Podcast appearances and mentions of steven oh

Incoming pro-growth policy, while inflationary in nature, could result in a strong credit environment in the eyes of PineBridge Investments' Global Head of Credit, Steven Oh. Oh joins Bloomberg Intelligence corporate credit strategists Noel Hebert and Sam Geier on this episode of Credit Crunch to walk through various macroeconomic pathways. The conversation touches on central-bank policy expectations and the geopolitical climate, before diving into portfolio composition, sector exposures and the current default landscape.

TOPIC: EXPERTS Joel and Sean on the Gospel of Mark, Jesus said Tell no one, JEFF AZ: "what does Emanuel mean?", PETE AK: "biblical question", COLIN TN: "comment on experts convo", STEVEN OH: "bible says Jesus cried 3 times", JAY NH: "the truth healed people!", SUPERCHATS, LYNN OK: "called 4 years ago, silent prayer works!"

Host Victoria Guido sits down with Steven Plappert, CEO of Forecastr, an online software designed to aid founders in financial modeling, which was born to help non-finance savvy founders understand and communicate their company's financial health. Despite the pandemic beginning right after Forecastr's launch in 2020, the company didn't pivot significantly thanks to extensive preparation and customer discovery before the launch. Steven delves into the operational and strategic aspects of Forecastr, highlighting the importance of balancing growth with financial sustainability, a consistent theme in their business strategy. Forecastr's significant development was integrating a strong human element into their software service, a move very well-received by their customers. Steven also outlines the company's key objectives, including cultivating a solid culture, achieving profitability, and exploring opportunities for exponential growth. Additionally, Steven discusses the importance of work-life balance, reflecting on his previous startup experience and emphasizing the necessity of balance for longevity and effectiveness in entrepreneurship. Victoria and Steven further explore how companies, including Forecastr and thoughtbot, incorporate these philosophies into their operations and culture. Forecastr (https://www.forecastr.co/) Follow Forecastr on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/forecastr/), X (https://twitter.com/forecastr), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/forecastrco/), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ForecastrHQ), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/forecastr), or TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@forecastrco). Follow Steven Plappert on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-plappert-59477b3b/). Follow thoughtbot on X (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant R¬obots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Steven Plappert, CEO of Forecastr, an online software that helps founders who hate building financial models in Excel actually understand their numbers, predict runway, and get funded. Steven, thank you for joining us. STEVEN: Hey, yeah, Victoria, thanks for having me. I'm stoked to be here. What's up, guys? VICTORIA: Just to get us warmed up here a little bit, can you tell me what's going on in your world? STEVEN: Well, you know, what is going on in my world? I had a great year last year, very healthy. I have a loving fiancé, and I'm getting married this year, which is going to be super fun. And, obviously, running a business, which takes up more than its fair share of my life. But yeah, it's early Jan, so I've been kind of reflecting on my life, and I got a lot to be grateful for, Victoria, I really do. VICTORIA: That's wonderful. You know, I used to work with a VP of strategic growth who likened forming partnerships with companies as getting into a marriage and building that relationship and that level of trust and communication that you have, which I think is really interesting. STEVEN: Oh, for sure. Emily always, Emily is my fiancé, she always says that, you know, Forecastr is essentially my mistress, if you will, you know what I mean? Because, like, that's [laughs] where the rest of my time goes, isn't it? Between hanging out with her and working on the company, you know, so... VICTORIA: So, how long have you been in a relationship with your business around Forecastr? [laughs] STEVEN: Yeah, right? Yeah [laughs]. Four years with this one. So, you know, we started it actually January 1st of 2020, going into the pandemic, although we didn't know it at the time. And so, we just celebrated our four-year anniversary a few weeks ago. VICTORIA: Well, that's really exciting. So, I'm curious about when you started Forecastr, what was the essential problem that you were trying to solve that you had identified in the market? STEVEN: I'd say the main problem we were trying to solve is that, like, specifically founders, you know, startup founders, really struggle to get, like, a clear picture of their financial health or, like, just the financial aspect of their business. And then they also struggle to communicate that to investors because most founders aren't finance people. You know, like, most people that start a company they don't do it because they're excellent in even, like, business or finance or anything like that. They usually do it because, like, they've identified some problem; they've lived it; they've breathed it, you know what I mean? They're some kind of subject matter expert. They may be good at sales, or marketing, or product. But a lot of times, finance is, like, a weak part for them, you know, it's not something that they're strong in. And so, they really have a hard time, like, understanding the viability of the business and communicating the financial outcome of the company to investors and stuff like that. And my co-founder Logan and I live that because all we did all day was built financial models in Excel for startup founders working for a CFO shop called Venture First. So, that's what we really saw. We really saw that just, you know, it's really hard for folks to get this clear picture. And we thought a big part of that, at least, was just the fact that, you know, there's no great software for it. It was just like, people are using Excel, which, you know, for people that are great in finance, you know, works but for most people, doesn't. And so, yeah, I think that that's what kind of inspired Logan and I to fly the coop there at Venture First and start a company. VICTORIA: No, that's really interesting. So, you found this problem. You knew that this was an issue for founders, and you built this hypothesis and started it. I think you said, like, right before 2020, right before the pandemic. So, were there any decisions you made that once you got more information or once you got started, you decided to pivot? And, like, what were those pivot points for you early on? STEVEN: There wasn't a lot of pivoting early on, I will say. And a part of that is because, like, this isn't my first company. I started a company right out of college back in 2013 called FantasyHub. In that company, we pivoted a lot and, largely because we didn't really put a lot of forethought into that company when we launched it, you know, we didn't do any customer discovery. We just launched the company. And then we skinned our knees a bunch of times [laughs] as we scaled that company up and had to change gears a lot of times. In Forecastr, you know, we had actually been kind of building towards starting the company for 18 months. So, Logan and I actually had the idea originally in middle of 2018. And we decided at that time, look, like, we're not going to go launch this company right away because we got full-time jobs, and we might as well de-risk it. So, we spent about 12 to 18 months just doing a lot of customer discovery, kind of in stealth mode while at Venture First. After about six months, we brought it up to Venture First and said, "Hey, here's this idea for a company we have. We want to go do it." You know, to Venture First's credit, you know, rather than viewing that territorially and saying, "Hey, you know, there's a great new product line for our company," they really inspired us to go forward with it. They said, "Hey, this is great. We want to support you guys." They put some money in. We did some more discovery. We built a prototype. So, long-winded way of saying that by the time we actually got to the starting line in 2020, you know, we had 18 months' worth of really clear thought put into this thing. And we had been building in this space for years, you know, building financial models and Excel for founders. So, I think we had a great understanding of the customer. We had a great understanding of the market and the needs. We'd done our diligence in terms of distribution and figuring out how we wanted to generate, you know, a good, healthy funnel for the business. And so, it was really just kind of a matter of execution at that point. And, you know, here we are four years in, and there really hasn't been anything that we've done that's really pivoted the business that much across those four years, except for one moment, which was actually six months ago. So, in July of 2023, we did finally have our first kind of pivot moment where one of the interesting things about Forecastr versus some other solutions in the market is that we're not just a product, just a SaaS platform. There's a real strong human layer to our solution. We've always felt like a SaaS plus human model was the right model for financial modeling for startups because a lot of these startup founders don't have finance expertise on staff or inherently. And about six months ago, it wasn't as much of a pivot as it was a double down. You know, we really doubled down on that human element, you know, and now that human element isn't just through, like, a white glove onboarding and some email support. But we actually do give our customers an analyst in addition to the software that's with them for the lifetime of their subscription and is with them every step of the way. And so, that's the only time that we really made, like, a significant change into what we were doing. And it was just, I think, off the back of three years of saying, "Hey, like [chuckles], people really love the human element, you know, let's lean into that." VICTORIA: I love that you saw that you couldn't solve this problem with just technology and that you planned for and grew the people element as well. And I'm curious: what other decisions did you have to make as you were growing the business, how to scale the tech side or the people side? STEVEN: So many decisions, right? And that's why I tell people all the time, I'm like, you know, I've been a founder for 11 years now. And, in my opinion, by far, the hardest part about being a founder is that all day, every day, you have to make a bunch of decisions. And you hardly ever have enough data to, like, know, you're making the right decision. So, you got to make a bunch of judgment calls, and ultimately, these are judgment calls that could make or break your company. And it's really taxing. It's taxing on the mind. It's stressful, you know. It is not easy. So, you know, I think it's one of the really hard things about being an entrepreneur. I would say one of the most consistent decisions that we've had to make at the highest level is decisions around kind of capital preservation, fiscal responsibility, and investing in the growth. So, categorically, it's like, on the one hand, you have a desire to build the company kind of sustainably, to get to profitability, to have a healthy working model, you know, where you have some real staying power, you know. And that line of thinking leads you to, you know, be conscientious about investments that you're making that, you know, increase the burn. On the other hand, you have a desire to grow the company very quickly. You know, you have certain benchmarks you need to meet, you know, in order to be attractive to venture capitalists. And so, you have decisions that you want to make, you know, to invest in that growth. And so, I think that's a very consistent theme that's played out across the four years is Logan and I trying to walk that tightrope between growing 2 to 3X year over year and being really mindful of the company's burn, you know, both for equity preservation and just to build the company in a more sustainable way. And I think as financial professionals and founders, the finance person in Logan and I a lot of times wants to be more conservative. The founder in Logan and I, a lot of times, wants to be more aggressive. And so, we kind of just, like, let those two forces kind of play themselves out. And I think it creates, like, a nice, healthy tension. VICTORIA: That is really interesting, yeah. And sometimes you have to make a guess [chuckles] and go with it and then see the results of what happens. So, you're a financial forecasting company. What kind of, like, key results or objectives are you working towards this year with Forecastr? STEVEN: Yeah, great question. So, we're really mindful of this kind of stuff. I'd say, you know, it's something that we really consider at a deep level is, like, you have to ultimately set objectives, which are very aligning and clarifying, you know, at an executive level, and then those should kind of filter all the way down through the organization. Because so much, I think, of building a company is you have to kind of punch above your weight. You have to grow faster than [chuckles] the resources that you're putting into it might expect or whatever. I mean, you have limited resources, limited time, but you got to go really quickly. I think alignment is a big part of that, and that starts with setting clear objectives. So, we actually have three very clear objectives, really four. The first one is living up to our cultural values. You know, we're a culture-first organization. We believe that, like, culture, you know, kind of eats strategy for breakfast, that age-old kind of cliché, but it's true. It's just like, I think, you know, if you build a really good culture, people are just...they're happier. They're more productive. You get more done. So, that is our number one strategic objective. Number two is to become profitable. Like I mentioned, we want to become profitable. We want to build a sustainable company. So, by setting that objective, it kind of forces us to be conscientious about spend and only invest in areas that we think is, like, a one plus one equals three. Our third strategic objective is reach 5 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of the year. We're at 2.4 right now. We want to at least double year over year. That's kind of, like, the minimum threshold to keep playing the venture game. And then number four is unlock exponential growth opportunities. So, we definitely adopt the philosophy of, like, hey, we've got a model. It's working. We've got 700 customers, you know, we've got two and a half million in annual recurring revenue. So, like, 80% of our focus should be on becoming profitable and hitting $5 million in annual recurring revenue. Like, that's, like, the bread and butter there, just keep doing what's working. But 20% of our attention should be paid to, well, what could we be doing to, like, triple down on that, you know, to really start to create an exponential growth curve? And, for us, that stuff and, like, kind of the data in investor space, like, there's a lot of interesting things that we could do, of course, as long as it's consensual, anonymized, et cetera, safe and secure, you know, with the kind of data that we have on private companies, you know, anonymously benchmarking companies against their peers, things like that. And I think there's a really big opportunity that we have to serve investors as well, you know, and to create a better investor experience when it comes to financial reporting, also something that we think can unlock exponential growth. So, those are the four objectives that we have going into this year. VICTORIA: Well, I really appreciate that you had culture at number one, and it reminds me, you know, you said it's old adage, but it's true, and you can verify that in reports like the State of DevOps Report. The number one indicator of a high-security environment is the level of trust and culture that you have within your company, not necessarily the technology or tools that you're using. So, being a financial company, I think you're in a good position [chuckles] to have, like, you know, protect all those assets and protect your data. And yeah, I'm curious to hear more about what you said about just unlocking, like, exponential growth. It's hard to keep both the let's keep the lights on and keep running with what we have, and make room for these bigger strategic initiatives that are really going to help us grow as a company and be more sustainable over time. So, how do you make room for both of those things in a limited team? STEVEN: Yeah, it's a great question. And it's not easy, I would say. I mean, I think the way we make room for it probably on the frontend is just, like, being intentional about creating that space. I mean, ultimately, putting unlocking exponential growth opportunities on the strategic company roadmap, which is the document that kind of memorializes the four objectives that I just went through, that creates space inherently. It's one of four objectives on the board. And that's not just, like, a resource that sits, you know, in a folder somewhere. We use the OKR system, you know, which is a system for setting quarterly objectives and things like that. And these strategic objectives they make it on our OKR board, which filters down into our work. So, I think a big piece of creating the space is just as an executive and as a leader, you know, being intentional about [chuckles] putting it on the board and creating that space. The thing that you have to do, though, to be mindful is you have to make sure that you don't get carried away with it. I mean, like you said, at the end of the day, succeeding in a business requires a proper balancing of short-term and long-term priorities. You know, if you're focused too much on the short term, you know, you can kind of hamstring yourself in the long run. Yeah, maybe you build, like, a decent business, but you don't quite, you know, reach your highest potential because you're not investing in some of those things that take a while to develop and come to play in the long run. But if you're too focused on the long run, which is what these exponential opportunities really are, you know, it's very easy to lose your way [laughs] in the short term, and it's very easy to die along the way. You know, I do think of startups as much of a game of survival as anything. I always say survive until you thrive. And so, that's where the 80/20 comes in, you know, where we just kind of say, "Hey, look, like, 80% of our time and energy needs to be devoted to kind of short-term and less risky priorities, such as doubling down on what's already working. 20% of our time, thereabouts, can be devoted to some of these more long-term strategic objectives, like unlocking exponential growth. And I think it just takes a certain mindfulness and a certain intentionality to, like, every week when you're organizing your calendar, and you're, like, talking with your team and stuff like that, you're just always trying to make sure, hey, am I roughly fitting into that framework, you know? And it doesn't have to be exact. Some weeks, it may be more or less. But I think that's kind of how we approach it, you know, conceptually. VICTORIA: Oh, what a great perspective. I think that I really like hearing those words about, like, balance and, like, being intentional. MID-ROLL AD: Now that you have funding, it's time to design, build, and ship the most impactful MVP that wows customers now and can scale in the future. thoughtbot Liftoff brings you the most reliable cross-functional team of product experts to mitigate risk and set you up for long-term success. As your trusted, experienced technical partner, we'll help launch your new product and guide you into a future-forward business that takes advantage of today's new technologies and agile best practices. Make the right decisions for tomorrow today. Get in touch at thoughtbot.com/liftoff. VICTORIA: You mentioned earlier that you're getting married, so, like, maybe you can talk about how are you intentional with your own time and balancing your personal life and making room for these, you know, big life changes while dealing with also the stress of being in kind of a survivor mode with the company. STEVEN: Like I mentioned, this is my second company, and Emily, bless her heart, my fiancé, she's been with me my entire entrepreneurial career. We started dating the first month that I started my first company, FantasyHub. And in that company, I ran that company for three years. We took it through Techstars down in Austin. It was a consumer gaming company. Interesting company. It ended up being a failure but, like, super interesting and set me on my path. Yeah, I was a complete and total workaholic. I worked around the clock. It was a fantasy sports company, so weekends were our big time, and I worked seven days a week. I worked, like, a lot of 80-hour-plus weeks. And, you know, looking back on it, it was a lot of fun, but it was also miserable. And I also burned out, you know, about six months before the company failed. And had the company not failed when it did, you know, I don't know what the future would have held for us. I was really out of balance. You know, I had deprioritized physical health. I hadn't worked out in years. I wasn't healthy. I had deprioritized mental health. Emily almost left me as a part of that company because I wasn't giving her any attention. And so, you know, when that company failed, and I was left with nothing, you know, and I just was kind of, like, sitting there licking my wounds [laughs], you know, in my childhood bedroom at my parents' house, you know, I was like, you know what? Like, I don't know that that was really worth it, and I don't know that that was the right approach. And I kind of vowed...in that moment, I was like, you know, look, I'm a startup founder. I love building these companies, so I'm, like, definitely going to do it again, but I'm not going to give it my entire life. Like, regardless of your religious beliefs, like, we at least have one life to live. And in my opinion, there's a lot more to life than [chuckles] just cranking out work and building companies. Like, there's a whole world to explore, you know, and there's lots of things that I'm interested in. So, this time around, I'm very thoughtful about creating that balance in my life. I set hard guidelines. There's hard, like, guardrails, I guess I should say, when I start and end work, you know, and I really hold myself accountable to that. Emily holds me accountable to that. And I make sure that, like, I work really hard when I'm at work, but I take the mask off, you know, so to speak, when I'm at home. And I just kind of...I don't deprioritize the rest of my life like I did when I was running FantasyHub. So, I think it's super important. I think it's a marathon building companies. I think you got to do that. I think it's what's in the best interest of the company and you as an individual. So, I think it's something I do a lot better this time around. And I think we're all better off for it, not the least of which is, like, one of our six cultural values is live with balance, and that's why. You know, because, like, we adopt the philosophy that you don't have to work yourself to death to build a great company. You can build a great company working a pretty reasonable workload, you know what I mean? It's not easy. It is kind of a pressure cooker trying to get that much done in that little time, but I think we're living proof that it works. VICTORIA: And if you don't make time to rest, then your ability to make good decisions and build high-quality products really starts to suffer eventually, like, I think, is what you saw at the end there. So, I really appreciate you sharing that and that personal experience. And I'm glad to see the learning from that, and making sure that's a core part of your company values the next time you start a company makes a lot of sense to me. STEVEN: Yeah, totally, you know, yeah. And I've always remembered, although this might be an extreme and a privileged extreme, but, you know, J.P. Morgan, the person, was famous for saying, "I get more done in 9 months than I get in 12," in relationship to the fact that he would take his family over to Europe for, like, three months of the year and, like, summer in Europe and not work. And so, while that's probably an unrealistic, you know, ideal for a startup founder, there's some truth to it, you know what I mean? Like you said, like, you got to rest. And, in fact, if you rest more, you know, yeah, you might be working less hours. You'll actually get more done. You're a lot clearer while you're at work. It's a mindset game. It's a headspace game. And the better you can put yourself in that good mindset, that good headspace, the more effective you are. Yeah, there's just a lot of wisdom to that approach. VICTORIA: Right. And, you know, thoughtbot is a global company, so we have employees all over the world. And I think what's interesting about U.S-based companies, I'm interested in how Forecastr might even help you with this, is that when you start a company, you basically form, like, a mini-government for your employees. And you have input over to how much they paid, how much healthcare they get. You have input over their hours and how much leave and everything. And so, trying to balance all those costs and create a good environment for your employees and make sure they have enough time for rest and for personal care. How does Forecastr kind of help you also imagine all of those costs [laughs] and make sense of what you can offer as a company? STEVEN: I would say the main way that we help folks do that, and we really do play in that space, is just by giving you a clear picture of what the future holds for your company from a financial perspective. I mean, it's one of the things that I think is such a superpower when it comes to financial modeling, you know, it can really help you make better decisions along these lines because, like, what does a financial model do? A financial model just simulates your business into the future, specifically anything related to the cash flow of your business, you know, cash in, cash out, revenue expenses, and the like. And so, your people are in there, and what they're paid is in there and, you know, your revenue and your expenses, your cash flow, your runway, all that's in the model. One of the things I feel like we do really help people do is just get a clearer picture of like, hey, what do the next 3, 6, 12, you know, 24 months look like for my company? What is my runway? When am I going to run out of money? What do I need to do about that? Can I afford to give everybody a raise, or can I afford to max out my benefits plan or whatever that is? It's like, you can make those assessments more easily. You know, if you have a financial model that actually makes sense to you that you can look at and say, oh, okay, cool. Yeah, I can offer that, like, Rolls Royce benefits plan and still have 18 months' worth of runway, or maybe I can't [laughs]. And I have to say, "Sorry, guys, you know, like, we're cash-constrained, and this is all we can do for now. But maybe when we raise that next round and when we hit these growth milestones, you know, we can expand that." So yeah, I think it's all, for us, about just, like, helping founders make better decisions, whether they be your decisions around employees and benefits, et cetera, or growth, or fundraising, you know, through the power of, like, financial health and hygiene. VICTORIA: Great. Thank you. I appreciate you letting me bring it all the way back [laughs]. Yeah, let me see. Let me go through my list of questions and see what else we have here. Do you have any questions for me or thoughtbot? STEVEN: Yeah. I mean, so, like, how do you guys think about this kind of stuff? Like, you know, you said thoughtbot's a global company at this point, but the name would imply, you know, a very thoughtful one. So, I'd be curious in y'alls kind of approach to just, like, culture and balance and some of these things that we're talking about kind of, like, straddling that line, you know, between, like, working really hard, which you have to do to build a great company but, you know, being mindful of everything else that life has to offer. VICTORIA: Yeah. Well, I think thoughtbot, more than any other company I've ever worked for, really emphasizes the value of just, like, people really want you to have a work-life balance and to be able to take time off. And, you know, I think that for a company that does consulting and we're delivering at a certain quality, that means that we're delivering at the quality where if someone needs to take a week off for a vacation, there's enough documentation; there's enough backup support for that service to not be impacted. So, that gives us confidence to be able to take the time off [chuckles], and it also just ends up being a better product for our clients. Like, our team needs to be well-rested. They need to have time to invest in themselves and learning the latest technology, the latest upgrades, contributing to open source, and writing about the problems they're seeing, and contributing back to the community. So, we actually make time every Friday to spend on those types of projects. It's kind of like you were saying before, like, you get as much done in four days as many companies get in five because that time is very highly focused. And then you're getting the benefit of, you know, continually investing in new skills and making sure the people you're working with are at the level that you're paying for [laughs]. STEVEN: Yeah, right. No, that's super cool. That's super cool. VICTORIA: Yeah, and, actually, so we're all remote. We're a fully remote company, and we do offer some in-person events twice a year, so that's been a lot of fun for me. And also, getting to, like, go to conferences like RubyConf and RailsConf and meeting the community has been fantastic. Yeah, you have a lot of value of self-management. So, you have the ability to really adjust your schedule and communicate and work with what meets your needs. It's been really great. STEVEN: Yeah, I love that, too. And we're also a remote company, and I think getting together in person, like you just talked about it, is so important. We can only afford to do it once a year right now as an earlier-stage company. But as amazing as, you know, Zoom and things like this are, it's like, there's not really a perfect replacement for that in-person experience, you know. VICTORIA: I agree, and I also agree that, like, once a year is probably enough [laughter]. That's a great amount of time. Like, it really does help because there are so many ways to build relationships remotely, but sometimes, at least just meeting in person once is enough to be like, oh yeah, like, you build a stronger connection, and I think that's great. Okay. Let me see. What other questions do we have? Final question: is there anything else that you would like to promote? STEVEN: I guess it's my job to say we are a really awesome financial modeling platform and team in general. So, if you are a startup founder or you know a startup founder out there that just could use some help with their financial model, you know, it is definitely something that we'd love to do. And we do a ton of education and a ton of help. We've got a ton of resources that are even freely available as well. So, our role in the market is just to get out there and help folks build great financial models, whether that be on Forecastr or otherwise, and that's kind of the approach that we take to it. And our philosophy is like, if we can get out there and do that, you know, if we can be kind of the go-to resource for folks to build great models regardless, you know, of what that means for them, a rising tide will float all boats, and our boat the most of which, hopefully. So [laughs], if you need a model, I'm your guy. VICTORIA: Thank you so much for sharing that. And I have a fun question for you at the end. What is your favorite hike that you've been on in the last three years or ever, however long you want to go back? [laughs] STEVEN: Well, I would say, you know, I did have the great pleasure this year of returning to the Appalachian Trail to hike the Roan Highlands with a friend of mine who was doing a thru-hike. So, a friend of mine did a southbound thru-hike on the A.T. this year, went from Maine to Georgia. Good friend of mine. And I had not been on the Appalachian Trail since I did a thru-hike in 2017. So, I had not returned to the trail or to that whole community. It's just a very special community. It really is a group of, like, really awesome, eclectic people. And so, yeah, this last year, I got to go down to the Roan Highlands in Tennessee. It's a beautiful, beautiful area of Tennessee and in the Southeast, rolling hills and that kind of thing. And hike, for him, for, like, three or four days and just be a part of his journey. Had a ton of fun, met some awesome people, you know, great nature, and totally destroyed my body because I was not prepared to return to the grueling nature of the Appalachian Trail. So yeah, I'd have to say that one, Victoria. I'd have to say that was my favorite in the last couple of years for sure. VICTORIA: Yeah, it's beautiful there. I've hiked certain parts of it. So, I've heard that obviously the Appalachian Trail, which is the eastern side of the United States, was the earlier trail that was developed because of the dislocation of people over time and that they would create the trail by getting to a peak and then looking to another peak and being like, "Okay, that's where I'm going to go." So, when you say it's grueling, I was, like, a lot of up and down hills. And then what I've heard is that the Pacific Trail on the western part of the United States, they did more of figuring out how to get from place to place with minimizing the elevation change, and so it's a much more, like, sustainable hike. Have you ever heard that? STEVEN: Oh yeah, that is 100% true. In terms of, like, the absolute change in elevation, not, like, the highest elevation and the lowest, just, like, the change up and down, there's twice as much going up and down on the A.T. as there is on the Pacific Crest Trail. And the Pacific Crest Trail is graded for park animals, so it never gets steeper than, like, a 15% grade. So, it's real groovy, you know, on the PCT where you can just get into a groove, and you can just hike and hike and hike and hike for hours, you know, versus the A.T. where you're going straight up, straight down, straight up, straight down, a lot of big movements, very exhausting. I've hiked a good chunk of the PCT and then, obviously, the whole A.T., so I can attest, yes, that is absolutely true. VICTORIA: I feel like there's an analogy behind that and what Forecastr does for you. Like, you'll be able [laughs] to, like, smooth out your hills a little bit more [laughs] with your finances, yeah. STEVEN: [laughs] Oh, I love that. Absolutely. Well, and I've honestly, like, I've often likened, you know, building a company and hiking the Appalachian Trail because it is one of those things where one of the most clarifying things about hiking a long trail is you just have this one monster goal that's, you know, that's months and months ahead of you. But you just got to get up every day, and you just got to grind it out. And every day is grindy, and it's hard, you know, but every day you just get one step closer to this goal. And it's one of the cool things about a trail is that you kind of steep yourself in that one goal, you know, one-track mind. And, you know, like we were saying earlier, there's so much more to life. So, you can't and probably shouldn't do that with your startup. You should continue to invest in other aspects of your life. But maybe while you're within the four walls of your office or when you open up that laptop and get to work on your computer, you know, if you take that kind of similar approach where you got this big goal that's, you know, months or years away but every day you just got to grind it out; you just got to work hard; you got to do what you can to get 1 step closer. And, you know, one day you'll wake up and you'll be like, oh shit, like, I'm [laughs] pretty close, you know what I mean? Yeah, I think there's definitely some similarities to the two experiences. VICTORIA: I appreciate that, yeah. And my team is actually it's more like starting up a business within thoughtbot. So, I'm putting together, like, my three-year plan. It's very exciting. And I think, like, those are the types of things you want to have. It's the high-level goal. Where are we going? [chuckles] Are we on our track to get there? But then day to day, it's like, okay, like, let's get these little actions done that we need to do this week [laughs] to build towards that ultimate goal. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Steven. I really enjoyed our conversation. Is there anything final you want to say? STEVEN: I just want to thank you, Victoria. I think it's a wonderful podcast that you guys put on, and I really appreciate the opportunity to be here and to chat with you. You're lovely to talk to. I enjoyed the conversation as well, and I hope everyone out there did, also. So, let's make it a great 2024. VICTORIA: Thank you so much. Yeah, this is actually my second podcast recording of the year, so very exciting for me. I appreciate it. Thanks so much for joining again. So, you can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, you can email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on X, formerly known as Twitter, @victori_ousg. And this podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions.

