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An international commercial airline pilot who, after the tragedies of 9/11, was forced to realize that his “Safe and Secure career” was nowhere near as safe and secure as he had thought. Steve Rozenberg chose real estate investing to be able to control his own destiny and create his own generational wealth. He created the fastest-growing property management company in the state of Texas. Managing over 1,000 properties across 3 major metropolitan cities. Steve built the business up and created maximum cash flow positioning his company for a very profitable exit.   He has been a guest and collaborated on countless panels, webinars, masterminds, conferences, and podcasts as well as being a published author. In today's episode, he shares his story, how he began real estate investing, and how important your mindset is to be successful in this business.   Episode Link: https://steverozenberg.com/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by Steve Rozenberg, who's an airline pilot and entrepreneur, and he's gonna be talking to us about the mental mind shifts we as investors need to make in order to scale and have successful businesses. So let's get into it.   Steve, what is going on, man? Thanks so much for taking the time to come hang out with me today. I appreciate it.   Steve: What's happening, fellas, good to see you.   Michael: Oh, super good to see you, Steve. I am super excited to share with our listeners a little bit about you and your background, because I know a little bit about it. But for anyone who doesn't know who Steve Rozenberg is, bring us up to speed quick and dirty. Who you are, where you come from, what is it you're doing in real estate today?   Steve: Sure. So I live in Houston, Texas, born and raised in Los Angeles, actually, my career brought me out here and that careers, what got me kind of involved in being a real estate and being an entrepreneur. I'm an airline pilot by trade and I got hired at 25 years old. I was the second youngest person ever hired by this particular major airline and hired at 25, I had the best job in the world is flying all over the globe. I was 25 years old and it was the most safe, most secure job that anyone could imagine having. Until a certain day in history. That day was 9/11 and that day changed my life, it changed a lot of people's lives. It changed my life because on 9/13, two days after 9/11 in the towers fell, I got delivered a furlough notice and I was basically told, hey, Steve, you know what that safe, secure job that you thought you had, it was never safe and it was really never secure and you're about to be on the street with 50,000 other pilots.   So to say that I got punched in the face very, very hard within about 48 hours would be an understatement and it was it was rough. You know I always I ever want to do as a kid is be an airline pilot. I didn't want to do anything else. I was fulfilling my dream and this something happened, which I realized it had nothing to do with me but it affected me. You know, I didn't I wasn't a part of 9/11 but I was a repercussion, a ripple effect, if you will and so I started to talk about what I could do, what could I do? What to survive to make a paycheck, right? All I knew was to be a pilot, but there was many, many other pilots out there probably better pilots than me to be honest with you that you know, we're also on the street and I looked and I saw that everyone that was tied to wealth somehow was tied to real estate. I didn't know anything about real estate, but I was like, okay, I mean, I knew some pilots who had rental properties, but I didn't know much about it. So this is 2001. So there was no YouTube or Facebook. So I had to go to the library. I had to get a library card.   Michael: A lot of our listeners are probably asking, like, what is that?   Steve: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a big house with a lot of books and so I had to start learning about real estate, I read a book a week and I just I read everything I could, because I thought that I was behind the curve of figuring out what I was going to do with this airline thing. If there was another terrorist attack or something happened, I was gonna be out of work and so I learned all the different things you know, now it's very cliche, you know, burrs and all this other stuff. But I just I learned how to buy I learned how to flip I learned how to wholesale properties. I got lied to, I got ripped off, I got cheated on. I mean, you name it, I just kept getting pushed down face down in the mud every time. But I kept getting back up because I had to I didn't I didn't have a choice. I had to figure out this combination and I, I saw people that were successful. So I was like, okay, there's a recipe. I just don't know it. But I can think like, I'm not the dumbest guy in the world. But I could figure this out and then I started getting better and I started winning a little bit more than I was losing and I started figuring out and what I realized was communicators are actually the ones that are the most successful, not the contractors.   It's four walls in a roof. It's relationship driven. It's not anything else and that relationship is driven by business models, and it's driven by systems and so I started realizing that the four walls and a roof and the dirt really had nothing to do with being a real estate investor. The successful people were good communicators, and they understood the value of leverage and team and then I started looking back at my real estate in my airline career and I started looking at how airlines run and I was like okay, systems, procedures structure and I kind of started melding the two and that led me into start learning to become successful as with my, my old business partner, Pete Newberg, who has been on your show, he and I built a very, very successful property management company, by understanding how to leverage those models and how to leverage systemization and then I've gone on to do a lot of other things, coaching people working with people, helping people understand the systemization of a business is very fundamental to be successful, is what I've learned and that's what I help people with.   Michael: I love that and we're gonna get into a little bit more of the systemization here in a minute. But for anyone listening, it's like, well, Steve, Michael, I'm not an extrovert. I'm more of an introvert, I'm more of an insert inside kind of person, like, Am I just doomed to never be a real estate investor like, what should I be doing if that's me?   Steve: So that's a good question because a lot of people you know, are a lot of people that go into real estate, what I've learned is they're running away from a life or job that they don't want you when you talk to real estate investors, and I coach a lot of real estate investors all over the world and when I talk to them, I'll ask them, why are you doing this, and a lot of them will tell me, I don't want this, I don't want that. They're running away from something and what they're running away from is a life that they don't want to have. Unfortunately, when you're running away from something you don't want, that's what you're focused on, and you run right back into it. I mean, that's the cycle, right because that's your filter. But what I've learned is, you don't have to be the best communicator, but you have to have good communicators on your team. There's things that I am really, really good at and there are things that I am horrible at. It's a matter of understanding, what are my strengths? What are my weaknesses, I don't think that I should become like, that's just my opinion. I don't think it makes sense to work on my weaknesses. I don't know anything about accounting, I would make a company go bankrupt if I started doing the accounting books for my business. So why should I go and take two year courses at a junior college to learn how to do books, or I just hire someone and that's what they do. So I've taken my weakness, and I've actually turned it into a strength because now I don't have to think about it, I don't have to focus on it. I have someone in place that is run by KPIs and metrics and accountability and I just, I just parceled, that whole piece of my life off.   So to answer your question, I don't think you have to be good at that. A business needs it like my business partner, Pete. He was the integrator and I was the visionary. I was the forward guy, I was the guy out in front. But I sucked at the operational side, he was like the mushroom in the in the back room and, you know, my job was to break his business all the time. It's like I wanted to have so much sales and marketing coming in, that he would go Steve, I can't take it anymore and that was like my victory lap of showing. That's the that's the sales and marketing tug of war that goes on, right and so I don't think that you have to be good at everything because the reality is, is you're not, you're probably good at one thing and you suck at everything else that you do. It's a matter of identifying what am I good at? What am I not good at leveraging out those other things and focusing on that one thing to be the very best that you can be and if you can do that, you will help the business, the organization and you'll be much happier too.   Michael: I think yeah, I think it makes a ton a ton a ton a ton of sense. So talk to Steve about like, you got three to five properties, you're looking at scaling up, you're realizing maybe a little bit more and more, you're self-managing, hey, this might be more of a job than I was anticipating I'm trying to get out of a job that people what are some systems people should be putting in place and how should they be thinking about systemization if that's a new term for them, that's never something they've done before?   Steve: Yeah, that's a great question and let, I'm going to back it up a little bit if it's okay, because a lot of people, if they have three to five properties, and I get a lot of people that will call me and ask me that question like, hey, Steve, you know, if I'm in front of them, they'll put a deal like three inches from my face and they're like, hey, is this a good deal like being closer makes it more sense? I don't know. But they'll put this right to my face and they're like, is this a good deal? Well, I don't know what a good deal is for you. So first question is, what's the goal, right? What is the date of that goal? So if they don't know the goal, and they don't have a date, and a timeline and a way to achieve that goal, I can't tell them what to do. I can't give them directions. It's kind of like if you said, hey, Steve, we're all gonna go to Disneyland and we got to be at the front gates at 8am on Friday morning and we're going to leave our house at 6am and we're going to take the 405 to the 91. Get off on Disney drive, and we're gonna go into the gates to be there ready to go. Well, if along that way, you get lost, you're gonna pull over and you're gonna go, hey, Steve, can I get directions? What's the first thing I'm going to ask you? Where are you? Where are you going? If you say, I don't know, I'm just driving around today, I'm gonna go with it. I can't help you, because I don't know where you're trying to get to. So if you take that same analogy, many people buy properties. They don't have a goal. So they say, should I buy more properties? My question is, is I don't know what's the goal? Because, you know, many people, you know, they think that owning rentals is the goal. That's just the strategy to achieve the goal. That's like saying, I'm going to get on the 405 freeway and you're going, where are you going? I don't know, I'm just gonna get on the freeway and drive and the reason I know that is when Pete and I first started buying properties, that's what we did. We were just buying properties and we're going the wrong way, in the wrong direction at a very, very fast pace and nobody stopped us to say, where are you guys going because we're just driving. We're like, we're making great time. Unfortunately, we're going in the wrong way. So to answer your question, to going back to what you're saying about systemization, every business normally has about eight to 11 systems in their business, it's a matter of looking at what you do and systemizing everything. So if you took a system and put it in a vertical, let's just say when you're going to rent a property, what is the system that it takes to rent that property, you've got to basically first thing you've got to do is maybe the first trigger of that system is when the Make ready is done. Now the property is in rent ready condition, it now triggers this system to happen. What's the first thing you got to do? Well, maybe you've got to go and take pictures and video of the property. Step one, what's the next thing you got to do? Well, then you've got to do some comps and check out the area and see what the property is renting for. That's step two. So you're going through and you're just basically talking to me, like I'm a three year old or third grader and you're explaining to me in very painstaking detail, what you're doing. These are all steps in the process of a systemization. Once you create the system all the way through to getting the property rented, once the property is rented, that system is complete. Maybe that system is 19 steps, right? Then you look at that system and go okay, is this the most efficient way to run this system, does or is there any redundancy? Is there any things that we don't even do or should not do? Are we missing some things? Now, let's say for example, this person, he, let's just say he grows and he gets an employee to do these tasks, right and or he subs it out to a company. This company needs to know very, very clearly what they're doing because the definition like look, I think we can all agree that when you own one business, or you own 50 businesses, which are rental properties, those are businesses, that you've got to treat it like a business, right? The challenge is, most people don't they don't have any systems that don't have any structure and it's chaos, which is why so many landlords get sued, because there's no systemization or standardization, meaning how you lease a property. When you're in the airlines, right, we'll go back to being an airline pilot, if I'm an airline pilot, and I came out and said, hey, everyone, this is gonna be a great day today. We're off to Hawaii. This is my first time ever doing this. So wish me luck. I'm just gonna wing it and hopefully we make it there. How would you feel?   Michael: Yeah, a little bit shaky.   Steve: Right but yeah, you'd probably be like, I'm not getting on this plane. Yeah, but that's what many people do with their rental properties and they're doing that with their financial lives, right? This is your real life, you're trusting me with your life but you don't do that with your financial life. So there's a disconnect as to the training and, and the way that you can scale because if you have to do everything in your business, you don't own a business, you own a job and a job is not scalable, because you have only so many hours in the day, and you have so much knowledge of what you're good at and what you're bad at. So I don't know if that answered the question but there's, that's a very hard thing to unpack.   Michael: No, it totally does. It totally does. Two things. First thing is I think you must be having been out of LA for a long time, because your analogy you're talking about getting on the 405 Dizzy land, you leave by six get there by eight. There's no world in which that happens today. Yeah, first and foremost. But secondly, so like, how does someone make that mindset shift because I think so many of us and specifically, it seems to be pretty pervasive in the real estate world, this DIY mentality, you know, I do it myself, do it myself, do it myself. How does, how do you make that mental leap of, okay, I'm going from doing it myself, small business owner to hiring someone or contracting it out or putting it to somebody else so I can get out of my own way?   Steve: Sure. Well, there's a couple things. Number one, you've got to you have to be willing to let go of your ego and pride, right? Because ego and pride are success inhibitors, they will kill your success quicker than anything. I should do it because I'm in charge, right and so let's go back to the goal, right? If I said, hey, what's your goal and you didn't, you didn't and this is what I use this example when I coach people, I'll tell them, okay, let's just use this as an example. I call it a 2020 2020 properties in 20 years, giving you $20,000 a month in passive income. It's a bait. It's a goal, right? Yeah, it's, it's got a time limit on it. It's something that we can attach an actual goal to and we know how we're going to achieve that goal because we have a scoreboard to see if we've made that. So that means that each property needs to be giving off $1,000 a month in passive income to get 20 properties give me $20,000 a month. Okay, that means, okay, so let we're gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna answer your question in a roundabout way, we've got to say, Okay, if we want to have 20 properties, that means by year 10, we have to have acquired all those properties so that from year 10, to your 20, we're going to pay those properties off, because we want them free and clear by your 20. That means between year one and year 10, we have to purchase 20 properties, which means we have to close on two properties a year, which is every six months, which means every three months, we have to be looking for deals.   My first question is, is do you have the finances to even make this happen? Do you have the do you have the financial means to achieve this goal? If they say I don't have a job, I'm gonna go well, then we're done talking because first thing you need is the financial means to make that happen. That's number one. Then we say okay, when you achieve the goal of 20 20 20, right, and we get to where we want to go, what I have learned and what many people I'm sure some people will learn, it's not a bad thing to learn. But a lot of people identify success by their accolades, meaning how much money they have in the bank, or how many properties they have, how many doors whatever they want to whatever they want to use as their gauge. That's how they quantify their success, or lack thereof. Now, I had Pete and I had a very successful property management company that we sold to a venture capital much larger firm and I can tell you that when you get that money in the bank, it is very, very, very anticlimactic. Like I mean, literally, like after we sold our company, and we sold it for well into seven figures, all of a sudden, I thought I'm done, like, oh, this is awesome. Now, mind you, I still am an airline pilot this whole time. So I'm okay financially but I thought, man, if I just if we sell this company, we're good. You don't happen Monday morning, after we sold the company?   Michael: You put on your uniform and go fly a plane.   Steve: My wife said, hey, don't forget, take the trash out the trash bin or come and I'm like, when I sold the company, like I sold my goods just like, don't give a shit. Take the trash out. So, but the point is, is like all of a sudden you think you're in some magic club like you think you break through this glass ceiling and the reality is, is nobody cares and the reason I'm saying the reason I'm going somewhere with this is that we think that once we achieve a mark or a goal that's going to make our lives complete and sadly, it doesn't, it actually makes it more hollow because you realize, like, wow, I've been doing this all these years, and nobody even cares. Like they're, you know, everyone's moving on. So what I always tell people when I talked to when I told you earlier that a lot of entrepreneurs, they buy real estate, and people want to get involved in real estate and I asked them why they say I want more freedom, right? I'm sure you've probably heard this, I want anytime freedom, do what I want, blah, blah, blah, they use this word freedom, like it means something special to them. I tell them okay, well, let me ask you this, why don't you just sell all your shit today, go live in your car at the park, and you'll have all the freedom you need. No one will bother you, you'll have your freedom. They think about that I'm like, but you know, what you won't have is you won't have the memories that you want associated with that freedom.   So we're really not buying freedom. What we're buying is memories. So when I sell a business, or I have rental properties, giving me cash flow, what am I doing with that cash flow, it's giving me the ability to have freedom to go buy the memories. It's the memories we want. So going back to your question, how does somebody step out of what they want? I would first ask them, what memories do you want to buy because at the end of the day, we're not leaving, we're not leaving this earth with anything except our memories, right? When we go when our when our expiration date happens. We're not going anywhere, except with memories in our brains. What memories do you want, right in the real estate, and the cash flow or whatever you're doing with that will give you the means to buy those memories. So buy the memories don't buy the time is you go to prison and have all the free time you want. You may not like the result, but you'll have free time by the memories, right? Go to you know, have dinner on the Mediterranean in Greece, right? Go to this African Safari, the Rolling Stones in Wembley Stadium. Those are the memories that you want and that's what real estate gives you. So going back to your question when someone says, hey, like, you know, how do I get out of it? I'm like, what memories do you want? Do you want to be an employee? That's trading time for money because that's what you're doing? I'll give you an example. So my son, he bought a rental property at 14 years old. Okay and everyone's like, oh, that's awesome. Yeah and he bought it with his money, you know and so everyone's like, man, that's awesome. That's great. Like, did you have him do the rehab and clean the house and I'm like, No. Why would I do that? They're like, so he can learn. I'm like, I don't do that. Why should I make him do that? That's being a hypocrite. I want him to be a business owner, not an employee. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with being an employee but that's that that is not the goal of one rental property like, hey, congratulations, you want a rental property? Now go learn how to cut wood lay tile, put it insulation but dad, you don't do that. I wouldn't even know how to do that. Like, again, working on strengths versus weaknesses, right? People seem like when they get a rental property that like, all of a sudden, I've got to learn how to put a toilet in and I gotta get up on the roof and inspect it. I'm like, have you ever done that before? No and I'm like, Well, then why in the heck would you get up on a roof? If you didn't know what you're doing like this is how you become a statistic. But we think we should because of ego and pride. So that's kind of a long answer but that's my answer.   Michael: I love it, I love it a great answer. Steve, great answer. Talk to us a little bit about, like, the qualities and what you see really successful people do who are able to implement systematization like what like, what skills should people be go out there and refining in order to be able to execute here really, really well?   Steve: Well, yeah, that's a great question and I've studied a lot of very successful people. I've been coached and mentored by some very successful people and I'm a constant student, I still a mentor to this day. Anyone who says that they don't need to be coached, and they don't need to be mentored, is missing out on a lot of opportunity. I look at Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, these guys are at the top of their game, and they still have coaches and mentors. All professional athletes have coaches, you don't become a professional athlete, and then lose the coaches. They make you better.   Michael: So I'm done.   Steve: Yeah, it's like I'm done. Um, you know, even Kobe Bryant, I mean, everyone, they all have coaches. I mean, that's how it works, right? Right, it's brings the best thing out of you. So number one, I think you always have to have somebody holding you accountable and if you look at all successful people, they have accountability. They have somebody holding them accountable in somebody, you know, a three feet distance is a world of perspective, right? In the simulators. When we find the simulators and we're practicing engine failures and all these things. The simulator instructor is about three feet behind us the control panel, and we joke and he they know, they're like, yeah, I'm the smartest guy in here because I'm three feet behind you, I can see all the mistakes you guys are making. You don't see it, because you're in the heat of battle. He's like, I can see it coming a mile away. I'm the smartest guy in the room. So having somebody three feet away, is a world of perspective, having an organization help give you guidance to when you're looking to acquire a property that's giving you that three feet difference. That's a world of difference, right? So, there is a recipe for success and I'm a firm believer. If you look at all successful people, they follow a very simple recipe. It's not magic, people who are failures, they follow a recipe also and I think that every day that you wake up every day that we all wake up, we have a decision to make. It's very simple. Am I going to be better than yesterday or am I going to be worse than that, initially, is our decision that we make every day because you're not good, you're they're getting better. You're getting worse, we never stay the same ever and so when you wake up in the morning, what is the decision you're gonna make? Are you going to do any reading? Are you going to do any I'm statements? What are you going to do to focus on solution based questions slash trying to be better or are you going to be in blame excuse or denial? So going back to your question, I think that people that if you want to learn how to become better at systemization, then talk to someone who knows what they're doing and that can help you become a systems expert because, look, as an airline pilot, right? I've been I've been flying for almost 30 years, I've been trained by Boeing, I fly one of the most complicated aircraft out there a Boeing 787. I didn't, I wasn't born that way, I had to be trained and guess what, we still go back to training every six months, and we go back through all the initial stuff. So just because you reach the pinnacle, you don't stay up there and if you look at people that are successful, they're always trying to be better, just because you have three houses or five houses or 500 houses. Look, the crash to the bottom is much faster than the rise to the top, as we all know, and seen, you know, with banks crashing and other things. It's the people that are cognizant and follow that recipe and again, I don't think it's a very complicated recipe and if you look at people, you know, they do a lot of things in the one thing that I've learned, I'll give you a quick story. I was with one of my mentors one time, guys. 11 businesses, right. He's on the board of 11 businesses and he was my mentor, and we lunch and I was like, man, I don't know how you do it. Like you have 11 businesses. I'm like, how many days a week do you work? He's like, Tuesday, Thursday, and sometimes half a Friday. It was like this guy was talking Martian to me. I was like, like, how is that even possible and he goes, You know what, Steve, you know what the difference is? He says, I say No, way more than I say yes and I said, you know what, that's easy for you to say because you're this multimillionaire that has 11 businesses and he said, I would have never become this way. If I didn't start saying no and he said there's an opportunity cost that every time you say yes to something, you are saying no to something else, right.   