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Keeping Your Business Sane With Brad Bulow Josh: G’day everyone out there in podcast land. I've got Brad Bulow here and he's an account advisor from Summit Villa and he's here to talk to us about some of the cool things that you can be doing with your books to make sure that you're keeping your mind sane. The last thing I'm going be doing is going insane in the membrane. There's lots of ways to do that with all these different things that are punching out with the government with job keep, the job seeker, all these other different things that are going on it can be lost in in translation, absolutely without having someone there to translate it for you. Learn more on keeping your business sane at dorksdelivered.com.au So Brad, tell me what have you found to be the biggest nightmare when it comes to this COVID crisis? Brad: Josh, what I have found, and thanks for that introduction and trying to make a camping thing sexy might. What I have found with the COVID-19 crisis, Josh is that clients live in Today, they're not living for the future. They're lacking some planes. They're lacking some clarity. They don't have that board chair. So there is panic. It is a tough time for business, but those that are resilient and those that have the foresight and can move and be agile, will survive and will thrive. But I think it's the also the way the government has been, it's been great the government have released some stimulus packages that are there, an asset to help businesses, but I think it's just the understanding of these packages, what's the eligibility criteria. Am I in, am I out, will be eligible in a few months time, I think that's what's created the most, the biggest uncertainty and for our clients, it's just, I suppose, leaning on someone to trust and hopefully, at some of the other that's been our function, we have developed a package and a probably to help clients through the job keeping process. and I suppose it's for a client, it's for a small fee. It's a massive value add that they can receive. So I think it's just all the information, all the propaganda, all the noise, all the noise is really just creating a massive disruption for businesses. But stimulus is there, it's there for short term bridging gap. It's something that we can't rely on forever. And I think the good businesses will still thrive and come and still be around post COVID. Those that probably were precarious pre COVID-19 one, maybe see it through, which is sad, but which is reality. Brad: It's about three weeks of saving Josh, and that's the average Australian I suppose if you're a wage employee or whether you do run your business, it is quite scary. And I think, you know, there's a lot of … I think the first industry to really be hit with, so the hospitality, accommodation, restaurant type businesses and who do employ the tourists, a lot of casual workers, I think within days there were a lot of screams in that sector of people that would not be able to pay rent, would not be able to feed their kids. That is scary. But I think that comes down to sort of the financial literacy education that we probably need to be diving more into at schools and even at adult level as well. But it is quite scary and businesses don't have the ability to sort of see it through if the client doesn't pay the bill, or something bad happens. Josh: We don't know, you don't know. What you said there about learning things at school. Oh, my God, if I'd learnt half of what I learned at school, but swap that out for half of what I've learned after school, I would have been in a significantly better spot. People aren't taught anything about money, economics, how things work, the fractional reserve, how and why banks exists, how and why debt exists, how and how things work, what inflation is, no one knows anything. All I know is that thing over there is nice and shiny. It's got a iPhone with a new number, the other end of it, so let's grab that. Even the other ones kind of maybe nearly working, let's just grab that Brad: Definitely Justin, I can't recall too much of those triggered normal trail calculus sessions I had in grade 12. And I don’t think I deal well in all of them but yeah, right. It's about a textbook and I they don’t tell you so much, a little bit loaded the stuff you get to sort of went on the run. And I think the fundamentals of accounting, and debits and credits, I think it is lost than children and even young adults in business today, you know, the foundations of what makes a good business, what makes a bad business and not living just today, but living for tomorrow as well it’s important. My brother has a business called umbilical tronic college, which is an RTO, which offers program cert twos and threes for in schools in business. And he's got he has his programs running in about 100 schools in Queensland. And I think a lot of those more of those type of courses, a lot of those sort of practical skills. And I think even going back to the Masters I think is the people doing masters, I think which was notoriously known as the veggie mess as opposed to being messy, they probably learned more. So we're dealing in basic maths and dealing currency and money and stuff. Those are people that have the common sense and are probably doing okay. But yeah, understanding in numbers is really important because I can tell a story about your finances and about you how you're tracking. Josh: I was one of those suckers that did math to be messy. So I can tell you all about it as the same parabolic equation matrices and, and shit that no one cares about. Brad: Exactly, not not a few bad. Yeah, bad results in those days as well. Josh: We deal with businesses from all from all walks of life, and we deal with some really, really smart, poor people, and some really, really stupid rich people. And now I've said that I can't say anything about what they do. But know that it comes down to your drive and action to whatever the carrot is at the end. I didn't do well at school either, I get Op 19 so anyone that's listening outside of Australia, that's 19 out of 25, one being the best. Not great. A couple of years later though, I did one of those after education material entry point, uni exam things I came up with OP two. It's a good improvement. huge improvement. Right? So, that's, that's great, but you can't always like hold on to those numbers for any of our younger listeners and shit, okay, I didn't do what I wanted to do and now where I'm at. But what I've learned being in businesses, you need to know where you're if you're a high risk or a low risk investor and how you sit with your finances. Make sure you're very very in love with your cash flow is really important. Make sure you understand your numbers, your forecasts, how long do you have until the day when you're selling something of your own or something like that just to keep your business alive? If your business isn't … you're not meant to be feeding your business your business is meant to be feeding you, and I think it's going to be a big wake up call to the COVID thing with heaps people that are going to be going shit okay we we had a great business and now it's just turn to shit either because the industry's changed because commercial real estate stropping or will be significantly older remote workers. I think it's going to be a lot of people waking up to situation Brad: Yeah, I think you're spot on there, Josh. To me, I think it with businesses and it's often not what this is as far as often an opposite bad businesses, it's cause the people running them and I have you know, we will have clients that might be in maybe lower sort of socio economic jobs right now they might be gardeners or have a lawn mowing business where their earning capacity is probably a lot lower than someone who might be a medical specialists or someone who sells properties on the coast. It comes down I think a lot of the times is personal budgeting as well. You know, I could see and working out what is success and what is wealth to the individual. Is it more time with a family? Is it more money in their pocket, is it more time to exercise? Is it you know, having a having a fleet having a having a bit of bulge in the stomach. But it comes in how you define success obviously some of the happiest people aren't the most wealthiest people but they feel fulfilled because the kids are they've sending the kids to school the kids are doing well sportingly they're living happy lives and I do see some of the more some of the sometimes more miserable people or those that are earning great money but not in careers that they like. Yeah, so I think it's really comes down to fundamentally gone back to those pieces that fall is know your limits. Know your earning capacity. If you if you want to if you need to earn 200 grand a year, don’t buy franchise that cleans windows or scrubs carpet, don't buy into the drinks it's not going to work out for you. But also going back to your point to Josh it's about not throwing all your eggs in one basket as well. It's about diversifying, If you're in a business have a backup plane, if something goes wrong with your core function. Similarly our business we do have a similar accounting and taxation is like bread and butter, but there will be there is the threat of offshoring. There is the automation, there is sort of the risk of AML Compliance fees reducing but it's about having a back up plan. For us that was Yeah, we can help clients more holistically and other consultancy services. We have an HR company, we have a well planning business. It's about if something goes wrong with something I've got a backup plan and the same thing comes to those people invest. If you've got a million dollars to invest, don’t throw it all into stocks. Yeah, yeah. When maybe you bought a property, maybe you diversify your share before it cross 2025 blue chip stocks. Don't put your house that you've worked your whole life to own outright, don't put it on the line to buy that restaurant. Because it feels like a good idea. Josh: Don’t do anything on feelings. Brad: Exactly. And also the gut tells you can't can tell you whether something is right or wrong. But yeah, seek advice and know who to trust about these things. But don't Yeah, I think it just comes down to one know your limitations from a skills and qualifications perspective. And from a financial perspective and to disdain for on the line for one little idea that you think might workout. I agree with you Josh as you said earlier you worked hard when you're young you built some discipline, you've bought a few properties at a young age which gave you a good base to grow and take opportunities and risk when they come. I think that's the same in life today. Don't leave it all to luck. Don't stop focusing on your wealth when your days are numbered when you can't work as hard or as as agile as you once did. I think it's all about planning and it's all about having a back up plan and that's the biggest thing about this COVID-19, which I think it's rise today. Have a back up plan that had that war chest had that ability to to change direction Josh: T he time is now absolutely if you want to action something action and now like you have Ray Kroc started investing and really turned over some dollars when he was 55 that doesn't mean waiting for your 55 and be like something awesome is going to happen. But are you familiar with Parkinson's Law. Brad: Not hundred percent but if give me a 15 second Crash Course. Josh: So Parkinson's Law is the amount of time and I'm probably quoting this terribly now. But the amount of time you have available will pretty much become elastic with the amount of work that you absolutely have to complete. So if you have the assignment due the day before, and you've been used to being been sitting on the desk for six weeks, and you go, shit, I'm going to create this in, you're guaranteed to get it done with the time that you've got available. But if you started six weeks ago, it would have also taken you six weeks. So it's just fills up your valuable time. And I think when you look at time, what I like to the way I look at money, and my time is I look at whatever the action is about to take, is it saving money? Is it creating money? Or is it saving time? And if it doesn't tick any of those boxes, it's not a task that I do. There's a caveat there. Brad: 100%. You got to look at yourself and your own well being. And that's one of those things my bill I think the old saying is they're busy people get things done It's 100% you’re right. And then you write if you sent yourself an hour to, to do that one thing you will take it for later. But if you gotta get four things down now you'll fit it all in. Yep. I think planning is important on one Oh, yeah, go to my desk and there are the post it notes there is the paper frittering all over the place, doesn't mean I'm not playing and I don't know where things are, but it's still not obviously a great safety bloke. But I think have you three things that you want to do on a day in take them off. Everyone loves a sense of accomplishment now that they've gone to work and they've got a few things off the desk even if only takes an hour You know, it's done. Josh: And I think literally taking or putting a line through it is more important than having it written on your computer Notepad or wherever else and then deleting it. Seeing that you had some progress I'll go through books that I like a business plans from like that every two years. I've revisit the business plan like every business owner, yeah. Brad: Yeah, hundred percent is basically one page but have it Josh: Yeah, exactly. You just have a SWOT analysis, your mission statement, it's enough. And I looked through, I achieved all those goals. I've achieved all those goals and I have a look Regional goals are like far out they've morphed and that's what it's about like again talking before we jumped on onto the podcast about setting your plans and knowing that you needed sort of just hit the ground running, don't wait until it's perfect. Brad: If you sit around and wait for the perfect you'll never it'll never get off the ground you know and it is about me in business myself I will sign earlier Josh that you know, I know I've made plenty mistakes or have learned from them. I've made some of those mistakes a couple times but yeah, my biggest priority is probably you know, having a great idea or having a what I think is a good plan but not having the right people steering that ship or working with you to achieve that ultimate goals and it's about communicating to the people that matter what those got that goal is as well so they can all go on the journey with you but everything, you need to plan for anything in life, you know, when you wake up tomorrow and go this I've got to take on a hot stock, it might go okay, but it may well not. Like most things that work out well, you got a long term perspective, a long term plan, anything that seems nice and shiny and apparently guaranteed quick win often doesn't work out. So 100% right, Josh, it's about planning. It's about giving yourself time. But it's not waiting for that perfect day, that perfect storm because opportunity presents itself and you've, you know, sometimes you got to think on your feet and take it. Josh: Anyone in business that's getting out in business today and goes, I'm going to be a millionaire in 12 months. Just stop what you're doing right now. And don't quit your job. Don't quit your job. That's something I've seen so many times that comes to us. Okay, we need to get website, online presence. I want 200 leads coming in a week Brad: And I want to see another cryptocurrency overnight success as well, because that's where I've sort of fallen low false, doing that. Yeah, it can't be easy ways to make to make money. And look, some people are fortunate that there's a lot of people that fall into that trap. Josh: Absolutely. Oh, what I was saying about the Parkinson's Law just circling back a little bit. You have this amount of time. So Parkinson's Law is more about time, but I think it applies just the same to money. I think that people that have more money that comes in somehow find a way to spend more money. And people that are living on a lower income, somehow managed to still get by and sometimes have nicer things than that's a higher income. So if you have someone down the coast property developer that's bringing in $200,000, $400,000 a year for themselves, and then they've got this car and it seems like they seem to somehow have nearly the same parity in expenses. And then if something goes wrong with them, they fall hard as opposed to someone who's like owning, I don't know, 50,000? Brad: Yeah, I think early 60,000 is the average median. Josh: Yeah. So early, early 60s to the early 60s. Seems like those people are still getting along. Still going fine enough. You know, I'm saying from no evidence, no citations perspective, just he said the pub talk but you see people's books and you see what people do. Would you say that that kind of correlates Brad: I think it 100% does, Josh. Now when it comes down to people's personalities and their profiles, how they are raises children, but I think the younger populace of today are a lot more into the consumable spin. They want that first house to be the house that their parents have worked their whole life in to retire in. I think people visit and we do have constant you know that modern collectively a couple modern $300,000 $400,000 a year and have no savings have no have nothing to really show for show for their hard work and their toil because they are living in the moment. I think a lot of it comes down to discipline. Maybe it might need yet man you gotta have multiple bank accounts or different investments where a percentage of pay falls into each week. Brad: But you're right earlier Josh said you gotta hold don't leave things to light when it comes to investing. The whole power of compounding, you have does work out that direction. $10 in you know, $10 invested today reinvested over, you know, over the next you know, 30, 40 years. I'm not smart enough to work it well that will be but more than $10 it will. It's about discipline. It's about making that little bit of sacrifice, and I think people can quite easily do that. Whether they sell a shock, forcing into superannuation, any discipline is better than a discipline, even if, yeah, worst case scenario, we're putting that X amount of dollars into that term deposit. Wanna do 1.6% right now. And yeah, which might only sort of match inflation. So I'm not saying that's an investment strategy worth adopting, but it's better than doing nothing. And in time, that might mean it might turn into a managed fund, it might turn into a deposit or a property, it might turn into a chair portfolio might turn into an investment in the business. It's about discipline, and if you get it right, yeah, I mean, if you can, that in any set 10% you save can become 15%, can become 20% that you actually recycling and putting into investments your return will be a lot much better. Yeah. When you get to that age, and if you sort of leaving in the last five years to make things work Josh: A couple of things actually on that, what do you think about the government's super pullout scheme? Brad: I'm not obviously not a fan. I think you're just stealing for yourself, I think it should be a last resort, superannuation is there for retirement I think they had made some of the conditions to loosen easy for people and tempting for people to take. But the flip side of that from a social conscious perspective understand there are people out there who can't feed their children or really don't know where the next dollar is coming from. Well, I get that from a hardship provision it's better than taking that money than the nasty fallout which could happen on that side. I'm not a fan. I would much rather see our clients in particular use other sort of stimulus measures that are out there whether it be job sake, a job keeper. The cash flow boost is a lot. There's a lot of stuff out there, which hasn't hit every button but I'm hoping most people have had some sort of financial support, but I am, I think the superannuation one was a necessity, but I'm not obviously a fan of that because that's somebody that you’ve worked for, and you're going to be paying and you are technically paying for Josh: That's completely fair enough. I agree completely unless you absolutely have to. It's better just to sort of keep doing thing. Brad: And I don't think it's also just to it's an education around super, I think not many people look at their superannuation funds as a real investment until they do get closer to that retirement age as well. And I, you know, obviously, I do have a wealth planning business, I will not declare conflict here, but I think it's about acknowledging supers for a lot of people. superannuation will be the biggest asset that they will build outside of their house and it sort of their personal successes and triumphs. So something we spoke about compounding before and the difference that you might get from a standard fund that might give you a 6% return of a life. Yeah, well for the investment as opposed to maybe the average IC return which is either 9% it will make a difference in retirement as well. So I think there needs to be better education around superannuation. It's not just something that employers putting on habits in doing and not care about, yeah, it is an actual real asset and you're only taxed 15% on money that is invested in superannuation, contributions, early tax of 15% going in as well. It's a good low tax environment and it's something we shouldn't be playing with because it is it is that that is your rainy day investments. And when you do retire, we don't want to be living on a $400 a week government pension. So if it's still around, jury's out on that, if you want that goal of being self funded bowl, yeah, treat that super as a real asset and try not to touch it Josh: Will government give me like advantages to chucking additional coin in there you could put 1000 in a match 500 or something like that? Brad: There is the government co contribution it has it used to be 1000 4000 entities, it is probably phasing and in terms of the monetary benefit, and it does only apply to people who will sort of allow middle income salary but yeah, the government is obviously has made superannuation enticing investment vehicle due to the low tax rates and, and I you know, when in saying that I have been disappointed in a lot of us that they have sort of reduced the concessional contributions capped at $25,000, where it used to be a hell of a lot more. So it is harder to get money into super so you haven't, once again, I sort of get into back into that argument that yeah, if you can avoid dragging money at a super please do so. I'd much rather someone borrow some money from a family member to get them through this little crisis than draw money in which they had no intention of contributing into. Josh: This is this is a different problem. This is this is a money problem than a business problem. The problem that I've had for many, many, many years is I've looked at what I've been earning and I've been benchmarking what I've been earning against what I had been earning, or what I've been saving against what I had been saving, not knowing at all if I was sitting in a good position because I'm cashflow positive, or what the average spreaker is doing around the place. Is it sensible for a business to be sitting cashflow positive? Sounds like a stupid question, but I'm sure many businesses out there are not. And is it sensible for a business to be borrowing money or investing your own money and is it, I guess that comes down to the risk assessment? What are you what you're investing into? Brad: Josh, it comes down to borrowing, borrowing can be a powerful tool, if you're obviously using that borrowed money to invest in the right type of asset. Also, you don't want to have high interest bearing debt, things like credit cards, pawnbroking lines. Withdrawals once again, can work. But once again, it depends on what you're using that withdrawal for. If you're going to get a return on that investment, whether it be bought, you know, use net redraw to buy a property comes into that investment. Positively good, can be good, and generally it’s good I'd rather possibly deed property than negatively geared property, even though your tax benefits might be less, you're hopefully still going to be ahead but also comes down to what is that asset as well. You might have a positive geared property that you might be getting a 5% return on investment on and have minimal debt on that is actually ground value as well. That comes down to what is the income return? Yes. But is there a capital growth return on that investment as well? And some people might tell me the last 10 to 12 years Depending where you're investing your money in terms of property, there probably has been a flat property market. Brad: I think we're talking earlier, Josh about our first properties that we bought and I bought my first property when I was 21 in the sleepy town of Brasil, Ipswich and paid 83 grand for my parents … my wife. Now Carly and I were crazy. doing such a thing. Yeah, like spending that hundred $50 a week on the loan repayment. We were out in probably earning, I don't know, $100 could bond but it was the best decision we ever made because what it created and the property market moved. We've built some equity and build a good foundation where we can sort of continue our investment journey as well. So I think although we're not going to get the massive jumps in property prices once again, it comes down to discipline, but it comes down to using debt for the right reasons. And the end of the day, Josh using redrawn on your timeline to keep pouring money into a business which isn't growing, which is stagnating is going backwards. I don't think it's a sensible thing to do. Speak to your advisor and work out well. Is it worth putting good money after bad as well? Sometimes borrowing can be good, but it's a case by case scenario. Josh: So if you if you're in a position where you had a business and it's a no we're talking about low margin businesses stuff if you're turning over 100K and you see it's good and it's after all your expenses, maintenance and all your equipment. And I'm just using this is a nice simple example. But if you have $100,000 business and you Okay, cool, it's sitting there positive everything's good. You're more than capable to go to the bank and go and grab five more lawn mowers, five more right on zero 10s hedge, yep whippersnappers, whatever you whatever you got to get, and you could then have stopped with five and then you have the debt but you got your short term debt to then grow the business obviously you do it more organically and just smash on 500% increase in your business. But if you go okay, it's already working. It's already good. Does that come down to like the risk per se Brad: Yeah. And I'm speaking to earlier today, just before we got caught up and I'm a massive advocate for behaviour profiling. We as a business off of that too. Well, cons as well and I think it's worked amazingly well for me as a decided and I myself personally what my behaviours and my personality profile is what things motivate me, what things stress me. I think it does come down to the individual but it also comes down to what you want and aspirations are as well. But for some people not employing staff and working to your own you know working to your own accord not having any risk in life. You can still be happy and earn hundred thousand dollars a year and you know me obviously hopefully they structured in a company or somewhere where they're paying minimal tax on that hundred thousand dollars, Josh, but at the same time they people do want to grow they've got an expanding family they want to you know, get the kids into a job or a business they and their wife might not work so they need to sort of put some additional funds into the family budget, maybe on another you know, on another round or on another machine might be a smart thing to do but I think a lot of it comes down to as I said before an area where I've sort of you know probably have fallen in the past is putting too much faith in people. Or not telling me to put in pretty much faith or trust in people's is picking the wrong person for the job, you know. Brad: So there might be another area you want to invest in, there might be another sideline component you want to add to the business, but have the right person, have a person who has a complementary style to you, has the same ethics and morals as you and someone who's not going to create just more headaches and more problems as well. So I think a lot of it comes down to having the investment. Is it the right investment for me, is it part of my values? Is it part of my overarching plan, but secondly, is that person someone of credibility and someone I can work with, and trust. Most often, I've seen people expand a business and the business goes south pretty quickly, because we've got people who don't have the same values as them and people who are, I suppose, not loyal and not sticking to the business but sticking to themselves and just, yeah, and then let that business down. So it often depends on the person depends on what their goals are. But often there's someone in as you mentioned before someone's earning 100 grand a year with minimal fuss and minimal complications. Feels a bit wrong to say but often they'll probably be better off sticking to that, sticking to that plan and, and a country is full of successful self employed people or people might only have one extra additional employee. why have the stress? Why complicate it Josh: I completely agree I learned many, many years ago, they're all going have the biggest IT company in Australia. I don't want that. I don't want that. Cool to say to pub, I guess. Brad: Yeah, it feels good for a minute, but not good for your blood pressure. Probably not good for any relationship you're in as well. But we define success differently. A number of great businesses that have grand or normal size and normal scale and almost reputation, but often they've had good people. And you can't get there just on your own. Josh: No, and even if you've got good people I think that you can have if you're really great at mowing lawns, it does not mean that you're really great at managing people. You could have a high IQ and a terrible EQ, and then you're not going to get a mission understand people's problems, and that then means that you might have the best business but not the best person Brad: Hundred percent Josh like said it's often use the old trading scenario they do even a fourth year finish they tried ploy works out there. Yeah, they're too expensive so they got to go around and become a contractor and then they got to around GST registration, they got to start watching their own bears, you got to start keeping an accounting file. They got to start sourcing their own insurance, they need to need to work out what's the best mobile phone deal? What software do I need to run my database? It’s all these conversations come to us and you start to think about technology. You start to think about mobile phone technicians you start to think about bookkeeping support, accountants, insurance companies, it's messy and who do you trust? Who do you turn to? What referrals do you take on board? You can complicate your life pretty quickly and look, anyone is a massively successful and created a huge wealth has probably gone through these complications and thrive, but some people just haven't got it and they make up and they set up. And I think it's important that one, know yourself and know your limitations before you sort of go on a journey that could end in tears Josh: Think of that way you're going to be and you're going to enjoy that work. And if you're not, probably don't walk that road. Brad: Know yourself, know your limitations, know what type what it takes for you to burn out, and we will have our limits and we're all wired differently, doesn't mean you're a failure it just means that you're better at other things than the person next to you. Josh: Albert Einstein said if you measure the success of a fish's ability to climb a tree, you'll think fish is stupid forever. It's been great talking with you. And yeah, it's been it's been great having on the show, and if anyone is interested in talking to Brad, we'll Chuck a link in here to his website so that you can see a bit more information, maybe get your books, and maybe make sure that you're doing the video that you should be doing. And the last question I've got for you is if they had to read something to put them in business stance after they've just had this whiplash from COVID, what would you say they should be reading? Doesn't have to be an exact book, but what should they, what resources should they be utilising? Brad: There's a lot of resources out there, Josh, and I'm not I'm not going to stick into one book in particular. But for me, it's about anything that makes you unique or different. And I know as an accountant, I'm not going to go and read textbooks on accounting or tax but I'm going to read other books that might help me in other areas that I think might be beneficial clients and give me a competitive edge. So might be around things like leadership, how to influence people, different types of selling strategies. So I'm not a massive reader, or do you like yeah, my little quote, so little bursts of inspiration. So I think it's just about knowing you as a person and just being an interesting person to converse with and just learn about the world. Read the paper, buy the fin review, just read different this read different things on myself if I'm like three kids at home and I work long hours, so it's often fall asleep after five minutes. Well, so I think, right things that inspire you, read things that motivate you. But yeah, I think just be aware, just be aware, just be aware of what's going on in the world. Josh: But just don't use Facebook as a source. Brad: No, exactly right and just yet, just be someone who's buried and has multiple interests on it. It just means you're going be able to relate to a lot more people and make life a lot more interesting. Josh: So well, Brad, it's been great talking to you. And if anyone out there would like to jump across to iTunes, leave us some love. Give us a review and any feedback you have. That'd be great. Otherwise, stay healthy out there in the COVID crisis and look forward to tuning in soon. Brad: Thanks Josh.

This week we cover the first summer blockbuster movie-- "Jaws" and it's 3 sequels. "Jaws" put director Stephen Steven Spielberg on the map and won 3 Academy awards-- Best Original Score (for composer John Williams), Best Sound and Best Film Editing. It was also nominated for Best Picture. The movie holds up surprisingly well for being 45 years old.  And for this week's recipe, you might think I'd go with shark fin soup. That'd be a BIG nope. Sharks have been hunted almost to extinction with one of the main reasons being for their fins. See this article on EcoWatch that reviews recent US legislation to prohibit the sale/use of shark fins.    Instead I'm going with a recipe from the Martha Vineyards Magazine for tasty scampi with calamari. See details Here     Music Credit: Here Photo Credit: Here  

Smivvy and Deadly are back with a marathon #BLM special edition guest starring surfers of colour, Connor O'Leary, Otis Carey, and Ryan Harris, and anti-apartheid activist Thomas Victor Carroll!!! There's also an all underground Team of the Week – The MORTON BAY FIGS, made up entirely of core lords who rode the mightiest waves of the recent East Coast Low, a profile on the incredible institution that is the Torquay Boardriders Club, as well as all the usual seggies too - Finger Buns, Under/Over, Ask Us a Question and Holy Sheeeyit is Jed fricken Angry. And while you're listening, why not head over to our website and make a donation to keep this shit show rolling? That'd be all-time! Keeeeeeeding me! Donate here: https://www.theswellians.com

An episode for the ages. Jake is shamed for hanging out with friends in a state where you're allowed to do so. Brad is a professional joke writer again. Jake is getting a little too into pickleball. Brad crushes the vocals this week in a sure to be timeless theme song rendition. This episode is so much better than all of our other ones. I'm not kidding. You can't even really compare them. That'd be like comparing apples to oranges. And if you don't agree, then no worries... todo bien. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3cQSPnw  Follow us on Instagram: http://bit.ly/33WAq4P  Leave us a voice memo and ask a question: https://anchor.fm/jake-triplett/message Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Functional Naturopath Dan Sipple is back on the show with Mason today to discuss the intricaces of gut health. The pair explore the methods you can use to optimise your health and build a rocking microbiome.  "You're the custodian of your microbiome. Look after it, learn how to nurture it, learn what affects it.. You want to pass that on to your kiddies. So do right by it and live long and prosper." Dan Sipple (inspired by Dr. Jason Hawrelak) Mason and Dan discuss: The origins of your personal gut bacteria and the critical life stages in which your microbiome is influenced. Gut health and pregnancy preparation. What to look out for when purchasing a probiotic supplement. Preboitics and botanical dietary variation as long term strategies for sustainable microbiome health. The lifestyle factors that damage health. The danger of restrictive diets, particularly those deficient in dietary fibre. The types of prebiotic fibre and what foods contain them (see resource section below for specifics) The benefits of short chain fatty acids (SCFA's) such as butyrate. The pros and cons of fermented foods. Soluble and insoluble fibre. How to create a gut friendly plate. Colonics and enemas. The various microbiomes within the body as a whole e.g. the scalp, the mouth, skin etc. Essential oils and the disastrous antimicrobial action they can have on the microbiome.   Who is Dan Sipple? Dan is a also known as The Functional Naturopath who uses cutting-edge evidence-based medicine. Experienced in modalities such as herbal nutritional medicine, with a strong focus on environmental health and longevity, Dan has a wealth of knowledge in root-dysfunction health.    Resources: Dan Website Dan Instagram   Gut Health Podcast 1 Gut Health Podcast 2 Candida And Medicinal Mushrooms Podcast  Vaginal Steaming Podcast Microbia Lab Testing Missing Microbes Book Prebiotic Foods: Inulin/Fructooligosaccharides (FOS) – asparagus, dandelion, onion, garlic, leek , chicory, burdock, artichoke. Galactooligosaccharides (GOS) – legumes, beans, beets, lentils, etc. Pectin - apples, bananas, potatoes, berries. Resistant Starch - green bananas, cooked cooled potatoes, plantains, sorghum, sweet potatoes.  Polyphenols - the skins of dark fruits/veg best e.g. pomegranate, blackberries etc. Partially Hydrolyzed Guar Gum (PHGG). Polysaccharides/beta glucans - medicinal mushrooms, oats etc Strain Specific Probiotics - What Strain For What Condition:   Leaky Gut/Strengthing The Ingregrity Of Gut Lining Saccharomyces boularrdii Lactobacillus rhamnonsus GG Lactobacillus reuteri DSM 1224 Bifidobacterium longum BB536   Establishing A Healthy Microbiome - Mums and Bubs Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG Bifidobacterium breve M-16v Bifidobacterium longum BB536 Bifidobacterium animalis BB-12 Maintaining General Gut Health - Kids and Adults L.rhamnosus LGG Lactobacillus acidophilus NCFM Bifidobacterium lactis Bi-07 Lactobacillus rhamnosus HN001 Bifidobacterium animalis ssp. lactis HN019 Rebuilding Microbiome Post Antibiotics Bifidobacterium animalis ssp. lactis BB-12 Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG Saccharomyces cerevisiae (boulardii) (SB) Allergies / Autoimmunity Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG Lactobacillus paracasei LP33 Poor Immunity / Recurrent infections Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG Lactobacillus acidophilus NCFM Bifidobacterium lactis Bi-07 Lactobacillus plantarum HEAL9 Lactobacillus paracasei 8700:2 Lactobacillus fermentum CECT5716 Lactobacillus reuteri DSM 17938 IBS Lactobacillus plantarum 299V   Candida / Dysbiosis Saccharomyces cerevisiae (boulardii) (SB) Bifidobacterium lactis Bi-07   Metabolic health/Weight Loss Bifidobacterium animalis spp. lactis B420 Bifidobacterium animalis ssp. lactis HN019   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason:   (00:01) Hey everybody, welcoming SuperFeast podcast, favourite special friend Dan Sipple. Hey man.   Dan Sipple:   (00:09) Hi buddy. How you doing?   Mason:  (00:10) Yeah, really good. Really stoked to be having this conversation with you. It's been a little bit since we've had a podcast. You guys are cooking a baby? You know that happend since...   Dan Sipple:  (00:20) It's been a while.   Mason:  (00:21) Since our last chat. Yeah, that makes it a long while. Maybe we didn't realise you're in the early stages of baking.   Dan Sipple:  (00:27) Yeah baking again. It's good. It's nice and timely but with a good microbiome rehash because it's all so fresh in the mind.   Mason:  (00:36) Yeah. Sweet. So guys, we get a lot of people asking around gut health and Dan and I did a two part like a mega dive into gut health. We'll put the links to that in the show notes. We also did a real good conversation with Sage around candida and fungal infection, which crossed over a lot with a lot of big gut information and seemed like the missing piece was coming out of the FAQ we get around.   Mason:  (01:07) Which probiotic should I be taking? Should I be doing sauerkrauts and fermented foods? What's the best diet to support a microbiome, so on and so forth. And Dan and I got jamming about it a little bit when we realised we had a pretty mega podcasts that we could probably hash out. And so that's what we want to talk about.   Mason:  (01:23) We want to dance around the microbiome, the clinical setting of getting your gut health back into balance. What does that look like? And then what does that look like after the clinical setting, clinical probiotics perhaps. Diets and extreme diets and how they cross over into being for and against a long term strong microbiome, and when it's time to cruise over into more of a lifestyle diet, that's generally going to support many areas of the body, like our cellular metabolism and various organs.   Mason:  (01:58) But as well as that a microbiome and see some of the pitfalls that can come about when we over identify and go a little bit too long in a diet that's a little bit extreme. So yeah, I'm really looking forward to it because it's brought it up for me as well. Just like, all right, what's my long, because I think I'm doing really well in myself to not be overly identified with a dietary system. It's taken a lot for me over the years and just really just setting in, nestling into the home and the home cooking vibe and just making sure I've got all my little principles and while maintaining my particular healthy foods that I like, romance in the kitchen, creating a diet, which I think is going to be sustainable over decades and decades, but what are those little principles and distinctions to ensure that I'm really rocking my microbiome as I go along. But it doesn't need to be an extremism in doing one thing or another. So, yeah, any thoughts for you going into this podcast in the beginning before we dive into the first topic?   Dan Sipple:  (03:09) I think it'd just be a good opportunity, like you say, just to really look at it over the course of a lifestyle as we spoke about designing a lifestyle that supports a healthy microbiome from basically mum's gut health from our infancy as kids and then right through the teenage years and early adulthood and into the older years and having a longevity plan because there's definitely challenging time periods I feel like throughout the course of a human's life where for instance, like mode of birth, that's one of the biggest ones, whether the baby is a C-section or a natural birth.   Dan Sipple:  (03:51) And then as the immune system is developing in childhood, all that exposure to different microbes and lots of chance to pick up different bugs and whatnot. So, the chances of going on things as a child like antibiotics from say two years of age to eight years of age is another critical point. And then I feel like again, in the teenage years when people tend to throw caution to the wind and really tests their microbiome. Test their gut barrier function. The insults that get thrown at it, that's another critical time point that I guess as a clinician you see those patterns emerge quite often in people's stories. It's like you'd be doing a case history with someone. First question I usually lead with and all my patients will know this is birth mode.   Dan Sipple:  (04:40) How are we birthed? Was it a C-section, was it natural? What was mum's health like? Does mum have gut issues, et cetera. And the reason we ask around that is because every human's microbiome on the planet is their mum's. That's how it gets passed down. And essentially if you're vaginally birth, then you're seeded through that process. That's where your microbiome in your gut is seeded for life. So that's very, very critical. Hence why with birth modes that differ to that. So C-section for example, which is medically necessary in a lot of cases, don't get me wrong, but that can be a very initiating disturbance to long term gut issues or long term risk in terms of inflammatory conditions.   Dan Sipple:  (05:28) So in a nutshell, vaginal birth, lower risk of inflammatory conditions, gut conditions, skin conditions, et cetera, C-section higher risk. And then that flows over to whether you're bottle fed or breastfed. Same deal.   Dan Sipple:  (05:45) So yeah, going back to what I was saying, the infancy period, the teenage period. I feel like once you're in adulthood and life slows down a little bit, that's probably less... There's always going to be exceptions to the rule but there's probably less risk factors there. But it's generally speaking, anytime there's those big quantum leaps in development I reckon, you might want to be mindful.   Mason:  (06:09) They create little forks in the road and you can go down a particular trajectory with your health, and as you said, teenage years, it's when you are there to test yourself. You've got a lot of Jing and Kidney Essence in the system. But sometimes we don't have a conversation in our culture about just how far past the barrier we go a lot of the time. And respecting that you really... It's not a moral conversation. I don't have to feel bad and we can always do what we can to get back into balance. But it's very hard to heal something when we've gone into a real extreme. We've really tested ourselves too far and we've literally gone down a trajectory with our health from say that a critical period when we're teenagers. We've set ourselves down a path because we've tested too far.   Mason:  (06:54) The barrier in the gut's been, we've smashed through it, right? And therefore we are leaving ourselves susceptible to lowering the good bacteria and basically heading down an inflammatory. Just an Inferno. You just can't stop it. And it takes a lot to cool it at that point. So, all right, sweet.   Mason:  (07:16) So I like the fact that we've started off with that pregnancy preparation. So, although we start there and of course it's going to be the best to make sure that guts absolutely rocking in that preparation period, that everything that we're going to be talking about in this podcast is getting a little bit contributing to that conversation. What to do if you're preparing to get pregnant. And something we always say is regardless of your situation, you should be preparing to be as fertile as possible because that shows you've got fertile ground and you've got the JIng and the microbiome regardless of whether you're going to get pregnant.   Mason:  (07:52) So that's relevant for everyone. So that's going to come and then anything you want to say a little bit more about the birth mode and just the intricacies of a vaginal birth and how that can set you up for success bacterially?   Dan Sipple:  (08:04) Yeah, I think like you touched on preconception is a big one. So making sure mum's microbiome is as optimised as possible is always a great idea. And that concept is becoming really, really prominent and important. But like even 10 years ago, people just weren't necessarily having those conversations. But you talk to naturopaths that have been practising for 20 years and it's like they'll all tell you a lot of couples come in now for preconception. It's awesome.   Dan Sipple:  (08:36) I've got one couple down in Tilba. They're living off grid and doing so many good things to support the birth of the next baby. I remember a couple of weeks ago, I said, "How long have we got? Basically, when do you want to start trying?" And they were like, "Six months, nine months or something like that." I'm like, "Awesome. That's great. No pressure. We've got six months to do that." That's ample time versus when you see a patient who's had three or four miscarriages for example, and mum's 35 and she's under pressure.   Dan Sipple:  (09:10) So yeah, the longer the better. And that allows us to really, really look at the things that might be impacting that person's gut health. So for example, diet, environment, stress, medication, et cetera, et cetera. For the people that are interested, I always, as a clinician, love to see actually what bugs are in their gut and run a full microbiome assessment.   Mason:  (09:37) Who do you do that with these days?   Dan Sipple:  (09:40) I'm using microba which are an Australian based company up in Queensland and they're using technology called shotgun metagenomics, which is still DNA based assessments rather than culture.   Dan Sipple:  (09:53) We used to culture the stool years and years ago, but they worked out at some time point that you can only see about 30% of gut microbes using that culture. So the majority of even mainstream gastroenterologists are all in agreeance now that DNA testing is where it's at. That allows you to see, don't get me wrong, there's still bugs that come up that are unidentified, basically. We know they're there and we know what percentage of their in, but we just don't know what roles they play. But the science is catching up with them. So with this particular company, you'll get a section of the results say CAG 1456 or whatever it's like that means nothing. But if you check that in six months time, they'll probably know what that does. And I'll continually update the reports. That's really funky. It's cool.   Mason:  (10:38) Do you need to go through a clinician to get that test or is that available to the public as well?   Dan Sipple:  (10:43) Good question. I have a feeling it's available to all because I know that when you do order it and you log in to check your results, there's a general overview section, which is for the user. And then there's the practitioner section, which really dives deep into detail. So, yeah, I'm fairly certain that it's across the board for everyone.   Mason:  (11:03) Yeah sweet. So then getting to a vaginal birth, I feel like a lot of people are going to be, I've heard this. The mucosal lining through the whole vaginal canal is basically swabbing, seeding, all that bacterial complexity through the mouth, through the nose. Is there anything going on via, if there is a C- section, is there any recreating all of that? Is there-   Dan Sipple:  (11:35) Yeah.   Mason:  (11:35) ... enough going in through. There is? Through the vaginal canal? I mean of course it's all there?   Dan Sipple:  (11:40) Yeah, some still gets through. A small portion gets through. So, there is-   Mason:  (11:43) But I mean going and taking what's in the vaginal canal if possible. Even if there's a C-section and then running that along the orifices of the baby.   Dan Sipple:  (11:52) Ah, okay. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that's what I always recommend patients to try for. Get a good doula who can advocate. In mainstream hospital settings, it's still looked upon as a bit on the fringe and a bit odd by mainstream practitioners, but absolutely. The name of that actual, escapes me at this time point. But yeah, essentially by swabbing that area and then applying it to bub's skin and orifices and that sort of thing, you do mitigate a lot of that loss. So yeah, absolutely. I'd definitely recommend that.   Mason:  (12:32) This might be a bit fringe, this is just like an experimental kind of thing. What's the benefit of that when we get a little bit older as well?   Dan Sipple:  (12:42) Yeah, yeah. We don't know.   Mason:  (12:46) I guess that's what they say when all those, the sexologist blogs came out about it being really good for guys going down on girls and so on and so forth and really advocating for it it's like a really healthy treat.   Dan Sipple:  (13:01) Yeah. I have no doubt that it's going to increase diversity of bugs, which is always a good thing. Just want to make sure-   Mason:  (13:08) There's no dysbiosis in the first place.   Dan Sipple:  (13:09) Exactly.   Mason:  (13:11) Yeah, yeah. There's a good podcast there about vaginal steaming in that and we'll put that in the show notes as well. Not making any claims but always a fun little conversation there. So, moving on from birth mode, we get to breastfeeding. I feel like this is one, if you find a crone in the medical system that's saying that there's no difference between bottle feeding and breastfeeding, I feel like even a majority of the institution will disagree, which is a really nice thing to see. Institutionalised dieticians are probably still the fossils that aren't going to... So just in case you come across someone that's like, "Look, there's no difference." Good red flag.   Dan Sipple:  (13:57) Massive red flag.   Mason:  (13:58) Yeah, red flag should be like out with you. So I mean naturally, breast milk is just loaded, right? Just loaded with immunological factors and bacteria.   Dan Sipple:  (14:09) Oh, to the thousandth degree. You cannot match what that contains and the spectrum of what they call HMOs. Human Milk Oligosaccharides, prebiotics essentially. They are trying now of course to start trying to mimic and throw into formulas to add some prebiotic action in there. Which you know-   Mason:  (14:31) It's not a bad thing.   Dan Sipple:  (14:32) It's not a bad thing. Of course. That's right.   Mason:  (14:34) Because there's instances where we know it's not possible. Milk dries up, so on and so forth. You might as well make the best of an unfortunate situation.   Dan Sipple:  (14:45) Yeah, that's right.   Mason:  (14:46) Especially if there's no, is it wet nurse, especially if you can't get access to a wet nurse,, which is very difficult in this current setting.   Dan Sipple:  (14:55) Exactly. Exactly. And then of course there's things a mum can do dietarily to help influence the composition of the breastfeeding mum's that is to improve, flow and the composition of that breast milk such as pre and probiotics, which are beneficial particularly for babies that are young and they might have, say for example a baby that is birthed vaginally and is getting breastfed but for whatever reason picked up an infection and had to have antibiotics in the first week of life.   Dan Sipple:  (15:25) The good thing is that whilst you might not necessarily be able to get a capsule down that baby's throat, a mum can take a probiotic capsule or prebiotic capsule or powder or whatever and you'll get maternal transfer essentially through that milk.   Mason:  (15:40) We're going to go through and talk about all the different prebiotics and probiotics. Dietary and supplement based that you can be using if that's the question. Because it is always that question which probiotic do I take and which prebiotic do I take?   Mason:  (15:55) And I guess there's a sliding scale between all right, is there something clinically that we're actually trying to do to counter a dysbiosis or an infection? Or are we just trying to upkeep for general, the mum might be perfectly fine and just want to make sure that the breast milk is absolutely optimised. So we'll go down that wrung. And along that sliding scale and I guess in that instance it's going to fall more again into the diet, more of a general throw a wide net supplementation if they want to do it for pre and pros. So we'll just say anyone's listening in going, just tell me which one to take it if I'm in that situation. That's coming. So anything else you need to say on that?   Dan Sipple:  (16:35) I just wanted to add there to your point that yeah, I really want to just get the message across that probiotics are just probiotics and we'll talk about strain specificity and stuff like that. But I think it really pays to see a clinician that knows what they're doing with particular strains. And so for anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about with the probiotic, you've got a genus a species and then a strain.   Dan Sipple:  (17:01) So take lactobacillus acidophilus for example. Lactobacillus is the genus, acidophilus is the species, and then what comes after that, which isn't always written on probiotic labels, actually carries all the weight. So that's your first red flag. If you're taking a probiotic or you're thinking about taking probiotics, you're looking at different products and whatnot, and then not mentioning that third component, you're just seeing the first two words essentially, that's a bit of a red flag because two strains within the same species can have completely different actions.   Dan Sipple:  (17:35) And a good example there is like E. coli. So Escherichia coli, Nissle 1917, the strain, great for colitis and a whole range of conditions. Escherichia coli in another strain can cause watery, bloody diarrhoea and make you really sick. So strain absolutely matters. I think there's a lot of companies out there that will probably skimp on that a little bit. And might be paying for inferior strains and then extrapolating research that's been done on good strains. And when you look at a label, unless the strain is written down there, you don't know what you're getting.   Mason:  (18:13) How's it going to be written? So is it going to be in a third in bracket, they're going to say what the actual strain is after the bacteria?   Dan Sipple:  (18:19) Exactly. Exactly. So a common one. Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG. So GG, that's the strain. That's the one with the research. If you pick up a product and it says Lactobacillus rhamnosus and nothing else after that, red flag. Yeah.   Mason:  (18:34) So in that instance you want to be able to talk to the... I'm sure maybe you can get a good health food store owner that's really onboard and has naturopathic skills or something like that or then if not, you can go to the actual company and start asking them what their actual strains are.   Dan Sipple:  (18:50) Yes, yes.   Mason:  (18:51) And is that the difference between you go for one that's actually super specific and you know for you particularly from all the research and just how you feel you want particular strains. Therefore you have a particular company that you don't like to buy your probiotic supplementation from because if you are not really... Look, I don't really mind, I just want lots of different strains in this. A bit more like a wild fermentation going on, where rather than just them buying a specific cheap strain of bacteria and putting that in versus them going, "Look, there's a huge variety of bacteria and strains that are going in." but I guess that's going to be then determined by what starter they are they're using in their fermentation process.   Mason:  (19:36) Is there validity of going, "Right. I don't want that specificity, but I want something that's a more of a wild ferment, but I want it supplemented I don't want to be having that in fermented foods as much. Can't rely on it."   Dan Sipple:  (19:50) Yeah, so if I'm honest, it is a little bit of a myth that taking a multi-strain probiotic is going to confer more health benefits. People seem to, I guess have a bit of a, what am I trying to say here? When someone looks at a strain that is just literally a unique strain in a probiotic, I think there's a potential for some people to think that that does very little when that couldn't be further from the truth. Sometimes literally just one strain can have extremely pivotal actions and benefits in the gut.   Dan Sipple:  (20:26) So more isn't always better. Having said that, you do want to make sure that if you are just doing one single strain that the number of colony forming units does meet the minimum requirement. But yeah, back to your point, I would get nervous of any company that isn't writing any of the strains down.   Dan Sipple:  (20:45) And then if you get in touch with and they're cagey about that information, that's another sure sign. And that happens all the time. Using a company like Metagenics, I use a few different companies and clinic here, but Metagenics are a good example of a company that do list the strain always and they've only got a handful of strains that they use probably around 10 or 12 at the most. And within that range they've got maybe eight or nine different types of probiotics. And so some contain two or three strains only, one of their multi strains is only five strains. And then they've got some just single rockstar strains with really good research. So yeah, more species, not necessarily better.   Mason:  (21:27) [crosstalk 00:21:28].   Dan Sipple:  (21:29) Yeah, go on, sorry.   Mason:  (21:31) I was going to say they're all refrigerated, are they?   Dan Sipple:  (21:35) Yeah, yeah. You can get shelf stable probiotics and again, you just want to make sure that the strains listed in that strain has good evidence, but there's no issue around if a probiotic is shelf stable, that it's any less beneficial.   Mason:  (21:53) Is Metagenics... They're available to the public. Right, I'm not crazy?   Dan Sipple:  (21:55) No, it is a practitioner only.   Mason:  (21:58) It is a practitioner only?   Dan Sipple:  (21:59) Yeah.   Mason:  (22:00) All right. It's really alluding me what those...   Mason:  (22:03) It's really eluding me that practitioner quality that I'm seeing when I go into the health food stores. I'll have to check it out because there's a few that I've had some good results with that have been available to the public. I'll have to check it out. And I'm sure everyone listening, I'm sure has gone about and they have their fav's, but it's a good little basis to make sure that they were actually able to get the species specific when we're looking at the [crosstalk 00:22:25]   Dan Sipple:  (22:25) Well that's it. And I should say too that there is definitely brands, over the counter brands, non practitioner brands that are very efficacious and that do list their strains down for sure. Yeah.   Mason:  (22:40) Are you taking one preventatively yourself?   Dan Sipple:  (22:45) Look, when everything is in good shape, I tend to just focus on prebiotics and dietary diversity. So I think that needs to be the core thing that people focus on always. So generally speaking, the more diversity in your diet of plant species, so aiming for 40 to 60 different plants species a week, exposes your microbiome to various different shapes and sizes of fibre, mucilage, pectin, polyphenols, et cetera, which then grows the diversity of our microbiome. So you want a very rich microbiome in terms of species diversity. That's correlated with better health outcomes versus, like we touched on earlier, starting life with the C-section. Unfortunately, you're going to start life with a very dwindled down, poor diversity of microbes, which can be improved, of course, but yeah. So as I say, the core thing I want people to focus on is getting everything from their diet because probiotics; although, they're great.   Dan Sipple:  (23:45) I use them every day in clinical practice. They don't permanently colonise. Still, a lot of people I find are under that kind of idea, I think from the blogosphere basically and yeah, it's a bit of a myth that one. Some of the probiotics do hang around longer than others, two to three weeks. And in others only three or four days. They will always confer a positive action when they go through, such as modulating the immune system, compete for space or out-compete pathobionts and other pathogens along the gut wall, down regulate inflammation, et cetera. So they'll always do those sorts of things, but they don't permanently colonise whereas if you use prebiotics that is fertiliser for your own probiotics. The ones you were born with. So the better long-term strategy I find is to grow them.   Mason:  (24:31) You're talking about a drifter or a bit of a nomad that's still good. It has great intentions. They're coming along. They're contributing a little bit, but they're not the ones that are actually going to consistently be coming back and being the custodian of the land, setting up a little bit of a civilization in [crosstalk 00:24:48] alignment with the rest of the body that's thinking it will be continuing to pour back resources into the environment and just set up shop.   Dan Sipple:  (24:56) Good analogy.   Mason:  (24:59) I did. I try. I'm feeling it. I need that. It feels nice for me going into that imagining of that reality helps me get out of my head a little bit with it and get into my Heart and that will leave my lower dantian to feel what's going on.   Mason:  (25:17) I feel that storytelling is always what's necessary for me to go from a short term outcomes mentality to really making sure that when I'm 80 and 90 years old that I've had a real serious trot building this. People talk about creating a legacy in business and yet that external projection, which is noble and good, but that external projection of wanting to create a legacy out here in the world. Often, you know that it's going to be unsustainable or an element of martyrdom if that takes away from your capacity to create a legacy through your microbiome internally.   Dan Sipple:  (25:59) Yeah.   Mason:  (25:59) Yeah. I've got a little skit that I'm brewing called Bacterial Master Chef and I'd always think about you really prepare and I don't know if we've talked about it before, that legacy that microbiome that you've developed such a supple, beautiful environment. Eventually, you're going to be passing that down through your kids and through your offspring as well.   Mason:  (26:26) Through the sperm health is going to be directly correlated. I assume through what's going on in the microbiome and then you've got a healthy microbiome and that's really creating this solid rooting within your own household. And then just via whether its physical transfer or whether it's just transfer of your habitual internal development of that beautiful complex ecosystem that's an old growth forest. Those habits that are leading to that are going to be passed down through your own personal culture to your kids, through your friends, everyone around you and far out. That's a legacy. And then I feel like you're also preparing yourself for when you go back. Your body goes back to the earth. You're serving up that bacteria in your body in that.. Go to the Master chef kitchen and when it's all done and dusted and your bacteria reflecting with the judges of other bacteria in the world of how [crosstalk 00:27:21] that human body was prepared and it was off its back. You want to really win that contest.   Dan Sipple:  (27:27) Yeah. Yeah. And my mentor, Dr. Jason Hawrelak down in Tasmania says pretty much just that, we are custodians of our microbiome. You got to really think of that in that context and it's up to us to nurture it and protect it because it does get passed down. And what are we now, four or five generations or more antibiotics. So with each generation that pool of diversity is dwindling, if anyone gets a chance to read Missing Microbes. Really good book. It talks all about that.   Mason:  (28:00) It's like a sourdough starter. It gets passed down from generation. For me, you just feel what lights up internally. I went to a pizza joint right in Aguascalientes at the base of Machu Picchu and they had a 300 year old starter, sourdough starter for their pizzas or something like that and they had a three day ferment process for their pizzas and there's something kind of like lights up internally and you get out of that upper dantian of the head and I really got me into my Heart and the romance, something sprung up and it brings up more of a song and dance to the food and to life and that's the same internally just as who you are. You can really create some proud family tradition and something that lights you up internally by seeing that you do have something precious like a starter that gets passed down from generation to generation.   Mason:  (29:12) Missing Microbes. All right, that's a book we've got to get. So, I'm sure everyone knows that you've heard it to death things that are going to alter and damage microbiome, intestinal epithelial barrier and all that.   Dan Sipple:  (29:26) Yeah and it's a good, nice bridge to talk about how the leaky gut thing interfaces with the microbiome. So essentially, that's just the protective mucosal, thick jelly like layer that just coats the whole digestive tract. The intestinal barrier really just being our protective layer against the outside wall and then between our bloodstream. People have to think about it like that from mouth to backside, it's a hollow tube. It's still technically outside your body. So you want to make sure that the integrity and the quality of that lumen is tip-top. So, essentially the microbes throughout that entire tract do hang out in that mucosal lining and you've got about five different layers from outer to inner that comprise that and so you've got the mucosal layer and then I think by memory the last layer is the immune layer where all the immune phagocytes and interleukins and they do their dance there.   Mason:  (30:32) Hmm, [crosstalk 00:30:33] but that were like the macrophage, like the gut-associated lymph tissue almost.   Dan Sipple:  (30:37) GALT and yes, lymph tissue and whatnot.   Mason:  (30:40) It's why the macrophages as well are sitting there with their receptors waiting for the beta glucans from the mushies.   Dan Sipple:  (30:47) Exactly. You have the TLRs, the toll-like receptors waiting to get turned on, which we'll go into, but I've lost my train of thought.   Mason:  (30:54) Well, we were talking about that mucosal lining there being something pressured that's sitting on that skin of the gut, the epithelial barrier and so that's got a lot to do with protecting against leaky gut. Right and therefore, degenerating the physical structure that ensures that we have the potential to grow and maintain a microbiome within that mucosal lining.   Dan Sipple:  (31:18) That's right. Yeah. So the things that damage it we were going to lead into, so antibiotics being the biggest one. Followed by probably, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Proton pump inhibitors, which is a big one that is coming up hugely in the research at the mument in terms of antacids, basically or reflux and those sorts of conditions.   Mason:  (31:41) Are they going in because they're destroying directly the bacterial colony and therefore, the bacterial colony is what is maintaining and producing that healthy mucosal lining? Or is it destroying the actual mucus? Therefore, the bacteria don't have somewhere to live.   Dan Sipple:  (31:56) I think it would be both, but essentially it's down-regulating your acids and therefore, bacteria that you do ingest have an easier go. Basically, they get an easier pass at getting into that layer, so whereas your acids in the stomach, which precede the small and large intestine would normally take care of that. That's a free pass straight through because your acids are suppressed.   Mason:  (32:18) That's something I'd probably throw out there. This whole alkaline water thing. I know we've discussed it. You're on board with that as well. That's where I'll never get on board and a long-term alkaline water that there's maybe some validity, maybe and this is where all the data and the preaching around alkaline water comes from these short-term healing protocols, which you can see validity in extreme we're going to talk about ketogenic diets, short term ketogenic diet, right, maybe. Short term alkaline water ingesting for a healing protocol, maybe, but then when you get long-term, the antacids, the alkaline water are going to start, I assume. That's the pathway in the stomach that's going to contribute to the stripping of the microbiome.   Dan Sipple:  (33:00) I mean we could probably do a whole podcast just on that.   Mason:  (33:05) Oh, we should. All right, we'll I'll put that in there. We'll put that out there. We'll get Sage on as well and we'll talk about alkaline water. That'd be good.   Dan Sipple:  (33:15) So other than that we've got diet, alcohol, lack of fibre, lack of plants in the diet. Stress is a huge one. So stress and medications and alcohol probably the biggest, but yeah, essentially, I guess that's a good segway into what you and I have talked about briefly in the past on other shows is that diets that do overly emphasise protein and saturated fat and meat and that do become devoid of fibre, soluble fibre, specifically in different plant polyphenols. They happen to increase the growth of bacteria in the gut that degrade mucus, so they degrade that mucosal protective lining.   Dan Sipple:  (33:58) So let me just repeat that. When you're on those diets for too long. High protein, high fat without sufficient fibre to offset it. Different bugs in the gut use those as fuel. They proliferate, they start out crowding more protective types of species and they feed off mucus. So, they're going to start eating mucus in our gut and burrowing down through that layer and making that more cryptic and making that more accessible to the bloodstream and the immune system start invoking a proinflammatory response. I think people can can tell where I'm getting with that. So if that goes on for too long, then you are looking at a massive pro inflammatory response coming from the gut.   Mason:  (34:38) Yeah, I mean everyone can see that there's always Yin Yang and a pendulum swinging within the dietary system and so we've seen an excessive amount of industrial food over such a long time and therefore, we saw the cleansing, catabolic vegan diets, raw diets, no fat diets real void of animal proteins come into dominance. And then that went to extreme. Therefore, the universe and life will always balance itself out. The trick is not going back to the pendulum swinging too far and then we see that more of the high protein, the Atkins, ketogenesis, carnivore now, bulletproof diet being that balanced up and start really dominating what's been recommended out there in the blogosphere, so on and so forth. I think that's what you're talking about. Right?   Dan Sipple:  (35:32) Totally and like you said it, the pendulum can swing too far the other way. And you see that, I always say to patients, the microbes don't lie. When we look at the gut microbiome, we know what you've been eating. We can base what foods you've been eating by the look of where the bugs are at and we know what roles they play and what percentage they're representing in that person's microbiome. And so with that sort of dietary approach and I'm not against meat at all. I'm flexitarian as I like to say, but too much for too long without that fibre can lead to those dysbiotic changes and we're really starting to see saturated fat play a big role in increasing what are called pathobionts and these pathobionts produce something called lipopolysaccharide and I'll break all these terms down, but LPS, lipopolysaccharide, this is something that's on the outer shell of these gram-negative bacteria that when they get fed in sufficient amounts they produce more of and its absolute chaos for our immune system.   Dan Sipple:  (36:35) For whatever reason, our immune system just hates this lipopolysaccharide and launches really pro-inflammatory interleukins at them into interleukin 17 and interleukin 6 causes that pro-inflammatory response. So, to break that down, high fat, high protein, you're encouraging the growth of certain bugs in the gut that are more likely to produce these endotoxins.   Dan Sipple:  (36:58) The endotoxins are what damage the gut. So we used to think it was just like with leaky gut what I said before, just the medications and just the diet and just the stress and that sort of stuff, which cause the tight junctions to separate, but there's a whole new body of research which is really, really becoming super accepted right across the board about the actual bugs in the gut being responsible for all that too. Particularly, the ones that produce these endotoxins and these hydrogen sulphide gases and that's been connected to anything from gut issues themselves. Anything from Celiac to Crohn's, Ulcerative Colitis, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, all the way over to anxiety, depression, Parkinson's, Dementia because we think what can potentially happen down in that gut microbiome can also then be affected in the blood brain barrier and affect the blood brain barrier the same way because that in itself is a very similar set up with that epithelial lining which can get damaged.   Mason:  (37:57) Because the microbiome in itself.   Dan Sipple:  (37:58) Pretty much. Exactly.   Mason:  (38:00) Oh man. Alright, so let's just start breaking it down a little bit because I feel like this is where the boring over-identifying with diet and what macronutrients are defining who you are and defining your diet at all. It's something I know we've hit a lot. We definitely hit in the past, the boring nature of identifying on being like low fat and low protein from animal sources and then we've seen that busting of the bubble around the saturated fat is bad coming especially out of the institutionalised dietitians so we've busted that and so then it's like you see fat-fueled, hashtag fat-fueled coming up. Completely living off saturated fat because all of a sudden we've almost been given this free pass to go and eat those things and do those things that we enjoy, but yet then you start identifying with the macronutrient of my diet, saturated fat, fats.   Mason:  (39:11) That's my fuel and I only talk about this from personal experience because you're internally too boring to develop your own innate identity through who you are and your true nature is you have to go and look at your macronutrients in order to create an identity for yourself that you can therefore go out and create in a career and a brand or just a bit of personality so you have something to talk about and it is boring and I think that's what we're talking about here. Right and it's not going down a short route because you're interested in creating some balancing for yourself through the endocrine system. I know we've talked about ketogenesis for a short amount of time, whether it's through water fasting, which isn't a very easily accessible way to get to ketogenesis.   Mason:  (39:57) But you know, living off fats and ketones and bulletproofing or maybe you go down that route because you want to get your insulin receptors and your leptin receptors back to a point where they're quite healthy. You've got an intention and you go full bolt into that intention, but then what happens when you don't find a sweet spot and you over-identify. I think that's what we're talking about at all points here.   Mason:  (40:21) You've gone too far. You haven't realised that what goes up must come down and find a sweet spot that's sustainable for decades and so we're talking about, there's a sliding scale of the damage that you can do to yourself verse.. I know I've gone really down like that fat route for a while. It gets to a point where I can just feel sluggish and you want to talk about what we're actually going to physiologically feel. If we're rocking the fats too hard, we're creating too much bile. Therefore, we're going to be having to lead to those bacteria growing that are going to start eating more of that mucus. What are we feeling?   Dan Sipple:  (41:02) The things that I think of straight away from a gut perspective, oily stools so if you're wiping lots that's a pretty sure sign that your intake of fats is exceeding your gallbladder's attempt to up regulate bile to the point to where it's affecting your stool.   Mason:  (41:22) That's such a good little distinction then. Lots of wiping, too oily.   Dan Sipple:  (41:28) Totally and then the flow on from that, I guess if it is done in excess for too long, you're talking about brain fog, lethargy, just overall increased body inflammation because if we strip it back down it is going to increase our leaky gut. So then all the symptoms that you can expect to find in someone with a leaky gut, you can carry over to that. Brain fog, just general digestive disturbance, lots of gas, lots of odorous gases and always check the stool. Look at what the stool is doing. I think that's the biggest marker of whether a diet is working for you or working against you.   Mason:  (42:10) Okay. So it's basically about ensuring we're not consuming so much fat that we're creating an excess of bile. Basically creating a different [crosstalk 00:42:19]   Dan Sipple:  (42:19) The other one is nausea, which I forgot to mention too. Nausea is a classic sign of poor fat breakdown.   Mason:  (42:26) I can get into immediately, a lot of my fats I enjoy my tonic. Having a bit of grass fed butter is my fat and just due to all the fat solubles that I'm going to be able to get going in through there especially with such a focus on bone health and teeth health and a little bit of EMU oil is also a big favourite of mine, but I can feel if I go for that second tonic and I'm relying on a saturated fat and it's been a hard one for me to chew the fat on actually over the years is I do feel a little bit nauseous afterwards. It's very immediate for me and [crosstalk 00:43:04] I feel like...   Dan Sipple:  (43:04) It's saturated fats? Or do you find you would get that, say if you slay five avocados in a row as well.   Mason:  (43:11) Avocados. I used to have that same experience when I was a raw foodie and I was relying on the macadamia butter and the avocados to really sustain me through the day. I'd get to that feeling. I get to that point where I'd eat my salads and it'd be heaps of olive oil and heaps of avocados and say olives, but mainly that avocado factor that would kind of get in there. And I just said, I'd be feeling it. It's an oily, stagnant feeling and it's a good one to kind of get on top of because it's not like that's a bad thing to feel. It's just that it's a good thing to be able to realise so you can, so I can adjust. I mean for me it's been an interesting one because I had so many years of so much roughage and so many plants, but I was having them in more of that raw form that it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth to an extent.   Mason:  (44:03) I did enjoy needing to balance out and getting a little bit more of that animal fat and animal protein. And now I really feel that they're settling in to their sweet spot and their little place and I'm acknowledging that I'm going to have to be responsible enough and go be the custodian of my microbiome to find that sweet spot, where I'm actually going to be able to create some mumentum in the development of that ecosystem.   Dan Sipple:  (44:28) And that's the thing, man, like that's what's so good about testing is because when you do that and you can see where these guys are at and their percentages. There's ideal percentages and don't get me wrong, we don't know what the exact perfect microbiome looks like yet.   Mason:  (44:41) Well it probably doesn't exist. I mean, that's like [crosstalk 00:44:45]   Dan Sipple:  (44:45) That's right. It's the horses for courses. That's right, but we do have a pretty good idea based on databases of healthy donors where these healthy species are meant to fall within, and you can design your diet around that. That's what's awesome about doing the gut microbiome testing is that you are going to get particular foods which we know feed up Akkermansia muciniphila and Bifidobacterium and different species in the gut that do produce these amazing substances called butyrate and other short chain fatty acids. Butyrate. We should talk about that too actually.   Mason:  (45:20) Well, let's get into it. I just want to kind of end on the fact that it's excessiveness and finding sweet spots, so you can kind of set and forget things in your diet and you can get on to enjoying life and celebrating life and developing your virtuous nature without taking your health down a dysbiosis route that will sneak up on you over years. And it's nice to get out of the good and bad kind of aspect of foods and just find there's always, you know, with most indigenous diets of course we've got the extreme instances with like Eskimos that are just basically all blubber and protein.   Dan Sipple:  (45:51) Right.   Mason:  (45:52) And that's a particular like fringe instance. And I think we've chatted about it before being like there's a phase of adaptation for that microbiome to find its harmony. But when you look at generally in the middle of the bell curve, which is where most of us can kind of like aim for. If we want them, by all means go and explore the fringes, just don't project it onto others until you have generational data for yourself and currently. But it's mostly like all the successful indigenous cultures, blue zone cultures, there's like that appropriate amount of saturated fat, plant in some places, most of the time it's coming, from animals that appropriate amount of protein, a lot of plant diversity, soluble, insoluble, right? And fibre.   Dan Sipple:  (46:39) That's exactly where I try and now more so than ever shoot my patients long-term towards that Mediterranean diet in terms of the actual research, comparing different diets. Mediterranean diet always trumps the others still. And I think exactly what you said, just because it is such a flexible approach where you're just getting a bit of everything and you're getting so much diversity and polyphenols and you're still getting your saturated fats and your proteins and whatnot. It's just that you're not relying on the same basic five foods to get them in.   Mason:  (47:13) Yeah, I mean that's so huge. And I also want to trump people who take that example, whether it's blue zones and say they pretty much eat nothing animal and try and use it to justify their other extreme vegan diet. I'm not getting away with that today sonny, not on my watch. I mean it is finding that sweet spot and also almost creating that legacy with how in harmony your diet can be and I'm respectful of what works and what doesn't work man. So good. It's so rad. Hey everyone, don't be so boring that you need to overly identify with your macro nutrients. If you find yourself at that point, please don't go spurting all that self-righteousness over everyone else. Chickity check yourself before you wreck yourself, because you will brand yourself in a particular way. And then it denies you the fact of getting very real. And it also denies you with being curious because what you do when you identify externally with your diet, extreme diet, even if you're over identifying with like the name of the Mediterranean diet, whatever it is, it means that when you go about and try and get testing done on yourself and you're looking for generational data, it makes you biassed and it makes you go and search for justification.   Mason:  (48:34) You know, misery loves company and you want to create company and basically create data that justifies your position, which is very boring. It's very boring to be around. I know that I've talked about that for myself. I've found that blandness in myself and then I've had to kind of shut up for a couple of years and really just go about that nature of that route of building something for myself, which I feel is in harmony and let the cup floweth over through curious conversations like this. Not saying I'm doing it right. Just sharing my little path and my opinion.   Dan Sipple:  (49:10) Hmm. And being open-minded and flexible.   Mason:  (49:13) Being open-minded and flexible. Hey, so did you want to go and break down any of those terms anymore? Do you feel like you've, you know, the lipopolysaccharide and that, I mean, I feel like we've dived into that, but just even going further down into diet and some of your faves, the places you're kind of like looking at to make sure that you've got like a wide variety of prebiotics getting in there?   Dan Sipple:  (49:39) Yeah, good point. Yeah. So I guess just to sort of preface by saying that old concept of fibre is fibre is nonsense and it comes in all different shapes and sizes.   Mason:  (49:52) You mean like have your bowl of all bran in the morning and your sweet?   Dan Sipple:  (49:55) Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. Yeah. Very dietician, very old hat, 80's, 90's mentality. There's soluble-   Mason:  (50:03) Dieticians are getting a flogging this podcast.   Dan Sipple:  (50:07) Well they will, unless they're willing to adapt to the research. You know?   Mason:  (50:12) I'll say there's a couple of dietitians out there I like and they're adaptive, but gosh, not many. Nope, not many. I've got a chip on my shoulder from when I had to butt heads with the dieticians that were trying to tell when my mum had her aneurysm, like nearly 10 years ago now, nine years ago.   Dan Sipple:  (50:32) Custard. Wasn't a custard.   Mason:  (50:33) Yeah, it was custard. They were basically, they were just ripping it to me about trying to go against the grain of their recommendations, giving her the golden circle orange juice.   Dan Sipple:  (50:43) [crosstalk 00:50:43] brain.   Mason:  (50:44) Yeah. Literally when it was literally custard, stock standard, golden circle, sugar infused, synthetic vitamin infused juices, which were just going to be putting in pressure through refined sugar on her system. Ra-ra. And I sat there with like the head of dietetics in the Royal North Shore. My mum's dietician and then a student, this like ratty little student right out of the institutionalised dogma, who was just trying to have a go at me because she thought I didn't know a thing or two. And then I just let her have it and ripped her into the biological healing process of the brain inflammatory processes, so on and so forth.   Mason:  (51:27) And I was like, I'm feel really beautifully smug about, because I was so highly charged and so traumatised and going through so much grief at that time and during those times I think for someone like that to not have tact and be projecting onto the stupid son who's just distraught and not being able to have a conversation because you're so rigid. I'm like that's where my chip on my shoulder of dieticians comes from. And yeah, as you said, I've changed my opinion and adapted so much over the years and when someone else doesn't have the capacity to do that, I'm just like "Sorry. You have ejected yourself from the conversation of relevance. So you go, I don't want to talk to you right now." So yeah, take that dietitians.   Dan Sipple:  (52:20) Well said. Yeah. So prebiotics and the different shapes and sizes. So look, we've got these long chain sugars and fibres. Inulin is one of them. One of my favourites. We've got fructose oligosaccharides, or FOS, we've got galactooligosaccharides, GOS, and then there's-   Mason:  (52:42) Galactose. What's the probiotic as well that goes by like, maybe it's just galacticose or so something like in, in that, anyway, sorry, I'm thinking about some of the names of bacteria or over the years you hear and I'm just like, Oh wow [crosstalk 00:52:59]   Dan Sipple:  (53:01) The names aren't forgiving. They're horrendous.   Mason:  (53:04) Like galactose is great. I've always, where's the dietary source of...   Dan Sipple:  (53:13) Galactose?   Mason:  (53:13) Was it galactose, am I making it?   Dan Sipple:  (53:15) So we've got galacto-oligo-saccharides and it's abbreviated as GOS for short.   Mason:  (53:21) GOS. Yeah.   Dan Sipple:  (53:22) And you're going to find that in legumes and beans and lentils and beets and stuff. So in the Mediterranean diet, they're getting a lot of GOS.   Mason:  (53:30) Where are you at with beans and the presence of lectins and that? Beans being like a peasant food, something like grain that's not necessarily natural, it's going to go against like an indigenous diet kind of style of things. I feel like there's a nice middle ground there to talk about taking advantage of the access we do have to like agriculture and realisation that some of these like prebiotic rich foods are going to be good. Maybe again it's, maybe is it just like a little bit, you know, where are you at?   Dan Sipple:  (53:59) I always go back to the blue zones and I just think if you know, you can't just compare the legumes consumed 500-1000 years ago to what's being produced now and say they're the same. So it's going to come back to quality at the end of the day and if they're being soaked and sprouted and cooked properly, because the reality is all that nasty crap like phytates and oxalates and lectins and a lot of that gets removed when you do those things, versus when they're picked, canned and then you heat the can of soup up for 30 seconds or whatever, different story, that's when you're going to end up with more likely chance of bloating and gastrointestinal issues.   Mason:  (54:38) So you can say that it's like a kitchari is not going to be a kitchari, is a kitchari, is a kitchari, is a kitchari. You look at preparation and again you've got to put time and effort into these things. If you want to go the convenience model it really is when you're going to be eligible to be in that legume, bean and lentil eating kind of category, where you might be actually doing some detrimental stuff to yourself over the time, versus I mean an almost like the preparation that you do, which I know is hard for everyone but the preparation time and the sprouting and the soaking, it kind of almost like limits the amount that you're going to be able to be having naturally and therefore you're going to have more diversity, because it takes so much effort. Right? There's like magic just in, it's the same as like a flavour of the food is, of garlic is going to limit the amount of garlic a lot of the time that you're going to be able to take, or like the flavour of Reishi is going to affect how much you're actually going to be able to dose. And so to the preparation time of foods is going to affect how much you're actually going to be able to reasonably include your diet. Therefore,. it's going to put a natural cap and help you find the sweet spot.   Dan Sipple:  (55:50) Totally, totally. And look, it's slow going for some people. Quite often when we do a microbiome assessment, take John Smith who's been on a paleo or a carnivore diet or whatever it is, a diet that focuses on the removal of legumes and that sort of thing and has been quite meat heavy for quite some time, 99% of the time the bugs that feed off legumes and resistant starches and whatnot and produce these beneficial compounds for us like butyrate, that heal the gut and lower inflammation, they're starved. Sometimes they're extinct totally. And that's because they've had such an over reliance on other foods and they've been on such a restricted diet that these bugs just dwindle and dwindle because they're waiting to get fed.   Mason:  (56:37) And what is butyrate do for the barriers again?   Dan Sipple:  (56:43) Sure. So when you feed your gut these types of fibres, so GOS, FOS, inulin and resistant starch, et cetera, et cetera, you're feeding beneficial microbes in the gut that when they get fed in sufficient amounts, they produce this awesome compound called short chain fatty acids. And there's different types of short chain fatty acids. One of the major ones is butyrate, which is probably the most favoured because it does have such good healing benefits for blood brain barrier function, for lowering lipopolysaccharide, healing a damaged leaky gut wall and just lowering colonic inflammation and systemic inflammation. So you want as much butyrate as you can get. So you want to feed those bugs up, you want to give them the fuel from those foods so they can produce that for you.   Dan Sipple:  (57:26) And yeah, sometimes it's a real hard slug to get those bugs fed up again, because those foods have been out of that person's diet for a while, reintroducing them does cause issues and it is like going, so for instance, sometimes it's like, all right I want you to go to bulk health foods or whatever it is, grab yourself a bag of black beans, go home, soak them when you're ready on a day where your gut's okay and you know, pick a Saturday or whatever, usually a day you're not at work, get literally like half a palm size and cook them over a long period of time and just start there. And I want you to do that again in three days from then and then again in three days from then and just slowly, slowly build it up. And you know when they're able to handle appreciable amounts of that. Cool. Go on to lentils, do it with lentils now and you just build them up slowly and slow and slow. And sometimes it takes like literally months, but it's good when you can show them their microbiome again in six months and say now look at that guy now. He was almost extinct in the first report, look where he is now and look how much butyrate you're producing now.   Mason:  (58:31) And so you're saying do that because you're going to have to go through a process of being farty and having a bit of a reaction to it or what?   Dan Sipple:  (58:37) You're always going to get gas. Yeah. You're always going to get gas with legumes and lentils, it's normal. I always say to folks when you're producing really odorous stinky, ridiculous amounts of gas and you know it's wrong, that is 99% of the time protein putrefaction so that is actually more from high protein and lots of saturated fats. When you're getting lots of gas from plants you'll get gas definitely, but it's usually more volume and less odour.   Mason:  (59:08) Well you probably also kind of talk to the fact that that gaseousness, because I've kind of opened a little bit more up to legumes and lentils and beans based on this preparation model because I've had a bit of a problem with them and with the anti-nutrients for some time. So I'm kind of trying to find my balanced approach. And again, even with those, with artichokes and you know is a big one, we call them fartichokes.   Dan Sipple:  (59:35) Fartichokes. Yeah.   Mason:  (59:35) I think it's probably also just a good gauge for where the sweet spot in your diet is long-term as well. Right? Like if it's making you noticeably, if it affects your day because you're noticeably farty, it's even just like lower the dose and don't necessarily use it as a staple of a meal. Right?   Dan Sipple:  (59:52) Hundred percent. And that's sometimes where I'll go in with an actual supplement, like a stripped down, like galactooligosaccharides as a fibre powder and they start on literally a pinch in their water a day, because you're doing some feeding, but it's different than say having four tablespoons of black beans or lentils and you just do it super, super slow. Yeah.   Mason:  (01:00:16) Man. A lot to learnings and just going through my processes on these podcasts. But yeah, I think you're right. I think there is still the presence of these legumes and even grains in traditional diets. They're just prepared and the thing is they we're just limited by what was possible to forage and procure and so you just had a reasonable amount in the diet. It's just the fact that we can get such high amounts and such easy access to these things that we just blow it out of the water and create a sometimes an unnatural reliance and to be honest, sometimes we can, I know this is speculative, but we can build upon what we've learned from our ancestors and those generationally tested diets that are actually generationally tested and just I guess try and slowly potentiate it without the ego to think that we're like necessarily improving, just honing it in based on the availability we have of things.   Dan Sipple:  (01:01:22) Yeah. I always think about, it's kind of like make your diet about your microbiome. Don't make it about your Instagram profile.   Mason:  (01:01:31) So tough. I get so many followers no, I mean like I'm vibing man. I just haven't been talking about my diet for so long. I just feel like I haven't it a right to. Appreciate the journey for sure.   Dan Sipple:  (01:01:42) Do you get that a lot still Mase? Like people will say, what are you eating? What have you found works for you? What are your vibing at the moment?   Mason:

I had several kinda crazy technical breakthroughs that are letting me automate computers in ways I didn't know they could be automated. That'd be on the recap.

Welcome!   For being locked down do to this Pandemic there is certainly a lot of technology in the news this week.  So let's get into it.  We are finding that managers are surveilling their employees, probably a little more than necessary and an uptick in VPN usage. Big Tech is strangling us and WordPress has a vulnerability plus much more   So sit back and listen in.  For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson: Hey everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. Spring is in the air. I am so excited about this, you know, I love pretty much every season. I was just thinking the other day how I missed not having, you know, like crunchy snow that you can walk on. I know you might think I'm crazy, right? I know other family members of mine who absolutely think I'm crazy, but it's, maybe it's just a thing from my childhood, you know, being 40 degrees below zero and being outside and just walking in the snow and just having a crunch, crunch, crunch. [00:00:40] But you know, so wintertime makes me enjoy spring makes me enjoy summer to a bit of a lesser degree, but I love going motorcycling so that works right? In the summertime. And then I really like fall probably my favorite season and then winter is pretty good. I'm not a winter sports kind of guy. I should probably do a little bit more of that. [00:01:01] Well, if you saw me on the TV news this week, you know that I was talking a lot about this new surveillance society that we have. Yeah. I'm not just talking about general regular surveillance that we've talked about before. I'm talking about surveillance in the workplace. And now there are two sides of this. [00:01:23] Of course, there are like two sides to everything and there's the side of the employee and then there's the side of the employer. And so we're going to spend a little time right now going through some of the things on both sides. If you're an employer, why you might want to be doing surveillance. In fact, in some ways, why you should be doing surveillance, if you're an employee, what are your rights? [00:01:46] What can you do about it? We'll be talking about that. And then some of the software the businesses are using and what you can expect. So let's sort of been talking about a lot this week over on various radio stations and on television as well this week. So getting right into this, and you'll see some articles about this up on my website as well, at Craig peterson.com [00:02:10] Oh and man did I get a kick in the pants this week, you know I've been doing a little bit of work on the website because we're putting some new stuff together for people. For y'all and I, I went to CraigPeterson.com/subscribe and just tried to check it out. So guess what. It doesn't work. Slash Subscribe to me. I just hate it when that happens. [00:02:35] So if you have tried to subscribe on my website before to get my weekly newsletter or get some of my special reports because you get, I think it's four of them when you subscribe, I send those off to you and you went to CraigPeterson.com/subscribe to subscribe. It may not have worked. So I'm going to be working some more on that this week. [00:02:58] I got that problem and then I've got a problem as well with the text number, the (855) 385-5553 number. And I guess it's kind of like the cobbler's kids that have no shoes, right? Where man. There are so many things that I need to do and I've been doing for customers and lately, I've been doing even more for non-customers, is trying to help everybody out because there are so many people that are in such dire straits right now. [00:03:26] You know, all businesses have changed. Talking about the pivot and pivoting to work at home has been a very big deal. In fact, I'm going to. Probably have a little course on that coming up here in a couple of weeks. What to do if you a business and you're kind of pivoting to homeworkers maybe permanently, but certainly for the next little while. [00:03:45] What should you be doing from the security standpoint? I think it's really important for everyone to understand and to do. Many managers are turning to surveillance software and. I got this idea about a norm reminder really from the Washington Post this week now, Washington post, you know, I don't trust him at all for any of their political coverage because they haven't been honest with any of us for quite a while, but some of their technology coverage isn't bad. [00:04:14] It's kind of like the New York Times. It's such a shame because the New York times has such great. In-depth articles on so many things, and then they completely misrepresent politics all the time, like a hundred percent consistent, and it's, so, I'm just always torn. Do I pay any attention to these guys or not? [00:04:35] You know, I certainly look at their coverage too when it comes to the political stuff, cause I have to make a judgment call myself. But man, I don't mind supporting the regular things, but their editorial things are in their decisions as to which stories to run. Sometimes they're just so antithetical to everything, I believe. [00:04:55] But anyway, enough of that. So the Washington post article. Kind of got me thinking about it. So I did a bunch of research and I have one, two, three pages of a bullet point that I want to go through with you. Because I did research. I looked at a lot of things online. I looked at some of the websites of these companies making this, I don't know if you want to call it spyware, but that's kind of what it boils down to and figured out what's going on there. I had looked at some of the legal issues from the federal government side and from the state government, and here's the bottom line. When in doubt, assume you're being watched now. [00:05:36] I think that's a reasonable assumption in this day and age, right? We've all got our smart devices. We're online. We know that companies like Google and Facebook are compiling information to sell it about us, and I'm not sure that that's an absolutely horrific thing. I get more concerned when we're talking about employers surveilling us because if you have a bad boss or not so great boss, what's going to happen when that boss comes down on you for taking a break. [00:06:09] Right? Even a short break, you know? Yeah. You took a 15-minute break or whatever it was that was not, you know, necessary for them to come down on you. That's where I started getting concerned. People losing their jobs over this. Now, in some cases, if you're a transcriptionist and you're paid by the word, well, you know, why would they bother? [00:06:29] Monitoring me. I'm paid by the word, right? Who cares? You know? Obviously I have to deliver in a certain timeframe, but if it takes me all day and I have a 24-hour guarantee and I'm only typing one word a minute,  it's no skin off my employer's nose. And on the other end of the scale, if you are kind of intellectual work and you're working. [00:06:52] At a higher level, if you will, right? You're not just selling your, your keystroke, your fingers. You're actually thinking about problems. You're trying to logically analyze what's going on, what should be done, what shouldn't be done. If you're that type of person while then it's a completely different thing, right? [00:07:12] Again, how do you measure that? Because you might be reading a book, you might, you might have read a book last night and now you're in the office and you're looking at that book from last night cause you want to make some notes on it because you're one implemented into the office and now your employer's looking at you saying, well why hasn't your screen changed. [00:07:31] So that's the other side. So I get really concerned with the employers somehow thinking that this type of monitoring is a panacea for them. It's not going to motivate their employees to work. It just totally reminds me of when I was a professor on faculty out at Pepperdine University, and I taught, back then it was called MIS management information systems 422 out at Pepperdine. [00:07:57] And one of the things we had to look at was something called the Hawthorne principle. And they had done a study in Hawthorne, California of workers on a manufacturing line. And the big question was do they perform better when they're being monitored or when they're not being monitored? There were some interesting studies to this looking at music in the background. [00:08:21] Do you perform better when you have music playing in the background just at a low volume or better when it's quiet? Well, in all of these cases, it depends on what you're doing. Workers tend to perform better. With music in the background when they're doing kind of a rote task when they're working on an assembly line, and it's the same thing over and over and over again, that tends to help those people. [00:08:50] But when we're talking about an intellectual worker who is planning, who's thinking things through, who's writing marketing materials, who's doing software development, in most cases. They perform worse with music in the background and they're better off just having some basic white noise going on, which could be as simple as a fan. [00:09:13] It could be office chatter, et cetera, and I actually use some things in order to put that into the background myself, and I find them to be very, very helpful. You can find all kinds of them online. If you wanted to know exactly which ones I use, send me an email and I'll let you know, just me@craigpeterson.com but I have a plugin that goes into my browser. [00:09:37] That has a coffee shop, the ring of fire, burning, you know, outside a bird chirping, wind blowing, water lapping just, it has a few of those things. And, and I can select what I want and if I need to kind of focus on something, I find that to be very, very helpful. so when it comes to monitoring in the Hawthorne effect. [00:10:04] What they found is that yes, in some cases monitoring people. Worked out better, they produce better than not monitoring people. And that kind of reminds me of a good war movie that I absolutely loved. I don't think it was a great escape. Oh, no. I remember what it was. it was Schindler's list and there were supposed to be making hinges. [00:10:28] These are, of course, prisoners, that are being used as slave labor. And. They are supposed to be making these hinges. And so the guard comes over, lets me see, we make a hinge and he makes one in a matter of just seconds or minute or whatever it is. And then under the Hawthorne. That'd be principal here. [00:10:48] If he makes one hinge in one minute, he should be able to make 60 hinges in an hour. And yet they were only making, I don't remember what any of these numbers were. It's been a long time since I saw that movie. But, he didn't make his many, so obviously he got in trouble, as did other people who were on the assembly line. You know, if there's a gun to your head, maybe you will work better, maybe you will work faster. But in most cases, that's not true. And that was certainly true of these people who were confined to slave labor. They're in the Schindler's list movie. So we're going to talk a lot more about this when we get back because nearly half of the US labor force is now. working from home. [00:11:30] That's according to a study by MIT researchers in April, so just a couple of weeks ago, stick around. We're going to talk a lot more about this when we get back. You are listening to Craig Peterson right here on WGAN, and you'll hear me every Wednesday morning, give or take at 7:30 on with Matt. [00:11:52] Stick around. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson: Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig Peterson here, on WGAN. I hope you're enjoying your Saturday, or if you're listening to me online, whatever day it is, you're listening, and of course, you can get that online experience through any podcast app. I'm on tune in. I'm on pretty much everywhere. You'll just be able to find me by looking for Craig Peterson. [00:00:28] The easiest way is just go to CraigPeterson.com/your favorite app when it comes to podcasts, whatever it is, and it'll just do a redirect for you, send you right to the right spot, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever it is. So we were talking before the break about what's happening here with surveillance scene, surveilling our employees out there. [00:00:55] And we're seeing some major changes. Now, some of these started actually a few years ago because businesses are rightly concerned about their intellectual property being stolen, and they need to know if an employee is. About to leave and leave with their customer list. And I have certainly seen that happen before. [00:01:17] Unfortunately, we often get these phone calls after the fact, after the data's already been stolen, the employee's gone, or whatever it is. But you know, that's kind of the way it is, right? Most businesses and people aren't willing to do anything about it until it goes over the cliff and this case. So what do we do as employers if we want to protect our information? [00:01:41] Because it's proprietary, right? That's called intellectual property for a reason, and the reason that it's proprietary is you just don't want it stolen and it gives you the advantage that you need to have. MIT researchers, as I mentioned before, are saying the nearly half of the US workforce is now working from home, which is absolutely massive. [00:02:06] We're seeing. VPN usage way up, and you know, I have a whole course on VPNs, the free one that I've been doing, and VPNs are not a panacea at all. In fact, they can make things much worse for you if you're trying to be secure. We've got these tattle wearables. Programs out there now that are doing everything from watching what you're typing and alerting the manager if you're typing in certain words that they think might mean that you are leaving their employee. [00:02:40] Right? So going to a website and employment website could cause, could cause a phone call from your manager. But we do have to check this. We do have to be careful. If you are going to be monitoring your employees, you need to make sure it's in the employee handbook. You want to be upfront with your employees and from the employee's side, remember that some of the software will do everything, like keep track of your keystrokes, watch the websites you're visiting, which is always the case. [00:03:13] A reasonable business is going to be tracking website visits. So keep that in mind. But, They're also going to potentially be screen capturing and maybe even capturing a picture from your camera. Some of them also will listen on the microphone and I get it. You know, it can be very demoralizing. [00:03:36] You've been working for a company for years, maybe decades, and now all of a sudden you've been, you're being spied on. Right? You think you've been a good worker, so talk with them. There are no federal laws against employee monitoring. In the private sector. There are a number of state laws, but many of these employers are crossing these ethical lines by continuing to track the employees after they've clocked out for the day. [00:04:05] So if you're an employee. Your best bet may be to just turn off the computer, turn off the laptop. If you have a smartphone that's been issued by the company, turned that off as well. If you have an app that is from the company, you might want to kill it. So it's no longer tracking and make sure your settings on your iPhone are set to only allow tracking while the app is active. [00:04:32] So those are a few things. You can talk to your HR department if you think something's happening that shouldn't be. And if you filed an internal complaint and nothing is really happening, you can file the same complaint with the securities and exchange commission, the equal opportunity employment commission, or the state organizations. [00:04:53] All right? By the way, you don't have to be informed that you are being spied upon. So keep that in mind. [00:05:01] So next step here, I want to talk about something from American thinker.com there's a great article there about big tech and how it is frankly strangling us right now. We have that 1984 ad. [00:05:17] Do you remember that? where. All of these people were sitting in a kind of Orwellian room, a socialist room. Everybody's dressed the same because you only have one type of clothes you can buy. Yeah. [00:05:29] By the way, Hey, thanks, guys. For this, what has it been two months exhibition of what socialism's really like? There's nothing on the shelves right now. [00:05:38] What do you remember that they're all sitting there and they're fighting this technocratic elite. When that woman runs down and throws the hammer at the screen. And obviously it was a pretty gloomy spot that ran, and I think it didn't have first run during the super bowl if I remember. Bottom line, but the tech giants now, like Apple and Google, all of these guys have really morphed into what is now, I think, near totalitarian giants. [00:06:13] No, they are controlling our speech. You got Candace Owens, brilliant woman. She's suspended from Twitter for challenging the Michigan governor. Facebook has flagged the declaration of independence as hate speech. It's incredible what's going on. We see Aaron Renn reporting that conservative and left-wing groups are being pulled down at Twitter, and that was back in 2016 2019 YouTube has been blocking some British history teachers from. [00:06:49] YouTube entirely for uploading archival material related to Adolf Hitler. Yeah. Heaven forbid that we remember what happened with him and YouTube said that these British history teachers were breaching. Guidelines banning the promotion of hate speech, even though they weren't promoting it, they were trying to let people know, Hey, this has happened before. [00:07:15] It can happen again. It's absolutely incredible. And, and where is that line drawn with the national socialists in Germany? Right? You remember? That's what they were. That's what Nazi stood for. National socialists. So the socialists there in Germany, they put out all kinds of a propaganda film about how great they were. [00:07:35] We were only telling half-truths. Sound familiar, right? and they're these British history teachers. Apparently we're putting some of these apps so people understood what it looked like to have manipulation coming from the government. So they deleted the videos, abrupt loaded to help educate future generations about the risks of socialism. [00:08:00] It's absolutely incredible. Now, Michael Cutler wrote just a couple of years ago that Twitter has, I love this language now morphed into a means of thought control. Through the control of language. Now we have, through the government, through the legislature and the federal level, we have given these companies immunity from prosecution in most cases because we say, Hey, it's like a public bulletin board. [00:08:30] People are up there saying stuff and YouTube and Twitter, et cetera. You're not liable if someone posts, posts, hate speech, et cetera, on your site. And now they're acting as though they might be liable. And so now because they're acting this way, should we remove their, their special treatment of being basically common carrier? [00:08:57] They're, they're saying, Hey, listen, we're, we're more like the telephone company than anything else than a newspaper. We don't have editorial control over the content and we don't control the content. Well, guess what? Those days are long past us. We need to make some changes here, okay? These big internet companies know more about you than you know about yourself, frankly. [00:09:20] And there's a study that came out, this was a years ago, where average consumers are checking their smartphones 150 times a day, and that number. Has grown, so we've got to make some changes. All right, everybody, stick around. We'll be right back. We're going to talk about some attacks that are going on. If you like to go online, visit websites, or particularly if you have your own business or personal website. [00:09:46] I got some news for you about attacks that are underway right now. Stick around. You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN. Craig Peterson: Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN yeah. Big tech is strangling us. We talked about that and how laws really need to change. I know that Chairman Pai over the FCC has been trying to tighten the things up a little bit, but there's been a lot of pushback from the left end from some people in their bureaucracy. [00:00:26]We also all already talked about the managers turning to surveillance software. And I understand why many of them are doing it to protect their intellectual property more than to make sure you're working at least. That's been the case historically. Now they're doing a little bit differently. They're actually trying to make sure you're working. [00:00:46] So if you are someone that has a website and it could be just a basic website, like something that you have for your local boy scout troop, or many, many of the other ones out there, your very likely to be using some open-source software called Wordpress. [00:01:07] WordPress is a great piece of software and I've been using it for many, many years. I used to hand-roll websites, which means I was sitting there writing the HTML code and putting everything in and it just wasn't very pretty. And then I moved over to an Adobe product. To do it. And then, then I went to something called WebGui, which was another piece of software to help run websites and build them. [00:01:35] And then I ended up on WordPress and I've been there for many, many years. Basically, since WordPress started. It has been quite a great little. Tool. So if you're thinking as well, by the way of putting up a website, let's say you want to start a business. Let's say you are a brick and mortar business, and frankly, you're looking to transition from brick and mortar to online first, which is what I think every business needs to be doing. [00:02:03] I want you to have a serious look at this. You can find it online. There are two WordPress sites. There's wordpress.com that you can go to online. And WordPress dot com just takes care of everything for you. They, they're a hosting company. They have themes. You can use a, they make it really quite simple. [00:02:25] It is not the most flexible but let me just give you a little bit of warning, but. All right? In this day and age, it's like 35% of the web is built on WordPress, so I'm looking at the numbers here on their website or their pricing plan. And for personal use, it is $4 a month. That is if you are paying for a year at a time so that that's hard to beat, isn't it? [00:02:59] And for premium, which I say is best for freelancers, it is $8 a month. Again, if you pay a yearly small business, they've got $25 per month and e-commerce. $45 a month. Now, the main difference between all of these different price points for WordPress. It has to do with domain name registration. Like if you're free, you probably don't have your own domain. [00:03:28] If you're a business, you're going to need your own domain name. Some of them have live support, 24/7 some of these, the basic packages only have email support. Premium themes are only available in the higher packages. You know, the business ones, which are premium business and commerce, they've gotten marketing and monetization tools that you can use at the business level. [00:03:54] Some search engine optimization, some advertising analytics, they have just a whole bunch of things that you can do. And then, then the highest end in e-commerce, they're adding on accepting payments and 60. Plus countries. Integrations with top shipping carriers, unlimited products or services, eCommerce marketing tools, premium customizable starter themes for 45 bucks a month. [00:04:22]So then this is kind of a duh, if you are looking to start a little business and have it online, if you have a business and you're looking to move it online, we're talking about WordPress right now. So wordpress.com is where you go for all of that. Now I get more complicated, than any of these provide for. [00:04:45] So I can't just use wordpress.com and I actually use WP engine as well as I self hosts some sites. In other words, I have my own servers because of my company Mainstream, we have our own data center. So why not? Right. But in some cases, like my bigger websites, I have up at WP engine and they maintain everything for me. [00:05:10] It's actually running on a Google platform, but they will automatically size it, resize it, and I can do absolutely anything I want. So if you want to be able to do anything you want, you're not going to use a wordpress.com. You're going to go to wordpress.org. Now, wordpress.org is the software that is behind wordpress.com and it's the software that I, again, 35% or so of the web uses. [00:05:43] I actually think it's probably higher than that, and most places use WordPress nowadays, and it's just so flexible. It's no longer just a blogging platform. And they have some built-in beautiful themes. I use something called Divi, which is a page builder. There's a few of them out there, Beaver, Ellementor. [00:06:03] Those are the three big ones. And if you're interested in, in thinking, Hey Craig, maybe you should do a class on this for us. Well, let me know. I'd be glad to put something together, but you got to tell me. Right? I just don't know. Otherwise, me, Me@craigpeterson.com if you'd like a class on this, and I know some people like Nancy Fields out there who she'll help people with their sites and put them together, but wordpress.org is where you go to get the software you need to put on too. [00:06:36] Some of these hosting services that you can use, and there's a million of them out there. Really. There's a lot, and then the kind of the ultimate, if you will, as the WP engine guys, but I brought this up to let you know the basics, right? This is what you want to look at. If you're thinking about going online. [00:06:54] But on the other side, I want to warn people right now because security teams and businesses have their hands full dealing with these COVID-19 related threats that are out there, and there are a lot of them, and right now the biggest problem isn't the hackers. The biggest problem is people clicking on emails and then getting ransomware. [00:07:16] We have a client that just. Yes. No, it was earlier in the week, I think it was Tuesday, one of their employees downloaded some software and he needed some software for windows to do some screen grabs cause he wanted to just grab a few things for off of the screen and save them the, save that graphic and use it in some documents. [00:07:38] So he went online, he did some searching and he found some screen. grabbing software, and lo and behold, there's this wonderful screen grab software for free that he downloads, and guess what? It's ransomware. So because we were doing all of the stuff for them and we had the really, the top anti-malware software that's out there very advanced stuff. [00:08:03] It detected it, it stopped it, it stopped it from spreading almost. Instantly, and that was just a phenomenal thing to have happened. It stopped it and it stopped the spread right away. So right now in WordPress, we're seeing a 30 fold increase in attacks on WordPress websites out there. , this is just dramatic. [00:08:27] So if you are running a word press word site or website, you're going to want to really, really have a look at it, make sure it's completely patched up because just like windows and Mac, iOS and iOS and Android, you have to apply patches. Man. It's like a grand central station here today. People in an out. [00:08:48] Anyhow, let's see. A million websites were reported, attacked, in the week from April 28th for one week. On May 3rd alone, they counted in excess of 20 million attacks against some half a million WordPress sites. It's just absolutely crazy. And by the way, they're coming in from more than 24,000. [00:09:10] Distinct IP addresses. What that means people are your machine to have been compromised and the bad guys are using them to launch attacks against websites and other people, which is not news, but it is news to most of those 24,000 people whose computers. Are being used to launch attacks. [00:09:32] You are Listening to Craig Peterson. Stick around because we're going to be right back. Talk a little bit about Zoom and how they are going to fix their chats. Stick around. We'll be right back and of course, visit me online at CraigPeterson.com. Craig Peterson: Hello everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. You can hear me here every Saturday from one till 3:00 PM and on with  Matt  Gagnon Wednesday mornings at 734 this week because the mayor was on, let's see, it was Friday at like eight Oh eight or something like that. So. Was very, a little bit, off. But I'm here from one til three. [00:00:31] Anyways. And for those listening online, of course, I am on pretty much every podcasting app out there. And in some ways, I'm one of the pioneers of this thing. I've been doing this podcasting stuff for over 20 years, so for a very, very long time. I don't know, it kind of makes you feel old. So, so far today we just talked about WordPress and how you can use that. [00:00:53] For your business where you can go online and order to find the right hosting environment for your WordPress site. We talked a little bit about how WordPress also has security vulnerabilities like anything else and what is going on right now. I also spoke about half an hour ago here about how big. [00:01:16] Technology is a drag, just strangling, just totally strangulating all of us with their censorship free speech just doesn't exist when you're talking about the big guys. And then, of course, we started out the show talking about surveillance software in what managers have been doing with the surveillance software over the years. [00:01:42] It's really bad, frankly. What's been going on. And right now we're going to talk a little bit about something. Pretty much I think everybody in the country's been on, and that is zoom. Now, if you have not been on zoom, let me just explain it really briefly, and that is zoom is a video conferencing. App, it's been around for a while now, was written by a couple of kids and they did a terrible job with the security side of things. [00:02:14] It works well, it's easy to use, and so they did a very good job on that. And frankly, if they hadn't, they wouldn't be kind of the premier video conferencing app right now. We just used it for mother's day. I set up a zoom conference for my mother and of course my stepfather, and we did another one for my, my father, and my stepmother, and we had the kids on there like 16 people called into it, and I chose zoom. [00:02:48] Knowing that it was easy to use, that a lot of people use zoom and really like it, but also knowing about the major security problems. Right? We're talking about mother's day, so I'm not worried about losing intellectual property. I'm not really worried about having people's zoom bombed me, and that is where zoom bombing has been going on like crazy. [00:03:12] But zoom bombing is where somebody. Gets onto your zoom conference and does something nasty. anything from sexual stuff through, I, I've heard of, swastikas coming up, you know, the good old socialist national socialist party of Germany and world war two I've heard about all just all kinds of terrible things that have been coming up. [00:03:37] So I wasn't worried about Zoom by me, so because I wasn't worried about privacy. Intellectual properties, zoom bombing. Okay. It's fine because I have a small business account on zoom. Now when I am doing something for my business, this business-related or I'm concerned about intellectual property or security, then I use WebEx because it is a, not just a regular WebEx, but a secured WebEx because it is a. [00:04:05] Very well known commodity out there, something that many people, have been looking at and the federal government uses, military uses, et cetera, et cetera. So that's kind of what I do. So zoom has had a very, very bad rap as of late and for, I think, frankly, it's for many, many good reasons. And I'm, I'm on Google right now, and you know, I recommend you use duck, duck, go. [00:04:32] But I'm going to use Google because of the fact that that's what most people are using. And I wanted to have the same results you'd see. So I just went into Google news and I said, zoom security. And it's got a, the latest updates, the highs, the lows. Here's what you need to know. Avoid the app and do this instead. [00:04:53] Here's why. It's from Forbes. Zoom five offers new security and privacy features. That's the new version of zoom, the new major version that they've released. In case you didn't get that notification, make sure you upgrade zoom. zoom settles with New York attorney general over privacy and security concerns. [00:05:13] This is just two days ago. Zooms tips for safety as recommended by video conference, express zoom issues, play security issues, plays a spotlight on other video platforms, privacy troubles. but here's the one that I think is kinda interesting. This one's from. Forbes and that is Zoom buys key base in bold, new security move. [00:05:37] How this could change everything. If you've been listening for a while, you know, I've been talking about how there are still security jobs open. You know, right now, security is kind of at the bottom of the list for most of the businesses out there because businesses are saying, Hey, we just don't know what's going to happen with our business going forward. [00:05:59] So, let's just drop security who need security, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's a bit of a problem if you ask me. And so because of that. I, you know, there, there's probably been a drop, I think, in the number of security jobs that are currently open, but we were talking about two and a half million, you know, up to 3 million open cybersecurity jobs before this whole pandemic. [00:06:26] It is, frankly, we need security now more than ever as business people and at home because we're under attack more than ever. But this is Zoom's first acquisition. Now I would actually call it more of an acquire than an acquisition. And if you're not familiar with that term, it's big probably because it's a pretty new term. [00:06:52] And an Aqua hire is where you find a company that has talent in it that you need or you want. And so how do you hire those people away? You probably can't, and it is a team of people working there, so you got to figure, they probably work together. They know how to work together. They know what some of the things are they need to do to work together. [00:07:19] So you just go ahead and you buy the whole company. So they're calling it an acquisition. In reality, this seems more like an acquire and Zoom got this 90-day plan to improve their security in this whole video conferencing system. We'll see what ends up happening. The terms of this deal weren't disclosed. [00:07:41] I'm sure a part of it is usually, Hey, all of the employees have to stay, or these key people have to stay. And then as part of the acquisition, they'll pay everybody some sort of an amount. So it isn't just the stakeholders. They're stockholders that make money off of this. Everybody stays around, but this is their first acquisition zooms nine years old in case you didn't know that if you thought they just came out of nowhere. [00:08:09] It's one of these overnight successes that took nine years to get there, but they're saying that as of a couple of weeks ago, there were 300 million people. On zoom, that's dramatic. In December, it was estimated that there were 10 million people. Now for the FBI InfraGard webinars that we were running, the FBI wanted us to use Zoom. [00:08:34] I don't know why, but that's what InfraGard wanted us to use. That's what I used. So we were part of that 10 million. To up to 300 million. Can you imagine that kind of growth so you can see how they had to do something, do something fast? They could not just staff up for it, but they're planning on creating a secure private and a scalable video communication system. [00:08:58] Part of the problem they've had recently when it comes to scalability is they have been routing people's teleconferences through China and other parts of the world. And of course, those really upset people when they found out about it because of course China sits there and spies on everything that's going on now. [00:09:19] The company that they acquired is called Keybase. They spent the last six years building a secure messaging and file sharing service. And with this, users can chat and share with team members and communities knowing that the messages are end to end encrypted. So the other thing with this acquire that zoom may be getting is the ability now to have chat and file sharing, which is something that. [00:09:49]Microsoft teams have that WebEx teams have, right? That's what the team's apps have. And even Slack has built-in now some communications ability. You can have small meetings and make calls to other users. And zoom is planning on putting this encrypted end to end meeting mode in for the paid accounts. [00:10:12] So if you have a free account, you're probably not going to get it, at least not initially. And then they're going to use public-key encryption, which is something that is, say, Pattonville a little bit of a go. But it's absolutely the way to do it. So I'm glad to hear that there are some adults in the room now over at zoom and they realized, not invented here syndrome is not going to help them grow. [00:10:37] It's not going to solve their security problems. And so they, I acquired a company that has been doing this type of security for quite a while. So, okay, here we go. This is a, an article from, this is dark reading, I think. Yeah. and they're saying as part of the deal, key basis, team members will become zoom employees. [00:11:00] So there you go. Okay. they, so they are planning on publishing a draft for their cryptographic design, next Friday. So it's coming up pretty soon. So we'll keep you up to date on this. I promised I would in the past let you know what zoom is doing and how they're doing and where they're going, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. [00:11:21] So I'm really glad to hear that zoom is pulling up their socks. So we are going to go away for a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about one of these companies that has smart hubs and what they have done. And this is kind of a story about what happens at end of life. And it's something that every business needs to think about. [00:11:48] If you're using salesforce.com Microsoft, you name it. Those companies are eventually going to go out of business. What happens when they go out of business? What's going to happen to your data? Whose data is it anyway? And in many cases, these companies are saying. It's my data. We own it, and if we lose it, we don't know you. [00:12:17] Anything. Real problem. If you asked me, so stick around. We'll be back here right after the break with news, et cetera, and we'll be talking more about all of this. You're listening to Craig Peter's son, right here on WGAN, and make sure you visit me online. Go to Craig peterson.com make sure you sign up for my newsletter so you can find out about the various cool stuff we've been working on and then we'll have out for you very, very soon. [00:12:45] Take care of everybody and stick around cause we'll be right back. Craig Peterson: Hey everybody. Welcome back. Craig Peterson here on WGAN and of course online as well at craigPeterson.com. We have been talking about a bunch of stuff today and you know, if you missed any of it, you can go to my website, Craig peterson.com this includes why businesses are using surveillance software. [00:00:25] To where what you can do as an employee if you think they are spying on you and what are your rights when it comes to some of this stuff, I talked also about what is happening with big tech and censorship and it really is a big problem, WordPress and how you can use that as a business. You know, if you are brick and mortar, you probably want to try and transition to more of an online model. [00:00:53] But even if you have a little bit of both, maybe WordPress is the way to go. So we talked a little bit about that when you can get WordPress as a service and also what you can do about it yourself. And by the way, attacks on WordPress are have gone up 30 fold in just the past few days. And then just before the top of the hour, we talked about zoom. [00:01:17] And how they have acquired a company in order to have end-to-end encryption on zoom. And I bet you also because of this acquisition, who they purchased the zooms going to be seen a new feature here where they're going to be doing a little bit of conferencing and. Collaboration. So I think that's going to be a good thing. [00:01:40] It's going to give a little competition to WebEx teams and also to our friends at Microsoft teams. Now, how many of you guys out there have been using some of these services. For your internet of things devices now, internet of things, devices that I'm talking about here. My kind of definition is anything that would normally be considered just a piece of hardware, you know, something that you turn on and use. [00:02:10] A good example would be some of these thermostats many of us have right. We've got these, now it's Google nest thermostats or some of the lights that we have. Well, many of these devices require what are called bridges because they using different technologies. So for instance, in my home, I've got some. [00:02:35] Now Apple home equipment, and of course we use Apple equipment almost exclusively in my business, and we have iPhones with iOS and Apple's home. The Apple home is the most secure way of controlling near your internet of things devices. The problem is that not many people make devices for Apple home, and that is because they are a little bit more expensive to make. [00:03:05] You have to have better encryption software. You have to pay the Apple tax because Apple developed it and Apple is going to charge you as a manufacturer to use their technology. So many of these companies have kind of gone off and done their own thing. We have some hue lights as well. H U E from Phillips. [00:03:25] Great lights, by the way. And those are all, again, controlled remotely, and we've got it tied in so that our iOS devices, our I-phones can turn on and off. The hue lights can turn on and off like our family room lights, et cetera, and can change the colors of lights. But because my internet of things devices are not directly compatible with Apple home, we had to get some special hubs. [00:03:58] So we have a small hub, and that hub speaks both the hue protocol. It speaks to a protocol that is used by the light dimmers in our main rooms, and it speaks Apple's protocol. Now. Were totally geeked out. So guess what? We have Linux running on a box. It does all of that stuff for us, right? So we can maintain it, we can update it, we can upgrade it. [00:04:23] We know what's going on. Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're really not after me. Right. Well, there is a company out there called Wink that many people have been using for quite a while. Wink, I should say, looks pretty darn good. It was launched first about six years ago, and the idea was to be able to connect and control all of their devices through just one master wink interface. So wink exists to really kind of simplify life for somebody, right? [00:05:00] That's really into the internet of things. You've got your lights, you got your locks, your thermostat, your cameras, your appliances. And they're all coming from different brands and they need different apps to operate. [00:05:13] Nowadays. You even see refrigerators and ovens. Man, I think I saw the first internet-connected one about six years ago as well. Our washing machines, dryers, all of these things, and they're different brands, and even though they might be using the same protocol, it doesn't mean as implemented the same way. [00:05:35] So these devices just can't speak to each other. Enter wink. Now there are a number of different devices out there that can be used as a smart hub, but speak to different, you know, different protocols, different vendors, everything else. But a lot of people went to wink because you bought it once. And that's it. [00:06:00] It was free for the rest of your life. Now, wink cost more yes than some of these others, but you did not have a monthly subscription fee that you had to pay. Well, as of this week, Wink is starting to charge on a monthly basis for their devices. The quote from Wink and obviously then they're looking for cash. [00:06:24] Now, who isn't? Wink has taken many steps in an effort to keep your hubs blue light on. That's the light on the Wink Hub. However, long-term costs and recent economic events have caused additional strain on our business. Unlike companies that sell our data to offset costs associated with offering free services, we do not. [00:06:48] Little jab there at Google. Data privacy is one of Winks core values. And we believe that user data should never be sold for marketing or any purpose. So basically what they were doing is, no grandfathering. The mandate here is to pay up or we're gonna shut you off. Here's what they said. Should you choose not to sign up for a subscription, you will no longer be able to access your wink devices from the app with voice control or through the API, and your automation will be disabled on May 13th your device connection settings and automation can be reactivated if you decide to pay up,  excuse me, to subscribe at a later date. [00:07:35] So there's no warning. It's now $5 a month per device. Think about how many devices are out there and how many devices people might have. Right? I'm a little unclear as to whether it's only $5 per house because you might only have the one Wink Hub or if it's $5 per month per device. That's kind of how I read it, so it could be really, really expensive and people are very upset about it. [00:08:05] You know, on Reddit there are thousands of responses to this company's tweet that was posted there. Most people are just absolutely angry. You know, they paid a lot more to get something that had lifetime support, and here it is, no life-time support. Right? So this feels like a variation on a familiar theme because it's happened many times. [00:08:29] You know, these internet-connected light bulbs. Many of them no longer work as a company went out of business and the servers got shut down. Smart scales. Some cases they just got dumb and they show you your weight to no longer show you your history or weight loss or anything, and in some cases, they just don't work at all because the companies pulled the plug on the apps. [00:08:51] These pet feeders. We've talked about a couple of cool ones here. They've gone. Out of business, they completely stopped feeding pets. How about these vacuums that we have in our homes that are all automated? They're running around cleaning the houses. So this is nothing new. We have seen companies go out of business before, right? [00:09:12] You've seen companies go out of business, right? Tell me. You have told me I'm not crazy. And when the companies go out of business and they're providing a monthly service for you. Then what happens? This gets to be a very, very big deal, and I also want to caution businesses because it reveals a major hole in this whole cloud business. [00:09:40] You know, we look at the cloud and say, it's going to make my life simpler. It's going to keep my costs down. I don't have to worry about the side of it anymore. I'll just use this cloud service like Salesforce for instance, or, or Dropbox or whatever it might be in reality. [00:09:59] Now, remember that your core business information, your intellectual property regarding your customers, regarding your orders, regarding your sales, your inventories, all of the stuff that is now in the hands of a third party. So what's going to happen when that third party. Goes out of business, it could be really, really bad for you. And for me. [00:10:27] So one of the things that we always advise our customers is to make sure you have a third party in a place that's securing these cloud-based apps and is doing backups for you. [00:10:43] So for instance, most of them, Microsoft. Office through the, what do they call it now? Windows three 65 plans or whatever it is. Those email accounts don't have backups and there's no guarantee from Microsoft that they will not lose your data. So are you backing that up as well? That I think there's a lot of lessons for all of us in this, and be careful when you're buying something. [00:11:11] We just got a new dryer. I made sure you were not internet-connected. I don't want a dryer from a company sitting in my house on my network, even though I've got it separated out into the internet of things network. I don't want that device sitting there potentially providing a breach for the rest of my network. [00:11:34] So think about that, be careful with that. You're listening to Craig Peterson right here on WGAN. Stick around because we're going to talk about how Microsoft is getting rid of passwords. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson: Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. Thanks for joining me today. I always appreciate it and I love getting your emails. I've got a couple of great ones this week. Again, Gary was out there letting me know what he was having some problems with. In fact, I even ended up getting on the phone with him to help him out a little bit with this whole tracking thing. [00:00:26] He was thinking that his GPS was being used to track him, and some people were really trying to mess with him while he's trying to make some money driving around. So I explained how the app he's using as a paid driver works, how tracks him, and how he can stop it from tracking him when he's not working. [00:00:47] So if you're driving for Uber eats or grub hub. Et cetera. That's, that's the sort of thing he's doing. And he was really kind of wondering about, because some people were changing the delivery point on deliveries and he'd show up at the new address and there's nobody there, and there's nobody at the old address. [00:01:07] And so he was really having some issues. Yeah. Obviously that can be a problem. So if you have any questions, whether it's about grub hub or anything else, by all means, just email me, ME@Craig peterson.com. Let me know how I can help. I'm always glad to give a little bit of help for absolutely nothing. [00:01:28] And obviously this is what I do for a living as well. So you know, if, if it's a lot of work, then I'm going to have to charge you. But anyhow, Microsoft. Now. passwords have been kind of the bane of my existence forever. I remember the very first time I had a password, I don't remember what it was. It would have been pretty simple back then but that was the early 1970s, and it was a non-online timeshare. [00:02:00] The Computer, an HP, I think it was like a 2000 access or 2000 after that got upgraded to an a and it was so totally cool. It was my first real computer access and we had a teletype, a TTY33 yay. Seven level. Yeah. So it was an a, it was really, really cool. [00:02:24] And that was my first major introduction to computers way back then and we had passwords now, the head of the, of the math department, and that's where was at the time I was in school then it was inside the math department. He always used some variation of his name for his password. And I still remember to this day, his name was Robert Allen Lang. [00:02:53]So, hi, Mr. Lang. If you're, if you're still around, actually, if you're listening, but He would always use a password that like R A lane or R Allen lane or, you know, you could always guess what his password was, so we would guess his password. And we'd use that to get more access. So for instance, our accounts could only have so much storage and the accounts could only have so much time per week to be used. [00:03:26] We just loved using as much time as we could. Oh, man. One of these days, I'll tell you some stories. And so we would hack into his account. And once we're in doing his account, we then gave ourselves upgraded privileges and online time and kind of everything else. So yeah, you know, that's what you do when you're a kid, but anyhow, you know, teenagers right? [00:03:54] Fast forward to today and passwords are still a problem. I've been using pretty darn good passwords for a very, very long time now, and as you probably are aware, if you sign up for my email list, I'll send you a special report on passwords, but you might be well aware that I really like one password. [00:04:16] It's by far the winner. There was some other half-decent password managers out there last pass being one of them, but 1password, absolutely the winner. And we also use DUO, which is a two-factor authentication system. So between the two of them, we're pretty secure and I have it generate passwords for me, which is really nice, and it'll generate passwords. [00:04:39] It's funny, many times I'll have a like a 20 plus character password and the website I'm on just doesn't support that. Sometimes it'll ask all, you didn't put enough special characters in, which, as you know, just doesn't count anymore. So make sure you get my password special report so you can see what the current advice is. [00:05:01] And it's really changed recently, current advice for passwords and what you should do. So we've got world password day and every year we talk about passwords and what you should do. And this is the first year I think we're seeing more people starting to really use new forms of authentication. We're working from home even at work, and people are starting to understand just how insecure and ultimately how costly passwords really are. [00:05:38] Our cybercriminals don't need advanced techniques when they can just bet on human behavior. Ponemon Institute did a survey in 2019 and this is all on security behaviors. Okay. And they found that 51% of 1700 information technology and information technology security professionals reused an average of five total passwords again and again and again across both their business and their personal accounts. [00:06:17] Now that is a very bad thing to do. There's something called password stuffing where they steal your password. And remember a couple of weeks ago I mentioned a, "have I been pawned" or powned website? And there's a feature that I put out as well. I don't think they're airing on WGAN, but they are on some other stations all about powned passwords. [00:06:41] Well, Once a password has been stolen and they know what it is and they know what your username is, they just start automatically going and checking banks, trying to log in with that email address and that password. So having the same password that you're using on more than one system is a very, very dangerous habit because if they get ahold of just one password, they know they can use it on other sites and they're probably going to be able to get in. [00:07:16] So this single compromised password can create just this chain reaction of theft and liability, frankly, on your part. And on average, one in every 250 corporate accounts is compromised each month. Think of that one in one in 22 really accounts is compromised every year. Wow. That is huge. I don't think I've ever seen that stat before. [00:07:48] So this expense of using passwords is really continuing to grow because we're using more business applications online, aren't we? I just talked about the cloud and some things she needed to be careful of with the cloud. Well, the cloud requires passwords and we're using those same passwords. Man. That is bad. [00:08:12]By the way, password reset is one of the highest support costs, especially in larger businesses. And that means that companies are dedicating 30 to 60% of the support desk calls to just resetting passwords. So. We all have to understand it better. We all need a multifactor authentication. The very least two-factor authentication and Microsoft now has this passwordless login. [00:08:43] You might've used it, you might've seen it where it's using the camera on your computer, and sometimes it's using other biometrics, like your fingerprints, et cetera. And there are new technologies out there that are being deployed, including in web browsers that we'll be talking about in the future as they get a little bit more well adopted. [00:09:03] But some of these keys, these USB authentication keys have a built-in, it's called Fido - FIDO so if you're interested, you can always dig that up and we'll be covering that. To a, you know, a future show, as I said, and I do do some training on that with my mentorship site. All right, everybody, stick around. [00:09:25] You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN and I'm going to talk a little bit about remote work and now. The security fight that's happening in the cloud. Make sure you join me as well. Wednesday mornings at 7:34 with Mr. Matt Gagnon morning drive time as we talk about the latest in technology. [00:09:50] Stick around. I'll be right back. Craig Peterson: Hey, good morning everybody. Craig Peterson here. We started out this whole show talking about surveillance here that managers are doing as they're surveilling their employees. I want to talk now a little bit about surveillance where we should be keeping an eye on our cloud devices. And our endpoint. [00:00:28] So let's start out with the cloud. You know, I call them devices. In some places, you might be using a server that's living up in maybe Microsoft Azure or Google's cloud, Amazon cloud, Amazon web services, et cetera. Those systems can all be compromised. And yeah, they're sitting in the data center. Yeah. You don't have to pay for the hardware or the electricity or the cooling, which is really nice. [00:00:58] Yeah. You don't have to hear all of the noise they make in the background, but many businesses have found that, wow, the cloud really isn't the panacea. I thought it was. And they're actually moving it back out of the cloud. And that's particularly true of businesses that have security concerns due to regulations because moving to the cloud does not absolve you, from these regulations. [00:01:27] Now we've got this additional problem of people working from home, so they're using either their own computers or maybe a company computer at home. They might be connecting to the office, but it's just as likely, maybe even more likely that they're connecting to a cloud service somewhere. Not, not just for collaboration or for meetings, but to do their basic work. [00:01:51] As more and more businesses are saying, Hey, why should I be paying for the software or hardware, et cetera. Let's just move it all to the cloud. And we're seeing now States and cities that are starting to lift some of these stay-at-home orders, but frankly, this increased level of employees working from home. [00:02:12] Is not going to disappear. Sure. It'll get a little smaller. Many businesses are going to be calling people back and they are going to be working from that office, but many people are in businesses that are going to continue that move over to the cloud. So what are the security challenges that come from a hybrid infrastructure? [00:02:35] Almost three-quarters of companies expect at least 5% or more of the former onsite employees to work from home on a permanent basis. That's not a lot, but 5% when you add it up over all of the small businesses, that is a lot because half of all employees in the country work for small businesses. And a quarter of businesses are planning on keeping at least 20% of their workers out of the office post-pandemic. [00:03:06] And this is according to a survey of chief financial officers by the, it's maybe you guys know Gartner right? Gartner group. They're research firm, so their numbers are usually considered gospel in the business world. With this remote work comes even more cloud usage, and that could be a problem for a lot of companies that have issues with the visibility into the security of the cloud. [00:03:33] Now. You might be as a business relying on maybe some permitter defenses or maybe some on-premise security software and appliances to help keep your systems and data safe. Now, most of the time, small businesses aren't using the right stuff. They're just using some equipment that they got from, you know, a random break-fix shop or heaven forbid at staples or where they ordered it from Amazon. [00:03:59] You can't, you just can't get the good stuff from any of those places. But that's not going to work anymore at all. When we're talking about remote workers cause people are in their homes and they're using cloud services that you just don't know the security level of, you might not know what the patch level is of windows of the software that's running on windows. [00:04:26] You might not know any of that stuff. Right. But we are going to see a major shift so. Let's talk about it a little bit here. We're just seeing, you know, massive, massive growth. I'm looking at these numbers in telecommuting. It was growing slowly before, but now many technology firms, particularly marketing companies, are relying almost exclusively on people working from home. [00:04:53] IBM had moved people to work from home and then found that experiment to be a failure and moved everybody back into the office. Now, that was back in 2017 they pulled them back in and made them work from an office in one of six cities. While IBM now has moved almost entirely to remote work and they've got 95% of its current workforce working outside of the company offices. [00:05:21] IBM, by the way, is a major player in the cloud in case you weren't aware, they were way more prepared for this problem than many companies. It com and infrastructure information security groups. Absolutely true. So coming out of this, we need to embrace the fact that we have to continually be ready for full. [00:05:43] Remote workforce. What is going to happen? And, and I'm, I'm on governors, the governor's task force here on education, on re-opening education. What are we going to do? And of course, I'm the security guy, the technology guy, actually one of the technology people on that task force. And we had a meeting this week and we were talking about it. [00:06:07] Okay, fine. So we've got the COVID-19 thing and it's eventually going to be a thing of the past. But thinking about the teachers that are 60, 65, 70 years old, what happens when there's another virus? What happens when the annual flu or curves. Are we going to be shutting down our offices again? Are we going to be shutting down our schools again? [00:06:32] Are we going to maybe try and do quarantines as we've always done in the past where we say, Hey, if you are sick. Or if you are vulnerable, you just stay home because this is happening more and more. We, we had SARS very, you know, that wasn't long ago. Right? That was another covert virus that we had. We had to MERS. [00:06:56] That was another COVID virus that we had. We've had a number of these things. I'm thinking about Ebola, which I don't think was a COVID virus. They're happening more and more. And as we have more and more people in the world, the likelihood of them occurring is going to be even greater. So if you are a business person, and then the case of where I'm on the governor's task force, looking at education, if, if we are a school, what are we going to do in the future? [00:07:30] And I really think we have to realize that we have to be able to have our businesses basically work remotely. So I want to encourage everybody to really keep that in mind as we're looking at this going forward. What can you do in order to make your business covert proof? Now, it isn't just the COVID-19 what happens if there's a fire in your building burns down. [00:08:00] What happens if there is a major lightning strike and it burns up all of your computers just zaps them. What's that all going to mean and what's going to happen with the next 12 months? Are we going to have another massive spike in the COVID virus or are you ready for that? We got to think about it. [00:08:21] The other side is the endpoint devices and we're seeing right now. Six and 10 remote workers using personal devices to do work, and almost all of these workers believe that the devices are secure. CrowdStrike had a look at this and said that people are naive. Six in 10 remote workers are using personal devices to do work and all. [00:08:48] Almost none of them. Are properly secured, and we've got attackers now focused on targeting the remote workers. They're going after VPN technology technologies, which is part of the reason I say don't use VPNs, right? It's where the people are and it's where we're getting it back. So be ca