Lisa Knee, Managing Partner of Real Estate at EisnerAmper, joins to talk about mortgage interest rates, outlook for the real estate sector, and a potential real estate credit crunch. Cam Crise and Vince Cignarella, Macro Strategists with Bloomberg News, join to discuss markets and the Fed. Ben Slavin, Global Head of ETFs at BNY Mellon, joins the show to talk about the outlook for ETFs and investing in 2023. Mike McGlone, Senior Macro Strategist with Bloomberg Intelligence, joins to discuss the OPEC+ cut and outlook for oil as well as his note on crypto and Nvidia. Steven Oh, Head of Fixed Income at PineBridge Investments, talks about the economy, interest rates, and inflation. Nancy Kimelman, professor at Northeastern University, joins to discuss the debt ceiling resolution, if it will lead to a liquidity crunch, and paints the overall economic picture factoring in geopolitical, Federal Reserve, and market risks. Mandeep Singh and Anurag Rana, Senior Tech Analysts for Bloomberg Intelligence, join to discuss the Apple headset release and Twittead revenue decline. Hosted by Paul Sweeney, Kriti Gupta, and Madison Mills.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John Butler, Senior Analyst: Telecoms with Bloomberg Intelligence, joins the program to discuss AT&T earnings and outlook for the company and telecom field. Steven Oh, Global Head of Fixed Income at PineBridge Investments, talks about the economy, interest rates, and inflation. Gina Martin Adams, Chief Equity Strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence, joins the show to discuss the outlook for equities in 2023 and start to the year for markets. George Ferguson, Senior Industry Analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence, discusses Boeing earnings. He can also discuss/preview other defense earnings for companies like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. Ben Cook, manager of the Hennessy Energy Transition Fund and Hennessy Midstream Fund, talks about energy stocks, the energy outlook for 2023, and oil and natural gas prices. Hosted by Paul Sweeney and Kriti Gupta.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Doctor is suddenly invisible in the TARDIS! Soon Team TARDIS discovers it has landed in the domain of the Celestial Toymaker. An eternal being with near infinite powers, the Toymaker traps others in his realm to play games (he's very bored). Now, the Doctor, Steven, and Dodo must win--or they will be trapped forever as the Toymaker's playthings. _____DOCTOR: You need me?TOYMAKER: Yes. I'm bored. I love to play games, but there's no one to play against. The beings who call here have no minds and so they become my toys. But you will become my perpetual opponent. We shall play endless games together, your brain against mine.DOCTOR: As you said, if I win the game, I can go.TOYMAKER: So you can, Doctor, so you can. But I think you will lose. _________DODO: I wonder if we'll ever see the sergeant and the cook again? They were rather funny, you know.STEVEN: Look, you still believe in these creations of the Toymaker, don't you? You can't see that they're just phantoms, things created in his mind.DODO: If that's so, why do they lose to us? And always through doing something silly and human?STEVEN: Oh, I don't know. Maybe they get out of his control.DODO: There, that's just what I meant.STEVEN: What are you talking about?DODO: Look, he can bring them to life, but they have wills and minds of their own. I'll never be able to look at a doll or a playing card again with an easy mind. They really do have a secret life of their own.___________DODO: We'll never see him again, will we, Doctor?DOCTOR: Oh, my dear, don't talk too soon. The mind is indestructible. So is the Toymaker.STEVEN: What, you mean he can never be destroyed?DODO: But you defeated him.DOCTOR: Yes, just at this moment, but there will be other meetings in an other time.DODO: Then your battle with him will never end.DOCTOR: Yes, you're quite right, my dear, but anyway, let us cheer up. After all we did win the games.___________________________________________Upcoming:The GunfightersEpisodes: "A Holliday for the Doctor," "Don't Shoot the Pianist,"  "Johnny Ringo,"  "The O.K. Corral"Team TARDIS encounters hilariously bad American accents in a comedic take on the shot-out in Tombstone....get ready for a song to get stuck in your head; forever.  New Who Review: The Power of the DoctorAn immediate reaction to Jodi Whittaker's final outing as the Doctor. Special thanks to Cathlyn "Happigal" Driscoll for providing the beautiful artwork for this podcast. You can view her work at https://www.happigal.com/ Do feel free to get in touch to share the love of all things Doctor Who: throughthevortexpodcast@gmail.comSpecial thanks to Cathlyn "Happigal" Driscoll for providing the beautiful artwork for this podcast. You can view her work at https://www.happigal.com/ Do feel free to get in touch to share the love of all things Doctor Who: throughthevortexpodcast@gmail.comThank you so much for listening!!