So he goes every time you say yes to doing something that is not the most high income producing activity, you are saying no to something. He's like, it's again, he goes, it's your choice. So when I coach people, one of the things I do, and this will be a freebie for people watching is, I always have them do a two week time study, okay? So it's a very simple time study that they have to go and they have to write down for two weeks, every single thing that they do, right, you want to go on a diet, you start tracking your food, you want to see where your money's going, you go on a budget, you want to see where your time is going and start tracking it at the end of the day, they have to give me an executive summary. Tell me how your day went? I don't care. I don't care what you did. I just want to hear it from your words. Within one week, within one week, they will be like, I now know where my time is going and most people think they're so productive, like, oh, I work all day long. I'm like, bullshit, you don't work all day long. Yeah, study and we'll see. After they do the time set, he's like, man, I'm only working like three hours a day. I'm like, because everything else is reactionary. A five minute interruption, a five minute phone call is equal to 23 minutes of lost time. How many times as a as a real estate investor entrepreneur, do we get the sideways calls that interrupt our data, and they sidetrack us, if you get 10 calls a day, that's 230 minutes that you were never expecting to lose, you just lost that chunk of time. So now you're living what's called a reactive life and when you're living a reactive life, you're in chaos and when you're in chaos, you're not in control and when you're not in control, you're not making money. So the challenges is what people don't put a factor into this chaotic life, is the mental stress that it weighs on you. So once they do the first week, the second week, they have to go back in every day, they have to do this and I and just the type of coach I am, every day, they have to send me a picture of their time study and I tell them, the day you don't send this, to me is the last day you will hear from me, because I can't want it more than you like it's very simple. Like, even if you pay me all the money, you're done like that's just how it is I can't I don't have time to waste if you don't want to be better. So when they do this, the next day is they have to put an H or an L next to that high income activity, low income activity. And guess how many low income activities they do on a day?   Michael: Probably the majority…   Steve: Probably the majority. So then what we do at the end of that next week, we go, okay, these are the things that make you money. These are the things that don't we need to outsource systemize or automate the things that you don't make money on of these high income activities. Which ones do you like doing? Which ones are you good at? I like this, and this, okay, this is the focus, we need to find someone else to do these other high income activities. We don't ignore them and so my point is, is one of my mentors said that he goes TV goes understand saying no is not saying that. No, the way you think it. He goes when I say no, it just means I'm not doing it. He goes, I just make sure that other people are getting it done, but it's not through me. He goes things to have to get done in a business but he goes, it doesn't have to be you. That's your ego and pride, thinking that you have to be the one doing it all. So that was a very valuable lesson for me that I share with you, you in the listeners.   Michael: Yeah, thank you. I mean, as you're saying this, I'm just like, oh, my God, I have so many hours in my day, this is insane.   Steve: Yeah, we do. We all look, we all do. And it's a matter of stepping on the scale whenever I'm coaching someone, or someone gives me a call, like, man, I just feel like I'm losing it. I'm like, just do a time study. I mean, it sounds it sounds so simple, or whatever but I'm like just do the time study you will see very clearly, and then just fix it. Look at the pendulum swings. It's okay but you got to do something to take corrective action. Otherwise, it's going to keep swinging, it's never gonna go back on its own. You don't all of a sudden become more organized and more productive. It doesn't work that way, right? You're always gonna go back and you've got to start focusing on making that decision every day. What am I doing? You know, and it could be something simple. It could be reading for five minutes, could be writing your day could be whatever it is, but start creating habits and those habits become patterns and those patterns will change your life.   Michael: Mike drop exit stage left, Steve, that was amazing. Man, I want to be super respectful of your time. If people want to talk with you more, learn more about you reach out, have you as their coach, what's the best way for them to do so?   Steve: Yeah, they can find me on all social media handles. It's Rozenberg, Steve on Instagram, Steve Rozenberg on all the other stuff. They can also go to my website. My website is https://steverozenberg.com/ , it's ROZENBERG.com and you know, I do a lot of coaching. I do three day masterminds with very high level, people like Bradley, the iron cowboy, other people, I bring them in. It's all about mindset and it's all about, you know, the one thing I'll say real quick before we go and I want to be respectful of your time is don't be selfish, and to the people watching and what I mean by that is as entrepreneurs, we watch these shows, right? We buy real estate, we do all these things, and we do it for the people that we love but here's the thing, we never actually share the knowledge that we've learned with the people we're doing it for. To me, that's the definition of being selfish be selfless. Like I said, my son bought his first rental property and 14, create generational wealth, right? Bring them into the loop. Don't be selfish, because when you're selfish, you're isolating yourself, have an open mind and the ability to give abundance and share the knowledge that you learned from this podcast, show reading, bring the family that you're doing it for into the mix, and you will have a much, much more fulfilled life and you'll be much more successful not just financially, but personally relationship and all that stuff. So don't be selfish.   Michael: Yeah. I love that, Steve and one more final question before I let you go. You mentioned you're running a mastermind and I think a lot of our listeners maybe have been to how to coach or been to seminars or been in real estate trainings, and just whoever reason can't implement it. They take the classroom knowledge, but they can't execute a role. So what have you seen people do who are really successful at that and actually applying what they've learned and taking that excitement and went out and actually ran with it…   Steve: That's a good question. So and the reason I created my mastermind is that very reason, right? Everybody goes there, rah, rah, they leave in there, like two weeks later, they're like, it's in their car underneath their seats, all the dogs chewing on it and so what I do when I do my masterminds is once they're done, they get unlimited coaching from me, they get my phone, they get my text, they get my email, if they need me, they call me. So I'm there as accountability for them every single day. It's not that hey, I know you have a problem Monday morning with a tenant exploding your house but we're supposed talk Thursday at three so call me then that doesn't work in the real world. I don't think that that's a very successful model. I give unlimited so that they have me and they have me as accountability. I think the biggest challenge when you leave these events and coaching is the accountability part. If the coach if you have a coach and he's not accountable, find them accountability person, one of the things I do when I coach partners is I have a board of directors meeting, I create a board of directors for them going over the P&I statements going over balance sheets, going over the goals. This is what you need to do in any organization, all businesses do it. Most people don't. So if you can't make your coach be accountable, or you can't afford a coach or whatever the case may be find a friend, a family member or go to the bum on the corner. I don't care but make someone hold you accountable that you actually have to answer for what you're doing and I think if you're accountable, based on what you learned, that's why I do unlimited coaching, you're going to be much more successful with achieving the goals that you set out to achieve.   Michael: Makes total sense, Steve, this was a total, total blast, man, thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with me. I really, really appreciate it.   Steve: Thank you, man. It's good having you appreciate you having me on.   Michael: Hey, we'll definitely talk soon.   All right, when that was episode, a big thank you to Steve for coming on super, super, super great stuff. As he was talking. I was like, oh my God, I need to start doing a lot more of what Steve is talking about. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts and we look forward to seeing you on the next one. Happy investing…

With August's milk production report in mind, the trading team gathered for another monthly mass balance and charting meeting. This month, though, we were blessed by two special guests: Steve Spencer and Vuko Karov from Freshagenda. Don kicked the meeting off by modeling domestic milk production and mass balance expectations for the rest of the year, with special focus on Q4. Then, we handed the reigns over to Steve and Vuko, who guided us through a workshopping version of their Dairy Trade Simulator (DTS). The Freshagenda team tested some ‘What if?' questions on their model and argued that market fundamentals suggest that we should see cheese futures over $2 soon. T3 countered with some points about difficult domestic freight and contractual obligations forcing cheese from high-growth areas. Then, to shift perspective entirely, Jacob suggested that historic correlations driving market fundamentals could break, and that there may be reason to feel bullish Class IV and bearish Class III after all. T3: Welcome back to The Milk Check. This month we return to our mass balance discussion with Don Street and the rest of the trading gang, and this time we have a couple of special guests: Steve Spencer and Vuko Karov from Freshagenda, an Australia-based supply chain and market analysis firm with some great data about how milk production and pricing may evolve in 2023. Welcome to this discussion, let's get started. Steve: Thank you. Vuko: Thanks so much. Steve: Thanks for having us in your meeting. We appreciate the opportunity to join the discussion, let's have some fun and see what it brings. T3: That sounds great. So Don, why don't you go ahead and lead us off. Don: All right, here we go. Balance update, August, 2022. So in spite of Ted being more accurate than I am on these projections and winning bourbon from me, I just want to say that if USDA would get the cow numbers right the first time, I'd be much more accurate. But June was revised downwards to where it was flat. I had actually had a negative 0.02 prediction, so I think that's reasonably close. And for Q2, which we finished down an average of 4/10 for a percent on milk. July finally goes positive. If that holds through the revision, when August is announced again, I was 2/10 of a percent over the 3/10 that was actually reported. Steve and Vuko, these are all 24 state numbers, not national numbers. I think I'm reasonably dialed in spite of the revisions, which brings us to August. I'm, at this point, thinking we'll be up 1% on milk, but the bottom line is that the cow herd will, in the couple of months, be higher than prior year instead of lower than prior year. Instead of being 60 or 78,000 cows below a year ago in August, when we see the numbers, we're going to be 25 to 30,000 cows below a year ago. And in September, we're going to more or less be equal. And then we start to see whether this grows or not. We're going to have more cows than we did in the prior year, which will contribute to higher milk production numbers. I've tried to recast this a little bit to just show you the impact, because June, July, we're up 8/10, one full percent on milk per cow, but fewer cows is the offset. In August, I think we'll be a little bit higher, mostly because of the poor performance of August '21. So I think we'll be up 1% on milk for August, but then I don't want to say that we're just going to continue to move higher but these changes in milk per cow are going to be 1.2, 1.3, maybe 1.4, but we're going to be something over 1%. And then you start to add more cows. And this is of whole certainty, unless we all of a sudden see a shrink in the herd that we don't anticipate because slaughter rates still seem to be lower, not higher. You're going to wind up with 1.4% more milk, maybe as much as 1.8 but somewhere in that range, but it'll be a marked difference than what we've experienced so far this year. Maybe just to take a look at components.

'Tis your seasonal broadcast and all through the house... THERE SHOULD BE SILENCE. The Great Leader allows small moments of levity in an otherwise serious broadcast, to allow for your yuletide excitement. This week, there are shoe spiders, the Grand Final of Dinner Winner 2021 and a welcome return of Paul Hollywood, 55. Please send your listener comments to Danny@radiox.co.uk This weeks podcast is for Isobel (not Steve) Thank you.

Today i am joined by drumming royalty! Dr. Steve Gadd.Steve is undoubtedly one of the most influential and finest drummers on the planet today. His remarkable CV speaks for itself.Join Steve and myself as we chat about his new book - Gaddiments. We Delve into his approach to playing double drums, referring to the legendary Simon & Garfunkel concert at Central Park back in 1981 where Steve shared the drumming duties with Grady Tate and of course his more recent tour in 2021 with Eric Clapton where Steve was partnered up with the magnificent Sonny Emory. We also chat about Steve's thoughts on Drum Clinics, does he enjoy or dread them!I feel incredibly honoured and privileged to have spent some of Steve's valuable time chatting to him. Steve - Thank you so much!Hugh thanks also to my good friend John DeChristopher for setting this up!Please enjoy this interview, feel free to comment,  it really does help!

Steve Connelly started Connelly Partners (the defiantly human agency) in 1999 after he, as President of another agency, decided that the next time he got shot in the head, it would be by his own hand. For the first 6 months, his startup operated out of loaned office space in the backroom of another agency, Partners & Simons, Connelly Partners grew to cover all disciplines through acquisitions and organic divisional spinoffs. Today, the agency has a 42,000 square foot office in South Boston, and satellite offices in Dublin, Ireland and Vancouver. The broad, international range of the agency's B2B and B2C clients range in size from very small to large. The agency even supports low-cost or pro bono services for creative opportunities. The core values of the agency include all things anthropology, with subsets of empathy, studying human behavior, observing people and being able to “figure out what they're thinking, even if they don't know that's what they are thinking.” Steve refers to his team as “master translators of human behavior” . . . with the ability to “read minds.” He thinks the best way to understand how to sell a product to a customer is to understand the challenges of that customer's life. His priority is not to “get noticed.” He says, “Everyone notices a streaker, but no one wants to shake his hand” and then clarifies the thought by saying, “I'd rather understand a person, have them look at our work and say, “You know what? They get me.” In this interview, Steve talks about people's responses to market cycles and how, often, when things bottom out, people sit and wait for things to turn around.  He says, for him, that “the bottom” is the point: When you attack, when you invest, when you try to grow new practices, you try to bring new assets into your company, you take a really good look at your company as it sits, identify all your flaws . . . and try to fix them. I think the bottom of the market is when you get aggressive. But to do that . . . you have to have a lot of money saved. That funding is accrued when times are good. In this interview, Steve talks about the post-Covid business environment. As the world “opens up,” he expects to see a surge of “revenge tourism,” with people trying to “catch up” on experiences with their families after so many months in lockdown. He says, “Everyone is pissed off about everything right now” and acknowledges that, in the not-too-distant-future the “rules are going to be applied differently,” people will “choose to live differently, work differently, open . . . businesses differently going forward.”. He concludes, “Maybe we all just need to take a breath.” Steve believes that the next year is going to be a time of discovery. Management during Covid revealed a lot of good things about people as they worked from home, but everyone was operating by the same rules. Once restrictions are lifted, things will change. Steve believes that a unilateral “everyone will work from home” is an unrealistic money grab and notes that the office environment fosters a higher level and quality of spontaneity and organic exchange. He expects to develop a “hybrid” model to keep the best of both. Steve can be reached by email at: sconnelly@connellypartners.com. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm joined today by Steve Connelly, Founder of Connelly Partners, based in Boston, Massachusetts. Welcome to the podcast, Steve. STEVE: Great to be here, buddy. ROB: It is excellent to have you here. I think you've got a great story with your firm, so why don't you start off by telling us about Connelly Partners and the firm's superpowers? STEVE: Connelly Partners was founded in 1999. The way most great agencies were founded, I was shot in the head by the previous agency I was president of, and came to a moment of realization that, “Okay, well, I'm not going to get shot in the head again unless it's . . .” ROB: Self-inflicted. [laughs] STEVE: Yeah, self-inflicted. So, we started the company. I had some amazingly gracious help from people inside the industry where I got space loaned to me. I had opportunities. The thing started organically in the backroom of another agency at the time called Partners & Simons. The nicest guy in the world, one of the smartest as well. Started organically. Moved to the south end in Boston about 6 months later. Now we have 42,000 square feet of space here. We have an operation in Dublin, Ireland. We have an operation new in Vancouver. We're in all disciplines. We've either acquired firms or organically started divisions to make sure that we have all skillsets represented. And as it relates to our superpower, I think everybody probably wishes for powers other than they have. We're certainly very fast, but I would say our superpower is the ability to read minds, which is creepy, but I do think our focus on empathy, our focus on really observing people, the love of anthropology, the study of human behavior – I think we can look at people and spend enough time and we can figure out what they're thinking even if they don't know that's what they're thinking. I'd love to say we have super strength. I'd love to say I'm invisible. I'd love to say all these other cool, sexier powers that you see on The Boys or in The Avengers and stuff like that. But I think at the end of the day, because we're an empathy-based company, reading minds is something we are actually really, really good at. ROB: That's a good talent. And you can read the minds of the people with the other superpowers, so it works out all right. If we zoom out a little bit, give us a picture of, if there is such a thing, a typical client, a typical engagement, or maybe an example client or engagement that helps us understand how you engage and what it looks like. STEVE: The reality is – and you know this and everyone listening knows this – there's nothing typical anymore. We have projects, we have AOR, we have big, we have small. We have people that have creative opportunities and we do it for nothing or low bono. We have some really big clients, great clients. We have some really small clients. I'd say the typical engagement, though, is somebody would come to us and they'd say, in so many words, “Help us understand our customers a little bit better and more their lives.” I think so many times people in marketing jump right to trying to understand how your product can be sold, and really the best way to understand that is to understand the person's life that you're trying to sell to and their stresses, their ups, their downs. What are the holes they have in their life that you might be able to fill or retrofit your product's benefit or services to meet a need? I think we would be looked at as master translators of human behavior and where we can identify what we would call defiantly human insights that most clients can take advantage of – things that are true about humans in general that we can help our clients use to maybe better get a conversation going with a prospect. I have a saying I've used all the time in this business, which is everyone notices a streaker, but no one wants to shake his hand. Our business is filled with a lot of people that believe our job is to be streaking and to get noticed and for people to see us, and I don't have time to do juggling llamas or flame-throwing fish. I'd rather understand a person, have them look at our work and say, “You know what? They get me.” ROB: Sure. Are we able to talk about some of the brands that might've been mentioned in the booking notes? I think it's illustrative, potentially. And I do notice the list was largely consumer. Are you largely in the consumer space? Is there some B2B in your game as well? STEVE: Yeah, we have lots of B2B. It's just those aren't names people have heard of. Everybody's heard of Titleist. Certainly, on some level, most people have heard of Gorton's and the Gorton fisherman. I think those are both great client examples. With Titleist, there's the fact they're the number one ball in golf. More players who are not paid to play a ball play Titleist, and I think that says a lot about – and of course, some of the greatest golfers in the world play it. Gorton Seafood, which is traditionally thought of as a fish stick-only company, but they're actually much more of a seafood company. With deep respect and understanding for people's love of the sea, we've been able to use anthropology; that's dictated a couple paths for us to connect Gorton's to the sea rather than lift them out of maybe how they were seen in the past, which is more of a convenience seafood. We work with Williamsburg Tourism, which is actually one of the biggest tourism DMAs in the country, with Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown. I was just down there a week and a half ago. Good to report to everybody, tourism is coming back. People may be wearing masks, but they're being active and they're outside again, and hotel occupancy was at a nice level. There were a lot of people enjoying the outside. So that's another client. We work for Audi in Ireland. Just finished a piece for them, or we're just going to production there. We're going to prepare for the reopening of the country and get people to rally around that, which is a cool assignment. We work for a big insurance company in Ireland as well. We work for Pizzeria Uno, which is a recent client here. Those are all consumer brands. On the B2B side, we work for a company called Quiet Logistics. We have a fair amount of B2B clients, including a couple I can't mention yet because we're still finishing up some contract negotiations. But I think one of our biggest wins in the last year is actually a B2B medical category company that has been totally embracing our love of anthropology. One of the things that happens in B2B, Rob, and you know this, is that people begin to try to categorize B2B as a different animal, and it's not. You're still marketing to a person; it's just that person is in a work stage, work life, different stresses, and we try to figure out what's going on in their life from the “9-to-5.” B2B is still B2P. And we get hired a fair amount for clients in that space to help figure out how to sell to people in the 9-to-5 mentality. ROB: It's consistent when we hear a little bit about how you think about consumer, because those brands that you mentioned – the Gorton's world – you think about food, and there's the lane of the flashy new product, and then there's the very – I think you mentioned where they came from, kind of this utilitarian mode. But there's something deeper you've gone to with the ocean, and Boston is certainly a good place to do that. When you mentioned that, I want to go eat some seafood in Boston right now. There's sort of a steadiness to how you come at those consumer brands that seems necessary. You seem to handle consumer more in the way people handle B2B than how people think about consumer. It's so flashy. STEVE: I think one of the things you have to do if you're going to be marketing – actually, B2C certainly, but B2B as well – is you can't be stuck. Everything changes every 6 months. If you're not self-aware enough to constantly be looking at the way life shifts – I mean, we have a rather robust strategic practice here. I don't know the number, but our strategist per employee number is I would guess much higher than most other agencies' numbers. We have two other open to hires, so if anybody wants to passively send me some anthropology resumes, I'd love to look at them. But I think you've got to be invested in the world and seeing how things have shifted. We just finished, and we're in the process of presenting to all clients now, 9 core insights that have changed and evolved or elevated in importance over the last 6 months as you come out of COVID. Now, those are different than they were 6 months ago when we were in COVID. It's knowing where the mind is going. You think about the imagery of the ocean, the power and the attraction of the sea, how we are all hardwired to yearn for it – I mean, everybody wants to put their toes in the ocean, for whatever crazy reason that may be that's anthropologically