient, simpler, and more suitable for systems programming. * Better Performance and Smaller Index Sizes: SCIP indexers, such as scip-clang, show enhanced performance and reduced index file sizes compared to LSIF indexers (10%-20% smaller)* Easier to Develop and Debug: SCIP's design, centered around human-readable string IDs for symbols, makes it faster and more straightforward to develop new language indexers. Having more efficient indexing is key to more performant RAG on code. Show Notes* Sourcegraph* Cody* Copilot vs Cody* Steve's Stanford seminar on Grok* Steve's blog* Grab* Fireworks* Peter Norvig* Noam Chomsky* Code search* Kelly Norton* Zoekt* v0.devSee also our past episodes on Cursor, Phind, Codeium and Codium as well as the GitHub Copilot keynote at AI Engineer Summit.Timestamps* [00:00:00] Intros & Backgrounds* [00:05:20] How Steve's work on Grok inspired SourceGraph for Beyang* [00:08:10] What's Cody?* [00:11:22] Comparison of coding assistants and the capabilities of Cody* [00:16:00] The importance of context (RAG) in AI coding tools* [00:21:33] The debate between Chomsky and Norvig approaches in AI* [00:30:06] Normsky: the Norvig + Chomsky models collision* [00:36:00] The death of the DSL?* [00:40:00] LSP, Skip, Kythe, BFG, and all that fun stuff* [00:53:00] The SourceGraph internal stack* [00:58:46] Building on open source models* [01:02:00] SourceGraph for engineering managers?* [01:12:00] Lightning RoundTranscriptAlessio: Hey everyone, welcome to the Latent Space podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO-in-Residence at Decibel Partners, and I'm joined by my co-host Swyx, founder of Smol AI. [00:00:16]Swyx: Hey, and today we're christening our new podcast studio in the Newton, and we have Beyang and Steve from Sourcegraph. Welcome. [00:00:25]Beyang: Hey, thanks for having us. [00:00:26]Swyx: So this has been a long time coming. I'm very excited to have you. We also are just celebrating the one year anniversary of ChatGPT yesterday, but also we'll be talking about the GA of Cody later on today. We'll just do a quick intros of both of you. Obviously, people can research you and check the show notes for more. Beyang, you worked in computer vision at Stanford and then you worked at Palantir. I did, yeah. You also interned at Google. [00:00:48]Beyang: I did back in the day where I get to use Steve's system, DevTool. [00:00:53]Swyx: Right. What was it called? [00:00:55]Beyang: It was called Grok. Well, the end user thing was Google Code Search. That's what everyone called it, or just like CS. But the brains of it were really the kind of like Trigram index and then Grok, which provided the reference graph. [00:01:07]Steve: Today it's called Kythe, the open source Google one. It's sort of like Grok v3. [00:01:11]Swyx: On your podcast, which you've had me on, you've interviewed a bunch of other code search developers, including the current developer of Kythe, right? [00:01:19]Beyang: No, we didn't have any Kythe people on, although we would love to if they're up for it. We had Kelly Norton, who built a similar system at Etsy, it's an open source project called Hound. We also had Han-Wen Nienhuys, who created Zoekt, which is, I think, heavily inspired by the Trigram index that powered Google's original code search and that we also now use at Sourcegraph. Yeah. [00:01:45]Swyx: So you teamed up with Quinn over 10 years ago to start Sourcegraph and you were indexing all code on the internet. And now you're in a perfect spot to create a code intelligence startup. Yeah, yeah. [00:01:56]Beyang: I guess the backstory was, I used Google Code Search while I was an intern. And then after I left that internship and worked elsewhere, it was the single dev tool that I missed the most. I felt like my job was just a lot more tedious and much more of a hassle without it. And so when Quinn and I started working together at Palantir, he had also used various code search engines in open source over the years. And it was just a pain point that we both felt, both working on code at Palantir and also working within Palantir's clients, which were a lot of Fortune 500 companies, large financial institutions, folks like that. And if anything, the pains they felt in dealing with large complex code bases made our pain points feel small by comparison. So that was really the impetus for starting Sourcegraph. [00:02:42]Swyx: Yeah, excellent. Steve, you famously worked at Amazon. And you've told many, many stories. I want every single listener of Latent Space to check out Steve's YouTube because he effectively had a podcast that you didn't tell anyone about or something. You just hit record and just went on a few rants. I'm always here for your Stevie rants. And then you moved to Google, where you also had some interesting thoughts on just the overall Google culture versus Amazon. You joined Grab as head of eng for a couple of years. I'm from Singapore, so I have actually personally used a lot of Grab's features. And it was very interesting to see you talk so highly of Grab's engineering and sort of overall prospects. [00:03:21]Steve: Because as a customer, it sucked? [00:03:22]Swyx: Yeah, no, it's just like, being from a smaller country, you never see anyone from our home country being on a global stage or talked about as a startup that people admire or look up to, like on the league that you, with all your legendary experience, would consider equivalent. Yeah. [00:03:41]Steve: Yeah, no, absolutely. They actually, they didn't even know that they were as good as they were, in a sense. They started hiring a bunch of people from Silicon Valley to come in and sort of like fix it. And we came in and we were like, Oh, we could have been a little better operational excellence and stuff. But by and large, they're really sharp. The only thing about Grab is that they get criticized a lot for being too westernized. Oh, by who? By Singaporeans who don't want to work there. [00:04:06]Swyx: Okay. I guess I'm biased because I'm here, but I don't see that as a problem. If anything, they've had their success because they were more westernized than the Sanders Singaporean tech company. [00:04:15]Steve: I mean, they had their success because they are laser focused. They copy to Amazon. I mean, they're executing really, really, really well for a giant. I was on a slack with 2,500 engineers. It was like this giant waterfall that you could dip your toe into. You'd never catch up. Actually, the AI summarizers would have been really helpful there. But yeah, no, I think Grab is successful because they're just out there with their sleeves rolled up, just making it happen. [00:04:43]Swyx: And for those who don't know, it's not just like Uber of Southeast Asia, it's also a super app. PayPal Plus. [00:04:48]Steve: Yeah. [00:04:49]Swyx: In the way that super apps don't exist in the West. It's one of the enduring mysteries of B2C that super apps work in the East and don't work in the West. We just don't understand it. [00:04:57]Beyang: Yeah. [00:04:58]Steve: It's just kind of curious. They didn't work in India either. And it was primarily because of bandwidth reasons and smaller phones. [00:05:03]Swyx: That should change now. It should. [00:05:05]Steve: And maybe we'll see a super app here. [00:05:08]Swyx: You retired-ish? I did. You retired-ish on your own video game? Mm-hmm. Any fun stories about that? And that's also where you discovered some need for code search, right? Mm-hmm. [00:05:16]Steve: Sure. A need for a lot of stuff. Better programming languages, better databases. Better everything. I mean, I started in like 95, right? Where there was kind of nothing. Yeah. Yeah. [00:05:24]Beyang: I just want to say, I remember when you first went to Grab because you wrote that blog post talking about why you were excited about it, about like the expanding Asian market. And our reaction was like, oh, man, how did we miss stealing it with you? [00:05:36]Swyx: Hiring you. [00:05:37]Beyang: Yeah. [00:05:38]Steve: I was like, miss that. [00:05:39]Swyx: Tell that story. So how did this happen? Right? So you were inspired by Grok. [00:05:44]Beyang: I guess the backstory from my point of view is I had used code search and Grok while at Google, but I didn't actually know that it was connected to you, Steve. I knew you from your blog posts, which were always excellent, kind of like inside, very thoughtful takes from an engineer's perspective on some of the challenges facing tech companies and tech culture and that sort of thing. But my first introduction to you within the context of code intelligence, code understanding was I watched a talk that you gave, I think at Stanford, about Grok when you're first building it. And that was very eye opening. I was like, oh, like that guy, like the guy who, you know, writes the extremely thoughtful ranty like blog posts also built that system. And so that's how I knew, you know, you were involved in that. And then, you know, we always wanted to hire you, but never knew quite how to approach you or, you know, get that conversation started. [00:06:34]Steve: Well, we got introduced by Max, right? Yeah. It was temporal. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was a no brainer. They called me up and I had noticed when Sourcegraph had come out. Of course, when they first came out, I had this dagger of jealousy stabbed through me piercingly, which I remember because I am not a jealous person by any means, ever. But boy, I was like, but I was kind of busy, right? And just one thing led to another. I got sucked back into the ads vortex and whatever. So thank God Sourcegraph actually kind of rescued me. [00:07:05]Swyx: Here's a chance to build DevTools. Yeah. [00:07:08]Steve: That's the best. DevTools are the best. [00:07:10]Swyx: Cool. Well, so that's the overall intro. I guess we can get into Cody. Is there anything else that like people should know about you before we get started? [00:07:18]Steve: I mean, everybody knows I'm a musician. I can juggle five balls. [00:07:24]Swyx: Five is good. Five is good. I've only ever managed three. [00:07:27]Steve: Five is hard. Yeah. And six, a little bit. [00:07:30]Swyx: Wow. [00:07:31]Beyang: That's impressive. [00:07:32]Alessio: So yeah, to jump into Sourcegraph, this has been a company 10 years in the making. And as Sean said, now you're at the right place. Phase two. Now, exactly. You spent 10 years collecting all this code, indexing, making it easy to surface it. Yeah. [00:07:47]Swyx: And also learning how to work with enterprises and having them trust you with their code bases. Yeah. [00:07:52]Alessio: Because initially you were only doing on-prem, right? Like a lot of like VPC deployments. [00:07:55]Beyang: So in the very early days, we're cloud only. But the first major customers we landed were all on-prem, self-hosted. And that was, I think, related to the nature of the problem that we're solving, which becomes just like a critical, unignorable pain point once you're above like 100 devs or so. [00:08:11]Alessio: Yeah. And now Cody is going to be GA by the time this releases. So congrats to your future self for launching this in two weeks. Can you give a quick overview of just what Cody is? I think everybody understands that it's a AI coding agent, but a lot of companies say they have a AI coding agent. So yeah, what does Cody do? How do people interface with it? [00:08:32]Beyang: Yeah. So how is it different from the like several dozen other AI coding agents that exist in the market now? When we thought about building a coding assistant that would do things like code generation and question answering about your code base, I think we came at it from the perspective of, you know, we've spent the past decade building the world's best code understanding engine for human developers, right? So like it's kind of your guide as a human dev if you want to go and dive into a large complex code base. And so our intuition was that a lot of the context that we're providing to human developers would also be useful context for AI developers to consume. And so in terms of the feature set, Cody is very similar to a lot of other assistants. It does inline autocompletion. It does code base aware chat. It does specific commands that automate, you know, tasks that you might rather not want to do like generating unit tests or adding detailed documentation. But we think the core differentiator is really the quality of the context, which is hard to kind of describe succinctly. It's a bit like saying, you know, what's the difference between Google and Alta Vista? There's not like a quick checkbox list of features that you can rattle off, but it really just comes down to all the attention and detail that we've paid to making that context work well and be high quality and fast for human devs. We're now kind of plugging into the AI coding assistant as well. Yeah. [00:09:53]Steve: I mean, just to add my own perspective on to what Beyang just described, RAG is kind of like a consultant that the LLM has available, right, that knows about your code. RAG provides basically a bridge to a lookup system for the LLM, right? Whereas fine tuning would be more like on the job training for somebody. If the LLM is a person, you know, and you send them to a new job and you do on the job training, that's what fine tuning is like, right? So tuned to our specific task. You're always going to need that expert, even if you get the on the job training, because the expert knows your particular code base, your task, right? That expert has to know your code. And there's a chicken and egg problem because, right, you know, we're like, well, I'm going to ask the LLM about my code, but first I have to explain it, right? It's this chicken and egg problem. That's where RAG comes in. And we have the best consultants, right? The best assistant who knows your code. And so when you sit down with Cody, right, what Beyang said earlier about going to Google and using code search and then starting to feel like without it, his job was super tedious. Once you start using these, do you guys use coding assistants? [00:10:53]Swyx: Yeah, right. [00:10:54]Steve: I mean, like we're getting to the point very quickly, right? Where you feel like almost like you're programming without the internet, right? Or something, you know, it's like you're programming back in the nineties without the coding assistant. Yeah. Hopefully that helps for people who have like no idea about coding systems, what they are. [00:11:09]Swyx: Yeah. [00:11:10]Alessio: I mean, going back to using them, we had a lot of them on the podcast already. We had Cursor, we have Codium and Codium, very similar names. [00:11:18]Swyx: Yeah. Find, and then of course there's Copilot. [00:11:22]Alessio: You had a Copilot versus Cody blog post, and I think it really shows the context improvement. So you had two examples that stuck with me. One was, what does this application do? And the Copilot answer was like, oh, it uses JavaScript and NPM and this. And it's like, but that's not what it does. You know, that's what it's built with. Versus Cody was like, oh, these are like the major functions. And like, these are the functionalities and things like that. And then the other one was, how do I start this up? And Copilot just said NPM start, even though there was like no start command in the package JSON, but you know, most collapse, right? Most projects use NPM start. So maybe this does too. How do you think about open source models? Because Copilot has their own private thing. And I think you guys use Starcoder, if I remember right. Yeah, that's correct. [00:12:09]Beyang: I think Copilot uses some variant of Codex. They're kind of cagey about it. I don't think they've like officially announced what model they use. [00:12:16]Swyx: And I think they use a range of models based on what you're doing. Yeah. [00:12:19]Beyang: So everyone uses a range of model. Like no one uses the same model for like inline completion versus like chat because the latency requirements for. Oh, okay. Well, there's fill in the middle. There's also like what the model's trained on. So like we actually had completions powered by Claude Instant for a while. And but you had to kind of like prompt hack your way to get it to output just the code and not like, hey, you know, here's the code you asked for, like that sort of text. So like everyone uses a range of models. We've kind of designed Cody to be like especially model, not agnostic, but like pluggable. So one of our kind of design considerations was like as the ecosystem evolves, we want to be able to integrate the best in class models, whether they're proprietary or open source into Cody because the pace of innovation in the space is just so quick. And I think that's been to our advantage. Like today, Cody uses Starcoder for inline completions. And with the benefit of the context that we provide, we actually show comparable completion acceptance rate metrics. It's kind of like the standard metric that folks use to evaluate inline completion quality. It's like if I show you a completion, what's the chance that you actually accept the completion versus you reject it? And so we're at par with Copilot, which is at the head of that industry right now. And we've been able to do that with the Starcoder model, which is open source and the benefit of the context fetching stuff that we provide. And of course, a lot of like prompt engineering and other stuff along the way. [00:13:40]Alessio: And Steve, you wrote a post called cheating is all you need about what you're building. And one of the points you made is that everybody's fighting on the same axis, which is better UI and the IDE, maybe like a better chat response. But data modes are kind of the most important thing. And you guys have like a 10 year old mode with all the data you've been collecting. How do you kind of think about what other companies are doing wrong, right? Like, why is nobody doing this in terms of like really focusing on RAG? I feel like you see so many people. Oh, we just got a new model. It's like a bit human eval. And it's like, well, but maybe like that's not what we should really be doing, you know? Like, do you think most people underestimate the importance of like the actual RAG in code? [00:14:21]Steve: I think that people weren't doing it much. It wasn't. It's kind of at the edges of AI. It's not in the center. I know that when ChatGPT launched, so within the last year, I've heard a lot of rumblings from inside of Google, right? Because they're undergoing a huge transformation to try to, you know, of course, get into the new world. And I heard that they told, you know, a bunch of teams to go and train their own models or fine tune their own models, right? [00:14:43]Swyx: Both. [00:14:43]Steve: And, you know, it was a s**t show. Nobody knew how to do it. They launched two coding assistants. One was called Code D with an EY. And then there was, I don't know what happened in that one. And then there's Duet, right? Google loves to compete with themselves, right? They do this all the time. And they had a paper on Duet like from a year ago. And they were doing exactly what Copilot was doing, which was just pulling in the local context, right? But fundamentally, I thought of this because we were talking about the splitting of the [00:15:10]Swyx: models. [00:15:10]Steve: In the early days, it was the LLM did everything. And then we realized that for certain use cases, like completions, that a different, smaller, faster model would be better. And that fragmentation of models, actually, we expected to continue and proliferate, right? Because we are fundamentally, we're a recommender engine right now. Yeah, we're recommending code to the LLM. We're saying, may I interest you in this code right here so that you can answer my question? [00:15:34]Swyx: Yeah? [00:15:34]Steve: And being good at recommender engine, I mean, who are the best recommenders, right? There's YouTube and Spotify and, you know, Amazon or whatever, right? Yeah. [00:15:41]Swyx: Yeah. [00:15:41]Steve: And they all have many, many, many, many, many models, right? For all fine-tuned for very specific, you know. And that's where we're heading in code, too. Absolutely. [00:15:50]Swyx: Yeah. [00:15:50]Alessio: We just did an episode we released on Wednesday, which we said RAG is like Rexis or like LLMs. You're basically just suggesting good content. [00:15:58]Swyx: It's like what? Recommendations. [00:15:59]Beyang: Recommendations. [00:16:00]Alessio: Oh, got it. [00:16:01]Steve: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:16:02]Swyx: So like the naive implementation of RAG is you embed everything, throw it in a vector database, you embed your query, and then you find the nearest neighbors, and that's your RAG. But actually, you need to rank it. And actually, you need to make sure there's sample diversity and that kind of stuff. And then you're like slowly gradient dissenting yourself towards rediscovering proper Rexis, which has been traditional ML for a long time. But like approaching it from an LLM perspective. Yeah. [00:16:24]Beyang: I almost think of it as like a generalized search problem because it's a lot of the same things. Like you want your layer one to have high recall and get all the potential things that could be relevant. And then there's typically like a layer two re-ranking mechanism that bumps up the precision and tries to get the relevant stuff to the top of the results list. [00:16:43]Swyx: Have you discovered that ranking matters a lot? Oh, yeah. So the context is that I think a lot of research shows that like one, context utilization matters based on model. Like GPT uses the top of the context window, and then apparently Claude uses the bottom better. And it's lossy in the middle. Yeah. So ranking matters. No, it really does. [00:17:01]Beyang: The skill with which models are able to take advantage of context is always going to be dependent on how that factors into the impact on the training loss. [00:17:10]Swyx: Right? [00:17:10]Beyang: So like if you want long context window models to work well, then you have to have a ton of data where it's like, here's like a billion lines of text. And I'm going to ask a question about like something that's like, you know, embedded deeply into it and like, give me the right answer. And unless you have that training set, then of course, you're going to have variability in terms of like where it attends to. And in most kind of like naturally occurring data, the thing that you're talking about right now, the thing I'm asking you about is going to be something that we talked about recently. [00:17:36]Swyx: Yeah. [00:17:36]Steve: Did you really just say gradient dissenting yourself? Actually, I love that it's entered the casual lexicon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:17:44]Swyx: My favorite version of that is, you know, how we have to p-hack papers. So, you know, when you throw humans at the problem, that's called graduate student dissent. That's great. It's really awesome. [00:17:54]Alessio: I think the other interesting thing that you have is this inline assist UX that I wouldn't say async, but like it works while you can also do work. So you can ask Cody to make changes on a code block and you can still edit the same file at the same time. [00:18:07]Swyx: Yeah. [00:18:07]Alessio: How do you see that in the future? Like, do you see a lot of Cody's running together at the same time? Like, how do you validate also that they're not messing each other up as they make changes in the code? And maybe what are the limitations today? And what do you think about where the attack is going? [00:18:21]Steve: I want to start with a little history and then I'm going to turn it over to Bian, all right? So we actually had this feature in the very first launch back in June. Dominic wrote it. It was called nonstop Cody. And you could have multiple, basically, LLM requests in parallel modifying your source [00:18:37]Swyx: file. [00:18:37]Steve: And he wrote a bunch of code to handle all of the diffing logic. And you could see the regions of code that the LLM was going to change, right? And he was showing me demos of it. And it just felt like it was just a little before its time, you know? But a bunch of that stuff, that scaffolding was able to be reused for where we're inline [00:18:56]Swyx: sitting today. [00:18:56]Steve: How would you characterize it today? [00:18:58]Beyang: Yeah, so that interface has really evolved from a, like, hey, general purpose, like, request anything inline in the code and have the code update to really, like, targeted features, like, you know, fix the bug that exists at this line or request a very specific [00:19:13]Swyx: change. [00:19:13]Beyang: And the reason for that is, I think, the challenge that we ran into with inline fixes, and we do want to get to the point where you could just fire and forget and have, you know, half a dozen of these running in parallel. But I think we ran into the challenge early on that a lot of people are running into now when they're trying to construct agents, which is the reliability of, you know, working code generation is just not quite there yet in today's language models. And so that kind of constrains you to an interaction where the human is always, like, in the inner loop, like, checking the output of each response. And if you want that to work in a way where you can be asynchronous, you kind of have to constrain it to a domain where today's language models can generate reliable code well enough. So, you know, generating unit tests, that's, like, a well-constrained problem. Or fixing a bug that shows up as, like, a compiler error or a test error, that's a well-constrained problem. But the more general, like, hey, write me this class that does X, Y, and Z using the libraries that I have, that is not quite there yet, even with the benefit of really good context. Like, it definitely moves the needle a lot, but we're not quite there yet to the point where you can just fire and forget. And I actually think that this is something that people don't broadly appreciate yet, because I think that, like, everyone's chasing this dream of agentic execution. And if we're to really define that down, I think it implies a couple things. You have, like, a multi-step process where each step is fully automated. We don't have to have a human in the loop every time. And there's also kind of like an LM call at each stage or nearly every stage in that [00:20:45]Swyx: chain. [00:20:45]Beyang: Based on all the work that we've done, you know, with the inline interactions, with kind of like general Codyfeatures for implementing longer chains of thought, we're actually a little bit more bearish than the average, you know, AI hypefluencer out there on the feasibility of agents with purely kind of like transformer-based models. To your original question, like, the inline interactions with CODI, we actually constrained it to be more targeted, like, you know, fix the current error or make this quick fix. I think that that does differentiate us from a lot of the other tools on the market, because a lot of people are going after this, like, shnazzy, like, inline edit interaction, whereas I think where we've moved, and this is based on the user feedback that we've gotten, it's like that sort of thing, it demos well, but when you're actually coding day to day, you don't want to have, like, a long chat conversation inline with the code base. That's a waste of time. You'd rather just have it write the right thing and then move on with your life or not have to think about it. And that's what we're trying to work towards. [00:21:37]Steve: I mean, yeah, we're not going in the agent direction, right? I mean, I'll believe in agents when somebody shows me one that works. Yeah. Instead, we're working on, you know, sort of solidifying our strength, which is bringing the right context in. So new context sources, ways for you to plug in your own context, ways for you to control or influence the context, you know, the mixing that happens before the request goes out, etc. And there's just so much low-hanging fruit left in that space that, you know, agents seems like a little bit of a boondoggle. [00:22:03]Beyang: Just to dive into that a little bit further, like, I think, you know, at a very high level, what do people mean when they say agents? They really mean, like, greater automation, fully automated, like, the dream is, like, here's an issue, go implement that. And I don't have to think about it as a human. And I think we are working towards that. Like, that is the eventual goal. I think it's specifically the approach of, like, hey, can we have a transformer-based LM alone be the kind of, like, backbone or the orchestrator of these agentic flows? Where we're a little bit more bearish today. [00:22:31]Swyx: You want the human in the loop. [00:22:32]Beyang: I mean, you kind of have to. It's just a reality of the behavior of language models that are purely, like, transformer-based. And I think that's just like a reflection of reality. And I don't think people realize that yet. Because if you look at the way that a lot of other AI tools have implemented context fetching, for instance, like, you see this in the Copilot approach, where if you use, like, the at-workspace thing that supposedly provides, like, code-based level context, it has, like, an agentic approach where you kind of look at how it's behaving. And it feels like they're making multiple requests to the LM being like, what would you do in this case? Would you search for stuff? What sort of files would you gather? Go and read those files. And it's like a multi-hop step, so it takes a long while. It's also non-deterministic. Because any sort of, like, LM invocation, it's like a dice roll. And then at the end of the day, the context it fetches is not that good. Whereas our approach is just like, OK, let's do some code searches that make sense. And then maybe, like, crawl through the reference graph a little bit. That is fast. That doesn't require any sort of LM invocation at all. And we can pull in much better context, you know, very quickly. So it's faster. [00:23:37]Swyx: It's more reliable. [00:23:37]Beyang: It's deterministic. And it yields better context quality. And so that's what we think. We just don't think you should cargo cult or naively go like, you know, agents are the [00:23:46]Swyx: future. [00:23:46]Beyang: Let's just try to, like, implement agents on top of the LM that exists today. I think there are a couple of other technologies or approaches that need to be refined first before we can get into these kind of, like, multi-stage, fully automated workflows. [00:24:00]Swyx: It makes sense. You know, we're very much focused on developer inner loop right now. But you do see things eventually moving towards developer outer loop. Yeah. So would you basically say that they're tackling the agent's problem that you don't want to tackle? [00:24:11]Beyang: No, I would say at a high level, we are after maybe, like, the same high level problem, which is like, hey, I want some code written. I want to develop some software and can automate a system. Go build that software for me. I think the approaches might be different. So I think the analogy in my mind is, I think about, like, the AI chess players. Coding, in some senses, I mean, it's similar and dissimilar to chess. I think one question I ask is, like, do you think producing code is more difficult than playing chess or less difficult than playing chess? More. [00:24:41]Swyx: I think more. [00:24:41]Beyang: Right. And if you look at the best AI chess players, like, yes, you can use an LLM to play chess. Like, people have showed demos where it's like, oh, like, yeah, GPT-4 is actually a pretty decent, like, chess move suggester. Right. But you would never build, like, a best in class chess player off of GPT-4 alone. [00:24:57]Swyx: Right. [00:24:57]Beyang: Like, the way that people design chess players is that you have kind of like a search space and then you have a way to explore that search space efficiently. There's a bunch of search algorithms, essentially. We were doing tree search in various ways. And you can have heuristic functions, which might be powered by an LLM. [00:25:12]Swyx: Right. [00:25:12]Beyang: Like, you might use an LLM to generate proposals in that space that you can efficiently explore. But the backbone is still this kind of more formalized tree search based approach rather than the LLM itself. And so I think my high level intuition is that, like, the way that we get to more reliable multi-step workflows that do things beyond, you know, generate unit test, it's really going to be like a search based approach where you use an LLM as kind of like an advisor or a proposal function, sort of your heuristic function, like the ASTAR search algorithm. But it's probably not going to be the thing that is the backbone, because I guess it's not the right tool for that. Yeah. [00:25:50]Swyx: I can see yourself kind of thinking through this, but not saying the words, the sort of philosophical Peter Norvig type discussion. Maybe you want to sort of introduce that in software. Yeah, definitely. [00:25:59]Beyang: So your listeners are savvy. They're probably familiar with the classic like Chomsky versus Norvig debate. [00:26:04]Swyx: No, actually, I wanted, I was prompting you to introduce that. Oh, got it. [00:26:08]Beyang: So, I mean, if you look at the history of artificial intelligence, right, you know, it goes way back to, I don't know, it's probably as old as modern computers, like 50s, 60s, 70s. People are debating on like, what is the path to producing a sort of like general human level of intelligence? And kind of two schools of thought that emerged. One is the Norvig school of thought, which roughly speaking includes large language models, you know, regression, SVN, basically any model that you kind of like learn from data. And it's like data driven. Most of machine learning would fall under this umbrella. And that school of thought says like, you know, just learn from the data. That's the approach to reaching intelligence. And then the Chomsky approach is more things like compilers and parsers and formal systems. So basically like, let's think very carefully about how to construct a formal, precise system. And that will be the approach to how we build a truly intelligent system. I think Lisp was invented so that you could create like rules-based systems that you would call AI. As a language. Yeah. And for a long time, there was like this debate, like there's certain like AI research labs that were more like, you know, in the Chomsky camp and others that were more in the Norvig camp. It's a debate that rages on today. And I feel like the consensus right now is that, you know, Norvig definitely has the upper hand right now with the advent of LMs and diffusion models and all the other recent progress in machine learning. But the Chomsky-based stuff is still really useful in my view. I mean, it's like parsers, compilers, basically a lot of the stuff that provides really good context. It provides kind of like the knowledge graph backbone that you want to explore with your AI dev tool. Like that will come from kind of like Chomsky-based tools like compilers and parsers. It's a lot of what we've invested in in the past decade at Sourcegraph and what you build with Grok. Basically like these formal systems that construct these very precise knowledge graphs that are great context providers and great kind of guard rails enforcers and kind of like safety checkers for the output of a more kind of like data-driven, fuzzier system that uses like the Norvig-based models. [00:28:03]Steve: Jang was talking about this stuff like it happened in the middle ages. Like, okay, so when I was in college, I was in college learning Lisp and prologue and planning and all the deterministic Chomsky approaches to AI. And I was there when Norvig basically declared it dead. I was there 3,000 years ago when Norvig and Chomsky fought on the volcano. When did he declare it dead? [00:28:26]Swyx: What do you mean he declared it dead? [00:28:27]Steve: It was like late 90s. [00:28:29]Swyx: Yeah. [00:28:29]Steve: When I went to Google, Peter Norvig was already there. He had basically like, I forget exactly where. It was some, he's got so many famous short posts, you know, amazing. [00:28:38]Swyx: He had a famous talk, the unreasonable effectiveness of data. Yeah. [00:28:41]Steve: Maybe that was it. But at some point, basically, he basically convinced everybody that deterministic approaches had failed and that heuristic-based, you know, data-driven statistical approaches, stochastic were better. [00:28:52]Swyx: Yeah. [00:28:52]Steve: The primary reason I can tell you this, because I was there, was that, was that, well, the steam-powered engine, no. The reason was that the deterministic stuff didn't scale. [00:29:06]Swyx: Yeah. Right. [00:29:06]Steve: They're using prologue, man, constraint systems and stuff like that. Well, that was a long time ago, right? Today, actually, these Chomsky-style systems do scale. And that's, in fact, exactly what Sourcegraph has built. Yeah. And so we have a very unique, I love the framing that Bjong's made, that the marriage of the Chomsky and the Norvig, you know, sort of models, you know, conceptual models, because we, you know, we have both of them and they're both really important. And in fact, there, there's this really interesting, like, kind of overlap between them, right? Where like the AI or our graph or our search engine could potentially provide the right context for any given query, which is, of course, why ranking is important. But what we've really signed ourselves up for is an extraordinary amount of testing. [00:29:45]Swyx: Yeah. [00:29:45]Steve: Because in SWIGs, you were saying that, you know, GPT-4 tends to the front of the context window and maybe other LLMs to the back and maybe, maybe the LLM in the middle. [00:29:53]Swyx: Yeah. [00:29:53]Steve: And so that means that, you know, if we're actually like, you know, verifying whether we, you know, some change we've made has improved things, we're going to have to test putting it at the beginning of the window and at the end of the window, you know, and maybe make the right decision based on the LLM that you've chosen. Which some of our competitors, that's a problem that they don't have, but we meet you, you know, where you are. Yeah. And we're, just to finish, we're writing tens of thousands. We're generating tests, you know, fill in the middle type tests and things. And then using our graph to basically sort of fine tune Cody's behavior there. [00:30:20]Swyx: Yeah. [00:30:21]Beyang: I also want to add, like, I have like an internal pet name for this, like kind of hybrid architecture that I'm trying to make catch on. Maybe I'll just say it here. Just saying it publicly kind of makes it more real. But like, I call the architecture that we've developed the Normsky architecture. [00:30:36]Swyx: Yeah. [00:30:36]Beyang: I mean, it's obviously a portmanteau of Norvig and Chomsky, but the acronym, it stands for non-agentic, rapid, multi-source code intelligence. So non-agentic because... Rolls right off the tongue. And Normsky. But it's non-agentic in the sense that like, we're not trying to like pitch you on kind of like agent hype, right? Like it's the things it does are really just developer tools developers have been using for decades now, like parsers and really good search indexes and things like that. Rapid because we place an emphasis on speed. We don't want to sit there waiting for kind of like multiple LLM requests to return to complete a simple user request. Multi-source because we're thinking broadly about what pieces of information and knowledge are useful context. So obviously starting with things that you can search in your code base, and then you add in the reference graph, which kind of like allows you to crawl outward from those initial results. But then even beyond that, you know, sources of information, like there's a lot of knowledge that's embedded in docs, in PRDs or product specs, in your production logging system, in your chat, in your Slack channel, right? Like there's so much context is embedded there. And when you're a human developer, and you're trying to like be productive in your code base, you're going to go to all these different systems to collect the context that you need to figure out what code you need to write. And I don't think the AI developer will be any different. It will need to pull context from all these different sources. So we're thinking broadly about how to integrate these into Codi. We hope through kind of like an open protocol that like others can extend and implement. And this is something else that should be accessible by December 14th in kind of like a preview stage. But that's really about like broadening this notion of the code graph beyond your Git repository to all the other sources where technical knowledge and valuable context can live. [00:32:21]Steve: Yeah, it becomes an artifact graph, right? It can link into your logs and your wikis and any data source, right? [00:32:27]Alessio: How do you guys think about the importance of, it's almost like data pre-processing in a way, which is bring it all together, tie it together, make it ready. Any thoughts on how to actually make that good? Some of the innovation you guys have made. [00:32:40]Steve: We talk a lot about the context fetching, right? I mean, there's a lot of ways you could answer this question. But, you know, we've spent a lot of time just in this podcast here talking about context fetching. But stuffing the context into the window is, you know, the bin packing problem, right? Because the window is not big enough, and you've got more context than you can fit. You've got a ranker maybe. But what is that context? Is it a function that was returned by an embedding or a graph call or something? Do you need the whole function? Or do you just need, you know, the top part of the function, this expression here, right? You know, so that art, the golf game of trying to, you know, get each piece of context down into its smallest state, possibly even summarized by another model, right, before it even goes to the LLM, becomes this is the game that we're in, yeah? And so, you know, recursive summarization and all the other techniques that you got to use to like stuff stuff into that context window become, you know, critically important. And you have to test them across every configuration of models that you could possibly need. [00:33:32]Beyang: I think data preprocessing is probably the like unsexy, way underappreciated secret to a lot of the cool stuff that people are shipping today. Whether you're doing like RAG or fine tuning or pre-training, like the preprocessing step matters so much because it's basically garbage in, garbage out, right? Like if you're feeding in garbage to the model, then it's going to output garbage. Concretely, you know, for code RAG, if you're not doing some sort of like preprocessing that takes advantage of a parser and is able to like extract the key components of a particular file of code, you know, separate the function signature from the body, from the doc string, what are you even doing? Like that's like table stakes. It opens up so much more possibilities with which you can kind of like tune your system to take advantage of the signals that come from those different parts of the code. Like we've had a tool, you know, since computers were invented that understands the structure of source code to a hundred percent precision. The compiler knows everything there is to know about the code in terms of like structure. Like why would you not want to use that in a system that's trying to generate code, answer questions about code? You shouldn't throw that out the window just because now we have really good, you know, data-driven models that can do other things. [00:34:44]Steve: Yeah. When I called it a data moat, you know, in my cheating post, a lot of people were confused, you know, because data moat sort of sounds like data lake because there's data and water and stuff. I don't know. And so they thought that we were sitting on this giant mountain of data that we had collected, but that's not what our data moat is. It's really a data pre-processing engine that can very quickly and scalably, like basically dissect your entire code base in a very small, fine-grained, you know, semantic unit and then serve it up. Yeah. And so it's really, it's not a data moat. It's a data pre-processing moat, I guess. [00:35:15]Beyang: Yeah. If anything, we're like hypersensitive to customer data privacy requirements. So it's not like we've taken a bunch of private data and like, you know, trained a generally available model. In fact, exactly the opposite. A lot of our customers are choosing Cody over Copilot and other competitors because we have an explicit guarantee that we don't do any of that. And that we've done that from day one. Yeah. I think that's a very real concern in today's day and age, because like if your proprietary IP finds its way into the training set of any model, it's very easy both to like extract that knowledge from the model and also use it to, you know, build systems that kind of work on top of the institutional knowledge that you've built up. [00:35:52]Alessio: About a year ago, I wrote a post on LLMs for developers. And one of the points I had was maybe the depth of like the DSL. I spent most of my career writing Ruby and I love Ruby. It's so nice to use, but you know, it's not as performant, but it's really easy to read, right? And then you look at other languages, maybe they're faster, but like they're more verbose, you know? And when you think about efficiency of the context window, that actually matters. [00:36:15]Swyx: Yeah. [00:36:15]Alessio: But I haven't really seen a DSL for models, you know? I haven't seen like code being optimized to like be easier to put in a model context. And it seems like your pre-processing is kind of doing that. Do you see in the future, like the way we think about the DSL and APIs and kind of like service interfaces be more focused on being context friendly, where it's like maybe it's harder to read for the human, but like the human is never going to write it anyway. We were talking on the Hacks podcast. There are like some data science things like spin up the spandex, like humans are never going to write again because the models can just do very easily. Yeah, curious to hear your thoughts. [00:36:51]Steve: Well, so DSLs, they involve, you know, writing a grammar and a parser and they're like little languages, right? We do them that way because, you know, we need them to compile and humans need to be able to read them and so on. The LLMs don't need that level of structure. You can throw any pile of crap at them, you know, more or less unstructured and they'll deal with it. So I think that's why a DSL hasn't emerged for sort of like communicating with the LLM or packaging up the context or anything. Maybe it will at some point, right? We've got, you know, tagging of context and things like that that are sort of peeking into DSL territory, right? But your point on do users, you know, do people have to learn DSLs like regular expressions or, you know, pick your favorite, right? XPath. I think you're absolutely right that the LLMs are really, really good at that. And I think you're going to see a lot less of people having to slave away learning these things. They just have to know the broad capabilities and the LLM will take care of the rest. [00:37:42]Swyx: Yeah, I'd agree with that. [00:37:43]Beyang: I think basically like the value profit of DSL is that it makes it easier to work with a lower level language, but at the expense of introducing an abstraction layer. And in many cases today, you know, without the benefit of AI cogeneration, like that totally worth it, right? With the benefit of AI cogeneration, I mean, I don't think all DSLs will go away. I think there's still, you know, places where that trade-off is going to be worthwhile. But it's kind of like how much of source code do you think is going to be generated through natural language prompting in the future? Because in a way, like any programming language is just a DSL on top of assembly, right? And so if people can do that, then yeah, like maybe for a large portion of the code [00:38:21]Swyx: that's written, [00:38:21]Beyang: people don't actually have to understand the DSL that is Ruby or Python or basically any other programming language that exists. [00:38:28]Steve: I mean, seriously, do you guys ever write SQL queries now without using a model of some sort? At least a draft. [00:38:34]Swyx: Yeah, right. [00:38:36]Steve: And so we have kind of like, you know, past that bridge, right? [00:38:39]Alessio: Yeah, I think like to me, the long-term thing is like, is there ever going to be, you don't actually see the code, you know? It's like, hey, the basic thing is like, hey, I need a function to some two numbers and that's it. I don't need you to generate the code. [00:38:53]Steve: And the following question, do you need the engineer or the paycheck? [00:38:56]Swyx: I mean, right? [00:38:58]Alessio: That's kind of the agent's discussion in a way where like you cannot automate the agents, but like slowly you're getting more of the atomic units of the work kind of like done. I kind of think of it as like, you know, [00:39:09]Beyang: do you need a punch card operator to answer that for you? And so like, I think we're still going to have people in the role of a software engineer, but the portion of time they spend on these kinds of like low-level, tedious tasks versus the higher level, more creative tasks is going to shift. [00:39:23]Steve: No, I haven't used punch cards. [00:39:25]Swyx: Yeah, I've been talking about like, so we kind of made this podcast about the sort of rise of the AI engineer. And like the first step is the AI enhanced engineer. That is that software developer that is no longer doing these routine, boilerplate-y type tasks, because they're just enhanced by tools like yours. So you mentioned OpenCodeGraph. I mean, that is a kind of DSL maybe, and because we're releasing this as you go GA, you hope for other people to take advantage of that? [00:39:52]Beyang: Oh yeah, I would say so OpenCodeGraph is not a DSL. It's more of a protocol. It's basically like, hey, if you want to make your system, whether it's, you know, chat or logging or whatever accessible to an AI developer tool like Cody, here's kind of like the schema by which you can provide that context and offer hints. So I would, you know, comparisons like LSP obviously did this for kind of like standard code intelligence. It's kind of like a lingua franca for providing fine references and codefinition. There's kind of like analogs to that. There might be also analogs to kind of the original OpenAI, kind of like plugins, API. There's all this like context out there that might be useful for an LM-based system to consume. And so at a high level, what we're trying to do is define a common language for context providers to provide context to other tools in the software development lifecycle. Yeah. Do you have any critiques of LSP, by the way, [00:40:42]Swyx: since like this is very much, very close to home? [00:40:45]Steve: One of the authors wrote a really good critique recently. Yeah. I don't think I saw that. Yeah, yeah. LSP could have been better. It just came out a couple of weeks ago. It was a good article. [00:40:54]Beyang: Yeah. I think LSP is great. Like for what it did for the developer ecosystem, it was absolutely fantastic. Like nowadays, like it's much easier now to get code navigation up and running in a bunch of editors by speaking this protocol. I think maybe the interesting question is like looking at the different design decisions comparing LSP basically with Kythe. Because Kythe has more of a... How would you describe it? [00:41:18]Steve: A storage format. [00:41:20]Beyang: I think the critique of LSP from a Kythe point of view would be like with LSP, you don't actually have an actual symbolic model of the code. It's not like LSP models like, hey, this function calls this other function. LSP is all like range-based. Like, hey, your cursor's at line 32, column 1. [00:41:35]Swyx: Yeah. [00:41:35]Beyang: And that's the thing you feed into the language server. And then it's like, okay, here's the range that you should jump to if you click on that range. So it kind of is intentionally ignorant of the fact that there's a thing called a reference underneath your cursor, and that's linked to a symbol definition. [00:41:49]Steve: Well, actually, that's the worst example you could have used. You're right. But that's the one thing that it actually did bake in is following references. [00:41:56]Swyx: Sure. [00:41:56]Steve: But it's sort of hardwired. [00:41:58]Swyx: Yeah. [00:41:58]Steve: Whereas Kythe attempts to model [00:42:00]Beyang: like all these things explicitly. [00:42:02]Swyx: And so... [00:42:02]Steve: Well, so LSP is a protocol, right? And so Google's internal protocol is gRPC-based. And it's a different approach than LSP. It's basically you make a heavy query to the back end, and you get a lot of data back, and then you render the whole page, you know? So we've looked at LSP, and we think that it's a little long in the tooth, right? I mean, it's a great protocol, lots and lots of support for it. But we need to push into the domain of exposing the intelligence through the protocol. Yeah. [00:42:29]Beyang: And so I would say we've developed a protocol of our own called Skip, which is at a very high level trying to take some of the good ideas from LSP and from Kythe and merge that into a system that in the near term is useful for Sourcegraph, but I think in the long term, we hope will be useful for the ecosystem. Okay, so here's what LSP did well. LSP, by virtue of being like intentionally dumb, dumb in air quotes, because I'm not like ragging on it, allowed language servers developers to kind of like bypass the hard problem of like modeling language semantics precisely. So like if all you want to do is jump to definition, you don't have to come up with like a universally unique naming scheme for each symbol, which is actually quite challenging because you have to think about like, okay, what's the top scope of this name? Is it the source code repository? Is it the package? Does it depend on like what package server you're fetching this from? Like whether it's the public one or the one inside your... Anyways, like naming is hard, right? And by just going from kind of like a location to location based approach, you basically just like throw that out the window. All I care about is jumping definition, just make that work. And you can make that work without having to deal with like all the complex global naming things. The limitation of that approach is that it's harder to build on top of that to build like a true knowledge graph. Like if you actually want a system that says like, okay, here's the web of functions and here's how they reference each other. And I want to incorporate that like semantic model of how the code operates or how the code relates to each other at like a static level. You can't do that with LSP because you have to deal with line ranges. And like concretely the pain point that we found in using LSP for source graph is like in order to do like a find references [00:44:04]Swyx: and then jump definitions, [00:44:04]Beyang: it's like a multi-hop process because like you have to jump to the range and then you have to find the symbol at that range. And it just adds a lot of latency and complexity of these operations where as a human, you're like, well, this thing clearly references this other thing. Why can't you just jump me to that? And I think that's the thing that Kaith does well. But then I think the issue that Kaith has had with adoption is because it is more sophisticated schema, I think. And so there's basically more things that you have to implement to get like a Kaith implementation up and running. I hope I'm not like, correct me if I'm wrong about any of this. [00:44:35]Steve: 100%, 100%. Kaith also has a problem, all these systems have the problem, even skip, or at least the way that we implemented the indexers, that they have to integrate with your build system in order to build that knowledge graph, right? Because you have to basically compile the code in a special mode to generate artifacts instead of binaries. And I would say, by the way, earlier I was saying that XREFs were in LSP, but it's actually, I was thinking of LSP plus LSIF. [00:44:58]Swyx: Yeah. That's another. [00:45:01]Steve: Which is actually bad. We can say that it's bad, right? [00:45:04]Steve: It's like skip or Kaith, it's supposed to be sort of a model serialization, you know, for the code graph, but it basically just does what LSP needs, the bare minimum. LSIF is basically if you took LSP [00:45:16]Beyang: and turned that into a serialization format. So like you build an index for language servers to kind of like quickly bootstrap from cold start. But it's a graph model [00:45:23]Steve: with all of the inconvenience of the API without an actual graph. And so, yeah. [00:45:29]Beyang: So like one of the things that we try to do with skip is try to capture the best of both worlds. So like make it easy to write an indexer, make the schema simple, but also model some of the more symbolic characteristics of the code that would allow us to essentially construct this knowledge graph that we can then make useful for both the human developer through SourceGraph and through the AI developer through Cody. [00:45:49]Steve: So anyway, just to finish off the graph comment, we've got a new graph, yeah, that's skip based. We call it BFG internally, right? It's a beautiful something graph. A big friendly graph. [00:46:00]Swyx: A big friendly graph. [00:46:01]Beyang: It's a blazing fast. [00:46:02]Steve: Blazing fast. [00:46:03]Swyx: Blazing fast graph. [00:46:04]Steve: And it is blazing fast, actually. It's really, really interesting. I should probably have to do a blog post about it to walk you through exactly how they're doing it. Oh, please. But it's a very AI-like iterative, you know, experimentation sort of approach. We're building a code graph based on all of our 10 years of knowledge about building code graphs, yeah? But we're building it quickly with zero configuration, and it doesn't have to integrate with your build. And through some magic tricks that we have. And so what just happens when you install the plugin, that it'll be there and indexing your code and providing that knowledge graph in the background without all that build system integration. This is a bit of secret sauce that we haven't really like advertised it very much lately. But I am super excited about it because what they do is they say, all right, you know, let's tackle function parameters today. Cody's not doing a very good job of completing function call arguments or function parameters in the definition, right? Yeah, we generate those thousands of tests, and then we can actually reuse those tests for the AI context as well. So fortunately, things are kind of converging on, we have, you know, half a dozen really, really good context sources, and we mix them all together. So anyway, BFG, you're going to hear more about it probably in the holidays? [00:47:12]Beyang: I think it'll be online for December 14th. We'll probably mention it. BFG is probably not the public name we're going to go with. I think we might call it like Graph Context or something like that. [00:47:20]Steve: We're officially calling it BFG. [00:47:22]Swyx: You heard it here first. [00:47:24]Beyang: BFG is just kind of like the working name. And so the impetus for BFG was like, if you look at like current AI inline code completion tools and the errors that they make, a lot of the errors that they make, even in kind of like the easy, like single line case, are essentially like type errors, right? Like you're trying to complete a function call and it suggests a variable that you defined earlier, but that variable is the wrong type. [00:47:47]Swyx: And that's the sort of thing [00:47:47]Beyang: where it's like a first year, like freshman CS student would not make that error, right? So like, why does the AI make that error? And the reason is, I mean, the AI is just suggesting things that are plausible without the context of the types or any other like broader files in the code. And so the kind of intuition here is like, why don't we just do the basic thing that like any baseline intelligent human developer would do, which is like click jump to definition, click some fine references and pull in that like Graph Context into the context window and then have it generate the completion. So like that's sort of like the MVP of what BFG was. And turns out that works really well. Like you can eliminate a lot of type errors that AI coding tools make just by pulling in that context. Yeah, but the graph is definitely [00:48:32]Steve: our Chomsky side. [00:48:33]Swyx: Yeah, exactly. [00:48:34]Beyang: So like this like Chomsky-Norvig thing, I think pops up in a bunch of differ