How Much Energy Have You Put Into Your W2 Jobs? (LA 1869) Transcript: Steven: Steve and Jill here. Jill: Hello. Steven: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill: And I'm Jill DeWit. Broadcasting from not only where Oprah and Reese Witherspoon grew up but the birthplace of Bluegrass music. Steven: I'm sorry, Oprah's from Chicago. Jill: But she grew up here. Steven: Oh yeah? Jill: I'm just telling you what I just read. Oprah, Reese Witherspoon, I think I'm kidding and yeah, all grew up in Nashville, Reese Witherspoon and Taylor Swift so even though- Steven: Today- Jill: So that's a fun fact that Jack didn't even know. Steven: Yeah, I wonder why I didn't know that. Jill: That's okay. That's why you have me. Steven: Today, Jill and I talk about how much energy have you put into your W2 jobs, so far in your life? Jill: This is scary. Steven: This is scary. It's a scary amount. Jill: No, I'm glad we're going to talk about this. So would you give the preface again from yesterday that you've mentioned. Steven: Jill and I were talking, sitting at a Wendy's restaurant somewhere in southern Ohio, one or two days ago. And there were some very, very energetic, intelligent young people working in Wendy's to try to fix on their own the soda machine. And I started thinking, what if these kids put this kind of energy into owning their own business or getting a college degree, or God forbid, buying and selling land? Jill: Yeah. So interesting. Steven: It was hard to watch. Jill and I were like, "God, these kids are brilliant." Jill: They were really getting into it. Steven: And then we started looked at each other and said, "Well, how long did you have a job like that? And how long did you work for somebody else?" And think about how much money you generated and how much energy you put into that to do well in that environment. And we both kind of had a tear in our eye. Jill: Yeah. Steven: Because it was a lot. Jill: And we'll talk more about that because I'm sure a lot of you listening are in that situation. Steven: 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 and I hope you know by now, Jill and I own a very specific use commercial printing company to get your offers to owners in the mail. It's called offers2owners.com. If you don't know about it, check it out. Go to the website and you will immediately see why it's so popular and why people use it. Jill: Yep. All right. Chase wrote, "I have noticed that two..." Or excuse me, "I've noticed that offers2owners has shown a significant decrease in the amount of mail sent in recent months. Any idea why?" This is interesting. And one of our members responded in here and I've got the response. Steven wrote, "I can't speak for everyone, but in my case, I loaded up on mail a while back and I'm just getting through it. I plan on loading up again as we get towards the end of the year, if I need to write off certain amount to get me under a tax bracket if I needed an expense." That's kind of interesting. But anyway, so it does ebb and flow even with us, our orders don't come in. We do bigger orders like quarterly, don't we? Not necessarily monthly. Steven: Oh two oh runs spec, oh two oh falls under my- Jill: Side of the sheet. Steven: Oh, yeah. My direction not Jill's, so I'll explain it to her while I explain it to you. Jill: Oh, thanks. I'm just going to be sit back, let me know. Let me know when I can talk. Steven: Enjoy the weather out here at the lake. Jill: Yeah, I will. Steven: We run specials intentionally at certain times of the year. And people that are successful at this and regularly sending mail know that it's not even. They know that everybody starts out saying, "Well, I'm going to send out 10,000 units of mail a month." And then what happens is you get too many deals or you have an incredibly successful mailer and mayb...

How Much Energy Have You Put Into Your W2 Jobs? (LA 1869) Transcript: Steven: Steve and Jill here. Jill: Hello. Steven: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill: And I'm Jill DeWit. Broadcasting from not only where Oprah and Reese Witherspoon grew up but the birthplace of Bluegrass music. Steven: I'm sorry, Oprah's from Chicago. Jill: But she grew up here. Steven: Oh yeah? Jill: I'm just telling you what I just read. Oprah, Reese Witherspoon, I think I'm kidding and yeah, all grew up in Nashville, Reese Witherspoon and Taylor Swift so even though- Steven: Today- Jill: So that's a fun fact that Jack didn't even know. Steven: Yeah, I wonder why I didn't know that. Jill: That's okay. That's why you have me. Steven: Today, Jill and I talk about how much energy have you put into your W2 jobs, so far in your life? Jill: This is scary. Steven: This is scary. It's a scary amount. Jill: No, I'm glad we're going to talk about this. So would you give the preface again from yesterday that you've mentioned. Steven: Jill and I were talking, sitting at a Wendy's restaurant somewhere in southern Ohio, one or two days ago. And there were some very, very energetic, intelligent young people working in Wendy's to try to fix on their own the soda machine. And I started thinking, what if these kids put this kind of energy into owning their own business or getting a college degree, or God forbid, buying and selling land? Jill: Yeah. So interesting. Steven: It was hard to watch. Jill and I were like, "God, these kids are brilliant." Jill: They were really getting into it. Steven: And then we started looked at each other and said, "Well, how long did you have a job like that? And how long did you work for somebody else?" And think about how much money you generated and how much energy you put into that to do well in that environment. And we both kind of had a tear in our eye. Jill: Yeah. Steven: Because it was a lot. Jill: And we'll talk more about that because I'm sure a lot of you listening are in that situation. Steven: 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 and I hope you know by now, Jill and I own a very specific use commercial printing company to get your offers to owners in the mail. It's called offers2owners.com. If you don't know about it, check it out. Go to the website and you will immediately see why it's so popular and why people use it. Jill: Yep. All right. Chase wrote, "I have noticed that two..." Or excuse me, "I've noticed that offers2owners has shown a significant decrease in the amount of mail sent in recent months. Any idea why?" This is interesting. And one of our members responded in here and I've got the response. Steven wrote, "I can't speak for everyone, but in my case, I loaded up on mail a while back and I'm just getting through it. I plan on loading up again as we get towards the end of the year, if I need to write off certain amount to get me under a tax bracket if I needed an expense." That's kind of interesting. But anyway, so it does ebb and flow even with us, our orders don't come in. We do bigger orders like quarterly, don't we? Not necessarily monthly. Steven: Oh two oh runs spec, oh two oh falls under my- Jill: Side of the sheet. Steven: Oh, yeah. My direction not Jill's, so I'll explain it to her while I explain it to you. Jill: Oh, thanks. I'm just going to be sit back, let me know. Let me know when I can talk. Steven: Enjoy the weather out here at the lake. Jill: Yeah, I will. Steven: We run specials intentionally at certain times of the year. And people that are successful at this and regularly sending mail know that it's not even. They know that everybody starts out saying, "Well, I'm going to send out 10,000 units of mail a month." And then what happens is you get too many deals or you have an incredibly successful mailer and mayb...

How Much Energy Have You Put Into Your W2 Jobs? (LA 1869) Transcript: Steven: Steve and Jill here. Jill: Hello. Steven: Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill: And I'm Jill DeWit. Broadcasting from not only where Oprah and Reese Witherspoon grew up but the birthplace of Bluegrass music. Steven: I'm sorry, Oprah's from Chicago. Jill: But she grew up here. Steven: Oh yeah? Jill: I'm just telling you what I just read. Oprah, Reese Witherspoon, I think I'm kidding and yeah, all grew up in Nashville, Reese Witherspoon and Taylor Swift so even though- Steven: Today- Jill: So that's a fun fact that Jack didn't even know. Steven: Yeah, I wonder why I didn't know that. Jill: That's okay. That's why you have me. Steven: Today, Jill and I talk about how much energy have you put into your W2 jobs, so far in your life? Jill: This is scary. Steven: This is scary. It's a scary amount. Jill: No, I'm glad we're going to talk about this. So would you give the preface again from yesterday that you've mentioned. Steven: Jill and I were talking, sitting at a Wendy's restaurant somewhere in southern Ohio, one or two days ago. And there were some very, very energetic, intelligent young people working in Wendy's to try to fix on their own the soda machine. And I started thinking, what if these kids put this kind of energy into owning their own business or getting a college degree, or God forbid, buying and selling land? Jill: Yeah. So interesting. Steven: It was hard to watch. Jill and I were like, "God, these kids are brilliant." Jill: They were really getting into it. Steven: And then we started looked at each other and said, "Well, how long did you have a job like that? And how long did you work for somebody else?" And think about how much money you generated and how much energy you put into that to do well in that environment. And we both kind of had a tear in our eye. Jill: Yeah. Steven: Because it was a lot. Jill: And we'll talk more about that because I'm sure a lot of you listening are in that situation. Steven: 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 and I hope you know by now, Jill and I own a very specific use commercial printing company to get your offers to owners in the mail. It's called offers2owners.com. If you don't know about it, check it out. Go to the website and you will immediately see why it's so popular and why people use it. Jill: Yep. All right. Chase wrote, "I have noticed that two..." Or excuse me, "I've noticed that offers2owners has shown a significant decrease in the amount of mail sent in recent months. Any idea why?" This is interesting. And one of our members responded in here and I've got the response. Steven wrote, "I can't speak for everyone, but in my case, I loaded up on mail a while back and I'm just getting through it. I plan on loading up again as we get towards the end of the year, if I need to write off certain amount to get me under a tax bracket if I needed an expense." That's kind of interesting. But anyway, so it does ebb and flow even with us, our orders don't come in. We do bigger orders like quarterly, don't we? Not necessarily monthly. Steven: Oh two oh runs spec, oh two oh falls under my- Jill: Side of the sheet. Steven: Oh, yeah. My direction not Jill's, so I'll explain it to her while I explain it to you. Jill: Oh, thanks. I'm just going to be sit back, let me know. Let me know when I can talk. Steven: Enjoy the weather out here at the lake. Jill: Yeah, I will. Steven: We run specials intentionally at certain times of the year. And people that are successful at this and regularly sending mail know that it's not even. They know that everybody starts out saying, "Well, I'm going to send out 10,000 units of mail a month." And then what happens is you get too many deals or you have an incredibly successful mailer and mayb...

Op 4 december 1972 loopt de 7-jarige Steven Stayner van school naar huis. Hij wordt aangesproken door een man die foldertjes uit staat te delen en die hem vraagt of Steven's moeder nog iets wil doneren aan de kerk. Ja hoor, zegt Steven Oh mooi, zegt de man. Stap maar in mijn auto… Het is zomer en ik ben al die documentaires aan het kijken die nog op mijn kijk-lijstje stonden, waaronder deze: Captive Audience op het Disney Channel. Van het verhaal van Steven zou later een beroemde Ware Woensdag Avond film gemaakt worden: I know my first name is Steven. Voor deze documentaire  gingen de makers terug naar deze mini serie, de originele nieuwsbeelden, en interviews met de betrokkenen.  SPOILER ALERT: als je deze documentaire nog wilde kijken en verrast wil zijn, dan kun je deze aflevering misschien beter later luisteren.  Trigger waarschuwing: er is in deze aflevering sprake van seks met een minderjarige.  

Op 4 december 1972 loopt de 7 jarige Steven Stayner van school naar huis. Hij wordt aangesproken door een man die foldertjes uit staat te delen en die hem vraagt of Steven's moeder nog iets wil doneren aan de kerk. Ja hoor zegt Steven Oh mooi, zegt de man. Stap maar in mijn auto… Deze aflevering staat vanaf 18 augustus live!  