validated. I don't know why, but everyone wants to put their feet in the ocean. Using that attraction right now, if you think about it, we've been locked up inside for so long, the imagery of the ocean, the imagery of the outdoors, the imagery of the air – and also, the need to protect the oceans. The oceans are under incredible assault right now. Our reverence for the ocean and respecting the attraction of the ocean, we can use all that stuff to sell seafood. There's a goodness to the food that comes from the sea that people inherently believe. I don't have to convince them. I just have to connect them to that part of themselves that acknowledges it. Everyone likes fish. ROB: Right. Steve, you mentioned starting the firm in 1999, which may have looked like a good idea for about a year or so, and then maybe seemed like kind of a bad idea from the dot-com bust and the echo of that. You've been through the 2007-2008 financial crisis, and this COVID thing as well. As you're looking at coming out, how does this situation rhyme with the past couple of times of duress, and how did you handle it differently coming from that lens? STEVE: There's a certain consistency that I have had in terms of dealing with any time you reach a market dip, a market bump, when the rollercoaster is at the bottom. Some people handle it and they sit on their hands and they wait for it to pass. They become exceptionally conservative. They become almost passive, and you're kind of waiting for things to open back up, and you just want to weather the storm. I would be in the opposite category, which is I think that's the point when you attack, when you invest, when you try to grow new practices, you try to bring new assets into your company you take a really good look at your company as it sits, identify all your flaws – because lord knows we all have tons of them – and try to fix them. I think the bottom of the market is when you get aggressive, but to do that, you have to be really conservative financially. You have to have a lot of money saved. You have to be very careful that when you're at the top of the rollercoaster, you don't go out and spend all your money on flashy cars and nice clothes. You've got to remember this is a long-term thing. Because we have been very well-managed financially, we're able to attack at the bottom when other people might not. Now, the difference here in this particular next 6 months is that the rules have been unilaterally applied to everybody. Everybody has had to wear a mask, stay inside, work from home. We've all been forced to compete by rules that are consistently applied. That wasn't the case in the previous blips. Certainly, the dot-com blip – I can go back and talk about what happened then. But the difference now is we all have to ask ourselves: What happens when we're all not playing by the same rules again in 4 months? When some people are going to work and some people aren't? When hybrid is becoming the reality and other people are going to want to stay home? When there's different requirements of people as they pursue revenge tourism, as they try to find different ways to have more experiences with their family because they feel like they have to make up for lost time? The rules are going to be – we're all competing and stuck in the same “COVID prison” right now. I'll say one other thing. I had a really good conversation with an employee here a couple of days ago. In an agency meeting, he asked me when I'm going to stop being so angry at COVID. I really didn't even know I was projecting that anger. I found that to be a really therapeutic, really good slap in the face of reality that I got, because I think we're all angry about it. But we can do nothing about it. I really took those words to heart. I think in the early parts of this, I thought the role of an agency leader or business leader, head of a household, head of any group, manager, coach, your job is to be positive and to get people to focus on the positivity in the long term. I think I and all of us have been beaten down to the point where we're angry and negative. [laughs] I found that to be a really good comment. As the rules are going to be applied differently and we choose to live differently, work differently, open our businesses differently going forward, I think positivity is something I'm going to try to amplify and get people to be a little less angry. Everyone is pissed off about everything right now, and maybe we all just need to take a breath. ROB: I think it will be good to have – you mentioned revenge tourism, and I hadn't heard that phrase. It's hilarious, but it's intuitive. I understand what you're getting at. Maybe that will be a bit cathartic. Everybody has 10 opinions about what to do each day, but some folks seem to be saying they're going to stay locked down, and maybe that's the hardest part. How do you get those people out and un-angry? We all need to see some people and do some things, I think. STEVE: Yeah, I don't know how we're going to – I think one of the things we have to do is acknowledge that we can only try so hard. Because of the way news is distributed, because of the way people are consuming news and they're gathering information, they are led down certain paths. For us, I think we'll go back to basic human instinct, which is the majority of people are going to want to get out. Here's an example. In Ireland they're still completely locked down. If I go to Ireland right now, I have to sit in an airport hotel for 2 weeks before I can get out, and then when I get out, everything's closed. The challenge as it relates to tourism in Ireland is that most people, when they take their holiday, go to Spain or to France or to Europe, other countries, and they explore the way we would explore other states here. They can't leave. So they are now making holiday plans to travel within Ireland, and if you think about it for context, that would be like me in Massachusetts – I can't go to Florida, as I would go every year; I have to go someplace within Massachusetts. There's a little bit of depression that comes from that. But I'm finding people are saying, “I'm going to make the best of it,” and there's a certain acceptance. In Massachusetts, there are amazing places to go visit and escape, and I can take some revenge on COVID. I think that's what's going to happen as different countries stay shut down. Revenge tourism is real, man. Our biggest piece of business when COVID started was Four Seasons in the Americas, and I lost that business in the first 2 weeks, for obvious reasons. But I think hotels are going to start – certainly, it's happening here in the States again, and some places, some hotel groups, destination groups that continue to spend and engage with customers at the bottom of the rollercoaster are going to see the benefit of it now that things are starting to pick up, where others are going to have to make up ground. From a marketing perspective, that's a little bit of an insight that's going to be fun to observe: how fast people can catch up. ROB: It's going to move. It's already moving pretty quickly. To your point about investing when things are down, I'm hearing that a lot of the rental car companies disinvested in their fleets and now, come July and August, you're looking at $100 a day for economy class cars in some places. If folks had kept it up, they'd have a fleet to sell. STEVE: I'll tell ya, man, I went to Naples this past weekend to golf. I'm in the Hertz Club Gold and I'm also in the National Emerald Club. I booked my car at National in the Emerald Club, landed at the hotel with my golf bag and my clothes, and there were no cars in the road except for one little teeny tiny clown car. I'm not a small human being, but this was my only choice. I was in a state of shock that every single car was gone, or, as you said, they've liquidated some of their fleets. I'm driving around Florida in this little teeny tiny thing, trying to figure out where all the cars went. They clearly didn't invest at the bottom. I get it; I think there are financial realities. But it doesn't change the fact that I'm driving with my knees up to my chin. ROB: [laughs] Sounds challenging. It's going to be interesting. I was ready to go to Ireland. I was ready to self-quarantine for 2 weeks when they were still open, I think last summer. It turned out our kids didn't have passports yet, so we didn't make that. But I was ready to do that drive around Massachusetts version of Ireland. Just pick a home base in the middle of the country and drive around and see it. STEVE: When you're ready to do it, give me a call. I followed my son some years back on a rugby tour around Ireland, and it's a spectacular country. The people are – for people that live in a country that has two seasons, cold and rainy and warm and rainy, man, they're happy, friendly, nice, accommodating. We had the greatest time ever, and you will too. But I could say the same thing about Massachusetts in terms of people that are driving to The Berkshires, or for me going to New Hampshire within 100 miles. There's so much that we haven't seen. I think at the end of the day, revenge tourism is about getting out of the house and reconnecting with some people, and you can do that driving 50 miles as well as flying 500 miles. ROB: Absolutely. I will look for those tips. Steve, with the journey you've been on, and really successfully running and growing a firm for over 20 years, I'd be remiss not to ask you about some other lessons you've learned along that journey and maybe some decisions you might advise yourself to do differently if you were going back in time. STEVE: I wear a lot of t-shirts. The people here would validate that. One of my t-shirts I wear is, “Often wrong but never in doubt.” I think that's a key categorization for people that lead firms. You're going to make mistakes; just make them quick and move on. Once you make a mistake, try to fix it. I see a fair amount of people that are suffering from analysis paralysis. I think that actually is because of data, too. There are so many different hunks of data out there that people can study. By the time you figure out what it is you want to do, it's too late. I think that's true with clients and that's certainly true with agencies. I trust my gut. I trust my eyes. I trust my instinct. I'm a coach by trade, too, and I think there are certain skillsets that come from coaching groups of kids and high school and college kids and getting a group of people to work as a team. Those are transferrable skillsets. The things I wish I could do over again – that's a trick question because everybody has a thousand of them, but I don't really think about them. I'll give you one, but I don't really think about them because you make a decision, you go with the decision, you do it based on what your gut and data tell you to do, and if you revisit it, you're going to drive yourself mad. I mean, I have a beautiful wife, I have great kids, I have a great company. Would I have gotten here if I had made other decisions? Who knows? But I'll tell you one thing. I'm sure no one's ever gone way back to when they were 12 years old, but when I was 12 going on 13, I was a really, really good baseball pitcher. I've told this story before. Stay with me; it's relevant. I had a choice at that time. I could've played on an elite team in my hometown that would've developed my skills, honed my skills. I would've found out how good I could've been. I stupidly at that point – perhaps not – chose not to play on that team. I chose to play on a lower level team because that's where my friends were. That one decision caused me to lose skills. I was never able to find out how good I was. I spent literally the next 8 years trying to find out how good I could've been as a baseball player, and I couldn't play in high school baseball. I wasn't good enough. I could've if I had made that choice. I did play in college, but it took me 5-6 years of training to catch up, and I was one of those athletes that the older I got, the better I was. I sat on the bench. I got on the team. But by the time I got into my mid-twenties and thirties and forties, and now as I'm 60, I can throw a baseball better than most at any other age, still. I love the game. The lesson is, if somebody presents an opportunity for you to explore and find out how good you can be, even if it's painful, even if it makes you uncomfortable, even if it pushes you outside your comfort zone, you take that shot and you go find out. Because if you don't, it's going to cost you years to find out how good you could be. It took me 8 years to undo one decision I made when I was 13 years old. I've never forgotten that. ROB: Yeah, and gladly, you do get to take that with you as you go. I wonder if it ties in a little bit – when I look at the sort of clients that you have and the way you've grown and the way you're still accelerating into acquisitions, I see the sort of firm that probably easily could have been acquired three times over, or you could've found somebody else to run it or something else. What keeps that fire burning in you to keep the gas going on the business, to not take a big check from some sort of ownership group that comes along, that sort of thing? STEVE: Well, to be clear, if anyone out there has a big check, please provide them with my email and contact information. No, I'll go back to when I was 13, man. That meant that I had a chip on my shoulder. I had something to prove. There was a certain anger and a fire in me that I think has gone to the point of where I am now at 60, where I'm like, I'm not done, man. I still want to try to compete at the highest level. I want to find out how good I can be. I think on a different level, I feel a responsibility as a company to defend the human right brain from the marginalization of it that's being caused by technology and data. I think I feel an obligation to be a defender of all things human at a time when we're trying to be algorithmically discounted. I think there's an opportunity for a company out there to have a good human soul, to be a non-arrogant, non-know-it-all marketing partner that is filled with confidence but not arrogance. And I don't think there are many companies like that. Meanwhile, I sit in a corner of the country where there's an opening for a firm like ours to provide a resource to a certain segment of clients that are interested in anthropology, that are interested in understanding their customers better, that are not interested in juggling llamas, that are interested in better connections. I always like to say, too, that we as a company are a terrible first date. We're awful. On your first date – it certainly was true with me – that's when you're at your absolute most artificial. You make yourself look as good as you can possibly make. You make sure that you say the right things. You're very measured. You prepare. The first date is an artificial presentation of who you aspire to be. You get down to second, third, fourth dates, then the real you is revealed. We're terrible at being artificial at that first thing. If somebody asks me a question, I'm going to give you an answer. I'm not going to bull anybody. I'm not going to try to shovel anything. If they ask me what I think, I'm going to tell them. That second, third, fourth date kind of stuff – when I put on a pair of pants and go to my wife now and say, “Do these pants make me look fat?”, my wife will say, “Sure, they do. So change them.” You have to get to a certain comfort level with a person, with a client, with an agency, where you have that kind of value conversation. I think there's need for that, and I don't see enough of it in the world or in our region. So I'm going to keep going till I don't. ROB: Sure. It's wonderful to see that burden on both sides to be a place that is worth working for and also one that's worth working with. There's certainly not enough of those. I don't talk to people with regular jobs that often anymore, but I think about the conversations complaining about them. STEVE: We'll see, too. One of the biggest struggles most agency leaders and most company leaders are going to have is the work from home discussion and the reality of how people like to work. Ours is a business, I believe, that's an organic exchange, but there's certain aspects to working from home that people have discovered, in terms of productivity, in terms of balance, that are good. How are you going to rebuild a corporate mentality and structure? I find it absolutely mind-boggling the amount of companies that are going to unilaterally embrace work from home all the time because they said that they have been productive during COVID. And we have been. All of us have been remarkably creative in figuring out ways to manage, but we've all been playing by the same rules. Now the rules are going to change, and I think some people are going to do it differently. A lot of people are going to move their companies to be unilaterally work from home, and it's a money grab. You're going to be able to cut out a bunch of operational expenses and put them in your pocket under the guise of work from home. And I don't know the answer, by the way. We're going to figure it out together here. But some sort of a hybrid model, certainly initially over the next year while we try to figure out how to keep the best of what COVID management has revealed in all human beings as we've worked from home – because surely some really good things came out of it – and combine that with the best of working together in an office environment where spontaneity and organic exchange can happen in ways that it can't when you work from home. That's going to be fascinating. Like I said, I wish I knew the answer, man. I don't, but I'm going to go on my rather substantive gut, and we'll see what happens. We'll be willing to change and adapt going forward. ROB: That'll be a great conversation going forward. Steve, when people want to get in touch with you and connect with Connelly Partners, where should they go to find you? STEVE: My email is sconnelly@connellypartners.com. I get a gazillion emails. I read them all; I don't respond to them all because I'm trying to get through them all. I think the easiest thing to do is just shoot me an email and I'll get back to you. I'm not a big social media guy, and one of the reasons for that – and I hope you and your audience understand – it's not that I'm a Luddite; it's just that I believe in honesty, and honesty is not unilaterally embraced in a lot of places. So I'm going to not expose myself in a position where somebody's going to misconstrue something. I have been in positions where I have said something innocuous and honest and some people want to take me to task for that. The debate is exhausting, so I choose not to have it. I'm big on LinkedIn. Our company is a big social participant. If you go to our website, to where we are on Instagram, on all social channels, you can get a feel for our culture and our people. You can get a feel for our approach and our philosophy. But if you want to talk to me, send me an email and I'll call you. ROB: Sounds excellent. Steve, thank you for coming on the podcast. You've really got a great deal of wonderful things to share. We could go on for three times this long, but we'll put that off to another time and wish you and Connelly Partners the absolute best as we all have our revenge tourism. STEVE: Thank you, man. I would just leave this parting thought with everybody: be as positive as you can going forward. Be a little less angry. I was reminded of that 3 days ago. It snuck up on me. I think it sneaks up on all of us. Let's go back to trying to be a little less angry and a little bit more huggable. ROB: [laughs] Perfect. Love it, Steve. Thank you so much. STEVE: Rock on. Take care, buddy. ROB: Take care. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Steve Denker, most recently Vice President of Marketing and Digital for Turner Classic Movies, chats with Rob at the virtual 2021 South by Southwest. In this interview, he gives his perspective on what he looks for when “working with agencies.”  In the mid-90s, Steve worked for Aramark at Fulton County Stadium/Turner Field, managing relationships with the brands and products that were part of that stadium experience. He observed how fans interacted with Coca-Cola and highlighted opportunities for Coke to increase sales and strengthen the link between the experience and the product. Coca-Cola liked his approach and brought him onboard to develop the experiential look and feel of Coca-Cola in a wide variety of venues.  After a while, Steve understood that Coca-Cola was large enough that it would be a long time before he would have the opportunity to manage people, explore the emerging field of digital marketing, and gain product sales experience.  He took a position with RentPath, leading the marketing and advertising outreach for apartment guide publications at Apartment.com. From 2001 to 2008, Steve worked directly with companies that “touched” the rental process . . . selling digital advertising to utilities, renters' insurance companies, and movers and helping people find the right place to live. “Moving is an incredibly stressful time,” Steve says. In 2011, Steve joined Relocation.com, doing lead generation and business development out of New York. He connected with an individual who owned the Beach.com domain. Together, they planned to build the world's largest and most comprehensive database of beach and beach destination information. When heavy competition from Travelocity and Expedia prevented Beach.com from getting the desired level of traffic and sales, Steve decided it was time to move again. He values his involvement in this “failed venture.” “I can't tell you the lessons learned from that experience I have taken through everything else I've done, both personally and professionally.” All that “good stuff” found its place when Steve joined a consulting firm in Atlanta. (Steve's Beach.com partner still manages the reimagined site.) In 2016, an old buddy from his Coca-Cola days invited him to build a marketing department at Turner Classic Movies. Steve was at TCM for 4-1/2 years. Outsiders may think large organizations have such a wealth of internal resources that they don't need help from agencies. Far from the truth, Steve says. Agencies are important for their unique talents, expertise, efficiencies, and ability to help “execute the vision.” Steve describes what he looks for in agencies. Once agencies get past the first cut of “Do they have the ability to do what we need them to do?”, he needs to know that they “either already understand our business and who our customers are or have the capacity to understand that in a very short period of time.” He thinks organizational leaders need to have a laser focus on what they are trying to accomplish and understand both functional and emotional business priorities. Steve recently started thefasttimes.net, a weekly culture e-zine for Gen-Xers and wannabes, and reaching out on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and continuing in our South by Southwest series, I am speaking today with a friend, a friend of the podcast, and not an agency owner but a marketer with a tremendous history that I think we will all benefit greatly from. My guest is Steve Denker. Steve was most recently Vice President of Marketing and Digital for Turner Classic Movies. He's based in Atlanta like me, but we are still in COVID quarantine, talking online. Welcome to the podcast, Steve. STEVE: Thank you, Rob. Thanks for having me. It's been great running into you at local marketing and industry events over the past probably 8+ years, and at South by. Hopefully I'll have a chance to work with Converge and/or Bellwood Labs in the future. ROB: I appreciate that. I think I met you one fine day when you wandered into the Flashpoint Startup Accelerator here in Atlanta in the season of Beach.com. At least, that's a memorable moment in your career. But you've done a great deal of things. Why don't you start off by running through your journey and path in marketing, to give us an idea of the context you come to us from? STEVE: Sure, thank you. And I do remember that day when we met downtown. I started out – I'll back the train up a couple of stops. I grew up in Philadelphia and went to school in New York and came down to Atlanta in the mid-90s for a company called Aramark that was responsible for the concessions, the merchandise, and general operations at stadiums and arenas around the country, among some other businesses that they're in. I started working at Fulton County Stadium and eventually what became the new Turner Field. My position really was more in an operations role, but I was responsible for the relationships with all of the brands and products that were part of that stadium experience. I was working with the Budweisers and Starbucks and Bluebell Ice Cream, Coca-Colas of the world. Any product that was looking to get in front of those fans. It's interesting how I eventually used that relationship to transition to a role at Coca-Cola because I was watching the fans and seeing what they were doing at every game. I had the opportunity to watch their behaviors and see their traffic paths and their buying habits and so forth. So when Coca-Cola brought a team down once or twice a season to take a look at their assets, I had the opportunity not just to nod my head and say, “Yeah, the umbrellas are faded” or “We need new menu boards,” but really share with them what was going on and how the fans were interacting with Coca-Cola and how it was part of the experience to watch a Braves game. By putting together some plans and sharing with them where I thought they could not only accelerate sales, but also make the brand more part of the experience, I caught the attention of a few folks within that sports and marketing group, at the time called Presence Marketing. Not long after the Olympics, I transitioned over to that group at Coca-Cola and was then part of that experiential look and feel of Coca-Cola at stadiums and arenas, Disney, Universal, and so forth, in a creative capacity. It was a terrific move. The group was run by Steve Koonin, who is just Atlanta royalty and the CEO of the Hawks and State Farm Arena. He really was bringing so many innovations to this group and to the way that Coke was marketed. I was really fortunate to be part of that team and that group. From there, a couple of years later, I had an opportunity to go to a company most recently called RentPath. At the time it was called PriMedia. Also here in Buckhead. What was missing at Coke at that time when I left – I think there were three things I was really looking for that were going to take a while. I was looking to manage people and learn how to do that. I felt that was a good next step for my career. That would've taken a while within that multinational structure. Digital was something that, in the early 2000s, was really the forefront of what the next part of marketing was. Coke wasn't paying as much attention to it as other companies were. Then finally, I was looking for something that would give me real sales experience, not just internally and working with other groups, but actually selling products. Again, I thought that would be something at the early stage of my career that I would learn and use for the rest of my days in terms of working in any capacity. So RentPath offered those and