James: Hey, audience and listeners, this is James Kandasamy from Achieve Wealth Through Value-add Real Estate Investing. Today, I've Cody Payne and Michael Tran from Colliers International out of Dallas market. Hey guys, why don't you say hi to our audience and why don't you introduce what you guys do? Michael: Oh, Hey everybody. Michael here. You know, we focus mainly on multitenant, mid-rise office buildings or industrial buildings or industrial parks. Anything between three to 25 mil is our typical range that we work on. Cody: And I'm Cody Payne and I work with Michael and that pretty much sums it up pretty well. We sell investment office and industrial buildings in Dallas Fort Worth. James: Got it, got it. So you guys are brokers, right? Do you own any of these as well? Cody: Yeah, actually we do, we actually just did a syndication not long ago where we pulled together a few investors and bought a portfolio of five office buildings down the mid-cities. And we've even done some development also. James: Got it. So office and industrial; nobody has talked about this asset class in the show. So I want to go really deep into how people make money out of this asset class because I'm a multifamily guy. I'm so used to multifamily and a lot of people knows multifamily very well. It's like seems to be like the only asset class out there. Right? But I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who's killing it in industrial and office. Right? So, I want to go deep into, you know, how an active investor would look at these two asset classes and you guys absolutely will be you know, giving a lot of value in this discussion. So let's start with industrial. Can we define what is an industrial asset class and how does it look like when I drive by, how can I say this is industrial and is there any different types of industrial that I need to be aware of when I drive by and when I'm going to look at something? Cody: Yeah, absolutely. So industrial is going to be, you know, your big box, tall, concrete warehouses that you'll see as you're driving along the freeway or in some other parts. These things can range anywhere from tenants utilizing just a couple thousand square feet up to a large shipping receiving warehouse that you'll see, that can be half a million-million square feet. A lot of things that I think a lot of people are familiar with is, seeing those tall, 24 36 foot tall concrete structures where a lot of 18 wheelers are backed up to that are loading, unloading, cross-docking and things of that nature. That's what your typical image of a warehouse industrial is. And a lot of people look for that and that's one of the key asset classes that a lot of investors are looking for right now. James: Well, so you said a lot of investors, I mean, it's a very relative term, right? And I'm not sure you guys know how much people invest in multifamily. So is that same equal in people investing in industrial and office or is it like coming from your knowledge in a multifamily is like crazily too many people and industrial is like a niche [03:26unclear] ? Cody: So the office and industrial it is a little more niche. I wouldn't say there's as many buyers for it as there is for multifamily. I mean, you, obviously there's a lot more multi-families than there are mid-rise office buildings, especially out here in Dallas, Fort Worth and even in Texas as a whole. But it's very niche specific. And so, that's why a lot of times you'll see a multifamily guy refer out if someone's looking at buying an office building or even vice versa. Because we won't sell a multifamily complex just because we're not as aware of it but the buyer pool is still very good. We get a lot of multifamily people, especially over the past three, four or five years, that have really started to hone in on the office industrial market as compared to my 10 years prior to that. James: Got it. Got it. Yeah. Even in my book, I mentioned that, you know, all these asset classes, they are somebody who's really good at these asset classes. And a lot of passive investors just look to, you know, seek to this kind of operators who are really good at industrial office or multifamily. There are people who specialize in this and they're really, really good at it so they have to seek for that operators. So that's good to know. It's very niche market. So, coming back to industrial, how do I identify a sub-market...how do I find an industrial, which is a really good, in terms of location, how do I say if I look at this building, I can say that this building is in a really good industrial location. How do I say that? What are the factors I need to look at? Michael: You know, one of the main ones nowadays is access. A lot of the logistics chains, they kind of make sure they can get the 18 wheelers in there, parked. That's why a lot of the users that are looking out that way, they're always making sure that they're centralized too. So like, let's say the great Southwest district here just South of DFW Airport; that's one of the biggest industrial hubs over here, you can get to almost any part of the metroplex within 20 to 30 minutes max. And then you'll have Alliance, which is in North Fortworth. I think that's a sleeper town that a lot of people overlook here but they're just building more and more bigger boxes up there. And it's due to 35 West Highway that goes all the way down to Austin, even down where you guys are at. So that's become another major hub press as well. And FedEx, Amazon they're all up that way. And you've got little pockets up in Plano as well which is probably about 30 minutes from the airport and they've got some major like Toyota is looking to move up that way. And they've got everybody else just following them over here. James: So do you look at, like for example, in multifamily, we look at household demographic, we look at median household income and income growth, job growth and all that. But it looks like industrial is different, I guess. Like you have to look at how convenient it is for the 18 wheelers to meet and compare and also seems to be some kind of adjacency with the certain key distributors like Amazon or Toyota. So is that key factors, I presume? Cody: Yeah, absolutely. And actually, we've got a map behind us.  James: So those who are on YouTube, you can definitely see the map. Cody: Yeah. James: To really, you know, talk numbers in terms of what? Cody: Just as the Dallas Fortworth airport right here. And this is the great South West district that Michael was talking about. This is where you'll have a lot of warehousing and a lot of it up North as well. Amazon's got a large center as well. So you've kind of have the same thing, which is growing a lot out here where Hillwood has their Alliance airport. And then the same thing back over here where Dallas load field is, there's a lot of warehouses over there and there's a lot off limits. So you know, a lot of these guys where we see a lot of tenant velocity and things of that nature are going to be closest to the airports because that [07:49unclear]  Fortworth because here and going to Fortworth and go to Dallas and go South and go North and they can receive from one of the largest airports in the world right here. James: Got it. So it's basically access to the airport and access to the highway and how can we get to go to other big cities, I guess, right? Fortworth, Austin. Cody: And they don't necessarily need highway visibility cause that's your most expensive parcel of land, but they need good access to it. And so having that nearby that airport, they've got access to I-20, I-30, 183, 360, and so that's a really good hub. And that's why that district is such a large district and continues to expand. James: Is there like a park, like an industrial park where the city or the government is allocated or is it like, is there random everywhere? Cody: They're more spread out. James: So there is no like tax incentive offered by any government or any cities, I guess. Cody: Well, yeah, certain cities will offer certain tax incentives. I know Dallas offers quite a few in certain areas and even if you start getting into like the opportunities zone areas and things of that nature. James: Got it. Got it. Got it. So, you talk in terms of industrial, in terms of square footage, right? That's what you said, or square footage and access, access is also an amenity. But I presume, what is the average price per square feet in terms of industrial buildings? Michael: So that is a very good question cause those can actually range anywhere between 50 a foot all the way up to, you know, building new. It also depends on the age of the building, ceiling height, [09:39unclear] in the building. So there's a lot of factors in industrial that you have to account for. How many docks as well. Dock high, grade level doors or are you familiar with any of these terms? James: No, no. This is all completely new. But it's important. I want you guys to share that level of detail because I want people to really learn how do you, cause I'm going to go to their underwriting later on. So that's going to features of the industrial, is that like a class A, class B, class C industrial buildings? Cody: Absolutely. Go over some of the rates that you see on some... James: Yeah. What are the class As? Cody: Are you asking for rental rates? James:  Rental rates and also buildings, right. I presume that's all correlated? Michael: Yeah. So rental rates, you'll see anything, depending, like I said, very niche-specific stuff. So like you'll see anything from $4 a foot all the way up to 10 and sometimes even higher and triple net or some of the newer industrial products coming out. And then you have if it's, you know, if it's in the less desirable area, they'll Teeter with the four to seven modified gross or industrial gross as you'll hear. And those usually have some expenses in there that are charged back to the tenant. As for space, if the space is less desirable, you're going to see more of that industrial gross number anywhere between, you know, five to seven. Newer stuff, like I said, $10, sometimes triple net, just depending on area and access. Cody: And a lot of times is that building size gets larger, that rental rate, well a lot of times go down. James: Okay. Okay. So before we probably go further, can you define triple-net because a lot of people in the residential stage, they are not used to this triple net. Can you define triple net, what does it mean? Michael: Yeah. So if you can ever in residential, try to charge them triple net. But when I was saying it's a triple net, basically it's taxes, insurance, and common area maintenance is charged back to your [11:46unclear]  Sometimes you can get an absolute triple-net deal and that's where the tenant also care of the roof and structure. It's not as common in industrial unless it's a single-tenant deal, but most of the time you're going to see this regular triple nets. James: Okay. Right. Interesting. Because we don't have that in multifamily. That'd be awesome. So triple net also means that if the property taxes go up, the landlord doesn't get any impact. We still get the rents that we supposed to get, I guess. Michael: That's correct. And sometimes, you know, your tenant, if they're a little more savvy they'll have like a protection on no higher increase in five to 10% on their common area maintenance or taxes. So let's say like your lawn guy wants to charge you way more, that'll force you to just find a new one at a more reasonable price. James: Got it. Got it. Got it. So what is the landlord responsible for then? Michael: Roof and parking lot. Structuring the building if it's triple net. Yeah. James: So does the landlord still get the tax benefits of owning the real estate? I'm presume so, right? Because you own the building, you own the roof and you own the real estate, I guess, right? Cody: Yes. So, well it depends on the tax benefits that they're getting, but if it's, you know, ownership of the real estate tax benefits, yes. Now if it's business-related or some of that nature, that's for them, obviously. James: Correct. Correct, correct. And I think the depreciation schedule for industrial and an office, I just want to cover that, is 39 and a half. Is that right if I'm not mistaken. Cody: I believe you're correct. James:  I think in residential it's 27.5 and all of the asset classes like 39 or 39.5, I can't remember. But that's a good distinction within triple net and the normal deals that we buy in multifamily. So, coming back to my question, I know we talked about different rental rates, but are there any classes that you guys have categorized in terms of industrial buildings? So it's just based on how old they are and there's no real definition... Cody: Yeah. So they do have classes, you've got B, you've got C, you've got A class and a lot of times that is determined by age and location and building quality and things of that nature. James: Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it, got it. But definitely have to be in some way accessible near to their distribution part I would say, or distribution hub. I guess Cody: That's when a lot of them like it, they are very keen on location. But like I said, I didn't have to have highway frontage. In that access is very key. James: Okay. What about the, who buys the industrial? I want to interview a buyer of industrial parks and industrial buildings and I can never find, but you guys know all these guys, but who buys...what are the typical buyer characteristics or where does it come from? What does he look for? What is his appetite in terms of investment whenever they buy these industrial buildings? Cody: Absolutely. So there's a lot of buyers for industrial and they increase every day. And you know, even for the small Bay warehouses, you know, we have so many of those people that keep pouring into the marketplace and not just Texas, but in the US as a whole. But yeah, I mean industrial probably gets some of the most cross product or cross asset buyers that we've got. You know, people from self-storage buy these, people retail, past experience, they buy these. We even have apartment owners and operators buy these. But you know, there's a lot of REITs and institutions and things of that nature that are big in it. But no, a lot of, I would say the past 10 industrial buildings that we sold, probably I think, I want to say seven of those were an out of state owners. James: Got it. Are they from coastal city? Like New York and California? Are they local? Cody: Yeah. Canada, Florida, Chicago, absolutely. James: And do you see that this one guy buying across the nation or it's still very localized? Cody: No, a lot of these people will buy across the nation, but this is a market that a lot of these people will look into.  James: Texas, they like a lot of Texas? Cody:  Oh absolutely. Yeah. And like Michael was saying, you know, because of the Dallas Fortworth economy and things of that nature, it gets a lot of eyes. James: Got it. Very interesting. So, let's go back to underwriting and industrial building. So I presume that's a rental of the building where the tenants...is it like usually one tenant or is it like multiple tenants or how does that or is it all the 17-wheelers parking need to pay rent?  Cody: Yeah, it can be one tenant. We just sold a very large complex off of 360 and about 80 tenants in it. So, it can be very, very intense with a lot of tenants. And I think the group that bought that had a lot of multifamily experience as well. James: So 80 tenants in one building. I mean, do they have like counters in it or do they have docks? Cody: Yeah, so it was a bunch of buildings in a business park and so it was about 22 of them. And so it was just park. James: So it's like an industrial park where everybody had buildings and they ran the... Cody: Yeah, they had their own suites and things of that nature. James: Okay. So if it's triple net then probably there's nothing to do with expense ratio for a landlord. Right, because you get [17:30 crosstalk] Cody: One of those, I believe, were on gross leases still, but with industrial, a lot of people that aren't on triple net are going that way. James: Okay. Explain what's the difference between gross lease and triple net? Cody: So a gross lease, you'll find a lot more in office, in general office. You will absolutely find it in an industrial and gross lease is going to be where the landlord's taking on commonary maintenance, landscaping, repairs and maintenance, you know, HVAC, things of that nature. And so it's more management intensive. Your expenses on the landlord are going to be higher and that's a gross lease. But then you start getting into other types of leases. You know, you've got full service, you got gross, you've got modified gross and you get into like net, double net, triple net. James: Oh, okay. And what about full service? As you mentioned, because I've seen Cody: So full service, you're really only going to see that in office. And what I mean by that is landlord pays everything. They pay the utilities, they pay the janitorial, they pay the common area maintenance, they pay taxes, insurance, they cover everything. A tenant goes in as you know, a price per square foot and that's all they pay. James: Got it. Got it. Very interesting. So let's go to office. I mean in general, people are worried about office. Because you know, people say the trend is working from home. So is that still true?  Cody: Not here. James: Not probably in Dallas, I guess. Cody: No. I think office is actually trending a lot more towards coworking and things of that nature. And that's a model that has just expanded and blown up like crazy, especially out here in Dallas, Fortworth. James: So what is a typical investor who's looking to buy office space, office buildings? Where do they come from, what do they look for in an office? What kind of hold time do they have usually? Michael: Yeah. So their hold time can range anywhere between five and seven years. But you know, we just did a major value-add project in Plano where Toyota's headquarters is. State Farm had moved out and it was probably 20% occupied. That buyer actually, you know, did a bridge loan and he's going to go ahead and get that filled up very quickly, just cause the area's occupancy is not any lower than 80, 85%. But where these buyers come from, same thing as the industrial guys, cause a lot of industrial buyers also look at office and office guys look at industrial as well. But like I was telling you the other day on the phone, we've noticed a huge influx of multifamily buyers moving into office just because the returns are a little higher. And so, we had like that last guy, California we've got one in Chicago looking at one of our deals right now. We've got a couple of local groups out here that know these office buildings really well too and they know the trends of the area and how the occupancy is. So one specifically we're working on right near White Rock Lake in Dallas. That one's at 92, 93%, and that one's always been full ever since anybody can remember. So that's where these buyers come from. Any other questions? James: Yeah. How do you decide this office space is in a good location? Other than knowing, I know Plano is hard and I know free score is hard, but how, what are the parameters you look for in terms of like like you know, jobs growth in that particular submarket? Michael:  So, yeah, so you look for competition within the area for that office building, comparables in that market to the building because if you know the market really well and you know every building, you'll see that some gives you like a better bang for your buck. You know, some will have a lot of amenities that they're starting to offer. [21:48unclear]  groups are starting to do incubator spaces where they have a smaller coworking model and then their tenants will grow into spaces that are available in their building that they have rooms. And so they'll convert, you know, a small executive office and they can charge anywhere, you know, 35 to $45 per square foot just for a room. And as that tenant grows, they can grow within the building. But if you want to look at like specific markets like Las Colinas Irving area, are you familiar with that area? James: Yeah. Michael: Yeah. So you know that area has a lot of office and that's one thing you need to make sure of when you're looking at a deal. How many other class B or class A properties can your tenants look at before they commit to a space? But if you're looking over in Dallas, like where White Rock is, our building is the only building for the next two or three miles before you hit a highway, either going towards 75 or going North towards 635. And so that's why this building has been able to capture a lot of the people who don't want to drive all the way to 75 and fight that traffic every day or drive North on  635 and fight with that traffic as well. James: So you probably look at a cost, what the VPD, vehicle per day drive on that nearby highway, I guess. And I think you probably...I mean, as you mentioned, you look at other office supply in that area and I'm presuming you look at vacancy rate as well, on nearby office. And what tool do you use? Is it CoStar that you guys is primary for this industrial and office? Cody: Yeah. So there's a lot of tools you can use CoStar and Craxi and things of that nature. There's a lot of, you know, real capital analytics as well. They track a lot of good stuff. What I would also say on the office side is it's probably one of the product types. It's a little closer to multifamily as far as kind of a how to make them successful and things of that nature. Because, you know, when people go look at a multifamily complex, they usually have a couple options. And so a lot of times what they'll look at is amenities, access, recent renovations, things of that nature. What can they do for me on a new move in? And so office is very much a model that is driven just like multifamily. And so, keeping up with the times, making sure the renovations are good, making sure the building offers things like the deli or wifi and stuff of that nature or coworking style environment. Those things all help office buildings succeed. James: Got it. And what about this vacancy rate? Cause sometimes they're not...I mean multi-families and people that need a place to leave and vacancies are pretty low I guess comparatively to office, I mean different tenant profile. Right. So what is the average vacancy rate? I mean, how do I know like this area, this is the vacancy rate because somebody can be like six months, one year or somebody can be a few months, right? Depends on the area, I guess. How do you determine what is the vacancy rate for office and what are the lease terms in office? Cody: Absolutely. So the vacancy rate is going to be area driven. And so, you'll have certain areas like downtown Fortworth, which will have a certain vacancy rate and then that is going to be very much different than Las Colinas, downtown Dallas, Plano Allen, McKinney, Frisco. We pulled something earlier today working on a few things out in the Allen and McKinney area up there by Frisco and you know, they're class B office spaces around 5% on the vacancy side, which is very good for office, especially with more and more supply continuing to come up out there. In Los Colinas, it's gonna move a little bit more. And so, in my career, I've seen Los Colinas go down to almost 30%, and come up to somewhere around 10. But there's a lot of supply out there and there's always things shifting. Fortworth, I believe their occupancy is higher than what's being shown, but that's because XTO owned a bunch of the office product out there at one time and they recently sold a lot of that off. So some of that's being converted to hotels and things of that nature. But what you want to look at when you're buying an office building is yes, the area of vacancy, the area rental rates, but also the velocity of tenants, how many tenants are moving in that area. And then you also want to look at what are the size of tenants, the square footage sizes that we have and what is really the area tenant size. And so, some people will buy a building and they'll have 10,000, 15,000 square foot units, when the area is really commanding three to 5,000 square foot tenants. And so they'll see a lot longer on market time. And so what they need to do is chop those spaces down. James: And do people who buy, you know, I just want to add industrial. So industrial office, are they people who syndicate deals, like what a lot of multifamily people do? Or is it REITs or is it some institutional or some rich guy from the coastal areas? Cody: It can be a rich guy like yourself or it could [27:23crosstalk] James: I'm in Austin, Texas.  Cody: It varies. When you start dealing under $5 million, a lot of that's going to be private. James: But is it a lot of syndication happening? Cody: Oh yeah. James: Oh really? Okay. So, syndication is not a multifamily game only is also in the office and industrial. Okay. That's really good to know because I didn't know that. Michael: Yeah. And to go back on your question, you're asking about these terms. So you want to make sure that, area driven but you also want to make sure that your TIs are not going to eat you alive. James: Yeah. So TI is tenant improvements; just for our audience, for them to know. Michael: Yes. So and you'll see a lot of these guys in office that are moving. Sometimes they really want like a gold plated wall finish out and you just can't do that for them. You need to make sure you get that lease term where it can get your TIs not in the red for the first year. I even try to keep that around like $10 or so per square foot. But you'll see those terms go just depending on what they need done to the space, how many offices they need built out. You'll see that range anywhere between three years, five years, seven or 10, sometimes 15. That's really big one that's usually the range you'll see on a lease term. James: Got it. So I think it's all up to negotiation and how much the landlord is going to pay and how strong is the lease terms and all that. How do you qualify your tenants? I mean, let's say I'm a buyer, I'm buying an office space with 10 different tenants in it, how do I say this is a class A tenant, this is a class B tenant and this is a class C tenant. And how do I say that? Michael: So when we underwrite a lot of these deals, we're looking at the tenants, how long they've been there. We can also reach out to the seller or ourselves if we know the tenant what their credit rating is. And you can give a write upon them. Like we were selling a three tenant deal out in Las Colinas and some of the tenants themselves put in their own money. They put in 500,000 in improvements to the space work for them. So that was one of the things that we made sure that we had in our OM when we were underwriting that deal and how much time they had left. Cause when you're looking at these, you're like, Oh man, this guy, he's only got a year or two left. But you know, a year or two ago they put $500,000 into this space. So sometimes it was a really big key factors, explaining these commitment levels of the tenant. James: So you said credit rating. Is there data that you pull out from them or you just look at history and how they [30:18unclear] Michael: Yeah, all those things combined. James: But is that something that way you can pull from the credit rating of the tenants? Is that a system or you just have to look [30:30unclear] Michael:  Yeah, not always, but you know, when you're working a lease deal when I used to lease back from the day, we would get tenant financials from them, sometimes, yeah. James: So based on their financials and what's their commitment to the space that's where you establish their credit rating, I guess? Michael: Yes. And comfort level and then like, Oh, okay. I feel like their financials are good enough for me to say. James: So it's very subjective then because I mean, somebody who want to sell the deal, he may say to all my tenants are A-plus credit rating, I guess. So, I'm just trying to quantify that a bit more, but I think it looks like there's no real... Cody: Sometimes you would have like an A-plus credit rating or something of that nature is when you've got like a DaVita or something of that nature in the building or a FedEx or something like that. But a lot of times, office buildings will have, you know, a little bit more generic companies, local regional firms. And so that's why Michael said if they're going to spend a lot of money on the finish out, they'll say, Hey, we'd like to see your business financials just so we can make sure that the money we're spending that you look like someone's going to be in business for the term. And you know, they're pretty much used to that. James: Got it. Got it. So let's say a building is being sold right now and some of the residents have like one or two years left in their lease. If they get to know that somebody's going to buy this building, will they start negotiating with the new buyer or the new buyer have an option to know whether they're going to be renewing? How does that work? Cause you know, that basically increases your risk. Michael: Yeah. So typically they do not know until you're pretty far along in the process. So they'll usually get attendant estoppel, which will signal to them that, Hey the building may change hands to a new owner. But although they're getting that, it's mainly just a lease verification to make sure also their security deposit is transferred over as well. And you know, you don't want to alert the tenants, but you also want to make sure that when you're working on these, they're paying what they're saying on the OM and it's matching what it has on the estoppel as well. James: Got it. Got it, got it. Well, Michael and Cody, thanks for coming. I mean, can you tell our audience and listeners how to get hold of you? You guys are doing really big deals in the DFW area. I'm not sure, are you guys covering any of the areas other than DFW? Cody: I'd say 95% of the business that we've got is in DFW now. We will branch out and sell a couple of things here and there. We're actually about to bring out a 20 story office tower out in Corpus Christi. That's a relationship that we have. James: Let me know if some of the towers in Austin is coming for Salem. Probably I can even buy one. Cody: Absolutely. James: I just heard there are 37 new towers coming in Austin. Cody: Well, there's a lot of people that are looking out there, I can tell you that. James: Yeah. So why not you guys tell our audience how to get hold of you guys. Cody: I'll do it. So yeah, Cody Payne, Michael Tran. Our number is (817) 840-0055, we're with Colliers International, we're office and industrial specialists and we've got some really good self-storage and retail guys here as well. James: Good, good. Guys, look for a specialist because all this asset class, there's a lot of nuances to it as so much of details. Not everybody can do this. And you know, these guys are some of the best in the industry. Thanks for coming on Cody: See you.

Nationwide, governors are imposing stay-at-home orders to mitigate coronavirus. That put Columbus startup Aunt Flow in a rough spot. The company manufactures pads and tampons and makes them available in stores, gyms, workplaces, colleges and universities. All of those places are now closed and it's not immediately clear when they'll open. That'd be fatal to the company if it wasn't thinking on its toes, CEO Claire Coder said. Instead it's making face masks now and has a mission to donate tens of thousands to Ohio hospitals, with the help of another woman-owned startup in the city. Instead it's making face masks now and has a mission to donate tens of thousands to Ohio hospitals, with the help of another woman-owned startup in the city. In the latest episode of our Crisis Management podcast, Coder talks to Columbus Business First about the company's transformation.

I try and sneak up on Charles Lamanna a third time, but he was ready for it, "fool me once". Recently promoted to CVP, Citizen Application Platform I wanted to check in with Charles, who was working from home, about some of the things that are going on.  We covered a lot of topics, including the post-virus workplace, RPA, API Limits, Multiplexing and Restricted Entities. Enjoy! BTW, don't forget, Mark Smith (@nz365guy) and I do PowerUpLive every Tuesday at 5PM EST, click here to be alerted, and here's a link to the replays! Full transcript follows: Charles Lamanna: Hello, it's Charles Lamanna. Steve Mordue: Charles, Steve Mordue. How's it going? Charles Lamanna: Hey Steve. I guess this is being recorded, huh? Steve Mordue: You bet. This is our third time. Have you got some time? Charles Lamanna: I do, always. I have a lot of time locked in my house right now. Steve Mordue: Yeah. It's going to be interesting for people who are listening to this in the future, we are recording this on March 27th 2020. The country is on lockdown and we're still heading upwards, so we don't know where this thing will go or end or what things will look like, but that's where we are now and the whole campus has been basically shut down except for essential people. You're all working from home. Charles Lamanna: Yeah, for a little over three weeks now actually. We did the MVP Summit from home, we did the partner advisory council from home. We even did a virtual offsite where for four days, we all joined a Teams meeting for eight hours each day. Steve Mordue: Oh my God. How are you finding it, compared to going in the office and being with the team. It was massive loss of productivity of your stuff or is it still okay? Charles Lamanna: I'd say there definitely is a slight loss of productivity. It's not as bad as I thought it would be, but I mean, never thought I'd miss my office so much. I really miss just ... you get used to it for a few years, you get everything in place. Steve Mordue: There's a bunch of businesses, I look up my apartment window to downtown Tampa at all these office buildings that are full of law firms and all sorts of people, with bunch of cubicle farms within them with people that could actually be doing their job from anywhere and could have for years and now of course are, and I'm wondering how many of these companies that were reluctant to do remote, that felt like I need to keep eyes on you, by the time we get through this, we'll have figured out how to do it remote. I wonder how many of those remote workers will end up coming back to an office. It could be a huge shift. Charles Lamanna: It definitely will. It's interesting. I was in a talk yesterday and we were talking about how when the original SARS outbreak happened, that actually is what launched eCommerce in APJ, and it's around then this jd.com and Ali basically like mobile ordering took off during that time because people were locked at home and then the rest is history, right? Those are the second largest eCommerce properties out there in the world second only to Amazon. So definitely, I would imagine the way people work and the technology people use will be fundamentally different on the other side of this. Steve Mordue: Well, I'll tell you what, it's almost prescient the way you guys decided to invest deeply in Teams over the past year before any of this was out there. And now looking back, that's looking like really brilliant move. Charles Lamanna: Yeah, there's a lot of impact. A lot of people are in trouble, but it's just, it's so exciting to be able to use something like Teams to do remote learning and tele-health and just video plus chat plus meetings integrated, Teams is really the only one doing that right now and it's just phenomenal for someone working remote or working virtually like us right now. Steve Mordue: You said we did recently go through MVP Summit, which converted into a virtual event at the last minute and it was not horrible for a virtual event first-time scrambled together. But I'm also wondering about events in the future if this may change a lot of events into virtual events even when they don't need to be anymore. But it feels like the technology needs to get one step better on the idea. It wasn't really built for virtual events at scale like that. But it seems like you guys are in a spot to really, you know what, we could figure that out and make a virtual event application actually built specifically for that purpose and potentially get rid of a lot of future ... because I tell you, there's no executive out there that's happy about approving travel expenses for his team to go to some in person event if he could sit at home or sit online, what for? Charles Lamanna: And what's really interesting is, I read Ben Thompson, he has a article called Stratechery and it's one of my favorite things to read and he talks about like is this the end of large conferences? Because when you move to all digital and you realize you get such bigger reach. I mean, you get 100,000 people, no problem. That's almost impossible to do in person and for a fraction of the cost and it can be way more tailored and you don't have to worry about double booking. That's another example where maybe things start to change fundamentally in the future. Steve Mordue: And I think conferences for years have been more about, or at least equally about, the social aspect, seeing people in person going out to the bar after the event, having fun going out to dinner, seeing some town, that sort of thing. And that part of course is probably what causes a lot of people want to go to a conerence and I have guys you and I both know that go to a conference and don't go to any sessions. Guys like myself and Mark Smith, we don't go to any sessions. We just go out there. We do that little things like we had you on and stuff like that just for fun and mainly are out there for the drinking. So we're going to miss it. Charles Lamanna: Yeah. Well I guess, the one thing too is just having a group of 20 ... that's the only thing I've learned for ... like Teams is amazing, like four people, you can have a really good conversation or a big broadcast, but if you want to have a group discussion it's hard. And that's something that works so well because you get all these people together that would never be in the room at the same time in person at these conferences and you can have some really interesting conversations. Steve Mordue: That would be the thing to figure out because in person in like MVP Summit, you guys get up in front of, I don't know, a hundred of us and we're all raising our hand, taking our turns, asking questions until we run you guys off the stage in fear. But now in this virtual, there's no real raise your hand. It's just the loudest person, the one that doesn't stop talking gets to continue until his questions gets out of his mouth and that would be an area that it seems like they could do some improvement. Charles Lamanna: Yeah, and I think [crosstalk 00:06:35] is raise your hand in Teams so you can press the button to raise your hand. I can't wait for that. Steve Mordue: That would be awesome. So you could mute everybody and they'd have to raise their hand and ... well, there you go. That's already heading the direction it would need to because that's what you'd need really for some kind of a virtual conference. Charles Lamanna: Yes. That way also I can just never answer you when you raise your hand. No, I'm just kidding. Steve Mordue: Yeah, exactly. "Oh, it's Steve raising his hand again. We'll just ignore him." Charles Lamanna: Yep. Steve Mordue: A lot of stuff that you guys announced at MVP Summit and of course as everybody knows that's mostly NDA for now so we can't talk about a lot of that stuff, but there's a couple of things that we could talk about. One theme I think I heard, which I wouldn't think is NDA, was this idea of make everything we have work better. And when you guys are building like you've been building at the pace you've been building. It's like somebody threw matches in a box of fireworks at stuff that's coming out. It takes a while for all of those wires to get connected and everything to be singing like you'd want it. And sometimes it's like, you know what, this is working darn good. Let's get this other thing launched and then we get a bunch of stuff that's working darn good but not perfect. So it definitely feels like there's a motion now to let's go back over top of all this awesome stuff we've launched and let's connect those last few wires. Let's get this stuff really working as good as it could work. Is that a fair statement? Charles Lamanna: That's exactly right. And the mantra we keep repeating internally is "end-to-end" because what you'll see is there'll be components that work well individually but they'll just be huge seams or gaps when you try to wire them up together and our whole vision has been that you want to wire these things together. That's why we talk about one Dynamics 365, one power platform. So we have this big focus on making sure scenarios that span applications or expand parts of the platform actually work well end to end and it's going in and wiring those things up and spackling over the creases and putting a new coat of paint on it. It's not fundamental and it's not necessarily something that will pop in a demo or in a keynote, but it'll just make a huge difference for our customers. And we see it already, we track our net promoter score very closely, like what are the makers, end users rate the product as they leverage it, and we just see it as we systematically improve these end-to-end experiences. That net promoter score just keeps going up and up and up and up. Steve Mordue: I know we're a one Microsoft now, which is a nice term, but in reality, these are lots of groups that are focused on their things. You've got the Office group focusing on their things, Biz Apps focusing on theirs, Azure focusing on theirs and you've got within your own group of bag things like VRP and power platform that they're wiring there you're working on and at least that's in your realm. You can make that happen, but then you get Azure AD group go do something out there that messes up something for us, or you talk about a gap, like a gap maybe between something we're doing over here and something's has happened over in the Office side and those are kinds of things that you don't have direct control. You got to try and influence and almost make a case internally to those teams that, hey, this is good or get Sacha to make a case, get somebody to make the case. Charles Lamanna: Yeah, and I think like that is a challenge. As any organization gets bigger you have, like I'd say it's not perfectly well mixed. Kind of like the ocean, right? The ocean is big enough. It's not perfectly well mixed, but I think the fact that it's actually a cultural tenant of Microsoft now to operate in the one Microsoft interest, useful listening and being willing to have the dialogue on is this truly better at the macro level? Is this a global maxima for Microsoft to go do this capability? Even if the things you directly own, it's maybe not a maxima for you and this opens the door to have that dialogue of hey, we need this feature for say the Outlook at [inaudible 00:10:38] so that our Outlook mail app can be better and we can get people off the comm at it. That's an example of a really tight partnership between Outlook and us. Charles Lamanna: And systematically, the Outlook team is completely willing and has shipped feature after feature to go make that Dynamics and Power Apps mail app richer and richer. And just the most recent example is to finally bring delegation to the mail app and that's come over the last three and a half months. So that definitely is a challenge, but it's eminently surmountable and solvable. Steve Mordue: I would imagine there's to some degree of quid pro quo, right? I mean, hey, you guys helped me out with this. I know there's nothing in it for you, but it'll help me. And then when I have an opportunity later to help you guys out. So we're all kind of open arm instead of crossed arms when [inaudible 00:11:27] approaching these other things. So how big is your list of things you owe other people? Charles Lamanna: For Power Apps, I owe a lot. But what's great is a lot of these things aren't like a zero sum in that in order for it to be good for one product or one team at Microsoft has to be bad for the other. The reality is Power Apps inside of Teams, I'll use that as an example. As Power Apps, we're very excited about that because are asking for an integrated experience inside Teams. I want it by my left rail for the app bar or I want it as a tab inside my channel. Those are real customer demands and on the other side, Teams wants to go support as many line of business applications as possible inside Teams. And we all know what's the fastest way to go create a bunch of line of business apps? It's not to go write code is to go use a low-code solution like Power Apps. So you actually can go help accelerate the platform and the line of business awareness and teams and you can go up Power Apps, reach new customers at a broader base just by doing that one feature. Charles Lamanna: So it is a very much win-win situation and adopting that mentality through one Microsoft that really the Microsoft cloud is what customers want and customers want to go trust and transact with Microsoft and not individual product teams. It is just a cultural shift that has really grown under Satya with great success. So I would say, I don't know if a product like Power Apps could have been successful 15 years ago, but it definitely, we have the environment where you can't have something like Power Apps embedded in SharePoint, embedded in Teams, the platform for Dynamics and a standalone business and having that not be dissonance or in conflict. Steve Mordue: It's interesting, I think that the companies that have embraced Teams, and it was frankly a slow go to get people to bite on because it looked a lot different than what they were used to and how they did business. But now the ones that have really gone into it are like, they're maniacal about Teams and Teams is like their new desktop. They're operating in Teams all day long now and like I can't imagine how we ever did anything before Teams. So we're still at that inflection point with Teams where I think there's a huge number of customers yet to discover what a lot of customers have about how transformative that can be. So you had to have Power Apps along for that ride. I think that ride is just getting started. Steve Mordue: It's interesting these times right now, there's an awkwardness about marketing or promoting things that make sense because of a virus. For example, I tactfully tried to write a couple of posts here recently and stood back. I was thinking, does that look opportunistic? But the one was this idea that I'd mentioned earlier, lots of people sending people home to work from home. Well, these companies that have had on-premise systems and still have them been reluctant to move to the cloud, that moved to remote workforce is going to be much more complicated than it would have been for those that had already gone full cloud, people just logging in. They got all the security they need to get. Some of these VPN solutions just were never designed or reinvested enough into to support the entire workforce. What are your thoughts about that? Do you have an opinion on that? Charles Lamanna: Yeah. I think the way we view it is number one, things have changed right now. That's just the reality. People are in different working environments, people are under a different economic pressure. There's very real frontline response necessary to go and combat COVID-19 out in the field. So things have changed. That's number one. And the second thing that we've adopted is because things have changed, we need to be flexible. And if you look across what we've done at Microsoft, even just specifically in the area that I work on, we took the April release or the 2020 wave 1 release. Originally it was going to be mandatory upgrade in April. Talking to a lot of customers, they said, "We can't get the workforce to test it. Please don't do this change, we can't take it." Charles Lamanna: So we extended the opt in window for the wave 1 release to May for an extra month and we'll keep evaluating stuff like that constantly. But we did that and that's a big change for us because we really have trumpeted that clockwork. It's always in April, it's going to come up. But we just felt like that was the right thing to do. Or we've also done a bunch of programs where for six months you can get Power Apps or Dynamics CE free if you're in healthcare, hospitals, life science or government organization because we want to go help. So there's literally dozens and dozens and dozens of state local government, hospitals that we're working with right now inside my team. And we wanted to make sure we could help them in a way where it was clear we were not trying to profiteer off of the crisis. Steve Mordue: It is that fine line though, because obviously there'll be a lot to these folks that'll take you up on those opportunities. And then when all this stuff passes, at some point you guys are going to reach out and say, "Hey, that thing we were giving you for free for so long, we like it back or have you start paying," and it is a fine line about, the super cynics could look at it very cynically I guess. The other thing that is interesting to me, I was talking about how in this time of business, revenue is going to be a challenge for businesses right now. Revenue is going to drop for most businesses that are out there. There'll be certain businesses certainly that will ... in every crisis there's always some businesses that do better than others but most are going to have a little downturn. And their revenue growth is going to be largely out of their control at the moment. And the government could shut down the people that are buying your product or who knows and it's not something you could control like you could before. Steve Mordue: So what you can control though is your costs. That's really all you can control right now. It's the cost side and both those drop to the bottom line the same way, right? Charles Lamanna: Yeah. Steve Mordue: And obviously you laying off people as people are doing that, but it seems like the time for people to really look into their organization for where money is leaking out. Because I look at historically to solve a problem like that, maybe with a business application, we're looking at Dynamics 365 or Salesforce or some big applications, costs a lot of money, a lot of time to get implemented to plug up a leaky ship that's losing some money. Where now with Power Apps, we really had the ability to go, let's identify those leaks. Let's spin up a Power App in a week or two weeks and solve this problem. Steve Mordue: We're doing one right now for a Fortune 500 company that discovered [inaudible 00:18:20] $50,000 a month. And in a big company, you can not notice that. I would notice it, but they didn't notice it until someone suddenly noticed it. We're literally going to plug that hole with a Power App at a total development cost of about 15 grand. And it's just amazing, amazing when you think about how many of those sorts of things and now's a good time for people to really focus on where's money leaking out of your business and there's some lower costs, low-code, quick tools now that could potentially plug those leaks that we didn't even have before. Charles Lamanna: Yeah. And if we look at as a company, we actually view Power Apps and Power Automate together as two products that will be envisioned doing quite well even during an economic downturn for that reason. Because you don't have to hire a very expensive developer to maybe go solve the solution or even if you go work with a services company to implement it, they can implement it much more quickly than they would if they had to go write code. And we're working with I said like a Fortune 100, like very large company just I was talking to this week and they said, well before we were talking about Power Apps all about like transformation. How do we go drive revenue forward and now for the next six months we're going to pivot and we're going to be focused on driving efficiencies in our business process and retiring other IT solutions which overlap and can be replaced with Power Apps. Charles Lamanna: So they're now going to go hunt for like this licensing thing, they pay one million bucks a year. This one, they paid two million bucks a year. Can they just spend a little bit of effort, move that to Power Apps and be able to shut down those licenses once and for all. So that's the benefit of the flexibility of the platform and just the ROI is so clean that we think that there's going to be a lot of opportunity between Power Apps and Power Automate with the new RPA capabilities. Steve Mordue: And talking about RPA in a second, but you did make a point there that it's funny how their original thought was to use it to grow revenue. And because of the situation we're in now, they're looking at another use case, which frankly was just as valid before any virus or anything else was out there. It's interesting that it took something like that to have them say, well what's the other hugely obviously we could solve. Charles Lamanna: Exactly. Steve Mordue: So RPA is an interesting one. There was a lot of talk, a lot of excitement about RPA. And I know that you're probably still somewhat limited on what you can talk about, but whatever you can say, what are you thinking about that? Charles Lamanna: The RPA, we're going to be GA in that with the April wave. So wave 1, just in a week or so. We announced the licensing details for RPA four weeks ago or so I think on March 2nd and what's exciting between the capabilities of it being a true low-code offering like typical power platform offering plus the reasonable licensing options that we have, which are generally like I'd say, the most affordable you're going to find out there for an RPA solution, we think we can actually start to democratize enterprise grade automation. Make it possible to really have business users, IT, pro developers, partners, service companies all use the same platform to go automate and drive efficiencies. So that's the exciting bit, because Power Automate and Flow have been around, Microsoft Flow before that had been around for a while but have really been, I'd say capped to a degree around personal and team and light departmental automation. Charles Lamanna: But now with the RPA functionality, we're starting to see enterprise wide invoice processing, quarterly earnings preparation, accounts, basically resolving receivable accounts, things like that. Very heavy workloads built on top of Power Automate, the same low-code tool has been there for a few years. So we're very excited about it for that reason. And in a world where you want to go trim costs, there's real opportunity to go drive efficiency using Power Automate over time. Steve Mordue: Yep. Definitely. It wouldn't be a talk with me if I didn't bust your balls about some stuff. Charles Lamanna: Let me hear it. What is it about? Steve Mordue: In one of our last calls we talked about the hot topic at the time was about these API limits and you said, this isn't something we want customers to think about. We actually thought of it more as like an asterisk on your cable bill. It shouldn't be a factor. Yet it continues to persist in people's minds. The conversation has not gone away. We've got people claiming that they're running into limits and doing stuff like that. And what are your thoughts around that now that it's actually out there and we're seeing how it's landed in people's organizations. Charles Lamanna: I do still hear a little bit of noise from customers or partners that are running into it. But it is dramatically less because it doesn't impact 99% of customers, it wouldn't impact that 99% of customers. So since it's kind of rolled out, we've heard a lot less noise but there's still does exist some noise. And the thing that we could- Steve Mordue: Would you call it air? Would you just call it a false noise? Because you guys have the analytics in the background, you know what's exactly happening. You know if once you launch this that suddenly half of our customer base is hitting this wall and you know that that's not happening. So is it still the feeling that the ones that are squawking either of that small percentage or just fear mongers? Charles Lamanna: I think there are ... I'd say I'd break down three very valid concerns that we hear. The first is, we don't have enough reporting to make it clear and easy to understand where you stand for the API limits. We have early stage reporting and power platform admin center, but we don't have enough. So there's a lot of improvements coming for that by wave two of this year. So by the end of the next wave, release wave for Dynamics, you'll be able to go in and understand exactly how your API limits are being used and if there's any risk. And that's just going to be exposing telemetry that we ourselves look at today and we think that will help with a lot of the concern that people are facing. So that's one. Charles Lamanna: The second is we have people that are using a lot of the Dynamics products. They're using customer insights, they're using Power Apps, they're using customer engagement, you're using marketing. And their concern is all these application workflows. Like imagine customer insights taking data from CE or marketing doing segmentation on CE are actually generating a lot of API calls. So as they actually keep adding more and more apps, which we like of course, and we think that's the whole special value prop of Dynamics, they are generating a huge amount of API calls. And so this is something we're going back and looking at to see how do we count the application API calls from Microsoft delivered apps and also what API inclusions should come with those other licenses. So that is something we're looking at and we don't have enforcement today so people aren't really feeling the pinch, but people are looking at it and saying, "Hey, I can see that I'm making a lot of API calls because of these other apps." That's the second one. Charles Lamanna: And third thing is we have customers who have a web app or some other service which calls into CPS in the background and that generates a lot of load and that is causing friction. Those are probably the people that we intended to have impact from these changes. And because those are people where maybe they have 10 user licenses but they generate like a billion API calls a day. So that's probably not correct. But we are seeing noise in a few places there. And that last one I think is probably, we're not going to do anything to simplify, whereas the first two are things we're going to go try to simplify and improve over time. Steve Mordue: Couple of other things before I let you go. One is, multiplexing is a concept that's been around for a very, very long time. Back when we had CALS, back when it was a physical app installed on machines and stuff like that. Now we're in this different world with all these cloud apps and services bumping into each other. But multiplexing is still this big gray box for lots of folks. And even in the Microsoft documentation, it's kind of contradictory in some places. What's the story with, we've got Salesforce Connectors, we got SAP Connectors, we've got all these other kinds of connectors that almost seem to be in direct conflict with some of this multiplexing. How do you guys get to figure that out? What does multiplexing going to look like in the future? Charles Lamanna: I would say the spirit of the law when it comes to multiplexing is, if you're doing something to reduce the number of user licenses you'd have to get for users, then you're probably doing multiplexing. And the problem is to convert that to a letter of the law is we create confusion historically to a degree as well as accidentally prevent things that we don't want to prevent based on how the language is written. And I'll give an example. So if I use a connector to say Salesforce or SAP, I still have to be licensed through Power Apps to Salesforce or SAP because you're running with your identity to Salesforce and SAP. So we feel like that's totally aligned with the spirit and those partners feel good with it. Charles Lamanna: One of the places where there was some weirdness was like say I have a Power App connecting to my Dynamics CE data, but I'm not using any of the Dynamics CE logic. Is that multiplexing? Technically four months ago that was multiplexing as the way the licensee guide was written. But that was not the intent and that was not the spirit of the law. So we've gone and changed that actually to say if you're licensed for Power Apps, you're writing a Power App to connect to Dynamics data, but not using the Dynamics app logic or app experience, then that's totally fine and not multiplexing. And that was changed I think in late January, early February because some people pointed out, like this doesn't make sense. And then we said, "You know you're right. That's not where we want to have the impact of that being." So we went and changed it. Charles Lamanna: But at its core, if you're using or doing something to circumvent a user license and you'll know you're doing it because it will feel unnatural because the system's not built to behave that way, that's multiplexing and not allowed. Everything else, the intent is to have it be allowed. Steve Mordue: So if your goal is to game the system, you're multiplexing. Charles Lamanna: Yeah, and you'll know it. If you're like, okay, I'm going to create one system account and people will use a web portal I build in Azure and the system account will then have to fake authorization talking to CDN, you're like in bad territory when you're doing that. Steve Mordue: Yeah. A lot of that comes from customers. Customers are like, "Can't we take a Power App and then have a custom entity that by workflow goes and recreates a record in a restricted entity." I'm like, "No, what are you talking about?" Anything you're doing to try and go around the fence, it's probably going to fall into that funny territory. But- Charles Lamanna: Yeah. And a challenge we always have is, how do we convert these ideas into a digestible licensing guide? And I think it's almost like running a law, like legislating, but there are no judges to actually go interpret the law. Steve Mordue: And we also know that when it's written down in a licensing guide, it almost might as well not be said. If we can't get it technically enforced at various levels, we can point back to the licensing guide. We as partners should be telling customers, "Yep, not allowed to do that." But without technical enforcement, these licensing guides are just something you could beat them over the head with when they misbehave. And speaking of restricted entities, when we last talked, you had mentioned, yep, there may be some more coming. That was a very long time ago and we haven't seen them. Is the thinking still along the lines of that is how we're going to protect some of the first party IP or we maybe have some different thoughts of different ways to protect it in this new world of a common data service, open source, data model, et cetera. Charles Lamanna: We actually do ... we are working on something, I can't quite tip my hand yet, that will better allow you to share data and share schema from the common data model, the common data service in the apps without running into the concept of the restricted entities. So there is something in the works that we're working towards and I would say at a high level, restricted entities as a concept are largely antithetical to our common data service, common data model and vision. And they were just like the least bad option to go make sure that we appropriately can license Dynamics apps. So we are working feverously on many proposals to get out of that restricted entity business, but still have a model which more appropriately captures and protects the value of the Dynamics apps without introducing restricted entities. So there, I'd say stay tuned. There definitely the best minds are working on it and I've seen a very digestible and good proposal that is running up the chain right now and that'll get us in a much better place later this year. Steve Mordue: I had that assumption since you talked about adding some and so much time had gone by and my thinking was, because I never liked the idea of the restricted entities for reasons you just said. It felt like a quick down and dirty temporary solution and I had the assumption that since we hadn't heard any more that you guys were actually coming up with a better idea. So very glad to hear that. I'm sure everybody would be glad to hear that. So I know you got to get back to work. You're a busy guy. Anything else you want to convey to folks out there right now? Charles Lamanna: The biggest go do I'd have for folks right now at this point in time, it would be go play with Power Automate, learn the new RPA functionality. It's a huge addition to dynamic CE. It's a great thing for support and customer service workloads. It's a great thing for finance workloads. Like we have one customer that went from 22 finance ops people down to three just using Power Automate and RPA. Plus if you use Power Apps, it's a great way to go extend it. So I say go give Power Automate and RPA a try. That is the number one thing I think to pay attention to and that's the number one thing we're going to be talking about at the virtual launch event. That would be my call to action. That'd be the one thing I'd say. And the second thing would be, I even wore short thinking Steve would maybe video call me today, but it's too bad you can't see it. Steve Mordue: That's very nice. Charles Lamanna: But maybe I take a picture and send it to you about a merry pigmas. So that's the current state here is I work from home, but I say- Steve Mordue: We're all letting the hair grow and- Charles Lamanna: Yeah, I had a call with our PR and AR folks, our analyst relations folks because I had an interview on Wednesday and they said, "You're going to shave, right? You're going to shave before you get on the camera with him." So yeah. But anyway, exciting times. As always, pleasure. Steve Mordue: Listen, you never have to shave to talk to me. Charles Lamanna: Awesome. Thank you. I appreciate that. Steve Mordue: All right Charles, thanks for the time. Charles Lamanna: Yeah, always good to chat with you, Steve. Have a good weekend. Stay safe.

Ian Ferguson from Jaiya Inc. joins Mason today for a juicy chat about relationships, intimacy and sexuality. Ian works with his partner Jaiya to empower people to own their desires and express their true sexual nature. Ian believes an individual's relationship to their sexuality reveals how they live every aspect of their life. Tune in for a truly fascinating and grounded chat about the things many of us don't often address let alone talk about!   "having sex is natural, but making love is an art." - Ian Ferguson   Mason and Ian explore: The challenges couple's face postpartum, how having a child can interfere with intimacy and sex drive and what to do about it. The erotic language of arousal, discovering what turns you and your partner on and learning how to communicate it. The limerence period. The lack of communication and awareness around sexuality in general. The five sexual blueprint types - the energetic, the sensual, the sexual, the kinky, and the shapeshifter. The Erotic Breakthrough Course; how to embody, heal and expand your sexual blueprint type. Sexuality as a common thread amongst us all - "Where did we all come from... We all came from sex." Ian Ferguson   Who is Ian Ferguso ? The consummate Renaissance Man and a lifelong student of Human Potential, Ian Ferguson has been featured on Good Morning America, Anderson Live, VH1, and in Details magazine. From his youth as tap dance king of Ohio to directing and performing in Off-Broadway theatre in New York; from building a seven-figure design business serving celebrity clients like Drew Barrymore, Ashton Kutcher and Michelle Pfieffer to co-creating Jaiya Inc., an international company with the mission of uplifting sexuality as something to be openly and honestly discussed, celebrated and enjoyed, Ian has been driven by his desire to create a world with freedom of expression for all, a world where people are more connected to the truth of their bodies and each other through authentic, honest communication, and love. In 2007, Ian partnered with Jaiya, an internationally recognized, award-winning sexologist and best-selling author to co-found Jaiya, Inc., spreading the word about Jaiya’s revolutionary framework, the Erotic Blueprint Breakthrough™, designed to radically transform how we talk about and experience sex.   Resources: Ian's Website Erotic Breakthrough Quiz Ian's Facebook Youtube   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) Ian, thanks so much for being on with me, man.   Ian Ferguson: (00:02) I'm excited. This is good. Good thing we have a bit of an Australian crew down there from some other podcasters, we've got some coaches down in Australia.   Mason: (00:12) Cool.   Ian Ferguson: (00:12) So the people who know the work that we're up to, it's the U.S., Canada and Australia is third on the list of the most people who have taken our quiz and dropped into what we're up to.   Mason: (00:24) Yeah, I can imagine. It's interesting because Jaiya, your partner... And it's been interesting because I didn't realise when I heard about her back when that you were working side by side, or just how intimately your working and partnering side by side, which is cool because I want to ask a couple of questions in terms of working together that intimately because Tahnee and I, I feel like we do a really good job. Tahnee's the GM of SuperFeast and we're working like every day. You've got a kid as well. How old is your...   Ian Ferguson: (00:57) 10.   Mason: (01:00) Wow, you've got a proper child, not just a three-year-old wobbly child.   Ian Ferguson: (01:06) You're in a three year old zone?   Mason: (01:09) I'm in it. I'm bloody in it, man.   Ian Ferguson: (01:12) Well you're, you're starting to hit that place where it's... Well, in my experience it started to get a little bit easier. The first two years? Whew.   Mason: (01:21) Yeah, it's going like in both directions. It's a tonne of fun. It's really getting interesting and it's wild having all these conversations, but no, I don't doubt that there's a lot of people following both of your guys' work and like a lot of Jaiya's work, which is, we're realising now, is a lot of your work as well, which is fun.   Ian Ferguson: (01:44) Right. I didn't really start taking on more of the front face role until about five years ago. I partnered with Jaiya just romantically and was supporting the work in some ways financially, producing some of the film work, and also being a test subject because everything that we talk about is stuff that has either played a really fundamental role in our life, in terms of improving our sex life and our connection. After our child was born, we had a major crash in our relationship. We had about a year and a half of the blissful limerence stage, we're in love just can't keep our hands off of each other, all the passion is alive. We had a child, the economy crashed and I moved from a place that I had become really entrenched into, into this cohabiting domestic lifestyle.   Ian Ferguson: (02:41) From stress and just total hormone imbalance I crashed, my libido tanked, my confidence in the relationship started tanking. Jaiya is a sex educator, our sex life falls off the map from going from like 100% down to 10%. So she's a sex ed educator, has all the sex techniques in the world at our disposal and we can't figure it out, like many couples who are in that situation of either just that period after you've been really deeply connected and all of a sudden it's not working the same or these big life circumstances come up and it's all different.   Ian Ferguson: (03:17) So we had a three year period where we were deeply, deeply struggling and in that period and our commitment to each other, we just started to really reconfigure how we were relating to each other because it wasn't working. So we went through an intense experimentation stage and that's where I really started to get much more deeply invested in the work because I saw the turnaround in our relationship and I'd always wanted to dive more deeply into the work of helping people live their fully expressed lives, feeling fully alive, and it just seemed like a complete perfect dovetail and a new transition for me. So three, four years into the relationship, I really took a deep dive into it. Then the last five years I've been basically just on the front lines with her in terms of everything from teaching, enhancing the models and frameworks that we're working with, and then building our coach community and just getting the word out there.   Mason: (04:20) And going through those three years to get there and sticking it out obviously then... Because that's all with like you know, when you're going through something, when you're really going through it and you're like you're kinda like... It's like, "All right, cool." A lot of people just don't hold on or a lot of people just won't go deeper in order to find their way out of that maze. Obviously for you guys that period would have created a knowing and loving of each other that's allowed you to work together I assume, but was it so... So was it... Because you're not running off endorphins anymore, you've got a child in the house. I was talking to Tahnee about how she heard Jaiya's, like a bit of her postpartum, what was going on, like having a tear and needing the internal massage, which Tahnee asked me to ask you if there are any details on that, because we've got a lot of mumma's that tune into the podcast who might be interested on that level.   Mason: (05:15) So maybe we should stop there and just talk about that, but what I was just wanting to know is was it that experimentation and looking in for different shades that you could bring into the relationship? Was it trying to get to know yourself and then you couldn't just take for granted that, "Oh yeah, I know myself on more of a surface level and that's enough," but "Holy shit, if I'm going to have this deep a relationship and this new life that's seemingly domestic... As you say, which seems like there's shackles, which it's just an external thing to rebel against. It's nothing... You don't really know yourself and know what you want it's not going to be that satisfying.   Mason: (05:56) So I just want know more of the details of postpartum and for you as well, what you went through during that time to really keep you bolstered and then coming out of it, was it that that experimentation and really getting to know yourself that led the way?   Ian Ferguson: (06:12) So there was the perfect confluence of events, working both angles here. One was the perfect confluence of events that was leading us down the dark tunnel, which was at the edge of us separating our relationship and figuring out how to co-parent as separately and then riding and in tandem with that was our dedication also to, "That's not how we want things to go. We know we love each other. It's just the passion is not there, the connection has dropped off," and being committed to figuring out how to reinvigorate that and along that line, Jaiya in her work as a sexological body worker and at that point, being fully in this work for over 12 years working with thousands of clients, she started to recognise the patterns in people's sexuality where she would be working with one client and she would get turn-on with a certain kind of technique or a certain kind of approach to their arousal or the way that they could drop in with someone.   Ian Ferguson: (07:19) Then she would use that same technique on another person and it'd just be a flat line, there'd be nothing. This is where the Erotic Blueprints really started to crystallize for her and start to download. So he started to see these patterns and then she started to experiment in her client sessions with these ways of approaching people in the arousal patterns and the sexuality and their ways of bonding with someone else, and it started to crystallize and form into the framework that has now become the Erotic Blueprints. Part of the experimentation that I talk about, it was us experimenting in our own sex life with each other, and what we discovered, and I'm sure we can drop into the blueprints and really dial that in for your audience of what the hell I'm talking about, but it's basically your erotic language of arousal.   Ian Ferguson: (08:11) Once you understand what you're turned on by, how you're turned on and what you're not turned on by and what turns you off, then you start to be able to have this language of articulation, of being able to share with your partner and know. What we discovered was, at the time, Jaiya was primarily sexual, partially because that was very front and center in her biochemical makeup, in her desire pattern was her sexual blueprint and secondary was energetic. So sexual, she was craving sex, was starving for sex. My libido had tanked on a biochemical front, testosterone was down, we were doing co-sleeping with our child, which was also boosting oxytocin and bonding chemical, which is just like bonding but not sex drive and sexual, as we discovered later, was basically zero on my blueprint map. So she's a sexual energetic, I'm a sensual kinky.   Ian Ferguson: (09:13) So she was coming to bed at night and she was grabbing my crotch and she was trying to seduce me by going and taking strip classes and coming home and getting in a g-string and doing sexual moves in front of me and trying to get me turned on that way. At one point that's exactly what she did, and my comment to her was, "You don't need to do that. That's so obvious," and that was not the right thing to say, and it spoke to a truth for me, which at the time that was not something that was going to get to my arousal. I was coming to bed at night and I would slide up next to her and I would start to cuddle and want to relax and have this transition moment and then discover what unfolded in our eroticism through that connection and bonding.   Ian Ferguson: (10:03) When I came in and cuddled with her, she was like, "Oh great, another night we're going to roll over, we're going to go to sleep. I'm not going to get laid tonight." So she's just like moving into depression, rolling over, crying herself to sleep. I want to connect. I want to have that kind of intimacy with her. I had already been married once and our sex life was one of the fail points in that relationship. So I started to spin and go into like, "Okay, here we go again. I don't know what to do. I don't have the confidence to step up and be present with my partner in a way that's going to satisfy her." So it was like Jaiya was speaking American English and I'm over here trying to speak French, and we think because we speak this different language that, "Oh, we must not be in love with each other."   Ian Ferguson: (10:54) Once we started to discover the blueprints, then we can start to actually communicate to each other in the way that the other was going to be turned on. That's when the deeper experimentation in our own relationship started to move into our own expansion of, "Okay, how can I expand and meet my partner in her sexual and her energetic approach to sexuality and how can she start to discover more about the sensual and the kinky approach to sex?" That's where that started to come together. The whole piece around the vaginal tear and the biochemistry end, we can talk about that in a minute, but that's where the blueprints started to take formation.   Mason: (11:33) What's it's really interesting in that there's this obviousness, in say, in certain instances where someone just wants on, and the other is feeling like they need a little bit more, like they need some cuddling and then going in many different directions. However, it's so blatantly obvious to you a lot of the time, which is one of the... When it's happened to me I know that Tahnee would want something else and I'd theoretically know how to approach it, but just have this block of languaging and just couldn't do it, which it feels sadistic in the sense of like, "Who am I? I know that I need to just approach it in a little bit of a different way. Why aren't I doing it? Why can't I do it?" There's that huge block.   Mason: (12:27) The blueprints I actually heard about probably about five years ago when Tahns and I were first starting out and we'd just have these conversations. Obviously, just early on in the relationship it's just like, "Oh that's interesting, and that's interesting." It's not like.. There wasn't too much on the line then because it was just flowing up, moving into when there is a child in the mix, all of a sudden, I think what becomes really highlighted, as you said, is like jewel blueprints that come up, which is something that happens in relationships, just like, "Hang on, you are super sexual and now you need something else, like energetic. What is that?" and there's no... All of a sudden it's like, "Why aren't you the same," and, "What's wrong with me? What's happened here?"   Mason: (13:16) So that's one thing I really, really, like it's always stuck with me about the blueprints and I've got to get in again and take the... Is it a quiz because we got a [inaudible 00:13:29] book.   Ian Ferguson: (13:29) There's an assessment. There's a full assessment. So you take the quiz and then the quiz kicks out what type you are. It also gives you a rating of percentages. So it's not just your primary because you use secondary, tertiary, your quaternary, I don't know what that is, and your fifth because there's five of them all together.   Mason: (13:46) I've had a bunch of friends really sing its praises and I dialed in. Without doing the quiz I just dialed into knowing myself because I always have a hard time doing quizzes and things. Even though there's no problem like, "Don't label me," I'm always worried that I'll change my mind and that it won't get reflected in the quiz results.   Mason: (14:06) Anyway, it's kind of... I've known a bunch of people who are grounded and know their shit who have really just... it's made for a really good talking point and understanding of themselves. Therefore a way to communicate with their lovers.   Ian Ferguson: (14:20) For sure. There's several threads coming up from me as we talk about just this, the context here. One is the piece of new to relationship, most people revert to the sexual way of relating. You're in that limerence phase, there's all this turn on, your hormones are pumping and we revert to sexual. So then we abandoned or just forget about those aspects of our sexuality, which may actually be more our primary drivers.   Ian Ferguson: (14:50) So as the limerence period, which is that first flush of romance zone, which lasts six months to two years fades, it's just like what most of us do in so many other aspects of entering into a romantic relationship. Let's say you're the type who was going to yoga five times a week and you have your dance thing on Thursday nights and you hang out with your buddies on Saturdays. You're now in your relationship and a lot of time and dedication and focus goes into this new romance, you drop away, maybe you get to yoga once a week and you hang out with your buddies every four weeks and all these elements that were really nurturing to you start to drop away. Then six months, two years in, you start to go, "Well wait, where am I in this relationship?"   Ian Ferguson: (15:38) So we've set up this expectation with each other that this is how it is. We're sexual, we get together all the time, we're spending all of our time together, and then the satisfaction of that, the intimacy gets too close and then it becomes the sort of like sense of a trap. That's where starting to utilize the language of the blueprints gives you the empowerment and the language to bridge the gap.   Ian Ferguson: (16:02) So the other aspect of this, which the thread that popped to me when you're talking about your progression in your relationship is this problem with sexuality in general, which is people don't talk about it. Like we do to some degree in our intimate relationships. I know people, because of our clients, who have been in relationship for 20 years and they never talked about sex. It's supposed to be automatic, it's supposed to be natural. Yes, it's natural. So having sex is natural, but making love is an art.   Ian Ferguson: (16:35) So being able to articulate how you make love gets into all the fine detail of what pencil you're using or brush you're using or the type of paint or the way you're mixing the colors together, and you don't have the facility in any Western culture that I'm aware of where you're given a deep language of how to express and articulate needs, desires, hopes, wishes, turn-ons, turn-offs in a way that is rich and actually truly descriptive and or not triggering.   Ian Ferguson: (17:13) So if I'm a sexual and I'm used to speaking overtly sexually about how I like my partner's breasts and her ass and my language, that's the limit of my language, and then my partner turns out to be an energetic sensual or kinky and that's my language, it's very likely just to shut that person's system down and just cut, cut off the communication.   Mason: (17:42) Well, I relate exactly to that scenario and at times obviously it changes, and that's where I think it's going to be, I'd like to jump in a little bit more in and do some of the blueprints because it's like, "All right, great, we know that at times your energetic and what that means. However, I'm over here sexual," because I feel like that's like the quagmire.   Mason: (18:06) That's why I love how thoroughly you and Jaiya are going through this. It's not just like, "Here's your sexual blueprint. Now have fun everyone." It's like, "Well now what? I've got my needs over here, saying I'm feeling really sexual and you've got your needs. I just want to pull some hair and go for it and you need to energetically feel me." It's like how do we bridge that? So is it as simple, in your approach, is it just like, "Let's communicate. Let's talk about our needs?"   Ian Ferguson: (18:49) So the blueprints are the introduction to a pretty broad framework. It that has the blueprints, it has your stages of sexuality and it also has the four pathways or blocks to sexual health and vitality. So there's an ecosystem that's working here and just like anything that is really rewarding, it's a 360 degree panoramic, full spectrum look at who we are and to add another complexity, our sexuality is shifting. You're without a kid, without your domestic needs and all those things weighing on you, your sexuality may be in a very different place than when you've got a newborn and you're dealing with all of the things that come up there or aging or an accident or a breakup in a relationship. There's so many things that can affect our stage of sexuality.   Ian Ferguson: (19:54) One of the routes to this, to you, anybody listening, is a willingness, right? So if there's a willingness to start to get into the other person's world, then there's a deep hope that you can really start to expand into that person's blueprint and feel it and understand it. So it's the ability, more than communication, to get to this empathetic convergence where you can really start to, even if it's not your turn-on, you can start to feel the person's turn-on through that approach and give spaciousness to it. I feel like it'd probably be better for everybody listening for us to dive into just articulating what the blueprints are at this point a little bit.   Mason: (20:42) Yeah, it sounds good.   Ian Ferguson: (20:43) Great. So there's five blueprint types. There's the energetic, the sensual, the sexual, the kinky, and the shapeshifter.   Ian Ferguson: (20:52) The energetic really thrives and tends to get turned on by anticipation and tease and distance. They tend to also look at sexuality in more of a spiritual or transcendent way of connecting with another person. So those are some of the positives and the superpowers of the energetic. They could orgasm by not being even touched, by me standing across the room from Jaiya 20 feet away, I can play with her energetically and she can start moving into orgasmic experience. Really a mind bender for somebody who's not energetic, "What's going on? I don't even know how to relate to that." So those are the superpowers of the energetic and the shadow of the energetic can be too much closeness, too fast, can completely shut the energetic down. So you move into the collapsing of the space ends their arousal. The anticipation of the kiss of like I'm inches away and we're holding that space is where the juice is, and then when I move in for the kiss, perhaps an energetic might be like, "Oh, fuck. It all just went away."   Ian Ferguson: (22:12) This is a generality, not always true, but often an energetic can have a history with sexual trauma and that is where that collapse of space and where that breaking of the boundary is the thing that shuts down their sexuality. An energetic may also give over their boundaries too quickly. They may have very little sense of their own container and what they need. So they'll acquiesce to their lover and that will just reinforce their shutdown and their lack of boundary and they'll do this because they're so energetically connected to their lover that if they disappoint them, they'll feel that disappointment deeply. So that can be some of the things that can be challenging for the energetic type.   Ian Ferguson: (23:00) Essential type.   Mason: (23:01) Makes sense.   Ian Ferguson: (23:03) Yeah, and if you have any questions about it, just interrupt me.   Mason: (23:06) No, like it's so on. Honestly I know it's just on point. Anyway...   Ian Ferguson: (23:14) Perfect, and the thing about when people hear about the energetic, we get a lot of commentary is like, "Oh my god, I didn't even know this existed. I've been feeling broken, wrong, like I don't even know who I am," their entire life and then they hear this spoken and they're like, "Oh my god, that's me. I had no idea."   Mason: (23:33) That's so full on. We haven't really brought it up, but a huge context of just us having this conversation is seeing within the flow of your life, seeing your libido in a level where you can be like almost, I don't know, yourself, proud of yourself. The libido is who you are and your sexuality as a part of who you are. We go into that conversation with the herbs consistently. That's why, when you want to have conversations like these, to see like how do we actually... Yes, you've got like good herbs in like the Jing herbs in there, but that's just starting or just helping something along, but this, it's quite often a... And that was what it was like for me, the biggest penny dropping. I haven't really gone and done my blueprint yet.   Mason: (24:26) I feel like I've been, I don't know, a little bit apprehensive, it's probably... And to know myself but I don't feel that at all anymore in that area. I'm really, really happy to go there, but just in that nature of that energetic, that existing and that possibly that could come forth rather than another blueprint could come forward, this is very game changing stuff. This is what I like. As you said, and then that leads to you being able to have a smooth lifestyle where libido can actually flourish rather than trying to like, "If I take his herb, I'll have a libido. If I get rid of my estrogen dominance, then I'll have libido." It's like that's going to get so far, but you need a dialogue going forth, right?   Ian Ferguson: (25:07) For sure. Yeah. Yeah. My mind starts to go off into all the places I could go on that, on a tangent.   Mason: (25:14) I know and then I'm taking you off course. Let's stop with a distracted, we'll go back to the blueprint.   Ian Ferguson: (25:19) Cool, and out of that I think we'll be able to touch on some of the things that you're addressing there. So the sensual blueprint, they bring the artistry to sexuality. Their sensual is all about the senses being ignited. So sensual could have a strawberry and eat that strawberry and go into orgasmic states. Sensual is the kind of person when they're eating, you just hear them like, "Hmm, Oh." They like the textures of the clothes, they need the environment to be really dialed in for their system to relax and for them to open. So a sensual type needs the... We talked about an energetic already. So the sensual type typically needs to relax to open to their sexuality. So they can get down regulated and then they can connect. Superpowers of the sensual is they can have full body orgasms, like when they're in their body, they're connected fully.   Ian Ferguson: (26:19) The challenges or the shadows for the sensual are when the environment or the atmosphere is off, music is too loud, the lights aren't right, they've got the interior brain chatter of, "Oh my god, I didn't return that call. There's a sock on the floor. Oh, that means I got to do the laundry. I got to do this thing." So the disconnect goes into the brain and completely disassociating from their environment. Smells, in terms of receiving from a lover and they can be like, "Oh, they're down there so long, their neck must be getting uncomfortable. Do I smell down there? I don't know if bathed." So they just get lost in all of that minutia and then they can't connect and they can't drop in.   Mason: (27:01) It's one obvious shadow for sensual, for me anyway, in thinking about it. That's super interesting.   Ian Ferguson: (27:10) It's not an obvious shadow.   Mason: (27:11) No, not for me, not in my perspective on that. I'm like, "Oh wow." I just like, "Yeah," but it makes sense that it's like that, "Brrr," chatter is in stark contrast from the sensuality. I guess it's like the balancing act of that blueprint.   Ian Ferguson: (27:26) For sure.   Mason: (27:27) So it makes sense on that level.   Ian Ferguson: (27:29) Yeah, and then a comparative between energetic and sensual would be the type of touch that they enjoy. I know some people may be watching this and some people may be listening, so the energetic, again in that spaciousness, they can feel those energies off the body. So the hairs on the skin, the very edge of the fascia, just like that outer layer of the epidermis, that can be a total turn on with very light and very slow touch. They can feel that energy six inches, 20 feet away. For the sensual, the touch tends to be contouring, more like massage into the tissue. Also still slow and really feeling, feeling everything deeply, but much more physically connected. So the sensual really likes to collapse that space, get into the cuddling and the nuzzling and the deep connection.   Mason: (28:24) All right, yeah.   Ian Ferguson: (28:27) All making sense is it?   Mason: (28:28) Yeah, it's definitely crystal when can... Hey, I just started thinking because I'm an overthinker, so it's just got me thinking as well.   Ian Ferguson: (28:39) Cool. Then the sexual is what the Western stereotype is about sex and sexuality. They love genitals, they love nudity, they love getting right to business. Sexual superpowers, they can go from zero to 60 in one second flat. It's just like, "Oh we're on, this is sex, we're going to have an orgasm." They want everybody who's involved in the situation typically to have an orgasm, that means success, "We've had a sexual encounter I've had an orgasm, we're good." In opposition to like the sensual, the sexual needs to have sex to relax. Sex is like life itself. If I'm not having sex, I'm not living, I'm don't feel fulfilled.   Ian Ferguson: (29:26) The sexual who's really sexually fulfilled tends to feel really empowered in work, really feels bold and emboldened and seen. They really need to be seen for their eroticism and accepted for their high libido, for their high desire to just have sex to feel accepted, to feel wanted. So those are superpowers for the sexual and they bring the fun to sex. Like there's not all the story, there's not all the busy work, there's not all the confusion. It doesn't matter if the lights are too bright or the music is, "We're going to fuck, this is good." So they're just like all in.   Mason: (29:59) And that's super like it's perpetuated... Is it like in the West, teenage boys, that's like you click into the association of that because we've all got an element of these blueprints inside of us and so that either brings like you're a dominant alpha because that is where you thrive and that's just commonly like, "Well that's what sex is in the West." Then there's the other part of it, just like you're a male especially, , just from my perspective and you're energetic and those sensual aspects of yourself are not quite up there, that's very confusing, right? That's like, "Well, I'm just no good at sex."   Ian Ferguson: (30:46) Right.   Mason: (30:47) But then that's also what's present at the beginning of relationships, as you were saying, right, that sensual nature, it's a little bit easier for everyone to connect on that level because it's a common commentary on sex and then boom, all of a sudden things change. That must be one of the most common things I'm assuming, but that must be one of the most common things that occur, is a relationship six months in or a year in, and then all of a sudden you almost need to enter into a completely new relationship and it creates these hectic speed-bumps trying to just move past just that whole expectation and just be like, "Oh great. Yeah, cool. Let's do it as we always did, let's just fuck. What happened? Why don't we do that anymore?"   Ian Ferguson: (31:27) "What happened. Why is it not working?" It's like driving blind, right? Again, back to that language piece, it's not something that people talk openly about, it's not something people... Usually our mentors are anything from our peers, parents, porn, religion, the mentorship that is available to anyone around this realm of sexuality is not only often full of shame and suppression, but sometimes it's downright full of misinformation.   Mason: (32:02) Yeah.   Ian Ferguson: (32:02) You're given some tools and you're given a hammer to do something that you need to accomplish with a screwdriver, and it's just because there hasn't been this open dialogue and even with people who have an open dialogue, they don't have the distinctions to really dive in to the full range of human sexuality. It even happens within the communities that congregate around sex and sexuality.   Ian Ferguson: (32:28) So one of the things that I'm most proud of about what we offer in our community, in our courses, is this full range of sexual expression and acceptance. Nobody listening is broken, wrong in your sexuality. We walk around, many of us, feeling broken, wrong, unseen, ashamed of who we are and this creates more of this hiding, more of this separating and silo-ing and, "I'm just going to suffer here alone in my silence." And back to the community thing, it's like there are great tantra communities, there are great BDSM, kink communities, they're great swinger communities and they also tend to silo. They also tend to be like, "We're this type of person and we're going to hang and we don't understand the kink person over there."   Ian Ferguson: (33:27) So what happens is the people who've got a kinky person and an energetic person, the energetics typically going to be more guided towards like a tantra community, the kink person's going to be walking into the tantra community and go like, "What is this weird stuff? I'm not into this. No turn on here from me." More disharmony within the relationship and the connection, the kinky is going to take the energetic to the kink environment and they're going to be horrified, likely full of judgment of like, "Wait, sex is supposed to be spiritual and connecting and slow and full of this energetic connection to God," and they're going to look at the kink community and think, "What are these people doing?"   Ian Ferguson: (34:10) This is what happened with Jaiya and I. I haven't talked about kinky yet, but because of her tantra and energetic background, had really big misconceptions and judgments about the kink community. She had 15 years of being immersed in the tantra community. and sex was about enlightenment and spiritual connection, and this is another shadow of the energetic, where they can be judgmental or have a sense of superiority about their sexuality versus all the other types of sexuality. So that that can then cut them off from this wider expression and wider acceptance of all that's out there to play with.   Ian Ferguson: (34:52) So the silo-ing of communities goes to reinforce this disconnection between people because they're not seeing, they're not having other people representing in their relationship, these other blueprint types. So that's one of the things I'm most proud about with our community is that we're speaking to everybody's sexuality under one roof, right? We all be all get to play.   Mason: (35:17) And in a way that isn't... Because I think another common thread if you're just watching Western culture, like media and that kind of thing, the next flow is when it stagnates, "Let's go try something. Let's go out and try some kink. I want to.. I brought home a tantra book," or maybe it's like, "Okay, oh, we're going to go to a swingers party." It's a little bit shooting in the dark, which sometimes gets you there, but when you don't know about the thing that might tickle you in the right place, I really like that, "Well let's just... Those things are all well and good then let's go and do them. They're at our disposal," but you start a little bit closer to home and get a little bit of light on the situation so then you can make... You don't need to seek as much.   Mason: (36:05) You can like know a little bit more. I really appreciate that because-   Ian Ferguson: (36:09) Yeah, that's good. I like that too. Not throwing spaghetti at the wall, but yeah-   Mason: (36:14) Because that's stressful. If you have a kid and you have a job and all these things and maybe a hobby or whatever it is, and your own health stuff going on, you don't have that much time. Maybe in early 20s it's just like, "Hey, cool, I'm going to go try this style of tantra. Then I'm going to do a bit of Taoist sexuality. I'm going to try this. I'll be poly.. Polyamorous for a little bit now." It's just like there's so much time and that's not realistic on a broad scale and you just said, as having these kinds of conversations, it doesn't really happen too much.   Mason: (36:49) We have like the talk, the sexual talk, which I don't know if that happens. I think it's more of an American thing, like having the talk around sexuality, but we definitely are the same here in Australia. It's definitely an uncomfortable conversation, which is interesting to be like, what we're really uncomfortable with is exploring the fact that we have nuance because these blueprints are going to show, not just being relating to sexuality, right? It's just relating to different other aspects of ourselves that lead to our happiness and our ability to connect. What's so taboo about that? It's hard to admit that this is a new area for us.   Ian Ferguson: (37:36) For sure. What we've found now that the blueprints have been out there and with a massively expanding community and more people being exposed to the blueprints, is people are finding that this stuff translates into all the aspects of their life, right? How they set their environment, how they relate to their kids, to the people in their workspace and gives them more empowerment, not just in sexuality, but to really own who they are and what they need to thrive any situation. So that's, that's an unintended consequence of this.   Mason: (38:15) Happy accident.   Ian Ferguson: (38:17) People who've talked about how they now get to understand their children better because they got one kid who's highly energetic and they've been forcing hugs on them for 10 years and they realise this and they go, "Oh my god, what have I done? I've been invading my child's boundaries and their sense of autonomy." Now they're able to create a relationship of respect and say, "Would you like a hug?" and when the kids says, "No," they say, "Great, thank you." And they've got the sensual kid who just really needs to be held and needs their room in a delicious, beautiful designs so that they really feel like they have their space.   Ian Ferguson: (39:02) So they do translate all throughout the threads of life.   Mason: (39:07) So good.   Ian Ferguson: (39:07) Where were we?   Mason: (39:08) On set rule?   Ian Ferguson: (39:09) Yeah.   Mason: (39:09) I think we're finishing the-   Ian Ferguson: (39:10) The sexual.   Mason: (39:11) Sexual, yeah.   Ian Ferguson: (39:13) So the shadow sides of the sexual, one, especially if you're a vulva bodied person, can be the sense of shame because the typical is that the man is the sexual, that's the stereotype and that the penis body people are the sexual and they're overt about it and always driven by it and that the vulva bodied folks are more going to be sensuals or maybe energetics. So a sexual-   Mason: (39:41) We need to think about penis bodied and vulva bodied?   Ian Ferguson: (39:46) Yeah.   Mason: (39:46) What do you mean by that?   Ian Ferguson: (39:48) So we're taking genitals away from gender and we're taking genitals away from your sexual identification.   Mason: (39:56) Yeah.   Ian Ferguson: (39:57) So this is for anybody who's trans, bi, non-binary, there's I think... I get this number wrong frequently, but it's somewhere between 63 and 67 gender identifications currently out there. So one of the things also in our community that we're working to do is obviously make it open and accepting to the multitude of consensual relationship styles, your sexual identity and your gender identity. So that when I speak to the penis bodied, let's say there's a bisexual person who's got a penis, they identify as feminine in their energy, they don't really relate to being called a man, but maybe they're going non-binary, but I can speak to the genitals and I can speak to the stereotype that's usually associated with those genitals, right?   Ian Ferguson: (40:55) So a person with a cock is going to be typically identified as male. They may not present as male or they may present as male, but identify as female or identify as a trans or whatever. Wherever you find yourself we are here to honor you in that place of self identification. So I choose to say penis bodied or vulva bodied simply to speak to the genitals and the stereotypes associated to them.   Mason: (41:28) I didn't realise it was a literal penis bodied. I didn't realise that or if it was just like a body shape kind of thing. Anyway, I got it. I love it. So the shadow side of the sexual self...   Ian Ferguson: (41:49) So for the vulva bodied, typically a highly sexual vulva bodied person will come up against being slut shamed. It's just not acceptable, right? So shame can be an aspect of it. Another version, which I didn't realise until about two and a half years ago when we were doing some of our own work around erotic personas, was the layers of sexual shame that I was dealing with. So for the vulva bodied and this thing of being overtly sexual can end up in a place of shame, slut-shaming, being shamed for their overt sexuality. On the opposite, I just realised about two and a half years ago, this was running for me, as a penis bodied person, I identified basically a cisgendered male, my is with my genitals, I had the good boy complex, right?   Ian Ferguson: (42:49) So in relationship to women, if I presented my desire for them, that was me being a jerk. This is how I associated to it. I associated the guys who are the alpha male as dangerous, threatening. So there was a different layer of shame for me being a cock bodied person that then had me shut down those energies in myself and not be able to put them out in the world. So that's a really interesting growth edge for me, in how I relate to my sexuality and being able to, once I got a handle on this and I played with an erotic persona that was overtly sexual, I started to be able to re-own aspects of my sexuality and my sexual started to go up in my blueprint percentages.   Mason: (43:40) Right. So you can see you're tuning in like on a yearly level and just seeing these alterations. It makes sense. You've got this garden of sexuality and you've got to start somewhere in watering some of the pioneer sexual plants for you and then that's going to help everything else grow.   Ian Ferguson: (44:00) For sure. That's the zone we call expansion, and that's where you start to be able to get the turn-ons of your lovers or other blueprint types and actually integrate them. So you're not just doing something in service to somebody, but you actually can like tune in to that aspect of your sexuality.   Mason: (44:20) Cool. Yeah, and that's a nice little caveat that I want to talk about, because that's what quite often what stops me, just I think more as an excuse rather than anything, is that I don't want to be pigeonholed. I don't want to completely go, "This is who I am and this is what I want to try," and then now realise, "Actually no, it's something else." I don't like being pegged down, but which is just a silly little bypass of...   Ian Ferguson: (44:43) I think it's the common thing for people. An example and we'll talk about it next is the kinky blueprint. So I think a lot of people who will take the assessment, it's your mind answering the questions and the circumstance of the quiz. So you're reading these questions, there may be a lack of relatedness to say like the kinky frame or there may be some kind of subconscious shame running around, "Oh well, that's wrong," or, "I shouldn't be turned on by that," or, "That's strange and I'm not going to answer that question with my true response to it," or "I don't even know what that feels like in my body.   Mason: (45:22) Yeah, right.   Ian Ferguson: (45:24) "I've never tried it. So, nope, I don't know." So he first layer is doing the quiz, which is this mental exercise, but where the rubber really hits the road is in the body because these tools came out of somatic practices and it's of the body practices, so when we start to test them in the body, sometimes you get very different results than what comes forward in the quiz.   Ian Ferguson: (45:53) So somebody who says they don't like spanking either never experienced it, they're ashamed to say it or write it on quiz, and then they get on the table or they start playing around with it with a lover and you do that slap to the inner thigh and they're like, "Ooh!" they just light up like, "Aww-grr!" That's exciting and sometimes unnerving for people because they're just like, "Wait, I don't want to be that kinky person," and yet their body says they're turned on by it.   Mason: (46:24) Yeah.   Ian Ferguson: (46:26) Then just one other piece on the shadow side of the sexual, which the sexual may never really be aware of, is that they are missing out. There's a lack of relatedness to all of the other turn-ons that are present. They'll get impatient with the sensual, they have no understanding of the energetic, the kinky is weird and, "Why do we need to do all of this strange thing with scenes and gear and psychological game play?" So they can be very myopically focused and this is a complaint for sexual lovers that we'll often hear from the lover of a sexual, is that they feel like they're a piece of meat. They're just being used for their partner's sexual gratification.   Ian Ferguson: (47:21) The shadow aspect there is just in the ability to really relate with their partner and and see their partner. The other aspect there too is also the sexual wants to be seen for their libido, their eroticism, their turn on and accepted for that, and when they're not, they can sometimes collapse into a lack of confidence or indignance like, "Wait, we need to be having more sex and we're not and you don't love me," and that kind of spin can-   Mason: (47:50) Spinning a good story.   Ian Ferguson: (47:54) Spinning in the story. So kinky. This actually really is my personal fastest access to turn on, is the kinky realm. A lot of people have associated kinky with that has dungeons and leather and chains and the kink realm just sort of busts that myth. It includes that, but the kinky realm is a vast ocean of possibility of expression.   Mason: (48:26) Did you support Jaiya to write a book about kink?   Ian Ferguson: (48:30) Oh yeah. So we went deep, deep, deep into the kink realm.   Mason: (48:33) Is this when 40 days, 40 days of submission?   Ian Ferguson: (48:36) Yeah.   Mason: (48:37) Yeah, I remember hearing that story from Jaiya. Okay. Yeah, maybe you could like... I think it's a good story if you want to share your perspective.   Ian Ferguson: (48:47) For sure. So Jaiya has several books out on the market. The publisher did 40 Shades [inaudible 00:48:57] and kink was starting to come up in the cultural conversation.   Mason: (49:01) Yeah, right.   Ian Ferguson: (49:02) Funny enough, Jaiya, when she first formulated the blueprints, there was energetic, sensual, sexual and shapeshifter. Kinky didn't exist. This is how much she didn't have it on her radar as like, "Oh, that's a whole category for people's arousal." So the publishers came and said, "Hey, we really want to get you in on this wave and you're a perfect person to go in and write the book," but she didn't know anything about kink. So we made a deal with each other, which we were going to do 40 days where Jaiya was dominating me and I was submissive to her. Then we were going to do the reverse where I was 40 days dominating Jaiya and she was submissive to me and Jaiya goes whole hog whenever she does anything.   Ian Ferguson: (49:50) So I got to be the guinea pig in this experiment and realise the depth of my kink. Like it was there in surface expression, little bit of cuffs and some light bondage gear and that sort of thing that I had in my repertoire, but we hired experts, we hired trainers, we went deep into multiple modalities of the kink experiment, learned incredible amounts about our own range of what turns us on and what doesn't. Kink is still a way low and Jaiya's chart, but now she has a much deeper understanding and has some access to kink where she didn't have it really at all before. Then in the kink experimentation... I had a thought that passed. I'm going to let it pass because I'm not going to catch it at the moment. It'll come back.   Mason: (50:49) [inaudible 00:50:49] maybe. That'd be fine.   Ian Ferguson: (50:50) What's that?   Mason: (50:51) I was just talking to the idea. You know the ideas and the thoughts come in, you just like it's all kind of it's own little adventure and maybe in another podcast for right now until we've got a little bit of extra room for it.   Ian Ferguson: (51:02) That's right. It didn't need its space quite yet. It was an amazing opportunity for me to be seen fully for who I was and honored in our relationship.   Mason: (51:14) I can imagine.   Ian Ferguson: (51:15) It was also pretty wild because when I was in the submissive role, for a cisgendered male, penis bodied person, I definitely had like shame challenges coming up. Like, "Wait, why am I turned on by this?" Or we would experiment with shaming language and I was like, "Oh, I'm not going to be turned on by being called a slut or derogatory terminology being used on me during a scene," but we came up with a list of vocabulary words and things to play with, really pushing the edge and we're doing this scene, she's using his words and I'm like, "Whew, my arousal is through the roof. I'm completely turned on by being put in this position where I'm having degrading language used about me," and I kept asking why.   Ian Ferguson: (52:05) Like I'm 30 days into this experiment of being in a submission. I just keep going like, "I don't have any history... These are misconceptions that are common around BDSM where I'm like, "I don't have any history of sexual abuse or trauma," like, "Why am I into all of this stuff?" and finally one of the BDSM practitioners we were studying with was just like, "Why don't you just stop asking why and enjoy yourself?" And it's like, "Ooh."   Mason: (52:39) That's right. It's an interesting one because I relate to the good boy and so in terms of... I mean I could probably relate of having it come towards me a little bit more, but I feel like I've just noticed recently and just growing up, parents divorced, mainly with my mum, really associating with being like, "I'm a good man," and a little bit of PC elements come in there. So in terms of dominating in that language, coming from myself, even now I can see that that's like, "Well that opens a river of sexual expression," opens something up and that's interesting point. Just, "Why don't you just enjoy that? That's an opening and leads..." You don't have to analyze that, but just watching that subconscious or that, "This is bad. You can't say those things. You can't say that to a woman," and everything that comes with it, very insidious for me.   Ian Ferguson: (53:44) For sure. Very much cuts one off from access to pleasure, access to honoring oneself, being able to see and seen first by oneself, let alone being able to present that to the outside world and have it be seen by someone else.   Mason: (54:00) That's so full on because that just opens up so much in the day to day just joy of being with a person, right? It can just create a whole dam and a relationship if there's these blockages, and just what you just said, that's often enough. It doesn't need to be analyzed.   Ian Ferguson: (54:18) Yeah. I've had some kinky partners since then and played very much in the dominant role. Jaiya, she can play psychological kink. There's two different types of kink as we frame it, there's the psychological kink in the physiological or sensation based kinky. I'll distinguish those in a second, but with Jaiya, she can play psychological kink, she can be submissive psychological kink. She's not so much going to be in the sensation based kink in terms of spankings or deep scratching or any kind of hitting or bondage, that kind of stuff.   Ian Ferguson: (55:00) So I've had some other partners who are very, very, very much in the kink and very much into the physiological and psychological and that place of ownership of being able to step into the dominant role. So kink can be an amazing place to practice for anyone who's looking to step into authority, but if you're looking to play a part and put on the role of authority, like, "You're going to get down on your knees and suck my cock," and play this role, the authenticity drops out and the actual connection and the turn on drops out because the receiver, let's say in that circumstance, if I'm going to put on this role, and that's what I did practically like 25-30 days into my dominance role with Jaiya, I was trying to put on this character who was dominant and it was a joke, like Jaiya was literally laughing at me at certain points. Like, "Phht, I'm so unconvinced by whatever you're doing."   Mason: (56:06) Yeah, I can see you putting on your officer's hat, but yeah, talk about that nuance because I'm sure that's like a block. I can definitely relate to that and especially even something that would help me in the future just hearing about it now. Like what was the nuance there?   Ian Ferguson: (56:26) Yeah, so there's a lot of nuances. One, just the discomfort of like I had the good boy thing. So being able to drop into what... So here's, here's the big shift that occurred. One of our instructors in this realm basically boiled it down to me that this is not about putting on that role. This is about an honest, authentic conversation about what turns you on and being really present with your partner because as a dominant there's so many different roles you can play in that. So you can play the role that you're submissive is a piece of furniture or a piece of meat, they're there to be used by you, but it's all within a container of a very, very clearly defined container that's consensual, has boundaries, has edges that you cannot go past and has rules that you must abide by.   Ian Ferguson: (57:29) So once you set your container, once you have full-on consent from every participant in the scene, you know what the game is that you're playing. Then within that game, the dominant is actually responsible for the wellbeing of the submissive. So some people will look at the BDSM world and they'll think, "That's just abuse. The person is hurting that person and they shouldn't be hurting that person," so all these judgements role. Inside of the context of a conscious kink scene, the submissive is the responsibility of the dom. So awareness needs to be heightened. If I'm in a dominant role, what's occurring for my submissive? How are they feeling? Are they getting turned on because we have an agreement of this is a scene that even if the stated thing is like, "This scene is from my pleasure and my pleasure, only as the dominant," they're in an agreement thing, so they're in their arousal, they're in their turn on within the context that we've set.   Ian Ferguson: (58:40) So there's this awareness, there's this presence that needs to take place to be dropped in to, "Oh, there's the subtlety of that thing that then turned into my turn on, on my pleasure because my submissive is turned on, or because the scene is going just as it's planned and I'm seeking for what really turns me on." I'm not playing at some role of like, "We're going to pull out the cop uniform and have you chained to the bed," and whatever the stereotype thing is that we think it's supposed to be-   Mason: (59:16) Which is often as far as people go.   Ian Ferguson: (59:18) Yes, right, but rather looking for like, "Oh, it really turns me on."   Mason: (59:25) What actually turns me on?   Ian Ferguson: (59:27) Yeah, what actually turns me on and where do I feel that connection to my own power? Then this where lifestyle kink, where people can start to go into lifestyle kink or really using the tools of kink domination and submission to create empowerment in their own life.   Ian Ferguson: (59:47) So let's say I'm in my workplace and I have a difficulty with being assertive and being authoritative. Well, start to look where the authentic core of what result you're trying to achieve in that situation, step into authentically claiming it and calling it out with the people who are either your subordinates or even with your boss, but really being in an authentic emotional connection with the outcome you're looking to create, whether it's in a BDSM scene or it's just in the conversation you're having with your boss.   Mason: (01:00:26) Yeah. I feel like you can't separate this from any other part of life, can you? To think that we can compartmentalize sex into this little like piece of the pie of who we are now. Well even just what we bring to sex and our own sexuality, it permeates everything. Shadow side?   Ian Ferguson: (01:00:51) Okay. Well the positive and superpower of the kink is wildly creative, just immense. I could be studying and doing really intense kink work for 10 years and really there'd be another 10 or 20 years to play in this realm. The superpowers are wildly, wildly creative. Often superpowers have to do with the authenticity of the conversations because you are talking about boundaries, consent, really diving deep into knowing your own turn-ons and the other person's turn-on, so you can create very conscious container for sexual play and sexual expression and superpowers for a kink is they also can have non-touch or let's say non-genital focused or non-touch orgasms because they move into subspace because they're being bound and spanked and the endorphins are rushing. So they can achieve orgasm without genital touch or without what typically is associated to what leads to orgasm.   Ian Ferguson: (01:01:55) Shadow sides. Biggest shadow side for the kink is shame, which we already have touched on here, "Why am I this way? Why am I turned on by this? I'm one of the weird people. I'm a kinky super freak. I don't want to be that," so that can be a downside. Then also a potential for... this is kind of a shadow potential for any blueprint type, but for kinky it can be very distinguishable, which is you can have a particular turn on, which becomes a rut, which becomes a sexual grave.   Ian Ferguson: (01:02:35) So let's say an example is like I'm only turned on by having sex in the yellow raincoat. "That's my kink, and that's the only way I'm turned on, and here I'm with my partner and that's really not doing it for my partner but that's it, that's all that turns me on and I can't get past it. So you can get into this rut that then becomes the grave of turn-on where there's no turn-on to be found elsewhere where you're going to lack sexual connection with your lover.   Ian Ferguson: (01:03:12) I want to state really clearly, if that works for you, whatever that turn on is and you're happy with it and your partner's happy with it, there's nothing wrong with it. It's all good, but often the sexual dissatisfaction, the sexual disconnection takes place to oneself or to others and you're in the grave.   Mason: (01:03:38) In the grave. And then shapeshifters, just shapeshifting in dominance throughout the different blueprints?   Ian Ferguson: (01:03:45) Yeah. Shapeshifter is everything. So the shapeshifter is like the high performance sports car of sexuality. They have the full range of expression. They're turned on by all of it. Superpowers for a shapeshifter are that they're turned on by all of it. They can be the ultimate lover for any lover because they have the full range, they're turned on by it, they know how to feed their lover in whatever blueprint they are.   Ian Ferguson: (01:04:14) On the flip side of it, the shapeshifter also can have a sense of shame because they're usually really big sexually. They're really expressed and they've been shut down as "You're too much, you're too loud, you're too big, you want too much. Why is this always so complicated?" So their sexuality can be shut down on that front.   Ian Ferguson: (01:04:35) Another shadow for them is that they can often live a life of sexual starvation because they'll fall into a relationship with somebody who's got a primary blueprint and they'll move into the people pleaser mode, turning on their lover in their blueprint, never being fed in their full sexuality, and they'll shut down and then that chain piece of, "I'm too much, I want too much, I'm too complicated," and they won't claim their needs or their desires because it'll rock the boat.   Mason: (01:05:08) Yeah, being a pleaser, that rears its head after a while, doesn't it or something like, "Well, I'm giving you everything you want," and just pretty much just become you can be, "[inaudible 01:05:17] under the skin.   Ian Ferguson: (01:05:17) Yeah.   Mason: (01:05:20) So good and thanks for going into that comprehensively. It's one of those things, especially like for a path of arousal because arousal's just like... You're aroused sexually, you can be aroused by life, you can be aroused by your job, you can be aroused my, everything. It's just it has so much to do with health and longevity. It's an interesting thing. Do you guys get into the Taoist herbs? I think I've heard Jaiya talk about his He Shou Wu and Eucommia.   Ian Ferguson: (01:05:46) Oh, for sure.   Mason: (01:05:47) You're on board. Yeah. it's an interesting thing. You can say these Jing Herbs, you got to watch out, you get pretty potent when you get onto the Jing Herbs, but when someone's like, "I'd like to have a little bit more libido." It's like, "Yeah, cool. That's all well and good, and yes, Jing Herb's and Schizandra are great, but what does your libido look like?" That's an interesting thing. That's why I wanted to do this podcast and have these chats as well, is just because we got to make sure we have other things in our awareness of yeah, like if you're going to have that potency being built with your lifestyle and with the herds, make sure that you actually can take it in different directions, it doesn't bottleneck in terms of you just mean you want to just be able to feel like you can just fuck like you did it in the first six months of the relationship.Maybe it's moved on now.   Mason: (01:06:39) It's so nice to be able to like... You must have it all day. I'm just feeling that empathy for those moments where it clicks and the awareness happens within it for someone with their own sexuality in their relationship and the pressure eases because they can like, "Oh, I can start relating to myself as who I really am," rather than the projection of just the cultural, like what I started identifying with, it's just really nice. So I'm glad everyone is going to get to listen and tune into your work. We've gone really down the rabbit hole with the blueprints, which is awesome because it impacts everything, but I really want to hear what's going on with the new work and your new course that's coming out.   Ian Ferguson: (01:07:23) Okay, perfect. Yeah. So you're going to post the quiz in your show notes.   Mason: (01:07:27) Yeah.   Ian Ferguson: (01:07:27) So that's sort of like the first step.   Mason: (01:07:29) So everyone, go and take that quiz.   Ian Ferguson: (01:07:33) For sure. So that's the first introduction. Just a recommendation, when you take the quiz, there's going to be a webpage that pops up. Scroll down the webpage because you'll see your primary blueprint type at the top of the page after you finish the quiz, but when you scroll down the page, you'll see your percentages so you'll see your primary and you'll see all the other blueprints and see where you stack in there. So fun to take with your lover so that you can compare notes like, "Oh Whoa, what's going on there?" This is either why we're rocking it or this is why we've got some disconnection.   Mason: (01:08:09) I did have that question actually. Obviously you're going to see compatibility emerging and non compatibility patterns, I guess, to an extent. Is it one of those things at times when you see like a, I don't know if there's two that are starkly in contrast to each other, where you go... Is it always possible to make it work as... Oh the will. That's what you were talking about, the willingness.   Ian Ferguson: (01:08:29) Willingness.   Mason: (01:08:29) Willingness before, and really I liked that you brought that up because in Taoism we talk about the Three Treasures, Jing, Qi, and Shen, but no one really talks about that fourth treasure Zhi which is will and it's not willpower, it's as you tonify and have your essence of your Jing, your geneti

Hey everyone, Dan Thompson with wise money tools. Glad you could join me this week, we're gonna continue our conversation where we left off with this Facebook post. Because this has been really interesting to see all the comments that came after this one little post. Okay, so the next comment was kind of interesting. This guy said, I do use a financial advisor. And I can tell you why and the risk. PM me, you know, private message me. The reason it was interesting is maybe he can tell you why he's using a financial advisor. But how do you quantify the risk this financial advisors willing to take. I mean, does this he mean this advisor is taking too much risk, not enough risk. I wasn't sure what the comment meant. I really like to hear this conversation. If he does PM him, I always ask people who call me wondering about their advisor? And if he's really any good or not. So I asked them, Well, have you ever asked your advisor? How much of my money are you willing to lose? Most people haven't asked that question. And of course, they have no idea how much their advisors willing to lose. So unless this advisor tells them exactly how much he's willing to lose, this is unquantifiable. And if the advisor is willing to tell you how much money they're willing to lose of your money, maybe that's not the right adviser at all. I mean, I want to tell someone that I'm not willing to lose any of their money. And sadly it's just a dream if you're gonna put your money at risk that at some point, you're not gonna see some losses. All right, then the next comment said talk to so and so. Now they name somebody but I took out their name don't want to get anybody into trouble. Anyway he says talk to so and so. He's got a combo that's working really well. And we just used etrade. I think, by combo, he meant he does some stuff on his own. And he uses a financial advisor as well, once again, I point out, he's doing really well compared to what a bank savings account. Is he doing? Well, compared to Warren Buffett, what is well, so to speak. And here's the here's the other thing. And the way I understood this is people look at their statements right now. And I just want you to understand that money is not your money yet. Unless you're thinking of pulling that out, taking it in locking in those profits. That's not your money. Those values are a snapshot in time. You may think that your money but unless again, you're willing to pull it out chances are pretty high. You're gonna write it down as well. That's just what most people do. So you really don't get to count your money until it's out of the market in a safe place, then you can say, all right, this is my pile of money. And I wonder if this advisor combo is ever gonna tell him when to get out. Most advisors don't. It's really interesting in my 35 years, I don't ever hear about advisors telling their clients to get out of the market. Now one of the reasons why it's counterproductive to the advisors goals. Now, what are the advisors goals, to keep as much money under management charging fees as possible? So there's always a reason to stay in from the advisors perspective. If a markets dropping, they're always saying, Hey, you got to stay in. You don't want to lock in these losses. This is gonna come back. If a markets going up. It's Hey, you got to stay in. You don't want to miss out on these returns and we're in this great economy. Here is never a good time to sell on Wall Street. You know, I remember the.com boom very, very well, late 1990s. Everyone was a stock genius. People were buying up internet stocks at a 1000 or more times earnings. That means for a company that would earn $1 people were willing to pay $1,000 for that dollar. And sadly, there were so many of these internet companies who didn't even have earnings and they were being bid up just ridiculous. I remember Yahoo at the time, probably worth about $3 billion. But people were buying it up at $34 billion valuations. That'd be like, you go in to buy a house that's worth $100,000. But you're paying 1.1 million for it, hoping one day it's gonna be worth more. That's just how insane things were at the time. We called it the greater fool theory. If you bought it today. You were just hoping that a greater fool would buy it from you tomorrow. There really were no valuations that made sense. There was no concern for earnings, no understanding of economics. I mean, it was the wild wild Wall street West. And then it happened again a few years later in a way. And that downturn, we saw a lot of people lose 50% or more in just a really short period of time. Now, I don't think we're there quite yet. But there are a lot of advisors thinking that they're kind of King of the hill because the markets been so good to them. And they look like geniuses. But what is geniuses like Warren Buffett doing right now? Well, as of December 2019, he's sitting on $128 billion in cash. Is he a big buyer in this market? No. Do we think he's stupid sitting there in cash? No. I mean, everyone else is at least buying the index, shouldn't he? Well, he's a very, very patient and disciplined investor. He's gonna wait till this market turns, then he's gonna just buy like crazy when things are on sell. And he's gonna do what he says he's gonna buy $10 bills for $5. So, he says to be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy right now, I don't sense much fear in the marketplace. Will the general population and these Facebook commenters wait it out? Probably not. They're gonna get aggressive. They're gonna start buying, they're gonna take each other's advice and then one day, you know, kaboom, it's gonna blow up. And they're probably gonna panic and then, you know, sit there and miss out on 1 or 2 compounding periods, which is so important in life. Well, here's the next comment. He says, I use a financial specialist and he partners with my company and gives great non-biased advice. Also, not fee based. And then he goes on he says our company does not manufacture their own funds. So I'm guessing this is some sort of a financial company, and he can utilize most major fund companies. So let me know if you'd like to get a second opinion on what you have in place. It never hurts. Well, first off, I have no idea what a financial specialist is. It's either, you know, some made up term, or this guy is really got his clients fooled into thinking he's something special. Anyway, he says he also partners with many companies and gives great non-biased advice. So one of the first things I think of is what in the world is non-biased advice? And what is great advice compared to what. Right. Now we're all biased. It's kind of human nature to be biased towards something. The fact that this guy is giving mutual fund advice and selling mutual funds tells me he's probably biased in favor of funds over individual stocks or gold or real estate. Right. Now, I don't care if you're biased. Just tell me why. And give me some good reasons why I should listen to you. And maybe I'll be biased with you as well. I remember a few years ago, one of the comments on of my videos can't remember what the video is about, but I do remember the guy says, Hey, don't listen to this guy. He's biased. And I immediately answered, well, of course, I'm biased. Why do you think I did this video? Right? I'm biased toward whatever this video was. But for the most part, I'm biased towards safe money and compounding. I have a biased against advisor fees that have no real value. So yeah, it's okay to be biased. Biased is not the issue. Ignorance is the issue. I like to hear ideas and I'm open to most things. However, after 35 years of doing this, I've kind of heard about Lot of the garbage that doesn't work that's still being sold today. So yeah, I do get a little bit biased. And then he went on to say also not fee based. Well, if his advice isn't worth the fees, then yeah, you definitely want to, you know, avoid that kind of a thing. Now, I'm not a big fan of fees, but if someone can get me Buffett like returns. And they're worth paying a fee to, that's a little bit different story, but your traditional advisor who's just buying mutual funds, and doesn't even understand the buffet way, probably not worth paying the fees. I'd be interested in his level of knowledge of how to invest again, if he's investing buffet style, it might be worth, you know, paying a fee. Sadly, again, most advisors aren't worth really the fee that you're paying them and they don't know much more about investing, then a lot of you do. Studies have shown that fees can rob you from as much as 30% of your total return. You know, if you assume a 2% total management fee and 8% returns. So about 30% of your total returns. Very, very expensive. Well, it sounds like this guy in this comment simply picks mutual funds for you. And if that's the case, we really don't want to be paying fees. He does say that this guy gets to pick from all the major fund companies. Well, that's got to be a winner right? At wrong. You can find so many reasons why the major fund companies lag even an index. Well, this is kind of what I end up calling barber shop advice, not trying to, you know, pick on barbers but that's kind of where you know hear about the advice coming from the barber shop, it can be pretty much worthless. Then he says at the end, that he can be there for a second opinion. Well, look, as I said this before, and I'll say it again, you need to become the expert. If you're in interested in investing, and stocks and all these kinds of real estate, whatever it is, you need to understand it. You need to understand money and investing and valuations and everything that's gonna to help you become a great investor. If you're not willing to do that, if you're not willing to put in the time, which by the way, it's not like it's that hard. But it does take some time and effort and energy, and you really need to have a desire. It's just not something that you can just learn overnight. But if you're not gonna do that, then you're going to be susceptible to this barber shop advice. Which is worth about as much as the hair on the floor. Right. So then the comments started to go into different brokerage firms that they use and up and comer brokerage companies like Robin Hood and then one. And you know, those are good firms, but they're good firms in actually executing the trades, but they're not unnecessarily good. Helping you learn how to make good investment decisions and becoming a great investor. They're not gonna find you a strategy that works. They're just gonna help you execute trades.And this is why I go back to Einstein's wealth equation because it works and we can implement it and it's easy to implement. And it's something that we can help our clients implement easily and you know, the equation y=(1+r)x, pay yourself first, start today. Don't lose money, let it compound and leverage for exponential growth. It's a pretty simple equation. And since we're on the topic of stocks, don't lose money should be the focus. That is probably the biggest wealth killer is when you lose money, you lose compounding, you lose time. You don't have to be a market or a stock genius. You don't have to tie markets. You don't have to take any advice from the barbershop crew. Because it's not gonna get you there in the long run anyway, you've got to be smart be deliberate be compounding be safe with your money and wealth on naturally follow. Okay, so that's it for this video. If you have any questions, shoot them to questions at wise money tools.com, we'll answer them just as quick as I can. Also make a comment below. Don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to talk about this stuff more in detail in your specific situation, just click on the time trade link below and we can have a quick conversation. That's it for this week. Until next time, take care.