Patrick cautions against the dangers of dream catchers, discusses the moral implications of AI technology, gives advice on how to understand the Mass better and explains how the two types of judgement function from Holy Scripture. Lori - I keep finding Dream catchers at my Church and other places, it says that are from a Catholic school. Is that okay? Gary - AI is the work of the devil; I disagree with your take on AI. Carolina - Matt 17: 24-27: What is the context behind this passage about the temple tax? Is there a good commentary for the bible? Jay - How can I help my child understand the Mass better? Brad - Why is it wrong to go to a medium to speak to the dead? Elizabeth - What do you think about votive candles with celebrities on them? Mike - Why are Free Masons not good for Catholics? Email - Where in the Bible does it tell us we need to attend Mass every Sunday? Steve - How do Particular Judgment and Final Judgement work? Kip - Could go over the questions you ask someone who wants you to use their 'preferred Pronouns'. It is so good I want to write it down.

Episode Highlights, Links and Resources:In the introduction, Jeremie and Steve discuss all things, Royal Family, the Harry and Meghan Netflix series, Elon Musk and AI. To check out the AI site they pulled up during the podcast to create a unique poem, see this link: copy.aiHere's the poem they created on ai during the show:The Jeremie and Steve podcast showIs always filled with fun and flowThey chat and laugh and share their viewsOn everything from politics to shoesTheir humor and wit never failTo keep their listeners engaged and enthralledThey bring a fresh and lively perspectiveTo the topics they discuss, with great respectTheir chemistry is off the chartsAnd their friendship is truly heart-to-heartThey bounce ideas off each otherAnd challenge each other like no otherSo if you want to be entertainedTune in to the Jeremie and Steve podcast, oh so gainlyThey'll make you laugh and think and smileFor a while.The unpacked the idea of Leadership Superpowers. Jeremie's superpower is that he is able to call people up into who they really are. And Steve added that Jeremie is a natural encourager to peopleSteve's superpower is seeing potential in people that they haven't seen before. He helps people open up quickly so they can live into who they are made to be. He can help them design a roadmap to get to their future. Steve can also multiply unconscious competence and invest in people to teach them to do what you do. Steve mentions the 70:30 tool. This tool opens the possibility that you can spend the majority of time doing things that are part of your superpowers; things that are in your sweet spot.Jeremie mentioned that he is Connector/Creative/Pioneer. To find out your Voice order, Take this assessment: 5 Voices AssessmentLooking to 2023:What is Steve excited about in 2023? He's excited about some new frontiers that are brewing. He mentioned a possible partnership with previous GiANT Leadership Podcast guest Jaz Ampaw-Farr.What is Jeremie excited about in 2023? He's excited about the new GiANT Operating System.Our favorite episode quotes: Steve: "How do I not be the person who settles? How do I become the person who pushes on to use my superpowers to the best of. my ability."Jeremie:  "Think bigger and higher about your purpose and your superpowers."Here's the end of the year poem Steve pulled up through AI:Rise up, oh brave and boldIt's time to follow your vision and never grow oldFor too long you've been held backBy fear and doubt and lackBut now is the time to break freeAnd chase your dreams with gleeYour vision is a beacon brightGuiding you towards your destiny's mightSo ignore the naysayers and the skepticsAnd trust in yourself and your abilitiesFor you are capable of greatnessAnd you have what it takes to succeedSo rise up, oh brave and trueAnd follow your vision, it's your time to shine throughSo don't hesitate, don't hold backGo forth and seize your dreams, and never look backFor the world is waiting for youTo show them all that you can do.If you want to become a GiANT Certified Coach,  go to GiANT Guide Certification and watch the videos, and sign up to join our next remote training cohort.If you'd like Steve or Jeremie to speak at your next event, either live or remote, inquire here:  https://giantspeakers.com

Patrick continues the conversation about confession from the first hour and he answers listener questions about where in the bible it says we should confess our sins to a priest, if we should be looking for spiritual direction while in a confessional, and he responds to an email that says this show is all “doom and gloom” (00:19) Where in the bible does it say we are supposed to confess to a priest? Lynn - Is confession the appropriate time to look for spiritual direction or should we be considerate of others in line for the sacrament? Jude - Confessing our sins to each other and a lot of people confess their sins to a bartender. Cynthia - My protestant friend has a dead person's ashes but really wants the urn that the ashes are in. How do I explain to him that he shouldn't just dump out the ashes? Patrick shares news of a new book of prayers for laypeople ministering to the sick will be out soon Sam - Is it okay to pray to someone who is not an official Saint declared by the Church? Chris - Is someone falls into mortal sin, do the good things they did before falling into sin matter anymore (assuming they repent of their sin)? Patrick responds to an email that describes him as all “doom and gloom” Steve - How do I defend the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist to a protestant friend of mine? Tim - Why does it say two thieves reviled Jesus in Matthew and Mark, but in Luke there was a Good Thief?

In this podcast, Suzanne Giesemann, renowned spiritual teacher, author, and evidential medium, joins host Steve Farrell to discuss “Partnering with Universal Beings.” During their conversation, you will learn what these Universal Beings are and why it's important that you develop your connection with our great web of consciousness. Suzanne is the founder of “The Awakened Way” teachings and was included on the 2022 Watkins list of the 100 most spiritually influential people on Earth.  In this podcast you will learn about… What “evidence” is in mediumship Incredible stories of spiritual connection from Suzanne and Steve How to connect with these different dimensions How a watermelon is a metaphor for consciousness Using “F.L.O.W.” to navigate difficult relationships ***Note: this is a special rebroadcast and any websites, links, programs, or events mentioned may no longer be active (or dates may have been changed). Thank you!*** Learn more about Humanity Stream+, a blooming spiritual community that combines the best transformational education in the world with real connections to fellow students in Conscious Living around the globe. Stream+ now features Suzanne's brand-new 8-week Masterclass, “Cosmic Forces,” co-created with fellow acclaimed spiritual teacher Patricia Cota-Robles. Explore Humanity's Team and the timeless truth that We Are All One. Learn more about the Humanity's Team free education programs.

Today we talk with Paul Asjes, a developer advocate at Stripe. We get some insight into creating a more secure site for credit card transactions. We also discuss card testing, or account stealing, techniques that are used to gain access to active credits cards. This topic is very important because it can have big financial consequences, and if serious enough, could cause a business to close. Paul gives us some techniques and strategies to discourage and prevent this activity. Sponsors Top End Devs (https://topenddevs.com/) Coaching | Top End Devs (https://topenddevs.com/coaching) Links Stripe (https://stripe.com/) Stripe Developers - Discord (https://discord.com/invite/stripe) Stripe Developers - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/c/StripeDevelopers) LinkedIn - Paul Asjes (https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-asjes-4a903a18/) Twitter: @paul_asjes (https://twitter.com/paul_asjes) Picks AJ - The Black Prism (https://www.brentweeks.com/writing/the-black-prism/) AJ - The unnamed city that I now live in Charles - Machi Koro (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XIP01AI) Paul - Stripe Sessions (https://sessions.stripe.com/) Paul- Takecarebnb (https://takecarebnb.org/en/) Steve - How to Freaking Find Great Developers By Having Them Read Code (https://freakingrectangle.com/2022/04/15/how-to-freaking-hire-great-developers/) Steve - Dad Jokes Special Guest: Paul Asjes.

Today we talk with Paul Asjes, a developer advocate at Stripe. We get some insight into creating a more secure site for credit card transactions. We also discuss card testing, or account stealing, techniques that are used to gain access to active credits cards. This topic is very important because it can have big financial consequences, and if serious enough, could cause a business to close. Paul gives us some techniques and strategies to discourage and prevent this activity. Sponsors Top End Devs (https://topenddevs.com/) Coaching | Top End Devs (https://topenddevs.com/coaching) Links Stripe (https://stripe.com/) Stripe Developers - Discord (https://discord.com/invite/stripe) Stripe Developers - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/c/StripeDevelopers) LinkedIn - Paul Asjes (https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-asjes-4a903a18/) Twitter: @paul_asjes (https://twitter.com/paul_asjes) Picks AJ - The Black Prism (https://www.brentweeks.com/writing/the-black-prism/) AJ - The unnamed city that I now live in Charles - Machi Koro (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XIP01AI) Paul - Stripe Sessions (https://sessions.stripe.com/) Paul- Takecarebnb (https://takecarebnb.org/en/) Steve - How to Freaking Find Great Developers By Having Them Read Code (https://freakingrectangle.com/2022/04/15/how-to-freaking-hire-great-developers/) Steve - Dad Jokes Special Guest: Paul Asjes.

Steve, AJ, and Dan talk to Drew Baker, co-founder of Los Angeles based digital agency Funkhaus about Storybook and Nuxt. After a discussion of various server side rendering methods, Drew talks about how they use Storybook, how it integrates tightly with Nuxt, and how it helps Funkhaus quickly and cleanly spin up sites for large customers. Sponsors Top End Devs (https://topenddevs.com/) Coaching | Top End Devs (https://topenddevs.com/coaching) Links Funkhaus (https://funkhaus.us/) UI / Badges / Funkhaus - Default (https://components.funkhaus.us/?path=/story/ui-badges-funkhaus--default) Songs from Scratch (https://songsfromscrat.ch/) AI Foundation (https://aifoundation.com/) Picks AJ - The Lost Medal (https://www.brandonsanderson.com/books-and-art/) AJ - Raven DB - Happy Path Performance AJ - Creeds of Craftsmanship (http://creedsofcraftsmanship.com/) AJ - Weight triggered coffee/tea warmer AJ - The Portal Element (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/portal) Follow CoolAJ86 Live Streams: YouTube: https://youtube.com/coolaj86 Twitch: https://twitch.tv/coolaj86 Follow Beyond Code: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2KJHARTj6KRpKzLU1sVxBA Twitter: https://twitter.com/@_beyondcode Dan - War in Ukraine Dan - Terrorist Attack in Tel Aviv Drew - Max Howl's tea (https://tea.xyz/) Steve - Vite (https://vitejs.dev/) Steve - How to Migrate from Vue CLI to Vite (https://vueschool.io/articles/vuejs-tutorials/how-to-migrate-from-vue-cli-to-vite/) Steve - Dad Jokes Special Guest: Drew Baker.

Steve, AJ, and Dan talk to Drew Baker, co-founder of Los Angeles based digital agency Funkhaus about Storybook and Nuxt. After a discussion of various server side rendering methods, Drew talks about how they use Storybook, how it integrates tightly with Nuxt, and how it helps Funkhaus quickly and cleanly spin up sites for large customers. Sponsors Top End Devs (https://topenddevs.com/) Coaching | Top End Devs (https://topenddevs.com/coaching) Links Funkhaus (https://funkhaus.us/) UI / Badges / Funkhaus - Default (https://components.funkhaus.us/?path=/story/ui-badges-funkhaus--default) Songs from Scratch (https://songsfromscrat.ch/) AI Foundation (https://aifoundation.com/) Picks AJ - The Lost Medal (https://www.brandonsanderson.com/books-and-art/) AJ - Raven DB - Happy Path Performance AJ - Creeds of Craftsmanship (http://creedsofcraftsmanship.com/) AJ - Weight triggered coffee/tea warmer AJ - The Portal Element (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/portal) Follow CoolAJ86 Live Streams: YouTube: https://youtube.com/coolaj86 Twitch: https://twitch.tv/coolaj86 Follow Beyond Code: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2KJHARTj6KRpKzLU1sVxBA Twitter: https://twitter.com/@_beyondcode Dan - War in Ukraine Dan - Terrorist Attack in Tel Aviv Drew - Max Howl's tea (https://tea.xyz/) Steve - Vite (https://vitejs.dev/) Steve - How to Migrate from Vue CLI to Vite (https://vueschool.io/articles/vuejs-tutorials/how-to-migrate-from-vue-cli-to-vite/) Steve - Dad Jokes Special Guest: Drew Baker.

Nathaniel - I thought the consecration was to stop the spread of communism but it has been spread all across the world. Will it still have potent effect. Efrank - If a pastor is using a different form of liturgy which you do not agree with should you go to another parish or should you stay? Abraham - I just heard about the consecration to Russia and I am wondering how that relates to the consecration of the host during mass? Yolie - I just heard about the consecration to Russia and I am wondering how that relates to the consecration of the host during mass? Steve - How can you involuntarily consecrate someone to Mary? I have read the Louis De Montfort book Jose - Awhile back you read a document highlighting Putin's efforts to promote the Faith in Russia but then Russia attack Ukraine. What are your thoughts about this sudden change? 

Over the years, many people have asked Steve: How do I get rich? This question was just as relevant years ago when Steve first answered this question on the old Lifeonaire Show podcast, so we're throwing back to this powerful legacy episode! If you don't think this episode applies to you, the first thing we want to say is: absolutely anyone can get rich. But Steve has some surprising insight on this topic that you may have never heard before. Stick around to hear it and learn how you too can be rich!

Episode 117g Having a Think About Celtic ChristianityDescription: In today's episode Dr. Carly McNamara of the University of Glasgow will dive in the intellectual tradition of early Irish Christianity. We will talk about who some of the important Irish Christian intellectuals were, how they operated and how they spread their version of Christian scholarship not only in the Ireland and Britain, but throughout Continental Europe as well.About Today's Guest:Dr. Carolyn McNamaraOn Twitter: @MedievalCarlyEducation Evolved: @EducationEvolvd www.educationevolvedltd.com/You can learn more about the History of Papacy and subscribe at all these great places:http://atozhistorypage.com/https://www.historyofthepapacypodcast.comemail: steve@atozhistorypage.comhttps://www.patreon.com/historyofthepapacyparthenonpodcast.comhttps://www.gettr.com/user/atozhistoryBeyond the Big Screen:Beyondthebigscreen.comThe History of the Papacy on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6DO2leym3kizBHW0ZWl-nAGet Your History of the Papacy Podcast Products Here: https://www.atozhistorypage.com/productsHelp out the show by ordering these books from Amazon!https://amzn.com/w/1MUPNYEU65NTFMusic Provided by:"Danse Macabre" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Virtutes Instrumenti" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Crusades" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Funeral March for Brass" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"String Impromptu Number 1" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Intended Force" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Agnus Dei X - Bitter Suite Kevin MacLeaod (incomptech.com)"Folk Round" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Celtic Impulse" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Image Credits:By Ariely - Own work, CC BY 3.0, ttps://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4533576By Pam Brophy, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9124089By ACBahn - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33810833By Trebbia at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22444330Begin Transcript:Thank you for listening to the History of the Papacy. I am your host Steve and we are a member of the Parthenon Podcast network, including Scott Rank's History Unplugged, James Early's Key Battles of American History, Richard Lim's This American President. Go to parthenon podcast dot com to learn more.•Patreon Plug patreon.com/history of the papacy•4 Tiers – Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople and Rome•Inclusion on the History of the Papacy Diptychs, bonus audio and video content, Pope coin coming soon, monthly book drawings, early content, and add free, early content. Sign up early so that you have your name at the top of the lists!•Now, let us commemorate the Patreon Patrons on the History of the Papacy Diptychs. We have oRoberto, Goran, William, Brian, Jeffrey, Christina, John, and Sarah at the Alexandria level oDapo, Paul, Justin and Lana all of who are the Magnificent at the Constantinople Level. oReaching the ultimate power and prestige, that of the See of Rome: we have Peter the Great!•In today's episode Dr. Carly McNamara of the University of Glasgow will dive in the intellectual tradition of early Irish Christianity. We will talk about who some of the important Irish Christian intellectuals were, how they operated and how they spread their version of Christian scholarship not only in the Ireland and Britain, but throughout Continental Europe as well.•With that, here is the next piece of the mosaic of the history of the Popes of Rome and Christian Church.Steve: [00:00:00] If we move on to what were some of the big cities that were starting to, as we get into the later middle ages and we're, you know, we're getting some new things. We have the Vikings coming in. How does that continue to develop?Dr. Carly McNamara: Yeah. So I think that's a great point. So if we're looking at kind of pre Viking age Ireland, there aren't really any cities that we would think of today. They tend to be your smaller settlements. And again, that's going to be a little bit different to what we expect to see. You know, from places that were part of the Roman empire, where Rome, you know, founded these, you know, London kind of places, but then when the Vikings come in, they start to found what becomes cities and some of the big ones that I can think of just off the top of my head are, you know, Dublin is a big one.We've got Waterford Wexford, cork, lemme. You know, these are all places that are [00:01:00] going to have a, a close Viking age, Scandinavian connection, because that's where they decided to settle. When they decided that reading, wasn't just going to cut it anymore. They want to just start spending the winter over in Ireland and then settling permanently. Steve: How did those cities develop a Christian and an ecclesiastical, uh, support and a system?Dr. Carly McNamara: Yeah. So we see the Vikings kind of getting pulled into Irish politics fairly quickly. You know, being able to talk a bit more in depth about that would be, I think really interesting, but just to give a little blurb about it, if you like, you know, they're finding themselves in a context in which, you know, we're looking more and more at society itself being.Christian. And [00:02:00] so if they want to trade with people, it's likely they're trading with Christians. If they want to take wives from the local population, they're likely to be Christians. If they're wanting to know. Agreements with local Kings to serve as mercenaries in their wars against other Irish Kings.It's likely that those Kings are going to be Christian. So they're going to get a lot of exposure and as they start to get that, you know, we're gonna get. The the Ecclesiastics coming in, or maybe there's a monastery nearby anyway, you know, near cork, there's a Lismore and a number of other monasteries.So they're just, they're going to be around. And I think that's probably, I almost want to say by attrition kind of how they start to. Pulled into Christianity. You're talking about the Christianization of Scandinavians, I think is really fascinating stuff. Steve: [00:03:00] Yeah, because they, they come in and in different ways, different places where the Scandinavians, when some times they had their families with them. But if they're going into a place that's heavily acculturated in one area and you want to become a part of that culture, it's really a lot easier to just become a part of that culture then to really impose your culture.On top of that, it's just. Not how that would generally work. If you're a handful of Vikings going into England or, uh, Ireland, you're not going to NESA and you want to get married and you want to settle down, you're still probably going to care. You're still going to carry on some of your aspects of your culture just naturally, but it's sure a lot easier to learn their language, get into their religion so that you can get married, settle down, do that whole thing.Dr. Carly McNamara: Yeah. And we start to see, you know, once we've got the. kingdom of Dublin getting fairly large. We start [00:04:00] to see Vikings who themselves have Gaelic names. And so it's very obvious. So there's been intermarriages going on between Scandinavian and native Irish or Gaelic speaking peoples. And we might have a think about the degree to which a certain amount of inter religious.You know, experiences within a marriage word, going to be fairly normal, even though we are moving increasingly towards a very Christian society. Steve: Yeah, I think of like I'm in a. It seems so real to me that it plays out like you maybe have a Viking comes in, who's into, uh, Odin or whatever. He's marrying a Christian and, you know, maybe he adopts Christian Christianity in every way, but he's still going to, you know, just naturally carry on what some of the things that he had always celebrated.And it's going to get [00:05:00] folded in a little bit, at least into his Christianity. Or a lot of bed, probably depending on case by case.Dr. Carly McNamara: Yeah. One of my favorite stories that talks to the conversion of Scandinavians is, you know, more in the Santiam and they would do these big baptism events. And this one guy comes in and he gets his baptism and they give him a new piece of clothing and they're giving new clothing to all of the people getting baptized.And he, he we're told that he turns to the people who are doing the baptizing. He says, well, this shirt isn't as nice as the one I got last time. And so that's kind of evidence for us. You know, how sincere are some of these Vikings actually being when they go through some of these mass baptisms, you're there going, you know, I'm going to get maybe a nice [00:06:00] meal.Uh, I got to wash myself anyway. Maybe it's logger job. Maybe it's washing day. They're going to give me some stuff afterwards, you know, in their own religion. They're not beholden to just a single deity or they can, you know, Revere any deity they want basically. And so they're like, right. I'll share, I'll worship your guy too.And you're going to give me some nice stuff so we can throw that into the mix. And I think that goes back to when we talked last time about. The conversion of Ireland and what the thought process of some of these Kings or even just your, your everyday person might my bring to the process of conversion in, or the sincerity of their conversion.Steve: And it's so interesting. We're really looking at, in any cultural change. What's. Really zoomed out view, but all of these changes were really made granularly. [00:07:00] They're changed at, you know, the individual pixels come together to make the pig the big picture. Dr. Carly McNamara: Yeah.

Ask Austin Anything! In this episode Austin answers questions from listeners just like you. Get your question answered on a future Ask Austin Anything episode by submitting it to the link below.Time Stamped Show Notes:[0:25] - #AAA for September 2021[1:07] - Mai - “When is the best time to talk about salary for a role that you're interviewing for? I've heard people say wait until the end but many recruiters ask about it at the beginning of the process. How do we maximize our earning potential?[5:00] - Mitchell - “Can you explain how the LinkedIn algorithm works for posts? When I make a post, is it only shown to my network? Or is it shown in other people's feeds and networks as well?”[10:03] - Steve - “How often should I be posting on LinkedIn for best results? I've been posting a few times per week, but I'm wondering if I should be doing more.”[14:33] - Wendy - “What is the single best piece of advice you would give a job seeker?”[17:00] - Cindi - “How do you get featured in places like Forbes or Business Insider? It seems like everyone is, but I've been trying for a while and haven't been able to make it happen.”[23:08] - Vikram - “How would you define career stability and who is responsible for it, you or your employer?”Have questions about your job search? Text them to Austin at (201) 479-9511.Ask Austin Anything:Click here to get your question answered on a future #AAA episodeShare Your Feedback:Want a free resume or LinkedIn profile review from Austin? Leave us a rating or review on iTunes to automatically be entered to win. We choose winners every week, click here to learn how to leave a review and enter to win.What should Austin talk about next? Ask a question or share your thoughts at CultivatedCulture.com/FeedbackConnect With Austin:Cultivated CultureLinkedInInstagramTry Austin's free Resume Builder, free Resume Scanner, and free Mailscoop email finder tool

There were no listener questions this week, so James fired one off to Dr Steve: How do couples manage stress while moving? The question is particularly salient to Dr Steve, who is preparing to sell his house and move. Always an instigator, James stirs the pot...

Franciscan Spirituality Center920 Market StreetLa Crosse, WI 54601608-791-5295Steve Spilde: Today I am excited to introduce Sam Rahberg. Sam is a presenter in our Spiritual Direction Preparation Program. He presents a weekend about “Introduction to Spirituality.” Sam is also a longtime supervisor in the program, helping our participants with their work. I know Sam to be an incredibly gifted presenter, and also a deep spiritual individual. It’s my pleasure to welcome Sam Rahberg.Sam Rahberg: I’m glad to be here. It feels a little bit like people get to be a fly on the wall in great conversations you and I have had in the past. I’m looking forward to it.Steve: As I usually begin these conversations, I invite people to explain their own spiritual tradition. As you were young, describe the spiritual atmosphere in which you grew up.Sam: I was a church-working kid. I grew up moving tables and chairs with my dad at the end of every church function. We were part of a Lutheran church, and he was the Director of Christian Education. I like to joke that I had an 18-year-long internship with him about what it means to be a professional in the church, to be working in ministry. I grew up in that environment knowing not much different than the formal structures of the church. I was always hungry when we would talk about discipleship. Or when I’d hear about spirituality, I’d quickly chase down those types of texts and learning opportunities once I was an adult and able to recognize something was stirring. I followed on that trajectory. I still think of myself being involved in a ministry of sorts, although for the last many years I haven’t served professionally in a parish. My spirituality and my understanding of vocation and calling has shifted, with no less appreciation for parish work. I still admire most professors I had who would say, “You know I love you guys. I love what we’re talking about, but I would rather be with the people in the parish. I’d rather be serving in those intimate relationships than in an academic sort of setting.” They’re just different birds. I have a great deal of respect, and I had the good fortune of being able to support people in ministry – pastors and priests and deacons and lay leaders in congregations through spiritual direction or retreat formats, and [also] working one-on-one with people in supervision fields like equipping people for ministry.Steve: You really grew up with a desire to be involved in that ministry. How old were you when that first desire came to your awareness?Sam: Actually, in high school I had anything but that desire. I had a stretch where I was wanting to go to the Air Force Academy. I wanted to be a computer programmer. I wanted to be a mechanical engineer. One of my high school teachers said, “Sam, you ought to consider becoming a teacher.” I said, “Well, maybe.” And then I realized, you know what I know how to do? I know how to do churchwork. It’s already who I am, [and] it’s already what comes naturally, so I bit on that and I did go [and] become trained as a Director of Christian Education. Part of what I loved about that was that I was being trained and equipped to do the things that were feeding my own personal spiritual hunger, [and] that were giving me a way to integrate my study of scripture, my spiritual reading, [and] my deep conversations with people into the work that I was doing. And to this day, I’m grateful for that privilege, [and] that I continue to be called into conversations that reflect some of the things that are most important to my inner journey. I’m grateful for that. I haven’t always been appreciative when days are busy or projects are hard, but when I can remember those moments, I do appreciate it.Steve: How long did you work in a parish setting?Sam: I had a yearlong internship, and then I was in a parish for five years before I went to the Benedictines and started working in Retreat Ministry there.