Rebecca Felton, Senior Market Strategist at Riverfront Investment Group, discusses markets and the economy. Steven Oh, Global Head of Fixed Income at PineBridge Investments, talks about the economy, interest rates, and the bond market. Christoph Rauwald, Bloomberg News Bureau Chief in Frankfurt, discusses Volkswagen's leadership change. Anna Wong, Chief US Economist with Bloomberg Economics, discusses the Bloomberg Economics model outlining the stickiness of inflation. Hosted by Paul Sweeney and Matt Miller. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Still reeling from the traumatizing events of "The Daleks' Masterplan," Steven and the Doctor land in France days before the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Separated from the Doctor, Steven gets caught up with the Huguenots who fear a plot to assassinate the newly married Protestant Prince Henry of Navarre. _____TAVANNES: Thank God.CATHERINE: God had very little to do with it. What is this?TAVANNES: The list, Madame. When those Huguenots are killed we need have no further fear of a Protestant France.CATHERINE: We have no need of lists, Marshall. The good people of Paris know their enemies. They will take care of them.TAVANNES: The good people? Madame, if you rouse the mob the innocent will perish with the guilty.CATHERINE: Innocent? Heresy can have no innocents. France will breath of pure air after tomorrow._________DOCTOR: I was not responsible.STEVEN: Oh, no. You just sent her back to her aunt's house where the guards were waiting to catch her. I tell you this much, Doctor, wherever this machine of yours lands next I'm getting off. If your researches have so little regard for human life then I want no part of it.DOCTOR: We've landed. Your mind is made up?(The Tardis doors open.)STEVEN: Goodbye.DOCTOR: My dear Steven, history sometimes gives us a terrible shock, and that is because we don't quite fully understand. Why should we? After all, we're all too small to realize its final pattern. Therefore don't try and judge it from where you stand. I was right to do as I did. Yes, that I firmly believe.___________Upcoming:John Lucarotti's Historical TriumphsA special episode exploring Lucarotti's three fantastic historical serials: "Marco Polo," "The Aztecs," and "The Massacre." Considering one writer's themes and his contributions to the early years of Doctor Who.Monday, July 11thSerial #23: The Ark(Episodes: "The Steel Sky," "The Plague," "The Return," "The Bomb")NO MISSING EPISODES:-)Monday, July 18thSpecial thanks to Cathlyn "Happigal" Driscoll for providing the beautiful artwork for this podcast. You can view her work at https://www.happigal.com/ Do feel free to get in touch to share the love of all things Doctor Who: throughthevortexpodcast@gmail.com

Jill Garvey, Senior VP and Senior Wealth Strategist at Huntington National Bank, discusses markets, interest rate hikes, and the economy in 2022. Jennifer Lee, Senior Economist and Managing Director with BMO Capital Markets, discusses the Fed, central banks, and global economies. Steven Oh, Global Head of Fixed Income at PineBridge Investments, talks about the economy, interest rates, and inflation. Bloomberg News Chief Economist Michael McKee discusses the Fed meeting. Hosted by Paul Sweeney and Matt Miller. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Todd: OK. Hello?Steven: Hello, there!Todd: How are you doing today?Steven: Pretty good.Todd: Could you please introduce yourself.Steven: Yeah. My name is Steven and I come from the north of England.Todd: Oh, really? Where in the north of England?Steven: A little village called Gawsworth.Todd: Is it a big place?Steven: No, it's about 10 thousand people I think.Todd: Oh, really? Do you go back there often?Steven: Not so often. The last time I went back was Christmas.Todd: Oh, really? OK. Did you have a good time?Steven: Yeah, it was very nice. I saw old friends and family and did the usual Christmas things.Todd: What actually are the usual Christmas things?Steven: Oh, I guess a lot of eating and a lot of drinking and a lot of laughing. Just general fun and games I guess.Todd: Great. How many of your family members still live in this town?Steven: Well, they don't actually....my mom and dad live in the town. My brother and sister actually live pretty close to this town, so my family is all in that general area.Todd: Oh, OK. Great. Thanks a lot Steven.

Todd: OK. Hello?Steven: Hello, there!Todd: How are you doing today?Steven: Pretty good.Todd: Could you please introduce yourself.Steven: Yeah. My name is Steven and I come from the north of England.Todd: Oh, really? Where in the north of England?Steven: A little village called Gawsworth.Todd: Is it a big place?Steven: No, it's about 10 thousand people I think.Todd: Oh, really? Do you go back there often?Steven: Not so often. The last time I went back was Christmas.Todd: Oh, really? OK. Did you have a good time?Steven: Yeah, it was very nice. I saw old friends and family and did the usual Christmas things.Todd: What actually are the usual Christmas things?Steven: Oh, I guess a lot of eating and a lot of drinking and a lot of laughing. Just general fun and games I guess.Todd: Great. How many of your family members still live in this town?Steven: Well, they don't actually....my mom and dad live in the town. My brother and sister actually live pretty close to this town, so my family is all in that general area.Todd: Oh, OK. Great. Thanks a lot Steven.

How to Get Over the Fear of Buying Property (1070) Transcript: Steven:                Steven and Jill here. Jill:                          Good day. Steven:                Welcome to the Land Academy Show. Entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill:                          And I'm Jill Dewitt broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven:                Today, Jill and I talk about how to get over the fear of buying property. Seems like such an interesting, funny, incredibly unnecessary topic, but I know it's- Jill:                          Oh my gosh, are you serious? Steven:                Yeah, to me it does. Jill:                          To me it's a necessary. Steven:                Yeah. Jill:                          Unnecessary. Just because you have no fear and I have no fear, it doesn't mean- Steven:                Any fear of buying real estate at all. Jill:                          I do not. Steven:                Have you ever? Jill:                          No. Steven:                Neither have I. Jill:                          Hold on a moment. That does not mean that everybody's that way. If it's one thing I have learned. Steven:                Well you just cut me off in the middle of the sentence, but that's okay. Jill:                          I'm sorry. I didn't know you were going there. Steven:                You know what we should do that's so, it's going to be annoying to the listener, but really fun for us. Jill:                          So sorry. Steven:                Every single sentence the other person says, just cut them off. Jill:                          Not nice. Steven:                Go ahead, Jill. Jill:                          No I didn't mean to do that. Steven:                It's not a trap, I mean it. Go ahead. Jill:                          Finish your thing. Steven:                No, I can't remember what I was going to say. Jill:                          Oh, well, sorry. Steven:                Look, this show is all about learning how to buy and sell real estate, so it's not really about Jill and I at all. So what comes easy to us might be incredibly difficult for somebody and vice versa. So this topic came up because we have a lot of new staff right now, and I'm learning by watching how they're doing deals and what they're bringing to the table that adds to what Jill and I can bring to the table. You know, there's some concern about ... you know what I think this really shows really about, and then I'll let you take over, because I know you have a lot of notes. It's just insecurity, not about buying real estate, it's just like fear of failure. Jill:                          Well I was going to say, I really saw it when we were talking about the topics. Not our people, the members. I talked to new members all the time. New and or thinking about jumping in, and this is one of their concerns. Steven:                Oh, okay, good. So it is necessary. Jill:                          It is necessary. And I have a lot more to say when we talk about the show. Steven:                Before we get into it, let's take to a topic posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It's free. Jill:                          Joe wrote, "Hello, my name is Joe. I'm 28 years old, married and no kids. New to this site and learning about land investing. I'm very interested. This is definitely something I want to do. However, I don't really know the best path to take at this point in my life. I have a decent paying job, but I hate it." Poor guy. "I'm just now getting to where I can make a change. I either want to go back to college or go back into the military. Now that I've found this, I'm not sure if I should focus on getting a better career first and then working towards investing in land, or just use the job I have now to save and get started. I don't know really what it takes to get going and I don't know h...

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Todd: So, Steven, what do you like to do in your free time?Steven: Um, free time. Well, I would just love to have some free time, occasionally I have some free time and well, I love to go hiking. Ah, I live in Japan in Kyuushuu and there are some beautiful mountains quite nearby to where I live so sometimes I go, I go hiking in the mountains.Todd: Well, actually, I love hiking and I am new to Kyuushuu (Right) I just moved here, so can you tell me where I should go hiking. What are the best spots?Steven: Right, well, there's one range of mountains in Kuju. One of the mountains is called Nakadake, which means central peak, I believe, and that is actually the highest, the highest peak, the highest mountain on mainland Kyuushuu. There is one higher mountain on an island near Kagoshima but on mainland Kyuushuu that's the highest peak and it's quite a challenge and there are some beautiful views from that mountain.Todd: Wow! Is it a day hike? Can I hike it in one day?Steven: Oh, sure. It takes about three hours to go up and the descent takes about two hours. It takes about two hours to come back down.Todd: Oh, that's great well, we live on Beppu and Beppu is on the coast. It's on the ocean, so how can I get to the mountain. Unfortunately, I don't have a car, so can I take the train or a bus?Steven: Um, I'm not absolutely sure. I've only ever been by car myself. Um, I don't believe there's a train that stops by the mountain but you can certainly get closer than you are now by train, and then you can perhaps take a bus or even a taxi from a town close by. I don't know. I'm sorry.Todd: Oh, that's OK. Well, you know, I've never done it before, but I hear that it's safe to hitchhike in Japan. Is that true?Steven: Oh, absolutely. Yep. Yep. The crime rate in Japan is so low. You'd have to be incredibly unlucky to have any problems hitchhikingTodd: And will people stop and pick me up?Steven: Ah, that I don't know.Todd: Maybe I'll have to give it a try. OK, thanks a lot.Steven: You're welcome.