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Atrium Health doctor Mark Vanderwel answers questions on the minds of many parents these days. We will be adding a transcription later today. Quick turn around on this episode! If you saw the original Facebook live, skip ahead 17 minutes - it dropped out after some audio issues but Stacey & Mark picked it back up again, off of FB. You can watch the full interview here Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode Transcription Stacey Simms  0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by one drop created for people with diabetes by people who have diabetes by real good foods real food you feel good about eating by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom.   Announcer  0:19 This is diabetes connections with Stacey Sims.   Stacey Simms  0:24 Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the show. So glad to have you here. I hope these episodes are helping. Today we are talking with a pediatric endocrinologist starting off by talking about Covid 19, of course, and things that people with diabetes specifically type one needs to keep in mind but then going down the line of listener questions things that my local Facebook group chimed in with things that the diabetes connections group chimed in with. Because if you're not seeing your endocrinologist for longer than expected, which is the case for a lot of us kids and adults, what should you You'll be doing and that's a lot of what we talked about what to do in between how to make sure that you are taking care of what you need to take care of some things you might not have thought about. And just a great chat with Dr. Mark Vanderwel, this was originally done as a Facebook Live Alright, that's only half the truth. This was originally done as a stream yard which is a an audio and video hosting system hosted Facebook Live, which crapped out halfway through and then mark and I jumped onto zoom and record it that way. So the whole video I kind of stitched it together. The whole video is up on YouTube, on diabetes connections there. It is also on our Facebook page. And here is the audio. That's what we're running is the audio of the initial Facebook Live and then everything that you didn't hear. So if you watch the Facebook Live already, the new stuff is about 17 minutes in from the beginning of the interview. If you want to skip ahead, I'm not coming back at the end of the interview. I do want to say, though, that I appreciate all of the messages I'm getting about, you know, putting out episodes. Look, we're all looking for things to do at our homes. We're all looking for good, reliable information. I am hoping to do more episodes like this more zoom Facebook stuff. So let me know what you'd like to hear. I've also been collecting audio from you from people in the audience. And I'm going to be releasing that episode and kind of figuring out how to use that great audio people just keep me posted on what's happening in their homes and what's on their minds. So I'm not really sticking to a schedule. And I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm sorry, if you were expecting every episode on Tuesday, and sometimes on Thursdays like we normally do, but I don't know about you. I've already lost all track of days of the week. So we're just gonna put out episodes when they're ready to go. And if you want to still listen on Tuesdays, that's awesome. If you want to let me know that that is or isn't working for you. That's great, too. I just think we all need to be here for each other in these wild times. Thank you so much. All right, so here is my talk with atrium health Dr. Mark Vanderwel, welcome to everybody who is watching. I'm so glad to have you with me for this little bit of an unusual circumstances bear with us. This is the first time I've done something like this. I am Stacey Simms, the host of diabetes connections and with me is Dr. Mark Vanderwel, a pediatric endocrinologist here in the Charlotte, North Carolina area with atrium Health. Dr. Vanderwel. Thanks for joining me,   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  3:26 Stacey. It's an honor as always,   Stacey Simms  3:29 well, we should say before we get going, we do have some disclaimers. But the very first thing in full disclosure that people need to know is that this is my son's endocrinologist and I've known Dr. V, as I've called him many times on the show and in my book for more than 13 years now. So we've never done an interview.   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  3:48 Yeah. At least recorded interview for for diabetes connections. We did some back in your radio days. Oh, that's right.   Stacey Simms  3:56 Yeah, I thought you were implying that I like interviewed you when I All right.   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  4:02 So it has been a long time since we've communicated it never on this platform.   Stacey Simms  4:05 Well, I really appreciate you jumping in because as you know, people have a lot of questions nervous times right now. So the The first thing we need to do is is do some disclaimers, obviously, while Dr. Vanderwel is our pediatric endocrinologist, he is not yours. So please, any comments questions that you may have addressed them to your own physician as well? Nothing I will put words in your mouth here, nothing that Dr. Vanderwel says today should be taken as your own personal medical advice. We're here to get general answers to general questions. And that's really about it. So I'm gonna put you on the spot a little bit, I think. But as you listen and watch at home, just you know, let's use some common sense here.   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  4:43 Yes, I'm not speaking for the pediatric endocrinology community in general. I'm speaking for myself and different physicians have different perspectives on how they take care of kids with diabetes. Different physicians will have different perspectives on Covid 19. And what I am saying is my perspective And it will not even apply universally to all of the patients I take care of because we know you are all different. Similarly, I am not a pediatric infectious disease specialist. I'm not I am not an epidemiologist, and I'm not a fortune teller. And I think we're all worried and we do not know what's going to happen in the future. And a lot of what we're talking about is just predictive, then we don't know.   Stacey Simms  5:21 All right, so good things to keep in mind. Also, this is first being broadcast live on Facebook. If for some reason as you're watching it, just bonks out or something crazy happens. We're recording the audio, this will be rebroadcast as a podcast, it may be broadcast in video in some other forms. If you have questions or comments. We're using technology called stream yard, and I can see your comments on Facebook, but we're not actually on Facebook. So there's a big delay, most likely, so bear with us. And I do have a lot of questions that I took in advance. So if we don't get to your question today, I promise it may not be with Dr. Vanderwel schedules permitting, but we are going to be addressing Senior questions going forward. And you know, we're just here to see what we can do. So we want to just jump right in. Sure. Let's go. All right. So my first question is really just about what you're hearing these days because I'm talking to you at home, you're not in the office offices is closed, but are you still getting close? Okay, so what are people asking?   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  6:16 Yeah, so, you know, I think the the primary things are, will we still have appointments? And the answer is we will eventually have virtual appointments. Although a lot of people will also need to be rescheduled, we don't only take care of kids with diabetes, and there are some conditions that we do need to see face to face. In general though, I think most of our kids with Type One Diabetes will be able to seen by a virtual visit, and we'll talk a little bit about that in just a minute. We do still have nurses answering phone calls in our office, I'm not sure what other offices are doing. So we have nurses answering phone calls. We have a physician that's on call 24 seven for hospital based medicine. And so we will we are creating a schedule. That's why our office is closed. We're working on developing virtual visits. And we've never done this before the platform that atrium uses was originally designed for perhaps five, six pediatricians to use to handle only general pediatric calls. And now this platform is being spread out to be used by pediatric specialists, as well as general pediatricians. And I think more than 100 physicians and, uh, and other providers are going to be on this platform. So we're still learning how to do it. And that's why we canceled appointments for a few weeks, but we will have virtual visits up and running hopefully, by next week, Tuesday,   Stacey Simms  7:34 because we're going to be in that soup, right? Yeah.   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  7:38 Your name on my schedule when I was telling everyone that exactly.   Stacey Simms  7:43 Alright, well, I won't call your office and ask what you're doing with me. I will let them reach out to us. When you're talking about virtual and again, this is kind of specific to your office. I don't even know yet. Do we on the other side have to do anything yet or you'll read? Yeah, we'll watch. No,   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  7:58 we we Will for our type one diabetes patients will likely have a medical assistant call you first maybe on the day of the appointment maybe beforehand to review any changes in medications, any new allergies, the types of things they usually ask you while they were checking you back in. And then in preparation for the phone call with a physician, we are going to ask you to gather diabetes data for us whether it's a pump, download a CGM, download a meter download, and that'll be the main thing that we as physicians will review. So we'll tell you more. We'll try to talk through a little bit more about how to do that. Although hopefully you all know how to do that. The physician will also will hopefully again, this is all new. We'll have all that information online.   Stacey Simms  8:42 If you're watching, you kind of saw me roll my eyes there. Dr. Vanderwel knows this but it's a little embarrassing to admit, I never upload anything in advance. I tell them please don't be mad at me. I think the only time I ever logged into T Connect is to upgrade the pump. So   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  8:57 well you know, I think the thing is, we We'll be able to get that data without, without advanced uploading, I don't want to come that 100%. But I think if your data is there, we should be able to access it. But we're gonna learn that over the next three to five days.   Stacey Simms  9:12 That's what we're all be learning it, I am sure. Um, in terms of questions that people have in between these appointments, you know, one that came to mind this morning was, you know, if I, if I need refills, if I'm worried about supplies, are you here? I know most people just call their physician pharmacies are open, but are you hearing anything about issues, shortages, that sort of thing with supplies   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  9:35 whatsoever, and I hope we don't, um, you know, Covid 19 is going to affect people in every sector. And I hope we don't get to a stage where there's problems with pharmaceutical production at this point, there is no anticipated problem with production of insulin production of test strips production with any other diabetes related spies. And so No, I do not foresee that as a problem. I know there's the temptation to stockpile And that's one of the things that we've seen in the general public, obviously, with toilet paper, hand sanitizer, etc. And there's that desire Should I stockpile my insulin? Well, we can't commit insurance fraud. And so as physicians, I cannot write a prescription to your pharmacy saying suddenly that a child who used to use 20 units of insulin a day is all of a sudden requiring 200 units of insulin per day, so that your insurance will cover additional insulin, I can't do that. That's illegal. And so we will be honest with the pharmacies. I'm not sure how you can get extra insulin just in case that might be something better to work with your pharmacy in terms of what they will cover or what they will allow your insurance to cover. But I do not foresee a deficiency in any diabetes related supplies.   Stacey Simms  10:45 Let's jump in and talk about Covid 19 best that we can. One of the questions that seems to be coming up over and over again is you know, we've all seen in the early days of this at least, the charts that came in from China and Italy saying they're the comorbidities and diabetes Sure, can you do you know what that means? Because one of the questions was, is it all type two is it you know, work?   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  11:06 Right so earlier this morning I saw some data recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine related to the children 10 and under. And the only fatality in the Chinese data that was published was a 10 month old, who had had intussusception, which is basically when your intestines telescope on each other. And so the child was already previously ill because of that, and there were no other fatalities in that population under age 10. I do not have the data for other age groups stratified out but that was what I saw on the New England Journal of Medicine earlier today. When the word diabetes is used, obviously, that is a big word and often refers to both type one and type two diabetes. And so as far as I can tell from all the Chinese data, when it says diabetes is referring to the big group of both and everyone's worried at greater risk, because I have type one diabetes, or let's face it type two diabetes? And the answer is, we do not think that people with type one or type two diabetes are at any greater risk of contracting Covid 19 than the general population. So there's no increased risk of picking up this virus as far as we know. Now data changes every day. That's the caveat here. We are still learning but at this point, there's no reason to think that people with diabetes type one or two are more likely to get Covid 19. Just like any virus, whether it's the flu, whether it's the cold, being sick, when you have diabetes makes taking care of diabetes more difficult, and we see that frequently during flu season, that when people are feeling sick, and they may not be eating or drinking quite as well, they have the predisposition to go into diabetic ketoacidosis. And so my answer to how do people with type one diabetes are people who have children who have type one diabetes, better take care of their children, either if They have been exposed to the virus or if they are already showing symptoms of a viral infection. And the answer is us you're sick. And by Sick Day protocol, I mean check for ketones. Even if your child's blood sugar is 124, you can still get ketones if they are not eating or drinking very well. So remember, ketones are what happened, or what happens when your muscles become desperate for energy. And usually with people with diabetes that happens when you don't have enough insulin in your system to help your body take the sugar out of the bloodstream and get it into the muscle cell to be used for energy. But sometimes ketones can happen if you're just not eating or drinking very well. And so ketones can happen even with a blood sugar 124 if your child has been sick, or if she is vomiting or if he is not eating very well because he feels sick. ketones also can be happening more often in the presence of fever. So although as far as we know right now, nausea and vomiting are not necessarily symptoms of Covid 19 like they are the flu. For example, fever is When you develop fever, that can also cause greater metabolic need, your muscles become more desperate for energy that can lead to the production of ketones and cause an increased risk of diabetic ketoacidosis. So my summary is related to kovat, 19 and diabetes, your child is not at greater risk, their immune system should still work just fine to fight off the virus However, they are at greater risk for developing diabetic ketoacidosis in the context of a viral illness.   Stacey Simms  14:29 A couple of follow up questions on that with keep checking for ketones. Do you recommend a keto blood meter? Are you comfortable with sticks and easily?   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  14:40 Yeah, I mean, most people check urine for ketones a blood ketone meter can give you more up to date information, for example, that tells you what's in your blood sugar level. That's what's in your blood right now. Whereas your urine is often saying, well, we made this urine an hour ago and it's been sitting in the bladder for an hour so it's not as up to date as before. glucometer as a blood ketone meter is, but still I think you can get the information you need from, from urine, ketosis, I don't feel you have to rush out and get a blood ketone checker just because of our current situation. I mean,   Stacey Simms  15:13 I'll be honest with you, and I don't know if this is true confessions time, we've never we've never purchased a blood ketones. This was the time I thought maybe, you know, the back of my head was like, should I get on Amazon? And then I got on Amazon, and there were so many and I thought, oh my god, I'm gonna buy a terrible one. So, um, stick with what we know maybe for me?   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  15:31 Yeah, I mean, there are many other things to worry about. And if you felt comfortable checking your child's urine for ketones, there's no need to suddenly change to use a blood glucose blood ketone meter.   Stacey Simms  15:42 Well, he's 15. So maybe,   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  15:43   Stacey Simms  15:46 I'm sorry, this if you're just joining us, we did have a bunch of disclaimers that this is not medical advice you should be taking personally, but this is my son's pediatric endocrinologist. So I might sneak in some personal questions. We'll see. But the follow up question. fever. And then I'm going to ask you that question about repro fantasy. Before I even get to that one, do you recommend? I've heard that sometimes it's better to let the fever go, you know, not to 104 but to 101, things like that.   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  16:17 That is a great question Stacy and I am no longer a general I should say this. I am board certified in general pediatrics, but I have not practiced general pediatrics for 15 years. However, that all being said, fevers makes you uncomfortable. When your temperature is high, you don't feel good, but many people are excessively afraid of fever as something that can hurt you, either in the short term or the long term and in general fever just makes you uncomfortable. So when we're sick, and we have a fever, we often for other illnesses have taken an antibiotic whether it's acetaminophen, whether it's ibuprofen, and what some, some French suggested Scientists have suggested is that ibuprofen and other anti inflammatories may blunt your immune response as of right now that information what's the exact word I had it pulled up is still up for debate. It is not necessarily something that is. That is a stocking answer that we say you must not use ibuprofen in the case of a fever related to Covid 19 unproven was the word I was looking for unproven so let's let's get the elephant out of the bag. What is killing people with Covid 19 is not fever. What is killing people with Covid 19 is respiratory distress is the inability to get breath in and children with diabetes are at no greater risk for developing that than children who don't have diabetes when it comes terms in terms of managing fever. Yes, ibuprofen is a anti inflammatory, ibuprofen at this point. We don't know if it's safe or not. My recommendation, though, is is to say, you know, we want to make sure you're drinking. We want to make sure you can keep fluids down. And if you are so uncomfortable that you can't drink or keep fluids down because of the high fever, then yes, we probably should treat the fever and at first maybe you treat with IV or with acetaminophen. But if all you have is ibuprofen, and you're you're miserable, at this point, it's still unproven that ibuprofen will make Covid 19 worse or prevent you to impair your ability to fight it off.   Stacey Simms  18:27 Well, and will continue to follow that obviously,   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  18:29 just new information.   Stacey Simms  18:31 It's unproven, but I mean, I can't lie. I still you know, I take ibuprofen here and there I immediately was like, No, because it's it's scary.   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  18:39 Sure. Yeah.   Stacey Simms  18:41 I went and checked everything in the house. How much acetaminophen do we have? What What else? Oh, because acetaminophen isn't so many cold medicines, sir. Let me ask you that people with type one and type two people with diabetes. Let's just say that who use CGM know that with Tylenol acetaminophen come warnings with death. calm. Now my understanding is Dexcom je six you can take 1000 milligrams of Tylenol safely by safely means it's not going to burn out your sensor you can is nothing to do with them anything beyond the sensor we're talking about here is that what you were understanding?   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  19:15 My understanding and just for clarification even in previous versions of Dexcom if you're using g five if you're using g four acetaminophen does not prevent it from working. It just may mean the readings it gives you are not as accurate as they might be without acetaminophen in your system. But that's also my understanding for the for the Dexcom g six,   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  19:35 just think or stick. Agreed?   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  19:37 Yeah, if you feel your ducks comm isn't accurate whether you have acetaminophen on board or whether you don't have acetaminophen on board, poke your finger.   Stacey Simms  19:46 Right? Which means that a lot of people need to make sure that not only do we have a meter and test strips, but that we have the batteries or that our stuff is plugged in because um I know A lot of us are very reliant on CGM. Let's just put it that way. And I'm looking at my phone, not to be rude, but to look at the next few questions. So as you're watching,   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  20:10 I know you go Okay, fair enough.   Stacey Simms  20:15 That was more for these guys. But seriously, um, I'm curious too, with, with not knowing when many of us will see our children's, endo next, or if we're adults are watching. Are there things that we should be doing? To check in between? I mean, I know that I'll give you an example. You always check penny for you know, scar tissue.   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  20:40 Right? Like lipohypertrophy. Exactly. Okay,   Stacey Simms  20:42 so go for it. Tell us what we do. Yeah,   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  20:43 so, so lipohypertrophy is when you will put your infusion side in the same place too often, or you give yourself insulin injections in the same place too often. And the downside of that is not only does it look funny, but it can prevent the insulin that you give yourself from getting into The bloodstream, and then it doesn't get from the bloodstream to the eventual target tissues of liver and muscle. So if you are thinking you're giving yourself a bolus, but you're giving it giving it into an area of life or hypertrophy, then perhaps the insulin isn't doing what it needs to do. And that can obviously be dangerous and increase your risk of decay. So, yes, I do think that parents should be checking your child for life or hypertrophy in the same way that their endocrinologist probably does regularly. And the thing that I would probably say is, the easiest way to do is just make sure it doesn't feel like a tricep, you know, flex your tricep right here. And you can feel a little bit of muscle tissue right there. And light by hypertrophy feels a lot like that. It feels kind of clumpy. It doesn't hurt the child, but it feels it like oh, it seems like there's a big clump of subcutaneous tissue here. You can even see like oh hypertrophy a lot of times and I might wind up doing that when I'm doing virtual visits is just have the kid in the room and say, Show me where you Put your palm but just look to make sure it's not looking clumpy now, I'm not going to do anything. Like make them show me their family or anything like that. But you know, their arms, their belly, that sort of stuff. Yeah, I might do that at the opposite.   Stacey Simms  22:13 That makes a lot of sense, though. You know. And another thing I was looking at my list of questions when we were talking about supplies, one of the interesting things is people seem to be posting quite a bit about not being able to get those little alcohol wipes. Yeah, we haven't used those in a very   religiously for years. Sure, sure. Is that something people need to be concerned about? Should I be getting out the rubbing alcohol and checking to make sure as a pediatric   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  22:36 endocrinologist I should say the standard line Yes, the proper protocol for either giving an insulin injection or putting a new infusion site in or putting a new Dexcom in or poking a finger is to wipe that area with alcohol first. That being said, You are probably not the only family. I take care of Stacy where your child does not use rubbing out Color an alcohol swab every time. So yes, we want clean skin. We know that giving an injection or anything that punctures the skin. without alcohol, there is a slightly increased risk of getting an infected site. There's bacteria everywhere. Obviously there are viruses everywhere. But when we're thinking about using alcohol swabs, we're thinking about killing the bacteria on the skin or removing the bacteria from the skin so that you can give a cleaner injection, or a cleaner infusion site or a cleaning Dexcom or cleaner Dexcom site etc. So if you can't get alcohol swabs, you still need to give your child insulin and you still need to figure out what her blood sugar is. So all in all, what's better to give a shot with alcohol to give a shot without alcohol swabs or to give no shot at all. They go in that order best is with second best is without third best is no insulin at all in that's not best. That's bad news. So   Stacey Simms  24:00 So, you know, another thing, that I have a whole bunch of questions here that I'm trying to get to the right order to go in,   when, when we're talking about these in between visits for a long time, and again, I know that you may be limited as what you can say, because we are talking in official capacity. So some of this is on, you know, I don't say on the record off the record, but you'll understand. So there are a lot of people who are very comfortable adjusting pump settings. Sure. There are a lot of people who aren't, you know, what's your advice for a family? And this was a question that came up in our group. I'll say, Michelle asked this, how do you advise or empower, newer diagnose parents on taking pump settings into their own hands? You know, are there ways to tell when something is a basal issue or a QRP? Sure.   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  24:46 Yeah, so first of all, I'm speaking for myself, I'm not speaking for every pediatric endocrinologist out there. I feel comfortable with my patients adjusting insulin settings without my permission, you do not need my permission to adjust your pump settings or your insulin dose. Is, however other pediatric endocrinologist may feel differently. I'm not speaking for all of us. In general, if your basal rate needs adjustment, that means that your child has been going a long time without eating. And her blood sugar either goes up, or her blood sugar goes down in the absence of all other factors. Best time is overnight. So if your kids waking up with a high blood sugar in the morning or higher than it was when he went to bed, that probably means he needs more basal. If he's waking up with a lower blood sugar than it was when he went to bed in the absence of the correction dose at nighttime, then chances are he needs less basal insulin. And kind of the same thing goes for carb coverage, if you notice every time after a meal, and I'm not talking about just that postprandial spike on a Dexcom because that is related not to the insulin quantity but to the timing of the insulin absorption. But let's say two hours, three hours, three and a half hours after every meal. If your kids blood sugar is going up that means That she needs a stronger carbohydrate factor. And remember, Stacy, I know you've written about this in your book, the factor is the denominator, right. So of insulin to carb ratio of one to 10 is stronger than insulin to carb ratio of one to 15. It's the denominator of the fraction. Similarly, for the instant correction factor, if you're giving a dose of insulin through the pump, or through the sliding scale that you've written down, and your child's blood sugar doesn't come far enough, universally, don't make adjustments based on just one thing, let her wait for a pattern to develop. But if you're noticing that you're that your child's blood sugar never comes down far enough after you give them a correction dose. That means let's make the correction factor stronger. And by that I mean maybe change it from 60 to 50, or from 50 to 40 or from 40 to 35, etc. Vice versa, if you are scared to to give a correction dose because your child's blood sugar because it doesn't come in or comes down too far after for extra dose that make it a little weaker. And by doing that I've seen baby move it from 50 to 60 From 60 to 75, or 75 to 90, etc.   Stacey Simms  27:04 So if you're watching this, and I covered my face and kind of made a joke, the reason is because in the book, I do talk about this, but I have definitely made the mistake of thinking that a smaller number meant less insulin.   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  27:18 So it is confusing. It is it, just think about it in terms of the denominator of the fraction, a half a pizza is bigger than a quarter of a pizza, even though two is smaller than four.   Stacey Simms  27:30 You know, and that brings, I know this, this interview is getting a little bit away from Covid 19. But we've got plenty of time to talk about that. The just a follow up on the calling your physician and you know, there are a lot of wonderful presenters like yourself, who will take a call every day for a month from a nervous mom of a newly diagnosed kid. But there are a lot of parents who worry that they're bothering the doctor for things like that. Obviously, it never bothered me. But all kidding aside, can you assure people that if they're calling for instance adjustments that   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  28:00 it's okay. Yeah, it is absolutely. Okay. Like I said, I want you to feel empowered to do that on your own. But if you need help, we are there to help. And my office still has CDs answering the phone during daytime hours, you can take blood sugars and help make adjustments. The physician on call over the night or weekend can also do that, although it's probably easier to do that during office hours while we have CDs answering the phone because they can pull up the child's chart whereas if you call me on a Saturday afternoon, I'm not going to have your child's chart at my fingertips to make those adjustments. So yes, but please don't feel you are on your own. And please don't feel you are bothering us. Yes, when we take call. We also are seeing patients in the hospital and we are usually seeing patients in the office although now we may be doing more virtual visits. We are doing other things. It's not like all we do is just feel phone calls. We are doing other things and so we appreciate that one. If it's not an emergency, if it can wait until morning. That'd be great to wait until more But there are emergencies. And we also understand that when people have a child with diabetes, they worry at three o'clock in the morning, and if they're worried enough, please call us. Yes, that's what we're there for. But remember, we also are not general pediatricians. And so when it comes to Covid 19, if you are worried that potentially your child may have been 19, that is a better question for your primary care provider rather than us. We are not your general pediatricians. However, if you're feeling like your child was getting sick, and you're having trouble managing their blood sugar's because they're sick. That's a question for us.   Stacey Simms  29:32 Well, and that was what I was just going to ask if someone says, Oh my gosh, I think my child has Covid 19 and they have type one diabetes, what would you advise them to do?   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  29:43 I think we're still learning more and more, you know, testing is not really readily available and everything that I've heard about testing to this point, it's been difficult to get a test now hopefully, that'll change soon. Um, and However, our primary care providers are at the frontline of giving of getting people coded testing. figuring out who needs to be tested? So I would defer that question to your primary care office because they will have the most up to date answers about whether you should simply, well, we should all be quarantined ourselves, right, we should all be practicing social isolation, but especially if you have any suspicion that you or your child has Covid 19 you need to stay in your house. And you do not need to expose any other people to this. So in that situation, though, whether do you bring your kid for a Covid 19 test? Or do you just try to isolate them and pray that they get better and again, they should I mean, kids with type one diabetes are not at greater risk for developing Covid 19 or having the respiratory complications, it just makes them more likely to get ketones. So anyway, um, if your kids healthy enough to just stay at home and continue that quarantine. Right now, that's probably what we're recommending, although things may change anytime,   Stacey Simms  30:57 and I guess you've answered this, but I'm going to ask them Again, just in a different way, to be perfectly clear the evidence as we're speaking right now, would say that if a child comes down with Covid 19 has type one diabetes, there is nothing different   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  31:11 to ground at home. Just Just differently from a diabetes management perspective perspective, make sure they're hydrated check for ketones if they're actually acting sick, even if their blood sugar seems fine. Um, follow your sick day protocol. But yes, nothing different compared to your other children who might not have type one diabetes.   Stacey Simms  31:32 Um, something else I wanted to ask. Gosh, I should have closed the blinds. Whoo. It's getting hot in here. One of the things I meant to ask when you talked about the time in between visits because I had a lot of questions on this in our Facebook group. People are saying like me, Benny's appointment was supposed to be in two weeks, we'll do a virtual visit, but I assume we're not going to get that a one. See that? We usually get quarterly.   Do you? Look we have a CGM so I can see what it probably is. But do you ever recommend a homemade one T tests.   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  32:01 Okay, you and I, about a one says yes, yes. So again, I'm not speaking for every pediatric endocrinologist out there, but people definitely overrate the importance of A1C, and so many people come into my office on pins and needles because they're so nervous about what that number is going to be in. As we've said before, you've heard me say it. And I think that's one of the reasons you and I get along so well is because we have a similar perspective, and everyone has different perspectives. But my perspective is, the ANC is just a number. And it's right now the best number we can get in a six minute turnaround test, tell us to summarize blood sugars, but it's just that it's just a number. And as we have more CGM data available, I think we're going to learn that time and range, maybe an even better predictor of avoidance of long term complications, because that's what we're talking about, right? We're talking about not necessarily trying to get your kids A1C to be less than x. We We are talking about trying to help your child be as healthy as she can be when she is 85 or 90 years old, right? And so it's not about the agency, there are plenty of kids I take care of where I'm worried. This kids having way too many low blood sugars, it's affecting their lifestyle. And I'd be much happier if they're a once you jumped up a half point or a full point if they had fewer low blood sugars. So my perspective on it once you may be different than many of my colleagues, I don't think it's worth it for you to check anyone see in the middle of between office visits, especially if you have the capability of looking at a continuous glucose monitoring system that can tell you time and rich.   Stacey Simms  33:38 Is it homey? Once the test even accurate? I've always wondered about   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  33:41 Yeah, I mean, I think so. I mean, I have not seen I'm sure there are studies out there comparing the home a woman c test to a serum drawn that means coming from your arm type of A1C test versus a finger poke A1C test, which we do in our office. Um, I honestly have not looked at those studies, so I can't answer your question. But my guess is yes, it's probably pretty close. Okay, so   Stacey Simms  34:04 I have another one. You know, all these people in my group know you very well. And the question, I've lost the question, Where did I put it? Ah, here it is. Okay. So it's a two parter. The first part is all about technology. Have you mentioned time and range? You mentioned CGM advice for parents. This is a question who says, Are we overly reliant on technology? Or is that a thing? Does she need to worry about being isolated? If something doesn't work?   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  34:35 Yeah, I mean, you use what you have. I mean, we didn't have dex comes when Benny was first diagnosed. We didn't have insulin pumps, when I was, you know, or there were they were out there, but they were not commonly used when I was a resident. Um, when my senior partner Dr. Parker was doing his medical school, they didn't even have finger stick blood sugars, right. And so diabetes management is changing and we not relying on technology, but the technology has been good. And it's helped make diabetes easier, not a cure, but a little easier unless you become a slave to that technology. And you can definitely overreact to the readings on a Dexcom. I know plenty of people who will not put their phone away because they always want to know what every second what their child's blood sugar is. And that's not healthy either.   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  35:22 I know what you're talking about.   Stacey Simms  35:26 I'm only half kidding. But yeah, nothing really can be a problem. I think the bottom line for that too, is if as you're listening, you think, gosh, I don't even know where our meter is. Or do I have test strips? You know, that's the kind of thing that you'll definitely want   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  35:40 to check but you do need to have a beat. You need to have a meter even when your child wears a Dexcom or a Libra or Medtronic CGM. You will need a backup way to check blood sugar. So yes, please have a meter and strips and lancets that's the finger poker available.   Stacey Simms  35:55 lancets we all have 5000 of those.   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  35:57 Yes.   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  35:59 Last question was Do bow ties help you in your practice?   Stacey Simms  36:03 choice only.   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  36:04 So, my grandfather always wear bow ties, you actually might be able to see him right over here at Grand Prix right over there over my shoulder. Always wear bow ties. Um, and so I got that from him. Um, and someone said, I looked smarter when I bought a bow tie. And I was like, you know, great. I like looking smart, even though I so, but to be honest, yes, um, especially in this age of viral transmission, you're probably not going to see me wear a tie when we do a virtual visit. And you may not see me wear a tie as much in the office in the near future. The reason that many of the pediatricians through Boston Children's Hospital other of the older pediatricians wear bow ties rather than long straight ties is because there's less germs from this than there are from something dangling and so I will for virtual visits, I probably will not I almost certainly will not have a bow tie on and for the for visiting the office, I probably won't either just to have one less thing on mice around me that can collect your   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  37:06 which is your grandfather in the medical field or, you   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  37:09 know, furniture industry.   Stacey Simms  37:13 All right. So before I let you go, because this is the first time I've ever had you on the podcast, hopefully not the last. But you know, it was in the interest of kind of feeling a little strange about, you know, that kind of relationship, my son's endocrinologist and that sort of thing. But now, I this has been great.   I'm curious, you know, you've been in practice for us at 15 years. I finished   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  37:34 my fellowship in 2005. So this is this will be my 15th. year as of July one or the end of my 15th year.   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  37:42 Yeah, we caught you   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  37:44 right at the beginning. Right, exactly. You were one of my may not my very first but one of my first patients now, I shouldn't say that. But yeah,   Stacey Simms  37:51 I mean, in the first couple of years,   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  37:52 right, exactly in the first few years. Exactly. So   Stacey Simms  37:54 I'm curious, you know, it's hard to sum up in just a few minutes, but from then to now. already mentioned the technology have things. It's kind of a pet question. I was gonna say, Have you seen things change, but I really want to know, like, how is it to be a pediatric endocrinologist from then to now? I mean, it's got to be difficult with insurance things and all that sort of stuff. But are you still happy? This is a field you chose?   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  38:20 Yes. I love my job. I love taking care of kids with diabetes. I kids with diabetes are only about 30 to 35% of my patient volume. And so I take care of 60% of other kids that I also love taking care of. It's the dream job. And yeah, I did not grow up thinking I wanted to be a pediatric endocrinology. I didn't know I really wanted to be a doctor. When I was in high school. I mean, there are some people that say they knew it from age two for me, that was not the case. But every step along the way, I've kind of thought yeah, maybe I do want to be a doctor. And then I go to medical school and yeah, maybe I do want to be a pediatrician and then I do my pediatric rescue. See and yeah maybe I do want to become a pediatric specialist etc so each step has kind of led me along the way and it's been a great choice I love taking care of your own as well as the all the other kids that I take care of. It's a dream job except for the paperwork.   Stacey Simms  39:15 Alright, so I'll check in with you again if I can during this time who knows how long we're going to be at home you guys doing? Okay, you can have your own everybody   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  39:22 do everyone's healthy. You know? I mean I I'm worried I mean, not about my kids not necessarily about my health I mean when one of those middle age brackets right but I'm worried about my parents, my grandparents who are still alive, you know, I'm, I am worried about I'm worried about the economy of not only our country, but the world I'm worried about, about the financial well being of my patients, even though I'm you can kind of get the sense I'm not really all that worried about the health of my patients with Covid 19 as long as they Following Sick Day protocols and but that doesn't mean go out and get exposed because obviously we need to contain this virus. I am worried about our world. But I'm not necessarily worried about the children that I take care of related to cope with it and I just don't want them spreading this terms to their grandparents.   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  40:17 I think you're absolutely right on that. Well, we will leave it there. And hopefully we can check back in and I will see you for a virtual visit. I'm sure we'll be hearing from   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  40:28 that.   Stacey Simms  40:31 But I do appreciate it. Thank you so much.   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  40:33 Yes, thanks for getting the word out states you remember, wash your hands stay inside socially distinct yourselves.   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  40:41 But don't forget to call your parents all the people you love.   Dr. Mark Vanderwel  40:50 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Sims media. All Rights Reserved or wrongs avenged   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

First of all I'm sorry. It's been a long time since I posted an episode. This is awkward cause I wasn't sure if I should post more episodes here or if I should scratch this and just start fresh. A new podcast. A new Identity. A brand new me...but nah. That'd be too much work so ill just go ahead and live up to the fact that I let all you listeners down. (classic move) BUT I have more to share with you all so... I've known Paul for as long as I've been doing stand-up and the longer I know him the longer I realize I don't know this guy at all! He's a man who's lived a hundred life's and can tell a thousand tales. One time I was out drinking after a set and Paul was being a good wing man. To be honest he was being too good of a wing man (but I'm no looker so I cant complain). He ended up leading most the conversation that night with his tales of debauchery from his days of being a musician and a chef. This girl wanted Paul so bad and I could totally see why. I was like "I kinda wanna bang Paul too!" but I didn't. instead we recorded a podcast. ENJOY.

Hello, and welcome back to the lead generation for financial services podcast. This week we have got an old friend, Jodie Stevenson. Almost a year ago when we had our first podcast interview and that went to be the number one downloaded episode of last year.For every enquiry, she gets the leads, CRM, check for notifications and will schedule a chat with her client. And to make sure that she's on top of everything she uses a blank sheet of paper and knows exactly the template and just writes everything and gets it organised. She does that for every client until she runs out of paper. Recently she bought a notepad by Rocket Book. It is reusable, can automatically scan, upload to dropbox, digitally file, and then wipe clean and use again. And again.And if you happen to look for something like a file created 6 months ago, Rocket Book can easily find it for you and locates it in your dropbox file.Cost is £34.99. They've done microwavable one as well where you write in it and put it in the microwave and it will erase everything. It's a huge impact environmentally and it helps save a lot of waste.Transcription:Alex: Hello there, welcome back. And we've got an old friend with us. This week, we're catching up with Jodie Stevenson and it was pretty much a year to the date that we had our first podcast interview. And it went on to be the number one downloaded episode of last year, and of all time, so people talk about her a lot, actually, when they've, I think it's one of the kind of the earlier episodes that people sort of pick up on because it's one of the first mortgage brokers that we interviewed, and they've come on to become the most popular episodes. So I really enjoyed catching up with Jodie. So let's dive straight in. Hello, and welcome back to the lead generation for financial services podcast and I can't quite believe it's been a whole year since we last caught up with the one and only Jodie Stevenson. How's it going?Jodie: Thank God it's one and only. I can hear my mom saying that, thank God.Alex: We were just saying, how was it? You were like, no, it's nobody You know, it could have been a year but it has.Jodie: But then we were talking about things like, what things have had like you're like, a quarter of a person that you were then you were last year.Alex: We haven't got a video either away. But yeah.Jodie: Now you're super skinny. Don't worry, though. I'm still fat and consistent for the world. got consistent and but yeah, no, it's, that's great. There's actually been a lot of things that have really happened. So if you actually like, pile up the achievements that both of us have had in the last year. Actually, that makes sense. It's probably like a decade's worth of achievement. So yeah.Alex: It's funny, isn't it? Because you like them day by day, week or week, month or month thing you know, I haven't really done a lot. I've really improved a lot if anyone needs to literally think about doing a 360 and see Oh, this time last year I was doing this, you know, what.Jodie: Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, I taught a human to walk this year, which is, technically he taught himself. I'm taking the credit. And if he was walking funny, I wouldn't be taking any other credit for it. But like, yeah, like he's actually like, he's doing the real things. Like he's really doing things this year. Like he's, he's learning words. And oddly, he's learned the word jacket. It's one of his jackets, he calls me Jodie instead of mom, which is awesome. Yeah, so shouts Daddy, and Jodie, I'm like, thank you very much.Alex: Excellent, excellent show you love that. Because I remember obviously we had theWow, it's just a sad thing. Obviously, we had the dogs barking.Jodie: Oh yeah, Thrasher and Baker. Oh yeah, yeah. Oh, that happened in a bowl we got em. So they went to live with another Basset and Mum, basically, because we were part of a really good dog network. And so they went to live with this lady who's got like four others and they are just they are so happy. I don't even think the fact they're like maybe because yeah, they live on a farm now and there are loads of dogs there and they absolutely love it. And so yeah, that was a yeah, that was sad but i think i think we could be kind of at the point with you could hear how chaotic it was in the background. They were just like, they were just like, let's go for a walk. Let's go here and I was like no. And so yeah,Alex: It is. Yeah, having a child, a human is a lot I wouldn't have been able to do with pets.Jodie: Yeah, but pets that I had created my own problem with the pets because it was too small of a house, too big of dogs, and not enough boundaries between anyone you know, the dog slept in bed with me and it just wasn't, you know, it was a recipe for disaster. And luckily they've gone somewhere where they are even further mollycoddled than they were with me. So they're there, they're even better off now. I think that's really it's a really big lesson as an adult when you make a decision that's going to hurt you and only hurt you, but it's going to help someone else. So the dogs were going to be better off. I was going to be sad. And I had to make that decision and be like, Okay, well, I guess I'll just be sad then because they're gonna be happier. Real adult learning. So yeah, it was super sad like I was gutted about it, but I think it was the right thing for them.Alex: I know, absolutely. Do you know what I was just looking up while you're telling me that, so I thought I better just check because I knew yours was a very popular sewed for a while it was the second most downloaded? But you want to know something quite exciting that it was the number one downloaded episode of all time.Jodie: Really? That's amazing. That's awesome. Yeah, you know, it's my dulcet tones. It's my lovely calming accent that ASMR of mortgage advisers.Alex: Say well, I would like to say part of the credit of doing something super exciting with the title of like a mortgage broker generating their own leads doing blah, blah, blah, blah. So I'd like to take a little bit of credit for that.Jodie: That's okay. You can.Alex: I'll take 30% of the credit. Jodie: Yeah. Alex: That's the number one so you'd be there. So David Thompson. So Gary was seventh, and then you don't talk to a second, Me and Tom doing an episode were third. We should have been first you know, that's an absolute disgrace. You got ash, Ash ball and fourth. So what was interesting actually the top, the top five are not if you take out me and Tom, the top five are all brokers. Jodie: Okay, cool. Alex: So now, you know we've had a lot of marketing experts on dishing out marketing advice. One thing I've learned over this year is that actually getting people like yourself and hearing your stories is what people are interested in. Jodie: Yeah, what do you know what though it's something that I found throughout my life and we had at the bank, we have people who would come and work for us. And you were like, university graduates and they'd come in on a graduate course or something, they'd come straight into management. And the rest of the bank was just like, nope, don't I don't want to know anything this person's got to say because you haven't lived this life. You haven't come from the ground up. And this, you know, it puts there's a lot in it. There really is I can sit there and say, Look, I know how to market for mortgage advisers because I am a mortgage advisor. Alex: Yeah.Jodie: I'm marking all myself. And this works rather than someone you know, just coming in and saying, This is what and we could probably be doing exactly the same thing. Alex: Yeah., no, absolutely, absolutely. I think it's, it's being it's easy to put someone to be like, um, you know, Jodie is a broker she's doing that what you know, why can't I and then maybe they think if there's someone who's not worked in it, and it's easy for them? Yeah. It's just easier to make a connection with people that are like you. So. Yeah, that's awesome. And then you had you, as supposed you are the only one as well that we got on that was doing Google Ads themselves. I don't think I spoke to any of the brokers that have been doing Google Ads themselves so are you still on your radar? He's still doing that. Is that anything else overtaking it, or Is that still the number one.Jodie: Now, I mean, I obviously had a baby. So there was a period of time where I wound it down. And I've continued to supply leads. So I still had a handful of loyal clients who just kind of kept buying from me over that period, but I stopped taking any of my leads. And so for about six months, I kind of just backed off from it, and then came back in sort of the back end of last year, I think a little one's gone to nursery now. So yeah, I'm kind of back in it now. And, and it's, it's a blend again. So obviously the network that I'm with b2b, they provide me with leads. And, and I also have my Google AdWords, which, and they're just two very different types of leads. And they all have different conversion rates, and they all work but I don't think you should ever turn a lead source away and you know, if If you can, as long as you are meticulously recording how many times you did everything to in that lead, you know, did I pick the phone up and dial them? How many times did I literally put my hand to my phone? And because then you can figure out how much putting your hand on a phone makes you might be 74 P. But, we can take it right back to that.Alex: Absolutely. I think I saw there was someone a broker showing me their screen and it was like one of their self-employed brokers had only logged two calls. They were saying that this I've not been able to get out as person but it was like two calls a week apart both before 5 pm. And it was like they were I can't remember how long after it was the lead initially dropped. But it was they were reporting it but not doing enough. And I think there's a case of people not being as meticulous as you are with that. I'm not chasing it enough.Jodie: Wow. I would as always, I'm going to be going against the grain here. No, I don't have the needs. I didn't do it, man, I don't do it. Look, if you want a mortgage, I'm going to touch. Here's my number. I if they put in an inquiry, I mean I would the b2b, b2b have their own structure, which is you know that you make an X number of calls, and we have a system that sends them texts, etc. And those ones, you know, that's, that's James's method, and I use that. But for my own needs I when the lead lands, I try within 10 minutes and firing them it's straight off the bat. So I go straight in and I call him because speed stones and it always will and a lot of the times they answer the phone and go oh, oh, didn't expect you to ring me that fast. And I'm like, exactly. I give them a ring straight away. And the chances are they are still sat by the computer. And so they get that one call and then and then I'm never in the zone. And then if they don't answer, I send them a text and I say, Hey, it's me from this company. I'm bringing about your mortgage when good, that's all I do. That's it. I can't find them again. Nope, I bring them at the moment and then I send them a text and that's it.Alex: Do you mind sharing what percentage of contact right there is like what percentage of like, no contact is that you know.Jodie: my contact rate is I have this down the other day I've actually I'm mentoring someone at the moment. So I'm more in my own KPIs than I ever have.Alex: While you're looking at apps are gonna it's like two very different things going on because If you are buying leads or if you're marketing in a way that you're not building any rapport you've you've only got that quick window because they'll forget about you. But if you're marketing and people know you quite well and they've bought into already then you can wait. So I don't think everyone I always think older minute coders are always like you say within 10 minutes.Jodie: Oh, I love that.Alex: Yeah, well little phrase for you.Jodie: YeahAlex: While you're looking at apps are gonna it's like two very different things going on because If you are buying leads or if you're marketing in a way that you're not building any rapport you've you've only got that quick window because they'll forget about you. But if you're marketing and people know you quite well and they've bought into already then you can wait. So I don't think everyone I always think minute older minute coders are always like you say within 10 minutes so I love that. Well, little phrase for you. Yeah. It because it literally is because they'll because if they because there's a lot of things that are important to people at that moment, like mortgages, especially protection that is important at the minute and then once the laptop gets close, I will it was important 10 minutes ago it's not important now because this is happening. So you miss if you miss that window, I think you're missing out. A big one. But it just depends on a case by a case like how well are you have you? Like, do people know you for that one thing and they've already decided that only gonna deal with you.Jodie: No, my leads have no idea who I am mainly, my leads are very much advertised on an in a cold no company we are a company, we can find you the things you would like as your details to have a call and, and so yeah, just give them a ring or give them a quick call. And then I'll send them a text and send them an email. So send them a text and an email. And if they don't come back to me, you didn't want it that much.Alex: Yeah, I wonder though, I'd be so interested to see the numbers like because you're you've got personality, definitely. If people got to know you a little bit beforeJodie: I leave a voicemail, I do leave a voicemail. So maybe that's why I get a lot of callbacks and I get a lot of texts back.Alex: And I think people prefer to communicate in the text.Jodie: 100% of the day. I do.Alex: Yeah, I think my big thing for us this year is to give the end-user the person that wants the mortgage, give them as wide of options as possible to communicate. And not just say, it's only a callback, you have to have a goal, but it's like, how do you prefer to us to get back to that email? Whatsapp? Facebook Messenger? Jodie: Yeah.Alex: Text, phone, and then let them just I think there's a lot of leads being missed, because people are going through and there, and there, yeah, I need a mortgage or I need advice. I've got this situation, and then the only they'll fill all the details out, and the only option is a callback and they'll sort of agree to it and then they'll think but whereas if it's something like WhatsApp, then they don't have to set that timeout to have a call because no one wants to be sold to and the broker can go away if they've done a fact find on the website. If you've collected all that information, why maybe go back to them with something and then build-up to the call.Alex: Yeah, exactly. I something like I think it's a month ago. And I needed to do something with my energy supplier. And I logged in and there was like to write live chat or like live chat, but I always forget it's open. You know, when you open it, and then you just walk off, just forget you have live chat open.Jodie: I’m so confident. I'm terrible with it. So, it clicks on this live chat thing. And it was like, Oh, do you want to just Whatsapp? I was like, Oh, yeah. So Whatsapp. And it just opened a WhatsApp chat with my provider. And then they just kind of got back to me throughout the day. Alex: Yeah. So as a broker, like whether you've got advisors working for you or not, and some people don't want to give them Oh, by the way, you can get a prepaid SIM and you can have WhatsApp away. So you can have all your WhatsApp communications open on a browser window to the on as you and it's so much more organized than email as well when I'm doing a whole sort of project on facilitating WhatsApp Web for clients. We've been looking at WhatsApp chatbot as well, which is not as good as the Facebook Messenger stuff. But again, if people want to do it, we're on it because if we can get as much info on if someone and then the only thing is one, someone said their network won't allow WhatsApp communication despite it being the safest. And I could say I covered which network it was where they were like they ban any communication whatsoever knowing that WhatsApp is more secure than email. That's bonkers. But either way Yeah, that's definitely on our mind because I think a lot of people just don't want to have a phone call.Alex: See, very I'm sort of taking over this episode. So what so what else? So are you doing more of the commercial stuff on your ads before? Exactly it was commercial mortgages pretty much that you were doing last year my rightJodie: Yeah, yup. So my advert saw more commercials but I do get a lot of isolettes through it as well. And yeah, but mostly it's battleaxe for so it's a limited company and Alex: That does seem to be a very popular minute obviously with all the sort of tax changes and stuff. Yeah. How are you finding it like demand this from this time last year to now the B-word is kind of semi sorted is that affected anything or our market like?Jodie: I would say that pre-Christmas which normally December is my salon and the month where I don't do anything, and January is just like I'm continuing to not do much. Outrageous this December was, I mean, right up until Christmas Eve I was still dealing with clients and taking and taking upset on Christmas Eve. Crazy.Alex: We saw one on Christmas Day.Jodie: No..Alex: One every Christmas Day, there’s always one.Jodie: I don't even think I'll pick my phone up on Christmas day it's just yeahAlex: Yeah everyone's different so people get bored and they're like but yeah I mean I was cooking on Christmas Day literally in a second but yeah that that did happen.Jodie: yeah now I've been really busy and really really busy and very much and that's kind of what my year is about this year is understanding how to manage the famine and the feast know get tons of leads in and when you're very quiet and then you know talking to me building it all up and then they kind of all slowly come back in and then you end up with like if anything you end up with too many inquiries because then you've gone too many people coming back and it's kind of I'm trying to figure out what that nice even let's take this many leads a day constantly rather than taking you to know 40 leads a day for two weeks, nothing for another three weeks. So that's what my plan is this year is to find my sweet spot.Alex: of literally the number of leads per week per day. Jodie: Yeah, yeah.Alex: And what was taking the most time for you, when you're sort of dealing with inquiries? Where could it like, Is it like,Jodie: what's that? Sorry, packaging cases? And okay, so that's always the most time-consuming part. And in any mortgage, getting the leads is fine, cuz everything's automatic. And it's also CRM, and it's perfect. And the notification comes through on my phone, I click a button and get it's great. And, but then once and I have a chat with a client, and that's fine, and I don't. Do you follow me on Instagram? Alex: Yeah. Jodie: And did you see the space paper that I got delivered yesterday?Alex: Oh, God doesn't know if I've been on the last couple of days.Jodie: So whenever I get an inquiry, I have a blank sheet of paper. And I know exactly the template of my fact find a blank sheet of paper and I just write, write all and it's all organized, you know, left side for Mr Right side to miss it, and it kind of all ends up looking like a fact find. And so I do that sheet of paper for every client, and then I write on that until really, I've run out of paper and it becomes a client file. And then I take paper, clip it in, and then they become a file. And yeah, well, that is pretty, you can imagine I've got like 60 notebooks piled up next, which is crazy. And so I've actually bought a notepad by rocket book. And it's a reusable notepad. Alex: What. Jodie: Yeah, so you write in it. And then you get your phone, you get the rocket dog app, you scan it over, and it uploads it into Dropbox into a file, wherever you can put file names on it, and everything, and then just wipe the page clean and start again.Alex: Oh my God.Jodie: It's like actual paper and so yeah, that I'm hoping that's gonna save me a bunch of time because now it's got handwriting detection as well. So all my notes now get uploaded into a file. So when a client rings me back in six months time and says hey you know Mr Donovan, I can just open my rocket dog file and go Donovan and it will find that note pad that page of my notepad and go that's that client it might just say Donovan, ah avoid you know, but it will be and that'll be on the new anywhere I am. I can just click it'll be in my Dropbox and I can just search for that name anywhere I don't need my notepads anymore. And because it will all be on this. This Dropbox so I thinkAlex: Then 34.99 I'm just on the road getting a rocket book. Why not? Not mega expensive.Jodie: Yeah, and the efforts are hilarious. I mean, you'll really enjoy him. It's just two guys in there like, they're just having a blast making these books clearly they've done a microwavable one as well where you write in it and then put it in the microwave, and it just erases everything. And but that has a shelf life. And, and something I'm really conscious of at the minute is the impact that I'm having, you know, environmentally. There's a lot of paper in my job. So I'm kind of wherever I can, I'm avoiding a paper. Because everything else in my life pretty much I know I doesn't really have minimal impact with most of the things I use are usable things in most of my life but then in this just reams and reams of paper that I'm printing, I feel terrible.Alex: It's literally my desk at the minute. I've got these A3 papers where we spent sort of between Christmas and New Year like coming up with different ideas days for campaigns and what can be doing better and I've literally got a flood of these A3 bits of paper that I could have done in this. If they do an A3 version. I'm all over, I might get the small one anyway because I do use it like my notebooks.Jodie: What size is a4? So A3 is quite bigger than A4Alex: Yeah.Jodie: I think A4 is probably the biggest that they do but you could open both pages because it's 32 pages.Alex: YeahJodie: Maybe you could open both and just have it on there but you know if you do it small and then just blow it up.Alex: Yeah, well, it's my birthday coming up and the misses were like, what can I want I can kind of get you sort of you never want anything and anything you want you but I could just send you this thing.Jodie: Do it because honestly, I was saying that is such a good present for people. And it's the last one is the one I got and it when it gets delivered. It looks like a bag of space food because it comes in the old space bag. I feel very modern, very.Alex: Yeah. I love it with these things I always get annoyed that I didn't invent it myself.Jodie: Yeah, my dad, my dad has invented everything before anyone else did. And, every time a product comes out, he'll remind me of the conversation we've had four years ago where he invented that and he's right, you know, we have and I say, well, maybe it should actually do one of those.Alex: Yeah. Oh well, I used to work at an agency and this guy called Kazu came like a freelance designer and he just comes in, he sort of lives in our office. We used to work together and our old boss used to say that he invented Facebook before Facebook Like all the time.Jodie: Oh, I bet he didAlex: It’s in his head, but then never did the difference. Zuckerberg did something about it. That's the…Jodie: I think I invented iPhones and I definitely think I did. I had all the passion for an iPhone, in my mind. Alex: Yeah. Jodie: But it just was the translation that I just, you know, probably by the time they came, you know, when I'm thinking of and they were probably 10 years in development anyway. Alex: Yeah, exactly. Jodie: So though they'll be imprinted in our fingers soon.Alex: Really? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So, other than digital notebooks, what else is new?Jodie: So yeah, my digital notebook is very new. I'm mentoring somebody.Alex: I was gonna say you mentioned it earlier. Yeah.Jodie: I believe she found me on your podcast.Alex: Well, do you know that happens a lot. This podcast doesn't cost me a lot of money. It cost me time. I don't make anything from it. But I seem to have made like other people. Like some really good so there's like, lots of like, pretty much every guest I've had on saying so and got in touch. We'd like to do this. Amazing. That's great. It's brilliant that I always find it bonkers that people actually listen. And they still listen. And people actually do stuff out of it. So that is.Jodie: I probably get one or two messages a month that say, Hey, I heard your podcast episode. And I'd love to have a chat with you about what you do. I'd love to buy some leads off. Alex: Amazing. Jodie: Yeah. One or two a month at least.Alex: Well, I was just looking at when I looked at your episode stats, I was like, Oh, this has had eight downloads in the last week. And I was like, well, that's like one at one a, obviously, more than one a day and it was over a year old. Least not being advertised. People are picking it out. So yeah, I mean, that is amazing. Amazing to hear. And then I say I didn't get anything out of it. I mean, we get inquiries all the time. I don't ask everyone where they come from. But that's cool. So how's that mentoring? Say what's in terms of the minute you mentoring them on, are they on like everything or just marketing? Just Google Or literally the whole, the whole.Jodie: So initially it was a marketing job really, that she just wanted something to learn. And as we kind of got talking, it just kind of organically became, we were both in a really similar position actually in our lives and her kind of wants to be in the same sustainable situation that I'm in where we can have our children and be the mums that we want to be and run a business that we want to run without having to sell Aloe Vera. Or, you know, these ridiculous shapes that people sell or anything like that. It's just a true Korea and true business. Alex: Yeah. Jodie: And which is lovely to see that people look at me and think, you know, that that's an aspirational and Korea, which is, you know, it's great. So she approached me and I said, Look, you know, I'd love to expand outwards and as well not just physically but potentially for my business. Well, but yeah, let's, you know, let's, let's do it and let's just kind of cobble through it together. And so that's kind of where we're at. She's taken a leap of faith on me and I have to leap of faith on her and we're just trying to figure out how that works. And so that's where we're at. I'm kind of guiding her through how I set up myself. And then we would slowly integrate her into her own being our own broker. And eventually, she's just been doing it a few months now. We've had Christmas, so it's been a little, you know, nonstarter over Christmas, but she's doing amazing, she's got 10s of thousands of pounds in the pipeline, which is crazy. And you know, not all of that is going to go anywhere. But you know, even if I think we've said like, you know, roughly she probably roughly banks to bank seven grand. And I would say, out of everything that she's had through, which is just gorgeous in it, you know, take this leap into like a totally new field and then get in a big pipeline like that. AndAlex: What I love about 99% of the brokers 99.99% brokers I know and speak to also just get as much satisfaction out of like, genuinely helping people as well and they and they and they get rewarded for it. It's like what it's like, I'm almost jealous of the rewards that you guys get from helping people as well as what you get in return. It feels quite a unique kind of job that it's kind of a must to be satisfying.Jodie: Yeah, it really is and do they want and I needed it as well. I really needed it because I started to doubt my own hipe last year and you know, when you have a kid you lose your identity completely for a period of time. And I came back and was like, right i mean obviously I have my group that was on your podcast which is still it still exists but it's just because I didn't know how to help these people and you know they were all asking me and I was like I don't know just how do I do this I'm a parent and how do I do it? How do I do it? And I know me and you know conversations about that and definitely minute old minute cold is, you know, plays on my mind with these people. And so when this really naturally just progressed into something and mentor wise, I was really happy because I was like, Okay, I can do this. And, and I can help and even if all I do is just give her the tools and then send her on her way and Alex: Yeah.Jodie: Because it is, I'm growing as a person, whilst I'm helping her grow as a person. And, and it might be that she goes off and does it without, you know without me in the future and that's, that's fine. And it's just something that I think I've, I've needed to do and it's a big learning for me as well.Alex: I think as well as you learn from teaching as well, she always won't feel giving advice to someone else to do something you sort of like, I find that when we're trying to I always feel like I'm looking at stuff more. So I'm not trying to help myself, I'm trying to help other people as well. So it gives me that extra edge so we've obviously got we've got the pressure of clients that pay us and we've got we've got to deliver for them otherwise we lose them and you know, lose house and family can't eat and things like that, but also that extra edge of wanting to help other people that what they do well or not And affect me, but it always finds, since doing the podcast and doing videos and things like that, that it gives it I've probably pushed myself to learn more to help share that kind of accent.Jodie: Yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, I, I would have, I would have said I was very, you know, very efficient at my job. And I knew I knew exactly what to do, but actually, I just knew exactly what to not do. I knew what to avoid. I knew what I knew. And I knew I knew how to avoid the stuff I didn't know. And with this new, new starter, she's kind of expanded and been like, Oh, well, I'm looking at loads of stuff over here. And I'm like, Oh, no, I don't play in that court. But what I have to do now, so I've, you know, started doing that as well and funnily and, you know, growth, growth is, it's up and down and sideways. It's everywhere because I've had a really great opportunity as well as my father in law and my mother in law and Actually, I've started on the path to working for me as well. And right, so they're going to become mortgage brokers and buy their own rights, which is lovely. But also my dad is coming to work for me as well. And he's had a background like you had a family that had worked in. He's got some experience in it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right. Yes. So he was a senior financial adviser for the bank that I worked for. And my sister was an advisor as well. And she's had a baby and she's going back to work in January, self-employed as well, which is lovely. And so we're all kind of doing it self employed. But yeah, my dad's come in to work with me as well. Which is great because he's the guy who kind of coached me and made me the person that I am. And now I kind of get to give a little bit back to him, but he loves me and he's going to help me from above and you No, it's going to, it's going to go everywhere. And it's going to be really nice. And it's going to build a really nice little company.Alex: Family literally a family business literallyJodie: Literally a family business. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my partner Matt, and he's always been like a rock in my company anyway. And when I have these, you know, packaging nightmares where I've got just, you know, reams and reams and reams of applications that I've got to fill in. He's just incredible. You just get straight on the computer and he's like, scans him in and, and does it all for me anyway, so I've always had him helping me. And even if sometimes it's just he just goes out with our thoughts. Leave Hello. Yeah.Alex: Yeah. Jodie: And so it's always been great and hands-on, but it's so nice that we're getting everyone else is kind of getting involved in it as well. And it's fantastic. Yes, it's lovely. It's quite a nice little family that we've got now. Really a family.Alex: Really Yeah. And I think just going back to what you said about Like growth being up down sideways my business mental talks about competitive with like climbing Everest is like the night before they go to sleep they climb up and then they have to climb back down again to like a climatized so it's always talking about the growth of that you're up and then you've got sometimes you've got to go back down to be able to push forwards again parallel so it's nobody can build a business with cute like continued growth will kill you.Jodie: Yeah absolutely. Isn't linear it's not you know.Alex: Yeah it's a graph, this graph should have these peaks where you drop down and then you that gives you the ability to then push back up again. So yes one thing is you always want like a month I always want growth, growth, growth, but the one thing he thought he taught me about was that it is normal and healthy to have no backs and I'm pushing on from there.Jodie: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's amazing what you can really beat yourself up on mean on AdWords I can, I can have a week where I look at my fingers and you know, they're costing me three times as much as they did on, you know, the month before and I will really panic. And I'll go Stop, stop the ads. And you know, it's just your instinct is to stop at that point but no, no, you need to stop because there's a reason why they're coming through at this. You know, it's because people really really want it or people you know, there's a lot of competition or whatever, but it always evens out. It always evens out over the course of a year and you always end up at the same cost per click. So there's a reason it's an average, you know, you're gonna have some weeks where it's half of your normal one that you just can't look in like that you've got to set boundaries and be like, I'm only gonna, I'm only gonna worry about it. If over the course of three months, my average cost is going up and then I'll worry andAlex: Yeah.Jodie: But even then don't leave it another three months.Alex: Yeah, exactly. Is that easy? Again, because when we do it like that with Google Ads absolute minefield in terms of like, we've got one company where the cost per click can range from like quid to four quid depending on the time of day and when other people are bidding and things like that. Jodie: Yeah.Alex: There are so many sorts of and it's difficult when if there are brokers with a small budget as well, those impacts will be felt bigger than one whether someone's spending like 50 grand a month compared some of the spending 500 pounds those ups and downs have felt much bigger with the smaller budgets definitely.Jodie: Absolutely.Alex: Have you ever kind of looked at the thought about SEO being on page one top of page one for those keywords bidding on.Jodie: You mean organically?Alex: Yeah, organically. Yeah. Is it ever like, do you have SEO remorse as in like this time last year, if there was an if you knew what to do, there was a plan in place, and you could have executed it and by now a year later, you could have been position one.Jodie: I don't know, I've never really, I've never really seen the benefit of you know what, I am the person who scrolls past the ads and goes to the organic number one result, but I feel like that's the same as buying an ad anyway now, because people just strategically do things to make themselves the number one result, but it's not. It's not really, you know when you go shopping online, and it organizes things, you know, and you can do it from price low to high or whatever, whatever the default is never price low to high, its price, whatever is gonna make me the company more money. And they do it that way. So it's, you know, I don't necessarily believe personally, that the value of being number one, organically has the value that it used to. I think it just means that you're very good at SEO.Alex: Oh, yeah. Jodie: Just means you're good at getting number one on Google. Alex: Yeah, absolutely. What we find with a lot of our clients, the reduction in the cost to acquire a new client if they're getting free traffic from Google is is is the biggest one the biggest factors inJodie: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. In that sense, yes, definitely that it would be a cheaper option. But just for me, I feel like I didn't know that my audience is ready.Alex: What you’re doing now is work and I don't want your eye off the ball. So there's a lot of things in life like, don't if you've got something that is working, that's profitable unless you're obviously like, where you were their way or now. You don't want to change it. Yeah, I was just kind of interesting. If we're, if because you're getting those leads from Google, whether that was on your mind.Jodie: It is nice to know, it would definitely be nice to know. And, and, and I certainly, I certainly would be open to looking at it and seeing But I'm still in the same position that I was in before, which I know is always your favourite thing to hear from me. I don't need any more leads at the minute. I have to turn the machine off frequently. Alex: If you if we were to talk this time next year, and you didn't have to have the machine on at all, and they were all just coming in.Jodie: Oh, yeah. Yeah. be great.Alex: Yeah. So that was my I have a question. I should have asked that beginning. But ya know, it's interesting. And that's where a lot of we have all kinds of ads running literally, bar, no bar, none. All of them but they were the ones that are getting those. We work on SEO for all of our clients because of getting that free trial. And Google's great because it's people are like, well, like we said earlier about catching them within that 10 minutes. They're in the zone. Jodie: Yeah.Alex: Like Facebook, LinkedIn once you're there when they are in the zone and it's They haven't made the decision to go out and look for something. Yes. You've got to be even quicker with the social ads to get them But yeah, I think we're finding Google gives the best quality and if you can get it free so obviously it reduced like the possibilities cray LAUGHINGJodie: You had a podcast with Joe Mani.Alex: The thing I haven't asked because it's we have your name is coming up on my thing is Joe Mani but Joe Mani is that a self-inflicted?Jodie: Yeah hundred per cent you know what? funny because it's difficult to nickname my name because it isn't really you can't really other than Steve Oh, yeah, all coffee bit. Oh calling me like, which I don't like Joe Go. Yeah, exactly. So it has to be something. So after a while, it just became, I just used to put myself on board, you know, couldn't fit Jody on it. So I'd write j and then we'll do like $1 sign. So I was. So yeah, it's definitely a self-made Monica and that does not need to stick. Nobody knew that nickname mom. But just to go back to what you said about LinkedIn, and LinkedIn, such a funny little place at the minute. And I mean, I've turned my notifications off because it's too much, people, I don't know who in their right mind thinks that anyone is going to read a near eight paragraph-long message from a brand new connection. Either like, Hey, how are you insert name here, comma, I would really like to talk to you about insert profession here. Let me tell you a little bit about what it is that I do. It was 25 paragraphs about it and I'm like Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I just never read it.Alex: I agreed at the no who's speaking to a guy the other day. And they're kind of like an agency that does that can't that I outreach but in a very different way. And he was like talking about getting them to strike up a conversation like asking a question or something to start a conversation rather than just doing a whole sales blurb is like running up to someone in the street and just shouting about your business for like, 10 minutes.Jodie: Yeah, exactly. And I way prefer, like, I've had a lot of impact on a lot of my favourite messages on LinkedIn, or people who've listened to your podcast, and they will message me with something. And, and I'll, it always makes me laugh. It'll always be something funny in the message. It'll be like, Hey, I heard you on the podcast. And then they'll just say something hilarious. Along the lines, I think because I give a sense of like and look for a laugh. And they'll always always have a laugh. And even if all we do is just say, uh, you know, I'll say thank you very much. And I'll see Say that I mean, uh, you know, I mean a deadly baffle for number one. So please be free to download it 400 times.Alex: As much as we've done it. Jodie: Yeah, exactly, exactly. I'll send you all your five pounds in a minute. So we're at and, but well, you know, we'll have a laugh and we'll have fun and that's what I think that's what LinkedIn should be is a place to find like-minded business people to do business with. And to Hulu, and not to get too caught up on being everyone's cup of tea. Alex: Exactly, that's Yeah, if you're vanilla, like the, someone was asking me about, Tony, have you seen Gary Vaynerchuk?Jodie: Yeah, I love Gary Vaynerchuk.Alex: Yeah, but he is Marmite, you know. That's why if he was vanilla and trying to get everyone to like him, he wouldn't have the following that he has. So Jodie: Yeah.Alex: Pretty extreme example, obviously. But yeah. Like being yourself is.Jodie: Yeah, I'm a marmite well, hundred percent a marmite. And people literally do like me or they do not like me. And it's and you know what, I used to really struggle with that but now I'm just like, that's fine. There are plenty more people in the world and I like to be alone. I like to warm people up a bit I am a little bit of a troll by nature and I do like to sort of tickle people a bit, particularly on LinkedIn. And somebody put something at Christmas. I hate the boastful nature of Christmas. And I don't think people talk about the presence that golfing kids run said. And so I was on LinkedIn at some point. And this guy was like, What do you get the guy who has everything, and I think I responded with haemorrhoid cream. And if you say you've got everything, have you got a spare tenner?Alex: Yeah, brilliant.Jodie: Yeah. You know, I like to sort of make fun of people a bit but I think Yeah, LinkedIn has got to change to become a bit more. I think you've got to be aggressive with who you let in your circle on LinkedIn.Alex: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I've really filtered.Jodie: Yeah, remove connections, remove connections. Yeah. Are you within a geographical distance of me that we can do business if not remove connection?Alex: Absolutely. I think it is a great platform and I'm slowly being marmite like I don't I put a photo on I think was yesterday and I've got I got bought two notepads for Christmas one says the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other thought of this as a warning Bantam merchant, proper cringe but I just took a photo and said I've got a really important meeting with a top dog Fs company but which notepad I never would have done that before because it's like, oh, I should be professional or not have a but then I think I've made more a double business got more friends out of LinkedIn and connections from being myself and not worrying about not being too professional or worrying about or not worried about anything actually other than just being sad.Jodie: Just don't do it. It's, you've got to you've just got to be yourself. I mean, you really have to just be yourself. My favourite people in the financial industry are you. I can smell I can sniff out a metalhead in a crowded room. I just know him. I know the people who you know they've got like a slipknot tattoo, I just know it. And I like a Rolodex of metal you know metal aficionados who are in the financial industry, and that's one that they're my people. So I love those people. And but then also people who, who have a criminally, you know, offensive sense of humour. That's, that's Matt der max. People so if I find a particularly funny person who also listens to, you know the same sort of music as me, you know that's a relationship for us. So if you're out there and you want to be my BDM please message me on LinkedIn and if you want to talk slipknot and deals let's do it let's I'm in the market for it.Alex: I'm really looking forward to someone opening a message or connection requests or doing some sort of reference or, or something like if you get that please do a screenshot and send.Jodie: I will put it on a T-shirt. Promise. Alex: Yeah, brilliant. We have been chatting for 50 of your English minutes Wow. Wow, it was like three.Jodie: It really does. Alex: What have we not discussed?Jodie: I think pretty much it and we've done exactly what I've been taught not to do there with it. We haven't done politics or what is it politics and religion not covered? That's good.Alex: We could do that next year. Yeah. Jodie: Okay. Yeah, definitely.Alex: It's so good to catch up with you. I can't believe it's been a year. It. It's absolutely bonkers. Yeah. And it's great that people are still listening to your original one. Still getting in touch with you. I can't believe I've been involved in something that makes that happen. I find that bonkers.Jodie: It's not the first situation that's gone viral for me. And I'm sure it won't be the last. Alex: Yeah, what was, go on spill it.Jodie: I'm not going to give you my medical records. No, I'm joking. And no, I put a few in. I often go viral actually. And I did it. I did a bit of a famous post about mediums A while ago and my disdain for the role of BDM. Right. I've always said, I stand by it. I don't think it's a role that that is relevant. I don't think it's a helpful role. For mortgage advisors when it's one person I think it's unfair on the person. I used to hate BDM but now I hate whoever makes a BDM do their job. I hate them. It's and it's not sustainable. It's not sustainable. You just need a call center that deals with those. But yeah, I did them almost like an X factor of BDMs. Once I put up that I don't like BDMsms and I refuse to use them. I actually completely refuse to use them now. I did have a few people who were like, let me prove you wrong Let me prove you right like so and so and a few of them did. Yeah, pretty much funny Penny Paul. But yeah, I got I ended up with quite a few connections through that who appreciated my angle which is Look, I want to know now the answer to my question, not seven o'clock at night when you've got home from I've been 16 coffees all day when you finally Got to read your emails. Like, the deal is with someone else at that point. It's, you know, it's crazy. But yeah, that was another thing that went a bit viral as well.Alex: Fantastic. So, if people haven't heard the first episode I'm following you know, I'm following you on Instagram. Jodie: Yeah.Alex: Where? Where? Where is that? Where's the BDM slugging going on?Jodie: Oh, it's on LinkedIn. Oh yeah, LinkedIn it's a really old post now I think and what it did it did get some traction and but yeah, you can find it on LinkedIn my Instagram is not a professional arena in any capacity it's just me but maybe yeah, maybe that's what I should do. Maybe I should start an Instagram for work. ItAlex: It should be one on one in one on the same.Jodie: Do you think?Alex: I think people buy from people.Jodie: I still talk a lot as a business on my Instagram, I just it's not like a business Instagram.Alex: I do not use my company Facebook page, my company LinkedIn, my company anything is all via me. And I get more out of it.Jodie: Yeah, I think I think that's the I think it's the way to go. And I do definitely talk about I always throw, you know, one or two posts a month up on my stories. Just saying no, don't forget, don't get life insurance. Don't forget mortgages don't get addressed. And, and I always get a couple of leads off of that. And even sometimes it's just people saying, Oh, I'm really interested. And we just have a chat. And then I'll come back to me a little later and we'll talk about it but yeah, yeah, I think you're right. I think you should keep it all as one brand.Alex: Nice. Love it. Awesome. I can't believe we're with them. I think we need to do it closer than a year. We need to catch up when I need to kind of get you drunk. You belong to one of our events as well so people can meet you in real life.Jodie: Wow definitely, definitely. I would love to do that and get the winter over with so I can come out as my winter cocoon. And yeah, but definitely Yeah, just invite me along I think you went to Did you go to u printer?Alex: Yeah, yeah it didn't just go It was on the stage.Jodie: Exactly. I think I need to go.Alex: It is an amazing event.Jodie: Yeah.Alex: Really good. Jodie: I should definitely make it to some sort of physical social interaction at some point in my life and stop the piano. Avoid at the end of the phone.Alex: We've got our events in March there's gonna be a load of brokers there in the lovely Peterborough March the 26th. I will send you a link.Jodie: March is pretty clear for me. So where I could probably squeeze you in. I’ll try my best.Alex: I will. Fantastic, awesome. All right, cool. Well, let's do that let's meet properly in March.Jodie: Yeah. Alex: Let's speak again soon. And I'm loving that you get in the family involved and things are growing and I like your partner helping you out with every I was like visualizing oh no exactly what it's like having a kid ourselves. But yeah sounds like it sounds amazing and I'm glad everything's still going really well for you.Jodie: Yes Yeah it's great. It's all a learning curve and to sayAlex: Oh god yeah Jodie: We’ll see, you never know listen if you know God but this is me on record now all of you all my family members are as fireable as anyone else and I like my coffee with sugar in it.Alex: I'm going to use that clip to promote this episode.Jodie: I love it.Alex: Fantastic. What an amazing note to leave on. Thank you so much for spending your time with us again, as amazing. And let's see if you can be the number one episode of 2020 as well. That'd be pretty cool. All right, thanks very much. Bye-bye.Jodie: See you later. Bye.Alex: And there we have it. There's my chat with Jody Stevenson. It is so good. catching up with her. And it sounds like businesses growing was great that she's kind of getting people involved now it's becoming a proper family business. So that is awesome. So she's got a lot of work to do to see if we can get her as the number one download episode of 2020. We'll see we've had a lot of amazing ones. some incredible ones coming up too as well. So don't forget our event, March 26. Only a few weeks away now I literally got a couple of tickets left. It'd be great to see you there. If you need any more information, go to the lead engineer, click on the conference tab, or details, their agendas all kind of finalize all speakers are on there. We've got loads going on. I will see you next time.

Coronavirus is ravaging its way through Rocket League esports (and every other game!), but the SubPar Poddy C lives on! Until StumpyGoblin dies. That'd be SO him. Join us as we chat Coronavirus, Cloud 9's glorious return to form v NRG, Psyonix's Coronavirus response, toilet roll shortages, and whether C O R O N A V I R U S is gonna somehow make JohnnyBoi cancel the European Invitational (pls no lol).

SEASON 2: EPISODE 5 Poet Nick Flynn talks about the ways in which he won't die. ABOUT THE GUEST Nick Flynn has worked as a ship’s captain, an electrician, and a caseworker for homeless adults. Some of the venues his poems, essays, and nonfiction have appeared in include the New Yorker, the Nation, the Paris Review, the New York Times Book Review, and NPR’s This American Life. His writing has won awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Library of Congress, PEN, and the Fine Arts Work Center, among other organizations. His film credits include artistic collaborator and “field poet” on Darwin’s Nightmare (nominated for an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary in 2006), as well as executive producer and artistic collaborator on Being Flynn, the film version of his memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. His most recent collection of poetry, I Will Destroy You, appeared from Graywolf Press in 2019. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Lili Taylor, and his daughter, Maeve. http://www.nickflynn.org/ ABOUT THE HOST Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com. ABOUT THE TITLE SHE'S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast. CREDITS This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund.  Producer: Devon Guinn  Creative Consultants: Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue  Mixer: Andrew Litton  Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver  Theme Song: Jeff Hiller  Website: Itai Almor Media: Justine Lee Interns: Alara Degirmenci, Jonathan Jalbert, Jesse Kimotho Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Nick Rymer, Sue Simon, Maddy Sinnock TRANSCRIPTION NICK FLYNN: I was driving my daughter to soccer. And she had a bike and I had a bike and we'd ride, even though it was a little cold.  NEIL GOLDBERG: Yeah.  NICK: But a guy went by on a bike and he had like a boombox, one of those boombox that plays, he's playing like a podcast, like really loud, and it was so odd. We both just laughed. It was like, what is that? You're just blasting a podcast going down the street, blasting.  NEIL: This is fresh air.  Hello, I'm Neil Goldberg and this is SHE'S A TALKER. I'm a visual artist and this podcast is my thinly veiled excuse to get some of my favorite New York writers, artists, performers, and beyond into the studio to chat. For prompts, I use a collection of thousands of index cards on which I've been writing thoughts and observations for the past two decades, kind of like one of those party games, but hopefully not as cheesy.  These days, the cards often start as recordings I make into my phone. Here are some recent ones: I really love how Beverly pronounces 'Meow'. It's never appropriate to share scrap paper from home with students. I'm never sure what a simmer is. I'm so happy to have as my guest, poet Nick Flynn. I have been a hardcore fan of Nick's writing since his first book, Some Ether, came out in 2000 and was blown away by his memoirs, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, and The Ticking is the Bomb. In the fall, he released a new book of poetry, I Will Destroy You, and in the next few months he has two more books coming out: Stay, and This is the Night Our House Will Catch on Fire. I met Nick briefly in, I think, the late eighties in Provincetown, and we reconnected recently via our mutual friend, Jacques Servin, who is on an earlier episode. Nick and I spoke in January at a recording studio at The New School near Union Square in New York City. NEIL: Are you comfortable?  NICK: Like on a scale of one to ten?  NEIL: Like, you know those smiley faces, like if you're in the hospital. NICK: How much pain I have? Uh, I hadn't even thought about it till you just said that. Now I'm wondering if I am, so.  NEIL: I feel like I'm, I'm totally not, I'm not feeling any pain at the moment.  NICK: No, I'm not feeling any pain. No, I'm feeling no pain.  NEIL: That's different from, feeling no pain is different from not feeling any pain. NICK: That means if you're kind of fucked up, I think.  NEIL: Exactly.  NICK: You're feeling no pain.  NEIL: Um, I'm so happy to have you, Nick Flynn, on the show, SHE'S A TALKER.  NICK: I'm happy to be here, Neil Goldberg -  NEIL: I, you know -   NICK: on the show SHE'S A TALKER. Is the 'She' the cat? NEIL: Yeah.  NICK: That's, that's who the 'she' is.  NEIL: It is, yeah. I, you know -  NICK: I guess I got that. Yeah.  NEIL: Well, you know, in 1993 when everyone was dying... Everyone is still dying, but just differently.  NICK: I remember that. Yeah.  NEIL: Yeah. Uh, you know, I did a video project where I interviewed, it turned out to be, like about 80 gay men all over New York City in all five boroughs who had female cats, combing their cats and saying "She's a Talker." NICK: They were combing the cats?  NEIL: Combing the cat. It was just almost like, it was like a stealthy way to like, not stealthy, but it was a way to document a lot of gay men who felt like really imperiled, and it was my first video project. And, I don't know, when I decided to name this, that came up for me. But subsequently I get a lot of like, what does the word 'she' mean at this point? NICK: Right, right, right. Yeah.  NEIL: Maybe I should rebrand it. What should I call it?  NICK: Uh, you should stick with it, I think. Hmm.  NEIL: Uh, when, when you're looking for like a short hand, like you encounter someone on the proverbial elevator and are looking for like a pithy way to describe who it is you are and what it is you do, what do you, what do you reach for? NICK: I say I'm a poet.  NEIL: Period.  NICK: Period. Yeah. Yeah. Cause that usually gets a pretty dead-eyed stare like the one you just gave me. Like that's it? That's it.  NEIL: When someone is confronted with poet, silence, do you ever feel like helping someone out?  NICK: Well, it depends on like, often, that'll pretty much be the conversation-ender.  NEIL: Yeah.  NICK: So it does nothing to help cause they're gone right at that point.  NEIL: If your folks were around, how might they describe who it is you've become? NICK: Wow, that's a, that's an interesting one. Would they, would they still be, are they like idealized, my, like my parents on their best day or on their worst day?  NEIL: Oh, I wouldn't mind hearing both if you don't mind. Like the...  NICK: Ah, like, you know, there's the idealized version of your parents. Then there's the, not the reality, but the, you know, but recognizing at a certain point that they had some rough days, you know. In my mind, it's hard to deny they had some rough days. So, um, it's a little, it's a little harder to pretend. Yeah. Uh, my father, he knew that I'd published books and he was sort of, you know, strangely proud of that. Uh, but proud just in the way he knew I'd be a good writer because he was such a great writer, so I got it all from him. So he took all credit for any of it. So I imagined he would still take credit for any accomplishments I've had or that he perceives I've had. I've, I'm trying to think if he had like on a good day, that's sort of like a not so good day. Yeah. On a good day, he did have a couple moments where he was able to just recognize the struggle it had been, uh, between the two of us, uh, to actually acknowledge that. And I think that would be like, he'd say like, yeah, this was, this must have been hard, you know? So I think that would be. That'd be a good day for him.  My mother's a little more enigmatic, like it's actually, when I think about it, like, cause I mean, she died before he did. I was younger. I didn't know her as well, probably. So, although I grew up with her, but, um, I sort of studied my father more, and my mother's more of a, uh, a construct of the imagination in some ways. Although, I mean, we spent so much time together too. It's strange to say that actually, I don't know if that's true.  You know, I, there's always the question like, what would my mother be like now? So I'm, I look at women that are my mother's age, that would be my mother's age now. Like I don't know how, how she would be. So either way, I think she's, since she, from her backhouse sort of WASP-y Irish background, she probably wouldn't say directly anything. I'd have to decipher what she said.   NEIL: So it would be cryptic in terms of her estimation of you, or?  NICK: I mean, she, I think she'd say, "Oh, I'm, I'm proud of you." But the deeper levels of that I think would be harder to get to.  NEIL: Yeah. I see you came in, you were, you had a bike helmet, which I connect to. Um, on your bike ride over, did you have any thoughts?  NICK: Wow. Thoughts as I was coming here - the sort of meta thing is I was listening on my headphones to SHE'S A TALKER. And you're talking to someone about riding a bike over the bridge.  NEIL: Right, yeah.  NICK: So like, yeah. I mean, at the moment I was riding over the bridge. I was listening to you talk to someone else about riding over the bridge and then thinking that I would soon be here talking to you, and I brought my helmet it, I didn't - usually I lock it on my bike  but maybe I brought it in so you would ask me about it. It's possible, but I think I just brought it in cause it was cold, it was so cold outside. I wanted a warm helmet when I went back out. So.  NEIL: Aha, you didn't want to put on a cold helmet. I never thought about that. NICK: What I thought about on the bridge was that it was way colder than I thought it was. It was the wind, it was like howling and I had a hat in my bag and I kept thinking, I'll just stop and put my hat on under my helmet and I didn't stop. I kept thinking, I'll warm up at some point, but I just kept getting colder and colder the further I went. I just never stopped, I just kept going.  NEIL: Well, let's, um, go to some cards that I curated for you.  NICK: You curate these for this conversation?  NEIL: Yes. Yeah.   (Card flip)  So the first card is: the specific, tentative, hyper-attentive way one tastes something to see if it's gone bad. NICK: Um, what I usually do is I'll, I'll, I'll cook it and then give it to my brother. NEIL: Mikey likes it?  NICK: Yeah. And then if he can get through it then it probably hasn't gone so far bad. Cause he's pretty sensitive actually. I mean, while I'm presenting, it sounds like he'd just eat anything. No. He's quite sensitive. So he's like sort of the. He's, he, he, he's a Canary. Ah ha. Yeah. So I'll just fix it up and give it to him and then, cause he'll, usually, he's quite happy if I make him something, give him some food, then if it's no good, then, then I throw it away. Yeah. If he eats it, I'll eat it.  NEIL: He's your taster. Um, where, where does your brother live?  NICK: He lives upstate, New York.  NEIL: Oh, okay. Yeah, but he's your older brother, right, if I'm remembering? NICK: But why did you say, "but." Because he lives upstate?  NEIL: No, because of the scenario of like, your brother, the implication. He's an implied younger brother in the story.  NICK: Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. He's an implied younger brother in life too.  (Card Flip)  NEIL: Next card. When a toddler falls, that space before they start to cry. NICK: Well. My daughter was, uh, three. And for us, like three was really like, spectacular meltdowns and just like, you know, tantrums and just like wildness, just like absolutely wild, like wild animal, just screaming and frustrated and like, you know, furious. And one day she, uh, she was in a tantrum, she fell and she hit her cheek on the corner of a staircase and it split open and like bled. It sort of woke her up. Like it was right at the end of her being three, she was going to turn four. It was a Sunday night. And my wife and I were like, Oh, what do we do? Like, I'm like, I guess, do we take her to her doctor or do we like, you know, just like, like leave her with a scar for the rest of her life? And so I butterfly-stitched it, you know, like made a little butterfly thing, to hold it together to squish the skin together, you know? And, uh. That's what we did. We sort of looked up t see like how big and deep it had to be to go to a doctor and stuff and to need a stitch, and it was sort of right on the edge. So I butterfly-stitched it, and then. Yeah so now she just has this pretty little scar on her face and she's perfect.  NEIL: Wow. And does she know the story of the scar?  NICK: Oh yeah. I would say it's a part of her myth, part of her origin myth. The wildest, the wildness poured out of her cheek. Yeah. Yeah.  NEIL: Uh, can, can you share -  NICK: Did that answer your question? NEIL: Yes and no. That's always the, um, I think it's beautiful. I have the idea, I'm not a parent, but when I see a kid having a tantrum - NICK: I wasn't either before that.  NEIL: Yeah.  NICK: It comes on kind of suddenly.  NEIL: But how did you deal with tantrums?  NICK: I, I've been sort of attentive and amused by the whole process. Like I feel like we're really lucky. She's a really good kid and just a really interesting kid and like, so I just sort of like see it, like, I admire the tantrums in a certain way. Like, I think everyone should be like, just screaming, running down the streets, you know, most of the time. Like this sucks. Um, so there was something very, uh, wild about it. Like just to see like, wow, like you can just do this. You can just go and like, you can go to a store and just pull a whole rack down. If you don't get your Popsicle, you don't fucking. She, she used to fire me like every day as a father. She said, if you do not give me that Popsicle, you will not be able to kiss me. You will not be able to hug me. You will not be my father.  NEIL: What did you say to that?  NICK: I'm like, Oh, that's really hard. I'd be sad not to be your father. She was like, you will not be able to, you will have to go to Texas and never come back.  NEIL: Crafty.  NICK: Yeah, she was good. Yeah, but I, you know, I was onto her though. Yeah. I'd be her father like in half an hour later. NEIL: Did you ever say -   NICK: She'd rehire me like half hour later. Yeah.  NEIL: Was there a re-intake process?  NICK: No. No. We just pretended it didn't happen. Yeah, it was all moving forward. It was all the continuous present.  NEIL: Yeah.  NICK: You just kept this present moment. This present moment had no connection to the other moments whatsoever. NEIL: Did you ever join your daughter in a tantrum?  NICK: Did I ever join her in a tantrum? Oh, wow. Yeah, I did. Yeah. I remember one night, like early on when she was like six months old and that. The beautiful hallucination of early parenthood where you just, you just don't sleep. You just like, you're just awake for like months. Like just not sleeping. And you just fall asleep in the middle of things. Just like, you know, you can just barely do anything. Everything's filthy and like, you know, you just wash all the clothes and immediately they're filthy again, the food is just taken and thrown to the floor. I think the dogs eat it. You just give up in a certain way. There's one night I was up with her at like three in the morning and she was just screaming. And I was just like, I think I filmed her screaming with my phone. I'm just like, okay, just scream. Just scream. I'm going to make a movie of you screaming. I was like, I don't know what to do. So I just made a little movie of her. NEIL: Wow. But you didn't, but, but it didn't call on you the feeling of like, now I am going to lose it myself and cry?  NICK: Um, well, I think I viewed, it's like, you know, I'm from like a sort of WASP-y Irish background, and so we don't really show that stuff. And I'm sort of always like that, but it don't, I don't, I try. I think no one can see it, but I think everyone actually sees it.  NEIL: So always you're, you're crying always. NICK: Melting down, yeah.  (Card Flips)  NEIL: Okay. Kids with artist parents. Because both you and your wife are artists. Like to me, the idea of like, two artists come together and they have a kid, well that's going to be a super kid. And then that kid maybe, will - NICK: Be with another artist, yeah. NEIL: It's almost like an artistic eugenics kind of vision or something.  NICK: Um, yeah. I always think it for our daughter, like Lord help her. Really. I don't think like, Oh, you've been, you've won the lottery. Like, like, this is the card, this is the hand you've been dealt. Good luck with it. You know, we're both like, yeah, we're both a little. I, I don't know, I don't know if neurotic is the right word, but like, you know. You know, we're, we're sensitive. We're like, you know, in some ways not made for this world, we're, we're awkward where other people are comfortable, we're, uh, you know, we found our place to, to survive, which is really lucky, you know? And also, you know, in a culture, like I'm a poet too, I'm not, like, it's not that like, this is like some hugely respected artistic position in our culture at the moment. You know, like, that's why I say that I, I say it perversely if someone asks me, with the elevator pitches, like if they ask me what I do, I say I'm a poet. And just because it's perverse, it's like it's so perverse, you know? You know when, if you go to a doctor's office, I write it on a form. I write 'poet', just, you might as well ride hobo or something. Right? That's not right. I'm a wizard. So it's not like, it doesn't feel like that she's suddenly being dealt like this, like, like a superhuman. Like, what are you talking about?  NEIL: Right. NICK:  It's just unfortunate. Like, you know. Artists get attracted to artists because we can vaguely understand each other, maybe. You know, we're not like, you know, I've tried to be with civilians before and it's like, not easy, you know? I really, I feel less understood, you know? I barely feel like I fit in now. To this world. So you know, you find someone who you feel like, yeah, you also don't feel like you fit in. So that's a kind of connection.  NEIL: How does your, how does your daughter describe what, what you both do? Does she unabashedly say -  NICK: Well, it's a little easier for Lily, for my wife. I mean, cause she's like, you know, people actually will sometimes recognize her on the streets and stuff, so she's a little prouder.  NEIL: But him, the hobo.  NICK: And my dad's a poet.  (Card Flip)  NEIL: Okay. Next card: the fetishization of storytelling.  NICK: Yeah. Right now there's a, there's a whole storytelling thing going on, right? Yeah. There's a whole sense of revival and stuff, and I don't exactly get it. I mean, I, I admire it, like I've gone to The Moth, I've participated in a couple of storytelling things. It's a, it's a strange form for me. It's a strange art form for me, and I admire it when it's done really well. I admire it. The ones I've gone to, that I've been part of, they were, kind of felt a little closer to stand-up, which is another art form too. But I'm like, the line is a little blurry and a little like strange and, and it makes sense that stand-up would be part of it. Cause they are sort of like, like jokes in a way. They're sort of packaged. I mean it's a packaged form. It's like improv is more interesting to me. Like where you don't know where it's going to go. But where, if you know where, I mean, like I say, people that do it well, it's really beautiful.  NEIL: Yeah.  NICK: It's just not what I do. It's like memoir is not storytelling. Uh, it's another form. And storytelling is like one part of it. You sort of tell the story, but then you sort of have to turn over the story and say like, why am I telling this story? Like what am I trying to present in telling this story, ignores all these other realities that are happening or all these other things I don't want you to know. People will come up and say like, you know, how's it feel to like, have that people know so much about you now? Like, well, you only know what I want you to know. You're gonna get some glimpse from a book.  NEIL: Right. Yeah.  NICK: From storytelling, I don't know even what glimpse you get, you get a glimpse of how they tell a story I guess. I want to know about other people. I want to know like what their, the interior life is of other people, what the landscape is. Which is why I like read... Or, why I, why I do anything. Like go see art. Or just to sort of like have that, so you're not so, so you recognize it's not all, all ego, you know? It's not all, like everything isn't sort of springing forth from within me. You know?  NEIL: Right. I'm not interested in other people's stories generally.  NICK: Yeah.  NEIL: Specifically too. I'm not interested in other people's stories, but I'm interested in hearing people think, which is what this podcast is about. So like the way their thought processes reveal themselves. That interests me. I don't know, but I'm, I'm, I'm not interested in the content. NICK: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I understand. Yeah. I teach creative writing and often it's like, I'm much more interested in like, the stuff around the content. It's not about the content, like it's more about the stuff around like how you're like, like, you know, how this one thing transformed something else or how you chose to make this weird sentence, or how like these things that have sort of moments of excitement. The story itself can be rather deadening.  NEIL: Right.  NICK: Yeah. Because, I think because it's somewhat packaged too, it is a lot of times, yeah.  NEIL: But I also, the thing I really resist is this, like: "We're about stories." You know, like the, this fetishization of storytelling has creeped into like how, how stories are talked about. It's like, we bring you stories da da da, stories. It's like, it feels infantilizing too.  NICK: Well, you know, I was just talking about this with one of my, some of my students, uh. You know, the, what's the most famous Joan Didion line? "We tell ourselves stories in order to live."  NEIL: Right, right.  NICK: And, yet, The White Album goes on. That's the first line of The White Album. That'll probably be on her tombstone. Uh, you know, they make bookmarks of it in bookstores, and yet if you actually read The White Album, that essay, she totally just doesn't believe it and contradicts it and says like, why? Like this makes no sense at all. And like that this is, I thought I could do this. Like I was, I was desperately trying to create a story that would protect me from something and it, none of it worked. And it just dissolves, the whole thing just all is like, so to take that one line out of context and say, this is actually a truism is so strange. It doesn't make any sense at all. And there's a  thing, my therapist came up with this thing of the, I don't know if he came up with it, but we talk about my, one of my disorders, uh, one of my many disorders is a narrative affect disorder where I'll create like stories like, but you know, it's not stories like you're talking about, it's creating books and creating like versions of what happened, um, in order to contain it and to be able to hold onto it in a way that seems safe, so I don't have to feel the actual emotional intensity of it.  NEIL: Right.  NICK: Um, and I think it's, it is a type of illness. I think storytelling is a type of illness, uh, that keeps you from actually feeling.  (Card Flips)   NEIL: Next card: often when I leave the apartment, I think, is this how I'd like it to be found if I die today? NICK: I think that one's more about you than me. I think. Um.  NEIL: You don't think that when you leave?  NICK: Well, I don't think I'm ever going to die. I'm pretty sure. NEIL: Do you really believe that?  NICK: Yeah. Like I, yeah, no. I have a thing where like, I'm, I'm, there's, well, I just know the ways I'm not going to die.  NEIL: Okay. Let's hear it.  NICK: I'm not going to die in an airplane crash. I'm not going to die by getting eaten by a shark. Might die by getting hit by a car on a bicycle. I mean I might, so I have to be careful.  NEIL: Yeah.  NICK: But I can swim for miles in the ocean filled with sharks. I'm fine. Yesterday I was on a plane coming from Houston and, uh, it was just like, like being on a ship in the middle of a, of a nor'easter. Like it was just wild, you know, like it really, like it was almost spinning. Yeah. I was fine. I'm like, Oh, this is cool cause I'm not gonna die in a plane. Like, you know, so I just have these sorts of things. They might be, you know, just delusional. You know, I mean, how could I possibly know? But I'm almost positive I'm not going to get eaten by a shark. NEIL: Uh huh.  NICK: Which really, which really helps in Provincetown. Cause there's a lot of sharks there now and a lot of people don't swim in the water. And I'm like, ask yourself, are you going to get eaten by a shark? Do you really think that's the way you're gonna die? And most people would say no. I mean, wouldn't you say no? Like no. If you know, on a rational day, like that'd be really, and if you did, that'd be so cool. Like how many people, how many poets get eaten by a shark? That'd be so excellent, right? Like it's a win-win. I have a poet, there's a poet, Craig Arnold, a really great poet that died a couple of years ago. He was writing a whole series of poems on volcanoes. Traveling the world, like got a grant to travel the world and look at volcanoes. He's just gone. He just vanished one day. He vanished. We think he fell into a volcano and died. Like, that's like an amazing story. Like it's terrible, terrible, awful. But I mean, there are a lot worse ways to die than falling into a volcano.  NEIL: Oh my God. How would you feel about being bitten by a shark and surviving it?  NICK: That's cool. That woman, that, that surfer that only has one arm, she's cool.  NEIL: You'd be okay with that?  NICK: If I could surf like her.  (Card Flips)  NEIL: Um.  NICK: I really killed this bottle of Perrier.  NEIL: Oh, awesome. I love it. Um, good job. Uh: the ambiguity of "It's downhill from here."  NICK: Oh. The whole idea of like, you know. There's a few things. Yeah. The opposite is all uphill from here, right. It's all, so downhill sounds pretty good, right? But it suggests like we're sliding into the grave, I think. NEIL: Yes.  NICK: Like it's all like we've reached the peak.  NEIL: Yeah.  NICK: That was the peak. It was really hard to get to the peak. And as soon as you get to the peak, you start going downhill. Yeah. You know? Uh, and, uh. Yeah, I often joke, yeah, I'm on the other side of the, on the other side, now, you know, that you somehow that the, the, the greatest work and the greatest, uh, notoriety so that was a while ago. Um, and.  NEIL: But also maybe the greatest struggle, no?  NICK: Was a while ago.  NEIL: Yeah.  NICK: Yeah. Oh, I dunno. But I, I joke about it. I just, I don't really believe that. The most recent project I'm doing just feels completely, uh, uh, fulfills me. You know, I'd have this other book coming out, this book, Stay, coming out, which I'm, I worked on a lot last year and I'm happy with that. And another book coming out after that. So there's like, you know, I don't really worry about it, but it's, it's almost a thing. It might be sort of Irish too, like just so you don't want to sort of, uh, be too full of yourself. You know, you want to like sort of be somewhat, you don't want to show how many fish you caught that day cause then you have to give half away. So you sort of downplay it. You downplay it. So the downhill side is where we sort of live. We live on the downhill side. I don't know, it's a strange metaphor.  NEIL: It's, it's ambiguous. NICK: Yeah, it's a strange metaphor.  NEIL: But I'm also thinking it's a paradox, too, and, as you talked, because take the downhill part. Um, it does get easier.  NICK: Yeah.  NEIL: I think, I mean, my life, I will say, and anything could change at any moment, has gotten so much easier, you know, now that I'm clearly on the other side. NICK: Psychic.  NEIL: Yeah.  NICK: Psychically. Yeah.  NEIL: For sure.  NICK: Yeah. Yeah.  NEIL: Um, yeah. It's also, I am sliding into the grave. Yeah. I mean, hopefully it's a long slide, but...  NICK: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mortality. The cold wind of mortality does start to, you start to feel it. At a certain point.  NEIL: In your back.  NICK: Yeah. You started, you know, it's blown in your face. Yeah. It's like, it's like you feel it, which I, you sort of thought you felt it in your 20's but you really, you could have, I mean, we know a lot of people that died in their 20's, sure. It was not like this. This is like the real thing. Yeah. This is like, yeah. There's no, like, there's no choice in the matter. So like, yeah, maybe I'll just overdose or something, you know, or, or, you know, or I'll just be reckless and didn't die. Now it's like, yeah, no matter what I do, doesn't matter what I do, I can, I can eat kale, I can eat kale the rest of my life.  NEIL: Yeah. I don't have to coax the process and it's still going to happen. NICK: Yeah.   (Card Flips)  NEIL: The existential space of the clipboard. NICK: Well, I mean, clipboard, I think when you say clipboard, I was thinking of just like first of a blank clipboard, but then I was also thinking of the thing you put clippings on, that you put other things on, combine things together.  NEIL: I'm thinking of the clipboard, the computer clipboard. Like when you cut something. That space.  NICK: Well, what do, what is it? What is that on the computer?  NEIL: The clipboard. NICK: Yeah. What is that? I'm not sure what it, what do you mean? You cut and paste stuff? Or... NEIL: Anytime you, surely you do Command X and Command C, right?  NICK: You mean like copy things and then cut things? Yeah. Yeah. Cut. Yeah.  NEIL: So when you copy something -  NICK: And Command V.  NEIL: Oh yeah.  NICK: Yeah, yeah. Can't forget Command V.  NEIL: Absolutely. When you do Command C - NICK: Yeah. That copies it.  NEIL: Into the clipboard. And then that command, do Command V - NICK: It takes it off the clipboard.  NEIL: Yeah. Well, it stays in the clipboard, but it also pastes the inside.  NICK: See I don't think, I never knew that. Yeah. I never would've thought of that.  NEIL: I'm acutely aware of the clipboard. NICK: I never thought where it went. Oh. Oh. Well, this is a tough question cause I've never really thought of this before. So, uh, existential, I mean, that's kind of heavy to suggest it has to do with life or death. Um, uh.  NEIL: You don't think about your text in that kind of liminal state between when you cut it and when you've pasted it? NICK: I figured it just, it goes away. Like it doesn't, like if I, if I cut something else, then that replaces the thing I cut before, or if I copy something else, replaces the thing. So I just assume there's not a clipboard holding all of them.  NEIL: No, it isn't. That's part of the existential condition.  NICK: Cause it just vanishes once you put something else on top, once you copy something else.  NEIL: Yeah. It's fragile.  NICK: Yeah. I make a lot of copies. I try to, I try to like, save things as much as possible and like, yeah, like I'm, and print things up. I, I prefer to write by hand first. Uh, really. Um, and then to print it and then to write by hand on the thing I've printed and then to keep going back and forth like that. I like writing by hand. There's a, there's a young poet, um, who created an app called 'Midst.' It's hard to say midst, like in, you're in the midst of something. Yeah. I don't know how to - midst. M. I. D. S. T. It's very hard to say for me.  NEIL: Yeah. Me too.  NICK: Can you say it?  NEIL: Uh, yeah. I feel like it's going to intersect with my sibilant A-S. Let's try it. Midst.  NICK: Yeah. Oh, you do feel very well.  NEIL: But a little gay, right?  NICK: I didn't, I didn't say that. I raised one eyebrow, but I did not say it.  NEIL: When straight men raise one eyebrow, it somehow doesn't look gay. Midst. Midst. What's Midst?  NICK: Well, it's a, it's a program that she did where you can, where you write a poem, I guess you write anything, but it sort of keeps track of all the cutting and pasting you do and the, the process of making it. So you ended up, you send her like a final poem, but then she can press a button and can see all the stuff you did to make it. Um, so I have to try it though, but I usually, I really usually write by hand first and she's like, no, you have to write it on the, you have to compose the whole thing on the thing. I'm like, okay, so I just haven't quite done it yet, but I'm, yeah, I'm planning on it though.  NEIL: But this is basically, this isn't a useful tool. This is a tool to create a kind of -  NICK: To create a thing. She'll publish like a magazine that shows, like you look at a poem and then you press a button and it all sort of like, maybe it goes in reverse and dissolves back to the first word or something.  NEIL: Yeah. I just am not into those kinds of things. I feel like there's a lot of that peripheral to the art world. These things that kind of like perform a process or reveal a process. I'm just not into that. You know what I'm saying? NICK: No, but that's okay. I mean, I try, I believe that you are not into it. I'm just like, process is nice. Like I love, I love, I love seeing the process. I love seeing, don't you love like, like thinking like Michelangelo's slaves, you know, on the way to the David, right?  NEIL: Oh yeah.  NICK: We get to see the slaves like coming out of the block of marble and everyone says that they were like incomplete.  NEIL: Yes.  NICK: Yeah. We just said, which is such bullshit. Like if you think about it, like what, he did twelve incomplete at the same stage, like they're half out of the block just, Oh, I'm just gonna stop them all here.  NEIL: Right?  NICK: Like, it makes no sense at all. Like you couldn't finish one of them? NEIL: Right. NICK: Like he clearly saw that it looked cool for slaves who were pulling themselves out of what they're stuck in. And that, I find it so much more interesting than David, which is complete and perfect. I think, I think that's the meta thing where it's like all about process. That's like the process right there.  NEIL: Huh.  NICK: Yeah. So I try to think about that. That was just sort of a highfalutin way to counter your anti-process.  NEIL: Doesn't feel highfalutin. I think my thing was like faux highfalutin.  (Card Flips)  What keeps you going?  NICK: Um. Uh, just wondering what's gonna happen next. Yeah. Yeah. NEIL: Poet. On that note, thank you, Nick Flynn, for being on SHE'S A TALKER. NICK: Thank you, Neil. NEIL: That was my conversation with Nick Flynn. Thank you for listening.  Before we get to the credits, there were some listener responses to cards that I'd love to share. In my conversation with artist Tony Bluestone, we talked about the card: That moment when you forget what you should be worrying about and try to reclaim it. In response to that card, Jamie Wolf wrote, "A single brussel sprout rolled under the stove, and I wasn't gonna let Shavasana get in the way of my at least remembering to retrieve it." John Kensal responded with what I think is a haiku: Please sit or flee, my wee and quiet executive function disorder. Another card Tony and I talked about was: Fog is queer weather, to which Jonathan Taylor wrote, "To me, fog is transgressive because it's like a cloud. So it's either you or it is not where it's supposed to be."  Thanks to everyone who wrote in. If you have something you'd like to share about a card on the podcast, email us or send us a voice memo at shesatalker@gmail.com or message us on Instagram at shesatalker. And also, as always, we'd love it if you'd rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or share this episode with a friend. This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund. Devin Guinn produced this episode. Molly Donahue and Aaron Dalton are our consulting producers. Justine Lee handles social media. Our interns are Alara Degirmenci, Jonathan Jalbert, Jesse Kimotho, and Rachel Wang. Our card flip beats come from Josh Graver. And my husband, Jeff Hiller, sings the theme song you're about to hear. Thanks to all of them, and to my guest, Nick Flynn, and to you for listening. JEFF HILLER: She's a talker with Neil Goldberg. She's a talker with fabulous guests. She's a talker, it's better than it sounds, yeah!