more, and I went over and led the marketing and advertising for the apartment guide publications at Apartment.com. This was early on lead gen and getting folks into and around their apartments, their living situations. It was really interesting, because it was working directly with any company that has to do with that process, whether it's your utilities and your phone, renter's insurance, physically moving – anything like that were opportunities for myself and my team to sell advertising to. These were the early days of digital advertising, if you can imagine: banner ads with CPMs of $60-75 and relatively no accountability. Not even serving accountability. Forget about click-through rates; did you actually serve the ads I just paid for? That was even, at the time, a little murky. Companies just wanted to be part of it. As long as they went onto the website and saw their ad, they said, “Keep serving it.” It was really interesting to see the growth of the industry from, again, banner ads and text ads to what it is today – particularly at that time of 2001 through 2008, when it really exploded into the framework of what we see today with data and analytics and accountability. It was exciting to see that grow. I left for a company called Relocation.com, which was lead generation and business development out of New York. I'd spend a week a month in New York and then back to Atlanta again. I connected with someone in New York who owned the Beach.com domain, and we had plans to build the world's largest database of beach information. Not just every beach in the world, but hotels, vacation rentals, restaurants, activities, local information, local concierge services – really anything that would have to do with a beach destination or vacation, and build out this massive portal. At the time in 2011, this is when people really were using Travelocity and Expedia. There was heavy competition from these other sites. We went ahead and raised some money, built a plan, and it just didn't take off. It didn't get to the level in terms of traffic and converting users into revenue and sales that we had hoped for. All shook hands a few years later, back in 2013, and the site is still live right now. My partner at the time is still running it with a couple of different objectives. But I can't tell you the amount lessons learned from that experience I have taken through everything else I've done, both personally and professionally. I look back at that and have no regrets on taking that business risk. I think if we had done a couple of things differently – many things differently – we would've had a different outcome. But again, we pivoted. A lot of key learnings from that that I've been fortunate enough to share with other folks. That's what I did after that at a consulting firm here in Atlanta and had some great client relationships with companies like PDS and a company called AGRO Merchants Group, a healthcare company, we did some work with Blackstone. Eventually, one of my earliest relationships from Coca-Cola, a woman named Jennifer Dorian, who is a mentor and a friend and could not be a bigger rock star – she's now the CEO over at Atlanta Public Broadcasting & Radio. She was on Steve Koonin's team as well. I worked with her in the Coca-Cola days and had stayed in touch with her really for 20 years. We were having coffee or lunch once or twice a year just to catch up and so forth. She at the time was general manager of Turner Classic Movies and gave me a call and said, “Hey, we're looking to build a marketing department and expand what we've been doing.” This was in late 2016. She said, “Would you like to come over and interview with a bunch of people?” I did that, and a couple of months later I had moved over to Turner and had an amazing four and a half years there. ROB: It's quite a journey. I think it's interesting to point out that all the way through Beach.com, and probably a little bit after that as well, you were in early on the customer journey. Moving, to an extent, is kind of the ultimate customer journey. You combined that in the digital space. You mentioned the high CPM, but the customer lifetime value is also quite high if you can get somebody into an apartment for a couple of years. STEVE: Absolutely. That's a great point. Not only is it part of that initial customer journey – wherever that came from and whatever company claimed to own that verbiage and so forth, it was the beginning of that – but it was also, I think, a very critical time when working with customers. I was working in industries where you really can't screw it up. In other words, moving is an incredibly stressful time. If someone doesn't find the right apartment, if you haven't given them all the information – and again, we were the connector. We weren't the apartment complex, but we were certainly helping them find that right place. But if they didn't move into the right place, if they found out it was an hour commute from where they worked and they didn't realize that, or if they moved into a place in Alpharetta and their friends were all in Buckhead and they didn't realize it was a 45-minute drive, not 10 – all of these different things, they looked back and they were upset with us and the recommendations we made. And on the moving side, same thing. Again, it's very stressful. If that moving truck doesn't show up on time – think about all the things physically connected to moving your stuff. You're trying to time everything out on a particular moving day. It could be hooking up utilities or having to be out of one place and into another. If something isn't right and you realize that all of your possessions are now on an 18-foot U-Haul and that is broken down on the side of a road, it's not good. So I think it's understanding how important it is to take care of the customer and really understand what it is emotionally they're going through when they're finding a place to live, when they're physically moving. At Beach.com, it was your vacation. Most people have two weeks a year, and that vacation is very important for them to recharge and connect with family or friends. It's an important part of your life. If somehow I was part of an organization that screwed that up, it was on me, and it was something that I took very seriously. ROB: Definitely a lot at stake there. Steve, one thing I think you can shed particularly interesting light on is maybe your time at TCM. You have a unique perspective for a guest on this podcast. You're kind of on the other side of the table from the marketing agency, so I think it would be interesting to explore TCM through the lens of what that brand–agency relationship can look like. STEVE: Sure. Absolutely, I'd love to do that. At TCM, we really looked at ourselves as part of the larger Warner Media portfolio. I think every brand looks at themselves as their own business, and we were certainly no different in that we had a very clear set of objectives and goals in terms of growing our brand to the audience, making sure that people not only tuned in and watched, but also couple participate in other ways if they didn't have TCM on cable. Now there's HBO Max and ways to watch, but also, there are a lot of other events and other enterprise businesses that TCM was a part of. Running all these events, I think some people from the outside may look at a company like Warner Media, AT&T being the parent, and say, “Oh, there's got to be so many resources within the company that there wouldn't be a need to tap into agencies.” That couldn't be further from the reality. I've worked with agencies for a very long time; they bring unique talent to a company like Warner Media and particularly TCM. We would work with agencies for their expertise, for their efficiencies, and for them to help us execute the vision. They were a very important part of what we did. We had a couple of different ways we could structure relationships. Certainly, there were some contractors or freelancers that could come in for some very small projects or very specific projects that maybe had to do with production or one part of a creative execution. But for the most part, working with agencies was something that we did, and we worked with a couple of Atlanta agencies that really knocked it out of the park for us. On the TCM side, early on when I started, we had a product called FilmStruck, which was this amazing streaming service of independent, foreign, and arthouse films. It was the first streaming service that Turner had launched, and eventually it was shut down to make way for HBO Max. But as we launched it, we worked with Nebo here in Atlanta. This team really dove into that customer journey and what the needs were, really end-to-end, of generating subscriptions and long-term value from those users, and ways to distribute and share what we were offering and get it out there. Again, these were not things that internally we had access to. I think a lot of us had pieces of the puzzle in our backgrounds and we had some very good folks internally that had acquisition experience, subscription acquisition experience even. But tying it all together – if you think about every customer touchpoint from copy for the website, both the frontend and the backend, things like thank you emails, things like the weekly newsletters and drip campaigns to get people excited about new content and new programming coming, ways to reengage folks, knowing how much time they're spending on the service and ways to get them excited about spending more time, sharing with friends, seasonal deals like “Hey, get this for someone for Mother's or Father's Day or a holiday subscription” – all of these different occasions to buy and reasons to stay are things that they helped us with in terms of those campaigns. ROB: How did you think about the agency selection process? Did you have a bake-off of some sort? Did you know what direction you were leaning? Because knowing the Turner/Warner Media ecosystem – I know local shops who have built web games for Falling Skies; I know global agencies on the PR side who've done analytics work for TBS and TNT. So you could really run the spectrum. How did you approach that selection process? STEVE: Right now – and this wasn't available for a couple of years while I was there, but has come on – there's now a database within Warner Media. Folks that work with agencies all around the country or international ones put in – it's not a scoring process and you look for the 90s or above, but it's more or less, “Hey, I had an experiential agency work on a large outdoor event with us. They did an amazing job. Here's the contact information, here's what they did, here are some pictures.” That exists now. So that's certainly a tool that I think some folks at Warner Media are using. When we selected Nebo – and more recently 9Rooftops, which has a great office here in Atlanta, that did some great work for us as well – so much of it is word of mouth and being in the Atlanta community, being part of AMA. That's exactly what I did. I reached out to a good friend of mine, Joe Koufman, at a company called Setup, and said to Joe, “Listen, I'm looking for an agency. This is what we need them to do. This is an outline of the project. What do you recommend?” He came back with three or four really strong recommendations, and that's where I started. Then from that, we sat down with the agencies – and I'm not a fan of having agencies do work for free. I don't think that's right. I don't think that's a way to start the relationship. So we didn't ask any agency to produce work; we really just had conversations with them to share ideas. We said, “Here's what we're looking to do. Come with some ideas.” Each of them got a time slot, and we, again, just had a conversation with them. For Turner Classic Movies – and I imagine this is the case with a lot of either networks or other brands – the number one thing that I look for in an agency is that they either already understand our business and who our customers are or have the capacity to understand that in a very short period of time. Certainly the agencies that I spoke with all got it. They came to the table with ideas around that. Now, they don't know all of our business, and that's completely to be expected. We didn't expect anyone to understand some of the internal ways that we connect with our audience. Those are things that as soon as we awarded the business, very early on we sat down and shared that. It may have even been at a late stage pitch that we shared it. But we're looking for an understanding of what we do and why we do it. If an agency gets that – because every agency we're talking to already has the technical capabilities. There's no doubt. There's a ton of talent. But it's a matter of, do you understand what we're trying to do? And then really understanding the logistics of who's going to be working on this and your process, the best way to establish how we communicate together, how we discuss the deliverables together, and who leads that on each side. ROB: That's a great client-side perspective. The empathy required, the value of reputation, the value of community engagement. It's so interesting. I'm in this mode now where people we're talking about working with – people still want to get together for lunch. In spite of, and maybe especially because we've all been in our houses for the most part for the past year, people are like “Let's catch lunch outdoors.” That's in bounds for me right now; some people are holed up. But geography, it seems, is still going to matter quite a lot. At least people will say, “I want a company with a local presence.” Nobody really even knows what that means sometimes, but it's what we want. STEVE: Again, there's so much talent in Atlanta. I think looking outside of Atlanta in most cases is really not necessary. The talent is here. It is really nice to have face-to-face meetings. We all know they'll be coming back. Even now, I've had several meetings outside at large picnic tables at a park or a restaurant with folks. That's really how you get to connect with people you're working with, especially on these types of relationships where it's really important that everyone understands what the objectives are together. I'm just a believer in face-to-face when it comes to things like that. I know certainly working remote right now has worked for many people, and even if agencies are local, they may have folks on your account that are in other cities. We worked with a company and that was the case; someone happened to be very talented on the digital team that worked out of South Carolina. And that worked out fine as well, but it was still nice to be able to have some reviews together in person. Again, I'm such a believer in Atlanta being this epicenter of culture and talent and tech, and that's who I want to work with. ROB: That's something for us all to think about as we start to emerge. Steve, you had some thoughts on some key lessons you've learned along your journey as a leader, as a marketer, as an executive. What would you reflect on if you could talk to your younger self about what to think about as you develop? STEVE: [laughs] I don't know where I'd start. That's funny. I think looking back, Rob – and it's such a great thing to do every once in a while, even if you're not talking about it to other people, but just to reflect on things you've learned. I can think of several in particular, and a lot of them are coming out of the Beach.com experience I had, but I think some of these apply throughout my career. Certainly engaging with customers to understand what it is they want, how they want to receive your information, when they want to receive it – you remember the beginning of that whole integrated marketing push? That's what people said integrated was. I think there's a through-line to everything we do now. There are so many different ways to receive information, so many platforms. But at the end of the day, if you don't understand what your customer wants and how they're going to react to what you're sharing with them, what that call to action is, then I think there's always going to be a miss. That's something I've learned that I took with me from those days on throughout the consulting and throughout my time understanding our audience at Turner Classic Movies and HBO Max. Next, I would say having someone that has either domain or IP expertise on your team or advising your team is so critical because again, that's the type of experience – when I was at Beach, we really would've benefited from having someone in the travel and hospitality business being a close advisor to us. I think we all thought because we were customers, we knew what other customers wanted, but we weren't seeing the big picture. I was just seeing it at the time for myself, married and two young kids, “This is how I vacation so everyone probably vacations like this. This is how we plan,” not knowing that that's a very small segment of how it's done. So I think having that advisor or having someone baked into the company that really understands – that domain expertise is critical. I would say probably the most important thing I've learned over time is just having a laser focus on what it is you're working on and really understanding both the functional and the emotional priorities of the business. And that focus isn't just for entrepreneurs; I think it's just as important in mid-size and large multinational companies. It's a challenge when you manage high-achieving and creative people. They always want to bring new ideas and new innovations to the table, and that's a great thing. That's what you look for as a leader. But I can't tell you how many times I said to my manager at Turner, “Look, this is only going to take 5 minutes” when nothing takes 5 minutes. What a lot of people don't realize, and it took a while for me to learn, is that it doesn't just take time away from what you're currently working on; there's an opportunity cost as well when you try to veer off the course – even to do something that wasn't necessarily in your plans, but eleventh hour, something popped up and you thought to yourself, “We should add this in.” Sometimes you need to make concessions and figure out a way to make it work, but I would say most of the time, all it's going to do is create a distraction. It's easy for that to happen. You could have marketing plans and then something like Clubhouse pops up and you're like, “We need to be on Clubhouse. We should create a room and get some experts to join us and talk about our product or service.” That might be a great part of the strategy, but if that's not what you were initially planning to do, then 9 times out of 10, it's better to continue to focus on what it is you were doing and then work that in as your next objective. I think that focus – I had on a whiteboard in my office at Turner the word “focus” for all 4 years before we got shut down and everyone worked from home. The word “focus” was in my office, and I saw that word every single day. Of everything that was written and erased and written and erased on the whiteboard, that was the one consistent thing. Never erased it. That was my constant reminder that nothing takes 5 minutes and that you've got to really keep driving those clear objectives and deliverables and not create unnecessary distractions. ROB: Right. It's such a good practice to, number one, not do something that's going to blow up in your face, and number two, not discard the thing you've already been very intentional about putting together. Steve, we normally wrap these conversations with a couple of different questions. I think they tie together for you. Number one is typically “Where should people connect with you?”; number two is “What are you excited about that's coming up marketing-wise?” I think you have those things linked together where we can get a much bigger dive into your mind and connect with you as well. STEVE: Sure. Again, this has been such a fun conversation. I would say in terms of the future and what I see, I don't think marketers should be thinking about things ever going back to normal. I think how we play and consume media, entertainment, food, healthcare, all of this, this whole sense of community is being redefined in front of our eyes. It's a generational opportunity that's going to impact customer behaviors from now on. It's not a trend; it's really a seismic shift that's going to resonate across the culture and economy and all of our personal and professional relationships. It opens up an opportunity to be more creative and more innovative than ever before, and I think there's going to be some things we've done in the past that we're going to have to decide to let go. Other things we're going to hold on to. Those are some of the things that excite me right now. I do think as a society, we need to get a little bit higher up right now. I think we need to work on making people feel less isolated and part of a community. I don't think that's going to go away when people can start gathering in small groups. The pandemic has exposed a real ripple in people feeling alone, and that's something that I think marketing can play a big role in: really helping people find their community or communities. Personally, I've had a lot of meaningful conversations since I left TCM and Warner Media, exploring high growth in entrepreneurial opportunities, looking to where I can create long-term value at scale and really do good. So that's what's on the horizon for me in terms of what I'm looking for. And then on the side, I started something really fun with my wife and some good friends of ours. We started an e-zine called The Fast Times. We always talk about how Generation X, which I'm a part of, sometimes gets the short end of the stick. We weren't born with a cellphone in our hands, and we certainly didn't save the world like the Greatest Generation. We just listened to really cool music and watched really fun movies and were latchkeys and came home to an empty house and made the microwave dinners and so forth. So we thought, what could we do to really have some fun with Gen X and the fringe on each side of younger Boomers or older Millennials? So we created this e-zine. We're sending it out once a week, and then a special edition on Mondays. It's taking a look at culture and how it intersects with both nostalgia from the '80s and early '90s and having this modern lens on things that are happening today. It's kind of with this smart snark, I would call it. It's the fun voice of the '80s, voice of that Gen X. Lots of sections in it like “We Got the Beat” and “Channel Z” and “Parents Just Don't Understand,” all very brand-driven throughout it. Ultimately, this may be a vehicle for sponsors and advertisers as our subscription base grows. But right now, we're doing it – I love reading. I read probably at least an hour a day and love writing, and it's a fun way to stay sharp and create something. Again, we'll see where it goes. ROB: Congratulations on that launch. Where do we go to find that? STEVE: You can sign up for that at thefasttimes.net. Even the address is nostalgic, the .net. Go ahead and sign up and give it a shot. We also are having a little bit of fun on social platforms, on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. We hope you like it. ROB: That's excellent. Steve, thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for sharing. I certainly look forward to connecting back in person. I look forward to seeing what else you take on next. It seems like it'll be a natural continuation of a really good story, so thank you for sharing with us. STEVE: Thanks again, Rob, for having me. As I said, I really believe you're the epitome of this. Everything that people are reading about in terms of the surge in Atlanta, in the tech space, in the companies interested in coming to Atlanta, you're the epitome of this. You started Converge bringing in outside investment and then growing it here in Atlanta and being part of the innovative labs and teams here. This is exactly what it's all about and what everyone is hoping this unwritten story of Atlanta is, and you are a very early author of it. Thanks for having me. ROB: I appreciate that. You're very kind. There is a lot of good stuff going on here in Atlanta, and we'll keep on sharing it. Thanks so much for coming on, Steve. STEVE: Thank you. ROB: Take care. Bye. STEVE: Bye. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Franciscan Spirituality Center920 Market StreetLa Crosse, WI 54601608-791-5295Steve Spilde: Today it is my great pleasure to welcome Lucy Abbott Tucker. Lucy has been a great contributor to the contemporary practice of Spiritual Direction. She was instrumental in the formation of the organization “Spiritual Directors International.” She has had decades of experience as a Spiritual Director. She has been a teacher of other Spiritual Directors. She now serves as a teacher of other teachers. We look forward to welcoming her this spring to the Franciscan Spirituality Center, where she will lead a workshop for our supervisors in the Spiritual Direction Preparation Program. Welcome, Lucy Abbott Tucker.Lucy Abbott Tucker: Thank you very much, Steve.Steve: Lucy, as we begin, a good place to start, I think, is, what is Spiritual Direction, in your understanding?Lucy: For many years I described Spiritual Direction as a conversation between two people who believe in the reality of God, however that is named, where one person is primarily the speaker and the other is primarily the listener. We are trying to touch more clearly the presence and the activity of the sacred in the speaker. I like that definition, and I still use most of it. Several years ago, I listened to a TED Talk by a man named Simon Sinek. He talked about what makes organizations and people great – what helps them to stand out among others. He used three concentric circles, and the innermost circle was ‘why’; the second circle was ‘how’; and the largest circle was ‘what.’ He uses a lot of examples, and I would encourage you to listen to his podcasts. One example he used that always stuck with me was Martin Luther King. He said in the 1960s there were many great people speaking about civil rights. Why did Martin Luther King speak on the steps of the Washington Monument and have thousands of people listening to him? We all know the answer: He had a dream, [which is] his famous speech. But his dream was there are laws of God, and laws of men. Until those come together, we will never have justice and peace. Simon Sinek described that as the ‘why’ of his energy that made him stand out from others.When I looked at my definition, I realized it didn’t have a ‘why’ in it. Why do I do this work? So now, I use the same words as I started out with, but I begin with, “Because I believe God is present and active in every moment of life, Spiritual Direction is a conversation.” That’s what Spiritual Direction is about for me: Touching that God presence that is always with us.Steve: Thank you, thank you. … How do you spell Simon Sinek? How is his last name spelled?Lucy: S … I … N … E … K. It’s a TED Talk. I can get you the exact title, Steve.Steve: I think if people Google “Simon Sinek” and “TED Talk,” it will come up. Thank you for sharing that resource. It sounds like something I want to watch. … You do a lot of work for the organization called “Spiritual Directors International.” Could you tell us what is SDI? How did it form? How were you involved in that beginning?