Danny talks to Steven Spohn about growing up as a gamer with a disability, and the work he does at the Ablegamers charity to make games more accessible. (Recorded January 10th) iTunes Page: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/noclip/id1385062988 RSS Feed: http://noclippodcast.libsyn.com/rssGoogle Play: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/If7gz7uvqebg2qqlicxhay22qny Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5XYk92ubrXpvPVk1lin4VB?si=JRAcPnlvQ0-YJWU9XiW9pg Watch our docs: https://youtube.com/noclipvideo Sub our new podcast channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSHBlPhuCd1sDOdNANCwjrA Learn About Noclip: https://www.noclip.videoBecome a Patron and get early access to new episodes: https://www.patreon.com/noclip Follow @noclipvideo on Twitter Hosted by @dannyodwyerFunded by 4,913 Patrons. -------------------------------------------------------------- - [Danny] Hello and welcome to Noclip; the podcast about people who play and make video games. I'm your host Danny O'Dwyer and today I'm joined by somebody who kind of has a finger in both of the pies we generally talk about; people who play games and also people who make games. We're gonna talk to him about a lot of different areas of his work and also the ways in which he enjoys playing games as well. He is the COO of AbleGamers, he is a fellow Trending Gamer nominee survivor. I am delighted to be joined by Mr. Steven Spohn. How are you doing my friend? - [Steven]I'm doing well. Can we just talk about pies for the next 15 minutes? - [Danny] I wanted to bring up the pie because I was trying to think about how you fit into the world of video games and, in a way, your work at AbleGamers is involved in both sides of the equation. You help individuals who have trouble accessing video games to get controllers and the means by which to play the games they wanna do, but you're also talking to game studios and hardware manufacturers about they ways in which they can make it so you don't have to do the other thing. - [Steven] Yeah. The truth is when I did the game awards video, one of the things that they captured me saying was that I don't know how I got where I am and I don't know what I'm doing and it was the absolute most truthful thing I had said during the whole piece. I don't know exactly what you would call my job. My job is literally whatever AbleGamers needs and sometimes that's talking to hardware, sometimes that's talking to developers, sometimes that's talking to fundraisers, sometimes that's talking to people with disabilities who need tech support, so I have really become the Jack of all video game trade at the moment. - [Danny] I've got a lot of questions about your work at AbleGamers and we've got some from the Patrons too. We've actually been, like, I feel like we've been working on the AbleGamers documentary, in some respect, either us having conversations or filming stuff like we did last summer, it feels like it's been going on forever and it's something that we eventually will get done. Today I kind of wanna talk a bit more about Steven; about how you came to be in the position you're in because, like you said, in a way I can't imagine anyone else doing your job, but also I couldn't imagine anyone doing your job until you did it. So, let's go all the way back. When did you start playing games or when did you start getting interested in games? - [Steven] I became interested in video games actually thanks to a friend I had made in high school. We were in a vo-tech class and we were doing AutoCAD designing and... - [Danny] Oh, cool. - [Steven] I, for just a brief hot second, I wanted to be an assistant engineer and then I wondered how much work it is and I said, "Nah". - [Danny] What was the name of the class? It sounded like volt-tech class. - [Steven] It was vo-tech. - [Danny] Vo-tech? - [Steven] Yeah, vocational technical school. - [Danny] Oh, okay, okay. - [Steven] Yeah, vo-tech is like the American, "We're not going to real school, we're going to fancy 'you're going to learn actual useful life skills' classes". - [Danny] Awesome. - [Steven] Yeah, like its where your mechanics go and all the people who are gonna do computers and what they do is, or at least in my school, you did your math and your science in the morning and then they shipped you on a bus during lunch to go to the other school. It's kinda cool. - [Danny] Wow, we had something similar in Ireland. It was called Leaving Cert. Applied and it was where all my friends who are tradesmen went. Like electricians and plumbers and then they all ended up moving to Australia anyway because the economy crashed and nobody was building houses. So you were in that class and you were learning AutoCAD. Was that the first piece of software you ever encountered? - [Steven] It was the first time that I had really worked on computers for more than a few minutes. Of course, everybody had Oregon Trail on their MathLab or whatever, but I grew up poor so we didn't own a computer and that was really the only time I got to have hands on a computer from multiple hours at a time. One of my friends there worked at a computer shop and he was telling me how he just got all these parts for computers secondhand because people would turn them in for repairs and then they wouldn't want them, so he would just end up fixing them and taking them home, and I was like, "That's amazing", so he started talking me into getting into video gaming and he told me about this fabulous game where you could go online and you could have a life and you could do amazing things like walking around the town of Britain and you could fight dragons and you could own a house, and I was like, "This is amazing", and so he sort of talked me into this persistent world, he was a Guild Master in his own right. That's how I got sucked in to Ultima Online and from there I just became super interested in the alternative reality that video games present. - [Danny] Was there an element of the escapism that appealed to you? Escapism is something that we all enjoy, but perhaps somebody in your position, maybe, was there an added element of escapism for you? - [Steven] For me it was the timing of where it hit me in life. I had gone into my senior year of high school and I had discovered friends and it sounds corny, cheesy; it's something that I'm probably gonna get up on a stage and give a TED Talk about one day, but it's interesting how our school system kind of segregates people with disabilities away from the main population if you let them. They'll put you in a special classroom and they will put you in a special room to eat lunch and they really keep you almost walled off from everyone else and I was super lucky that I had a friend who talked me into doing that and I made friends. Long story short, I sort of got a huge case of senior-itis and I just didn't want to do the school thing anymore. I wanted to go have a social life because holy crap having friends is awesome! And so I just wanted to go experience that and have fun with it and it was fantastic. The only problem was that I was just at the age where we were transitioning from middle-teens to late-teens so it was a couple of years of doing... - [Danny] Hell. - [Steven] Oh, hell! But also doing video games in your friends garage, to, "Hey, let's go to the club and pick up girls." and its like "Well, the club has a stair to get into it, so I can't do that, oh damn". So I started kind of being walled off by life. Just happenstance of things not being wheelchair accessible and here's my other friend going, "Hey, here's a world where your wheelchair doesn't eff-ing matter". I don't know if I can say swears on this show. - [Danny] Say whatever you want, man. - [Steven] Right, cool, so they were like "Who the fuck cares if you're in a wheelchair. Go play this world where everybody's equal", and I was like "Oh, this is my first experience where everything is a level playing field" and it was amazing, so... Was it escaping or was it choosing to forge a different path in life? I don't think I'll ever really know the answer to that, but consequently, through the butterfly effect, deciding to do that and take that friend's advice led me to where I am right now. - [Danny] You're an incredibly social person. I feel like everyone in the industry has met you and had a conversation with you. I've noticed that you're very good at advocating for people's time, which is something that a lot of people who like having friends and like being social, they sort of don't put themselves out there to, you know, they don't want to be a bother or something like that but I've always found you to be incredibly inviting and sort of proactive in your friendships, which I think is a really important trait, especially the older you get. Video games, in that way I suppose, have sort of provided you with a lot then, in terms of both your social life and your professional life. Is it fair to say that most of that sort of revolves around the world of games? - [Steven] I think it is now. I mean, you hit the nail right on the head. When you're in your thirties, going out and making new friendships is exceedingly difficult and we could literally talk for the rest of the podcast about the difficulties of living the disabled life and having to fit in to the norms of society. But as far as the video games industry has been, to me it's been a very welcoming and inviting place and I am super honest guy, you know, you follow me on twitter, we've been friends for a couple years now. I, to my own detriment, I am way too honest sometimes and I am sure that there are people in the industry who love me and there are people who probably wish I would just stop talking so much and I feel like if you don't have some people that think you talk too much then you're probably not making change and that's what I'm trying to do. I have terminal illnesses, I have a disability for those of you who don't know me. I am aware that there is that shot clock ticking and I don't talk about it a lot but I'm aware it's there probably more than your average person and I'm trying to use all the time I've got to do something with it. - [Danny] It's an interesting dichotomy you bring up there, in that, in many ways, who could say a bad thing about Steven and AbleGamers, you know what I mean? At least, who could say it out loud? But you are kind of creating problems for companies, right? Like you're creating a problem that, by the fact that you're even having the conversation with it was a problem that they thought didn't exist. You're fashioning it for them. Is that the case? Like, is it different now talking to companies than it was when you first started doing this work? - [Steven] The difference really is that I didn't make the problem. I shined a spotlight on a problem that was in the darkness. It was always there and the more technology advances, the less accessible it becomes, just by the very definition of advancing technology. So, we banded together, me and Mark Barlet and Craig Kaufman, and a bunch of amazing people, now AbleGamers, got together and decided that we were going to take this problem head on and we changed a multi-billion dollar industry. I tell you the weirdest thing that I could ever say to another human being because it is entirely factual, you could prove it, in fact, we're doing a documentary talking about it, so it's, you know, it's something that's kind of shock and awe to even try to talk about it, but here we are, years later, where developers went from laughing at us and walking away to now coming to talk to us, so, you know, it's pretty amazing. I am very fortunate in my position that I am able to walk all these different sides of the video game life. - [Danny] When you think about some of the ways in which you guys have changed the industry, the one that comes to mind right away, for me at least, because it's probably the most recent, is the work that you guys did with Microsoft on the, is it the Adaptive Controller, is that what the name is? - [Steven] Yeah, it's called the Adaptive Controller. - [Danny] What other stuff comes to mind for you, over the years? - [Steven] You know, I think some of the biggest were going into Harmonix and getting to talk to Alex. Sitting down in his office and doing the whole Rock Band thing and talking about the various ways that you might wanna play the game. The fastest way I can tell this anecdote is we were sitting in his office and we were talking about how, if someone wants to play the video game, how many buttons would they have to use at minimum? Could you do this if you only had three fingers on on hand? Could you do it if you were one-handed? You know, yes, no, yes, no. So we talked about that for a minute and I just came up with a question to ask; "Why did you come up with three buttons as the minimum to be able to play?" and his answer was, "Well, it's just the number that we thought was the smallest that people would ever wanna do". I said, "Well, what about somebody who only has the ability to push one button?" He said, "Well, we never thought anybody would want to be able to play Rock Band with just one button." I looked him in the face and I said, "I would." And the color just drained out of his face and he just nods his head and goes, "Okay, we'll have to work on that" and that was sort of a great beginning point for, not only my friendship with Alex, but AbleGamers as a company we have worked with Harmonix ever since and they've been really great partners of the business and I've made some good friends over there as well. It's this amazing thing of how, one of my friends put it best, my job title is to go out and be who I am very visibly and let people learn lessons from my experiences and I've been able to thread this needle of using personal experience and second hand experience from the gamers I've met along the way to then translate that into the friendships that I've forged in the industry and then turn that into making changes for other people. So it's this tightrope act of making sure to be friends with everybody because the only way that you really can get people to make change is if they want to. If they don't want to, they're not gonna change. - [Danny] When you think about changing those games, were there games when you were growing up that you were like "Oh man, I'd really love to play that", but then you realized that there were barriers in your way to doing so? - [Steven] Yeah, I can tell you that I wanted to play Dance Dance Revolution and that'd be a great sound bite. Of course I'm in a wheelchair but I've always been a very realistic kind of guy. I am a logic-based person, I have the weird sort or emotional Spock thing going on where I wear my heart on my sleeve and I will fight for anybody if I believe in them, but there has to be logic in my brain, also why this is a thing, and I'm never gonna be on Dancing With The Stars. I'm never gonna be a ninja. It's just not in the cards for me. So I am okay with that and there was no particular game that I wanted to play that made me start advocating for people. It was simply having a disease that was advancing slowly, taking away abilities one by one, made me go, "Oh, shit, I guess I need some technology" and somewhere along the way I discovered that it was a lot more fun to help other people than to help myself. - [Danny] What was it like then for you, trying to gain access to that technology? Presumably you were doing that before AbleGamers existed, so was it a case where your conditions were getting worse and you were effectively looking for solutions as the issues presented themselves? - [Steven] So it's interesting when you're doing a technology upgrade as someone with a disability because it's often a mismatch of just MacGyver-ing your way through technology. To eat potato chips, I used to use hot dog tongs as I couldn't lift up my biceps, but I could rotate my wrist so I would just pick up one chip at a time with a hot dog tong. It's the same thing with video games. I used a little tiny dental hygiene tool that has a little crook on the end of it, has a little rubber tip and I would use that to push W, A, S, D when I couldn't reach it and operate the mouse with the other hand. So I was already using technology, it was just this way... Doing things the low-tech way was beginning to start to fail, so I had to find a little bit more high-tech solutions. - [Danny] And how did you do that? Did you fashion stuff yourself? Were there people out there making custom rigs for people? - [Steven] Well, you know, I started doing it by finding ways to play video games with only the mouse and just getting rid of keyboard entirely. Fortunately, I had found a program called TrackIR which generally allows you to look around in the cockpit of a Microsoft Flight Simulator and when you're looking around, you're also telling the computer to push different directions and I found that you could use this to push keyboard buttons and it was a totally unintended thing that this program was offering. They were trying to use it to help people have a more virtual experience, more immersion, and I ended up using it as a disability tool and now I teach others how to do the same thing. - [Danny] That's incredible. So you sort of hacked it in a way to be quick key-binding stuff. How many buttons could you set up on a TrackIR? How many directional ways are there to use it? - [Steven] So the best way to think about it is to think about a dartboard. - [Danny] Okay. - [Steven] If you think about each position, each little block, being a different key then the laser pointer that is attached to the brim of one of my hats allows the laser pointer to move around based on the way I'm looking. - [Danny] Right. - [Steven] So I can move it to whatever block. The only downside of that technology, of course, is if you're thinking about moving in a straight line. If you gotta get to block number three, you gotta run through block number one through two. - [Danny] Right. - [Steven] So, it sort of becomes this interesting way of lining up the buttons so that they don't do the wrong thing at the wrong time. - [Danny] It sounds like key-binding is something that is one of the most powerful ways of allowing people to use controllers in these interesting ways. You say using a mouse only; I imagine setting up 'run' to be right-click or something like that would maybe fix one sort of problem. We talk about the hardware issue, but also one of the biggest issues in games that has sort of been slowly fixed over the past five, 10 years, well, maybe closer to five, is the ability to re-bind controls, which certainly has never been something that was standard and is a lot more common now. Is that a big issue with accessibility as well? - [Steven] Yeah, re-mapping has gotten a lot better. Now, re-mapping is almost as standard as closed captioning is for TV shows and movies. That's a lot thanks to the groundwork that people have done, demanding it to be a thing. It's not just a disability thing. Everybody loves for you to be able to re-map things so that they're more comfortable, so that your hand isn't stretched out in weird ways that the developers didn't quite think somebody would try to do. So it's good for everybody, it's good design and it allows us to be comfortable playing video games. - [Danny] So what other big games were you a fan of? Or what other games were you a big fan of, rather, back in those days, back in the Ultima Online days? Eventually those doors closed, but you could've got back into that fantasy world. So what other games are your favorites when you look back? - [Steven] Back then Diablo was huge, I loved that game. Star Wars Galaxies actually was the bait that Mark used to get me into AbleGamers. - [Danny] How'd he do that? - [Steven] Okay, so I loved Star Wars Galaxies so much. Star Wars Galaxies was, and maybe is, my favorite game of all time and they had just changed it to the NGE and the NGE made it more into an action simulator game, which took away a lot of the accessibility. - [Danny] Oh, really? - [Steven] Yeah, in SWG, the original vanilla version, you had macros, you had slash commands, you had buttons on the screen that you could click, you could do macro ability to do more than one action at a time. It was a very very friendly game for people with disabilities and they didn't even realize they were designing it that way. They were just trying to make it friendly for everybody. So, it just happened to be accessible and I happened to latch on to it as the most amazing thing since pizza and it was great and they changed it and then, right after that, they were gonna change it again for the combat upgrade and they were gonna make it into this, I don't even know what kind of 'Barbie Ken Dreamhouse' thing they were trying to do with this game, but it was just destroying it from the inside out and then then closed it so I literally told Mark that I would come work for AbleGamers, volunteer my time, and at the time I was just being a writer and trying to help the cause, and I would do it, but only if he would give me the email for Smedley so I could tell him off. - [Danny] And did you? - [Steven] I did, yeah, absolutely. - [Danny] Oh, God. - [Steven] I wonder if he still has that email. - [Danny] Did he respond? - [Steven] No. I was nobody then, so just an angry guy yelling at him, which he had a bunch of those already. - [Danny] How long is the email, do you reckon? Is it like one paragraph or was it like 20 paragraphs? - [Steven] It was like five paragraphs with expletives and doing something between rational explanation of why he should change it back to, you know, "I hope both your eyebrows catch on fire!" It was not my most refined moment but I was just so passionate about it. - [Danny] Yeah, shoot your shot, fair enough. So what have you been playing at the moment? We were playing a bunch of PUBG I remember last year and then you went off and joined the Fortnite gang. You said you could never be a ninja but there you are, every day, playing Fortnite. Are you still playing it? - [Steven] Actually, no. I don't play Fortnite as much as I used to. It is still a fun game for me, but I've actually began to fall away from first-person shooters a little bit. I've been doing the Rocket League thing, I've been really into Kingdom: Two Crowns recently, just playing that 8-bit life. Yeah, it's the third installment of this franchise where you're just a little dude or a queen that's got a kingdom to take care of and there's little greedy things that are trying to take all your money and beat up your people to get it, so there's no fighting involved so, I don't know, I'm one of those gamers that, I used to run a violent game like a Diablo and then I would run The Sims Online. I would just bounce back and forth to satisfy both sides of my brain, so I guess right now I'm just like, "I don't wanna shoot people, I just wanna watch little monsters be murdered." - [Danny] Okay so by that rationale, Rocket League is the violent game? - [Steven] Yeah, well, if you've ever seen me play Rocket League, it depends how many times I get scored on. - [Danny] Oh dude, I swear to God, I have never been as angry and stressed out as when I play Rocket League online. - [Steven] It's like a stress test, they should replace that at the doctor's office. - [Danny] I swear to God, I had to start playing on PS4 because then I couldn't type shit at people. Then I just started doing it on that as well, bringing up the little PlayStation keyboard. In between goals where you've hardly any time to trash talk anyone and you just figure out ways of doing it. - [Steven] What a save, what a save, what a save! - [Danny] Oh, yeah, totally and all that sarcastic stuff for sure, yeah. It's ridiculous. Did you do a 'Top 10' list or anything for 2018? - [Steve] You know, I think I'm one of the three video game industry people that didn't do a 'Top 10' post. - [Danny] You need to get Alex Navarro over at Giant Bomb to email you as well next year. - [Steven] Apparently, yeah. Next year I need to get on the list, I was like, "every one of my friends has a list, what the hell?" Damn. - [Danny] So what was the stuff last year that really caught your eye? Were you playing a lot of those games? Well, playing Rocket League I guess, since 2017. - [Steven]Yeah, it was a good year for video games, man. The one I wish I could have played the most was Spider-Man. Man, that looked like an amazing game. I couldn't personally play it, so it was actually one of the only games that I sat on Twitch and watched friends play from the beginning to the end. It was so good. I loved it so much. - [Danny] Is that because it's a console game and it's just the accessibility issue? - [Steven] It was the way that the accessibility was set up was just a little bit rough for trying to aim and change your weapons. Anything that has a weapon wheel just adds another layer of complication for people who have a limited number of buttons that they can push, so, yeah. Even if you were using a QuadStick on a console, the weapon wheel is just difficult, so, you know. - [Danny] How does the QuadStick interface with the PlayStation? Because obviously Microsoft now has a controller that's like officially doing it. Do you