127: Interview with Dr Larry Little Josh: So, I've got a special guest with us today, which is Dr. Larry Little. Now, Dr. Larry Little is somebody who's been very, very fun part of my life and has influenced millions of people through his book Make a Difference. Now Make a Difference is all about doing just that, making a difference. And I'd like to introduce you now, Dr. Larry Little, why'd you want to make this book? Learn more about how to make a difference at dorksdelivered.com.au Dr. Larry Little Well, Josh, thank you first of all For allowing me to be with you and just to hang out and to talk. I'm so proud of you and you're such an incredible leader, and example of what that make a difference the whole concept is about. And you're a wonderful example of why I wrote the book. Because I understood that people they may be brilliant and certainly can do things from a skill standpoint, can do things from a technical standpoint that were... and they were very gifted in that area. But what happened was I had entrepreneurs and owners and people that were leaders would come to me and they would say, "You know, Larry, I had this wonderful, for instance, engineer and she was brilliant. So we promoted her and she failed miserably. We promoted her, she had a team of people around her. She had no clue how to lead a team. She frustrated the team. She was frustrated. She ended up leaving. So we lost a great engineer, not to mention we still have a need for this leader in this area." I got to thinking about that, Josh and I saw a gap and how we literally talk, communicate, engage others. And I thought we're going at this kind of in an ineffective way. So, the Make a Difference concepts began to emerge around understanding who you are but not so you can just understand who you are, but let's understand who you are so that I can then understand who others, who they are and so that I can get to where they are and speak their language. And that's the real secret if you were to take... So if you take the whole book, in a nutshell it's understand who you are, but understand how to speak the language of others. The results have been really, really exciting as I've seen relationships grow personally in business, professionally simply because people begin to understand how to connect, engage, and really speak the language of those within their circle of influence. Josh: I completely agree. And one of the things that I definitely found from the book that I got now, I was fortunate enough to have started reading the book a number of ago when you did a bit of a tour around Australia and I met you in person, which was... didn't realise I guess the golden nugget, the opportunity that had landed in my lap in meeting you and how it was the change and pivot the direction of my life and the influence that it gave to me. So one of the things that I've found is it's not just about business, and it's definitely about relationships and communication and the way that you're talking with people and understanding what's their carrot for some people, and what is the driving motivators? why do people act the way they do? I know myself, and if it's not overly obvious, I'm definitely a quite a monkey. And the the interesting thing, actually, I'll give you a bit of background on the book. So you've got different characters that you all relate to, and there's different of profiling that you can do. But this is really easy to see and understand what type of person that you are and the type of... and how you discuss different things with different people. And how you've received the information from different people. And there's different books that I've read over the years and other ones on the five love languages, which I'm very familiar with. A different type of concept, but still resonates strongly with me. And being able to understand that when I'm talking with a line and they told me something very directly, and it was impacting me emotionally from them telling me what they've told me and it was... And they've told me and then it's been shifted on, it's out of their mind. And someone might say, "Josh, you look stupid in that shirt. What are you wearing that shirt for?" And all of a sudden that's in my head every time I see them for the next three years, they think I look stupid. And whether or not it was just something silly that I did or some off the cuff comment. And in my mind they were thinking about that as well the whole time, and I was thinking about it. It had entered their mind and let their mind and that was it for them. Dr. Larry Little Great. Josh: So, it's interesting just to understand how people think about you and how you should start thinking about others. And I'd say comfortably it's affected in positive ways, all areas of my life. My communication with family, friends, business associates, anyone and everyone. The way that I present myself on stage, the whole lot has changed because you can more easily gauge the feedback of the people that you're discussing or conversing with and work your way from there. It's a valuable read. So what would you say is where are you going from here? Dr. Larry Little Well, first of all, Josh, once again, congratulations, you get it. That's exactly the purpose of the book. And books like The Five Love Languages the Make a Difference these books all have one thing in common. And that is, it's about servant leadership. It's about understanding how to get to where someone else is instead of them to get to where you are. And that means you've learned to put your sensors in when you're around lions and not be offended with their direct language. You've learned to when you're presenting, to understand who your audience is and present in that format. And all of those things are... those are concepts, principles that really are undergirded by that servant leadership model. And the servant leadership model is just, let's understand and look at leadership from a service mentality instead of a dictatorial, narcissistic mentality. Josh: Yes. Dr. Larry Little Which it really is about serving others. And that's the premise of the book. The book, there are two myths that we really have to debunk. And the first myth is that we believe everybody shares our value view. In other words, we believe that what we think is important, everybody else thinks is important in terms of emotional connection and those kinds of things. That's not true. Everybody has their own value view. The second myth is that we believe everybody views us the same way we view ourselves. That's not true. We had this narrative that we tell ourselves, and this is how, based on our personality, based on who we are that is the narrative that drives our behaviour many times. But when we become self aware and we say, "Wait a minute. You know what, that narrative is not true for her or for him," then it changes the way we connect with others. And it's that understanding that drives us to serve others. And really the crucible of leadership is your purpose. Why are you leading? Why are you doing what you do, Josh? And the answer is because... for me it's because I want to make a difference in the lives of others. I want to make a difference in their life. I want to be able to speak into that. So this is a vehicle, this Make a Difference book is a vehicle for that. And that book it's been around and it's been around the world and we've been just very excited and very humbled by seeing the difference that it's made in relationships. Because Josh, if you in this interview you had said, "Hey Larry, this book it's really good. It's helped me to be a better leader. Boy it's helped me to be really much better president, CEO of my company, entrepreneur. Boy I could really lead my people in my company now." I would really be disappointed in you and I would say, "I'm so sorry. I was disappointed in myself because we didn't achieve what I wanted for you." But if you said what you said a minute ago, that, "Hey, this has helped me personally. This book has helped me in my personal life with those relationships that are so important to me. And oh by the way, I use the concepts in my professional world as well because it spills over." Then we celebrate. Then we say, "Hey, that is awesome. I'm so excited. I'm so proud and I'm so glad that you were able to use a bit of this to speak into the lives of others." So what's next? And it's really cool to watch it. The organisation that I work with, it's called Legal Centre for Leadership and we are taking these Make a Difference concepts and we continue to coach around them. With the executive and leadership coaching. We also have make a different seminars. We have a series of those that from accountability to engaging the disconnect, those kinds of things that our trained facilitators do a tremendous job. Very excited about our products and tools that we offer to support that and assessments. And really excited to roll out in 2020 what we are calling Eagle University. And Josh, we are taking those concepts and we are building a university online where you can go and get certified as an Eagle leader by walking through these, make a difference courses and other courses and that kind of thing. We are, our team is, they're going at it. They're excited about it, and we're focused on it. And I'm so grateful they let me hang out with them. It's exciting times around Eagle leadership. Josh: That's cool. So for the people that are in the land down under, a lot of the time that we find I guess we were only a very small, I guess we're a small continent full of widespread people. Is that someone that you'll be touring around Australia with or is that something we could say and definitely jump into online for some of the online university type media? Dr. Larry Little Oh yeah, the answer's yes and yes. Definitely you can jump online. Definitely you can participate in the Eagle university in the coaching, the seminars. With that I was just over in... well I would say your neighbour, maybe, we were in New Zealand. Josh: East Australia as I call it. Dr. Larry Little Yeah, the East Australians. Yes. So we were in New Zealand and we were able to roll out some of these concepts and yes, we'll be back in Australia. We'll look forward to that. But a lot of our work from a coaching standpoint can be done virtually now. We coach leaders literally across the globe. And so to answer your question, absolutely, we can do it virtually or in person or online. So that's exciting. Josh: That's cool. Yeah. Well, it's definitely as I said, it's impacted my life and it's been something strong enough that my position has evolved as it does over the years. Over the 12 years I've been in business, I've gone from being the guy in the trenches and talking with customers all the time, to being the guy that goes out and builds a team. And then from the team now I've started influencing and leading other business owners, which is something I'm very, very dear about and interested in doing. Because it's helping not just grow my business and the way that on own my mindset, it's helping grow theirs and hopefully accelerating their growth. Instead of taking 12 years to gain the knowledge that I've gained, helping them get it in a fast paced way that allows for them to apply that to their business, grow their business. And have the maturity that they can have, hopefully sooner. One of the actual great bits of feedback that I got and only a couple of weeks ago I had someone call me up, and I'm sure he would've called you up if you had your number. But he called me up and he said, "Joshua, I can't tell you how happy I am that you book Make a Difference on to me and how much it's changed my life." He's only halfway through the book at the moment. And him and his partner, they both work together in a local plumbing business. And he took his car to the mechanic and so the mechanic he's been taking his car to for years, and he he left. And he noticed that there was something wrong in the brakes and he thought, okay I'll bring it back to him and I'll just let him know there's something wrong with the brakes. And he thought, I'll talk to him as he would because they're on a friendship basis, the working friend relationship. Dr. Larry Little Right. Josh: He said, "Oh, I know you came in and you discussed... you had my car serviced, but I've noticed that the brake pads don't seem quite right. I've had a bit of a check over some pretty technical mind and I've noticed there's only a couple millimetres left. And I know I didn't bring it in to build the brake pads, but whats to go with that?" Now the mechanic went into an attack position, got rather upset with him. And Dan, the person who took the car to the mechanic was able to diffuse the situation by not retaliating and showing his teeth, and instead understanding where he was coming from and making sure to calm down the situation. Now the relationship with the mechanic might not continue on a whole bunch because it's... he felt very, I guess... you don't feel comfortable when someone does something like that. Josh: But it showed him this mechanic that's been a local mechanic for 20, 25 years around the area, what he could gain from the learnings or from the teachings that you have. And how impactful it's been for somebody who's only halfway through your book. And I can only imagine what value they would be getting out of any of the courses and through your seminars. Dr. Larry Little Well, you know I'm really glad to hear that. It is fulfilling and I just love to hear when someone says, this is helping me in my personal life. That was the purpose of the book. And that Dan had the competency to absorb and then to put into practise how to have those hard conversations. Realise that situation, how to have a hard conversation is certainly very, very important part of the things that we talk about in the book and in our seminars. So it speaks well of your friend. And like you said that professional relationship may change and look different and not be salvaged. But the fact that he did not allow himself to engage in that personal conflict, but yet he had healthy conflict and had a hard conversation, it says a lot about him. Josh: Absolutely. And there's a book that I've read by called [Flawsome 00:15:14] and it's about embracing your flaws. Now these aren't necessarily personal flaws, but about embracing flaws that you might have had because you dropped the ball, you stuffed up. Now everyone does it. Everyone has a bad day. Everyone has an off day. And when you dropped this ball, Flawsome is all about making sure that you embrace the flaw and then overcome it. What I love about Make a Difference is it's about making sure you're understanding it from the other person's perspective so that once you aren't... you have a lot of empathy towards the situation and you're not going in with the Lion heart outset or the monkey outset or the camel outset. And I think that's such really important to do. Dr. Larry Little Well, I think that you're very wise and that is a skill and you're 100% right. You've got to be willing to fail. You've got to be willing to say, it's not about getting it right every time, Joshua. Right? It's about saying, "I'm going to try to get in those other quadrants." And when I say other quadrants, I'm talking about where are the other personalities live? And the book breaks that down. So, that takes practise just like anything else. It takes discipline, rigour and rhythm. And if we have those things and we say, "I'm going to have the discipline." Yeah. Josh, just a quick... we'll chase a quick rabbit is, one of the things I've never understood this when we start teaching and talking about this, sometimes some of those lions or camels will say, "These are soft skills. You're just teaching soft skills." And the truth is no, there's nothing soft about it. This is hard. These are hard skills. If they were so often easy, then everybody would be doing it and relationships would be flourishing everywhere and we would never have problems. Right? This takes practise and it takes it... Good news. It is something you can choose to learn and choose to grow in. Right? But it takes practise and being willing to say, "Hey Josh, I blew that. I tried that. I'm sorry. Let me back up and try something. Yeah, Josh, I thought you were lion. I was a bit direct there. Let me back up." Because you're really a monkey and I got to tell you how good looking that shirt is and how I really like it. Josh: Exactly, exactly. And it's about understanding someone else, understanding how your team's working. And I also find, and I've done a couple of YouTube videos and this one's called the Mirror Mindset. It's about understanding yourself and about also knowing a situation where you need to be present as a different person. So, being a leader is about making sure you understand your team and you have your team all pulling towards... I think the saying goes, all ships rise with high tide. And hopefully I didn't quote that wrong. Josh: The important thing is when I was very introverted at school, and very introverted for the first part of my life. I was overweight. I was picked on to a spot where I wasn't able to walk anymore. Walk any more for a couple of weeks, when I was... Sorry, bashed up would be the more appropriate term rather than picked on, physically picked on. It was a traumatic experience. And when I lost the weight, I lost 38 kilos, I was still the timid person that was still trying to make people feel good, feel happy. And the reason I believe I became a monkey or what was because everyone resonates with the class clown. Everyone resonates with something that can make them laugh. And the universal languages is the smile. And Mr. Bean did it really well as did Charlie Chaplin making everyone smile without even speaking. Dr. Larry Little Right. Josh: Now, now when you read this book and you understand the teachings of Larry, it's fantastic to sort of know, okay, when you jump onto stage, you need to snap out of the mindset that you had and the person that you was, and you then need to become this other person. And one of the things that I found that taught me a lot is people such as [WindoyYankovic 00:19:19] Jim Carrey and a bunch of other people that are very loud extroverted people. But at heart are still very introverted people and they're actors and they're acting extroverted. Now, what I found is I was able to put on different hats, depending on different situations, and more easily resonate and get my message across. If I'm talking with a lion and I know that the information they want is to be direct. They want information, but they're not looking for details, that they're wanting to pieces to get the information... to get everything done. And that also goes for myself when I'm in a situation that I can't be a monkey or I shouldn't be a monkey. Or I need to be aware of all of those traits. It allows for me to be a better person in all situations, even if it's, yeah, I guess in just all situations. So- Dr. Larry Little Well, Josh you know, you're so right. And first let me say to you congratulations for how you walked through trauma because the truth is that was a very traumatic event for you as a young man. Congratulations for losing the weight, I knew that took discipline and nobody understands that work. But I'm really impressed with the fact that you look back at that very difficult, unfair, not okay situation that you found yourself in. And in today's world would call it being bullied, and that's not okay under any circumstance. However, you chose to look at that and instead of remaining the victim, you chose to learn and you chose to grow, and you chose to overcome that and say, "I'm going to... Was that fair? No. Was it okay? No. But neither is life." Life has never fair. Life is not fair. Josh: No. Dr. Larry Little And the only thing we really get to choose is how we handle the struggles. We don't get to choose if we struggle because we all struggle. We all have things. But we do get to choose how we navigate those. And you chose to learn and to grow from a... I hate this really, but the truth is we seem to learn more from the hard experiences in our life. Not that they're okay, but if we choose, we can really learn and grow from those. And you did just that, and boy that's inspirational. Thank you for that. That's choosing to learn and grow and become a better leader and then to go into these concepts instead of becoming bitter, angry, defeated, you said, "No, no, no, I'm going to learn these concepts so that I can invest in others better, so that I can lead through serving them. So that I can understand and be self aware of who I need to be." Josh, that's great work. Congratulations. Josh: Thank you. It's obviously doesn't come with having the right mentality and making sure that you are investing in your personal development. Interestingly, actually that story has a second part where the person... there was these, about three different people that were picking on me out of a school of 1200. It was relatively low numbers, but still life impacting, isn't it? It's not about the percentage, I guess. Dr. Larry Little That's right. Josh: And so one of my first jobs was at subway, subway sandwiches, which we've got everywhere I guess. And I'm there behind the counter as a sandwich artist as it would be, and one of the bullies came in and my heart dropped. And I went, Oh my goodness. And I started freaking out and I thought to myself, no, because... I thought to myself and thought about it from their perspective, and put why are they bullying? What is going on in their life? And I feel whatever's happening in my life could only be... I've got great parents, I've had a great upbringing. I'm fortunate enough to say that I live in one of the best countries in the world, and we... and I thought what has happened in their life for them to be doing what they're doing? And I felt in my mind, it calmed me down. So I thought, okay, they've gone in a direction where they've had to lash out. And I thought they probably don't have the best family and upbringing. And I'd thought of this in my head and as I'm making their sandwich, and obviously everyone has this one thing sitting on this shoulder saying, spit in their sandwich. Dr. Larry Little Right. Josh: No one listens to this one, I hope. I hope not. I still go to subway. Obviously we're not talking about yet. So and he said to me without me saying anything and I was just smiling and being the best person that I could, and making sure that my outlook was not dropped down to any of the previous influence that I'd had from the situation. And he said, "Josh, I'm sorry for picking on you." And he said, "I'm sorry for bullying you at school." And he said that without me putting anything up, and nearly made me cry because I thought, wow, he's also matured in his mindset- Dr. Larry Little Wow. Josh: And that instantly all like... everyone's sort of... always having not miss about it. No, not about that situation, but at school. And when he said that everything sort of just felt like it was just a blanket that disappeared, and it shows the mental games that you make in your mind and how that plays and the impact that has on you, and what someone might say or do to you that changes and pivots the direction of your life. And as I said I'd be lying if I said that... I'm pretty sure when you first gave me the book, it was 2013 I think. Might have been 2012 around then. But it was, I can comfortably say that people come into your lives sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. That bully... And it's all again up to the mindset. That bully came into my life, and at the time I thought it was for bad, but then it's allowed for me to further understand how people think. So in a way it was for good. It was a hard lesson to learn. You came into my life for good. And again, that's a pivot and grown the direction of my life and how I've gone to impact things and people and that has been for good. So, it's all about your mindset, everyone... And this is again in the YouTube video I made the mirror mindset is about. When I started losing weight, I felt still overweight. My eyes saw a fat person in the mirror. And it was only after I then put on a couple more kilos that I then looked at a photo of me when I'd lost as much weight that I look anorexic. And I thought I've gone in the other direction. And so it's about your mindset and making sure that you keep in check and making sure you understand how people are perceiving you, how you're perceiving people. And know that the way that you're seeing you does not necessarily reflect the way that other people are seeing you. And we always, we're our worst critics, I'd agree. We do agree? Dr. Larry Little Yeah. There's no doubt. Well, unless we're narcissistic and then we're delusional. Right? Josh: Yeah. Dr. Larry Little But I think a lot of times that's very true of leaders and people that we are our worst critics. But perception is reality. And so you have to make sure that your perception is rational and it is real. And you had to check that even when the bully was apologising to you. You could have perceived that for him just to try to make up to you or that he had an ulterior motive, or that he wanted to get something for it. But you didn't. You took that at face value. You allowed it to be a source of healing for you. When people come into your life, when we introduced you to the concept that you had a choice to make. You could have perceived that as these are just soft skills and maybe it's good for somebody else, but you don't know what I've been through. You don't know what I've suffered. You don't know... But you didn't do that. You said, "I'm going to take those, I'm going to perceive that as something good and I'm going to use it and I'm going to apply it." And you did that Josh. And your choice, and we can never underestimate the power of choice in our life. We all have choices to make every single day. And you chose to take those concepts, you chose to use those concepts, you chose to apply those concepts. And you know as well as I do, if you were honest that took work. I mean, you've been doing this now since 2013 and you're still applying it and still using it. It's not a onetime and done. It's you've made that a part of your life and that took a lot of hard work. Josh: Right. And it's hard work. Nothing comes easy. Dr. Larry Little That's right. Josh: And a few things my father has taught me, is nothing comes easy and trust everyone until they prove themselves untrustworthy. Dr. Larry Little That's right. Josh: So, walk up to someone with open arms, not, not closed, and feel comfortable with the person that you're approaching until they show themselves to be, not the person that they first appeared to be. And that's a... Another person that's influenced my life. It's you and dad now, so- Dr. Larry Little Love that. Wow. You know, it's so true. And the whole centrepiece around the Make a Difference is that. And that's what we entitled it Make a Difference is that it's outward focused. It's about becoming self aware, yes. But becoming self aware so that we can give to others. Becoming self aware so that we can make a difference in the lives of others. And so you have done that, you've taken that and that's our goal in teaching these concepts. Josh, the truth is there are a lot of personality profiles out there. There are a lot of psychological assessments and they're all good. But seriously, there are a lot of very good psychological assessments that you can take. The problem comes when you take those tools and you get this plethora of data, you get all this stuff right? And they set it, and you try... First, you don't have time to go through it all. Second, you're not really sure what it means. And third, and most importantly, you don't know how the heck you're going to apply that quickly. So, the concepts we developed, the secret is not in a little assessment tool, that's not the the secret. The secret is well, I'll show you. So the secret is this, the secret is white picket fence. Josh: Okay. Dr. Larry Little White picket fence. So right now, Josh, even if you wanted to or not, it doesn't matter. Who you are, you're thinking of a white picket fence. You could say- Josh: I sure am. Dr. Larry Little ... I'm not thinking of one, but you are. And so that's the secret of what we do because neurologically our brains are hardwired to download word pictures very quickly and to process them very quickly. So, we use silly animal names, much love monkey, leading lion, competent camel, a tranquil turtle, so that our leaders are... And by the way, when I say leaders, I'm talking about all of us because we all are leaders. We all lead- Josh: Absolutely. Dr. Larry Little ... at least one person and that's ourselves. We only get to choose if we lead ourselves poorly or wisely. So, we wanted something that leaders could take and download quickly and apply quickly. So, the secret is in making it simple so that it can be practically applied so that then you can begin speaking that lion language to the lions in your life. You can speak the turtle language to the turtles in your life, and learn how in the world do you speak camel language and you speak that into the lives of camels. But the secret to the success of this, I truly believe is as simple as white picket fence. It's the practical application. It's the word pictures that we created because colours and numbers, our brain can't process that quick enough to really use it in the moment. Josh: Having a full letters that come back on a piece of paper without talking about the other tests. Obviously you can't really describe that or relate that to someone. But when you ask a five-year-old, "What does a monkey do, and how does a monkey look? How does a monkey react to a situation? And how does a lion look and what does a lion do and how does a lion react to a situation?" And anything that's worth teaching and worth learning should be able to be understood by a 12 year old. And I could comfortably say that being that we're related to animals, everyone knows animals, everyone loves animals. Everyone can see and see how they work together and how they can work better together. So, it's very, very smart the way that you did it. And as you said, situationally you can look and go, "Okay fine. They're that sort of person, they're that sort of person." And we've got a job network in Australia called Seek, which is you put an ad up on there to find a new employee. And we were using the make a difference test to sort of work out how they would fit into our organisation and how that would fit with us and the rest of our team. Dr. Larry Little Love it. Josh: And right from the word go we knew how we would be relating to them. And it's important too, what you pointed out earlier about engineers. And engineers may be being put into a managerial role does not necessarily mean that they should be managers. And it doesn't necessarily mean like a pay rise and a responsibility rise may not be what they're looking for. It may not be their carrot, and it may not be something they're looking for in their skillset. But if it is, it's definitely make a difference as a way that they can make it work with that position to make a difference, to there, present in the moment around that new position. Dr. Larry Little You're so right. Hey Josh, so I have a little secret and if you want me to, I'll let you in on it. You'd ask earlier what do you have? What's next? You want me to share it with you? I'm going to tell you just a little snippet about what's happening next. Josh: Yes, please. That'd be wonderful. Dr. Larry Little So, we're very excited that we knew the Make a Difference book, we felt like it had the concepts and we're so thrilled that it has helped people on an international level. That's awesome. But I knew there was something else and I knew there was, and the series is wonderful. We're glad to do that. We're so glad that, so cool what would people do that? But I knew there was something else. So, for over a year I've been piloting ideas and thinking about ideas and teaching and doing some work. And just last weekend I finished, I went in to an intensive, what I call an intensive, and I wrote a book that I believe is the sequel to the Make a Difference book. The working title of the book is called Lead to Make a Difference Above and Below the Line. Josh: Okay. Dr. Larry Little It's a different concept, but here's a snippet just to kind of give you an idea of where I'm coming from. You have to read the book to find out what above and below the line is all about. But it builds on, if you think about the DNA diagram, in the Make a Difference, it'll give you a hint. But the concepts are more around this. We talk about teams and that kind of thing and why they underperform or why there's toxicity in the team, or toxicity in a relationship. And the book centres not only on professional, but we talk a lot about personal relationships. And I think there's a monster. I think the monster attacks our relationships and attacks our teams. This monster is, I believe the reason that companies go under, that company's struggle, that relationships are destroyed. And the monster is fear, and the fear of failure, fear of being misrepresented, fear of being misunderstood. We could go on and on and I think the antidote to that fear is trust. But not in the traditional context of trust. We always talk about trust in terms of trust in a team or building trust in your relationship or building trust to be a strong... to trust each other to... Here's the problem with that. There's a huge disconnect there. Gap, if you will, and this is it. I don't think we can truly develop trust in someone else until we understand how to develop trust in ourselves. And I think self trust is something that people don't want to think about, but how in the world can I ask you to join me in a trusting relationship if I don't trust myself? Josh: Yeah. Dr. Larry Little: How can I build trust on a team if I don't trust my reaction? Josh: Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Larry Little: Yeah. So that, the book Lead to Make a Difference Above and Below the Line talks about how to gain that self trust. There an assessment tool in there about it. So, I'm very excited about it. I think it's going to... Boy, I hope that it helps a lot of folks. It was difficult to write because it kind of went down a different direction even then when I first started the concepts way back. Because I've talked and listened, and learned and I've tried to learn from others. But I think the end result is going to be pretty exciting. Josh: Well, I'm definitely pumped. I've loved your first book and I'm very interested to read the next one. It's something that I think everyone has... As I said, everyone has this demon inside themself. They're self-doubting, and I know I'm going to say I'm the worst for it. The worst for it, I guess. And I know myself, I have a team that look up to me. I have staff members that have left. And I've continued personal relationships with them. I'm still friends with them. And whenever they come to Queensland, they see me. And I sent out a something to one of them recently. And and I said, "Oh look, I'm looking to go this approach." And I said, "I'm worried about some of the directions that, some of the parts of the business are going." And I sort of brought them up to him and he said, "I've worked for five companies since you. You are the most professional company. You offer the best, most outstanding service verse any of them. You should not be worried about anything." And I felt wow, the way he's told me and how he was able to put that data together nearly made me cry to be honest. It was wonderful and I thought, everyone's got this doubt in himself and I can't do this and I won't do this. And I relate it back to the girl at school that you had the crush on, or 2009. The person you had at school, you had a crush on I guess. But the girl at school that you had the crush on, looked across you thought, Oh, I'm going to... At the right moment I'm going to go there and talk to her and I'm going to... Oh, I'm going to ask if I can say hey or hang out with her at lunch or whatever the case was. And then you didn't. And a year goes by, two years goes by and this person is saying, still do it. And you go, "No, I'm not going to do it." And then you... I'm not going to have to hang out with her. She's too pretty. She's too beautiful. And then the last day of school happens and then you finish school and you realise, wait, I'm in the same position now as I was before if I hadn't jumped on that opportunity. And this self doubt can have you lose opportunities and have you fail at I guess the butterfly effect. If you've got a small thing that just saying hello once to someone, reaching out like I did with yourself and saying hey. The smallest thing can build into a big thing for everyone involved, if you've got the... I guess not the guts, but the power within yourself to override those thoughts, feelings, and strive forward. So, I guess it's an important message. Dr. Larry Little: No, it really is. And it's revelation when someone realises that she no longer has to allow feelings to drive her behaviour. He no longer has to allow irrational thoughts, right, to define who he is or who he's not. That there is choice involved and we can learn the discipline of learning to lead through those emotions and making good choices based on that rational thought process. In fact, if you take two leaders and look at two leaders who were put in the exact same scenario of struggle. One may do very poorly that he may become a victim. He may become disassociated, he may become... Another may experience struggle and hardship and pain and so... But at the end he's grown stronger. Josh: Yeah. Dr. Larry Little: What is the difference? And so the book addresses that head on. The difference is this person understood how to lead above and below the line, understood the voices that he or she had before them. And we talk about the importance of having a grit, G-R-I-T and leading. And so I don't want to go into all of that and take out time, But I'm very excited about it. I think it's a good, I really do think it's a good sequel to the first make a difference project. Josh: Cool. And is that going to be available in Australia or online or audio books?> Dr. Larry Little: Yeah, all of the above. Right now, it's just brand new and it's actually at our... we're in the editing process right now, so look forward in the spring of 2020. And it will be, our goal is to have it hard copy, online obviously you can get it on Amazon, those kinds of things. And then also I'm going to push our team so that we can do an audio version. I want to do it... In fact, I want to do that for both of those books and create that audible experience as well. So it was a great question. Josh: Cool. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, especially I guess for business owners, and I'm going to say I love a physical book. I love feeling a physical book. I love the paper of a physical book and you want to get many technical people saying that. But I'm in front of a computer monitor sometimes eight hours a day, sometimes 18 hours a day. And the thing that I absolutely love is stepping away from that feeling something and you can... I think you can feel more of an emotion in the book. I don't know. It's probably just someone I'm saying. I feel that there's something there that you just can't get off of a screen. And that's where I'm looking forward to getting the physical book and I think that's going to do it for me. But at the same time, business owners are busy people and some people spend half their lives driving around in cars and I'd sincerely suggest not reading a physical book while in a car driving. Right. Dr. Larry Little: Agreed. Agreed. Josh: Yeah. So, it would be good to see it as an audio book. Well, I'm really happy to have been able to speak with you and go through and hear about the new exciting projects that you've got on offer coming through in the future. And also the, some of the ones that you've got on offer now through the university in bits and pieces, and... or soon to be on offer. Is there anything else that you'd like to ask me will go through? Dr. Larry Little: I'll tell you, Josh. It's leaders like you who are truly going to successfully make a difference moving forward because you are, as our friend Brad Scow talks about the entrepreneurial journey. You're in that leadership journey of now mentoring and coaching and just be encouraged that that is a very, very influential and important place to find yourself. So it is my hope. Who knows, Josh? This is what I might ask of you moving forward. Let's have a talk. I mean, we're always looking for coaches, so you never know, and presenters. So we may have to talk offline a bit about what you're doing. But seriously our website is eaglecenterforleadership.com and we'd love to talk with whoever is listening or watching and to be able to speak into your life as a leader, to walk with you to journey with you. That's a call that we have that is bigger than any of us any one person. We have a team of around 60 or so individuals that are all committed to walking with leaders in order to help them to lead differently and help them to influence others just like you Josh. And so it's been just a real honour. Thank you for calling and inviting me to come hang out with you for a while in the land down under. It's been a blast. Josh: Any bloody time. All right. I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity here as well. And as I said, I've looked up to you and your teachings for quite some time and I've carried them through to my life and carried them through in all aspects. And also in the lives of the people that I'm influencing. And it's touching to hear the stories. And I could only imagine the stories that you would have with people that have come to you and how you've helped them out. And there's a few written in the book, but the amount you would have had from the book, I could only imagine, would be a very impressive and very humbling to have all those. We will put a link to your website in the description below as everyone does, or it will be in the article on our website or in the podcast, or whatever the method is that you're listening. There'll be some way to jump on the site and check it out. And yeah, I really look forward to speaking with you again and yeah, going from there. Dr. Larry Little: Thanks my friend. Good day. Josh: Thanks. You too.  

This week, catching up with Dexcom CEO Kevin Sayer – overseas at the ATTD conference. We talk about everything from a G7 update, new partnerships, in-app notifications and those sensors that you’ve probably heard about getting stuck. We also talk about competition, customer service and a lot more. Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! In Tell Me Something Good, a Miss America contestant with T1D has pretty stellar week – and it has nothing to do with her crown and sash.. this is about engineering . Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode transcription (we're in beta so please excuse grammar, spelling, punctuation and the fact that AI can't figure out Dexcom speak) Stacey Simms 0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop created for people with diabetes by people who have diabetes by Real Good Foods, real food, you feel good about eating, and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom. Announcer 0:21 This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms. Stacey Simms 0:26 This week, catching up with Dexcom CEO Kevin Sarah overseas at a big diabetes Technology Conference. We talk about everything from the g7 new partnerships in app notifications. And those stuck sensors that you've probably heard about or seen on social media. Kevin Sayer 0:45 There's a freak out factor but Let's face it, if that's your last sensor, that's not fair. And that's not right. So we noted it, we've seen it, we've read it. We've done everything we can to mitigate it. I'm very comfortable we’ll see this come down. Stacey Simms 0:57 We also talk about upcoming CGM Competition, customer service, direct to Apple Watch and a lot more. in Tell me something good on Miss America contestant with Type 1 diabetes has a pretty stellar week and it has nothing to do with her crown and sash. This is about engineering. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your healthcare provider. Welcome to another week of Diabetes Connections. I am your host Stacey Simms, we aim to educate and inspire about type 1 diabetes by sharing stories of connection. My son was diagnosed with type one, just before he turned two. That was more than 13 years ago. My husband lives with type two diabetes. I do not have diabetes. I have a background in broadcasting and local radio and TV news. And that's how you get the podcast. longtime listeners know what the show is all about. letting some new people know because let's face it anytime we talked to dexcom or talk about anything New technology, we get a lot of new listeners. So welcome! If you've come for that, I hope you stick around and go through our almost 300 past episodes. Now, you can find everything at Diabetes Connections. com, we have a very robust search, there's the regular old search box on the upper right hand side. Or if you click on the episode page, there is a way to sort them by category. So if you want to see all the technology episodes are all the ones with athletes are all the ones about family or advocacy, you can sort them that way as well. Before we talk to Kevin Sayer, it is important to point out that as you heard the very top Dexcom is a sponsor of this show, and has been for a few years now. Our agreement means I talk about them in a commercial, which you will hear later on the show. But it doesn't mean that I don't get to ask hard questions. I really try to serve you as you listen, I try to serve you first. And if I'm not doing that this show doesn't work ethically. It's really important to disclose these things. And I always get upset when other either podcasters or bloggers or speakers don't do that. If you're a longtime listener, you understand how it works around here. Hopefully, I am doing a good job of serving you. But just to be clear, the advertisers in the show pay for the advertisement. And I believe in them, and I'm glad they're here. But they do not tell me what to say, in the show anywhere else on social media, or when I write a blog, that sort of thing. It's not that kind of relationship. So we're talking to Kevin coming up in just a couple of minutes asking your questions. I took a whole bunch of them from the Facebook group. We do have a Facebook group, it is Diabetes Connections, the group, very original, but very easy to find that way I thought, and that's really the best way if you want to ask these newsmakers questions I usually ask in the group and you can always contact me that way. That's coming up in just a minute. But first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by another sponsor, One Drop. It is so nice to find a diabetes product that Not only does what you need, but also fits in perfectly with your life. One Drop is that is the sleekest looking and most modern meter My family has ever used. And it's not just about their modern meter setup. You can also send your readings to the mobile app automatically and review your data anytime, instantly share blood glucose reports with your healthcare team. It also works with your Dexcom Fitbit or your Apple Watch. Not to mention they're awesome test strips subscription plans, take as many test strips as you need, and they'll deliver them to your door. One Drop diabetes care delivered, learn more, go to Diabetes Connections calm and click on the One Drop logo. My guest this week is Dexcom CEO Kevin Sayer. He is joining us from the International Conference on Advanced Technologies and Treatments for diabetes, which this year is in Madrid. So as we're talking to Spain here, please pardon any glitches or weird phone sounds that might pop up but hopefully all will go away. Kevin, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it. Kevin Sayer 5:02 Oh, thank you, Stacey. It's good to be back again. Stacey Simms 5:05 All right, let's start with the news that has already come out of the conference. And that is this official partnership with Insulet. With Omnipod. Can you start by talking a little bit about? And I'll be honest with you, I'm a little confused. I they're already in clinical trials for Horizon. I thought this agreement was a done deal. Tell us about the agreement with Insulet. Kevin Sayer 5:23 Actually, we've been working with Insulet since 2007. This is a long time relationship. And most of our work in the past was then under the form of a development agreement to jointly develop products together. The announcement this week is the culmination of all that development work over time to basically say, look, we've entered into an agreement whereby we know how we're going to commercialize our joint systems. And also, as we have entered into these development agreements with our partners, we typically do it one generation of technology at a time, we made the g7 system available to the Insulet team as well. So once they get a rising launch with G6, as the G7 system gets ready to go, it will be will be able to migrate over to that system as well. So that that was the purpose of this announcement and the other. You know, the other reason for it, there is so much going on in the interoperability world right now. We index coms as well, it's important that everybody knows that we have these relationships. And this relationship is very close and near and dear to us. So we therefore thought the announcement was good on something we have been working on for a very long time. Stacey Simms 6:29 When we look at interoperability, you've mentioned already G6, G7. Can you just take a step back and give us a little bit of an update on that so Insulet will go with their horizon, which is not out yet. That'll be g six and G seven tandem with control IQ also g six mg seven Kevin Sayer 6:50 Tandem has access to G6 right now. We've not yet signed a G7 agreement with them, but we'd expect to do that and then they're very near future. We've also signed a relationship with Lily and their connected pens and their platforms, whereby they'll have access to G six and G seven as well. We have several other smaller relationships with some of the smaller pump companies or others where they have to six, access not a lot of g7. At this point in time, we have to look at that strategy over time and decide what approach we're going to take with partners. The interoperability world creates some very interesting business scenarios, which I wish I knew the answer to all of that, but it ranges anywhere from let's say, one person and go or two people and just work with them to maybe a few or just open it up to everybody. And I think it evolves over time. For us right now. We think it's important that we support certainly as many as we can, but offer even a heightened level of support to those who are going to have commercial offerings in the near future as speaking towards Tandem and Insulet. In particular, the control IQ uses g six and we read certainly very good things about that is that since we've been out there. And so we'll work with them all. This is going to evolve over time. All the answers are available. Sure. Stacey Simms 8:07 Okay, so let's talk about control IQ quickly, because that's been in the news quite a lot lately. We just started it about three to four weeks ago. It's been working very well for my son, but Dexcom owns the algorithm, but used to be called or maybe still is type zero. Kevin Sayer 8:23 So let me give a little clarity on the fundamental or the underlying science and the calculations behind the algorithm are in fact, developed a type zero and owned by Dexcom. Tandem has filed that as their controller. They have done some user experiences some modifications as to how it is integrate into their pump, but the fundamental algorithm is owned by Dexcom. And type zero. That's correct. So the sensor in the algorithm driving it are Dexcom properties. Stacey Simms 8:49 This is a little bit more esoteric than I expected to get in so quickly here, but what's it like being in the algorithm business and Do you have plans to perhaps get some other algorithms in Your tool kit, if you're like us, not the only one out there Kevin Sayer 9:02 know when we've looked at those, and we love our team in Charlottesville, we have some decisions to make there too. So what we're going to do long term with the algorithm and how available we're going to make it, it is a great business opportunity is a great skill set for us to have as well. With that team in Virginia, we've learned a lot about our sensor, their opportunities to take the science has been developed for automated insulin delivery and apply it to decision support for those who really don't want to use a pump all the time that we could possibly provide some good decisions along the way that would help them better manage their diabetes in the manner that they want to. I think there are a lot of opportunities to do that here. What we're going to let it play out, we're still early on in in that one. They're certainly next generation algorithm to come after they control iq version of it, which is kind of a step up or there's even less user interaction where you possibly won't have to announce all the meals and Everything that will be a little more aggressive on treatment and require a little less user interaction. And we got to figure out what our strategy is going to be to do that and how we're going to go with that. So we're kind of in the algorithm business, but sensors are still our biggest, you know, that's where we pay our bills, the most important thing for us, when we saw that asset was kind of available out there that we felt it was something that we just needed to control. And then we're thrilled with it. And quite frankly, it's worked out well for me, too, because they're right away from us in San Diego. And we can very much collaborate very quickly, since we have access to those scientists and they have access to us. Stacey Simms 10:39 So let's talk about the g7. We've talked about it before. Can you give us an update, what the features will be? What makes it different and the timeline? Kevin Sayer 10:49 Well, as we've talked, I'll start with the timeline, as we've said in our public statements, will be starting a typical study this year. Our hope is have a limited launch in 2020 The limited line for that have a significant impact on our financial results. So in the public world, we don't say a whole lot about the limited launch, we intend to do the full ride in 2021. And I don't have a perfect time frame yet, I will tell you, the mitigating factor will more than likely be our ability to scale it up. As you know, from your community. We learned a lot in 2019, about scale and all those lessons were not necessarily positive, the Dexcom. But they were good learnings. It was hard, we underestimated some things when we rolled to six out the way we did and I don't know that even if we delayed three or four months like to its original plan launch date, that we would have solved those problems because the demand for G six was so much higher than we anticipated. It would be you know, in the past, we could overcome 20% more demand than we have because we didn’t fill that many sensors. So yeah, if you’re manufacturing 2 million sensors. We can come up with another 200, 300 thousand, that's not a problem. But when you use the numbers we're at today. becomes a problem. So if anything, we learned anything from the big six launch, we are going to be prepared to scale g7 when we launch it, because when it comes, nobody's going back, just like nobody's going back to G five g six features of the product, as we've talked about before it much thinner, smaller profile, disposable electronics. So there's not a transmitter component anymore. There's no assembly of anything before you put it on, you literally take it out of the box, press the insertion device into your skin and hit the button and you're gone much smaller plastics profile. from an environmental perspective, patients will be glad to know that we get that comment frequently on our current system about all the plastics length of where we're shooting for an extended wear period. I have to tell you, we will balance the extended wear period against the accuracy and performance of the system with respect to iCGM standards. We know we have to have this as an iCGM to talk to these automated delivery systems and sometimes you make trades offs. Length of wear versus accuracy, as most people know, at some point in time, the longer you wear a sensors, the more difficult it is for to perform perfectly. One of the things that I often that isn't understood about g six, I can give the perfect example, these standards set by the FDA on iCGM are difficult. They're not simple to meet. And literally the way that g six algorithm works is if through our and our analytics, we look at the sensor signal and determine that that sensor is about to become less accurate than it should be, under iCGM rules, we turn it off. So there's a perceived lack of reliability from some of our patients on the sensor, when in fact that's not the case at all. We're turning it off intentionally. And that's very often associated with physiology. You know, people's bodies are different, and even sensor sessions can be different based on how much activity you have or where, the place you insert the sensor. So we're hoping for an extended To 15 day, where it certainly wouldn't be less than 10. We will go either way, but we need to make sure we meet the criteria. The sensor is much shorter than g six. So it will be a shorter sensor from our user experience so far and our preclinical work we've had nothing but great feedback on that. Stacey Simms 14:17 What does that mean? Is it a shorter wire or a shorter device, smaller, shorter wire Kevin Sayer 14:22 Shorter wire with the direct insert, not angle, but it is straight in but it's very, very short. Stacey Simms 14:33 More to come on the g7 and many other Dexcom issues. But first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Real Good Foods, good foods, and their philosophy is all about keeping it real with food with community and with each other. And if you go on their website, you can find out so much more about the product real food, high protein, it's not about chemically made protein powders. This is about food, chicken cheese Right, low carb, grain free and zero added sugar. They keep adding products. We are big fans of the original pizza and the poppers but they've added a breakfast sandwiches with sausage or with bacon, cauliflower crust pizzas, chicken alfredo, other Italian entrees. They just keep adding more great stuff, find out more, go to Diabetes Connections calm and click on the Real Good Foods logo. Now back to my interview with Kevin and we were talking about the g7. You mentioned the the longer were balanced with their performance Do you expect the g7 to perform differently to perform I hate to say better but to use the criteria you were talking about with the iCGM? Do you expect fewer issues with either Physiology or the sensor sensing that something is wrong and then turning off. Kevin Sayer 15:57 That is our hope and our belief? We have learned So much from G six, as to what we can improve and make better It's been one of the scientists said to me the other day, he feels like he's working in a semiconductor factory. We're learning that much about sensors these days, as we're preparing for this setting to launch this product, we may not even be able to get all the things we've learned into the first version. But I think there'll be a couple of iterations whereby I know the extended wear will come and I know that that the reliability will be there. One of the things that we put around ourselves as a criteria is to significantly improve the reliability percentages. And we were experiencing on G six today, both on G six going forward and on g7. It just doesn't work. Patients have to return to the sensors, because they fall off or don't last long enough. We have to make that experience more consistent. So we're very focused on that. Not just with you seven, but with the six improvements as well. Stacey Simms 16:51 All right, this next one, I just have to get it out. Kevin, I feel like a broken record. But can we talk about direct to watch what's going on? I know there's been a lot of holdups but is that something that’s happening? Kevin Sayer 17:03 No, and we're working on it I appreciate you asking again, is technologically very difficult a Bluetooth protocols on the watch are not the same as the phone. And I go down to r&d and I asked the guys a question, every time I talk to you tell me what's going on. And it's not only difficult from the Bluetooth perspective, there's an experience perspective, it's also difficult with respect to the alerts Can we make it worse, audibly loud enough for by somebody can hear them? What happens when you take your watch and you put it on your charger and it's your primary displaying walk away, there's some where issues and some issues around the watch to create a little bit different experience and required a bit more fun on our part, and quite candidly, a lot more complex engineering. And we have done firmware updates to get us closer there. When we're done. We'll announce it. The other thing I would tell you is even if we weren't finished today, I wouldn't tell anybody I'm not trying to tell anybody till every transmitter in the field is was compatible because it will be different. version of the firmware on the transmitter. And while it was still be seamless on your iPhone or your Android phone, it will look the same if we announced direct to watch, and then we have a bunch of transmitters in the field that don't go director will watch, we're creating a tech support issue that will just again lead to patients being upset. So we're working on it, it's just a ways out and all these opportunities or engineering, things we have to get done are not just caused by Dexcom, either. There's Apple things that we just have to understand better. They work very closely with this. They're very helpful. It's just taking a lot of time. Sure. Stacey Simms 18:34 Well, thanks for the update on that. It's nice to know, you know, there's always a fear that these features may not get rolled out right. There's always a fear that and I know you know, this is the type one community that we see CGM makers and other technology companies looking at the the enormous type 2 market which has very different needs very different wants, and that we will be left behind so the watches I mean, it's a little bit dramatic to put it in that way. Looking at direct watch, but you understand what I'm talking about, right? Kevin Sayer 19:03 Yeah, I do. And I let me respond to that a little bit, please do. You're right. There are a lot more people with type two diabetes, type 1 diabetes, but there is nothing that we do for people with type 1 diabetes, that can't create a great experience for people with type two diabetes. I would argue that the good things we do for type one patients translate better over to type two then heading down a path with lesser accuracy, or lesser connectivity or fewer features. You're much smarter to make a product performance is superb level and then make the changes software related rather than then system related. And rather than sensor related, which is the way we're doing it now. Or you know, there was a big fear that g7 would be a type two product only hired that from a lot of patients because barely our partner been a great partner has been very much focused on type two where they're on duo, a managed diabetes management program, but that's not the case. We We will launch our g7 system with his ice ice jam label current plans are a legit person in the type one space. After that, even with G six, we can adapt the G six platform to a type two patient that has a different software experience. It doesn't detract at all from what we do for our core market. And where we sit today, the most important thing to do is to get a like if you get accuracy and performance and reliability and consistency, you can take that anywhere. And that meets our type one patients need and will also gives us the business flexibility that we need to go forward. But we're not going to do that if we were looking at something for another market. And I'm speaking way out in the future. today. It might be another platform that would measure multiple analyze that wouldn't have ice jam accuracy for glucose, but you'd have some combination of pick for analytics glucose, ketones, lactic acid, some other one where it's maybe 20% lack less accurate all four but you get a picture of everything. That's more of a diagnostic As we look at sensors in the future, that's something we would consider. But that's, you know, that's advanced r&d and something that we would look at. We don't have an intention of going a different direction right now. We believe that the features we have we can migrate to type two without compromising our current patient base. Stacey Simms 21:18 All right, let's talk about some specific type one stuff. And let's talk about following up. And no pun intended there. I apologize on the share and follow issues from late last year, you put out a very sincere apology, you really seem to have taken some steps. I appreciate that. I'm sure it couldn't have been too easy to put that video out, and we appreciate it. Kevin Sayer 21:40 But no, actually, I didn't tell you that that did not bother me at all. We couldn't put it out until we knew the answers. But that's the way we run this company. And that's the way I will always behave. If we do something that doesn't work. You own it. You don't hide and I wanted to do the video of the day with day one and Gemma calming me down, I wanted to write a letter or reduce something I was wasn't happy that we could not go faster. But now we will always behave that way will never behave any differently. Stacey Simms 22:13 I have some questions. Go ahead. Alright. Alright. So my first one is, you've updated the website and I'll put a link in the show notes where people can go to check in just last week, there were a couple of issues that were resolved quickly. But I noticed that what happened to me I'll give you my personal story. I noticed on my follow app for my son that we had lost signal, there was a brief notification, I apologize. I can't remember what it said. But something like you know, server error, but something came up a little teeny red line on the app. I cleared it without even looking at it too closely. And I went on my way because I don't My son is 15 I don't look at the follow up as much as some other parents do. But then on a Facebook group, someone said go and check the Dexcom page because They're updating the situation there is an issue. Great. So we all went. But my first question is, you will have announced, I believe that you're working on push notifications of some kind, because it didn't occur to me and maybe shame on me to go to the website. So can you talk about the timeline for that and what those in app notifications will be? Kevin Sayer 23:19 Sure. But let's go back a step we said and I said in the video, two things we're working on it immediately is a server status page and a product status page on our on our website. So you can go to the Dexcom website, and you can see how the system is functioning. And you can see that clarity is functioning Share and Follow how they're functioning, and we give an update to those in real time, will then implement before in the first half of the year, we're two months into the year almost before the end of June, we will have in app messaging to whereby if there is a share or follow or clarity or whatever issue we can send a message directly to the patient and are the followers servers are down, this is what's going on and it will come in the app won't come through text messaging yet. That'd be something we would do a little bit later. And in all fairness, I don't know that we have everybody's phone numbers to whereby we can push text, but we can't push to the app into the app users. So that'll be here by by mid June. As far as anything going on Recently, there were a couple times when the status page was yellow. And they worked through those quite quickly learning from what's gone on in the past and got that resolved. And we're now establishing the boundaries for what example what yellow server status means, on our webpage. Because when we started this and just adding totally, one of the the apps had yellow and it's happened to two clinics in the whole country. But since it happened to two clinics, we made it yellow, just in case it happened anyplace else on reality. That was the two words had happened and we dealt with it so we're being rather cautious is causing anything that we We will make it yellow over time, we'll put, you know tighter boundaries around that. But we will make it yellow. We'll work through the issues. We've improved our internal communications, I knew something was going on from the minute that thing went yellow, I was getting notifications. And I was I was traveling, so it's going much better. And we'll build a structure up and continue to make it better. That's all I can tell you. So we'll keep improving. Stacey Simms 25:24 And I know that you'll be researching this, but I'll give you some patient feedback real quick is that please don't text me. You don't need my phone number in app notification. Kevin Sayer 25:34 Okay. Yeah, I would rather not understand. balance that with everybody else because you're catching a flight for the airport, what happens? You get a text message. So the expectation since we're on your phone is we have the same infrastructure we just don't Stacey Simms 25:53 do what I don't get a text message from the airline. I get a notification from the app. It shows up on my similarly you get a text from Because you probably, Kevin Sayer 26:01 I guess it depends I Yeah, I know. Anyway, you have to be more like everything else that people experience. Stacey Simms 26:08 Exactly. Okay, so I have a couple of questions. Many of these questions that I've asked have actually already come from my listeners. Of course, we all have a lot of the same questions. But here are a few that people sent in. Rachel, as we're staying here on the follow up. Rachel wanted to know, if you're still working on having the follow app getting same notifications as the primary app, because all of us parents, especially with older kids, now, we never know when the sensors is expiring when the transmitters expiring, is there any work being done to get the follow up to be a little bit more robust for parents work any caregiver? Kevin Sayer 26:43 Yeah, we're continuing to work on the follow up and add add more to it. I think it'll be continual development cycle and will continue to add more. I will tell you from the teenager or the college students share a perspective the last thing they want is their parents. Getting The alerts from their app. I know that firsthand, because I talked to a couple of No, no, no, no. And so we try and balance it all. We will make the the share system more robust as time goes on. Because if we learned anything thing from the server outage, we learned how important share was. It is very important to everybody. Stacey Simms 27:19 Yeah. And all due respect, when you have the first update, when you could make it for 10 followers. You know, not every kid wants everybody their school following them either. I mean, but these have to be parental decisions with good education. So, you know, I think I get what you're saying. But these are all, let's just see, these are wonderful problems technology has created. I try to leave them alone. Alright, so. Okay, the next question came from a few people. And Gosh, I don't know if you can answer this, because this is more anecdotal, but we've been using the G six since May or June of 2018. And it seems to me Just in the last two months, I have seen pictures and heard anecdotal reports of sensors getting stuck at insertion to the point where in my smaller I have a smaller local Facebook group. People are posting the things they have used to whack the sensor because you're supposed to, apparently on Facebook, you whack it with a wooden spoon to get it to release or there might be a button underneath that you can push a pin in. But this is something that we haven't experienced, but that I've seen in the last two months. Are you aware of this? Is this an actual problem that Kevin Sayer 28:33 just so you understand, we monitor every complaint and everything that's coming very closely, we have seen a rise in those instances. Fortunately, it doesn't result in a patient getting bad data or anything bad happen. We just have to replace their sensor. We've identified the root cause of that and we've taken mitigations to correct that and that should come down going forward. We have this this Not this specific issue, but the fact is when we see things rise in the complaint base, we have a group of sustaining engineering group that jumps on these issues and determines where they came from. we've analyzed this, this specifically and we've implemented improvements and you will see that decreasing significantly over the next several months that should go away. Stacey Simms 29:20 Okay, cuz I know the good news is there isn't as readings issue, but the bad news is there's a freakout issue. Kevin Sayer 29:26 There's a freakout issue and let's face it, if that's your last sensor, yeah, that's not fair. And that's not right. So we notice it, we've seen it we've read it and we have we've done everything we can to mitigate that I'm pretty I'm very comfortable we’ll see this come down. Stacey Simms 29:41 Okay, but I'm glad to hear that. Is there actual advice of what to do if it happens? Is there the release underneath? I'm assume whack it with a spoon isn't something that you recommend? Kevin Sayer 29:54 Now we’re in anecdotes and I can’t speak to that. The easiest thing is call us and we’ll get us a new sensor as fast as we can. Stacey Simms 30:02 I gotta ask. I got a couple of questions from listeners who are asking about outside the United States. Obviously our listeners are USA centric, but there are many, many, many in the UK and Australia and Canada. Can you talk a little bit about jif six and G seven, internationally. Kevin Sayer 30:19 So g six is in Canada now. We launched it there in the fourth quarter. We also launched in Canada, any commerce platform reimbursement is not brought in Canada. Many of the patients have to cover the costs on their own. So we have tried to make it easier and Canada is the first place we've ever had an e commerce platform where patients can literally go online and buy their sensitive transmitters have them shipped directly to them without having to deal with this has been a very efficient and a tremendous growth driver up there. A lot more people are getting access to speech him in Canada because of that. That's been a great experience. g six has been available in the UK for quite some time. And again, the UK business is I want to say three reacts when it was two years ago. So we're doing very well there also, reimbursement is coming, but it is sporadic. It isn't everywhere. We spent a lot of time with government authorities pleading our case, the importance of CGM, and we found that educational process great. they've jumped on board and learn a lot Australia, g six is coming. I know it's not broadly rolled out, but it will certainly be a 2020 product there and should do very well in Australia as well. Government reimbursement, for CGM in Australia has gone very well. Here today. It is growing nicely, are all US strategy. We really have three pillars that we're working on, you know, first those countries we're reversing, that is good. We gotta broaden there. We have to increase access in countries where reimbursement is sporadic. And the UK, Spain where I am Italy, some of those places is very sporadic. Some regions it's reimbursed others it's not. Yeah. And then there is where we don't play it all. Yeah, we're very well In Central and South America, or Mexico, where we've got a filing in Japan virtue six, but we're not launched there yet. Stacey Simms 32:08 I'm gonna start this question right here. And it's my fault because I'm running over time. And I want to get one more question in. So I apologize. One more question. Okay, so diabetes mine ran a column recently that was headlined 39 potential new continuous glucose monitors for diabetes. Now a lot of these are pie in the sky. We know many won't come to market, but they went through and listed a bunch of new CGM that are going to be your competition. My last question is about customer service. Talk to us about how you're going to improve, maintain, really try to over serve in terms of customer service, because you know, that in the last year or two as the launch of the G six was a challenge, because of supply, customer service has got to be a challenge too. So my last question is, assure us that it's going to be okay from a customer service standpoint. Kevin Sayer 32:58 Well for us, it will be Well, I will tell you the one thing we've learned this year, more than anything else is scale. It's very difficult. And I just throw some numbers at you. Two years ago, we announced that the JPMorgan conference we had 270,000 active patients. That means we have patients that we know are buying and using sensors. Okay. I announced in an earnings call a week ago that we have 650,000 active using sensor patients. You can imagine the number of sensors we have to produce above and beyond that the number of phone calls we take, we will make customer service priority but scale is a huge challenge here and it is not cheap. We will spend hundreds of millions of dollars getting the g7 factory up and running before you see a sensor. We will invest hundreds of millions of dollars in G six at the same time, getting the factory automated getting the sensors more reliable. At the same time as we looked at the customer experience. There's a lot of things we can do. We have formed an entire customer experience Team at Dexcom over the past 12 months To go back and look at how we interact with people is 43 screens to start up the G six, new from scratch. Why is it 43 screens was because it was 43 screens and we did seven plus or G for whatever, we did the same thing. We're go back and re evaluating all those things to make it easier. I believe also on the customer service side, we do need to get better. But we need to get better a couple of ways. Product reliability is the first thing if we make it so you never have to call them customer service gets that much easier. But inevitably patients are going to, I believe personally that software can alleviate a lot of customer concerns. As we look to the future we look at putting tech support in the app to whereby I'll give you an example if your sensor poops out at eight days, it says Hey, your sensor quantitate days hit yes and we'll send you a new one. We're looking at things like this to make it much easier for our patients to work with us. We We purposely went offshore to set up a customer service center because quite frankly, we could not hire enough resources here to Do so that is going better as well on the distribution channel and make it simpler. We're going to the drugstore with future products and moving g six there. So there's not as much interaction as well. But I can tell you the customer service piece is every bit as hard if not harder than the technology piece. And we take it that seriously and we will over the next several years. Stacey Simms 35:18 Seven, thank you so much for spending some time with me. I apologize to your people because I kept you too long. But I always appreciate talking with you. Kevin Sayer 35:25 Thank you very much. Unknown Speaker 35:32 You're listening to Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms. Stacey Simms 35:38 I couldn't get to everybody's questions from the Facebook group. I apologize for that. But as you heard, we ran out of time he was doing back to back to back interviews. I don't know who was next in the queue. I'm sorry. I did make him a couple of minutes late. But just a couple of quick thoughts on on my talk with Kevin they're listening back and I do listen back to almost every interview before we air it. I sounded so offended about the text messages. Do not like that I don't know about you. I want text messages to be from my family, friends and emergencies. I'll take text messages from school, and maybe some alerts. But I want my apps to notify me through the app. And I want to be able to opt in and out of that. I know a lot of people disagree. You know, if you listen to the show for a long time, we don't use share and follow like a lot of parents, I have never let any school personnel follow my kid. We do not see the need, but that is us. So you know, I understand Dexcom has to do its market research and make everybody as happy as they can. The other thing that occurred to me is that when he talked about going direct to watch, and not announcing it, right, waiting till all the transmitters are out there and then announcing it. My first thought was and so many of us who listen are part of the DIY community. I don't know what you do or how you do it. But the first thing that occurred to me was it's going to take five minutes for these DIY folks to figure out that different transmitters are out there. So I'm relying on you to let us all know because I have a feeling As soon as they start shipping whenever that is and he didn't indicate when, you know, I mean really how long it's going to take people to notice that it's direct to watch because I know there are people out there who every time they get a new transmitter their check up next, tell me something good with one of my favorite past guests, Sierra Santa said, we will tell you what she is up to now she was in the Miss America Pageant just a few years back. But first, as I mentioned, Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. And here's what I have to say about Basal IQ. Now, you know, we switched over to control IQ. But the first iteration of this the first software was basal IQ, the Dexcom g six tandem pumps software program. And when we got it, we started doing less work for better results. Should I say that again? less work, better results with diabetes. Vinny always liked seeing his CGM on his pump. But you know, before this change that was really just kind of a cool feature. I mean, he really didn't pull this pump out just to check a CGM. He looked at his phone, but there was some serious sauce and the basal IQ that kept many more steady. His timing range increased significantly when we started on basal IQ. And his agency, you know, we don't share specific numbers, but not only did it come down, it stayed down. It has been the same, really for more than a year. Now, as I think about it, it's just been great. Of course, individual results may vary. To learn more, just go to diabetes, connections dot com and click on the Dexcom logo. Right, tell me something good. Really My favorite part of every show. Send me your good news stories for those of you not familiar with Sierra Sandison, and I think most of you probably are, she was in the Miss America Pageant in 2014. I had to look that up because I can't believe it's it's been that long already. But she went on stage first in the Miss Idaho pageant in July of 2014, with her insulin pump, clipped to her bikini bottom, you know, when they had the swimwear competition, and then she created the hashtag Show me your pump, which went viral. And I didn't know this till recently, it was NPR as most popular online story that year. Well, then she walked the runway again at the Miss America Pageant with the insulin pump again on her bathing suit. And you know, we all went bananas. Well, since then Sierra has gone back to school. She's at Boise State University. She's at the College of Engineering there. And last week, she won her team. She's on a team for this, she won invent for the planet. This is a competition where engineering teams come up with inventions and solutions to make the world's a better place. So they only had 48 hours to do this. It's a pretty wild competition. I will link up more information about it so you can see exactly what happened there. And I'll put some pictures in the Facebook group too. But it's a team looks like a team of five people and Sierra posted. We slaved away at the 48 hour event for the planet competition this weekend and it paid off. We had so much fun and so little sleep, but then it gets even better. Couple of days later, she was recognized by the Idaho Society of Professional Engineers. As the number one student in her class of mechanical engineers, she writes, I am so humbled and still in shock this week seems too good to be true. Thank you to everyone who helped me get to where I am today. I hope to make you proud and keep wearing pink while doing it. Every time I talked to Sierra, you know, it's easy to forget that she is brilliant, right? We look at the bathing suit, which is how most of us first saw her and we're distracted by that. I mean, I'll be honest with you. When I look at Sierra, I'm always thinking about how bad my hair looks because she always looks gorgeous. Her hair looks great. Her makeup looks great. I have joked with her about setting her up to do a clinic for moms at like a friends for life conference that because we all need to walk around with a ton of makeup. I don't know she doesn't all the time either. Just because it's fun, right? It would be kind of fun to learn how to do pageant makeup like that. I'm getting way off topic, but it's So easy to forget when a woman is beautiful that she is also brilliant. And I think that that is so important to keep in mind. And I'm so thrilled that she is so far forward in sharing all of these accomplishments and not compromising what she enjoys, which seems to be engineering and wearing pink and looking fabulous. So Sierra, thanks for continuing to include us in your journey. I cannot wait to see what you do next. Just let us know when you're taking over the world who would appreciate a little bit of a heads up if you have a Tell me something good. Please send it my way. You can email it to me Stacy at Diabetes Connections. com reach out through social media the Facebook group is a really easy way to do it every once in a while I'll post and ask and other Facebook groups but please seek me out I would love to hear from you. Help me spread the Good News in our community. As this episode goes live, it is the last week of February I don't know January dragged by February flew by I'm afraid to The page to March that we have a lot going on. I have three appearances for the book tour. I'm going to be in Wilmington, North Carolina, Winston Salem, North Carolina, and then over to Indianapolis, for the friends for life conference there. I am getting requests for the fall already definitely booking things in September. I think I have something in December already. So if you'd like me to come speak to your group, reach out. I'm trying not to do too many of these a month. I'm trying not to travel every single weekend because I still do have Benny at home even though my daughter's in college. So it's a lot of balancing juggling going on, but I'm loving every minute of it. Our next episode is coming up on Thursday, I'm going to be talking about a little bit of a Twitter kerfuffle. I don't know if any of you saw this if you're on Twitter, but there was a bit of a disagreement started by an eye doctor, a disagreement between how many doctors see their duty to give patients a wake up call and how people with diabetes actually view that wake up call and a real big gulf between these two groups on this One Twitter chat, unfortunately. So I want to share that with you and maybe how we can get our doctors to listen a little bit more. Alright. Alright, thanks as always to my editor john Kenneth from audio editing solutions. Thank you so much for listening. Joining me, please spread the word about this show. Word of mouth is the best way to grow a show like this. We can get more good information into the hands of people who really need it. So post it on your Facebook page, tell a friend who's touched by diabetes about it. I'd really appreciate it. I'm Stacey Simms. I'll see you back here on Thursday. Unknown Speaker 43:37 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms media. All rights reserved. All rounds avenged Transcribed by https://otter.ai

There is a full moon at 2:33 am eastern time February 9, so this episode is being released Saturday night for those of you who might want to use the evening before to do some powerful creating. I also compare this configuration to an interesting one that was in the sky during one of the presidential candidate's public campaign announcement. There are some things we could learn and deploy.Feb 9 Transcription[00:00:00] Hey, welcome man to the full moon out February 9th in Leo. So we could say top of it. Thomas Miller and I am, uh, so this is for Sunday, February 9th. But because this full moon happens at 2:30 in the morning Eastern time, I'm going to release this. On Saturday evening, so that if, so those of you who are, stay up late hours might want to catch it.Those of you on the West coast, this will happen before you go to bed. This is all us time stuff, of course. And those of you insomniacs who just wake up in the middle of the night and want something to do, you might start doing your full moon routine. So let's talk about this full moon at 20 degrees.Leo, this is kind of an interesting thing, and it made me think of something that I saw this week in the astrological [00:01:00] conversations online about inception points in the chart. One of the foundational things about astrology is that everything has a birth time. Whether that's you or whether that's an event, a business, a marriage, and I think that we don't put enough value on inceptions, but that's how astrology works, that everything is based on the time that something is born.And what's super unique about this full moon. Is that it is in Leo fire sign and all about making a statement in the world. So with the sun, obviously opposite in Aquarius and the moon in Leo, and the only real aspect that this full moon has is a trine favorable aspect with Mars. And Mars is still in Sagittarius.Now there's no other side of this that we can pull. Like [00:02:00] Mars is not in a trine with something, so we don't get a grand trine and the moon is not trying with something else over on the other side of the chart. So we're dealing with a couple of fire signs. At least we have what we have the moon in Leo fire and Mars in Sagittarius fire.So I think this is just a great weekend to create around that putting herself out there. So the social piece comes from the sun in Aquarius. The putting yourself out there comes from the moon in Leo and the extra oomph and. Good luck comes from Mars in Sagittarius, which of course is ruled by Jupiter, which is in the sandbox in timeout and Capricorn, but at least it rules Sagittarius.So, Hey, let's take what we can get right now. What caught my fancy in the astrological conversations this week [00:03:00] was the announcement of the presidential campaign for mayor Pete budaj. Now look, number one, rule number one on this podcast, no politics. We all, Republicans, Democrats, independence. If you are in another country listening to this and don't even relate to what that is, uh, we are all under the same sky, right?And it affects all of us. And that's why I just stay politically neutral. Why I'm using this is the unfolding events since this occurrence and it's in the profile. So it's something that we all can look at and relate to. Okay, fair enough. There is no, I mean, zero political inference or reference associated with this.Okay, so let's call him mayor Pete, like he likes to be called, announced his presidential campaign in South bend, Indiana on April 14th, 2019. And I have not looked at all, and I don't even know if it would be [00:04:00] disclosed if he follows or uses astrology. But boy, I'll tell you what if he doesn't, he dumb lucked his way into this one because, uh, I mean, for a road scholar, this was pretty good, let's say.So, the sun on that day was an Aries fire. And it was trying to Jupiter in Sagittarius, that's Jupiter in its home sign. Remember how I said so much before Jupiter leaves Sagittarius initiate or do what you would want to do because that energy will not be back for 12 years. Well, Jupiter was in Sagittarius trine, the sun and Jupiter was also trying the moon right where it is right now.And Leo almost at the same degree. It was at 19 degrees. So there's a grand trine. So the moon was trying the sun that all fire the fire. The three fire signs were connected by trines. So the sun was in Aries, the moon was in Leo, and Jupiter was in [00:05:00] Sagittarius. The further brilliance of this is, as I mentioned, Jupiter rules Sagittarius.So there was a ruling configuration, and the sun is exalted in Mars. That means it's happy. So you had an exalted sun and Mars, a ruling sign with Jupiter, and then the moon, and Leo. Now, mayor Pete first came to my attention from a, another tweet that was copied or something from Dan rather, the former news journalist at CBS news, whose tweet basically said, Hey, just keep an eye on this guy.And this was when finally he started to be in the public eye. And, you know, knowing that Dan rather has seen this a few times in his eighties, six or so years, I mean, he's way up in his eighties. That was an intention grabber, and I don't follow the political scene that much. I really don't.But I have seen this [00:06:00] week that he claimed initial victory in this debacle of the caucus that they had an Iowa. And that was kind of a bold move, but it looks like the results are kind of turning out that way, or at least is tied for first, however you want to frame it. So in other words, here he is at the top of the first primary, and we'll see how this unfolds.But I just thought it was interesting that, you know, I mean, how many 37 year old mayors step into the presidential arena, and by the time the first primary rolls around are at the top of the peak. That's the power of a fire branded Jupiter influenced trine. Now, let's don't go any further. I mean, am I saying that he's going to win, you know?No, I'm just saying that here is somebody who either by design or by, like I say, backing into it, set up his campaign, [00:07:00] the announcement of his campaign. Publicly on this very powerful energy and look at where he is. Is that because of astrology or is that just because his message is resonating and he's a potential, top runner?Top of the ticket for the democratic side? I don't know. I would say the astrology doesn't, doesn't hurt. In this case, it certainly doesn't hurt. And then go, wow, look at that. That's interesting. So that's why, you know, I say don't ever bet against astrology. That's the amazing part of this. And of course, that's a story that we'll get to publicly watch unfold over the next....Rest of this year.Basically. So what do we have? Well, we have that moon and in Leo, so that's, you know, there's part of it. And moon was in the same position. We have Mars in Sagittarius. We've got that fire element. We don't have, I mean, this is not that kind of configuration, but what I was saying is this is pretty darn good.[00:08:00] So if you wanted to initiate something under the raise of this beautiful Leo full moon. That'd be a great thing to do. All right. Stay busy. Stay awake. Stay conscious and do some creating on Sunday. Have a good one. We'll see ya. Manyana. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Show Sponsor:MotorCity Grind - Jim ChatasFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/motorcitygrind17/Instagram - MotorCityGrind 17 - https://www.instagram.com/motorcitygrind17/Links mentioned in the show:Tom Scarpello, Revology Episode:https://ford-mustang-the-first-generation-the-early-years-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/tom-scarpello-revology-founder-interviewRoush Performace Engineshttps://www.roushperformance.com/engines Transcript from today's episode with Mike ReyDoug Sandler 0:01Ford Mustang Early Years Community, welcome back. Let me share some accolades about today's guest, Mike Rey. Number one, he's  coming back for a second time, which means we did something right AND he said he's heard some really good feedback from you guys about his first appearance here. Mike Rey is the National Director of Marketing and Sales, for Ford's Treasure Collectibles Official Archives Collection, but he's also manager and president of the largest International regional Mustang club (MOCSEM) Mustang Owners Club of South Eastern Michigan, and was on the official launch team for Ford in the 2015 Mustang and the GT 350. Talking about some stories and doing some things around the Mustang club, here to talk Mustangs membership and modifications. Welcome back to the show. Mike,Mike Rey 2:19Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate coming back.Doug Sandler 2:21You're a wealth of information. Man. I love having you here. And thank you for sharing so many of your connections with me. I've gotten a ton of of research done and a lot of people that have agreed to come on the show. And I would say mostly because of you and the positive words you've said about this show what gives man you know, I try to keep my reputation under the under the covers here.Mike Rey 2:41Absolutely. And I love helping out and I actually have more extensive list to share with you as well. People I think are very crucial in the Mustang community from day one, before the car was even built to the current day. So I have a lot more that I can share with you that I think would make the show amazing and what your listeners want to hear.Doug Sandler 2:57Oh, that is great. And I want to tease a couple of Although we haven't gotten commitment from anybody yet from from Mike's list, we have gotten at least a lot of a lot of levels of interest and, and maybe share a name or two. And again, if you don't know these Ford Mustang community, if you don't know these names, it's okay, you're going to know them because I'm going to do my best to make sure I get them here on the air. And, you know, not everybody can be at the reputation to the level of Mike, but we are going to have some folks that are that are amazing and can can share a lot of great stuff. So who can we tease a little bit Mike here?Mike Rey 3:28Well, I would definitely say Dave Pericak, who is the global director of foreign icons right now, who's basically in charge of all the fun stuff so GT 500 Gt 350 Mustang, Bronco, Ford Raptor, the Ford GT the new Ford Mach-E, everything Dave's in charge of all that. Wow. Okay, so that's, that's a good one again, we're gonna tease these a little bit and I'm gonna do my best Ford Mustang community you're gonna hold me responsible for making sure if that if those guests don't make their way to the to our airwaves. It's only because I screwed up. Not because I didn't get me the lead. It's now up to me to to to make sure I bring it in yet another tease would be my former boss at Selene. Amy Boylan. So if anybody's been in the Mustang community for all the years, she was a former president and CEO of Shelby American and brought Shelby to all its glory back in the early 2000s.Doug Sandler 4:21That's great. So I'm really excited to reach out to both of them hopefully, they'll both be positive. I've also reached out to a good connection that Mike has also her name is Mustang Marie. And, and she has agreed to be on the show. She's we're waiting for her to pick a date. Hopefully she'll hear this and be guilted into a little bit and hopefully she'll be on here. If you don't know her. She has a Instagram following of thousands. She's got some great photos up there. Not only of herself with the cars but some great cars, some great modifications and some great great classic rides, as well. And Mike again, thank you so much for for all the great connections you made for us.Mike Rey 4:56Mustang Marie is gonna be awesome for you and she just finally got her Mustang. She's going to tell you that story which is just just absolutely incredible that she's been such a Mustang fan for her whole life and never actually owned a Mustang until now. And it is a first generation Mustang. You know what some more we're going to talk about today too Doug is that I might be able to get you a reach out for Jack Roush Jr. being on the show. He does inteviews every now and then and we are going to be talking about Roush a little bit today. Definitely can reach out to jack for you and see if you'd like to do a episode with you.Doug Sandler 4:59So let's and I appreciate that very much. And that would be that would be a major win. So let's start there. Because I'm really curious because I really don't know a lot about Roush Performance. But you had approached me with maybe this is a subject on today's show. So I started doing some research and some background check about what Roush is all about. So why don't you tell me the position that you that you take about some of their products and then maybe we can share a little bit of your experience with them as well?Mike Rey 5:49Yeah, I was very fortunate to spend four years at Roush. I'm in the marketing department, basically running marketing being marketing manager. Great, great assets of people there. We had an amazing team to put a lot of cool stuff together and what Roush is, is Roush is a manufacturer, but they actually take the Mustang to the next level and now it's f 150s to the next level and they do Raptors and they're doing Super Duty so they keep expanding as they go. But so you're taking a really cool product and forgiving you and they're making it just a tad bit even better, if that's even possible, right? So like even rafter like what could you possibly do to a raptor? Well, that Ross record actually really, really does really well and really performs to the highest level.Doug Sandler 6:33Well, I'm looking at some of the products that they have online everything from spoilers to facials, two scoops to louvers to spoilers in the back and skirts I mean it's a pretty cool and they do a lot with it looks like exhausts and graphics and grills and all sorts of things too.Mike Rey 6:49And the number one thing is probably the superchargers So, you know they're partners with Ford Performance, doing their supercharger, which is one of the best selling superchargers there is on the market and gives us the Power and back. So my full warranty. One of the things I'm very proud of that Roush that I got to accomplish was there is to make the connection and bond between relish performance and for performance and title it partners in performance. So if you see that tagline anywhere that was one of my brainchild that I actually got per, you know, approved by Ford, Henry Ford and Pericak. And Jim Owens all got that approved for me. And that was it still to this day is partners of performance. So that forever linked Roush Performance and Ford Performance together.Doug Sandler 7:31So what's the connection between some of the classic car or some of the classic Mustang so even the first generations back to the to the mid 60s? What's the connection between a mid 60s owner and in a current owner Do you know of a later model or a late model Mustang Do you see a lot of overlap them repeating the purchase and getting now that they've had a classic ride they want something in addition to having that one that they keep in the garage and just kind of baby and love. They're having one that they can actually get out there and really enjoy the speed that they that That a late model can offer.Mike Rey 8:01Yeah, absolutely. So like the first gen owners definitely want to keep that and drive it around and show that off because that's their pride and joy and they want to be able to do that in like the local car shows, things like that. But if you're in Michigan and you want to drive out to California and you want a newer one, you know, you're not going to want to take that older one on that ride. And, you know, actually Roush offers for both people. So a lot of first generation cars are dropping what they call crate engines in there. Whether it could be a new Coyote with a Roush supercharger on it or an old 427 or something that you want to drop in. Roush still builds all those motors for all the old first gen cars and offers that's all the consumers that actually own those vehicles still, who want to do it and a lot of the big vehicles that you see across going across Barrett, the old Hot Rods and stuff or even 32 Fords things like that. All of a lot of them have Roush engines in it so that they're well known in that industry. And then in the newer phase, people are buying the Mustang automatically want to get the Roush exhaust on it are the Roush supercharger, things like that. So they're very, very well known throughout the whole community from the first generation to current.Doug Sandler 9:05Take me through a little bit of the process. So let's say that somebody that's in our listening community, which many people in our listening community have those first gen models. So let's just take a typical 65 or 66, classic, Mustang. And they want to do this what's the I'm not, I'm not holding you responsible for knowing the exact process that Roush goes through when they when they install or when they when they share a crate with you. But how does that process work? Like I would have no idea where to even begin on something like that. So where does somebody that's listening, even think about the opportunity to drop something Roush under the hood,Mike Rey 9:37They're usually at a lot of local shows. And that's you brought it up just like a perfect segue into a new one is Jim Kemp is the head of Roush engines, I can set up an interview with you too is that with him is that he can actually provide all that information in great detail but usually what happens is there's a website on Roush that you can get into the engine area. I'd have to get that for you they specific link for you. But also, they're usually at the shows like they were just recently at Barrett Jackson there at the Good Guys show, which is a lot of the older cars, if you will, first generations. And you can talk to them and get your specs and tell them what you're wanting. And then they can basically custom build the engine for you and put in your car. A cool story that we did that actually put this in effect, it's a more of a newer engine, but we put it into an older car. You ever heard of Jeff Allen, which is another list. He did a TV show that was called Chasing Cars. It was on TV A few years ago, and it ran like three or four episodes. You got to look him up. But when I was at Roush, he was doing a special Sema project and it was with a 63 Falcon. It's known as Ronin. And if you Google that you guys can see the pictures and everything what we did on that car and it was a 63 Falcon that he wanted to soup up and we put the 400 in it will put the Roush supercharger in it and the really cool thing is he notched the hood to where you could actually only see the Roush superchargers sticking out of the hood, that's all you see. So that was really Really cool and it won all kinds of awards at SEMA and it was one of the really crazy cool build but in like basically a first gen. Ford, you know from that from that area from 1963. So in that era of the first generation Mustang so that it just goes hand in hand with what we can do to customize it to whatever the customer wants.Doug Sandler 11:20It's amazing. I'm looking at some of the engines directly online right now and Ford Mustang community. I'll make sure I put a link in the show notes to to Roush engines, but it's Roushperformance.com/engine and literally it is a laundry list of every kind of engine that will that will get your eyes twirlin' here. It's everything from the 331SRX all the way up to the 5.0 Coyotes, amazing stuff in there. Wow this you know, this is the kind of stuff where I get in front of my computer and all of the stuff I have on my to do list for the day just kind of evaporates, sitting in front of the computer. Just looking at all the cool stuff on it and Again, these are these are crate engines. So these are these are brand new engines and amazing, amazing Look, I'm sure they make it. So what happens if you put something like this into into a classic Mustang? And again, I'm not expecting you know all the mechanical details of it and all as I certainly don't myself, but what happens if you put something like this into a car and the rest of the car isn't compatible meaning you don't have a transmission that can that can hold the torque that this thing is going to create or you don't have, you know the the right suspension to kind of handle this properly. What do you need to match everything up? I would assume, don't you?Mike Rey 12:33Yes, absolutely. Jim and his team will tell you like what's going to be needed to hold this car down to the ground. And then also there's other partners to like we have Gateway Classic Mustang, who another one I can get you there there but they specify and specifically in suspension and performance. So if you're doing any kind of racing, whether it be drag racing, whether it be road course racing, whether what it would be they are the pros that suspension for all Mustangs from first generation two currents, and the majority they would they do it first gen Mustangs, so they're out of the Missouri area and they just do great, great things that would complement a Roush engine going into a vehicle.Doug Sandler 13:12It's a it's amazing as again, as I'm looking at this, the technical specs of this stuff, the tech specs, it's 425 horsepower, Ford steel crankshaft it's Coyote engine 302. 425 horsepower, 475 foot pounds of torque. It's like, Oh my gosh, I like I said I could get lost in this in this forever. And I'm not a mechanical guy. But just the look and the feel of these. I mean, I could just imagine opening up my, my 65 convertible downstairs in the garage and just open it up and just seeing this brand new 5.0 in there. That would be crazy, ultra expensive. Crazy. Amazing.Mike Rey 13:48Well, then that also allows you to if you got, you know, like I said, you said you had talked to Tom Scarpello before and that's basically the old car outside, new stuff inside. So that would allow you to go from Michigan to California on a road trip.Doug Sandler 13:59Exactly. Yeah. That was Tom was a great guest from from Revology. I don't remember the exact episode number. I'll look it up. And I'll make sure I put that in the show notes as well. But yeah, really fun. So what else can you tell me about Roush because their products look really cool.Mike Rey 14:15So Roush is a lot. You know, they're known for engineering and every other thing they've been around for over 40 years, and been building cars since 1995. And now the big thing is, is that 150s with them, so it's at least when I left there, it was like 75% of sales were F150s. So three to one over Mustang, actually. So that's where the world's going is to the pickup truck era. And F150 was definitely the king for that. But yeah, I got the chance to work with Jack Roush Jr, who was absolutely amazing fun to work with. Get that super down to earth guy. A hell of a racer on the road course. I've been in the car with him on road course and just watched him lap people and we were in one of his Focuses. So and we're laughing must things with 800, 900 horsepower. That's how good Jack is. So I think you'd be a really really cool guest to be on but Roush offers basically anything you want whether it's a parts play, whether it's a whole vehicle, whether it's taking a vehicle and upgrading it afterwards. If you're doing a truck if you want to go off road, they offer the off road accessories for that the off road suspension. Everybody wants to Roush to exhaust on their vehicle whether it be Mustang or truck so yeah, definitely definitely the way to go and they have a lot of dealerships all around the country to more so than anyone else in the in the aftermarket industry.Doug Sandler 15:34Geez, thanks for all the information and for Mustang community if you're not in the market right now for a crate engine, but you do want a good tumbler they do have a really nice cup on their website and Roushgear.com also they have great shirts and hats, and even if you can't play the part by having a crate engine dropped into your dropped into your classic ride. You certainly can play the part by wearing the the very nice t shirt as well.Doug Sandler 16:00Yeah, I agree. I agree. So let's move over to to membership a little bit. Tell me a little bit about what's going on in the in the club scene we didn't really have a lot of time to talk last time, specifically about about MOCSEM, but I really do want to find out, you know a little bit more about the whole membership idea. There's probably a ton of people in our community that that aren't part of any Mustang clubs and, you know, maybe share some of the advantages and some of the stories that you have going on with your regional club.Mike Rey 16:24Let me share a few of my favorite things really quickly as there's been four huge events. That, to me stand out more than any. I've done hundreds of hundreds with the club over the last 15 years. But one was when I was presented with the Lee Iacocca award at the Mustang Memory Show. And one of my best friends John Clor, you know, was the one who surprised me and presented it to me at the show. So there's only about 100 people in the world that have that award. It doesn't exist anymore. To the Mustang community that's basically the Mustang Hall of Fame, if you will. So very, very honored to have That and I was surprised at the muscle memory show and John was the one actually presented to me, which ironically, takes me to the second event. It was our 50th Heroes banquet so celebrating 50 years of Mustang in 2014. We did a heroes banquet here the weekend of our show, and I in return got to present John me and Dave Pericak presented John with his Lee Iacocca was at that event, but that event is still titled and labeled as the greatest 50th anniversary Mustang events in the world that ever happened. And that was here in Dearborn, Michigan, during 2014, and it was our club who hosted that and ran it we have 60 different heroes from Gale Halderman and Hal Sperlich and Edsel Ford to the current team, which was the Pericak team. We had everybody throughout those 50 years. We had about 60 different people know from clay modelers to engineers to marketing team to Vice President. Everybody was there and We we set them up in a horseshoe shaped design out in the lobby after the banquet and let them sign autographs for everybody and created a keepsake for everybody to take. And they went around and they were there to almost two in the morning, starting at 8pm signing autographs, that's how long and everybody wanted to be with them and taking pictures and hearing stories. And it was just an unforgettable event and probably our most proud event we've ever put on as a Car Club. So those are things that cool that you get to come and see as a as a member that you get to enjoy. Another one was another no other Car Club can say this is we did a our general meeting inside the Ford World Headquarters. I touched on this very briefly at the last interview, but at the Ford world headquarters auditorium where we had Henry Ford, our Edsel Ford, we had Mark Fields, we had Dave Pericak, we had the list goes on and on and on. We had everybody you could possibly think of at the time that was available. So that was really, really cool. And so yeah, really, really great. And then the last event that I want to mention that we've done that was really cool was literally just last week. Last Tuesday, and I mentioned this before, we had Dave Pericak as our special guest speaker at our general meeting, which was held at Gateway Classic Cars in Dearborn. And he surprised everybody and brought out a Mach-E in person, for everybody just sit in feel touch and ask questions about and explain the reason and the process, why the Mustang name was attached, why, you know, and so many opportunities are against that. You get to explain the reason behind that. And I think it opened up a lot of people's minds about seeing a change everybody's mind because still, a lot of people, including myself, don't think the Mustang name should have been attached to that kind of vehicle. But I do understand the reasoning. I've accepted it and I'm okay with it. And he basically agreed with that. David great analogy stating, you know, if you go to your favorite amusement park like Cedar Point or something when you're a kid and they bring in a new ride, you know, do you absolutely hate it and want to go to war over it or you just don't ride it? You don't I mean, it's just an addition to the fun, it's not replacing anything. So it's not like you came into the amusement park and replace your favorite ride. It's not replacing Mustang, it's just an addition to and given another outlet. And you got to understand if they don't build the electric vehicles, they can't build their other Mustang. So the marquee is enabling them to keep building the GT 500 is the GT 350s, the Mustang GT, without these electric vehicles are not going to be able to do that anymore by federal mandate. So this is a part of it, and why not make a fun little section of it, and giving this Mustang performers that was going to do and this horsepower and torque in that thing is insane.Doug Sandler 16:42And I think it would be great to have a conversation with I think, you know, Jimmy DensmoreMike Rey 20:55I just talked to him a couple times this weekend. Tell him what a great job he did on I'm his interview with you because I listened to that yesterday too. Yeah, I know. I've known Jimmy I met him through Gale Halderman. I think Jimmy came in a couple years ago and you know, was was doing the book on Gale And but yeah, cuz I know Gale, probably for the last seven or eight years now. And you know, and heard a lot of the stories. So a lot of the stories Jimmy was telling you were absolutely true and fun, because I've actually heard those from Gale's mouth himself as well. One of the things that Jimmy didn't get into was about those myths, the myths that he was talking about. The one myth is that Mustang was named after an airplane. And it was, it was named after the horse when we we've been visiting Gale for the last maybe 5,6,7 years. We go down to his museum in barn once a year with the club. And afterwards after everybody leaves me and John Clor usually sit with Gale for an hour or two and just hear stories from a man he tells us about the Lee Iacocca days and spurling and all that. And we asked him about the horse and the one of the first visits we went there. He said, yeah, it was absolutely named for horse not after a plane so everybody tells you that. Don't believe that because Did you ever see a plane in any rendition or any form met on a car on a badge or anything like that it was it was always animals. And it was definitely named after the horse. So that's the guy that was on the team that will know it. And it came from the horse's mouth, as we call it.Doug Sandler 22:11And pardon the pun, no pun intended, but there was a fun. So tell me a little bit more about just how how, you know, you have a lot of these regional clubs and a lot of the regional clubs don't quite have the pull that a club that would be in Southeast Michigan has. So what do you say to those that are either running or in clubs? I mean, what's some of the what's some of the formula for success when it comes to running a successful club?Mike Rey 22:34That's a perfect segue of exactly where I want to talk about next is in coming February 9 this year, we have a summit that we put together started about 10 years ago. For all other clubs that are welcome and any club business listening here would like to join us. Please send me a note in the next week. And, Doug, if you could share my email with them. That'd be great. February 9th, we invite all different club heads in the Ford and Mustang world to this summit to share best practices. things they may need help with things to cross promote for each other for events, get to know each other and see how we can help support each other's events and answer questions or give them different avenues of where they might, you know, like to feel comfortable with or to learn things from. And yes, we people say, you know, we're spoiled. Oh, you guys got it made because you're in Dearborn and I mentioned this before. No, we have to actually go out and do what we need to do to actually make things happen. But like, a couple years ago at our show, you just seen the the bullet that just sold at Mecum? Correct. So Sean's car. Sean's a good friend Sean is a Club member of ours. Sean brought the Bullit out. We had Craig Jackson bring the little red before it was restored and that was just unveiled last weekend. Little Red was there. The Bullit was there. The 10 million Mustang was there. Larry Shinoda, his prototype boss real to car and we have all those guys there. We had Henry Ford, the dueces car. They're all at our shows over different years and to have those kind of special cars is just absolutely insane to me. And like you said, they're all first generation cars. And you can't see those at any other show. After our show last year when we had most of those, John Clor got just bombarded by other clubs asking, how do we get all those cars at our show? is simple answer was you don't. Everything has to basically fall in line, and a lot of hard work behind it to get things lined up. And we are very fortunate to have Woodward now, the same weekend as our show. So a lot of muscle cars coming for Woodword, and we try to talk to those people to try to extend it another day. Now people say well, that's why you get 1000 plus cars at your show. That Woodword weekend only started in 2014. So from 1975 to 2014. We were not the same weekend as Woodward we were always the weekend before. And two of those shows before that weekend started. We hit over 1000 cars so and now you're out. Are you out in California? Correct? So you're very familiar with the Knott's Berry show that has been going on for many years.Knott's Berry has always been the number one one day largest Ford show in the country. Well Knott's is taking a breather now and trying to get you know some new things basically reinvented if you will, and they're going to they're going to come back shortly but I know they're going to be taking a year or two off. So currently right now we are the largest one day all Ford event in the entire country. And that's how it the Ford world headquarters every AugustDoug Sandler 25:26That's incredible. Yeah, I think that a lot of people are going to say hey, because of your location where you are in the country. It makes it quite easy, not easy, but it makes it a lot easier for you and I would say that hey there's a lot of there's a lot of excuses people could have for not building their club the right way or maybe finding the right mix of guests to come in. But I'll tell you there's a lot to be said about tenacity and and just kind of staying in the game and and promoting your club to those that are important. I have another show called The Nice Guys on Business podcast and we're about 1000 and some episodes in Which game afforded me the opportunity to put that kind of say, okay, that's running over its own steam to start this show and look until you start reaching out to guests that are in favor and guests that you really want to hear. You can't be shy about it, you got to sink your teeth in and make it makes it happen.Mike Rey 26:17You know, passion is a huge thing, you really can't teach it, you got to be born with it. But anybody who usually steps into the club lead and not i'm not saying everybody because there's definitely exceptions. But usually, if you're stepping up to that role, you got to have some passion behind you to want to do that. And the passion will take you a long way I can, I can definitely vouch for that. And so being a club leader, if I can speak as a leader to other club leaders is see where you can give the most benefits to your members. So one called might be very interested in racing, so try to put the best racing events together. And another one might be well we might like to be in a big car. So let's do that. Some people like to do road trips or overnight so you know focus on that where you can you know, cater to what their their wants are as many preserve your club. And that will go a long way. And then they're there, their word of mouth will actually, you know, expand your club, gain more interest and make things, you know, a little bit more exciting within the club and to actually keep gaining traction and build the club as well.Doug Sandler 27:12What are some definite don'ts? Some things that you have tried that you said, Oh, well, that didn't work. We kind of fell flat on their face to face with that one. Is there anything that's happened in your club?Mike Rey 27:21Yeah, well, you know, there's, here's, here's the thing right now, and not nothing we've done, but I've watched other clubs do it and these other clubs that, you know, I'm talking and I won't name names right now, but there's a couple clubs Now regarding this Mach-E. And I love both of them. I get along with both of them, but one of them has they've taken stances and one fully embracing it Once fully not and like you're not allowed in the club anymore. If you have a Mach-E. So the market is not welcomed in their club. And the other one is absolutely and they're getting. So for the people that are welcoming it are they're getting from the people who hate it against it, and then the people who are banning it the people who like it are against it. So one thing that I'm just trying to do what I've been putting out there is our club is not like that I am I, I don't want to, I don't hope it a word it wrong. But I don't want to be a dictatorship into a club, we're not going to force you to like something, we're not going to force you to hate something, everybody has their own opinion. And we're going to support it either way. But, you know, our club doesn't want to take a stance and to do that, it's just like politics anywhere else you go, you know, I mean, you're not going to say, this club is all republican or this club is all democratic, you know, you don't want to do anything like that. It just opens up so many different cans of worms. So for me, personally, is what can I do in the best interest of the club always and to make the members happy and to make them feel good, whether they agree with something or not, you know, I mean, so. Like I said, I've mentioned it many times, I don't think the Mustang name should be attached to Mach-E because it's been the hottest topic. And our club is actually one of the few clubs that actually has a small advantage. I think I told you this before too. It's like 60% in favor of the car 40% against, so most clubs are 80% against and 20% for it. You don't I mean, so But like I said, it's just that it's a topic now that's going on, but You know, it's created a lot of conversation within club heads, which is really, really good. But like I said, To each his own, anybody can do something like that. But no, I mean, it has nothing personal against me. I'm not going to let a name of a vehicle, ruin lifelong friendships over something like that.Doug Sandler 29:16I think that's, I think that's where it is very well. And again, we all have to get along here. No haters is a part of this. If people have differing opinions, that's okay. And just let them voice their opinion. I won't mention the club the the place that I was, but I was at this and somebody got up and he just started like preaching to the people that are there and not about this particular car, but about a subject that that we have, we've got to take a stance and I kept thinking, we don't have to take a stance. This is my first meeting here and you're really not even making me feel welcome. It wasn't about me, right? But I just felt so uncomfortable. Just the fact that he was taking everything so personally at this club meeting, everybody, we just got to relax a little bit, just chill out.Mike Rey 29:57And you know, Doug, I would really really, really hope you can Try to put it into your schedule to make it down to Mustang Memories this year because I think you could go live there with so many first generation owners to share about their experience to share their camaraderie with their their friends who are parked next to them and all that I just think you're you know, you see so much eye candy for miles I it would be fun and you get to meet so many great people from just being at the event.Doug Sandler 30:22I completely agree with the end. I'm trying to look up the date for that right now.Mike Rey 30:26August 16th, and it's at the Ford world headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan.Doug Sandler 30:29See if I can get my press pass all lined up for that.Mike Rey 30:32I got you covered on that. And then here's what the theme is that we're doing this year for that is 65 years of Thunderbird, 60 years of the Ford Falcon and 30 years of the Seven-Up Mustang which not too many people are aware of or are doing anything special for so we're celebrating 30 years of the Seven Up Fox Body Mustang at our event this year.Doug Sandler 30:51Wow. That's very cool. I enjoy the sound of the seven up Mustang. I wonder why I haven't heard of that.Mike Rey 30:57It's a 1990 Mustang was a special edition that they were going to do for NCAA March Madness back in 1990. And the the promo fell through somehow, but the cars were already made. So they were at the dealers there a dark green car with white interior, you know, seven up colors basically, if you will. And, and there was, you know, only a certain amount made, and they were only made for that one year. And like I said it was very, very limited. So they're called the Seven Up Mustang and very, very cool. And they have their own groups and their own clubs, but to do a national event for them. This is the first one that I know of right now that we're celebrating 30 years this coming year for themDoug Sandler 31:33Nice. Love it. And I'm looking at pictures of that right now online as well. It's a very cool looking car Fox Body 5.0 Are they all convertibles? Did you say Are they all convertible?Mike Rey 31:41All convertibles. And you know, Doug, I don't know if you were gonna get to this or ask this. But I was listening to Jimmy's interview yesterday, and you asked about if you could be at a table with five people.Doug Sandler 31:51Hey, that was my next question. You can you can take me there though. Let's do so let me let's set up the question properly. So I give I'm gonna get Mike the ability to choose five guests alive or dead to have a dinner or a conversation with a talking Ford Mustangs? Who would he pick? And I'm I'm really curious because you've named so many of those people that were on not only Jimmy's list but on many of our guests list that have come on so you're already friends with many of them. You might not have to pick them who would you pick?Mike Rey 32:18Well, the funny thing is, is I really truly have seven and six of them I know personally, I'd have met one was passed away and I never got to me and that my biggest regret in the industry but so for my list is Gale Halderman, Hal Sperlich, John Clor, Dave Pericak, Amy Boylan, Carroll Shelby, and Jack Roush.Doug Sandler 32:35You know we got a really crowded table. Should we go? Should we go buffet style for this? Are we still in French service?Mike Rey 32:41Well, let me let me tell you the reasoning behind each of them. So all right, John, to me is the most well known in my opinion, Mustang expert there is in the entire world. That's my opinion may not be in fact or other people may not agree but in my opinion, he is the most knowledgeable man on the Ford Mustang there is In the world. Dave Pericak has the biggest and baddest things that are coming out now been, like I said, had the greatest launches with Ford on the current day. Hal Sperlich and Gale Halderman had the greatest launches of the original Mustang, the first gen and the greatest way. And so they can actually share a lot of that. Amy Boylan, to me is the most successful woman in Mustang history. And she could share her female input of if you will, and and how to make businesses work and how to make things special and exciting. Carroll Shelby, obviously the absolute legend, he's the one I never did get a chance to meet and my biggest regret in life is I had one chance to meet them and I couldn't make it to the event. And I never got to meet Carroll. And then I also had the honor of working with Jack Roush and Steve Saleen. But Jack Roush is just so amazing and his ideas. Jack is quiet. Just so super quiet, but very observant, observant and some as a tack. So he's listening. He's taking everything in and when Jack needs to talk, he goes again. what he's talking about and his ideas always usually turned into gold and still to this day the number one winning NASCAR owner in historyDoug Sandler 34:08That is great and what a great list and we'll give you the will give you the latitude to have an extra couple people at the table I'm thinking that if you send out the invitations maybe not all of them would be available but I'm hoping that they would all be available at the same time how what a cool dinner that would beMike Rey 34:40I'm sure I can get John to have Ford pick up that expense if we can hit up we can get those guys together.Doug Sandler 34:44Yeah, hey, listen if it if it could be my personal mission to put all seven of well, I can't put Carroll in the room. Well, I don't know if I can. I know some people that know you. I mean, you know all these people, you'd be able to invite them so maybe I'm going to use you as my liaison. To him I think we could. How cool would it be if we were able to actually put this together?Mike Rey 35:04Oh, absolutely. You know what, and I me and John can absolutely kind of try to work on this. Now Hal Sperlich is very tough but I've got to meet Hale on four or five different occasions. the saddest time was actually at the Lee Iacocca funeral, this is not a thing. So, we were contacted by Ford to provide first generation Mustangs for the Lee Iacocca funeral to be on display our club one so and when I walked in the door the first two people I see were Hal Sperlich and Gale Halderman so I got to talk to both of them and great length there as well. But yeah, those guys are great another guy who never comes out of hiding as John Colletti but he would be a special guest for your show as well and I think we can try to reach out to him and see if he doesn't he doesn't like coming out in person. But you might do a phone call.Doug Sandler 35:44I heard the same thing about about how because when I when I was talking to to Jimmy who wrote the book with Gale's cousin he was saying that, that how was it is a tough guy to get it to get ahold of now Dale, Gail is is is a little bit a little bit easier but but not quite the same with with Hal so we'd have a challenge with him but I'm up for the challenge.Mike Rey 36:16I am as well and I'm trying to actually get them to come speak at a meeting this year. So me and John are already gonna be talking to him. So let me see what we can do. If we can get him on the call. That would be an epic podcast if I could ever haveDoug Sandler 36:26I'll tell you Mike I not only do I enjoy having you as a guest but I just enjoy your positive attitude and the world needs more positivity like like you're spreading So thank you again for sharing not only just a great message but sharing you know your your fun stories on the on the show as well. Thanks for being here. One more time.Mike Rey 36:42Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's literally been an honor and I'm gonna just keep getting you some names and some contacts and we want to blow this thing up for you.Doug Sandler 36:50Hey, man, I would appreciate that so very much. You know, I'm here to my day gig might be going away. So I have no problem doing this full time. No problem at all. Give a plug one more time for, for that special collector's thing that you're working on the collector's thing, sorry, the Ford Treasured Collectibles. You gotta shorten that title, man, that's do long.Mike Rey 37:11Here's the funny thing right now. So on board, we submitted the book for final approval before we went to print and Ford has requested a few edits. And we're adding a new chapter in that they wanted more stuff in there. So we're going to be adding that. And so if anybody is listening, that actually already ordered one, an email will be going out in probably the next three to four weeks. People that have already ordered the shipment is going to start early summer. But if you haven't ordered one yet, you still can, you can contact me directly on the link that Doug is providing. And we can still get you included into the book and have your picture included for everyone to see for the rest of history. And we can actually still get you in and still get you into the discounted price. So everything happens for a reason they say and so with the edits and bought us some more time so it's actually cool because we get to market them for the next three four months though.Doug Sandler 37:57Yeah, we'll make sure we put a link again in the show notes for you. TreasuredCollectibles.us but the site right now is not accepting orders so just send an email directly to Mike I'll put his email directly in the in the show notes as as well thank you again, Mike for being on the show and sharing all of your amazing stories and your message with us today.Mike Rey 38:17Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. And we'll talk again soonDoug Sandler 38:20Ford Mustang community if you have an idea for the show or you think you'd make a great guest send an email directly to me Doug@turnkeypodcast.com, we'll put a link in the show notes for that as well. Thanks for listening. Keep it safe, keep it rolling and keep it on the road. Until next time.Transcribed by https://otter.ai 

No other part of social media is more important to sales people than LinkedIn, and yet reps spend almost no time or energy on their homepage. That'd be like releasing a movie on DVD and printing the words, "Yeah, it's an okay movie" on the back jacket as a testimonial.Your LinkedIn homepage is an opportunity to make or break a new client relationship. This is where people go to find out more information on that persistent rep that keeps calling on them. Follow these 4 "Musts" from Bill Farquharson and Kelly Mallozzi and learn how to build an online profile that makes you look like the Wizard of Oz and not someone hidden behind the curtain.