My conversation with Steve Sims is a testament of what someone can do if they put their mind to it. He has created an incredible company, TheBluefish.com by literally making what would appear to most as impossible, a reality, hence the title of his book - "Bluefishing: The Art Of Making Things Happen" He ever says during our conversation that he hopes the fact that a brick layer from London could accomplish all of this, that you too can accomplish whatever you set out to do. You're going to love his sincerity and how "real" of a person he is. Literally what you hear and what you get and no bullshit! Enjoy!!! Joe Steve Sims: Founder and CEO Bluefish The Man Behind All Things Steve Sims Website: https://www.stevedsims.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevedsims/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/stevedsims/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevedsims LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sdsims/ Email: ask@stevedsims.com Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Today, my guest is Steve Sims. Steve, welcome to the show.   Steve: Now, thanks for having me.   Joe: Very excited man, I I've been following you for quite some time now. Do you like the title, The Real Life Wizard of Oz? This do you like that? I just want to know because I don't.   Steve: Now, when it came out, when when folks wrote a big article on me and they named like Elon Musk and Richard Branson, the article was fantastic. You know, the article I couldn't have done a better puff piece in a show of piece if I had done it myself. But then then they came up with the idea of Titli Me as Steve Sims, the real life Wizard of Oz. Now, this got a lot of people's attention, but at the end of the day, he was some dodgy pervert that didn't do anything to hide it behind a curtain. So I thought to myself, I'm not quite sure I like that. But, you know, people people I'm proud to say see to the essence of the imagination and the creativity and not the fact that he was a big forward.   Joe: Right. I want to go back a little bit, if you don't mind, I know there's so much I have to ask you, but I also wanted to lay the groundwork. So when anyone listens to this, they understand who you are and what you're about, where you came from. So it can you give how you became who you are today and what you do.   Steve: Yeah, very simply, I'm the same as everyone else, every entrepreneur in the planet started off by being pissed off about something, whether it be their finances, their life or something, the way it was being done. But I believe the entrepreneurs were kind of aggravation and it's aggravated oysters to make pose with. First of all, got to be pissed off about something. I was kicked out of school at 15 straight onto the building site in London, and that was my life. And I thought, really, you know, this is my dad, my uncle, my cousins, even my granddad in his 80s was on this building site. And I thought, this is my life now. Of course, I didn't have Instagram to tell me how inadequate my life was at the time, so I had nothing to gauge myself by. But, you know, I just thought there's got to be something else. And so, like every entrepreneur, we jump out of the frying pan into the volcano, you know, we just like, well, let's try it. And then we fail. And then we try something else and we fail at that. We gain all this education. I realized one thing that was my my my true north is a site. I was in the wrong room now as a as a bold bloke, British biker, all those bees. I was in a room with all of those people. You know, I remember going into into the pub at night and throwing the money on the table, knowing exactly how many babies you could afford to.   Steve: And maybe if you scratch get hold, you got two pennies, get one more on each hand out between everyone else. And I said to myself, is this it? And so I had to change the way I had to go into a room where people would demand themselves demanding more impact, demanding more income. And so I didn't know how to do it, but I ended up building up this Trojan horse. I ended up as a doorman of the nightclub, knowing where all the nightclubs were. Then I started to own my own parties. Then I started throwing parties for other people. Then I started managing other people's parties. And I went from closing down clubs in Hong Kong to working with someone on his Oscar party, the Kentucky Derby, the New York Fashion Week, the Palm Beach Polo. I ended up working for the biggest events in the planet, and one single film I always had was I would only ever invite rich people to these events. Why? Because I knew what people were like, because I was broke and broke. People can't afford shit. So I only I would only invite millionaires and billionaires. So I changed the room I was in. And the only reason I did it was because I wanted to walk up to someone rich and go, Hey, how come your filthy rich and I'm not. So I created my own firm in order to be able to ask that question.   Joe: It's so cold, before we go any further, I have to tell you, now that I'm sitting here across from you even virtually, that I love the way you express yourself and I love dealing with people who are down to earth and honest and say what's on their mind. And as you know, and you even have some of this on your website, there's so much fluff in the world today and there's so much of the facade of I am this person and I do all of this and I do all of that. And it's just nice to sit with a successful real person. And I really mean that. It just it's it's truly an honor to be sitting here talking with you.   Steve: Isn't that a shame, isn't   Joe: It   Steve: It?   Joe: Is,   Steve: Now,   Joe: It is.   Steve: Really, isn't it a shame that if you if you if you rewind and listen to it, don't thank me for being real? And therefore, all you're doing is validating that the rest of the planet is not. So it should be it should be something we take for granted, we should make someone go. Well, I know what that is all about, but we don't because people spend so much energy trying to be someone that not you never get to meet them. You go of these shields and as you say, there's these facades to navigate through all of these Almaz. And you're like, well, what's really about I made it. I made a decision very early on and I will get experience three seconds after we needed it. But I remember there was one point in my life that I woke up and like all entrepreneurs, we had that little nagging doubt, oh, should I really be doing this? Should I really look like this? Should I really sound like this and like a moron? I listen to it. And so I changed my persona and she tried to use big words. You know, I, I wore suits. I took my earrings out. I covered my tattoos. I became someone that I thought would be easier for you. What I ended up doing was I made it harder for you to understand me. But he was the weird thing. I had an expensive watch. And if anyone knows me, I'm in a black T-shirt and jeans. Every single time in my life, I ride motorcycles. I do not own a car. I collect motorcycles. I bought a collar this time, I bought a car, I bought made suits, I bought an expensive watch, and then I realized these will for you, I was trying to impress you and all of those trappings and trinkets of, wow, look at me, I've got money gained me.   Steve: And this is the doll thing. A lot of clients. And I was making more money with a lot of people I didn't like, I didn't like and I couldn't connect with. So I realized very early on that and this put me actually on a serious note, put me into a mass depression. Thankfully, I came out of the other side so to watch, got rid of the suit, got rid of the car on motorbikes ever since. I want to make it impossible for me to be misunderstood by you. OK, I want you to never be able to sit on a fence and go, well, what's this Steve Sims about? I want to make it so simple that you can go like some people. I would imagine some people on this podcast have gone down on that guy. I'm gone. And that's fine with billions of people in the planet. If a few bugger off after 30 seconds, Mumolo, could you still. Fine, but I want to make it very easy for you to know what side of the fence you want to jump on my side, be part of family and community and grow and get uncomfortable or go go about your way. Either way, fine. But there's nothing in the planet today where some fence sitters and I decided I'm going to make it very easy for you to make sure you know which side of the fence to be on.   Joe: Yeah, and it's true, I know where I stand with you, I can make a comment on your social media that you always write back. You always say thank you. You always say whatever you whatever. It's just it feels like a real relationship and it's and it's awesome. And that's the way it should be,   Steve: It   Joe: I   Steve: Should   Joe: Think   Steve: Be, yes,   Joe: Should be.   Steve: And go good, so everyone out that all you can with your people is you are you connecting with people as the person you think they want to see? It's a deep question, but stop spending any effort on trying to be someone you know.   Joe: I love it. Perfect. OK, so I know this is going to sound like rush to the audience, but I have you for such a little bit of time and I have a huge sheet of notes and things, and I have to ask you. So the book deal, so blue fishing, the art of making things happen. How did that deal come about? Like you said, and I think 20, 16 is when that book deal happened. How did they come to you and say, hey, why don't you take all your experiences and what you do and write a book? Is that what they basically said?   Steve: No,   Joe: Ok.   Steve: When when you actually start hanging around with people, different people that do things differently and opportunities come at you, OK? And I was at a party up in New York and I'm at the bar doing what I do, drink in old fashions and telling stories. And this this woman was introduced to me and it was a case of Steve telling the story about you. But you and Alan Jonel when you did this with the pope. So I just told a few stories and she came back to me and she said, you know, you should buy a book. Now, we've all heard that before. And I'm like a few days later, she actually contacted me. She was part of Simon and Schuster, one of the largest publishing houses in the planet. And she said, no, Susie, we want you to buy a book. We want you to buy a book on all the rich and powerful people all over the planet you deal with and what you do. And I said, do you mind if I did that? I'd be dead by cocktail hour. So I can't do that. So then we got chatting and I did I did a speech for a friend of mine called Joe Polish at the Genius Network event, and it was like, hey, I got kicked out of school. But this is how I did this with the pope and Elon Musk. And they got wind of this this talk that I gave and came back to me about a week, like went, oh, hang on a minute.   Steve: We don't want you naming people. We want to know how a bricklayer from East London managed to do this, you know, and so was OK. That makes sense. So I did the book for a variety of reasons. One of them. Actually, both of them were completely selfish. Now that I think about it. Your kids are never impressed with you. It doesn't matter who you are. Your kids are never impressed with me being able to write a book. I'll be like, hey, kid, your dad's an author now, you know? And I just wanted to warn to book. So one of them was personal satisfaction to imitate the crap out of my three kids. The other selfish reason was to get people to stop thinking. Now, that seems the opposite of what everyone's trying to do. But haven't you noticed when someone said, hey, we should do this and they go, yeah, that's brilliant, let's build a business plan, let's do a vivid vision and let's do a forecast. Let's get an analytical survey. Let's do a crowdsourced. Shut up. Try it, see if you like it, see if someone wants to buy it. See if someone's got a problem that your mouth to try something. So I've always said, forget about you. I can't focus on you.   Steve: I can. And I thought to myself, if I can demonstrate in this book that a great line from London is doing this, then you're already out of excuses. So selfishly, I wanted to create a world that there were more doers than who is in the planet. There's a lot of who is out there. There's no substance. So selfishly, I wanted to piss the kids off on. I wanted to create more people to be aggravated enough to go. Well, I have it's dark. I can do it. And it came out, as you say, I got the deal in twenty sixteen book, came out in seventeen and I thought to myself, well and I got paid nicely so I thought, I don't know if anyone's going to believe it, I got to buy it. Because when you look at the industry of books, there's thousands of books coming out every week. And I thought and I know this is really going to appeal to anyone so suddenly. Schuster, they send me, which was weird because I'd always wired me my Bothaina, but they posted me a two and a half gram check and they said, we want you to go to Barnes and Noble and we want you to sit there with a pile of books and a couple of bottles of champagne and signed books. Now, is this is this a video podcast was just an audio podcast about.   Joe: It's both.   Steve: Ok, so for those people that don't have the pleasure of seeing me. Let's let's be honest, a Saturday afternoon when you're walking around with your kids, there is no way in God's green earth you're going to go, well, he looks nice and friendly. Let's go and find out while you're   Joe: The.   Steve: Going to avoid me like the plague. So I thought, I can't do that. I'm going to end up drinking. Champagne is all going to go well. So I thought to myself, no, not doing that. So I went down to a local whiskey bar and that that I happened to have frequented a couple of times. And I said, look, here you go. I'm going to sign this, check over to you and turn the lights on when we run out of money. And they went and saw I invited a bunch of my friends again, if you demand of you and your circle, you end up with pretty good friends so that everyone from like Jim Quico had a son and had a great, great and all. But Jesse and I had a whole bunch of really cool people that were in there that also have big followings and pretty well not invited to Lewis House, a whole bunch of people from there. And we literally just stuck a pile of books at the end of the bar because we were told we had to be a book launch and just basically go home for the night. And here's the funny thing. I never even had a website announced in this book, you know, because I've never done a book but called Insomnia Hotta, Sneaky Little Buggers that they are. They did a secret video of the night, which I was told was to get Bilo footage for a new video for Kolhatkar. They did this incredible, unbelievable video of my book launch and put into the music of Dreman by Eversmann is one of the best tunes in the planet and gave it to me. And it was tremendous. And what they did was they went around all of these people going, hey, what do you think of Steve doing this book? Now, if you go to Steve de Sims, don't come, you know, not trying to sell you anything.   Steve: But if you go to our website, we put the video on the front page of the website because Simon Schuster said you're not even not even promoting the book. You have to promote the book. So I went, oh, I'll stick this video up. Now, the video at the beginning, everyone's like, oh, it's such an honor to be here. Steve's done really well. He's what? It's all bullshit. It's all kind of like I'm sober and I'm on film, so I'm going to say something nice about him. And then as the video gets old, obviously the night gets old on the old fashions get going on and like with that bleep bleep bleep. Oh, bleep. And he's just to use it. And I just tell myself that's real. That's that's low people about a couple of drinks in him. And now that just kind of like screaming at me and swearing and I just thought, that's Leo. So I put that up. And the funny thing is that video. Launched it, people suddenly saw I wasn't trying to hide behind any kind of misconception of perfection, that this was as good as it gets. And now the book's been released and translated into Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Mandarin, Chinese, Korean. It's now Polish and it's now being translated into Russian. And it's called World Wide as a best seller. It's in credible how this is taken off and what it's done for me and for those people that I'm now able to communicate with, shake him up a little bit, get them uncomfortable, and then spit them out into the world to be more impactful.   Joe: Yeah, it's it's great and it's truly a Steve Sims book launch, like people should take note that that's why it's so cool to meet you and to be talking with you. It's like this real, real, real thing. And that's what I love. It's just it's completely refreshing. So ask why three times what does that mean?   Steve: We're in a world today where we're very scared of telling you what we want, you know, if you say to someone, hey, you win a million dollars this weekend, what are you going to do? They're going to go, oh, I'm going to get a Ferrari and I'm going to get a hot tub. And all of the Hawaiian Tropic goes are going to come and sit in the hot tub with me. And you gotta scrape. But three months down the line, what are you going to do? And then it's going to be things like, well, you know, my school, my kids school does no basketball court. I'd really like to help them. You see, people have a knee jerk answer and then they have the real core and people don't want to tell you what the core is. So this is what I do. People will say to me, and he's a chip on a trick for everyone out there, basic communication and in fact, is heavily used by the FBI. I know it sounds funny, but it is just the basics of communication. And when anyone ever says to you what they want, respond in the same right and tonality and speed that they've said. Now, let me give you an example. I really want to do this. And you go, oh, that's really fantastic. And then you drop it. You go, Oh, that's really fantastic. But why? And when you drop that tone.   Steve: They in their head, they go, oh, they recently bodily wise, if I sat in front of you, you know, the body language, you can see them like sink down a little bit more because the gods know up when the chest is out and it's all raw. But then they sink back and they go, oh, that's a good question. And they they then go, well, actually this happened. And in fact, probably rather than going on about that, I'll give you a story as an example, if I might. So I was working with John for about eight years, and we had an office at the time in Palm Beach and I wasn't in the office and I get this call come through to me from one of the team and they said, hey, Steve, we've got a guy on the phone from New York and he wants to meet some Elton John. You know, you need to speak to him because you're the one that's going over to be without one on that time. And I just found out what he wants. Right. So I answer the phone and I said, hey, hey, hey, hey. I want to get a picture out of John. Match the technology. Oh, that's fantastic, that's great. Why? So then he comes back with well, he's you know, he's one of the last living legends, he's an icon, he's brilliant. I want to get a photograph with him off my desk.   Steve: He's going to die soon. And, yeah, that's two things. One, there was no direct response to my question of why. And secondly, if, you know, if he never matched my knowledge, well, he carried on with his excitement. So I said to him, oh, that's fantastic. I'll come back to you. Let me see what I could do. And I hung up, never got his email, never got his phone number. There was no real driving call. It was all very superficial. OK, so then about a month later and we're about a month and a half away from the party now, one of the girls at the office contacted me. She said, hey, we got this guy from New York on the phone, wants to meet Elton John. I don't think it's the same guy as the other one because I already contacted him and said, we don't touch this guy. But I'm wondering if this is might this charter can I do it because you wouldn't respond to it? So in my head, I'm like, oh, well, I've got to get rid of this guy as well when I put me through New York and comes on the phone. Hey, how are you doing? I said, all right. You know, I hear you want to meet sound, John. He went, Yeah. What mean? So I want to have a chat with him. So I said, Oh, that's fantastic.   Steve: Brilliant. I said, Why? And he went, oh, and he had to think about it, but still had a bit of bravado about it, is that all? Well, he's a he's an iconic he's a legend. I want to meet him and have a chat. Going to get a picture with him. There's things. Now, I could see he was stumbling. So I said to him very quietly, and as Chris Voss says, you've midnight boys, I said to him. What things? And just shut up. And a different man came back on the phone. And this is all he said. So when I was a kid, my dad used to take me to school and he used to bring me back from school whenever my mom, it was always my dad, he'd take me to bring me back. Now, the car, we had a cassette player in it and the cassette was jammed and it was Elton John's greatest could play, but it couldn't eject. So all the way to school. We would be singing our lungs out to Elton John on the way back from school, we'd be singing our lungs out of Elton John now. Then he got a new column. This car had this CD player in it. So he bought Elton John's greatest hits. And again, we would sing our lungs out all the way to school and sing our lungs out on the way back. And then I started to get into high school for the first couple of years, he still had to take me and pick me up.   Steve: And I used to jump into that car so fast because he would have one job blaming before it even got in the car and I would stare out the window with mass embarrassment as my dad some his lungs out all the way home. And I would say to my mom, can you make you stop singing anyone jump a Clydeside just like she's thing and all the way to high school and all the way back, you will be like by sunlight, slam the door quickly so no one else can hear Elton John coming out of the door. He said that my dad died about twenty five years ago. I've got kids, I'm married, and I'll be traveling to work where we're going on a vacation, going down to take my wife out for dinner one night. He said the radio will be on, he said, and Elton John to come on the radio. You sit in for the next three and a half minutes, my dad is sat in the seat next to me blaring his lungs out to John. I want to thank him for bringing my dad back to me every now and then for three minutes at a time. That was it, there was the why, there was the call, he was too embarrassed to tell me that story at the beginning, so he hid behind the always great bring in all the bravado.   Steve: But you'd have never got to it if you hadn't have used you in a Sherlock and gone. Why what why is also the most aggressive, combative word out there? For some reason it pisses people off. I get people text me and DM me and Facebook message me and they go Sim's. I see you in L.A. I'm going to be in L.A. next week. We should get together for a beer. I want to buy you a steak and all I will respond with is why. And the amount of people get, well, I heard you acculturate the dick, you know, and they will get offensive and right. And then I'll get other people going. Good question. I wanted to discuss it. I want to talk about this. I wanted to bring this. I wanted to say thanks. And that is my wife. The older you get, the more you need the why. This guy was a perfect example without a job of what he's true. Why? What is true call was now with that. I was able to go to Elton John telling the story and got them to meet, and it was a very Tavey wonderful moment, this very powerful moment. But that was that was a perfect example of how the wide drives to the core. Without the coal, you haven't got a connection. It's all superficial.   Joe: Yeah, that's a great story. Gosh, the next one never be the first call.   Steve: Yeah, I'm really crappy introducing myself, and I also think it's pointless, so what I'll do is if I need to get in touch with you and I come in and I say, hey, you know, hey, how are you? My name's my name's Steve Sims. You know, we got a chat. I know the Pope and Elon Musk. Richard Branson. I'm a big deal. Can I be on your podcast? You're going to be like, this guy's a dick, you know, I want nothing to do with this guy, you're going to go straight past any of the information I've given you and just come to the assumption of a self promoting full of himself. Egotistical prick. Now, let's change it, let's say like next week, you're talking with one of your buddies and your buddy says, oh, have you heard about this guy called Steve Sims? He's worked with John Elon Musk. And the guy is a big deal. He says word for word what I said. But all of a sudden, you're now interested, you're kind of like, oh, you know, can you make an intro? And then when you do get to speak with me, I've already got all this credibility. So I haven't got to so much so I can be humble and sit and go, yeah, what do you want? Oh, I've got to focus. Well, let me see if I can do all of that shit, because I've already got the credibility. So I noticed years ago there is much more powerful and it's much more brief of a conversation if you're riding on someone else's credibility and connection and introduction.   Steve: So if I want to meet someone, I'll look at whoever else is in that circle, who do they respect and get them to make the introduction and then they will contact me. Oh, yeah. You know, Jimmy, tell me to call. You got you've done some weird things, though. Yeah, I have. But I want to do my next weird thing with you. I tell you what, so you can have that kind of conversation. If I'm at a party and someone stood next to me and they say, hey, what are you doing? Based on that body language, based on how they're asking the question will be based on how I respond. So I've said to people before, I own the valet company in this park and all the cars here, oh, I to work for the security. I'm undercover. I own a petrol station just down the road. I'll come up with all of those kind of things to find out. So did I want to stay there and still have a conversation? If they do, great. You know, but then is it something that I think I want to do business? I want to say actually, do you know the best thing? You know what? You over there. I'll get you a drink, you go nostalgia what I did. And then I'll get a job and of course, I want to be like, oh my God. And then of course, they'll be back down. Oh, yeah. And you'll have that kind of thing that I'm always very careful to be very calculated on how I get introduced and who introduces me.   Joe: Yeah, it's that theory of the circle of influence type thing, right, that for four, then three, then two, then one. And so the more you can have those people talk about you. By the time you reach the person in the middle that you eventually wanted to be, maybe introduced to or do business with you, you've been built up so big you don't have to say a word.   Steve: You have to say nothing. I've had people literally phone me going, Oh, Billy, Billy told me to give you a call and I'll be honest. How can I help you? And I haven't had to sell myself. I haven't had to talk about. I've had to do none of that. So if you become the solution to someone else's problem, you ain't got to worry about any of the shine.   Joe: Yeah, all right, so this is the last one of those three bullet points that I when I they caught my eye, I wanted to make sure I asked and you already alluded to this one, but you said, don't be easy to understand. Be impossible to misunderstand.   Steve: There's a confused client will never give you his checkbook, and so I noticed years ago that anyone that's ever heard the term, the big C. knows it stands for cancer. OK, the big C in business is confusion. So you say I alluded to earlier, you alluded it to even earlier than that.   Joe: Ok.   Steve: When you actually remove all the confusion with what it is you do and who you are. You make it very easy for the other person to now make an educated decision on whether or not you're the person they want to do business with, hang out with whatever. OK, so stop trying to confuse your clients. Here's the classic mistake. Hey, I've got a new business. Let me get a website. Let me get a guy to buy all the copy for the website with words that I could not even spell. I could not even say. But hey, they make me look smart and the person who reads it goes OK with this person's obviously ex a dictionary or, you know, was was was an English major in Oxford. And then they get you on the phone. You're like, Hello, Bob, how can I help you? And they go, well, hang on. I mean, there's a disconnect. And that's the problem. You want to make sure that you have full transparency, who you are, what do you stand for? What do you do? What is the solution that you provide to whose problem? So if you've got all of that transparency, you are impossible to misunderstand. But people try to be something they lean against cos they don't own. They take photographs on jets that have not left the runway. They talk a good talk of bullshit and bollocks and a distortion. And people look at you and here's the thing. You're never, never going to get someone phone you up. Hey, Steve, I was looking at your website. I'm really confused what it is you do. What is it you do? You're never going to get that.   Steve: People are going to they've got a problem. They need a solution. That's what being an entrepreneur is an entrepreneur. It's for people to outsource their problems to. And you then send them an invoice to do so. It's complicated, but that's the world of an entrepreneur. So if you make it very confusing as to who you are, what problems you solve, then you're not in business. And so that's why I'm a great believer that you've really got to focus on the clouting. I'll give you a classic one. People, if you if you open up your social pages, link to Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, whatever, and you look on there, you look on LinkedIn and you've got to you're going to sue on and you're all looking smart and debonair. And then you go over to Facebook and it's Girls Gone Wild, just sitting there with a mix on the edge of the beach. And, you know, your confusion people. And you never want to confuse people. And there's a lot of people out there I like to call them idiots. They look at LinkedIn and they go, well, you have to do that LinkedIn because it's more professional than Facebook. Facebook is the largest business advertising platform in the planet. So why is linked in the business, want to not know Facebook, that's the first thing. Secondly, because you are a genius and you think you have to be buttoned up on LinkedIn, but you can be in real bad Bahama shorts on Facebook. Why is it that Apple is not why is it that Nike is not, why is it the Samsung Chevrolet? Any brand out there is the exact same on thing as they are on Facebook as they are on Snapchat, as they are on Twitter? Why? Because you are who you are, why start confusing your clients by being two different people if you love wearing suits? I wear suits on all platforms.   