Steve Prefontaine is Chris's brother. Steve started his career at Quaker Oats as a regional sales manager and then moved to Kraft General Foods, before changing gears and working with Bob at Skaff Cryogenics from 1995 to 2018 as Vice President and a partner in the company. What you'll learn about in this episode: Why Steve made the leap from working in a corporate job to becoming an entrepreneur and working for himself, and why he prefers being an entrepreneur Why now, during the global pandemic, the added freedom of being an entrepreneur has been invaluable to Steve How working at Quaker Oats and working with a mentor there gave Steve great insights into where he wanted to take his career Why Steve believes that building strong relationships is crucial for any business, regardless of industry How relationship-building skills helped Steve turn a difficult and problematic customer into his best customer Why honesty is a crucial skill that can help you communicate more effectively and build stronger relationships Why Steve values learning new skills, and why admitting vulnerability and being willing to admit you don't have all the answers is crucial What actions Steve recommends for anyone considering making the jump from the corporate world to becoming an entrepreneur Why being an entrepreneur takes a completely different mindset from working in a corporate position Resources: SmartRealEstateCoachPodcast.com/webinar SmartRealEstateCoachPodcast.com/termsbook SmartRealEstateCoachPodcast.com/ebook SmartRealEstateCoach.com/QLS Smart Real Estate Coach Podcast Sponsor: Paul G. Dion CPA, CTC

Two days after celebrating his wedding engagement, Frank Zaccari's brother Steve was in an accident that left him paralyzed. Given the news that with his injuries Steve had five years to live, Frank and his family sprung into action. How did the family come together to support Steve? How did Steve survive and what is his quality of life? Read his inspiring story in our bestselling book Crappy to Happy: Sacred Stories of Transformational Joy. Frank Zaccari has written and published five books based on life altering events. Frank teaches a program for entrepreneurs at Arizona State University; he is a mentor with the Veterans Treatment Court; a mentor and judge with the University of California Entrepreneurship Academy; the host of a weekly radio show Life Altering Events; and is an accomplished speaker. Say "Alexa or Okay, Google play Sacred Stories Podcast!" or subscribe to our podcast at Sacred Stories.

Two days after celebrating his wedding engagement, Frank Zaccari's brother Steve was in an accident that left him paralyzed. Given the news that with his injuries Steve had five years to live, Frank and his family sprung into action. How did the family come together to support Steve? How did Steve survive and what is his quality of life? Read his inspiring story in our bestselling book Crappy to Happy: Sacred Stories of Transformational Joy. Frank Zaccari has written and published five books based on life altering events. Frank teaches a program for entrepreneurs at Arizona State University; he is a mentor with the Veterans Treatment Court; a mentor and judge with the University of California Entrepreneurship Academy; the host of a weekly radio show Life Altering Events; and is an accomplished speaker. Say "Alexa or Okay, Google play Sacred Stories Podcast!" or subscribe to our podcast at Sacred Stories.

Thin Line Between Insulting a Seller and Pricing to Buy (LA 1295) Transcript: Steve: Steve and Jill here. Jill: Howdy. Steve: Welcome to Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny northern California. Steve: Today, Jill and I talk about the line between insulting a seller and actually buying a piece of property. This is a topic that's very fresh in how we're buying and selling land, and it's something that we all deal with. It's one of the top five- Jill: It happens. Steve: -or eight questions that we get from new people or really even experienced real estate people, like, "What do you mean you send offers out for 20% of what the property's actually worth?" Jill: Exactly. Steve: How do you deal with that? There truly is a line between... There's a thin line between offering $25 for a piece of property, which I personally think is ridiculous. Some people do it with success. Jill: Right. Steve: We'll talk about all that. Jill: Thank you. Steve: Before we get into it, though, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the LandAcademy.com online community, it's free. Jill: I would like to add on the LandInvestors.com online community, it's free. Steve: Oh, yes. You'll get there. Jill: It's okay. Steve: You'll get there both ways. Jill: That's true. Lucas wrote, "Hi, everyone. Lucas here from Greenville, South Carolina. For some reason, I'm extremely nervous and excited at the same time. After reading the book-" Steve: Are you crying? Crying on the inside. Jill: That's daily. That's kind of how I wake up, nervous and excited. You're not alone, Lucas. Steve: Crying on the inside and laughing on the outside. That's how I wake up. Jill: "That's right. After reading your ebook, listening to the podcasts and watching YouTube interviews, I have become convinced that I want to do this and I could be good at this. I love data. Steve: Excellent. Jill: "I'm part of a manufacturing engineering group, and my colleagues call me the data guy because I so enjoy statistics and deep diving into the metrics." This is all really good. Steve: Excellent. Jill: "And I love land. This is good. I have a dream of starting a homestead with my wife and children someday, so for the last several years, I've been scouring GIS maps and Google Earth, trying to find a hidden gem for our homestead. I have long believed that there are incredible deals out there, just waiting to be found, and I couldn't process the data in a way that was efficient. After spending hours examining attributes of parcels in numerous states, I just couldn't figure out how to get the truly amazing deal. When I saw this community, it was like a lightning bolt turning on. It hadn't even occurred to me that this could be a potential business. I have been focused on upstate South Carolina, western North Carolina, upstate New York and all of Vermont, my home state. Steve: Excellent. Vermont's a great choice. Jill: "Someday, I want to leave properties for my children, and I want them to have business savvy. I feel like I have a knack for this stuff. I just need some direction. My biggest challenge will be managing this endeavor with the time constraints of my full-time job and my life as a parent. I'm so determined, though. If I can make some success with my initial mailer and my first purchase, I know there'll be enough momentum to really change my career. I'm looking forward to meeting some of you and collaborating and sharing ideas. Thank you, Steve and Jill." Awww, that's so cool. Steve: I'm going to turn this over to you right now, just the initial part of it, anyway, because I know that you talked to people constantly in the exact same boat. Jill: There's no question. I'm looking to see. He's just kind of sharing his experiences, right? Steve: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jill: Am I missing something? Steve: I think he joined. Jill:

Thin Line Between Insulting a Seller and Pricing to Buy (LA 1295) Transcript: Steve: Steve and Jill here. Jill: Howdy. Steve: Welcome to Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny northern California. Steve: Today, Jill and I talk about the line between insulting a seller and actually buying a piece of property. This is a topic that's very fresh in how we're buying and selling land, and it's something that we all deal with. It's one of the top five- Jill: It happens. Steve: -or eight questions that we get from new people or really even experienced real estate people, like, "What do you mean you send offers out for 20% of what the property's actually worth?" Jill: Exactly. Steve: How do you deal with that? There truly is a line between... There's a thin line between offering $25 for a piece of property, which I personally think is ridiculous. Some people do it with success. Jill: Right. Steve: We'll talk about all that. Jill: Thank you. Steve: Before we get into it, though, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the LandAcademy.com online community, it's free. Jill: I would like to add on the LandInvestors.com online community, it's free. Steve: Oh, yes. You'll get there. Jill: It's okay. Steve: You'll get there both ways. Jill: That's true. Lucas wrote, "Hi, everyone. Lucas here from Greenville, South Carolina. For some reason, I'm extremely nervous and excited at the same time. After reading the book-" Steve: Are you crying? Crying on the inside. Jill: That's daily. That's kind of how I wake up, nervous and excited. You're not alone, Lucas. Steve: Crying on the inside and laughing on the outside. That's how I wake up. Jill: "That's right. After reading your ebook, listening to the podcasts and watching YouTube interviews, I have become convinced that I want to do this and I could be good at this. I love data. Steve: Excellent. Jill: "I'm part of a manufacturing engineering group, and my colleagues call me the data guy because I so enjoy statistics and deep diving into the metrics." This is all really good. Steve: Excellent. Jill: "And I love land. This is good. I have a dream of starting a homestead with my wife and children someday, so for the last several years, I've been scouring GIS maps and Google Earth, trying to find a hidden gem for our homestead. I have long believed that there are incredible deals out there, just waiting to be found, and I couldn't process the data in a way that was efficient. After spending hours examining attributes of parcels in numerous states, I just couldn't figure out how to get the truly amazing deal. When I saw this community, it was like a lightning bolt turning on. It hadn't even occurred to me that this could be a potential business. I have been focused on upstate South Carolina, western North Carolina, upstate New York and all of Vermont, my home state. Steve: Excellent. Vermont's a great choice. Jill: "Someday, I want to leave properties for my children, and I want them to have business savvy. I feel like I have a knack for this stuff. I just need some direction. My biggest challenge will be managing this endeavor with the time constraints of my full-time job and my life as a parent. I'm so determined, though. If I can make some success with my initial mailer and my first purchase, I know there'll be enough momentum to really change my career. I'm looking forward to meeting some of you and collaborating and sharing ideas. Thank you, Steve and Jill." Awww, that's so cool. Steve: I'm going to turn this over to you right now, just the initial part of it, anyway, because I know that you talked to people constantly in the exact same boat. Jill: There's no question. I'm looking to see. He's just kind of sharing his experiences, right? Steve: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jill: Am I missing something? Steve: I think he joined. Jill:

SUMMARY: Jeff Walters joins Steve for EP83 of the DYB Podcast and discusses his life's story of drug addiction to being a successful painting contractor. Jeff became the man of the house at a young age, which put pressure on him, though he had a very encouraging mom. He began playing in a band at the young age of 11 and worked hard --whether working hard for drugs or as he now does, to help give others a second chance. Not only does he have a wonderful, thriving business, but Jeff strives to give felons a second chance as he hires them and helps them to work hard to overcome their previous life choices to be successful, clean, and sober. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: How Jeff started out in a band at a young age and painted on the side to make money What the catalyst was that helped Jeff out of drugs and into being a successful businessman The hope Jeff offers to other convicted felons--helping them see beyond their past and work hard for their futures. The interesting start the 12 step program gave Jeff for his painting company and the encouragement he has for hiring today QUOTES: 1:34 Steve: "How did you get started in this crazy business?" Jeff: "Well, the funny part about it was, whenever I couldn't find anything else to do, I could always find something you paint. And this goes clear back from, in my teens, at that point I'm supposed to be an entertainer. So, I mean, I never thought of the painting business as a career. It was just a way to always make some quick, easy money." 3:04 Steve: "So you started playing music very young and then you figured, 'All right, well, I've got to actually generate some income.' How old were you?" Jeff: "17, 18. It was just kind of a side thing, when I was playing five nights a week and I did the holiday circuit and we had a band that traveled about five States. We did college one nighters for a few years, so I started pretty young. One of the neat things that there is, as I see some of the new young guys come in, now they're all 'gung ho' about starting the business and stuff. That wasn't how it was for me. I wasn't looking at it as a business at all, it was just a way to make decent money relatively quickly, but I didn't really look at it when I started, as that being a business or career." 3:52 "It was basically me and my mom growing up. So I didn't meet my dad until I was in my thirties. So it was me and my mom growing up and I was kind of the man of the house, but with that came a lot of, a lot of pressure. Mom was always supportive of everything that I did, but I turned to drugs, really, at a pretty young age and battled with some addiction issues for a huge chunk of my life. I'm thankful that I don't have to live that way today. I've been clean since, October the 6th of 2001. And it's something that I work on, really, every day." 5:29 Steve: "So you started off in new construction." Jeff: "I did. Yeah. Like most of us, right? Easy leads. Just usually no profit, unfortunately. But at that point, I wasn't looking at any of that. We're just trying to get some money to continue the lifestyle." 7:32 Jeff: "One of those things, Steve, where birds of a feather flock together, you know?" Steve: "Oh yeah. It's so true. That's one of my favorite quotes. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with-- Jim Rohn." 9:43 "When I got clean, that was almost a full time job for me -- just to try to find a whole new way to live and not associate with the people that you...that's why I took the halfway house for awhile. Cause that way, at least, I had someplace safe to go. I didn't have any money, I didn't have anything. So, finding a job sounded like the logical answer, except nobody would hire me. I'm a convicted felon at that point, I'm at a halfway house. I wasn't having very good luck finding a job. So I start up the business." 10:26 "Of course, at first...I didn't have any kind of advertising or anything else. As I would go to these 12 step meetings, I would tell them, say, "Hey, here's the thing. I just got out of treatment. Anybody has anything to paint, I'd like to do it." And at that point, I was just trying to keep the phone on." 11:29 Jeff: "An old timer once told me, "Look, all you need to do is stay clean till your next meeting." So that's how come I was attending three or four a day because I wasn't sure if I could make it til tomorrow, but I could make it to my next meeting. Then the days started turning into weeks and the weeks into months and then years. And here we are today." Steve: "These referrals from the meeting, they had a vested interest. They wanted 1) to support you, because it's like a brotherhood. And then 2) they were kind of there as accountability, too, after they pay you. They're like, "So Jeff, you're going to use this to pay bills and buy equipment, right?" Jeff: "Exactly...a whole new set of birds to flock together." 16:50 "I would way rather have some really good people that don't know how to paint. I can teach them how to paint. (Verses) somebody that comes in and says, "Oh, I got 27 years worth of experience." I'm like, "Yeah, I got 27 years worth of bad habits to break."  Steve: "Isn't that the truth!" 18:23 Steve: "Now, for our listeners who are not DYB Members, yet, you mentioned Monday. I just want to pack that a little bit. So, Monday is the new production management & admin management program that we have rolled out. And what Jeff's referring to is, we (in our 1-1 Coaching Meetings) built out an All Star Team CRM now, so that it's created its own application form. And so, then when he posts that link with his hiring ad, everybody drops into that form and it makes the process streamlined. Plus he's building his list, right, Jeff?" Jeff: "Right. Correct. And , the nice thing about doing that is now, they can fill out the app off of a cell phone. Before, I used to have him come in, fill out an application... I wanted to see if they could read and write and follow instructions, you know, and a lot of them couldn't do at least parts of those. But now, we've tried really hard to streamline a bunch of those processes and we see the benefits of doing that." 24:01 "I just wanted to, let some of the people know that there's some really good people there (felons) that really want to work hard and just want to do, want to change their lives and given the opportunity, some of them do that. We've had some really wonderful success stories over the years. And that's part of why, why I still do this. You know, God is good. He's given me some tools here where I can make a difference in some people's lives. So for me, I'm at an age where the money is important and I live comfortably, but that's not really the big motivator for me. So if anybody has any questions on that ever, they can sure contact me."   HIGHLIGHTS 0:18 Jeff meets his wife, who mistakes his employee, Johnny, for the owner as Jasmine thinks, "If Walters Painting will hire, Jeff, then maybe they will hire me." Little did they know, they'd get married a few years later! 01:45 Jeff starts playing in a band at a very young age and gets into the drug and alcohol scene. He then paints on the side to make quick cash for his lifestyle. 05:29 Jeff starts off painting in new construction for the easy leads. In 1988, Jeff is busted on drug charges and taken to prison. In 1991, is when he really started a painting business. 08:10 Jeff goes back to prison from 1995-1998, but he does work for the Department of Corrections eventually, painting about every correctional facility there was in Nebraska. 09:43 At a half-way house, Jeff tried to find employment, but as a convicted felon, no one would hire him. Jeff decides to start up his painting business. 10:26 Jeff begins asking for painting work at his 12 step meetings and landing work. 16:29 Jeff shares how he took his company culture to the next level, working with convicted felons and then having them all read business books together and discuss. 18:23 Jeff talks about how he has streamlined his business. 24:01 Jeff talks about his key motivator for business in giving hope to those who need a second chance.   LINKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: Receipt Bank QuickBooks Online Monday: Project, Hiring, and Admin Management QBQ (The Question Behind the Question) Dave's Killer Bread ADDITIONAL FREE RESOURCES: Jim Rohn   Jeff Walters Facebook   Schedule Your Free Strategy Call With Steve Burnett   Thank you very much for joining us today! If you received value, would you take a quick few seconds and leave us a review on iTunes, please?   Press and hold to visit the page: Show Notes Page

Franciscan Spirituality Center920 Market StreetLa Crosse, WI 54601Steve Spilde: My name is Steve Spilde. Today I’m here with Vince Hatt, the longtime director of the Franciscan Spirituality Center. Tell me about your work at the Spirituality Center, and maybe specifically your understanding of what the Spirituality Center is all about.Vince Hatt: I started out as basically the Spiritual Director. From there I eventually became Director of the Spiritual Director and Preparation Program, and I eventually became Director. My purpose, I think – one of the main ones, anyway – was to provide a safe place for people to explore the big questions of life. It gave me the most joy when I saw people ask themselves the hard questions and go deeper.Steve: Tell me how you came to the Franciscan Spirituality Center.Vince: I was a priest in Iowa for 27 years. I resigned in 1993. I called Mary Katherine to basically cancel during a retreat because I was no longer going to be a priest, and she said, ‘Would you like to work here?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ She said, ‘Well, that’s good.’ Then I said, ‘How do I apply?’ She said, ‘You’re the only applicant.’ So I resigned on August 15th, 1993 and started here September 7th, 1993. I worked here until I retired.Steve: We’re going to circle back to that, how you ended up here and how you resigned from the priesthood. But I want to find out how you entered the priesthood in the first place. Let’s kind of rewind the tape to the beginning of your life. Tell me who Vince was as a young boy, and how you ended up becoming a priest.Vince: As a young boy, my purpose was to be successful. I not only wanted to be a good student, I wanted to be valedictorian of the class.Steve: Did you succeed?Vince: Yes, of course. When I put my energy into something, it was focused. Then I not only wanted to be the best long-distance runner my school, I wanted to be the best in the conference. My focus was always on succeeding. Another question that arose pretty early is, what is my purpose? I’m a goal-setter, so what’s my purpose? On October 4th, 1957, I was on my way to a cross country meet in Ames, Iowa, and [there] was breaking news. They didn’t use that term as frequently as they do now, but the breaking news was that the Russians had sent up the first space satellite, Sputnik, and then right away I knew my purpose was to catch up with the Russians in space. Because of my record, I was offered a full-ride scholarship to Notre Dame in physics and math. I thought that was my purpose. I didn’t particularly enjoy it, but you know, what am I supposed to do? Well, that was the environment, so I did that until the third year. I was taking a course called “Quantum Mechanics,” and about halfway through the course I thought, ‘You know, maybe someone else can help the United States catch up with the Russians in space.’ I pulled out of that, and then the last year at Notre Dame I was thinking about, what was my purpose? I decided the church needs priests [and] somebody’s got to do it. I was always kind of the guy [who said], ‘Somebody’s got to do it. I would.’ That had good results in some areas, like when I was in high school [and] I got elected to any position, usually I didn’t volunteer. They would come to me and I would say, ‘Somebody’s got to do it.’ That was kind of the person I was, and that’s how I ended up a priest.Steve: What was your experience in the church when you were young?Vince: When I was young, I grew up in an Italian family and the church was very important. I would go to church all the time with my grandparents and my parents. I think my first purpose in the church was to get to heaven. That was my spirituality. That worked pretty well until I hit adolescence. Then I thought, ‘This is not so easy.’ Pretty much the whole thing was getting to heaven.Steve: What was your understanding of how you would get to heaven from that age?Vince: Keep all the rules – excel in them, of course. I was going to be the best rule keeper. I’ve always had an intense desire to succeed. That was my drivenness.Steve: What was your image of God at, say, 15 years?Vince: God sets the rules. If I keep them, I get eternal bliss. That was the deal. I was very practical. It might be a struggle, but life only lasts so many years and heaven is forever.Steve: As a young man becoming a priest, at that point had your view of God changed?Vince: Not a whole lot. I think I was evolving into it’s more a matter of loving than keeping the rules. In fact, the basic rule was loving God above all, and your neighbor as yourself. It kind of took the emphasis off of keeping the rules to being a loving person.Steve: How was it for you as a priest.Vince: It had its plusses and minuses. The plusses included the opportunity to be part of people’s lives at critical junctures in their lives, and they were forever grateful. If you were there when a parent died, the kids would never forget it. They would bring it up years later. The hard part was it was very isolating. I would be in a parish for six years, and then I would rip it all up and end those relationships and go start over in another place. It was exciting at first – a new challenge – but then after 20 years it was like, ‘Man, this is lonely.’ That’s when I started to say, ‘Maybe I have some other options.’ I didn’t like being the one who had, in middle management, had to deliver the message to the folks about stuff I really wasn’t that enthused about. It took me a lot longer to leave than to enter. I decided to be a priest in a couple of years. The process of leaving took about 10 years from the first rumblings to finally saying I am leaving.Steve: Was your understanding of God shifting during that time of rumbling?Vince: Yeah. I came to the conclusion that my lifetime commitment was to God as I understood God [and] not to the church. So I could leave the priesthood and still be faithful to God. That was the big struggle originally. I was in the era when priests were leaving. The ones who remained had more to do. I had certain friendships that were originating through my priesthood. It was renegotiating important relationships as a lay person. It was hard, but finally, after three years of depression, I thought I had to do it. I would not be at peace until I did.Steve: What was your understanding of spirituality at that time if someone had asked you, what is spirituality? What would have been your answer?Vince: Spirituality was tied up with your relationship with God at that time. Now I would say spirituality is the lived experience of your values. So in that format, everyone has a spirituality. If the lived experience of your values is to make a lot of money, that’s your spirituality. Everybody has a spirituality. Now, the people I saw here and other places, that view of spirituality was bankrupt. There are bigger things, bigger questions, like, who am I? What is my purpose? How am I to live? Those are the big questions. When I was younger, the emphasis was on, what is my purpose? Now, as it evolved, the question more was, who am I – really? That became a lot more important because if I knew who I was, I presumed the purpose would become clearer at how I was to live became clearer.Steve: If you had to rewind the tape of your life, what decisions might you have done differently or perhaps done sooner?Vince: I believe as Richard Rohr entitled the book: Everything Belongs. It’s all part of the story. Just as Jacob wrestled with God all night and ended up with a damaged hip, in the struggle I’ve learned a lot about me. So any of the struggles belong, and they took as long as they took. Jacob wrestled with God because he sought a blessing. He wanted to be blessed. I think my wrestling with God meaning purpose needed to happen for me to be open to a blessing. It all belongs. I rewind my life, and I don’t say, ‘I wish I’d made another decision.’ I rewind my life and say, ‘Isn’t this interesting? This is really fascinating. What a story. I couldn’t have written a plot if I tried.’ And actually, I tried. I tried to write the plot. I was doing an RCA retreat. These are people interested in becoming a Catholic. I had 16 people there. Most of them were UW-L students. I said, ‘When I went off to Notre Dame to catch up with the Russians in space at your age, if you would have told me at the age of 80 you’ll be leading a retreat for college people who are considering becoming Christian or Catholic, I’d have said, what are you smoking?’ That’s what I would have said. I didn’t plan it, but Saturday I felt like, I’m just where I belong. This is where I belong, and there’s no better feeling than that because at different times in life I would sit in my chair and say, ‘I don’t know where I belong, but it’s not here.’Steve: At this point in your life, how would you describe God?Vince: God is a sacred presence that’s always there. I cannot say specifically a description of God because that would be to know the essence of God, which is way above my pay grade. But God, at the deepest part of myself, is there. And that would be my best guess right now. When people ask me questions, my usual statement or assumption is, what is my best guess right now?Steve: A couple of things I want to ask you. One, you have a great story about sorting through the voices in your head, particularly the voice of anxiety, which is a voice you’re well familiar with.Vince: I believe holiness is wholeness. You need to love every part of yourself, or else you cut it off and you’re not whole. You’re fragmented and less than you are. I named that part of me, that drive for success, ‘Successful Sam.’ I’m the chairman of a board of several people. There is ‘Needless Ned.’ There’s ‘Special Whatever.’ When I come to a decision now that’s kind of confusing, I have to say to ‘Success

Today is question and answer time with Matt and Laurie! We cover a lot including these questions: How did we first meet Steve? How do we handle Pride Month? How do we plan to address our mixed-orientation marriage with our kids? How can straight, single guys and girls be friends without the relationship getting weird? If we, as a married couple, invite a single person into our home how can we prevent it from becoming a situation where one of us falls in love with the single person? How can I care for my bisexual friend without compromising my beliefs or pushing my beliefs on her? How can I be committed to a worldview that has caused so much pain and depression for so many LGBTQ+ people? How do we grieve well—whether for trivial things or deep, human loss? Let's go, fam. | Highlights: | “It always has to be this recognition of what is good about Pride Month—about people being able to be open and not hidden. But there is also this sorrow: … the unity that comes from Pride Month is not oriented toward your relationship with God, it’s about something completely different.” —Matt “Ya’ll, we got to repent for the last x decades of idolatry of marriage, idolatry of sex in marriage, and really? Not honoring this thing that we have eye-rollingly said is ‘Every man’s battle, every woman’s battle,’ and ‘Oh, just hurry up and get hitched and put a ring on your lust.’” —Laurie “Yes, it costs LGBT+ people something to follow Jesus, but the gospel should cost all of us our lives. And if it is not, are we actually following Jesus?” —Laurie | Do the Next Thing: | Watch this conversation on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/428642123 That BOGO deal for our Journey Well Study? (We will send you two for the price of one!)It's here: https://lauriekrieg.com/product/journey-well-study-explore-your-deepest-needs-and-how-to-meet-them/ We mention "Safe Place Prayer with Matt" podcast episode. It's here: https://soundcloud.com/laurie-krieg/bonus-safe-place-prayer-with-matt Follow us on the IG: https://www.instagram.com/laurie_krieg/

The Beat; Mark Maron's Addresses the death of his girlfriend on his podcast; college of pop culture knowledge; Tipsy with Steve: How to get your kids to take medicine and more!

Welcome! Good morning, everybody. I was on with Steve Fornier this morning who was sitting in for Jim Polito. We discussed what the James Dyson Foundation is providing to families to interest their kids in Engineering and what the Business world will look like post-COVID. So, here we go with Steve Fornier For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com ---  Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig So what we did is we took the opportunity with her to say, Okay, well, let's do it. Let's make here's a recipe with feeds four people. So now we need to feed six people. So at the age of about five or six, she was doing fractions in her head. Hey, we went through a few more tips this morning. And Mr. Jim Polito is out. So Steve Fornier is sitting in for him. And I managed to work murder Hornets into this morning's interview, so here we go. Steve Welcome back to the Jim Polito show. It is Steve Fornier here in Springfield in for Jim this morning. And again, I a guy that I think is just such a valuable resource at a time like this. Craig Peterson joins us, our tech talk guru Craig. Good morning. How are you doing, sir? Craig Good morning, doing well. Steve First of all, Craig, I want to say thank you for your contributions, and I know that you also gave our radio stations a bunch of tech talk tips that we can use that we can run here on the stations. And I think that's so valuable. So I want to say thank you for providing us with that stuff. Craig Oh, you're welcome. Yeah, it took a long time. Those little features are about a minute and a half to two minutes long talking about the tech stuff. Steve How do you boil it down to just something that's just a minute or two long? That's my entire job, Craig is spitting 40 seconds worth of stuff into a 30-second spot. So I hear you that. Craig Today is National Teacher Appreciation Day, which I think is so important. And you have some cool resources for parents to help the kids out. Can you tell us a little bit about it? Craig Yeah, this one is just totally cool. I don't know if you know, but my wife and I have eight kids, and we homeschooled them. Steve Your baseball team. Craig Yeah, yeah, right. Oh, you know from Canada, so it's closer to a hockey team. But anyway, the whole time up to college in fact, now they've gone on to get advanced degrees. But what you have to do with your kids is look at their interests. We had a young daughter, I think she was about five or six years old, and she loved to cook she loves to bake. And so what we did is we took the opportunity with her to say, Okay, well, let's do it. Let's make here's a recipe with seeds for people. So now we need to feed six people. So at the age of about five or six, she was doing fractions in her head. She was multiplying fractions dividing fractions because she loved to cook—somebody like you, Steve, who loves sports. If you have a little boy or girl that's interested in baseball, teach them how to figure out the statistics. And which stats are better? Is it better to bat a 300 or 400? And what does that mean? You take those opportunities, and that's what Dyson has come up with James Dyson's foundation. He is the guy that makes those vacuum cleaners that are kind of cool some high tech fans and other things. His foundation has put together this list of about two dozen different challenges for kids. And the idea behind it is to get them interested and expose them to engineering concepts. You know, they have some simple things like can you skewer a balloon that's inflated without poping it? How about taking a nail electroplating it? How can you cover it in copper? Well, how would you do that? And then a classic I remember when I was a little kid is plugging a clock into a potato making a potato battery. So all of these things are designed as challenges specifically for kids. They're ideal in the home or the classroom. And the whole idea is to get kids excited about engineering. Steve Yeah, into just give them something to do right to let them put down the fortnight controller and, and be productive. You know, while we're all sitting around. Craig Yeah, I think that might be a difficult one for some people because so many of these video games are very, very addicting, and the whole science behind them is fascinating. But this is great. So I'm going to we'll get them outside. They'll get them in the kitchen. They'll get them doing some things. So just search online right now you'll be able to find it. It's the James Dyson Foundation spelled D Y S O N. Steve By the way, I learned Craig thanks to Final Jeopardy earlier this week. Maybe that Dyson also invented the wheelbarrow. So how about that? What is who is Dyson? Cool there? We're talking with Greg Peterson, and I do have sort of an off the radar question. I wanted to fire at you towards the end. So stay on alert for that, Greg, but can you tell us a little bit about telecommuting. Post COVID-19, it's going to be a little different. How can you tell us out? Craig Yeah, we're seeing some fascinating numbers starting to come out right now most businesses have got some sort of telecommuting in place now. Many of them have been looking at how do I secure it now? How do I make it more efficient, make it faster for people? What we're starting to see from these C-levels and the executive offices, who are trying to figure out what's it going to look like, is that they are serious about moving out of the big cities. So I think you're going to see a lot of the businesses moving from a Boston, for instance. Closer to Western or Springfield, smaller cities, and even smaller towns, some of these corporate buildings in Chicago are already emptying. We've seen the same thing in Detroit for many years. So post COVID-19, we're going to see that many of their employees have ten times more than pre-COVID-19. Ten times more employees about 40% or maybe more will be working from home on a long term basis. Steve Whether or not they want to. I mean, like yes, some people don't want to be stuck in the house all day with their family and some businesses. Craig Some businesses still have their people getting together? What I'm thinking is that we are going to see more people working from home, but it's not going to be five days a week. They may be working from home four days a week or three days a week and going into the office once or twice, but that's going to happen. It is going to have a devastating impact on real estate, the business real estate out there, frankly. But we're going to see just a dramatic a giant increase from January and people working from home on Craigslist, anything. Steve Like I don't know how to say this is the impact that COVID-19 is having in the big cities? Is that a part of it too, because it just seems like, you know, the cities that are being hit the hardest. New York City, Boston, you know, major metropolitan cities, is that a part of it too, just keeping your employees safe, and, you know, understanding the threat that there isn't a big city. Craig So that's a massive part of it. Most of the major corporations are not planning any sort of travel even until the probably next year 2021. And when you're looking at the big cities, it is a considerable risk. You know, as a business, we can't afford to lose some of our best talents, and when Many companies have been placed strategies that say hey listen, you guys cannot be on the same airplane traveling somewhere you cannot be in this location together. And because of what we've seen with COVID-19, there are a lot of businesses that are being Steve all just a whole lot more cautious about having people in one place. I talk to business people who are saying that for them in reality. It has been a big wake up call because having everyone in the office but spreading these germs, even for the flu for instance, but when you've got something like this virus we have today where we don't know what's going to happen, having them all in one office and sharing it the big problem. I have a client who is an HVAC contractor, and they are starting to install air handling units that have ultraviolet light inside of them. They have heavy HEPA filters that put into them all in an effort for businesses to be able to keep the offices safe so that they are not spreading disease in the office. It's going to be a whole new world. Steve Yeah, sure is. We're talking with Craig Peterson, our tech guru and Craig, I do have a question sort of out of the left-field that I think you can help with solve security questions. It is today's world from the eyes of a hacker, these security questions, just don't cut it for me, like, what is your dad's but what is your mom's maiden name? Like? I feel like that's very easy to find on the internet. If you're a hacker, what you know what street did you grow up on? Well, we can figure that out pretty easily on the Yellow Pages calm. Um, I'm to the point now where it's I'm answering questions like, you know, what's your dog's name and I'm answering like purple because I Hope they will get it. Is that the best approach to just sort of lie on all these questions? Craig Yeah, it is, you know, in this day and age of murder Hornets, we have to be extra cautious. But yeah, what I've done for the last 30-40 years. I got my first job ever. I wrote some computer software used for magazine distribution stuff. I came to realize that hey, they are tracking us. So always since then, I have been making up the answers to all of those questions, just wholly random words. And I have been using one password, which is a password manager, to a great one. It's the one I recommend to everybody. There are other password managers out there, but it'll generate passwords for you. It'll store notes securely, etc. So you're doing the right thing, Steve, every website that I go to, that's asking those security Questions. I have it either one password randomly pick words for me, or I just make up something that's completely nonsensical. And sometimes, when you get on with the tech support or PII or help desk people, and they ask one of those questions, they chuckle. They ask, what's that? What's that all about? Now, there is a line. You cannot erase the lease not supposed to lie on certain types of applications. So if it's financial information, if it's government-related stuff, you can undoubtedly make top answers to those recovery questions. But you can't just totally lie about who you are. But I have dozens and dozens of identities, Steve that I use on just random websites. They don't need to know who I am. So I only use some made-up identity, and sometimes I'm a guy, sometimes I'm female, you know, different ages, everything else because they don't need to know that. I don't want the hacker To be able to examine my life on LinkedIn or my website or Facebook and come up with the answers. Steve Yeah, no, that that was my thought is how simple it is. Especially if you have if you're not like a private thing, if you don't have a personal Twitter or a private Facebook, you know, you're opening yourself up to getting that information, the hackers getting that information, and then then you know, they're in. So very interesting. I appreciate that. I have been fighting that battle with the security question thing now. Craig Well, that's not right. Now that's a $15 billion industry, sending out those phishing emails and trying to figure out what someone's information is and using that to do spearfishing. It's all part of business email compromise, which the FBI says I'm more than $15 billion industry right now. Steve Wow. That's crazy. Craig, this is excellent stuff, folks. And if you want more from Craig, you can do that. We'll go with the name, Jim, for consistency, but you can do text, the name Jim, to this number. Craig to 855 385 5553. So let's just text and Jim to 855 385 5553. Steve And as always good stuff, Craig, if you want more information on those different activities for the kids, again, you will find it at Dyson is the name of the company. Likewise, if you get in touch with Craig, he's more than willing to help out. And like I said, Craig, we appreciate you, especially this time. It's valuable stuff. And we understand it. So thanks again. Craig All right, take care. Bye-Bye, guys. Steve Thank you. Thank you. There goes everybody, Craig Peterson. And great stuff. Craig I've been sort of mulling over the security question thing for a while that just like what street did you grow up on? That's specific information to come up with if you're a hacker, it's just to me it just seems way too easy. So yeah, what street did you grow up on honeysuckle? It's not honeysuckle, but that's what I'm, you know, whatever. You're right. Just make sure you write them all down somewhere. And then I'll use the one password it can have secure notes. Don't forget it. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for reaching out to me yesterday. Text Me Me at Craig Peterson dot com. I appreciate that. I got a couple of excellent comments. I think I might be onto something here through something that's going to help you guys out. So anyhow, have a great day. I expect I'll be back tomorrow if I have a decent interview on WGAN as well. Bye-bye Transcribed by https://otter.ai ---  More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Land Academy Members Self Start Accountability Metric to Insure Success (LA 1097) Transcript: Steve:                   Steve and Jill here. Jill:                          Hi. Steve:                   Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill:                          And I'm Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steve:                   Today Jill and I talk about how Land Academy members have self-started an accountability metric to ensure their own success. Jill:                          I love it. Steve:                   Who the heck wrote that title? Jill:                          Wasn't me, because the word metric was in it. Steve:                   What does it mean? What it means is some smart person in our group started a Facebook group called accountability, Land Academy accountability. And the people that join it, you know it's an invite only or it's like requests only, how that works. Jill:                          It's a secret group. Steve:                   And they- Jill:                          It's not secret now, sorry. Steve:                   It's not secret anymore. When certain people start off on stuff like this, everybody knows this. It's hard to stay on track. Stuff happens. Like you got to pick up your kids from school or whatever. Your job gets in the way. So this is an accountability group to make sure that if you commit to sending out, it's kind of like Weight Watchers, you are going to get weighed in ... I don't even know how the Weight Watchers works. Jill:                          I can tell you. Steve:                   How does Weight Watchers work? Jill:                          There is a weekly weigh in. It's true. It's actually funny. Steve:                   I'm choking myself laughing. Jill:                          Why Weight Watchers came from, but okay. Steve:                   So what happens in Weight Watchers? Do you say I'm going to lose a pound or I'm going to stay on this diet? Is it like, let's see how this goes next week on the scale or I have a goal in losing a pound? Jill:                          Well you have a goal. Well, in the old days when I did Weight Watchers way back when, like you kept track, it wasn't on our phones back then and you kept track of it, you had points and you could eat so many points a day. And then once we could go to meeting and you'd weigh in and meet with your person, they say yay and you'd sit down and someone would talk and then you go home with a bunch of recipes. Steve:                   So does everybody like not eat the day before? Jill:                          Oh, I'm sure. Oh yeah. And they like drink a lot of coffee. Try to get things going before you go to the meeting. And like were your thinnest, lightest weight clothes, like don't wear a sweatshirt that might weigh something. It's so funny. Take your shoes off. Steve:                   So I don't, I'm not a member of this group. I think you are though. Jill:                          Oh, I was. Weight Watchers way back when. Steve:                   No, no. This accountability group. Sorry, I changed gear. Jill:                          No, no. Steven. I am actually not currently a Weight Watchers member. I do however support, always support Weight Watchers. I am not a Weight Watchers member at the time. Are you telling me I should? Steve:                   No. It has nothing do do with- Jill:                          Is this about the chump? Steve:                   No. Yeah. You don't ever want to talk about any woman's weight. Jill:                          That should be the stump the chump, like do you bring up Weight Watchers with a woman? Steve:                   Sitting next to a woman on your own show, do you even bring up Weight Watchers. What kind of idiot would bring up Weight Watchers? Jill:                          And then ask me questions about it. Like,