In today’s modern world, we like things to come instantly. Because of technology, we can do things as fast as possible. We believe that our time is so valuable that spending time on something is almost impossible. But we have to remember that the trees that we have today didn’t grow in a day. We have to put in a lot of work if we want to achieve our goal because patience is a virtue. Dean will teach us a lesson in this podcast episode relating to why trees don’t grow in a day. Stay tuned! ---------- Automated Transcript Below: Dean Soto 0:00 Hey, this is Dean Soto founder of freedom in five minutes calm and pro sulum.com PROSULUM.COM. And we're here again with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this trees don't grow in a day. That and more coming up. Well hello, welcome back to the podcast. Nice to hear from you. Nice to see you What are you chickens looking at? I'm looking at some chickens that think I got you think I got some treats for your chickens ain't gonna happen. Once you come mix my compost over here needs you to mix my compost pile anyway. Not gonna mix my compost pile get get a step and so, back a couple episodes ago, I had mentioned that we had planted a whole bunch of treats and not just that I have a ton of raised garden bed. Actually, I should say four raised garden beds in a in a garden enclosure now. And the so they've got these raised garden beds also got a what's called a roof stout potato patch. And so what I've reached out potato patch is is essentially you take a whole bunch of straw, or mulch or anything like that, you put it on the ground, and you do it again, and you do it again and you do it again and you do it again and you do it again, you just have a whole bunch of mulch on the ground. And you put potatoes and you put potatoes at the very bottom of it and with with the water from the rain and everything like that, it should grow. It should all the water should, should be all trapped in there and the potatoes should grow. So as I was doing All of these things, one of the frustrations that I was feeling one of the frustrations that I was feeling because this is the first time I've ever done this, right. We've been here nearly three years. This is the first time I started venturing out into actually building a homestead and started gardening and, and things like that. I mean we have chickens, but planting is different. Right? planting something is it's a pain in the butt it from from, from my modern mind to wrap my head around. It's extremely difficult. And why is that? It's because I'm so used to the microwave. I am so used to that which we've gotten rid of we actually don't have a microwave, but we're so used to the microwave. And And once I've planted so I'll tell you all the things Is that I've planted so we have four raised garden beds right. One of those garden beds actually has seeds in them and has a we planted spinach, carrots, and I think broccoli and a couple of other things. The other garden beds don't have anything in it because we we put a bunch of bunch of organic matter in it and we're just waiting. I'm just waiting. That's my wife's thing. Okay, planted, I'm trying to create a food force as well. So planted a whole bunch of stuff in this area that has just a lot of lot of stuff going on already. And, and got 12 to 14 trees or something like that have all these things that I kind of listed before. Plus the rooster grind. Out of all of that work out of the out of the tons of work that has gone into into all of that so with the even with the food for us I sorry I had to go back to this because just to give you an idea, planted radishes in this food forest or your radishes, cantaloupe, radishes, cantaloupe, oregano, parsley, time, carrots, different types of carrots, different kinds of watermelon, whole bunch of different whole bunch of things, whole host of things beans, peas, I want to say All in all, we probably planted over 50 different things in the last few months. And what has been the major frustration what has been the thing that I literally have such a hard time with? It is the fact that I do not see quick progress at all. It's so hard. I'm like Oh my gosh. Okay, so do I see do I see progress? Yes, that the spinach is growing and went from being super duper small to now it's now it's a little bit bigger. The carrot seeds went from being dirt to actually seeing the seeds starting to sprout, which is cool, right? But, but the trees we got it was it's it's wintertime as a recording this the trees well the thing that sucks about the trees is that they went dormant, right? So they're just sitting there doing nothing, at least as far as I can tell, which is of course not the case they're doing what they're supposed to do. But I want I want to see these things grow. Oh, the other thing. The other thing is that the brew stout potato patch. It actually shows that It's starting to show some some growth. It has some potatoes growing, which, which makes it so I'm looking at it going, go go faster. It is so hard man, I can tell you right now it is so hard for me to get a wave mosquito. It is so hard for me to look at this. Even though I see progress, even though I see these things to look at this, and I just like just come on already. Let's go. But here's the deal is that trees are not, they do not. They do not grow in a day. Right? Because we've also planted I've already direct seeded some persimmon trees, some plums, trees, some apricot trees and those ones Gonna take even longer than the ones that are planted that are saplings. But trees do not grow in a day. And so often, often we we take, we want to see these huge results, right in the beginning when we're trying to do something, we want to get the thing right now that's the way our culture is, let's get all of this as as quickly as possible, right? But there are times whether, especially if you're in sales, sometimes the sales cycle is two months, three months, six months, seven, maybe even a year. That'd be a really long sales cycle. But often we we don't do the things today. Now the That that will bring these the simple, simple little things like people. So our pro sulim clients, the ones who see massive success, the ones who see like massive results are the ones who take the five minutes a day to create the video that their virtual systems architect, their virtual assistant on superpower with superpowers does used to create the standard operating procedures and grow and everything like that the ones who the ones who simply want to say go do this thing and get a task. They actually see really poor results. Right? Because they go say they go go manage my social media account and give no direction, no clear process, no clear documentation, no nothing like that. They don't do the system. That even though the system takes five minutes is like planting a little seed even. It didn't take me long to plant seeds. The the system is there to allow you to plant these little seeds that once the documentations created, the person can go and do it without ever coming back to you to ask how to do something. They they're set up for success and and we just see Matt like massive like quadrupling revenue, you know that are the business owner spends like zero time doing any work on their business in like 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. Right. But those who want the tree, they want the fruit right away without doing without planting the little seeds. They lose more often than not. They lose, they lose. And so so this is where we really have to look at See, are we willing to go with the season? Are we willing to go with the system? Are we really willing to? This is why, you know, when people go to, say, psychologists to fix their marriage, you know, they, they, the psychologist says, you know, hey, you know, it's going to be, you know, let's do this once a week for the next three months. And you need to he need to actually apply what we, what we're what we're actually doing during this thing. Those those who actually have success and see their marriage grow, typically, are the ones who follow the system, follow what the psychiatrist or psychologist says. Those who fail are the ones who go they go one week. They try it out, and they they get into a big massive fight. And they go, Oh, this doesn't work. I'm we're done and I go, there's this doesn't Work, I'm not going to do this anymore. Right? Not gonna do this anymore. And so so the, the big thing that, that I think a lot of us, especially in today's age, fail to see and fail to even have the habit of is seeding and waiting for those seeds to grow, knowing, knowing that, okay, if I want X amount of dollars in six months, these are the things I need to do now. If I want to have a happy marriage, these are the things I need to do now. Because when you start trying to get the fruit, so if I if you start trying to plant something right in, and you go, Hey, this isn't working and you dig up the tree. The next you dig up the seed as it's starting to sprout. What happens the whole thing dies there's no established route there's you try and you're trying to get the fruit but you end up killing the entire thing very quickly you know if it's if it's trying to save your marriage it's I this isn't gonna work I want good feelings now. I don't want to put in the work. I want good feelings now. The you run the risk of killing the entire thing, right? I want a business that automates that that has a standard operating procedures that everyone can follow that I can replace anybody at any time. And that that a somebody who wants to buy my business looks at and goes, whoa, this is a totally automated turnkey system, and I want it now. I just want to tell this person do do all these things. And and it's done. It doesn't work that way. I want a fit body I want muscles I want I want to look like a Greek god. But I want that by next weekend when you're 300 pounds, not gonna work. Trees do not grow in a day. And so the big thing is spending those five minutes a day, literally could be five minutes a day, planting those seeds, planting those things. Planting those new habits planting, planting the the standard operating procedures, planting the the the love notes to your wife or your to your husband. It's those things. Those things that over time you doing them will blossom into huge trees with amazing fruit that people will look at envy and be inspired by. I love you too big boy. You're gonna go with Jen. Okay, well she's coming back up right here. She's coming back up. She's right there. Alright, so freedom in five minutes.com go check that out or go to prosulum. com if you want to virtual systems architect they are virtual assistants with superpowers to transform your business in 30 60 90 days into a fully automated system that you can sell at the highest price if you wanted to. You don't have to You can just enjoy your your business that works without you and makes you a lot of money. Go check that out PROSULUM.COM and I will catch you in the next freedom in five minutes episode.

Sanjay Rawal worked in the human rights and international development sectors for 15 years in over 40 countries before focusing his love for photography and storytelling onto filmmaking. His first feature, Food Chains (2014), premiered at the 2014 Berlinale and screened at Tribeca before securing domestic distribution from Screen Media. The film was produced by Eva Longoria and Eric Schlosser and narrated by Forest Whitaker.  It went on to screen in 1,100 more theaters during its theatrical, semi-theatrical & community screening tour. A lifelong runner, Sanjay was happy to lose the pounds he gained eating Mexican food in farmworker towns and take on a project about running. His latest film, 3100: Run and Become, opened in theaters in fall 2018 and comes to New Zealand in February 2020.   Sanjay learned under spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy and studies in this film the power of running to connect humans to powers beyond themselves. The film follows the incredibly long and brutal 3100-mile race held every year in New York City as well as diving into the long human history of long-distance running visiting The Mt Heiei Monks in Japan to the Navajo Indians to the Kalahari Bushmen. A film not to be missed and an interview to open the mind to new possibilities.   We would like to thank our sponsors:   Running Hot - By Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff   If you want to run faster, longer and be stronger without burnout and injuries then check out and TRY our Running Club for FREE on a 7-day FREE TRIAL Complete holistic running programmes for distances from 5km to ultramarathon and for beginners to advanced runners.   All include Run training sessions, mobility workouts daily, strength workouts specific for runners, nutrition guidance and mindset help Plus injury prevention series, foundational plans, running drill series and a huge library of videos, articles, podcasts, clean eating recipes and more.   www.runninghotcoaching.com/info and don't forget to subscribe to our youtube channel at Lisa's Youtube channel  www.yotube.com/user/lisatamat and come visit us on our facebook group   www.facebook.com/groups/lisatamati Epigenetics Testing Program by Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff. Wouldn’t it be great if your body came with a user manual? Which foods should you eat, and which ones should you avoid? When, and how often should you be eating? What type of exercise does your body respond best to, and when is it best to exercise? These are just some of the questions you’ll uncover the answers to in the Epigenetics Testing Program along with many others. There’s a good reason why epigenetics is being hailed as the “future of personalized health”, as it unlocks the user manual you’ll wish you’d been born with! No more guesswork. The program, developed by an international team of independent doctors, researchers, and technology programmers for over 15 years, uses a powerful epigenetics analysis platform informed by 100% evidenced-based medical research. The platform uses over 500 algorithms and 10,000 data points per user, to analyze body measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home Find out more about our  Epigenetics Program and how it can change your life and help you reach optimal health, happiness, and potential at https://runninghotcoaching.com/epigenetics You can find all our programs, courses, live seminars and more at www.lisatamati.com    Transcript of the Podcast:   Speaker 1: (00:01) Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa [inaudible], brought to you by Lisatamati.com Speaker 2: (00:13) You're listening to pushing the limits with Lisa Tamati. Welcome back everybody. Today I have a very, very special podcast, but before we get underway, I just want to remind you, if you want to reach out to me, you can do that at lisatamati.com Find me on Instagram. I'm very active on Instagram at least to [inaudible] the same on Facebook. And I'd love you to come and check out our website and our flagship programs. We have three programs. We mainly do our work and we have the epigenetic program, we have the run online run trading system running hot, and we also have mindset you, which is all about mental toughness, resilience, and being the best version of yourself that you can be. So make sure you go and check those lisatamati.com Right now. Today we have a very special guest all the way from New York city. Speaker 2: (01:05) His name is Sanjay revile. Have you haven't heard of? Sanjay? He is an internationally renowned filmmaker. He was in the human rights and international development sector for 15 years and worked in over 15 so over 40 countries before he tuned his love for photography and storytelling into his new career, which is filmmaking. He's done a number of films. I'm most well known as his feature film, his first feature film called food chains. This was produced with Eva Longoria and Eric Schlosser and was an over 1100 theaters worldwide. And his latest film is what we're going to be talking about today. Now Sanjay is a lifelong runner. He's dedicated to doing just this running. And he was also a follower of the late Sri chum NOI, who many of you runners may know of. He was a Indian spiritual leader who died in 2007, but he was very much into unifying religions and to meditation and the power of a sport and athleticism to help you reach spiritual realms, which I find really, really fascinating subject. Speaker 2: (02:25) And the film that Sanjay has just produced is called 3,100 run and become, and it's based around the fact that human beings are meant to do this long, long distance running that we talk about that we're born to run. And it's particularly seen it on the race in New York city. 3000, 100 miles. This has been going for over 27 years, I believe around half mile block in New York city. And every year about 14 to 16 runners come to test the metal against horrifically long brutal arduous race. And the distances that they cover in that time is over 52 days. Is 3,100 miles set is over with just up, no, sorry, just over 5,000 kilometers. That's like going right across the United States, but in a half mile blocks. So you can imagine how hard this is. It's absolutely brutal. It's not something I would've ever tackled. It's too big. But he talks in chosen this foam, one of the characters, the main characters is the Norwegian runner who has done this over 15 times. And as really the world's best at the super, super, super long distances. So we get into a really deep conversation around philosophy and spirituality. The power of running to train, seeing yourself the healing abilities of running, how it can connect you with mother nature and you know, soul, a lot of our modern day woes. So without further ado, here's Sanjay. Speaker 3: (04:01) Well, hi everybody and welcome to pushing the limits. It's fantastic to have you guys back again. We're nearly at the end of 2019 and I can't believe it. And today I have a special special guest with me who is sitting in New York city at the moment. Sanjay Rowe. Wow. Welcome to the show. Sanjay. Speaker 4: (04:20) Thank you so much. It's a, it's a winter here, so I'm just trying to keep it together while you guys enjoy mother nature in a different way than I am right now. Speaker 3: (04:28) Yes, I've been, yeah. Well you're welcome to come over here anytime. We'd love to have you ever New Zealand. You can come and visit way. That'd be fantastic. So have you ever been to New Zealand? Speaker 4: (04:38) I have, I haven't been there in almost 20 years, but I am coming for about 10 to 12 days at the end of February. The screen, the movie that we're going to talk about. Speaker 3: (04:48) Oh wow. Okay. I've got to make sure I get to that somehow. So we'll talk about that afterwards. So everybody listening who doesn't know sanjay you will soon. So he has produced a number of films over his career. But recently won a film that we are going to be talking about mostly today is a film called 3,100. Sanjay, can you tell us a little bit about this amazing though? Speaker 4: (05:15) Yeah, I'd be happy to. So the movie's 3,100 running become and it follows a pretty diminutive relatively unheard of. Finished man named Ashbery. Hannah Alto is a paper boy by trade. At the same time, he is an underground, multi-day distance running legend. The film follows him trying to complete the 3,100 mile race and the year 2016 this race is the world's longest certified road race. It's almost 5,000 kilometers. It's just a few case short of five K 5,000 but it takes place all around a half mile, close to a kilometer along a loop. In the heart of New York city runners have to try to complete at least a hundred K a day for 52 days in order to finish the race. Under that window. It's grueling, but at the same time, although it sounds like an absolute misery Fest, a suffer Fest, people don't come out of it physically devastated. In fact, the only way you can actually tell the line for this type of mores is to have a deep understanding of the spirituality of long distance running. Speaker 4: (06:31) So in the film, not only do we follow Ash Briana, El Alto, but to kind of show how and why this race is even possible, we'd go back into time. We follow three other runners on their own quests, but runners who come from very deep traditional cultures of running a, we follow an ultra marathoner on the Navajo nation. In Arizona, we go to the Kalahari desert and Botswana at hunt with Bushman hunters who chase down game across two to three day law tracks. And we follow an aspirant in the Highlands of Japan who was doing a thousand day Trek of about 31,000 miles in the mountains outside of Kyoto. This shows the spirituality that's inherent to running that really fuels the runners in the 3,100 mile race. Speaker 3: (07:20) Wow. Well you preaching to the converted here and a lot of my audience, of course Evan runners. And what really surprises me, I mean I have to, I have to tell you a little bit of a story. I actually tried to get a documentary series done for discovery channel called run the planet and we actually uncovered, so the Kalahari, the Navajo, the, the Mount Tia amongst the, and a number of other tribes, people with stories and legends of doing long distance running. I didn't manage to pull it off. We did the the pilot for the series a in Australia reenacting an Aboriginal men story who ran 250 kilometers to save a friend of hers across the desert. And that was the end of the project unfortunately. But you actually manage the Paul was off which a huge amazing seat too though because I know what these sort of things take. Speaker 3: (08:17) But we, we came from the same premise that running is an inherently, we are born to run and stuff. The famous book is from Chris Google. We have born to run and we are made for this sort of long distance stuff and that we've done that throughout history. And you have uncovered these amazing people doing these incredible things. What's interesting for me is you've come from a very spiritual background and I've actually not come from that same background as a runner come more from the sporting and the, you know and I, I think I lived a lot of untapped potential sort of on the table looking back cause I didn't tap into the more spiritual side. I think I did to a certain degree without really understanding it. But you know, let's talk a little bit about Sri chum noise and what the races that he set up all around the world actually have to do with a 3,100 mile race. And, and your, your what, what your beliefs are around, she treats your NOI and has had a trick to long distance running. Speaker 4: (09:25) First of all. I so wish you'd completed that series. It sounds like it would have been awesome and I probably wouldn't have had to do this movie. Speaker 3: (09:33) It would have been complimentary, would've been awesome. Yeah. We didn't manage to pull it off. As, you know, there are lots of hurdles to jump through when you're totally, yeah. Speaker 4: (09:44) So, you know, to your question, I, I ran track in high school and I, I, I grew up in the United States and you know, the state that I grew up in, California has 35 million people. So a lot of people ran track, you know, but kind of got disillusioned from everything at university and ended up after graduation moving from the West coast of the U S to New York city where an Indian spiritual teacher named Sri Chinmoy lived his path really intrigued me because no harm, no foul, like there's no superiority or inferiority. But he really advocated a a pretty unified philosophy of not just making your heart strong and, and trying to develop the kind of beautiful qualities that we have inside, like love and peace and joy. But he also felt that physical fitness was a paramount importance to achieving that sense of inner peace. And so he came at running an exercise from a totally different vantage point than I did for me. Speaker 4: (10:45) You know, it was all about competition. And you know, when I was in high school, I would win a lot of races, but by the time I got to college, you know, I was no longer in that kind of top echelon. And you know how it is. It's like once you realize you're never going to be like at the very, very top, you know or, or you're not going to win every single race. I know you want a lot of races, you start really losing, you know, a sense of purpose. But when I came across region wise philosophy, it was totally different. You know, and, and this is reflective in all the cultures that we explore in 3,101 and become that there's something unique about running and we just have to take it on faith that unlike any other activity, however wonderful, whether it's tennis or swimming or biking, that running connects us to mother nature in a completely unique way. Speaker 4: (11:41) And when I, when you know, when I spent time with the Navajo and people will see in the film are our main Navajo character. Sean Martin says, when you run your feet are praying to mother earth, you're breathing in father sky. You're showing them, you're praying to them, you're showing them that you're willing to work for the blessings of mother earth. And that's a philosophy that I've seen reflected in traditional cultures all over the world. And that was in Sri Chinmoy. His philosophy, even though we don't actually, nobody really consider as Eastern philosophy as something that really revolves around an act of, of, of physical fitness, like running. Yeah. But in a sense, you know, it was men and women, humanity's first religion, that idea of connecting to nature and the energies both within and without through our feet. So when, when, when he kind of presented that to me and to others, that blew my mind, but I wasn't really ready for the philosophy. You know, I ran 800 meters and the 1500 meters, but when I moved to New York to study with them in 1997 that was the summer that the 3,100 mile race was launched and I hadn't, I hadn't even done a marathon. So the idea of doing 60 miles a day or 52 days just blew my mind. Speaker 3: (13:03) Yeah, absolutely. How does the human body, I mean I've, I've done, you know, the longest I've run is like through New Zealand, like 3000, 250 Ks in 42 days, which is not as much money per day is what they were doing. Given we were on the road and doing book tours and things at the same time. But the, the amount of pain in the suffering that you do go through and people have often said to me, did you reach this flow state? And then you became a, and I know that a lot of people experience that. And I, and I have to say I had had times or flow state when I was in a flow state, but unfortunately I couldn't leave a hole myself in that flow state. And the, the suffer face did, you know, it was about, you know, overcoming a lot of pain amazing levels of fatigue with a lot of willpower which we know as limited, you know, we will have a limited amount of willpower. Speaker 3: (14:09) And, and I was always hoping to reach that state of self transcendence really. And, and Neveah, but I hadn't been a catered myself to meditation and to the other sides of all that. Probably enough looking back which I'm much more into these days. But back then it was all about, you know, the physical, mental, the mental strength and the physical strength to actually prepare your body for this battle going in. And this is a completely different approach to what Sri, Jim NOI head and what these people that are doing the 3,100 have really it's, and I wonder how do they actually get to that, you know, as someone who's don't done a hell of a lot of running and not really achieved that flow state for long periods of time, at least how the heck do they do it. Speaker 4: (15:00) So there, there, there are two types of runners in the race and you know, again, no superiority or inferiority, but there are very few people on earth like you that have the mental fortitude to like will themselves through 40, 45, 50 days, you know, of of doing, you know, 30, 40, 50, 60, 80, a hundred Ks per day. Like, you know, that willpower will only take you so far. And, and in your darkest moments, you know, in the run, willpower is not going to offer you any light. If it's gone, then it's just Sufferfest. So a lot of people who come to the 3,100, whether they, there, they come from a background of faith or not, they realize either in their first attempt or beforehand that if they don't kind of develop access to a place within themselves where they can be happy, simply just happy in the worst moments. Speaker 4: (15:58) If they can't be in that flow state at will, then it's going to be a long 52 days. And you know, a lot of people, I would say probably at least a third to a half of people who do it the first time, you know, it's, it's it's a mixture of pleasure and pain and those moments like you experienced in, in your, in your cross-country run, those moments are enough to get you up the next day. But they're not necessarily gonna fuel every single mind mile. That said, it's like the people that come back and do it over and over and over, either through the race or outside the race, they really develop the power of meditation and at the same time, like unlike your race, and I think you'll appreciate this more than most, the reason why they do the race on a half mile loop is so that you have access to your aid every half a mile. Speaker 4: (16:53) You have access to a bathroom every half a mile. There's no traffic. There's foot traffic on this loop from just the public, but it's a pretty isolated area of New York and you don't have to worry about cars or anything. So in that sense your mind can like stop forgetting about the surroundings and, and it's, it's a lot easier that way. So that said, it's like this race, like the people that get the most out of it come at it the way you would now that come at it, knowing that you need to have access to that meditative side of you and you need to train with that in mind. It's like you have to find a way to find joy or happiness in those moments of exertion. And that doesn't come spontaneously out in the suffer Fest. You have to build that in your training. Speaker 3: (17:38) Yeah. And you have to develop that skill and the years and years of meditation, I should imagine to be able to reach that state. And that's something that fascinates me now. And I'm in, I'm developing, you know, those skills of late, but it's something that I wish on head back then instead of just the will and mindset. And I'm doing this no matter what. And, and it surprises me that how many people can override all of the the pain and the, you know, we do have an amazing ability to deal with things. But I cannot, I cannot, in all honesty, say to you, I enjoy it or I was happy in doing a lot of those races. There was a lot of, you know, I want to achieve this. It's a challenge. It's an opportunity to find out who I am. And I think when we, when we connect to nature and we do find out so much about ourselves and so even though I didn't approach it from a spiritual point of view, I think the stuff that I learned from it has been so, so powerful to helping me in, in everyday life. Speaker 3: (18:51) In, in getting through obstacles, other people that are doing these types of things, in your opinion just more, are they tapping into a higher power? Are they able to actually leave the the, the suffering behind in some way? Speaker 4: (19:12) That's a great question. So like going to the time that we spent with the Bushman and the Kalahari, these cultures that have been running for literally 125,000 years, they say you cannot separate running from God. Of course, if you want to run to become a better looking person running, we'll give that to you. If you want to run to become healthy running, we'll do that for you. But if you run with the intention, I mean this is wild, but if you run with the intention of getting closer to the divine part of yourself, to the divine part of the universe, whatever you, you label that as running, we'll get you there. I mean, just like if you meditate for just power of concentration, it'll do it. If you meditate to feel a little bit of peace, it'll do it. But if you meditate for a self discovery to discover the oneness you have with the divine, that's everywhere. Speaker 4: (20:07) Meditation will do that. And so when it, when it comes to running this particular race, people come into it as a pilgrimage. You know, you can either come into it what the mental attitude of like, I'm going to do this, I'm going to achieve this. But there was a runner on an Israeli multi-day champion and Coby Orrin who did the race, I think in 2017 and across the first thousand miles he was pushing. And he actually sat in Israeli national record for the fastest time to a thousand miles in the midst of this 3,100 mile race. But he realized that the true meaning of this race wouldn't reveal itself unless he moved into a completely different state of mind. And he realized that he had to take the race as a pilgrimage. And what that meant was not thinking about your splits, not thinking about how many miles you're doing each day, but really finding a way to focus on the meaning of each action of each step. Speaker 4: (21:06) And when he got into that sense of, or lack of expectation, and when he got into that sense of focus, he realized that there was, there was joy, there was actually happiness by looking at the moments, by looking at the specific actions and the steps and that happiness wasn't going to come. Looking at your watch or looking at your daily mile totals, that happiness kind of existed in the middle of all that. But again, it's like, it all sounds like fun and games, but unless we had that kind of intention, we don't actually find where happiness really exists. Speaker 3: (21:40) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, overcoming changing perspective. I mean, I never went into races with the, the thought of winning, to be honest, most of the time it was all about, you know, survival getting through to the other in some which way. And I've had some very spiritual type experiences underway. Perhaps induced by, you know, fatigue, sleep deprivation, those types of things, hallucinations. And the things that you actually discover about yourself are just absolutely mind blowing, even without the spiritual aspect. But I do wish now that I had gone more into that side of things to be able to overcome the limitations. You know, what worries me nowadays as a, as a running coach and we train $700 sleets all around the world is, is the danger that is involved with ultra marathon running. Because there is, you know, you can do permanent damage. Speaker 3: (22:44) I've done some damage to my body. Why do these guys not have physical damage from doing these extreme races or do they? I've had, you know, big problems with things like rhabdomyolysis kidneys, you know, not functioning properly from repeatedly breaking down too much muscle. Things like that, fibroid problems, adrenal problems, adrenal burnout. Do these guys ever suffer from those sort of normal physical breakdowns? Of course, muscle tears and in those sorts of things as well. And if not, why not? Why do they not have that limitation, those very human limitations on them Speaker 4: (23:26) That, that, that, that's a great question. You know, as, as opposed to most ultra distance running, I mean this is more akin to your, your, your 42 days across New Zealand where you can't push it. You know, you can't win the 3,100 mile race in a day, but you can lose it in a day and it's not wanting a 24 hour race where you can say like, I can push myself past the limit because I can sleep for two weeks and I can take care of like the damage I do across the next six months or a year with the 3,100. Imagine doing a hundred K then waking up again and doing it again and then waking up again and doing it again. And the, the, the leaders are, are, are at about 120 K per day. So it's a totally different mindset. I mean, you know, they can't, they Canyon say that when you run long distances, whether they're 10 Ks or marathons, you have to run dumb. Speaker 4: (24:20) The UMB like in the 3,100 you have to have like a real sense of softness between your ears. You know, even physiologically, it's like if your, if your mind is thinking and thinking and thinking, your face muscles get tense, which tenses up, you know, your upper cervical vertebra, which have ramifications all the way down your body and you start getting repeated. Use injuries. Your, your knees aren't aligned, your tabs aren't aligned. But frankly it all starts in the mind. And so if you can find a way not to be in your mind, to cultivate, you know, your heart, your spiritual heart, that things that you focused on in meditation and bring those feelings and emotions and sense of self, sense of peace, sense of joy into your one, then it becomes an entirely different experience physiologically. You know, you're much more in tune with what's going on. Speaker 4: (25:14) You're much more in tune with the sense of balance. You have more patients. But in that patience, when you're not pushing, you can also experience a sense of happiness that you, you, you typically don't get in shorter races. And when I mean shorter like, you know, 24 hours and less, where are you going? Like, I've got to get there. I've got to get there. I can't stop. I can't stop. You know, when you've got that type of an attitude in a race, you, you rarely dissociate from your mind. I mean, the trick for those of us wanting shorter races is finding ways in training like the Kenyans to completely get rid of expectation and to find a way to get into that flow state in the first couple of miles. Speaker 3: (25:53) Yup. Yeah. And it does association. I mean, I definitely use it to some degree, obviously not to the degree that I would like to have used it and being able to take your mind away from the pain and the suffering in the body. And that's one of the tools that I, you know, teach about a little bit. And I do find like when you get into a rhythm, a rhythm is something that that is meditative. And I'm often, if I'm running behind, someone will use their feet as a little flicker of they fry, they fried and they, it's almost a trance like state that you can get into. But I can't keep it in the forever. That's a, that's the key point I think. And that's the difference between these guys. So they are tapping into things that we as, you know, average not so spiritual human beings, if you like, for the ones who have a bit of expression and you know, can't tap into. Speaker 3: (26:52) And that's what I find absolutely fascinating because I know what it takes to run 70 Ks a day. I cannot imagine the amount of pain that it would take to run 120 days beyond. It's certainly beyond my physical limitations. And the, the amount of pain that you'd have to overcome us is, is phenomenal. But what you were saying there about stress and stress is I listened to an interview with dr Chatterjee that you were talking about stress and how, why can't AIDS epidemic in our world. And it's one of the killers and it's one of the most problematic things. And we are living in a cult stunt state of alertness and fight or flight sort of state because of the society that we live. And we're no longer being chased by lions, but we seem to be living in that constant state is meditation and using even this, running this self transcendent, running a way of calming the body and stopping those stress responses. Speaker 4: (27:59) So the curious thing is that running is humanity's oldest physical practice, maybe dance as well. That movement through your feet and there is something electric when you're aware of it, between the connection between mother earth and our feet, our lungs breathing in oxygen and air, there's something deeply nourishing and effecting that way. At the same time, meditation is humanity's oldest practice of contemplation. Not just getting rid of stress, but understanding who we are, why we're here, what we're meant to do in any given moment. And meditation gives us access to different parts of our body and our, or of our being, I should say. It's like we've got a tool belt on and we've got 15 sets of tools, but we're using a hammer 24 hours a day. You know, it's like we might not even know all the other tools that we've got, but meditation is a very simple, very natural way for people to go, wow, when I'm stressed, I don't have to like think about it. Speaker 4: (29:05) I don't have to like, you know, just become obsessed with what's going on. There's another part of me that will allow me to feel something different, to allow time, for example, to take its course at the same time. If, if this dress requires something hyper-focused, you know, we can pull that tool out and apply it to the moment and get rid of that stress in a very constructive, you know, analytical way. Some meditation and running, you know, are really the two oldest tools that we have. But it's a question of, of coming back to that as, as a civilization, as a species. And you know, obviously as individuals we can come back to that just, you know, we just have to, we just have to take those first steps. Speaker 3: (29:45) Well, I actually had to an argument or not an argument, but a discussion with reduce your, of the, the portal, which is a new movie that's come out. Tom Cronin, who was on the podcast a few weeks ago and he was, he's, it's all about meditation and the power of meditation to heal the whole world. And I'm a very, very interesting man. And I said to him, I believe meditation running is a meditation. And he said to me, no, it's not a meditation. It's running. And I said, I know, and I had this discussion with an amazing no, because running you are in a sympathetic nervous system state and you're not in a parasympathetic state. Speaker 4: (30:23) It's that if for four, I would say for most people not myself included. That was true up until a few years ago. But I F I was trying to understand why the people who do the 3,100 mile race, most of them come back and do it a second time, a third time. The main character in the movie, Ashby Hunnel, you know, did it again last summer for get this a grand total of 15 times he's completed that race 15 times when when you understand that running and meditation can actually go together, you know, and you've explore what that truly means. I mean, again, it's, it's not simply the fact and I, I get where he's coming from. It's not simply saying like, my running is my meditation. The way that chopping onions is my meditation. It's like, you know, I, I get the kind of like, you know, hyperbole that that comes with that. But if you get into a state in running where you're completely beyond your mind, where you're completely in that flow state and, and you know, it's like the definition or the flow state is not an absence of pain, but it's finding happiness in the, in that exertion. And there there was a Hopi elder. Hopi is there. There are tribes in central Arizona, some of the best runners anywhere Speaker 3: (31:46) We uncover the swipe for that with a series. Yeah. Speaker 4: (31:50) Yes. W a Hopi elder had told us when I was on a prayer run with a bunch of native kids in Arizona, he told us as, as we headed off for monument Valley, he said, find joy through exertion. And that was mind blowing to me because how many of us, when, when we're really working hard, number one, feel joy, number one or number two, even know that we can feel joy in those moments of intense effort. And he said, not only do you need to realize that joy exists in the most extreme forms of exertion, but you can find it. You just have to be aware of it and find a way to, to tap into it. I mean, that totally changed the way I race that only that changed the way I run. It's like in those moments when you're really pushing to learn that joy actually exists there. Speaker 4: (32:43) That you can go beyond that pain by tapping into joy. I mean that that's how to get into flow. That's literally step one and to getting into flow. And when you're in that flow state as, as you know, it's like you can have experiences or you can tap into those same places within your being that you try to get to in your highest form of meditation. That said, learning and knowing how to meditate is going to help you get into that state a lot easier. And if you get into that state and running, you're going to be able to get into that state when you're meditating. So I completely disagree based on experiences that I've had personally, but more importantly, seeing these cultures that have understood the connection between prayer running and the spirit for tens of thousands of years. Speaker 3: (33:33) Oh, I'm so glad you've said that because I've, you know, had a debate with myself over the last few weeks because I took him on what he said, and I thought, well, that's probably got an element of truth about, you know, we're looking at the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system, and you, when you are in the meditative state, you have to be in the sympathetic state. But I have that, I've had that experience of being in a meditative state, running granted I can't do it on demand, but I have been there. So I, I was having trouble with that sort of like autonomy, if you like. They, they're sort of opposites. And that gives me permission to go back to the thought. And yes, actually there's a type of meditation and it is a powerful one and it's something that I've missed like the last four years. Speaker 3: (34:19) Sandra, you you wanna know, but I had a mom who had a mess of aneurysm and my listeners know the story and was in a vegetative state, basically would have any high function at the age of 74. And obviously the last four years I just stopped doing the long distance running because I had to completely focus on her rehab and that, you know, they're trying to make a living was all there was 24 hours in a day basically. And now four years later, I've just written her book. It comes out in March this year. It's called relentless and tells the story of, of bringing her back and she's now completely normal again. At the age of 78 against all odds. And I created, I created this comeback journey that I've been on with her, on to the fact that I've done this running. Speaker 3: (35:06) If I had not have had the mental skillset that I developed through running, I wouldn't have been able to, to do the things that I did with here to look outside the square to, to push through boundaries that most people would have, you know, quit long, long time ago. And to go up against some medical system and say, no, this is the, she will come back. And this the story is very powerful because it's in why I'm so passionate about getting this book out there is because it taps into these types of tools that we discover when we are doing these extreme things like you know, running long distance races and we learned stuff about ourselves and then how the body works and how that we are capable of so much more than what your average local doctor will tell you. What capable of, I mean, have you ever been to a local doctor and they've said, look, you can't run anymore. You've got a sore knee. Yeah, Speaker 4: (35:59) Yeah. I mean, I mean th th th the thing to understand is that we physiologically evolved as runners. You know, from, from an evolutionary biology standpoint and all your, all your listeners will know that the humanities first advantage as bipedal beings was number one, unlike Quadra peds, we could step without having to breathe. Many people can imagine what a dog looks like or a horse looks like in full sprint when their legs are extended, you know, splayed out on the, on the an extension. Their lungs, inhale air. When the legs come together as they all do, they all come together in the middle of the, of the center of gravity. It's like that's when the lungs are forced to expel air. So they're incredible anaerobic beings, but we're the only animals by virtue of standing on two feet that can like trot and not have to breathe every single time we take a step. Speaker 4: (36:56) And so that's given us a tremendous sense of endurance. You know, we can breathe, you know, multiple times per step, which Quadro peds can't do. And you know, we can, we can breathe every three or four steps, which also keeps our Arabic level kind of pretty low. So it's like, if you, if you look at that, you know, human beings are meant to move on our feet. The things that take us away from that state of being are all the, all the afflictions of modern day life. But I would say weirdly enough, like I, I'm on the medical team at the 3,100 mile race too, and 95% of the day to day trauma that the runners face. The pain, you know, we can take away through a deep tissue, we can take away through Raul thing, but it tends to come back day in and day out. And when that starts happening to runners, I tell them like, look, your problems are mental. Speaker 4: (37:50) Like there's no reason why if these problems are taken away through through some sort of therapy that they, that they should come back the next day. I find that 90% of injuries that people have through, you know, basically through a non-traumatic running racing is totally different. But when you're just in training and you're just doing like low stress low intensity type of stuff, you know, maybe heavy miles, the injuries that are repeated use injuries are really due to bad form, which really comes from a state of mental unrest from a state of anxiety and not allowing the mind to release. And then the body subsequently to release. Speaker 3: (38:31) There's not so much rinks in the core strength and you know, like we teach about, you know, you've got to have a strong core and strong had some things to be able to be upright. You were saying it's more of a mental stimulus. That's, that's the problem that we are because of the stress that we're all under or that we are thinking we are under we're actually inflicting that on our bodies as, as much as anything else. Speaker 4: (38:56) I mean of course is since most of us don't spend day to day, you know, I spend, spend our day to day kind of inner body the way we might've as hunters and gatherers. Yeah. Yeah. We need to do all the range of motion, all the core activities that we don't get from our, our, our standard nine to five jobs. Yeah. But still like you have plenty of students that do all of that and that still gets Phantom injuries. Yep. And then I'll take it Speaker 3: (39:22) Good. You know, I can do everything and I'll still be struggling with one or two injuries Speaker 4: (39:27) And that come that that comes entirely from the mind. Like the 3,100 mile race is a great Petri dish for it. Because like I said, like, you know, like LA last summer, Ashby hunt all did it and I was, his handler. It, I would kind of take care of his afflictions, you know, every break he had every six or eight hours. And after a few days of of him having calf pain and taking it away through simple, you know, deep tissue or, or Rolfing or, or, or you know, active release stuff. And I just told them like, I can take care of this every single day. But the reason why you're having these problems is somehow you're, you're not running fluidly, you know? And that comes in that race from overthinking, from stressing out, for thinking about stuff that you shouldn't be thinking about. Mainly from, from thinking at all. Speaker 4: (40:18) Yeah. And so I go, I go back to the time I go back to the time we spent with Sean Martin on the Navajo reservation. We're all you're supposed to do when you run is listen to the sound of your feet. Breathe in the universe through your lungs. And when you do that, you begin to feel the importance of the connection of your feet and mother earth and your breath and father sky. And that nourishes you. And that gives you the sense of happiness that you need from running. But most of us, myself included when I go for a run and looking at my watch, I'm looking at my pace, I'm thinking about my workout. I might think about like, you know what I'm going to eat afterwards, what I'm going to do afterwards. My, my, my, my experience of running is already done, you know, and I'm getting nothing out of each moment. I'm only just checking off a workout. And that's the difference. It's like unplugging from our playlist, you know, you can run with a GPS watch. We all do. But not worrying about what your watch says to you, but listening to yourself, listening to your thoughts, listening to your heart, and taking, running as a spiritual discipline rather than as an escape. I mean, that's when the fruits of running really, really coming to the fore. Speaker 3: (41:34) Yeah. And I'm just going back briefly to that story with mum. The difficulty if I haven't been able to do the long distance running in the, in the last, you know, three and a half, four years and I've missed the clarity of mind that came with it. You know, when you, when you spend hours a day running is indulgence as that sounds. It actually, you know, I had time to work through the problems that I was facing in my life and to get them out, it's very cathartic, sort of a, a thing to do. And when you don't have that, you can be missing that piece quite badly. And then, you know, so they, I think running is a physical release and a spiritual release in a, in a mental release. It's a, it's all rolled into one and the connection that you say to, to mother earth. Speaker 3: (42:28) And I think this is one of the major, major problems that especially our young generation are facing because we so on devices and we so connected all of the time that we have no time to just be in our own thoughts or just being with ourselves and to just be in movement. We just constantly wanting entertainment or connection. And, and not being connected to mother Ruth not being outside in the burning sun, the freezing rain, the, all of those things that really make us feel good. You know, when you go for a run in a storm, you can't come back, you know, if anything but invigorated and like alive, you know. And it might've been hard and it might've been cold and it might've been this, but you're alive. You're, you're feeling you're alive. And I think that they, in their very artificial world where everything's air conditioned and we jumped from Avalon to a garage, into the car and off to the mall and you know, all of these things is just disconnecting us so completely from, from the way that we are meant to be living generally, like outside of just running, but just not being connected to nature is, is killing us, I think. Speaker 3: (43:44) Do you agree? Speaker 4: (43:46) I'm, I'm totally with you now. You know, imagine that 3,100 mile race on a city block. It's sidewalk. Almost a K it's, but it's a square. So it's like you're going around right angles. It takes place in New York city summer, you know, for for almost eight weeks where the temperature last summer climbed above 41 42 seas. For a day or two. But much of the time in, in the heat of the day, you know, you're talking between 32 and 36 Celsius. Again, it's like unrelenting. You're pretty close to some major roads. There's buildings all around and it's not like you're running through the grand Canyon, but that, but that said, it's like if you're, you know, on the South Island or if you're in the grand Canyon, it's really easy to feel the power of mother nature. But our, our Navajo character's father is a, is a as a medicine man. Speaker 4: (44:39) And he told me mother earth is under the sidewalk to no mother earth is under the asphalt. That is mother earth. So on this course, you know, people are, are desperately, desperately struggling to maintain their connection to nature despite being in an urban setting. And you know, when you've got that type of intense focus on what you need when it comes to you, it's, it's in a much higher dosage than you can imagine. So like, yeah, in the 3,100, that connection to mother earth, even though they're running around in circles on a sidewalk, it's absolutely essential. Speaker 3: (45:16) Absolutely. And that you don't need, you know, people often say, well we don't lock them did on these rices and the Sahara and the Gobi desert and Dave belly and Australia and all like Himalayas. To be honest, actually it wasn't about, Speaker 4: (45:33) Yeah, Speaker 3: (45:33) The views, it wasn't about what you were seeing, keeping you going. In fact, most of the time, unfortunately, you know, your heat is usually down on the ground trying not to fall over the next thing or you're so, so tired. You can have the enjoy your surroundings very often. And, and of course it is more inspiring to at least go to these places and you know, in the before and the after and the cultural exchange that you have. But actually during the race, it's not about the beauty, you know, it's and running around and ran a block or running through a desert. They're both connected the both outside and nature. Like you say, they both are. Speaker 4: (46:15) And w one of the great things about this race happening in New York is that whatever you need, whether it's a new pair of shoes, whether it's a very specific type of medicine you're in New York city, someone will be able to get a volunteer. We'll be able to get it for you within a couple of hours. And as you know, it's like when you travel for these like international ultras, very often if you don't have something with you is stuffed, you are not going to get it. Yeah. It's not going to be a good experience for you. Speaker 3: (46:44) No, it must be. Yeah, it definitely has a be a great advantage to have all of the things around you and that half-mile block, although it's, you know, mind numbing and people think, Oh gosh, going around in a circle. I mean I've only done like 24 hour races, but they are easier than running across the desert per se, where you don't have access to anything. And if you've forgotten something, you're in deep, deep trouble, physically in trouble. But it does become about the mind and what you are, what you were doing. The so this, this movie is coming to New Zealand. This phone was [inaudible]. Speaker 4: (47:23) Yeah. Yeah. So from February 10th through, we'll be traveling from, I think we're going to be an Oakland, Wellington, Christchurch maybe a few other places in between doing single nights screenings. The information is going to be up on our Facebook page, which I think is facebook.com forward slash 3,100 film and afterwards, after the 20th, that you can't make, one of those screenings will be up on all the online platforms. But Lisa, I would love to have to be able to, to, to ask you questions at one of our screenings. You know, I'm not sure what city you're in, but Speaker 3: (48:02) It would be fun. It would be really, really fun. I think we can make that happen. I live in a little place called new Plymouth, so you probably not coming here, although that would be awesome. But I can travel to, you know, walking into Wellington or something to make sure that I get to see this and I've seen the movie. But to actually meet you would be of course just, you know. Awesome. and you know, people out there, how do they get tickets so they can just go onto Facebook and find out where the screenings are. Get me tickets via that way. Speaker 4: (48:30) Yeah. The, the, the, the movie screenings are going to be in proper theaters and all of those cities. And so, you know, on our Facebook page there's links to the times and dates and we're going to be adding a few more things here and there. But yeah, all the tickets can be purchased online. Speaker 3: (48:45) Fabulous. And we will put all the links in the, in the show notes and stuff and all that. I do want to ask you a couple more questions about you and your background because you've had a fascinating life. This isn't the first movie you've done. Tell us about how did you get into filmmaking? Cause I'm very fascinated by filmmaking. I made a couple of, well eight documentaries, but on a very, very low budget documentaries. And I know I want to know, you know, how did you fall into this area and do the amazing things that you've done. So tell us a little bit about your life. Speaker 4: (49:19) I, I'm, I'm a Jack of all trades, master of none. Know I, I moved from California to New York to basically, you know, S to just study what's rich and white and spend a few years even with a good university degree, you know, just spend a few years working in health food stores and just, you know, getting to understand who I was and what I really wanted to do in life before launching into a career or whatnot. But switch in my head a lot of friends from other Theresa to Desmond Tutu and Mikhail Gorbachev and Mandela. And as I got more interested in kind of humanity specifically in, in like international development, humanitarian aid, human rights, I began having opportunities to work with some most rich and moist friends. So I got a chance to, to work with Desmond Tutu and you know, a ton of other people and gradually kind of like made my way into the world of humanitarian aid and human rights. Speaker 4: (50:18) So I kind of worked in that, in that sphere for about 15 years till around 2010, 2011. And you know, realize that a lot of the projects that I really, really enjoyed were ones that required me to take photos or to make little small documentaries, just being the only person with a camera for hundreds of miles. And I began making some short films, like my first one that most of them have been on sports, weirdly enough. My, my first one was called ocean monk and it was like an, a personal exploration of the connection between meditation and surfing in the winter in New York city. Of all things. I mean there is surfing like you know, in New York city in the winter here, you know, you might walk through, you know, half a meter of snow or a meter of snow to get to the water. But you can imagine like when the city's going like 24 hours a day to be out in the water was no one else around is probably the only experience of real nature we can get in New York city. Speaker 4: (51:21) But my, my second film explored, you know, kind of a curious aspect of streets and noise life. You know, after he stopped being able to do distance running, he took up weightlifting and he left, he lifted astronomical pounds, you know, in fact, when I was in New Zealand in 2002 and 2003 I was actually on a three month trip with him and one of, one of the cutest things he did was he went to a farm, you know, not too far away from Topo. A sheep farm and sheep are put into little cages and put onto this contraption that's reaching. Mike could sit under and he would like push up, you know, a cage with a sheep on each hand and you know, lifted a thousand sheep. It was just, it was really, really cute and childlike but also kind of mind boggling. And the physicality. Speaker 4: (52:11) I made a film called challenging and possibility, but then kind of went back to my human rights roots and made a film about the exploitation of farm workers in the United States. And that was, that actually achieved some success. You know, we had some famous people that were involved, Forrest Whitaker and then this movie 3,100 run and become was my second, you know, big feature length project. Wow. Oh, I should add as well. Just jumping back to the last topic that there have been two Kiwis that have done that 3,100 mile race, a man named Jade Lynn who did it I think in 2006 but there is a three time female finisher of the race. Hurry to Davey's. She lives in the States, but she's actually gonna be in New Zealand with us for all these screenings. They, cause she's doing a series of events during that time called the peace run. It just basically, it's like a, an Olympic torch style relay where they're going to be running from Oakland all the way down. You know, obviously what the ferry all the way down to Christchurch and stopping in a zillion schools. So she'll be at all though. She'll be at all the screenings too. I'll get to make a hopefully. Speaker 3: (53:27) And we also have another very famous lady. He used to do the 2000 kilometer race in New York city. Sandy Barwick. Oh yeah. Cause she's [inaudible] who was my role model. I feel like as a little girl growing up and who, who came with me to the family when I ran through death Valley, an incredible woman fates that again, just defy I think she had nine world records. I think some of them still stand. So we've got a, you know, great tradition in New Zealand of incredible runners and, and she was certainly way above where it, anywhere I ever got to. So we've got some amazing people. And on the note of shirt tree, Jim, he wanted to tell you just a little cute story. I was in the nationals. We have the streets of NOI, 24 hour race in Oakland every year. Speaker 3: (54:17) And it was, she was actually very, very sad while we were doing it was, it was in 2007 and we were doing the 24 hour race and a day before the race. [inaudible] He died as you would. Well, and, and so the people were devastated who were organizing. Right. And so they all just dropped everything and flew to New York basically. And I didn't really understand the whole street and rowing movement at that stage. I just, just was a runner turning up to the race to run and all of a sudden the rice was no longer happening. So one of the other runners and I, we decided we're doing it anyway, so we just, we ran around the track for hours. Well, I need actually made it to 20 hours that they ended. It was a absolutely torrential rain. The poor people in the street show me the way that were just so devastated. Speaker 3: (55:16) I just had to go, you know, they just had to be there to say goodbye to the master. And it was just a really for us back home running around in the rain, me and one other guy. And it was one of those special memories because it wasn't an official race. It wasn't going to be the official national race. And I'd been trying for years to qualify for the New Zealand team to go to the world champs. So I had to wait another year before I qualified, but we did get there in the end. But yeah, just the dedication to him was, was really moving and that they all just, they just dropped tolls and all just flow to, to New York overnight. It was really they were so, they were so devastated, obviously. Because he was such a great man and, and it was a man who, who really unified the religions rather than, you know, things are, don't matter. From what I understand. He was a very unifying figure. And yeah, for sure. I mean, his philosophy was, was, was love of God. Again, from an Eastern tradition, we don't really have the singular Speaker 4: (56:24) Concept of, of God being just, just, you know, a masculine energy, you know, it can be anything and everything. And, you know, we, we worship many different forms of, of the divine. But you know, his was about, you know, kind of an ancient path that way. But at the same time it was very accepting of people no matter what their backgrounds were. And, you know, he felt that you could live in the outer world and still achieve the highest. You didn't necessarily need to become a monk and renounce everything. And I know he loved New Zealand, you know, he, he had a, he's had a long friendship with a number of Kiwi runners like Alison Rowe, who he, I think he first met during the the New York city marathons. And you know, just to my great benefit, when we opened the movie in theaters in New York city and in November of 2018, it was during the week of the New York city marathon. And Alison was there to be inducted in the New York city marathon hall of fame, and she came to one of our screenings and did a panel. So I got to meet a lifelong hero of mine. And yeah. It's like, it's interesting because all the people that I've met through each and Moy still have, you know, you know, some sort of a connection with activities that his followers still kind of hold around the world. Speaker 3: (57:41) Yeah. Yeah. And even, you know, even my life. So through that we connected in some weird, weird, bizarre way, you know, and that's fantastic. And, and th the, the one that you did was the on the food food chain. Tell us a little bit about the food chain movie. And that was all about the, the site of conditions for workers migrant workers. Speaker 4: (58:04) Yeah. So most countries require some sort of foreign labor to pick their food. And especially when you're looking at like industrialized countries. I mean even England, you know, has had pre-Brexit you know, had a lot of, a big requirement for Polish workers, for Chinese workers, for Thai workers to come seasonally to pick food. You know, we know these are the hardest, most labor intensive jobs anywhere in the world and most people in developed countries don't want to do that kind of work no matter how much it pays. But in as we know it, those types of jobs don't pay much at all. I guess the big corollary in the South Pacific are the, the fishing fleets with a lot of indenture Thai workers, Filipino workers, Burmese workers working in essentially some in some cases like realistically slave like conditions. But the movie really delves not just interpersonal stories but looks at the kind of economic system behind it. Speaker 4: (59:05) Most of us, most places in the world kind of follow a food system that America set up. And that's like a supermarket grocery system where we expect to buy the cheapest possible food, good quality, but like very low prices. And w you know, Walmart in the U S a big chain kind of started that. And from their standpoint, they insisted on buying it ultra low prices from farmers and from meat producers and dairies, but buying in very, very high volume. And that created a set of conditions that not only had made it really hard to be a farmer in the us, but has made farm work essentially, you know, extremely low wage. Now we've see, we see these supermarkets all over the world and this is really a model that was created in the U S and exported to other countries. Even though you know, obviously there's, there's chains that are completely, you know, owned by people in their country. Speaker 4: (01:00:04) But when that supermarket system, that idea of convenience and being able to have the same types of food, you know, 365 days a year, that's made us in the U S rely on a lot of like New Zealand blueberries. But at the same time, you know, you guys get a lot of stuff into your country that are, that are not seasonal, that aren't grown in New Zealand, but that you still expected very low prices and we don't necessarily know the ripple down the food chain that it's causing farmers to really, really make very little at the same time. It creates this reliance on labor that's very colonial, that's very almost kind of feudal as well. And that's what the, the movie food chains kind of looks into. Speaker 3: (01:00:47) Well thank you for bringing it to light because it is a worldwide problem and that, you know, we have migrant workers here as well from the islands. You know, I, when I was the young girl I used to work on, on fruit, on, you know, Apple picking and kiwifruit cracking, I can tell you it's bloody hard work and very little money. Speaker 4: (01:01:07) Yeah. So yeah, so you, you, you, you, you absolutely know that it's, it's not something you would ever want to do the rest of your life. Speaker 3: (01:01:15) Oh my, no, definitely not. I'd rather run the 3,100 actually. There you go. There you go. Look st I would have taken up so much of your time today and I just really wanted to thank you for all the work you do, all the goodness that you put out into the world because it's very, very powerful what you are sharing and you're making people think and you're making people aware of some of these humanitarian stuff that you've done earlier. And also with this new wonderful movie that you bought out, everybody, you have to go and see this movie. It is, if you're into running, obviously you have to go. But if you are into just finding out about what the human body is capable of, what the human mind is capable of, and you want to see very average. And I put that into, you know, a quotation marks, average looking, average appearing, people doing incredible things. Speaker 3: (01:02:06) And that's the beautiful thing about ultra marathon running. We don't all look like Hussein bolt or Paula Radcliffe or or some, you know, elite specimen. We just normal people, but with very, very strong minds and strong willpower to do things. And in this case, it's all about the spiritual side as well. So thank you very much for doing this movie, for putting it out there. And I can't wait to see it and I hope we can connect and not, I can get to one of those screenings that would be absolutely fabulous. Meet you. It'll make my entire trip worthwhile. Right. We've got to make that happen. Thanks for not Sanjay. Thanks so much, Lisa. Speaker 1: (01:02:48) That's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to write, review and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at Lisatamati.com.

This weeks guest is Ryan Narus. Ryan is a double graduate from Wake Forest University with an undergrad in Psychology and an MBA with concentrations in Operations and Marketing. Graduating in 2009 left him unable to find a B2B sales job, so he settled for car sales. Flash forward 4 years later and he won several awards, wrote a book, and discovered he was completely disillusioned with Corporate America, so he started a mobile home park business. Now he has been a part of 10 MHP deals spanning 1,245 pads and over $20MM in acquisitions, all with starting with more student loan debt than cash to invest in deals. He is going to share with us how to destroy all our excuses!Links: http://www.archimedesgrp.com/Connect more with your host Samuel Knickerbocker at:https://www.facebook.com/ssknickerbocker/?ref=profile_intro_cardhttps://www.instagram.com/ssknickerbocker/https://howmoneyworks.com/samuelknickerbockerWelcome back to the fuel your legacy podcast. Each week, we expose the faulty foundational mindsets of the past and rebuild the newer, stronger foundation essential in creating your meaningful legacy. We've got a lot of work to do. So let's get started. As much as you like this podcast, I'm certain that you're going to love the book that I just released on Amazon if you will, your legacy, the nine pillars to build a meaningful legacy. I wrote this to share with you the experiences that I had while I was identifying my identity, how I began to create my meaningful legacy and how you can create yours. You're going to find this book on Kindle, Amazon and their website Sam Knickerbocker com.Welcome back to fuel your legacy. And as always, we have some more incredible guests coming on. And today we're talking somebody who has made his millions he's crushing it in the mobile home park industry. If you've ever thought who owns that trash heap over there. I'm just kidding. His are probably nicer than the average. But no. So Ryan, he was fed a lie when he was younger, much like, probably most of us are you who are listening to this, that if you study hard to graduate from top universities, you're going to get a job, and everything's going to be hunky-dory and you're going to retire with ease and everything's gonna be fantastic. Well, he found out much like I'm sure you're finding out, which is why you're listening to this podcast, that not everything turns out as advertised. Thankfully, he has rebounded, really got into his rock bottom, and launched from that with a solid foundation. And now he's here to help you understand, hey, kind of where did that aha moment happen? How did you launch and how did he overcome the fear of failure? So I'm super excited. Ryan, take it away. Awesome. First, of foremost, Samuel, I want to thank you. I'm flattered to be here. We have a ton to talk about offline, because we're both huge fans of a very Reading and Writing I haven't even told you I've written a book which we can get into again offline but yeah I am so pumped to be here I really am and I don't have anything to sell I am literally doing this because I want to help you the listener escaped corporate America cuz it is awful awful awful man and you know what stinks about it it's that you're forced for this line which you hinted at which is work hard in school you'll go to a good college and then from there you'll have a job and then you work really hard at that job and then you get to retire. Well, it turns out like quite literally none of that is true you can work hard and still not to go to a good school. You can go to a good school I went to Wake Forest University, a very good school made the on Becky list. And so quote-unquote were elite or whatever, because people are on Becky's of the world, are paying to get their kids in on fake scholarships. Right so like a good school, not Ivy but a very good school is no guaranteed job. Oh my gosh, don't get me started about that. My wife's a huge Full House fan. So I like to give her trash for that good, but it's like did I went to Wake Forest twice I went once to get for undergrad, I got my degree in psychology and statistics, literally, to be a salesman. I wanted to be in sales. And I figured what better way to sell them to understand the psychology of the people you're trying to persuade. And it paid dividends, especially because I got a statistics minor, which also helped me optimize my selling schedule, which we can I did Moneyball statistics to opt I was a car salesman, I optimized my day based on a whole bunch of data I put together which is cool. But long story short, even after graduating with first an MBA, there's no gear I hadn't no guaranteed job coming out of it and both times I was going out of undergrad and grad. And I found myself stuck at a job where I did not want to get promoted because I hated it. And I didn't find any meaning or purpose in it. I found myself not wanting to go up. So not wanting to and not wanting to stay put. And then it's like, well, I'm making too much money here. Where am I going to go? Because I've adapted a lifestyle that has become part of my identity. And it's not just a sunk cost of racking up student loan debt and putting it a bunch of hours and years playing the office politics game, but it just becomes part of your identity. It's hard to let that go especially if you're used to a certain lifestyle, right? So you're living a middle-class lifestyle, you drive a certain car, you go to certain restaurants, you have certain friends, really hard to let that go. To give a teaser about where I'm going with this. Eventually, I gave all that up and moved into a mobile home. Chase my dream. Sosacrifice is a big part of where I'm going with this but to kind of go back so we don't do a huge Quentin Tarantino. Its where my journey started when I was in, obviously, when I was in high school really when even before that when I decided Wake Forest was my dream school and I wanted to go I did everything I could to get it. And I did. And I had several key moments in my life where I realized if I don't get my stuff together as I got like 1980 on the essay T, other PSAT so in the average at the times, this is when it was based off 1600 Wake Forest average was 1320. It wasn't even close. So I was like, Okay, well, we've got to get this score up and flash forward. Several years later, from my freshman year to my senior year, I scored a 13 to one out of 1600. So I got the average as T score. Then I had slightly above the GPA and I got accepted the way I can. It was like a dream come true getting to go to my dream school, I loved it. And I was following that trajectory, right? Like, hey, go to a really good school, you have a really good job when you come out. Well, turns out, I did it. It turns out I got a lot a job down. So I graduated in oh nine. So you can't be like, well, you just graduated right at the start of the Great Recession, well, actually had my job locked off, locked up before the economy took a tumble. It was that I picked the wrong job. Because I didn't know myself well enough. I didn't self assess well enough to know who I was at heart. So even though I had a psych major, and I took a ton of classes that basically browbeat you into the really trying to come to the realization that you need to understand who you are, what you like, and what you do not like, or you will make a decision based on what you think other people want you to do. What Are you real? Whether you realize that or not? Whether you're consciously going well, I'm going to do this because I don't want to make dad unhappy? Or you're going, Well, no, I want this. But really, do you want that? Or do you want the world so for example, investment banking, I know a ton of investment bankers that are doing it, quote, unquote, for themselves, but really, they're doing it because they want to impress other people. So the thing that I came into really, really hard and fast is I didn't have my dad was a college professor and marketing. He was not a psych person, right? He wasn't there to tell me, Hey, you really should figure out like really drill down into who you are at heart and what you want to be when you grow up. I didn't have that. And so I picked a job that was selling. It was a sports sales. And so I was like, Oh my god, sports and selling done right. This is going to be my life. And it ended up being I tricked myself into literally taking a telemarketing job, which was horrendous. And then It was like July, June or July of 2009. After I had graduated answer, everyone who just graduated who was going to get a good job, got a job. And so I was like, I can't find a sales job because number one, I'm not. I've already graduated. Right? So I can't read the graduate. And number two, the only people were hiring business to business sales, wanted someone with five years of experience and a Rolodex, who could roll in day one and be effective. And that was not me. What I needed was someone willing to take a chance on me. Thankfully, my karate instructor from high school was a car salesman who's a manager at Hendrick, Honda, and Charlotte, and they gave me a chance. And I could have easily been like, I went to Wake Forest University car sales is beneath me. I want the business to business sales, not consumer, not business to consumer. But instead, I said, You know what, I am not going to sit at my parent's house and feel sorry for myself. I'm going to go and do Do something to make the most of it. What I ended up doing was I ended up tracking my data, literally using Moneyball statistics with multivariate regressions to optimize my day and figure out who are the best leads to follow up on which ones can you let go? What part of the sales process is vital. And what I found during that process, literally just using a basic, very regression analysis, is if you can show people numbers for a car, even if they're like, I'm not buying today, your likelihood of selling them jumps from like 25% to 60. So better than a coin flip. So then all of a sudden, I craft my entire sales process around how can I convince someone to test drive their car and to just sit down with me for five minutes, and it absolutely revolutionized the way I sold cars and in my first full year, I hit Honda's highest award right out of the gate. I sold 200. And I think was 241 cars, so about 20 cars a month, right out of the gate at 24 years old. And I had a moment which where they shipped me up to Washington DC for like to stay at a five-star hotel. And it was this weird moment in my life where I drank way too much.And, and it wasn't that it's not that I'm I went up there to dress nice and be a party boy. It was that at the moment, I didn't realize that I was filling a void in my soul. So I thought I wanted to be a salesman. I thought it was good at it and an old boy I have made it. But at that moment when I was shaking hands with the district manager, and he looked me in the face and said, are you going to do this again next year? Like I better see you here next year. Of course, at the moment I was like you're going to see me here next year when I walked away without a warm To have my dinner and just sunk in that I was completely unfulfilled. It sunk in how many hours I spent doing that how much of my life I sacrificed to get to that moment. And basically, I was told, go do it again. You better do it again. And also it. It was pretty lucrative, relatively speaking, but it wasn't. It's not something that would ever make me millions unless I owned a car dealership. You know, I had a great I had a meeting with my general manager who told me point blank, he makes what, 300,000 a year, some huge number, but he's like, I never seen, my kids. He's like, you need to think long and hard if that's what you want. And I kind of realized at that moment, talking to my general manager, that if I wanted the car industry, I wasn't getting promoted up, because it takes me 20 years to get to be a general manager only to miss my kid's entire life. I realized around that time that I needed my name. On the side of the building Henrick Honda right and used to be Henrick Honda, because Mr. Hendrick rolls in and his Ferrari once a year to shake hands have dinner and tell everyone they're doing great. And then he drives back to Quail Hollow and hangs out with other multimillionaires, not billionaires, right? So to me I was like what I need is time freedom and I achieve time freedom by having my name on the side of the building but flashing back to hitting Hanta gold. What I realized then in there at that moment, was how completely unsatisfying making decent money is getting the literally the highest award you can get out of the gate is and, and at the time at 24 years old, I'm in the moment I filled that void without call and was totally embarrassed the next day. But it was one of those moments where I knew something was wrong at the moment and I didn't know how to fix it. And it wasn't until a few years later. Because I never hit that award again, by the way, because I've tried to make my life I tried to have a life balance that I couldn't achieve selling cars. And it wasn't until I sprained my ankle playing basketball, where I was sitting at home with ice on my ankle, where I went, I am not going to make money today. I'm 20 something, it was maybe 2526 years old. Not making money that day. And I went, I can't do this. And I went out and I bought the crutches. And I went out to sell cars using crutches, that same day, and just muscled through the pain. And it was really around that time where I realized I can do this in my 20s. That's annoying. If I get hurt when I'm in my 50s or 60s, or God forbid, I don't plan my retirement correctly, and I'm working in my late 60s. I can't afford to not have a paycheck coming in if I get hurt. And so it was the Several pivotal moments where I realized, number one, I don't want to get promoted upwards at the car dealership,I can't really go out because a car sales experience doesn't really translate somewhere else directly, I would really have to start at the bottom of the rung and I had gotten used to a lifestyle that is really hard to give up with, like I mentioned earlier people that whether you really truly want what you think they want you to have, or whether or whether you are just like falling victim to the pressure you think they're putting on you to live a certain lifestyle. It gets to you. And so I realized after a lot of reading, so I realized first and foremost, if it's not owning a car dealership, I need to own a business period. Because it's a lot of introspection and I went I meant to be my boss. And also during this period, I realized that Hate cars. What the heck am I doing here, but I utterly hate cars. They're depreciating assets. It was a really bad investment. I love investments. I ended up getting my series seven one day because I just loved it. And so I was like, I love investing. I love the idea of owning my own business. I love the autonomy. I love the idea of time freedom. So I'm a guy who likes to work 80 hours a week, but then occasionally I like to work 20 hours a week. So I want that flexibility and know that money is coming in and the only way to do that is to start a business. And so then I went step one self-reflection understand self assess. Who am I What do I like? Do I like my coffee completely black or like cream and sugar? Do I even like coffee? Do I? Am I a night owl? Am I an early bird? Like who am I at my core? What am I truly passionate about? And it's as soon as you can answer that question and even me myself after taking many many years of asking myself very hard. Questions, I still cannot look you in the face and tell you I confidently know myself. So if you're listening in, and you're like, I know myself, I know you don't. And it is, really, really painful. But it is worth it to just absolutely obliterate cell phone, deliver it, liberate your self-esteem and then rebuild it with a proper foundation. And like Steve Jobs says, and a bunch of other people says Warren Buffett to the best word in your business repertoire is the word No. Because I looked at over 100 businesses, I even started a couple that didn't go anywhere. But because I said no to a lot of sexy opportunities that ultimately didn't fit, who I was at heart and it made deciding things so much more efficient, so that when I eventually found mobile home parks, which is what I do full time now. It was, it was, my wife hates that I say this, but it was just like meeting her. The stars just aligned. I was like, Oh my gosh, this is who I'm supposed to be with. Like when I met my wife, we, we just, we clicked. And we just knew that we were getting married and very quickly, and we've been together seven years now and over seven years now, and I am in love with her. And we are happier now than we've ever have been. And I knew that early on. And it was the same thing with mobile home parks. So sorry, sweetheart, I know you're listening to this.But if you can't get there if you don't know who you are, and it's very similar to dating, right, like you want to go after the thing that looks the best, or the most popular thing or the thing that you think your friends are going to be proudest about. And what you need to realize is it's not that it's someone who fits you like a glove and compliments you so flashing back to the car dealership, I spent four years there. And then I decided you know what I need to do, I need to get my MBA because I don't understand business. And this will allow me to pivot into another company. And I also realize too, that at the car dealership, I was gaining amazing skills, how to sell how to market, how to do operations, how to take a really angry customer when I am the bad guy, because I'm the quote-unquote scummy car salesman and then have the and completely flip that on its head, have them leave with the warm and fuzzy and go next time I'm buying a car I'm coming to Ryan and I'm sending my friends here, because he's not a car salesman. This is a professional. So learning how to do all of that and so much more we're skills that I use, I used this morning at my current business. So I realized that whatever job I have is going to pivot into I was going to start whatever company I was going to start getting my MBA would and taking another job would not I can take something that is Even if I look at it, I'm like, well, that might be below me. I need to take it for the experience. And so I ended up going to work for Wells Fargo, which is their leadership program, which taught me many great things. And I was very thankful for that opportunity. But I realized very quickly at that opportunity that I was not meant to do that. And thankfully, while I was getting my MBA, I had discovered mobile home parks, and I was a year into it when I started at Wells Fargo. So I hate to say that I had one foot in the door and one foot out, but basically what I was doing during that first full year is proving that mobile home parks could make me money. And then the second full year was at Wells Fargo. I needed to scale that up and also plan to go full time. So it took me two full years from discovering mobile home parks, and three acquisitions to even go full time. And that's not to mention the three years I spent reading any book I could get my hands on so I used to challenge myself to a book a week and I've read well over 100 bucks, probably well over 200 bucks now, definitely slowed that down a lot like we were saying offline. But I forced myself to read. I forced myself to learn, I forced myself to network. And most importantly, I forced myself to self assess and understand who I am. So that way when it was time to make the jump to full time, it was time for a sacrifice. And when I did that, finally, I cut my salary big time, so I pay myself $35,000 a year $35,000 a year, I make more than that. But every penny above that I forced directly into my net worth. So it's like injecting steroids into my business because every penny I make since I'm an S Corp, it only gets taxed once. So I'm forcing funneling all that money into my business and not paying myself but just a salary, right and a measly one at that compared to what I probably could make in the open market. The reason is that it forces me to live a frugal lifestyle. So when I quit my job at Wells, I moved into a mobile home when I realized it was and I live there every other week for 14 months. So it wasn't like for a week, it was over a year. What I realized it was to get full time I had to make a sacrifice, I had to cut some crazy expenses of mine that I didn't truly make me happy. I had to live extremely frugally. I slept on a mattress. And I had two lawn chairs and a TV without a stand. It was leaning against my wall. And what I realized at that moment was I could pay myself to the property manager salary. So all of a sudden, I could make 35,000 a year, be an owner of a business. And if I get lucky, and I make a whole bunch more that year, I can funnel all that directly into business which I was lucky and there's a lot of luck involved to which I cannot stress enough luck and timing is completely out of your control and A huge part of it. But because I made that major sacrifice that allowed me to get full time and then the crazy thing about going full time and your side hustle is out of seemingly nowhere, you will see opportunities everywhere. And you're like, Oh my god, how did I miss this? And I will tell you how you missed it. It's because you're working 50 to 60 hours making someone else rich. And even if you're making 35,000 or less or not paying yourself at all, like I think the founder of Nike didn't pay himself for like 10 years. Yeah, he.He struggleduntil he struggled. Oh my goodness. And so you got to look at soda for a lot of reasons. I've been very lucky. So for a lot of reasons, like you have to, you have to make a massive sacrifice. And I have to tell you, from the moment I quit Wells Fargo today, I've been writing this Hi, it was June of 2016. 17 it's now October of 2019. So it's been two years and change. And I am so happy not being in corporate America anymore. I have a bunch of wonderful stories about achieving time freedom and how I've had my son, and how having time freedom it allowed me to literally be there for my premature babies birth, which never would have happened if I had to request PTO or early paternity time or get worried about being passed over for promotion or worse, work a commission-only sales gig. So if you hear my story, and we're about to dive into this a little deeper, I'm excited to see what questions you have for me, by the way, because I've seen you take some pretty furious notes there. If you're listening to this, know that it's going to require it. The word sacrifice means if you look it up the definition inherently means you're giving up something valuable to you and the hopes that you're getting something more valuable and exchange, right? But inherently, it's going to hurt. And in some cases a whole lot. But what you'll realize in very short order, once you destroy your self-esteem and rebuild it, the right way from the ground up, not with lies or not even lies, lies is a bit of embellishment. It's a hype story that other people are pitching to you that they're perpetuating, and they don't necessarily know that it's not true. So it's not necessarily a lie. It's just that when you are if you're the product of the five people you spend the most amount of time with, you know, and your, your mom is a plumber, your dad is a salesperson, like they're going to attack problems like a plumber or a salesperson, right? Like one of the best books I ever read. Besides four hour workweek, which is an amazing book, by the way, was the Millionaire Next Door because it makes you think like a millionaire like Rich Dad Poor Dad, brilliant book. It makes you think like a millionaire. So if you're you don't come from money because I didn't. I never thought like a middle-class person. So you have to think like a rich person. You have to make sacrifices, you have to self assess. And you have to be patient. Because it took it's not fair to say, Oh, I found mobile home parks and it took two years, and then took another two years and changed to get where I'm at now, it's not fair to say, well, in 2012, Ryan discovered he wanted to own his own business. And then three years later found mobile home parks. It's not fair to say that, that you know, that time was it because before then I was developing skills. And before then I was getting degrees from universities. And before then I was self-assessing to a smaller degree and reading books. So it takes a lot of time. And that's just not a sexy thing to say. And for someone who is stuck in a job that they're miserable that because I was there more than once. It sucked Here, but you need to hear that and you need to prepare yourself. Like Heidi Halverson says in her book motivation. The most successful people are the slight optimists. They're the ones who go, not who go, oh, I'm going to do this, or the ones who go, oh, I'm never going to do this. It's the ones who go, I'm going to do this, but it's going to be hard. So if you can have that mentality, you can look at it like it's a marathon. You will be like Bill Gates says you will be you'll probably overestimate what is it the quote is like, you'll overestimate what you can do in one year and underestimate what you can do at 10. And to end before we go to questions, I'd like to say I made a LinkedIn post recently, where I copied and pasted my goals. So that's the first meeting that my business partner and I had in July of 2015. Our first meeting, we wrote down very specific goals, very specific goals with dates that we were to accomplish these goals by For a five-year time horizon, and actually up to a 10-year time horizon, I copied those goals. And I pasted them to LinkedIn, just a post. And I put where I'm at today, and I smashed all of them. So if you're listening to this, and you're going, oh God, Ryan took seven years to get to where he's at today from discovering he was meant to be an entrepreneur, I will tell you, it will go by a lot faster, and you will accomplish way more than you think you will. Because there's a lot of, there's a lot of time in a day. And there's a lot of time in a year. And even I'll give you a good for example. Just I'll make this my denouement I do do a lingo every single day because it's been my life call to speak Spanish and I'm on like 855 days in a row or something like that. 15 minutes a day in Japan. Mucho Espanol our hit that I can speak Spanish now because not because It's not perfect, it's a disaster. But home is what we say works. And because I practice for 15 minutes every day no matter what, in two-plus years, I'm fluent. If you ask my tenants, they'll laugh and they'll be like as we go MCO up arrow as they own brave where they have large Espanol. So it's really funny, but he can see this man can speak Spanish, right? So what I'm getting at with all of this and where I'd kind of like to end and right out to the sunset for questions here is a little bit every day goes a long way.Yeah, absolutely. Okay, we are going to dive in because I have I love this. It's one thing that I love. Well, there are multiple things that I love in life. But when you find people who think like you, and express themselves the way you do, and yet have completely different passions in you, it's exciting. Right? I would never feel like Finding a mobile home park is like meeting my wife yet, However, no, no but to be honest though, what I do right now is that's how I feel about what I do right now that my broker profession of helping people understand how money works. I am as in love with that as I am with my wife. And sometimes that's a struggle because it's like, oh, man, I wish you'd love me more, right? That'd be nice, you know, but really, this like I love this in every fiber and core of my being I love helping people understand money and prepare financially for their future. And I love what it does for my family. On the income side, so like there's, there's, yes, there are hard days, there are things that you don't love about your job. And there's probably stuff in the mobile home park when you have to evict somebody or have to clean up a trashy site, right? There are bad days, right? But it doesn't matter how bad that day is. I love every part of the bad as much as I love every part of the good and finding and that is I love this. If I were to be a relationship coach, I am on the money side, but not the, on the human side, right, but it's something that I've told all of my single friends who are and my siblings who are looking for a spouse. And it's something I learned through a lot of reading stuff before. But when I was looking for a wife, I said, Look, and this may be a little graphic for people who are whatever, just know, but but I was looking for a wife is like, Look, I have to be able to like wake up in the morning and have sex with you. That's like something I got to be able to do. Right. I can't marry somebody who I'm completely not attracted to. But attraction is a very small part of this equation. For me. I'm looking for compatibility over attraction every day all day. I'm looking for compatibility. If we're not compatible. I don't care how attractive you are. It will not make up for a lack of compatibility. And that is as true and relationships as Ryan pointed out as it is in business as it is in a career, if your career is not as like compatible with who you are, that's not possible. So Ryan I, just met briefly before we record this, I'm busy, I read his stuff. And he's probably seen me a little bit. I don't know if you pick this up or not. But my tagline or one of the taglines that I use when I'm speaking on stage is to identify your identity. That is like the core of my message, the core of fuel your legacy. I believe that your legacy is the enactment and the living of your identity. But first, you have to identify your identity. And then the fuel your legacy is a financial component of gaining the financial confidence to live your legacy regardless of the outcome, right and that's where that sacrifice comes in. But that sacrifice is only possible after you know you're backed up against the wall and you know, without a shadow of a doubt. This has been identified and I'm living it out and it's a gift to the world. And so I love that that you recognize that your, the lifestyle that you adopted had become part of kind of an identity that you had adopted. But not that you reallylike when you pulled back all the core, it wasn't who you were. Right? And that is lives where you reach.Yeah, it's so crucial to get to that point. And it is hard to hear it is hard to say okay, everything you believe about yourself, I need you to question everything, not leave anything on unsewn stone unturned like I love it said like, what do I like with my coffee? Do I even like coffee right? Question everything. How do I like to do my hair? Do I like to do my hair? What color do I like my hair right? What kind of clothes do I wear? Why do I wear these type of clothes do I want to end before we got I'm in a shirt and tie right now he's in a polo. And he's like, man, should I go put a tie on? I feel how to dress. Like, did you just do you? I mean, I have a meeting. So I met a shirt and tie today, but like, just dress how you're comfortable. Like there's no reason to dress a way that you're not comfortable if it's inauthentic to you, and I love that.So, I'm going to go way back to the beginning, because I think this is another crucial thing, and I want to hear your thoughts on this. But you said something that I think only aneither an experienced person and human development or, or somebody just thought a lot about it, but you persuade people and so many people think that a salesman is there to kind of be that sleazy person or manipulate them. So how would you define the difference between persuasion and manipulation I don't think there's a lot of difference. I know that's probably not what people want to hear. But manipulation is basically in layman's terms, doing things to affect someone's behavior to get what you want out of them, right. And persuasion is a form of manipulation. But at the same time, I think persuasion comes with a lot of negative connotations in that you think you're just going to wave a magic wand and persuade someone and the truth is, outside of a cult leader, that's not something that happens unless you're lying to someone. There's persuasion, you're not going. It's really hard to be that charismatic, that you're going to convince someone to do something against their will. Right. So in other words, in car sales, I sold Honda's reason why I picked is number one I drove the product, and I believed in the product. And so and also it carries its value. It doesn't break it last forever. I have a 2900 fit, stick shift, love it to death 250,000 miles on it, I'm gonna keep it as long as the thing goes, I've paid it off a long time ago. It's cheap. It's great on gas, I can do that. That's easy to sell. Right? Because when people come in, oh, you know, I don't want to make the wrong decision. Dude, I've had this for a while now I've had it for 10 years, right? Like, if you're looking to have something reliable, that's going to hold its value and be cheap, but safe, like a no brainer, right? So what you're doing in a sale, is you're presenting the facts in a way that allows someone to make their own decision. Now you have things like strategical missions where you might weave out that it's not as comfortable as the Toyota. Right so like, I'm not going to just volunteer that information or maybe you do so like there's a lot of gray area and sales which kind of opens the way for you to lie. And so my thing was when I got into car sales, I was like, I'm going to do this the right like I'm not going to be a scummy car salesman, one of two things is going to happen. I'm either gonna go do this honestly. And the whole world is just gonna implode. And it's not gonna work, or it's gonna work and it's going to wow people because they're going to be like, Oh my god, I curse that. Like if someone asked me like, what's more, comfortable Toyota, or Honda, I'm going to tell you the truth. The Toyota if you want to ride a couch, go get a Toyota. But here's the thing. If you want to enjoy if you want to feel like you have more control of your car, you pick a Honda. Right? So in other words, like persuasion to me, is it manipulation? Yes, it is. But that manipulation doesn't necessarily have to be nefarious, right. So for example, towards the end of my years at Honda, Toyota got rocked with safety issues. I mean, rocked with safety. And it wasn't just the car pedal thing getting stuck. It was they failed really big tests and I can't remember what it was. But I remember showing people like, hey, look, just FYI Toyota's are great cars, they hold their value, but just FYI, here is a serious issue that Toyota has that they have not addressed yet. And it's funny when even though I was presenting the facts in a way that was knocking down my competition, people didn't like that. I don't know. It's just not even bringing up period. And I think the takeaway there is manipulation doesn't necessarily have to be nefarious, right. So in that instance, I was like, Hey, this is a safer car. Check these third party sources, right. So am I manipulating someone for my self-gain? Yeah, absolutely. I want to sell you a Honda and you had not had you buy a Toyota. However, it's safer for you to buy this Honda right now at least right. So in other words, it doesn't always have to come with the various connotations. And kind of where I also think it's important to make note of if your incentives are aligned with your prospective buyers, that's everything. Right? So in other words, it becomes nefarious and deleterious for someone in an in a situation where they're being persuaded where it doesn't incentivize them to buy whatever you're selling. Right? So you're selling some snake oil, right? And truly, you know, in the bottom of your heart that the snake oil doesn't do anything, right. But the person trying to buy it is seeing something that's not there. And you are allowing them to see that and you are planting seeds there, whether you're being truthful or not. Whether you're omitting key details or you're directly lying to them. If somebody is looking at a story that you're telling, and they are buying that story, even though you know It's not true. That is a really bad thing. But even still, like that person is actively wanting to believe in something. So if you're a critical thinker, like you said, you ask tough questions of yourself and your surroundings. Even if it is really hard to ask those questions. You're never going to get persuaded. Unless someone directly lies to you. And even then trust but verify, man always checks the facts. Yeah, I agree. I, in my mind, I would say kind of the difference between if I had to separate the two words, I would say manipulation is, is more of mal intent. And persuasion is to help people be to get what they need. And it comes down to what is your intention? And are your values aligned? Are your values aligned with the buyer or are they not if they're not, and you're still trying to get them to buy something that at that point, I would say it's more like manipulation. It's mal intent, whereas persuasion it's a fine line, right because you're employing the same techniques. So, to use an extort a story from my past, I did door to door sales for five years for four and a half years. And, and I did it one year. And then I went out and I served a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And when you're talking about Jesus Christ, the last, the last thing you want to do is like sell somebody, Jesus Christ, right, because maybe they're going to join for the wrong reasons and all this, right. There's some there are some ethical things there that for me, I was like, I want to sell them this, but I have learned all these sales tools on the door to door sales and happened to be that I knocked a lot of doors on my mission. So a lot of the skills and tactics applied to both to both situations and I would go through kind of ups and downs where I like I would be using the sales, tools, and tactics but I felt kind of dirty using them because I was I didn't want to sell somebody the Jesus Christ. But on the other hand, when I wouldn't use them, I felt like I was not giving them the best opportunity to see Jesus Christ in the best light. And so part of it is you're using these skills, these are skills you've been given, and it's okay to be persuasive, that I think comes down to what's your intent in being persuasive, because part of and this is where I would separate a salesman from a closer, right. And a salesman is somebody who is they're just with their pocket bolt book in mind, and they're how, how much money can I get out of this person? And they're just selling them anything. And then a closer their objective is not to get not to sell them something as much as to get a yes or no and help their client make a decision. If they can try and make a decision, yes or no, everybody wins, right? Most of the time. The client really respects that and will actually buy from you just because you were objective about the whole process, rather than going even though they probably could get something or they might have liked the toilet a better in the end right out of respect for knowing that you are living in alignment, that they'll do business with you because they can trust at that point where the salesman they always feel like okay, what's your not telling me? What, What's he trying to do just get my pocketbook. And I think that that's an important distinction, especially when we're going to start talking about kind of how you grew your business and how you overcame some different challenges. And that's an important thing to understand where you're coming from and the intention behind what you're doing. And I think, to identify that you have to go in and identify your identity, do that self-assessment, and, and start thinking about this.If you're lying to yourself, you're going to lie to other people, whether you realize you're doing it or not.Yep. And I say all the time, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. Andto, to further that example, I didn't This is a great conversation but before we started recording, he, Ryan'sjust told him to hit record because of our conversationso good. So so I was telling him that sometimes if I've read three quarters or half or a quarter of a book and I feel like I've got the main idea and it's just becoming repetitive and multiple stories of the same, teach the same principle, I will stop a book halfway. I'm not committed to finishing a book just because I need to finish a book for my own like to see the finished bar on my audible. Like, if I've got it, I'm moving on, where he's like, man, if I open a can of beer, I've got to finish my can of beer. And so we Chuck all these and maybe that's a bad thing. And I think, no, there are advantages to both mentalities depending on what angle you're taking it. But I think the the the commitment to finish that commitment applied everywhere in his life. And it's about what is the finishing for him it was about finishing, identifying his identity and continue to live by his identity. And he's not going to be satisfied until that's completed. And he already told you, he's still working on it. He doesn't know exactly who he is, and he doesn't think you do either. And I would agree. I'm fairly confident with who I am like I can function knowing who I am. But I'm still questioning everything I believe every day and I'm seeking to have associations with people who question everything, I believe from a just aspect of business aspect to where I'm uncomfortable. I disagree with some people and maybe get a little bit angry about other people's opinions. But I put myself in those situations voluntarily because I want the challenge I want to grow. And I'm not satisfied until I've, I've completed my growth. And so it's just an interesting thing to think about. And then Say I want to touch on one thing before we go further. But there's this thing that you talked about. And I wonder what's the emotional thought process? You kind of talked about it, but when you realize that your time is worth more, your life is worth more. So many people they're working and they think it's okay like I'm surviving. But how do you value your life? How did you get to the point where like, Okay, my life is worth more than this job and I'm done with this job because my life the actual experiences that I could operate or have are worth more than this, this income. So I mentioned earlier one, one thing I challenged myself to do is meet everyone I could write it Everyone says, Oh, it's all about who you know, like, it's not who it's not what you know, it's who you know, everybody knows that. But almost no one applies that in their life. So I was like, Okay, and this is true axiom wisdom of those passed down through the many years. Like, let's see if there's any credence to this. I talked to anybody with a pulse. I don't care if you're a janitor or a CEO, or anywhere in between, I wanted to talk to you. And that's still true. Today, I'll talk to anybody. It's a big reason why I want to come on here too, by the way, like, I want to give people free content. So they can escape corporate America to like, I'm not selling anything. I'm not raising any funds for my properties. I just want to help people, but also like, What's in it for me? Well, I'll tell you what's in it for me. Hopefully, someone listening now will go, I need to get on the phone with this guy. Even if I don't offer him anything. And I want that because I want to hear from you. I want to understand your thought process. And I've met thousands of people in my life thousands and I've just, it's amazing how everyone is unique, yet. Everyone is very average. And it's until you realize how average You are where you realize like if you're a fan of the office like I am, I love Michael Scott as a character. He has this one episode which is Jericho, where he promised a bunch of kids that he was going to pay for their college. Evan, they graduated then they're like, hey, Michael Scott, where's their money? Hilarious episode. And, and he doesn't have the money, right? And so they like someone asked him like, why would you promise that you're going to pay all these kids colleges 10 years ago? And his answer was, well, 10 years ago, I figured by now I'd be a millionaire.And has funny as that is, it is so true across the board. So many people are like, I'm going to be rich one day. And when you ask them, they joke, oh, the lottery, or I'm going to get a promotion or this is going to happen or that's going to happen and no one wants to actually take the steps and To do that, right, and it's not at your job, unless you're crazy unless you're LeBron James, right? Unless you're like 1% of the 1% as athletic or smart or anything. Like, just think of think about basic statistics. If you want to be in the 1% of the wealth, you need to be 1%. good at something, you there needs to be 1% good looking, or 1% smart, or 1%, hard-working, or 1%. Lucky, right? You're not just going to get into the 1% because you exist even if you're the 90th percentile you that's not the 1%, right. So what I realized is, well, what's a really easy thing to be 1% in the 1% in what no one else is willing to do. So for me, it was easy it was like, Let's go meet everyone in the world because that's a really basic truth. Like to meet everyone you can and I've met some incredible people and Go and do things like living in a mobile home. And in my industry, no one wants to everyone wants to syndicate money. And put the guild deals together, no one wants to operate their deals. And not only do they not want to operate, but they also don't even want to go to their properties. Two hours ago, I was sitting in one of my properties, I go almost every day if I can have my properties, and for a long time, I was the physical property manager before I was able to start hiring people. And it's like, you need to be able to do those things. To do that, so So getting back to I think, ultimately what you're getting out there is like, you know, emotionally How do you get there? Well, step one is, you have to like you mentioned earlier, you have to understand that no matter what you pick in life, they're going to be awful things, awful things about it. Like the subtle art of not giving an F by Mark Manson where he's like, dude, any. Any job you pick is going to come with a pile of crap. You just have to pick the pile of crap. That, you know, you can live with every day and for me. For me, it's that I knew I wanted to do real estate. It just fits my skill set well and I and I knew I wanted to help charity somehow. And more specifically, I knew I wanted to help underprivileged kids, and name a better way to help underprivileged kids than to help give them a clean, safe place to live. I started as a partial scholarship, I offer to pay for college applications. I do free food giveaways, I try my best to help remove the stress from these families so that kids can focus on their school. And for me, that helps me through really bad days, because I have a lot of really, really bad days. But ultimately, it's like, it's like this man. I want to talk to everyone I can talk to and if you're listening in, I recommend you do the same because you'll never know who you're going to meet. And it could be a janitor that gives you the best information about your life. Never know. And you know, you got to find a way to escape the fear. A great book I can recommend is Susan Jeffers Feel the fear and do it anyway. And really what that book kind of taught me is that like that in four-hour workweek it's like, dude, imagine the worst-case scenario it's not that bad. Like if you vividly imagine the worst-case scenario, you're going to survive and that's the point not to be a spoiler on Susan Jeffers. That book is full of amazing things. But her big thing was right out of the gate. She's like, fear. It comes from thinking you can't handle a situation.To convince yourself you can handle it. Yep. Then.You can. Exactly and it's like courage. It's not you. Courage is not the absence of fear courage is feeling the fear of doing it anyway to quote her book.I completely agree. So how did you when you decided to quit? I mean, it sounds like from timeline if I got everything right. You got married three or four years before you quit your job completely correct.I got married in November of 2015, which was a couple of months up to Korea, every mobile home park and Okay, it was about a year and a half before I went full time.Okay. So about a year and a half. How did so one thing that a lot of people face when they try and move from corporate America and entrepreneurship, everybody faces it? If it doesn't come from outside, it comes from inside. Tell me the story of your biggest naysayer. And how you silence them in your mind and said, Look, I'm doing it anyway. Oh, man, there's a lot. There's a lot of people. There's a lot of people in corporate America. One guy laughed at me and was like, you're going to be a real estate agent. You're going to leave this at the Wells Fargo leadership program.The way that it's investigated by our government, yeah. Oh,yeah. I don't want us about things about Wells Fargo.I had a bad I was Think I was in a bad culture at Wells I there's a lot of folks at Wells I know that just absolutely love it so I think I was just unlucky in that regard but there's it you know I again if my way when my wife listens to this you get really mad but one thing that I think needs to be said is that whether somebody the closest people to you may be the biggest naysayers I'm not saying that my wife was not supportive or that she wasn't a native she was a naysayer so to speak, but there are a lot of things that she was saying and doing that she will if she was here to defend herself, she would be like, That's not fair. I didn't know what I was doing at the time. But she grew up like a lower upper class. So like if I was like upper-middle class, she was like a lower upper class or like Country Club big house. Meanwhile, I was like, middle class, my dad's college professor, my mom's a salesperson, a good income, get private school. Wake Forest is private. You know, so I wasn't rich by any means, but we're middle class. But her parents were, I want to say wealthy, but they're definitely over that threshold of being considered coming from wealth. And so when I rolled home and was like, guess what, I've got amazing news. I found the one I found it around the one I meant to be with its mobile home parks. She said a lot of really bad words in a very elevated tone of voice. And I think that you know, I don't want to say that she was a naysayer saying I couldn't do it because she never said I couldn't do it. She was more like, you're thrusting our family and our future into literally recourse debt. In other words, if one of my properties goes belly up, they're coming after all of my assets. So I have full recourse debt over myself on my properties. So in other words, Ryan, you're going to put our family into full recourse debt. Literally, to a certain degree a trash can. I hate to say it, I'm supposed to say modular home communities, but a lot of people have looked at me and been like, why are you you're buying garbage cans? This is a horrible thing to say. But I get it if you come from a country club lifestyle, right? So number one, you're taking a recourse debt number two, you're going to pay yourself nothing. Right? $35,000 a year. I was it for the first few years I lost money. Well, the first year I lost money in the second year, I made money but I didn't pay myself anything. So I really lost and then the third year pay myself 35,000 and then I'm in the fourth year and change and it's still on purpose paying myself 35,000 a year. So from her perspective, this is awful. And she has no said as basically, I was I basically in an awful way was like you're being a dream killer.a horrible thing for me to say but I'm I think this is a story that people need to hear because when you have a Significant Other that was that loves you, and wants to build a life with you. And you come home one day, unannounced, and you're like, this is what I'm dedicating my life to. That's a crappy thing to do, especially when you're going to follow up by calling or a dream killer. So I did a lot of really lame things. And she will tell you, first and foremost publicly that she did a lot of really lame things, too. We recorded it on my podcast, I gave her the mic. And I was like, You know what, say whatever you want to rules, no bad words, and no giving away any of my secrets. And I let her just rail on me for like 10 minutes. And then for the light, it's like a 15-minute episode and the last five minutes, we just kind of have a cute little back and forth where we together talk about marriage through the lens of entrepreneurship. So ultimately, who's my biggest naysayer? You know, I don't know. I'm a person who hates losing. I'm competitive and it's not winning. To me is not nearly as much fun as not losing. I kind of make sense like the magnitude that I have an emotion I feel when I win is dwarfs the magnitude of the pain I feel when I lose. So it was tough the first year from someone who was my best friend and my spouse, right and so I reason why I say that because my wife is gonna get really mad when she hears that I told this story. But Sweetie, we have that episode so you can ask for it. The reason why I want to say that is I know that there are listeners to this episode right now who have a significant other who, for whatever reason, haven't bought in yet, or given them a lot of flack, I will tell you, you are not alone. And if you truly know in your heart, that you are meant to do something, you will find a way to persevere through that. And if that person that significant other is meant to be there with you, you will find a way to get through it together and come out even better because, at the end of that episode, we were both like, yeah, we love each other more now than we did going in This, I think that those are all really, you know, it's kind of lame for me to basically pick my spouse to answer that question. But the truth is, I think people need to hear that man, I do. And you can if you're if you know yourself and you found the spouse that like you said earlier you want to have sex with but also fits who you are at heart and you want to build something together. And they're truly supportive. Right? They're going to stand by you even if they fundamentally hate what you're getting into. Yep, I completely agree. I was. I was fortunate enough to when I was dating, I already had found what I was doing for eternity right before I got married. So that was part of it was kind of baked into the cake. However, I will say that over the last like a year and a half I've ramped up a lot of my public speaking a lot of my traveling and it's hard. It's been a topic of conversation in our marriage are saying K, well, how can we manage this? She doesn't she thought she would love being a mom, she doesn't love being a mom, which is hard because she also doesn't necessarily want to go earn all the income. So it's like, Okay, well, how do we balance that there are still responsibilities that have to be done. Now we have two kids, we can't send them back. So it is a management thing. And it's not necessarily I think what you said is actually, probably that the rawest and real if people love you, and you potentially are bringing them into something that they didn't feel like they signed up for, and better ways to deliver that message and to get the buy-in. Absolutely. dropping their head and say, well, baby, join me or get out. Right.Exactly. And so so with that, though,I love all this. We're going to have to have you on again because this just is not enough time to have this conversation. And we're going to talk a little bit after this about some things that I think could we might be able to work together on Elsa sounds like we have some similar missions. But I'm going to go through there are two more sections here. Well, first, how can we support you? How can we get in touch with you? If we did want to have a phone call with you? Where would we reach out to you to kind of hear more of your story or share our gratitude for you being so vulnerable? Yeah, absolutely. So literally just google me My name is Ryan and I are us that's and like, Nancy, LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me second best places my website, Archimedes GRP. com. You can drop me a line on either place, I'm pretty much so wide open door  I have a lot of people that reach out to me that is like, Hey, can I buy your coffee? Or can I take you out to lunch or this or that? And it's like, dude, honestly, I just want to meet you like how does it benefit me? Just getting on the phone with you. I want to hear who you are. I want to hear your story. I want to know where you came from, where you're at and where you want to go. And I thoroughly enjoyed teaching. I thoroughly enjoyed Helping, I thoroughly enjoy connecting so offline when Samuel, I were talking I was I thought of two people I would love to introduce you to. That's who I am. And if I have you in my database, then I can connect people to you and you to people and I love that. So I like I said, I'm not selling anything. I don't have fun, I'm not looking for investors. I'm not self-promoting for anything. I just want to help people because I have to tell you, being stuck at a job is is torture. It's torture. I look from quitting to like six to 12 months after quitting corporate America, I lost something like 15 pounds, and I changed none of my habits. I was depressed. It's true. So if I can help people because I don't think you know, you can argue like AI is going to come in and take over thought jobs and automation is going to take over thought jobs. So we need to reinvent jobs going forward. You can make that argument but truth be told, go find your happiness because I got to tell you, when my son was born premature, being able to be there by my wife side, she's in the hospital for almost a week and then my son in the hospital for over two weeks and then Nick you to be there by their side when they needed me the most and not have to worry about work. That was worth the I don't care if someone was like, I'll give you a million bucks to miss this moment. I would never take it to be there at 3:45 pm on a Thursday in the middle of a workweek, watch my son be born. That was the most amazing experience in my life. Why there is no amount of money you could ever give me that would make me forego that experience. So to me, it's like, like what I am like, you are helping me by allowing me to help you because I want you to achieve that. So please reach out to me. I mean that Again, Ryan nearest anywhere us, Archimedes GRP. com Find me on LinkedIn. Connect with me I'd love to. Okay.So this night, I encourage everybody to reach out to him. I'm so grateful that I get to know him. I'm excited to connect with the people that he'smentioned to me offline. And I said I think there's some potential there for us to even work closer together. This is my last two sections here, and they're kind of my favorite. So we're doing legacy on rapid-fire. It's five questions. I'm probably only gonna ask you four of them though.And one word to one-sentence answers. Cool. Okay. The only caveat to that is this first question you must clarify.Okay. And you'll understand that when, when I ask it because everybody assumes that especially these more enlightened people that have been talking to everybody answers that same and I'm like, okay, expand. Okay. So, so here goes. What do you believe? is holding you back from reaching the next level of your legacy today.Timeand I'll expand on that. I think that the concept that I have works so I bought 10 mobile home I've been a part of 10 mobile home park transactions now. So far, I've made a ton of mistakes along the way. But truth be told, it's going to take a lot I'm not you can't just go to the mobile home park store and buy a bunch of good mobile home park deals. It's the industry is flooded right now with people trying to enter the space so there's not a lot of good deals out there period. And even if there were, I wouldn't want there's my time is limited. So number one, it's like buying it's like planting seeds you the limiting factor there is the time you plant the seed and then you watch it grow but have to wait. You know if I buy it a great deal today. It's not like I make a bunch of money today. I will make the money when I sell or refinance and I'll get cash flow along the way. But, you know, you buy a property in the big jumps in your IRR. And you know the money that hits your bank account comes after many months or many years after you've executed a turnaround. So for me, the limiting factor is absolutely time. Okay,awesome. And what is the hardest thing you've ever accomplished?meeting my wife. Okay. I was abysmal with women. I could not I was annoying, unlikable, and it took me years of my life to learn how to talk to people. And my wife. I met her at the car dealership, she showed up to buy a Honda. She ended up buying a Volvo. So I was not. I was not manipulative. I was persuasive. And another, another light, but yeah, I was just god awful were women. And I taught myself how to speak to people and through getting proficient in interacting with people. When my wife presented herself it was, it was just it everything fell apart. It fell into place so easily for both of us, to get married and to grow our lives together.Awesome. And what's the greatest success than to this point in your life?Other than my sonI would say escaping corporate America. I mean, that's more than getting my black belt in karate or hitting a hundred gold or getting a master's degree or teaching myself Spanish. I got to say if you're listening to this and you think you are meant to be your boss and to escape corporate America, I am telling you, you are right. And it is. It is on par with getting married and having a child. That is amazing.Awesome. And what is one secret He believes contributed most to your success throughout your journey, habit, mindset or behavior.So many things, man habits, habits are everything. But I, again, I think the self-assessment is got to be the most important thing there.The 1% rule that I talked about earlier where you've got to find your 1% is huge, but I mean, if I have to pick only it's like I mentioned earlier, life is a marathon man. You will do a lot you will overestimate what you do in a year and underestimate what you do at 10.Totally. And then, so that's the end of that section. This is my favorite section. Okay, this is this question that is why I do this podcast. Okay. Okay.So we're going to pretend that you are dead. So your family sad now butsix generations from now. Your great, great, great, great, great-grandchildren. They're sitting around a table that discussing your life, right? They're discussing your legacy. They're having this conversation. What do you want? Your great, great, great, great, great-grandchildren? What do you want them to be saying about your legacy and six generations from now?I want them to be saying, I'm glad he taught us to leave the world better than you showed up. So for me, I, you know, I don't want to divulge how much I'm worth. But it's gone from effectively negative to a lot. And it's because I take that mentality into my properties, right? So I want to buy something at or above appraisal value. So in other words, I'm happy to pay an unfair price advantage seller, because I know that I'm going to make that property better off for having been there. And the reason why I mentioned my scholarship and paying for college applications and doing things like Bible studies on the properties and going to my properties and talking to people face to face. Because I want the people on my properties to be better off for having been there. It's really easy to be like, Well, I hope in six generations I've amassed so much like I'm the Vanderbilts, right? So they have wealth and they can do what they want and not worry about money ever. But the thing of it is, studies show that by the third generation, most wealth is gone. And I have a friend who's third-generation wealthy and he, he's told me multiple times. He's like, I am breaking this, I'm going to be abnormal here. I am going to continue my family's wealth. He's a wicked, ambitious guy, right? There are a lot of people that once you hit that third iteration that's gone. And not only is that gone, but I think I possibly hit a really big milestone in my life to