Steve: If you love when Bahama shorts web Howard Schultz on a new platform, but don't be two different people. It breeds confusion and understand the social is nothing more than a platform of consumption. If I don't want to get too deep into it. But if you got 10 people together and you said, hey, what's the news tonight? And then we're going to talk about nine o'clock tomorrow. And nine o'clock tomorrow, you would still be talking about coronaviruses, potential riots. New laws coming in, you know, stimulus packages, the news would be exactly the same. But then if you ask those 10 people what news station did you look at that would go well, KTLA, ABC, CNN, BBC, these are all points of consumption for the same news as for social platforms or whatever you post on Facebook, post on LinkedIn, whatever is posted on LinkedIn, post on Twitter. This is nothing more than points of consumption. I know people that go, I don't want to watch Facebook, OK, whatever I'm posting on Facebook, I'm going to post on Twitter, so I'm still going to get you so. Don't change to be anybody, they're not the big brands don't do it, so why did your smart arse tell you that it's a good idea to do it makes   Joe: Right,   Steve: Them say.   Joe: And for everybody that's listening to this or eventually watching the YouTube video, the prime example is just go to your website, go to go to Steve's website, and you'll see that exactly the person you're seeing hearing here is exactly who's on that website. The tone of the copy that's on the website is you throughout the entire Web site.   Steve: And that's that's there's a lot of people that go and get copyright is OK. They miss the point and again, I don't want to get too deep into this, but they miss the point of what social and websites are for. That's a generally and ignite a conversation. So I thought I'd come to you and I start speaking Japanese to you, and you don't speak Japanese. End of conversation, if I get somebody to put together a copy onto my website that makes me sound articulate and overly smart and overly iino on everything, you may go or don't like the sound of this guy or worse, you might go. I like the sound of this guy. And then you reach out to me and you suddenly find that I am nothing like that person. So what you should do is download a copy, and I love copy, copyright is a great we going to copyright is not the time. I think everyone should look at copyrights in the future. But when you're doing basic critical copy for, like, your website. Puke, count your thoughts and then get somebody to tweak your thoughts, don't impose it, just correct the grammar, correct terminology, maybe reframing a bit, but that's what I did. I call it verbal puke. I will literally I'm one of the ways that I do it is I've got this thing like a smart phone, like everyone in the planet has one foot away from them. I record, I push the cord and I go, hey, welcome to the world of Steve Sims. I'm here to tell you about this. And I will talk it through and then I will send it over to one of my assistants to get it translated and then to adjust it for grammar and correction and flow that you should always leave your website, your most important initial point of conversation with words that came from your head, not somebody else.   Joe: Yeah, and your website is exactly the perfect example of that, so everyone has to go look at your website because I think it's refreshing. Again, everything about you is refreshing. So I have less than 15 minutes with you. So I want to just talk about a few things on your Web site so that the audience understands. So Sims distillery is the first thing, which is your online community, right?   Steve: It's my community, I wanted to build a community for people that wanted to ask me questions, ask a private community questions, we do live Facebook Amma's where people come in to answer that question. So if you're a member of seems to still be and you go, hey, I'm having a problem with problem of finding a good copywriter or what's been a tick tock of Instagram, or should I be doing more videos or should I be doing more static postings? I will literally bring one of my friends in and will do a forty five minute live AMA where you and the other seems to still be members can physically ask these people questions and get results out of your answers.   Joe: Awesome. OK, we don't have to go into this, but I know that you're a keynote speaker. I've seen different things for you, but I just want the audience to know everything about you. You also offer private coaching, OK? And then you also offer this private 30 minute phone call that you'll do with people. Right? OK, and then you have the same speakeasy, which is the thing that I think is really interesting, which to me it's like a two day roundtable mastermind. Is that a good description of it?   Steve: Now, how much do you know about it?   Joe: Well, I just I you know, from when I was going to maybe a 10 to one here in Scottsdale, that happened not too long ago, sort of looking at it, it was me. It felt like a master mastermind, like you were going to go around and everyone   Steve: But   Joe: Was   Steve: What   Joe: Going to   Steve: Information   Joe: Sort of.   Steve: Did you actually know about Scotsdale? And   Joe: Oh,   Steve: I'm putting you on the spot here, so   Joe: God,   Steve: Get   Joe: I.   Steve: All of the information and you knew for a fact about Scotsdale.   Joe: I think the only time when I looked at it, I just potentially knew the dates and the cost and that it was going to be capped, that I don't know if it was at the time that one might have been capped at like twenty five people or something like that. I don't think it was 40, but I don't remember.   Steve: So the point is that we actually we run these speakeasies as a reverse mastermind, so what we do is we tell you the city, as we did Scotsdale, we didn't tell you where it was going to be. We tell you it's two thousand dollars and we give you the dates.   Joe: Right. OK,   Steve: Then   Joe: Good.   Steve: We'll   Joe: So   Steve: Give   Joe: I passed because   Steve: You   Joe: That's   Steve: Pass.   Joe: All I knew. OK.   Steve: Yeah. And but we don't tell you who's going to turn out. We don't tell you what you're going to learn. We don't tell you any of those things. And the reason is because everyone signs up, we reach out to them and we would go, hey, thanks for joining up. Thanks for with the speakeasy. What's your problem? And we want to know what our problem is and if they come back and they go, well, I'm having a problem gaining credibility or I want to get more viewers or I want to, can I go into coach? You know, I want to do more speaking gigs. I want to when we can find out what our problem is, then I know who to bring in to actually teach and train Joe in that two day event to physically answer the problems they have. So I work in reverse. There's no point in me saying, hey, come to my event. I've got this person, this person, this person, because you may go, well, I like those too, but I have no idea who those three. I want to know your problem and then I'm going to bring people in. And by not telling anybody what who's going to be there, even the attendees. The whole speakeasy mentality is that you don't know what's going on, you just know that the people in there both teach in training and attend these. I've got to be creative disruptors of rock stars because it takes that mentality to come along to one of my events and we cap them all at 40. We capture one in Scottsdale at 40, although we only had thirty six turn up because there was some flight issues, because I think we had that big Texas storm coming through at the time. So sadly we lost about four people, but we capable of 40 next ones in San Diego, the 19th and the 20th of July. And that's all, you know. You know, that's that is literally a.   Joe: All right, cool, the deep dive is when you would come to somebody's organization and do a full day of onsite consulted,   Steve: Yeah,   Joe: Correct?   Steve: That's that's that's the that's the call where we actually go in and find out what's going on, it's very shaky, you know, it's very disruptive. It gets a lot of people uncomfortable because we really go in there and try and tear down, you know, why people are doing things, what they're looking for as an outcome and usually to see where the disconnect is on those.   Joe: Great, and then you also have your own podcast, which is the art of making things happen. And do you is most of the people, from what I can see in the sort of entrepreneurial space.   Steve: Yes, but not somehow you think you see, I've had priests, I've had gang members, I've had lifers, I've had prostitutes, I've had Fortune 500, I've had rocket scientists. I have many, many different range of people on there. But as I said at the beginning of the show, at one point or time, they were pissed off and they were aggravated and that's what caused them to then go into a different world. So, you know, we're all entrepreneurial, but I'm not running Fortune 500 companies or CEOs. They come from very, very wide and almost ran on. Something will happen to me. I saw that Megan Merkl interview recently a while ago, and I did a deconstructs on the power of branding that could have been done if we'd have had and still in the royal family and how brand wise it was a for and again with her leave in the royal family. So I'll often just go in there and spout about things that I'm up to that have come to my mind, of course, to piss me off. And I need to vent.   Joe: And then on top of everything else is if you didn't have enough to do you have Sim's media, which to me looks like you're basically helping anybody, any entrepreneur or any person with their branding, the PR, their marketing podcast book launches product launches. Right. So you because you've done all of this stuff, you're like, hey, I can help. So you have Sim's   Steve: Yeah,   Joe: Media as well.   Steve: I've done it for everyone from Piaget to Ferrari to major events to major influences, and I find the way people work media quite often is wrong. They have a Field of Dreams moment. Hey, I'm going to pay for an article in Forbes. They get the article in Forbes and then they sit there by the phone thinking, OK, Reinier, bugger. And it doesn't work like that. So I'm a great believe. Again, media is one thing, but what you do with it is everything. So the way I work kind of works. So now what we did was about three years ago, we started allowing clients to actually operate under the way that we worked. And then it was about six months ago that we physically launched Tim's media and able to get you to where you wanted to be given the message you want to be given.   Joe: Awesome. I love it. OK, Henry, your son, does he work with. Is he part of your team?   Steve: Yes, and he's branching out to a new thing, and I laugh because, again, your kids grow up going, Oh, Dad, you don't know day, you don't know I want to follow you. Yeah. And they love you. And then they go to school where for eight hours the school teaches them. There's only one answer. And if you don't get this answer and you don't take the white box, you failed. And then they come home to an entrepreneur who doesn't even know where the box is. And there's 20 different answers and each one of them is making them half a million dollars, you know, so it's a real disconnect. And he had trouble with that. And he was studying engineering, which was a very analytical profession. And then he would come on to his dad, who Cyprien old fashioned talking to someone in Korea and suddenly getting wired one point to be able to do something. He's like, how can this be? You know? So eventually he actually said he wanted to just flow around to a couple of the events that I was speaking at. And then he suddenly sort to see the world of entrepreneurial being a lot more challenging to him. And now he's actually gone out. And it's it's beautiful to see how he's come from the analytical world. And he's now taking what he knows about that. And he's very driven, focused on results. And he works in Sim's media and he's launching his own group. So I'm very proud of it.   Joe: Ok, so he's actually doing some of his own things. He's not just   Steve: He is, he   Joe: Got   Steve: Is   Joe: It, OK,   Steve: You   Joe: Call.   Steve: Want to you want to you want to basically build people up to be good enough that they can leave but treat them so well they don't want to. So it's good to see him out on his own. I'm   Joe: Perfect.   Steve: Happy with that.   Joe: Awesome. OK, so we're out of time. One quick question. If you only had one motorcycle, which brand would you choose?   Steve: Oh, that's the nastiest question   Joe: I   Steve: In.   Joe: Know, I knew I knew it was going to   Steve: Oh.   Joe: Because I see all your bikes lined up, I see because I see your Harley Norton, I'm like, Oh man, what's your what's his favorite?   Steve: Oh, this is kind of weird because if anything, it's probably the least exclusive exclusive of my bikes, but I bought a Harley Street glide about a year ago and it's the only comfortable to up bike. I've got Zoom. My others are single seat is all that will Elbaum comfortable. So this is the only one that my wife can come on. So I would probably say that one because it's the only one that me and her can actually get out and do. Our tacker runs up to Santa Barbara or.   Joe: Perfect. OK.   Steve: Tough question, tough   Joe: Hey,   Steve: Olival question.   Joe: I will I would have had another eight of those like I already you've already explained your favorite drink. It sounds like it's an old fashioned but   Steve: Yeah, it is.   Joe: But I would have a ton of I wish I had more time with you. I so enjoy this. I'm going to put all your links in the show notes so that anyone listening to the podcast will see them in the show notes and on YouTube. And I will make sure they know where to find you. This has been a complete honor for me. I again, to meet you even virtually, and to have a real person who's doing real things at a real honest level and not leaning against a Lamborghini that you don't own are sitting in a shell of a fuselage of a plane that doesn't even fly for photos. It just means a lot to me. There's something about it. And I hope to meet you in person sooner than later. I hope to attend one of your events, and I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for being here.   Steve: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

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Quick Land Sale vs. Retail Price (LA 1300) Transcript: Steve: Steve and Jill here. Jill: Hello. Steve: Welcome to the Land Academy Show. Jill: Oops. Steve: Entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steve: Today, Jill and I talk about a quick land sale versus retail price. Jill: Right. Steve: You want to explain that title? Because it's kind of your title. Jill: Oh, is it? Okay. It's kind of like, think about the kind of person you want to be. A quick land sale is for me, just how we operate. I used to say I'm a wholesaler, but that even gets confused. I don't want people to ... People have negative thoughts sometimes- Steve: Yeah, it became a negative term. Jill: It did, and it's so silly because I think people see a wholesaler as someone who doesn't acquire property, all they do is assign a- Steve: Get in the way. Jill: ... property. Exactly. Assign it versus yeah, virtually get in the way. I am with you. And the way we do it, which is still wholesaling. People don't, I don't know why it got all garbled. We buy the property. I will seek out the property. I will buy the property. I will pay the full price for the property. We own it. We close escrow, it's in our name. Now I'm going to turn around, mark it up and sell it. So I can choose to quickly double my money and get out or I can, Hm, I can mark it up and some people do this, they get a little greedy and they think about retail. Why would I sell a property, Jill, that I paid $20,000 for? Why would I sell it for $45,000 tomorrow when I can sit and wait and get seventy for it. Because that's really what it's worth. And my question is, why wouldn't you? I mean, do you really want to sit and babysit the property and talk to all the people who want to go drive on it and roll around on it and camp on it and love on it? Have a virtual thing of what their tiny home's going to look like on it and see their family running through the field on it. Dream it up. And waste all that time. I'm kind of getting into the show, but that's describing it and we'll talk more. Steve: The undertone or between the lines here is, the ethics of what we do. That's what I want to get into. Jill: Oh, really? Steve: Yeah, because I haven't heard it recently, but I've heard people in the past, give me a hard time about what we do for a living. We haven't brought this up. Jill: I haven't heard this in a while. Okay, good we'll talk about that. Steve: We haven't brought this up in a long time, but I think it's worth talking about. Jill: I love it. Steve: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill: Okay. Gina wrote, "Hello. My name is Gina. I've been doing land investing for a few years now and I guess I'm here to try and see if I can improve my workflow. I send out about 2000 letters a month, but I'd like to make that close to 5000." Thank you, Kevin. One of our moderators. Yep. Steve: Thank you, Kevin, by the way from me. Jill: Yeah. "Any tips, tools tricks you use to scale? I currently work a full time job and simply don't have the time to sort through all the sites and piece together that many records. 2000 sites would be my max without going crazy. Any help from experienced members, such as yourself, would be much appreciated." Cool. So I'm wondering what sites she's going through to piece together records. I'm thinking if she's a member, you're not piecing anything together, you're just- Steve: She's a member. Jill: Okay. So you should be using Real Quest Pro, having an idea before you go into there to download the data, you've spent a lot of time picking the areas, picking the County and getting it all from there. You're holding back. Go. Steve: In the interest of education, I'm going to be very plain speaking here. I don't see the difference between processing 2000 or 5000 at all. In fact,

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

Steve: Welcome to all of our Becoming Your Best podcast listeners, where ever you might be in the world today. This is your host Steve Shallenberger and we have a very special guest and friend on our show today and I am as excited as I've ever been to have somebody here. He's wonderful. He’s a one of a kind individual with a life of inspiring others, including me, and helping people all over the world to reach their fullest potential and dreams. Welcome Denis Waitley.   Denis:  Hey Stephen! Great to be with you. It's a real honor and a privilege to be on your podcast and I hope we can shed some more light to your audience which you do so well on Becoming Your Best.   Steve: Well thank you so much. Well yes we'll just go ahead and get right into it and before we get going I'd like to just give a little background of some of the things that Denis has done and generally his nature which is amazing. He is inspired, informed, challenged and entertained audiences for over thirty five years. I know that because in 1983 and 1984  in one of my first companies where we had 700 sales reps that were going all over the world - Denis was one of the individuals that we invited to speak to and train all of these young sales reps. There were going all over, and they were energetic of full of energy but Denis and along with the number of his friends Zig Ziglar, Earl Nightingale, Ira Hayes -  I mean these are some really cool people who changed our lives and Denis was one of those. And so we're just part of that but he has done that all over the entire world. He's spent many years in China , hopefully will have the chance to have them tell us a little about that experience, in India, United States. Recently he was voted business speaker the year by the Sales and Marketing Executives Association and the by Toastmasters international and inducted into the international speakers hall of fame. He's had over ten million audio programs sold in fourteen different languages. This is just great! I actually pulled Denis a number of your books off my bookshelf again this morning. I've read that many times -  The Psychology of Winning, The Seeds Of Greatness and it goes on. His audio album The Psychology of Winning is the all time best selling program on self mastery. He's a graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis and a former navy pilot. He holds a doctoral degree in human behaviour. Denis we’re so excited to have you with us!   Denis: Well thank you Steve. It's really great to be with you. You know it's been a wonderful journey. I'm still out there. You know people say,  Well, you’re long past retirement age and I said well retire - by its very definition means to go to bed or tired for the last time. If you're retired it seems tired again. So  I'm re inspired and retried instead of retired and I think that's one of the secrets that we all learn from people like Billy Graham and people like you know George Burns. You can name them and they seem to live longer because they're engaged in learning and they have the curiosity of a child that doesn't end when you finally stop earning. So I think you're yearning should and learning should continue regardless of your no longer earning.   Steve: Well that is a great way to put it. All of a sudden,  that great voice a Denis Waitley is coming back and we just kinda lean forward to listen to all those great quotes that you have. That's an inspiration for me , like I'm already past retirement ,but I am no where compared - I think Denis is like a 184 at least. Denis: It seems like it. You know, Steve, I've been doing eulogies for all of my contemporaries and that’s not, of course something that you look forward to. So, I did the eulogy for my friend, Jim Rone, Eulogy for my friends Zig Ziglar, for Wayne Dyer, Eulogy for my friend Steven Covey and even for Robert Schuller and Billy Graham was a friend of mine. I don't like to drop names like that but as I look at it them, I say to myself, “Wow, I'm so fortunate to still be out here.” But I have a cousin in England, Jack Reynolds ,who's 106 and he holds the Guinness Book of Records for the highest, longest, zip line journey for the oldest person. And it shows him at 106,  shouting and yelling as he's going down this is a blind over the mountain in England and I asked him how do you live so long and he said,” I look forward to being a 107.”   Steve: Well that's great you know just recently Denis I've had the opportunity in just the last few months to be with the number of longevity in health doctors just on a retreat or different circumstances - one in Singapore there. Dr Oz was one of them. Another, Dr Mao is his name and then the third Dr Foruhy - they're amazing but they talk about, and there among the world's leaders on health and longevity. They all reflected a number of things in common that we can do to extend healthy living: stay fit,  get adequate sleep. One of the ones I like the Dr Oz said was your heart needs to have a reason to keep beating.   Denis:  Well that's good, that's a very good.  That's when I have learned that too because I studied Prisoners Of War for my doctoral dissertation and I found that no American prisoner escaped during the Korean War from a minimum security camp but many of them escape from maximum security camp and that's because leaders always want to get home, or get to where they're going and people who feel that they're victimized and have no way out or no way forward, then don't live as long and that's what happens to many service people and coaches when they retire . If they retire and do nothing and have nothing really going on, you know we all say why don't we just play golf and fish. Well I like to eat what I catch and I don't like to kill fish necessarily but I do like taste of a fresh fish and I don't play golf anymore because why would I run my self esteem on a want like that.   Steve: That’s great. Well there's so much we can talk about that I think today let's start talking and I hope you don't mind and for the benefit of our audience, I'd like to start off talking about The Psychology Of Winning. This is a wonderful book and I am going to read just a small portion out of it. It’s an introduction and then perhaps Denis can tell us about what inspired him, what led to him write The Psychology Of Winning, and how was it been impactful in your life and others? So let me read this clip first. This is where he talks about true winning. True winning however is no more than one's own personal pursuit of individual excellence. You don't have to get lucky to win at life nor do you have to knock out other people down or gain at the expense of others. Winning is taking the talent or potential you were born with and have since developed and using it fully towards a goal or purpose it makes you happy. Winning is becoming the dream of yourself that would fulfill you as a person with high esteem. And winning is giving and getting in an atmosphere of love, cooperation, social concern and responsibility and that is why I've been so inspired about Denis because not only does he set it out there but then he's he says now here are some things that we need to do the will help us realize those dreams. So how did it all happen? What led to The Psychology Of Winning.   Denis:  Well, that you know, of course a long journey, but as things always start in childhood - so as a little boy, I grew up during World War II - a dysfunctional family. My father left home when I think I was 9 years old when he left but he went to war and then he and my mother broke up and my mother became very bitter because they weren't spending his checks home and so she became disillusioned with life and was fairly negative it and as a way of combating that disillusionment I rode my bike about ten miles over to my grandmother's house every Saturday because she was an inspiration. So she and I planted a victory garden and she taught me about the seeds of greatness. She said whatever you put in the soil and nurture will come up and be fruitful and I said, “But how come weeds don't need water?” And she said, “Well weeds are like negative thoughts. They blow in on the wind and they don't need any water and they just need people to repeat them.” So we did this victory garden and she inspired me when I was little and in a dysfunctional family where your father maybe is an alcoholic and your mother's a negative for perhaps all of the right reasons, I found that by reading biographies of people who'd overcome enormous obstacles to become successful - I found that these people had problems that I never even dreamed about and yet they seem to be fulfilled and happy. So I read a lot and then I began to try to be a leader in my school to overcome feelings of inadequacy and feelings of abandonment perhaps by my father and to make a long story short,  going to the Naval Academy during the Korean War, I learned a lot about discipline and target seeking and I became a navy pilot which meant that I had to visualize, internalize, I had to fantasize but I had to be goal oriented and I think as a surfer in southern California who finally became disciplined enough to be a carrier pilot, these things went together but I never wanted to destroy people in war-  I want to defend my country but I had a calling that I wanted to develop the potential within people because I was struggling myself and to make a really long story short ,during the worst time in my life, when I had custody of my 4 little children, I was divorced and had no income I wrote The Psychology of Winning at the worst of times. Now people, you know Tony Robbins and some of my friends would say, “Well usually, you write a book about your success!” And I said “Well I wrote the book for myself, so that I could learn from what I was not doing to do the things I know I should be doing. And so at the worst of my time, I wrote my best work so to speak, and so I think writing it for myself, giving myself the encouragement to do things that were a little more difficult but took a little more habit, a little more discipline, a little more effort; I put together these principles and I use POW because I had been a rehab facilitator for the returning Vietnam prisoners of war and I use that as a metaphor-  POW means either Prince Of Wales, putting on weight, power of women or psychology of winning and it's a perception through the eye of the beholder. So my premise is it's not so much what happens to you that counts, it's how you take it and what you make of it so what's your response to the daily life ; your anticipation of the future and the way you treat failure as fertilizer. Failure is the fertilizer of success. My grandmother used to say as we were fertilizing our plants, she said “We just take all the stuff and mulch and up and it grows green plants,” and I said “So that's what you do with failure huh? She said you don't lay in it wallow in it. You use it as a learning experience. So I would say that my grandmother who immigrated from England and going through World War 2 and the Korean War -  I thought we'd always be at war because that's all I knew growing up, and so I was so gratified to realize that the war is finally ended but POW, does really mean for me psychology of winning rather than a prisoner of war.   Steve: Wonderful! Boy, what we're great comments and thanks for the background. Talk about seeds! There are so many nuggets of what you just shared of and your grandma must've been some lady!   Denis:  Well I think about every day I have a mahogany butterfly that she always wanted that I finally made enough money with my paper out to buy it for is the only gift that I wanted from her life but it's in my kitchen and I look at it every day and we have a little silent conversation but she was definitely the role model and inspiration in my life and that I'll always be grateful for having her. She would say “You mow the bass line I've ever seen.” and I would ride my bike 10 miles just to get that kind of recognition from her and that good feeling of you're a good boy and you can do good things and the seeds of greatness and I  always ask her “Will the Japanese win?” And she said “No ,you always get out what you put in.” So you get the harvest of the seeds that you sell sow - she said they will not win because their premise for doing what they did was not good and honest. I said “Wow.” She said, “So model yourself after people who've given service but not necessary are celebrities,” and I've always felt that the most successful people will never be known in the media because they're not celebrities, they are so busy living life and doing good they don't get covered by the media.   Steve: Great insights! if you wouldn't mind, you said something that caught my attention. You said in the middle of all this you had to you know this wonderful influence and contrast of experiences as a young man but the influence of your grandma on talking about planting the right seeds and in in the middle of all this where you're feeling “a bit like a failure,” because of some of the things that had happened , you said just mention that you felt a calling to help others develop their potential and you included yourself in that group. Would you mind talking about that feeling you had? This calling you felt that you needed to address and respond to and how big of a deal was that for you?   