have to hack it to get it to work? - [Steven] Yeah, its just an adaptor. - [Danny] Oh, really, just like off the shelf? You just get it off Amazon or something, or eBay? - [Steven] Well no, it's not off the shelf, but there are adapters out there that let you use PlayStation and Xbox things, vice versa, depending on which console you need to use the most, so we can put a QuadStick on either one. It doesn't really work on a Swtich, unfortunately, looking at you Nintendo. But, yeah, PlayStation and Xbox works just fine. - [Danny] Is it the type of thing that they know about and they're cool with or they know about it and they're just gonna go, "Ah, whatever"? Like what is it that Nintendo are doing that stops people being able to make adapters for that? - [Steven] You know, I'm not really sure what I can say, legally. I can tell you that it's still works on Xbox and PlayStation and it doesn't work on Nintendo. - [Danny] Fair enough. Sorry, you were saying, what other games are you playing? - [Steven] The God of War series was, of course, super amazing. I had a lot of strange indie taste as well, like Tricky Towers was a really good game I found. Just something sort of different. I loved Into the Breach. I think the only one I've lost a lot of time into was Odyssey. Odyssey is just so good; I can't stop playing it. - [Danny] My wife is playing it too. It's the most game I've ever seen. - [Steven] It is ridiculous, it is. I mean there were so many good games that came out last year, but Odyssey is maybe the first one in forever that I've been playing off-stream. There's usually, for me, only two kinds of games that I play; either I play them for work or I play them for stream work. Don't you get it where it's like, I'm sure, just like you, I don't like play just to play very much, so when I do, a game's gotta be great and Odyssey was fantastic. - [Danny] Did you play the Origins? The one that came out the year before? - [Steven] I didn't. You know, Odyssey was actually my first venture into Assassin's Creed world. - [Danny] Oh, cool. It's crazy how people are, I feel like there's two groups of people; there's the people who played so much Origins that they just can't play Odyssey because it's just like, it's just so too much, too quickly and then there's people who didn't play Origins who are loving Odyssey because it's a lot of the same sort of systems and stuff that worked there, but in a much bigger map with so much stuff. It's ridiculous how much stuff is in that game. Like how much of the map have you uncovered? My wife's been playing for months and like a third of the map has been opened up. - [Steven] You know, I probably have got a little over half of it at this point, and it just seems like the game just keeps going and, I gotta say, I'm into it though. It's one of those games where I'm finding I don't mind how much time has been sunk into it. Normally by like hour 50 I'm like, "Alright, come on, we gotta wrap this up", but this one I'm like, "You know, I could probably play this off and on for the next year, I'd be alright with that." - [Danny] What is it about it? Is it the setting or the combat or is it the ticking off the things on the list? There's a lot of 'do these things' and then you do the things and they give you stuff for it and you're like, "Yeah, give me more things to do." Is it that? - [Steven] I think it's a combination of the story and the never-ending tasks. I love the bounty hunting system, oh my goodness. I love how you just randomly get hunted and then you get to kill them and then more people hunt you. It's just awesome. - [Danny] That's rad. What are you playing at the moment? So you're playing that at the moment still, are you? - [Steven] Yeah, I mean whenever I get spare time, that's where I'm sinking my time right now. That was after I beat Far Cry. I don't know if you got a chance to sink your teeth into that but, man, that was a mind trip. - [Danny] Yeah, that was another one, my wife is basically just on the Ubisoft open world ticket at the moment, so that was another one I watched her play a lot in the evenings. Had you played previous Far Cry games? Was that your first foray into that one as well? - [Steven] That was another first note as well. It seemed to be my year to break into story games. I guess now we're looking back at it and I liked it but, this is gonna turn into spoiler-cast if I'm not careful, but, man, the ending in that game. At the end of the day I am a writer who just happens to be doing other things right now and so I love, love, love a good story. So, if it had something that can just grab my attention and make me wanna find out what happens at the end, then I'm in. - [Danny] You're one of the first people we're talking to in 2019, I mean you're one of the first people we're talking to on this podcast, this is the 5th episode. I feel like I haven't been able to stop and take stock of what's coming out this year. Is there anything, I have a list in front of me here but is there anything off the top of your head that you're looking forward to? Because I feel like 2018 actually ended up being a fantastic year but I worry that we ended up going into a slower one, when that happens. But is there anything off the top of your head that's popping out that you're looking forward to in 2019? - [Steven] I don't know, it can't be a slower year than last year. Last year was just boom, boom, boom. I would say, right off the top, and the same thing everyone is gonna say is Anthem. If Anthem is bad then I am going to riot. I'm going to grab a pitchfork and I'm going to the studio and I'm gonna stand there and be like, "You guys fix it." I'm gonna do it in a very non-threatening way. I'm just gonna stand there and it's gonna be a safety pitchfork, there's gonna be little plastic things on top of it. - [Danny]Orange tips. - [Steven] Yeah, orange tips on it. I'm gonna have a peaceful vest on me and just be like, "I just want you to fix the game." - [Danny] Well you say you're a fan of stories, does that mean, are you a fan of Dragon Age and Mass Effect, the other BioWare games? - [Steven] Oh yeah, oh my goodness. Dragon Age: Origins is... So Dragon Age: Origins, I love it so much, so anybody who really is a fan of mine may have picked up my one and only book that I have out there and if you look hard enough at the book, you'll see that one of the main characters is actually nearly directly pulled out of the Origins video game. - [Danny] Oh, careful, this is fucking EA man! - [Steven] I did not steal their IP, but that was like my main inspiration. It was so good. - [Danny] That's awesome. - [Steven] It was like, you know, the character and the everything just was so great to me that I was like, "I have to create my own version of this and plug it in somewhere", and I ended up doing that. - [Danny] That's right, what's the name of the book? Where can you get it? - [Steven] It's a horrible book, you don't wanna go find it. - [Danny] Hey man, I a 33 year old video game fan. I don't read books, I just buy them and put them on my shelf. - [Steven] That's fair. So the book is called The Finder. You can get it on Amazon still. I got it under my pen name, Steven Rome. Honestly, I hired an editor but the editor really kind of let me down so there's grammatical errors and there's an audio book uploaded to it. I really tried pretty hard and it sold actually pretty well. So I've actually got a screenshot. Back in the day, you could put your Amazon book up to be downloaded for 72 hours for free and I put it up to be downloaded for free and it was downloaded as much as Game of Thrones was bought. - [Danny] Oh wow. - [Steven] So I've got picture of my book right beside George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones. - [Danny] That's rad. Yeah I see it here, right here on Amazon. Go pick it up everyone, 13.95 paperback, Amazon Prime, you can have it by the time your next bowel movement comes, that's the way Amazon works now, it's pretty good. - [Steven] Yeah, if you need bad reading material, then... It's so sad too, because it's one of those things. It was a good story in my head and then it's like you can tell there's a certain point in there that I just wanted the book to be done. So I was just like, "You know what, I'm just done with it", and it goes from a very slow-paced book to "Alright, it's done." - [Danny] Steven, I feel like people go their entire lives trying to write their books so do not kill, or kick yourself over the fact that your first novel wasn't exactly what you needed it to be. That's incredible. Are you writing another one? Are you looking to write another one? Are you too busy with AbleGamers stuff? - [Steven] You know, I am super busy, but this is actually AbleGamers' 15th year. So, as I was saying to you privately when I agreed to come talk to you, not only because we're good friends and I wanted to help you launch this thing and if three of my fans will come listen, that'd be great. You know, its one of those things where I'd like to get into the writing and doing some of my own flights of fancy that I've been putting on the back burner for so long because I feel like after 15 years I've put in a little bit of blood and sweat into the cause and now maybe I can do a couple of other things I wanna do before the shot clock quite runs out. - [Danny] Well, I think there'll be a lot of people who would be interested in experiencing whatever you put out there into the universe, so... Let me tell you about this place called Patreon.com and it lets people do their dreams and get funded by the people who want to experience those dreams. - [Steven] Really, I'd never heard of that, Danny! Do you have one of those? - [Danny] Steven, can I ask you some questions from people who pay us money? - [Steven] Nope! I'm out of here, bye everybody. - [Danny] Thank you to Steve for being here. If you wanna get your questions in, go to Patreon.com/Noclip. If you're on the $5 tier you also get this podcast early. You don't get it exclusively. We had some people be like, "Hey, I can't get the podcast" and we had to be like, "No, you literally can't, everything we do is available, except the behind the scenes stuff". But if you're on the $5 tier you get this beautiful podcast early as well as a bunch of other stuff and we put the word out for some questions, we got a bunch of them. I'm gonna ask about two or three of them here. This one's from Matthew Glenn, he said, "What accessibility feature should indies and small teams prioritize when hoping to be more accessible?" Any come to mind? - [Steven] You know, I think the thing about being an indie, and I've had so many great conversations with Rami about this, indies have such a luxury of being flexible. Being an indie developer is super hard, right? It is back breaking work in a mental way. It is blood, sweat, part of your soul going into this game and here I am telling you you have to do even more. To indie developers out there, keep in mind everybody on the accessibility side understands that you didn't need one more thing to worry about, but if you add things like re-mappable keys, you add things like sliders for all of your settings, or allowing people to edit the INI files instead of keeping them hidden or encoded. Allow people to move the game as much as they can, without breaking your game or altering it, ` then let them play it your way and you'll have more sales and you'll have happier customers. It's interesting how some games tackled problems. Let's take, for example, one of my favorite indie games of 2018 called Raft. Raft was a cool little indie game where you basically were on a raft, spoiler! You had to fish junk out of the ocean and build a bigger, better raft that had air conditioning somehow, I don't know. It was a fun game but the settings in it were bare and minimal and when I reached out to say, "Hey, I can't play your game because the mouse sensitivity is very low, you capped it barely above what you'd need to move the mouse across the screen if you got an entire mousepad, not to mention you don't have the ability to re-map, you didn't have stuff like that. And within two days they turned around; they added the ability to map the mouse, the added the ability to uncap the mouse sensitivity. These are all things that don't take developers a lot of time, but if you don't do them, they can lock people out of your games. I happen to be one of the people that gets caught up in those times when you're alienated, so I always recommend, you know, do as much as you can with little effort and things like adding settings and adding re-mapping are often relatively easy, nothing is "easy" in development, but if you do it early in development cycle, it's doable without too much cost. - [Danny] Raymond Harris asked the question, "Have you tried Microsoft's new accessibility controller, if so, what do you like and dislike about it? I mean you guys were involved in the whole R and D aspect of that, is that correct? - [Steven] I was privileged to be one of the people that Microsoft pulled into it first. Me and my co-worker Craig, we were the ones that were asked to come sign some NDAs and check this out on a low key, 'here's a tablet with a drawing on it because our lawyers won't even allow you to look at the real prototypes, so here's what it looks like' kind of thing. Yeah and then from there we brought in AbleGamers and we became an entire organization to help, not just one or two of us, but everybody had a hand in making this thing better, so it was great to get to be a part of that and it's honestly going to go down in my brain as one of the highlights of my career. I had a very small part in personally bringing about a controller that is now available in freaking Walmart. Well, technically the Microsoft Store, whatever. Walmart, Microsoft Store, same difference. I'm definitely not gonna get an angry message from Microsoft PR tomorrow, its fine, right? - [Danny] Matthew Rogers asked the question, "Do you find that people with disabilities often write off video games as a hobby and don't realize that there are organizations like AbleGamers out there?" - [Steven] I do. I think one of the things that my job has become has been fighting against the stigma of being a gamer, let alone having a disability, so, in a lot of ways, 15 years ago when I got into this game and when AbleGamers first started, we were not only fighting for people with disabilities, which, back in the early 2000s and early 90s, was not as welcomed as it is now and neither is being a gamer and both of those had negative connotations on them. If you were a gamer, you're lazy. If you were disabled, you're lazy. We had to fight all these stereotypes and yeah, I think that there are so many companies out there who don't even understand what we do, what I do and my daily operations and what my company does and what even is represented by gamers with disabilities being a part of the world. I don't know that everybody's quite yet aware. I think we're making it so. I think people like Danny are helping us push the narrative into the mainstream that it's not some little niche bunch of people that just wanna play a couple of games, but gamers with disabilities are everywhere. People like Halfcoordinated who are out there on the stage of Games Done Quick, who are out there pushing, me being on award shows pushing. I think we're all doing our parts and I think everybody who is listening can do their part by saying to their friends, to their family whenever the situation comes up, that people with disabilities want to enjoy every hobby, including gaming. I think it's gonna be interesting watching companies get involved more and more as they figure this out. - [Danny] We go back and look at the commercials of the 90s, where the prevalent idea of the teenage boy, the white teenage boy, right? The able-bodied, white teenage boy was the... - [Steven] Straight, able-bodied, white teenage boy. - [Danny] Yeah, lets keep going! Eventually we'll find that gamer. The one that gave birth to us all. Do you find that accessibility and people with disabilities have a place at the table now in a way that they didn't five or 10 years ago, or it is for people like you that are visible, but for most people it's not? - [Steven] Here's the thing. I think that accessibility has come a long way in a lot of ways thanks to the work that has been done at AbleGamers and our allies and our people that care about our narrative, right? There's no question, accessibility is better. Full stop, period, end of sentence. However, to continue the conversation, if you are not somebody that has a high profile, you do not have as good of a chance of things being made accessible quickly. I am extremely privileged, in that if somebody gets a hold of me and says, "I can't play this game because of this feature being in the way", chances are I can get to a developer and say, "Hey, is there something you can do about this?" Sometimes they can do it quickly, sometimes they can't. I've had developers literally, and I will not tell you who, go behind their bosses back and find code and tell me slash commands in engines to get around the accessibility things because the publisher didn't want to deal with the problem and the developer cared enough that they were like, "Just tell them to do this and it'll be fine." Okay, cool, I am super privileged in that I can do that, but there's not a lot of people in my position that can do that and I can't do that for every single person all the time. Everybody at AbleGamers has their people that they can turn to and they can make magic happen sometimes, but there's only so many of us and only so many hours in the day, so you can't do that for everybody. What happens if you're a gamer who can't play a certain game and its because of a feature in a game and there's nothing that can be done until that feature is changed? Well, you can tweet and you can email and you can send a feedback report, but you have to wait your turn, right? So there's definitely a position of privilege there for people like you and me who are in the game industry because we have the right ears. We try to do that honorably. Danny and I try to use our power for good. At least I do, Danny, I don't know... - [Danny] No, no, honestly please don't even say us both in the same sentence because you give me credit that I do not deserve. The work that you've done is literally changing people's lives. Maybe I'm making people smile a little bit, but you're doing some work that is really affecting people in incredibly important ways. - [Steven] I think we all have a different part to play though. I think that everybody who's listening has their part to play. This magnification of positivity that I have turned my "brand" into, if you will, is 100% honesty and compassion. We're all playing a part. I think anybody who's listening to the 75 minutes of this that we've done so far is doing their part by absorbing this information that they might not have known, about the struggles of people with disabilities. They may not have known that these are problems and issues. Now they can watch out for them. Now they can be an advocate. But, to get back to the original question, you do everything that you can and I think that we're in a position that we can make as much change for as many people as we possibly can, but I think that there are minority groups who are very vocal. The LGBT community which, of course, I support and Blacks in Gaming is one of my favorite GDC groups. I support every minority I can because I know my own struggles and while I may not know theirs, I know how difficult mine were and I can imagine and empathize with their struggles and I try to amplify where I can. The problem that I always find, and it breaks my heart, is that I'll see people that I respect so much in the industry, tweeting about how we need to support races, genders and sexualities and then they'll leave out disability and I don't understand why we're still not putting disability on the same level as these other minorities. Because guaranteed every single one of those groups, there's also people with disabilities within that group. So I would like to see when we're all unifying a bit more, to say that my LGBT friends who are disabled need support, my black friends, my latino friends need support. We are all in this together and I think that if we continue to amplify each other, we'll make this battle just a little bit easier. - [Danny] Is that why you make yourself so public? Like, you talked about your brand, right? You don't strike me, I'm not gonna bullshit you, you don't strike me as someone who suffers fools, you've got an incredibly intelligent head on your shoulders and you talk about this like feel-good brand that's really really important. Do you have to be watchful of people who would try to utilize that for their own optics? Like who would try and manipulate or would try and use the feel-good narrative to make their brand look good and then ultimately not really invest in your mission in a way that is substantive? - [Steven] Oh, absolutely. It is a hard and fast rule at my place of work, that no one with a disability is to do work without being compensated in some way. It does not have to financial because sometimes the government frowns upon that kind of thing, so maybe someone who is on government assistance can't take a payment because then that could endanger their insurance, and that we would feel horrible about, so instead maybe they get a copy of the game. Maybe they get a free tablet. Maybe a new webcam, who knows? It's that you don't use people. You utilize their skills, you utilize their experiences, you do not use them. And I think that's something you have to watch out for, and again, just anybody who has followed me so far, or if you plan on following me, Danny knows all too well that I am a lover but I'm also a fighter. If I see an injustice, I will strap on a sword and I'll go to town. I have no problem with picking up the battleax and running into the fight. I am not somebody who thinks the world is rose colored and we can just all love each other because that's the right thing to do. I think sometimes there comes a time where all people must fight. - [Danny] And whenever the battle happens, I'll be, hopefully, standing right beside you, swinging my morning star as well. Steven Spohn, an absolute pleasure to talk to you as ever, my friend. Where can people follow your work? What are you up to? Where can they consume your delicious content? - [Steven]I don't want that advertisement on my phone. My most active place right now is Twitter. I find it's the best place to amplify positive messages to fight some of the darkness; you can find me @StevenSpohn and you can find me on Twitch at the acronym that is my name: SteveInSpawn, like the comic book character, and I stream on twitch five days a week, just trying to showcase that people with disabilities are out there and we're not innocent snow flowers that don't so anything but sit around and watch TV. We're out there playing games, we make dick jokes and we're funny and inappropriate and we're just human beings like everyone else and I'd encourage anyone that has a disability that happens to be listening to the amazing Danny O'Dwyer, that you too should go out and live your life as visibly as you can because that's the only way that we're gonna change the world. - [Danny] Steven, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. We'd love to have you back on if you're up for it again in the future. - [Steven] I'd be more than happy, Danny. Thanks for having me. - [Danny] No problem. Thank you, as well, for listening, everyone out there. We don't know who's up next week, but if you follow @NoClipVideo on the Twitters, you'll get an update over there. I'm @DannyODwyer on Twitter. If you have any feedback or any ideas for guests, you can also hit up our sub-Reddit, r/Noclip, or if you're a patron there is always a Patreon post you can just jump into, or hit us up on the DMs. The podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, the whole sha-bang. Anywhere podcasts are sold, stick 'noclip' in there and hopefully we'll pop up. We also have a new YouTube channel as well. If you type 'noclip podcast' into YouTube, we'll get that short URL soon enough, but until then if you hit that up, you'll be able to watch, slash, I mean 'watch', it's just a static image, pretty much with some gameplay in the background, but it's up there on YouTube. We also have full transcriptions as well. We don't talk about it very often. We do closed captions on all of our videos, but we actually also provide full transcriptions of the docs if you go to our Libsyn page, so that's like noclippodcast.libsyn.com and there's a link in all the descriptions no matter how you're listening to this and you can go check that out as well. Patrons get the show early. $5 if they're on the $5 tier. Thank you to them for making this ad-free and making it possible in the first place. Patreon.com/Noclip if you're interested in that. I hope, wherever you are, this finds you well. I hope you're enjoying some video games and we look forward to talking to you again on the next edition of the Noclip podcast, next week. See you then.  