We've got Amina Eastham-Hillier back on the show today. This time around Amina is talking all things Lyme disease. Amina is an experienced Lyme literate naturopath who specialises in testing and treating Lyme disease, Lyme co-infections, mould related illness and chemical sensitivities. Amina is a treasure trove of knowledge in her area's of expertise and today's chat offers a grounded and holistic approach to healing stealth infection and Lyme disease.  Mason and Amina cover: Lyme disease. Health sovereignty and the importance of taking charge of your own health. The multifaceted approach required to remedy chronic health conditions. Ticks - "the dirty needles of nature". Principals of prevention, tips and tricks you can embody to minimise exposure to Lyme and other pathogenic bacteria. Inflammation and gut health. Stealth viruses and the havoc they can wreak. Living in harmony with nature, and that includes viruses and bacteria.   Who is Amina Eastham-Hillier? Amina owns a successful multi-modality clinic in Noosa comprising of 18 practitioners. With over 15 years of Naturopathic and 25 years of Nutritional practice, Amina successfully treats chronic illnesses and complex cases. Amina is a Keynote speaker presenting to medical doctors and naturopaths at international conferences, medical documentaries, TV interviews, radio, seminars, webinars, podcasts and workshops. Author of “Lyme Natural” Amina won the award for ‘Australian Practitioner of the year’ in 2017 and is currently finalising her second book (Chronic stealth infections – Filling in the missing pieces).   Resources: Amina Website Amina Facebook Amina Instagram Lyme Natural Website   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify! We got you covered on all bases ;P Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:03) Hey, Amina. Thanks so much for coming back on and chatting with me.   Amina: (00:07) Oh, you're welcome, Mason. Thank you for having me.   Mason: (00:10) Always a pleasure. I think it was about two years ago that we jumped on, when we were different podcasts by then. Mason Taylor Podcast. We chatted about Lyme, we chatted about mold, mold when just got distributed out. And so everyone in the SuperFeast community has begun to become familiar with you and your awesomeness and I want to continue pointing people in your direction because I've found you always really influential. And watching your Instagram, I love watching you being a practitioner, live and breathe the lifestyle up in your retreat. I love your foraging tips and I love watching all the notes when you go to these conferences, whether it's ... I know you're going to ... What's the conference you're going to this weekend, you're presenting at?   Amina: (01:01) Oh, it's actually in September, but it's in Melbourne for metagenics and it's all on fatigue and looking at intricate details of just what's going on with people with fatigue and why are they not getting better? Looking at a lot of biotoxins and underlying viruses and lots of things. Very exciting.   Mason: (01:26) Well, I just love watching the adventures because you go along, obviously, and attend and upgrade your skills. You can just really tell you're an absolute nerd for all of this.   Amina: (01:36) I do love it.   Mason: (01:39) Yeah. I feel like ... You know, we've spoken to you a couple times. I know how deep you can get into the nuance of the body and testings, and really going after and hunting for the source of symptoms. And you work a lot with people with extremely chronic illness. Right?   Amina: (01:57) Yes, yes. I do.   Mason: (01:59) And we were just talking about the fact, as well, before how when you look down the barrel of either going through western medicine, a lot of people go down that gauntlet and then come out the other side without answers. And then coming into the, for lack of a better word, the natural treatment, going down that route. I can understand why going down the western route is often necessary, of course, but is cozy and comfy because there's this integrated nature where there's a specialist for everything and your doctor will talk to the specialist. On the surface, that's the idea. There's a big web that you know you don't have to think. You're just caught in it. But then if you look down, often, the natural route, the amount of information out there, the amount of conflicting information, of course that's in the western medicine as well but it's that non-integrated web that makes it so difficult at times and you've kind of got to stand up into your sovereignty and be your own hub.   Mason: (03:02) I know I send so many people your way when they're dealing with stealth infection or Lyme, as well, because I know ... I read that at Noosa Holistic Health ... Is that Noosa Holistic Health?   Amina: (03:14) Yep.   Mason: (03:15) Yep. And you were saying how you've really created a hub and how you ask for every single test that's ever been done through the western model or beyond in the natural world and try and create that melting pot. On that, I think it's important for people ... We're going to go into Lyme today. I think it's very relevant in this instance, but know whether we're dealing with chronic illness, whether it's stealth infection, or just a mystery. Finding someone who can create that hub and go and be the detective and be that central point, I just want to know ... obviously, you've created it. I just want to know the extent of which you put importance on that for someone. And then what do you like to see and procure in your patients for them to be able to feel like they have the capacity to start to be that melting pot, themselves, and really feel that health sovereignty while being supported by practitioners?   Amina: (04:21) Okay. So first of all, when patients come in initially, obviously I'm listening for what their main concerns are. And I have a jigsaw puzzle template by my side and it literally has about 50 odd pieces and I can squidge them all around if I need to. And this empty, blank jigsaw puzzle template, I actually start writing everything on and it becomes a full puzzle. And I think that's the main thing for the people to understand when I'm first having consultations with them is that they may come in saying, "Have I got Lyme? Is it this? Is it that? What's wrong with me?" And you can never give one person a definite answer because, the thing is, there are often so many things. So there are many pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.   Amina: (05:19) For example, someone might come in and they think that they've been bitten by ticks or they're not even sure, but they've got chronic fatigue, they've got pain. It might be just random pain, fibromyalgia-type pain or aches. It's often brain fog. Maybe a bit of sweating, maybe not, digestion problems, anxiety, all of the common symptoms that we see that aren't getting addressed with the normal medical models. And we just start putting it together. So I just go through a very comprehensive history and just putting all the pieces. So whether they have had chemical exposure, mold exposure ... I mean, this is a very broad summary of what I do. I think an answer to your question, is that ...   Mason: (06:07) Yeah, for sure. I mean, I guess I almost wanted just to make sure everyone had an insight into the depth and level that you'd want to be able to demand or go and find with a practitioner in order to qualify.   Amina: (06:21) Absolutely.   Mason: (06:22) And then what's the difference? Do you see certain ... the difference between a patient and just some qualities that other patients, you can help imbue in them in terms of not feeling overwhelmed or feeling empowered in the fact that you can transfer? The fact that you, yourself, you've got so many patients, so much stuff going on. You can't hold the constant hub for every single patient. At some point, it needs to bridge over into the patient themself, especially with long-term healing. Right? Is there ...   Amina: (06:53) Absolutely, absolutely. So what I like to do, I think it's really important, if patients want to. Not all patients want this. They do like the practitioners to take charge and they don't really want much information. But I think, these days, it's really important to take charge of your health and have it that each person really understands themself. So that's why I really encourage patients to gather all of your past medical results. It doesn't matter how long ago it was. Get as much information as you can. If you had a stool test with a naturopath 10 years ago, get it. Let's put it all together. Let's see, where did this start? Because of the patients that I'm seeing, they're often very chronic, complex patients that often have so many things going on and that's why it's very difficult for them to go to any one place and get a diagnosis.   Amina: (07:46) So it's really important for us to gather as much information as we can. And if you haven't had past tests, that's great. That gives us a clean platform to go, okay. Well, now we know what we need to do in the way of functional medicine testing as well as working with their doctor and seeing what treatments they may be getting at that time. But I just definitely, I can't express enough how I think it's important for patients to take charge of their own health in a way of just knowing what's going on, knowing what has happened in their body before they got really sick, and understanding their family history, things ... Even looking at genetics can be really helpful, knowing what their sensitivities are and their triggers, and understanding the state of their adrenals and nervous system, and understanding their gut and being mindful of, "Is my gut going good? Do I need a bit of a detox at the moment?" Or, "Do I need a detox from life? Do I need to sort of step back and go and have a rainforest walk or something?"   Amina: (08:56) So just being really mindful of all of the systems. And that's something of a naturopath that I think is really important for us to educate patients so that they know what to look out for and they know how to be their own sort of one-stop hubber and check in on themselves, as well as having the support of the professionals.   Mason: (09:16) Yeah. I just don't think it can be said enough. It's a great reminder and I just wanted to bring that up in the beginning because, at SuperFeast, we get asked so many ... every day. It's phone, email, Instagram, getting so many questions and some of them very gnarly and very deep questions. We don't consider our role to kind of play practitioner, we just don't. We continue to stand in the fact that we're doing tonic herbalism and we are standing for a particular philosophy and lineage. However, we don't like leaving everyone high and dry. And so what I feel like I consistently want to do and for the podcast and having these kinds of conversations, is continue to make distinct ... just that simple nature of ... when you say, "Become your own practitioner," I feel like that's quite loaded because I'm prone to this, then I feel the pressure, and I'm very much prone to putting pressure on myself, to have a level of understanding using similar language, that a practitioner would have in a specialised area, of myself.   Mason: (10:24) And then with that and put a couple of other things on my shoulders that I'm doing in life, it becomes overwhelming and I feel I'm kind of failing at this. I don't know how to manage my own body. I need to continue to rely on practitioners. But what you're saying, I just don't think it can be repeated enough for everyone to remember. If you just gather all that information so you know thyself, you can understand little patterns and your constitution. You get little clues and then put it into language that ... For me, it's been especially useful. Just put it into language for a lay person or just put it into language that's not charged and easy for you to then go take into your kitchen and your lifestyle because, as you said, just knowing. It can kind of seem like it just gets on repeat. And I just want to make sure everyone's listening. Reading your body and your digestion, watching the way that you're pooing, or your nervous system can tell if you can get that pattern to go, "Wow, it's time for a little bit of a walk. Right now, it's time for a little bit of practice...   Amina: (11:21) Absolutely. That's right. And it's just having that understanding. And sometimes, I find when I go through and I put all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together, literally, and then the person can see, "Oh, there's quite a few things going on." Not to be overwhelmed at all, but purely just we can see, look, we do need to work on all systems here because all systems are affected. And of course, I'm not saying to be their own practitioner and treat themselves. I'm very, of course, into seeing a professional practitioner that can monitor and help you with the dosages of herbs and so forth and give you the right medicine. But just, I find a lot of people will bounce around from many practitioners to practitioners, different types of practitioners and still not understand the basics of what's going on with their body. If they could see that, they might not be as overwhelmed and see, "Okay, I need some help with my adrenals," or, "I might need to do a bit of a gut detox. I'll go and see my practitioner," be it naturopath, Chinese medicine, integrated doctor or whoever. And we work together.   Mason: (12:34) Yeah. That working together, I don't think it's that rare anymore, but I don't know, sometimes it feels like it. I know that's definitely the biggest thing we get when we're like, "Look, we're really just going to have to encourage you to go and have someone onside, have a practitioner onside." And it can just seem like such a daunting task in the beginning, going and finding someone. But they're out there and if you're on the sunny coast, you know where to go.   Mason: (12:59) So I want to dive into Lyme. And I especially just wanted to make sure I had this resource for everyone in the community who is asking us questions. There's just so much that I can do in terms of saying, "You know, read." I like Stephen Buhner's work. Sending to your website. But I just wanted to speak to a couple of things that come up constantly that I feel will be useful, and especially useful for my team, hearing it from you in this context to pass on.   Mason: (13:37) For those of you that don't know Lyme disease, can you give a little elevator pitch, Amina, knowing that most people will know and there's many resources for people to get the understanding, including your website. But do you want to just give a little brief update for everyone? And especially your current understanding of Lyme infection?   Amina: (13:55) Absolutely. And I must say that my current understanding is just becoming more and more expansive as the years go by. But your traditional textbook Lyme is someone's been bitten by a tick and that tick has given the person an infection of Borrelia bacteria. And as a result, the person gets very sick. So it's a tick-born bacterial infection. That's a very simple textbook example. However, we know that there are ... Now Lyme, I think, has become a bit of an umbrella word. In Australia actually, a lot of practitioners use the term more Lyme-like illness and I think that's probably more appropriate because we don't know exactly what we're dealing with. So there's a lot of different types of Borrelia, not just Borrelia burgdorferi. There's actually a hundred strains or so.   Amina: (14:55) There's actually a lot of different types of Borrelia. We know that this Lyme-like illness is not just caused by ticks. We know there possible are other vectors. There's even been talk of mosquitoes. A study in Germany showing that mosquitoes could possibly be carrying Borrelia. I know there are possible other insects that can certainly pass on very similar co-infections, like midgies, sandflies and passing on things like mycoplasma bartonella, that co-infections that often coincide with Lyme patients.   Amina: (15:31) And we know that it can be passed on by utero. So if a woman's pregnant, she could definitely pass it on to her baby. Doesn't mean the baby's going to have the full on symptoms like the mother may have had. I certainly have seen quite a few different levels of patients. Some people have a positive Borrelia result, maybe even from a couple of different labs, and they really are okay. They're not suffering from a lot of symptoms. And I've seen people that we test and they've got negative Borrelia and it's not being picked up. Doesn't mean it's negative, but in the blood, the urine, and serum. And they've had lots of tick bites, lots of rashes.   Amina: (16:13) So it's a very broad umbrella term. But generally, I feel that now what we're dealing with when we're talking about Lyme-like illness ... the technical name is actually borreliosis because of it being from the Borellia bacteria infection. However, I think we just need to look at the facts that there are a lot of ticks and a lot of other biting vectors in Australia. We know that the ticks carry many bacteria. So rickettsia, ehrlichia, anaplasma, bartonella, which is a cat scratch disease as well. And we also know that Babesia, that's a very common infection in kangaroos and wallabies and is a similar infection to mosquito malaria.   Amina: (17:08) And recent studies just last year have come up with Australian ticks ... The one study, they had 21 viruses that they actually found in the ticks and they were actually affecting penguins down south of Australia. But in the studies, they weren't so sure if these particular viruses are going to affect humans, which is a very kind of, I think, controversial subject and could be. So the point is, the ticks are also carrying a lot of viruses. In fact, in this particular study, two of the viruses hadn't even been discovered. No one really knew what they were. So they're pretty yucky things. Hence, we call them nature's dirty needles. Ticks, they really are a bit of a problem.   Mason: (17:57) So just back to a couple of things. So you were talking about vectors, the possibility of passing on Borrelia by utero. And I think we got asked this question just after the mold podcast that we'd put out. It was one of the reasons I thought we've got to do a specific Lyme podcast, because someone was asking in terms of whether it can be sexually transmitted or via saliva.   Amina: (18:22) I'm not sure via saliva. I, from a practitioner perspective and upon conversations with many other practitioners from Australia and overseas that deal specifically with Lyme, I'd say clinically, anecdotally, yes. It can be passed on sexually, considering it is actually very similar. It's a spirochaetae bacteria that's very similar to syphilis bacteria, which is passed on sexually, of course, and very similar way of presenting within the body. Like, the initial syphilis, you'd get the canker sores and Borrelia, you may get the erythema, target-type rash. May not, as well. And then the symptoms can flare up for a couple of weeks or so and then, maybe, be a little bit dormant for a few months and flare up. That can happen with the syphilis for sure.   Amina: (19:16) So I think, yes. And why I think this is because I have seen families that we have tested the whole family and the mother might think she got it from the father for some reason. And upon testing, they all do have it. And the father or the mum says, "I've never been bitten by ticks or not to my knowledge." And then the children have it. So that has happened on a number of occasions. So I would say, yes.   Mason: (19:44) Yeah. Okay. So going back to the dirty needles of nature. Obviously, we were talking about the simplicity before with understanding patterns of your body so you can read your body and take very simple actions. And then you accumulate an incredible amount of benefits through taking ownership and responsibility. I think what's confusing, definitely has been for me, is just the simplicity of that. You get lost in just how potent that small accumulation of practicing that, what that can do for your health.   Mason: (20:20) In relation to Lyme, I think it's definitely worth something not being paranoid about, yet being extremely vigilant about, especially in the east coast of Australia, where we're at. The same as east coast of America and all these places where, obviously, you just need to be very real and not stay in your little box in your concrete jungle and be unrealistic about the fact that you live within gnarly nature and there is the possibility for many vectors to come and bite you. So in terms of just basic principles of prevention, have you got some just quick tips for people to embody into their lifestyles when they are camping or when they're foraging, as you do?   Amina: (21:07) Absolutely. I live out in ... I've got acreage. So every day, I go for a walk through the forest. And with my dog and I sometimes go through long grasses. So of course, the first thing is to make sure that you check yourself for ticks when you get home. So I recommend people wear light clothing if they can and then you can see the ticks. And whenever I've gone for a walk, which is pretty much every morning, I just strip off and just get straight in the shower and those clothes end up going in the wash. I also check my dog, as well, because my dog is running around with me and she does get quite a few ticks, but we get them quite quickly.   Amina: (21:48) So just be mindful of that. If it's a hot day and you've got a bunch of clothes, you're not sure ... because it's a lot of washing, otherwise. If you've got a bunch of clothes, you're not sure, it's a hot day, just put your clothes in a suitcase in the car. The ticks aren't going to survive in the heat of the suitcase. Or put clothes in the dryer for a few minutes. But definitely, you just need to check and be diligent about ... and just know, just check all over your body or your nooks and crannies.   Amina: (22:19) I mean, I have had quite a few tick bites and, of course, I go straight in with my herbs, my echinacea and my astragalus and garlic, anyway, because I actually am taking my regular immune herbs and vitamin C every day. So I'm keeping my body healthy. So I think it's important to just be healthy, as well, of course. It comes down to diet, all that sort of thing. I mean, that's the extreme, walking through forests and long grass. If you're just going for ... You need to get out. If you're just going in a park or something, just be mindful. There's lots of places you can go where the grass is short. Tuck your pants into your socks sort of thing and just enjoy. I think the benefits of being out in the nature and out in the fresh air is so helpful for your nervous system and immune system, anyway. At the end of the day, you have to live. So this is really important.   Mason: (23:22) And it always helps to have ... Well, I like using those tick-specific tweezers, having those around when you get the ...   Amina: (23:29) Oh, yes. For sure. Always have good tweezers and you can use things. There are some sort of ... People use citronella and sometimes even a little bit stronger that they can spray onto their clothes, but I think if you're going to brush up against a tree or something like that, that's when you're more likely going to ... if you're brushing up against plants and if you have animals, because animals will bring ticks in the house. So you take your boots off in the house and go and make sure you have a ... get in the shower and just don't be sitting around on your bed sort of thing with your clothes that you've been out in the forest with. Things like that. Just be really diligent.   Mason: (24:08) And in terms of if you do get a tick bite and you remove it, are you a fan of popping on dragon's blood? Any little myths that you want to bust around what you should be doing, topically?   Amina: (24:23) I actually use ... I've got a medicinal throat spray that's got sage and thyme and echinacea and I actually spray that on the bite.   Mason: (24:34) That's a great idea. Yeah.   Amina: (24:38) I think if you can use your herbs, topically, I think something like good-quality manuka honey is really good. But otherwise, just keep an eye on it. I mean, if you're going to get bitten by these sort of types of insects and ticks and mosquitoes, you just need to be mindful and just keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn't come up in a rash. If it does, then you take further precaution. And, yeah. There's not really anything more I would put onto a tick bite, no.   Mason: (25:10) Yeah, great. Just those little things to add to your culture. That's what people, over the years, when I ask ... I always get curious when people have all the herbs. And living in particular areas. Astragalus, for a lot of people, they're like, "Yep, in autumn." And then if I get a tick bite, comes up quite often that they ... just as you said. A little echinacea, even just getting a little bit of manuka inside of you, but they'll take a big does of astragalus, as well, if they have a tick bite.   Amina: (25:39) Absolutely.   Mason: (25:40) Just as a little precaution.   Amina: (25:41) Absolutely.   Mason: (25:42) And mushrooms, as well. I mean, you can get the shiitake, maitake, reishi's, and chaga's in and give it ... because there is going to be, at the time of consuming medicinal mushrooms and the beta-glucans they do in astragalus, as well. They're going to get into the bloodstream and you're going to see, most of the time, a direct impact on white blood cells and natural killer cells and macrophage activity. So that's the other one that always comes up.   Amina: (26:08) Absolutely. Definitely. I've been using some medicinal mushrooms in my clinic recently. So just some new formulas and I'm just finding, yeah, the benefits are really awesome. I think it's great. Anything you can do to boost your immune system up, but definitely the shiitake, ganoderma (reishi), and so forth are really definitely helpful and part of keeping the immune system as strong as possible.   Mason: (26:35) Yeah. I think we've got to make sure we stay in touch for when you really dive into the medicinal mushroom literature. It would really be good just to jump on and have a jam. Maybe at that point, that's what we can do when I get up to the sunny coast and I can come and visit you up there. Is it just called Hillier Retreat?   Amina: (26:52) Yes.   Mason: (26:52) Okay. I'm coming to visit you up at Hillier Retreat and we can go have a forage, because you've got ...   Amina: (26:56) Absolutely.   Mason: (26:57) The mushies up there are incredible, especially because obviously, being tropical, you can even find the tremella's snowflake mushrooms.   Amina: (27:06) Oh, yeah. There's so many. It's actually fascinating. Every day when I go for a walk, I find new mushrooms and it's just because we've got a lot, there's tree's fallen and it's just the perfect environment. Oh, it's just amazing.   Mason: (27:21) Can't wait. So then the other time we get a lot of questions, so probably the most for us is people writing to us and saying, "I've just been bitten by a tick," and they're not used to it. They haven't been in the shrub much and so ... But then after that, we do have a lot of people writing to us, whether it's themselves or their children, identify that it's been a tick bite, possibly, because I know that the rash or the bullseye esha is, I think ... what is it? Like, 60% of the time or something like that, that that..?   Amina: (27:52) Different statistics. I've heard anywhere between 30 and 60% of people will get a rash. And if you've been bitten on the scalp or some nook and cranny, you're not going to notice a rash. And don't forget, some of the ticks are so minute, they're nymph, the size of a pinhead, the baby ones you're not even going to notice. You wouldn't even know. You'd just rub it up with a towel and you might not be aware of having one at all.   Mason: (28:22) So just to help us consolidate our advice or if we're going to refer people to this podcast, what would be those first steps? What would you be looking out for symptomatically and what would be something that you'd go, okay, now you want to actually turn your head to that and knock it on the head?   Amina: (28:39) Okay. So if you know, yes, there's just definitely been a tick or a tick was attached, you might not know how long it's ... If it's just literally crawled on your arm and you feel it attached, just take it off and it's not likely going to have passed anything on too severe. But we don't know how quick. The bacteria has to actually be passed on through the tick's hypostome, it's little, pointy sort of appendage that sticks into you. And it needs to be really actually feeding in a proper feeding moment for the bacteria to release from its stomach. So depending on how long the tick's been on you, just get the tick off as quickly as easy as you can without squeezing the tick.   Amina: (29:27) Then, just be mindful. So you could certainly put any sort of antiseptic or a lot we just said, topically onto the bite. And then I would boost up with vitamin C. I would definitely boost up with those herbs. What to watch out for, if you do get a rash, then I would be more than likely, if you get a specific bullseye rash, I probably would recommend just go to a doctor and get a couple of weeks of Doxycycline, at least.   Amina: (29:54) If there's no rash ... Sometimes it can just be a bit red and puffy and swollen. Lymph glands swell up. It could just be a normal sort of allergy reaction to the tick because that can definitely happen. So just keep an eye on symptoms and, at this point, I would definitely be boosting up those herbs. Your anti-spirochete ones, so your astragalus, echinacea, as we said. Siberian ginseng, for example. Garlic ginger, which I would recommend you get the practitioner support with that, with the dosages.   Mason: (30:27) Would you put cat's claw in there, the uña de gato ?   Amina: (30:30) You can, but it's very difficult to get good quality cat's claw in Australia, right now.   Mason: (30:36) Yeah, you know what? I stopped stocking it because of that.   Amina: (30:40) Yeah, it's very difficult. I would love to be ... I did use it a lot, but I haven't been able to get it for a good couple of years and until I know that my quality sources that I get it from are available and I'm not really trusting any other ones. But there's plenty of other herbs. Andrographis is another beautiful one for these initial infections.   Amina: (31:02) So definitely, prevention is better than anything. So boost up on the herbs, anyway, and just be mindful. So that infection, you might not get any symptoms but, if in the next couple of weeks, two or three weeks, you do get some flu-like symptoms, I would go and get tested. As in, go and get checked with the doctor and just get checked. Things like rickettsia will come up quite quickly. You might need to wait about six weeks before the tests will actually show anything positive in those early stages, but I think that's a good cause for, if you have all of those symptoms, the rash, feeling not so good, lymph glands up, and then you get the flu-like symptoms, a bit of fever, it could be not necessarily Borrelia, it could be rickettsia, it could be a bit of babesia depending on the symptoms. So therefore, I would get onto it. Boost the natural packet treatment with your practitioner and you may need to go on antibiotics.   Amina: (32:05) I say this very open-mindedly that there is a place for the antibiotics, of course, for traditional medicine or conventional medicine. And we can work together on that. So I think if that is the case, otherwise, if it's just a case of, "I've got bitten and now I'm okay a few weeks later," you've been taking your herbs, eating well, resting, and nothing really flares up, I'd say that you're probably okay, but just be mindful of those. It's the symptoms that come up like the aching joints, the knee pains that, "Mmm, didn't have that before," and you haven't been running or anything in particular, to know that there is an ongoing infection. And it's really ... yeah.   Mason: (32:56) I assume it'll be similar symptom presentation in children?   Amina: (33:00) Yes, but children often won't explain exactly what's going on, but you'll know. I mean, a child might get fevers. You'd know that. The glands are up, maybe. And if they're young, they'd probably be crying a lot, feeling very uncomfortable, irritable, not feeding so well. The stools might be a little bit loose, showing there's systemic inflammation that's affecting the gut, as well. Rashes, doesn't have to be the bullseye. A bartonella rash can be almost like stretchmarks on the body. Any sort of rash, I think, needs to be dealt with.   Mason: (33:37) Yeah. And that was, when I got bit ... I think we've spoken about it. I mean, for some people might be new here, my interest was really spiked. And it was three years ago, and I got bitten by a tick, but it was very micro and it stayed on me for about three or four days and we just didn't catch it and we thought it was something else. And it was at that point, it had been feeding because it became engorged. And at that point, now I understand, oh, that's when you really got to watch it, when that engorgement has occurred there can be a transfer of bacteria. Got it out and then we were a few months away from having a baby and then I went down, the esha presented. "Okay," kind of kept on going. Kind of like, I don't know. I don't know if it was just because I was just so healthy and was just like, "Right, cool. I'll charge through this." And then after a few days, started getting fevery and started getting aching through the joints in my right hand, somewhat in my knees.   Mason: (34:33) I'd listened to enough of Stephen Harrod Buhner. You can't listen to him or read his books without coming across Lyme quite extensively. So I was like, "Right. I kind of know what this is." And so at that point, in came the andrographis, the high dose vitamin C's, a lot of astragalus and all that. But it went on for, I think it was seven to ten days it went on and I just continued to deteriorate in fever and just couldn't get out of bed. And then I was listening to one of Stephen Buhner's podcasts and he was just reiterating that, at that point, this is when you ... He's teaching about antibiotic resistant bacteria now, running rampant as many awesome herbalists are. Yet, he's like, "At this point, that's when doxycycline is going to be very useful for you to knock it on the head," and I was just in that position. I definitely had that solid belief that I would never be turning to anything like that for the rest of my life, but yeah. That one Monday night, I was deteriorating thinking, "Geez, we're having a baby soon."   Mason: (35:40) I'm at this point, and this is what I want to discuss with you next, I'm at this point where it's possibly able to be dealt with on a surface somewhat level, on acute or subacute level. And I obviously want to ensure that these bacterium aren't able to really dig their way into my system to cause that long-term infection. And so I did. I went Monday night to the emergency in Byron, showed them the rash because, here, they're a little bit more open minded. They were like, "Oh, yeah. We know what that is. Here's your doxycycline dose." And I know a lot of people have been turned away. However, I know a lot of doctors in emergency rooms have turned people away. So I'm not sure if you have any advice there on what they can ask for or say, but that sorted me out in 24 hours. And then I just continued to maintain that protocol of completely supporting my immune system and my nervous system for months. My whole lifestyle was that, but high, high doses of these herbs for quite a few months to get it out.   Mason: (36:44) But, yeah. I think it's nice to hear that that's the advice that's still standing, still quite nice and simple...   Amina: (36:53) Yeah, I think so because I've seen patients that, for example, they may have been bitten by a tick in California or in Germany and, straight away, they went to a doctor and they were only given maybe two or three weeks of doxycycline or similar. That's the main one, antibiotic. And even just taking it for that very short period of time did make it help their body, but they didn't end up getting a full-on chronic Lyme symptoms, have that go on for years and years. And how long you take it for is really dependent on the patient because some patients, in those acute times, may need it for quite a few months, that particular antibiotic and other antibiotics. But I think if you can just get in there as soon as possible and the herbal medicine, then you've got a really good chance.   Amina: (37:48) And we can sort the gut out later. We can deal with the side effects of the antibiotics and we can work on that. It's better to, I think, initially do that. And some people can't take antibiotics, it's as simple as that. So therefore, we have to just do the herbs. But this is in the real acute, black or white, yes, you've got it. There it is and we need to deal with that infection. I think it would be negligent to not have it treated with the antibiotics and using the herbs. So when I see patients that are ... most of the patients I see that are more chronically Lyme, then it's a different story. I do feel it's a different story than if ... It's questionable whether the antibiotics might help them at that point if they've already had it for two years, also, it's like, mm, okay, that's where I probably would go more herbal medicine, but I'd go in very gently. I don't go in with the hardcore antibacterial herbs at high doses, whereas I would with the acute Lyme.   Mason: (38:54) Yes. I mean, well that's ... Chronic Lyme seems to be, whenever I see anyone explaining the fact that we will have herxing reactions as you're removing infection from the body or busting up open biofilms, it's always Lyme disease that's used as the example. "Such as in Lyme disease..."   Amina: (39:14) Yeah, absolutely. And it's very important to ... it's almost two disease, acute tickborn infections and treating someone that has chronic Lyme that they may not have even known whether they ever had a tick bite or anything but ... they may have a positive Borrelia, they have all the symptoms and then we need to treat it. That's when it becomes a beautiful example of how naturopathy can help by putting all those pieces on the puzzle and treating that person holistically. And if you don't treat all of the systems, if you miss out treating the adrenals, they're going to stay tired. If you don't detox them properly and work on the liver, they're not going to eliminate those lipopolysaccharides, the dead bits of the outer shell proteins of the bacteria upon killing them.   Amina: (40:05) And inflammation has to be addressed at all times. The gut's got to work well every day. Every part of the body needs to be working at its best. When I talk about the jigsaw puzzle that I put together, there's so many factors then in chronic Lyme that are pieces of the puzzle then. It's not just about, yes, someone got bitten by a tick. Now we're looking at a full piece of toxins, mold, so forth, and the viruses.   Mason: (40:37) Well naturally, because your immune system and your energy levels, your hormonal cascades are going to be out of rhythm during that time if you've had months or maybe years of chronic infection, as well. Right? So naturally, just on the back of that, not to say that there was stealth infection or stuff going on beforehand. Naturally, it's going to come into a ... And it often seems like a perfect storm. I've met a lot of folks, especially around area, had long-term chronic Lyme and they're exhausted from the treatment protocol. I've never seen more of a bit of a jadedness towards how much they need to do and keep their finger on the pulse to get well, when it is extremely chronic. Do you feel like by bringing back a little bit more flow in the sense of understanding the puzzle, understanding how the holistic nature of what phase we're in of treatment and also what the consistent pieces of the puzzle, as you were saying, got adrenal liver. Of course, they're going to be primary. What's your take on managing the mental load and the emotional load of that whole treatment protocol?   Amina: (41:50) I think it's important to ... When we talked earlier about just taking charge of your health, you don't have to be knowing what to do, you just need to be understanding what's going on. And then work with someone that can put it all together. So for example, it can be quite simple. I can have someone with many, many piece of the puzzle. All those heavy metal toxins and genetic, MTHFR and pyrroles, and the mold exposure. It's all along there.   Mason: (42:29) All the trendy things to get diagnosed with at the moment.   Amina: (42:32) Yeah. All of those things. The tooth infection, the mercury fillings. It's all on there, you know?   Mason: (42:38) You know what? Maybe a bit of SIBO. I know that's pretty hot right now.   Amina: (42:41) Absolutely. SIBO. They've got adrenal depletion from stress that they've had. Usually, there's a period of time when they've had stress. So there's often many pieces of the puzzle. And then we need to sort of put it simply. And simply, I just look at the systems that need, basically, support. So diet. Diet alone can be amazing just to help the person with a personalised diet that's going to work for them. So making sure that they've got enough iron, enough vitamin B-12 for detox methylation, enough protein, amino acids for detoxification again, and neurotransmitter support for their nervous system chemicals.   Amina: (43:30) And diet, I think, is such a ... obviously, it's a really important part, but I think it can be so overwhelming in itself for people of what they should eat. "I've got histamine sensitivity and salicylates and oxalates and ..."   Mason: (43:44) Yeah. I mean ...   Amina: (43:44) It can be very overloading. So I think just bringing it down to really simple, a simple basic diet, simple vegetables, and understanding what works for that patient and what doesn't, because everyone's different. So I think that the diet is the most important thing and reducing any sort of inflammation triggers. Obviously, alcohol, coffee, the basic things that would be better to reduce or eliminate if possible. I like to use anti-inflammatory herbs to reduce inflammation because inflammation is going to make everything worse. And stress is going to make inflammation worse. So we've got to also work on the nervous system, the adrenals for the adrenal support.   Amina: (44:35) So in answer to your question of how do we put it all together, I think was what you were asking, is just looking at it and it just really needs to be simplified. Even looking at the liver and make sure the person is detoxing well. Well, you know, it's a case of how you feel when you eat. Do you feel nauseous after you take your B vitamins? That might indicate that your phase two detox pathways aren't working so well. You're not able to tolerate garlic of sulfurs or ... What's going on? Is there methylation problems? We can actually look, by understanding the symptoms, what may be going on there and offer that very basic liver support that might be just a case of having the right amino acids, proteins. Having some tumeric, some broccoli, sprouts. Making sure that maybe a bit of N-acetylcysteine might help just with ... obviously, we're trying to boost the Glutathione and make sure that the liver is doing its job. I love St. Mary's thistle for hepatoprotection and just to help the liver naturally do what it is supposed to do.   Amina: (45:38) So it's just about looking at the areas that really need the most addressing. And symptoms of things like brain fog and memory and focus, concentration. That can just be often due to inflammation. So often, just having some anti-inflammatory support. tumeric, amazing. chamomile, calendula, fennel, marshmallow, beautiful herbs that will support gut and inflammation can actually reduce those symptoms just by working on reducing the inflammatory markers.   Mason: (46:11) So a couple of things that are coming up. In previous conversations, we've honed in to certain explanations of particular issues using Classical Chinese terminology. And there's one thing I feel like, really, when I've gone down the depths of trying to understand naturopathy and that pathway and tried to ... I know for yourself, as well, I know the immense amount of success that you're having, which is incredible and I feel like, although I get the conversations from people who are in that exasperated state when it comes to not just naturopathy, but all doctors and all the different things that they're trying, and so I always try and not focus on that but really try and find out the key things that are, what's up? What's going on that lead to that exasperated state where someone can't really get on top of it? Hopefully, get through their symptoms and then get on the mend where they have that health sovereignty.   Mason: (47:14) Something about the way that you talk about all this, I was trying to figure out why I feel comfortable and why ... Dan Sipple, I don't know if you know him. He's a naturopath down south of Sydney.   Amina: (47:25) Oh, yeah. Yeah.   Mason: (47:25) Yeah. So he's a good friend of mine. Our personal naturopath, but especially working with my mum. He originally introduced your work to me and he really liked your stuff, as well. I think there's a nice bridging there. Not that you can merge systems. I definitely don't think we can merge and lay over Classical Chinese medicine with naturopathy, but there's something that flows in when you talk that you don't so much purely sit in that, "All right, what's the symptom? Bang. Here, slap this protocol on." There's a looking, and maybe correct me if I'm wrong, but there's a looking for somewhat of the pattern that's leading to the pathology with a particular person and then a desire to understand what's constitutionally going on for them, which leads to a bit more of ... And I know that's the theory a lot of the time in naturopathy and that's the theory of, now, modern, traditional Chinese medicine which has deviated from the classical nature and deals with symptoms, but I feel like theoretically what they say they're doing and what's actually happening is two different things because, and quite often, what's in the way is living it as a way of life.   Mason: (48:38) I feel like that's kind of what I feel is there's a bit more flow with the way you're talking about this and possibly why we see you getting such high success rates because there is that little bit of extra time in order to identify what that underlying pattern is, not just focusing on the shiny thing that is the symptom or the pathology.   Amina: (49:04) That's exactly right. And one thing I'd like to bring up is what I'm doing a lot of work with at the moment, are the underlying causes of why are the people not getting better, or why they ... Sorry, that's my dog out there.   Mason: (49:21) That's all good.   Amina: (49:22) Beautiful Jessie. Why people start getting better when they start working on their bacterial infections, but then other symptoms arising and it's viruses. We're just not paying enough attention to the underlying viruses. And I think this is something that I'm really doing a lot of work on and I'm ecstatically excited about because I'm realizing that, when I'm working on the viruses with the patients ... For example, someone in their jigsaw puzzle, they had Epstein Barr virus, glandular fever, when they were a teenager. And they had immunoglobulins tested. So it would come up IGG. So, yes, they had that Epstein Barr virus virus a long time ago. The IGM may not be coming up, sort of active antibodies, but they're still presenting with funny sweats and aches and pains. And this is almost like new symptoms and we know that, with borreliosis and a lot of these Lyme-like illnesses, symptoms do move and change.   Amina: (50:29) So looking at it, when you look at the person, you realize they had Epstein Barr virus, they've still got active herpes, or they had cytomegalovirus. Oh. And when we test, they actually had Ross River virus or Dengue fever comes up a lot, Barmah Forest. Coxsackie virus, which is your mouth, sort of your hand, foot, mouth disease viral thing. And what I've realized is that upon further testing ... There's a lab in Germany that, ArminLabs, that's actually looking at more detailed Epstein–Barr viruses and actually seeing that, even though a person had IGG antibodies, they're actually coming up with high levels of lytic Epstein–Barr virus within the cells. It's not the latent Epstein–Barr virus, which shows that basically the virus is now almost reactivating.   Amina: (51:25) Now, viruses are not like bacteria. They have their own DNA or RNA, but they're not like bacteria. They have their own organelles. The virus needs to get into a living cell, be it a red blood cell or a bacteria and it uses the cells organelles. So it needs to use our own cell organelles in order to replicate. So if a virus is in a system that maybe that person's not massively healthy or they have low levels of mitochondria, which is your energy powerhouses of the cell, or the cell is not very sort of full on effective at that time, the virus will just sit there and hang out until the cell is more nourished or ready. Or the virus will go and find another cell.   Amina: (52:20) Now what happens is, say the person starts dealing with their chronic Borrelia infection or their other bacteria, their gut dysbiosis or parasites, then it's like almost when the person starts getting a bit healthy, then the viruses will start replicating.   Mason: (52:38) Oh, god. It's so ...   Amina: (52:38) This is what's going on now and that's what I'm feeling is a big area. And I know that there are quite a few other, specialist practitioners that deal with chronic fatigue and retroviruses and things like that. There's a Doctor Dietrich Klinghardt in America that's looking a lot at retroviruses. And I would have to agree, because this is what I'm seeing, as well. And I think being mindful of that, we need to make sure that the person also has viral support and that we understand and the patient understands what's going on. Because otherwise, what happens is they take herbs and go, "Oh, yeah. I did this, but it made me worse." you know a full on Herxing that's not being dealt with because they're not detoxing well or ...   Mason: (53:29) Yeah, sorry to cut you off there, but it's really poignant and I feel like it brings up a position where I've sat with so many years, having essentially given people access to tonic herbs and to these medicinal mushrooms and then educating them as much as possible about appropriate ways to integrate these with intention. But then when you get these questions about, "Well, this is presenting and this is presenting, what's happening to me?" it is only so far and I feel like I like presenting five or six different options of what's possibly going on. And the nature of saying it's a detox reaction or it's a herx has, seemingly over the last few years, seemed too simplistic just to put out there. You know what I mean?   Amina: (54:22) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yep.   Mason: (54:24) And so just hearing this, it's just further bridging for me. I never expect them to be simple answers that come forth when people get clue ... there's always a chance that a herb isn't for somebody, which is always the first that I like to put forth. And as well, also, doses being too large at a particular time.   Amina: (54:48) Absolutely, absolutely.   Mason: (54:50) So that gets presented first. And then going on to what comes down the line, which I ... and the general attitude, and I can feel it in you and I feel it as well, is, "Well, this is bloody exciting because there's something going on here." And just hearing that nature of, "I'm getting better," but then, bam, I just get another hit in the face and then I go down again to some new symptoms. That trap, that loop when you are working purely symptomatically and you're not going for that underlying pattern. Or in that sense, you haven't figured the pattern that the reason there's a backlog or a bottleneck within a person who's, because phase two detoxification isn't actually able to occur and because they gut these and actually were able to eliminate, that I feel like ...   Mason: (55:39) The word that's coming forth, which you are using in a practitioner mindset, which I feel can very easily be transferred into someone's everyday life before going and looking for solutions from one herb or looking to find the exact reason why you are reacting positively or negatively, seemingly, to a practice or a herb or whatever it is, is you can bring in these very sensible ideas of looking at what is the pattern that your body is going to need to be supported in in order to basically stop that bottleneck of symptoms from occurring? Or even the bottleneck of positive effects from a herb.   Mason: (56:21) If you take a herb, as far as I'm concerned, you don't necessarily want to be feeling waves of energizing and vitality straight away. It shows that there was maybe a little bit of a deficiency.   Amina: (56:33) Yeah.   Mason: (56:34) So that level of sensible nature, that seems like that and you kind of ... I don't know if you feel it. I know I try not to feel dismissive in this nature when I talk to people and go, "Look, back off. I want you to be really making sure that your gut, your nervous system and adrenals and liver," you hit on them before, it's where I land, as well, "are absolutely running on optimal and are optimised so that you can possibly eliminate any of the reactions from occurring in the first place." That's the ideal situation. But sorry, I just wanted to touch base on that because I feel ... I'm going to have my whole team, especially the team who I'm chatting to customers, just listen to this so we can get a bit more context of how to communicate it.   Amina: (57:23) Sorry, what were you wanting me to ...   Mason: (57:25) Nothing. I just stopped there. I didn't even ask a question. But I did interrupt you when you were in the middle of talking about what's going on, just after you were talking about the retroviruses, that I interrupted you there. But either I can go on with another question or is there any more of that? Because this is super interesting and [crosstalk 00:57:48]   Amina: (57:47) Oh, there is so much more. I think it's just something ... Our science, at the moment, we just don't know enough about the types of viruses. Like I said, the tick study that just came out last year showed that the Australian ticks have 21 viruses. There's studies showing that estimations of ... We have 320,000 mammal viruses that are present in our current world and possibly more, but that's just based on looking at different types of animal genre and looking at the types of viruses that might be specific to them. And it's an estimation, but I think it's a reality.   Amina: (58:33) And you think about a virus, a virus is the size of a pea compared to a bacteria that might be the size of a watermelon, compared to the size of a red blood cell that would be the size of one of those giant gym balls. So a virus is a tiny, micro, micro, microscopic thing, yet it can be so powerful. I think the whole looking at the retroviruses that mean that the viruses are either RNA or DNA. And the retroviruses, they start off the single-cell RNA strand virus into a cell. They can actually, as I said, use the cells organelles to replicate itself, but they can actually, change themselves to become DNA-type viruses and they actually change the DNA of the cell, because when that cell that now is full of this active virus that's changed itself, and it's now using the human cell's DNA, now when that cell replicates it actually has already some of the viral DNA or RNA within it. So it actually is changing us genetically.   Amina: (59:48) And that's actually not a bad thing because, environmentally, evolution, we need viruses. We need viruses. We need retroviruses to change us for evolution. It's normal. That's been happening for thousands of years, but it's just interesting. I think, at the moment, due to the way we are, our toxic bodies, electromagnetic radiation, all the chemicals, glyphosate that's being used. All of that stuff is actually exacerbating this growth of the retroviruses. That's the problem.   Mason: (01:00:25) Mm-hmm (affirmative). I'm really happy that you brought up the necessity there of just the fact that we are sharing an environment and we are co-evolving with a virus, because it does bring up that reminiscence of when germ theory was really rocking and we're still in the medical model trying to destroy bacteria and can conquer bacteria when bacteria is, in fact, a part of us and the origins of our cellular matrix that is our ancestors and likewise. We, to an extent, have been evolving and have the possibility of living in harmony with viral loads that'll have that mentality of going to war. Never really going to ...   Mason: (01:01:14) If that's the entirety of your mindset towards it, it's never going to allow you to get into what the Tao and what all these ancient philosophies were talking to was to start to get into unison with nature and with the elements. And that's where those basic principles can come about to ensure that you are not overexerting yourself. If you can take the years, and years, and years to not ... you need to alter your lifestyle so that you find yourself being able to come predominantly at the world, I'm really working on this myself at the moment, from a parasympathetic space and ensuring that you are getting your beautiful amount of sun exposure, walking and moving consistently, remaining hydrated, a diet that is working for your constitution and your intuition and is somewhat simple in that nature and not shrouded in dogma, then you've got those basic patterns and principles that will hopefully allow you to get back into unison with nature. And then we have our little tests and our supplements and our things that we can take to help us compensate for the way the world is going for as much as we possibly can.   Mason: (01:02:27) So that, to an extent, these bacteria, these nasty viruses, perhaps we can slightly get back into a place where we are living in harmony or able to have our own cells and immune system be able to manage them so they don't lead to chronic illness. And it always comes back to that simplicity.   Amina: (01:02:50) It is really about living in harmony. Sometimes I feel like I just want to sort of say to patients, we really need to accept the fact that everyone is going to have a lot of chronic stealth infections. We have up to two kilos of bacteria in our gut. We need bacteria to survive. [inaudible 01:03:15] bacteria beneficial and commensal and then you disbiotic when it gets out of balance. And of course, like I've mentioned, the viral role is an evolution thing. It's not something we can stop. Viruses don't all necessarily have to be bad, but if the body is not in balance, that's when the viruses will affect ... There's a lot of bacterial viral interactions that go on and I think this is what gets missed in these chronic patients. It's not just the fact that they have underlying viruses that haven't been treated. It's the fact that the viruses are now coinciding with the bacteria and actually ...   Amina: (01:03:58) For example, there's direct interactions like influenza, just your normal flu virus. When it comes into contact with, say, a staphylococcus-type bacteria, like staphylococcus aureus, for example ... and there's been studies proving this. The influenza virus, it's like a big sort of ... well, it's not, it's tiny, like a round shape and it has lots of appendages, like lots of sticky things sticking out of it, like lots of sort of protease is what they're called, like these cleavers. And the staphylococcus can actually make the viral appendages split. So therefore, say the virus has a hundred little arms coming from it, it splits them so it now has 200 appendages. So it has more ability to cling onto the cell wall that it's wanting to attack or to intrude.   Amina: (01:04:59) So the bacteria actually help the virus when it's first initiated into the body to survive. And other ones, like your herpes virus, can actually cause an immune suppression type environment that actually can lead to ... I think there's a gingivalis type bacteria that specifically, if you've got herpes and you've got that particular gingivalis bacteria within the mouth, they're actually going to work together so that the virus can actually survive a lot easier. [crosstalk 01:05:35]   Mason: (01:05:35) Mm-hmm (affirmative). So amazing. I don't know. I find that really fun. I find it really exciting. Kind of reminds me just not to be a snowflake with the fact that there are so many opportunistic organisms around us and it's not because they're bad, it's nothing evil, it's just ...   Amina: (01:05:57) They just want to survive, but we're all trying to survive. Everyone's doing the best they can, including the viruses. And at the end of the day, I think we're almost ... What I was saying I'd like to say to patients sometimes is that we almost energetically need to make these are friends and we really need to love our body. And that's where it comes down to. It's a very spiritual aspect, I know, but loving ourselves, loving our body, accepting what is and just allowing the balance to occur. Not neglecting oneself, but in the best environment you eat well, you breathe well, you sleep well, you eliminate well, you'd be outside, be mindful, be in nature, do all of those things that you can do to create optimum holistic health. And then because the viruses are going to do what they're going to do and the bacteria's going to do what they're going to do, but we create an environment that everything is in balance and in harmony and no one takes the mickey because, otherwise, they become opportunistic in that toxic environment.   Mason: (01:07:03) Yeah, it's like having a bunch of delinquent children sometimes inside, but. And I really appreciate ... We'll bring this home because I know you've got stuff to do, but I really ... having off the back of a conversation that's so practical and in reality, and shrouded in testing and understanding exactly what's going on and which organ systems need to be supported in order to come back to optimal within 3D reality. I 100% agree that, at that point where you mind feels comfortable, that you're moving and you're on top of that, then going in and reestablishing your relationship with yourself and the viral and bacterial and everything else loads that, within you, can often ... I've found it to be often one of the keys. Obviously, there's many keys along the way that will get people over a particular hump.   Mason: (01:07:53) And I feel ... I guess that's ... It especially brings up ... I have a friend who does a lot of this work in reestablishing your relationship with the entity of even wifi and 5G. And if you are just doing that and that alone and not being real about what's actually going on on a cellular level, that possibly can be wishy washy, some of us are strong enough to actually ... and I think we can agree upon that just with that reframing can reestablish a flow of Qi and self function in order to bring some protection. But most of all, what it does is it allows us to move forward without an identity that is derived by opposition. When we are opposing our bacteria and we're in opposition to viral load and opposition to this sick state that we're in, we create a massive glass ceiling in what's possible for us to go forth in our emerging identity.   Mason: (01:08:52) So I really appreciate you bringing that up. Thank you for that, Amina.   Amina: (01:08:56) You're welcome. Thank you.   Mason: (01:08:58) I think we've got a couple more. We could probably have a whole ... After you've talked in September, it might even be nice if you'd be up for coming and sharing on an even deeper level what you're discovering and excited about with these viral infections and these ...   Amina: (01:09:16) Definitely.   Mason: (01:09:17) ... retroviruses. I think, of course, it'd be really fun. And then dive into the mushrooms. And when I get up there, we'll have a deep dive and have a nerd-out on that world of mushie love.   Amina: (01:09:28) That'd be

What if I told you there's a secret to getting your story out of you and onto paper without writing a single word?That'd be cool right? Well today I drop the most actionable and valuable content snippet when it comes to writing stories from my 3 Day Live training in my FB group (Storytelling Secrets With Jules Dan) Whether you're in the group or not, this podcast episode will be action packed with plenty of how to's and stories to make you remember it all. Shameless plug to join my group http://bit.ly/StoryTellingSecretsFBGroup Got a question about your story creation? Shoot me an email to info@julesdan.com

What's up everyone! I am very excited to talk about the HPA Axis and how we overwork it too much and how it causes chronic illness and disease. On today's Podcast, we discuss: The HPA (Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal) AxisHow the HPA Axis functionsHow does chronic stress (fight or flight) contribute to chronic illness?What can you do about it to help return to homeostasisYou have a purpose! Check out the show notes from today's episode: Frank: (00:00)Are you overstressed and not sleeping really good and are you like super anxious about everything? Let's face it, are you putting on a little bit of weight and you just kinda don't understand why? Well, pay attention to this podcast because this podcast is going to describe something called the HP a access and how it is lending itself to frantic inflammation, chronic disease, and a lot of symptoms that we really just can't put our finger on and why we are getting those symptoms. So stay tuned. New episode, coming up on unconventional wellness radio. I am Frank, I am your host. I'm excited to bring you this information, so stick around and we'll talk soon. Frank: (00:38)Hey everyone. Welcome to unconventional wellness radio. It's a powerful and inspiring podcast set to revolutionize and disrupt healthcare. It's time to put you in the driver's seat. That'd be the force of change necessary for the lifestyle you've always wanted. Frank: (00:53)Hey everyone. I know it's been a little while since we've done a Facebook live or even a podcast and I apologize for that actually. I think it's been like one week, but the reason why is because I had the grateful opportunity to be able to attend this conference. There was a stakeholder conference down for the farmer veteran coalition down in Austin, Texas. And I was there for, I think it was like three or four days. And quite honestly, whenever you do something like that, you just, I know you kind of fall off the map. But anyway, we're back and we're here to talk about unconventional wellness and uh, and yeah, I am extremely excited to talk about this topic. Why? Because I'm a bit of a nerd and I sure do love talking about science. And so, uh, I feel that if we, if we discuss that, by the way, let me show you this mug. Frank: (01:40)This was actually like one of my, I'm going to start doing all of my like fun. I'm going to start doing all of my like fun holiday mugs now. Yes, I know it's not quite Thanksgiving yet and darn, and I've already pulled out a Christmas bug, but here's the deal. This is my, this is my rationale for awhile. Okay. Please don't think under any circumstances. I want to like overshadow Thanksgiving just because, um, I'm looking at Christmas instead. Instead, I had the conscious discussion with my wife and the reason why we decided to slowly trickle out some of the Christmas stuff is because of the fact that Thanksgiving was late this month, this year. Right. So like, I mean it's on the 28th. So yes, I am not decorating the outside of the home, I believe until after Thanksgiving as well. No Christmas music has been played, at least not yet. Frank: (

Over here with bread for a year and additionally a few bonus bits, songs, and tags.  We're going to close out 2019 and trepidatiously yet confidently step into 2020 with laughter.  Laughter and music.  That's what I do.  Some drinking (...and remember, driven2drink is not about alcohol, really.  The concept is...that which drives you to do or drink or take or embark upon the things that help you to find internal peace and homeostasis even in the midst of existential crisis or whatever daily travails you endure and/or obstacles impede you.  You may be driven to have some herbal tea, listen to smooth jazz very loudly, and snuggle with your angora rabbit in a hooded Snuggy.  That's YOUR driven to drink.  And for me?  Here?  Laughter and music are the things to which I return.  And also alcohol.  And other things...) and a lot of singing and laughing and consuming soulful aural art. Anyway, you should hang out.  Have some fun with us.  Listen to some music.  And while you're doing it, engage in the thing to which you are driven to find inner calm, if only for a few.  (Wait, what if Driven2Drink were your "drink?"  That'd be wonderful, really.) Love yinz! -G

We talk about this random movie from 2011 that Morgan really likes. It has Hugh Jackman. And robots. Plus, robot boxing. Like the sport... not the process of robots... being boxed. That'd suck. But does the movie suck? Listen... listen to the thing if you want to know that. Or watch the movie. Probably that second one because we definitely ruin it for you. But then after that listen to us. Please. We're lonely.

Welcome back to the Fuel Your Legacy podcast. Each week we expose the faulty foundational mindsets of the past and rebuild the newer, stronger foundation essential in creating your meaningful legacy. We've got a lot of work to do. So let's get started. As much as you like this podcast, I'm certain that you're going to love the book that I just released on Amazon, Fuel Your Legacy: The 9 Pillars To Build a Meaningful Legacy. I wrote this to share with you the experiences that I had while I was identifying my identity, how I began to create my meaningful legacy and how you can create yours. You're going to find this book on Kindle, Amazon and as always on my website, samknickerbocker.comWelcome back to Fuel Your Legacy bringing you another incredible guest, Douglas Taurel. And he's actually out from in New Jersey. I Love New Jersey. I love Pennsylvania, the whole area out there so when I saw that that's where it's from. Somebody, I wanted to be in around and get to know. But his mission and his passion are even more incredible than where he's from, in my opinion. He's a TV actor, right so he's been on the affair Mr. Robot, the American blue blood. So the Americans bluebloods person of interest. And he is in the cobbler. If you haven't seen the cobbler by Adam Sandler, I think one of Adam Sandler's best movies honestly, just an incredible movie, and so you've got to be in that. But now even he's a producer and he's produced a one-man play. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it's a one-man play, called the American soldiers journey home, which commemorates any of the First World War, and he's finished filming the Web TV series, a landing home, in which he wrote and directed and tells the story of a veteran having a hard time adjusting military life, and that everybody has different reasons for doing what they do. I work with a lot of veterans, veterans, and people who are actively serving in the military and my company. That's a lot of the people who are my business partners. And so I have, a natural desire to want to help them also my sister, Denise, she was like three or four months, maybe six months away from being commissioned as an ROTC officer. And then she got diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia and was discharged. She wasn't able to fulfill her dream in the military. So I got to see firsthand kind of the adjustment of somebody whose dream had just been altered by the reality of needing to come home per se, although she never left. She still had to come home mentally from that lifestyle and now readjusted to we'll call it civilian life. So I'm excited to be able to share this with you because I think it's every one of us. If we don't know somebody who's serving in the military, we should know somebody who's serving the Military, and this is a very real concern, a real thing about most people who have served. So I'm excited to have you on here, Douglas and go ahead and share a little bit of your background how you got into acting and why the American soldier What about that, as are you so passionate about?So Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me on the podcast. So I got into I've been acting professionally here in New York for about 20 years. I'm originally from Texas from Houston. But I came to New York, trying to pursue the dream and I got into acting in college. It was very cliche was over a girl that I had a crush on and I wanted to impress her and I thought being part of a school play would be would do the thing and the 10 cent version is I got bit by the acting bug and I never got, I never got rid of it. So I went to Ole Miss. I graduated from there with a double major business in the theater.And I've been pursuing acting ever since I came Since I graduated, andI am as being here in New York, I was, I came out of the Twin Towers probably 10 minutes before the first plane hit. So I was kind of I was in the financial district when I was working there when I was a young actor. And so I was really, as the rest of the nation was that was affected by the event and like a lot of young men did. They wanted to, you know, they wanted to join, they wanted to come part of the military. I couldn't join the military because of being blind and when I so I decided to kind of do something with my talents, so I wrote this play, called the American soldier. And I at the time, you know, we were reading a lot of the time we were heavy in the Middle East, I guess around 2005 2006 I were reading a lot in the newspapers about what veterans were going through and how they were struggling either suit through a suicide or financial problems or just challenges they were having. And I just thought it was kind of unfair. So I would, I wanted to kind of create a project to kind of give a true awareness of what they were coming from and calculus, people understand what sacrifice meant. So I went to the New York Public Library, and I had this crazy idea of creating a planet based on the American Revolution. And I was going to remind people the bravery of how we became the country we are in and I started researching, like, books and books, there are so many books based digital, they're just filled with veteran letters. And the more I researched, the deeper I went into, and I kind of created this project from that nucleus, and since then, I've been you know what I thought it was just going to be a vanity project. You know, just a one-time thing is now been performing for six Seven years it's gone on. I've performed in notable spaces like the Kennedy Center Library of Congress, the American Legion national headquarters Off-Broadway twice. And the play is kind of it's become an artistic mission for me to kind of keep reminding people of what veterans and families go through and have gone through. And that's kind of where I'm at right now with the plane why I created it.That's awesome. So I'm curious how often I mean because it's been years since it was created initially. Are you updating it? Are you rewriting it little parts to make it more impactful for today's current issues? Or is it kind of just a snapshot of something in the past,so the play is taken on, it's not being updated anymore? You know, when I started creating it, Samuel, I created it about I guess I was I started about, you know, I mean, 1110 to 11 years ago, I kind of I start to lose track of diamonds. I've been part of it for so long. But when I had created it, I had a bunch of letters of veterans. And so in the very beginning stages, it was very malleable, so to say, and it was like, I had Shakespeare in and that didn't work I had, I had on it was the play wasn't balanced. And so over the time, it's been really shaped and really kind of sharpen and polish, so to say, and, and from what it is now, Tim, from where it first started. It's, I mean, it's very different. And it's a very different play. So now, there are a couple of letters that I want to put in there that I don't know when I'll be able to because I'm already like in November, I'm performing it twice. And then next year, I already have like six cities lined up so the play keeps it keeps so busy. That doesn't allow me to kind of rebake it in a way that makes sense.Sure. Now that's cool. And so what was the process like?And maybe I don't know if this lends to your childhood orwhatnot butwhat how did you get into acting? I know you said a girl but is that that the full story what about acting caught ahold of you? Because I got into cross country for girls. And as soon as the girls were gone, I was gone, right? Because nothing is exciting about it. Running cross is not exciting. What about acting took your interest and said no, this is exactly where I want to be. I feel like I can fulfill my legacy my purpose hereWell, I mean, I got into theworld Well,hello, I'm so when I got to college, and I got into acting once I fell in love with what acting was I was when I was a freshman year in college. I was just really kind of, you know, you know, rudderless, so to say, and didn't have a real direction to know what I was going to do. And then I remember very clearly an actor standing up saying hey, there's I'll just For this Children's Theatre, and at the time, you know, just coming out of high school I was I just broke up with my girlfriend and I said, You know, I want to do something to kind of impress her. So I became part of it. And so once I joined once I audition, I was always really good at being playful and kind of funny. And so the director liked what I was doing and she said, Hey, you know, you're pretty good at this, you know, if I like to cast you and I Institute and then she cast me in another plan, and she said, you know, if you major in theater, I'll give you a scholarship. And you can study theater, and I said, Well, that sounds like a good deal to me. And you know, you know, a lot of girls around so I said, Yeah, sure. Let's do it. So, and then I, I developed, I was able to develop a real passion for it and I was pretty good at it in college so they said the bug bit me and then that was pretty much once I graduated college. I knew what I was going Do and I knew that that was for me what it was going to do for me as I knew there was nothing else that I could do. At that time. I was a double major. So I had opportunities to go into business. I was doing an internship for life, north northwest mutual life, and they had offered me a real job paid you real money. And I just remember very clearly going into the interview in a tie and thinking I just, this is not something I want to do for the rest of my life. It's just not what I want to do. And I told my father says, I'm gonna turn the job down. At that time, they had these general auditions and I audition for this what they call summer stock theater, and you audition and you get cast for the summer. And I was given a job up in North Carolina and pay me 125 bucks a week to be an exercise dancer. And I took it and that was my first contract. That was my first real job and to this day, it's so One of the most blissful memories I think about as a young actor because I was free, I was open I had, you know, really No, no responsibility. I wasn't married, didn't have any kids. All I was doing is making 125 bucks a week and acting up in North Carolina and I was completely in love. And then, you know, that contract ended and, and I knew there was nothing else I could do. And a lot of times when people asked me, you know, could you do anything else I couldn't because it would be, to me personally would be spiritual suicide. There's not much else I could do. I could probably do another job, but I wouldn't. I just wouldn't be very happy at it. And, you know, to me, at the end of the day, what's important is that you're doing something that you love because it's never really beneficial to do anything for only the money. And that's when life kind of presents its problems towards you. Stress is happening and you're never feeling fulfilled and they leave Dark Places. And I know many people who have gone through those avenues and I just been very fortunate that I've always known instinctively pursue what I love. And it's been and it's paid me back. I mean, it's, it's, as I say, the acting God's been kind to me.That's incredible. I love that phrase. I don't think I've ever heard it in the context of this, but I think that's so true. Because legacy and this is kind of one of the purposes of this show is to help people get out of the box when they hear the word legacy. So many people think of legacy as a financial term.Yeah. Andit could be a financial term, I'm not ruling money out of it, right. But I think more importantly than the finance is the identity and you identifying who you are what really lights your soul on fire and, and helps you grow spiritually because if, for me, at least, my mission in life, I would align it by at least the four F's and there's five if you throw in fun Right, but faith, family fitness, finance, and then fun, right? Those are kind of the order in which I want my life to operate. And faith is number one. And faith isn't necessarily really a religious term, just as a legacy is not a financial term faith has to happen everywhere. And it's a very deeply personal I mean, yeah, and I think faith is an I mean, faith is really important and the one thing that I've always had I've always had confidence as a person as an individual and you know, once I made the decision that I was going to be an actor, it didn't matter. I mean, there were you know, there's always when you choose to become an actor when you grow up with friends who are not actresses, it can be challenging because they're making real money. Right? I mean, they're making real money they're buying cars are getting mortgages to starting to get married. And that necessarily, is not the journey that you're on as a young actor, you're waiting tables you're on you're doing odd jobs, you're doing crap films, crap, small projects, don't anything to kind of build your resume, so to say and you have to have An unbelievable iron will and iron constitution to believe in yourself and others which you want to do. And a lot of times when I coach young actors, and if I, if I give I give presentations, I always tell them, you know, if you're going to go into this business, do it because you love it. Because you're going to have a tremendous amount of downs. And if you don't love it, you're not going to be able to withstand the hardship that comes across when you're in the business. And I think Steven jobs said it, probably as clearly as anybody else could have said it, it says, you know, you have to be insane to do it, because it's hard. And if you had any sanity, you'll quit. And the rejection is so relentless and is so it comes actually in such high quantity that if you don't absolutely love this or whatever it else you're doing and believing in, you're not going to have the endurance to finish. And that is usually the thing that anybody can take away from this conversation. Is that You have to believe in what you want to do, to have the endurance to finish it, and to be fulfilled in life. Because if you're doing something that you're not fulfilled and it doesn't make you happy, then that's going to put you that's going to leave you in a very poor place spiritually. And you know, being rich, doesn't necessarily mean well that means you know, absolutely waking up in the morning, being excited about the things that are in front of you and not looking at your day, as you know, as complete drudgery every single day like Groundhog Day.Yeah, exactly what I love. And so this comes to mind because in my in a lot of my teaching, and when I coach people, and it comes down to value, I have a just a full conversation about value and how you say, your your friends, you went into acting and you're waiting tables and you're struggling, right. And they were making quote-unquote, real money. So what's interesting about that, from a financial perspective, I'm in the financial space. at a company much like Northwestern, but the interesting thing is, although they had, I would call it corporate value, their value is still being assigned to them. And there, in most cases, and this is not unanimously across everybody, in most cases, then there's a massive imposter syndrome feeling inside of corporate America, and a lot of people are being paid more than they think they're worth. And they couldn't go and transfer that value that they're getting paid maybe $100,000 a year, they could not transfer for that hundred thousand dollars your income to anywhere else except for that company because they think that's the only company willing to put it there. So where you are out building your value, and get into the point where you can create money because you're able to create you created a one-man play where you're going, you're going all by yourself, you're creating value. Those people who had real jobs quote-unquote in corporate America, they didn't get that opportunity of many of them, not all of them, but many of them don't have that ability to believe in themselves because it was never developed. Not that they can't have it, but they just don't have it. And I coach a lot of my clients through that who are coming in from corporate America jobs and say, Okay, I want to be an entrepreneur, I want to go do something on my own. But I just don't think that I have the value exchange there.AndI love that you said you have to be insane. Because every great person, they had a vision for what was going to come before it was ever a reality. And they chose keyword being chosen to live in their future to live in the vision of their future rather than where they were at today. And because nobody else can see your vision and your future other than you or at least as clearly as you can, then you appear as insane.Yet, I would argue you're the only sane person around because you're engaging in creation. Rather than reacting to your surroundings, but it's you know, it's it's really important because I mean, even when I created the play when I created the play, as I mentioned earlier, I had, you know, I had thousands of veteran letters for over a period of five, six years, and I just didn't know what to do with them. And I knew I wanted to tell a story. I just didn't know how I wanted to tell it. And, you know, at one point, I thought it was going to be full, that's going to be a play with multiple characters. And I would talk to many directors, and they were like, Well, what do you want to do with it? You know, and they were like, let's not really, I don't think people are interested in veteran letters. And, and I got a lot of no's. And then, you know, even when I found directors who were might be interested in and, you know, they had completely different ideas. And so, you know, I was already conditioned to understand that, you know, if I, if I want this, I'm gonna have to you know, squeeze it through the funnel. And I, I mean, I just, I took no for an answer. And I think, you know, what I was able to do is, I was, I knew I had it. I knew I needed to create a product to show people from it. And that sometimes is, you know, sometimes just focusing, they always say, you know, the journey of 1000 steps begins with the journey of without the journey of 1000 miles begins the first step. And so, so many people told me to know that if I would have listened to them, and not focused on the first step, which was actually to memorize your eyes, just one letter, the play would have never become what it is today. And I was able to just basically, you know, tune them out to them out and listen to my voice and just completely only listen to myself and said, You know what, no one knows what to do with it. Everyone is telling me No, I'm going to focus on one thing right now that I have control over. And I'm going to start showing people something that I can create with it. And then from there, the yeses started to come. And that's where that and then from there more than I got a director who was interested in the work and got a director and said, You know, that's really powerful stuff that you have. No, you anymore And then from there, it just fast forward to right now, I've had the opportunity now to you have to be, I've shared this before you have to be so stubborn because there was a period when I was creating the play that every single festival told me no even when I had a version of it, they told me like, ah, I don't know, that's something we're really interested in right now. And I only got my first yes to a festival because someone dropped out of a festival. And that first yes gave me an opening. And now people look at the plate. You know, being at the Kennedy Center a couple of times and touring and the response it gets and now I get invitations and people don't they think they think that that's where you start you started from with the play, but they don't see the incredible amount of knows that you're going to get in the beginning. And you just have to have that complete, insane, insane stubbornness to push through and whatever it is you're pushing through, not to focus on what other people Going to value and what people are going to think about it because it's never your job to judge it. It's your job to create it, and let other people judge it because they will always judge whatever you create, especially in the art, you know, in the art world. In sports, if you shoot if you make if you shoot 20 points, or you score 20 points is 20 points. In the art what someone thinks is beautiful the other person can think is trash. So you're always subjective to the to, you always immersed. It's a subjective art. So you're at the mercy of the audience. So it's really important that in anything you create, and in that goes into business as well because it takes it to create to make a business you have to be creative and how you're going to get over your obstacles is to really focus on on the task at hand and focusing on what you're creating, not worrying about if people are going to think what you're creating has any value if it's stupid or not. Or if you're going to get laughed at you know, it was that usually is when you start listening to your ego and then That's when you start making really bad decisions. And you don't follow through what you're trying to do. And you start second-guessing yourself, and you start saying that it's probably not a good idea anyway. And you talk yourself out of it.Yeah, absolutely. I think that it's interesting. This is this. I just talked to a friend about this. But the idea of know sometimes people either get discouraged by now or there, they hear the kind of three feet from gold perspective, which is like, just keep going, just keep going. And I think what's interesting that you mentioned is when you heard No, you didn't just keep trying to offer the same thing over and over and over and over, every time you heard a know or maybe not every time but you know, as you were hearing knows, you made adjustments to what you were offering to make it more appealing to accept and I think so many people think, well, three feet from gold just says keep doing the same thing. Like no, you keep doing the same thing that you know, nobody wants. That's right. Oculus that's insanity, right? That's insanity. That's insanity, right? But if you're going to get to know, the end goal is I'm going to be on Broadway, I'm going to be in the Kennedy Center, I'm going to be traveling the world doing this. But that's the goal. Now, that's the goal. Now how that shows up is really, as you said, dictated by your subjective audience. And so if somebody says no to the first version of it, then you just create a new version, you create a new version, brand new version, until somebody says, yes, that happens at family life, dating doesn't matter. Everything ever, you have tohave the ability to it's a, it's a fine balance, but you have to have the ability to be stubborn and the same time to listen. Right? So you know, you're pushing through to the end goal, but you have to have the flexibility and the ability to take criticism and feedback and say, Okay, I'm hearing the same note over and over and over and I should make I should turn 45 degrees, or I should adjust the combination of what I'm trying to create right now. 35 to left 27 to the right. 13 to the left. Okay. Try 27 to the right, you keep messing with that combination to finally figure it out. But it doesn't mean that you say just because you say no, you quit. You say, Well, you know, and I used to I, whenever I would get it, no, I would always I mean, I don't take any easily. So when people would tell me to know, when especially directors, I would always say, Well, I appreciate your time. If you don't know if you're not interested in it, do you know anybody else who might be interested in it? And a lot of times just by continually pushing through and asking for more yeses, right? You start finding enough people who believe in what you're doing to cultivate to get you to what your end goal is, but, you know, I know it's just a temporary opinion. It's not a definite answer. It's just a temporary opinion because a lot of the theaters who have told me to know are now calling me to come to perform, right? It's just a temporary answer and no, if you don't take it personally, then it allows you to be more if you can learn how to put your needs Go away and not worry about criticism and, and put it to the side you become more you have the ability to, to swim up upstream so to say you have the ability to withstand and keep going, but if you let people's nose affect you personally, then that's true whether in life or in business or creating anything that becomes really hard for you to keep pushing to your project is the ability basically to say, you know, I get it, they don't really okay. Let me take it, let me what let me take your criticism. Let me take your feedback. Let me digest it. And let me see if I resonate with it. My first performed play, the reviewers were kept saying, I got Forstall for I got really good reviews and I got some mixed reviews in the beginning and but all the reviewers had one like they had one no they kept saying the reviewers and add a playwright Really smart guy. And I said, You know, I don't know if I should listen to these reviewers of, or should I just kind of throw it away, you know? And he said, Well if they're all telling you the same thing there is, there is some. It's, it's worth paying attention to what that criticism is. And so they were saying like, the plague wasn't teaching them something. They kept saying that it gets it like the plague didn't educate me in a way but didn't teach me in a powerful voice. It was very emotionally, it was very well crafted, rather well-acted, that it didn't feel like I was learning anything. So I sat back and I started going through the play and going through all the monologues that I had, instead of realizing that I wasn't teaching the audience of what was going inside, with what a veteran sees, feels inside, internally. And so I went back to the drawing board with my director and I said, You know, I need to add some more stuff to it. And that's really when the plane took off. The play started to explode after that, but I would have never been able to get where I'm at today if I hadn't had the flexibility, and not have the ego to say, I'm right, you're wrong, they're wrong. I'm right. And ignore their responses and, and ignore their criticism. And that's a really, that's a very valuable thing for anybody to take. Because if you're doing business and if you're creating anything, you know, you have to be if you're getting the same note, listen to it. And you can adjust to it. And they're always and there are some notes that you feel so strongly about, like, there were some, you know, some things that people talked about, like, that particular monologue to my director didn't really like but I feel so passionate about it that I said, it's not staying in the play. Like I want it. This is part of the play. So yeah, it's really important to have that flexibilityI've seen so I've seen some kind of go both ways. And it's interesting, sometimes when you hear those complaints, or constructive feedback, whatever and sometimes the responses You need to actually, it's a good response becausealthoughI'm trying to figure out how to say this, but, in any endeavor, you need to create tribes, you need to create separation between the things that people like and things that people don't. And, as you said, identify if it resonates with you, but it's not resonated with other people, okay, and we're gonna put other people in a quote in quote marks because that just means that they're not your people. And sometimes you need to blow that thing that nobody likes, you need to blow that up and make it, even more, standing out so people understand why it's there. And rather than remove it, and not give somebody the contrast, but give somebody more of the contrast, and once somebody has more of a contrast, then they can gain that understanding. They can learn, oh, this is why that those lines are in there because it's literally how somebody's feeling, not just a story, but these are the feelings and feelings are rarely unanimous. There's almost Almost every feeling, there's going to be some contrast that that's just the nature of humanity. And so it is a delicate balance. I'm curious. For me, I've had to adopt forms of meditation. Thanks to getting past naysayers in the early years. How did youlearn toput down the naysayer and say, Look, I'm not going to worry about your negative feedback. Did you have meditations? Did you have practices or rituals that you use to bolster your confidence at the same time as taking their feedback and say, Okay, what can I alter?Well, I mean, tactically what I always did is I did this more when I was a younger actor, but I would write where my dreams are. I would always write when my dreams are. And I used to keep a diary, a physical diary and I would write you know, this is what these are my dreams, this is where I hope I I am in five years where I am in 10 years and I would try to foresee that But, you know, when you become an actor, you know, you have to really love it. And so I would just tell myself, this is worth every ounce of frustration that I'm going to get. Because this is what I want to do. And I would sit there and think, could I do anything else? Um, I remember when I was getting heavy into acting, and there was a girl that I was dating before, who was not my wife right now. And she said, What are you going to quit this kid thing and get a real job. And I remember what I and I only bring that up because it's one of those things that someone tells you in, in the history of your life that are always those things that someone tells you that you never forget, you know, and you'll always look back at it and I remember thinking, one I thought, Okay, I guess we're done. Right, it's over with, but then I thought, I thought I like it. And I thought, well, she sees this as a doing like a, like a kid thing like a hobby, where I'm looking at it as a life mission as a dream of mine, right? It's a much the definition that she had what I was doing and the definition that I had what I was doing was so opposites. You know, she thought I was like, you know, I don't know to go to a tailgating game or something where I was like, I'm on a this is my mission. This is I'm going to be an actor. I want to tell stories, telling stories makes me feel happy. I'm just nothing else I want to do. And I think from a very early age, I understood that and once you understand that, I guess many people talk about it is your why but you have to sit down and you have to know what it is that you're doing and why you're doing it. Because if you don't know why you're doing it, that's when you can, you can get knocked off the track. Because if you're doing it because if you're doing it for your wife, if you're doing it for your kids, if you're doing it for your Dad for your mom, if you're doing it for, for your friends, if you're doing it for the kid who picked on you in high school, if you're doing it for the girl who didn't ask you out to the prom, you're doing it all for the wrong reasons. And that is going to do that's going to, you're not going to have the the the fortitude to finish through. So you have to have the ability to understand, okay, this is why I'm doing this. And this is what it means to me. And once you understand that, then the rejections and the failures don't matter because you're on you understand why you're doing it. And that's it's really important that people are crystal clear, and how they get there and how you can do it by writing. You know, you can kind of sit down there and everyone tries to skin the cat in many different ways people have you writing journals, people have you meditate, people have you, you know, you know, think out loud, talk to friends about it, but at the end of the day, the goal is still the same, the answer is still the same. Why do you want to do what you want to do and what does it mean to you? And that has to be something very powerful. Very, has to be something almost. It has to be worth death, to be honest, because if it's not worth death, then you're not going to finish. And so if, if whatever it is you want to do is not worth dying over. I would I would. Second I would check what that is and reevaluate. Because once you can answer this is worth dying for. And I know it's cliche to say, but life is so short. It is and to not do something in this life that you love is a real travesty. And when you start looking at the perspective of life through those prisms, and start and I in this and I understand that there's art, you know, wherever, wherever you're at in life, you have real responsibilities, you have bills, you have, you know, mortgages and, but whatever it is, even when you're doing within that You can find ways to say, Okay, how can Ihelp? If I want to do something more? How can I do it? At night? when everyone's asleep? How can I get up at four o'clock in the morning to do it right? To pursue the dreams that I want to pursue while I do my day job, quote, you know, my day job, so to say. And if you don't have that really clear answer to that it's worth doing. Even if it means death, then you're not going to wake up at four o'clock in the morning to pursue that dream. You're not going to stay up at two o'clock in the morning to pursue that dream. And that's what you need to do it. You know, it's just really important that you get clear on that and that answer, and I mean, write it in a journal, you know, where you want to see your life in five years in 10 years. What do you want people to say about you? That to me was always really important to you. What, where do I want to see myself you know, and I constantly see myself still holding an Oscar. You know, and I dream about it all. The time you know, and I keep those dreams and I may not reach that dream, but I get closer and closer and closer and closer. And those goals and make someone told me once that, you know, having these artistic goals or any goal makes life worth living, you need a goal to live. And I think a lot of depression and a lot of failures that happen in life is that people don't give themselves really exciting goals. You know, they don't give themselves tangible, really vibrant, really compelling, hard goals to achieve, you know, and to make life more interesting. They get caught in the minutiae of life, which is easy to get caught, you know, I mean, I saw my parents go through it, and you get on this treadmill so to say and you wake up the same day you go to work the same day you wake up the same day, you go to work the same day you wake up and it becomes this repetitive thing and eventually life is like this, you know, you're 65 years old, you know you're sitting there, you're watching jeopardy. Oh, that'd be terrible. Yeah. So it's important to have that, it's going to be worth doing, you know, even if it means death.Yeah, absolutely. I love that because there's a book called The Hundred and 77 mental toughness Secrets of the world-class by Steve Siebold. He was that held the contract him and his consulting firm held the contract for training, navy seals that America's navy seals on mental toughness. And that's one of the questions that he asks. right at the beginning of the book is, Hey, what are you willing to die for? What do you want to fight for? What do you how do you want to be remembered? I think understanding that is so crucial. And it's one of the reasons I do again, feel your legacy podcast. This is why I brought Doug's on here. Understanding that legacy most people have lost even a glimpse of that legacy in early teens, if not late childhood at this point in life. We're conditioned to not think about that and that is what I would do. From I would say religiously but also known religiously that spiritual suicide, just as Douglas said, and that is that, that's the key to having that vision, having the desire to go out there and do something. And that's I found the same thing in my life when, when I started into what I do right now public speaking, and I'm an author now and working in the financial industry, people I get a lot of people asked me, hey, Sam, why don't you go over to that company or that company or that company, you can get paid way more working at another company doing what you're doing? And never wants it? I've been thought of going where I'm getting paid the most. I've always thought about where can I go have the greatest impact? Where can I have the biggest alteration? Like how can I alter more people's lives and that's what I've been using to dictate where I go, but then I still have people ask me, when are you going to get a real job? And what I found is it's that moment. One, everybody should ask yourself, that doesn't matter even if you have a question. quote-unquote, a real job, when are you gonna go get a real job makes you question what you're doing? And that's an awesome question. So without those questions that were would never have been able to say, that's not the right girl for me or whatever, it's important to have people who question you and your life. But that's the moment where it's like, okay, obviously, you don't quite yet understand what I'm doing. And so I need to blow up my intention and come at this with so much more enthusiasm, so much more exciting. So you can see the vision of what I've seen because I've been kind of half passing it thinking that you're catching the vision, and you're okay with the vision, but you haven't caught the vision. And so I've got to go so big to where you catch the vision and keep going until you do. And I love that that's kind of one of those things you've done. I'm curious if you were to say one specific habit, mindset or behavior that you've used over the years of creating your legacy. What would that be like one thing that we could all adopt into our lives? I think the world valuable thing to do is wake up before everybody else.You know, in sports, we have anything you want to beat people to the spot in basketball. You know, the crossover and basketball are designed to give you separation between the defender. When it's designed the crossover move, anybody who doesn't know basketball sports, it's a move that the basketball players work on to get a little bit of separation to beat someone to the spot. So when you wake up early in the morning, you don't even have to be the most talented person. But if if you get up at four o'clock in the morning at 430 in the morning, and you start working on your goals for a couple of hours, and you do that on a repetitive basis, five days a week, four weeks out of the month, every month out of the year, you're going to be exponentially further from anybody who has any more talent in you. You're going to get more work done, you're going to beat them to the spot. So they may be faster they may be a faster rider. They may be a faster type of Maybe a faster blogger than maybe a faster speaker. But if you're getting up, you're producing, you're producing more content, you're, you're creating more work, more leverage every morning by getting up in the morning. That value of you getting up before, you know, before they wake up, gives you so much more leverage in your life. And to me, I mean, I had so many other projects and you have life in front of you. And I did all my writing early in the morning because it was the only time that I would get up. And there was no phone, there was no text, there was no email there was it was just me and me. That was it. And everybody else and so I would do that for about an hour, an hour and a half. And I would always, to me it was one of the things my mother taught me as a student as a young kid. I remember I think I was in seventh grade or eighth grade and I had to memorize I think the capitals of the United States and I was like oh my gosh, I'll never get this done. You know, and she's once you get up early in the morning and memorize it off, it's too hard because if you get up early in the morning, your brain will be fresh. You'll be able to do it. And I did. And I took that lesson too hard. And now I wake up every pretty much consistently, five, six days a week and 445 in the morning. And I try to get all my writing and all my work in before everybody else. Because once life starts, and it becomes difficult, but anybody, whatever your goals are, if you can just condition yourself to get up early in the morning to work on your projects, and you're going to get them done. And that is, to me the most, that's the most personal I feel is been the biggest asset to my success as a writer and as a producer.Yeah, I love that. I think that that's something that I've also noticed in my life. And I go in and out of it. I'm not perfect. I wish I was more perfect. But definitely when I have a target or something that I'm going for and I've got a deadline, I want it I want to get something achieved a certain point and then I stay up later and I wake up earlier because that simply would want to get your stuff done.Yeah. And when you get up early in the morning and you're tiredFor our, for your listeners to listen iswhen that voice speaks to you as that warm comfy pillow starts talking to you and that you know that bed says no stay in bed. And you know, it's much more comfortable in here, you have to tell yourself now the reason why I'm getting up is not because of the short term goal is because of the long term goal. There's a lot you're getting up to achieve the long term goal is and so it's not just to immediately shift your focus from short term to long term. And if you can do that, that makes it easier to get out of bed. Because you know, discipline is hard. And it's hard for me and it's hard for everybody. And if it was easy, then everybody would have the discipline I think about people always say I wish I had more discipline, but what you do it just you have to realize that it's hard. It was easy, then everybody would have discipline is it's where you are it's where your focus is as a person. So when you get up in the morning and alarm goes off and you're like, I don't know if I want to do this focus on the long term goal. Don't focus on the short term goal which is I'm just getting up to date. Focus on today is going to give me You know, this much more freedom in my life, this much more creativity in my life, this much more happiness in my life.I love that focus on the focus on the long term, read your goals. And then as you said, you know you you wrote out your vision multiple times to kind of handle because some of those naysayers they're not outside of us that those naysayers are just as much or more so inside of us than they are outside your mom and dad.Yeah, that people who care about you the most who want you to succeed. Sometimes the loneliest things are doing things when people you care about the most or against you. And again, it goes back. That's why you have to have that answer this is worth doing, even if it means death. Because if you don't have that answer, it's going to be easy to get knocked off your block.Yeah, for sure. So I'm curious for people who maybe haven't heard of this play or want to see this play and give us a little bit more information on how we can get in touch with you if we want to watch the short series or whatever. How do we get in touch? How do we watch what you're doing? support your endeavors and help you share this message of, in my opinion, building your legacy and focusing on that the long term rather than the short term.Sure. And just to let everybody know that this play, everyone who's trying to create something plays very successful right now it's touring. It's, it's performing notable, beautiful venues that it started with a piece of paper and simply an idea. So everyone should know that, you know, you can take any idea you have, and if you chip at it, a day at a time, consistently, you can make it into something very special. So that's something that's an important lesson for everyone to kind of take away but so the place called the American soldiers based on letters from the American Revolution through Afghanistan. They've been written by veterans and their family members on the play gives awareness to what veterans go through when they come back home from combat and their families. And it gives a true appreciation for their sacrifice. And commitment. And most importantly, it says thank you to them. The website is called www the American soldier solo show.com, the American Soldier Soldier show.com. And in November, I'll be at the Kennedy Center on the 13th. And then I'll be in Cape Cod. And then in January, potentially supposed to go to LA. And then I will be in North Carolina, on Veterans Day and then Chicago on Memorial Day and a couple of other cities. But if you go to the website and you sign up and you're interested in the project, or if you're interested in the play coming to your city or your state, you know, you can go to my website and contact me there and and then we can begin a discussion about how I can bring the play to your area or your community. But it's been an incredible honor now because I mean like I said, I probably almost started as an idea. I've now performed this play for over 10,000 audience and veterans and I received letters from veteran runs all the time and become friends with a lot of veterans, they'll ask you to keep going. So something that started as just a simple idea on a piece of paper that I wanted to tell the story for veterans now it's become this artistic mission that I could have never, ever in a million years would have thought it would be giving me back so much in return.That's awesome. And are you on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, where'sTwitter, Twitter, Twitter, and Instagram are at Douglas Taurel. And then my Facebook page is Douglas drill.Okay, awesome. Just a random question because I'm, I'm thinking of this as a show solo show. Is it something that you do all by yourself? Or do you have supporting staff and stage set and stuff that take how many people that take to put on this play?It's just me, it's just me. And then I usually have a sound designer and a lighting designer and usually when I traveled to a different city that was whatever venue I'm at, they provide that they provide me a sound designer in the theater and lighting designer, with a place kind of already been designed so we get there to get to the space. It's me and an army trunk, a world war two authentic army trunk, a six by nine American flag, and I play 14 characters. I play men, women, and children. I play many different accents. And one cost, I use one costume and my kind of manipulate it into many different costume changes. And I tell stories, I tell 14 characters from every conflict, and I try to kind of give it a whole module of what been associated with a family member who's been in combat or being a veteran who's come back from combat.Wow, that's, that's awesome. I'm going to, hopefully, I'll be in a city where it's playing. That'd be fun to watch. So here's that. Here's the next section here. And I love these last two sections. This one's called legacy on rapid-fire, almost like a little game show. But it's five questions. And you're just going to give us one word to one sentence. answers. Now, this first question, I've been getting the same answer repeatedly. So it's okay to give that answer but I'm asking you to clarify it now. So I haven't been able to change it. I don't know how to change it to target the clarification, but I prepped people here. So the question is, what do you believe is holding you back from reaching the next level of your legacy?It would be me. That's what everybody says. That's what I want you to clarify.What about you is holding you back? I mean,how much more work I can put into the day. Okay, I mean, it comes down. How much more work can I crank out in the day?Awesome. And what do you believe the hardest thing you've ever accomplished has been thehardest thing I've ever accomplished, then,you know, as an actor, there are so manyI mean, I would say this play. I mean, I had tremendous doubt in this play. I mean, I can't tell you how many know. I mean, just a side note, I threw the play in the trash can on one time. I was so frustrated because I was getting so many noses and I was just like, no one gets it. Everyone tells me No, all I have is a bunch of letters that over 1000 letters of veterans and my wife pulled it off to stop being a little girl. Do what you do memorize a piece of memorizing your favorite piece of text and start showing people where your passion is that and that. I think this play.I mean,From if I wish I could somehow in a three-hour film, I can crystallize where this place started more display is. It's been pretty magical in many different ways. It's I've been able to touch and speak to people that I could have never in 1000 years thought I would be telling And touching and speaking to,yeah, no, I love it. That's so I'm gonna break code here for a second, just because training my team on this just two days ago, two or three days ago. But it lends perfectly to this idea of he had to learn something and start showing people what he wants to do. So there's, in my opinion, there are four types of people who get on stage and do something, right, whether it's speaking or singing or whatever, right and, and I label them that as a talker, somebody who's just like, basically reading something, they're just talking. And they're no emotion, nothing almost monotone. They're just talking there can sure text conveying a message, then there's a speaker speaker a little bit better, because the speaker actually has intention behind like, they have a goal, they have a beginning endpoint. They know what they kind of know their structure. So they're structured but they're not there's no emotion in it. And then a presenter is somebody who's able to present with a little bit more fun Yes, so they're getting a little bit more buy-in. But what you want to achieve is somebody who gives somebody an experience. And as long as you're telling somebody something, or showing somebody something, you're not able to give them an experience. And so you have to infuse the emotion. And I love that your wife said, Go memorize a piece of it and show people what you love to do. Because at that point, that's when you're able to infuse the emotion into the script and show somebody. This is why it's important. Because I say the same words in my presentations to my clients as I as some of the other people that I work with. But our results are so different because of the emotion behind what I'm doing and what they're doing. They're presenting, which is decent, and they're showing people what they do. I'm allowing my clients to experience the transition between where they are and where they're going to be all in that meeting with me. So that experience they want it so much more because now they've experienced but they have that comment. The dissonance of it's not quite a reality. So let's do it. And they take that next step forward and they want to rather than me trying to drag somebody through a pushup, push a playthrough. You want them to watch your play notbe okay with your way. Yeah, well, we have a say in acting. show people don't tell people.Yeah, show people, you don't want to tell them. No one wants to be told anything.That's true on stage. So a lot of times when I'm if I'm directing actors, or I'm coaching actors is that you know, don't tell me Show me. Yeah, exactly. If you're in a scene, if you love her, show me, don't tell me that you love her. Like, how would you act? If you love that girl? Show me. What would you do? Get on your knees? Would you do you know? Pull her chair out for us. You know, we want to see you show us. We don't want to see you tell us much more interesting when you show us and you tell us?Yeah, absolutely. So what would you say your greatest success at this point in your life has been?I mean, I don't want to sound like a broken record again. But I meanHad this play at the Kennedy Center twice has been,you know, as a performer to get the opportunity to perform at the Kennedy Center is such a far fetched dream. You know, it's such a, it's like, you know, down the runway pipe dream when you're a kid that, you know, one day I'll be able to love to perform at the Kennedy Center. And to take this idea to be invited back at the Kennedy Center to me is I have to say, it goes back to the play at the Kennedy Center. I mean, it's awesome to be twice they're invited back. So I mean, I and I was at the Library of Congress. And so I mean, the stages that this venue has taken me to is just been mind-blowing.Cool. And so what's one more secret Do you believe what contributes to your success?stubbornness, you just you had? I have I think I was born with the ability to ignore other people's criticism.I've always had that ability not to be.And I've had friends told me that because I, I've had many friends have told me, I don't know how you're an actor, I would fail one audition and I couldn't do it anymore. And I just always could ignore people. I think, you know, you can develop that skill, but I think that's the one thing that I've always been blessed with that I can just focus on my voice and my mission and that to me, is all that matters.Yeah, that's awesome. So what are a few books that you recommend to the fuel your legacy audience may be to learn more about what you do or just books that have been a guiding light to you throughout your journey?I mean, I don't know if people will find this very powerful, but, you know, one of the most one of the books to change my life so pretty dramatically was during the race memory book. You know, as an actor, I was always trying to find how to how can have a strong memory and I think a strong memory can help you in any business in any in anything in life. And I would say for everyone to get that book so it'll tell you the tactical things of how to use your memory in a much more powerful way. And then what happens is that gives you confidence because you have a stronger memory and the more confidence you have you perform in with more confidence. So I that's one book and another great book that I've read isMaxwell,Psycho-Cybernetics by his last name is Maxwell Maxwell's book. Psycho. cybernetics is a really powerful book but it goes to the point of visualizing where you want to go and how when you visualize it, your body will, you will go there and he goes into research and studies where there's the famous one where like people who have the simple act of writing down your goal makes you like something like 60% more, gives you 60% more chance of actually achieving that goal, just by sliding it down. And by having a vision and people who have a vision and forward can go into the subconscious where your body your mind starts feeding the body, the body starts feeding the mind where you start performing the actions that you need to fulfill your vision. So I would say Psycho-Cybernetics and the head of the range memory book and Neuro-Linguistic processing. I've always been fascinated by the psychology of the mind because I've always been trying to find out how can I, what can I do to kind of tweak this muscle and get the most out of it? And so books on NLP will be really powerful. Your linguistic processing?Yeah. Now cool. Those three books, they're going to have show notes. They'll be some in the show notes for books for those. And then here's my favorite part of the show. This is like, probably one of the whole reasons I do this show. It's my favorite I get to pretend that you're dead. Um, so I guess I don't like it as much, but I do know. But really though the thing is legacy. And you alluded to this earlier in the show and I wanted to say yeah, that's we're going to talk about but I held off. Legacy is really about what are you being remembered? So we're going to pretend you're dead and you get to view your great great great great grandchildren six generations down, sitting around the table discussing your legacy. What do you want them to be saying six generations now?six generations away about Douglas. You went through his dreams.I love it. Simple, short, sweet direct, going after his dreams and you can do that's, that'swhat drives me. I have a dream that I'm still trying to fulfill. And so it's what I tell my children to go after your dreams.Just be willing to work on but go after him.Yeah, and that's all you need. So thank you so much, Douglas, for coming on the show and sharing this I'm excited to see where this goes and see as your career progresses the different types of opportunities that you get through being just absolutely determined I'm excited for you to see you are or hold your Oscar. Just know that you got that. And because I think it'll happen if you with as much focus and attention you're putting to it, I see no, no reason why it wouldn't happen.And I appreciate those happen over time. Thank you, man. Thank you for having the opportunity to share my story with you guys. Yeah,no problem. We'll catch youguys next time on fuel your legacy.Thanks for joining us. If what you heard today resonates with you please like comment and share on social media tag me and if you do, give me a shout out. I'll give you a shout out on the next episode. Thanks to all those who've left a review. It helps spread the message of what it takes to build a legacy that lasts and we'll catch you next time on fuel your legacy.Connect more with your host Samuel Knickerbocker at:https://www.facebook.com/ssknickerbocker/?ref=profile_intro_cardhttps://www.instagram.com/ssknickerbocker/https://howmoneyworks.com/samuelknickerbockerClick The Link Bellow To Join My Legacy Builders Mastermindhttps://www.facebook.com/groups/254031831967014/Click here to check out my webinar as well!Want Sam’s FREE E-BOOK?Claim your access here! >>> Fuel Your Legacy: The 9 Pillars To Build A Legacy

Today, we welcome indie movie darling ELYSE CANTOR to review NEIGHBORS!! Elyse is very funny/talented/kind person and you should follow her on her journey to stardom (Twitter/IG: @elysedc) BUT FIRST listen to this episode and enjoy your thanksgiving. And hey, do us a favor and tell your uncle about us. Maybe bring it up while you're eating mashed potatoes at the dinner table with the rest of your family. That'd be so cool. Alright, goodbye.

This is too much fun! Today, we have Jill Winger of The Prairie Homestead on a 2-part conversation! On today's episode, we get into the life that lead Jill and her family to have a 9-year (and running) blog into their lives on the homestead! We also talk about her journey toward living a more natural and healthy life, discussing the 5 Pillars of Unconventional Wellness. As we talk about in the Episode, you can check out Jill's new book, The Prairie Homestead Cookbook: Simple Recipes for Heritage Cooking in Any Kitchen! Get your copy: HERE! Enjoy our conversation! Here are the shownotes for today's episode: Frank: (00:00)Welcome to unconventional wellness radio. I'm Frank and I'm your host. I'm a physician assistant trying to bring you the five pillars of unconventional wellness and on today's episode we bring on a special guest who's not just a special guest, but also a great friend of my wife's and I. Her name is Jill winger and she started a blog that has grown to over 750,000 people every single month called the Prairie homestead. And we're gonna talk real and talk transparently about her journey and how she has changed her course of wellness and how she has living out those five pillars of unconventional wellness in our home itself. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about her book and we're also going to talk about heritage cooking, which is something that she has launched recently. So stay tuned. This is episode number 43 of unconventional on this radio and I will talk to you guys very, very soon. Hey everyone, and welcome to unconventional wellness radio, powerful and inspiring podcast sets of revolutionize and disrupt healthcare. It's time to put you in the driver's seat. That'd be the force of change necessary for the lifestyle you've always wanted. Frank: (01:07)Hey guys, how are you? This is Frank and this is unconventional wellness radio and I'm just going to flat out jump right into it because I didn't want to keep you any longer and build up any more suspense. Uh, but I have a friend of mine on this podcast episode for today. Uh, you probably know who she is because if you have even considered dabbling in any type of homesteading or heritage cooking, uh, will definitely trust me. We will make sure that you're experts on what heritage cooking is even all about. Uh, but I have Jill winger, uh, from the Prairie homestead on my podcast today and I'm extraordinarily excited to be able to actually speak with her about everything that she's got going on in her life. And, uh, we are going to get transparent and, uh, probably a little raw and real. And we're going to dive into what makes Jill winger, uh, just such a wonderful light and such a wonderful inspiration to a lot of people who know her not only through her podcast but also through her website. Frank: (02:14)Uh, the Prairie homestead. She's a friend of ours that we met mutually, uh, a couple of years ago. Uh, and we have just fallen in love with both her and her husband, Christian, who have this really wonderful a homestead out in Wyoming and that they now are raising so many different types of animals. And we'll talk about all of those and we'll talk about all the wonderful things that she's doing on the homestead. But I am so grateful, Jill, for you being

What Makes a Successful House Wholesaler (HA 081) Steven Jack B.:                   Jill and Jack here. Jill DeWit:                            Hello. Steven Jack B.:                   Welcome to the House Academy Show, entertaining real estate investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit:                            And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Jack B.:                   Today Jill and I talk about what makes a successful house wholesaler. Jill DeWit:                            I would like just to point out something. The way you just started the show just had a nice ring to it. Steven Jack B.:                   Oh, because you're first now? Jill DeWit:                            Yeah. Steven Jack B.:                   You know what we decided? Jill DeWit:                            I was first there, but I wasn't first on the names. Maybe we should- Steven Jack B.:                   You know what we decided? Jill DeWit:                            Are we easing into it? Steven Jack B.:                   And it's been this way all along, but it was brought to our attention, my attention recently that, "Hey Jack, it's not about you, man. Hey Jill, it's all about you." Jill DeWit:                            Thank you. Steven Jack B.:                   "You're just a sidekick. You're just the guy who's standing there trying to make everybody look a little bit more intelligent, just trying to." Jill DeWit:                            The one who's doing the math, the man behind the curtain. Steven Jack B.:                   The other thing too is that Jack and Jill sounds like we're selling nursery rhymes. Jill DeWit:                            Exactly, so we thought we'd go with Jill and Jack. Steven Jack B.:                   So yeah, it probably confuses the hell out of everybody. Jill DeWit:                            It makes you think. I hope it does, we'll see. We'll find out. Steven Jack B.:                   Before we get into it let's take a question posted by one of our members on the houseacademy.com online community. It's free. Jill DeWit:                            Aaron asks, "What exactly is SPS," which is a Smart Pricing Service, "from offers to owners? Have any of you used it?" And I see someone's already weighed in and answered here. Kelly said, "Is that an abbreviation for Smart Pricing Service?" Yes. "If so, yes, I've used it for a big list and it's definitely worth it." So without getting too into it and too brainy, can I- Steven Jack B.:                   I got some instructions today about how the show should go, how we should record the show. Here's the instructions. Jill DeWit:                            Oh no. Steven Jack B.:                   "Hey Steve"- Jill DeWit:                            Jack. Steven Jack B.:                   "Can you tone it down and just stop making this so brainy and so really nothing interesting?" Jill DeWit:                            Well, I'm right on the interesting part. We like the brainy part. That part's good. Steven Jack B.:                   So I'm going to sit quietly and listen today. Jill DeWit:                            No, that's not the truth. Okay, so here is the deal. One of the things that we do when we're doing our pricing, we all come up with our own ... We have our own way of valuating these assets, looking at what's available, but let's take a step back. We all know ... If you don't, you should and you do now ... that Zillow, Trulia, Redfin, Realtor, DataTree, all these companies spend a lot of money to put together their own unique algorithms for pricing properties. That's why when you go on something like realtor.com it gives you it's value. It's not a made up number. It's looking at comps, what's available, what's sold, probably square footage. I'm hoping the size of the lot's in there, three bed, two bath, whatever it is. I'm sure they all do a version ... I don't know all the details and I don't need to get into all the details here now, but they do some version of informative, elevated, smart pricing. So what we do is- Steven Jack B.:                   It's an algorithm. Jill DeWit:                            Yeah, it's an algorithm. Do you want to continue it? Steven Jack B.:                   Yeah. So if you'll notice if you look up your home address on Zillow, Trulia, Redfin, DataTree, it's all different, but they're all not crazy, crazy different. One's not $500,000 and one's $1.2- Jill DeWit:                            Right. Steven Jack B.:                   In very rare cases, that's the situation. Jill DeWit:                            Thank you. Steven Jack B.:                   So they all have the different take on what's in that algorithm. The ones that are my favorite lean heavily on recent sales or recent listings, not so much on the asset itself. Jill DeWit:                            Right. Steven Jack B.:                   And then they look at the lot size and square footage. So is one better than the other? I don't know. But we don't judge. We just line them all up next to each other and take the average, and so it's a lot of work to look up all those properties. And we're working on automating that so that you just hit a button and it goes out and brings all that data back into the spreadsheet in the correct format. But until then a human has to do it, and we choose our virtual assistant team in the Philippines. Jill DeWit:                            Right, so we saw that on offers to owners. You can go in and you could put it ... I don't care if it's 10 units or 10,000 units. We hit them with 20,000 and then they'll work on it. Depending how many it is, it might take hours, it might take a day- Steven Jack B.:                   It's never taken longer than 48 hours and we do some 20,000 unit plus mailers- Jill DeWit:                            Exactly- Steven Jack B.:                   Often. Jill DeWit:                            And they sit and look up all those numbers and put them in for you and send it right back. And then it's great because then from there Jack still does his magic, if you will. And he uses that as a tool to price our offers. Steven Jack B.:                   Exactly. And it's very, very accurate. It's way more accurate and more fun than the values that we come up with to buy land. Jill DeWit:                            Right. Steven Jack B.:                   That's more of an art. Jill DeWit:                            It's true. Steven Jack B.:                   This is more of a science. Jill DeWit:                            It's very true. Steven Jack B.:                   Today's topic, what makes a successful house wholesaler? This is the meat of the show. Jill DeWit:                            You go first. What do you think? Steven Jack B.:                   After I get my keyboard thing up. Jill DeWit:                            Okay. Is everything working okay there? Steven Jack B.:                   Before we say ... We talked about what a successful wholesaler is, let's just define it. What is a house wholesaler? Oh go ahead, yeah, sure. I want to see if our answer's the same here. Jill DeWit:                            If you didn't see that, for those of you that are not watching I raised my hand. And no, I wasn't always that kid in high school that always had an answer for everything. Usually in high school by the way, I was in the back going, "Please don't pick me. Don't make eye contact." Steven Jack B.:                   Me too. Jill DeWit:                            Even if I know the answer, just let somebody else go. It's too much work. I'm over here doing my thing. I'm only here because I have to be here. So anyway- Steven Jack B.:                   This morning Jill and I were having breakfast together and for whatever reason we were talking about when we were little kids and how our parents reacted to stuff, and how as parents we are. Jill and I just walk around and say, "Gosh, we're the coolest parents there ever was." All parents probably say that. Anyway I said, "What was it like when you were a kid?" And she said, "I broke a lot of glass." Jill DeWit:                            I said, "My dad was, "Really?" Steven Jack B.:                   Did you really- Jill DeWit:                            It's so funny- Steven Jack B.:                   Break a lot of glass? Jill DeWit:                            Hold on a moment. Yeah, my dad was pretty chill. My dad's like, "Just come on, can you get your act together here?" My mom was not that way, no. And so for some reason I seemed to drop glasses a lot and my mom would always have a fit. Whether it was emptying the dishwasher or just getting them from the table to the kitchen, I have no idea why. Actually, I do think I know why. You know what, this is Jill therapy. Steven Jack B.:                   I want to hear this, too. Jill DeWit:                            You know why? I have been and forever will be someone who wants to make less trips than more trips to and from the car- Steven Jack B.:                   Me too- Jill DeWit:                            To and from the kitchen, to and from anywhere. So what do I do? Oh, I load up man. Steven Jack B.:                   Overload. Jill DeWit:                            And so I'm sure that's why. I was probably balancing 16 things because I thought I could do it in one trip and I was willing to risk it, to try. So what happens is I'm always dropping something, that's why. Steven Jack B.:                   When the kids were little I was trying to be a better parent, so I was read these books about parenting. And one of the things that stuck with me forever was this person who wrote this book, I don't remember even what book it was, they said, "There's a really big difference between telling your child that they made a mistake and telling them that they're stupid." It can be psychologically damaging forever. Jill DeWit:                            Oh my gosh. What if somebody says, "You made a mistake, stupid?" Steven Jack B.:                   You drop a glass, it's not that Jill's a ... doesn't make her a bad person. Jill DeWit:                            No. Steven Jack B.:                   She just made a mistake. Jill DeWit:                            Exactly. Steven Jack B.:                   And my parents did not know the difference between that. Jill DeWit:                            Oh ... oops, sorry. No, I got in trouble for the incident, not for being an idiot. It's true. Nevermind, I was an idiot. Steven Jack B.:                   My parents whole take on the thing was, "This is just another incident that confirms what we knew all along." Jill DeWit:                            "You're not that bright." Steven Jack B.:                   "A long, long list of examples that you continue to add to. This is the most recent one." Jill DeWit:                            Nice. "Check, we knew that was going to happen." Oh gosh. Okay, so back to what is a successful wholesaler? Steven Jack B.:                   What is a wholesaler? A wholesaler is not what you see on HGTV. That is a rehabber. We don't want any part of that. Our group is packed full of people who have long thrown their tools away. We want to buy an asset for 70% of what it's worth-ish, mark it up 10 to $50,000, let's say ballpark, and sell it to the person who's going to clean it up or rehab it. We are wholesalers. Jill DeWit:                            It's the easiest thing. I love it. And imagine this, because you're only dealing with other investors. You're not dealing with the realtor who has the couple in the car, who wants to drive by and look at it and then bring the kids and maybe even have a picnic there to see if the view's that good. You never know. Steven Jack B.:                   Occasionally we hit an asset, we buy an asset that looks great, and we decide incorrectly to retail it- Jill DeWit:                            Or to do a lipstick flip kind of thing. Steven Jack B.:                   Yeah, we maybe change the carpet out or something and that's it. Jill DeWit:                            Right. Steven Jack B.:                   And every single time we do that, we regret it. Jill DeWit:                            We kick ourselves. Steven Jack B.:                   It hasn't happened much this year. We did one last year, but we made a hundred grand on it but- Jill DeWit:                            We have to catch ourselves. Steven Jack B.:                   It took four or five months to sell it, I think. Jill DeWit:                            So much more work. Steven Jack B.:                   Yeah. Jill DeWit:                            A lot of talking- Steven Jack B.:                   A lot of phone calls, a lot of real estate agent contact. So if you listen to this show at all you know how we feel about that. Jill DeWit:                            Exactly. You know, the thing is too when you're dealing with people who are just like you in the like mind, you bought it for cash, they're coming in with cash. They love that you had the inspection, you hand it to them. All I need to do is walk it once and they're done. I mean that's really it. And that's- Steven Jack B.:                   And if you do it right you're selling to the same person over and over again too, for the same five, eight, 10 people per market. Jill DeWit:                            Exactly. So I think we're describing not only what a wholesaler is, but what a successful wholesaler is. Steven Jack B.:                   That's a wholesaler. "So that's great, Steve. Thanks for the definition." Jill DeWit:                            "I could've done this myself online." Steven Jack B.:                   If you're actually still listening, here's the topic. The successful wholesaler is data centric. The asset itself is merely the results of the manipulation of assessor data and how you've utilized it and looked at it and looked at the market. Jill DeWit:                            Right. Steven Jack B.:                   We are data people that happen to buy and sell real estate. We could be data people that happen to buy and sell stock. Jill DeWit:                            It's true. Steven Jack B.:                   We know people that are like that, very successful people. Jill DeWit:                            We could be doing this with cars- Steven Jack B.:                   Extremely successful, yeah. Jill DeWit:                            Boats- Steven Jack B.:                   But it's data first. So that's in my mind what makes a successful wholesaler. But I'm the acquisition guy and I designed all this, put this whole thing together from scratch. I came up with it somehow, I don't know why. Really because I didn't want to talk on the phone. Jill, once the mail gets out, if you listened to yesterday's show or whenever it aired, the most recent show before this, I'm done when the mail goes out. I'm done. What makes a successful wholesaler then is Jill. Every single person in our group who does very, very well is on the phone all day, all day. That's what this business is. And so I don't want ... I think there ... The ones who are great- Jill DeWit:                            You mean getting inbound calls? Steven Jack B.:                   Yeah. Jill DeWit:                            Okay, yeah, yeah. I'm not outbound calls, it's inbound calls. Steven Jack B.:                   Inbound calls, responding to the mailer. Jill DeWit:                            I want to make that really clear. Do you know what, that's what's interesting. I'm going to just say real quick, we talked about this the last show too, we're just with a couple last weekend who thought they knew what we do and realized they have no idea what we do. Steven Jack B.:                   Which we don't talk about it anyway, we're out having fun. Jill DeWit:                            And it was so cute. Yeah, trust me, we don't bring this up. Steven Jack B.:                   They didn't make a mistake- Jill DeWit:                            No- Steven Jack B.:                   Is what I'm saying. Jill DeWit:                            Oh no, no, no. But what's funny is people ... and I can see where they get this, they think this is a cold calling environment. It's not, there's no outbound calls. Steven Jack B.:                   The whole concept is- Jill DeWit:                            It's all inbound. Steven Jack B.:                   We send out thousands and thousands of letters and then if you can envision these people opening their mail, all of them simultaneously sitting at their kitchen table ... there's only going to be a handful of them that have chosen themselves as a potential seller now. You just kind of rattled the cage. Then they've said, "Wow, this is perfect timing. I do want to sell this. I was just talking to my wife a couple of days ago. We need to sell this house." Jill DeWit:                            Right. Steven Jack B.:                   "We need to move back to Boston. We need to," fill in the blank. Jill DeWit:                            Right. Steven Jack B.:                   So they choose you, we don't choose them. Jill DeWit:                            Exactly. Steven Jack B.:                   And so 20 or 30 people are going to identify themselves as a seller, per mailer, and maybe three, four or five of those people, the deals actually make sense all the way through, from a financial perspective and a location and all that stuff. Jill DeWit:                            Right. Those numbers apply to a how many unit mailer that went out? Steven Jack B.:                   For houses? Jill DeWit:                            Yeah. Steven Jack B.:                   Oh, those numbers ... Let's just back it back into it this way. I feel very safe in saying that between 1200 and 4,000 people ... you want to answer this on the air? Jill DeWit:                            You want me to answer this? Steven Jack B.:                   Yeah. Jill DeWit:                            All right, I'm going to answer real inbound. This is a seller calling me back. Who knows what this is going to be. Ready, here we go. Jill DeWit:                            Hi, this is Jill. Speaker 3:                           Okay, I called this morning. I got one of your ... What are they called, purchase price things? Jill DeWit:                            Yes. Speaker 3:                           Okay, and I called you this morning because I want this name to be taken off your list. Jill DeWit:                            Okay. Speaker 3:                           Paul Romberg at 1435. Well, after the family did a little bit of research they want to make sure that you do that because it's really worth three times that much. Because when you send things out as you know, it's the seniors that you probably research sometimes. Jill DeWit:                            I don't- Speaker 3:                           And they go ahead and agree. Jill DeWit:                            No. Speaker 3:                           How are these done? Jill DeWit:                            You know what, I'll tell you. Here in Southern California it's tricky because it's based a lot of it ... There's a lot of stuff that goes into it. The way things are valued here in California and what they're really worth sometimes are very different, I totally understand that. And it's a good thing because we all know that you don't want to run down right now to the assessor and say, "Hey, I'm paying you too little in taxes. You all think my property is worth less." We like it that way, so that's part of the thing. So the bigger question is ... And I know sometimes they're off and I apologize, I did the best I can. But if that price doesn't work and you do want to sell, what price would work and I'll sure look at that. Speaker 3:                           Oh yeah, they've already done that. They're not selling. Jill DeWit:                            Oh, okay. So it doesn't matter what. I could have offered you three times what you really think it is and you don't want them- Speaker 3:                           He's 92 and he's not dead yet, so they're not selling. Jill DeWit:                            Okay, nobody wants to sell? Speaker 3:                           We don't want to get any more things like this because we don't get them very often. Jill DeWit:                            I understand- Speaker 3:                           And it's disturbing because if someone isn't here to open the mail then it creates other problems. Jill DeWit:                            Okay- Speaker 3:                           And confusion. Jill DeWit:                            No problem. Speaker 3:                           And so that's another thing. If you have a grandfather or a grandmother- Jill DeWit:                            I do- Speaker 3:                           Or something and they go, "Oh, this sounds good," and they sign papers- Jill DeWit:                            Oh no, we would ... Oh no, I wouldn't let it get to that point too, by the way. I would make sure and do my homework and make sure everybody's on board, and exactly. Don't even worry about that. Speaker 3:                           I just want it clear that it's taken off because I don't think they're going to sell it. Jill DeWit:                            That's a whole different thing- Speaker 3:                           [inaudible 00:16:33]. Jill DeWit:                            Well you know what though, save it and who knows? Someday if something changes and you do want to sell it, let me know. And you can call back and say, "Hey Jill, I know I got this crazy offer from you two years ago, but we do want to sell and here's the price. And you said you'd do it quick and fast. I might be interested." So just let me know. Speaker 3:                           [inaudible 00:16:59] the file. Jill DeWit:                            Okay. Alrighty, thank- Speaker 3:                           I wanted to know what was what because otherwise I'd be thinking about it and going, "What?" Jill DeWit:                            Exactly. Speaker 3:                           But thanks for explaining what you're doing and- Jill DeWit:                            No problem. I appreciate it- Speaker 3:                           [inaudible 00:17:12] real estate, so- Jill DeWit:                            Yes. Speaker 3:                           Thanks very much, Jill. Jill DeWit:                            Thank you. Speaker 3:                           No problem. Jill DeWit:                            Take care. Okay, bye bye. Speaker 3:                           Bye. Jill DeWit:                            You never know. Steven Jack B.:                   That is how you take an inbound phone call. Jill DeWit:                            Thank you. Steven Jack B.:                   Jill, in a very firm and very respectful tone turned that call all the way around. Jill DeWit:                            Thank you. Steven Jack B.:                   She was mad. You could hear it in the beginning. At the end she was thanking Jill, and that is what it takes. Jill DeWit:                            Thank you. Steven Jack B.:                   I'm just going to go out on a limb here because I know I say stuff on these shows sometimes and you're like, "God." Jill DeWit:                            Go ahead. Steven Jack B.:                   If that is not in your skillset, what you just saw and heard, this business is going to be very hard for you. Jill DeWit:                            Right. And you have to say that with these people. You'd be surprised how many phone calls that I have taken in the last 48 hours that I got a number out of them. They're like, "Oh, okay, well let me tell you, if it was this much money I would be interested." Okay, now we know. And so then I go back and we do our work and then sometimes it works- Steven Jack B.:                   Exactly- Jill DeWit:                            If it's still a good number. Steven Jack B.:                   But to finish my thought ... Absolutely Jill- Jill DeWit:                            Thank you- Steven Jack B.:                   To finish my thought, I don't have that talent that Jill has. I have it if I ... It's in here, I just don't want to do it. That's the truth. So I stick to the data piece and all that. Chances are you're either like me or you're like Jill. And if you find a partner that's the opposite, you're going to do just great. Jill DeWit:                            Exactly. Steven Jack B.:                   I've said this a million times on the air since 2015; when I teamed up with Jill, our revenue quadrupled- Jill DeWit:                            Thanks- Steven Jack B.:                   That week because she does what it takes on the phone with these buyers and sellers and gets them to do what she wants them to do. It's classic Dale Carnegie stuff, and they don't even have any idea that it's happening. I live with her and she does it to me all the time. Jill DeWit:                            I don't even think it's that. It's not manipulation, it's just figuring out if they really want to sell or not. What's going on? It's not manipulating anything, it's getting to the bottom of it. Steven Jack B.:                   Its helpful. That's how I look at it. Jill DeWit:                            And you know what, and if she doesn't want to, she doesn't want to sell. I'm not going to beat her up, who cares? But someday they might. She just told me the guy's 92. Well you know what, he might not make it to a hundred. I'm not trying to be mean or anything but hey, that doesn't mean I'm a bad person. My offer was off, who flipping cares? Steven Jack B.:                   For the record, we don't target- Jill DeWit:                            I don't target- Steven Jack B.:                   There's no age, or there's no way to look at that in assessor data. Jill DeWit:                            We don't look at the obituaries. Could you imagine? Steven Jack B.:                   We just send it- Jill DeWit:                            We don't do that. We don't do back tax properties. Steven Jack B.:                   Price per square foot analysis- Jill DeWit:                            Exactly- Steven Jack B.:                   That letter just happened to get to somebody who was older. Jill DeWit:                            Right. Steven Jack B.:                   That's it. The next one- Jill DeWit:                            The 20 year-old down- Steven Jack B.:                   The next one got to a millennial- Jill DeWit:                            The block got one too. Just bought his first thing. He got a letter too, so that's exactly right. He probably just bought it six months ago, who knows? That property is zoned and priced the way we wanted. Steven Jack B.:                   Exactly. Jill DeWit:                            I think we covered it. That was good. Steven Jack B.:                   We know your time is valuable. Thanks for spending some of it with us today. Join us next time for another interesting episode. Jill DeWit:                            And we you answer your questions posted on our online community that you can find at houseacademy.com. It is free. Steven Jack B.:                   You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Jill DeWit:                            That was kind of fun. Steven Jack B.:                   I think that was incredibly informative. Jill DeWit:                            I hope so. Steven Jack B.:                   I was hoping when it rang that it would be a deal. Jill DeWit:                            I know. Steven Jack B.:                   Because that'd be cool. Jill DeWit:                            That'd be good. Well I'll keep doing this on these shows now and then. When the call comes in I'll just answer it. I think it helps everybody. Steven Jack B.:                   I think it's great. Jill DeWit:                            You got to get over it, and a lot of people are afraid of those calls. You've got to get over the hurdle and it's okay. Well, you know, I had a great call today earlier too. I had one that turned out that she didn't want to sell. She's a buyer, I could tell because she's already down the process of doing their own ... We hit another investor who's already redoing the property. She's thinking she's going to sell to me now and then when it's done. That's not what I want. Slash however, now I can cue up deals to her. She's a buyer, it's really good. The House Academy Daily Show remains commercial-free for you, our loyal listener. Wherever you are watching, wherever you are listening, please subscribe and rate us there. Both:                                     We are Jill and Jack. Jill DeWit:                            Inspiration- Steven Jack B.:                   And information to buy undervalued property.  

Do you know what your body is telling you at any given time? Well, there's a key to finding out how it talks and how to listen. Hmm. Mm hmm. That'd be a good thing, right? Let's see about that.   ☆Visit my Website and Blog Page at http://www.revivor.net ☆Email me at chris@revivor.net ☆View my Facebook Page at http://www.facebook.com/iamarevivor ☆Tweet with me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/iamarevivor I look forward to hearing from you and being a part of your journey.