Denis: What was really a big deal see because at the Naval Academy is Episcopalian and growing up the only religious training I had was my grandma reading some really great proverbs and things out of the good book. So I went to Sunday school because the Presbyterians have better uniforms on the softball team and so I went through all these religious experiences and finally and later Billy Graham said to me, “So you've got all these experiences what denomination are you? and I said, “Sir I was hoping you might give me a suggestion.” And  he said, “You know you're on your journey .” So the truth of the matter is when I would hear Handel's messiah at Christmas time , there was this inner tingling and this feeling that there was something internal and I think I was becoming acquainted with my soul and yet not having any formal religious training, it was definitely an inner inspiration so I felt that perhaps I had made a lot of mistakes in my apprenticeship in life so that I might be able to learn to do the right things. And much of what I've written about are certainly repetitions of the scriptures and the Old and the New Testament and all the great books that have been written so there's no question that I'm not an original. I'm someone who's leaned from reading and experiencing and traveling about these things and I think that it was at that bad time of not having income, having my four children wanting to come back home  to San Diego or to California and I was in Pittsburgh in their worst winter and I had just sold the Jonas Salk Foundation to the Mellon Foundation back in Pittsburgh and I found myself divorced with custody of four children who didn't want to be with me in Pittsburgh in the winter. They wanted to come home. It's almost like saying  “Come on we've always been a team!” And they said ‘We want to go home, dad.” I said,” I know but you're with your dad.’ They said “Yeah I know but we want to go home,” and I think that was the turning point where you put your head out the window and say, I'm fed up with myself. I'm not going to take it anymore but which meant I'm not going to do this to myself. So I went into this program of self analysis, self awareness and found that I was not doing the very things that I had read about and I was only superficially scratching the surface. I was only skin deep and so I got into it very deeply and that became that book for The Psychology Of Winning which became an audio program first and then a book, was really a diary of what I needed to learn myself and the only regret I have Steve, is that at the time that I wrote it, OJ Simpson was running through airports for Hertz Rent-A- Car and had suffered rickets as a child and had bold legs and he became this NFL superstar and I included him in my book and I've been trying to remove him from the book ever since. But you can't pick winners in all of the so called role models. He certainly isn’t a role model but so in other words by I learned these principles for me so that I would do them and I began to do them and I went from being somebody who was always late, which is perfect for my name, “Waitley,” - wait for me and so I should have changed my name to swiftly or rushly but I became Waitley but I became first to the gate Waitley. I became someone who was always on time and I did that because I am an absolute believer in the creation of habit and I've learned so much about good and bad habits and healthy and unhealthy and about ninety percent of our daily activities are habitual we do them autonomically without even thinking and so I've spent most of my life trying to help people not break habits - but you don't break a habit. You re write it ,you overcome it, you change it but you don't break it. You know habits are like submarines there silent and deep. They're like comfortable beds easy to get into but difficult to get out of and habits are just this knit pattern of thought that becomes automatic after a while and so I think working with the Olympics, I was really lucky as you know, Bill Simon was president of the Olympics and he appointed be as the first chairman of Psychology for United States Olympics in 1980 and through that experience, I watch these amazing young people get into the habit of winning. And they became they did within what they were doing without and they simulated and they rehearse and they practiced, on and off the field and finally watching the skiers go through the visualization at the top of the run before they hit the first gate and watching swimmers go through the meat ,watching figure skaters backstage going to their routines and not falling during the Triple Axel. I saw all of this and I said you know in addition to being emotionally inspired there definitely is a way to do this if you can control your thinking and if you can fill your thoughts which I call “Psycho Linguistics,” because thoughts are traffic and the brain is either a cul de sac construction zone or freeway. And you can create a freeway in your brain by controlling the traffic that flows through your brain and it actually makes a new highway toward your goal is like a GPS system but instead of a goal positioning satellite or a positioning satellite, it’s a goal positioning system in your brain that you can train to have a target so specific and so emotional that your brain will allow very little distraction to get you there so fortunately through the years neuroscience has proven that positive thinking is more than just the placebo effect. It actually are creators internal pharmacy that really helps optimism become the biology of hope as well as the psychology of hope.   Steve: These are some really extraordinarily inspirational ideas and I'm just thinking I know that so many of our listeners including me and I'd expect all of them have this feeling of something special that they can do in life and then it takes going through thinking about their own unique talents in this introspection that you describe saying how do I address that and how do I concretely move forward and so, these things that you're sharing are so important , so inspirational. I know that they're covered in your books. As you think about this the book Psychology Of Winning, you've been talking about on some of the key parts that are really important for us to realize our goals.   Denis: Well that's a very good question. I think the first one is realizing that your intrinsic worth. I think that worth internalized is better than worth externalized and I think you have to feel deserving of success before you'll really experience it, which really means that if love is not inside of you ,then how can you give away something you don't possess? So love must be there in the first place and I'm not talking about narcissistic self love. It’s the kind of thing that say given my parents and my background given who I am, how I look ,what age I am my ethnicity my religious beliefs ,I'm kind of glad I am me! And in fact I'd rather be me than anyone else in the world live in at any other time, in fact that's who I am. I'm as good as the best but not necessarily better than the rest so I don't compare myself favorably or unfavorably with other people although the Olympics do that with the standard of excellence but that's just to be an Olympian and to compete with world class standards -doesn't mean you're necessarily trying to knock and beat the other person. You're just trying to be your best against world class standards. So I think the most important thing is to believe in your potential because only then will you invest in yourself. if you don't feel worth investing and then you won't invest in it you'll live your life as a spectator - happy to be in the stands and I am happy to be in the stands as well watching tremendous performances but it's much more fun to be in the arena however small and participating. So I think intrinsic self worth, believing in your dream when that's all you have to hang on to is the single most important quality. And then the second one is to always give more in value than you expect to receive in payment, because it seems to be that you really do have an unfailing boomerang. People always called the law of attraction or the law of cause and effect but I found when I am truly interested in helping other people genuinely not to get something for me ,but if I get out of me and into them and transmit whatever value I have in the way of service or advice, that in that way I don't expect a return on the investment but I usually get it ten fold. So I've always believed that if you give more in value than you receive in payment you'll be truly rich in every sense and then of course there is the idea of expectation, optimism, the world revolves around optimism and people who believe in solutions rather than are just complaining about the problems and we have so many critics and so many tweets and so much Twitter as so many instagrams and so much Facebook and so many selfies. You know I'd like to be unselfish in a selfie world and I'd like to instead of being skin deep, I'd like to be soul deep and I'd like to measure diversity not based on how you look on the outside but the experiences you've had as you've been growing up . In other words we all bring a diversity of experience, why do our eyes have to tell us what we should believe or why the war years and our eyes have to be the ones that are the megaphone and also that the block? So I believe that in expecting the best ,that optimism, Harvard does have a new school of placebo and they have found that even people who have after stopping the surgery if you have the sham surgery which you agree to and they just do a little incision and sew it up, the chances of your recovery and feeling good are almost as well as if you have the real surgery which shows that God has given us this incredible ability to believe in something that we really want and is valuable and gives us the pharmacological influence to do it in other words: the endorphins and the harbingers of peace and happiness. So I believe also that happiness is the decision that you make and I train the Olympians above all I've decided to be happy and I think happiness is a decision, not a results and if you wait for a result to make you happy, you'll probably be for ever hung in that suspense of wondering when it's going to happen.   Steve: Well I'll just tell you, Denis, for all of us who are working on becoming our best, which literally creates a fulfilment of light, a happiness within us that goes out and radiates and touches everybody. These things that you're teaching us and sharing with us today are the very things that create that light and I've been taking good notes today. I thank you for that and I'm always shocked at how fast time goes like we're done.   Denis: I know we are! I spent a lot of my time talking to uber drivers and I said you know you have this incredible mechanism and they say, “You being my little GPS that I have up here on my dashboard so I can take,” I said yes first you must know where you are and then you crank in where you want to go and if you know where you are and where you want to go it's much easier to get there because that's called focus and specificity. And they go, wow,  thanks for the info doc! Do I get to I get a tip? Anyway Steve it's been a real thrill, a real honor for me to be with you.  I just keep wanting to plant apple seeds like Johnny Appleseed and I don't know how many of them will get in the soil and take but doesn't matter if you just keep throwing them out - one or two and all I want to do is make a difference in one or two lives and that's enough for me. Plant shade trees under which I myself will never sit.   Steve: Thank you. I can tell you for sure of one person and I know it's countless people where that seed that has fallen and grown and continues to do so. So I personally thank you!   Denis: Well thanks, Steve. I hope we connect again we will. When you're this way and I'm that way let's really do have a reunion. That’s important - friends who haven't seen each other but are still friends for a long time.   Stev: You bet, you can count on that. Now we can't end this podcast without this question and the question is, if you're giving in a parting shot to your family or your friends and brothers or sisters across the world ,what would it be it would be?   Denis: It would be that time is the only equal opportunity employer and please don't rush to your life trying to get wealthy only to find yourself too old to do the things that you save the money to do and remember the one most important thing; the values you leave in your children are much more priceless than the valuables you leave them in your estate. My children have never thanked me for all the money that I've spent on them but we always talk and laugh and cry over the time we spent together. So make sure you spend time with those you love, not just tweets and that just instagrams and not just text .   Steve:  Thats great advice.  Denis how can people find out more about what you're doing? How can they have access to your book , your materials or whatever?   Denis:  I think you know just going to DenisWaitley.com and I have that funny one n  in my nameand I what I'm trying to do is create a library and most of it free. So I'm not trying to get people to go to my website so I'll make money off them. I'm trying to go so that they'll be able to get NFL locker room style pep talks for free which would mean that the music the lyrics, if you will the quotes and the best of what I've done. I'd rather give it to them free then try to sell them something on a subscription so hopefully they'll get more free than trying to surf around the store.   Steve: Wonderful, thank you Denis for being part of the show today. It’s been amazing! We wish our friends that are listening today all the best as well as you continue making a huge difference in the world I'm Steve Shallenberger with becoming your best global leadership wishing you a great day. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Interview with Steve Durie Hugh Ballou: Greetings, it's Hugh Ballou. Another episode of The Nonprofit Exchange live, it's Hugh Ballou and Russell Dennis. Russell, how are you doing today out there in beautiful Colorado? Russell Dennis: After a snowfall last night, the sun has come back out. Everything is beautiful out here in Colorado. Hugh: Love it. People on the podcast can't see it, but you've got a shiny head. Is that part of the sign, or is that just the light over your head? Russell: All of this glare helps keep the focus off of the shadow here with all of the gray hair in it, so there is a method to my madness shining the light here. Hugh: I see that. Russell, the real person. We have a guest who is also a resident of Colorado, but he is a new resident of Florida. We are going to hear from him in just a minute. Today's topic is protecting your culture by doing effective vetting of the people you're bringing in, be it volunteers or paid staff. Steve Durie, welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange. Steve Durie: Thank you, Hugh. It's good to be here. Hugh: So good to have you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, some background, and how did you arrive at what you're doing now? Why is it important to you? Steve: I have been doing this for 15 years. Where it started was when I was actually volunteering in youth organizations with my kids. My question was: Aren't you going to run a background check on me? They're like, No, we don't do that. We trust everyone. Previous to that, I had a lot of database experience in a consulting company in consulting on justice projects, that is, how to share criminal data. I took that knowledge about sharing criminal data and my passion for keeping my own kids safe and know that I was going to be working as a volunteer and turned it into a business 15 years ago. My kids are a little older now, and my wife Laura and I have a special needs son. He is an adult; he is 31. But he is also extremely vulnerable and needs protection. He doesn't live at home anymore. And that is a constant worry about Tommy, whether the people who are working alongside him are safe. It does transcend not just our children in their youth, but into any vulnerable population. That is a broad brushstroke is anybody who is vulnerable, and we can look at each group individually as to how to best screen someone and check them out if we are working with children, youth, or vulnerable adults, or elderly, or single people. There are a lot of different. Vulnerable populations who may need our work. Hugh: Absolutely. It's really good to know about people. In the work that Russell and I do through SynerVision, we help people build their strategy out. Part of that is competencies. We have created a new paradigm that replaces the position description, and the first of four colors is the competency. When you look at somebody's competency, you also want to do a background check so that you can validate what is on their resume, that they actually do that. Are there some hidden things in there? Finding out about the people. What is their performance going to be? Role and responsibility? If it's financial, there is another level of compliance. I used to live in a town of 30,000, and one year, there were two nonprofits that had treasurers make away with $750,000, trusted friends and community members. They didn't do an adequate background check or have safeguards in place. The third color is the culture fit. If somebody has a history of conflict or abuse, you don't really want them spoiling your culture. The fourth color is expectations, but the vetting the person, competency, not only are they clean, but they also fit the culture. There are lots of reasons in any kind of enterprise to do the background check. I think it's especially important when we are dealing with people who are compromised, like your son, like children, like older adults. There are lots of opportunities for people to abuse the system. You have worked with nonprofits so far, have you? Steve: Our focus of the company SecureSearch is with the nonprofit community. It's been over 15 years; we have served over 10,000 nonprofits as their partner for screening their staff, their volunteers, and their board of directors. We are a full-service company. We can do anything, from resume verification to child awareness for those who work with children. Hugh: Resume verification. I heard a guy one time, and his resume said he went to Yale and studied finance. I found out later he didn't graduate. People make up things on their resume. That's a new piece of data. Are nonprofits any more vulnerable than for-profits? Is there an attitude of difference there? You told a story about you being a volunteer, and you ask about the background check. They said we trust people. Do you find that to be more common than not? Steve: I find that to be pretty common in the nonprofit culture where they are really hungry for people to serve and to help. With that, sometimes they actually push aside the fact that these people may have a nefarious past. They are looking to quickly onboard them, get them into a position. They are happy to have a warm body. They are happy to have the skillset the individual brings to the table. Referred by a close friend or family member, so they are not even thinking about screening them, especially if they are not working directly with a child. When they are working with a child, it's more in our consciousness that we should put the best people with these kids to keep in faith. But what about people who are just working alongside one another? The workplace violence conflict. We need to focus on making all of our communities and all of the workplaces as safe as possible. It's the responsibility of the organization to do so. But nonprofits, because of their compromised budgets in some cases, they are spending their money elsewhere to maybe grow their projects and they are not really thinking about the people, if they are safe in the environment they are working in. In corporate America, it is common, and in the nonprofit arena, it is not as common. We are here as a voice to raise the awareness that everybody should be doing this, whether you have one employee or thousands. Hugh: You and I met at a conference last week, CEO Space. Had I met you—I came in late in the week because I had conflicts—and said, “Hey Steve, what is it that you do?” and you say, “I do background searches,” and I say, “I have a nonprofit. Why is it important for me to do that?” How would you respond to me? Steve: As a nonprofit? Hugh: If I say, “I have a nonprofit. Why is it important for me to do that?” Steve: You touched on this. It's about reducing risk and reducing liability. Liability is big. It all ties into the overall image in the community they're serving. It's protecting their image. It doesn't have to be their first priority. The first priority is protecting those who are part of their organization. You have to look at the entire hierarchy of your staff from your board of directors down to your volunteers. Oftentimes, there are people in between the upper board and the volunteers who are just coming on who get missed. They didn't think it was important to screen them. Really it's about lowering your liability and lowering your risk, or at least managing your risk. You can't be a risk-free organization; that doesn't exist. It's about, how do you take steps and utilize your budget dollars to minimize your risk as much as you possibly can? Hugh: Russell, you and I interface with a lot of nonprofit leaders and boards. I find there is a lot of boards that aren't up to speed on how to be the board. They think about being in charge of governance sometimes. They sometimes realize they are responsible for financial oversight. I don't think boards realize they have a liability whatever happens. Do you find, Russell, in your work that boards are blind to this element as well? Russell: I have talked to people who really don't have a core grasp of the notion of having liability insurance for the board of directors officers as they are putting these things together. They don't understand how critical that is and what risks are involved. A large part of the problem is people don't know what they don't know. Nonprofit leaders, these are people centered in the idea of making the world a better place and service to others. They are more prone to take people at their word as opposed to doing any sort of digging. They may not think there is a big risk associated with bringing a person on. It's nice to be able to take people at their word, but it depends on what kind of work you're doing, who you're serving, the assets of your organization you're protecting. It never occurs to people there may be a scurvy elephant roaming around the zoo. You have to have a look at who you're dealing with. People aren't always who they say they are. That is just the reality of it. It's important to look at these things up front because if you don't have a person who is not in integrity in there in the first place, you don't have to figure out how to get rid of them later on when you could have problems. The reputation of your organization could be at stake. You just have these horror stories. There was a veterans' organization a few years ago that saw their reputation fall apart because the CEO was playing games with the books. Always you have to think in terms of protecting yourself with your regulations, with internal controls, with the way money and other assets are handled. More important, how you deal with the people you serve. You can really get in a lot of trouble easily and quickly without in the least bit intending to. Hugh: Steve, did that shake loose any thoughts for you? Steve: Yeah, it actually did. I do believe that nonprofits feel that the people they bring in have the heart for what they do. If they have a heart for what they do, then they are probably good people. I really think that is a mistake a lot of them make. Taking that assumption because they say they believe in what you believe in, they have the passion for what you have a passion for, that doesn't mean they have the same background you have. A lot of people are trying to use their influence they currently have in the community, it could be a leader in the community, to find their way into a vulnerable group. That is the MO of a pedophile is to build up trust in everybody around them, including building themselves up to be leaders in the community so that everybody seems to trust them, and that is when they can get to the vulnerable children and build relationships without anybody thinking twice about it. Screening is not going to catch everybody, only if they have been arrested or convicted of something in the past. It's only one part of the puzzle for keeping not only your organization safe, but those that you serve. It goes much more beyond the background check. I don't think anyone can feel that they have that warm fuzzy feeling now that I have implemented background checks. I'm good, I got a green check mark for that person, I can just let them go. That is a wrong approach. You really need to have a conscious community around that everybody is the eyes and ears of the organization. We all have to keep our eyes on who we're working alongside. If they are doing something we believe is incorrect or harmful to the organization or to those who serve, to make sure we all feel empowered to report those things, especially for physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, whatever you might see. It's up to us to report it. Hugh: There is another realm that Russell talked about with having your policies and procedures up to date. You just pointed out, we have to pay attention. That is part of our responsibility as a leader to see what is in front of us. I never realized people who are—and it makes sense if you talk about it—a pedophile positions themselves in a place of trust and then continues to validate that, so they throw people off guard. No, it couldn't possibly be true. I have known people in that position before, and they were busted. Eventually you got caught. How long does it take and how many people do you hurt in the process? At least do your background check, which also helps relieve your liability. I'm sure some of the companies that Russell talked about that issue board insurance require a background check so they have less liability. I didn't warn you: When Russell comes in, he asks you the hard questions. I'll ask you easier ones first while he formulates the hard ones. Give us an example where people were trusting, and it really created damage. Then you came in and maybe you helped them get a process in place to prevent it in the future. Without naming names, what are the kinds of things that people should be alert to?   Steve: There are so many stories. Some have been recently in the news that everybody is aware of. One is USA Gymnastics with Dr. Nassau. Building trust, not only from the organization, but with the parents of these young children in the gymnastics program, and then going on to abuse them for years without ever getting caught. Sandusky at Penn State, same thing. He was able to testify with his peers that showering with young boys was just about cleanliness. They are always going to try to lie about who they are and have somebody believe it. They are masters at it. They never take any responsibility for their actions. It's that narcissistic behavior on the pedophile side. Another story has nothing to do with a criminal record. This was a nonprofit organization that had drivers and they were doing deliveries. One of the individuals when we met with them, and we were on site for this one, he was in the state of Colorado, but he had a Tennessee drivers' license. He said he had been here for four years. I asked him why didn't he have a Colorado license. He said that he lost his license in Colorado from too many speeding tickets, so he had to go to my parent's house in Tennessee to get a license. He is volunteering for an organization that drives one of their vehicles. People can get around from their past and get away from their past, whether it's criminal behavior or not. It could be resume fudging. That happens more than you know, especially for certain positions, for executive director positions, finance positions, COO type positions, where they can say they have a Master's degree in finance. They really just have a Bachelor's, or they never finished college. They put it on their resume for years, and nobody questioned it. There are stories where the CEO of RadioShack, and RadioShack is falling from grace, but the CEO never had his Master's degree in business, never had his MBA. It was a reporter who figured it out and started reporting on it. Then he resigned or got let go. Same thing with the president of the business school of Harvard. She had miscommunicated on her resume that she had a Ph. D, and she never did. Organizations that we all know about and have heard about, down to around the corner with businesses in your neighborhood or possibly even your organization. It's important to vet the higher-end positions in your organization. It's not just about the volunteers. I can go on forever about why it's important for the volunteers, but anybody working in your office, making sure you are looking at embezzlement or money laundering or anything that deals with your budget, your finances, your books, make sure those are always intact and that you are bringing on the best people. Background checks don't always catch everybody. They may never have been arrested before. I am going to go back to what Hugh was talking about with the pedophile. Eventually they get caught. That's not true. They never get caught, and they die with their secrets. The average pedophile molests 137 children in their lifetime without ever getting arrested for it. That is where the training is more important than the background check and being aware and keeping their eyes open. Hugh: Wow. I guess there is some people who will be polite and they think it's not polite to do a background check. Have you come across that? How do you respond to that? Steve: For the last 15 years, we have dealt with that. I don't know exactly where that really stems from other than they feel like it's unkind to ask someone to sign a consent form to do a background check. They are giving of their time, and I feel like I am invading their privacy if I ask them for this information. But you have to think about your organization and its reputation and why you have that organization set up in the first place. Then you have to make sure you bring on the best people. You just need to frame it differently: we are a culture of safety instead of just being haphazard about who we bring on. I think that everybody who comes on board would feel more confident with the person sitting next to them, with the person they are running an errand with to Office Depot if they are going in the same vehicle together. You will have a higher level of confidence that the organization did the right thing before you came. Hugh: Where is the person who said, “Oh, I don't want to be impolite to them,” so they back down from not realizing they are being impolite to everyone else in the culture. I don't want to make trouble, but if they don't do that, they will make trouble for everybody else. What about the person who says, “I don't have time for that?” That sounds like too much trouble. Steve: The one issue with nonprofits is wearing so many hats and being so busy. I think that sometimes the background check seems like a daunting task, especially if they have never done them. First, I have to vet a company. I don't know where to go to trust somebody. I don't want to do all the paperwork. I have enough things going on. I don't even understand background checks. How am I going to do this? I don't have a Human Resources background, nor do I have a HR director on staff. That is where SecureSearch makes it a little unique. We can come in understanding that that is one of your pain points on not having enough people to do all of the tasks you have to do. We made everything paperless. Not only are the consent forms, but also the entire process of signing up is paperless. Everything is the click of a button. The applicants, whether they be your board of directors, staff, or volunteers, they do all of the data entry. All you're doing is sending an email invitation. Simple as that. Hugh: Wow. If I came to you and said I have ten volunteers and I need to take them through a background check, then you'd give me a consent form for