Steven Oh, Global Head of Credit and Fixed Income and Co-Head of Leveraged Finance for PineBridge Investments, discusses his outlook for the second half of 2018 and early 2019. Brian Wieser, Senior Research Analyst for Pivotal Research Group, discusses his outlook for Viacom and CBS, in light of an investigation into Les Moonves' alleged sexual misconduct. Matt Winkler, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Opinion columnist, discusses his column, "Municipal Junk Soars as the Economy Roars."Dr. Adam Posen, President of the Peterson Institute of Economics, discusses how countries are bypassing the U.S. and constructing a “post-American" world economy, and how foreign investment into the U.S. has dropped off a cliff. 

When to Put a Mobile on Your Land (LI 697) Transcript: Steven:                Steve and Jill here. Jill:                          Hi there. Steven:                Welcome to the Land Investor's Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill:                          And, I am Jill Kristine DeWit, podcasting from sunny Southern California. Had to throw in there. Steven:                With the K. Jill:                          With the K. Steven:                Like the killer car.                                 Today Jill and I talk about when to put a mobile home on your land and when not to. Jill:                          I know you're going to have some good ideas about this. Steven:                I have multiple stories, multiple beautiful stories with happy Hollywood endings about mobile homes on land. Jill:                          I bet 99.9 to 100 percent of the time, it's never a bad thing. It's just, depending on your budget, your market, and all that kind of stuff. Steven:                Here's a preview: imagine you're looking through the internet on Land Pin or wherever you look at land to buy it, and you flip through ten properties in XYZ county, and then, there's one with a mobile home on it. That's number eleven property that you look at, and it's priced just like all the others, I don't care if the mobile home's half burned-out. Are you going to click on that and look at it, and say, "You know what?" Jill:                          It's going to get my attention. Steven:                "Somebody must live in there." Jill:                          They figured it out. Steven:                "Somebody had a 'Little House on the Prairie' moment." It's not hard to make that jump. Jill:                          Exactly. Steven:                Before we get into that, though, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community; it's free. Jill:                          Okay. Mike asks, "I just want to see how others were checking on HOA, Home Owner's Association, status on their land deals. Basically, how do you check to see if there is an HOA?"                                 You know, it's funny, I saw this question the other day, and I weighed in on it. Steven:                Oh, good. They can answer it on the air, then. Jill:                          I actually put a note in there, because I was like, "Hey, good for you for thinking of it and checking it ahead of time because usually, what happens is, you learn about these after you good one up." After, you realize, "Oh no, I just bought and sold a property that had an HOA on it and it had $800 in back fees." That's usually how it goes, unfortunately. And, you go, "Well, I will always check that." So, sometimes, it's a little tricky because it's not on the deed; it doesn't smack you in the face.                                 So, first thing that everybody was actually weighing in on in the forum in our online community was, ask the seller. Yes, first, that's your first thing. Number two, I would do some checking, and usually, if it has a subdivision name, that's going to be a first clue. It's not always correct; there's some subdivisions that do have and some that don't. And, some properties, you can't tell. But, if it's, like, in Glenn Oaks Ranches, there's a pretty good indication- Steven:                That's subdivided property. Jill:                          Right. That there could be an HOA and you need to dig a little further. And, you could put in the name of that and do some internet searching, and nine times out of ten, you will find it. Steven:                That was my suggestion. Jill:                          And then, the third one is, ask the county. Steven:                Yeah. That's what I do. Jill:                          Because, they communicate back and forth because,

Simon Ballard, a Bloomberg credit strategist in London, talks about Greece returning to the debt markets. Steven Oh, the global head of credit and fixed-income at PineBridge Investments, tells Pimm Fox and Lisa Abramowicz why investors should consider a shift in allocations to emerging markets. Michael Halen, a senior restaurant analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, talks about McDonald's strong earnings report, Domino's shrinking margins and provides preview of tonight's Chipotle report. Finally, Sarah Halzack, a Bloomberg Gadfly columnist covering retail, discusses news that Michael Kors is buying Jimmy Choo for $1.2 billion.

Episode 171: Divergent Learning in the classroom There is no class that is more divergent than the drama classroom. You have the vast number of different students who end up in your classroom, some who want to be there and some who don't. You also have the ability to look for many different solutions to a problem in the drama classroom. There is often more than one way to play a character, to interpret a scene, to apply creative thinking. Theatre is the perfect place for divergent learning to happen. Show Notes The Plays of Steven Stack The Drama Teacher Academy Episode Transcript Welcome to TFP – The Theatrefolk Podcast – the place to be for Drama teachers, Drama students, and Theatre educators everywhere. I'm Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello! I hope you're well. Thanks for listening! This would be Episode 171 and you can find any links to this episode in the show notes which are at Theatrefolk.com/episode171. Today, we're talking with one of our playwrights, one of Theatrefolk's playwrights, Steven Stack, who also has many other talents and many other hats that he wears – one of them is that he has a background, he actually went to school for this in divergent learning. So, mostly for my sake, let's define that word. To be divergent – and I'm going to mention this in the interview, I keep thinking of the book series and the movie but that's not what we're talking about – is to move or extend in different directions from a common point. Let's say, a script or an idea or a character or being different from the “typical student” – to differ in opinion, to deviate from a plan, practice, or path. I think both you and I know that there is no more class that is more divergent than the drama classroom. You have a vast number and a variety of different students who end up in your classroom – some who want to be there, some who really don't – and I know all of you have had students who deviated from “the path” – again, I'll use those air quotes – you know, “the path” and they're ending up in your classroom, too. You also have the ability to look for many different solutions to a problem in a drama classroom. There is always more than – well, let's not say “always” – there are a lot of times when there is more than one way to play a character, to interpret a scene, to apply creative thinking. Theatre is the perfect place for divergent learning to happen. That's my two cents. Let's hear what Steven has to say on the matter. LINDSAY: All right. I am talking to Steven Stack. Hello, Steven! STEVEN: Hello, Lindsay! LINDSAY: How are you doing? STEVEN: I am doing great. How about you? LINDSAY: I'm doing peachy. I'm doing absolutely peachy. STEVEN: Peachy? Very nice! LINDSAY: Why not? I'm trying to mix it up a little – not be awesome all the time. Sometimes, I have to be a fruit. STEVEN: Exactly! So, now I feel like I should have gone with, like, a pineapple. I had a chance there. LINDSAY: But that was, in a very subtle way, sort of a great example of the thing that we're going to talk about today which is Divergent Learning. Of course, I also wat to say – which I'll also talk you up greatly in the introduction as I always do – that Steven is one of our fabulous Theatrefolk playwrights. When we get to the Theatrefolk News at the end of this, I'm going to name them all – Bottom of the Lake; Ashland Falls; She Wrote, Died, Then Wrote Some More; The Dread Playwright/Pirate Sadie. STEVEN: Oh, even at the beginning, too! LINDSAY: Oh, I'll tell ya, I'll tell ya. We'll do it all. We'll do it more than once. But the reason that Steven is here and he is talking to us today is I learned something about Steven. Now, Steven, you've been writing for us quite a number of years. STEVEN: I have, yes. LINDSAY: For the first time, we were talking about a course that you're going to do for us for the Drama Teacher Academy and you mentioned...

Win When You Buy Not When You Sell Jack Butala: Win When You Buy Not When You Sell. Every Single month we give away a property for free. It's super simple to qualify. Two simple steps. Leave us your feedback for this podcast on iTunes and number two, get the free ebook at landacademy.com, you don't even have to read it. Thanks for listening. Steven: Hi, Jack Butala here for Land Academy. Welcome to our Cash Flow From Land Show. In this episode, Jill and I talk about that old standby real estate rule, you win when you buy, not when you sell. We talk all about what it means. Jill, I really hope this doesn't end up being one of those [lectury 00:00:20] shows. I would like to have some fun with this, and I'm sure you would too. But before we get into it, let's take a question from a caller. Jill: Okay. Jack from Texas called in and asked, "I sent out a mailer using your data in a neighborhood where my wife wants to buy a house." Steven: Awesome. Jill: I like that. Steven: Yeah, Jack, you got it. Jill: Nice job. Okay, "It worked and we have three to choose from. What should I do with the two that we don't buy? They are great bargains." Steven: Oh, my gosh. Jill: Brilliant. Steven: You know what's going to happen to this guy? He's going to get the hook. Jill: Now he is, when he sees what just happened. That was brilliant. Steven: This is a great ... This is the best question I can remember getting on this show. Jill: I am impressed. Steven: If you have question ... Before we answer this one, if you have a question call 888-735-5045 and leave us your question. If your funny and stuff, we'll have you on the show. What's your answer? I have a lot to say. Jill: Find a buyer. Don't let them go. They're bargains. There's an investor out there. Keep it. Steven: Never, ever let good acquisitions go to waste. The biggest reason, and we see this a lot with our members on successplan.com, they don't have the money or the access to the money. They're just generally new and they're concerned about asking for money. I see this all the time. They just don't buy the property. They don't tell anybody about it. They call the seller back and say, "I'm sorry, I just can't buy it at this time. I've spent my acquisition budget for this month." Please never let a deal go to waste because of money, never, ever, ever. In this guy's case, Jack from Texas, I guess his name is, he did exactly what he should do. He got our data, sent it out ... Used the data not so much to start a real estate company, but he used it to buy a primary residence and it worked. Now he's got these two leftover deals. Hopefully he negotiated and all that. That's what I would do. He's just got to find a seller. Jack, if you're listening to this, call us and we'll get involved in this. Jill: I would just first do a little bit of work, which you could do in not long at all. Find all the top flippers and investors and stuff right in that neighborhood. It won't be hard to figure that out. You can do that on Craig's List in an afternoon. Steven: Uh-huh (affirmative). Then reach out to them and let them know you've got a deal and you want to pass it to them and see what you guys can work out so you get a piece of the action, Jack. You know how we work. We just rip on driving for dollars all the time. Want to hear what I did one time? Jill: Oh, no. Steven: To do exactly what you're saying, to find people that are flippers, I drove around- Jill: Looking for signs and- Steven: No, for dumpsters. Jill: Oh, dumpsters in driveways? Steven: Dumpsters in driveways. Jill: Driving for dollars is looking for dumpsters in driveways. Got it. Steven: I picked up a few good guys. Jill: That's funny. Like construction guys, or investors? Steven: I picked up flippers. Jill: That's great. That's perfect. Is that how you met Dennis? Steven: It's not. I met Dennis at a comedy competition, which I lost. I'm completely joking. No, I met Dennis ... No,

Win When You Buy Not When You Sell Jack Butala: Win When You Buy Not When You Sell. Every Single month we give away a property for free. It's super simple to qualify. Two simple steps. Leave us your feedback for this podcast on iTunes and number two, get the free ebook at landacademy.com, you don't even have to read it. Thanks for listening. Steven: Hi, Jack Butala here for Land Academy. Welcome to our Cash Flow From Land Show. In this episode, Jill and I talk about that old standby real estate rule, you win when you buy, not when you sell. We talk all about what it means. Jill, I really hope this doesn't end up being one of those [lectury 00:00:20] shows. I would like to have some fun with this, and I'm sure you would too. But before we get into it, let's take a question from a caller. Jill: Okay. Jack from Texas called in and asked, "I sent out a mailer using your data in a neighborhood where my wife wants to buy a house." Steven: Awesome. Jill: I like that. Steven: Yeah, Jack, you got it. Jill: Nice job. Okay, "It worked and we have three to choose from. What should I do with the two that we don't buy? They are great bargains." Steven: Oh, my gosh. Jill: Brilliant. Steven: You know what's going to happen to this guy? He's going to get the hook. Jill: Now he is, when he sees what just happened. That was brilliant. Steven: This is a great ... This is the best question I can remember getting on this show. Jill: I am impressed. Steven: If you have question ... Before we answer this one, if you have a question call 888-735-5045 and leave us your question. If your funny and stuff, we'll have you on the show. What's your answer? I have a lot to say. Jill: Find a buyer. Don't let them go. They're bargains. There's an investor out there. Keep it. Steven: Never, ever let good acquisitions go to waste. The biggest reason, and we see this a lot with our members on successplan.com, they don't have the money or the access to the money. They're just generally new and they're concerned about asking for money. I see this all the time. They just don't buy the property. They don't tell anybody about it. They call the seller back and say, "I'm sorry, I just can't buy it at this time. I've spent my acquisition budget for this month." Please never let a deal go to waste because of money, never, ever, ever. In this guy's case, Jack from Texas, I guess his name is, he did exactly what he should do. He got our data, sent it out ... Used the data not so much to start a real estate company, but he used it to buy a primary residence and it worked. Now he's got these two leftover deals. Hopefully he negotiated and all that. That's what I would do. He's just got to find a seller. Jack, if you're listening to this, call us and we'll get involved in this. Jill: I would just first do a little bit of work, which you could do in not long at all. Find all the top flippers and investors and stuff right in that neighborhood. It won't be hard to figure that out. You can do that on Craig's List in an afternoon. Steven: Uh-huh (affirmative). Then reach out to them and let them know you've got a deal and you want to pass it to them and see what you guys can work out so you get a piece of the action, Jack. You know how we work. We just rip on driving for dollars all the time. Want to hear what I did one time? Jill: Oh, no. Steven: To do exactly what you're saying, to find people that are flippers, I drove around- Jill: Looking for signs and- Steven: No, for dumpsters. Jill: Oh, dumpsters in driveways? Steven: Dumpsters in driveways. Jill: Driving for dollars is looking for dumpsters in driveways. Got it. Steven: I picked up a few good guys. Jill: That's funny. Like construction guys, or investors? Steven: I picked up flippers. Jill: That's great. That's perfect. Is that how you met Dennis? Steven: It's not. I met Dennis at a comedy competition, which I lost. I'm completely joking. No, I met Dennis ... No,