He’s invited by some of the world's top salesmen to help them sell more.    He’s incredible...and amazing at it - I’ve learned SO much from him.    Every time he speaks, I take out a pen and paper...    (Hint, hint...cue, cue...to everybody here!)   Please take out a piece of paper and take notes!    This is a man who’s likely to make MORE money arrive in your pocket just by listening to him... ;-)   Mr. Myron Golden. Myron: Hey, Steve. How are you doing, man?    Steve: Fantastic. Thanks for being on here, man.   Myron: Absolutely my pleasure to be on Sales Funnel Radio, talking to one of my favorite trainers...teachers… ‘OfferMinds…’   Ooh, did you see what I did there?! ;-)   Steve: That's good!     Honestly, thanks so much for taking the time. The feeling is mutual.    I have notebooks upon notebooks from your things.    Every time you come speak...or anytime I’m at Inner Circle or one of Russell's events, I’d fill a WHOLE legal pad.    And thinking…     "Oh, man, that was amazing."       "No, that was better than the last."        "Oh, my gosh, they're getting better…”      Myron: You're kind, thank you.   Steve: You are just an incredible salesperson.    You have so much skill and so much knowledge...    I've watched you unplanned…    (...and I know you've done this multiple times!)    ….get up and pitch someone's product better than they pitch it to an audience that doesn't know you…   AND you'll make MORE sales than the actual owner of the product!   How do you do that?! I know that's a huge question, but that's amazing…   HAVING NO INHIBITIONS   Myron: First of all, how I do that in particular, is how I sell.    First and foremost, I have to believe in the thing that I'm selling. If I believe in the thing that I'm selling, then it's easy for me to sell it.    What I mean by that is...   Most salespeople don't even realize that they haven't gotten out of their own way yet.    Most people who sell things, whether they sell cars, or sell shoes, or sell online courses… or whatever...     … they believe that selling is doing something ‘TO’ people not doing something *FOR* them.    So first and foremost, I look at selling as a service.    I look at it as something that I do *FOR* people’ that makes their lives better. It makes the world a better place because people like me are selling.   So I don't have ANY inhibitions.    For example...a pitcher will have pain in his shoulder, and he can't throw the ball as fast, or a golfer will have pain in his back and he can't swing.    Because subconsciously, his body knows that, “This movement is gonna hurt me or hurt someone.”    Right?    When we are incongruent or when we have incongruence about selling in general, that makes it hard for us to sell things.    I think the thing that I have going for me when it comes to selling is that I have *NO* incongruence in me whatsoever.    If I feel like a product isn’t good, then I wouldn't sell it to somebody in the first place!    Does that make sense?    Steve: Yeah, that makes sense.   Myron: I get out of my own way.   Steve: And I mean, you've done that multiple times.    I saw you do that at Dream 100 Con.    I mean, you're the guy that Russell Brunson asks to come re-pitch ClickFunnels' amazing offer after he's pitched!   Myron: Yeah.   Steve: It's impressive.   Myron: I'm honored. I'm honored by Russell. I appreciate him more than I can say...  I've got so much belief in what he offers, that selling a Russell Brunson coaching program is easy for me to sell.   (...even though he doesn't consider himself a guru, okay? I'm gonna call him my bounce-back guru.)    Because I went out, made a fortune and had a lot of great things happen in my life.    And then…    I went through seven years of life devastation.   Like every year, major tragedy after major tragedy, of some kind, happened in my life.    ...from 2007 through 2013.    I signed up for another coaching program in 2014 and I just didn't like that kind of work.    I don't believe that the key to success is to find something you're passionate about and the money will follow.’’   I DON’T believe that's true.   Steve: I don't either.   Myron: But I do believe that…    If the work that you’re doing doesn’t match the person that you are, you will never create wealth or massive world change in that arena - because your ‘doing’ has to match your ‘being’.  Right?    The coaching program was great; they had a lot of people making A LOT of money...it just wasn't the kind of work that suited me.    After that in 2015, I joined Russell's Inner Circle and my life has been on an upward trajectory financially, ever since then.    Selling a Russell Brunson coaching program? That's like the easiest thing in the world for me to sell!    Because he is the one person who I can point at and say, incontrovertibly, has helped more people to become millionaires in a shorter period of time than ANY other human being I've ever known of.   Steve: Yeah, not even just “known of”. I've never heard of anyone doing that!   Myron: Exactly.    And he's not an MLM guy. He's just a guy who teaches you frameworks that work.    So standing up and selling his product is easy because…    I wasn't selling the product I was selling the payoff   ...and I know what the payoff is because I get paid from that payoff all the time!   So that's why, if I can look at something and it makes sense, then it's easy for me to see how it makes sense...    ...then it's easy for me to say HOW it makes sense in a way that's easy for people to receive.   Steve: It's powerful stuff! And you know what's funny?   I feel like there's a lot of people who are jumping in entrepreneurship…   (which is great!)   ….but they do it under this notion that it's NOT sales, it's “entrepreneurship”.    But  like,  “ Eh, entrepreneurship IS sales. It's a sales role."   Myron: Yeah, exactly.   Steve: And if you're lying to yourself about that, you're already a bad entrepreneur!   To be an entrepreneur is to be a salesperson.   Myron: Exactly.   Steve: How can people be better?    How can they get rid of the inhibitions around selling?   Myron: Let's start with this.    So as you just said…   The reason that people say, “I'm an entrepreneur, I'm not a salesman,"    (What does that even mean?)    ...that is because they think there's something inherently wrong with sales!    But I'm gonna fix that right now.    BLOOD & SALES   …. the people reading right now - they can agree or disagree.    If you disagree ...here's what I'm gonna say to you…   ”You've been wrong before… congratulations, it's happening again!”   So I happen to have some money in my pocket….   ….if you take some money out of your pocket, any amount of money… and you look at that money - just check it out - and you’ll realize that:    All of the money that you have...    All of the money you will ever have...   To do the things…    You desire to do for yourself...   For the people that you love...   The causes that you care about...   The only reason it's possible for me, you, or anyone else to ever have money is because somebody somewhere sold something to someone for a profit.    PERIOD.   (I wasn’t gonna go here, but I will…)   Money is like blood, right?    Money is like blood, in that, money is stored in a bank.    Where's blood stored?    Steve: In your body.   Myron: Well, no, it's stored in a blood bank.    Money is stored in a money bank, right?    Steve: Oh, I get what you're saying.   Myron: Blood is stored in a blood bank.    Blood has to be in circulation in order to give life to your body and money has to be in circulation in order to give life to the economy.   Steve: I love that.    Myron: Right? So money is very much like blood.  Blood carries oxygen to every part of your body.    Money doesn't really carry oxygen, but it does help you breathe.    … because when you don't have any money, you feel like you can't breathe.   Steve: That's true.   Myron: Right?    But also…    Money is a mass noun, just like blood is a mass noun.    Yesterday, I went and got some blood drawn - I didn't go get ‘A blood’ drawn, I got SOME blood drawn.    … even though it's singular, it's a mass noun.    So you have to put “some” (which is plural) in front of a singular word.    You'd never say "I gave A blood," because that doesn't make any sense.    I gave SOME blood. Well, guess what?    When it comes to money, you wouldn't say, "I gave A money..."   It's SOME money.    Money and blood are both mass nouns.    Money and blood are both fungible.    Q: Now, what does fungible mean?    Well, you drove my car when you were in Tampa.   Steve: Yeah, great car, beautiful car.   Myron: With my name on the floor mat.   Steve: On the floor mats right there, that was...wooooo!   Myron: I drive a Bentley Continental GT.    If I let Steve borrow my car, when he brings my car back, my car is NOT fungible.    It's a car, but he can't bring me back a Volkswagen Jetta and say, "Here Myron, here's a car."    You have to bring back the same car!    ...or at least the same kind of car in, at least the same kind of condition.   (Preferably my car, right?)   So if somebody borrows a car, a car is NOT fungible.    If somebody borrows my golf clubs...    (… I wouldn't let somebody borrow my golf clubs 'cause those are my babies!)      But if I did, it's like, "No, you can't bring me back some other golf clubs."    "Well, they're golf clubs! What difference does it make?"    No! Golf clubs are NOT fungible.    If you give blood at a blood bank and then get in a car accident, you need to go get some blood… they don't have to search through millions of pints of blood to find the exact blood you gave!   Steve: "Oh, here are your cells!"    Myron: Exactly.    They just have to find the same blood type.    It's like with money.    Money is fungible.    If you loan me $5, you don't care if I pay you back the same bill.    Or if you owe me $50 then you don't care if I pay you back a $50 bill. Or two $20s and a $10 or five $10s or 10 $5s.    You don't care.    Q: Why?    A: Because money is fungible.    As long as it's the same currency type (#American dollars), you don't care.    You don't wanna loan me $50 in American dollars and I give you back Costa Rican dollars.    That wouldn't work.    So…    Money and blood are very much alike.   So here's what you gotta realize.    The only reason any of us EVER have any money in our pocket to do…   The things we wanna do    The things we desire for ourselves    The things we desire for people we love or the causes that we care about    … is because somebody somewhere sold something to someone for a profit.    Here's what that means:    Just like money is the blood, it keeps the economy alive, money is the lifeblood of the economy.    Salespeople are the heart of the economy that keeps the blood flowing.    If you are in sales, free yourself from the idea…from this ridiculous Hollywood notion that selling is somehow doing evil in the world.    Hollywood does way more evil in the world than salespeople!   The government tries to demonize business and salesmen and entrepreneurs while they do WAY more evil in the world.     Here's what you gotta realize...    Being a person who is in sales (a salesman or saleswoman) is one of the most noble, honorable positions and vocations in the world.     You make the world go ‘round.   Once you realize how essential salespeople are in the world and how much joy they bring into the world?   Salespeople bring joy into the world!    Remember how good you felt last time somebody sold you a new car? Or somebody sold you a new house? You felt great!   Why?    Because they sold you something that made your life better.    Salespeople bring more joy into the world than almost any other profession.    So once you wrap your mind around what selling really is…   … that FREES you up from all those internal conflicts and incongruencies that create the cognitive dissonance that restrict you from going out and making your offers boldly.   Steve: I 100% believe that.   Myron: That was a long answer.   Steve: But it's an amazing answer.    It drives me crazy…. "Money's evil."    Money is NOT evil, money is an amplifier.    I feel like (most of the time) when someone is NOT good at sales, usually they need to redefine their relationship with money.    They have so many *false beliefs* around money.   Myron: Absolutely.   Steve: Do you find that to be true?    Myron: Absolutely.    I'm gonna say, money IS an amplifier, but I'm gonna add a caveat.   Because money IS an amplifier…    If you're bad, money will make you a worse person, or give you the opportunity to do more evil in the world.    If you're a good person, money will give you the opportunity to do more good in the world   HOWEVER…   Money itself is NOT bad, nor is it neutral. Money itself is good. Money is a good thing.   Steve: Right.   Myron: How can you say money is a good thing?    Q: What is the substance that represents wealth around the world since the beginning of time?    What's that substance?    Steve: Gold.   Myron: Gold, that's right.   Steve: Yeah.   Myron: Gold is the substance that represents wealth.    The first time gold is mentioned in Scripture is in the Garden of Eden.    Here's what God said, "And there was gold in that land, and the gold of that land is good."    Now, wait a minute, wait a minute!    Help me understand something here.    The Garden of Eden is a place where all the food is free.    The Garden of Eden is a place where there were only two people who ever lived there, Adam and Eve, (last I checked, they were married to each other).    There were no stores, there was nothing for sale, and yet God put gold in the Garden of Eden and then, He made sure He told us it was good.   Money is good. It's not neutral. It's not bad. It is inherently good.    You can do bad things with money, but it’s inherently good.    A car is inherently good - it's not bad to not have to walk everywhere you go!    It's good to be able to get places faster and it gives you the ability to save time and put more experiences in your life.    But people have run over people intentionally with cars!   You can do something bad with something that's good but it doesn't make the good thing bad - it just means that a person did a bad thing with it.   Steve: And the person did it, NOT the car, or the gold, or the object!   Myron: You know how you talk about the Capitalist Pig it really irritates people?    THIS MAY OFFEND YOUI'm gonna say something that really irritates people.   Steve: Yeah.    Myron: I'm not attempting intentionally to offend anybody (that's not my intention) but if they get offended…. they should probably grow up a little bit!    So the government talks about gun violence, right?    Steve: Yeah.   Myron: Oh, there's no such thing as gun violence.    I know, I just lost a bunch of people....but I lost the ones I wanted to lose.   Steve: Sure.   Myron: Okay?    There's no such thing as gun violence. I have a whole bunch of guns, not one of them is violent.   (I know I just lost a bunch of people… but I lost the ones I wanted to lose)   Steve: Me too. It's so funny, they're just sitting there and they never harmed anyone.      Myron: They don't do anything to anybody.   They just mind their own business!   In fact, they don't even mind their own business ...because they don't do anything.    They just sit there until I go to the range and I practice.    There's no such thing as gun violence, it's people violence and some of those people use guns.    Nobody talks about...   Steve: Car violence.   Myron: Car violence.    Nobody talks about fist violence.    It's stupid, it's like saying, "My stupid pencil failed that test."    *Your pencil didn't take the test*    Steve: I'm gonna use that one!    I wish I would have known that when I was in elementary school, hah.    “My pencil's broken!”   Myron: "My pencil...I can't believe this... What kind of pencil is this?!”   Steve: So we've gone through and said, “Okay, in order to get better at sales, you really need to embody…” Myron: You have to fall in love with it.   Steve: Sales are incredible.   Myron: You have to fall in love with it.   I love sales and salespeople.    Pray for salespeople every night when you go to bed. Thank God for them every morning when you wake up.    Stop being, "I can't believe that person tried to sell me something."    When somebody tries to sell something to you, get excited about it and watch their process and see what you can learn.   Instead of , "I can't stand these stupid infomercials. I can't stand these stupid commercials….”    I like infomercials… I really love them!    Steve: Me too! I watch them for fun.    Myron: Goodness, they're so entertaining!   I'm like, "Ooh, that is such a great idea!"    Steve: Oh man! So we’re saying …   THE STRUGGLE IS NOT REAL!   Number one: You can't even learn any of the skills or real tactics that you teach if you can't even accept the fact that…    Sales ARE good.   That money IS good.   Myron: Absolutely, absolutely!    And that you are doing good in the world when you sell things to people.    Do you understand that people only buy something because they value the thing they're buying more than they value the money?    It's kind of amazing when you think about it.   Steve: Yeah, money is GOOD. Sales are GOOD.    I'm writing down some of the notes here...    What else would somebody need to do?    I mean these are all major foundational pieces before you even get into tactics…   (or even things that you'll be speaking at OfferMind about)   So what else can somebody do to just increase their sales?    They're like, "Hey, I've got those things, I know sales are GOOD. I know money is GOOD."    What would be the next step?    Myron:    Realize that the struggle is not real, it's imagined.    “But sales are SO hard!”    No, no, no, no, that's just a story you tell yourself.    Sales are NOT hard, you're just NOT good at it.    I love what Jim Rohn said his mentor told him.    He said, "Mr. Rohn, Mr. Rohn. Don't wish it were easier. Wish you were better."   Steve: Ohhhhh...there's some zing on that!   Myron: That's juicy, ain't it?    Steve: It's a little sting, there. A little spicy.   Myron: Yeah, he was like, "Sales is hard."    No, no, no, no. It ain't the problem.    Sales are not hard. Sales are really, really easy! You just don't know how to do it.    Jim Rohn said his mentor, Mr. Earl Shoaff asked him, “So how much money do you make?"    He said, “Well, I don't make that much. I'm broke.”    His mentor said, “How is it that you, being 26 years old and a healthy American male...and you're broke?”    He said, “Well, I can't help it. This is the job I have. This is all they pay.”   His mentor said, “Well, now Mr. Rohn that's not true. Let me ask you a question. Are there people who work for your company that get paid more than you get paid?"    He said, "Yes."    His mentor said, "Well then, that's not all they pay. That's just all they pay YOU."   And I said, "That is so good!"   Steve: I totally I can hear his voice as you say that. You do it well!   Myron: That's all they pay *YOU*    So what we have to realize is…    Mr. Rohn said, "It's too expensive."    "No, Mr. Rohn. The problem is not that it's too expensive. The problem is that you can't afford it."    We always wanna blame it on something outside of ourselves.    We always wanna relieve ourselves from the responsibility to do the thing, but the reality is... the reality is that sales ISN’T hard…   “…I just haven't learned how to do it yet!”   I'm gonna tell you something, Steve.    I have NOT always been good at sales.    When I got started in sales in 1985 selling insurance and investments through a company called AL Williams, I was not even good enough to be bad yet.    I was so bad, I was worse than bad!    I got started in October of 1985 and I did not make my first sale until April of 1987.    I was working and doing presentations... and I was woefully awful.    See, here's what happens.    Most people are not willing to be bad long enough to get good.   I was making offers and doing presentations from October of 1985 to April of 1987.    (By the way, if you're counting that's 18 months before I made a single, solitary sale.)   Shortly after I made that first sale, I became the top salesperson in our office month after month after month after month.    Some of you will say, "Well, Myron. How did you do that? What was it that changed for you, that took you from not being able to make the sale, to being the top salesperson in your office?"    *EASY*    I ran out of all the ways that wouldn't work.   Steve: Mat time!   Myron: The only thing I had left? The ways that it WOULD work.    It's so amazing, Steve.    People resist the only activity that can help them get better at the thing they are desiring to do.   They'll create all kinds of creative avoidance around not doing the one thing, i.e.,    Making offers   Doing presentations.   DON’T HIDE   I'm gonna tell you something, I've got a young lady who's in one of my high-end coaching programs.    Her name's Eileen, I think you met her.    This particular coaching program is $40,000 and they have to put at least half down and then they get on weekly bank drafts, right?    So she's like, "Myron, I really wanna get in this and I don't have the money. I don't know what to do."    First of all, she came to me and she didn't hide from me.    She came to me and said, "I don't have the money. I don't know what to do. What should I do?"    I'm like, "This person's gonna be awesome."    … because when they didn't have the answer, they knew there was an answer…   ... and so they ASKED for the answer instead of avoiding the place where they could get the answer.   Steve: Yes. I'm a student of exceptions.    If you don't have the means, or you don't have whatever...    JUST FIND ANOTHER WAY.    It doesn't mean that you're blocked!   You keep moving!   Myron: Yeah, exactly.   Here's what I told her:    "Eileen, you already have a $4000 offer. Raise the price to six and make more offers.    In fact, take the people who are in your current database right now and give them a date at which you're gonna raise your price to $6000 and give them an opportunity to get it now for only $4000.    Raise your prices."    I said, "Then the second thing you wanna do, raise your prices and make more offers."    Now, here's what make more offers means to me: *Collapsed timeframe*.    Take the number of offers you would do in the next year and do that in the next month!   Take the number of offers you'd do in the next month and do that in the next week!   Take the number of offers you'd do in the next seven days and do that many offers today!    You will have the money in less than 30 days.    She called me a week later, "Myron, I have the money."   Steve: That's SO cool.   Myron: It’s something as simple as “make more offers”.    I can tell you story after story. That's not unusual, but it is unusual to find people who are willing...   To make an offer!    Adjust the offer and then make that offer to another person when somebody says no to their offer   Make that offer just the way it is to 10 more people just to see if the problem is the offer... OR if it’s just the way they're offering it.   Steve: Right, right.   Myron:    Most people won't allow themselves to stay in the game long enough to figure out how to win the game.   Steve: You know, it's funny. I went back and I recounted how many tries it took me... and it was 33 failures over six years!    It was painful...   Myron: Well, why didn't you quit?    Steve: Right? Yeah, I know.    Someone was like, "Why did you think you could keep going like that?"    I was like…   I realized that failure is largely made up. You just learn. Everything is progression. It's not win-lose, it's just progression.   Man, I had a lot of garbage in my own head around the beliefs in money that I had to overcome.   Myron: Absolutely.   Steve: Before I could even sell what I was making in the first place.   ALL WORK *WORKS*   Myron: Absolutely.    What's really interesting that a lot of people don't realize?    They'll say, "But Steve, it's not working! But Myron, it's not working!"    I say, "Okay, first of all, let me help you understand something. All work WORKS."   Steve: I'm gonna put that on my ceiling!   Myron: All work works. There's no such thing as, "I did that thing, and it didn't work."    Oh, it worked.    "No, no, but I made the offer and nobody bought."    It still worked.    "Well, if I made the offer and nobody bought, how can you say it worked?"    See, work is a two-sided coin.    Q: What are the two sides of the coin?    There's the work I do on it    There's work it does on me.    When the work I do on it doesn't do what I thought it would do...then the work it does on me ALWAYS does what it's supposed to do!   I know all work works.    So when I'm working on something that seems like it's NOT working, it's still working on me.    It's so interesting, we were talking about how you had six years... six years you tried all these different things and none of them "worked."    You had six years of failure, about 30-some odd failures but here's what we as human beings fail to realize.    Repetitive use of a limited ability will always produce an increased capacity.    What do I mean?    If I wanna get in shape and started doing push-ups, and I wanna do 30 push-ups, but I can only do five, here's what happens initially after I do five.    The next day I can only do three, right?    Because push-ups, in the beginning, don't make you stronger at first, they make you weaker because of fatigue.    So people think when they become fatigued from the activity that they wanna get good at, they think that means it's NOT working.    But you have to do it over and over again.    Repetitive use of a limited ability will ALWAYS produce an increased capacity.    Unless you do the activity repetitively, it cannot increase your capacity to do that thing.    Eventually, if you do five push-ups today, and three tomorrow, and then five the next day, and then three the next day, and five the next day... all of a sudden, you get down one time and then it’s 21.    Where did that come from?    Repetitive use of a limited ability will ALWAYS produce an increased capacity.    Over that year and a half when I was making presentations and nobody bought, what I didn't realize I was learning two very valuable lessons.    I was learning how to NOT work for money.    I was learning how to hone my message and how to adjust my approach and then go back and do it again.   And that's what I mean when I say I literally became the top seller.    Went from a year and a half no sales...to making a sale...to top salesperson.    “How did you do that?”    I ran out of all the ways that wouldn't work. The only thing I had left were ways that would work.   Steve: I totally get it.    It's kind of the same thing for me... after a while, I was like, "I don't know how else to be bad, or make it not produce cash.”   Myron: Exactly.   Steve: So just so everyone else can see, I've taken so many notes that I even turned the page…   ….now I'm going down this side of the page with notes!   I have so many notes and what's funny is that I've listened to you speak so many times...    Every time I hear you speak, more and more comes out!    I have a greater understanding of why I behave the way I do.    Not just, "How do I sell more?"    It's, "How do I actually behave better?"    It's really fascinating and I want to thank you for that.   Myron: Absolutely, my pleasure bro.   Steve: So you're gonna be teaching a lot of stuff at OfferMind and you're gonna come speak...   Myron: Yes.   Steve: And at the point where you're gonna come speak, people should have a great idea of what their offer actually is.    The core offer, what they should be doing.    Horse blinders on about everything else and just hyper-focused on that one core offer…which is what I'll be doing on the first day.    But you're gonna come in and teach them how to offer the offer.   Myron: How to offer the offer in a way that people expect it.    So many people make the mistake of thinking that the offer is their person.    What do I mean by that?    What they'll do is say, "Well you'll get so many hours of my time."    I say, "How many hours of your time?”    What I want less than hours of your time is for you to have hours of my time!   Steve: Right.   Myron: Okay? So they'll sell their person.    They'll sell their pieces, "Well, this has got five books, 17 videos and 47 audios."    Well, nobody cares about the pieces.   Steve: No, I don't want that.   Myron: Nobody cares about the pieces.    They'll sell their process.    It's fine to teach people the process after they've taken advantage of your offer, but don't sell them the process!    If you sell them the process then they're not gonna buy it.    I'm gonna teach you how to offer the offer...    Q: ...and so how do you offer the offer?    When you're selling to somebody you don’t sell them the process, you only sell them the payoff.    You don't sell them your person, you don't sell them the pieces, you don't sell them the process.    Q: What do you sell them?    You sell them the payoff and you use a concept that I call Emotional Cooperation.    After you use Emotional Cooperation… (and I'll teach you what that means when I get there - at OfferMind…)    ...then you use what I call Logical Justification.    When you combine Emotional Cooperation with Logical Justification, you become what I call a Psychological Artist.    You can hang pictures in people's minds for them to refer to that help them see your offer in a more favorable light. OFFERMIND???Steve: That is powerful stuff and I’m taking notes like CRAZY.    If anyone's watching or listening to this now, and they're like, "Will OfferMind be worth it?"    ...first of all, if you're NOT convinced by now… I don't know what to tell you!    What would you say to somebody who's like, "You know what, I don't know if I should show up to OfferMind?"   Myron: What does that mean?    Steve: Right.   Myron: No, no, I know what you mean.    I'm like, "I don't know if I should show up for OfferMind?"    Some of the greatest marketing and sales minds in the world alive today are gonna be there teaching you how to get BETTER at creating offers, and offering those offers…   ...if you don't know if you should be there…? Perhaps we should come get your family and take them to safety!?!   It's that kind of deal.  THE TWO THINGS...One of my old mentors, Charlie "Tremendous" Jones... I love that man and he was so amazing.    He changed my life in so many ways.   Steve: Oh, I didn't know he was! Oh, that's cool. Wow.   Myron: Oh yeah, I knew Charlie.   Steve: Oh, that's amazing.   Myron: Yeah, I knew Charlie.   Steve: Cool.   Myron: He lived in the same town as me. I used to go visit him.   Steve: That's amazing.   Myron: Like, I would go hang out with him.    Charlie used to say:    Your life would be the same 10 years from now as it is today, except for two things, the books you read and the people you meet.   When he said, "The people you meet", he is talking about the people you associate with.    I have found that NOTHING in this world ... in this life...changes your life for the better like going to live events.    Live events are my vibe.    I get to meet people and interact with people.    If I had never gone to Funnel Hacking Live, I wouldn't even know you and we wouldn't even be having this conversation right now.   Steve: No, definitely not.   Myron: When you were at Funnel Hacking Live in San Diego, 2016 and I was at Funnel Hacking Live 2016... I don't even know if I remember meeting you.    Do you remember meeting me?    Steve: No.   Myron: Probably not. No.   Steve: No, no.   Myron: Probably not, right?    We were both there, just as attendees.     And now you're having your event, and I'm coming to speak at your event!   You learn from me, I learn from you.    We make each other's lives better and we help each other's students, it's like...    ...does it get any better than that?!    Steve: I don't know?!   Myron: You will meet joint venture partners and they can open doors for you that you can't open for yourself just by going to live events in general...    But OfferMind! Like really?!!    I mean where will an assembly (other than at Funnel Hacking Live) of this level of marketing and sales genius be converged in ONE place at the same time other than OfferMind?    If you're not there ...where else would you be?!    Steve: I don't know? I've asked the same question.    I'm like, “I don't know why you wouldn't show up to this, it's pretty ridiculous…”   Myron: Your life will change.    I love what JR Ridinger used to say, he is a guy who is the president of a network marketing company I used to be a part of.    He said, "You can change your life in two days."    How long is OfferMind? Two days or three days? Two days?    Steve: Two days.   Myron:    You can change your life in two days. You can get more accomplished in two days than you get accomplished in a whole year by being smart enough to get yourself to that next event. Steve: There’s something about it...   Myron:    It collapses timeframes   It gives you a synergy    It gives you a level of focus that you can't get...that's diffused when you're out here doing your own thing in the workaday world.    When you come into a space where there are that many people focused on sales, focused on marketing, focused on offer creation, dude, it changes everything.   Steve: Yeah.   Myron: Yeah, I'm speaking at OfferMind.    But I'm not just going to OfferMind 'cause I'm speaking, I'd be going to OfferMind if I wasn't speaking.   Steve: Yeah.   Myron: Let's not get it twisted, ladies and gentleman.    Steve needs to go to events, I need to go to events, Russell needs to go to events.    The teacher who has stopped learning has lost his right to teach.   Steve: Okay, amen.    I think about like wings on a plane.    I tell everyone, if you're being coached by someone who's not also being coached, stop listening to them!   They're not practicing the very thing they're teaching you.   Myron: Absolutely.   Steve: Get away from them.     Myron: Absolutely.   Steve: Oh man.   Myron: Don't get stuck like Chuck in a pick-up truck.   Steve: Well hey thanks so much for being on here, thanks for being in Sales Funnel Radio.   I'm just incredibly excited to have you on.   Myron: Me too.   Steve: Guys, go to OfferMind.com and grab your ticket.      By the time while I'm saying this right now, we're pretty much out of VIP seating -  stuff is filling up very quickly.    Go get your ticket and we'll see you September 2nd and 3rd!   You’ll get to listen to Mr. Myron Golden teach you how to offer the offer that I'm gonna teach you how to build on day one.   Myron: May I borrow one of your words?    Steve: Yes.   Myron: BOOM!   Steve: BOOM!   BOOM!    If you're just starting out you're probably studying a lot. That's good. You're probably geeking out on all the strategies, right? That's also good.   But the hardest part is figuring out what the market wants to buy and how you should sell it to them, right?    That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the formula.    So I created a special Mastermind called an OfferMind to get you on track with the right offer, and more importantly the right sales script to get it off the ground and sell it.    Wanna come?    There are small groups on purpose, so I can answer your direct questions in person for two straight days.    You can hold your spot by going to OfferMind.com.    Again, that's OfferMind.com.