them to sign, with permission to do that. Steve: The way you phrased that is interesting, that you give them a consent form. It's actually against the law for us to provide a template consent form. We provide samples. All consent forms are the organization's form. It's not my form. We provide a sample, but it is really up to each organization to go through legal counsel and make sure everything is in there that needs to be in there and that it meets their federal and state laws. We try to do our best with our samples to make sure they are good, but you should only use that as a framework. Hugh: Before you can do the background check, I have to have them sign a form though. Steve: Yes. That form can be in paper, or it can be through our paperless volunteer and applicant portal that is called Search My Background that we have. If everything is in the portal electronically, and they sign a signature box either with their finger on a mobile device or the mouse of their computer. That signature will map to all the documents in the system so that everything is signed and everything is provided to the applicant. Hugh: Where I was headed with that, and I thank you for the clarification on the language, where I was headed with that is I would say I have my ten volunteers and I need to run them through the process. Would you suggest to me that I do it on myself as well? Steve: Well, somebody should run one on you. But if you want to at least have something in the “file,” whether it be a digital file or a file folder in a lockable filing cabinet, having your own in there is a good idea, especially to report to the board that if you are the executive director, it started with you. Sometimes you can be surprised on what you might see on your own. We had an executive director in Minnesota who had a small nonprofit. I think it was five or ten volunteers based on what he told me over the phone. This was quite a few years ago. When I was small enough and able to see the background checks coming in on a regular basis, I pulled it open and said, “Oh, I talked to that gentleman on the phone.” He signed up and ran his background check; he had three pages of felonies on his own. He never ran another background check with us. I think he was curious as to if his own background check would come up and expose him as a customer. There was nothing I could do to share it with the greater group of that organization. There is a lot of risk out there. It can start with that executive director. I don't think the executive director should be the one running the background check; it should be pushed by the board that the executive director have a background check. Hugh: Absolutely. Nobody should be exempt from it. Everybody should go through it. The founder, the executive director. Steve: Everybody. Hugh: Great. We are almost halfway through this interview. Russell, I'm sure that you have formulated a great question for our guest. Russell: As I was saying earlier, a lot of people don't know what they don't know. I think it starts with going from a place of what do I know, what have I been told, what don't I know, and where did the information I get come from? How do I know what I know? I think my first question would be all quality information. How can you get quality information to make sure that what you're hearing can be verified? Steve: That is a really good question. There are a lot of background screening companies in the U.S, thousands really. Everybody approaches business differently. Some are very small, that concept of working out of your garage, and they might not have a website. They might be in it just for the profit. There are lots of different data points to put together a good background check. The problem I see with the nonprofit side is they are learning on these database products to be the be-all end-all product because it's fast and it's inexpensive. They think because somebody might be calling it a national search that it truly is. But it isn't. I like to think of the database searches as a net. If you can picture the map of the United States and now you're casting this net across the United States, what is the net made up of? Holes strung together is the way I'd like to put it. I want you to remember that while it might be national—we call it multi-state—there are going to be holes. In some areas of this net there will be tears and huge holes versus tightly knit holes in other areas. You have this product that a lot of the nonprofits like to order because they think it's national, they think it's an easy, inexpensive way to launch into the background checks, and they don't realize the risks that are still going to be there. They are not conducting what we call a best-in-class background check. Nonprofits have to be careful. To answer your question about data, we take three different aggregation data points from the database and merge them together, eliminating the duplicate points. Other companies will buy data from these aggregate groups of data, and they will hang it on their own internal servers and ping against that data for months before they refresh it. That's how you get the $2 background checks for some of these large nonprofits. I'm not saying everybody does it, but in order to reduce the cost to meet what an expectation might be for a nonprofit, which is cheap, these organizations are going to give you bad and old data. We refresh our data every week, in some cases like the sex offender registries, for some every two weeks. But the oldest refresh we have is 30 days for our entire database. Again, it's a merge of three different data points coming together. We didn't get into this business primarily to make a profit; we got into this business to protect those who need to be protected. Russell: That's it. It's setting that intention right up front. When you talk to people, you have to set an intention up front about what it is you're doing. When you talk to people who might be new that we need to help, but understand we are going to be looking into some things, asking you questions for the sake of transparency, and direct about it. Who, what, when, where, why, and how? We keep our questions as open in that way as we can so that we get some meaningful information. I think that people who have things to hide may balk a little bit at this directness. Somebody is fidgeting, and they are talking about how much time this is taking, why you need to know that. In my head, that will be a red flag. What say you? Steve: A hidden benefit of the background check implementation is the bad ones kind of leave in the guise of night. They don't come back tomorrow. You actually said, “Hey, we take it seriously, we are going to have a consent form for you to sign. We will call your references. We will check in on who you say you are.” That's another thing, references. If you are not calling references, whether you outsource it to an organization, I recommend doing it internally so you can hear the nuance of the phone, the pregnant pauses of someone being asked, “Is this somebody you would bring back into your organization if you could?” and they go, “Hmm, well, I don't know about that.” If you outsource that, it's hard for somebody to put that into words on a report. I recommend if you have the time to do it yourself. If you have the money, you can outsource it. References are just as important as the background check. The background checks of course can be criminal. They can also verify your resume, education, employment. It's not always just looking at their criminal records, but making sure they are who they say they are. Hugh: While you are on that track, what kinds of background checks are there? Go over that again. Steve: There are lots of different types of background checks. We want to get nonprofit organizations to stop thinking about using the database just for looking for a criminal or a sex offender. Because of the analogy I used with the net with all the larger holes and tears, you need to look at each applicant holistically. Instead of where your organization is serving or based and the geography and how that might look in a database search, you need to look at the applicant. John could be a resident of one place for his whole life, and Mary has lived in seven different places in seven years. Mary, you are going to have to do more on because there are possibilities that the database has missed where Mary lives, they weren't up to date, and you are going to add a county courthouse search or a statewide repository search if it exists, like it does in Colorado. Other states have that, too. You are going to need to start with a foundation and then lay additional due diligence on top of that to get a good profile for each applicant instead of one size fits all. The criminal side, you break out into two different things. We have state and local crimes that you find in a database. You have the sex offender crimes that are in the sex offender registry. Then you will have crimes against the federal government or federal-related crimes. A lot of people think of these as the white-collar crimes, the Bernie Madoffs or the Martha Stewart crime where she got involved in the stocks. Yes, but inter-state kidnapping is also a federal crime. Money laundering and profiteering is a federal crime. Any building on federal lands. A lot of organizations and companies lately neglect ordering a federal criminal search. That can come back to bite them if they don't search it. There are a lot of other things, too. Motor vehicle searches, I mentioned. Credit reports we can do. You can do the education verification. International criminal and credit. Motor vehicles. We have 165 different services available to any organization, and most organizations look at about five. Russell:What are some of the training opportunities? Part of the challenge is training nonprofit leaders or other people about what the benefits are and the dangers of neglecting to do due diligence. In other words, what are the things that you're doing to assist people to understand the value of it so that they actually have this awareness? It's one thing to bring somebody in. Somebody could slide under the radar after you have done your search. Maybe something changes. People need to have an idea of what sort of things they need to look out for to make sure that everything is good. What training do you folks give nonprofits an opportunity to take advantage of so that they have a better sense of when they may need some help digging into something? Steve: We actually have a very specific training program that I actually founded. It's called Safeguard from Abuse. With a focus on the vulnerable populations that a lot of nonprofits focus their energy into those communities, it is a 75-minute online and also on a DVD training program with a certificate of understanding for those that pass the test on all of the different types of abuse, not just the sexual abuse, but neglect, physical, and emotional abuse, diving deep into what they are, diving deep into how to recognize when a child is being abused. So many organizations have that fear of having a sexual predator in their midst, so we do focus more time and attention in their personality traits, their grooming behaviors, understanding the personality of that pedophile. The most important thing is raising the awareness overall through the training, but empowering each person who goes through the video to be a mandated reporter and to understand that they can't help if they put their head in the sand. They have to be empowered to report, and they have to understand how to do so is very important. The awareness training is important. My example that I like to use is Russell, you want to buy a new car. You have a brand of car in mind, and you're getting in that car and heading down the road. All of a sudden, you start to see that car everywhere. It's now in your awareness. It's always been there, just like the characteristics of people who harm kids. They're still doing it in front of us; we're just not aware of it. We didn't raise our awareness level high enough to see what's always been there but invisible to the eye. It's really what we focus on is what we see. What we focus on we become as well. We want to make sure that we can train enough people to end child abuse, or at least if we can save one child, it's all worth it. Russell: Every time you buy a new car, everybody buys the same make, model, and color that very same day. I was thinking about all of these things. There are people who are listening to this, and they may be leaning back in their chairs thinking, No, I never did any of this stuff up front. Now I have 60 people. How do I know that I don't have somebody like this in my midst right now? Is there some type of organizational audit or assessment that you can do? Steve: We can definitely help. What you're saying is I gotta go retro. I have to go back to day one, and anybody who is still with me, screen them. That seems like an invasion maybe, or a daunting task, or maybe you're just thinking, I'll start with the next person. Now you will set yourself up for some difficulties being fair and equitable. If it's just Susan who just walked in the door but you did not go back five years ago and do this, once you implement the strategy, you have to implement it at any level and go back and do everybody. Starting top down is a good approach. Start at the top, and push down through the hierarchy of individuals in your organization. It's about resetting the reason for why you're doing it. You are resetting the fact that you have this new program that you're implementing. Our insurance company wants us to do it. Most insurance companies want you to do it anyway. If you have to put it on something else, you can just say it's a new requirement. It could be just your organization's requirement. Once it's a new requirement, it's a requirement. Everybody has to do it. Russell: Having everybody do it ensures that you don't have somebody out there who wants to take you to court saying they're being singled out because I'm a woman or I'm black or I'm over 50, or just anything they can pull out to say why it doesn't apply. We talked about that comfort level that people have. I don't want to offend or put anybody out. How do you help people who decide to do something like that do it in the face of the apprehension that they may have and the fear of offending somebody, implementing it seamlessly? What are some of the things you do to help people through that? Steve: That's a good question. We help organizations put together a background screening policy. It's all about policies. Sometimes you might have a policy- With those who work with kids, you might have a child protection policy, for example. But even in that child protection policy, they don't talk about background checks. So we need to weave in another layer of policy, and that is who do we screen, why do we screen them, how often do we screen them, and what do we order? Really it comes down to being comfortable enough with your organization and communicating that you do have policies. It's part of your mission and vision, wherever it is that it fits in, to make it that important. You can make it unimportant and be at risk and have everyone at risk, or you can make it important and be an advocate for safety and make your organization. It's all about preserving that organization. Amp up your image; it will help you and the community. Hugh: Both of you are talking about people not knowing what they don't know. There is a side that people are so close to it, you're so involved in it, that you're so blind to it because you are focusing on the day-to-day and the relationships. You're blind to all of the liabilities. Having someone like you that is skilled to discuss policy procedure with I think is really a high benefit. Is that part of your service that you offer? Steve: We offer that at no charge. Phone call conversations, any time someone wants to talk to me. It's very individual. Each organization is very individual, and I can't just say, Here is a template. We like to discuss what your organization looks like, the different roles and responsibilities you might have, the silos you may have, the offshoots of your organization you may have, and drill down. Like I mentioned, it's not a one-size-fits-all. Based on roles and responsibilities, you will be ordering different types of services. You may order motor vehicle for one, you may need to look at a credit report for one, but it won't be for all. We want to make sure that you understand that as an organization, what's available first of all, why you should order it, and then implement it. Now it's part of your policy manual, and now it can be handed off if you were to leave the organization. If you are in charge of this role, and now you are leaving or retiring to go do something else, you can now hand it off to someone else and they won't have to reinvent the wheel. It's important to do it on the front end, but we'll help. Hugh: Your link for people to find you is SecureSearch.com? Steve: It's actually not. I wish I had that. It's SecureSearchPro.com. Hugh: That's better. Steve: We have SafeguardfromAbuse.com. Hugh: You have been talking about databases, and people can do a database search. Say more about that for people who don't know what you mean by “database.” I think of a database as where I keep my CRM, where I keep my contacts. Say more about that and why it doesn't really cut the mustard. Steve: Okay. A lot of people think that there is one central place to go to do a background check in the United States. Just go to the FBI. They think there is something in some place to go. That is a fallacy. We are a disparate country. Our systems do not communicate with each other. What you have in Colorado doesn't communicate with what's in Virginia with what's in Florida, even though we think that's the case. Another fallacy is that a social security number is all you need to find a criminal record. We don't find any criminal records using a social security number. That's a myth. We use the social security number to find out what the person might be: what names they have used, what addresses they may have used, information sources. The databases, because we have this disparate system where counties don't communicate with states sometimes and counties don't even communicate with each other, all of these groups work in silos. Their information or their data is also stuck in that silo. You have to search that silo to find that information. In some cases, these silos of information raise their hands and say they will share. There are companies called data aggregators to say, I will pull from this county, I will pull from that county, and this department of corrections wants to give me that information. They compile it all together. They go out to my industry and say, “Do you want to buy my information?” I was talking about having three of these aggregators that I purchase information from and weave it all together because they will miss some in one and miss some in another and I am hoping I can fill in some of the gaps. This is not 100%. Again, it's that net with holes. It's as good as it gets. We search over a billion records, but there are so many holes and gaps in this data. That is where the database comes in; it's a base of data. There will be holes that you can't rely on as your only search. We can consult on the best approach. The best approach is you have to look at three different things. First, your due diligence, why you do what you do, why you want to screen in the first place. Do you want to protect the vulnerable? Is it because your insurance company made you do it? I don't care what it is. We have to understand what the impetus of your diligence is. Then we need to look at your organizational budget and say what budget dollars do you have to work with. Do you need to go find more budget dollars from another bucket in order to cover something like this? You want to implement it as soon as possible. The third is your comfort for risk, or your risk tolerance. That is already comfortable with your organization name being in a newspaper because you didn't do a background check, and now you brought in a pedophile into your organization. Or does that make you cringe and keep you awake at night? What does your legal counsel say? What does your insurance company say? We need to bring those three things together and create a unique, sustainable program for your organization. That may be very different from the organization I talk to tomorrow. That's okay. It's unique to you and sustainable and something you're comfortable with and can move forward with in your organization. A long answer for a simple question. Hugh: It's a complex question, a complex situation. I have met people who think they can just Google somebody's name and find out all kinds of things. What's the fallacy in that strategy? Steve: Did you have consent to do it, first of all? Every applicant has their legal rights. They have to provide you consent to really do a background check on them, especially if you want to use it. If you just want to be the armchair neighbor and check in on a neighbor, you have the legal right to do so. If you are going to bring this individual on board and have them fill out paperwork to be a volunteer or member of the staff, you have to get their consent. You can't just go to Google. The data out there is only as good as the data out there. If you're not buying it and it's free, there is a reason it's free. If you're spending $59.99 to get the rest of the report, they gave you a little bit, and the rest of it is behind the scenes, that is just database information, and that is way more than you ever need to pay. You need to do a database search for only $15. It's something you need, and something you need to build on, so you want to make sure you make it affordable on the database side so you can grow it and add the county courthouse searches as necessary. Russell: There are some things out there that are robust. I have probably used some of the things as a revenue agent for IRS. It's not off the shelf, and it's not cheap by any means, but it's good stuff. It's important to do that. You get what you pay for. A lot of these databases that you describe pop up if you do an online directory search for the Yellow Pages, or something like that. These things get offered to you all the time. Steve: It's the free data available to everyone that they compile. Not everything is going to be in there as I mentioned. It will be fraught with holes. They make it look good. They put a shiny website together, and you see moving parts. It's like they are searching as deep as they can go, and I will get every tidbit of information I need in seconds on one of these companies. You have to be careful with what you do. Everything needs to be validated at the local level. Anything from the database, any red flag, has to be validated at the court or the point of origin of the information to be accurate; otherwise, you are not supposed to see it anyway. That is why you want to work with a consumer reporting agency. SecureSearch is a consumer reporting agency. We are a member of concern consuming reporter agency, making sure we do it the right way and making sure we do validate everything at the local level before you as the customer gets to see that information. Hugh: We are coming to the last part of our interview, Steve. SecureSearchPro.com is where people can find out more. What is the differentiator? What makes this business different? You mentioned there are lots of others out there. Why are you different from them? Steve: That's a good question. The first thing is the information we have to share with you is through years of experience. We have veterans in the industry on staff who run our customer service department, who run our operations, and who run the executive office. That's number one, lots of experience. Two is we have a heart for the nonprofit sector because we understand you are wearing many hats. You don't have time, and you may not have the skillsets. You can feel comfortable with us. We are going to answer the phone. We will talk to you. You won't be alone in this process. We will be there to answer any questions you may have throughout the process, and you will have someone you can work with, whether it be me, you can always work with me directly, or anyone on my staff. We also don't have a single salesperson on staff, so you will never be “sold” anything. We only have consultants, so we will be asking you questions and making you recommendations for best practices. You won't hear from us five million times; we won't pound you until you buy. We wait to hear from you again if you'd like to do this with us. That is what makes us different. We have a heart for the nonprofit, the integrity of our data we are purchasing, and the integrity of the system we have and the compliance of our system and processes is what set us apart. Hugh: That's strong. It sounds like this service is incredibly expensive, thousands of dollars, to do a background check. Is that true? Steve: No, that's actually very far from true. Depends on the organization you're working with. Our pricing model is geared toward the nonprofit sector, so we are extremely affordable. We actually have scalable pricing for those who have high volume discount programs. A background check, I would say that a good budget, if you want to do it right, for the criminal and sex offender and fill in all the gaps, is budget for $50 a person. It doesn't mean it will always cost $50 a person; it may cost $15 for some, $22 for another, or $85 for another. It could be all over the board. But I would budget that to make sure you have enough allocated funds for a good solid program. A lot of people are going to ask if they need to do background checks through the fingerprint process, too. No, you don't. You can get good information that is disposition-based. Disposition is what happened in court, information from a secure search without ever having to do fingerprints. If you are getting government funding or state funding, they may make it mandatory, so you have to do it. But we can still make sure that the fingerprint arrest record—and that's all it is, an arrest information source with biometrics, and not everybody gets fingerprinted when they get arrested—that the courts dismissed it or said it was a guilty verdict and enhance the arrest record database you search. Hugh: Good. Thank you for that complete answer. This has been a very informative interview, and I'm sitting here thinking about all the organizations that I know about that have fallen short. We are going to make sure we will put a recommendation in our work that they do this early on. I think it's that important. As we are tying up this really good interview—Steve, thank you for the time today. It's been exceptional—what impression, what challenge, what thought do you want to leave in people's minds? Steve: I guess my question is: What image do you have of your own organization? How do you look at your own organization? Do your process and your people align with it? If you are worried about that and you want to lower your risk and your liabilities as an organization and maintain the image you want to have of your own organization, it doesn't cost a lot of money, it doesn't take a lot of time, you don't have to learn how to do it. We do everything for you. Just reach out to us. There is no charge to sign up or for a free consultation. Talk to one of our advocates. We're here to help; we're not here to sell. We hope to hear from you. It's something you should definitely take a look at. If you're doing the background checks now, we can talk about if you are doing them the right way. If you're not doing them, we can help you along the path. Hugh: Russell, thanks again for being here and being by my side. Steve, thank you for a wonderful interview. Thanks everyone for listening. Steve: Thank you very much. Learn more about your ad choices. 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Nasir and Matt welcome Steve Rothschild to discuss the film tax credit bill recently passed in California, as well as the importance of transferrable tax credits to businesses. They also answer, "I received a demand letter from an attorney that is asking for way more money that I would ever be responsible for. What should I do about this?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: This is our business podcast where we cover business legal news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, submits to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. We are at the mid-week point, Episode 50. That’s a lot of episodes. MATT: Yeah, pretty crazy. It’s a semi-milestone. NASIR: I thought 48 episodes was a lot but 50 is just… I think we should just stop. It’s too much. MATT: Yeah, we’ll see how this one goes. If it’s the best one, we’ll stop at 50. NASIR: That’s a lot of pressure. MATT: Well, let’s get into the story that we have for today. The story here is the one that was in California. Senate passes film tax credit bill which basically is trying to keep filming and production in the state or give incentive for the filming and production to stay in California. Obviously, in California, we have Los Angeles, Hollywood, there’s lot of companies, lots of actors here. There’s no reason to let them leave but a lot of them are leaving for these tax credits that are in different states. I know there’s a few states in the country that a lot of places film but California is just trying to keep this in in order to generate more money, help the economy. It’s obviously struggling in California but I think this is a good thing for a lot of people, especially for California. NASIR: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s going to cost quite a bit to California off the bat because of the hikes but they also have additional incentive for production companies that are actually moving into California. This started me thinking about tax credits in general. I don’t think businesses realize how many different tax credits for all these little things are there and I wanted to bring in Steve from State Tax Credit Exchange. He’s a tax credit clearing house. Steve, welcome to the program. STEVE: Thank you. Good to be hear. NASIR: Obviously, there’s always going to be legislation in different states that gives different tax incentives to businesses. You’re an expert on tax credits. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about tax credits in general and also how you’ve been dealing with it in your business as well? STEVE: Tax credits are obviously incentives by typically the states such as the state tax credits – typically by the states – to foster growth in certain industries. The feds have also tax credits to foster growth in particular industries as well. Some of them are for more social reasons such as affordable housing. Others are for more business development – call it jobs which would be the film and entertainment tax credit. Certainly, California is trying to keep the flood of folks from leaving the state of California to other states as film production and technology has been a little easier to do on an international basis for that matter. It’s not as essential to film in the state of California. Other talent is now national and international as well. Some actors and actresses as well are not living necessarily in the state of California. That has been an issue where California has struggled to keep these folks and there’s now infrastructure being generated – or should I say built – in places all over the world. Our company as an exchange or clearing house, we basically take the tax credits that have been generated by these companies and we sell them or transfer them to other taxpayers – they could be individuals or businesses that have tax liability. These incentives that we only work with are ones that are transferrable by law.