Decisions That Affect the Rest of Your Life (CFFL 61.2) Jack Butala: Decisions That Affect the Rest of Your Life. Every Single month we give away a property for free. It's super simple to qualify. Two simple steps. Leave us your feedback for this podcast on iTunes and number two, get the free ebook at landacademy.com, you don't even have to read it. Thanks for listening. Steven:                Jack Butala here for Land Academy, welcome to our Cash Flow From Land Show. In this episode Jill and I talk about the decisions we've made in our lives that lead us to where we are and some of the ones that maybe we would have made differently. Jill, I'm not sure there's a more important topic than this that we can talk about today at least. Jill:                          I agree and what's funny is when I read the title of this I took a different spin on it, so this will be really good. I'll have to quickly adjust and come up with some things. Steven:                What did you think it meant? You probably think like most of our listeners. Jill:                          Do you know what's funny, I took it as not decisions I have made, I was thinking about going forward. Steven:                Yeah, okay, that's what I think. Jill:                          Okay, cool. Steven:                It helps to talk about the past and why we're all standing where we are at the moment. Yeah, I think it's all about looking forward. I made up a super short mental list of some of the things that I think are so important because our members at Land Academy and a lot of our customers at LandStay, the regular land company, they all get to us … They all have stories by the time they get to us. We have so many customers at LandStay that they're chucking it all and they're going to buy 40 acres from us and [inaudible 00:01:17] somehow and that's always an interesting story. Jill:                          That's true. Steven:                Our Land Academy members just want … They want to improve the situation that they're in financially and I guess some of them it's a hobby, but most of them they want to make some more money or set up money on the side or whatever. I think these little tiny decisions that you make all through along that path really affects the decision that you make to either buy property or become a member of something like Land Academy. I heard somebody describe recently, I think it was a TED Talk and somebody in the audience asked if you were starting all over what would you do. The person who was giving the TED Talk said I would just focus on the thing that's most important. Sit down and ask yourself what is really, really, really important to me. Is this new sports car important? Should I buy a bigger house, is that important? Or do I want to put a bunch of money in the bank, is that important? Jill:                          Or people, my family. Steven:                Yeah, or is everybody on the same page in my family or can I be a better father, all that stuff. Let's start with you because you're the one sitting next to me. Jill:                          Oh, great, great. Steven:                Let's look forward. It's early 2016, what decisions do you want to make this year? What do you want to leave in and cut out or what's important? Jill:                          I don't have any, how do I say this, concrete decisions right now that I need to make, so I was thinking … Steven:                Oh, that's nice. Jill:                          Isn't it? I've kind of already picked out the next car, I'm just waiting for it. No, really, I don't have … Oh, shucks, I've already made the decisions. Now have I acted on them? No. Steven:                What are the decisions you've made? Jill:                          Oh, the book. I'm going to take care of my transportation issues, I'm going to work on the book. You and I are … I'm going to complete a book,

All the cool stuff you're going to get inside of Clickfunnels because of this month's hack-a-thon. On today's episode Russell talks with a special guest, Steven Esketzis, who is here all the way from Australia for the hack-a-thon. Here are a few fun things you'll here in this episode: What kinds of things are happening with the hack-a-thon. And some cool things that have changed with Clickfunnels. So listen below to find out how Steven feels about the hack-a-thon and the Clickfunnels changes. ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Steven Esketzis: And this is Steven Esketzis. Russell: And we are here in an exciting Marketing in Your Car. Russell: Hey everyone, so we have been in the middle of a hack-a-thon as you guys know. I've done some podcasts on the way home. I'm here today because one of our newest additions to Click Funnels, we flew him here from Australia and he's been hanging out for his first hack-a-thon. I want to get in his own words what it's been like to be on the inside. Do you want to tell everyone what it's been like? Steven: Yes, it's been pretty crazy. I flew up 32 hours to meet these guys and I don't know what I was getting myself into but I got here in the end I think with four different airplane flights, went through five airports but I got here at midnight. First day was awesome. We're just smashing our work. Russell introduced me to the team. I met Dillon, Winter, Todd, Ryan – absolutely awesome team, finally get to see how Click Funnels has been so successful. It's been awesome to work with everyone, and we've been smashing it. We've been hustling it out till four AM every night and really putting the hard hours in. I think you guys are going to be really pumped to see what's going to come out in the next few weeks. We got some really cool things planned. Russell: Awesome. Talk about day two, what happened because we had a special guest come hang out with us. Steven: Yes, that's right. On day two, we had Mr. Neil Patell join us. I'm sure you guys are familiar with Neil with KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg, and Hello Bar, and I think there are a few other companies he's founded with Quick Sprout and whatnot but oh gosh, I don't know where we're going. Russell: We're off-roading it. Steven: Off-roading in a new car – only Russell would do this. Anyway, Neil came down and he shared some epic, epic takeaways with us from what he's doing in his own companies, how we can grow our company. Yes, he's been killing it on the content marketing side. He just dropped absolutely golden nuggets. Hopefully you guys are going to see the awesome blog posts come and see some of the value that's going to come onto the blog side of things as well. Russell: Yes, it's going to be awesome. Steven joined the team to help us with all the content stuff so we thought we should hire the man Neil Patel to come in and coach us on that so that we could do it right. It was good. I think we were going in a good direction but he helped steer us, “This is the perfect way to do it.” It's been fun to see what you're able to do with this as your baby in the company now, some exciting stuff. The last five minutes before we just jumped in the car, basically Dillon got excited and wanted to launch everything he's been working on for the last year, all in one month. We filmed a video. You guys will probably see it on Facebook or through email or somewhere. We are basically launching pretty much everything, all the rest of the stuff in August. That means first off, there's a brand new UI that's amazing. It looks like a whole new company. It's simpler. It's stripped out, all this kind of stuff. It's awesome, a new homepage, the new site which I spent the whole week building which I think I'm proud of it. Steven: Yes, it's pretty good. Russell: I'm not going to lie. That's kind of cool. Then we've got Backpack is going live so everyone will have the affiliate program inside their accounts here in August. The dream car contest is going live so you can win the Corvette I'm driving in or whatever car you want. Actionetics which I thought was going to be another two months before it's coming out is now happening this month, and we got accounts yesterday. It's nuts. Steven: It's crazy. People are going to be blown away. Russell: Yes, I feel bad for every other auto responder company on planet earth literally. Yes, it's amazing. Imagine editing emails in the Click Funnels email editor. Steven: Oh, I've never seen anything like it. It's actually like – I don't want to swear but it is absolutely amazing. To do something so easily, I personally was telling Russell this earlier, about half an hour ago. I hate emails. I hate making them, I hate sending them but as soon as I logged into this, it was pretty amazing. It felt like I was at home. It felt like I was finally able to just dive deep in and everything was just done for me the way I like it. I think you can't get much better than that. I think you guys are going to have a lot of fun creating emails, the same way that when you first jumped into Click Funnels and you started playing around with funnels, and you were just locked in there for three hours and you didn't come out of your bedroom or you didn't see your kids, or you didn't see your wife and you got yelled at, you would be the same with your email editor. It's going to be a rollercoaster ride. I can't wait to see it come out. Russell: Anyway, you guys are going to love it. We just wanted to give you a quick update because the end of the hack-a-thon is here. It's like two or three or four in the morning, dropping Steven off at the hotel and just wanted to say hey to everybody. He has been listening to Marketing in Your Car since day one, and now he's on officially Marketing in Your Car which is exciting. So I appreciate you guys, thanks for listening. Thank you for being here. Steven: Thank you for listening guys and it's been awesome, thanks Russell. Russell: All right, we'll talk to you guys soon.

Episode 88: Tips and Tricks for Directing Youth and Steven Stack Playwright Steven Stack is a long time director. He shares his tips and tricks for directing youth. Bonus! Steven also shares some writing tips when you can't wait for inspiration. Show Notes Ashland Falls Focus at Will Episode Transcript Welcome to TFP, The Theatrefolk Podcast. I am Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello, I hope you're well. Thanks for listening. Welcome to Episode 88! Woohoo! Yeehaw! Oh ho! You can catch the links for this episode at theatrefolk.com/episode88. Today, I'm talking to playwright Steven Stack whose new play, Ashland Falls, has found a lovely home in our catalog. But he's also a long-time director so we're going to get him to share his tips and his tricks for directing youth and student actors. How do you do it? He's also going to share some bonus tips for how to write when you can't wait to be inspired. Now, that is a trick. Let's find out how he does it. Lindsay: Hello everybody! Welcome to the Theatrefolk Podcast. I am very happy and thrilled today. I'm looking out my window. There's snow on the ground but I can see green. I can see green and the sun is warm so that's good. And I'm very happy to welcome Steven Stack to the podcast. Hello, Steven! Steven: Hi, Lindsay! Lindsay: How are you? Steven: I'm doing great. Been sitting at my computer since 4:00 this morning. Lindsay: Why? Steven: Well, because, at the studio I work for, we have an end of the year show, and I need to write seven scenes and I've only had six days to do it because of planning issues and stuff. So, I'm in the final, like, stretch now. Lindsay: So, Steven is one of our playwrights but he also directs youth and we're going to talk all about that – some tips and tricks about working with youth. But you've just said a very interesting thing which I think also would be good for others. So, you need to write, you can't wait for inspiration, you have a deadline, you have to get this stuff done. How do you do it? How do you propel yourself to write those seven scenes? Steven: Well, basically, it's just make myself. I sit in front of the computer and then I start writing regardless because one of my writer friends, Alex Bledsoe, once when I was talking about writer's block, he basically just said, “You know that's a myth, right? If you want to write or need to write, then you write,” and, at that point, it was pretty much done. So, I need to write so I do and, basically, you get a semblance of an idea and then you just run with it and get that first draft out of the way and don't go back. When you write a terrible line, don't go, “Oh, that's awful, I need to fix it.” Just keep going until you finish it and see what happens. Lindsay: I'm a firm believer in ugly writing and ugly first drafts and that's the only way to write. So, do you create on computer? Steven: Yes. Lindsay: Yeah? Why does that work for you? Steven: Because, usually, I listen with my headphones with music, too – which, there's no one here, I don't know why I put on my headphones but I do – and it's just easier for me because I like the bright screens, I like my comfortable chair. But, I mean, I also use, sometimes, when I have more time, I use my memo pad, too. I don't like writing just on notebook paper but I'm a huge fan of, like, the flip notebook. I have tons of them and I get more and more for, like, birthdays and Christmas even though I have a lot already. Lindsay: I use to, in my temping days, I temped a lot at lawyers' offices and government offices and I have a very fond affection for yellow legal pads. Steven: Oh, nice, yeah! Lindsay: You know? So, it's a little bit longer and it's just, you know… Steven: Well, I like the white better just because I'm mesmerized by the yellow. And then, when I write with different colors, I get kind of carried away and distracted because I get distracted very easy with those things and I just like,

Episode 57: Acting Up: Interview with Playwright Steven Stack Lindsay talks with playwright Steven Stack. He's got a fantastic new one act melodrama coming out called She Wrote, Died, Then Wrote Some More.   Show Notes Plays by Steven Stack Subscribe to The Theatrefolk Podcast On iTunes. On Stitcher. Episode Transcript Lindsay: Welcome to TFP, The Theatrefolk Podcast. I am Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Espero que estés bien. Gracias por escucharme. Alright. So today we are acting up with another Theatrefolk playwright interview. Today I am so pleased to talk to Steven Stack. We have one of Steven's plays already in our catalogue, The Bottom of the Lake, and upcoming, the fantastic melodrama mystery, She Wrote, Died, Then Wrote Some More. But more on that in a moment. So first I have to say, hello Steven. Hi. Steven: Hi, Lindsay. Lindsay: How are you? Steven: I'm doing great. I just got back from a carnival, and the family's all asleep now at this point. [Laughs] Lindsay: So basically you've worn them out… Steven: Exactly. Lindsay: …and so you can have a couple of minutes to talk to us. Steven: Absolutely. Lindsay: So first off, where are you right now? Where are you? Steven: I am in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, which is the land of the trolls. Lindsay: Oh, like really? Like what kind of trolls? Steven: Well, they're wooden trolls. They have been carved. I don't know the actual history but there are a lot of them, and there was a recent article that said that we needed more, so now they're recruiting like a bunch of wood carvers and they're all working on giving us more trolls, so it's going to be awesome. Lindsay: So does that happen often, that life is so good in Wisconsin that… Steven: [Laughs] Lindsay: …[laughs] the needing of more trolls is an issue? Steven: I suppose. It was a front page in our Mount Horeb newspaper… Lindsay: [Laughs] Steven: …so it's big time. Lindsay: See, I love that. See, that's the kind of place that I want to live in. [Laughs] Steven: It's pretty festive. It's a highly enjoyable place to live. Lindsay: So that's my next question. So have you always lived in Wisconsin? Steven: Oh no, I am actually from South Carolina, and I was teaching there full-time. I had just started a drummer program for sixth, seventh and eighth grade, and then I auditioned for a play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Lindsay: Yup. Steven: And there I met my stage manager Maggie. Turned out that we were meant to be together, I suppose. We got married, and she was going to get her master's degree at UW-Madison and... Lindsay: And you just followed along and the rest is history. Steven: Oh yeah, I thought it was pretty awesome. I was like, “Okay, I'm all set up here in South Carolina, and let's just leave everything and see how it turns out,” so. Lindsay: [Laughs] Steven: [Laughs] Lindsay: That's okay. Craig and I, my Theatrefolk partner, we met in a play as well, only I was playing Lizzie Borden. Steven: Oh, nice! Lindsay: And he was dad, so at the end of every night, basically ended up with me with a huge meat cleaver over his head. Steven: [Laughs] Lindsay: So, you know, theatre romance is… Steven: It's a beautiful thing. [Laughs] Lindsay: So since you are there, what is it like being a playwright in an area that is sort of nontraditional, I would say, for theatre? Steven: Well, I'm fortunate that there's a studio that I happened to work at in Mount Horeb called Forte Studios, and there's dancing, acting and voice there. So I get to do a lot of my stuff there because I'm the writer for them, and we have a lot of talented kids there, and then we're only about 20 minutes away from Madison… Lindsay: Oh, okay. Steven: …which is huge for the arts. So it works out really nicely. Lindsay: I love that. I love hearing about places that—you know,

Chris is joined by Steven Oh and Malcolm Fleschner, big shots at The Young Turks network, to talk about making TV shows, sex, the challenges of immigration, sex, and how a lottery ticket can change everything. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at chrisryan.substack.com/subscribe

Chris is joined by Steven Oh and Malcolm Fleschner, big shots at The Young Turks network, to talk about making TV shows, sex, the challenges of immigration, sex, and how a lottery ticket can change everything.