Catholic Pilot Podcast - Episode One ( I DID have intro music!) Oshkosh Countdown Clock NEWS [21:53] NTSB Recovers Crashed Atlas Air 767 Cockpit Voice Recorder and Flight Data Recorder [22:24] United Airlines Just Showed True Thoughtfulness in a Moment of Tragedy [28:33] Presque Isle Maine UA Commuter off Runway [33:48] TSA stops man traveling with 'military rocket grenade launcher' in bag [57:44] Qantas Horror Flight Plunges 15,000 Ft Before Emergency Landing in Melbourne FEEDBACK [1:03:46] Sean - FAA Investigating WN for Weight & Balance [1:12:41] Alexander - High functioning Autism and Piloting [1:23:32] Glaucus - FEN ATC Mistake - It Could Have Caused a Tragedy [1:31:22] Stuart - Flight Deck Photography, Flashing Landing Lights [1:36:06] Texas Charlie - Airbus Promoting a New Propulsion System? [1:37:13] Rob - Sneaky Entertainment System [1:41:34] Simon - Question re: Aerotoxic Syndrome [1:53:08] Texas Charlie - ULC Carrier Audio Feedback [2:04:15] Plane Tale - Capture Prone [2:25:00] Deanna - Trip to ATL [2:28:17] Shreenand - Should I be daring them to dream? CRM [2:47:28] Steve - How do International Border Air Crossings Work? VIDEO Audible.com Trial Membership Offer - Get your free audio book today! Give us your review in iTunes! I'm "airlinepilotguy" on Facebook, and "airlinepilotguy" on Twitter. feedback@airlinepilotguy.com airlinepilotguy.com ATC audio from http://LiveATC.net Intro/outro Music, Coffee Fund theme music by Geoff Smith thegeoffsmith.comDr. Steph's intro music by Nevil BoundsCapt Nick's intro music by Kevin from Norway (aka Kevski) Doh De Oh by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100255Artist: http://incompetech.com/ Copyright © AirlinePilotGuy 2019, All Rights Reserved Airline Pilot Guy Show by Jeff Nielsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

NEWS [42:06] Malaysia's Malindo Air crew in A$20 million drug smuggling syndicate [44:21] Pair Busted at Airport for Smuggling 159 Pounds of Weed in 4 Suitcases [49:37] Oil from Humble Saltwater Plant Blended with Jet Fuel on Etihad Airways Flight [54:08] Air Force Plane Makes Unannounced Low Pass Over Nashville [59:29] Fire onboard WestJet flight from Calgary caused by e-cigarette batteries [1:02:54] Man Who Caused Transatlantic Flight to be Diverted Jailed [1:07:28] Crashed Indonesia jet's recorder has two hours of cockpit voices [1:08:59] ANA B788 at Osaka on Jan 17th 2019, both engines rolled back after landing FEEDBACK [1:12:16] Private Pilot Rich - Fast North Magnetic Pole Shift Prompts Navigation Update [1:22:44] Steve - How’s Dana Doing? [1:34:56] Timo - UPDATE - "Weather, Maintenance and a Government Shutdown" [1:51:07] Robert - Feedback APG #357 - Crazy German Language [1:56:19] Plane Tale - Adam Spink and Speedbird 38, Part 2 [2:20:38] Len on Lantau - Fighting High Demons [2:26:35] Sean - Family Forced to Sit on Floor of Aircraft [2:37:15] Spencer - Audio Feedback- Just saying hi:) [2:40:20] James - Photography/Video on Airplanes? [2:50:35] Jay - Variable-Geometry Wings? [2:54:12] Mike - For Capt. Nick (re: F-111 bombing accuracy) VIDEO Audible.com Trial Membership Offer - Get your free audio book today! Give me your review in iTunes! I'm "airlinepilotguy" on Facebook, and "airlinepilotguy" on Twitter. feedback@airlinepilotguy.com airlinepilotguy.com ATC audio from http://LiveATC.net Intro/outro Music, Coffee Fund theme music by Geoff Smith thegeoffsmith.com Dr. Steph's intro music by Nevil Bounds Capt Nick's intro music by Kevin from Norway (aka Kevski) Doh De Oh by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100255 Artist: http://incompetech.com/ Copyright © AirlinePilotGuy 2019, All Rights Reserved Airline Pilot Guy Show by Jeff Nielsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Why Dave Decided to talk to James Smiley: James reached out to Dave recently and asked if he could do this second podcast with him because of all the things he’s had the opportunity he’s been accomplishing. The best part about it all is that most of what he wants to talk about is the little things everybody easily forgets that makes the biggest difference. Networking happens to be one of those things. James has found he does better than most people because of the QUALITY of the relationships he builds through something he’s always focused on: contribution. Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business: (2:48) The systems for high leverage (4:10) “Contribute” from James Smiley’s perspective (6:30) The Highest Leverage Move comes from using other people with contribution in mind (10:54) James Funnel Hacked his way onto Russell’s radar. Who’s radar do you want to find yourself on? (12:44) Your webpage should highlight exactly what your dream client is looking for, get those stats on there. (15:02) Selling Kevin Harrington when he only gives you 11 minutes (16:20) Network to Network (19:00) Who’s the gatekeeper to your networking (21:38) Network with those you know you are able to contribute to (24:54) Understand how the person you want to meet with thinks (28:00) The Long-Term Play Quotable Moments: (2:22) “What I’ve noticed through life, whether it’s through working with sales, working with sales teams, or helping solopreneurs is there’s a way to create leverage, extremely high leverage,  and it’s a system.” (6:54) “So you can see, if you don’t start thinking about the word ‘contribute’ but you start thinking about using other people’s platform or money, the whole system doesn’t work.” (13:24) “There’s a lot of little things like that which I started doing. And you know you never really know if anybody is seeing it, but chances are if you’re doing the right thing they’re going to take a peak at you.” (16:10) “‘I’ve seen your videos and I like it’, those little phrases show me that my little personal branding and marketing out there synergized with him. So it allowed the conversation to move forward because he had more trust with me.” (20:57) “You have to be on point, like when they look at your stuff would they think ‘James is one of us’?” (22:48) “Networking to network is incredibly huge, especially if you figure out how do I honestly contribute” (30:07) “If you contribute to people in the right way, the relationships and all the things that happen, you can take over your Dream 100 in a way that you never thought possible.” Other Tidbits: A quote from our dear James Smiley, “IF YOU’RE NOT USING CLICKFUNNELS, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?” If your main goal is to make money off of somebody and not improve their lives, business, relationships, health, etc. then they’re going to find out. Once they find out, they’ll find somebody else sooner or later. Tony Robbins, Russell Brunson, James Smiley, and all these other people have 24 hours in their day just like the rest of us. What they’ve done differently though is they’ve found out how to leverage their time to “hockey stick” up. Get the numbers to make yourself “one of us”. You must contribute sincerely for any form of networking to have a lasting effect. Important Links: www.JamesSmiley.comFunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar ---Transcript--- Speaker 1:     00:00       Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward. Everybody. Welcome back to funnel hacker Speaker 2:     00:18       radio. This is going to be a ride of your life guys, because I have the opportunity having the one and only Mr James Smiley back on the show. James, welcome to the show again. Woo. What's up? I am so excited. So for those of you guys don't may not know James Out. We did a podcast a while back and I want to make sure you understand this is a guy who's been around for a long time in this whole digital marketing space. He's done over $210 million dollars in digital marketing. I actually in his early twenties, actually I IPO to SAS company, which is super, super cool. Something I have yet to do and has worked with three of the fortune 10 companies. This guy basically knows what he's talking about and he approached me and said, you know, Dave, we did this awesome podcast awhile back, but I've done all these cool things recently and I want to talk about some of the stuff way back when that everyone's already forgotten about and I thought, I love all the deep dark secrets of things that people have forgotten about. So with all that said, James, take us away and let's just see where this is going to go today. Speaker 3:     01:10       Awesome man. Well, I appreciate you. Appreciate Click funnels. If you're not using click funnels, what are you doing? So, um, we ever since it came out, we've moved everything there and it's just been awesome. Appreciate you, appreciate the community and all you guys and gals out there and everything that's going on in the funnel hacker world. So, um, but yeah, you know, one of the things that I've been sharing with our coaching students, you know, we've been super fortunate or blessed or everyone to call it to. We brought on a hundred and three students since me and you last talked, I think it was an August of last year, around the 2017, um, and we do a 15,000 and $5,000. We did a hundred and three students and one of the biggest things that people have been wanting to know and, and it is like how do I get, how do I, how do. Speaker 3:     02:01       Because like, like in business, you know, you, like you have people who have like regular acceleration, right? They just like if you were to graph it, they have a gradual growth or maybe it's like staggered up and down lows and highs. But then there's like those hockey stick moments, right? Where like somebody goes from where they're at and the hockey stick way up and then they plateau and then the hockey stick again. And so what I've noticed through life, whether it was sells, uh, working my own sales teams, running, running with a big company or helping solo preneurs is um, there's a way to create high leverage, like, like extremely high leverage. Um, and it's a system that I really, to be totally honest, I learned it from chat from Chet Holmes who started the dream 100 stuff. And this was a system that he, uh, talked about in, in a VIP session that I was at a, um, I was at a thing with Tony Robbins in chat. I want to say it was like 2013 or 2004. And um, and I learned this, but he's like, this is so, so good that I don't publish this because people can really take it the wrong way. And so, uh, so I wanted to share, Speaker 2:     03:13       have to understand, we talked a lot about dream 100 and even just don't understand the depth of dream 100. It's so much more than just creating a list and send them out a package. So much deeper than that. And Russell spent a whole bunch of time at our traffic secrets course that we did in October down in Phoenix and just blew everyone's mind. And that's why when you were talking to me about this whole idea of, of it being used for good as well as for evil, it truly, truly is and can be. So with that caveat, I want to make sure you guys understand when we're talking about this, we assume that you guys are gonna use this for good and that you're not going to turn this around and uh, destroy people's lives with it. But with that, I really want to kind of dive in. Jane's really kind of go into this whole idea as far as contributing. I know that was one thing that we were talking about. What exactly does that really, really mean from your eyes? Speaker 3:     04:00       So this was back in a chalkboard day. There wasn't whiteboards. And so, um, uh, Chad had wrote the word contribute. He said everything I'm going to now for the next hours, if you don't understand this word, you're going to screw up everything I'm going to tell you because people are going to realize at some point you're taking advantage of them. And when they realize that everything you just did is going to come crashing down on me and then the rebuild, that reputation could take you years, you know, or you may never be able to recover from that. And so, um, so he really, he sat us down and he said, I want you to think about, do you actually have the best intentions for the other person before you do anything before you contact them for you, follow any of this stuff if you don't, if your main goal is to make money, he goes, I promise you this is not gonna work. Speaker 3:     04:52       And it may work on one person, but he goes, eventually it's gonna catch up with you. And when somebody realizes you're taking advantage of them, it's over. And so he really, Harper was work contribute. And that's where this whole system starts with what I teach our coaching students. I'm glad to share this with everyone out there that like what I'm about to share with you, if you don't have that, that, that mindset of like, I want to do this to help someone else more than helping me. Right? Like if, if I can't find that gratitude, like even in this, you know, like, like I reached out to you, um, and I'm using the same process I'm going to share, you're going to see like I'm using the same process, but in my heart I'm like, if I can't, if I don't have complete gratitude, like in me just being able to network with Dave, help his community, how, you know, like if I can't contribute into your world from a pure perspective than everything that I'm doing is going to come crashing down, you know. Speaker 3:     05:52       And so, um, so that's really where this whole starts out is, you know, really focusing on contributing to people. Okay. So that's kind of, there's really a five step system. Um, and so I can just run through those real quick. Is that the awesome? Yeah. Okay. So number one is contributed. So you got to think about like how you come up with your dream 100 lists, all the standard stuff that Russell talks about in his book and all that stuff. Like, like come up with your dream list. Okay. Then then you think, okay, like how do I carve out a few of these people in like, like the most strategic ones, the ones that I can get the highest leverage move. And so I'm just a side note. A lot of people say, well, what is the highest leverage move means basically highest levers. Move means how do you, how do you use other people's stuff? Speaker 3:     06:33       So I called P. A lot of people are opm, other people's money, opt other people's time. But you've got to think more but more. Okay. You can use other people's data, you can use other people's relationships, you can use other people's platforms, you can use other people's intellectual property. You like infinite, right? Um, and so, so, so you can see how like if you don't start thinking about the word contribute, but then you start thinking, how do I use other people's platform or how to use other people's money. Like the whole system becomes warped, right? It becomes about me, about, you know, um, and, and I'm not actually adding value into the community. And so, um, so like, like the, the way that I've seen people get real hockey stick growth, whether it was a company, a sells startup, whatever is they figure out how do I create the highest leverage move with my time or, or with, uh, with, with, with my investment or with whatever, with whatever the asset is. Speaker 3:     07:36       And so I'm like, if I were to go out today, uh, like you, you and I both know, like, like, uh, me, you, Russell, Gary Vaynerchuk, Tony Robbins, we all have the same amount of time. We all have the same amount of, of like no one had 35 hours today. Everyone had the same, you know, 10, 12, 15 hours to work. Like we all had the same amount of time. The only thing is some people figured out how to create more leverage with their time. Right? And to me that is like the true essence of d, 100. It's like how do you create more leverage with your time? And so typically it's using other people's whatever, right? Other people's time, money, network, email list, facebook page, podcast, a coaching group, whatever. And uh, and then in return, like, you know, like, like you're helping them, they're helping you. Speaker 3:     08:27       Okay. So number one contributed to the number two thing that chat started showing us and I've summarized it up into this is okay. So like if I carve out like 10 people that I want to talk to that I really need to network with. Okay. So like, let me just be totally honest here. Okay. I could say Russel, I could say, um, there's some people on Shark tank that I wanted to get ahold of. There's some people, you know, there's, there's some key individuals, right? So, okay. So the first thing I need to do is actually write out like how can I actually contribute into Russell's world? I literally did this a couple years ago. I was like, okay, like what could I do to be different? Like, how can I contribute to him versus like, you know, every time I see him, like, hey man, I got this thing, I got this idea, you know, and you know what man, like if we just partnered up, I give you 50 slash 50 men, you know, and I'm like, come on now like how many people are or be one of those people who's like, you know what, me and my product is so good. Speaker 3:     09:22       Russell. Like if I just got sales I would be good. It's like you just like, I can't, you know what I mean? Like you can't believe it is. I literally got an email from a guy who's actually has a lot of fame, uh, people would know him and you'll be at funnel hacking live and everything else. And it was interesting because he's like, listen, before I fire up to funnel hacking, live on a fly over to meet with, with Russell and just kind of go through a couple of things with the real fast. I'm like, why? And what is the value? Russ is going to get out of this besides, you are going to come to the office. I mean, it was just interested in like, oh, you know what, it doesn't work that way. Yeah. And so, okay, so contributing number one. Number two is I need to figure out how to summarize data that my d 100 is going to, uh, it'd be impressed by. Speaker 3:     10:13       Okay. So this, this one really shocked me because I was like, why is this so important? Okay. So like one thing that, one of the things I've learned around Internet psychology through the years is numbers tend to mean more than just words. Okay? So it's a reason why people will say like, we've reached x amount of people, right? Instead of saying, uh, you know, like even Louie's started here, it's like, hey, you can say, Hey James Smiley's a good digital marketer or a great digital marketer, but when you say numbers, he's done this amount of sales. He's done this, he's done. You know what I mean? It, it registers in people's mind fast. Okay? So if I'm going to really drive a highest leverage move d, 100 strategy, I need to think about how do I move numbers to the forefront of my marketing so that when I'm going to, she's Russell for an example, when Russell, if he eventually ever looked at my site or sees my webpage or sees my facebook page that he will see a number that means something to him or he'll go, oh, like, like chet used to say, you want them to, you want them to start saying he's one of us. Speaker 3:     11:16       Like, so I love that analogy because I think that's really super critical. It's, I were just talking about our to calm a couple of word winters. We have 411 two Comma Club award winners right now. And so it's nice because it again, it groups you into that. Now you're there. One of us. I love that announced. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. And so, um, so like, so like I started a by the way. So Larson told me to, to talk about this more because I told him how I, how I got to know you guys. And Russell, and he was like, dude, this is one of the smartest 100 strategies ever. He's like, you gotta talk about this more. So, um, so, uh, so because I told him how is using data that I thought Russell would like. So like I'd listen to those podcasts, I'd watched all this stuff and I'm like, okay, he's saying like he wants, this is way back when he's like, I want to be the fastest growing SAS company. Speaker 3:     12:11       So then I started using like language, like, uh, I was a part of iop on one of the fastest growing sas companies in Silicon Valley. Like specifically saying that I feel like if I knew Todd Russell, like somebody saw it, they'd be like, oh, he's one of us like in subliminally. Right? Um, and so, uh, but, uh, but for, for other people that might mean like, like, like in the btby world, like somebody may not be interested in how much revenue you make, they may be interested in how many distributors you have or, or maybe they're more interested how many customers you have or something like that. So like, I try to encourage people, like on your website, have data that summarizes something that you, that your dream client is going to go, wow, this. I'm impressed by this. So I heard Tony Rob Russell say once on his podcast, he said, Tony Robin, he has spoken to 10,000 B, two b sales reps. Speaker 3:     13:03       okay? Somewhere. He said that on a podcast and he was impressed by it. Well, I knew because a corporate recruiter had told me this, I had spoken to 12,000 B, two b sales rep. I was like, yes, I'm going to put this on the front of my homepage if Russell ever received that. James is one of us, you know what I mean? And so, um, there was a lot of like little things like that that I started doing and um, and then so and I didn't know, like you never know, like if somebody really seeing it or not, but, but chances are if you're doing the right things, sooner or later they're going to take a peek at you. Right? And, and if these are the little things that make somebody start calling, oh, maybe, maybe he's like us, you know? Um, okay. So the third thing, Speaker 2:     13:44       I'm going to step back on that because I think that helping people understand that they're one of us is such a huge, a huge thing in networking, um, because you'll talk to people talk about, well there's a level b level c level type of relationships. And uh, again, you were talking about Steve Larsen and his whole big thing is, you know, you can reach one level up as I've heard him referred that a million times and I think it's important that as you get to know what your, what your group or your level is, what does that one level above you, what's that one level below you? And whether it's, again, whether you mentioned as far as revenue or, or contacts or whatever the number is, but realize that everybody has some number. I guess these days, a lot of people, as far as we're dealing with a lot of influencers and their numbers are you. How many youtube followers? Yeah. How many instagram, facebook, whatever. That may be, and those numbers basically say, okay, you're one of us and I think this, oh, critical that, and I appreciate James that you mentioned. It's not just revenue, it's not just these numbers can be anything, but the key here is numbers, numbers or something. People very quickly can just, it's a scale and they say, okay, that's, I'm in that same area. I'm in that you're, you're one of us or you're better me or one lower than me, Speaker 3:     14:52       whatever it might be. They at least know where they fit. And I think that's the big thing with a lot of marketing is people want to know where do I fit in this ecommerce or this whole cosmos here. Yeah. I recently struck a big partnership with Kevin Harrington from Shark tank and I won't talk about the whole details, but one of the things I will say is I knew the specific type of numbers he wanted to see and so I move those to the forefront of my marketing, of my, of my personal branding. And um, so I got on a call with him one day and he's never talked to me before and he goes, James, I've heard a lot about you. And he goes, ah, he goes, but I, I hate to tell you this, I got to cut this call short. He goes, I have 11 minutes, pitch me, go. Speaker 3:     15:35       I was like 15, I have 11. Exactly. He's like, yes, you have 11. Go in. And I was like, okay. So long story short, in 11 minutes I struck a big deal with them in the other people on the phone were like, we never seen nothing like that. Even even, um, uh, Kevin's brother Brian or his son Brian was like, okay, I seen all the pits people pitching. I've never seen minutes. And um, but the reason is because I had him preframe through all this stuff. I'm telling you, like I had preframe because of the data. And he said little phrases. He's like, I've seen some of your stuff. I've seen some of your videos. And I like it. Like those little phrases tell me that my little personal branding and marketing out there, it's synergizing with him and that's how I got on the phone with them. Speaker 3:     16:20       And so it allowed the conversation to move forward because he had, he had a little bit more trust with me because he was kept thinking. I think James is kind of like one of us, you know? Um, okay. And then. So number three is, I'm a check called this something else, can't remember, but I call it network with the network. Okay. So like when I wanted to become friends with Russell, I'm like, man, this is gonna be like, hard to get to know Russel, right? So, um, I was like, okay, like this is a total chet holmes strategy. I'm like, okay, who are all the people around Russell? And remember this is like two or three years ago, okay, who I guarantee you I could get ahold of them. And then so I was listening to the podcast and he's like, Oh yeah, I'm hiring this kid named Steve. Speaker 3:     17:04       I'm like, I bet you I can get ahold of that kid. I'm not kidding you. That's the first thing I thought. I'm like, I guarantee you, I get a hold of that kid. Like he's a Newbie, you know what I mean? So, and then I started looking up and I'm like, this is no joke. I'm like, oh, there's, there's this dave guy. Oh, this is Dave Woodward Guy. There's this guy named todd. There's, um, then I, and then I realized there's John Parks. Um, and then like back then he was talking about certain inner circle people. So he had mentioned I'm a funnel that some guy named Henry had done for him and I had no, he didn't even mention Henry's name, so I like, googled, looked on his friend list, like figuring out who the hell is this Henry Guy because he just talked about Henry Henry must be a friend. Speaker 3:     17:47       And so like what I did was I started figuring out how do I contribute to sincerely until all these people's lives. So, I'm not kidding you like this a little bit embarrassing, but it totally like I had you Larson had all you guys on my list and I was like, okay, how do I like sincerely, like, like add into these people's lives. Okay. And then, um, so when I first told, I told, I told this at the, uh, at a mastermind I was with Steve and I said it from stage one. I said this, Steve Goes, that happened, that really happened. Let me tell you what happened. So I told. So the whole idea here, okay, is that someday, maybe you guys will all be talking to Russell in. Somebody will be like, well we should try to get into btby and then someone will be like, why? I notice James Smiley Guy, but I don't know, like nobody really knows him. And then somebody else in the circle would be like, James James Smiley. Like the guy, you know that guy. Oh yeah, he's totally cool. And then somebody else would be like, James Smiley. And this also like the idea is that like everyone kind of knows james and Russell's like, who the heck is named Smiley God? Why do I not know James Smiley? Speaker 2:     18:58       Seriously? Oh my gosh. I can tell you that networking with a network is probably the most understated issue. And people just don't understand how important that is. I've seen that so often in my gosh, in my own business over the years I've noticed that that has been a huge, huge opportunity for me. A kind of also goes back as far as making sure you understand who the gatekeepers are, that you network with the gatekeepers and that's your, you're nice to the gatekeepers. And it's, it's so funny because uh, I mean literally Russell's my officer like four feet apart. I mean I stepped through the glass and it's, it'll be funny where he'll get the same package I will get and I know exactly what people are like, well, if I can't get to Russ, I'll get to dave first and then I'll use dave to get to Russell. And I like, I know the game, but I think it's cool that people are playing the game because I think that's how it's so critical. More people who know you, who have a point of reference in a frame of reference for you, the easier it is to have those types of conversations when, when again, the name comes up, it's not like it's going to come up all the time, but when it does, you want there to be a positive relationship with that, with your name or whoever else that might be. Speaker 3:     20:04       Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so I, uh, uh, I, I said that from stage one time [inaudible] Larson stopped. Everything goes to, he goes, that literally happened one time. He's like, we were talking about like a new version of the website or something like that. And he's like, that literally happened. He's like, two or three of us knew who you were. And Russell said, who's James? I don't know. Yeah. And, and, and, and so I didn't say any of this, but we all know, like people like Russell use the internet, use their phone like with somewhere within the next 24 hours, the next hour, I guarantee you, he looked up to see who the heck is James. Sure. So, so like every one of the listeners to understand like, this is why having your stuff on point in having data summary, because I mean you don't have like an hour for this guy to look at your stuff and you might have in seconds. Speaker 3:     20:55       So you gotta be on point and so you gotta think like, okay, like what is this person? If they were to look at my stuff for 20 seconds, would they go, James is one of us, you know? And so, um, the, so the, and the whole thing around network when the network is like understanding that first word contribute. So it's like how do I actually add value to Steve? How do I add value to John? And so like, I'm like, I didn't know John at all. But um, so there's two little hacks that I've learned over the years or we're doing this over 10 years with network, with a network. One is finding somebody who is, um, I don't know if it's right to say, but finding someone who's younger is easier to network with in finding someone who's an up and comer is definitely easier like it because not only that, you can contribute into those people's world really, really fast. Speaker 3:     21:45       Like you can tell them stuff, help them, give them encouragement. Um, you know, like, like I've sent, I won't say who, but there's multiple people on that list. I've sent them big deals, I've sent them, you know, I signed a deal and I broke or the services out to them. I like message. I'm like, Hey, um, you know, I got this deal in a, all you need is this, this and this, and I can wire you $8,000 right now. Like what? Like, who is James Smiley? Like I don't even know who this person is, right? But, but now, like I built longterm relationships with those people, um, in like, uh, in, like when you really do that, right? It's almost like this becomes flawless because you become friends with the people who your dream 100 person is friends with, you know what I mean? And um, and so, and it's a really cool thing because you don't have to push your way in, you don't have to try to, you know, insert yourself. Speaker 3:     22:37       Like it just happens kind of organically, you know. Um, and so, so anyway, um, so yeah, so networking with the network is, is, is unbelievably huge, especially if you can figure out like, how do I honestly contribute. Okay. Um, one like 32nd story I'll tell you about something I did with John Mckay was I bought 'em fill your funnel a number of years ago. Okay. And um, you know, like I thought that was a lot until, you know, like, like it was like 30, 3,500 bucks or something like that. And it was like, it was awesome. Right. And so, like here I am in this group and I wasn't going to be totally honest. Okay. I wasn't 100 percent sure how I was going to use that content. But one, okay, there's a couple of things I realized. Number one, John was in there, it was messaging in the group a lot. Speaker 3:     23:25       And so like every time John would say something, I would back them up, you know what I mean? Like, like, uh, and so I was, I kind of became friends with them in there, you know, and then I would post like a testimonial or two of like something cool that I did based on something he said. And so I think just over time, like I don't, I don't, I don't think like me and John are like, know we don't really talk a lot, but I will tell you like the few times we do talk it's like he, I think he's like, he's Kinda cool. Like James is like one of us, you know. And um, and so, but I first met him in this group. So I want to say something like, I bought my way in to a relationship with somebody like that because I figured if I bought my way into this, the people that are in there managing this are probably going to be people who Russell knows. Speaker 3:     24:12       You see what I'm saying? Oh, I totally agree. Like whereas some people they just go into it with the, you know, they don't think about those kinds of. Yeah, you know what I mean? They don't think like, not only that, like you're in a group of couple of hundred people who are, you just spent like $3,000 on something. Like you're in a group of cash buyers. Like why would you complain of 80? Like there's, you can build friendships, relationships, all those kind of things. But um, but anyway, but that's, that's like my, the first time I really interacted with John, I just saw, I was like, how do I contribute? How do I contribute? How do I make this fun? How to make this engaging for him. Okay. And then the fourth one is, this was a little bit psychological, but it's like the most ideal thing is if you can understand how the person thinks, because one thing I did not know is I did not know or even think Russell was an introvert. Speaker 3:     25:05       Never thought that. And um, and so I'm glad. Like I would listen to him and go, man, like this dude's an introvert. Okay. So like if I ever meet him, the last thing I want to do is come up to him like, oh my God. You know what I mean? Like in, in the few times I've seen I'd been around him and seeing people approach him. I'm just sitting there laughing, going, I have no idea. Like they're well meaning good people, but they have no idea. Like, you know, I was at the Mellon texts event, I think, and Russell's crushed it there. And uh, and then he was out in the hallway I think, and there was like 20 people around him in a circle. And so I walked by that day I walked by, um, and uh, and so I'll just Kinda, just for time I'll, I'll put four and five are kind of similar. Speaker 3:     26:00       So a four is like, you want to start mirroring the person. This is a lot of Tony Robbins stuff like marrying the person. So like, um, so one of the things that I did at that event was a, I noticed that you guys would always have a camera person and a lot of times it's you or somebody like holding the b roll camera, right? The vlogging camera will like, I'm message John Before that event. And I said, hey dude, I'm, what camera are you guys using? And he said, I don't know man, let me check it out. Because we were friends. He was like, dude, let me check it out. So he came back and told me the camera you're using so that I told my camera girl, I'm like, hey, they're using this camera, go buy it. And then she was like, Hey, I can get one that's just slightly better. Speaker 3:     26:43       I'm like, that'll be even better. Like the upgraded version that will be better. And then, uh, so we bought the same tripod. It's the same camera. And guess who, the only two people at this event were who had camera people, you and me. And so I did that. So because I knew that I would be in the vicinity of Russell and I wanted to try to get his attention in a non, like, you know what I mean? I wanted to try to get an intention and so I was like talking to Caleb and people like that. And I remember seeing Russell in the corner of his eye look over at us and he's like, I guarantee you he's probably going, who's the other dude with the camera? With a camera person following them around. Like, who the hell does this guy like, I don't know, maybe he knew, maybe he didn't. Speaker 3:     27:29       But um, uh, but I distinctly remember him, like continuing to look over and we would connect a little bit. And then, um, uh, so when he was out in the hallway, uh, I, I saw him and I told him, I camera goes, I was a communications committee. And I was like, Hey, so, so we walked out and uh, and so I'm walking out, my camera person is following me and there's literally 20 people around, Russell and I can just tell he's like, I mean everybody, I'm sure it was like super nice and cool, but he was just drained. He was just like, dude, get me out of here somebody. And so I walked by him and he kind of looks at me out of the corner of his eye and uh, and he just kinda like opened his shoulder just I think he just wanted to see, like if I was going to say it, say what's up or whatever. Speaker 3:     28:14       And uh, and of course, like I'm looking at him, so I reach over and lean in really, really softly. We shake hands in, right when we shake hands, that whole group went dead silent. Oh sure. Everybody was like, what the heck is this guy? Right? Like, Russell just stopped the conversation to have shake somebody's hand. And uh, and I remember shaking his hand in and I said, hey man, I said very soft and comp because I understand his personality. And I'm trying to like mayor his personality or how he thinks and so I was like, hey man, I appreciate you letting Steve Come to my event. He crushed it on stage. Thank you so much for, for letting him do that and I just appreciate you. Basically I just told the guy, thank you, that's all I did, you know, and I just remember him looking at me and he was just like, he just said thank you James. Speaker 3:     29:06       And he's like, thank you for doing that. And it was just like really cool like bonding moment and um, and so, so it was just, it was, it was the coolest thing because like all that work had built up to a, to a handshake, you know what I mean? There's so much value in that and I think so often people are in this game for the short term and it's like, what can you do for me? What can you do for me? What can you, for me? And like that's not how this game works. This is a long longterm play. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that a ton. Jane's. Yeah. And so I guess I'll, I'll kinda wrap it in this way and saying that, um, you know, you guys featured how you, how we were using click funnels and be to be on the clickfunnels.com home page for a while. Speaker 3:     29:50       I will tell you of 103 students, we had a majority of them, the original, because we survey, a majority of them had said, well, we saw you on the clickfunnels site. We looked you up. So I just want this whole conversation and coming full circle if you contribute to people in the right way, like the relationships and all the things that happen, like you can win over your dream 100 in a way that you never thought possible just by contributing into their world it just by adding value into the world. And so anyway, um, so yeah man, I'm super grateful and thankful for you guys. I mean just to, uh, to share a number like our practice, that coaching practice that's $766,000 and, and, and, and I'll say like all that happened because we, we, we focus on contributing. I love that, you know, so I appreciate you guys man so much. Speaker 3:     30:48       Well James, thank you. And I appreciate you being so kind to contribute to our audience and our community as well. So any other parting words? Um, appreciate you guys, man. Appreciate your audience and everything. I'm a Jane Smiley Dot Tom is the homepage and all that stuff. If you guys want to check out anything but uh, whoever, whoever it is that you, uh, your dream client is, you know, if you got that person, I would just say this to any of your followers. If you have that person or those people at that company and it like it, it's like it doesn't leave you, it doesn't leave your mind. You're like, I got to meet that person. I got to. If I could just get that relationship. To me that's, that's like the confirmation in your heart that you're supposed to build that relationship, right? Like the fact that like, I'm not thinking about that person. I guarantee you no one else is like you. You are the person who was supposed to build that relationship. The fact that it doesn't leave the fact that you wake up, you go to bed, you in meetings, you're daydreaming about that person or that relationship like that is the person that you're supposed to meet and work with and if you focus on contributing, you can get there. Oh, I love it. Well James, thanks again, James Smiley.com. Check them out. Thanks James. We'll talk soon. Appreciate it. Speaker 4:     32:03       Hey everybody. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to podcasts. If you don't mind, could you please share this with others, rate and review this podcast on itunes. It means the world to me where I'm trying to get to as a million downloads here in the next few months and just crush through over $650,000 and I just want to get the next few 100,000 so we can get to a million downloads and see really what I can do to help improve and and get this out to more people. At the same time, if there's a topic, there's something you'd like me to share or someone you'd like me to interview, by all means, just reach out to me on facebook. You can pm me and I'll be more than happy to take any of your feedback as well as if people would like me to interview more than happy to reach out and have that conversation with you. So again, go to Itunes, rate and review this, share this podcast with others and let me know how else I can improve this or what I can do to make this better for you guys. Thanks.