Episode Notes Episode Description: Summer’s over and we are officially back! Sophia, David and Hannah (along with special guests Carl Morison and Jakob Lazzaro) talk about studying abroad in Asia in the latest episode of Second GenerAsian! Sophia Lo: Hi and welcome back to... All: Second GenerAsian. Sophia: I'm Sophia. David Deloso: I'm David. Hannah Julie Yoon: And I'm Hannah. David: And for those of you who are new, this is our podcast where we talk about our Asian American identity... Hannah: And also generally what it's like to be an Asian-American Northwestern student. Sophia: So today, since this is our first episode back from the summer, we're going to talk about what we did over the summer, more specifically study abroad programs. David: So for this summer, I studied abroad in Beijing, China through a Northwestern program. I was studying poli-sci and Chinese language. And it was one of the best two months of my life. So many awesome memories, I met so many cool people and it really made me interested about what other people's experiences have been like studying abroad, specifically in Asian countries. Hannah: So we thought we'd gather some of our friends who have also studied abroad in Asian countries and have them talk to us about what it was like. Sophia: So, David first question: Why China? David: So I've been taking Chinese since my freshman year of high school and I've always just been really interested in the culture. And yeah, I just wanted to practice my Chinese, which I had mixed results with, but that's why I picked China. Sophia: And what's your favorite memory from studying abroad? David: The one-week break when we all went to Shanghai, or at least my friend group did, and it was great because we didn't have classes that week and we just kind of got to explore one of the coolest cities any of us had ever been in, and just really bond. We all stayed in an Airbnb and we had some amazing food. Shanghai has xiao long bao which are soup dumplings. They're very hard to find in the Midwest. I finally got to have some good ones, and it was honestly a life-changing experience because now all I can think about is when I'm going to have xiao long bao again, and it's probably going to be a while, but that was just a great time. I think my biggest takeaway was just the fact that being in a country that you're not really familiar with, with other people who are also not that familiar with it is just a very amazing bonding experience. You really gotta stick together. And I mean, I was seeing the same eight or nine people every single day for two months, and by the end we were all so close and I still keep up with them now that we're back on campus. And I don't think that really matters what country you go to. Just being in another country with people is just a really great time. So yeah, I would definitely recommend this program or any study abroad program to Northwestern students or any students who are interested in doing something that's very different from being on campus and like doing the same like, you know, kind of daily grind stuff that you really get used to in college. It was very, very different from my college experience, even though we were taking classes still. And yeah, it was just a great way to spend the Summer especially since it was the Summer after my freshman year, and I didn't have to worry about getting an internship or anything. Yeah. I really loved it. Hannah: If you had to summarize your study abroad experience in one sentence in Chinese, what would it be? David: 我的中文不太好 所以别的人都不会听懂我说的话. So basically that sentence was like, "Chinese people really didn't understand me". You know, no one really did. Luckily, there were a couple fluent Chinese speakers in my friend group who got me through the experience. Shoutout Allison, shoutout Ginny. I realized my Chinese that I learned in school was really not where I wanted to be. But yeah still great experience. I mean, a lot of my friends had never taken Chinese in their life and they survived, so you'd probably survive. Sophia: Keyword "probably." David: Right. Our first guest is Carl Morison, a friend of mine who I met in China. You might hear some of the same stories that I told, but we really appreciate him coming in and giving his perspective on the program, I think he has some really great thoughts and insights to share. Here's Carl. Carl Morison: I'm Carl Morison. I went to China this summer on NU in China program at Peking University, and I have four or five years of Chinese language experience. I knew I wanted to study abroad in college, and I thought China would be a really interesting place to go because of my past experience with the language and just sort of its global rise right now. And not that many American kids have a chance to go to China and this program looked really cool too, looking at China from a political lens as well as learning about language and culture and everything. It was just really, it seemed like a really cool program at the right time for me. I think going to Shanghai was probably the coolest thing we did in China, riding the bullet train. It's one of the fastest trains in the world. Really everything about that city is amazing. Everything there is so modern. We went to a rooftop bar on the 60th floor of the Ritz Carlton Hotel there, and seeing Western elements, but also mixed in with Chinese elements and like the confluence that they're all a high-tech city and everything. It was super cool. I think Shanghai was probably my favorite experience in China. One thing I was amazed about in China was how incredibly cheap food was, you know things that would run for a couple dollars in the U.S., you could buy for the equivalent of about 30 cents in the U.S. Honestly, the little popsicles and things you get there, amazing. I've never tasted anything like that, but also the dining hall food was incredibly good compared to American dining halls. The whole spectrum, everything from fancy Peking Duck to zha jiang mian, famous Beijing food and everything, a few significant restaurants in Shanghai, and everything all the way down to cheap dining hall food and street snacks. All of it was really cool and a lot cheaper than I ever expected. A few notes about China: from the start, one of the things I noticed right when I got off the plane is the concept of personal space is so much different than in the U.S. I got off the plane, people started, people just bump into you, they don't say sorry. There's not like a concept of like, "Oh, you can't cut me off as I'm walking, you can't…" you know, and that's just their culture. It's interesting. Public space truly is public space. You can brush into people, or whatever. There's you don't get your little personal bubble there. I thought that was very surprising. Another thing I was surprised at was the general lack of privacy in China. You know, in the Chinese language, until very recently there wasn't a word for privacy. It's not a concept that's very common there, and like I think as an American and someone who didn't really have that much experience with real Chinese culture before, those were incredibly surprising. Another thing I'll mention about the trip too was that I was amazed at how frank our professors were with us. You know, you expect, you go to China, even one of our professors was a party member. And teaching us about the politics and economy of China, he's a member of the Chinese Communist party, but he's still going up there in front of us and saying "If it's a People's Republic, that means they don't care about the people," you know, that was that was very surprising to me and I felt like I was surprised at how balanced the program was in terms of saying, "Here are some of the ways that China has grown, here are some of the negative aspects and people who get left behind in their system and everything." It was a really powerful comparison in those classes. I had an incredible time there. You know, kids who go there through Northwestern, really cool. Everyone is super personable, made some very close friends obviously. I never would have thought when I went to China that I have friends close enough to go and take a bullet train and live an Airbnb with them for six days and love every moment, never get tired of them. It may have been, honestly probably was my favorite quarter I've had at Northwestern, over the summer in Beijing so, nothing but good things to say about it. 去中国旅游很有意思. David: And for the non Chinese speakers here that would mean “traveling in China was very interesting.” Thanks to Carl for his stories. Our next guest is a friend of this podcast who’s been helping us since day one: Jakob Lazzaro. Jakob Lazzaro: I'm Jakob Lazzaro. I'm a senior here at Northwestern University and Medill studying journalism, obviously. And I'm also the executive editor of North by Northwestern. So I studied at the University of Hong Kong, which is, as the name would imply, in Hong Kong, and I honestly had a super lit time. The whole reason I ended up there was kind of a bit of a weird game of process of elimination, but in the end it worked out quite well for me. See the back story is, you know, growing up, for several years I lived in Sydney Australia with my family because my dad was doing some research there, and so that really played into my study abroad choices because I said, okay, I don't want to go back to Australia because you know, that would not be a new experience or whatever. I don't really want to go to Europe because, you know, it's different but it's relatively similar to you know, like the U.S. or Australia in terms of just how everything is, so I said, "I've never really been to Asia. I would love to go to Asia, live in Asia for a bit. That'd be really cool." The problem, me being a fool, was that I only speak English and some Spanish, and as you can probably guess those university educations in Asia that are in English and/or Spanish are basically very limited. So through the Northwestern program, my options were the University of Hong Kong and a few others in Hong Kong, but I wanted to go to HKU because I'm a history double major, or National University of Singapore, which is in Singapore. And you know, I have heard online from people that Singapore is kind of boring. It's basically if a mall was a city. And I was like, well that doesn't sound very fun. Hong Kong sounded a lot more interesting as a place to live. So I said I want to go to HKU exchange, so I did. I took four history classes because I'm a history double major. I wanted to rack up a bunch of credits for my double major, you know. My concentration in that double major is incidentally Asia slash Middle Eastern history. So that was also very helpful to do that in Asia. Taking these four history classes. They're all very great. Man, I wrote like, I don't know, 12 papers. So I wrote like a paper every week basically, but I did that also on purpose because HKU's calendar meant that the classes ended on November 30th, but I wasn't going back to the U.S. Until January 2nd. So I had a whole month off basically to just kind of travel a bit. So I did do that. It was awesome, you know, and they're just being there. I was also able to travel outside of Hong Kong, to Japan, Korea, Thailand and Cambodia, so that was great. But in terms of Hong Kong itself, I really enjoyed living there as a student who lived in university housing and did not have to pay Hong Kong rent, or deal with Hong Kong/more broadly Asian work cultures, but living there as a student was honestly really great and I really enjoyed it. I'd say my overall favorite memory was just kind of existing in Hong Kong. I don't know exactly know how to describe it, but being on exchange, taking classes, you know, four days a week, I wasn't working, right, because you can't do that. So I had a lot more free time than I usually do. I just basically did a lot of walking, you know. I would put on some music, put on some podcasts, and I would just walk around the city. I would take buses, because you can sit up on the upper level of the bus in the front, you get a great view of where you’re just going along, you know, I would take the MTR to like a random place, just like walk around there. You know, I just kind of soaked in the atmosphere just wandering around and there's a few albums that I listen to, I'm like, "Wow. This reminds me of when I was living in Hong Kong at the time." So I'd say that was my fault favorite general memory. Sophia: So I know you said you don't know any Cantonese, but if you have to summarize your study abroad experience in the language, what would you say in one sentence? Jakob: 請勿靠近車門. Which is very bad. As I already stated, you know, I don't speak Cantonese, which is bad or whatever, but I'd say that sentence encapsulated my study abroad experience the most because I took the MTR quite a lot. That's the announcement one of the announcements for like, "please stand clear of the doors" or something like that, that they play at every single station, you know, and so that sentence in Cantonese — my horribly mispronounced, somewhat misremembering Cantonese — I'd say encapsulates my study abroad experience. Hannah: So for this episode instead of a snack of the day, we're going to do a special snack of the study abroad program! We're going to ask all our interviewees what their favorite snack was from their study abroad experience. So starting with David. David: Yeah, so in the dining Halls at Peking University, they have these things which, I still have no idea if they actually have a Chinese name, but they're basically like, they're fried dumplings but they're encased in an omelette. Carl: They had little that little omelettes with dumplings in the middle David: And it was so good because it was really cheap. It was like less than a dollar for a plate of them. And literally we would have those every single day. Carl: And like, I don't think that's real Chinese food. David: We just called them egg dumplings, which is, I don't think an accurate name, but we don't know what they were called. Carl: But like it was incredibly good this little omelette with like the eggs and like dumplings in the middle and stuff. So good. Loved it. David: Fried dumplings fried eggs. It's good stuff. Jakob: There's just one place in Wan Chai. It's called Joy Hing Roast Meat and they do a lot of roasted meats, but I would go there and just get the char siu. That meal was amazing. It was like 30 Hong Kong dollars. It's about like four or five U.S. dollars, which is pretty cheap, and they gave you this like godly char siu just like, you know was pork with just this like beautiful skin and rice and they had this great like in-house sauce. I don't even know what was in it. And that was probably my favorite meal because it was just so perfect, especially because I found that place through like people saying it was good online, and you know in person or whatever about two months after I'd already been living in Hong Kong and I'd had char siu at like three other places, and each time I thought, "What am I missing here?" And then I went to that place and I was like, "Oh this is what it's supposed to taste like." Sophia: Thank you so much for listening, and thank you to everyone who shared their study abroad experiences! Again, I'm Sophia. David: I'm David. Hannah: And I'm Hannah. David: Our theme music was composed by Tenny Tsang. This is NBN Audio. Hannah: Signing out! David: Yeet! Sophia: Please keep that in there.Find out more at https://dimelo-northwestern.pinecast.coThis podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Zach has the pleasure of chatting with Brittani Hunter, founder and CEO of The Mogul Millennial, and they discuss how to go about effectively using your voice at work. They also talk about The Mogul Millennial platform in general, what she's looking forward to in the future, and what initially led her to its creation. Connect with Brittani on Twitter and Instagram!Check out The Mogul Millennial website and follow them on Twitter and Instagram!TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate, and again, look, y'all know what we do. We have incredible guests all of the time. Now, this guest is pretty interesting, because, you know, as I've been--as we. Shout-out to Ade, shout-out to Sheneisha, shout-out to Tiffany, shout-out to Tara, shout-out to Taylor, shout-out to Tristan, you know what I'm saying? These are all sounding like random names, but these are all people that actually I work with on Living Corporate. Shout-out to Amy, okay? I see you. We have all--as we continue to really build out Living Corporate, folks, there's one name that continues to come up. Like, "Have you talked to this person? Have you talked to this person? Have you talked to this person?" And I'm like, "Yes, I have. Yes, we've made a connection. Yes, we still need to interview. Yes, but I do know who that is," and it is this individual, and this person is a LinkedIn Top Voice. They're an entrepreneur. They're a writer. They're an educator. They're a public speaker. They're a mover. They're a shaker, you know what I'm saying? They're a snatcher of edges, you know what I'm saying? They out here is my point, and this person is Brittani Hunter. Brittani, welcome to the show. How are you doing?Brittani: I'm doing really good. Thanks for having me.Zach: No, no, no. Thank you for actually being on the show. In fact, let me go ahead and just--just a very modest, you know what I'm saying, cheer, just to welcome you, you know what I'm saying? [cheers sfx] Nothing too crazy. Just something to kind of get us started. For those of us who don't know you--I know I kind of gave a little bit, but would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself?Brittani: Yeah. So like you mentioned earlier, I'm an entrepreneur and also a LinkedIn Top Voice. I am also a proud HBCU grad, so if you went to PVAMU, shout-out to you. I am based here in Texas, Dallas to be exact, and I've been in the entrepreneur space for about 3.5 years, but full-time since January of this year. So January of 2019.Zach: Okay, now, wait, you're not gonna shout-out your HBCU?Brittani: I did. You didn't hear me? Prairie View A&M University. So PVAMU. ["ow" sfx]Brittani: [laughs] Yeah. It's the best HBCU in my opinion, so yeah, shout-out to you if you are a PV grad as well. Zach: Shout-out to the HBCUs. It's so funny, 'cause, you know, no one ever goes, "Shout-out to the PWIs!" But, you know, it's cool. Shout-out to education, and definitely shout-out to HBCUs. My dad went to Jackson State, and my mom [was Miss?] Tougaloo back in the day, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I came from good stock is what I'm trying to say. [jokingly] You're not the only person out here flexing in your complexion, that's all. Okay, so look, today we're talking about using your voice effectively. You talked about being a LinkedIn Top Voice. First of all, what does it mean to be a LinkedIn Top Voice?Brittani: So every year, LinkedIn, they'll select people that currently use the LinkedIn platform--hence the name LinkedIn Top Voice--and what it is is people that they recognize that are making an impact through the platform, and so an impact on the platform through their content. So yeah, to become a LinkedIn Top Voice essentially means that you're recognized as someone who has influence and a heavy impact on the users, on the thousands and millions of users that are on LinkedIn.Zach: Let's talk about you being selected. Like, what did that process look like?Brittani: It was actually a surprise. So I was literally at my old 9-to-5, um, not doing work, checking my personal email on my phone, and I saw that I had an email from one of the editors. And so LinkedIn has several editors that specifically focus on different subjects, and so the editor reached out and was pretty much saying that they love all of my content, that they, you know, on the back end they've been seeing how much engagement and all the high impressions that my content has been getting, whether that was my blog content--'cause, you know, LinkedIn has the publishing platform that you can publish blogs on. So whether it was that or just my normal, you know, short-form or long-form posts, and they were wanting to see if I was interested in being a part of their LinkedIn Top Voice selection. And so it was pretty much--that was really it. They required for me to write a post, so once they released the list of all of the LinkedIn Top Voices in the different categories--and by the way, I was selected in the category for Management and Culture. So yeah, once they released the article with everybody that was selected, they also released a series of articles from each LinkedIn Top Voice that was selected.Zach: That's really, really cool. You know, what's really interesting about what you shared is that, you know, you said you weren't even expecting it. You were just doing what you were doing, and then it just happened, right?Brittani: Yeah. A lot of people think that there is, like, some type of formal application or if you, like, reach out to someone that works at LinkedIn that you can get it, but it doesn't work like that. If you just keep doing what you're doing and just be focused on--and you're just, like, focused on actually putting out great content, then you'll be noticed, and if you're lucky they'll select you as a Top Voice.Zach: You know what? I just--I just think it's really incredible, and like I said from the top, everybody that I talk to, as I've been talking about Living Corporate, they're like, "You know, you really need to talk to--have you talked to anybody from The Mogul Millennial?" And I'm like... but it's just been, like, an ongoing conversation, and, you know, since then, and really frankly to this day, I'm just really excited that we were able to make this connection, you know what I mean? [to this day sfx]Brittani: Yeah. [laughs] I love the soundbites. I love it, I love it. Zach: No, I appreciate. So look, on your platform you share real talk, right? So the latest piece that I personally read was about black leadership at Fortune 500 companies being at its lowest, yet black celebrity partnerships are booming--and it's so interesting because, at the time of this recording, of this podcast, you know, Jay-Z just announced that partnership that he has with the NFL for the social justice movement thing. Anyway, in it you assert that while exploring the direct and subtle implications of that fact, right? So basically you go into it, right? A lot of your pieces do this, where you have, like, this fairly, like, strong initial statement, and then you really go into the nuances and the implications of whatever you stated, right? As black creatives who are focused on content centered around business, I think there's a line we have to decide when we're going to, like, not cross, right? Like, and show how honest or raw that we're being. What has that journey looked like for you specifically and how you've balanced, like, discomforting truths with managing a brand that extends far beyond your family and close friends?Brittani: Yeah. So I think, for me, what I just try to, like, you know, work at towards every day is just, like, living my truth. When you're not living your truth, you know, you're the one that's mostly impacted, and so whether that was--you know, whether that's me right now as an entrepreneur or me back when I was working the traditional 9-to-5 in the workplace, I'm not going to downplay, you know, what I think or try to sugarcoat, like, my thoughts and my feelings because of someone else, and so I think it's important that when we speak on our truths it also empowers other people to do the same. So specifically through Mogul Millennial, I like to have those types of conversations and so that way, you know, the issue at hand isn't ignored or it's not--you know, it's not watered down.Zach: And so how do you feel like that philosophy could be applied to, like, black and brown professionals in their day-to-day jobs and how they use their voice?Brittani: I think, you know--it's funny. So it makes me think about--like, a really quick story. When I was working at one of my last 9-to-5s, it was a predominantly white workplace, and one of my coworkers who was black, she would just, like, literally turn her personality all the way off, even from, like, the foods that she ate.Zach: Wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. Whoa, whoa, whoa. [record scratch sfx] What you mean the food that she ate?Brittani: Yeah! So she wouldn't eat things like chicken in the office or really be, like, really careful on the types of fruit that she would eat.Zach: The types of--oh, so she wouldn't eat, like, a banana is what you're trying to say?Brittani: That, watermelon. You know, like, the traditional, like, things--[haha sfx, both laugh] Yeah, like, you think about, like, black people, and it was weird. So we would have, like, potlucks at work, and if people brought chicken she would say that she was allergic to chicken, but she loved chicken.Zach: She would say that she was allergic to chicken?Brittani: Yeah. It was like, "Girl, why are you doing this? Just be yourself and people will like you for it," you know?Zach: Can we have, like, a real conversation about this though? Okay, so I was talking to my--my wife and I were talking about this. We talk about this often, and Dave Chappelle did a whole stand-up skit about it, but you know how, like, just racist--anti-black racism is so lazy. So it's like, you really think that chicken and watermelon are, like, exclusive to black people? Do you know delicious watermelon is? Do you know how delicious chicken--like, do you know how many cultures enjoy chicken? We all love chicken. Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm. So she would not eat watermelon. She would not eat bananas. Bananas are--you know, they're a lot of sugar, so if you're watching your weight and you're trying to, you know, kind of cut down on your calories, I can understand--Brittani: Yeah, the carbs and everything. Yeah, I get it, but, you know, from that to, you know, purposely not listening to music that she wanted to in her own personal office.Zach: She had a personal office?Brittani: Yeah. It was just crazy. Like, do what you want to do. Like, be yourself. And so she would say all of the time, like, "Well, Brittani, you're gonna listen to this type of music in the office?" Yes. This is my office. You know, I've earned my role. I'm just as qualified as the next person, and I'm not gonna feel uncomfortable at work and not do things that are true to myself, but the person next to me is, just because we're two different skin colors, come from two different backgrounds, and, you know, upbringings. You know, it doesn't mean that they can do something that I can't. And so one of the things that I learned is that, you know, when you're true to yourself, people, they like the real you. They want to know the real you. You don't have to whiten it to be accepted. So yeah, I highly encourage people in the workplace to not, like, you know, whiten or change who they are just to quote-unquote "fit in," because, you know, people can recognize bull**** and they know that it's not the real you anyway.Zach: That's right. Now, look, this is a clean podcast, but, you know, I respect you, you know what I'm saying?Brittani: Oh, I'm sorry.Zach: No, no, that's okay, but when you said it I was like--[Metal Gear Solid surprised sfx]--you know what I'm saying? Like, "Okay, wait." But no, no, you're absolutely right, people can recognize it, and you just want to be yourself, you know? It's interesting. We had a conversation on Season 1. It was, like, our first episode, with Fenorris Pearson, who was--he was, like, an executive with Motorola and Dell, and he talked about the fact that he went on this plane ride, right, with, like, this very senior white executive, and he said, "Look, we can tell when y'all are putting on airs, and, like, it's fake." Like, "We hate that. It's annoying. We can see right through it. It's awkward. It's clearly not authentic," right? Now, I don't want to shame anybody, because we've been classically--we've been conditioned to put on coverings and participate in respectability politics as a means of survival, so I'm not shaming anybody for doing those things, but at the same time--not but, and we also live in a time when, look, you have a voice. Use it and be yourself, right? Like, if you want to listen to Rick Ross, you know what I'm saying, do that. You want to smoke a Black and Mild on your smoke break? Go ahead and do that. Like, nobody's gonna stop you. Like, it's okay. It's all right. Maybe not a Black and Mild. [both laugh] I'm trying to think of the last time I've seen somebody smoke a Black and Mild, like, in a work setting.Brittani: Oh, God. I don't think I've ever seen that. That's funny.Zach: Like a 'rillo. That'd be like, "Ooh, what's going on?" [both laugh] No, no, no, but anyway, let's talk a little bit about Mogul Millennial, right? You've talked about the fact it's been going on for three years. What have you been most proud of so far, and what are you looking forward to most in the next, like, six to twelve months?Brittani: You know, when I think about, like, everything that I've experienced in these three years, the thing that I am mostly proud of was getting out of my [?] and realizing that I literally cannot do everything. At my last job, I was--I've always been in management roles, so I'm used to being, like, head over something, you know?Zach: Hold on a second. So wait, wait, wait. You said you've always been in management roles?Brittani: Yeah.["ow" sfx]Zach: Okay, I got you. Keep going. Brittani: [laughs] Yeah, so when I started, you know, The Mogul Millennial, it was, you know, just, like, a side project in the beginning since I couldn't dedicate all of my time and resources to it, but yeah, once I decided that I was gonna go full-time with it, I knew that, "Okay, well, Brittani, you can't, like, grow this company. You can't, like, really be as profitable as you want to be, and you're doing everything." So you're doing all of the social media. You're writing all of the blog posts. You're the one trying to pitch yourself and your company to different brands and partners, so you can't do it all, or you can but it's not gonna be really worth anything, or it won't be as good as it could be and as impactful as it could be. And so I really didn't want to at the beginning, I decided to put out a post asking for help, and once I did that, like, our traction increased. I felt like the content got better because we just had, you know, more diverse opinions and thoughts from--like, black millennials literally all over the world were contributing, and so I think that's what I've been most proud of, you know, recognizing that I don't know everything, and that's fine, 'cause now I have people that help me out day-to-day that are so much more better at certain things and more knowledgeable on certain topics, and I've learned a lot as well from those people.[straight up sfx]Zach: No, I feel you. Like, it's tough when, you know, you're at a point, you're grinding, and you feel like you're doing everything, right, like, to the point you're just at your wit's end. You're looking at 'em like ["what more do you want from me?" sfx] You know? It's just like, "I can't." Like, "I have to reach out." That's really important. So, you know, you not only used your voice to create your platform, but you used your voice to extend and expand your platform, 'cause you had to actually use your voice to ask for help.Brittani: Mm-hmm, absolutely. So right now--it was crazy, 'cause when I put out the first post--so since I'm... I have the highest, like, influence on LinkedIn, so, you know, I went to what I know I'm good in. So I put a post on LinkedIn, and literally within the first, like, two weeks, we had over 150 people who were like, "I want to write!" And it was so overwhelming. So between--and remember, I was still working at my 9-to-5. So in-between meetings, like, literally as I was going to, like, meetings, either, like on-site at my job or off-site, or during my lunch break, anything--on the way to the restroom, I was having interviews with these people. 'Cause some people, you know, I had to--I wanted to be accommodating as well, 'cause I wanted to help, and so yeah, it's been good. It's been really good.Zach: So what does it look like, right, to continue and build out this platform, and--actually, let me take a step back. What did it look like when you actually left your full-time job? Like, what did that conversation look like?Brittani: So I had actually planned to leave and was really strategic. So I--I think you and I had talked before and I mentioned that I lived in Houston for a short period of time.Zach: For a little bit of time, yeah.Brittani: Yeah. So originally I'm from Dallas, and I went to school at PV, which is by Houston. Went to PV, came back to Dallas, and was working at a university that's, like, north of Dallas in a small--well, not small... well, yeah, small, but it's [?]. So I was working there at UT Dallas and I remember being approached by my boss's boss--well, no, my boss's boss's boss. So, like, three people above me, to work at the property at the University of Houston, and I denied them, like, three or four times, because the pay wasn't right and I was like, "No, you're not gonna pay me [?]," and I have to move and uproot my life, and so eventually we negotiated back and forth. I got the rate that I wanted plus more, and we--and so yeah, I specifically took that role because I knew that I wanted to quit within a year so that way I could work on Mogul Millennial full-time, 'cause we were doing really well with the site, and so--so yeah, I literally only took the promotion--well, it was like a lateral promotion, so it was the same role but different duties. Zach: But you had got that [cha-ching sfx].Brittani: Exactly, exactly. Making extra money, so I took it knowing that, "Okay, well, I can save money even faster and, you know, quit and be way more financially comfortable."Zach: I got you. So you were, like, kind of scheming on the low, but, like, you know, for yourself though.Brittani: Yeah. I mean, they do it all of the time with us, with [?]. So I had no regrets, no shame. [laughs]Zach: Oh, no, no. Hey, I'm not shaming you, I'm just chuckling 'cause, you know, you negotiated that deal and you're in the background, you know, you're shaking his hand and you're talking about ["hehehe" sfx, both laugh]Brittani: Yep. So no, like, I literally stayed, like, long enough as well. So the year was special because, you know, within a year you can really do--if you're dedicated and persistent you can do some really good damage--well, not damage, but some good improvement. Zach: No, you said what you said. It's okay. [both laugh]Brittani: And then also with the relocation fee, you know, that's why it's important that you read everything. I read in the contract for the relocation [?] I was given that you need to stay for a year. So yeah, I left within a year, and then--so it really just looked like, you know, within that time period for me working at the other location in Houston, was to just save and grow my team, and then also focus on, like, upcoming products and plan out different projects that we're gonna actually be releasing this year, so I'm really excited about that, but it was a lot of hard work. So at my last company I was literally working, like, sometimes, like, 60, 70 hours a week, 'cause I worked in a very busy industry, but at the same time, you know, having a team was really helpful, and then I just worked crazy hours on the weekends, on my lunch breaks, before work, things like that.Zach: That's a blessing. It's a blessing to find folks who are, you know, engaged and willing to support, right? You know, I think we probably need to have you back just around, like, the principles of building a team and getting started, because I think a lot of times, and I'll say this for podcasting, podcasting is notorious for people, like, starting off really big with a splash and then being done after, like, 2.5 months, because the load of, like, getting content, researching, producing, it can get, like, tiring over time, so, like, a lot of podcasts don't even last a year, you know what I'm saying? Let alone--Brittani: It's a full-time job.Zach: It's a full-time job, and so, you know, it's tough. So that's incredible. I'm so excited. I'm so thankful that you've been able to be on this, on our platform. Now, look, again, Brittani, you're the first LinkedIn Top Voice that we've had on Living Corporate. How does that make you feel?Brittani: You know what? It makes me feel good, but it won't be the last. I believe in you guys.Zach: Ow! Had to do my own Cardi B "ow," goodness gracious. Thank you so much, I appreciate that. And, you know, I've gotta give you a Flex bomb just because you've been dropping casual just--[Flex bomb sfx] It's just ridiculous. Like, it's just incredible, but, like, I'm just so thankful that you're able to be here. Before we let you go, any parting words or shout-outs?Brittani: Yeah. So of course shout-out to my team. My editorial assistant, Alex, she came up with the name Mogul Mob and I love it, so shout-out--Zach: Oh, The Mogul Mob? Yeah, Mogul Mob be up in that WordPress putting content together like [Cardi B "bratbratbratbrat" sfx] You know what I'm saying? We out here.Brittani: [laughs] Yeah, so shout-out to them. They are all amazing, even--like, in their own individual lives they do so many great things, from being startup entrepreneurs, small business owners, freelancers, et cetera. Corporate bosses. They are just amazing. But the only other thing that I want to also shout-out or mention is that we gonna be launching our own online course platform through Mogul Millennial. It's called Mogul Genius, so look out for that. It will be released to a private group of people in October, but after that we'll be releasing it to the general public, so yeah.Zach: Look at you. Come on, now. Well, first of all, again, you know what, just shout-out to y'all. I've gotta go ahead and drop these air horns right here--[air horns sfx]--for The Mogul Millennial and, you know what, for Brittani Hunter. Thank you so much for being on our show. Y'all, that does it for us on the Living Corporate podcast. Make sure you check us out on Twitter @LivingCorp_Pod, on Instagram @LivingCorporate, and on our website at living-corporate--please say the dash--dot com. Now, look, if you have any questions or any shout-outs you'd like to place on the show, you can contact us through the website or you can email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com, or you can just DM us 'cause the DMs are wide open. Now, look, you can check us out online if you just Google Living Corporate. We're at all of the domains. Brittani, do you know we have every single Living Corporate variation besides Living Corporate dot com?Brittani: That's a smart way to go. A lot of people don't do that. I'm so glad that you do so somebody [can't?] steal it.Zach: Thank you. So we've got livingcorporate.net, livingcorporate.tv, livingcorporate.org, but we don't have livingcorporate.com because Australia has livingcorporate.com. They've got, like, some apartment renting company out there.Brittani: Oh, my God.Zach: I'm saying, right? Now, look, one day though the brand is gonna be brolic enough we're gonna go and we're gonna get that domain. I just don't know when that's gonna be, but it's gonna happen. I'm speaking it.Brittani: They'll [?] forget to pay their renewal.Zach: They'll mess up. Yeah, real talk. Playas mess up, and they'll mess up too. [both laugh] You know what I'm saying? We've talked about Australia a little bit. I'm really trying to be careful 'cause I don't want to create no international beef, but I very much so do want the domain, so I'm trying to figure out, like, what the best strategy is. Maybe you and I could have a conversation offline about that.Brittani: Yeah, yeah. I could tell you a story about that. Zach: [laughs] All right, y'all. Well, look, this has been Zach Nunn, and you've been listening to Brittani Hunter, CEO and founder of The Mogul Millennial. Until next time. Peace.

Shortcut to finding our characters’ worst flaws and deepest fears? Yes, thank you.All Sarina had to do was say “protagonist character analysis” and we were off. Enneagrams, for those who have never heard of them [raises hand high] are descriptions of character types intended for “journeys of self-discovery.” But when it comes to knowing more about your protagonist (and love interest and antagonist and their mother and all the people) they’re pure solid gold, especially if you go romping down the rabbit hole of reading what people in various types (there are 9, with a “wing” in one direction or another) think of themselves and their relationships. Suddenly, you can think about how your character would play fantasy football, or interview for a job. But the best part is diving deep into how your character behaves at her/his/their very worst, and very best, along with what they most fear and what they believe they want. It’s like real butter on movie popcorn, people.Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, October 14, 2019: Top 5 Resources for Dictating Your Work. Not joined that club yet? You’ll want to get on that. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.LINKS FROM THE PODCASTThe Enneagram Institute (length type descriptions and relationships between the types under the “LEARN” tab).Free Enneagram test (there are many; this is the one KJ talked about, chosen largely at random for brevity and for being free) from eclecticenergies.com.Enneagram and Coffee on Instagram.#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess:  The Butterfly Girl and an essay “The Green River Killer and Me” by Rene Denfeld and Demi Moore’s memoir, Inside OutKJ: The Great Believers, Rebecca MakkaiSarina: The Play, Elle Kennedy#FaveIndieBookstorePrairie Path Books, Wheaton ILThis episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.The image in our podcast illustration this week is from enneagramandcoffee on Instagram, and I asked permission to use it, although I confess that I’m posting it pre-reply. But I feel good about our odds. Plus, fun follow for everyone!Getting Ready to NaNoWriMo?Every episode of #AmWriting is sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. One key to that is the INSIDE OUTLINE, a tried and tested tool developed by Jennie Nash that can help you start a book, to help you rescue one that isn’t working, and to guide a revision.Author Accelerator is hosting a webinar about the Inside Outline just in time for NaNoWriMo prep on Monday, October 14 at Noon Pacific/2 PM Central/3 PM Eastern.Register even if you can’t attend live, as a replay will be sent to everyone who has registered.REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR NOWTranscript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:01                    Hey Book people, before today’s episode of #AmWriting, I want to tell you about something new from our sponsor, Author Accelerator. No matter where you are in your own work, you’ve probably found yourself working with other writers on theirs. If that time spent encouraging, editing and helping someone else turned out to be pure joy for you, you might want to consider becoming a book coach yourself. Author Accelerator provides book coaching to authors (like me) but also needs and trains book coaches. If that’s got your ears perked up, head to https://www.authoraccelerator.com and click on “become a book coach.” Is it recording?Jess:                                     00:01                    Go ahead.KJ:                                        00:01                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     00:01                    All right, let's start over.KJ:                                        00:01                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                                     00:01                    Okay.KJ:                                        00:01                    Now one, two, three. Hey I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. We are the podcast about all things, writing short things, long things, fictional things, non-fictional things, memoirs things. And as I say, every single week in a variety of different ways, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done.Jess:                                     01:23                    And I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book on preventing substance abuse in kids that is due in seven days. And you can find my writing at various places including the Washington Post and the New York Times.Sarina:                                 01:41                    I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of more than 30 romance novels and you can find me at sarinabowen.com.KJ:                                        01:49                    And I am KJ Dell'Antonia author of How To Be a Happier Parent and have a novel that will be coming out next summer. And the former editor of the New York Times' Motherlode blog. For the most part at the moment you can find me sitting in front of my laptop writing a new novel. And I'm going to just own that Sarina and I are snuggled up in our small town library, gazing out at there are a lot of really pretty trees, but these that we can see are not super spectacular and that, I forgot my microphone. So we might sound a little echoey.Jess:                                     02:24                    And from my perspective, I'm looking out on the woods behind my house and there are a couple of red leaves out there, but it's Vermont and it's just starting to get that orangy glow to it. It's really pretty. What was crazy is this week I went from Vermont - where I was wearing a sweatshirt - and I traveled to Charlotte, North Carolina where it was oppressively hot, it was like 95 degrees. And then I went New York where it was cold again and then back here. So it's just been a really interesting week of summer and getting into fall. So, I'm ready for fall. I'm happy about it.KJ:                                        03:09                    And now this is the podcast about all things weather, and enough of that. I am so excited about our topic today because this is going to be super fun. We're going to talk Enneagrams, which is a rabbit hole that Sarina went down one day. And then quickly texted to me and I immediately dove right in after her. But let me just say before you all go, 'Wait a minute, wait a minute'. We're not talking about our own Enneagrams, although we might. We're going to talk about doing it for characters, because it's so cool. But before we do, what is an Enneagram for those of us who don't know, which was actually mostly all of us until we started this. You can do the defining.Sarina:                                 04:07                    Oh good. The Enneagram, which seems to have had most of its big talk in the 60s with psychiatrists. Working in psychiatry in the 1960's and 70's is a framework for explaining various human psychological profiles, personality typing.KJ:                                        04:34                    It is not the one where you get I,D, J, H, Q, B, Y. This is the one where you get a number.Sarina:                                 04:42                    So there's nine numbers in a shape. And you were referring to the Myers-Briggs system personality typing, which I'm honestly not a huge fan of. Partly because it was forced upon me by my corporate overlords in my previous work life.Sarina:                                 05:03                    But the Enneagram is, as we'll discuss, uniquely useful for writers. Because both personality type systems have a lot to do with preferences and how you prefer to handle things and how you see the world. The Enneagram I quickly discovered is also really focused on character flaws. Like your super power is also your greatest weakness, right?KJ:                                        05:28                    Which is so perfect for creating both main characters and secondary characters. I mean, that's exactly what you need to know. What does this person fear? And what do they want? And that's what these nine types are. And also, I mean partly because there are nine and then they sort of spread out. There's like, the enthusiastic who leans towards the challenger or leans towards the loyalist. You get a lot of different - this is not cookie cutter, it's got a lot to it.Sarina:                                 06:03                    Right. And if you get a book about Enneagrams and you take a look, you'll see some discussion of the wings, which is a theory with the Enneagram that each of the nine types also has a secondary type, which is the adjacent number.KJ:                                        06:38                    So 27 possibilities, but all of which have a lot of range within them and happily you don't have to get a book on this, you can just hit our friend uncle Google.KJ:                                        06:52                    Right. And there's some nice reliable sources for information.Sarina:                                 06:57                    And our favorite is the Enneagram Institute. I was pointed there (I'd like to give a shout out to author Nana Malone) who is the first person who ever said the word Enneagram to me. And I had to go look it up and Nana Malone is a romance writer and now I need to go read everything she's written because she has a wonderfully nuanced understanding of how this all works for character typing. And she really sort of walked me through how she looks at it and I was immediately hooked.KJ:                                        07:27                    We're enchanted, in part because one of the things I like about this (besides that it helps you) we all start with a character and we have this sort of mental picture, and I think we often start from something kind of flat. You often start with a stereotype. So you're often like, 'Well, my person is a real type A, or my person is a real introvert. Like you kinda just start with one word and then you build from there. And after you've spent a little time building, then you can dig into these Enneagrams and you'll find the one that fits the person that you're creating. And then you can sort of start reading a little more and go, 'Oh yeah, totally.' We're in the Enneagram Institute right now and we're looking at the peacemaker. So peacemakers are accepting, and trusting, and stable. And you could see that could be a character, but then you know, you can go like really sort of down into it and they have a universal temptation to ignore the disturbing aspects of life and seek peace and comfort. They numb out. You can see how you can really use this to create someone.Sarina:                                 08:51                    So everybody's biggest super power is also their biggest weakness. And even though we like the sound of that as fiction writers, this really shows you how to do it.KJ:                                        09:03                    I'm just looking at nine here. It even tells you exactly what it is that nine is. We're not proposing you just grab this and like stick it into a book cold. But if you have a character who's a nine, their want is for everything to be peaceful and pleasant and can't we all just get along? But their need, which is right here on the bottom of the list of description of nine, is to remember that the only way out is through and you can't just brush your troubles under the carpet. And there you go. I mean, that's practically a plot right there.Sarina:                                 09:40                    It is. And they all are. Maybe we should just dive in and give a few examples. I'm writing a nine right now. Well, nine is, as you said, that the peacemaker or the peaceful mediator. And most any gram resources will tell you what is that person's greatest fear? And nine's fear being shut out. And they fear being overlooked. They fear losing connection with others and all kinds of conflict, tension, and discord. So, what they're longing for is that their presence really matters. And their desire is for inner stability and peace of mind, because of those basic fears. And so you can see that their weakness then would be to hide from the stuff that isn't quite hitting their peacemaker senses. So, you could remain in an idealistic place psychologically and not cope with the things going on around you.KJ:                                        10:51                    So this person needs to sort of break through that desire to keep everything idealistic and feeling like it's all safe and calm and get to a point where they actually feel secure.Sarina:                                 11:07                    So let's contrast the nine with a seven.KJ:                                        11:09                    That's perfect because I'm writing a seven.Sarina:                                 11:11                    Me too.KJ:                                        11:12                    Oh, excellent.Sarina:                                 11:14                    Well, my seven is a party boy.KJ:                                        11:16                    My seven is a failed child actress.Sarina:                                 11:21                    Well, this number is usually called the enthusiast. And their basic desire is to be happy and satisfied, fulfilled and engaged. So sevens hate boredom and they're easily bored. And I was listening to a podcast with Ian Cron who has what is probably the most popular Enneagram book out there. And it has a bright yellow cover, The Road Back To You, I think. And he was very clear about how sevens leave a wake of unfinished projects behind them because of their attention span. And there's always something more interesting to be doing. And I really particularly liked his descriptive appeal about all of these. And there's one, I don't think it started like this in the 60's and 70's, but a lot of the writings about Enneagrams now are from a faith-based kind of Christian perspective. I don't read much faith-based stuff, but he had a really light touch that that made me want to seek out his book anyway. Even if even if the Christian angle is not what's interesting to me about it. So the seven and the nine don't look at the world the same way, even though they're in the same world together sometimes and have to have to sort through that. And in each case you're handed weaknesses. And so if you look at the Enneagram Institute site, it will actually tell you what a romantic pairing.KJ:                                        13:05                    We can just look that up right now. Relationships types, we've got a seven and a nine here and I'll just go under seven and hit the nine. And we can see what each type brings to the relationship.Sarina:                                 13:21                    They bring a good mix of similar and opposite qualities. Fundamentally, they're both positive outlook types who are optimistic, upbeat, and prefer to avoid conflicts.KJ:                                        13:33                    There's gotta be a but here.Sarina:                                 13:34                    Oh, there's absolutely always a but. That's why we like Enneagrams. So sevens are more active and self-assertive than nines. They tend to take initiatives and to make the plans and have multiple interests and they bring the fun and sparkle and the party atmosphere. Well nines bring a sense of steadiness and support so you can see how that might build.KJ:                                        13:56                    And that's one of the things sevens want is somebody to take care of them. One of the seven's weaknesses that I've found that I'm exploiting in my person is that they want to feel like somebody else. They would like to seed the decision making to someone else. So that they can just sort of party along, having a good time and you know, getting a chance to try everything and do everything and experience everything, but not necessarily have to make any hard choices. So here are the potential trouble spots for that possible relationship between the seven and the nine. Sevens are more equipped to talk about whatever's bothering them. But they often feel they cannot help themselves and honesty demands they tell the nine how unhappy they are with them.Sarina:                                 14:54                    That's a good scene.KJ:                                        14:55                    One of the sunniest and most carefree couples can become one of the most hopelessly tortured if they become unwilling or unable to really talk with each other. Why do I have a feeling that is going to happen to the poor seven and nine?Sarina:                                 15:10                    But that's also like the classic Harry Potter and Dumbledore problem, right? Just knock on his office door, Harry.KJ:                                        15:17                    That's every book. I mean, it's not a good book unless you're shouting, 'Just tell them. Just tell people, just tell everyone what's wrong. Just tell them the truth.'.Sarina:                                 15:28                    You know what, though? You make a good point because that is in every book, but it's not always good in every book. So you have to earn it.KJ:                                        15:36                    And it has to be different and the person has to have a really good reason for not telling the truth. So you have to understand why they're not going to. And if they don't, if you're sitting there reading along going, 'Oh, come on. Like you know, this character would just tell her boss everything or whatever, then that's it.' You're not going to keep going. So, Enneagrams can help you to find the reasons that your character is not telling the deep dark secret. Not telling the deep, dark secret is not revealing everything about themselves or whatever. And then you can also head out and have a look. So one of the things I think is fun about the Enneagram is that it's a great way to find some things about your character that would be true to this person that you have created, that are also quirky. And a funny way to do that if you just want to sort of wander through the world of quirks of different things is to (I mean there's probably a lot of places to do this) but we happened to have found the Instagram account for Enneagrams and Coffee. It's lovely, it's really funny. So, for example there's a post here where she says, 'I need someone who for each Enneagram type. So sevens need someone who doesn't stop on my ideas and nine needs someone who asks them really good questions and genuinely listened to the answers. Sometimes these are funny, sometimes they're not. But the reason I loved it is you can come up with a bizarre quirk that your person always does. So walking down the sidewalk sevens are dance walking. And you could use that. And what you get is sort of quirks that are gonna be consistent with a personality type that maybe you are not, but you know people that are like this, you can feel it. You can sort of get their three-dimensionals. For example, when they play fantasy football they're the one that's always trying to trade. Or whatever. That might not occur to you, but it might be perfect for your person. And it's just fun.Sarina:                                 18:04                    I liked the fantasy football one, too. I read that one. We should do a few more types because it makes our examples better. So type one is the reformer, the moral perfectionist. And I have to say, that I think I might be this type.KJ:                                        18:21                    We will put a link to a quiz you can take that is free. And frankly the link was chosen entirely because I Googled free Enneagram test and this one was free and kind of long and seemed good. So we'll put a link and you can figure out your own because of course that's fun. Alright, so type one, possibly Sarina.Sarina:                                 18:43                    You really like rule following. I don't like to make the rules, but I like to make sure that everyone else is following them. Number two, the helper, the supportive advisor. So the number twos are the people who are making sure that there's somebody working in the soup kitchen on Christmas Eve and they really, really love helping other people and it really feeds them.KJ:                                        19:11                    But they also like to be appreciated for their doing of this. I'll talk about this in a later episode if I'm not quite done with it, but I just read The Logger Queen of Minnesota and loved it. And there's a total two, like one of the main characters and there is just two, two, two. They're always doing exactly that, but their inner thought is always, 'You know, basically maybe when I'm dead everyone will appreciate how much I did.'.Sarina:                                 19:39                    And number three is the achiever. So that's the person in the CEO office burning the midnight oil, you know, making sure he's on top of the heap. And I think, in my earlier life I was more of a three before I found my inner one.KJ:                                        19:58                    I've got a three in my next book. I've got a broken down, beaten up, three. In the book I'm writing.Sarina:                                 20:07                    Okay. So four is the romantic individualist. So the who's the Harry Potter character?KJ:                                        20:13                    Luna Lovegood.Sarina:                                 20:13                    Writing the poetry, gazing at the moon, singing a song, interpretive dance.KJ:                                        20:22                    I remember some fun stuff I liked about this one. Also empathy, they see themselves as uniquely talented, special, one of a kind, but also uniquely disadvantaged or flawed. So you see this in a lot of characters where they feel like they're super special and they're different from everyone else. And one of the things that they often have to discover, which I'm sure I could find if I sort of scroll down here, is that other people also share their needs, or share their interests, or are willing to sort of be part of them. My longings can never be fulfilled because I now realize that I'm attached to the longing itself and not to this best specific result. So that's what the four needs is to figure out how to be attached to something besides this sort of dream of themselves as special.Sarina:                                 21:25                    Type five, the investigative thinker. And that's supposed to be the most analytical personality type. And also tending toward introvert.KJ:                                        21:37                    So it's a little obvious, but if you were writing in the mystery genre, you probably at least would want to hit this so you could figure out whether your person had this or didn't have this. And if your main character doesn't, there's probably someone in your plot that does. I could see that.Sarina:                                 21:54                    So five is like Sherlock Holmes.KJ:                                        21:57                    Yeah. I'm looking at this - so perceptive and innovative, sure. But also secretive and isolated. I mean, that's a thousand detective story heroes. But they're all interesting and deep and it's not like a two dimensional thing. Alright. Six the loyalist. What do you have on the loyalist?Sarina:                                 22:19                    You know, I haven't done enough that I understand this one so well. But, sixes know how to be on a team, but they're a bit anxious. Like they're Woody Allen, making all of my anxieties, wearing them on the outside.KJ:                                        22:38                    The cool thing about the Enneagram Institutes, their key motivations are they want to have security, they want to feel supported by others, to test the attitudes of others towards them, and to fight against their anxieties and securities. I mean, once again, I could write a dozen plots in that. Oh, this one gives George Costanza. Okay, so now we know what a six is. A six is George Costanza. Do you like me? Do you really like me? I don't think you like me. I'm just going to be really awful until I see whether or not you like me. But I'm also going to be completely loyal to you at all times. That's a six, I like a six. Then, just to keep sort of going with what we can do character wise here, if you scroll down to the bottom of this extremely useful free site, they talk about how at their best the six is self affirming, and trusting of others, and independent, belief in themselves leads to true courage. Okay, that's where your six gets to at the end of your book, right? But at the beginning, your six is ... let's don't go all the way down to hysterical. I guess this is probably where they drop down to.Sarina:                                 23:55                    Yeah, that's the darkest moment.KJ:                                        23:58                    The darkest moment for the level six - they're self destructive and suicidal. They're on skid row.Sarina:                                 24:05                    Okay, well that's pretty dark. Not in a comedy, maybe.KJ:                                        24:09                    Yeah, maybe in a comedy you only go to level seven.Sarina:                                 24:12                    But you do bring up a good point, which is that Enneagram writers like to talk about, what an unhealthy version of each one of these things looks like. And my friend Nana Malone was saying that she looks at these unhealthiest levels, like what's the worst version of that character's self? And then she sort of looks at that to be the dark moment of her novel. And tries to make those things pan out each time.KJ:                                        24:44                    And it's really cool reading this stuff about the six. You can see them sort of deteriorating. You know, to compensate for their insecurities they become sarcastic and belligerent, blaming others for their problems. And then they just sort of keep sinking lower. But then hopefully they come back around and end up believing in themselves and finding their true courage. I'm not sure that ever happened for poor George Costanza yet.Sarina:                                 25:08                    The series ended before he got there.KJ:                                        25:10                    We can hope that he found himself in a prison cell.Sarina:                                 25:13                    The only one we haven't mentioned is number eight.KJ:                                        25:16                    Okay, well conveniently enough, number eight is the one I dropped into.Sarina:                                 25:23                    Really? So tell me about eight, because I don't think I understand this one.KJ:                                        25:26                    Eights are challengers, rebels. Yeah, that would be me. And the quirky thing about eight, the thing that kept popping up everywhere is that eights also wants to try everything. So eights are ordering everything in the restaurant because they don't want to miss out on everything. So that's an eight characteristic. Decisive, willful, prefers other people to do what they want. That might be me. Yeah, I was sort of in between. I was like, 'Am I seven or am I eight?' But I tested out as an eight.Sarina:                                 26:02                    So the fear here is of being controlled, like letting someone else make all their decisions.KJ:                                        26:08                    To be in control of their own life, says the unemployable, freelance writer. So that would be me. Yeah, I didn't spend a ton of time on it, but apparently I could rebuild a city, run a household, wage war, make peace. I have all kinds of things within my Enneagram. It's a rabbit hole, we can't deny it. But man, it's a useful rabbit hole. When you're thinking about your character and trying to create someone who is three-dimensional and whole, who isn't either too perfect or too flawed. You can't read this and go, 'Okay, well I'm just going to apply this Willy nilly.' You have to go, 'Well, okay, what would somebody in my character's situation who has these fears, that has these desires, what might they do? You know, what might they have done at some moment in their past? What would be affecting what they do now?' It's hugely fun.Sarina:                                 27:15                    So it's been really useful for me on the book that I need to finish next, in a couple of months or whatever. But I have to say that I have discovered a big question in my head about how this all fits together because when you use the Enneagram as your character basis, it almost, but not accurately... So here's a moment where once I learned more about it, I'll find my answer. But the other way we build characters is to look at their big emotional wound and to understand how this thing that happened earlier in life is shaping all of their decisions and their outlooks now, which is somewhat in conflict with the idea that you're born seeing the world a certain way. So yeah, I mean if you want to go with that character background that you know, he witnessed a horrible accident or you know, some big thing in his or her past made that person be the way they are right now, there's a little bit of struggle there. And between that framework for making your character arc and this sort of innate diversion.KJ:                                        28:33                    I think that when it comes to creating character, I can probably work with either way. You need to have the emotional wound or the moment in their background or the lengthy experience. You know, there are a lot of options there. It doesn't have to be a single event that gives them whatever misbelief that they're sort of traveling through life with, right? But I feel like I personally can take the Enneagram and either start it there, it doesn't bother me, I'm cool. They don't have to have been born with it. I find that I can't make a person - like basically the minute I start to make a person and I want to give the person a name, I have to know who their parents are and sometimes even who their parents are. Not like in depth, but I can't even name you unless I know what your mother and father would have named you.Sarina:                                 29:30                    Well that's really healthy as a fiction writer because you will save yourself time, I think. Because I actually kind of take the opposite approach whereas that I usually know some dramatic thing that's going to happen at the 50% point. And so the beginning part of my characterization sounds like I'm holding a Barbie doll and a Ken doll, one in each hand. And the dialogue that's coming is just as bad as it sounds like it would be. And I have to sort of bumble through that a while until I figure out what they're really saying to each other. So, if I knew who their parents and grandparents were, the first draft of chapter one would be a lot better.KJ:                                        30:11                    Maybe. Sometimes you get lots and lots of pages on who their parents and grandparents are that you really, really don't need. But yeah, I can't even give them a name until I know where the name would've come from. And then to know that, sometimes I have to know why the parents' names were what they were. I guess I think names are really important. I could probably find a naming rabbit hole, I've found them all.Sarina:                                 30:37                    I've bought baby books when my kids were already teenagers, just for this purpose. Seriously, there's a lot of baby books in the world.KJ:                                        30:45                    I just Google, you know, common surnames or common first names for people with X descent and that kind of thing.Sarina:                                 30:54                    And I'm sure you've discovered this social security naming database. So in case our listeners don't know, this U.S. Social Security database publishes the most popular 100 names for girls or boys for every birth year, going back a good amount.KJ:                                        31:14                    Right. Which is great because if you need to bring somebody's grandmother or great aunt into the story, you don't want to name them Madison. That'd be wrong.Sarina:                                 31:24                    So you would go back and you would look at the database for the year of 1939 and see that Sally who was the number 17 or whatever.KJ:                                        31:37                    Character creation is so fun. I felt like I could just create characters all day, but darn it, then they have to go and do something and I have to be mean and make terrible things happen to them. And I have to have them make terrible choices. And that is where the glorious thing about this Enneagram is that man, does it give you the reasons that your characters make really, really, really terrible choices. And contrary to all appearances Jess is still here.Jess:                                     32:08                    I'm still here. No, I was going to say, recently I'd noticed a Sarina posting things to her Sarina Facebook group that she's been doing mean things to characters lately and I've been wondering about what kind of evil stuffs been going on over in Sarina's writing world.KJ:                                        32:26                    You got to do mean things. I think I put it up somewhere - woke up, did mean things to character. I don't remember what it was.Sarina:                                 32:35                    I feel like I haven't always been very good at that.KJ:                                        32:38                    Yeah, it's a weakness of mine, too. Like, why don't they just make all the great choices and the whole book will just be the happy middle.Sarina:                                 32:47                    Well plus, honestly, I let readers' angst into my head. Like, I'm writing a book about two characters that my readers have already met and I know that they're not gonna want me to make him make bad choices. Like I can the already hear the, 'Don't make him do that.' And those voices are kind of hard to shut off sometimes.KJ:                                        33:13                    Yeah I have to just have the voice that's like, 'Oh, you know that's just too hard. That's just too much. That's too awful. Nobody wants to read about that.' But yeah, we do. We absolutely do. That's exactly what we want to read about. And speaking about what we want to read about - should we talk about what we have been reading about?Sarina:                                 33:31                    Absolutely.KJ:                                        33:32                    Alright.Jess:                                     33:33                    Who's going first?KJ:                                        33:35                    You go first cause we haven't heard from you for awhile.Jess:                                     33:38                    Okay. So because I've been traveling this week and I've been doing a lot of audio book listening and I listened to some really interesting things. I also want to talk about the fact that Renee Denfeld's book The Butterfly Girl came out this past week. She also published (and I know I've talked about her before) She wrote The Enchanted, she wrote The Child Finder and The Butterfly Girl is the next book in a sequence with the same protagonist that was in The Child Finder. But what's so interesting about Renee is that she's just decided, I have never seen her do this before, she just wrote something, memoiry for crimereads.com. It was an essay called The Green River Killer and Me because Renee was a teen runaway, she lived on the streets. She grew up in a very unsafe situation. And so the stuff that she writes about, these kids on the streets that get lost and sort of lost in the system and lost in the world, she's lived that. And so it was really fascinating. I've been so engrossed in Renee Denfeld's fiction, to suddenly read this piece of memoir from her. It was such a gift and it's a beautiful piece of writing. Crimereads.com. The Green River Killer and Me. But then I have something really fun. I decided to do something a little bit light for this trip. And so I listened to Demi Moore's memoir called Inside Out. And you know when there are those memoirs where you feel like you're hearing a little too much. Like, I don't think I should be hearing this. She spills everything and I got a little uncomfortable. And it was also really weird cause I read it right after it came out, which is when they were looking for like Ashton Kutcher for his response to what she accuses him of in the book. And so in real time I could see on Twitter how people were responding to this book. If you're looking for a juicy, sort of scoopy memoir, this is the one for you. And you know, I also didn't realize she'd been through some of the stuff that she's been through. But it also made me a little uncomfortable.KJ:                       

BE SURE TO SEE THE SHOWNOTES AND LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE HERE. Eve Picker: Hey, everyone, this is Eve Picker, and if you listen to this podcast series, you're going to learn how to make some change. Thanks so much for joining me today for the latest episode of Impact Real Estate Investing. My guest today is Joshua Lavrinc, a colleague of mine in Pittsburgh. Josh is the CEO of Grove Community Development, a real estate development and consulting company. He's also the CEO of Callay Capital, a fund advisory and management company. BE SURE TO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST AND SEE THE SHOWNOTES ON THIS PAGE HERE. Eve Picker: While Josh started his professional life as an attorney, he pretty quickly moved into the capital-raising world and has stayed there ever since, but he shifted his role to developer, development consultant, and fund manager, squarely in the impact arena. What sets Josh apart is the type of funds and projects he's involved in. He's carved out a little niche for himself in Pittsburgh, helping to raise and manage funds like the Strategic Investment Fund and the Power of 32 Site Development Funds.   Eve Picker: In this podcast, we explore the inherent challenges in impact investing. Be sure to go to EvePicker.com to find out more about Josh on the show notes page for this episode and be sure to sign up for my newsletter, so you can access information about impact real estate investing and get the latest news about the exciting projects on my crowdfunding platform, Small Change.   Eve Picker: Hi, Josh, how are you?   Josh Lavrinc: Good morning, Eve. I'm very well, thank you.   Eve Picker: Josh, I know a lot about you, but our listeners do not. I would love you to just tell us a little bit about yourself.   Josh Lavrinc: Fantastic. Well, thanks for the opportunity to speak. I'm in Pittsburgh, as you are these days, working on real estate investment, in particular, for socially responsible mission-based investments, which we'll talk about as we proceed in the conversation.   Josh Lavrinc: My background ... I've lived in several places in the Northeast and went to college, undergrad, at Penn State, where I learned accounting, among other things; started my career as an accountant very briefly, before deciding to continue on to law school. After studying accounting and being in an accounting firm for a short while, I decided to proceed to law school, and went to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia with my now wife.   Josh Lavrinc: We stayed there for about five years, through law school and practicing law, really in the areas- two areas - one, real estate finance and development and the other area, structured finance, working, in particular, on commercial mortgage securitization for large rating agency clients and large investor clients. Then combining that with a more traditional dirt practice, as they call it, on real estate development, and then representing banks, insurance companies on lending and investment, as well.   Josh Lavrinc: When it was time to have children - my wife is from Pittsburgh - we came back to Pittsburgh and here we've been since about 2005. I continued practicing law for a few years until the market crashed in 2008. I had left the law firm to start a development career and started, actually, a distressed debt strategy that was difficult to pull off, raising capital and sourcing distressed debt transactions as a way to try and acquire property at the right basis during that cycle.   Josh Lavrinc: With little resources to pursue that strategy, my partner and I at the time - he was also young with new children in the house, like I - we decided to look at residential real estate as an overlooked asset class; something that had been hit pretty hard by the financial crisis. We started a real estate development and construction company in Pittsburgh, which went on. After starting that up. about 24 months into it, I sold my interests and moved on to the mission-based investment fund management platform that I've grown and am part of now. I sold those interests, and he went on to become the largest owner of houses in Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, in 2014..   Josh Lavrinc: I have a residential development and an investment background thanks to those couple of years, but I've moved back into commercial, which was much more of my professional training. I'm excitedly applying my skills for a particular mission rather than an array of clients, an array of projects, where I had responsibilities previously, just to execute on a transaction somewhat disconnected from the underlying projects. Now, I'm on the front side of the transaction, helping, assisting clients in figuring out how to finance those projects or actually providing the capital for those projects, and with a particular mission, as I was saying [cross talk] I can talk a little bit about that.   Eve Picker: Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about the mission? That'd be really great.   Josh Lavrinc: My current partner, Jim Noland, had a mortgage banking firm back in Pittsburgh that he had started in the late '70s-early '80s. At some point, towards the end of that decade, some of the local union building trades came to him and said, "We've been investing in these national strategies with our local pension fund money. They will create financial returns, but they're invested in projects at major metros that are very large, and they don't really have any impact on us, here locally, so we would like to see if we can invest our money in local projects, create jobs, and create financial return."   Josh Lavrinc: So, before it became popular to talk about responsible investments or mission-based investment, here was a fund that formed. Fast forward, that fund is called the Employees Real Estate Construction Trust. It's a regional fund from Cleveland, Ohio, through West Virginia that has a collection of union, municipal and private pension fund investors, the majority of whom originally were local union building trades. There is a 100-percent union building-trade labor requirement attached to those funds for every investment they do, in order to create high-quality jobs through the union building trades and invest that money for financial return, locally.   Eve Picker: How much has been invested locally through that fund over the years?   Josh Lavrinc: It's been, I believe, over a billion dollars at this point, although the corpus of the funds is in the $200 million range, a little over that [cross talk]   Eve Picker: -that's pretty high impact, Josh.   Josh Lavrinc: Pretty high impact, and that's not a track record I can claim responsibility for. There's a great team. There's a trustee of those funds, AmeriServ Bank. My partner, Jim Noland, and his company, Penn Trust Real Estate Advisory Services, Incorporated, of which I was part, has served as the real estate advisor, essentially in charge of origination, and execution, and servicing of all those assets. There are strategies within those funds - a debt strategy and an equity strategy. They've been very flexible in the market; able to do things a little more aggressively than conventional lenders and have built up a great reputation in the development community in this region, as a result of that, and their great, diligent, and friendly relationships.   Eve Picker: That's how you dipped your toe in the water of impact and socially responsible developments. If you fast forward today, what other projects have you worked on or what other funds have you managed that fit that criteria?   Josh Lavrinc: Great. When I met Jim Noland on a nonprofit board he and I were serving on, he was pursuing a program with the State of Pennsylvania - the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I should say - called the Building Pennsylvania Mezzanine Loan Program, trying to do support; provide gap financing to support commercial projects in promoting an economic development mission in the state. That program successfully was pursued, and we've used that a number of times, including to finance the Ace Hotel here in Pittsburgh. That's one additional mission-based fund that we continue to manage from time to time.   Eve Picker: Be sure to go to EvePicker.com and sign up for my free educational newsletter about impact real estate investing. You'll be among the first to hear about new projects you can invest in. That's EvePicker.com. Thanks so much.   Eve Picker: We should tell people, the Ace Hotel in Pittsburgh is a pretty high-impact project, because it's a hotel that was ... The hotel actually re-utilized, renovated a beautiful old building that had been long vacant in a very underserved neighborhood that was quite poor at the time. It really did a number of amazing things. It's not just an Ace Hotel. It's an Ace Hotel that really made an impact, I think.   Josh Lavrinc: Yeah, it came at a time, just before this ... Really at the cusp for ... This neighborhood in Pittsburgh, East Liberty, had been, prior to that, fairly distressed. Certainly, the Bakery Square project and the folks at Walnut Capital helped to transform that neighborhood, among others, but our friends, Nate Cunningham and Matthew Ciccone - Matthew sort of envisioning that project ...   Josh Lavrinc: A former YMCA associated with a church across the street; had been sort of mid-block. Not a hard corner. Not an easy site to see, and certainly, at that time, not a neighborhood where you thought about hospitality assets, nor a brand, in Ace, that lenders still to this day think about wanting to see a major franchise and the loyalty customer base of that franchise brought to bear. Difficult to do boutique hotel financing in this neighborhood, mid-block, in the conversion of a former YMCA, but it turned out beautifully. It has been a social magnet for that neighborhood and certainly part of the recovery, I think [cross talk]    Eve Picker: So that's what-   Josh Lavrinc: Interestingly enough, another- Oh, go ahead, Eve.   Eve Picker: No, you go ahead.   Josh Lavrinc: Interestingly enough, at that time, we also arranged senior financing, or I should say bridge financing, with a fund called the Strategic Investment Fund, which I now manage through our company, Callay Capital - a third fund in our portfolio of funds that we manage. At that time, we were doing servicing for this fund and had helped with origination. We weren't formerly the fund manager, we were just a particular service provider, but it was a good fit for that mission.   Josh Lavrinc: That fund now has recently changed its mission a bit but was originally formed in the '90s to revitalize downtown Pittsburgh in the wake of the collapse of the steel industry. I should say not just downtown Pittsburgh, but also industrial reparation of the river valleys, where so much steel job loss actually was experienced. The Strategic Investment Fund's intent was to create economic development - primarily its focus - in those river valleys, but also to revitalize housing and make a vibrant downtown community in the Pittsburgh CBD, in particular. It was very active in financing residential, retail, some hospitality, and a lot of commercial in the region, but focused on those two strategies.   Josh Lavrinc: Again, subordinate financing, taking aggressive pieces of the capital stack that were unable to be financed by conventional lenders - second, third mortgages, bridge loans, those kind of financing. We now manage that. The strategy is shifting a bit. We're looking at- now that downtown Pittsburgh has essentially become revitalized, although, perhaps not at 100 percent, it's drastically different than it was even 20 years ago. The mission now is to try and spread that growth into other neighborhoods that have more challenges for resources and try and help those more challenged communities. There's also a sub-mission to assist with the affordable housing crisis that we have nationally and trying to create affordable housing. We're looking at affordable housing in well-resourced communities, as well as lesser-resource communities [cross talk] In the last-   Eve Picker: No, you go ahead. Go ahead.   Josh Lavrinc: I was just going to say the last fund that we're managing currently, as an active fund, is the Power of 32 Site Development Fund. This was a fund in 2014 that we raised to assist in creating shovel-ready sites for our region to promote a land development and attract companies from across the globe to locate here in our region and create jobs.   Josh Lavrinc: It's called the Power of 32, because there was a larger think-tank initiative trying to promote the greater Pittsburgh region, identifying with four states: Ohio, Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania - 32 counties in those states - and really community development, broadly - rails to trails, and venture capital, and site development. A bunch of initiatives were discussed, and we were one of those initiatives was to do the site development and we were chosen as the fund manager and helped to raise and implement that fund. It's been successful to date. We've raised about $50 million and have ... We've done about $25 million of projects right now, and we're continuing that investment.   Eve Picker: That, in itself, is a huge body of work, but I know you're squarely involved in socially responsible real estate and finance in Pittsburgh, but I also know that you are working on your own real estate development projects. You and I have partnered to try and raise money for Opportunity Zone real estate, which I'd love us to talk about and the difficulties around that entire tax law and how it's playing out. Do you want to talk about that?   Josh Lavrinc: Yes, absolutely. That's the fund that has not been named yet-   Eve Picker: That's right.   Josh Lavrinc: and we are ... Eve and I have been actively involved since the tax cuts and JOBS Act of 2017 came out. In the wake of the announcement of the designated Opportunity Zones in April of 2018, or March of 2018, we've been actively monitoring this potential huge impact game-changer for socially responsible investment and impact investment. Maybe I'll unpack that a little bit and just-   Eve Picker: I think that's a great idea.   Josh Lavrinc: -how it's set up.   Eve Picker: I was going to suggest that, yep.   Josh Lavrinc: When we talk about impact investment or social responsibility and investment, these all sort of have a categorical place, I think, in my mind, around certain missions. I think any time we're talking about investment funds, there's obviously a financial mission, but when we talk about socially responsible or impact investments, we're coupling financial investment, without trying to compromise it, with some social mission and likely environmental; which might be part of social, but I would break out as a third category. So, financial, social and environmental missions; social sometimes is referred to as community.   Josh Lavrinc: I think that community development should and does occur in all communities. Most of the time, when we talk about community development, we're talking about low-income communities and trying to help the communities with less resources, but really, there can be good community, positive community development. For instance, we're pursuing right now an affordable housing project in Pittsburgh's Strip District, which is a neighborhood that's on fire for job growth, and retail development, and hospitality resources, adjacent to the CBD, and multi-family apartment, market-rate apartments, condominiums, office. All of the commercial real estate products are well represented there, but not affordable housing.   Eve Picker: In other words, it's gentrifying very, very quickly.   Josh Lavrinc: Yes, and I think it was a fairly low population community to begin with, because it's primarily industrial in nature, right? [cross talk]   Eve Picker: It was. That's correct. That's correct.   Josh Lavrinc: -there are concerns about displacement and gentrification throughout all of these conversations about responsible community development, but here's a community that maybe did not have a large, low-income population, and we need to try and develop it in a balanced manner and help-   Eve Picker: That's correct.   Josh Lavrinc: I think a key to creating affordable housing and creating a region, a strong region for all, is in those hot neighborhoods to try and remember the responsible uses, as well. We're working on a project that I hope we'll be closing on later this summer to create a significant amount of affordable units in that neighborhood. A slight digression there from our categorical discussion of impact investment.   Josh Lavrinc: Just one example of community development, though, is affordable housing, and most of the time, that market, whenever we have a use that doesn't bring in rents that are sufficient to motivate investors on their own - hence the crisis we're in, where we don't have enough supply because there's not enough financial investment incentive to attract investors and developers to create that product - there's some subsidy or incentives. And in this case of affordable housing, obviously, there's the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, and those-   Eve Picker: Well, I've got to interject here. You have said a couple of things now that I think are absolutely key. That is that there's not enough financial incentive; that we're trying to do socially responsible projects, while at the same time keeping the financial returns the same. That, I think, is the crux of the issue. I think that perhaps we've all gotten a little bit too greedy, but it isn't- it isn't always possible to keep the financial return in the 20-to 25-percent internal rate of return arena for a project that is socially responsible. Yet you and I have not ... I think we both don't believe that we have investors really ready to invest for less. They really want both. Am I right? They want the financial returns, and they want [cross talk]   Josh Lavrinc: Yeah, they do. They do [cross talk] and it's tough to deliver both. It's tough to deliver both, especially when you get into ... When you get into a structured product like the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, you've got rent restrictions - for good reasons - that go on for sometimes upwards of 20 years. That's difficult to project a financial return on sort of ... All real estate is perhaps a depreciating asset, other than their land value, that require repair and reinvestment over time. If you have a challenged underlying land value because it's in a less-resourced community, you have a restriction on the income potential of that property, it really becomes a very specialized, niche investment opportunity [cross talk] like most other investments.   Eve Picker: -yeah, because the asset value can't increase over time because it's restricted. Typically, investors- or often investors are looking for some return over the years and then some share the upside at the end, when the project is sold. But the upside on an asset, on a building that has been restricted, is just not going to be there.   Josh Lavrinc: That's right. Sometimes, it is. Obviously, on the margins, there are exceptions. When you have something in a rent-restricted unit to a project in a rapidly, or even not rapidly, but a neighborhood that changes over the course of 20 years and becomes very valuable at the end and you lift the restrictions. That's no longer developed for the same mission. That then, perhaps ... The value becomes in converting that to another use. I think the silver lining to all of this, interestingly ... How do we reconcile financial return and investment? You hit the nail on the head. There requires some compromise, in the absence of other incentives. I think the Opportunity Zone program or incentive is potentially one of the solutions that can really spur new impact investment in communities. The reason I say that- oh, go ahead.   Eve Picker: No, I was going to say for our listeners who don't know what Opportunity Zones are, they were introduced as part of the 2017 JOBS and Tax Act. I think there are over 8,000 of them. Am I right, Josh? 8,000 [cross talk]   Josh Lavrinc: -25 percent of all eligible low-income census tracts in the United States were delegated to the state level to be selected by the chief executives in each of those states, and then they designated 25 percent of those. It is a large number, as you said, Eve, across the country. There has been a lot of focus on this program, about whether it's really a program. I've used that word a couple of times. It's an incentive, for sure, but it is different than a tax-credit program or other incentive program that we've seen in the past in that only those with capital gains can directly benefit by investing into an Opportunity Zone - one of these designated low-income census tracts.   Josh Lavrinc: The benefit is in a short-term deferral of a prior capital gain. If, meeting the qualifications, you can maintain that capital gains investment in an Opportunity Zone for a whole period exceeding 10 years - a long-term investment -then you would receive a step up in basis for that capital gains that was reinvested into a new investment to the fair market value of that investment at the end of that hold period [cross talk] has the potential for tax exemption, essentially.   Eve Picker: That's correct. I think it's actually a great program. It could be a great program. It has a couple of really, I think, serious flaws, and it's inequitable in the fact that only someone with capital gains can really take advantage of it. That already skews it towards wealthy investors. Secondly, in the selection of these census tracts, one can only imagine how much politics was involved, because you and I know that the tracks that were selected in Pittsburgh, particularly difficult, and they were selected for the right reasons, because those really need the most investment. But other states didn't really think about it that way, or other cities. They selected tracts that already had investment and they thought they could attract more dollars to. Even the selection of the census tracts has been inequitable. I don't know what you think about that, Josh, but ...?   Josh Lavrinc: Yeah, I think it may have been equitable in that everyone every state was participating, and every leadership group had discretion to choose the census tracts that made sense for their for their states. But when you do things equitably, it doesn't necessarily always result in an equitable distribution of resources after that. I think, unfortunately, there will be ... With our real estate lens, thinking about it in a real estate investment perspective, over the past 18 months, as we have ... When I say 'we,' I mean all of us; all of the thought leaders on the investment, accountants, lawyers, investment professionals coming together, talking about Opportunity Zones.   Josh Lavrinc: There has been concern about how will this come about? What is the financial impact of this incentive? Will it really be a game-changing flow of capital to all the Opportunity Zones? Obviously, I left out, in that conversation with the communities and economic development trust professionals across the country, who are hoping that this is a new resource to help revitalize their communities. There is certainly, when looked out through the lens of investment capital, in projects out, real estate projects out, there will be some lowest common denominator that attracts capital to the primary market.   Josh Lavrinc: Rather than changing a capital flow from Silicon Valley to Pittsburgh, which may have been the original intent of the program, and I think was, based on the political leadership that have spoken about it, if there are qualified Opportunity Zones, designated Opportunity Zones in Silicon Valley, in New York, in L.A., then those folks that are already investing in those communities don't have to look very far to find another opportunities. In fact, West Hollywood, and East Palo Alto, and portions of New York City - of course, they have low-income communities and have been designated Opportunity Zones..   Josh Lavrinc: If there's a competition among Opportunity Zones across the country for limited dollars, there will not- the problem necessarily won't be solved by the Opportunity Zone designation, itself. But I think, and reflecting on it 18 months in, I think the real change that can come through Opportunity Zones is the operating business incentive. This doesn't just apply to real estate projects. The Opportunity Zone benefit applies to capital gains of any type, with some exceptions - some very nuanced tax exceptions - but operating businesses are squarely within the regulations that have come out from the IRS.   Josh Lavrinc: I think that when we see greater investment in operating businesses ... There are already folks saying that private equity shops looking to invest in venture capital, looking to invest in companies; Company A is located outside an Opportunity Zone. "Why don't you just move down the street to an Opportunity Zone, and we'll make an investment, because it'll be more tax advantaged for us."   Josh Lavrinc: When that flow happens, when we see venture capital, private equity, and investment, and operating businesses start to prefer Opportunity Zones, I think that tide - that's a trend that can occur throughout the Opportunity Zones, not just isolated ... When that happens, we're going to see real businesses relocate, real jobs relocate, real homes relocate. That will attract more jobs, more retail, more housing, and start to really revitalize a community in a fundamental way that I think we talked about revitalization, which is putting dollars into a community.   Josh Lavrinc: There may be adverse impacts of that, if we don't use those dollars responsibly by providing for affordable housing in those communities, along- maintaining affordable housing at a high quality, for instance, as a community is revitalizing, but hopefully, those jobs that are moving down the street initially ... Although the people in those jobs may or may not have come from the target Opportunity Zone community, new jobs that are attracted to that new company, whether they are community goods and services, like retail, or strategically associated companies with the original company that moved, or some other service in the community that has more demand, those hopefully will be employing folks in the community, and is such that, hopefully, the gentrification that happens is inclusive and participatory, so that we're not seeing a series of outsiders coming into this community alone, but that there is a strengthening of the existing community that may not touch and concern every person.   Josh Lavrinc: Therefore, there's a need to make sure we're thinking about responsible community development goals, like affordable housing and investing in social services. That program, creating new businesses in an Opportunity Zone and the downstream impact of a new business locating in a community, I think, is the opportunity to bring together financial return and impact investment, social responsibility, because we'll then [cross talk]   Eve Picker: -where does that leave real estate in the equation?   Josh Lavrinc: That's the downstream effect. I think that it only takes one company moving into East Liberty, for instance - Duolingo moving into East Liberty; Google moving into East Liberty - to suddenly revitalize that community. There are much more real estate- many more real estate projects taking place in that community as a result of those business moves..   Josh Lavrinc: If we can continue to see more businesses move into Opportunity Zones that will beget more real estate investment, and folks that say, "We're going to invest in this community ... We wouldn't have otherwise, because we were worried about compromising our financial return." But then, when we combine the incentives for capital gains with the Opportunity Zone incentive with the potential transformation of this community over 10 years - transformation meaning revitalization; hopefully, appreciation - now we have a large enough financial return to incentivize us to invest and in this particular community. That's what we've been trying to accomplish all along.   Josh Lavrinc: Obviously, there is place-based responsibility. Just investing in a low-income community is helpful, but it's also subject-based, use-based responsibility. What are we building in that area? We're building commercial real estate to support jobs. That's a that's a version of social responsibility. If we're doing it to support housing, that's a version. Obviously, we want to consider the environmental impact, which I've kind of left out of this conversation about financial incentives and social responsibility. All of those things can be serviced. We'll still have, however, a need for some segment of the market to support the under-resourced portion of the community through other affordable housing, or social services. I think [cross talk] role of responsible tax management and those kind of things for the governing bodies, in addition to charitable and private efforts.   Eve Picker: But also, there's people in the community who want to invest, as you know, right? I do believe that equity crowdfunding can play a huge role in the revitalization of communities, because now, if you have a business that moves in, or a building that is revitalized, the people in that neighborhood can actually invest in it. That's a really important piece of building wealth within a community for the community, not just making it better for the community and leaving them on the outside. Difficult, as you know.   Josh Lavrinc: I think that's a great point that the community, itself, with new financial tools and e-commerce, information-age tools, like crowdfunding and the regulatory predicates of crowdfunding that you've harnessed with Small Change, bringing not just capital into these communities for financially viable projects, but also on tapping neighbors, and neighbors, perhaps in a colloquial sense, that might be stretching across the globe that are motivated about something that compromises financial return in order to accomplish impact. That's a real experiment with social capital [cross talk] can be accomplished. That story hasn't been told yet, entirely.   Eve Picker: In my time in Pittsburgh, the thing that has had the biggest impact on me is - this is true throughout the Rust Belt, I think. I'm not sure about other cities, but certainly many places I've been - how much people love the cities they live in, and how much they want to be engaged in making them better. It's a pretty astounding phenomenon..   Eve Picker: Give them an opportunity to invest $500, $1,000, $2,000, or whatever, in the place they live, rather than put it in a mutual fund, where they don't know where it's going to go, that circulates money locally, and it gives them an opportunity to share in making that place better. It's an amazing opportunity. Now we just have to educate investors, right, Josh?   Josh Lavrinc: Of course. Yeah, that's right. Not to mention the bite-sized piece of the investment that you're talking about. The other power of this is we would all like to own the local restaurant, or the local general store, or name any other part of the community that you utilize and would like to support or own. Without a large amount of resources, it's practically very difficult to accomplish that.   Josh Lavrinc: This allows, through fractional ownership at very humble investment levels, the opportunity to make a change and invest in something that ... Whether it's financially motivated, or more community motivated, depending on the mission of that particular project or fund, crowdfunding certainly is a powerful tool to try and unlock investment and change for the masses.   Eve Picker: Yeah. Moving away from Opportunity Zones, what other current trends in real estate development are you seeing that you think are really important for the future of our cities?   Josh Lavrinc: I think I would focus on the word 'community.' What  by that is I think we're defining the way - in particular, in cities and urban environments - the way people come together, and live, work, and play. Those are terms popularized by commercial real estate development to try and identify or put a friendly face around mixed-use projects and make them simple to understand, but fundamentally, there is a big social change there of trying to make productive and as accessible a community as possible.   Josh Lavrinc: I was listening recently to another podcast with the co-founder of WeWork, talking about their perspective on co-working, how that came out of a desire to create community. I'm involved with a co-working company here, locally, called The Beauty Shop, in Pittsburgh, where we're trying to develop similar communities, but growing that community outside of just an office space. Their first thought, back right around of the time the financial crisis, was that people working in isolated environments can be more productive, more happy, more engaged, and feel more appreciated and better-served by those around them that are similarly motivated; similarly making sacrifices for their businesses, if they are put together in a community.   Josh Lavrinc: When you combine that and expand that into residential real estate, can those people perhaps live in environments where they feel more supported and have more of a social fabric? I think this comes along with trends on isolationism and depression that are plaguing our country these days. Those are growing problems for our nation. This is one way to tackle that social problem is bringing together community.   Josh Lavrinc: Obviously, it can extend into other parts of the community, where instead of spending time isolated, commuting to your job, you might be able to create an entire ecosystem around your business, or your apartment, or your entertainment venue, and have that all in one ... Obviously, that's what a city represents [cross talk] extending that community into a broader scale about technology, connectedness, and resource- infrastructure resources in a particular city - all of these things are really the same concept, at a different scale.   Eve Picker: I can't help but think it's the modern-day version of the kibbutz [cross talk]   Josh Lavrinc: Yes, right, and-   Eve Picker: -the kibbutz probably got all of this right a long time ago.   Josh Lavrinc: That communal living is exactly what is perhaps needed to get people back, attached, especially in the age of digital devices and the connected-with-ness we have, and yet, perhaps, the over-connectivity that's coming with that, without having perhaps enough emotional and human support with that connectivity. Definitely, it's funny [cross talk]   Eve Picker: It's also affordability, because if you share resources, whether it's a shared kitchen or whatever it is, then your living costs are going to go down. I think that's also part of the reason why co-housing options are being explored.   Josh Lavrinc: That's right. You're right, when we talk about the impact of an urban environment, or it doesn't necessarily have to occur just in an urban environment, the community, generally, there are social health and well-being aspects. There are business aspects, and there are certainly affordable aspects of the development that can be brought to bear as a result of the sharing of a common amenity base and spreading those costs across many uses.   Josh Lavrinc: That's one of the focuses of my current development [audio cuts] in addition to fund management and the structured finance consulting, new markets, tax credits, historic tax credits that I work on in my primary business, I also spend a lot of time on commercial real estate development; in particular, recently, anchored by coworking, but has molded that into a strategy around community, where we are looking at secondary and tertiary cities, not primary markets, to try and create these full-scale communities in urban environments. Although I think suburban environments are a huge untapped market, as well, to try and bring together a greater sense of community and all of those benefits that come with it - the social, the financial and the affordability.   Eve Picker: Probably in suburban markets, people are even more isolated.   Josh Lavrinc: Exactly, exactly. When we talk about commute times and disparate destinations for live, work, and play, bring those things together into a town center, into a real Main Street ... Revitalizing the main street. Obviously, there are a lot of Main Streets programs across the United States. It's a very similar theme for community development. But bringing an urban spin to it, with a responsible amount of density and set of uses, I think has a lot of power, and I think we'll see a lot of that coming up.   Josh Lavrinc: Hopefully, we'll see that happening in Opportunity Zones. I think if we can bring together Opportunity Zone development and businesses locating in those Opportunity Zones and then try to develop more community, then we'll see some pretty significant change in the next decade of real estate, business, and real community development conspiring together to implement improvement or accomplish improvement.   Eve Picker: Given all of this, where do you think the future of real estate impact investing lies?   Josh Lavrinc: Well, I think that it probably is the future. I think that the days of solely focusing on financial returns are probably starting to narrow, and it seems that the aware, responsible person is going to make more decisions. As we provide more information and more connectivity to individuals to not only their investments, but to the world around them, and their neighbors, and the people in the communities around them, they're going to make more conscious decisions to better ... To increase their efforts to deploy what investment funds they have into those things that help people around them and the environment around them.   Josh Lavrinc: Whether it's crowdfunding, whether it's an Opportunity Zone fund, whether it's a tax credit incentive, there are ... We are seeing a growth in responsible investment, in mission-based investment, and for good reason, because, fundamentally, we aren't robots. We're humans, and we have a moral compass, and we have emotion, and emotional intelligence that directs our activities to things that we favor for reasons other than purely financial. The closer we can get to combining financial return - which is almost a third-party neutral arbiter, selecting return responsibly for our good of our income and wealth in the future - if we can start to align that financial return, even more strongly than just the Opportunity Zone, with responsible investment, I think I think we'll get there.   Eve Picker: We have, in fact, lived through the era of green-washing, and we're heading into the era of good-washing, right?   Josh Lavrinc: Yeah, that's an interesting way ... Hopefully, it's not washing at all, but you're right. You're right that there's been popularization, perhaps over-popularization and overuse of terms around, for instance, green. I think we're getting into a period, an enlightenment, if you will, where individuals are receiving information about their investments, receiving information about what's happening in the world around them, and then are given opportunities to vote with their own dollars in projects that have real meaning to them and to the people around them that they care about.   Eve Picker: I have three sign-off questions for you that I ask everyone. I'm wondering what your answers are going to be. The first one is what's the one thing that makes a real estate project impactful to you?   Josh Lavrinc: The impact for me, although I skew towards economic development, I would say it's serving the people. Keying in on that community that we have spoken about here, we could easily talk about the environmental crisis that we face as a globe. We could talk about the lack of social services and the need in our community for the poor. But I think that cutting across all of those for impact, in my mind, is assessing whether a project is responsibly targeting its community.   Josh Lavrinc: I'm not inventing anything new with that response. When you think about the New Markets Tax Credit program and what community development enterprises across the country look at, when they're assessing projects, one of the first questions they ask are what are the community's plans? Does the community have a development plan? Is there community support for a proposed project, prior to awarding a subsidy or incentive? I think there's really good wisdom in that practice. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're getting the best project, or necessarily a particular outcome, but it does mean that you're considering what that community's needs are and trying to address it responsibly. That's how I would answer that.   Eve Picker: The second question - other than by raising money, how do you think crowdfunding might benefit the impact real estate developer?   Josh Lavrinc: Well [cross talk] obviously-   Eve Picker: These are not trick questions.   Josh Lavrinc: No, no, I think ... Obviously, I think, when we think about influencers, and social media, and the power of marketing in our current environment, crowdfunding has a way of making something more popular, more highlighted, and can be a great marketing tool, and perhaps a vote of confidence from the community. It might be a third party, whether those people are local to the community or outside, it's a third-party validation of whether this investment is responsible, or desirable for whatever- depending on the purpose of the crowdfunded group, that it's meeting their mission. I think there could be strong marketing efforts as a result of the crowdfunded opportunity, but I'm sure there are a couple of other [cross talk]   Eve Picker: -in effect, a community engagement tool.   Josh Lavrinc: That's right.   Eve Picker: Yeah, yeah. Final question - what one thing in real estate development do you think would improve ... I'm going to ask that question again. How do you think real estate development in the US could be improved by just one thing?   Josh Lavrinc: I think that if we could ... We can work hard to tie together our incentives, make sure they are aligned. We have a lot of ... All of the real estate industry is motivated fundamentally by financial return. We have folks whose livelihood is based on their development project, their construction project, their leasing of the project. That is a powerful tool to impact activity, to create activity financially, for each one of us.   Josh Lavrinc: The more we can align incentives, like the Opportunity Zone, to create the outcomes we want and make sure that those incentives are narrowly tailored to really accomplish what we want ... For instance, I think there are some great things about the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, which is an area I don't practice a lot in - although we're investing in affordable housing, regionally, that's not a national practice that I participate in - I think that we see the competition over the program; the structure of a program that tries to compensate with fees, given the lack of value creation. Those fees then create outsized projects that maybe are more expensive than they need to be, or more inefficient than they need to be.   Josh Lavrinc: If we can go back and fix programs to address the value equation differently and think about the model we're setting up and the downstream impact of that model to be more efficient and more effective for our goals, I think that would have perhaps the most profound effect, because you're not ... Instead of trying to change the fundamental capitalistic income-driven goal of a professional, which I don't think we can change - other than to redirect it through incentives - and if we can align those incentives with what we think currently are the crises facing our country, which are probably the social isolation, the isolation of resources, so that everyone has access to good education, and training, and jobs, and economic advancement of themselves, and healthcare, and all the rest of those basic needs, and hopefully in a way that's aligned responsibly for the environment, long term ... We have a lot of great rapid change happening there, obviously, with autonomous vehicles and renewable energy. The more we can align these programs into creating a community that's hitting on all cylinders across both of those major programmatic missions, I think that the better our commercial real estate market will be, the better our professionals will be in accomplishing those goals and the end result for the community.   Eve Picker: Yes. Agreed. Well, Josh, thank you very much for talking with me today. I really enjoyed our conversation, and I'm sure we'll be talking again soon. Thanks so much-   Josh Lavrinc: I did as well. Thank you very much, Eve.   Eve Picker: Bye.   Eve Picker: That was Josh Lavrinc. Today, I learned that the capital markets can be squarely directed at impact investing. There are some large and strategic funds in Pittsburgh that have been doing this for quite a while now. Impact investing in real estate spans the spectrum from tiny projects, some of which we've listed on Small Change, to large funds that focus solely on impact.   Eve Picker: You can find out more about impact real estate investing and access the show notes for today's episode at my website, EvePicker.com. While you're there, sign up for my newsletter to find out more about how to make money in real estate while building better cities. Thank you so much for spending your time with me today, and thank you, Josh, for sharing your thoughts with us. We'll talk again soon, but for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.  

The monkey--or is that a billy goat--is off of their backs.  The Cardinals not only won at Wrigley but beat Kyle Hendricks in the process (even if he didn't take the loss because reasons), propelling them that much closer to an October appointment.  Daniel (C70 At The Bat, @C70) and Allen (Red Dirt Redbird, @amedlock1) talk about the highs and lows of Thursday night's game, from Jack Flaherty to Carlos Martinez to Matt Carpenter, and look ahead to what the upcoming week might look like.  (Can the Pirates help at all?  That'd be swell.)  Plus what does the Nationals series tell us about postseason baseball and how much does losing Kolten Wong hurt.  Plenty to listen to as you go through this big weekend series!

JJ Virgin is a 4 x New York Times Best Selling Author, TV show Host, Triple Board certified Celebrity Nutritionist and a warrior mum. In 2012 JJ's 16 year old son Grant was the victim of a hit and run accident and was left barely hanging onto life, after weeks in a critical condition and defying all the odds he slowly emerged from his coma with major brain trauma and 13 fractures and a near torn aorta. JJ was told from the outset he wouldn't survive the first night, that he wouldn't survive the airlift to the hospital, that he wouldn't survive the operation and that if by some miracle he did his brain damage would make it a life not worth living. But JJ is a fighter and she decided from the outset that her son would survive and thrive and that she wouldn't rest until he was 110%. The years of rehabilitation and the strategies she used to get him there is what we share in this interview. This powerful story resonated with me because I have been through the same experience with my mother and I too refused to give up, had to advocate for her rehabilitation and took a multple pronged approach to her recovery as did JJ with her son.   This incredibly powerful woman is a testament to what the right mindset combined with love, belief, faith and the ability to build a team around her can do to beat the odds.   We would like to thank our sponsors Running Hot - By Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff If you want to run faster, longer and be stronger without burnout and injuries then check out and TRY our Running Club for FREE on a 7 day FREE TRIAL Complete holistic running programmes for distances from 5km to ultramarathon and for beginners to advanced runners.   All include Run training sessions, mobility workouts daily, strength workouts specific for runners, nutrition guidance and mindset help Plus injury prevention series, foundational plans, running drill series and a huge library of videos, articles, podcasts, clean eating recipes and more.   www.runninghotcoaching.com/info and don't forget to subscribe to our youtube channel at Lisa's Youtube channel  www.yotube.com/user/lisatamat and come visit us on our facebook group   www.facebook.com/groups/lisatamati Epigenetics Testing Program by Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff. Wouldn’t it be great if your body came with a user manual? Which foods should you eat, and which ones should you avoid? When, and how often should you be eating? What type of exercise does your body respond best to, and when is it best to exercise? These are just some of the questions you’ll uncover the answers to in the Epigenetics Testing Program along with many others. There’s a good reason why epigenetics is being hailed as the “future of personalised health”, as it unlocks the user manual you’ll wish you’d been born with! No more guess work. The program, developed by an international team of independent doctors, researchers, and technology programmers for over 15 years, uses a powerful epigenetics analysis platform informed by 100% evidenced-based medical research. The platform uses over 500 algorithms and 10,000 data points per user, to analyse body measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home Find out more about our  Epigenetics Program and how it can change your life and help you reach optimal health, happiness and potential at: https://runninghotcoaching.com/epigenetics You can find all our programs, courses, live seminars and more at www.lisatamati.com    Transcription from the show. Speaker 2: (00:02) Well, hello everybody. It's Lisa Tamati here at pushing the limits today. I have a really wonderful special guest with me all the way from Tampa in Florida. She's an absolute superstar of a lady. She's a celebrity nutritionist, four times New York Times best seller fitness hall of Famer and she's also a warrior mum and she has a very interesting story today that we're going to delve into both in her career and what she's achieved but also,uwas ubrain injury in regards to his son grants. We had a hit and run x events. So welcome to the show JJ. It's fantastic to have you. Thank you. Good to be here also. (00:42) So JJ, I just want to start a little bit of it with a background. If you wouldn't mind sharing, what you do and your, your books and your work a little bit. That'd be fantastic. Speaker 3: (00:54) All right. I am a nutrition and fitness expert and so I've got a bunch of books I've written over the years. Online programs. I speak, I do TV. I had a couple, I was kind of helped start reality TV because I was on Dr Phil's weight loss challenges for two years. It was really when that whole thing was kinda getting going. Then I had my own show on TLC called freaky eaters. So I've been really fortunate to just be able to work in something that I'm super passionate about, which is anything related to health and wellness. And then I also have an organization where we help other doctors and health experts get their message out to the world called mindshare. Speaker 2: (01:37) Oh Wow. And that is something that we definitely want to delve into a little bit too. So now I want to go back to you've got two sons, Bryce and Grant and in 2012 Grant was the victim of a hit and run accident. Can we share a little bit about that story and what you sort of went through with him and you know, it really resonated with me, your book and your story because a lot of the same dramas that you have over there, it was with the system a few like we have here as well. Probably even worse, the speaks and you had to be a real fighter and therefore the title of your, your book sort of really resonated with me as well. So can we go into that story a little bit and tell us what happened with Grant? Speaker 3: (02:29) Yeah, it's really a story I realized after the fact. It's really a story about what it takes to be a caretaker and I think that's important to underscore because it's a role all of us will have to play, right? I mean, at some point in your life you're going to be taking care of kids, you're going to be taking care of your parents. Maybe you're taking care of both at the same time or a spouse or siblings. So it's, it's one of those roles in life that you will probably face and how you show up during that role can make the difference between life and death for that person. So and also you know, how you show up is going to make a difference on your personal health too. So the grant was 16 years old. My other son was 15 years old. Speaker 3: (03:15) Bryce and grant went out to walk to a friend's house one night and got hit by a car and I didn't see this. A neighbour didn't see him getting hit. He just saw him lying on the street. You saw this woman get out of her car, gasp, get back in and drive off. And he then called nine one one and he was airlifted to the local hospital. When we got there, they told us that he had a torn aorta and it was going to rupture sometime in the next 24 hours unless it got repaired. But that he would never survive the airlift to the next hospital. They couldn't repair it there. He would have to, but that he wouldn't survive that. And even if you were to survive that, he would most likely not survive the surgery. And even if you were to survive that, he'd be so brain damaged. Speaker 3: (04:07) It wouldn't be worth it. I mean, literally they said that, I remember looking at this doctor going, he didn't, did he say that? And My 15 year old looked at the doctrine, he said, well, maybe like, is there a 0.25% chance he'd make it because the doctor already said his aorta was going to rupture sometime in the next 24 hours. And the doctor said, that sounds about right. Bryce could looked over at me. That's not zero. You know, and we're like, we'll take those odds. And because I think any, any parent out there or anyone who loves anybody would have to agree that as long as there's a chance, even if it's the teensiest little chance, like you've got to go for it, you know, you've got to fight for it. I mean, the idea that I was gonna let my son die here, there was absolutely no way I was going to do that. Speaker 3: (04:52) So we overruled. This doctor. Had Him airlifted. He survived the airlift, went through surgery, he survived that surgery. Now when he came out of the surgery, he had a stint in and he was, his aorta was fine, but he was in a deep coma. The neurosurgeons were like, we don't know if he'll wake up. And I remember standing in the hospital and he had 13 fractures. He was in this deep coma, multiple brain bleeds. And there were like literally Lisa, two little fingers I could hold on to everything else was either covered with road rash. It was bandaged shoes and cast. And I was standing there holding this little fingers and I said, grant, you know, I love you so much and nothing, you know, just the beeps of the machine he had, he was on a respirator, he had a central line. So it was all these things being monitored. Speaker 3: (05:43) And then I said, and your brother Bryce loves you so much. And I felt the littlest fingers squeezy and Huh. And then I said, you know, grandma loves you so much, nothing. And I said, your girlfriend Kenzie loves you so much. And that's when I felt this big by my hand getting picked a little bit up. And I said, you know, grant, you're going to be 110% your name means warrior. I got this. I've got so many friends in the business who can help, but I need you to fight. You've got to fight, you've gotta hang on for me and your name means warrior. Turns out. So I said, you just got to you. You've got to fight all, handle the rest and we're going to get you to be 110% and I just lived that 110%. I was so afraid to let anything else get into my brain that, that you know, the what ifs. Speaker 3: (06:31) Like what if he doesn't wake up? What if he can't walk away? I just, cause I felt like if I thought it, it would happen. So I've always been one of those people who believes that you can, you can create your reality. And I just managed my mindset. I stay focused on the 110% and you know, and there are a lot of times in there, things were not looking like they were even gonna make it to like 30%. You know, I'm much less a hundred, much less this like unrealistic number that doesn't exist. But I will tell you today, after being told that he would never survive an air lift or surgery, he'd be so brain damaged. He'd never wake up, he wouldn't walk, he couldn't hear like over and over and over again. He is better than before that accident is so, and you know, it has been this thing in our life that has made all of us in the family so much better and stronger because now you know, the, the things that would average most people would get rattled about, the average person would get upset about, they don't even like, they don't even trick, trick trigger us at all. Speaker 3: (07:39) Like we're like, Eh, no one's dying here. You know, and I'm sure you relate, right? I mean like stuff like this, you realize the stuff that people let get them upset on a regular basis. It just doesn't, who cares? You know, Speaker 2: (07:57) Actually. Yeah. And I mean, I've, my lesson is, know my story with my mom and very similar, not gonna survive if she does miss and brain damage, if she, you know, when she did wake up after weeks in a coma sh lights on, nobody home Speaker 2: (08:16) Years and years of rehabilitation and we're out a story's cross. And why this is so important for me is that you never gave up. You keep your mind on the know. Exactly. I had that 110% in my head too when I go around still saying that. And my mom's only at 90%, so I wa I've still got a wee way to go. But in their whole process, it's not that you don't have doubts and disappear and times where you're on the ground crying going, oh my God, how am I going to get through this? But it's keeping it standing back up every time, Speaker 3: (08:48) Every time. And Hey, here's the thing, Lisa. So you went for 110% and got to 90 Speaker 3: (08:55) That's a lot better than the zero they were giving you. Right. You know, like you look at it, I kept thinking, oh, I'm going to go for 110% if I get to like wherever I get to is better than the zero that they, the 0.25 they gave me. So you know, you just gotta keep going. And by the way, it's only been recently that he really has been getting to this hundred and 10% I just figured as long as he's alive, there's always something else I can do. It's something amazing I can do. So he is now better than before the accident. But now I'm not showing, you know, we're just going to keep Speaker 2: (09:27) Pushing. Exactly. And you've got to, you've got to keep that focus. One of the things, the, the title of my book that's coming out is called relentless. And that's exactly what you have to be is totally and utterly real. And I know, and with my journey, I came up against a huge opposition to the way that I was wanting to rehabilitate my mum in both the resources that I wouldn't try to get hold of. In my approach, I was criticized a lot for why are you putting you through such a rigorous and difficult training regime? Why don't you just let it be comfortable and know Speaker 3: (10:07) Rest, no wrestling cupcakes and just let her be Speaker 2: (10:10) Exactly. Cupcakes and this, I mean, I'm a ultra endurance athlete. I've been an athlete my entire life and I know so we, you know, do 200 300 kilometer races and things and I know how to overcome when your mind is trying to stop you. I know that people are capable of so much more than what we think we are. Yeah. What I have issue with, I understand that the medical professionals do not want to give you false hope, but to take away your hope creating. Huh. Any hope makes you have a weak action. Like you're not going to fight because you don't believe there's a waste at home. You know, here's the thing. Speaker 4: (10:55) Okay. Speaker 3: (10:55) No one can take our hope away. Speaker 4: (10:57) Cool. Speaker 3: (10:59) So what we've really got to manage is, is we're, we, we're putting people in the wrong places. What you're going when you're going to a doctor is you're getting an opinion. You can do what you want with the opinion. That's what you're getting as an opinion. You know, like the opinion of the doctor at the first hospital was the complete opposite of the opinion of the doctor in the second hospital. Why the first hospital doctor worked in Palm Springs, California, where the average age coming into the urgent care, the trauma center was about 75. Oh Wow. And for 75 year old with a torn aorta, multiple brain bleeds, multiple fractures, this would've been it. Speaker 3: (11:40) But for a 16 year old, it's not. And so the trauma center, we got them to, which is the second trauma centers, number two trauma center in the country in us, they see all sorts of gang fights, people thrown off, overpasses, all sorts of stuff. This was like not out of the norm. Right? So you're just getting their opinion based on what they know. And they're going to give you the best opinion they can based on the information that they have. And then you get to make the decision you want out of it. I think that we're giving people power where we shouldn't be, you know, so and yes, people thought I was absolutely crazy. But then they started to get behind it cause I started tell them what, you know, what I was doing and what we were going to have, especially when they walked in, said, oh he's never gonna walk again. Speaker 3: (12:30) I go, well, Huh. You know, he had a crushed heel. And I said, well what if Kobe Bryant were in this bed cause I'm pretty sure that you would be doing everything possible. So that's what we're going to do. And you know, then they told me he was in the second hospital, which was a rehab hospital. And they told me that you know, there was a swimming pool and they go in there. They go, oh he's not ready for that. And there was a gym and I would sneak into the gym with him and do stuff and they get mad at me. So then I got to t I got a little furlough where I got to take them out for four hours. So we took them to an Olympic size pool. We took a video of him swimming perfectly through this pool. Then we took him to the gym, and then I took the video of him doing all this workout stuff at the gym. And I said, he wants to be challenged. Human beings need to be challenged. They, you know, that's how we actually get stronger. We don't get stronger by doing a little less than what we're capable of. We get stronger by being pushed beyond what we think we're capable of. And that's what we have to do. Speaker 2: (13:34) I mean, that is just absolutely amazing. I mean, well, I had all this opposition when I was in the hospital that she would not even live for a few weeks even when she was stabilized. And that she would never, I would never be able to care for her. And I just, I, I was determined to take her home like this, you know, once they said, look, she's not improving, she's never going to do anything again. You have to put her in this, you know, a hospital institution. And I really fought tooth and nail to get her home and to get a little bit of support. So with caregivers in the morning for an hour and just, you know, for personal cares and some time out because she was 24, seven around the clock here and the, they would not give me the resources that I need. I had to really, really fight. Speaker 2: (14:23) And this is one of the important points that I've heard you make before too, and then abuse it. I've listened to did you have to really advocate for your loved one? You can go and, and you've, you're fighting against not only the, the, the accident or the aneurysm or you know, the, the results of that you're filing against the system that if you don't be a pushy, quite, you know, strong person. I mean, I'm, I'm lucky. I'm like, you, I don't really care if people don't like me when it comes to my mum, you know, like, I wouldn't Speaker 2: (15:00) Like a, a lot of, you know, oh, she's said pushy daughter. She's very forceful. You know, she's here again, me, I'm sure they hated me. And, and did not believe that I could do any of this. And I actually, at one stage, I remember going in and throwing my other two books at the doctor and saying, this is who I am and I am not putting my mom in a home and you better get used to it. You better give me what I need. And he still wouldn't, you know. So then I'm walking up brother, and who's very big man, and we got results. What we needed. You do, what ever you take to, to give your loved one the best chance possible. And you know, like with, with you taking grant into the gym and seeing, isn't it a, isn't it a beautiful feeling to actually get them out of the hospital situation and finally into some way like a gym or swimming pool surrounded with, with athletes and people that are actually all about improving themselves rather than being in a rehabilitation place where that's what I found that, you know, when she was surrounded by other young athletes training hard, she rose to the next Speaker 3: (16:15) Well think about, you know, what we know about obesity, that's super interesting. As they, you know, the studies in the U s about obesity being contagious, you catch it from your friends that you will tend to weigh what your closest friends way, even if they live across the country. And so one of the classic things I say when someone says, all right, well now I've gotten healthy and fit, how do I stay that way? I go find fit friends. So, you know, grant, when we took them, we took them out of the hospital after four and a half months earlier than they wanted us to. And then we had them in a Rehab Center for another month, but then I took them out of that, brought them home and I brought them to a training center that is the Athletic Training Center for that area. And they are amazing what they do. There are all sorts of, you know, like rope training, balance training power, like really cool stuff. And that's what we had them doing. And he's still now doing it to this day, like all sorts of crazy balanced stuff and you know, climbing and ropes and that kind of stuff that, you know, again, the average person won't do much less. Someone with rods in their thighs and, you know, he had ac joint problems, all sorts of stuff. And like Speaker 2: (17:37) He's fine, he's fine and he's fighting back. And did you with a brain injury? Did you have to teach grant everything from scratch again or did he start like with mum, it took me 18 months to teach mum just to roll over and bead, you know, it was that she couldn't push a button or she couldn't sit like she was completely floppy and no special awareness. Did grant have those issues as well? Speaker 3: (18:05) Yeah, that's very interesting. So grant was in a coma for a couple of weeks and I thought like in the movies, you know, in the movies someone's in a coma and then one day they wake up and they go, hi, I love you. So that is like shame on those movies. This does not happen this way. We, he didn't wake up from that coma overnight. It happened over time and a lot of time. And we basically got to start all over again at, first of all he did was stare off into space. He wouldn't make eye contact and you moved one arm has only thing that was in a cast. He moved one arm back and forth all day every day. And I was like, Oh, you know, and then we'd sleep off and on and then then you started, you know, being able to make eye contact. Then he started. Then one day I wasn't there at the time, which is so sad. His girlfriend came in and he said, I love you. And so he just, things started to come out, but we had to start all over again with teaching them how to brush his teeth, how to eat, how to go to the bathroom. He knew none of this, none of it. So it was quite like, it was like raising a very big, a 16 year old baby. Speaker 2: (19:16) Yeah. I had a 74 year old baby and they don't think very well. Speaker 3: (19:20) Yeah. Right. It's not a, it's very different. Speaker 2: (19:24) And, and, and this is what people don't quite understand is the dates of the rehabilitation. Every time you get something back, you realize there's another deficit that you haven't thought of. Yeah. You haven't come up against that problem until that one is sort of right. Right. Speaker 3: (19:37) That one installed and you're like, oh no, now they're going to get up. And they can't gonna have any balance. Oh, now that they want to get up, now they've got to go. You know, it's like, yeah. Every single thing was, Speaker 2: (19:49) Was relearning and retraining the brain. Now you were very, in a very lucky situation, you hit some of the world's top doctors and brain doctors like Dr. Daniel Amen. Who's amazing. They supported you through the students. [inaudible] Yeah, most of them don't have such amazing friends, if you like. And the opportunity to get the information that you needed. I want to go a little bit into the, like the supplementation side of things and then get into hyperbaric because hyperbaric is something that we both did. And I know with my mom, it was absolute key factor in her recovery. Can you tell us what your nutritionist, you're an amazing nutritionist, triple board certified, you know, everything about the right foods. What's wrong with the stuff that they give you in the hospital? Speaker 3: (20:41) Things grant said was, you know, when they tried to give him hospital food was disgusting. And I was like yeah, I made a point, especially at the first hospital, the second hospital had better food, but the first hospital had just the typical, it was a county hospital and it was all processed. It was horrible. Honestly. It was like ensure and white bread and I mean just horrible stuff. And he needed wholefoods. He needed you know, good and mega threes, he needed lots of vegetables. There was none, there was nothing there to be had. And so I made a point of bringing and it was a pain in the bucks. His hospital's parking lot was under construction, so I'd end up parking anywhere from a mile to two miles away every single day. And it wasn't in a great neighborhood. So sometimes this would be like six in the morning, nine at night. Speaker 3: (21:38) So it was like, I look at me, I don't, I don't know how the heck I would do this and I would bring a cooler bag of stuff cause there was nowhere to store it there. There was no fridge or freezer or anything else I could use. And so I would just bring this stuff in and I'd make him me smoothies where I'd put fish oil in and Greens and load him up with supplements that he needed. Cause my gosh, when you're healing like that, he had 13 fractures and your brain is healing. You need to be, have heavy duty nutrient dense food and supplements like you don't, this is when you need the most of it. And the last thing you should be doing is eating white flour and you know, bad fats and sugar. Like are you kidding me? You know, we don't want to waste calories here. We've got to make every single thing counts. So I was getting wild salmon and bone Brah and Avocados. I mean I was just loading him up with stuff and thankfully once he started to eat he was a pretty good eater. But you know, at first it was mainly smoothies. Speaker 2: (22:41) Yeah, a new triple a was my best friend. That was a thing I could get into mum cause she could only draw. And this is really, really important that you talk about fish oils and there's a whole lot of other supplements that can really help with brain health. And this is not general knowledge. This is I did CBD oils. I did you know, fish oils anything that was anti-inflammatory, tumeric and things like this. What are some of the secret sauce things, if you like that you grant, and I know you hit them on high doses of fish oil. Speaker 3: (23:20) Well, high dose fish oil was definitely the biggest one that we did. They wouldn't let us do it right away. Now, here's what I would say is prior to the accident he was doing five grams of fish oil a day. I believe that that was one of the key things that helped him get through this because it protects your brain. You never know when your brain is going to get injured, right? And if you've got that on to begin with before it happens, you're going to be in better shape. So he had an on board to begin with. Then as soon as I could, the hospital refused to give him more than two grams. So as soon as he took out his feeding tube, which he spit out himself, then I started in. And so that's how I got the fish oil up. Speaker 3: (24:04) Cause I gave this the hospital, the studies and they refused. And the next thing I did was make sure that he had a lot of protein on board and good amino acids because, and that's why something like bone broth or adding Collagen, you need all of that so he can, he can heal. He had all these broken bones, he had so much healing to do and he was sarcopenia. Q had been catabolic from you know, being coma and then not moving and then being on a feeding tube. So I kicked his, his protein way up and I was giving him also these really good amino acids. Super you know, bioavailable. And then a lot of, I did vitamin D. Um, I couldn't give him k cause he was on Warfarin, which you know, it was a little bit, I just gave him vitamin D and then I gave him trying to think about curcumin Acetylcarnitine a ton of brain nutrients like I just through the brain nutrient book at him at the time CBD wasn't out yet. Speaker 3: (25:10) So it wasn't a thing. Otherwise I would absolutely do that. I gave him progesterone and topical progesterone and I don't know, cause the studies, I did it based on Donald's Donald Donald Stein's work out of Emory university on how they saw that reduce brain inflammation. I don't know if it did or not, but here's the thing, like, you know, people ask what worked and I go, I don't know cause I did everything I possibly could and I figured I did things based on what was the pathway, how would it work and what's the risk versus what's the reward, the risk. We're so low on progesterone versus the potential reward, you know, same with like Fischel. There's no, there's no risk there. The rewards way bigger. So I, that's how I just started dosing. Everything is risk versus reward. When we got him out of the hospital, then I could start hyperbaric. Speaker 3: (26:01) We did multiple rounds of stem cells. I think five rounds of, of stem cells. We thread doing stem cells straight into a spine. Wow. And we did a lot of neurofeedback and a lot of exercise, a lot of bringing, like to me, if you to pick one thing that is the most under and has the biggest impact, it's exercise, it raises something called BDNF Alpha. It's going to help you create, you know, create a new brain so to speak. So super important fact that yeah, this is, this is really important. Oh yeah. Yeah. One other thing we did obviously first in the hospital was to and then I wrote to him on this a couple times. Obviously, you know, sugar and gluten are gone, but we had him on a ketogenic diet because when you have a brain injury, your brain can't get glucose in, but it can use ketones for fuel. So, and you can use you can use exotic genus ketones if you have an issue not being able to do that where you're at, like based on what they're feeding. So there's other ways to do it, but that's what we did. Speaker 2: (27:11) Yeah. And those are all really important things. So exalted in as keen t times you can get and things like that. MCT Oils and Speaker 3: (27:18) Yup. Oh, an MCT oil. Yes, we use that. And coffee. You know, coffee has helped him a lot too. So coffee, MCT oil, lot of healthy fats, a lot of fish. Doesn't really, sugar doesn't eat gluten Speaker 2: (27:35) And, and all these things. And this is one of the things that I've, you know, cause I get asked a lot too, what was the one thing that you did it, it's a multifaceted approach. There's no, there's no silver bullet. Speaker 3: (27:50) There is one. Lisa, there is one silver bullet and I think this is the most important part of this story is the most important thing that you did was to make this decision that you are going to do everything you possibly could to help her. And relentless and to do what it takes. And that's the decision I made that night in the hospital. And I think the important takeaway is when you make that decision, there's the most important thing that you have in your arsenal in order to pull that off is you. And in order for you to help your mom come back, the thing you have to do before all else is make sure that you, you put yourself in your health first, that when you think about caretaking, you're the first person you take care of because you cannot help someone else unless you are like at the top of your game. And this is a tremendous amount of stress. And I find with so many people, they just stopped taking care of themselves. So super duper important when you look at this to take care of yourself first. Never feel guilty about it. It's actually selfless to do it. Not Selfish because then you can really show up like you need to. Speaker 2: (29:00) Yeah. Is, and that's something I probably didn't do too well for the first couple of years and ended up quite sick myself. And, and you know, it was its own journey, but that's a really important point because when you, you're, you pouring in, you're giving all the time, every day, all day. You know, I still work with my mum seven hours a day, even though like now she's driving the car and got a full driver's license and walking and doing everything again, I'm still like, you're like, I want that 110%. Speaker 3: (29:29) Oh goodness. At this point of what she went through and how far she's come. Speaker 2: (29:34) He has no recollection of the first 19 months. And so she can't believe. And I, you know, I show her the videos and the little, you know, photos and stories that we've got and she's just like, Nah, that's, that's, you know, I, I can't remember any of that. Or I was like, you're very lucky. You don't really cause it was horrific and it's really horrific to look at the, in the eyes of your loved one and they don't know who you are and they don't know what's happening to them. And then to actually see them come back into, be like fully like your whole personalities. The same. She's intelligent woman again. You know, it's just so wonderful. I remember the first time my mum actually rang me on the phone after, I don't know, a year and a half or something and I was just crying my eyes out because she'd worked out how to use the phone, you know, and she could, you know, just the little things like that, you just know, oh, this is working. Speaker 2: (30:28) And she's coming back. And the, the biggest thing I found too was that on the day to day grind, because it is a grind, it's a day to day battle of training that you, you don't see the progress often for months at a time. You will see nothing happening and things are happening on the cellular level, but you don't see them. And this is where most people give up in that time when you're in a plateau. And if you can push through that, then you can look back and all of a sudden you have another, you know, another little jump in your abilities. And you'd get something back and you'd look back and how far you've come. But when you measuring it on a day to day basis, you're not actually Speaker 3: (31:09) Never, you know, I say this to grant now because he's made some tremendous strides and he doesn't see it. I go, because grant, you don't go out and look at the grass everyday and go, wow, look how much the grass grew from today. But if you went out and looked at the grass f not cutting it for two weeks, you'll look at the grass. Holy Moly. So I go, you cannot, you're going to have to take my word for it. And people who are like seeing you once a week or once a month, you're never going to see this ever. And that's really how life is. Like, you know, everyone wants to have that success. They see the person with the bestselling book or you know, win the race and they think that that just happened and they don't see the grind. And so to me, the paralleling life life is a grind and it's a little consistency every single day that create what we see. Like, people look at grant, I'm sure they're looking at your mom and they go, it's a miracle. I go, it was really flipping grind. Speaker 2: (32:10) A lot of miracle is fricking hard work. It is. And, and this is something that fascinated me with your story too because okay, I'm not as, as amazingly successful as you are. And but you had to continue your career. You keep writing your books. I remember you saying, you know, sitting on the side of your son's bed and trying to get your needs, you, your book out, which was at that very same time sort of thing. And Speaker 3: (32:36) I remember a sweet woman wrote in, posted on my Facebook page and she goes, don't worry about your job. It will be waiting for you. And I thought, yeah no app won't actually the New York publishers, that will be that, you know, it's like I have a, I have a book, I have everything invested in it. If it doesn't go, I will not get another book deal and I'll be bankrupt and then I will not be able to take care of my son. And so, you know, I don't have a job waiting for me. I run my own business. If I'm not there, it's not happening. And so there wasn't that option. There just was that, that realization that if I want my son to be 110%, I'm going to need to be even more successful because this is not free. You know? And a lot of this stuff that you do, like hyperbaric [inaudible] never covered that stem cells insurance never covered that. Speaker 3: (33:33) You know? So it's like, so many of the things that I was doing, insurance just didn't cover. You know, we had he had heavy metal poisoning from some of the stuff and insurance didn't cover that. I mean, just thing after thing after thing. Right. So it, you know, you just, you just do it. You have to do. And it's amazing what we have a capacity to do, you know? Yes. And I, I think for so many people, they're not where they want to be in life because they make success optional. And it wasn't optional here. Right. I mean, in order for me to do what I needed to do for my son, success was no longer an option. It was required in order for me to have what I needed to be able to take him, get him what he needed. And so that was that. Speaker 2: (34:24) Yeah. And you had to stay absolute. This is where the mindset stuff really, really kicks in. And I think because you know both you know, running your own companies and you, you have a huge city successful empire now, but it's the combination and years and years and years of work. And if you dropped the ball for five minutes, when you run your own company, that can be the, you know, it's, that cycle wasn't, as I said difficult to coordinate all this stuff. So you have to, I would have to work with mum all day and then I would come home at eight o'clock at night and work til one in the morning in. This is where I burnt out of course working on my businesses and then, you know, wake up at six in the morning and re repeat rinse. And repeat for day in, day out, seven days a week for the last, you know, four years nearly. Speaker 2: (35:17) In prior to that, it wasn't exactly not working either. You know, like you were still working like mad and it costs a lot of money to rehabilitate someone. I mean, we, we didn't have a hyperbaric er clinic over here at all, so I had to go into commercial dive company and begged them to be able to use their their chambers. And then I got xs for a little while and then it had to be taken off on a contract. So I had to mortgage the House and buy a hyperbaric chamber, a mild one. And then I actually opened up a clinic because I was such a success. Speaker 3: (35:50) Of course you did because you're an entrepreneur. Exactly. Speaker 2: (35:54) And I want to be able to have access to this planet. I'm so good on now. So someone else's running it, but people have access to it. And hyperbaric as a, as one of the key things that I just do not understand why it's not an every hospital in every country of the world. Why this is not often for so many things is because I know no lemon drug money behind it. And this is just tragic for so many people that could be helped by this amazing therapy if they would take it, you know, have enough treatments. So there's a lot of things wrong with the system, not only in America, but in New Zealand. So what would be your advice to people if they're facing something like a brain injury or anything in the hospital if they've got a loved one? How do you know, how do people, I mean, we have access to the Internet. We have resources. We know how to research. We know how to, you know, take action. A lot of people listen to the doctors, either experts and just leave it all up to them. That really isn't gonna work as it. Speaker 3: (37:00) So the doctors, the hospital saved my son's life. And literally put him back together again. And I think what we do wrong here is that we, they are, they're amazing at trauma. And at that piece of it, what they weren't, and they told me they go, this is not our part. We don't do the Rehab. We don't do this piece. They are in the urgent emergent here. Like these bones are broken. The say orders rupture. Like what, what do we need to do? And so just making sure that you're, like, for some reason we think of say a emergency room doctor is not where I would absolutely go if my son broke his leg is not the person I would go to if my son's moods were unstable or if he, you know, didn't have the energy he needed to have. Like we're going, we're assuming that they do everything. Speaker 3: (37:57) And when you really look at it, that is this trauma care, you know, and there's trauma care and then there's disease care and then there's health care or wellness care and there are all different things. But yet we go to two doctors expecting like expecting them to have all the answers, which doesn't make any sense. You'd never go to a gynecologist with a tooth problem. Right. You know, I mean it just, you wouldn't go to your hairstylist for a manicure. Like let's, let's put people ask the right things of the right people because in their zone of genius, like it's amazing. I mean, my son wouldn't be here except for some of these amazing at Harbor UCLA and at Children's Hospital La, you know, I mean they were just incredible. But then we expect them to all of a sudden change gears and do a part of medicine that's not their part. Speaker 3: (38:47) And I'd argue that health care really, you know, the wellness side of it probably isn't, that's not where they should even, that's not their part, their parts trauma and disease. Right. Those are different. So I think the first part of all of this though is just making that decision that you're going to be an advocate for your or your loved one. And I know in the hospital they were like, oh my gosh, cause I'd be there every morning when the grand rounds came through and I was doing my research and I was pulling in my expert opinions and I was getting help and I was, and I was walking through and I wanted to understand it. And I have every right to do that, you know, and, and guess what, we have the right to ask for more information to question things, to bring in other ideas. Speaker 3: (39:36) We can do that. They don't, you know, they like it though. So we, yeah. Well, you know what if someone, I actually had, I had amazing relationships with most of them. I've, I, you know, one woman who was a bit snotty. But for the most part they actually were pretty cool about all the stuff. And I finally at Children's Hospital La, the meetings, which would have all the doctors and therapists had, me too. I go, you know, I see. I know things you guys will never know because you are not the mom. Like, so I got into all the meetings and we all helped guide the care because, you know, and it was very, very different. So I think it's really coming in from a spirit of teamwork and how can we work together? If I've got a doctor who doesn't want to work with any other doctors, that is not going to be my doctor. Just like, like right now, I just moved to Tampa, we're remodeling the house. And if I'm, I, you know, we have an architect, well, if the, if the person who's going to do the construction doesn't want to work with the architect, we don't have a, we don't have anything going on. Like they're not going to work together. Right. With the doctors. Like they all have to work together. And this is just expectations and don't let someone intimidate you. You're the customer. Yes. You're exactly right. You know? Yeah. Speaker 2: (40:52) Him and I did by the, you know, I think we put doctors on a pedestal sometimes, which I mean they're amazing, you know, intellectual incredible people, but they don't always know every answer there is in, just because you don't have a doctorate doesn't mean that you haven't been able to research stuff and find the best doctors that can help you. And you've also got a brain in your head and you, and you're sitting there 24, seven or you know, your family is around the clock with that person. They can see the changes where a doctor hadn't, he has five minutes to spend with you before they move on to the next one. Speaker 3: (41:27) Quite often we can see, give them valuable. I had a son with a psych disorder with a brain injury. Yeah. And so I was like going, you know, I can tell you what's new and what's old and where like they would never have been able to tell any of that stuff and what he'd been on before and what worked and what didn't work and where we need to go from here. And I mean that it was a big learning curve and I could spot when things were starting to go sideways with them. Like I could see it right in the middle of his forehead. They could not see it. I go right now, you know, so cause we had to medicate him enough to keep him calm and stable but not so much as bring wouldn't heal. So I mean there's, there's just a lot that can happen when everyone comes as a team and you know, it comes from what I want is an Improv called the yes. And you know, instead of the yes, but philosophies. So, and that's what I found is for the most part, they all worked in the, yes. And especially when I got to children's Hospital La, they were very collaborative. They took it team approach. Everyone from the nurses to the therapist to the docs all had, you know, important things to say and it mattered. [inaudible] Speaker 2: (42:38) Well, and it's amazing that [inaudible] grant is now back into life and loving life again and fully well and like you, let's talk a little bit about your mind share summit in your, you know, the work that you do. Cause I want people to, you know, that are listening to this to follow what you do, to read your box, to hop online and learn all about you. So JJ, tell us a little bit about your mind share stuff and what you're into at the moment and where you're going with your career. Speaker 3: (43:07) Well my career I've probably got two more books that I'm going to write in the health space. Wow. one much more on how a cure a kind of a caretaker's guide to surviving and thriving. Because that's what really came out of all this with warrior mom is that this really is like we're all caretakers. And then one about really how to, how diets do work were just using them wrong and how to, how to navigate your health. Cause we don't, you know, we don't change our health. We, we haven't been feeling rotten and being sick for 10 years and now we're going to change it in 10 days. You know, it's like takes, it's a process. And what we can accomplish in anything over a year is amazing, but we all try to do it in a week and then beat ourselves up. So working on those two things. Speaker 3: (44:00) But my real passion now lies in fact that I have been fortunate over the years to know so many amazing practitioners and doctors and so I've really devoted my life to helping them identify their messages and their purpose and get that out to the world and then find other people to collaborate with. So that's what mindshare summit is, is bringing health care people, health experts, doctors help entrepreneurs together. They can share ideas, support each other collaborate, not feel alone like so many entrepreneurs do. And that's really kind of my bigger, bigger mission now is how do I help people have better resources? When I was in the hospital with grant, I had amazing resources. And you know, now that the Internet's out there, you don't have to be able to send Dr. Daniel Amen. A text message. You can now get to this information. And that's, that's what I want to see out there is more easy access to information so that when these things happen, you can just plug it in and find out. And, you know, biggest threat we have to all of that right now is, is Google and the search engines trying to dictate what you should be able to locate and find. So we're also working on that piece to make sure that, you know, this information stays open to all and it's not censored, which is so obscene. Huh? Speaker 2: (45:30) Well, yeah. Now how do we get involved with that? Can we get involved with that? You know, from New Zealand's, because I mean, I'm very passionate too about sharing this knowledge. And this is one of the reasons why I've got this book coming out is because I want people to have the tools that I didn't have when I went into this situation. Yeah. And I, I, you know, I got access to it via the Internet. You know, is there ways that we can be involved with that from New Zealand? Speaker 3: (45:57) Which one, which, you know, mind share is, is if you are a health expert doctor, entrepreneur, yes. Mindshare collaborative.com gives you a place to join. It's a membership and then within that we're working on a task force for the rest of this. Cause you know, it's like the whole thing is how do you create information that everyone has access to so that money isn't, isn't the defining line as to whether you can get healthy or not. And you know, the Internet should be the great equalizer. It shouldn't be. All of a sudden you find out that these bigger companies have grand schemes because they own pharmaceutical companies and now they're going to keep the information from you. Like it just, it just is discounted. Really. Yes. It's evil. It's evil. But I think it's, it sounds like it's going to get shut down. If not, you know, there's other options out there. That's hopefully what we get through here with this group Speaker 2: (46:56) And with the box and so on. So JJ, before, just as we wrap up as you, any messages that you want to get across that we've, we've covered a lot of ground today. I know that you've worked on, I did want to mention the broken brain series, which I've bought and, and devoured the, the work that those doctors and professionals are doing. This has been a really important thing. I think that's a huge resource. If I'd had that four years ago, we've been brilliant, you know? Speaker 3: (47:26) Yes. Oh my gosh. But mark Hyman and drew per it have put together an amazing, Mark's been a longtime friend for like 20 years. You know, he's, he's just doing incredible things. Anyone with any kind of brain stuff going on, broken brain is just incredible resource source for you know, loads of interviews, et cetera. And then drew continues with this broken brain podcast. So there's that too. Speaker 2: (47:52) It on jury's podcast. Maybe you can put on a good or on your thoughts for that, that her with the [inaudible] stories. Speaker 3: (47:58) Well, yeah, you have to be in person. You must be in La to do. Yeah. So there's that. But the point is there's a lot of resources. I think the most important thing is that first, you know, when you look at what happens in life, it isn't like a, I'll give you an example. Let's say that you want to have a new sofa in your living room. Use something as mundane as that. The first thing you have to do is envision that you want a sofa in your living room. Then you go out and find the sofa you don't like all of a sudden, you know, a sofa pops in and then you envision it. It always happens in your mind's eye first, right? Yep. So same with this. If, if, when I was facing this situation with grant, the first thing was in my mind's eye, I saw him at 110%. Speaker 3: (48:47) I saw him getting through this. Now anywhere along the line, something could have happened. He nearly died multiple times, but I knew that I was doing everything humanly possible and beyond that to help him get there. And that's what I, you know, that's what I could do. I could manage my mindset and do everything possible on my, on my end to do that. And I think that's really important is we create it first in our mind. Thoughts create. It's very powerful. It's amazing what we can do. So manage your mindset because it's the first thing that you have control over that and commit and make a decision into the situation and always push past what you think is possible. Which was why I said 110%, you know, versus Oh, I just want grant to be alive. Grant just being alive could have been grant in a wheelchair unable to talk or see or hear or anything. So, you know, go for it, go big for it and then go for the resources to make it happen. Speaker 2: (49:50) Well I think that's a beautiful place to wrap it up. JJ, thank you so much for being such a warrior for being such an a fantastic mum. And being such an amazing role model for other people going through these, these sorts of journeys takes for all the work you do in this area with broken brain, with, with all the books that you have out with the nutrition stuff that you do. We can people find you online and buy bio books and know more about JJ. Speaker 3: (50:21) Pretty easy. JJ Virgin, www.jjvirgin.com. Speaker 2: (50:29) Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. And I wish you son grant and Bryce of course all the best in the future and it'd be amazing to see what they do with the, with your mom too. She's got a, she's super lucky to have you as a daughter, Huh? He's a beautiful mom. I'll send you a book when it comes out. And yeah, it's, it's very special stories. Both of these and these stories are really important to share because it gives other people hope. And the biggest piece of the puzzle we've heard today is your mindset. And they never ever give up and that you throw everything in to the pot. You can't the universe, but you can control what you do. I think that was the biggest takeaway from today. I very much enjoyed today. Thank you. 