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Show Topic: The Road Warrior's Guide to Romance and Relationships Co-Hosts:  Judy Gaman, Walter Gaman, Mark Anderson Guest: Steve Haberly (in studio) Segment 1: Many of our listeners are what we refer to as road warriors. The job may take you or your spouse from coast to coast or halfway around the globe. Being separated is a major concern for relationships and can have a huge impact on marriages and families. We're going to talk about not only how to stay young when you're on the road, but stay engaged and connected with the people you love. We have a guest in the studio with us, Steve Haberly, he has a blog at https://howsyourconnection.com where he gives excellent advice on this very subject. Steve – you're a pretty smart guy with a PhD from UT Austin and a history of 25 years of global travel. Was this international travel what lead you to start your blog? Docs – in addition to staying married and happy, let's round table a few thins patients need to know to stay young while on the road. Quick blurt-out roundtable (for fun) with our top “to do” list while traveling overnight or extended periods of time Quick blurt-out roundtable (for fun) with our top “NOT to do” list while traveling. MUSIC FOR DOC SHOCK (JIM) THAT MUSIC MEANS IT'S TIME FOR DOC SHOC. A TIME WHEN WE FIND SOMETHING SHOCKING IN THE NEWS OR WE'RE SHOCKED IT MADE THE NEWS. Listen up men, it may be you're turn to take the pill. A new pill, referred to as DMAU, is being developed by National Institutes of Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The new daily pill works much like the female birth control pill by combining the hormone androgen and a progestin. While the participants in the study had lowered testosterone, but no symptoms, I am still concerned about lowering testosterone levels for other reasons, besides the sexual ones. Participants also had slight weight gain and lowered HDL “good” cholesterol. Read more! Follow us on Facebook! Tweet us on Twitter! Download the show on iTunes! Visit our website! Call us at  844-well 100 When we come back, the two most important factors that affect relationships when you travel.   Segment 2: Today's focus is on relationships, especially when traveling. Stay with us because we have a special in-studio guest, Steve Haberly, who's going to tell us the top 2 factors that affect relationships when traveling. Immortal minute Alcohol can alter your sleep through a shift in DNA expression! Learn more: Read more Steve – How is it that Time can be both #1 and #2 on the list?        Time away – discussion        Time zone – discussion Docs – you see executives from around the globe, many of which travel extensively. Are they concerned about their relationships? In your blog post about 20/20 Vision, what are the filters you discuss? How do we get a clearer view of people and circumstances? When people are traveling, do they lose focus of their loved ones? Coming up- Solutions to keep your relationships alive when you have to be separated for work.   Segment 3: Visiting with Steve Haberly, who has a blog - howsyourconnecton.com We've spent the hour talking about the major factors that keep up separated emotionally during travel, but now we're going to focus on solutions.   Open discussion of solutions that will keep the flame burning strong Love notes Conversations – scheduled and long Always be home when they get home or pick up from the airport Stay interested and engaged Have a plan   Segment 4:  Medical Mania Trivia –Raymon T or F. Enamel is the hardest substance found in the body (T) What is the name of the muscle that helps you inhale and exhale? (Diaphram) Name one female sex hormone (Estrogen, progesterone, FSH) Thyroxine is the main hormone secreted by which gland? (Thyroid) What 3 letters stand for the blood test we do on males to check their prostate? (PSA – Prostate Specific Antigen) Open discussion DEMENTIA DEFENDER -THIS DEMENTIA DEFENDER IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY SMART NEW YOU AND DR. CHARLES POWELL. IF YOU HAVE SLEEP APNEA AND YOU'RE READY TO DITCH YOUR C-PAP MACHINE CALL 214-524-6333. LAST WEEKS RIDDLE WAS: What is better than the best thing and worse than the worst thing? (nothing) This week's riddle: If you eat me my sender will in turn eat you. What am I? End Show Thank you for listening to the Staying Young Show! With all the mixed messages on health, you need information that you can use and that you can trust. Listen in as the experts discuss all topics health related. It's time to STAY YOUNG and stay healthy! Each week we tackle a topic and often with leading scientists, best-selling authors, and even your favorite celebrities! As a listener of our show, your input is important to us. Please take a moment to fill out this quick survey so we can serve you better - Survey. 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EP21: Marc Miles Discusses 7 Things Every Painting Contractor Must Know To Protect Their Business SUMMARY: In this episode of DYB Podcast, Steve interviews Marc Miles, his business attorney based out of Venice, Florida specializing in defendign against IRS and state collections. Marc shares a plethora of useful knowledge about finding real solutions to the unknowns that could potentially hurt your business. From employee timesheets to written agreements, Marc talks in-depth about how to navigate the different undesirable situations you and your business may face. _______________ WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: -How to protect yourself and your business from unknown factors -The legal standing of your business and your money -Understanding the goals of your business in advance _______________   QUOTES: "If you do have something in writing, you’re bound by it, so you need to make sure you’re comfortable with it." "If you’re going to form a business entity, 95% of the time, LLC is the way to go." "A written agreement isn’t ‘I don’t trust you,’ it’s clarifying expectations and giving yourself a chance to void if something unfortunate happens." "If you want just your books done right, and you have no worries, your EA is irrelevant." "When you form the business, think about what your succession plan is going forward." _______________ HIGHLIGHTS: [03:25] The big unknowns that can hurt your business and how to prepare for those unknowns [09:33] Proper ways to protect yourself from false claims from employees [15:14] What to stay on top of regarding the IRS and what to do when dealing with tax issues [26:16] The difference between sole-proprietors and corporations [34:15] Partnerships, establishing trust, and understanding what your expectations are from the beginning _______________ LINKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: [APPS] TSheets DYB App [GROUPS] BNI The Florida Bar DYB Coach Special Offer Contact Miles Join DYB ADDITIONAL FREE RESOURCES: DYB System PDF EP01 9 Steps to Doubling Your Business Part 1 52 Blog Post Ideas PDF YouCanBookMe VIDEO Pre-qualifying Questions PDF Video Testimonial Checklist PDF 3 Steps To Get Leads From FB PDF 11 Interview Questions PDF 9 Ways To Get HOA Work PDF  -------------- Connect with Marc Miles on Facebook here Connect with Steve on Facebook here  -------------- Press and hold to visit the page Show Page Notes -------------- Thank you very much for joining us today! If you received value, would you take a quick few seconds and leave us a review on iTunes, please? _________ STEVE: What happened? MARC: So, I had this client, he was behind on his IRS payments, he had an ex-wife and had some issues, things didn’t work out well, she left him high and dry, he was in another relationship, he was trying to make that relationship work, but the IRS kept following him, he had a car, he had a business he was trying to start and his soon-to-be wife was like, "I am not marrying you till you get this fixed, if you don’t get this fixed, I am leaving you," so he is like, you’ve got to help me, I said I can do that, so he comes to me, he said, where are you at, we took a look at this whole situation, we said no problem, we can do this, this and this, we set everything up, I talked to the revenue officer, she was fine, we submitted the paper work and he ended up paying about, maybe $8,000 on what had been a $110,000 liability… And his girlfriend at the time married him afterward, saying we got together and if it hadn’t been for you, while I was doing this, she would not have stopped there… STEVE: Woah, okay… Hello and welcome Marc Miles of the law offices of Marc J. Miles P.A, welcome to the show. MARC: Thank you, Steve. STEVE: Marc, what does P.A mean? MARC: P.A stands for Professional Association, and it’s a designation that is able to be used by individuals who are licensed by the county moral of the States, when they formed a business entity that says, they can only practice with the entity that which they are licensed for. So, if you see a lawyer with P.A or PLC, you know that is their business, all they do is the practice of law, they don’t serve Mc Donald’s fries on the side… STEVE: Ah… okay, glad to have you on the show. For everybody listening, Marc Miles is our business attorney, and he has been, for years, he helped us when we were at Burnett Painting, he wrote the agreement when we sold Burnett Painting and he has worked with us ever since, for everything we’ve done, without going in details… and Marc is outstanding keep him close cause he’s a great guy to know and I was kidding around with him before we get into this. Marc, you are too big to be an attorney… it’s not hard and I kind of wonder how you got into this industry… But, fortunately, he is really good at what he does and so I thought, Marc, we’ve got to get you on the show and let’s share somethings that some business owners, painting contractors out there need to know, to protect themselves, protect their businesses and the unknowns right, so we know, what we know and we don’t know what we don’t know, that’s really the dangerous part huh… MARC: And that’s what I try to help people to say, here’s what you are not aware of, let me ask these questions, you decide, but I hope you can get there so you can think about these things that you might not otherwise think of. STEVE: Hmm… Absolutely, so for example, what are some of the big unknowns? MARC: Okay, so the big unknown… the biggest thing especially with trade contractors and painters is, whether your clients are going to pay you or not, a lot of times whether or not you are having an agreement or non-agreement to sign, that states the payment terms and other terms of agreement, you have no idea what the client is going to go, are they going to try to want to stiff you, do they want to change? Do they say no? I am not paying until you repaint the whole thing? So, one of the biggest unknowns is try to eliminate the ways the client has not to pay you. STEVE: Uh… Okay, now this is really good, this is especially used for high contract or long contract work like commercial, industrial or even residential for your construction, absolutely… So, what are some ways? How can you…? MARC: The first is, you put the total price in the writing in the contract, not just a quote, the quote says, here’s my estimate, here’s your price, but when you have them in a contract say, this is the price and what’s paid, you are also saying what you do it for, and you haven’t signed, people don’t think an estimate is binding, people sees a paper says, estimate, sign, yeah, I agree to that amount, but they don’t see it as, this is a contract I am… subject to, there are legal remedies to it and that’s one of the easiest ways to sort of… that’s how you do it, so you have a little, it doesn’t have to be a 10-page contract, it can be a 1-page contract, but it looks like a contract, so it impresses upon them, the seriousness as opposed to, here is my quick book invoice, sign here, that says I agree… STEVE: Uh, woah. Okay, so this is a really good point is and I know opinions to this is very common practice, quick books, invoice, estimates, whether it’s an estimating program, they all say estimate stuff. If I heard you correctly, you were saying it should say, to set the it should say contract, what about agreement? Can it say agreement? MARC: Absolutely, you could say agreement, no problem. And then it should contain a couple other things that… you people have seen in contracts before, you’ve seen references to if the contract is breached or if not paid in x days or you know, choice of law, if we disagree, we go to court here, you know… throw some of those things in there, you know… Now, don’t be smart about it, don’t put something that is going to hurt you because you don’t really know what it is, but throw some other things in there, so it looks like an agreement or contract, more than just an estimate. STEVE: So, silly question here, I put this together when I was in L.A, is if we should have a lawyer take a look at it? MARC: Have someone take a look at it, over, just see it and ask some questions, yeah. Because every state is going to be different and some things you maybe find difficult to put in one state versus another, so… STEVE: Okay. Thank you. What are some ways that business owners… because you know, I mean you run your own practice, it’s a ton of work and you take all the risk? Now if something happens to you, you can sue them for free, and if something happens to us, the owner… how can business owners protect themselves against faulty claims. Like here is an example, I was talking to a friend of mine and he had paid on of his guys an extra day, it was a holiday or something and it ended up being 48 hours and he isn’t paying five and a half and there was a day he didn’t even work, he was just being generous and paying the next 8 hours, well he came back and sued him, ended up causing him $30,000, because he didn’t pay him five and a half for that extra 8 hours that he paid him… MARC: And he brought the state in as well, I am sure, because the state came in and probably said, let’s take a look at your records as well… Absolutely, so yes, so one of the things you want to do is, some people use independent contractors, while some people use employees, and there’s two different ways you have to handle it, you have an independent contractor, you need to clearly meet… First of all, if you are using an independent contractor, you need to have an agreement, end of story, why? Because if you have good insurance, your insurance might have clause for not having an agreement. I’ve got a situation right now, a client of mine that is relatively large painting company has got major insurance, that’s $100,000 job, $300,000 jobs, had a job where the sub he used, ended up screwing up, causing maybe $1,500 or $1,900 worth of damage, but if he wants to go through his insurance, they are like you didn’t use sub-contractor agreement, even though I drafted one for him. And now they are saying, if you are going to use the insurance, it’s going to cost you $15,000… So, now he is going to pay it out of the pocket or pay the $15,000. So, if you are going to use a contractor, make sure the insurance always have an agreement, even for that reason, but the agreement contains a schedule, the schedule says, here is how I pay you, and you will be specific in that schedule, this is how I get paid and then you only pay by that schedule… that’s for contractors STEVE: For sub-contractors, so if you are working with subs, you have subs, make sure you have a written agreement? MARC: Yes, absolutely… STEVE: Okay, what should be in that agreement? The schedule? The payment schedule? MARC: The schedule, their insurance and their compliance with the law basically says, you agree you have x amount insurance and your license etcetera, whatever you have with the state, failure to do so is a breach. As well as the fact that if you don’t get paid, they don’t get paid, so you want to make sure that if you are doing the job and your sub and you get stiffed by the owner, you are not going to have to pay your sub out of pocket or not. Now, some people, they say that’s a little hard to get, maybe fair, but if you take a look at almost every big GC contracts that’s out there, from the big players, I would guarantee you that is in there. STEVE: Hmm… I wouldn’t be surprised actually… So, what about employees, what are some proper things, what are some, things we need to be doing to protect ourselves, faulty claims against employees, just making sure all our basis are covered? MARC: The biggest thing to do is, the time-tracking of hours, you have to have a system where their hours are tracked and you can see that, relatively easily… STEVE: Okay… MARC: Then the best thing to do is, if you are doing payroll, maybe you have someone else doing payroll, maybe you are doing it yourself. If you have someone else doing payroll, they will automatically know the hours when you calculate to get to know, are we yet over-time? Is it a holiday? Do we pay 5 and a half? Now, if you use QuickBooks payroll, it will usually do the calculation for you, but if not, they will know, it will let you keep track, because once you get that 40 hours, the rules change, once you hit the holidays, the rules change, and they are different in every state, but wherever the state, you need to know that. So, you need to be able to keep track of hours because what happens if they put, we’ve worked this time and you are like, hey you’ve worked 42 hours already, based on this job in here, you only really worked 32 hours, you know, something… I don’t know, I mean God forbid… few hours here and there a day. Track hours to be able to track the hours consistently, that’s number one… STEVE: There is an app we like to… that we used with Burnette Painting and that many DYB use, we call it T-sheets, I don’t know if you are familiar with it, but… MARC: Not a lot but okay… as long as it is hours that are recorded and you can see those hours on a regular basis so that you can catch anything, you have to still review and catch everything at a time, because what a lot of people do is, they think overtime is time and a half, that’s the only thing they think of, they don’t think about, sick or vacation, whether it’s state mandate, certain things, and that should be talking to… even talking to a payroll person they know, you know good idea of that, if a not local attorney is what makes that. And that’s just actually a brief conversation just to get some conversations to help make sure that you don’t blow that. The other thing is don’t do a written agreement, depends on what state you are in, lots of state are at will, which means as long as you don’t have it written, you can sort of do what you like with their employment and how they are employed and how long they are employed. So, very few rules such as over-time, wages, etcetera, but if you do put something into writing, you are bound by it, so you need to make sure you are really comfortable with what you have, if you have something in writing. STEVE: Interesting, so you have more liability with the employee… MARC: Potentially it is because you can be held to everything that you held them to, you can be held if you don’t do it, so you have 6 employees, and the rule states that employees do not get vacation until they have worked at least 3 months and ask for two weeks in advance and you let one guy have his one week in advance, now everybody gets to have one week in advance because you let them do it, despite the fact that the agreement, Emmanuel or whatever says two weeks STEVE: Hmmm, now you mentioned at will, can you impact that for us please? MARC: Sure, absolutely I will… STEVE: Okay MARC: So, a lot of states… actually I am not sure, I think it’s less states… at will, which means, whenever you go to work for somebody, there are no set terms, there are no set agreements, you can work whatever you agree to, if it’s in written then it’s a great upon, if not, it’s really tough and you can let them go at any time for any reason, subject to of the course federal discrimination, you can’t let the person go because they are black, you can’t let them go because they are female, you know, those kind of stuff you can’t do, no matter what, that’s a federal law that overrides. But if you don’t like the way the person drives his car, you don’t like the way he looks on the job, done… goodbye… STEVE: About tattoos… MARC: Absolutely… Sorry, I don’t like tattoo, done… You don’t have to give him a chance to rectify, you are done, goodbye… STEVE: Okay… MARC: So, everybody needs to find if they are in at will state or not, so if you are, great, if not, then you need to check with the local attorney there, because I can’t tell you what some of the restrictions on firing somebody can be, sometimes you have to give them notice, you have to give them opportunity and it just depends on that state. STEVE: Okay, makes sense, interesting. So, how about IRS? What are some?… I don’t know if I can ask you this… MARC: You can ask whatever and I have to answer it… STEVE: How do you feel, like where does the IRS ranks and your Christmas card list? MARC: Actually, believe it or not, the IRS ranks decently, the problem is congress, they are the ones, that are so low, I am like don’t ever pay them in front of me when I have a baseball bat… Because all of these since about say 1999, most of the issues we really have with IRS, is really congress issues, it says, you know what, we have come up with this plan, we are not going to spend a lot of time specifics here, you, IRS, figure it out, if we don’t like it, we will tell you, you are wrong and then go implement it without any real guidance from us and then when people complain, deal with it until they complain too much then we will try to address it, and that brings the IRS into doing things that they really shouldn’t be involved in, and having to make decisions that really shouldn’t be made by them, but congress doesn’t do it, so… STEVE: So, IRS has been taking the wrap the whole time MARC: They take the wrap a lot of time. Now, back in the early 1990s and late 80s, IRS deserved the wrap, they were doing stuff, it was like, we don’t care about you, you aren’t human, done, done, done… Now, it’s a little better, I mean most of the people I work with at the IRS are very reasonable, they are not push-overs unfortunately, but they are reasonable, at least, so… STEVE: So, what are some things that we need to stay on top of, to protect ourselves with IRS? MARC: The biggest, most important is if you have employees, you need to make sure you are paying those payroll taxes on time. So quickly, when you have an employee, you pay them their wage, you withhold a certain amount based on their W4, plus you pay 7.65% of the social security at one point, something percent, whatever… 7.65% total between the two and social security, Medicare, that federal withholding plus the Medicare and social security withhold from the employee’s pay, is not your money, that’s their money that goes to the government, failure to pay that, and the government can come after you, personally for that amount, regardless of what you think you set up, business protection-wise. STEVE: So, are these the 941s that we file? MARC: Yes, everything you file, the 941, the payments you are making, the 941, you need to make sure you pay those employee taxes first and foremost, end of story, pay those, it’s not your money, people try to say, I won’t pay this week and I will try to do next week and catch up, they can still be very, very dangerous game, it’s sort of like gambling, like oops, I didn’t hit black this time, I will get black again, alright Mr. black, I will bet it one more time, maybe eventually I’ll get to black and try to win. You know… do you really want to take that risk? You probably don’t. Number two is, for those in some states… if you have sales tax, file and pay that sales tax as quickly as possible. In Florida, I tell people, if you are a Florida resident and you don’t pay your federal taxes, IRS can come after you and take 90-120 days, and they will start coming after you, Florida department revenue… 90 minutes if they get serious… the state can move like that, and most states can move like that, most states have far more strong to grab and attach to people, for non-payment of state taxes than the IRS does. So, whatever your state tax is, if you have sales tax and… or similar collection taxes, pay those, because they are the people that can go after you ASAP. IRS, you can buy time, you can do stuff, a lot more than you can with the state. STEVE: Okay, that is really good to know. Now, what’s the first thing somebody should do if they received one of those dreaded letters from the IRS? MARC: The one that says, we think you owe something? STEVE: Yes, that one… MARC: Okay, there is a lot of letters from the IRS that people dread… So, there’s two types of letters, there is the one that says that, excuse me, we want to look at your return, because we don’t like this $200,000 in supplies that you put and then we know you owe us money, now if you don’t do something within 30 days, we are going to take action. So, there’s two different letters, one is on one side and one is on the other, if you get that first letter that says, we don’t like this on your return, go back and make sure you check you have your receipt and your documents, in that statement. Once you have those, then decide, do I want to talk to my CPA if my CPA can help or if it is something simple. Sometimes it’s as simple as, we just need to see what your travel is, and your travel was, for example, that year was just twice as large, because you went to two more conferences and you’ve got plane tickets and the thing, you probably have to go and say, here, sure, no problem, plane ticket… here and as long as all your receipts match up to what’s on the return, you know, you are probably fine. Now if they go and say, we want to see your bank statement, everything on the return, now you probably need to talk to that CPA, because they need to know what limits there are, when they are doing this, not you. STEVE: So, that’s a great point, CPAs…  about Florida, that’s fantastic. What does somebody look for in a CPA? How would somebody know a great CPA from a forum floor? MARC: The first thing usually is to check whether they have the CPA designation, those that have CPA, which means they’ve got the license, have undergone a higher level, 99 times out of a 100, a higher level of training education to know what has to be done. Now, does that means they are going to form that they have education? No, obviously not, so the best thing to do is have an interview with them, phone or face, it doesn’t matter, and then ask them questions about your stuff. Say, what can I do about this? What can I do about that? And see how they answer, and if they are one of the people that goes, oh you can do A or B, and that’s it… and they are probably one of these people that is following up on the forum or it depends, like what are we looking for, or they can give you a little more and say, well, what are you trying to achieve? They will ask you, what are you trying to obtain? What are you trying to achieve? What’s the ultimate goal to fit it in, that’s one part, instead of saying, just oh, well, keep your receipts or make sure the mileage checks, those one line answers to three or four questions indicate the person is probably not, either is engaged and they are going to give you the time, or they are probably more about, here it is. STEVE: Okay, so this is really good, we are going to pause here for a moment, because… this is really good, if I heard you correctly, what you are saying is if they have a simple A or B answer, that’s no good? MARC: Usually, yes… STEVE: Okay, usually… these situations are dynamic… MARC: Yes, and they depend on the overall… So, obviously once have a CPA in your account say, hey, Marc, can I deduct this? And he goes, no, that’s okay, that happens, this time you are not asking stuff, the answer is simple, no you can’t, okay do this, yes you can. But when you are interviewing a CPA and in this interview, don’t just say, oh, I know somebody, okay, here you go, stuff… talk to them, interview them, so, I say interview attorneys too, don’t just… whenever you have a professional, especially a professional, interview them and talk to them, make sure you think that they can do it, they are engaged and you can work with them. STEVE: Fantastic. What about these small shops who… maybe just a couple of employees, but the and for one thing I know about myself and I know about most entrepreneurs is, we hate the books… MARC: Yes, so that is why you have a good CPA or a book keeper and ask them to do a monthly or quarterly book keeping and here is the thing, they are going to give you a quote, they are going to ask to see some stuff that can give you a valid quote of how much it is going to cost per month to do everything. And what you do when you get that quote and you shop around, you go to a couple of different accounts of CPAs and get quotes, then you ask yourself and you do an exam that I am sure you tell everybody to do, how much time does it take you, as the business owner to do this, this and this and you add up all these hours to do all these stuff that they are doing in this proposal. Now, ask yourself, how much money you could have earned with those hours in your business, which is what you are good at, as opposed to doing this and work it out. STEVE: Absolutely, we have a video, we have a link to it in the show notes called “Ownership Responsibility Value” and work through that exact formula. So, that’s great, how would… how does somebody know, so okay, find a couple of 2, 3 book keepers, how do you interview them and what do you do to open up your books... do you say what do you think? MARC: No, when you go to them, you talk to them, you ask them a little bit… hey Marc, how have you been down here, how long have you been doing this? You know if they are a CPA, you know how long they have been a CPA… and then they say, so, here is my situation, give a brief overview of my situation, I have this, I do that, and see what they say, some people may go straight to, hey, can I see the tax return? Some people may ask questions, there is really not a right or wrong there, because especially if you start getting a little long-winded, they are going to say, just give me the tax return, at this point you are explaining all that stuff and it’s like you are probably going to a little more extraneous details than they actually need… STEVE: Okay… MARC: But, bring the tax returns, bring the bank statements and you ask them questions about… do you feel comfortable with them? Ask them some basics, hey dude, do you… how many other painting companies do you deal with? How many of your clients are under 3 employees? How many of your practice is business versus personal? Because all CPAs do 10, 40 individual tax returns. So, how much individual do you do? If the person does 95% individual and has 3 businesses, maybe you say, okay, may we look at someone else, maybe you are like, hey I am going to be the forth, I don’t need a lot of handholding, okay, or you can go to someone who’s got 85% of the businesses and most of the individuals in the business. And then, the thing is more of a judgement at that point, how much does that matter to you? What’s the feeling you got from that? Because there is no right or wrong answer at that point, now you sort of feel, what are they doing in there, in their field and then how many employees they have, because if they’ve got several employees, the chances of you actually getting to them or them actually really looking at your stuff are probably slim than none and they may be awesome, the junior who they’ve hired, may not be at the same level that they are, and if you are going to get junior doing your tax return, do you have the same confidence that… you know… STEVE: And would you say it’s just as important to check and refer us as we would prior an employee? MARC: Absolutely… who we know, if you go find a CPA, have 2 or 3 people, that’s why I like BNIs, it’s a great resource, because most probably if someone isn’t BNI, they’ve got testimonials, hope… if nobody is giving testimonials then there should be a problem, they should begin there, that’s the start, so if you can get testimonials from people, ask people, if you know somebody says here, go and ask on… or do the whole Facebook recommendation thing, go and ask Facebook, what is recommended for CPA and see who comes up with it, if you got somebody come up with 6 names, then name 17 times out of 40, that’s probably a good one to start with… STEVE: Yeah, absolutely. Now, what is an EA? And how important is that a CPA is an EA? And I believe you are an EA MARC: No, I am not… An EA is an Enrolled Agent, and that is an individual who has taken the exam that the IRS puts out, to be able to practice before the Internal Revenue Service. Me, being an attorney and CPAs being the CPA are automatically granted that by right, nature of our license to do so as long as we are in good standing in A state. STEVE: Interesting, that’s why I though you are an EA MARC: Yeah, because I can do it. So, if you want just your books done right and you have no worries, your EA is irrelevant, because the EA is when you have tax issues and need them resolved. Hopefully you are not getting to that point… STEVE: Okay, absolutely… let’s circle back a little bit… we talked about corporations, what is the difference between sole proprietor, LLC, S-corp, C-corp and impact this slowly for us, for those who want to know if they are in the right one or they should make a shift MARC: Well, and that’s going to be after some consultation, that’s really hard to make, a sole proprietor is somebody who has nothing, but use their name… Steve Burnette painting, not Burnett 1800 painting, Steve Burnette painting, Donald Robert CPA, those are sole proprietors, they don’t have any requirements to deal with bank accounts or whatever, they do have to get an EIN, if they have employees, and everything they earned on their profit is subject to self-employment tax, which is an extra tax above income tax… On the net profit, corporations and LLCs are business entities, why do people say C-corps, S-corps… at the state level, it is a corporation, you form a corporation or you form a limited liability company, and people form these for two reasons, tax or protection, 99 times out of a 100, there are some exceptions to the rule and each day it is a little different, but a corporation is the vehicle designed for large companies, they are going to have public shareholders, make large amount of money, have a lot of certain deductions and have to pay out to the members and there was a way to keep the protection inside the company, so that members that were buying in weren’t at risk. The cost of that was paying an extra inside tax on the money, before the money got out to people, who received it and had to pay their tax, so S-corporation decided to say, we are going to make a difference, we are going to give you the corporation and give you the protection but the income will just flow out so you only pay tax once. But there are some restrictions on that, for example, you can’t have two different classes of stock when people invest, like you had a preferred shares, but you can’t have preferred shares in this corporation, you can’t have more than a hundred people, you can’t have a non-US resident, alien or citizen be a shareholder and the most important in an S corporation, if one partner takes money out, the other partner has to take their share out as well… STEVE: Interesting… MARC: Whether you like it or not… STEVE: What’s the difference in protection between S and an LLC? MARC: Okay, whether it is S or C, protection on the inside level doesn’t matter… so, corporation and LLCs, doesn’t… corporation… when you hear S or C, that’s a federal, sometimes state tax issue only, it has no effect on the protection of a corporation or not, whether it is C or S, the protection from the corporation, from a legal stand point is the same, no matter what… So, there’s two types of protection; inside and outside. Inside protection is simply that you are doing something on the job, within the job… something goes wrong and you get sued and that keeps your personal assets from being attached, you close down the business if you have to, but walk away, that’s within the business, no matter what, you are covered, you are protected, that’s what we call inside protection, there is no difference if you do it right between a corporation or an LLC, you get the same either or…. It’s the outside protection that there’s a huge difference, so outside protection is, something happens to you outside of the business, such as you many have back alimony you haven’t paid or child support that you haven’t paid, your behind done or you have a judgement from when you were trying to get your life together, say you have your house closed, they are not going to forgive the loan and they are still going to come after you for the money, it is outside your business, but they are going to come after you. A corporation does to protect you from that, your corporate shares are assets and they can attach those. STEVE: Okay, but how relevant are corporate shares to a painting company? MARC: Really, because most states require shares to be issued if you have a corporation and your share is your evidence of ownership, so if you are the 100% owner, you are supposed to have shares and if you have shares and they get attached, guess who owns the company, the corporation now, not you, your creditor… (After the Break) STEVE: How much protection does a sole proprietor have? MARC: None… Zilch in any which way he performs, no inside, no outside, end of story. STEVE: Okay, so if somebody started a painting company and maybe they are a sole proprietor, they are just getting going, should they go? What should they do? Should they… I heard you say it was dynamic… MARC: Yeah STEVE: So, any guidance what they should do? MARC: Yes, so basically, look about… first and foremost, if you are just starting, are you going to have employees and contractors or not? If you are going to have employees and contractors, most especially employees, form an entity, end of story. No matter what, form the entity, it’s not a question of anything else, because if that employee or that contractor does something wrong and you get sued, no entity, no protection… STEVE: Okay MARC: End of story, if you are not going to hire or use anybody else, it’s just you and your truck and your paint brush, your ladder, it’s probably cheaper to just get some insurance for what you are doing and make sure you have some decent insurance, and go forward… STEVE: So, just some liability or… MARC: Yeah, liability insurance, or if they don’t have an umbrella policy, if they are on the house, once they get an umbrella policy, because if you are just one person doing everything yourself, you don’t really get much protection from the company and what are you really going to do to cause the damage as obviously as the painter, I mean at what point are you going to cause more than two million dollars for the damage, it’s pretty hard, as a sole proprietor, just going around. Now, once you have contractors, a lot of the people, they are driving around or they are doing different things, and their effect is going to affect a whole lot more people rather than you, now you are going to get more risk. STEVE: Okay, you’ve mentioned partnerships a couple of times, so partnerships can be sticky for example… there is a common statistic that marriages will have 50% chance of ending up in divorce, what is it for partnership, do you know? MARC: No, I don’t have a number, sorry… STEVE: That’s okay, I was just curious, I didn’t think there might be one, but what are some things… I think it was just the last episode, we had four brothers on and they are partners, unfortunately they are brothers and they are just awesome Christian, so they’ve got a strong understanding and character and values, but that’s not the case for most partnerships, right? They all started off great, hey 50-50, it’s going to be awesome, we are going to make a ton of money, it’s will be great… MARC: Correct, so there’s two part to it, one, there is a part that is themselves and there is a part after… So, let’s take a part that is themselves, you are going to go into business with somebody, could be your wife, significant other, it could be your brother or somebody you have just known for 5 years that says, hey, let’s walk together, the biggest thing in the world is expectations. Before you can get started, what are your expectations for the company? And what are your expectations within this company, what are mine? What’s the work load split? How much work are we putting in? how much are we expecting? Can I afford to live on what we have as a budget while we are putting this together, before it grows to be the next billion-dollar company? Set those expectations down and talk about them, you don’t even need to get the attorney involved yet, because if you don’t agree that, hey, I thought you were going to put in 50% of the money and I am going to put in 50% of the money and you are now like, no you are going to put in 90% and I am going to put in 10% and I was going to work this amount. Well, that’s a direct split you can’t reconcile, end of story, you don’t even need the attorney, so expectations starting off, what are the expectations to find them? And then what’s the work load going to be? As an example, I had somebody call me, he was like, hey, my friend wants me to go and work for him, he wants me to be a partner in his business, and I would handle the finance and the contract etcetera and he would do the marketing and customer and actual web production, he was like, but I don’t trust him, he was like, because I don’t know if he is going to be straight with the money and I tell him to stop, my first response was, don’t go into business with him, he was like, no I want to do this and I said okay, fine, I will draft a disagreement, he is like, okay, no, change it, I want to do a new LLC and I am like, really? I am like, I can do this, but I am telling you, from your friend and as a client, it’s not a good idea, so I went and did it, he’s like, okay, let’s work on this, he comes back to me and says, no, I changed my mind, I am not going to, after realizing. You have to be able to trust this partner, I tell people all the time, you are going to business with this person, okay, do you trust them with the key to your house and with your wife and child? If the answer is no, you need to rethink this, or at least think it over seriously before you move forward… if you don’t trust this person, it’s ultimately a matter of trust in the beginning, do you really trust this person? Now, people change and you don’t know, but you ask that question, you could think you trust this person, but again, we don’t know what happens until the going gets rough sometimes, when people show what they are made of, that kind of stuff… STEVE: Absolutely, that’s really good… So, expectations, and do you trust them enough to keep them with your wife and children… MARC: Yes, once you’ve got to that point and you are sure, that’s when you go to the attorney and you say, we want this and we want this, in writing as to what we are going to do, well, is this a corporation which has a shareholder agreement or an LLC which has an operating agreement? You can put this stuff in there, now what people don’t realize is corporations, generally, people hear corporations, they hear bye-laws, bye-laws don’t address all these issues that I talked about and in an LLC, you have to do an operating agreement, that has addressed everything, you address those if you do it right. Of course if you don’t, if you put a trained monkey don’t do one, you basically got nothing, but if you put a you can do a shareholder agreement to address all these, an LLC will not need to address everything and if you don’t address it, I tell people, if you don’t address it with your business partner now, you are going to end up paying ten times what it would have cost you to have done this right in the first place, to have the courts tell you what you are going to be doing. And most people don’t usually like that, that’s not a win-win situation… STEVE: Speaking of win-wins, most partnerships start as 50-50, why might that be a really bad idea? MARC: One of the reasons is because a lot of partnerships are like 50-50, but at the end, we are going to go vote, and are going to try to make decisions, at 50-50, you are deadlocked, so how do you break that deadlock? And if you can’t break that deadlock you can’t move forward. So your company can stall without proper mechanism; 50-50. Second, a lot of people want to do something where they can get minority preferential treatment in bids and contracts, if it’s female or other minority owned, so all you can do is make a 51-49 or 60-40 split, but if you create an LLC, you can put all these protections in, just because you are the 40% person, you are not getting screwed by the person that has the majority votes, that’s one of the things that I love… I am doing that for a company right now, he’s got this product that he’s selling out, you know he wants to get the minority preference, he wants to put his wife as the majority owner, he wants to preferred himself in case of anything happens with him and his wife, that she runs the company and makes all the decisions, and she doesn’t really get the company. So, I as a good attorney can fix that, you can play with that, in an LLC, it’s a lot harder in a corporation. STEVE: So, somebody should have insured a majority, but just because you get the majority doesn’t mean you can’t protect yourself. MARC: Correct. And sometimes you can say, you know what? There’s a majority for voting, there’s a majority for money, so in a corporation, you are sort of stuck, but in someone, especially if passed to an S-corporation, but in LLC, you could say, listen, you are going to put in more money in, fair enough, we will give you more money back out, ahead of me, but I want 50% control, so we have to agree, or 51-49 and I want the control, you can do that split. Now, a lot of times, what I do, I tell people, if you have the deadlock, I put in the agreement, you find the third party that knows that area and ask him, because people go, oh, let’s come to the attorney and I am like, well that’s all fine and good, but if you guys are discussing a painting issue or growing your painting company, why are you coming to me to ask for expert opinion? I don’t know, I don’t know about painting, like I am not going to help you out on that, go to somebody else that knows that and ask them. Now, legal stuff, yeah, come to me and ask, and say hey, we need financial advice? Come ask me, but… so, I say, find an expert and talk to them… but if you don’t put anything in, then you are going to be screwed, because then you can’t make a decision, and essentially if you don’t agree, you have no recourse but to go to court… STEVE: That’s awesome, that very helpful. Now, selling a company, what does somebody need to know, how do they prepare, what… so Marc I come to you, say Marc, we’ve got this… April and I had this weird idea, we are going to sell our company… MARC: Okay, so first thing I ask is, how much are you going to sell it for? Then I say, where did you come up with that number? Because, what’s going to happen is you need someone objective who knows what they are doing, to look at your books and say, this would merit a price increase of x or a price of y, to sell the business, all things been equal. Now there’s always certain things that are out of the box, that you have this unique packing system, that there is a big craze for? That hey, that has the value that you are buying the business for, for that, as opposed to the business, as a business-operating-bringing-cash. So, actually the first thing I do is, I tell people, when you formed the business, think about what your succession plan is, going forward, what’s your ultimate goal with this business, do you want to be a 100? Do you want to sell it out to somebody else? Do you want to give it to your kid? Because based on that you need to prep, I usually prefer, when people want to go sell their business, start prepping, a year to two years in advance, because as we know with a lot of the trades and restaurants, cash flows through, cash doesn’t always get recorded on the tax, right or wrong, we all know it happens, cash is king. Well if a lot of your cash is king, then you can be very hard to ask for a price on your business, because people look at your numbers and say, why do you want this? Well, I take $40,000 of cash in a year, well, okay, do you want me to believe that, I tell you one horrible story, one restaurant here in Venice, the individual who sold the restaurant was putting money in for fake sales, paying the sales tax on it, so the number looked higher for the buyers. And the buyers bought it and paid more because they thought the sales were higher than they actually were… STEVE: Oh no. That’s bad MARC: Yeah… So, that’s why you do your prep, you do your work, so you can be prepared to show, this is why I deserve what I am asking for… STEVE: Okay, NDA; how important is NDA, what is an NDA? MARC: So, an NDA is a Non-Disclosure Agreement, it’s different from a Non-Compete, which is different from a Non-Solicit, people use these terms interchangeably and they are not. One, Non-Compete, the person who works for you cannot work in the same field at a certain period of time, doing what you do, Non-Compete. Non-Solicit, whoever leaves you cannot come back and go after your clients. STEVE: Interesting, so that one is not very popular or common? MARC: No, not common and then Non-Disclosure means you cannot disclose any information you obtain for any reason, except for the purpose you’ve received it, this is used often when people are looking into buying or selling a business, you sign a Non-Disclosure, hey, let’s see the financial so we don’t use it, etcetera. But you can also use it, if you don’t have the proprietorial system, such as a DYB coaching for example and someone is interested in the coaching program, you want them to sign this Non-Disclosure because if they decide not to buy in, and they have gotten some information, you don’t want them going and taking it elsewhere. So that’s a Non-Disclosure, and so you can do an agreement that has all three, but sometimes you don’t need all three, I have had somebody say listen, if somebody comes work for me, I don’t care if he works in a set of shops next door, I just don’t want him to go after my clients, Non-Solicit, fine, Non-Compete, I don’t care if he works for another company, I don’t care if he dissolves the company up, I don’t care, I just don’t want him to go after my clients, that’s a Non-Solicit, so it depends on what you want, what are you concerned about? then you know, get that. STEVE: Awesome. Very good, so as we wrap this up, Marc, this has been awesome, is there a question I should have asked or another point or comment that you would like to share with me? MARC: Yes, two of them actually. One is that, if you are going to form a business entity, 95% of the time, an LLC is the way to go, so picture your state change and talk to somebody, but it’s going to give you more flexibility if you need it for what you want to do, because you can always choose to be treated like a corporation with an LLC, but you can use its flexibility for elsewhere. Two, if you do want to use an attorney, every attorney who is licensed to practice in the state you are in, has to have passed the bar and your local bar has a list of every attorney, so if someone says they are an attorney, or you are looking at an attorney, you can go to your local bar, in this case it is floridabar.gov, you can look up the person, it will tell you how long they have been practicing, if they are licensed to practice in that jurisdiction and it will show disciplinary history, if any. So, anytime somebody says, I am an attorney… look them up on Florida bar or the bar or maybe they were dis-barred and maybe they are retired, I can’t tell you when we looked through sometimes, and I hate to say this but… look through the disciplinary hearings for fun sometime, seeing what people are doing… and a lot of times, what it is, is people are practicing without license because they have been dis-barred and they still continue to take people’s money to quote and do work, they are not licensed anymore, so always go to your local bar, check out say, is this guy licensed? Is there a disciplinary history? What is his story? How long have they been working? And CPA is by the way the same thing, if they have a CPA designation, go check with the state, state has information for CPAs. STEVE: Okay, fantastic, very good. Anything else we should have asked or you like to share? MARC: Yes, last thing, sorry… STEVE: No, it’s good… MARC: License is an insurance, a lot of times, when you use a sub, they are going to ask… you are going to want to make sure they have an insurance, a certain type. Always understand that the first step is asking for a certificate of insurance and don’t let them give it to you, make sure it comes from the insurance agency who has their policy. People take it and modify it and play around with it, and you can’t trust it if it doesn’t come from the insurance agency. STEVE: So, the certificate must come from the insurance agency? MARC: Should come from the insurance agency and you have them send you the certs… STEVE: Become listed… MARC: Yeah, so list the person… so the agency says, here it is, here is the person, it’s valid. Now, again, could they have cancelled that insurance? Yes, they could have, afterwards, but at least it’s not fraudulent, it’s legitimate and a lot of time people don’t realize what it is, so they don’t even know how to give it, but that’s why this part two is have that written agreement, because if you get that insurance and you have agreement say they will keep your insurance and they violate it, now, A, potentially your insurance may say, screw you, but B, you now have them on hook of being in the wrong. STEVE: Okay, fantastic, if there could be one more things that you would have shared, what would it have been? MARC: The last thing I am going to say is, in general rule we all want to believe the good in people, so, we give people chances, we do things sometimes without as much structure, because we don’t think of the negatives and I want people to understand that the reason you go to an attorney or somebody is if something goes wrong, yes it may go bad, go well, nothing ever needs to be done, and that’s great, I hope so, but if it does and things happen, this is what you are trying to protect. So, as much as I like kelvin, the person I am sharing my office with and it might be compartments, our agreements in writing, as much as I like people or certain things, the agreement is in writing, it clarifies the expectations and just in case something happens… what happens if someone gets Alzheimer’s… this person will never betray me, no, now they got sick, now they have Alzheimer or something, now they are doing something that they wouldn’t have done, but they are, so now what? Didn’t expect that? Too bad. STEVE: So, written agreement is not, I don’t trust you, written agreement is clarifying expectations… MARC: And giving yourself a chance to avoid, when something unfortunate happens. STEVE: Okay, very good, that is awesome. So, Marc, I am going to share your contact information here in just a moment for those who would like to reach out to you… MARC: Okay STEVE: But first, how about some fun questions, because… MARC: Sure… STEVE: Alright, you are a dangerous, not just legally but physically and have a black belt in… MARC: …Taekwondo STEVE: How many countries have you lived in? MARC: Lived in? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… STEVE: Five, how many languages do you speak? MARC: How well do I speak them… I have studied six different languages… STEVE: Six different languages, which is the most difficult? MARC: German was the most difficult for me… STEVE: German, interesting… okay, and food. You are a food kind of… I have been trying to encourage you to start like a food blog… MARC: I know and I have been starting and I have… STEVE: You will be the ultimate ABA for Venice, Florida as far as food blogs, I mean like, anytime we have a question about food, I just call Marc, food this, food that… what are some of your favorite dishes or types or styles of food? MARC: Sushi… STEVE: Okay MARC: Duck… STEVE: What’s the strangest thing you have ever tried with all the different countries you have lived in? MARC: The strangest thing was probably eating a fish that’s still living and breathing as you pull the flesh off the bone. STEVE: Okay, that good… that’s awesome. So, what countries? Germany, Japan? MARC: No, Demark, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, United States. STEVE: Awesome, fantastic… Marc, it has been great to have you on... MARC: Thank you Steve… STEVE: For those who have been listening, more to value, we have tons of take away here and looking forward to hearing feedback from this episode, it has been very, very helpful, for those who like to follow up with you, how can they best reach you? MARC: Email is the best way to go, my email should be… I think marcmileslaw.com, that’s the best way, because I am running around, I am not always in the office and stuff… STEVE: So, I have that here, and that’s mmiles@marcmileslaw.com MARC: Yes, awesome STEVE: Fantastic. Marc, thank you so much my friend. MARC: No problem, my pleasure Steve, anytime, take care…

Steve: Hey, everyone. This is Steve Larsen and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.   Speaker 4: (music starts) Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business, using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. (music ends)   Steve: All right you guys. Hey, I am super excited. Today I've got two very special, kind of unique guests on the podcast. As you guys know, a lot of times, I record my own thoughts on things that Russell and I are doing to make marketing awesome, but I like to go and interview other people as well. Today I've got on the show with me, it's Dallin Greenberg and Kristian Cotta. These guys have a pretty awesome unique way for building funnels. Anyways, I want to welcome you. Thanks for joining me.   Dallin: Appreciate it.   Kristian: What up.   Steve: Hey. I actually was thinking about it and Dallin, I don't even remember how we actually met. It wasn't that long ago, was it?   Dallin: Ah, no, not very. Just a couple weeks.   Steve: Just a couple weeks ago.   Kristian: I think Dallin met you the way that him and I kind of joke about he's the black box back alley hacker. He does all the ...   Dallin: If there's someone I want to meet, I find a way.   Kristian: He's the unconventional guy. You won't find his practices in a book or a manual.   Steve: Crap, that makes me a little nervous.   Dallin: Yeah, don't mess ... I told Kristian the other day ...   Kristian: Not black hat, black box.   Steve: Yeah. We can call it whatever we want, right? No, just kidding.   Kristian: Yeah.   Steve: Well, hey thanks for-   Dallin: I told Kristian, the other ... Oh, I'm sorry.   Steve: No, no, you get a say. Thanks for letting me wake you up at the butt crack of dawn and still being willing to share some cool stuff.   Dallin: Yeah.   Steve: How did you guys start meeting or working with each other?   Kristian: I'll let Dallin take that one.   Dallin: Yeah. I was working on a kind of unique project. We had a guy up in Scottsdale that owns a software. He's the developer. It's a software that does algorithmic stock trading and he was stuck with his marketing. He's a big guy. He's got a lot of stuff going, but anyway, we were trying to help him get some plans going.     I had actually watched Kristian on Periscope. I'd met a lot of guys on Periscope and one day I noticed Kristian was actually in Chandler, which is only a few miles away from me. Like I said, if I see someone, I'm going to find a way to meet him, so I'll comment in his Periscope a few times and little by little, end up getting his contact info. Day later we're in a Starbucks together talking about a plan that we can do, well I was more impressed with Kristian, what he was doing. My partner that I was working on with this marketing plan for this software developer, we were on kind of different pages. I have a background in sales and Kristian's dynamic was a little more my still, so my partner ended up leaving and I ended up asking Kristian, "Hey, is there anything on the side that you're working on or that I think we can do together?"   Steve: Mmm.   Dallin: Badda bing badda boom. We've ... I feel like it's the perfect love story. We've been hanging out pretty much ever since.   Steve: As long as he says the same thing, I guess that is true, right?   Dallin: Yeah. Yeah.   Kristian: Yeah, no. The funny thing, Steve, about Dallin is I'd been with ClickFunnels, I was one of the first 50 people that signed up for the beta version of ClickFunnels.   Steve: Wow. You're from the dark ages, Man, that's awesome.   Kristian: Dude. Yeah. We were just talking yesterday because we literally I mean the crazy part ... I'd been so resistant to start using Actionetics.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: Until I had to transfer from Infusionsoft to AWeber, AWeber to ActiveCampaign and we're trying to do something and it's like, "Dude, why don't we just use Actionetics?" It's all in here." I'm like, "Fine." We're switching everything over and I needed ... I'd been doing funnels and learning about ... like when I first signed up for ClickFunnels, I didn't know what a funnel was. I wasn't even sure what Russell had explained to me. It just sounded so cool and I was like, "Dude, I'm going to figure this thing out because what he's talking about and the numbers, I'm like, "That's what I need to be doing. That's it." I been doing this for two and a half years, which is kind of a long time in funnel years.   Steve: Yeah. Yeah, it is.   Kristian: It's not really that long of a time in regular terms, but I got on Periscope and started kind of talking about my business. At the time, I was trying to grow this fitness, be an online fitness guy.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: I'd used funnels to grow an email list of 3,500 people and I got on to Periscope and nobody cared about the fitness. They wanted to know how I was growing my email list and how I was doing my, how was I doing this business.   Steve: Interesting.   Kristian: Then I kind of became one of the funnel guys on Periscope and was a speaker at the Periscope Summit. I got this notoriety on Periscope for, they call me the King of Funnels. I'm like, "No, guys. I know some really big funnel guys on Periscope." They're like, "No, King of Funnels."   Steve: Wow.   Kristian: It's been like two and a half years of this little journey of learning funnels where it's been ... I'll tell you the three guys I credit everything to are Russell, Todd Brown and [Lo Silva 00:06:09].   Steve: Mmm.   Kristian: I actually had just finished the PCP coaching program with Todd Brown and those guys. Dallin, when he came to me was like, "Dude, this stuff you're talking about is awesome." I said, "Well, let's, I need a guy that gets it. That is driven and ... " that was Dallin. Now we've got this little, little agency we're trying to scale.   Steve: That's awesome, because good partners are hard to find. I remember I started doing this back in college. My buddy and I were driving traffic for Paul Mitchell and we were doing all this stuff. I ended up firing, going through nine different partners. It's cool that you guys found each other, you know what I mean? That's pretty rare just right there.   Kristian: Yeah. If you go back and talk about Dallin's ... there's a couple of key things that I was looking for, because I have an entire course. You love Periscope. I saw some of your Periscopes on YouTube and ...   Steve: Dang it. Man, those were the new days for me.   Kristian: Yeah. I was a speaker at the Periscope Summit in January.   Steve: Cool. Wow.   Kristian: Dallin's helped me develop this program and it's something that we've rolled out in beta and we're going to roll out as a digital product. It's called the Live Video Funnel. I've been working with Todd Brown and the guys at MFA on the entire sequence and the packaging and all that kind of stuff. They're calling Kurt [Malley 00:08:00] speaking at Marketing Funnel Automation Live in October and one of the things they're saying is that the biggest opportunity of 2017 is, they call it the Facebook Live Funnel, but I'm going to let you guys in on a little note. Facebook Live and Periscope don't work the same way. Even though they're both live video, they're different, so Dallin ... I needed somebody to help me with that aspect. I couldn't ... to be honest, you know this Steven,   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: I couldn't do all that, every single thing, every single aspect of a funnel.   Steve: No.   Kristian: The script writing, the copy writing, the editing, the videos for the VSL's, the strategy, the email marketing sequences, all the social media.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: What I'm really good, compliments what Dallin's really good at, like I said, his ability to get in on Facebook and recruit people. He has this really strong sense about building a team, which is one of those things that ... we both get along with people, but Dallin's good at that recruitment process. When you want to build and scale something and you need the right people, you need somebody like that.   Steve: That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, it's hard to find that stuff. Dallin, you and I, we were talking a little bit about some of the trials you guys went through. Obviously individually you do, but you guys met each other, what have you guys been working on and I guess what was the ... What are some of the issues you guys have run on, I guess, getting to where you are. You know what I mean?     Unspoken stories, you know that where none of us put in our marketing hardly ever unless it's part of our sales letter. "I was in the dumps, but now I'm flying high." These are like, really what kind of issues did you guys run into what you're doing now? What are you doing now, first of all?   Dallin: Well, the majority of our issues actually are from more individual sides. We're actually doing really good with our projects together.   Steve: Mmm.   Dallin: Your typical issues you run in together are testing. That's what funnels are, right, it's testing, testing, testing, testing. There's always that down side until you ... it's just a numbers game, right, until you find something that works. As far as the personal side, because I believe that this kind of runs, this is the fire that's on the inside, the Y factor from what I call it, right. My background's in sales, so I did door-to-door for years. I think, Steven, you've mentioned that you flirted with that a little bit but, I was really good at it.   Steve: Yeah. Yeah. That's like, I'm sorry to interrupt, but that's one of the best educations I've ever had.   Dallin: Yeah. Yeah.   Steve: I've got a marketing degree and I don't know what I learned from it. You know?   Dallin: Well, that's actually just what I was going to say. I was going to school for business and marketing and be honest, my classes were super redundant. I hated them. I was like, "Man, this is for years I've been planning on doing this and ... " Anyway I got into sales and I did pretty good at it. I just kept going. I ended up doing more recruiting and for six, seven years going out on the summers and taking a team out and helping manage and recruit and sell.   Steve: Yeah.   Dallin: You learn so much from just talking to people, the sale cycle, funnels, a different type of funnel, right?   Steve: Yeah.   Dallin: Learning how to build value to the point where it doesn't matter what you ask for money, because they love it so much that they're going to buy. It taught me a lot. Well, long story short, I made my transition. I was doing alarms and home automation. I made my transition with this solar boom.   Steve: Mmm.   Dallin: Solar's on fire and fortunately for us, we live in Arizona, one of the sunniest places in the world. Solar was hot, but a lot of stuff was happening politically. A lot of the utilities are trying to shut down solar here just because of different costs. It's a mess. They succeeded and actually the utility ... There's two main utilities in Arizona. They succeeded shutting down solar where I live.     In order for me to get work, I'd have to go an hour a day just to prospect clients, let alone keep my pipelines, my relationships, my contracts, everything going, because they're longer projects. It was really funny because I was really bummed because I was really excited about this transition. It was a huge jump for me because we were so comfortable with what we were doing, making awesome money and it was kind of just this really big leap of faith. Well, last April, fast forward a little bit, last April, our little girl, our daughter, she was four years old. She got diagnosed with leukemia.   Steve: Oh man.   Dallin: When that happened, we literally were going to leave for another summer, two days after she was diagnosed. It was crazy. Everything was just happening and days and days and days sitting in the hospital. I had always wanted to do something online my whole life, but I didn't want to ... I didn't know exactly what was happening. I didn't know where I wanted to put my foot in. I didn't want to mess with inventory and selling one off things. I wanted to do something on a big level. I just didn't know how to do it.     In the hospital you got a lot of time to yourself and so I'd study these things. I'd start looking at different processes. I'd find patterns. I would sign up for everyone's email list, not because I cared about their product. I wanted to see their system. I wanted to study the funnel. I wanted to study the email sequences and I started seeing the patterns.     That's when I kind of got into a lot of this other stuff with Periscope and live stream. I was like, "Man, this is the future. I get it." I think every guy that's doing any sort of digital marketing has a day where they, it kind of clicks and they say, "Holy smokes. I can really ... This is powerful. This is how you can reach a lot of people." What everyone wants to do is have a voice and do something.     I ended up switching my major, going to school for persuasion and negotiations were my sayings. I was a business communication major and I had that emphasis in persuasion and negotiation. Looking back on everything now, it was just perfect. Everything kind of worked out really, really good. I was kind of like, my little side, so we really hit this kind of rock bottom where it was like ... financially we took a massive hit because I wasn't able to go out, drive an hour and do all this kind of stuff. This last year-   Steve: Yeah. You needed to be home. Yeah.   Dallin: This last year has really been an investment of my time and I just kind of feel like I went back to school. I feel like I'm getting way more out of this school than four years of collegiate, right?   Steve: Easily. Man, how's your daughter now? If you don't mind me asking.   Dallin: She's awesome. She's in a maintenance phase right now, got another year left of treatments, but she's ... hair's back and muscles coming back and went back to school. She's in a really, really good spot right now. Appreciate it.   Kristian: She's strong too. You should see her.   Steve: Really?   Dallin: Yeah.   Steve: That's amazing.   Dallin: It's from everything that she went through. She got down to, had to relearn to walk, lost all her muscles. She was a little skin and bones and now she's this little muscle ball.   Kristian: Now she's a beast.   Dallin: She's awesome.   Steve: I appreciate you guys sharing that kind of stuff. I mean it's ... because most of the ... I've never interviewed anyone on this who hasn't gone through something crazy, you know. It's not like the path is always clear, either. Usually it isn't.   Dallin: Yeah.   Steve: There's a lot of times I wake up and come here, I'm like, "I don't even know. I know I got to work on something, but I don't know what." It's like going through this hazy fog, so I appreciate that. Then there's all the personal side and all the things going on. Yeah, I first started getting into this stuff, little bit similar with door-to-door sales. I started looking around going, "What the heck?" We're driving out and there's all these billboards everywhere. I was like, "People call these things ready to buy." I'm knocking on people's doors all day long and they're not wanting to buy it when they wake up. I've got to go convince people who weren't planning on spend money. Like, "How do I do this?" I start putting ads everywhere and that's how I started getting phone sales and stuff. I was like, "There's something to this." Anyways, I-   Dallin: See, that's funny because I was kind of the same person. All the other managers are, "Dallin, stop trying to reinvent the wheel. It works."   Steve: DS, yeah.   Dallin: DS, this. I'm like, "No, guys. There is a better way." My motto in everything in life is there is always a better way. I don't care what you say and what's working. Something can be tweaked and something can be done to scale.   Steve: Yeah. Yeah, definitely.   Kristian: Which is funny, because Russell always says, "You can tell the pioneers because they're lying face down with arrows in their back."   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: I guess in this case, it wasn't really pioneering. You were trying to find the people laying face down.   Steve: Yeah. Yeah.   Dallin: Yeah.   Steve: Side stepping all the other people who were already face down because they knocked 400 doors that day, right?   Dallin: Yeah, seriously.   Steve: What are you guys working on right now though? You guys mentioned that there's some awesome things going on. What's your current funnel, if you don't mind talking about that? [inaudible 00:18:19] sounds like, maybe ...   Kristian: Dallin said like perfect timing. I feel like it has been. We joke about being a startup because ultimately we are, to the point that we're even in the process of creating our business plans and our SOP's and all that kind of stuff, so that we can talk to some investors. We have some investors that we're talking to in order to really have the capital that we think we need to be able to scale this thing quickly, instead of Facebook ads tested at $10 a day for 50 weeks.   Steve: Yeah. Yeah.   Kristian: Yeah. The whole reason I got into learning funnels was, you guys talked about door-to-door sales and I have 15 years of commercial real estate experience. I worked with clients like L.A. Fitness and McDonald's. I represented McDonald's for the state of Arizona and Burger King and Taco Bell, so pretty big name companies.     There's a lot of guys that would be happy with that, but the problem I had was that I kept looking at the deal size of what I was doing. It was constantly kind of like this feast or famine situation where you either had a huge check or you had nothing. Literally, nothing. It kind of got to the point where I was like, "Man, there's a better way to do this." Very similar. You guys hear the consistent theme here? There's a better way.     That was kind of the first step of me saying, "I'm going to figure out how to streamline this" so that it wasn't even so much ... I just kept seeing all the guys that were buying the properties doing all these big deals. They weren't even in real estate. They had these other businesses that were generating cash flow and here I am putting these deals together that are making, Dallin and I had this exact conversation, making these guys over a million dollars and they're like, "Oh hey, thanks. Here's 40 grand."   Steve: Yeah. Yeah.   Kristian: What's wrong with this equation? I'm the one that did the whole thing, the financials and all that. I just didn't have the money. That was the start of it.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: Then you add on top of it that we got into a network marketing company and did really well, but we got stuck right under about 10 grand a month for like 18 months. It turned into another full time job where I was 40, 50 hours a week at every Starbucks from east to west meeting people. I'm like, "This is not working."   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: Those two combined, I was like, "If I get online, I can figure out how to do both of these. I don't have to pick because I can leverage myself."   Steve: That is kind of the funny thing I learned about ... because I got into an MOM. I went and did exactly what my upline was saying. Got 13 people my first move.   Kristian: Oh, wait, your [inaudible 00:21:42] not duplicatable.   Steve: No. Not at all.   Kristian: I don't care. If I find enough of the right people, it won't have to be.   Steve: Yeah. Yeah. My first month, I recruited 13 leeches. Man, they wouldn't do a dang thing unless I was like pushing them in the back with a cattle prod. I was like, "Ah. There's got to be a better way to do this." That's why I took it online and did a lot better. I definitely relate with that.   Kristian: Yeah. The crazy part about this is, like Dallin was saying, he's, shoot, some of the advanced strategies ... Dallin's has this like ... he understands and can see what the outcome is that we're trying to do. He gets it. He gets the whole flow and process of this, of how funnels work. He's been studying them. I just think for a big part, he just needed to connect certain pieces and be able to see what's going on behind the scenes that you can't see online.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: We talk about ... the hardest part about knowing how to do funnels is focusing because when you understand it and it clicks and you realize what you can do, it's like .... Someone starts talking you're like, "Oh my God. I know how to make money with that. Oh my God."   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: It's like entrepreneurial ADD exacerbated.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: Forget entrepreneurial ADD. This is like an entrepreneurial ADD addiction.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: That's the issue, so we've had to get very focused on okay what's the quickest and most pressing thing at the moment that we can make money with, so that we can reach our long term goals. Like I said, Lo Silva is one of the guys that I credit a lot of what I learned from. There's three little things that I take from them and that's think big, start small, scale fast.   Steve: Interesting. Think big, start small, scale fast.   Kristian: Yeah, that's kind of our little mantra.   Dallin: Yeah. That leads into basically what we're doing now. Our whole plan without getting too much into detail is we have a very, very big picture. Just like a funnel, we have our personal value ladder. Our big picture is more in investments, real estate, things like that. Those are our high tickets. Right.   Steve: Yeah.   Dallin: For the time being, we need to make sure that we couple that with clients, so we have our lead gen system, our agency that's doing multiple things, SCO work and funnels, and social media strategies and management and that way it can help us scale. Our agency essentially fronts the bills and I guess the best way to put it is we want everything that we do to be self-sufficient. If we build something, the entire goal-   Steve: Keep it in hands.   Dallin: Well, yes and no. The entire thing is for that project to sustain itself, so you understand once you get going with your Facebook marketing and such, it gets to the point where you reinvest X amount back into it. Then it lives, it breaths on it's own kind of. It just needs to be monitored, right.   Steve: Yeah.   Dallin: If we have this solid balance between us of we have clients coming to us for done-for-you services, that's awesome. That's cash. That keeps us busy. That keeps workers of ours busy. Then in the meantime, if we can couple that with 40, 50% of our other time for in-house projects, because Kristian and I already have entrepreneurial ADD, we're always thinking of ideas. We always have something going on or a lot of times a client that comes in has something that sparks an idea.   Steve: Yeah.   Dallin: We'll, like you said, we'll keep them in-house and then we funnel them. We get them to the point where they self-sustain and all of a sudden, we have our house projects, our client projects and it's just a very healthy business model. You don't see a lot of very sustainable and scalable models. You know what I mean?   Steve: Yeah.   Dallin: Especially, because I've been with very, very, very big companies with these companies I've sold for and you find ... one of the things I like to do is study patterns and development. I'm really into the business development side of things. You look at the ones that have made it, that have succeeded and that are scaled to the massive, massive billion dollar companies and that's kind of what they do. They make sure they have kind of that happy medium, that solid balance in all these different areas and factors and that's kind of what we're trying to do.     One of the projects we're working on right now is a political campaign funnel. This is just one that's easy to scale and we're just pretty much hacking it and taking advantage events which one of the things coupling social media with funnels is current events, man. That's, they kill. If you can find something trending and good and that has ... that you can milk for a long time, you better believe we're going to find a way to make, pinch money out of it, right.   Steve: Yeah. Isn't it the-   Dallin: I'll let Kristian talk about that.   Steve: The political campaign funnel, is that the one you downloaded I think from Sales Funnel Broker?   Kristian: Ah, no.   Steve: Maybe that was you, maybe it wasn't. I don't know. There's some guy, he downloaded it and came back and he's like, "This is the coolest thing ever." I was like, "Just the share [funnel 00:27:53] free one I got from someone else. Glad you like it."   Kristian: Yeah, no. I got the idea from actually from Funnel ... I got part of the idea from Funnel U. To be honest, as much as we know about funnels, something clicked when I watched Russell's video inside the membership site for the political bridge funnel, where it was like, "I see it." It was that coupled with the, the funnel stacking I got that whole idea of moving them from a front end funnel to a webinar funnel to a high ticket and how you stack those.   Steve: Sure.   Kristian: Bridging and when all the sudden the bridging made sense to me, I said, "Oh my God." Just like what Dallin was talking about here. Ultimately our goal is to, take the same amount of time to do all this work to go and work with somebody and do a commercial real estate transaction, where we're an investor or we're buying the property and people are investing with us, as it does to sell a t-shirt. Just time is time, it's just the size of the value and how you frame your mind around it. We are in the process of growing our agency. The whole point of it is to, if you think of construction companies, really good construction companies constantly have work that's in place to keep their employees working, so that they have the best team, right.   Steve: Mmm. Yeah.   Kristian: That's what they're always talking about is we just have to keep work so we can keep these guys busy. It's not about keeping them busy, but we also want to have the team in place because ultimately when we have our ideas, we can get them shipped quicker.   Steve: Yeah. I've been approached by a few people lately and they're like, "I got these awesome guys. I absolutely love them." He's like, "What work do you have? I just don't want them to go anywhere else." He's like, "I don't care what it is. I just got to bill."   Dallin: That's exactly what it is.   Steve: Yeah, interesting.   Kristian: Yeah. That's the idea, but to get back to what we're doing right now is I got the idea of how Russell explained the political bridge and my dad had ordered 100 t-shirts from my best friend. My best friend did all the screen printing for the Super Bowl in Santa Clara.   Steve: Jeez.   Kristian: He's got one of the largest screen printing companies on the west coast, based here in Phoenix. He has a company very similar to what Trey Lewellen started with Teespring.   Steve: Interesting.   Kristian: He's set in and he came to us and said, "Hey, why don't you partner with me and just handle the marketing on this." He's talked to me about doing some marketing for them for different aspects of their company. Now we're working together and the whole idea came up I said, "Well, you know what? I think I can do it." Before I was hesitant because I was like, "Well, I'm in the digital media space. I'm selling digital products." That was big hangup was I've got to sell to these entrepreneurs.     Then when this political bridge funnel that Russell talked about when he talked about how you move people from this list to this list, I went, "Oh my God. I can build a list in anything. I can just bridge them." It was a combination of that video inside of Funnel U and my participation in Todd Brown's PCP, Partnership Coaching Program, where they were really working on educational based marketing, and script and copy writing. The confidence level in my own ability to write copy had shifted to where now MFA is outsourcing some of their done-for-you client work to Dallin and I and having me write copy and script for their video sales letters.   Steve: What?   Kristian: Yeah.   Dallin: That's real, man.   Kristian: That tells you the ...   Dallin: We scale fast. Remember that third principle. We scale fast.   Steve: Yeah. Yeah. I wrote all those down. That's amazing. What's funny is that people don't realize that it literally is the exact same amount of work to do a small company as a big one.     My buddy, I mean as far as building a funnel and things like that, my buddy and I were building an [inaudible 00:32:11]. It was the first funnel I ever built with ClickFunnels and it was a smartphone insurance company and we were ... we got out of that for a lot of reasons, but it was interesting though because I was building it. We put it all out. That's actually when I got into ClickFunnels and it was right after ClickFunnels left beta. I was like, "Hey, I'm going to build this whole thing out before my ClickFunnels trial runs out." I'd never built one and I just killed myself for the next little while. We got it out.     Then this guy approaches me in Florida. He's like, "I need a funnel for some of my ..." He was selling water ionizers or something. I was like, "Oh man. This is a big company. They're already making a couple million a year." I was blown away. I was like, wait, this is the same exact amount of work as it was for the small little startup. Anyways, I thought that was interesting you said that.   Kristian: Yeah. That's what we talk about is that it's easier to work with those bigger companies. They get it.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: You work with the smaller companies and they're worried about how much money it's going to cost them. The reality is that the more we put ourselves in a position to work with guys like you and Russell and guys like Todd and Lou Coselino and David Perriera and all them at MFA, they're saying, "Man, why are you, how come you're not charging double and triple?"   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: Dallin and I are sitting here like seriously if they're willing to pay us to write scripts for, to outsource their ad copy to us for some of their client work, what's that say? I mean, we're literally working with, doing work for the guys that are considered the best in the industry.   Steve: That's ... Yeah. Yeah.   Kristian: It's just a mindset shift is what it is. That has made it a little easier to have a conversation with someone and say, "You know what? We can take on this project. Here's how much it is."   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: They're like, sticker shock. Well, sticker shock. You can go and just have someone build the pages for you, but it's not going to convert. I know that for a fact because copy os what converts, right.   Steve: You know Tyler Jorgensen?   Kristian: You know what, it sounds familiar. I think I-   Steve: He said the same thing to me. He's like, "You charge 10 grand to build a custom funnel?" I was like, "Yeah." He's like, "Why not 15?" I was like, "I don't know. I'd never thought about that before." I thought 10 was kind of the mark. He's like, "No, no, no, no. I'd do 15, 20, 25." I was like, "You've got to be kidding." That is is just a mindset shift. You'll get better people to build for anyways, whatever it is.   Kristian: The big thing for us-   Dallin: True and at the same time ...   Kristian: Yeah, I don't know.   Dallin: You there?   Kristian: Yeah, you cut-   Steve: Kind of lost you there.   Kristian: The big thing for us is really to build a team, Steve, and to have that team in place and be able to have people that focus on all the different areas of the funnels, so that they get really, really good at that. They don't have to know the whole process because that's what I've spent the last two and a half years doing, right.   Steve: Wow.   Kristian: They can be part of this and be part of building something and helping these clients and really enjoy what they're doing. Then, like I said, when we have these ideas we can ship them. I know you want to know and your audience probably wants to know what it is that we're doing, which is what got you in. I mentioned my friend, Bryant. He's got this company like Teespring. He's got everything in place to roll this out. We had this idea for how to start doing that. We took advantage of knowing that the campaigns going on right now. I mentioned to you I think my dad bought like 100 Trump t-shirts from him. I was like, "Those are really cool shirts." My dad's like, "Yeah, man You should do this funnel stuff and figure out how to sell these to everyone. Look how crazy everyone is about Trump. Trump's going to kill it." At the time, it was still in the Republican Primaries. I'm like, "Well, I don't want to go build a funnel."   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: "Then trump doesn't win the primaries." But as he started pulling away I'm like, "Oh, let's start testing some stuff." We tested one funnel and surprisingly the Facebook campaign got a lot of clicks, but there wasn't a lot of opt-ins and conversions on the funnel. What it did and I think this is one of the biggest skill sets that people who are elite develop versus people that are frustrated and saying this isn't working for me is understanding the information that they're getting and what to do with it. You might not have a winning campaign or a funnel that's making money, but to understand what kind of info you're getting and how to use that to do the next thing is that whole testing process is what separates those that are killing it from those that are getting killed. That first funnel that we did, didn't make money. Not at all.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: I mean it lost $1,200. I went to Dallin and I said, "Dude, this is awesome." He's like, "Huh?" I said, "Look at the retargeting list that we got." Then we went and we tweaked this and I said, "What if we change the front end," and at that time Mike Pence had just been named Trump's VP. I'm like, "Who the hell is Mike Pence? I never heard of this guy before." I started asking people, they're like, "No." Unless you're from Indiana, you don't know who Mike Pence is. I go, "Should Trump have picked Mike Pence? Isn't there someone else." I'm like, "Boom. Is there a vice presidential debate in the Republican Party?"   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: We created a little mini survey around is Mike Pence the right one. First of all, you've got all these people that love Trump and they're hardcore republicans and now you're creating an internal debate. Everyone wants to voice their opinion, but they don't want to be judged.   Steve: Yeah. People get pretty intense about that for sure.   Kristian: Yeah. We created a mini survey.   Dallin: Oh yeah.   Kristian: We created a mini survey and we had this retargeting list from the first time and we started running ads. I didn't expect and I don't think Dallin either, that it was going to do as well as it did, but I mean, we had in less than 12 hours, we had 500 email opt-ins.   Steve: What? Oh my gosh.   Kristian: I was like, "Oh my God." I'm like, "Holy crap." I'm like, "What the hell's going on?" Of course the first goal is to try and get the funnel to break even. What we had to do was we were getting so much information so quickly that we really had to be on our toes and make adjustments and modifications. What we figured out through the first week of testing this is there's so much activity on this funnel. Just to give you the stats, after what was Dallin, really 6 days of running the ads, we got 2,600 email subscribers?   Dallin: Five and a half, yeah.   Kristian: Yeah. Five and a half days, we got 2,600 email subscribers.   Steve: Wow.   Kristian: K, the funnels not at break even, but here's what I want whoever's listening and whoever wants to take this information understand is the testing process. We figured out between two front end offers-   Steve: Which one was the winner.   Kristian: Which one's working better.   Steve: Yeah. Which one's the awesome one. Yeah.   Kristian: It's still not winning. Our free plus shipping is not, it's not helping us break even. The reason for that is because we're getting so many opt-ins. On a normal free plus shipping, you're not getting as many people clicking on the ads, right.   Steve: Right.   Kristian: Well, we're getting 5, 6 times the amount of people subscribing to the email-   Steve: Would you, in that scenario, would you ever try and get even less people. It'd be counter-intuitive maybe, but I would just start tweaking the free plus shipping, I guess.   Kristian: No. No. Well, no. We can't-   Dallin: The strategy-   Kristian: Yeah. We can't really tweak it because it's not like we're going to offer anything cheaper than free plus shipping. When you start looking at all the different things we can offer, there's not a lot of options, but here's what Dallin and I have figured out is that we think we've created a new funnel. It's not really new in the sense of what you and I and Russell and all these other guys think of.   Steve: True.   Kristian: In terms of Russel and [Daygin Smith 00:41:29] coming up with the black box funnel, right.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: It's just soft offer funnel, a front end soft offer. We think that we've come up with what we call a backdoor funnel.   Steve: Interesting.   Kristian: You get so many people on your email list. You get as many people to take the first offer and you get as many people to take your upsell as possible to figure out how close to break even you can get. If you look at 2,600 people, we go back and look at the numbers, only about 115 of those 2,600 ever saw the offer.   Steve: Huh.   Kristian: Now we have an opportunity to present those people with the offer again. Well, how do you do that in a way that's going to get a lot of people to open the e-     All right. Want me to ...We cut off here at the point of high dramas. As I was mentioning, we got so many email subscribers and such a lower number based on the email subscribers because we didn't expect to have that many, that we still weren't at break even, but we have a ton of people that we can show an offer to. It's a little different obviously because our price points ... We're doing apparel and things like that.   Steve: It's like delaying the offer almost on purpose, right. I mean this is ... awesome.   Kristian: Yeah. Remember, we started this whole thing with a survey, right, something that people were very passionate about, so a lot of polarity in there. They want their opinion-     They also want to know what everyone else thinks, where they fall in line here. We thought, "Oh my God. Somebody that votes, that voices their opinion, takes the time to put a vote in wants to know what the results are." We created a results page that shows them the results and has a special offer that all those people haven't seen. When we send it in the email and we tell them here's the results of the survey, the open rates are and the click through rates are sky high.   Steve: How long are you waiting to actually send them this results page?   Kristian: A couple of days, so-   Steve: Oh really. Wow.   Kristian: Yeah. I mentioned Actionetics. The whole reason that we started doing this is because we wanted to ... since we're having people take a survey and we're offering them this gift, we want to make sure we get as many people that take us up on that gift for taking the time to vote. We have a few of those triggers built in there, "Hey, don't forget to grab your free gift. We noticed you took the time, maybe something happened. Go back here and grab your gift." Then we make sure that everybody sees the results page a couple of days later.   Steve: A couple of days. That definitely is a different style for sure. You don't think that hurts conversions at all?   Kristian: No, I mean. It's a survey, right?   Steve: Sure.   Kristian: The point of high drama and the suspense and all that. We're still testing it, again, like I mentioned earlier that the biggest thing I think that separates those that are successful and those that aren't is to understand the type of information that you get.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: We may found out that we need to send the results sooner, but we don't know. We've got to test.   Steve: It's interesting positioning too of you saying, "Hey. It look's like. Thanks for taking it. Here's your results. I don't know if missed this, but just jump back and get that." That's interesting. Like they missed it. They missed the gift.   Kristian: Yeah. Yeah. "You forgot to grab your gift." That's our first step and then in the email that comes after they've taken the survey, "Hey, we're in the process of tallying up the results. We'll send them to you as they're updated."   Steve: Interesting. It keeps the loop open, basically.   Kristian: Hmm-hmm(affirmative). Exactly. Exactly.   Steve: Man, that's awesome. Well, hey is there a URL that we can go check that out on? I don't want to pollute or dilute any of your stats, so if not that's fine, but ...   Kristian: Yeah. We're just running ads to this right now.   Steve: Good.   Kristian: We're in the process of, like I said, this was just an idea that my dad came up with. I've got to give him credit for the initial idea, but now it's turned into kind of a new business entity, right.   Steve: Yeah.   Kristian: We're growing this email list and the concepts that Russell talks about the how to bridge funnels and lists and things like that. We're starting to build a list now in that republican, conservative, survivalist category. We're going to take it a step further and build out a home page and start doing some different stuff with it.   Steve: That's interesting. You're going to go through and who's going to keep opening all the emails over and over again, looking at all the stats of all the people around. These are the hyper active political caring people. You know what I mean? That's awesome. That's a really clever way to segment out those people. That's fantastic.   Kristian: Yeah. Yeah. You never know where your next business entity is going to come from.   Steve: Interesting. Gosh, well, hey, I know we've been on quite a while. Thanks for dropping all the bombs of gold you guys did. I don't know what happened to Dallin, but ...   Kristian: Yeah. He just texted, said thank you. He's trying to get back on, but I know we've got to take the kids to school and stuff, so-   Steve: Awesome. Well, hey man, I appreciate it. Thank you so much and this was awesome.   Kristian: Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it, Steve. Love meeting new people that are doing the same thing as us and glad that we can reach more people that are trying to learn how this works and kind of help them understand the process and that if they just stick at it and keep testing. That's really the big thing I think is testing and learning is how you get better at it.   Steve: You're kind of a scientist going through this, for sure. Going in an industry you know will make money obviously, but whatever you're doing specifically, you might almost always be the first. The think big, start small and scale fast. That's huge.   Kristian: Yeah. If anyone wants to connect with us, Dallin and I are both on Facebook. We mentioned Periscope. I do a lot of broadcasting on there with what I call the Live Stream Marketing Funnel Show. We're rolling, if people are interested in learning how to use live video, we've got that coming out. Yeah. Connect with us on social media. Kristian Cotta and Dallin Greenberg.   Steve: Okay, yeah. Then you've got the Health Success Podcast. Guys, go check him out at Health Success Podcast as well as he said Live Stream Marketing?   Kristian: Well. Yeah. Just go to KristianCotta.com. It'll take you right there.   Steve: Cool. Awesome.   Kristian: Kristian with a K.   Steve: Kristian with a K. Cotta, right?   Dallin: I'm in.   Kristian: Kristian with a K. Cotta. Dallin's in here. He just got back in.   Dallin: Dude, I don't know what happened. I was getting all excited what Kristian was saying and then just cut off.   Kristian: It's the point of high drama, that's what we were talking about.   Dallin: I know. It was. That's what I told Amy. Is it over?   Steve: It is now.   Kristian: Yeah. We're just wrapping it up.   Steve: Awesome.   Dallin: Sorry.   Steve: It's good. Hey, thanks guys so much.   Kristian: All right. Take care, Steve.   Dallin: See you man.   Steve: All right. Bye-bye.   Speaker 4: (music starts) Thank for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Have a question you want answered on the show? Get your free t-shirt when your question gets answered on the live Hey Steve Show. Visit salesfunnelbroker.com now to submit your question. (music ends)