Hello North County! If you're picking up what we're putting down please subscribe, share, and/or review. That'd be neat! This week Chris traveled outside of North County to the great unknown of Orange County. What's Cassidy's solution for ants? We have some great beer picks of the week. Have you heard of our Compass Concierge program? This week in things to do we focused on Encinitas. Our local Oktoberfest is fast approaching. And find out what songs we're jammin' to. You may be surprised. Enjoy!

    We start by talking about a burnout experience I had a few years ago, and how I recovered. In essence, we're talking about managing your nervous system. Doing so is one of the most important things you can do for your overall health and well-being. There are phases of this experience which Matt details on this show. The first is fight, flight or freeze. The next is impaired decision-making ability and the final phase is mental and physical burn out. Matt shares his experience with burn out and then goes on to explain his current strategy for avoiding a nervous system meltdown. To understand his strategy it's important to first understand some basics about the nervous system. Your nervous system is divided into two parts: the sympathetic (this is where the fight, flight or freeze system comes from) and the parasympathetic (this is where all the healing happens within your body). Going more in-depth, in most instances exercise puts your body into fight or flight mode. This includes things like lifting and running. The exercises that are healing for your body are tai chi and yoga, they activate your parasympathetic nervous system. When you're breathing deep and slowly that activates your parasympathetic nervous system, when your breathing is more rapid your sympathetic nervous system is engaged and you go into fight, flight or freeze mode. Personally, I've been doing breath work for 20 years including meditation. Breathing can change your brain state, belly breathing is a necessary part of this. By allowing your belly to come out with your breath your lungs will open up so you can get fuller and deeper breaths. I start every day by doing a few quick exhales and then long and slow inhales. I do the 10-10-10-10 process which is 10 seconds in, 10 seconds hold and 10 seconds exhale and then 10 seconds with no breath. This is also called box breathing and you can start with just a few seconds (like 4 or 5) and work your way up to 10. Healing The Body to Avoid Burn Out Next, we talk about brain waves and neural feedback. Neural feedback is brain measuring feedback system that feedbacks to you what is happening. It's like a GPS system that trains your brain to hit different states. These different states fall in one of 5 categories, three of which are healing and two of which are fight/flight/freeze. The healing states are alpha which is when you are relaxed but alert, then there is theta which is even slower and deeper than alpha. And the last of these three is delta - that is the state we are in when we are sleeping. On the fight, flight or freeze side, the two states are beta and gamma. Beta is when you are engaged and focused and thinking. Anxiety looks like too high levels of beta. Gamma is a very high spiritual state, it is very powerful and intense but there is a cost to it. We also discuss dopamine levels and blue light from social media and technology, before we move into how to know we are overstimulated and heading towards burn out. One of the big X factors in avoiding burn out is resilience, there is a physical component to this. Matt has worked to increase his through neural feedback and also cleaning out his limbic system. (The limbic system is one component of our nervous systems, it is responsible for our emotions). He has cleaned out his limbic system by facing and healing old emotional wounds. Take for example the person who was bitten by a dog and doesn't like them, even though it's been 40 years since they were bitten. They haven't healed that experience and their limbic system will respond to dogs as if they were about to relive that old experience of being bitten. One way to work on these old emotional wounds and put your nervous system in a more relaxed state is through EFT (the Emotional Freedom Technique), it is also known as tapping. EFT immediately starts to shift your nervous system into parasympathetic. When you tap the specific points in EFT your nervous system shifts over into a parasympathetic state.  You can also do neural feedback, meditation and practicing gratitude. Pay attention to how often you laugh - if you are laughing you are probably in parasympathetic mode. Another piece of avoiding burn out is macro and micro recovery. In general, the harder you want to drive the harder you need to focus on recovery. If you want to drive your body like a race car then you need a really good pit crew and really high-quality components to put your car back together, or you will crash and burn! There are some supplements you can take to help with this. For the fight, flight or freeze, things like coffee, THC, caffeine, etc would fall under this category. But you can stack parasympathetic supplements with sympathetic supplements to counterbalance their effect. Matt talks about which he likes best and why, plus which essential oil has been shown to increase alpha brain waves. You'll also hear how we both healed ourselves with magnesium and why floating was part of that! It's all here on episode 31 of Awesome Health Podcast with Matt Gallant. Episode Resources Magnesium Breakthrough Oura ring Biostrap Info on EFT The Powerful Engagement, by James E. Loehr and Tony Schwartz PDF on Flight, Fight or Freeze Masszymes (code cheat10) Read the Episode Transcript : Wade Lightheart: Good afternoon. Good morning and good evening, wherever you are. It's Wade T Lightheart here with my cofounder of BiOptimizers Matty G. I am so pumped about today. Wade Lightheart: We haven't done a podcast together. We haven't done an Awesome health Podcast forever. And crime is pretty much, and we're gonna actually increase these over the next while because you know, Matt is a wealth of information. He's on the bleeding, the literally the bleeding edge. He does bleed literally to kind of optimize his health regularly by taking a variety of blood extractions and testing a lot of different things. We're going to get into that in one of the future podcasts. But today we're going to go kinda back the truck up. We're going to talk about something that every high performer deals with and everybody listening to this is going to deal with this. And that is burnout and its relation to the nervous system. What is the relationship? Because if you're kind of into by optimization, uh, or you know, you call yourself a biohacker or whatever, everybody gets pretty much into that area because their, their mind is writing checks that their body can't cash. Wade Lightheart: Uh, and you know, part of the, uh, pro high performer is to find that balance, that balance between am I performing at a high level and am I destroying my body to do that? And it was kind of cool in the 80s to do that. It's not cool as we move into 2020 it's about I want my cake, I want to eat it too. I want to be a superhuman. And we're on the edge of the evolutionary parts of what it takes to become a superhuman. And most people want to become a superhuman because they recognize, you know, there is that angle that we were getting. We're getting examples of people who are delivering at super high levels, but what is the, what is the components? What do you need to do? What are the daily practices? What are they, what are the things to watch out for? How do you end up in the burnout? How do you destroy yourself? Matty G, what do you gotta say about this right now I've been doing all the talking, let's say on this Matt Gallant: because I'm going to make a bold statement, which we both love to do, which is I think in terms of quality of life, understanding what we're going to be talking about today, probably the most important thing, and we're going to get into that. So there's my bold statement, the most important system in the by for quality of life. That's the topic. Wade Lightheart: All right. Matt Gallant: So let's, so, so wait, let me cue you what for a second. So, you know, just a little bit of background. Wait, I've been friends for what, 20 years, a long time. And uh, we went through something a couple years ago that I, I've never seen him go through that in our relationship. And it was incredible, you know, less than, I mean, I always love learning from other people's mistakes. And, uh, we had, you showed me again in a lot of things of what not to do and it was really powerful and, and, and I was thinking about that the other day in aspire, today's topic. So why don't you share what happened and the aftermath of that. And I think it'll, it's a perfect segue into the today's conversation. Wade Lightheart: Yeah. Great. So I'm going to talk about the deep level or the deep cost of, uh, doing more than your physiological capable or, and what are the general go to moves that people make on a consistent basis rationalize, which sets them up for a deep failure. So a few years back, um, so keep in mind, I'm kind of living the, the, what I would call the Tim Ferris lifestyle, the quote unquote four hour work week. Nobody actually works the four hour where we, but you know, I'm traveling around the world, I'm living where I want to live, I've got multiple online businesses and then everything is kind of, you know, going along and you kinda just assume, but what happens inside any business, there are certain components where you've got to get laser focused. You've got to adapt to new skills, you've got to develop new capabilities. And there's an easy assumption, especially in today's world where we kind of, we all think that we can do multiple things, you know, 50 different things because of all the digital technology. Wade Lightheart: But there's a certain point in our biology where we don't adapt to these, what I would call silicone brain and our carbon brain or carbon brand is the one we were born with. The silicone brain is the extension and right now there's a lot of input data that's coming in in the nervous system, especially if you're running businesses and when you go up in business there's more data coming in. So I ran into this trouble and so what my answer was is, well I'll just work more. Okay. So I can remember it started, I was in Bali and uh, you know, I'm running a company that I'm, I'm in kind of startup mode over there. I've got on one business that's kind of in steady mode and then I've got BiOptimizers which is going into grow like extreme growth mode. And as you can imagine, those are three different stages of business that don't actually match. Wade Lightheart: And so I'm doing mornings with one business partner, uh, early. More like I'm a meeting with him doing that stuff. I'm doing my regular business, my kind of cashflow business in the afternoons and I'm staying up till like three four 30 in the morning. So I'd sleep three hours, wake up, do one business, go for a massage in the afternoon, come back, go to work again, sleep for an hour and a half, wake up and then work the evenings. And it all looked like it would go right. So after a couple months of that, I was really starting to pay the price and what I'm doing to, to manage that. As I'm upping, I'm increasing my caffeine take, I'm increasing my new tropics so that my brain is focused. So I, I feel like I'm laser and for some things you are, and I feel like I've got the energy cause I do, but it's like paying your mortgage off with their credit card, your, your, you've got your mortgage at 5% interest, which is manageable maybe over 30 years. Wade Lightheart: And then you've got your credit card bill, which is at 19.99% so I'm paying the 5% with the 19.99 so that the deficit is growing. Like if you've been in New York city and you've seen that deficits sign of how much the national debt is going, that's a great example. And only you're doing this not just with money, you're doing this with your physical energy units and still kind of manageable. So I move to Panama because I'm like, you know, I can't handle it. It's the time zone. You know, if I would just in the one time zone, now keep in mind, Matt and I are living about eight and a half minute walk from each other. And over the course of, I believe it was four and a half months, Matt and I saw each other physically five times. Okay? Like we're best friends, we're hanging out all the time. Wade Lightheart: I only got time to see him and, and he's, and what happened is I'm, I'm still burning and I'm still going. I'm still trying to do all these things. And what happened is the unexpected happened. I had a problem in my growth business and that was a challenge with my partner. And there was a bunch of challenges that came up. And that's the piece that takes you out. It's the unexpected where you've got to go to another level and solve problems. You haven't. So, well, guess what? That's when I ran out of gas and literally physiologically I was burnout. Um, it didn't matter how much caffeine I was taking, it wasn't helping. It was also putting me in an unresourceful psychological state and unresourceful emotional and, and, and at the very low point, uh, Matt and I went for dinner at a restaurant. He like, Hey bro, how's it going? Wade Lightheart: And I said, yeah, you know, I'm, I'm living in hell and I can go back years and years before. Um, when I was competing, and Matt could comment on this. In 2003, I went through a similar process. I was running my personal training business. I was preparing for the Mister universe contest and I had a serious problem with the relationship with and my relationship partner was addicted to drugs and creating a lot of havoc. And even though I broke up that was dealing with all these other X factors that you can't plan, plan on. And that set me up for the big burnout after mr universe. I was able to maintain that level for nine and a half months, but eventually the wheels came off and it was another six, seven months before I recovered from that. And I had to get rid of some things. Wade Lightheart: And so how do you handle this? The question is, and so how do you handle this? And, and for me it involved, uh, I had to go off caffeine completely. I stopped coffee. Um, I had to stop putting hard stop times on when I was working, when I wasn't working. Uh, I had to start taking vacations. I wasn't taking vacations, you know, the, the four hour work week, it looks like you're on vacation, but you're really not, you're, you know, or that kind of digital nomad lifestyle. And, uh, and then I had to take a hard look about my own skillsets based on where the growth I wanted to experience in my own business. So how do I, how do I become more efficient and more effective at new things? How do I let go of things that I'm not good at? How do I improve the physiological recovery components in my body, which we're going to get into here. Wade Lightheart: And what are the things do I gotta drop that's maybe, you know, how do I get out of the credit card paying the mortgage debt from an energy kind of standpoint? So that's where I was. I implemented a lot of new things. One of the, you know, one of the big things that getting off the caffeine, cranking magnesium, uh, to, to, to, to, you know, literally the toilet, the toilet experience where you're, you're watching, you know, cause that's one of the big nervous system burners, uh, essential fatty acids and things like that. So yeah, that was, that was my perspective perspective. Quickly, we'll dive into a little bit more of a, Matt, you want to add to that from your perspective cause you're on kind of the outside looking in and you know me pretty well. Wade Lightheart: Yeah. You know, it was um, first of all I understood why you were doing what you were doing. Uh, I think it was again, a lot of things you could have done differently, which was pretty much we're going to talk about today. All the different things that you can do. Just to zoom out. What we're really talking about is managing your nervous system and we're gonna say managing, cause I like it better than balancing balancing. What does that really mean? So, um, managing nervous system is probably one of the most important things to avoid waiting experience or to avoid the slot zone. Cause if you go to the other mode of just, and I've got friends that are stuck in that zone too, which is not good. Um, or they're just kind of relaxing for years and they're not technically retired. But anyways, so hold on her topic. But we're really talking about managing nervous system. Wade Lightheart: And when I was looking at Wade, he was cranking, cranking, cranking. Then I first thing I think the first system that went offline was probably his emotions. Um, you know, again in, we're gonna talk about kind of the different set of emotions in the different parts of nervous system, but he shifted completely to fight or flight or freeze zone emotionally. And then the, the mental capacity started dropping. Just the kind of decisions you were making, waiters, the way you were thinking. I'm like, you know, I know, I know you enough to know that that's not the thought you would've had prior. And um, so that was the kind of the next phase. And then you kind of like, you described, you went to hell. And then just to make this more real on a numbers level, I have this neurofeedback system at home and at wired Wade's brain to it. Wade Lightheart: And the amount of electricity in Wade's brain in that moment was about a quarter of my friend who's 76 years old. Like, like he is, you know, we're not gonna say he was brain dead, but it wasn't far away. On an electrical level, literally. Um, and, and for those of you that don't understand that that's a lot of your, your states in your mind and how you think come from electrical energy. So Wade had literally like just burnt out. The electrical energy is brain plus his body weight. It took you what, like a year to bounce back from that, you know, like, like on all levels. Like you, you kind of were coming and I I was seeing you come back online again first. Uh, your, your executive functioning, your brain and then your emotions, but it took you about a year. Is that right? Wade Lightheart: Yeah, it uh, I would say yeah, probably a good year. Yeah, it was about, it was about 12 months to recovery and, and going back, say when I had my other burnout in 2003, that was a six month recovery period. It was actually actually if I look all told it would be nine months, cause there was the three months of catastrophic rebound rug gained all the weight and things like that, which is usually a sign of adrenal fatigue. You start just putting on weight and can't kick get it off, that's a, that's a good indication that you're, you're tracking in the wrong direction. It's kind of like the fat cat businessman image that we all have in our minds. And um, and so this time it was about a year. So you're looking at, if you look at the age difference, there was an extra three months of recovery even though I had way more tools than I had back then. So you're probably looking at a two X Wade Lightheart: factor just with the age. Um, and my rationalization for it. No. I want to be quick about, before we get into the mechanics, the rationalization was as it is, you know, my mentality is just go in and take on as much as you can until you blow. And when you blow, you get really laser clear with kind of painful realities of what's working and what's not working. I'm not recommending that strategy. It's a strategy that I've done to make quantum jumps and I feel I made that quantum jump now. But you can avoid that. You can avoid that. Matt, what's your, what's your comments on that as far as how you kind of look at it cause you're kind of a hyper growth oriented person and in far as burnouts in your own life of what you've had and what you and why you've kind of aggravated there the way that you approach things now. Wade Lightheart: Yeah, I think, um, I only really hit one burnout, which was in my twenties there was a lot of like micro things. So, but in my twenties I decided to do a crazy experiment of sleep deprivation and work a holism to the max. So I got up to, I was doing 80 hours a week in the gym, like literally 80 hours in the gym working. I was a trainer, plus I was training twice a day. Plus I was recording a hard rock album, plus I was learning marketing. So I was doing all these things at a time and I'm like, okay, well I need to sleep less. How old were you at this time? Um, was 25 photos on that later or probably had much more severe consequences. So I'm like, okay, I need to sleep less. So let me start cutting my sleep back by 15 minutes, like every week or so. Wade Lightheart: So starting out like seven hours and six and a quarter, six and a half and five and then I, you know, and then it got to the point where it was a really interesting thing. I think around the five hour Mark, like I had to drink water nonstop to stay awake. Like if, if I, if I got even like 1% dehydrated I would just crash. The other thing too is like you get so sensitive with food, like certain foods would make me crash instantly. So you know that was kind of interesting experiment cause every little thing would either just throw me off or keep me going. But I, I just crashed and burned and our thicker on four hours and 25 minutes or 15 minutes at four, four and a quarter is when I ended the experiment had declared unsuccessful and then read a book called power sleep and went the other way and it took me, it took, I think it took me like four months and, but I wasn't using caffeine, thank God. Wade Lightheart: But, um, I hadn't discovered caffeine at that point. It took me I think four months of sleeping around 10 hours a day to, of recover from that and then then my sleep kind of normalized. But that was it. So since that time, you know, I've become very, very hyper aware of, okay. You know, there's all these signs that I look for including, um, you know, my executive functioning starts dropping. In other words, my capacity, how I feel, um, I'm not enjoying work as much. And that's a classic sign too, from like over training, even in the gym, like you're training really hard and you just, it starts to feel like a chore. That's a scientifically that, okay. Time to back off. Um, so I've got all these different signals. Plus I use like the oral ring so I can see my HRV and my heart rates. Wade Lightheart: So, you know, that starts getting out of whack. I know my nervous system is stressed. We'll talk more about that in a second. But yeah, so, so my strategy now, and you know it, we'll talk about how to change this permanently too. Cause I used to kinda hit a red line maybe three, four times a year now. Okay. I got to go on vacation versus now, I can't remember the last time I hit, it's probably been like a year and a half, two years now. Like there's still like a yellow zone on the heart, on the RPMs that, uh, that I'll hit, you know, a couple of times. But I don't tend to get red. And like I used to. And a lot of it's because of the stuff we're going to talk about. So I just want to zoom out and break down what we're talking about. Wade Lightheart: So we're talking about the nervous system, which divides into two. So you have the parasympathetic system, which we're going to call the healing system of the body. Okay. And it's a very accurate description because all the healing happens in that zone as far as your body's concerned. Then there's the sympathetic nervous part of the nervous system, which is fight, flight, or freeze. So let's just go back to the caveman days. And there is a cyber saber tooth tiger chasing you. You need to activate your fight, flight or freeze system a hopefully fight or flight kicks in. Cause if you freeze your dead, um, but either you're running really fast or you're gonna fight this threat and that's a huge part of, you know, survival. Right? And really it's kept us alive. And if it wasn't for that, probably, uh, there'd be no humans [inaudible] ology these, these are, these are things that are built over millions of years in your nervous system that are intrinsic with being a human. Wade Lightheart: It really intrinsic with being an animal. You can see that in a dog or cat. Like, you know, the, these are all part of the animal brain. I mean really we're talking in bacteria will recoil against a toxic substance, right? It's flighting from it. You know, you took a single cell organism with mercury and it recoil. So it's built rate into every cellular system that we see today. Just kept us alive. So, so just for the purpose of this podcast, we're going to talk about the healing system and we'll just call it the fight or flight system. Um, so you know, again, when there is a threat, just to go one level deeper here, when there is a threat, there is again three potential responses, which is, you know, I'm gonna fight this thing. I'm going to run away from this thing or I'm going to freeze like a deer in the headlights, which is probably the worse option. Wade Lightheart: So that's again, the fight or flight. So let's go through different things in different parts of the body and we're going to kind of, uh, organize them in different categories. And by the way, there's a P O one page PDF that you can look at that'll show you this as bioptimizers.com/nervous system and you'll be able to see what I'm about to walk us through. So let's start with exercise. And exercise is primarily fight or flight. So when you're lifting weights, that's a fight or flight response. You're playing sports, it's a fight or flight response. Even things like running, I mean, you're literally like it's flight, right? Like you're running. Now on the healing side, there are some exercises and two that come to mind is, is tide CI and yoga. So Tai-Chi is this really slow type of, of movement that again, with the breathing and just this slow movement activates your parasympathetic, uh, or in your healing part of your nervous system. Wade Lightheart: So I haven't done Tai Chi. I've done a lot of yoga. And yoga is really interesting because it's really, you know, it kind of physically intense, but because you're breathing and really slowing down the breadth and breadth is a huge part of managing your nervous system. And we don't want you to talk about your breathing techniques in a, in a minute cause you've been a lot of that. But when you're breathing deep and slowly, that activates the healing part of the nervous system. If I start hyperventilating, that activates my fight or flight response. And that's what happens when you're fight or flight. You know, you start hyperventilating because you're trying to get more oxygen to the brain. So anyways, Wade, maybe talk about the breathing stuff and we'll, we'll get into meditation in a second. But uh, I know you've done a little bit of yoga and I know that you do a lot of breathing exercises almost every day. Wade Lightheart: So maybe talk about the breath and how you use it to change your nervous system. Yeah, I agree. Great points. So, and I will make one caveat in regards to yoga. Some of the newer forms of yoga are what I would stay more into the fight or flight stuff. So when you get into the stuff like the power yogas and things like that, which are outside of maybe the classical styles that were cultivated in India, cause you know, yoga has got all these branches are now moving more to an exercise format. And those, I'm not saying I'm not discounting that they're valuable as an exercise, but they will not give you that parasympathetic response the same way. So let's talk about healing. Um, with the breathwork. So I've been doing breathwork literally for the last 20 years and through meditation and you learn a lot of different things about breathwork. So the breathing is, and we talk about this in the awesome health course. If you haven't downloaded or got involved with the health of melted RV, we actually go really, really deep on this where I can share with you exactly how you do these things. Wade Lightheart: Breathing is the only thing that you do, both consciously and unconsciously. In other words, you can think about your breathing and change its rate either faster or slower or it happens unconsciously. And for most people it's unconscious. You don't ever think about it. It just happens unless of course you're under water and suddenly here without it, then it's like, Oh, um, so what was discovered in ancient forms of practice and going back at least 6,000 years, maybe even beyond that, is that you could change your brain state, your focus ability. And now that's all been proven through science. That was kind of a lot of thought of airy fairy ideas by these kind of mystical people that you know were funny. Beards and roads and stuff and well it actually has now been proven by science. Thank you to the Dalai Lama who I think brought a lot of advanced, uh, breathwork people are meditators to the world of science so that we could actually track and see how their brains look in their brains look very different than the ordinary person. Wade Lightheart: And one of the ways they do this is by practicing and breathing. So there's a couple of things to do now. What's interesting in Eastern philosophy, the exhale is the start of the breath. And what the exhale process does is it takes carbon out of the system. And by de carbonating. The blood is actually what creates the healing component. The oxygen component will come on by itself, but by starting with the exhale, a conscious exhale, then when the oxygen comes in, then you're going to load up your hemoglobin a lot more, carry more oxygen into. If you carry more oxygen inside the cell without a like a rapid kind of breathing, that's what switches you over into the healing side of the nervous system of the parasympathetic. So all breathing practice would start out with maybe some short quick breasts like and then a slow or even a double in. Wade Lightheart: Here we go and take us short and then a slow so that you actually start to train your body to take a deeper breath and to lower part of lungs is mostly when you're sitting, you're getting about 30% of the oxygen inside your body. The other piece that you need to learn to, which is counter to my bodybuilding world, is to learn how to belly breathe. So, fortunately when I was a kid, um, I had a world-class music teacher and they taught us how to belly breathe and belly breathing is where you actually let your belly come out even while you're sitting. And what that does is that opens up your lungs so that you can get fuller, deeper breasts. Now I know bodybuilding, which I learned years later, is you're always trying to keep your stomach in. So you think about a bodybuilder wear to the beach, right? Wade Lightheart: Cause he's holding that in. So practicing learning to let your belly on the inhale as opposed to inhaling through the chest, which is what most people think they do there. It's got, you know, it's kind of like this way as opposed to slower down, deeper inside your body. And even the top musical people, if you go to Roger loves a course, I think he's the best speaking a coach in the world. He spends a lot of time on teaching you how to breathe. That's how the best musicians make the best sounds and get that deep resonant voice that you hear through singing is how you belly breathe. And so what I do, I start every day. I do some quick exhales, right? I do some quick exhales and then I do long and slow inhales. I'll start off with the process. I call it the 10 10 10 10 program, which is 10 seconds in tech, 10 seconds, hold 10 seconds, exhale, 10 seconds with no breath. Wade Lightheart: Now when you start that out, you're probably only going to do maybe three or four seconds and what's interesting is you'll start to realize is that you don't have the lung capacity, you, it feels like you don't have the lung capacity to hold your breath. It's particularly on the exhale more than three or four seconds and there's a panic part which indicates that your in sympathetic nervous system as you go through this, and sometimes it's called box breathing, you know it's what your, each breath is the same amount. By doing that, imagine a foresight at breath that the, you know, your exhale and then your inhale and then your hold and then your exhale and leave. Each one of those are the sides of a box. Okay. Those, if you're doing five seconds or 10 seconds or however long, those are going to indicate how quickly you get into sympathetic. Wade Lightheart: And usually once you get over that between five and 10 seconds, if you can get into that range, you're going to be moving into sympathetic nervous system, or excuse me, parasympathetic nervous, out of sympathetic into parasympathetic, so out of fight or flight into healing. And think about this. When you're in a stressful situation, let's say something's coming up or you're going to go on stage to speak, or you've got a fight coming up or something stressful is coming in, what do people naturally do? They go, you know that you, you instantly do this. And so what you're doing is consciously leveraging that response, slowing it down so you don't go into that adrenal fight or flight vote. And now one last piece before we kick it over to Matt is there's a lot of different ways that you can do this and there's various techniques where you start actually working in feeling the energy revolve inside your system. And that's what people are talking about, chi or prana. And as you deeply meditate, you actually get to feel these systems that aren't available to us. But when I was in the middle of my fight or flight craziness was literally the first time in 20 years that I wasn't able to do my meditations. Wade Lightheart: I literally couldn't do my meditations because I wasn't able to escape the fight or flight mode. It was so ingrainly deep. And that was of course a extremely painful. Matt Gallant: So there's also, first of all there's a lot of different breeding techniques and what we do is great and it does get a lot of benefits to clearing out CO2 and and different things. Um, I got wired to a medical grade breathing HRV machine. So let me just talk about heart rate variability for a second because it's probably the most useful number to manage your nervous system, your age, your heart rate variability. HRV is the best indicator to see where you're at in which direction you're going in. So what that means, it's actually the time in between the heart beats and going back to breathing. When you inhale, you will typically see a shortening of the time. Matt Gallant: And then when you're exhaling that it, it goes a little longer. Now if you're stressed out, there is no, there's very little variability. That means the heartbeat is like kinda like a piston. I remember thinking is not a good thing. No, it's not means your body's stress versus if I'm breathing and I'll talk with the kind of the metric breathing naturally, I'll just call it. Uh, I should see massive variability, which by the way, a couple of tools to measure that. One is the o-ring, which I have one right here that kind of gives me my score for the night. I can see kind of a graph of what happens to my heart rate variability. Um, and another one, which is more of a real time is called the buyer strap. So we'll put a link, um, and, and the again bioptimizers.com/nervoussystem so you can see the, the links and perhaps invested in was quick, quick, quick question, which do you prefer? Wade Lightheart: Um, for what reason? The bio strap versus the oura ring. I think that's a good distinction. Matt Gallant: I like, I liked the oura ring for measuring how fried my nervous system is in the morning. I think. I think it's got a better set of metrics and algorithms, but the buyer strap, um, let's, I want to do something and just see what my HRV is or again, it's not just HRV, it's got a bunch of metrics. I can't do that with the o-ring. So the bio strap for like more real time. I, let's say you want to do an experiment, see, Hey, how did that affect my HRV? Literally two minutes you push a button and two minutes later you get a score. So I like both of them. I use them for different things. But so that's a good question. So anyways, HRV is the most important thing. Going back to this machine that I got wired to. The way it works is you, you do these different breathing times and again, it's not a box breath. It's you know, either four seconds usually starts four seconds and four seconds out, five seconds in, five seconds out. Like you fold the system and then it tells you exactly what your optimal breathing pace is to maximize HRV. In other words, to relax your body. And for me, for an example, it was like six and a half seconds. So in other words, if I just breathe like Matt Gallant: I mean no, no holding and no pressure, no pushing. Cause it was interesting if I, if I kind of like, cause I did, I've done a yadda, a lot of yoga and yoga you do like you kind of like, you know, kind of squeeze your throat a little bit to push the bread out a little slower. If I did that, it would actually stress out my nervous system a little bit. So again, there's a lot of different breathing techniques. I'm just sharing this one. So for most people's like five, six seconds just in out, um, no, nothing for his big belly breath like Wade said, those, those things work. So anyways, that, that I think covers exercise. There's a lot of other stuff to talk about. But this is a great segue into brainwaves. Matt Gallant: So both Wade and I have done several rounds of medical wiring level, neuro feedback. So what is neurofeedback? It is a brain measuring feedback system. You get these electrodes wired to your brain and they feed back to you what's happening. So if you're doing the right thing, you get a a reward in the form of these beautiful audio tones. And if you're doing the wrong thing and go silence, your brain's like, Whoa, that didn't work. Let me try something else. And when you're doing the right thing, you're like, Oh, okay, that's what I need to do. Let me do more of that. So think of it kind of as a GPS. If you're driving around and you head on on the wrong street, the GPS has a turnaround. Um, that's basically how it is. But you're training your brain to hit all these different States. Matt Gallant: So there's five major groups of brainwaves and there's three of them that are in the healing side, and two are more on the fight or flight side. So on the healing side, yet alpha, which is relaxed but alert. And then that's a great kind of first goal for meditators is to reach that state. Um, then if you slow your brain waves down even more to I four to seven Hertz, then you hit feta, which is a lot slower and much deeper state. And then if you slow it down even more, which is what we hit when we sleep also is about zero to four Hertz. That's Delta. So if you think about how much healing, how, like all the healing in your body pretty much happens when you're in Delta. Deep sleep, most of it, right? Your growth hormone, your testosterone, all your hormones get produced in that phase. Matt Gallant: So again, going back to that's the healing side now on the fight or flight side, yeah, beta. So right now we had an hour in beta, we're engaged, we're focused, we're thinking, and you know, if, if beta goes too high in the wrong places, the brain, that's what anxiety looks like. That's what happens. It's like your brain has too many, uh, the of these beta brain waves and you know, we all know people like that. They're kind of stuck in that mode. You know, the way I would describe these people is they sleep. They, you know, that's the only time they're in parasympathetic, the only time during healing and they fall asleep. And most of them actually, if you have a lot of beta usually is bad sleep. It's a whole other topic. And then they wake up, they go right to beta, have a cup of coffee, go, you know, and then they fall asleep at night and then they repeat that cycle and they, they, they're kind of stuck into those two zones. Wade Lightheart: Can, can you talk about, cause I see this happening so much more with the role of digital devices now, and you could talk about blue light or stimulus and, and all that sorta stuff, which is, you know, Dr. Cruz talks a lot about this stuff. What's your take on all that and, and, and the role of technology of keeping us locked into beta and also maybe people not getting out into nature. Wade Lightheart: Yeah. That's, um, let me just finish the fight or flight on the brainwaves and we'll, we'll segue right into that. Cause it's a perfect segue. So the last wave I'll put in fight or flight is gamma, which gamma is an incredibly high spiritual state. Like you just kinda have this universal connection with higher power would say it that way. And one of our mutual friends, um, we named his name just to protect his anonymity, but he has the highest gamma that's ever been recorded at one of these brain, uh, facilities. And, you know, it fries him. I mean, it's a very, very intense brainwave. I mean, it's very intense. It's very powerful. It's incredible spiritual, but there is a cost to it. So, so that's why I kind of put in fight or flight anyways because the, a lot of psychics and stuff in that zone, I would think. Wade Lightheart: Or they kind of, you know, it's kinda like the wizard on the movie that pulls off the magic spell and then they're kind of wiped out on the song. It's kinda like, well, all right. So just to be completely unfiltered, um, one of our main spiritual mentors, David Hawkins, it does a lot of stories like this. They kind of had these massive spiritual jumps. Now, in my opinion, what's happening physiologically based on what we currently know is they have this massive, massive gay gamma Brae burst like a gamma burst on stars. They're just like, they're the same GAM all the time. And what we know with these experiences is that it takes them years in order to learn how to live with that, learn how to manage that and for do a Cawkins took them about seven years, um, at cart, totally three years anyway. It was all come on him or her Rishi didn't talk for years. Wade Lightheart: You can look through the histories of these kind of advanced mystics who been floated. Most of them go through this period where they're just, they're just not functional in the world at all. And I think a lot of it is learning to, to function with gamma, learn it that, you know, having the nervous system respond and adapt so that it had been as back to your question, um, first of all is, so let's segue to your transmitters and then we'll segue into your question because the neurotransmitters are the explanation to your question. Correct. So on the healing side, we have four main treat neurotransmitters. We have serotonin, which gets released when you eat sugar. That's one of the reasons people eat a lot of sugar because it makes them feel a little more relaxed. We have endorphins, which, you know, if you go to the gym it's kind of the rewards you get afterwards. Wade Lightheart: Running long distance biking. Endorphin highs. Matt Gallant: We have oxytocin, which is kind of the, the love molecule. When you first started dating someone first 12 months, there's a huge, or when a woman gives birth to a baby through the birth canal is the biggest boost of oxytocin. There is, I think. Right. And also that's why women love cuddling after sex. Cause there's a big oxytocin release and then there's an end of mine, which is the bliss molecule. So all four of those are more and bliss potential, easier in fight or flight. But those are on the healing side. And then on the fight or flight side, we have adrenaline, noradrenaline, and dopamine. So if we look at technology and you know, all the phones and all the apps, they are, they are hijacking or dopamine system. So every time you get notifications that's activating dopamine, your brain feels like, Whoa, Hey, I'm a little bit important. Matt Gallant: Somebody reaching out. Somebody liked something, somebody messaged me. And when people are messaging you and commenting on your stuff or liking your stuff, that is releasing dopamine every single time. So most of us, and I'm not immune to this, we're all trapped in these dopamine loops to various levels. And you know, there's a lot of things we can do to manage that. Um, and some people again are really completely lost in it. Now blue light is, is actually more fight or flight. We know this because it's designed to wake us up, right? When somebody hit our eyes, it's like go time versus you know, other colors of light like orange and the reds or more relaxation. And you know, if for those of us that wear blue light blocking glasses, we know that our brain starts just shutting down and downregulating. So that's the price on your nervous system of using these devices in a perfect world, probably three hours, four hours before bed. Matt Gallant: You just, you just get off the phones and the iPads. Your other thing too is that, ah, sorry, TVs, TVs. I mean old TV watching TV is an alpha. It actually increases alpha. It's where a lot of people like watching TV. I like watching TV. For me it's a good segue. Now the light is a different story, which I can hack with glasses. Now obviously depends on what I'm watching. If I'm watching horror movies and Rambo and commando and whoever, shoot, that's more dopamine, right? That's going to, so what you're watching is going to influence your neurotransmitters. Correct. But I like why wearing glasses couple of hours before bed. And that will again tell my brain to, it's nighttime, let me shut things down. But there's also the effects of wireless waves. So Bluetooth, wifi and what it seems to be doing is increasing dopamine. So even even just the, the waves that are blasting us nonstop, right. If I put my phone, probably 15 wifi that I can catch with my phone. So, and there's all kinds that I'm not seeing. Right. Um, so those waves seem to be increasing dopamine. So we have w the, the dopamine from the apps that dopamine from the blue light and the dopamine from all these singles. So it's not, it's no mystery that people are being hijacked from this stuff. Wade Lightheart: Yeah. Powerful information. Okay. So here's the stressors. How do we get it? So what are some physical indications that you've seen? If you could maybe walk me through some stages that people might notice when they're becoming overstimulated and headed to run down. What would you say from your observation? Cause you know, you've, you've dealt with a lot of high performers, you've coached a lot of high performers in you, you're pretty much surrounded by high performers. I was like what do you, what did you notice that they've given you feedback as well? Matt Gallant: So, well one of the big X factors of whether you burn out or not is resilience. So we could do a whole podcast on resilience cause it's a really interesting thing. Um, and resilience is primarily an emote. It's more of a limbic system thing. Now there's a physical component. Resilient. How tough are you in your pretty example wave? You know, you're as tough physically as, as anyone else I am that I know. But you know, one of the things that I've done, um, to to like probably increase my resilience, I'm going to say like 500%, maybe more in the last four years has been the neurofeedback but, but it's more specifically I'm cleaning out my limbic system. So you have all these, Wade Lightheart: when you say w when you say limbic system for our listeners, what do you mean by the limbic system? Matt Gallant: Okay. So the limbic system is one of the components of our nervous system. Okay. So it's kind of a sub component of it and that's where all of our emotions, so the emotional part of our nervous system is the limbic system, we'll just call it the emotional system. So we had this emotional system and when we see things that are similar to other painful experiences that we've had in the past, and if these painful experiences are not healed, okay, heal is the key word. If they're not healed, we will feel you're threatened by that experience or something similar. That experience for exactly whatever this, this thing that's in front of me that's reminding me of that thing that was painful. I go right to fight or flight, right, right. To fight, flight or freeze. I mean it's immediate because, and, and a great example, and we all know people that been bitten by dogs and you know, they're 40 50 60 years old, they'll still be scared of that, of that dog, even if it's like a small little dog. Wade Lightheart: A dog comes into the elevator, there's sweat, perspiration comes up, their tension comes up, the heartbeat adrenaline response. If you were to look at that, it's pretty significant. Or someone that's been in a car accident, they get in the car again and all of a sudden they start having a physiological response. Matt Gallant: Yeah. And it's very true even on micro levels. So for an example, you know, your mother told you, uh, you know, your grades aren't good enough. You know, like one of the things my dad told me like one time I hit like 96 and he's like, where's the other four? And that was something that I had to, to identify and heal because it was kinda driving the perfectionism in me and, and it was so, so there's a whole consequence cascade of consequences that can literally lead to character defects and sometimes character assets. Matt Gallant: Uh, and I love Joe Dispenza, us models on that. But going back to healing, one of the things that works incredibly well is EFT. So EFT immediately starts shifting your nervous system into parasympathetic. It's a very, very fast response because you're hitting these nine points. EFT stands for emotional freedom technique by the way. Correct. And there's probably more commonly known now as tapping. So you have these points you have, and if you're watching the video, you have this karate chop point, top of the head, top of the I side, below the eye, below the nose, below the lips, right where the crease in the chin, his collar bone, and then ribs. And when you tap these points, you're, your nervous system literally shifts over, which, so if I bring up and I like guide, I'm actually certified and I've guided people countless times to do this and I've never seen it not work. Matt Gallant: And I'm talking about like bringing up really painful experiences and shifting from, Oh wow, that was a really traumatic experience too. I'm at peace with it. I mean, big ones might take 15 minutes, but usually it's like five minutes. And for me, because I've done it so much, um, it's probably like 60 seconds, two minutes sometimes. So it's really good a thing. Probably one of the best sites to learn is that www, EFT, universe.com, or you can go to YouTube, just countless videos. So that's one thing. Um, the other thing you can do is neurofeedback, which again we talked about, so we don't really have time to talk with. That'd be a whole other podcast. Um, you know, meditation is definitely parasympathetic and, and you know, especially again, if you hit as soon as you hit alpha, you're in healing mode. So alpha theta you hit start handies a slower brain waves and that's the people that are stuck in beta all the time. Matt Gallant: If they could just learn to shift their brain waves over to a slower mode, they're are going to start healing. Um, so things you can do when you meditate that are highly effective. And again, these are different emotions that are parasympathetic, that are healing. One of them is gratitude, which is this at this point is extremely highly researched. Um, if you're actually feeling gratitude, you're in parasympathetic, you are in healing mode. You cannot, and I'm not talking about saying thank you verbally. I'm talking about feeling gratitude in your heart, in your body. If you're feeling that sensation, you are definitely in healing mode. There's no two ways about it. There's a lot of new techniques that people are talking about is starting the day by doing a gratitude list or sharing your gratitude list or what you're grateful for getting this as a practical implementation because a lot of people don't really feel gratitude, you know, in the world today, even though as humans listening to this podcast, we're in the top 1% of humans in history of the planet, most people are focusing on what they don't have as opposed to what they are. Wade Lightheart: And that that's the comparison problem is, is real and present and bring yourself back to that gratitude practices is a great, is a great thing. Yeah. Um, happiness in general. So you know, if you're feeling happy probably in parasympathetic joy, which you can kind of measure with laughter, which is one of the things I kind of pay attention to is like how much am I laughing? And if I, if I'm not laughing, I'm probably in fight or flight. Like, you know what I mean? Whatever. If I'm laughing a lot that I know I'm in a good space first my nervous system goes and if I notice that I haven't, I'm not really laughing. You know what I mean? Uh, and it's one of the things I look for in people too. Are they laughing a lot or do not laughing and I can kind of gauge where they're at, um, feeling, you know, peace, serenity. Matt Gallant: Obviously if you're feeling peace and serenity, serenity now as they said in Seinfeld, then yeah, you're in parasympathetic versus you know, fear, anger. Obviously those are total fight or flight or freeze emotions and then even drive like, you know, getting stuff done like Wade, you burn, you are burning yourself thought necessarily fear and anger for you is dry. That, that intense willingness. So you know, and I spend probably like eight hours of my day, sometimes 10, sometimes 12 in that zone. And it's just something to be mindful of. Is that, yeah, when we're driving hard on our projects or business or jobs or careers that you know, that his fight or flight like and it's a low level or fight or flight, I mean sometimes it's high level if you're really dealing with a lot of stress, which goes back to resilience, but you know, driving this is a fight or flight thing. So any comments on that Wade? Because again, that's really what took you out. Yeah. Wade Lightheart: I think there's also part of the representation of it comes down to what is valued in your own life and, and not understanding the recovery to drive ratio and how the, the harder you drive, the more to you need to manage your recovery. And uh, there's a great book, the powerful engagement, uh, which really breaks this down about the difference that started off with tennis players. And even though they all had relatively the same level of skills, the guys that were doing these micro arrests were actually dominating the tennis field. And it was an unconscious practice which had all kinds of applications in the business world. And one of the things that I think you were really clear about, um, is your commitment to both micro and macro recovery. You kind of went into that earlier cause you probably hit that burnout zone in your 20s and said, okay, I, and you know, we talked about how you, that became kind of like a, uh, an a breakthrough attention unit and for people who are listening to this podcast, that's what our whole point here is to create a breakthrough awareness level that the harder you want to drive, the more you need to focus on recovery and micro recovery and macro recovery as well Wade Lightheart: recovery components. It's like a race car and F1 formula cart. If you think about it as going around the track at 200 miles an hour and guess what? It needs to be fueled up a lot more than your regular car. It's burning through tires at a lot more than a regular car. Um, so if you wanna drive at 200 miles an hour in your life, you better have a pit crew and you better be putting all the high components or recovery on it or you're going into the wall and you're going to crash and burn. Matt Gallant: So we're, we're, we're about at the end of the, of the show. So I just want to start talking about, you know, supplements and different things that shifted nervous system. Let's start with the easy one. The fight or flight stuff. Um, coffee, you know, any type of stimulant, you know, even the new nicotine, I mean, all of those are, you know, we'll put cocaine, amphetamines, you know, all of that stuff is, is fight or flight or freeze, right? Wade Lightheart: What's your opinion on, uh, all the kind of, uh, cognitive enhancers that you see people using in the digital world. And also in, um, education universities like Ivy league schools and stuff. What would you clarify those and, and it, Matt Gallant: most of them are fight or flight on the Modafinil goals and which the, I would, Daphne knows probably like a two out of 10 cause there's a scale right? Like not everything is just tense. Wade Lightheart: Let's just talk about that because I think there's a lot of people that are using these things. I mean like Ted talk, I talk about the guys on wall street are now on cocaine, testosterone and Aderoll, you know. Matt Gallant: And you don't see testosterone is more of a fight or flight versus estrogen's more healing. So you know, the point is that yeah, like is probably like a seven or eight Modafinil is probably like a two on that, on that fight or flight scale. So there is, you know, again scale. But yeah, almost all the nootropics now there are some exceptions. So let's shift over drug the drug based nootropics. Yeah. But even, yeah, even some of the cleaner stuff. So if we shift over to [inaudible] and so the better blends are a combination of boats or for example LFE is parasympathetic, parasympathetic healing, which counterbalances a lot of the caffeine issues. So you can stack parasympathetic substances with stimulants and have a much more balanced nervous system response versus just going completely fighter flights would. That is a great tip for everybody. Well, just to cover some substances. Matt Gallant: We got reishi, I would probably rate it pretty low on healing, but you do feel a little bit of a shift. El Athenian, one of my favorites, I take about 400 milligrams before bed every night. CBD, CBN, CBG, those are three different cannabinoids. They are definitely on the parasympathetic side versus THC. More fight or flight lavender oil, one of the only oils research to show to increase alpha brainwaves, which is healing. I like taking a actually oral lavender oil before bed. Ashwagandha, I took two grams last night. I was a little wired, um, during the day. Shifted me right over and had a decent sleep. But the one I want to talk about and we'll do a whole podcast on this, uh, because they're gonna run out of time, but it's magnesium in both Wade and I uh, healed ourselves, healed our nervous system using magnesium. Like I got to the point because I was uh, you know, squeezing my drawings too much and my nervous system was literally getting raw. Wade Lightheart: You can burn the myelin sheet off your nerves and I couldn't drink coffee anymore. Like, if I drank coffee, I instantly felt like frazzled. I didn't get to it to the level we'd got, but I'm like, okay, I can't drink coffee anymore. I'm done. So I did a big magnesium cycle for around I think 90 days and around the 60 day Mark I'm like, I felt completely different. I felt kind of permanently relaxed. The magnesium is kind of the, the parasympathetic mineral, you know, nothing shifts you over on a mineral level or a macro. Probably the greatest deficiency out there in North Americans right now is magnesium, I think. I think it's only 32% of the population is getting the RDA levels. And that's not what the optimal level is. Yeah. Because probably there's the hard to get from food. That's the problem. It's almost impossible to eat enough magnesium. Correct. Like it's, that's, that's the fundamental challenge. So even if you're, you know, one of these, Hey, let me try to get the perfect guide going. Um, it's, it's really challenging to do that. So that is the list of, um, parasympathetic and sympathetic. Like I said, go to box.com/nervous system. I've got this entire doc including a couple of things we didn't have a time to cover. Wade Lightheart: We'll add them in and throw in a couple of things. So we'll go a little bit longer. What else can we do? Cause I know you've gone, you spent years in testing, literally has insurance of substance and social unload on us a little bit and give us a little extra bonus. Matt Gallant: Yeah. Um, so I'm going to talk about my favorite favorite thing like which this is about biohacking thing. It's not a substance, but it does relate to magnesium. The number one thing for me, like by a long shot, I've talked a lot about our guys. Joe Rogan's, a huge fan is floating. So floating is a sensory deprivation tank. You're literally floating in this salt magnesium, salt soup. It's made with Epsom salts, which is a magnesium salt and you're floating. The water is the same temperature as your body. It's pitch black. So all your senses get a reset. Like you're not getting stimuli like you normally would. Like even if I'm sitting in this chair, I'm feeling gravity right now, right? Like, my feet are feeling gravity from the floor. My butt's feeling gravity from the chair. But when you're floating, you kind of just not feeling anything. Matt Gallant: You're just, you're not really feeling the water. You don't have light against stimulating your brain. It's really usually completely pitch. There's no sound and you're absorbing magnesium. So I love to float for like 90 minutes. And I mean, the level of shift, like I've gone places. I remember we went in LA, I flew in Venice beach, right? Yeah. Flare crash, got the best tanks. That's the one he makes. Joe Rogan's tax. Um, float labs is a, his company. So I flew to LA. I could tell like my, you know, when I get fried, I get these swollen plans here, the lymph nodes, so I could, I was fried. I said, Hey, wait, let's go. Floats away. And I went floating and after the float, all my, you know, all my glands were, we're back to normal and I felt incredible. So there, there's one thing I could recommend is definitely floating, um, to, to shift over your, uh, nervous system. Wade Lightheart: Chiropractic too. I have a world-class chiropractor, which I'm actually going to go see here in about an hour and a half. Um, is also way that you're able to take relief off the nervous system if you have a really good chiropractor. Of course. Uh, I've got what we call the wizard here in Vancouver. There's a Gary down in LA that his, his whole thing at the human garage, they've got some really great things to switch you into that healing mode. And, and a really good chiropractor will be able to take load off the nervous system. And one of the things that I didn't have on those travels is I didn't have my chiropractor Wade Lightheart: who was always giving me that feedback of where I was. And one of the big recovery modalities that I've experienced is by using chiropractic care. Matt Gallant: I will call it out for a shameless pitch. We have a new product called magnesium breakthrough, which is seven different magnesiums, including cofactors in our humble opinions. It is the best bang museum out there. So what we recommend you do if you're feeling a little fried, a little bit in the fight or flight system, is to take around three doses a day. It is better to spread your dose because if you take too much magnesium at once, you may run to the bathroom because it can disaster. But however, key, powerful note, we formulated this, the minimize that effect. So when we, when we formulated this cause it goes different magnets, some magnesiums pull a lot more water than others. Matt Gallant: Um, we minimize the, the water pulling effect. So we recommend starting off it probably half a gram three times a day and then building up to three grams. So it'd be a grand three times a day. That's probably a good dose. Um, I mean if you really want to push it, you can try to get to like four or five, six grams. That's, that's where I ended up, uh, when I was really healing that thing and got it to five grams, um, and felt incredible. So anyways, that is our new product. Uh, magnesium breakthrough.com. You can go on our sidebar optimizer.com and check it out. So amazing product. Really excited to share this because we know both Wade and I have experienced the, the healing benefits of magnesium. Um, it's, it's incredible. It's literally one of the best supplements that I've ever experienced in terms of real world experiential benefits. And that's why we wanted to do a magnesium product and we didn't want to just do another me too. Magnesium. We wanted to do something special, which we have. So wait, maybe we'll close off your final thoughts on magnesium and your experiences. Wade Lightheart: Yeah, so, uh, I went the, uh, of course I'm an all in kind of guy as you imagined. And what I did is understanding when I was cooked a

Subscribe through iTunes and Google Play. In this interview, ASCO President Dr. Howard A. “Skip” Burris discusses why he became an oncologist, the importance of mentors in his career, the most significant changes he’s witnessed in cancer care during the past three decades, and his vision for the coming year as he serves in this top volunteer position. Dr. Burris stresses that we can’t “divide and conquer, to conquer cancer,” a message underscored by his ASCO presidential theme, “Unite and Conquer: Accelerating Progress Together.” Find all of ASCO's podcasts at podcast.asco.org   Shannon McKernin: Hi. My name is Shannon McKernin, and I'm the host of the ASCO Guidelines Podcast series. When a new ASCO guideline publishes, we release a podcast episode featuring an interview with one or more expert panel members. Each episode highlights the key recommendations and the implications for patients and providers. You can find the ASCO Guidelines Podcast series on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening to this show, and you can find all nine of ASCO's podcasts, which cover a wide range of educational and scientific content and offer enriching insight into the world of cancer care at podcast.asco.org. Disclaimer: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Clifford Hudis: Welcome to this ASCO in Action podcast brought to you by the ASCO Podcast Network, a collection of nine programs covering a range of educational and scientific content offering enriching insights into the world of cancer care. You can find all of ASCO's podcasts including this one at podcast.asco.org. This ASCO in Action podcast is part of our series exploring policy and practice issues that impact oncologists, the entire cancer care delivery team, and the individuals who care for people with cancer. My name is Clifford Hudis, and I am the CEO of ASCO as well as a host of the ASCO in Action podcast series. For today's podcast, I am delighted to be joined by Dr. Howard, or "Skip", Burris. He's ASCO's president for the 2020 term, and if we're lucky today, we'll find out why he's called Skip. In the meantime, Dr. Burris is joining me to share his vision for his presidential year. That is what he hopes to accomplish by this top ASCO volunteer leadership position is an opportunity to leave a lasting mark on our organization and indeed the larger oncology community. Skip, welcome and thank you for joining me today. Howard “Skip” Burris: Thank you for having me. Looking forward to the conversation. Clifford Hudis: So, Skip, every one of us comes to oncology for individual reasons and personal motivations, and I know that's true for you as well. So before we get into the details of your current role at ASCO, I think our listeners will be interested in learning why you became a medical oncologist when there are so many places to go in medicine, so many exciting specialties, what was it that drove you to choose taking care of patients with cancer for your career? Howard “Skip” Burris: Interesting question and story. I was driven to medicine really thinking that I wanted to do something that was meaningful, something that helped others. And I was influenced by actually a number of friends whose fathers were physicians when I was in high school. And as I initially went into the medical field, I thought surgery was so exciting, and I actually spent many of my electives doing surgical sub-specialties and in particular thoracic surgery. And it was an exciting time in the '80s with heart transplantation and bypass surgeries. And yet I also was dissatisfied with the fact that it seemed transactional. While important, and certainly lifesaving for those patients, these were surgeries and then, quote unquote, were done taking care of that patient. And then I had a seminal moment after rounds one day when we were in the intensive care unit. And I was talking to a patient, and the team moved on. And my attending yelled at me, “hey, Burris, what are you doing?” I looked at him and he said, “Come on. He's fixed. Let's go.” And I half smiled and I thought, well, this guy's got such an interesting story and he was terribly appreciative of the care he'd receive, but he looked at that attending as somebody had truly had saved his life. And so fast forward to fumbling through internship and trying to figure out really what type of specialty I might want to go into. And two groups of folks that I ran into contact with shaped my career. One were the oncology patients. Rounding on the oncology patients, doing that elective early in my internship, they were grateful. They were so appreciative. It was a great program in San Antonio. It was folks participating in clinical trials. And these were patients who not only wanted to help themselves but understood that what they were doing might help others. But really every person was so unique and had such a powerful story. And then secondly, the attendings that were taking care of those patients, the oncologists truly seemed to love what they were doing. And it was really those two groups, I thought these are the kind of patients I'd like to take care of, and these are the types of physicians that I'd like to practice with. And I began shifting as many rotations as I could as a resident into oncology, and I've enjoyed being an oncologist now for almost 30 years. Clifford Hudis: And so it was the patients, and it was the physicians really that in the end drove you into this specialty it sounds like, right? Howard “Skip” Burris: Yes. I had been taught early on, and I tell some of our younger folks today, working with people that you like and working with people that you respect is such an important part of the job. And then the service that you're providing knowing that folks are appreciative and there's a teamwork in that both the doctors and the patients in the field of oncology are so special. Clifford Hudis: So you just touched on a big part of what I think motivates or at least supports so many of our members throughout their careers and that is collaboration, working with others. And I can't help but imagine that your experience in terms of your education at West Point and your service with distinction in the Army has a relationship to that camaraderie, that connection, and that collaboration. How do you see that experience as preparing you for medicine, or maybe you think it didn't? Howard “Skip” Burris: Actually it did, and I appreciate the question, the opportunity to comment on that. Going to the US Military Academy, going to West Point for undergrad was a decision made because I wanted to go to a great school. It was a great scholarship package, the way they handled it. And I knew I'd get a great education and was attracted, one of these kids in high school who gravitated toward leadership positions, and going to an institution that would teach leadership was attractive. And then you realize as soon as you get to West Point, you're part of this big team. Everything you do during your years there is all about your group of individuals, your team, your squad, your company, surviving together, thriving together, and being successful. And, in fact, the motto that they teach is strength is one. And it was clear that you were at school with a talented group of folks who all wanted to be leaders, and everybody had to learn how to fit in, pick their place to lead, pick their place to be humble, pick their place to take charge. And those sorts of teachings and the mentors and the colonels and generals that were my teachers on that led the program, they were simple things but they were things that stuck with me forever, and I think they've served me well as a physician. One was around the simple concept of you know if no one's following, you might not actually be leading. And you got to stop and take a look behind you and see if while you're heading in whatever direction you might be going, if no one's following, you got to check yourself. I think a second thing that has stuck with me is better to be decisive than to be sure you're right. Very rarely are you sure you're right, and I think that teams even in medicine and maybe particularly in medicine really like a decisive leader. And I think that's something that is a great characteristic for physicians, gathering the appropriate data and making the decision and moving forward. But looking around and trying to emulate some of those folks who became leaders of the country was inspirational and then also gave you the opportunity to take away some of those teachings and try to embed them in terms how you carry yourself. One thing about the army it's very hierarchical, but the generals, you know, know that those privates are what's going to make them successful. So the chain of command and that respect for each other, respect for the position, and respect for their role on the team is very similar to the role of doctor to nurse to the support staff and the like. So it actually ended up being a great foundation for my career. Clifford Hudis: So it's interesting throughout medicine and especially in the last few decades, we have increased our emphasis on the role of mentoring. And I have I guess two questions which would be, one: how did you find mentors in your post military career given the strength of the leadership that you saw displayed there? And the other question is how did you translate that into your own service as a mentor? Howard “Skip” Burris: Yeah, so I think important-- I think picking the right mentor-- maybe picking the mentor where you resonate with that person and think that somebody who you'd like to model and picking that mentor who can teach you something and really has your best interests at heart I think are key. Picking the wrong mentor is something that could really set somebody off on the wrong track if they're not careful. I was very lucky. As I went into internship and residency, my chief of medicine was a fabulous mentor. He was one of those individuals who kept the patient first, was kind but firm, and just the thing I learned from him was what now we talked to as emotional intelligence, this fact that he was optimistic. He was very self-aware, and he was in control of his emotions. And no matter what we'd done or not done and however the result went, he was the steady hand, and I always looked up and thought, I want to be that person. I want to be the person who's calm in the storm, and I want to be the person that people look to and say he's not panicking, and he's got the situation where we're going to get through this together. So that was a great mentor in my chief of medicine. And then my other mentor during my oncology fellowship was a famous oncologist, still in the field today, in Arizona, Dr. Dan Von Hoff. I mentioned Dr. Von Hoff's name, he's been a Karnofsky Award lecturer. And Dr. Von Hoff was the one who got me interested in drug development and phase 1 clinical trials. And I would say that Dr. Von was a great mentor for a few specific reasons. One is he always pushed us in front of him. He didn't need to take the credit. He pushed us to be presenters, pushed us to be first authors, pushed us to be the person that was in front of the clinical trial. And that was something that really was important for somebody early in their career. And then secondly he really taught that perspective that it was a great responsibility both for the patient on the clinical trial and for overseeing that clinical trial and that while your title might be principal investigator, you might be the leader of the program that you really were beholden to those researchers that brought the drug forward and to those patients who were volunteering to participate in the study. And Dr. Von Hoff has always been a great person in that regard, and his Karnofsky Lecture was actually a highlight to and a tribute to all those patients who had participated in phase one trials through the years. So those were two mentors that really stood out and have impacted me throughout my career. Clifford Hudis: Do you see yourself I guess echoing those styles of mentorship or expanding on them? Do you see anything in your own role as a mentor that hearkens back to what you saw in West Point and in those mentors in medicine for you personally? Howard “Skip” Burris: I do think I've had embodied in me the patient centric, patient first approach. I am one of those physicians who has always wanted to get to know his patients, have always taken the social history as an important part. It's funny, a number of my longtime patients are comfortable calling me Skip on occasion. I actually know their stories and know who their family is, and I know what they're wanting to fight for in terms of grandchildren and trips and the like. So that I'd be really being grateful on having a relationship with the patient I think is something that has carried forward. I will say to my chief of medicine mentor I still aspire to that. I wish I was always as calm as he was. I wish I was always as optimistic as he was and had that sort of strength, but it is still something that's front of mind for me and something that I at least strive to be as much as I can. Clifford Hudis: So, reflecting on your career just for a little bit, I have a couple of questions. One is a general one and one more specific. But thinking generally first, you've been in medicine a long time. I guess you're around 30 years if I'm not mistaken. From your point of view, what do you see as the most significant change in the field that -- can be good or bad or whatever -- but that we have to think about and maybe help our trainees and younger members adapt to? Howard “Skip” Burris: Well, the flow of information, the speed at which we're making discoveries and just the educational challenges there are immense. And so, I think that is something where the speed of drug development and approvals just to throw one statistic out, eight new drugs approved in 1998, 48 new drugs are indications approved in 2018, so what a change over the past 20 years. I think the most significant change, though, is we knew early on in our careers-- you and I always knew that no two patients were alike. They might be in ERP or positive breast cancer that they really were not the same patient. They might be a adenocarcinoma, but they were really different. And now with the advances in pathology -- advances in molecular profiling, understanding biomarkers, we do know that no patients are alike. And we know that everybody has to be approached individually. The tendency has always been to want to lump patients into groups to make broad treatment recommendations. And that is part of the challenge with the education and information flowing forward. It is as simple as continuing to look at some of the prognostic indices that we have for some tumors, the next generation sequencing for others, whatever that test might be to really determine what's the best therapy for that patient. So those advances have really helped us in terms of looking at tumor biology and knowing whether we're thinking about an immunological approach to a patient or chemotherapy approach to a patient or whether it might be one of the new oral biologics. But that has been such a significant change. And only a few years ago, it seems like we were giving immunotherapy in the form of drugs like interleukin 2, and now we have these fabulous new checkpoint inhibitors that are in front of us. Thinking back to really something like tamoxifen being truly a targeted therapy now thinking about the dozens of drugs that are out there now that are targeting other biomarkers on patients. That really has been an amazing advance. Clifford Hudis: Well, I mean, I have to agree that this is certainly an exhilarating and challenging time in oncology, so maybe we can pivot to think about that and talk about your presidential year. What do you think are specifically the biggest challenges facing us? And let's call those challenges promising opportunities. Where do you think we have to focus right now? Howard “Skip” Burris: I think one very top of mind is the oncology workforce. Physicians, leveraging up the physicians, having enough nurses and enough nurses interested in oncology, attracting young physician talent into wanting to be an oncologist, and then the other ancillary health care providers, nurse practitioners and the like, we need a bigger and more robust workforce to take advantage of the opportunity given to us with the survivors. It's incredible when we think about the advances and the number of cancer survivors in this country, individuals either under treatment or surviving with the disease where we're talking in numbers approaching 20 million over the next two years so really very amazing in that regard. I think education, it is tough. We still have a lot of physicians particularly in the United States that are seeing multiple different tumor types during the day, and with the advances in information, it's just important that we as ASCO do our part in trying to educate and provide the information. And then with all these new advances, it becomes the challenge of clinical trial accrual. While many of these therapies have made important differences in patients' lives, we're still not curing enough patients. And so, there is room and certainly the need for better therapies. And so, in this busy workforce and in the challenges of having everyone aware of the opportunities, how do we improve clinical trial accrual? And then lastly, I'll just mention, of course, cost of care. That goes a little bit with patients living longer or taking therapy for a longer period of time sometimes in a chronic setting and then the cost of some of these new therapies. So those were certainly factors we're going to have to deal with. So, some big challenges for the field of oncology. Clifford Hudis: Well, hearing you run to that list-- workforce, research, cost, patients, and survivorship, all of that-- it sounds like it builds right up to your presidential theme of unite and conquer, celebrating progress together. That sounds like a lofty and aspirational statement, but I also see immediately connections back to again all those points you just made. Do I have that right? Can you unpack the meaning of that for us at least, as you see it? Howard “Skip” Burris: Yes, it's an interesting theme, unite and conquer, celebrating progress together. I specifically resonated with that. I have long taught my young attendings and my colleagues at Sarah Cannon that the challenge is too big and the needs too great for us to actually go with the divide and conquer mentality. We've actually got to be together as a team to get this accomplished and have the best care provided. So I have talked about uniting and conquering for many years here at Sarah Cannon, and I think it fits nicely when we think about the oncology workforce and the members of ASCO. And then accelerating progress together, there is a great need to step things up a bit. I think that can come in a few different fashions. I am excited about the emerging opportunities and real world evidence. I do think some of the clinical trials are getting smaller and more narrow to fit specific groups of patients. And then I think we're beginning to leverage up some of our physicians with technology, with advanced practice providers, nurse practitioners, physicians assistants, all those pieces coming together. And then I'll admit also having conquer in the phrase was important to me. The Conquer Cancer Foundation, ASCO's foundation, I think is so important. When you come back to some of these topics we just talked about, it's really one of our best ways to invest in and inspire young investigators. Some of the awards provided by Conquer Cancer and the mission it provides I think are really going to be key to ASCO's success. Clifford Hudis: I think that's a great vision, and it's certainly one that does resonate, not just with you but I think with many in the audience. You touched in that description on that diverse expertise that we all believe we need to make faster progress. And for me, of course, this reminds us of our upcoming meeting in Bangkok, which is looking at speakers from some of the unconventional fields. How do you see that diversity coming together to drive innovation in cancer research and care? Howard “Skip” Burris: It's an interesting opportunity for us, and I'll digress for a brief minute and then go to the Nashville Analogies. So, Sarah Cannon, based here in Nashville, and some of the things we've talked about really revolves around what it takes to put on a musical performance. So only one person might have the microphone at the time, but you've got the band and you've got the engineers and you've got the people that have setup the stage, sold the tickets. Every aspect of that's key to having that concert pulled off. And I think Breakthrough is a meeting and when you think about the oncology ecosystem not too different. We need and have invested in information technology. I mean some of those IT individuals are so key to doing a variety of things, getting data to us, sorting and analyzing data, we were seeing telemedicine coming at us, artificial intelligence and natural language processing, all those pieces, which then moves quickly into where the engineers or participating. Engineers and medicine, I think, are going to help make some of the greatest advances. I think certainly engineers in terms of how we're looking at robotics and surgery, how we're thinking about different techniques for radiation therapy, and even engineers getting involved in some of the drug discovery process. And then bioinformatics and we've talked about big data and the excitement behind that. I commented on real world evidence, but this whole idea of being able to have decision support through bioinformatics and the understanding that those experts bring to the table. Those are some of the things that'll be highlighted at the Breakthrough Meeting. I think those are individuals who are going to need to be core pieces to the cancer solution and to cancer centers. And it's just an exciting time, and I think this meeting will be a great place to highlight how those groups can come together and have a conversation. Clifford Hudis: So, we are now a few months into your presidency year. I have to ask: has there been anything that has surprised you about the experience, something that you did not expect as you entered into this leadership role? Howard “Skip” Burris: I think the one surprise is how many individuals want you to lend an ear with email and text, that's a little bit easier. But folks that want to stop and grab you and give you a suggestion. I say surprised by that because I think these members, our colleagues, folks that are participating in the oncology care field really have ideas, thoughts, and passions. The individuals that speak to me really want you to take their ideas seriously, think about it, and bring it forward. And I'm appreciative of that. I'm surprised that they wouldn't see me taking this role in this title as being an opportunity for them to have that conversation and want to push their idea of forward. But that's been both a surprise and yet a pleasant experience, and I've enjoyed the conversations. I will also comment and throw some kudos out. I knew the ASCO staff was smart. I knew the ASCO staff was very hard working. But as you become ASCO President and you're seeing and signing and reading and participating in their communications that they put out in a variety of fashions, just this sheer legislative communication they have back and forth with congressional staff and answering various health care initiatives. One, it's a high volume, two, ASCO's voice and input on this is really needed and appreciated and respected, and, three, we really have a very talented ASCO staff sitting with our organization, and I think that's something that it would be great for all 40-plus 1,000 of our members to really appreciate. Clifford Hudis: Well, you know I agree. Now I have to ask, in addition to your long history of volunteer leadership within ASCO and your current role, especially as president, you also have a busy day job. You're currently chief medical officer and president of clinical operations as well as executive director of drug development all at the Sarah Cannon Research Institute, which is a leading cancer center for clinical research in the country. You're also an associate of Tennessee oncology. Now I was once ASCO president myself, and I know how busy the role keeps you. How do you do it all, Skip? Howard “Skip” Burris: Well, you certainly did it, and I don't mind saying I looked at folks like yourself to understand how better manage my life. I do think I've become better at scheduling. Through the years, I've learned that if I don't schedule myself in, I don't schedule a family in, and schedule a little downtime, that can be hard. So, I have become more disciplined with that through the years. I think secondly, I've been blessed to have constant and consistent team. Same nurse practitioner for more than 15 years, same pharmacologist for more than 20 years, nurse, staff, et cetera, so that has helped and enabled me to delegate and empower them and others. And recruiting in great talent has been important. The work energizes me, and I have really enjoyed working with really smart people. And then lastly some credit to my wife, Karen. Surely after being elected president, Karen put me on a diet, and I think that's provided a little bit of extra energy for me as well. Clifford Hudis: And how's that working out? Howard “Skip” Burris: Yeah, it's going pretty well. She's been a great encourager for me, and we've been able to drop a few pounds. And we can button the jacket, and so that will help me out with the pictures and being onstage. Clifford Hudis: So that leads me to maybe a piece of low hanging fruit here, but at the end of this year when you look back on your year as ASCO president, what's the one thing you hope you've accomplished? And don't tell me it's dropping 20. Howard “Skip” Burris: No, I won't 'cause Karen would tell you dropping 30, but I'm open for dropping 20. I hope that when we look back on my presidential year that it will be seen as a year where we bridge some gaps and connected people to begin to have some conversations to really push some advances. I think this idea of connecting people and bridging the various stakeholders is important to me, that will come in a variety of ways. I think my educational chair Dr. Prowell, Tatiana, coming from the FDA and from Johns Hopkins and Dr. Melissa Johnson, the two of them bring a very unique perspective in. So how the committees are formed and who's engaged in planning the annual meetings and how we have various participants and speakers, I think we're hoping to engage more of the oncology workforce and care force in terms of participating in the meeting. I also hope that we'll begin to push this idea of why all should be a member of ASCO. I think there's nothing more important than being together as an association. There has been articles out of late touting why doctors should organize, so I'm also hoping during this year we see an increase in membership for years going forward. Maybe we can set some of that platform up. And then also really continue to energize and push the Conquer Cancer Foundation. I think it should be something that all of our members will be proud of to say that they've contributed to Conquer Cancer and that they'd invested in the future of oncology. So those are a few of the things I hope to get started. It's a fast year. I know it'll go by quickly, but I'm hoping some of those initiatives can get rolling and we can have that carry forward in years. And when we look back we'll think that I had a small part in getting some of those programs moving along. Clifford Hudis: Well, that's great. I want to thank you again, Skip, for joining me today. It's been a great conversation. I've appreciated especially hearing more about your vision and your hopes for the coming year as well as the impact you want to leave. I have to say at the opening I teased a little bit about how you came to be called skip, and you haven't shared that. So, this is your chance if you want to let the membership know why we call you Skip. That'd be great. Howard “Skip” Burris: Well thanks, Cliff. Howard A Burris, III and, of course, Howard, Sr lived down the street and Howard, Jr was in the same house with me. So, when I first came home from the hospital, my mom called me Skip. I have had that nickname since I was born. And I always talked about switching back to Howard when I went to college or after medical school or when I turned 40. And for whatever reason, personality, friends, I've always stayed a Skip. There is no middle name, Howard A Burris. A is just the initial. So, there's been no middle initial to fall back to. So, I think Skip's what it's going to be and that seems to be what's sticking with me through the years. So that's the story. Clifford Hudis: That's great. Well, I want to thank you again and want to remind our listeners until next time. We appreciate your taking the time to join us for this ASCO in Action podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, don't forget to give us a rating or a review on Apple podcast or wherever you listen. And while you're there, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. The ASCO in Action podcast, remember, is just one of ASCO's many podcasts. You can find all of the shows at podcast.asco.org.

Hey everyone! I just couldn't contain myself any longer. Unconventional Wellness is coming soon! Next week - matter of fact! I am thrilled to be able to deliver this life-changing program to the world...and most of all, you. It has been a 10-year personal journey to discover what I was supposed to do. Through my experience and training, I am here to help you break free from conventional (and broken) healthcare. It is time for you to get healthy, for good. Please enjoy this episode - Unconventional Wellness drops NEXT WEEK! If you haven't gotten a copy of my FREE 5-day Sleep Challenge, pick it up HERE Shownotes for today's podcast: Frank: (00:00)I know I am not alone with saying that our modern healthcare system here in America is broken. Uh, can I get a witness? Can I get an amen? Raise your hand if you agree with me because we need a lifestyle modification now more than ever. And that's what unconventional wellness sets out to do through it's five pillars of unconventional wellness. Stay tuned. I've got a special announcement for all of my listeners out there, episode 36 coming at you very momentarily unconventional on this radio. I'm frank. We'll catch you very soon. Hey everyone, and welcome to unconventional wellness radio. It's a powerful and inspiring podcast, such a revolutionize and disrupt healthcare. It's trying to put you in the driver's seat. That'd be the force of change necessary for the lifestyle you've always wanted. Hey everyone. Good morning and welcome to a new week and welcome to our simulcast. Frank: (00:55)I just loved that word between Facebook and my podcast. Unconventional one is radio. I am super thrilled and the reason why I'm getting started so early on this Monday morning is because unconventional wellness is almost here. Matter of fact, I'm going to just drop it right now. I am lodging unconventional wellness next week. Yes, it is being launched next week. There is going to be an introductory price and this introductory price will not be seen seven days after I launch it, so it'll drop Monday and then the following Monday the price is going to go up. Let me tell you about what unconventional wellness is. Okay. Is My enterprise flagship program. It is the thing that I have worked for for the last 10 years. I have worked as a physician assistant working with active duty service members, figuring out how I can actually bring in natural wellness and integrated practice to light. Frank: (02:04)I am sick and tired of conventional means. They just don't always work. We have lots of side effects. We have lots of problems that come along with it. With that being said, I love the fact that we have modern lifesaving practices and procedures that are done every single day. I mean, people are living through heart attacks, which is incredible. They're living through cancer, which is incredible, but the fact of the matter is is that 80% of chronic illness is preventable. Let me say that again. 80% of chronic illness is avoidable and preventable with good nutrition, being active, getting great sleep, reducing your stress and making sure that you remove toxins out of your life and that is exactly what unconventional wellness is set to help to you. It is going to revolutionize your thoughts, your thinking, your education, and be

So we thought we'd change things up a little bit this week and let Justin take his turn in the guests' seat!!! This also gives Gerard a chance to practice some of those sick interview skills that you need in order to have a show like this run smoothly. But overall, this episode was actually really fun, and it gave us a chance to explore around inside of Justin's head a little more, and also just flip the script and have some questions answered. We cover the whole nine yards, from mental and physical fitness, to the technical aspects of running your own podcast, and trying to start a business while working a full time job. It's not EXACTLY like all of the other "quit your 9-5" stuff that you might see out there, but we think we are working toward a similar goal, but from a whole different angle. And if you have any questions yourself, be sure to leave them in the comments below!! Chances are we might do an interview like this one again and we will address your questions ON THE SHOW if you leave them as comments. That'd be kind of cool, right? ------- Justin Phillips: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_moctBGU-tfwSANYXl9OCg Facebook: https://facebook.com/jjustinrp Instagram: https://instagram.com/jrpdaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/jjustinrp Website: https://justinrp.net/

Hey y'all! It has been a GREAT last 10-12 weeks on the Podcast! Time flies! So with that, let's do a mid-season wrap-up! On the podcast we discuss: The Unconventional Wellness Facebook page, find it HEREThe top episodes of the show!Things to come with the show!The launch of the enterprise program: Unconventional Wellness! So excited everyone! Please stay tuned for the launch! Also, there is still my GIVEAWAY! All you have to do to enter is the following: Leave a rating/review on the PodcastLeave a recommendation on the FB pageShare the content with a friend! That's it - and you are in! Thank you - have a wonderful week! Here are the show notes from today's podcast: Frank: (00:00)Hey everyone, and welcome to unconventional wellness. Radio is a powerful and inspiring podcast, such a revolutionize and disrupt healthcare. It's trying to put you in the driver's seat. That'd be the force of change necessary for the lifestyle you've always wanted. Hey, what's up on conventional walk on this and what is up to you that are listening in on my podcast, I'm doing another simulcast between my Facebook page and then also on our podcast. So let me explain what this episode slash live is going to be all about. So I'm going to do a quick wrap up on all things that have been content. The reason why is because, um, honestly I've felt a bit like a content machine and I know that it might be a lot to consume. And so I just wanted to let you know about all of the great resources and all of the things that I've created and what's available to you for really being a fan and really being a part of this page and being a part of this podcast. Frank: (01:00)So let's just dive right in and let's talk about all of the things that I actually have on the podcast. So first of all, if you're not on my podcast, make sure you get on it because I have 34 episodes of just stuff that I've tried to chock full and make it very, very convenient for you to get, you know, anywhere between say a 20 minute and sometimes a 40 or 45 minute episode that you can listen to on the car while you're on the go or maybe exercising or what have you. And I wanted to, uh, just highlight some of the podcasts that we've done in the past that had been really great. So I kind of took a bit of a break and ended up, I guess looking at it as a season break. I did 22 episodes and then I've taken a break since and now I've done another like 12 and I probably will end up taking a break from season two, sometime around Christmas because I just, you know, I dunno, maybe I will. Frank: (01:58)Maybe I won't. I don't know. But, um, I'm kind of on my second season right now with my podcast and it's, ah, it's doing really great. It's helping a lot of folks. I know that and uh, and I just wanna to make sure that you are aware of the things that were on it. So some of the episodes that I truly enjoy are, uh, one of my best episodes is talking about heart healthiness with the a the dash diet and the Mediterranean diet. Now this is a, a far cry from, you know, what you may know myself and my wife went with the Paleo Diet, but I wanted to talk about all these other diets as well. The ones that are very well researched and actually are p

Cash Flow Management Tips We all love money, but most don’t really love cash flow management stuff. Despite being a pain, ultimately cash flow management will give you more money. In no particular order below we will go through 10 fantastic tips around how you can have better cash flow management in your business. Learn more about cash flow management: https://dorksdelivered.com.au/blog/457-some-tips-you-need-to-know-about-cash-flow-management-by-dorks-delivered Outsource Number one is outsource things where possible. You might think that doing everything yourself and keeping it all in-house is the way to go, but it has been shown time and time again that it is not. Outsourcing gives you a huge advantage. It increases your accountability because you have a position to point you finger at when something goes wrong, and it also increases the brain force of your company. You know the voodoo that you do pretty well, but the reason you're outsourcing, they know even better than you know. Therefore, you should be outsourcing it. It'll save you countless hours and ultimately bring you more time to be able to do the voodoo that you do. So, keep that in mind. Outsourcing is a fantastic way of increasing your cash flow. Changing Your Payment Terms One of the other ones that I think is fantastic is changing around your payment terms. Drop your terms down to Net10. Now, a shorter pay period doesn't sound like it's going to make that big of a difference, and obviously depending on the business that you're working in, this may or may not apply. If you're selling pies, probably don't increase it to Net10. That'd be stupid. But maybe give them a discount card or something like that if they are to buy multiple pies at once, or if they are to be a loyal customer. That'd be a great way to increase your cash flow. Having said that, if you're doing government contracts and very commercial things, then it's a different kettle of fish again. They may not really respond well to Net10, so your mileage may vary on this one, but ultimately you want to be able to give them a shorter payment period if you're able to do that in your industry. This means that you're able to get cash in your pocket sooner. You could also try change around the payment gateway that you're using to a different merchant facility that gets the money into your bank account a little bit quicker. This could end up making a huge difference. I did an example a couple of weeks ago where we went through the process of what it would cost if you had $10,000 outstanding for 30 days every month, always outstanding. It was always paid but it was always 30 days later. The results were fantastic. It worked out to be about a carton of beer a month that you could have extra in your pocket just by changing around your payment terms, so that's a big one. Direct Debit Requests The next one is stemming from that, and that's setting up direct debit requests. Instead of waiting for your customer to pay, a fantastic way to manage your cash flow is by making you the responsible one to be able to pull money from their bank accounts. You set it up in your payment terms, so maybe you invoice on the first, it gets pulled out on the 10th or on the 9th or whatever it is, and then you end up getting the money in your bank account, reliably every month so you know that it's there. It's removing a headache and heartache for them and it removes a headache and heartache for you. Everyone wins and then you have a reliable cash flow. If you aren't doing this, there's some fantastic tools out there that allow you to do it. One of the ones that you could be using is IntegraPay, Bill Buddy, or even PayPal. To be honest, we use a combination of all three of those internally, just depending on what it is exactly that we are doing. Keep that in mind, because it makes a huge difference in making sure that payments are coming in on time. You're not sending out overdue notices, because the payments are coming in on time, and it means that you know reliably when money's going to be there. There's not a question mark next to it. Offer Pay On Time Discount Now, moving on from that is incentivising for the people that don't want to sign up for the direct debit by offering a pay on time discount. Now, the reason I say this instead of offering a fine for paying late is fines aren't well received. You'd be better off offering a discount and that is a positive frame around the same problem. The way I'd suggest doing this is increasing all your prices by said discount amount, so maybe it's 5%, 10%, or 20%, and then just have in your Net10 terms that if you pay before this date, this is the rate. This means that they get to continue to pay the normal rate and you get either more money for them paying later or you get your invoices paid on time. This is a fantastic win/win for the cash flow management. Selling in Bulk Your next one hopefully you've already got as an offering. If you're selling a service where you're selling per hour or per month or whatever the frame is that you've got around the service that you're selling, if you can package that up for them to be able to purchase it in bulk, you're going to get people that want to do that. That's great for their business, because if they're doing that before tax time's up, they're able to offset that in the previous financial year which is an advantage to them. If you're able to sell whatever you are selling in bulk, you have a bulk amount of cash that's sitting in there. If it's in an offset account, it means that you're paying less interest against your house or whatever you've got that offset against. Either way, more money in your pocket, less money in theirs initially, but it's a win/win for everyone. The reason I say that is it means that there's less bookkeeping that needs to be done by all parties. There's less administration overhead. Because of that, it'd be a very sensible idea to offer them an incentive to incentivise for them to buy in bulk. Say for instance if you were to be giving the service for 10 hours, if you normally bill per hour, you give them 10 hours in block amounts and maybe you give them a 5% discount. Or, if they're paying for something per month, ask them if they'd like to pay per year and give them a 10% discount or a free month or two free months or whatever you think would be of value to them, and of value to you. You don't want that to cut into your profits, but you've got to keep in mind that that money is coming to you right now, and you're earning interest ON that money right now for the next 12 months. You also know reliably you've got that customer for 12 months. There's lots of great reasons why that will improve your cash flow tenfold. Keeping Expenses In Check Number six is keeping your expenses in check. You'd be surprised how many places we go into and we just see people throwing money at stupid shit. We go in, we see phone systems that they're paying $600-$650 a month for. We jury rig it all around, get it all fixed up and we drop it down to below $100 a month with no locked in contracts, and they are just like, "Whoa, geeze, you've just saved us thousands of dollars a year with just a small conversation." It's a conversation you guys can be having with any of your current providers, but the problem you may have with your current providers is they're ripping you off or they aren't going to give you the full story. We always suggest for our customers to look elsewhere all the time to see what they can find. See if people are offering the same things that either we're giving away, or that they have from other suppliers. We had a business that we were dealing with in Brisbane and the service they were offering us was costing us nearly $1400 a month. We've been with them for about 10 years so we did a bit of a shopping around. We found the same service for $465 saving us, that's right ladies and gentleman, over $900 a month. That's a $10,000 saving a year that we had from having a maybe two or three hour discussion between the different suppliers and vendors that we rang around about. That gave us a $10,000 saving. Money saved on expenses is money you don't need to find through new customers. Definitely make sure to keep all of your expenses in check. Most suppliers are going to be able to give you a little bit of leniency there, even if it's not directly on cash. We ourselves for our customers offer fantastic incentives for finding other businesses that they work with and referring us on. Now for us that could be anything from several hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars that we give someone for finding a customer. It's not all about reducing your prices down if you're on the other side of this. It's definitely about making sure that you're adding value and you're having everyone grow together. Giving everyone the tools to empower themselves to be able to do the voodoo that they do, and make sure that you're able to grow, they're able to grow, and you're able to hopefully keep your cash flow in control. Automating Processes The next one is definitely easier said than done. It's around automating processes in your business to remove employee, financial, and time expenses. You'll notice if you've got more than one employee that everyone doesn't have the same go-getter attitude that you have. You want to make sure that they do, but you know honestly, they're never going to. It's your baby, you're passionate about this. They're never going to be as passionate as you. Try automate some of their tasks and let them work on things that they enjoy doing more, or bring other things and other aspects into your business that you've been wanting to do for years. If you're able to remove repetition and automate some of those processes, you'll be ahead of the pack and you'll have the advantage over your competitors. That's what you want to do. You want to make sure you have the advantage over your competitors, and you want to make sure you're running a lean, mean, growing machine. As I said, get a business advisor in to automate your process and see where that ends up with you. Explore Other Technologies Talk to any of the people in your business about the technology they're using or about the processes that they are following and see if they can be adjusted. Now, when you've been a leader and you're telling everyone how to do things, a lot of the time people aren't talking back to you on how things can be done. They're just listening to you because you're telling them. Empowering them to be able to go out and search for different tools that might speed that process up could be great for cash flow management. Maybe you've got some quoting extraordinaire and they're using some arbitrary Excel, Word, monster system that's not really working that well and not very efficient. You explain to them to go and have a look and they might find tools such as Proposify, or other different quoting tools that speed up their process and speed up their deliverables. Giving them the power to find these tools will give them the power to own the project of implementing them, and they're going to love the whole process. It's win/win for everyone, and ultimately, that's going to affect your cash flow and that's going to affect it in a positive way, which is what we want. Time Management Number nine is building on number seven. Look at where time is spent and if there's a process that takes a long time, give it to someone else in a different area of your business to look over it. One of the best things about our business internally is we have people from different areas and from different walks of life. We have people who are in their early 20s, we have people in their late 40s and we have people everywhere in between. We have advisors that come in that are nearly in their 70s. We've got people that are giving us advice from everywhere. It goes without saying, everyone knows the old story that NASA spent millions of dollars developing a pen that works in space, but the Russians used a pencil. There could be something very clear that you're missing, very obvious, that you're missing in a process or in business. Dick Smith had a great attitude towards this. Any member of the business, anyone that was a staff member, regardless of your level of management or wherever you sat in the hierarchy, you needed to be customer facing for at least one day a month. You do this to make sure that you don't lose grips with what's important in the business. That is a great attitude to have and we use that same model in our business. One day a month, if they're lucky enough to get on the phone with me, I'll help them out with their support requests, and that gives me an idea of their feedback, it keeps you front of mind with the customer, and it allows us to change the direction of where the business is going. If you've got a team and you've got multiple people in different areas, you want to make sure the engineering team and your operations team and your marketing team are all building your products together. In doing this, you might find that an engineer has a solution to a marketing problem that you wouldn't have seen or otherwise thought of. Maybe you weren't aware that the product that you're selling could even do something that it's doing, so making sure that you are sharing all of your knowledge between all of your team members is very important. Get Your Name Out There Give reasons for your customers to spruik your message. Make sure that your product is a product that encompasses the message for them to be able to market for you. Gmail pay very little to be able to have everyone use their email service, because it's such a great deal that they're able to have the people tell everyone else about how great it is, and everyone else markets the product for them. In this situation, the product although appears to be email, you are actually the product and then they're using the emails and the data that's coming in through Google Adsense and the Google AdWords Networks to be able to then push out and market and make profit from it. You need to make sure you're able to encompass a similar model where your customers are spruiking the message about how important your product is to them. If you do this that'll affect your cash flow tenfold. If you don't know what your customers want, join a network marketing group, talk to them, sit down for a network breakfast or something like that and find out what it is that they do and how your product could help them out. There's all sorts of different network marketing stuff, depending on if you're a small business that's been around for six months, or you're a big business that's been around for 20 or 30 years, there's something out there for you. Review Everything Time for a bonus one! Surprisingly, give yourself time to review everything in your business. This is by far the best tip. A health check to see where your business is at can save you thousands. I know myself it has saved us thousands. Just the example I gave you earlier by ringing up that vendor saved us thousands. Keeping the mobile phone companies in check saves us thousands. Keeping everything in check and setting up a schedule in your calendar for every few months to have a look and go over everything. I've got this as show me the money, and it says all the different things that I can go through. Then, at the end of the financial year, I have another list of all the different things that I can prepay forward. That could be investment properties or any other software vendors that I already know that I can prepay those forward and I save some money. That gives me more cash flow for next year, although it's kind of in a sense converting OPEX to CAPEX. You're ultimately going to have more money at the end of the day. The Final Word I hope you've enjoyed this. We've covered off on a lot of information so if it has helped let us know. Stay good!  

Welcome to the Podcast! Stressed? Full of Anxiety? Well, I am right there with you! I know how you feel - matter of fact, although your situation is unique to your experience, we have all felt stressed and/or anxious. It does not DEFINE you - you can work through it. On today's episode, I will give you 10 natural, anxiety busting remedies that I use - and they work! Some of the topics include: The stress of social mediaThe hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axisThe 10 methods I use to help with stress/anxietyWrap-up with my FREE giveaway! I decided to extend the FREE giveaway a couple of weeks to get your lot casted! How to enter: #1 - Leave a rating or review (has to be 5-stars so this Podcast can be shared)#2 - Share the Podcast with someone#3 - Email me a Wellness Question who would like answered! Email me at frank@ritzessentials.com Thats it! By the way - are you sleeping well? If not, here is a FREE 5-day Sleep Challenge downloadable that could help you start getting better sleep tonight! Download it HERE Here are the show notes for this episode: Frank: (00:00)If you're like me, then you have had stress and anxiety in your life. Matter of fact, it might be in your life right now as you're listening to this podcast. Wow. Stay tuned. I'm frank. This is unconventional wellness radio and on today's episode I am going to talk to you about 10 natural anxiety busting methods that I use and I want to share them with yourself. Stick around unconventional wellness radio and we will talk to you very, very soon. Hey everyone, and welcome to unconventional wellness. Radio is a powerful and inspiring podcast, such a revolutionize and disrupt healthcare. It's trying to put you in the driver's seat. That'd be the force of change necessary for the lifestyle you've always wanted. Hey, what's going on? Everybody? Frank here? Um, oh, I just noticed that I still have these on. These are actually a kind of cool. Frank: (00:47)These are those blue blocking types of lenses. So whenever I'm like working on the computer and stuff like that, I try to wear these. Um, they have like a yellow tint to them and it's a little ticks, a little a second to get used to them. But what's really cool about it is that, uh, they're, they're really great. If you're joining us on, uh, Facebook, um, awesome. Uh, we're doing another simulcast. Uh, this is Oscar Maine, uh, in correlation with my podcast that I'm doing. It's our weekly podcasts. It's unconventional wellness radio. So if you're listening to us on there and hello, hope you had a great weekend, uh, if you're like me, you're pretty excited cause college football season is essentially upon us again, and even when we're even where we're at, we've got a little bit of cooler temperatures, so it's maybe time for that fall to start creeping its way in, uh, here shortly in the next couple of weeks. Frank: (01:39)And so we've got a small preview of what, uh, what fall is going to be bringing. But anyway, we're here to talk today about 10 anxiety busting remedies that I want to recommend to you. Uh, we are just so stressed out and so anxious and our society just, you know, it ca

Hey y'all, I hope you had a fabulous weekend! Personally, I am getting silly excited about the fact that College Football starts this weekend. Yes! Enough about that, though :) Let's look at what we talk about on today's podcast: Nutritional issues with Americans and diseaseTricks and traps that grocery stores use to make you spend moneyTips to navigate your grocery storeHow to enter my FREE GIVEAWAY! Do you want better sleep? Have you downloaded my FREE 5-day Sleep Challenge yet? If not, grab yours HERE For those that love to read, here are the Podcast show notes: Frank: (00:00)Hey and welcome to unconventional on this radio. I am your host frank, and I'm going to have a little fun today. We're going to talk about three tips that I can give you to go navigate your grocery store in order to watch out for all of the deceptive marketing experience that they try to create in order to buy a bunch of things that you don't really need. So stay tuned. Unconventional wellness radio, episode number 32 coming at you in a couple of moments. Hey everyone, and welcome to unconventional wellness. Radio is a powerful and inspiring podcast, such a revolutionize and disrupt healthcare. It's time to put you in the driver's seat. That'd be the force of change necessary for the lifestyle you've always wanted. Hey guys, what's up? It's frank and you're here with an episode of unconventional wellness. I'm so blessed and happy that you're here to join me today. Frank: (00:51)I am going to really have some fun with this podcast because I am sick and tired of the BS. I am sick and tired of people making sciences that are, you know, just outlandish and making, like we used to jokingly say in the military, like, don't make an mos out of it. And what that really means is we don't want people to believe that it needs to be more difficult than what it actually is. One of the problems that people have when they try to start having a more healthy lifestyle is the fact that they really just get bogged down with a bunch of information and then it becomes extraordinarily difficult to sift through that and be able to understand that really it is not nearly as crazy and difficult as it should be or that it's more difficult than it actually should be. And so one of the things I want to talk about today was, you know, just how I liked to navigate in a grocery store. Frank: (01:47)Um, I know it may seem stupid and you could turn this podcast off and stuff like that, but honestly, if you listen up for it, um, I can break down some of the psychology of how marketers have figured out excellent ways to be able to keep you inside of the store. That way you continue to purchase things, uh, or you can actually listen to me and learned some good tips and tricks to be able to cut through the junk and be able to go get the food that you need in order to be able to start changing your nutrition for the better. So I wanted to start off with just a couple of tidbits for you. I love tidbits because I love numbers and I love putting things on in, in understanding, uh, for us so we can really see if the types of problems that are actually being created with poor nutrition. Frank: (