In this episode we sit down with Centricity Music General Manager, Steve Ford. 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a:hover{color:#8f8f8f !important;} www.fullcirclemusic.orgFCM007_-_Relationships_with_Steve_FordDuration: 00:50:21You're listening to The Full Circle Music Show. The why of the music biz.Chris: Welcome back to the Full Circle Music Show, it’s Chris Murphy and I'm sitting right beside Seth Mosley. How are you buddy?Seth: I'm good man. It's a busy week, lots of good stuff going on over here at the studio. And I’m excited to take just a few minutes out of our schedule to talk to one of our favorite people in the industry, Mister Steve Ford.Steve has been a guy that I've known for a long time, was one of the people that I met moving to Nashville in the music business. And we've talked to a lot of people on the creative side so far but we haven't yet talked to anybody on the label side. So, you think of the guy that sits in a dark room with a suit in a corner office, that's this guy! Except for not, he actually sits in a what is a pretty awesome office, he's the general manager of a label company called Centricity Music; has been pretty massively successful in the past couple of years and really since they opened. But, he's a really great leader and speaks to what they look for in a good producer, in a good artist, in a good team member at their label.So, if you're wanting to get involved in the music industry, this is a great episode to listened to. I learned a ton and I think you will too.Chris: You know, being a podcast junky, it's nice to meet a fellow podcast enthusiast as well. We had some great conversations in the episode but also talked a lot about our favorite podcasts on and off the mic. He's just a great guy, great to get to know him and I really appreciate Seth you setting this up. Another great interview and I can't wait to listen to it.Seth: And you can check out his company at centricitymusic.com. They have a lot of great artists that I think you'll dig.Audio clip commencesHey podcast listeners, something is coming February 1st 2016. Have you ever thought about a career in song writing or music production? We have created a couple courses with you guys in mind. We've been getting a lot of feedback on people wanting to know more about how to become a song worker; how to become a professional music producer or engineer. These courses were designed to answer some of those questions. Go to fullcirclemusic.org and sign up there for more information.Audio clip endsChris: You were saying earlier before we started rolling that you were a podcast guy.Steve: Oh yeah, big podcast guy.Chris: And, you've heard this podcast before?Steve: Yeah. I've listened to the first three.Chris: Okay. So, can I ask you to go out on a limb and give us a grade so far?Steve: You know what? I'd give them a solid B+. I want them longer. That's my thing; I want to go into the background. I want to hear when you did Brown Banishers which is funny because I've worked a lot with Brown but you didn't get past Amy Grant.Seth: Sure.Steve: I mean, this is the guy who worked with from everybody from Third Day to Mercy Me to Why Heart, he's done everybody like come one there are stories there. I tell people I'm on the corporate side because of Brown Banisher because of how he worked. I was an engineer in LA for ten years and he would come out and mix records with us, it was at a little place called Mama Joes and I would see him on the phone going, “Happy birthday sweetie.” Later knowing that it was Ellie; missed her first walk and all of these other things. And when my daughter was born, I was like, I can't do this. I needed a life and so I started praying and Peter York calls. So it’s because of him so it's fun to hear some his stories. I did a lot of records win Jack Joseph Puig and–Seth: And you were engineering at the time?Steve: Yeah. I was an engineer at LA.Seth: And at the time that was really engineering?Steve: Oh my gosh.Seth: You were cutting tape and…Steve: Yeah! I've cut a lot of two inch tape, quarter inch tape, half inch–Seth: Stuff that I hope to never do.Steve: You don't have to, Jericho does it for you.[Laughter] Seth: I don't know if Jericho has ever cut tape? In school he did.Steve: Now, I feel really old.Chris: Is that kind of like when you're in a biology class and not in any other time of your life will you need to dissect a frog but you just have to do it for the experience of it. Is that what it's become cutting tape?Steve: I don't know if you have to do it even that. It's sort of like this legend of starting a fire with flint, you know? It's sort of like, “Yeah. I used to cut tape.”[Laughter] Seth: I mean there's probably a resurgence. I would imagine knowing the process of what coffee has become and how artists.Steve: Yeah.Seth: I think there's a big thing in maybe it's the millennial generation or whatever it is but I think people are drawn back to slower, older more hands on processes it seems like than just pushing the button or going through the drive through–Steve: And somethings, don't you think, in some things its like just give me the button. Give me the filter on Instagram.Seth: That is true! That's true but then you've got the whole wave of people roasting their own coffee beans now and then they're grinding the with a hand grinder, and then they're putting in a… And, I'm saying this because we have like three artists that we work with; that come in and they bring their whole coffee apparatus.Steve: And they measure how much coffee goes in, weigh it?Chris: Yeah.Steve: My son has one of those has a scale that weighs, how much coffee goes in. Oh yeah just …Chris: Yeah, I thought you were going to say some of the artists that you work with, they actually bring their own barista in the studio because–Steve: I'm sure that will happen.Seth: That’s kind of a prerequisite to be in a band. There has to be at least one barista.Steve: True.Seth: In the band.Steve: There has to be one business guy in every band and one guy who can make great coffee.Seth: And then the guy who can actually play the instruments.Steve: Yeah. Then the artist.[Laughter]Chris: And then the fourth guy on base who just knows how to shape everybody's beards. He's more of a grooming guy.Seth: And sometime there's a drummer.[Laughter] Steve: You don't need a drummer; there are machines for that now.[Laughter] Seth: Yeah. I mean, just take us through a little bit of your journey, you started in L.A.?Steve: I was born and raised in L.A.; read an article when I was 14 years old about this guy named Sir George Martin. And I was like, “What? You can do that for a living?”Seth: Who is George Martin?Steve: He produced this little band called the Beatles, probably never heard of…most 20 year olds haven't heard of them so…Chris: And then isn't true that he went on from there to write The Game of Thrones?Steve: Did he? I'm not a Game of Throne person–Chris: Okay that's R.R. Martin, sorry.Steve: Wrong one. But I mean, you read about these guys and you sort of open a door into a new world that you didn't know existed. And so, I was 18 years old, junior out of high school walked into the recording studios and started from there.Seth: So, you didn't wait to have some sort of a college thing to get internships?Steve: My mom was like Reeds parents which was like, “That’s a nice hobby but let's make sure you have a backup plan, a plan B.” And so, I still went to school, I still went to college did all of that. Don't ask me my grade point average because I was going home at 4 o'clock in the morning, waking up at 8 to crawl into my first class, it was terrible. But yeah, my first job in the recording studio, I was making $500 a month from 6 o'clock to 3 o'clock in the morning.Seth: Living in L.A?Steve: Living in L.A.Seth: And that probably paid for a tenth of the rent?Steve: Maybe.Chris: Or, just the gas to get around?Steve: But I loved every second of it. And then from there you sort of work your way up. So, I did that… Like I said earlier my daughter was born and I was like an engineer’s life is a hard life in LA especially. Those were the days when you'd pay $1,500 a day block booking a studio; you booked a studio and you're paying $1,500 if your there six hours or eight there 24 hours. And a lot of them stayed 24 hours, and you just have next, next, next, next.Chris: And you've got to be the first guy there.Steve: First guy there, last guy out, yeah. You're sitting there winding tables at 6 o'clock in the morning going, “I just want to go home.”Chris: When the bug caught you, from that point until the time that you walked into that first studio and got a job, what skills were you harnessing?Steve: None.Chris: Just reading liner notes?Steve: Yeah. Lying in the floor, reading and going, there's one in North Hall and I'd write it down on a piece of paper because I grew up in the San Fernando Valley and start looking for them. Hey man that where Bill [inaudible 8:50] studio is or whatever the studio was and start. There wasn't really a whole lot you can do to prepare for it. It's no like in high school you go, “I wonder what class…”  I was in all the choirs and all the music stuff and that didn't prepare you for it. Probably the greatest skills for a studio engineer especially a starting one is being attentive, being hungry, being prepared and that depends on who you're working with.When you working together with somebody so well, I'm sure you and your team, they know what you want in advance and plugin something in before you even have to ask, that’s just working together. I've told a lot of wannabe engineers who want to go to some of these very expensive schools, don’t do it. Take that money, live on it for two years and go give yourself away for free for two years. You learn more two years in a studio than you will however long you go to one of the expensive ones.Chris: Yeah.Steve: It's just doing it. Just aligning the tape machine which is once again, it's like starting fire with flint again, knowing the lines taped but you learn by doing that.Chris: Absolutely.Steve: You learn by making a lot of mistakes. I recorded a lot of bad drum sounds.[Laughter] It just happened and then you go, “Oh if I do this, its better.” And 10,000 hours man, it takes 10,000 hours.Chris: Again, I think that it's not that schooling is necessarily a bad thing but the way that you learn in life versus the way that you learn in a classroom is different because for the most part, a classroom will deduct points for the stakes and if you’re in the–Steve: That's true. Good point.Chris: Yeah. I heard that -actually going back to our love of podcasts here- I heard Tim Farris on his podcast talking about the fact that he was going to go to, was considering something like Princeton or Harvard or something to go get his MBA. And he thought instead of doing that -or maybe this was advice given to him and he took it- instead of taking that couple hundred thousand dollars worth of whatever I needed to go get my MBA. I'm going to invest that in myself, very similar to what you're saying. And I'm going to use that to live on so that way I can go and I can intern for that company that I would never be able to if the money mattered that much. Because once you get out of school its like, “Oo I've got to go do something with this.” But if you've got the money set aside to go get the MBA anyway, it goes a long way to really feeling free to not have to pay that rent or pay that car payment that you could really dive in.Steve: And most people never use their college education for what they use. I had a meteorologist specialist. She had a degree in meteorology for TV and she was my marketing assistant. And you go, “I want to see what you spent four years doing versus what's your grade point average or what's you major.” I don't care about that stuff.Seth: So to fast forward to today, you are general manager of a very successful record label. When you got to hire somebody to your team, do you even say, “Hey, send in your resume. Where did you go to college?” Or does that not even cross your mind?Steve: I do want to see that. Four years in college gives me the impression that they follow through, they finish. You’ve said it before, finishing is such a hard art in today's world. To have somebody who finished is very valuable. Do I care about your grade point average? No. Do I even care about your major? No. Because if you have the right work ethic and the right heart, I can train you to do other things but I want to see how hard you're willing to work.Seth: So, a college degree still carries some weight but maybe it doesn't carry the weight that people think it does in terms of having the training because you kind of have to relearn it all when you get out into the real world.Steve: Exactly. Most college students that I see haven't learned anything that’s a really good use at a record label. My last five hires at Centricity have all come from internships. Now, I've had a lot of bad interns. I've wanted to fire a couple of interns, that's pretty bad when you want to fire somebody who works for free.Seth: What defines a good intern and what defines a bad intern?Steve: A bad intern sits on Facebook until you give them something to do and then they do exactly just to the letter of the law of what you asked them to do, hand it in to you and then get back on Facebook. A great intern does what you do and says, “Hey and I thought about this. And what about this more?” You give them to go to D and they go to G; then you give them to G and they go to S. I have a girl in my office, I asked her to do one thing and she says “Oh by the way while I was thinking about it I did these other three things that will help you out.” That type of proactivity and thinking ahead is so incredibly valuable. Like having somebody patching in your compressor before you ask for it. They know where you're going so fast that they're working ahead of you. And for all of those out there, that's old school once again patch bays.[Laughter]Seth: We have a small patch bay, we have two patch bays actually so we're probably on the old school end of things.Chris: It looks very cool though. It's looks kind of old science fiction movie.Steve: Spaghetti.[Laughter] Seth: It's like a telephone operator kind of thing. I heard a thing on…man, we keep talking about podcast, we're all just podcasts nerds, dude. I think that’s what we do for a living is listen to podcasts. And I heard one last night, they did a study of millennials; if you had a dream job, pick out of these choices what would be your dream job. Number one was the president; number two was a senator; number three was a successful athlete; number four foreign diplomat; five was a CEO of Apple; and then the last choice was the personal assistant to a famous actor or athlete. And 45% I think picked that one, hands down.Steve: They have no idea what that job looks like.Seth: They don't but it also speaks to they don't want to take the responsibility. Like, when you're that person, when you're the boss, they want to have a boss and maybe you can speak to a little bit to that but I feel like when you were talking about the internships, the ones who go above and beyond are the ones who are willing to take some responsibility and say, “Here's an idea” and just put it out there. How many interns would you have to get, to get that one good one?Steve: Probably 10 to 15.Seth: 10 to 15 to 1?Steve: Yeah, to 1. I think that’s what it is.Chris: Wow.Steve: Yeah, that's what it is. And I heard you, I think we had the conversation, there's such a different work ethic in today's young adults. And part of it is my fault, I'm a parent of a young adult they've been given everything in their whole life, they haven't had to work for anything. You want that iPhone! Here's that iPhone. You want that? Here's that. The art and the craft of working, the labor of getting something is a lost art, I think.Seth: So, would you go back and do those things differently?Steve: For my kids? My kids had to work.[Laughter]Seth: So, you weren't saying from my experience, you weren't–Steve: I’m saying that personally and much more of…[Laughter]What we made our kids do is like when they wanted that $100 American girl doll is you buy half, we’ll buy half. And all of a sudden they're digging out rocks in the backyard at $1 a bucket out of the garden. Because you want to give your kids what the value of work is and that's that doll at the end.In our world, I sat with an intern once and he was irritating everybody in the office. He's that guy who only asks questions because he wanted to tell you how much he knew. An intern needs to be quite and listen because there's a lot of information that flows around… And then they find the person that they can go to and go, what did that mean when he said this? So, what did that mean or… Come to me! I've told everyone in my internship, feel free to come to me and say, what does it mean when you said that? Versus this guy would come to you and tell you everything he knew. So, I was sitting him down one day and going,  “Man, you're irritating everybody. The whole office wants to prove you wrong.”Seth: You literally said that?Steve: I said that to him and later on, “I know I do that. I'm just trying to figure out where I fit and trying to find a job make $100, $120,000 a year and start in the music industry.” And I said, “You're in the wrong industry, man.”Seth: Go into finance!Steve: Go into finance, or go be an architect somewhere I guess or something. It was just about wanting to make as much money as his dad did, now! This generation wants to start where their parents have gotten to right now. I've seen it with artists, I've seen it with interns–Chris: They don't want a drop in their lifestyle that they've become accustomed to.Seth: A luxury once had, becomes a necessity.Steve and Chris: Ooohh.Steve: Very nice.Seth: And I'm very guilty of that. You fly first class once and you feel like a swine by sitting in coach.[Laughter] Steve: I've flown private jets twice in my whole life, in my whole career both times sort of accidentally. And man, once you do a private jet and you don't have to go through security and you’re just like, “Oh, I want that.” I say this all the time about artists. The worst thing you can do for an artist is start them touring in a bus because that's the expectation and then you know what happens? Is they got on the bus and they’re, “This isn't a very nice bus.” There are people in vans like when you were out in a van, to be on a bus, to be able to sleep horizontally would be the greatest thing ever and just because you started at this place and then you get into private jets. Everybody needs to start their first tour in a Silverado truck and then the next one to a bigger–Seth: Graduate to a suburban!Steve: A suburban would be great, then a 15 passenger old church van that you bought for $5,000 that the left side of the speakers don't work. And then, you work your way into a [inaudible 19:58] van and then into a bus. Then you're grateful for everything that's better along the way.Seth: It's more about the process than anything.Steve: Yeah.Seth: And getting there.Steve: A wise manager once said, his job is to make his artists life better every year, just a little bit better. I'm like, that's a good goal. That's a good goal to have.Seth: It is. So, your transition, we shipped about 20 years–Steve: We skipped through it very fast.[Laughter] Your transition from doing that 6pm to 3 in the morning thing in LA, you had your baby…Steve: Yep. My wife and I were praying at that point going, “God, please give us some sane clients or open another door.” And I just worked probably two months before with Peter York–Seth: And for those out there listening, was this at a record label you got your first…Steve: I was working with Peter in the studio and he called me up and said, “Hey, are you interested in A&R?” And I started in A&R in Sparrow…what's that 87, 88? Right around there and we were still in Chatsworth, California, spent time out there with him. So, I’ve been at Sparrow, moved from Sparrow to Star Songs and then back to Sparrow when they came up. Started in A&R worked my way into the marketing side, artist development side… So, yes back to Sparrow went to  Mer and worked my way up to Vice President at marketing at Mer, was general manager at [inaudible 21:34], general manager at SRI and now general manager at Centricity.Chris: Wow.Steve: It's been a long journey. If you’d ask me to 25 or 30 years ago, were you going to be general manager at Record Label? I would have laughed in your face.[Laughter]Chris: Because you didn't think it was attainable or because you didn't want have this job?Steve: That was not the path I was on. I thought, I was going to be producing records and engineering records.  Jack Pueg is still mixing great great records out there and I thought I was going to follow that path. God had something very different in mind which makes me laugh going I was talking to [inaudible 22:09] this morning and I can't believe I’ve been doing this, this long. When you're now an industry veteran it means that you've been around a long time.Seth: But I don't think looking back and I don’t want to put words in your mouth but you don't strike me as one of those people that's looking back and feeling like you’re working in the corporate side of the industry because you never made it on the creative side.Steve: No, no.Seth: You don't strike me as that at all.Steve: I made that decision for my family. What's funny is I've learned more about engineering and more about mixing and more about mastering being on the corporate side of what we're trying accomplish and why trying to do what we're doing. I learned so much about that. And for the first year or so, I was mad at God going, “Why did I just spend 9, 10 years in studios, in dark rooms working long hours if this is where you wanted me?” But realize, every day of my life in the last 27 years in the corporate side I've used information I learned in the studio. Sometimes we can't ask God why until you're 20 years down and you go, “oh I get it.”It's the path he puts us on, he brings people in and out of your life. I remember a girl over at Sparrow she was an accountant, that was her thing she loved accounting and God put me with her to learn that whole budgeting, it was only like for four months and then we were separated again but once again she changed my perspective and my life for the next 20 years. So, you don't know if these people that are coming in and out of your life are for a short period of how they're going to impact you.But yeah, I've sort of worked my way, I was one of the strange guys everybody wants to be in A&R. I started in A&R and left to got to marketing and then got back into it as I moved back up into the but everybody wants to be an A&R guy, hang out in the studios and have dinner with the artists which is not what an A&R guy does.Chris: Well it's the perception out there–Steve: Yeah, exactly, that's what they think.Chris: Just like you saying the artist is going to be in private jets.Seth: And for honestly if somebody's out there, can you break down what exactly what it is A&R. What is that? What is that job?Steve: A&R, we [inaudible 24:27] airports and restaurants which is [inaudible 24:28].[Laughter]It’s artist and repertoire. It’s basically looking for artist, finding people that have a seedling of something. Sometimes you don’t know what it is. We’ve all got our standards of what we feel like will lead to success. But finding that, nurturing it, grooming it, it’s sort of the mustard seed put into the ground, pat around and hopefully something really great grows out of it. Sometimes the plants don’t live, sometimes they give up. But it basically the music made by the A&R guy, we have one of the best in the industry in Centricity. When he’s done, when the music is done, he hands the baton over to me, and I go everywhere from there. But it’s his job to make sure we have hits, we have songs that work for live or work on the radio, an artist that’s got uniqueness to him that fits differently than everything else in the market place and sometimes it’s just plain old dumb luck. We’ve got all those where we’re like, “We though this person had everything they needed, was need for success and it didn’t work, and this one over here it’s that seedling and it’s just growing like crazy.Seth: Yeah, sometimes you don’t know or probably more often than not, I would think.Steve: How many songs have you worked on and said, “Man, that’s the hit.” I have a memory of I will eat my shoe if this is not [inaudible 26:04][Laughter] I believe you owe me a shoe eaten.Seth: I’m wearing Nikes right now. I have a feeling that this material is not organic.Chris: I was going to say, whatever you choose make sure its biodegradable.Steve: I was going to send you a shoe after one particular sock.[Laughter]We’ve all got them dude.Seth: Oh yeah, totally. I think more often than not and it’s honestly becoming a theme on this show is, we’re all just kind of winging it we’re all just guessing. So, my question to that is, I mean, it sounds like there’s a lot of responsibility placed on the shoulders of an A&R person. They’re the one that’s finding and nurturing talent and ultimately seeing what songs make it on records.I think a lot of people listening in our podcast audience, we have a lot of producers and writers and people outside of the music industry but then there are also probably some people who are just wanting to get in on the music business side and people who maybe want to be in music marketing or be in music management or maybe do what you’re doing someday, run a record label. You said what you look for interns, what qualifies a person to be an A&R person?Steve: Wow. Interesting. There are a few A&R guys you should interview. A great A&R person is able to inspire an artist beyond what they’ve every thought they could do. A great A&R person knows how to get a good song to a great song. We’re no longer in a society that good is not good enough, it has to be great. A great A&R guy can go, “You know what? There are seedlings, there are moments in here that are really great.” But you’re missing the mark I these two or three places. And then, coming in and sitting side by side with a producer like you and making sure that… I think that I’m a big movie buff and A&R guy is sort of like an executive producer on a movie where you put the team together and then sort of let the team go make the music. So, it’s the right producer for the right, for the right song and for the right artists and then let them shine where they go. It’s very much putting the pieces together. They’re not usually playing the music, they’re not [inaudible 28:34] musicians, they have to have a really good song sense and I think one of the skills an A&R guy has to know is, it’s not about them. They’ve got to know their audience, know what they’re making for because all of us have a tendency to gravitate towards music that’s on the fringe because we listen to so much stuff that all of the stuff in the middle starts mucking up. There’s a big muck in the middle. So, “you know what I like? I like this thing way over here or way over there.” Where a normal consumer listens to 10 records a year, the middle is the sweet spot for them. So, an A&R guy that understands who he’s trying to record for is very important.Seth: That’s very good. And, you said that they have to have a great song sense, that is even a sticky situation because why is one person’s song sense better than the other? Is that determined by track record? And, if you’ve never done A&R before, how do you prove that, hey I know a hit when I hear one?Steve: You know what? Our history of…John Mays is a 25 years somebody took a chance on him 27 years ago and said “You’re a great musician on the road, let me bring you in here.” Part is the relationship, you know, can they sit and hang with an artist? You know, you’ve been in these mediums. Where it’s like can you move an artist from A to Z while making the artist think it’s their move? As a producer it’s the same skill set of can you get an artist to bend without knowing that they’re bending? Or being able to move–Seth: All the artists out there, they just had a–Steve: I know they had a convulsion.[Laughter]And all the producer are like, yeah![Laughter]But that’s part of it, of like how do you get a song… because you don’t want to tell an artist, “You know what? This song sucks.” You just want to say, “Let’s work on the chorus. The chorus isn’t paying off hard enough, let’s make it lift better. Let’s make it shine.” Whatever it may be, moving them away from, “I love this, this is my baby. It’s beautiful.” To let’s keep working on this song.Seth: So, it sounds like it maybe starts with who they are as a person. Are they a good hang? Are they a servant? And then, the music kind of just follows and that taste follows.Steve: Our young A&R guy over there, he went through our radio department so he was listening to radio hits, radio hits, radio hits. And part of it is… There’s marketing guy named Roy Williams, I went to a seminar with him and he said he has a friend that works at General Market Record Label to pick all the singles and I’m like, “How did you learn this?” And the guy basically said, “Since I was five years old, every week I’d get my allowance and I would go buy the number one song in America.” And so for his whole life, he poured into himself hits. This is what a hit sounds like, this is what a hit sounds like, this is what a hit sounds like.Seth: That’s pretty good wisdom, right there.Steve: And so, at a certain point you go, you got to know our music, you got to listen to our music, you got to know what a hit sounds like. I’ve heard a lot of kids come though “I hate listening to Christian radio.” Then why do you listen to Christian music? How many people in country music go, “[inaudible 32:11] but I hate country music.” Get out! You’re not going to succeed.[Laughter]But they almost wear it as a banner that I hate Christian music in our market place. We have an open concept office and I’ll try to listen to two hours of Christian radio every day in my office. And if I’m listening to it, everybody in my office is listening to it too; more for this is what a hit sounds like, this is what radio sounds lie. If you’re trying to meet a need at radio and you don’t know what they’re playing, how can you meet the need? So…I digress, sorry.Seth: No, that’s gold. That’s all gold.Steve: I think you nailed it in your earlier podcast when you said, this is a servant industry. It really is. And in my life, it took me a lot of time to figure out what my calling was. I knew I wasn’t an artist but God, what does that mean? And I was walking through Exodus with my kids when they were very young and hit Exodus 17 where God say to Moses, they’re out of Egypt heading towards the Promised Land and they hit the Analcites, God calls Moses up to the hill top; arms up in the air he wins, arms down they lose. But what never caught to me until I was reading it, Moses took two people along with him Aaron and Hur and I love to say I am the Hur in the Moses’ life. It’s my job, what Hur was up there to do is to hold Moses’ arms up, that’s all he did. When Moses was weak, when Moses needed help, Hur held his hands up. That’s my calling be a servant, be there to hold your hands up. Some people know Aaron “Aaron, you know, Moses’ little brother.” No one knows who Hur is. If you’re okay standing, holding someone’s arms up and no one recognizes, you are created to be in the music industry. Because you’re not in to be the rock stars; we’re in the back of the room with our arms folded, looking at the person on stage going, “Yeah. I was there to hold their arms up.”Chris: That’s wise. One of my favorite movies is That Thing You Do, I don’t know if any of you have seen that.Steve: Yeah. I’m the guy that goes, “You look great in black.”[Laughter]Chris: Has anyone told you that?Steve: Yeah.Chris: But, one of my favorite characters in the movie, and they’re filled with them. Anybody out there that hasn’t seen it, it’s a great movie.Steve: Please, go see it.Chris: But there’s Horus who’s basically the A&R guy that sees them in–Steve: In the camper-[Laughter]Chris: Yeah, he lives in a camper and he’s essentially the A&R guy. But he sees them in a performance at an Italian restaurant or something and comes and buys their album and get’s them to sign a little deal. And then at the end, when they get signed to a major label and they’re going out to play these state fairs, Horus leaves and the main character drummer of the band says, “We don’t want you to leave.” And he goes, “My [inaudible 35:27] is done. I’ve done what I’m supposed to do.” And then move on to the next thing and so he wasn’t meant to ride that out the whole movie; he’s there for a specific piece to move it from A to C. He’s the B part of it, the Hur of that story so to speak.Steve: Nowadays, you’d call them just production deals. You start working with an unknown artist who has a little bit of talent, you start developing them and then you start shopping them to record labels. And then you go, my job here is done. They then take the baton and now try to make to a national artist. If you make 2 out of 20, 3 out of 20, you’re in great shape. You’re a hall of fame baseball player if you hit 3 out of 10. And you’re a hall of fame A&R guy if 3 out of your 10 are hit artists.It’s a cycle, you have the young artist going up; you have the artist at their peak; and then you have some that are on their way down. And you’ve got to keep that circle going because any artist that’s been at the top is going to be past its peak and slowly work its way down, and you got to have the new artist coming up behind to grow into. So it’s a continual cycle of in the music industry. The circle of life in music would be that.Chris: I had a mentor –Scott [inaudible 36:48] if you’re listening I’m about to talk about you- but he always talked about how life in the ministry or in a career is kind of like looking at life or the people that you interact is like a watching a parade go by. There are things that are right in front of you, there are things that you just saw, and there are things that are coming down. And to really appreciate what is happening in the parade you have to absorb it all. And so there’s a little bit of grabbing from each of those in order to get the full experience of it all.Steve: And the bigger what’s right in front of you, the bigger those artists are in front of you, sometimes you don’t have time to look behind and develop what’s behind and what happens is with a lot of these record labels and I’ve been at these where, man they’ve got the big, and they slowly slipping. The [inaudible 37:32] slowly start getting past their prime and they haven’t developed anything behind them and then you’re in trouble because you’ve got this machine you’ve got to feed and you haven’t created for the future, it’s only for the present.And so, every A&R guy wants to sing but some of the big labels, the big artists, the A’s are so big that’s all they’re paying attention to. We’ve all seen it, we’ve all seen artists where we say, “Man, they’re amazing” but they got lost in the shuffle and that’s the sadness. We forget that we’re playing with people’s lives, especially on the record label side their dreams.I signed this band at a label and they were 18 years old when I signed them and 21 years old when I had to drop them. So, their dreams had come true and shattered by the time they were 21. And it’s just hard when you start thinking about that stuff.Chris: That’s true. And if you think about it there are some people that are fortunate enough to have a full career in the music industry and there are some people that have a three year window kind of like a profession sports guy or those things. There’s a window and the once you pass it, yeah but the guy is only 24 and the band is only 21. What’s coming up for them?Steve: You know what, I think it’s a catalyst of those people leaving or burning out, is balance. You guys have said it; I can walk through a record label at 8 o’clock at night and I can tell you which employees will be gone in a year because they have nothing to put back into themselves. The music industry is a take industry, it just continues squeezing and it just wants more and more and more. If you have one they want five; if you have five we want ten; if we have ten we want twenty, and it’s never enough. My poor radio team goes, “Hey we got number one.” And I’m like, “Great. How do we keep it on number one for another week?” It’s never enough and so you continue squeezing out what this industry does, if you don’t have a ministry, if you don’t have a relationship, if you don’t have friends that give back to you that don’t care what you do  for a living and basically go, “Yeah, yeah. You do music, how are you?” You know, if there aren’t nursing students at the college that you got to that are your friends, you’re going to burn out.  Because there’s nothing giving back, there’s no one pouring into you. Sooner or later the candle ends, there’s no more fuel and it juts burns out.So, I try to keep my staff saying, I want you to go to concerts and date people and go home at 6 o’clock and have a life. Because if you don’t have a life you have nothing to come back when you come back tomo

Coach Mary and her husband had a plan - even though they weren't sure exactly where that plan was taking them. They made the decision to forgo unnecessary vacations and spending their bonuses and lived on less than they earned. After a few years they paid off their last consumer debt and found financial freedom to do whatever they wanted.  Listen to the interview with Mary by clicking the play button above. Steve: Mary, you have a wonderful testimony that I would love to have you share with the audience. Before we get into all of that, tell people who is Mary Hayford. Mary: Thanks for having me, Steve. As a professional, I am a financial coach, and I also teach financial education. I not only do it for work, but we live it in our lives every day. Steve: How do you live it every day? Mary: The first thing we do is we live on less than what we earn; it’s a conscious choice and a conscious decision. This is contrary to what our society dictates to us, but we’ve found it to be a smart choice. Steve: And the reason you did this was to become a millionaire? Mary: I don’t know if it was that clear to us back then; it started when we were in our early 30’s. We had seen many people work for years and years at their jobs, make a lot of money, and be very successful. Unfortunately, these people made the decision to spend everything they made. They spent additional money they made, like bonus checks, raises through the years. They weren’t able to enjoy the fruit of their labors because they weren’t saving anything. They were living month to month, spending everything they earned. It became clear to use that this is not how we wanted to live our own lives; we didn’t want to feel that way after decades of working. Steve: That sounds like the typical American. So what was your end goal here? Mary: The end goal in making the decision to live on less than what we made, and save for our retirement, and have an emergency fund, was that I knew that my current career was not something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. This was the driving force of us getting focused. The first thing this afforded us was to give us options to look at. So many people are in what they consider “dead end” careers that they despise going to every day; once we got out of debt we were able to have the option for me to consider leaving my full time job. It was not possible for us to do this or think about it in a responsible way until we paid off everything. Steve: Most people would call that early retirement, but what you’re going to tell us about is the big life-changing event you guys are working on right now. By being debt free, you’re now about to adopt! Mary: It’s very exciting! I consider myself living out two dreams at once for our family: I stopped working my first career, but I never stopped working all together. My husband and I have always wanted to have children; we felt that somehow, someway it was going to be possible and become real for us. So we continued all throughout our 30s and 40s to search for God’s plan for us to have children. Lo and behold, at ages 51 and 52, we are in the process of adopting two beautiful children. They are sisters age 10 and age 15 Steve: That’s so great!! Would you say that five years ago you knew this was your plan? Mary: No, we didn’t know this was our plan. It was our desire; we are very goal oriented and very patient. We felt that if this was really the true plan that God laid out for our life, then somehow, as long as we kept working toward it in our home life, marriage, and finances, God would allow it to happen. Steve: The point I’m trying to lead to is that you didn’t know that this was your goal, but you continued just living on less than you make in order to get rid of that consumer debt. You’re actually consumer and mortgage debt free, is that correct? Mary: Yes, we are. What you just said is right on. At this stage of our life, in our early 50s, if we were saddled with a lifestyle that we spent everything we made, and if we didn’t have money for retirement, and if we had a big, hefty mortgage payment, bringing two children into our home would not have been a responsible decision that we would have considered. Steve: And your desire was to be able to be home with the kids as much as possible. Mary: I wanted to be able to position myself and our family, that if we were able to bring children into our home, that I was in a career that would allow me the flexibility to be here for the kids. Steve: And you did it!!! Mary: I feel 100% certain that people who are working two full times jobs can still adequately meet the needs of their children, but I am sure however, that without the financial strain of needing two full time incomes has made a difference for us. Steve: Would you caution a person, in their 30s with debt, against adoption? What would the roadblocks be for them? Mary: I wouldn’t caution or deter them, but I would say that some people have felt that adoption wasn’t an option because in many cases adoptions can cost $30K to $40K in a private placement. We are adopting two girls that are in the foster care system and it’s not costing us anything. For people that want to adopt, but are worried about the cost, there are options out there. I encourage people to consider all the options, and not to allow money to be the reason they stop dreaming of having a family of their own. Steve: I’m certainly not an expert on the adoption process, so can you give us an idea of what those options are that you were just referring to? Mary: There are two main ways that people choose to adopt. One would be through a private attorney, either a domestic or international adoption. When you do either of those through a private placement, that necessitates a lot of work on the part of the attorney. The rate for this is about $30K-$40K per child right now. For many families that is not an option; for those that would consider adoption, we have a system here in the US that does not have a good reputation. It is the foster care system. These children have been removed from their homes for one reason or another. When you choose to go this route, you can adopt these children at essentially no cost to you. And children are available from all ages newborn to teenager. I encourage people that if it is your hope and dream to adopt, do your homework and look at your options. Steve: Thanks for coming on to the show. Your testimony is wonderful; I love the idea that you didn’t exactly know what you were going to do, but by living on less than you make and paying off the debt, you have been able to make these choices. Adoption is a wonderful thing for those looking to increase the size of their family. Are there resources that you would like to direct our listeners to, that will help them discover their options? Mary: I tell people to start local. Every municipality has an agency to obtain where they can obtain more information. The second thing I tell people is to check online for the state agency. The third thing is to check online and look at national data base. Keep looking until you can connect with an agency and a child that you can work with and bring in as part of your family.